Baltic
Dry Index. 809 -06
Brent Crude 76.24
Spot Gold 2928 US 2 Year Yield 4.28 -0.01
US Federal Debt. 36.464 trillion!
The number one problem in today's generation and economy is the lack of financial literacy.
Alan Greenspan.
If history repeats, get ready for the re-run of the 1930s, but with massive global and consumer debts.
While we are only one week in to our new trade war re-run, there’s little reason to expect a different outcome to the 1930s outcome, although in our debt fuelled, AI roaring 20s, algo computer driven modern world, achieving the next global depression will likely happen faster.
Asia-Pacific markets trade mixed as investors
assess Trump tariffs
Updated Tue, Feb 11 2025 11:06 PM EST
Asia-Pacific markets traded mixed Tuesday
as investors assessed U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff campaign.
Trump on Monday signed an order imposing 25% tariffs on imports of
steel and aluminum into the U.S.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 traded
around the flatline. South Korea’s Kospi rose 0.72%, while the
small-cap Kosdaq climbed 0.35%.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index slipped
0.56%, while the mainland China’s CSI 300 dipped 0.36%.
Japan markets were closed for a holiday.
Singapore’s benchmark Straits Times Index slipped
0.44% after it hit an all-time intraday high of 3,910.12 on Monday.
India’s benchmark Nifty 50 was down 0.32%,
while the BSE Sensex index traded around the flatline.
Overnight in the U.S., the three major
averages closed higher as major tech names outperformed. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added
167.01 points, or 0.38%, led by a 4.8% gain in McDonald’s. The 30-stock index
closed at 44,470.41. The S&P
500 gained 0.67% to end at 6,066.44, and the Nasdaq Composite climbed
0.98% to 19,714.27.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell is
slated speak before Congress later in the day.
Asia markets live updates: Trump tariffs on steel and aluminum imports
McDonald’s revenue disappoints as U.S. customers
spend less at its restaurants
Published Mon, Feb 10 2025 12:01 AM EST
McDonald’s on
Monday reported disappointing
quarterly revenue, dragged down by weaker-than-expected sales at its U.S.
restaurants following an E. coli outbreak just weeks into the quarter.
Shares of the company fell less than 1% in
premarket trading.
Here’s what the company reported compared
with what Wall Street was expecting, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG:
The fast-food giant reported
fourth-quarter net income of $2.02 billion, or $2.80 per share, down from $2.04
billion, or $2.80 per share, a year earlier.
Excluding gains tied to the sale of its
South Korean business, transaction costs for buying its Israeli franchise and
other items, McDonald’s earned $2.83 per share.
Net sales of $6.39 billion were roughly
flat compared with the year-ago period.
The company’s overall same-store sales
growth of 0.4% outperformed Wall Street’s expectations of same-store sales
declines of 1%, according to StreetAccount estimates.
But McDonald’s U.S. business reported a
steeper-than-expected drop in its same-store sales. Same-store sales at the
company’s domestic restaurants fell 1.4% in the quarter; Wall Street was
projecting same-store sales declines of 0.6%.
McDonald’s said traffic was slightly
positive, but customers spent less than usual during the quarter. Over the
summer, the chain rolled out a $5 combo meal to bring back price-conscious
diners and reverse sluggish sales. The strategy worked, helping McDonald’s U.S.
same-store sales tick up in the third quarter. However, analysts have warned
that value meals only work if customers also add menu items that aren’t
discounted to their orders.
The biggest hit to McDonald’s U.S. sales
came in late October, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
linked a fatal E. coli outbreak to its Quarter Pounder burgers. McDonald’s
switched suppliers for its slivered onions, the ingredient fingered as the
likely culprit for the outbreak. In early December, the CDC declared the
outbreak officially over.
However, in the days following the news of
the outbreak, traffic at McDonald’s U.S. restaurants fell steeply, particularly
in the states affected.
Outside the U.S., sales were stronger.
