For all the rhetoric about above-trend US growth, one month ago UBS shattered the narrative of surging GDP by showing just one chart, which revealed that excluding contributions from energy investment, which are about to hit a brick wall now that the price of oil has peaked and is reverting lower once again, US growth for the past 2 years has been slowing.
True to its perpetually optimistic form, OPEC, which last month for the first time conceded the threat posed by rising US shale production...
... sharply raised its demand forecast for cartel oil in 2018, ahead of the OPEC meeting at the end of November.
After an early slide last night following the stunning news that Doug Jones had defeated Republican Roy Moore in the Alabama special election, becoming the first Democratic senator from Alabama in a quarter century and reducing the GOP's Senate majority to the absolute minimum 51-49, US equity futures have quickly rebounded and are once again in the green with the S&P index set for another record high, as European stocks ease slightly, and Asian stocks gain ahead of today's Fed rate hike and US CPI print.
Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,
Is the US really a superpower or just the biggest collection of stupidity on the planet?
Washington has already lost the Syrian war once. Now it is about to lose it a second time.
A few days ago the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, declared a “complete victory” in Syria:
“Two hours ago, the (Russian) defense minister reported to me that the operations on the eastern and western banks of the Euphrates have been completed with the total rout of the terrorists.”
Just two weeks after North Korea once again put the world on nuclear war alert by launching its most advanced Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) to date - which experts believe could reach New York or D.C. with a nuclear payload - Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in surprising statements Tuesday indicated that the US would be willing to hold talks with North Korea without any preconditions.