George Soros calls Trump a 'would-be dictator'

George Soros calls Trump a 'would-be dictator' who 'is going to fail'

Jeff Cox | @JeffCoxCNBCcom

 

 CNBC.com

George Soros thinks President-elect Donald Trump will fail — and that will be just fine with the billionaire investor and supporter of progressive causes.

"I personally am convinced that he is going to fail," Soros told Bloomberg during an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Failure will come "not because of people like me who would like him to fail, but because his ideas that guide him are inherently self-contradictory and the contradictions are already embodied by his advisors."

Soros spoke less than 24 hours before Trump, himself a billionaire businessman and political agitator, takes the oath of office as the 45th president. Trump's Cabinet picks have been undergoing a sometimes-grueling round of confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill, though it's not clear if any will be rejected.
]
During the 2016 campaign, Soros donated close to $20 million to various causes, including more than $10.5 million to Trump's opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
He has been unrelenting in his criticism of Trump, and unloaded on him again during the Davos interview.

"It is impossible to predict exactly how Trump is going to act, because he hasn't actually thought it through." -George Soros

"I have described him as an impostor and a con man and a would-be dictator," Soros said. "But he's only a would-be dictator because I'm confident that the Constitution and the institutions of the United States are strong enough. ... He would be a dictator if he could get away with it, but he won't be able to."
Trump's unexpected win in November hurt Soros beyond politics and ideology — he is believed to have lost more than $1 billion in trades he made that would have benefited if the market went down. Instead, a monthlong rally after the election cost Soros big.
However, he said Thursday he still believes the market is headed lower.
"Uncertainty is the enemy of long-term investment," Soros said. "I don't think the markets are going to do very well. Right now they are still celebrating. But when reality comes in," his bets against the market "will prevail."
Soros said Trump will act as a divisive figure because "anyone who disagrees with him is not really part of the people."
"It is impossible to predict exactly how Trump is going to act, because he hasn't actually thought it through," Soros said. "He didn't expect to win. He was surprised. He was engaged in building his brand and improving it by his success in attracting crowds. It was really only when he got elected that he started to seriously think whatever he is going to do."
Correction: Trump's Cabinet picks have not been confirmed yet. An earlier version mischaracterized their status.

George Soros thinks democracy is at risk   Tuesday, 3 Jan 2017 | 9:01 AM ET | 00:34

Jeff CoxFinance Editor

Build a new habit

Healthy Lifestyle:

The best way to build a habit is consistency, so think "same place, same time"  and try to stick with it.
Be flexible, sometimes you may have to change it up. Return to your schedule when convenient. 


 

Sick people are big business:

Sick people are big business:

Five things for pharma marketers to know 
 
1. Biogen will pay Forward Pharma about $1.25 billion for the patents to several multiple-sclerosis drugs, including Tecfidera. Tecfidera brought in about $1 billion in sales for Biogen in the third quarter of 2016. (Reuters)

2. The Supreme Court will hear an appeal by Novartis over a decision that prevented the drugmaker from selling Zarxio, the first biosimilar version of Amgen's Neupogen, for six months after approval. Novartis is arguing that the delay, prompted by Amgen's patent claims, improperly gave Amgen six additional months of exclusivity. (Reuters)

3. Merck KGaA inked a deal with Palantir Technologies to analyze its data in a bid to make its drug-delivery process more efficient. Palantir gets a cut of Merck's resulting profits. (Bloomberg)

4. A news investigation found that drugmakers that develop drugs for orphan diseases have received millions of dollars in government incentives for therapies that eventually were approved for mass market indications. (Kaiser Health News)

5. The implementation of Pennsylvania's prescription drug monitoring program led to a drop in the number of prescriptions written for painkillers like Vicodin and OxyContin. (WaPo)


Blockbuster Drugs 
 
'Blockbuster Drug'   An extremely popular drug that generates annual sales of at least $1 billion for the company that creates it. Examples of blockbuster drugs include Vioxx, Lipitor and Zoloft.

There can be a heavy cost to being prescribed 'popular' drugs like Vioxx... my doctor prescribed it to me but a quick Google search alerted me to problems with the drug.  It was given to people for about 9 months after the toxicity was well known.

