Business

As if Theresa May did not face enough challenges, the latest survey from The Bank of England (BoE) suggests the British consumer is about to face the biggest credit crunch since the great financial crisis.

After repeated warnings from BoE about the surging pace of lending to households, British lenders are planning the biggest cutback in consumer loans in nearly 10 years (BoE's quarterly net balance of lenders' expectations for the availability of unsecured lending over the next three months fell to -28.6 from -16.2.)

Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,

For those of you who don’t know Andy Xie, he’s an MIT-educated former IMF economist and was once Morgan Stanley’s chief Asia-Pacific economist. Xie is known for a bearish view of China, and not Beijing’s favorite person. He’s now an ‘independent’ economist based in Shanghai. He gained respect for multiple bubble predictions, including the 1997 Asian crisis and the 2008 US subprime crisis.

While in recent days Bridgewater has been in the news not for its investing acumen (or lack thereof), or the outspoken, contrarian views of its founder Ray Dalio, but rather the recent spirited attack by Jim Grant who in not so many words hinted, if not explicitly stated, that there is something very rotten in the state of (Westport) Connecticut (a theatrically sponsored defense was inevitable), it is still the case that any major investing move the hedge fund...

Despite storms, wildfires, quakes, higher gas prices, and failed Washington policies, Americans are - according to The University of Michigan - their most confident since January 2004.

But we think it's clear what is driving the optimism... total delusion!

Americans have never been more confident that that stock market will rally further in the next 12 months...

And despite the fact half of America lives paycheck to paycheck, they have never, ever, been more confident of retiring comfortably...

Authored by Kevin Muir via The Macro Tourist blog,

Another day, and another steady grind higher in US stock markets.