United States

Submitted by Chris Hamilton via Econimica blog,

Analysts and talking heads have an awful lot of opinions.  Are we in a bubble or aren't we?  Rather than offer another opinion, I'll offer the relationship of US economic activity (GDP) against the Wilshire 5000 (representing US equities) and the Federal Reserves gauge of American wealth, Z1 Household Net Worth series.  These are the preferred establishment gauges, so take a look and then you decide.

In their latest quarterly letter, Carlson Capital's Black Diamond Thematic Fund (which was up 9.27% in Q4 and up net 19% in 2016) portfolio managers Richard Maraviglia and Matt Barkoff, who unlike Carl Icahn, Stanley Druckenmiller, Dan Loeb and most of the market, turned rather bearish weeks into the Trump victory, warn that “we may be looking at the grisly spectacle of stagflation”, echoing ongoing warnings from virtually all major banks that the market is wildly overpriced:

In surprising comments that may rekindle a verbal currency war between president Trump and Europe, German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble told German newspaper Tagesspiegel that in his opinion the Euro is "too low" for Germany, echoing criticism from Trump's trade advisor Peter Navarro, who last week told the FT that Germany was exploiting its US and EU partners by using a “grossly undervalued” euro to create a vast trade surplus.

Online news site BuzzFeed is being sued for publishing fake news in the form of a Russian dossier about Donald Trump and the hacking of the US election.  Tech firm XBT Holdings, owned by Russian tech magnate Aleksej Gubarev, is suing Buzzfeed, its editor in chief, Ben Smith, and a former British intelligence agent for defamation in a court in Florida. Mcclatchydc.com reports: “The dossier included libelous, unverified and untrue allegations regarding XBT, Webzilla and Gubarev.

Following angry tweets all day from President Trump, the U.S. Justice Department filed notice Saturday evening of a formal notice of appeal of a Seattle judge’s temporary restraining order which put the administration's immigration order on hold. The notice followed a statement by the DHS to comply with Friday night’s court ruling by reverting to immigration procedures in place before the Jan. 27 executive order on immigration, and by the State Department to reverse the provisional revocation of about 60,000 visas.