Asia

Submitted by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

Donald Trump’s election triumph is among the more astonishing in history.

Yet if he wishes to become the father of a new “America First” majority party, he must make good on his solemn promise:

To end the trade deficits that have bled our country of scores of thousands of factories, and to create millions of manufacturing jobs in the USA.

Fail here, and those slim majorities in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin disappear.

Having soared to fresh 13 year highs in a quiet overnight session on thin liquidity due to the US Thanksgiving holiday, which sent the USDJPY just shy of 114 and the Yuan to 6.96, the dollar pared back its weekly advance with modest profit taking after traders wondered if the rally has gotten "too stretched." European shares were fractionally higher, with Asian stocks and US equity futures rising and both the Dow Jones and the S&P set for new all time highs.

Authored by Pepe Escobar, originally posted op-ed via Strategic-Culture.org,

A half-hearted near handshake between US President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin before and after they spoke «for about four minutes», standing up, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Lima, Peru, captured to perfection the melancholic dwindling of the Obama era.

While the optics of a soaring stock market and crashing safe-havens (gold and bonds) fits nicely with the election of Donald Trump as the next US president, a closer look shows gold prices beginning to break hours earlier. As India unleashed its demonetization scheme, local retail gold prices began to surge as rumors began to spread of an Indian gold import ban. As rumors have continued, precious metals prices have plunged as the 700 tons of gold imports to India would be a major demand shock for the bullion market.

While most global equity markets were subdued due to the US Thaksgiving holiday, the FX world was very busy overnight, marked by the relentless dollar surge on expectations of a rate hike not only in December but further in 2017, sending Asian currencies to the weakest level in 7 years: the Bloomberg-JPMorgan Asia Dollar Index reached 103.32, the lowest level since March 2009.