By Ye Xie and Amy Li, Bloomberg Markets Live reporter and strategists

On Oct. 16, 2007, the Shanghai Composite Index hit a record high of 6,092. Exactly 16 years later, the benchmark closed 50% below that record. On Chinese social media, ridiculing the poor stock-market performance has become a national pastime.

Even the recent arrival of the National Team – state-backed entities such as a sovereign wealth fund and pension funds — did little to shore up sentiment. To be fair, though, their support has been half-hearted, at best.

Despite data showing the economy is stabilizing, the stock market has continued to trade poorly. The announcement that a sovereign wealth fund was buying bank stocks and reports that Beijing is considering a gigantic stabilization fund barely made any difference.

One headwind has been the relentless selling by foreign investors. They are on track to pull out from the northbound stock connect for a third consecutive month, which would mark the longest outflows since the Shenzhen and Hong Kong stock connection debuted in 2016. In August, a record 90 billion yuan ($12 billion) of funds flew out the door.

Coincidentally, August also saw a record inflow of 143 billion yuan into Chinese equity ETFs trading on the mainland. That was quite an unusual splurge, almost double the previous record.

According to Goldman Sachs, the National Team — which collectively owns about 3.5% of the market value of local stocks — was largely behind the ETF purchases. The net inflows to the National Team’s top-five “favorite” ETFs surged by more than 90 billion yuan that month.

If that was the case, they have since become dormant. Investors added 23 billion yuan to ETFs in September, before withdrawing 6.5 billion yuan this month. If sustained, October would be only the second time on record when both ETFs and northbound connect registered net outflows.

It seems to suggest that support from the National Team was rather opportunistic and lukewarm. It steps in only when foreign outflows become sizable.

Agricultural water withdrawal way beyond the limit of renewable freshwater resources is most common today in countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

Statista's Katharina Buchholz reports that, according to the FAO Aquastat database where the latest available year for the data is 2020, several other nations, with Spain, South Africa, South Korea, Pakistan and India all sticking out for using up a higher share of their freshwater resources in agriculture than their neighbors.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Desert climates like on the Arabian peninsular make countries there overextend their annual water budgets by agriculture alone.

This has led to studies concluding that the United Arab Emirates, for example, could run out of groundwater by 2030. In Pakistan and Iran, between 63 and 70 percent of renewable freshwater resources were dedicated to agriculture in 2020, rising to 68 and 77 percent including all freshwater uses. Extensive and water-intensive agriculture, including cotton crops, is also driving up freshwater use in the semi-arid climates of Central Asia. Here, Uzbekistan used 111 percent of renewable water resources per year, followed by Turkmenistan at 65 percent (106 percent when counting all freshwater use). The only other country extending its freshwater budget only when combining agriculture and other freshwater uses was Jordan.

Agriculture accounts for 72 percent of all freshwater withdrawals globally, including a lot of overuse. According to the FAO, global freshwater resources per person have declined by 20 percent in the past decades, while water availability and quality have also deteriorated. Additional factors playing a role in this are pollution and climate change, stretching the precious resource even thinner.

October 16 marks World Food Day, which this year has the motto: Water is life, water is food. Leave no one behind.

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Biden administration has warned U.S. banks and other financial institutions that they can't reject illegal immigrants' credit applications based solely or predominantly on their immigration status.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) said in a recent statement that rejecting illegal immigrants for credit cards and various types of loans just because they are noncitizens is unlawful.

The two agencies stated that they were issuing the warning "because consumers have reported being rejected for credit cards as well as for auto, student, personal and equipment loans because of their immigration status, even when they have strong credit histories and ties to the United States and are otherwise qualified to receive the loans."

Specifically, the agencies cited the provisions of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA), which protects credit applicants from discrimination based on such characteristics as race, religion, sexual orientation, and national origin.

The agencies argue that protections afforded by ECOA and other laws extend to alienage, so banks that have blanket policies to deny loans to illegal immigrants may be breaking the law.

“Lenders should not deny people the opportunity to take out a loan to buy a home, build their businesses or otherwise pursue their financial goals because of unlawful bias and without regard to their actual ability to repay,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the DOJ's Civil Rights Division said in a statement.

“Fair access to credit is crucially important for building wealth and strengthening household financial stability,” CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said in a statement. “The CFPB will not allow companies to use immigration status as an excuse for illegal discrimination.”

Bud Cummins, a former U.S. attorney, objected to the agencies' warning to banks and other financial institutions.

"DOJ and CFPB tell banks it might be illegal to refuse to loan money to people [who] broke federal law to reach the bank. You gotta be kidding me. The invasion of illegal immigrants is intentional and must be stopped," he wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

According to the Center for Immigration Studies, there were roughly 11.35 million illegal immigrants residing in the United States as of January 2022.

Some financial institutions have maintained blanket policies denying people credit based on their immigration status, without regard for their ability to repay, interpreting ECOA in a way that they believe shields them from liability, according to the agencies, which added that this is incorrect.

"A creditor may consider an applicant's immigration status when necessary to ascertain the creditor's rights regarding repayment," the agencies said, explaining that Regulation B, a rule that implements ECOA, expressly states that the only conditions under which immigration status may be considered is only to determine creditors' "rights and remedies regarding repayment" of a loan.

If financial institutions consider immigration status for any other reason, the agencies said they're probably breaking the law.

"Creditors should be aware that unnecessary or overbroad reliance on immigration status in the credit decisioning process, including when that reliance is based on bias, may run afoul of ECOA's antidiscrimination provisions and could also violate other laws," the agencies said.

The "other laws" mentioned could refer to the 1866 Civil Rights Act, also known as Section 1981, which the agencies said in their joint statement "has long been construed to prohibit discrimination based on alienage."

They said that courts have found that "ECOA's prohibition of national origin discrimination and Section 1981's prohibitions complement one another and that discrimination that arises from overbroad restrictions on lending to noncitizens may violate either or both statutes."

It's unclear whether any banks or financial institutions intend to challenge the DOJ and CFPB's interpretation of the law regarding the provision of loans to illegal immigrants.