I love this time of year, in particular it is the festivities surrounding one of the biggest commercial shopping days of the year - Halloween. According to Wikipedia:

"Halloween, or Hallowe'en, is a contraction of "All Hallows' Evening",also known as Allhalloween, All Hallows' Eve, or All Saints' Eve, and is a yearly celebration observed in a number of countries on 31 October, the eve of the Western Christian feast of All Hallows' Day.

Halloween initiates the triduum of Allhallowtide, the time in the liturgical year dedicated to remembering the dead, including saints (hallows), martyrs, and all the faithful departed believers. Within Allhallowtide, the traditional focus of All Hallows' Eve revolves around the theme of using "humor and ridicule to confront the power of death."

According to many scholars, All Hallows' Eve is a Christianized feast initially influenced by Celtic harvest festivals, with possible pagan roots, particularly the Gaelic Samhain. Other scholars maintain that it originated independently of Samhain and has solely Christian roots."

However, most importantly, it is a great time to spend with family and friends, dress up in costumes and over indulge in the many "treats" that come along with the celebration.

I thought this weekend's reading list should maintain the focus of "scary" ponderings now that the Federal Reserve has ended their latest monetary iterations. So with that said, grab a Reese's or two from your kids treat bucket and enjoy this weekends "5 Things To Ponder."

1) Zombie Land, USA by Elizabeth MacDonald via Fox Business

"Historic bailouts have increased the number of corporate zombies living off of easy money, hindering restructurings and holding back the expansion of healthier companies, restructuring experts here and in the U.K. warn.

"Capital is not being recycled and reinvested, impeding the “creative destruction” process Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter says is vital for any healthy economy.  Executives at big accounting firms like Ernst & Young have also warned zombie companies are grabbing market share from healthy companies."

2) The Fed's Lack Of Conviction Is Warranted by Mohamed El-Erian via Bloomberg

"Fed officials welcomed the continued improvement in the economy, particularly signs that the underutilization of labor resources is gradually 'diminishing,' though only 'gradually' despite 'solid gains and a lower unemployment rate.' On the second element of its dual mandate -- stable inflation -- the central bankers acknowledged the fall in market measures of forward inflation but played down the risk of damaging deflation by also pointing to other metrics of inflationary expectations.

This apparent lack of conviction, while frustrating to many, is understandable and warranted.

Because it faces a historically unusual mix of cyclical, structural and longer-term issues, the behavior of the U.S. economy isn't easy to capture well with existing models, including those used by the central bank. The nation’s policy response has fallen well short of the “first best” given the constraints imposed by the political polarization in Congress on virtually every policy-making entity other that the Federal Reserve; and the central bank doesn't have sufficient instruments to compensate for this."

3) The $75 Trillion Spectre by Szu Ping Chag via The Telegraph   

"Global shadow banking assets rose to a record $75 trillion (£46.5 trillion) last year, new analysis shows.

The value of risky investment products, mortgage-backed securities and other non-bank entities increased by $5 trillion to $75 trillion in 2013, according to the Financial Stability Board (FSB).

Shadow banking, which is not constrained by bank regulation, now represents about 25pc of total financial assets - or roughly half of the global banking system. It is also equivalent to 120pc of global gross domestic product (GDP)."

 What could possibly go wrong?

4) The Truly Scary Picture Of American Wellbeing Since 1979 by J. Bradford Delong via Project Syndicate

"The story goes like this: Since 1979 – the peak of the last business cycle before the inauguration of Ronald Reagan as President – economic growth in the United States has been overwhelmingly a rich-only phenomenon. Real (inflation-adjusted) wages, incomes, and living standards for America’s poor and middle-class households are at best only trivially higher. While annual real GDP per capita has grown 72%, from $29,000 to $50,000 (in 2009 prices), almost all of this growth has gone to those who now occupy the highest tier of the US income distribution."

5) Trick Or Treat - $65 Oil Is Coming by Derek Thompson via The Atlantic

"Gas prices are falling below $3 a gallon across the United States for two big reasons: (1) the world economy is growing slower than we hoped, and (2) global oil production is improving faster than we expected."

BONUS GOODIE BAG:

We're Way Overdue For A Real Correction by Joe Calhoun via Alhambra Partners

"Investors seem to think that markets are binary, either rising or falling, bull or bear, but the market actually spends a lot of time doing neither. An old Wall Street adage says that tops are a process while bottoms are an event. When we think back about previous markets we often forget how long things take to happen. Looking back on a long term chart tends to compress the time frame and we remember things happening a lot faster than they actually did. Turning points in markets, despite the old saying, take time to happen. Bottoms are remembered to the month."

When You See It...Run by John Hussman via Hussman Funds

"The next several sessions could contain a significant further short-squeeze or a vertical collapse, and we have very little predictive basis for that distinction.Longer term, we continue to view present market conditions as among the most hostile in history, coupling rich valuations with market internals that remain unfavorable on historically reliable measures. So allow for any sort of action in the near term, but recognize that from a full-cycle perspective, we continue to view a 40-50% market loss as having very reasonable plausibility over the completion of this market cycle.

To reiterate what I wrote in June 2008, just before the market collapsed, “Again, falling interest rates, moderate valuations, and very strong market action early into the rebound are useful in separating sustainable advances (even sustainable bear-market rallies) from the fast, furious, prone-to-failure variety.” Those would still be among the primary considerations that would lead us to an optimistic or aggressive market outlook. As always, the strongest market return/risk profiles we identify are associated with a material retreat in valuations coupled with an early improvement in market action. We’ll take our evidence as it arrives."

"I'll bet living in a nudist colony takes all the fun out of Halloween." -- Author Unknown

Wishing you a scary, and delightful weekend.