Baltic Dry Index. 1365 -19 Brent Crude 76.17
Spot Gold 1962 US 2 Year Yield 4.29 +0.01
Coronavirus
Cases 01/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,103
Coronavirus Cases 23/05/23 World 689,046,272
Deaths 6,880,725
For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the message was lost.
For want of a message the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
Another day dawns and another day lost to financial sanity returning to Washington, where team Biden still don’t seem to realise that their hand of four twos doesn’t beat the Republican’s hand of four Kings.
Unless team Biden can somehow rig four Aces and fast, a global financial earthquake is about to hit at some time in June 2023.
For now, the global stock casino punters
remain in disbelief that this could happen. Team Biden couldn’t be that stupid,
they think. I wouldn’t bet on it though. Deep in the Biden White House bunker
it’s already late April 1945 with May 1945 fast approaching.
European markets
set for positive open but there’s still no deal on U.S. debt ceiling
UPDATED TUE, MAY 23 2023 12:24 AM
EDT
European markets are heading for a higher open
Tuesday as U.S. debt ceiling negotiations continue.
On Monday, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy
said he had a “productive” and “professional” meeting with President Joe Biden on
how to raise the debt ceiling, but that the two did not reach a deal. June 1 is
seen as the earliest
date that the U.S. could default, lending urgency to the
discussions.
Asia-Pacific markets were
mixed overnight, while U.S.
stock futures were modestly higher.
---- Yellen’s latest guidance: ‘Highly likely’ Treasury will be
unable to cover debts in early June
Treasury Secretary
Janet Yellen has just released a new letter to congressional leaders
with updated guidance on the earliest date that the U.S. could be at serious
risk of a debt default.
The date remains
June 1 in the new letter, the same date it’s been since the start of May. But
the new message contains two key differences from a very similar letter Yellen
penned on May 15.
“With an additional
week of information now available, I am writing to note that we estimate that
it is highly likely that Treasury will no longer be able to satisfy all of the
government’s obligations if Congress has not acted to raise or suspend the debt
limit by earlyJune, and potentially as early as June 1,” writes Yellen.
The phrase “highly
likely” is new. Last week Yellen wrote that it was merely “likely.”
Yellen also removed
an entire sentence from last week’s letter that said emergency measures
Treasury is currently taking could help to push that June deadline out.
“The actual date
Treasury exhausts extraordinary measures could be a number of days or weeks later
than these estimates,” read Yellen’s May 15 letter to congressional leaders.
The new letter
comes as President Joe Biden is about to meet face to face with House Speaker
Kevin McCarthy, part of an increasingly urgent effort to reach a bipartisan
compromise deal.
European
markets live updates: stocks, news, U.S. debt ceiling (cnbc.com)
Stock
futures are up slightly as Wall Street watches for debt ceiling progress: Live
updates
UPDATED MON, MAY 22 2023 8:19 PM EDT
Stock futures are modestly higher Monday night
after a key debt ceiling meeting between President Joe Biden and House
Speaker Kevin McCarthy, even
though the two did not strike a deal.
Futures tied to the Dow Jones
Industrial Average added 88 points, or 0.2%. S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 futures
each also gained about 0.3%.
McCarthy and Biden met at the White
House Monday evening, in a discussion that the House speaker
described as “productive” and “professional.” These latest talks – taking place
with just 10 days until June 1, the earliest
date that the U.S. could default – seemed to have a more
positive tone following the hourlong discussion.
“The president and I know the
deadline, so I think we’re going to talk every day… until we get this done,”
McCarthy said, noting that both teams would “come back together and work
through the night” on a compromise.
Investors have been closely
eyeing debt-limit negotiations in Washington, hoping for more certainty as the
so-called X-date of June 1 draws closer.
“Certainly, the debt ceiling’s
been weighing on investors,” said Phillip Colmar, partner and global strategist
at MRB Partners. “It’s probably an 11th-hour deal, but if it is earlier than
that, I think that would be encouraging.”
The meeting follows a mixed
session for Wall Street as investors followed the latest updates
out of resumed debt ceiling negotiations. The Dow lost about 0.4%, while the
S&P 500 finished little changed. The Nasdaq Composite advanced 0.5%. The
tech-heavy index touched its highest intraday level and highest close since
August.
