Baltic
Dry Index. 1874 -78 Brent Crude 76.42
Spot Gold 3373 US 2 Year Yield 3.94 unch.
US Federal Debt. 36.996 trillion
US GDP 30.081 trillion.
'Emergencies' have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.
Friedrich August von Hayek
As expected, the US central bank left its key interest rate unchanged, infuriating President Trump who proposed making himself head of the Fed when Chairman Powell’s term ends.
The stock casinos yawned and wondered what next in the Israel v Iran war. US intervention against Iran, as always late to the war? But what if the Strait of Hormuz gets impacted, or even worse closed for a few days?
That couldn’t happen, could it?
What if tanker owners decide the Persian Gulf is just to risky to enter for now, or insurers decide not to cover the risk?
With another oil shock and Uncle Scam almost 37 trillion in debt, collapse happens fast if President Trump missteps this week.
Asia-Pacific markets fall as investors weigh Fed
decision, Middle East conflict
Updated Thu, Jun 19 2025 11:12 PM EDT
Asia-Pacific markets fell Thursday, as
investors weighed the U.S. Federal Reserve’s decision to keep interest rates
steady, while the ongoing conflict between Israel and Iran continues to dent
sentiment.
Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 lost 0.74% while
the Topix declined 0.61%.
South Korea’s Kospi fell 0.34% and the
small-cap Kosdaq was flat.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 was flat.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index declined
0.48% and mainland China’s CSI 300 was flat.
Investors are also awaiting Taiwan and
Philippines’ central bank decisions later in the day.
U.S. President Donald Trump is convening
his national security advisors in the White House Situation Room for the second
time in two days, as he weighs a potential military strike on Iran amid its
conflict with Israel. The meeting started shortly before 5 p.m. ET on
Wednesday, a White House official told NBC News.
The U.S. Federal Reserve expectedly held
interest rates steady on Wednesday, leaving its benchmark rate unchanged at
4.25%-4.5%, where it has stood since December. Fed Chair Jerome Powell signaled
that the Fed committee will wait to see the impact of President Donald Trump’s
tariffs on inflation before considering any adjustments to monetary policies.
However, the Fed still pointed to two rate
cuts later this year.
Overnight on Wall Street, the three major
averages ended the trading day mixed. The 30-stock Dow lost 44.14 points, or
0.10%, and ended at 42,171.66. The S&P 500 slipped 0.03% to
close at 5,980.87, and the Nasdaq
Composite inched up 0.13% to settle at 19,546.27.
Asia-Pacific
markets live: Fed decision, Taiwan central bank decision
Gold is near an all-time high—here’s how much a
Costco bar bought a year ago is worth today
Published Tue, Jun 17 2025 10:40 AM EDT Updated
Wed, Jun 18 2025 10:47 AM EDT
Costco’s gold bars are worth a lot more
than they were a year ago — and demand is soaring.
The bars have been a steady draw since
Costco began selling them in 2023, and a sharp rise in spot gold
prices seems to have boosted their appeal. In May, the retailer tightened
purchase restrictions, limiting members to one transaction, capped at a
maximum of two bars, per day.
As of Tuesday morning, gold traded
around $3,390 per ounce —
near a recent record high and roughly 45% higher than it was at this time last
year.
Historically, investors tend to flock to gold during periods of geopolitical
instability, inflation and concern over the strength of the U.S. dollar.
Here’s how much more a 1-ounce gold bar
purchased at Costco in June 2024 could be worth today, based on the listed purchase price and Tuesday’s opening spot
price.
- Purchase
price in June 2024: $2,399.99
- Spot
price for June 17, 2025: $3,390
- Unrealized
gain: $990
- Percentage
increase: 41.3%
More
How
much a Costco gold bar bought in 2024 is worth one year later
‘Tariff engineering’ is making a comeback as
businesses employ creative ways to skirt higher duties
Published Wed, Jun 18 2025 3:23 AM EDT
Would you be bothered if your coat was
officially classified as a windbreaker or a raincoat, or your shoes as
slippers? Businesses do care though, as classifications under a preferred
category can help them pay lower tariff rates.
As U.S. President Donald Trump imposes
duties on friends and foes alike, manufacturers are increasingly rethinking the
classification of their products and resorting to “tariff engineering” to incur
lower duties, several customs lawyers, supply chain and shipping experts told
CNBC.
