Today's Headlines

Bloomberg:

• European Stocks Fall After Three-Week Rally as Fiat Drops. European stocks declined, snapping a three-week rally for the Stoxx Europe 600 Index, as U.S. factory production and home sales missed economists’ forecasts. Fiat SpA (F) retreated 3.2 percent as JPMorgan Chase & Co. downgraded automakers. Volvo AB slid 4.3 percent as Natixis SA cut its rating on the Swedish truck producer. TNT Express NV, the Dutch package-delivery company, rallied 4.3 percent after releasing results. Mediobanca SpA (MB) climbed 3.3 percent as the Italian investment bank reported increased profit. The Stoxx 600 slipped 0.2 percent to 319.49 at the close of trading, erasing an earlier gain of 0.3 percent.

• Five Killed as Jeep Rams Into Crowd at Beijing’s Tiananmen. A Jeep crashed into a crowd by Beijing’s Tiananmen Square close to where the portrait of Mao Zedong hangs, killing five people and injuring 38. Three people in the vehicle were killed, along with tourists from the Philippines and Guangdong province, the official Xinhua News Agency said, citing the police. The injured included tourists from Japan and the Philippines, it said. 

• WTI Crude Rises for Third Day as Libyan Production Falls. WTI for December delivery gained 40 cents, or 0.4 percent, to $98.25 a barrel at 12:47 p.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Futures touched $95.95 on Oct. 24, the lowest intraday level since June 27. The volume of all futures traded was 25 percent below the 100-day average. 

• Gold Swings Near 5-Week High Before Fed Policy Meeting. Gold for immediate delivery gained 0.3 percent to $1,354.50 an ounce at 1:52 p.m. in New York. Bullion climbed 2.6 percent last week, the second straight advance.

• Corn Drops to Three-Year Low on Beneficial U.S. Weather. Corn futures fell to the lowest in more than three years as dry weather improved harvest prospects for a U.S. crop that the government estimates will be the world’s biggest ever. Farmers probably have completed 50 percent of the harvest as of yesterday, up from 39 percent a week earlier, according Prime Agricultural Consultants Inc. The U.S. Department of Agriculture will issue its update on crop conditions later today. The agency has forecast that output will increase 28 percent this season from last year, when drought damaged fields across the Midwest.

MarketWatch:

• The Mother Of All Surprises. By not addressing the pace of stock-market gains, falling inflation expectations, and the growing disconnect between asset markets and the economy, the Fed is risking the embarrassment of potentially causing another bubble.

CNBC: 

• It's crisis time for Obamacare. (video)

• Audi surges, Ford struggles in latest Consumer Reports survey. (video)

Zero Hedge: 

• Manufacturing Production Disappoints As Utilization Rises To 5-Year High. (graph)

• Home Sales Collapse At Fastest Rate In 40 Months; Stocks Spike. (graph)

• Dallas Fed Dumps From 19-Month High; Misses By Most In 6 Months. (graph)

• What Spanish Recovery? (graph)

• Big Brother Is Coming To Your Car.

• The Google(GOOG) Unemployment Index. (graph)

• Second Tesla Goes Down In Flames Following Mexico City Crash.

Business Insider: 

• APPLE(AAPL) EARNINGS PREVIEW: The Most Exciting Earnings Report Of The Year.

• Penn State Will Pay $59.7 Million To 26 People Over Claims Of Sexual Abuse.

Forbes:

• In China There's Not One City Sans Terrifying Stretches Of Empty Houses. Over the last two years of traveling constantly in China, I can say that I have not seen a single city, town, or hamlet without massive empty housing stock. A colleague, on two trips crossing about 1,500 kilometers overland, said that he was not out of sight of empty buildings even once. Up by the Siberian border, the town of Manzhouli has decided to become a tourist resort and built thousands of empty “villa” developments. In the southern mountains of Yunnan, a colleague took video footage of 15 kilometers unbroken of empty highrises. The ghost developments stretch along Beijing’s southern Fourth Ring and through Shanghai’s Pudong and Xuhui. The East District Zhengzhou looks like a post-apocalyptic landscape. The new districts of Harbin could earn some revenue as sets for a remake of I Am Legend.

TheStreet.com:

• Netflix(NFLX) Is Not Coming to Comcast, TWC.

Powerline:

• The Truth of Obamacare. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have already lost their health insurance due to Obamacare, and soon millions will have lost it. Conservative commentators have noted that, from all that appears, more people have lost their health insurance than have signed up for plans in health insurance exchanges.

Reuters:

• Fed may outline commodity policy for banks early 2014 -source. The U.S. Federal Reserve may not unveil its plans for regulating Wall Street's commodity trading business until early next year, a person briefed on the matter said, deferring a decision on the politically fraught debate into 2014.

Financial Times:

• China-Japan relations take turn for worse. When Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told Japanese troops on Sunday that Tokyo opposed the use of force to change the status quo in Asia, his real audience was in Beijing. The Chinese foreign ministry responded on Monday by accusing Japan’s leaders of “repeatedly making provocative remarks” and displaying “wild arrogance”. The Global Times, a nationalistic Communist party mouthpiece, said the chance that friction between the powers would “escalate into military clashes is growing”.

Telegraph:

• BIS sees risk of 1998-style Asian crisis as Chinese dollar debt soars. The world's banking watchdog warns that foreign loans to companies and banks in China has tripled over the last five years and may be large enough to set off financial tremors in the West.