Baltic Dry Index. 1668 +28 Brent Crude 80.62
Spot Gold 1964 US 2 Year Yield 4.90 +0.10
"After today, would you still refer to
President Xi as a dictator?"
Reporter.
"Look, he is. He's a dictator in the sense
that he's a guy who runs a country that is a communist country that's based on
a form of government totally different than ours."
President Biden. Yesterday.
Presidents Biden and Xi
got along fine in yesterday’s mini-summit
meeting in San Francisco. But it all kind of went off message afterwards in
President Biden’s press conference.
In the stock casinos, it’s
party on again since inflations beat and the central banks will soon be cutting
interest rates again, bringing out the punchbowl.
Well maybe, but see the
next section down for more reasons to think the next recession is here.
Besides, that good USA
CPI number had much to do with low weightings on sectors with inflation around
and higher weightings on sectors deflating. Not for nothing is the Bureau of
Labor Statistics often called the Bureau of Lying Statistics by unkind hacks.
European stocks
set for lower open as positive sentiment falters
UPDATED THU, NOV 16 2023 12:45 AM
EST
European
markets are heading for a negative open Thursday, reversing positive sentiment
seen earlier in the week after the release of positive data from the U.S. and
China.
A soft U.S. inflation reading on
Tuesday boosted hopes that the Federal Reserve is nearing the end of its
interest rate-hiking cycle. And there was upbeat economic data from China, which
reported better-than-expected retail sales and industrial data for
October.
In other news,
U.S. President Joe Biden and China’s President Xi Jinping met
in person in San Francisco on Wednesday, marking the first meeting of the
leaders in about a year. The leaders agreed to resume high-level military
communication, according to both countries, but Taiwan remains a sticking
point.
At the post-talks presser yesterday, Biden
reiterated the U.S. position that Taiwan maintains its sovereignty, despite
China’s claims to the contrary. Beijing considers Taiwan part of its territory,
with no right to independently conduct diplomatic relations.
Overnight, Hong
Kong stocks led declines in the Asia-Pacific region on
Thursday, while S&P
500 futures were little changed Wednesday night as investors
looked to extend November’s hot streak.
European
markets live updates: stocks, news, data and earnings (cnbc.com)
S&P 500
futures are little changed as traders hope to build on November rally: Live
updates
UPDATED THU, NOV 16 2023 12:43 AM
EST
S&P
500 futures were
little changed Thursday as investors looked to extend November’s hot streak.
Futures tied to the broad-market
index inched lower by 0.08%, while Dow Jones
Industrial Average futures
lost 22 points, or 0.06%. Nasdaq 100 futures slid
0.17%.
In after-hours action, shares of
Cisco Systems dropped 11% after the company offered weak
guidance for the current quarter and full fiscal year. Palo
Alto Networks shed 5% after the cybersecurity company issued a dismal forecast
on billings.
The moves follow a winning
day on Wall Street as investors cheered the latest inflation
data. The Dow added
more than 160 points, finishing its fourth straight winning session with a gain
of around 0.5%. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite climbed
about 0.2% and 0.1%, respectively.
October’s producer price index, a
gauge of wholesale prices, slid
0.5%. That marked its biggest monthly decline since April 2020.
That came a day after the
consumer price index remained
flat for October, another encouraging sign for investors hoping the
Federal Reserve has seen the path of inflation cool enough to stop hiking
interest rates. Tuesday’s session brought the biggest
gains for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq since April.
With November about halfway
through, the S&P 500 is up more than 7% for the month, while the Dow has
advanced nearly 6%. The Nasdaq has leapt 9.8% in the period.
These recent advances could be
indicative of a longer term trend, said Barbara Doran, founder of BD8 Capital
Partners. That’s because the recent inflation data can imply the Federal
Reserve is done raising interest rates. The market being in a seasonally strong
time historically is also a positive sign, she added.
“I think this has legs,” Doran
said on CNBC’s
“Closing Bell: Overtime.” “The elements are in place for this
rally to continue.”
With the two inflation reports
behind them, investors will turn focus to a crop of economic data on topics
such as jobless claims, industrial production and the housing market due
Thursday. They will also follow remarks expected from Fed officials including
Cleveland President Loretta Mester and New York President John Williams at
events throughout the day.
