Tokyo-based Nomura said it expects the North Korea tensions to stay controlled, even after the rogue state on Tuesday fired a missile over Japan.
"We see today’s provocation as in line with our base case for the [Korean] peninsula – that tension will remain elevated for some time, but also remain contained," a team of Nomura research analysts said in a Tuesday note led by Hong Kong-based economist Minoru Nogimori.
Finland’s Varma Mutual Pension Insurance Company- the country’s largest pension fund- told Bloomberg it has reduced its exposure to stocks by five per cent, most of that reduction coming from U.S. stocks.
"It seems as if there is no president in the U.S.," Varma CEO Risto Murto said. "If I look at what is the moral and practical power, there is no longer a traditional president."
Bridgewater Associates founder and co-CIO Ray Dalio thinks that democracy is being threatened. In a LinkedIn post published Monday, Dalio said that democracies are healthy when the principles "that bind people are stronger than those that divide them." In turn, "democracies are threatened when the principles that divide people are more strongly held than those that bind them and when divided people are more inclined to fight than work to resolve their differences."
Dealing a serious blow to President Donald Trump’s agenda, the Senate early Friday rejected a measure to repeal parts of former President Barack Obama’s health care law after a night of high suspense in the U.S. Capitol. Senate Republicans failed to pass their pared-down Obamacare repeal bill on vote of 49-51 in a dramatic late night vote that caps a months-long process of trying to fulfill a seven-year promise to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
Some experts suggest that environmental regulations, such as the US decision to quit the Paris Climate Agreement, are likely to have a zero impact on the US economy. Do you share this point of view? Why?
It depends on a period of time that you are talking about. I think that in the long run it has a negative impact. I believe that the energy sector, especially alternative energy sources, hold tremendous opportunities for economic growth. If the US is not going to push in that direction, then other counties will take that growth away. Thus, I think that within the next two years there may be no effect, but, going forward, it has a negative impact on the US economy.
Trumponomics: what has been done?
Not much… so what?
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review a series of lower-court rulings blocking the Trump administration’s controversial travel ban on Monday, setting up a major showdown over presidential power and religious discrimination.
In an unsigned order issued on the Court’s last day before its summer recess, the justices scheduled oral arguments in the case for when they return in October. They also partially lifted the lower courts’ injunctions against Section 2(c) of President Trump’s executive order, which temporarily suspended visa applications from six Muslim-majority countries, as well as Section 6, which froze the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program and halted refugee entry into the United States.
Panama announced it would break ties with Taiwan and enter into a diplomatic relationship with China Tuesday. The move is a huge coup for China, and signals increasing pressure on the Taiwanese authorities to bend to Beijing’s “one China” policy. Taiwan has strongly condemned the Panamanian decision as “oppressive,” and fueled by “money diplomacy.”
The move was announced by Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela. After decades of siding with Taiwan in the disagreement, a joint statement said: “The Government of the Republic of Panama recognizes that there is but one China in the world, that the Government of the People’s Republic of China is the sole legal government representing the whole of China, and that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China’s territory.”
