In what may be the biggest news of the day, and certainly with far greater implications than whatever Mario Draghi will announce in a few hours when we will again witness the ECB doing not "whatever it takes" but "whatever it can do", moments ago Reuters reported that China is preparing for an unprecedented overhaul in how it treats it trillions in non-performing loans.
The Democratic Party fight between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders—one likely to extend through the very last primaries if not all the way to the convention—might be compared to the contest between Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford in 1976. A beloved movement figure is taking on an exhausted yet entrenched establishment, running much better than anyone expected. But like Reagan, even in defeat, Sanders clearly represents the future of the party.
The European Central Bank promised in January to "review and reconsider" its monetary stance this week. The question, as BloombergBriefs notes, is not if policy makers will ease but how. Haruhiko Kuroda's humbling in FX markets shows what Mario Draghi is up against tomorrow: namely, that even the most forceful policy decisions can be overwhelmed by events, positioning, or sentiment.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered the deployment of all of Russia’s RS-26 intercontinental ballistic missile systems, ahead of what the Russian Ministry of Defence say is an “impending” attack of the U.S. and Europe by ISIS militants. The RS-26 missiles are considered Russia’s “doomsday weapon”, packing in 1.2 megatons into its four 300 kiloton warheads. They are capable of hitting targets throughout the U.S. with their 11,000 kilometer range.
Liquidity worries are so 2015.
In the new year, there are much more pressing concerns.
Like a possibly imminent, overnight yuan float, which would quite simply torpedo every risk asset on the planet even as it would probably be just the thing Beijing’s economy needs to secure long-term stability.