United States

As part of its historical revision to GDP, the BEA also had to adjust personal income and spending, with the full results released in today's July report. What it revealed was striking: over the revised period, disposable personal income for US household was slashed cumulatively by over $120 billion to just under $14.4 trillion, while spending was revised higher by $105 billion, to just above $13.8 trillion. There were two immediate consequences of this result.

The crackdown by Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro - now officially branded a dictator by the U.S. - on political opposition intensified Tuesday when intelligence agents detained opposition leaders Leopoldo Lopez and Antonio Ledezma at gunpoint in their homes and took them into custody.

Welcome to August: you may be surprised to learn that S&P 500 futures are once again levitating, higher by 0.3%, and tracking European and Asian markets. Asian equities traded higher across the board after China's Caixin Manufacturing PMI beat expectations and printed its highest since March, refuting the decline in the official PMI data reported a day earlier, while firmer commodity prices boost both sentiment and commodity stocks across Asia and Europe.

Authored by Pepe Escobar via Asia Times,

A situation in which the US military feels 'unhampered' has precedent – and, as General MacArthur's endeavors in Korea prove, it's something to be afraid of...

The current collapse of the unipolar world, with the inexorable emergence of a multipolar framework, has enabled a terrifying subplot to run amok – the normalization of the idea of nuclear war.

While the Pentagon may be already contemplating its next steps in the escalating conflict with Russia, which as the WSJ reported will likely involve supplying Ukraine with antitank missiles and other weaponry - a red line for the Kremlin not even the Obama administration dared to cross - there is minor matter of what to do with a suddenly furious Europe, which as we discussed  previously, has vowed it would retaliate promptly after Trump signed the anti-Russia legislation into law, due to allegations it was just a veiled attempt at favoritism for US-based energy companies.