China

Following more dismal data from the US, hope for global growth remains in China and they did not disappoint. Despite slumping macro data, a major slowdown in real estate, and the nation's deleveraging efforts in the last three months, GDP beat, Retail Sales beat, Industrial Production surged, and even fixed asset investment was above expectations. The Yuan hasn't moved.

For the last three months, Chinese data has been disappointing, along with US, as the collapsing credit impulse leaks into reality...

Authored by Jeffrey Snider via Alhambra Investment Partners,

Authored by John Mauldin via MauldinEconomics.com,

“The job of the central bank is to worry.”

– Alice Rivlin

“The central bank needs to be able to make policy without short-term political concerns.”

– Ben Bernanke

“… from the standpoint of the overall economy, my bottom line is we’re watching it closely but it appears to be contained.

– Ben Bernanke, repeatedly, in 2007

In an unexpectedly brazen rattling of sabers, just days after China deployed troops to its first foreign base in Djibouti, a move which the Global Times clarified is "about protecting its own security, not about seeking to control the world, Beijing made a less than subtle reversal, when it told Japan on Friday to "get used to it" after it flew six warplanes over the Miyako Strait between two southern Japanese islands in a military exercise.

Authored by George Koo via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

North Korea’s latest test of a missile with a range capable of threatening American cities has left the Trump Administration somewhere between wishful thinking and a hard place. Too bad neither represents a realistic resolution of the conundrum.