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It takes ignorance on an almost unbelievable level to try to claim that “nothing is happening” in the financial world right now.

• Asia shares rally, but on track for worst quarterly loss in four years (Reuters)
• Global Rally Shows Relief at End of $11 Trillion Stocks Meltdown (BBG)
• Glencore Extends Rebound as Turmoil Shows Signs of Easing (BBG)
• Putin wins parliamentary backing for air strikes in Syria (Reuters)
• China Cuts Minimum Home Down Payment for First-Time Buyers (BBG)
• German Unemployment Unexpectedly Rises in Sign of Economic Risks (BBG)
• Japan Industrial Output Slide Hints at Recession (WSJ)

• Headline winner: "Read Beyond Massive Job-Cuts Headlines: Labor Market Is Fine" (BBG)
• And speaking of lies: The More Yellen Talks Up Inflation, the Less Traders Believe Her (BBG)
• How Some Investors Get Special Access to Companies (WSJ)
• Victorious Catalan separatists claim mandate to break with Spain (Reuters)
• Russia seizes initiative in Syria (Reuters)
• Former VW boss Winterkorn investigated for fraud (Reuters)
• Investors Pull Back From Junk Bonds (WSJ)

"The discrepancy between economic growth and the two key indicators' growth in the first six months did not fit with previous patterns, but industrial restructuring is a new factor, and should be taken into account when analyzing the new situation."

Did Australia's Prime Minister Tony Abbott just lose his job because of fears that a probe and audit of the "data" and "statistics" behind global warming could threaten to destroy Goldman Sachs' best laid cap-and-trade, emissions trading scheme and carbon tax plans?

“There’s a saying that helps explain our mood around here. When the sea is this turbulent, the only thing you can do is sit on the sand and watch. It’s not time to get in a boat."

The fallout from the emissions scandal that triggered a harrowing plunge in Volkswagen's shares and now threatens to derail the German economy continues as Detusche Bank delivers a sobering assessment, the Green party blames Berlin, BaFin lanches an investigation, and the town of Wolfsburg panics.

Hot on the heels of British military threats of a coup, the potential for a truly 'red' black swan of an event has reared its ugly head in China, just as Xi tours America. As Reuters reports, bitterness is growing within China's armed forces to President Xi Jinping's decision to cut troop numbers by 300,000, and, according to a source and commentaries in the military's newspaper, considerable effort will be needed to overcome opposition to the order with PLA official sources warning "people are worried, it's been too sudden."

While Asian trading overnight started off on the right foot, chasing US momentum higher, things rapidly shifted once Europe opened as attention moved back to global growth fears, global central banks losing credibility, as well as miners and the ongoing Volkswagen fiasco.

We’re all Dr. Evil today, thinking that one million dollars is a lot of money, or that one second is a short period of time, or that we are individually smart or capable in a systemically interesting way. We use our small-number brains to make sense of an increasingly large-number investment world, and as a result both our market fears and our market dreams are increasingly out of touch with reality.

Non-bombasitc overview of the investment climate.  No, the sky is not falling.  This is not the end of days.  

Ordinary Americans frequently ask why politicians and government officials appear to be so obtuse, rarely recognizing what is actually occurring in the country. That is partly due to the fact that the political class lives in a bubble of its own creation, but it might also be because many of America’s leaders actually accept that there is an unelected, unappointed, and unaccountable presence within the system that actually manages what is taking place behind the scenes. That would be the American deep state. America’s deep state is completely corrupt: it exists to sell out the public interest, and includes both major political parties as well as government officials.

Our current monetary system is the root cause of many evils of today. Let’s take war, a topic we discussed in this article, as an example. Without a monetary system that creates currency out of thin air, most of the wars that we have had and still have would simply not be financeable. This system is controlled by a few, who change the rules to their own benefit. And as we have seen they use their privileges to finance wars and to bribe politicians. By holding your wealth in precious metals you are rejecting the current system and also protecting yourself from “financial tyranny”. This includes: capital controls, expropriation, bail-ins, bailouts, negative interest rates, market manipulation on a wide scale and massive paper currency fluctuations.

A perfect storm of Islamophobia and technophobia (as Wired.com's Marcus Wohlsen so eloquently put it) has erupted in Texas where high-school freshman Ahmed Mohamed was arrested Monday after bringing a homemade digital clock to MacArthur High. A teacher at the Irving school exclaimed "it looks like a bomb,"  resulting in a call to police. By mid-afternoon, police were leading the boy out of school in handcuffs and taking him to juvenile detention on suspicion of making a "hoax bomb." As Mike Krieger sums up so perfectly, America is a deeply fallen nation. I don’t know how obvious it has to become before people come to grips and start to do something about it.

"Countries need to put aside geopolitical ambitions [and] direct or indirect use of terrorist groups to achieve goals that include regime change, in order to counter the threat of Islamic State. Elementary common sense responsibility for global and regional security demands the collective effort of the international community."