Mays Lonely Path against the Economic Forecasts. Trump, GM and Cohen

What a surprise earlier this week when the Government issued its forecasts for the economy, assuming either that the withdrawal agreement is approved or that we actually go to the backstop. the best case scenario is that the economy in 15 years will be 3.9% worse off than if it stayed in the EU. The worst case - the reduction will be 9.3%. Yes our economy will still grow but definitely not as well as if we stay in the EU.

The Prime Minister of course uses this as the dire warning that parliament should vote for her withdrawal agreement to have the lesser of the two evils. Naturally, some of think that perhaps this is a strong hint that we should stay. Came across an interesting chart on the impact on other EU countries - see http://ukandeu.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/The-economic-consequences-of-Brexit.pdf. Ireland is most impacted, affected almost as much as the UKin both instances. The Netherlands and Belgium are the next two most affected countries, but the effect is less than a quarter that experienced by the UK. But countries like Germany feel an impact that is a tenth of what we will experience.

Remarkably, with currently most of Parliament is against the Withdrawal Bill, whether Remainers or Brexiteers. The critical day will be 11th December when Parliament votes on the current agreement. But comeback May obviously hopes to turn Parliament around by then.

President Trump is also having a more challenging time too at the moment. General Motors is laying off 14,000 workers as they restructure as part of their long term planning for an electric and self driving future. His first response was to threaten to cut GM's subsidies, and then followed with the prospect of increasing tariffs on car imports.

And then President Trumps former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen admits in court that he had been lying out of misplaced  loyalty. Rather than ceasing to represent Trump in Russia in property negotiations to build a skyscraper there in January 2016, negotiations continued to June 2016, well into the Presidential campaign.

Trump remains bullish about not having done anything wrong - and currently there is no evidence of collusion with Russia to influence the Presidential elections.