Baltic Dry Index. 1384 -18 Brent Crude 75.58
Spot Gold 1978 U S 2 Year Yield 4.28 +0.04
“Markets can remain irrational
longer than you can remain solvent.”
John Maynard Keynes.
Which
is why you should only go short stock indexes with purchased put options,
synthetic purchased put options or better still, purchased double options.
Remember,
when betting on stocks going down, your taking on the other side of the central
banksters rigged markets bet. They can just print their way out of trouble.
This
weekend’s real gem lies in the music section, though, closely followed by the
math’s section.
In
the US stock casinos yesterday, a reversal as the Washington debt ceiling talks
come to a (temporary?) end.
No one yet really believes President Biden will allow the US government to run out of money, but lookout below if that possibility becomes a probability next week.
Of course, if Treasury Secretary Yellen, is lying about June 1 along the lines of the end justifies the means, this brinkmanship could go on through June towards July 4th.
Stocks end Friday lower as GOP negotiators halt debt
ceiling talks, S&P 500 notches best week since March: Live updates
UPDATED FRI, MAY 19 2023 5:58 PM EDT
Stocks fell Friday as GOP negotiators halted
ongoing debt ceiling negotiations, stoking doubt of a deal being reached soon.
However, the S&P 500 notched its best week since March.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped
109.28 points, or 0.33%, to 33,426.63. The S&P 500 slipped
0.14% to 4,191.98. The Nasdaq Composite slid
0.24% to 12,657.90.
All three major averages capped
the week with gains. The S&P 500 rose 1.65%, and the Nasdaq Composite
gained 3.04%. It was the best weekly performance since March for both indexes.
The Dow added 0.38%.
A chunk of those gains came Thursday, as traders
mounted bets that a U.S. debt ceiling deal could be reached. Comments from
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy Thursday seemed to suggest
a potential deal could come as soon as next week.
However, stocks turned lower
Friday after GOP negotiators walked out of a debt ceiling meeting, with Rep.
Garret Graves, R-La., saying the White House team is “unreasonable,” according to NBC News. “We’re not
going to sit here and talk to ourselves,” he said.
Friday’s losses were kept in
check, however, after Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said interest
rates may
not have to rise as much as expected to quell inflation.
“Markets have had a fairly
constructive week, and were trading better as in the early hours of today’s
trading day, in large part due to a more constructive or positive sentiment
around the debt ceiling negotiations. And that took a little bit of a bump in
the road [today] as the negotiations have taken a pause,” said B. Riley
Financial’s Art Hogan.
“I don’t think that is the end.
But I certainly think that going into the weekend, with any uncertainty about
the debt ceiling, it’s going to cause a bit of a sell off,” he added.
Stock
market today: Live updates (cnbc.com)
Next,
Fed Chairman Powell runs up a white flag and looks for anyone saluting. But
with a US default now back on the table again, events are far from the Fed’s
control.
Fed Chair Powell says rates may not have to rise as much
as expected to curb inflation
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said
Friday that stresses in the banking sector could mean that interest rates won’t
have to be as high to control inflation.
Speaking at a monetary
conference in Washington, D.C., the central bank leader noted that
Fed initiatives used to deal with problems at mid-sized banks have mostly
halted worst-case scenarios from transpiring.
But he noted that the problems
at Silicon Valley Bank and others could still reverberate
through the economy.
“The financial stability tools helped to calm
conditions in the banking sector. Developments there, on the other hand, are
contributing to tighter credit conditions and are likely to weigh on economic
growth, hiring and inflation,” he said as part of a panel on monetary policy.
“So as a result, our policy rate may not need to
rise as much as it would have otherwise to achieve our goals,” he added. “Of
course, the extent of that is highly uncertain.”
Powell spoke with markets mostly expecting the Fed
at its June meeting to take a break from the series of rate hikes it began in
March 2022. However, pricing has been volatile as Fed officials weigh the
impact that policy has had and will have on inflation that in the summer of
last year was running at a 41-year high.
On balance, Powell said inflation is still too
high.
More
Fed
Chair Powell says rates may not have to rise as much as expected to curb
inflation (cnbc.com)
But
not everyone agrees that a risky interest rate pause next month will be helpful,
even if President Biden compromises and avoids a US default.
Fed may be forced to defy market expectations and hike
more aggressively, economist says
The U.S. Federal Reserve may
be forced to defy market expectations by raising interest rates aggressively
again later this year if sticky inflation and tight labor markets persist,
according to Daniele Antonucci, chief economist and macro strategist at Quintet
Private Bank.
