presidential elections

As economist William Anderson explains, "presidential elections in the United States spawn Really Bad Economic Policies, and 2016 is a vintage year."

American media has repeatedly likened GOP presumptive nominee Donald Trump to France's far-right Front-National party leader, and frontrunner in polling for the French 2017 presidential election, Marine Le Pen and while the forthright French politician has not explicitly named a "preferable" candidate for US president, her comments today suggest it is not Hillary Clinton.

Donald Trump has cleared the field of competitors for the Republican nomination but has still not won over one particular, and significant, constituency. Legislators have been curiously resistant to his charms, far more so than those with executive branch experience. While this pattern may have no influence on the outcome of the election, it could turn out to have large implications for the balance of powers should he be elected president.

Over the weekend, we were surprised to read that none other than recent market cheerleader Goldman Sachs had come up with six reasons why its chief equity strategist believes the market is poised for a material draw down (read "big drop") in the coming weeks. Among these were the following:

After recent (and in some cases very dramatic) bearish conversions by the likes of JPM, BofA, Citi and UBS, the only bank that steadfastly held a bullish view on stocks during the recent market squeeze higher was Goldman Sachs.

Not any more.

On Thursday, Goldman strategist David Kostin appeared on CNBC, where he too join the bearish crowd and said that based on the threat of margin collapse ("35 out of 53 tech companies had margin declines") and record-high stock valuations this year, it's time to play defense in "a tough market."