"I definitely understand how that would make lots and lots of extremely rich people uncomfortable," said Mr. Hanauer, co-founder of a Seattle-based venture capital firm and an early investor in Amazon. "But I'm more worried about our democracy."

"Don't get me wrong," he added. "I would prefer 3 percent." But even at 6 percent, he said, "we would all survive and continue to be rich and fly around in our planes."

He pointed out that most Americans had been living with meager income growth for decades, while the silk-thin layer at the top shoveled in enormous gains, cumulatively more than 400 percent since 1980.

"All you're doing is saying to the richest percent of Americans that the rate of growth of your assets and wealth will now match what has happened to other Americans over the last 40 years," Mr. Hanauer said.

One lawsuit filed by Tesla shareholders alleges Musk engineered the purchase of SolarCity, in which he was the majority shareholder, as a a bailout of the troubled solar panel company. That case is heading for trial in March.

Over the past two years, Tesla's electric car business has been beleaguered with manufacturing problems related to its rollout of the new Model 3 sedan. The company's latest earnings report signals the firm may be at a turning point. It posted a $342 million profit, indicating it's making bigger margins on car sales.

...

Musk also invited Einhorn to tour the Tesla factory and learn more about the company, adding "I'm certain your investors would appreciate you getting smart on Tesla."

Einhorn responded Friday, in an open letter challenging Musk to identify inaccuracies in Greenlight's shareholder letter and accepting the invitation to visit Tesla factories, writing, "I think facility visits would be fun (can we start in Buffalo?). I might learn the difference between your alien dreadnought factory and cars made by hand in a tent."

For one, Walgreens WBA, already has $15 billion in debt on its balance sheet. A potential bidder would need to add more leverage to fund the purchase. That would leave the drugstore chain particularly vulnerable when the credit cycle turns -- which is looking increasingly likely.

...

the share of new leveraged loans with no maintenance covenants -- requiring the borrower to maintain certain financial buffers such as a debt-to-Ebitda ratio, or earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization, of less than five times -- has tripled since 2007, the U.K. central bank said.

Banks are already struggling as investors steer clear of hefty private-equity debt package. Take Bain Capital's $4 billion buyout of market-research firm Kantar in July. The U.S. private-equity firm lined up 11 banks to assemble a $3 billion debt package.

But after an underwhelming reaction from the market, the banks had to restructure the debt package to make it more palatable to investors. This included raising the pricing on the loans and tightening the covenants.

Secondly, Walgreens finances aren't looking so good. The company's profit in the fourth quarter plunged 55% to $677 million, compared with the same quarter in 2018.

...

Also driving sentiment is that President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping are on the cusp of signing "phase one" on a trade deal, which could be enough for global commerce to find a footing. China is reviewing locations in the U.S. where Xi would be willing to meet with Trump to sign a pact.

...

"If the U.S.-Chinese trade escalates again, or if the U.S. starts a new trade war against the only other economy of almost equal size, the EU, it could all still go wrong," said Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg Bank. "But in the absence of such new political shocks, chances are that the global downturn could peter out in early 2020 and make way for a modest upturn thereafter."

Back on the "no recession ever" yellow brick road... all it takes is financial meltdown-level central bank intervention...

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Manhattan-wide, rents fell an average of 8.1%. The Meatpacking District, which has benefited from tourist traffic on the High Line, was the only submarket where rents climbed.

Rents on upper Fifth Avenue had surged in recent years, pushing out many of the street's luxury retailers whose sales hadn't kept pace. The cost increases have leveled out a bit, Smith said. On lower Fifth, some landlords who created oversized spaces in a bid to attract major chains are now struggling to fill those stores.

Yet the new purchases are different from those postcrisis packages.

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Mr. Powell and his colleagues have repeated, time and again, that the current balance sheet expansion should not be confused with quantitative easing.

...

To drive home the point that there is no broader policy signal this time, officials made the new package look unique. The Fed is buying only Treasury bills, for one thing. The Fed's recession-era buying focused on bonds, in a bid to make mortgages and car loans cheaper by pushing down longer-term interest rates. By concentrating this effort on short-term debt, the Fed is forgoing that sort of stimulus.

...

Still, some onlookers were skeptical that the Fed would manage to convince investors that this was not an attempt to bolster the economy, given the size of the purchases.

"When it swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's hard to prove your intentions aren't fowl," Paul Ashworth, chief economist at Capital Economics, wrote in research note.

...

It is important that the Fed's message sticks. The Fed will be short on room to cut interest rates when the next recession hits, because they are already at just 2 percent -- leaving the central bank with far less than the five percentage points of cuts it made in the 2007 to 2009 downturn. That means bond-buying will be an essential part of the Fed's future easing packages, and one to be used in case of emergency.

"They want to keep Q.E. as something special," said Laura Rosner, a co-founder of MacroPolicy Perspectives. "I don't think they want to send a signal that things are bad."

...

Officials had decided this year that they wanted to continue setting interest rates in what they called an "ample reserve" framework. In such an approach, the central bank keeps its balance sheet holdings big enough to leave plenty of cash in the financial system. Banks keep their extra cash on deposit at the central bank, and the Fed adjusts interest rates by changing how it pays on those excess holdings, commonly called reserves.

Emerald Equity Group and Sugar Hill Capital Partners fell behind on loans issued by LoanCore Capital over the last few months, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The loans, backed by a collection of more than 600 rent-regulated units in Upper Manhattan that the companies separately own, were for more than $200M and packaged into securities. The firms had purchased the properties with the hope of moving units out of rent stabilization, per the WSJ.

Under the new laws, passed in July, landlords' ability to increase rents on stablized units and take units out of regulation and into the free market has been significantly reduced.

...

Isaac Kassirer's Emerald Equity is delinquent on $86M in loans on East 117th Street buildings and on $85M in mortgages on an apartment building in Manhattan Valley. Sugar Hill has missed payments on properties along Central Park West. Emerald and LoanCore are discussing resolving the issue, and one possible outcome is that the lender will take the properties over, a source told the WSJ.

Generally speaking, lenders will likely seek to renegotiate loans with their sponsors over foreclosure, Ariel Property Advisors President Shimon Shkury said.

Investment sales in the city have been sliding, particularly among multifamily properties, which many say is a direct result of the rent regulation reform and a disaster for the city. In the third quarter of the year, multifamily sales volume in Manhattan dropped some 60% year over year, according to data from Ariel