This is hilarious. EU sabotaged the North Stream so that its completion before 2020 is now highly doubtful. However come 2020 Russia will cease all gas transit to Europe over Ukraine, whether Nord Stream 2 is ready or not.

Kiev has endured trade imbalances with most of its European partners, according to the latest data from the country’s statistics agency. Ukraine is still struggling to make its domestic products meet the rigorous EU standards.

In the first quarter of the current year alone, the overall trade deficit with the European Union totaled $535 million. Europe’s number one economy, Germany, contributed most to the ever-widening gap.

Ukraine signed the controversial association agreement with the EU five years ago, shortly after the Maidan revolution brought down the government of then-president Viktor Yanukovich, who had rejected the association deal. The political part of the agreement has been in effect since September 2014 and the economic part has de-facto operated from January 2016.

TSLA had yet another bad week, closing down $19 (9%) from the previous Friday’s close. Last week every attempted bounce in the stock was shortable on a daytrading basis. Currently Tesla’s shares are trading at $188. It would likely be a lot lower if it weren’t for Musk’s repeated “leaked” emails loaded with dubious production and delivery claims, with both barrels pointed directly at short-sellers.

A second “leaked” email appeared on Wednesday, as the stock was getting ready to take another deep plunge, in which Musk asserts that the employees need to “catch up on deliveries” in order to have a “successful quarter.” Speaking of catching up on deliveries, whatever happened with the 10,000 vehicles that Musk claimed were “in transit” at the end of Q1…? This analysis posted by @boriqato is a priceless “de-coding” of the Musk emails.

President Trump has threatened to slap a 25% tariff on the remaining $325 billion in goods coming from China, announcing the plans the same day the US more than doubled duties on $200 billion in Chinese goods as trade talks ended in a deadlock. China has a potential trump card of its own via its massive pile of US debt. But will it use it?

On Saturday, Trump doubled down on his promises to work to eliminate the trade deficit with China, warning that the trade deal between the two countries would "become far worse" for Beijing if it had to be negotiated in his second term and telling the Chinese not to daydream about him being defeated in the 2020 election so that a Democrat may give them a better agreement.

Trump made the comments a day after his administration increased tariffs from 10 to 25% on $200 billion in Chinese imports, just hours before a second day of trade talks in Washington with China's top trade negotiator.

While nuclear power plants in the U.S. are retiring as they face stiff cost competition from cheap and abundant natural gas, America has also been struggling to keep its leadership on the global nuclear power market as state-sponsored programs in China and Russia have started to dominate the world’s nuclear plant construction market.

The United States must protect its longstanding leadership on nuclear energy globally, Senators Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) wrote in an op-ed to CNBC.

The U.S. lawmakers believe that reviving nuclear energy in the U.S. and developing new and advanced reactors will raise the share of clean energy generation in America on the one hand, and reestablish U.S. leadership on the global market, on the other.

It's a testament to the American legal system that even companies like Huawei, which built an empire on stolen technology and shady anti-competitive practices, have a right to seek redress of grievances in US courts.

The Chinese telecoms firm on Wednesday filed a motion in a Texas court seeking a summary judgment on the constitutionality of the Trump Administration's decision to prohibit US companies and government agencies from using Huawei equipment due to 'national security' concerns. The motion is the latest development in a lawsuit that Huawei first filed back in March challenging Section 889 of the National Defence Authorisation Act (NDAA) - signed into law back in August - which barred federal agencies and their contractors from buying Huawei equipment.

That prohibition has since been expanded by executive order to cover most American companies.

It's going from bad to worse for Europe, whose currency had just hit session lows after Brussels confirmed that Italy faces a massive fine over its debt, when the Euro was hit with a double whammy after Bloomberg reported that the Trump administration is escalating its battle with "European allies" over the fate of the Iran nuclear accord, and is "threatening penalties against the financial body created by Germany, the U.K. and France to shield trade with the Islamic Republic from U.S. sanctions."

According to Bloomberg, the Treasury Department’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, Sigal Mandelker, sent a letter on May 7 warning that Instex, the European SPV to sustain trade with Tehran, and anyone associated with it could be barred from the U.S. financial system if it goes into effect.

In Gold We Trust 2019 –The Annual Gold Report from Incrementum is Here

We are happy to report that the new In Gold We Trust Report (2019) has been released today and the download link can be found at the end of this post.

Ronnie Stoeferle and Mark Valek of Incrementum and numerous guest authors once again bring you what has become the reference work for anyone interested in the gold market.