Investors will watch Tuesday for
a batch of corporate quarterly earnings from retail stocks including Lowe’s, BJ’s Wholesale and Dick’s Sporting Goods.
On the economic front, they will follow morning data on the manufacturing and
services sectors as well as new home sales.
Stock
market today: Live updates (cnbc.com)
Treasury
confirms U.S. default as early as June 1 without debt ceiling hike
May 22, 2023 11:02 PM GMT+1
WASHINGTON, May
22 (Reuters) - The U.S. Treasury Department reiterated Monday it expects to be
able to pay the U.S. government's bills only through June 1 without a debt
limit increase, leaving just 10 days for White House negotiators and congressional
Republicans to reach a deal.
In
her third letter to Congress in three weeks, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen
said it was "highly likely" that the agency will be unlikely to meet
all U.S. government payment obligations by early June, and as early as June 1,
without congressional action to raise the $31.4 trillion debt ceiling, which
would trigger the first-ever U.S. default.
"With an
additional week of information now available, I am writing to note that we
estimate that it is highly likely that Treasury will no longer be able to
satisfy all of the government’s obligations if Congress has not acted to raise
or suspend the debt limit by early June, and potentially as early as June
1," she said.
Yellen
said the estimates, in line with her last letter to Congress on May 15, were based on
currently available data, but federal receipts, outlays and debt could still
vary. She said she would update Congress as more information became available.
More
Treasury
confirms U.S. default as early as June 1 without debt ceiling hike | Reuters
What
it would mean for the global economy if the US defaults on its debt
May 22, 2023
The repercussions of a first-ever default on the federal debt would quickly reverberate around the world. Orders for Chinese factories that sell electronics to the United States could dry up. Swiss investors who own U.S. Treasurys would suffer losses. Sri Lankan companies could no longer deploy dollars as an alternative to their own dodgy currency.
“No corner of the global economy will be spared” if the U.S. government defaulted and the crisis weren’t resolved quickly, said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics.
Zandi and two colleagues at Moody’s have concluded that even if the debt limit were breached for no more than week, the U.S. economy would weaken so much, so fast, as to wipe out roughly1.5 million jobs.
And if a government default were to last much longer — well into the summer — the consequences would be far more dire, Zandi and his colleagues found in their analysis: U.S. economic growth would sink, 7.8 million American jobs would vanish, borrowing rates would jump, the unemployment rate would soar from the current 3.4% to 8% and a stock-market plunge would erase $10 trillion in household wealth.
More
What
it would mean for the global economy if the US defaults on its debt | AP News
Up next, more US bank trouble to come says JP
Morgan’s CEO. Even if sanity returns to the Biden White House bunker and
President Biden capitulates and makes a deal, a great summer of US commercial
real estate trouble lies directly ahead. Look away from that rapidly distorting
inverted US yield curve now.
Jamie Dimon warns
souring commercial real estate loans could threaten some banks
Deposit runs have led to the collapse of
three U.S. banks this year, but another concern is building on the horizon.
Commercial real estate is the area
most likely to cause problems for lenders, JPMorgan Chase CEO
Jamie Dimon told analysts Monday.
“There’s always an off-sides,”
Dimon said in a question-and-answer session during his bank’s investor
conference. “The off-sides in this case will probably be real
estate. It’ll be certain locations, certain office properties, certain
construction loans. It could be very isolated; it won’t be every bank.”
U.S. banks have
experienced historically low loan defaults over the last few years due to low
interest rates and the flood of stimulus money unleashed during the Covid-19
pandemic. But the Federal Reserve has hiked rates to fight inflation, which has
changed the landscape. Commercial buildings in some markets, including
tech-centric San Francisco, may take a hit as remote workers are reluctant to
return to offices.
“There will be a
credit cycle. My view is it will be very normal” with the exception of real
estate, Dimon said.
For example, if
unemployment rises sharply, credit card losses might surge to 6% or 7%, Dimon said.
But that will still be lower than the 10% experienced during the 2008 crisis,
he added.
Separately, Dimon
said banks — especially the smaller ones most affected by the industry’s recent
turmoil — need to plan for interest rates to rise far higher than most expect.
