But all around China, gloom and uncertainty are the word.
Economic growth is slowing, and the country’s hundreds of millions of middle-class shoppers seem to be holding on more tightly to their pocketbooks. Tech companies are antsy about the government’s more interventionist attitude toward big business. The tariff fight with the United States is casting a pall not simply over trade, but over China’s future writ large. This month, Alibaba cut its sales forecast for the year ending in March by around 5 percent, citing the wobbly economy and the trade war.
Alibaba is not like Amazon in that it is not a retailer. It merely provides the digital shelves and aisles for other merchants to sell their goods. But in its relentless ambition, Alibaba may be Amazon’s only global equal. Both companies

No. 1-12The problem with #3 is not libertarian, it is that when your house catches fire under such conditions (high winds, firestorm), embers and burning things from your home might set my home on fire – even if I have a metal roof or take other measures. My insurance goes up because of what you do to your house (it also applies if the roof needs to be replaced or you add on a garage and such and don’t use a metal roof, or otherwise have flammable movable objects).To use a silly analogy but it makes the problem clear, what if I have a storage space on the edge near lots of homes and store explosives that will go off in a fire (say lots of fireworks) and will devastate everything in a quarter mile. I’m not "agressing" merely creating a risk that may or may not happen. Beyond that, lets

The leader of the union that represents a majority of California’s firefighters said Saturday that President Donald Trump should apologize for blaming the state’s deadly wildfires on "poor" forest management.
The Camp Fire in northern California reduced the town of Paradise to rubble and claimed the lives of nine people, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, known as Cal Fire. In addition, two bodies were found Friday night in Malibu within the 70,000-acre Woolsey Fire zone, Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials said.
Actor Patricia Arquette tweeted, "Maybe Trump would like to see what would happen if California threatened to withhold our federal taxes."
The Pasadena Firefighters Association declared the president "wrong."
"The fires in So. Cal are urban

Stuki4 hrsForget money, Europe can’t even produce soldiers to man an army.The ancients comprising the "conservative" long tail of the Japanese political spectrum, have increasingly been talking similar nonsense about rebuilding a proper army. Only to look around and realize that the only potential soldiers available to man it, are, literally, the exact same guys who fought in WW2…. Just now 80 years older than they were back when.France, in particular, may have done a slightly better job of not straight up going extinct than the extreme corner case that is Japan, but Europe as a whole is simply not demographically capable of building, supporting and sustaining a globally meaningful army any more than Japan is. And they won’t be, until their army is part of the Caliphate’s.Heck, America

ReadyKilowatt3 hrsPart of the problem is that there are reasons why a city might not want to build more buildings. SFO has some extremely tight regulations because one of the draws for the area is the "charm." It is much the same as what happened in Aspen Colorado -vs- Vail. You drive through Vail and it is almost all high-rise hotels and roads designed to move vehicles. Aspen is still attempting to hold on to their "charming" qualities through restrictive building regulation. Any time there’s a builder or project that needs an exemption from the regulation there’s always a public comment about not wanting to see the "Vailifcation" of downtown Aspen.Believe it or not, there are homeless people in Aspen. Actually living in the streets, although more of them are couch surfers. The more

Stuki said: More than nuclear explosions, aids, wars, plagues, Scary Muslim Virgins and any other supposed ills; the banksters getting the average idiot to fall for the childish drivel that a roof over ones head is some sort of "investment," is the single greatest calamity to ever befall humankind.

Resulting in a virtually endless supply of zero value add, utterly incompetent at anything productive nor valuable whatsoever idiots; lining up to pump their fists in illiterate support of whichever pathetic tinpotentate-wannabe promises to harass, rob and steal from their neighbors, in order to increase the idiots’ poppeti vaijues. While also promising to do all he can to keep as many as possible homeless, hence desperate enough to accept grossly overpaying for the cheering, incompetent

No. 1-12It seems Democrat run Miami-Dade county has left THOUSANDS most likely Republican leaning mail-in ballots UNCOUNTED:"Dozens of boxes filled with mail-in ballots are sitting inside a Miami-area mail distribution center, according to photos obtained by The Miami New Times.The news outlet noted that the distribution center where the ballots are located is the same one that was evacuated in October after a mail bomb reached the facility.The news about the ballots comes the same day Miami-Dade County announced it finished counting votes for the midterm elections, which includes hotly-contested Senate and gubernatorial races that have yet to be called.Two unnamed sources alleged to The New Times that hundreds or thousands of ballots may still be in the distribution center.A spokesperson

