Baltic Dry Index. 1340 +17 Brent Crude 79.30
Spot Gold 1772 US 2 Year Yield 4.34 -0.07
Coronavirus
Cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,1030
Coronavirus Cases 07/12/22 World 650,969,384
Deaths 6,649,946
Crypto is a confidence trick. If you put up the right signs, the
wizards of finance themselves will come in and ask you to take their money.
With apologies to banks and Christina Stead. House of
All Nations, 1938.
In the stock casinos,
a growing feeling that all’s not well.
With Goldman and
Morgan Stanley talking about layoffs ahead of Christmas, the BIS fretting over
an 80 trillion blind spot, Blackstone private equity investors stopped from
cashing out FTX/SBF style, those punters in the stock casinos just might be onto
something real.
European markets
head for mixed open as global sentiment wavers
UPDATED WED, DEC 7 2022 12:31 AM EST
European stocks are heading for a mixed open on
Wednesday as jitters set in over the state of the global economy.
Sentiment has been mixed
overnight with shares
in the Asia-Pacific region trading in mixed territory, weighed
down by major
U.S. indexes that fell more than 1% each Tuesday as recession
concerns grow.
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon told
CNBC on Tuesday that American consumers are still supporting the U.S. economy
with consumer spending, but that may change in 2023.
Consumers have $1.5 trillion in
excess savings from pandemic stimulus programs and are spending 10% more than
in 2021, he said Tuesday on CNBC’s
“Squawk Box.”
“Inflation
is eroding everything I just said, and that trillion and a half
dollars will run out sometime mid-year next year,” Dimon said. “When you’re
looking out forward, those things may very well derail the economy and cause a
mild or hard recession that people worry about.”
China’s reopening is
a bigger driver for oil prices than cap on Russian crude, says Singapore
official
China’s reopening
will be a bigger driver for oil prices that the cap on Russian oil, Singapore’s
foreign minister Vivian Balakrishnan told CNBC on Tuesday.
“I would expect to
see a significant opening,” Balakrishnan said. “Now that has profound
implications for the global economy, more so than an oil price cap.”
China’s medium to
long-term playbook should hence focus on improving vaccination rates,
Balakrishnan said.
“You can open up if
you’ve got high vaccination rates. So I’d be watching to see what efforts China
makes to ramp up vaccination in the seniors,” he added.
Live
updates: European markets open to close, data, news and earnings (cnbc.com)
Next, what could
possibly go wrong? Not to worry though, Biden, Trudeau, Sunak, Von der Leyen
are on the case, soon to be assisted by masses of laid of investment bankers,
crypto-fakers and recently released silly-con valley techies.
FX swap debt a $80 trillion 'blind spot' BIS says
December 6, 2022 12:27 PM GMT
LONDON, Dec 5
(Reuters) - Pension funds and other 'non-bank' financial firms have more than
$80 trillion of hidden, off-balance sheet dollar debt in FX swaps, the Bank for
International Settlements (BIS) said.
The
BIS, dubbed the central bank to the world's central banks, also said in its
latest quarterly report that 2022's market upheaval had largely been navigated
without major issues.
Having
repeatedly urged central banks to act forcefully to dampen inflation, it struck
a more measured tone and picked over crypto market troubles and September's UK
bond market turmoil.
Its main warning
concerned what it described as the FX swap debt "blind spot" that
risked leaving policymakers in a "fog".
FX
swap markets, where for example a Dutch pension fund or Japanese insurer
borrows dollars and lends euro or yen before later repaying them, have a
history of problems.
They
saw funding squeezes during both the global financial crisis and again in March
2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic wrought havoc that required central banks such
as the U.S. Federal Reserve to intervene with dollar swap lines.
The $80
trillion-plus "hidden" debt estimate exceeds the stocks of dollar
Treasury bills, repo and commercial paper combined, the BIS said. It has grown
from just over $55 trillion a decade ago, while the churn of FX swap deals was
almost $5 trillion a day in April, two thirds of daily global FX turnover.
For
both non-U.S. banks and non-U.S. 'non-banks' such as pension funds, dollar
obligations from FX swaps are now double their on-balance sheet dollar debt, it
estimated.
