Wall Street Journal

OPEC HAS AGREED TO OIL OUTPUT POLICY ROLLOVER, SETS TARGET AT 31.5 M B/D AFTER INDONESIA JOINS: DELEGATE. This increases the output limit up from 30 million but is merely reflective of the current real output from the Cartel of 31.5 million barrels. And crude is crashing, Ruble is dumping and gold is jumping.

"Friday’s employment report clears the way for the Federal Reserve to raise short-term interest rates by a quarter-percentage point at its Dec. 15-16 policy meeting, ending seven years of near-zero interest rates."

"There has been a bunch of headlines coming out of OPEC with each contradicting the other," says Petromatrix analyst Olivier Jakob. “It is difficult to trade in front of OPEC - the general consensus is for nothing, but when we get a soundbite that creates a bit of a reaction." However, once the OPEC meeting announces that, sorry Venezuela but nothing changes, expect the early upward bias to crude prices to promptly reverse.

Too Bad Our Government Isn't Serious About Stopping Terrorism ...

Researchers at Duke University and the University of California at Berkeley point to quantitative evidence that The Fed consistently leaks non-public information about its meetings, driving an investment pattern that has led to market gains.

The lack of fear in risky assets is another way of saying that risk premia have been low, or as we also like to put it, that complacency has been high. Not fully appreciative of this inherent risk, it seems many investors have refrained from rebalancing their portfolios, and bought the dips instead. We believe the Fed’s efforts to engineer an exit from its ultra-low monetary policy should get risk premia to rise once again, that if fear should come back to the market, volatility should rise, creating headwinds to ‘risky’ assets, including equities. That said, this isn’t an overnight process, as the ‘buy the dip’ mentality has taken years to be established. Conversely, it may take months, if not years, for investors to shift focus to capital preservation, i.e. to sell into rallies instead.

“We will listen, and then decide,” he said on Tuesday upon his arrival in Vienna, trying to tamp down speculation that the outcome is preordained. When asked if OPEC’s strategy of pursuing market share was working, al-Naimi was coy. “What strategy?” he said. “Who said we’re keeping market share?” Despite al-Naimi’s assurances that the Saudi delegation won’t dictate policy to OPEC, his voice is the only one that counts.

While the lifespan of affluent whites continues to lengthen, the lifespan of poor whites has been shrinking. As a result, in just the last four years, the gap between poor white men and wealthier ones has widened by up to four years. This was not supposed to happen. For almost a century, the comforting American narrative was that better nutrition and medical care would guarantee longer lives for all. So the great blue-collar die-off has come out of the blue and is, as the Wall Street Journal says, “startling.”

It is vital to give proper consideration to the improper liberties that are being taken by those with “unwarranted influence” and “misplaced power”.   Value extraction has replaced value creation in pursuit of short?term, self?serving benefits at the expense of long?term stability and durability of corporate America and therefore the country as a whole.  As citizens, our obligation is to be well?informed, cognizant, outspoken and to vote. The words of men may temporarily suspend but they do not alter the laws of financial dynamics. The fundamentals always take precedence eventually.

"In the three decades between the surveys, pollsters found the share of young Americans overall who said the American Dream 'is not really alive' grew sharply from 12 to 29 percent. Among white people, it nearly tripled from 10 percent to 29 percent."

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.

Perhaps Voltaire said it best: "To determine the true rulers of any society, all you must do is ask yourself this question: Who is it that I am not permitted to criticize?"

With at least 83 percent of these companies' operating cash being spent on debt repayments - the highest on record - the renewed collapse in crude oil prices of the last month has renewed focus on the tidal wave of defaults that the credit market is increasingly pricing in (and stocks not).

Why Now?

• European stocks up, oil slides as concerns ease over Russia-Turkey tension (Reuters)
• ECB discusses two-tiered bank charges, broader bond buys (Reuters)
• New agonies, alliances as Fed debates post-liftoff plan (Reuters)
• A New Military Power Rises in the Mideast, Courtesy of One Man (BBG)
• Russia's Gazprom says halts gas supplies to Ukraine over payment (Reuters)
• Other central banks set to act, but Swiss policy cupboard bare (Reuters)