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Black Friday is the day when the trademark US consumerism takes center stage for its annual manic, full-frontal exposure around the globe. Here is what it looked like around the US…

People buying TVs

 

Thanksgiving Day shoppers line up to start shopping at a Target store in Chicago

 

People carry shoes in Macy’s during Black Friday sales in New York

 

Shoppers line up outside Best Buy before the store opens in Newport, New Jersey

 

People line up outside before the Toys R Us store opened in Times Square

 

Women try on shoes in Macy’s to kick off Black Friday sales in New York

 

Shoppers wait to enter Macy’s to kick off Black Friday sales in New York

 

A girl chooses an item from Disney’s Princess toy line up to purchase at the Toys R Us store in Times Square

 

A shopper carries a TV outside a Best Buy store in Newport, New Jersey.

 

Shoppers enter Best Buy as the store opens in Newport, New Jersey

 

People look in the window before the Toys R Us store opened in Times Square.

 

A girl poses with an Olaf plush toy from Disney’s Frozen toy line at the Toys R Us store in Times Square.

 

Thanksgiving Day shoppers ride an escalator while shopping at a Target store in Chicago

 

Thanksgiving Day shoppers carry televisions at a Target store in Chicago

 

A woman lines up outside before the Toys R Us store opens in Times Square.

 

Shoppers line up outside Best Buy before the store opens in Newport, New Jersey

 

A girl looks at items from Disney’s Frozen toy line at the Toys R Us store in Times Square.

* * *

… And not only, because other countries increasingly adopt the “best” of US traditions. Here is what happened in the UK earlier today:

Black Friday hops the pond: Shoppers compete to purchase retail items on “Black Friday” at an Asda superstore in Wembley.

 

Shoppers wrestle over a television as they compete to purchase retail items on “Black Friday” at an Asda superstore in Wembley, north London November 28

 

… And Brazil:

Here, shoppers crowd outside a store before it opens on “Black Friday” in Sao Paulo.

Photos: Reuters

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/122vnzN Tyler Durden

The French delivery of two Mistral ships to Russia may be postponed indefinitely (a move which ultimately would cost Hollande over $4 billion in contract breach penalty fees he simply can’t afford to pay), but that doesn’t mean the Russian navy has been hobbled or is hiding in the corner. To the contrary: according to the following tweet from the UK Ministry of Defense, Russia’s navy is getting quite bolder.

Four Russian ships escorted through Dover Strait from North Sea by @RoyalNavy HMS Tyne this morning. Ships have left UK waters.

— Ministry of Defence (@DefenceHQ) November 28, 2014

What happened?

As Bloomberg reports, at least 4 vessels which departed the Russian Northern Fleet main base on November 20, led by anti-submarine ship Severomorsk, entered English channel for exercises that include anti-sabotage training, damage control in case of fire and water intake, state-run news service RIA Novosti says, citing statement from Navy.

Reuters confirms that a squadron of Russian warships entered the English Channel on Friday to hold exercises, RIA news agency reported, the latest apparent show of military might since ties with the West plunged to Cold War lows over Ukraine.

RIA quoted the Northern Fleet as saying its vessels, led by anti-submarine ship Severomorsk, had passed through the Strait of Dover and were now in international waters in the Seine Bay to wait for a storm to pass.

 

“While it is anchored the crew are undertaking a series of exercises on how to tackle … infiltrating submarine forces and are training on survival techniques in the case of flooding or fire,” RIA quoted the Northern Fleet as saying in a statement.

 

The Russian navy could not reached for comment and the Defence Ministry declined to comment on the report.

The Russian navy frigate Smolny is seen at the STX Les Chantiers
de l’Atlantique shipyard site in Saint-Nazaire, western France, November 25, 2014

Naturally, NATO – afraid of looking even weaker than it is – was quick to downplay the incident since a lack of retaliation would make the defensive alliance appear quite prone to “penetrations” by Russian forces:

France’s navy confirmed the location of the ships and said it was not unusual to have Russian warships in the Channel.

 

“They are not holding exercises. They’re just waiting in a zone where they can be several times a year,” said the French Navy’s information service.

 

Lieutenant-Colonel Jay Janzen, NATO’s military spokesman, also said the alliance was aware of the Russian ships’ location.

