Japan

If it looks like a recession, walks like a recession and quacks like a recession, it’s a recession.

The paradox of the current global crisis is that for the last five years, all relatively responsible and independent nations have made tremendous efforts to save the United States from the financial, economic, military, and political disaster that looms ahead. And this is all despite Washington’s equally systematic moves to destabilize the world order, rightly known as the Pax Americana. But the US needs to think fast. Their resources are shrinking much faster than the authors of the plan for imperial preservation had expected. The point of no return will pass once and for all sometime in 2016, and America’s elite will no longer be able to choose between the provisions of compromise and collapse.

Ignorance about recessions has taken hold because of a simplistic idea that a recession is two successive quarterly declines in GDP or, more broadly, a situation where we see some, but not all, of the typical markers of recession. While the final determination of recession might be delayed by a year of more, our leading indexes have never been this weak outside a recession. If this is indeed a recession, policy makers would be remiss in assuming that this is an economic slowdown rather than a recessionary vicious cycle.

"It is already too late. Having delayed way beyond the point when it might typically have raised rates in previous cycles, it has allowed an Orc-like monster to incubate, hatch and emerge into the sunlight, snarling and ready to do battle."

For once, the overnight session was not dominated by weak Chinese economic data (which probably explains why the Shanghai Composite dropped for the second day in a row, declining 1.4%, and ending an impressive run since the beginning of November) and instead Europe took the spotlight with its own poor data in the form of Q3 GDP which printed below expectations at 0.3% Q/Q, down also from the 0.4% increase in Q2, with several key economies rolling over including Germany, Italy, and Spain while Europe's poster child of "successful austerity" saw Q3 GDP stagnate, far worse than the 0.5% growth consensus expected.

Inflation expectations are collapsing in the EU, Japan and the US. Is another deflationary spiral about to hit?

In a sign that the slowing economy, rising bank NPLs, and lackluster demand for credit from overleveraged corporates is overwhelming Beijin's easing efforts, China's October loan growth data came in far weaker than expected in yet another sign that all is most certainly not well with the world's engine of global growth and trade. Meanwhile, fiscal spending soared as it now appears Beijing may have no choice but to go the helicopter route if it hopes to reignite growth.

Good Thing Debt Doesn't Matter! </sarc>

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

Below is a "help wanted" ad for a "trader" by the infamous 3Red "spoofing" outfit.  We put trader in quotation marks because... well, just read the ad and you will see.

Well that didn't last long. After diappointing data from Japan (very weak Reuters Tankan), and China overnight confirming the weekend's dire trade data (and crushing the soft survey-based idiocy of the PMIs), global equity markets ramped abruptly because "bad news is good news" still in China - meaning moar stimulus is due. However, Draghi's lack of exuberance this morning, and the reality of Macy's outlook reflection on the US consumer have dragged all the overnight gains back into the red...

• GOP debate winners and losers (Hill)
• European Stocks Rise as Dollar Weakens; Metals Decline on China (BBG)
• Global shares shrug off mixed China data, copper teeters near six-year low (Reuters)
• Fed's Evans: Looking forward to time when Fed can raise rates (Reuters)
• Alibaba’s Global Ambitions Face Counterfeit Challenge (WSJ)
• China Rebalancing Takes Hold as Output Slows, Retail Jumps (BBG)

Empires, like adolescents, think they’ll live forever. In geopolitics, as in biology, expiration dates are never visible. When death comes, it’s always a shock. "At the beginning of the great unraveling, in 2015, I was still a young man. Like everyone else, I didn’t see this coming. Today, in 2050, fewer and fewer people can recall what it was like to live among those leviathans... Thirty-five years and endless catastrophes later on a poorer, bleaker, less hospitable planet, it’s clear that we just weren’t paying sufficient attention. Had we been listening, we would have heard the termites. There, in the basement of our common home, they were eating the very foundations out from under us. Suddenly, before we knew quite what was happening, all that was solid had melted into air."