Overnight

It might come as a surprise to many but as the Wall Street Journal is reporting:

One of central banking’s most aggressive easers—the Bank of Japan—may soon have to think about tightening for the first time since 2007.

The latest buzz in Japanese monetary-policy circles is that the BOJ may have to lift the 10-year government-bond target from the latest cut to zero.

It wouldn’t be the first to blink. On Thursday the European Central Bank, which like the BOJ has driven interest rates down and pumped cash into the economy with vast bond buying, announced that its continued easing would be combined with some tightening.
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The dollar gained on Monday as a near-certain interest-rate increase by the Federal Reserve was set for later this week when the Federal Open Market Committee meets. The Nikkei 225 was up for the fifth day overnight partly owing to the weak yen and the expected rise in interest rates later this week by the Fed. The index edges 0.8% higher to 19,155.03, it's highest closing sine December last year The broader Topix added 0.4 percent to 1,531.43 and the JPX-Nikkei Index 400 advanced 0.4 percent to 13,712.76. The Hang Send was up 1.44%; the ASX was higher 0.04%; the Kospi up 0.13%

China has it's own problems as investors shun markets there government crack down on insurance companies buying stocks and some comments out Sunday by Trump. The Shanghai Composite Index ended down 2.5%, the biggest one-day drop in percentage terms since June 13, with nearly 1,000 stocks in the red. The Shenzhen Composite Index ended 4.9% lower, the biggest daily drop since Feb. 29. Oil prices jumped in early Asian trade, as investors react to the weekend's news of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and non-OPEC countries led by Russia arriving at their decision to cut in Vienna, a first since 2001. The deal will help to ease a global supply glut after more than two years of low prices. U.S. crude rose 4.76% at $53.95 a barrel while Brent crude leaped 4.2% to $56.61.

Gold was off 0.58%,trading at 1152.90, -6.80.

Another MSM Confidence Builder

They missed it. Badly. It was obvious. But in the land of of the blind, one eye is better than MSM and their controllers.

What do you do when you miss the obvious? Well, if you are the elites and MSM you get vindictive as hell, lash out at false bogeymen and create more fake news.
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Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo slammed the establishment and members of the media Sunday, saying they failed to see the economic issues that mattered to Americans during the presidential campaign.
“Obviously the elites, the establishment, the media, they had no idea what the people wanted and had no idea where the people were in terms of economic issues, in particular jobs,” Bartiromo said on the "Cats Roundtable" on 970 AM in New York. The "Mornings with Maria" host emphasized that the 2016 election was about "the working man and woman."

“I think it was very much about the working man and woman. And I think there’s a big portion of the population out there who was saying, 'You know that, I’m the forgotten man and woman. I’m the one who has not seen their wages move in 20 years,’” she told host John Catsimatidis.
The Fox Business host noted that investors are seeing that “the Trump plan is a growth plan,” and the incoming administration’s changes will pass through because of the “Republican sweep.”

“Businesses are sitting on cash because, before the election, they didn’t know what was around the corner. They were getting just strangled by regulations,” she said.

thehill.com/homenews/campaign/309831-bartiromo-media-had-no-idea-what-economic-issues-mattered-to-americans

Hack Some More

This from today's Wall Street Journal. It should inspire some real confidence in you about the accuracy and credibility of the Central Intelligence Agency.

They now give the American public two actual reliable news sources, MSM and the CIA.
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If the CIA really does have “high confidence” about Mr. Putin’s motives, this would also be the first time in recent history. These are the same seers who missed the Russian invasion of Crimea, missed the incursion into southern Ukraine, and missed Mr. Putin’s foray into Syria. The intelligence community also claimed “high confidence” in 2008 for its judgment that Iran had suspended its nuclear-weapons program. That judgment conveniently shut down any further Bush Administration action against Iran. But a year later, in the Obama Administration, our highly confident spooks disclosed Iran’s secret Fordo underground facility.

wsj.com/articles/russian-hackers-and-american-hacks-1481499091?mod=trending_now_

Hack This

If you really want to know about how phony the MSM uproar about Russian hackers causing the surprising recent election results is, here's an example. There was no hacking. But there were leaks. Most likely tied to some who possibly paid for them with their lives.

Logic would tell anyone with even a modicum of sense those higher ups in the DNC, including their psychopathic leader, are not going to come out and admit they just screwed up. Scapegoats come in handy. Especially foreign ones like those evil Russians the neocons so desperately want to start a war with.

Authored by Craig Murray, a former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, and was the Rector of the University of Dundee

I have watched incredulous as the CIA’s blatant lie has grown and grown as a media story – blatant because the CIA has made no attempt whatsoever to substantiate it. There is no Russian involvement in the leaks of emails showing Clinton’s corruption. Yes this rubbish has been the lead today in the Washington Post in the US and the Guardian here, and was the lead item on the BBC main news. I suspect it is leading the American broadcasts also.

