Europe

Submitted by Bill Blain of Mint Partners

Blain's Morning Porridge - Fed Acts, ECB Smoking - but what?

The Fed acts. Normalisation. Hints of a rate rise in December, confirmation of further “data-dependent” hikes to come next year, and ending the reinvestment of QE income. Exactly as expected – although some say three hikes in 2018 is a bit hostage to the global economy. The effect: Dollar up. Bonds down. Record Stocks. Yellen threw the bond market a crumb when she reminded us low inflation will require a “response.”

One day after the much anticipated Fed announcement in which Yellen unveiled the "Great Unwinding" of a decade of aggressive stimulus, it has been a mostly quiet session as the Fed's intentions had been widely telegraphed (besides the December rate hike which now appears assured), despite a spate of other central bank announcements, most notably out of Japan and Norway, both of which kept policy unchanged as expected.

Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,

North Korea, Iran, Venezuela are targets in "compassionate" America's war on the "wicked few." It's almost as though Washington felt its hegemony threatened...

Paul Delaroche, Napoléon à Fontainebleau, 1840. With other global powers increasingly at odds with US foreign policy under Donald Trump, the nation's hegemony on the world stage may soon face its own crisis point.

Can Putin Stand Up To Washington?

Drake University Emeritus Professor of Economics Ismael Hossein-zadeh explains that the reason Russian President Vladimir Putin so often blinks when Washington confronts him is that the ruling oligarchs in the US and Russia are members of the same financial elite. The more than one hundred Russian billionaires are financially integrated into the West and are able to elevate their interests above Russian national interests.

Authored by 720Global's Michael Lebowitz, via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

“There is no other agency of government which can overrule actions that we take.” 

– Alan Greenspan