Authored by Steven Vannelli via Knowledge Leaders Capital blog,
In a US Dollar bull market with interest rates at zero, cash is rightfully dismissed as a non-asset class. But, when the US Dollar is in a bear cycle, things change, irrespective of what US interest rates are.
There are a handful of indicators we use to identify US Dollar bull and bear cycles.
Markets were thrown for a loop in the past 24 hours, with the Dow first soaring nearly 400 points on Thursday on expectations that tax reform was a done deal, when drama emerged just after the close when the Senate tax bill came this close to falling apart when the proposed "Trigger" was ruled as invalid, pushing a Thursday tax vote to this morning, and as of this moment the bill appears in limbo with the GOP scrambling to find ways to appease the sudden loud opposition among budget hawks. UBS economist Paul Donovan summarized it best this morning:
Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,
With its focus on Central Asia and Eastern Europe, the Belt and Road Initiative can be seen as fulfilling a strategy of challenging the West that can be traced back to Mao...
Authored by Michael Hudson via Counterpunch.org,
In theory, the global financial system is supposed to help every country gain. Mainstream teaching of international finance, trade and “foreign aid” (defined simply as any government credit) depicts an almost utopian system uplifting all countries, not stripping their assets and imposing austerity.
Despite a Wednesday dive in high-flying U.S. tech stocks on worries their boom may have peaked following a MS downgrade, which presured Asian stocks leading to a slide in Hong Kong and South Korean share, on Thursday morning the dip buyers have emerged and both European stocks and US equity futures are once again solidly in the green as yesterday's tech selloff is quickly forgotten.