APRIL 5/GOLD CLOSED UP $38.65 TO $2325.65//SILVER CLOSED UP $0.61 TO $27.41/PLATINUM CLOSED DOWN $11.40 TO $930.15 WHILE PALLADIUM CLOSED DOWN $31.00 TO $1005.30//GOLD/SILVER PODCAST FROM ANDREW MAGUIRE/LIVE FROM THE VAULT: A MUST VIEW AND MIKE MAHARREY//TWO COMMODITY REPORTS ON COCOA AND VANILLA BEAN//USA RELEASED THEIR PHONY JOBS REPORT AND THE GOOD GUYS WERE READY TO REPEL BANKER ATTACKS//THE REAL JOBS REPORT IS HIGHLIGHTED FOR YOU//DENMARK SACKS ITS DEFENSE MINISTER DUE TO FAILURE TO STOP ATTACKS ON THE RED SEA//ISRAEL VS HAMAS//ISRAEL VS IRAN/HOUTIS VS USA/WEST BANK //COVID UPDATES//VACCINE INJURY REPORT/DR PAUL ALEXANDER/MARK CRISPIN MILLER//SLAY NEWS ETC//SWAMP STORIES FOR YOU TONIGHT///
The defense of $2300 gold is now upon us. Silver’s next line is $28.52. Then $34.76
Bitcoin morning price:$66,912 DOWN 1920 DOLLARS.
Bitcoin: afternoon price: $67,806 DOWN 1116 dollars
Platinum price closing DOWN $11.40 TO $930.15
Palladium price; DOWN $31.00 AT $1005.30
END
SHANGHAI GOLD PREMIUM 38 DOLLARS/COMEX GOLD
SHANGHAI GOLD……
…
SHANGHAI GOLD (USD) FUTURES – QUOTES
As of Monday, April 1, 2024, CME Group settlement data is no longer accessible through ftp.cmegroup.com and has 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.
As of Monday, April 1, 2024, CME Group settlement data is no longer accessible through ftp.cmegroup.com and has 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.
Last Updated 04 Apr 2024 12:48:03 PM CT.
I will now provide gold in Canadian dollars, British pounds and Euros
4: 15 PM ACCESS
*CANADIAN GOLD: $3158.330 UP 58,56 CDN dollars per oz( * NEW ALL TIME HIGH 3,158.33 CDN DOLLARS PER OZ//APRIL 5 2024)
*BRITISH GOLD: 1839.32 UP 28,60 pounds per oz// *(NEW ALL TIME HIGH//CLOSING///1839.32 BRITISH POUNDS/OZ) APRIL 5/2024
*EURO GOLD: 2144.60 UP 32.63 euros per oz //* (ALL TIME CLOSING HIGH: 2144.60 EUROS PER OZ//APRIL 5.2024)
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118 H MACQUARIE FUT 3 132 C SG AMERICAS 10 190 H BMO CAPITAL 42 363 C WELLS FARGO SEC 50 363 H WELLS FARGO SEC 8 435 H SCOTIA CAPITAL 18 624 C BOFA SECURITIES 12 661 C JP MORGAN 45 59 690 C ABN AMRO 9 5 726 C CUNNINGHAM COM 2 737 C ADVANTAGE 16 8 905 C ADM 1
TOTAL: 144 144 MONTH TO DATE: 13,079
JPMORGAN STOPPED (RECEIVED) 59/144 CONTRACTS
FOR APRIL/2024
GOLD: NUMBER OF NOTICES FILED FOR APRIL/2024. CONTRACT: 144 NOTICES FOR 14,400 OZ or 0.4479 TONNES
total notices so far: 13,079 contracts for 1,307,900 Oz (40.681 tonnes)
FOR APRIL:
SILVER NOTICES: 2 NOTICE(S) FILED FOR 10,000 OZ/
total number of notices filed so far this month : 423 for 2,115,000 oz
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
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END
GLD/
BOTH GLD AND SLV ARE FRAUDULENT VEHICLES//THEY ARE NOW RAIDING GLD AND SLV FOR PHYSICAL
THE CROOKS ARE STEALING GOLD AND SILVER FROM THE GLD/SLV AND REPLACING THE PHYSICAL WITH PAPER DOLLARS.
WITH GOLD UP $38.65
INVESTORS SWITCHING TO SPROTT PHYSICAL (PHYS) INSTEAD OF THE FRAUDULENT GLD/ :
HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A DEPOSIT OF 1.72 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD/
/ /INVENTORY RESTS AT 832.45 TONNES
INVENTORY RESTS AT 832.45 TONNES
SLV//
WITH NO SILVER AROUND AND SILVER UP 61 CENTS AT THE SLV//
HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A DEPOSIT OF 3.748 MILLION OZ OF SILVER INTO THE SLV
// INVENTORY RISES TO 441.060 MILLION OZ/
INVESTORS ARE SWITCHING SLV TO SPROTT’S PSLV.
CLOSING INVENTORY: 441.060 MILLION OZ
Let us have a look at the data for today
SILVER//OUTLINE
SILVER COMEX OI ROSE BY A HUMONGOUS SIZED 1550 CONTRACTS TO 172,686 AND RAPIDLY CLOSING IN ON THE RECORD HIGH OI OF 244,710, SET FEB 25/2020 AND THIS HUMONGOUS SIZED GAIN IN COMEX OI WAS ACCOMPLISHED WITH OUR STRONG GAIN IN PRICE OF $.20 IN SILVER PRICING AT THE COMEX ON THURSDAY. WE HAD ZERO LONG LIQUIDATION AT THE COMEX SESSION WITH AGAIN PANICKING SHORT COVERING BY OUR SPECS WITH THE PRICE GAIN. WE HAD A HUGE 844 T.A.S ISSUANCE AND THESE WILL BE USED FOR MANIPULATION LATER THIS MONTH/AS WELL AS TODAY. PLEASE NOTE THAT THE CROOKS NEED A HIGHER SILVER/GOLD T.A.S. TO CARRY ON THEIR CROOKED MANIPULATION ON A DAILY BASIS BUT DEMAND IS JUST TOO HIGH FOR THEM.
