Markets stuggle ahead of a big week for earnings

Dow inched up 2, advancers slightly ahead of decliners & NAZ added 33.  The MLP index hardly budged near 266 & the REIT index fluctuated near 381, its previous close.  Junk bond funds crawled higher & Treasuries saw more buying which lowered yields.  Oil was off 1 to 76 after last week's rise & gold rebounded 8 to 2025.

AMJ (Alerian MLP Index tracking fund)

3 US service members were killed & dozens wounded during an unmanned aerial drone attack on US forces stationed in northeastern Jordan near the Syrian border, Pres Biden & US officials said.  Biden blamed Iran-backed groups for the attack, the first deadly strike against US forces since the Israel-Hamas war erupted in Oct & sent shock waves throughout the Middle East.  “While we are still gathering the facts of this attack, we know it was carried out by radical Iran-backed militant groups operating in Syria and Iraq,” Biden said.  At least 34 personnel were being evaluated for possible traumatic brain injury.  2 different officials said some wounded US forces were medically evacuated from the base for further treatment.  2 US officials said the drone struck near the barracks early in the morning, which could explain the high number of casualties.  The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella organization of hardline Iran-backed militant groups, claimed attacks on 3 bases, including one on the Jordan-Syria border.  The attack is a major escalation of the already tense situation in the Middle East, where war broke out in Gaza after Palestinian Islamist group Hamas' attack on Israel on Oct 7 which killed 1200.  Israel's subsequent assault on Gaza has killed over 26K Palestinians, according to the local health ministry.  Since then, US forces have come under attack more than 150 times by Iran-backed groups in Iraq & Syria, causing at least 70 casualties prior to yesterday's attack, most of them traumatic brain injuries.  US warships have also been fired at by Iran-backed Houthi forces in Yemen, who are regularly attacking commercial ships passing thru Red Sea waters off Yemen's coast.

Three U.S. troops killed, up to 34 injured in Jordan drone strike linked to Iran

The US national debt is climbing at an astronomical pace & has shown no signs of slowing down despite the heightened scrutiny on gov spending.  The national debt, which measures what the US owes its creditors, surged to $34,135B as of Thurs, according to the latest numbers published by the Treasury Dept.  That is up about $47.1B from the $34,088B figure reported the previous day!!  By comparison, just 4 decades ago, the national debt hovered around $907B.  The unrelenting increase is what prompted Fitch Ratings to issue a surprise downgrade of the nation's long-term credit score in mid-2023.  The agency cut the US debt by one notch, snatching away its pristine AAA rating in exchange for an AA+ grade.  In making the decision, Fitch cited alarm over the country's deteriorating finances & expressed concerns over the gov's ability to address the ballooning debt burden amid sharp political divisions.  "This is a warning shot across the U.S. government's bow that it needs to right its fiscal ship," Sean Snaith, an economist at the University of Central Florida, said.  "You can't just spend trillions of dollars more than you have in revenue every year and expect no ill consequences."  The outlook for the federal debt level is bleak, with economists increasingly sounding the alarm over the torrid pace of spending by Congress & the White House.  The latest findings from the Congressional Budget Office indicate that the national debt will nearly double in size over the next 3 decades.  At the end of 2022, the national debt grew to about 97% of GDP.  Under current law, that figure is expected to skyrocket to 181% at the end of 2053, a debt burden that will far exceed any previous level.  Should that debt materialize, it could risk America's economic standing in the world.  "America’s fiscal outlook is more dangerous and daunting than ever, threatening our economy and the next generation," said Michael Peterson, the CEO of the Peter G Peterson Foundation that advocates for reducing the federal deficit.  "This is not the future any of us want, and it’s no way to run a great nation like ours."

US national debt takes turn for the worse as it shows no signs of slowing down

The US & China will hold formal high-level talks in Beijing next week aimed at limiting the flow of fentanyl into the US, senior Chinese officials said, resuming counternarcotics cooperation that was suspended for more than a year even as America struggles with what has been called its worst drug crisis in history.  China, which US officials say is the primary source of the precursor chemicals synthetized into fentanyl by drug cartels in Mexico, has promised greater cooperation with the US on combating the crisis.  It also continues to deflect blame for it.  “I believe through this collaboration, both countries can enhance their law enforcement capabilities,” Yu Haibin, one of China's top narcotics control officials, said this week.  “We will achieve remarkable results in combating fentanyl substances, including precursors.”  But he also repeated China's argument that America's fentanyl problem stems from the public's unrelenting demand for it.  “The crisis in the U.S. is not manufactured by China; rather, its roots lie within the United States itself,” said Yu, who is deputy director general of the Ministry of Public Security’s Narcotics Control Bureau & deputy secretary-general of the National Narcotics Control Commission.  Chinese officials did not go into detail about the upcoming counternarcotics meeting in Beijing, which has not yet been publicly announced.  The US has accused China of complicity in its fentanyl crisis, which together with other opioids has killed hundreds of thousands in recent years & destroyed communities across the country.  According to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, more than 80K people in the US died from overdoses involving opioids in 2021 alone, with almost 88% of those cases involving synthetic opioids such as fentanyl.  The meeting early next week of a newly launched US-China counternarcotics working group is part of delicate efforts to improve relations between the world's 2 biggest economies, which in recent years have fallen to their lowest point in decades.  The launch of the working group was one of the outcomes of the Nov meeting in California between Pres Biden & Chinese Pres Xi Jinping, their first encounter in a year. 

U.S. and China to hold high-level talks aimed at curbing the fentanyl crisis

Everybody is waiting for more earnings reports.  This is a good time to look at the federal debt disaster (see above).  US debt was not an important factor until this century.  Then it exploded & its growth shows no signs of slowing.  Gov spending is out of control.  Not good!  Meanwhile fighting in the Mideast is going from bad to worse.  All is not well.

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