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For the auto business, "The pain is just beginning," according to Nomura analyst Masataka Kunugimoto and his team. "We now expect global auto demand to be down 3%," year on year, in 2019, he told clients recently. He is not alone. At bank after bank, analysts are coming round to the idea that the world may have passed "peak car," and that in the future humans will need fewer personal vehicles.

Extortion: After 16 banks caved in to White House demands to refund billions in losses to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, one outlier remains unrepentant. Nomura Holdings refuses to succumb to the political shakedown. The Japanese bank's U.S. unit won't give in to extortionist regulators protecting Fannie/Freddie who claim it hoodwinked the toxic twins into buying pools of subprime mortgages, like it claimed Bank of America, JPMorgan and other U.S. banks did in the run-up to the mortgage crisis. The government demands $1 billion in damages. Nomura says it won't give a dime toward the $18 billion ransom the feds...

That dismal June retail sales report is causing a mass GDP-forecast-slashing parade on Wall Street. Here's Goldman's Jan Hatzius... Retail sales declined by 0.5% (month-over-month) in June, while the consensus had looked for a 0.2% gain. Key details of the report were also weaker: non-auto retail sales declined by 0.4%, and growth in April was revised down. Similarly, “core”/control retail sales (ex-autos, gasoline and building materials) was weak, declining 0.1% in June. The weakness reflected lower sales across a variety of categories, including general merchandise stores, electronics, furniture, sporting goods stores, and health and personal care retailers. Merely food and...

For the growing chorus of observers who fear that a breakup of the euro zone might be at hand, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany has a pointed rebuke: It’s never going to happen. But some banks are no longer so sure, especially as the sovereign debt crisis threatened to ensnare Germany itself this week, when investors began to question the nation’s stature as Europe’s main pillar of stability. On Friday, Standard & Poor’s downgraded Belgium’s credit standing to AA from AA+, saying it might not be able to cut its towering debt load any time soon. Ratings agencies this week...

Eat your heart out, Godzilla. A massive menace from the sea seems poised to invade Japan anew this summer, experts predict. In 2005 Japanese waters were inundated with swarms of Nomura's jellyfish--like the pair seen above cruising off the coast of Fukui Prefecture in November 2007. The giants clogged fishing nets and poisoned potential catches with their toxic stings, costing coastal fishers billions of yen. Scientists have since been racing to unlock the mysteries of this giant jellyfish species in an attempt to forecast invasions and prevent damages. This June researchers at Hiroshima University made some of the first surveys...

Nomura to Shutter U.S. Mortgage Business Monday October 15, 8:10 am ET By Hiroko Tabuchi, Associated Press Writer Japan's Nomura to Shut Down U.S. Mortgage-Backed Securities Business TOKYO (AP) -- Nomura Holdings, Japan's largest securities firm by revenue, said Monday it will shut down its U.S. residential mortgage-backed securities business, the latest casualty of the subprime mortgage crisis. Nomura said in a statement Monday it will book a 73 billion yen ($621 million) loss in its residential mortgage-backed securities business. The group now expects a group pretax loss of 40-60 billion yen ($340-510 million) for the July-September quarter, including about...