America

• Futures rise as oil gains hold steady (Reuters)
• China promises economic stability as G20, parliament loom (Reuters)
• Obama scolds Senate Republicans for Supreme Court threat (Reuters)
• China Deploys Missiles on Disputed South China Sea Island (WSJ)
• China Ramps Up Rhetoric, Plans New Steps to Juice Up Economy (BBG)
• China Loses Control of the Economic Story Line (WSJ)
• Banks are still the weak links in the economic chain (FT)
• The Great Iron-Ore Flood Claims Anglo as Biggest Victim (BBG)

Submitted by Burak Bekdil via The Gatestone Institute,

• Washington should think more than twice about allowing Turkey and Saudi Arabia, its Sunni allies, militarily to engage their Shiite enemies in Syria. Allowing Sunni supremacists into a deeper sectarian war is not a rational way to block Russian expansion in the eastern Mediterranean. And it certainly will not serve America's interests.

Wouldn’t it be a strange world to live in if 50% of military spending was paid for by just 5% of the population? Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.

Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist

Every year, the United States government spends the equivalent of $3,300 for each working citizen on its military budget. In aggregate, this grand total of $610 billion in defense spending amounts to about half of the dollars globally spent on the military.

Submitted by Neal Gabler via TheAntiMedia.org,

So here is how you play the media like an accordion.

First, you deliver a debate performance so notably bad, so mechanical and unthinking, that you have everyone buzzing about it, even those in the media who gush over you. Then you take responsibility for being awful because, after all, you don’t want to give the impression that you might not really be responsible for uttering the words you uttered – four times.