JAN 19//GOLD CLOSED UP $8.15 TO $2027.00//SILVER WAS DOWN $0.11 TO $22.59//PLATINUM WAS DOWN $7.50 TO $901.00 WHILE PALLADIUM WAS DOWN $3.00 TO $941.75//IMPORTANT GOLD COMMENTARY TODAY FROM SCHIFF GOLD//GREAT PODCAST FROM ANDREW MAGUIRE AND ALASDAIR MACLEOD: LIVE FROM THE VAULT//UPDATES ON ISRAEL VS HAMAS///WEST BANK UPDATES//HOUTHIS AGAINST USA AND OTHER SHIPPERS//SWEDEN AND ECUADOR COUNTRIES IN A TOTAL MESS//COVID UPDATES/VACCINE INJURY UPDATES/DR PAUL ALEXANDER/SLAY NEWS//USA DATA RELEASE: U. OF MICHIGAN SURVEY PLUNGES//REVERSE REPO POOL MONEY DECLINES AGAIN AS DOES FED’S BAILOUT FACILITY//SWAMP STORIES FOR YOU TONIGHT///
Beginning Monday, April 1, 2024, CME Group settlement data will no longer be accessible through ftp.cmegroup.com and will have a delayed publication time of 12:00 a.m. CT on all cmegroup.com web pages. Learn about alternate ways to access the data in our FAQ.
363 H WELLS FARGO SEC 55 435 H SCOTIA CAPITAL 301 657 C MORGAN STANLEY 1 661 C JP MORGAN 1060 620 685 C RJ OBRIEN 30 686 C STONEX FINANCIA 3 737 C ADVANTAGE 28 21 880 H CITIGROUP 829
TOTAL: 1,474 1,474 MONTH TO DATE: 5,933
JPMorgan stopped 620/1478 contracts.
FOR JAN.:
GOLD: NUMBER OF NOTICES FILED FOR JAN/2024. CONTRACT: 1474 NOTICES FOR 147,400 OZ or 4.584 TONNES
total notices so far: 5923 contracts for 592,300 oz (18.454 tonnes)
FOR JANUARY:
SILVER NOTICES 2 NOTICE(S) FILED FOR 10,000 OZ/
total number of notices filed so far this month : 780 for 3,900,000 oz
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END
BOTH GLD AND SLV ARE FRAUDULENT VEHICLES
GLD
WITH GOLD UP $8.15
INVESTORS SWITCHING TO SPROTT PHYSICAL (PHYS) INSTEAD OF THE FRAUDULENT GLD/ : /NO CHANGES AT THE GLD:
INVENTORY RESTS AT 862.10 TONNES
SLV//
WITH NO SILVER AROUND AND SILVER DOWN 11 CENTS AT THE SLV//
HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A WITHDRAWAL OF 458,000 OZ OUT OF THE SLV/
INVESTORS ARE SWITCHING SLV TO SPROTT’S PSLV.
CLOSING INVENTORY: 432.493 MILLION OZ
Let us have a look at the data for today
SILVER//OUTLINE
SILVER COMEX OI ROSE BY A HUGE SIZED 840 CONTRACTS TO 133,243 AND CLOSER TO THE RECORD HIGH OI OF 244,710, SET FEB 25/2020 AND THIS GOOD SIZED GAIN IN COMEX OI WAS ACCOMPLISHED DESPITE OUR GAIN OF $0.13 IN SILVER PRICING AT THE COMEX ON THURSDAY. WE HAD A ZERO LONG LIQUIDATION, AND MAJOR SPEC SHORT COVERING BUT AT HIGHER PRICES. WE HAD CONSIDERABLE T.A.S. LIQUIDATION AT THE COMEX SESSION. WE HAD A GOOD 410 T.A.S ISSUANCE AND THESE WILL BE USED FOR MANIPULATION LATER THIS MONTH/AS WELL AS TODAY.
CRAIG HEMKE HAS POINTED OUT THAT THE CROOKS USE THE MID MONTH FOR MANIPULATION AS THEY SELL THEIR BUY SIDE OF THE CALENDAR SPREAD FIRST AND THEN KEEP THE SELL SIDE TO LIQUIDATE AT A LATER DATE. THUS WE HAVE TWO VEHICLES THE CROOKS USE FOR MANIPULATION AND BOTH ARE SPREADERS: 1) AT MONTH’S END/SPREADERS COMEX AND 2/ TAS SPREADERS, MID MONTH. TOTAL TAS ISSUED ON THURSDAY NIGHT: 410CONTRACTS. DESPITE MANY COMPLAINTS THAT THE CROOKS HAVE VIOLATED POSITION LIMITS DUE TO THE FACT THAT THE TAS ISSUED HAVE A VALUE OF ZERO (AS TO POSITION LIMITS FOR OUR CROOKED BANKERS). THE PROBLEM OF COURSE IS THAT THE CROOKS DO NOT LIQUIDATE THE TAS TOGETHER BUT SELL THE BUY SIDE FIRST AND THEN LIQUIDATE THE SELL SIDE TWO MONTHS HENCE. IT IS OBVIOUS MANIPULATION TO THE HIGHEST DEGREE BUT IT NATURALLY FELL ON DEAF EARS WITH OUR REGULATORS (OCC) WHEN THEY RECEIVED OUR COMPLAINTS. IT THUS LOOKS LIKE THE FED (GOV’T) IS BEHIND ALL OF THESE TRADES.
WE HAVE NOW SET ANOTHER RECORD LOW AT 114,102 CONTRACTS ///JULY 3.2023// OUR BANKERS WITH THE HELP OF SPECULATORS AND HIGH FREQUENCY TRADERS WERE UNSUCCESSFUL IN KNOCKING THE PRICE OF SILVER DOWN (IT ROSE BY $0.13), AND WERE UNSUCCESSFUL IN KNOCKING ANY SILVER LONGS AS WE HAD A HUGE 1549 CONTRACT GAIN ON OUR TWO EXCHANGES..
WE MUST HAVE HAD:
A STRONG SIZED 600 ISSUANCE OF EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICALS) iiii) AN INITIAL SILVER STANDING FOR COMEX SILVER MEASURING AT 6.650 MILLION OZ (FIRST DAY NOTICE) FOLLOWED BY TODAY’S NIL OZ QUEUE. JUMP NEW TOTALS 6.5525 MILLION OZ//
//NEW STANDING FOR SILVER IS THUS 6.5525 MILLION OZ
//HUGE SIZED COMEX OI GAIN/STRONG SIZED EFP ISSUANCE/ VI) GOOD SIZED NUMBER OF T.A.S. CONTRACT ISSUANCE 410 CONTRACTS)/
I AM NOW RECORDING THE DIFFERENTIAL IN OI FROM PRELIMINARY TO FINAL -REMOVED 109CONTRACTS //
HISTORICAL ACCUMULATION OF EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICALS JAN ACCUMULATION FOR EFP’S SILVER/JPMORGAN’S HOUSE OF BRIBES/STARTING FROM FIRST DAY/MONTH OF JAN
TOTAL CONTRACTS for 13 days, total 9822 contracts: OR 49.110 MILLION OZ (755 CONTRACTS PER DAY)
TOTAL EFP’S FOR THE MONTH SO FAR: 49.110MILLION OZ
LAST 23 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
YEAR 2022:
JAN 2022-DEC 2022
JAN 2022// 90.460 MILLION OZ
FEB 2022: 72.39 MILLION OZ//
MARCH 2022: 207.140 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
TOTALS YR 2022: 1135.767 MILLION OZ (1.1356 BILLION OZ)
JAN 2023/// 53.070 MILLION OZ //FINAL
FEB: 2023: 100.105 MILLION OZ/FINAL//MUCH STRONGER ISSUANCE VS THE LATTER TWO MONTHS.
MARCH 2023: 112.58 MILLION OZ//FINAL//STRONG ISSUANCE
APRIL 118.035 MILLION OZ(SLIGHTLY GREATER THAN THAN LAST MONTH)
MAY 66.120 MILLION OZ/INITIAL (MUCH SMALLER THIS MONTH)
JUNE: 110.395 MILLION OZ//MUCH LARGER THAN LAST MONTH
JULY 85.745 MILLION OZ (SMALLER THAN LAST MONTH)
AUGUST: 171.43 MILLION OZ (THIS MONTH IS GOING TO BE HUGE //2ND HIGHEST ON RECORD
SEPT: 72.705 MILLION OZ (SMALLER THIS MONTH)
OCT: 97.455 MILLION OZ
NOV. 50.050 MILLION OZ
DEC. 66.140 MILLION OZ//
TOTAL 2023: 1,104.10 MILLION OZ/
JAN ’24: 49.110 MILLION OZ//WILL BE A VERY STRONG MONTH FOR ISSUANCE
RESULT: WE HAD A HUGE SIZED INCREASE IN COMEX OI SILVER COMEX CONTRACTS OF 840CONTRACTS DESPITE OUR GAININ PRICE OF SILVER PRICING AT THE COMEX//THURSDAY.,. THE CME NOTIFIED US THAT WE HAD A STRONG EFP ISSUANCE CONTRACTS: 600 ISSUED FOR FEB 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 JAN. OF 6.665 MILLION OZ FOLLOWED BY TODAY’S ZIL OZ QUEUE JUMP //NEW TOTAL 5.525 MILLION OZ TO WHICH WE ADD EX. FOR RISK ISSUANCE/PRIOR FOR 1.0 MILLION OZ //NEW TOTALS; 6.525 MILLION OZ/
NEW STANDING 6.525 million OZ /// WE HAVE A HUGE SIZED GAIN OF 1440OI CONTRACTS ON THE TWO EXCHANGES WITH THE GAIN IN PRICE. THE TOTAL OF TAS INITIATED CONTRACTS TODAY: A GOOD SIZED 410CONTRACTS//HUGE FRONT END OF THE TAS CONTRACTS WERE LIQUIDATED DURING THE THURSDAY COMEX SESSION/RAID// WITH CONSIDERABLE SHORT COVERINGS FROM OUR SPEC SHORTS BUT AT HIGHER PRICES.. THE NEW TAS ISSUANCE THURSDAY NIGHT (410) WILL BE PUT INTO “THE BANK” TO BE COLLUSIVELY USED AT A LATER DATE//PROBABLY TODAY., .
WE HAD 2 NOTICE(S) FILED TODAY FOR 10,000 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 STRONG SIZED 7456 CONTRACTS TO 474,472 AND FURTHER FROM THE RECORD (SET JAN 24/2020) AT 799,733 AND PREVIOUS TO THAT: (SET JAN 6/2020) AT 797,110.
THE DIFFERENTIAL FROM PRELIMINARY OI TO FINAL OI IN GOLD TODAY: – removed 125 CONTRACTS
WE HAD A STRONG SIZED DECREASE IN COMEX OI ( 7,456 CONTRACTS) DESPITE OUR $14.85 GAININ PRICE//THURSDAY. WE ALSO HAD A RATHER STRONG INITIAL STANDING IN GOLD TONNAGE FOR JAN. AT 8.214 TONNES ON FIRST DAY NOTICE FOLLOWED BY TODAY’S HUGE 145,800 OZ QUEUE JUMP//NEW STANDING: 18.497 TONNES // ALL OF THIS HAPPENED WITH OUR $14.85 GAIN IN PRICE WITH RESPECT TO THURSDAY’S TRADING. WE HAD A GOOD SIZED LOSS OF 4,204 OI CONTRACTS (13.076)PAPER TONNES) ON OUR TWO EXCHANGES.
E.F.P. ISSUANCE
THE CME RELEASED THE DATA FOR EFP ISSUANCE AND IT TOTALED A FAIR SIZED 3252CONTRACTS:
The NEW COMEX OI FOR THE GOLD COMPLEX RESTS AT 474,472
IN ESSENCE WE HAVE A GOOD SIZED DECREASE IN TOTAL CONTRACTS ON THE TWO EXCHANGES OF 4204 CONTRACTS WITH 7,456 CONTRACTS DECREASED AT THE COMEX// AND A FAIR SIZED 3252EFP OI CONTRACTS WHICH NAVIGATED OVER TO LONDON. THUS TOTAL OI LOSS ON THE TWO EXCHANGES OF 4204 CONTRACTS.. WE HAD THE FOLLOWING TAS CONTRACTS INITIATED (ISSUED): A FAIR SIZED 1490CONTRACTS.
CALCULATIONS ON GAIN/LOSS ON OUR TWO EXCHANGES
WE HAD A FAIR SIZED ISSUANCE IN EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICALS (3252CONTRACTS) ACCOMPANYING THE STRONG SIZED LOSS IN COMEX OI (7456) //TOTAL LOSS FOR OUR THE TWO EXCHANGES: 4204 CONTRACTS. WE HAVE ( 1) NOW RETURNED TO OUR FORMER FORMAT OF BANKERS GOING LONG AND SPECULATORS GOING SHORT ,2.) STRONG INITIAL STANDING AT THE GOLD COMEX FOR JAN AT 8.214 TONNES FOLLOWED BY TODAY’S 145,800 OZ QUEUE JUMP//NEW STANDING 18.497 TONNES. / 3) SOME LONG LIQUIDATION AND CONSIDERABLE TAS LIQUIDATION WITH MAJOR SHORT COVERINGS BUT AT HIGHER PRICES.// 4) STRONG SIZED COMEX OPEN INTEREST LOSS/ 5) FAIR ISSUANCE OF EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICAL PAPER///6: FAIR T.A.S. ISSUANCE: 1490CONTRACTS
HISTORICAL ACCUMULATION OF EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICALS IN 2023-2024 INCLUDING TODAY
JAN.
ACCUMULATION OF EFP’S GOLD AT J.P. MORGAN’S HOUSE OF BRIBES: (EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICAL) FOR THE MONTH OF JAN. :
TOTAL EFP CONTRACTS ISSUED: 47,757 CONTRACTS OR 4,775,700OZ OR 148,54 TONNES IN 13 TRADING DAY(S) AND THUS AVERAGING: 3674 EFP CONTRACTS PER TRADING DAY
TO GIVE YOU AN IDEA AS TO THE SIZE OF THESE EFP TRANSFERS : THIS MONTH IN 13 TRADING DAY(S) IN TONNES 148.54 TONNES
TOTAL ANNUAL GOLD PRODUCTION, 2022, THROUGHOUT THE WORLD EX CHINA EX RUSSIA: 3555 TONNES
THUS EFP TRANSFERS REPRESENTS 148.54/3550 x 100% TONNES 4.19% OF GLOBAL ANNUAL PRODUCTION
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//
TOTALS: 2,578.08 TONNES/2021
JAN:2022 247.25 TONNES //FINAL
FEB: 196.04 TONNES//FINAL
MARCH/2022: 409.30 TONNES //FINAL( 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
TOTAL: 2,847,25 TONNES/2022
JAN 2023: 228.49 TONNES FINAL//HUGE AMOUNT OF EFP’S ISSUED THIS MONTH!!
FEB: 151.61 TONNES/FINAL
MARCH: 280.09 TONNES/INITIAL (ANOTHER STRONG MONTH FOR EFP ISSUANCE)
APRIL: 197.42 TONNES
MAY: 236.67 TONNES (A VERY STRONG ISSUANCE FOR THIS MONTH)
JUNE: 172.667 TONNES (WEAKER ISSUANCE THIS MONTH)
JULY: 151.69 TONNES (WEAKER THAN LAST MONTH)
AUGUST: 195.28 TONNES (A STRONGER MONTH)//FINAL
SEPT: 254.709 TONNES (WILL BE LARGER THAN LAST MONTH AND A STRONG MONTH)
OCT. 248.09 TONNES. LIKE SILVER, THIS MONTH IS GOING TO BE A STRONG E.F.P. ISSUANCE.
NOV. 239.16 TONNES//WILL BE STRONG THIS MONTH,
DEC. 213.704 TONNES. A STRONG MONTH//
TOTAL FOR YEAR 2023: 2,569.57 TONNES VS 2578 TONNES LAST YEAR
JAN ’24: 148.54 TONNES (WILL EQUAL LAST MONTH’S ISSUANCE OR A LITTLE GREATER)
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 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 NOV HEADING TOWARDS THE ACTIVE DELIVERY MONTH OF FEB., FOR GOLD: AND MARCH FOR SILVER
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 (FEB), 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.
The crooks also use the spread in the TAS account (trade at settlement). They buy the spot TAS (e.g. June) and sell the future TAS two months out (e.g. August). Then they unload the front month (i.e. unload the buy side first so the price of gold/silver falls. This occurs in the middle of the front delivery month cycle. They unload the sell side of the equation, two months down the road. The crooks violate position limits as the OCC refuse to hear our complaints.
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 HUGE SIZED 840CONTRACTS OI TO 133,243 AND CLOSER TO THE 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. HOWEVER WE HAVE NOW SET A NEW RECORD LOW OF 114,102 CONTRACTS JULY 3.2023
EFP ISSUANCE 600 CONTRACTS
OUR CUSTOMARY MIGRATION OF COMEX LONGS CONTINUE TO MORPH INTO LONDON FORWARDS AS OUR BANKERS USED THEIR EMERGENCY PROCEDURE TO ISSUE:
MARCH 600 and ALL OTHER MONTHS: ZERO. TOTAL EFP ISSUANCE: 600 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 840 CONTRACTS AND ADD TO THE 600 OI TRANSFERRED TO LONDON THROUGH EFP’S,
WE OBTAIN A HUMONGOUS SIZED GAIN OF OPEN INTEREST CONTRACTS FROM OUR TWO EXCHANGES OF 1440CONTRACTS
THUS IN OUNCES, THE GAIN ON THE TWO EXCHANGES TOTAL 7.240 MILLION OZ
c) Commentaries from: Egon von Greyerz///Matthew Piepenburg via GoldSwitzerland.com, Pam and Russ Martens
ii a) Chris Powell of GATA provides to us very important physical commentaries
b. Other gold/silver commentaries
c. Commodity commentaries//
d)/CRYPTOCURRENCIES/BITCOIN ETC
2.ASIAN AFFAIRS//
FRIDAY MORNING/THURSDAY NIGHT
SHANGHAI CLOSED DOWN 13.50 PTS OR 0.47% //Hang Seng CLOSED DOWN 83.10 PTS OR 0.54% /The Nikkei CLOSED UP 497.10 OR 1.40% //Australia’s all ordinaries CLOSED UP 1.01% /Chinese yuan (ONSHORE) closed UP AT 7.1915 /OFFSHORE CHINESE YUAN CLOSED UP TO 7.2026 /Oil UP TO 74.06 dollars per barrel for WTI and BRENT UP AT 78.93/ Stocks in Europe OPENED MOSTLY ALL GREEN// ONSHORE YUAN TRADING ABOVE LEVEL OF OFFSHORE YUAN/ONSHORE YUAN TRADING STRONGER AGAINST US DOLLAR/OFFSHORE STRONGER
1. COMEX DATA//AMOUNTS STANDING//VOLUME OF TRADING/INVENTORY MOVEMENTS
GOLD
LET US BEGIN:
THE TOTAL COMEX GOLD OPEN INTEREST FELL BY A STRONG SIZED 7,456 CONTRACTS TO 474,472 DESPITE OUR GAIN IN PRICE OF $14.85 WITH RESPECT TO THURSDAY TRADING. WE MUST HAVE SOME LONG SPEC LIQUIDATIONS IN THE COMEX SESSION WITH HUGE SPEC SHORT COVERINGS AT THE HIGHER PRICES.
EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICAL ISSUANCE
WE ARE NOW IN THE NON ACTIVE DELIVERY MONTH OF JAN..… 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 3252 EFP CONTRACTS WERE ISSUED: : FEB 3252 & ZERO FOR ALL OTHER MONTHS:
TOTAL EFP ISSUANCE: 3252CONTRACTS
ON A NET BASIS IN OPEN INTEREST WE LOST THE FOLLOWING TODAY ON OUR TWO EXCHANGES: A GOOD SIZED TOTAL OF 4204 CONTRACTS IN THAT 3252 LONGS WERE TRANSFERRED AS FORWARDS TO LONDON AND WE HAD A STRONG LOSS OF 7456 COMEX CONTRACTS..AND THIS GOOD SIZED LOSS ON OUR TWO EXCHANGES HAPPENED DESPITE OUR GAIN IN PRICE OF $14.85 THURSDAY COMEX. AS PER OUR NEWBIE TRADE AT SETTLEMENT (TAS) MANIPULATION OPERATION (WHICH CRAIG HEMKE HAS POINTED OUT HAPPENS DURING MID MONTH IN THE DELIVERY CYCLE), THE CME REPORTS THAT THE TOTAL T.A.S. ISSUANCE FOR THURSDAY NIGHT WAS A FAIR SIZED 1,490 CONTRACTS. THROUGHOUT THE PAST SEVERAL WEEKS, THE BANKERS SOLD OFF THE LONG SIDE OF THE SPREAD WHICH OF COURSE CONTINUES TO MANIPULATE THE PRICE OF GOLD SOUTHBOUND. (THEY KEEP THE SHORT SIDE OF THE CALENDAR/T.A.S. SPREAD WHICH WILL BE LIQUIDATED IN DAYS HENCE//.
