Domain Mondo's weekly review of macro economic and investing news:
MacroView Feature • President-elect Donald J. Trump's 2017 Great Again Team Cabinet-level Power Players:
The
Electoral College vote on December 19, 2016, sealed Trump's Presidential victory.
Congress will certify the results on January 6th, and Donald J. Trump will be inaugurated the 45th President of the United States on
January 20, 2017. However,
Hillary Clinton and some of her supporters and 'friends' in the media are still whining about the 2016 Presidential election outcome. Meanwhile, most rational people have moved on and are preparing for the incoming Trump administration:
"The Founding Fathers got it right, and California is proof."--MarketWatch.com. For those still looking in the rearview mirror, Vice President Joe Biden said this week that Hillary Clinton
never really figured out why she was running, while
others have concluded the desire for change was bigger than any worries Clinton was able to raise about Trump. For those still living in a
state of denial,
reality is about to give them a slap in the face:
"Senate Democrats are about to get rolled on Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks. They [Democrats] could spend years in the minority ... instead of the GOP collapse that many expected on Nov. 8, it’s now Democrats [who are] soul-searching about what went wrong."--POLITICO.com.
Background: In
November 2013, Democrats controlled the U.S. Senate and used the so-called
nuclear option to eliminate filibusters on executive branch nominations and federal judicial appointments other than those to the Supreme Court. As a result, in 2017, Trump's Cabinet picks will only need a simple majority of 51 votes for Senate confirmation (Republicans will have a 52-seat majority in the 100-seat U.S. Senate in 2017).
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| Digital Trump: Horizontal View | ©2016 John Poole | DomainMondo.com |
Trump's Cabinet-level picks requiring Senate confirmation:
- Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson
- Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin
- Defense Secretary James N. Mattis
- Attorney General Jeff Sessions
- Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke
- Agriculture Secretary TBA
- Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross
- Labor Secretary Andrew F. Puzder
- H.H.S. Secretary Tom Price
- HUD Secretary Ben Carson
- Transportation Secretary Elaine L. Chao
- Energy Secretary Rick Perry
- Education Secretary Betsy DeVos
- V.A. Secretary TBA
- Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly
- U.N. Ambassador Nikki R. Haley
- C.I.A. Director Mike Pompeo
- Director of National Intelligence TBA
- U.S. Trade Representative TBA
- Administrator of the Small Business Administration Linda McMahon
- E.P.A. Administrator Scott Pruitt
- Director of the Office of Management and Budget Mick Mulvaney
•
Trump Effect: Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) Up 8.73% since November 8th:
•
Companies Face Delays Getting Cash Out of China | WSJ.com:
"French construction-materials company Cie. de Saint-Gobain SA, is finding it harder to take its money out of China. The conglomerate—like all multinationals operating there—faces new delays in recent weeks as Chinese regulators impose tougher restrictions on the movement of capital out of the country to slow the yuan’s decline ..."
• Venture capital is harder to come by, interest rates are low, and founders prefer no dilution--
voilà venture debt--
U.S. Startups Are Piling on Debt | Bloomberg.com:
"With fewer companies getting funded these days, many startups are opting to borrow money instead. Some have already been forced to shutter after missing payments."
•
Italy Banking Crisis is Also a Huge Crime Scene | WolfStreet.com:
"Toxic loans as a result of corruption, political kickbacks, fraud, and abuse."
•
World Energy Tipping Point: Solar Is Now Cheaper Than Wind:
"Emerging markets are leapfrogging the developed world thanks to cheap panels."--Bloomberg.com
•
IMF's Lagarde keeps job, escapes penalty after negligence conviction in France | Reuters.com
•
Fallibility, Reflexivity, Adaptability:
“My conceptual framework is built on two relatively simple propositions. The first is that in situations that have thinking participants, the participants’ views of the world never perfectly correspond to the actual state of affairs. People can gain knowledge of individual facts, but when it comes to formulating theories or forming an overall view, their perspective is bound to be either biased or inconsistent or both. That is the principle of fallibility .... The second proposition is that these imperfect views can influence the situation to which they relate through the actions of the participants. For example, if investors believe that markets are efficient then that belief will change the way they invest, which in turn will change the nature of the markets in which they are participating (though not necessarily making them more efficient). That is the principle of reflexivity.”--George Soros. See
Soros, Fallibility, Reflexivity, and the Importance of Adapting | blogs.cfainstitute.org
•
Much ado about nothing--
Data Shows Fake News Sites Have Tiny Audience | DailyCaller.com--
anyone surprised? (other than the 'sore losers' of the Clinton campaign, the
anti-free speech liberal-left Dems, and
MSM).
•
The Hacking Evidence Against Russia Is [Still] Extremely Weak | WashingtonsBlog.com:
"I don’t know what the DNC paid “Crowdstrike” for their narrative but they got a very poor return for their effort indeed. That the New York Times promotes it as any kind of evidence is a truly damning indictment of the mainstream media."
•
One More Thing: In Aleppo's historic St. Elias Cathedral, priests prayed for peace at the first Christmas Eve Mass in five years, attended by dozens of worshippers and some Russian officers. Many among the 400,000 Syrian Christians who comprise 10% of Syria's population, support Assad's Syrian government forces,
not the Sunni Muslim rebel fighters supported by the Obama administration--
sources. See also Journalist Eva Bartlett Destroys Mainstream News Journalists' Credibility Over Syria, Aleppo | washingtonsblog.com.
-- John Poole, Editor, Domain Mondo
feedback & comments via twitter @DomainMondo
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