“I think everyone
should be prepared for rates going higher from here,” up to 6% or 7%, Dimon
said.
More
Commercial
real estate: Jamie Dimon says souring loans threaten banks (cnbc.com)
Finally, yet more bad news for global food
price inflation. HMG needs to hold off
for awhile on seeking a trade deal with the USA
MRNA animal vaccines are newly routine in America, I believe, and can enter into humans via edible animal products. Best to wait a couple of years to see how this turns out.
Mad Cow Disease Case Detected
in the US
May 20, 2023 Updated: May 21, 2023
An atypical case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy
(BSE), also commonly known as mad cow disease, has been detected in South
Carolina, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) said Friday.
The disease was found in an approximately 5-year-old
or older beef cow at a slaughter plant in the Palmetto State.
“This animal never entered slaughter channels and at
no time presented a risk to the food supply or to human health in the United
States. Given the United States’ negligible risk status for BSE, we do not
expect any trade impacts as a result of this finding,” the federal agency said
in a statement.
The cow was from Tennessee and tested positive for
atypical BSE, Clemson University stated.
“The animal showed symptoms of the disease upon
arrival at the plant and was euthanized. Samples were sent to a National Animal
Health Laboratory Network (NAHLN) lab for testing and returned suspect for BSE.
The samples were then sent to USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service’s
(APHIS) National Veterinary Services Laboratories (NVSL) where they were
confirmed positive for atypical L-type BSE,” the statement reads.
Michael Neault, director of Clemson Unversity
Livestock Poultry Health and South Carolina state veterinarian, said that this
is an “isolated case.”
----This was the seventh detection of BSE in the United States since
2003, and all but one have been atypical.
The first case was reported in December 2003 when a
presumptive diagnosis of BSE was announced in an adult Holstein cow from
Washington state. The diagnosis was later confirmed by an international
reference laboratory in Weybridge, England.
BSE Variant Could Be Deadly for Humans
According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), humans could get a version of BSE called variant
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) if they eat food from cows sick with BSE.
As of 2019, 232 people are known to have been
infected with vCJD and all of them have died. Most of the victims lived in the
United Kingdom at some point in their lives. Four of them lived in the United
States.
The four Americans who died after vCJD most likely
were infected when they were living or traveling overseas, the agency said.
BSE and vCJD are not contagious and people will not
be infected with BSE from drinking milk or eating dairy products from sick
cows.
Researchers reported that one in 2,000 people in the
United Kingdom were carriers of vCJD, the BBC reported.
The House of Commons Science
and Technology Committee, which was renamed as the Science, Innovation, and
Technology Committee this year, said in a 2014 report that thousands of people
could be asymptomatic carriers of the prions that cause vCJD and blood
transfusions were a key channel of transmission.
More
Mad
Cow Disease Case Detected in the US (theepochtimes.com)
Kansas farmers abandon wheat
fields after extreme drought
May
22, 2023 11:53 AM GMT+1
WICHITA, Kansas, May 22 (Reuters) -
Farmers in Kansas, the biggest U.S. producer of wheat used to make bread, are
abandoning their crops after a severe drought and damaging cold ravaged farms.
They are intentionally spraying wheat
fields with crop-killing chemicals and claiming insurance payouts more than
normal, betting the grain is not worth harvesting, Reuters found on a three-day
tour of the state. Other growers are turning over dismal-looking fields to
cattle for grazing.
Abandoning fields will lead to a
smaller U.S. wheat supply in the world's No. 5 wheat exporter, with stocks seen
falling to a 16-year low. High rates of abandonment deal an economic blow to
farm towns and force wheat buyers to adjust procurement plans by buying the
staple grain elsewhere.
Nationally, winter-wheat farmers plan
to abandon 33% of the acres they planted, the highest percentage since World
War I, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said in a May 12 report.
Kansas farmers are expected to abandon
about 19% of the acres planted last autumn, up from 10% last year and 4% in
2021, according to the report. But farmers, grain traders and representatives
of major food companies who traversed the state on an annual crop tour last
week warn of an even greater percentage of unharvested acres.
More
Pasta prices have
surged, prompting crisis meetings in Italy and calls for a strike
Whether it’s a plate of spaghetti aglio e olio or
penne arrabbiata, the price of Italy’s beloved staple is soaring — enough to
warrant a crisis meeting at the heart of the Italian government.