// WE HAVE A STRONG AMOUNT OF GOLD TONNAGE STANDING: JAN (18.497 TONNES) ( NON ACTIVE MONTH)
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. 64.000 tonnes
(TOTAL YEAR 656.076 TONNES)
2023:
JAN/2023: 20.559 tonnes
FEB 2023: 47.744 tonnes
MAR: 19.0637 TONNES
APRIL: 75.676 tonnes
MAY: 19.094 TONNES + 1.244 tonnes of exchange for risk = 20.338
JUNE: 64.354 TONNES
JULY: 10.2861 TONNES
AUGUST: 38.855 TONNES(INCLUDING .6842 EXCHANGE FOR RISK)
SEPT: 15.281 TONNES FINAL
OCT. 35.869 TONNES + 1.665 EXCHANGE FOR RISK =37.0355 tonnes
DEC. 47.073 + 4.634 TONNES OF EXCHANGE FOR RISK = 51.707TONNES
TOTAL 2023 YEAR : 436.546 TONNES
JAN ’24. 18.497 TONNES
THE SPECS/HFT WERE UNSUCCESSFUL IN LOWERING GOLD’S PRICE( IT GAINED $14.85) //// BUT WERE SUCCESSFUL IN KNOCKING SOME SPECULATOR LONGS AS WE HAD A GOOD SIZED LOSS OF 4204TOTAL CONTRACTS ON OUR TWO EXCHANGES. WE HAD A STRONG T.A.S. LIQUIDATION ON THE FRONT END OF THURSDAY’S TRADING . THE T.A.S. ISSUED ON THURSDAY NIGHT, WILL BE “PUT INTO THE BANK” TO BE USED AT A LATER DATE AT THE COLLUSIVE CHOOSING OF OUR BANKERS. WE ALSO EXPERIENCED CONSIDERABLE SPECULATOR SHORT COVERING BUT AT HIGHER PRICES.
WE HAVE LOST A TOTAL OI OF 13.076PAPER TONNES FROM OUR TWO EXCHANGES, ACCOMPANYING OUR INITIAL GOLD TONNAGE STANDING FOR JAN. (8,214 TONNES) ON FIRST DAY NOTICE FOLLOWED BY TODAY’S 145,800 OZ QUEUE JUMP (4.538 TONNES): NEW TOTAL STANDING 18.497 TONNES/ ALL OF THIS WAS ACCOMPLISHED WITH OUR GAIN IN PRICE TO THE TUNE OF $14.85
WE HAD – REMOVED 125 CONTRACTS TO THE COMEX TRADES TO OPEN INTEREST (CROOKS)
NET LOSS ON THE TWO EXCHANGES 4204 CONTRACTS OR 420,400 OZ OR 13.076 TONNES.
Total monthly oz gold served (contracts) so far this month
5923 notices 592,300 oz 18.454 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
x
1 dealer deposits:
i) Into Delaware; 2999.910 oz
total dealer deposits: 2999.910 oz
total customer withdrawals: 1
i)out of Brinks: 32,150.000 (1000 kilobars)
total withdrawals 32,150.000 oz
we had 0 customer deposits
total deposits NIL oz
Adjustments; 2 dealer to customer
i) 385.812 ox JPMorgan
ii) 30,477.092 Brinks
CALCULATIONS FOR THE AMOUNT OF GOLD STANDING FOR JAN.
For the front month of JANUARY we have an oi of 1498 contracts having GAINED 477 contracts. We had 981 notices served on THURSDAY, so we gained 1458 contracts or an additional 145,800 oz will stand for delivery at the comex . This was one major queue jump and it means that somebody needed physical gold badly.
FEB LOST 16,818 CONTRACTS FALLING TO 196,979
March GAINED 190 contracts to stand at 777.
APRIL GAINED 8268 CONTRACTS RISING TO 209,769.
We had 1498 contracts filed for today representing 149,800 oz
Today, 0 notice(s) were issued from J.P.Morgan dealer account and 1060 notices were issued from their client or customer account. The total of all issuance by all participants equate to 1474 contract(s) of which 0 notices were stopped (received) by j.P. Morgan dealer and 620 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 JAN. /2023. contract month, we take the total number of notices filed so far for the month (5923 x 100 oz ), to which we add the difference between the open interest for the front month of JAN. (1498 CONTRACTS) minus the number of notices served upon today 1474 x 100 oz per contract equals 594,700 OZ OR 18.497 TONNES
thus the INITIAL standings for gold for the JAN.contract month: No of notices filed so far (5923) x 100 oz + (1498) {OI for the front month} minus the number of notices served upon today (1474) x 100 oz) which equals 594,700oz standing OR 18.497 TONNES
TOTAL COMEX GOLD STANDING FOR JAN: 18.497 TONNES WHICH IS GREAT FOR AN INACTIVE DELIVERY MONTH IN THE CALENDAR.
TOTAL OF ALL GOLD ELIGIBLE AND REGISTERED GOLD: 19,961,540.593 OZ
TOTAL REGISTERED GOLD 9,209,534.740 (286.455 tonnes).
TOTAL OF ALL ELIGIBLE GOLD: 10,752,005.847 OZ
REGISTERED GOLD THAT CAN BE SERVED UPON: 7,765,234 oz (REG GOLD- PLEDGED GOLD) 241.53 tonnes
END
SILVER/COMEX
JAN 19/INITIAL
//2024// THE JAN 2023 SILVER CONTRACT//INITIAL
Silver
Ounces
Withdrawals from Dealers Inventory
NIL oz
Withdrawals from Customer Inventory
86,792.660 oz
Brinks CNT
.
Deposits to the Dealer Inventory
nil OZ
Deposits to the Customer Inventory
3886.700 oz Delaware
No of oz served today (contracts)
2 CONTRACT(S) (10,000 OZ)
No of oz to be served (notices)
325 contracts (1,625,000 oz)
Total monthly oz silver served (contracts)
780 Contracts (3,900,000 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 deposit: nil oz
i) We had 0 dealer withdrawal
total dealer withdrawals: 0 oz
We had 1 deposits customer account:
i) Into Delaware 3886.700 oz
total customer deposits 3886.700 oz
JPMorgan has a total silver weight: 131.923 million oz/280.297 million or 47.097%
adjustment
Comex withdrawals: 2
i) Out of Brinks: 80,790.720 oz
ii) Out of CNT 6002.540 oz
total withdrawal: 86,792.660 oz
TOTAL REGISTERED SILVER: 41.980 MILLION OZ//.TOTAL REG + ELIGIBLE. 280.297 million oz
CALCULATIONS FOR THE NEW STANDING FOR SILVER FOR DECEMBER:
silver open interest data:
FRONT MONTH OF JAN. /2023 OI: 327 CONTRACTS HAVING LOST 13 CONTRACT(S). WE HAD 13 NOTICES SERVED ON THURSDAY, SO WE GAINED 0 CONTRACTS OR AN ADDITIONAL NIL OZ WILL STAND FOR DELIVERY AT THE COMEX
FEB GAINED 5 CONTRACTS TO STAND AT 850
MARCH GAINED 158 CONTRACTS TO 102,195
TOTAL NUMBER OF NOTICES FILED FOR TODAY: 2 for 610,000 oz
Comex volumes// est. volume today 40,202//fair
Comex volume: confirmed yesterday 48,817 fair
To calculate the number of silver ounces that will stand for delivery in JAN. we take the total number of notices filed for the month so far at 780 x 5,000 oz = 3,900,000 oz
to which we add the difference between the open interest for the front month of JAN. (327) and the number of notices served upon today 2 x (5000 oz) equals the number of ounces standing.
Thus the standings for silver for the DEC/2023 contract month: 780 (notices served so far) x 5000 oz + OI for the front month of JAN. (327) – number of notices served upon today (2 )x 500 oz of silver standing for the JAN contract month equates to 5.525 MILLION OZ. to which we add our exchange for RISK of 1.0 million oz//new total 6.525 million oz/
New total standing: 6.525 million oz.
There are 41.989 million oz of registered silver.
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//
BOTH GLD AND SLV ARE MASSIVE FRAUDS!
JAN 19/WITH GOLD UP $8.15 TODAY:NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD //://INVENTORY RESTS AT 862.10 TONNES
JAN 18/WITH GOLD UP $14.85 TODAY:HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD A WITHDRAWAL OF 2.30 TONNES OF GOLD FROM THE GLD//://INVENTORY RESTS AT 862.10 TONNES
JAN 17/WITH GOLD DOWN $23.25 TODAY: BIG CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD A DEPOSIT OF .549 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD.;//://INVENTORY RESTS AT 864.40 TONNES
JAN 12/WITH GOLD UP $31.65 TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD; A MASSIVE WITHDRAWAL OF 4.61 TONNES OF GOLD FROM THE GLD//://INVENTORY RESTS AT 864.99 TONNES
JAN 11/WITH GOLD DOWN $7.40 TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD; A MASSIVE WITHDRAWAL OF 4.61 TONNES OF GOLD FROM THE GLD//://INVENTORY RESTS AT 864.99 TONNES
JAN 10/WITH GOLD DOWN $4.80 TODAY: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD://INVENTORY RESTS AT 869.60 TONNES
JAN 9/WITH GOLD UP $0.95 TODAY: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD://INVENTORY RESTS AT 869.60 TONNES
JAN 8/WITH GOLD DOWN $16.85 TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD:A WITHDRAWAL OF 4.61 TONNES FROM THE GLD. INVENTORY RESTS AT 869.60 TONNES
JAN 5/WITH GOLD UP $0.80 TODAY: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD:///. // INVENTORY RESTS AT 874.21 TONNES
JAN 4/WITH GOLD UP $7.60 TODAY: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD:///. // INVENTORY RESTS AT 874.21 TONNES
JAN 3/WITH GOLD DOWN $29.40 TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF 4.90 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD///. // INVENTORY RESTS AT 874.21 TONNES
JAN 2/WITH GOLD UP $1.50 TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF 1.44 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD///. // INVENTORY RESTS AT 879.11 TONNES
DEC 29/WITH GOLD DOWN $10.25 TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF 1.16 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD///. // INVENTORY RESTS AT 880.55 TONNES
DEC 28/WITH GOLD DOWN $8.35 TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A DEPOSIT OF 1.45 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD///. // INVENTORY RESTS AT 881.71 TONNES
DEC 27/WITH GOLD UP $23.25 TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A DEPOSIT OF 2.01 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD///. // INVENTORY RESTS AT 880.26 TONNES
DEC 26/WITH GOLD UP $1.25 TODAY: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD:/. // INVENTORY RESTS AT 878.25 TONNES
DEC 22/WITH GOLD UP $17,85 TODAY: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD:/. // INVENTORY RESTS AT 878.25 TONNES
DEC 21/WITH GOLD UP $5.10 TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD:A DEPOSIT .58 TONNES OF 2.02 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD//. // INVENTORY RESTS AT 878.25 TONNES
DEC 20/WITH GOLD DOWN $3.60 TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD:A WITHDRAWAL OF 2.02 TONNES OF GOLD FROM THE GLD//. // INVENTORY RESTS AT 877.67 TONNES
DEC19/WITH GOLD UP $12.15 TODAY: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD:. // INVENTORY RESTS AT 879.69 TONNES
DEC18/WITH GOLD UP $5.50 TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD:. /A DEPOSIT OF 173 TONNES INTO THE GLD// INVENTORY RESTS AT 879.69 TONNES
DEC14/WITH GOLD UP $47.35 TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD:. /A DEPOSIT OF 2.42 TONNES FROM THE GLD// INVENTORY RESTS AT 877.96 TONNES
DEC13/WITH GOLD UP $3.90 TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD:. /A WITHDRAWAL OF 2.89 TONNES FROM THE GLD// INVENTORY RESTS AT 875,65 TONNES
DEC12/WITH GOLD DOWN $0.60 TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD:. /A WITHDRAWAL OF 2.01 TONNES FROM THE GLD// INVENTORY RESTS AT 878.54 TONNES
GLD INVENTORY: 862.10 TONNES
Now the SLV Inventory/( vehicle is a fraud as there is no physical metal behind them
JAN 19/WITH SILVER DOWN $0.11 TODAY HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A WITHDRAWAL OF 458,000 OZ OUT OF THE SLV // //INVENTORY RESTS AT 432.493 MILLION OZ
JAN 18/WITH SILVER UP $0.13 TODAY NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: // //INVENTORY RESTS AT 432.951 MILLION OZ
JAN 17/WITH SILVER DOWN $0.38 TODAY HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A WITHDRAWAL OF 779,000 OZ FROM THE SLV.: // //INVENTORY RESTS AT 433.500 MILLION OZ
JAN 16/WITH SILVER DOWN $0.08 TODAY NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: // //INVENTORY RESTS AT 433.500 MILLION OZ
JAN 12/WITH SILVER UP $0.62 TODAY NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: // //INVENTORY RESTS AT 433.500 MILLION OZ
JAN 11/WITH SILVER DOWN 34 CENTS TODAY NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: // //INVENTORY RESTS AT 433.912 MILLION OZ
JAN 10/WITH SILVER DOWN 3 CENTS TODAY SMALL CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A WITHDRAWAL OF 450,000 OZ FROM THE SLV// //INVENTORY RESTS AT 433.912 MILLION OZ
JAN 9/WITH SILVER DOWN 20 CENTS TODAY NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV //INVENTORY RESTS AT 434.370 MILLION OZ
JAN 8/WITH SILVER DOWN 8 CENTS TODAY HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV A WITHDRAWAL OF 1,602,000 OZ INTO THE SLV//:././/////INVENTORY RESTS AT 434.370 MILLION OZ
JAN 5/WITH SILVER UP 20 CENTS TODAY HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV A DEPOSIT OF 916,000 OZ INTO THE SLV//:././/////INVENTORY RESTS AT 435.972 MILLION OZ
JAN 4/WITH SILVER UP 5 CENTS TODAY NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV/:././/////INVENTORY RESTS AT 435.056 MILLION OZ
JAN 3/WITH SILVER DOWN 78 CENTS TODAY HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV/: A WITHDRAWALOF 2.294 MILLION OZ OZ FROM THE SLV././/////INVENTORY RESTS AT 435.056 MILLION OZ
JAN 2/WITH SILVER DOWN 9 CENTS TODAY HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV/: A WITHDRAWALOF 915,000 OZ FORM THE SLV././/////INVENTORY RESTS AT 437.35 MILLION OZ
DEC 29/WITH SILVER DOWN 29 CENTS TODAY NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV/: //////INVENTORY RESTS AT 438.265 MILLION OZ
DEC 28/WITH SILVER DOWN 25 CENTS TODAY NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV/: //////INVENTORY RESTS AT 438.265 MILLION OZ
DEC 27/WITH SILVER UP 20 CENTS TODAY:HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV/: A WITHDRAWAL OF 1.374 MILLION OZ FROM THE SLV//////INVENTORY RESTS AT 438.265 MILLION OZ
THIS IS THE 3RD STRAIGHT DAY THAT THE SLV HAS ENGAGED IN WITHDRAWALS
DEC 26/WITH SILVER DOWN 14 CENTS TODAY:HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV/: A WITHDRAWAL OF 1.465 MILLION OZ FROM THE SLV//////INVENTORY RESTS AT 439.639 MILLION OZ
DEC 22/WITH SILVER UP 0 CENTS TODAY:HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV/: A WITHDRAWAL OF 2.289 MILLION OZ FROM THE SLV//////INVENTORY RESTS AT 441.104 MILLION OZ
DEC 21/WITH SILVER DOWN 2 CENTS TODAY:NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV/: NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV//////INVENTORY RESTS AT 443.393 MILLION OZ
DEC 20/WITH SILVER UP 28 CENTS TODAY:NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV/: NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV//////INVENTORY RESTS AT 443.393 MILLION OZ
DEC 19/WITH SILVER UP 27 CENTS TODAY:BIG CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV/: A MASSIVE DEPOSIT OF 2.747 MILLION OZ INTO THE SLV////INVENTORY RESTS AT 443.393 MILLION OZ
DEC 18/WITH SILVER DOWN 9 CENTS TODAY:BIG CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV/: A WITHDRAWAL OF 0.794 MILLION OZ FROM THE SLV////INVENTORY RESTS AT 440.646 MILLION OZ
DEC 14/WITH SILVER DOWN 8 CENTS TODAY:BIG CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV/: A MASSIVE WITHDRAWAL OF 3.00000 MILLION OZ FROM THE SLV////INVENTORY RESTS AT 441.470 MILLION OZ
DEC 13/WITH SILVER DOWN 8 CENTS TODAY:BIG CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV/: A DEPOSIT OF 10.326 MILLION OZ FROM THE SLV////INVENTORY RESTS AT 444.470 MILLION OZ
DEC 12/WITH SILVER DOWN 5 CENTS TODAY:BIG CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV/: A WITHDRAWAL OF 594,000 OZ FROM THE SLV////INVENTORY RESTS AT 434.144 MILLION OZ
The first half of 2023 was a record-breaking moment for central bank gold buying, led by none other than China and Russia. Organizations like the World Gold Council reported a staggering increase compared to 2022:
“On a year-to-date basis, central banks have bought an astonishing net 800t, 14% higher than the same period last year.”
Whether or not The January Effect will apply to the gold price as we finish the first month of 2024, there are plenty of indicators that the central bank buying spree will continue for at least the first half of the new year. Accelerating de-dollarization is just one factor, as powerhouses like China and Russia continue strategically moving further and further from the grips of USD hegemony.
Of course, actions by the Biden administration to isolate Russia with sanctions in the wake of the Ukraine conflict only provide further impetus for the Russians to continue divesting in any way they can from the US dollar. Combined with a volatile ruble and a wave of new American spending to feed its proxy wars in Ukraine and Israel, it only makes sense that Russia’s gold coffers will continue to grow.
You can also bet on China and Russia buying significantly more gold than what gets reported publicly, so the real numbers are always higher than they seem. As Jim Richards has pointed out many times, such as in this tweet from Q1 last year, countries like Russia and China hold gold acquired through off-the-books buying programs that far exceed what they officially claim:
“Central Bank of Russia reported a gain of 30 metric tonnes in its gold reserves. That’s after a year of flatlining more likely due to non-reporting than non-acquisition. Nice to see Russia back in the game.”
For more central bank gold-buying fuel, the Fed, claiming victory against inflation, has actually given up on fighting it. The Fed knows it backed itself into a corner and has no choice but to lower rates in 2024 — which means central banks will need a way to hedge against those easier money policies. And while the Fed’s balance sheet shrank in 2023, it didn’t even come close to closing the gap created by the trillions it added during the Covid era. Of course, that wouldn’t stop Powell from running his victory lap at 2023’s final post-FOMC press conference about stopping rate hikes:
“That’s us thinking we’ve done enough.”
However, lower rates in 2024 would bolster the case for even more inflation, not less — leading to a tanking dollar and surging relative prices for gold and other commodities. Peter Schiff isn’t the only one to have pointed this out, but all you have to do is forget what central banks say and look at what they do. The stage is set for banks to add more gold to their reserves to hedge against downward pressures on the dollar, even as the Fed claims victory over the inflation battle. The only question is which will occur first: a dollar crisis or a sovereign debt collapse? Central bankers aren’t going to wait to find out
After all, in 2023, not even higher nominal yields managed to slow down gold’s rally. Booming Treasury yields reflect less certainty in the health of the economy, not more, as investors flee to the perceived safety of Treasurys and bonds. But what goes up must come down, and a collapse in the Treasurys market would nuke the dollar, taking the rest of the economy with it:
“…a Treasurys crash will force the value of the dollar to plunge, which will lead to a brutal economic downturn — one in which the “standard of living” in the country will drop dramatically.”
Finally, 2024 brings even more uncertainty in the face of the US’s continuing proxy conflicts and, notably, a US presidential election that is reinforcing a global picture of domestic political instability. With candidates on both sides like RFK Jr. and Vivek Ramaswamy embracing anti-establishment messages about reigning in central banks, the military-industrial complex, and the US debt spiral, there are plenty of candidates shaking the nest in ways that would have been unheard of just a couple elections ago. As Robin Tsui of the South China Morning Post points out, somewhat obviously:
“…the potential for US government shutdowns, fiscal policy debates, and political stand-offs ahead of the 2024 US election cycle persist.”
It’s true that many economists and Fed officials haven’t given up hope for a ”soft landing” next year, which would imply decreasing demand for gold. But as time has pressed on, this is a claim that even they admit could end up being proven hollow. To any honest observer, more signs of instability, inflation, negative-yielding debt, and election-year madness all point to a strong need for safety throughout this year.
Looking past the claims that US bankers and officials are making in public, central banks know the truth: they need to keep gobbling gold. It’s the only strategic maneuver that makes sense, with few other meaningful ways to protect themselves from becoming collateral damage in the confluence of self-destructive economic meddling, overstretched foreign entanglements, and election-year political turmoil in the US.
END
2,c) Commentaries from: Egon von Greyerz///Matthew Piepenburg via GoldSwitzerland.com, Pam and Russ Martens, John Rubino
Mathew Piepenburg…
END
3. CHRIS POWELL//GATA GOLD COMMENTARIES:
END
3. CHRIS POWELL//GATA GOLD COMMENTARIES:
END
4. OTHER GOLD/SILVER //COMMENTARIES//PODCASTS
END
4. OTHER GOLD/SILVER //COMMENTARIES//PODCASTSLIVE FROM THE VAULT
Volatility isn’t in gold or oil, it’s in the dollar! Feat. Alasdair Macleod
In this week’s episode of Live from the Vault, Andrew Maguire is joined by Alasdair Macleod, stockbroker and Head of Research for Goldmoney, to exchange views on the US dollar hegemony and its impact on the price of gold.
