Baltic
Dry Index. 957 -30
Brent Crude 79.99
Spot Gold 2726 US 2 Year Yield 4.27 Fri.
US Federal Debt. 36.377 trillion!
America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.
Henry A. Kissinger.
In the global stock casinos, the Trump one way street is back.
But is it? What if inflation is back? What if the US debt ceiling isn’t raised?
What if tariffs and illegal immigrant deportations drag on the US economy.
What if the Biden family pardons have damaged America’s image in the rest of the world? Did Biden pardon himself? Suppose after all it turns out he really did steal that election?
But these are not issues for today, but issues for tomorrow.
For today, all hail Caesar Trump President
Trump.
Asia-Pacific markets rise as investors await
clarity on President Donald Trump’s policies
Updated Tue, Jan 21 2025 11:29 PM EST
Asia-Pacific markets rose Tuesday, as
investors awaited greater clarity on policies of U.S. President Donald Trump
following his inauguration.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 advanced
0.68%.
In Japan, the benchmark Nikkei 225 was up 0.15%,
while the Topix was flat in choppy trade.
South Korea’s Kospi was up 0.17%, while
the Kosdaq declined 0.32%.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index gained 1.12%.
Mainland China’s CSI300 Index reversed losses to gain 0.39%.
Several central banks in Asia will be
convening later this week. Malaysia’s central bank is expected to keep its
policy rate steady at 3% on Wednesday. The Bank of Japan is holding its next
policy meeting from Jan. 23 to Jan 24 — BOJ Governor Kazuo Ueda has
signaled intentions to hike rates. Singapore’s Monetary Authority of
Singapore will be meeting on Friday.
Over in the U.S. markets were closed due
to the Martin Luther King Jr. public holiday.
U.S. stock futures were higher after
Trump’s swearing in and his promise of a new “golden age” for the U.S. He
also issued a slew of executive orders, which notably did not include tariffs.
Futures tied to the S&P 500 gained
0.5%, while Nasdaq 100 futures ticked up 0.6%. Dow Jones Industrial Average
futures advanced 221 points, or 0.5%.
Asia
markets live updates: Trump inauguration, South Korea PPI
European stocks head for slightly higher
open as markets assess the impact of Trump 2.0
Published Tue, Jan 21 2025 12:42 AM EST
LONDON — European stocks are expected to
open slightly higher Tuesday as traders digest the first executive orders that
newly inaugurated U.S. President Donald Trump signed on Monday.
The U.K.’s FTSE index is seen opening
10 points higher at 8,531, Germany’s DAX up 4 points at 21,004,
France’s CAC 40 7
points higher at 7,740 and Italy’s FTSE MIB up 44 points at
36,326, according to data from IG.
Global investors will be assessing the
potential impact of Trump’s second term in office following his inauguration as
the 47th president of the U.S. on Monday. After
the ceremony, Trump signed some of his first executive orders before
an audience of 20,000 supporters at the Capital One Arena in Washington.
Trump issued “full pardons” to approximately 1,500 people who were
charged in relation to the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He also
signed an executive order which effectively paused the enforcement of a law
that would ban TikTok in the U.S.
Trump also said Monday that
tariffs of 25% could be levied against Mexico and Canada as soon as early
February.
In other news, European market investors
will be keeping an eye on the
World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this week. The annual event,
which attracts heads of government and business leaders from around the world,
steps up a gear on Tuesday.
While some are skipping Davos — the
leaders of China, India and a number of key European leaders are absent this
year — Trump is due to address participants via videolink on Thursday.
On Tuesday, there are a number of keynote
speeches, with Ursula von der Leyen, head of the European Commission, set to
speak at 10:50 a.m. Davos time (9:50 a.m. London time). Shortly after, Ding
Xuexiang, the vice premier of China, will give a keynote speech at 11:20 a.m.
Follow
CNBC’s WEF live blog here
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will address
the forum at 2 p.m. local time and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will
speak at 2:30 p.m. The forum will be a crucial platform for the president to
present Ukraine’s case ahead of likely pressure from Trump to reach a ceasefire
with Russia to end the war.
Later in the afternoon, Cyril Ramaphosa,
the president of South Africa, will give a keynote at 3:45 p.m. Davos
time.
