Much of the predictive economic analysis we present is done so for a very specific reason. If you teach yourself how to sift through the big picture rocks you can quite simply predict the granular future.  Our CTH goal has always been to help with the sifting. CTH has a remarkable track record because common sense is the compass heading, and when we see the obscure data –nobody pays attention to– we focus attention and context upon it.

NOW THIS–>:DETROIT (AP) — Ford is replacing its CEO amid questions about its current performance and future strategy. A person familiar with the situation says CEO Mark Fields is retiring at age 56 after 28 years at the company. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the official announcement hasn’t been made.

Fields will be replaced by Jim Hackett, who joined Ford’s board in 2013, this person says. Hackett has led Ford’s mobility unit since last year. He is the former CEO of office furniture maker Steelcase. Fields helped lead Ford’s turnaround a decade ago as president of its Americas division. But the company’s stock price has fallen almost 40 percent in the three years since he became CEO. (link)

Those of you who have been around a while might remember…

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The pageantry and scale of the royal reception toward President Trump and the U.S. is reflective of much more than a singular presidential visit to a nation and region of geo-strategic importance.

The word “reset” is frequent amid media reporting of the Saudi trip but few people have followed the recent regional history to thoroughly understand what exactly is being reset.

~ President Donald Trump and Saudi King Salman – Joint Statement.

President Trump is being recognized and respected by the regional Arab coalition for his specific approach and outward worldview which is based on eye-to-eye diplomacy.

Through the contacts, discussions, emissary meetings and individual diplomatic engagements over the past six months, the Arab region members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) -and specifically Saudi Arabia- are overjoyed to find a fresh U.S. perspective based on mutual respect. (more…)

United States Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir hold a press briefing shortly after President Donald Trump and Saudi King Salman signed a series of agreements, including a military sales deal.

Expansive Transcript to include the media question and answer session is provided.

[United States Office of The President and U.S. Department of State]

Important Reminder – The scope of the economic impact of this ‘bilateral’ trade agreement has additional benefits when you consider within the next 12 months the U.S. Trade Team (Ross, Lighthizer, Mnuchin and T-Rex) will be renegotiating NAFTA, and bilateral trade with China, the European Union and the U.K. 

FOREIGN MINISTER AL-JUBEIR: Are we ready? Okay. Good evening, everybody. I would like to welcome all of you to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It’s a great pleasure and honor for me to welcome my colleague and friend Rex Tillerson on his first visit to Saudi Arabia as Secretary of State. Mr. Secretary, while this may be your first visit as Secretary of State, you have been here many, many, many times over many, many years. You know our country and our region extremely well. And I believe your country is fortunate to have you as Secretary of State during this period. We in the region feel very fortunate having you at the helm of the State Department.

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The primary elements of the historic arms side of the strategic agreement today is to position Saudi Arabia to enhance its own defense capability.  Over time this will lessen the concern or need of U.S. military forces or deployment.

The United States will manufacture, sell, train and support over $110 billion in U.S. hardware to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (explained below). In return, the Saudi government has committed over $350 billion in additional bilateral trade imports and investments.

[U.S. Department of State] Today, in a significant expansion of the more than seven-decade long security relationship between the United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the President and Secretary Tillerson attended a signing ceremony for almost $110 billion worth of defense capabilities to be conveyed via Foreign Military Sales Letters of Offer and Acceptance and a Memorandum of Intent to support Saudi Arabia’s defense needs.

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Sip slowly, this explainer was hard to write.   There is a considerable amount of perplexed frustration following on the heels of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin testifying to the Senate Banking Committee earlier today and specifically saying:

02:20 Glass-Steagall? “we do not support a separation of banks from investment banks, we think that would have a very significant problem on the financial markets, on the economy, on liquidity; and we think that there is proper things that potentially we could look at around regulation, but we do not support a separation of banks and investment banks.”

That statement runs counter to the Trump administration’s prior policy statements outlining a preference for a reinstatement of some form of “Glass-Steagall” regulatory separation between commercial banking and investment banking.

