If you thought 2016 was full of market maelstroms and geopolitical gotchas, 2017's 'known unknowns' suggest a year of more mayhem awaits...
Here's a selection of key events in the year ahead (and links to Bloomberg's quick-takes on each).
January
Submitted by Alex Gorka via Stratgic-Culture.org,
Matteo Renzi resigned as the Italian Prime Minister after the people of Italy voted «no» in a historic referendum on constitutional reform on December 4. The vote results triggered a shock wave across Europe much like Brexit. It’s up to Italian President Sergio Mattarella now to decide what will happen next – an appointment of new prime minister supported by parliamentary majority or a snap election, paving the way for an anti-euro party, the 5-Star Movement, to come to power.
Blink, and you missed the "sell off" from Italy's failed referendum vote.
The Syrian parliamentary election on Tuesday was a vote of confidence by the people for their government. Syria’s ruling Ba’ath Party and its allies won the majority of the votes according to official results with 5,085,444 voters casting their ballots out of a possible 8,834,994 eligible voters. Press TV reports: The Syrian electoral commission announced late Saturday that the National Unity coalition, comprising the ruling party and its allies, had won 200 of the 250 seats at the People’s Assembly (Majlis al-Sha’ab).
Riot police have detained around 10 people protesting outside the central bank in Moscow, who were asking for a better deal on their Forex mortgages after the recent decline of the Russian ruble. The Star reports: Around a hundred protesters gathered outside the bank to demand their loans be converted to rouble mortgages from dollar and euro ones or that their repayments be recalculated using a different rouble exchange rate to take account of the Russian currency’s sharp fall in the last 18 months. Protesters have previously targeted the banks where they first took out their mortgages.