United States

Late last month in “South Pacific Showdown? Japan May Send Warships To China Islands,” we documented a meeting between Japanese PM Shinzo Abe and Philippines President Benigno Aquino on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit held in Manila. 

The two leaders discussed the possibility that Japan could provide Manila with “large ships” that the Philippines can use to patrol the South China Sea. 

This was, of course, a direct response to China, whose land reclamation efforts in the Spratlys have ruffled more than a few feathers in the South Pacific. 

Submitted by David Stockman via Contra Corner blog,

There is going to be carnage in the casino, and the proof lies in the transcript of Janet Yellen’s press conference. She did not say one word about the real world; it was all about the hypothetical world embedded in the Fed’s tinker toy model of the US economy.

Arguably the biggest event overnight was yesterday's BOJ announcement which was widely expected to be non-event, yet ended up being anything but, when, as expected, the Bank of Japan did announce it would keep overall JPY80 trillion monthly QE unchanged, as forecast by 41 of 42 economists, however it also announced it would extend the average maturity of JGB holdings to 7-12 yrs, would establish a new program for ETF purchases targeting the stocks issued by companies "proactively making investment in physical and human capital", and lastly

Submitted by Koos Jansen via BullionStar.com,

The very reason I became interested in gold after the financial crisis in 2008 was because of Dutch gold guru, author, journalist, entrepreneur, and fund manager Willem Middelkoop. When I started reading his books I was immediately obsessed with economics and the gold market – along with thousands of others across the world.  Who would have thought that I would become a precious metals analyst a few years later?

Amidst all the current shadow play, the true test of the Obama administration's intentions is whether the US coalition will really fight Daesh, al-Nusra and Ahrar ash-Sham (which harbors a lot of jihadists from Chechnya, Dagestan and Uzbekistan), with no reservations.