Business

• Global share market settles after stormy start to year (Reuters)
• Stocks Extend Losses as Yen, Gold Rise on Lingering China Unease (BBG)
• China battles to shore up stocks, yuan after globe-shaking slide (Reuters)
• China Said to Intervene in Stocks After $590 Billion Selloff (BBG)
• Volkswagen faces billions in penalties as U.S. sues for environment violations (Reuters)
• Obama tightens gun rules, requires more background checks (Reuters)
• Obama to Announce Expansion of Background Checks for Gun Purchases (WSJ)

After yesterday's historic -6.9% rout in the Shanghai Composite, which saw the first new marketwide circuit breaker trading halt applied to Chinese stocks (on its first day of operation), many were wondering if the Chinese government would intervene in both the once again imploding stock market, as well as China's plunging and rapidly devaluing currency.

Some sobering words about China's imminent crisis, not from your friendly neighborhood doom and gloom village drunk, but from BofA's China strategist David Cui.

Excerpted from "2016 Year-Ahead: what may trigger financial instability", a must-read report for anyone interested in learning how China's epic stock market experiment ends.

A case for financial instability

Submitted by Michael Lebowitz via 720Global.com,

“It’s self-defeating to use the wrong monetary policy.”  -Ben Bernanke

Late last month in “This Is Canada's Depression: Surging Crime, Soaring Suicides, Overwhelmed Food Banks ‘And The Worst Is Yet To Come,’” we took a sweeping look at what is truly pitiable situation in Alberta, the heart of the Canadian oil patch.

Roughly a third of provincial revenue is derived from “resources” which means that when oil prices collapsed, the territory plunged into recession. Oil and gas investment fell by more than a third in in 2015 and in its latest fiscal update, the government said it fully expects the weakness to carry into 2016.