Investors will also watch for
earnings reports from retail companies expected on Thursday. Macy’s and Walmart are
slated to report before the bell, followed by Gap after
the market closes.
Stock
market today: Live updates (cnbc.com)
U.S. and China
agree to resume military talks. Takeaways from the Biden-Xi summit
BEIJING — U.S. President Joe Biden and
Chinese President Xi
Jinping have agreed to resume high-level military
communication, according to both countries.
The two leaders met
in person for the first time in a year Wednesday local time in
San Francisco on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation
conference.
“We’re back to direct, open, clear
communications,” Biden said at a press conference after the talks.
China has conducted military exercises around
Taiwan, while its navy has been engaging in aggressive maneuvers in the South
China Sea in a standoff with the Philippines as both countries stake their
territorial claims.
The U.S. has wanted to revive the
military communication, especially after some near-miss
incidents where China’s ships almost collided with American
forces.
“Vital miscalculations on either
side can cause real trouble with a country like China or any other major
country,” Biden said at the post-meeting press briefing.
China’s Defense Ministry declined a call with its U.S. counterpart in
early February after the discovery of an alleged Chinese spy balloon over U.S.
airspace. The balloon incident delayed U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s
highly anticipated trip to China by more than four months.
In June, the defense chiefs from
both countries attended an annual security summit in Singapore, but they did
not have a formal meeting.
---- At the presser, Biden reiterated the U.S. position that
Taiwan maintains its sovereignty, despite China’s claims to the contrary.
“We maintain the
agreement that there is a One-China policy and I’m not going to change that,
that’s not going to change. That’s about the extent to which we discussed,” he
said.
According to Chinese
state media, Xi pointed out during the bilateral meeting that Taiwan has always
been the “most important and sensitive” issue in China’s relations with the
U.S.. He said in the report that China “takes seriously” positive statements the
U.S. made during his meeting with Biden last year in Indonesia.
“The U.S. should use
concrete actions to reflect its stance of not supporting ‘Taiwan independence,’
stop arming Taiwan and support China’s peaceful reunification,” state media
reported. “China will ultimately be reunified and will inevitably be reunified.”
Beijing considers
Taiwan part of its territory, with no right to independently conduct diplomatic
relations. The U.S. recognizes Beijing as the sole government of China but
maintains unofficial relations with Taiwan, a democratically self-governed
island.
---- Trade
and sanctions
The Biden
administration has announced export controls and sanctions on Chinese companies
in an effort to limit U.S. companies’ contribution to technology that supports
China’s military.
Xi noted the export
controls, investment reviews and sanctions in the meeting, and called for the
U.S. to lift the sanctions and provide a non-discriminatory environment for
Chinese companies, Chinese state media said.
Biden also brought
up difficulties around travel harassment of Americans in China, and a business
environment that wasn’t as welcoming as it was in the past, the U.S. senior
administration official said.
But overall the
official described the meeting as more personal than the last time the two
leaders met.
More
Xi-Biden:
Takeaways from U.S.-China summit—Taiwan, military talks, fentanyl (cnbc.com)
The market
thinks the Fed is going to start cutting rates aggressively. Investors could be
in for a letdown
Markets seem to have taken this week’s positive
economic data as the all-clear signal for the Federal Reserve to start cutting
interest rates aggressively next year.
Indications that both consumer and
wholesale inflation rates have eased considerably from their mid-2022 peaks
sent traders into a frenzy, with the most recent indications on the CME Group’s FedWatch gauge pointing to a
full percentage point of cuts by the end of 2024.
That may be at least a tad
optimistic, particularly considering the cautious
approach central bank officials have taken during their
campaign to bring down prices.
“The case isn’t conclusively made yet,” said Lou
Crandall, chief economist at Wrightson ICAP. “We’re making progress in that
direction, but we haven’t gotten to the point where they’re going to say that
the risk of leveling out at a level too far above target has gone away.”
This week has featured two
important Labor Department reports, one showing that consumer prices in
aggregate were unchanged in October, while another indicated that wholesale
prices actually declined half a percent last month.
While the 12-month reading of the producer
price index sank to 1.3%, the consumer
price index was still at 3.2%. Core CPI also is still running
at a 12-month rate of 4%. Moreover, the Atlanta Fed’s measure of “sticky” prices that
don’t change as often as items such as gas, groceries and vehicle prices,
showed inflation still climbing at a 4.9% yearly clip.
