Two movies helped push October box office numbers to near record levels. According to The Wall Street Journal:
Two new hit movies—“Venom” and “A Star Is Born”—gave Hollywood its best-ever October showing at the box office over the weekend.
“Venom,” a superhero spinoff starring Tom Hardy, collected a robust $80 million in first place, unseating the October opening record set by the $55.8 million debut of “Gravity” in 2013.
Bradley Cooper’s update to the show-business myth “A Star Is Born” followed with $42.6 million in second place, a solid start for a modestly budgeted drama that has drawn rave reviews from critics.
After several relatively quiet weeks at the box office, the arrival of “Venom” and “A Star Is Born” led an industrywide weekend tally of $174.5 million, a record for October.
China will increase loans to businesses as trade tariffs bite. According to The New York Times:
China is signaling that it is worried about its economy.
Troubled by slowing growth, persistent debt problems and President Trump’s trade war, the Chinese government has taken steps in recent months to shore up its economy. It has pared back a high-profile campaign to tackle debt. It has restarted big infrastructure projects, a traditional economic engine. It has even censored bad economic news.
On Sunday, Beijing went one step further.
The People’s Bank of China, the central bank, pulled a financial lever that will effectively pump $175 billion into the economy. The government is aiming to help small and midsize businesses in particular, which have had trouble obtaining loans and face other rising pressures.
Inflation in the United States may be the biggest wildcard in the future of the world economy. According to CNBC:
U.S. inflation is the world’s most important economic variable.
That proposition is explained by its corollary: Rising inflation is the only problem the U.S. Federal Reserve cannot solve by increasing its money supply.
The Fed can deal with structural problems in credit markets by means of enhanced supervision, regulatory provisions and, all else failing, by open-ended lending in cases of systemic threats to the financial system’s stability.
A hedge fund has compared Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) with Lehman Bros. According to CNNBusiness:
U.S. inflation is the world’s most important economic variable.
That proposition is explained by its corollary: Rising inflation is the only problem the U.S. Federal Reserve cannot solve by increasing its money supply.
The Fed can deal with structural problems in credit markets by means of enhanced supervision, regulatory provisions and, all else failing, by open-ended lending in cases of systemic threats to the financial system’s stability.
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