Both of McDonald’s international divisions reported same-store sales increases,
bolstering the company’s overall performance.
More
McDonald's (MCD)
Q4 2024 earnings
The Truth About Trump’s Steel Tariffs
His first-term levies hurt consumers and
U.S. manufacturers.
By The
Editorial Board Updated Feb.
10, 2025 6:43 pm ET
President Trump gave the economy another
jolt of uncertainty on Monday when he signed executive orders imposing 25%
tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports. His advisers say these tariffs are
economically “strategic” rather than a bargaining chip for some other goal. Is
the strategy to harm U.S. manufacturers and workers?
That’s what his first-term tariffs did,
and it’s worth revisiting the damage of that blunder as he threatens to repeat
it. In March 2018, Mr. Trump announced 25% tariffs on steel and 10% on aluminum
under the pretext of protecting national security. Then, as now, most U.S.
metal imports came from allies including Canada, Mexico, Europe, South Korea
and Japan.
Mr. Trump said tariffs were needed to
boost domestic steel and aluminum production. But U.S. production was already
increasing amid a surge in capital investment unleashed by his deregulation and
2017 tax reform. U.S. steel capacity utilization climbed to 78.5% in March 2018
from 72.4% in December 2016.
More, subscription required.
The
Truth About Trump’s Steel Tariffs - WSJ
Trump tariffs are ‘punitive,’ former U.S.
ambassador to Singapore says, warns of U.S. job losses
Published Mon, Feb 10 2025 11:59 PM EST
Tariffs proposed by U.S. President Donald
Trump are not simply symbolic, but are punitive and will “cost jobs” in the
U.S., according to Frank Lavin, former U.S. ambassador to Singapore.
Speaking to CNBC’s “Street Signs Asia,” Lavin
said that “we’re in for a bit of bad news in the near term,” adding that the
tariffs will also hurt the auto industry in the U.S.
“It will obligate other countries to
respond. So we’re going to see deterioration, and I think worst of all, from
Mr. Trump’s point of view, is we’re going to see a little bit of inflationary
pressure as well,” Lavin said.
Trump on
Monday signed executive orders implementing 25% tariffs on imports of
steel and aluminum into the U.S.
When asked if Trump could be using tariffs
and the threat of tariffs as a bargaining chip, Lavin explained that it could
be seen as such, if tariffs were targeted at Canada or Mexico to elicit a
response on issues like border security.
“But when you’re talking about a global
tariff on steel and aluminum and a tariff on China, you’re not going to see a
quick response and a quick resolution of these matters,” he said.
Furthermore, with Trump vowing a
“reciprocal” stance on tariffs, Lavin said that the world will see a
deterioration in trade, and this will make it difficult for other countries to
respond. “So he’s gone beyond simply signaling or simply establishing tariffs
as a bargaining chip.”
More
Trump
tariffs are 'punitive,' former U.S. ambassador to Singapore says, warns of U.S.
job losses.
What the ‘mother of all trade wars’ can teach us
about U.S. tariffs, according to economists
Published Wed, Feb 5 2025 9:53 AM EST Updated
Wed, Feb 5 2025 11:34 AM EST
A trade war is brewing — and, if history
is any guide, the U.S. economy may not be too happy about it.
President Donald Trump on Saturday levied
a 10% additional tariff on all imports from China starting Tuesday. In
response, China retaliated
with its own tariffs of up to 15% on select U.S. imports, starting
Feb. 10.
Experts believe these are just the initial
salvos of a broader trade war between the two nations.
Meanwhile, the U.S. is on the
precipice of a trade spat with Canada and Mexico. Trump has also
threatened to impose tariffs on the European Union — and, if that happens, the
nations have vowed retribution.
“I will never support the idea of fighting
allies,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said Monday. “But of course, if the U.S. puts tough terms
on Europe, we need a collective and robust response.