There are no major earnings releases due
in Europe Tuesday. Data releases include the U.K. unemployment rate for
November and the ZEW indicator of European economic sentiment data.
European markets assess the impact of Trump 2.0, Davos in focus
The FTSE 100 has hit another new high. Next stop
9,000?
Monday 20 January 2025 3:42 pm
The FTSE 100 has hit another all-time high
today of 8,548.59, the second time in two trading days the blue-chip index has
hit a record.
For the first time, the FTSE 100 passed
the 8,500 barrier last week, off the back of hopes that the Bank of England
might cut interest rates more aggressively than expected.
So far this year, the index has returned
4.2 per cent. In comparison, the S&P 500 has added 1.9 per cent.
Now, City analysts are wondering if this
could be the start of something bigger for the index and if it could hit the
key 9,000 level.
“The 9,000 level represents a rise of
approximately six per cent from current levels, so it is by no means unfeasible
that the FTSE 100 could reach this in the coming months,” said Jonathan Unwin,
UK head of portfolio management at Mirabaud Wealth Management.
The FTSE 100 broke the 8,000-point barrier for the first time in
history in February 2023 before quickly falling.
Paul Jackson, global head of asset
allocation research at Invesco, said he expected the 9,000 barrier to be
crossed during 2025 but questioned whether it would manage to stay that high
until the end of the year, as Trump’s policies start to set into the US market.
He added that the FTSE 100 is already
close to its end-of-year prediction of 8,700.
When he made his prediction (8 November),
the index was at 8,173, and Jackson said it “doesn’t take a lot to imagine it
going above 9,000 at some stage,” especially with UK valuations comparably
cheap to the rest of the world.
Adam Vettese, market analyst at Etoro,
added that the FTSE 100’s recent rise felt more like “a platform to build on as
opposed to a peak before the start of a retreat”.
The level of “9,000 is still some distance
away but with key resistance having just been broken, a run-up to that historic
milestone would not be out of the question,” he said.
“When will it go above 10,000? I suspect
that bigger target may have to wait until 2026,” added Jackson.
More
The FTSE 100 has hit another new high. Next stop 9,000?
In other news, in what will be seen in most of the world as covering up American corruption.
Biden in Final Hours Pardons Relatives and Others
to Thwart Trump Reprisals
President Biden used his executive
clemency power to protect people targeted by Donald J. Trump, including five
members of his family as well as Liz Cheney, Anthony S. Fauci and Mark A.
Milley.
Jan. 20, 2025
President Biden granted a wave of
pre-emptive pardons in his final hours in office on Monday to guard members of
his own family and other high-profile figures from a promised campaign of
“retribution” by his incoming successor, Donald J. Trump.
In an extraordinary effort by an outgoing
president to derail political prosecutions by an incoming president, Mr. Biden
pardoned five members of his family, including his brothers James B. Biden and
Francis W. Biden, as well as others targeted by Mr. Trump like Gen.
Mark A. Milley, Dr.
Anthony S. Fauci and former Representative Liz
Cheney.
“I believe in the rule of law, and I am
optimistic that the strength of our legal institutions will ultimately prevail
over politics,” Mr. Biden said in a statement. “But these are exceptional
circumstances, and I cannot in good conscience do nothing. Baseless and
politically motivated investigations wreak havoc on the lives, safety and
financial security of targeted individuals and their families.
“Even when individuals have done nothing
wrong — and in fact have done the right thing — and will ultimately be
exonerated, the mere fact of being investigated or prosecuted can irreparably
damage reputations and finances,” he added.
In addition to his brothers, Mr. Biden
pardoned his sister, Valerie Biden Owens, and her husband, John T. Owens, as
well as Sara Jones Biden, the wife of James Biden. He pardoned all the members
of the bipartisan House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on
the Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters, as well as their staff and the police
officers who testified during their inquiry.
In issuing the pre-emptive pardons, Mr.
Biden effectively turned the president’s constitutional power of forgiveness
into a protective shield against what he maintained would be politically
motivated vengeance. No other president has employed executive clemency in such
a broad and overt way to thwart a successor he believes would abuse his power,
and no other president, not even Mr. Trump, has pardoned so many members of his
own family.
