America

Authored by Vitaliy N. Katsenelson via MauldinEconomics.com,

We are having a hard time finding high-quality companies at attractive valuations.

Authored by Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

As our politicos creep deeper into a legalistic wilderness hunting for phantoms of Russian collusion, nobody pays attention to the most dangerous force in American life: the unraveling financialization of the economy.

And just like that, the term Snaplicant was born, when moments ago McDonalds - which appears to have run out of "qualified" line cook and fast food job candidates (as our latest overview of the restaurant industry showed) - announced that it hopes to hire a quarter million workers this summer, of which more than half are projected to be between the ages of 16 – 24 years old, and to aid the hiring effort of these workers, for many of whom this will be their first job, MCD will use Snapchat. Hence the bolded term.

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

The only way to rebuild a Common Good is to radically decentralize political, financial and media concentrations of ownership and power.

The theory of American civics is that the competitive process of every group advocating for its narrow self-interests will magically generate the Common Good, that is, a political and social order that serves everyone's common/shared interests.

Days after Trump issued a characteristically undiplomatic statement on last week's s terrorist attack in Iran by ISIS which killed 17 people and which the US president accused Tehran of basically provoking by stating that "states that sponsor terrorism risk falling victim to the evil they promote", which prompted Iran to slam the "repugnant WH statement... as Iranians counter terror backed by US clients....