The current animosity bears many
similarities to an earlier episode in U.S. history — the Tariff Act of 1930 —
which triggered an all-out trade war and exacerbated the Great Depression,
according to economic historians.
The law, known as the Smoot-Hawley Tariff,
was “one of the most controversial tariff acts ever enacted by Congress,” Doug
Irwin, an economics professor at Dartmouth College and past president of the
Economic History Association, wrote in 2020.
It was also the last instance of a trade
war involving the U.S., prior to Trump’s first term, said Kris James Mitchener,
an economics professor at Santa Clara University who studies economic history
and political economy.
Smoot-Hawley sparked “the mother of all
trade wars,” Mitchener said.
---- Among Smoot-Hawley’s chief aims
was to safeguard U.S. farmers, who had expanded agricultural
production during WWI but suffered after the war as European production came
back online and prices collapsed, Mitchener said.
However, Congress expanded the scope of the tariffs considerably,
extending beyond agriculture to include all sectors of the economy. The
law got its name from its chief Republican supporters in Congress: Rep. Willis
Hawley of Oregon, chair of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, and
Sen. Reed Smoot of Utah, who chaired the Senate Finance Committee.
Smoot-Hawley was “broad,” putting tariffs
on roughly 25% of all goods imported to the U.S. — about 800 to 900 different
types of goods, Mitchener said.
President Herbert Hoover, who had run for
the office on a platform of helping farmers with protective tariffs, signed the
law in June 1930, ignoring a petition signed by more than 1,000 economists asking him to
veto the bill.
The law raised dutiable tariffs — tariffs
on goods subject to import duties — by about 6 percentage points, on average,
Mitchener said.
While that may not sound like much, those
duties sparked a trade war with major U.S. trading partners, which was perhaps
their “most important ramification,” wrote Irwin of Dartmouth College.
Smoot-Hawley raised the average tariff on
dutiable imports to 47% from 40%, Irwin said. Depression-era price deflation
ultimately helped push that average to almost 60% in 1932, he added.
Nine nations — Argentina, Australia,
Canada, Cuba, France, Italy, Mexico, Spain and Switzerland — imposed
retaliatory tariffs directed specifically at U.S. products, Mitchener
said.
“Canada, which was heavily dependent on
the U.S. market, retaliated almost immediately and imposed tariffs significant
enough to put a sizable dent into American exports,” Irwin wrote.
That “tit-for-tat response” with targeted
tariffs is the hallmark of a trade war, Mitchener said.
Other nations formed trade blocs that
excluded the U.S., Irwin wrote. Ultimately, 35 governments lodged official
protests against Smoot-Hawley, Mitchener said.
The result: Global trade collapsed,
exacerbating the Great Depression, which was the worst economic downturn in
U.S. history, economists said. U.S. exports to retaliating nations fell by
about 28% to 32%, said Mitchener. Further, nations that protested Smoot-Hawley also reduced their U.S. imports by 15% to 23%.
More
How Smoot-Hawley Tariff sparked the 'mother of all trade wars'
In other news.
Egypt announces emergency Arab summit after
Trump’s Gaza plan infuriates key allies
Updated 4:01 PM GMT, February 9, 2025
CAIRO (AP) — Egypt announced Sunday that
it will host an emergency Arab summit on Feb. 27 to discuss “new and dangerous
developments” after U.S. President Donald Trump proposed to
resettle Palestinians from
the Gaza Strip.
Trump’s
suggestion, made
at a White House meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last
week, infuriated the Arab world, including Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia — key
allies of Washington.
Both Egyptian President Abdel Fattah
el-Sissi and Jordanian King Abdullah II dismissed Trump’s call to
resettle 1.8
million Palestinians in Gaza and for the U.S. to take ownership of the enclave,
but Trump claims that they would eventually accept it.
A statement from Egypt’s Foreign Ministry
said it would host the Arab League summit in Cairo following talks at the
highest level in Arab countries in recent days, “including the state of
Palestine that asked to hold the summit in order to discuss new and dangerous
developments for the Palestinian cause.”
