Politics

For all the breathless newsflow over the past 7 days, the single most consequential event of last week was the sudden jump in debt ceiling/government shutdown odds following Donald Trump's confrontational Phoenix speech, which laid out a problematic dilemma: Trump's Mexican wall, or a government shutdown. While various financial pundits rushed to discount the odds of a worst case scenario, the market - in Treasury bills, if not so much equities - was spooked, sending the "pre-post default bill" spread to the widest on record...

A week after the White House pushed out former chief strategist Steve Bannon, the Trump administration has lost another controversial staffer. The departee this week is Sebastian Gorka, a deputy assistant to the president and former Breitbart employee who was closely allied with the White House’s rapidly shrinking anti-globalist faction. News of Gorka’s resignation was first reported by the Federalist, and later confirmed by Axios and a host of other news outlets.

Authored by Pepe Escobar via Asia Times,

While the US-backed 'Hunger Games' in South Korea plow on, a 'new strategy' for Afghanistan is really all about business. But China is already there...

There are more parallels between an unfinished 1950s war in Northeast Asia and an ongoing 16-year-old war in the crossroads between Central and South Asia than meet the eye.

Let’s start with North Korea.

Once again the US/South Korea Hunger Games plow on. It didn’t have to be this way.

Authored by Craig Wilson via The Daily Reckoning,

Jim Rickards joined Alex Stanczyk at the Physical Gold Fund to discuss current destabilizing factors that could drastically impact investors. During the first part of their conversation the economic expert delved into gold positioning for the future, the expanding threats from North Korea and liquidity in global markets.

After weeks of speculation whether Trump would pardon sheriff Joe Arpaio - who on July 31 was found guilty of defying a court order barring officers from stopping Latino drivers on suspicion they were in US illegally, bringing his tenure as a crusader against illegal immigration to an end - as he hinted at the recent Phoenix rally, or if he would, as the NYT claimed, not interfere in the legal process, moments ago - in what is now a record-setting Friday night for the sheer barrage of news - the White House announced that Donald Trump would pardon sheriff Joe Arpaio.