TRENDS ON THE ECONOMIC AND MARKET FRONT
ECONOMIC UPDATE –MARKET OVERVIEW
It’s summertime, and the living is easy.
Much of the world, particularly those in the northern hemisphere, is in a summer state of mind.
INVESTORS EXPECT RECESSION, SEE CURRENT MARKET STRENGTH AS TEMPORARY
Two-thirds of respondents in the latest Market Pulse survey of 410 major investors expect the U.S. economy to slip into a recession before 2025.
FITCH DOWNGRADE AN OMINOUS SIGNAL
When Fitch Ratings downgraded the U.S.’s credit rating from AAA to AA+ on 1 August, analysts were quick to dismiss it as meaningless to investors, citing the stock market’s lack of reaction.
U.S. BANK STOCKS FALL AFTER FITCH DOWNGRADE
The U.S. banking sector saw stock prices sink on 7 August after Fitch Ratings lowered its credit ratings on 10 small and midsize lenders and put 17 other institutions under review.
BOND MARKET BRACES AS FED’S BOND PORTFOLIO SHRINKS BY MORE THAN $1 TRILLION
Following the Great Recession and during the COVID War, the U.S. Federal Reserve bought trillion of dollars in bonds to keep the credit market alive, seeing its portfolio peak at $8.55 trillion in May 2022.
START-UPS WITHER AMID FUNDING DROUGHT
A “historic” shortage of venture capital has cut off money for start-ups, The Wall Street Journal reported.
U.S. INFLATION TICKS UP
The U.S. consumer price index grew at an annual pace of 3.2 percent last month, a slight rise from June’s 3.0 percent but still lower than many analysts had forecast.
U.S. BANKS LOSE $18.9 BILLION TO BAD LOANS
In this year’s second quarter, U.S. banks booked $18.9 billion in losses, the most in any quarter since the second...
MAJOR SOURCE OF COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE LOANS DRIES UP
Blackstone Mortgage Trust and KKR Real Estate Finance Trust, two of the largest mortgage-focused real estate investment trusts, originated no...
TRENDS ON THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC FRONT
EUROPEAN INFLATION WILL RISE FOR A DECADE
Inflation swaps, analyst surveys, and other indicators find Europe’s economy watchers expecting inflation to continue above the European Central Bank’s (ECB’s) 2-percent target for at least a decade.
OIL PRICE CONTINUES ITS CLIMB
Oil demand set a record of 103 million barrels a day in June, driven by summer air travel, a surge in use by China’s petrochemical plants, and stronger-than-expected economic activity in Europe, the International Energy Agency (IEA) reported.
THREAT OF STRIKE SENDS EUROPE’S GAS PRICES SOARING
The threat of strikes at several Australian ports exporting liquefied natural gas (LNG) rocketed up prices for the fuel across Europe from around €30 per megawatt-hour on 8 August to €40 the next day.
BUSINESS-CLASS AIR TRAVEL’S RECOVERY STILL STALLS
After showing signs of a revival, business-class air travel among Europe’s three major airline groups has begun to level off, according to the carriers’ most recent earnings reports.
WEWORK, DON’T WORK: ONCE VALUED AT $47 BILLION, POISED TO COLLAPSE
WeWork, which assembled a billion-dollar global empire of coworking spaces during the ‘teens, said in an 8 August statement that “substantial doubt exists about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern.”
PRIVATE EQUITY FIRMS OFFER SWEETENERS TO ENTICE RELUCTANT INVESTORS
As we reported in “Worry Sign: Major Investors Holding Onto Cash” (8 Aug 2023), foundations, pension funds, and the other major investors who fund private equity’s deals have been sitting on their cash, waiting for a more encouraging economic outlook.
WHEN THE ECONOMY FALLS JOBS GO WITH IT
First-half cuts among healthcare companies including hospitals are up 97 percent year over year. The volume of cuts have already surpassed last year's totals. Many of these cuts are only affecting administration.
GOING OUT OF BUSINESS TRENDS
The post-COVID War economic landscape has presented an array of challenges that have profoundly affected the business community.
SPOTLIGHT ON CHINA: ECONOMIC STRUGGLE
As we have noted, China’s current economic decline is mostly self-inflicted.
The nation’s economy boomed at the greatest level in modern history when the U.S. allowed it to join the World Trade Organization some two decades ago. Their economy boomed as western companies gave the cheap labor communist nation all the high-tech intelligence and heavy industry manufacturing skills they never had... to make what they were selling.
SPOTLIGHT: BIGS GETTING BIGGER
As we had long forecast, the higher central banks raise interest rates, the lower the Merger and Acquisition trend… which hit record highs at the height of the COVID War in 2021 when interest rates sank and governments pumped in countless trillions to artificially prop up sinking economies.
