China

Something strange is taking place in China, and we are not talking about the largely optical, mostly irrelevant first downgrade of China by Moody's since 1989 (which still managed to unleash diplomatic hell in Beijing), and in which the rating agency simply admitted what everyone else already knew about the 300% debt/GDP economy.

The bigger issue, as we noted previously, is that both the short-term...

and conventional Chinese funding market appears to be breaking...

The market may have long since moved on from Moody's downgrade of China to A1 from Aa3 (by now even long-only funds have learned that in a world with $18 trillion in excess liquidity, the opinion of Moodys is even more irrelevant), but for Beijing the vendetta is only just starting, and in response to Tuesday's downgrade, China's finance ministry accused the rating agency of applying "inappropriate methodology" in downgrading China's credit rating, saying the firm had overestimated the difficulties faced by the Chinese economy and underestimated the country's abilit

Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

Those of us who have exited The Matrix are concerned that there are no checks on Washington’s use of nuclear weapons in the interest of US hegemony over the world.

Washington and Israel are the threats to peace. Washington demands world hegemony, and Israel demands hegemony in the Middle East.

Not even last night's Moody's credit downgrade of China - the first since 1989 - could dent the global stock rally which has pushed global stock prices to all time highs. After initially sliding, regional stocks and emerging Asian currencies pared early losses following the unexpected downgrade of China, taking their cue from the "sudden reversal" of the Shanghai Composite Index, which some speculated saw the latest intervention of the "national team."

When OPEC sits down on Thursday, keeping the price of Brent above $50 (to avoid a budget catastrophe and social upheaval in Saudi Arabia) and below $60 (to prevent US production from going exponential), will be just one problem the cartel nations and various hangers-on will be desperate to solve. A much bigger one, literally, is the problem that led to this week's OPEC meeting in the first place, and years of headache for OPEC and non-OPEC nations: a record global oil inventory glut.