United States

Just hours after the Senate overwhelmingly voted to enforce further sanctions against (mostly) Russia, North Korea and Iran, while binding Trump from undoing any measures against Moscow without Congressional approval, in the process infuriating not only the Kremlin but America's European allies, with Brussels warning repeatedly it will have no choice but to respond in kind, on Friday morning Russia’s Foreign Ministry ordered the United States to cut its diplomatic staff to 455 by Sept.

S&P futures have tracked both European and Asian markets lower, which were dragged down by the big EPS miss and guidance cut reported by Amazon on Thursday. Meanwhile, the pounding of the dollar has resumed with the euro and sterling strengthening against the dollar due to renewed political concerns after this morning's stunning failure by the Senate GOP to pass a "skinny" Obamacare repeal after John McCain sided with democrats.

Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

America has been a discouraging landscape ever since the neoconservatives took over US foreign policy during the Clinton regime and started the two decades of war crimes that define 21st century America and ever since US corporations betrayed the US work force by moving American jobs to Asia.

The outlook became darker when the Obama regime resurrected the Russian Threat and elevated the prospect of military conflict between the nuclear powers.

Authored by Eric Zuesse via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

It affects both international relations, and America’s domestic policies...

We see it all around us. 

Authored by James Rickards via The Daily Reckoning,

Three-player games are easy to model - it’s always two against one. The art of geopolitics and examining hegemony powers in such situations is to be part of a duo that pressures the remaining player, or, at a minimum, keep the other two players separated.

This is basic balance-of-power politics as practiced since the rise of Napoleon (1799), with antecedents in the Treaty of Westphalia (1648), and Machiavelli’s The Prince (1532).