Tribune

If you play the Illinois lottery and win more than $600, you are getting an IOU...

• Democratic rivals back Clinton on emails, but little else in scrappy debate (Reuters)
• Hillary Clinton Shows Relentless Efficiency in First Democratic Debate (WSJ)
• U.S. Examines Goldman Sachs Role in 1MDB Transactions (WSJ)
• JPMorgan Says Trading Pain Isn't Over After Third-Quarter Slump (BBG)
• Islamic State battles insurgents near Aleppo as army prepares assault (Reuters)
• Oil Slide Means `Almost Everything' for Sale as Deals Accelerate (BBG)

Someone in Chicago has been shot every 2.84 hours this year for a total of 2,349 shootings during the period of January 1, 2015 to October 6, 2015 (and 2015 is likely to eclipse 2014's record 2.587 shooting victims); but, Chicago, for all intents and purposes, is a “gun-free zone.” But all the state and city regulations associated with firearms in Chicago have failed to produce a safe city, and these are the policies that President Obama and Secretary Clinton wish to extend to the rest of the country.

Then - "We will not have any more crashes in our time." – John Maynard Keynes (1927)

Now - "Ambarella, GoPro & FitBit are headed higher" - Jim Cramer (7/22)

"You know what's funny? If we owed the state money, they'd come take it and they don't care whether we have a roof over our head. Our budget wouldn't be a factor. You can't say (to the state), 'Can you wait until I get my budget under control?'"

It is undeniable; the final collapse triggers are upon us, triggers alternative economists have been warning about since the initial implosion of 2008. You would think that the more obvious the economic collapse becomes, the more alternative analysts will be vindicated and the more awake and aware the average person will be. Not necessarily... In fact, the mainstream spin machine is going into high speed the more negative data is exposed and absorbed into the markets. If you know your history, then you know that this is a common tactic by the establishment elite to string the public along with false hopes so that they do not prepare or take alternative measures while the system crumbles around their ears. At the onset of the Great Depression the same strategies were used.

BK wants to join forces with McDonald’s to create the McWhopper and support Peace One Day – giving consumers a shot at massive indigestion while supporting a cause. 

Not only is the equity market going to crash (after a dead cat bounce) the property market is about to pass out pain like you won't believe.

Thanks, Uncle Warren. The Kraft-Heinz merger engineered earlier this year by everyone’s favorite folksy octogenarian billionaire along with 3G will cost some 2,500 people their jobs, as the combined entity looks to cut costs.

Reuters has taken an in depth look at Illinois' sprawling bureaucracy and discovered that the state "is home to nearly 8,500 local government units" which helps to explain why "the average homeowner pays taxes to six layers of government, and in Wauconda and many other places a lot more." The story also sheds quite a bit of light on why the state's fiscal crisis may ultimately prove to be intractable. 

California's gasoline price premium to the rest of the nation is the highest on record, according to Bloomberg data. This, as OilPrice's Andy Tully notes, is in large part because an Exxon Mobil Corp. refinery in Torrance has been out of commission since an explosion there in February, and the state’s environmental regulations are hampering the company’s efforts to quickly get it back to full production. This situation is not expected to improve by year-end.

Today will almost certainly be the busiest trading day of the year, as the Russell indexes go through their annual rebalancing/reconstitution. But, as ConvergEx's Nick Colas notes, Friday’s close will be the end of a trade that began almost 2 months ago, as traders began handicapping which equities would be included for the first time or swapped between various Russell indices. Since the beginning of May, for example, the stocks that will be added to the Russell 2000 are up 11%, and those being deleted from the same index are down 2% over the same time period.  In short, for one day – and this is the day - every U.S. equity market participant, no matter what their investment mandate, needs to think like a trader.  Throw in a little Greek drama going into the weekend, and it could be quite a day...

In downgrading the city, Moody’s said it expected “Chicago's credit challenges will continue, both in the near term and in the long term [as] unfunded liabilities of the Municipal, Laborer, Police, and Fire pension plans grow and exert increasing pressure on the city's operating budget.” That looks to have been an accurate assessment, because as Bloomberg reports, Chicago’s budget gap is set to triple by 2017.

"Protesters hailing from as far away as Kansas City and New York City participated in a demonstration at McDonald's Oak Brook headquarters Wednesday, urging that hourly wages for the burger giant's front-line workers be increased to $15 an hour", the Chicago Tribune reports. Police estimated the crowd at about 2,000 people. Organizers had projected that upward of 5,000 would participate in the demonstration.

“When Edward Snowden revealed our intelligence secrets to the world in 2013, civil liberties extremists seized that moment to advance their own narrow agenda." Well the founding fathers were also “civil liberties extremists” with a narrow agenda. That agenda was laid out in a little something called the Constitution. The most dangerous part of Christie’s language is calling Snowden defenders “extremists.” Christie knows exactly what that term has come to mean, and he deliberately used it.