Giving an update on the de-dollarisation process and the geopolitical impact of tensions in the Middle East affecting the global economy, the precious metals experts take us through the debt trap the US has fallen into.
end
5 a. IMPORTANT COMMENTARIES ON COMMODITIES /
5 B GLOBAL COMMODITY ISSUES/FOOD IN GENERAL//FREIGHT
1.YOUR EARLY CURRENCY VALUES/GOLD AND SILVER PRICING/ASIAN AND EUROPEAN BOURSE MOVEMENTS/AND INTEREST RATE SETTINGSFRIDAY MORNING.7:30 AM
ONSHORE YUAN: CLOSED UP AT 7.1915
OFFSHORE YUAN: UP TO 7.2021
SHANGHAI CLOSED DOWN 13.50 PTS OR 0.47%
HANG SENG CLOSED DOWN 83.10 PTS OR 0.54%
2. Nikkei closed UP 498.10 PTS OR 1.40%
3. Europe stocks SO FAR: MOSTLY ALL GREEN
USA dollar INDEX DOWN TO 103.14 EURO RISES TO 1.0885 UP 5 BASIS PTS
3b Japan 10 YR bond yield:RISES TO. +.668 Japan buying 100% of bond issuance)/Japanese YEN vs USA cross now at 148.11/JAPANESE YEN NOW 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 ONSHORE YUAN: UP// OFFSHORE: UP
3f Japan is to buy INFINITE TRILLION YEN 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 +2.2830***/Italian 10 Yr bond yield DOWN to 3.850** /SPAIN 10 YR BOND YIELD DOWN TO 3.214…**
3i Greek 10 year bond yield DOWN TO 3.283
3j Gold at $2033.35 silver at: 22.78 1 am est) SILVER NEXT RESISTANCE LEVEL AT $30.00
3k USA vs Russian rouble;// Russian rouble UP 0 AND 31 /100 roubles/dollar; ROUBLE AT 88.33//
3m oil into the 74 dollar handle for WTI and 78 handle for Brent/
3n Higher foreign deposits moving out of China// 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 148,11// 10 YEAR YIELD AFTER FIRST BREAKING .54% LAST YEAR NOW EXCEEDS THAT LEVEL TO 0.641% STILL 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 0.8693 as the Swiss Franc is still rising against most currencies. Euro vs SF: 0.9456 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: 4.136 DOWN 1 BASIS PTS…
USA 30 YR BOND YIELD: 4.358 DOWN 1 BASIS PTS/
USA 2 YR BOND YIELD: 4.357 UP 0 BASIS PTS
USA DOLLAR VS TURKISH LIRA: 30.19…(TURKEY SET TO BLOW UP FINANCIALLY)
GREAT BRITAIN/10 YEAR YIELD: DOWN 3 BASIS PTS AT 3.9280
end
2.a Overnight: Newsquawk and Zero hedge
S&P Futures Approach All Time High As Tech Meltup Goes Full-Tilt
BY TYLER DURDEN
FRIDAY, JAN 19, 2024 – 08:18 AM
After starting off the week with whimper, renewed hopes for a soft Goldilocks landing as well as two consecutive upgrades of Apple have not only reversed the bitter taste from the preceding two downgrades (today the company was added to Evercore ISI’s tactical outperform, following yesterday’s BofA upgrade which fueled the best day for Apple since May), but have also sparked “banging” trader sentiment which pushed US futures higher in premarket trading while lifting the Nasdaq 100 to a recorder high. As of 7:40am, contracts on the Nasdaq 100 climbed about 0.7% after hitting an all time high on Thursday, while S&P 500 futures were up 0.4%, and with the S&P just 16 handles away from all time highs, we may have a new record today (at which point we assume Marko will finally turn bullish and we can once again short). Treasury yields were flat at 4.14% and the dollar dropped after frenetic repricing of the policy outlook earlier in the week. Investors will pay close attention to UMich inflation expectations and Fed speakers today for further cues on the timing and extent of rate cuts. Traders now see the prospect of easing in March at little more than a coin toss, down from almost 80% at the end of last week.
In premarket trading, semiconductor sector names like Nvidia and Broadcom were among the biggest benefactors from the Nasdaq rally, as a brighter outlook from Taiwanese chipmaking behemoth TSMC two days ago lingered on (and on) and helped lift the mood as well as hopes for a broader recovery in the tech sector in 2024 (even as a similar warning by TSMC a quarter ago was very much ignored). Chip companies such as Advanced Micro Devices climbed 2% while Intel rose 1.2%. Texas Instruments rose more than 2% after maintaining its quarterly dividend. Here are some of the other notable premarket movers:
Coherus BioSciences shares jump 5.8% after the commercial-stage biopharmaceutical company posted data from the lead-in portion of the Phase 2 clinical trial on a treatment for liver cancer.
Coinbase shares rise 0.8% as Citi hikes its price target on the cryptocurrency exchange operator, following an increase in crypto prices and volumes quarter-on-quarter.
Endeavor shares climb 7.5% after Bloomberg reported that Silver Lake plans to sell parts of the entertainment company after taking it private.
iRobot shares slide 37% following reports that the European Union’s antitrust watchdog is planning to block Amazon’s planned acquisition of the Roomba vacuum maker.
Roku shares rise 2.3% after Seaport Global raised the maker of TV streaming boxes and software to neutral due to to incremental data points that suggest there could be upside to the asset manager’s estimates.
Super Micro Computer shares rise 12% after the computer hardware maker’s preliminary financial results beat expectations, with the company saying it expects to exceed its previous guidance. Barclays analysts said that it was a positive pre-announcement for the firm.
AT&T rises 1.5% in premarket trading after Oppenheimer raised the wireless telecommunications company to outperform from perform, citing several tailwinds including improvements to network capacity and coverage, helping boost average revenue per user growth.
IBM advances 2.5% in premarket trading after Evercore ISI raised the IT services company to outperform from inline, calling it an “overlooked beneficiary” of the increasing adoption of artificial intelligence.
Apple Inc.’s long-awaited Vision Pro mixed-reality headset will finally be available for preorders on Friday, giving the company its first real taste of consumer demand for the $3,499 device. Apple Inc. vowed to open up its coveted tap-to-pay technology on iPhones to rivals in a bid to sidestep potentially massive European Union antitrust fines.
“Markets have been unnerved by the reluctance of major central banks to cut rates quickly in response to slowing inflation and weak growth,” said Lee Hardman, a currency strategist at MUFG Bank Ltd. “It is difficult to see today’s rebound in risk assets proving sustainable until central banks give the green light for rate cuts.”
In Fed speak, Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic urged policymakers to proceed cautiously given the potential impacts of unpredictable events from elections to global conflicts. His Philadelphia counterpart Patrick Harker said he expects inflation to keep ebbing toward the target. Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee and the San Franscisco Fed’s Mary Daly are scheduled to speak today.
And speaking of market expectations, BlackRock expects the Fed to start cutting rates in June, senior investment strategist Laura Cooper said in an interview with Bloomberg TV. She sees 75 to 100 basis points of reductions by year-end. “We’re leaning more towards a June rate cut and then a recalibration,” Cooper said. Markets have become “very exuberant” in their bets on policy easing, she said, adding that “there is a degree of repricing that still needs to come through that adds to our view that there’s going to be a bit of volatility ahead.”
On the outlook for US equities, Bank of America strategists said the stocks that led the rally in 2023 are again traders’ top picks amid elevated Treasury yields.Investors are reverting to owning growth, technology, the AI bubble and the so-called Magnificent Seven group of stocks including Apple as the 10-year Treasury yield settles in a range of 3.75% to 4.25%, a BofA team led by Michael Hartnett wrote in a note.
This same group of equities led the Nasdaq 100’s 54% rally last year amid expectations of rate cuts, a solid economy and optimism about artificial intelligence developments. So far in January, Nvidia Corp., Microsoft Corp. and Meta Platforms Inc. — all among those seven dominant stocks — are the top gainers on the tech-heavy gauge.
European stocks rose for a second day, albeit slightly, with the Stoxx 600 up 0.1% and trimming its loss this week to 1.2%. The technology sub-sector advanced further as Taiwan Semi’s outlook fueled hopes for a global recovery in chip sales. Swiss electrical-equipment maker ABB dragged industrials lower after saying US lawmakers are reviewing its operations in China. Here are the biggest European movers on Friday:
Teleperformance jumps as much as 6.3% after Stifel raised its rating and its target price for the shares of the French call center operator which, the broker believes, has the potential to double in the next three years
BASF rises as much as 2% after reporting preliminary results. UBS says the 4Q numbers represent a trough, though overall Warburg says the figures fall short of the company’s guidance as well as consensus estimates
Avanza rises as much as 8% after the Swedish bank’s quarterly earnings beat estimates. Citi says the update should prompt an upgrade to earnings consensus
Persimmon rises as much as 3.5% and is leading gains among UK housebuilders following double upgrade to overweight from Morgan Stanley. Analysts flag hopes that demand is improving as we approach the key Spring selling season, even as the outlook remains uncertain
Temenos shares rise as much as 7.6%, the most since April, after the Swiss financial software firm reported preliminary 4Q results that were well above expectations and exceeded guidance, according to Vontobel
Marel shares jump as much as 8%, to its highest intraday level in Amsterdam as John Bean Technologies raised its offer to buy the company to €3.60/share
4imprint Group shares rise as much as 15%, the most since August after the promotional merchandise maker said annual pretax profit for 2023 will be above the upper end of analysts’ consensus range
Wincanton gains as much as 48% the biggest jump on record to 439p, slightly below the offer price of 450p/share proposed by CEVA Logistics, a subsidiary of French shipping and logistics company CMA CGM
Corbion plunges as much as 8.5% after ING cut its recommendation on the Dutch ingredients maker to sell from hold. The broker say it’s “quite shocking” that over nearly a decade the company has spent the equivalent of its market value in capital expenditure
Earlier in the session, stocks in Asia mostly rose, as gains in semiconductor stocks drove MSCI’s Asia Pacific gauge higher for a second day, and higher as much as 1.1%, set for its biggest gain in at least six sessions and paring this week’s loss to 2.3%. A sub-gauge of tech shares gained more than 3%, on track for its biggest gain in a year. Taiwan’s benchmark Taiex led gains around the region as TSMC climbed 6% after saying it expects a return to solid growth this quarter. Shares in Japan and South Korea also advanced as the Taiwanese chipmaker’s outlook for capital spending and revenue lifted hopes of a broad tech recovery in 2024.
Hang Seng and Shanghai Comp were subdued amid the lingering concerns surrounding an uneven recovery in the Chinese economy, while a restriction on short sales by China’s largest brokerage did little to spur a recovery.
Nikkei 225 was underpinned and briefly climbed above 36,000 after Japanese CPI data continued to soften and a source report noted there was no pressure for the BoJ to rush towards the exit.
ASX 200 climbed back above 7,400 with the advances led by tech after similar outperformance stateside.
Indian stocks advanced, on track for their first gain in four days, tracking regional peers boosted by a rally in chip shares. The S&P BSE Sensex rose 0.9% to 71,844.37 as of 09:30 a.m. in Mumbai, while the NSE Nifty 50 Index advanced 0.9% to 21,655.75.
“When TSMC reports a strong outlook, you know there will be other winners in the space — market focus is likely to return to other chip stocks and AI plays,” said Charu Chanana, a market strategist at Saxo Capital Markets. “The recovery comes in somewhat faster-than-expected.”
In FX, the Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index dropped 0.1%, its second consecutive day of decline, yet the gauge remains on track for its third straight week of gains as expectations of a Federal Reserve rate cut recede; USDJPY rose 0.4% before paring gains to trade flat at 148.08; Japan’s finance minister Shunichi Suzuki said the government is closely watching FX movements. GBPUSD fell as much as 0.3% to 1.2666, reversing two sessions of gains; after UK retail sales slumped at their fastest pace since January 2021.
In rates, Treasuries trade little changed across the curve. Gilts rallied on the increasing prospect of recession after UK retail sales fell at their fastest pace since Covid-19 lockdowns three years ago. UK 10-year yields drop 3bps to 3.90%.
In commodities, oil was steady after closing at a three-week high on escalating tensions in the Middle East. WTI rose 0.8% to trade near $74.70. Spot gold added 0.3% but was headed for a weekly loss on the recalibration of Fed rate-cut bets.
Bitcoin rose +0.7%, amid attempts to pare back some of the prior day’s hefty losses, though still remains below $41.5K.
To the day ahead now, and data releases include German PPI and UK retail sales, and US existing home sales for December. Otherwise in the US, there’s also the University of Michigan’s preliminary consumer sentiment index for January. From central banks, we’ll hear from ECB President Lagarde, along with the Fed’s Daly and Barr.
Market Snapshot
S&P 500 futures up 0.3% to 4,827.25
STOXX Europe 600 up 0.3% to 471.69
MXAP up 1.1% to 163.86
MXAPJ up 1.2% to 498.73
Nikkei up 1.4% to 35,963.27
Topix up 0.7% to 2,510.03
Hang Seng Index down 0.5% to 15,308.69
Shanghai Composite down 0.5% to 2,832.28
Sensex up 0.6% to 71,625.04
Australia S&P/ASX 200 up 1.0% to 7,421.24
Kospi up 1.3% to 2,472.74
German 10Y yield little changed at 2.34%
Euro little changed at $1.0882
Brent Futures up 0.6% to $79.61/bbl
Gold spot up 0.3% to $2,028.90
U.S. Dollar Index down 0.16% to 103.37
Top Overnight News
China’s largest brokerage has suspended short selling for some clients in mainland markets amid a deepening rout in the nation’s stocks. State-owned Citic Securities Co. has stopped lending stocks to individual investors and raised the requirements for institutional clients earlier this week after so-called window guidance from regulators. BBG
China has said it will rein in expansion of the country’s electric vehicle sector, as Beijing responds to western criticism of its industrial and trade policies that have contributed to a wave of Chinese car exports. FT
Japan’s core CPI cooled to +3.7% in Dec, inline with expectations and down from +3.8% in Nov, a number that removes pressure from the BOJ. RTRS
British retailers suffered the biggest drop in sales for almost three years during December, raising the risk that the economy slipped into recession late last year, official data showed on Friday.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said people doing Christmas shopping earlier than usual – especially for food – contributed to retail sales volumes shrinking 3.2% between December and November. It was the biggest monthly drop since January 2021 and left the level of sales at its lowest ebb since May 2020. RTRS
Germany’s construction union has demanded a pay rise of more than 20 per cent for many of the sector’s 930,000 workers, which economists warn could stoke inflation fears and delay interest rate cuts by the European Central Bank. FT
Blackstone’s Steve Schwarzman says inflation is already near 2%, lower than what the formal gov’t statistics signal (“I think they’re the wrong numbers…the numbers that the Fed are using are overstated”). Barron’s
Congress passes legislation shifting the gov’t shutdown dates to Mar 1 and May 8 (from Jan 19 and Feb 2). WaPo
Arab states are working on an initiative to secure a ceasefire and the release of hostages in Gaza as part of a broader plan that could offer Israel a normalization of relations if it agrees to “irreversible” steps towards the creation of a Palestinian state. FT
META CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company will have 350,000 Nvidia H100 graphics processing units and overall almost 600,000 H100 compute equivalent GPUs by the end of this year. Barrons
A more detailed look at global markets courtesy of Newsquawk
APAC stocks mostly took impetus from the tech-led advances on Wall St where sentiment was underpinned after initial jobless claims fell to the lowest since September 2022 and with tech encouraged by TSMC’s earnings which lifted the Co.’s shares by over 6% and underpinned other chipmakers including Samsung Electronics. ASX 200 climbed back above 7,400 with the advances led by tech after similar outperformance stateside. Nikkei 225 was underpinned and briefly climbed above 36,000 after Japanese CPI data continued to soften and a source report noted there was no pressure for the BoJ to rush towards the exit. Hang Seng and Shanghai Comp were subdued amid the lingering concerns surrounding an uneven recovery in the Chinese economy, while a restriction on short sales by China’s largest brokerage did little to spur a recovery.
Top Asian News
China’s MOFCOM said it hopes all parties concerned will restore and ensure the security of shipping lanes in the Red Sea and it hopes all parties jointly safeguard the smooth flow of global production, supply chains and normal order of international trade. Furthermore, it stated that China will strengthen coordination with relevant departments, closely track developments and provide timely support and assistance to foreign trade enterprises.
Japanese Finance Minister Suzuki said forex moves are driven by various factors and the government is watching forex developments carefully, while he reiterated it is important for FX to move stably reflecting fundamentals. Suzuki also stated that he won’t comment in advance about what the government expects the BoJ to do but hopes the BoJ guides policy appropriately, working closely with the government to sustainably achieve the 2% inflation target.
Moody’s cuts Huarong Asset Management to Junk, according to Bloomberg
China’s cabinet has reportedly instructed heavily indebted governments to halt some unfinished infrastructure projects, according to Reuters sources; Beijing is said to be concerned about potential default due to local governments’ large debts.
China securities regulator said will strengthen supervision over stock index futures trading to safeguard market stability. No signs yet of the intensive build-up of short positions in stock index futures.
European bourses are modestly firmer but with price action contained amid a lack of pertinent catalysts; the FTSE 100 (+0.5%) leads amid the softer Pound and lower yields. European sectors hold a slight positive tilt; Travel & Leisure outperforms, Tech continues to build on the prior day’s advances whilst Consumer Products is hampered as Luxury gives back some of yesterday’s gains. US equity futures are firmer across the board to varying degrees. The NQ (+0.7%) continues yesterday’s outperformance. BASF (BAS GY) FY Prelim (EUR): adj. EBIT 3.81bln (exp. 3.85bln); Sales 68.90bln (exp. 70.58bln); Miss in forecasts “primarily attributable to non-cash-effective impairments in the amount of EUR 1.1bln”.
Top European News
UK Chancellor Hunt has given strong hints that he wants to cut taxes in the spring budget, according to the BBC. He did not offer any further detail on the scale of potential future tax cuts, as the government awaits an assessment from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). It is widely expected that the chancellor will focus on income tax in the budget on 6 March, BBC said.
SNB’s Jordan said that additional rate hikes from the Bank are not necessary to maintain price stability, according to Aargauer Zeitung
FX
A contained session for the Dollar thus far in narrow 103.31-51 ranges amid a lack of pertinent catalysts and a light docket ahead; DXY resides within yesterday’s 103.14-63 range on either side of its 200 DMA (103.45).
A flat session for the EUR amidst a quiet morning with little price action seen on the sub-forecast German PPI metrics; EUR/USD trades within yesterday’s 1.0845-1.0906 parameter.
GBP is the G10 underperformer (albeit narrowly) in the aftermath of the dismal UK Retail Sales data; Cable found resistance just above its 21 DMA (1.2708) and matched yesterday’s high.
Antipodeans are mixed trade across the antipodeans with the AUD propped by a rise in base metals whilst NZD is subdued following a further contraction in Manufacturing PMI.
PBoC set USD/CNY mid-point at 7.1167 vs exp. 7.1972 (prev. 7.1174).
Fixed Income
USTs are flat following yesterday’s bear-steepened as the long end failed to recover from the larger-than-expected drop in US jobless claims; Resistance at 111-21 and support at the 38.2% Fibonacci retracement level from Oct 19 at 110-14.
Gilts saw a marginal gap higher at the resumption of trade following the dismal UK Retail Sales metrics, which saw the contract open at 98.90 (vs yesterday’s 98.71 close).
Another choppy morning within narrow ranges for Bunds with horizontal trade seen in APAC hours following yesterday’s fall under 134.00 after yesterday’s US data.
Commodities
WTI and Brent continue to extend on gains after settling higher by over USD 1/bbl apiece yesterday; Brent Mar resides above USD 79/bbl and found resistance just before USD 79.50/bbl.
Modest upside bias in precious metals as the DXY remains caged whilst geopolitics could be underpinning the yellow metal as prices were largely unfazed by yesterday’s US data; XAU found support at near its 50 DMA (USD 2,019.74/oz).
Base metals are firmer across the board despite relatively muted price action elsewhere, with copper continuing to edge higher.
Russia’s Kremlin said there is no prospect of reviving Black Sea Grain deal, said alternative routes to ship Ukrainian grain carry huge risks
Saudi Finance Minister said Saudi Arabia is not worried about the oil price, via BBG interview
Geopolitics
Yemen’s Houthis military spokesman said naval forces carried out an operation against the American ship Chem Ranger in the Gulf of Aden with naval missiles, while the US military later stated Houthis launched two anti-ship ballistic missiles at a US-owned tanker ship and that there was no reported damage or injuries.
North Korea said it conducted a test of an underwater nuclear weapons system and that the test was in response to joint military drills involving South Korea, the US and Japan, according to KCNA.
Belarusian Defence Minister said Belarusian new defence doctrine defines actions in case of aggression against CSTO allies, according to Tass
US Event Calendar
10:00: Jan. U. of Mich. Sentiment, est. 70.1, prior 69.7
Jan. U. of Mich. Current Conditions, est. 73.0, prior 73.3
Jan. U. of Mich. Expectations, est. 67.0, prior 67.4
Jan. U. of Mich. 1 Yr Inflation, est. 3.1%, prior 3.1%
Jan. U. of Mich. 5-10 Yr Inflation, est. 3.0%, prior 2.9%
10:00: Dec. Existing Home Sales MoM, est. 0.3%, prior 0.8%
10:00: Dec. Home Resales with Condos, est. 3.83m, prior 3.82m
16:00: Nov. Total Net TIC Flows, prior -$83.8b
Central bank speakers
08:30: Fed’s Goolsbee Speaks on CNBC
11:15: Fed’s Daly Speaks on Fox Business
13:00: Fed’s Barr Speaks About Bank Regulation
DB’s Jim Reid concludes the overnight wrap
Risk assets found a firmer footing over the last 24 hours, with the S&P 500 (+0.88%) posting a solid recovery as an upbeat 2024 outlook by chipmaker TSMC drove an outperformance from tech stocks that saw the Magnificent 7 (+1.35%) reach a new all-time high. By contrast, bonds continued to struggle, and the 1 0yr Treasury yield (+3.9bps) hit a one-month high of 4.14% after US data continued to surprise on the upside, and overnight it’s risen further to 4.16%. That was mainly driven by positive data, including the weekly initial jobless claims which fell to just 187k over the week ending January 13 (205k expected), marking their lowest level since September 2022. So that offered yet more evidence of US economic resilience, and the data increasingly looks like a trend, since the release also pushed the 4-week average to its lowest since February.
