TRENDS ON THE ECONOMIC AND MARKET FRONT
ECONOMIC UPDATE – MARKET OVERVIEW
Back in November of 2022, The Trends Journal had forecast a stock market spike in 2023. We noted that over the past 40 U.S. midterm elections, the S&P 500 rose 16.3 percent in the next 12 months and considering the economic data, the trend would continue.
FED LETS RATES STAND WHILE DEBATING A NOVEMBER HIKE
The U.S. Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee did not raise rates when it met last week, leaving them at 5.25 percent for deposits and 5.5 percent for loans, both at a 22-year high.
DOLLAR CLIMBS AS INVESTORS SEE HIGHER RATES AHEAD
Last week, the dollar rose to six-month highs against the euro, pound, and yen after U.S. Federal Reserve officials said the bank expects to keep interest rates higher longer than they had earlier predicted.
CREDIT CARD COMPANIES PILING UP LOSSES AT FASTEST RATE IN 30 YEARS
Aside from the early days of the Great Recession, credit card issuers are seeing their losses mount at the fastest rate since the mid-1990s, CNBC reported.
CORPORATE BANKRUPTCIES COULD REACH 13-YEAR HIGH
Through August, 450 U.S. corporations have claimed bankruptcy, more than the total in either 2021 or 2022, according to a report by Guggenheim Investments.
HOME SALES, STARTS FALL IN AUGUST
Sales of existing homes slipped 0.7 percent in August from July and fell 15.3 percent from August 2022, setting their slowest pace since January, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported.
FEDEX: REVENUE DOWN, PROFITS UP
In the quarter ending 31 August, FedEx took in $21.7 billion in revenue, 6 percent less than a year earlier. Even so, it reported a profit of $1.08 billion, compared to $875 million in the same quarter in 2022.
BANK LOBBY SPENDING MILLIONS TO KILL MODEST REGULATORY CHANGE
In July, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and U.S. Federal Reserve proposed a regulation to require banks with $100 billion or more in assets—so-called “megabanks”—to set aside more capital as reserves against loan losses and to ensure general operational stability.
TRENDS ON THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC FRONT
GLOBAL DEBT SETS RECORD AT $307 TRILLION
The amount of money owed by governments, businesses, households, and individuals grew by $10 trillion in this year’s first half to a record $307 trillion, the Institute of International Finance (IIF) said in a 19 September report.
WHEN THE ECONOMY FALLS JOBS GO WITH IT
This is week 55 of our listing job cuts. Today, the Dow plunged nearly 400 points. Why? According to the CNBC headline because “... economic worries return.”
GOING OUT OF BUSINESS/CLOSING STORES TRENDS
In recent times, the economic landscape has presented an array of challenges that have profoundly affected the business community. Some of the most significant challenges include soaring inflation rates, escalating interest rates, looming fears of a recession, and a tangible decrease in revenues for many sectors…all made worse by the COVID War which destroyed the lives and livelihoods of billions across the globe.
RUSSIA HALTS EXPORTS OF GASOLINE AND DIESEL FUEL
With world oil prices closing in on $100 a barrel, Russia has banned exports of diesel fuel and gasoline, with exceptions for some low-grade diesel and for supplies to four adjacent ex-Soviet states.
TURKEY RAISES KEY INTEREST RATE BY 5 POINTS AT ONCE
On 21 September, Turkey’s central bank hiked its key one-week repo interest rate by a whopping five percentage points to 30 percent, matching economists’ forecast in a FactSet poll.
BANK OF ENGLAND PAUSES RATE HIKES
By a vote of five to four, the Bank of England’s (BoE’s) rate-setting committee paused its steady march of rate increases at its meeting last week, leaving its key rate at 5.25 percent.
BUNDESBANK PRESIDENT WARNS AGAINST ENTRENCHED INFLATION
“At all costs,” the European Central Bank (ECB) must prevent inflation from becoming entrenched across the Eurozone’s economy, Joachim Nagel, president of Germany’s central bank, said in a speech last week.