Vioxx
Initially hailed as a superior non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID), Vioxx spent only a few years on the market before it was the focus of thousands of consumer lawsuits. Within five years of being approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of arthritis and menstrual pain, the painkiller was linked to thousands of heart attacks, strokes and deaths. At the same time, the drug’s manufacturer, Merck, vehemently denied any problems.

I read about a similar company in Canadian Business magazine when at the hospital...  Ali Tehrani was a hotshot at UBC who started a compny named Zymeworks Inc...

Zymeworks is building the next great Canadian drug company

May 5, 2016 ... Ali Tehrani ought to be exhausted, considering what his company, Zymeworks Inc., has accomplished in the past few months. Instead, he is enveloped in a bubble of calm rationality, as if he’s thought it all through in advance. “You have to make calculated decisions, but you have to be on the aggressive side,” he muses about life in the biotechnology industry. “You have to take chances.”

www.canadianbusiness.com/innovation/zymeworks/

http://www.canadianbusiness.com/search/?q=ali+tehrani



***********************************************************************

op_alexandru ‏@op_aleksandru Jan 8

The billion-dollar #pharma #startup that #SiliconValley has totally missed http://tcrn.ch/2jjSP7M  via @techcrunch

The billion-dollar pharma startup that Silicon Valley has totally missed

Posted Jan 6, 2017 by Connie Loizos (@cookie)

When it comes to millennials and healthcare companies, recent history gives plenty of reason for pause. Elizabeth Holmes, the founder and CEO of Theranos, has watched her star fall precipitously over the last year, amid a continuing drumbeat of allegations that her blood testing company never worked as advertised. 

Meanwhile, Martin Shkreli, a young hedge fund manager turned pharmaceutical executive, was for a while the country’s most reviled businessperson, after his relatively small company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, bought a drug that treats toxoplasmosis and promptly raised its price from less than $20 per tablet to $750.

If these black marks on the industry are slowing down 31-year-old Vivek Ramaswamy in any way, you wouldn’t know it. He thinks his company,
Roivant, will one day be a giant holding company for dozens of independent biopharmaceutical companies — both by developing drugs as well as focusing squarely on reducing the time and cost of the drug development process.
It all sounds rather lofty. Then again, it’s hard to argue why Ramaswamy shouldn’t be one to reshape how drugs are brought to market.
A Cincinnati native who studied biology at Harvard then earned a law degree from Yale, it was when Ramaswamy began working as an analyst in 2007 at the hedge fund QVT Financial in New York that he first observed the problem that defines his work today.
He noticed that many big and small pharmaceutical firms abandon promising drugs for various reasons having nothing to do with their efficacy.

Sometimes, it’s a strategic decision to focus elsewhere; sometimes, it owes to a lack of resources.
Seeing an opportunity to complete the development of some of these abandoned late-stage drug candidates and get them to market quickly, Ramaswamy struck out on his own in 2014.
Having earned the trust of QVT was key.

The firm, along with Dexcel Pharma, an Israeli firm that reviewed Ramaswamy’s work at QVT, provided Ramaswamy’s new holding company with just less than $100 million in capital — a feat, given that he was just 28 years old at the time.

Yet what Ramaswamy has done with Roivant in the years since is pretty remarkable, too.

While Silicon Valley has obsessed over Theranos, Ramaswamy has acquired a dozen drugs, including an Alzheimer’s pill that’s now named intepirdine.

He also formed a company around that drug, Axovant Sciences, and took it public in 2015 — despite that the drug’s Phase 3 results won’t be out until this year.

It was the biggest biotech IPO ever in the U.S., raising $360 million. It has largely held up, too. Axovant’s shares, which opened at $15, currently trade around $13.25.

Roivant has also launched Enzyvant Sciences, a company focused on rare genetic pediatric conditions that Ramaswamy calls “ignored and underserved,” including a metabolic disorder called Farber disease and DiGeorge syndrome, a genetic disease that results in poor development of several body systems.
It has also teamed up with one of Japan’s oldest companies, Takeda Pharmaceuticals, to start Myovant Sciences, a standalone company that’s focused on women’s health issues. 

The drug candidate around which the company is centered is called Relugolix, which aims to treat endometriosis and uterine fibroids.

Takeda is currently conducting two Phase 3 studies in women with uterine fibroids in Japan. In the meantime, Myovant last year orchestrated what was — again — the biggest biotech IPO of the year.