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: 844 CONTRACTS. 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 $0.20), AND WERE UNSUCCESSFUL IN KNOCKING ANY SILVER LONGS AS WE HAD A MEGA HUMONGOUS SIZED GAIN OF 3329 CONTRACTS ON OUR TWO EXCHANGES WITH THE GAIN IN PRICE OF $0.20.
WE MUST HAVE HAD:
A HUMONGOUS SIZED 2022 CONTRACT ISSUANCE OF EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICALS) iiii) AN INITIAL SILVER STANDING FOR COMEX SILVER MEASURING AT 2.465 MILLION OZ (FIRST DAY NOTICE) FOLLOWED BY TODAY’S 5,000 OZ E.F.P.. JUMP TO LONDON//NEW STANDING 3.210 MILLION OZ//
//NEW STANDING FOR SILVER IS THUS 3.210 MILLION OZ
WE HAD:
/ TINY HUMONGOUS SIZED COMEX OI LOSS/ MEGA HUGE SIZED EFP ISSUANCE/ VI) HUGE SIZED NUMBER OF T.A.S. CONTRACT ISSUANCE 844 CONTRACTS)/
I AM NOW RECORDING THE DIFFERENTIAL IN OI FROM PRELIMINARY TO FINAL -REMOVED A WHOPPING 1550 CONTRACTS //
HISTORICAL ACCUMULATION OF EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICALS FEB. ACCUMULATION FOR EFP’S SILVER/JPMORGAN’S HOUSE OF BRIBES/STARTING FROM FIRST DAY/MONTH OF APRIL
TOTAL CONTRACTS for 5 days, total 9498 contracts: OR 47.490 MILLION OZ (1899 CONTRACTS PER DAY)
TOTAL EFP’S FOR THE MONTH SO FAR: 37.380 MILLION 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 111035 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 : 78.655 MILLION OZ//
FEB /2024 : 66.135 MILLION OZ./FINAL
MARCH: 143.750 MILLION OZ// 4TH HIGHEST ON RECORD.
APRIL: 47.49 MILLION OZ (THIS MONTH MAY BEAT LAST MONTH’S HUGE ISSUANCE)
RESULT: WE HAD A HUMONGOUS SIZED INCREASE IN COMEX OI SILVER COMEX CONTRACTS OF 1307 CONTRACTS WITH OUR STRONG GAININ PRICE OF SILVER PRICING AT THE COMEX//THURSDAY.,. THE CME NOTIFIED US THAT WE HAD A HUMONGOUS EFP ISSUANCE CONTRACTS: 2022 ISSUED FOR MAY 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 APRIL. OF 2.465 MILLION OZ ON FIRST DAY NOTICE FOLLOWED BY TODAYS’ 5,000 OZ EFP JUMP TO LONDON
//NEW TOTAL STANDING RISES TO 3.210 MILLION OZ
WE HAVE A HUMONGOUS GAIN OF 3329 OI CONTRACTS ON THE TWO EXCHANGES WITH THE STRONG GAIN IN PRICE. THE TOTAL OF TAS INITIATED CONTRACTS TODAY: A HUGE SIZED 844 CONTRACTS//SOME FRONT END OF THE TAS CONTRACTS WERE LIQUIDATED DURING THE THURSDAY COMEX SESSION/// WITH MAJOR SHORT COVERING FROM OUR SPEC SHORTS
THE NEW TAS ISSUANCE THURSDAY NIGHT (844) 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 TINY SIZED 349 CONTRACTS TO 499,257 AND CLOSER TO THE RECORD (SET JAN 24/2020) AT 799,733 AND PREVIOUS TO THAT: (SET JAN 6/2020) AT 797,110, BUT WE ARE NOW MUCH FURTHER FROM OUR ALL TIME LOW OF 390,000 CONTRACTS.
THE DIFFERENTIAL FROM PRELIMINARY OI TO FINAL OI IN GOLD TODAY: REMOVED 37 CONTRACTS
WE HAD A TINY SIZED DECREASE IN COMEX OI (349 CONTRACTS) WITH OUR $3.35 LOSS IN PRICE//THURSDAY. THE BANKERS WERE FORCED TO SUPPLY THE NECESSARY SHORT PAPER TO CONTAIN GOLD’S RISE.WE ALSO HAD A RATHER LARGE INITIAL STANDING IN GOLD TONNAGE FOR APRIL. AT 44.8615 TONNES ON FIRST DAY NOTICE FOLLOWED BY TODAY’’QUEUE. JUMP OF 2500 OZ.(0.0777 TONNES)
NEW TOTAL Of INITIAL GOLD STANDING 42.043 TONNES FOLLOWED BY TODAY’S 2500 OZ QUEUE JUMP//NEW STANDING 42.758 TONNES// ALL OF THIS HAPPENED WITH OUR $3.35 LOSS IN PRICE WITH RESPECT TO THURSDAY’S TRADING. WE HAD A FAIR SIZED GAIN OF 1913 OI CONTRACTS (5.950 PAPER TONNES) ON OUR TWO EXCHANGES.
E.F.P. ISSUANCE
THE CME RELEASED THE DATA FOR EFP ISSUANCE AND IT TOTALED A FAIR SIZED 2262CONTRACTS:
The NEW COMEX OI FOR THE GOLD COMPLEX RESTS AT 499,257
IN ESSENCE WE HAVE A FAIR SIZED INCREASE IN TOTAL CONTRACTS ON THE TWO EXCHANGES OF 1913 CONTRACTS WITH 349 CONTRACTS DECREASED AT THE COMEX// AND A FAIR SIZED 2262 EFP OI CONTRACTS WHICH NAVIGATED OVER TO LONDON. THUS TOTAL OI GAIN ON THE TWO EXCHANGES OF 1913 CONTRACTS.. WE HAD THE FOLLOWING TAS CONTRACTS INITIATED (ISSUED): A FAIR SIZED 1730 CONTRACTS,
CALCULATIONS ON GAIN/LOSS ON OUR TWO EXCHANGES
WE HAD A FAIR SIZED ISSUANCE IN EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICALS (2262 CONTRACTS) ACCOMPANYING THE TINY SIZED LOSS IN COMEX OI (349) //TOTAL GAIN FOR OUR THE TWO EXCHANGES: 1915 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 APRIL. AT 44.8615 TONNES FOLLOWED BY TODAY’S 0.0777 TONNES QUEUE JUMP //NEW STANDING 42.758 TONNES.
