China

So how do you grow household wealth by $18 trillion in the face of these dismal real world trends? In a word, with a printing press. But what happened today is that Draghi showed he is out of tricks and Yellen confessed she is out of excuses. Yes, this sucker is going down. And this time all the misguided economics professors turned central bankers in the world will be powerless to reverse the plunge.

• The Jobs Report Probably Won't Change the Fed's Mind on Liftoff (BBG)
• U.S. authorities look for militant links to shooters in California mass slaying (Reuters)
• Neighbors, Acquaintances Shocked That Couple Are San Bernardino Shooting Suspects (WSJ)
• ECB Fumbles the Stimulus-Baton Hand-off, Mussing Up Fed’s Plans (WSJ)
• OPEC Heads for Status Quo as Members Clash Over Crude Output Cut (BBG)
• Foreigners drawn in as fear and loathing grip China's finance industry (Reuters)

After a full generation of systemic crime in the silver market and thirty consecutive years of supply deficits, there will be a reversal in this market, and that reversal can come in only one form

Hong Kong's once-upon-a-time raging housing bubble just got its last rites after November home sales sank to a record low as an imminent interest rate in the US this month scared away prospective buyers. According to Land Registry data, reported by SCMP, November saw 2,826 registered residential transactions, down 14.4% from October and 41.7% less than in November last year. This was the lowest print in the history of the series.

But just like in 2008, the “experts” at the Federal Reserve are assuring all of us that everything is going to be just fine.  This is the exact same kind of mistake that the Federal Reserve made back in the late 1930s.  They thought that the U.S. economy was finally recovering, and so interest rates were raised.  That turned out to be a tragic mistake.

Why are the worlds’ most successful investors having so much trouble lately? The short answer is that the markets they used to understand have been replaced by something very different. In this new, post-market world, money managers can’t separate signal from noise and end up on the wrong end of wild swings in commodities, currencies and interest rates. And now their clients are figuring this out.

Eighty-five years after the birth of French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard, and the crude complex is acting suitably surreal today. As expected, rhetoric is ratcheting up out of Vienna ahead of tomorrow’s OPEC meeting, with the crude market shaken up like a snowglobe.

“Was there a link to terror?” That’s the question Americans are asking themselves the morning after a husband and wife opened fire with assault rifles killing 14 and wounding 17 at a San Bernardino County employee holiday party. The shooters, Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and Tashfeen Malik, 27, left their young child with Farook’s mother in nearby Redlands on Wednesday morning before dressing in “assault clothing,” and crashing the party (literally).

"Given the surge back towards the all-time highs in the S&P 500, we think that the best might be over for US equities and that indices might range trade more in 2016. We have downgraded US equities to neutral. This takes our overall equity weighting down to neutral, in many respects an extension of what we’ve been doing for most of this year as richer and richer asset markets, against a global background of economic risks, have made us more cautious."

Having ramped its way up to the cliff's edge of China devaluation and Black Monday's free-fall, Germany's DAX has come unbuttoned rapidly with a 480-plus point droip today. Down over 5.5% in the last 3 days, crushed back under 11,000 today with a 3.75% crash - the most since August 24th - all thanks to Draghi over-selling his "whatever-it-takes"-ness... after the Paris Terror attacks.

• Mario Draghi Is About to Become the World's Market Risk Manager (BBG)
• Five Things to Ask Mario Draghi From Negative Rates to QE (BBG)
• Leaving behind baby and bombs, couple sows panic in California (Reuters)
• Couple's motive in California rampage a mystery for police, family (Reuters)
• In Grim Ritual, Barack Obama Again Calls for Stricter Gun Control After Mass Shooting (WSJ)
• Islamic State Defeat Impossible Without Ground Force, Kerry Says (BBG)
• OPEC States Push for Output Cuts in Face of Saudi Opposition (BBG)

Yesterday's market swoon which unwound all of Tuesday's gains on concerns about a hawkish Fed and fears about terrorism in the US, are now completely forgotten, and have been replaced with the latest daily round of pre-ECB euphoria, driven by hopes that Mario Draghi will announce even more dovish details to Europe's Q€ 2 than just a 10 bps rate cut and a boost to QE more than €10 billion, both of which have been already priced in.

There isn’t much as far as confirmation, but it increasingly appears as if “something” just hit the triple hooks (CCC) in the junk bond bubble. At least as far as one view of it, Bank of America ML’s CCC implied yield, there was a huge selloff that brought the yield to a new cycle high (low in price) above even the 2011 crisis peak.

Again, the globalists at the BIS and the IMF require a diminished U.S. dollar, greatly reduced U.S. living standards and a much smaller U.S. geopolitical footprint before they can establish and finalize a single publicly accepted global elitist oligarchy. If you cannot understand why it seems that the Federal Reserve and U.S. government appear hell-bent on self-destruction, then perhaps you should consider the facts and motivations at hand. Then, you’ll realize it is THEIR JOB to destroy America, not save America. When you are finally willing to accept this reality, every disastrous development since the inception of the Fed a century ago, as well as all that is about to happen in the next few years, makes perfect sense. As the U.S. destabilizes, we are not escaping the clutches of the Federal Reserve system, only trading out one totalitarian management model for another.

After days of hazardous pollution forced people to wear masks and huddle indoors, residents of Beijing turned their attention to the mayor, Wang Anshun, and his bold vow last year to clear the air. As JapanTimes reports, Wang said, if pollution wasn’t brought under control by 2017, he would cut off his own head and present it to the country’s leadership. So, imagine his relief, when after pollution levels hit 20x WHO's risk limit, a cold front - as caught on tape below -  swept away the choking smog (and saved his neck).