Everybody
is ignorant, only on different subjects.
Will
Rogers.
In weekend trivia
news, Pakistan beat Zimbabwe at cricket, Italy beat England in Euro football,
someone won the men’s final at Wimbledon, Richard Branson and 5 others almost
got into space, and the great north-western American heatwave showed no sign of
breaking, as did rising global inflation.
And according to
mainstream media, a great time was had by all. Or was all had by a great time?
Back in the real
world, while space tourism arrives and half the world lives on two dollars a
day, it is too dry in the western half of north America, to wet in the UK and
Ireland and much of western Europe, and unseasonably hot in Moscow and much of
Siberia.
What all that means
for global food production is an open question, but experience tells me that it’s
not good.
In our global stock
casinos, too much newly created global fiat money continues to pursue too few
stocks.
In commodities, the
top down switch to a “green” electric and hydrogen economy, is in its infancy
and just setting off the greatest new commodity Supercycle of all time.
But do they all live
happily ever after? Well, we are about to find out.
Asia shares bounce as mood
shifts, sentiment fickle
July
12, 2021
TRUTH
OR CONSEQUENCES, N.M.—Richard Branson reached the edge of space and safely
returned to Earth, a trip that marks a turning point in the billionaire entrepreneur’s multidecade effort to help
create a space-tourism industry.
The space trip that Mr. Branson and five other crew members
completed Sunday morning on a Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc. rocket plane lends
credence to the company’s ability to safely take passengers to and from space.
Virgin Galactic, the company Mr. Branson founded, plans to
initiate commercial service next year, charging passengers hundreds of
thousands of dollars each for such flights. The test flight was aimed at
evaluating systems and the passenger experience, as well as providing
additional validation of its safety. Vehicles developed by private space
companies have been tested a fraction of the number of times compared with the
planes used by airlines.
The British entrepreneur and five crew members crossed one
threshold of space, climbing 53.5 miles above the Earth’s surface.
California and other parts of the
West broil and burn
By
CHRISTOPHER WEBER July 12, 2021
Firefighters working in searing heat
struggled to contain the largest wildfire in California this year while state power
operators urged people to conserve energy after a huge wildfire in neighboring
Oregon disrupted the flow of electricity from three major transmission lines.
A large swath of the West baked
during the weekend in triple-digit temperatures that were expected to continue
into the start of the work week. The California Independent System Operator
that manages the state’s power grid issued a five-hour ”flex alert” starting at
4 p.m. Monday and asked consumers to “conserve as much electricity as possible”
to avoid any outages.
California and other parts of the
West are sinking deeper into drought and that has sent fire danger sky high in
many areas. In Arizona, a small plane crashed Saturday during a survey of a
wildfire in rural Mohave County, killing both crew members.
The Beech C-90 aircraft was helping
perform reconnaissance over the lightning-caused Cedar Basin Fire, near the
tiny community of Wikieup northwest of Phoenix.
---- A wildfire in southeast Washington grew to
almost 60 square miles (155 square kilometers) as it blackened grass and timber
while it moved into the Umatilla National Forest.
In Idaho, Gov. Brad Little declared
a wildfire emergency Friday and mobilized the state’s National Guard to help
fight fires sparked after lightning storms swept across the drought-stricken
region.
In global tax news,
the Biden led G-20 is preparing to tax itself into prosperity. Good luck
getting that past the very bipartisan, bribable US Senate, when it comes to
taxation.
Janet Yellen says tax changes for
large firms may not be ready until 2022
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen
said on Sunday that a new mechanism to allow more countries to tax large,
highly profitable multinational firms may not be ready for consideration by
lawmakers until the spring of 2022.
Yellen told a news conference after
a G20 finance leaders meeting in Venice in Italy that the OECD “Pillar 1”
re-allocation of taxing rights was on a “slightly slower track” than a global
corporate minimum tax of at least 15% as part of a major tax deal among 132
countries.
G20 finance ministers and central
bank governors endorsed the deal over the weekend, but questions remain over
the ability of U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration to persuade a deeply
divided Congress to ratify the changes.
Yellen said she hoped to include
provisions to implement the so-called “Pillar 2” global minimum tax into a
budget “reconciliation” bill this year that Congress could approve with a
simple majority.
The “Pillar 1” portion of the
agreement would end unilateral taxes on digital services in exchange for a new
mechanism that would allow large profitable companies to be taxed in part based
on where they sell products and services, rather than where their headquarters
and intellectual property reside.
This will require a multilateral tax
agreement that will take time to negotiate, a Treasury official said.
“Pillar 1 will be on a slightly
slower track. We’ll work with Congress,” Yellen said, when asked whether a
two-thirds majority would be needed in the U.S. Senate, which is normally the
requirement for international treaties.
“It may
be in ready in the spring of 2022 and we’ll try to determine at that point
what’s necessary for its implementation,” Yellen said.
In overture to U.S., EU's
Gentiloni says G20 deal is priority on corporate tax
July 10,
2021 7:36 PM BST Last Updated 11 hours ago
VENICE, July 10 (Reuters) - The priority in corporate
tax reform is to go ahead with a global G20 deal, European Economics
Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni said on Saturday when asked about whether European
Union's digital services levy plan may be postponed.
