European Union

Following the humiliation of losing the House of Commons vote on Friday, in which MP’s took the final say on the Brexit deal from the executive, UK Prime Minister was in Brussels as EU leaders gave approval for Brexit talks to move to phase 2. At a dinner last night, she was applauded by leaders of the other 27 EU nations after giving a speech. This morning, the European Council approved the recommendation from the European Commission that talks should proceed to the next phase. Donald Tusk, President of the European Council, tweeted the news.

In the run-up to the recent agreement on phase I of Brexit, there was mixed news on the extent to which jobs in the City of London would be relocated to other European hubs, primarily Frankfurt. On one hand, we discussed the meeting between US Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross, and executives of JPM, Goldman, HSBC and other banks at Wilton’s restaurant during his trip to London in early November. The banks warned that they were close to a “point of no return” on moving jobs.

Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

In a move almost destined to prove that laws and policies have absolutely zero meaning, the European Union released a list of “tax havens” last week… with a massive, giant, highly conspicuous omission.

The blacklist contains the names of the usual suspects– Panama, United Arab Emirates, etc., along with a few additions like Mongolia and Marshall Islands.

Prime Minister Theresa May suffered a humiliating defeat for her key Brexit law on Wednesday after pro-European members of her own party openly defied her orders in a vote in Parliament. The vote in the UK Parliament was described as being “knife-edge” with the BBC’s chief political correspondent, Norman Smith, called it a “Big Bananas moment” for May. In the end, May lost by a narrow margin, with 309 voting for and 305 against, and as a result, UK members of parliament - not Theresa May and her Cabinet - will have the final say on Brexit.

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.