United States

At the start of the year, we were surprised when SocGen's Albert "Ice Age" Edwards, the biggest perma-deflationist on Wall Street, flipped his outlook on the US economy, and said he now expected a fast spike in inflation driven by wage growth, which in turn would prompt an even more accelerated tightening cycle by the Fed. We did not see it, and said so, pointing out that the bulk of US job growth in recent years has been among industries that have little to no wage power.

Tropical Storm Harvey made its second landfall near Cameron, La. on Wednesday after slamming Houston with a staggering 50 inches of rain, the largest rainfall ever recorded in the Continental US. Given the unprecedented devastation, which will likely leave large swaths of Houston, America’s fourth-largest city, uninhabitable for weeks if not months, storm-watchers have scrambled to revise their initial forecasts for damages.

It's groundhog day as S&P futures, European and Asian shares all rise overnight, while the dollar is set to .

Regulators in the US, Europe and Asia who’ve sought to crack down on bitcoin – many of these regulators are also proponents of a “cashless society” – have been dealt a stunning setback by an unlikely defender of the pioneering digital currency: The US Department of Homeland Security.

To wit, one anonymous DHS source told CNBC that bitcoin has become “a lot more legitimate” than many believe.

Authored by Nomi Prins,

Since late 2007, the Federal Reserve has embarked on grand-scale collusion with other G-7 central banks to manufacture a massive amount of money. The scope and degree of this collusion are historically unprecedented and by admission of the perpetrators, unconventional in approach, and - depending on the speech - ineffective.