The White House announced the family
pardons with less than 20 minutes left in Mr. Biden’s presidency, after he had
already walked into the Capitol Rotunda to witness the swearing-in of Mr.
Trump.
More
Biden
in Final Hours Pardons Relatives and Others to Thwart Trump Reprisals - The New
York Times
News site focused on Elon Musk to launch
January 20, 2025 10:01 AM ET
News organizations are grappling with how
to cover the overwhelming pace of news expected from the return to power of
President-elect Donald Trump later today. The lawyer and investigative
journalist Judd Legum, founder of the liberal site Popular Information, thinks
he has the answer: focus like a laser on Elon Musk, the richest man in the
world.
Legum says there will be two issues a week
of his publication on Substack, to be called "Musk Watch";
one issue will be dedicated to a deep dive or scoops about Elon Musk, and a
second aggregating the reporting of others to capture Musk's actions and
activities.
He's hired Caleb Ecarma, formerly a
political reporter for Vanity Fair, and hopes to hire more to cover
Musk, the chief of SpaceX and Tesla, owner of the social media platform X
(formerly Twitter), and now the head of DOGE, a new task force charged with advising Trump on how to
radically reorder the federal government.
"I think that he has an unprecedented
combination of wealth, of influence across major industries, and of political
influence," Legum tells NPR. "We really don't know what the
implications of one person having so much influence over a breadth of different
areas will be."
Legum says there should be plenty to write
about.
"He is not just a charlatan who says
wild things and doesn't follow through," Legum says. "He has
accomplished a lot."
Legum says he'll run Musk Watch on the
same principle as Popular Information, embracing "adversarial
journalism." The site has made national news on some of its stories,
including the revelation that a
man whose life sentence commuted by Trump in his first term was subsequently
convicted of domestic violence. Legum reported he shared an attorney with
Donald Trump Jr.
"It's not neutral," Legum says.
"It comes from a progressive perspective, but we're also taking our facts
very seriously and making sure we get the story right."
News site focused on Elon Musk to launch : NPR
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.
Food
Prices Are Rising Again
Bird
flu and bad weather are helping drive up prices for groceries, making things
complicated for families, companies and Trump
Jan.
19, 2025 5:30 am ET
The
specter of rising food prices is
back.
The
cost of groceries in the U.S. increased 1.8% from a year earlier in December,
rising at the fastest pace in more than a
year,
according to Labor Department data released last week. The cost of food overall
was 0.3% higher in December, after increasing 0.4% in November.
There
isn’t one factor. Bird flu is
killing chickens,
cutting egg supplies and sending wholesale prices to a record. Extreme heat and
dry weather in the world’s coffee-growing regions have sent the cost of brews
surging.
Chocolate and cereal makers have raised prices for their products, too.
It
is a problem for
consumers,
who are still acclimating to a stretch of bruising inflation following the
Covid-19 pandemic. Shoppers are picking up more store-branded
groceries and scouring multiple
stores for
the best deals. Grocery prices in December were roughly 28% higher than they were five
years ago, according
to the Labor Department.
An
uptick in the pace of food inflation presents a challenge for the incoming
administration. President-elect Donald Trump campaigned
on consumers’ frustration with inflation, though more recently has acknowledged
it could be hard to cool rising grocery prices.
Some
of the problems underlying food costs, such as disease and bad weather, don’t
have quick policy fixes. Trump’s pledge to implement tariffs on goods from
Canada, China and Mexico, some of America’s top trading partners, could further
roil food-commodity markets.
Heather
Bowman, a Pennsylvania marketing director, said she is still shelling out for
more expensive eggs, because they are a good source of protein for her family
of five. But she has cut back on what she said are less healthy items,
including her 8-year-old son’s favorite chips—now $8 for a family-size bag.
“We’re
just going to have to try other snacks,” Bowman told her son. She recently
opted instead for pretzels on sale.
Eggs
are one of the primary drivers of food inflation. The index for eggs was up 37%
from a year ago, according to the latest Labor Department figures, and the
average retail price of a dozen large eggs increased nearly 14% to $4.15 in
December.
