Asia

A month ago, we highlighted a disturbing new record in the Hong Kong real-estate market – a market that received a ranking of “high” from Algebris Investment’s Alberto Gallo in his annual ranking of the world’s biggest asset bubbles.

According to a report in the South China Morning Post, the record price per square foot for a residence in Hong Kong was obliterated when a mystery buyer purchased two apartments in “The Peak” – an exclusive district.

One month ago, Citi's credit team laid out its outlook for the coming year in what - in our opinion - was one of the gloomiest reports for the coming year, and included the following fascinating revelation according to which central bankers appears to have lost control: "That seems to be a growing fear among a number of central bankers that we have spoken to recently. In our experience, they too are somewhat baffled by the lack of volatility and concerned about the lack of response to negative headlines....

Long-time rumors about presidential candidate Nixon conspiring to delay the ending of the Vietnam War were recently confirmed.

A year ago, historian and journalist John A Farrell wrote in the New York Times:

Content originally published at iBankCoin.com

Let's be clear. The American market for Bitcoin is an aspirational one; but the true volume is done in Asia. Instead of going through the trouble of setting up shell corporations to launder their money, the Chinese have been using crypto currencies, which was beautifully marketed as some sort of rebellious form of capitalism -- creating millions of bedroom billionaires.

All of that might be ending soon, thanks in part of President Trump.

Spanish stocks and the euro fell, while Spanish government bond yields hit their highest levels in over a month after Catalan secessionists delivered an unexpected blow to the government of Spanish PM Rajoy by winning the Catalan regional election. Meanwhile across the Atlantic, U.S. equity futures and the dollar rose on the last trading session before the Christmas holiday. The MSCI index of world stocks was flat.