Saturday, February 18, 2017

QUICK OVERVIEW

  • Whatever might be going on in the White House, investors are keeping their faith in Trump -- so far. 

  •  Mexican newspapers report Mexican Parliament anticipates to shift corn/soy imports to South America and were ready to source soybeans/corn from Brazil/Argentina.

  •  German Consumer Price Index rose 1.9% 
  • YoY German GDP came in at a seasonally adjusted plus 0.4% in Q4. 
  • YoY the growth rate for 2016 was 1.9%, which was the strongest rate for half a decade. 

  • (Reuters) U.S. President Donald Trump's vow to roll back government regulations at least 75 percent is causing anxiety for some pharmaceutical executives that a less robust Food and Drug Administration would make it harder to secure insurance coverage for pricey new medicines… "People often argue that the FDA is too restrictive," said Roger Perlmutter, head of research and development at Merck & Co Inc (MRK.N). "We have the sense that the balance is pretty right ... you have to have a well-characterized risk/benefit profile." 

  • Solar now provides twice as many jobs as the coal industry: The solar industry is adding jobs much faster than the overall economy, but still makes up just over 1% of the country's total power supply. Clearly, there's room for growth.


  • Republicans terminate the EPA https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/861/text

  •  (Fortune) In a new interview with Quartz, Microsoft founder Bill Gates makes a rather stunning argument—that robots who replace human workers should incur taxes equivalent to that worker’s income taxes. “Right now, the human worker who does, say, $50,000 worth of work in a factory, that income is taxed . . . If a robot comes in to do the same thing, you’d think that we’d tax the robot at a similar level.”

  • Catherine Rampell: National Endowment for the Arts budget, which Trump wants to eliminate: $148m Estimated annual cost (to NYC) to protect Trump Tower: $183m 


  • The 10 biggest defense budgets in 2016 added to over $1.1 trillion. The U.S lead the way with $605 billion, followed by China with $145 billion.

  •  U.S. annual inflation rate rose to 2.5% in January, from 2.1% in December.

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