/ 3) ZERO LONG LIQUIDATION WITH THE SMALL FALL IN PRICE.
// 4) TINY SIZED COMEX OPEN INTEREST LOSS/ 5) FAIR ISSUANCE OF EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICAL PAPER///6: FAIR T.A.S. ISSUANCE: 1730CONTRACTS/ HUGE SHORT COVERING BY OUR WRONG FOOTED SPECS.
HISTORICAL ACCUMULATION OF EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICALS IN 2023-2024 INCLUDING TODAY
APRIL
ACCUMULATION OF EFP’S GOLD AT J.P. MORGAN’S HOUSE OF BRIBES: (EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICAL) FOR THE MONTH OF APRIL. :
TOTAL EFP CONTRACTS ISSUED: 18,671 CONTRACTS OR 1,867,100OZ OR 58.07 TONNES IN 5TRADING DAY(S) AND THUS AVERAGING: 3734 EFP CONTRACTS PER TRADING DAY
TO GIVE YOU AN IDEA AS TO THE SIZE OF THESE EFP TRANSFERS : THIS MONTH IN 5TRADING DAY(S) IN TONNES 51.03 TONNES
TOTAL ANNUAL GOLD PRODUCTION, 2022, THROUGHOUT THE WORLD EX CHINA EX RUSSIA: 3555 TONNES
THUS EFP TRANSFERS REPRESENTS 58.07/3550 x 100% TONNES 1.63% 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: 291.76 TONNES (WILL BE MUCH GREATER THAN LAST MONTH.//3RD HIGHEST EVER RECORDED EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICAL)
FEB’24: 201.947 TONNES
MARCH 2024: 352.21 TONNES//2ND HIGHEST EVER RECORDED EFP ISSUANCE.
APRIL: 58.07 TONNES (WILL BE A STRONG MONTH BUT LESS THAN MARCH 2024)
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 APRIL. 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 (APRIL), 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 GIGANTIC SIZED 1307 CONTRACTS OI TO 172,686 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 6 YEARS AGO. HOWEVER WE HAVE NOW SET A NEW RECORD LOW OF 114,102 CONTRACTS JULY 3.2023
EFP ISSUANCE 2022 CONTRACTS
OUR CUSTOMARY MIGRATION OF COMEX LONGS CONTINUE TO MORPH INTO LONDON FORWARDS AS OUR BANKERS USED THEIR EMERGENCY PROCEDURE TO ISSUE:
MAY 2022 and ALL OTHER MONTHS: ZERO. TOTAL EFP ISSUANCE: 2022 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 1307 CONTRACTS AND ADD TO THE 2022 E.FP. ISSUED
WE OBTAIN A HUMONGOUS SIZED GAIN OF OPEN INTEREST CONTRACTS FROM OUR TWO EXCHANGES OF 3329CONTRACTS
THUS IN OUNCES, THE GAIN ON THE TWO EXCHANGES TOTAL 16.645 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 5.66 PTS OR .18% //Hang Seng CLOSED DOWN 1.18 PTS OR .01% / Nikkei CLOSED DOWN 781.06 PTS OR 1.96% //Australia’s all ordinaries CLOSED DOWN 0.57%///Chinese yuan (ONSHORE) closed DOWN 7.2337 //OFFSHORE CHINESE YUAN CLOSED DOWN TO 7.2416 /Oil UP TO 86.79 dollars per barrel for WTI and BRENT DOWN AT 90.94/ Stocks in Europe OPENED ALL RED// ONSHORE YUAN TRADING ABOVE LEVEL OF OFFSHORE YUAN/ONSHORE YUAN TRADING WEAKER AGAINST US DOLLAR/OFFSHORE YUAN WEAKER
1. COMEX DATA//AMOUNTS STANDING//VOLUME OF TRADING/INVENTORY MOVEMENTS
GOLD
LET US BEGIN:
THE TOTAL COMEX GOLD OPEN INTEREST FELL BY A TINY 349 CONTRACTS TO 499,257 WITH OUR LOSS IN PRICE OF $3.35 WITH RESPECT TO THURSDAY TRADING. WE HAD STRONG T.A.S. LIQUIDATION AS WELL AS SHORTS DESPERATELY TRYING TO GET OUT OF THEIR NAKED SHORTS.
EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICAL ISSUANCE
WE ARE NOW IN THE NON ACTIVE DELIVERY MONTH OF APRIL..… 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 2262 EFP CONTRACTS WERE ISSUED: : JUNE 2262 & ZERO FOR ALL OTHER MONTHS:
TOTAL EFP ISSUANCE: 2262CONTRACTS
ON A NET BASIS IN OPEN INTEREST WE LOST THE FOLLOWING TODAY ON OUR TWO EXCHANGES: A FAIR SIZED TOTAL OF 1915 CONTRACTS IN THAT 2262 LONGS WERE TRANSFERRED AS EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICALS TO LONDON AND WE HAD A TINY SIZED LOSS OF 349 COMEX CONTRACTS..AND THIS FAIR GAIN ON OUR TWO EXCHANGES HAPPENED DESPITE OUR LOSS IN PRICE OF $3.35 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 2262 CONTRACTS. WE HAD 0 EX FOR RISK ISSUANCE
THROUGHOUT THE PAST SEVERAL WEEKS, THE BANKERS CONTINUE TO SELL 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//. IT SEEMS THAT OUR CROOKS ARE HAVING A HARD TIME TRYING TO CONTROL THE PRICE OF GOLD AND THUS THE NEED FOR RECORD T.A.S. ISSUANCE.
