In a research note titled "Close to the edge", economists at Swiss bank Credit Suisse warned the fate of monetary union hangs in the balance if Europe's policymakers are unable to ward off another global slump and quell anti-euro populism. "The viability of the euro is contingent on the current recovery," said Peter Foley at Credit Suisse. "If the euro area were to relapse back into recession, it is not clear it would endure."

Although the bloc's nascent recovery was likely to persist in the coming months, Credit Suisse said there were worrying signs of deterioration emanating from Europe's economies. These included an industrial slowdown, heightened credit stress in the banking sector and market volatility. "The near-term outlook for economic activity, as well as the risks around it, has shifted materially downwards," said the seven-page report.

Financial markets all over the planet gyrate wildly at the smallest comment from Fed officials, and virtually every boom and bust cycle over the past 100 years can be traced directly back to specific decisions made by the Federal Reserve. We get all excited about what various presidential candidates say that they “will do for the economy”, but in the end it is the Fed that is holding all of the cards.

The funny thing is that the Federal Reserve is not even part of the federal government. It is an independent private central bank that was designed by very powerful Wall Street interests a little over 100 years ago. It is at the heart of the debt-based financial system which is eating away at America like cancer, and it has no direct accountability to the American people whatsoever.

The Fed has been around for so long that most people assume that we need it. But the truth is that we don’t actually need the Federal Reserve. In fact, the greatest period of economic growth in United States history happened during the decades before the Federal Reserve was created. A little over 100 years ago, very powerful forces on Wall Street successfully pushed for the creation of an immensely powerful central bank, and since that time the value of the US dollar has fallen by about 98 percent and our national debt has gotten more than 5,000 times larger.

The Federal Reserve does whatever it feels like doing, and Fed officials insist that the institution must remain “independent” and “above politics” because monetary policy is too important to entrust to the American people. To me, this is absolutely ridiculous. Everything else, including our national defense, is subject to the normal political process, and yet the decisions made by the Fed are so “important” that the American people can’t have a voice?

It is high time that the American people begin to learn what the Federal Reserve is really all about, and that can start with a full, comprehensive audit of all of the Federal Reserve’s activities. Yesterday, Donald Trump came out in favor of such an audit…

He had scraped together his last $325 for the flight to Iraq — a small fraction of the money he had paid to smugglers last summer to get to Germany by foot, bus and boat through Turkey, Greece, the Balkans and Austria.

But now, after more than 1.1 million refugees from troubled lands such as Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan have trekked into Germany over the last 13 months, a small but growing number are heading home. The reasons are myriad, but include overcrowded refugee centers, exasperating bureaucracy, unfamiliar German food, a lack of jobs and a spreading sense of resentment from Germans who fear their country is being overrun by Muslims.

Many refugees say they are now happy to trade a cold, heartless and lonely life in one of Europe's richest countries for the violence, insecurity and poverty back home. And they say they have realized, rather belatedly, that smugglers had sold them a pack of lies about big houses, well-paying jobs and the life of luxury they would find in Germany.

Since when does the self-proclaimed righteous defender of the elite, founded by John Rockefeller, lower themselves to such blatant and childish mudslinging? They don’t, and this behavior is representative of a departure of tactics employed by the elite. And the fact that elite are approaching such a state of desperation, near-panic, if you will, all options are on the table. Again, I say, the elite are proclaiming that all options are on the table when it comes to the fate of Donald Trump.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton is their choice and has always been their choice to follow Obama into the White House, with her criminal behavior notwithstanding. As an average American, anytime the CFR, or its first cousin, the Trilateral Commission endorses a candidate, no matter how subtle the endorsement, I assume it is opposite day and move in the other direction.

A new superPAC has dumped $10 million into blistering negative TV ads against Trump in the last three days. The Koch brothers and their associates deny funding the effort but their denials are questionable at best. The New York Times reported Sunday that the Rubio and Kasich campaigns are now openly planning on a ‘brokered convention” to stop Trump in the back rooms in Cleveland.

The New York Daily News reported that Barbara Bush has vowed revenge against Trump for ending the “low energy” campaign of her son Jeb, the anointed one and that the Bush clan is all-in in the effort to stop Trump. The News reported that Jeb may transfer the $25 to $30 million in SuperPAC funds he has left to an anti-Trump effort.

Surely the party pros know that a nomination wrenched from the hands of Donald Trump would be worthless but they don’t care. The ruling elite that have dominated the party would rather have globalist Hillary Clinton than the uncontrollable nationalist Donald Trump. The idea of a president not beholden to the ruling elite is more than they can stand.

