Mike Norman Economics

USD zombies low on the people's soy product: #China’s #soybean oil futures limit up, hit the highest in a year. pic.twitter.com/HaRjQsWRvR — YUAN TALKS (@YuanTalks) August 9, 2019 USD zombies low on the people's fruit and the people's pork products too: #China’s factory gate prices fell for the first time in 3 years in July. Consumer inflation picked up to 17-month high on surging food prices.Fruit prices surged 39.1% y/y and pork jumped 18.2%. On a monthly basis, pork up 7.8% while...

Reserve flows. Like inside information.

Naked Capitalism5 Reasons Why Trump’s Venezuela Embargo Won’t End the Maduro Regime Marco Aponte-Moreno, Associate Professor of Global Business and Board Member of the Institute for Latino and Latin American Studies, St Mary’s College of California. Originally published at The ConversationVenezuelanalysisIn Venezuela, social, popular and communal unity is not an illusion Corriente Revolucionaria Bolívar y Zamora interview with Ángel Prado, the spokesperson of the Socialist Commune El...

Saudi Arabia has begun implementing a “strategic plan” to confront the Turkish government, after Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman decided he was being “too patient” with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the wake of journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s murder. The plan is detailed in a confidential report based on open- and closed-source intelligence prepared by the kingdom’s ally, the United Arab Emirates. The intelligence report is one of a monthly series written by the Emirates Policy Centre,...

Leaving aside the sensational headline, the article is about a putative recent agreement between Iran and Russia for Russia to participate more actively in Iran, as it has long done in Syria. Simon Watkins gives specifics he claims he has been made privy to. He seems to be in a position to have the connections.Oilprice.comRussia Gains Stranglehold Over Persian GulfSimon Watkins, formerly Head of Forex Institutional Sales and Trading for Credit Lyonnais, Director of Forex at Bank of Montreal,...

US dollar now used to settle just 45 percent of exports to EU and China, and just one third of imports Checkpoint AsiaRussia’s Pledge to Ditch the Dollar Is Fast Becoming a Reality Andrey Biryukov, Bloomberg

Ka-ching. The Western MIC is going for it.Sputnik InternationalNATO’s China Double-Think

Clearest analysis on these "hot spots" I have seen yet.Strategic Culture FoundationHong Kong, Kashmir: a Tale of Two Occupations Pepe EscobarSee asloZero HedgeEvidence Of CIA Meeting HK Protest Leaders? China Summons US Diplomats Over Viral Photo

Spross quoted former bank CEO Richard Vague, chair of The Governor’s Woods Foundation, who explained, “China has committed itself to a high level of growth. And growth, very simply, is contingent on financing.” Beijing will “come in and fix the profitability, fix the capital, fix the bad debt, of the state-owned banks … by any number of means that you and I would not see happen in the United States.”... This did happen to a degree in the US, when the Fed stepped up to save the financial...

In thirteen years of hostile decisions, the Roberts Supreme Court has done all it can to legalize corruption. With the Bridgegate case, it gets a chance to wreak even more havoc and possibly end the use of the term “corruption” as a useful legal concept.... That the purpose, wasn't it? If this is not judicial activism, what is? This approach to corruption sets the Roberts Supreme Court apart from other Supreme Courts. For over a century, previous Supreme Courts upheld campaign finance laws...