The co-working giant now controls 15.5 million square feet across 335 locations in 24 countries and says it is the largest tenant in Manhattan, Washington D.C. and London. So, when the next economic downturn arrives, WeWork's landlords might not be able to evict it even if it can't pay its rent... a more likely outcome would be for landlords to "swallow hard and renegotiate the lease agreements on more favorable terms to keep WeWork from creating a full-on panic." They could also have the company start acting as a property manager in the vein of Marriott, which manages rather than owns or leases hotels.

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No population genuinely worried about abuses of power would even countenance placing a single private company in control of securing the data of both the intelligence community and the armed services. Add putting a major media organ or two under the same umbrella and you're beginning to enter oligarchy territory.

Moving Amazon closer to America's political and financial capitals isn't just about creating a few jobs. It's also a symbolic move that speaks to the unsettling co-mingling of state and corporate power. We might wake up soon and wish we hadn't put so many eggs in one basket.

In truth, the world's economy has been slowing to a crawl. The German economy contracted in the third quarter. Meanwhile, China is dealing with a massive debt bubble and a trade war. (Note: China is the world's largest importer of oil.)

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A diversified investor with a helping of large-cap stocks, small-cap stocks, foreign stocks, commodities, bonds, preferreds and/or other income producers had been relying on the influence of mega-caps like Facebook, Amazon and Apple. Bearish price depreciation in one or two of them might have been tolerable. Not all three.

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"Our view is that there is tremendous wind at our back -- we are the only serious global player out there," he said."Our growth is actually accelerating as our product offering continues to go deeper and reach not just small-sized companies but Fortune 500 companies and everything in between.

That clause, according to this great piece by CNN's Jeanne Sahadi, could well lead to the eventual public disclosure of Trump's returns:

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What seems certain now: House Democrats will make a move to see Trump's taxes. Trump, who, I believe, thinks the release of the returns could do him real political harm, will fight like hell to keep them from doing so.

Who wins? No clue. But there's no question that we are closer to seeing Trump's tax returns today than we have been at any point since he began to run for president in 2015.

If Mrs. May's cabinet signs off on the draft agreement, the next step is for European Union leaders to give it their blessing at a meeting at the end of the month.

Part of the strategy is to sell off valuable real estate, the better to enrich the hedge fund, and stick the retail company with costly rental payments to occupy the space that it once owned.

In the case of Sears, the culprit is a hedge-fund operator named Edward Lampert, once a senior merger guy at Goldman Sachs. In 2005, Lampert merged Sears with Kmart, loaded both up with debt, and used some of the debt on stock buybacks to pump up the share price and enrich shareholders, notably himself and his hedge fund.

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"Experienced borrowers will act in their economic interest and will turn in the keys to malls that don't merit further investment. They don't want to service the loan anymore," Edward Reardon, head of CMBS research at Deutsche Bank, said in a phone interview. "We think the number of malls that don't merit investment will expand."

This is happening because malls are losing anchor stores and as a result would have to significantly cut rents for existing occupants, Reardon said, noting that mall owners fleeing their properties early is a "relatively new phenomenon."

That may mean trouble ahead for investors. While the delinquency rate in the CMBS market is now at post-crisis lows, the mall-related pain may not show up for a couple years, according to analysts. That's because the securities with the highest exposure have loans that won't mature until 2021 or later.

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At this point, I seriously doubt the Fed has a solid grasp of the (direct and indirect) sources of the Trillions of global liquidity that have flooded into U.S. securities and asset markets over the past decade. I take them at their word that they don't discern the degree of leverage that would typically indicate a Bubble. Yet this has been the most atypical of global Bubbles. I am not convinced the Fed knows where to look for the leverage most germane to today's global Bubble. And, I'm compelled to add, the whole world seems oblivious. Speculative deleveraging is not on the Fed's radar, and this is a problem for the markets.

''

These groups accounted for more than 75 percent of the $800-plus million spent by all dark money organizations between January 2010 and December 2016. They spent the majority of this money on negative attack ads, criticizing candidates from the shadows while purposefully hiding their donors and masquerading as trade associations or "social welfare" nonprofits.

"Dark Money Illuminated" profiles the top 15 dark money groups and shines light on approximately 400 donors and donor organizations who have funded these groups, including companies, trade associations and labor unions. Issue One created a searchable, first-of-its-kind database containing nearly 1,200 transactions linked to these donors, each supported by primary source documents.''

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More firms that look like they are going bankrupt don't. Over the last 50 years, it's clear that the average company in the world is more leveraged using more debt than ever before. There was no leveraged-loan or junk-bond markets 50 years ago. Now, these are big dynamic markets available to many firms. They take advantage of it. Interest rates in the last ten year have been low and firms have been overjoyed to leverage their balance sheet to try to earn returns greater than the cost of capital. And the cost of capital, with the lower costs of interest rates, has come down.

... There is a dramatic increase in leveraged loans, in covenant-lite issuance. The defaults will not take place as quickly as they normally would because there are no easy triggers from these covenants. But when they do take place, the ultimate recovery when the firm emerges from Chapter 11 will be lower because the covenant-lite debt kicked the can down the road.