United States

The proposed ban on Muslim Immigration to the United States by Republican front-runner Donald Trump is endorsed by a large number of GOP voters and the establishment. The consideration of such policy is a betrayal of American values and has far reaching consequences besides being racist and Islamophobic, according to Murtaza Hussain from The Intercept. The Intercept reports: Exit polls conducted by ABC News on “Super Tuesday” show that more than 60 percent of GOP voters in five states favor Trump’s proposed ban. In Alabama and Arkansas, that figure rises to nearly 80 percent.

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has been recruited as the head of a new Pentagon advisory board aimed at bringing cutting edge Silicon Valley ideas to the U.S. military.  U.S. Defence Secretary Ash Carter announced the new appointment on Wednesday, saying that he hopes that Schmidt will be able to use his experience at Google to bring the U.S. military up-to-date technologically. Businessinsider.com reports: Carter is due to discuss the new Defense Innovation Advisory Board with Schmidt during the annual RSA cybersecurity conference in San Francisco.

Given the vicious downward spiral of competitive devaluation that is washing around the world's economic bathtub, it appears - just as we saw during The Great Depression - that currency wars have given way to mal-investment-fueled protectionism as US launches the first missile in the trade wars with a massive 266% tariff on imports of cold-rolled steel. “There’ll be a short-term benefit,“ said John Packard of Steel Market Update. ”However, in the long run, the U.S.

Via ConvergEx's Nicholas Colas,

With yesterday’s impressive equity rally, every trader is asking the same question: “Can U.S. equities go green on the year?”  The S&P 500 is now down “just” 3.2% in 2016 and there’s nothing like a +2% one-day rally to hold out hope of actual gains before March 31.

 

The US markets are in a quandary.

On the one hand, some of the data (GDP growth, unemployment, etc.) suggests the Fed should continue to hike rates. On the other hand, other data points (food stamp usage, labor participation rate) suggest the US never actually entered a real recovery.

More importantly, how can the jobs data suggest such a strong employment situation… when one in seven Americans are on food stamps?