Detroit

• David Bowie, musical legend behind Ziggy Stardust, dies at 69 from cancer (Reuters)
• With No Powerball Winners, Jackpot Grows to Estimated $1.3 Billion (ABC)
• Stock Gains Short-Lived as Chinese Volatility Hurts Oil, Metals (BBG)
• China's yuan spikes higher, but stocks tumble (Reuters)
• Arch Coal Files for Bankruptcy (WSJ)
• Yuan Loan Rates Soar in Hong Kong as PBOC Halts Currency's Slide (BBG)
• China stocks close down at lowest level since September (Reuters)
• Fed Eyes Margin Rules to Bolster Oversight (WSJ)

We don’t have a dog in this fight.  San Bernardino doesn’t change the calculation.  ISIS will eventually collapse under its own homicidal and parasitical weight, probably with the help of one or more of its neighbors, whose inactivity and divisiveness we currently underwrite. Then ISIS will be replaced by something better... or worse... it is impossible to know in this region.  In the interim, we and our European friends should focus our efforts on isolating ourselves from the madness.  And we certainly should not go out of our way to draw further fire.

There’s really one supreme element of this story that you must keep in view at all times: a society (i.e. an economy + a polity = a political economy) based on debt that will never be paid back is certain to crack up. Its institutions will stop functioning. Its business activities will seize up. Its leaders will be demoralized. Its denizens will act up and act out. Its wealth will evaporate. Given where we are in human history - the moment of techno-industrial over-reach - this crackup will not be easy to recover from. Things have gone too far in too many ways. The coming crackup will re-set the terms of civilized life to levels largely pre-techno-industrial. How far backward remains to be seen.

... I found myself seeking refuge in the tiramisu staring back at me, a bit uncomfortable that I was only hearing the wah wahs of Charlie Brown’s adult voices. Until this, during the back and forth of Q&A: (Laughter around the room…) “We don’t remember how to raise interest rates. None of us worked here the last time we did it.”

"The City of Flint has experienced a Manmade disaster," said the city’s mayor Monday evening, as she declared a state of emergency over evidently staggering levels of lead in the city’s tap water. Mayor Karen M. Weaver has requested federal assistance to deal with the fallout from over a year’s worth of tainted water delivered to Flint residents and, allegedly, falsely declared safe by government officials.

In a supreme twist of irony, Bear Stearns is back - maybe not the firm itself - but the people who were in charge of its distressed and junk bond trading group, and just like the summer of 2007, it is an ex "Bear"-run hedge fund that was the first to gate, just as the credit cycle is turning and the default cycle has begun, as we explained last week, just one day before everyone's attention finally focused on junk debt.

Everyone Agrees that We Need to Stop Mass Shootings ... But This ISN'T the Way to Do It

Puerto Rico faces its moment of truth on Tuesday as the commonwealth must decide whether to default on GO debt and risk triggering a cascade of litigation. Meanwhile, Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla is on Capitol Hill hoping to drum up support for a plan that would allow for some of the island's agencies to file for bankruptcy.

As goes Ford, so goes America?

A simmering rage is bubbling below the surface as 20% of American households rely on food stamps to survive, the percentage of Americans in the labor force stands at a four decade low, real household income remains stagnant at 1988 levels, corporate profits have reached record levels while corporations continue to fire Americans – shipping their jobs overseas, and the six mega-corporations representing the mainstream media cover up the truth, mislead the public with propaganda, while celebrating the .1% as saviors of our economy. There is nothing more volatile to societal stability than millions of unemployed men, growing angry and resentful towards the ruling class for their lot in life.

The United States still plans to try to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees into the country in the coming year, the State Department said on Monday as the weekend attacks in Paris renewed scrutiny on Syrian migrants. But not just anyone: according to the US State Department, the US will only accept "carefully vetted" Syrian refugees...

"Given the tragic attacks in Paris and the threats we have already seen, Texas cannot participate in any program that will result in Syrian refugees - any one of whom could be connected to terrorism - being resettled in Texas,"

“In metros with high-income growth, unaffordable mortgage payments can become affordable within a few years. For millennials, buying an unaffordable Home isn’t always a bad idea."

Prepping has not only gone mainstream, it's infected even the billionaire culture as referenced recently on a ZH article:

While some have called The Trans-Pacific Partnership, "the most brazen corporate power grab in American history," President Obama tells Americans - in an Op-Ed released today - that "it’s the right thing to do for our economy, for working Americans and for our middle class" Despite indepedent analysis that appears to confirm  the creeping corporate coup d’état along with the final evisceration of national sovereignty, President Obama explains - in simple words - ObamaTrade is "a trade deal that helps working families get ahead," due, inhis opinion,  to the "toughest global labor laws" which will allow American workers to compete on a so-called "level playing field."