The Economist

• Central Banks Ponder Going Beyond Inflation Mandates (BBG)
• Bloomberg Weighs Making Bid for The Financial Times (NYT)
• Hedge Funds Fall Out of Love with Equities (FT)
• Obama and Boehner resume US fiscal cliff talks (FT)
• Italy Front-Runner Vows Steady Hand (WSJ)
• Spanish Bailout Caution Grows as Business Lobbies Back Rajoy (BBG)
• Japan sinks into fresh recession (Reuters)
• China economic recovery intact, but weak exports drag (Reuters)
• Greece extends buyback offer to reach target (Reuters)  ... but on Friday they promised it was done
• Basel Liquidity Rule May Be Watered Down Amid Crisis (BBG) ... just before they are scrapped
• Irish, Greek Workers Seen Suffering Most in 2013 Amid EU Slump (BBG)

Europe is supposedly fixed and/or well on the path to being competitive and "rebalanced." Or so they say every day. What they don't say, is that to complete the process of rebalancing, in the absence of external devaluation mechanisms under a currency union, is that wages in countries such as Spain, Italy and even France, will have to drop by another 30%-50% for internal imbalances between the Eurozone's nation states to be evened out. What they certainly don't say is how this could ever possible be achieved...

Or Maybe the Biggest of All Time ...

Will Congress go over the fiscal cliff?  Yes, we've been going for decades, really since the social unrest of the 1970s. 

There was one election outcome yesterday that few noticed, judging by mainstream media. We are referring to Colorado’s Amendment 64, which regulates marijuana in a similar manner to alcohol.  It is basically full legalization of pot for adults over 21. It’s interesting that the two states to legalize marijuana both voted for Obama in this election.  Will he now betray all these faithful voters?  Based on his first term performance, you can count on it.  Your move Mr. Holder.

First, The Economist, now the man who owns the terminal that global finance uses each day to chat with one another, and occasionally to check the real time price of ESZ2 (if certainly not quite as much this year, and last, as desired). Mike Bloomberg's driving catalyst to chose the way he did? Climate change. Because to some it is the economy, to others: the number of cloudless sunny days in St Barts. The question for employees of Bain now: do they immediately disconnect their BBG terminals, or wait until next Wednesday.

And for a second there we thought financial publications were supposed to at least pretend they are impartial. It appears that is not the case. Now we eagerly await to learn whom Playboy, the National Enquirer, and TMZ endorse...

Every Halloween people are engaging in free-market anarchism whether they like it or not. To the economist, it’s clear that the child values receiving candy, even if it means dressing up in a funny or scary costume and going door-to-door, sometimes for hours, saying “trick or treat”. It’s clear that for the adults, joining in for the festive evening is valued more-so than the monetary value of the candy, or else they wouldn’t be giving it away. And some don’t. Some people, adults and children alike, shy away from Halloween night neither tricking nor treating nor allowing their homes to be used as candy repositories. To the free-market anarchist, Halloween is a perfect example of a non-coercive display of voluntary goodwill. Here is a spontaneous order of people partaking in a festive holiday without any expectation of monetary gain.

"We have just spent 15 years learning that a policy of creating asset bubbles is a bad idea, so it is hard to imagine why the Fed wants to create another one. But perhaps the more basic question is: How fruitful is the wealth effect? Is the additional spending that these volatile paper profits are intended to induce overwhelmed by the lost consumption of the many savers who are deprived of steady, recurring interest income? We have asked several well-known economists who publicly support the Fed’s policy and found that they don’t have good answers. If Chairman Bernanke is setting distant and hard-to-achieve benchmarks for when he would reverse course, it is possibly because he understands that it may never come to that. Sooner or later, we will enter another recession. It could come from normal cyclicality, or it could come from an exogenous shock. Either way, when it comes, it is very likely we will enter it prior to the Fed having ‘normalized’ monetary policy, and we’ll have a large fiscal deficit to boot. What tools will the Fed and the Congress have at that point? If the Fed is willing to deploy this new set of desperate measures in these frustrating, but non-desperate times, what will it do then? We don’t know, but a large allocation to gold still seems like a very good idea."

While it is easier to listen to the narrative from world leaders and feel numb to the reality of it all, The Economist has decided enough is enough. Just as we earlier explained in simple bullet points the reality of the last few years in Europe (here), so The Economist provides this handy 'be your own global macro strategist' tool to comprehend just what magic the markets believe will occur going forward to keep debt levels under control across the world's governments... (e.g. all things equal, the country would need to grow by 7.7% a year, or nominal bond yields to fall to a Teutonic 0.5% to stabilize government gross debt at its 2011 level of 70% of GDP).

