Bloomberg:
- China Exports Drop for Fourth Month, Adding to Signs of Slowing. China’s exports declined for a fourth straight month in October, adding to evidence of cooling in the world’s second-largest economy. Overseas shipments dropped 3.6 percent in October in yuan terms, the customs administration said Sunday, compared with a 1.1 percent decline in September. Imports fell for a 12th straight month, declining 16 percent in yuan terms, after a 17.7 percent decrease the prior month. The trade surplus was 393.2 billion yuan ($61.9 billion). "There’s still quite weak external demand," Ding Shuang, chief China economist at Standard Chartered Plc in Hong Kong Kong, said before the report. "We don’t expect any major improvement from here because we forecast U.S. growth to be quite sluggish even next year. Imports may start to pick up as policy loosening begins to boost demand. "The report signals that the People’s Bank of China is still struggling against economic headwinds even after cutting the main interest rate six times in the last year and a surprise devaluation of the currency in August.
- U.S. Wants to Avoid Second Cold War - or Hot War - With Russia. The U.S. is taking steps to counter Russian “aggression” and provocations in Europe and the Middle East, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said in a speech that also focused on China’s “more ambitious” objectives. Carter, speaking at the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, California, on Saturday, listed ways that Russia has been acting as a “spoiler” on the world stage, including violating the sovereignty of Ukraine, trying to intimidate Baltic countries and sending troops to Syria. “We do not seek a cold, let alone a hot, war with Russia,” Carter said. “We do not seek to make Russia an enemy. But make no mistake, the United States will defend our interests, our allies, the principled international order and the positive future it affords us all.” “At sea, in the air, and in cyberspace,” Carter said, “Russia has engaged in challenging activities.”
- Venezuela Seen as Major Beneficiary of Obama's Keystone XL Snub. (video) President Barack Obama’s rejection of TransCanada Corp.’s proposed Keystone XL pipeline could give Venezuela’s ailing economy a lifeline. With the world’s largest oil reserves, the South American country produces heavy crude that’s similar in consistency to the one coming from Canada’s oil sands, and its economy relies largely on shipping it to the same U.S. Gulf Coast refineries that Keystone XL was meant to supply. “The number one beneficiary of all this will be Venezuela and other suppliers of heavy oil that ship to the Gulf Coast by tanker,” IHS Energy Inc. Vice President Jim Burkhard said by e-mail.
- Kuwait Sees Oil Glut of Up to Five Years on Increasing Supply. Oil markets will continue to be oversupplied for as long as five years as producers in the Middle East ramp up output, according to Mohammed Al-Shatti, Kuwait’s representative to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Iraq pumped a record 4.4 million barrels a day in June, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Libyan output, which has declined by more than half due to conflict, can return "at any moment," Al-Shatti said in an interview Saturday in Doha. Iran has the capacity to boost exports by 500,000 barrels a day within one week of sanctions being lifted and by 1 million a day within six months, Roknoddin Javadi, managing director of state-run National Iranian Oil Co., said last month.
- Square's Lower IPO Valuation Casts Shadow Over Startups. (video) Square Inc.’s initial public offering is the latest evidence that startups are attaining lofty valuations in private funding that will be hard to sustain once they reach public markets. The mobile-payments provider is seeking a market valuation of as much as $4.2 billion in its trading debut, a significant cut from the $6 billion the company sought in its last funding round in 2014. This is fueling concerns that there’s a wide -- and expanding -- gulf between between how private investors and public markets value companies.
- Justice Department Doesn’t Deliver on Promise to Attack Monopolies. Obama administration arrived promising a tougher stance, but few antitrust cases have been pursued in U.S. and enforcement has shifted to Europe. When Obama administration officials came to power vowing tougher antitrust enforcement, among the areas they highlighted was the behavior of dominant companies with monopoly power.
- Medicaid Expansion Is Proving to Be a Bad Bargain for States. New ObamaCare enrollees and costs have exceeded estimates and threaten to swamp budgets. Advocates in Washington of the Affordable Care Act have been fighting tooth and nail to preserve the president’s signature health-care law—and they’re fighting even harder to expand it in the states. Conservative lawmakers in our home states of Utah and Florida recently defeated a combined three proposals to expand Medicaid under ObamaCare. They were absolutely right to do so, as the fiscal messes in states that did expand Medicaid demonstrate.
- Explosion reportedly heard on black box of Russian passenger plane. (video) The black box recorder of the Russian passenger plane that crashed on its way back from Egypt’s Sinai resort of Sharm el-Sheikh last week killing all 224 people on board reportedly reveals a loud explosion heard on the jet before it went down. Sky News, citing a report from French television channel France 2, reported Saturday that the black boxes from the doomed airliner “distinctly show the sound of an explosion during the flight.”
- Here Is The Credit Bubble. (graph)
- Consumer Credit Has Biggest Jump In History, Led By Government-Funded Car And Student Loans. (graph)
- 'Don't lie!': Ben Carson holds combative press conference to denounce media reports about him. (video) Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson held a fiery press conference Friday evening to respond to recent Politico and CNN investigations into his past. "Wait a minute, don't lie! I never said that I received a full scholarship. Nowhere did I say that," the leading Republican candidate challenged one reporter who suggested otherwise. "Politico, as you know, told a bold-faced lie. They've been called out on that by The Washington Post and by The New York Times and I'm sure there will be several others who will call them out on that because there are actually some people with integrity in your business."
- This is the 'bubble' that people in the tech industry should fear: Leader of Silicon Valley's top startup school. On the show, Altman says, "The bubble I'm afraid of is the risk bubble. People are so sure that things are going to work out that you see burn rates that I have never seen before, and that, I think, is actually a real danger." Right now, startups believe everything is going to work out, so they are spending recklessly, burning millions of dollars every month. This will not end well for many of them.
- Exclusive: U.S. to open new screening centers for Syrian refugees - State Department. The Obama administration is moving to increase and accelerate the number of Syrian refugees who might be admitted into the United States by opening new screening outposts in Iraq and Lebanon, administration officials told Reuters on Friday. The move comes after President Barack Obama pledged in September to admit an additional 10,000 refugees in 2016 from Syria, torn by four years of civil war and disorder.
- Communists ready to assume power in Portugal and topple conservative government. Anti-euro Communist party say 'conditions are in place' to form historic triple Left coalition and bring down centre-right.
- Time to ignore the bankers and pull up the drawbridge. When it comes to rate rises, Mark Carney is starting to resemble the Boy Who Cried Wolf.
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