presidential election

This article by David Haggith was first published on The Great Recession Blog:

Submitted by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

Conventional wisdom suggests National Front candidate Marine le Pen will make it to the second round in French elections, then lose in a landslide to whoever her opponent happens to be.

I believe le Pen’s odds of winning it outright are far better than most think.

Current Polls

Chart from Wikipedia, with image clips added.

Top Five candidates

Authored by Oaktree Capital's Howard Marks,

In August, I mentioned that I had chosen the title “Political Reality” for my memo in part because of my liking for oxymorons.  I classed that title with other internally contradictory statements, such as “jumbo shrimp” and “common sense.”  Now I’m going to discuss one more: “expert opinion.”

Submitted by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

Here’s an interesting graph from the World Economic Forum from their article Which countries are on the right track, according to their citizens?

Discontent spreads

 

Between October and November 2016, the percentage of people who believe things are on the right track in their country dropped by 2 percentage points to 37% globally.

 

In a "mass layoff" event reported late last week by the Department of Labor, the Clinton Foundation announced it would lay off some 22 employees at the Clinton Global Initiative, which attained notoriety during the John Podesta leaks, when the various details of the fallout between between CGI head Doug Band and Chelsea Clinton were revealed; it also emerged that long-time Bill Clinton friend Band was soliciting donations for Clinton through his PR firm, Teneo in an sordid example of "pay for play" which most of the mainstream media refused to cover, especially after Band emailed Podesta "I