Weekend News Items.

Aliens over New Jersey.

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Give the gift that keeps on giving, 6x weekly, week in and week out. Nothing says ‘Happy Holidays’ quite like News Items. Act now while supplies last:

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“If I could only open one thing each morning it would be John Ellis’s News Items newsletter.” — Larry Summers, President Emeritus of Harvard University and former Secretary of the Treasury of the United States.

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1. The country that invented paper is making way too much of it. So Shandong Chenming Paper, one of China’s biggest paper manufacturers, did what any company faced with overcapacity would do: It cut prices to unload more supply while it tried to ride out the storm. Instead, its losses mounted. Last month, the company said it had racked up around $250 million in overdue debts. Creditors sued and some of the manufacturer’s bank accounts were frozen, it said. The papermaker’s troubles are only the latest sign of the havoc caused by falling prices in China, as factories struggle to cope with overcapacity and weak demand. Chinese leaders this week pledged to do more to stimulate the economy, including by cutting interest rates and boosting government borrowing. But pressure is building on Beijing to take even more forceful action to prevent a downward spiral of deflation that becomes self-reinforcing, potentially landing China in a longer-term recession. (Source: wsj.com)