Baltic Dry Index. 3058 +86 Brent Crude 91.70
Spot Gold 1939 US 2 Year Yield 5.19 +0.10
On October 17, Arab oil producers cut production by 5% and instituted an oil embargo against Israel's allies: the United States, the Netherlands, Rhodesia, South Africa, and Portugal.[14] On 17–19 October 1973, the Saudi Foreign Minister, Omar Saqqaf, visited Washington together with the foreign ministers of Algeria, Kuwait and Morocco to warn that there was a real possibility of an oil embargo being imposed.[43] During a press conference, an American reporter mocked the threat, contemptuously saying the Saudis "could drink their oil", leading Saqqaf to reply in anger "All right, we will!".[43] Saqqaf met with Nixon in the Oval Office who promised him that the United States would mediate a settlement to the war that would be "peaceful, just and honorable" to both sides.[43] Saqqaf reported to King Faisal that Nixon told him that he ended the Vietnam war on an honorable basis and now intended to end the October war in the same manner.
Update: Israel in a press conference, has strongly denied bombing the hospital blaming a failed Palestinian rocket launch, stating that the damage largely came from unspent rocket fuel plus the warhead. Time will tell I suppose, once the site gets visited by independent military experts.
We are sadly, one day closer to the start of World War Three, with the massive bombing of a Christian Baptist hospital in Gaza City. Though Israel and the Palestinians are blaming each other, only Israel has the munitions and capability of causing the destruction caused.
At best
it was a targeting mistake or a weapon malfunction, at worst a deliberate attempt
to hit a hospital, further inflame world polarisation and trash President Biden’s
gamble of visiting Israel today.
Below, Bloomberg’s coverage of the latest atrocity. Other coverage is far more judgemental. World War Three, WW1 precedent, is about three weeks away.
Look away
from that oil price and 2 year US Treasury yield now.
Your Evening Briefing: Gaza Carnage
Escalates With Hospital Destruction
October 17, 2023 at 11:50 PM GMT+1
President Joe Biden is set to travel to Israel
Wednesday in a show of solidarity with the American ally. Simultaneously, the
US is sending an amphibious task force including thousands of Marines to the
region. They will join two US Navy aircraft carrier strike groups bound for or already in the Eastern Mediterranean.
The massive show of force is an effort to dissuade escalation
of the Israel-Hamas war by other nations or parties, and perhaps to prepare for
any US intervention should such signaling fail to have the desired effect.
Here are today’s top stories
The
diplomatic fallout has been swift. Biden will not visit Jordan after the country canceled plans for a
summit with Egyptian and Palestinian leaders, a blow to diplomatic efforts to
contain the war. The White House said the decision was made after consulting
with King Abdullah II of Jordan and in light of the days of mourning Palestinian Authority President
Mahmoud Abbas announced following the destruction of the Gaza hospital.
More
Bloomberg
Evening Briefing: Hospital Destroyed In Gaza With Hundreds Dead - Bloomberg
Mideast
teeters on the brink of wider war as Iran weighs its options
October 17,
2023
Fears that the
Gaza war could trigger a wider and more devastating Middle East war are growing
as clashes with Iranian-backed Hezbollah intensify along Israel’s northern
border with Lebanon and Israel presses ahead with its plans for a ground
incursion into Gaza aimed at destroying Hamas.
The fears
spiked on Tuesday following a strike on a Gaza hospital that appears to have
killed hundreds of people, triggering angry denunciations and calls for
vengeance across the region. Demonstrators took to the streets in the West
Bank, marched to the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, and converged on Israeli
diplomatic missions in Turkey and Jordan, blaming the strike on Israel, which
has denied responsibility.
The bloodshed
fueled already rising tensions between Israel and Iran, which backs Hamas along
with an array of allied militias and proxies. Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein
Amirabdollahian warned before the strike that Iran’s militia allies in the
“resistance front” could take what he called “preemptive action” to deter an
Israeli ground offensive, and the risk is high that an incident such as this
could prompt escalatory attacks in revenge. “We have to retaliate from
Lebanon,” the demonstrators chanted in Beirut.
But Iran and
its allies are also confronting a dilemma that could determine whether the
conflict is contained to Gaza or triggers a multi-front war, analysts said.
Over the past
decade, Iran has built up a formidable array of militias and proxies in
Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen in addition to Hamas, and all or any of them
could be called on to open up new fronts. Iran also has to calculate whether it
can afford to expend the considerable military leverage it derives from these
allies in a potentially ruinous conflict for the purpose of defending one of
them, Hamas, in Gaza.
