USA - The Federal Reserve's fight against inflation will spark a recession in the United States that begins late next year, Deutsche Bank warned on Tuesday. The recession call - the first from a major bank - reflects growing concern that the Fed will hit the brakes on the economy so hard that it will inadvertently end the recovery that began just two years ago. "We no longer see the Fed achieving a soft landing. Instead, we anticipate that a more aggressive tightening of monetary policy will push the economy into a recession," Deutsche Bank economists led by Matthew Luzzetti wrote in the report. That forecast is driven by red-hot inflation, with consumer prices rising at the fastest pace in 40 years. Hopes that inflation would rapidly cool off have been dashed, in part because of the war in Ukraine. Inflationary pressures have broadened out, raising concern that the Fed will have to rapidly raise interest rates to get prices under control. Deutsche Bank pointed to how energy and food commodity prices have spiked since Russia invaded Ukraine.

JAPAN - Japanese Minister of Defense Nobuo Kishi declared on Monday that his ministry might request a larger budget for the next fiscal year to bolster Tokyo’s ability to stand up to a possible military threat coming from any regional power. The Asian nation’s new desire to level up its military might comes despite Japan’s allegiance to an exclusively defense-oriented policy under the country’s constitution. “The defense budget is a major indicator that shows the nation’s will. We want to ensure a budget that is enough to strengthen our defense capabilities drastically,” said Kishi in an interview with the Kyodo news outlet. The defense minister has argued that Japan needs to prop up its army due to an increasingly severe regional security environment. In particular, he has cautioned against China's intensifying military assertiveness and North Korea's nuclear threat. Japan’s fears over North Korea are growing as Pyongyang is testing new intercontinental ballistic missiles. Tokyo is also increasingly concerned with Beijing’s claims of sovereignty over the Senkaku Islands, an uninhabited Japanese archipelago in the East China Sea.

USA - The drumbeats of war are picking up the pace of inflation. Inflation, as I’ve argued here for some time, was certain to rise for months to come; but you’ll see in the various inflation notes below that sanctions made in response to the war are increasing inflation even more, as could be expected, and shortages due to the war are driving up costs as well. Some is from the war, itself; some is from our responses to it. What follows is a broad picture of the most notable areas where either background inflation (rising producer costs) or consumer inflation is rising significantly: (Producer costs, of course, eventually get passed on to consumers, so they are the CPI jolts of tomorrow.)

AFRICA - When it comes to water security – a reliable, good supply of safe water – just 29 African countries have made some progress over the past three to five years. Twenty-five have made none. This data comes out of the UN’s first-ever assessment of water security in Africa. Published by the UN University’s Canada-based Institute for Water, Environment and Health, the assessment used 10 indicators to quantify water security in Africa’s 54 countries. Such an assessment had been done before in the Asia-Pacific region, but never for Africa. These countries are home to half a billion people. The situation doesn’t appear to be improving very quickly.

USA - Which looming global conflict shall I talk about today? It appears that there won’t be a ceasefire in Ukraine for the foreseeable future, I believe that China is seriously considering a full-blown invasion of Taiwan, and an extremely violent conflict between Israel and Iran could literally erupt at any moment. But today I think that I will focus on a hotspot that is not getting nearly as much attention as it deserves. Tensions are rising between North Korea and South Korea once again, and if a shooting war erupts on the Korean peninsula it could easily result in tens of millions of deaths. North Korea possesses nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, and I am entirely convinced that Kim Jong-Un is crazy enough to use them. North Korea has a military that is far superior to South Korea’s military. All these years, it has been the United States that has prevented North Korea from “reuniting” the Korean peninsula by force. But now the Biden administration is distracted by the war in Ukraine. And if China were to invade Taiwan as well, the US simply would not be able to devote sufficient resources to prevent the North Koreans from overwhelming the South Koreans.

GERMANY - Contrary to the popular historical narrative, the country has always prepared for war. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz does not have a reputation as a man of big words. Yet, speaking to the German parliament on February 27 — just days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — he broke this mold to give a speech ushering in what analysts have correctly described as an “epochal shift,” or even a “revolution,” in German foreign policy.

