Greece

It’s easy to be frightened by these proposals. But if governments think they can force us to accept negative interest rates on our savings by abolishing cash, they need to think again. It’s preposterous to assume that savers will passively accept outright confiscation of their assets via negative interest rates or a ban on cash. Instead, people will simply revert to other stores of value.

"The days of uncontrolled immigration and illegal entry can't continue just like that. Paris changes everything."

"I really hope I am wrong about everything I wrote. I hope those advocating for positive statements and solidarity will win the day. I hope EU politicians change course before it’s too late. I hope all of those things, but hope is not going to save Europe... Because if not, the backlash against Muslims generally, and refugees specifically, is likely to be sustained and unjustifiably harsh."

While the world was following the tragic events unfolding on Friday night in France where hundreds of innocent civilians were killed or injured, an important economic development took place at the IMF, whose staff and head Christine Lagarde, officially greenlighted the acceptance of China's currency - the Renminbi, or Yuan - into the IMF's foreign exchange basket, also known as the Special Drawing Rights. Here are the initial early responses by various Wall Street analysts.

The trifecta has emerged: just as expected, the link between Syrian refugees, ISIS, and Terrorism has now been set in stone.

Brutal news is pouring in from pretty much everywhere. The world, in short, is rolling over. Debt monetization on the scale so far attempted has failed to stop the implosion of tens of trillions of dollars of bad paper, growth has stalled and geopolitics has begun to turmoil. And none of this is a surprise. It’s just what you get when you put monetary printing presses in the hands of governments and/or big banks.

"They helped us understand what was going on beyond what you see on the screens."

In the next financial crisis, physical gold held outside the banking system in safe vaults in safe jurisdictions will prove to be a “financial cushion” to individuals, companies, pension funds, family offices,  and indeed nations.

Where did Europe's Q3 weakness come from? It was broad based and pronounced led by Germany, the currency area’s exporting powerhouse, while Italian economic growth also eased. There were fresh contractions in Greece, Finland and Estonia, while Portugal’s economy stagnated.

For once, the overnight session was not dominated by weak Chinese economic data (which probably explains why the Shanghai Composite dropped for the second day in a row, declining 1.4%, and ending an impressive run since the beginning of November) and instead Europe took the spotlight with its own poor data in the form of Q3 GDP which printed below expectations at 0.3% Q/Q, down also from the 0.4% increase in Q2, with several key economies rolling over including Germany, Italy, and Spain while Europe's poster child of "successful austerity" saw Q3 GDP stagnate, far worse than the 0.5% growth consensus expected.

Evidently, voters are in a very bad mood just about everywhere. Unfortunately, they are bereft of good choices in most places. Usually one essentially gets to exchange one bunch of psychopathic looters for another – so it is like jumping from the frying pan into the fire. Very often, things will simply go from bad to worse, as the underlying basic problems are usually misdiagnosed, resp. there is no-one willing to actually tackle them. Investors should pay very close attention to this trend...When the performance of financial markets diverges from underlying social mood trends, it is usually time to be very careful.

Good Thing Debt Doesn't Matter! </sarc>