Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
Japan is a global leader is how to gracefully manage stagnation.
Although our leadership is too polite to say it out loud, they've embraced stagnation as the new quasi-official policy. The reason is tragi-comically obvious: any real reform would threaten the income streams gushing into untouchably powerful self-serving elites and fiefdoms.
Two years ago, when UBS looked at the world's most expensive housing markets, it found that London and Hong Kong were the only two areas exposed to bubble risk.
Most Puerto Ricans haven’t had access to electricity, cell service or financial services for nearly two weeks now. And as we reported yesterday, residents who didn’t stockpile enough cash have been struggling after Hurricane Maria essentially knocked the island’s economy into the 1950s, forcing some to forgo essential supplies - or worse - resort to looting. For those who do have access to working ATMs and banks, long lines have sapped cash reserves as the country has effectively reverted to a "cash only" economy.
It appears that "subdued volatility" is hurting not only bank trading revenues. Two years after CNBC announced that it would no longer rely on Nielsen ratings to measure its daytime audience (just after we reported its viewership had tumbled the most on record), turning to rival Cogent Reports instead, the latest data reveals that the decline for the financial channel has continued, and in the past quarter CNBC delivered 152,000 total daily viewers, its lowest viewership since 1991 for the 28-year-old network.
Earlier today Twitter Vice President for Public Policy Colin Crowell met with staff from Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to discuss how Twitter may have been exploited by sneaky Russian operatives to sway the course of American history by undermining the candidacy of Hillary Clinton.