Baltic Dry Index. 1515 Brent Crude 83.90
Spot Gold 1819 US 2 Year Yield 4.34 +0.03
Coronavirus
Cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,103
Coronavirus Cases 30/12/22 World 664,005,108
Deaths 6,693,938
But the U.S. government has a technology, called a printing
press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many
U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost. By increasing the number of
U.S. dollars in circulation, or even by credibly threatening to do so, the U.S.
government can also reduce the value of a dollar in terms of goods and
services, which is equivalent to raising the prices in dollars of those goods
and services. We conclude that, under a paper-money system, a determined
government can always generate higher spending and hence positive inflation.
Fed Chairman Bernanke, 2002. Inflationist.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/Speeches/2002/20021121/default.htm
It is the
last trading day of the best forgotten year. Time for one last push in the
stock casinos to dress up the ending of a bad year for most stocks?
Well
probably, but it won’t do much to reverse the 2022 declining wealth effect.
From rising crypto fraud to the declining wealth effect of the bursting of the Great Everything Bubble, 2023 looks to be very challenging at least through mid-year.
Asia-Pacific
markets rise in final trading session of 2022
UPDATED THU, DEC 29 2022 11:50 PM
EST
Stocks in the Asia-Pacific traded higher on its
last trading session of the year after Wall Street rebounded
overnight, recovering most losses from the previous day.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index rose
0.82% carrying on the sentiment from the U.S. session. In mainland China, the Shanghai Composite gained
0.61% and the Shenzhen
Component added 0.35%.
The S&P/ASX 200 in
Australia rose 0.65%. In Japan, the Nikkei 225 and
the Topix both inched up 0.4% while the Japanese yen saw
some strengthening to last stand at 132.42 against the U.S. dollar.
Seoul’s stock
markets are closed for New Year’s holiday and scheduled to resume trade on Jan.
2 an hour later than usual at 10 a.m. local time.
Overnight in the
U.S., jobless filings rose last week, according to the Labor department, a
higher reading than Dow Jones estimates. Wall Street’s major averages are still
headed toward their worst year since 2008 as investors head into the final
trading days of 2022.
Asia
markets: South Korea inflation, China reopening (cnbc.com)
Stock futures
inch lower as Wall Street awaits final trading day of 2022
UPDATED THU, DEC 29 2022 11:04 PM
EST
Stock futures
inched lower in overnight trading Thursday as investors braced for the final
trading day of the worst year for stocks since 2008.
Futures tied to the
Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 41 points, or 0.12%. S&P 500 and
Nasdaq 100 futures traded 0.14% and 0.08% lower, respectively.
The overnight moves
followed a rally during the regular trading session, with the Nasdaq Composite
and S&P 500 climbing about 2.6% and roughly 1.8%, respectively. The Dow
jumped 345 points, or 1.05%.
For the week, the
Dow and S&P are slightly higher, with the Nasdaq on track for a modest
loss. All major averages are lower for December and are poised to snap a
two-month win streak.
Friday marks the
final day of trading of what’s been a painful year for stocks. A volatile bear
market, sticky inflation, and aggressive rate hikes from the Federal Reserve
battered growth and technology stocks. These factors also weighed on investor
sentiment.
All three of the
major averages are marching toward their worst year since 2008, slated to snap
a three-year win streak. The Dow fared the best of the indexes in 2022, down
8.58%, while the S&P and tech-heavy Nasdaq tumbled 19.24% and 33.03%,
respectively.
Despite the yearly
losses, the Dow is on pace for a 15.65% quarterly gain and is primed to snap a
three-quarter losing streak. It’s also headed for its best quarter since the
second quarter of 2020. The S&P is up 7.35% and slated to break three consecutive
quarterly losses. The Nasdaq’s slipped 0.92%, for its fourth consecutive
negative quarter for the first time since 2001.
More
Stock
futures inch lower as Wall Street awaits final trading day of 2022 (cnbc.com)
Amazon lost half
its value this year as tech stocks got crushed and recession fears grew
It was a brutal year for mega-cap tech stocks
across the board. But 2022 was especially rough for Amazon.