But it was renewed tech optimism rather than the positive data that helped equities post solid gains yesterday, and the S&P 500’s advance (+0.88%) means the index is now less than half a percent away from its all-time high at the start of 2022. Europe’s STOXX 600 also rose +0.59%. That optimism was driven by an upbeat outlook by the world’s largest chip manufacturer TSMC, which expects revenue growth of at least 20% in 2024. TSMC’s shares are more than +6% up in trading this morning, while its American Depositary Receipts gained +9.87% in US trading yesterday. The news boosted other chipmakers – with the Philadelphia semiconductor index up +3.36% – as well as tech stocks more broadly with the NASDAQ advancing +1.35%, whilst the STOXX Technology index in Europe was up +3.24% in its best daily performance since July. Outside of tech, equities posted more moderate gains though, and the equal weighted version of the S&P 500 (+0.52% yesterday) is still down -2.04% YTD, in contrast to a slight +0.23% gain for the regular index. So the theme of mega caps propping up the equity performance has again played out since the start of the year.
Meanwhile, bond markets continued to see the pattern of positive data pushing up longer-dated bond yields. For instance, t he 30yr Treasury yield was up another +5.4bps yesterday to 4.37%, which is its highest level in over 6 weeks. Similarly in the Euro Area, 10yr bund yields were up +3.3bps yesterday to 2.35%, up more than +45bps from their low less than a month ago. And in the near-term, the robust data meant that investors continued to dial back the prospect of a Q1 rate cut. Indeed, the prospect of a Fed cut by the March meeting was down to 56% yesterday and has moved down further to 55% overnight, its lowest since the Fed’s last meeting in December. Meanwhile at the ECB, the prospect of a cut by March is down to 19% overnight, the lowest since late November.
This pushback on rate cuts was echoed by comments from Atlanta Fed President Bostic (a voter on the FOMC this year), who said that his “outlook right now is for our first cut to be sometime in the third quarter this year”, so that’s a contrast with market pricing, which is still fully pricing in a cut by the May meeting. Remember that today is the last day before the Fed’s blackout period ahead of the next meeting, so the next scheduled remarks are Fed Chair Powell’s press conference on January 31.
For the ECB, their next meeting is now less than a week away, and yesterday saw the release of the December minutes, which showed a concern about the recent easing in financial conditions. It said that “Concern was expressed that the sharp market repricing threatened to loosen financial conditions excessively, which could derail the disinflationary process.” Nevertheless, the accounts also mentioned that “it was argued that the December staff projections for growth in the near term might be too optimistic overall”. So while at least some on the Governing Council are wary of the downside risks to the ECB’s view, the overall reaction function was still focused on ensuring disinflation continues, as seen also in recent comments pushing back at pricing of cuts. See our European economists’ full reaction to the accounts here.
Looking back at the key data yesterday, the decline in US jobless claims was a surprise for markets, and the 187k reading was beneath every economist’s estimate on Bloomberg. And on similar lines, continuing claims fell to 1.806m in the week ending January 6, which was the lowest since October (1.840m expected). That positivity was echoed in the housing data too, where housing starts only fell to an annualised rate of 1.460m in December (vs. 1.425m expected), and building permits were up to an annualised rate of 1.495m (vs. 1.477m expected).
Overnight in Asia, equity markets are mostly up this morning following the rally on Wall Street yesterday. The Nikkei (+1.19%) has posted strong gains, along with the S&P/ASX 200 (+1.02%) and the KOSPI (+0.81%). However, the Shanghai Composite (-0.68%) has lost further ground and is now at its lowest since May 2020, whilst the CSI 300 (-0.37%) and the Hang Seng (-0.28%) are also down. Otherwise overnight, Japan’s headline CPI inflation rate fell to +2.6% in December (vs. +2.5% expected), which is the lowest it’s been since July 2022. In addition, core inflation slowed to +2.3% as expected, and core-core inflation was down to +3.7% as expected, which helped to cement expectations that the Bank of Japan won’t be rushing to end its negative interest rate policy.
In US policy news, last night Congress averted a partial government shutdown that would have started this weekend, with both the Senate and the House approving the latest stopgap spending bill. T he temporary measure pushes out the deadlines into early March, giving six weeks for officials to try and agree a long-term funding bill. Another short-term continuing resolution is also possible, with the harder deadline being 30 April, when automatic sequestration spending cuts would take place if no annual funding bill is passed.
Elsewhere, data yesterday showed fresh evidence that the rise in shipping costs was continuing, with Drewry’s WCI composite index up by +23% to $3,777 for a 40ft container, marking its 6th consecutive weekly advance. That follows the attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea by the Houthi rebels, which has led to big diversions as container ships go round the Cape of Good Hope instead. Yesterday also saw further US strikes in response to the Houthis, and President Biden said that they would continue. The news also contributed to upside for oil, with both Brent (+1.57% to $79.10/bbl) and WTI (+2.09% to $74.08/bbl) crude prices rising to YTD highs.
To the day ahead now, and data releases include German PPI and UK retail sales, and US existing home sales for December. Otherwise in the US, there’s also the University of Michigan’s preliminary consumer sentiment index for January. From central banks, we’ll hear from ECB President Lagarde, along with the Fed’s Daly and Barr.
2 B) NOW NEWSQUAWK (EUROPE/REPORT)
Equities firmer, DXY flat & GBP lower after softer UK Retail Sales; Fed’s Daly due – Newsquawk US Market Open
FRIDAY, JAN 19, 2024 – 05:59 AM
European bourses and US futures are modestly firmer across the board; the NQ leads the gains as Tech continues yesterday’s strength.
The Dollar is flat whilst GBP marginally underperforms following soft UK Retail Sales data, AUD is bid on firmer base metals and a positive risk tone.
Treasuries and Bunds are contained whilst Gilts outperform following UK data.
Crude continues to build on the prior day’s strength with a lack of pertinent catalysts; Base metals are firmer amid Chinese stimulus hopes.
Looking ahead, highlights include EZ Consumer Confidence (Flash), Canadian Retail Sales, US UoM Prelim, and speeches from Fed’s Daly & Barr.
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EUROPEAN TRADE
EQUITIES
European bourses are modestly firmer but with price action contained amid a lack of pertinent catalysts; the FTSE 100 (+0.5%) leads amid the softer Pound and lower yields.
European sectors hold a slight positive tilt; Travel & Leisure outperforms, Tech continues to build on the prior day’s advances whilst Consumer Products is hampered as Luxury gives back some of yesterday’s gains.
US equity futures are firmer across the board to varying degrees. The NQ (+0.7%) continues yesterday’s outperformance.
BASF (BAS GY) FY Prelim (EUR): adj. EBIT 3.81bln (exp. 3.85bln); Sales 68.90bln (exp. 70.58bln); Miss in forecasts “primarily attributable to non-cash-effective impairments in the amount of EUR 1.1bln”.
Click here and here for the sessions European pre-market equity newsflow, including earnings.
A contained session for the Dollar thus far in narrow 103.31-51 ranges amid a lack of pertinent catalysts and a light docket ahead; DXY resides within yesterday’s 103.14-63 range on either side of its 200 DMA (103.45).
A flat session for the EUR amidst a quiet morning with little price action seen on the sub-forecast German PPI metrics; EUR/USD trades within yesterday’s 1.0845-1.0906 parameter.
GBP is the G10 underperformer (albeit narrowly) in the aftermath of the dismal UK Retail Sales data; Cable found resistance just above its 21 DMA (1.2708) and matched yesterday’s high.
Antipodeans are mixed trade across the antipodeans with the AUD propped by a rise in base metals whilst NZD is subdued following a further contraction in Manufacturing PMI.
PBoC set USD/CNY mid-point at 7.1167 vs exp. 7.1972 (prev. 7.1174).
USTs are flat following yesterday’s bear-steepened as the long end failed to recover from the larger-than-expected drop in US jobless claims; Resistance at 111-21 and support at the 38.2% Fibonacci retracement level from Oct 19 at 110-14.
Gilts saw a marginal gap higher at the resumption of trade following the dismal UK Retail Sales metrics, which saw the contract open at 98.90 (vs yesterday’s 98.71 close).
Another choppy morning within narrow ranges for Bunds with horizontal trade seen in APAC hours following yesterday’s fall under 134.00 after yesterday’s US data.
WTI and Brent continue to extend on gains after settling higher by over USD 1/bbl apiece yesterday; Brent Mar resides above USD 79/bbl and found resistance just before USD 79.50/bbl.
Modest upside bias in precious metals as the DXY remains caged whilst geopolitics could be underpinning the yellow metal as prices were largely unfazed by yesterday’s US data; XAU found support at near its 50 DMA (USD 2,019.74/oz).
Base metals are firmer across the board despite relatively muted price action elsewhere, with copper continuing to edge higher.
Russia’s Kremlin said there is no prospect of reviving Black Sea Grain deal, said alternative routes to ship Ukrainian grain carry huge risks
Saudi Finance Minister said Saudi Arabia is not worried about the oil price, via BBG interview
UK Chancellor Hunt has given strong hints that he wants to cut taxes in the spring budget, according to the BBC. He did not offer any further detail on the scale of potential future tax cuts, as the government awaits an assessment from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). It is widely expected that the chancellor will focus on income tax in the budget on 6 March, BBC said.
SNB’s Jordan said that additional rate hikes from the Bank are not necessary to maintain price stability, according to Aargauer Zeitung
DATA RECAP
UK Retail Sales MM (Dec) -3.2% vs. Exp. -0.5% (Prev. 1.3%, Rev. 1.4%); ONS said retailers say part of the fall reflects consumers purchasing food and Christmas gifts in November
UK Retail Sales Ex-Fuel YY (Dec) -2.1% vs. Exp. 1.3% (Prev. 0.3%, Rev. 0.5%); Retail Sales Ex-Fuel MM (Dec) -3.3% vs. Exp. -0.6% (Prev. 1.3%, Rev. 1.5%); Retail Sales YY (Dec) -2.4% vs. Exp. 1.1% (Prev. 0.1%, Rev. 0.2%)
German Producer Prices MM (Dec) -1.2% vs. Exp. -0.5% (Prev. -0.5%); German Producer Prices YY (Dec) -8.6% vs. Exp. -8.0% (Prev. -7.9%)
Supermicro (SMCI) raises Q2 guidance; EPS view USD 5.40-5.55 (prev. 4.40-4.88, exp. 4.52) and revenue between USD 3.6-3.65bln (prev. 2.7-2.9bln, exp. 2.78bln); cites “strong market and end customer demand for rack-scale, AI and Total IT Solutions” Shares +10.5% after-hours
Amazon (AMZN) AWS said to invest about JPY 2.3tln in Japan over 2023-2027 for data centre business expansion, according to Nikkei
GEOPOLITICS
MIDDLE EAST
Yemen’s Houthis military spokesman said naval forces carried out an operation against the American ship Chem Ranger in the Gulf of Aden with naval missiles, while the US military later stated Houthis launched two anti-ship ballistic missiles at a US-owned tanker ship and that there was no reported damage or injuries.
OTHER
North Korea said it conducted a test of an underwater nuclear weapons system and that the test was in response to joint military drills involving South Korea, the US and Japan, according to KCNA.
Belarusian Defence Minister said Belarusian new defence doctrine defines actions in case of aggression against CSTO allies, according to Tass
CRYPTO
Bitcoin, +0.7%, attempts to pare back some of the prior day’s hefty losses, though still remains below the USD 41.5k level.
APAC TRADE
APAC stocks mostly took impetus from the tech-led advances on Wall St where sentiment was underpinned after initial jobless claims fell to the lowest since September 2022 and with tech encouraged by TSMC’s earnings which lifted the Co.’s shares by over 6% and underpinned other chipmakers including Samsung Electronics.
ASX 200 climbed back above 7,400 with the advances led by tech after similar outperformance stateside.
Nikkei 225 was underpinned and briefly climbed above 36,000 after Japanese CPI data continued to soften and a source report noted there was no pressure for the BoJ to rush towards the exit.
Hang Seng and Shanghai Comp were subdued amid the lingering concerns surrounding an uneven recovery in the Chinese economy, while a restriction on short sales by China’s largest brokerage did little to spur a recovery.
NOTABLE HEADLINES
China’s MOFCOM said it hopes all parties concerned will restore and ensure the security of shipping lanes in the Red Sea and it hopes all parties jointly safeguard the smooth flow of global production, supply chains and normal order of international trade. Furthermore, it stated that China will strengthen coordination with relevant departments, closely track developments and provide timely support and assistance to foreign trade enterprises.
Japanese Finance Minister Suzuki said forex moves are driven by various factors and the government is watching forex developments carefully, while he reiterated it is important for FX to move stably reflecting fundamentals. Suzuki also stated that he won’t comment in advance about what the government expects the BoJ to do but hopes the BoJ guides policy appropriately, working closely with the government to sustainably achieve the 2% inflation target.
Moody’s cuts Huarong Asset Management to Junk, according to Bloomberg
China’s cabinet has reportedly instructed heavily indebted governments to halt some unfinished infrastructure projects, according to Reuters sources; Beijing is said to be concerned about potential default due to local governments’ large debts.
China securities regulator said will strengthen supervision over stock index futures trading to safeguard market stability. No signs yet of the intensive build-up of short positions in stock index futures.
DATA RECAP
Japanese National CPI YY (Dec) 2.6% vs. Exp. 2.5% (Prev. 2.8%); National CPI Ex. Fresh Food YY (Dec) 2.3% vs. Exp. 2.3% (Prev. 2.5%); National CPI Ex. Fresh Food & Energy YY (Dec) 3.7% vs. Exp. 3.7% (Prev. 3.8%)
Chinese FDI (YTD) (Dec) -8.0% (Prev. -10.0%)
2C ASIA AFFAIRS
FRIDAY MORNING/THURSDAY NIGHT
SHANGHAI CLOSED DOWN 13.50 PTS OR 0.47% //Hang Seng CLOSED DOWN 83.10 PTS OR 0.54% /The Nikkei CLOSED UP 497.10 OR 1.40% //Australia’s all ordinaries CLOSED UP 1.01% /Chinese yuan (ONSHORE) closed UP AT 7.1915 /OFFSHORE CHINESE YUAN CLOSED UP TO 7.2026 /Oil UP TO 74.06 dollars per barrel for WTI and BRENT UP AT 78.93/ Stocks in Europe OPENED MOSTLY ALL GREEN// ONSHORE YUAN TRADING ABOVE LEVEL OF OFFSHORE YUAN/ONSHORE YUAN TRADING STRONGER AGAINST US DOLLAR/OFFSHORE STRONGER
2 d./NORTH KOREA/ SOUTH KOREA/
NORTH KOREA/SOUTH KOREA
END
2e) JAPAN
JAPAN
3 CHINA
China’s stock market hits rock bottom with its $6.3 trillion in market loss. It suspends short selling. it has a massive snowball derivative margin call
(zerohedge)
China Stocks Hit Rock Bottom: After $6.3 Trillion Market Loss, Brokers Suspend Short-Selling
The Hang Seng China Enterprises Index crashed 6.5% this week – its worst weekly loss since March 2023 with Wednesday seeing the biggest daily loss since Oct 2022 as the index plummeted to key support levels around the Oct 2022 lows…
Source: Bloomberg
For context, Chinese and Hong Kong stocks have seen some $6.3 trillion of market value wiped out since a peak reached in 2021…
Source: Bloomberg
But, as we detailed earlier in the week, authorities have ruled out the use of massive stimulus to revive the flagging economy, leaving traders wondering when things will improve.
“What we are seeing this year so far really is a continuation of what we saw last year,” John Lin, AllianceBernstein’s chief investment officer of China equities, said in an Jan. 17 interview on Bloomberg TV.
“These squeezing-the-toothpaste type of stimulus policies so far haven’t been able to turn around the underlying bottom-up fundamentals of areas like the property sector.”
It gets worse as China is setting grimmer and grimmer milestones by the day:
Tokyo has overtaken Shanghai as Asia’s biggest equity market…
India’s valuation premium over China has hit a record.
Locally, a meltdown in Chinese shares is wreaking havoc on the nation’s asset management industry, pushing mutual fund closures to a five-year high.
Most importantly, as we noted previously, the lack of stimulus (amid China’s real estate sector crisis and escalating tensions with Washington on trade) has had a very adverse impact on both economic and market sentiment at a time when China’s middle class is growing increasingly restless and pitchforky, resulting in a surge in labor strikes and (mostly peaceful) protests.
And while a quiet, painless sovereign suicide may be an option for Japan – with its demographic disaster and rapidly aging population where more adult than baby diapers have been sold for years; for China – which still has a young, vibrant and increasingly angry population – this is not an option as the coming tidal wave of unrest could easily result in the one thing the Chinese Communist Party dreads the most, a revolution.
For now, Beijing refuses to unleash a monetary bazooka – amid its longest period of deflation since 1998 – but that doesn’t mean it won’t step in to try and arrest the collapse of the stock market (which along with real estate) is a considerable source of ‘wealth’ for the Chinese.
“The government seems very sanguine about the economy,” said Xin-Yao Ng, an investment director for Asian equities at abrdn.
“The market might not even trust the 5% growth figure, it certainly has a much more negative view on the economy and definitely believes Beijing needs a big fiscal response.”
With that in mind, just a day after unleashing The National Team (China’s Plunge Protection Team), Bloomberg reports that China’s largest brokerage has suspended short selling for some clients in mainland markets, according to people familiar with the matter.
State-owned Citic Securities Co. has stopped lending stocks to individual investors and raised the requirements for institutional clients this week after so-called window guidance from regulators, said the people, asking not be identified discussing a private matter.
Of course, as we have pointed out numerous times (most recently here for example), research has consistently shown that banning short selling during stretches of particularly volatile equity market activity intensifies the volatility.
Such prohibitions impede investors from determining accurate prices of assets and reduce market liquidity.
Moreover, short-selling bans in one market can increase volatility in other markets as some investors try to circumvent the ban.
But since when has historical evidence of the failure of policies ever stopped any politician from ‘doing something’ or blaming someone.
Everything that Chinese authorities have tried has failed to convince money managers that the worst is behind us. As Bloomberg reports, Asian funds have cut their allocation to China by 12 percentage points to a net 20% underweight, the lowest in more than a year, according to the latest Bank of America survey.
Managers of benchmark-tracking funds have sold a net $300 million of shares traded in mainland China and Hong Kong this month, according to a Morgan Stanley analysis.
That’s a reversal from the last half of 2023, when they bought $700 million on a net basis even as stock indexes declined.
“China is a waiting game and we continue to be waiting,” said Mark Matthews, head of Asia research at Bank Julius Baer & Co., which is mostly avoiding Chinese equities.
How much longer can Beijing wait?
end
4.EUROPEAN AFFAIRS//UK /SCANDINAVIAN AFFAIRS
SWEDEN/MIGRANTS
This is what happens when you bring in migrants and they do not assimilate:
(Cody ReMix)
“It Feels Like Something Has Gone Terribly Wrong” – 5 Swedish Cops Forced To Pay Fine To Convicted Syrian Migrant Who Brutally-Attacked Them
In a shocking twist, five police officers are being forced to pay a fine to a Syrian migrant who was convicted for severely injuring one of them during riots related to a Quran burning during Easter of 2022.
The officers will have to pay out a total of 12,650 Swedish crowns (€1,122) from their own pockets to the 45-year-old convicted Syrian who has been sentenced to two years and seven months for his role in the riots.
The officers have reacted with near disbelief over the outcome of the case.
“It feels like something has gone terribly wrong in the legal system here. We are there and doing our job, yet individual police officers must be forced to pay out of their own pockets to people who really wanted us dead,” says Aleksandar Jeremic, who is a group leader in a civil suit involving the Botkyrka local police area and is now one of the five police officers ordered to pay court costs to the foreign national, according to Danish newspaper Dagens Nyheter.
The case stems from the Quran riots, which began in Örebro’s city park over Easter weekend in 2022. They were preceded by far-right activist Rasmus Paluden burning a Quran in Sweden, leading to the violent riots that lasted several days.
However, the judge in the case is defending the decision to fine the police officers, saying he is sticking to the letter of the law.
“I understand if it appears offensive from the police’s point of view. But there is no mistake that has been made, the rules are as they are. The issue of damages was separated into a civil case, and the police withdrew their claims, so they are considered the losing party and must pay,” said Johan Nordgren, councilor at Örebro district court and the judge who made the decision.
Several police officers were injured so severely by stone-throwing rioters in Sveaparken that they needed emergency care. Among them was Johan Westberg, who was hospitalized with a severe concussion and hand injuries that are expected to take years to heal.
Westberg is one of the officers requesting damages after the 45-year-old Syrian was sentenced to prison for “gross sabotage against police operations.”
The criminal case and the civil case were handled as two separate matters.
The Syrian was sentenced to over five years in prison, which was later overturned by the Supreme Court and reduced to two years and seven months. However, the Supreme Court decision also destroyed the officers’ civil case.
The judges there argued that officers are not entitled to damages in a case of “gross sabotage against police operations” because it is considered a crime against the state and not against individual police officers.
