Submitted by David Stockman via Contra Corner blog,
First there were seventeen. At length, there was one.
Donald Trump’s wildly improbable capture of the GOP nomination, therefore, is the most significant upheaval in American politics since Ronald Reagan. And the proximate cause is essentially the same. Like back then, an era of drastic bipartisan mis-governance has finally generated an electoral impulse to sweep out the stables.
It is a comparison that many are making. Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, is very similar to Ronald Reagan, the 40th President of the United States and icon of modern conservatism. While these two men share some cosmetic similarities on the surface, in reality they are very different in many ways. Thus, those that are seeking to conclude that a Trump presidency might follow a similar course to that of Reagan’s are likely to discover a much different outcome than they might expect.
Submitted by Wolf Richter of Wolf Street
Freight Rail Traffic Plunges: Haunting Pictures of Transportation Recession
292 Union Pacific engines idled in Arizona Desert
Total US rail traffic in April plunged 11.8% from a year ago, the Association of American Railroads reported today. Carloads of bulk commodities such as coal, oil, grains, and chemicals plummeted 16.1% to 944,339 units.
While markets remain relatively subdued ahead of tomorrow's nonfarm payrolls report, after several days of losses in US stocks, which have taken "sell in May" to heart and pushed the S&P500 to three week lows, overnight markets ignored the latest weak data out of China where the Caixin Services PMI was the latest indicator to disappoint (dropping from 52.2 to 51.8), and instead focused on crude, which rebounded from yesterday's post inventory-build lows and briefly printed above $45/bbl over uncertainty related to the impact of Canada wildfires on production and how long will last.
Submitted by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,
If an economic system collapses in the woods and no one is paying attention, are there any consequences outside the woods? Well, yes, of course. As with most situations financial and global, however, consequences are not usually taken very seriously until they have spawned a vast bog of sewage we all have to then swim through.
The issue is and always will be “interdependency,” and the dissolution of sovereign borders. Take a close look at the European Union, for example.