Russia

Whether you define gold as a barbarous relic, a pet rock, "tradition", or "doomed", Russia surely refers to it as a saving grace. As Russia’s foreign reserves dwindled to just under $350 billion in early 2015, many predicted Russia was going to burn through all of their reserves in the not too distant future as they dealt with a depreciating Ruble and plummeting oil revenues.

However, this dire prediction did not pan out mainly due to one thing: Russia’s strategic decision to load up on as much gold over the past few years as it possibly could.

How quickly the oil production freeze narrative has fallen apart.

Source: stockboardasset

Indeed, it's been a tough two days for oil bulls holding on to hope that excess oil production will normalize in the near term and that the world's oil suppliers would somehow manage to curb oil production in the aftermath of the OPEC's November 2014 cartel collapse.

We are one step closer to another full-blown return of the cold war.

Yesterday, during a briefing in Latvia's capital Riga, NATO Gen. Philip Breedlove said that NATO and the United States are switching their defense doctrine from assurance to deterrence in Eastern Europe in response to a “resurgent and aggressive Russia."

The comments by Breedlove come a day after the Pentagon said it would begin continuous rotations of an additional armored brigade of about 4,200 troops in Eastern Europe beginning in early 2017.

Russia has criticised US plans to position troops, tanks and other armored vehicles full time along NATO’s eastern borders, and said that Moscow is preparing a “completely asymmetrical” response to the deployments. Alexandr Grushko, Russia’s Ambassador to NATO said on Thursday that Moscow would not act like a “passive observer” but would rather undertake all those military measures needed to counter the “totally unjustified increased military presence.” Press TV reports: “Of course, our response will be completely asymmetrical.

There was much surprise in geopolitical circles several weeks ago when, completely out of the blue, Russian president Vladimir Putin announced he would begin withdrawing military forces from Syria at once, a move hailed by some as confirmation Russia had failed to achieve its goals in the civil war-ridden nation which serves as a hotbed of ISIS terrorist attacks around the globe, and by others as victory.