February 10+++//2023 · by harveyorgan · in Uncategorized · Leave a comment·Edit

GOLD PRICE CLOSED: DOWN $4.05 at $1863.30

SILVER PRICE CLOSED: DOWN $0.08  to $22.05

Access prices: closes : 4: 15 PM

Gold ACCESS CLOSE 1864.20

Silver ACCESS CLOSE: 22.01

Bitcoin morning price:, 21,749 DOWN 217 Dollars

Bitcoin: afternoon price: $21,745 DOWN 221  dollars

Platinum price closing  $950.70 DOWN $31.90

Palladium price; closing 1547.05 DOWN 107.20

END

Due to the huge rise in the dollar, we must look at gold and silver in currencies other than the dollar to understand where we are heading

I will now provide gold in Canadian dollars, British pounds and Euros/4: 15 PM ACCESS

CANADIAN GOLD: $2,487.86 DOWN $16.65 CDN dollars per oz

BRITISH GOLD: 1546.32 UP 9.18 pounds per oz

EURO GOLD: 1734.20 UP 11.76 euros per oz

EXCHANGE: COMEX

EXCHANGE: COMEX
CONTRACT: FEBRUARY 2023 COMEX 100 GOLD FUTURES
SETTLEMENT: 1,866.200000000 USD
INTENT DATE: 02/09/2023 DELIVERY DATE: 02/13/2023
FIRM ORG FIRM NAME ISSUED STOPPED

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072 C GOLDMAN 1
132 C SG AMERICAS 1
323 C HSBC 2
435 H SCOTIA CAPITAL 72
624 H BOFA SECURITIES 24
657 C MORGAN STANLEY 6
661 C JP MORGAN 28
800 C MAREX SPEC 4 4
880 C CITIGROUP 9
905 C ADM 1

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TOTAL: 76 76

JPMORGAN STOPPED 28.76

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GOLD: NUMBER OF NOTICES FILED FOR FEB/2023. CONTRACT:   76 NOTICES FOR 7600  OZ  or  0.4074 TONNES

total notices so far: 12,932 contracts for 1,293,200 oz (40.223 tonnes)

 

SILVER NOTICES: 2 NOTICE(S) FILED FOR 110,000 OZ/

total number of notices filed so far this month :736 for 3,680,000 oz

 

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END

GLD

WITH GOLD DOWN $4.05

INVESTORS SWITCHING TO SPROTT PHYSICAL  (PHYS) INSTEAD OF THE FRAUDULENT GLD

///SMALL CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD//A WITHDRAWAL OF 0.31 TONNES FROM THE GLD//

INVENTORY RESTS AT 921.10TONNES

Silver//SLV

WITH NO SILVER AROUND AND SILVER DOWN 8 CENTS

AT THE SLV// :/HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: INTO THE SLV/

INVESTORS ARE SWITCHING SLV TO SPROTT’S PSLV

CLOSING INVENTORY: 483.762. MILLION OZ (CORRECTED

Let us have a look at the data for today

SILVER//OUTLINE

SILVER COMEX OI ROSE BY A TINY SIZED 6 CONTRACTS TO 132,960 AND CLOSER TO THE  RECORD HIGH OI OF 244,710, SET FEB 25/2020 AND THE TINY GAIN IN COMEX OI WAS ACCOMPLISHED DESPITE OUR   $0.14 LOSS SILVER PRICING AT THE COMEX ON THURSDAY.  FOR THE TWO MONTHS, OUR BANKERS HAVE RETURNED TO BEING NET SHORT AND THUS WERE SUCCESSFUL IN KNOCKING THE PRICE OF SILVER DOWN (IT FELL BY $0.14. AND WERE  UNSUCCESSFUL IN KNOCKING ANY SPEC LONGS, AS WE HAD A FAIR SIZED GAIN ON OUR TWO EXCHANGES OF 391 CONTRACTS. AS WELL, WE HAD 0 NOTICES FOR  EXCHANGE FOR RISK TRANSFER (0.0 MILLION OZ. ) AS THE TOTAL ISSUED IN THIS CATEGORY SO FAR THIS MONTH TOTAL 1.775 MILLION OZ.  WE HAVE FINISHED WITH OUR SPECS BEING SHORT AS THEY COVERED WITH THE RISE IN PRICE .  WE HAVE NOW RETURNED TO OUR USUAL AND CUSTOMARY SCENARIO: BANKERS SHORT AND SPECS LONG.

WE  MUST HAVE HAD: 
A FAIR  ISSUANCE OF EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICALS( 385 CONTRACTS) iiii) AN  INITIAL SILVER STANDING FOR COMEX SILVER MEASURING AT  0.540. MILLION OZ FOLLOWED BY TODAY’S 105,000 OZ QUEUE JUMP O// NEW TOTALS STANDING = 3.775 MILLION OZ  + 1.775 MILLION OF EXCHANGE FOR RISK//TOTAL STANDING 5.55 MILLION OZ////  V)  STRONG SIZED COMEX OI GAIN/ FAIR SIZED EFP ISSUANCE/

 I AM NOW RECORDING THE DIFFERENTIAL IN OI FROM PRELIMINARY TO FINAL  -574

HISTORICAL ACCUMULATION OF EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICALS FEB. ACCUMULATION FOR EFP’S SILVER/JPMORGAN’S HOUSE OF BRIBES/STARTING FROM FIRST DAY/MONTH OF FEB: 

TOTAL CONTRACTS for 8 days, total 8231 contracts:   OR 41.155  MILLION OZ . (1028 CONTRACTS PER DAY)

TOTAL EFP’S FOR THE MONTH SO FAR: 41.155 MILLION OZ (HUGE)

.

LAST 17 MONTHS TOTAL EFP CONTRACTS ISSUED  IN MILLIONS OF OZ:

MAY 137.83 MILLION

JUNE 149.91 MILLION OZ

JULY 129.445 MILLION OZ

AUGUST: MILLION OZ 140.120 

SEPT. 28.230 MILLION OZ//

OCT:  94.595 MILLION OZ

NOV: 131.925 MILLION OZ

DEC: 100.615 MILLION OZ 

JAN 2022//  90.460 MILLION OZ

FEB 2022:  72.39 MILLION OZ//

MARCH: 207.430  MILLION OZ//A NEW RECORD FOR EFP ISSUANCE 

APRIL: 114.52 MILLION OZ FINAL//LOW ISSUANCE

MAY: 105.635 MILLION OZ//

JUNE: 94.470 MILLION OZ

JULY : 87.110 MILLION OZ 

AUGUST: 65.025 MILLION OZ 

SEPT. 74.025 MILLION OZ///FINAL

OCT.  29.017 MILLION OZ FINAL

NOV: 134.290 MILLION OZ//FINAL

DEC, 61.395 MILLION OZ FINAL

JAN 2023///   53.070 MILLION OZ //FINAL

FEB: 2023:       41.115/ MILLION OZ/INITIAL//HEADING FOR A RECORD MONTH OF ISSUANCE!!

RESULT: WE HAD A STRONG SIZED INCREASE IN COMEX OI SILVER COMEX CONTRACTS OF 580 DESPITE  OUR  $0.14 LOSS IN SILVER PRICING AT THE COMEX//THURSDAY.,.  THE CME NOTIFIED US THAT WE HAD A FAIR  SIZED EFP ISSUANCE  CONTRACTS: 385 CONTRACTS ISSUED FOR MAR AND 0 CONTRACTS ISSUED FOR ALL OTHER MONTHS) WHICH  EXITED OUT OF THE SILVER COMEX  TO LONDON  AS FORWARDS./ WE HAVE A GOOD INITIAL SILVER OZ STANDING FOR FEB OF  0.54 MILLION  OZ FOLLOWED BY TODAY’S 105,0000 OZ QUEUE JUMP= NEW STANDING:  3.775 MILLION  OZ  +  1.775 MILLION OZ EXCHANGE FOR RISK://NEW STANDING REMAINS AT   5.55 MILLION OZ   .. WE HAVE AN GOOD SIZED GAIN OF  965 OI CONTRACTS ON THE TWO EXCHANGES DESPITE THE LOSS IN PRICE//

 WE HAD  22  NOTICE(S) FILED TODAY FOR  110,000   OZ

THE SILVER COMEX IS NOW BEING ATTACKED FOR METAL BY LONDONERS ET AL.

GOLD//OUTLINE

IN GOLD, THE COMEX OPEN INTEREST FELL  BY A FAIR SIZED 2721  CONTRACTS  TO 435,848 AND FURTHER FROM  THE RECORD (SET JAN 24/2020) AT 799,541 AND  PREVIOUS TO THAT: (SET JAN 6/2020) AT 797,110.

THE DIFFERENTIAL FROM PRELIMINARY OI TO FINAL OI IN GOLD TODAY: ADDED + 145 CONTRACTS.

.

 WE HAD A FAIR SIZED DECREASE  IN COMEX OI ( 2721 CONTRACTS) WITH OUR   $10.90 LOSS IN PRICE. WE ALSO HAD A SMALL INITIAL STANDING IN GOLD TONNAGE FOR FEB. AT 41.601 TONNES ON FIRST DAY NOTICE FOLLOWED BY TODAY’S QUEUE JUMP  OF 1000 OZ //NEW STANDING: 43.107  TONNES//(QUEUE JUMPING = EXERCISING LONDON BASED EFP’S ) (EFP is the transfer of  contracts immediately to London for potential gold deliveries originating from London). TONNES

YET ALL OF..THIS HAPPENED WITH OUR  $10.90 LOSS IN PRICE  WITH RESPECT TO THURSDAY’S TRADING

WE HAD A FAIR SIZED LOSS OF 1676 OI CONTRACTS (5.213 PAPER TONNES) ON OUR TWO EXCHANGES 

E.F.P. ISSUANCE

THE CME RELEASED THE DATA FOR EFP ISSUANCE AND IT TOTALED A FAIR SIZED  1045 CONTRACTS:

The NEW COMEX OI FOR THE GOLD COMPLEX RESTS AT 435,993

IN ESSENCE WE HAVE A FAIR SIZED DECREASE IN TOTAL CONTRACTS ON THE TWO EXCHANGES OF 1676 CONTRACTS  WITH 2721 CONTRACTS DECREASED AT THE COMEX AND 1045 EFP OI CONTRACTS WHICH NAVIGATED OVER TO LONDON. THUS  TOTAL OI LOSS ON THE TWO EXCHANGES OF 1676 CONTRACTS OR 5.213 TONNES.

CALCULATIONS ON GAIN/LOSS ON OUR TWO EXCHANGES

WE HAD A FAIR SIZED ISSUANCE IN EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICALS (1045 CONTRACTS) ACCOMPANYING THE FAIR SIZED LOSS IN COMEX OI (2721) TOTAL LOSS IN THE TWO EXCHANGES 1676 CONTRACTS. WE HAVE ( 1) NOW RETURNED TO OUR NORMAL FORMAT OF BANKERS GOING SHORT AND SPECULATORS GOING LONG  ,2.) FAIR INITIAL STANDING AT THE GOLD COMEX FOR FEB. AT 41.601 TONNES FOLLOWED BY TODAY’S 1000 OZ QUEUE JUMP  // ///3) SOME LONG LIQUIDATION //4)    FAIR  SIZED COMEX OPEN INTEREST LOSS// 5) FAIR ISSUANCE OF EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICAL PAPER/

HISTORICAL ACCUMULATION OF EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICALS IN 2023 INCLUDING TODAY

FEB

ACCUMULATION OF EFP’S GOLD AT J.P. MORGAN’S HOUSE OF BRIBES: (EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICAL) FOR THE MONTH OF FEB :

25,897  CONTRACTS OR 2,589,700 OZ OR 80.55 TONNES 8 TRADING DAY(S) AND THUS AVERAGING: 3237 EFP CONTRACTS PER TRADING DAY

TO GIVE YOU AN IDEA AS TO THE  SIZE OF THESE EFP TRANSFERS :  THIS MONTH IN 8 TRADING DAY(S) IN  TONNES  80.55   TONNES

TOTAL ANNUAL GOLD PRODUCTION, 2022, THROUGHOUT THE WORLD EX CHINA EX RUSSIA: 3555 TONNES

THUS EFP TRANSFERS REPRESENTS  80.55/3550 x 100% TONNES  2.26% OF GLOBAL ANNUAL PRODUCTION

ACCUMULATION OF GOLD EFP’S YEAR 2021 TO 2023 

JANUARY/2021: 265.26 TONNES (RAPIDLY INCREASING AGAIN)

 FEB  :  171.24 TONNES  ( DEFINITELY SLOWING DOWN AGAIN).. 

MARCH:.   276.50 TONNES (STRONG AGAIN/

APRIL:      189..44 TONNES  ( DRAMATICALLY SLOWING DOWN AGAIN//GOLD IN BACKWARDATION)

MAY:        250.15 TONNES  (NOW DRAMATICALLY INCREASING AGAIN)

JUNE:      247.54 TONNES (FINAL)

JULY:        188.73 TONNES FINAL

AUGUST:   217.89 TONNES FINAL ISSUANCE.

SEPT          142.12 TONNES FINAL ISSUANCE ( LOW ISSUANCE)_

OCT:           141.13 TONNES FINAL ISSUANCE (LOW ISSUANCE)

NOV:           312.46 TONNES FINAL ISSUANCE//NEW RECORD!! (INCREASING DRAMATICALLY)//SIGN OF REAL STRESS//SURPASSING THE MARCH 2021 RECORD OF 276.50 TONNES OF EFP

DEC.           175.62 TONNES//FINAL ISSUANCE// 

JAN:2022   247.25 TONNES //FINAL

FEB:           196.04 TONNES//FINAL

MARCH:  409.30 TONNES INITIAL( THIS IS NOW A RECORD EFP ISSUANCE FOR MARCH AND FOR ANY MONTH.

APRIL:  169.55 TONNES (FINAL VERY  LOW ISSUANCE MONTH)

MAY:  247,44 TONNES FINAL// 

JUNE: 238.13 TONNES  FINAL

JULY: 378.43 TONNES FINAL

AUGUST: 180.81 TONNES FINAL

SEPT. 193.16 TONNES FINAL

OCT:  177.57  TONNES FINAL ( MUCH SMALLER THAN LAST MONTH)

NOV.  223.98 TONNES//FINAL ( MUCH LARGER THAN PREVIOUS MONTHS//comex running out of physical)

DEC:  185.59 tonnes // FINAL

JAN 2023:    228.49 TONNES FINAL//HUGE AMOUNT OF EFP’S ISSUED THIS MONTH!!

FEB: 80.55 TONNES/INITIAL (HEADING FOR ANOTHER STRONG ISSUANCE)

SPREADING OPERATIONS

(/NOW SWITCHING TO GOLD) FOR NEWCOMERS, HERE ARE THE DETAILS

SPREADING LIQUIDATION HAS NOW COMMENCED   AS WE HEAD TOWARDS THE  NEW  ACTIVE FRONT MONTH OF FEB. WE ARE NOW INTO THE SPREADING OPERATION OF BOTH GOLD (

HERE IS A BRIEF SYNOPSIS OF HOW THE CROOKS FLEECE UNSUSPECTING LONGS IN THE SPREADING ENDEAVOUR ;MODUS OPERANDI OF THE CORRUPT BANKERS AS TO HOW THEY HANDLE THEIR SPREAD OPEN INTERESTS:HERE IS HOW THE CROOKS USED SPREADING AS WE ARE NOW INTO THE  NON ACTIVE DELIVERY MONTH OF OCT HEADING TOWARDS THE  ACTIVE DELIVERY MONTH OF FEB., FOR BOTH GOLD:

YOU WILL ALSO NOTICE THAT THE COMEX OPEN INTEREST  STARTS TO RISE BUT SO IS THE OPEN INTEREST OF SPREADERS. THE OPEN INTEREST IN WILL CONTINUE TO RISE UNTIL ONE WEEK BEFORE FIRST DAY NOTICE OF AN UPCOMING  ACTIVE DELIVERY MONTH (NOV), AND THAT IS WHEN THE CROOKS SELL THEIR SPREAD POSITIONS BUT NOT AT THE SAME TIME OF THE DAY.  THEY WILL USE THE SELL SIDE OF THE EQUATION TO CREATE THE CASCADE (ALONG WITH THEIR COLLUSIVE FRIENDS) AND THEN COVER ON THE BUY SIDE OF THE SPREAD SITUATION AT THE END  OF THE DAY. THEY DO THIS TO AVOID POSITION LIMIT DETECTION. THE LIQUIDATION OF THE SPREADING FORMATION CONTINUES FOR EXACTLY ONE WEEK AND ENDS ON FIRST DAY NOTICE.”

WHAT IS ALARMING TO ME, ACCORDING TO OUR LONDON EXPERT ANDREW MAGUIRE IS THAT THESE EFP’S ARE BEING TRANSFERRED TO WHAT ARE CALLED SERIAL FORWARD CONTRACT OBLIGATIONS AND THESE CONTRACTS ARE LESS THAN 14 DAYS.  ANYTHING GREATER THAN 14 DAYS, THESE MUST BE RECORDED AND SENT TO THE COMPTROLLER, GREAT BRITAIN TO MONITOR RISK TO THE BANKING SYSTEM.  IF THIS IS INDEED TRUE, THEN THIS IS A MASSIVE CONSPIRACY TO DEFRAUD AS WE NOW WITNESS A MONSTROUS TOTAL EFP’S ISSUANCE AS IT HEADS INTO THE STRATOSPHERE. 

First, here is an outline of what will be discussed tonight:

1.Today, we had the open interest at the comex, in SILVER ROSE BY A TINY  SIZED 6 CONTRACTS OI TO  132,960 AND CLOSER TO OUR COMEX HIGH RECORD //244,710(SET FEB 25/2020).  THE LAST RECORDS WERE SET  IN AUG.2018 AT 244,196 WITH A SILVER PRICE OF $14.78/(AUGUST 22/2018)..THE PREVIOUS RECORD TO THAT WAS SET ON APRIL 9/2018 AT 243,411 OPEN INTEREST CONTRACTS WITH THE SILVER PRICE AT THAT DAY: $16.53). AND PREVIOUS TO THAT, THE RECORD  WAS ESTABLISHED AT: 234,787 CONTRACTS, SET ON APRIL 21.2017 OVER  5 YEARS AGO.  

EFP ISSUANCE 385 CONTRACTS

OUR CUSTOMARY MIGRATION OF COMEX LONGS CONTINUE TO MORPH INTO LONDON FORWARDS  AS OUR BANKERS USED THEIR EMERGENCY PROCEDURE TO ISSUE:

MAR  385 and ALL OTHER MONTHS: ZERO. TOTAL EFP ISSUANCE: 385 CONTRACTS. EFP’S GIVE OUR COMEX LONGS A FIAT BONUS PLUS A DELIVERABLE PRODUCT OVER IN LONDON.  IF WE TAKE THE  COMEX OI GAIN OF 6 CONTRACTS AND ADD TO THE  385 OI TRANSFERRED TO LONDON THROUGH EFP’S,

WE OBTAIN A GOOD SIZED GAIN OF 391 OPEN INTEREST CONTRACTS FROM OUR TWO EXCHANGES. 

THUS IN OUNCES, THE GAIN  ON THE TWO EXCHANGES 1.955 MILLION OZ//

OCCURRED DESPITE OUR $0.14 LOSS IN PRICE ….. OUR SPEC SHORTS HAVE NOWHERE TO HIDE!

END

OUTLINE FOR TODAY’S COMMENTARY

1/COMEX GOLD AND SILVER REPORT

(report Harvey)

2 ) Gold/silver trading overnight Europe,

(Peter Schiff,

end

3. Egon von Greyerz///Matthew Piepenburg via GoldSwitzerland.com, Pam and Russ Martens

4. Chris Powell of GATA provides to us very important physical commentaries

end

5. Other gold/silver commentaries

6. Commodity commentaries//

7/CRYPTOCURRENCIES/BITCOIN ETC

3. ASIAN AFFAIRS

i)FRIDAY MORNING//THURSDAY  NIGHT

SHANGHAI CLOSED DOWN 9.71 PTS OR 0.30%    //Hang Seng CLOSED DOWN 433.94 PTS OR 2.01%      /The Nikkei closed  UP 86.63 PTS OR 0.31%            //Australia’s all ordinaries CLOSED DOWN .84%   /Chinese yuan (ONSHORE) closed DOWN 6.8121 //OFFSHORE CHINESE YUAN DOWN TO 6.8242//    /Oil UP TO 79.79 dollars per barrel for WTI and BRENT AT 86.29   / Stocks in Europe OPENED ALL RED// ONSHORE YUAN TRADING ABOVE LEVEL OF OFFSHORE YUAN/ONSHORE YUAN  TRADING WEAKER AGAINST US DOLLAR/OFFSHORE WEAKER

a)NORTH KOREA/SOUTH KOREA

outline

b) REPORT ON JAPAN/

OUTLINE

3 C CHINA

OUTLINE

4/EUROPEAN AFFAIRS

OUTLINE

5. RUSSIAN AND MIDDLE EASTERN AFFAIRS

OUTLINE

6.Global Issues//COVID ISSUES/VACCINE ISSUES

OUTLINE

7. OIL ISSUES

OUTLINE

8 EMERGING MARKET ISSUES

 COMEX DATA//AMOUNTS STANDING//VOLUME OF TRADING/INVENTORY MOVEMENTS

GOLD

LET US BEGIN:

THE TOTAL COMEX GOLD OPEN INTEREST FELL BY A FAIR SIZED 2721 CONTRACTS DOWN TO 435,993 WITH OUR LOSS IN PRICE OF $10.90 

EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICAL ISSUANCE

WE ARE NOW IN THE ACTIVE DELIVERY MONTH OF FEB…  THE CME REPORTS THAT THE BANKERS ISSUED A FAIR  SIZED TRANSFER THROUGH THE EFP ROUTE AS THESE LONGS RECEIVED A DELIVERABLE LONDON FORWARD TOGETHER WITH A FIAT BONUS.,

THAT IS 1045 EFP CONTRACTS WERE ISSUED: :  APRIL 1045 & ZERO FOR ALL OTHER MONTHS:

TOTAL EFP ISSUANCE:  1045   CONTRACTS 

WHEN WE HAVE BACKWARDATION,  EFP ISSUANCE IS VERY COSTLY BUT THE REAL PROBLEM IS THE SCARCITY OF METAL AND IT IS FAR BETTER FOR OUR BANKERS TO PAY OFF INDIVIDUALS THAN RISK INVESTORS ESPECIALLY FROM LONDON STANDING FOR DELIVERY. THE LOWER PRICES IN THE FUTURES MARKET IS A MAGNET FOR OUR LONDONERS SEEKING PHYSICAL METAL. BACKWARDATION ALWAYS EQUAL SCARCITY OF METAL!

ON A NET BASIS IN OPEN INTEREST WE LOST THE FOLLOWING TODAY ON OUR TWO EXCHANGES: A  FAIR SIZED  TOTAL OF 1676 CONTRACTS IN THAT 1045 LONGS WERE TRANSFERRED AS FORWARDS TO LONDON AND WE HAD A FAIR SIZED  COMEX OI LOSS OF 2721 CONTRACTS..AND  THIS  FAIR SIZED LOSS ON OUR TWO EXCHANGES HAPPENED WITH OUR FALL  IN PRICE OF $10.90. WE ARE NOW WITNESSING THE BANKERS GOING NET SHORT AND THE SPECS GOING NET LONG. TODAY THE SPEC LONGS WERE RINSED OUT!!

// WE HAVE A STRONG AMOUNT OF GOLD TONNAGE STANDING:    FEB  (43.107)

TONNES),

 HERE ARE THE AMOUNTS THAT STOOD FOR DELIVERY IN THE PRECEDING 12 MONTHS OF 2021-2022:

DEC 2021: 112.217 TONNES

NOV.  8.074 TONNES

OCT.    57.707 TONNES

SEPT: 11.9160 TONNES

AUGUST: 80.489 TONNES

JULY: 7.2814 TONNES

JUNE:  72.289 TONNES

MAY 5.77 TONNES

APRIL  95.331 TONNES

MARCH 30.205 TONNES

FEB ’21. 113.424 TONNES

JAN ’21: 6.500 TONNES.

TOTAL  YEAR  2021 (JAN- DEC): 601.213 TONNES

YEAR 2022:

JANUARY 2022  17.79 TONNES

FEB 2022: 59.023 TONNES

MARCH: 36.678 TONNES

APRIL: 85.340 TONNES FINAL.

MAY: 20.11 TONNES FINAL

JUNE: 74.933 TONNES FINAL

JULY 29.987 TONNES FINAL

AUGUST:104.979 TONNES//FINAL

SEPT.  38.1158 TONNES

OCT:  77.390 TONNES/ FINAL

NOV 27.110 TONNES/FINAL 

Dec. 64.541 tonnes(TOTAL  THIS YEAR 656.076 TONNES

2003:

JAN/2023:    20.559 tonnes

FEB 2023: 43.107 tonnes

THE SPECS/HFT WERE SUCCESSFUL IN LOWERING GOLD’S PRICE( IT FELL $10.90)  //// AND WERE SUCCESSFUL IN KNOCKING MANY  SPECULATOR LONGS AS WE HAD A FAIR SIZED LOSS OF 1676 CONTRACTS ON OUR TWO EXCHANGES 

 WE HAVE LOST A TOTAL OI  OF 5.213 PAPER TONNES OF TOTAL OI FROM OUR TWO EXCHANGES, ACCOMPANYING OUR INITIAL  GOLD TONNAGE STANDING FOR FEB. (41.219 TONNES) FOLLOWED BY TODAY’S QUEUE JUMP  OF 1000 OZ OR 0.03110TONNES//NEW STANDING INCREASES TO 43.107 tonnes … ALL OF THIS WAS ACCOMPLISHED DESPITE OUR FALL IN PRICE  TO THE TUNE OF $10.90.  

WE HAD + 145 CONTRACTS  COMEX TRADES ADDED TO OPEN INTEREST AFTER TRADING ENDED LAST NIGHT

NET LOSS ON THE TWO EXCHANGES 1821 CONTRACTS OR 182100 OZ OR 5.664 TONNES

Estimated gold comex today 154,717//poor//

final gold volumes/yesterday  193,186/// poor

INITIAL STANDINGS FOR  FEB 2023 COMEX GOLD //FEB 10//

Gold	Ounces
Withdrawals from Dealers Inventory in oz	nil
Withdrawals from Customer Inventory in oz	nil oz   .
Deposit to the Dealer Inventory in oz	NIL oz
Deposits to the Customer Inventory, in oz	NIL oz
No of oz served (contracts) today	76 notice(s) 7600 OZ 0.2364 TONNES
No of oz to be served (notices)	927 contracts    92700 oz 2.893 TONNES
Total monthly oz gold served (contracts) so far this month	12,932  notices 1,293200 40.223 TONNES
Total accumulative withdrawals of gold from the Dealers inventory this month	NIL oz
Total accumulative withdrawal of gold from the Customer inventory this month	xxx oz

i)Dealer deposits: 0

total dealer deposit:  nil oz

No dealer withdrawals

Customer deposits:  0

total deposits: NIL oz

 customer withdrawals: 0

Adjustments;  nil

CALCULATIONS FOR THE AMOUNT OF GOLD STANDING FOR FEBRUARY.

For the front month of FEBRUARY we have an oi of 1,003 contracts having lost 121  contracts. We had 131 notices

filed yesterday so we gained 10 contracts or an additional 1000 oz will  stand for metal at the comex 

March lost 98 contracts to stand at 2096.

April lost 3301 contracts down to 356,015

We had 76  notice(s) filed today for 7600 oz 

Today, 0 notice(s) were issued from J.P.Morgan dealer account and  0  notices were issued from their client or customer account. The total of all issuance by all participants equate to  76  contract(s) of which 0   notices were stopped (received) by  j.P. Morgan dealer and 28 notice(s) was (were) stopped/ Received) by J.P.Morgan//customer account and 0 notice(s) received (stopped) by the squid  (Goldman Sachs)

To calculate the INITIAL total number of gold ounces standing for the FEB. /2023. contract month, 

we take the total number of notices filed so far for the month (12,932 x 100 oz ), to which we add the difference between the open interest for the front month of  (FEBRUARY 1003 CONTRACTS)  minus the number of notices served upon today  76 x 100 oz per contract equals 1,385,900 OZ  OR 43.107 TONNES the number of TONNES standing in this   active month of January. 

thus the INITIAL standings for gold for the FEB contract month:

No of notices filed so far (12,932 x 100 oz+   1003 OI for the front month minus the number of notices served upon today (76)x 100 oz} which equals 1,384,900 oz standing OR 43.107 TONNES in this active delivery month of FEBRUARY..

TOTAL COMEX GOLD STANDING: 43.107 TONNES.  SO JUST LIKE LAST MONTH WE START WITH A LOW INITIAL AMOUNT OF GOLD STANDING BUT THIS WILL GROW AS THE MONTH PROCEEDS TO ITS CONCLUSION. 