CANADA’S INFLATION RATE SPIKES IN AUGUST
Canada’s annual Inflation rate jumped to 4 percent in August from 3.3 percent in July, largely due to a 0.8-percent rise in the price of petroleum fuels, Statistics Canada reported. The rate was the highest since April.
BANK OF JAPAN HOLDS INTEREST RATE STEADY
The Bank of Japan (BoJ) did not change its interest rate when the governing committee met on 22 September, citing “extremely high uncertainties” about its own and the world’s economic future.
SPOTLIGHT, TOP TREND 2023: OFFICE BUILDING BUST
About 24 percent of office space in 18 major Chinese cities sat empty in June, compared to 18.2 percent in the U.S., real estate services firm CBRE reported. In that month, the national value of office rents fell 7 percent below that of 2019.
SPOTLIGHT: CHINA’S ECONOMIC STRUGGLE
China’s economic crisis has emboldened reformers who argue for structural change to the country’s economy, challenging other officials who contend that stimulus spending will put China’s productivity back on track, Reuters reported.
SPOTLIGHT: “BIGS” GETTING BIGGER
As we have noted since the Central Banksters started to rapidly raise interest rates, the decade’s long merger and acquisition spree is over. However, the “Bigs” will still get bigger, as they buy out overleveraged companies that can’t afford to borrow at high rates to refinance while, at the same time, recessionary pressures erode their profitability.
UKRAINE WAR TREND UPDATE
ZELENSKY BRINGS WAR SHOW TO CANADA. SAYS RUSSIA WILL LOSE
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Canada’s Parliament after his brief visit to the U.S. last week and was greeted with a standing ovation from MPs.
WASHINGTON KNOWS UKRAINE LOST
An alleged top source told Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh that the White House already knows that Ukraine has lost its war against Russia despite reports indicating that its forces have made recent small gains in their counteroffensive.
KYIV ON DIFFERENT WAR PATH THAN WASHINGTON
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met last week with newspaper editors in Washington and presented a different war strategy than U.S. war planners have in mind.
LAVROV CALLS OUT WEST’S HYPOCRISY, CITING ISRAEL’S OCCUPATION OF GOLAN HEIGHTS
Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s top diplomat, called out Western hypocrisy when criticizing Moscow’s occupation of the Donbas while giving a stamp of approval for Israel’s land grab in the Golan Heights.
UKRAINE LOST ITS COUNTEROFFENSIVE, NOW LOOKS TO PROVOKE WWIII WITH STRIKES ON RUSSIA’S BLACK SEA FLEET IN CRIMEA
The Ukrainian military used British Storm Shadow missiles to strike the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol last week, which was reportedly intended to coincide with a meeting of Moscow’s top naval commanders, according to a report.
POLAND—ONE OF UKRAINE’S TOP ARMS-DEALER—SAYS IT WILL NO LONGER PROVIDE KYIV WITH WEAPONS
Mateusz Morawiecki, the Polish prime minister, said Wednesday that Warsaw will no longer transfer weapons to Ukraine—citing the need for his own country to rearm itself with the “most modern weapons.”
WRITER MOCKS BIDEN’S ‘WHOPPERS’ DURING UN SPEECH ON UKRAINE
U.S. President Joe Biden was serving up so many “whoppers” during his UN speech last week on the state of the Ukraine War that he looked like he should apply for a job at Burger King, a peace activist said.
JOE BIDEN USES UN SPEECH TO URGE SUPPORT FOR MORE WAR IN UKRAINE
U.S. President Joe Biden used his speech at the UN’s General Assembly last week to urge countries not to agree to any peace deal for Ukraine that would mean ceding land to Russia because if the body allows Kyiv to be “carved up, is the independence of any nation secure?”
