Having traded in a relatively narrow – for bitcoin – range of $16,500-$17,500 over the past week, the world’s most popular cryptocurrency jumped to new all time highs following the latest (unexplained) burst of buying out of Asia, with another Saturday surge in volumes emerging out of Japan and Korea.

Bitcoin is now up over $1,200, or 7%, in the past 24 hours, last trading at a new all time high of $19,000 on the coinbase exchange.

As a result of the latest push higher, the market cap of bitcoin is now over $318 Billion; to fund the bitcoin spree, Ethereum, Litcoin and various other cryptos have seen some modest liquidation, and have not enjoyed Bitcoin’s latest dramatic ascent.

As of Saturday morning, the total crypto space market cap surpassed half a trillion, and was above $560 billion at last check.

Following Saturday’s surge, Bitcoin’s YTD return is approaching 20x, while ethereum remains the best performing major crypto, up more than 70-fold YTD.

Also, for those keeping track, Bitcoin’s market cap is now greater than Bank of America at $302 billion, as well as Wells Fargo ($295BN), Wal-Mart ($288BN), and Visa ($257BN). It is rapidly approaching Exxon at $352BN, but the real target is JPMorgan, whose $368BN market cap is now less than $50BN away.

While bitcoin has added more 30% to its value in the past week, trading has been slightly calmer than the wild price swings the market has seen in recent weeks, with volatility lower since the launch of bitcoin futures from Cboe Global Markets on Sunday. Market-watchers said bitcoin’s price was being lifted by the launch of rival CME Group’s bitcoin futures contracts on Sunday.

“The hope (is) that futures signal the unlocking of institutional money into the digital arena and (that there will be) a rapid demand increase and ratification of the technology and its principles,” said Charles Hayter, founder of industry website Cryptocompare.

Still, outside of the crypto market, worries continue to grow about the amount of money piling into the space with the most vocal critics being those who have so far missed the entire move. Chief among them is A study by Anglia Ruskin University, Trinity College Dublin and Dublin City University released on Friday said bitcoin could pose a threat to the financial stability of traditional currencies and markets, something which Janet Yellen denied earlier this week.

“Our evidence finds that the price of Bitcoin has been artificially inflated by speculative investment, putting it in a bubble,” said Larisa Yarovaya, one of the report’s authors and a lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University. “Although bitcoin is not regulated by governments, it could still have a knock-on effect on traditional markets due to the interconnectedness of cryptocurrency markets with other financial assets.”

Well, of course bitcoin is a bubble: as we first showed last week, it’s now officially the biggest bubble in history, surpassing the “Tulip Mania” of the 17th century:

The problem is that everything else is also a bubble. And as Stanely Druckenmiller said last week, until the “everything bubble” bursts, bitcoin is safe. The problem is that if and when the “everything bubble” does burst, it would most likely result in war as trillions in artificial “wealth effect” are wiped out; in this context what happens to bitcoin would be irrelevant.

Meanwhile, for those who missed it, last week Deutsche Bank laid out who it believes is behind the relentless and dramatic surge in bitcoin:

An 11 December Nikkei report stated that 40% of cryptocurrency trading in Oct-Nov was yen-denominated. Japanese traders have reportedly come to account for nearly half of cryptocurrency trading since China started to shut down cryptocurrency exchanges, and this is said to be widely known among industry insiders (various estimates exist). Japanese men in their 30s and 40s who are engaged in leveraged FX trading (or who used to trade but have stopped) are driving the cryptocurrency market.

So is “Mr. Watanabe’ proving more powerful than all the world’s central and commercial banks, and most of the world’s establishment economists, all soo desperate to shut down the “bitcoin bubble” to preserve faith in fiat currencies and traditional equity investments? Juding by the now daily record highs in the cryptocurrency, the answer – for now – is a resounding yes, which is clearly a benefit for all those who are still long the crypto such as these guy…

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Michelle Tandler@michelletandler

This may be the most San Francisco thing I have ever seen.

Both CME and CBOE Bitcoin Futures contracts opened above $20,000 this evening (with Bitcoin spot hovering around $19,000). However, as soon as trading started, Bitcoin futures got hammered lower.

Those expecting a surge in futs volumes on the CME vs the CBOE will be disappointed:

In fact, spoting actual trades in the first few minutes of trading is not heavy to say the least. Obviously Jan is seeing all the volume…

And March not so much… (let alone the $1200 bid-offer spread)

The lack of trading will likely be a surprise to those who were expecting a more “vigorous” futures launch on the CME, such as Brooks Dudley, vice president of risk in New York at ED&F Man Capital Markets who told Bloomberg that “CME’s bitcoin contract may not be first, but they are a larger futures clearinghouse and we are looking forward to our clients trading their product on Sunday evening. Not all market participants have been able to short the Cboe bitcoin futures. We have allowed our clients to go long or short to take advantage of dislocations between the futures and the underlying spot market.”

For now, nobody appears to be taking advantage of anything.

Incidentally, here is the (declining) Cboe XBT futs volumes in the first week of trading.

Finally, for those who missed it, here is JPM’s take on CME vs Cboe futs:

• With CME Bitcoin futures set to begin trading on 18th December, there will be competition between the two exchanges to attract volumes. Similar to the CBOE contract, the CME futures are cash settled, and after reviewing the initial margin requirement ahead of launch the CME raised it this week from 35% to 47% for speculative accounts, modestly higher than the CBOE’s
  44% initial margin requirement.
• There are some differences in the contracts worth noting, however. The settlement price of the CME futures will be based on a weighted average of prices from several exchanges (including Bitstamp, GDAX, itBit and Kraken), rather than a single exchange. The settlement dates of the CME futures will also extend further ahead to March, June, September and December. These factors, along with the fact that the CME is a larger exchange, could give it an advantage in terms of attracting trading volumes.

A sensational commentary from Stewart Dougherty outlining what may be going on with EFP’s.  I have been extremely puzzled as the sheer volumes of EFP’s issued for gold. It is very plausible that the commercials have also entered into these EFP’s as longs (they will not receive a fiat bonus) and when these are morphed into London forwards, some of the commercial longs and thus some on the short side will cancel each other out.  London is poorly regulated and it would be easy for the banks to hide their manipulation.

When the Republican establishment realized that the initial Trump phenomenon was not a fluke that would soon flame out, Ryan, McConnell and their respective chamber mates did everything in their power to destroy Trump’s campaign, including recruiting Mitt Romney to excoriate Trump personally and professionally. But the smears and attacks did not work, because Trump had tuned into the gathering despair of millions of flyover America voters, and his insight into their pain enabled him to speak to them in a language they hungered for and understood. His words galvanized their anger and their anguish into action. Against all odds and by nothing short of a miracle from God, Trump won.

