America

When all other sources of economic growth appear tapped out, there is always the military-industrial complex coming to the rescue of US GDP with the sale of arms and equipment to the world's biggest purchaser of weapons: Saudi Arabia. Because when one looks beyond the pageantry, pomp and circumstance of Trump's visit to Saudi Arabia, the main purpose behind the president's visit is precisely that: selling weapons, some $350 billion over the next decade, according to estimates.

Back in 2006, some of the wall street banks (ahem, Goldman) managed to layoff quite a bit of their mortgage risk to unwitting European and Asian investors who, in their desperate 'search for yield', had no idea they had just been conned into stepping in front of a freight train.  Now, it seems that the same thing may be happening yet again with another favorite wall street structured product, Collateralized Loan Obligations (CLOs).

Well known government mouthpiece, The China Global Times, published an op-ed overnight that was shockingly frank about the state of America (in their eyes) and did little to confirm President Trump's opinion that he and Premier Xi are best-buddies...

President Trump's Troubles Are Not Going Away

Via HeatSt.com,

A major new study out of Harvard University has revealed the true extent of the mainstream media’s bias against Donald Trump.

Academics at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy analyzed coverage from Trump’s first 100 days in office across 10 major TV and print outlets.

They found that the tone of some outlets was negative in as many as 98% of reports, significantly more hostile than the first 100 days of the three previous administrations:

Over the past week a lot of digital ink has been spilled trying to preview and predict what will take place during Trump's first official mammoth visit abroad, when over the next 8 days after an overnight flight on Air Force One, Trump will hopscotch from Saudi Arabia to Israel to the Vatican. He’ll close his trip with a pair of summits in Brussels and Sicily. The stakes are great for Trump who makes his debut on the international stage: he’s the first president since Jimmy Carter to not travel abroad during his first 100 days in office.