Having hiked by 25 basis points to
take the fed funds rate into the 5%-5.25% target range earlier this month, the
market is pricing around a 60% probability that the central bank pauses its
monetary tightening cycle at its June meeting, according to the CME Group’s Fed Watch tracker of prices in the fed
funds futures market.
The Fed has been hiking rapidly
over the past year in a bid to rein in sky-high inflation, but the market
expects policymakers to begin cutting rates before the end of the year. Annual headline
inflation fell to 4.9% in April, its lowest for two years, but
remains well above the Fed’s 2% target.
Meanwhile, the labor market remains tight, with
jobless claims still close to historically low levels. Job
growth also hit 253,000 in April despite a slowing economy,
while the unemployment rate sat at 3.4%, tied for the lowest level since 1969.
Average hourly earnings rose 0.5% for the month and increased 4.4% from a year
ago, both higher than expected.
Antonucci told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on
Friday that Quintet disagrees with the market’s pricing of rate cuts later in
the year.
“We think this is a hawkish pause —
it’s not a pivot from hawkish to dovish — it’s a pause, the level of inflation
is high, the labor market is tight, and so markets can be disappointed if the
Fed doesn’t lower rates,” he said.
Given the strength of the labor market, Antonucci
suggested that a rate cut “seems an implausible scenario and it is only the
first issue.”
“The second one is that the tension here is that if
the labor market remains strong, if economic activity doesn’t eventually
deteriorate to a point to have a recessionary environment and disinflation, the
Fed may have to tighten policy more aggressively and then you have a recession
including an earnings recession,” he added.
More
Fed
may be forced to defy market expectations and hike: Economist (cnbc.com)
World watches in disbelief and horror as U.S. nears possible
default
May
19, 2023
Gathered last weekend at the Toki Messe convention center and Hotel
Okura in Niigata, Japan, the world’s top economic officials were scheduled to
discuss some of the biggest emergencies facing the global economy, such as the
war in Ukraine and climate change.
But the finance ministers for the Group of 7 nations had another
question for Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen: What is going on with the U.S.
debt ceiling?
All of Yellen’s counterparts
were aware of the potential global ramifications if the United States were to
default on its debt — so aware, in fact, that many asked her privately for
updates on the status of negotiations between the White House and House
Republicans, according to one person familiar with the matter, who spoke on the
condition of anonymity to reflect private conversations. Yellen told U.S.
allies that she agreed that a default would be devastating and that resolving
the debt ceiling was a top priority for the administration, the person said.
Talks
over the debt ceiling have forced President Biden to cut short his own foreign
trip, scrapping planned visits to Australia and Papua New Guinea after the G-7
summit so he can return to Washington on Sunday.
On Friday, negotiations between the White House and House
Republicans had been paused, according to two people familiar with the
conversations. That news sent financial markets lower on Friday, a sign of
investor unease that a protracted standoff could roil the economy.
The fight over the borrowing cap has been alarming U.S. allies.
Around the world, experts have been watching in disbelief as the U.S. flirts
with its first default, fearful of the potential international economic
ramifications — and astonished by the global superpower’s brush with
self-sabotage.
Rich and poor nations alike fear a possible U.S. default, which
would torpedo the financial markets and deal a massive blow to the dollar.
Analysts say the impasse jeopardizes America’s standing abroad. And foreign
economists and policymakers are bewildered over why the United States has
imposed a specific limit on its debt and then turned it into a political
football.
7 doomsday scenarios if the U.S. crashes through the debt ceiling
“The
U.S. Treasury market is Washington’s golden goose, and the market shows the
golden eggs it lays are still very much in demand,” said Maximilian Hess,
principal at London-based political risk firm Enmetena Advisory, which advises
clients including credit insurers and other financiers. “And yet the U.S. has a
rule in the debt ceiling that inexplicably says that the golden goose should be
taken out back and shot unless it agrees to lay fewer eggs for a while.”
More
World
watches in disbelief and horror as U.S. nears possible default (msn.com)
In
other news, reality or wishful thinking? It makes no difference anyway if Team
Biden overplays its weak hand and the US government runs out of ways to pay its
bills.
Britain firmly on path away from
recession as hiring and growth ramp up
FRIDAY 19 MAY 2023 7:00 AM
Britain
seems almost certain to dodge a recession this year as two new surveys out
today reveal businesses are hiring at the strongest pace in half a year and
families are upbeat about their finances.
Numbers
from Lloyds Bank show nearly every sector of the UK economy stepped up
headcount last month.
Its
monthly employment survey showed ten of the 14 sectors it tracks took on more
staff over the last month, signalling the UK jobs market is holding up pretty
well despite the economic slowdown.
The
survey also indicates hiring picked up after wobbling at the beginning of the
year.
