Today's Headlines

Bloomberg:

• China Eases Fiscal Stance to Meet Slower 2016 Growth Target. China unveiled a record fiscal deficit and pledged to accelerate the restructuring of its bloated state-owned industries while still setting a weaker growth target for this year. Premier Li Keqiang announced a 6.5 percent to 7 percent expansion goal Saturday, down from an objective of about 7 percent last year and the first range the government has offered since 1995. The government also abandoned its trade target, underscoring the degree of uncertainty about prospects for global growth. The details were given in Li’s work report at the annual meeting of the ceremonial legislature in Beijing. The plan reflected the government’s determination to maintain growth and put off confronting its debt -- now nearly 250 percent of gross domestic product. The report also cited downward pressure on the economy against a backdrop of weaker global growth. "The package of monetary stimulus, higher deficit, and restructuring of the state sector is a surprisingly coherent response to China’s downturn," said Andrew Collier, an independent China analyst in Hong Kong and former president of the Bank of China International USA. "The problem is there’s a lot of bad lending going on behind the scenes at the banks that’s slipping through the cracks."
• China Raises 2016 Deficit to 3% as Leaders Seek to Boost Growth. China raised its projected budget deficit for 2016 to 3 percent of gross domestic product as leaders look to fiscal policy to boost flagging growth. The projected deficit is up from 2.3 percent of GDP in 2015, the Finance Ministry said in its 2016 budget. Fiscal spending for 2015 grew 13.2 percent, exceeding a target of 10.6 percent. The figures were released on the opening day of the national legislature’s annual session. Today’s figure had been broadly flagged in state media as leaders look to revive growth that slowed to the weakest pace since 1990 last year. Last month, central bank officials wrote on the Economic Daily’s website that China has room to increase its budget deficit to 4 percent of gross domestic product. Concerns have risen about the ruling Communist Party’s ability to maintain growth now that debt levels have climbed to 247 percent of GDP and capital continues to flow out of the country. On March 3, Moody’s Investors Service lowered China’s credit-rating outlook to negative from stable.
• China Sets Energy Consumption Cap That Researcher Deems `Loose'. China, the world’s second-largest economy, will seek to cap energy consumption at a maximum of 5 billion metric tons of standard coal equivalent by 2020, a ceiling that a researcher says should be easy to achieve. The target represents a 16 percent increase from 4.3 billion tons in 2015, or growth of about 3.2 percent a year in the world’s largest consumer of energy. Use expanded 0.9 percent last year, slowing from a rise of 2.2 percent in 2014 and 5.9 percent in 2010. The ceiling was contained in the Five-Year Plan for 2016-2020 released at the annual legislative meeting in Beijing on Saturday.
• Russia Leads List of Oil States at Risk of Moody's Downgrade. The credit ratings of more than 10 oil producing nations in the developing world were placed on review for a downgrade by Moody’s Investors Service, which cited the shock of depressed oil prices on these economies. The list includes Russia, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Angola, Gabon and Trinidad and Tobago, according to statements released by Moody’s on Friday in New York. Five of the six Gulf Cooperation Council nations -- Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Qatar -- were also put on review for a cut, Moody’s said, adding that it expects to complete its review within two months. The ratings of Bahrain and Congo were downgraded in addition to being placed on review, while the credit outlook for Venezuela was lowered to negative from stable. 
• European Close: Euro Faces a Slew of New Hazards. (video)
• EU Migrant Crisis Leaves 10,000 Children Missing, Europol Says. More than 10,000 child refugees have disappeared after arriving in Europe, according to crime-fighting agency Europol, as the region faces its worst migrant crisis since World War II. “This is something European police services and governments should be worried about,” Europol Chief Rob Wainwright said in an interview Saturday with French newspaper Le Figaro. “Not all are exploited for criminal purposes -- illegal labor or sexual slavery. Some have left shelters to reunite with their families, but we have no proof of that.”

Wall Street Journal:

•  Saturday’s Presidential Contests — Live Blog.
• At CPAC, Marco Rubio Warns of ‘Hijacked’ Conservative Movement. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio can’t seem to help himself when it comes to attacking Donald Trump. Mr. Rubio didn’t mention the Republican front-runner by name during his remarks to the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday, but he worked in plenty of digs, questioning Mr. Trump’s conservative convictions and the tone of his campaign. “Being a conservative cannot simply be about how angry you’re willing to be or how many names you’re willing to call people,” Mr. Rubio said at one point.
• The Bank That Makes Its Own Rules. The Fed’s holdings earned $116 billion in interest in 2014—almost $90 billion more than in 2001. The Federal Reserve plays a major—some would say oversize—role in American life, but it is, for many citizens, a mysterious entity: Unelected officials pore over reams of data and rely on abstruse models and theories to set interest rates, regulate banks and otherwise ride shotgun for our vast and fluid economy. Should we be worried? The Fed “attracts conspiracists better than most governmental agencies,” concedes Peter Conti-Brown in “The Power and the Independence of the Federal Reserve.” To many observers, the Fed is “a dark and brooding omnipresence that can be accounted for only with nefarious explanations.”...
• Clinton’s Email Jeopardy. Aides shouldn’t take the fall for her self-serving actions. Hillary Clinton’s Super Tuesday victory gives her a clear path to the Democratic presidential nomination, but Bernie Sanders has never been her biggest obstacle to the White House. Her real liability is an email scandal that has put her in legal jeopardy.
• How Progressives Drive Income Inequality. The Obama years proved that transfer payments reduce incentives to work and lower incomes. Yet Clinton and Sanders are eager to go the same route. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are promising all types of programs to make America a more equal country. That’s no surprise. But when you look at performance and not rhetoric, the administrations of political progressives have made the distribution of income more unequal than their adversaries, who supposedly favor the wealthy.

