In early 2009, roughly at the time when this blog was launched which coincided with the start of the greatest monetary experiment of all time, we warned that there are two ways it will end: either in hyperinflation, or a deflationary supernova, the failure of currency and, eventually, barter. Now, almost 8 years later, some of the world’s top hedge funds are in agreement, and they are […]
newslide Taylor Swift and Zayn Malik debut new duet on film soundtrack American pop star Taylor Swift and former One Direction member Zayn Malik released a surprise duet on Friday, December 9 after joining forces for the upcoming Fifty Shades Darker movie soundtrack. I Don’t Wanna Live Forever will feature in the sequel to the Fifty Shades of Grey film, based on the hugely successful trilogy by […]
This is part of a series on the global rise of exchange traded funds The morning after the US election Steven Bregman, a New York-based hedge fund manager, began to notice something strange going on in a corner of the stock market. His screen showed that shares of gold mining companies were being sold indiscriminately, falling by double digits, even though the price of gold itself had […]
Tom Brokaw has a theory about covering politics that can be summed up in three letters: U.F.O. The basic idea is this: If something unforeseen can occur, it will. That’s why, when asked what the biggest news story will be one year from today, he gave an honest answer: “I don’t know.” “We don’t know what’s going to happen with Donald Trump,” Brokaw said. “We don’t know […]
Submitted by Nomi Prins via TomDispatch.com, Given his cabinet picks so far, it’s reasonable to assume that The Donald finds hanging out with anyone who isn’t a billionaire (or at least a multimillionaire) a drag. What would there be to talk about if you left the Machiavellian class and its exploits for the company of the sort of normal folk you can rouse at a rally? It’s […]
Global investors are turning their backs on French government bonds, reflecting alarm over the capacity for next year’s presidential election to deliver another shock to the eurozone and financial markets. A pronounced drop in French sovereign bond prices suggests they are being treated less like those of a core European economy and more like securities issued by the region’s least creditworthy countries. The selling has pushed the […]
By Jeff Mason | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON U.S. President Barack Obama has ordered intelligence agencies to review cyber attacks and foreign intervention into the 2016 election and deliver a report before he leaves office on Jan. 20, the White House said on Friday. In October, the U.S. government formally accused Russia of a campaign of cyber attacks against Democratic Party organizations ahead of the Nov. 8 presidential election, […]
By Steve Holland | GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. Exxon Mobil Corp Chief Executive Officer Rex Tillerson emerged on Friday as President-elect Donald Trump’s leading candidate for U.S. secretary of state, a senior transition official said. Trump met Tillerson on Tuesday and may talk to him again over the weekend, the official said. Trump appears to be in the final days of deliberations over his top […]
Update, Dec. 9, 2016, 2:22 p.m.: This story has been updated. Donald Trump routinely blasts his political foes for “pay-to-play” politics and “crony capitalism and corruption.” But Trump is now rewarding some of his biggest campaign bankrollers with unparalleled access, influence, prestige and power in his presidential administration-in-waiting, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of new campaign finance disclosures filed with the Federal Election Commission. In […]
WASHINGTON The CIA has concluded that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help President-elect Donald Trump win the White House, and not just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, the Washington Post reported on Friday. Citing U.S. officials briefed on the matter, the Post said intelligence agencies had identified individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided thousands of hacked emails from the […]
Journalism took a beating in 2016. Donald Trump was elected president, thwarting pollsters and shaking off seemingly endless fact-checking. News organizations continue to lay off journalists as Facebook and Google gobble up the advertising market. And trust in media sunk to an all-time low, helped along by abuse on the campaign trail. Despite that, a former whistleblower thinks journalism still has the power to make big changes. […]
BATON ROUGE, La U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Friday pledged to stop companies from abusing the visa process for foreign workers in a way that undermines the labour market for Americans. Speaking at a rally in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Trump said he had spent time during the presidential campaign with workers who were laid off but forced to train foreign hires brought in to replace them. “That’s […]
