Baltic Dry Index. 1633 +07 Brent Crude 66.43
Spot Gold 3311 US 2 Year Yield 4.04 +0.12
US Federal Debt. 36.954 trillion
US GDP 30.059 trillion.
With all this consumer debt, business debt, government debt, smaller movements in interest rates have a magnified effect. a small movement can tip the boat.
Bill Gross
In the Asian stock casinos, optimism that today’s trade talks in London between China and the USA will be constructive.
To avert a 1930s type of outcome for the global economy, they need to be and soon, as in this week, if not today.
Look away from China’s economy and events in LA California now.
Asia stocks rise
as investors digest China data, await Beijing-Washington trade talks
Updated
Mon, Jun 9 2025 12:27 AM EDT
Asian
markets climbed Monday as investors awaited trade talks
between Washington and Beijing later in the day, and digested China
inflation and trade data.
Trade
tensions are seemingly easing between the world’s top two economies as China
has reportedly granted temporary approvals for the export of rare
earths, while jetliner Boeing Co has begun commercial jet deliveries to the Asian
superpower.
China’s consumer
price inflation fell by 0.1% year on year in May, smaller than the
0.2% decline forecast by economists polled by Reuters, while producer price
index declined 3.3%, compared to a 3.2% drop expected by analysts.
Mainland
China’s CSI 300 index rose
0.18% while Hong
Kong’s Hang Seng Index added
1.01%.
Japan’s
benchmark Nikkei 225 advanced
1.05%, while the broader Topix index rose 0.66%.
The
country’s GDP contraction for the January
to March quarter narrowed to an annualized 0.2%, from the 0.7% print
released previously, revised estimates showed.
In
South Korea, the Kospi index
climbed 1.62% while the small-cap Kosdaq increased by 0.97%.
India’s
benchmark Nifty 50 was
up 0.36% in early trade while the BSE Sensex added 0.4%.
Australian
markets are closed for a public holiday.
U.S.
equity futures were mostly flat in early Asian trade.
All three
key benchmarks on Wall
Street jumped last Friday, after the non-farm payrolls data came in
better-than-expected.
U.S.
payrolls climbed
139,000 in May, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday, above the
Dow Jones forecast of 125,000 for the month but less than the downwardly
revised 147,000 in April.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average popped
443.13 points, or 1.05%, to close at 42,762.87. The blue-chip index was up more
than 600 points at its highs of the session.
Meanwhile,
the the broad-based S&P
500 also gained 1.03% — surpassing the 6,000 level for the first time
since late February — and settling at 6,000.36, while the Nasdaq Composite rallied
1.20%, to end at 19,529.95.
Asia
stock markets today: live updates for June 9 2025
China’s exports
to the U.S. clock their sharpest drop in more than 5 years — down over 34% in
May
Published
Sun, Jun 8 2025 11:12 PM EDT
China’s
exports growth missed expectations in May, dragged down by a sharp decline in
shipments to the U.S., despite a temporary trade truce that paused most
tariffs for 90 days.
Chinese
exports to the U.S. plunged 34.5% from a year ago, marking the sharpest drop
since February 2020, according to Wind Information. Imports from the U.S.
dropped over 18%, as the country’s trade surplus with the U.S. shrank by 41.55%
year-on-year to $18 billion.
Overall
exports rose 4.8% last month in U.S. dollar terms from a year earlier, customs data showed Monday, shy of Reuters’ poll estimates
of a 5% jump.
Imports
plunged 3.4% in May from a year earlier, a drastic drop compared to economists’
expectations of a 0.9% fall. Imports had been declining this year, largely owed
to sluggish domestic demand.
That was
largely offset by its shipment to the Southeast Asian bloc, which jumped nearly
15% from a year, and those to European Union countries and Africa, which rose
12% and over 33%, respectively.
Exports
growth in May slowed significantly from a
8.1% surge in April as a jump in shipment to Southeast Asian countries
offset a sharp drop in outbound goods to the U.S. Chinese shipment to the U.S.
plunged over 21% in April, as prohibitive tariffs kicked in.
