With the Yuan at its weakest against the Dollar since May 2008, it's becoming harder and harder (and more and more expensive) for China to hide/defend its devaluation strategy (CNH down over 13% since the 'one-off' Aug 2015 devaluation).
And in its latest effort to rig the currency's value, it currently costs more to borrow yuan overnight in Hong Kong than it does to borrow it for a year.
As The Wall Street Journal reports,
In a fiery press conference on Friday, shortly before departing for his last Hawaiian vacation, president Obama accused the press of being responsible for Hillary Clinton's loss, slammed "domestic propagandists" who he said were responsible for the risk of "fake news" and assisting foreign counter-US propaganda, but more importantly Obama vowed to “send a clear message to Russia” in retaliation for its election hacking - of which the CIA still has to demonstrate evidence - as both a punishment and a deterrent.
Barron's Asia: When you look ahead to 2017, what keeps you awake at night?
Amando Tetangco: Short term, the Fed rate hikes -- the timing and the magnitude. Of course, this would be related to the policies that the new U.S. administration will adopt. Medium-to-long term, the retreat from multi-lateralism. That is related to the performance of the global economy - the major and various economies, and emerging markets like China.
Submitted by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,
In this world, it is often dangerous to be an enemy of the United States, said Henry Kissinger in 1968, but to be a friend is fatal.
The South Vietnamese would come to appreciate the insight.
So it is today with Aleppo, where savage reprisals against U.S.-backed rebels are taking place in that hellhole of human rights.
Yet, again, the wrong lessons are being drawn from the disaster.
Quad-witching Friday has arrived, which means that alongside thin, pre-holiday liquidity and a jumpy market, we expect to see sharp, volatile moves for the rest of the day, the first of which was just noted in Europe, where stocks moved from session lows to highs in the span of minutes, in the process sending the Euro Stoxx 50 index 0.8% higher and turning it positive on the year as it reached its highest level since December 2015. The broader Stoxx 600 remains still down 1.8% on the year.