Baltic
Dry Index. 1280 -24
Brent Crude 66.30
Spot Gold 3224 US 2 Year Yield 4.02 +0.04
US Federal Debt. 36.846 trillion!!!
As markets soared on a
truce in the trade war between the US and China, Citadel founder Ken Griffin reflected on the past month,
suggesting it would have been better to sit on the sidelines in cash. “It’s
been a really difficult time for fundamental investors because so much of the
value of the companies that we invest in is being dictated by very quickly
changing policies from Washington,” Griffin, 56, said in an interview.
Trump Touts Saudi US-Investment Pledge That May Hit $1 Trillion - Bloomberg
Has the relief rally and short covering rally in the stock casinos already ended?
While it’s too early to know for certain, in the real global economy, the disruption to the just in time global supply chains is now starting to show up.
What if the US v China 90 day tariff pause isn’t made permanent?
What if the Trump v EU tariff war isn’t ended but extended?
Well we’ll know by about mid-August if not sooner.
Asia-Pacific markets trade mixed as U.S.-China
tensions ease
Updated Wed, May 14 2025 10:35 PM EDT
Asia-Pacific markets traded mixed
Wednesday after key Wall Street benchmarks rose on easing U.S.-China trade
tensions.
Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 slipped 0.68%,
giving up gains after four consecutive positive sessions. South Korea’s Kospi rose 0.53%.
Australia’s benchmark S&P/ASX 200 was
flat.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index rose
0.96% while mainland China’s CSI 300 traded flat.
Wall Street rebounded after the U.S. and
China reached a temporary truce on tariffs earlier this week. The development
led to stocks surging with the Dow gaining more than 1,000 points Monday.
At current levels, however, Julius Baer
strategists remain cautious, adding that the bank “does not share the
prevailing optimism” regarding a quick resolution of the trade conflict.
“Even if new deals are announced, they are
likely to involve complex conditions and protracted implementation timelines,
making a full rollback of tariffs to pre-conflict levels unlikely,” the bank
said in a Tuesday note.
Investors will be keeping an eye on Asian
chip stocks after shares of Nvidia jumped following CEO Jensen Huang’s remarks
that the
company will sell more than 18,000 of its latest artificial intelligence chips to
Saudi firm Humain, a new AI startup owned by the country’s Public Investment
Fund.
U.S. stock futures were little changed as
Wall Street looks to extend a strong start to the week. Futures tied to
the S&P 500 were
flat, as were Nasdaq 100
futures. Dow Jones
Industrial Average futures added 30 points, or less than 0.1%.
Overnight stateside, the three major
averages closed mixed. The S&P
500 rose, clawing back into positive territory for the year as
investors extended the sharp gains seen in the previous session. The broad
market index gained 0.72% to close at 5,886.55, while the Nasdaq Composite climbed
1.61% to end at 19,010.08.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average lagged,
losing 269.67 points, or 0.64%, as a nearly 18% drop in shares of UnitedHealth pressured the
benchmark.
Asia-Pacific markets live: Asia chip stocks, U.S.-China trade
Up next, more Bidenism?
Trump’s Middle East trip marked by potential
private business conflicts
May 13, 2025
President Donald Trump kicks off the first
major international trip of his second term Tuesday in a region where his
family business has grown significantly in recent months, presenting his
administration with more potential conflicts of interest than ever.
The president’s sons, who head the Trump
Organization, have spent the past few weeks crisscrossing the Middle East,
laying the groundwork for deals that will benefit the company and, in some
instances, Trump himself. Government watchdogs, presidential historians and
other critics say it is an escalation of unethical and even unconstitutional
conflicts between the interests of the United States and its president.
A week before Trump was scheduled to land
in Saudi Arabia for a trip that would also take him to Qatar and the United
Arab Emirates, his son Eric spoke to a
crowded convention center in Dubai about the Trump Organization’s
plans to build an 80-floor hotel and residential tower there. He boasted that
the “incredible icon” would “redefine luxury” and have the highest
infinity-edge pool in the world, overlooking the towering Burj Khalifa
building.
“On behalf of myself, on behalf of my
family,” he said, “we love Dubai. … We have such a great relationship between
the United States and just one of the greatest places and I’m glad to call so
many of you friends.”
Trump’s relationship with the Persian Gulf
states offers insight into the instincts of a lifelong businessman who has made
a career of selling. Trump has notably declined to duplicate his first-term
pledge to not advance his personal business interests from the White House, but
he has also managed to evade efforts by Congress and the courts to rein in his
potential conflicts.
Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump have
appeared at events in the region to advance deals including cryptocurrency and
luxury penthouses, signaling the family intends to continue to pursue
international deals even as Donald Trump leads U.S. foreign policy in the
region.
