United States

Two days ago, we were the first to point out that in a striking case of data revisionism, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, in an attempt to retroactively boost GDP, revised historical personal incomes lower, while adjusting its estimates of personal spending much higher, resulting in a sharp decline in personal savings, which as a result, was slashed from 5.5% according to the pre-revised data, to just 3.8%, in one excel calculation wiping out 30% of America's "savings", and cutting them by a quarter trillion dollars in the process, from $791 billion to $546 billion, a level last seen just

Yesterday, the WSJ reported that the Trump administration is planning to begin a probe of what the U.S. sees as violations of intellectual property by China. Against a backdrop of Trump’s frustrations with domestic policy, sliding approval ratings and disagreement with China over North Korea, the chances of protectionist action are rising, as is the probability of a "hot", retaliatory trade war. This morning ow learn when Trump is set to fire the first shot.

E-mini futures are fractionally lower this morning (0.08%) after Apple's surge helped the DJIA climb above 22,000 for the first time on Wednesday; Global shares declined for the first time in 4 days pressured by tech stocks: Asian shares fell, while Europe pared opening losses to trade unchanged.

Several hours after President Trump officially signed the new Russian sanctions into law - despite his reservations and his statement that while he favors "tough measures to punish and deter aggressive and destabilizing behavior by Iran, North Korea, and Russia, this legislation is significantly flawed" - Russia responded when moments ago Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on his FaceBook page that any hopes of improving Russian relations with the new US administration are dead, that the Trump administration demonstrated complete impotence by transferring executive power to

Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,

The western world is mired in a mile-deep political crisis and nary a soul seems to notice, or rather: everyone just sees their own little preferred echochamber tidbits of it. Which is not a good thing, because that crisis is bound to trigger other bigger crises that are much more damaging. And I’m sorry to say it, but Donald Trump is not your main problem. Not even close.