United States

Richard Gamble reviews John Wilsey’s American Exceptionalism and Civil Religion, and finds Wilsey’s version of exceptionalism to be dangerous in its own way:

Currently the US Dollar, traded on the stock market as (UUP), and (USDU); is the world's reserve currency. Although there is talk of the fall of the US Dollar as the world reserve currency, it's all talk and there's no signs that this will happen any time soon. Hungary recently issued sovereign bonds in Yuan - but so what? It's just a drop in the bucket. The practical fact is there is no real threat to the US Dollar's status as a reserve currency. However, there may be one.

Back in 2014 Obama promised that as part of the US war against ISIS, there would be "no ground troops in Iraq." Moments ago U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter gave the latest confirmation that Obama was not being exactly "honest", when during a visit to Baghdad in which he met U.S. commanders, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, and Iraqi Defence Minister Khaled al-Obeidi, he announced that the US would send another 200 additional troops, raising the number of U.S. troops in Iraq to about 4,100.

Over the weekend, Bloomberg View's quasi-economist wrote his latest laughable article, one which supposedly "explained" how "Everyone Worries Too Much About 'Black Swans'", which in addition to being a rambling, meandering stream of consciousness that as is regularly the case with this particular author, made little sense, sparked a Twitter feud with the Nassim Taleb, the person who made the concept of a Black Swan into a household name.

Some critical observations on investor positioning from BofA's Michael Hartnett

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On April 28th the current bull market in the S&P500 will become the 2nd longest ever

3 observations:

1. Quantitative Success on Wall Street