U.S.
President Donald Trump’s prohibitive 145% tariffs on Chinese goods took effect
in April, with Beijing retaliating with triple-digit duties and other
restrictive measures, such as export controls on critical minerals.
U.S. and
China struck a preliminary deal in Geneva, Switzerland, last month that led
both sides to drop a majority of tariffs. Washington’s levies on Chinese goods
now stand at 51.1% while Beijing’s duties on American imports are at 32.6%,
according to think tank Peterson Institute for International Economics.
Chinese Vice Premier and lead trade representative He Lifeng is
expected to meet with the U.S. trade negotiation team led by Treasury
Secretary Scott Bessent in London later in the day for renewed trade
talks.
The
second-round of meetings come after tensions flared up again between the two
sides, as they accused each other of violating the Geneva trade agreement.
Washington
had blamed Beijing for slow-walking its pledge to approve the export of
additional critical minerals to the U.S., while China criticized the U.S.
decision to impose new restrictions on Chinese student visas and additional
export restrictions on chips.
China’s
Ministry of Commerce said on Saturday that it would continue to review and approve applications for export
of rare earths, citing growing demand for the minerals in robotics and new
energy vehicle sectors.
China
May trade data: exports rise after tariff ceasefire
China consumer
prices slump again, deepening deflation worries as demand stays weak
Published
Sun, Jun 8 2025 9:41 PM EDT
China’s
consumer prices fell for a fourth consecutive month in May, as Beijing’s stimulus
measures appear insufficient to boost domestic consumption, with price
wars in the auto sector adding to downward pressure.
The
consumer price index fell 0.1% from a year earlier, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics released Monday,
compared with Reuters’ median estimate of a 0.2% decline.
CPI slipped
into negative territory in February, falling 0.7% from a year ago, and
has continued to post year-on-year declines of 0.1% in March, April, and now
May.
Core
inflation, excluding food and energy prices, however, rose 0.6% in May —
highest since January this year, according to Wind Information.
Separately,
deflation in the country’s factory-gate or producer prices deepened, falling 3.3% from a year earlier in May, marking the
steepest decline since July 2023 and a sharper drop compared with analysts’
estimates of a 3.2% fall, according to LSEG data.
Wholesale
prices have remained in deflationary territory since October 2022.
Aside
from the persistently weak consumer demand, a bruising price war in the
automotive industry has kept prices lower, said Zhiwei Zhang, president and
chief economist at Pinpoint asset management.
Chinese
policymakers have urged the automotive industry to halt
the brutal price wars, which had hurt businesses’ profitability and
efficiency, driving prices lower.
“The
price war in the auto sector is another signal of fierce competition driving
prices lower,” Zhang said, adding that falling property prices also contributed
to the downward pressure in consumer prices.
More
China
consumer deflation deepens as demand stays weak despite stimulus
In other news.
Canada won’t become the 51st US state – but could
it join the EU?
Donald Trump’s extraordinary threats have
angered Canadians and Europeans, and the idea of a new kind of transatlantic
alliance is gaining traction
Sun 8 Jun 2025 05.00 BST
Joachim Streit has never stepped foot
in Canada. But that
hasn’t stopped the German politician from launching a tenacious, one-man
campaign that he readily describes as “aspirational”: to have the North
American country join the EU.
“We have to strengthen the European
Union,” said Streit, who last year was elected as a member of the European
parliament. “And I think Canada – as its prime
minister says – is the most European country outside of Europe.”
Streit had long imagined Canada as a sort
of paradise, home to dense forests that course with wide, rushing rivers. But
after Donald Trump returned to power, launching much
of the world into a trade war and turning
his back on America’s traditional allies, Streit began to cast the
northern country in a new light.
What he saw was a relatively unexplored
relationship, one that could prove mutually beneficial as the world grapples
with rapidly reshaping global dynamics. “Canadians have seen their trust in the
US undermined, just as we have in Europe, following
President Trump’s actions,” he said. “We need to strengthen the ties that bind
us to our friends.”