Numbers
from the Office for National Statistics earlier this week for the three months
to March showed unemployment nudged up to 3.9 per cent, vacancies fell and
payrolled employees dropped 136,000, the first decline since early 2021 when
the UK was in the teeth of Covid-19 prevention measures.
Jeavon
Lolay, head of economics and market insight at Lloyds Bank Corporate and
Institutional Banking, said the data shows “hiring activity is firming again
as, alongside a pick-up in activity levels and improving confidence, many
businesses reported that it was easier to recruit staff”.
Across
all the 14 sectors monitored by the bank, growth expectations reached their
highest level in 13 months at 71.4 points, far above the 50 point threshold
that separates growth and contraction.
Around
seven in ten companies clocked an increase in activity last month, chiming with
purchasing manager indexes and other more timelier surveys that suggest
official gross domestic product figures from the ONS will reveal the economy grew
in April after contracting 0.3 per cent in March.
Separate
research from insight company Growth for Knowledge (GfK) found consumer
confidence – seen as a proxy for how keen households are to spend – jumped for
the fourth month in a row to minus 27 points this month from minus 30 points.
That
rise was mainly driven by a five point uptick in households’ optimism in their
personal finances over the coming year and a four point improvement in their
economic outlook.
More
UK on path away from recession as hiring and growth ramp up (cityam.com)
Finally,
more news from those northern Italy floods. More bad news for continued food
price inflation although it’s still to early to calculate the size of the
damage.
Italy floods leave behind ‘incalculable’ devastation to farms
and homes
May
18, 2023
Floods that killed at least
nine people in Italy caused billions of pounds worth of damage and hit
agriculture particularly hard, a regional governor said on Thursday.
Rescue crews were still
working to reach towns and villages, with many of them cut off from power and
mobile phone services, in the northern region of Emilia-Romagna.
Torrential rains devastated
the area, with up to 300 landslides, 23 overflowing rivers, some 400 roads
damaged or destroyed, and 42 flooded municipalities.
“We are facing a new
earthquake,” Emilia-Romagna president Stefano Bonaccini told reporters,
recalling the 2012 quake that destroyed thousands of homes.
Farmers warned of “incalculable” losses and
authorities began mapping out clean-up and reconstruction plans.
Local mayors said some remote villages are still
isolated because landslides have made roads impassable and phone service
remains severed.
“If it rains any more, the situation will be
tragic,” said Mercato Saraceno mayor Monica Rossi.
Parts of the city of Faenza are still underwater,
with cars submerged and basements flooded by thick, gooey mud.
----More than 10,000 people fled their homes, some plucked from
rooftops or balconies by rescue helicopters and others ferried out on civil
protection dinghies.
Italian farm lobby Coldiretti said more than 5,000
farms with greenhouses, nurseries and stables have been flooded, covering
thousands of acres of vineyards, fruit groves, vegetables farms and grain
fields.
----Sunday’s Formula
One grand prix in Imola, which is close to many of the worst-hit areas, was
called off to relieve pressure on emergency services, while a Bruce Springsteen
concert in Ferrara was set to go ahead as planned, drawing some criticism.
More
Italy floods leave behind ‘incalculable’ devastation to farms and homes (msn.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.
This
weekend, something different. The Lords of the Universe Bilderbergers are
meeting in secret again, desperately planning your future as a modern day serf
to their aristocracy.
You'll own nothing
and be happy (alternatively you'll own nothing and you'll be happy)
is a phrase originated by Danish Politician Ida Auken in a 2016 essay for the World Economic Forum. After appearing in a WEF video in 2016,
the phrase began to be used by critics of the World Economic Forum (WEF) who accuse the WEF of
desiring restrictions on ownership of private property.
A secretive annual meeting attended by the world’s elite
has A.I. top of the agenda
PUBLISHED THU, MAY 18 2023 9:32
AM EDT UPDATED THU, MAY 18 2023 12:00 PM EDT
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman will join forces with key
leadership from companies like Microsoft and Google this week as a secretive meeting of the business and
political elite kick-starts in Lisbon, Portugal.
Artificial intelligence will top the agenda as the
ChatGPT chief meets with Microsoft CEO Satya
Nadella, DeepMind head Demis Hassabis and
former Google CEO Eric Schmidt at the annual Bilderberg Meeting.
The tech titans will be joined by political
heavyweights including former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, NATO
Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba
for a range of discussions spanning international relations, trade, energy and
finance.
All in, around 130 participants from 23 countries
are set to attend the private meeting — a similar number to previous years. Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, BP chief Bernard Looney, TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanne, investor Peter Thiel and a
number of EU politicians will also be there.