More
FX
swap debt a $80 trillion 'blind spot' BIS says | Reuters
‘The
Mother of All Economic Crises Looms,’ Warns Economist Nouriel Roubini
December 6, 2022 Updated:
December 6, 2022
Economist Nouriel
Roubini has warned about an impending economic
crisis in the global economy that policymakers will likely not
be able to handle.
Following the explosion of
leverage, borrowing, and deficits in recent decades, the world economy is now
moving toward an “unprecedented confluence” of financial, debt, and economic
crises, Roubini warned in a Dec. 2 article for
Project Syndicate. Households, corporations, financial entities, governments,
pension plans, and so on are now burdened with massive amounts of debt that
will only “continue to grow as societies age.”
Total private and public sector
debt as a share of GDP rose to 350 percent in 2021 from 200 percent in 1999. In
the United States, this stands at 420 percent, while in China it is at 330
percent.
The unsustainable debt ratios
turned many borrowers like banks, corporations, households, nations, shadow
banks, and governments into “insolvent zombies.” The low interest rates in the
past years helped keep this trend alive.
More
‘The
Mother of All Economic Crises Looms,’ Warns Economist Nouriel Roubini
(theepochtimes.com)
The 'office apocalypse' is upon us
Dec 6, 2022, 12:03 PM
Deserted downtowns have been
haunting US cities since the beginning of the pandemic.
Before
the pandemic, 95% of offices were occupied. Today that number is closer to 47%. Employees' not returning to
downtown offices has had a domino effect: Less foot traffic, less
public-transit use, and more shuttered businesses have caused many downtowns to
feel more like ghost towns. Even 2 1/2 years later, most city downtowns aren't
back to where they were prepandemic.
Not
unlike how deindustrialization led to abandoned factories and warehouses, the
pandemic has led downtowns into a new period of transition. In the 1920s
factories were replaced by gleaming commercial high-rises occupied by
white-collar workers, but it's not clear yet what today's empty skyscrapers
will become. What is clear is that an office-centric downtown is soon to be a
thing of the past. With demand for housing in cities skyrocketing, the most
obvious next step would be to turn empty offices into apartments and condos.
But the push to convert underutilized office space into housing has been
sluggish.
More
Remote
Work Is Gutting Downtowns, Will Cost Cities $453 Billion (businessinsider.com)
Finally, today we
take a break from covering the Decline and Fall of the Crypto Crooks Empire and
allow the dry Irish wit of Patrick Boyle to cover in depth a subject we covered
on Saturday.
Blackstone’s
Investors Want Their Money Back!
Blackstone’s Investors Want
Their Money Back! - YouTube
Sadly in 21st
century private equity investing, you don’t always get what you want, but you
certainly get what you deserve.
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.
British
farmers warn UK is ‘sleepwalking into crisis as food is under threat’
TUESDAY 06 DECEMBER 2022 7:34 AM
Britain’s union for farmers and growers has warned
the UK is “sleepwalking” into a food supply crisis,
Ahead of an emergency press conference later today,
the National Farmers Union (NFU) said the Government needed to step in to
assist primary producers under severe strain from soaring fuel, fertiliser and
feed costs.
Union president Minette Batters said egg shortages “could just be the start” as multiple farming sectors were impacted.
“Shoppers up and down the country
have for decades had a guaranteed supply of high-quality affordable food
produced to some of the highest animal welfare, environmental and food safety
standards in the world,” Batters told the BBC.
“I fear the country is sleepwalking into further
food supply crises, with the future of British fruit and vegetable supplies in
trouble.”
The NFU said the next food items which would
likely be impacted would be tomatoes, cucumbers and pears due to them all
coming from energy-intensive crops.
Food security
However, according to the Department for
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), Britain has a high degree of food
security which is “built on supply from diverse sources”, including strong
domestic production as well as imports through stable trade routes.
It comes after multiple supermarket giants
introduced a temporary buying limit of eggs per customer as a precautionary
measure amid the impact on supply of rising costs and bird flu.
The rate of food price inflation is expected to
reach a peak year-on-year of between 17 per cent and 19 per cent in early 2023,
the Institute of Grocery Distribution (IGD) earlier announced.
This is up from its previous forecast of a peak of
between 14 per cent and 16 per cent.