Qatar, where the president is scheduled to
visit Wednesday, has previously paid his attorney general, FBI director and
head of the Environmental Protection Agency, among others, to lobby or consult
on behalf of the country and its royal family, a Washington Post review of
Foreign Agents Registration Act filings and disclosures found.
Trump himself has appeared unconcerned
about conflicts of interest.
On Monday, he spoke glowingly of a $400 million Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet that Qatar has
offered as a gift, which would become Air Force One for the duration of his
presidency and then turned over to his presidential library foundation.
“I think it’s a great gesture from Qatar.
I appreciate it very much,” Trump said of what he has called a “palace in the
sky.” “I would never be one to turn down that kind of offer. I mean, I could be
a stupid person [and] say, ‘No, we don’t want a free, very expensive airplane.’
But it was — I thought it was a great gesture.”
Two weeks ago, Eric Trump entered into an
agreement to build the $5.5 billion Trump International Golf Club, Simaisma —
“a beachside ultra luxury community” in Qatar that the company said will boast
an 18-hole golf course and luxury villas emblazoned with Trump’s name.
The president will end his trip in Abu
Dhabi, where his family’s cryptocurrency venture, already at the center of
allegations of corruption, is increasingly intertwined with Middle Eastern
investment. Last week, an investment firm backed by Abu Dhabi said it plans to
plow $2 billion into the venture.
More
Trump’s Middle East
trip marked by potential private business conflicts
In other news, after losing a trade war with China, Trump attempts to take on the EU over big pharma.
But big pharma has many dirty tricks ways to hit back. Just make a slightly different variant drug for the cheaper Africa, Asia, and Europe all priced differently, and claim the variants are specifically adapted for the rest of the world and only leave the American version available in the higher priced USA, for one.
And don’t think for one moment avaricious big pharma doesn’t have a hundred or more such dirty tricks, including defunding MAGA and funding socialist Democrats.
After killing the conservatives in Canada and Australia, can we get some grown-ups thinking in the District of Crooks and soon?
Trump calls European Union ‘nastier than China’
13 May 2025
President Donald Trump said the European
Union is ‘nastier than China’ while announcing an order to slash prescription
drug and pharmaceutical prices for Americans. Trump condemned the EU hours
after the US and China reached a deal to cut reciprocal tariffs against each
other and deescalate their trade war. ‘European Union is in many ways nastier
than China, OK, we just started with them,’ Trump said from the White House on
Monday morning. We have all the cards. They treat us very unfairly. They sell
us 13million cars. We sell them none. They sell us their agricultural products.
We sell them for virtually none. They don’t take our products. That gives us
all the cards. And it’s very unfair’
According to the European Automobile
Manufacturers Association’s March fact sheet, there were actually 750,000
vehicles exported from the EU to the US, versus about 170,000 exported from the
US to Europe, in 2024. Trump declared that the EU does not pay its fair share
for drugs and that the bloc needs to in order to lower prices for Americans.
‘Europe’s going to have to pay a little bit more. The rest of the world is
going to have to pay a little bit more,’ he said. ‘And America is going to pay
a lot less’
Trump signed an executive order setting a
30-day deadline for drugmakers to lower the cost of prescription drugs in
America, or face further action by the federal government to see it through. He
said the US ‘will no longer subsidize the healthcare of foreign countries’ that
pay a small fraction of what Americans pay for the same drug. ‘European Union
has been brutal, brutal. And the drug companies actually told me stories which
is just brutal how they forced them,’ Trump said. ‘European Union suing all our
companies – Apple, Google, Meta – they’re suing all of our companies. They have
judges that are European Union-centric and they get rewarded $15billion,
$17billion, $20billion, and they use that to run their operation. Not going to
happen any longer, that I can tell you’
US Health and Human Services Secretary
Robert F Kennedy Jr, who has been tasked to develop a new rule equalizing what
the US and other nations pay for medications if deals are not reached, echoed
Trump’s criticism of Europe. Kennedy said that the US represents 4.2% of the
world’s population but represents 75% of revenue for pharmaceutical companies.
