United States

Admiral Scott Swift, Commander of the US Navy’s Pacific Fleet, said he would obey a hypothetical order to launch a nuclear strike against China if the president chose to give it. As AP reports, the remarks follow the director of the CIA’s recent assessment that Beijing poses a major threat to the US in the long run.

In a rare interview this week, CIA Director Mike Pompeo asserted that China is more of a long-term threat to US national security than any other world power, including Russia.

Two days after the House passed bipartisan legislation in a 419-3 vote codifying and imposing further sanctions against Russia, Iran and North Korea and preventing the president from acting unilaterally to remove certain sanctions on Russia, moments ago the Senate also overwhelmingly approved the measure in a 98-2 vote.  Only Senators Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders voting no. The bill will now head to the White House where it will be either signed into law by the president or vetoed, setting up a potential showdown with the White House over Russia.

After dropping to an all time low 62.9% in Q2 of 2016, the US homeownership rate rebounded modestly in the subsequent two quarters, then dropped again at the start of the year, before once again rising fractionally to 63.7% in Q2 of 2017 from 63.6% in the previous quarter, just 1% from the all time lows in the series history going back to the mid 1960s.

Authored by Thorstein Polleit via The Mises Institute,

The Federal Reserve (Fed) is widely expected to continue to tighten its monetary policy this year. According to a latest Reuters Poll, the Fed is likely to start shrinking its US$4 trillion balance sheet in September and, moreover, raise further its key interest rate, which is currently standing in a range of 1.0 to 1.25 percent, in the fourth quarter this year.

While nobody knows what catalyzed for the sharp selloff over the last hour, with Citi blaming it on Acrophobia, or fear of heights, saying  that "US equities opened at record highs, key levels were being approached in fixed income while USD enjoyed a bid across the board... However since then, it looks like markets have gotten a small case of cold feet", Bloomberg had a different idea, when it observed that stocks erased gains around 12:30 p.m. as S&P 500 fell 0.5% over 60 minutes to low of 2,469.51.