European Union

Many people are cheering now that yesterday Marine Le Pen and her Front National (FN) party didn’t get to take over government in any regions in the France regional elections. They should think again. FN did get a lot more votes than the last time around, and, though she will be a little disappointed after last weekend’s results, it’s exactly as Le Pen herself said: “Nothing can stop us”.

Welcome to the future, ladies and gentlemen. "A driver allegedly involved in two hit-and-run incidents was tracked down after her car alerted the police. As reported by local news outlets, an unusual 911 call to emergency services took place on Friday in Port St. Lucie, Florida. You would usually expect a human voice on the end of the line, but in this scenario, a Ford vehicle alerted the police to a collision."

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"The move would arguably represent the biggest transfer of sovereignty since the creation of the single currency."

Having won Time's "Person of the Year" award, German chancellor Angela Merkel may have little time, or cause, for celebration. The reason for that is shown in the chart below.

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• U.S. top court divided over affirmative action in college admissions (Reuters)
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• Gun buyer and gunman linked through marriage, previous plot (AP)

The number of radical Salafists in Germany has more than doubled over the past five years, according to a new estimate by German intelligence officials. And now, Salafists disguised as aid workers are canvassing German refugee shelters in search of new recruits from among the nearly one million asylum seekers who have arrived this year from Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Some Salafists are offering gifts of money and clothing, with literature saying "Come to us. We will show you Paradise."

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After being threatened with expulsion from the Schengen borderless Europe zone, Greece has grudignly accepted an offer from the European Union to "bolster its borders with foreign guards as well as other aid, including tents and first aid kits." In doing so it has last its last shred of state sovereignty.

"In the year ahead, geopolitics likely poses the greatest potential to disrupt markets in terms of event risk. There is also the potential for geopolitical risks to intersect with economic fragility in the event of a downturn, amplifying both."

In a somewhat depressing show of the farce that is Europe's immigration policy, local media reports "apocalyptic scenes" on the northern Greek border where "economic migrants" who are not entitled to leave Greece's provisional camps are fighting with 'refugees' who are entitled to leave, and head into other European nations. Petrol bombs and stones flew through the air, fists, kicks and wrestling on the ground as migrants hindered refugees from entering Macedonia (FYROM). People have injured, trampled and faint, among them many babies as some migrants tried to pass together with the refugees and were apparently hindered with stun grenades fired by the FYROM police.

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She warned against a EU superstate by saying famously: "We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them reimposed at a European level, with a European superstate exercising a new dominance from Brussels."

Update: PSPP extended to March 2017 "or beyond", regional debt added to QE-eligible asset pool

Having just let everyone down with a less-than-spectacular 10 bps depo rate cut, Mario Draghi will now try to appease a spoiled market by announcing an expansion and/or an extension of PSPP.