QUICK OVERVIEW

• Obama urged Republican/Tea to stop political brinkmanship on gov't funding and debt limit in order to avert self-inflicted wounds to economy.

• The Dow and S&P 500 set record highs on Fed's "no taper" decision.

• MoM existing U.S. Home Sales Beat Expectations rising 1.7% September

• US Philly Fed business index 22.3vs 10.0 exp

• (Reuters) - China could import 20-30 million tonnes of corn a year to cover growing supply shortages, a researcher with a government think tank said on Thursday, as much as four times current levels.

• (Bloomberg) Global cocoa demand will outstrip supply by 209,000 metric tons in the season ending Sept. 30, estimates KnowledgeCharts, a unit of Commodities Risk Analysis in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. That is bigger than the 52,000-ton deficit forecast by the International Cocoa Organization in London. The shortage next season will amount to 188,000 tons.

• 27% of Americans say now is a good time to find a quality job, up from 21 % in August. The figure is the highest since January 2008. At the same time, lower-income Americans' optimism has faded; with 19% saying now is a good time to find a quality job.

• Argentina’s economy grew 8.3% in Q2.

• The US National Security Agency (NSA) has posted an ad for a "Civil Liberties & Privacy Officer".

• The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed limits on carbon pollution from new fossil fuel (coal) power plants. The move, if successful, would be the first major step by the U.S. to limit greenhouse gas emissions from this sector.

• The Czech Republic became the latest EU member to denounce subsidies for clean but costly renewable energy and pledged to double down on its use of fossil fuels.

• Results from a referendum in the southern Swiss canton of Ticino showed that 65% of the electorate backed a proposal to forbid the covering of faces in public areas by any group.

• The Sunday Assembly—the London-based “Atheist Church” grew at 3,000% since January, a rate that might make this non-religious Assembly the fastest growing church in the world”.

Next Update  Sep. 15   Sep. 22

Jerry Brown's Tough-Love California Miracle "He preceded Al Gore," says Tom Hayden, the counterculture icon whom Brown appointed as the first chairman of his solar-energy council. "He's out there with solar beanies and rooftop collectors, and it's 1974 and people think he's a lunatic."

   “But I’ m not habituated – I disrupt my own thought pattern every day. I have learned to disbelieve almost everything I think!”

QUICK OVERVIEW

• MoM U.S. consumer sentiment declined to 82.1 from July’s 85.1.
• Chicago PMI rose to 53.0 from 52.3 in July.
• Consumer spending barely rose in July, the first month of the third quarter, indicating little change in the U.S. economy's mild pace of growth.

• China returning to full speed? China official manufacturing PMI rises to 51 in August a 16 month high.

• The United States' High Plains Aquifer — a vast underground reservoir that stretches through eight states, from South Dakota to Texas, and supplies 30 percent of the nation's irrigated groundwater — could be used up within 50 years, unless current water use is reduced, a new study finds.

• NSA Says It Can’t Search Its Own Emails The NSA is a "supercomputing powerhouse" with machines so powerful their speed is measured in thousands of trillions of operations per second… But ask the NSA, to do a seemingly simple search of its own employees' email? The agency says it doesn’t have the technology…
• However, a document seen by SPIEGEL reveals that the NSA  spied successfully on the French Foreign Ministry and news broadcaster Al Jazeera - the technology worked fine.

• The Most Efficient Health Care Systems in The World: among the 48 countries included in the Bloomberg study, the U.S. ranks 46th, outpacing just Serbia and Brazil - worse than China, Algeria, and Iran.

• Radiation levels around Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant are 18 times higher than previously thought, Japanese authorities have warned.

• (MarketWatch) -- August was the worst outflow month in more than three years for U.S. exchange-traded products, according to preliminary data from No. 1 ETFs provider BlackRock Inc. U.S. ETFs saw $16.1 billion in redemptions through Thursday, representing the biggest outflow in one month since $17.1 billion exited in January 2010. The largest ETF was the main driver, as the SPDR S&P 500 endured $13 billion in August outflows, BlackRock said.

• (Guardian) General patterns suggest that internet users in the UK deliberately access online pornography more frequently than they access all social networking sites put together..

• (Reuters) - British manufacturers are planning the fastest increase in capital investment in the year ahead since before the financial crisis, a survey showed, suggesting the economy could be heading for a more balanced recovery.