‘We spend in our country $1,126 per capita on drugs. In Britain, they spend
about $240,’ said Kennedy. ‘They spend about one-fifth of what we do and this
is true across Europe.’ Kennedy added that if Europeans raised the price of
their drugs by just 20%, it would equate to $20trillion that could be spent on
innovation and that the ‘health of all people, all across the globe, is going
to increase’
Trump signed the order after writing on
his Truth Social platform on Sunday afternoon: ‘My next TRUTH will be one of
the most important and impactful I have ever issued. ENJOY!’ That evening, he
revealed that he was referring to the order aimed at reducing drug prices for
Americans by 30% to 80%. ‘They will rise throughout the World in order to
equalize and, for the first time in many years, bring FAIRNESS TO AMERICA!’ he
wrote. ‘I will be instituting a MOST FAVORED NATION’S POLICY whereby the United
States will pay the same price as the Nation that pays the lowest price
anywhere in the World’
More
Trump calls
European Union ‘nastier than China’
U.S.-China trade war pushed global supply chain
near breaking point, new data shows
Published Tue, May 13 2025 8:01 AM EDT Updated
Tue, May 13 2025 10:23 AM EDT
The trade truce reached between the U.S.
and China arrived just as President
Donald Trump’s tariffs took a big bite out of North American & Asian
manufacturing, with a steep retreat in April purchasing activity after the rush
to hoard supply, according to the GEP Global Supply Chain Volatility Index.
“The pause on tariffs is a major relief
for manufacturers in both the U.S. and China,” said John Piatek, vice president
of consulting for GEP. “Our Supply Chain Volatility Index shows manufacturing
demand in China is dropping steeply, and U.S. manufacturers are aggressively
stockpiling key inputs to buffer against tariffs.”
But according to Piatek, the trade deal
won’t quickly quiet U.S. manufacturers’ anxiety about how to reduce risks
related to China for the long-term. “As they maneuver to de-risk and limit
exposure to China, the rapidly changing landscape and uncertainty is clouding
manufacturers’ outlook and dampening their capital investment and supply
chain,” he said.
The GEP Global Supply Chain Volatility
Index tracks demand conditions, shortages, transportation costs, inventories,
and backlogs based on a monthly survey of 27,000 businesses.
“The first blows of the tariff war have
landed on global manufacturers,” Piatek said. The supply chain volatility data
should serve as a warning about what would come next if the temporary pause in
tariffs by the U.S. and China aren’t extended permanently after the 90-day
pause and the trade war re-escalates.
The data showed a “hockey stick”-like
upturn in April, according to Piatek, with North American companies
aggressively stockpiling inventory at what he described as a “concerning rate.”
At the same time, “the first signs of manufacturers anticipating slower demand
and supply shortages have emerged,” he said.
More
US-China trade war pushed supply chain to breaking point, data shows
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.
World
trade chief says global free trade is in a 'crisis' while on visit to Japan
13
May 2025
Global
free trade is in crisis, the head of the World
Trade Organization chief
said Tuesday while meeting Japanese Prime Minister Shigaru Ishiba on Tuesday.
Ngozi
Okonjo-Iweala, director-general of the World Trade Organization,
told Ishiba that she has high expectations for Japan as a champion of open
markets as U.S. President Donald Trump disrupts
world commerce with his fast-changing tariffs and other policies.
“Trade
is facing very challenging times right now and it is quite difficult,” she
said. “We should try to use this crisis as an opportunity to solve the
challenges we have and take advantage of new trends in trade.”
Japan,
as “a champion of the multilateral trading system” must help maintain,
strengthen and reform the WTO, the Japanese Foreign Ministry cited her as
saying.
They
met a day after the United States and China said they
had agreed to slash recent sky- high tariffs for 90 days to allow time for
negotiations.
Japan
is among many countries yet to reach a deal with the Trump administration on
hikes to U.S. tariffs, including those on autos, steel and aluminum.
The
WTO played a pivotal role in past decades as the U.S. and other major economies
championed the trade liberalization that facilitated the growth of global
supply chains, many of which are anchored in China.
By
dismantling many protectionist barriers to trade, it has aided the ascent of
Japan and China, and many other countries, as export manufacturing hubs.
Since
taking office for a second time, Trump has prioritized higher tariffs to try to
reduce U.S. imports and compel companies to locate factories in the United
States, doubling down on a trade war that he launched during his first term.
The
two leaders agreed that WTO member countries should unite to restore the
organization's capacity to address challenges.
Okonjo-Iwaela
was visiting Japan to strengthen cooperation between Japan and the WTO to
maintain and reinforce the multilateral trading system, Japanese officials
said.
She
also was scheduled to meet with Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya, Finance
Minister Katsunobu Kato and Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Yoji Muto.
World trade chief
says global free trade is in a 'crisis' while on visit to Japan
Tourists
are cancelling trips to the US – and it’s not just Trump to blame
13
May 2025
International
travel spending in the United States is projected
to fall by $12.5 billion, or seven per cent, in 2025, according to the
World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC).
WTTC
CEO Julia Simpson said the unpopular policies from the administration of
President Donald Trump, fear of being
stopped at the border and an unfavourable exchange rate had pushed
international tourists towards alternative destinations.
