According to Der Spiegel, it seems German citizens from all walks of life and all political camps are highly devoted fans of Russia and its president. They are therefore by and large okay with him recently grabbing the Crimea from out under Kiev.

Readers will probably recall that we have frequently mentioned that the current 'echo boom' is more diffuse than previous booms in terms of bubble activities that can be easily identified.

No-one can accuse the Japanese of not having done everything the Keynesian playbook said they should do, and in spades.

You have to give it to the Machiavellian Turkish prime minister Tayyip Erdogan, so far, nothing seems able to shake his position. There has been an extremely damaging corruption scandal involving himself, his son and several prominent cabinet members and their families (inter alia, the scandal involved smuggling gold into Iran to help it circumvent sanctions, and everybody getting a big cut in the process).

Readers may remember former BuBa board member and ECB chief economist Otmar Issing, who probably like few others personified the image of the stern, conservative German central banker (Jürgen Stark and Axel Weber were also people in this mold).

The recent downturn in gold and gold stocks has become bigger than we expected. We basically thought that gold might correct to the support area around $1320 and then resume its rally to test the interim high around $1420 to 1430 that was reached last August.

In order to more quickly transfer the funds of Western tax cows to the Ukraine, the US senate has apparently decided to drop an IMF reform clause from the aid bill.

Prechter recounts US monetary history and brings it into context with the stock market. In the beginning, the 'dollar' was not an independent monetary unit at all: it was simply a specific weight of silver (0.7734 oz.).

It should be pointed out that insiders have been heavy sellers of stocks for quite some time. Insiders are almost always early, both in their buying and selling.

Venice just held a 'non-binding' referendum on whether the city should once again become an independent city-state and secede from Italy. An astonishing 89% voted 'yes' (which makes the outcome of the Crimea referendum no longer look 'strangely one-sided').

The stock market has spent much of this year trying to exceed its year end 2013 high, and finally succeeded in terms of several indexes in late February/early March. However, it has also dispensed a number of warning shots along the way.

As Agweb informs us, fears shrinking meat supplies have sent both the prices for cattle and hogs into the stratosphere recently:

Apparently China's government appears to be slightly alarmed at the recent slew of negative headlines and data releases and fears that its 'growth target' may not be met this year.

As always, Kremlinologists can check the WSJ's trusty FOMC statement tracker to see what has actually changed. Ever since the first 'taper' announcement in December, the statement has become a lot more convoluted.

RT and Der Spiegel have recently published a few infographics on trade between the EU and Russia, respectively Germany and Russia, which we reproduce below. This shows why tit-for-tat sanctions could be a really big problem for Europe and why the EU's leaders are probably quietly praying for the crisis to simply go away.

As we always stress, it is generally not a good idea to buy gold on geopolitical news. Unless geopolitical developments lead to more government spending and more monetary inflation to fund it, they should not influence the gold price in the medium to long run. In fact, such rallies are per experience always given back