Absent any major geopolitical shocks, it is set to be a quiet summer week ahead with focus on the Jackson Hole conference. On the data front the key releases will be US durable goods and Eurozone PMIs, as well as Japan inflation & UK and Norway GDP. In Emerging Markets, there are monetary policy meetings in Indonesia, Hungary and Kazakhstan.
Trump and American History Have Been Assassinated
Paul Craig Roberts
When Trump was elected I wrote that it was unlikely that he would be successful in accomplishing the three objectives for which he was elected—peace with Russia, the return home of offshored US jobs, and effective limits on non-white immigration—because these objectives conflicted with the interests of those more powerful than the president.
The latest escalation in the deteriorating diplomatic relations between the US and Russia was unveiled this morning, when the US embassy in Russia announced it was scaling back its visa services in Russia after Moscow ordered it to sharply cut its diplomatic staff in retaliation over new U.S. sanctions, and would suspend all non-immigrant visa operations in Russia starting August 23, although visa operations will be resumed on September 1, but only in the main embassy building in Moscow.
US embassy in Moscow
Authored by Adam Garrie via The Asia Times,
When Paul Robeson belted out the lyric “I’m tired of living, and scared of dying,” he stumbled on to a paradox of emotional dissonance that could easily define the geo-strategic cognitive dissonance that the US exhibits when dealing with its fellow superpowers Russia and China.