Based on this finding, the officers had no hope of winning their case. Westberg and the other police officers in the case therefore withdrew their claims for damages.
However, in the procedural code, anyone who withdraws their civil case is considered to have “lost” the case and must pay the other party’s legal fees. This is what happened in this case, resulting in severely injured officers being forced to pay damages to the Syrian who attacked them.
“I don’t intend to pay a penny. Then, they better foreclose on me. This is so wrong, I was in Sveaparken as a service (provider), it was not optional to work,” said Johan Westberg, who no longer works for the police, according to Dagens Nyheter.
The police have appealed to the Göta Court of Appeals. Their attorney, Ester Andersson Zandvoort, says it is very strange how the case was separated into a criminal and civil case to begin with.
“It is exactly the same claim for damages as in other trials and in none of the other cases has it been separated. It is very surprising that this judge has acted this way. We will appeal,” she said.
In rebuke of the US, PM declares Israel must maintain security control over West Bank and Gaza; says Israel will know soon if medicines sent into Gaza have reached hostages
rime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gives a press conference on January 18, 2024. (Kobi Gideon/GPO
During a combative press conference Thursday evening, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the prospect of Palestinian statehood after the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, and vowed to resist the United States on the matter.
He also denied blindsiding his defense minister over a deal to send medicines into Gaza for Israeli hostages, accused Israeli media of spreading pessimism about the progress of the war, and said Hamas and Iran were hoping to see his government fall and elections held mid-war.
On the issue of Palestinian sovereignty, Netanyahu was speaking after a report on Wednesday that the Biden administration is looking past the premier to advance a two-state solution, and hours after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Israel cannot achieve “genuine security” without a pathway to a Palestinian state
“Whoever is talking about the ‘day after Netanyahu’,” he said, “is essentially talking about the establishment of a Palestinian state with the Palestinian Authority.”
Most Israeli citizens are opposed to the establishment of a Palestinian state, he said, and he would always resist it.
The decades of Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he declared during the primetime appearance at the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv, are “not about the absence of a state, a Palestinian state, but rather about the existence of a state, a Jewish state.
“All territory we evacuate, we get terror, terrible terror against us,” he said, citing Gaza, southern Lebanon and parts of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). Therefore, “in any future arrangement, or in the absence of an arrangement,” he said, Israel must maintain “security control” of all territory west of the Jordan River — meaning, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. “That is a vital condition.”
The war cabinet meets at the IDF’s Kirya military headquarters in Tel Aviv on January 18, 2024. (Kobi Gideon/GPO)
He acknowledged that this “contradicts the idea of sovereignty [for the Palestinians]. What can you do? I tell this truth to our American friends.”
Netanyahu reportedly rejected a proposal last week from Blinken that would have seen Saudi Arabia normalize relations with Israel in exchange for Jerusalem agreeing to provide the Palestinians with a pathway toward statehood.
Nonetheless, Netanyahu asserted that his stance would not prevent Israel from expanding the circle of peace to new Arab countries, “along with our American friends.”
Medicines for the hostages
Netanyahu also denied that he hid the details of an arrangement to send medicine to Israeli hostages in the Gaza Strip from Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, pulling out what he claimed was a memo by Mossad chief David Barnea laying out the details of the deal, which was sent to Gallant’s office.
He also denied that he allowed the medicine to be delivered without a security check, insisting that the minute he heard of that possibility, he “took responsibility” and ordered that the shipments be checked, “whether or not Hamas accepts that.”
Five truckloads of medicine, including vital drugs long sought for hostages held for over 100 days, entered Gaza on Wednesday, after undergoing Israeli security checks, according to authorities.
The shipment included long-awaited medicine for Israeli hostages held by Hamas, many of whom rely on prescription drugs for chronic conditions, according to their families, as well as medical supplies, food and other humanitarian aid for Palestinians in the war-torn Gaza Strip, as part of a deal brokered by Qatar and France.
Netanyahu said that he bypassed the Red Cross, because it had not helped with previous Israeli efforts to get medicines to the hostages, and that Qatar promised that the medicine would reach “every last hostage that needs it, and I expect them to meet their commitment.”
Admitting that the Qatari commitment to deliver medicine to hostages was the only way Israel has to verify their delivery, Netanyahu insisted that the government would know “very soon” if they didn’t meet their commitment.
A senior Hamas official said that for every box provided for the hostages, 1,000 boxes of medicine were being sent in for Palestinians.
Trucks carrying humanitarian aid enter Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip after crossing the terminal border from Egypt, on January 17, 2024, during the ongoing war between Israel and the Palestinian terror group Hamas. (AFP
Answering a question about humanitarian aid, Netanyahu told reporters that Israel is only allowing in the absolute “minimum” quantity necessary to prevent a humanitarian crisis.
Attacks on Israeli media
The prime minister’s press conference featured several attacks on Israeli media, including the claim that the idea that Israel cannot win the war was being circulated “in the TV studios.”
“We are aiming for complete victory — not just to strike Hamas, not just to damage Hamas, not another round with Hamas,” Netanyahu promised. “A total victory over Hamas.”
“We will continue to fight at full strength until we achieve all our goals: the return of all our hostages — and I say again, only military pressure will lead to their release; the elimination of Hamas; and certainty that Gaza will never again represent a threat to Israel. There won’t be any party that educates for terror, funds terror, sends terrorists against us.”
Stopping the war prematurely “would harm Israel’s security for generations,” he said. “Ending the war before the goals are achieved would broadcast a message of weakness, encouraging our enemies to believe that they defeat us. And then the next slaughter would be only a matter of time.”
Asked about the progress of the war, Netanyahu said 16 or 17 of Hamas’s 24 battalions have been destroyed. “After that, there is the [phase] of clearing the territory [of remaining gunmen]. The first action is usually shorter, the second usually takes longer.”
Netanyahu said he “would be happy to find Gazans” to run civil affairs in the Strip, and to have regional states help with Gaza’s rehabilitation, but that this was unlikely to happen until Hamas is defeated, because potential alternatives will be afraid to “get a bullet in the head” from the terror group’s gunmen. “Until Hamas is eliminated, it will be very hard for you to start activating the ‘day after’ [arrangements],” he said.
Israeli troops operate in the Gaza Strip in a handout image published January 17, 2024. (Israel Defense Forces
Netanyahu, who has repeatedly avoided taking direct personal responsibility for the failure to prevent Hamas’s October 7 slaughter of 1,200 people in southern Israel, was asked if he feels he has anything to apologize for regarding the events surrounding October 7. In response, he said the way the question was framed was designed “to stain” him.
“Nobody is immune from mistakes, including me,” he said, but then again criticized the reporter. “I’ll continue to fight Hamas, and you’ll continue to fight me,” he said. “That’s the division of work,” he said, between him and the TV studios.
Regarding reports that he invited opposition party leaders Yair Lapid and Avigdor Liberman to join the coalition, he insisted, “I didn’t make any offers.” The current emergency war coalition was stable and should be maintained, he added.
“Going to elections would be irresponsible and would badly halt the war effort,” he also declared, since it would divide the people when unity was essential. “The ones who are hoping for this, and for all the other things we hear in the TV studios night after night, are Hamas and also its backer Iran. We won’t give this to them. We will bring complete victory.”
In response to another reporter, who asked why Israel is sufficing with attacks on Iran’s proxies rather than attacking Iran directly, Netanyahu responded, “Who says we aren’t attacking Iran? We are attacking Iran.”
Sam Sokol and Jacob Magid contributed to this report
end
Same story as above
(zerohedge)
Netanyahu In Blistering Rebuke Of US Post-War Plans: “Israel Will Control Entire Area From The River To The Sea”
THURSDAY, JAN 18, 2024 – 08:00 PM
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced that he informed the White House that he firmly opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state in any postwar scenario, after also saying that the operation to eliminate Hamas could continue all the way into 2025.
In statements that run directly counter to what the US has expressed (namely a desire for a two state solution), Netanyahu said, according to the widely circulated Hebrew translator’s words, “In any future arrangement … Israel needs security control all territory west of the Jordan. This collides with the idea of sovereignty. What can you do?”
The Israeli leader added that he had “told this to the Americans” and then stressed, “The prime minister needs to be capable of saying no to our friends.”
He also said Israel seeks a “decisive victory” over Hamas and that war is “not about the lack of a Palestinian state but the existence of a Jewish one.”
“Every area that we evacuate, we receive terrible terror against us. It happened in south Lebanon, in Gaza, and also Judea and Samaria… and therefore I clarify that in any other arrangement in the future the state of Israel has to control the entire area from the river to the sea.”
“This truth I say to my American friends.” He emphasized that questions of Israeli sovereignty can’t be “imposed” from the outside, even from the “best of friends” – in a reference to Washington.
The prime minister’s word choice of “from the river to the sea” is interesting given that this is the very phrase often used by groups opposed to the state of Israel and pro-Palestine supporters. Critics have called it a pro-Hamas, antisemitic and pro-genocidal slogan when shouted at pro-Palestine demonstrations. Netanyahu without doubt used the phrase specifically to show that Israel doesn’t plan to give even an inch of statehood to the Palestinians.
It has for weeks been clear that Israeli and US officials have been clashing on a vision for the Hamas “day after”. The US has called for the Palestinian Authority (PA) to eventually resume control of the Gaza Strip, but the Netanyahu government has firmly rejected this, calling the PA terror sympathizers, and saying this won’t solve Israel’s security problems.
Tel Aviv’s resistance to the United States’ more “moderate” stance has been deeply awkward for the Biden administration, given it is the US that has given the weaponry and support Israel needs to execute the war in the first place, which has taken a reported over 24,000 Palestinian lives, with the majority of these being civilians.
end
ISRAEL/HEZBOLLAH/HAIFA
(JERUSALEM POST)
Rocket sirens sound in Haifa, IDF responds to Lebanese aerial threats in northern Israel
The IDF reported responding to two separate threats originating from within Lebanon on Friday.
By SAM HALPERNJANUARY 19, 2024 21:02Updated: JANUARY 19, 2024 22:09
Rocket alarms sound in Haifa. January 19, 2024.(photo credit: Screenshot/Tzeva Adom)
Rocket alarms sounded in Haifa on Friday evening. Israel’s emergency medical service, Magen David Adom (MDA), subsequently stated that response teams had been dispatched to areas where rocket falls had been reported.
The MDA added that had received no reports of injuries.
Later, regarding the rocket alarms in Haifa, the IDF stated that a guided missile had intercepted the aerial target and that the incident had concluded.
Earlier in the day, the IDF reported that it had identified an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in the Acre area in northern Israel.
The UAV, which had crossed into Israel from Lebanon, was intercepted by the Iron Dome.
Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system intercepts rockets launched from the Gaza Strip, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in southern Israel, January 16, 2024. (credit: REUTERS/TYRONE SIU)
Rocket alarms sound in northern Arab town
Later that afternoon, a rocket alarm sounded in the Israeli-Bedouin town of Arab el-Aramsha, in northern Israel.
Later, the IDF again reported identifying a threat from Lebanon. The IDF stated that it had fired a guided missile at a “suspicious target” inside Lebanese territory.
The IDF added that the target did not cross into Israeli territory.
Jerusalem Post Staff contributed to this report.
END
Jordan air attacks Syria trying to get rid of drug cartels
END
JORDAN/SYRIA
At Least 9 Killed In Suspected Jordanian Airstrikes On Syria
Airstrikes, believed to have been carried out by the Jordanian air force, have killed at least nine civilians in the southern Syrian city of Suwayda on Thursday.
“Jordanian warplanes carried out airstrikes targeting residential areas and a warehouse in the southeastern province of Suwayda, killing at least nine people, including two girls and four women,” the opposition-linked war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) has reported.
“The death toll is likely to increase due to people [trapped] under the rubble and information about other victims, in addition to massive destruction to houses” in the area, SOHR added.
Local news outlet Suwayda24 said the strikes were likely carried out by Amman, and killed at least ten.
SOHR director Rami Abdel Rahman said that Jordan regularly attacks Syria under the “pretext of combatting drug smuggling.” He said in this case that it remained unclear whether or not those killed in the strikes were involved in the drug trade.
However, Rayan Maarouf from the Suwayda24 news website said that the casualties were likely drug traffickers. On January 5, Amman confirmed via state media that its air force had launched two air raids on Syria while “in pursuit” of drug smugglers.
Alleged Jordanian airstrikes reportedly killed a number of civilians in Syria on December 18. On the same day, a Jordanian army statement said that a smuggling operation on their northern border with Syria had been foiled, but officials denied that any airstrikes had taken place at the time.
In May 2023, the Jordanian Army conducted an airstrike in southern Syria that allegedly led to the killing of a well-known Syrian drug trafficker, Marai al-Ramthan, along with his wife and children.
Drug smuggling has surged on the Syrian-Jordanian border, despite a recent boost in border security measures between Amman and Damascus.
Jordan has accused the Syrian state of taking the drug smuggling threat lightly. Narcotics, quite commonly Captagon amphetamine pills, are smuggled into Jordan via Syria regularly.
The drug trade, among other political issues, has resulted in tensions in the already turbulent Syrian governorate of Deraa, which lies in close proximity to the Jordanian border.
The Minister of Government Communications in Jordan and spokesman for the Council of Ministers, Muhannad Mubaydeen, said on December 19 that Amman is interested in further coordination with Damascus to combat the drug smuggling problem.
On Wednesday, Suwayda-based Syrian Druze leader Hikmat al-Hijri expressed support for Jordanian efforts to combat smuggling, but called on Amman to avoid harming civilians.
LEBANON/ISRAEL
LEBANON/ISRAEL
WEST BANK/ISRAEL
END
USA only concerned with defensive moves to combat the Houthis?
(Jerusalem Post)
HOUTHIS/IRAN/USA/THE WEST
US officials say strikes are diminishing Houthi capacity, after Biden comments earn scrutiny
White House National Security spokesman John Kirby said the US is taking away the Houthis’ capability with “each and every strike.”
By HANNAH SARISOHN
The Pentagon is seen from the air in Washington, U.S., March 3, 2022, more than a week after Russia invaded Ukraine.(photo credit: JOSHUA ROBERTS/REUTERS)
The Pentagon says the US is not at war with the Houthis, calling its five attacks against the militant group “defensive in nature,” according to spokesperson Sabrina Singh.
US forces conducted two airstrikes in the last 24 hours. Thursday morning, US Central Command conducted strikes on two Houthi anti-ship missiles, Singh said, and struck 14 missiles at over a dozen locations on Wednesday night.
“We do not seek war, we are not at war with the Houthis,” Singh said. “But again, what we are doing and the actions that we are taking are defensive in nature. I would turn back to the fact that there have been over 30 attacks by Houthis on 50 different nations that are transiting the Red Sea at this time.”
“I can only repeat so many times that we do not seek war with the Houthis, but we will take self-defense actions if we need to protect our troops, protect commercial shipping, and ensure that freedom of navigation is still allowed through international waterways,” Singh said.
The US has been able to severely disrupt and destroy Houthi military capabilities since its initial strike on Jan. 11, according to Singh. Armed men watch the ”Galaxy Leader” ship that the Houthis took over to the coast of Yemen, December 5, 2023 (credit: REUTERS)
State dept: responses to Houthis will be ‘case by case’
Initial assessments indicate the US has been “very successful” in destroying all intended targets, Singh said.
“The systems, the capabilities that they had available to them yesterday are not the same ones that they have available to them today,” Singh said. “So we’re going to continue to take the action that we need to disrupt and degrade the Houthis.”
The Pentagon said it cannot yet provide assessments on civilian or military casualties.
The Pentagon “wouldn’t say it’s not capable” of stopping the Houthis, hours after President Joe Biden told reporters that the US airstrikes will not stop them.
“That’s why you saw the action we took earlier this morning and late yesterday, to degrade and destroy their capabilities,” Singh said.
White House National Security spokesman John Kirby said the US is taking away the Houthis’ capability with “each and every strike.”
Singh repeated that the end goal for these attacks is to deter the Houthis from attacking commercial shipping on the Red Sea, and that it’s up to the Houthis to decide when the attacks stop.
The UK joined the US in its initial attack last week, however the US was the sole power involved in the past two attacks.
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said direct military action of this nature is always going to be “case by case” in terms of coalition involvement.
“We’ve said from the outset that we did not think that the attacks would stop after our first military strike, that we would have to take further action,” Miller said. “You have seen us take further action, and we’re committed to continuing to do so because the attacks on commercial shipping are just unacceptable. They don’t have anything to do with the conflict in Gaza, and they need to stop.”
Houthis attack USA owned tankers for the 3rd time this week. Biden admits failure to stop them
(zerohedge)
Houthis Attack US-Owned Tankers, 3rd Time This Week, As Biden Admits Failure To Stop
FRIDAY, JAN 19, 2024 – 11:45 AM
The Pentagon has revealed than an American-owned commercial vessel has come under attack in the Red Sea. It happened Thursday, the same day that President Biden admitted the US-led Prosperity Guardian has not halted the attacks out of Yemen. “Are they stopping the Houthis? No. Are they going to continue? Yes,” Biden conceded in surprisingly blunt Thursday comments.
The US-owned, Greek-operated Chem Ranger was targeted by a pair of anti-ship ballistic missiles, in what was the third such attack on international shipping in three days. “The crew observed the missiles impact the water near the ship. There were no reported injuries or damage to the ship,” Central Command said.
This follows closely on the heels of attacks on the US-owned Gibraltar Eagle and the Genco Picardy in the days prior, both which sail under Marshall Islands flags. The Houthis have declared that “we are now in direct confrontation with the US and UK” in the Red Sea, according to the Thursday words of Houthi chief Abdul-Malik al-Houthi.
Not only has the Western coalition patrolling waters off Yemen attacked Houthi positions in four waves of strikes at this point, but the Biden administration put the Houthis back on the global terrorism list. None of this has deterred the Iran-backed rebel group, which has already been battling Saudi and US airpower in the Yemeni civil war that goes back to 2015.
The resultant raised freight costs for the majority of big carriers choosing the more costly journey around Africa has continued the spur in Middle Eastern crude demand. For example, Bloomberg notes “The price of one of the Middle East’s most popular oil grades has jumpedin Asia as buyers favor Persian Gulf producers that don’t have to send their crude via the Red Sea or on longer alternative routes”— in reference toMurban oil’s premium surging…
The prior economic incentive for Asia to rely on US Gulf Coast imports has effectively closed, given the surging cost of booking supertankers for the long route, making similar Middle Eastern crude oil a more popular choice.
And as for transport of goods, new WSJ analysis observes that European retailers are bearing the brunt of the scramble for alternative routes around the Red Sea:
Those detours are raising freight costs and leading retailers to worry about running out of stock. Some factories have suspended work in the absence of needed parts. Should the threat persist, economists think the decline in inflation Europe enjoyed last year could slow down, pushing back a potential cut in key interest rates.
“This is clearly one of the major downside risks to growth, and upside risks to inflation,” said Ana Boata, chief economist at insurer Allianz Trade. “We could talk about a recessionary risk.”
IKEA boss Jesper Brodin said the Red Sea conflict has lengthened its shipping routes by about 10 days or longer though its customers aren’t affected.
Discount retailer Pepco said conflict in the Red Sea has had a limited effect on product availability, but could hurt supply in the coming months if it continues. The discount retailer—which houses Poundland in the U.K. and Dealz and Pepco in continental Europe—said Thursday that Houthi attacks on vessels were leading to higher spot freight rates and delays to container lead times.
Volvo Cars, the Chinese-Swedish automaker, said gearboxes needed to build conventional combustion vehicles at a plant in Belgium were delayed, forcing the company to halt production for three days.
Volkswagen, Europe’s largest carmaker by sales, said its plants hadn’t been affected, but that it continued to monitor the situation in close contact with its suppliers. VW said it was rerouting shipments, which was causing some delay.
An estimated 40% of the goods traded between Europe and Asia utilize Red Sea transit; however, the experiences of the Covid-19 pandemic and the fact that transit delays and goods blockages are still nowhere close to being on par with the 2020-2021 situation means companies by and large feel confident.
IKEA CEO Jesper Brodin told an audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos that “The huge difference at the moment is that we have recuperated after the pandemic.” He emphasized: “So that means our stocks in our warehouse are in good shape.” It remains that for most, the real concern is if the Red Sea crisis stretches to six months and beyond.
Lt Richard Hecht
.END
RUSSIA/UKRAINE
Zelensky is out of control:
(zerohedge)
Lavrov Says West Is Aware Zelensky Getting ‘Out Of Control’
THURSDAY, JAN 18, 2024 – 10:40 PM
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in fresh Thursday statements says the West is trying to reign in Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky as he’s doing everything possible to stamp out dissent and cling to power, including canceling an expected presidential election this year.
Lavrov characterized the situation as one wherein America’s man in Kiev is increasingly “out of control” but that his Western backers “would have liked to have more flexibility,”according to state media translation of the new remarks.
The Russian top diplomat further said that all the latest rhetoric coming from the Ukrainian presidency’s office “only reflects the wish of that individual and his associates… to keep power as much as they can.”
That’s when Lavrov asserted that having Zelensky run a re-election campaign “would put him more in line with Western interests, because he has been increasingly getting out of control.”
However, this claim is uncertain given that all commentary on this matter by the Biden administration as well as US mainstream media has focused on justifying the election cancelation based on there being martial law and a state of war in the country. Biden officials have previously stated that it would not be practical, and even logistically impossible, to have fair elections.
Thus the US has defended these anti-democratic moves of Zelensky at every turn. It’s also an open question of whether there will even be parliamentary elections, which was due to change over this year. However, US officials do seem open to entering serious negotiations to end the war, behind the scenes at least, given Ukraine’s mounting battlefield losses.
