Amid Capitol Hill hearings and rising concerns over regulation, Facebook crushed expectations in Q3 - beating top- and bottom-line dramatically and better-than-expected user growth - sending the stock price higher after-hours to new record highs.
Record highs for stocks, 10 year lows for the yield curve...
U.S. auto sales for the month of October came in mostly mixed with Fiat and GM being the biggest losers relative to street estimates and Ford beating on strong truck and fleet sales. GM forecasts that the overall SAAR for the month ended up around 18mm units, versus 17.5mm expected, as sales remain elevated due to hurricane-related replacements. Here's more from Detroit News:
Amid rising speculation whether Catalonia will adopt some cryptocurrency should it follow through with plans for independence, and in the context of articles such as this from Vice that "Russia is going all in on bitcoin", one country appears to be preparing to accept bitcoin as digital legal tender: Iran.
Back in 2014, a scandal erupted when media reports confirmed what many had previously speculated about China's banking system: namely that much of China's staggering loan issuance had been built (literally) upon air and that trillions in loan collateral had been "rehypothecated" between two, three or many more debtors - or never even existed - forcing banks to accept that they would never recover much if any of the pledged collateral - in most cases various commodities - if the economy were to suffer a hard-landing resulting in mass defaults.