While he admitted that the possibility of
Canada as a full member of the EU “may be aspirational for now”, he wondered if
it was an idea whose time had come
“Canada would be a strong member,” he
said. “If Canada would be a member of the EU, it would
rank 4th in terms of GDP. It’s part of Nato. And 58% of (working-age)
Canadians have college
degrees.”
Canada also has vast
energy reserves – an asset that could prove useful to the bloc, which
is still struggling to
wean itself off Russian gas, he added.
Since launching his campaign last month,
Streit has become the most visible proponent of an unlikely proposition that
has been gaining traction since Trump began floating the idea of Canada as
the 51st state.
In late January, a former foreign minister
of Germany, Sigmar Gabriel, called for Canada to be invited into the EU. “They
are more European than some European member states anyway,” he
told Germany’s Pioneer Media.
Media outlets on both sides of the
Atlantic have delved into the idea, while a February poll of 1,500 Canadians
found 44% of them believed
Canada should look into joining the EU.
In March, however, a European
spokesperson appeared
to pour cold water on the suggestion, citing an article in the EU
treaty that specifies only European states can apply to join the EU.
Streit brushed off the technicality,
pointing to France’s overseas
territories. “Those are also not in Europe, but those islands belong to the
European Union,” he said. Cyprus, considered EU
territory but located geographically in west Asia, was another
example.
And if one wanted to get technical, Canada
was – albeit in a minuscule way – connected geographically to Europe, he said.
“Greenland, which belongs to Denmark, shares a border with Canada,” he said,
pointing to the divide
that runs through the uninhabited half-mile square Hans Island.
More
Canada won’t become the 51st US state – but could it join the EU? | Canada | The Guardian
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.
Klarna
boss: AI will lead to recession and mass job losses
7
June 2025
The
introduction of AI at firms could lead to a recession due to mass job losses of
professionals, Klarna’s chief executive has warned.
The
use of AI to make work more efficient has been encouraged by leading figures,
including the government itself which said it could save civil servants two
weeks a year.
But
fintech boss Sebastian Siemiatkowski, who runs the Stockholm-based ‘buy now,
pay later’ business Klarna, has warned that
its potential to replace work done by office staff could push economies into a
recession in the coming years.
Siemiatkowski
suggested that tech bosses had tended to dismiss the impacts AI could have on
headcounts at firms, with Klarna cutting staff numbers from 5,500 to 3,000 in
recent years.
“Many
people in the tech industry, especially CEOs, tend to downplay the consequences
of AI on jobs and white-collar jobs in particular. And I don’t want to be one
of them,” Siemiatkowski told The Times Tech Podcast..
“There
will be an implication for white-collar jobs and when that happens that usually
leads to a recession at least in the short-term. Unfortunately, I don’t see how
we could avoid that, with what’s happening from a technology perspective.”
He
said he based his predictions on anecdotes seen through the number of firms
pushing AI tools, with economic data not yet considering the impacts of AI.
“I
feel like I have an email almost every day from some CEO of a tech or a large
company that says we also see opportunities to become more efficient and we
would like to compare notes. If I just take all of those emails and add up the
amount of jobs in those emails, it’s considerable.”
He
said humans could be protected for some jobs at Klarna, such as in customer
service where people can work on fraud and other complex banking issues.
“The
value of that human touch will increase,” he said, adding that AI meant people
working in client-facing roles would have to be more skilled.
“They
will provide a much higher quality type of service.”
Siemiatkowski’s
comments echo those made by the chief executive of Anthropic, Dario Amodei, who
said half of all entry level professional jobs could be eliminated in the next
five years.
The
head of another AI firm, Arthur Mesch, who runs French firm Mistral, has
claimed that the excitement of fellow tech bosses for its ability to overpower
humans was a “very religious” fascination while Demis Hassabis of Google
DeepMind said
it would take another five to ten years before AI would overtake human
intelligence.
