Social Issues

In a decision that was widely anticipated, the Trump administration has decided to end immigration protections for Haitians who migrated to the US following a devastating earthquake that laid waste to Haiti back in 2010.Now, the 50,000 Haitians still living in the US under the protections have 18 months to leave, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

As the Washington Post pointed out, the decision was made to appease immigration hard-liners who insist the program was never intended to grant permanent residency to Haitians who were displaced by the quake.

The national opioid epidemic is even larger drain on the US economy than previously believed, according to a new analysis from the White House Council of Economic Advisers. The cost of opioid-related deaths in 2015 was $504 billion, according to the CEA – a figure equivalent to 2.8% of that year’s gross domestic product.

EURUSD is testing overnight lows (and gold is tumbling) after German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she would prefer to go ahead with new federal elections rather than try to form a minority government.

Seeking her fourth term, Bloomberg reports that Merkel is “skeptical” about a minority government as it may not bring about necessary stability and is open to another so-called grand coalition with the Social Democratic party, she said in an interview with ARD television.

Over the past several months we've frequently noted the devolving relationship between Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and billionaire financier George Soros.  Tensions escalated last month when Orban took it upon himself to mail a Soros-related questionnaire to all 8 million Hungarian voters (see: Hungary Launches Anti-Soros Political Campaign) and then followed that up with an announcement that Hungary's intelligence services had been instructed to "map" Soros' network of influence.

In perhaps the most intrusive move of social media platforms' efforts signal as much virtue as possible and appease their potentially-regulating government overlords, Twitter has announced that it is cracking down on what it defines at hate-speech and not just by looking at its own site.