Business

Authored by Tom Luongo,

The first rule of politics is feather your own nest.  President Trump’s tax cut proposal always had this in mind.

Congress has passed a bill which tinkers at the edges but leaves most of Trump’s core proposal intact.  It’s obvious to me that Trump has the political acumen of another brilliant U.S. politician, the loathsome Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Yeah, I’m not a fan of FDR.  But I do respect his political skill in the same way I respect the way sharks hunt their prey.

To the delight of Donald Trump, just before 2am on Saturday morning the Senate passed the Republican Tax bill in a 51-49 vote, and with tax reform legislation now passing both chambers of Congress it looks very likely to become law by year-end, probably within the next two weeks according to Goldman Sachs which now ascribes a 90% probability of the legislation becomes law by year end.

Just after 430pm ET we showed that bitcoin, and the entire crypto space, tumbled, with Bitcoin plunging from session highs just under $12,000 to a low of $10,600 on what appeared at first sight to be no news.

However, in retrospect this appears to not have been the case, and as the Telegraph reported just around the time of the big drop, UK "ministers are launching a crackdown on the virtual currency Bitcoin amid growing concern it is being used to launder money and dodge tax."

Just hours after Neil Chriss announced that his $2.2 billion Hutchin Hill hedge fund is shuttering due to underperformance and admitted that "we fought hard, but did not deliver the performance that you expected from us", another legendary hedge fund announced it was undergoing a significant restructuring as a result of relentless investor withdrawals: citing a November 30 letter, Bloomberg reported that Paul Tudor Jones' Tudor Investment Corp, which lost 1.6% YTD,  was closing its Discretionary Macro fund "and letting investors shift assets to the main BVI fund as of Jan.

A deal that was months in the making is finally official, with Aetna's board of directors approving on Sunday the health insurer’s sale to drugstore chain operator CVS Health Corp for approximately $207 per share in cash and stock, in a deal worth $67 billion, multiple news sources reported on Sunday afternoon. The purchase price represents a premium of 29% to where Aetna shares were trading before the WSJ first reported that the two companies were in talks in October.