Asia

Several weeks ago, Chinese President Xi Jinping paid a visit to CCTV and People’s Daily to tell them what a great job they’re doing. The feeling, The Shanghaiist quipped, was mutual.

The media, Xi said while making the rounds, should “reflect the will of the Party, mirror the views of the Party, preserve the authority of the Party, preserve the unity of the Party and achieve love of the Party, protection of the Party and acting for the Party.”

So what you’re saying is that it’s all about the Party?

Submitted by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

On Friday March 15, 2013–just over three years ago–people across the entire nation of Cyprus went to bed believing that everything was OK.

The next morning they woke up to a different reality.

It turned out that their banking system was totally broke. After suffering enormous losses, banks no longer had sufficient liquidity or capital to maintain customer account balances.

With all of Europe and the Americas closed for holiday, what little market action there was overnight came out of Asia, where China once again was engaged in its last hour "National Team" market manipulation, which saved the SHCOMP from a red close after the now traditional last hour buying spree, pushed the Shanghai Composite from red on the session an hour before close to near the highs of the day.

“Investors could be forgiven for heading for the hills given the tumultuous start to 2016,”  so writes Andrew Oxlade in The Telegraph today who advises investors to diversify into gold as an “insurance policy”:

Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,

If the four structural trends highlighted below don't reverse, the middle class is heading for extinction.

Everyone knows the middle class is fading fast. I've covered this issue in depth for years, for example: Honey, I Shrunk the Middle Class: Perhaps 1/3 of Households Qualify (December 28, 2015) and What Does It Take To Be Middle Class? (December 5, 2013)