Simply brilliant. Carlos Ghosn springs out of house arrest and ends up in Lebanon before Japanese authorities knew he was gone.  Just for reference, it is normally a 16 hour flight from Tokyo to Beirut.  This is not the first time Japan's legal system is used to to eliminate a business problem. It was done to Livedoor's Takefumi Horie to get him out of the way.  Ghosn's efforts to finalize the merger between Renault and Nissan rubbed legacy Nissan the wrong way.  The solution, do a Horie.  But if Ghosn has pulled off the escape, way to go!

AP released an article today about why after 3 years no Obamacare replacement.  The simple reason is money.  For the month of November, the US spent $434B. The amount of cash the government took (revenue to a business, tax for a government) is $225B.  So the government is spending nearly 2x of what is taking in. But that is OK, because just issue debt, which is what is being done.

2016 saw the fallout from Colin Kaepernick events.  Now just over 3 years removed, where's the attendance at for the NFL.  When Kaepernick started his work, the NFL peaked with its attendance at just shy of 17.8M spectators. 

BMW is being investigated by the SEC for using shady tactics to boost their sales.  You know you are successful when you can survive a government investigation as they know they will get paid by the target company.  Not saying if BMW did anything wrong. 

The spectacular failure of WeWork is dragging on Softbank as Softbank is having a hard time getting the financing in place to keep WeWork alive.  Flash back that is your typical SiliValley Unicorn that is revolutionizing the world as we know it while not making money, not having a survivable business an at least this time the public market is not left holding the bag. 

US Steels drops dividend by 80%, stops buyback and eliminates a factory and 1500 jobs..

All is not well at US Steel.  Unfortunate notification for those at the Great Lakes Works facility.  1500 people will be out of work leaving the total loss in that area at 1700 jobs out of this factory.  Pulling back the way USS is, does not reflect the narrative of everything is awesome.  The approach of pulling back to consolidate their efforts is not out of place.  Not like Detroit area needed another major failure in their area. But they got it.

Wolf Richter of Wolf Wallstreet nails how awful the State of the university system is in the US (link).

Sum it up, enrollment is collapsing (10-50% depending on the segment) yet debt load for those attending has gone up 70%+ over the last 8 years.  How is this possible.

Earnings came out and the withdrawal of Amazon hurt.  But on another level, their forecasts may be overly optimistic based on their assumptions of moderate US growth and stable international trade.  Neither of these options seeing playing out well in 2020, but can't blame them for being optimistic.  

The money is coming from the Fed in the form of overnight Repo. But everything is great, right?  The Fed had to spur the overnight funds for the banks. The banks putting up their Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS) and TBills to get the  cash.  Basically the banks aren't lending and the Fed is having to prop it up.

Super shuttle is done this year.  Is this the result of Uber/Lyft environment or just a model that was no longer valid?  Super Shuttle is made up of Super Shuttle the blue vans that would carry multiple people (like a slimmed down bus service) and Execucar.  My experience was with the later and it was excellent at a time when the only other option was a cab.