United States

After last week's payrolls report, the year is starting to wind down for economic events and capital markets, but not before one last hurrah for central banks: indeed, it is a very busy week dominated by central bank meetings for the FOMC, ECB, BOE, SNB and Norges Bank. We will also observe the controversial Alabama Senate elections and the EU Council summit on the state of Brexit negotiations. Data-wise, the most important economic update will be Wednesday's US CPI print, as well as industrial production releases in a number of countries including the US and China.

U.S. equity index futures pointed to early gains and fresh record highs, following Asian markets higher, as European shares were mixed and oil was little changed, although it is unclear if anyone noticed with bitcoin stealing the spotlight, after futures of the cryptocurrency began trading on Cboe Global Markets.

The gradual acceptance of digital currencies, with major exchanges about to launch bitcoin futures trading, may prompt some oil producing nations to ditch the US dollar in crude trade in favor of cryptocurrencies, an oil analyst says.

As RT reports, Russia, Iran and Venezuela have more than one thing in common.

All three are major oil producing nations dependent on the dollar since the global crude market is traditionally dominated by contracts denominated in US currency.

 

Authored by Tom Luongo,

For months I’ve been telling you that the framework for a Middle East Peace Plan is in process.

Donald Trump dropped a nuclear bomb on the world the other day by announcing the U.S. would recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, ending more than 50 years of virtue-signaling over what is, in fact, fact.

And right after that announcement Trump told the Saudi Arabians to end the blockade against Yemen.  And in less then a day Israelis went from cheering Trump’s name to being confused.

Authored by Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept,

Friday was one of the most embarrassing days for the U.S. media in quite a long time. The humiliation orgy was kicked off by CNN, with MSNBC and CBS close behind, with countless pundits, commentators and operatives joining the party throughout the day. By the end of the day, it was clear that several of the nation’s largest and most influential news outlets had spread an explosive but completely false news story to millions of people, while refusing to provide any explanation of how it happened.