JonSellers3 hrsTrump won the election with the backing of "Reagan Democrats", patriotic working class Americans who were used to the idea of good pay, a decent pension, and their healthcare being paid for by their employer. Trump won the election by claiming to bring our victorious troops home, defending social security, investing in American infrastructure, and defending American jobs.Those are all solidly Democratic Party positions from the pre-Bill Clinton era. Trump voters were probably democrats in their younger days, or children of democrats.I don’t think she’s smart enough, but I think Pelosi would be brilliant to back a number of Trump’s initiatives. She could return a number of his voters back to the Democratic Party by backing Trump on issues that used to be democratic issues.

Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in September indicates that the labor market has continued to strengthen and that economic activity has been rising at a strong rate. Job gains have been strong, on average, in recent months, and the unemployment rate has declined. Household spending has continued to grow strongly, while growth of business fixed investment has moderated from its rapid pace earlier in the year. On a 12-month basis, both overall inflation and inflation for items other than food and energy remain near 2 percent. Indicators of longer-term inflation expectations are little changed, on balance.

2banana3 hrsThis is called "putting laws on the books but only enforcing them against your political opponents" method of tyranny.Democrats excel at this form of tyranny in America.Hillary wiping clean servers that are under investigation? Taking classified info to her own personal servers? Failure to turn over emails? Destroying blackberries? Nah – no issues. But don’t you dare think you could get away with this.The IRS, EPA and DOJ only going after political opponents under obama? Pure coincidence!Bill Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Keith Elliot, Eric "We Could Rarely Have Sex Without Him Beating Me" Schneiderman, etc., raping and sexual assaulting women for decades? Nah – no issues.Hey look – a conservative nominated to the supreme court. We will destroy him, his family, his reputation,

Casual_Observer10 hrsAnd here’s the point that you need to understand. The US Treasury borrows those dollars and it goes on the total debt taxpayers owe. The true deficit that adds to the debt is actually much higher than the number you see in the news. It brings to mind the scene in the Wizard of Oz, when they wizard says, “Pay no attention to the man behind the screen.”Household and corporate debt is growing fast, too, and not just in the US. Here’s a note from Lakshman Achuthan.Notably, the combined debt of the US, Eurozone, Japan, and China has increased more than ten times as much as their combined GDP [growth] over the past year.Yes, you read that right. In the last year, the world’s largest economies are generating debt 10X faster than economic growth. Adding debt at that pace, if

No. 1-7Tengen5 hrsJust looked these two women up to check their positions, not much exciting about either of them. Neither seems concerned about the Fed or economics/banking in general.Foreign policy is more revealing. Sinema was anti-war when younger, but has distanced herself from such groups since being elected in 2012. She goes along with whatever.McSally is very pro-war and has close ties to Raytheon. She even wants to increase military spending! More interestingly, she has repeatedly groused about her time in Saudi Arabia and its treatment of women. She must experience serious cog dis about the MIC propping up the Wahhabis with her support.Forget ballot counting, may as well flip a coin and insert the winner into the Senate. Neither will lift a finger to stop the fall of the empire

No. 1-11Top-GUN5 hrsTwo thoughts,,, States are legalizing pot for revenue purposes.
Want to do pot go ahead,,,, but I don’t want you on my job site, in government or anywhere else making decisions that affect me, driving anything anywhere, and I don’t want to pay for your health care ….ReplyQuote

On the last business day of September, the job openings level fell to 7.0 million (-284,000), after reaching a revised series high of 7.3 million in August. The job openings rate was 4.5 percent in September. The number of job openings edged down for total private (-188,000) and fell in government (-96,000). Job openings increased in health care and social assistance (+71,000). The number of job openings decreased in many industries, with the largest decreases in professional and business services (-118,000), finance and insurance (-82,000), and state and local government, excluding education (-67,000). Job openings decreased in the South region.

