Gauging by the performance of stock market indexes, Donald Trump’s Presidency has been a smashing success in its first six months. US-Stocks rose sharply in the first six months of 2017, with the S&P-500 index <SPX> rising +8%, outstripping the return most Wall Street strategists predicted for the full year and doubling the average +4% January-thru-June gain since World War II. The Dow Jones industrial average topped 20,000 for the first time and made 24 record highs. US-companies posted their best quarterly profit growth…
On January 31st, 2017; the Trump administration fired the first shot in a “Currency War’ with the Euro-zone, when Trump’s top trade adviser Peter Navarro accused the German finance ministry of using a “grossly undervalued” Euro to “exploit the US and its EU partners”, in written comments in the Financial Times. Navarro, the head of Mr Trump’s new National Trade Council, told the Financial Times the Euro is like an “implicit Deutsche Mark” whose low valuation gave Germany an advantage over its main partners. While not necessarily novel – Germany…
Three years ago, on June 12th, 2014; after four days of fighting, Iraq’s security forces abandoned their posts in Mosul as ISIS militiamen took over army bases, banks and government offices. The jihadists seized huge stores of American-supplied arms, ammunition and vehicles, apparently including six Black Hawk helicopters and 500 billion dinars ($430-million) in freshly printed cash. Some 500,000 people fled in terror to areas beyond ISIS’s sway.
The scale of the attack on Mosul was particularly audacious. But it did not…
Just a few months ago, Brazil’s central bank chief Ilan Goldfajn was finally able to deliver some good news to his fellow citizens. On March 18, 2017, Mr Goldfajn predicted Brazil’s economy would officially emerge from its deepest recession on record, in the first quarter, and reach an annualized growth rate of up to +3% by the fourth quarter of this year. Latin America’s largest economy is estimated to have grown sequentially +0.5% in Q’1; a sign that Brazil was pulling out of its depression.
May 22, 2017
