Germany

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.

Marcello Minenna, a division head at the Italian securities regulator, emailed his plan to "Cure the Eurozone".

Authored by Eric Zuesse via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

Due to a historic data-dump on December 10th, the biggest swindle that occurred in the 20th Century (or perhaps ever) is now proven as a historical fact; and this swindle was done by the US Government, against the Government and people of Russia, and it continues today and keeps getting worse under every US President.

Dow futures are up some 80 points this morning after early on Wednesday morning the Senate passed the Tax Reform bill in a party-line vote, and is now set to become law after a follow-up vote in the House and Trump's signature some time on Wednesday afternoon. The good news is that the biggest political drama of 2017 will then be over. The bad news is that once the bill becomes law, the market will no longer be able to "price it in" every single day as it has for the past year.

Authored by Gail Tverberg via Our Finite World blog,

Economists, including Ben Bernanke, give all kinds of reasons for the Great Depression of the 1930s. But what if the real reason for the Great Depression was an energy crisis?