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

COMEX GOLD INVENTORIES/CLASSIFICATION

we had one adjustment of 110,631.591 oz Brinks

NEW PLEDGED GOLD:

241,794.285 oz NOW PLEDGED /HSBC  5.94 TONNES

204,937.290 PLEDGED  MANFRA 3.08 TONNES

83,657.582 PLEDGED JPMorgan no 1  1.690 tonnes

265,999.054, oz  JPM No 2 

1,152,376.639 oz pledged  Brinks/

Manfra:  33,758.550 oz

Delaware: 193.721 oz

International Delaware::  11,188.542 o

total pledged gold:  1,812,504.867 OZ   56.37 tonnes

TOTAL OF ALL GOLD ELIGIBLE AND REGISTERED:  22,198,698.693 OZ  

TOTAL REGISTERED GOLD:  11,063,541.226     (344.122 tonnes)..dropping fast

TOTAL OF ALL ELIGIBLE GOLD: 11,135,107.467 OZ  

REGISTERED GOLD THAT CAN BE SERVED UPON: 9,251,937 OZ (REG GOLD- PLEDGED GOLD) 287.74 tonnes//

END

SILVER/COMEX

FEB 10/2023//INITIAL. SILVER CONTRACT FOR FEBRUARY

Silver	Ounces
Withdrawals from Dealers Inventory	NIL oz
Withdrawals from Customer Inventory	381,590.470 oz CNT Loomis
Deposits to the Dealer Inventory	nil OZ
Deposits to the Customer Inventory	19,949.88 oz Delaware CNT
No of oz served today (contracts)	22 CONTRACT(S)    (110,000 OZ)
No of oz to be served (notices)	19 contracts  (95,000 oz)
Total monthly oz silver served (contracts)	736 contracts  (3,680,000 oz)
Total accumulative withdrawal of silver from the Dealers inventory this month	NIL oz
Total accumulative withdrawal of silver from the Customer inventory this month

i)  0 dealer deposit

total dealer deposits:  nil   oz

i) We had 0 dealer withdrawal

total dealer withdrawals:  oz

We have 2 deposits into the customer account

i) Into Delaware:  4942.080 oz

ii) Into CNT:  15,007.800 oz

Total deposits:  19,949.88 oz 

JPMorgan has a total silver weight: 146.939 million oz/291.212 million =50.51% of comex .//dropping fast

  Comex withdrawals: 2

i)Out of CNT:  291,438.249  oz

iii) Out of Loomis:  89,957,221 oz

Total withdrawals; 381m590.470 oz

adjustments: 0

the silver comex is in stress!

TOTAL REGISTERED SILVER: 31.784MILLION OZ (declining rapidly).TOTAL REG + ELIG. 291.212 MILLION OZ 

CALCULATION OF SILVER OZ STANDING FOR FEB

silver open interest data:

FRONT MONTH OF FEB/2023 OI:  41   CONTRACTS HAVING GAINED 17  CONTRACT(S.).

WE HAD 4 NOTICES FILED ON THURSDAY, SO WE GAINED 21 CONTRACTS OR AN ADDITIONAL 105,000 OZ OF SILVER WILL

STAND AT THE COMEX.

March LOST 5113 CONTRACTS DOWN TO 75,446 contracts

April GAINED 15 CONTRACTS TO STAND at 38.

TOTAL NUMBER OF NOTICES FILED FOR TODAY:22 for 110,000 oz

Comex volumes// est. volume today  74,856//good  

Comex volume: confirmed yesterday: 81,927 contracts ( good)

To calculate the number of silver ounces that will stand for delivery in FEBRUARY. we take the total number of notices filed for the month so far at 736 x  5,000 oz = 3,680,000 oz 

to which we add the difference between the open interest for the front month of FEB(41) and the number of notices served upon today 22 x (5000 oz) equals the number of ounces standing.

Thus the  standings for silver for the FEB./2023 contract month:736 (notices served so far) x 5000 oz + OI for the front month of FEB (41 – number of notices served upon today (22) x 500 oz of silver standing for the FEB. contract month equates 3.775 million oz  + PREVIOUS 1.775 MILLION OZ ( EXCHANGE FOR RISK) = 5.55MILLION OZ//(TOTAL OZ OF SILVER STANDING).

the record level of silver open interest is 234,787 contracts set on April 21./2017 with the price on that day at $18.42. The previous record was 224,540 contracts with the price at that time of $20.44

END

GLD AND SLV INVENTORY LEVELS

FEB 10/WITH GOLD DOWN $4.05 TODAY: SMALL CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD//A WITHDRAWAL OF .0.38 TONNES/INVENTORY RESTS AT 920.79 TONNES

FEB 9/WITH GOLD DOWN $10.90 TODAY:SMALL CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD A DEPOSIT OF .38 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD./INVENTORY RESTS AT 921.10 TONNES

FEB 8/WITH GOLD UP $6.15 TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A DEPOSIT OF 2.9 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD////INVENTORY RESTS AT 920.82 TONNES

FEB 7/WITH GOLD UP $5.25 TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF 2.32 TONNES OF GOLD FROM THE GLD////INVENTORY RESTS AT 917.92 TONNES

FEB 6/WITH GOLD UP $3.30 TODAY: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD//INVENTORY RESTS AT 920.24 TONNES

FEB 3/WITH GOLD DOWN $52.55 TODAY: STRANGE: BIG CHANGES AGAIN IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A DEPOSIT OF 1.74 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD///INVENTORY RESTS AT 920.24 TONNES

FEB 2/WITH GOLD $10.95 TODAY: BIG CHANGE IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A DEPOSIT OF 1.44 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD////INVENTORY RESTS AT 918.50 TONNES

FEB 1/WITH GOLD DOWN $2.55 TODAY: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD//INVENTORY RESTS AT 917.06 TONNES

JAN 31/WITH GOLD UP $6.55 TODAY; BIG CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF 1.44 TONNES OF GOLD FROM THE GLD////INVENTORY RESTS AT 917.06 TONNES

JAN 30/WITH GOLD DOWN $6.00 TODAY: SMALL CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF .87 TONNES OF GOLD FROM THE GLD.//INVENTORY RESTS AT 918.50 TONNES

JAN 27/WITH GOLD DOWN $0.85 TODAY: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 919.37 TONNES

JAN 26/WITH GOLD DOWN $11.55 TODAY; HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A DEPOSIT OF 2.03 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD////INVENTORY RESTS AT 919.37 TONNES

JAN 25/WITH GOLD UP $7.55 TODAY: SMALL CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A DEPOSIT OF .28 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 917.34 TONNES

JAN 24/WITH GOLD UP $7.35 TODAY: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD//INVENTORY RESTS AT 917.06 TONNES

JAN 23/WITH GOLD UP $0.25 TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A DEPOSIT OF 4.63 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD////INVENTORY RESTS AT 917.06 TONNES

JAN 20/WITH GOLD UP $4.75 TODAY;BIG CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A DEPOSIT OF 1.45 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD////INVENTORY RESTS AT 912.43 TONNES

JAN 19/WITH GOLD UP $16.95 TODAY; HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A DEPOSIT OF 1.74 TONNES INTO THE GLD///INVENTORY RESTS AT 910.98TONNES

JAN 18/WITH GOLD DOWN $1.95 TODAY; HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF 2.9 TONNES FROM THE GLD////INVENTORY RESTS AT 909.24 TONNES

JAN 17/WITH GOLD DOWN $11.45 TODAY; NO  CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD//INVENTORY RESTS AT 912.14 TONNES

JAN 13/WITH GOLD UP $22.90 TODAY: SMALL CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF .29 TONNES FROM THE GLD///INVENTORY RESTS AT 912.14 TONNES

JAN 12/WITH GOLD UP $20.55 TODAY: BIG CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF 1.74 TONNES FROM THE GLD///INVENTORY RESTS AT 912.43 TONNES

JAN 11/WITH GOLD UP $1.20 TODAY: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD//INVENTORY RESTS AT 914.17 TONNES

JAN 10/WITH GOLD UP $1.00 TODAY: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD///INVENTORY RESTS AT 915.33 TONNES

JAN 9/WITH GOLD UP $ 8.60 TODAY: BIG CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF 1.44 TONNES FROM THE GLD//.//INVENTORY RESTS AT 915.33 TONNES

JAN 6/WITH GOLD UP $28.80 TODAY: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD//INVENTORY RESTS AT 916.77 TONNES

JAN 5/WITH GOLD DOWN $17.05 TODAY: BIG CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF .87 TONNES FORM THE GLD////INVENTORY RESTS AT 916.77 TONNES

JANUARY 4/WITH GOLD UP $32.40 TODAY: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD//INVENTORY RESTS AT 917.64 TONNES

JAN 3/WITH GOLD UP $20.00 TODAY: SMALL CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD:STRANGE: A WITHDRAWAL OF .87 TONNES FORM THE GLD////INVENTORY RESTS AT 917.64 TONNES

GLD INVENTORY: 921.10  TONNES

Now the SLV Inventory/( vehicle is a fraud as there is no physical metal behind them

FEB 10/WITH SILVER DOWN 8 CENTS: NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: //INVENTORY RESTS AT 483.762 MILLION OZ

FEB 9/WITH SILVER DOWN 14 CENTS TODAY: NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: INVENTORY RESTS AT 483.76 MILLION OZ (CORRECTED).//

CLOSING INVENTORY 483.762 MILLION OZ//

PHYSICAL GOLD/SILVER STORIES

1:Peter Schiff

 

end

2 Lawrie Williams//Pam and Russ Martens/Jim Rickards/Mathew Piepenburg/Von Greyerz//Rickards:

No Matter How You Turn It, The Global System Is Already Doomed: Got Gold?

FRIDAY, FEB 10, 2023 – 06:30 AM

Authored by Matthew Pipenburg via Gold Switzerland,

Below we look at the interplay of embarrassing debt, dying currencies and failed monetary fantasies masquerading as policies to confirm that no matter how one turns or spins the inflation/deflation, QT/QE or recession/no-recession narratives, the global financial system is already doomed.

Recession: The Elephant in the Room

As I’ve been arguing in report after report, my view has been that the US, with its 125% debt-to-GDP and 7% deficit-to-GDP ratios, was, and already is, in a recession heading into 2023, despite official efforts in DC to re-define the very definition of a recession.

But a recession is still a recession, and an elephant is still an elephant, and both are fairly easy to see at a distance.

As of now, however, the recession has officially been avoided.

How comforting.

As with the inflation data, it’s nice when the folks in Washington can exercise their magical powers to move the goal-posts in mid-game whenever a little “cheating” helps their odds and fictional narrative.

For me, an elephantiac recession is now in the room.

The Empire Manufacturing data in my latest report, for example, supported this recessionary outlook.

In case, however, we still need more recessionary evidence, the dramatic 6 month decline in the Conference Board’s index of leading indicators serves as yet another neon-flashing warning that the recession—if not under our bow—is certainly right off our bow.

Still Hoping for a “Softish” Landing?

Furthermore, and despite Powell’s belief that his office can manage a recession with the precision of a home thermostat, his faith in what he lately described as a “softish landing” is almost as farcical as his prior attempt to describe inflation as “transitory.”

Without wishing to appear “sensational,” as many of us blunt and math-based observers (from Burry to Middelkoop) of late are described, I will stick my tin-foil-covered head out and say candidly that I see nothing “softish” ahead.

Instead, I see either: 1) a financial crisis which will dwarf 2008 and/or, 2) an absolute tanking of the USD, whose unsustainable strength throughout 2022 was indeed “transitory,” as I argued numerous times.

The Simple Math of Liquidity

The simple math and reality of even centralized and central-bank distorted markets is quite simple: These markets rise and fall on liquidity.

Once the monetary “grease” required to maintain the MMT fantasy of mouse-click money as a debt solution “tightens” too tight or runs too dry, the entire house of cards of the post-2008 fairytale comes to a hard rather than “softish” end.

Again, we saw the first signs of this collapse in the “tightening” backdrop of 2022.

Of course, this critical “liquidity” won’t be coming from economic growth, rising tax receipts, a robust Main Street or a fairly-priced market.

Instead, and as expected, it now comes from out of thin air…

Is It a Race to the Bottom for Risk Assets?

The honest but scary numbers rather than fluffy but fictional words of our financial central planners make it all too clear that unless Powell puts his finger on the Eccles-based mouse-clicker to create more fiat money (highly inflationary), US and global credit markets will simply continue their race to the ocean floor (highly deflationary or at least dis-inflationary).

As credit markets sink and bond yields and rates rise, this also means that equity markets, who have been sickly addicted to years of central-bank repressed low rates and cheap debt, will merely join those bonds on the bottom of the dark ocean floor.

In short, bonds (and hence risk parity portfolios) won’t save you. Rather than hedge stocks, they are now correlated to the same.

More Easing Won’t Bring “Ease”

Failing outright and open bond default, it thus seems that an eventual capitulation to more magical “liquidity” and renewed QE is nothing short of inevitable, which means the USD’s fall from its 2022 highs is equally the case, as shown below.

But such “easing,” if realized, will lead to more inflationary-debased Dollars and hence more inflation dis-ease for investors.

This is hard for investors to fully grasp when the Dollar seems “strong,” but even that was an illusion, and one which hardly did any asset class any good in 2022 but for the Dollar itself.

The Damage Already Wrought by the Strong USD

In the interim, the cancerous ripple-effects of the Fed’s strong USD policies, as warned throughout 2022, continue their waves of destruction, as openly evidenced by the earnings reports from our beleaguered S&P.

Already, the early data coming from its listed companies is anything but positive.

As in the July and October earnings seasons of 2022, corporate earnings for 2023 are still drowning under the weight of the USD.

But we must also keep in mind that the DXY (which measures the relative strength of the USD) has fallen 11% (from 113.9 to 101.8) over the last quarter.

If the S&P hit an October bottom during a DXY high, what can we deduce from a now falling DXY?

Will markets rise like Lazarus?

This will be something worth tracking.

But why?

Strong Dollar or Weak Dollar, No One Wins…

Should earnings and hence stocks continue to decline despite the DXY declines, this would suggest that not even a weakening USD can save these post-08, over-stretched, Fed-addicted and debt-soaked markets.

However, should stocks rise on a weaker Dollar, the percentage gains in price will only be eaten away by the invisible tax of inflation and the increasingly debased value of the very dollars used to measure those so-called “appreciating” stocks.

In short, a no-win scenario…

For now, it seems the stock market only cares about the Fed rather than the DXY, as the Fed is the market.

That is, when QE is the meme, zombie markets rise; when QT is the meme, they fall.

Again, see for yourself:

Yellen, Squawking for a Weaker Dollar?

In fact, it was during those October market lows that the queen of toxic liquidity, former Fed-Chair-turned-Treasury-Secretary (imagine that?) Janet Yellen, was suddenly ringing the bell for more magical money—i.e., “liquidity.”

Specifically, Yellen was wondering who would be buying Uncle Sam’s IOU’s without more mouse-click money from the Eccles Building?

As my latest reports on the UST markets confirmed, the answer was simple: No one.

Instead, foreign central banks were and are selling rather than buying America’s bonds. Just ask the Japanese…

Is Yellen, contrary to Powell, silently suggesting that QT has backfired? Is Yellen, unlike Powell, realizing that there are no buyers for our increasingly issued yet unloved USTs but the Fed itself?

Perhaps these tensions within the Treasury market provide the hidden clues as to why the USD has been sliding rather than rising from the DXY’s October highs?

After all, a weaker USD means less forced need for foreign nations to dump their UST reserves to come up with the money to buy their own dying bonds and strengthen their own dying currencies as a direct response to Powell’s (and originally, Yellen’s) strong USD policy.

In short, perhaps our Treasury Secretary now wants to stop the bleeding in her Treasury market…

Weaker Dollar Ahead?

My current view is therefore this: We are seeing the slow end of the strong USD policy.

Why?

Because as warned throughout 2022, such a strong USD was a massive gut-punch to foreign currencies and hence foreign holders of USD-denominated debt.

Indirectly then, the strong USD was also a gut-punch to the UST market, which saw more sellers than buyers around a crippled globe. Hence Yellen’s backfired and back-stepping fears above…

Furthermore, and returning to the aforementioned topic of recessions, I also argued throughout 2022 that no recession in history has ever been solved with a strong currency.

Given that such a recession is, again, either directly off our bow or already under it, it is likely no coincidence that the USD/DXY is now falling rather than rising.

In short has Uncle Sam’s strong Dollar finally cried, well… “Uncle”?

Or more simply stated, has Yellen realized, in private, what we’ve been arguing in public, namely: That we are already in a recession and thus need a weaker Dollar.

Powell: Ignoring Reality & Yellen?

Meanwhile, however, you have the math-challenged but psychologically tragic Jay Powell wanting to save his legacy as a Paul Volcker rather than as an Arthur Burns.

Like a child wanting to be John Wayne rather than Daffy Duck, Powell and his rate-hiked strong USD refuses to see the $31T debt pile in front of him which makes it impossible to be a reborn Volcker, who in 1980 faced a much smaller debt pile of $900B.

In short, Powell’s America of 2023, unlike Volcker’s America of 1980, can’t stomach rising rates or a strong USD.

Or stated even more simply: Powell can’t be Volcker.

Will someone at the Eccles Building please remind him of this?

Doomed Either Way

Yellen or Powell, QT or QE, strong Dollar or weak Dollar, the global financial system is nevertheless doomed.

We either tighten the bond and hence stock markets into a free fall and economic disaster, or we loosen and ease liquidity into an inflationary nightmare.

As I’ve said so many times: Pick your poison—depression or hyperinflation.

Or perhaps both…namely stagflation.

Either way, of course, Powell, and the American economy, is now doomed. And he has only Greenspan, Bernanke, Yellen, himself and years of mouse-click fantasy to blame.

Supercore (CPI) Lies from On High

Meanwhile, the lies, twisted math and Nobel-Prize level mis-information continues…

Last week, for example, I reminded readers of DC’s latest attempt to mis-report otherwise humanly-felt inflation by tweaking an already-tweaked (i.e., bogus) CPI inflation scale.

But if that comedy wasn’t already comical enough, now welcome none other than Paul Krugman to this stage of open theatrics masquerading as economic data.

According to one of Krugman’s latest neoliberal economist tweets, “3-month ‘supercore’ CPI is below Fed’s 2% inflation target,” which naturally had those equally raggish economic playwriters at the WSJ almost galvanic with theatrical “good news.”

Hmmm.

What neither Krugman nor the WSJ seemed to recognize is that “supercore” CPI excludes food, energy, shelter and the price of used cars, so yes, absolutely, if you take away all the things that actually cost lots of money, inflation is no problem at all… Bravo!

Such shameless misuse of data and headlines, of course, is almost as shameless as the misuse of monetary policy we’ve been enjoying since the Troubled Asset Relief Program…

But as stated last week, such desperate tricks from on high will continue to mount as global financial problems do the same.

An Historical Turning Point

The astounding lack of accountability from the foxes guarding our financial hen house will one day be the stuff of history books, assuming history itself is not cancelled, as it seems the study of economics has already left the room.

The best we can hope for from the very “experts” who have brought the global economy toward a mathematically unavoidable cliff are now empty words and twisted math, as per above.

Such disloyalty from our financial generals on the eve of an unprecedented strategic and tactical economic defeat of their own making reminds me of officers sitting miles from the trenches as investors go “over-the-top” toward a row of cannons pointed straight at their trusting chests.

In short: Sickening.

Gold: A Far More Loyal Lieutenant

Gold was a far more loyal asset than stocks and bonds in the turbulent times of 2022; and given that 2023 portends to be even worse, we can expect better loyalty from this so-called “barbarous relic” of the past.

With inflation ripping and war blazing, many still argue that gold did not do enough.

Hmmm…

But gold in every currency but the USD (see above) would beg to differ.

Furthermore, and as argued so many ways and times, that USD strength will not hold, as gold’s price moves this year have already tracked.

Gold’s future strength and rise is thus easy to foresee, as gold doesn’t rise, currencies just fall.

It’s really that simple.

Got gold?

end

Pam and Russ Martens:

Credit Suisse Tanks Yesterday to $3.02; It’s Lost Over 90 Percent of Its Market Value Since 2007; It’s Not Alone

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 10, 2023 ~

Credit Suisse continued its long death spiral yesterday, losing 15.64 percent of its market value in one trading session to close at $3.02 on the New York Stock Exchange. The trading action came on the heels of an earnings report that was excruciatingly bad – even for Credit Suisse.

The Global Systemically Important Bank (G-SIB), which means it’s interconnected to other G-SIBs that could bring down the global financial system, reported yesterday that its clients had yanked over $100 billion in just the fourth quarter — which was more than eight times the outflow in the third quarter. Its pre-tax loss for the quarter was $1.51 billion, marking its fifth consecutive earnings loss.

Credit Suisse is Switzerland’s second largest bank, after UBS, but its troubled history looks more like that of a bank in a banana republic. On March 26, 2021, the family office hedge fund, Archegos Capital Management, defaulted on margin calls to its prime brokers and went belly up, leaving major investment banks with more than $10 billion in losses. Credit Suisse took the lion’s share of those losses, acknowledging a loss of more than $5.5 billion. (To fully appreciate the wild risks that mega banks were taking with Archegos, see our report: Archegos: Wall Street Was Effectively Giving 85 Percent Margin Loans on Concentrated Stock Positions – Thwarting the Fed’s Reg T and Its Own Margin Rules.)

The Board of Credit Suisse decided to hire the Big Law firm, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, to conduct an internal investigation of the Archegos fiasco. Paul Weiss issued a 165-page report in July of 2021, detailing its version of what had happened. Paul Weiss, reliably, found that no fraud had occurred — just zombie risk management at a Global Systemically Important Bank. (Some shareholders might have been more comforted with a finding of fraud.)

Paul Weiss investigators portrayed the zombie risk managers at Credit Suisse as follows:

“The Archegos-related losses sustained by CS [Credit Suisse] are the result of a fundamental failure of management and controls in CS’s Investment Bank and, specifically, in its Prime Services business. The business was focused on maximizing short-term profits and failed to rein in and, indeed, enabled Archegos’s voracious risk-taking. There were numerous warning signals — including large, persistent limit breaches — indicating that Archegos’s concentrated, volatile, and severely under-margined swap positions posed potentially catastrophic risk to CS. Yet the business, from the in-business risk managers to the Global Head of Equities, as well as the risk function, failed to heed these signs, despite evidence that some individuals did raise concerns appropriately.”

Credit Suisse’s reputation has taken more hits from its involvement in the Greensill Capital scandal and the infamous spy-gate scandal in 2019 where the bank spied on and followed various employees. (You can’t make this stuff up.)

Nervousness about Credit Suisse reached a pivotal moment in the fall of last year. On November 30, its 5-year Credit Default Swaps (CDS) blew out to 446 basis points. That was up from 55 basis points in January of 2022 and more than five times where CDS on its peer Swiss bank, UBS, were trading. The price of a Credit Default Swap reflects the cost to traders, or investors with exposure, to insuring themselves against a debt default by the bank.

The big move in CDS on Credit Suisse had started in early October of 2022. On October 3, 2022, Dennis Kelleher, President of the nonprofit watchdog, Better Markets, summed up the situation and its potential impact on American taxpayers as follows:

“As the financial condition of Credit Suisse continues to deteriorate, raising questions of whether it will collapse, the world and U.S. taxpayers should be deeply worried as multiple, simultaneous shocks shake the foundations of economies worldwide. Credit Suisse is a global, systemically significant, too-big-to-fail bank that operates in the U.S. and is deeply interconnected throughout the global financial system. Its failure would have widespread and largely unknown repercussions from the inconvenient to the possibly catastrophic.

“That is due, in part, to the failure of the Federal Reserve to properly regulate the activities of foreign banks that have U.S.-based operations. The U.S. has a largely ineffective regulatory framework with gaping loopholes that fail to include some of even the most basic safety and soundness requirements, which incentivizes regulatory arbitrage. As a result, the U.S. financial system and economy are needlessly threatened.

“An effective and appropriate regulatory framework for large foreign banks that covers all of their U.S.-based affiliates should have been established when the Fed set up so-called U.S.-based intermediate holding companies (‘IHCs’) that they regulate. Instead, U.S.-based branches of foreign banks (which are not consolidated within the IHC) face significantly weaker standards than the IHC, remarkably including no specific capital requirements in the U.S. Furthermore, the branches have significantly weaker liquidity requirements. This has resulted in many foreign banks – including in particular Credit Suisse – engaging in regulatory arbitrage by shifting large amounts of assets from their IHCs to their branches, entities that are entirely reliant on the resources of their foreign-based parent companies. The 2008 financial collapse proved that these resources are not available in periods of stress, which is why the U.S. bailed out so many foreign banks operating in the U.S. The Fed should have stopped that long ago.

“As is well-known, risks in the global financial system that materialize elsewhere easily end up becoming risks here in the U.S. and threaten our financial system and economy. Those risks are amplified by the unprecedented fiscal and monetary policies attempting to address the many unexpected shocks from the pandemic and war. The Fed must see Credit Suisse as a warning sign and improve the regulatory framework for large foreign banks and all banks to ensure that the American financial system and economy are properly protected.”

Unfortunately, Credit Suisse is far from alone. As the chart above indicates, Credit Suisse, Barclays (U.K.), Deutsche Bank (Germany) and Citigroup (U.S.) have lost the bulk of their market value since January 1, 2007 – or prior to the financial crisis of 2008. And all of these banks are also G-SIBs and interconnected to one another through derivatives, loan relationships and the like.

The bottom line is that Congress, the Fed and other federal regulators have seriously failed in their obligation to ensure that there is not another replay of the Wall Street mega bank meltdown of 2008 – which brought on the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression.

3. Chris Powell of GATA provides to us very important physical commentaries//

Your weekend reading material

Alasdair Macleod:

Alasdair Macleod: Money and recession

Submitted by admin on Thu, 2023-02-09 11:24Section: Daily Dispatches

By Alasdair Macleod
GoldMoney, Toronto
Thursday, February 9, 2023

How reliable is the link between money supply growth and the economic outlook?

Monetarists are warning now that the money supply has stopped growing and even turned negative, so we are heading for a recession. This article examines the position for U.S. dollar M2 money supply and the prospects for the U.S. economy.

But monetary growth, or the lack of it, doesn’t only affect GDP but a large element of economic activity that is not included in it, principally financial activities, and the acquisition of assets such as property.

This raises the question: Is the downturn in money supply due to financial activities, or the non-financial economy? What is its actual relevance?

In this article I delve into the relationship between credit and the economy. I examine the process of credit contraction. I conclude that rather than relying solely on the monetarists’ favourite indicator, an understanding of the credit cycle and loan officer surveys are more valuable evidence. …

… For the remainder of the analysis:

https://www.goldmoney.com/research/money-and-recession?gmrefcode=gata

END

4. OTHER GOLD/SILVER RELATED COMMENTARIES/

5.IMPORTANT COMMENTARIES ON COMMODITIES: NICKEL +

GLOBAL COMMODITIES ISSUES/FOOD IN GENERAL

6.CRYPTOCURRENCY COMMENTARIES/

1. YOUR EARLY CURRENCY/GOLD AND SILVER PRICING/ASIAN AND EUROPEAN BOURSE MOVEMENTS/AND INTEREST RATE SETTINGS//FRIDAY MORNING.7:30 AM

ONSHORE YUAN:   CLOSED DOWN TO 6.8121

OFFSHORE YUAN: 6.8242

SHANGHAI CLOSED DOWN 9.71 PTS OR 0.30%

HANG SENG CLOSED DOWN 433.94 PTS OR 2.01% 

2. Nikkei closed UP 86.63 PTS OR 0.31%  

3. Europe stocks   SO FAR:  ALL RED

USA dollar INDEX DOWN TO  103.34 Euro FALLS TO 1.0691 DOWN 48 BASIS PTS

3b Japan 10 YR bond yield: RISES TO. +.490!!(Japan buying 100% of bond issuance)/Japanese yen vs usa cross now at 130.82/JAPANESE YEN RISING AS WELL AS LONG TERM 10  YR. YIELDS RISING //EVENTUALLY THIS WILL BREAK THE JAPANESE CENTRAL BANK.

3c Nikkei now  ABOVE 17,000

3d USA/Yen rate now well ABOVE the important 120 barrier this morning

3e Gold UP /JAPANESE Yen UP CHINESE YUAN:   UP-//  OFF- SHORE: UP

3f Japan is to buy INFINITE  TRILLION YEN’S worth of BONDS. Japan’s GDP equals 5 trillion usa

Japan to buy 100% of all new Japanese debt and NOW they will have OVER 50% of all Japanese debt. 

3g Oil UP for WTI and UP FOR Brent this morning

3h European bond buying continues to push yields lower on all fronts in the EMU. German 10yr bund DOWN TO +2.353%***/Italian 10 Yr bond yield FALLS to 4.201%*** /SPAIN 10 YR BOND YIELD RISES TO 3.389…** DANGEROUS//

3i Greek 10 year bond yield RISES TO 4.176//

3j Gold at $1862.55//silver at: 22.06  7 am est) SILVER NEXT RESISTANCE LEVEL AT $30.00

3k USA vs Russian rouble;// Russian rouble DOWN 0  AND  5/100        roubles/dollar; ROUBLE AT 73.06//

3m oil into the 79 dollar handle for WTI and  86 handle for Brent/

3n Higher foreign deposits out of China sees huge risk of outflows and a currency depreciation. This can spell financial disaster for the rest of the world/

JAPAN ON JAN 29.2016 CONTINUES NIRP. THIS MORNING RAISES AMOUNT OF BONDS THAT THEY WILL PURCHASE UP TO .5% ON THE 10 YR BOND///YEN TRADES TO 130.82/10 YEAR YIELD AFTER BREAKING .54%, RISES TO .490% ON CENTRAL BANK (JAPAN) INTERVENTION

30 SNB (Swiss National Bank) still intervening again in the markets driving down the FRANC. It is not working: USA/SF this 0.9235– as the Swiss Franc is still rising against most currencies. Euro vs SF 0.9875 well above the floor set by the Swiss Finance Minister. Thomas Jordan, chief of the Swiss National Bank continues to purchase euros trying to lower value of the Swiss Franc.

