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• Stock Halts Added to Monday’s Market Chaos (WSJ)
• Fed Up Investors Yank Cash From Almost Everything Just Like 2008 (BBG)
• Drop in Stock Futures Signal Halt to S&P 500's Relief Rally (BBG) - at least until the BOJ ramps USDJPY up again
• Hacker Killed by Drone Was Islamic State’s ‘Secret Weapon’ (WSJ)
• Greece's Syriza to win election but face setback, poll shows (Reuters)
• Puerto Rico Spends More Than $60 Million on Debt Restructuring (BBG)

News That Matters

Americans associate the morning with “Time to trade equities”. They hear news – in the case of the last few days, bad news from overseas – first thing in the morning. By the time the market opens, they have made their decisions and entered their orders. About half as many will check in around the close to see how things turned out, but for many the next piece of market news won’t hit their mental “Screen” until 20 hours or so later. 

One might argue that the success of 15-year-old Brady Olsen - aka Deez Nuts - from Wallingford, Iowa, embodies more than simply a successful lampooning of the American political system. There are legitimate reasons to view this development as the opening salvo in an upheaval of the way Americans elect presidents. Does this sound hyperbolic? Let me take it a step further: Deez Nuts is actually critically important for the future of the country... and here’s why...

Google delivers its verdict...

• CHINA PBOC CUTS INTEREST RATES
• CHINA PBOC CUTS REQUIRED DEPOSIT RESERVE RATIO
• CHINA PBOC CUTS 1Y DEPOSIT RATE BY 25 BPS
• CHINA PBOC CUTS 1Y LENDING RATE BY 25 BPS
• CHINA PBOC CUTS BANKS DEPOSIT RESERVE RATIO BY 50 BPS

As asset bubbles are in the way of the Fed’s policy, a decline in stock prices removes the equity market bubble and enables the Fed to print more money and start the process up again. On the other hand, the stock market decline could indicate that the players in the market have comprehended that the stock market is an artificially inflated bubble that has no real basis. Once the psychology is destroyed, flight sets in.

...and it just promises to get worse!

America’s next president could be eased into office not just by TV ads or speeches, but by Google’s secret decisions, and only a few obscure researchers would know how this was accomplished.

...Perhaps the most effective way to wield political influence in today’s high-tech world is to donate money to a candidate and then to use technology to make sure he or she wins. The technology guarantees the win, and the donation guarantees allegiance, which Google has certainly tapped in recent years with the Obama administration...

At the risk of sounding like a broken record we'd like to say a bit more about economists' tendency to get their monetary history wrong; in particular, the common myths about the gold standard. If there's one monetary history topic that tends to get handled especially sloppily by monetary economists, not to mention other sorts, this is it. Sure, the gold standard was hardly perfect, and gold bugs themselves sometimes make silly claims about their favorite former monetary standard. But these things don't excuse the errors many economists commit in their eagerness to find fault with that "barbarous relic." The point, in other words, isn't to make a pitch for gold.  It's to make a pitch for something - anything - that's better than our present, lousy money.

Moments ago, Morgan Stanley did it again just as expected, only this time it at least followed protocol when it announced it is raising its price target on TSLA from $280 to a whopping $465, or just shy of $61 billion in implied market cap. Incidentally at this price TSLA would be the biggest US automaker, surpassing not only GM's $50bn in market capo, but also Ford's $60 billion.

Rather than rely on the same signals everyone else has, accredit yourself. Don't rely on the declining value of credentialing signals: demonstrate you have the skills.

On October 24, 2014, the 19-year old son of a wealthy Swiss businessman walked into a brothel in the Bavarian town of Augsburg. Although by almost any standard he led a rather splendid existence, on this particular night he had reached his breaking point. The problem: he drove a 2011 Ferrari 458 Italia.

Recent price volatility in the media sector got us wondering: is “Cord cutting” the home cable box in favor of online entertainment really hitting critical mass?