America

Authored by David Stockman via The Daily Reckoning,

The American economy has been mangled by decades of assault on capitalist prosperity.

Growth is now dying because the Federal Reserve’s hit on corporate America that has strip-mined its balance sheets to feed the halls of Wall Street. Trillions of dollars have been thrown into financial engineering (stock buybacks, M&A deals and leveraged recaps) while neglecting real investment and productivity in Flyover America.

One month after the WSJ reported that Israel had been secretly funding the Syrian rebel opposition to Assad's regime for years in hopes of keeping the Syrian political situation unstable and preventing the Syrian - and Iranian - regime's military from becoming a substantial threat, overnight Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters after his meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday that Israel opposes the cease-fire agreement in southern Syria that the United States and Russia reached "because it perpetuates the Iranian presence in the country."

Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

This past week, the lovely, and talented, Danielle DiMartino-Booth and I shared a discussion on the ongoing debate of why “Rates Must Rise.” 

Debt drives rates lower....not higher. Debt is deflationary. See chart below and read this: https://t.co/jHAcnuGTit pic.twitter.com/tM2a5BrIiO

In the years after its 2009 bankruptcy, Chrysler looked for a dedicated lender to help customers "finance their cars quickly"...which was code for a lender who could help the struggling OEM expand their market share by making extremely risky loans to subprime borrowers all while laying off the credit risk to unsuspecting pension funds.  As such, Chrysler ultimately picked Santander due to its expertise in “automated decisioning”...which was code for the ability to advance credit without actually performing income verification tests on borrowers.

“Bigger Systemic Risk” Now Than 2008 - Bank of England