Klarna boss: AI
will lead to recession and mass job losses
May
jobs report crushes recession fears, market expert says
June
6, 2025
The
May jobs report came in hotter than expected, showing surprising strength in
the labor market. Eddie Ghabour, co-founder, Key Advisors Group, joined
TheStreet to discuss what this report means for the U.S. economy.
EDDIE
GHABOUR: So
the job numbers. And what did we make of this report is that we are nowhere
near a recession. We're getting a hearing a lot of recession calls. And when
you look at this job data, it just which is why the market's reacting the way
that it is. I think it just continues to support that. We are of a really
resilient economy. And although the jobs number wasn't through the roof, it
beat expectations. And just as importantly, it gives the Fed a little bit more
ammunition to justify rate cuts, which would be bullish for markets as well
too. But one of the biggest things that has stood out to us is when we're
looking at wage increases. This is again very bullish from an economic
perspective because we know Americans love to spend money in these wage
increases at a time when the rate of change of inflation is actually slowing
down, is a net positive money in folks pockets, and that money is going to
filter into the economy. And I think we're going to see that over the coming
quarter. We believe the economy is growing at a much faster pace than many
people realize.
What
this report tells us about the state of the economy is we're not close to a
recession. And I know that's not a consensus call. And the reason why we say
that it is really hard to have a recession when you have unemployment rate with
a four handle, and we don't see unemployment breaking down to a level that
would concern everyone and get that recession trade on. We think the next 12
months from both an economic and stock market perspective are going to be
extremely prosperous. And the capital markets are really smart. We believe this
market has had this nice recovery and resiliency because it is sniffing out the
forward looking data that's going to come down the road. And so we think we're
in a really good spot. I would really call this a Goldilocks market.
Like
anything it's not going to go straight up. We're going to have hiccups along
the way. We'll have bumps. But those dips in our opinion should be bought until
the data changes. And right now the data just continues to support that. It's
prudent to stay bullish.
May jobs report crushes recession fears, market expert says
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.
Nuclear fusion
record smashed as German scientists take 'a significant step forward' to
near-limitless clean energy
5 June
2025
A
recently concluded experimental campaign at the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator at
the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) in Greifswald, Germany has
smashed previous fusion records and set a new benchmark for reactor
performances.
Nuclear fusion offers
a tantalizing promise of unlimited clean energy. By smashing together isotopes
(or different versions) of hydrogen at incredibly high temperatures, the
resulting superheated plasma of electrons and ions fuses into heavier atoms,
releasing a phenomenal amount of energy in the process.
However,
while this fusion reaction is self-sustaining under the extraordinary
temperatures and pressures within stars, recreating these conditions on Earth
is a huge technical challenge — and current reactor concepts still consume more
energy than they are able to produce.
Stellarators
are one of the most promising reactor designs, so named for their mimicry of
reactions in the sun. They use powerful external magnets to control the high-energy
plasma within a ring-shaped vacuum chamber and maintain a stable, high
pressure. Unlike simpler tokamak reactors — which pass a high current through
the plasma to generate the required magnetic field — stellarators' external
magnets are better at stabilizing the plasma through the fusion reactions, a
feature that will ultimately be necessary when translating the technology to
commercial power plants.
Most
notably, the international team revealed that the reactor had reached a new
record high triple product — a key metric for the success of fusion power
generators. The triple product is a combination of the density of particles in
the plasma, the temperature required for these particles to fuse, and the
energy confinement time (a measure of how well the thermal energy is held by
the system). A certain minimum value called the Lawson criterion marks the
point at which the reaction produces more energy than it uses and becomes
self-sustaining, so a higher triple product indicates a more efficient
reaction.
More
Next, the
world global debt clock. Nations debts to GDP compared.
World Debt
Clocks (usdebtclock.org)
When
you own gold you're fighting every central bank in the world. That's because
gold is a currency that competes with government currencies and has a powerful
influence on interest rates and the price of government bonds. And that's why
central banks long have tried to suppress the price of gold. Gold is the ticket
out of the central banking system, the escape from coercive central bank and
government power.
James
Rickards
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