Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,
By setting off a 100-kiloton bomb, after firing a missile over Japan, Kim Jong Un has gotten the world’s attention.
What else does he want?
Almost surely not war with America. For no matter what damage Kim could visit on U.S. troops and bases in South Korea, Okinawa and Guam, his country would be destroyed and the regime his grandfather built annihilated.
Authored by Irina Slav via OilPrice.com,
An open military conflict in Northern Asia would disrupt more than a third of global seaborne crude oil trade, Wood Mackenzie warned last week amid yet another escalation between North Korea, its neighbors, and the U.S.
In a note on the role of gold as a "geopolitical hedge of last resort", Goldman chief commodities strategist, Jeff Currie, writes that while it is tempting to blame the rally in gold prices on recent events in North Korea - which have certainly helped create a bid in gold - they only explain a fraction, or ~$15/oz of the more than $100/oz rally since mid-July. Instead, Goldman finds that the events in Washington over the past two months play a far larger role in the recent gold rally coupled by a sharply weaker dollar.
As part of South Korea’s response to the latest escalations out of its northern neighbor, the country's defense minister on Monday said it was "worth reviewing the redeployment of American tactical nuclear weapons to the Korean Peninsula" to guard against the North, a step that analysts warn would sharply increase the risk of an accidental conflict. On Monday, South Korean Defense Minister Song Young-moo said that he asked his American counterpart, Jim Mattis, during talks at the Pentagon last week that strategic assets such as U.S.
After UN Ambassador Nikki Haley asked the security council to pass the “strongest possible” sanctions against North Korea following the isolated nation’s sixth nuclear test which took place over the weekend, Russia President Vladimir Putin has hinted that Russia may - and most likely will - use its Security Council veto power to stop any further sanctions from being implemented.