UNITED STATES
- Futures are up slightly but it looks like a flat open
- P/E ratios have fallen to multi-year lows
- Oil giants including ConocoPhillips and Royal Dutch Shell are funding a multi-million dollar campaign to lobby Congress in favor of a carbon emission tax
- Lawmakers will be busy trying to avoid a government shutdown this week which could happen on December 21 in the absence of any agreement
- Freight shipping activity began to slow last month, down 5.1%
- Manufacturing output fell last month as well
- Industrial production overall had a good month (Expected 0.3% | Actual 0.6%)
OTHER
- Malaysian authorities have filed charges against Goldman Sachs connected with the 1MDB financial scandal
- German indicators are in distress
- PMI Composite Output Index = 52.2 | 48-month low
- Services PMI Activity Index = 52.5 | 7-month low
- Manufacturing PMI = 51.5 | 33-month low
- Coffee futures have come tumbling down the past few weeks, reaching a new low for the year
CHINA
- China is forcing Uighur Muslims detained in "re-education" camps to go to work in factories
- Chinese officials say they want to transform them into disciplined worked
- Researchers believe the camps may hold as many as 1 million of the Uighur ethnic minority
- New home prices are still going up by 9% a year
Submitted December 17, 2018 at 07:29AM by ogordained https://ift.tt/2CirJX9