There are many great aphorisms in politics but this one may be the key to who ends up President: he who knows the rules, rules. Right now, it’s Reince and the Racketeers who know them best. Beware Republicans: the big steal is coming.

It is amazing to me that a candidate that is openly at war with the Republican Party establishment, Fox News, Glenn Beck and a whole bunch of other prominent conservative pundits is running away with the race for the nomination. If someone would have told me this a year ago, I never would have believed it. But the war is far from over. Special interest groups are going to pour tens of millions of dollars into an all-out attempt to defeat Trump, and the mainstream media is going to continue to try to smear him however they can.

#1 Marco Rubio – The establishment could put everything that they have into pumping up Marco Rubio’s failing campaign.

#2 Mitt Romney –if Marco Rubio does not win the state of Florida that Rubio will drop out and Romney will enter the race.

#3 Independent Campaign – There had always been speculation that Donald Trump would try an independent campaign if he did not get the nomination, but now it is Republican insiders that are seriously considering going this route.

#4 Throw The Campaign To Hillary – This may sound completely and utterly bizarre, but the truth is that most establishment Republicans are far more comfortable with Hillary Clinton than they are with either Donald Trump or Ted Cruz.

All of this shows me that there is absolutely no hope for the Republican Party. If they can’t unite now, after eight years of Barack Obama and potentially facing four years of Hillary Clinton, when will they be able to get their act together? The fact that establishment Republicans seem far more freaked out about four years of Donald Trump than they do about four years of Hillary Clinton says an awful lot.

Sadly, the Republican establishment is not even willing to rally around Ted Cruz because they hate him almost as much as they hate Donald Trump. They would much rather deal with “President Hillary” than either Trump or Cruz, and so that is quite likely what America is going to get…

Up to 0.2 percent of the European Union's GDP could be erased as a result of the spiralling costs of cross-border travel and disruption to internal trade that would return to post-Schengen Europe, Morgan Stanley warned. The bank's analysts estimate a 5 percent surge in the cost of cross-border travel, while trade flows between countries could fall by up to 20 percent due to border checks as waiting times are reintroduced to Europe.

Unlike the process of negotiating an EU exit for Britain, Morgan Stanley said a chaotic dismantling of the 30-year old passport-free zone would plunge the EU into political turmoil. "Contrary to the Brexit process, which would follow an orderly legal procedure if implemented, the risk surrounding a suspension of Schengen is that it could lead to disorderly political developments related to border controls, which in turn could cause a material hit to private-sector confidence", said Elga Bartsch, at Morgan Stanley.

"This uncertainty would likely lead to a material decline in investment spending, especially if the suspension of Schengen coincided with an exit of the UK."

“UNHCR is warning today that Europe is on the cusp of a largely self-induced humanitarian crisis. This is in light of a rapid build-up of people in an already struggling Greece, with governments not working together despite having already reached agreements in a number of areas, and country after country imposing new border restrictions,” UNHCR spokesman Adrian Edwards said during a press briefing in Geneva on Tuesday afternoon.

The UN says that Europe has to take responsibility for the newcomers, despite over 131,000 people arriving through the Mediterranean this year, almost as many as the 147,000 that made the journey in the first half of 2015.

With Greece unable or unwilling to control its borders or register and process the vast majority of refugees, despite additional EU funding and support, but other countries on the ‘Balkan route’ sealing themselves off, tens of thousands of refugees are stuck in impromptu camps en-route to their desired destinations of Germany and Scandinavia.

In recent decades, China built its economy on heavy state investment in export-oriented manufacturing industries. Those investments created large numbers of jobs for low-skilled people flooding China’s fast-growing cities. But China seems to have over-invested, leaving a glut of capacity in the heavy industrial sector that has forced plants to cut prices deeply. The low prices mean those factories are effectively operating at a loss subsidized by the state.

China has long said that over time it plans to shift from an export-driven economy to one that relies more heavily on internal consumption. Now, with the global economy slowing, China really has no choice. There simply is not enough external demand elsewhere around the globe for China to export its way back to the high levels of growth it achieved over the last few decades.

Of course, the risks and ramifications don’t rest solely with China. Countries as varied as Brazil and Australia are large suppliers of crucial raw materials, such iron ore and coal, for China’s industrial sector. They’ve been faced with steep declines in the price of those commodities. Brazil’s economy has sunk into a deep recession, in part due to its weak export sector.