USA - The top US military officer told lawmakers Tuesday that the world is becoming more unstable and the "potential for significant international conflict is increasing, not decreasing." Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Mark Milley and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin appeared before the House Armed Services Committee in their first testimony before Congress since Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

NATO - Much has been said and written about media bias and double standards in the West's response to the Russia-Ukraine war, when compared with other wars and military conflicts across the world, especially in the Middle East and the Global South. Less obvious is how such hypocrisy is a reflection of a much larger phenomenon which governs the West's relationship to war and conflict zones.

USA - Elon Musk's 9.2% stake in Twitter and his newly announced board seat has sent the left into an anti-free-speech tailspin. On Monday, CNN host Brian Stelter said there's a 'fear' over Musk's move. "There's interest in billionaires, there's celebration of the Musk. There's also fear, I think, sometimes or wariness of- okay, so here's the richest man on the planet who just bought a big chunk of one of our most important communications tools," said Stelter. ""He's also one of the biggest owners of satellites in the world. So he's incredibly powerful, incredibly, I don't know, am I allowed to use the word strange when talking about Elon Musk?" Except, billionaires have been controlling information for decades and nobody had a problem. And it's no wonder why the left is rattled - according to Statista, their biggest problem with Twitter is 'inaccurate or misleading information,' while they're least concerned about 'Twitter banning users.' Musk has been an outspoken proponent of free speech - which he says that failing to adhere to "fundamentally undermines democracy."

ISRAEL - Israel’s Political Bombshell. The government no longer enjoys a majority in the Knesset, but neither does the opposition. The two sides are deadlocked at 60 lawmakers each. The government’s standing took a serious hit, but its downfall is still not guaranteed, and will require complicated political maneuvers. The government can survive, for now, if there are no more defectors. Dissolving the Knesset and taking Israel to new elections is likelier than Netanyahu securing a majority in the current Knesset.

USA - Experts are warning that the world faces a historic famine. The war in Ukraine is only one of many problems plaguing the global distribution of food. In Yemen, Ghalib al-Najjar skips meals so that his children have enough food. He says he and his family "live like ants or fish… we eat what we can find." In the months ahead, experts warn food is going to be harder to find in many more nations. A perfect storm of several problems is decimating the world food supply. It's been called the biggest food crisis since World War Two.

GERMANY - German supermarket chains including Aldi and Lidl have announced they will be significantly raising prices on some goods, such as cooking oils and other food products due to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. The German supermarket chains have indicated that due to the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, they will be increasing the prices of some goods as the renewed conflict has had a significant impact on global commodity prices.

NATO - NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Finland and Sweden would be quickly brought into the alliance should they seek membership, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine stokes security concerns on the bloc’s eastern flank. “Of course, it’s for them to decide but, if they apply, I expect that they will be very much welcomed by all 30 allies and that we will find ways to do that in a relatively quick way to take them into the alliance if they so want,” Stoltenberg said on Sunday in an interview with CNN. Stoltenberg made his comments after meeting last week with Finnish President Sauli Niinistö, noting that NATO’s main message was that it’s for Finland to decide whether to join the alliance. He said the same is true of Sweden.

USA - After an excellent introduction to the subject matter of globalization and the New World Order, Leo Hohmann shared the following during his presentation. “God created us with a free will, right? But under the technocratic movement, you are denied ownership over everything. That includes not just your physical assets, but your body and even your mind. They say you’ll own nothing, have no privacy but somehow you’ll be happy. The new definition of happy of course is you accepting the idea that you are no longer in control of your own body or thoughts. While the God of the Bible has created you in his own image, with a body, soul and spirit. People like Schwab, Gates and Harari deny all of that… instead of that, they see a physical, biological and digital identity.

UKRAINE - During the last week of March, multiple major media outlets in the UK and the US ran stories about Ukraine’s ‘Azov Batalion’, seeking to whitewash almost a decade of previous reporting that clearly identified the unit’s Nazi sympathies and ethos. Supposedly acting independently, they nonetheless stuck to the same talking points and often the same verbiage, suggesting a concerted effort to spin the unit as heroic defenders of Ukraine against the alleged “real” fascists – the Russians. the Financial Times ran a story describing Azov as “key to the nationwide resistance effort.” While it acknowledges that Azov was created in 2014 “by volunteers with nationalist and often far-right political leanings,” the FT shrugs off its Nazi connections.