Egypt announces
emergency Arab summit after Trump's Gaza plan infuriates key allies | AP News
Trump Says Palestinians Wouldn’t Have Right to
Return to Gaza
President says Palestinians would get
‘much better housing’ in neighboring countries
By Tarini Parti Updated Feb. 10, 2025 6:16 pm ET
WASHINGTON—President Trump said
Palestinians wouldn’t have the right to return to Gaza under his new
plan to rebuild the territory, adding that they would get “much better
housing” instead in neighboring countries.
“In other words, I’m talking about
building a permanent place for them because if they have to return now, it’ll
be years before you could ever—it’s not habitable,” Trump said in an interview
with Fox News’s Bret Baier that was conducted before Sunday’s Super Bowl. “It
would be years before it could happen.”
The president’s latest comments come after
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters last week
that any Palestinian relocation would
be temporary. She also said taxpayers wouldn’t cover the cost of developing
the territory. Trump’s aides have tried to clarify the president’s plan after
he surprised even some in his own White House when he announced it.
Asked by Baier if displaced Palestinians
would have the right to return to Gaza, Trump said, “No, they wouldn’t.”
Trump’s proposal to take long-term
control of Gaza, which he unveiled standing next to Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a press conference, has already caused
some discord within the Republican Party, which has been largely united since
the election. Several Republican lawmakers have expressed skepticism of the
effort.
Major Middle East powers have rejected Trump’s plan. Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab
Emirates and Qatar have rejected evictions, while the Palestinian Authority and
Hamas said they wouldn’t support an evacuation of Gaza. Jordan’s King
Abdullah is expected to meet with Trump at the White House on Tuesday. The
president plans to raise his Gaza
proposal during the meeting, according to an administration official.
Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on
Monday that he would “maybe” consider withholding aid from countries who
decline to take Palestinians leaving Gaza.
In the Fox News interview, Trump also
appeared to suggest that Gaza would belong to him and compared it to a
real-estate project.
more
Trump
Says Palestinians Wouldn’t Have Right to Return to Gaza - WSJ
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.
EU
to retaliate over tariffs imposed by the US: France
Mon
Feb 10, 2025 01:53 PM
The
European Union will retaliate by replicating any tariffs imposed on it by the
United States, the French foreign minister said on Monday, warning Washington
against a trade war.
"There
is no hesitation when it comes to defending our interests," Jean-Noel
Barrot said in an interview with TF1 after US President Donald Trump announced
on Sunday that Washington will move this week to impose 25-percent tariffs on
steel and aluminium products.
Asked
whether France and the European Union would retaliate against the measures
announced by Trump, Barrot said: "Of course. It's not a surprise. This is
already what Donald Trump did in 2018" (during his first term as
president).
"At
that time we replicated. So we will replicate again this time," he said.
Asked
what measures of retaliation would be agreed, Barrot replied that it was up to
the European commission to decide what sectors would be targeted.
"No
one has an interest in entering into a trade war with the European Union,"
he warned.
The
tariffs on steel and aluminium imports were the latest in a slew of trade
levies the US leader has announced that have raised fears of a global trade
war.
French
President Emmanuel Macron told CNN that the EU should not be a "top
priority" for the United States after Trump's repeated threats to target
the bloc.
"Is
the European Union your first problem? No, I don't think so. Your first problem
is China, so you should focus on the first problem," he said, adding that
the EU must be ready to react to US actions.
All of Donald
Trump's tariffs and threatened trade actions | The Daily Star
Worst jobs slump since pandemic in wake of Budget ‘gloom’
10
February 2025
New
job openings have fallen at their fastest pace since the pandemic amid
widespread “gloom” in the wake of Rachel Reeves’s Budget.
The volume
of permanent vacancies in the UK dropped for the 15th month in a row in
January and at the fastest pace since August 2020, according to KPMG and the
Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC). Vacancies for temporary workers
also fell sharply.