More
Mideast
teeters on the brink of wider war as Iran weighs its options (msn.com)
Whatever unfolds in Gaza war,
judgment day looms for Netanyahu
October 17, 2023.
JERUSALEM
(Reuters) - One Israeli cabinet minister was barred from a hospital visitors'
entrance. Another's bodyguards were drenched with coffee thrown by a bereaved
man. A third had "traitor" and "imbecile" shouted at her as
she came to comfort families evacuated during the horror.
The shock Oct.
7 massacre by Hamas gunmen has rallied Israelis to one another. But there is
little love shown for a government being widely accused of dropping the
country's guard and engulfing it in a Gaza war that is rattling the region.
Whatever
ensues, a day of judgment looms for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, after a
record-long career of political comebacks.
Public fury
over some 1,300 Israeli fatalities has been further fuelled by Netanyahu's
signature self-styling as a Churchillian strategist who foresaw
national-security threats.
Another
backdrop is social polarisation this year over his religious-nationalist
coalition's judicial overhaul drive, which triggered walkouts by some military
reservists and raised doubts - now borne out in blood, some argue - about
combat-readiness.
"October
2023 Debacle" read a headline in top-selling daily Yedioth Ahronoth,
language meant to recall Israel's failure to anticipate a twin Egyptian and
Syrian offensive in October 1973, which eventually led then-Prime Minister
Golda Meir to resign.
That ouster
put paid to the hegemony of Meir's centre-left Labour party. Amotz Asa-El,
research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, predicted a
similar fate for Netanyahu and his long-dominant, conservative Likud party.
"It
doesn't matter if there's a commission of inquiry or not, or whether or not he
admits fault. All that matters is what 'middle Israelis' think - which is that
this is a fiasco and that the prime minister is responsible," Asa-El told
Reuters.
"He will go, and his entire establishment along with
him."
An opinion poll in Maariv newspaper found that 21% of
Israelis want Netanyahu to remain prime minister after the war. Sixty-six
percent said "someone else" and 13% were undecided.
More
Whatever unfolds in Gaza war, judgment day looms for Netanyahu (msn.com)
In casino news, the betting goes on as normal, but for how much longer?
Asia markets pare
declines after stronger than expected China data
UPDATED TUE, OCT 17 2023 10:42 PM
EDT
Asia markets pared some declines from earlier in
the session on Wednesday after economic data from China
showed stronger-than-expected growth.
China posted 4.9% growth in the
July to September quarter from a year earlier, according to a release from
China’s National Bureau of Statistics on Wednesday. Economists expected the
country’s economy to report growth of 4.4%, according to a Reuters poll.
The world’s second-largest
economy also posted higher than expected retail sales data for September, and an
urban unemployment rate that fell to its lowest level in nearly two years last
month.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index eked
out gains of 0.02%, while China’s benchmark CSI 300 index dipped 0.39%.
In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 edged
0.16% higher, ahead of its unemployment figures on Thursday. The unemployment
rate is one of the key metrics that the Reserve Bank of Australia considers
when setting its monetary policy.
Japan’s markets fell, with the Nikkei 225 down
0.21% and the Topix fell 0.18%.
South Korea’s Kospi gained
0.07%, while the Kosdaq slipped 1%.
The Taiex in
Taiwan dropped about 1%.
Overnight in the U.S., the S&P 500 closed
near the flat line on Tuesday, slipping just 0.01% as investors analyzed the
latest bond yield moves and the corporate earnings season gained steam.
The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield topped
4.8%, reaching its highest level since Oct. 6 — when it traded at
4.887%. The move followed U.S. retail
sales data that came in hotter than economists surveyed by Dow
Jones had anticipated.
The Nasdaq Composite lost
0.25%, while the Dow
Jones Industrial Average added 0.04%.
Asia
stock market today: Live updates (cnbc.com)
Grace period for China's Country Garden coupon
payment expires
By Clare Jim and Xie Yu October 18,
20235:24 AM GMT+1
HONG KONG, Oct 18
(Reuters) - The grace period for Country Garden Holding's (2007.HK) $15
million coupon payment has expired, fuelling expectations that China's biggest
private property developer had defaulted on its offshore debt.
One bondholder of the tranche, who
declined to be identified discussing confidential information, said he had not
received payment on the coupon as the grace period ended.
Country Garden did not immediately
respond to a request for comment.
A missed payment on a September 2025
bond without a deal with creditors would mean that Country Garden has joined
scores of other Chinese developers who have defaulted, deepening the crisis
roiling the property sector, which makes up about a quarter of the world's
second largest economy.
