NATION AND STATE

Watch: Japan’s Largest Active Volcano Violently Erupts; Warnings Issued Japan’s largest active volcano violently erupted on Wednesday, prompting the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) to warn about lava flows and falling rocks. 

JMA issued a level 3 on a scale of 5 alerts for Mount Aso, a popular destination on the main southern island of Kyushu. A level 3 means “do not approach the volcano” and urged tourists and residents to avoid entering the danger zone due to the risk of falling rocks and pyroclastic flows about half a mile around the volcano. 

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Goodbye Middle Class: 50% Of All US Workers Made $34,612.04 Or Less Last Year Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

If we keep going down this path, soon we won’t have much of a “middle class” at all.  When I first started writing about the economy many years ago, I often wrote about the tens of millions of “working poor” Americans that were enduring so many hardships.  But at this point most of the nation now falls into the “working poor” category.  That isn’t because wages haven’t been going up.  Little by little, wages have been incrementally

Tesla Fluctuates After Beating Margin, EPS Expectations But Missing On Sales Heading into Tesla’s Q3 earnings, sentiment is euphoric judging by the near-record stock price and the outlook for is pretty good because despite grappling with the chip shortage, surging input costs and the same shipping bottlenecks plaguing all global automakers right now, Tesla managed to set a record for vehicle deliveries in the third quarter: 241,300 cars.

As a result, Wall Street is expecting a strong report, with consensus expecting an EPS of $1.67 a share on revenue of $13.9 billion.

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Dollar Dumps, Gold Jumps, Bitcoin Pumps To Record High This could be the start of a problem…

Overheard at The Treasury…

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Democrat Plans Plunge Deeper Into Chaos After Sinema Opposes Tax Hikes; May Leave Top Rates Unchanged Senate Democrats are starting to freak out over Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s opposition to tax increases – a crucial component of their attempt to pass over $4.5 trillion between two spending packages.

Sinema is one of two moderate Democrats – the other being Sen. Joe Manchin (WV) holding up their party’s spending agenda over their refusal to support the massive spending legislation.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Sinema has told lobbyists that she won’t stand for significant increases in taxes on businesses, high-income

David Einhorn: Inflation Is Here To Stay, And Powell Hasn’t Lifted A Finger It’s been another quarter to forget for David Einhorn’s Greenlight, which lost -2.6% in Q3, underperforming the S&P’s 0.6% gain as “longs detracted 4.5% in the quarter while shorts added 1.2% and macro added 1.0%.” In his latest quarterly letter published earlier today, Einhorn writes that at quarter-end, the largest disclosed long positions in the Partnerships were Atlas Air Worldwide, Brighthouse Financial, Change Healthcare, Green Brick Partners and Teck Resources; the fund had an average exposure of 127% long and 70% short.

Housekeeping matters aside, we jump

Where Stuff Comes From Via Doomberg Substack,

“this dovetails in sinister fashion with the basic idea that any sufficiently advanced technology cannot be distinguished from magic. highly evolved capitalism becomes such a technology and the largess and plenty it produces gets mistaken for a property of the universe rather than a made thing, a thing that must be created rather than simply reaped.”

– el gato malo

Modern society is awash in stuff. There’s stuff at the grocery store. At the hardware store. At Amazon and eBay. We eat stuff, wear stuff, buy stuff, and store stuff. Click

PIMCO CIO Says Bond Giant Plans To Buy More Crypto As Bitcoin Surges To Record High As bitcoin prices surge to new record highs while inflows into the new bitcoin ETF (which holds exactly zero actual bitcoin) are going absolutely gangbusters, more institutional players are revealing plans to get involved in crypto trading.

Speaking to a CNBC reporter Wednesday during the TV Channel’s “Seeking Alpha” conference, PIMCO CIO Daniel Ivascyn announced that his firm, which has already “dabbled” in crypto, plans to gradually invest more in the nascent asset class, starting with its quant-based and “trend-following” strategies, before moving