How is Roivant doing so much at once? Its financing approach plays a major role.
The Alzheimer’s pill that Axovant is currently researching was bought from GlaxoSmithKline as it was dialing down its neuroscience research. Roivant paid a mere $5 million in upfront payments, with the promise of significant upside if the drug works. (Specifically, Axovant will pay Glaxo $160 million in milestones and a 12.5 percent royalty on sales.)

Roivant has also now raised more than $1 billion from investors since its inception. Ramaswamy declines to break out from where that money has come, but he calls a recent, undisclosed amount of funding from hedge fund Viking Global Investors “one of the largest, if not the largest, private financing of a biotech company in history.”

Roivant is meanwhile counting on the power of equity to attract top talent, which seems to be working thus far. Among the 150 employees across Roivant’s organization is Lynn Seely, who is leading Myovant as its CEO. Seely is an endocrinologist with more than 20 years of drug development experience, including as chief medical officer of biotech firm Medivation, where she worked for 10 years ending in 2015. (Medivation sold last year to Pfizer for $14 billion.)

An even newer hire is Alvin Shih, who recently joined as the CEO of Enzyvant. Shih was previously head of R&D at the publicly traded biopharma company Retrophin (where Shkreli was once CEO). He was also the COO of a rare disease research unit at Pfizer.

The idea, explains Ramaswamy, is to create individual companies around each drug or small groupings of candidates that Roivant acquires, then install the scientists who developed the drugs and provide them with big rewards if the drugs prove useful. If the drugs don’t pan out, Roivant will  find another place for the scientists — potentially at another company under its umbrella.

Whether the scheme will work longer term isn’t clear, but it’s easy to appreciate why people like Seely and Shih were drawn to Ramaswamy’s vision. At traditional, top-down pharmaceutical companies, scientists aren’t typically rewarded when a drug they’ve developed becomes a blockbuster, and failed drugs often translate into job cuts.

“It sounds vanilla, but I can’t overstate the importance of re-aligning R&D personnel,” says Ramaswamy of his decentralized approach. “A lot of what you see in conventional pharma R&D is, because [scientists’] jobs are on the line if their projects fail, in many instances, clinical studies aren’t designed to get the answer but instead not get the answer. There’s a kick-the-can mentality.” By addressing that incentive misalignment, he insists, “we’ve stacked the odds in our favor.”

Naturally, questions remain, including whether there’s been a biotech bubble in recent years.
When Axovant went public, a columnist at FierceBiotech warned that it should “scare the hell” out of investors, writing, “The fact that someone can make something of this size out of virtually nothing should be of concern to everyone in the industry. Magical thinking will take you just so far (remember the intoxicating dot-com days?).”

It’s young, yes, but Roivant doesn’t have a sure-fire winner on its hands, either. Though Ramaswamy argues that the “rationale [for Axovant’s Alzheimer’s drug] is uniquely strong relative to other therapies that have entered into Phase 3 trials,” he also concedes that he “can’t promise the clinical trials will work.”

Still he and his investors are willing to bet that at the pace the company is moving, some subset of the drug candidates it’s exploring will pay off — even if it’s by discovering new ways to apply the underlying science that it’s acquiring.

If it doesn’t, expect the Holmes and Shkreli comparisons to follow.
Not that Ramaswamy sounds terribly concerned about that happening. “The more general skepticism about another millennial that likes to claim they’re disrupting another industry — that doesn’t serve me well,” he says with a laugh. But it’s “irrelevant to our business model,” he continues. In fact, he says, “I’d encourage more young people to apply their talents beyond finance and consulting and to think about reshaping how medicines are brought to market and how the business is run. This is a bigger problem that talent has ignored for a very long time.”

Besides, as he’s quick to point out, while “young ambitious people are flocking to companies like Facebook and Google and Snapchat and Uber,” the trillion or so dollars up for grabs in the pharmaceutical industry “far exceeds the scale of the industries being tackled most by Silicon Valley startups.”

