Bitter
Irony: San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Jose have the Worst Roads in America,
Worse even than Detroit - (www.wolfstreet.com) That
the streets are in terrible shape in San Francisco is clear when I step out of
the house, look at the pavement I need to cross, and think: “I should have put
on my hiking boots.” To its credit, the city has been repaving streets in
sections of a few blocks here and there. Those repaved sections look civilized,
until you get to the next intersection. But now we know, sort of officially:
the streets in San Francisco are in the worst condition of any major urban
area. Even compared to smaller cities, only Concord, also in the Bay Area,
outshines it. This we now know from a report by TRIP, a nonprofit that “researches, evaluates, and
distributes economic and technical data on highway transportation issues.”
Student,
Auto Loans Hit New All Time High Of $2.5 Trillion As Consumer Credit Jumps By
$19 Billion - (www.zerohedge.com) With
the Fed releasing its quarterly update on both auto and student loans in its
monthly consumer credit report, we have two new records: a new all-time high in
both car loans at $1.098 trillion, and a record for student loans, which just
hit $1.396 trillion. The Fed's latest consumer credit report revealed that in
September, overall household credit rose by a greater than expected $19.3
billion, above the $18 billion expected, if below last month's near-record
$26.8 billion.
Wall
Street Bonuses Are Expected to Sink for 3rd Straight Year - (www.nytimes.com) Wall
Street bonuses are expected to decline for the third consecutive year,
reflecting a period of busted mergers, limited trading activity and muted hedge
fund returns. The payouts are projected to be from 5 to 10 percent lower this
year, according to an annual report to be released on Monday by Johnson
Associates, a compensation consulting firm. Bonuses fell about the same amount
last year from 2014. The projection confirms a report last month by the New York State comptroller that
said firms set aside 7 percent less for bonuses through the first half of this
year compared with last year. While mergers and acquisitions have been active
(and even hit record levels in 2015), the bankers who advise on the deals get
paid largely when the deals are completed. This year, antitrust officials thwarted
a number of large mergers, including Halliburton’s $35 billion bid for Baker
Hughes, as well as the consolidations of the health insurance companies Anthem
and Cigna, and Aetna and Humana.
Hong
Kong Derails Property Streetcar With Punitive Tax - (www.bloomberg.com) Now
that foreigners, including all-important mainland Chinese buyers, must pay
a 30 percent stamp duty to buy overpriced shoeboxes, transactions could
drop by 70 percent, Bloomberg News reported. Weaker demand might jolt earnings
of the city's developers. That's what the biggest drop in 16 months
in Cheung Kong Property Holdings Ltd.'s shares suggested Monday.''
Obamacare
Needs to Be Fixed to Win Over Millennials - (www.newsweek.com) A
growing number of the Affordable Care Act's champions are admitting this
reality. Progressive columnist Matt Yglesias concedes that "remaining
uninsured is a reasonably good financial option for many younger or healthier
Americans."... federal efforts to target [millenials] for health insurance
enrollment are doomed to fail--the law's plans are just too costly. ... And
cost isn't the only reason we're not flocking to the federal insurance
exchanges. Our generation values choice and flexibility, but what we're finding
through the Affordable Care Act offers neither. More than one-fifth of people
who look for insurance on the exchange system will find only one insurance
company servicing their area through 2017. And then there are narrow networks
that seriously crib our options of doctors and specialists.
ETFs attract more than $3.2tn to pass hedge funds - (www.ft.com)
Hong Kong Protesters Clash With Police as China Plans Political Intervention - (www.wsj.com)
China’s Internet Controls Will Get Stricter, to Dismay of Foreign Business - (www.nytimes.com)
Italy Approaches a Constitutional Reckoning - (www.wsj.com)
China moves to bar Hong Kong activists as fears grow over intervention - (www.reuters.com)
Turkey's treatment of dismissed officials reminiscent of Nazis: Luxembourg - (www.bloomberg.com)
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