Lavrov’s critique came as Zelensky is seeking to push an unrealistic peace plan at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos. To review:
Zelensky’s plan requires a full Russian withdrawal from the territory it has captured since February 2022, Russia giving up Crimea, war crimes tribunals, and Russia paying reparations to Ukraine. Kyiv has no shot at implementing any aspect of the Peace Formula since its counteroffensive failed, and Ukrainian forces are now focused on defense and facing manpower shortages.
Despite the reality on the ground, Zelensky’s “Peace Formula” has received backing from the US and other Western nations. “There was the most representative meeting of national security advisors regarding the implementation of the Peace Formula. More than 80 countries and international institutions were represented,” Zelensky said in Davos.
Given these latest words of Zelensky, it remains clear that Kiev’s plan is a non-starter for Moscow, and for the war to end Ukraine will have to at the very least recognize Russian possession of Crimea, and likely the four annexed territories as well.
Meanwhile, Zelensky has continued pushing hard for the Western allies to give his forces more advanced weapons, including longer range missiles and advanced fighter jets. Yet public opinion polls in the West have continued to show Zelensky’s popularity is slipping.
Billy was a bright 10-year-old boy with two Ivy-League-educated parents. He was book smart—got straight A’s in school—but lacked street smarts.
He was also a poor sport. Billy would frequently lie and cheat when playing board games or participating in team activities and have full-blown meltdowns when he lost. His friends, who had been with him since kindergarten, began losing patience. His parents recognized that something had to be done.
So Billy’s parents brought him to Dr. Victoria Dunckley, a pediatric psychiatrist specializing in screen use.
After a four-week “screen fast” prescribed by Dr. Dunckley, which eliminated all TVs, phones, and video games, Billy’s problems miraculously cleared up. His parents were so pleased that they decided to maintain the fast.
Six months passed, and Billy’s friends were no longer avoiding him, and his sportsmanship had improved markedly. Billy decided to run for class president and delivered a speech, something that would have previously terrified him.
Billy is one of Dr. Dunckley’s many patients whose mental and behavioral problems disappeared once they eliminated or significantly reduced screen time.
Excessive use of screens has become an epidemic silently eroding lives with little resistance.Gallup’s 2012 survey found that around 60 percent of young adults admit to spending too much of their time on the internet; a subsequent survey estimated that 83 percent of smartphone users say they keep their phone near them “almost all the time during their waking hours.”
Screens can overstimulate our brains, resulting in a perpetual, highly stressed, fight-or-flight state. This then makes us prone to meltdowns, depression, and anxiety when even minor changes in the environment occur.
Rising Problem
The initial link between screen time and poor mental health was spotted through generational studies by Jean Twenge, who has a doctorate in psychology and is a professor of psychology at San Diego State University.
“I got used to changes that would grow slowly and steadily over time,“ but then after 2010, ”I started to see some changes that were much more sudden—I had really never seen anything like it,” Ms. Twenge said in a TEDx talk.
Between 2005 and 2012, the change in rates of depressive episodes in teens aged 12 to 17 barely exceeded 1 percent. However, between 2012 and 2017, there was an almost 4 percent increase.
Additionally, fewer teenagers are going outside or reading books, while their time on social media and the internet is dramatically surging.
In 2008, psychotherapist Tom Kersting, who worked as a school counselor for 25 years, saw a rise in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnoses in children over age 8.
ADHD tends to be detected in early childhood after a child starts school. However, he has witnessed increasingly delayed diagnoses in teenagers and adults. While it could be possible that some of these teens were missed by clinicians when they were young, Mr. Kersting suspects that some developed symptoms of ADHD due to screen use.
Around 2012, when 30 percent of teenagers had a smartphone, he started to see rebellious behavior and anxiety disorders becoming more common among children. Young adults and teenagers growing up now also tend to be more antisocial and have reduced emotional resilience, which may be related to insufficient in-person socializing due to spending most of their time behind screens.
“It’s not just the amount of time spent in the cyber world,” Mr. Kersting told The Epoch Times, “but also what they missed out on: outside play and social learning.”
Few studies investigated internet addiction in children during the pandemic, but a large study done in adults in 2021 showed that adults who were considered at risk of internet addiction were 2.3 times more likely to have depression and 1.9 times more likely to have anxiety than the general population. Furthermore, people with definite or severe addiction were 13 times more likely to have both depression and anxiety.
Fast forward to post-pandemic times, with teachers reporting that the latest generation—Gen Alpha, also known as “iPad kids”—is aggressive, undisciplined, and regulates emotions poorly in the classroom.
Dr. Clifford Sussman, a psychiatrist specializing in screen addiction, has focused his practice on treating this condition due to increasing need. Especially after the pandemic, “demand for help with this issue exploded,” he told The Epoch Times.
How Screens Hook You
Screen activities—whether they include video games, social media, internet scrolling, or video streaming—offer an escape. These activities are also highly stimulating for the brain due to their bright colors and seamless integration into the virtual world, professor and psychotherapist David Rosenfeld at Buenos Aires University told The Epoch Times.
When presented with anything new and exciting, the brain releases dopamine, and anything that induces dopamine release can be addictive. Dopamine produces a feeling of pleasure, while a drop in it is linked to irritability and poor mood.
Screen activities have been designed to capture our attention by feeding us regular doses of dopamine. Like playing an immersive video game, giving you a thrill when you level up, defeat a boss, or find a new item, screens entice you to spend more time in the virtual world.
“Video games are governed by microscopic rules,” Bennett Foddy, who teaches game design at New York University’s Game Center, said in the book “Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked” by Adam Alter, as excerpted by The Guardian.
These micro-rules can be a “ding” sound or a white flash whenever a character moves over a particular square and are synced to the player’s actions so they feel they were the one who caused it. This micro-feedback generates a sense of reward, hooking people into continuously playing the game.
This system may also explain why interactive screen activities may be more problematic for children than passive screen activities, like watching TV.
Dr. Dunckley has observed that while two hours of TV is linked to signs of dysregulation in children, only 30 minutes of interactive screen activities is stimulating enough for signs to occur.
Many video games also employ strategies used in gambling, such as loot-box rewards, where players are rewarded at random intervals throughout the game. Since players do not know when the next reward drop will come, they are further compelled to play the game—even if they are not enjoying it.
This strategy came from the works of psychologist Burrhus Frederic Skinner. Skinner put pigeons in a box with a button, rewarding them with food whenever they pressed it. He found that the pigeons rewarded irregularly were more compelled to press the button than those rewarded with every button press.
Some lots of COVID-19 vaccines caused significantly more adverse events than others, according to newly published information.
Some batches were linked to as many as 1,650 serious problems, while some produced zero reported issues, according to the data, which was obtained by the Informed Consent Action Network and presented on the website OpenVAERS.
The network received the data through Freedom of Information Act requests from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
“Certain lots had an unusually high number of adverse reactions,” the network said in a statement.
The data undercut a 2022 statement from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.). The department said at the time that an analysis by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) showed “no unusual concentration of reports with a single lot or small group of lots.”
The HHS is the parent agency of the CDC and the FDA.
Mr. Johnson told Dr. Mandy Cohen, the CDC’s director, and Dr. Robert Califf, the FDA’s commissioner, in a new letter that the newly disclosed data “paint a very concerning picture.”
“As a former manufacturer, this data provides strong evidence that the vaccine manufacturing process was not in control,” Mr. Johnson wrote. If the data are accurate, “then your agencies have kept this vital information hidden from Congress and the American people for years, despite my requests for this data beginning in December 2021,” he added.
Spokespersons for the CDC and FDA said the agencies received the letter. The spokespersons said the agencies would respond at a later time to Mr. Johnson.
The HHS did not respond to a request for comment.
According to independent research reviewed by Mr. Johnson in 2021, as many as 5,297 adverse event reports were linked to certain vaccine batches, while other lots had as few as one reported adverse event.
The reports were made to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), which is co-run by the FDA and CDC. The system accepts reports from anybody but studies have shown most reporters are health care workers. Reporters face penalties if they enter information later found to be false, and many reports have been verified by health authorities.
Melanie Anne Egorin, the assistant HHS secretary for legislation, made the 2022 statement to Mr. Johnson before adding that the number of reported events may vary by lot due to “important factors such as the lot size and the length of time a lot has been in use.”
She said that COVID-19 vaccine lots are backed by certificates from manufacturers and that the FDA has visited sites to ensure quality, safety, and effectiveness.
More on New Data
The Informed Consent Action Network submitted multiple FOIA requests for lot information, and eventually sued when the data was not released.
Updated datasets were provided on Dec. 13, 2023, the network said.
The nonprofit shared the data with OpenVAERS, which describes itself as a project “developed by a small team of people with vaccine injuries or who have children with vaccine injuries.”
Before receiving the data, “it was impossible to determine the Serious Adverse Event (SAE) rate by lot number because we did not know the total number of doses in the lot,” OpenVAERS said on its site. With the new data, “we can now confirm that some batches of Covid-19 vaccines are significantly more dangerous than others.”
The project linked the lot information with VAERS reports that included batch data to produce the total number of reported serious adverse events, and rates of serious adverse events, per batch.
Serious adverse events were defined by the definition used by VAERS, which is an event that leads to an emergency room visit, a hospitalization, permanent disability, or death, or is life-threatening or results in a birth defect.
Many lots had between 10 and 500 reported serious adverse events linked to them, according to OpenVAERS. Twenty-two had between zero and nine reported adverse events. Forty-five had 501 or more adverse events.
Reported deaths following vaccination were also higher for certain lots, particularly for some Moderna batches.
The data cover the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines.
Pfizer and Moderna did not respond to requests for comment.
Some lots were flagged by Pfizer for deviation from quality standards, according to FDA documents recently produced under court order, but still released to the public.
Mr. Johnson urged the FDA and CDC to provide responses to questions by Jan. 26. He asked for the analysis the FDA allegedly performed to look into whether certain lots were associated with unusual concentrations of reported adverse events, whether the agency took any issue with the OpenVAERS’ analyses, and what steps the agency would take if it did determine any COVID-19 vaccine lots were associated with higher rates of adverse events.
HHS says in a guide that VAERS “is used to continually monitor reports to determine whether any vaccine or vaccine lot has a higher than expected rate of events.”
Danish researchers reported in 2023 that they examined rates of serious adverse events across batches of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and found that certain batches were linked to many more events than others. They noted that leaked data showed there was a “significant difference” between the amount of modified messenger RNA between batches of the Pfizer vaccine.
Can all these journalists AND doctors be too dumb to see what’s causing THIS pandemic? Or are they just too corrupt to mention it? Either way, we’re in big trouble—and ALL of them must GO!
interview (read script), Bailiwick News; Breggins were hounded wrongfully by Malone and thank God a judge who saw through the crap stepped in, same for Jane Ruby et al.; I love the Breggins!
Covid Experts Sound Alarm Over New Viral Strain That is ‘100% Lethal’ in Chinese Lab ExperimentsREAD MORE…
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LATEST NEWS:
NEWS ADDICT
MICHAEL EVERY/PHIL MAREY/OR OTHER EXECS //RABOBANK
END
7//OIL ISSUES//NATURAL GAS ISSUES//ELECTRICAL GRID ISSUES// RENEWABLE ENERGY ISSUES//USA AND GLOBE
Widening discounts for Russian grades and lower international benchmark prices dragged Russia’s oil export revenues down to a six-month low in December, despite higher export volumes, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Thursday.
All Russian oil exports, including crude and fuels, jumped by 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) to 7.8 million bpd in the last month of 2023, compared to November, the IEA said in its Oil Market Report for January. This was the highest export level in nine months, with crude oil shipments jumping by 240,000 bpd from November to 5 million bpd, and oil product exports increasing by 260,000 bpd month-on-month.
Despite the highest export volumes in nine months, Russia’s estimated export revenues plunged to their lowest level in six months, to $14.4 billion, the IEA said.
The decline was the result of increased discounts of Russian oil prices compared to benchmarks and the overall decline in international benchmark prices.
The price of Russia’s flagship crude grade, Urals, dropped in early December to below the G7 price cap of $60 per barrel after the U.S. toughened the enforcement of the sanctions on Russian oil exports.
The tougher enforcement of the G7 sanctions looks to have created troubles for Russia in placing some its crude in some markets, especially one of its top markets, India.
The toughened enforcement and related issues have been holding up Indian purchases of some cargoes of Russian crude oil, with tankers previously headed to India now turning back eastwards, tanker-tracking data monitored by Bloomberg showed earlier this month.
Some of those tankers were already en route to India loaded with Russia’s Sokol grade and departed from the Far Eastern ports in Russia.
At the end of last year, the United States took a tougher stance on the sanctions against Russia and sanctioned several vessels for violating the G7 price cap of $60 per barrel, above which cargoes cannot use Western insurance and financing.
8. EMERGING MARKETS//AUSTRALIA NEW ZEALAND ISSUES//
ECUADOR
Ecuador is in a terrible mess as drug gains take control of the country
(zerohedge)
With Ecuador “In A State Of War”, Prison Overcrowding Soars In Latin America
FRIDAY, JAN 19, 2024 – 02:45 AM
After several days of violence perpetrated by criminal gangs, in which at least fourteen people lost their lives, Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa declared last week that his country was “in a state of war”. Ecuador is currently in the grip of an unprecedented wave of violence, led by drug trafficking gangs.
The country, currently the main export point for cocaine produced in Peru and Colombia, has recently seen an escalation of gang-related violence. Between 2019 and 2022, homicides on the streets of Ecuador increased by 288%, to 26.7 deaths per 100,000. 2023 figures published by the Ecuadorian government indicate that this figure has now risen to 46 deaths per 100,000 as nearly 8,000 homicides were recorded in the country.
On Tuesday January 9, a group of armed men burst onto a television set of the Ecuadorian public channel TC Television, and took several journalists hostage. In the country’s prisons, mutinies also broke out. This wave of violence follows the escapes of Adolfo Macias, alias “Fito”, leader of the Los Choneros gang, which has around 8,000 men, on Sunday January 7, and of Fabricio Colon Pico, the leader of the Los Lobos gang, a few days later.
Nearly 180 prison guards and civil servants were taken hostage by the end of last week.
At least two hostages were killed by the inmates, one of them hanged, according to the videos.
But after the deployment of more than 22,400 military personnel and the imposition of curfews, all 136 hostages seized during prison riots in Ecuador were freed earlier this week, prison authorities said.
“Security protocols and the joint work of the police and the national army enabled the release of all the hostages who were being held in various prisons across the country,” the SNAI prison authorities said in a statement on X.
President Daniel Noboa celebrated their release.
“Congratulations to the patriotic, professional and courageous work of the armed forces, national police and the SNAI […] for achieving the release of the prison guards and administrative staff held in the detention centers of Azuay, Canar, Esmeraldas, Cotopaxi, Tungurahua, El Oro and Loja,” Noboa wrote on X.
Police said 46 guards and one civil servant were released from the Cotopaxi prison, 13 from Tungurahua prison, and 15 others from El Oro prison, where the body of a civil servant was found.
This phenomenon is, however, much more pronounced in a large number of Latin American countries.
Five countries on the continent have a prison population more than twice the capacity of their prisons: Peru (229 percent occupancy), El Salvador (237 percent), Bolivia (264 percent), Guatemala (293 percent), and Haiti, where the prison population is almost five times its official capacity.
END
YOUR EARLY CURRENCY/GOLD AND SILVER PRICING/ASIAN CLOSING MARKETS AND EUROPEAN BOURSE OPENING AND CLOSING/ INTEREST RATE SETTINGS FRIDAY MORNING 7;30AM//OPENING AND CLOSING
EURO VS USA DOLLAR: 1.0885 UP .0005
USA/ YEN 148.11 DOWN 0.012 NOW TARGETS INTEREST RATE AT 1.00% AS IT WILL BUY UNLIMITED BONDS TO GETS TO THAT LEVEL…//YEN STILL FALLS//
GBP/USA 1.2682 DOWN .0029
USA/CAN DOLLAR: 1.3475 DOWN .0009 (CDN DOLLAR UP 9 BASIS PTS)
Last night Shanghai COMPOSITE CLOSED DOWN 13.50 PTS OR 0.47%
Hang Seng CLOSED DOWN 83.10 PTS OR 0.54%
AUSTRALIA CLOSED UP 1.01% // EUROPEAN BOURSE: MOSTLY ALL GREEN
Trading from Europe and ASIA
I) EUROPEAN BOURSES: MOSTLY ALL GREEN
2/ CHINESE BOURSES / :Hang SENG DOWN 83.10 PTS OR 0.54%
/SHANGHAI CLOSED DOWN 13.50 PTS OR 0.54%
AUSTRALIA BOURSE CLOSED UP 1.01%
(Nikkei (Japan) CLOSED UP 497.10 OR 1.40%
INDIA’S SENSEX IN THE GREEN
Gold very early morning trading: 2033.90
silver:$22.81
USA dollar index early FRIDAY morning: 103,14 DOWN 18 BASIS POINTS FROM THURSDAY’s CLOSE.
The USA/Yuan, CNY: closed ON SHORE CLOSED (UP) …7.1940
THE USA/YUAN OFFSHORE: (YUAN CLOSED (UP)…. (7.2085)
TURKISH LIRA: 30.19 EXTREMELY DANGEROUS LEVEL/DEATH WATCH/HYPERINFLATION TO BEGIN.//ON DEATH WATCH
the 10 yr Japanese bond yield at +0.663…VERY DANGEROUS
Your closing 10 yr US bond yield UP 4 in basis points from THURSDAY at 4.186% //trading well ABOVE the resistance level of 2.27-2.32%) very problematic
USA 30 yr bond yield 4.391 UP 4 in basis points ON THE DAY/12.00 PM
USA 2 YR BOND YIELD: 4.412 UP 6 BASIS PTS.
Your 12:00 AM bourses for Europe and the Dow along with the USA dollar index closing and interest rates: FRIDAY CLOSING TIME 12:00 PM
London: CLOSED UP 4.37 PTS OR 0.06%
German Dax : CLOSED DOWN 18.09 PTS OR 0.11%
Paris CAC CLOSED DOWN 31.56 PTS OR 0.43%
Spain IBEX CLOSED DOWN 22.00 PTS OR 0.22%
Italian MIB: CLOSED DOWN 41.53 PTS OR 0.14%
WTI Oil price 74.73 12: EST
Brent Oil: 79.60 12:00 EST
USA /RUSSIAN ROUBLE /// AT: 88.23; ROUBLE UP 0 AND 79//100
GERMAN 10 YR BOND YIELD; +2.3168 UP 1 BASIS PTS
UK 10 YR YIELD: 3.984 UP 3
BASIS PTS
CLOSING NUMBERS: 4 PM
Euro vs USA: 1.0893 UP .0013 OR 13 BASIS POINTS
British Pound: 1.2696 DOWN .0016 or 16 basis pts
BRITISH 10 YR GILT BOND YIELD: 3.950 DOWN 2 BASIS PTS//
JAPAN 10 YR YIELD: 0.664%
USA dollar vs Japanese Yen: 148,10 UP 0.066//YEN DOWN 6 BASIS PTS//
USA dollar vs Canadian dollar: 1.3434 DOWN 0.0051 CDN dollar UP 51 basis pts)
West Texas intermediate oil: 73.81
Brent OIL: 78.76
USA 10 yr bond yield UP 1 BASIS pts to 4.151%
USA 30 yr bond yield DOWN 2 BASIS PTS to 4.354%
USA 2 YR BOND: UP 6 PTS AT 4.410%
USA dollar index: 103.06 DOWN 25 BASIS POINTS
USA DOLLAR VS TURKISH LIRA: 30.19 (GETTING QUITE CLOSE TO BLOWING UP/
USA DOLLAR VS RUSSIA//// ROUBLE: 88.20 UP 0 AND 85/100 roubles
GOLD 2028.35 3:30 PM
SILVER: 22.59 3:30 PM
DOW JONES INDUSTRIAL AVERAGE: UP 382.40 PTS OR 1.02%
NASDAQ UP333.71 PTS OR 1.95%
VOLATILITY INDEX: 13.42 DOWN .71 PTS OR 5.02%
GLD: $187.93 UP 0.56 OR 0.30%
SLV/ $20.67 DOWN ,14 OR 0.67%
end
USA AFFAIRS
TODAY’S TRADING IN GRAPH FORM
S&P 500 Surges To New All-Time High Despite Wrecked Rate-Cut Hopes
FRIDAY, JAN 19, 2024 – 04:00 PM
‘Good news’ was initially ‘bad news’ for stocks to start the week, but as ‘hard’ data surged, ‘soft’ data slumped…
Source: Bloomberg
…but the strong ‘hard’ data prompted a biig (hawkish) repricing of rate-cut expectations (initial timing and velocity)…
Source: Bloomberg
…and stocks didn’t care either way – we were getting to record highs on this large OpEx (Gamma unclench) no matter what. All the majors exploded higher today with Nasdaq the major winner on the week. Small Caps actually ended the week in the red (the 4th weekly loss in a row)…
The S&P 500 finally joined the Nasdaq at new record highs, surpassing its record high close (4796.6 1/3/22) and intraday record high (4818.6 1/4/22)…
Source: Bloomberg
2024 has been very good to L/S Hedge Fund managers, erasing (admittedly in our proxy index below) the ugly losses from December…
Source: Bloomberg
As their ‘most shorted’ stocks plunged non-stop – erasing the squeeze pain after the FOMC…
Source: Bloomberg
And MAG7 stocks ripped to new highs this week
Source: Bloomberg
AI leaders have dominated YTD, helped by a massive surge off Wednesday’s opening lows…
Source: Bloomberg
Interestingly, while the anti-obesity drug names have outperformed YTD, this week saw both the GLP-1 winners and losers get punished…
Source: Bloomberg
Lower-quality stocks suffered this week and YTD…
Source: Bloomberg
US equity markets melted up in the second-half of this holiday-shortened week, completely decoupling from the Treasury market – which saw yields rocket back higher, roundtripping the post-FOMC move entirely…
Source: Bloomberg
Treasury yields were higher every day this week, with the long-end the laggard YTD (30Y +33bps, 2Y +16bps)…
Source: Bloomberg
The yield curve (2s30s) ended back in ‘inverted’ territory after bear-flattening this week…
Source: Bloomberg
The dollar ended the week higher – though saw selling pressure the last two days…
Source: Bloomberg
Bitcoin has been punched in the face at the cash equity trading open in the US every day since spot ETFs began trading. Today was different though as buyers appeared near $40k and bid the cryptocurrency back above $42k -practically unchanged on the week…
Source: Bloomberg
And while Ethereum also ended the week slightly lower, it held on to its massive outperformance relative to bitcoin last week…
Source: Bloomberg
Spot Gold prices ended the week lower but saw a healthy bounce off the $2000 level midweek…
Source: Bloomberg
Oil prices ended the week higher (yes, higher), but reverted back into the YTD range after breaking out yesterday…
Source: Bloomberg
Finally, be careful what you wish for on ‘encouraging’ hard-date signals being positive. The lagged effect of the unprecedented loosing of financial conditions is about to strike…
Source: Bloomberg
…and with it ‘animal spirits’ will be reborn – and the threat of re-inflation.
