United States

First, the AP reported that according to a transcript of a phone call between the presidents of the US and Mexico, Trump threatening to send US troops to Mexico if it was unable to stop the "bad hombres down there." Then, in a separate report from the Washington Post, Trump labeled a refugee swap deal with Australia "dumb" on Thursday after a Washington Post report of an acrimonious telephone call with Australia's prime minister, replete with alleged "yelling" and which Trump hung up after just 25 minutes, that has threatened a rift in ties between the two ally nations.

European shares and S&P futures fell amid mixed earnings from corporate heavyweights, while Asian stocks were fractionally higher. The dollar slump continued against all its major peers after the Federal Reserve gave dollar bulls little to be optimistic about.  The U.S. currency dropped toward the lowest close since November after the Fed reiterated its intention on Wednesday to lift rates only gradually.

The United States is a demographic time bomb, plain and simple.  Over the next 30 years, the U.S. economy will face an unrelenting demographic transition as ~75 million baby boomers exit the highest wage earning years of their life and start to draw down what little retirement savings they've managed to tuck away while wreaking havoc on the public "safety net" ponzi schemes, like Social Security, that will almost certainly be insolvent in a decade.

Submitted by Paul Brodsky via Macro-Allocation.com,

In Contrarianism in 2017 we cited the following macro dynamics that keep us cautious on equities, bullish on Treasuries and gold, and negative on credit:

Submitted by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,