America

Last week's bullish sentiment that sent the S&P not only to a new all time highs, but a burst of last-second buying pushed above 2,500 for the first time ever, has carried through to the new week, with European and Asian shares rallying across the board, US futures again the green, and world stocks hitting a new record high on Monday ahead of a historic Fed meeting in which the FOMC is expected to announce the start of the shrinkage of its balance sheet.

Authored by Peter Robison, Karen Weise, Wenxin Fan, and Yan Zhang via Bloomberg.com,

Have a spare $500,000 to invest in an economically distressed American area (that actually isn’t distressed at all)? China’s EB-5 fixers will help you every step of the way...

One summer Saturday in 2013, Vivian Ding took the stage in the grand ballroom of Shanghai’s Shangri-La Hotel to hold forth on a subject in which she was both an expert and an inspiration: emigrating to the U.S.

Despite recently being demonetized by YouTube, possibly for his anti-establishment views and slamming President Trump’s decision to increase troop levels in Afghanistan, former Texas Congressman Ron Paul is back with a video addressing the widening left-right political divide in the US – and the role that the “immoral use” of government force has played in fomenting the US’s present political crisis.

By John Mauldin from Mauldin economics

Kyle Bass’s Hayman Capital has been having a rough year thanks to its widely publicized bet against China’s currency, which has more than reversed its 2016 decline – its largest annual drop since 1994 - as the People’s Bank of China has cracked down on potentially destabilizing capital outflows.