China’s authorities are increasingly worried by stress in the country’s financial system and the sudden slowdown in economic growth, fearing that it may now be too dangerous to press ahead with their draconian crack-down on shadow banking.

The People’s Bank (PBOC) began signaling late last week that it would soften its assault on the credit markets, shifting instead to pro-growth policies and efforts to prevent a liquidity shock before the Communist Party’s 19th Congress in November.

Then on Sunday (5/15), Premier Li Keqiang told the International Monetary Fund that regulatory overkill would be a mistake at this delicate juncture. The state media says “financial stability” is now deemed a greater priority than efforts to control debt.

“They are spooked. They know that shadow banking is running amok but they are not really willing to follow through and take the leverage out of the system,” says George Magnus from the China Centre at Oxford University.  “This is their Achilles Heel. It is very similar to what happened in the West in 2005 to 2006.”

The Democrats have ended their unity tour more divided than ever. Unlike Republican quarrels, their war is mostly ignored by the media. And yet it will define what the Left and its plan to take over the country will look like.

The Clintons are history.  Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders are the leaders of the two sides in the Dem civil war. The shots are already being fired. As usual, they are coming from the insurgent Sandernistas.

Bernie embodies the Old Left. Its mantra is class warfare. There is a great deal of talk about billionaires, working people and the ruling class.

Obama pays lip service to that same rhetoric, but his is the program of the Intersectional Left. The Intersectional Left is far more interested in identity than class. It defines its organization around a coalition of racial, sexual and other minorities.

Where Bernie wants to talk to the working class, the Intersectional left wants to hear from transgender Muslim women of color.

The differences aren’t just intellectual. They define the tactics and agenda of the Democrats.  The Old Left wants to ‘overthrow’ the middle class and the rich. The Intersectional Left wants to ‘overthrow’ white people and heterosexuals.

That is the Bernie and Obama split in a nutshell:  Obama will take money from Wall Street to fight white men. Bernie wants white men to fight Wall Street.

As every Democrat and Fake News Airhead in the country has their hair on fire over President Trump firing FBI Director Comey, cooler heads are focusing on who was responsible for Trump’s decision.

That would be Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.  His Memo of yesterday (5/09) to Attorney General Sessions, “Restoring Public Confidence in the FBI”, was sent to the President, upon which the decision was made.

 Here are two points to consider regarding the Deputy AG.  He has unquestioned integrity, and was confirmed two weeks ago by a bipartisan Senate vote of 94-6.

President Trump tweeted late yesterday (5/02):

“The reason for the plan negotiated between the Republicans and Democrats is that we need 60 votes in the Senate, which are not there.”

He’s talking about the budget deal. Well, how about going the route of reconciliation? Which was designed for budget deals. Reconciliation means you only need 51. Well, why not veto it?

Now we’re back to “We can’t do anything ’cause we don’t have 60 votes.” But we can. We can veto it or we can blow up the filibuster here and say we’re gonna go budget reconciliation just like they got Obamacare passed. I mean, if we really wanted to do this.

Following the tweet above, the President then tweeted:

“We either elect more Republican senators in 2018 or we change the rules now to 51%. Our country needs a good shutdown in September to fix this mess.”

If a shutdown is gonna be good in September, why isn’t it better now?

American Leftists celebrated the venerable Communist holiday of May Day in the traditional fashion. Portland grad students, who have never worked a day in their lives, marked International Workers Day by smashing the windows of local businesses.

There's a long proud tradition of the revolutions of the working class being led by rich Leftists like Marx, Engels, Lenin and Castro to whom work is an evil mystery that they spent their miserable lives resolving never to become acquainted with.

The New York Times, which has far too many of its own windows to go around smashing those of others, instead offered some sickening nostalgia for the red dead past with a little piece titled, "When Communism Inspired Americans."

Communism didn't inspire Americans, it inspired the Left to try and turn America into a totalitarian state. It still does. This is the dirty little secret that leaks out of the Left.

When the media runs these evocative nostalgic pieces about Communism, it's the equivalent of a pedophile sharing snapshots of summer camp. It's the disgusting secret of truly vile people leaking out.

And the vile people are the cultural Leftist elites claiming to be our moral superiors on account of their commitment to total government control of everything... for the benefit of the people.

Sound familiar?

Equity investors across the world are positioned for the nirvana of synchronized and accelerating global expansion led by China and the US.

What they may instead get is a synchronized Sino-American slap in the face. Analysts at UBS say the international credit impulse has already "collapsed". The two economic superpowers are both tightening policy into an approaching storm.

There has been a steady drip-drip of hard facts that support the fears.  The $12.5 trillion market for US bank credit has sputtered out, for example, with flat growth over the last three months. Commercial and industrial loans are falling at the fastest rate since the Lehman crisis.

The latest Chinese mini-boom has been a wonder to behold. We can now see that the authorities panicked after the economy hit a wall in early 2015. They abandoned reform and reverted to extreme debt creation, pushing corporate debt to 171% of GDP.

The key question the world must face now is where the pain threshold lies for a dollarized global system that is more leveraged than at any time in market history. The Institute of International Finance says global debt has reached $217 trillion, a record ratio of 325% of world GDP.