AIG

Rand Paul’s signature “Audit the Fed” legislation failed to garner the 60 votes needed in the Senate to move the measure forward. Of course, this is merely the latest in a never-ending series of banker victories, and a truly devastating blow against liberty, free markets, transparency and any hope for government by the people and for the people. Ensuring that light is never shined on the Fed’s shady, corrupt and unaccountable bailout activities has always been a key goal of the American oligarchy, and they succeeded once again.

Here’s a newsflash that CNBC didn’t mention. According to the BLS, the US economy generated a miniscule 11,000 jobs in the month of December.

Needless to say, these names are just the beginning: once the redemptions - and gating - genie is out of the bottle, there is no putting it back.

Two waves of IS terrorists are said to have been trained for terror attacks in Europe - either for suicide bombings, or for Paris-style handgun attacks.

“Strengthening Frontex, creating a kind of border guard would by all means be needed, beneficial,” he said on his way into a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels. “But the way the commission proposed it—for it to be a structure independent from nation states—is astounding.” He added: “There’d be an undemocratic structure reporting to no one knows who.”

In a supreme twist of irony, Bear Stearns is back - maybe not the firm itself - but the people who were in charge of its distressed and junk bond trading group, and just like the summer of 2007, it is an ex "Bear"-run hedge fund that was the first to gate, just as the credit cycle is turning and the default cycle has begun, as we explained last week, just one day before everyone's attention finally focused on junk debt.

"The move would arguably represent the biggest transfer of sovereignty since the creation of the single currency."

"We are living amid an Islamic threat and we should be aware of the consequences. Our country, as well as other European countries, is at war – both outside our borders, in Syria for instance, and inside our borders, because our enemies live in our own country”

There was something for everyone in last night's much anticipated Chinese PMI data, with the official number sliding to the lowest in over 3 years, suggesting the PBOC will need to do more stimulus and is thus bullish, while the unoffocial Caixin print rising to the highest since June, suggesting whatever the PBOC is doing is working, and is also bullish. Not unexpectedly, global stocks decided to take the bullish way out, and have risen across the globe led by Asia, where stocks rose as much as 1.8%, Europe also green and US equity futures up 10 points as of this writing.

Dear Mr. President, your country faces a stagnating economy... The truth is it is too late for our politicians to act, because the speculative peak that precedes the crisis is already upon us.

Janet Yellen’s astonishing letter to the Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, is a sign that the central bank is panicking over the fact that Congress is unhappy with the job it has been doing.

I had never heard the term "safe space" until just a few days ago, but it's a zone in which free speech is completely forbidden, for fear of hurting the feelings of some special snowflake.

The just concluded 13-F bonanza shows that "some of the world’s top hedge fund managers scaled back their U.S. stock investments last quarter as markets tumbled." Below, courtesy of Bloomberg, is the full summary of what the most prominent hedge fund names did in Q3...

Goldman Sachs -> Treasury -> PIMCO -> The Fed