Now, more than a year later, we are beginning to learn the mountainous heights of corruption scaled by the Deep State elite to rig the 2016 election. Among many other sordid details revealed, we have learned that at the highest levels, the Justice Department and FBI have been corrupted, and turned into crude, partisan, Mafia-style enforcers of the Deep State looting agenda. With rarely seen arrogance and false righteousness, traitors within these organizations decided to subvert the will of the American people, and to swing the election to suit their personal tastes, and bank accounts.

In November, 2016, the American people came within a few thousand votes of being plunged into the crony communist dictatorship the Deep State elitists have planned for us. If Trump had not won, the people would never have found out what is now being revealed to them on an hourly basis about the depths of the Deep State corruption, because all of it would have been shredded and erased, like something out of Orwell’s 1984. The truth about the election, and the numerous related political scandals, such as the real Russian collusion, the Clintons’ treasonous $145 million Uranium One sting against the citizens of the United States, would have been assassinated and buried deep in the D.C. swamp.

The evidence is now incontrovertible that, on an inflation-adjusted basis, the United States has become the most corrupt empire in history. We see this corruption everywhere, not just in presidential politics. We see it in the cooked and crooked government books that totally ignore $21 trillion in accounting fraud, and likely, outright theft; in deliberate government misreporting of inflation, retail sales, employment, and GDP, perpetrated to tell false economic narratives and front-run markets that will react in predictable ways to them; throughout the banking and financial system, where scandals and massive fines are now so routine that no one even notices or pays attention to them anymore; in central bank interest rate rigging, which ripples into every other market, distorting all of them; and in cronyism that has bred the most pervasive wealth inequality in our history, and that is starting to resemble what was seen in ancient monarchies and feudal societies; to mention just a few examples of our corruptive disintegration. This endemic and systemic corruption is suffocating the American economy, not to mention the American dream, or what is left of it.

It is precisely this advanced, systemic corruption that enables the gold price manipulation fraud to continue unabated. If the High Priests of corruption could overtake the United States Justice Department and FBI, which they did, they can also easily control the gold market, which they do. And they do so because the corruption of the gold market is the necessary prerequisite to and enabler of every other form of official American corruption, as we shall later explain.

Which brings us back to the gold EFPs. The important question is: Are the EFPs solely designed to prevent Comex delivery failure? We don’t think so. We think the EFP story is bigger than that.

As we have outlined in recent articles, it is critically important to the Deep State financial elite that the price of gold not “go Bitcoin.” If it does, it would create a buying stampede that would feed on itself, sucking funds out of individual bank deposit accounts. Banks make money by controlling depositors’ money, and precisely nothing from a box of Gold Eagles buried in someone’s back yard. More important to the banks is that individual deposits will be required for future bank bail-ins and capital controls, and cannot be allowed to leave the banks, soon to be monetary prisons, in which they currently reside. As has often been said by those who have experienced them in the past, “there is no fever like gold fever.” This fact is well known to the financial elite, and they are doing everything in their power to prevent gold fever from breaking out.

The way to keep a gold buying stampede from happening is to sharply depress gold’s price, making gold look like a terrible place to put money. Human beings are momentum chasers by nature, which is broadly evident in the current Bitcoin and stock market phenomena. In 2011, gold was in the process of going vertical, just as Bitcoin subsequently has gone, and this represented an emergency for the ruling financial elite. Since then, they have pounded down the price from $1,900 to $1,250 today, during a dreary, relentless campaign now well into its seventh year. In the process, the ruling financial elite has made an unprecedented $1 trillion profit from the manipulation of the gold market, but the full story is more nuanced and complex than the elite’s looting and corruption.

The control of the gold price is a technical and complex process. Some people wonder why, if the manipulators could crush the price from $1,900 to $1,250, they haven’t they kept pushing it down in order to profit even more? Why haven’t they taken it down to, say, $1,000 or $750?

The answer is that the supply does not exist to handle the increased demand that lower prices would create, particularly from sovereign buyers such as Russia and China. These buyers have certain amounts to invest on a regular basis. In September, 2017, for example, Russia purchased 1.1 million troy ounces, or 34.2 metric tons of gold. The average price of gold that month was $1315.39. This means that Russia spent approximately $1.447 billion on gold that month. If gold had been pushed down to, say, $1,000 per ounce, Russia would have been able to purchase 1.447 million ounces of gold for the same amount of money, or 347,000 ounces (31.6%) more gold. China, a huge gold accumulator that is far less transparent about the scale and timing of its sovereign purchases, and whose citizens are buying gold on a massive scale, would also have been able to buy 31.6% more ounces with whatever amount it invested in gold in September, 2017. And so would every other gold buyer that month, including sovereign, industrial and retail purchasers worldwide.

But with supply and demand already in a tenuous balance, where would the extra gold have come from?

The gold price manipulators are therefore required to cap the price not just on the upside, but also on the downside. If the paper price were to go lower than the supply / demand equilibrium price, this would trigger delivery failures that would spread like wildfire as everyone raced to buy disappearing, increasingly non-available gold. Buying stampedes are created by the non-availability of merchandise desired by consumers, because it is human nature that when people are told they cannot have something, their desire for that thing goes exponential.

When the gold price moves too low, the manipulators must go long (buy) paper gold in order to support and stabilize the price. The manipulators are therefore in the predicament of needing to vacillate between going long and going short, as circumstances demand, to keep the price in the allowable range. They must maintain dual long and short positions all, or at least most of the time. And all of the contracts they buy must ultimately settle, one way or another.

The manipulation of the gold price is strategically engineered at the highest levels of the deep state financial elite, and is managed for the elite by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). Instructions from the BIS are then communicated to the western central banks (WCBs), who in turn inform the bullion banks of the specific price ranges they must keep gold within. These price targets change according to financial and economic conditions, and Deep State market manipulation profit (theft) objectives.

The Commitment of Traders (COT) gold report, which is issued by the CFTC based on data provided to them by the Comex, categorizes positions held by “commercials” (the bullion banks), “non-commercials” (generally assumed to be big dollar hedge funds), and “non-reportables” (smaller investors such as gold fabricators, jewelers and coin dealers, who must hedge their positions so as not to be financially hurt by price swings).

People assume that these market participant categorizations are honest and accurate, but we do not. The gold market has been corrupt for decades, and this includes in its reporting. We believe there are many bullion banks (commercials) that also manage shadow “non-commercial” (e.g., hedge fund-like) accounts. Therefore, at any given time, the bullion banks can be both long and short the gold market, via both known commercial accounts, and also unknown, shadow, non-commercial accounts.

