United States

Corporate tax reform has been a key policy initiative of Trump's as he has called for slashing the corporate tax rate from 35% down to 15%.  While this is welcome news for most companies, it would result in some fairly staggering writedowns for Wall Street's largest banks that amassed substantial net operating losses in 2008 and 2009.

According to Bloomberg, Citibank would be hardest hit with writedowns that could hit earnings for up to $12 billion or more. 

Submitted by Federico Pieraccini via Strategic-Culture.org,

Looking at US history over a fairly long period of time, it is easy to see the destructive path that has accompanied the expansion of the American empire over the last seventy years.

In the first major political accomplishment by Donald Trump, yesterday the Trump team announced that he had reached a deal with Carrier to keep its air conditioning plant in Indiana, and prevent an outsourcing of some 1000 jobs to Mexico. Understandably, Trump wasted no time to deliver the good news to his Twitter followers.

I will be going to Indiana on Thursday to make a major announcement concerning Carrier A.C. staying in Indianapolis. Great deal for workers!

European, Asian stocks rise as do S&P futures as OPEC ministers gathering in Vienna appeared to be set to announce a deal to cut oil production and prop up global prices. Oil has surged over 7% as a result, also pushing US TSY yields and the dollar higher.

With all eyes on Vienna, where optimism OPEC ministers will salvage a deal to cut production, oil has soared by over 6% reverberating through the financial markets, spurring oil’s biggest gain in two weeks and sending stocks of energy producers and currencies of commodity-exporting nations higher.

Submitted by Brian Cloughley via Strategic-Culture.org,

In the military a rearguard action is defined as ‘a defensive action carried out by a retreating army’ and it is an appropriate description of the desperate scrabbling by NATO to convince the rest of the world — and especially Donald Trump — that its existence is justified.