// WE HAVE A STRONG AMOUNT OF GOLD TONNAGE STANDING: APRIL (42.689 TONNES) ( ACTIVE MONTH)
HERE ARE THE AMOUNTS THAT STOOD FOR DELIVERY IN THE PRECEDING 24 MONTHS OF 2021-2023:
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 = 51.707 TONNES
TOTAL 2023 YEAR : 436.546 TONNES
JAN ’24. 22.706 TONNES
FEB. ’24: 66.276TONNES (INCLUDES 1.723 TONNES EX. FOR RISK)
MARCH: 18.8398 TONNES + 1.1695 EX FOR RISK = 20.093 TONNES
APRIL: 2024: 42.758 TONNES
THE SPECS/HFT WERE SUCCESSFUL IN LOWERING GOLD’S PRICE( IT FELL $3.35 //// BUT WERE UNSUCCESSFUL IN KNOCKING ANY SPECULATOR LONGS AS WE HAD A FAIR SIZED GAIN OF2262 TOTAL CONTRACTS ON OUR TWO EXCHANGES DESPITE OUR LOSS IN PRICE 0F $3.35.
WE HAD A STRONG T.A.S. LIQUIDATION ON THE FRONT END OF THURSDAY’S TRADING ALONG. 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. THE HIGH T.A.S. ISSUANCE IS MEANT TO CONTROL THE PRICE OF GOLD
WE HAVE GAINED A TOTAL OI OF 6.065 PAPER TONNES FROM OUR TWO EXCHANGES, ACCOMPANYING OUR INITIAL GOLD TONNAGE STANDING FOR APRIL. (44.8615 TONNES) ON FIRST DAY NOTICE FOLLOWED BY TODAY’S QUEUE JUMP OF 8700 OZ (0.2706 TONNES)//NEW STANDING; 42.758
NEW STANDING: 42.758 TONNES
ALL OF THIS WAS ACCOMPLISHED DESPITE OUR LOSS IN PRICE TO THE TUNE OF $3.35
WE HAD REMOVED 37 CONTRACTS TO THE COMEX TRADES TO OPEN INTEREST (CROOKS)
NET GAIN ON THE TWO EXCHANGES 1913 CONTRACTS OR 191,300 (5.95 TONNES)
Total monthly oz gold served (contracts) so far this month
13,079 notices 1,307,900 oz 40.681 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
0 dealer deposits:
total dealer deposits: nil oz
total customer withdrawals: 0
total customer withdrawal: nil oz
we had total deposit 0 oz
Adjustments: 0
CALCULATIONS FOR THE AMOUNT OF GOLD STANDING FOR APRIL.
For the front month of APRIL we have an oi of 812 contracts having LOST 1746 contracts. We had 1771 contracts served on Thursday, so we gained 25 contracts or an additional 2500 oz (0.0777 tonnes) will stand at the comex
MAY LOST 41 CONTRACTS TO STAND AT 1627
JUNE DECREASED ITS OI BY 141 CONTRACTS UP TO 424,267 CONTRACTS.
We had 144 contracts filed for today representing 14400 oz
Today, 0 notice(s) were issued from J.P.Morgan dealer account and 43 notices were issued from their client or customer account. The total of all issuance by all participants equate to 144 contract(s) of which 0 notices were stopped (received) by j.P. Morgan dealer and 59 notice(s) was (were) stopped (received) by J.P.Morgan//customer account
To calculate the INITIAL total number of gold ounces standing for the APRIL. /2024. contract month, we take the total number of notices filed so far for the month (13,079 x 100 oz ), to which we add the difference between the open interest for the front month of APRIL. (812 CONTRACTS) minus the number of notices served upon today 144 x 100 oz per contract equals 1,374,700 OZ OR 42.758 TONNES.
thus the INITIAL standings for gold for the APRIL. contract month: No of notices filed so far (13,079) x 100 oz + (812) {OI for the front month} minus the number of notices served upon today (144) x 100 oz which equals 1,374,700 oz (42.758 TONNES)
TOTAL COMEX GOLD STANDING FOR APRIL: 42.758 TONNES WHICH IS HUGE FOR A NON ACTIVE DELIVERY MONTH IN THE CALENDAR.
TOTAL OF ALL GOLD ELIGIBLE AND REGISTERED GOLD: 17,778,614.098 OZ
TOTAL REGISTERED GOLD 7,540,724.837 (234.54 tonnes).
TOTAL OF ALL ELIGIBLE GOLD: 10,237,889.261 OZ
REGISTERED GOLD THAT CAN BE SERVED UPON: 5,960,387 oz (REG GOLD- PLEDGED GOLD) 185.39 tonnes/dropping like a stone
END
SILVER/COMEX
APRIL 5
INITIAL
//2024// THE APRIL 2024 SILVER CONTRACT//INITIAL
Silver
Ounces
Withdrawals from Dealers Inventory
NIL oz
Withdrawals from Customer Inventory
80,627900. oz
hsbc
.
Deposits to the Dealer Inventory
nil OZ
Deposits to the Customer Inventory
1,009,781.410 OZ Brinks Manfra
No of oz served today (contracts)
2 CONTRACT(S) (10,000 OZ)
No of oz to be served (notices)
219 contracts (1,095,000 oz)
Total monthly oz silver served (contracts)
423 Contracts (2,115,000 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 0 deposits customer account:
total customer deposits nil oz
JPMorgan has a total silver weight: 129.806 million oz/289.514 million or 44.90%
adjustment: 0
Comex withdrawals:
i) Out of HSBC : 80,627.900 oz
total withdrawal: 80,627.900 oz
adjustment: 2 customer to dealer
a) Delaware 19,081.370 oz
b) JPMorgan: 203,803.510 oz
TOTAL REGISTERED SILVER: 46.348MILLION OZ//.TOTAL REG + ELIGIBLE. 289.514million oz
CALCULATIONS FOR THE NEW STANDING FOR SILVER FOR DECEMBER:
silver open interest data:
FRONT MONTH OF APRIL /2023 OI: 221 CONTRACTS HAVING LOST 61 CONTRACT(S).