The company last
week warned of
its inability to meet offshore debt obligations, saying that included
"within the relevant grace periods" and adding non-payment may lead
to creditors demanding payment acceleration or pursuing enforcement action.
With nearly $11 billion of offshore
bonds, a default by Country Garden would set the stage for one of China's
biggest corporate debt restructurings.
Country Garden has also missed other
offshore payments in the past few weeks, though those payments still have not
seen their 30-day grace periods lapse.
more
Grace
period for China's Country Garden coupon payment expires | Reuters
Finally,
in our new rapidly polarised Middle East war, more and more name calling is
underway. Well at least it beats starting WW3.
Spain rejects Israeli claims
of its officials aligning with Hamas
October 17, 2023
Madrid has dismissed Israel’s
claims that some members of Spain’s acting coalition government have aligned
themselves “with Isis-style terrorism” by criticising Benjamin Netanyahu’s
response to Hamas’s atrocities and suggesting Israeli forces are committing
genocide and war crimes in the Gaza Strip.
On Saturday, Ione Belarra,
who serves as Spain’s social rights minister and is the leader of Podemos, the
junior partners in the socialist-led coalition, suggested the
Spanish government should bring Netanyahu before the international criminal
court to face war crimes charges.
After attending a
demonstration in Madrid in support of the Palestinian people the following
day, she tweeted: “Dignity
has filled the streets of Madrid today to urge the end of the genocide that
Israel is planning against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip. Freedom
for Palestine.”
Belarra’s views were echoed by her Podemos colleague Irene Montero, who is acting equality minister, and by Alberto Garzón,
Spain’s acting consumer affairs minister.
“A violent and indiscriminate
attack on a civilian population is a collective punishment that clearly
violates international law,” said Garzón, who is a
member of Podemos’s partners, the United Left alliance. “What the Israeli
government is doing is pure cruelty.”
Although
Israel’s embassy in Madrid did not refer to any of the ministers by name, it
put out an angry statement on Monday evening, accusing “certain elements” in
the Spanish government of aligning with Hamas and of putting Spain’s Jewish
communities in danger. It called on the socialist prime minister, Pedro
Sánchez, to intervene and condemn his colleagues’ “shameful” comments.
More
Spain rejects Israeli claims of its officials aligning
with Hamas (msn.com)
Colombia lashes out at Israeli
envoy amid spat over war with Hamas
Mon, 16 October 2023 at 11:16 pm BST
Colombia on
Monday said Israel's ambassador should leave the South American country before
rowing back comments amid a worsening spat over President Gustavo Petro's
remarks on the war with Hamas.
Foreign
Minister Alvaro Leyva initially said the envoy, Gali Dagan, should "at a
minimum, apologize and leave" after criticizing Petro's comparison of
Israeli attacks on Gaza with the Nazi persecution of the Jews.
Leyva lashed
out on social media at the "rudeness" of Israel's response to Petro,
adding: "Shame."
In a later
post, Levya said he had merely demanded "respect" for Colombia's
president, adding "I have not said that the Israeli ambassador is
expelled."
After the
Hamas attacks on October 7 that killed more than 1,400 people, and Israel's
announcement of a retaliatory "siege" of Gaza, Petro accused Israeli
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant of using language about Palestinians similar to
what the "Nazis said of the Jews."
Petro,
Colombia's first leftist president, asserted in one of several posts on X,
formerly Twitter, that "democratic peoples cannot allow Nazism to
reestablish itself in international politics."
Then on Sunday
Israel, one of the main providers of arms to Colombia's military, said it was
"halting security exports" to the South American country as the
diplomatic feud escalated.
Israeli
foreign ministry spokesman Lior Haiat said Colombia's ambassador, Margarita
Manjarrez, had been summoned over Petro's "hostile and anti-Semitic
statements."
The
president's statements were received with "astonishment," said the
spokesman.
He accused
Petro of "expressing support for the atrocities committed by Hamas
terrorists, fuelling anti-Semitism, affecting the representatives of the State
of Israel and threatening the peace of the Jewish community in Colombia."
----In
response to Haiat's statement, Petro said his country does not support
"genocide."
"If we
have to suspend foreign relations with Israel, we suspend them," he added.
Colombia's
armed forces, engaged in a decades-long conflict with leftist guerrillas,
rightwing paramilitaries and drug cartels, uses Israeli-made weapons and
aircraft.
The country
has a history of strong diplomatic and military relations with Israel and the
United States.
Petro has also
engaged in an online war of words directly with the ambassador, Dagan, who had
urged the president to condemn a "terrorist attack against innocent
civilians."
In his
response, Petro said: "terrorism is to kill innocent children, whether it
be in Colombia or in Palestine."
