Today's Headlines

Bloomberg: 

• Terrorists Likely Planned Another Attack, Paris Prosecutor Says. Terrorists had likely planned another attack, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said, citing findings from a predawn police raid in a Paris suburb that led to the deaths of at least two extremists and seven arrests. In the seven-hour assault that began at 4:30 a.m., one young woman blew herself up, and another extremist was killed by bullets and hand grenades, he said at a press conference in Paris Wednesday. Phone taps, surveillance and witness accounts had led investigators to conclude that Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the suspected ringleader of Friday’s terrorist attacks, might be holed up in Saint Denis, the very suburb where the night’s violence began outside the Stade de France. Molins said Abbaoud was not among those arrested. Neither was Abdeslam Salah, one of the eight suspected perpetrators of the attacks in the Paris area. Last week’s attacks killed 129 people and left more than 300 injured.
• France Intensifies Assault on Islamic State at Home and Abroad. (video) France escalated its retaliation against Islamic State both at home and on the global stage. A predawn police raid on a pedestrian street in a Paris suburb led to the deaths of two extremists and seven arrests, while a French aircraft carrier headed to the eastern Mediterranean to intensify the bombardment of the terror group’s positions in Syria. “We must annihilate an army that threatens the whole world,” President Francois Hollande said after SWAT teams stormed what authorities believed was the hideout of the architect of last week’s violence that claimed 129 lives. Hollande tracked the operation from his office at the Elysee Palace as the focus swung back to the streets of the capital region from the global stage. Russia and France, long at loggerheads over their approach to the war in Syria, took steps toward a united military front against Islamic State in response to the massacre in Paris and a downed plane in Egypt.
• Bloomberg Poll: Most Americans Oppose Syrian Refugee Resettlement. Americans agree with Republican presidential candidates on refugees, but are divided on whether to send U.S. troops to Iraq and Syria to fight the Islamic State, according to the poll. Fifty-three percent of U.S. adults in the survey, conducted in the days immediately following the attacks, say the nation should not continue a program to resettle up to 10,000 Syrian refugees. Just 28 percent would keep the program with the screening process as it now exists, while 11 percent said they would favor a limited program to accept only Syrian Christians while excluding Muslims. More broadly, terrorism and the Islamic State group surged to the top of Americans’ concerns immediately following the deadly attacks, even as Republicans and Democrats remain divided over how best to address threats. The percentage of those rating terrorism or the Islamic State as top concerns has nearly doubled since the poll last was taken in September. At the same time, those who think the U.S. is on the right track, fell to 23 percent, the lowest rating in more than three years.  Obama’s disapproval rating rose to 51 percent, up four percentage points since September.
• China's Economy Faces Considerable Downward Pressure, Xi Says. (video) Chinese President Xi Jinping acknowledged downside risks to growth while assuring fellow leaders that Asia’s biggest economy is resilient and will remain on the path of reform. China is working to overcome the challenges of slowing global growth this year by advancing reforms and won’t change its policy on foreign investment, Xi said at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation chief executives summit in Manila on Wednesday. “In general, China’s positive economic fundamentals and long-term trajectory remain unchanged,” Xi said, taking the stage after U.S. President Barack Obama. “On the other hand, China’s economy is still coping with the complicated internal and external environment, considerable downward pressure and the temporary pain of deep reforms.”  
• The $152-billion bill Canadian banks — and consumers — will have to pay for a crisis they avoided. Canadian banks are starting to get their share of the bill for global regulations designed to prevent a repeat of the taxpayer funded bailouts of the 2008 financial crisis. Over the next five years the nation’s six-largest banks will need to convert $152 billion of capital into securities that can be used as a shock absorber during a crisis, according to estimates from Royal Bank of Canada. That pales in comparison with the $1.2 trillion tab the world’s biggest lenders face, but the Canadians are unusual in that they never needed rescuing in the first place. 
• Europe Stocks Little Changed With CAC 40 Falling After Shootout. European stocks were little changed as investors assessed value after the strongest rally in six weeks, while France’s CAC 40 Index retreated after a police gun battle with suspects linked to the Paris terror attack. Air Liquide SA slid the most on the French equity gauge, falling 7.4 percent after agreeing to purchase U.S. rival Airgas Inc. The CAC 40, which jumped the most in six weeks yesterday, retreated 0.6 percent at the close of trading in Paris after the shootout left at least two people dead. L’Oreal SA slid 1.7 percent and LVMH lost 1.1 percent in France. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index fell 0.1 percent to 379.33, paring earlier losses of as much as 0.8 percent.
• Glencore's Debt Problems Worsen on Copper Prices. (video) 
• Codelco Says It Won't Cut Copper Production as Prices Slump. The head of the world’s biggest copper miner said he would rather rein in costs than curb output to navigate a slump in prices that are hitting fresh six-year lows almost daily. Chile’s Codelco this week slashed the premium it charges Chinese buyers by 26 percent, the most since the global financial crisis, as it seeks to sustain sales to the world’s largest consumer amid weakening demand.
• Bloomberg current implied probability for Dec. 16 Fed 25 basis point rate hike at 66% versus 68% prior to FOMC minutes release today.
• Fed Inserted Language to Stress Potential for December Liftoff. (video) Federal Reserve policy makers inserted language into their October statement to stress that “it may well become appropriate” to raise the benchmark lending rate in December and largely agreed that the pace of increases would be gradual, minutes of the meeting showed. “Members emphasized that this change was intended to convey the sense that, while no decision had been made, it may well become appropriate to initiate the normalization process at the next meeting,” said minutes of the FOMC’s Oct. 27-28 meeting, released Wednesday in Washington. A majority of Fed officials have signaled they expect to raise interest rates this year for the first time since 2006. That message was underscored when policy makers inserted a reference to the “next meeting” on Dec. 15-16 in their October statement, in connection with their assessment on when to act. 
• Blackstone's(BX) James Says U.S. May Enter Recession in 2017. The U.S. may enter a recession within two years as economic growth faces headwinds, Blackstone Group LP President Tony James said. “It wouldn’t surprise me if we had one in 2017,” James said Wednesday at Bank of America Corp.’s banking and financial services conference in New York. “I’m turning more pessimistic now. There are a lot of headwinds facing us right now.”
• Target(TGT), Wal-Mart(WMT) See Online Sales Growth Slow in Ominous Sign. (video)
  Target Corp. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. both saw a big slowdown in online sales growth last quarter, fueling concern that the brick-and-mortar chains aren’t transitioning fast enough to e-commerce. Target’s Internet sales grew 20 percent third quarter, missing the 30 percent gain it expected, the retailer said on Wednesday. The previous day, Wal-Mart posted quarterly e-commerce growth of 10 percent, compared with 16 percent in the second quarter and 21 percent a year earlier. The deceleration underscores the challenge of competing with Amazon.com Inc., the world’s largest Internet retailer. Wal-Mart is spending as much as $1.5 billion this year to improve its e-commerce operations, and investors expect to see a big bump in sales. Target also has stepped up its online investments.
• Carlyle's Unwanted Debt Exposes Growing Problem on Wall Street. Investors who piled into anything and everything in the junk-debt market in recent years have begun to run in the other direction at the first sign of trouble. The turnabout has caught Wall Street’s biggest banks off guard and is increasingly leaving them on the hook for funding takeovers that investors want little part of. On Tuesday, Bank of America Corp. and Morgan Stanley were forced to shelve the debt package backing the year’s largest leveraged buyout -- $5.5 billion meant to fund Carlyle Group LP’s purchase of Veritas, Symantec Corp.’s data-storage business, according to two people familiar with the matter. “It’s very much a whipsaw market,” said Martin Fridson, chief investment officer at Lehmann Livian Fridson Advisors LLC. “Outside of a recessionary period, this has been pretty brutal.”
• BlackRock(BLK) Winding Down Global Macro Hedge Fund After Losses. BlackRock Inc., the world’s largest asset manager, is winding down a global macro hedge fund after losses and investor redemptions eroded assets. BlackRock Global Ascent lost 9.4 percent this year, according to an October investor document, on track for its worst year since inception in 2003. The fund, which had $4.6 billion in assets just two years ago, has shrunk to less than $1 billion as of Nov. 1, said a person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named because the information is private.