BIDEN TELLS ZELENSKY THAT LONG-RANGE ATACMS COMING SOON
U.S. President Joe Biden told his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky last week that Washington will provide his country with a number of long-range ATACMS missiles, which would be the latest escalatory move by the White House during Ukraine’s war against Russia.
CANADIAN MPs GIVE NAZI VETERAN A STANDING OVATION, SUPPORTING PUTIN’S CLAIM THAT RUSSIA IS IN A FIGHT AGAINST UKRAINIAN NAZIS
Russian President Vladimir Putin was ridiculed in the Western media when he announced—at the onset of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—that one of his chief goals was to smash the neo-Nazis in the country who have been waging a Hitleresque assault in Russian-speaking Donbass region that killed over 14,000 residents since the U.S. led 2014 coup that overthrew the democratically elected government of Viktor Yanukovych.
LAVROV AGREES WITH TRENDS JOURNAL: U.S. IS AT WAR WITH RUSSIA
Sergey Lavrov, the top Russian diplomat, said the U.S. and its NATO allies are in a direct war with Moscow—no matter how these countries try to officially frame it.
FEATURED TRENDS GUEST ARTICLE by Dr. Joseph Mercola
MORE MASK MASQUERADES
From the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, health experts have been unable to unify around a cohesive message about face masks. A virtuoso of contradiction, Dr. Anthony Fauci—then-director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and a prominent face of the White House COVID-19 response team—publicly flip-flopped on the usefulness and need for masks multiple times.
FEATURED TRENDS GUEST ARTICLE by John & Nisha Whitehead
A NATION OF SNITCHES: DHS IS GROOMING AMERICANS TO REPORT ON EACHOTHER
If you believe in and exercise your rights under the Constitution (namely, your right to speak freely, worship freely, associate with like-minded individuals who share your political views, criticize the government, own a weapon, demand a warrant before being questioned or searched, or any other activity viewed as potentially anti-government, racist, bigoted, anarchic or sovereign), you have just been promoted to the top of the government’s terrorism watch list.
TRENDS IN THE MARKETS by Gregory Mannarino
MAXIMUM SATURATION
For many years now, I have warned that at one point a “maximum saturation” moment would eventually occur in the financial system—it’s already started.
TRENDS IN TECHNOCRACY by Joe Doran
FROM FANTASY AND INTRIGUE TO REALITY: LEADING AUTHORS VS AI
It’s exactly what The Trends Journal explained and forecast to readers well before most people knew what ChatGPT was: the company behind it had hijacked human creative content en masse, and figured out a way to monetize it.
THIS WEEK IN SURVEILLANCE
Joining sensory systems with AI is the cutting edge of where more sophisticated technology is heading.
TRENDS IN CRYPTOS
BLOCKCHAIN BATTLES
Authors looking for permissionless web3 alternatives to Amazon or Barnes & Noble to publish their works have yet to see anything that approaches the ease of use of those platforms.
PUBLIC BLOCKCHAINS VS. THE “GOVCORP” SYSTEM
This past week multiple governments including the U.S. and the U.K. actually pressured corporations like Rumble and TikTok to deplatform political commentator Russell Brand.
TRENDS IN THE COVID WAR
U.S. SCHOOLS ARE ‘FAILING’ COVID GENERATION, REPORT SAYS
A nonpartisan research organization in Arizona released a damning report last week that said public schools in the U.S. are failing the “COVID generation” who have already struggled under unnecessary lockdowns and in-person class cancellations during the lockdown years.
TRENDS IN GEOPOLITICS
GERMANY’S SCHOLZ’S UN SPEECH WOULD MAKE HITLER PROUD, JOURNALIST SAYS
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz addressed the United Nations in New York last week and told the body that there should be no “phony” solution of the Ukraine War and that it is essential that Moscow is punished for its decision to invade.