Tariff engineering — a practice that
precedes Trump — involves changing an item’s materials, altering its dimensions
or compositions so that the finished products can be justified to fit in a
different “harmonized
system code,” legal
experts said.
Although most new tariffs added during
Trump’s second term are broad-based, the U.S. government has carved
out exemptions for certain products, leaving doors open for companies to
benefit through tariff engineering, trade lawyers pointed out.
After Trump unveiled sweeping “reciprocal”
tariffs in April, several overseas manufacturers moved to bundle steel and
aluminum elements into their final products to qualify a lower 25% duty
under Section
232,
said David Forgue, a partner at Chicago law firm Barnes, Richardson &
Colburn.
Things, however, changed quickly in June
as Trump jacked up tariffs on all steel, aluminum products and derivatives to
50%, except those from the U.K. “Now that the duties are reversed, we’re now
seeing companies remove those elements and ship them separately again,” Forgue
said.
There is “nothing inherently illegal or
even untoward about leveraging strategic design choices that result in creating
different products that are subject to different tariff classification and duty
rates,” said John Foote, a customs lawyer at Kelley Drye & Warren in
Washington D.C. “Tariff engineering is one of the few things you can do to try
to get it right and reduce your duty liability.”
There are over 5,000
different product classification codes that U.S. customs authority uses
while assessing tariffs. These tariff classifications were determined through
decades of negotiations between governments and industry bodies, often varying
by product category.
More
'Tariff engineering' is in vogue as businesses attempt to skirt duties
In other news, is global trade now dying?
Japan exports fall at sharpest pace in 8 months as
U.S. shipments plummet
Published Tue, Jun 17 2025 8:01 PM EDT
Exports from Japan in May declined 1.7%
year over year, marking the sharpest decline since September 2024 as the
country continues to grapple with trade uncertainties.
The fall was softer than the 3.8% decline
forecasted by economists polled by Reuters, but was a reversal compared to the
2% gain recorded in April.
Data
from Japan’s trade ministry revealed that exports to the U.S. continued to
decline, falling 11.1% year over year. Exports to China, Japan’s largest
trading partner, was down 8.8%.
Japan’s global automobile exports dropped
6.9%, but notably, exports of motor vehicles to the U.S. plummeted 24.7%
compared to the same period last year.
Japanese carmakers accounted for 28.3% of
all exports to the U.S. in 2024, according
to customs data. Besides
the current
25% levy on its auto, steel exports to
the U.S., Japan is also facing a 24% ‘reciprocal’ tariff rate on all
other exports starting on July 9.
The data comes a day after the Bank of
Japan highlighted in its
monetary policy statement that the country’s growth was likely to
“moderate,” due to factors like trade, which would lead to a slowdown in
overseas economies and a decline in domestic corporate profits.
“It is extremely uncertain how trade and
other policies in each jurisdiction will evolve and how overseas economic
activity and prices will react to them,” the BOJ added.
Stefan Angrick, Head of Japan and Frontier
markets economics at Moody’s Analytics, said that tariffs are the “main threat”
to Japan’s outlook.
“The deteriorating trade outlook doesn’t bode well for exports in the months
ahead. Even if Japan and the U.S. reach a deal that softens some of the more
punitive U.S. tariffs, a full return to pre-Trump trade terms is unlikely,” he
said.
Falling exports had already made a dent in
Japan’s GDP, with the country’s economy shrinking 0.2% in the quarter
ending March, compared
to the preceding period, marking the first time in a year that the economy
contracted on a quarter-on-quarter basis.
Imports to the world’s third-largest
economy fell 7.7% in May, compared to the Reuters poll expectations of a 6.7%
decline.
Japan’s trade deficit stood at 637.6
billion yen in May, smaller than the 892.9 billion yen deficit expected by the
Reuters poll.
On Wednesday, U.S. President Donald Trump
reportedly said that Japan
was being “tough” in trade talks, after six rounds of negotiations between
Japan’s top negotiator Ryosei Akazawa, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick
and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent failed to yield a breakthrough.
Louis Chua, Equity Research Analyst for
Asia at Julius Baer, noted that Japan’s Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba had
reportedly emphasized the significance of the automobile industry as a “major
national interest,”
and that Japan would likely prioritize concessions for its key automobile
sector during trade talks.
