Germany

As the third day after the Paris attacks dawns, and hours after France launched an unprecedented blitz airstrike on the Islamic State "capital" of Raqqa (located in the sovereign state of Syria), here are the latest developments following the worst European terrorist attack in the past decade.

Within one hour of the Paris attacks and without any evidence, the story was set in stone that the perpetrator was ISIL. This is the way propaganda works.

It is important to keep in mind that the dollar’s attacks on gold always end the same way – in a painful knockout for the dollar. There have been no exceptions to this rule throughout monetary history, nor will there be this time. Hence the well-known market rule: “Any maximum of the gold price is not the last one.” It would be naive to believe that this golden rule is unknown to that grandmaster of patience, Vladimir Putin, and to Xi Jinping. By systematically increasing their gold reserves, Russia and China are relentlessly moving forward to strip the US dollar of its status as a global reserve currency. America’s standard military solution won’t work in this situation.

It’s easy to be frightened by these proposals. But if governments think they can force us to accept negative interest rates on our savings by abolishing cash, they need to think again. It’s preposterous to assume that savers will passively accept outright confiscation of their assets via negative interest rates or a ban on cash. Instead, people will simply revert to other stores of value.

"The worldwide collection of phone calls, emails, text messages and our total loss of privacy is all about taxes – NOT terrorism. With all this power, and the demand that encryption be outlawed, none of this surveillance has stopped one terrorist act... Let’s knock off the bullshit and stop the Stasi tactic of building files on everyone. Focus on just the targets to protect society sand we just might stop something like this if we tried."

"The days of uncontrolled immigration and illegal entry can't continue just like that. Paris changes everything."

If there is one 'winner' from last night's terrible events in Paris, it is France's anti-EU, anti-immigration far-right wing Front Nationale party leader Marine Le Pen. Having already ascended to the lead in yet another poll ahead of France's 2017 elections, Le Pen came out swinging this morning call for France to "re-arm itself," stating that radical Islam must be "eradicated" from France. She further demanded that border controls be made "permanent" and binational Islamists must be depreived of their French passport.

Trump, for all his contradictions, gives voice to the “isolationist” populism that Rubio and his neocon confederates despise, and which is implanted so deeply in the American consciousness. Why us? Why are we paying everybody’s bills? Why are we fighting everybody else’s wars? It’s a bad deal! This is why the neocons hate Trump’s guts even more than they hate Paul.

In the latest from Europe's border battles, Austria has responded to Slovenia by building its own version of an anti-migrant fence while Sweden has began checking trains coming from Denmark and removing anyone without the proper papers. Saving Schengen truly is a "race against time."

Where did Europe's Q3 weakness come from? It was broad based and pronounced led by Germany, the currency area’s exporting powerhouse, while Italian economic growth also eased. There were fresh contractions in Greece, Finland and Estonia, while Portugal’s economy stagnated.

For once, the overnight session was not dominated by weak Chinese economic data (which probably explains why the Shanghai Composite dropped for the second day in a row, declining 1.4%, and ending an impressive run since the beginning of November) and instead Europe took the spotlight with its own poor data in the form of Q3 GDP which printed below expectations at 0.3% Q/Q, down also from the 0.4% increase in Q2, with several key economies rolling over including Germany, Italy, and Spain while Europe's poster child of "successful austerity" saw Q3 GDP stagnate, far worse than the 0.5% growth consensus expected.

China has given the green light to more than 150 coal power plants so far this year despite falling coal consumption, flatlining production and existing overcapacity. Modelling this expansion, Greenpeace EnergyDesk suggests that this would cause 6,100 premature deaths a year — that’s 150,000 over a 24-year operating life.