 

“Our information indicates that the ships are transiting and have been delayed by weather conditions. They are not exercising in the Channel, as some Russian headlines would have us believe,” he said.

And if they were “exercising” it would simply mean that NATO exercises in the Black Sea miles away from the Russian coast, are finally being met in kind by a Russia which with every passing day is making it clear its “concern” of western reprisal and retaliation to Russian actions, which in turn are a consequence of NATO expansion eastward, is increasingly negligible.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1vYg3Rb Tyler Durden

• Oil Seen in New Era as OPEC Won’t Yield to U.S. Shale (BBG)
• Alberta Producers With World’s Cheapest Oil Face Cascading Woes (BBG)
• Bundesbank’s Weidmann Rejects Calls for German Stimulus Plan (WSJ)
• Google Should Be Broken Up, Say Euro MPs (BBC)
• Calm comes to troubled Ferguson; protests dwindle across U.S. (Reuters)
• Russia’s Banks Feel Capital Squeeze in Grip of Sanctions (BBG)
•  Italian Unemployment Rate Rises to Record, Above Forecasts (BBG)
• Hedge Funds Seek to Tie Up Money for Longer (WSJ)
• Laughing Hacker Who Hit Sony, FBI Now Seeks Legal Lols (BBG)
• China Motorists Exceed 300 Million as Cities Struggle (BBG)
• WHO advises male Ebola survivors to abstain from sex (Reuters)
• Why Italy’s stay-home shoppers terrify the euro zone (Reuters)
• Iron Caps Biggest Monthly Drop Since September as Supply Climbs (BBG)

 

Overnight Media Digest

WSJ

* Two music publishers are taking aim at a new target in the battle against illegal song downloading: the cable industry. Wednesday afternoon, BMG Rights Management LLC and Round Hill Music LP sued cable giant Cox Communications Inc, claiming that Cox, which provides Internet service to millions, is deliberately turning a blind eye to illegal downloading by its subscribers. (http://on.wsj.com/15F673Y)

* Hedge-fund managers are increasingly persuading investors to lock up their money for longer – in many cases more than double the typical one-year period – and dangling lower fees to close the deal. (http://on.wsj.com/1vr7DyZ)

* European politicians are poised to approve a new generation of lower-cost rockets, partly in response to competition from U.S. launch providers, according to government and aerospace-industry officials on both sides of the Atlantic. (http://on.wsj.com/1xY2DEe)

* Manufacturers are taking matters into their own hands to patch up a weak spot of Thailand’s economy: its worsening shortage of skilled labor. A shrinking labor pool and inadequate training for workers are constraining business and industrial growth, investors here say. Now an increasing number of companies – many in the auto industry – are rolling out apprenticeship programs aimed at beefing up the workforce themselves. (http://on.wsj.com/1HJ21Xh)

* Europe escalated its war against U.S. technology superpowers as the Continent’s two largest economies and the European Parliament on Thursday backed fresh efforts to rein in the growing influence of companies such as Apple Inc, Facebook Inc and Google Inc. (http://on.wsj.com/1zZDYhv)

* Outbrain Inc, a provider of “native ads,” filed confidentially with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this month seeking preliminary approval to list shares on the Nasdaq Stock Market, according to people familiar with the matter. (http://on.wsj.com/1xXb1Uk)

* The financial crisis and its aftermath have revived interest in gold as a monetary policy instrument, especially in Europe, where central banks face public pressure to buy gold or bring back home what they hold overseas. (http://on.wsj.com/1vWk0pg)

* BAIC Motor Corp, a Chinese car maker partly owned by Daimler AG, is planning to start gauging investors’ interest next week in an initial public offering which could raise between $1.2 billion and $1.5 billion in Hong Kong, a person familiar with the situation said. (http://on.wsj.com/1tx1blZ)

 

FT

Two senior executives, Kevin Grace, group commercial director, and Carl Rogberg, UK finance director, of troubled British grocer Tesco, left the company on Wednesday.

Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim is set to become the largest investor in Spanish builder FCC after agreeing to buy top shareholder Esther Koplowitz’s part of a $1.3 billion capital increase. This capital increase will leave Slim with a 25.6 percent stake in the company.

Deutsche Bank AG is winding down its physical precious metals trading business, it said on Thursday, moving to further scale back its exposure to commodities.