The truth is there are simply no newsworthy Brexit developments. The reason is that, as of now, there is still no majority for a deal.
So let us focus instead on smaller pieces of the puzzle that might become relevant later.
One of those was a small item in the Financial Times from the Hauts-de-France region in Northern France, whose president is demanding a constructive attitude by the EU in the case of a no-deal Brexit. Expect to hear more of this as we approach the Brexit deadline. If the EU plays it tough to the bitter end, not only Hauts-de-France will be clobbered along with the UK.
The EU could in theory turn a no-deal exit into a de-facto blockade of the UK. But a far more likely scenario would be a no-deal Brexit accompanied by a multitude of mini-deals to keep goods and people

[unable to retrieve full-text content]It takes 23.6% of median income to make the monthly payment on the average-priced home.

Over the past six months, I spoke with a host of Texas Republicans about the U.S. Senate race. Many of them dislike Cruz. Some of them privately hope he loses. And all of them are baffled by the disconnect between the superior branding of O’Rourke’s candidacy and what they see as the tactical malpractice of his campaign.
In their view, Cruz is uniquely vulnerable, having alienated Texans of all ideological stripes with his first-term antics—and especially those affluent, college-educated suburbanites repelled by Trump.
“Despite all of Cruz’s problems—and there are plenty—here’s a guy who’s running around talking about Medicare for all, and impeaching Trump, and abolishing ICE. And it’s killing him,” Karl Rove, the former senior adviser to George W. Bush, told me in Austin this summer.

Kevin Karel, the general manager of the Arthur Companies, which has long sold soybeans to China. With that market now largely shut off, Mr. Karel said his firm has started to stockpile soybeans.
The latest federal data, through mid-October, shows American soybean sales to China have declined by 94 percent from last year’s harvest.
Mr. Karel, the general manager of the Arthur Companies, which operates six grain elevators in eastern North Dakota, has started to pile one million bushels of soybeans on a clear patch of ground behind some of his grain silos. The big mound of yellowish-white beans, already one of the taller hills in this flat part of the world, will then be covered with tarps.
“I’ve been to China 25 times in the last decade talking about the dependability of U.S. soybeans,”

By pitching his progressive forces against nationalists, Macron has set the scene for the European elections not only at the EU level but also at home. With her advance in the polls she now threatens to get her revenge for being outsmarted by Macron in the second round of the French presidential elections last year.
Le Pen winning the European elections next year is not so unlikely. There is a certain Macron fatigue amongst voters, the economy and unemployment figures are not showing any signs of change. Higher taxes on diesel are hitting in particular those rural voters that have less affinity to Macron to begin with. And finally, Europe features lower as a priority among French voters, who might well use the elections next year to settle their accounts with Macron.
There will be a

The soldiers worked with U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officers to lay about 1,000 feet of fencing along the river, the Defense Department said. The makeshift barrier was installed underneath the McAllen-Hidalgo International Bridge, which crosses into Mexico. The overpass is in the small town of Hidalgo, about 250 miles south of San Antonio.
“I saw that beautiful barbed wire going up,” Trump said at a Saturday campaign rally in Montana. “Beautiful sight.”
A Border Patrol spokesman said in an email to the New York Post the fencing was part of “necessary preparations” for the caravans.
Roughly 900 troops have reached the U.S.-Mexico border since the Trump administration began the deployment Oct. 26. The president vowed the forces would block the caravans, which contain thousands of

The Fall 2018 Chicago Resource Expo will be held on Friday, November 9th at the Schaumburg Marriott Hotel and also on Saturday morning, November 10th. The one and a half day show, beginning at noon on Friday, is filled with company presentations, Q & A panel discussions, and plenty of time to get to know each exhibitor. The Expo also includes an evening canape buffet.
The very popular Expert Q & A Panel Discussion will start at 7pm. The Panel features Dr. Lee Warren, Chris Temple, Dana Lyons, Ambassador Thomas Graham and Mike "Mish" Shedlock.
The Expo features publicly traded companies with businesses focused on a large range of natural resources and new technologies, including rare earth elements and medicinal cannabis. Admission to the event is free of charge to all active

