South America

Update 3: According to the WSJ, Blackstone's Steve Schwarzman called Trump to tell him council was disbanding. Then Trump tweeted he was disbanding it.

Paul Craig Roberts writes that the admirable and honorable truth-teller John Pilger warns us that nuclear war is closer than we think.

Authored by Christoph Gisiger via Finanz Und Wirtshcaft,

Fred Hickey, editor of the influential investment newsletter «The High-Tech Strategist», warns of trouble ahead for the stock market and spots bright opportunities in the gold sector.

In Venezuela's latest crackdown on all opposition voices, on Saturday the country's newly convened pro-government constituent assembly removed dissident state prosecutor Luisa Ortega Diaz - the highest-ranking member of President Nicolas Maduro’s administration to break ranks with the dictator - from her job in what critics said was a blatant example of Maduro's new dictatorship flexing its muscles. The assembly voted on Saturday to permanently remove Diaz, 59, from her post after the Supreme Court ruled on Friday evening to suspend her and send her to trial.

After retail bankruptcies soared an astonishing 110% in the first half of 2017 (something we discussed here: The Amazon Effect: Retail Bankruptcies Surge 110% In First Half Of The Year), it seems that the new wave of retail operators are finally figuring out that in-store payrolls and excessive mall rents are simply an insurmountable economic disadvantage in the post-Amazon world.  The following info-graphic from the Wall Street Journal helps to put the offline vs. online cost structure of apparel retailers into perspective: