Baltic Dry Index. 874 -47 Brent Crude 84.08
Spot Gold 1909 US 2 Year Yield 4.06 -0.12
Coronavirus
Cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,103
Coronavirus Cases 19/01/23 World 672,215,054
Deaths 6,736,076
“A good politician is
quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.”
H. L. Mencken.
Today we are again spoiled for
choice. Below is only small sample of the increasingly dismal economic news.
Asia-Pacific
stocks trade mixed after losses on Wall Street
UPDATED WED, JAN 18 2023 11:31 PM EST
Shares in
the Asia-Pacific traded mixed on Thursday after tracking losses on Wall Street
overnight.
In Japan, the Nikkei 225 and
Topix traded down 1.28% and 0.81% respectively after Japan recorded another
trade deficit for December, one day after the Bank of Japan surprised
markets by keeping its yield
curve tolerance band unchanged. The yen currently
stands at at 128.43 against the U.S. dollar.
South Korea’s Kospi inched up
0.37%, while the Kosdaq traded flat. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 edged
up 0.57%.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index fell
fractionally. Mainland China’s Shanghai
Composite inched up 0.13% and the Shenzhen Component was
down 0.44%.
Hong Kong and Australia are slated to post its
unemployment rate reading for December and October to December respectively.
Overnight on Wall Street, major
stock indexes stumbled, with the S&P 500 recording its worst day
in more than a month.
Asia-Pacific
stocks trade mixed after losses on Wall Street (cnbc.com)
European markets
head for lower open as investor mood sours
UPDATED THU, JAN 19 2023 12:32 AM EST
European
markets are heading for a negative open Thursday as investors gauge the
economic outlook, a topic high on the agenda at the World Economic Forum in
Davos this week.
CNBC will be speaking to a range
of delegates at the World Economic Forum on Wednesday, including the CEOs of
Enel, Merck, Rio Tinto and leaders of the Netherlands and Ireland, among many
others.
The
lower open in Europe comes after the Dow Jones Industrial
Average tumbled more than 600 points on Wednesday as investors took profits on
some of the strong January gains, and as a disappointing December retail sales
reading in the U.S. raised concerns about a recession. Overnight,
shares in the Asia-Pacific traded mixed on Thursday after
tracking the losses on Wall Street.
European
markets live updates: Data, news, stocks, WEF and earnings (cnbc.com)
S&P 500 posts
worst day in more than a month, Dow closes 600 points lower
UPDATED WED, JAN 18 20235:20 PM EST
The Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled more
than 600 points on Wednesday as investors took profits on some of the strong
January gains and as a disappointing December retail sales reading raised
concerns about a recession. Shares of banks led the losses.
The Dow fell 613.89
points, or 1.81%, to 33,296.96. The S&P 500 lost 1.56% to close at
3,928.86, its lowest level since Dec. 15. The Nasdaq Composite slid 1.24% to
end the day at 10,957.01, snapping a seven-day win streak.
---- JPMorgan,
Bank of America and Wells Fargo fell as the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield slid to
its lowest level since September. Shares of regional banks like Zions and Fifth
Third posted bigger losses.
Elsewhere, Microsoft announced
plans to lay
off about 10,000 employees, which hurt investor sentiment. The stock
fell, contributing to the Dow’s decline.
In economic data, investors
digested the latest retail
sales numbers, which showed a drop of 1.1% in December,
slightly more than the 1% forecast. The report suggested consumers are slowing
their spending, with department stores reporting a 6.6% decline and online
sales dropping 1.1%.
Investors also weighed the latest
reading on the producer price index, which measures input costs from
companies. The PPI showed a 0.5% decline for December. Economists surveyed by
Dow Jones expected a 0.1% decline.
More
S&P
500 posts worst day in more than a month, Dow closes 600 points lower
(cnbc.com)
In other news, Saudi Arabia is
ready to sell oil in other currencies to the dollar!
The Fed calls for higher for
longer.