Barron's:

• Had bullish commentary on (MLM), (BMC) and (MYL).

Fox News:

• Cruz wins Kansas GOP Caucus, five states vote Saturday. (video) Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz won the Kansas Republican Caucus on Saturday, the Associated Press projects. Forty delegates are at stake in Kansas. "God bless Kansas," Cruz declared during a rally in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. "The scream you hear, the howl that comes from Washington D.C., is utter terror at what we the people are doing together."   He was leading front-runner Donald Trump by more than a 2-to-1 margin with roughly 70 percent of precints reporting. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio was in third and Ohio Gov. John Kasich was in fourth, according to the Associated Press.

Zero Hedge:

• China Fails To Deliver Major Fiscal Stimulus At People's Congress, Makes Many Promises Instead. (graph)
• The Nine Horsemen Of The US Recession Apocalypse. (graph)
• HY Credit Spreads Have Never Been This High Outside Of A Recession.
• "It's A Depression" - The Disturbing Email A Houston CEO Sent His Soon To Be Laid Off Employees.
• "Everything's Interconnected". 
• CBOE Signals VIX "Death Cross". (graph)
• Hey St. Louis Fed, See How The Bank Of Japan's Assets Are Growing? (graph)
• "The Bounce Has Run Its Course" Bob 'The Bear' Janjuah Warns S&P Heading To 1700s.
• "Democracy Ends In Turkey": Prominent Anti-Erdogan Newspaper Seized In Midnight Raid. 
• EU Bombshell: The Balkan Route To Germany Is Closed.
• The Lure Of Socialism.
• "There Is No Clear Way Out" - Richard Koo Says "The Price For QE Has Yet To Be Paid".
• "This Is A Ridiculous Joke" - An Abandoned, Rotting Vancouver House Is Listed For $7.2 Million. (graph)
• The Last Time Gold ETF Flows Were This Strong, The Fed Was Starting QE. (graph)
• The Last Time The Market Was So Overbought, This Happened. (graph)
• Gallup: "The Amount Of Debt Americans Carry Is Staggering And Grows Every Day". (graph)
• The Only Chart That Matters For The Fed In March. (graph)
• Stocks Tumble After Fed Plans Too-Big-To-Fail Bank Counterparty Risk Cap. (graph)
• Weekend Reading: Is The Bear Market Over Already? (graph)
• Stocks Surge On Biggest Bear Market Short-Squeeze Since Nov 2008. (graph)

Business Insider:

• Donald Trump suddenly softened his stance on torture after getting blasted by military and legal experts.
•  'It’s unprecedented, we have never seen this before': How ISIS makes and supplies deadly IEDs.
• Ted Cruz scores another win against Donald Trump.
• This 'panic index' suggests an oil-and-gas crisis could be on the way. Little-reported but extremely critical data point for the oil and gas industry emerged yesterday. With insiders in the debt business saying that risk levels in the sector have risen to unprecedented levels. That came from major ratings service Moody’s. With the firm saying that one of its proprietary indexes of credit problems in the oil and gas sector has hit the highest mark ever seen. That’s the so-called “Oil and Gas Liquidity Stress Index.” A measure of the number of energy companies that are facing looming credit problems because of overextended debt.

Gawker:

• Voicemails Reveal Donald Trump’s Cozy Relationship With the Liberal Media. (audio) Early Thursday morning, Gawker received an anonymous email with an attachment that purported to contain recordings from Donald Trump’s voicemail inbox. Among the recordings were messages left for Trump by various celebrities—most notably, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, and Tamron Hall. While Gawker was unable to independently verify their authenticity, the recordings certainly appear to be genuine. In addition to those from the MSNBC personalities, there were messages from longtime Barack Obama advisor David Axelrod, New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, and boxing promoter Don King, all of whom spoke to Trump in a friendly and familiar manner.

Reuters:

• Iran eyes 2016 economic growth above 5 percent after sanctions lifted.

Telegraph:

• Debt 'explosion' awaits unless policymakers defuse demographic timebomb, warns IMF chief. People will have to work longer and pay more taxes as ageing populations put a strain on government finances, according to the managing director of the International Monetary Fund. Christine Lagarde said the challenges facing governments this century required a policy overhaul. Without reforms, the combination of ageing and shrinking populations would "reduce potential growth in advanced economies by about 0.2 percentage points in the medium term - and twice as much in emerging economies," said Ms Lagarde.