USA 10 YR BOND YIELD: 3.704% UP 2 BASIS PTS…GETTING DANGEROUS

USA 30 YR BOND YIELD: 3.775 UP 2 BASIS PTS//

USA DOLLAR VS TURKISH LIRA: 18,84…

GREAT BRITAIN/10 YEAR YIELD: 3.380%  UP 9 BASIS PTS

end

i.b  Overnight:  Newsquawk and Zero hedge:

 FIRST, ZEROHEDGE (PRE USA OPENING// MORNING

Futures Extend Slump To 3rd Day As Tech Rout Accelerates, Yields Rise, Oil Surges

FRIDAY, FEB 10, 2023 – 08:04 AM

Global markets dropped, US futures extended their slump into a third day and the Nasdaq 100 was on course for its first weekly loss of 2023, while Treasuries extended a selloff as wagers for more hawkish monetary policy mounted. Oil rose after Russia said it will cut output. Nasdaq futures were down 1.1% by 730 a.m. ET after the tech-heavy index lost 0.9% during the previous session, bringing this week’s declines to 1.5%. Nasdaq futs have broken below the support level of the rising channel since the start of the year.

The tech benchmark is still up over 13% year-to-date, but expectations of interest rates staying higher for longer – at least for a few more days – after a blowout US payrolls report and concerns about inflation pressures are weighing on sentiment. Investors will be closely watching the US inflation report next Tuesday for clues on the Fed’s monetary policy outlook.

S&P futures were also down, off by 0.6% and trading near session lows, and at the lowest level since the Golden Cross earlier this week. Treasury yields held gains across the curve after investors inverted the TSY yield curve by the most since the early 1980s, a sign of flagging confidence in the economy’s ability to withstand additional Federal Reserve hikes. The dollar reversed earlier losses when the yen surged after a report that Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida had picked the hawkish Kazuo Ueda as the next head of the BOJ.

In premarket trading, Lyft tumbled as much as 35% after the ride-hailing company said it would prioritize lower prices to attract more customers, a move it expects to shrink future profits. Expedia Group was lower in premarket trading after reporting a fourth-quarter miss driven by bad weather. Here are some other notable premarket movers”

• BuzzFeed and SoundHound AI lead fellow artificial intelligence-related stocks lower in US premarket trading. The group is poised to extend losses from Thursday. AI-related stocks falling in premarket trading: BuzzFeed -10%, SoundHound AI -6%, BigBear.ai -3.5% and C3.ai Inc. -4%
• Expedia Group dips 2.3% after the US online travel agency reported a fourth-quarter miss, driven by bad weather. That said, a surge in January bookings sparks optimism around recovery in 2023, with some analysts raising price targets.
• PayPal shares slip 0.4%, erasing earlier gains, as analysts weighed the payment company’s miss on fourth-quarter total payment volume against better-than-expected EPS guidance, with some looking for more evidence of growth to justify further gains in the stock.
• Cloudflare rises 7.3% after the infrastructure software company gave a 2023 revenue forecast that beat the average analyst estimate. Analysts raised their price targets and said that the guidance will allay some investor concerns.
• Bloom Energy shares jumped 7.4% as analysts nudged their price targets higher on the power generation equipment maker, noting the company’s fourth-quarter revenue beat estimates.
• News Corp. shares drop 2.8% in US postmarket on Thursday after the media company reported adjusted earnings per share for the second quarter that missed the average analyst estimate and said it will cut 5% of its staff this year, or about 1,250 positions.

Stocks are heading for their first weekly decline in three after a chorus of Fed speakers reinforced the need to keep raising rates for longer, following a strong payrolls report, quashing the optimism that spurred a powerful rally in January. Next week’s inflation update from the US offers a relevant potential inflection point in the Treasury yield curve, according to Benjamin Jeffery and Ian Lyngen, strategists at BMO Capital Markets  “Our expectations are that the market takes away sufficient angst regarding the prevailing inflation trend to press the inversion trade even further,” they wrote in a note.

Investors have become increasingly jittery about a hawkish policy tilt are paying close attention to official comments and economic data for clues on the rates trajectory. In Japan, reports of a surprise nomination for Kazuo Ueda to take helm at the Bank of Japan sparked a jump in the yen. It pared gains later as Ueda said the BOJ’s stimulus should stay in place.

“The momentum this week is building towards realizing that Powell’s last speech is actually not dovish and that translates on Treasuries yield and the Nasdaq,” said John Plassard, investment specialist at Mirabaud, confirming once again that price action sets the daily narrative. Investors initially brushed off the Fed chief’s warning on Tuesday that borrowing costs may need to peak higher than previously expected, and instead focused on his outlook that 2023 will be a year of significant declines in inflation.

And speaking of deflation, next week’s CPI data will mark a turning point for the equity rally at a time when investors are swapping stocks for bonds amid the specter of a recession, according to Bank of America strategists. US equity funds saw their first redemptions in three weeks, according to BofA’s note citing EPFR Global data. Bank of America strategist Michael Hartnett said that while it was “so very tempting” to believe that last week’s blowout US jobs report for January indicated the economy could avoid a contraction, the consumer-price data on Tuesday will be “vital” for clues on when the Federal Reserve would start easing up on monetary policy. Hartnett reiterated his 4,200 “sell” level.

In Europe, stocks were also lower with the Stoxx 600 down 1.1% and on course to snap a three day winning streak. Retailers, travel and consumer products are the worst-performing sectors. Here are some of the biggest European movers.

• Adidas shares drop as much as 12%, the most since March 2020, after the sportswear group warned that the fallout from the dispute with rapper and former partner Ye might lead to a €700 million operating loss in 2023
• Roche voting shares fall as much as 7.9% on news that an unnamed shareholder plans to sell a 2.5% stake in the Swiss pharmaceutical company
• HelloFresh falls as much as 8.9% as the meal-kit delivery firm is cut to underweight from neutral at JPMorgan
• Standard Chartered declines as much as 7% after First Abu Dhabi Bank reiterates that it’s not evaluating a possible offer for the London-based lender
• Schibsted slides as much as 5.7% after results, trimming a recent rally, after the Norwegian firm failed to offer Ebitda guidance at a group level
• Thule falls as much as 18%, the most since September, after the Swedish outdoor and bicycle equipment maker said it would replace its CEO
• Enel shares gain as much as 3.5%, the most since Jan. 4, after the Italian utility reported full-year revenue and adjusted Ebitda that beat estimates
• Saab jumps as much as 11% to a record after reporting a strong full-year performance
• Neobo Fastigheter AB rises as much as 56% on its first day of trading, bucking a trend in the real estate market that’s recently been in the limelight for its struggles
• Nobia gains as much as 5.6% after the Swedish kitchen interiors manufacturer reported in-line numbers in its 4Q report
• Iveco soars as much as 15%, the steepest gain on record, after the company reported 4Q results that Mediobanca (neutral) said are strong and “far above” consensus across the board

Earlier in the session, Asian stocks were poised for a second weekly decline as worries about a more hawkish Federal Reserve weighed on sentiment, while a pullback in China’s reopening rally also dragged the region’s equities.  The MSCI Asia Pacific Index fell as much as 1.1% on Friday, with losses driven by consumer discretionary and communication service shares. The Hang Seng Index declined the most among benchmarks, led by Chinese technology stocks, while gauges for South Korea and Australia also fell. Onshore Chinese shares continued to retreat from their highs as traders await fresh impetus, with a mild pick-up in inflation — seen as reflecting improving demand — doing little to support share prices.  Meanwhile, Japanese stocks edged higher as strong earnings from chipmakers providing a boost. However, Nikkei futures slipped after a report said Kazuo Ueda will be nominated as the Bank of Japan’s next governor. The Asian stock benchmark was poised to drop more than 1% this week, extending its slide from a late-January high. Global investors are starting to price in the prospect of higher interest rates, following a strong US jobs report last week and a string of hawkish comments by Fed officials. “Some investors are ramping up bets that we could see a whole lot more Fed tightening, but overnight index swaps are still pricing in easing by the end of the year,” said Edward Moya, senior market analyst at Oanda. “If inflation ends up being hotter-than-expected, the Fed will most likely go back to the hawkish playbook and signal more work needs to be done.”

Stocks in India declined for a second week in three amid rising wagers for further rate hikes by the global central banks, while an extension of a selloff in Adani Group shares weighed on investor sentiment.   The S&P BSE Sensex fell 0.2% to 60,682.70 in Mumbai on Friday, stretching its weekly decline to 0.3%, while the NSE Nifty 50 Index declined by by a similar measure. The Reserve Bank of India raised its key lending rate by 25 basis points as expected to 6.50% earlier this week. The rate-setting panel said it remains open to further hikes if the inflation accelerates. US Federal Reserve as well as the Reserve Bank of India seem to be using a “firmer tone” regarding inflation containment, and “both sounded quite determined to hike rates again if data points favor the same,” according to Joseph Thomas, head of research at Emkay Wealth Management.  Nine out of BSE Ltd.’s 20 sector-gauges fell on Friday, led by metal companies, which were also among worst performers for the week as worries over global growth and monetary tightening hurt stocks across Asia.  Reliance Industries contributed the most to the Sensex’s decline on Friday, decreasing 0.8%. Out of 30 shares in the Sensex index, 14 rose, while 16 fell. Adani Group stocks capped another week of losses as a review by MSCI Inc. spurred concern about passive outflows from shares already reeling from the rout triggered by US short seller Hindenburg Research’s scathing report.

In FX, the dollar edged higher against its Group-of-10 peers as traders awaited Tuesday’s key inflation data to assess the outlook for Federal Reserve rate hikes. The gauge is set for a 0.3% gain this week as traders lifted bets on peak Federal Reserve policy rate after a slew of officials reiterated the need to hike rates further to quash inflation. In Japan, the yen initially jumped on media reports of a surprise nomination for Kazuo Ueda to take helm at the Bank of Japan — suggesting investors saw the move as hawkish. The currency later pared gains after Ueda said it’s important to keep BOJ easing for now

In rates, US treasuries extended losses over the London session, following wider selloff in bunds and gilts as money markets ramped up expectations that the ECB will raise the deposit rate to 3.75% by September. Front-end-led selloff in core rates pushed German 2-year yield 8bps higher to 2.77%, the highest since 2008. US yields cheaper by 3bp to 4.5bp across the curve with losses led by intermediates, cheapening the 2s5s10s spread by 1.5bp on the day; 10-year yields up to around 3.70% are near cheapest levels of the day with bunds and gilts lagging by 3bp and 4.5bp in the sector. Bear-flattening move in German curves have knocked 2s10s, 5s30s spreads tighter by 1bp and 2.5bp vs Thursday’s close.

In commodities, oil prices surged after Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said the country will cut output in March by 500,000 barrels per day. Russia did not consult with OPEC+ on its March oil production reduction, it was an independent decision, according to a source cited by Reuters. Subsequently, Russia’s Kremlin says Russia held talks with some OPEC+ members on its decision to cut its oil output. OPEC+ will not boost supply in reaction to the Russian cut, according to delegates cited by Reuters. Brent crude futures have added 2.6% to trade around $86.70.  Spot gold is little changed around $1,864.

To the day ahead now, and data releases include UK GDP for Q4, Italian industrial production for December, and in the US there’s the University of Michigan’s preliminary consumer sentiment index for February. From central banks, we’ll hear from the Fed’s Waller and Harker, the ECB’s Schnabel and de Cos, and BoE chief economist Pill.

Market Snapshot

• S&P 500 futures down 0.7% to 4,062.25
• MXAP down 0.8% to 166.52
• MXAPJ down 1.1% to 542.42
• Nikkei up 0.3% to 27,670.98
• Topix little changed at 1,986.96
• Hang Seng Index down 2.0% to 21,190.42
• Shanghai Composite down 0.3% to 3,260.67
• Sensex down 0.2% to 60,701.20
• Australia S&P/ASX 200 down 0.8% to 7,433.66
• Kospi down 0.5% to 2,469.73
• STOXX Europe 600 down 0.6% to 459.65
• German 10Y yield little changed at 2.36%
• Euro down 0.2% to $1.0718
• Brent Futures up 2.8% to $86.83/bbl
• Gold spot up 0.1% to $1,863.42
• U.S. Dollar Index little changed at 103.29

Top Overnight News from Bloomberg

• Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will nominate Kazuo Ueda, a professor and former Bank of Japan board member, to take the helm of the BOJ from April, according to local media reports, in a surprise move that sparked a jump in the yen
• Russia’s partners in the OPEC+ oil coalition signaled they won’t boost output to fill in for cutbacks announced by Moscow
• The UK avoided a recession last year by the narrowest of margins after the cost- of-living crisis and industrial action hit the economy during December
• The UK’s trade deficit with the European Union widened to a record in the final quarter of 2022 as imports from the bloc jumped
• Banks in the euro zone will return another €36.6 billion ($39.2 billion) in long-term funding to the European Central Bank after the terms of the programs were toughened to help the fight against inflation

A more detailed look at global markets courtesy of Newsquawk

APAC stocks were mostly negative after the losses on Wall St where the major indices wiped out initial gains and virtually spent the entire session on the back foot with sentiment hampered and recession fears stoked amid the deepest 2s/10s yield inversion since the 1980s. ASX 200 was dragged lower as underperformance in tech led the declines seen in almost all sectors and after the latest RBA Statement on Monetary Policy reaffirmed that further rate hikes will be needed. Nikkei 225 bucked the trend amid an overload of earnings releases and softer PPI data, although advances were capped as participants second-guess who will succeed BoJ Governor Kuroda. Hang Seng and Shanghai Comp. were lower with Hong Kong pressured by weakness in the property and tech industries, while frictions lingered as the US seeks to take action against Chinese entities linked to the surveillance balloon and reportedly aims to curtail technology investment in China.

Top Asian News

• RBA Statement on Monetary Policy noted that the board’s priority is to return inflation to the target and that the board expects further increases in rates will be needed, while it is mindful that a considerable adjustment to interest rates has already been made and that monetary policy affects activity and inflation with a lag and through different channels. RBA also stated there are considerable uncertainties surrounding the outlook, and so around the level of interest rates needed to achieve the Board’s objectives.
• Singapore Backtracks on Grab’s Lawmaker Hire After Outcry
• Adani Stocks Decline as MSCI Action Raises Concern Over Outflows

European bourses are under pressure, Euro Stoxx 50 -1.2%, in a continuation of APAC/US trade that was exacerbated by the latest geopolitical developments re. Romanian airspace. Sectors are predominantly in the red with the exception of Energy given benchmark pricing while Retail names post marked underperformance amid heavy losses in Adidas. Stateside, futures are directionally in-fitting with Europe given broader geopolitics-induced action though with marked NQ -1.0% underperformance as yields pick up globally.

Top European News

• UK Treasury officials are in discussions to speed up Solvency II reforms and are considering whether to pursue a two-stage implementation, according to FT.
• ECB’s Vujcic says core inflation is too high and ECB needs to see a sustained decline in the core rate. Not the time to discuss terminal, once the peak is reached will need to hold there for some time. Even if headline inflation fell below core, policy would need to remain restrictive.
• ECB TLTRO.III February 10th window repayment figure (EUR): 36.6bln vs exp. 60-320bln (prev. 62.75bln).
• Russian Federation Central Bank Key Rate (Feb) 7.50% vs. Exp. 7.5% (Prev. 7.5%); if pro-inflationary risks intensify will consider the necessity of hikes.
• Roche Foundation Buys Shares as Family Voting Stake Falls to 65%
• Jupiter’s Mid-Cap Fund Sinks Below £1 Billion AUM After 62% Fall
• UK Trade Deficit With EU Hits Record as Brexit Curtails Exports
• Russia to Cut Oil Output in Retaliation for West’s Sanctions
• Brent Oil Jumps Above $86 After Russia Says It Plans Output Cut

BOJ

• Japanese gov’t is reportedly likely to nominate Kazuo Ueda as the new BoJ Governor, via Nikkei; to nominate Himino as the new Deputy. Japanese gov’t initially approached BoJ deputy Amamiya as a possible successor but was met with a firm refusal. Click here for more detail.
• Touted BoJ Governor nominee Ueda said the BoJ’s monetary policy is appropriate and they need to continue easy policy, speaking on NTV; when asked if he will be nominated as the next BoJ Governor, says nothing has been decided. Adds, it is important to make decisions logically and explain them clearly.
• Japan’s government is to present the nominees for the BoJ leadership on February 14th at 02:00GMT/21:00EST, while the ruling and opposition parties are considering holding a hearing on the nominees in the lower house on February 24th, according to officials cited by Reuters. Subsequently confirmed by PM Kishida

Geopolitics

• “Ukrainian commander in chief Zaluzhny says 2 Russian kalibr missiles entered Moldovan and NATO-member Romanian airspace on their way to targets in Ukraine”, via The Economists’ Carroll; subsequently, Romania says it cannot confirm at this point that a Russian missile crossed its airspace though Moldova confirms it entered Moldovan airspace.
• Most recently, Romania’s Defence Ministry says Russian missile did not reach Romanian airspace, but crossed Moldovan airspace.
• Ukrainian Energy Minister says Russian attacks hit power facilities in six regions, emergency shutdowns reported in many regions.
• French President Macron said he doesn’t rule out sending fighter jets to Ukraine but added that it is not a priority for now, according to Reuters.
• Brazil reportedly bowed to US pressure and agreed to delay Iranian warships from docking in Rio de Janeiro until after President Lula meets with US President Biden, according to sources cited by Reuters.

FX

• JPY soared on reports that Ueda will be the gov’ts nomination for BoJ Governor, with USD/JPY dropping to 129.82 from 131.55; however, Ueda announcing he is happy with easy policy saw this unwind back towards 131.00.
• Amidst this, the DXY was pushed down to 102.89 though has since been revitalised by the above Ueda commentary and geopolitics, taking the index to a session peak of 103.50.
• More broadly, GBP and EUR initially benefitted from the above gyrations, but have since succumbed to the USD’s strength and thus have been below 1.21 and 1.07 respectively.
• SEK continues to extend post-Riksbank while NOK benefited from very hot CPI which adds to conviction to the calls for more policy tightening than flagged by Governor Bache at the last gathering.
• PBoC set USD/CNY mid-point at 6.7884 vs exp. 6.7885 (prev. 6.7905)
• Banxico hiked rates by 50bps in a unanimous decision (exp. 25bps hike) and said for the next policy meeting, the upward adjustment to the reference rate could be of a lower magnitude.

Fixed Income

• Core benchmarks came under JGB-led pressure on the initial Ueda reports, sending Bunds, Gilts and USTs to 135.88, 104.07 and 112.29+ lows.
• However, this pressure has since eased a touch for EGBs given risk gyrations though USTs remain at session lows as the initial JGB-induced move was less pronounced stateside.

Commodities

• WTI and Brent are bolstered following Novak announcing that Russia is to cut oil production by 500k BPD in March.
• Currently, the benchmarks are firmer by circa. USD 2/bbl, though they have eased slightly from best levels as the USD lifts alongside the risk tone slipping somewhat.
• MMG (1208 HK) said the Las Bambas copper mine in Peru secured critical supplies that have enabled production to continue at a reduced rate and the property remains secure but transport disruptions continue and critical supplies remain low. Furthermore, it warned that if the situation of critical supplies persists, it would be forced to commence a period of care and maintenance.
• Damage assessment and repairs are taking place in Turkey’s Ceyhan oil terminal and exports from BTC could begin on Sunday, according to a Turkish official and industry source cited by Reuters.
• Spot gold is modestly firmer and seemingly torn between geopolitical-induced haven appeal, though perhaps impacted by JPY action, and the associated pick up in the USD, as such the yellow metal is at the mid-point of USD 1852-1877/oz parameters.

US Event Calendar

• 10:00: Feb. U. of Mich. 5-10 Yr Inflation, est. 2.9%, prior 2.9%
• 10:00: Feb. U. of Mich. 1 Yr Inflation, est. 4.0%, prior 3.9%
• 10:00: Feb. U. of Mich. Expectations, est. 63.1, prior 62.7
• 10:00: Feb. U. of Mich. Current Conditions, est. 68.5, prior 68.4
• 10:00: Feb. U. of Mich. Sentiment, est. 65.0, prior 64.9
• 14:00: Jan. Monthly Budget Statement, est. -$55b, prior $118.7b

DB’s Jim Reid concludes the overnight wrap

Although the S&P 500 is still above where it was before the FOMC last Wednesday, it does feel like more challenging markets for both risk and rates have been developing since the payrolls number two days later.

After the strong 10yr auction on Wednesday, a weak 30-yr auction last night pushed yields higher across the curve in the last few hours of the session. US 30yr UST yields were up +5.5bps on the day and around 10bps off their pre-auction lows. This pulled up 10yr Treasury yields, which prior to the auction were down slightly, to close +4.8bps higher on the day at 3.658% and slightly up (+0.76 bps) this morning in Asia. There were bigger moves at the front end, with the 2yr yield up +6.1bps to 4.482%, and came as investors modestly raised their estimates of the Fed’s terminal rate. For instance, Fed funds futures are now expecting a 5.153% rate in July, up +1.5bps from the previous day, although still -0.05bps beneath its recent closing high on Monday.

The only silver lining from the poor 30 year auction was that it prevented the 2s10s curve from closing at its most inverted for 42 years. It moved as low as -87.2bps at one point before closing at -82.8bps as the back end got dragged up by the weak auction. Regardless of the brief respite, these curve levels are very extreme and at levels where a recession has always followed within months. Long-time readers will know that the 2s10s is my favourite US recession lead indicator. Critics might argue that some cycles have taken a lot longer to roll over than others after the initial inversion which means you can’t rely on the curve for timings.

However, the lead time tightens up considerably when we only count it as a signal when the yield curve inverts for 3 months. In this cycle it first (briefly) inverted at the end of March last year but then only inverted on a sustained basis since the start of last July. After the 3 months rule has been triggered in the last 70 years, 8 out of 9 recessions have occurred between 8-19 months later. In this cycle that would take us to a range between March 2023 and February 2024.

The deeper curve inversion hurt US equities after a bright start in the first half of the session but the market didn’t recover any poise in the last few hours of trading even as we steepened back. In the end, over 77% of the S&P 500 finished lower as the index posted a -0.88% loss. The large move higher in long-term yields weighed on tech stocks, which was one of the sectors that was keeping the index afloat in the morning. It was the first back-to-back -1.0% days for the S&P 500 since mid-December. Tesla remained an outperformer (+3.0%). Its share price now stands at nearly double its intraday low back on January 6, albeit down -49.98% from its all-time peak on November 4th. On the other hand, Alphabet fell a further -4.39% yesterday, following on from its -7.68% decline on Wednesday. Outside of Tesla and BorgWarner keeping the Autos sector above water (+2.44%), defensives like Food & Beverage (+0.01%) were the only industry group higher on the day.

Whilst US markets were fairly soft, European assets had a much stronger day thanks to some good news on the inflation side. First, we had the delayed German CPI figures for January, which showed inflation unexpectedly falling to 9.2% (vs. 10.0% expected) on the EU-harmonised definition. That’s a 5-month low, and is also the third consecutive decline since its peak of 11.6% back in October. The data might need to settle down a bit after the benchmark revisions though for economists to get the best view on trends. Second, European natural gas futures fell to a fresh 17-month low yesterday of €52.77 per megawatt-hour, which is another positive story for European consumers and should help sustain the recent downturn in inflation.

Against that backdrop, Euro sovereigns outperformed their counterparts elsewhere, with yields on 10yr bunds (-5.9bps), OATs (-6.1bps) and BTPs (-11.2bps) all seeing a decent decline on the day. It was a similar story for equities too, with the STOXX 600 (+0.62%) hitting a 10-month high and Germany’s DAX (+0.72%) reaching a one-year high.

The main exception to this European outperformance came from Sweden, which followed the Riksbank’s latest policy decision. This was the first meeting with the new Governor at the helm, and although the 50bps hike was expected, they also announced that QT would be starting from April and indicated that the policy rate would “probably be raised further during the spring.” That triggered a massive reaction among Swedish assets, with the Krona strengthening +2.36% against the US Dollar, whilst yields on 10yr Swedish government bonds were up by +23.0bps on the day.

Asian equity markets are mostly trading in the red following the second consecutive overnight losses on Wall Street. Across the region, the Hang Seng (-1.79%) is the biggest underperformer with the CSI (-0.72%), the Shanghai Composite (-0.60%) and the KOSPI (-0.59%) slipping in morning trading. Meanwhile, the S&P/ASX 200 (-0.67%) is also losing ground after the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) released its quarterly Statement on Monetary Policy (SoMP) in which it indicated that inflation remains high and flagged further interest rate hikes ahead. Elsewhere, the Nikkei (+0.22%) is bucking the regional downward trend. Outside of Asia, US stock futures are printing fresh losses with contracts tied to the S&P 500 (-0.17%) and NASDAQ 100 (-0.26%) both slightly down.

In early morning data, consumer prices in China (+2.1% y/y) rose at the fastest pace in three months in January, in line with market expectations and up from a +1.8% increase seen in December on the back of a spending surge over the Lunar New year festival. At the same time, factory gate prices (-0.8% y/y) dropped more than the anticipated -0.5% decline while extending the -0.7% drop in the preceding month. The mixed data highlights a staggered economic recovery in the world’s second largest economy even as it relaxed its stringent Covid-19 policy earlier this year. Meanwhile, Japan’s producer prices advanced (+9.5% y/y) in January (vs +9.7% expected), lower than the upwardly revised gain of +10.5% in December 2022.

There wasn’t much other data of note yesterday, but we did get the latest weekly initial jobless claims for the US, covering the week ending February 4th. Interestingly, they marked the first time this year that the number had surprised to the upside of consensus with a 196k reading (vs. 190k expected). Even so, the 4-week moving average still fell to its lowest level since April, at just 189.25k.

To the day ahead now, and data releases include UK GDP for Q4, Italian industrial production for December, and in the US there’s the University of Michigan’s preliminary consumer sentiment index for February. From central banks, we’ll hear from the Fed’s Waller and Harker, the ECB’s Schnabel and de Cos, and BoE chief economist Pill.

end

AND NOW NEWSQUAWK (EUROPE/REPORT)

Pronounced two-way JPY action, crude bid on Novak while broader sentiment slips – Newsquawk US Market Open

FRIDAY, FEB 10, 2023 – 06:42 AM

• European bourses are under pressure, Euro Stoxx 50 -1.2%, in a continuation of APAC/US trade that was exacerbated by the latest geopolitical developments re. Romanian airspace.
• Stateside, futures are directionally in-fitting with Europe given broader geopolitics-induced action though with marked NQ -1.0% underperformance as yields pick up globally.
• JPY soared on reports that Ueda will be the gov’ts nomination for BoJ Governor, with USD/JPY dropping to 129.82 from 131.55; however, Ueda announcing he is happy with easy policy saw this unwind back towards 131.00.
• Amidst this, the DXY was pushed down to 102.89 though has since been revitalised by the above Ueda commentary and geopolitics, taking the index to a session peak of 103.50.
• Core fixed benchmarks came under JGB-led pressure on the initial Ueda reports, sending Bunds, Gilts and USTs to 135.88, 104.07 and 112.29+ lows.
• WTI and Brent are bolstered following Novak announcing that Russia is to cut oil production by 500k BPD in March, posting upside in excess of USD 2/bbl.
• Looking ahead, Canadian Jobs Report, US Uni. of Michigan Prelim, EU Leaders Summit (2/2), Speeches from Fed’s Waller & Harker, ECB’s Schnabel, BoE’s Pill.

View the full premarket movers and news report. 

Or why not try Newsquawk’s squawk box free for 7 days?

EUROPEAN TRADE

BOJ

• Japanese gov’t is reportedly likely to nominate Kazuo Ueda as the new BoJ Governor, via Nikkei; to nominate Himino as the new Deputy. Japanese gov’t initially approached BoJ deputy Amamiya as a possible successor but was met with a firm refusal. Click here for more detail.
• Touted BoJ Governor nominee Ueda said the BoJ’s monetary policy is appropriate and they need to continue easy policy, speaking on NTV; when asked if he will be nominated as the next BoJ Governor, says nothing has been decided. Adds, it is important to make decisions logically and explain them clearly.
• Japan’s government is to present the nominees for the BoJ leadership on February 14th at 02:00GMT/21:00EST, while the ruling and opposition parties are considering holding a hearing on the nominees in the lower house on February 24th, according to officials cited by Reuters. Subsequently confirmed by PM Kishida

GEOPOLITICS

• “Ukrainian commander in chief Zaluzhny says 2 Russian kalibr missiles entered Moldovan and NATO-member Romanian airspace on their way to targets in Ukraine”, via The Economists’ Carroll; subsequently, Romania says it cannot confirm at this point that a Russian missile crossed its airspace though Moldova confirms it entered Moldovan airspace.
• Most recently, Romania’s Defence Ministry says Russian missile did not reach Romanian airspace, but crossed Moldovan airspace.
• Ukrainian Energy Minister says Russian attacks hit power facilities in six regions, emergency shutdowns reported in many regions.
• French President Macron said he doesn’t rule out sending fighter jets to Ukraine but added that it is not a priority for now, according to Reuters.
• Brazil reportedly bowed to US pressure and agreed to delay Iranian warships from docking in Rio de Janeiro until after President Lula meets with US President Biden, according to sources cited by Reuters.

