Norway

And to think all it took was Gartman going short of stocks in 25% correction terms yesterday...

News That Matters

If we could put the economics of Bernie Sanders into a nutshell, it would be this: Burden private enterprise with one directive after another, and then demonize it when it ultimately falls down under the awful weight of taxes, higher costs, and mandates. While many people believe that instituting the Sanders economic agenda would help turn the USA into another Sweden or Denmark, the more likely outcome would be turning this country into another Venezuela.

Gold rose 3.5% in August as stocks globally saw sharp falls on growing concerns about the Chinese and the global economy.  

It's a case of economic policy run amuck.  Real estate development can boost the economy, under the right conditions: lots of jobs and economic activity get generated when homes are built or refurbished.  And there is the wealth effect when home prices rise.  But when taken to extremes - as it is today and was in the previous economic cycle consumer spending gets squeezed out in order to pay mortgages and rent.  It becomes an incredibly unproductive use of capital. Simply put, we have a surge in college-age prostitution and it's the Fed's fault. It gives new meaning to the term "perverse monetary policies"

While some, perhaps not California farmers, will disagree with NOAA's assessment of the world's atmospheric conditions, earlier today the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration declared that July was the warmest month ever recorded for the globe and was also the record warmest for global oceans, putting a full stop to a year that has been characterized by numerous perplexing atmospheric outliers around the globe but perhaps none other more so than NOAA's earlier assessment that the winter of 2015 was also the warmest on record despite the much discussed US winter, where for the second year in a row the economic slowdown was blamed on a colder than usual winter. Go figure: perhaps here too we need double seasonal adjustments.

But Not There Yet...

Seconds ago, someone accidentally (we hope) pulled a Janet Yellen as the following just came across the wires

FOMC MINUTES: MEMB 'GENERALLY AGREED' MORE INFO NEEDED TO HIKE
FOMC MINUTES: NO TIP TOWARDS SEPT LIFTOFF, DOESN'T RULE IT OUT

But the bottom line is that the Fed just admitted things are going from bad to worse: "The risks to the forecast for real GDP and inflation were seen as tilted to the downside." The question now is what comes first: QE4 or the first rate hike in nearly a decade.

The nation’s largest privately held company, Cargill, has agreed to purchase Norwegian-based EWOS, one of the world's largest suppliers of feed and nutrition for farmed fish. The $1.5 billion deal signals Cargill’s entry into salmon and trout markets and is the company’s second aquaculture deal in the past two months after it announced a $30 million shrimp feed facility project in Equador with Naturisa. 

A look at next week's data in the somewhat larger context, and a look at interest rate differentials

To help remind readers of what happens when the entire world engages in wholesale currency war, here is a complete list of all the recent FX interventions, courtesy of Stone McCarthy.

In "historic step," Norway may be forced to tap into its $875 billion sovereign wealth fund to help make ends meet in the face of persistently low crude prices.

Here is an overview of next week's events and data placed in the larger context.  

Coal powered electricity is currently by far the cheapest and one of the most reliable forms of electricity generation known to Man. To suggest that replacing this with intermittent wind and solar or carbon capture generation will somehow reduce American’s electricity bills is either delusional or plain stupid. Or is the intention to deliberately deceive?