United States

After a burst of volatility in the developed market over the past month, one odd outlier was China, where after a surge of gut-wrenching moves in both its currency and equity markets (recall that it was China's troubles with marketwide circuit breakers at the start of January that may have catalyzed the global volatility wave), Chinese stocks remained relatively quiet and resilient, levitating quietly day after day. That all changed overnight when the Shanghai Composite plunged by 6.4% with the drop accelerating into the close.

Presidents have more latitude in foreign affairs than in domestic policy, and the trend over the past two administrations has been for presidents to be more hawkish than their campaign pledges led voters to expect. George W. Bush promised a “humble foreign policy.” Instead, he gave us the Iraq War. Barack Obama was elected in part to end Bush’s wars. But he too pursued regime change, with Pyrrhic success in Libya and abortively in Syria.

Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,

When a currency peg breaks, it unleashes shock waves of uncertainty and repricing that hit the global financial system like a tsunami.

The U.S. dollar has risen by more than 35% against other major trading currencies since mid-2014:

Submitted by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

When a leading nominee for President gets something exactly right, we should applaud them for it.  In this case, Donald Trump’s call to audit the Federal Reserve is dead on correct.  Most Americans don’t realize this, but the Federal Reserve has far more power over the economy than anyone else does – including Barack Obama. 

President Putin made an unusual and urgent call to King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud on Wednesday after the leader of Saudi Arabia refused to speak to President Obama on the upcoming Syrian ceasefire later this week – a situation which risked a World War if left unresolved. The Saudi king spoke to Putin about the nature of the Russian-US ceasefire agreement in Syria, before agreeing to cooperate with it. “The king of Saudi Arabia welcomed the reached agreements and expressed readiness to cooperate with Russia for their implementation,” The Kremlin reports.