United States

A new ‘anti-Russian propaganda’ bill is to be signed into law which will make it illegal to run an alternative media website in the United States.  Under the guise of combatting “Russian propaganda,” the House of Representatives passed the H.R.6393 bill, also known as ‘Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017‘. The bill is an attempt to counteract “measures by Russia to exert covert influence” in America. Worryingly, the definition of what constitutes “Russian influence” includes references to so-called ‘fake news’ websites and any site deemed anti-establishment.

Submitted by Nick Cunningham via OilPrice.com,

If anyone is cheering the news of an OPEC deal it is U.S. shale producers. The OPEC agreement sent oil prices shooting up this week, with WTI and Brent quickly surging above $50 per barrel.

In years to come markets may well look back at the month just passed as one of the most pivotal in recent memory, at least that's the assessment of DB's Jim Reid. The US election result just over 3 weeks ago sparked a huge divergence across asset classes and also between developed and emerging markets. In fact you could probably start this performance review from November 8th as assets were generally little changed in the first week and a bit leading into the election.

Trump’s Appointments

Paul Craig Roberts

What do they mean?

The final November fund flow numbers are in, and as BofA's Michael Hartnett puts it, November, it was a "watershed" month for fund flows with the largest 5-week
bond outflows in three and a half years at $10 billion...

... the largest 3-week precious metals outflows
in 3.5 years...

... and the largest 5-week equity inflows since October 2013 at $34.5 billion.