France

One lesson from military history is that once mobilization for war begins, it takes on a momentum of its own and is uncontrollable. This might be what is occuring unrecognized before our eyes.

While much of the financial media and Wall Street analysts continue to ignore the risks of a recession, there are some important warning signs that suggest this might be a bad idea. As Charles Gave noted earlier, "We are swimming in an ocean of ignorance... It seems all the painful economics lessons learned over the last 300 years have been forgotten"

"What I find most hilarious is that some serious commentators have been pontificating at considerable length about what the market’s participants think. These days, some 70% of market orders are generated by computers, and many of the rest by indexers. And computers do not think... I cannot remember a time when less thinking has ever been done in the financial markets, which is why I find today’s financial markets infinitely boring."

- Charles Gave

After yesterday's rollercoaster session in both the S&P and in oil, where initially stocks soared alongside oil, only to promptly tumble as stops were taken out and as the refiners' inventory strategy was exposed after the DOE's latest weekly numbers were released, it has been a quieter session so far, though maybe not for China where stocks jumped at the open only to fizzle and close at the lows in what appears to be ever less intervention by the market manipulating "National Team."

With Turkey and Iraq still at odds over the former's deployment of between 150 and 300 troops along with two dozen tanks to Bashiqa, Russia told the Security Council on Tuesday that Ankara is acting "recklessly and inexplicably." Of course Moscow has a powerful friend among the five permanent members and on Wdnesday, Beijing weighed in on the Turkish troop issue for the first time.

"We are living amid an Islamic threat and we should be aware of the consequences. Our country, as well as other European countries, is at war – both outside our borders, in Syria for instance, and inside our borders, because our enemies live in our own country”

“The government and parliament need to review the agreement signed with the United States on security because the United States does not seriously care about its fulfillment, We demand that it be annulled." 

Overnight market action has largely been a continuation of Tuesday's key themes with European stocks falling as a selloff in mining companies extended to a 7th day, even as metals prices rose and crude oil rallied modestly from a six-year low after yesterday's API crude inventory draw. U.S. equity futures have rebounded from modest declines, as emerging-market shares extended their losing streak to a 6th day while Asian stocks dropped to 2 month lows.

When most people think of CIA sabotage, they think of coups, assassinations, proxy wars, armed rebel groups, and even false flags - not strategic stupidity and purposeful bureaucratic ineptitude. However, according to a declassified document from 1944, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which later became the CIA, used and trained a curious breed of “citizen-saboteurs” in occupied nations like Norway and France.

Send a Million Troops From All Over the World Pouring Into Raqqa

Hitler said often that the bigger the lie, the easier it would be [for the masses] to believe.  This is no where more true than Forex.

The day of reckoning has arrived for the oil price. After a year of "Oil Price Crash" in October the world managed record production of 97.09 Mbpd. Production momentum built in the period of high price, 2007 to 2014, is proving very difficult to switch off. It must be switched off and it seems to me the most likely scenario is sharply lower oil price in the near term.

• Anti-Trump Effort Launches Super PAC (WSJ)
• Muslims decry Trump's proposal to keep them out of US (AP)
• Debate Heats Up Over No-Fly List, Gun Sales (WSJ)
• OPEC Takes Down Oil Majors as Lower-for-Even-Longer Kicks In (BBG)
• Chinese Companies Are Trapped in IPO Logjam (WSJ)
• Republican Ted Cruz vaults into first place in new Iowa poll (Reuters)

Over the weekend, in its latest quarterly presentation, the Bank of International Settlements made what may have been a very premature assessment that China is now contained. Judging by events in the past 24 hours, the reality is anything but.

The left is now mixing terrorism and mass shootings to push a narrative to eviscerate the Second Amendment. We once again have rehashed stories about the AR-15 rifle, which isn’t as powerful as a hunting rifle and rarely used in crimes. And we have the media endorsing gun control policies that would require gun bans and confiscation. They’re insinuating parts of it, but the brash call to ban guns entirely is coming.