Japan exports fall
at sharpest pace in 8 months as U.S. shipments plummet
Japan
Still Won’t Rush Into US Trade Deal, Says PM Ishiba — Even As Falling Exports
Stoke Recession Risk
17
June 2025
Japanese
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said on Tuesday that Tokyo will not rush a trade
deal with the U.S. until it secures its national interests.
“It
is important to proceed slowly but surely,” Ishiba reportedly said at a press
conference in Calgary on Tuesday during his visit to Canada for the G7 summit.
His
comments came ahead of Japan posting its first decline in exports in eight
months, as U.S. tariffs on critical sectors, including autos and steel,
weighed.
On
Monday, Ishiba held a 30-minute talk with U.S. President Donald Trump, who left
the two-day summit early to take stock of the conflict between Israel and Iran.
“I
strongly believe that we must not prioritize reaching an early agreement at the
expense of our national interests,” Ishiba said in a press conference,
according to a Bloomberg report.
President
Donald Trump has set a July 9 deadline for countries to agree to a trade deal
with the U.S. He has already warned that failure will invite unilateral tariffs
from Washington, D.C.
Like
other countries, Japan is facing 25% tariffs on cars, its top exports to the
U.S., as well as 50% tariffs on steel and aluminum. The U.S. has so far imposed
a 10% blanket tariff on all Japanese exports, which could rise to 24%.
According
to a Bloomberg report, citing Japan’s Finance Ministry, the country’s total
exports by value fell 1.7% in May from a year earlier, while exports to the
U.S. fell 11.1%.
However,
the country’s overall export volumes rose 1.8%. According to the Bloomberg
report, Taro Saito, the head of economic research at NLI Research Institute,
noted that the uptick in shipments implies that Japanese businesses are
lowering prices to remain competitive, which will negatively impact their
profitability.
The
decline in exports also raised concerns over a recession as domestic
consumption remains tepid.
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.
Stagflation
warning as Fed resists Trump's pressure and holds interest rates
18
June 2025
America’s
central bank last night resisted intense pressure from Donald Trump to
slash interest rates as it warned of growing stagflation
risks.
The
US Federal Reserve left rates at a range of 4.25-4.5 per cent as it cut its
forecasts for economic growth and raised the inflation outlook.
It
came hours after Trump vented his fury at the Fed for not cutting benchmark
borrowing costs and saying they should already be two percentage points lower.
The
Fed is tasked with getting inflation down to its 2 per cent target – a job
complicated by the US president’s imposition of steep tariffs on trading
partners, many of which have been subject to a 90-day pause which is now coming
to an end.
Fed
chair Jay Powell said: ‘Increases in tariffs this year are likely to push up
prices and weigh on economic activity.’
He
said the effects may either prove ‘short-lived’ or more persistent. But he
warned that the Fed could find itself in the ‘challenging scenario’ in which
economic weakness puts pressure on it to cut rates while higher inflation pulls
it in the opposite direction.
A
major impact from tariffs has yet to be reflected by inflation figures, though
Powell said more is expected in coming months as companies pass on the costs to
consumers.
US
jobs growth has been slowing – though not by as much as some feared. A further
complication is the conflict between Israel and Iran, which has driven oil
prices higher.
The
Fed’s projections cut the outlook for US growth this year from 1.7 per
cent to 1.4 per cent, and pencilled in unemployment of 4.5 per cent by the
end of 2025, up from 4.2 per cent now.
It
pointed to inflation finishing the year at 3 per cent. The forecasts imply an
increasingly stagflationary outlook – the dismal scenario in which economic
growth stagnates while at the same time inflation climbs.
The
Fed still expects two quarter-point interest rate cuts this year, but slowed
the pace from three to one each in 2026 and 2027.
That
would cause huge frustration to Trump, who yesterday even mused about taking
over at the Fed himself.
‘Am
I allowed to appoint myself at the Fed? I’d do a much better job,’ he said.
More
Stagflation
warning as Fed resists Trump's pressure and holds interest rates
House prices
slump in April: ‘Supply is beginning to outweigh demand’
Wednesday
18 June 2025 10:25 am
UK
house prices fell in April as affordability issues constrain demand following
the end of the stamp duty holiday in March.
