Last week, before the full devastation from Hurricane Harvey was unveiled, Goldman and JPM were the first banks to suggest that the storm's impact on US GDP would be modest: a slight decline in Q3 growth, offset by a similary modest rebound in Q4 and further as emergency funds "trickled down" through the economy.
European stocks dropped, Asian and EM market rose, and S&P were lower by 0.3% as investors assessed the latest overnight carnage in the USD which plunged to the lowest level since the start of 2015, sending the USDJPY tumbling to 107, the euro extending gains to just shy of $1.21 and a slowdown in China’s export growth which however did not prevent the Yuan from posting its best weekly gain on record.
After reports surfaced last month that President Donald Trump was becoming “frustrated” with his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, another world leader has expressed regret at honoring the former ExxonMobil CEO. Russian President Vladimir Putin joked during public remarks on Thursday that Tillerson had “fallen in with the wrong company” since being awarded with a Russian state honor for his contribution to Russian-U.S. relations, according to Reuters.
The remark was emblematic of the deterioration in relations between the Trump administration and Putin’s government:
Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,
When the US government decides it doesn't like a foreign regime, it's become something of a tradition for US politicians — with the help of a compliant media — to portray those leaders as irrational, unhinged, or even downright insane.
This was true of Saddam Hussein, and it was true of Slobodan Milosevic. In both cases, a foreign head of state was condemned as irrational in order to help justify US invasions and bombings of foreign nations that were no threat to the United States.
Wealthy CEOs and athletes have found a loophole that allows them to minimize their tax bills while traveling in style – all at the expense of the everyday traveler who flies commercial and must bear an outsize percentage of aviation taxes in the US.