United States

Authored by Zainab Calcuttawala via OilPrice.com,

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley warned U.S. President Donald Trump that he would face the wrath of the northern nation’s many allies if the freshman president begins employing energy trade restrictions with Canada.

Notley is currently in China, negotiating her country’s trade policies with the Asian giant. She told reporters that she did not know what was meant by Trump’s comments about what Canada has done to its American neighbor with the energy, softwood lumber, and dairy industries.

The Looting Machine Called Capitalism

Paul Craig Roberts

I have come to the conclusion that capitalism is successful primarily because it can impose the majority of the costs associated with its economic activities on outside parties and on the environment. In other words, capitalists make profits because their costs are externalized and born by others. In the US, society and the environment have to pick up the tab produced by capitalist activity.

North Korea conducted what various media outlets have dubbed as its largest ever live-fire exercise on Tuesday to mark the 85th anniversary of the foundation of its military, as a U.S. submarine docked in South Korea in "a show of force" amid growing concern a showdown between the US and North Korea may be imminent.

After yesterday's violent gap up in stocks across the globe in response to the "expected" outcome from the French election, today the risk on sentiment has continued if to a lesser extent, with stocks in Europe, Asia all rising while S&P futures point to a higher open. Yen, gold decline, while the euro traded as high as 1.09 this morning before fading some gains; oil is up modestly.

Authored by George Friedman, Xander Snyder, and Chyenne Ligon via MauldinEconomics.com,

Nuclear bombs have a strange quality: They are a type of weapon that countries spend enormous sums of money to develop but don’t actually intend to use. While chemical weapons have been frequently used in war, no country has detonated a nuclear bomb since the end of World War II.