Director of Britain’s “Business for New Europe”, a pro-EU lobby group and a non-profit organisation, Alisdair McIntosh, is set to quit after less than a year in office.

 

NYT

* Oil cartel OPEC decided not to cut petroleum production, despite the plunge in prices in recent months that has indicated the diminishing clout of the organization. The price of Brent crude oil fell an additional $4 to a four-year low of about $73. American crude dropped below $70, an even more significant threshold. (http://nyti.ms/1vqEkwq)

* Europe’s resentment of the American technology giant Google Inc reached a new noise level as the European Parliament passed a nonbinding vote to break up the company. European fears of American technology giants have been stoked in the last 18 months by the revelations of Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, about American intelligence agencies’ spying activities and perceived easy access to the world’s tech infrastructure. (http://nyti.ms/120xXWO)

* A London high court judge has ordered Chris Hohn, founder of one of Britain’s largest and most successful hedge funds, to pay his former wife $531 million to settle their messy public divorce, according to statements made in court. The figure demonstrates the immense wealth Hohn has accumulated at the helm of the Children’s Investment Fund, known as TCI. (http://nyti.ms/1rB9PQy)

* Cheyne Capital, a $6 billion hedge fund based in London, plans to buy property it will then rent to organizations that deliver services like affordable housing, aid for the elderly or care through the National Health Service. (http://nyti.ms/1zBFfuq)

* Argentina’s tax agency accused HSBC Bank PLC of helping more than 4,000 Argentines evade taxes by placing their money in secret Swiss accounts. The head of the country’s tax agency said Argentine citizens had evaded about $3 billion in taxes. (http://nyti.ms/120UX8i)

* U.S. Bank, a division of U.S. Bancorp, is being accused of failing to engage with borrowers who missed payments. The legal action could mean fresh problems for other big mortgage banks, as well. (http://nyti.ms/1yiVs8p)

* Japan will follow the United States in forcing automakers to recall all vehicles containing potentially dangerous driver’s-side airbags made by Takata Corp. An order from the Transportation Ministry on the airbags would lead to the recall of an additional 200,000 vehicles in Japan. (http://nyti.ms/1zZHY1E)

 

Canada

THE GLOBE AND MAIL

** Canada’s energy sector faces the prospect of a lengthy downturn in oil prices and broad spending cuts after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries said it did not intend to cut production – a move that sent crude prices and energy shares plunging. Investors immediately punished Canadian energy companies in reaction to the OPEC’s decision on Thursday to stand firm on its production plans, defying industry hopes for a cut. (http://bit.ly/1zCx9lo)

** It has been a long road to redemption for Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, but the lender’s retail banking revamp is finally bearing fruit. For the first time in years, there is a buzz inside CIBC – a confidence instilled in its executives by early signs of above-industry-average growth. After years of lagging its peers, retail banking head David Williamson says he and other executives can’t help but feel a little swagger. (http://bit.ly/121HJIc)

** Patents are a key measure of a country’s ability to turn research into viable products, and Canada is slipping. Per capita patent filings in Canada have been on a steady decline since 2000, according to a study of more than one million applications to the Canadian Intellectual Property Office by the C.D. Howe Institute. (http://bit.ly/11AiBHC)

NATIONAL POST

** Wal-Mart Stores Inc’s Walmart Canada is expanding its ‘grab and go’ locker pickup system for online orders just in time for Christmas, beating Amazon Canada to the punch. Walmart began testing a locker system for web customers at 10 Toronto-area stores in August, offering it as an alternative to home delivery. It allows customers to pick up the goods at a locked unit with a personal PIN code tied to their order, thereby skipping cash register lines and in-store shopping time. (http://bit.ly/1v0D7NH)

** In his blogging about Canada’s hate speech laws, right-wing personality Ezra Levant defamed a young law student as a serial liar, a bigot and a Jew-hating “illiberal Islamic fascist,” bent on destroying Canada’s tradition of free expression, a judge has found. (http://bit.ly/1y7FLmW)

** Canada is sending a team of military medical specialists to Sierra Leone to help combat the spread of Ebola in that country. The government says up to 40 Canadian Armed Forces healthcare and support staff will be deployed to the West African country. (http://bit.ly/1vUeG6z)

 

China

CHINA SECURITIES JOURNAL

– A cut in China’s reserve requirement ratio (RRR) is “imminent” after the central bank slashed interest rates last week, said Wen Bin, senior economist at Minsheng Bank.

