Baltic Dry Index. 603 +02 Brent Crude 85.16
Spot Gold 1878 US 2 Year Yield 4.45 -0.02
Coronavirus
Cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,103
Coronavirus Cases 09/02/23 World 676,850,919
Deaths 6,776,287
There can be few fields of human endeavour in which history
counts for so little as in the world of finance. Past experience, to the extent
that it is part of memory at all, is dismissed as the primitive refuge of those
who do not have the insight to appreciate the incredible wonders of the
present.
John Kenneth Galbraith.
In the stock casinos, more bubble and froth.
Never mind that the death toll from the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria is now estimated to have passed 25,000.
Never mind that Europe is headed into day 5 without new supplies of Russian diesel and jet fuel among other refined oil products.
Never mind that crude oil prices are rising again, or that China’s economy is in the process of reopening after the Great Lunar New Year holiday.
Never mind that Mickey Mouse is about to fire Donald Duck and Goofy.
Never mind that money supply is falling even as interest rates are rising.
Never mind that FTX just asked a whole lot of politicians to return the money stolen from their victims.
Buy more overpriced stocks. What could
possibly go wrong?
Asia-Pacific
markets trade largely higher as investors weigh risks of more hikes ahead
UPDATED THU, FEB 9 2023 12:33 AM EST
Stocks in
the Asia-Pacific traded mixed on Thursday, as investors assessed further risks
of more rate hikes to come. A number of Federal Reserve speakers reiterated the
central bank is yet to be finished with its hiking cycle, including Fed
Governor Christopher
Waller.
The S&P/ASX 200 fell
0.53% as Australia’s top power producer AGL Energy fell
after posting a half-year loss in its latest periodic
earnings. The Nikkei 225 fell
0.13% and the Topix climbed marginally. In South Korea, the Kospi rose
fractionally and the Kosdaq gained 0.42%.
Crude oil saw its third consecutive day of gains
on China’s reopening hopes. The U.S. dollar index maintained
levels above 103, with bond yields hovering at its highest levels in a month.
In corporate earnings, Japan’s Toyota, Nissan and Nexon are
slated to report quarterly and full-year results. China’s top chipmaker Semiconductor
Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) will
also publish its results later in the day.
However, Chinese markets rose in
its first hour of trade, as Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index rose
0.62% and the Hang Seng Tech index climbed 1.07%. In mainland China, the Shenzhen Component climbed
1.11% higher, while the Shanghai
Composite rose 0.71%.
Overnight on Wall
Street, all three indexes fell on corporate profit
worries — including Chipotle and Lumen Technologies’ disappointing
results. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell
0.61% the S&P 500 slid
1.11% and the Nasdaq
Composite dropped 1.68%.
Asia-Pacific markets trade largely higher as investors weigh risks of more hikes ahead (cnbc.com)
Pressure on
China’s factories grows as U.S. demand falls
BEIJING — For some factories in China, it’s not
full steam ahead after the end of zero-Covid.
All the factories that U.S. toy
maker Basic Fun works with in China — about 20 of them — told workers not to
return immediately after the Lunar New Year holiday, said CEO Jay Foreman.
That’s because of a flood of inventory in the first half of last year,
which didn’t get sold as consumer
prices in the U.S. surged over the summer and into the fall, he
said. Basic Fun’s products include Care Bears and Tonka Trucks.
The official Lunar
New Year holiday in China ended Jan. 27, but the travel period runs until Feb.
15. The festival is typically the only time each year that migrant workers —
more than 170 million people in China — can visit their hometowns.
“Every factory I
spoke to said they’re going to have less people employed this year than last
year,” Foreman said. He expects U.S. consumer demand to pick up later this
year.
China’s exports to
the U.S. in the toys, games and sports category account for about 6% of all
exports to the country, according to China customs data accessed through Wind
Information. That category of toy exports to the U.S. saw a slight drop in
2022, the data showed.
“Retail, anything
consumer discretionary, they were hit quite hard. It was really a combination
of high inventory and demand dropping quite a lot for the export markets,” said
Johan Annell, partner at Asia Perspective, a consulting firm that works
primarily with Northern European companies operating in East and Southeast
Asia.
He said consumer
electronics was seeing a similar situation.
More
Pressure
on China’s factories grows as U.S. demand falls (cnbc.com)
Disney to cut
7,000 jobs and slash $5.5 billion in costs as it unveils vast restructuring.
Disney said
Wednesday it is planning to reorganize into three segments, while also cutting
thousands of jobs and slashing costs.
The media and entertainment giant
said it would now be made up of three divisions:
- Disney
Entertainment, which includes most of its streaming and media operations
- An
ESPN division that includes the TV network and the ESPN+ streaming service
- A
Parks, Experiences and Products unit
The move marks the most significant action Bob Iger has taken
since returning to the company as CEO in November. Disney announced the changes
minutes after it posted its most recent quarterly
earnings. The announcements also come as Disney engages in
a proxy fight with activist investor Nelson Peltz and his
firm Trian Management.
---- On Wednesday, during its quarterly earnings call with investors,
Disney also announced it would be cutting $5.5 billion in costs, which will be
made up of $3 billion from content, excluding sports, and the remaining $2.5
billion from non-content cuts. Disney executives said about $1 billion in cost
cutting was already underway since last quarter.
Disney also said it would be
eliminating 7,000 jobs from its workforce. That would be about 3% of the
roughly 220,000 people it employed as of Oct. 1, according to an SEC filing, with roughly
166,000 in the U.S. and about 54,000 internationally.
More
Disney
announces layoffs, reorganization, cost cuts (cnbc.com)
Next, more on that money supply collapse we
covered on Friday January 27.
Central banks are
fighting the wrong war – the West’s money supply is already crashing
8 February 2023
----We know today that the US economy went into recession in
November 2007, much earlier than originally supposed and almost a year before
the collapse of Lehman Brothers. But the Federal Reserve did not know that at
the time.
The
initial snapshot data was wildly inaccurate, as it often is at inflexion points
in the business cycle. The Fed’s “dynamic-factor markov-switching model” was
showing an 8pc risk of recession. (Today it is under 5pc). It never catches
recessions and is beyond useless.
Fed
officials later grumbled that they would not have taken such a hawkish line on
inflation in 2008 – and therefore would not have set off the chain reaction
that brought the global financial edifice crashing down on our heads – had the
data told them what was really happening.
One might retort that had central banks paid more
attention, or any attention, to the drastic monetary slowdown underway in
early-to-mid 2008, they would have known what was going to hit them.
So
where are we today as the Fed, the European Central Bank, and the Bank of
England raise interest rates at the
fastest pace and in the most aggressive fashion in forty years,
with quantitative tightening (QT) thrown in for good measure?
Monetarists are again crying apocalypse. They are accusing
central banks of unforgivable back-to-back errors: first unleashing the Great
Inflation of the early 2020s with an explosive monetary expansion, and then
swinging to the other extreme of monetary contraction, on both occasions with a
total disregard for the standard quantity theory of money.
“The
Fed has made two of its most dramatic monetary mistakes since its establishment
in 1913,” said professor Steve Hanke from Johns Hopkins University. The growth
rate of broad M2 money has turned negative – a very rare event – and the
indicator has contracted at an alarming pace of 5.4pc over the last three
months.
It
is not just the monetarists who are fretting, though they are the most
emphatic. To my knowledge, three former chief economists of different stripes
from the International Monetary Fund have
raised cautionary flags: Ken Rogoff, Maury Obstfeld, and Raghuram Rajan.
The
New Keynesian establishment is itself split. Professor Krugman warns that the
Fed is relying on backward-looking measures of inflation – or worse, “imputed”
measures (shelter, and core services) – that paint a false picture and raise
the danger of over-tightening.
Adam
Slater from Oxford Economics said central banks are moving into overkill
territory. “Policy may already be too tight. The full impact of the monetary
tightening has yet to be felt, given that transmission lags from policy changes
can be two years or more,” he said.
Mr
Slater said the combined tightening shock of rate rises together with the
switch from QE to QT – the so-called Wu Xia “shadow
rate” – amounts to 660 basis points in the US, 900 points in
the eurozone, and a hair-raising 1300 points in the UK. It is somewhat less
under the alternative LJK shadow rate.
He
said the overhang of excess money created by central banks during the pandemic
has largely evaporated, and the growth rate of new money is collapsing at the
fastest rate ever recorded.
More
Central
banks are fighting the wrong war – the West’s money supply is already crashing
(msn.com)
U.S. inflation roller coaster prompts
fresh look at long-ignored money supply
Thu, 26 January 2023 at 11:18 am GMT
U.S. inflation roller coaster prompts fresh look at long-ignored money supply (yahoo.com)
Finally,
in cryptoland, did the sky just fall in
on the Democrats in Washington, District of Crooks? Could it be that FTX/SBF
didn’t buy the US mid-term elections after all?
FTX Demands Return of Funds Made by Former CEO SBF to Political
Parties
2023-02-06 12:46
After millions were sent to politicians and action
committees by FTX’s founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) or others in
his administration. FTX said Sunday that the insolvent crypto exchange wanted
its money back.
Newly assigned to monitor the Chapter 11 bankruptcy
of the FTX after its collapse in November, John J. Ray III had previously said
that contributions associated with the exchange should be refunded.
Legal Action Otherwise
The statement released on Sunday, however, was more
direct in its demand. That all “contributions or other payments” be returned by
February 28. And in its reiteration of an earlier warning that legal action
would be taken to recover any funds not returned voluntarily “with interest
accruing from the date any action is commenced.”
The press statement claims that the FTX Debtors are
communicating with politicians, PACs, and other receivers of donations
covertly. Furthermore, the business reaffirmed that even if a receiver donates
FTX-related monies to a third party, such as a charity. They are still
responsible for repaying the company.
Once worth $32 billion, FTX filed for bankruptcy
last year. After a sharp decline in the value of its exchange token FTT
prompted a run on the exchange. And exposed that it did not have enough
reserves of client money as it failed to satisfy withdrawals.
Federal authorities in the Southern District of New
York eventually detained Bankman-Fried and accused him of eight monetary
offenses including securities fraud, money laundering, and campaign finance
violations. The fall of the FTX brought the crypto market to one of its
toughest phases with several linked firms filing for bankruptcy or closing
their doors.
FTX Demands Return of Funds Made by Former CEO SBF to
Political Parties - Investing.com India
Alameda-Linked
Address Withdraws $2 Million in FTT – What’s In Store Crypto Market?
Author: Qadir AK Feb 7, 2023 18:58
After a whopping $13
million worth of assets was transferred to the consolidation wallet of Alameda
Research, a new development suggests that there was a $2 million withdrawal by
an Alameda-linked address labeled “brokenfish.eth”.
In one of the most
recent updates from the crypto analytics platform, Arkham Intelligence, the
money was taken out of BentoBox, a smart contract serving as the hub of the
entire Sushi ecosystem, by the brokenfish.eth address. FTT, the FTX exchange’s
native token, accounted for the majority of the withdrawal amounts.
Alameda and Sushiswap
have a long relationship that began in 2020, when Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF)
assumed control of the decentralized exchange protocol after its chief
developer, Chef Nomi, pulled the community under his sleeve.
Apart from the $12
million, Bitfinex sent cryptocurrency to Alameda Research valued roughly $8.5
million, according to PeckShield. It was also reported that the FTX’s sister
company received 1.545 ETH (about $2.5 million), 6 million USDT (or $6 million),
and 4.6 million USDC. 6 million USDT and 1,545 ETH were sent from Bitfinex out
of these assets.
More
Alameda-Linked Address Withdraws $2 Million in FTT – What’s In Store Crypto Market? (coinpedia.org)
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.
More than £18bn was added to non-food retail sales by inflation as 80 per cent of retailers prepare to raise prices
8
February 2023
Inflation is set to add £18.2 billion to UK non-food retail sales this
year, a report suggests.
Sales values are expected to hit £249
billion in 2023, but the 2.6 per cent increase – or an additional £18.2
billion of spending on last year – will be driven entirely by rising consumer
prices, according to the Ecommerce Delivery Benchmark Report by Auctane and the
consultancy Retail Economics.
A survey for the study of more than
730 retail businesses across eight international markets found that 80 per cent
of retailers are planning to increase the price of products, with 40 per
cent suggesting rising costs will be their biggest challenge this year.
Some two thirds of UK consumers (66
per cent ) say inflation is their biggest concern, Retail Economics found.
Some 74 per cent plan to change
their buying behaviour, with 34 per cent saying they would only make
necessary purchases while 29 per cent intend to delay or reduce spending.
As a result, UK retail
sales volumes are set to fall by 4.9 per cent on last year due to
shoppers having to spend more to get less for their money, with retail
inflation expected to hit 7.5 per cent over the year ahead.
The study also found that more than a
quarter of retail firms plan to increase the cost of delivery for their
customers, while just 18 per cent said they would not increase the price
of products, delivery, or returns this year.
Almost 30 per cent of UK
consumers said they would “happily” switch to parcel lockers or click and
collect services for their online orders.
Retail Economics chief executive
Richard Lim said: “Retailers will continue to face a toxic mix of pressures
this year as rising input and operating costs collide against a backdrop of
weaker consumer demand, rising interest rates and shifting consumer behaviours.
More
UK to swerve
recession but a quarter of homes face cost of living struggle, think-tank
predicts
February 8 2023
The UK will avoid tipping
into recession this year but a greater number of homes - one-in-four - will
struggle to pay elevated bills , according to an economic think-tank.
The National Institute
of Economic and Social Research (Niesr) said in a forecast that the squeeze on
incomes from the energy-driven cost of living crisis and lower government
support would combine in 2023 to make it "feel like a recession".
It predicted that a
quarter of households - around seven million - would be unable to fully meet their
planned energy and food bills in the next financial year because of the
prolonged cost of living crisis.
That was up from a fifth of homes in
the current financial year.
It was due, Niesr said, to a
deterioration in disposable income.
The think-tank's model saw a hit from
inflation remaining, with the headline rate easing from its current rate of
10.5% to 5.3% by the end of 2023.
The independent body's headline
numbers for economic growth were far more rosy than recent forecasts by
the Bank of England and the
world's lender of last resort - the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The latter released a report just
over a week ago that predicted the UK would be the worst-performing developed
economy in 2023, with output falling 0.6%.
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.
Bivalent COVID Vaccines Perform
Worse Against Variant Now Dominant in United States: Studies
Feb 7 2023
The new COVID-19 vaccines
don’t work as well against XBB.1.5, the virus variant that’s now dominant in
the United States, according to multiple studies.
In one of the papers, researchers found the vaccines
boosted neutralizing antibodies, believed to be a measure of protection,
but that the antibody levels declined to previous levels within three months.
Compared to the antibody responses to BA.5, the responses
to XBB.1.5 were reduced 20-fold.
“Following bivalent mRNA boosting, responses to XBB.1.5
increase but remain low and wane within 3 months back to pre-boost levels. These
data suggest that once a year boosters with the current mRNA vaccines may not
provide adequate protection for an entire year for those at high risk of
complications of COVID-19,” Dr. Dan Barouch, director of the Center for
Virology and Vaccine Research at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and a
co-author of the preprint study (pdf), told The Epoch Times via email.
The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines both utilize messenger
RNA, or mRNA, technology. The updated versions of the vaccines are bivalent,
targeting the Wuhan variant and a sublineage of the BA.4 and BA.5 strain. The
new versions were cleared as boosters in the fall of 2022 despite no clinical
data being available. They are poised to replace the original
vaccines.
Other studies have also found that the bivalents induce a
better response than the old, monovalent boosters, but that the response is
reduced against XBB.1.5 or its parent, XBB, which comes from BA.2 lineages.
Researchers with Pfizer and Pfizer
partners, for instance, reported recently that the antibody levels were the
lowest against XBB.1.5, and were particularly low among people without evidence
of prior infection. Similarly, researchers with the U.S. National Institutes of
Health and other institutions concluded (pdf) that “the lowest titers were observed
against XBB.1” and researchers with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC) detected (pdf) “low activity” against XBB.1. And
Japanese scientists also observed a reduction in neutralizing power.
More
Could
you still have Covid-19 if you have symptoms but test negative? A medical
analyst weighs in
By , CNN Published 3:58 AM EST, Wed February 8, 2023
It
has been over three years since Covid-19 cases were first diagnosed in the
United States. And while President Joe Biden announced last week that he intends to end the state of national
emergency around Covid-19, this does not mean the pandemic is over.
Although
much is now known about this coronavirus, many questions remain, especially as
the virus continues to evolve and infect people on a large scale. There were
more than 280,000 new coronavirus cases diagnosed in the last week, according
to the US Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention. This is
almost certainly an undercount, given the many home tests not included as part
of the official tally.
A
frequent question from CNN readers and viewers is what it means if someone has
Covid-19 symptoms but tests negative for the virus, especially if they have
been exposed. Why does that happen? Should they test again and when? Are there
other tests they should get, including for other viruses? How can someone find
out if they’ve already had Covid-19?
To
help us with these questions, I spoke with CNN medical analyst Dr. Leana Wen,
an emergency physician and professor of health policy and management at the
George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health. She is
also the author of “Lifelines: A Doctor’s Journey in the Fight for Public
Health.”
CNN: Many people believe they have symptoms of Covid-19 but are testing
negative. Why does that happen?
Dr. Leana Wen: There are several possibilities. First, Covid-19 often presents
like other viral illnesses. Common symptoms include a fever, cough, runny nose,
headache or body aches, a sore throat and diarrhea. These are types of symptoms
also seen with other viral illnesses, including influenza and adenovirus. It’s
possible you may have symptoms you’re identifying as evidence of a Covid-19
infection that are actually due to another virus.
Second,
you may be testing too soon after being infected with Covid; there may not be
enough virus present to trigger a positive result. Generally, it takes at least
two days after exposure to develop symptoms and/or to have a positive result.
Many times, though, there isn’t enough virus to trigger a positive test until
at least five days after exposure. This is why repeated testing is important,
especially if you are taking home rapid antigen tests.
Third,
the test may be a false negative. Home antigen tests are less accurate than PCR
tests. If you have a high likelihood of contracting Covid-19 — for example, if
you were exposed to someone who had the coronavirus and now you have symptoms,
but you’re still testing negative from a home test — you may wish to get a PCR
test.
More
Could you still
have Covid-19 if you have symptoms but test negative? | CNN
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.
ChatGPT
ChatGPT is an advanced AI chatbot trained by OpenAI which
interacts in a conversational way. The dialogue format makes it possible for
ChatGPT to answer followup questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect
premises, and reject inappropriate requests.
ChatGPT relies on the powerful GPT-3.5 technology. GPT stands for Generative Pre-Trained
Transformer, a complex neural network based on the revolutionary Attention concept.
More
Coding
GPT technology can help people write code quickly and
accurately by using natural language as a prompt. GPT can take a text prompt
such as "I need a function to calculate the average of two numbers"
and generate code that is tailored to the given task. This technology has the
potential to cut down development time, as it can generate code quickly and
accurately. It can also help reduce the risk of errors, as GPT is capable of
generating code that can be tested and used immediately. Try AI Code Generator to
create code in any language, from small functions to entire static websites.
ChatGPT
Online: AI Advanced Chatbot by OpenAI
ChatGPT
ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer)[2] is
a chatbot developed
by OpenAI and launched in November 2022. It
is built on top of OpenAI's GPT-3 family
of large language models and
has been fine-tuned (an approach to transfer learning)[3] using
both supervised and reinforcement
learning techniques.
ChatGPT was launched as a
prototype on November 30, 2022, and quickly garnered attention for its detailed
responses and articulate answers across many domains of knowledge. Its uneven
factual accuracy, however, was identified as a significant drawback.[4] Following
the release of ChatGPT, OpenAI's valuation was estimated at US$29 billion.[5]
Training
ChatGPT – a generative
pre-trained transformer – was
fine-tuned on top of GPT-3.5 using supervised learning as well as reinforcement learning.[6] Both
approaches used human trainers to improve the model's performance. In the case
of supervised learning, the model was provided with conversations in which the
trainers played both sides: the user and the AI assistant. In the reinforcement step, human
trainers first ranked responses that the model had created in a previous
conversation. These rankings were used to create 'reward models' that the model was further fine-tuned on using several
iterations of Proximal
Policy Optimization (PPO).[7][8] Proximal
Policy Optimization algorithms present a cost-effective benefit to trust
region policy optimization algorithms;
they negate many of the computationally expensive operations with faster
performance.[9][10] The
models were trained in collaboration with Microsoft on their Azure supercomputing
infrastructure.
In addition, OpenAI continues
to gather data from ChatGPT users that could be used to further train and
fine-tune ChatGPT. Users are allowed to upvote or downvote the responses they
receive from ChatGPT; upon upvoting or downvoting, they can also fill out a
text field with additional feedback.[11][12]
In any
great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to
be right alone.
John Kenneth
Galbraith.
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