Link: https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/06/this-millennial-wants-to-build-the-berkshire-hathaway-of-biopharmaceutical-companies-can-he-pull-it-off/

Crunchbase

• Roivant Sciences

  • Founded 2014
  • Overview Roivant’s mission is to reduce the time and cost of developing new medicines for patients and to share those savings with the healthcare system. It is a unique biopharmaceutical company with world-class drug development experts working across multiple clinical and functional areas.
  • Location Basel, 04
  • Categories Pharmaceutical, Biopharma, Health Care
  • Founders Vivek Ramaswamy
  • Website http://roivant.com/
  • Full profile for Roivant Sciences

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op_alexandru ‏@op_aleksandru Jan 8

The billion-dollar #pharma #startup that #SiliconValley has totally missed http://tcrn.ch/2jjSP7M  via @techcrunch

Atul Gawande suggests new ways to do medicine

Published on Apr 16, 2012

http://www.ted.com Our medical systems are broken. Doctors are capable of extraordinary (and expensive) treatments, but they are losing their core focus: actually treating people. Doctor and writer Atul Gawande suggests we take a step back and look at new ways to do medicine -- with fewer cowboys and more pit crews.

Link: https://youtu.be/L3QkaS249Bc

 

Politics, Policy Uncertainties Likely to Sway Markets in 2017

January 9, 2017

inS

Barbeau: We think headlines, rhetoric and speculation will continue to spark global mkt volatility in '17. Here’s why:

For fans of surprise endings, especially in political contests, 2016 was a banner year. Unexpected election outcomes swung global equity markets both up and down and continue to influence the outlook for many sectors and companies. And Coleen Barbeau, director of portfolio management, Franklin Equity Group, says the volatility likely will continue into 2017. In fact, she believes this year may be even more unpredictable, as additional elections are held and policy changes play out across the globe. While these events may sway equity markets, Barbeau maintains that stock fundamentals should—eventually—resume their place as the key determinant of stock value.

For fans of surprise endings, especially in political contests, 2016 was a banner year. Unexpected election outcomes swung global equity markets both up and down and continue to influence the outlook for many sectors and companies. And Coleen Barbeau, director of portfolio management, Franklin Equity Group, says the volatility likely will continue into 2017. In fact, she believes this year may be even more unpredictable, as additional elections are held and policy changes play out across the globe. While these events may sway equity markets, Barbeau maintains that stock fundamentals should—eventually—resume their place as the key determinant of stock value.

Coleen Barbeau

Coleen Barbeau
Senior Vice President, Director of Portfolio Management
Portfolio Manager
Franklin Equity Group

After the UK Brexit vote and the US presidential election, international equity markets should be accustomed to the unexpected by now. 

And as 2017 unfolds,
we believe uncertainty is likely to persist. Instead of trading on underlying corporate fundamentals, we think this uncertainty creates the potential for markets to trade on news headlines as well as on rhetoric and speculation about policy changes coming from a number of Western capitals.
We believe the potential for significant policy change in the United States is what has largely driven the surge in equities since the presidential election in November. Growth stocks have drastically underperformed value stocks, as investors favored financial and energy names while selling what had been strong performers in the information technology and health care sectors. Bank stocks, in particular, have moved in dramatic fashion—rerating not on a near-term change in profit outlook, but simply on optimism about possible industry deregulation and a more rapid pace of interest rate increases.

Also, hopes for greater fiscal spending in the United States, along with the subsequent rise in bond yields, have led to a move into stocks that could benefit from faster growth and greater inflation—the so-called “reflation trade.”

Infrastructure and defense-related names—especially those sporting low valuations as measured by price-to-earnings ratios—surged at the expense of what we view as higher-quality stocks that generally offer more sustainable earnings growth, cash flows and dividend streams.
While these moves may mark the dawn of a new period for global equity markets, in our view, not much has changed fundamentally. According to the International Monetary Fund, the pace of global economic growth is likely to remain steady in 2017, with global gross domestic product growing a projected 3.4% after a 3.1% expansion in 2016.¹

Underpinning these forecasts is relatively robust growth in emerging markets and more modest expansion in developed economies, including somewhat faster growth in the United States, a slowdown in Europe and the United Kingdom and continued sluggishness in Japan.
Although the US Federal Reserve may continue to raise interest rates modestly over the course of 2017, the European Central Bank (ECB) and Bank of Japan are likely to continue asset purchases as they look to support growth and bolster inflation in their respective economies. 

We anticipate that this liquidity should continue to buoy international equity markets, even as the ECB begins to taper bond purchases in April 2017. Additionally, a stronger US dollar is likely to put a cap on US equity markets, after the recent move higher has left them trading at the top of their historic valuation range.
With many US stocks potentially at their peaks, we see greater opportunities to seek best-in-class, non-US companies that are positioned to take advantage of growth opportunities around the world. 