Shares of the e-retailer are
wrapping up their worst year since the dot-com crash. The stock has tumbled 51%
in 2022, marking the biggest decline since 2000, when it plunged 80%. Only Tesla,
down 68%, and Meta,
off 66%, have had a worse year among the most valuable tech companies.
Amazon’s market cap has shrunk to about $834 billion from $1.7
trillion to start the year. The company fell out of the trillion-dollar club last month.
Much of Amazon’s misfortunes are tied to the
economy and macro environment. Soaring inflation and rising interest rates have
pushed investors away from growth and into companies with high profit margins,
consistent cash flow and high dividend yields.
But Amazon investors have had other
reasons to exit the stock. The company is contending with slowing sales, as predictions
of a sustained post-Covid e-commerce boom didn’t pan out. At the height of the pandemic, consumers
came to depend on online retailers like Amazon for goods ranging from toilet
paper and face masks to patio furniture. That drove Amazon’s stock to record
highs as sales soared.
As the economy reopened, consumers
gradually returned to shopping in stores and spending on things like travel and
restaurants, which caused Amazon’s impressive revenue growth to fade. The
situation only worsened at the start of this year, as the company confronted
higher costs tied to inflation, the war in Ukraine and supply
chain constraints.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, who succeeded founder Jeff Bezos at the
helm in July 2021, admitted that the company hired too many workers and
overbuilt its warehouse network as it raced to keep up with pandemic-era
demand. It’s since paused
or abandoned plans to open some new facilities, and its head
count shrank in
the second quarter.
More
Amazon shed half its value in 2022 as tech stocks got crushed (cnbc.com)
The “Mega-Bubbles” Have Started To Burst, And That
Could Mean Unprecedented Financial Chaos Is Ahead
The Federal
Reserve giveth, and the Federal Reserve taketh away. In a desperate
attempt to help the U.S. economy recover from the horrific economic crisis of
2008 and 2009, the Federal Reserve pushed interest rates all the way to the
floor and kept them at or near the floor until 2022. During that same
time period, the Fed also created trillions of dollars out of thin air and
pumped it into the financial system. All of this new money had to go
somewhere, and it created colossal financial bubbles that were unlike anything
we had ever seen before. There were a few voices that were warning that
all of this foolishness would end very badly, but those voices were mostly
drowned out by those that were super happy that asset values were absolutely
exploding. The Fed had essentially created the ultimate “get rich quick scheme”,
and countless Americans were more than happy to take advantage of it.
But in 2022
inflation started to become exceedingly painful, and the Federal Reserve went
into panic mode. The flow of free money stopped, and the Federal Reserve
began to aggressively hike interest rates.
Everyone knew that this sudden change of course by the Fed
would crash the housing market, and that is precisely what is happening.
In fact, even the Wall Street Journal is now admitting that we are facing “a housing
slump as severe, by some metrics, as that of 2007-09”…
Home sales have been falling month after month, and it is being projected that
they could soon fall below the levels that we witnessed during the last housing
crash…
Sales of existing homes fell in November for a record 10th straight
month. Economists at Fannie Mae and Goldman Sachs forecast they will drop below
4 million in 2023, lower than during the 2006-11 housing bust.
On
Wednesday, we got some more bad news.
Pending
home sales are one of the best leading indicators for where the housing market
is going next, and at this point pending home sales have dropped to the lowest level ever
recorded…
More
Finally, in crypto fraud news, a little hope for some
recovery of some customer assets by the Bahamas regulator. But what these
assets are really worth we’ll only know when it becomes time to sell them.
Bahamas
regulator holds FTX assets pending delivery to customers, creditors
December 30, 2022 1:47 AM GMT
Dec 29 (Reuters)
- The Securities Commission of the Bahamas said on Thursday that it is holding
FTX assets worth $3.5 billion based on market pricing at the time of transfer
on a temporary basis to deliver them to customers and creditors who own them.
FTX's
Bahamas unit's digital assets were transferred to digital wallets under the
exclusive control of the commission in November soon after the company and its
hedge fund Alameda Research and dozens of affiliates filed for U.S. bankruptcy.
Upon completion of the
transfer, FTX founders Sam Bankman-Fried and Gary Wang no longer had access to
the tokens that were transferred or frozen, the executive director of the
commission, Christina Rolle, said in an affidavit filed with the Bahamas
Supreme Court.