"The consensus view was that QE3 was going to send the stock market to the moon. Yet the peak level on the S&P 500 was 1,465 on September 14th, the day after the FOMC meeting. The consensus view was that the lagging hedge funds were going to be forced to play some major catch-up and take the stock market to the moon too. Surveys show that the hedge funds have already made this adjustment...Q3 EPS estimates are still coming down and now stand at -3% YoY from -2% at the start of October....this is the first time the Fed embarked on a nonconventional easing initiative with the market overbought and with profits and earning expectations on a discernible downtrend. Not only that, but the fact the pace of U.S. economic activity is still running below a 2% annual rate, which is less than half of what is normal at this stage of the business cycle with the massive amount of government stimulus, is truly remarkable. Keep an eye on the debt ceiling being re-tested — the cap is $16.394 trillion and we are now at $16.119 trillion. This is likely to make the headlines again before year-end — the rating agencies may not be taking off much time for a Christmas break."

The Japanese have a peculiarly virulent strain of right-wing militarism that continues to influence domestic politics. In this worldview, reverence for the Imperial household is mixed with an aggrieved sense that Japan's expansion in World War II was justified (though few would say this publicly). As a result, any official Japanese attempt to apologize for the horrendous destruction, murder, enslavement and torture inflicted by Japanese forces in World War II sparks outrage in one sector of the domestic political order. Deep within this mindset is the view that the only thing wrong with World War II was that Japan lost. Even more galling to those who suffered so mightily, Japan has refused to publicly acknowledge (though they claim they have) and compensate the "comfort women," young women who were forced into prostitution to serve Japan's armed forces in the Asian/Pacific theater of World War II. This official dance between apology and refusal satisfies no one, and the general sense outside Japan is that the Japanese acceptance of guilt is grudging public relations rather than sincere. Combine an obsession with "face" and a plethora of deep-seated resentments, and you get the tinder for territorial disputes. What appears to be lost on the Chinese is the consequence of their saber-rattling and bluster: they appear to have obliterated 20 years of careful diplomacy aimed at convincing their neighbors of China's peaceful intentions.

...the pushback from Wall Street was intense and multi-pronged. The Blob oozed through the halls of government, seeking, through its glutinous embrace, to immobilize the legislative and regulatory apparatus, thereby preserving the status quo. The executive jets of the Wall Street air force flew sortie after sortie, transporting high-ranking emissaries from new York to Washington to meet with the SEC, [Senator Chris] Dodd and [Senator Richard] Shelby staff, and the staff of other senators on the Banking Committee. Some of the executives, no doubt less enthusiastically, even met with Josh and me. The research companies and market experts Wall Street employs also raised their voices against us. At times it got ugly. Ted was called a crackpot and dangerously uninformed. He was accused of “politicizing” market regulation (a strange notion considering he wasn’t running for election). It seemed as if Wall Street, which wasn’t used to someone on Capitol Hill asking in-depth questions about arcane issues, wished to silence or marginalize its critics. Industry people would always ask me, “What got Kaufman so interested in this stuff?” Used to politicians whose top priorities were to please their home-state business interests and raise money, they had trouble fathoming that Ted was so interested because it was the right thing to do. He believed in fair markets. And because he was genuinely concerned about emerging issues that threatened the stock market, where half of all Americans keep a sizable portion of their retirement savings.

• Germany Can Ratify ESM Fund With Conditions, Court Rules (Bloomberg)
• Obama Discusses Iran Nuclear Threat With Netanyahu (Bloomberg)
• Stocks, Euro Gain as Court Allows ESM; Irish Bonds Climb (Bloomberg)
• U.S. cautions Japan, China over escalating islands row (Reuters)
• Draghi alone cannot save the euro (FT)
• 'New York Post' Runs Boldest Anti-Obama Ad Yet (Bloomberg)
• Another urban legend: Fish Oil Pills Don’t Fix Heart Ills in 24-Year Data Review (Bloomberg)
• Troika Says Portugal’s Program is ‘On Track’ (Bloomberg)
• Russia Wants to Steer Clear of 'Gas War' (WSJ)
• U.S. Said Set to Target First Non-Bank Firms for Scrutiny (Bloomberg)
• Wen Says China’s Policy Strength Will Secure Growth Targets (Bloomberg)
• UK faces clash with Brussels on City (FT)