Europe

• Oil slips toward $30, traders bet on more falls (Reuters)
• Oil Plunge Sparks Bankruptcy Concerns (WSJ)
• RBS cries 'sell everything' as deflationary crisis nears (Telegraph)
• World stocks drop but Europe shrugs off oil slide, China money market surge (Reuters)
• Canadian Stocks Fall in Longest Slump Since 2002 as Oil Slides (BBG)
• State of Union Speech to Note Work Yet to Be Done (WSJ)
• "Murderous" Yuan Rate Jolts Hong Kong as Top Currency Hub (BBG)
• Putin Says Sheltering Assad Would Be Easier Than Snowden Asylum (BBG)

As reported last night, now that the PBOC has devalued the Yuan to a level China's central bank is comfortable with, if only for the time being,and having done so by unleashing a "murderous" short squeeze "to deter bearish bets and helping to stabilize equity markets", manifesting itself in the offshore Yuan 1 week deposit rate exploding to a record 82%...

Submitted by Pater Tenebrarum via Acting-Man.com,

Portugal’s Rickety Banking System

After the unseemly bankruptcy of the Espirito Santo Group and the associated bank, then Portugal’s second biggest (likely a result of not praying enough, see: “Big Portuguese Bank Gets Into Trouble” and “Fears Over Banco Espirito Santo Escalate” for the gory details), Portugal’s state-run deposit insurance fund basically ran out of money.

In an interview in Germany’s Bild am Sonntag, the country’s Development Minister, Gerd Müller, says:

The people fleeing hunger, misery, violence, and because they see no future for themselves and their families. But we live in a globalized world. We can not build fences around Germany and Europe. When people suffer, they will come. … The biggest refugee movements are ahead: Africa’s population will double in the coming decades.

Und:

Over the last several days, more information has come to light with regard to the wave of sexual assaults that occurred across Europe on New Year’s Eve.

What some observers initially assumed was an set of isolated attacks in Cologne’s city center now appears to have been a bloc-wide phenomenon as women from Austria, to Switzerland, to Finland come forward to report being accosted by what some police say were gangs of drunken Mid-East asylum seekers.