United Kingdom

For the first time since it (belatedly) began conducting stress tests in 2014, none of the UK’s major banks need to raise additional capital. More importantly, the Bank of England and the system could withstand a disorderly Brexit. As Bloomberg recaps, "the stress-test scenario therefore encompasses a wide range of U.K. macroeconomic risks that could be associated with Brexit,” the BoE said. As a result, it "judges the U.K. banking system could continue to support the real economy through a disorderly Brexit."

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

Britain is facing a three-week long arctic chill that will see temperatures plummet and significant snowfall, according to health officials, who are warning that residents should be prepared for the imminent threat to human health. 40,000 could die from the cold.

Temperatures in Britain are expected to go as low degrees Celcius or 10 degrees Fahrenheit over the next three weeks and extremely heavy snowfall is expected in Essex and London.

Authored by Peter Korzun via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

Leaders from the EU and six former Soviet states – Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Belarus – met on Nov.24 to discuss the prospects for deepening ties.

The traditionally illiquid post-Thanksgiving week has started with a series of whipsaws across stocks and bonds, as European stocks turned positive after starting the day on the back foot, initially mirroring a slide in Chinese stocks and price action in U.S. equity futures as investors look to a possible - and absolutely critical - tax-plan vote in the Senate this week.

Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,

Punxsutawney Phil Hammond, the UK chancellor, presented his Budget yesterday and declared five more years of austerity for Britain. As was to be expected. One doesn’t even have to go into the details of the Budget to understand that it is a dead end street for both the country and for Theresa May’s Tory party.