Dagan then
invited Petro to visit the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem and the
Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, which the president retorted he saw being
"copied in Gaza."
"No
democrat in the world can accept Gaza being turned into a concentration
camp," Petro added.
More
Colombia lashes out at Israeli envoy amid spat over war with Hamas (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.
As
goes America, so goes the world, is the old post WW2 adage, and while it may
not be quite so true post covid, if our new Middle East war on terrorism
provokes an inflationary spike in crude oil prices, many Americans are poorly positioned
to handle it.
For
an 80 year old President trying for a second term next year, this new Middle
East war on terror might undermine any thoughts of running for a second term if
oil prices spike in any meaningful way.
Incomes are falling in 17 states. Here's
where Americans are falling furthest behind.
UPDATED ON: OCTOBER 13, 2023 /
3:59 PM
Americans
are feeling gloomy about the economy and their financial prospects, with more
than half of the respondents to a recent CBS News poll say they're struggling to pay the bills. The reasons for that pessimism
are clear: Not only has inflation chewed into their paycheck, but many people
are also earning less, with Census data showing that median household incomes
dropped in one-third of U.S. states last year.
Many of those 17 states where households lost
economic ground are clustered in the Midwest and Northeast, including electoral
swing states such as Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, according to recent data
from the U.S. Census Bureau. Across 29 states, incomes didn't change enough to
be statistically significant, while residents in only five states saw their
incomes improve enough to be measurable, the data shows.
The
state-level data may help shed light on why many Americans have soured on the
economy, which by many measures appears strong, with a low jobless rate.
Yet
while the labor market has rebounded strongly from the pandemic, the most
direct way people experience the economy — how much they earn — hasn't. U.S.
median household income slipped 2.3% last year to $74,580 — the third consecutive year that incomes have
waned.
Households
are coping with high inflation as well as the end of pandemic-era benefits that
had put extra money in their pockets through federal stimulus checks and the
expanded Child Tax Credit. That money is now gone. But inflation, while
receding, remains elevated, experts note.
More
Incomes are falling in 17 states. Here's where
Americans are falling furthest behind. - CBS News
American
Families Risk Falling Into A Doom Loop
Oct
14, 2023,08:00am EDT
American families
face a confluence of financial challenges, including high inflation, escalating
costs and mortgage rates that make it nearly impossible for young families to
purchase a home. To make matters worse, an abrupt job loss could lead to a
financial doom spiral. In economics, a doom loop describes a situation in which
one negative economic condition catalyzes another negative condition, creating
a third negative condition or reinforcing the first, resulting in a downward
spiral.
Nearly 75% of working
adults in the United States are stressed about their personal finances,
according to a recent CNBC Your Money survey, with 61% of Americans reporting living paycheck to
paycheck. To feel financially secure, around 70% of working Americans say they
would need an annual salary of at least $150,000.
Inflation remains the
primary source of financial worries impacting American workers today, as 61%
say inflation contributes to their anxiety about money.
The high cost of
living and inflation eat away at people's sense of financial security. Despite
low-wage earners receiving the most significant pay bumps during the recent
U.S. labor shortage, more than 40% of American households still struggle to afford basic necessities as rising costs outpace
their incomes, Governing.com reported.
According to Bankrate, nearly one in three
people have emergency savings, but not enough to cover three months of expenses. To make matters worse, 22% of U.S. adults have zero
emergency savings.
Credit card debt has
topped $1 trillion for
the first time on record, according to a recent survey from the Federal Reserve
Bank of New York. The latest Quarterly Report on Household Debt and
Credit showed an increase in credit card balances by $45 billion to
$1.03 trillion, while total household debt reached $17.06 trillion.
The accumulated debt
for American households shows an increased reliance on credit cards during the
economic downturn.
The national average for credit card debt is $5,733, according to TransUnion. That debt comes
at a cost when considering the average APR for
revolving credit accounts is 28.10%, according to Forbes Advisor’s
weekly credit card rates report.
In
need of emergency cash, Americans are increasingly withdrawing from their retirement
savings,
according to Bank of America’s Q2 2023 Participant Pulse Report.
Many
adults in the U.S. are prioritizing short-term expenses over their long-term
savings. Data analysis from the survey showed that the number of 401(k)
participants taking hardships distribution surged 36% year-over-year, following
an uptick in Q1. Additionally, the rate of people borrowing from their
workplace plans increased in Q2.