The
price increase is fueled by the deadliest outbreak of avian flu on record,
which first started spreading on U.S. farms in 2022. Egg price surges tend to
be seasonal because wild birds—ducks and geese—migrate during the winter,
carrying the virus to farms as they travel. To limit the virus’s spread, whole
flocks are killed after an infection is confirmed.
Combined
with the more limited supply, demand for eggs tends to peak in December as
grocery stores and food manufacturers stock up for the holiday baking season.
Price increases have helped increase the profits of egg companies, including
Cal-Maine,
the largest U.S. egg producer, whose stock has doubled over the past year.
Prices
were also higher in December at the meat case. Products such as bacon and
breakfast sausage rose 2% in price from November. The Agriculture Department
said this month that it expects higher pork, beef and chicken prices in 2025 as
meatpackers cut back their slaughter rates.
More
Food Prices Are Rising Again - WSJ
III.
It’s Baaaack. Inflation Persists at Higher Rates. Transient? Maybe Not.
January 20, 2025
----Here
are the CPI inflation rates for the last four months of 2024: September: 2.4%.
October: 2.6%. November 2.7%. December (most recent available): 2.9%. That’s a
0.5 percentage point increase in inflation since last August.
It’s moving in the wrong direction. Inflation was also 2.9% in July 2024,
meaning that there has been no material progress in five months despite some
ups and downs along the way. Analysts paid almost no attention to this headline
number. They immediately went to “core” CPI (excluding food and fuel),
“super-core” CPI (excluding food, fuel and housing), and the producer price
index (PPI) all of which showed more moderate increases or actual declines.
That’s fine if you don’t eat, drive a car or live in a house. Most people do.
CPI is what people actually pay for the things they actually consume. I’ll
leave the variations for economists with nothing better to do. The fact is
prices for everyday Americans are not only still going up, but they’re also
going up at a faster tempo. We’ll see what the Fed does with interest rates at
their FOMC meeting on January 29th. They believe that unemployment
is “normalizing.” Inflation is not. That could mean no rate cut, just a pause.
And that could be very bad news for stocks.
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
My husband has been left disabled by the Covid vaccine
20 January 2025
Whenever Kate and Jamie Scott's seven-year-old son writes a card for his daddy, it
contains the same fervent wish.
'He always says 'I hope
you feel better soon, daddy', because he doesn't understand that you can't get
better from a brain injury the size of a credit card,' says Kate.
The bewilderment of her
eldest boy and his four-year-old brother is 'another layer of heartbreak', as
36-year-old Kate puts it, on top of everything she and her husband have already
endured – and they have endured a great deal.
Three years ago in April,
Jamie suffered a catastrophic bleed on the brain after being given the AstraZeneca Covid vaccine.
Doctors were convinced it
was a death sentence but, astonishingly, the previously fit and athletic then
44-year-old – a keen skier, mountain biker and runner – pulled through. A
'walking miracle', in Kate's words.
He is far from the same
man, however. His vision is impaired, he can no longer hold down his
high-flying software engineer job, drive a car, or follow complex
conversations.
The toll it has taken on
the family has required a huge amount of adjustment. To make matters worse, it
has been unfolding against a backdrop in which the Scotts – and the dozens of
others like them who have lost loved ones or watched them battle grievous
consequences following an adverse reaction to the Covid vaccine – feel they
have been silenced.
'I have had people stop
talking to me and walk away when I describe what happened to Jamie,' Kate says.
'If I said he'd had a bike accident, I think people would always say how sorry
they were. But with this, people either question whether it's true or just
don't want to talk about it. It's such a taboo subject; our circle of family
and friends is much smaller because of it, which has been hard to come to terms
with. It's the same for many in our position. We've been made to feel like an
uncomfortable truth.'
Equally difficult to
navigate, she says, is the Government's compensation scheme (known as the
Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme, or VDPS), currently limited to a payout of just
£120,000 – and even then, only when those affected have gone through a
draconian process in which they are judged on whether they meet 'the threshold'
for payment, a brutally specific figure of '60 per cent or more disabled'.
The severity of Jamie's
condition means that he easily met that criteria – a bittersweet moment for
Kate, who says she 'cried and cried' when receiving the news over the phone.
