presidential election

With China celebrating the Lunar New Year and offline until next weekend, and with the US in the usual post-payrolls macro newsflow lull, the markets will have more than enough time to stew in the latest source of contagion fears, namely Europe, the same Europe which until recently was fixed but is broken all over again. The highlight of the week will be Janet Yellen's semi-annual testimony to Congress where she is expected to confirm she is trapped: either push the market even lower by sounding hawkish, or admit the US is on the verge of a recession and admit policy error.

The biggest event of the weekend, if not the month, was China's FX reserve outflow update, which at $100BN was slightly better than the $120BN expected (it pushed China's reserves to the lowest in nearly 4 years) but it was in the "no man's land" between the BofA best case scenario ($37.5BN), and the GS worst case ($197BN).

According to Morgan Stanley's European equity strategist, Graham Secker, we may have just hit peak bearishness. However, does that mean that a rebound in risk sentiment is imminent, or is this just the beginning of a multi-decade mean reversion, one that will seek to unwind years of central bank intervention, and push risk assets to their ex-central bank prop fair values?

We don't the answer just yet, although it seems unlikely that after one humiliating episode in recent months for the ECB, Fed and BOJ, each, they will simply pack up and go.

By Chris at www.CapitalistExploits.at

Note: The following is a parody. Characters are fictional (some, at least) and any similarities that may exist with people real or imagined are purely coincidental. Really!

December 10, 2015, around 2 AM

Submitted by Llewellyn Rockwell via The Mises Institute,

The very first votes of the 2016 presidential election season were cast this week in the Iowa caucuses. This is supposed to fill us with happy thoughts about self-government, civic virtue, rational deliberation, and about politics as the way the people’s will is put into effect.