Written by Econintersect
Early Bird Headlines 21 February 2019
Econintersect: Here are some of the headlines we found to help you start your day. For more headlines see our afternoon feature for GEI members, What We Read Today, published Monday, Wednesday and Friday, which has many more headlines and a number of article discussions to keep you abreast of what we have found interesting.
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​Global
- Stocks in Asia mixed as investors digest Fed minutes; Lenovo soars more than 12 percent (CNBC) Stocks in Asia were mixed on Thursday following an earlier slip in the morning as traders digest a release from the Federal Reserve. The U.S. dollar index was up slightly at 96.592 but was off an earlier session high of 96.657. Brent crude futures contract added 0.22% to $67.23 per barrel. The U.S. crude futures contract gained 0.47% to $57.43 per barrel. Spot gold had inched up 0.1% to $1,340.14 per ounce by 0404 GMT. U.S. gold futures were down 0.5% at $1,340.90 an ounce.
- When the next recession comes there is going to be a lot of turmoil (Yahoo! Finance) Jeffrey Gundlach CEO of Doubleline Capital discusses risk factors for investors including corporate debt, national debt, bond maturity and the next recession.
U.S.
- Hill-HarrisX poll: 59 percent oppose Trump’s emergency declaration (The Hill) Fifty-nine percent say they oppose President Trump’s declaration of an emergency to build a wall on the Mexican border, according to a new Hill-HarrisX poll released Wednesday. The poll found that just 41 percent of registered voters support Trump’s decision, which has drawn lawsuits from 16 states and divided Republicans.
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- FBI’s top lawyer believed Hillary Clinton should face charges, but was talked out of it (The Hill) For most of the past three years, the FBI has tried to portray its top leadership as united behind ex-Director James Comey’s decision not to pursue criminal charges against Hillary Clinton for transmitting classified information over her insecure, private email server. Although in the end that may have been the case, we now are learning that Comey’s top lawyer, then-FBI General Counsel James Baker, initially believed Clinton deserved to face criminal charges, but was talked out of it “pretty late in the process.”
- Bombshell Mueller report may never be fully revealed (CNN) Robert Mueller’s report could land within days, yet rather than offering definitive answers, his hotly anticipated filing might only ignite a new controversy — over how much of the special counsel’s conclusions most Americans get to see. Sources told CNN on Wednesday that the Justice Department is preparing for Mueller to report to Attorney General Bill Barr as soon as next week after an investigation that started as an attempt to find out whether Trump campaign members conspired with a Russian election meddling effort.
But the big question is how much of what the special counsel concludes — after an investigation repeatedly blasted as a “hoax” and a “witch hunt” by the President — will be made public or even sent to Congress.
Whenever it is filed, Mueller’s report will mark a critical point in the Trump presidency, given the gravity of the accusations against his team, and offer the theoretical possibility of conclusive answers about the last White House race.
- Dems seize on Times bombshell to push allegations of Trump obstruction (The Hill) Democrats are seizing on a bombshell New York Times report as further evidence that President Trump may have sought to obstruct justice in investigations of his campaign and administration. The Times reported Tuesday that the president asked then-acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker late last year to put U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman in charge of the investigation into Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen. Cohen pleaded guilty last year to bank fraud, tax fraud and making payments to silence women alleging that they had affairs with Trump. See Trump declares New York Times ‘enemy of the people’.
- Cohen had originally been scheduled to testify on Feb. 7 but his advisor Lanny Davis said he canceled because of threats against his family from Trump.
- The president’s former lawyer will report to federal prison on May 6 after a judge granted him a two-month delay to allow him to recover from a surgical procedure and to prepare for his congressional testimony, according to a court filing on Wednesday.
- Trump Signs Directive to Create a Military Space Force (Space.com) The Space Force just took a big step from sci-fi-sounding dream toward reality. President Donald Trump signed Space Policy Directive-4 (SPD-4) Tuesday (Feb. 19), ordering the Pentagon to establish the Space Force as the sixth branch of the United States military, to go along with the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard. But the Space Force still has a big hoop to jump through: Congress must approve the creation of any new military branch.