"Of
184 countries, the U.S. is the only one that's seeing an absolute decline in
international visitor spending," Simpson said.
"The
U.S. is definitely losing its crown in this area."
The
U.S. is the largest travel and tourism economy globally, she said. However,
international visitor spending in the country is projected to fall under $169
billion this year, down from $181 billion in 2024 and 22 per cent below its
previous peak in 2019.
A
strong dollar, which makes U.S. vacations more expensive, caused a decline in
foreign travel spending in the country in 2024, Simpson said, but now politics
and worries about crossing the border were also weighing on U.S. visitation
figures.
In
March, Germany updated its U.S. travel advisory to emphasise that a visa or
entry waiver does not guarantee entry after several Germans were detained at
the border.
The
Trump administration requires all foreigners 14 or older to register and submit
fingerprints if they stay beyond 30 days. This includes Canadians, who
previously could visit for up to six months without a visa.
"The
rest of the world are putting up open signs and getting people to come and see
their country," Simpson said. "The U.S. at the minute has firmly got
a 'we're not open for business, closed' sign, which is a great shame."
While
90 per cent of U.S. travel and tourism spending comes from domestic tourists,
Canadian travellers spend three times more on U.S. vacations than Americans,
according to the U.S. Travel Association. Overseas visitors spend seven to
eight times more than U.S. travellers.
Travel
from Canada and Mexico, the largest source of inbound visitors to the U.S., is
down about 20 per cent year-over-year, the organisation said. Visits from
British, German and South Korean travellers are also trending lower.
Overall,
overseas travel to the U.S. fell about 12 per cent year-over-year in March but
rose 8 per cent in April, according to data from the U.S. National Travel and
Tourism Office.
Tourists
are cancelling trips to the US – and it’s not just Trump to blame
Microsoft said it will cut thousands of workers with
a focus on reducing layers of management. Planned reductions across the company
amount to less than 3% of total headcount, a spokesperson said. “We continue to
implement organizational changes necessary to best position the company for
success in a dynamic marketplace,” the spokesperson said.
Trump
Touts Saudi US-Investment Pledge That May Hit $1 Trillion - Bloomberg
Covid-19
Corner
This section will continue only occasionally when something of interest occurs.
Maybe, but no evidence presented.
Covid inquiry:
180,000 lives could have been saved
12 May 2025
If the government had
listened to experts and implemented the same strategies used in other
countries, 180,000 lives may have been saved during Covid, the UK Covid Inquiry
heard today.
East Asian death rates
were five times lower than in the UK.
The Covid-19 Bereaved
Families for Justice group said the UK’s death toll was down to “political
decisions rooted in arrogance” and a “dangerous belief that Britain was somehow
different”.
Covid inquiry: 180,000 lives could have been saved – Channel 4 News
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.
Keppel, Huawei
to collaborate on solar and battery tech for Asean power grids
Other
projects include low-carbon data centres and industrial parks
Published Tue,
May 13, 2025 · 12:00 PM
[SINGAPORE]
The infrastructure division of Keppel will work with Chinese tech giant Huawei
International to design and develop solar photovoltaic (PV) systems and battery
energy storage system (Bess) technologies for interconnected power grids across
South-east Asia.
Both
companies will also collaborate on PV and Bess solutions for low-carbon data
centres and industrial parks, and digital energy management for hybrid energy
systems, under a memorandum of understanding inked on Tuesday (May 13).
The
aim is to reduce the projects’ carbon intensity, improve operational stability
and optimise life-cycle costs and economic performance, Keppel and Huawei said
in a press statement.
Once
operational, the projects will be connected to Keppel’s Operations Nerve Centre
in Changi for real-time remote monitoring and control, and performance
optimisation.
Both
companies are also collaborating on a demand response programme – a system
which helps to balance power demand with supply – using a Bess developed at
Keppel Infrastructure’s Changi premises.
“The
Bess will allow Huawei and Keppel to further explore novel smart operations and
maintenance solutions to enhance the reliability, performance and efficiency of
renewable energy assets,” said the companies, adding that they will co-develop
go-to-market strategies beyond Singapore.
Cindy
Lim, chief executive officer of Keppel’s infrastructure division, noted that
energy storage is “essential” to overcome the intermittency of renewable energy
sources such as solar power.
“Through
this partnership, we will harness Huawei’s digital power technologies and
Keppel’s deep expertise in energy infrastructure,” she said.
Keppel, Huawei to
collaborate on solar and battery tech for Asean power grids - The Business
Times
Next, the
world global debt clock. Nations debts to GDP compared.
World Debt
Clocks (usdebtclock.org)
The
U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its
electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it
wishes at essentially no cost.
Ben
Bernanke
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