The
Chancellor’s tax raid on employers’ National Insurance contributions was blamed
for the slowdown,
as was Angela Rayner’s overhaul of workers’ rights.
Businesses
face a collective £25bn increase in National Insurance contributions from
April. Companies will be made to pay sums equivalent to 15pc of their
employees’ annual salaries, above an earnings threshold of £175 per week.
Labour
is also currently consulting on plans to give workers the right to take
employers to tribunal and claim sick pay from day one in a job; ban zero hours
contracts; and hand greater power to unions in the workplace.
Neil
Carberry, chief executive of the REC, said: “Businesses entered the year
uncertain on the growth path, and that has driven a ‘wait and see’ approach to
hiring.
“An
autumn of fiscal gloom, difficulty navigating significant upcoming tax rises
and little progress on the practicalities of a costly new approach to
employment rights are all acting as brakes on progress.”
The
survey adds to the growing body of evidence suggesting Labour has snuffed out
momentum in the economy since coming to power. Ministers have been accused of
stifling growth by talking down the economy and targeting businesses in the
Budget.
The
Bank of England last week halved
its growth forecast for
the coming year, predicting the UK will grow by just 0.75pc in 2025 rather than
1.5pc as previously forecast. Unemployment is also expected to rise to 4.75pc
by the end of the year, from 4.4pc currently.
The
Bank last week cut interest rates to 4.5pc in an effort to stimulate the
economy and signalled more cuts were likely.
----Hiring
fell across all job categories, with the sharpest drops seen in recruitment for
executive and professional positions. Vacancies for administrative jobs and
positions in IT and computing also fell sharply.
Increases
in workers’ pay waned in January as lay-offs and the slowdown in hiring weighed
on employees’ power to negotiate higher salaries. Salaries grew at the softest
pace since March 2021.
More
Worst jobs slump
since pandemic in wake of Budget ‘gloom’
Covid-19
Corner
This
section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
No,
Moderna Did Not Create Its COVID Vaccine Two Years Before the Pandemic
Alex
Demas Fri, February 7, 2025 at 9:37 PM
GMT
An image that is
spreading widely online claims that Moderna had created its COVID-19 vaccine
two years before the pandemic began—proof that health authorities had planned
the pandemic in advance. “Moderna CEO confessed to creating the Covid-19
vaccine 2 years before the virus was released to the world,” the image reads.
“This means that they knew Covid was coming, that it was pre-planned,
pre-meditated, and launched on the world for profit and power. God we pray for
exposure and justice for Dr. Fauci, Bill Gates, and the pharmaceutical industry
in Jesus’ name. Amen!”
The
claim is false. While the novel technology used by Moderna in its COVID-19
vaccine was being researched and developed years before COVID-19 emerged, the
COVID-19 vaccine itself was created after the outbreak was first identified in
China.
When
COVID-19 was first identified in China in December 2019, health officials
immediately began laying the groundwork for development of an effective vaccine
against it. At the time, a decades-long effort to create a vaccine
platform that leveraged messenger RNA (mRNA) to trigger the body’s immune
response was just coming to fruition.
“It
was an extraordinary piece of good fortune, but chance favors the prepared
mind,” Dr. Chris Beyrer, epidemiologist and director of Duke University’s
Global Health Institute, told The Dispatch Fact Check. And prepared
vaccine researchers were.
Public
health authorities and private medical companies had been exploring the
application of mRNA technology to novel and existing coronaviruses long before
COVID-19 emerged. Deadly outbreaks of SARS in 2002
and MERS in 2012—both
respiratory illnesses caused by coronaviruses believed to originate in
bats—prompted focused research into mitigation and prevention of future
coronaviruses. “There had been a lot of concern about this family of bat
coronaviruses for some years,” Beyrer said. Specifically, public health
authorities were worried that SARS or MERS might reemerge with epidemic
potential.