RUSSIAN OIL

• Russian Deputy PM Novak says Russia is to voluntarily cut production by 500k BPD in March (oil only); price cap on Russian oil and oil products interferes with market relations; reiterates will not sell oil to those who adhere to the price cap. There is a risk that oil price caps will be applied to other global economic sectors. Will take further actions depending on the market situation.
• Russia did not consult with OPEC+ on its March oil production reduction, it was an independent decision, according to a source cited by Reuters. Subsequently, Russia’s Kremlin says Russia held talks with some OPEC+ members on its decision to cut its oil output.
• OPEC+ will not boost supply in reaction to the Russian cut, according to delegates cited by Reuters.
• Most recently, Russian Deputy PM Novak says Russia has not held any consultations on oil cuts.

EQUITIES

• European bourses are under pressure, Euro Stoxx 50 -1.2%, in a continuation of APAC/US trade that was exacerbated by the latest geopolitical developments re. Romanian airspace.
• Sectors are predominantly in the red with the exception of Energy given benchmark pricing while Retail names post marked underperformance amid heavy losses in Adidas.
• Stateside, futures are directionally in-fitting with Europe given broader geopolitics-induced action though with marked NQ -1.0% underperformance as yields pick up globally.
• Click here for more detail.

FX

• JPY soared on reports that Ueda will be the gov’ts nomination for BoJ Governor, with USD/JPY dropping to 129.82 from 131.55; however, Ueda announcing he is happy with easy policy saw this unwind back towards 131.00.
• Amidst this, the DXY was pushed down to 102.89 though has since been revitalised by the above Ueda commentary and geopolitics, taking the index to a session peak of 103.50.
• More broadly, GBP and EUR initially benefitted from the above gyrations, but have since succumbed to the USD’s strength and thus have been below 1.21 and 1.07 respectively.
• SEK continues to extend post-Riksbank while NOK benefited from very hot CPI which adds to conviction to the calls for more policy tightening than flagged by Governor Bache at the last gathering.
• PBoC set USD/CNY mid-point at 6.7884 vs exp. 6.7885 (prev. 6.7905)
• Banxico hiked rates by 50bps in a unanimous decision (exp. 25bps hike) and said for the next policy meeting, the upward adjustment to the reference rate could be of a lower magnitude.
• Click here for more detail.

FIXED INCOME

• Core benchmarks came under JGB-led pressure on the initial Ueda reports, sending Bunds, Gilts and USTs to 135.88, 104.07 and 112.29+ lows.
• However, this pressure has since eased a touch for EGBs given risk gyrations though USTs remain at session lows as the initial JGB-induced move was less pronounced stateside.
• Click here for more detail.

COMMODITIES

• WTI and Brent are bolstered following Novak announcing that Russia is to cut oil production by 500k BPD in March.
• Currently, the benchmarks are firmer by circa. USD 2/bbl, though they have eased slightly from best levels as the USD lifts alongside the risk tone slipping somewhat.
• MMG (1208 HK) said the Las Bambas copper mine in Peru secured critical supplies that have enabled production to continue at a reduced rate and the property remains secure but transport disruptions continue and critical supplies remain low. Furthermore, it warned that if the situation of critical supplies persists, it would be forced to commence a period of care and maintenance.
• Damage assessment and repairs are taking place in Turkey’s Ceyhan oil terminal and exports from BTC could begin on Sunday, according to a Turkish official and industry source cited by Reuters.
• Spot gold is modestly firmer and seemingly torn between geopolitical-induced haven appeal, though perhaps impacted by JPY action, and the associated pick up in the USD, as such the yellow metal is at the mid-point of USD 1852-1877/oz parameters.
• Click here for more detail.

NOTABLE HEADLINES

• UK Treasury officials are in discussions to speed up Solvency II reforms and are considering whether to pursue a two-stage implementation, according to FT.
• ECB’s Vujcic says core inflation is too high and ECB needs to see a sustained decline in the core rate. Not the time to discuss terminal, once the peak is reached will need to hold there for some time. Even if headline inflation fell below core, policy would need to remain restrictive.
• ECB TLTRO.III February 10th window repayment figure (EUR): 36.6bln vs exp. 60-320bln (prev. 62.75bln).
• Russian Federation Central Bank Key Rate (Feb) 7.50% vs. Exp. 7.5% (Prev. 7.5%); if pro-inflationary risks intensify will consider the necessity of hikes.

DATA RECAP

• UK GDP Estimate MM (Dec) -0.5% vs. Exp. -0.3% (Prev. 0.1%); YY (Dec) -0.1% vs. Exp. -0.2% (Prev. 0.2%, Rev. 0.6%); 3M/3M (Dec) 0.0% vs. Exp. 0.0% (Prev. -0.3%)
• UK GDP Prelim QQ (Q4) 0.0% (Prev. -0.3%, Rev. -0.2%); YY (Q4) 0.4% vs. Exp. 0.4% (Prev. 1.9%)
• Norwegian Consumer Price Index YY (Jan) 7.0% vs. Exp. 6.5% (Prev. 5.9%); MM (Jan) 0.2% vs. Exp. -0.2% (Prev. 0.1%)
• Norwegian Core Inflation YY (Jan) 6.4% vs. Exp. 6.1% (Prev. 5.8%); MM (Jan) 0.2% vs. Exp. -0.1% (Prev. 0.4%)

NOTABLE US HEADLINES

• Fed released 2023 bank stress test scenarios which include heightened stress in commercial and residential real estate markets, as well as a new ‘exploratory market shock’ for eight of the largest banks.
  • USTR chief agricultural negotiator said they asked Mexico to respond by February 14th to questions regarding the science behind the GMO corn ban decree and its response will help USTR decide on the next steps in resolving the GMO corn dispute including whether to escalate a USMCA dispute.
  • Click here for the US Early Morning note.

APAC TRADE

• APAC stocks were mostly negative after the losses on Wall St where the major indices wiped out initial gains and virtually spent the entire session on the back foot with sentiment hampered and recession fears stoked amid the deepest 2s/10s yield inversion since the 1980s.
• ASX 200 was dragged lower as underperformance in tech led the declines seen in almost all sectors and after the latest RBA Statement on Monetary Policy reaffirmed that further rate hikes will be needed.
• Nikkei 225 bucked the trend amid an overload of earnings releases and softer PPI data, although advances were capped as participants second-guess who will succeed BoJ Governor Kuroda.
• Hang Seng and Shanghai Comp. were lower with Hong Kong pressured by weakness in the property and tech industries, while frictions lingered as the US seeks to take action against Chinese entities linked to the surveillance balloon and reportedly aims to curtail technology investment in China.

NOTABLE ASIA-PAC HEADLINES

• RBA Statement on Monetary Policy noted that the board’s priority is to return inflation to the target and that the board expects further increases in rates will be needed, while it is mindful that a considerable adjustment to interest rates has already been made and that monetary policy affects activity and inflation with a lag and through different channels. RBA also stated there are considerable uncertainties surrounding the outlook, and so around the level of interest rates needed to achieve the Board’s objectives.

DATA RECAP

• Chinese CPI MM (Jan) 0.8% vs. Exp. 0.7% (Prev. 0.0%); YY (Jan) 2.1% vs. Exp. 2.2% (Prev. 1.8%)
• Chinese PPI YY (Jan) -0.8% vs. Exp. -0.5% (Prev. -0.7%)
• Japanese Corp Goods Price MM (Jan) 0.0% vs. Exp. 0.3% (Prev. 0.5%)
• Japanese Corp Goods Price YY (Jan) 9.5% vs. Exp. 9.6% (Prev. 10.2%)

1.c FRIDAY/  THURSDAY  NIGHT

SHANGHAI CLOSED DOWN 9.71 PTS OR 0.30%    //Hang Seng CLOSED DOWN 433.94 PTS OR 2.01%      /The Nikkei closed  UP 86.63 PTS OR 0.31%            //Australia’s all ordinaries CLOSED DOWN .84%   /Chinese yuan (ONSHORE) closed DOWN 6.8121 //OFFSHORE CHINESE YUAN DOWN TO 6.8242//    /Oil UP TO 79.79 dollars per barrel for WTI and BRENT AT 86.29   / Stocks in Europe OPENED ALL RED// ONSHORE YUAN TRADING ABOVE LEVEL OF OFFSHORE YUAN/ONSHORE YUAN  TRADING WEAKER AGAINST US DOLLAR/OFFSHORE WEAKER

2 a./NORTH KOREA/ SOUTH KOREA/

///NORTH KOREA/SOUTH KOREA

2B JAPAN

JAPAN/

In Surprise Twist, Japan Set To Appoint Ben Bernanke Classmate Kazuo Ueda As Next BOJ Head

FRIDAY, FEB 10, 2023 – 09:46 AM

Less than a week after the yen freaked out and tumbled on media reports (by Japan’s Nikkei) that Japan’s PM Fumio Kishida would nominate prominent dove and BOJ Deputy Governor Masayoshi Amamiya to replace Haruhiko Kuroda whose tenure ends April 8, in what was a clear trial balloon meant to gauge investor, early this morning we got news (once again from Japan’s Nikkei, the government’s preferred mouthpiece especially for market trial balloons), that the PM will nominate Kazuo Ueda instead, a professor and former Bank of Japan board member, but most importantly a far greater hawk than Amamiya, after the job was reportedly declined by the former.

The news came as a major surprise to market participants with the yen initially jumping as much as 1.4% against the dollar, suggesting investors initially interpreted Ueda as a hawkish choice.

Additionally, the government is also reportedly moving to appoint BOJ Executive Director Shinichi Uchida and former Commissioner of the Financial Services Agency Ryozo Himino as deputy governors, taking over from current deputy governors Masayoshi Amamiya and Masazumi Wakatabe.

Who is Kazuo Ueda?

Well, as Fed whisperer Nick Timiraos points out this morning, “Ueda has a Ph.D. in economics from MIT and, like his classmate Ben Bernanke, was advised by Stanley Fischer” adding that he has “largely supported the policies of Kuroda, as the next central bank governor.“

He served as a BOJ Policy Board Member from 1998 until 2005, and his appointment would mark the first time in the post-war period that someone from an academic economics background takes on the role of BOJ governor. At the start of this week, reports emerged that the government had sounded out Deputy Governor Masayoshi Amamiya to take over as the next governor, but that he declined (February 10, Nikkei). Up to now, the governor post has been filled alternately by candidates from the Ministry of Finance and the BOJ, and the appointment of Kazuo Ueda would mark a departure from this practice.Kazuo Ueda, an economist and former member of the BOJ Policy Board

As the BOJ Policy Board member at the time, Ueda led the introduction of “commitment effect” (forward guidance) when the BOJ adopted the zero interest rate policy (ZIRP) in 1999. He also voted against terminating the ZIRP in 2000. On the other hand, he was in the cautious camp on the BOJ’s implementation of quantitative easing (QE) in 2001, commenting that it is hard to find a positive meaning to QE.

On February 10, Ueda mentioned to the press that he thinks the current BOJ policy is conducted appropriately, and current conditions warrant continuation of the easy monetary policy. On the other hand, he has also recently said that the BOJ should prepare an exit strategy, and a serious examination is needed at some point on the current unprecedented monetary policy framework that has been in place for much longer than most people had expected (July 6, 2022, Nikkei).

In his book published just after returning to academia from the BOJ Policy Board, he stated that suppressing money market rates to the lowest possible level helped to prevent concerns about the financial system from mounting, but that came with a cost in the form of impaired financial market functioning. He also noted that financial market infrastructure was partially damaged, and believed that this would take a long time to restore.

In its post-mortem, Goldman writes that it agrees with the assessment that “Professor Ueda has a balanced view (February 10, Yomiuri), rather than being biased significantly as either a dove or a hawk” although the market clearly sees him as leaning hawkish.

The Japanese government is due to present its nominees for the BOJ Governor and two Deputy Governor positions to the Diet at 11am on February 14. Once the nominees have been presented, each candidate will be called for hearing at the lower and upper house committees in mid-to late February (media report lower house is being planned for February 24), and both houses will then take a vote to approve the appointments. While approval from each house is required, the ruling coalition holds a majority in both houses, so the process is likely to be smooth. Final approval is likely to come in late February or early March.

Meanwhile, the big question for traders is whether Kuroda’s successor will keep his easy monetary policy, which includes yield curve control. Critics have pointed both to accelerating inflation and the fact that most major central banks globally are raising rates.

3c CHINA /

CHINA

China injects the equivalent of $one trillion of new money into their system

(zerohedge)

China’s Credit Monster Is Back: Beijing Injects Nearly $1 Trillion In New Money In One Month

FRIDAY, FEB 10, 2023 – 11:55 AM

One month ago, when looking at the latest Chinese credit data, we said that Beijing’s credit flood is about to hit, even if the December data was a disappointment.

Two weeks later, we got confirmation when a local paper said that “China Bank Lending in Jan. May Hit Record at Over 4T Yuan”, to which our response was that China had just wasted 3 years in another pointless deleveraging experiment to get back where it started: with massive credit injections as the only means for growth.

Fast forward to today when just as previewed one month ago, the Chinese Credit Flood arrived with a bang, and a record 4.9 trillion in new loans, which smashed expectations as did the Total Social Financing which came at a near record 6 trillion yuan, or almost $1 trillion in total new credit (i.e., new money) in just one month!

The big picture: Total RMB loans surprised the market to the upside mainly on stronger corporate loans – corporate loan growth accelerated to 23.7% month-over-month annualized in January from 16.9% in December, although short-term corporate loans grew faster than medium to long term loans. Household loan growth slowed in contrast – medium to long term loans to households (mostly mortgages) contracted in January vs December last year amid weak property transactions and early repayment of mortgages. Total social financing and M2 beat expectations as well on the back of stronger loan growth.

The key numbers:

• New CNY loans: RMB 4900BN in January (RMB loans to the real economy: RMB 4930BN) vs. Bloomberg consensus: RMB 4200BN.
• Outstanding CNY loan growth: 11.3% yoy in January (+12.7% mom sa ann, estimated by GS); December: 11.1% yoy (+12.1% mom sa ann).
• Total social financing: RMB 5980 billion in January, vs. consensus: RMB 5400bn
• TSF stock growth: 9.4% yoy in January, vs. 9.6% in December. The implied month-on-month growth of TSF stock: 11.5% in January (seasonally adjusted annualized rate), more than double the 4.8% December rate.
• M2: 12.6% yoy in January (21% mom sa ann estimated by GS) vs. Bloomberg consensus: 11.7% yoy, December: 11.8% yoy (+2.5% mom sa ann).

Courtesy of Goldman’s Maggie Wei, here are the main points from the report:

• 1. January total social financing (TSF) came in above market expectations, mainly on stronger loan growth. The sequential growth of TSF stock accelerated to 11.5% mom sa annualized in January from 4.8% in December, and in year-on-year terms, TSF stock growth slowed to 9.4% from 9.6% in December. Among major TSF components, new CNY loans rose strongly after seasonal adjustment, and shadow banking credit turned less negative as well. Trust loans, entrusted loans and undiscounted bankers’ acceptance bills combined contracted by RMB 140bn in January, vs a contraction of RMB 453bn in December last year. Corporate bond showed net issuance of RMB 91bn, vs net redemption of RMB 505bn in December, and government bond net issuance rose to RMB 794bn, from RMB 425bn in December.

• 2. Overall CNY loans came in well above market expectations, and the sequential growth of RMB loans accelerated to 12.7% mom sa annualized from 12.1% in December. Year-on-year growth of RMB loans was 11.3% in January, edging up from 11.1% in December. Based on loan breakdown by different sectors after our seasonal adjustment, corporate loan growth accelerated while household loan growth slowed. In particular, household short-term loan growth slowed to 3.4% month-over-month annualized from 5.7% in December, and household medium to long term loans, which are mostly mortgages, contracted by 2.2% in January from 5.2% expansion in December last year, on the back of slow property transactions and early repayment of mortgages, despite on-going property policy easing.
• 3. M2 growth accelerated to 12.6% yoy in January from 11.8% in December, above market expectations and the highest since 2016. FX inflows have likely been quite strong in January, adding to the overall M2 growth in the month, besides the contribution from faster RMB loan growth.

• 4. January loan and credit data were stronger than expectations, mostly on higher RMB loans to the corporate sector. The acceleration in corporate loans reflected policy support and some improvement in credit demand – policymakers urged commercial banks to accelerate loan extensions and market color suggests faster loan growth in infrastructure and manufacturing sectors. However, corporate short-term loans grew faster than long-term loans – short-term loans expanded by 39.3% month-over-month annualized, vs 5.4% in December last year, and medium to long term loans expanded by 28.2% month-over-month annualized, vs 24.4% in December. Whether the fast speed of corporate loan growth could be sustainable thus remains to be seen. In contrast, the weak household loans and in particular household medium to long term loan growth highlighted the challenges in the property sector – despite the on-going policy easing in the sector, households chose to repay mortgages early amid falling mortgages rates and relatively conservative expectations on future property prices.
• 5. PBOC revised the statistical standards for money and credit data this month by including credit extensions from consumer credit companies, wealth management companies, and financial asset investment companies to the loan and TSF data, though this impact is relatively small. According to the PBOC, total loan extensions by these companies stood at RMB 841bn in January, around 0.4% of outstanding RMB loan stock.

Bottom line, the January loan and credit data came red hot as we expected and as China warned, clearly expecting this outcome and hinting that there is much more to come (no surprise that the PBOC released more than 1trillion yuan in new liquidity in just the past three days). The acceleration in bank loans reflected policy support – commercial banks extended more loans to property developers after the “property 16 measures”, and policy banks’ credit facility targeting at infrastructure investment in recent months likely also added to overall RMB loan growth. At the same time, the sharp upward reversal in TSF growth indicates that Beijing has fully capitulated when it comes to new containing the next credit bubble and is now pursuing it wholeheartedly as it hopes to reverse three years of subdued growth by China’s economy during its Zero Covid nightmare.

The question is how soon and how extensively China’s massive credit impulse reboot will flood the world. One thing is clear: the burst higher in credit will lead to an even more powerful bounce in Chinese stocks in the near term.

How widely that spreads across the globe remains to be seen and will be a function of how much inflation China manages to export to the world in the next year. This a topic we discussed in “Nikileaks Spooks Markets That Chinese Reopening May Be Inflationary, But Wall Street Disagrees.” But what is perhaps most important is that the wobbly foundation of the world’s biggest asset bubble – China’s property market..

… is about to be reinforced with monetary concrete, as discussed in “In Huge Policy Reversal, China Will Ease “Three Red Lines” Rule To Kickstart World’s Biggest Asset Bubble“, and not long after expect all global “high beta” asset classes to follow suit.

END

CHINA/

China blasts the uSA again claiming that the balloon was nothing but a weather balloon gone off course

(zerohedge)

China Blasts US Balloon Accusations As “Information Warfare” – Still Insists It Was For Weather

THURSDAY, FEB 09, 2023 – 08:00 PM

The Chinese government has rejected fresh US accusations over the recently downed alleged spy balloon off America’s east coast, blasting Washington’s “information warfare” while continuing to insist it wasn’t a surveillance vehicle, but instead a weather balloon for collecting research which blew off course.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning further on Thursday described that China did not intend to violate any country’s sovereignty or airspace. She dismissed the US claims as “irresponsible” and asserted it “may be part of the U.S. side’s information warfare against China.”

The ministry also took a swipe at President Biden’s Tuesday night State of the Union comments directed at China, wherein the US leader said Chinese President Xi Jinping faces “enormous problems” due to the balloon incident.Reuters: People photograph a suspected Chinese spy balloon as it floats off the coast in Surfside Beach, South Carolina, before it is shot down.

Mao Ning separately in a PBS Newshour interview described the latest US assertions as “highly irresponsible and violate basic diplomatic protocols,” saying specifically of Biden’s anti-China rhetoric: “We are firmly opposed to that and condemn that.”

Biden had laid out bluntly that the US and allies must focus on winning the “competition” with Beijing, which should “unite all of us.”

“Before I came to office, the story was about how the People’s Republic of China was increasing its power and America was falling in the world. Not anymore,” the president said. Biden then asserted he makes “no apologies” for the US investing in “industries that will define the future, and that China’s government is intent on dominating.”

On Thursday the US State Department issued an update of its findings related to the capabilities of the shot-down Chinese balloon, describing that it was equipped with antennas and other gear “likely” used to sweep up communications.

According to the officials cited in The Wall Street Journal:

The Chinese balloon that crossed the U.S. was outfitted with antennas likely capable of collecting communications, a senior State Department official said Thursday, adding that the Biden administration is preparing to take action against China’s surveillance program.

Providing details the U.S. has gathered since tracking and shooting down the balloon, the official said the balloon was also equipped with large solar panels capable of powering an array of intelligence-collection sensors. The manufacturer of the balloon has a direct relationship with the Chinese military, the official added.

However, Beijing will likely zero in on all of these qualifications, given there’s yet to be smoking gun evidence presented for public view. The State Dept. is still using words such as “likely” and merely that the balloon merely “capable” of surveillance. This stops short of the US asserting definitively that it is a proven spy balloon based on the recovered debris.

China has instead called it a “civilian climate research vehicle” and has this week asked for the debris to be returned.

END

CHINA/USA

Sparks fly after Biden casually says China spy balloon not a major breach

(zerohedge)

After Ordering Shootdown, Biden Casually Says China Spy Balloon “Not A Major Breach”

THURSDAY, FEB 09, 2023 – 07:20 PM

Update(1920ET): Unexpected statements from President Biden on Thursday, who ordered the Chinese balloon to be shot down in the first place:

Biden says China spy balloon ‘not a major breach’ President Biden on Thursday said that the suspected Chinese spy balloon that flew over much of the U.S. last week was “not a major breach,” comparing it to intelligence gathering conducted by countries around the world.

“It’s not a major breach. Look, the total amount of intelligence gathering that’s going on by every country around the world is overwhelming,” Biden said in an interview with Noticias Telemundo.

“It’s our airspace. And once it comes into our space, we can do what we want with it,” the president said.

But the narrative dissonance on display out of the same administration is interesting: first, a potentially weaponized ‘spy’ balloon is hyped by Biden officials; second, a national media panic ensues complete with national security officials scrambling amid non-stop major network coverage; and three, an advanced fighter jet is dispatched to shoot the balloon down over the American east coast with a sidewinder missile. 

Something isn’t adding up here.

Meanwhile, during a closed-door House briefing on Thursday, sparks flew…

A classified House briefing on the Chinese spy balloon turned tense Thurs when MTG went after admin officials for waiting to shoot down the balloon. “I chewed them out just like the American people would’ve,”

@RepMTG

told

@thehill

. “I tore ‘em to pieces.”

thehill.com

House briefing on China spy balloon turns tense with Greene questions: ‘I chewed them out’

A classified briefing for House lawmakers on the Chinese spy balloon turned tense on Thursday when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) went after

* * *

Update(1317ET): The US is looking very determined to seek retribution against China for the ‘spy balloon’ saga, with the FBI now talking criminal charges in an early afternoon announcement.

The FBI confirmed it is now in the process of “decontaminating some balloon remains” by removing sea water and salt. Further the FBI backed an earlier State Dept statement in describing the evidence from the balloon’s components “could be used for intelligence” and “possible criminal charges” could result.

At the same time, the House has unanimously approved a resolution which formally condemns China’s use of a spy balloon over US soil, calling it “a brazen violation of United States sovereignty.” The Hill details of the resolution: 

The resolution — which cleared the chamber in a bipartisan 419-0 vote — came to the House floor five days after the U.S. shot down the Chinese spy balloon off the South Carolina coast, intensifying tensions between Washington and Beijing.

“An event like this, Mr. Speaker, must not happen again. And it cannot go unanswered,” Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and sponsor of the measure, said on the House floor during debate Thursday.

“They only understand one thing and that is force, and that’s projecting power, and we need to project power and force and strength against the Chinese Communist Party,” he added. “They must understand that we do desire peace, but infringing upon our sovereignty leads us down a dangerous path. Our adversaries must believe that any future incursion into American airspace by a spy balloon or any other vehicle will be met with decisive force. And that is why the House should pass this resolution.”

Meanwhile, as NYT wrote yesterday, this has plunged US-China relations to a new low in terms of open communications. A mere days ago Secretary Blinken was supposed to meet with President Xi, which the balloon saga disrupted, given the US side called off the important meeting.

Meanwhile, more from unnamed US officials:

“High resolution imagery from U-2 flybys revealed that the high-altitude balloon was capable of conducting signals intelligence collection operations,” an official with the State Department, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Epoch Times.

“The high altitude balloon’s equipment was clearly for intelligence surveillance and inconsistent with the equipment onboard weather balloons. It had multiple antennas to include an array likely capable of collecting and geo-locating communications. It was equipped with solar panels large enough to produce the requisite power to operate multiple active intelligence collection sensors,” the official added.

* * * 

As debris from the shot-down Chinese balloon recovered from the Atlantic Ocean presumably continues to be analyzed, US officials have been cited in Reuters and The Wall Street Journal to describe that the alleged spy balloon was part of a much bigger than previously believed “balloon surveillance program” by China which has targeted over 40 countries. 

“The United States will also explore taking action against PRC entities linked to the PLA that supported the balloon’s incursion into U.S. airspace,” a senior State Department official said in a statement released Thursday.

“We are confident that the balloon manufacturer has a direct relationship with China’s military and is an approved vendor of the PLA, according to information published in an official procurement portal for the PLA,” the official said.US Navy: The Harpers Ferry class amphibious warfare ship USS Carter Hall sails in the background as Navy sailors recover a portion of the Chinese spy balloon’s envelope. 

But notably, the State Department did not reveal whether ongoing examination of the actual wreckage from the balloon that passed over the United States late last week before it was shot down Saturday off the South Carolina coast is primarily informing the current assessment. 

However, The Wall Street Journal does hint that the recovered debris points in the direction of it being a spy balloon:

The Chinese balloon that crossed the U.S. was outfitted with antennas likely capable of collecting communications, a senior State Department official said Thursday, adding that the Biden administration is preparing to take action against China’s surveillance program.

Providing details the U.S. has gathered since tracking and shooting down the balloon, the official said the balloon was also equipped with large solar panels capable of powering an array of intelligence-collection sensors. The manufacturer of the balloon has a direct relationship with the Chinese military, the official added.

The statements provide less than certainty, given the official used qualifiers such as it being “likely capable” of collecting communications, and further that its solar panels are “capable” of powering intelligence-collection sensors. At this point it seems a smoking gun has yet to be presented for public view based on the actual balloon shot down.

According to more via Reuters, describing the Chinese balloon manufacturer, “The company also advertises balloon products on its website and hosts videos from past flights, which appear to have overflown at least U.S. airspace and the airspace of other countries, the official said, without naming the business.”

“The official said the United States has collected high-resolution imagery of the balloon from U-2 aircraft flybys that revealed it was capable of conducting signals intelligence collection operations, the report continues. The official then said, “China had conducted similar surveillance flights over more than 40 countries on five continents.” 

China has sarcastically quipped that the US has launched a “war on weather balloons” – continuing to reject that it was for spying…

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has also weighed in, telling CBS news that the Pentagon’s driving concern was protecting US nuclear capabilities. Confirming that Chinese balloons have flown over places like Texas and Florida in prior years, he said, “Certainly all of our strategic assets, we made sure were buttoned down and movement was limited and communications were limited so that we didn’t expose any capability unnecessarily.”

China has meanwhile blistered at President Joe Biden’s words related to the balloon incident, per Bloomberg:  

Beijing lashed out at President Joe Biden for saying Chinese leader Xi Jinping faces “enormous problems,” underscoring the renewed tensions between the two nations since the US downing of a balloon in its airspace.

China’s Foreign Minister hasn’t wavered from its initial position expressed last week that it was nothing but a sophisticated weather “research” balloon which traversed errantly over North America. Beijing has claimed it simply blew off course, and that Washington exploited the incident for political purposes.

end

CHINA/USA

Rogers vows to expel all chinese goods form his defense supply chains

(EpochTimes)

Rogers Vows To Expel All Chinese Goods From Defense Supply Chains

THURSDAY, FEB 09, 2023 – 11:40 PM

Authored by Andrew Thornebrooke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, gestures during committee’s hearing on “Ending the U.S. Military Mission in Afghanistan” in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, Sept. 29, 2021. (Rod Lamkey/Pool via Reuters/File Photo)

The Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee is vowing to expel all Chinese goods and materials from the United States’s defense supply chains.

Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) said that he would lead the effort to expunge China-sourced goods during a Feb. 8 hearing of the committee on the subject of defense-industrial base security.

“The greatest concern I have with the defense industrial base is our continued reliance on China as the source of raw materials,” Rogers said.

“I won’t stop until we’ve completely rid the defense supply chain of Chinese goods and materials.”

Rogers said that communist China still inadvertently controlled too many parts of the supply chains required to equip the military and conduct security operations.

He singled out the United States’s continued reliance on China for rare earth minerals and non-advanced semiconductor chips and said that the regime’s grip on such supplies would need to be broken.

“The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) maintains a tight grip on many of our material supply chains including critical minerals and semiconductors,” Rogers said.“We will never prevail in a conflict with China if they’re the source of our military supply.”

US Must Move Dependencies

Committee Ranking Member Adam Smith (D-Wash.) said that the continued role of China in providing elements for the United States’s defense industrial supply chains was part of a greater legacy of irresponsible investment by U.S. corporations seeking to make an easy profit.

“Starting roughly in the late 1990s into the early 2000s, China became the global corporate easy button,” Smith said.

“That’s where you went to make stuff. Huge market, not much in the way of labor costs, certainly not environmental regulations. It was cheap, it was easy, it was the way to go.”

Read more here…

end

CHINA/USA/NORDSTREAMSEYMOUR HERSH

China Demands US “Explain Itself To The World” Over Nord Stream Attack Story

FRIDAY, FEB 10, 2023 – 04:20 PM

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

China has demanded that the United States “explain itself to the world” if the revelations in Seymour Hersh’s story about US intel being responsible for destroying the Nord Stream gas pipelines are true.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist published an article this week in which he asserted that the pipelines were destroyed by the US as part of a covert operation.

According to Hersh’s sources, the explosives were planted in June 2022 by US Navy divers under the guise of the BALTOPS 22 NATO exercise and were detonated three months later with a remote signal sent by a sonar buoy.

One source told Hersh that the plotters knew the covert operation was an “act of war,” with some in the CIA and State Department warning, “Don’t do this. It’s stupid and will be a political nightmare if it comes out.”

Now Beijing is demanding that the White House address the issue, seemingly unimpressed with the Biden administration’s rather weak response to merely label the story “false”.

Earlier today, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning asserted that Washington would have to bear responsibility if the report is confirmed as accurate.

“If the conclusions of the investigation are true, then the US behavior is unacceptable,” the diplomat told reporters, adding that the US would need to “explain itself to the world community.”

The Kremlin also responded to the report by demanding a fresh international investigation into the attack, which was preceded by both Joe Biden and Victoria Nuland asserting that the pipelines would be taken out if Russia invaded Ukraine.

Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said Hersh’s article showed “the need for an open international investigation into this unprecedented attack on this critical infrastructure.”

“It’s a very important piece, which… must provoke the acceleration of the international probe. But we, on the contrary, witness attempts to silently wind down such international investigation,” he added.

Meanwhile, in Germany, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is also calling for a full inquiry.

“The Pulitzer Prize winner’s suspicions must be investigated,” wrote co-chairman of the AfD parliamentary group, Tino Chrupalla.

“Has NATO’s leading power carried out an attack on our country’s vital critical infrastructure in European waters? Then one would have to question whether the alliance guarantees security in Europe or rather endangers it. The consequence would be the withdrawal of all U.S. troops.”

*  *  *

4/EUROPEAN AFFAIRS/UK AFFAIRS//

5.UKRAINE RUSSIA//MIDDLE EASTERN AFFAIRS

RUSSIA/USA/UKRAINE

Hal Turner Radio Show – *****BULLETIN***** Russia Changing Nuclear Policy to Allow “Preventive” First-Strike – Mentions US Bases in Europe and “Continental United States”

Robert Hryniak	10:44 AM (10 minutes ago)
to

Sometimes info on this site is a wee bit inflammatory, however he is correct this time.

  Sources have for weeks and months now been suggesting that matters were moving to a new level. The West is desperate to seek out war to mask the fact that their experiments with 0% interest rates failed to achieve any success while governments piled up debts they can never pay back. This is simple accounting math to see this reality. So war is sought as cover so politicians can blame Russia and not accept blame themselves. And delusional hopes and dreams of profiteering from breaking up Russia to exploit the 75 trillion + of natural resources ruining the culture and people are just that, delusions of fantasy.

Russia has accepted that there is no one to speak to in America that is worthy and every treaty signed before with Russia in effect has been broken because it is said the agreements were with the Soviet Union and not today’s Russia. And we have seen open admissions by the likes or Merkel and Macron that Minsk Accords were a con; and the this week’s article by Hersh and exposure of America destroying the Nord Stream pipes leaves little room for moral character. China has demonstrated it no longer takes calls from a dysfunctional Administration in America, as Blinken and Austin find no one wants to talk to them. Ponder that; a major hegemonic country like China refusing to talk with America. The recent balloon nonsense was more about determining signals intelligence to figure out who really runs things in America because no one takes the Biden gong show seriously. Especially when it is seen as a rogue actor trying to enforce dominance by lies and threats and war, and thievery.

In the past, many times, many words have been penned in hopes of awakening people to the dangers of what is possibly coming. Sadly, those efforts seen and unseen have failed as there really is no one to talk too, any more. So the cast is cast for war.

As part of the defensive approach of Russia to incoming attack, much time has been spent in thinking through a required response. It is why hypersonic missiles were developed as Russia realized that trusting the West would be a fatal mistake. So it has prepared. Recent information sent disclosing placement of defensive weapon systems on rooftops in Moscow should have been a clue to future expectations. Just like spot checks on underground bomb shelters in Russia have been on going. What have you seen where you are? Frankly, we in the West have no such preparation, which is another governmental blunder. And unlike Russia, we have no defensive systems like S400, S500, S550 in serial production and in placement in and around cities to defend against inbound missiles. Daily prancing by Zelensky in the Ukraine is simply a distraction to the upcoming main event.

Please be mindful of the April/May period when real war becomes the headline because it is where this is going. When it breaks, do expect missiles launched at Russia that will be responded to with a barrage of hypersonic Mach9+ and Mach20 missiles that will reduce any European threat by reducing all military bases to rubble, in minutes. This will take the fight to America, much to chagrin of Neocons too naive to expect repercussions.

Perhaps after the first exchange, telephones  will ring and sane common sense people will be on line to discuss real realities of state and not phony hegemony dreams of breaking Russia and conquering her natural resources to bail out Western failures. Because before Russia succumbs to Neocon ambitions, she will die first. The Russian mentality is such that they believe a world without Russia is not worth having. Sadly, in west we have forgotten that about our own countries, which is why peace is so difficult to achieve.

We will have an opportunity to rebuild and hopefully, we all will have sufficient memory of a horror faced to never stare at it again and work to rebuild our societies and nations from the brink of disaster. Because the similar danger faced in the Kennedy era has been forgotten. Across this globe of ours there are many cultures and nations that all have gifts to be shared by all of us, as we go forth as a brother’s brother, and not a brother’s keeper.

> https://halturnerradioshow.com/index.php/en/news-page/world/bulletin-russia-changing-nuclear-policy-to-allow-preventive-first-strike-mentions-us-bases-in-europe-and-continental-united-states

end

//UKRAINE/RUSSIA/KHARKOV

In Kharkov, the largest thermal power plant in Ukraine was hit by a precision strike

Robert Hryniak	1:02 PM (2 minutes ago)
to

Direct hits like this, selectively remove electric ability to use the train systems to transport troops and supplies.
Before the offensive, starts it would not surprise me to see all of eastern Ukraine go dark. The only ones with equipment and inventory of thermal units are the Russians so you can actually tell by what they are hitting because the West cannot supply such units. The inventory simply is not there even if the EU wants to be generous and give such equipment for free.

https://avia-pro.net/news/v-harkove-vysokotochnym-udarom-porazhena-krupneyshaya-tec-ukrainy

end

Turkey/SYRIA

UN warns very little aid reaching Syria amid USA sanctions

(the Cradle)

UN Warns ‘Very Little’ Earthquake Aid Reaching Syria Amid US Sanctions

FRIDAY, FEB 10, 2023 – 05:00 AM

Via The Cradle,

US-imposed Caesar Act sanctions against the Syrian government have impeded humanitarian efforts in the country following the devastating February 6 earthquake, the UN Resident Coordinator for Syria, Mostafa Benlamlih, said on Wednesday.

Benlamlih also warned against the “politicization” of humanitarian efforts in Syria, referring to claims by western media outlets and certain aid groups that the government ‘prohibits’ aid from reaching opposition-held territory.Iranian aid packages being unloaded in Aleppo. February 8, 2023. Image: AFP/Getty Images

“The goal of UN organizations is to deliver a message about the suffering of the Syrians as a result of the sanctions imposed on their country … These sanctions have … prevented the arrival of millions of dollars to those affected by the earthquake,” Benlamlih told Syrian news agency SANA in an interview.

“Syria today is suffering from a ‘double crisis’ as a result of the ongoing war since 2011, as well as the earthquake, which made the situation more difficult … before the earthquake, there were 15 million Syrians in dire need of assistance,” he said, adding that now, the numbers have increased significantly.

One day later, UN Special Envoy for Syria, Geir Pederson, warned against the politicization of earthquake aid. “Emergency response must not be politicized … We need to do everything to make sure that there are no impediments whatsoever to the life-saving support that is needed in Syria,” Pedersen said on Thursday.

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken on Wednesday claimed that Washington was the ‘leading provider of aid to Syria and the Syrian people,’ despite also announcing a refusal to coordinate with the government, whose territory is inhabited by around 70 percent of the Syrian population. On the same day as Blinken’s statement, the UN warned that “very little” aid was reaching government-held territory.

Samuel Werberg, the regional spokesman for the US State Department, claimed on Wednesay during an interview with Saudi television that Washington’s sanctions do not restrict humanitarian aid deliveries in any way. Despite this, Bassam Sabbagh, Syria’s permanent envoy to the UN, said on the same day that international cargo planes “refuse” to land in Syrian airports due to the threat of sanctions.

Coinciding with Werberg’s remarks was a statement by Washington’s permanent envoy to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), Joseph Manso, who said that the US would continue to stand against normalization with the Damascus government.

“Our policy is clear. The American administration … will not normalize relations with Bashar al-Assad’s regime, and we do not support other countries’ move [to do so] unless there is real movement towards a political solution under UN Security Council Resolution 2254.”

This statement comes in the aftermath of the OPCW releasing its third report on the alleged chemical attack in Douma in 2018, which was put out as the US has been attempting in any way it can to obstruct a potential reconciliation of ties between Syria and Turkey, which was in the works under Russian auspices before the massive earthquake ravaged both countries.

end

we have a new government in Moldova has missiles flew over their country from Russia firing from a ship in the black sea.

(zerohedge)

Moldova’s Govt Collapses After Russian Missile Salvo From Black Sea Breaches Its Airspace

FRIDAY, FEB 10, 2023 – 11:15 AM

Ukrenergo, Ukraine’s energy operator, confirmed Friday that several high-voltage sites across the country had been hit in what Kiev authorities called the latest “massive” missile attack by Russia. Already tens of millions across the war-ravaged country are without power, and elsewhere emergency cuts persist.

Ukrainian forces claimed to have shot down the majority of inbound missiles, however. “The enemy launched a massive missile attack on the critical infrastructure of Ukraine,” Ukraine’s air force said. “Sixty-one out of 71 enemy missiles (have been) destroyed.”

The attack was focused on Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia regions. In describing the fresh assault, Valery Zaluzhny, the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, said that Russia fired two Kalibr missiles from the Black Sea and which had allegedly crossed over the airspace of Romania and Moldova. The allegation is significant especially given Romania is a NATO member

Romania has formally denied the claim, but Moldova acknowledged it without initially condemning Russia directly, likely in fear it will inflame tensions with Moscow further, as the AP reports:

Romania’s defense ministry said it detected an “aerial target launched from the Black Sea from a ship of the Russian Federation” but “at no point did it intersect with Romania’s airspace”.

The Moldovan defense ministry said it detected a missile, confirming it “crossed the airspace of Moldova.” Moldova, which has already seen debris of Russian missiles during the war, said it would summon Russia’s ambassador over the incident.

But one of the missiles is still believed to have narrowly missed crossing into NATO-member Romania’s airspace. Ukraine’s President Zelensky seized on this to argue it constitutes a fresh “challenge” to NATO and its collective security.

“The enemy launched at least 70 rockets in another massive attack [on Ukraine] this morning,” Zelenskyy said in a video statement on Telegram.

“Several Russian missiles passed through the airspace of Moldova and Romania. These missiles are a challenge to NATO and collective security. This is terror that can and must be stopped,” he added. Zelensky has long tried to push NATO more directly into the conflict to drive the Russians out of Ukraine.Source: ESRI

News of the missile flyover was accompanied by further instability in Moldova, as CNBC reports, the Moldovan government has effectively collapsed amid the ongoing pressure due to the war just across the border. “Moldova’s Prime Minister Natalia Gavrilita said Friday that her government was resigning following a volatile 18 months in power and an ongoing war at its border.”

“Gavrilita did not say whether the decision was in direct response to the war between neighboring Ukraine and Russia,” CNBC continues. Western allies have long charged Russia with seeking to destabilize Moldova, and there have long been fears that Russian forces could cross into the country.

The follows on the heels of in the past months Western countries donating hundreds of millions of dollars to shore up tiny Moldova’s resources amid renewed fears of future Russian aggression and energy supply cuts against it. 

A new prime minister has been named, the pro-EU Dorin Recean, described as someone who will keep Moldova on a pro-European Union trajectory. Recean is currently the national security adviser, and will replace Natalia Gavrilița as the new head of government,” Politico reports.

“The Moldovan parliament, where Sandu’s party holds a comfortable majority with 63 out of 101 seats, will vote to confirm the nomination next week,” details Politico.

On the ground, fighting in Bakhmut continues, with Western media reports increasingly acknowledging that time is running out for Ukrainian troops defending the city.

Russia already has it surrounded by three sides, but the Ukrainians have vowed to fight till the end, akin to what happened in Mariupol. Control of Bakhmut will strategically link large swathes of eastern and southern Ukraine currently in control of Russian forces. 

END

ROBERT H TO US:

TASS/RUSSIA

(COURTESY TASS)

Russia may become top sunflower oil exporter globally for first time ever — expert

It is reported that exports are nearing record-highs

MOSCOW, February 10. /TASS/. Russia can become the world’s largest sunflower oil exporter in the current agricultural year [from July 1, 2022 to June 30, 2023 – TASS], the General Director of the Institute for Agricultural Market Studies (IKAR) said on Friday.

“This season, Russia will become the largest sunflower oil exporter globally – for the first time in its history,” Dmitry Rylko said.

Exports are nearing record-highs, he noted. They may reach 3.9 mln metric tons this season, compared to 3.1 mln metric tons the previous season.

Refining capacities have also been expanding in Russia in recent years, in addition to the rapid growth of oil-bearing crop production, the expert said. Facilities are located throughout the country, from Central Russia to the Far East.

END

6. GLOBAL ISSUES//COVID ISSUES/VACCINE ISSUES

Vaccine//Covid issues: Injuries

Important: Bivalent COVID vaccines perform worse against the now dominant XBB 1.5 circulating throughout the globe

(Stieber/EpochTimes)

Bivalent COVID Vaccines Perform Worse Against Variant Now Dominant In United States: Studies

THURSDAY, FEB 09, 2023 – 01:35 PM

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The new COVID-19 vaccines don’t work as well against XBB.1.5, the virus variant that’s now dominant in the United States, according to multiple studies.

In one of the papers, researchers found the vaccines boosted neutralizing antibodies, believed to be a measure of protection, but that the antibody levels declined to previous levels within three months.

Compared to the antibody responses to BA.5, the responses to XBB.1.5 were reduced 20-fold.

“Following bivalent mRNA boosting, responses to XBB.1.5 increase but remain low and wane within 3 months back to pre-boost levels. These data suggest that once a year boosters with the current mRNA vaccines may not provide adequate protection for an entire year for those at high risk of complications of COVID-19,” Dr. Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and a co-author of the preprint study (pdf), told The Epoch Times via email.

The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines both utilize messenger RNA, or mRNA, technology. The updated versions of the vaccines are bivalent, targeting the Wuhan variant and a sublineage of the BA.4 and BA.5 strain. The new versions were cleared as boosters in the fall of 2022 despite no clinical data being available. They are poised to replace the original vaccines.

Other studies have also found that the bivalents induce a better response than the old, monovalent boosters, but that the response is reduced against XBB.1.5 or its parent, XBB, which comes from BA.2 lineages.

Read more here…

end

They should remove here as fast as possible.  CDC director defends mask mandates despite the new study showing masking has little effect.

The reason: the virus is 1/10 the size of the pores of the mask.  The virus can easily penetrate masks

(Stieber/EpochTimes)

CDC Director Defends Mask Mandates After New Study Shows Masking Has Little Effect

THURSDAY, FEB 09, 2023 – 09:40 PM

Authored by Zachary Steiber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky in Washington on Feb. 8, 2023. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Feb. 8 defended her agency’s promotion of masking after a new study found that protective masks had little effect on the spread of respiratory viruses such as COVID-19.

The Cochrane review analyzed randomized controlled studies, considered the gold standard by U.S. officials and others, but limitations undermined the conclusions, according to CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky.

“One of the limitations of that study, in addition to the fact that it included randomized trials from before COVID-19, is that it stated in the study that people actually had limited update of using masks,” Walensky said during a hearing in Washington. “Of course, randomized trials that look at mask use by people who aren’t wearing them are going to have limited utility.”

The CDC imposed mask mandates on public transportation users, including plane passengers, and on children in Head Start programs as young as 2, contradicting policies from other countries that left younger children maskless, if mandates were imposed at all.

The agency also repeatedly recommended that children, teachers, and others in schools wear masks, as well as people in common settings, such as grocery stores.

Multiple members of Congress pressed Walensky on the Cochrane review, which concluded that the available evidence shows a lack of effect in mask wearing against the spread of influenza or flu-like illnesses.

“While acknowledging the limited data pool, it found no clear sign of a reduction in transmission when using either medical or surgical masks,” Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) said. “Yet today, CDC still recommends masks in schools for all ages, even though the emotional, mental, physical, and educational toll masking has had on our kids is widely recognized.”

Walensky told Rodgers, “You actually have to wear a mask for it to work.”

The CDC’s mandates and guidance on masks relied on cohort studies, Walensky said.

That included a non-peer-reviewed study that the agency published in its quasi-journal that compared the incidence of COVID-19 case clusters in schools located in districts with mask mandates with schools in districts without forced masking. Only two Arizona counties were studied.

A follow-up study that expanded on the number of districts involved and the time frame found that there was no link between school masking and COVID-19 cases.

The CDC also cites other studies in a scientific brief on the subject, including a randomized controlled trial in Bangladesh that found that masking had little effect on COVID-19 spread and a Chinese study of just 124 households.

Rep. Gary Palmer (R-Ala.) brought up the Cochrane study and said doctors have informed him that masks aren’t effective.

He asked Dr. Lawrence Tabak, acting director of the National Institutes of Health, whether that agency funded any trials examining mask efficacy in schools. Tabak said he wasn’t aware of any.

Walensky defended the lack of research.

“So many studies demonstrated … that masks were working,” during the COVID-19 pandemic, she said, “that I’m not sure anybody would have proposed a clinical trial because in fact there weren’t equipoise.”

Apart from the Bangladesh trial, the two other randomized, clinical trials conducted in other countries provided little data to support masking against COVID-19.

Walensky also said this week that “now is not the moment” to drop mask mandates in schools. Many states have already lifted their mandates and others have recently announced that they’ll rescind their mandates.

Lockdowns

During the hearing, Walensky also defended the lockdowns imposed in the United States during the pandemic.

“I agree that we should do everything in our power not to have it happen [again],” she said, referring to school closures and other lockdown policies.

But she recounted how being a clinician in 2020, there was a morgue outside her hospital. When hospitals are overwhelmed and unable to take care of brain tumors and car accident victims, “extraordinary measures are necessary,” Walensky said.

“I do think when there are lockdowns, there’s decreased need for things like motor vehicle accident care,” she said, disagreeing with Rep. Neal Dunn (R-Fla.) on the issue.

When members pointed out that the COVID-19 vaccines don’t stop transmission, undercutting the rationale for vaccine mandates imposed by the Biden administration, Walensky pushed back, claiming that the vaccines prevent severe disease and death. It “doesn’t prevent transmission as well as it did for prior variants, but it does still prevent some,” Walensky said, referring to all vaccines as one type.

The CDC was consulted before the mandates were issued, she confirmed.

“What we have though is a modest prevention, like a 50 percent prevention, of risk of getting infected if you’re up to date on your vaccination, and that’s very important for frontline workers of all types to stay healthy, for children not to infect their grandparents that may be at risk,” said Dr. Robert Califf, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.

“If you’re up to date, your risk of dying is reduced by 80 percent.”

Califf was referring to the updated bivalent vaccines, for which there’s no clinical data half a year after the administration authorized them. The U.S. government and outside researchers have said in observational studies that the bivalents provide a subpar boost against infection and a better boost against severe illness

end.

GLOBAL ISSUES;/GLOBAL ECONOMIES

A good indicator as to how well the economy is faring

(zerohedge)

Adidas Shares Crash Over $1.3 Billion Pile Of Unsold Yeezy Shoes

FRIDAY, FEB 10, 2023 – 08:20 AM

Adidas AG shares trading in Germany crashed after it published its financial guidance for 2023 and warned it’s sitting on a 1.2 billion euros ($1.3 billion) pile of unsold Yeezy product. 

The German sportswear company said it’s ‘reviewing’ all options for utilizing its Yeezy inventory. It said, “this guidance already accounts for the significant adverse impact from not selling the existing stock.” 

Operating profit will decline by 500 million euros if the company fails to sell the products and expects sales to decline at a high-single-digit rate this year. The company might write off its remaining products if the inventory isn’t repurposed. 

In December, we first pointed out Adidas was sitting on a half billion dollars of Yeezy products. Today’s report doubles that number to a staggering $1.3 billion. 

“The numbers speak for themselves. We are currently not performing the way we should,” CEO Bjørn Gulden wrote in a statement. 

Gulden said this “will be a year of transition to set the base to again be a growing and profitable company.” 

In October, Adidas terminated its partnership with Kanye West, who now goes by Ye, after antisemitic comments. 

Gulden added: 

“We need to put the pieces back together again, but I am convinced that over time we will make adidas shine again. But we need some time.”  

Adidas shares crashed 12% on today’s horrible 2023 outlook. 

Here’s what Wall Street analysts are saying about Adidas (courtesy of Bloomberg): 

Jefferies (cut to hold from buy, PT to €150 from €140) 

• The confirmation of an even-deeper earnings trough for 2023, though needed for a quicker rebuild in profit, “will spook many,” analyst James Grzinic says 
• The disconnect between the operational delivery at Adidas and the exceptional cash returns will likely see the company end 2022 with a slight net-debt position 
• As such, assume no dividend proposal for 2022 or 2023 and cut rating given the rebound for the stock set agains a difficult medium-term profit outlook

Oddo (cuts to underperform from neutral, PT to €120 from €124) 

• “Massive” warning on both Yeezy and other problems within the business, with market seemingly too-optimistic on inventory clearing and promotional volumes, analyst Andreas Riemann says
• Not selling more Yeezy is not a surprise, but the magnitude is and given this cannot explain the shortfall entirely, believe there are additional problems which may take years to resolve

Morgan Stanley (underweight, PT to €110 from 115)

• “Material reset” for Adidas in 2023, driven by the combination of losing any profit contribution from the highly-profitable Yeezy line and from weaker underlying performance, analyst Edouard Aubin says 
• Bulls will say this is a classic “kitchen-sinking” by the new CEO, who is know to guide conservatively 
• Yet this report confirms what the broker has been hearing in the trade, that Adidas has an unattractive profit line, it is losing market share in a number of categories and has a bigger inventory issue than peers

UBS (neutral, PT €150) 

• Based on the tone of the press release, see a high likelihood that the Yeezy business will be “scrapped entirely” going forward, analyst Zuzanna Pusz says
• The update may provide a “reality check” for the market given the re-rating in Adidas shares recently

Credit Suisse (underperform, PT €103) 

• The warning underlines the weakness of the Adidas brand and damage to the margin structure of the company, analyst Simon Irwin says 
• Assume the cut to guidance driven by weaker gross margins and operating de-leverage, which means much of the margin rebound will have to come from the cost lines

RBC (sector perform, PT to €110 from €130) 

• Had been anticipating Adidas would book one-offs in FY23 but the lower underlying guidance has resulted in a “materially worse” outlook than expected, analyst Piral Dadhania says 
• See much work to do for Adidas across its corporate culture, on products, on lower sell-through rates, inventory and digesting the Yeezy exit, which can all be achieved but which will take time
• Materially cutting FY23 estimates and continue to prefer Puma and Nike

Baader (reduce, PT €133) 

• Outlook is “horrible” and and the cut to the sales and earnings guidance is “much deeper than anybody projected,” analyst Volker Bosse says

Senior leaders at the German sportswear company have learned a valuable lesson not to concentrate large segments of the business on one relationship. 

Let’s not forget Beyoncé’s clothing line with Adidas is another flop. The Germans sure know how to pick influencers…

 DR PAUL ALEXANDER/DR PANDA\

How did Sweden do so well in their COVID responding? Sweden did almost NOTHING, that’s right, near nothing yet look at the all-cause excess mortality; it is better than all; how? were we lied to?

My view all along is that Sweden did best & had they placed more protection on the elderly high risk, it would have been perfect; the optimal response: isolate sick ONLY, protect vulnerable, rest free

DR. PAUL ALEXANDERFEB 9

SAVE▷  LISTEN

See this series of charts that tells a very potent story. The key pandemic response should have been:

1)isolate (and test) the unwell, sick ONLY; no mass test or isolation of asymptomatic or well people or people at borders etc.

2)strong protections of the vulnerable high-risk, taking reasonable precautions

3)allow the rest of low-risk healthy society to live free, no lockdowns or school closures, no masks, no mandates

Sweden did all correct except did not protect the vulnerable optimally but the data is clear, they lost vulnerables but then it settled out. Had they protected the vulnerable, they would have no even seen a rise in early 2020. Otherwise, IMO, optimal.

Now see some actual charts that tell the story in Sweden. See substack below for very good information. Consider subscribing free or for a minimal subscription.

‘Sweden has been the poster child of the pandemic. After almost three years, it’s as clear as it gets. Sweden did almost nothing, and they have the best results, when it comes to all-cause excess mortality.

‘Covidians’ often noted, that Sweden must be compared to their neighbors, and cited the first waves, where Sweden did worse than their neighbors as proof for the success of lockdowns. Of course lockdowns might only work in short term, but their long term effects are so bad, that they should never be used.

All-Cause Mortality Monitoring – USMortality.com is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

While Sweden has no rise in excess mortality since beginning of 2021, the excess mortality in the other countries is steadily on the rise.

end

New York Post (NYP) opinion piece got it near 100% correct, except for the statement on COVID vaccines & maybe could have used harsher words but I applaud, WELL done!

‘COVID vaccine don’t stop you from spreading it. (& the natural immunity from having had COVID is better than immunity from a jab); Masks do nothing to reduce transmission, nor does 6 feet distancing

DR. PAUL ALEXANDERFEB 10

SAVE▷  LISTEN

SOURCE:

https://nypost.com/2023/02/05/new-yorks-kid-vaccination-collapse-is-a-grim-result-of-expert-covid-misinfo/

Another AMNESTY try and NYP must stop this ‘mea culpa’ BS. We need way more than ‘I am sorry’. Too many died due to the malfeasance and ineptness.

NYP wrote this:

‘Closing schools seemed sensible in the earliest days of 2020, but the data soon proved that young kids basically never get the bug. Most masks do nothing to reduce transmission, nor does six feet of social distancing. And making toddlers mask in school risks major developmental harm.

Heavy-lockdown states fared no better in health outcomes than mainly-open ones — and fared worse economically and most likely in mental health, too.

Every element of the public-health establishment from Dr. Anthony Fauci on down got many of these points wrong, even long after the science was clear. Worse still, government pushed censorship (as “misinformation”) of any discussion of the downsides of any intervention. And that included the real risks to younger men of cardiac problems associated with vaccination. 

In short, the public-health establishment earned a ton of distrust. Tragically, that’s now feeding doubts about MMR jabs, leaving more New York kids vulnerable to measles, mumps and other childhood diseases that actually present real danger to the young — unlike COVID. 

So what is the city doing in response to this catastrophe? “Confronting rising vaccination hesitancy through media campaigns, providing educational forums to providers and community-based organizations, and providing tools to talk about vaccine confidence with patients and parents.”

More lectures, in short, from the lost-credibility crew.’

‘America needs a trustworthy public-health establishment, but getting it requires some kind of truth-and-reconciliation commission, with significant firings and massive, unflinching and public mea culpas from city, state and federal health departments — and reforms aiming to ensure they never make the same mistakes again.’

