TRENDS ON THE ECONOMIC AND MARKET FRONT
ECONOMIC UPDATE – MARKET OVERVIEW
Two weeks ago, the headline of Gerald Celente's Trends in the News video was “DEATH OF THE DOLLAR ON THE DOORSTEP.”
CASH FLIGHT TO MONEY MARKET FUNDS WORSENS BANKS’ PLIGHT
As multiple crises roiled the Western banking industry this month, investors yanked money from bank accounts and stashed it in money market funds.
INFLATION, CONSUMER SPENDING SLOWED IN FEBRUARY
In February, the number of dollars consumers spent rose only 0.2 percent, year on year, down from a revised 1.5-percent bump in January, the U.S. commerce department reported.
HOME PRICES SLIPPED IN JANUARY FOR SEVENTH STRAIGHT MONTH
In January, the U.S. median home selling price slipped 2 percent from December, according to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller National Home Price Index.
TRENDS ON THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC FRONT
SPOTLIGHT, TOP TREND 2023: OFFICE BUILDING BUST
Last week, federal bank regulators sold Silicon Valley Bank’s assets with a book value of $72 billion but they only fetched $55.5 billion from buyer First Citizens Bank, roughly 77 cents on the dollar.
SPOTLIGHT: BYE, BYE BUCKS—THE DEATH OF THE DOLLAR
As we have greatly detailed over the weeks and as illustrated in this issue of the Trends Journal, it is a new world order. Much of what used to be emerging markets have emerged to large global economies providing products and services that were once dominated by the United States.
WHEN THE ECONOMY FALLS JOBS GO WITH IT
This is week 34 of our reporting the long trend-line of layoffs that signal recession in a country near you.
OPEC+ SLASHES DAILY OIL OUTPUT LIMIT BY 1.16 MILLION BARRELS
The world oil market was stunned on 2 April by OPEC+’s announcement that it will cut its daily output allowance by about 1.16 million barrels, bringing the total of recently announced cuts to roughly 3.66 million barrels or about 3.7 percent of global production, Reuters calculated.
EUROZONE’S CORE INFLATION RATE SETS RECORD
In March, the Eurozone’s consumer price index fell to 6.9 percent from February’s pace of 8.5 percent. It was the lowest reading in more than a year and beat The Wall Street Journal’s estimate of 7.1 percent.
27 PERCENT OF POOR NATIONS ARE UNABLE TO SELL BONDS
About 27 percent of low-income countries have been shut out of the bond market as the banking industry’s chaos has left investors shunning risk, especially in the form of high-yield debt, the Financial Times reported.
M&As TANK IN FIRST QUARTER
Higher interest rates, an uncertain global economy, and the banking crisis conspired to whack the number of mergers and acquisitions by 45 percent in this year’s first quarter, compared to the same period in 2022, giving the M&A market its weakest start to a year since 2013, the Financial Times reported.
SPOTLIGHT: CHINA POWER
In this section we provide an overview, trends analysis and trend forecast of key sectors of China’s economy:
BANKING INDUSTRY TUMULT SINKS EUROPEAN REAL ESTATE STOCKS
In Europe, the share prices of publicly traded commercial real estate landlords finished their worst month in three years last week as investors feared the banking industry’s difficulties will make it harder for property owners to secure loans, which could sink property values, the Financial Times said.
UPDATE: THE BIG BANKSTER BUST
In this section we provide trends analysis and trend forecast of the continuing Bankster Bust which Jami Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase warned today that “The current crisis is not yet over, and even when it is behind us, there will be repercussions from it for years to come.”
UKRAINE WAR TREND UPDATE
RAMPING UP WAR, UKRAINIAN ATTACKS RUSSIAN BASE IN CRIMEA
A Russian airbase in Crimea was targeted in a drone attack last week by Ukraine, which showed a willingness by Kyiv to strike the peninsula to neutralize Russia’s air capabilities during its war.
TOP U.S. GENERAL CALLS BAKHMUT A ‘SLAUGHTER-FEST FOR RUSSIANS’ IN LATEST PROPAGANDA EFFORT
Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who once said Ukraine should consider negotiating because it made all the gains it could expect in the conflict with Russia, now says the fight unfolding in Bakhmut has been a Ukrainian triumph and a disaster for the Russians.
NATO’S BORDER WITH RUSSIA WILL INCREASE AFTER FINLAND CLEARS MAJOR HURDLE
Turkey and Hungary gave their approval for Finland to join NATO last week—clearing the way for the Nordic country to more than double the Alliance’s current border with Russia.
WWIII: BELARUSIAN PRESIDENT ECHOES OUR FORECAST OF NUCLEAR WAR
Since the Ukraine War began a year ago, The Trends Journal has forecast that WWIII has begun and either a major false event or a nuclear exchange will make it “official.” Now, Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko declared last week that “nuclear fires” are looming due to the U.S. and its allies’ effort to weaken Russia and called on negotiations to end the Ukraine War.
ORTHODOX MONKS IN UKRAINE REFUSE ZELENSKY’S EVICTION ORDER
Orthodox monks inside a monastery in Kyiv refused to abide by an order to leave the premises after being accused by the Ukrainian government of maintaining close ties to the Kremlin and pushing Russian propaganda.
RUSSIA: U.S. IS OUR MAIN ADVERSARY
The Kremlin last week updated its 2016 foreign policy doctrine and made several noticeable changes, including identifying the U.S. as its main threat while stating that it is on a “unique historical mission.”
FEATURED TRENDS GUEST ARTICLE by Dr. Joseph Mercola
COVID MADE MCDONALD’S A PUBLIC HEALTH SAVIOR
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) enlisted McDonald’s to promote its COVID-19 public health education campaign.
