America

Just a day after a Texas Republican "faithless elector" explained why he will not cast his vote for Donald Trump, The Denver Post reports two Democratic Colorado electors are filing suit challenging a state law requiring them to vote for the winner of the state’s popular vote. Their hope is to set a precedent enabling Republican electors in other states to vote for a third-party candidate to keep Trump from receiving 270 electoral votes.

As we noted yesterday,

Mallaby knives Greenspan following gold comments

Contributed by:  Sprott Money News

December 5th, 2016

Two years ago, Alan Greenspan humiliated America’s financial and political establishment by publicly highlighting the US dollar’s secondary role. "Gold is a currency,” Greenspan said, at a Council on Foreign Relations conference. “No fiat currency, including the (US) dollar, can match it."

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

Some perspectives on the fascinating economic experiment that is China from Eric Peters, CIO of One Asset Management, as told in his traditional third-person style.

Anecdote: “We’ve become anesthetized to the absurdity of Chinese growth,” said the CIO.

 

The accelerating rate of credit expansion relative to GDP has no precedent. “They’ve run off the cliff so fast that people seem to think they’ll actually make it to the other side.”

 

John Kerry admitted that the United States gives Israel more than half of the aid that we give “to the entire world,” but Israel doesn’t pay attention to anything the U.S. says. Kerry: Every president, Republican and Democrat, has been opposed to settlements – we issue a warning today when we see a new settlement announced. Nothing happens. It’s ignored, a new settlement goes up. New units, new sales. So the issue — Journalist Jeffrey Goldberg: You’re describing a situation in which you have zero leverage.