Bang on and huge hugs for this piece but you forgot prison time, we need money taken away and prison time too for those involved. All statements correct but ‘Vaccines greatly reduce your chances of getting COVID, and of having a severe case if you still do’. That is patently wrong, very wrong! If you do not understand the data, please write me.

end

Fake COVID vaccine cards offered to doctors at Houston Methodist Hospital; Dr. Paul Elias Alexander discusses with Dr. Mary Crow, Dr. Venu Julapalli and Mr. Owen Robinson, RN, the issue of fake COVID

vaccine cards being offered to doctors at Houston Methodist Hospital. Dr. Vinay Julapalli has been instrumental on this topic & will be present at future interviews to lend insight into the challenges

DR. PAUL ALEXANDERFEB 9

SAVE▷  LISTEN

SOURCE:

VACCINE INJURY/

maybe of interest

Chris Powell	11:04 AM (50 minutes ago)
to me

See:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11734051/Australian-scientists-make-astounding-Covid-19-discovery.html

VACCINE IMPACT

Vaccine Impact

---

United States Guilty of Terrorism by Blowing up Nord Stream PipelineFebruary 9, 2023 5:21 pm85-year-old journalist Seymour Hersh, who used to write for the New York Times and is referred to by some as “the greatest journalist of our time”, and now publishes on Substack, just published what many are claiming is the “news story of the century.” Seymour Hersh gained recognition in 1969 for exposing the My Lai Massacre and its cover-up during the Vietnam War, for which he received the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. Hersh has conclusively shown how the U.S. Government was responsible for blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline from Russia in a deliberate act of terrorism. The corporate media has mostly tried to discredit Hersh by not treating this as a major story, with the exception of Tucker Carlson on Fox News, who of course blamed everything on Joe Biden and his Democratic administration. But here is Clayton and Natali Morris’s coverage of this yesterday on Redacted News, where they pull video footage of many Republican members of Congress also calling for the closing down of the Russian Nord Stream pipeline, including U.S. Republican Senator Ted Cruz from Texas, home of some of the largest Big Oil companies in the world who benefited from Germany’s loss of cheap Russian gas in 2022. So while this was a bipartisan action to destroy the Nord Stream pipeline from Russia and the greatest ecological disaster of all time, the true criminals are the Globalists who put these politicians into power, and reaped their greatest year of financial profit in American history last year. “Exxon Reports Record Profit Of $59 Billion In 2022; Earns $7 Million Every Hour.”Read More…CDC Director Blames “Misinformation” for Reduced Vaccination Rates of KindergartnersFebruary 9, 2023 6:53 pmCDC Director Rochelle Walensky appeared before Congress this week, and blamed “dis and misinformation” for kindergarten children showing up at school without being fully vaccinated. And where could these parents be getting this “misinformation” that is causing them not to vaccinate their children? Maybe they are getting it from the CDC’s own Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) which is available to anyone in the public. According to VAERS, there were 77,990 injuries including 263 deaths recorded in 2021 and 2022 following all vaccines. Of those 77,990 cases filed during 2021 and 2022, 61,375 were following COVID-19 “vaccines,” including 160 of the deaths recorded. Prior to 2020, for the 10-year period covering 2010 through 2019, there were 120,783 cases of vaccine injuries and deaths recorded in VAERS, or about 12,000 per year. That’s an increase of over 200% for vaccine injuries and deaths since the COVID shots were introduced, according to the CDC’s own data. Could this be the “misinformation” that Walensky was talking about? Of course Walensky knows all of this, since it is the CDC’s own data, so by petitioning Congress and parents to give more vaccines to their children is intent to commit premeditated murder. Why would parents want to avoid that??Read More..

end

SLAY NEWS//

The latest reports from Slay NewsAustralian Reporter Drops Hammer on Live TV: ‘Fit & Healthy People Are Dropping Down with Heart Issues’A popular Australian TV reporter went off-script during a live broadcast by raising concerns about people suffering severe side effects from Covid vaccines.READ MOREJesse Watters & Jeanine Pirro Blast AOC for Defending Censorship: ‘Goes against Everything She Stands For’Fox News stars Jesse Watters and Judge Jeanine Pirro called out Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) for defending Big Tech censorship by falsely claiming the Hunter Biden laptop story was “half-fake.”READ MOREAnother Republican Council Member Shot Dead in New JerseyA Republican New Jersey municipal council member has been shot dead in his car just days after Councilwoman Eunice Dwumfour (R) was gunned down in an unsolved slaying.READ MOREHollywood Stars Give Update on Jeremy Renner after Visit: ‘It’s a Miracle’Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly have given an amazing update on co-star Jeremy Renner after visiting the inured Hollywood actor.READ MOREMusic Legend Burt Bacharach Dead at 94Music legend Burt Bacharach has died at 94 years old, his publicist has announced.READ MOREDemocrat Senator John Fetterman HospitalizedDemocrat Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), who suffered a stroke during his election campaign last year, has been hospitalized while attending a Democratic Party retreat, his office said.READ MOREEU Complains Twitter Not Interested in Complying with Censorship DemandsOfficials in the European Union (EU) are complaining that Elon Musk’s Twitter appears to have no interest in complying with the bloc’s censorship demands.READ MORERep Nancy Mace Reveals Covid Shot Left Her with ‘Heart Pain That No Doctor Can Explain’Republican Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) has revealed that she has suffered severe side effects from her Covid shot.READ MORE‘Woke’ Ex-Twitter Executives Told They May Be Arrested for Election InterferenceFormer Twitter executives were called to testify before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday morning regarding their efforts to censor information on the social media platform.READ MOREDisney to Slash 7000 Employees as ‘Woke’ Company StrugglesThe Walt Disney Co. is slashing a whopping 7,000 jobs worldwide as the “woke” company battles a profitability crisis, CEO Bob Iger has announced.READ MOREPeter Doocy & Wife Hillary Vaughn Announce Birth of Daughter: ‘Her Name Is Bridget Blake Doocy’Fox News stars Peter Doocy and Hillary Vaughn have announced the birth of their baby daughter.READ MORETim Allen Overcomes Snub to Score Huge Win, Will Return as Buzz Lightyear for ‘Toy Story 5’Hollywood star Tim Allen scored a huge win and announced he will star as Buzz Lightyear again in the latest “Toy Story” movie.READ MORERatings Crater for Biden’s SOTU Speech, Drop 29% from Year BeforeDemocrat President Joe Biden’s big State of the Union speech tanked in the ratings. Bill Clinton’s 1994 State of the Union averaged some 45.8 million total viewers. President Donald Trump’s SOTU in 2018 averaged 45.55 million. George W. Bush’s SOTU speech in 2002 averaged 51.77 million total viewers. Joe Biden averaged 33.83 million in 2022 (early numbers) and finished with …READ MORE

MICHAEL EVERY/RABOBANK

The Yield Curve Would Invert By A Record 450bps If The Fed Hikes To 8%

FRIDAY, FEB 10, 2023 – 09:20 AM

By Michael Every of Rabobank

Duh, Kapital

Balloons blow, and capital won’t flow. ‘US Makes Case That Chinese Balloon was Part of a Spying Program’, says Bloomberg, and “The Chinese spy balloon shot down Saturday included western components with English-language writing on them.” ‘US Aims to Curtail Financial Ties With China’, says the New York Times, with the White House preparing rules to restrict US dollars from flowing there. An inverse CFIUS would stop US investment in areas related to technologies like AI; or with dual civilian-military uses, which is a longer list; or balloons.

Markets are not going to like that because it’s anti-Marx. I don’t mean the CCP, though that is also true, but rather Karl’s quote that: “The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed…. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations.”

Talking of capital flows, yesterday US yields rose again and the 2s -10s yield curve spread widened to most since the early 1980s, at one point reaching 86bps – and that is with the 2-year yield still 100bps lower than the 5.50% terminal rate that our Fed watcher Philip Marey now has penciled in for this year. However, things can get worse. Philip sees the risk of a US wage-price spiral becoming embedded, as does Fed Chair Powell in talking about a “structural” shift in the labor market. That leads Philip to flag that Fed Funds might have to go to 6% – and today Bloomberg quotes one analyst saying 8% rates are needed to bring US inflation down to 2% again. (If 5.50% was science-fiction a year ago, 8% was *bad* science-fiction, like ‘Plan 9 From Outer Space’.)

The deepening US curve inversion shows the market refuses to see the same risks of a wage-price spiral: the long end would hypothetically by 450bps inverted if it didn’t move and the Fed did to 8%.

In doing so the market is adopting a Marxist view that capital has so much power vis-à-vis labour that wages can’t get out of control. For a long time that has been a really accurate call. However, there is building evidence of a Covid effect on OECD labour markets, and others: Thailand recently floated using prisoners in the under-staffed tourist sector, giving a whole new meaning to ‘Let me take your bag, Sir.’ Moreover, we might be seeing labor hoarding because firms realize having no labor makes their capital worthless. If sustained, that would undermine Marx’s claim that capitalists maintain a “reserve army of labor”, i.e., high unemployment to ensure wage demands never rise.

Of course, one can push back against this, as a Marxist dialectician must, to say that central banks don’t understand the political-economy or Marx, which is ironically an argument for an inverted yield curve, because they risk over-tightening.

However, the long-end view that the bourgeoise elderly are retiring, so asset prices must be high, so yields must be low, clashed with an inverted US demographic pyramid even pre-Covid. A retirement wave now means fewer workers; so wage pressures; so inflation pressures; so higher rates for longer; and so lower asset prices; unless one is focused on the bourgeoise elderly – “OK, Marxist Boomer.”

Moreover, it seems an odd dichotomy to conceive that capitalists are ruthless, short-term, amoral exploiters (so low wages), yet capital markets are thoughtful, rational, and forward-looking (so low yields). Enron, Madoff, and Bankman-Fried are obvious retorts, as is the fact that Wall Street thinks about end-quarter returns and remuneration, not Marx. On that basis, the capital market is as willing to be ruthless, short-term, amoral, and exploitative: and what it wants is lower rates, to allow a broader re-risking, end-quarter returns, and remuneration.

Just as a reserve army of labor is created by capitalists to ensure wages cannot rise much, a reserve army of liquidity flows from capital markets to the long end of the yield curve to ensure yields cannot rise much either. That forces the Fed to keep doing more on rates to compensate for the easing of financial conditions the market is creating. If that then leads to a Fed policy error, recession, and the mass mobilization of a reserve army of labour, then it’s just collateral damage to end-quarter returns; and the market will have created it, rather than having predicted it. Perhaps they are Leninists, not Marxists, willing to give history a violent push in the right direction. Yes, this again supports an inverted curve – just not for the kind of intellectual reasons one thinks.

Of course, capital markets can be forced back – the Fed’s Williams recently underlined that rates are not just moving vastly higher than capital thought a year ago, but will stay higher for longer. But such talk is cheap, as is the long-end cost of borrowing in real terms. Far more effective is the kind of blunt instrument we see the Biden administration about to use vis-à-vis China.

Importantly, all this theorizing will reach a point of praxis soon. What will tip the market scales one way or the other will be wage growth. If there really is no more reserve army of labor, we are going to see wage growth stay high. If there is a reserve army of labor, we won’t. It’s not just a case of ‘duh, Kapital’, but ‘duh, Labor’.

We will find out what the BOJ has to say about both shortly too, as next week (11am local time on February 14) will see the nomination of the next Governor. Do we get a hawk or a dove? Does that imply a market-wrenching shift in BOJ policy? Again, praxis looms.

The RBA quarterly Statement on Monetary Policy today also saw the Bank raise its forecasts for core inflation, now 6.25% y-o-y in the year to end-June, up from 5.5%, but then falling back to 4.25% by December (because reasons). Wages are expected to rise 4% y-o-y by June and peak at 4.25% too, despite a white-hot labour market, despite 1/3 of firms surveyed by the RBA hiking wages by over 5% in Q4 (because reasons). Those forecasts are based on the RBA overnight cash rate peaking at 3.75% this year then declining to 3% by mid-2025, both of which are open to question at this stage. Aussie GDP growth is now seen at 1.6% in 2023 and 1.4% in 2024, against population growth of 1.5%, which implies a lot of net immigration, and a slight decline in GDP per capita. Overall, the SoMP was taken as hawkish – but trying to decipher its inherent contradictions, as the RBA tries not to spook housing while talking tough, is a challenge even for a Marxist.

Today saw Chinese CPI and PPI too: the former was 2.1% y-o-y, up from 1.8%, but as expected, and the latter was -0.8% y-o-y, weaker than then -0.5% expected. Lots of challenges for Marxists there too, even if different ones from the West.

Meanwhile, global commodity traders Trafigura are facing losses of $577m after nickel shipments were found to be fraudulent. That’s painful for them, and for markets expecting cheap nickel as a key input for ongoing green transitions, especially as it comes after the LME’s scandal over nickel trading. That means higher inflation as part of that transition. Of course, higher US rates for longer would help push commodity prices lower for everyone, as well as asset markets in general;  and ‘nickel and dimes’ also points out the problems inherent in trying to move away from dollars to commodities as currency as a point of geopolitical praxis. You think fiat is doddy? Try non-existent nickel and copper!

end

7//OIL ISSUES//NATURAL GAS ISSUES/USA AND GLOBE

Oil jumps after Russia announces a strong 500,000 barrel cut in output

(zerohedge)

Oil Jumps After Russia Says It Will Cut 500,000 Barrels Of Oil Output

FRIDAY, FEB 10, 2023 – 07:16 AM

Crude prices jumped this morning after a top Russian official said it would reduce oil production by 500,000 barrel-a-day, or about 5% of output, next month, in retaliation against western sanctions, Reuters reported.  Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said in a statement on Friday that Russia believes the mechanism of Western price caps on Russian crude and crude oil products is a destructive energy policy:

“As of today, we are fully selling the entire volume of oil produced, however, as stated earlier, we will not sell oil to those who directly or indirectly adhere to the principles of the ‘price cap.'” 

“In this regard, Russia will voluntarily reduce production by 500,000 barrels per day in March. This will contribute to the restoration of market relations.” 

The Kremlin has frequently mentioned crude output reductions since the EU floated the idea of Russian crude oil price caps last year. The tit-for-tat move creates renewed volatility in oil markets. 

Brent crude rose as much as 2.3% early Friday morning on the announcement. 

Russia’s move adds to the 2 million barrel-a-day supply cuts announced by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its oil-exporting allies (OPEC+) in October. Earlier this month, OPEC+ Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee made no recommendation to change the group’s current production policy. 

This means the global oil market will likely tighten in the second half of this year, supported by a China recovery. 

“We see the oil market coming into balance in 2Q and turning tight in 3Q and 4Q, supporting higher prices later this year,” Morgan Stanley analysts told clients last month. They also said risks to Russian supply, a decline in US shale production, an end to SPR releases, China’s re-opening, and recovery in jet travel would support higher prices. 

In response to Russia’s announced cuts, the OPEC+ group led by Saudi Arabia signaled there would be no need to boost output. Interfax reported that ahead of today’s announcement, Russia discussed its oil output reduction plan with some OPEC members. 

Though some reports say, Russia didn’t discuss the voluntary cut with OPEC members. 

Giovanni Staunovo, an analyst at UBS Group AG, pointed out that no oil producer can fill the Russian supply gap. And it’s only a matter of time before the Biden Administration panics, although any further releases from the SPR are now unlikely. OPEC nations and partners don’t appreciate the G7’s price cap on Russian oil. These sanctions will likely backfire with higher crude prices. 

Amusingly the oil price spike comes just hours after Goldman, one of the biggest commodity bulls, said it was cutting its oil price forecast: As Goldman’s Callum Bruce wrote, “we are nudging down our Brent price path by $5/bbl. This adjustment reflects a modest softening to our 2023 balance, with the bulk of the revision due to a lower path for long-dated prices. Introducing monthly forecasts, we now expect Brent to rise gradually to $100/bbl by December, where we expect it to stay in 2024.” (full note available to pro subs).

8. EMERGING MARKETS//AUSTRALA NEW ZEALAND ISSUES

BRAZIL/VACCINE//digital currency

How crazy can a country be?

Social Credit Brazilian Style: All UBI Recipients Must Be Vaxxed

FRIDAY, FEB 10, 2023 – 01:00 PM

Authored by Mark Jeftovic via BombThrower.com,

This is what CBDCs are being built for

Anybody who seriously thinks that Universal Basic Income (UBI) programs of the future won’t be full blown social credit systems need look no further than Brazil, where newly selected socialist / globalist Lula da Silva just decreed that the Bolsa Familia program will require family members to be vaccinated in order to continue receiving benefits.

“We can’t play, it’s a question of science. If I have 10 covid vaccines to take, I will take all that is necessary ”.

The news comes via The Rio Times, which describes the Bolsa program as “a social welfare program for the poorest families in Brazil” and “a kind of Universal Basic Income”.

UBI is considered by many to be beneficent and inevitable. I personally believe the latter but not the former.

However it shouldn’t surprise anyone that if you’re dependent on The Saviour State for your sustenance (as Charles Hugh Smith calls it),  you are, in effect, their chattel.

CBDCs will be the rails for UBI programs

The emergence of Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) initiatives in nearly every nation on earth clearly signals the direction this is going. Nearly every CBDC white paper or proposal I’ve come across have the following three characteristics spelled out in plain text, and I expect every CBDC to have these five capabilities baked-in, whether or not they are initially enabled (or  documented).

#1) Expiry dates / use-by dates

CBDCs will have expiry dates after which their value will evaporate or erode. What I’ve noticed is white papers coming out of central banks started framing it as a feature, not a bug, to facilitate “recovery of lost funds”.

Abstract
An important feature of physical cash payments is resilience, which is due to their indifference to power outages or network coverage. Many central banks are exploring issuing digital cash substitutes with similar online payment functionality. Such substitutes could incorporate novel features, making them more desirable than physical cash. This paper considers introducing an expiry date for online digital currency balances to automate personal loss recovery. We show that this functionality could substantially increase consumer demand for digital cash, with the time to expiration playing an important role. Having more information available to the central bank improves accuracy of loss recovery but may decrease welfare.
— Best Before Expiry? Expiring Digital Currency and Loss Recovery, Bank of Canada Staff Paper, December 24, 2021

However the real reason CBDCs will have expiry dates is to stimulate money velocity and keep recipients dependent.

#2) “Anti-hoarding” features

Saving for the future is being rebranded as “hoarding” and it is becoming officially unfashionable because personal savings reduces dependancy on the state. The easiest mechanism for achieving this will be through negative interest rates on savings accounts, as per this IMF white paper,

“A world with lower inflation (and even zero inflation) and no persistent recessions may sound like a pipe dream, but we argue that it is possible by transitioning to an “electronic money standard.” Such a transition requires eliminating the zero lower bound, which central banks can achieve using readily available tools. Breaking the zero lower bound implies that the optimal rate of inflation will be lower than in the presence of the lower bound. This will empower central banks to quickly restore full employment and, over the medium term, possibly move toward targeting full price stability with zero inflation.”

…which goes on to outline the challenges there would be in eliminating the “arbitrage” between digital and physical cash:

A zero lower bound can be broken through a combination of (1) adopting or strengthening an electronic money standard in which electronic money is the unit of account and (2) implementing a time-varying interest rate (or more generally, rate of return) on paper currency (cash). Then, as the interest rate on cash moves in line with the official policy rates, there is no arbitrage between cash and money in the bank. Operationally this can be done while remaining quite close to the current monetary system, but there are several legal, communication, and political challenges to a transition to such an electronic money standard (Agarwal, and Kimball 2019).

(Despite the current rise in rates, once the money printers fire back up, this is where we’re headed).

#3) Total Information Awareness

Once it’s digitized in a centralized database (central banks) as opposed to being cryptographically secured on a decentralized blockchain (Bitcoin) – everything becomes known to central authorities instantly. Taxation can be applied per-transaction, but more interestingly – prices can also be modified on the fly.

If you’re behind on your property or income taxes – or have an unpaid fine (maybe because you’re fighting it), for example, they could simply enable a rolling garnishee on your wallet until it’s paid off.

While all transaction signatures are public on Bitcoin – they are pseudonymous and more importantly, unalterable. It’s true it may be known or discoverable that A sent sats to B, but there’s nothing any third-party can do about it. With Lightning on the ascent, combined with  various privacy enhancements there – Bitcoin development is moving in the direction of more freedom and more privacy – which is the opposite direction of most CBDC initiatives.

Finally, whether CBDCs are launched with the noblest of intentions, there will at some point arise “an emergency” which will make it necessary for The People in Charge to “flip the switch” and turn them into:

#4) Social Credit Systems

Imagine if “LoonCoin” was a thing last year when the #FreedomConvoy hit Ottawa (and signalled the beginning of a worldwide revolt against Covid tyranny). Instead of emailing a list of bank accounts to be frozen that were cribbed from a (hacked) spreadsheet, they could simply direct the Bank of Canada to turn off everybody’s digital wallets who were in the vicinity of the protest, or who contributed to their crowdfund, or who retweeted the #HonkHonk hashtag.

Do you think they wouldn’t have done it?

Covid vaxports have already been weaponized in China, Brazil is doing it with their UBI program and when this is all formaized into a CBDC, they will probably not launch it without the framework for widespread social credit and control systems being part of the plumbing.

We all know from our experience with the pandemic, emergencies tend to drag on in perpetuity. The “War on Terror” is still in effect, and there are still legions of collectivist automatons tweeting #CovidIsntOver.

So when “The Long Emergency” (to use James Kunstler’s term) becomes a never ending, rolling climate crisis, the social credit systems built into CBDCs will be used to enforce:

#5) Carbon footprint tracking

Back in Carbon Rationing, CBDCs and Sound Money I wrote how this trajectory is more or less baked-in now, and that the state-run financial system is undergoing a shift from a debt-backed monetary system to one based on carbon quotas.

Dashboard of Svalna’s app. Image credit Svalna.

This is the ultimate end-game of CBDCs. There is no hidden agenda or conspiracy around this (there’s already a Mastercard that cuts off your spending when you exceed your carbon quota), and globalist elites are quite up front about it….

Why CBDCs will ultimately fail

The developments of CBDCs is something we monitor in The Bitcoin Capitalist (formerly The Crypto Capitalist). Every month we put out our coverage of CBDCs  in the “Eye On Evilcoin” section and it’s not always bad news:

There is still  some time to stop CBDCs

Despite all the jawboning about CBDCs, nobody has really deployed anything viable. It’s all still design and planning – with some test beds going on. The few projects that have launched formal, actual CBDC’s have largely stiffed: Nigeria’s Enaira, Venezuela (lol). Even China’s much vaunted Digital Yuan had an underwhelming reception at last year’s Olympics (my suspicion is that the global financial system is unraveling faster than CBDCs can be developed, so they may have to go with something already out there, like Ethereum).

Worth noting, is that Brazil plans to deploy its CBDC next year.

I should note one exception to all the proposals out there in former CFTC Commissioner Chris Giancarlo (a.k.a “CryptoDad”) and the Digital Dollar Project. So far it’s the one proposal I’ve seen bucking the trend among all CBDC specifications in that there is no talk of expiry dates, and an actual emphasis on tokenization, custody and privacy.

CBDCs will not be permanent

It amuses me that when I read these plans around social credit flavoured CBDC’s, policy makers still continue to believe that by hobbling “cash”, making it impossible to save, eliminating privacy and layering on Orwellian levels of social control, they still get something that the public will prefer to cash, crypto or Bitcoin.

It’s delusional.

Incentives matter, and that’s why nobody in their right might isn’t going to hold any wealth in CBDCs and keep their transactions within it to the lowest practical level.

The overall global system of governance is in a Fourth Turning style restructuring. With institutional legitimacy in tatters and public trust plummeting, CBDCs are typical and symbolic of the last gasp of industrial era, centrally planned economies.

The transition period between where we are now (Late Stage Globalism) and where we are headed – decentralized Network States, is going to be rough, so I advise battening down the hatches and reducing one’s reliance on government entitlements as much as possible…

Pro Tip: Don’t be poor

This is where we’re headed folks, so at the risk of sounding flippant, the solution is not to need financial aid.

Anybody depending on state entitlements or financial support will be CBDCerfs, their affairs fully regulated by the state, their carbon footprints metered, and rationed, while their lives are gamified through their smartphones.

Among the affluent G20 nations where woke-ism reigns supreme and neo-Marxism is still fashionable,  a lot of them may even like it.

But for the rest of us, who would prefer not to “own nothing and be happy”, it’s imperative that you have zero reliance on government subsidies, entitlements or support payments.

If you haven’t already:

1. Start a business. (Even a kitchen table business or an online venture)
2. Start stacking sats (Bitcoin) – get off zero, today.
3. Start taking sats at your business.

If you already own or run a business, buy, start or invest in another one.

It’s going to get a lot more expensive to be free. It’s not right or fair, but that doesn’t matter.

The good news is there’s never been a better time in history to learn, create, innovate and grow and these are the dynamics and incentives that will ultimately prevail. We’re in a period of Peak Collectivism and Peak Centralization now (for the next few years). This dominating ideology is ultimately an anti-human philosophy and this too shall pass.

Be ready for it, either way.

*  *  *

Follow me on Nostr , Gettr, or Twitter. For new pieces sent straight to your inbox subscribe to the Bombthrower mailing list – and receive a free copy of our long term thesis on Monetary Regime Change. Our premium newsletter, The Bitcoin Capitalist, covers CBDCs, digital assets and publicly traded crypto stocks using a distinctly value oriented approach. Try it for $2. 

END

INDIA/ADANI

Adani Hires Top US Law Firm To Combat Short-Seller Hindenburg

FRIDAY, FEB 10, 2023 – 12:35 PM

Adani Group stocks recorded another week of losses. More than $100 billion has been wiped out from the Indian conglomerate following US short-seller Hindenburg Research’s scathing report last month that accused it of “brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud.” 

Adani recently called Hindenburg’s short report “bogus” and threatened legal action. 

Now billionaire Gautam Adani might be preparing to go on the offensive after hiring New York-based law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, according to Financial Times, citing people with direct knowledge of the matter. 

Wachtell is one of the world’s leading business law firms and has been used by companies to fight off activist investors or hostile takeovers. 

The people said Wachtell’s services would focus on co-ordinating legal, regulatory, and public relations for the Adani Group. They will also provide access to crisis communications firms. 

Adani Group needs to control the narrative surrounding the companies since the Hindenburg short report spooked investors. The reason is to prevent a further loss in the market cap of its companies. Also, limit the slide in bonds from diving deeper into distressed levels. 

Meanwhile, Adani stocks slid on Friday after MSCI Inc. slashed the shares it considers freely tradable for four of the group’s companies. Flagship Adani Enterprises Ltd. closed down 4%. 

“It’s hard to tell if the worst is over,” Manish Bhargava, fund manager at Straits Investment Holdings in Singapore, told Bloomberg. 

“There are so many layers to Hindenburg’s report. Unlikely that long-term institutional investors will return to the name anytime soon. Speculators might,” Bhargava said. 

There are fears that Adani Group’s troubles could spill into India’s banking sector. And this could be very problematic for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s economic growth plan as the conglomerate operates a vast amount of infrastructure, such as airports, ports, and mines, countrywide. 

And now the waiting game begins as Wachtell strategies with Adani execs and lawyers to fend off the short seller. 

YOUR EARLY CURRENCY/GOLD AND SILVER PRICING/ASIAN AND EUROPEAN BOURSE MOVEMENTS/AND INTEREST RATE SETTINGS FRIDAY MORNING 7;30AM

EURO VS USA DOLLAR:1.0691  DOWN  .0048

USA/ YEN 130.82 DOWN  0.652/NOW TARGETS INTEREST RATE AT .50% AS IT WILL BUY UNLIMITED BONDS TO GETS TO THAT LEVEL…//YEN  STILL FALLS//

GBP/USA 1.2098  DOWN   0.0018

 Last night Shanghai COMPOSITE CLOSED DOWN 9.71 PTS OR 0.30% 

 Hang Sang CLOSED DOWN 433.94 PTS OR 2.01% 

AUSTRALIA CLOSED DOWN 0.84%  // EUROPEAN BOURSE: ALL RED 

Trading from Europe and ASIA

I) EUROPEAN BOURSES  ALL RED 

2/ CHINESE BOURSES / :Hang SANG CLOSED  DOWN 433.94 PTS OR 2.01%

/SHANGHAI CLOSED DOWN 9.71 PTS OR 0.30% 

AUSTRALIA BOURSE CLOSED DOWN .84% 

(Nikkei (Japan) CLOSED UP 86.63 PTS OR 0.31%

INDIA’S SENSEX  IN THE RED

Gold very early morning trading: 1864.60

silver:$22.410

USA dollar index early FRIDAY morning: 103.34 UP 24  BASIS POINTS from THURSDAY’s close.