UKRAINE WAR TREND UPDATE
RUSSIA MOCKS VICTORIA NULAND’S VISIT TO NIGER AS RE-RUN OF 2013 COUP IN UKRAINE
Maria Zakharova, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, mocked Victoria “Fuck the EU” Nuland’s recent trip to Niger and compared it to her destabilizing visit to Ukraine in 2013 to overthrow the government and put in place its current “banana [republic-style] regime.”
BIDEN WANTS $24 BILLION MORE TO KEEP BLOODYING UKRAINE KILLING FIELD, BUT ASKS FOR JUST $3.3 BILLION FOR U.S.’s ROTTING INFRASTRUCTURE
The Biden administration asked Congress last week to approve a new bill with $24 billion for Ukraine to continue its war effort against Russia.
PUTIN STATUE IN CENTRAL PARK PROMPTS CHILDREN TO TAKE OUT THEIR WATER GUNS AND AIM FOR THE HEAD
The anti-Russian indoctrination begins early in the U.S.
FEATURED TRENDS GUEST ARTICLE by Dr. Joseph Mercola
LONG COVID OR COVID VAX INJURED? A BILLION DOLLARSWASTED
It took two and a half years and more than $1 billion to do it, but world health officials can now showcase all that they’ve accomplished in studying long COVID and the patients who suffer with it.
LAWSUIT UNVEILS MURKY WEB OF CENSORSHIP AGAINST U.S. CITIZENS
Between lawsuits and voluntary document releases such as the Twitter Files, it’s become apparent that most censorship is being directed by the U.S. government, in blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution
FEATURED TRENDS GUEST ARTICLE by John & Nisha Whitehead
INDOCTRINATION, INTIMIDATION & INTOLERANCE: WHAT PASSES FOR EDUCATION TODAY
This is what it means to go back-to-school in America today.
Instead of being taught the three R’s of education (reading, writing and arithmetic), young people are being drilled in the three I’s of life in the American police state: indoctrination, intimidation and intolerance.
FEATURED ARTICLE BY GUEST WRITER by Philip Giraldi
WHAT IS HAPPENING IN SYRIA?
Washington’s interventionism and its disregard for its own highly promoted “rules-based international order” is outrageous...
PRESIDENTIAL REALITY SHOW® 2024
RFK JR. NAMES FAUCI AS THE FATHER OF BIOWEAPONS DISASTER
Dr. Anthony Fauci actively kept bioweapons research going in Ukraine and elsewhere, even after the Obama administration tried to shutter...
TRENDS IN THE MARKETS by Gregory Mannarino
COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE TIME BOMB
The silence here is deafening.
There is a BIG secret being kept from the public, one which has the potential to send the already vastly overleveraged financial system into a tailspin on an unprecedented scale… and that is a commercial real estate time bomb.
TRENDS IN TECHNOCRACY by Joe Doran
KNOWLEDGE WORKERS LOSING OUT TO AI
Is Generative AI complementing knowledge workers, or more often, displacing them?
That’s the subject of a newly published study by researchers at the University of Washington at St. Louis.
THIS WEEK IN SURVEILLANCE
Understanding the boundless sense of entitlement of technocrats to radically remake the world, is a key to putting together their sometimes seemingly far flung pursuits.
TRENDS IN CRYPTOS
BLOCKCHAIN BATTLES
Was the Securities and Exchange Commision unfairly targeting XRP with its lawsuit, while giving other cryptos like Ethereum a pass?
HEDERA POWERED SOCIAL MARKETPLACE APP CALAXY LAUNCHES
Calaxy, a social media platform which facilitates direct interactions and payments between social media creatives and audiences, made its official launch last week.
TRENDS IN GEOPOLITICS
U.S.: NIGER’S JUNTA MUST FOLLOW OUR DEMANDS OR WE’LL STARVE YOUR COUNTRY
Antony Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, called the coup in Niger “extremely troubling” and said he supports the efforts by some West African countries to “restore constitutional order” in the country, while his second-in-command vowed to starve the country of funding.
SUDAN’S BRUTAL WAR DISPLACES OVER 4 MILLION, BUT WHO CARES? THEY AREN’T UKRAINIAN
The United Nations warned last week that the armed clashes between Sudan’s army and its paramilitary Rapid Response Forces have displaced more than four million people—including over 884,000 who have fled the country.
WHERE’S THE OUTRAGE? ECUADORIAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE ASSASSINATED
Politicians in Washington and the presstitutes in the media shrug off political assassinations unless, of course, they occur in countries that are continually portrayed as evil, like Russia and China.
