United States

The key economic releases this week are ISM non-manufacturing on Monday and University of Michigan consumer sentiment index on Friday. There are a few scheduled speaking engagements from Fed officials this week.

Away from the US economic calendar, initially focus will be on the Italian referendum result, which already appears to have been largely digested by the market, despite a variety of unknown consequences still to emerge. It will then shift quickly to a critical ECB meeting.

In another sign that conventional diplomatic protocol is changing on a daily basis, on Monday Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said he would visit Hawaii on Dec. 26 and 27 for his final summit meeting with outgoing U.S. President Barack Obama, and to remember the victims of Japan's Pearl Harbor attack 75 years ago.

As Reuters reports, the visit will make Mr Abe the first sitting Japanese prime minister to visit Pearl Harbour since his country’s surprise attack on the Hawaiian port began the Pacific war 75 years ago.

Blink, and you missed the "sell off" from Italy's failed referendum vote.

Submitted by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

“I have in my possession a secret map, made in Germany by Hitler’s government — by the planners of the New World Order,” FDR told the nation in his Navy Day radio address of Oct. 27, 1941.

 

Submitted by Alice Salles via The Mises Institute,

As President-elect Donald Trump met with Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach — a potential pick for head of the Department of Homeland Security — the internet lit up with the leaked contents of their meeting, triggering another round of talks concerning a possible “national registry” of Americans or immigrants who subscribe to Islam.