China

While the US has been bombarded by the artificial, mainstream media-fabricated concept of "fake news" for the past month, a strawman erected in an attempt to impose creeping limits on free speech and eliminate any outlet that does not comply with the government narrative and is accused of being "Russian propaganda", China does not need to beat around the bush. Instead, it has shortcuts, like newspaper editors unexpectedly "falling" to their death.

Submitted by Michael Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

I have been warning about the increasing likelihood of a serious global trade war for quite some time.

That warning is now my baseline scenario. Unless there is an immediate deescalation of rhetoric and a return to rational thinking, a very destructive global trade war is baked in the cake.

I seek ways that a global trade war does not start, but I come up short.

Yesterday's brief hiccup in what has been an otherwise relentless rally in global risk assets is all but forgotten this morning, as European and Asian stocks, and US equity futures, all rise in quiet trading ahead of tomorrow's FOMC meeting, with the Dow set to make a 16th consecutive post-election all time high.

Submitted by Valentin Katasonov via Strategic-Culture.org,

The financial crisis of 2007-2009 effectively terminated the process of globalization. In 2015 world trade suddenly dropped by more than 10% for the first time since 2009. Nothing like this has been seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s. But some politicians, public figures, scholars, and journalists continue to talk about globalization as an «objective» and «progressive» process, even though it has already ended.

Venezuela’s inflation has officially become the 57th official, verified episode of hyperinflation and been added to the Hanke-Krus World Hyperinflation Table, which is printed in the authoritative Routledge Handbook of Major Events in Economic History (2013). An episode of hyperinflation occurs when the monthly inflation rate exceeds 50 percent for 30 consecutive days. Venezuela's monthly inflation rate first exceeded 50 percent on November 3rd and continues to do so, sitting at 131 percent as of December 11, 2016.