WE HAD 60 CONTRACTS SERVED ON THURSDAY, SO WE LOST 1 CONTRACTS OR ADDITIONAL 5,000 OZ WILL NOT STAND AT THE COMEX UNDERGOING A EFP JUMP TO LONDON AS THIS GUY WISHED TO TAKE DELIVERY OVER ON THAT SIDE OF THE POND.
MAY SAW A LOSS OF 1440 CONTRACTS UP TO 119,141
JUNE SAW A GAIN OF 38 CONTRACTS RISING TO 251.
JULY SAW A GAIN OF 2265 CONTRACTS UP TO 33,967
TOTAL NUMBER OF NOTICES FILED FOR TODAY: 144 for 144,000 oz
Comex volumes// est. volume today 137,687 wow
Comex volume: confirmed yesterday 116,827 wow!!.
To calculate the number of silver ounces that will stand for delivery in APRIL. we take the total number of notices filed for the month so far at 423 x 5,000 oz = 2,115,000 oz
to which we add the difference between the open interest for the front month of APRIL (221) 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 APRIL/2024 contract month: 423 (notices served so far) x 5000 oz + OI for the front month of APRIL. (221) – number of notices served upon today (2 )x 500 oz of silver standing for the APRIL contract month equates to 3.210 MILLION OZ.
New total standing: 3.210 million oz.
There are 46.348 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!
APRIL 5 WITH GOLD UP $38.65 TODAY; HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD //A DEPOSIT OF 1.72 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD/ INVENTORY REMAINS AT 832.45 TONNES
APRIL 4 WITH GOLD DOWN $3.35 TODAY; HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD //A DEPOSIT OF 1.73 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD/ INVENTORY REMAINS AT 830.73 TONNES
APRIL 3 WITH GOLD UP $33,85 TODAY; NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD // INVENTORY REMAINS AT 829.00 TONNES
APRIL 2 WITH GOLD UP $23.90 TODAY; HUG CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD A WITH DRAWAL OF 1.15 TONNES OF GOLD FROM THE GLD.:// INVENTORY REMAINS AT 829.00 TONNES
APRIL 1 WITH GOLD UP $18.70 TODAY; NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD:// INVENTORY REMAINS AT 830.15 TONNES
MARCH 28 WITH GOLD UP $26.30 TODAY; NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD:// INVENTORY REMAINS AT 830.15 TONNES
MARCH 27 WITH GOLD UP $15.00 TODAY; HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF 5.18 TONNES OF GOLD FROM THE GLD// INVENTORY FALLS TO 830.15 TONNES
MARCH 26 WITH GOLD UP $1.40 TODAY; NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD INVENTORY RISES TO 835.33 TONNES
MARCH 25 WITH GOLD UP $17.05 TODAY; NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD INVENTORY RISES TO 838.50 TONNES
MARCH 22 WITH GOLD DOWN $23.75 TODAY; NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD INVENTORY RISES TO 838.50 TONNES
MARCH 21 WITH GOLD UP $24.80 TODAY; HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD A STRONG PAPER DEPOSIT OF 1.15 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD/:INVENTORY RISES TO 838.50 TONNES
MARCH 20 WITH GOLD UP $1.45 TODAY; HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD A STRONG PAPER DEPOSIT OF 1.48 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD/:INVENTORY RISES TO 837.35 TONNES
MARCH 19 WITH GOLD DOWN $4.10 TODAY; HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD A STRONG PAPER DEPOSIT OF 1.48 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD/:INVENTORY RISES TO 833.32 TONNES
MARCH 15 WITH GOLD DOWN $5.20 TODAY; NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD/:INVENTORY REMAINS AT 816.86 TONNES
MARCH 14 WITH GOLD DOWN $12.20 TODAY; HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD A DEPOSIT OF 1.73 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD//:INVENTORY REMAINS AT 816.86 TONNES
MARCH 13 WITH GOLD UP $14.40 TODAY; NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD:INVENTORY REMAINS AT 815.13 TONNES
MARCH 12 WITH GOLD DOWN $21.15 TODAY; NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD:NOT AVAILABLE///LAST VALUE 815.13 TONNES
MARCH 11 WITH GOLD UP $3.20 TODAY; HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF 1.44 TONNES OF GOLD OUT OF THE GLD AFTER 7 CONSECUTIVE GOLD PRICE RISES//INVENTORY RESTS AT 815.13 TONNES
MARCH 8 WITH GOLD UP $21.05 TODAY; HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF 0.87 TONNES OF GOLD OUT OF THE GLD AFTER 7 CONSECUTIVE GOLD PRICE RISES//INVENTORY RESTS AT 816.57 TONNES
MARCH 7 WITH GOLD UP $7.20 TODAY; HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF 4,20 TONNES OF GOLD OUT OF THE GLD//INVENTORY RESTS AT 817.44 TONNES
MARCH 6 WITH GOLD UP $17.20 TODAY; HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF 2.30 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD//INVENTORY RESTS AT 821.47 TONNES
MARCH 5 WITH GOLD UP $16.55 TODAY; HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF 2.30 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD//INVENTORY RESTS AT 821.47 TONNES
MARCH 4 WITH GOLD UP $30.55 TODAY; HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A DEPOSIT OF .86 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD//INVENTORY RESTS AT 823.77 TONNES
MARCH 1 WITH GOLD UP $40.40 TODAY; NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 822.91 TONNES
FEB29/WITH GOLD UP $12.60 TODAY HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD//WITHDRAWAL OF 4.03 TONNES INVENTORY RESTS AT 822.91 TONNES
FEB28/WITH GOLD DOWN $1.00 TODAY NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD INVENTORY RESTS AT 826.94 TONNES
FEB27/WITH GOLD UP $4.40 TODAY HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD A WITHDRAWAL OF .87 TONNES OF GOLD FROM THE GLD:/INVENTORY RESTS AT 826.94 TONNES
FEB26/WITH GOLD DOWN $8.90 TODAY NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD:/INVENTORY RESTS AT 827.81 TONNES
