France

Authored by Finian Cunningham via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

Fighting terrorism is now morphing into clamping down on human migration, as far as the European Union is concerned.

France’s President Emmanuel Macron is leading the charge, claiming at a conference in Paris last week that terrorism and human trafficking are part of the same problem, requiring the deployment of a military force spread across Africa.

The melding of the two concepts provokes serious legal and moral questions.

Spanish stocks and the euro fell, while Spanish government bond yields hit their highest levels in over a month after Catalan secessionists delivered an unexpected blow to the government of Spanish PM Rajoy by winning the Catalan regional election. Meanwhile across the Atlantic, U.S. equity futures and the dollar rose on the last trading session before the Christmas holiday. The MSCI index of world stocks was flat.

Apparently, the chartered flights scandal that enmeshed four Trump cabinet secretaries - eventually leading to the resignation of Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price - has spread to Paris.

Yesterday we joked that with the US House of Representatives set to vote for the GOP tax bill on Tuesday, markets would "price in" the same tax legislation they have been pricing in every day for the past year, all over again...

Get ready for US markets to price in tax reform all over again in just a few short hours

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) December 19, 2017

One day after the Fed hiked rates by 25 bps as part of Janet Yellen's final news conference, it is central bank bonanza day, with rate decisions coming from the rest of the world's most important central banks, including the ECB, BOE, SNB, Norges Bank, HKMA, Turkey and others.