The
prospect of using mRNA as a tool for vaccination was identified as early as the
1990s, but a breakthrough in 2005 by
Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman—the pair would go on to win the 2023 Nobel
Prize in
Medicine for their research—demonstrated that mRNA could be delivered in a way
that activated the body’s immune system and induced the production of
antibodies to fight a specific disease. “Many people would credit that as the
beginning of the idea that, okay, maybe we could use this as a vaccine delivery
system,” Beyrer said.
More
No, Moderna Did Not Create Its COVID Vaccine Two Years Before the Pandemic
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.
Never seen
before quantum state discovered in graphene could advance computing
Rupendra
Brahambhatt Sun, February 9, 2025 at
9:10 AM GMT
Graphene,
also known as the wonder material, continues to surprise scientists. This time,
it has revealed new quantum states. A team of researchers has found peculiar
topological electronic crystals in twisted graphene layers.
Their
study highlights a special way to arrange electrons
in graphene, where they freeze into a perfectly ordered pattern.
Surprisingly, while staying locked in place, all the electrons spin together
like ballet dancers performing synchronized pirouettes without moving.
This
unusual quantum behavior allows electric current to flow smoothly along the
edges of the material while the interior remains non-conductive because the
electrons are stuck in place.
In the
future, such quantum states can be utilized for the development of
energy-efficient electronic devices and fault-tolerant quantum computing
applications.
Topology
is the study of shapes and spaces that don’t change even if they are stretched,
twisted, or deformed—without cutting or gluing.
“An
everyday example of topology is the Möbius strip—a simple yet mind-bending
object. Amazingly, no matter how you try to manipulate the strip, you cannot
untwist it back into a normal loop without tearing it apart,” the study authors
note.
A
material exhibiting topology is of great importance because it has the uncanny
ability to remain unaffected by external factors. Such a material can
demonstrate robust quantum behavior, as its quantum
states in such material are immune to small disturbances.
For
instance, topological electronic crystals like the one mentioned in the current
study are quite special. In these unique crystals, electrons move in a very
stable way, no matter if there are small defects or impurities in the material.
What
makes them special is that their stability comes from the material’s internal
structure and not from outside influences like temperature or pressure.
However, these
crystals are rare because only certain materials have
the right atomic arrangement to support topological electron behavior.
----When
electrons moved through this twisted structure, their behavior completely
changed. “For example, the electrons slow way down, and sometimes they develop
a twist in their motion, like the vortex in the water at the drain of a bathtub
as it is draining out,” Joshua Folk, one of the study authors and a physics
professor at the University of British Columbia (UBC), said.
This
behavior resulted in a strange electronic effect. Inside the material,
electrons became frozen in place, making it act like an insulator. However,
along the edges, electrons moved effortlessly, allowing electricity to flow
without resistance.
Generally,
when electrons freeze and settle down such a structure is called the Wigner
crystal. However, in this case, the rotational motion of electrons along
the edges resulted in something different — the topological electronic crystal.
Generally,
when electrons freeze and settle down such a structure is called the Wigner
crystal. However, in this case, the rotational motion of electrons along
the edges resulted in something different — the topological electronic crystal.
“The
rotation of the electrons in the crystal is analogous to the twist in the
Möbius strip and leads to the remarkable characteristic of the topological
electronic crystal never before seen in the rare cases where electron crystals
have been observed in the past,” the study authors said.
This
rare discovery could contribute to the development of highly efficient
electronic and quantum computing applications.
Never seen before
quantum state discovered in graphene could advance computing
Next, the
world global debt clock. Nations debts to GDP compared.
World Debt
Clocks (usdebtclock.org)
The
abandonment of the gold standard made it possible for the welfare statists to
use the banking system as a means to an unlimited expansion of credit. In the
absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from
confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. Deficit
spending is simply a scheme for the hidden confiscation of wealth. Gold stands
in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property
rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the
statists' antagonism toward the gold standard.
Alan
Greenspan.
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