A Critical Test.

The NFL and CTE.

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1. Two weeks after Ukraine’s surprise incursion into Russia, the Kremlin’s forces have slowed the advance, with the hardening front line in the Kursk region of Russia setting up the next phase of a battle with great political stakes for both sides. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has pledged a decisive response to the first invasion of Russian territory since World War II. But so far, the response has been focused on containing the incursion rather than reversing it, raising the question of what Russia’s depleted military is willing to risk to expel the invaders — or if it is capable of doing so. The unforeseen invasion of Kursk has exposed the ongoing intelligence failures of the Russian military as well as Moscow’s shortage of battle-ready reserves in a war fought along a 750-mile front. Ukraine’s rapid gains have also upended the global perception of a slow but unstoppable Russian march toward victory in a war of attrition. (Source: nytimes.com)

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2. President Biden approved in March a highly classified nuclear strategic plan for the United States that, for the first time, reorients America’s deterrent strategy to focus on China’s rapid expansion in its nuclear arsenal. The shift comes as the Pentagon believes China’s stockpiles will rival the size and diversity of the United States’ and Russia’s over the next decade. The White House never announced that Mr. Biden had approved the revised strategy, called the “Nuclear Employment Guidance,” which also newly seeks to prepare the United States for possible coordinated nuclear challenges from China, Russia and North Korea. (Source: nytimes.com)

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3. The Chinese central bank on Tuesday kept two benchmark lending rates unchanged for this month, after financing extended by Chinese banks hit their lowest level in roughly a decade and a half. The People's Bank of China held the one-year loan prime rate at 3.35% and the five-year LPR at 3.85%. The two key interest rates were each cut by 10 basis points in July. The one-year LPR serves as a benchmark rate for corporate lending, while the five-year LPR serves as a reference rate for mortgages. But financing demand remains weak among both businesses and households amid a prolonged housing slump. In July, new yuan-denominated lending fell 25% from a year earlier to 260 billion yuan ($36.4 billion) on a net basis -- the lowest level since October 2009. Long-term loans dropped by roughly 30% on weak sales of condominiums. Business loans, including for capital investment, plunged by more than half. Corporate and household borrowing demand fell to an all-time low in the April-June quarter, according to an index calculated based on a PBOC survey of roughly 3,200 banks. Other than that…..(Source: asia.nikkei.com, italics mine)

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4. China has disbursed only a fraction of a flagship central bank fund designed to rescue property developers, as authorities struggle to cut a vast stock of unsold homes and end a prolonged real estate slump. Beijing unveiled a plan in May for the People’s Bank of China and state banks to mobilize up to Rmb500 billion ($70 billion) in lending to support local government enterprises to buy up unsold property. Local governments would then lease the property as social housing. But the latest figures from the PBoC show that banks have lent only Rmb24.7 billion under the scheme, prompting the central bank this month to promise to “accelerate” the program. (Source: ft.com)

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