Free Republic

President Donald Trump’s trade war may soon escalate if the U.S. slaps more tariffs on import goods from China. Mohamed El-Erian, chief economic adviser at the Allianz Group and former CEO of PIMCO, assuaged U.S. investors by noting that the chance of the U.S. getting a better deal from the trade war is 3-in-4. “I think it’s really important to make a distinction between the journey and the destination,” El-Erian said on Yahoo Finance’s The Final Round on Tuesday. “The journey will involve lots of noise, lots of rhetoric about trade wars, and the technically vulnerable asset classes, such as...

World financial markets should be somewhat relieved that Greece and its creditors reached a reforms-for-bailout deal, closing-followed market watcher Mohamed El-Erian said Monday. But the chief economic adviser at German financial giant Allianz warned that investors should be prepared for a difficult and messy implementation of the terms of the agreement. Euro zone leaders in Brussels agreed Monday on a third rescue for Greece. The deal includes a stipulation that a $55 billion fund be set up using Greek government assets for privatization. The two sides came together for "two negative reasons," because the alternative was worse and nobody wanted...

Here is what you need to know now as Greece enters a pivotal week in its testy relationship with the Eurozone: 1. Greece’s most immediate – as in first thing Monday morning – source of danger is its banking system. To compensate for accelerated deposit flight, the European Central Bank injected additional emergency funding on Friday to allow the banks to open on Monday. With a lot more needed, the ECB will grow more hesitant to pump in new money unless the Greek government secures an agreement with its European partners and the institutions through which they operate (the European...