America

While there are many questions about the sincerity, not to mention underlying viability of his company (which many skeptical investors have accused of being an accounting shell whose operations raise many questions), moments ago Alibaba's Jack Ma appeared at the Trump Tower for a meeting with Donald Trump, where according to CNBC, he will discuss plans to create 1 million new U.S. jobs over the next five years.  The Monday meeting will focus on the Chinese e-commerce company's U.S. expansion plans, according to spokespeople for both Alibaba and Trump.

Submitted via Duane of Free Market Shooter

On Tuesday, president-elect Trump tweeted about General Motors, stating the GM was building its Chevrolet Cruze in Mexico, importing them to the US tax-free, and selling them at US car dealers:

General Motors is sending Mexican made model of Chevy Cruze to U.S. car dealers-tax free across border. Make in U.S.A.or pay big border tax!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2017

Around the time Taiwan's president Tsai Ing-wen, who last month infamously spoke to Trump putting the long-standing "One China" policy in jeopardy, made a controversial stopover in Houston, China's state-run tabloid Global Times warned U.S. President-elect Donald Trump that China would "take revenge" if he reneged on the one-China policy. 

A group of liberal Hollywood celebrities are threatening a “massive, all-round Hollywood strike” unless Donald Trump resigns. Describing Hollywood as “the base of the entire modern American culture“, the group also claims to be speaking on behalf of “all of humanity.” “It’s about time people understood that we’re the ones with the power and that the president is there to serve us, not the other way around“, a spokesperson for the group told The New York Times.

Submitted by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

Fed Governor Jerome Powell says “Signs of excesses are ‘isolated’. Asset Prices ‘not broadly unsustainable’“.

The Federal Reserve does not see “broadly unsustainable asset prices,” a senior U.S. central banker said Saturday, with financial excesses stemming from almost a decade of ultralow interest rates “isolated.”