Every quarter we take a break from all the standard economic indicators to look at a range of alternative data.  The purpose here is to pose the question: “Does the consensus view of the U.S. economy square with what real people do in their day to day lives?” Overall, the news from “Off the Grid” challenges the notion that the U.S. economy is on solid ground and accelerating.  Inching forward, yes... But not much more.

The meaning of events and market signals differ hugely from country to country, tribe to tribe, generation to generation. Ferguson does not mean the same thing as Hong Kong. Hong Kong does not mean the same thing as Tahrir Square or even Tiananmen Square. Monetary policy does not mean the same thing in Beijing as monetary policy means in Washington, which in turn does not mean the same thing as monetary policy in Paris or Rome. But we have an innate tendency to act as if these signals DO mean the same thing, and we can totally wrong-foot our investments as a result. The biggest thing happening in the world today is the growing divergence between US monetary policy and everyone else’s monetary policy with three HUGE implications: one for investment strategy selection, one for global growth, and one for … (gulp!) gold.

There Might Be Some Truth to China's Accusation that the U.S. is Doing Its Best to Stir Up Hong Kong

New investigations by the Small Business Administration (SBA) Office of Inspector General have found SBA Administrator Maria Contreras-Sweet's announcement that small businesses received 23.39% of all federal contracts was greatly exaggerated. As WaPo reports, Federal agencies overstated their success last year in contracting with small businesses that face socio-economic disadvantages finding $400 million worth of contracts that agencies gave to ineligible firms but still counted toward their targets. Rather stunningly, the report found of the top 100 recipients of the highest dollar amount of federal small business contracts, over 75% were actually current large businesses. Trust...

The kings men also viewed their power as necessary as Comey does today. They could simply enter someone’s home and search all your papers. If you wrote anything derogatory against the king, off you went to prison. This is what inspired the American Revolution and the Fourth Amendment that there had to be a reason to search not just arbitrary desire to want to know and lets see what we can find as the NSA and FBI do today. This is the very essence of LIBERTY. You cannot pretend to be the leader of the free world with people like Comey in government.

A man who had been fired from a food processing plant in an Oklahoma City suburb beheaded a woman with a knife and was attacking another worker when he was shot and wounded by a company official, police said Friday. As AP reports, while questioning the suspect's co-workers, investigators learned he had recently started trying to convert several employees to Islam. As the director of news and information for the Islamic Society of Greater Oklahoma City stated, "they have this ISIS thing on their minds and now this guy has brought it to America."

Thanks to a dizzying barrage of lies, mainstream media fear-mongering and a couple of beheadings, the Obama Administration finally achieved its long sought after war in Syria. The tactic that proved most effective in mobilizing the American public back into a shivering, post-9/11 fetal position, was the same tactic used by elites in the UK to convince Scotland against voting for independence. That tactic... is fear.

• A Month of Bombs Dropped in One Night of Strikes on Syria (BBG)
• Air strikes in Syria hit Islamic State-held areas near Turkey (Reuters)
• Pimco ETF Draws Probe by SEC (WSJ)
• Shadowy al Qaeda cell, hit by U.S. in Syria, seen as 'imminent' threat (Reuters)
• Yellen Warns on Market Calm Before ‘Considerable Time’ Up (BBG)
• Dudley Says Fed Needs U.S. Economy to Run ‘A Little Hot' (BBG)
• Websites Are Wary of Facebook Tracking Software (WSJ)
• Just a joke now: Barclays Fined Twice in One Day for Compliance Failures (BBG)
• Fired UPS worker kills two supervisors, self, in Alabama shooting (Reuters)

While careful to note 'no specific threats' have been found, it appears the FBI and DHS have decided it's time to show why local police departments needed to be fully militarized after all. In the first bulletin, according to Bloomberg, US security officials warned federal and local police to watch for “homegrown violent extremists” who may be motivated to attack by airstrikes in Syria. In the second bulletin, the FBI and DHS assess that disgruntled and former employees pose a significant threat to US businesses due to their authorized access to sensitive information and the networks businesses rely on (no doubt inspired by today's dreadful occurrences at UPS in Birmingham). It's just a good thing all those local police forces have MRAPs, don't you feel safer already? However, don't forget, as The UK made clear, the definition of terrorist is a tricky one since even viewing ISIS propaganda constitutes a criminal offense.

"We have put in place the toughest ethics and transparency laws of any administration in history," President Obama proclaimed four short years ago... However, as AP Washington Bureau Chief Sally Buzbee said recently, the fight for access to public information has never been harder, and in fact, the problem extends across the entire federal government and is now trickling down to state and local governments. Here is Buzbee’s list of eight ways Obama's "most transparent" administration is making it hard for journalists to find information and cover the news...

For a mass of people so easily terrified by guys in caves funded and armed by our intelligence services and “allies” in the Persian Gulf, the American public talks with such armchair bravado when it comes to launching bombs from drones and sending other people’s children to die. Makes you wonder though, which one is it? Is the American public actually the tough guy soldier it pretends to be when cheering overseas military interventions, or is it really a scared, propagandized, coward hiding in one of our nation’s endless cubicle rows? Unfortunately, based on recent opinion polls demonstrating approval for military action against ISIS, it appears to be the latter. The former is merely a front put on by that terrified, economically insecure, silently suffering automaton.

It’s not just homeowners who have to worry about rising interest rates, the Federal government might soon get a taste of its own medicine. From the admittedly partisan Republican Senate Committee on the Budget comes this report outlining how federal interest outlays will dovetail with other expenses in the future. "By the end of the budget window in 2024, however, CBO forecasts that interest payments will nearly quadruple to an astonishing $880 billion."

Plus: Exclusive Interview with FBI Whistleblower

• Obama orders U.S. airstrikes in Syria against Islamic State (Reuters)
• Obama Relying on Mideast Allies to Counter Islamic State (BBG)
• Scotland Nationalists Claim U.K. Oil in 40-Year Campaign (BBG)
• Scottish Polls Embolden Catalans Pushing Rajoy for Vote (BBG)
• Royal Bank of Scotland: RBS will leave Scotland if voters back independence (Guardian)
• Most Hedge-Fund Managers Are Overpaid, Unigestion Says (BBG)
• China Inflation Softens to Four-Month Low (WSJ)
• Munger Hosts Groupies, Mocks Wall Street, Praises Buffett (BBG)

Just when one thought the embarrassment for Obamacare, and its epically flawed website Healthcare.gov, which according to some accounts had over 100 million lines of code, the vast majority of which did not work as it is after all a government project, could not get any worse it just did following a report in the WSJ that the website which is reasonably expected to be the safest in the world (and at a price of over $500 million it should be the safest in the world) considering it holds not only the financial but personal and healthcare data of millions of Americans, has been hacked. According to the WSJ, a hacker broke into part of the HealthCare.gov insurance enrollment website in July and uploaded malicious software. And the punchline: neither the government, nor the security contractor, Blue Canopy Group, found out it had been hacked until two months later.