Accepting the Inevitable,
EU Parliamentarians will fight Donald Trump's ambassador to the EU, who favors EU deconstruction. “I helped bring down the Soviet Union, so maybe there’s another union that needs a little taming,” said Mr. Malloch in an interview with the BBC.
“These statements reveal outrageous malevolence regarding the values that define this European Union,” Mr. Verhofstadt and Mr. Weber wrote, adding that Mr. Malloch could seriously undermine the trans-Atlantic relationship. “We are strongly convinced that persons seeing as their mission to disrupt or dissolve the European Union should not be accredited as official representatives to the E.U.” Thanks Eleni
Moon of Alabama says that Ukrainian PM Poroshenko was sure Clinton would win, banked Clinton, then swallowed advice from John McCain and Lindsay Graham to attack in the Donbass, further violating the ceasefire he has never really kept. Trump MET with Poroshenko's rival, Yulia Temoshenko, then had a fairly short and non-committal phone call with Poroshenko. This boxes "Porky" in, and boxes his ears, too. The assessment is that Ukrainian aggression was not hidden effectively, and is seen by all parties as a partisan effort to derail Trump detente with Russia. It's not working.
Marine LePen is really clear about the purpose of her presidential campaign. "If elected, Le Pen says she would immediately seek an overhaul of the European Union that would reduce it to a very loose cooperative of nations with no single currency and no border-free area. If, as is likely, France's EU partners refuse to agree to this, she would call a referendum to leave the bloc." http://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-election-fn-idUSKBN15J007?il=0
Euro fades in currency markets as Le Pen presidency begins to look possible.
French bonds lose luster as recent French presidential front-runner Filon, now losing support for hiring his wife on national payroll, for questionable work, apologizes instead of punching back hard. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-02-06/market-not-happy-fillon-statement-spread-germany-spikes
Former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis urges Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to turn his back on Greece’s lenders, adopt a parallel payment system and to unilateral restructure the loans held by the European Central Bank. “This two-pronged preparation is the only way to prevent another excruciating retreat by the prime minister in the short term and [German Finance Minister Wolfgang] Schaeuble’s plan in the long term.” Varoufakis suggested that Schaeuble’s strategy is to lead Greeks to the point of exhaustion so they ask to leave the euro themselves.
This article says that a "Transpacific Partnership" composed of the US, Japan and South Korea, and based on the power of the US military to defend them from China, may be plenty, and may already be well on the way to agreement, since Secretary of Defense Mattis visited those countries recently.
China unveils a new ballistic missile that can nuke Japan, Taiwan and US bases in Asia. It's fast, and hard to intercept with ABMs.
This voice from the Independent UK says that "Deluded Republicans are Accidentally Pushing for Progressive Corporate Tax Reform" This reform would encourage repatriation of corporate profits, by taxing all transactions within the US, regardless of corporate headquarters. (Hey, maybe they mean to do it correctly this time, fella.)
Professor Paul Craig Roberts: 150 masked “protesters” at Cal Berkeley, precisely 0.0039 percent of the 38,000 student body was all it took to shut down free speech at the University of California, Berkeley. The protesters are so confused that they see the shutdown as a victory for free speech. The 150 violent protesters are masked, so we don’t know if they are students or a Deep State operation against President Trump. The protesters are behaving as fascists by shutting down free speech. By associating the exercise of free speech with fascism, the protesters appear to be too stupid to be Cal Berkeley students. When I was a graduate student at Cal Berkeley, there were high admission standards. http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/02/02/cal-berkeley-protesters-fascists/
Keystone XL needs much higher oil prices to be viable. Art Berman
Which assets are most likely to survive the inevitable "System re-set"? Charles Hugh Smith (Not financial assets, but who you are, what you know/do, friends and family, and your house and land if you can keep up tax payments through some kind of income source.)
Still Have Health
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