The remark followed intense pressure on the EU
executive commission from the U.S. administration to drop the EU's plan for its
separate levy, while some European officials also questioned its value.
"We will assess everything, but the key issue from
my point of view is that what we decided today is the number 1 priority,"
he told reporters after a meeting of G20 finance ministers in Venice endorsed a
global agreement on corporate tax backed by 132 countries read
more .
Gentiloni was asked whether the EU was considering to
postpone until after October its proposal on a new European levy on digital
services, which has so far been expected later in July.
He added that G20 countries had agreed to coordinate on
national measures keeping the global tax deal as the main objective.
The U.S. administration is wary of the EU's initiative
as it wants existing national digital service tax to be repealed as part of the
global overhaul of cross-border corporate taxation under a long-sought deal
taking shape at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD).
One European official said that the new levy risked
undermining the broader OECD deal, which G20 finance ministers formally
endorsed on Saturday.
"The Commission is going to have to figure this
one out," another European official said.
Finally, gold. It may
be a barbarous relic to some, but when fiat currency fails, as fiat currencies
are prone to do, it always pays to have plenty around.
Still by suggesting
that banks clearing gold trades in London might need an exemption from the new
rules, it does suggest that the gold clearing banks in London are short of gold
to meet all their contractual commitments.
They wouldn’t do
that, would they?
Britain carves out exemption for
gold clearing banks
Saturday 10 July 2021
1:52 pm
Banks clearing gold trades in London
can apply for an exemption from tighter capital rules due in January 2022, the
Bank of England’s Prudential Regulatory Authority said, removing what some said
was a threat to the functioning of the market.
London is the world’s biggest
physical precious metals trading hub. Its clearing system, operated by a
handful of large banks with access to metal in vaults – JPMorgan, HSBC , ICBC
Standard and UBS – settles gold transactions worth around $30 billion a day.
The
upcoming rules, known as the net stable funding ratio (NSFR), are part of Basel
III regulations designed to make banks more stable and prevent a repeat of the
financial crisis of 2008-09.
The rules treat physically traded
gold like any other commodity, requiring banks to hold more cash to match their
gold exposure as a buffer against adverse price moves.
The London Bullion Market
Association (LBMA), an industry body, has lobbied against them, saying they are
unnecessary and could force some banks – including clearing banks – to stop
trading.
Following a consultation, the
Prudential Regulatory Authority (PRA) said on Friday it had “decided to amend
its approach to precious metal holdings related to deposit-taking and clearing
activities.”
It said it had introduced an
“interdependent precious metals permission” which would reduce the size of the
required capital buffer.
“This is one of the key points that
what we’ve been asking for all these years,” said Sakhila Mirza, the LBMA’s
chief counsel. “Clearing will be exempt.”
The PRA said it would not classify
gold as a high-quality liquid asset, which would have freed other trades such
as precious metals loans and leases from the high capital requirement.
The LBMA says gold is liquid enough
not to need an additional liquidity buffer for clearing and settlement and
short-term transactions.
JPMorgan and HSBC declined to
comment. ICBC Standard did not immediately respond late on Friday.
A spokesperson for UBS said: “UBS
welcomes the PRA’s decision, which supports stability in bullion cleaning and
avoids disruption to the London market.”
Given our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our
spendthrift politicians, inflation now needs an entire section of its own.
Higher
Inflation Is Here to Stay for Years, Economists Forecast
Strong economic rebound and lingering pandemic
disruptions fuel inflation forecasts above 2% through 2023, survey finds
July 11, 2021 9:00 am ET
Americans should brace themselves for several years of
higher inflation than they’ve seen in decades, according to economists who
expect the robust post-pandemic economic recovery to fuel brisk price increases
for a while.
Economists surveyed this month by
The Wall Street Journal raised their forecasts of how high inflation would go
and for how long, compared with their previous expectations in April.
The respondents on average now
expect a widely followed measure of inflation, which excludes volatile food and
energy components, to be up 3.2% in the fourth quarter of 2021 from a year
before. They forecast the annual rise to recede to slightly less than 2.3% a
year in 2022 and 2023.
That would mean an average annual
increase of 2.58% from 2021 through 2023, putting inflation at levels last seen
in 1993.
“We’re in a transitional phase right
now,” said Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economics LLC. “We are
transitioning to a higher period of inflation and interest rates than we’ve had
over the last 20 years.”
The inflation measure—the Commerce
Department’s core price index of personal-consumption expenditures—jumped
3.4% in May from a year earlier, the biggest increase since the
early 1990s.
What Mr. Naroff and the other survey
respondents describe is a generational shift from the lower inflation of the
past two decades, a shift that could create new challenges for households, policy
makers and investors who came to expect inflation closer to or below 2%.
If the economists prove correct,
Federal Reserve officials might have to raise rates sooner or more than they
expect to keep inflation under control.
Following the markets on both sides of the Atlantic since 1968. A dinosaur, who evolved with the financial system as it was perverted from capitalism to banksterism after the great Nixonian error of abandoning the dollar's link to gold instead of simply revaluing gold. Our money is too important to be left to probity challenged central banksters and crooked politicians.
No comments:
Post a Comment