U.S. markets are closed for the Memorial Day holiday, and with UK and Chinese markets also closed for various holidays, it has been a quiet start to the week, with S&P futures essentially unchanged, trading at 2,415, up 0.06%, a new all time high.
Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,
There are times when you have to talk about things when it appears most inopportune to do so, because they’re the only times people might listen. Times when people will argue that ‘this is not the right moment’, while in reality it’s the only moment.
For decades, portfolio managers around the WORLD would receive the periodic "Economics & Policy" newsletter, full of original insights on everything from the markets, to the economy, to geopolitics, as penned by Stephen Lewis, chief economist at ADM (if best known for his tenure at Monument Securities which was eventually absorbed by ADM). Sadly, on Friday Lewis sent out his "Valediction" - the last ever Economic Insights report.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly told Meet the Press' Chuck Todd on Sunday that high-level classified leaks, like those over the Manchester attack in the U.K., are "borderline treason."
"I don't know where the leak came from. But I... immediately called my counterpart in the UK.... She immediately brought this topic up. And, if it came from the United States, it's totally unacceptable. And I don't know why people do these kind of things, but it's borderline, if not over the line, of treason."
One day after Donald Trump infuriated Angela Merkel and the rest of his G-7 peers, when the US president refused to endorse the Paris climate treaty, prompting the German chancellor to say that “the whole discussion about climate has been difficult, or rather very unsatisfactory... here we have the situation that six members, or even seven if you want to add the EU, stand against one", Germany's prime minister made what many have dubbed, an "era-defining" statement.