Business

To some it is the independent and impartial Swiss National Bank; to others it is the world's biggest hedge fund with $584 billion in assets or about the same as the Swiss GDP, whose former chief suddenly resigned in 2012 following a family FX trading scandal.

Whatever it is, the SNB had an abysmal year: first and foremost it was its terrible bet on maintaining a EURCHF floor which imploded almost exactly a year ago, when the bank was forced to scrap its attempts to keep the Swiss Franc weak, in the process suffering tens of billions in losses.

Friday, well dressed men in suits and ties set up an encampment at a city owned park in Houston and said they weren't going to leave until the CFTC stops its "tyranny."

It just got weirder from there.

On Friday, the PBoC said it would seek to keep the yuan’s exchange rate “basically stable” at reasonable and equilibrium levels and work to further promote RMB internationalization.

As we noted earlier today, the more China moves to “liberalize” exchange rates and financial markets, the worse things will be for global risk assets. After all, when something that has been perpetually manipulated is suddenly subjected to a semi-honest price discovery process, the “adjustment” is usually violent. China is a case in point.

Just over two hours ago, following the latest disappointing wholesale sales and trade, using the Atlanta Fed's GDP methodology, we calculated just where the regional Fed would trim its famous "nowcast" estimate to:

Atlanta Fed to revise Q4 GDP to ~0.8% shortly

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) January 8, 2016

Moments ago, that's precisely what the Atlanta Fed's revised Q4 GDP estimate was lowered to. To wit:

By EconMatters

   Collusion on Wall Street