European Union

Over the past several months we've frequently noted the devolving relationship between Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and billionaire financier George Soros.  Tensions escalated last month when Orban took it upon himself to mail a Soros-related questionnaire to all 8 million Hungarian voters (see: Hungary Launches Anti-Soros Political Campaign) and then followed that up with an announcement that Hungary's intelligence services had been instructed to "map" Soros' network of influence.

US index futures are unchanged, having recovered virtually all overnight session losses alongside the EURUSD following Merkel's failure to form a government, while European shares rise despite Angela Merkel's failure to form a new government. In the span of just hours, the goalseeked "hot take" consensus was that Germany’s collapsed coalition talks aren’t expected be a deal breaker for European equities due to the "strength of the German economy."

Russia-gate blame-scaping is accelerating across Europe... and now it is being embraced by none other than European Council President Donald Tusk.

In what is an unprecedented attack by an EU leader on a member state’s sitting government, Bloomberg reports that Tusk explicitly suggests the ruling Law & Justice party is merely a 'puppet of Putin' and just forwarding Russian interests...

Submitted by GoldCore

It is the 'opinion of the European Central Bank' that the deposit protection scheme is no longer necessary:

'covered deposits and claims under investor compensation schemes should be replaced by limited discretionary exemptions to be granted by the competent authority in order to retain a degree of flexibility.'

Yesterday's torrid, broad-based rally looked set to continue overnight until early in the Japanese session, when the USD tumbled and dragged down with it the USDJPY, Nikkei, and US futures following a WSJ report that Robert Mueller had issued a subpoena to more than a dozen top Trump administration officials in mid October.