Europe

Submitted by Robert Gore via StraightLineLogic.com,

The pathetic attempts to undo Donald Trump’s victory are signs of desperation, not strength, in the Deep State.

Submitted by Eric Zuesse via Strategic-Culture.org,

California alone accounted for all of Hillary’s popular-vote win, plus 1,405,004 votes

America’s Electoral College - the publicly elected representatives who select the U.S. President - voted on Monday, December 19th, and chose Donald Trump as America’s next President, though Hillary Clinton had won nearly three million more of the nation’s popular votes on November 8th than he did.

So far, so expected. After earlier announcing the failure to attract any anchor investors for a private capital raise, Monte Paschi has announced that it will officially ask the Italian government for a "precuationary capital increase" - in other words a bailout. The funds will come from the newly decreed EUR20 billion bailout fund, and as Bloomberg reports will not trigger a "bail-in."

This is the third bailout in three years and reportedly the biggest nationalization in Italian history.

In what, for the past seven years, has been an upside-down investing world where the opposite of what financial and economic theory - and certainly consensus - suggests should happens with centrally-planned regularity, what better trading recommendation list than one focusing on the "Costanza Trades" for the year ahead.

Conveniently, that's what RBC's Mark Orsley has put together, so for those who know what the right trade is, and need just that little bit of confidence push to do the opposite, here it is...

2017 Costanza Trades

The market was waiting for the DOJ to announce the long-awaited settlement with Deutsche Bank today. Instead, it got news of a surprise lawsuit filed by the DOJ which sued Barclays after failing to settle a long-running probe into the UK bank's involvement in pre-crisis mortgage fraud. Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse are in settlement negotiations with the DOJ over similar claims.