United States

Authored by Ruthie Blum via The Gatestone Institute,

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

Over the next three weeks, the investing world will shift its attention away from the endless chatter of central bankers and concerns about the state of the economy, and instead focus on second quarter earning season, which launched on Friday with results from the three biggest US banks which showed that chronically low volatility is anything but good for trading revenues (as Jamie Dimon made all too clear in a bizarre Friday rant). As previewed last week, and is the norm, we get most of the US numbers first, followed by Europe and then Japan.

Within hours of President Donald Trump’s return to the US following his Bastille Day visit to Paris as a guest of French President Emmanuel Macron, the Justice Department has asked the Supreme Court to block a ruling by a federal judge in Hawaii that seeks to expand who can be let into the US under the narrower terms of the Trump travel ban.

One month after we reported that the "restaurant industry hasn't reported a positive month since February 2016", we can add one more month to the running total: according to the latest update from Black Box Intelligence's TDn2K research, in June both same-store sales and foot traffic "growth" declined once more, dropping by -1% and -3%, respectively, extending the longest stretch of year-over-year declines for the US restaurant industry to 16 consecutive months - the longest stretch since the financial crisis - with sales rising in 45 markets while declining in 150 with Texas, the worst reg