Business

Submitted by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

In 524 BC, a group of pirates set sail for Sifnos, an ancient Greek island famed for its vast gold and silver mines.

The mines of Sifnos were unparalleled in the ancient world.

They produced so much gold and silver that the local government at Sifnos could erect countless monuments, invest in new public works, and still easily have a substantial balance remaining at the end of each year to distribute to the citizens.

There’s a lot to be worried about going into 2017 both in terms of financial markets and in terms of geopolitical concerns.

With OPEC behind us, perhaps the market's focus will swing back to fundamentals (as opposed to headlines) and following last week's huge build across products, API reported the second week in a row of crude inventory draws (bigger than the expected 1.37mm drop). However, Gasoline and Distillates saw major builds but Cushing inventories rose over 4mm barrels - the most since 2008. WTI seemed to focus on the crude draw at first...

API

In what may be the most direct admission that China's economy is about to grind to a deflationary halt, today China's Global Times, a newspaper which is seen as a propaganda companion to the official People's Daily, revealed data showing this year's proposed salary guidelines according to which there is a broad wage growth declines in virtually every single province on the mainland, which according to the Chinese publication "confirms the country is experiencing an economic slowdown."

The consensus around 2017 being the year of the dollar has clear vulnerabilities, according to Bloomberg's Mark Cudmore, who notes that there’s a strong self-correcting impulse to dollar strength.

I’ve just returned from a week in New York that included meeting a number of FX traders from several different firms. And the one view that was repeated again and again, with conviction, was that next year will see the dollar roar.