Pasta prices rose 17.5% in March
and 16.5% in April, according to Italy’s ministry of business which cited
Istat data. The jump is double that of Italy’s consumer price index
figures, which climbed 8.1% year-on-year for April and 8.7% for March,
according to Refinitiv data.
Pasta dishes in restaurants have
risen 6.1% across the board year-on-year, Italy’s consumer rights group
Assoutenti told CNBC. According to a 2022 survey by the International Pasta
Organization, an average Italian consumes almost 23 kg worth of pasta per
year.
The elevated retail
prices are owed to the fact that producers are now selling their pasta stocks
which were made when the raw material costs were higher.
“This is due to the
disposal of stocks produced with higher costs of raw materials,” Assoutenti’s
President Furio Truzzi said, citing higher wheat and energy prices.
In March 2022, the price
of wheat peaked to its highest levels in more than a decade as
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine advanced. Both nations are huge suppliers of
agricultural products to the global market.
However, Truzzi noted that the
input costs have since dropped since that time, and higher pasta prices are now
driven by other factors.
“High prices are maintained in
order to have greater profits. Prices will fall only in the face of a
significant drop in consumption,” said Assoutent, proposing plans to reduce
pasta consumption with a “pasta strike” of at least 15 days. In 2007, Italians staged a one-day strike against
buying pasta when prices rose by almost 20%.
International wheat prices in April
lost 2.3% to drop to their lowest since July 2021, according to the Food and Agricultural Organization.
“Wheat prices have been declining
from their historic peak following the invasion of Ukraine, but remain high,”
the World Bank’s External Affairs Officer Nandita Roy told CNBC via e-mail. She
noted that the World Bank forecasts a 17.4% drop in wheat prices in 2023
relative to 2022.
The prices of durum wheat, a
variety of wheat that’s typically used in pasta, have also been on a decline in recent months.
“However, there are many country-specific factors that would explain the rise
in pasta prices in Italy,” Roy added.
More
Pasta prices have surged, prompting crisis meetings in Italy and calls for a strike (cnbc.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.
UK inflation poised
to slip out of the double digits to lowest level in over a year
May 22, 2023
UK inflation is poised to tumble to
its lowest level in over a year in what is expected to begin a steady descent
from its multi-decade highs, new figures out this week are likely to reveal.
The rate of price increases in April
is tipped to have dropped markedly to 8.2 per cent last month, down from 10.1
per cent and to the lowest level since March 2022 when it rose to seven per
cent, according to City analysts.
That would take inflation out of the
double digits for the first time since last summer.
Living costs have been rising rapidly
for more than a year, initially driven upward by supply chains buckling under
the weight of a sudden surge in demand after Covid-19 lockdowns were ditched.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of
Ukraine lit a rocket under international energy prices, pushing up UK household
energy bills to what could have been more than £4,000 without the government
stepping in and capping bills at £2,500 last year.
While that intervention has averted
the biggest hit to average living standards on record, it has knocked Britain’s
finances, forcing the government to borrow £22.4bn last month, markets expect.
----A
combination of poor weather and the Russia-Ukraine war jolting raw material
production has also squeezed food supplies, putting upward pressure on
supermarket prices, which have climbed nearly a fifth over the last year – the
fastest acceleration since the 1970s.
However, the cost of living crisis that has knocked the poorest
households’ finances is poised to slowly ease as the year progresses, but food
price inflation may take longer than headline consumer prices to
decelerate.
Comparisons
with last year’s jump in energy prices will force the headline consumer price
index lower, although “further downward pressure will come from fuel prices,”
Andrew Goodwin, chief UK economist at consultancy Oxford Economics, said.
Bank
Governor Andrew Bailey and other rate setters will break down the reasons why
they lifted borrowing costs earlier this month by 25 basis points at a grilling
MPs on the treasury committee on Tuesday.
More
UK inflation
poised to slip out of the double digits to lowest level in over a year
(msn.com)
The Stagflation That
Defined the 1970s Could Be Making a Comeback
May
20, 2023
Stagflation is a situation
where there is simultaneous slow growth, high unemployment,
and significant inflation.
