L. Todd Wood's Blog

Originally posted at Newsmax.com

America’s lake and the Pacific Rim are becoming a very dangerous place due to abdication of American leadership in the region. After decades of maintaining a vast security structure to maintain hard fought gains in democracy for her allies and her own national security, pax Americana is a disappearing concept and America’s adversaries are noticing. This makes the possibility of war all the more likely.

After a press trip and briefing at the DMZ recently, I was...

Originally Posted at AgilityForex.com

Everyone knows that long USD is a crowded trade. The question is, when will the music stop? I for one have been advocating selling dollars here in favor of cheaper, beaten-down currencies. However, I’m not sure the Euro is the one to bottom-fish with.

It’s not hard to lay out the issues facing the Eurozone at the moment.

At the top of the list is Greece and the $340 billion it owes the Troika, the European Commission, the IMF, and the ECB. That’s a lot of...

Previously Posted at Newsmax

Recently me fifteen-year-old son came home one afternoon from his blue-state high school and told me about what he is learning in social studies. Apparently the domino theory of the spread of communism was all made up in America’s mind. Didn’t really happen. That was news to me and we can talk about my reaction another time but suffice to say I replied, “Tell that to the North Koreans.”

Playing the long game was a favorite past time of totalitarian governments bent...

Originally Posted at Newsmax Insiders

There has been obvious schadenfreude in the Western press as reports of Russia’s economic demise flood the newspapers and airwaves. Bank runs, inflation, recession, currency collapse, even economic collapse have been the normal fare. As Einstein said, It’s all relative. Yes, these things have happened or are going to happen to some degree, just not to the extent the West hopes. The news of Russia’s death has been greatly exaggerated.

First let’s start with...

Originally Posted at The Moscow Times

Both Russians andforeigners living inRussia have been hurt recently bythe severe devaluation ofthe ruble as theRussian currency has lost 50 percent ofits value over thelast few years. Thelast few days have been especially brutal as ruble fell past 58 tothe dollar onFriday. Thefree fall ofthe price ofcrude oil globally has pressured theRussian economy andis directly related tothe ruble’s fall.

Many Russians are worried that theruble could hit 100 or ev...

Originally posted at AgilityForex.com

Is the U.S. treasury market reading the tea leaves correctly? Today, the short end of the U.S. yield curve moved higher, signaling a rise in rates faster than most analysts are forecasting after the Fed released the FOMC minutes yesterday. Janet Yellen also jumped into the fray, saying that the Fed and the futures market were not that far off as far as the timing for a shorter term rate rise. The USD spiked higher in response to the Fed’s comments, also si...

Originially posted at Agilityforex.com

After a brutal sell-off in February of this year, the Chinese Yuan has slowly gained back about half of the ground it lost in the People’s Bank of China engineered bloodbath, where the currency had its largest short-term decline in years. The free-fall came in conjunction with the Chinese government widening the trading band by two percent as they follow the path to making the Yuan a free floating reserve currency. At the time, markets were worried that t...

Originally posted in The Moscow Times

Despite winning closer relations with theEU, many Ukrainians are losing faith inthe Maidan revolution as war rages ineastern Ukraine. Their future is dependent onthe duration andoutcome ofa civil war, that, no matter its conclusion, has already significantly damaged thecountry’s economy.

Ukraine already had serious economic problems even without having todeal with separatists inits east. This year economic growth inUkraine is estimated toshrink bymore...

Originally posted at Fox Business

It is not hard to underestimate the animosity felt towards the international trade payment system that is based on the historical role in recent history of the United States dollar as the global reserve currency. Adversaries of the United States have a love-hate relationship with the USD. During the recent Ukrainian crisis and the short-lived sell-off of the RUB against world currencies, Russians flocked to the USD as a haven, even demanding to settle real est...

Originally Posted At Fox Business

There has been much written and discussed about the current situation in Ukraine and how the ensuing sanctions could affect the Russian, Ukrainian, and European economies. A European study was leaked to the press recently that showed almost 1% of GDP could be shaved from Germany if Europe restricts Russian gas imports and levies level three sanctions, which could also include restrictions on other sectors.

Yes, sanctions will hurt all involved; however, the rea...