 FRIDAY  MORNING NUMBERS ENDS

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And now your closing FRIDAY NUMBERS 1: 00 PM

Portuguese 10 year bond yield: 3.217% UP 7  in basis point(s) yield

JAPANESE BOND YIELD: +0.493% UP 0 AND 3/10   BASIS POINTS /JAPAN losing control of its yield curve/

SPANISH 10 YR BOND YIELD: 3.395%// UP 7  in basis points yield 

ITALIAN 10 YR BOND YIELD 4.208 UP 8   points in basis points yield ./ THE ECB IS QE ITALIAN BONDS (BUYING ITALIAN BONDS/SELLING GERMAN BUNDS)

GERMAN 10 YR BOND YIELD: 2.363 UP 6 BASIS PTS 

END

IMPORTANT CURRENCY CLOSES FOR FRIDAY  

Closing currency crosses for day /USA DOLLAR INDEX/USA 10 YR BOND YIELD/1:00 PM

Euro/USA 1.0671 DOWN 0.0069 or  69 basis points//

USA/Japan: 131.50  DOWN .018 OR YEN UP 30  basis points/

Great Britain/USA 1.2057  DOWN.0059 OR 57 BASIS POINTS //

Canadian dollar UP .0085 OR 85 BASIS pts  to 1.3364

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The USA/Yuan,  CNY: closed    ON SHORE  (CLOSED DOWN ..(6.8095) 

THE USA/YUAN OFFSHORE:    (YUAN CLOSED (DOWN)…. 6.8234

TURKISH LIRA:  18.83  EXTREMELY DANGEROUS LEVEL/DEATH WISH/HYPERINFLATION TO BEGIN.

the 10 yr Japanese bond yield  at +0.493…VERY DANGEREOUS

Your closing 10 yr US bond yield UP 5  IN basis points from THURSDAY at  3.730% //trading well ABOVE the resistance level of 2.27-2.32%) very problematic

 USA 30 yr bond yield   3.818 UP 6 in basis points 

Your closing USA dollar index, 103.55 UP 42  BASIS PTS   ON THE DAY/1.00 PM/

Your closing bourses for Europe and the Dow along with the USA dollar index closing and interest rates  FRIDAY: 12:00 PM

London: CLOSED DOWN 28.70 PTS OR  0.36%

German Dax :  CLOSED DOWN 215.44 POINTS OR 1.31

Paris CAC CLOSED DOWN 58.63PTS OR 0.82% 

Spain IBEX  DOWN 126.10 POINTS OR 1.36%

Italian MIB: CLOSED  DOWN 235.56  PTS OR  0.86%

WTI Oil price 79.81  12: EST

Brent Oil:  86.21 12:00 EST

USA /RUSSIAN ///   DOWN TO:  73.39/ ROUBLE DOWN 1 AND 39/100       RUBLES/DOLLAR

GERMAN 10 YR BOND YIELD; +2.3615

UK 10 YR YIELD: 3.425  UP 10 BASIS PTS.

CLOSING NUMBERS: 4 PM

Euro vs USA: 1.0678  DOWN 0.0061    OR 61 BASIS POINTS

British Pound: 1.20521 DOWN   .0063  or  63 basis pts

BRITISH 10 YR GILT BOND YIELD:  3.414% UP 10 BASIS PTS

USA dollar vs Japanese Yen: 131.48  DOWN .080////YEN  DOWN 23 BASIS PTS//

USA dollar vs Canadian dollar: 1.3348 DOWN .01015 (CDN dollar, UP 102 basis pts)

West Texas intermediate oil: 79.82

Brent OIL:  86.49

USA 10 yr bond yield UP 6 BASIS pts to 3.747% CLIMBING IN YIELD

USA 30 yr bond yield UP 8 BASIS PTS to 3.832% CLIMBING IN YIELD

USA dollar index:103.48 UP 38  BASIS POINTS

USA DOLLAR VS TURKISH LIRA: 18.83

USA DOLLAR VS RUSSIA//// ROUBLE:  73.39  DOWN  0 AND  39/100 roubles

DOW JONES INDUSTRIAL AVERAGE: UP 169.39 PTS OR 0.50% 

NASDAQ 100 DOWN 76.25 PTS OR 0.62%

VOLATILITY INDEX: 20.49 DOWN 22 PTS (1.06)%

GLD: $173.36 UP 0.33 OR 0.19%

SLV/ $20.24 UP 0.06 OR 0.30%

end)

USA TRADING TODAY IN GRAPH FORM

EARLY MORNING TRADING

LATE AFTERNOON TRADING//GRAPH FORM//CLOSING

Stocks, Bonds, & Gold Slammed As ‘Fed Pivot’ Party Crashes

FRIDAY, FEB 10, 2023 – 04:01 PM

Goldman sums up the week’s equity trading succinctly:

This week has been most aggressive aggregate net selling across HFs and LO$ on the year (Monday-Thursday) by a factor of 4x. LOs showed the largest weekly net selling since the first week of 2023, but HFs added to this selling dynamic as well, selling the most in a week since mid-Dec of ’23.

With the ‘imminent H1 recession / Fed pivot’ narrative taking a beating recently with US macro data surprising to the upside, and FedSpeak has (once again) reassured that there will be no pivot…

Source: Bloomberg

This ‘adjustment’ has sent the market’s expectations for The Fed’s rate-trajectory significantly hawkishly higher with terminal rates adding 35bps of additional hikes this week alone…

Source: Bloomberg

All of which prompted pain for bond and stock bulls this week with all the US major equity indices in the red on the week, led by a puke in Small Caps and Big-Tech. The Dow was the least ugly horse in the glue factory…

The energy sector was the only one to close the week green with Consumer Discretionary and Real Estate puking hardest…

Source: Bloomberg

(who could have seen that coming?)

Translation: just as tech is now outperforming every other sector as a result of a seemingly endless short squeeze, the same hedge funds which are rapidly degrossing as they have no idea what to do… are apparently convinced that the sector to short is energy despite a near record buyback announced by Chevron and record cash flow from Exxon. Translation: they are about to be steamrolled again, only instead of tech, the next big squeeze will be in energy as all those recent shorts are violently unwound.

…and bonds have been a one-way street higher in yields since the better than expected payrolls print. The short-end  (actually more the belly) has significantly underperformed this week as hawkish reality is priced back in…

Source: Bloomberg

And this has started to ‘tighten’ financial conditions (despite Powell’s nonchalance) after four months of extreme loosening (which implies ‘peak Fed’ has already occurred…

Source: Bloomberg

And notably, with rates rising again, the multiple expansion that lifted stocks all year is facing peril…

Source: Bloomberg

After an almost non-stop short-squeeze all year, the ‘most shorted’ stock basket is down 6 straight days and the biggest weekly drop since September.

Source: Bloomberg

The dollar ended the week modestly higher, holding its gains from last Friday’s payrolls print…

Source: Bloomberg

Bitcoin tumbled this week after last week’s surge, breaking back below $22k…

Source: Bloomberg

Gold extended last week’s losses, unable to break back above $1900…

Oil prices rebounded significantly this week with WTI back above $80…

Finally, repos continue to be all that matters… and that’s not a good thing anymore…

Source: Bloomberg

It’s all one big Fed trade…

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And VVIX is warning that next week is going to be chaotic with CPI and OpEx…

Source: Bloomberg

VVIX always knows…

END

ii) USA DATA

This is as to be expected: inflation expectations rebound hugely in early February

(zerohedge)

UMich Inflation Expectations Unexpectedly Rebounded In Early February

FRIDAY, FEB 10, 2023 – 10:07 AM

After a surprise jump in January, University of Michigan’s sentiment survey was expected to continue to improve (although marginally so) in preliminary February data and it did, rising from 64.9 to 66.4 (better than the 65.0 exp). This was driven by a jump in current conditions (highest since Dec 2021) while expectations limped lower…

Source: Bloomberg

Democrats’ sentiment fell for the second straight month while Republicans and Independents are more positive….

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, the most-watched aspect of the survey is once again the inflation expectations and in a surprise move, short-term expectations rebounded from 3.9% to 4.2%…

Source: Bloomberg

However, as UMich itself notes, consumers continued to exhibit considerable uncertainty over both long and short-term inflation expectations, indicating the tentative nature of any declines.

Overall, high prices continue to weigh on consumers despite the recent moderation in inflation, and sentiment remains more than 22% below its historical average since 1978. Combined with concerns over rising unemployment on the horizon, consumers are poised to exercise greater caution with their spending in the months ahead.

END

iii) USA ECONOMIC NEWS

Fierce Backlash As Project Veritas Sidelines James O’Keefe After Pfizer Bombshells

THURSDAY, FEB 09, 2023 – 03:50 PM

Authored by Mark Pellin via Headline USA,James O’Keefe / IMAGE: Project Veritas via YouTube

The board of directors of Project Veritas on Wednesday placed its founder and chairman, James O’Keefe, on paid leave as it reportedly moves to oust him from his leadership position.

The organization’s executive director informed employees of the news via an internal message that said O’Keefe would be taking “a few weeks of well-deserved PTO,” according to NY Mag’s Intelligencer.

Widespread reports of a hostile takeover point to a more insidious long game at play, with the move coming after two bombshell undercover video reports from Project Veritas that showed a Pfizer research scientist discussing the company’s gain-of-function work to maximize vaccine profits.

 Project Veritas’s board is slated to meet Friday, when O’Keefe’s potential ouster will be discussed, one source told the Intelligencer.

The backlash from all fronts was fierce and furious when news broke about the brewing coup.

“Absolute madness if he is being forced out just weeks after Project Veritas celebrates one of their greatest-ever journalistic investigations with which O’Keefe was intimately involved,” wrote Human Events editor Ben Kew.

“There is no Project Veritas without James O’Keefe,” Candace Owens tweeted. “I say this as a donor to the organization, but more importantly as a colleague who watched him pour everything he had into PV over the years. The money and supporters will follow James.”

Project Veritas’s board of directors tried to deflect the heat, shifting blame on “Corporate Media” for fanning flames and posting a response to the backlash.

“Despite what the Corporate Media tries to portray about our organization, know this: We have never been more motivated and dedicated to our mission than now,” the group tweeted.

Fans, supporters and colleagues of O’Keefe were less than impressed, and continued to express their support for the investigative journalist.

END

Furious Project Veritas Donors Threaten Board Of Directors Over Reported O’Keefe Ouster

FRIDAY, FEB 10, 2023 – 12:40 PM

Major donors to Project Veritas have sent the board of directors a Cease and Desist Demand Letter over founder James O’Keefe’s reported ouster.

A letter from the Troutman Pepper law firm reads: “Our firm represents a large group of significant donors to Project Veritas who have grave concerns about the Board of Directors’ reported action to remove Founder and CEO James O’Keefe from this leadership position, change the structure of Project Veritas entities and their Boards (raising risks for the entities’ charitable status), and operate Project Veritas for purposes other than those for which the organization was established.”

…

The group is asking that the board “immediately cease using Project Veritas funds, which were solicited using Mr. O’Keefe and his reputation for purposes of carrying out the organization’s mission, in any manner contrary to that mission.”

The letter requests that the board also preserve all evidence related to the matter.

On Wednesday, the board put O’Keefe on paid leave amid widespread reports of a hostile takeover. Many have questioned the timing of the move, as it comes on the heels of two bombshell undercover reports from PV which showed a Pfizer research scientist discussing the company exploring ways to mutate Covid via “directed evolution” in order to anticipate new strains.

As Headline USA noted yesterday,

Project Veritas’s board is slated to meet Friday, when O’Keefe’s potential ouster will be discussed, one source told the Intelligencer.

The backlash from all fronts was fierce and furious when news broke about the brewing coup.

“Absolute madness if he is being forced out just weeks after Project Veritas celebrates one of their greatest-ever journalistic investigations with which O’Keefe was intimately involved,” wrote Human Events editor Ben Kew.

“There is no Project Veritas without James O’Keefe,” Candace Owens tweeted. “I say this as a donor to the organization, but more importantly as a colleague who watched him pour everything he had into PV over the years. The money and supporters will follow James.”

Project Veritas’s board of directors tried to deflect the heat, shifting blame on “Corporate Media” for fanning flames and posting a response to the backlash.

“Despite what the Corporate Media tries to portray about our organization, know this: We have never been more motivated and dedicated to our mission than now,” the group tweeted.

Fans, supporters and colleagues of O’Keefe were less than impressed, and continued to express their support for the investigative journalist.

end

High-Altitude Object Over Alaska Shot Down By F-22 Jet; CH-47 Helicopters Deployed In Recovery Op

FRIDAY, FEB 10, 2023 – 03:47 PM

Update(1608ET): Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder gave few additional details in a briefing shortly after it was revealed the US military shot down an unidentified object flying over Alaska Thursday night. When questioned about the possibility of second Chinese balloon, Ryder said the US has yet to reach out to China over the latest object.

The White House has also said that ownership has not been established. Ryder additionally repeated that the aircraft had been seen as a hazard to civilian aviation, and that it was shot down by an F-22 jet with a sidewinder missile. According to more from the Pentagon press briefing: 

• The Pentagon cannot say if the object shot down over Alaska was a balloon, it is sure that there were no people on board: Kirby
• Pentagon says object shot down over Alaska “wasn’t an aircraft per say”
• U.S. Military used F-22 aircraft to take down object over Alaska on Friday, using a sidewinder missile: Pentagon
• Ryder says U.S. Army CH-47 helicopters have launched to recover debris from the downed ‘object’ in NE Alaska in the frozen waters near the U.S.-Canadian border.

So it seems, the world could soon find out what this object actually was. However, recovery could take time given the difficult weather elements in Northeast Alaska.

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* * *

A US official has said Friday that the US military engaged and shot down an unidentified object flying first observed over Alaska on Thursday night, upon the order given by President Biden.

It’s unconfirmed whether the unidentified object was a balloon, “but it was traveling at an altitude that made it a potential threat to civilian aircraft,” according to The New York Times, which first reported it Friday afternoon.

The president gave the shootdown order “out of an abundance of caution,” the unnamed US official said, coming on the heels of the dramatic Chinese ‘spy’ balloon shootdown off the American east coast last Saturday.

The scant details given to the Times didn’t reveal any information that might point to the nature of the flying object, or if it was possibly a weather or spy balloon (China still insists last week’s balloon was purely for weather research purposes, and that it blew off course).

A separate official quoted in the new report commenting on the second object to breach US airspace in a week called it a “fast-moving” situation, and that it’s still developing – thus more details are expected to soon trickle out.

“It is not clear if the object was from an adversarial power, or a commercial or research operation that has gone astray, the official said,” NYT reports.

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Officials called the airspace breach relatively short, and could not readily identify what it was. It’s also unclear whether a recovery team is able to access the down object, or whether it took place over water or land.

In a briefing administration spokesman John Kirby said the Pentagon had been tracking the object before deeming it a “reasonable threat” to the safety of civilian aviation, as it was traveling at 40,000 feet:

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Meanwhile, on Friday the US announced it will go after Chinese firms deemed connected with the manufacture of the alleged spy balloon shot down last weekend…

US SET TO SANCTION CHINESE FIRMS CONNECTED TO SPY BALLOON

developing…

END

 3 B)USA ECONOMIC ISSUES// SUPPLY ISSUES//

”

USA COVID//

SWAMP STORIES

what an idot!!

Former Twitter “Safety” Executive Yoel Roth Argues That Free Speech Is A Threat To Free Speech

FRIDAY, FEB 10, 2023 – 02:00 PM

In a blatant display of Orwellian double-speak, the former executive in charge of Trust and Safety at Twitter told a House GOP hearing that unrestricted free speech “results in less speech, not more.”  Yoel Roth is best known for his dramatic removal from Twitter after Elon Musk’s takeover and his consistent complaints about the social media platform allowing conservative ideals to spread without obstruction.

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Musk disbanded the original Trust and Safety team after discovering disturbing inaction on child pornography on the platform, as well as collusion between Twitter team members and government officials to illegally censor specific individuals posting information contrary to the government narrative. 

Roth attempted to justify the widespread censorship, primarily used against people with views opposing leftist positions, by suggesting that “abusive speech” by a minority of malcontents was “driving away” other users.  The claims of abuse are subjective and also unsupported.  What one person sees as factual information others like Yoel Roth might treat as abusive.  This is a classic authoritarian tactic – To assert that some speech is dangerous to everyone, and then declare yourself the person most qualified to determine what speech is a threat and what speech is not.  

Roth also repeats now debunked Russiagate claims, suggesting that Twitter had to increase censorship because of the discovery of an insidious plot by the Russian government to “stoke culture war divisions” and interfere in US elections.  These claims have not been substantiated by any significant evidence, and there is no need for Russia to stoke divisions when the political left has done that so effectively already.  Accounts discussing anything damaging to the Biden Administration (the Hunter Biden Laptop issue in particular) were often labeled “Russian bots” without serious investigation.

The claim by Roth that free speech is in itself a threat to free speech illustrates the twisted nature of mass censorship and the mental gymnastics required to justify violations of civil liberties.  Twitter’s previous management and their collusion with government agencies and politicians should act as a blaring alarm for the future of freedoms in western societies.  

The question that must always be asked when rationalizing censorship is this:  Who gets to decide? 

Who gets to arbitrate the measure of acceptable speech?  Who gets to hold all the power?  Big Tech companies are dominated by the political left, with Twitter being the only outlier allowing more free discussion.  Competing companies have in the past been attacked and even sabotaged (as in the case of Parler) by Big Tech’s monopoly of access.  Clearly, they intend that only the far left will get to enjoy 1st Amendment liberties while everyone else is labeled as varying degrees of deplorable.  

Is the political left qualified to act as judge and jury over speech rights?  They have proven to be utterly inadequate, but the truth is, no one is qualified.  This is why the 1st Amendment is so broad – To prevent the notion that speech management is acceptable.      

