Trump Turns His Attention To His Own Political Survival

With the midterms behind him, Trump dives into a reelection campaign facing a Democratic House, political gridlock — and special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe.

As president Donald Trump absorbed Tuesday night’s mixed election returns, two key allies were by his side in the White House: one of his 2016 campaign managers, Corey Lewandowski, and the man who will run his 2020 reelection bid, Brad Parscale.

The two men attended what the White House billed as a midterm watch party. But the presence of Lewandowski and Parscale underscored that it may have more accurately been described as the unofficial kickoff of Trump’s 2020 campaign. As guests snacked on hamburgers and hot dogs, the president was surrounded not just by the political aides who will orchestrate the effort but also by some of the donors expected to underwrite it, including Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, Marvel Entertainment CEO Ike Perlmutter, and fracking billionaire Harold Hamm….

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Midterm Elections: Your Complete Guide To What The Vote Means For Your Money

• Scenario 1 (Most likely): Democrats take control of the House, while Republicans keep a slim majority in the Senate
• Scenario 2: (Second most likely): GOP holds control of both chambers
• Scenario 3: (Least likely): Democratic sweep
• Each outcome would lead Congress to pursue different policy initiatives and would have widely different implications for the market and individual stocks and sectors.

The midterm elections Tuesday have huge stakes not only for the future of health care, taxes and immigration, but also for the U.S. economy and investors….

>>> continue reading: Midterm Elections: Your Complete Guide To What The Vote Means For Your Money

Economic Stability Doesn’t Necessitate Political Victories

A healthy economy is a precondition of American renewal. But it is not the end state.

Not even Jared Bernstein, former economic adviser to Joe Biden, could put a negative spin on Friday’s jobs report. The U.S. economy created some 250,000 jobs in October, beating expectations. The labor participation rate increased even as unemployment held steady at 3.7 percent. That’s a 50-year low. The best part: Wages rose 3 percent in the highest rate of growth since the Great Recession a decade ago. “Pretty much everything you could want in a monthly jobs report,” Bernstein tweeted….

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How & When Will The Next Financial Crisis Happen? 26 Experts Weigh In…

It is often stated that there is a major financial crisis every 10 years or so. Having said that, it’s been a little over a decade since the Lehman Brothers collapse sparked the last global financial crisis (GFC) and with global economic growth starting to show signs of petering out, some in the media and elsewhere in the public eye are forecasting another global financial crisis in the very near future.

There has been a variety of reports from prominent analysts lately with predictions as to when the next crisis will hit and what will spark it. Strategists at J.P. Morgan Chase recently made a splash with their announcement of a new predictive model that pencils in the next crisis to hit in 2020. Additionally, J.P. Morgan’s Global Head of Macro Quantitative and Derivatives Research, Marko Kolanovic, has highlighted a potential precipitous decline in stocks that could cause what has been termed “the Great Liquidity Crisis.” He identified the shift away from actively managed investing toward passive investing strategies such as exchange-traded funds, index funds and quantitative-based trading strategies, as well as computerized trading as the potential culprit, which could not only be the catalyst for the next crisis but could also exacerbate the fallout….

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‘Where Do We Have Tariffs?’ Trump Asks. He’s Got A Point

Donald Trump threw financial pundits back on their heels this week when he told the Wall Street Journal, “We don’t have tariffs anywhere.”

The financial press has obsessed over tariffs for most of the year, first declaring that the tariffs were a tax on consumers and would cost Americans jobs. And when those predictions did not pan out–consumer price levels are in line with the Fed’s target and layoffs are at record low levels–carefully looking for and extensively reporting anecdotal evidence of claims not supported by data.

President Trump’s comments to the Wall Street Journal, however, went even further….

>>> continue reading: ‘Where Do We Have Tariffs?’ Trump Asks. He’s Got A Point

Eight Reasons A Financial Crisis Is Coming

It’s been about 10 years since the last financial crisis. FocusEconomics wants to know if another one is due.

The short answer is yes.

In the last 10 years not a single fundamental economic flaw has been fixed in the US, Europe, Japan, or China.

The Fed was behind the curve for years contributing to the bubble. Massive rounds of QE in the US, EU, and Japan created extreme equity and junk bond bubbles.

Trump’s tariffs are ill-founded as is Congressional spending wasted on war.

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’60 Minutes’ Was Outmatched By Trump

The President talked over Lesley Stahl in a relentless blast of rhetoric that seemed more rally than interview

On Oct. 14, CBS’s “60 Minutes” aired an interview with President Donald Trump — rare for its status as having appeared outside of Fox News or conservative media. Appearing the same weekend as First Lady Melania Trump’s appearance on “20/20,” this would seem to represent a new level of media blitzing on the part of an administration that’s already seen its head get plenty of free promotion during rallies broadcast on cable news. And, like Melania Trump’s utterly-on-message, relentlessly forward-moving TV interview, the President’s interview had effectively the same impact as a rally; it allowed him to bulldoze his chief enemy, the media, while airing his own points at ceaseless length. The lesson the media has evidently not learned yet is not to be sitting right there when he does it.

Lesley Stahl’s interview with Trump was an undeniable get; he’d been scarce on mainstream media since around the time he appeared on tape with NBC’s Lester Holt and indicated he’d fired former FBI Director James Comey in part due to the Russia investigation. But the interview seemed governed by two motives, both of which played into the hands of a media-savvy President whose refusal to play by typical rules of engagement has been at the center of his rise….

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The Next Economic Crash Will Be “Far More Painful” Than The 2008 Recession

“This is a bigger bubble than the one that blew up in 2008, and the crisis that is going to ensue is going to be far larger”

Euro Pacific Capital CEO Peter Schiff is sounding the alarm after this week’s market selloff, saying Wall Street and the U.S. economy are on the verge of a recession.

“I think as Americans lose their jobs, they are going to see the cost of living going up rather dramatically, and so this is going to make it particularly painful,” Schiff said.

“This is a bubble not just in the stock market, but the entire economy,” he told Fox News Business.

Schiff is predicting a recession, accompanied by rising consumer prices, that will be “far more painful” than the 2007-2009 Great Recession….

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The Stock Market Dip And The Trump Economy

October, which concludes with Halloween, historically often brings “tricks” for stock markets.  So far, this month is following suit, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average scared investors with an 831-point tumble on Wednesday.  Mainstream media critics of President Trump have mostly ignored the incredible positive news for our economy since his election, and seem to take twisted glee in days like Wednesday, with HBO host Bill Maher  actually admitting that he wants a recession because it may mean “getting rid of Trump.”

Despite this recent market volatility, the real economic growth of the Trump Boom continues apace.  So Mr. Maher will likely be very disappointed.  Sorry — but not sorry — Bill….

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China Has Already Lost This War

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is dead. Mexico and Canada have folded. A new agreement, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), will replace it. While the new agreement maintains the integrity of the North American market, it dramatically changes the rules and tilts the playing field in favor of the United States. In particular, changes in provisions regarding the percentage of North American content required in vehicles imported under the agreement, a mandate for huge increases in minimum wages in Mexico and support for labor unions in Mexico mean that an already resurging American manufacturing base is set to expand even more rapidly.

All eyes now shift to the ongoing trade war between the United States and China, the world’s two largest economies. Here the news is even better. We have already won….

>>> continue reading: China Has Already Lost This War