“We’re getting closer,” Crandall
said. “The data we’ve gotten this week are consistent with what you would want
to see as you move in that direction. But we haven’t reached the destination
yet.”
More
The
market thinks rates will come down a lot. It could be let down (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.
Japan's export growth
slows as China, global downturn risks loom
By Tetsushi Kajimoto November 16, 2023 2:28 AM GMT
TOKYO, Nov 16
(Reuters) - Japanese exports grew for a second straight month in October but at
a sharply slower pace due to slumping China-bound shipments of chips and steel,
as weakening external demand takes its toll on the trade-reliant economy.
Exports rose
1.6% in October from a year earlier, Ministry of Finance data showed on
Thursday, faster than a 1.2% increase expected by economists in a Reuters poll
but slower than the 4.3% rise in September.
Weak exports have
complicated Japan's efforts to spur economic growth with sluggish domestic
demand also weighing on the post-pandemic recovery.
"With
China's economy crawling at the bottom and demand from the United States and
Europe slowing, we need to wait until the middle of next year for exports to
bottom out," said Atsushi Takeda, chief economist at Itochu Economic
Research Institute.
"Until
then, Japan would need to count on consumption and capital expenditure to pick
up the slack."
With the absence
of growth drivers, some economists warn Japan could fall into a technical
recession, defined as two straight quarters of contraction.
Japan's
economy weakened in July-September, snapping two straight quarters of
expansion on soft consumption and exports, data showed on Wednesday.
By destination,
exports to China, Japan's largest trading partner, fell 4.0% year-on-year in
October, posting 11 straight months of declines.
More
Japan's
export growth slows as China, global downturn risks loom | Reuters
China's home prices
dip for 4th month, may weaken further
By Liangping Gao and Ryan Woo November 16, 2023 4:55 AM GMT
BEIJING, Nov 16
(Reuters) - China's new home prices fell for the fourth straight month with
dozens of cities hit by declines, the most since the peak of the COVID-19
pandemic last year, suggesting a broader weakening in the sector that could
drag on the country's overall recovery.
New home prices
in October dropped 0.3% month-on-month after a 0.2% dip in September, according
to Reuters calculations based on National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) data.
Once a key engine
of economic growth accounting for around a quarter of China's economic
activity, a regulatory crackdown since 2020 to curb debt has tightened
liquidity and raised default risks for developers, delaying many projects.
Authorities have
rolled out a flurry of measures to prop up the pivotal sector, including
relaxing curbs on home purchases and cutting borrowing costs but homebuyers
remain cautious.
"The most
important reason for the bearish home prices is that demand is weak, buyers
don't know if pre-sold homes they buy will be delivered on the dates promised
by the developers," said Ma Hong, senior analyst at Zhixin Investment
Research Institute.
Nomura
estimated there are around 20 million pre-sold units that are either not yet
constructed or delayed. That is equivalent to 20 times the number of unfinished
projects by indebted developer Country Garden (2007.HK) as of end-2022.
Bearish
home prices follow data on Wednesday showing some improvement in industrial
output and retail sales, which both beat expectations in October,
but overall investment growth was tepid and property sales and investment slumped sharply.
"Residents
remain uncertain about income growth, and there are poor returns on financial
investments in the country. They are hesitant to buy a big-ticket item like a
house," Ma added.
Out of 70
cities, 56 reported declines in monthly prices last month, marking the most
cities number since October 2020, up from 54 in September.
More
China's
home prices dip for 4th month, may weaken further | Reuters
UK
inflation slows sharply, boosting BoE and PM Sunak
By Andy Bruce and William
Schomberg November 15,
2023 10:24 AM GMT
LONDON, Nov 15 (Reuters) - British inflation cooled more than expected
in October as household energy prices dropped from a year ago and there was
also a wider softening of price pressures, offering relief to the Bank of
England and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
Annual consumer price inflation plunged to a lower-than-expected 4.6%
from 6.7% in September, official data showed. The increase was the smallest in
two years and prompted investors to increase their bets on BoE rate cuts next
year.
"Now we are beginning to win the battle against inflation we can move to
the next part of our economic plan, which is the long-term growth of the
British economy," finance minister Jeremy Hunt said.
