United States

Covering numerous topics, from foreign politics to the Russian budget, the price of oil, sports doping allegations as well as the US election during his annual end-of-year news conference, Russian president Vladimir Putin slammed the US Democratic party saying "the party that is called the Democrats has clearly forgotten the original meaning of that name" and added that "the use of administrative resources (by the Democrats) is absolutely shameless."

European stocks halted two days of declines, with the Stoxx 600 fractionally in the green and Italy’s bonds climbing after Monte Paschi requested a bailout and Italy pledged to provide support for its other ailing lenders. S&P futures were little changed among extremely thin volumes while Chinese stocks dropped amid concerns on higher borrowing costs. Oil slid, while gold advanced; bitcoin soared to multi-year highs, rising above $900.

Shortly after last night's news that Deutsche Bank had settled with the DOJ for $7.2 billion, of which it would pay $3.1 billion in a civil penalty, far lower than the $14 billion number initially speculated (the stock popped as much as 4% before settling just over 2% higher currently), Credit Suisse likewise closed the books on its pre-crisis RMBS fraud when the largest Swiss bank agreed to pay $5.28 billion to resolve a U.S. investigation into its business in mortgage-backed securities.

Via GEFIRA,

In 1992, at the end of the Cold War, an American political scientist infamously proclaimed "the end of history:" liberal democracy and the capitalist system has won, the rest of the world will eventually embrace western ideas as superior to theirs because only they are able to provide peace and prosperity.

Submitted by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,