FEB23/WITH GOLD UP $17 TODAY HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF 2.01 TONNES OF GOLD FROM THE GLD.//INVENTORY RESTS AT 827.81 TONNES
FEB22/WITH GOLD DOWN $2.15 TODAY NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD://INVENTORY RESTS AT 829.82 TONNES
FEB21/WITH GOLD DOWN $5.30 TODAY HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF 7.59 TONNES OF GOLD OUT OF THE GLD///INVENTORY RESTS AT 29.82 TONNES
FEB20/WITH GOLD UP $16.15 TODAY HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A DEPOSIT OF 0.58 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD///INVENTORY RESTS AT 837.89 TONNES
FEB16/WITH GOLD UP $8,60 TODAY HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A WITHDRAWAL OF 1.73 TONNES OF GOLD FROM THE GLD///INVENTORY RESTS AT 837.31 TONNES
FEB15/WITH GOLD UP $11.70 TODAY NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD:/INVENTORY RESTS AT 841.92 TONNES
FEB14/WITH GOLD DOWN $2.75 TODAY NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD:/INVENTORY RESTS AT 841.92 TONNES
FEB13/WITH GOLD DOWN $20.15 TODAY NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD:/INVENTORY RESTS AT 841.92 TONNES
FEB12/WITH GOLD DOWN $4.80 TODAY HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A STRONG WITHDRAWAL OF 1.74 TONNES OF GOLD FROM THE GLD. / //://INVENTORY RESTS AT 841.92 TONNES
FEB9/WITH GOLD DOWN $8.60 TODAY HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A STRONG DEPOSIT OF 1.44 TONNES OF GOLD FROM THE GLD. / //://INVENTORY RESTS AT 843.66 TONNES
FEB8/WITH GOLD DOWN $2.70 TODAY HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A MASSIVE WITHDRAWAL OF 5.47 TONNES OF GOLD FROM THE GLD. / //://INVENTORY RESTS AT 842.22 TONNES:
FEB7/WITH GOLD UP $0.40 TODAY HUGE CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD: A MASSIVE WITHDRAWAL OF 4.04 TONNES OF GOLD FROM THE GLD. / //://INVENTORY RESTS AT 847.69 TONNES:
FEB6/WITH GOLD UP $8.50 TODAY NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD:/ / //://INVENTORY RESTS AT 851.73 TONNES:
GLD INVENTORY: 832,45 TONNES
Now the SLV Inventory/( vehicle is a fraud as there is no physical metal behind them
APRIL 5/WITH SILVER UP $0.61 TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A DEPOSIT OF 3.748 MILLION OZ INTO THE SLV// SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 441.060 MILLION OZ
APRIL 4/WITH SILVER UP $0.20 TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A DEPOSIT OF 3.671 MILLION OZ INTO THE SLV// SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 437.312 MILLION OZ
APRIL 3/WITH SILVER UP $1.14 TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A DEPOSIT OF 2.835 MILLION OZ INTO THE SLV// SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 433.641 MILLION OZ
APRIL 2/WITH SILVER UP 84 CENTS TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A DEPOSIT OF 6.721 MILLION OZ INTO THE SLV// SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 430.806 MILLION OZ
APRIL 1/WITH SILVER UP 14 CENTS TODAY: NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV// SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 424.085 MILLION OZ
MARCH 28/WITH SILVER UP 20 CENTS TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV A DEPOSIT OF 1.005 MILLION OZ INTO THE SLV: SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 424.085 MILLION OZ
MARCH 27/WITH SILVER UP 14 CENTS TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV A A DEPOSIT OF 1.691 MILLION OZ INTO THE SLV: SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 423.079 MILLION OZ
MARCH 26/WITH SILVER DOWN 24 CENTS TODAY: SMALL CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV A A DEPOSIT OF 0.366 MILLION OZ INTO THE SLV: SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 421.388 MILLION OZ
MARCH 25/WITH SILVER UP 8 CENTS TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV A HUGE WITHDRAWAL OF 3.887 MILLION OZ INTO THE SLV: SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 421.022 MILLION OZ
MARCH 22/WITH SILVER DOWN 9 CENTS TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV A HUGE DEPOSIT OF 1.1899 MILLION OZ INTO THE SLV: SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 424.909 MILLION OZ
MARCH 21/WITH SILVER DOWN 8 CENTS TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV A HUGE WITHDRAWAL OF 3.560 MILLION OZ INTO THE SLV: SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 423.720 MILLION OZ
MARCH 20/WITH SILVER DOWN 5 CENTS TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV A HUGE DEPOSIT OF 11.792 MILLION OZ INTO THE SLV: SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 427.280 MILLION OZ
MARCH 18/WITH SILVER DOWN 11 CENTS TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV A HUGE DEPOSIT OF 11.792 MILLION OZ INTO THE SLV: SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 427.280 MILLION OZ
MARCH 15/WITH SILVER DOWN 9 CENTS TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV A WITHDRAWAL OF 1.006 MILLION OZ FROM THE SLV: SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 417.866 MILLION OZ
MARCH 14/WITH SILVER DOWN 9 CENTS TODAY: NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 418.872 MILLION OZ
MARCH 13/WITH SILVER UP 32 CENTS TODAY: NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 418.872 MILLION OZ…
MARCH 12/WITH SILVER DOWN 31 CENTS TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A SMALL WITHDRAWAL OF 0.549 MILLION OZ OF SILVER INTO THE SLV//// : SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 418.872 MILLION OZ…
MARCH 11/WITH SILVER UP 11 CENTS TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A HUGE WITHDRAWAL OF 2.147 MILLION OZ OF SILVER FROM THE SLV//// : SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 418.323 MILLION OZ…SUCH A MASSIVE FRAUD!
