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"Given that we are clearly moving into a higher default environment we believe that equity investors may be inclined not to reward stocks that have large buyback programs. And if this is the case, corporate managers will have a diminished incentive to borrow money to finance buybacks."

But who is the governments' strongest ally in their 'war on cash'?

It must be somewhat ironic for the U.S. progressive moment that a day after Obama officially slammed the seal shut on Transcanada's Keystone XL pipeline after a seven year "review" (and days after the company itself withdrew its application, something which the admin ignored just so it could have the final say on the mater), moments ago an oil tanker train derailed north of Alma, Wisconsin along the Mississippi River 80 miles south of Minneapolis, with at least 32 cars off the tracks.

Today we got yet another confirmation that China's July announcement on its gold holdings merely broke the seal of accumulation when the PBOC reported that its total gold holdings as of October 31 had risen to a record $63.3 billion, up $2.1 billion from $61.2 billion at the end of September, and an increase of 14 tons based on the month-end LBMA gold fix price. This represents the fifth consecutive month in a row in which China has added to its gold.

The most entertaining overnight story has to do with the latest farcical development in the Chinese "market" when just after open, it was reported that PBOC Governor Zhou said a trading link with Shenzhen will start this year which promptly sent all Chinese brokerages soaring, and the Shanghai Composite jumped over 3%. And then, out of the blue, the PBOC said the undated comments were actually as of May. As Bloomberg put it, "China’s central bank unintentionally sparked a surge in the nation’s stock market by publishing five-month-old comments from governor Zhou Xiaochuan that said a link between exchanges in Shenzhen and Hong Kong would start in 2015."

Almost all serious analysts see a Terminal problem developing - "We will go from deflation to hyperinflation without seeing inflation." But hyperinflation is a political phenomenon. It is caused by those same authorities the masses think they can trust. When they are threatened, they will protect themselves by printing money on a scale we haven’t seen since the War Between the States (consumer prices in Richmond, Virginia, had risen 6,700% by the end of the war).

So far today's trading session has been a repeat of what happened overnight on Monday, when following a weak start on even more weak Chinese data, US equities soared on the first trading day of the month continuing their blistering surge since that dreadful September payrolls report, which as we showed was mostly catalyzed by a near record bout of short's being squeezed and covering, which accelerated just as the S&P broke the 2100 level.

Amid the ever-expanding easing program in Europe (longer? more-er? different-er?), one of the gravest concerns was (amid a growing scarcity of collateral), finding willing sellers (at any price) to meet the needs of central bank asset purchasers could be a problem. However, as The FT reports, it appears the Chinese stepped up to the plate to 'help' The ECB (rather The Bundesbank) out from its dilemma. Just as we saw with Chinese selling US Treasuries (whether to diversify away from the major reserve currencies, deal with outflows, or to manage a liquidity crisis at home), The PBoC's reserve management wing, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, has been selling some of its German government bonds since the ECB began buying them in March, say two sources close to central banks in China and Europe. This news has prompted further weakness in Bunds today, despite expectations of Draghi unleashing more buying in December.

On a day full of Manufacturing/PMI surveys from around the globe, the numbers everyone was looking at came out of China, where first the official, NBS PMI data disappointed after missing Mfg PMI expectations (3rd month in a row of contraction), with the Non-mfg PMI sliding to the lowest since 2008, however this was promptly "corrected" after the other Caixin manufacturing PMI soared to 48.3 in October from 47.2 in September - the biggest monthly rise of 2015 - and far better than the median estimate of 47.6, once again leading to the usual questions about China's Schrodinger economy, first defined here, which is continues to expand and contract at the same time.

The desire to take the American public out of the “of the people, by the people, for the people” business can minimally be traced back to the Vietnam War, to the moment when a citizen’s army began voting with its feet and antiwar sentiment grew to startling proportions not just on the home front, but inside a military in the field.  It was then that the high command began to fear the actual disintegration of the U.S. Army. From that moment on, the urge to demobilize the American people and send them to Disney World would only grow.

Based on the overnight market prints which are an oddly reddish shade of green, it took algos about 12 hours to realize that the reason they soared for most of October, namely hopes of an easier Fed which were launched with the terrible September jobs report and continued with increasingly worse US economic report in the past month, can not be the same reason they also soared yesterday after the announcement of a more hawkish than expected Fed statement which envisioned a stronger US economy and a removal of foreign considerations, which even more curiously took place on even worse data than the Fed's far more dovish September statement.

No, Ben S. Bernanke will be someday remembered as the world’s most destructive battleship admiral. Not only was he fighting the last war, but his whole multi-trillion money printing campaign after September 15, 2008 was aimed at avoiding an historical Fed mistake that had never even happened!

With a 4% probability, it is no surprise that The Fed did not raise rates. Since The FOMC "folded" in September blaming global turmoil, stocks, bonds, and precious metals have soared as China (and EM) chaos has calmed while domestic data has declined. This has led to 'lift-off' expectations extending to April 2016, and so the question today is - how will The Fed convince the world it 'will' raise rates when it really can't...

• *FED REMOVES LINE THAT GLOBAL DEVELOPMENTS MAY RESTRAIN GROWTH
  
• *FED SAYS U.S. ECONOMY `HAS BEEN EXPANDING AT A MODERATE PACE'

A definite hawkish bias but so we are left data-dependent (fundamentals bad, stocks good), and less economically optimistic, but are supposed to believe that December (34%) is still a live meeting (because of some hockey-stick expectation in data) because The Fed needs to raise to show that it can.

First it was wildfires, then it was unprecedented flooding, and now it is earthquakes.  In the past two weeks alone, more than 400 earthquakes have shaken San Ramon – a small city that sits approximately 45 miles east of San Francisco.  Never before have so many earthquakes been recorded in that area in such a short span of time.