America

Continuing his anti-establishment bent, in his latest letter "Red is the new black", Bill Gross first exposes the "current global establishment’s (including Trump’s) overall plan" consisting of 8 simple steps to "solve the global debt crisis" (yes, the sarcasm is oozing), at which point he goes on to say that "it pays to not fight the tiger until it becomes obvious that another plan will by necessity replace it" and adds "that time is not now, but growing populism and the increasing ineffectiveness of monetary policy suggest an eventual transition."

A few days ago we wrote an article asking how stable the world's democracies really were and noted the opinion of at least one Harvard historian who saw extreme risk related to the global wave of anti-establishment sentiment (see "How Stable Are The World's Democracies? - 'Warning Signs Are Flashing Red'").  Apparently Tony Blair, the former British Prime Minister, agrees that the political upheaval from Brexit to Trump to the collapse of the Italian government on Sunday signal the most dangerous time for Western democracies in decades.

US Productivity rose a disappointing 3.1% in Q3 (missing expectations of a 3.3% rise). However, on a year-over-year basis, Q3 saw a second consecutive decline - the first two-quarter decline in US productivity since 1993. Unit labor cost growth slowed in Q3 to 3.00% (with QoQ growth tumbling from 6.2% in Q2 to just 0.7% in Q3).

Actually if one looks at the official table US productivity has notr risen YoY since Q4 2015 - (Q1 0.0%, Q2 -0.3%, Q3 -0.05%)

The long arm of the United States military-industrial complex is arming and training both sides of the increasingly brutal Yemen conflict, according to WikiLeaks’ latest release. Promptly after the release of more than 500 documents from the U.S. embassy in Yemen, WikiLeaks explained why this particular leak matters. “The war in Yemen has produced 3.15 million internally displaced persons,” the statement said.

Russia poses the biggest military threat to America, according to The Secretary of the US Air Force, Deborah James.  The Air Force boss told Reuters at the annual Reagan National Defense Forum on Saturday that Russia’s nuclear capabilities pose a very real threat to the United States. “Russia is the No. 1 threat to the United States. We have a number of threats that we’re dealing with, but Russia could be, because of the nuclear aspect, an existential threat to the United States,” Deborah James said on Saturday.