Business

• China trade surprise brings relief (Reuters)
• Obama knocks Trump, voices optimism (Reuters)
• Republican Candidates Criticize Obama’s State of the Union Address (WSJ)
• Republicans and Democrats Agree: We Hate Wall Street (WSJ)
• Oil rises for first time in eight sessions on China, U.S. stocks draw (Reuters)
• U.S. Exports First Freely Traded Oil in 40 Years (WSJ)
• China Imports Record Crude as Price Crash Accelerates Buying (BBG)
• Can We Fix American Cities by Tearing Them Down? (BBG)

Last April, the financial markets cheered the biggest restructuring in GE's history when the oligopoly announced the dramatic shrinkage of GE Capital but more importantly, GE  announced the largest, at the time, stock buyback in history, repurchasing some $50B in shares. 

After several of weeks of sharp currency devaluation, the market was carefully watching last night's China trade data to see if the Yuan debasement had led to a positive trade outcome to the world's second biggest economy, and as reported last night, it was not disappointed when China reported a December trade surplus of $60.09 billion from $54.1 billion in November, as a result of exports rising (2.3%), the first increase since June, while imports declined by just 4%, the lowest since 2014 despite China importing a record amount of oil, or 33.2 million tons, ostensibly to take advantage of

Hold your real assets outside of the banking system in a private international facility  -->  https://www.321gold.com/info/053015_sprott.html 

Gold Undervalued Due To Massive Stock Dilution & Debt

Posted with permission and written by Steve St. Angelo, SRSrocco Report (CLICK FOR ORIGINAL)

Submitted by William Engdahl via New Eastern Outlook,

Russia has just taken significant steps that will break the present Wall Street oil price monopoly, at least for a huge part of the world oil market. The move is part of a longer-term strategy of decoupling Russia’s economy and especially its very significant export of oil, from the US dollar, today the Achilles Heel of the Russian economy.