Donald Trump

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...

What better way to end 2015, than with a highlight reel of Donald Trump’s more colorful insults.

As WSJ reports, "more than two dozen companies and groups and one foreign government paid former President Bill Clinton a total of more than $8 million to give speeches around the time they also had matters before Mrs. Clinton’s State Department."

Some have called Cass Sunstein "America's Goebbels" since he sugggested that the government "formally hire credible private parties to engage in counterspeech," and was engaged by President Obama as 'Information Tzar'. So today's op-ed from the government's propagandist-in-chief, condemning those who choose to push back against political correctness, should be read with a Bernaysian perspective as Sunstein attempts to delegitimize any and every effort to argue against the government's view of the world.

The Muslim population of Britain surpassed 3.5 million in 2015 to become around 5.5% of the overall population of 64 million. In real terms, Britain has the third-largest Muslim population in the European Union, after France, then Germany. Islam and Islam-related issues were omnipresent in Britain during 2015, and can be categorized into five broad themes: 1) Islamic extremism and the security implications of British jihadists in Syria and Iraq; 2) the continuing spread of Islamic Sharia law in Britain; 3) the sexual exploitation of British children by Muslim gangs; 4) Muslim integration into British society; and 5) the failures of British multiculturalism.

It appears that no matter what he says, does, or is alleged to have said or done, The Donald's rating continue to rise. As Bloomberg notes in the following chart of his 'success' so far, Trump's controversial comments appear highly correlated with his poll standings as the latest poll shows his support is now larger than that of his next three rivals combined...

My overriding theme and the central drama for the coming year is that unexpected events can take on greater importance as the Federal Reserve ends its near-decade-long Zero Interest Rate Policy. Consensus premises and forecasts will likely fall flat, in a rather spectacular manner. The low-conviction and directionless market that we saw in 2015 could become a no-conviction and very-much-directed market (i.e. one that's directed lower) in 2016. There will be no peace on earth in 2016, and our markets could lose a cushion of protection as valuations contract. (Just as "malinvestment" represented a key theme this year, we expect a compression of price-to-earnings ratios to serve as a big market driver in 2016.) In other words, we don't think 2016 will be fun.

• The World's Richest People Got Poorer This Year (BBG)
• Oil hovers near 11-year lows on abundant supply, slowing demand (Reuters)
• Oil-Producing States Battered as Tax-Gushing Wells Are Shut Down (BBG)
• A Bold Few Traders Earn Billions Flouting Rivals (WSJ)
• Islamic State ruling aims to settle who can have sex with female slaves (Reuters)
• Winter Storm Snarls Republican Presidential Traffic (BBG)
• Donald Trump Urges Supporters to the Polls (BBG)

James Madison, the father of the Constitution, put it best: “Take alarm,” he warned, “at the first experiment with liberties.” Anyone with even a casual knowledge about current events knows that the first experiment on our freedoms happened long ago. Worse, we have not heeded the warnings of Madison and those like him who understood that if you give the government an inch, they will take a mile. Unfortunately, the government has not only taken a mile, they have taken mile after mile after mile after mile with seemingly no end in sight for their power grabs. All of the signs point to something nasty up ahead.

It appears The Establishment has decided to bring in the big guns to dislodge The GOP's nightmare scenario as Donald Trump goes from strength to strength in the polls. Writing in an op-ed for The Guardian, billionaire puppet-master George Soros urges Americans "to resist the siren song of the likes of Donald Trump," adding that "the terrorists and demagogues want us to be scared. We mustn’t give in."

The phenomenon of “The Donald” is rooted in a psyche far deeper and more consequential than next November’s presidential election. His support denotes an abiding distrust in - and disrespect for - the governing elite. These individuals do not like being told by Washington or Wall Street what is best for them, do not like the direction America is headed in, and disdain President Barack Obama and his (perceived) circle of self-righteous, tone-deaf governing partisans. Trump voters are not just angry - they want revenge.

Our quarterly survey of “Off the Grid” economic indicators finds that the U.S. economy is still growing, but the pace seems to be slowing from Q3 2015.

We apologize, but 2015 had so many negatives that we’re having trouble seeing the positives. It’s like we’re on the Titanic, and it’s tilting at an 85-degree angle with its propellers way up in the air, and we’re dangling over the cold Atlantic trying to tell ourselves: “At least there’s no waiting for the shuffleboard courts!” Are we saying that 2015 was the worst year ever? Are we saying it was worse than, for example, 1347, the year when the Bubonic Plague killed a large part of humanity? Yes, we are saying that.