Asia

After an exuberant few days following Coinbase's adoption of Bitcoin Cash, the forked currency has collapsed back below $3000.  

For the 4th night in the last 5, someone has started slamming Bitcoin at around 8pmET, pushing the biggest cryptocurrency back below $15,000 for the first time in two weeks...

Catalysts for the drop are unclear other than systematic selling pressure as Asia opens. There was chatter about the lack of security in South Korean local exchanges, but it is unlikely that is the cause for now.

U.S. equity futures are little changed with the GOP Tax Plan now a done deal and no more daily "pricing in" of tax reform possible, as traders nerviously look to see if others will now be "selling the news", a preview of which we got yesterday when US equity indexes closed red across the board despite Trump's biggest legislative win to date, while bonds were spooked by the blowout in government debt needed to fund the giveaways.

Dow futures are up some 80 points this morning after early on Wednesday morning the Senate passed the Tax Reform bill in a party-line vote, and is now set to become law after a follow-up vote in the House and Trump's signature some time on Wednesday afternoon. The good news is that the biggest political drama of 2017 will then be over. The bad news is that once the bill becomes law, the market will no longer be able to "price it in" every single day as it has for the past year.

Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

In the run-up to Christmas, President Donald Trump has been the beneficiary of some surprisingly good news and glad tidings.

Sunday, Vladimir Putin called to thank him and the CIA for providing Russia critical information that helped abort an ISIS plot to massacre visitors to Kazan Cathedral in St. Petersburg.

 

Monday found polls showing Trump at his highest in months.

 

Authored Doug Kass of Seabreeze Partners Management,

"The missing step in the standard Keynesian theory [is] the explicit consideration of capitalist finance within a cyclical and speculative context . . . finance sets the pace for the economy. As recovery approaches full employment . . . soothsayers will proclaim that the business cycle has been banished [and] debts can be taken on . . . But in truth neither the boom, nor the debt deflation... and certainly not a recovery can go on forever. Each state nurtures forces that lead to its own destruction. "