It has been a morning session of two halves.
In Asia, the mood was somber, and stocks fell with the Shanghai Composite (+1.1%) outperforming on another late session binge-fest by the National Team, and the Nikkei 225 (-1.4%), Hang Seng -1%, Kospi -0.2%, ASX -0.6%, Sensex -0.4% and the South Korean Won all down following news of the biggest Chinese Yuan devaluation in five weeks.
Sens. Ben Sasse (R-Nebraska) and Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) repeated some boilerplate hawkish nostrums on foreign policy in a recent op-ed. They concluded:
We say this delicately, as we work hard to respect the office of the presidency, but our allies everywhere are baffled. We asked one head of state, What single lesson would you like us to report back to our bosses, our constituents? The reply: “Get us a U.S. president who will know that the U.S. needs to lead. We need you. All the freedom-loving nations of the world need you.”
The Supreme Court Has Murdered The US Constitution
Guest Column by John Whitehead
The People vs. the Police State: The Struggle for Justice in the Supreme Court
By John W. Whitehead
February 16, 2016
“We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.” —- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The untimely death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has predictably created a political firestorm.
First it was over-invoicing 'exports' to friends in Hong Kong; then it was Bitcoin, most recently it was buying domain names, and now, the ever-industrious (and increasingly desperate) Chinese have found a new way to beat the government's quasi capital controls... by losing.
China Law Blog's Dan Harris explains how the Chinese are getting money out of China by losing in Arbitrations...
File this one under “just when I thought I had seen/heard everything.”
In recent weeks, status-quo maintainers have pointed to The Atlanta Fed's GDPNow forecast's resurgence as evidence that the market is just being irrational and that everything is awesome after all. Since we first brought the world's attention to this real-time forecast of US economic growth it has become closely-watched by all...