One day after Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told US NATO allies they will have to pay up and meet their mandatory quota of 2% of GDP (which only 5 nations currently satisfy, among them the US and Greece), on Thursday the Pentagon's new chief also had some bad news for Russia when he rejected any kind of military collaboration with Russia, despite previous calls by Putin for the West to work with his country on Syria and other issues.
In an ironic twist of fate, it appears the catalyst for many of the biggest and most incomprehensible market ramps of the last few years is a fund called "Catalyst." With around $4 billion under management (before the latest collapse), the levered options fund is run by Edward Walczak who "uses options to create a better risk/return profile."
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson met his Russian counterparty, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, at a G20 summit in Germany in the pair’s first meeting since Tillerson became secretary of state, and comes as a possible Russia-US rapprochement is in the spotlight. Moscow and Washington have much to discuss, Lavrov told Tillerson at their first meeting in Bonn, Germany, on Thursday.
"Mostly, it includes issues addressed by the two presidents during their phone conversation. I think that we could identify parameters of our future cooperation on each of those topics," he stated.
Donald Trump’s Presidential campaign has several different platforms but the most important was his stance on trade. Donald Trump is a protectionist. He views the U.S. foreign trade policy over the last 25 years as a failure. With the passing of NAFTA and other free trade agreements millions of manufacturing jobs that have been eliminated. Donald Trump’s main target for unfair trade practices during the election was China. At one point during the campaign he even claimed that China was raping the U.S.
The Trump Presidency: RIP
Paul Craig Roberts
Has Donald Trump overestimated his presidential power? The answer is yes.
Is Steve Bannon, Trump’s main advisor, politically inexperienced? The answer is yes.
We can conclude from the answers to these two questions that Trump is in over his head and will pay a big price.
How large will the price be?
The New York Times reports that US “intelligence agencies…sought to learn whether the Trump campaign was colluding with the Russians on the hacking or other efforts to influence the election.”