END
MORNING TRADING//
end
AFTERNOON TRADING
II USA DATA
Two important points here:
Fed bailout fund reaches record levels
Reverse repo cash is declining rapidly
Regulator Readies For End Of Fed Bank Bailout Fund As ‘Arb’ Volumes Explode Higher
THURSDAY, JAN 18, 2024 – 04:45 PM
Money-market fund assets notched their first net weekly outflows in a month, led by declines in government funds as investors reallocated portfolios in the early days of the new year. Total assets dropped $14.1BN to $5.961TN from $5.975TN the week prior, which was a record high…
Source: Bloomberg
Retail funds saw yet another inflow (of $1.6BN) while Institutional funds saw $15.8BN outflows…
Source: Bloomberg
In a breakdown for the week to Jan. 17, government funds – which invest primarily in securities like Treasury bills, repurchase agreements and agency debt – saw assets fall to $4.862 trillion, a $15.7 billion decrease.
Prime funds, which tend to invest in higher-risk assets such as commercial paper, meanwhile, saw assets rise to $978.3 billion, a $5.2 billion increase.
After its biggest increase (+$5.7BN) since the SVB crisis last week, The Fed’s balance sheet shrank by $13BN last week to a new cycle low of $7.674TN (the lowest since March 2021)…
Source: Bloomberg
The Fed’s reverse repo facility continues to see drawdowns, pointing to the source of liquidity zero-ing out by March as we have warned about.
Bank reserves at The Fed continue to rebound strongly (helped by the drawdowns from RRP to their highest since April 2022), catching up to equity market cap’s recent gains…
Source: Bloomberg
Additionally, usage of The Fed’s bank bailout facility (BTFP) exploded higher by $14.3BN last week (presumably as everyone piled into the arb) to a new record high of $162BN…
That is the biggest weekly jump since the SVB crisis…
Source: Bloomberg
The Fed has totally lost control of its BTFP facility as it has risen by over $47BN since the arb existed.
And the Fed-BTFP Arb remains alive and well and offering 55bps of free money to every bank that qualifies…
Source: Bloomberg
And it appears our warnings that is becoming more likely that The Fed will be able to keep the bank bailout (BTFP) plan alive after its planned obsolescence in March have been proven right.
“In justifying the generous terms of the original program, the Fed cited the ‘unusual and exigent’ market conditions facing the banking industry following last spring’s deposit runs,” Wrightson ICAP economist Lou Crandall wrote in a note to clients.
“It would be difficult to defend a renewal in today’s more normal environment.”
Expanding on earlier plans that we detailed here to reduce banks’ ability to use FHLB as an implicit funding tool, Bloomberg reports today that US regulators are preparing to introduce a plan to require that banks tap the Federal Reserve’s discount window at least once a year to reduce the stigma and ensure lenders are ready for troubled times.
In an interview, Michael Hsu, the acting comptroller of the currency, said the changes regulators will propose aim to ensure banks are more prepared to respond to sudden flights of deposits.
“We want to make sure that banks have enough resources to meet any kind of outflows within five days—especially those related to uninsured deposits,” Hsu said.
He added that the plan will also seek to remove any stigma associated with borrowing from the Fed’s discount window.
Hsu is the latest top US regulator to flag the need for banks to be more comfortable using the discount window.
“Banks need to be ready and willing to use the discount window in good times and bad,” Michael Barr, the Fed’s vice chair for supervision, said in December.
Maybe banks are starting to realize this won’t be painless…
To make the discount window more attractive, the government is considering ways to make it cheaper for borrowers, according to a person familiar with the rule-writing effort.
The proposal could also affect how assets such as high-quality bonds and mutual funds, which are frequently held as collateral to gain discount-window access, can be counted on a bank’s balance sheet, said the person, who asked not to be identified as the plans haven’t been released.
Translation: all the “pay me at par” rules of the BTFP will now be applied to the discount window… but maybe not the arbitrage.
Well, now we know where the regional banks will be going for funding…
Can the discount window cope with the sudden need for over $147 Billion?
Last week saw usage of the discount window rise $189 Million to $2.295 Billion…
What do you think?
It is clear that The Fed is well aware of the problem it faces on March (or sooner). As we noted previously, the potential for this liquidity crisis created the possibility of a worrying chain reaction – from the Fed’s balance sheet, via the money market funds and the private repo market, through the basis trade and on to the demand for Treasuries, at a time when the US government is coming to market with massive amounts of issuance.
Instead of scarce bank reserves creating liquidity problems and forcing the Fed to stop QT, it may well be the exhaustion of the ON RRP and the upending of the hedge fund basis trade that causes problems in 2024. The worrying difference now is that there is no Fed backstop for hedge funds and the high degree of leverage used in the trade could lead to liquidity problems proliferating even more quickly through the financial system.
This may be too late to avert a severe bout of bond market volatility, though.
Either way, the Fed is on course to end QT and restart QE in the coming months, against a backdrop of loose fiscal policy and a still-resilient economy, opening the door to a reappearance of inflationary pressures that the Fed may have little appetite (or ability) to restrain.
And that’s why The Fed will cut rates no matter whether employment is at record highs or inflation is re-igniting.
end
UMich Inflation Expectation Plunges To Lowest Since 2020, Sentiment Soars
FRIDAY, JAN 19, 2024 – 10:10 AM
After soaring in October and November, and crashing back to earth in December, consensus estimates for UMich inflation expectations in preliminary January data were basically unchanged – but instead they declined further to 2.9% (1Y) and 2.8% (5-10Y)…
Source: Bloomberg
This lack of fear of inflation sent the sentiment indicators soaring 9.1pts to 78.8, the biggest monthly advance since 2005.
The current conditions gauge rose 10 points to 83.3, and a measure of expectations climbed to 75.9. Both were the highest since 2021.
“Sentiment has now risen nearly 60% above the all-time low measured in June of 2022 and is likely to provide some positive momentum for the economy,” Joanne Hsu, director of the survey, said in a statement.
Source: Bloomberg
“Consumers exhibited stronger views on multiple facets of the economy, suggesting greater confidence of a soft landing,” Hsu said.
“Improvements in inflation expectations have been supported by perceptions of easing price pressures in buying conditions for both durable goods and vehicles,” she said, adding that consumers increasingly expect the Federal Reserve to lower rates this year, but not housing…
That’s “consistent with the belief that inflation will not accelerate in the near future,” Hsu said.
The survey showed the pickup in optimism was broad, with improvements across age, income and political affiliation. More than half of households expect their incomes to grow at least as fast as inflation, the highest share since mid-2021.
Meanwhile, stock market expectations were the strongest in more than two years, the report showed.
Consumers’ perception of their current financial situation rose to a two-year high, while expectations for future finances climbed to the highest since 2021.
Democrats are loving it…
Are ‘animal spirits’ coming back? The Fed should be careful what it hopes for.
end
III USA ECONOMIC COMMENTARIES
This is important as the Supreme Court appears to wish to roll back powers of Federal agencies.
(EpochTimes)
Supreme Court Conservatives Appear Open To Rolling Back Power Of Federal Agencies
A bureaucracy-empowering judicial doctrine that critics blame for the explosive growth of the U.S. government in recent decades should be overturned, the Supreme Court heard on Jan. 17.
The court may overturn the so-called Chevron deference doctrine that the Supreme Court enunciated in 1984, or narrow its application. “Chevron deference,” as lawyers call it, holds that an agency’s interpretation of a statute it administers is entitled to deference unless Congress has said otherwise.
The court’s ultimate ruling might alter the current balance of power among Congress, executive agencies, and the nation’s judiciary by curbing the legal underpinnings of the modern administrative state, which critics deride as an illegitimate fourth branch of government.
In the landmark ruling in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the court held that while courts “must give effect to the unambiguously expressed intent of Congress,” where courts find “Congress has not directly addressed the precise question at issue” and “the statute is silent or ambiguous with respect to the specific issue, the question for the court is whether the agency’s answer is based on a permissible construction of the statute.”
Conservatives and Republican policymakers have long been critical of the doctrine, saying it has contributed to the dramatic growth of government and gives unelected regulators far too much power to make policy by going beyond what Congress intended when it approved various laws. The authority of regulatory agencies has been increasingly questioned in recent years as the conservative majority on the Supreme Court has grown.
Conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch have expressed skepticism of the Chevron doctrine.
Those on the other side say the Chevron doctrine empowers an activist federal government to serve the public interest in an increasingly complicated world without having to seek specific congressional authorization for everything that needs to be done.
The court heard two related cases: Relentless Inc. v. Department of Commerce and Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo.
In the cases at hand, in 2020, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and its National Marine Fisheries Service implemented a final rule to compel fishing companies to pay for human monitors aboard their vessels.
The companies say the burden of paying for the monitors is a hardship that significantly reduces their profit margins.
Relentless Inc. attorney Roman Martinez told the justices that Chevron deference must be overruled.
“For too long, Chevron has distorted the judicial process and undermined statutory interpretation,” he said.
“Chevron violates the Constitution. Article III empowers judges to say what the law is … [and] to interpret federal statutes using their best and independent judgment. Chevron undermines that duty. It reallocates interpretive authority from courts to agencies, and it forces courts to adopt inferior agency constructions that are issued for political or policy reasons.
“In doing so, Chevron blocks judges from serving as faithful agents of Congress. It mandates judicial bias and encourages agency overreach, and by removing key checks on executive power, it threatens individual liberty. Chevron also violates the APA,” referring to the Administrative Procedure Act.
The APA “contemplates that courts, not agencies will authoritatively resolve ambiguities in statutes,” Mr. Martinez said.
“This court’s only justification for Chevron is the implied delegation theory, but that theory is a fiction. There’s no reason to think that Congress intends every ambiguity and every agency statute to give agencies an ongoing power to interpret and reinterpret federal law in ways that override its best meaning.
“In this case, the agency misinterpreted the MSA [i.e., Magnuson–Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act] to force struggling fishermen to pay up to 20 percent of their annual profits to federal agents.”
The government is arguing that “even if all nine of you agree with us that the agency’s construction is worse than ours, you should nonetheless defer to that construction and uphold their program under Chevron.
“That’s not consistent with the rule of law. If we have the best view of the statute, we should win this case,” the lawyer said.
Justice Clarence Thomas told Mr. Martinez, “Your argument is that Chevron deference is problematic.”
“How do we know where the line is?” he said.
Justice Elena Kagan offered a hypothetical to show the difficulty that lawmakers could face if deference to agencies were overruled.
The justice asked how lawmakers would decide if a product aimed at alleviating bad cholesterol was a dietary supplement or a drug. Having specialized agencies staffed with experts who understand these things can be helpful, she said.
Along similar lines, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said she saw Chevron as “doing the very important work of helping courts stay away from policymaking.”
“I’m worried about the courts becoming uber-legislators,” the justice said.
Justice Samuel Alito suggested that Chevron became popular because it was viewed as a way of discouraging judges from imposing their own views in a case.
Justice Alito asked Mr. Martinez if he agreed “that one of the reasons why Chevron was originally so popular was concern that judges were allowing their policy views consciously or unconsciously, to influence their interpretation of the statutes in question.”
Mr. Martinez replied, “yes.”
That fear has diminished over time because nowadays courts rely less “on legislative history and on more free-form analysis that I think made it easier for policy considerations to infect the judicial decision-making process,” the attorney said.
But the Supreme Court has “now made clear that, really, we should be text-focused, we should be focused on faithful agency to Congress.”
The late Justice Antonin Scalia backed away from his initial enthusiasm about Chevron deference after he realized the APA “had text that actually bore on this question,” he said.
“When you’re enforcing that text, you come to the same place as our Article III argument, which is that courts have to exercise independent judgment.”
Justice Alito suggested Mr. Martinez was arguing that courts decide cases arbitrarily.
“Do you think that the canons of interpretation that we have now and all of the other tools that we have in our statutory interpretation toolkit are like the enigma machine? And so we have these statutes and they’re sort of written in code and we run them through the enigma machine and –abracadabra—we have the best interpretation? Do you really think that’s how it works?”
Mr. Martinez said the problem with Chevron is that “you’re not trying to find the best interpretation anymore. You’re, in fact, agreeing that you have to impose the not-best interpretation because you have to defer.”
This means that Chevron is the only canon “that says to courts, ‘you can stop doing your normal interpretive function and we’re going to allocate that interpretive function outside of Article III,’” the attorney said.
Responding to Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Mr. Martinez said the Supreme Court “has tried to rein in Chevron in numerous ways, but I think that what all of those efforts show is that you kind of need a secret decoder ring to figure out what the law means under this court’s approach.”
Loper Bright attorney Paul Clement said Chevron deference hurts small businesses.
“Commercial fishing is hard,” he said. Space on vessels “is tight, and margins are tighter still.”
For his clients to have “to carry federal observers on board is a burden, but having to pay their salaries is a crippling blow.”
Chevron deference “is unworkable as its critical threshold question of ambiguity is hopelessly ambiguous. It is also … a reliance-destroying doctrine because it facilitates agency flip-flopping.”
U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar told the court that Chevron deference should be affirmed.
“The Chevron framework is a bedrock principle of administrative law with deep roots in this court’s jurisprudence,” she said.
“Overruling a precedent is never a small matter. But overruling a precedent as foundational as Chevron should require a truly extraordinary justification. And petitioners don’t have one.”
The other side argues that Article III “requires de novo review of all statutory interpretation questions.”
De novo review is when a court rules on an issue without giving deference to a previous decision, as if the case were being heard for the first time.
“But that’s flatly inconsistent with precedent going back” to the early days of the American republic, she said.
They are wrong to argue that Chevron violates due process because “the application of deferential standards of review doesn’t constitute impermissible bias.”
And the contention that the APA requires de novo review is “inconsistent with the statute’s history and the way it’s been understood ever since its enactment, including in the more than 70 cases in which this court has relied on Chevron to sustain an agency’s interpretation.”
Overturning Chevron deference would cause upheaval and lead to “endless litigation,” Ms. Prelogar said.
“Thousands of judicial decisions sustaining an agency’s rulemaking or adjudication as reasonable would be open to challenge, and that profound disruption is especially unwarranted because Congress could modify or overrule the Chevron framework at any time.
“Congress has many times considered proposals to do so, but it’s never taken that step,” she added.
Justice Neil Gorsuch told the top government lawyer that, “Maybe a dozen or more circuit judges have written asking us to overrule Chevron. And … it also may be why one of your colleagues last year said I don’t know what ambiguity means at this lectern.”
“And should that be a clue that something needs to be fixed here, that even the federal government at the podium can’t answer the question what triggers ambiguity?”
Even “here in this rather prosaic case,” lower court judges “can’t figure out what Chevron means,” the justice said.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, “Most scholars of statutory interpretation consider Chevron to be an interpretive canon, much like clear statement rules, rule of lenity, judicially created.”
Ms. Prelogar said she didn’t think of it as “a canon,” but instead regards it as “fundamentally rooted … in kind of setting the ground rules for how all three branches of the government are operating together.”
The Supreme Court has been “recognizing that there are legitimate reasons why Congress cannot answer every question itself and why it will want to go hand-in-hand with an agency by charging that agency with administering the statute.”
END
Grocery stores in Democrat run cities are leaving in droves
(zerohedge)
“Food Deserts” Rise In Democrat Run Cities As Grocers Leave In Droves
THURSDAY, JAN 18, 2024 – 11:20 PM
The panic is palpable. Democrat controlled cities across the nation are experiencing something they might never have experienced before: Consequences for their terrible criminal prosecution policies. And, they don’t like. Not one bit.
Democrats have argued for the past couple years that crime rates are actually falling in the US compared to previous decades, but this does not seem to be represented on the streets as retailers in numerous metro areas are closing up shop after many years of operations due to increasing theft. If crime rates are falling, why are so many businesses leaving blue areas?
Boston, for example, has been bleeding retailers in recent months, with companies like Walgreens closing down four stores in the area in a single year. Residents and officials are “outraged”, arguing that these companies have a civic duty to stay and service communities in need. It’s estimated that Massachusetts retailers are losing more than $2 billion per year to criminal theft. Maybe if the community stopped robbing them on a daily basis, these companies wouldn’t feel the need to shut down.
The series of closures in Boston is similar to what is happening in San Francisco, with some neighborhoods slowly but surely losing nearby access to grocers. Companies have in some cases tried to hide the reason for shutting down (high crime) by suggesting that they are “improving” the area by opening land up for development, but locals know the real cause.
Conclusion – Crime is not falling at all in leftist run cities. Crime rates rely on reports and arrests. If leftist officials are making policies which discourage arrests and reporting, then crime rates go down – It’s like magic.
Due to changes in the way data is being collated by the FBI during the covid years, many major cities are not actually required to provide full crime rate information until 2024-2025, and quite a few are taking advantage (at least 30%). San Francisco will not be reporting complete crime stats until 2025.
This means that when Democrats argue that crime is going down (ostensibly because of their leadership), this is based on a false and incomplete picture of the data. Lack of data, as mentioned, is also coupled with lack of arrests, lack of prosecution, and the consistent release of repeat offenders in blue cities. Lack of arrests and convictions does not mean there’s less crime.
Again, using San Francisco as an example, the police department’s closure rate on cases remains dismal because the city’s District Attorney refused to prosecute; for every 100 suspects arrested, three are charged and one is convicted. Until he was recalled in a July 8, 2022, election, San Francisco’s DA was Soros-backed radical leftist Chesa Boudin. The Soros connection is widely considered one of the prime indicators of crooked DA’s and prosecutors, as well as high crime rates for a city.
Soros DAs run several other major prosecutorial offices, including Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Austin, Dallas, San Antonio, St. Louis, New York, Baltimore, Albuquerque, Orlando, and three urban counties in Northern Virginia. In Massachusetts, Soros-backed federal prosecutor Rachael Rollins was forced to resign after the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General and the Office of Special Counsel released devastating reports outlining her serious ethical lapses and partisan political activity. It’s not surprising that wherever Soros influenced DAs and prosecutors run things, food deserts seem to follow.
Once this dynamic of corruption is understood, it becomes clear why so many grocers and retailers are uprooting their stores and leaving. It’s no longer profitable to stay because Democrat city governments have chosen criminals over businesses.
END
Donald Trump Jr. Says His Father May Tap Tucker Carlson As Running Mate
When asked by Newsmax if the rumours of Carlson being the one had any validity, Trump Jr. said “I would love to see that happen. That would certainly be a contender.”
“That clearly would be on the table, right.” he continued, adding “I mean they’re very friendly, I think they agree on virtually all of these things,” including “stopping the never-ending war.”
Trump Jr. suggested several other names including Ben Carson and even Ron DeSantis, who Trump continues to call ‘DeSanctimonious’.
One person Trump Jr. was sure won’t be a contender is Nikki Haley.
“I think she’s being funded by Democrats, right? I mean, you see that. She’s got Democrat megadonors funding her campaign. The people who are getting her gains in New Hampshire are all Democrats,” he added.
“So, I probably see that as part of that sort of globalist Democrat, RINO tactic of dragging this out to make it harder for Trump to win a general,’ Trump Jr. further noted.
Rumours have been circling for some time about Tucker Carlson being in the running.
Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews
END
Bannon Predicts Trump’s First 100 Days Will Set 50-Year Agenda
In an exclusive interview with The Epoch Times, Steve Bannon laid out what the beginning of former President Donald Trump’s second term would look like if he is elected later this year.
“The first 100 days of President Trump’s second term will be the equivalent of the first 100 days of FDR [Franklin Delano Roosevelt],” said Mr. Bannon, the host of the “War Room” podcast.
“FDR, in his first hundred days, started the foundations of building the administrative state, the deep state. The first 100 days of President Trump, I think you’ll see the beginning of the deconstruction of that and the destruction of the deep state, along with dozens and dozens and dozens of other policy proposals,” he added.
How 2024 Differs from 2016
Mr. Bannon served on President Trump’s transition team in 2016 and then as the White House’s chief strategist.
He recalled that former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie had put together the future president’s first transition team.
Mr. Bannon dismissed the resulting work product as “a joke.”
