October was a brutal month for the stock market. After the Federal Reserve’s eighth interest rate hike, on September 26, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped more than 2,000 points, and the NASDAQ had its worst month in nearly 10 years.
It didn’t take long for the US government to move in with aggressive tax procedures for policing earnings on crypto currency. As a result, a burgeoning industry has popped up in crypto-accounting and tax law, leaving crypto traders with volumes regulation piling up on tax requirements, liability, deductions and procedures. Clearly, this is an attempt by government to slow down the growth of crypto entrepreneurs until Wall Street moguls can corner the market and thus work in collusion with Big Government manipulate crypto as they have fiat money.
There are emerging signs in the global financial system which combined with some disturbing political developments and the Neoconservative proclivities of the Trump Administration – may spell trouble for the global markets. Is financial warfare a sustainable tactic for Washington going forward? What are the risks of blowback? Tensions also mount in Western China’s Xinjiang Province and the ethnic Uyghur issue. How will this issue affect the Belt and Road Initiative?
It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes.
— President Andrew Jackson, Washington, July 10, 1832
As key representatives of the three chief villains of international finance and trade, the IMF, World Bank (WB) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) met on the lush resort island of Bali, Indonesia, they warned the world of dire consequences in terms of reduced international investments and decline of economic growth as a result of the ever-widening trade wars initiated and instigated by the Trump Administration. They criticized protectionism that might draw countries into decline of prosperity. The IMF cuts its global economic growth forecast for the current year and for 2019.
