United States

In our initial take on the Washington Post's story about the "secret" CIA assessment that Russia helped Trump win the election (since contested by the FBI), we said that this may amount to nothing short of a "soft coup" attempt by leaders in the US Intel community and the Obama administration, and warned to expect of a push by prominent democrats to pressure the electoral college to "take into consideration" these findings next Monday, on December 19, when the formal vote for president is set to take place.

This is how we summarized the newly-formed narrative:

With oil prices surging to 17-month highs following this weekend's OPEC-NOPEC deal and Saudi promises to cut still more, many Wall Street analysts are skpetical with Goldman Sachs warning that the Saudis are wrong to think U.S. shale production won’t respond to higher prices. However, Nomura and Bernstein see little threat to OPEC from rising U.S. shale production in 2017.

Prices spiked...

Top Experts Dismiss Reported Claim That Russia Influenced the US Election

Presstitutes such as the New York Times and Reuters continue to hype an alleged CIA finding that Russians hacked Hillary’s emails and used them to influence the election outcome. As a number of experts have noted, there is no evidence whatsoever for the claim, which is in the category of fake news.

Julian Assange at Wikileaks, which released the leaked, not hacked, documents, denies that the Russians were involved.

The US government’s claim of killing thousands of terrorists in the fight against ISIS is the “stuff of fairy tales” and far removed from reality, according to former American diplomat, J. Michael Springmann. Springmann, who had been a high-ranking US diplomat in Saudi Arabia, made his remarks after a senior American military official said that the US-led coalition conducting airstrikes in Iraq and Syria had killed terrorists in the two countries since 2014.

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• 10-Year Treasury Yield Above 2.5% for First Time in Two Years (WSJ)
• The New Reality of TV: All Trump, All the Time (NYT)
• Fed May Struggle to Signal What Comes After December (WSJ)
• China warns Trump against ignoring its Taiwan interests (Reuters)
• China’s Stocks, Bonds, Yuan Slump in Unison on Liquidity Concern (BBG)
• Sovereign funds pulled cash from world markets for third year running (Reuters)
• Trump Adds To Criticism Of Companies (WSJ)