European Central Bank President Mario Draghi is desperate.
The European Union has been plagued with years of falling inflation and stubbornly high unemployment.
And now its central bank is attempting to employ "unconventional" policies to kick-start the economy.
Using tactics never tried before, the ECB has just entered uncharted waters.
But if we look at the history, we'll see the perfect opportunity to profit...
The group of five nations - Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, otherwise known as the BRICS - is making some intriguing financial, economic, and political moves.
They're committing tens of billions of dollars each to organize their own versions of an IMF and World Bank.
Many observers thought the BRICS nations would encounter too many obstacles to collaborate effectively.
But after announcing such plans just over a year ago, the next BRICS summit in July is likely to see the official launch of these institutions.
The implications are huge for investors...
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China is hungry and looking outside its borders for ways to feed its 1.35 billion citizens.
In recent years Chinese companies and investors have become some of the largest players in the vertical supply chain for global agriculture. It's a Chinese investment trend that will only accelerate as the country's population increases.
According to the Heritage Foundation, Chinese investors have pumped $27.9 billion into the agricultural sectors of more than 30 nations.
But one aspect of this Chinese investment trend has stirred some concern. The Asian giant has bought vast tracts of farmland in nations across Asia and Africa.
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I like Australia's stock market right now. I think it provides you with a ton of upside potential.
Virtually every analyst on Wall Street disagrees, of course. They hate Australia. But they didn't like Chile, either, where we're up 46%. And they weren't crazy about Indonesia - another market that's making us good money.
Independent thinking pays well, plain and simple. And right now, Australia can pay you extremely well.
And there's more than one way you can make money.
The broad-based ETF is the no-brainer, of course. Based on the country's economic growth rate, it could increase twice as fast as the S&P 500.
But you can do even better by picking up shares of one (or all three) of Australia's best companies, as you'll see.
This is just a great place to grow your money right now, for three reasons...
In 1979, China implemented a one-child policy in an effort to alleviate social, economic, and environmental problems in the country.
Government officials indicate that the policy prevented over 250 million births between 1980 and 2000, and 400 million births between 1979 and 2011.
"China was a very different place back then," recalls Money Morning Global Investing & Income Strategist Robert Hsu. "It was very poor and there was overpopulation; they had to do something about it. I'm not saying that it's the best policy, but that's what they did to fix these problems. Nowadays though, the economic situation in China has vastly changed."
And changed it has - China is currently the world's second-largest economy, which is precisely why investors worry about how demographic issues there will play out globally. How will China's shrinking birthrate affect global economic growth?
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The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, a global group made up of central banks, just came out with its new bank capital standards, the Third Basel Accord (Basel III), to address some of the problems and weaknesses in global financial regulation.
These problems were seen to have been a partial cause of the global financial crisis.
When banking systems adopt the regulations, which are completely voluntary, it's seen as a step towards greater transparency, a more robust system. It's seen as regulators finally getting tough. This is all part of the mad, frantic scramble for... credibility among regulators.
The latest round of Basel III regulations, which were approved and adopted by the Fed just last week, call for banks to begin strengthening and improving the quality of their capital reserves. Quantity and quality of capital are absolutely vital to a healthy banking system.
It was the paradigm of the "honest-to-god, AAA mortgage-backed security," with all of its rubbish quality, willfully overstated and overestimated by U.S. ratings agencies, which helped lead us down the path to collapse just five years ago.
So why not have the banks shore up their defenses, take on more capital of good quality?
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A year-old G8 African farming initiative is destroying the livelihood of tens of thousands of farmers while crony capitalism reaps the profits….
There's trouble all over the global economy, from fresh tremors in the Eurozone debt crisis to unrest in the Middle East and uncertainty over the fate of Obamacare here at home.
With so many threats to the markets coming from so many directions, what's an investor supposed to think?
Fortunately it's the job of Money Morning's Chief Investment Strategist Keith Fitz-Gerald to figure out which issues investors need to watch and which ones they don't.
On Fox Business Keith spells out what he thinks are the biggest threats to the global economy now and what investors need to be doing about them.
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Want to know more? Here's what Keith thinks would be The Worst Investing Mistake You Could Make Right Now.
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President Obama is wrapping up a wide-ranging trip to Africa this week, one in which he talked about everything from human rights, the triumphs of Nelson Mandela, a return to growth in Zimbabwe and the prospects of an African renaissance.
But it was his comments about access to electricity that should have drawn the most attention. The President is setting the stage for a huge leap in Africa's standard of living - and most people probably didn't notice.
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When PPL Corp. (NYSE: PPL) agreed to buy British power distributor Central Networks from German owner E.On AG (PINK ADR: EONGY) last week, the $5.6 billion bid by the Allentown, Pa.-based utility highlighted a key advantage that U.S. firms have when it comes to corporate-takeover battles in the international arena: In most countries, the staff and customers of the target company prefer a U.S. suitor to those from most other nations.
How do I know this? Simple ... my mother told me.
