Carolinas brace for Hurricane Florence: CNN
Hong Kong prepares for Super Typhoon Mangkhut: South China Morning Post
US seeking to restart trade talks with China: CNBC
European Parliament votes to sanction Hungary: Reuters
US jets intercept Russian bombers near Alaska for 2nd time this month: BI
Trump’s high disapproval rating contrasts with strong US economy: Bloomberg
Bridgewater’s Dalio: US recession likely within 2 years: Bloomberg
Business inflation expectations steady at 2.2% in Sep: Atlanta Fed
Fed: some businesses delay investment due to trade concerns: Reuters
Wholesale inflation in US continues to weak for annual pace: MarketWatch

The Federal Reserve is expected to raise interest rates again later this month, but if that’s another signal that headwinds are building for fixed-income securities the warning isn’t resonating in the junk bond market these days.
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US industry groups set to fight US policy on trade tariffs: Reuters
Russia starts its largest war games since Soviet Union fell: Reuters
Russia’s oil minister: US trade war against China is headwind for oil market: CNBC
Hurricane Florence strengthens as it approaches US East Coast: Bloomberg
China’s export hub feels pressure from trade war with US: SCMP
Democrats still poised to retake House in November election: FiveThirtyEight
Optimism among small US business owners rises to record high in August: MW
US job openings surge to record high for July: CNBC

How old is the bull market in US stocks? By some accounts, we’re knee-deep in the oldest run on record. But some analysts beg to differ. Thanks to several possibilities for measuring such things, there’s a debate about the appropriate methodology for dating the age of the current run-up in stock prices. Here’s one more: measuring the bull market from the point when the last NBER-defined recession ended. By that measure, the current rise is the second longest on record, based on modern history of the S&P 500 (since the mid-1950s).
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11 September 2001

China to ask WTO for sanctions on US in trade dispute: Reuters
Former PBOC gov: US tariffs bringing Russia and China closer: CNBC
US Southeast coast braces for Hurricane Florence: CNN
Trump adviser threatens Syria if chemical weapons used: Time
World hunger rises as climate change curbs access to food: Bloomberg
N. Korea’s Kim asks Trump for a second summit: BBC
Many Americans still struggling a decade after financial crisis: LA Times
Are junk bonds a “new safe haven” for investors? MarketWatch
US consumer credit rose at 5.1% annual rate in July: MarketWatch

Selling weighed on all the main categories of global markets last week, based on a set of exchange-traded products. The biggest slide: stocks in emerging markets.
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Russian and Syrian jets resumed air strikes in Idlib: Reuters
Hurricane threatens Southeast and Mid-Atlantic states on US East Coast: WaPo
China’s warily monitoring a modest pickup in inflation: NY Times
Trade war is lifting global holdings of China’s currency: SCMP
Sweden: far-right, anti-immigrant party becomes 3rd-largest party: Fox
Fed’s Rosengren sees two more rate hikes in 2018: Bloomberg
US wage growth is accelerating: USA Today
Changes in credit supply are a crucial driver of economic cycles: Barron’s
There’s still a bullish case for the economy and the stock market: Scott Grannis

● Blaming China: It Might Feel Good but It Won’t Fix America’s Economy
By Benjamin Shobert
Excerpt via International Policy Digest
Given how Donald Trump has spoken about China, it would seem Americans wish China had stayed poor, isolated and powerless. To elites in DC during the run up to the last election, this was all noise; but to politically disenfranchised and economically dislocated Americans, blaming China for our economic problems was embraced as truth. As the American economy has struggled to create wins for more than the wealthiest, politicians have become increasingly willing to point towards China as the cause. Now trade is perceived to be a zero-sum game, where China’s win is America’s loss. This leads to an important question: is America’s frustration with China nothing more than a distraction from profound insecurities we have about our economy, global status and domestic politics?
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Private payrolls in the US increased by a seasonally adjusted 204,000 in August, marking a sharply stronger gain over the previous month’s revised 153,000 advance, the Labor Department reports. Meantime, the year-over-over trend held steady at a 1.9% pace for the sixth month in a row. Today’s numbers reaffirm that the labor market continues to expand at a healthy rate, a sign that the nine-year-old economic expansion is in no immediate danger and so further monetary policy tightening has a green light to continue.
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