Moreover, unlike US stocks, many of these companies have traded sideways over the past few years, and their valuations look more compelling to us. 

For instance, our bottom-up research has led us to individual opportunities more recently in the United Kingdom and Japan. 

We are focused on companies which garner most of their revenues abroad, as they leverage their robust business models to capture growth opportunities in faster-growing regions like the United States or emerging markets.

Politics remain the wildcard. What a combination of lower taxes, looser regulation and potentially greater protectionist policies in the United States may mean for the economy and global trade remains to be seen. 

Increased protectionism, in particular, could upend supply chains and make doing business globally more challenging. The populist rhetoric might also increase across Europe in 2017 as French, German and Dutch voters head to the polls.

Although political rhetoric, a changing regulatory regime and potentially more protectionist policies may influence how markets trade from day-to-day in 2017, we believe fundamentals will ultimately matter. As markets get more clarity on the emerging policy backdrop, we believe companies with strong growth potential that the market has overlooked will likely fare well over the longer term.

Get more perspectives from Franklin Templeton Investments delivered to your inbox. Subscribe to the Beyond Bulls & Bears blog.
For timely investing tidbits, follow us on Twitter @FTI_Global and on LinkedIn.

___________________________________________________
1. Source: International Monetary Fund, World Economic Outlook, October 2016. There is no assurance that any estimate, forecast or projection will be realized.

This site is intended for residents outside the US
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• January 8 2017

Trumponomics gets the thumbs down from Nobel-winning economists

• Rich Miller 

A pack of Nobel Prize-winning economists gave Donald Trump and his policy plans the thumbs-down on Friday, with one saying the president-elect's programs could lead to a deep recession.
Speaking on a panel during the first day of the annual American Economic Association meeting in Chicago, the Nobel laureates voiced a variety of concerns about the billionaire developer's stance, from his haranguing of US companies about their outsourcing plans to the risk that his tax and spending proposals could lead to run-away budget deficits.

Trump's plan for the US to spend itself out of trouble just "won't work", says Nobel laureate and globalisation expert Joseph Stiglitz. Photo: Christopher Goodney

"There is a broad consensus that the kind of policies that our president-elect has proposed are among the polices that will not work," said Joseph Stiglitz, summing up the views of the panel that included his fellow Columbia University professor Edmund Phelps and Yale University's Robert Shiller.
Such disapproval though is likely to fall on deaf ears. Trump rode to victory on the back of an unconventional campaign that was short on advice from PhD economists -- relying more on a team of wealthy businessmen -- and there's no indication that's about to change.
He pledges to accelerate growth and create millions of well-paid jobs through spending hikes and tax cuts as well as reduced regulations and renegotiated trade deals.

Discouraging newcomers

Phelps was particularly critical of Trump's singling out of individual companies for abuse and praise, saying such interference could end up discouraging newcomers from entering markets and bringing with them much-needed innovation.
"The Trump government is threatening to drive a silver spike into the heart of the innovation process," he said.
Phelps also voiced concern about Trump's plans for big tax cuts and spending increases. "Such a policy runs the risk it could lead to an explosion of public debt and ultimately cause a serious loss of confidence and a deep recession," he said.
That also has the University of Chicago's Roger Myerson worried. While other presidents have run big budget deficits in the past, they depended on foreign purchases of US debt to do so.

'Confidence and trust'

With Trump threatening to renegotiate US trade agreements and shift to an "America First" policy, the willingness of foreigners to keep buying US government securities can't be taken for granted, Myerson said.
America's interaction with other countries "has to be based on confidence and trust," Stiglitz said. "That's being eroded."
Angus Deaton of Princeton University said he was less worried about the US economy under Trump than he was about international relations, particularly when it comes to China.

The Asian nation was facing difficult economic problems and sounding more bellicose in the region even before Trump won the presidency on a vow to take it on, Deaton said.
Yale's Shiller was the only Nobel Prize winner on the panel discussion who didn't take a shot at Trump. "I'm a natural optimist and I would not like to speculate on how bad it could get," he said. "Maybe one of the other panelists wants to do that."
They certainly did.
Bloomberg

Related Content

• Boosted by Apple, Wall Street parties like it's 19,999
• El-Erian wary of $US ascent
• Trump targets tax, regulations and Paris agreement in economic plan

 

Source:   http://www.smh.com.au/business/trumponomics-gets-the-thumbs-down-from-nobelwinning-economists-20170106-gtngaq.html

Related Content

• Trumponomics: Make America broke again?

