China

"Deteriorating market breadth and herding into an ever-narrower number of stocks is classic market top behavior. Currently, there are many other warning signs that are also being ignored. The merger mania, the stock buyback frenzy, the year-over-year declines in corporate sales and falling earnings for the entire S&P 500 index, the plunges this year in the high-yield and leveraged loan markets, the topping and rolling over of the massive (record) level of stock margin debt... and I could go on."

"Very much in evidence, once more, has been the perennial contrast between the hectic rhythm of markets and the slow motion of the deeper economic forces that really matter. Markets can remain calm for much longer than we think. Until they no longer can."

The system is beyond the point where it is merely showing stresses and fractures. Things are now falling apart and there may well be no way of putting them back together again. The media will continue to claim everything is fine, until the day of panic and reckoning when it will suddenly be the "next Greece" or "2008 all over again"... but worse.

"The liquidity picture for EM corporates in 2017 looks less appealing, due to a 38% yoy increase in USD bond maturities (to USD122bn) and lingering uncertainty on commodity prices (an important component of the corporate sectors’ cash flow) and FX (a headwind for domestic-oriented players). A further depletion in cash buffers and reduced appetite for certain portions of the EM corporate universe may lead to increased refinancing stress in 2017."

But Gold and Silver I figured were dead in the water until the Fed announcement on December 16^th and they both showed signs of life from the long side on Friday.

Draghi’s Friday talk of a “no limit” ECB balance sheet must have Weidmann and responsible members of the ECB at their wits end. It’s the nature of monetary inflations that there’s always a need for more. Throughout history, it’s been ‘just one more round of ‘printing’’ or ‘just one more year and then we’ll rein things in’. But things spiral out of control – and there’s a lot of currency with a lot more zeros. It can end in hyperinflation, at least when monetary inflation is afflicting the real economy. Today’s strange variety is inflating securities market Bubbles. It will end with Bubbles bursting and confidence collapsing. Integral to the bursting Bubble thesis is that policymakers are losing control. Granted, such analysis has about zero credibility when markets are in melt-up mode. But perhaps the markets’ response to Draghi is a forewarning.

"In the year ahead, geopolitics likely poses the greatest potential to disrupt markets in terms of event risk. There is also the potential for geopolitical risks to intersect with economic fragility in the event of a downturn, amplifying both."

For about three weeks, beginning on August 11, just about all anyone wanted to talk about were EM FX reserves, and for good reason. But because the market has a short memory, the global EM FX reserve liquidation story has been largely forgotten even as commodity prices remain in the doldrums and even as a laundry list of idiosyncratic factors are still weighing on the world’s most important emerging economies from Brasilia to Ankara to Beijing to Kuala Lumpur.

"You can't 'comply' because there is no rule of law. The best thing you can do is establish processes for who is likely to be taken away, and how to make sure they aren't disappeared forever."

Keynes is dead – unfortunately his etatiste nonsense didn’t expire with him. Meanwhile, the long run is catching up with those who have so far failed to die.

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.