Trump is nice to the stock market

A few less negative remarks from Donald Trump and the markets around the world breath a sigh of relief and start climbing. It's so volatile that the slightest change in mood from the president and the world takes note. Perhaps that's the way he likes it. This time he has stated that he has no intention of sacking Jerome Powell, the chairman of the US Federal Reserve, although Trump has been pretty rude about him in recent days. That statement boosted the stock market significantly. Then he said that the hugely high tariff rates on Chinese imports will come down. Up up up goes the stock market. Of course this is encouraging but the stock market really doesn't know where it is at the moment. It has been one of the most unpredictable periods since the financial crisis in 2008. What the market wants is a steady-as-you-go economy with signs of green shoots for a big boost to come. But there is no sign of that at the moment, so the market takes what it can get and if Trump is in a happy mood, then that's good for investors. It is certainly a Trump world we live in.

Perhaps the Pope's funeral will lead to some diplomatic breakthroughs

Historically, state funerals have been exploited to draw leaders of the world together to try and do some back stage deals. The Pope's funeral is attracting most of the leaders on this planet with obvoious exceptions, including Putin, Xi Zinping and Kim Jong Un. But both Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky will be there on Saturday and perhaps they could get together and sort something out about the war in Ukraine. Trump will want to get the rare earth minerals deal completed. All the European leaders will be present and they should get Trump to one side and tell him it's high time he demonstrated his devotion to the alliance. That would be a great achievement. Funerals have a way of forging relationships in a way which can't always be achieved in more formal conference rooms.So, watch out for little gatherings here and there. If peace were to emerge out of these chats whether it be to do with the wars in Ukraine and Gaza or the Trump trade war, then Pope Francis in his death will have added to his legacy as a peacemaker. It's a small hope but something positive could emerge from Saturday's funeral.

How much longer can the stock market slump?

Every day it seems to get worse. The stock market is dropping so fast it will go through the floorboards soon. But President Trump is sticking with his tariff war and is now focusing all his ire on the chairman of the US Federal Reserve, calling on him to cut interest rates. If the stock market continues to fall, Trump will blame Jerome Powell and then sack him. Something is going to have to give. The Dow Jones index fell by 1,000 points yesterday. That's staggering. The trouble is, Trump can't back down, not fully anyway, because he has set up his stall and has told everyone that it is the only way to make America great again. So far it has just been short-term suffering on a huge scale. Could it lead to long-term prosperity and jobs for everyone? This is what he is hoping but meanwhile the economic future looks grim for the average American household and for all of us. Trump's popularity is going to vanish and he could find himself under greater pressure than ever to switch tactics. Right now, he is holding firm. This gentleman is not for turning, to use the famous comment by Margaret Thatcher.

Fear and chaos at the Pentagon

Pentagon officials are living “in fear” of being forced to take polygraph tests to prove they are not leaking sensitive information to the media. An email warning of the potential use of lie-detector testing has created an atmosphere of intimidation, according to one US defence source. The source said the Pentagon was currently a “Pandora’s box” of uncertainty, following the sacking of three top officials and the departure of two more high-ranking civilians in the last week, leaving Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary, without key advisers. “The extraordinary thing is that lie detector tests are being threatened, not to uncover potential anti-President Trump civil servants but to catch political appointees suspected of leaking classified or sensitive information,” the source said. There are also concerns that the Pentagon will follow the example of the Department of Homeland Security where some officials have been ordered to hand over their phones to check on their political loyalty and their social media activity. “Pentagon officials are living each day in fear of being sacked. This is all causing a huge distraction and I would be shocked if Hegseth is still defence secretary for much longer,” the source said. Hegseth himself is still being investigated by the Pentagon’s inspector general for his involvement in the Signal group chat last month between top Trump national security officials about the upcoming air strikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen. One of those in the text-messaging group was Geoffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of the Atlantic magazine, who had been inadvertently invited to participate. Now he is facing further investigation after The New York Times revealed Hegseth had also discussed the airstrikes on the Houthis with a second Signal chat group which included his wife, Jennifer, a former Fox News producer, his brother Phil and Tim Parlatore, his personal lawyer, both of whom work in some capacity in the Pentagon. Sean Parnell, Pentagon spokesman, denied in a reply on social media that any classified information had been discussed in either of the Signal chats. Underlining the reported chaos at the Pentagon, one of the officials ousted last week has spoken out in public about the damage being created by the recent sackings. John Ullyot, appointed top spokesman by Hegseth, was asked to resign following an outcry over the removal from the Pentagon’s website of the military service record for Jackie Robinson, a black baseball legend and civil rights hero. It was removed as part of the Trump administration’s order to stop promoting diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). The website entry on Jackie Robinson was restored. Following Ullyot’s ousting, three top Hegseth officials were accused of leaking classified information to the media and were summarily sacked: Dan Caldwell, a senior adviser to the defence secretary, Darin Selnick, deputy chief of staff, and Colin Carroll, chief of staff to Stephen Feinberg, the deputy defence secretary. Then Joe Kasper, Hegseth’s chief of staff, was also removed, creating five vacancies in “front office” roles in just a week. “The [Pentagon] building is in disarray under Hegseth’s leadership,” Ullyot wrote in an opinion piece in the Politico magazine. “The dysfunction is now a major distraction for the president, who deserves better from his senior leadership,” he wrote. Ullyot wrote that the Pentagon was in “total chaos” and he also doubted whether Hegseth would survive as defence secretary. He accused Hegseth’s office of “falsehoods” about the three officials who were sacked for leaking information including the decision to send a second aircraft carrier to the Middle East. On Saturday the three sacked officials penned a post on X (formerly Twitter) in which they claimed they had been slandered. “Hegseth is now presiding over a strange and baffling purge,” Ullyot wrote. “More firings may be coming, according to rumours in the building.” Ullyot was in charge of communications at the National Security Council during Trump’s first term as president.

