The provision targeting ZTE was part of the National Defense Authorization Act, a must-pass defense spending bill that cleared the Senate by a vote of 85-10. It must now be reconciled with the House version of the measure, which takes a narrower approach to ZTE.

The vote raises the stakes in Congress' brewing confrontation with Trump over the Chinese company, which lawmakers of both parties consider a national security threat to U.S. networks.

In a sign of the broad backing for the effort, Republican Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Marco Rubio of Florida as well as Democrats like Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts pushed for the ZTE ban to be included in the defense bill.

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The Senate's ZTE provision would force Trump to certify that Chinese telecoms have not violated U.S. law for a full year and are cooperating with U.S. investigators before any lifting of civil penalties. It would also prevent the U.S. government from purchasing or subsidizing equipment from ZTE and Huawei.

Despite Monday's overwhelming Senate passage, the ZTE ban could still be stripped from the defense bill or modified during the conference process between the Senate and House, which did not push back as aggressively in its own version of the legislation. House lawmakers did include a provision that would bar ZTE and Huawei from entering into U.S. government contracts.

Underwriting is not nearly as bad as in 2006--2007 yet, but it appears the trend is what it always has been, when the economy is strong and there is too much capital, underwriting standards fall down, and then the stage is set for a bad outcome when the economy goes bad. It is typically 10--12 years between collapse of the last crash and then credit quality deterioration and the next credit collapse. We are at 10 years. Dodd Frank had rules to try to avoid a replay of 2008 in CMBS, but a lot of loans now are made by private equity funds that are not subject to these regulations.

One thing that is immutable is that as each generation comes into Wall Street, they think they know better how to do it, and they eventually do the same dumb loans in pursuit of profits and bonuses. It has never been different. We are not about to have a major crash again, but CMBS loan quality is deteriorating now, and one day in the next 2--3 years, it will be a bad problem. When they start doing a lot of CDOs and virtual CMBS pools with derivatives, then that is a sure sign the end is near.

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And this might just be the opening act for a theme that could endure for at least 12 months. While the Fed is expected to deliver up to two more rate increases in 2018 and further hikes next year, the ECB just ensured it won't move until the latter half of next year at the earliest.

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The government has recently been issuing a lot more debt to finance its deficit, much of it in the form of Treasury bills that are sold to investors. But to find sufficient buyers, the Treasury has had to pay higher rates on Treasury bills. This helped attract money out of the federal funds market into Treasury bills, and in turn that caused the fed funds rate to move higher and closer to the top of its range.

This caught the Fed's eye. The central bank, according to analysts, wants to avoid a situation in which the fed funds rate moves above the Fed's target range. "The Fed doesn't want anyone in the market to think it's not in control of overnight rates," Lou Crandall, chief economist at Wrightson ICAP, said. "It might worry some people if it went above the upper band''

Seems like the Fed doesn't have a clue how this post-2008 jalopy of a monetary system works...

... from the jump, it's pretty clear Judge Leon thinks AT&T's ideas about the future of content are pretty good, while the DOJ's complaints about antitrust are pretty boring...

In a country where net neutrality has just been repealed, owning the internet connection is a huge advantage, just like owning the cable network would be. All of this is, of course, extremely obvious to anyone who has used a phone to watch anything in the past decade. It's not clear how Judge Leon thinks any of this actually works, or if he realizes AT&T is the country's largest wireless internet provider...

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This is the third bank that settled with state attorneys general for illegally influencing the Libor. Barclays, Deutsche Bank and now Citibank have been fined $420 million collectively.

Citibank agreed to comply with ongoing investigations into other banks' Libor cases.

Darius Brawn, a hedge fund veteran who previously worked as a portfolio manager for SAC and Citadel, told CNBC he thinks $10 billion is a conservative estimate. He cites Tesla's plans to ramp up its Model 3 production, build new factories, make a new Roadster, Semi trucks and a Model Y vehicle, and to embark on large-scale production of its glass solar roof tiles.

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Brawn, who has shorted Tesla personally, points out that it's highly unusual for a growth company to cut its planned investment spending, as Tesla did last quarter from $3.4 billion to under $3 billion... Without raising additional capital, Brawn said, the electric vehicle maker has enough cash to last for only a few quarters.

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"I do not believe Wall Street investment banks are willing take the massive reputational, legal and financial risks associated with underwriting billions of dollars of new securities for [Tesla]" [Said Gabe Hoffman].

He and other bears also believe Tesla may not even be able to conduct an equity offering because of the existence of an undisclosed, and ongoing, enforcement action by the SEC. This action was discovered through FOIA research