The term, which essentially means a stagnant economy, is a combination of the
words ‘stagnation’ and ‘inflation.’ During a period of stagflation,
wages are down and inflation is up, so purchasing power goes down, resulting in a stagnant economy.
The last time the U.S. experienced
stagflation was in the 1970’s when oil price spikes combined with slow growth
produced the toxic combination. While a lot has changed in the last 50 years,
some economists believe stagflation could soon make a comeback.
J.D. DURKIN: The highest inflation
in four decades has led some to compare today’s conditions to those of the
1970s. But back then – “stagflation,” or a combination of the words
“stagnation” and “inflation,” was a major problem for the U.S. economy.
Stagflation is a term used to describe an economy where there is slow growth,
high unemployment, and significant inflation, meaning stagflation is this
perfect storm where prices go up, currency is becoming devalued, and there’s no
real economic growth.
The term is synonymous with the 1970s,
when people lined up for hours, when job losses were high and people waited
hours for gas. During a period of stagflation, workers are getting paid less
money, and things are more expensive, so purchasing power goes down – resulting
in a stagnant economy.
Video.
The Stagflation That Defined the 1970s Could Be Making
a Comeback (msn.com)
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
Today, the next mRNA vaccine
scandal in the making? Flu mRNA vaccines.
Approx. 7 minutes.
mRNA
pathophysiology
mRNA pathophysiology - YouTube
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.
More sanity and reality from Jack
Lifton and the leading Canadian website Investorintel.com
Jack Lifton is
the Editor in Chief, Critical Minerals for InvestorIntel.com, a capital market
source celebrating its 21st year in business. He is also a Director of
InvestorIntel…
Can we get back to the way we
were?
Jack Lifton May 21, 2023
The lack of
understanding of the total supply chains for the complex, unseen components,
that underlie and enable the operations of the technologies we now take for
granted in our daily lives, is the main reason that we have given away our
competitive advantage in so many of the technologies we invented. In fact it’s
a prime example of the old excuse, “I didn’t know the gun was loaded.” Most of
us only see, and are only interested in, the outer face of of a device
The financialization
of American industry over the last 50 years has completed eroded the
engineering and experiential skills that used to be de rigeur in the management
suites of America’s manufacturing giants. The decline of understanding of the
sourcing and sources of the components necessary to assemble an automobile is
glaringly apparent.
The limits of
American chemical manufacturing engineering, critical for the downstream
processing of non-fuel minerals into end user products, versus the unrestrained
limits of the imagination of policy makers and their academic and bureaucratic
advisors have now reached a crisis point. Policy makers think that a skilled
workforce and legacy engineering competence can simply be brought into
immediate existence by funding amorphous programs with the appropriate names
and with the correct distribution of money to bureaucratically approved
recipients who do not need to demonstrate any prior competence in the
production, on-time delivery, at the agreed price, of products meeting the
customer’s specification. These recipients of the other-people’s money (a/k/a
taxes), rather, need to demonstrate the proper cronyism and have the necessary
lobbying in Washington.
American
manufacturers driven solely by quarterly reports have given up on supporting
internal corporate R&D, which in the form of GE Schenectady, Bell Labs,
Park Xerox, Ford Scientific, GM Engineering, and many, many more gave us not
just the twentieth century’s rapid expansion of technologically based consumer
and military goods, but Nobel Prize winners, medical advances, and most of all,
our contemporary lifestyle and standard of living. President Nixon’s decision
to shut down the Space Shuttle Program in 1972 began the rapid decline of the
major funding of corporate R&D by government agencies that fueled all
technological development up to that time. That foolish, short-sighted,
decision was made to try to save money due to the enormous expense of the
(successful) moon program and the war in Vietnam. The long-term benefits of the
moon and space shuttle programs for the general economy were ignored in favor
of the short term financial needs.
Fast forward to
2023. The greatest generation of manufacturing engineers and research
scientists are long gone from the management suites of American industry. The
font of technology that was the private corporate R&D labs in the United
States is not even a memory.
More.
Can we get back to
the way we were? - InvestorIntel
“When the music stops, in terms of liquidity, things will be
complicated. But as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and
dance. We’re still dancing,”
Chuck Prince, dancing CEO of Citigroup, July 2007, who danced
himself right out of his job in 2008.
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