- Teachers with Guns (Boston Review) What happens when a school district votes to arm teachers? A Rust Belt educator takes us through the grim realities of training to kill one of his own students. It is difficult to know how many Ohio school districts have in recent years availed themselves of the option to arm teachers. Buckeye Firearms Association, an Ohio Second Amendment lobbying organization and PAC, claims that 63 of the state’s 88 districts now have armed staff.
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- US Supreme Court Rules To Limit States’ Ability To Seize Property, Impose Fines (Zero Hedge) The US Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Wednesday that the Excessive Fines Clause in the 8th Amendment applies to state and local governments. Announced in an opinion written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on her second day back on the bench following a December cancer surgery, the ruling limits states’ abilities to seize property and impose fines deemed excessive on citizens who break the law. Ginsburg, as the court sided with Tyson Timbs of Marion Indiana, whose $42,000 Land Rover SUV was seized by the state following a guilty plea for selling $385 worth of heroin to an undercover detective, wrote:
“For good reason, the protection against excessive fines has been a constant shield throughout Anglo-American history: Exorbitant tolls undermine other constitutional liberties.”
EU
- Eurozone manufacturing slips into contraction – survey (Financial Times) The PMI for manufacturers hits lowest level in nearly six years as weak demand and uncertainty bite. The level hit 49.2 in February – below the crucial 50 level that separates an expansion in activity from a contraction and down from 50.5 the previous month. This number is the “flash” (preliminary) reading for February and will be followed by a final reading in another week.
Japan
- Trump to visit Japan twice in months after North Korea summit (CNN) Donald Trump will visit Japan twice in the coming months, a US official has told CNN. The US president will pay a formal visit to the close ally in late May, likely to Tokyo, after the country’s current crown prince Naruhito becomes Japan’s 126th Emperor. Trump will then return in late June to attend the G20 in Osaka, the official said. The news comes ahead of Trump’s upcoming summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Hanoi, which is set to take place next week.
- Japan Just Shot a Fake Asteroid with a Space Bullet … for Science (Space.com) Say you need to prepare to shoot bullets into an asteroid and suck up the debris kicked up from the blast, then tuck it away for safekeeping. There’s no better way than to shoot bullets into a fake asteroid here on Earth and watch what happens in slow motion. So, that’s precisely what the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) did at the end of December in preparation for its spacecraft Hayabusa2‘s sampling run at the asteroid Ryugu later this week. Using the data gathered over months spent surveying the space rock, they created a model of the asteroid, put it in a vacuum chamber and used a copy of the spacecraft’s sampling system in a test run. Such techniques might be developed for use in asteroid mining.
China
- The U.S. is under pressure to expand weapons sales to the Middle East amid record high regional defense spending and encroaching foreign competition.
- Lt. Gen. Charles Hooper, director of the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency, this week emphasized changes underway to U.S. policy that has thus far prevented armed drone sales to Washington’s Arab allies.
- Systems that Gulf countries have wanted include the deadly MQ-9 Reaper, produced by General Atomics, a hunter-killer drone that can carry up to four hellfire missiles as well as laser-guided bombs and joint direct attack munitions (JDAMs).
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- US Demanding China Keep Value Of Yuan Stable, Halt Devaluations (Zero Hedge) In the latest sign that at least some progress might be made this week toward a US-China trade accord as the seventh round of talks gets underway in Washington, Bloomberg just reported that the US – in addition to its other demands – also been pressing China to “stabilize” the yuan, a move aimed to neutralize efforts by Beijing to devalue its currency to counter American tariffs. According to sources close to the talks, the two sides are discussing how to codify language prohibiting currency manipulation in a memorandum of understanding that would form the outline of a deal.
While we fail to see how Beijing would agree to such a stipulation – agreeing in principle is easy for Beijing; implementing safeguards and controls preventing currency manipulation is virtually impossible – the market has once again lapped up the news, sending the yuan and the Aussie dollar higher as the headline was seen by algos as another indication that talks are at least moving along, even if nobody appears to have considered the actual content of the report.
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