Europe

After an early slide last night following the stunning news that Doug Jones had defeated Republican Roy Moore in the Alabama special election, becoming the first Democratic senator from Alabama in a quarter century and reducing the GOP's Senate majority to the absolute minimum 51-49, US equity futures have quickly rebounded and are once again in the green with the S&P index set for another record high, as European stocks ease slightly, and Asian stocks gain ahead of today's Fed rate hike and US CPI print.

The Guardian reports that EU could scrap a divisive scheme that compels member states to accept quotas of refugees, one of the bloc’s most senior leaders will say this week.

The president of the European council, Donald Tusk, will tell EU leaders at a summit on Thursday that mandatory quotas have been divisive and ineffective, in a clear sign that he is ready to abandon the policy that has created bitter splits across the continent.

Authored by Mark Jeftovic via Medium.com,

To me and many others, bitcoin is not a technical revolution as much as it is a triumph of political and economic incentives.

-Two Bit Idiot

 

Authored by Christoph Gisiger via Finanz und Wirtschaft,

James Grant, Wall Street expert and editor of the renowned investment newsletter «Grant’s Interest Rate Observer», warns of the unseen consequences of super low interest rate and questions the extraordinary actions of the Swiss National Bank.

Nearly ten years after the financial crisis, extraordinary monetary policy has become the norm.

 

First it was the Chinese, now it’s the Europeans, as the rest of the world is suddenly very unhappy with the prospect of US tax reform (or maybe it is an unexpectedly strong US economy). As we discussed yesterday, with the historic Trump tax reforms on the verge of passage and the Fed’s dot plot signalling another 7-8 rate hikes (soon to be revised much lower), China is nervous that the capital outflows, which it thought it had bottled up, might be about to return.