MIDDLE EAST MELTDOWN: BIDEN ESCALATES TENSIONS WITH IRAN IN STRAIT OF HORMUZ
The Biden administration deployed sailors and Marines to the Middle East last week as part of its “pre-announced deployment to support deterrence efforts in the Strait of Hormuz,” the Pentagon said.
PAKISTAN HIT WITH POLITICAL INSTABILITY AFTER PM DISSOLVES PARLIAMENT
Shehbaz Sharif, Pakistan’s departing prime minister, announced last week that he dissolved Parliament—which means the country’s election will not occur until 2024 instead of November.
CHINA ACCUSES U.S. OF ‘TECH BULLYING’ AFTER BIDEN’S LATEST MOVE TO HURT CHINA
The Biden administration last week took its latest actions to stymie the growth of China by issuing an executive order that bans new investment into vital technology industries in the Asian giant.
POLAND TO SEND UP TO 10,000 SOLDIERS TO BORDER WITH BELARUS AMID RELOCATION OF WAGNER FORCES
Mariusz Blaszczak, the Polish defense minister, announced Thursday that Warsaw will move up to 10,000 additional soldiers to its border with Belarus to “scare away the aggressor so that it does not dare to attack us.”
TRENDS-EYE VIEW
ELECTROSMOG RUINING LIVES AND HEALTH?
For the sake of convenience, and marching along the siren song of technological progress, are we damaging our health, and our humanity?
JOE ROGAN AGREES WITH CELENTE, WARNS OF GOV’T PUSH TO DIGITAL CURRENCY
Joe Rogan, the popular podcast host, warned last week that a shift to digital currency in the U.S. would mean the disappearance of freedom and privacy in the country and enable the government to control nearly every facet of life.
AMERICA: “WE’RE #1” IN CORRUPTION
A newly released Gallup poll found that 74 percent of those polled said the U.S. government is corrupt, which ties with Mexico for most corrupt countries.
GOOGLE-OWNED YOUTUBE BANS SCOTT RITTER FOR NOT SWALLOWING THE MAINSTREAM NEWS BULLSHIT ON UKRAINE
Scott Ritter, the former UN weapons inspector who has been a top voice in the U.S. peace movement since the start of the Ukraine War, saw his YouTube channel deleted last week “due to multiple or severe violations of YouTube's policy prohibiting hate speech.”
TRENDS IN HI-TECH SCIENCE by Ben Daviss
SCIENTISTS PRODUCE RETINAL CELLS THAT COULD HELP HUMANS REGAIN THEIR VISION
Macular degeneration, a major cause of blindness on the rise in developed nations, occurs when retinal cells die in the central area of the retinal field, leaving sufferers with a black hole in the center of their vision.
TINY BIOCHIPS COULD SCAN FOR THOUSANDS OF ILLNESSES IN MINUTES
Using light to diagnose the presence of viruses or other invaders in the body isn’t new. Typically, the tests use a probe molecule that locks onto a gene known to belong to the villain. The combination of the two changes the frequency of light emitted by the target, and the change can be seen and quantified by an optical microscope.
CHEAP PROTON FLOW BATTERIES MAY BE AS GOOD AS LITHIUM
A “proton flow battery” created at RMIT University in Australia can store as much energy per unit of weight as a mid-range lithium-ion battery and is just as energy-efficient, the developers say.
TRENDS IN AI
AI’S IMPACT WILL BEGIN TO BE FELT AFTER 2025, GOLDMAN STUDY SAYS
Generative AI could boost global productivity by 1 percent a year for the 10 years after the technology is widespread in the world’s economy, a period that will begin in the last half of this decade, according to an analysis by Goldman Sachs Economic Research.
CAN CHATGPT BE YOUR NEW INVESTMENT COUNSELOR?
ChatGPT returned almost 10 percent in a month after telling BTCNews, a crypto website, how to invest $20,000. Following the chatbot’s guidance, the news site pocketed a gross return of $1,946 in barely four weeks.
AI IS A WAKE-UP CALL FOR CALL CENTER WORKERS
“I always had a question in the back of my mind,” Ylonda Sherrod told The New York Times. “Will I be jobless? Am I training my replacement?”
AI: THE CHIPS ARE DOWN
The boom in AI has caused the same problem that the clamor for electronics did during the COVID War: there aren’t enough computer chips to meet the demand.
AUTHOR USES AI TO GENERATE 97 E-BOOKS IN NINE MONTHS
Science fiction writer Tim Boucher says that ChatGPT and other AIs have enabled him to create and illustrate 97 “mini-novels” in nine months.
AI WILL REINVENT THE COMPUTER, NVIDIA CEO SAYS
Conventional computer platforms are being outmoded and replaced by AI platforms, Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, the company that leads the AI chip market, told a computer graphics conference earlier this month.