America

Via The Daily Bell

The President is very much a figurehead – he wields no real power whatsoever. He is apparently chosen by the government, but the qualities he is required to display are not those of leadership but those of finely judged outrage. For this reason the President is always a controversial choice, always an infuriating but fascinating character. His job is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it.

An orange sash is what the President of the Galaxy traditionally wears.

President Trump sat down with The Economist last week to talk trade, immigration, taxes, and health care and the transcript is chock-full of 'Trumpisms' that should not go unnoticed.  Here are just a few of our favorite exchanges:

On NAFTA, apparently 'big' is not an appropriate adjective to describe the renegotiation that will take place...'massive' and/or 'huge' are far better descriptors:

It sounds like you’re imagining a pretty big renegotiation of NAFTA. What would a fair NAFTA look like?

We start with the overnight observations by Mint's Bill Blain who points out something contradictory: on one hand Europe is said to be "fixed" with inflation expectations rising and the ECB preparing to take its foot off the gas pedal. On the other hand, "European Sovereigns will start issuing long bonds again.... A French 30yr is in the works, Italy and Belgium are both looking, while other rumours say the EFSF might be in the frame. ...

Via The Daily Bell

180 years ago today, everyone panicked. On May 10, 1837, New York banks finally realized that the easy money they were lending was unsustainable, and demanded payment in “specie,” or hard money like gold and silver coin. They had previously been accepting paper currency that for every $5 was backed by only $1 in silver or gold.

Authored by Whitney Webb via TheAntiMedia.org,

When the U.S. overthrew the Taliban in the wake of 9/11 as part of its newly launched “war on terror,” it set the stage for the explosive growth of Afghanistan’s dying opium industry. A few short months before the invasion took place, the Taliban made headlines for having “dramatically ended the country’s massive opium trade” after the leader of the fundamentalist group had declared the substance to be un-Islamic. At the time, Afghanistan’s opium was used to produce 75 percent of the world’s heroin.