Politics

The driving catalyst behind the furious market rally since the presidential election has been the market's hope that Trump will unleash a "huge", still undetermined, debt-funded financial stimulus package, which will grease the volatile handover from monetary to fiscal policy, boosting inflation and rerating risk assets higher. Indeed, the market was so transfixed by this hope, that it has so far ignored all warning signs, duly noted previously on this website.

When the WaPo posted last Friday's story about a "secret" CIA assessment that Russian cyber attacks were aimed at helping Republican President-elect Donald Trump win the 2016 election, the readers of the Bezos-owned publication took it as gospel, despite, as we promptly noted, there being no evidence provided by the CIA, and as we learned today, the FBI openly resisting the CIA's assessment. It now appears that once again the WaPo may have been engaging in "partial fake news", as it did with its Nov. 24 story about "Russian propaganda fake media."

Via DaisyLuther.com,

Enough with “the Russians” already. This “Russian Disinformation” and “Russian Hacking” stuff is getting more ridiculous by the day.

After days of speculation and strawmen, and following Mitt Romney's statement earlier, AP is reporting that President-elect Donald Trump has selected Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson to lead the State Department, according to two people close to Trump's transition team.

The decision caps a lengthy process that often played out In public and exposed rifts within Trump's transition team. But Tillerson's close ties to Russia could still complicate his Senate confirmation hearings.

 

Hillary Clinton’s carefully concocted plan to accuse Russian hackers of helping Donald Trump win the election was openly hinted at during the third and final debate.  The video below shows Hillary pivoting away from a question about domestic immigration to raise the unexpected issue of Russian President Vladimir Putin “hacking the Democrats’ emails” in an attempt to “influence the outcome of the U.S. election”. Was she laying down the foundation for the fake news scandal that currently plagues the mainstream media?