North America

In today's trifecta of after hours earnings results, all three behemoths representing different key parts of the US economy, stumbled after either missing expectations, or guiding lower.

First, it was Mondelez, which missed on the top and bottom line, reporting Q4 EPS of $0.47 below the $0.49 expected, on disappointing revenue of $6.77BN, below the $6.87BN expected. The company also missed on margin reporting Q4 adj. gross margin 39.0%, below the est. 40.1%. Some other details:

Despite Macy's, Saks, and Zappos still carrying Ivanka Trump's fashion lines, it appears Nordstrom has folded to the liberal intelligentisia's "Grab Your Wallet" protests, demanding a boycott of retailers carrying Trump merchandise, as the department store stated today that it will no longer sell Ivanka Trump's eponymous clothing and accessories.

http://abcnews.go.com/video/embed

As ABC reports, a spokesperson for the retailer, which has nearly 350 stores under various banners across North America, said

The United States is a demographic time bomb, plain and simple.  Over the next 30 years, the U.S. economy will face an unrelenting demographic transition as ~75 million baby boomers exit the highest wage earning years of their life and start to draw down what little retirement savings they've managed to tuck away while wreaking havoc on the public "safety net" ponzi schemes, like Social Security, that will almost certainly be insolvent in a decade.

Following last night's deadly shooting at a Quebec City mosque which killed six people and wounded eight, two suspects were under arrest and according to press reports have been identified: one is a French-Canadian and the other was of Moroccan heritage. One suspect was identified as Alexandre Bissonnette, a French-Canadian, the other as Mohamed Khadir, who is of Moroccan heritage although his nationality was not immediately known.

Submitted by Denis MacEoin via The Gatestone Institute,