White House Trade and Manufacturing Policy Advisor Peter Navarro appears on CNN to debate economic policy with Jake Tapper. As customary Tapper attempts to use the Multinational Big AG talking points to identify farmers as victims.
♦The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note dropped to 1.623% Wednesday for less than one hour; momentarily below the 2-year bond rate of 1.634%. The cause was a rapid influx of foreign capital, mostly from the EU (due to negative interest rates), into the U.S. to secure a return. This is not comparable to the historic ‘bond rate inversion’.
♦The biggest fallacy pushed in this interview, YET AGAIN, surrounds price impacts on Chinese imports. Tapper takes the talking points of the Wall Street multinationals, and their paid think-tanks, to push an empirically false assertion of the U.S. consumer paying for tariffs on China. Here’s the easiest refutation of that nonsense:

• The Steel (25%) and Aluminum (10%) tariffs have been in place for two years.
• The 25% tariff on $250 billion Chinese goods have been in place over a full year.
• The current inflation rate (Consumer Price Index) is only 1.4%.

(Bureau of Economic Analysis – Personal Income and Consumer Price Index)

If the tariffs on China were impacting consumers, inflation would be much higher. In fact the exact opposite is happening. Because the protectionist Chinese and EU currency manipulation hits *ALL* imports, including non-tariff products, we are actually importing deflation.

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National Economic Council Chairman Larry Kudlow appears on NBC with Chuck Todd to debate the issues surrounding current trade and economic policy.  While Todd is obviously annoying, Kudlow makes two important points:

1.  The Q3 CapEx (capital expenditure) spending reflects a domestic energy sector investment pause related to the dropped cost of oil. A fluctuation related to extraction costs and projected finished product price. [Energy companies pause on low price.]
2. The Sept. “Next Step” tariff delay relates to pre-contracted prices of holiday goods with the import price attached to lower dollar value at the time of contract. The delay allows the arrival of product without price impact. If products were determined with current valuations the current arrival price would have been lower (offsetting tariffs).

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“Seek first to understand, then to be understood”.

1.) First, please READ THIS ENTIRE THREAD – and the full text of any discussion thread you wish to participate in. Skipping to the comments to express an opinion without reading the content of the discussion is not helpful.
Often, unfortunately very often, we find many of the points injected into comments are already outlined in the construct of the thread itself. -or- Questions asked while the answers are in the primary post.
2.) STAY ON TOPIC – please do not post something unrelated to the specific matter and content of the thread subject. There is a ALWAYS a daily open thread available for any subject you feel should get attention. Never place unrelated, “O/T”, or “Off Topic” comments on a thread unrelated to the topic. It is not ok to say: “sorry, O/T but”… or any iteration therein.
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In an effort to keep the Daily Open Thread a little more open topic we are going to start a new daily thread for “Presidential Politics”. Please use this thread to post anything relating to the Donald Trump Administration and Presidency.

This thread will refresh daily and appear above the Open Discussion Thread.

President Trump Twitter @POTUS / Vice President Pence Twitter @VP

Stephanie Grisham Twitter @StephGrisham45

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come. THY WILL BE DONE, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but DELIVER US FROM EVIL. For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen †

Hong Kong movement spokesperson Sunny Cheung explains what the protests are about, and what the movement hopes to achieve.   Mr. Cheung explains the protesters do not believe in the communist idea, and/or the larger communist ideology; hence their efforts to reach out to the U.S. for support.
More protests and rallies are scheduled for this weekend.

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Delivering a statement directly from the files of ‘captain obvious‘ former AAG Matt Whitaker notes that everything about Bruce and Nellie Ohr was sketchy.

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Political opposition research was paid for by Hillary Clinton and created by Fusion-GPS (Glenn Simpson and Nellie Ohr).  That oppo-research was then sent to Chrisopher Steele in the U.K. so he could launder the information and return it to the DOJ and FBI, through Bruce Ohr, as a semi-official “intelligence” product.
Within the released documents provided to Judicial Watch the last FBI interview of Bruce Ohr (May 15th, 2017) took place two days prior to the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller; and one day before Rod Rosenstein took Mueller to the White House.
Throughout the interviews (full pdf below) Bruce Ohr was acting as the go-between delivering information from his wife Nellie Ohr at Fusion GPS and one of Fusion’s contract investigators, Christopher Steele.
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We are living in remarkable times.  Often we forget, amid the noise within the challenges, to pause and reflect on the accomplishments.

“The nation state remains the true foundation for happiness and harmony”…

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For all intents and purposes Germany is the EU, because German economic policy dictates the outcomes of all EU economic policy.  So as the EU promises to engage in more central bank monetary printing (quantitative easing) simultaneously Germany promises to keep negative interest rates floating as long as possible. [EU Parliament pictured below]
Yes, the EU is in serious structural economic trouble; and that is likely the real reason why quivering Chancellor Angela Merkel has decided to exit the political stage before the larger communal catches on.

Within the remarks by German Finance Minister Scholz it is the lamentation about the lack of investment into their grand collective economic scheme where you find the economic dissonance, and ultimately the hilarious punch lines:

BERLIN (Reuters) – German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz said on Saturday that he expected interest rates to remain very low for “the next few years”, adding that companies should seize the opportunity of near-zero borrowing costs to boost private sector investment.
The European Central Bank has already signaled even more monetary stimulus for the euro zone economy, hoping to arrest a downward spiral that could lead to an economic recession.

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An interesting article in the South China Morning Post (SCMP) highlights how China is shifting their procurement priority from minerals used in manufacturing (cobalt, copper) to the acquisition of food and agriculture products.
The impact is being felt throughout Africa, where mining companies are shutting down operations because Chinese demand no longer exists.
Articles like this highlight the ancillary impacts of a weakened Chinese economy.
Despite the proclamations by Beijing about their ability to withstand the withdrawal of the U.S. as a primary customer for manufactured goods, reality shows they cannot.
There is a confluence of events all leading to radical changes just below the surface.  China has been burning cash to subsidize industries impacted by U.S. tariffs.  Simultaneously Beijing has lowered the value of their currency in an effort to eliminate the tariff impact in the cost of their finished goods. However, as the ideological economic conflict between the U.S. and China continues, Beijing cannot hold their position indefinitely.
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