United States

Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

On December 3rd, a month before Saudi Arabia carried out it largest mass execution since 1980 — subsequently setting the region on fire — Arjun Sethi wrote an article for Al-Jazeera titled: Saudi Arabia Uses Terrorism As An Excuse for Human Rights Abuses. According to Cora Currier at the Intercept:

Al Jazeera’s headquarters in Qatar appear to have blocked the article outside of the United States because it is critical of an ally of Qatar.

It was less than two months ago when we brought to you the "Macy's Massacre": on November 11, the stock of the iconic retailer crashed 13% and its CDS soared after Macy's announced a trifecta of weak data, reporting a miss on Q3 sales which came at $5.87 billion below the $6.1 billion expected, down from the $6.2 billion, as well as a plunge in comparable store sales which tumbled by 3.9%, far worse than the expected drop of -0.4%, and nearly three times as bad as the 1.4% drop a year ago.

Overnight, we got two notable headlines out of the Far East.

First, the yuan devaluation continued unabated with the RMB falling to five-year lows and the spread between the onshore and offshore spots blowing out to record wides.

Second, Kim Jong-Un detonated an H-bomb. Or so Pyongyang says.

On the first trading day of the year, stocks crashed after China shocked the world with a circuit-breaking market slide that was not contained by the government. On the second trading day, after the Chinese government intervened drastically, global equities stabilized if just barely.

Standard & Poor’s slashed the credit ratings of 112 corporations around the globe to default (D) or selective default (SD) in 2015, according to S&P Capital IQ Global Credit. The highest number of global defaults since nightmare-year 2009, when a previously unthinkable 268 companies defaulted, and not far behind the second highest default tally of 125, in 2008.