What can we say about the week the Trump administration just suffered through that hasn’t already been said about Afghanistan? “It looks bombed out and depleted”…

 

Thanks in no small part to Trump’s tirade and legal threats, Michael Wolff’s new book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House” was released early, and by “early” we mean today.

Here’s how that’s going so far:

The new anti-Trump book is really popular https://t.co/QReZtaZovP pic.twitter.com/DnJCkTLHe0

— Salon (@Salon) January 5, 2018

Bigly. For a little extra dose of comedy, here’s what Trump’s lawyers sent to Wolff on Thursday:

Mr. Trump hereby demands that you immediately cease and desist from any further publication, release or dissemination of the book, the article, or any excerpts or summaries of either of them, to any person or entity, and that you issue a full and complete retraction and apology to my client as to all statements made about him in the book and article that lack competent evidentiary support.

Dear Mr. President: How’s that workin’ out for you? 

In need of a distraction, Trump turned to the only thing he’s got left… the stock market:

Dow goes from 18,589 on November 9, 2016, to 25,075 today, for a new all-time Record. Jumped 1000 points in last 5 weeks, Record fastest 1000 point move in history. This is all about the Make America Great Again agenda! Jobs, Jobs, Jobs. Six trillion dollars in value created!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2018

Yes, “Jobs, Jobs, Jobs.”

Speaking of which:

To be fair, average hourly earnings printed in line, so the payrolls report wasn’t a complete disaster, but the headline number missed “big league” and that led to an immediate knee-jerk lower in the dollar, which later recovered.

Friday’s rebound off the post-NFP lows notwithstanding, the greenback is more “beleaguered” than Jeff Sessions after a Trump twitter tantrum. DXY has fallen for three straight weeks and the Bloomberg dollar index for four, with that latter stretch representing the worst string of weekly declines since May.

But here’s what you really care about: this was the best week since early December 2016 for the S&P and the Nasdaq:

And this is the annotated path to paradise via WSJ:

Best week since August for mom-and-pop high yield:

Up, up and away, but remember: hell hath no fury like a bear that’s been gouged in the fucking eye with a stick over and over for damn near a decade.

The loonie was the big winner on Friday, surging after a blockbuster December jobs report in Canada. The jobless rate north of the border is the lowest in 40 years.

Best opening week to a year for crude since 2013:

Great start to the year for Europe:

And here’s Asia on the week:

Any questions? Just buy it all.

Finally, for your moment of zen we go to Sarah Huckabee Sanders who will not-so-patiently explain to you how people should “obviously” be concerned about “peddling fake stories” and “saying things that aren’t true” – something she wouldn’t know anything about. “Believe me”…

.@kwelkernbc: Is the President committed to following through with these lawsuits against Bannon, Wolff and his publisher?

Sanders: "That's a question you'd have to talk to his attorneys about." pic.twitter.com/FM6CnKgywc

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) January 4, 2018