European stocks are steady in post-Christmas trading if struggling for traction after a mixed session in Asia, amid trading thinned by a holiday-shortened week and ongoing worries about the tech sector; however a strong rally in commodities - including copper and oil - buoyed expectations for a strong 2018 and helped offset concerns over the technology sector triggered by reports of soft iPhone X demand.
Authored by Douglas Murray via The Gatestone Institute,
Authored by Peter Koenig via The Saker blog,
Via Moon Of Alabama blog,
The promotion of the alleged Russian election hacking in certain media may have grown from the successful attempts of U.S. intelligence services to limit the publication of the NSA files obtained by Edward Snowden.
While the establishment may breathe a sigh of relief looking back at political developments and events in Europe - which was spared some of the supposedly "worst-case scenarios" including a Marine le Pen presidency, a Merkel loss and a Geert Wilders victory - in 2017, any victory laps will have to be indefinitely postponed because as Goldman writes in its "Top of Mind" peek at 2018, Europe's nationalist and populist tide was just resting, and as Pascal Lamy, the former Chief of Staff to the President of the European Commission admitted earlier this year, "Euroskeptic politicians are