"All
transferred assets were and remain under the sole control of the commission,"
Rolle said.
Lawyers
for crypto exchange FTX earlier this month opposed a demand for internal records
from its Bahamian business, saying they "do not trust" the Bahamian
government with data that could be used to siphon off assets from the bankrupt
company.
more
Bahamas
regulator holds FTX assets pending delivery to customers, creditors | Reuters
Global Inflation/Stagflation/Recession Watch.
Given our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians, inflation now needs an entire section of its own.
South Korean chip production slumps as inflation hits
electronics demand
Samsung set to increase
capital spending to grab market share in downturn, say analysts
29
December 2022
South Korea’s chip production fell last month by the most since the global
financial crisis, reflecting the deepening industry downtown as chipmakers
struggle to clear large inventories and inflation saps demand for electronics.
The country’s chip output decreased for a fourth consecutive month in November, sliding 15 per cent from a year earlier for its biggest drop since 2009, according to Statistics Korea. Output was down 11 per cent month on month as semiconductor inventories surged more than 20 per cent from a year earlier.
The sharp increase in inventories highlights a supply glut of memory chips as global demand for technology products is hit by high inflation after a two-year boom during the coronavirus pandemic. South Korea, home to Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, is a leading producer of microchips.
“Demand has been hit by the slowing global economy and large inventories. Customers are not buying chips as demand has collapsed,” said JJ Park, an analyst at JPMorgan in Seoul.
“Inventory destocking will be completed throughout next year and the market
could rebound in 2024.”
Chipmakers are cutting their investment plans to adjust to the oversupply. SK Hynix, along with US rival Micron Technologies and Japan’s Kioxia Holdings, are slashing spending, though Samsung is not considering an output cut.
Samsung expects the memory chip market to remain sluggish until the end of 2023. The industry leader was sticking to its past strategy of increasing capital spending during the downturn to grab market share, analysts said.
“Samsung is
back-stabbing its fellow oligopoly competitors,” Dylan Patel, chief analyst at
semiconductor research group SemiAnalysis, wrote in a report earlier this
month. “Samsung is looking for a Pyrrhic market share victory.”
Samsung said during its third-quarter earnings call in October that its capital
spending this year would reach Won47.7tn ($37.5bn). The guidance calls for a
jump in fourth-quarter spending, almost double that of the second and third
quarter, according to Patel.
In July, Samsung began production at its new domestic chip factory in Pyeongtaek, one of the world’s largest semiconductor production facilities. Its increased capital spending and chip production will exacerbate the global oversupply, analysts have warned.
“The oligopoly is
broken, as Samsung’s new chair wants to eat market share,” Patel noted,
warning of “pure carnage” in the Dram (dynamic random-access memory) market.
More
South Korean chip production slumps as inflation hits electronics demand | Financial Times (ft.com)
Crumbling tech stocks and recession fears have cratered the fortunes of the wealthiest Americans including Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.
December
29, 2022.
As we near the end of 2022, today let's take a moment to count up just how much money some of the wealthiest folks on the planet have lost this year.
1. As an individual
accumulates more wealth, they have more to lose. And between this year's historic inflation, sky-high
interest rates, and global economic turmoil, those with the deepest coffers
have seen the deepest losses.
Let's start with Elon Musk.
His wealth this year has shrunk by $140 billion, bringing his net worth to roughly $130 billion,
according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Then there's Jeff
Bezos — the Amazon founder's
wealth has gotten $86 billion lighter.
And Microsoft founder Bill
Gates saw his fortune tumble by $29
billion, while former CEO Steve
Balmer took a $21 billion hit, as Insider's Theron Mohamed points out.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin,
the cofounders of Google's parent company Alphabet, together lost roughly $91 billion in 2022.
Perhaps both most
notably and most under the radar is
how Warren Buffet, the most veteran investor of the bunch, lost a comparatively
meager $3 billion.
And of
course, FTX's Sam Bankman-Fried saw his net worth evaporate virtually overnight
last month, dropping from $16 billion to a buck.
