United States

The biggest macro development over the weekend was China's latest "gloomy" economic update, in which industrial production, retail sales and lending figures all missed estimates, however now that we are back to central bank bailout mode, bad news is once again good news, and the Shanghai Comp soared +1.7% among the best performers in Asia on calls for further central bank stimulus while the new CSRC chief also vowed to intervene in stock markets if necessary. In other words, the worse the data in China, the better.

The New York Times reports on the Saudi-led war on Yemen and U.S. support for the campaign as the war nears the one-year mark. The article doesn’t contain that much new information for readers that have been following the conflict closely, but it is still worth reading. This section stood out to me:

Saudi Arabia and its Persian Gulf neighbors were poised to begin a campaign in support of Yemen’s impotent government — an offensive Mr. Jubeir said could be relatively swift.

Submitted by Andrew Korybko via OrientalReview.org,

The Law Of Hybrid Warfare

Authored by Michael Klare via TomDispatch.com,

We’ve written quite a bit about P2P or, more accurately, "marketplace" lending over the years.

Most recently, we noted that write-offs for five-year LendingClub loans were coming in at between 7% and 8% as opposed to the forecast range of between 4% and 6%. “Their business is to take data and use that to underwrite risk,” Compass Point’s Michael Tarkan told Bloomberg by phone. “If you’re an investor in the loans on the platform, this creates a concern around that underwriting model.”