Business

Benjamin Friedman criticizes Ted Cruz’s plan for a gargantuan military budget. Here he describes what the plan would cost:

Cruz says that as President he’ll spend 4.1 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) on defense for two years, and 4 percent thereafter. As the chart below shows, under standard growth predictions, Cruz’s plan produces a massive increase in military spending: about $1.2 trillion over what would be Cruz’s first term and $2.6 trillion over eight years [bold mine-DL]. Details on the chart are at the end of this post.

If "everything's fixed," then why is the number of distressed debt issuers still the highest "since Lehman."

h/t @mattmiller1973

And the answer is not - it's just energy and it's different this time.

One of the more stunning economic updates this week was China's unprecedented surge in Chinese loan creation, when as reported earlier this week, China unveiled a whopping CNY3.42 trillion in Total Social Financing, its broadest debt aggregate, an amount greater than half a trillion dollars, of which CNY2.51 trillion was in new bank loans.

Originally posted Op-Ed via The Wall Street Journal,

These are strange monetary times, with negative interest rates and central bankers deemed to be masters of the universe. So maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that politicians and central bankers are now waging a war on cash. That’s right, policy makers in Europe and the U.S. want to make it harder for the hoi polloi to hold actual currency.

While jobless claims look rosy, Philly Fed's employment index plunged by the most since May 2013 as the headline survey extended its period of sub-50 contraction to six straight months - the longest streak outside of a recesssion in history. Across the board the underlying components were weak with current all tumbling led a collapse in average workweek, employment, and new orders. Worse still, the "hope" index plunged to its lowest since Nov 2012.

6 straight months of contraction flash red for recession...