United States

With US markets failing to hold on to today's "Deutsche Bank" euphoric gains today despite, or rather due to Janet Yellen's Congressional testimony, traders in mainland China remains locked out due to the Lunar New Year holiday, while Japan is mercifully taking a break - mercifully, because otherwise the Nikkei would be crashing. However, one market is back online as Hong Kong traders return to their desks to see carnage around the globe, and most importantly, are unable to hedge arbed exposure between China, Japan and the US.

When Barack Obama swept into the White House in 2008, the American electorate was hoping for “change.”

A “change” in the way Republicans and Democrats interacted with one another, a “change” in how the US is perceived by the rest of the world, and a “change” in Washington’s notoriously poor foreign policy in the Mid-East.

Submitted by Christoph Gisiger via Finanz Und Wirtschaft,

Fred Hickey, editor of the widely read investment newsletter «The High-Tech Strategist», warns of more trouble to come for stocks and spots bright investment opportunities in the gold sector.

Having seen what monetary-policy failure looks like in Japan.. and in the US, we now turn our attention to the world. Amid NIRP temptations, growth fears, and faltering faith in central banker control, market-implied inflation expectations have collapsed to record lows. Worse still, even The Fed's own survey of consumer's inflation expectations has slumped to record lows.

Inflation expectations are collapsing... (US and Europe at record lows - worse than the lows in the middle of the last crisis)...

Tomorrow, John Kerry will meet Sergei Lavrov and several of his other counterparts from Europe and the Mid-East in Munich in a last ditch effort to revive Syrian peace talks, which fell apart amid an intense Russian air assault on rebel positions in Aleppo.