Another crypto crash.
Tomorrow will not be like today
which was like yesterday. Tomorrow looks set to be very different.
Saudi Arabia Is Open To Discuss Non-Dollar Oil Trade
Settlements
Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest crude oil exporter, is
open to discussing oil trade settlements in currencies other than the U.S.
dollar, Saudi Minister of Finance, Mohammed Al-Jadaan, told Bloomberg TV in
an interview in Davos on Tuesday.
The
Saudi signal that it could be open to talks about oil trade arranged in
non-dollar currencies could be another threat to the current dominance of the
U.S. dollar in global oil trade.
“There
are no issues with discussing how we settle our trade arrangements, whether it
is in the US dollar, whether it is the euro, whether it is the Saudi riyal,”
Al-Jadaan told Bloomberg TV.
“I
don’t think we are waving away or ruling out any discussion that will help
improve the trade around the world,” the Saudi minister added.
The
Saudi riyal has been pegged to the U.S. dollar for decades, while the Saudi oil
exports continue to support the petrodollar system from the 1970s in which the
world’s top oil exporter prices its crude in U.S. dollars.
However,
Saudi Arabia is willing to deepen its strategic cooperation in oil trade with
China, the world’s largest crude oil importer.
Last month, China and Saudi Arabia agreed to expand crude oil trade as they upgraded
their relations to a strategic partnership during the visit of Chinese
President Xi Jinping in the Saudi capital Riyadh.
China,
for its part, plans to make its own currency, the yuan, more prominent in
international oil trade.
During a visit to Saudi Arabia
last month, Xi Jinping pledged to ramp up efforts to promote the use of the yuan in energy deals, suggesting at a
summit in the Saudi capital that the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries
should make full use of the Shanghai Petroleum and Natural Gas Exchange to
carry out its trade settlements in yuan.
Saudi Arabia Is Open To Discuss Non-Dollar Oil Trade
Settlements | OilPrice.com
Fed policymakers call for further rate hikes to beat
inflation
January
19, 2023 2:05 AM GMT
Jan 18 (Reuters)
- Federal Reserve policymakers on Wednesday signaled they will push on with
more interest rate hikes, with several supporting a top policy rate of at least
5% even as inflation shows signs of having peaked and economic activity is
slowing.
"I
just think we need to keep going, and we'll discuss at the meeting how much to
do," Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester said in an interview with the
Associated Press.
The remarks appeared
to reflect a widely shared view among her fellow policymakers, most of whom as
of December had penciled in a 5.00%-5.25% policy rate in coming months.
Mester
said that for her part she expects the Fed's policy rate to need to go "a
bit higher" than that, and stay there for some time to further slow
inflation.
The
Fed's benchmark overnight lending rate currently sits in a target range of
4.25% to 4.50%, and investors expect the Fed to lift that rate by a quarter of
a percentage point at the end of its Jan. 31-Feb. 1 meeting.
More
Fed
policymakers call for further rate hikes to beat inflation | Reuters
Cryptocurrency news -
live: Genesis to file for bankruptcy amid ‘major’ US crypto move
January
19, 2023
Cryptocurrency firm Genesis Global
Capital is planning to file for bankruptcy as early as this week, Bloomberg
reported today.
The bankruptcy filing has been
expected since the November fall of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange.
Meanwhile, the US Justice Department
has announced that Anatoly Legkodymov, the Russian operator of the China-based
crypto exchange Bitzlato, has been arrested. Bitzlato was a crypto exchange
that allegedly worked with the darknet blackmarket Hydra Market, which dealt in
illicit trade and served as a safe haven for ransomware attackers, according to
the DOJ.
The US Justice Department issued a
vague statement on Wednesday that it would “announce a major, international
cryptocurrency enforcement action”, and noted that the US Treasury Department
would also be making its own statement.
