Davos

• David Bowie, musical legend behind Ziggy Stardust, dies at 69 from cancer (Reuters)
• With No Powerball Winners, Jackpot Grows to Estimated $1.3 Billion (ABC)
• Stock Gains Short-Lived as Chinese Volatility Hurts Oil, Metals (BBG)
• China's yuan spikes higher, but stocks tumble (Reuters)
• Arch Coal Files for Bankruptcy (WSJ)
• Yuan Loan Rates Soar in Hong Kong as PBOC Halts Currency's Slide (BBG)
• China stocks close down at lowest level since September (Reuters)
• Fed Eyes Margin Rules to Bolster Oversight (WSJ)

Free Corzine!!!  Hasn't he already served enough time?

With a new wave of terrorism, mass shootings and unprecedented social violence around the globe now a part of the daily routine for billions of people across both developed and developing nations, one group wants to be certain there is no chance of "close encounters", violent or otherwise, with the peasantry during its upcoming annual boondoggle at the World Economic Forum in Davos. According to Swissinfo, when the world's billionaires land their private jets in the gorgeous Swiss town (which at 1,560 m is also the highest town in Europe) on January 20, they will have up to 5,000 Swiss army troops protecting them.

Elections, elections, and more elections is the 'regime change' meme for 2016 but, as Bloomberg details, the key events of the year ahead vary from a California marijuana referendum to Brazil's Olympics, and from Davos to SCOTUS. No matter what, 2016 holds a lot of opportunity for volatility, and without The Fed's safety net, who knows what that means for markets...

The announcement of the restoration of Israel-Turkish relations should be seen in the context of Turkey having nowhere else to go.

When it comes to “prepping”, many among the elite take things to an entirely different level. 

"...declining velocity of money requires an ever rising level of monetary stimulus, which further depresses velocity of money, and requiring even further QEs. Also as countries compete in a diminishing pool by discounting currencies, global demand compresses, as current account surpluses in these countries rise not because of exports growing faster than imports but because imports decline faster than exports. This implies less demand for the global economy."

And to think all it took was Gartman going short of stocks in 25% correction terms yesterday...

Why are the global elite buying extremely remote compounds that come with their own private airstrips in the middle of nowhere on the other side of the planet?  And why did they start dumping stocks like crazy earlier this year?  Do they know something that the rest of us don’t?

"CNBC is an electronic shaman for investors... The situation resembles George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, where the protagonist Winston Smith tuned out the massive telescreen on his apartment wall that issued endless streams of positive news."

On the heels of Thursday's move by Belgium, France, and Austria to freeze Russian state assets in connection with the disputed Yukos ECHR ruling, Moscow vows to retailiate in kind, while the chairman of the former Yukos holding company pushes the US to join Europe in enforcing the arbitration court's decision. 

"I fear that central bankers may have been inadvertently drawn into what they are currently doing... [QE] won't work and may have many undesired side effects that will build up over time. Many of the central bankers at Davos this year said explicitly that they were only buying time for governments to act but, seven years into the crisis, it already seems we have been waiting forever...  the effectiveness of monetary policy in terms of stimulating aggregate demand goes down with time, because you're constantly bringing spending forward from the future...  Logically, at this point, central bankers should say, "We are doing more harm than good. This policy must be reversed." But I don't see anybody actually doing it."

“If you’re unhappy with what you’ve had over the last 50 years, you have an unfortunate misappraisal of life...  should all be prepared for adjusting to a world that is harder..."

Debt, Distraction, Currency Wars, Itchy Fingers