On the last day of calendar 2016, total US public debt jumped by $98 billion, mostly as a result of end of quarter Social Security debt allocation, which accounted for $70.4 billion of the daily increase. As a result, total US government debt on December 30, 2016 was $19,976,826,951,047.80.
There was some confusion for those trading yesterday's first session of the year, which started off in euphoric fashion with the Dow Jones printing once again just shy of 20,000, then slumped after crude inexplicably tumbled, prompting even JPMorgan to chime in with the following snyde commentary: "the question isn’t why stocks have come in from their highs but instead why they were so strong to begin with."
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
An economy that only serves the prosperity of the protected top 5% is an economy doomed to rising inequality, stagnation and widespread social discontent.
Donald Trump is preparing to appoint another Wall Street proxy to the top Wall Street regulation, supervision and enforcement post.
According to the WSJ, Wall Street M&A and IPO lawyer, Jay Clayton, is Trump's leading candidate to become chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and could be announced as the nominee as soon as Wednesday.
Here’s a chart your broker won’t show you.
The entire move in the S&P 500 since the November 8 election has been driven by the move in the $USD/Yen pair. As you can see, these two items (USD/YEN and S&P 500) are essentially the same trade.
“So what, who cares?”, you might be asking.
Everyone should care, because this trend is ending.
The USD/Yen currency pair is now at MASSIVE resistance. The odds of this trend continuing are now less than 20%.
Which means… this move will be reversing, and stocks will be dropping, HARD.