They are honoured that some of the thought leaders of the gold market read and support their our annual In Gold we Trust report! #IGWT19

Amazon has long touted its relationships with the small businesses who sell on its platform as helping them “reach hundreds of millions of customers around the world.” But Bloomberg reported on Tuesday that the e-commerce giant is about to cease bulk ordering for “thousands of mostly smaller suppliers,” which could have a devastating effect for those mom-and-pop operations. Amazon, however, disputes the report.

“We informed Bloomberg prior to publication of their article that their sources and story are wrong,” and Amazon spokesperson told Gizmodo in a statement by email. “We review our selling partner relationships on an individual basis as part of our normal course of business and any speculation of a large scale reduction of vendors is incorrect. Like any business, we make changes when we see an opportunity to provide customers with improved selection, value and convenience, and we do this thoughtfully and considerately on a case-by-case basis.”

Monex Casa del Bolsa, aka Holding Monex, is a Mexican financial institution founded in 1985 which is one of the world’s largest providers of commercial foreign exchange.

On its website, Monex says it engages in both corporate and private banking, and boasts that it is "an institution formed by leading companies in financial and payment businesses, that provide services and specialized products in the national and international market in an innovative manner and with the highest ethical and quality standards."

With $5.2 billion in assets and operations in the U.S., Monex Casa del Bolsaalso provides banking services to foreigners visiting or doing business in Mexico, as well as many American expatriots living in Mexico. Mostly retirees, they have to navigate a society with fewer legal and financial protections than they’d get in the U.S.

Those Americans, however, recently discovered that the money in their Monex bank accounts has disappeared.

Anti-establishment forces had major gains in the EU elections because voters are tired of parties refusing to challenge Brussels, analysts told RT, saying the results also show that migration is still a top issue.
Euroskeptic parties made considerable gains in the European Parliament elections, leaving the bloc’s establishment parties badly battered and searching for answers. Ultimately, analysts told RT, it illustrates how Europeans have run out of patience for politics as usual.

In the past, whenever the EU found itself in trouble, Brussels would always remedy the crisis by calling for more European integration, Dr. Werner Patzelt, a political science professor at the Technical University of Dresden, noted. And until now, Brussels always got its way.

“This time it was different,” Patzelt told RT.

Late last Friday, we reported that several hours after the market close, China's financial regulator and central bank made a shocking announcement: for the first time in nearly 30 year, China would take control of a bank, in this case the troubled inner Mongolia-based Baoshang Bank, due to the serious credit risks it poses.

The news which highlights the potential for increased stress at regional lenders that piled into off-book financing in recent years, was strategically timed to hit ahead of the weekend, and with the market closed, it avoided an immediate panic selling waterfall. However, the fact that in China banks are now fair game for failure, and will soon join the record surge in Chinese corporate defaults...

Today we’re talking gold.

I’m not going to make projections about the price – whether it’s going to go up or down.

Instead we’re going to look at the cost of buying and selling gold.

How to buy gold on the cheap

What’s the easiest, cheapest way to buy gold?

Most would say via one of the gold exchange-traded funds (ETFs) such as the ETFS Physical Gold (LSE: PHAU), for more see a list of gold ETFs here. You buy the ETF through your broker, the same way you would buy a share. You pay a small premium to the spot price of gold, and a small annual percentage to cover storage and other related costs.

ETFs really are brilliantly simple. It is because they’re so convenient that ETFs have become the means by which most investors and – perhaps more importantly in the financial scale of things – most institutions buy gold.

Atlanta’s City Council just voted in favor of transforming over 7 acres of vacant property into the state of Georgia’s first food forest. The measure, which paves the way for the largest food forest in the country according to Councilwoman Carla Smith, was approved last Monday after a unanimous vote.

The Urban Food forest will be available free of charge and will include edible trees, shrubs, and vines in addition to traditional community garden beds as well as walking trails, public gathering spaces and other features.

“It’s just like going into a park and picking muscadines from a bush,” Smith said.

The land, currently own by environmental agency The Conservation Fund, will be sold to the city of Atlanta for $157,384.00. The agency was in possession of the land after it was abandoned due to a failed business venture.

Mrs Thatcher's great sell-off of publicly owned services and assets, continued by successive governments, started exactly forty years ago to a fanfare of positive publicity.

Small shareholders own only a tiny proportion of the billion of pounds worth of assets that were sold off. Many of these assets are now owned by hedge funds. A large number are in foreign ownership, including quite ironically the state ownership of other countries.

We can have subsidiaries of German and Dutch state railways running our trains, (and buses) and charging British passengers higher fares than passengers in their home countries, but not British Rail.

The past week of off-again, on-again support from Google to Huawei concerning Android, combined with the potential killer blow of Arm joining the party to shun Huawei, should be regarded as a warning shot to what sort of impact a proper trade war between the United States and China could have on the tech sector.