He is expected to offer investment
incentives to businesses in a budget update on Nov. 22.
The BoE's forecasts and the consensus
from a Reuters poll of economists had pointed to an October reading of 4.8%.
The ONS said the fall in the annual CPI
rate was the biggest from one month to the next since April 1992.
Sterling fell slightly against the
dollar after publication of the data, which showed key inflation measures
watched closely by the BoE also slowing by more than expected. The FTSE 100
rose more than 1% to its highest level in nearly a month. The mid-cap FTSE 250
hit a two-month high.
Although inflation has more than halved
from its October 2022 peak of 11.1%, the BoE has warned that the "last
mile" of getting it down will be tougher. The central bank forecasts that
inflation will only return to its 2% target in late 2025, though many
economists say it will happen sooner.
With Britain's economy now stagnant,
the inflation figures reinforced expectations that the BoE's hiking cycle has
ended, with the U.S. Federal Reserve and European Central Bank also seemingly
having reached the peak for interest rates.
"The UK economy is still very much
facing stagflation and, in our view, the road ahead will likely continue to be
bumpy," Julien Lafargue, chief market strategist at Barclays Private Bank,
said, predicting no BoE rate changes for a few months.
Core
inflation, which strips out energy and food prices, fell to 5.7% from 6.1%,
while service sector inflation also fell by more than the central bank had
expected to 6.6% from 6.9%.
More
UK inflation slows sharply, boosting BoE and PM Sunak
| Reuters
Covid-19 Corner
This
section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
New Report Raises
Concerns That CDC Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System Is Broken
A
BMJ investigation found the CDC isn’t following its standards for maintaining
VAERS, is missing safety signals, and essentially maintains two databases.
11/14/2023 Updated: 11/14/2023
The report published on
Nov. 10 by The BMJ found the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) has received an unprecedented number of
reports attributed to COVID-19 vaccines, and there aren't enough staff to meet
the requirements for reviewing and following up with serious reports, including
deaths. Additionally, the investigation revealed that VAERS is neither
transparent, user-friendly, nor responsive, and suggests the government
essentially maintains two VAERS systems—only one of which the public can
access.
Co-managed by
the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and CDC, VAERS collects reports of
symptoms, diagnoses, hospital admissions, and deaths after vaccination to
capture post-marketing safety signals and determine if there are any unusual or
unexpected reporting patterns for adverse events.
According to the CDC,
healthcare providers are “strongly encouraged” to report any adverse event
following vaccination to VAERS, even if they’re unclear whether the vaccine
caused the adverse event. In contrast, vaccine manufacturers are required by
law to report all adverse events that “come to their attention.”
Although VAERS accepts reports from anyone,
knowingly filing a false VAERS report violates
federal law and is punishable by fine and imprisonment. This allows VAERS to
serve as an "early warning system to detect rare adverse events" and
deters false reporting. Even so, VAERS has been shown to reflect only 1 percent of actual vaccine adverse events, according to a Harvard Pilgrim Health Care study.
CDC Isn't Investigating Serious Adverse Events for COVID-19 Vaccines
According to the CDC, in 2019—prior to
the pandemic—VAERS received more than 48,000 reports of vaccine
adverse events, 85 to 90 percent of which were mild. After the COVID-19 vaccine
rollout, The BMJ found an “unprecedented” 1.7 million adverse events were
reported to VAERS, with 1 million reported in 2021 and an additional 660,000
received thereafter. Nearly 1 in 5 cases met the criteria for a “serious”
adverse event, and most reports were attributed to COVID-19 vaccines.
According to the VAERS Standard Operating Procedures for COVID-19, serious adverse events include reports
of death, hospitalization, life-threatening illness, permanent disability
and/or prolonged hospitalization, and congenital anomalies. Medical records are
routinely requested for all serious reports, including deaths, and adverse
events of special interest may undergo a more in-depth clinical review by the
CDC.
If there is a
significant increase in VAERS reports warranting clinical review, the standard
operating procedures require additional CDC Immunization Safety Office staff to
process cases. For events classified as “serious,” people who report to VAERS
are supposed to receive email correspondence prompting them to provide updates,
but The BMJ's investigation shows these standards aren't being followed.
