Authored by Daniel Lang via SHTFplan.com,
If you’ve been paying attention to the ongoing degradation of the American economy since the last financial crisis, you’re probably flabbergasted by the fact that our economy has managed to make it this far without imploding. I know I am. I find myself shocked with every year that passes without incident.
Another dataset, another head-scratching disparity between ostensibly fulsome confidence and evidently sluggish activity. While markets get whipsawed reacting to divergent hard and soft data points, the question that traders need to ask is whether this gap makes any sense.
Bloomberg's Macro Strategist Cameron Crise may have the answer... If you're willing to believe that survey respondents allow their political beliefs to color their answers, then it very well might.
Chicago's pension funds, along with several other large public pensions around the country, are in serious trouble (we recently discussed the destruction awaiting our financial markets here: "Are Collapsing Pensions "About To Bring Hell To America"?").
The problem is that the pending doom surrounding these massive public pension obligations often get clouded over by complicated actuarial math with a plan's funded status heavily influenced by discount rates applied to future liability streams.
Authored by Charles Hugh-Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
Unless we change the fundamental structure of the economy so that actually producing goods and services and hiring people is more profitable than playing financial games with phantom assets, the end-game of financialization is financial collapse.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson tried to reassure America's nervous European counterparts over Washington's commitment to NATO on Friday but it didn't quite work out as expected when he pressed them again to spend more on defense, triggering a sharp rebuke from Germany.
“As President Trump has made clear, it is no longer sustainable for the U.S. to maintain a disproportionate share of NATO’s defense expenditures,” Tillerson said at a meeting of allied foreign ministers in Brussels.