Authored by Pepe Escobar, originally posted op-ed via Strategic-Culture.org,
A half-hearted near handshake between US President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin before and after they spoke «for about four minutes», standing up, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Lima, Peru, captured to perfection the melancholic dwindling of the Obama era.
While the optics of a soaring stock market and crashing safe-havens (gold and bonds) fits nicely with the election of Donald Trump as the next US president, a closer look shows gold prices beginning to break hours earlier. As India unleashed its demonetization scheme, local retail gold prices began to surge as rumors began to spread of an Indian gold import ban. As rumors have continued, precious metals prices have plunged as the 700 tons of gold imports to India would be a major demand shock for the bullion market.
While most global equity markets were subdued due to the US Thaksgiving holiday, the FX world was very busy overnight, marked by the relentless dollar surge on expectations of a rate hike not only in December but further in 2017, sending Asian currencies to the weakest level in 7 years: the Bloomberg-JPMorgan Asia Dollar Index reached 103.32, the lowest level since March 2009.
In a quiet overnight session in which Japan was closed, European shares are mixed as financials and auto weigh, Asian stocks rise led by materials while S&P futures little changed against a backdrop of the continuing commodity rally with oil holding near $48 a barrel, up fractionally on the session. Against a basket of currencies, the dollar index was up slightly at 101.12, very close to a 14-year peak. The dollar also kept most of its recent hefty gains on the yen at 111.05 though it has met resistance around 111.35 in the last couple of sessions