Business

Now they tell us…

Last month, S&P warned that UK lenders could incur £30 billion of losses on their consumer lending portfolios consisting of credit cards, personal and auto loans if interest rates and unemployment rose sharply.  Much like in the U.S., S&P warned that "loose monetary policy, cheap central bank term funding schemes and benign economic conditions" had fueled an "unsustainable" yet massive expansion of consumer credit that will inevitably end badly.  Per The Guardian:

ICO Investors are about to experience something that’s almost never happened in the brief history of the $3 billion market: An offering by a company with an actual product.

As online retailers in the United States prepare for Cyber Monday, i.e. the biggest online shopping day of the year, China’s largest e-commerce company just recorded the biggest day in its history.

As Statista's Felix Richter notes, on November 11, Chinese Singles’ Day, online shoppers bought merchandise worth more than $25 billion across Alibaba’s platforms (mainly Tmall and Taobao), shattering last year’s sales record in the process.

Authored by David Stockman via The Daily Reckoning,

103 years ago, in 1914, the Federal Reserve opened-up for business as the carnage in northern France was getting under way.

And it brought to a close the prior magnificent half-century era of liberal internationalism and honest gold-backed money.

The Great War was nothing short of a calamity, especially for the 20 million combatants and civilians who perished for no reason discernible in any fair reading of history, or even unfair one.