If the COT report were honest, there would be a fourth category of market participants: Official Price Manipulators (OPMs), and all official price manipulation activities, long and short, would be reported. We will call such positions OPM Contracts. Of course, official price manipulation cannot be admitted or detailed, because it would expose the gold price for the rigged fraud that it is. Therefore, OPM Contracts currently hide within the shadows of the commercial and non-commercial investor categories.

The role of the bullion banks is to control the price of gold per the instructions of the BIS and WCBs. The bullion banks make enormous profits as a side benefit of being officially authorized gold price controllers, as they have been granted a Bondian License to Steal. But their primary duty is to ensure that the price remains within the ranges set by deep state financial elite and central bank agents. With respect to price manipulation, per se, it is not the intent of the bullion banks to take delivery of gold when their long contracts expire, or to deliver gold when their shorts expire. For them, gold price manipulation is a cash settlement operation.

There are numerous times when the price manipulators must act in a non-profit manner to keep the gold price in line. This occurs when the price comes close to breaching either the minimum or maximum price set by the BIS. It is at these times that the bullion banks must act in behalf of the BIS, not themselves. In other words, when the price is intra-range, the bullion banks can manipulate it for their own profit; but when the price threatens to break out of the range, then their job is to control it, no matter what the cost.

In performing their BIS and WCB gold price control duties, the bullion banks receive a guarantee that any losses they might incur will be fully subsidized. Because their actions come with great exogenous risk. News of such things as war, a major terrorist attack, a bank failure and even election outcomes can result in immediate, substantial moves in the price of gold. For instance, on election night, 2016 and the following day, the price soared and then plunged, as the controllers worked overtime to keep it within the set boundaries, producing massive paper gains and losses during the process. The deal between the BIS and WCBs, and their price manipulation agents, the bullion banks, is that Job One is to keep the price of gold within the set range at any given time.

Imagine a situation where the gold price is going too low, and the manipulators must step in to support it by going long. Imagine, too, that there are no market participants willing to go short at that necessary market intervention moment. Therefore, there is an order imbalance. To fix this problem, the bullion bank manipulators simultaneously go both long and short, to set the price where it needs to be. Keep in mind, these are price manipulation, not money trades. There is no intention on the part of the manipulators to settle them either via cash or physical delivery; these trades are solely made to maintain a particular and phony gold price. Therefore, as these contracts expire, the manipulators need to vaporize them, and make them disappear.

This is what the EFPs do. EFPs are where the OPM Contracts go to die and be buried. The EFP longs offset the corresponding Comex short OPM Contracts (which are also phantom), keeping the Comex accounts in balance.

We acknowledge that in times of delivery stress, the Comex might need to convince legitimate gold longs (in other words, non-Official Price Manipulators) to accept EFPs by offering them a cash bonus for doing so. But this would be in a minority of cases, given that the non-commercial hedge funds are typically momentum trade, cash settlement players, not investors in physical gold. They want cash profits to fund their salaries and bonuses, not gold. Therefore, it is uncommon for them to stand for delivery.

The Comex is owned by the CME, a publicly traded corporation subject to regulation, audits and taxation. If the CME were to actually pay cash bonuses to legitimate longs persuaded to accept EFPs, they would need to report them as a business expense. While they would try to bury these expenses deep in the footnotes of their financial reports, in the event of a lawsuit and legal discovery, the payments would be revealed. This is a legal risk the CME cannot take, because bribing customers to accept EFPs would indicate a de facto delivery failure on their part. If an EFP were no different from a Comex contract, why would the CME need to bribe a customer to accept it? Non-admitted and elaborately disguised delivery failure would be tantamount to fraud, and the payment of bribes to cover up such a delivery failure, in other words, to cover up the fraud would be a prosecutable criminal act.

Therefore, any EFP payments / bribes must be transferred to the LBMA, the over the counter gold market in London, which is opaque and loosely regulated, if regulated at all. Keep in mind, the vast majority of EFPs simply vanish, as they are the concocted method of making OPM Contracts disappear.

As has been pointed out by several gold market experts, it is inconceivable that the LBMA has the ability to deliver the quantity of physical gold represented by the massive number of EFPs created in recent months. But we believe this misses the point. It was never the bullion banks’ intention to demand delivery of the OPM contracts, which are nothing but shadow, price control mechanisms.

This is why, despite the fact that the enormous gold futures trading volume in New York and London would by now almost certainly have produced delivery failures, if they were all legitimate and real, there have not been any reported delivery failures. The only explanation for this is that a large number of these contracts are shadow OPM Contracts whose sole purpose is to control the price of gold, and which are then vaporized after they have served their price manipulation purpose.

Please keep in mind that the control of the gold price by the deep state financial elite is not some parlor game that they play for their enjoyment; it is an absolutely critical requirement in keeping the fraudulent fiat currency counterfeiting scheme from collapsing. There are literally trillions of dollars at stake, and the entire counterfeiting scam could and almost certainly would implode if gold “went Bitcoin.” If that were to happen, gold would tell the world the sobering monetary, financial and economic wisdom it has gleaned from 5,000 years of study, experience and reflection. The simple fact is that the financial system cannot handle the truth that gold knows, and that it would tell, if it were allowed to.

In our view, we are at the point where official corruption is so endemic and extreme that it has become a mistake to rely on official gold reporting of any kind, whether from the CFTC, the CME, the Comex, the LBMA, the World Gold Council, the mainstream media, the government or anyone in between, in conducting market or price analysis, or in forecasting coming gold market developments. When it comes to the one and only money, gold, we believe the most logical and profitable approach is to simply refer to history, and use common sense. The 5,000 year old antidote not only to financial fraud and corruption, but to the profoundly corrosive and dangerous effects of political fraud and corruption, has been gold. We believe this antidote is now more important than it has ever been in human history. The Washington, D.C. swamp is evolving from a living, breathing cesspool of out-of-control corruption, into a Silurian breeding ground for epic, highly-evolved evil. We hope the now ceaseless revelations of corruption can at least halt, if not reverse the further spread of this destructive scourge, but history says this never happens in declining empires. Therefore, we believe that those who honor their basic, common sense instincts to buy physical gold as protection against the consequences of official corruption and evil will be rewarded by Time for doing so.

Kindly note: Harvey Organ is the leading expert when it comes to EFPs. He publishes detailed EFP data on a daily basis, and if you do not already follow his work, we believe you will find it illuminating. No one is closer to the daily specifics of the EFP fraud than Harvey. S.D.