Mortgage rates had a bad week and an especially bad day following a much stronger-than-expected jobs report.
Mortgage rates were already operating fairly close to long-term highs, but today’s move easily took them to new highs. The average lender is now quoting conventional 30yr fixed rates of 5% for relatively ideal scenarios.
Those without a big down payment or without perfect credit/income can expect to see even higher rates. Most lenders ended up recalling the morning’s initial rate sheets and reissuing higher rates at least once today.
There’s really no silver lining apart from the fact that the higher rates go, and the quicker they get there, the closer we get to the point that the economy slows down as a result. When that happens, rates will begin to fall before just about

The big sticking point in the Brexit negotiations has been described as a "red herring" by one of the 10 Democratic Unionist MPs propping up Theresa May’s minority government.
Sammy Wilson told the BBC World Service there was no "real problem".
Mr Wilson, the Democratic Unionist Party’s (DUP) MP for East Antrim and the party’s Brexit spokesman, said: "This is a red herring that’s been thrown in to either string out the negotiations until there’s a change in government in the UK, or to make the price of leaving the EU the break-up of the UK, or to keep the UK in the customs union and the single market".
The MP pointed to comments from the Irish Taoiseach (prime minister), Leo Varadkar, who said he had been given assurances about the border by the European Commission president Jean-Claude

If retailers were not in enough strife already, it now appears falling house prices have joined low wage and price growth, as well as declining household savings, in their increasingly large list of worries.
Monthly retail sales figures have disappointed again, rising just 0.2 per cent in September on a seasonally adjusted basis.
More disturbingly, sales were up just 0.2 per cent across the three months of the September quarter.
With the exception of cafes, restaurants and takeaway, the other key discretionary sectors such as household goods, clothing and department stores reported either flat or negligible sales growth.
"The subdued rise in real retail sales in Q3 suggests that households are starting to feel the pinch from rising petrol prices and the slowdown in the property market,"

[unable to retrieve full-text content]The Fed proposes looser lending standards. I propose ending deposit insurance.

Caradoc-again21 hrs400 million EU citizens will carry the weight and defaults/losses will be socialized.Not likely to be the case if the banks were in the smaller countries but France & Germany have status of being "exceptional nations" & no action is too large to bail-out their big banks.ReplyQuote

Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 250,000 in October, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 3.7 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Job gains occurred in health care, in manufacturing, in construction, and in transportation and warehousing.

As Treasury yields rise, corporate bonds are getting whipped by the storm. But there’s still a danger investors aren’t getting paid enough for the risks they are taking.
A close look at U.S. bond markets reveals little evidence of a systemic flight from risk amid last week’s auctions. Yields haven’t yet risen much compared with recent years even as investors have withdrawn billions from corporate-bond funds.
All year, investment-grade bonds have performed worse than riskier debt. Meanwhile, the spread on junk bonds hasn’t yet increased enough to break out of the generally downward trend that has lasted almost three years.
However, given that the U.S. and global economies are very far into a long period of growth and more interest-rate rises are in the cards, investors should be more

The Federal Reserve announced one of the most significant rollbacks of bank rules since President Trump took office with a proposal for looser capital and liquidity requirements for large U.S. lenders.
The changes would affect large U.S. lenders including U.S. Bancorp , Capital One Financial Corp. , and more than a dozen others. The largest U.S. banks, including JPMorgan Chase & Co., wouldn’t see any significant rule changes, and some in the industry thought the proposal didn’t go far enough.
The draft proposal, approved by a 3-1 vote at a Wednesday meeting of the Fed’s governing board, would divide big banks into four categories based on their size and other risk factors. Regional lenders would be either entirely released from certain capital and liquidity requirements, or see those

It is often stated that there is a major financial crisis every 10 years or so. Having said that, it’s been a little over a decade since the Lehman Brothers collapse sparked the last global financial crisis (GFC) and with global economic growth starting to show signs of petering out, some in the media and elsewhere in the public eye are forecasting another global financial crisis in the very near future.
There has been a variety of reports from prominent analysts lately with predictions as to when the next crisis will hit and what will spark it. Strategists at J.P. Morgan Chase recently made a splash with their announcement of a new predictive model that pencils in the next crisis to hit in 2020. Additionally, J.P. Morgan’s Global Head of Macro Quantitative and Derivatives Research, Marko