1. Michael Pettis has a post on why he thinks it unlikely that China will be able to rebalance their consumption. The main flaw is his analogy to Japan's economy. One of the main reasons Japan had trouble rebalancing was that Japan had almost fully converged with other developed economies except there were a lot of micro-inefficiencies in Japanese consumption markets. When houses are built one at a time and the retail market is still dominated by mom and pop stores the cost of consumption is rather high, reducing a household's willingness to consumer versus save on the margin. Growth stopped in Japan more because the convergence process was done and Japan couldn't overtake the rest of the world any more in places it was ahead. To argue that the readjustment in China is going to have the same effect as it did in Japan, it would have to be assumed that China's economy has reached its steady state and will no longer catch up with the world.
2. Arnold Kling looks at momentum in employment. This is another reason why markets care more about the headline number.
3. Some school districts don't understand bulk discounts. No wonder they are running out of money.