Stewart Dougherty is the creator of Inferential Analytics, a forecasting method that applies to events proprietary, time-tested principles of human instinct, desire and action. In his view, forecasting methods not fundamentally based upon principles of human action are unlikely to be reliable over time. He is a graduate of Tufts University (BA) and Harvard Business School (MBA). He developed expertise in strategic analysis and planning during a 35+ year business career, has traveled to and conducted research in over 25 countries and has refined Inferential Analytics into a reliable predictive instrument over a period of 16+ years

Global stocks and US equity futures roared upward to new record highs to start the second-to-last week of the year, boosted by optimism over a Republican agreement on the shape of U.S. tax cuts aimed at lifting growth; incidentally this is the 6th consecutive day that the “tax bill” has been priced in by the market, and according to cynics, 6th consecutive week and/or 6th month. Meanwhile, the dollar dropped and Treasuries headed lower.

World stock markets have surged this year, for the most part on constant expectations of tax reform passing, which is expected to boost corporate profits but mostly trigger share buybacks and higher dividend payouts, to the tune of over $1 trillion. The benchmark MSCI World index rose 0.41% on Monday to hit a fresh record high, putting it on course for its best year since 2009.

In overnight cross-asset developments, it was a low-volume session as traders close out the year, which saw the dollar fall against most G10peers Monday alongside Treasuries as focus remained on Trump’s tax measures. The pound climbed ahead of a speech by PM May.  While core euro- area bonds were little changed, peripheral debt from Italy and Spain climbed. Portugal’s bonds rallied, with 10-year yields sliding to the lowest since April 2015 after Fitch Ratings raised the country’s credit ranking two notches to investment grade late on Friday. Portugal’s 10Y bond traded decisively below its Italian equivalent on Monday. The last time it did so for a sustained period was in early 2010. “There is very much a shift in the architecture in the European government bond market,” said DZ Bank rates strategist Daniel Lenz.

Europe’s Stoxx 600 Index rose for the first time in three sessions as real estate, automakers and technology stocks led gains. Germany’s DAX index rose 1.2 percent, with the U.K.’s FTSE 100 up 0.5 percent. Most European bonds rose with Portuguese debt outperforming after Friday’s upgrade from Fitch Ratings. Sentiment was buoyed by ongoing tax reform optimism with the latest reports suggesting that Republican Senators Rubio and Corker are to support the tax bill. In terms of what lies ahead, the House is due to vote on the bill tomorrow, while US Senator Cornyn has stated that Senate will most likely pass the bill tomorrow. In terms of sector specifics, gains are relatively broad-based with individual movers including Gemalto (+6%) and Thales (+4.3%) in the wake of their tie-up at the expense of Atos (-1.3%).

With little in the way of major economic data this week, the GOP tax bill was likely to remain in focus for stock market investors, according to Mike van Dulken, head of research at Accendo Markets. “Ahead of bill being signed into law, any more updated guidance from U.S. corporates, showing potential earnings improvement from the reform, will be closely watched.”

“The odds of the tax cut legislation getting passed within this year have grown,” said Shoji Hirakawa, chief global strategist at Tokai Tokyo Research Institute Co. This “will benefit not only the U.S., but also economies around the globe including Japan, allowing investors to anticipate an increase in corporate earnings.”

Earlier, equity benchmarks in Tokyo, Hong Kong and Sydney climbed after the S&P 500 Index and other American gauges closed at records on Friday. Australia’s ASX 200 (+0.7%) was higher as miners gained after an early 6% surge in Dalian iron ore prices, while Nikkei 225 (+1.6%) outperformed on JPY weakness and after encouraging Japanese Trade Data in which exports rose a 12th consecutive month. Elsewhere, Hang Seng (+0.7%) was positive and Shanghai Comp. (-0.1%) traded indecisive after a significant CNY 300BN injection by the PBoC (CNY 260BN net), and as some property names lagged after the latest China House Price data continued to show the effectiveness of government measures to cool the property sector.

Meanwhile, Indian shares rebounded as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party is set to return to power in his home state, an election that’s considered a bellwether before the national vote in early 2019. The NIFTY rose 0.7% after being down 2% at the start of trade as early results suggested a closer race in Gujarat between the ruling BJP and the opposition Congress Party than what was seen in Friday’s exit polls. However, stocks later pared losses and then some, after the BJP pulled ahead and trends pointed to a comfortable majority win

The dollar pared its Friday gains even as Treasuries dropped, with investors’ greater focus still on tax reform. Volumes were relatively low as traders noted holiday liquidity slowly emerging in the major currencies. EMFX edged higher with politics driving price action, while global equities surged amid improved risk appetite. The euro gained and sterling advanced before U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May sets out her plan for a proposed Brexit transition period. The euro strengthened after two days of declines. South Africa’s rand rose on optimism Cyril Ramaphosa will become the next leader of the ruling African National Congress party.

Looking at the latest weekend developments involving UK’s messy divorce, EU Brexit Chief Michel Barnier said the EU is not prepared to come up with a makeshift trade deal for the UK that knits together all the best bits of existing models. Following this, the Telegraph have reported that this will lead to a cabinet row in the UK. The Telegraph have also reported that leading Remain campaigners plan to utilize the ‘meaningful vote’ on final Brexit deal with the aim of keeping UK in the EU. On the subject of trade, Guardian reported that Britain’s banks have written to Theresa May and Philip Hammond warning that a Canada-style free trade agreement with the EU post-Brexit is not ambitious enough and that alignment with EU rules on finance is crucial.

In the energy complex, WTI and Brent crude futures trade with modest gains alongside the broadly softer USD with energy news flow otherwise relatively light after the Baker Hughes oil rig count posted a decline to 747 from 751 on Friday. Among news driving oil price is Nigeria’s oil union starting a national strike Monday, while last week’s Forties pipeline crack which sent Brent prices higher, hasn’t spread, but the pipe remains closed. In metals markets, gold has seen little in the way of notable price action alongside the broad positive risk tone, with price action in the metals complex mainly centred around China in which Dalian iron futures surged around 6% on the back of recent gains in global prices.

