Asia

European politics returns with a bang this week, when not only will attention be focused on Austria to see if the right wing Freedom Party joins the People's Party in a historic governing coalition, in an embarrassing blow to Europe's establishment, but also whether Catalan President Puidgemont will (again) fomally - and this time clearly - announce whether he has declared independence as Spain's PM Rajoy demanded last week. Elsewhere, EU leaders meet on Thursday to discuss the progress of the Brexit talks and whether transition and trade negotiations can begin.

Via StockBoardAsset.com,

Regulatory Filings Suggest Elon Musk Is Planning a Secret Rocket Launch In Mid-November. 

According to Spaceflight Now, federal regulatory filings suggest SpaceX will launch a mysterious payload on a Falcon 9 rocket mid-November. Mainstream media remains silent on the event considering the payload is top secret. Filings indicate the payload has no public claim of ownership– from any government or private corporation.

Nearly two years after the historic, and still mysterious "Shanghai Accord" which in early 2016 halted what at the time appeared to a global collapse in capital markets courtesy of what appears to have been unprecedented political, fiscal and monetary coordination between the developed world and China, on October 18 the world turns its attention to what is arguably the most important political event of the year, and the logical conclusion to the stabilization process which started with the Accord, when the Chinese Communist Party kicks off its 19th Party Congress, the political even

Returning to the world of investing and market commentary one week after surgery, One River's CIO Eric Peters touches on some of the most topical issues, including his latest take on bitcoin and money in particular, and the definition of value (which is increasingly more weightless) in general, the deflationary impact of tech on prices and wages and what the Fed's inflation target should be in this "new normal", recent trends in R&D spending, and, of course volatility.

Below we present select highlights from Peters' latest letter:

Overall

The Unraveling of American/Russian Relations

Paul Craig Roberts

Dear Readers: I agree that the official Las Vegas story seems to be unraveling. A public mass shooting should be transparent, not opaque. I think we explored the story long enough to discover that without knowing the facts, we cannot arrive at an explanation with confidence.