Will Trump's nuke deal with Iran look like Obama's?

Donald Trump was scathing about Barack Obama's nuke deal with Iran signed in 2015. He said it was weak and failed to include any limitations on Tehran's sponsorship of terrorism in the Middle East. When he became president in 2017 he axed the deal, or at least he opted the US out of the deal which had also been signed by the other four permanent members of the UN Security Council - UK, France,China and Russia - plus Germany. But without the US on board, the deal fell apart. Now Trump is desperate to negotiate a new deal with Iran to avoid having to resort to military action to try and destroy the clandestine nuclear weapons programme facilities. But are the new talks also addressing Iran's state-sponsorship of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, or are they sticking exclusively to the nuke issue? If it's the latter, it's ironic that the Trump administration is trying to emulate the Obama deal which Trump hated. One of the great drawbacks of the Obama deal was that it only covered a limited period which meant Iran only had to bide its time before renewing its efforts to build a bomb, and in the meantime the sanctions on Iran would have been lifted immediately, effectively pouring billions of dollars into Tehran's coffers to continue nuclear research and support its proxy terrorist forces in the Middle East. If the Trump deal is going to be more effective. Ever, not just delayed for ten years.

Easter ceasefire in Ukraine announced by Putin

It was only last month that Vladimir Putin announced that he had instructed his military commanders to stop targeting Ukraine's energy installations as part of an agreement for a 30-day ceasefire. Neither the ceasefire itself nor the end to bombing power plants actually materialised. No ceasefire and the bombs and missiles kept on hitting these infrastructure sites. So what was the purpose behind Putin's promise? Now we have an Easter ceasefire announced by Putin, to last 30 hours. One can only look at this latest gesture with a degree of cynicism. Even if it worked and there was no shooting or bombing for 30 hours, it would presumably start all over again as soon as the 30 hours are up. But in reality the Easter ceasefire will probably not work out because no one in Ukraine trusts Putin to keep his word. In fact Zelensky claimed there were Iran-supplied Shahed armed drones even at that moment in the sky over Ukraine to hit targets. So what sort of ceasefire exactly is being offered? It's a clever move by Putin who claimed it was a humanitarian gesture. But humanitarian gestures are pretty meaningless in a war which has lasted more than three years and shows no sign of ending.

Now Trump could walk away from a Ukraine deal

You never know quite where you are with the Trump administration. Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, came out of a meeting with Europeans on Ukraine and said unless there was a sign in the next few days that a deal to end the war was genuinely on the cards, the US could walk away fromn Ukraine. In other words, the US would stop supporting Ukraine and leave it to the Europeans and that would be it. It's probably just a negotiating tactic but it shows that there is not a lot of patience around in the White House. Trump wants to get shot of Ukraine but preferably by brokering a deal to stop the death and destruction. A good objective, except there is one person who is not interested in making any deal except on his terms. That's Vladimir Putin. So with the US threatening to walk away that just hands Putin what he wants. He is not going to make any deal with the Europeans, so the war will go on and on and on. Europe will get increasingly immersed in the war and it will bankrupt us all. This is a disastrous moment.