Bitcoin traded at around $19,000 as futures trading debuted on the CME Group Inc.’s venue, the world’s biggest exchange, giving the cryptocurrency further cachet and access to mainstream investors

Marfket Snapshot

• S&P 500 futures up 0.3% to 2,689.75
• STOXX Europe 600 up 0.8% to 391.29
• MSCI Asia Pacific up 0.8% to 171.40
• MSCI Asia Pacific ex Japan up 0.4% to 556.13
• Nikkei up 1.6% to 22,901.77
• Topix up 1.4% to 1,817.90
• Hang Seng Index up 0.7% to 29,050.41
• Shanghai Composite up 0.05% to 3,267.92
• Sensex up 0.5% to 33,642.23
• Australia S&P/ASX 200 up 0.7% to 6,038.93
• Kospi down 0.01% to 2,481.88
• German 10Y yield rose 0.4 bps to 0.305%
• Euro up 0.4% to $1.1791
• Brent Futures up 1% to $63.84/bbl
• Italian 10Y yield rose 1.7 bps to 1.546%
• Spanish 10Y yield fell 2.2 bps to 1.437%
• Brent Futures up 1% to $63.84/bbl
• Gold spot up 0.07% to $1,257.32
• U.S. Dollar Index down 0.2% to 93.71

Bulletin Headline Summary from RanSquawk

• Optimism over tax reform buoys sentiment in Europe.
• PGBs outperform following Fitch’s two notch upgrade.
• Looking ahead, highlights include US NAHB Housing Market Index

Top Overnight News from BBG

• President Donald Trump is set to deliver a national-security speech, in which he will declare China a “strategic competitor” to the U.S., senior administration officials say
• U.K.’s May will address Parliament Monday, outlining her plan for the transition period, which might stoke a potential new row with the EU as she tries to keep different factions inside the Conservative Party on her side
• Lawmakers scrambling to lock up Republican support for the tax reform bill added a complicated provision late in the process — one that would provide a multimillion-dollar windfall to real-estate investors such as President Donald Trump
• French aerospace specialist Thales SA knocked out Atos SE’s unsolicited attempt to buy Dutch cybersecurity provider Gemalto SA, outbidding the rival with a cash offer valued at 4.76 billion euros ($5.6 billion) that won backing from the target company
• The surprising closeness of early results from elections in Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state of Gujarat sent the benchmark S&P BSE Sensex tumbling as much as 2.6 percent, while bonds and the rupee also sank. But as his party gained ground — the Sensex reversed, rebounding more than 1,206 points from the day’s low
• A narrower victory may prompt Modi to resort to populist spending to boost support before he faces re-election in early 2019
• Steadier short-term money-market rates are no reason to relax for China’s fixed- income traders still reeling from a tumultuous 2017. While the central bank’s timely measures have maintained money-market calm and helped bonds recover, rising longer-term borrowing costs signal traders expect funding costs to become more volatile
• Blackstone Takes 80% Stake in Australia’s La Trobe Financial
• Facing Impeachment, Kuczynski Finds Peruvians Quickly Left Him
• San Miguel Boosts Power Play With $1.9 Billion Coal Plant Deal
• Bitcoin Takes Bigger Wall Street Stage With Smooth CME Debut
• French Finance Ministry Seeks Fine v. Amazon: Le Parisien
• Apple’s Homepod 2018 Shipment Goal Raised to 15M Units: EDN

Asia equity markets began the week broadly in the green following Friday’s gains on Wall St. where tax reform optimism buoyed all major indices to record levels after reports Republican Senators Rubio and Corker were to support the tax bill. ASX 200 (+0.7%) was higher as miners gained after an early 6% surge in Dalian iron ore prices, while Nikkei 225 (+1.6%) outperformed on JPY weakness and after encouraging Japanese Trade Data in which Exports rose a 12th consecutive month. Elsewhere, Hang Seng (+0.7%) was positive and Shanghai Comp. (-0.1%) traded indecisive after a significant CNY 300bln injection by the PBoC, and as some property names lagged after the latest China House Price data continued to show the effectiveness of government measures to cool the property sector. India markets were volatile on election risk during vote counting day with the NIFTY (+0.7%) down 2% at the start of trade as early results suggested a closer race in Gujarat between the ruling BJP and the opposition Congress Party than what was seen in Friday’s exit polls. However, stocks later pared losses and then some, after the BJP pulled ahead and trends pointed to a comfortable majority win. Finally, 10yr JGBs were uneventful with prices flat as pressure from the heightened risk appetite in Japan was counterbalanced by a respectable Rinban announcement by the BoJ for nearly JPY 1tln of JGBs in 1yr-10yr maturities.

Top Asian News

• HNA Debt Load in Focus as Citic Bank Cites Repayment Issues
• China Is Said to Plan Killing Local Subsidies for Electric Cars
• Tencent, JD Back Chinese Online Retailer in Battle With Alibaba
• China’s $189 Billion Giant of Finance Reveals a Huge Bet on Tech
• Saudi Aramco, Khazanah Eye Stake in Indonesian Road Builder
• ThaiBev Bets Big in Vietnam With $4.8 Billion Brewery Stake
• The Stocks Vying to Join the China-Hong Kong Trading Link
• Indian Contracts Advance Amid Tight Election Race: Asian NDFs

European equities (Eurostoxx 50 +1.0%) trade higher across the board in the wake of further record highs on Wall St. last week and a broadly positive Asia-Pac session. Sentiment has largely been buoyed by ongoing tax reform optimism with the latest reports suggesting that Republican Senators Rubio and Corker are to support the tax bill. In terms of what lies ahead, the House is due to vote on the bill tomorrow, whilst US Senator Cornyn has stated that Senate will most likely pass the bill tomorrow. In terms of sector specifics, gains are relatively broad-based with individual movers including Gemalto (+6%) and Thales (+4.3%) in the wake of their tie-up at the expense of Atos (-1.3%). Bunds have succumbed to more downside, and inter-market spread activity coupled with some asset-switching seems the obvious catalysts as Portuguese bonds in particular continue to bask in the glory of becoming investment grade at Fitch, while EU equities have latched on to latest Wall Street records and mostly firmer leads from Asia-Pac bourses overnight. The 10 year Eurex bond has been 20 ticks off-side at 163.27, but now back near the upper end of the range as the focus turns to Eurozone data in the form of final CPI. In contrast, UK Gilts have recovered well from their early Liffe base to trade up at 125.65 (+18 ticks vs -7 ticks at one stage) and ongoing Brexit uncertainty with inferences for BoE policy seems to be the prop. Elsewhere, US Treasuries remain a few ticks underwater on heightened tax reform bill passage prospects, and with the curve re-steepening a little after spreads contracted to fresh multi-year levels late on Friday.