A little simple logic demolishes the CIA’s claims. The CIA claim they “know the individuals” involved. Yet under Obama the USA has been absolutely ruthless in its persecution of whistleblowers, and its pursuit of foreign hackers through extradition. We are supposed to believe that in the most vital instance imaginable, an attempt by a foreign power to destabilise a US election, even though the CIA knows who the individuals are, nobody is going to be arrested or extradited, or (if in Russia) made subject to yet more banking and other restrictions against Russian individuals? Plainly it stinks. The anonymous source claims of “We know who it was, it was the Russians” are beneath contempt.

As Julian Assange has made crystal clear, the leaks did not come from the Russians. As I have explained countless times, they are not hacks, they are insider leaks – there is a major difference between the two. And it should be said again and again, that if Hillary Clinton had not connived with the DNC to fix the primary schedule to disadvantage Bernie, if she had not received advance notice of live debate questions to use against Bernie, if she had not accepted massive donations to the Clinton foundation and family members in return for foreign policy influence, if she had not failed to distance herself from some very weird and troubling people, then none of this would have happened.

The continued ability of the mainstream media to claim the leaks lost Clinton the election because of “Russia”, while still never acknowledging the truths the leaks reveal, is Kafkaesque.

I had a call from a Guardian journalist this afternoon. The astonishing result was that for three hours, an article was accessible through the Guardian front page which actually included the truth among the CIA hype:

The Kremlin has rejected the hacking accusations, while the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has previously said the DNC leaks were not linked to Russia. A second senior official cited by the Washington Post conceded that intelligence agencies did not have specific proof that the Kremlin was “directing” the hackers, who were said to be one step removed from the Russian government.

Craig Murray, the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, who is a close associate of Assange, called the CIA claims “bullshit”, adding: “They are absolutely making it up.”

“I know who leaked them,” Murray said. “I’ve met the person who leaked them, and they are certainly not Russian and it’s an insider. It’s a leak, not a hack; the two are different things.

“If what the CIA are saying is true, and the CIA’s statement refers to people who are known to be linked to the Russian state, they would have arrested someone if it was someone inside the United States.

“America has not been shy about arresting whistleblowers and it’s not been shy about extraditing hackers. They plainly have no knowledge whatsoever.”

But only three hours. While the article was not taken down, the home page links to it vanished and it was replaced by a ludicrous one repeating the mad CIA allegations against Russia and now claiming – incredibly – that the CIA believe the FBI is deliberately blocking the information on Russian collusion. Presumably this totally nutty theory, that Putin is somehow now controlling the FBI, is meant to answer my obvious objection that, if the CIA know who it is, why haven’t they arrested somebody. That bit of course would be the job of the FBI, who those desperate to annul the election now wish us to believe are the KGB.

zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-11/former-uk-ambassador-blasts-cias-blatant-lies-shows-little-simple-logic-destroys-the

Capital Control

If you want to get an inkling of what a cashless society will feel like, look no further that Macau, the Chinese city noted for its casinos.

The Chinese government in general as do most governments worry about capital flight. When the masses get concerned about stability or the lack of opportunity, they often try to move their money off shore. Reasonable enough unless you're a government that loves to screw things up and live to discourage or prevent anyone from talking about it.

The Chinese have been flooding the U.S. and other so-called Western democracy with money for some time. Talk to your local realtor, especially if you live near the coasts. All cash deals from Chinese buyer are so common one might suggest they've propping up the real estate market and driving prices higher.

According to one story, the South China Morning Post recently noted that the daily restriction limit on withdrawals at local ATM's for one bank there was cut 50 percent. In short, they just limited how much a customer can withdraw from his or her account in any 24 hour period. Recall ATM daily withdrawal rates are already limited.

It should strike you that these banks don't impose in the main limits on how much you can deposit each day. This is about using your money and control. Capital flight can happen in more than one place. Just don't mention it in earshot of your local banker or those elected officials the bankers have bought off.

So it's not just an American thing. It's an endemic human thing. People want to control their own money, not some committee of government bureaucrats hundreds or thousands of miles removed. Snoozing creates its opposite, losing.

Known Liar

It never ceases to amaze. This guy ought to be ashamed of showing his face in public. He's been discredited and self-confessed and known liar about his famous escapades in the media.

We are repeating this--known liar. Mr.Williams, here's to your face. You are a known, disgraced liar.
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Now this is rich.  Brian Williams, the disgraced ex-NBC journalist who was literally fired for falsely reporting that he was in a helicopter during the Iraq war that took on combatant fire, is now going on a crusade against "fake news."  On his MSNBC show last night, Williams decided to attack retired General Flynn and Donald Trump for spreading "fake news" via their twitter accounts.

"The retired Army 3-star general has passed on some gems himself.  Here are a few...Flynn retweeted accusations that Clinton is involved with child sex trafficking and has "secretly waged war" on the Catholic Church, as well as charges that Obama is a "jihadi" who "laundered" money for Muslim terrorists.

As we talked about here last night, fake news played a role in this election and continues to find a wide audience.  A BuzzFeed news study of Donald Trump's own tweets where they followed back news stories to their root source found more of them came from Breitbart originally than any other single source."