The three-day event, which this year runs from
Thursday to Sunday, is shrouded in mystery, with clandestine talks held behind closed
doors and subject to Chatham House rules, meaning the identity and affiliation
of speakers must not be disclosed.
That has sparked conspiracy theories, similar to
those leveled against high-level meetings like the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, by those who claim attendees are seeking to establish a
“new world order.” However, the event’s organizers say that the discrete nature
of it is to allow for greater freedom of discussion.
What is on the agenda
in 2023?
Key topics up for discussion at this year’s
meeting were published by its organizers Thursday, giving an insight into what
it deems the most pressing issues in global affairs:
- A.I.
- Banking
system
- China
- Energy
transition
- Europe
- Fiscal
challenges
- India
- Industrial
policy and trade
- NATO
- Russia
- Transnational
threats
- Ukraine
- U.S.
leadership
The talks come as the rollout of artificial intelligence
tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard have added to mounting
concerns around the rapid development of technology, with Altman called
to testify before
the U.S. Senate on Tuesday.
Meantime, the ongoing war in Ukraine and
concerns over rising China threats have become a source of continued discussion
among Western leaders, with signs of division in U.S. and European policy
rising over recent months.
More
Bilderberg: OpenAI, Microsoft, Google join AI talks at
secretive meeting (cnbc.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.
The Next COVID-19 Vaccine Should Only Target the XBB Strain,
WHO Advises
Thu, May 18, 2023 at 7:55 PM GMT+1
The World Health Organization
(WHO) recommended on May 18 that the next COVID-19 vaccines should no
longer include the original SARS-CoV-2 virus—which all existing vaccines
currently do—and instead contain a different version of the virus to better match
circulating variants.
Currently, this means a version
of the virus from the XBB.1 family, which is now responsible for most of the
new COVID-19 infections around the world. The group that made the
recommendation, called WHO’s Technical Advisory Group on COVID-19 Vaccine
Composition, suggested that the XBB.1.5 variant be
included in the next vaccine.
WHO also recommended that the
updated vaccine contain only an XBB variant, and not more than one version of
the virus. While the advice isn’t binding, it forms the foundation for
decisions made by health officials for vaccines in their respective countries.
Some public-health officials have been urging including at least two different
virus strains in the next shot, since that increases the likelihood of matching
whatever viruses might be circulating in the future. These experts have looked
to influenza as a model; the annual flu shot targets four different strains of
the virus to maximize the chances of protecting people against disease.
In explaining its recommendation,
the WHO group noted that there are only small differences among the existing
XBB variants, and that “other formulations and/or platforms that achieve robust
neutralizing antibody responses against XBB descendent lineages can be
considered.”
More
The Next COVID-19 Vaccine Should Only Target the XBB
Strain, WHO Advises (yahoo.com)
Some more useful Covid links.
Johns Hopkins Coronavirus
resource centre
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
The Spectator
Covid-19 data tracker (UK)
https://data.spectator.co.uk/city/national
World Health Organization - Landscape of COVID-19 candidate vaccines. https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/draft-landscape-of-covid-19-candidate-vaccines
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
Technology Update.
With events happening fast in the
development of solar power and graphene, I’ve added this section.
Due to length, no update this weekend.
This weekend’s music diversion. The obscure, long forgotten, great English composer John Baston again. Don’t expect to ever hear any of his work on the extreme far left BBC, even though mysteriously he seemed to have lived either 1658-1740 or 1685-1740, although other sources say 1708-1739.
Check out the amazingly fast clothing
changes by both Karen and Michael, the two
very highly talented performers.
Also check out the two unknown persons
seen occasionally hiding behind the organ. None of which distracts from the
great 18th century obscure English music.
The editor even attaches his name to
this uniquely European Youtube production. Presumably proud of his editing. Approx.
5 minutes.
Concerto
Nr. 1 - John Baston (1685-1740) - Flöte und Orgel
Concerto
Nr. 1 - John Baston (1685-1740) - Flöte und Orgel - YouTube
This weekend’s chess update. Approx.
11 minutes.
How
Strong is The Women's World Champion? || Vidit vs Ju Wenjun || Sharjah Masters
(2023
How Strong is The
Women's World Champion? || Vidit vs Ju Wenjun || Sharjah Masters (2023) -
YouTube
This weekend’s two maths updates. Approx. 4 minutes and 17 minutes.
1729
and Taxi Cabs - Numberphile
1729 and Taxi Cabs
- Numberphile - YouTube
Ramanujan,
1729 and Fermat's Last Theorem
Ramanujan,
1729 and Fermat's Last Theorem - YouTube
"before you know it you get a negative
twelfth out the other side and everyone gets very emotional." But I diverge.
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