Top European News

• Thales Makes Cash Bid That Values Gemalto at $5.42 Billion
• ECB’s Liikanen Says Strong Recovery Supports Euro-Area Inflation
• The European Wind Sector Gains New Power After U.S. Tax News
• Statoil Spends Up to $2.9 Billion on More Brazil Oil Assets
• Nabiullina Downplays Sanctions Threat Hanging Over Russian Bonds
• IG Group, CMC Markets, Plus500 Plummet After ESMA Review
• Vonovia Offers to Buy Real Estate Rival Buwog for $3.9 Billion

In FX, the Greenback is off late Friday and overnight peaks, but underpinned on latest tax reform bill developments. GBP is holding up relatively well despite latest tests for PM May as she consults with the Cabinet on the Brexit ‘end game’, while the EU top brass stresses that the UK won’t be given any preferential treatment when it comes to trade deals. Cable is keeping tabs on the 1.3350 level, above the recent range base, albeit moderately softer vs the Eur with the cross back over 0.8800. The antipodeans continue to outperform on supportive Central Bank, macro and fiscal impulses, with the Kiwi reclaiming 0.7000 status vs the US Dollar after an improvement in the Performance of NZ Services. JPY is still trapped in a range vs the USD, albeit trending more recently towards the upper end of the 112.00-113.00 band.

In commodities, WTI and Brent crude futures trade with modest gains alongside the broadly softer USD with energy news flow otherwise relatively light after the Baker Hughes oil rig count posted a decline to 747 from 751 on Friday. In metals markets, gold has seen little in the way of notable price action alongside the broad positive risk tone, with price action in the metals complex mainly centred around China in which Dalian iron futures surged around 6% on the back of recent gains in global prices.

Much of the focus on Monday will be on China where the annual Central Economic Work Conference is due to kick off and continue into Wednesday. Datawise the final Euro area CPI report for November is due, along with UK CBI trends orders data for December and the December NAHB housing market index in the US. November property prices data in China will be out in the early morning.

US Event Calendar

• 10am: NAHB Housing Market Index, est. 70, prior 70

DB’s Jim Reid concludes the overnight wrap

We have a week of ‘great expectations’ ahead as the tax bill finally looks set to be delivered to Mr Trump before Christmas. The mood changed pretty quickly on Friday as Senators Rubio and Corker changed their minds and backed the plan with the latter being the only Republican Senator not voting for the original one. Then late on Friday details of the planned bill was announced. In terms of ratifying, it seems that the House will vote first, expected to be tomorrow, and then the Senate will vote later in the week. Now the holdouts have turned in favour, it does seem like a routine voting  process now even though the GOP may be one vote down in the Senate as CBS has reported that Senator McCain may not be available for the final vote due to his recent illness.

Given improved prospects of passing the US tax bill, the S&P rallied 0.90% to fresh highs and the USD dollar index firmed 0.47% last Friday. Within the S&P, gains were broad based with only the energy sector marginally down, while gains were led by tech and health care stocks. As a reminder, the key proposals in the final tax bill were broadly similar to prior press reports, including: i) cutting the corporate tax rate to 21%, effective from 2018, ii) offshore companies’ income held as cash subject to a 15.5% tax rate, iii) mortgage interest deduction capped at loans of $750k, iv) cutting top individuals tax rates to 37%, but benefits expire after 2025 and v) repeal the alternative minimum tax.

Also important this week will be China’s three-day Central Economic Work Conference which kicks off today. This event will see Party leaders discuss economic policies for the next year and the market will probably be most interested in the GDP growth target. Our China economists previously noted that it will be important to see if the government will change the tone on its growth target by lowering it explicitly from 6.5% to 6% or fine-tuning the wording to reflect more tolerance for slower growth.

Also worth highlighting is Friday’s US personal income and spending reports and within it the Fed’s preferred inflation measure – the core PCE print. Current market expectations are for a modest +0.1% mom rise in the core PCE which translates into a one-tenth uptick in the YoY rate to +1.5%. Also worth flagging are the Catalonia regional elections due on Thursday. Our economists in Europe previously noted that according to polls, Podemos could emerge  as the potential king-maker with ~10 seats. This ambitious positioning couldallow them to support an ERC and Junts pel Cat minority government while keeping the unilateral agenda in check. Alternatively, if Citizens continues on its strong momentum and ends up being the first party accompanied by a strong performance of the Socialists, Podemos could decide to support a minority unionist government. The rest of the week ahead is at the end of the note today with a few interesting things ahead before we break for Christmas. However don’t expect activity to be particularly high this week.

This morning in Asia, markets are broadly trading higher. The Nikkei (+1.57%) and Hang Seng (+0.63%) are both up, but Kospi (-0.03%) and China’s CSI 300 (-0.25%) are slightly down as we type. Now briefly recapping other markets performance from Friday. European equities were mixed, the Stoxx 600 dipped 0.19% but the DAX (+0.27%) and FTSE (+0.57%) both rose modestly, with the latter benefiting from mining stocks and a lower Sterling. The VIX fell for the first time in four days and dropped 10.2% to 9.42. Core 10y bond yields were little changed with treasuries up 0.4bp and Bunds -1.1bp.

There was more action in the UK, with 10y Gilts yields down 2.3bp and Sterling dropping 0.83% on Friday after various EU diplomats signalled the next stage of Brexit talks may be more difficult. Firstly, German Chancellor Ms Merkel said the next stage will be “incomparably more difficult”. Then the EU Commission President Juncker said “the second phase is much more difficult than the  first…. (for now) we just finished the first mile”. Later on, the EU Chief negotiator Barnier noted the UK “have to realize there won’t be any cherry picking….we won’t mix up the various scenarios to create a specific one…and accommodate their wishes”. Over the weekend, the UK’s Foreign Minister Johnson said the UK must strike a trade deal that gives it power to discard EU laws and failure to  do so would render Britain a “vassal state” of the EU. Elsewhere, the latest BMG poll for the Independent showed 51% of respondents would prefer to remain in the EU compared to 41% who wants to leave, with the 10ppt margin the highest since the monthly poll’s inception last June. Most other recent polls have showed that voting intentions wouldn’t have changed much since the referendum.

Away from markets, US Congress has until this Friday (22 December) to extend government funding and avert a partial government shutdown. Notably, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin seems fairly relaxed, he noted “I can’t rule it out, but I can’t imagine it (government shutdown) occurring”.

Over in the Germany, talks to form the next government between Ms Merkel’s party and SPD may have hit an obstacle. The leader of the CSU party Mr Seehofer (main ally of Ms Merkel’s CDU party) told Party delegates that “we won’t negotiate anything that would hinder or hurt our state election campaign” and that Germany “needs limits on migration”.

Finally, the French Finance Minister Le Maire noted he will ask G-20 ministers to consider joint regulation of Bitcoin, he said “I don’t like it….there is an obvious speculative risk, we need to look at it and study it” and that “I think we need regulation of Bitcoin”. Elsewhere, futures trading of Bitcoin have started yesterday on the world’s largest futures exchange (CME).

