Written by Gary
The biggest cryptocurrencies resumed their decline yesterday (Sunday), failing to reverse a selloff that began when bitcoin’s unprecedented rally fell short of breaking above $20,000. Happy Holidays from Econintersect.
Here is the current market situation from CNN Money | |
North and South American markets are mixed. The Bovespa is higher by 0.07%, while the IPC is leading the S&P 500 lower. They are down 0.24% and 0.05% respectively. |
What Is Moving the Markets
Here are the headlines moving the markets. | |
This year’s lumps of coal could be 2018’s diamondsSAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Investors saddled in 2017 with the market’s worst performers, including Under Armour and General Electric, may do well to remember as December draws to an end that lumps of coal sometimes turn into diamonds. | |
Exclusive: ArcelorMittal tells Ilva it wants to change buying contractROME (Reuters) – Steelmaker ArcelorMittal has told commissioners running Italy’s Ilva plant that it wants changes made to the contract in which it agreed to buy the company in order to protect it from legal challenges in Italy. | |
Israel regulator seeks to ban bitcoin firms from stock exchangeJERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel’s markets regulator will propose regulation to ban companies based on bitcoin and other digital currencies from trading on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, he said on Monday. | |
Russia’s standards agency says Nissan to recall 127,738 carsMOSCOW (Reuters) – Japanese automaker Nissan Motor Co Ltd will recall 127,738 Nissan cars in Russia, Russia’s technical safety watchdog Rosstandart said on Monday. | |
Amgen estimates its U.S. tax bill at over $6 billion as it repatriates cashNEW YORK (Reuters) – Amgen Inc said it expects to incur tax expenses of $6 billion to $6.5 billion over time as it repatriates cash it has accumulated around the world because of the new U.S. tax law signed by President Donald Trump on Friday. | |
Russia’s FinMin: crypto FX should only be traded by professionalsMOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said on Monday that cryptocurrencies should be traded only by professional investors, not in the mainstream. | |
VW may post excellent 2017 results, CEO tells Welt am SonntagBERLIN (Reuters) – Volkswagen will report excellent group results this year, its chief executive said, helped by expected record vehicle sales and by spending cuts. | |
Kremlin hopes Rosneft/Sistema settlement to be smoothly implementedMOSCOW (Reuters) – The Kremlin said on Monday it hoped an out-of-court settlement reached between Russia’s largest oil producer Rosneft and the Sistema conglomerate would be implemented smoothly. | |
An investor’s best friend: China’s booming pet market sparks dealsPINGYANG, China/SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Li Mingjie is a pet industry investor’s dream. The 23-year-old e-commerce worker spares little expense to make his pooch happy. | |
#BitcoinBreakdown: Five Easy PiecesFirst Appearing on HedgeAccordingly Fourth Part of a series. | |
As Good As It Gets?Authored by Sven Henrich via NorthmanTrader.com, So they got their tax cut done. In the middle of the night again no less, despite the vast majority of the American people not wanting it. The reason may simply be that the American public is not believing the false narratives that are being sold to them. And who can blame them? It starts at the top after all. When Donald Trump claims the tax plan would personally hurt him everyone knows that’s simply not true. And still his agents insists on defending the lie by lying some more. So I had to ask, does truth still matter:
The answer may not reveal itself for months to come. US cooperations will see benefits to GAAP earnings and they will increase dividends and buybacks. All true. But they will not hire more or pay more. We already know this:
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New Erdogan Decree Grants Immunity For “Suppressing Terror”, Paves Way For Militia ViolencePresident Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s latest batch of presidential decrees has transformed Turkey into a nation of government-endorsed militias and “anti-terror vigilantes.” According to Ahval, Erdogan published Turkey’s latest state of emergency government decree – the country has been under a perpetual state of emergency since the summer of 2016 failed coup – in the Official Gazette on Sunday. And not only does it condone the purging of thousands of civil servants from their jobs, but, in an unprecedented escalation, grants immunity to “those who took to the streets during the coup attempt” or “assisted with suppressing terror.” Furthermore: ”Notwithstanding whether individuals hold a formal title or whether they have fulfilled a formal duty, those who have acted in the scope of suppressing the coup attempt and acts of terror on July 15, 2016, and actions that were extensions of these events” will be exempt from being put on trial for their actions.” Of course, anyone who has been following the situation in Turkey over the past year-and-a-half (and certainly longer) knows that “suppressing terror” is Erdogan’s popular euphemism for punishing or imprisoning suspected Gulenist sympathizers, and also anyone who dares to bring attention to Erdogan’s brazen corruption. As a result, the Turkish president has been busy lately, signing a flurry of decrees that have further consolidated political power in the office of the president – a stunning reversal from the early days of Erdogan’s political career, when he was a well-regarded moderate advocating much needed government reforms. | |
Charles Hugh Smith Explains “Why I’m Hopeful”Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog, A more human world lies just beyond the edge of the Status Quo. Readers often ask me to post something hopeful, and I understand why: doom-and-gloom gets tiresome. Human beings need hope just as they need oxygen, and the destruction of the Status Quo via over-reach and internal contradictions doesn’t leave much to be happy about. The most hopeful thing in my mind is that the Status Quo is devolving from its internal contradictions and excesses. It is a perverse, intensely destructive system with horrific incentives for predation, exploitation, fraud and complicity and few disincentives. A more human world lies just beyond the edge of the Status Quo. I know many smart, well-informed people expect the worst once the Status Quo (the Savior State and its corporatocracy partners) devolves, and there is abundant evidence of the ugliness of human nature under duress. But we should temper this Id ugliness with the stronger impulses of community and compassion. If greed and rapaciousness were the dominant forces within human nature, then the species would have either died out at its own hand or been limited to small savage populations kept in check by the predation of neighboring groups, none of which could expand much because inner conflict would limit their ability to grow. The remarkable success of humanity as a species is not simply the result of a big brain, opposable thumbs, year-round sex, innovation or even language; it is also the result of social and cultural associations that act as a “network” for storing knowledge and good will–what we call technical and social capital. I have devoted significant portions of my books– | |
Chip Makers Aren’t Stacking Bets on CryptocurrenciesCryptocurrencies have been a winning bet this year, but the chip makers who play a key role in the market are still playing their hands very cautiously. | |
Games Companies Play, Tax-Cut EditionBy timing expenditures, companies can boost the advantage of the sudden change in corporate taxes, but they will wreak havoc on economic and profit statistics. | |
Apple Changes Business of Selling Your Browsing DataOnline advertising is under siege by privacy campaigns run separately by Apple and European regulators. The long-term solution may be for sites to be more explicit about how they make money from customer data. | |
NewsWatch: Will a ‘Santa rally’ give a robust stock market an added lift?Expecting a Santa Claus rally in a year which gave us a 20% return feels just a little greedy. Yet, that’s still the most likely outcome, according to analysts | |
Capitol Report: The Trump tax calculator — will you pay more or less?It’s finally here — on Friday, President Donald Trump signed a $1.5 trillion tax cut into law. Polling shows that most Americans don’t expect the Republicans’ overhaul to benefit them. With this calculator, find out if that’s the case. | |
NewsWatch: What the insane circumstances under which Dickens wrote ‘A Christmas Carol’ reveal about money, debt, and successThe most famous book about money written by someone strapped for cash wasn’t “Das Kapital” or “The Communist Manifesto.” It was “A Christmas Carol.” |
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