You want to read some real fake news. Here's some Mr.Williams concocted himself over the years.

zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-09/nbcs-fake-news-king-brian-williams-launches-crusade-against-fake-news

The Big Ball

The globalization freaks will never it seems give up their freaking.

In house globalization freaks reside aplenty in MSM, especially places like the Washington Post, the  LA and NY Times and the bloated, rather gassy, if we don't say, Financial Times, not to mention many fake news websites.

Since the golden goose turned wan and pale and more than a bit sickly they continue to come up with excuses like ice cream in an old-time sundae topped with reasons why just a few minor adjustments will get Cinderella back to the Big Ball.

It ain't going to happen. And it shouldn't unless you want to continue the present and continue to be sidestepped and left out.These are chosen clueless zealots. Make no mistake. Look soon for anyone  who questions their religion, much like climate change, to be labeled a fake news member. Their religion--a it's a longstanding common one-- is lining their pockets not yours with money.

The world is facing the “first lost decade since the 1860s”, said Bank of England governor Mark Carney this week. Arguably good for soundbite of the day, but the buck stops there. The only way that buck could have kept rolling would have been for Carney to take a critical look at himself and his employer(s), but there was none of that.

The Canadian import governor has no doubts about anything he’s done, or if he does he shows none. Instead he puts the blame for all that’s gone awry, on some -minor- elements of what he think globalization means, not with the phenomenon itself, or his enduring support for, and belief in, it. The problem with that is it’s indeed belief only; he can’t prove an inch of what he says.

Globalization is an act of faith inside a politico-economic belief system, and all it needs according to Carney and many others in his ‘church’ is a little tweaking. That globalization itself could be the driving force behind Brexit, Trump and the defeat of Italian PM Renzi does not enter into the faith’s ‘thought’ system.

Neither does the possibility that globalization is what it is, in and of itself, a process that in the end cannot be tweaked. That globalization is simply yet another form of centralization that follows the same rules and laws all other forms do, where power and wealth always, of necessity, wind up in the hands of a few, through pretty basic centrifugal forces.

People like Carney will insist that globalization spurs growth, right up to the moment where they’re either voted out or fired. And they’ll probably keep on insisting until their dying days. But why are we in that “first lost decade since the 1860s” then? Is that really only because ‘we’ failed to “redistribute some of the benefits of trade”, something that can allegedly be easily rectified by enabling workers to ‘acquire new skills’?

Where is the proof for that? And why have economies stagnated in the middle of the entire process of globalization? Is that solely because ‘some of’ the benefits were not distributed well enough? If that is so, and wealth distribution is the only problem with globalization, at what point do we redistribute ourselves into the realm of communism? Where’s the dividing line? It all feels mighty vague and unsatisfactory, and not a little goal-seeked.

Like a large part of the Brexit voters in Britain, millions of Italians have been on the losing side of globalism’s ‘benefits distribution’. And this weekend they found an outlet for their frustration about it. Like Brexiteers voted against Cameron and Osborne much more than they voted for anything in specific, and Trump won because Americans are fed up with the Obama/Clinton/GOP model, Italians voted against PM Renzi and his idea to take power away from parliament and give it to him.

Judging from poll numbers, they also seem to have gained confidence in Beppe Grillo’s, and the Five Star Movement’s, ability to do something real in politics. It has taken a while, and that makes sense because the movement doesn’t fit the model of politics as they’ve known it all their lives.

theautomaticearth.com/2016/12/more-talk-about-more-growth-and-more-globalization

The Draghi Affair

Mario The Magic Man Draghi, leader of the European Central Bank, has spoken.

The Wall Street Journal today reported, as many expected, the ECB will continue its handouts of money via its bond purchasing program though the amount purcashed each month will be less. So there are no real surprises here, including Draghi's comment obviously designed to sooth some nerves about the bank's presence in markets will be around for a while.

FRANKFURT—The European Central Bank decided Thursday to extend its asset-purchase program to the end of 2017, but will buy bonds at a reduced monthly rate.

It will maintain its monthly purchase volume at €80 billion ($86.2 billion) until March 2017 as planned, but will reduce it to €60 billion as of April. It kept all its interest rates unchanged.

Speaking in a news conference, ECB President Mario Draghi said the decision didn’t constitute a move to “taper,” or gradually phase out the bond-buying program.

“Tapering has not been discussed today,” he said. “The presence of the ECB on the markets will be there for a long time.”

Mr. Draghi said the governing council had also considered a six-month extension to the bond-buying program at the current monthly rate, but that there was a “very, very broad consensus” in favor of the alternative.

When it launched the program in March 2015, the ECB bought €60 billion a month, but that was increased in March 2016.

“We basically judged that the outlook of a sustained return to the inflation objective is not very different from the beginning of the program,” Mr. Draghi said. “More specifically, the risk of deflation has largely disappeared.”

wsj.com/articles/ecb-to-extends-stimulus-program-by-nine-months-at-reduced-rate