While we await the government's retail sales data on December 11, the last official economic report the Fed will see before its December 16 FOMC decision, Bank of America has been kind enough to provide its own full-month credit card spending data.
Submitted by Jeffrey Snider via Alhambra Investment Partners,
Now that Kinder Morgan has come out with a massive dividend cut, I think it will get harder to ignore that this isn’t just about crude oil prices and the death of “transitory.” There is a financial element here that is perhaps even more important.
The pipeline system already does what people are saying "Keystone XL" set out to do: move tar sands down to Gulf refineries and the Houston Ship Channel. So TransCanada, oil traders, hedge fund tycoons, refiners and all the other gamblers in this casino we call the oil and gas industry have already largely won this fight, even as activists have declared what Obama nixed to be a major victory.
ISIS controls Iraqi oil fields near Mosul. They have been making millions of dollars each day by selling oil from these fields. How does ISIS get the oil from the fields in Mosul to the market?
By deserting America, Pfizer relinquishes its right to influence American politics. If Pfizer or any other American corporation wants to leave America to avoid U.S. taxes, that's their business. But they should no longer get any of the benefits of American citizenship -- because they've stopped paying for them.