We wrap up with other data releases from Friday. In the US, the November IP was slightly below expectations at 0.2% mom (vs. 0.3%). Growth in October was revised up 0.3ppt, but this was largely offset by downward revisions spread across earlier months. That said, the overall annual growth of IP was sound at 3.4% yoy – the highest for three years. The capacity Utilization was broadly in line at 77.1% (vs. 77.2% expected), which is the highest since November 2011. Elsewhere, the December Empire manufacturing survey was below market at 18 (vs. 18.7 expected). In Europe, the October trade surplus narrowed to €19bln (vs. €24.3bln expected). In France, the final reading of the 3Q wage growth was in line at 0.3% qoq.

This…

The Dow closed at its 70th record high of the year… it has never done that before in its 100-year-plus history.

Additionally, S&P is most overbought (weekly RSI) since 1958…

There have been no down months since Trump elected and 2017 is shaping up to be a ‘Perfect Year’

This would be the first time ever that stocks had 12 monthly gains in a row in a calendar year…

On the day, everything in stock-land was awesome… Trannies and Small Caps outperformed, Dow and S&P gained but lagged on the day…

Futures show the excitement was after the close on Friday, at Sunday’s open, and at this morning’s open…

Most-Shorted stocks soared 3.5% in the last 2 days as another squeeze surged markets higher…

‘High Tax’ companies actually outperformed…

Retailers (black) continued their rip higher (Utes underperformed)…

And it would be rude to end today without mentioned LongFin… which was halted 18 times today!!!

For once, the yield curve steepened today – after its biggest flattening week in years last week…

In fact this was the biggest percentage steepening in 2s30s since the election..

The Dollar ended the day lower but bounced notably into the EU close and beyond…

WTI Crude ended the day lower by copper, gold, and silver gained…

Gold gained as Bitcoin slipped today…

Bitcoin Spot had a modest down day but Ethereum soared to a new record high…

Bitcoin Futures (CME and CBOE) drifted lower from their open, compressing the premium to spot…

Meanwhile, Citron is massacred at the Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) explodes 25% higher to a 70% premium to NAV (and a $27,000 implied Bitcoin price!!)

Bonus Chart: WTF!!!

Once again echoing the dinner conversations of a growing number of American households around the country, Representative Trey Gowdy (R-SC) ripped into FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe on Fox News regarding text messages released earlier this week between Agent Peter Strzok and lawyer Lisa Page that revealed an FBI plot, allegedly hatched in McCabe’s office, to prevent a Trump presidency at all costs.  Among other things, Gowdy said he would be somewhat shocked if McCabe was still an employee of the FBI “by this time next week.”

“I’m still trying to figure out why 3 FBI agents are discussing politics in the Deputy Director’s office because you’re not supposed to discuss politics on Federal ground.  And FBI agents aren’t supposed to engage in politics for Hatch Act reasons.”

 

“Remember, we were supposed to interview Andy McCable yesterday on another committee.  It was all setup and ready to go and then at the last minute they said he can’t come.  I’ll be shocked if he comes next week.  I’ll be a little bit surprised if he’s still and employee of the FBI this time next week.”

 

“But the notion that 3 bureau agents would be conspiring or plotting on how to handle the outcome of a presidential election is the opposite of what you want in an objective, dispassionate, neutral FBI.”

For those who aren’t familiar with the text messages in question, here is the text that Agent Peter Strzok sent to FBI lawyer Lisa Page, a woman with whom he was having an extramarital affair, last summer:

Meanwhile, if there is anyone out there who still harbors any remaining doubt that Special Counsel Mueller’s probe is anything but a farcical, politically-motivated witch hunt, then we highly recommend you also view this Trey Gowdy gem from earlier this week during a hearing with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

Of course, only time will tell if Gowdy is just engaging in some self-serving political grandstanding or if he’s intent upon firing some swamp creatures.

Former FBI Assistant Director James Kallstrom called disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok a “total moron” who belongs in Leavenworth federal prison, during a TV appearance on Thursday.

James Kallstrom

Kallstrom, a former Marine captain and Vietnam veteran, told FBN host Liz MacDonald that if an FBI agent wanted to stop someone from becoming President, “I think he can do what [Strzok] tried to do,” adding “He can fabricate things, he can make stuff up, he can lie, he can be a total moron.”

“You know, he belongs in Leavenworth this guy, in my personal view.” 

Kallstrom’s comments come after two weeks of stunning revelations about the FBI’s top brass actively engaging in an effort to help then-candidate Hillary Clinton by “decriminalizing” her actions in the email case, while pursuing a case against then-candidate Donald Trump – using a discredited 34-page ‘Trump-Russia’ dossier to launch an investigation, according to several GOP members of Congress.

When a subset of 10,000 text messages sent between Peter Strzok – lead investigator in the Trump-Russia case, and his FBI-Attorney mistress Lisa Page emerged, GOP lawmakers honed in on a specific exchange in which Strzok references an “insurance policy” in the “unlikely event” Trump was elected President. 

Now, it appears, that “insurance policy” may have been the entire Russia investigation, cooked up using the Trump-Russia dossier provided by DNC-Clinton funded opposition research firm, Fusion GPS. Fusion has been linked to several attempts to undermine Trump – including hiring Nellie Ohr – the CIA wife of DOJ official Bruce Ohr, who was demoted for obfuscating his meetings with Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson.

Last week, Kallstrom said he believes there is a “Fifth Column conspiracy” within the FBI designed to “destroy President Donald Trump” – and the agency may have committed a “serious felony” in doing so. In an interview last Sunday with radio host John Catsimatidis on 970 AM in New York, Kallstrom said:

“Ninety-nine percent of the people in the FBI are doing a fantastic job… It’s a small cabal of people running the FBI, the James Comey sycophants.”

“I’m coming more and more to the conclusion that this is a conspiratorial cabal among the fifth column to basically take away the presidency of the United States,” Kallstrom said, adding “This whole thing with Russia is just a farce. If we find out that that phony [Russian dossier] was brought to the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in the form of an affidavit for a judge’s authority, and if we find out that the people signing that affidavit in the bureau knew that that was phony information, that is a serious serious felony.”

Listen here: 

https://omny.fm/shows/cats-interviews/12-10-17-james-kallstrom/embed

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has once again balked at questions over the need for a second special counsel to investigate the Justice Department, telling reporters at a Friday press conference that while he’s concerned about recent allegations of bias within the FBI, “sometimes things that might appear to be bad in the press have more innocent explanations, so fairness and justice should also be provided to our personnel.”

Last week Sessions responded to mounting pressure to launch a second special counsel, stating “I’ve put a Senior Attorney, with the resources he may need, to review cases in our office and make a recommendation to me, if things aren’t being pursued that need to be pursued, if cases may need more resources to complete in a proper manner, and to recommend to me if the standards for a special counsel are met.”