MARCH 8/WITH SILVER DOWN 5 CENTS TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A HUGE WITHDRAWAL OF 4.299 MILLION OZ OF SILVER FROM THE SLV//// : SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 420.519 MILLION OZ…SUCH A MASSIVE FRAUD!
MARCH 7/WITH SILVER UP 8 CENTS TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A HUGE WITHDRAWAL OF 4.665 MILLION OZ OF SILVER FROM THE SLV//// : SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 424.818 MILLION OZ…SUCH A MASSIVE FRAUD!
MARCH 6/WITH SILVER UP 52 CENTS TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A HUGE WITHDRAWAL OF 2.378 MILLION OZ OF SILVER FROM THE SLV//// : SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 427,105 MILLION OZ
MARCH 5/WITH SILVER DOWN 2 CENTS TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A HUGE WITHDRAWAL OF 1.499 MILL;ION OZ OF SILVER FROM THE SLV//// : SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 429.483 MILLION OZ
MARCH 4/WITH SILVER UP CENTS TODAY: NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: // : SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 430.982 MILLION OZ
MARCH 1/WITH SILVER UP 49 CENTS TODAY: NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: // : SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 430.982 MILLION OZ
FEB 29/WITH SILVER UP 25 CENTS TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A WITHDRAWAL OF 2.104 MILLION OZ OUT OF THE SLV//// : SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 430/982 MILLION OZ
FEB 28/WITH SILVER DOWN 7 CENTS TODAY: HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A DEPOSIT OF 5.123 MILLION OZ INTO THE SLV//// : SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 433.086 MILLION OZ
FEB 27/WITH SILVER UP 3 CENTS TODAY HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A WITHDRAWAL OF 0.64 MILLION OZ FROM THE SLV//// : SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 427.943 MILLION OZ
FEB 26/WITH SILVER DOWN 44 CENTS TODAY HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A WITHDRAWAL OF 3.065 MILLION OZ FROM THE SLV//// : SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 428.603 MILLION OZ
FEB 23/WITH SILVER DOWN 44 CENTS TODAY HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A WITHDRAWAL OF 3.065 MILLION OZ FROM THE SLV//// : SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 428.603 MILLION OZ
FEB 22/WITH SILVER DOWN 10 CENTS TODAY NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV
// : SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 432.766 MILLION OZ
FEB 21/WITH SILVER DOWN 28 CENTS TODAY HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV A WITHDRAWAL OF 2.348 MILLION OZ OF SILVER FROM THE SLV// : SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 432.766 MILLION OZ
FEB 20/WITH SILVER DOWN 33 CENTS TODAY HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV A WITHDRAWAL OF 3.385 MILLION OZ OF SILVER FROM THE SLV// : SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 435.008 MILLION OZ
FEB 16/WITH SILVER UP 53 CENTS TODAY HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV A DEPOSIT OF 1.235 MILLION OZ OF SILVER FROM THE SLV// : SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 438.393 MILLION OZ
FEB 15/WITH SILVER UP 56 CENTS TODAY NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV : SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 437.615 MILLION OZ
FEB 14/WITH SILVER UP 24 CENTS TODAY NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV : SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 437.615 MILLION OZ
FEB 13/WITH SILVER DOWN 60 CENTS TODAY SMALL CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV A SMALL WITHDRAWAL OF 0.504 MILLION OZ OZ OUT OF THE SLV: SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 437.615 MILLION OZ
FEB 12/WITH SILVER UP 14 CENTS TODAY HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV A HUGE WITHDRAWAL OF 1.921 MILLION OZ OZ OUT OF THE SLV: SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 438.119 MILLION OZ
FEB 9/WITH SILVER DOWN 4 CENTS TODAY SMALL CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV A SMALL DEPOSIT OF 600,000 OZ INTO THE SLV: SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 440.040 MILLION OZ
FEB 8/WITH SILVER UP 29 CENTS TODAY NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: SLV INVENTORY RESTS AT 439.994 MILLION OZ
FEB 7/WITH SILVER DOWN 18 CENTS TODAY HUGE CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A MASSIVE DEPOSIT OF 4.04 MILLION OZ INTO THE SLV///INVENTORY RESTS AT 439.994 MILLION OZ//LAST 9 DAYS: 10.7598 MILLION OZ WITHDRAWAL
CLOSING INVENTORY 441.060 MILLION OZ//
PHYSICAL GOLD/SILVER COMMENTARIES
1:Peter Schiff/Mike Maharrey
This certainly signals that where there is smoke there is fire
(Mike Maharrey)
Proposal To Move Bank Regulation Goalposts Signals Underlying Problems In Financial System
If a formula spits out a number you don’t like, just change the formula so you get a better number!
That’s exactly what the Bureau of Labor Statistics did to the Consumer Price Index formula in the 1990s. Because the CPI kept indicating price inflation was too high, the BLS tweaked the formula to spit out a lower inflation number.
Now the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) is trying to talk the Federal Reserve into changing the formula for the supplementary leverage ratio (SLR) to make bank balance sheets look better.
This proposal sends some alarming messages about the stability of the banking system and confidence in U.S. government debt.
What Is the SLR and Why Do They Want to Change It?
The SLR is calculated by dividing the bank’s tier 1 capital (capital held in a bank’s reserves and used to fund business activities for the bank’s clients) by all assets on the bank’s balance sheet, including U.S. Treasuries and deposits at Federal Reserve Banks.
Banks use the SLR to calculate the amount of equity capital they must hold relative to their total leverage exposure. Regulations imposed after the 2008 financial crisis require category I, II, and III banks to maintain an SLR of 3 percent. “Globally Systemically Important Banks” are required to keep an extra 2 percent SLR buffer.
