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The U.S. Postal Service is fighting for its life.

The post office announced it's implementing nearly $3 billion in service cuts to avert bankruptcy — just one step of a larger cost-cutting plan. Mail will still be delivered, but it's going to take a little longer to arrive at its intended destination. Almost half of the 500 mail processing centers around the country will be closed as soon as next March and 3,700 local post offices are scheduled to shutter their doors to the public — moves that will effectively terminate 100,000 postal employees. The post office expects to report a record loss of $14.1 billion this year and owes billions of dollars to the Treasury Department for retiree health benefits.

A leaner and revamped post office should not be viewed negatively, Henry tells Aaron in the accompanying clip.

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More evidence emerged over the weekend that China is increasingly worried about slowing growth and the social unrest that could arise as a result. Always a concern, this is a particularly sensitive issue in a time of political transition as the top leaders of the Communist Party are set to change next fall.

"It is an urgent task for us to think how to establish a social management system with Chinese characteristics to suit our socialist market economy," warned Zhou Yongkang, the Chinese leadership's law-and-order czar. "Especially when facing the negative effects of the market economy, we still have not formed a complete mechanism for social management."

These comments come on the heels of last week's news that manufacturing in China fell to levels not seen since February 2009. As a result, many economists — including those at IHS Global Insights and J.P. Morgan — have lowered growth expectations for the rest of the year.

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