Business

• Spot the common thread: China's growth hits quarter-century low, raising hopes of more stimulus (Reuters)
• And here: China stocks climb on hopes for new economic stimulus (Reuters)
• Welcome to the Crisis Economy, Where Tumult Reigns (WSJ)
• IEA Sees Risk of World Drowning in Oil (BBG)
• IEA Sees Iran's Return Intensifying Battle for Europe Oil Market (BBG)
• China 2015 power, steel output drop for first time in decades (Reuters)
• Major snowstorm may threaten DC to NYC Friday into Saturday (Accuweather)

Submitted by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,

We’ve only really been in two weeks of trading in the new year, things are looking pretty bad to say the least, so predictably the press are asking -and often answering- questions about when the slump will be over. Rebound, recovery, the usual terminology. When will we get back to growth?

In the aftermath of Citi and JPM's earnings last week, the only thing investors wanted to know about when it came to the just released Bank of America earnings moments ago, was the bank's energy exposure, and we'll get to that in a second, but first here are the housekeeping items.

On Monday, we noted with some incredulity that North Dakota Sour - a high-sulfur grade of crude - was briefly going for -$0.50 at the Koch brothers' Flint Hills Resources refining arm.

That’s not a misprint. If you had yourself some North Dakota Sour, you’d have to pay a refinery to take it off your hands. Your product was worth less than nothing.

We use the past tense there because once Bloomberg broke the story, Flint Hills quickly replaced the negative number with a positive one - you can now get $1.50.

Only the most intellectually dishonest can claim that last night's Chinese economic data deluge was anything but miserable. As we showed last night, everything missed:

• Industrial Production +5.9% (MISS vs +6.0% YoY expectations)
• Retail Sales +11.1% (MISS vs +11.3% YoY expectations)
• Fixed Asset Investment +10.0% (MISS vs +10.2% YoY expectations),
• Q4 GDP growth +6.8% (MISS vs +6.9% YoY expectations).

Even as the real full year GDP of 6.9% was in line, it was still the lowest since 1990...