In November. Sessions pushed back on the need for a special counsel to investigate a salacious anti-Trump dossier paid for in part by Hillary Clinton and the DNC, and whether or not the FBI used the largely unverified dossier to launch the Russia investigation. Sessions told Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) that it would take “a factual basis that meets the standard of a special counsel,” adding “You can have your idea but sometimes we have to study what the facts are and to evaluate whether it meets the standards it requires. I would say, ‘looks like’ is not enough basis to appoint a special counsel.”

A flood of GOP lawmakers along with President Trump’s outside counsel Jay Sekulow have renewed calls for a separate special counsel investigation of the Department of Justice and the FBI amid revelations that top FBI officials conspired to tone down former FBI Director James Comey’s statement exonerating Hillary Clinton – altering or removing key language which effectively “decriminalized” Clinton’s beahvior. The officials implicated are former FBI Director James Comey, Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Strzok’s supervisor E.W. “Bill” Priestap, Jonathan Moffa, and DOJ Deputy General Counsel Trisha Anderson.

Also under recent scrutiny are a trove of text messages between FBI agent Peter Strzok to his mistress, FBI attorney Lisa Page showing extreme bias against then-candidate Trump, while both of them were actively engaged in the Clinton email investigation and the Trump-Russia investigation. GOP lawmakers claim the FBI launched its investigation into Russian collusion based on the 34-page dossier created by opposition research firm Fusion GPS – which hired the CIA wife of a senior DOJ official to assist in digging up damaging information on 5then-candidate Trump.

A particularly disturbing text message between Strzok and Page was leaked to the press last week referencing an “insurance policy” in case Trump were to be elected President. Strzok wrote to Page: “I want to believe the path you threw out to consideration in Andy’s office — that there’s no way he gets elected — but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk.” It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40….”

House and Senate Committees are also trying to get to the bottom of a report last Monday by Fox News which revealed that recently demoted DOJ official Bruce Ohr’s wife, Nellie, worked for Fusion GPS – the firm behind the Trump-Russia dossier. It was also later uncovered by internet sleuths that Nellie Ohr represented the CIA’s “Open Source Works” group at a 2010 working group on organized crime, which she participated in along with her husband Bruce and Glenn Simpson, co-founder of Fusion GPS.

Bruce and Nellie Ohr

Last Tuesday, FBI Deputy Director McCabe unexpectedly cancelled a scheduled testimony in front of the House Intelligence Committee – thought to be related to the Fox report on Bruce and Nellie Ohr. Text messages between Strzok and Page were released the same day.

So with Attorney General Jeff Sessions saying things may have “more innocent explanations” here are some specific questions for the AG to answer:

• Did Peter Strzok innocently tell his mistress that there was an “insurance policy” against a Trump win, which likely referenced the Russia investigation which GOP lawmakers think was based on an unverified dossier?
• Was Peter Strzok innocently texting Lisa Page “F Trump” while he was the lead investigator on the Clinton email case?
• Was Peter Strzok’s edit of the phrase “Gross negligence” to “extremely careless” innocent? It very innocently changed the entire legal standing of the case from criminal conduct to a layman’s opinion of carelessness.

18 U.S. Code ‘ 793 “Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information” specifically uses the phrase “gross negligence.” Had Comey used the phrase, he would have essentially declared that Hillary had broken the law.

• Was Peter Strzok innocently calling Trump “a f*cking idiot” and a “loathsome human” before investigating him?
• Did FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s “damage control team” innocently change their conclusion that Hillary Clinton’s server was “possibly” hacked, rather than “reasonably likely” – language which significantly altered the seriousness of Clinton’s mishandling of classified information?
• Were all references to the FBI working with other members of the intelligence community on Clinton’s private server innocently scrubbed from Comey’s exoneration statement – making it look like a much smaller investigation?
• Before he was demoted for doing so – did senior DOJ official Bruce Ohr innocently meet with MI6 spy Christopher Steele who assembled the salacious ‘Trump-Russia’ dossier, and then also innocently meet with Glenn Simpson, co-founder of opposition research firm Fusion GPS? Fusion commissioned Steele to create the dossier, which relied on senior Russian officials.
• Did Fusion GPS innocently hire Bruce Ohr’s CIA wife, Nellie Ohr, to gather damaging information on President Trump? If there weren’t such innocent explanations for everything, one might think Nellie Ohr could have possibly passed information from the DOJ to Fusion GPS and vice versa.
• Did Hillary Clinton and the DNC innocently pay Fusion GPS $1,024,408 through law firm Perkins Coie, which then paid Steele $168,000? 
• In addition to the ‘Trump-Russia’ dossier, did Fusion GPS innocently arrange the Trump Tower “setup” meeting between Trump Jr. and a Russian Attorney? Or attempt to link Donald Trump to billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein? Or try to push the debunked claim that a secret email server existed between Trump Tower and Moscow’s Alfa bank – which Alfa bank executives are suing Fusion GPS over?

The list goes on and on, but hey: sometimes things that might appear to be bad in the press have more innocent explanations… 

After a week of rumors, denials, whistleblowers, backlash, demands, threats, lies, bias, and anti-biassurrounding Robert Mueller and his investigation, President Trump said Sunday that he is not considering firing the Special Counsel.

“No, I’m not,” Trump told reporters, when asked if he intended to fire Mueller, according to Politico.

The president was returning to the White House from a weekend at the Camp David presidential retreat.

Trump’s allies complained this weekend about the way Mueller’s team went about obtaining from the presidential transition. Mueller’s spokesman Peter Carr said Sunday that the office had followed appropriate steps to obtain the transition emails. Pro-Trump lawmakers and pundits also have accused the special counsel’s office of bias after it was revealed that two FBI officials who previously served on Mueller’s team had exchanged anti-Trump text messages.

And while Trump said “I’m not,” Axios notes that he did criticize the fact that Mueller accessed “many tens of thousands” of emails from the presidential transition, saying it was“not looking good.”

Additionally, as The Hill reports, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Sunday said he has no reason to believe President Trump intends to fire special counsel Robert Mueller amid the ongoing investigation into Russia’s election interference.

“I don’t have any reason to think that the president is going to do that, but that’s obviously up to him,” Mnuchin told host Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union,” adding that the topic did not arise when he dined with Trump and Vice President Pence on Saturday night.

The finance chief argued, however, that the ongoing probe is “a giant distraction” that needs to wrap up “quickly.” 

http://fave.api.cnn.io/v1/fav/?video=politics/2017/12/17/sotu-mnuchin-probe.cnn&customer=cnn&edition=domestic&env=prod

Going by Trump’s previous comments, we would not be surprised in the least if news breaks tomorrow of Mueller’s firing.