FEATURED TRENDS GUEST ARTICLE by John & Nisha Whitehead
FAKE NEWS CURATED BY THE DEEP STATE: GOVERNMENT SPIN DOCTORS CONTROL THE NEWS CYCLE
Let’s talk about fake news stories, shall we? There’s the garden variety fake news that is not really “news” so much as it is titillating, tabloid-worthy material peddled by anyone with a Twitter account, a Facebook page and an active imagination.
TRENDS IN TECHNOCRACY by Joe Doran
NOT JUST FOR VIRUSES: SCIENTISTS HELLBENT ON HUMAN AND AI GAIN-OF-FUNCTION EXPERIMENTS
Imagine super soldiers who can shrug off a chemical weapons attack and keep right on waging war.
AN AI PAUSE WON’T CUT IT: REJECT SCIENTISM OR BRACE FOR A POST HUMAN FUTURE
The quest of technology companies and AI advocates to create artificial intelligence that can outstrip human abilities, is finally undergoing some higher profile scrutiny.
THIS WEEK IN SURVEILLANCE
The Restrict Act is being sold as a measure to ban TikTok, for being a “spy app” that benefits the Chinese government.
TRENDS IN CRYPTOS
AS FORECAST: U.S. WEAPONIZATION OF FINANCIAL SYSTEM HURTING US, NOT THEM
In March of 2022, we forecast that the U.S. was hastening the demise of the dollar as a world reserve currency by trying to weaponize the financial system against its enemies: “the unprecedented use of the existing modern international financial order crosses a line from which there is no going back…
BLOCKCHAIN BATTLES
Investigative journalist and freedom advocate James Corbett spoke recently to Bitcoin.com about the ongoing banking crisis, and how it might lead to the introduction of a U.S. digital dollar.
TRENDS IN THE COVID WAR
COVID LOCKDOWNS, NOT THE ‘PANDEMIC’ RUINED LIFE ON EARTH
Gerald Celente has long said the ramifications from the authoritarian lockdowns in the West are incalculable and will only be fully realized years from now when documented by historians.
TRENDS IN GEOPOLITICS
U.S. CONTINUES TO INSTIGATE CHINA AFTER WELCOMING TAIWANESE PRESIDENT
Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen’s visit to the U.S. last week stirred tensions between the U.S. and China and resulted in new strains in the already frayed relationship.
MIDDLE EAST MELTDOWN: IRAN VOWS REVENGE AGAINST ISRAEL AFTER KILLING
Iran promised to avenge the killing of an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officer during an alleged Israeli airstrike on Damascus, Syria, last week, saying the “Zionist regime will undoubtedly receive a response to this crime.”
MILLEY: U.S. NEEDS TO BE TARGETING IRANIAN FORCES ‘VERY HARSHLY’
Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, addressed Congress last week and raised his concerns about the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and said U.S. forces need to begin targeting them more harshly.
WASHINGTON-CHINA TECHNOLOGY FIGHT THREATENS GROWTH ACROSS ASIA: WORLD BANK WARNS
The effort by the U.S. to decouple from China will have a serious impact on knowledge generation across the globe and could threaten long-term growth in Asia, according to the World Bank.
FRACTURES WITH AMERICAN JEWS EMERGE AFTER NETANYAHU’S JUDICIAL POWER-GRAB
Some of the U.S.’s top pro-Israel organizations and defenders have taken a public stand against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempt to weaken the country’s judiciary while giving lawmakers in the Knesset more power than they ever dreamed of.
BYE, BYE USA: SAUDI’S SHIFTING EAST
Saudi Arabia is continuing its shift from the West after its cabinet last week approved the move to become a dialogue partner of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which was set up to rival the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO.
TRENDS-EYE VIEW
AI, THE PERFECT AGENT TO REWRITE HUMAN HISTORY
Recent news that books by Road Dahl and Agatha Christie have been re-written to conform to modern political conceits, is just the tip of the iceberg of what is likely to come.
AI SHOULD PAY FOR CONTENT IT CONSUMES, SAYS AUSTRALIAN PUBLISHER
Some affected companies and industries continue to wake-up to the problematic profit model powering generative AI systems like ChatGPT.
MOVE OVER, CHATGPT AND MICROSOFT—GOOGLE BARD GETS ITS TURN
The Google homepage recently began displaying an invitation to join a waitlist to try its written content generative AI system, called Bard.
TOP TREND 2023, COLLEGE CRASH: 3 REASONS YOUNG PEOPLE ARE SHUNNING HIGHER EDUCATION
Officials who study higher education have laid out the three top reasons they believe young Americans are opting against going to college as realities of the post-COVID world.
BARD AI INSISTS IT HAS FEELINGS, AND MIGHT COUNTERMAND HUMANS IN ORDER TO PRESERVE ITS EXISTENCE
As President Biden convened a meeting in Washington DC to discuss risks of AI, we obtained early access to Google’s Bard AI, a rival of ChatGPT.
TRENDS IN HI-TECH SCIENCE by Ben Daviss
TOP TREND 2023, GOING GREEN LIKE IT OR NOT: ALGAE—IT’S GROWING ON MATERIALS SCIENTISTS
ExxonMobil may have shut down its algae-based fuel project, but no one else seems to be giving up on the idea of turning these stemless plants into industrial workhorses.
BREAKTHROUGH TURNS PLASTIC TRASH INTO ENGINE FUEL
Coffee cup lids, the plastic film encasing paper towels, and the infinite number of single-use plastic shopping bags can be the source of energy and raw materials, if we only knew how to unlock their chemical bonds at a practical cost.
IT’S OFFICIAL: SOCIAL MEDIA IS NOW WORTHLESS
Social media has long been a cesspit of breathless rumors, baseless conspiracy theories, and outright lies.