In essence when combined with the totality of Mnuchin’s testimony before the committee, Mnuchin is saying the current “too big to fail” (‘too big to succeed’) issue has created a problem for lending liquidity.  Specifically, if divisional separation is required – the banks best interests would naturally put the investment division ahead of commercial lending and the liquid capital within the overall economy would shrink.

I think we have a handle on what the administration is doing based on the executive orders signed and explained earlier.  Bear with me…

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Something appears to be happening within the administration that is currently impossible to define with regard to intent of construct. For the sake of my own internal disposition, and to ensure a geographic distance from sharp things, a modicum of levity is necessarily required.  Cue suspicious cats:

Unfortunately, it’s too early (not fully developed pixels) to see the picture, but there appears to be an intentionally constructed parallel set of administrative policies that almost gives the appearance of a paralleling administration. It should be emphasized the construct herein is not necessarily definable as good or bad; it’s just simply too early.

It begins with Vice President Mike Pence delivering a speech at the Invest in America Summit today, which is primarily a gathering of the largest lobbying group in Washington DC via The U.S. Chamber of Commerce.  No single lobbying organization has done more to advance global trade interests and diminish the U.S. manufacturing economy than the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and its president Tom Donohue.

Simultaneous to this event, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin was on Capitol Hill testifying to the Senate Banking Committee, and appears to have recently accepted the premise that the U.S. banking system is institutionally too big to fail, and more alarmingly too big to reform.

First, the Summit remarks:

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President Donald Trump meets today with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos. Trump and Santos were meeting to discuss collaborative policies on the drug trade and drug cartels.  Together they will hold a joint press conference from the White House at approximately 3:45pm:

UPDATE: Video Added:

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Newly confirmed U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer accepts his presidential commission today completing the cabinet of U.S. President Donald J Trump.

Together with his daughter, Claire, and son, Bob Jr.,  Robert Lighthizer was sworn in by Vice-President Mike Pence.  A really wonderful ceremony.

Listen carefully to Lighthizer’s words which begin around 09:00 – HE IS NOT KIDDING OR OVERSTATING.  BELIEVE IT.

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Trade Rep. Lighthizer joins a U.S. trade team including Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.  Together with exceptional underlying staff and trade policy support members they represent the strongest U.S. trade policy team in our lifetime.

The WINNING future looks exceptionally bright.

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To understand the larger objectives of the G7 Financial Ministers meeting it is important to understand the three-decade global financial construct they seek to protect. Global financial exploitation of national markets:

♦Multinational corporations purchase controlling interests in various national elements of developed industrial western nations.
♦The Multinational Corporations making the purchases are underwritten by massive global financial institutions, multinational banks.
♦The Multinational Banks and the Multinational Corporations then utilize lobbying interests to manipulate the internal political policy of the targeted nation state(s).
♦With control over the targeted national industry or interest, the multinationals then leverage export of the national asset (exfiltration) through trade agreements structured to the benefit of lesser developed nation states – where they have previously established a proactive financial footprint.

The ‘America First’ Trump-Trade Doctrine upsets the entire construct of this multinational export/control dynamic.  Team Trump focuses exclusively on bilateral trade deals with specific policy only looking out for the national interests of the United States.

Under President Trump’s Trade positions exfiltration of U.S. national wealth is essentially stopped.  This puts the multinational corporations, globalists who previously took a stake-hold in the U.S. economy with intention to export the wealth, in a position of holding interest of an asset they cannot exploit.

If you can see the ramifications, and can grasp the inherent anger, you can begin to understand the severity of the opposition to President Trump.

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To understand the China ‘One-Belt / ‘One-World’ economic trade forum it becomes necessary to understand how structurally weak the Chinese economy was created.

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People often talk about the ‘strength’ of China’s economic model; and indeed within a specific part of their economy -manufacturing- they do have economic strength.  However, the underlying critical architecture of the Chinese economic model is structurally flawed and President Trump with his current economic team understand the weakness better than all international adversaries.

Lets take a stroll and lightly discuss.

China is a central planning economy.  Meaning it never was an outcropping of natural economic conditions.  China was/is controlled as a communist style central-planning government; As such, it is important to reference the basic structural reality that China’s economy was created from the top down.

This construct of government creation is a key big picture distinction that sets the backdrop to understand how weak the economy really is.

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