The BMJ
interviewed more than a dozen people, including physicians and a state medical
examiner who filed VAERS reports for serious adverse events on behalf of
themselves or patients and were either never contacted by the CDC or were
contacted months later. Many never received confirmation emails when their
reports were filed. Likewise, if a condition was successfully treated or was
found to be unrelated to a vaccine, this was not reflected in the database.
More
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.
Google's AI beats supercomputers for fast, accurate
weather forecasts
Michael Irving November 14, 2023
Next time you roll your eyes at a weather
forecast that got it wrong, just remember that predicting the weather is one of
the most complex problems in science. Now, Google has put AI
to work as a weatherman, and shown that in
just one minute on a single machine, it can make accurate predictions up to 10
days in advance, a task that normally takes a room full of supercomputers hours
to achieve.
The famous butterfly effect posits that whether
or not a storm brews could be influenced by something as small as a butterfly
flapping its wings in another part of the world. It’s the job of weather
forecasting to wrangle all these proverbial butterflies into accurate models
that tell you if you should go ahead with planning that picnic next Saturday.
Doing so involves
what’s called Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP), which uses current weather
observations around the world as input data and runs it through complex physics
equations run on supercomputers. But now, Google has unveiled an AI system called
GraphCast that can crunch the numbers much faster, on less powerful hardware.
This AI was trained
on 40 years’ worth of weather reanalysis data, gathered by satellite images,
radar and weather stations. GraphCast takes the state of the weather six hours
ago and the current state, then uses its treasure trove of data to predict the
weather state six hours from now. From this, it can project forward in six-hour
increments to build a forecast up to 10 days out.
GraphCast does this
across more than a million grid points around the Earth’s surface, each
measuring 0.25 degrees in longitude and latitude. At each of these points, the
model accounts for five variables – such as temperature, pressure, humidity and
wind speed and direction – at the surface and six in the atmosphere at 37
different altitudes.
In tests, GraphCast
running on a single Google TPU v4 machine was compared to the current
gold-standard for weather prediction – a simulation system called the High
Resolution Forecast (HRES), running on supercomputers. GraphCast was able to
make 10-day forecasts in under a minute, and was more accurate than HRES on 90%
of the test variables and forecast lead times. When the models were focused on
the troposphere – the lowest layer of the atmosphere, where accurate
predictions are most useful and applicable to everyday life – GraphCast
outperformed HRES 99.7% of the time.
Even more
impressive, GraphCast demonstrated an ability to identify severe weather events
earlier than HRES – even though it hadn’t been specifically trained to do so.
In one real-world example, the AI accurately predicted where a hurricane would
make landfall nine days in advance, while traditional forecasts could only
confirm it six days ahead.
Google says that GraphCast’s
code is open source, allowing scientists around the world to experiment with it
and incorporate it into everyday weather forecasts. This kind of
number-crunching feels like the perfect job for AI, so they can leave the
art and writing to us humans.
The research was published in
the journal Science.
Google's AI beats supercomputers for fast, accurate
weather forecasts (newatlas.com)
Google
DeepMind’s AI Weather Forecaster Handily Beats a Global Standard
Machine
learning algorithms that digested decades of weather data were able to forecast
90 percent of atmospheric measures more accurately than Europe’s top weather
center.
NOV
14, 2023 10:00 AM
In September, researchers at Google’s DeepMind
AI unit in London were paying unusual attention to the weather across the pond.
Hurricane Lee was at least 10 days out from landfall—eons in forecasting
terms—and official forecasts were still waffling between the storm landing on
major Northeast cities or missing them entirely. DeepMind’s own experimental
software had made a very specific prognosis of landfall much farther north. “We
were riveted to our seats,” says research scientist Rémi Lam.
A week and a half later, on
September 16, Lee struck land right where DeepMind’s software, called
GraphCast, had predicted days earlier: Long Island, Nova Scotia—far from major
population centers. It added to a breakthrough season for a new generation of
AI-powered weather models, including others built by Nvidia and Huawei, whose
strong performance has taken the field by surprise. Veteran forecasters told WIRED earlier this hurricane season that meteorologists’
serious doubts about AI have been replaced by an expectation of big changes
ahead for the field.
More
Google DeepMind’s AI Weather Forecaster Handily Beats
a Global Standard | WIRED
"It is unrealistic for one
side to remodel the other, and conflict and confrontation has terrible
consequences for both sides."
President Xi.
Yesterday.
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