Reuters

The IMF’s Executive Board decision today means that the yuan will be included in the SDR basket from Oct. 1, 2016, effectively anointing the yuan as a major reserve currency and represents recognition that the yuan’s status is rising along with China’s place in global finance. The weight in the basket will be 10.92%, larger than JPY and GBP. However, as politically-motivated as this decision may have been, now comes the hard part for China.

While gold prices continue to languish in the doldrums and are on course for their worst month since 2013, global demand and especially Chinese retail, investor and official demand continues to remain very robust. Indeed, China looks likely to see a new record demand for gold annually again in 2015.

This is not the end of the war on cash. Ultimately it will culminate in efforts to impose a carry tax on physical cash if not ban cash outright.

• Dollar rises versus euro, oil drops before ECB, OPEC meetings (Reuters)
• Smog chokes Chinese, Indian capitals as climate talks begin (Reuters)
• Obama: COP21 Paris Climate Talks Could Be ‘Turning Point’ For Planet (BBG)
• China plans to launch carbon-tracking satellites into space (Reuters)
• Scientists Dispute 2-Degree Model Guiding Climate Talks (WSJ)
• At NATO, Turkey defiant over downing of Russian jet (Reuters)
• ECB Left With No Choice But Action After Draghi's Priming (BBG)

Financial crises can happen quickly, like the bursting of the tech stock bubble in early 2000, or slowly, like the late-1980s junk bond bust. The shape of the crash depends mostly on the asset in question: Equities can plunge literally overnight, while bonds and bank loans can take a while to reach critical mass. China’s bursting bubble is of the second type. "If, as seems likely, the government has succeeded in getting funding to higher risk sectors by relaxing bond approvals," wrote Christopher Wood of brokerage CLSA in a recent note, "it is all rather scary, given the regulatory failures exposed by the A share boom-bust cycle."

“If the ECB merely does on 3 December what is effectively priced by the market, we could collectively wake up on 4 December feeling a bit deflated, like a child discovering on Christmas day that his parents ‘only’ gave him what he/she had asked for, without the ‘little extra’ that would have kept him/her smiling all day long."

French police fired teargas Sunday to disperse climate change activists in Paris who threw objects at them during a demonstration ahead of key UN talks. Riot police took action after a small group of masked protesters in the Place de la Republique square began chanting "State of emergency, police state", after 24 climate activists were arrested under France's new "state of emergency" laws.

In the aftermath of last week's dramatic events in Turkey, one would expect that the "democratic, humanistic" western countries would at least issue a harsh condemnation of Erdogan's behavior. That won't happen: instead, the European Union will pay Turkey $3.2 billion to help it stop the flow of refugees to Europe from the conflict in Syria, 2.2 million of whom are currently in Turkey and to prevent Europe's worst refugee crisis from getting even worse.

A day after Turkey arrested two journalists for their report exposing Erdogan's weapon deliveries to extremist groups in Syria, confirming that no dissent to the president's foreign policy would be allowed, today a new riot has erupted in Istanbul following the dramatic murder in broad daylight of Tahir Elci, the president of the Turkish bar association in southeastern Diyarbakir province, who was shot dead by unidentified gunmen while giving a public speech.

Another 'mass' shooting, and another outraged statement from President Obama proclaiming "enough is enough." With 9 injured, and 2 police officers and 1 civilian dead after the dreadful standoff at a Planned Parenthood office in Colorado Springs, the President took the opportunity to explain "we have to do something about the easy accessibility of weapons of war on our streets to people who have no business wielding them. Period." Of course, any discussion of the shooter's mental health, the violent polarization towards and politicization of abortion among an increasingly micro-aggressive America were conveniently ignored.

Within the last week China appears to have hit the panic button with regards the seemingly unstoppable collapse of commodity prices. First, desperate Chinese producers began to demand a QE-for-commodities bailout; then, following the well-trodden (and failing) path of China's equity market maipulation, authorities began to crackdown on "malicious" commodity short-sellers. So why now? Why focus attention on the commodity markets? Perhaps this chart holds the key...

Moments ago the Colorado Springs police responded to a call of an active shooter in the parking lot of a Planned Parenthood clinic, adding that the area has not been secured, the department said.