United States

Tensions continue to escalate between the US and Russia. As a reminder, Russia conducted several close encounter fly-bys when first a Russian Su-24 "buzzed" the US missile destroyer USS Donald Cook in the Baltic Sea, and just days later flew within 50 feet of a US recon plane also flying over the Baltic Sea. The U.S. quickly responded and complained vocally to Russia, followed quickly by the first deployment of US F-22 stealth fighter to Romania, in close proximity to both the Black Sea and 400 km from the Russian military stronghold of Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula.

Submitted by Adam Smith via PeakProsperity.com,

Students of Austrian business cycle theory are familiar with the term malinvestment. A malinvestment is any poor use of resources or capital, commonly made in response to bad policy (usually artificially low interest rates and/or unsustainable increases in the monetary supply). The dot-com bubble that popped in 2001? The housing bubble that similarly burst in 2008? Those were classic examples of malinvestment.

Last week a Russian Air Force MiG-31 jet intercepted a US surveillance plane near Kamchatka in Russia’s Far East, flying within 15 meters of the aircraft. Kamchatka is Russia’s main military hub in the Pacific with several military bases located there, along with a major naval base. Washington downplayed the incident and said the maneuver was carried out in a “safe and professional” manner. Russia Today reports: The MiG-31 (NATO code name Foxhound) is a Soviet-design supersonic interceptor, the world’s fastest aircraft in service today.

Submitted by Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk via Bawerk.net,

When JPM quant Marko Kolanovic released his latest report today, we were expecting him to read his latest insight on the positioning of quant funds, on the relative imbalance of risk parity, or perhaps whether market gamma was suggesting that the market is poised for an inflection point, either lower or higher.