THE KING REPORT

The King Report February 9, 2023 Issue 6945Independent View of the NewsRates will need to stay ‘restrictive’ for a few years: N.Y. Fed’s Williams (9:48 ET) The president of the New York Federal Reserve said the central bank probably needs to maintain “restrictive” interest rates for a few years to make sure high inflation is restored to pre-pandemic levels…  https://www.marketwatch.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-dow-futures-ease-over-90-points/card/rates-will-need-to-stay-restrictive-for-a-few-years-n-y-fed-s-williams-RIGZ9ic7sSMuxmlfctj3   Google (Alphabet) tumbled 8.72% by the European close.  Reports said Alphabet’s new AI Chatbot contained inaccurate information.   All you need to know about ChatGPT, the A.I. chatbot that’s got the world talking and tech giants clashing – The tool is capable of taking written inputs from users and producing human-like responses — from poetry in the style of William Shakespeare to advice on what to do for a child’s birthday party… https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/08/what-is-chatgpt-viral-ai-chatbot-at-heart-of-microsoft-google-fight.html   Tesla rallied 1.6% early, hitting $200 by 9:47 ET, on a report that Tesla delivered 66,051 China-made vehicles in January, +18.4% m/m.   Tesla is up 57.1% over the past 14 days.  Tesla hit a low of 101.81 on January 6, 2023 and a high of 202.85 yesterday, almost a 100% jump in about one month!   Carvana soared 21% in early trading, which triggered a trading halt at 10:07 ET.  When trading resumed CVNA jumped to a high of 16.77 (+27%).  By 11:34 ET, Carvana had sunk to 13.85.   ESHs were negative except for two brief moments during Asian trading.  After a modest rally into the European open, ESHs commenced a measured decline that ended at 9:33 ET.  The usual rally after a down NYSE open ended quickly, at 9:44 ET.  ESHs and stocks then gyrated violently.  After a spike to a modest new high at 10:19 ET ESHs and stocks then tumbled into the European close.   The stock market was not impressed with the domestic agenda that Biden proposed in his SOTU Speech.   The post-European close rally was modest; but a Noon Balloon materialized.  The rally ended at 13:06 ET.  ESHs and stocks plodded lower, making a daily low near 15:20 ET.  The last-hour rally was modest and ended at 15:52 ET.  ESHs and stocks eased lower into the close.   Baupost chief Seth Klarman blames Federal Reserve for ‘financial fantasyland’ Easy money response to 2008 credit crisis contained ‘the seeds of its own destruction’ https://www.ft.com/content/2f0c592f-7974-476b-bc6d-3dd0780d91c6   Positive aspects of previous session ESHs rallied after the NYSE open Bonds decline early but rallied sharply are Europe closed   Negative aspects of previous session ESHs were negative except for two brief moments during Asian trading. Gasoline rallied, resisting the general decline in commodities   Ambiguous aspects of previous session A huge divergence in rate outlooks has developed between equities and bonds.   First Hour/Last Hour Action [S&P 500 Index]: 1st Hour from NYSE open: Down; Last Hour: Down   Pivot Point for S&P 500 Index [above/below indicates daily trend to traders]: 4128.80 Previous session High/Low: 4156.85; 4111.67   Fed’s Waller Says May Need Rates Higher for Longer Than Some See https://t.co/LrhFxo1clm   Disney to Cut 7,000 Jobs as Part of Cost-Saving Effort – BBG 16:40 ET (+9.3% on the cuts)   Disney Stock Soars on Job Cuts, Cost Savings ($5.5B) After Disappointing Streaming Subs https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/disney-stock-soars-job-cuts-cost-savings-after-disappointing-streaming-subs   JPMorgan Cuts Hundreds More Mortgage Workers Amid Housing Woes – BBG 16:19 ET   Fauci paper suggests feds knew COVID vaccines were doomed from the start: ‘Decidedly suboptimal’ – “Systemic immunity” through intramuscular injection has never worked for respiratory viruses, ex-NIAID chief admits after stepping down, promoting “mucosal immunization” long advocated by critics… Fauci knows why COVID-19 vaccines have been so unreliable at halting infection and transmission beyond a few months. He waited until he stepped down as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to publicly explain it… https://justthenews.com/government/federal-agencies/decidedly-suboptimal-fauci-paper-suggests-feds-knew-covid-vaccines-were   How America Took Out the Nord Stream Pipeline   by Seymour Hersh    Last June, the Navy divers, operating under the cover of a widely publicized mid-summer NATO exercise known as BALTOPS 22, planted the remotely triggered explosives that, three months later, destroyed three of the four Nord Stream pipelines..    The divers were Navy only, and not members of America’s Special Forces Command, whose covert operations must be reported to Congress and briefed in advance to the Senate and House leadership—the so-called Gang of Eight. The Biden Administration was doing everything possible to avoid leaks as the planning took place late in 2021 and into the first months of 2022…    A few months later, as the construction of the second pipeline neared completion, Biden blinked. That May, in a stunning turnaround, the administration waived sanctions against Nord Stream AG…    Senate Republicans, led by Cruz, announced an immediate blockade of all of Biden’s foreign policy nominees and delayed passage of the annual defense bill for months, deep into the fall. Politico later depicted Biden’s turnabout on the second Russian pipeline as “the one decision, arguably more than the chaotic military withdrawal from Afghanistan, that has imperiled Biden’s agenda.”…    On February 7… Biden defiantly said, “If Russia invades . . . there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”  Twenty days earlier, Undersecretary Nuland had delivered essentially the same message at a State Department briefing, with little press coverage. “I want to be very clear to you today,” she said in response to a question. “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.”…    In the immediate aftermath of the pipeline bombing, the American media treated it like an unsolved mystery. Russia was repeatedly cited as a likely culprit, spurred on by calculated leaks from the White House—but without ever establishing a clear motive for such an act of self-sabotage… https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream   @TheInsiderPaper: White House says Blog post by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh that says US was behind Nord Stream pipelines explosion “is utterly false and complete fiction”   GOP Sen. (Utah) @BasedMikeLee: I’m troubled that I can’t immediately rule out the suggestion that the U.S. blew up Nord Stream. I checked with a bunch of Senate colleagues. Among those I’ve asked, none were ever briefed on this. If it turns out to be true, we’ve got a huge problem.   Today – After a robust rally, with historic January gains for Nasdaq and Fangs, the US stock market is reluctantly adjusting to a new reality in the US interest rate markets.  While the trend for the general equity market has been down this week, select Fangs, meme stocks, and trading sardines have had spectacular intraday rallies.  Guppies and other small traders will not easily be disabused of inculcated behavior that has been fortified for a long time.   No Fed officials are scheduled to speak today.  So, trapped bulls and permabulls are likely to try to force stocks higher.  ESHs are +6.50 at 20:30 ET.  4100 on the S&P 500 Index is important support.   Massive website outages for US firms occurred early Wednesday night.  Russia or China retaliation?   Expected economic data: Initial Jobless Claims190k, Continuing Claims 1.66m   Expected earnings (some key consumer companies could provide insight on inflation): PEP 1.64, BWA 1.07, HLT 1.22, PM 1.26, K .84, PYPL 1.20, EXPE 1.76   S&P 500 Index 50-day MA: 3964; 100-day MA: 3878; 150-day MA: 3933; 200-day MA: 3946 DJIA 50-day MA: 33,652; 100-day MA: 32,525; 150-day MA: 32,431; 200-day MA: 32,327   S&P 500 Index – Trender trading model and MACD for key time frames Monthly: Trender and MACD are negative – a close above 4514.50 triggers a buy signal Weekly: Trender and MACD are positive – a close below 3779.77 triggers a sell signal Daily: Trender and MACD are positive – a close below 4037.43 triggers a sell signal Hourly: Trender is positive; MACD is negative – a close below 4096.12 triggers a sell signal   JOE BIDEN HAS ADVOCATED CUTTING SOCIAL SECURITY FOR 40 YEARS “I tried with Senator Grassley back in the 1980s to freeze all government spending, including Social Security, including everything… When I argued that we should freeze federal spending, I meant Social Security as well,” he told the Senate in 1995. “I meant Medicare and Medicaid. I meant veterans’ benefits. I meant every single solitary thing in the government…” BIDEN’S FIXATION on cutting Social Security dates back to the Reagan era…  https://theintercept.com/2020/01/13/biden-cuts-social-security/   @JesseKellyDC: I love how the entire country is supposed to pretend that how Biden walks isn’t at all a big deal.  People who know, know that gait… https://twitter.com/JesseKellyDC/status/1623135997264265217   NYT: Footprints to Cognitive Decline and Alzheimer’s Are Seen in Gait    July 16, 2012 Five studies presented at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Vancouver this month provide striking evidence that when a person’s walk gets slower or becomes more variable or less controlled, his cognitive function is also suffering… https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/17/health/research/signs-of-cognitive-decline-and-alzheimers-are-seen-in-gait.html   State of the Union TV viewership falls 29% to 27.3 million, according to Nielsen. https://dnyuz.com/2023/02/08/state-of-the-union-tv-viewership-falls-29-to-27-3-million-according-to-nielsen/   NY Post Cover yesterday: JOE LIE-DEN – Misstate of the Union – President tells so many fibs during speech, we can’t keep count   https://nypost.com/cover/february-8-2023/   NY Post Editorial Board: Biden’s State of the Union set new records for dishonesty and emptiness He offered lie after lie in a shameless bid to fool the electorate ahead of his 2024 run for re-election. His only “big idea” is to make bogeymen out of the wealthy and offer the American people more freebies, more unsustainable spending.    He blended brags about his supposed achievements (inflation-fueling blowout spending sprees), promos for various dead-on-arrival bits of legislation (even heavily Democratic Congresses have been unable to pass “comprehensive immigration reform”), blatantly insincere calls for bipartisanship, cynical and false attacks on his opponents (the chamber was in an uproar at his fake claim that Republicans want to slash Social Security and Medicare), bogus stats (billionaires pay roughly 24% income tax, not 8%), some fine tough talk on the Ukraine war and utter laughers (“as we made clear last week, if China threatens our sovereignty, we will act to protect our country. And we did” — by shooting down the balloon at the last possible moment?)… But he had literally no overall theme, as he has no overall vision beyond his self-serving distortions and promises of more giveaways. In his best chance to reach the entire nation, our president basically showed America that there’s no there there except his trademark malarkey.  His flagging polls show the American people aren’t fooled. Just like Biden, they see that his act is getting stale.  https://trib.al/AA5lXdt   SOTU: Biden Falsely Claims ‘Burger Place’ Cashiers Had to Sign Non-Compete Agreements: ‘Look It Up’ … before his administration banned it… “Thirty million workers had to sign non-compete agreements for the jobs they take. Thirty million. “So, a cashier at a burger place can’t walk across town and take the same job at another burger place and make a few bucks more. They just changed it because we exposed it.”… even liberal CNN’s fact-check acknowledges that burger joint workers were not being forced to sign non-compete agreements preventing them from taking jobs a competitor… https://www.cnsnews.com/blog/craig-bannister/sotu-biden-falsely-claims-burger-place-cashiers-had-sign-non-compete   The Big Guy’s SOTU was troubling in form, style, and substance.  (72 minutes, 41 seconds per CSPAN) It was so bad that the NY Times contorted and debased itself to defend The Big Guy: “The president’s speech contained no outright falsehoods, but at times omitted crucial context or exaggerated the facts.” https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/08/us/politics/fact-check-biden-state-of-the-union.html   The regime media and Dems voiced opprobrium that GOP members jeered The Big Guy, but extolled Dem members when they did that to Trump and when Pelosi stridently tore up a copy of his SOTU address!  PS – Regime media silence on Wednesday about The Big Guy’s SOTU tells us how bad it was.   @SteveGuest: Joe Biden delivered the worst State of the Union speech in 25 years according to CNN: “The 34% who reacted very positively to Biden’s speech is the lowest in CNN’s speech reaction polls dating back to 1998.”   Full Text: President Joe Biden’s State of the Union Address https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/02/07/full-text-president-joe-bidens-state-of-the-union-address-2/   Biden: “We’ve already created 800,000 good-paying manufacturing jobs, the fastest growth in 40 years.  Where is it written that America can’t lead the world in manufacturing again? I don’t know where that’s written…Inflation has fallen every month for the last six months while take home pay has gone up…”   Biden: “And two years ago, our democracy faced its greatest threat since the Civil War. Today, though bruised, our democracy remains unbowed and unbroken.”  (Still campaigning on Jan 6!)   GOP @RepMTG: Biden follows the lead of the GOP-led House and claims COVID is over, while his administration sues to force us to wear masks on airplanes again.   Biden is acting strong on Big Pharma while delivering them record profits with forced vaccinations. Big Pharma loves Joe Biden.   W Bush Press Sec @AriFleischer: Why does Biden sound like he’s speed-reading?  He must want to get back to the WH before it gets too late.   Ex-Thatcher aide @NileGardiner: Biden sounds like a very angry president, shouting a lot of the time in his State of the Union address. He comes across as increasingly unhinged.   @jimmyfailla: Dude is talking FAST. White House doctor might have over did the dosage…   @Heminator: Biden’s generally inarticulate speech is not helped by having been given enough amphetamines to kill a water buffalo.   @thebradfordfile: Biden is higher right now than Hunter has ever been.   @winningatmylife: GRANPAW’S MEDS JUST KICKED IN. Joe Biden screaming THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA like a lunatic. Everything’s fine nbd. https://twitter.com/winningatmylife/status/1623146322554503168   @TheSpectator: “Biden screams violently about how his diversity-hire transport secretary has failed the country. America has sank to thirteenth in the world for infrastructure, he shouts. Confused Mayor Pete stood and applauded himself anyway.” — @Chadwick_Moore https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1623147544090927104   Sen. (R-Utah) @BasedMikeLee during SOTU: He’s not well.  This is elder abuse.   @maxpcohen: Bunch of Rs shouting “LIAR” at Biden for saying they want to cut Social Security and Medicare. Lots of booing.  (Joe: “Instead of making the wealthy pay their fair share, some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset. I’m not saying it’s the majority.”) https://twitter.com/greg_price11/status/1623151738441150464   @JudiciaryGOP: Joe Biden is lying about Social Security and Medicare.   NY Post’s @mirandadevine: Republicans calling out Biden’s lies in real time. This is getting almost as rowdy as Question Time in Parliament.   @townhallcom: Republicans laugh hysterically when Biden says “we’re gonna need oil for at least another decade!”  https://twitter.com/townhallcom/status/1623150198196211712   @townhallcom: Republicans jeer when Biden accuses the Trump administration of accruing “nearly 25% of the entire national debt that took over 200 years to accumulate.” https://twitter.com/townhallcom/status/1623151150869499904   @ClayTravis: Joe Biden saying he wants to go after tax fraud while his son Hunter is a tax felon who didn’t pay his taxes — while they show AG Merrick Garland on TV — is amazing hypocrisy.   @SpeakerMcCarthy: One hour into this speech, and President Biden hasn’t mentioned China or our border once. But he’s proposed raising taxes three times. Tells you where his priorities lie.    That was one of the most partisan State of the Union speeches I’ve ever heard.   @_StephanieMyers: Pres. Biden: “Before I came to office, the story was about how the People’s Republic of China was increasing its power and America was falling in the world. Not anymore. I’ve made clear with President Xi that we seek competition, not conflict.”   Biden: “Today we’re in the strongest position in decades to compete with China… As we made clear last week, if China’s threatens our sovereignty, we will act to protect our country. And we did.   @greg_price11: Biden (angrily screaming, and off script): “Name me a world leader who would change places with Xi Jinping! Name me one!”  https://twitter.com/greg_price11/status/1623157950654078977   GOP Rep @michaelgwaltz: China is in a Cold War with the U.S. and Biden needs to be honest about this threat.  Should have been a priority but was instead a footnote.   @conservmillen: Someone yells “it’s your fault!” as Biden pretends to be outraged by the pervasiveness of fentanyl.   @mirandadevine: Brings out the empathy card for fentanyl victims but doesn’t mention a word about how the fentanyl has streamed over the border he opened. “Close the border” Republicans yell, and all he does is smirk… Republicans now openly laughing at Biden in the chamber.   Biden: “Most of us in here had never had to have the talk that brown and black parents have had to have with their children. Bo, Hunter, Ashley, my children, I never had to have the talk with them… if a police officer pulls you over…”   @SharylAttkisson: Re: the ‘cop talk’ (how to behave when a cop stops you): I got it and most white people I know got it. More than once incl. from my cop husband when I was 23. What about you?   @G_CURLEY: Most people have this talk with their kids. Doesn’t surprise me that Joe hasn’t. Why would he need to explain how to interact with cops to Hunter? Hunter Biden is above the law.  Apparently, he never had the talk with his kids about not disposing of their guns in trash cans across the street from high schools either.   Near the end of his SOTU Speech, The Big Guy ran out of juice, and everyone noticed it. https://twitter.com/sav_says_/status/1623162563285352448   Ex-DNI @RichardGrenell: Joe Biden is struggling to read his speech.  And everyone sees it.   @BonillaJL: Biden: “MAKE NO MISTAKE! If you try anything to raise the cost of frisizhnjubs I will veto it.”   (Incredulously, Kamala clapped like a trained seal at Joe’s gibberish!) https://t.co/DaJIvDiRy2   Biden tied the attack on Paul Pelosi to Jan 6/Trump supporters: “And then, just a few months ago, unhinged by the Big Lie, an assailant unleashed political violence in the home of the then-Speaker of this House of Representatives. Using the very same language that insurrectionists who stalked these halls chanted on January 6th,” Biden said… https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/3848616-biden-skirts-trump-references-in-jan-6-paul-pelosi-remarks/   @RealAmVoice: After years of spewing divisive rhetoric, Biden tries to rally Congress to get along and work together.   @MichaelPSenger: Biden SOTU: “Two years ago, COVID had shut down our businesses, closed our schools, and robbed us of so much. Today, COVID no longer controls our lives.”  It says a lot that Democrats pretend they had no role in the lockdowns and mandates they championed.   Biden SOTU gaffes: Calls Majority Leader Chuck Schumer the ‘minority’ leader https://justthenews.com/government/white-house/biden-sotu-gaffes-calls-majority-leader-chuck-schumer-minority-leader   @jacobkschneider: Biden greets (Dem Sen HI) Mazie Hirono by grabbing onto her face. (She resists!) https://twitter.com/jacobkschneider/status/1623161805479546881   @kadiagoba: (GOP) Rep. George Santos describes, to me, his exchange with Sen. Mitt Romney during the State of the Union tonight: Mitt: You don’t belong here. Santos: Go tell that to the 142K that voted for me. Mitt: You’re an ass.  Santos: You’re a much bigger a$$#ole.   @townhallcom: (Arkansas Gov) Sarah Huckabee Sanders: “The dividing line in America is no longer between right or left. The choice is between normal or crazy.” (In rebuttal to SOTU) https://twitter.com/townhallcom/status/1623168299142881282    Joe Biden “is simply unfit to serve as Commander in Chief.”    “President Biden’s weakness puts our nation and world at risk.”    “I’m the first woman to lead my state and [Biden] is the first man to surrender his presidency to a woke mob that can’t even tell you what a woman is.”   Yesterday, the House held a hearing on social media political censorship.   Comer says Twitter colluded with feds to suppress embarrassing Biden stories even before laptop Twitter was a “a private company the federal government used to accomplish what it constitutionally cannot: limit the free exercise of speech.” Rep. James Comer says…    Comer said his investigators had substantiated that there was “coordination between the federal government and Big Tech to restrict protected speech and interfere in the democratic process” that began even before Twitter famously censored New York Post stories in October 2020 about the contents of Hunter Biden’s now infamous laptop… https://justthenews.com/nation/free-speech/holdcomer-says-twitter-colluded-feds-suppress-embarrassing-biden-stories-well   @ColumbiaBugle: GOP Rep. Mace: “Did the U.S. Gov ever contact you or anyone at Twitter to pressure Twitter to moderate or censor certain tweets?”  Long Pause M: “Yes or no?”  Vijaya Gadde: “We received legal demands to remove content from the platform from the U.S. Gov & Govs all around the world.”   @ColumbiaBugle: GOP @RepMTG: “You permanently banned my Twitter account, but you allowed child porn all over Twitter.”  https://twitter.com/ColumbiaBugle/status/1623365742493151233   @DC_Draino: Former FBI General Counsel James Baker just testified under oath that he did not know about the Hunter Biden laptop in possession of the FBI for almost a year prior to it being censored on Twitter (where he was a senior attorney at the time). This is almost certainly perjury.   @CollinRugg: GOP Rep Lauren Boebert catches Yoel Roth in a lie after he denied being involved with the suspension of her Twitter account.  What happens to people who lie under oath?   Rep. Higgins Tells Twitter Executives to Prepare to be Arrested for Interfering in 2020 Election “This is the investigation part, later comes the arrest part, your attorneys are familiar with that… I’d like to spend five hours with these ladies and gentlemen doing depositions surely yet to come.” https://trendingpoliticsnews.com/breaking-rep-higgins-tells-twitter-executives-to-prepare-to-be-arrested-for-interfering-in-2020-election-mace/   Former Twitter Execs Tell Congress: We Didn’t Meddle In 2020 Election And Also We Need To Do It More – Baker still had the audacity to claim that he “did not destroy or improperly suppress any documents at Twitter.” He qualified his brazen and disproven statement by tacking on “regarding information important to the public dialogue” at the end, meaning information that he deemed important to the public conversation… Documents uncovered in the “Twitter Files” also suggest that Baker aided in a domestic intelligence coup against Americans during the 2020 election by priming the lead censors at Twitter to discredit reporting on the Biden family business… https://t.co/wqnXBoYnRU   @JonathanTurley: Baker has refused to answer questions based on attorney-client privilege which the Chair just overruled as a basis to refuse to answer the questions…(Twitter was his client.)   @SteveDeaceShow: I don’t believe for a second DeSantis has a 9-point lead over Trump like the Club for Growth poll claims. But man oh man, Trump and his simps are behaving like they believe it with the feces they’re flinging today. We still have a calendar year until Iowa and already panicked.   @FLVoiceNews: DeSantis responds to Trump Re Truth accusing him of being a “groomer”.  “I’d just say this. I spend my time delivering results for the people of Florida and fighting against Joe Biden… I don’t spend my time trying to smear other Republicans.” https://twitter.com/FLVoiceNews/status/1623353981387800577   Former Memphis Police officer texted photos of Tyre Nichols to ‘female acquaintance,’ document shows – Haley was one of the black officers involved in the ultimately lethal arrest. https://justthenews.com/nation/crime/former-memphis-police-officer-texted-photos-tyre-nichols-female-acquaintance-documents   Do the rumors about the fatal beating possessing a personal angle have substance?   Putin ‘supplied’ Buk missile that shot down flight MH17 over Ukraine (in 2014): investigators https://t.co/2qHPRBDCdH   @RNCResearch (PBS interview): BIDEN: “The idea that there was a dereliction of duty I think is, uh, it’s a bizarre notion. China knows exactly what the deal is with us.” https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1623463594305236993     Q: “Have relations now between the U.S. and China taken a big hit?”  BIDEN: “No” *long pause* “no” Q: “How do you know?” BIDEN: “I know. I’ve talked to them.” https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1623464293055311873    Biden says one of the classified documents hidden in his home was from 1974. https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1623465407599284224    “You said just possessing classified documents is ‘totally irresponsible’? So, what was totally irresponsible about the fact that you had some?” BIDEN: “They’ve informed me not to speak to this issue” https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1623466105804099585     BIDEN says Republicans just “make up things” about his family’s corrupt foreign business dealings. Emails, texts, voicemails, photos, and witness testimony say different. https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1623463941841076225    Biden says politics is “too mean,” “too personal,” and “too divisive”  Biden smeared Republicans as a threat to the country a few months ago.  https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1623462751451463681   Biden tells PBS he’s ‘not at liberty’ to discuss classified documents scandal, suggests his staff is to blame The president attempted to downplay the contents of what was in his possession, telling Woodruff “the best of my knowledge” they were items from “1974” and “stray papers,” but added “there may be something else, I don’t know.”https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/biden-tells-pbs-he-s-not-at-liberty-to-discuss-classified-documents-scandal-suggests-his-staff-is-to-blame/ar-AA17gwEN FRIDAY As we opined in yesterday’s missive, with no Fed officials scheduled to speak, traders would play for a rally on Thursday.  Tesla soared 3.3% on the NYSE open as the usual suspects got long Fangs, trading sardines, and meme stocks.  Tesla peaked at +6.3% near 10:22 ET.   ESHs rallied from 15 minutes after the Asian opening until they peaked near 6 ET at 4170.25, +40 handles for the day.  ESHs retreated 14 handles y 8 ET.  The rally for the NYSE open ended at 9:27 ET.  It  looked like some pros executed a pump & dump.  They unloaded into unsuspecting guppy traders when the NYSE opened.  ESHs sank to 4130.00 by 11:55 ET.   A Noon Balloon appeared; it ended at 12:20 ET.  Five minutes later, ESHs tumbled to a new daily low.  After bottoming near 12:49 ET, ESHs and stocks gyrated in a tight range until a modest spike higher appeared at 13:32 ET.  ESHs and stocks then quickly fell to new lows.  The decline persisted until 14:35 ET, when the window for the pre-last hour rally opens.   The rally quickly failed; new lows appeared.   ESHs tumbled until 15:32 ET.  ESHs jumped 17 handles in 11 minutes on the last-hour manipulation.   But that was it.  ESHs retreated into the close.   USH opened sharply higher at the Nikkei open and then gradually rescinded most of the rally by the Nikkei close at 1 ET.  The ensuing rally took USHs to a high of 129 13/32 (+1 2/32) at 9:27 ET.  USHs then traded sideways in a 17/32 range until then broke lower at 13:00 ET.  USHs sank in concert with ESHs in the afternoon.  USHs bottomed at 14:25 ET, but the bounce was modest.   Yahoo to lay off more than 20% of staff as it shrinks ad biz https://www.axios.com/2023/02/09/yahoo-layoffs-2023-tech-media-companies   Positive aspects of previous session ESHs rallied from early Nikkei trading until peaking near 6 ET Fangs rallied on Tesla and retail day trading Commodities sank, except copper   Negative aspects of previous session Google suffered its largest 2-day loss (-12.6% at low) since Lehman Stocks declined sharply The S&P 500 Index closed below 4100 USHs rallies as much as 1 2/32; but they eventually tumbled to -18/32 due to a poor 30-yr auction   Ambiguous aspects of previous session It appeared that defensive asset allocation appeared early in the session   First Hour/Last Hour Action [S&P 500 Index]: 1st Hour from NYSE open: Down; Last Hour: Down   Pivot Point for S&P 500 Index [above/below indicates daily trend to traders]: 4102.50 Previous session High/Low: 4156.23; 4069.67   U.S. to ‘explore’ punishing China over spy balloon, official says “High resolution imagery from U-2 flybys revealed that the high-altitude balloon was capable of conducting signals intelligence collection operations… multiple antennas to include an array likely capable of collecting and geo-locating communications.” The solar panels were large enough to power that kind of intelligence activity, the official noted… https://www.yahoo.com/news/u-explore-punishing-china-over-144500575.html   U.S. says may target Chinese entities linked to spy balloon’s incursion “The United States will also explore taking action against PRC entities linked to the PLA that supported the balloon’s incursion into U.S. airspace,” a senior State Department official said in a statement.    “We are confident that the balloon manufacturer has a direct relationship with China’s military and is an approved vendor of the PLA, according to information published in an official procurement portal for the PLA,”… https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-says-may-target-chinese-entities-linked-spy-balloons-incursion-2023-02-09/   @AndrewDesiderio: (Dem) Sen. Tester at defense appropriations subcommittee hearing on China balloon says “this administration owes America answers” on what happened last week and steps being taken to make sure it doesn’t happen again…”    Tester asks if the U.S. knew what China was trying to collect when the balloon entered our airspace. The witnesses won’t answer the question, and Tester is not happy.  Tester: “If we waited to shoot this one down over water, why didn’t we shoot the others down over water?”  “Either this is no big deal in the military’s eyes…or there’s not a consistent plan on how to deal with it.”…     Tester is pissed: “I don’t want a damn balloon going over the United States when we could’ve taken it down over the Aleutian Islands… I’ve got a problem with a Chinese balloon flying over my state, much less the rest of the country.”…    Sen. Murkowski: “As an Alaskan, I am so angry. I want to use other words. But I’m not going to. The fact of the matter is, Alaska is the first line of defense for America… It’s like this administration doesn’t think that Alaska is any part of the rest of the country!”    “It seems to me the clear message to China is, ‘we got free range in Alaska, because they’re going to let us cruise over that before it gets to more sensitive areas.’”     Tester: “To know absolutely that this was of no military threat — boy, I want to hear more about that in classified session. Because I’m not sure that you can say that unequivocally.”   China Balloon – A Layered Scandal To start with, China just tested Joe Biden, and he failed… We’re told only that “debris” might hurt someone, or that it was innocuous, and hence no need for action. These were tenuous, if not false, excuses for inaction. Debris would have been minimal and could be engineered into empty spaces. Satellites see things, but a spy balloon 100 times closer sees more…    This leads to the next hard-to-believe deflection. Biden’s team says the Chinese balloons Trump did not shoot down were only discovered after he left office. What?  Yes, they say it happened then but was only “discovered after” Trump left, which is probably why no one had heard about it. This is hard to credit. Are we to believe that NORAD’s 24/7 operations center was asleep – that China dared cross Trump, and we only saw the spy balloons after reviewing the tape?… https://www.realclearwire.com/articles/2023/02/06/china_balloon__a_layered_scandal__148823.html   Berkshire Hathaway sells $138.9 mln of shares in China’s BYD The sale on February 3 lowered Berkshire’s holdings in BYD’s issued H-shares to 11.87% from 12.26%, the filing to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Thursday showed…  https://t.co/VARL8f2uJY   Fed Balance Sheet: +$1.759B  https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h41/20230209/   Today – From Thursday’s report: After a robust rally, with historic January gains for Nasdaq and Fangs, the US stock market is reluctantly adjusting to a new reality in the US interest rate markets… No Fed officials are scheduled to speak today, trapped bulls & permabulls are likely to try to force stocks higher.    Stock and bond traders bought stuff before the NYSE open.  However, organic sellers unloaded stocks and bonds during the remainder of the session.  The adjustment to the reality of higher fed fund rates this year will persist for a while.  Bonds started the adjustment sooner because Street traders are highly leveraged and when the cost to carry unexpectedly jumps higher, levered traders must adjust quickly.   If stocks are soft in the morning or at midday, be alert for the traditional Friday afternoon rally – especially on Fridays before expiry week.  ESHs are +1.50 at 20:30 ET.    Expected economic data: Feb UM Sentiment 65, Current Conditions 68, Expectations 63, 1-year inflation 4.0%; Jan Monthly Budget -$55.0B   S&P 500 Index 50-day MA: 3966; 100-day MA: 3880; 150-day MA: 3934; 200-day MA: 3945 DJIA 50-day MA: 33,649; 100-day MA: 32,554; 150-day MA: 32,448; 200-day MA: 32,326   S&P 500 Index – Trender trading model and MACD for key time frames Monthly: Trender and MACD are negative – a close above 4514.50 triggers a buy signal Weekly: Trender and MACD are positive – a close below 3779.77 triggers a sell signal Daily: Trender and MACD are positive – a close below 4037.43 triggers a sell signal Hourly: Trender and MACD are negative – a close above 4127.82 triggers a buy signal   @RNCResearch: Sen. @ChuckGrassley: Whistleblower disclosures “make clear the FBI has within its possession very significant, impactful & voluminous evidence with respect to potential criminal conduct by Hunter and James Biden. These disclosures also allege that Joe Biden was aware.” https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1623746129727741953    “I’ve ran countless investigations. In the past few years, I’ve never seen so much effort from the FBI, the partisan media, and some of my Democrat colleagues to interfere with and undermine very legitimate congressional inquiries.”  https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1623743322605907968   CBS: The House Oversight panel officially requested records from President Biden’s son, Hunter, and brother, James.  https://t.co/ISWAdLBowh   Hunter Biden proposed his firm’s office space with ‘separate entrance’ for new hire of Beijing-backed firm https://t.co/hAPcXqwyD2   The Democratic litany of Hunter Biden’s laptop lies https://nypost.com/2023/02/08/the-democratic-litany-of-hunter-bidens-laptop-lies/   @paulsperry_: The WH is making reporters hunt for actual transcripts of Biden speeches on site, and featuring only the “as prepared for delivery” version, b/c the actual transcripts contain an embarrassing # of [sic]’s and strike-through[correction]’s including at least 10 in his SToU   Elon Musk touts Twitter execs getting grilled by House GOP: ‘The Woke Stasi felt the heat today’ https://www.foxnews.com/media/elon-musk-touts-twitter-execs-getting-grilled-house-gop-woke-stasi-felt-heat-today   Whistleblower reveals FBI tried to open criminal cases on 140 people just for taking bus to J6 rally Veteran FBI intelligence analyst’s testimony raises civil liberty concerns about acquisition of bank records, possible undercovers at U.S. Capitol… agents in Boston were improperly pressured by Washington to open criminal cases on 140 people who had simply taken a bus ride to the Jan. 6 rally in Washington. The agents refused because there was no evidence the attendees engaged in any criminality, the whistleblower said… Hill said supervisors in the Washington field office pressured to open cases, first on seven individuals who came up in a sweep of bank records provided by Bank of America…    “I appreciate this brave whistleblower coming forward,” Jordan said in an interview. “He’s worked in the military and then as an FBI agent. And he gave us a lot of valuable information that will be the foundation for our weaponization investigation going forward.”…    Hill said he was told the banks provided the FBI with the records they mined. “Nobody asked for it,” he claimed. “It was totally voluntary.”    Hill also told the committee about concerns he developed when the Washington field office refused to let its colleagues in Boston review surveillance video from the Capitol to see if any of the 140 attendees had committed crimes. The answer he got back raised concerns about whether the FBI had undercovers — or informants — at the site, he said… And the comeback then is ‘There may be identities within that footage that we need to protect.’… https://justthenews.com/accountability/whistleblowers/new-whistleblower-says-fbi-tried-open-criminal-cases-140-people-just   @julie_kelly2: FBI whistleblower told @jsolomonReports Washington FBI office (run by D’Antuono, he of Whitmer fednapping hoax) told Boston FBI office they didn’t want to share surveillance video for fear of exposing involvement of FBI informants.   FBI whistleblower raises fresh concerns about bank record mining, undercover agents in J6 probe Veteran FBI intelligence analyst’s testimony raises civil liberty concerns about acquisition of bank records, possible undercovers at U.S. Capitol. https://justthenews.com/accountability/whistleblowers/new-whistleblower-says-fbi-tried-open-criminal-cases-140-people-just   @paulsperry_: Fired Twitter censor James Baker just testified he was hired at Twitter by Sean Edgett, whom records show formerly worked for Latham & Watkins–the same law firm that employs Hunter Biden’s attorney Chris Clark, who is defending him against incriminating laptop evidence   Ex-DNI @RichardGrenell: I haven’t seen @DanaBashCNN report on today’s Congressional hearing highlighting the fake story that Hunter’s laptop was Russian disinformation 3 weeks before the Presidential election of 2020.  Do you think it’s because her husband signed the letter interfering in the election?   Gov watchdog finds multiple ‘acting’ Biden admin officials in positions unlawfully The Government Accountability Office found that Deidre Harrison, the acting controller at the Office of Management and Budget; Allison Randall, the acting director of the Department of Justice’s Office of Violence Against Women; and Charlotte A. Dye, the acting general counsel at the Federal Labor Relations Authority were all in violation of the 1998 Federal Vacancies Reform Act… https://t.co/Qn5DWcQUD9   GOP Rep Gaetz introduces resolution to end military and financial aid to Ukraine, urge peace deal The resolution lists the enormous amount of equipment that the U.S. has provided to the country since the beginning of the conflict. It also cites Pentagon officials who have said the munitions have “severely depleted United States stockpiles, weakening United States readiness in the event of conflict.”…    “America is in a state of managed decline, and it will exacerbate if we continue to hemorrhage taxpayer dollars toward a foreign war,” he said. We must suspend all foreign aid for the War in Ukraine and demand that all combatants in this conflict reach a peace agreement immediately.”…    “How much more for Ukraine? Is there any limit?” he asked on the House floor. “Which billionth dollar really kicks in the door? Which redline we set will we not later cross?”… https://www.foxnews.com/politics/gaetz-introduces-resolution-end-military-financial-aid-ukraine-urge-peace-deal   @SteveGuest: Sen. Ted Cruz blasts Biden judicial nominee Dale Ho who described himself as a “wild-eyed leftist” who was motivated by his hatred of conservatives: “That’s the kind of radicals who this administration is nominating… That is not the kind of person that should be a federal judge.” https://twitter.com/SteveGuest/status/1623711057461084160   Can you image the outrage if a conservative nominated for a federal judgeship said he or she was motivated by their hatred of liberals?   Ann Coulter: State of the Union Highlights Reel FUNNIEST DEMOCRATIC BASE SUCK-UP: “I met a young woman named Saria, who is here tonight. For 30 years … she’d been a proud member of Ironworkers Local 44 …”  Good for Saria, but 95% of ironworkers are men. Democrats, can’t you ever give it a rest? …     WORST ADVERTISEMENT FOR BIG PHARMA: Maybe ease up on the Adderall, Mr. President. Biden was like the Energizer bunny on crack, one moment curing cancer and the next talking about airline luggage fees…    MOST ADORABLE ATTEMPT TO BLAME LIBERAL INSANITY ON JAN. 6: Plagiarizing this part of his speech from MSNBC, Biden claimed that a druggie’s hammer attack on Paul Pelosi was inspired by Jan. 6…  https://anncoulter.substack.com/p/state-of-the-union-highlights-reel   GOP Sen. @ScottforFlorida: Welcome to Florida, @Joebiden. Since you can’t stop talking about me and lying to Floridians about Social Security and Medicare, I’m sure you’ll accept my invitation to debate the issue. I’ll be back in Florida tonight. You pick the time and place.   FBI suffers fresh bias episode, retracts intel memo portraying Catholics as extremist threats The episode is the latest to sully the FBI’s reputation, raising fresh concerns about political bias and civil liberties… The memo… suggested that Catholics who prefer to celebrate Mass in the traditional Latin language posed a risk of white supremacism and violence…    The abrupt reversal by the FBI comes as the House and majority Republicans announced plan to investigate concerns that pro-life Catholics have been targeted by law enforcement for unfair investigations, an allegation the FBI denies. https://justthenews.com/accountability/fbi-suffers-fresh-bias-episode-retracts-intel-memo-portraying-catholics-extremist   FBI HQ disavows FBI field office intel report targeting ‘Radical Traditionalist Catholics’ https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/justice/fbi-hq-disavows-fbi-field-office-intel-report-radical-traditionalist-catholics   Bill Gates claims his private jet habit ‘not part of’ climate problem  https://trib.al/dkZ8Knu

GREG HUNTER REPORT//

I am repeating this important interview in case you missed it yesterday

Greg Hunter 

State of Inflation, NYT Propaganda Prepare for Crash

State of Inflation, NYT Propaganda Prepare for Crash

By Greg Hunter On February 10, 2023 In Weekly News Wrap-Ups9 Comments

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com (WNW 568 2.10.23)

Vice President Biden gave the annual State of the Union address, and it might as well have been called the State of Inflation address. The ideas presented by Biden spell big inflation and bigger debts. This is not to mention the fact of how out of touch the government seems to be with China, nuclear war with Russia and an ongoing CV19 vax genocide. Let’s pretend everything is great, and the Biden Administration is totally in control—NOT.

The Lying Legacy Media (LLM) has officially turned into a propaganda arm of the New World Order Freedom Hating Democrats. For proof, look no further than the propaganda piece attacking alternative media as spreaders of “misinformation.” This from the organization that told us the Huge lie that President Trump was a Russian asset, and they did this for years!! Same with the incriminating Hunter Biden laptop that the New York Times said was Russian disinformation—Yet, another huge lie in a sea of lies and propaganda. The NYT and the rest of the LLM will never recover from the “safe and effective” claims of the CV19 bioweapon/vax that was pushed day and night 24/7 and is still being pushed. Dr. Paul Craig Roberts has some important news on the CV19 vax too.

The economy is tanking, and the Fed is going to continue to raise interest rates for now. Companies are laying people off by the thousands, and the Fed is perplexed over the Saudis moving away from the U.S. dollar in oil trade. The dollar is not going to fall all at once from the world reserve currency perch, but the decline has started. Can the Fed hold up the value of the dollar with 2% interest rates? Of course, the answer is NO.

Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com for these stories and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up for 2.10.23.

(https://usawatchdog.com/state-of-inflation-nyt-propaganda-prepare-for-crash/)

(Tech Note: If you do not see the video, know it is there. Unplug your modem and plug it back in after 30 sec.  This will clear codes that may be blocking you from seeing it.  In addition, try different browsers.  Also, turn off all ad blockers if you have them. All the above is a way to censor people like USAWatchdog.com.)

After the Wrap-Up

Book author and financial analyst John Rubino will be the guest for the Saturday Night Post.
Rubino sees dark things coming for the economy, including a “death spiral.” He will explain on Saturday.

I will see you tomorrow

Harvey