MALI, BURKINA FASO, NIGER FORM SECURITY ALLIANCE AMID THREAT OF FRENCH INVASION RISK
A group of African nations in the Sahel region announced last week that they’ve formed a security alliance amid what they see as a growing risk of intervention by France in its former colony Niger.
FRENCH TROOPS, AMBASSADOR WILL EXIT NIGER, MACRON SAYS
French troops and the ambassador from the country will exit Niger and will end all military cooperation with the military leaders of Niger in place since the July coup.
TRENDS-EYE VIEW
ULTRA-PROCESSED FOODS—ESPECIALLY WITH ARTIFICIAL SWEETENERS—LINKED TO HIGHER RATES OF DEPRESSION IN WOMEN
A recent study out of the U.K. linked ultra-processed foods to depression in women, especially when the item contained artificial sweeteners.
JOURNALISM IS DEAD: GANNETT HIRING REPORTERS TO COVER TAYLOR SWIFT, BEYONCE
While newsrooms across the country are cutting staffers and local news is an essentially dead market, Gannett, the country’s largest newspaper owner, announced earlier this month that it will hire two journalists who will exclusively report on Taylor Swift and Beyonce Knowles.
ASPARTAME MAY CAUSE GENETIC CHANGES IN SPERM, AFFECT FUTURE GENERATIONS
A newly released study by Florida State University found that the ingestion of aspartame—a popular artificial sweetener found in “diet” foods, could come with a deleterious impact on not only persons ingesting it but also future generations.
TRENDS IN HI-TECH SCIENCE by Ben Daviss
GOODBYE, GRAY CEMENT. HELLO, GREEN CEMENT.
Making cement—the main ingredient in concrete—is estimated to be responsible for producing 8 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, at a rate of a ton of CO2 per ton of cement.
3-D PRINTED LIVING BRAIN CELLS SEND AND RECEIVE INFORMATION
Using “bio-inks,” researchers at Australia’s Monash University have 3D-printed living neurons—brain cells—that continue growing in a lab and are able to send and respond to nerve signals.
COMPUTER SUSSES OUT THREE NEW ANTI-AGING COMPOUNDS
Elderly cells in our bodies stop functioning but live on, after a fashion, causing inflammation and emitting waste and other damaging chemicals into the bloodstream.
TRENDS IN AI
AI MAY GENERATE 90 PERCENT OF ONLINE CONTENT BY 2026, STUDY SAYS
Within about two years, 90 percent of all content online could be the product of artificial intelligence, according to a study by the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation.
CONSULTING FIRMS BET BIG ON AI
Global business and technology consulting and services firm EY has invested $1.4 billion in AI, has created its own large language model AI called EYQ, and will train all of its 400,000 workers in AI, the company announced last week.
RELAX! LAWS TO GOVERN AI ARE ALREADY IN PLACE, SECURITY EXPERT SAYS
AI insiders from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to Bill Gates are calling on the U.S. Congress to set rules in place to govern artificial intelligence and Congress is listening.
NEW INTEL CHIP BRINGS AI TO LAPTOP COMPUTERS
In December, chip-making giant Intel will unveil its new “Meteor Lake” chip able to run a generative AI program on a notebook computer instead of forcing users to connect to data centers to muster enough computing power for the task, the company announced last week at a Silicon Valley developers conference.
AHEAD OF AI SAFETY SUMMIT, U.K. REGULATORS LIST GUIDING PRINCIPLES FOR AI DEVELOPMENT
“The speed at which AI is becoming part of everyday life for people and businesses is dramatic,” Sarah Cardell, CEO of the CMA, said in a statement listing the principles.
U.K. WILL PLACE THIRD IN GLOBAL AI SWEEPSTAKES, STUDY SAYS
Britain’s AI sector will grow from £1.36 trillion (about $1.7 trillion) to £2.4 trillion ($3 trillion) by 2027, making it the world’s third-largest AI economy behind the U.S. and China, according to an analysis by the information clearinghouse Global AI Ecosystem.