Business

By Mark Cudmore, a former FX trader who writes for Bloomberg

Mnuchin’s Dose of Reality Yet to Bite

Steven Mnuchin’s dose of reality for investors in relation to the fiscal stimulus has triggered a disinflationary theme to markets that will impact many assets classes.

Yesterday, I wrote that Trump’s speech to congress on Tuesday may mark a capitulation point for reflation trades. It appears that Mnuchin has tried to pre-empt him.

Submitted by Daniel Mitchell via The Foundation for Economic Education,

Early last month, in a column on my hopes and fears for 2017, I fretted about fiscal chaos in Italy leading to default and bailouts.

Simply stated, I fear that Italy, along with certain other “Club Med” nations, has passed the point of no return in terms of big government, demographic decline, and societal dependency.

And this means that, sooner or later, the proverbial wheels are going to fall off the bus. And it might be sooner.

Submitted by Saxo Group's Jack Davies, via TradingFloor.com,

Submitted by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

The latest GDP numbers from the World Bank were released earlier this month, and today’s visualization from HowMuch.net breaks them down to show the relative share of the global economy for each country.

As Visual Capitalist's Jeff Desjardins explains, the full circle, known as a Voronoi Diagram, represents the entirety of the $74 trillion global economy in nominal terms. Meanwhile, each country’s segment is sized accordingly to their percentage of global GDP output. Continents are also grouped together and sorted by color.