China

At 6 p.m. local time in Buenos Aires, new FinMin Alfonso Prat-Gay will announce the end of currency controls in Argentina, ushering in a new era and a sharply weaker peso as the official and black market rates converge. 

China did everything it could to prevent a collapse and it still happened.  How do you think other countries will do?

"When the Fed moves next will depend importantly on how inflation evolves. The Fed’s preferred measure of inflation has run below its 2% objective for more than three years. The central bank focused extra attention on the inflation outlook in its statement, saying it would “carefully monitor” actual and expected progress toward the goal. This point implied the Fed will be reluctant to raise rates again unless it sees inflation actually moving up. For now, officials said they were “reasonably confident” inflation would rise."

The argument that the Fed should do nothing - for it will be harder to correct a rate rise than to do nothing - because there is no bubble anywhere, demonstrates that we have the most serious BUBBLE in history. The FED is between a rock and a hard place. It will be blamed no matter it does. Nobody seems to understand the dynamics of the trend in motion.

According to ScGen, the Fed is widely expected to start tightening policy on Wednesday and adds that "after the BoJ and ECB, we see a risk that the market will be wrong-footed for a third time, and that extreme positions built ahead of tightening will be reversed.... In particular, we are short US small cap equities vs large via being short Russell 2000 vs S&P 500.... As the Fed tightens and the market enters into a lower-liquidity environment (and higher-volatility regime), we think the premium on small caps is no longer justified."

Despite a brief dead-cat-bounce late November, which Jim Cramer heralded as evidence of stabilization in China, the world's best known freight index has collapsed to new all-time record lows this morning. Amid a persistent glut of ships and ongoing concerns about Chinese steel imports, The Baltic Dry has tumbled to 471 - the lowest level in at least 30 years.

... I found myself seeking refuge in the tiramisu staring back at me, a bit uncomfortable that I was only hearing the wah wahs of Charlie Brown’s adult voices. Until this, during the back and forth of Q&A: (Laughter around the room…) “We don’t remember how to raise interest rates. None of us worked here the last time we did it.”

The writing has been on the wall since the S&P "junking" in September, and now Fitch has jumped on the bandwagon, cutting Brazil to BB+, outlook negative. 

• Fed Poised to Mark the End of an Era (Hilsenrath)
• Fed opens meeting to put an end to crisis era policy (Reuters)
• Fed's Historic Liftoff and Everything After: Decision Day Guide (BBG)
• Emerging Markets Gird for Fed Rate Increase (WSJ)
• What 7 Years at Zero Rates Have Looked Like (BBG)
• 5 Things to Watch at the Fed Meeting (WSJ)

The day has come when the boxed-in Fed has no choice: with the vast majority of the market expecting a rate hike, Yellen has to deliver or suffer a crushing confidence blow like no other. And deliver she will, with expectations that said hike will be "as dovish as possible." For now however, the market is desperate to convince itself that just as more easing and more QE were bullish for the market, so rate hikes are just as bullish. Recall from late 2013: "tapering is not tightening," then the 2015 version of this refrain is "tightening is not tightening."

“While Fed did a great job in reacting to global financial crisis, it played an equal role in setting markets up for the crisis by running uber-accommodative monetary policy.”

Since mid-2014 the Pentagon has run all manner of war games – as many as 16 times, under different scenarios – pitting NATO against Russia. All scenarios were favorable to NATO. All simulations yielded the same victor: Russia. And that’s why Erdogan’s erratic behavior actually terrifies quite a few real players from Washington to Brussels.

Following an increase of $17.4 billion in September, foreign net sales of Treasuries hit an all time high of $55.2 billion, surpassing the previous record of $55.0 billion set in January. In absolute terms, October's total foreign holdings by major holders declined to $6,046.3 trillion the lowest since the summer of 2014.