“We reviewed it, but we threw that away,” he said. Mr. Christie was quickly replaced as the lead of the transition effort by the president-elect’s second in command, Mike Pence.
“During the first few days on the job, every hour felt like a race,” Jared Kushner, also a member of the transition team, recalled of the opening hours of President Trump’s time in office in his memoir, “Breaking History.”
Mr. Bannon and Mr. Kushner were among the big names who helped set the White House’s initial agenda. Reporting during the Trump administration often emphasized ways the two men did not always see eye to eye.
“President Trump does like to have the tension of different viewpoints and debating things—and the best idea wins. So that’s not a negative,” Mr. Bannon said, likening the dynamics in Trump’s inner circle of advisers to Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet, which also included many clashing personalities.
He predicted “one difference” that would set that “Team of Rivals” dynamic in the second administration apart from what Americans saw between 2017 and 2021.
“You won’t have people that tend to be more globalist. I think you’ll see populist, nationalist people that are fully on board with the outlines and directionally on board with President Trump’s policies,” Mr. Bannon said.
Trump, he added, is “running an anti-globalist campaign.”
President Trump has said neither Jared Kushner nor his wife and President Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, will be part of a future Trump presidential team.
“It’s too painful for the family,” the former president told Fox News’ Bret Baier in June 2023.
‘A LinkedIn of MAGA’
Mr. Bannon said the first 100 days of the first Trump term also suffered because “we didn’t have a deep bench of MAGA-type people that had understood policy or had been in the government before.”
Eight years after 2024, Make America Great Again has a real institutional presence in Washington.
“You have groups like Heritage and others that have made a huge effort,” he said, citing Johnny McEntee, a young Trump insider who is now part of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, officially unaffiliated with any candidate, but seen by many as a blueprint for the second Trump White House with a stronger executive and weakened executive branch bureaucracies.
That slow, steady organizational work is yielding “a LinkedIn of MAGA,” according to Mr. Bannon.
The former White House strategist ran through a list of core Trump policies that President Trump has described in his campaign trail speeches: “Tariffs across the board, sealing our border, mass deportations, starting to rethink our geopolitical alliances.”
While he conceded that some of the president’s priorities would likely require cooperation from Congress, he argued that much of the president’s agenda could be enacted through executive order, or even simply a return to enforcement of the law as written.
Executing MAGA policies requires loyal, competent people.
The new MAGA-inflected institutions in Washington are “building up a cadre, a base of like-minded people that can step into the government and media.”
“I think President Trump’s first days will be very dramatic,” Mr. Bannon predicted.
He foresees an equally dramatic immune response from MAGA foes.
“They will come at him from every different angle, just like they do on the lawfare now,” he said.
MAGA Equivalent of New Deal Coalition
Mr. Bannon, a naval intelligence veteran who also previously worked in investment banking and Hollywood, returned to the theme of President Trump as an anti-FDR during his conversation with The Epoch Times.
FDR was elected to an unprecedented four terms, serving through the Great Depression and most of World War II. He ultimately died in office.
The New Deal coalition he forged was a political juggernaut for generations, setting a liberal tone to the national government for much of the next half century. The coalition only began to fragment with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and the 1994 “Republican Revolution,” in which Republicans gained control of both houses of Congress for the first time in 42 years.
While a second Trump term could accomplish a lot through executive orders, the reversal of many Trump executive orders at the start of the Biden administration reveals the weakness of governance in that form. To stand a better chance of lasting, MAGA policies emanating from the top would need to be buttressed by MAGA laws promulgated by a friendlier Congress.
Republican skeptics of President Trump are quick to argue that the fruits of his political influence—for example, on the primaries ahead of the underwhelming 2022 midterms—show MAGA isn’t a formula for victory.
But Mr. Bannon envisions a MAGA equivalent of the New Deal coalition capable of implementing an agenda that lasts.
“If we do this right, it’s just the beginning, like FDR’s was, of 50 years of MAGA policies,” he said.
IIIB USA COMMENTARIES RE ISRAEL/HAMAS WAR/ and PERVASIVE ANTISEMITISM/WOKISM
END
FREIGHT ISSUES/USA
END
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
END
END
SWAMP STORIES
Legal Blow: Hunter’s Defense Hammered By Discovery Of Cocaine On Gun Pouch
Attorney Abbe Lowell has faced a series of legal blows in his defense of Hunter Biden, but not quite as literal or lethal as what came this week in his client’s gun prosecution.
After Lowell sought to dismiss the federal indictment as a trumped-up political prosecution, the Justice Department lowered the boom and revealed that Hunter’s gun was found in a pouch covered in cocaine.
The disclosure is devastating for a defense that Lowell just rolled out late last year.
In October, Lowell argued that Hunter had not lied on ATF Form 4473 when he indicated he was not an unlawful user of, or addicted to, narcotics.
“At the time that he purchased this gun, I don’t think there’s evidence that that’s when he was suffering,” he said.
It was a curious shift, since Hunter, President Biden and the media have repeatedly used his addiction to forgive everything from corruption to influence-peddling.
Hunter released a book that had laid the foundation of that defense, and “Beautiful Things” was heralded by many in the press.
Reviews gushed about “an astonishingly candid and brave book about loss, human frailty, wayward souls, and hard-fought redemption.”
The image of a clean, redemptive soul is strikingly out of sync with a gun pouch that was reportedly covered in coke.
What is clear is that the sobriety defense now seems as risky as it is implausible.
In the special counsel’s filing, the court was informed that “an FBI chemist subsequently analyzed the residue and determined that it was cocaine. To be clear, investigators literally found drugs on the pouch where the defendant had kept his gun.”
Hunter bought and possessed the Colt Cobra 38SPL revolver for 11 days between Oct. 12 and Oct. 23, 2018.
That possession ended when his sister-in-law Hallie Biden tossed the firearm into a dumpster in Wilmington, Delaware.
Hallie, the widow of Hunter’s deceased brother, had begun a sexual relationship with him and she apparently became concerned about what he might do with the gun.
According to Hunter’s own memoir, that would make the window of sobriety a mere blink in time for a defense.
The defense will likely challenge the admissibility of police testing due to the gun being tossed into the dumpster.
It is more likely that they will cite the break in the chain of custody as making the test unreliable and prejudicial.
What is clear is that the sobriety defense now may be as risky as it is implausible.
The government could argue that it should be able to use the testing as circumstantial evidence to rebut the claim or even impeach Hunter if he takes the stand (which seems unlikely).
Hunter wrote about being a crack addict and alcoholic throughout this period, writing in his book that at some points he was “drinking a quart of vodka a day by yourself in a room is absolutely, completely debilitating” as was “smoking crack around the clock.”
The most pressing problem is not the government portraying Hunter as Tony Montana from “Scarface,” it’s Hunter himself.
He’ll have a tough time changing that story now.
END
Texas Begins Arresting, Charging Illegal Immigrants In Eagle Pass As Border Feud With Biden Admin Intensifies
Texas authorities began arresting illegal immigrants at Shelby Park in Eagle Pass on Wednesday after the state’s attorney general defied a cease-and-desist letter sent by the Biden administration demanding officials stop blocking U.S. Border Patrol agents from the site.
The arrests were announced by Lt. Chris Olivarez at the Texas Department of Public Safety on X, formerly Twitter.
Mr. Olivarez said single adult migrant men and women were taken into state custody and charged with criminal trespassing under Governor Greg Abbott’s new state law, which allows police to arrest and charge people suspected of entering the country illegally.
That measure was passed in December and is set to go into effect in March but is currently subject to a legal challenge by the Justice Department.
“Under the authority of Gov.@GregAbbott_TX’s Border Disaster Declaration, @TxDPS Troopers are arresting illegal immigrants for criminal trespass at #ShelbyPark in Eagle Pass,” he wrote.
“Troopers are enforcing criminal trespass on adult men & women. The State of Texas will maintain a proactive posture in curbing illegal border crossings between the ports of entry,” Mr. Olivarez added.
The Texas official also shared photos and video footage alongside the post, showing officers searching and handcuffing multiple illegal aliens before leading them into police vehicles.
Typically, illegal immigrants who enter the United States may surrender to border patrol agents and seek asylum.
Biden Admin Issues Warning
It is not immediately clear how many arrests were made by Texas officials.
However, the detentions mark the first of their kind since Texas state authorities earlier this month took control of Shelby Park, a roughly 2.5-mile portion of the U.S.-Mexico border that serves as a hotbed for illegal immigration, in an effort to combat unprecedented illegal border crossings.
Wednesday’s arrests are likely to increase ongoing tensions between Texas officials and the Biden administration after the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) demanded state authorities stop “barring” federal Border Patrol agents from accessing the area, which is located next to the Rio Grande.
The federal government claims that Texas has “impeded operations of Border Patrol” along the area in “conflict with the authority and duties of Border Patrol under federal law” and preempted under the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
In a cease-and-desist letter sent to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Jan. 14, DHS general counsel Jonathan Meyer further accused Texas of having failed to allow border agents access to the area “even in instances of imminent danger to life and safety.”
‘Facts and Law Side With Texas’
Mr. Meyer cited an incident on Jan. 12 when a woman and two children drowned in the Rio Grande. DHS has claimed the three died after Border Patrol agents “were physically barred by Texas officials from entering the area,” while the White House has used the incident to further take aim at Mr. Abbott’s policies.
However, the Texas Military Department has provided a different account following a thorough review of the circumstances surrounding the drownings, stating that Border Patrol agents requested access to the area after the drownings occurred while Mexican authorities were already recovering the bodies.
National Guard soldiers stand guard on the banks of the Rio Grande River at Shelby Park in Eagle Pass, Texas, on Jan. 12, 2024. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
Despite the differing statement from the Texas Military Department, DHS gave Texas until Wednesday to stop “barring” Border Patrol’s access to the area and threatened to refer the matter to the Department of Justice for “appropriate action” if state officials failed to do so.
Mr. Paxton responded to the DHS cease and desist request on Wednesday by defending the actions of Texas authorities.
“Because the facts and law side with Texas, the State will continue utilizing its constitutional authority to defend her territory, and I will continue defending those lawful efforts in court,” Mr. Paxton wrote.
The Texas Republican also called the White House’s attempts to blame Texas for the death of the three illegal immigrants “vile” and “completely inaccurate.”
“Instead of running to the U.S. Department of Justice in hopes of winning an injunction, you should advise your clients at DHS to do their job and follow the law,” Mr. Paxton wrote.
Chinese stocks got hammered again early on Thursday. Chinese officials then saved stocks.
China’s Sudden Stock Rally Points to ETF Buying by State Funds Chinese equity benchmarks rebounded in afternoon trading, with a jump in turnover in some major exchange-traded funds raising speculation that buying by state funds maybe behind the reversal. Traded value of the Huatai-Pinebridge CSI 300 ETF surged to 15.3 billion yuan ($2.1 billion) on Thursday, the highest since 2015, while those for Harvest CSI 300 Index ETF and E Fund CSI 300 ETF also saw extraordinary spikes. That coincided with gains in the CSI 300 benchmark of mainland shares, which closed 1.4% higher after declining as much as 1.8%… https://finance.yahoo.com/news/china-stocks-rebound-afternoon-amid-075532243.html
@Sino_Market: The CSI 1000 Index drops to below the 5,300 level, which will trigger knock-ins intensively. The total scale of SnowBall derivates in China tops 200 billion yuan. Most China SnowBall Derivates were intensively opened from Feb to April 2023. Since the downside knock-in put barriers are set to 75% or 80% of the spot price, dealers estimate that most of those are set at 5,180 points on the CSI 1000 index. For securities houses, hedging can be difficult when there are big market moves… https://twitter.com/Sino_Market/status/1747821835738284342
TSMC bullish on AI demand, forecasts 20% revenue growth this year Expects capital spending $28-$32 bln for 2024 Q4 profit T$238.7 bln vs T$226.4 bln analyst view Q4 capex $5.24 bln vs Q3 capex $7.1 bln “We are a key enabler for AI applications. So far today, everything you saw for AI comes from TSMC,” CEO C.C. Wei said at the conference, after the company reported a fourth quarter net profit that beat market expectations… https://www.reuters.com/technology/tsmc-q4-profit-falls-19-beats-market-expectations-2024-01-18/
Taiwan Semiconductor’s good results and AI incantation unleashed feverish buying in Fangs, semiconductors, and related trading sardines.
US Initial Jobless Claims fell to 187k from 203k, the lowest level since September 2022. 205k was expected. Continuing Claims retreated to 1.806m from 1.832m; 1.84m was consensus.
US Dec Housing Starts 1.46m, 1.425m expected; Permits 1.495m, 1.477m consensus
AP: Pakistan’s air force has carried out retaliatory strikes on insurgents inside Iran, the Pakistani foreign ministry says. https://t.co/QweQfP41XT
Pakistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs: This morning Pakistan undertook a series of highly coordinated and specifically targeted precision military strikes against terrorist hideouts in Siestan-o-Baluchistan province of Iran. A number of terrorists were killed during the Intelligence-based operation – codenamed *‘Marg Bar Sarmachar’*. Over the last several years, in our engagements with Iran, Pakistan has consistently shared its serious concerns about the safe havens and sanctuaries enjoyed by Pakistani origin terrorists calling themselves *Sarmachars* on the ungoverned spaces inside Iran. Pakistan also shared multiple dossiers with concrete evidence of the presence and activities of these terrorists. However, because of lack of action on our serious concerns, these so-called Sarmachars continued to spill the blood of innocent Pakistanis with impunity. This morning’s action was taken in light of credible intelligence of impending large scale terrorist activities by these so called Sarmachars… https://mofa.gov.pk/press-releases/operation-marg-bar-sarmachar?s=02
Despite the Chinese equity market intervention, TSM’s good results, and the upward bias ahead of Biden’s address on the US economy, the general US stock market was mixed in the morning. USHs were -18/32 at 11:00 ET. The DJTA and DJUA were down; the DJTA, S&P 500, and Nasdaq were up.
ESHs were negative, but flat, from the Nikkei opening until they turned modestly positive after the 1:00 ET Nikkei close. ESHs then plodded higher. They soared after 5:50 ET on TSMC’s results. ESHs eventually hit a daily high of 4797.50 at 8:35 ET. They sank to 4779.75 near 10:00 ET.
An A-B-C rally ended 9 minutes after the 11:30 ET European close. ESHs then sank to 4775.75 at 12:13 ET because Atlanta Fed President and uber-dove Bostic said he doesn’t see Fed rate cuts until Q3. He also urged ‘caution’ on cutting rates due to global uncertainty. Bostic said that if inflation falls faster than expected, rate cuts would appear.
ESHs bounced to 4783.75 at 12:17 ET as algos bought the headlines/verbiage about ‘rate cuts if inflation falls faster than expected.’ Sellers returned; ESHs sank to 4770.00 at 13:07 ET. The rally for the Biden economic address at 14:15 ET then commenced.
Biden’s address had little to do with the US economy. The Big Guy said airstrikes against the Houthis would continue even though strikes to date have not deterred Houthis from attacking ships. Joe touted spending millions for Internet access and trying to arrest ‘junk fees.’ The Big Guy claimed that Pakistan’s strikes at Iran show that Iran is not “well liked” in the region.
@Breaking911: BIDEN: “How many of you spent time in the McDonald’s parking lots tapping into their internet so you could do the homework with your kid?” (What jackass came up with this crap?) https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1748073317582401809
@ClayTravis: Joe Biden asks for Congresswoman Ross in the crowd and says he just got his picture taken with her. Then he says that’s not true, he forgot, she’s actually not there at all. He’s not well, guys. This is sad: (‘Tis why Joe’s handlers hide him!) https://twitter.com/ClayTravis/status/1748100274814603642
National Review: Joe Biden Explains to Reporters That He Doesn’t Know What He’s Doing On Thursday, Joe Biden assured reporters that his belated, reluctant effort to impose some prudence on the Houthi terrorist sect by force has so far been a failure. It’s not exactly comforting to hear the commander in chief explain that the Red Sea strategy to which he has committed the military is not working… Biden is facing a nascent backlash from members of his own party who view his weakness on the world stage as a provocation abroad and a political liability at home… the blame for the embarrassment to which Biden is committing the United States will fall on their shoulders too. https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/joe-biden-explains-to-reporters-that-he-doesnt-know-what-hes-doing/
@BloombergTV: President Biden lambasted Donald Trump for casting the US as a “failing nation” and predicting the economy will crater. “He wants to see the stock market crash,” Biden said in Raleigh, North Carolina. https://twitter.com/BloombergTV/status/1748105572317020512
Despite an innocuous Biden speech, ESHs soared to a daily high of 4817.00 at 15:52 ET. From yesterday’s King Report: Equity traders will play for a rebound rally after the declines on Tuesday and Wednesday… The rebound rally appeared yesterday afternoon.
Positive aspects of previous session Fangs, Semiconductors, and related trading sardines soared on TSMC’s good results The DJTA rallied sharply on expectations that JB Hunt would issue great results after the close A rebound rally drove US equities higher
Negative aspects of previous session Bonds declined sharply; USHs were -26/32 at the NYSE close Commodities rallied sharply
Ambiguous aspects of previous session Who keeps juicing USHs into US Treasury Auctions? Commodities, ex-energy, declined sharply again. Is China’s plight getting ominous?
First Hour/Last Hour Action [S&P 500 Index]: 1st Hour from NYSE Open: Down; Last Hour: Up
Pivot Point for S&P 500 Index [above/below indicates daily trend to traders]: 4769.10 Previous session S&P 500 Index High/Low: 4785.79; 4740.57
Today – Traders will try to extend the rebound rally on Thursday, emboldened by the proclivity for stocks to rally on Friday and the highest Reserves at the Fed ($3.6117 trillion) since April 20, 2022.
The odds are high that bulls will try to push the S&P 500 Index above its 4818.62 all-time high today or on Monday.
Expected Economic Data: Jan UM Sentiment 70.1, Expectations 66.6, Current Conditions 73, 1-year Inflation 3.1%, 5-10 Year Inflation 3%; Dec Existing Home Sales 3.83m; SF Fed Pres Daly 11:15 ET, Fed VCEO for Supervision Barr 13:00 ET on bank regulation
ESHs hit +1.25; USHs are -7/32; and Feb AU is +3.00 at 20:18 ET.
S&P Index 50-day MA: 4629; 100-day MA: 4488; 150-day MA: 4478; 200-day MA: 4400 DJIA 50-day MA: 36,339; 100-day MA: 35,109; 150-day MA: 34,958; 200-day MA: 34,606 (Green is positive slope; Red is negative slope)
S&P 500 Index – Trender trading model and MACD for key time frames Monthly: Trender and MACD are positive – a close below 4026.83 triggers a sell signal Weekly: Trender and MACD are positive – a close below 4522.06 triggers a sell signal Daily: Trender is positive; MACD is negative – a close below 4707.12 triggers a sell signal Hourly: Trender and MACD are positive – a close below 4736.99 triggers a sell signal
White House dodges question after Biden looked surprised that a smoothie costs $6 in Pennsylvania – ‘not out of touch and was joking around’https://trib.al/P5BUAsT
Georgia judge in Trump case orders hearing into allegations of Fulton County DA’s misconduct The Georgia judge overseeing the state election charges against former President Donald Trump has ordered a hearing into allegations that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and the lead prosecutor in the case were involved in an improper relationship and mishandled taxpayer dollars… https://justthenews.com/government/courts-law/georgia-judge-trump-case-orders-hearing-allegations-fulton-county-das
Davos 2024: Special address by Javier Milei, President of Argentina Today I’m here to tell you that the Western world is in danger. And it is in danger because those who are supposed to have to defend the values of the West are co-opted by a vision of the world that inexorably leads to socialism and thereby to poverty. Unfortunately, in recent decades, the main leaders of the Western world have abandoned the model of freedom for different versions of what we call collectivism… Far from being the cause of our problems, free trade capitalism as an economic system is the only instrument we have to end hunger, poverty and extreme poverty across our planet. The empirical evidence is unquestionable. Therefore, since there is no doubt that free enterprise capitalism is superior in productive terms, the left-wing doxa has attacked capitalism, alleging matters of morality, saying – that’s what the detractors claim – that it’s unjust… https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2024/01/special-address-by-javier-milei-president-of-argentina/
@Deacon_Schiele: (Tampa Bay Bucs Head Coach) Todd Bowles on coaching against Mike Tomlin this Sunday: “I don’t think it’s a big deal…we don’t look at color.” Bowles on representation in coaching: “I think the minute you guys stop making a big deal about it, everybody else will as well.” https://twitter.com/Deacon_Schiele/status/1580300126815662085
The UN’s World Health Organization (WHO) wants total control in the next pandemic, and a pandemic is surely coming. They already have a name for it. They are calling it “Disease X.” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is an Ethiopian Director-General of the World Health Organization, and he wants this control by May of 2024. It’s control over forced vaccinations, and there is zero dissension allowed in a surreal attack on free speech over the entire planet. This was the most important story coming out of the demonic Deep State World Economic Forum where they are planning to either kill or enslave all of mankind.
Donald Trump had the biggest victory in the history of the GOP primary in Iowa. Trump won 98 of 99 counties and would have won them all if party switching cheating was not involved. This is scaring the heck out of the Deep State because they may be brought to justice for the many crimes they have committed against humanity, including the CV19 murder and disability program they keep pushing.
David Webb, author of the popular book and documentary called “The Great Taking,” will be the guest for the Saturday Night Post. Webb will do a deep dive on how they want to try to steal all your wealth and what you can do to protect yourself.
Armed men watch the ”Galaxy Leader” ship that the Houthis took over to the coast of Yemen, December 5, 2023 (credit: REUTERS)
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