Asia

The United States is a demographic time bomb, plain and simple.  Over the next 30 years, the U.S. economy will face an unrelenting demographic transition as ~75 million baby boomers exit the highest wage earning years of their life and start to draw down what little retirement savings they've managed to tuck away while wreaking havoc on the public "safety net" ponzi schemes, like Social Security, that will almost certainly be insolvent in a decade.

Trump Is Being Sabotaged by the Pentagon

Paul Craig Roberts

President Trump says he wants the US to have better relations with Russia and to halt
military operations against Muslim countries. But he is being undermined by the Pentagon.

The commander of US forces in Europe, General Ben Hodges, has lined up tanks on Poland’s border with Russia and fired salvos that the general says are a message to Russia, not a training exercise. http://russia-insider.com/en/us-tanks-fire-salvos-poland-warning-against-russia/ri18767

European stocks rise the first day in four, with Asian stocks, S&P futures and the Dollar all gaining following strong Apple earnings ahead of today's Fed decision and the U.K. parliament's first vote on the Article 50 bill.

European bonds fell and stocks rose led by banks and retailers as surging inflation data prompted investors to switch into reflationary assets even as speculation about ECB tapering has returned. Asian stocks and US equity futures declined. The Yen and gold advanced after Trump’s firing of the U.S. acting attorney general added to concern over the unpredictability of decisions in the new administration.

One of the least convoluted, most insightful and thus best forecasts of what the first few months of the Trump administration will look like, came from one of the respondents of today's Dallas Fed manufacturing survey. This is what the respondent said:

President Trump looks to do things that will be favorable for business, which would improve employment and growth if successful. However, protesters are all over the place, so I tend to think that will cause trouble for the country and for business.