Zero Hedge:

• Terrorists Planned Thursday Attack On Paris Mall; "Mastermind" Killed In Raid, WaPo Says.
• "If You Get Enquiries Just Obfuscate And Stonewall" - How Barclays Rigged The FX Market For Seven Years.
• America Is Charlie Sheen: CDC "Alarmed" At 20 Million New STD Cases Spike.
• Obama "Lives In A Fantasy Land," Chris Christie Rages John Kerry Should "Get Some Sleep & Shut Up". (video)
• Fed's Lacker Admits Fed Is "Market" Data-Dependent. (graph)
• Fed's Dudley Admits Fed 'Liftoff' Is All About Inspiring Confidence (Not Data). (graph)
• US May Bring Criminal Charges Against JP Morgan, RBS Executives, Prosecutors Pretend.
• The Poisonous Cocktail Of Main Street Woes And Federal Reserve Liftoff.
• Major Market Index Fails Key Test. (graph)
• Housing Starts Plunge To 7-Month Lows As Rental Units Tumble. (graph)

Mashable:

• ISIS magazine: 'Nightmare in France has only begun'. The Islamic State published a new edition of its propaganda magazine Wednesday, calling last week's attacks in Paris and the bombing of a Russian passenger jet earlier this month "revenge" for French and Russian military actions in Iraq and Syria.

Daily Mail:

• We did it and this is how: ISIS boasts of bringing down Russian passenger jet by releasing picture of crude bomb they claim was used to kill 224 people. (pic)

Xinhua:

• China Energy Consumption to Grow ~3% y/y Over 5 Years. Energy consumption will expand approximately 3% annual over the next five years, slowing down from an avg growth of 4.3% during 2010-2014, citing Zhang Yuqing, deputy director of the National Energy Administration at a recent conference on clean energy development.