Europe

European stocks halted two days of declines, with the Stoxx 600 fractionally in the green and Italy’s bonds climbing after Monte Paschi requested a bailout and Italy pledged to provide support for its other ailing lenders. S&P futures were little changed among extremely thin volumes while Chinese stocks dropped amid concerns on higher borrowing costs. Oil slid, while gold advanced; bitcoin soared to multi-year highs, rising above $900.

Via GEFIRA,

In 1992, at the end of the Cold War, an American political scientist infamously proclaimed "the end of history:" liberal democracy and the capitalist system has won, the rest of the world will eventually embrace western ideas as superior to theirs because only they are able to provide peace and prosperity.

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.