Besides the fallen crypto king,
many of these shrinking fortunes can be chalked up to this year's bloodbath in
the tech stocks. Amazon has halved in value, Alphabet's down 40%, and Microsoft
has tumbled 29%.
(By
the way, Buffett's Berkshire
Hathaway remains in the green for the year).
But special consideration should go to
Tesla. It remains far and away the dominant player in the burgeoning
electric vehicle market, yet its stock has fallen about 68%.
More
Should the LIR start “ poor billionaire relief fund?” If yes, should SBF be put in charge of it? Binance?
Below, why a “green energy” economy may not be possible, and if it is, it won’t be quick and it will be very inflationary, setting off a new long-term commodity Supercycle. Probably the largest seen so far.
The
“New Energy Economy”: An Exercise in Magical Thinking
https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/sites/default/files/R-0319-MM.pdf
Mines,
Minerals, and "Green" Energy: A Reality Check
https://www.manhattan-institute.org/mines-minerals-and-green-energy-reality-check
"An
Environmental Disaster": An EV Battery Metals Crunch Is On The Horizon As
The Industry Races To Recycle
by Tyler Durden Monday, Aug 02, 2021 - 08:40 PM
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
With Covid-19 starting to become only endemic,
this section is close to coming to its end.
Risk of a
dangerous new Covid variant in China is ‘quite low,’ U.S. health expert says
BEIJING — It’s unlikely that a dangerous new
Covid-19 variant is spreading in China, said Dr. Chris Murray, Seattle-based
director of a health research center at the University of Washington.
His comments Friday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” come as
U.S. health officials warned this week about the chance of a new Covid variant
emerging in China’s nationwide outbreak — and how Beijing’s
lack of transparency could delay detection of public health
risks.
Murray, director of the Institute
for Health Metrics and Evaluation, pointed out there were likely billions of
omicron infections worldwide this year, but no new Covid variant has emerged,
only subvariants of omicron.
“That’s why I would
put the risk as quite low that there is a dangerous new variant in China,” he
said. He noted that “some very special characteristics” would be needed for a new
variant to emerge and replace omicron.
The variant was first
detected in South Africa more than a year ago. Omicron is far more
transmissible, but causes less severe disease, than when Covid first emerged in
Wuhan, China, in late 2019.
Unlike much of the world, China’s Covid wave this
month is affecting a population of 1.4 billion people who are mostly getting
infected for the first time. Only domestically made vaccines are widely
available to locals.
Beijing this month suddenly relaxed
many Covid-related restrictions on movement. On Monday, authorities also said
they would scrap
inbound quarantine starting Jan. 8, while resuming passport
processing for Chinese citizens wanting to travel abroad for tourism.
More
Risk
of a dangerous new Covid variant in China is 'quite low,' U.S. health expert
says (cnbc.com)
First
"virovore" discovered: An organism that eats viruses
Michael Irving December 28, 2022
Name a type
of organic matter and chances are some type of organism has evolved to eat it.
Plants, meat, algae, insects and bacteria are all consumed by different
creatures, but now scientists have discovered something new on the menu –
viruses.
Since
viruses are found absolutely everywhere, it’s inevitable that organisms will
consume them incidentally. But researcher John DeLong at the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln wanted to find out if any microbes actively ate viruses, and
whether such a diet could support the physiological growth of individuals and
the population growth of a community.
“They’re made up of
really good stuff: nucleic acids, a lot of nitrogen and phosphorous,” said
DeLong. “Everything should want to eat them. So many things will eat anything
they can get ahold of. Surely something would have learned how to eat these
really good raw materials.”
To test the
hypothesis, DeLong and his team collected samples of pond water, isolated
different microbes, and then added large amounts of chlorovirus, a freshwater
inhabitant that infects green algae. Over the next few days the team tracked
the population size of the viruses and the other microbes to see if the latter
was eating the former.
And sure enough,
one particular microbe seemed to be snacking on the viruses – a ciliate known
as Halteria. In water samples with no other food source for the ciliates,
Halteria populations grew by about 15 times within two days, while chlorovirus
levels dropped 100-fold. In control samples without the virus, Halteria didn’t
grow at all.