CHINA BUSINESS NEWS

– The Legislative Affairs Office of the State Council, or China’s Cabinet, is seeking public comments on draft rules for the country’s social security fund.

– Balance in China’s margin trading accounts reached a record 800 billion yuan ($130.31 billion), the newspaper said, citing a report.

21ST CENTURY BUSINESS HERALD

– The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) will soon release guidelines on Public-Private Partnership (PPP) regarding cooperation between local governments and social capital, said Ou Hong, an NDRC official.

CHINA DAILY

– The people of Hong Kong must respect Beijing’s jurisdiction over the region in order to smoothly implement the “One country, two systems” policy, the China Daily said in an editorial.

 

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1uQZoIO Tyler Durden

Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has had an extremely busy past few weeks. After increasing the sales tax rate earlier this year which caused the GDP to contract by more than 7%, the Bank of Japan announced earlier this month it would step up its game and print money like never before. In a previous column we explained that Japan would print new money at twice the rate the USA was printing cash at the height of its quantitative easing program.

Even though Abe’s economic policy (called Abenomics) seemed to be working in the first phase of the implementation, the progress has stalled and Japan is now back in a recession again. This could be a huge indication that Abenomics is quite dead. In an attempt to resuscitate the policy, the huge money printing program has started and Abe has announced he would postpone a planned increase in the sales tax to 10% by 18 months years as the effect of another increase might have been devastating for the country’s economy. It was already quite weird for someone who wanted to increase the consumption pattern of the Japanese population to increase a sales tax (which obviously reduces the demand for goods) to get the country’s financial situation back in order.

Surprisingly enough, even though Japan’s economy is now officially in recession again Abe has called for new elections within the month. With Abenomics failing and the domestic economy tumbling back into recession, the central bank printing money like crazy leading to a severe depreciation of the Japanese Yen and an unpopular move to increase the sales tax from 5% to 8%, one would definitely not expect a democratic leader to ask the citizens of Japan to vote for him once again.

But Abe has effectively called for elections which will be held on December 14^th which is in less than four weeks from now, now that’s an electoral ‘Blitzkrieg’! It’s also quite easy to understand why the sales tax hike has been postponed as the prime minister needs to make himself popular with his citizens. But more than anything else, the elections were called to take the left side of the political landscape by surprise. As elections are a complete surprise for everyone, the left-wing parties haven’t organized and harmonized their opposition against Abe yet. On top of that, with such a short time frame before the elections it’s extremely unlikely the left side will actually be able to organize themselves and take up the glove Abe has dropped.

By adding this element of surprise, Abe just wants to secure another term in office despite his failing economic policy. As he’s a real politician, Shinzo Abe is still upbeat about Abenomics stating ‘it’s working’ but he seems to forget that even though the unemployment rate decreased and the company’s revenues increased, there still isn’t a noticeable increase in consumption and salaries. Realizing one out of three promises isn’t really what you’d call ‘passing’ the test. It’s also a very wise decision to ask the Japanese population for a vote of confidence before the newly-printed money will be felt by the man in the street through an increasing inflation rate.

Source

The ‘Abenomics -balloon’ is slowly deflating and Abe seems to want to secure his personal future before Japan’s economic situation deteriorates even further. The Japanese Yen has already lost 15% of its value in the past six months and with a failing economy and huge quantitative easing program we are expecting a further depreciation of the Yen. Meanwhile, the gold price in JPY has increased by almost 10% in the same six months, despite a 7.5% drop in the price of gold (expressed in USD). This once again emphasizes every decent investment portfolio should contain some gold and silver to protect yourself against sudden changes in the economic policy.

Our thesis seems to be confirmed as our research has indicated the total amount held in a physical gold ETF issued by Mitsubishi UFJ – “Fruit of Gold” – has increased exponentially since Abenomics went in full force, as can be seen on the following chart.

Source

The amount of gold is expressed in grams. So whereas this ETF had roughly 1 million grams of gold in 2010 ( 32,150 ounces), this increased exponentially and almost eightfolded in just a few years time. The vertical red line is the moment the Bank of Japan started behaving irrational and you can clearly see the interest to hold physical gold has increased since then. The smart Japanese have mobilized their money and invested it in physical gold to safeguard and protect their purchasing power. And they are right to do so!

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