Submitted by Constantin Gurdgiev via True Economics blog,

Recent media and analysts coverage of the global economy, especially that of the advanced economies has focused on the rising degree of uncertainty surrounding growth prospects for 2016 and 2017. Much of the analysis is shlock, tending to repeat like a metronome the cliches of risk of ’monetary policy errors’ (aka: central banks, read the Fed, raising rates to fast and too high), or ‘emerging markets rot’ (aka: slowing growth in China), or ‘energy sector drag’ (aka: too little new investment into oil).

Benjamin Friedman criticizes Ted Cruz’s plan for a gargantuan military budget. Here he describes what the plan would cost:

Cruz says that as President he’ll spend 4.1 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) on defense for two years, and 4 percent thereafter. As the chart below shows, under standard growth predictions, Cruz’s plan produces a massive increase in military spending: about $1.2 trillion over what would be Cruz’s first term and $2.6 trillion over eight years [bold mine-DL]. Details on the chart are at the end of this post.

If "everything's fixed," then why is the number of distressed debt issuers still the highest "since Lehman."

h/t @mattmiller1973

And the answer is not - it's just energy and it's different this time.

Six military personnel were killed and one seriously wounded in an explosion that hit a military convoy in the southeast of Turkey. The blast that was reportedly caused by a home-made device  and follows yesterday car bomb attack that killed  28 people in the Turkish capital of Ankara. RT reports: The military also said that a handmade bomb was detonated by remote control while the military vehicle was searching for mines on the highway linking Diyarbakir to the district of Lice, Reuters reports.

One of the more stunning economic updates this week was China's unprecedented surge in Chinese loan creation, when as reported earlier this week, China unveiled a whopping CNY3.42 trillion in Total Social Financing, its broadest debt aggregate, an amount greater than half a trillion dollars, of which CNY2.51 trillion was in new bank loans.