Asia

While China's president Xi was busy dancing on the grave of TPP and rolling out its own regional free-trade alternative during the APEC summit in Peru, Obama was just as busy defending his vanishing legacy to an international audience for the last time. He was even busier projecting his denial before the entire world. As AFP reports, after the APEC summit closed on Sunday, Obama insisted that the 12-nation trans-Pacific deal, a key part of his now failed "pivot" to Asia, was far from dead and those involved still wanted to move forward with the United States.

As we noted on Thursday, "it was ludicrous for Obama to leave China out of things. China is the second biggest economy in the world, third if you treat the EU as a block. Had China been in the deal all along, we may not have seen the ludicrous provision that allowed companies to sue governments. That provision was one of the key reasons the deal failed. With the election of Trump, TPP is officially dead. China, not the US, will be at the center of a new Asian trade pact."

Submitted by Eric Bush via Gavekal Capital blog,

We all know that stocks are a leading indicator of economic growth and disappointingly recent breadth measures suggest that economic activity may slow over the next several months.

Moments ago, the Hollywood Reporter released the much anticipated Michael Wolff interview with Steve Bannon, the controversial president-elect's chief strategist. As a preface, Wolff reveals that Bannon - unlike virtually anyone else in the "credible" media - predicted exactly how things would play out:

While Caterpillar's CEO may have resigned recently, admitting that he misjudged the business strategy, the stock does not appear to be bothered, soaring by 15% since the Trump victory on hopes an infrastructure push would make excavators great again. For now, however, the woes at the heavy industrial manufacturer continue, with yet another month of declining global sales, the company's 47th in a row.