United States

FBI Director James Comey has confirmed to President-elect Donald Trump that Russia did not influence the outcome of the U.S. presidential election.  In a telephone conversation between Trump and Comey, the FBI Director said there was no credible evidence that Russia hacked DNC emails of John Podesta. Comey also revealed that James Clapper, director of National Intelligence, agreed with his conclusion. Edwardklein.com reports: The only member of the U.S.

One month ago, when we last looked at the Fed's update of Treasuries held in custody, we noted something troubling: the number had continued to drop sharply, declining by another $14 billion in one week, and pushing the total amount of custodial paper to $2.788 trillion, the lowest since 2012.

In an unexpected reversal, President Obama declined to sign a renewal of existing sanctions against Iran but let it become law anyway, in an apparent bid to alleviate Tehran’s concerns that the U.S. is backsliding on the nuclear agreement. The White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Obama had decided to let it become law without his signature. Press TV reports: The US Senate passed a 10-year extension of the Iran Sanctions Act (ISA) on December 1, sending the measure to the White House for Obama to sign into law.

Throughout the campaigning cycle, Trump sent a very clear message to businesses looking to move manufacturing operations offshore by repeatedly saying that subsequent imports would be hit with a massive 35% tariff.  Here is a December 4th tweet storm from the President-elect on the topic:

The U.S. is going to substantialy reduce taxes and regulations on businesses, but any business that leaves our country for another country,

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 4, 2016

The U.S. Department of Education has just released it's latest ranking of international education systems (Program for International Student Assessment - "PISA") and performance of U.S. students just continues to deteriorate on both absolute and relative terms.