British farmers warn UK is 'sleepwalking into crisis as food is under threat' (cityam.com)
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.
Pfizer,
BioNTech countersue Moderna over COVID-19 vaccine patents
December 6, 2022
(Reuters) -Pfizer Inc and its German partner, BioNTech SE, fired back at
Moderna Inc on Monday in a patent lawsuit over their rival COVID-19 vaccines,
seeking dismissal of the lawsuit in Boston federal court and an order that
Moderna's patents are invalid and not infringed.
Moderna first sued Pfizer in August,
accusing the company of violating its rights in three patents related to
innovations that Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Moderna said it pioneered
before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Moderna has also filed a related
lawsuit against Pfizer and BioNTech in Germany. All three companies are also
embroiled in U.S. patent disputes with other companies over the vaccines.
A Pfizer spokesperson said the
company and BioNTech are confident in their intellectual property and will
"vigorously defend" against Moderna's claims.
Moderna did not immediately respond
to a request for comment on the Monday filing.
In its lawsuit, Moderna asked for an
undisclosed amount of money damages from Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines sold since
March. Pfizer's vaccine made over $26.4 billion for the New York-based company
in the first nine months of 2022, while Moderna sold over $13.5 billion worth
of its vaccine over the same period, according to company filings with the U.S.
Securities and Exchange Commission.
Pfizer and BioNTech said in their
Monday filing that they developed their vaccine independently, calling
Moderna's lawsuit "revisionist history" and arguing its patents
"far exceed its actual contributions to the field."
The companies argued that Moderna
ignored the contributions of their scientists to foundational mRNA technology,
as well as those of researchers at the U.S. government's National Institutes of
Health.
Moderna also waived its right to
bring the lawsuit when it pledged not to sue other COVID-19 vaccine makers
during the pandemic, the filing said, arguing the pandemic has not yet ended.
Pfizer, BioNTech
countersue Moderna over COVID-19 vaccine patents (msn.com)
Money is not the
most important thing in the world, love is. Fortunately, I love money.
Pfizer, BioNTech and
Moderna, with apologies to Jackie Mason
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.
Taiwan Semiconductor lifts chip
investment in Arizona to $40B
Dec. 06, 2022 6:16 AM
ET
Taiwan Semiconductor
Manufacturing (NYSE:TSM) is set to
make history with one of the largest foreign investments in the United States.
The company will announce plans on Tuesday to build its second chip plant in
Arizona, increasing its investment in the
state to $40B. The event will be attended by President Biden, as well as CEOs
who will benefit from the increase in American chip production, like Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) CEO Tim Cook,
Micron's (NASDAQ:MU) Sanjay
Mehrotra and Nvidia's (NASDAQ:NVDA) Jensen
Huang.
Cutting edge: TSMC
previously disclosed a $12B investment plan to build its first factory in
Arizona that was slated to manufacture 5-nanometer chips (and later changed to
4-nanometers) with mass production expected in 2024. Construction on the second
site that will make 3-nanometer chips (the tiniest "die shrink"
available today) will start in the coming year, with production set to begin in
2026. Once the plants come online, they are expected to deliver enough chips to
meet U.S. annual demand of 600K wafers per year, according to Ronnie Chatterji,
White House Coordinator for CHIPS Implementation at the National Economic
Council.
"It's
the foundation of our personal electronics, and also the future of quantum
computing and AI," Chatterji declared. "That's the definition of
supply chain resilience. We won't have to rely on anyone else to make the chips
we need." Warren
Buffett recently took a major position in TSMC in a bet that the world cannot
do without silicon.
Go deeper: The
passage of the CHIPS and Science Act in early August helped provide certainty
to companies like TSMC to expand their footprint in the U.S. The bill included
$52B in loans, grants and other incentives, as well as billions in tax credits
to support domestic semiconductor production. Washington has been worried about
reliance on microchips made in Taiwan for years, but the dependence became more
apparent during the pandemic, when supply chain issues affected everything from
cars and electronics to healthcare equipment and advanced weapons systems.
Taiwan
Semiconductor lifts chip investment in Arizona to $40B (NYSE:TSM) | Seeking
Alpha
“If all the rich people in the world divided up their money
among themselves there wouldn't be enough to go around”.
Christina Stead. House of All Nations, 1938.
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