United States

Americans are not getting enough sleep, according to a new report from The CDC. More than one-third of adults in the US get less than the 'required' 7 hours sleep per night, leading to greater chance for obesity, high blood pressure and other diseases related to the digestion of food into energy. Interestingly it is the laid-back Hawaiians that get the least sleep, but South Dakota has the highest percentage of those getting seven hours of sleep each night, at 71.6%.

A think tank has warned that North Korea has the potential to launch a devastating EMP attack on U.S. power grids. An EMP attack could disrupt electrical and electronic systems needed for modern life and cause widespread chaos. The Sunday Express reports: The possibility of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack, where a nuclear device is programmed to produce an electromagnetic wave with such force to destroy electronic systems, has plagued mankind since the Cold War, according to the Center for Security Policy.

Prosthetic eyeballs go for anywhere from $2,000 to $9,000 at an ocularist. You'll be thanking me for this information, as the US election ramps into high gear and the deluge of political propaganda, I mean advertising, puts sane people everywhere at severe risk of stabbing their own eyes out with knitting needles.

After refusing to even consider the possibility of a recession in the US for over a year, the first cracks in Goldman's armor are starting to appear. Over the weekend chief equity strategist David Kostin said that while the probability of a recession according to GS economists remains low, saying that "their model suggests the US has an 18% probability of recession during the next year and 24% likelihood during the next two years", Goldman's clients and investors "continue to inquire about the impact a contraction would have on the US equity market."

At the peak of the last financial crisis, as the credit liquidation wave was jumping from one highly levered product to the next, one of the hardest hit sectors was Collateralized Loan Obligations (CLO) space, where the rout and massive P&L losses across most tranches led to a revulsion for new issuance, which effectively shut down the sector for the next 3 years.