House
prices fell 2.7 per cent month on month in April, according to the
Office for National Statistics (ONS).
Prices
increased by 3.5 per cent to £265,000 in the 12 months to April 2025, down from
seven per cent in the 12 months to March 2025.
The
ONS pinned the monthly drop on an increase in payable tax on properties due to
the end of the stamp duty holiday on March 31 for first-time buyers.
Sales
volumes in March were “unusually high”, according to the statistics body, followed
by low volumes in April 2025 in England and Northern Ireland.
An
influx of properties, too, means that the UK housing market has tipped in
favour of buyers interests in the last few months.
“We
expect the rate of price growth to slow further over 2025 as home buyers face a
large choice of homes for sale which will support a buyers market,” Richard
Donnell, executive director of Research at Zoopla, said.
Recent
Rightmove data found that buyer demand was up three per cent year on year in
June, while the number of homes coming to the market rose
11 per cent year on year.
“Asking
prices will need to reflect the current reality where supply is beginning to
outweigh demand,” Nick Leeming, chair of Jackson-Stops, said.
“Stubborn
inflation is likely to prevent mortgage rates from falling as quickly as hoped
[and] buyers are hesitant amid mounting household financial pressures and wider
economic uncertainty,” he added.
More
House prices slump
in April: 'Supply is beginning to outweigh demand'
Covid-19
Corner
This
section will continue only occasionally when something of interest occurs.
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.
Sharper than
lightning: Oxford’s one-in-6. 7-million quantum breakthrough
Date June 10, 2025
Source:University of Oxford
Summary:Physicists at the University of Oxford have set a
new global benchmark for the accuracy of controlling a single quantum bit,
achieving the lowest-ever error rate for a quantum logic operation--just
0.000015%, or one error in 6.7 million operations. This record-breaking result
represents nearly an order of magnitude improvement over the previous
benchmark, set by the same research group a decade ago
To put the result in perspective: a
person is more likely to be struck by lightning in a given year (1 in 1.2
million) than for one of Oxford's quantum logic gates to make a mistake.
The findings, published in Physical
Review Letters, are a major advance towards having robust and useful
quantum computers.
"As far as we are aware, this is
the most accurate qubit operation ever recorded anywhere in the world,"
said Professor David Lucas, co-author on the paper, from the University of
Oxford's Department of Physics. "It is an important step toward building
practical quantum computers that can tackle real-world problems."
To perform useful calculations on a
quantum computer, millions of operations will need to be run across many
qubits. This means that if the error rate is too high, the final result of the
calculation will be meaningless. Although error correction can be used to fix
mistakes, this comes at the cost of requiring many more qubits. By reducing the
error, the new method reduces the number of qubits required and consequently
the cost and size of the quantum computer itself.
Co-lead author Molly Smith (Graduate
Student, Department of Physics, University of Oxford), said: "By
drastically reducing the chance of error, this work significantly reduces the
infrastructure required for error correction, opening the way for future
quantum computers to be smaller, faster, and more efficient. Precise control of
qubits will also be useful for other quantum technologies such as clocks and
quantum sensors."
This unprecedented level of precision
was achieved using a trapped calcium ion as the qubit (quantum bit). These are
a natural choice to store quantum information due to their long lifetime and
their robustness. Unlike the conventional approach, which uses lasers, the
Oxford team controlled the quantum state of the calcium ions using electronic
(microwave) signals.
----The experiments were carried out at
the University of Oxford's Department of Physics by Molly Smith, Aaron Leu, Dr
Mario Gely and Professor David Lucas, together with a visiting researcher, Dr
Koichiro Miyanishi, from the University of Osaka's Centre for Quantum
Information and Quantum Biology.
The Oxford scientists are part of the UK
Quantum Computing and Simulation (QCS) Hub, which was a part of the ongoing UK
National Quantum Technologies Programme.
Sharper than lightning: Oxford’s one-in-6. 7-million quantum breakthrough
| ScienceDaily.
Next, the
world global debt clock. Nations debts to GDP compared.
World Debt
Clocks (usdebtclock.org)
The
history of government management of money has, except for a few short happy
periods, been one of incessant fraud and deception.
Friedrich August von Hayek
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