With the dollar index now 10 points below its recent cycle highs from early January, nervous dollar bulls are starting to reevaluate their initial assumption that this would be a short-term pullback, and many are worried that this could be the start of a new secular bear market.
Authored by George Friedman, Xander Snyder, and Ekaterina Zolotova via MauldinEconomics.com,
The US Congress has passed new sanctions targeting Russia’s energy companies. Among the other notable aspects of the sanctions is that they take some authority away from the US president (who used to be able to implement some measures but not others at his discretion) and give it to Congress.
In a scathing Facebook post entitled "Mid Summer Anger," movie director (and infamous Putin interviewer), Oliver Stone lashes out at Washington's passage of the Russia sanctions bill, suggesting that US intelligence agencies aren't doing their job and are misleading the public in the "false-flag war" against Moscow.
Congress passed its beloved Russia sanctions last week by a vote of 419-3! The Senate followed with a vote of 98-2!!
This week for the first time - in the name of "transparency" - the London Bullion Market Association unveiled that as at 31 March, 2017 there were 7,449 tonnes of gold, or 596,000 gold bars, valued at $298 billion sotred in the vaults around London as well as $19 billion in silver. Only the gold hoard at Fort Knox and among Indian households said to account for more than the LBMA's inventory, which clears just over $18 billion in gold daily.
Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,
President Trump has been defeated by the military/security complex and forced into continuing the orchestrated and dangerous tensions with Russia. Trump’s defeat has taught the Russians the lesson I have been trying to teach them for years, and that is that Russia is much more valuable to Washington as an enemy than as a friend.
Do we now conclude with Russia’s Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev that Trump is washed up and “utterly powerless?”
I think not.