United States

While it may come as a surprise to the current crop of 17-year-old hedge fund managers, the current period of persistently low long-term interest rates and plunging, near reocrd volatility in the face of a  hawkish Fed and rising short-term rates, is hardly new: exactly the same happened from 2004 through 2006, despite the Fed's continued rate hikes and jawboning. Alan Greenspan, the Fed's Chair at the time, called this phenomenon a "conundrum" and blamed it on many things, including the global savings glut. 

Authored by Giulio Meotti via The Gatestone Institute,

The US sent two B-1B Lancer strategic bombers from Guam's Andersen Air Force Base base to the Korean Peninsula, to practice “attack capabilities” with South Korean jet fighters and hold live-fire drills on Saturday, Yonhap News reported, the latest show of force by the US military after North Korea’s first-ever ICBM test launch on July 4. The pair of US bombers flew conducted a simulated destruction of an enemy ballistic missile launcher and underground facilities, the South's air force said, sending a strong hint to its northern neighbor.

World leaders meeting at the G-20 summit in Germany have agreed on almost every aspect of the joint communique, where in a victory for Merkel they vowed to fight protectionism and secure fair trade seeking to defuse President Donald Trump’s threats of unilateral measures the WSJ reported; they have so far failed, however, on a compromise position in the section on climate where the United States is pushing for a reference to fossil fuels, European Union officials said according to Reuters.