More
American Families Risk Falling Into A Doom Loop
(forbes.com)
Because of a severe
drain on U.S. gold reserves, leading to higher inflation and lack of confidence
in the strength of the dollar, President Nixon issued Executive Order 11615 on 15 August 1971, closing
the "gold window". This action made the dollar inconvertible to gold
directly, except on the open market, and was soon dubbed the Nixon Shock, leading eventually to the collapse of
the Bretton Woods system in 1976. Because oil was priced in
dollars, oil producers' real income decreased when the dollar started to float
free of the old link to gold. In September 1971, OPEC issued a joint communiqué
stating that from then on, they would price oil in terms of a fixed amount of
gold.
Covid-19 Corner
This
section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
Retinal Vessel
Analysis: A Potential Tool for Detecting Long COVID
Recent
studies have indicated a significant connection between COVID-19 and changes in
retinal blood vessels.
10/15/2023
Updated: 10/15/2023
Eye health can reflect one’s
overall physical condition, and recent studies have indicated a significant
connection between COVID-19 and changes in retinal blood vessels. Since the
onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, many individuals have been affected by various
long-COVID symptoms, especially concerning cardiovascular issues.
In July, the Angiogenesis journal published a study in which researchers conducted a retinal vessel
analysis on 41 long-COVID patients to assess microvascular endothelial
function. The body’s endothelium lines blood vessels and lymphatic vessels.
The results revealed that
long-COVID patients exhibited persistent endothelial dysfunction compared to a
healthy control group without a COVID-19 infection. Typically, the retinal
vessels would dilate when exposed to flickering light. However, this response
significantly diminished in patients with a prolonged COVID-19 infection,
particularly in the microvascular reaction to light stimulation. Additionally,
the researchers found through retinal microvascular analysis of long-COVID
patients that, in comparison to the healthy control group, their retinal
arterioles were significantly narrower.
The researchers also found that
changes in endothelial function were linked to inflammation; the higher the
levels of inflammatory biomarkers measured in participants’ blood, the more
pronounced these changes.
More
Retinal
Vessel Analysis: A Potential Tool for Detecting Long COVID | The Epoch Times
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.
"Pseudogravity" in crystals can bend light
like black holes
Michael Irving October 16, 2023
Scientists
in Japan have managed to manipulate light as though it was being influenced
by gravity. By carefully distorting a photonic crystal,
the team was able to invoke “pseudogravity” to bend a beam of light, which
could have useful applications in optics systems.
One of the
quirks of Einstein’s theory of general relativity is that light is affected by
the fabric of spacetime, which itself is distorted by gravity. That’s why
objects with extremely high masses, like black holes or entire galaxies, wreak
such havoc on light, bending its path and magnifying
distant objects.
In recent
studies, it was predicted that it should be possible to replicate this effect
in photonic crystals. These structures are used to control light in optics
devices and experiments, and they’re generally made by arranging multiple
materials into periodic patterns. Distortions in these crystals, it was
theorized, could deflect light waves in a way very similar to cosmic-scale
gravitational lenses. The phenomenon was dubbed pseudogravity.
For the new
study, the team put the idea to the test in a photonic crystal made of silicon.
They distorted the crystal structure so that the grid’s cells, originally
uniform at 200 micrometers apart, became more and more deformed across the
surface. Then a laser with light waves in the terahertz range was beamed into
the crystal.
The device
had two output ports on the opposite side from the laser’s input port, arranged
so one was above and one below the input. If pseudogravity wasn’t at work, the
laser would have traveled in a straight line and not exited through either port
– but in the distorted crystal, the light waves were successfully bent towards
the lower port.
The team says this technique
could be a very useful way to manipulate light in optics systems and other
devices, and could inform the study of related physics.
“Such in-plane beam steering
within the terahertz range could be harnessed in 6G
communication,” said Associate Professor
Masayuki Fujita, an author of the study. “Academically, the findings show that
photonic crystals could harness gravitational effects, opening new pathways
within the field of graviton physics.”
The research was published in
the journal Physical Review A.
"Pseudogravity" in crystals can bend light
like black holes (newatlas.com)
In October 1973, the members of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting
Countries (OAPEC),
led by King
Faisal of Saudi Arabia, proclaimed an oil embargo targeted at nations that had
supported Israel during the Yom Kippur War.[2] The initial nations targeted
were Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States, though the embargo also later extended
to Portugal, Rhodesia and South Africa. By the end of the embargo in March
1974,[3] the price of oil had risen nearly 300%, from US$3
per barrel ($19/m3) to nearly $12 per barrel ($75/m3)
globally; US prices were significantly higher. The embargo caused an oil
crisis, or "shock", with many short- and long-term effects on global
politics and the global economy.[4] It was later called the "first
oil shock", followed by the 1979 oil crisis, termed the "second oil
shock".
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