'Because now it's been
confirmed in black and white that the vaccine caused his injury, and he's 60
per cent disabled, and that is our 'win'. But it's not a win, is it? That's our
life now. And £120,000 doesn't touch the sides of what we have lost in terms of
income, and will lose over the decades to come.'
It is one reason that
Kate has fought so passionately for the voices of vaccine victims to be heard
at the ongoing Covid-19 Inquiry, a desire which was fulfilled last week when,
on Wednesday, she gave evidence for half an hour on their behalf.
More
My husband has been left disabled by the Covid vaccine
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.
How EV Owners
Are Tuning Their Cars To Make Them Faster
January
19, 2025
Electric
vehicles often dominate in drag racing. Full power from the word "Go"
and the precision of electric motors results in neck-spraining straight-line
sprints and heart
rate elevating 0-60 mph dashes. When we discuss EV
performance, the Tesla Model S
Plaid is one of the most notable models in the sporty EV segment.
And the new Model 3 Performance isn't far behind, with an
affordable price and a 0 to 60 mph time of 2.9 seconds.
Even
though it is a
ludicrous machine capable of outrunning supercars, what
if that performance wasn't enough? Several upgrades can be made to electric
vehicles to improve performance.
EVs
are now a part of daily life, which means tuners naturally want in on that
action. That's why we're exploring this new avenue of car tuning. This article
will only focus on technology specifically designed for electric vehicles and
that is available to the public.
It
should come as no surprise that the aftermarket support for electric vehicles
is incomparable to the aftermarket as a whole. While small, enough suppliers
and parts manufacturers produce appealing products to improve electric vehicle
performance. The easiest modifications that can be made to an electric vehicle
to increase performance would be better and larger brakes, upgraded suspension,
aerodynamic elements, and better tires. These components would allow for better
braking, better body control, better road-holding, and, as a bonus, improved
visual appeal.
Brakes
Let's
start with brakes. Typically, the solution for better brakes is bigger ones,
and carbon
ceramic brakes would be best when bigger ones are not feasible. High-performance
electric vehicles like the Porsche Taycan
Turbo GT rely on large, lightweight carbon ceramic brakes. Still,
an aftermarket set of carbon ceramic brakes would come at a hefty cost. Beyond
the rotors, brake lines, brake cooling ducts, and high-performance brake pads
would be essential components to improve braking performance further.
Suspension
Suspension
systems for electric vehicles are easy to acquire, with certain brands and
manufacturers catering exclusively to electric vehicles. A notable example
is Unplugged
Performance, which had previously worked on Joe Rogan's Tesla Model S Plaid.
This company offers an array of bolt-on
components specifically for Teslas. As far as suspension
goes, there is no limit, with the main deciding factor being how much of the
vehicle's original suspension an owner would want to be replaced, which can
include the control arms, trailing arms, camber arms, coilovers, and bushings.
---- Typically,
tuning an electric vehicle's ECU means tuning its electric motor software,
adjusting the vehicle power delivery protocols, and adjusting its regenerative
braking systems and software. Changing these aspects of an EV's ECU results in
improved performance, which could mean better acceleration abilities, higher
top speeds, improved energy recovery during regenerative braking, and allows
for thermal management system adjustment to maintain optimal operating
temperatures for a modified EV setup.
Other
aftermarket solutions focus on specific aspects of an electric vehicle's
operation. DTE Systems offers a tuning solution called the PedalBox, a tuning
system that improves throttle response and changes the characteristics of the
accelerator pedal to offer better acceleration. It's important to remember that
the easy part is buying the components; the hard part is finding someone
capable of tuning these components and electric vehicles without introducing
any unwanted risks and issues. Improper tuning could result in an electric
vehicle's battery and motor systems being damaged, while at the very least, it
would void the vehicle's warranty.
More
How EV Owners Are
Tuning Their Cars To Make Them Faster
Next, the
world global debt clock. Nations debts to GDP compared.
World Debt
Clocks (usdebtclock.org)
The
task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have
not been. The public does not fully understand the world into which it is
going. Leaders must invoke an alchemy of great vision. Those leaders who do not
are ultimately judged failures, even though they may be popular at the moment.
Henry
A. Kissinger.
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