presidential election

The event which according to many democrats cost Hillary Clinton the election (aside from Putin personally hacking the brains of several million middle-class Americans and forcing them to vote against Hillary, of course) is finally getting closure. On Thursday, the FBI turned over 7,000 new documents from Anthony Weiner’s private laptop to the State Department as part of a Judicial Watch's freedom of information act lawsuit related to last year's Hillary Clinton email case.

Another 'soft' data survey rolls over...

Following this morning's tumble in the Philly Fed report, Bloomberg's Consumer Comfort survey shows economic expectations plunged back to their lowest since before the election...

The monthly measure of economic expectations fell to 47 in July from 52 in June.

The share of respondents who say economy getting better dropped to 28%; 32% said it was getting worse.

Shortly after CNN reported late on Monday that according to Russian deputy foreign minister Rybakov, the Russian government was "almost" at a deal on getting back property seized by the US...

Just in: Russian Dep Foreign Minister Rybakov says Russian government "almost" at a deal on getting back property seized by the US

— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) July 17, 2017

Authored by Federico Pieraccini via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

The meeting between Trump and Putin at the G20 in Hamburg injects new hope into the complicated relationship between the United States and Russia. Only time can confirm whether there is any basis for this hope.

With both the S&P, and global stock markets, closing last week at new all time highs, it is safe to say that any and all warnings about "froth", and perhaps a bubble in the market, as Deutsche Bank characterized it last week have been ignored. And yet, as Goldman's economist team writes over the weekend, the recent rise in warnings about "risk levels" and asset prices by Fed officials is concerning: "Fed officials have expressed greater concern about asset prices and financial stability risk recently, a change from their more relaxed view last fall.