President-elect Donald Trump said on Friday he would name Andrew Liveris, chairman and chief executive of Dow Chemical Co, to head the Manufacturing Council, a private sector group that advises the U.S. secretary of commerce. Trump made the announcement during a rally in Battle Creek, Michigan, where he introduced Liveris, 62, a dual U.S.-Australian citizen who said he had accepted the appointment. (Reporting by Eric Walsh; Editing […]
Submitted by Steven Horowtiz via The Foundation for Economic Education, The headlines tell us that the Dow Jones is up around 1,000 points since Donald Trump won the election on November 8th. The conventional wisdom is that this shows how much confidence people have in Trump’s ability to generate a healthy American economy. The argument is that if people are willing to buy stock in American firms, […]
Donald Trump wants Wilbur Ross, the billionaire investor tapped for Commerce secretary, to oversee his trade policy, in a controversial move that could spark a battle between the incoming administration and Congress. Mr Trump has agreed to give Mr Ross, a close friend, responsibility for handling one of his signature campaign issues, the Financial Times has learnt. The move, which would cut the influence of the US […]
It is a story of the markets against the US Federal Reserve — and so far, the markets have been on the right side of the call. Bond market movements have this year proved a better guide to potential shifts in benchmark rates than has the Fed’s official range of projections. But as Donald Trump prepares to take power amid expectations that the Fed will next week […]
By Warren Strobel, Yara Bayoumy and John Irish | WASHINGTON/PARIS WASHINGTON/PARIS Key U.S. allies in Europe are quietly expressing concern over President-elect Donald Trump’s approach to Syria, warning that his pledge to work more closely with Russia, Damascus’ main backer, will do little to diminish the terrorist threat emanating from Syria. The diplomatic persuasion campaign has taken on new importance in recent days as the Syrian army, […]
JERUSALEM — After years of obfuscation and a high-profile dispute concerning an esteemed New York rabbi who converted Ivanka Trump, Israel’s rabbinical authorities announced this week that they would convene to establish clear criteria for recognizing Orthodox conversions done abroad. The rabbis also said that under the new criteria, Ms. Trump’s conversion, which had been in some doubt in Israel, likely would be considered legitimate. More broadly, […]
By David Lawder | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON President-elect Donald Trump is stacking his trade transition team with veterans of the U.S. steel industry’s battles with China, signaling a potentially more aggressive approach to U.S. complaints of unfair Chinese subsidies for its exports and barriers to imports. Led by Wilbur Ross, a billionaire steel investor and Trump’s nominee for commerce secretary, Dan DiMicco, the former CEO of steelmaker Nucor […]
Barack Obama has ordered US intelligence agencies to conduct a “full review” of alleged Russian hacking into this year’s election and to issue a report before he leaves office next month. Lisa Monaco, White House counter-terrorism adviser, said that the review, which would be sent to Congress but which might not be made public, would look at both what happened during the election and would consider “some […]
An upcoming deadline for a major derivatives market reform is “unrealistic” and authorities should consider whether the asset managers and banks most affected are ready, a top US regulator has warned. Christopher Giancarlo, the sole Republican of the three commissioners at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, on Friday called on counterparts to prevent new rules due on March 1 from disrupting the global swaps market. His remarks, […]
Pulp Fiction and Star Wars star Samuel L Jackson, who picked up his lifetime achievement award at the Dubai International Film Festival on Wednesday, is renowned for speaking honestly on issues from race relations to gender equality and American politics, so when The National sat down with him Friday morning, we couldn’t avoid checking whether his yearning for Diff was heartfelt or the result of an unexpected […]
Good morning. Regrets laced with irony Glenn Beck is sorry. He really is. He swears. He’s sort of like Miss Otis in Cole Porter’s oft-recorded 1934 “Miss Otis Regrets” (I’ll take Bette Midler’s version). She “woke up and found that her dream of love was gone, madam.” And, them, “from under her velvet gown, she drew a gun and shot her lover down, madam.” In this case, […]
Investors made the biggest shift in more than three years into funds that help provide protection against rising interest rates ahead of next week’s meeting of Federal Reserve policymakers who are expected to increase overnight borrowing costs for the first time this year. Funds invested in leveraged loans attracted $1.7bn of inflows in the week to December 7 — the greatest weekly haul since 2013 — figures […]