Despite the bluster and rhetoric out of the Oval Office, the simple fact is that the supply chains between the nations are far too intertwined for either country to avoid high amounts of pain as they get untangled.

Whatever device you are reading this on, there's a fair chance it was assembled in the Middle Kingdom, using componentry and intellectual property from the US.

SOURCE: ACTIVIST POST

By Carey Wedler

Every Memorial Day, Americans pay their respects to soldiers who have died while fighting for the US military. Though the good intentions and courage of those who enlist in the armed forces are admirable, the best way to honor those individuals on this holiday—and every day—is to stop sending them to war.

This pro-peace sentiment is often conflated with disrespect for the troops: If you don’t support the government’s wars, you must not support the soldiers fighting in them. However, considering the great cost to human life inflicted by military conflicts—the immense suffering soldiers, their families, and civilians in battleground countries endure—scaling back the size and scope of military programs is not only the best way to respect the troops but also a necessary measure to preserve liberty and freedom.

MILITARISM

It was an unnerving piece of data for investors two weeks back, buried halfway down an esoteric spreadsheet released by the U.S. government that tracks how many Treasuries foreign investors buy and sell. China, the largest foreign creditor to the U.S. government with total Treasury holdings in excess of $1.2 trillion, sold $20 billion of securities with a maturity exceeding one year in March, according to U.S. government data. The sales amounted to China’s largest retreat from the market in more than two years.

The move came shortly before tensions over trade between Beijing and Washington heated up again, with the U.S. slapping additional tariffs on the country’s imports, and Chinese officials retaliating with measures of their own. What’s more, the sales could not be explained away by the typical ebb and flow of China’s Treasury holdings that result from managing its large reserves to keep the currency stable.

A simple visit to an obscure factory by Chinese President Xi on Monday is all it took to raise the specter that China could be contemplating cutting off supply of critical materials to the U.S. and potentially crippling large swathes of its industries. Also, fueled by political innuendo in Xi’s recent call for a new “Long March” in reference to a key founding tenet of the Chinese Communist Party, speculators are growing increasingly wary of Chinese export restrictions to the U.S., including rare earth minerals.

As the world’s largest producer, the Middle Kingdom has a vice-like grip on rare earths supply.

It's tempting to believe President Trump's insistence that Chinese companies will bear the costs of US tariffs, but as a chorus of emergent trade experts have pointed out, this simply isn't true.

American consumers will bear at least some of the costs of the new tariffs, though the extent will depend on how companies react to the new taxes (that is, whether they will pass it on to consumers, tolerate the gross margin hit, or decide to rejigger their supply chains).

Apple and Qualcomm may have dropped their worldwide lawsuit war against each other, but that wasn’t the only battle Qualcomm faced. The FTC also brought a case against Qualcomm, alleging antitrust abuses and illegal behavior. In a ruling May 21, US District Court Judge Lucy Koh found that Qualcomm had violated the Federal Trade Commission Act. Qualcomm has pledged to immediately appeal the ruling, which has significant implications for its business structure and earnings.

“We strongly disagree with the judge’s conclusions, her interpretation of the facts and her application of the law,” Don Rosenberg, executive vice president and general counsel of Qualcomm, said in a statement Wednesday.

SOURCE: RT
The Euroskeptic Brexit Party headed by former UKIP leader Nigel Farage is looking at a solid victory in the European elections, early exit polls show, placing it at about 30 percent, over 20 percent ahead of the Conservatives.
The Brexit Party appears to have scored big in the UK’s portion of the European Parliament elections, with early results and projections on Sunday night showing it ahead of the rest of the field.

Farage began celebrating as the first exit polls started coming in. “It looks like it’s going to be a big win for the Brexit Party,”he told reporters.

With about 99 percent of the vote in, Brexit has some 31.6 percent, followed by the pro-EU Liberal Democrats with 20.3, Labour with 14.1 and the Greens with 12.1. The Conservatives are taking a massive hit and are projected to win only 9.1 percent.

UK: 99% counted.

Remain parties: 40.4%
Hard Brexit parties: 34.9%

A simple visit to an obscure factory by Chinese President Xi on Monday is all it took to raise the specter that China could be contemplating cutting off supply of critical materials to the U.S. and potentially crippling large swathes of its industries. Also, fueled by political innuendo in Xi’s recent call for a new “Long March” in reference to a key founding tenet of the Chinese Communist Party, speculators are growing increasingly wary of Chinese export restrictions to the U.S., including rare earth minerals.

As the world’s largest producer, the Middle Kingdom has a vice-like grip on rare earths supply.