• It's Trumponomics versus the establishment

Vancouver Real Estate Prices

Vancouver home sales down 5.6 per cent last year, prices slide

Real estate prices see a 17.8 per cent slide over same month in 2015

The Canadian Press

January 4, 2017 

A high-angle view of Vancouver’s False Creek real estate as seen from the Fairview Slopes neighbourhood, Vancouver, B.C., February 24, 2016. (Bayne Stanley/CP)

VANCOUVER — Home sales in Metro Vancouver dropped by 5.6 per cent in 2016, the city’s real estate board said Wednesday, wrapping up a tumultuous year in one of the country’s most watched housing markets.

The composite benchmark price for all residential properties in Metro Vancouver, as measured by the Multiple Listing Service home price index, fell to $897,600 in December. That’s a 17.8 per cent slide from the same month the previous year.

“It was an eventful year for real estate in Metro Vancouver,” board president Dan Morrison said in a statement.

“Escalating prices caused by low supply and strong homebuyer demand brought more attention to the market than ever before.”

Residential property sales in the city started the year off strong, sometimes hitting record highs. But partway through the year the market started to cool, with sales and eventually prices declining.

The cooling came as a number of measures were implemented in an effort to address home affordability concerns in Vancouver, including a 15 per cent tax for foreign buyers and a tax on homes left vacant.

“As prices rose in the first half of the year, public debate waged about what was fuelling demand and what should be done to stop it,” Morrison said.

“This led to multiple government interventions into the market. The long-term effects of these actions won’t be fully understood for some time.”

There were 39,943 detached, attached and apartment properties sold in the region last year, down from the 42,326 sales recorded in 2015.

Despite the decline in the number of homes sold, 2016 was the third-highest selling year on record, behind only 2015 and 2005.

Last month, residential property sales totalled 1,714, a 39.4 per cent decrease from the 2,827 homes sold in December 2015.

Read Maclean’s and 150+ more magazines on Texture. Start your free trial today.

Filed under:

 

Source: http://www.macleans.ca/economy/home-sales-in-vancouver-down-5-6-per-cent-last-year-prices-slide/

 

 

Why Trump's Tough Talk On China May Work

 

  U.S. President-elect Donald Trump speaks during a rally at Ladd-Peebles Stadium in Mobile, Ala. 

                                                                               (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)


Investing #​TrumpsAmerica
Dec 19, 2016
Why Trump's Tough Talk On China May Work

Bryan Rich ,
Contributor

As we near year end and near a new administration and policy stance, the geopolitical risks have risen.

I've talked about the China threat quite a bit. China's currency regime was at the core of global economic crisis and is inching us all toward what looks like an ultimate military crisis. The seizure of an American drone by the Chinese on Friday was another step toward that end.

Remember, back in January, I talked about six global market themes that would rule for 2016. Among those, I said "China's currency manipulation will come home to roost.....China's currency manipulation (i.e. keeping their currency weak relative to the rest of the world, to corner the world's export business) was a big contributor to the global credit bubble and subsequent economic crisis.
Only after being persistently pressured by key trading partners (namely the U.S.) have they allowed their currency to slowly appreciate over the past several years. But now their economy is slowing, a dangerous scenario for China.
Meanwhile, China is losing export prowess to Japan, a country that has weakened its currency by almost 35% in the past two years.
The easy fix, in the minds of the Chinese, is to jump start exports. How do they do it? Weaken the currency, which is precisely what they have started doing (beginning in August of last year). But, longer term, expect such a reversal on formerly agreed to concessions by China, to be an act of economic war, which may, over the next decade or two, lead to military war (U.S., Europe, Japan v China, Russia, N. Korea)."

Since January (when I discussed the above), China has continued to weaken its currency. They've blamed it on capital flight.
But with the economy still running at recession speed, they want and need a weaker currency, and they are walking it down. They know what works. A cheap currency drives exports. Exports drive prosperity in China.

But they've run into new leadership in the U.S. that is talking tough and has the credibility to act (unlike the outgoing administration).