The announcement comes at a time when
former FTX crypto exchange CEO Sam Bankman-Fried is facing charges of wire
fraud, securities fraud, and conspiracy. The DOJ stressed that criminals using
the crypto space for scams and other criminal activity should be aware the
agency will use “every tool” to crack down on their activities.
Mr Bankman-Fried’s company – long
considered one of the biggest crypto exchanges alongside Binance – declared
bankruptcy after allegedly using, and losing, customers’ funds as investment
capital.
More
Cryptocurrency
news - live: Genesis to file for bankruptcy amid ‘major’ US crypto move
(msn.com)
Finally, in the USA, the world’s largest debtor, it’s time to
fight over raising the debt ceiling again. Only in America, as they say. The
real cut-off comes in June if no resolution comes before then.
Biden and McCarthy Square Off
Over the Debt Ceiling
January 17 2022
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy
(R-CA) called on Democrats to begin talks immediately on raising the debt
ceiling, a critical requirement that Republicans plan to use as leverage in
their effort to slash federal spending. “I would like to sit down with all the
leaders and especially the president and start having discussions,” McCarthy
said Tuesday at the Capitol.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen
warned last week that the federal government would run up against the federal
debt ceiling on this Thursday, forcing the Treasury to start taking
“extraordinary measures” that would provide liquidity roughly through June.
McCarthy said he wants to start talks before the cash crunch gets too close.
“Who wants to put the nation through some type of threat at the last minute
with the debt ceiling? Nobody wants to do that,” he said.
The White House, however, made it
clear that President Joe Biden – who called Republicans
“fiscally demented” in comments over the weekend — has no plans to negotiate on
the issue, and is demanding instead a clean vote to raise the debt limit.
More
Biden and McCarthy Square Off Over the Debt Ceiling (yahoo.com)
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.
U.S.
economy losing momentum as retail sales post biggest drop in 12 months
January
18, 2023 7:51 PM GMT
WASHINGTON, Jan
18 (Reuters) - U.S. retail sales fell by the most in a year in December, pulled
down by declines in purchases of motor vehicles and a range of other goods,
putting consumer spending and the overall economy on a weaker growth path
heading into 2023.
The
second straight monthly decrease in retail sales, which are mostly goods, is
undercutting production at factories. Manufacturing output recorded its biggest
drop in nearly two years in December, while monthly producer prices also
tumbled, other data showed on Wednesday.
More
U.S.
economy losing momentum as retail sales post biggest drop in 12 months |
Reuters
New
York State manufacturing plunges in January as orders collapse, employment
growth stalls
January
17 2023
New York State manufacturing contracted sharply in
January as orders collapsed and employment growth stalled, pointing to
continued weakness in national factory activity, and little improvement was
expected over the next six months.
The survey from the New York Federal Reserve on Tuesday
offered an early read of conditions in one of the sectors hardest hit by the
Federal Reserve’s fastest interest rate hiking cycle since the 1980s. It showed
slumping demand and improved raw material supplies slowing inflation at the
factory gate. National manufacturing has been shrinking since November,
according to data from the Institute for Supply Management.
“A variety of manufacturing surveys have been weak across
recent months and the Empire State survey suggests that this weakness
continued, or perhaps intensified, early this year,” said Daniel Silver, an
economist at JPMorgan in New York.
The New York Fed’s “Empire State” index on current
business conditions plummeted to –32.9 this month from –11.2 in December. That
was the lowest level since May 2020 and the fifth worst reading in the survey’s
history. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast the index at –9.0.
A reading below zero signals the New York manufacturing
sector is contracting. Forty-four per cent of respondents in the survey
conducted between Jan. 3 and Jan. 10 reported that conditions had worsened,
while only 11 per cent said they had improved.
A gauge of new orders tumbled 27.5 points to –31.1. The
shipments index dropped 27.7 points to –22.4. Order backlogs are also drying
up, while inventories are steadily rising.
Higher borrowing costs are weighing on demand for goods,
which are mostly bought on credit. Spending is also shifting back to services.