In follow-up tests,
the team tagged chlorovirus DNA with fluorescent dye, and found that Halteria
cells soon began to glow. This helped confirm that Halteria was indeed
consuming the virus.
These experiments
show that the newly coined term “virovory” can now take its place among
herbivory, carnivory et al, with Halteria crowned the first known virovore. But
of course, it’s unlikely to be the only one out there, and the researchers plan
to continue investigating the phenomenon, including its effects on food webs
and larger systems like the carbon cycle.
The research was published in
the journal Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences.
Source: University
of Nebraska-Lincoln via Eurekalert
First "virovore" discovered: An organism
that eats viruses (newatlas.com)
NY Times Coronavirus Vaccine Tracker. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/science/coronavirus-vaccine-tracker.html
Regulatory Focus COVID-19 vaccine tracker. https://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/news-articles/2020/3/covid-19-vaccine-tracker
Some other useful Covid links.
Johns Hopkins Coronavirus
resource centre
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
Centers for Disease Control
Coronavirus
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html
The
Spectator Covid-19
data tracker (UK)
https://data.spectator.co.uk/city/national
Technology
Update.
With events happening fast in the
development of solar power and graphene, among other things, I’ve added this
section. Updates as they get reported.
Today, so you really, really want to
drive an EV.
Queues stretching for
hours show what it's really like owning a Tesla at Christmas
December 28, 2022
Tesla owners
were having a truly British Christmas this year by queuing for hours to charge
their electric cars.
Several
snaking queues have been spotted up and down the UK over the last few days.
Nearly
two dozen cars were logjammed at a charging point in a Waitrose parking lot in
the Hertfordshire village of South Mims on Christmas Day.
One TikTok user said the Tesla
owners were waiting around one hour to charge their cars at the station.
They
said: ‘Here they all are queueing up, waiting for an hour or whatever it is for
their charging. They’re everywhere.’
A
Facebook user filmed countless Tesla vehicles clogging the Tebay Southbound
supercharger in Cumbria by the M6 Junction yesterday.
‘All our electric Tesla friends queueing up to
charge up at Tebay Services on the post Xmas trip south,’ they said, adding
that it was a ‘struggle to park as very busy’.
Members of a Tesla driver’s Facebook group
reported waiting nearly three hours to charge their cars in Tebay.
---- In Westmorland, north-west
England, an electric vehicle driver said the scene at a motorway charging
station was ‘bedlam’ yesterday.
‘Two-hour 30-minute wait for a
charge,’ he said. ‘Worst journey as (a) Tesla driver. Q now 40 deep!’
A Manchester-based user shared a
photo of a dizzying queue of Teslas yesterday.
‘UK services this week have been
insanely busy for Tesla charging,’ they said.
‘Currently car 15 in a queue of over
20 … but you can always rely on the British public to make an orderly queue.’
Queues stretching
for hours show what it's really like owning a Tesla at Christmas (msn.com)
NYC Electric Garbage Truck
Plans Hit Wall After Trucks "Conked Out" Plowing Snow After Just Four
Hours
THURSDAY, DEC 29, 2022 - 02:05 AM
In a move that absolutely nobody could
have seen coming, New York City is scrapping its brilliant idea for electric
garbage trucks after finding out the truck simply "aren't powerful enough
to plow snow".
The pipe dream of converting the city's 6,000
garbage trucks from gas to electric in order to try and limit carbon emissions
(because there's no other problems that need to be dealt
with in New York City right now) is "clashing with the limits of
electric-powered vehicles," Gothamist wrote this week.
The city's current trucks run on diesel and
can be fitted with plows in the winter.
Despite the shortcomings, the city Department of Sanitation' has
already ordered seven electric rear loader garbage trucks, custom-made by
Mack, the report says. Those trucks cost an astonishing $523,000 each and are
to be delivered this spring.
More
Another weekend and another year too. But what will 2023 bring to the global economy?
A wider European war? Continued food and
energy inflation? Continued money printing fuelling more inflation leading to more
strikes and social unrest?
My guess is on stagflation as money
fuelled inflation continues even as the new global recession deepens. Have a
Great, Safe, Happy New Year weekend everyone.
“I don’t make jokes. I just watch
the government and report the facts.”
Will Rogers.
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