That has money in China seeking the exit doors as more bumps appear to be ahead for the economy (not the least of which are threats of tariffs). And with that uptick in money leaving the country, the monetary authorities have clamped down on capital controls, more onerously restricting the movement of money out of China.

A weaker currency, tightening capital controls, and an eroding confidence in doing business in China all reinforces a weaker and weaker economy.
Still, as I've said before, while many think Trump will provoke a military conflict, that's far from a certainty. With the credibility to act, however, Trump's tough talk on China creates leverage.

From that leverage, there may be a path to a mutually beneficial agreement, where the U.S. can win in trade with China, and China can win. But it may get uglier before it gets better.

In the end, growth solves a lot of problems. A hotter growing U.S. economy (driven by reform and fiscal stimulus), will ultimately drive much better growth in the global economy.

And China has a lot to gain from both. Though in a fair trade environment, they won't get as much of the pie as they've gotten over the past two decades. But it has the chance of leading to a more balanced and sustainable economy in China, which would also be a win for everyone.



 The Little Black Book of Billionaire SecretsJoin me here to get all of my in-depth analysis on the bigger picture and our carefully curated stock portfolio of the best stocks that are owned by the world's best investors. Our portfolio is up 35% since we started it in December.

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanrich/2016/12/19/why-trumps-tough-talk-on-china-may-work/?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiT1dNeU5qUmhNRFpoTURZeiIsInQiOiJPS1haMjZqdnUyRm9KTUw0Z0tOM1NcL0hKd2VUUGVqQmt2NnBBdzV4dWFvdVFzN2RQd1dFNmlCTTNGbnc5bjloenJ6aXlKZTZvdWE3UG50d1NkZkV5YUdGelAwSmsxNVo0TGMxTmxWOFRaZ0FjeSt6U0FcLzdzNHgyUkZGUStKdytqIn0%3D#4287e4ecb777


China's stay at home currency policies may do more to bring down Vancouver, Canada real estate prices than the 15% owner tax lmposed by the provincial governments... governments get involved too late and increase volatility when trying to reverse trends, infrastructure spending to create well-paying, longterm employment could fuel inflation and highlight Canada's skill shortages.... 

Quotes

"Our busy minds are forever jumping to conclusions, manufacturing signs that aren't there." #Epictetus  

"Your Speed doesn't matter, forward is forward."

Bromide can be poor advice? sense of urgency needed in a fast moving world...etc.

a trite and unoriginal idea or remark, typically intended to soothe or placate.

"feel-good bromides create the illusion of problem solving"

Jon Sindreu ‏@jonsindreu

Central Banks Loosening Their Grip on Markets? http://www.wsj.com/articles/central-banks-loosening-their-grip-on-markets-1483364681 …

 Consistently investigate what gives other people energy. Be the fan that fuels it.

- Darren Rowse

 

Clothes + Manners do not make the man; but when he is made, they greatly improve his appearance. Arthur Ashe

#quote

Grande Prairie's winter sunshine http://bit.ly/2ignxyn 

 

 

A Journey Of A Thousand Miles Must Begin With A Single Step.

Brevity is the soul of wit. #Hamlet #Shakespeare @jbot

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7 'black swan' events that could upend oil,commodity prices this year

Here are 7 'black swan' events that could upend oil, commodity prices this year, Barclays says

Tae Kim | @firstadopter

3 Hours AgoCNBC.com

 

 

PENGGG | Getty Images

 

Barclays' commodities research team shared its top risks for oil, gas and metals investors this year including events such as trade wars, sovereign debt defaults and a Tesla battery breakthrough.

"From Brexit to Trump's election, polling models and analysts were frequently surprised in 2016 by political events that had seemed remote," analyst Michael Cohen wrote in the Thursday report titled "The black swans of 2017."

Nassim Taleb wrote "The Black Swan" in 2007 that focused on the risks of unforeseen tail events.

"We define a commodity 'black swan' as an extreme event or dynamic that market participants, including ourselves, are not currently pricing in. We assess several black swan threats to the supply, demand and transit of commodities that could potentially move markets in 2017," 
Cohen added.

He said global political populism and trade protectionist policies are key risks to the commodity supply chain this year.

Here are seven "possible black swan events" from Barclays and the firm's predictions for commodities prices.




Link: http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/05/here-are-7-black-swan-events-that-could-upend-oil-commodity-prices.html?__source=newsletter%7Ceveningbrief