The dollar’s past appreciation and softening global demand are also hurting
manufacturing, which accounts for 11.3 per cent of the U.S. economy.
The Fed last year raised its policy rate by 425 basis
points from near zero to a 4.25 per cent-4.50 per cent range, the highest since
late 2007. In December, the U.S. central bank projected at least an additional
75 basis points of increases in borrowing costs by the end of 2023.
With orders collapsing and the pipeline of unfinished
work slowing, employment growth in the region stalled this month, with a
measure of number of employees falling 11.2 points to 2.8, the lowest level in
more than two years. Factories also reduced hours for workers.
“Manufacturing conditions in the U.S. are deteriorating
and the worse is likely ahead,” said Gurleen Chadha, a U.S. economist at Oxford
Economics.
More
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.
Are Athletes
Dropping Dead From the COVID Jab?
Jan 17 2023
Despite ‘fact’ checkers’ best
efforts to dismiss it as normal, the number of people in this group who died
suddenly between January and April 2022 was 1,696% above the historical monthly
norm. Is this the deadly combo that’s causing it?
----With every passing day, the
list of people suffering tragic consequences from the COVID mRNA shots grows
longer. As of December 23, 2022, the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting
System (VAERS) had received 33,334 reports of post-jab deaths, 26,045 cases of
myocarditis and 15,970 heart attacks.1
Many of these people and their
stories have remained hidden from public view as social media have universally
censored these stories. As a result, people who only read mainstream media are
largely unaware of the damage being done. However, there is a population of
people whose injuries and deaths have been far more public.
Over the past two years (2021
through 2022), more than 1,6502,3,4,5,6,7 professional
and amateur athletes have collapsed due to cardiac events and 1,1488 of them proved fatal. In his book “Cause Unknown: The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021 and 2022,”9 Edward Dowd writes extensively about the anomalous
number of deaths now occurring among athletes, which, despite “fact checkers”
best efforts to dismiss it as “normal,”10,11 is
anything but.
More
Are Athletes Dropping Dead From the COVID Jab?
(theepochtimes.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.
World's first ammonia-electric semi packs as much
energy as the Tesla
Loz Blain January 17, 2023
Claiming a
system-level energy density 5X higher than batteries, Amogy has rolled out
"the world's first ammonia-powered, zero-emission semi truck." It
holds about 900 kWh of energy, like the Tesla Semi, but you can refuel it in
about eight minutes.
Ammonia
does a better job of storing hydrogen than hydrogen itself, in many ways, and
it could help clean up some difficult industries that require high-density
energy. Brooklyn company Amogy has now presented a world-first ammonia-powered
semi truck.
Ammonia has two chief advantages over hydrogen as an energy
carrier. One is the fact that it's a liquid at ambient temperature and pressure
levels, making it a ton easier to store, transport and handle; hydrogen either
needs to be heavily compressed to around 700 bar, or else kept cryogenically
cooled as a liquid, to just 20.28 K (−252.87 °C; −423.17 °F) – both of these
are energy-intensive processes. The second is how much energy it carries: by
volume, nearly three times as much as hydrogen gas, and by weight, more than 20
times as much as today's lithium batteries.
It can be produced cleanly, and it can be used as a fuel in
many different ways, many of which create zero harmful or climate-relevant emissions.
And while it does have certain drawbacks, green
ammonia is viewed as a promising clean fuel alternative for industries like shipping,
aviation and other applications where batteries and hydrogen gas simply can't
carry enough juice to get the job done.
More
World's first
ammonia-electric semi packs as much energy as the Tesla (newatlas.com)
Richard Wittington, an honest dreamer, travels to London “where
the streets are paved with gold”. Fairy Bow Bells realises his destiny, and
supplies him with an introduction to the leading London bitcoin gambler, Bernie
Buymore, a 22 year old dropout from the London School of Economics, who’s
fighting extradition to America over an unintended flash crash in shady
Chicago.
With apologies to Richard Gauntlett author of pantomime scripts.
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