With very little going on this morning, I’ll say this on the death of Kin Jong Il. While the new head of North Korea will likely be his son, maybe the people there have the first ray of hope to see the fortunes of their lives change for the better as any increase in the amount of freedom given to them would be more than they had before. In Europe, the story of 2012 will still come down to debt repudiation/writedown or ECB money printing or in other words, deep recession but lower debt levels ultimately or inflation/currency debasement and a better economy nominally/temporarily. In an interview in the FT, ECB Pres Draghi said this on money printing, “the important thing is to restore the trust of the people, citizens as well as investors, in our continent. We won’t achieve that by destroying the credibility of the ECB. This is really, in a sense, the undertone of all of our conversation today.” The US Fed will be having a very similar discussion, again, in 2012.
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