China

A few weeks ago we highlighted an 'inconvenient fact' for the publicly traded electric car manufacturers and the environmentally-conscious Left, namely that, according to Morgan Stanley, electric cars generate more CO2 than they save.  As a stark reminder to our left-leaning political elites who created these companies with massive taxpayer funded subsidies in the United States, Morgan Stanley pointed out that while electric cars don't burn gasoline they do have to be charged using electricity generated by coal and other fossil fuels.

Authored by Kevin Muir via The Macro Tourist blog,

Whenever I tell people the next big crisis will come from inflation, not deflation, the looks of disgust are worse than when someone says Justin Bieber’s music is not that bad. And when I try to tell them that the true bubble is in fixed income, not stocks, they look at me as if I just slipped the Biebs into the next-up slot on the Spotify playlist.

Apple Inc. had hoped that its iPhone eight might demolish the company’s sales records in China as the country’s burgeoning middle class embraced the phone, thanks in part to its name: Eight is considered a lucky number in Chinese culture, signifying wealth and fortune.

Unfortunately for the world’s most valuable company, this calculus isn’t playing out as well as its massive marketing operation had hoped for one simple reason: The price of the phone is simply too high for most members of the company's target demographic.

And we're back at all time highs.

In the latest indication that the US is desperate to reach a diplomatic compromise over North Korea, even if it means appeasing Beijing and Moscow, Reuters reports that while the UN Security Council is set to vote on Monday afternoon on a U.S.-drafted resolution to impose new sanctions on North Korea over latest nuclear test, as discussed on Friday, the new draft no longer proposes blacklisting North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, while also dropping a proposed oil embargo - something Beijing had vocally opposed - and instead intends to impose a ban on condensates and natural g