presidential elections

The farce is complete.

Former CIA shill, Phil Mudd, took to CNN yesterday in an attempt to both smear Wikileaks' Julian Assange and also help change the narrative regarding alleged, muh, Russian hacks on the U.S. Presidential elections.

Notice how the rhetoric has shifted from Putin himself directing the hacks to a third party being directed by the Russians? Also, he called Assange a pedophile, the very thing John Podesta's emails caused many to believe in an underground child trafficking ring called 'Pizzagate.'

Source: Zerohedge

With 2016 still fresh in most investors' minds, and questions about 2017 pressing, here is a summary, courtesy of Goldman's Allison Nathan, of where Goldman believes we closed out 2016, what is in store in the coming year, and ultimately, "what keeps Goldman up at night" about 2017.

2016, and a peek at 2017

Submitted by Daniel Greenfield via FrontPageMag.com,

It was the end of the big year with three zeroes. The first X-Men movie had broken box office records. You couldn’t set foot in a supermarket without listening to Brittney Spears caterwauling, “Oops, I Did It Again.” And Republicans and Democrats had total control of both chambers of legislatures in the same amount of states. That was the way it was back in the distant days of the year 2000.

In 2016, Republicans control both legislative chambers in 32 states. That’s up from 16 in 2000.

To Russia with hate.

While Putin took the "high road" and refused to retaliate tit-for-tat to last week's decision by the Obama administration to impose sanctions on the Kremlin, for dozens of Russian diplomats stationed in the US the first day of the new year meant taking what is likely a last, one way flight out of the US in direction Moscow, simply because it was Russia's duty to be the scapegoat for Hillary Clinton's loss in the presidential elections after Vladimir Putin himself, according to the narrative, "hacked the US elections."