During the pandemic, the Fed temporarily altered SLR requirements, allowing banks to exclude Treasuries and reserves from the formula’s denominator. This made it easier to maintain the required SLR ratio.
As a Federal Reserve note explained, the banking system “exhibited considerable strains” during the reign of COVID-19. As the pandemic unfolded and governments began shutting down economies, banks quickly liquidated risky assets and increased their cash holdings. This resulted in a “sharp increase in bank deposits.”
According to the Fed note, “The associated rise in the overall balance sheets had the potential of causing their tier 1 capital levels to fall below the amount required by the SLR, which could have resulted in banks limiting their provision of financial services.”
To provide some relief, the central bank made temporary changes to the SLR formula effective April 1, 2020. The emergency rule allowing banks to exclude U.S. Treasuries from the calculation expired a year later.
In a letter addressed to the Federal Reserve, along with the FDIC, and the Office of the Comptroller of Currency, the ISDA urged these government agencies to make that “temporary, emergency” rule change permanent.
“To facilitate participation by banks in U.S. Treasury markets—including clearing U.S. Treasury security transactions for clients—the Agencies should revise the SLR to permanently exclude on-balance sheet U.S. Treasuries from total leverage exposure, consistent with the scope of the temporary exclusion for U.S. Treasuries that the Agencies implemented in 2020.”
The proposed rule change would allow banks to exclude both “on-balance sheet U.S. Treasuries that a bank holds in inventory or as part of its liquidity portfolio, as well as U.S. Treasuries the bank has received in a repo-style transaction to the extent the bank records the U.S. Treasuries on its balance sheet.”
This raises a question: does this indicate that the banking system is under “considerable strain?”
What Would a Change to the SLR Mean in Practice?
According to the ISDA, the change would “promote the stability of the U.S. Treasury market.” The organization also said it would more broadly “help support market liquidity in the context of projected increases in the size of the U.S. Treasury market and the importance of bank participation in the market.”
From a practical standpoint, it would incentivize banks to buy and hold more U.S. Treasuries by allowing them to hold them on their balance sheet without impacting their SLR. This would be good news for the U.S. Treasury Department, given that is selling billions of dollars in Treasuries every month to cover the massive government budget deficits.
The impact would be similar to quantitative easing.
In effect, the proposed change in the SLR would boost demand for Treasuries, driving prices higher and interest rates lower than they otherwise would be. Given the impact of Treasury yields on the broader bond market, it would also likely push other borrowing costs lower.
It would also enable banks to lend more money than they otherwise could under the current SLR scheme. This is a form of money creation and would have an inflationary effect.
European Investment Bank senior policy analyst Antonio Carlos Fernandes called this proposal “alarming.”
In an article published by Medium, Fernandes identifies several reasons banks would love to adjust the SLR requirements to exclude U.S. Treasuries.
Treasuries are generally considered “risk-free” assets because they are backed by the “full faith and credit” of the U.S. government. The proposal to exclude them from the leverage ratio requirement implies banks perceive them as more risky. This could “potentially undermine confidence in U.S. government debt.”
The SLR is intended to backstop risk-based capital requirements and to ensure banks don’t become overleveraged, even with “safe” assets. The carveout for Treasuries would weaken these protections.
The formula change would incentivize banks to load up on U.S. Treasuries. Fernandes called this a “concentration of risk” that would “heighten the interconnectedness between the banking system and government debt, posing systemic risks.”
The request to exclude Treasuries from the SLR could signal “broader anxiety” about the U.S. fiscal situation and government debt levels. Given the spending problem in Washington D.C., this anxiety is certainly justified.
Fernandes summed up the situation this way:
“Any perception that banks require special exemptions for holding U.S. government debt could shake global confidence in Treasuries as a safe haven asset and could impact the status of the U.S. dollar.”
Trouble in the Banking System?
This proposal also casts doubt on the notion that the banking system is “sound and resilient.”
A year ago, rising interest rates precipitated a banking crisis kicked off by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. The Fed managed to paper over the problem with a bailout program.
Through the Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP), banks, savings associations, credit unions, and other eligible depository institutions were able to take out short-term loans (up to one year) using U.S. Treasuries, agency debt, mortgage-backed securities, and other qualifying assets as collateral.
Instead of valuing these collateral assets at their market value, banks were able to borrow against them “at par” (Face value). It would be like the bank extending you a second mortgage based on the original value of your house after a flood caused significant damage. Normal people would never get this kind of sweetheart deal.
The BTFP was set up to address a specific problem that took down Silicon Valley Bank and two other financial institutions.
SVB went under because it tried to sell its undervalued bonds to raise cash. The plan was to sell the longer-term, lower-interest-rate bonds and reinvest the money into shorter-duration bonds with a higher yield. Instead, the sale dented the bank’s balance sheet with a $1.8 billion loss driving worried depositors to pull funds out of the bank.
The BTFP gave banks facing similar problems an alternative. They could quickly raise capital against their bond portfolios without realizing big losses in an outright sale. It gave banks a way out, or at least the opportunity to kick the can down the road for a year.
Fernandes said the timing of this ISDA proposal should raise some questions about the global banking system.
“With the conclusion of the BTFP, are banks signaling a potential banking crisis on the horizon? Or perhaps, even more significantly, are they indicating concerns about an impending international financial crisis, given the central role that U.S. Treasuries play in the global financial markets?”
Money Metals President Stefan Gleason said these are just “more games” to try to make banks look safer than they really are, “even though they have a lot of exposure to U.S. bonds.”
“Especially after they’ve experienced big value declines and an erosion in bank equity, causing their measured leverage to increase.”
Gleason is right. When you dig beneath all of the technical, regulatory mumbo-jumbo, this is just another example of the powers that be moving the goalposts to keep the game tilted in their favor.
2.Commentaries from: Egon von Greyerz///Matthew Piepenburg via GoldSwitzerland.com, Pam and Russ Martens/
3. CHRIS POWELL//GATA
Asia pushes Western gold price riggers out of the way, Giustra says
Submitted by admin on Thu, 2024-04-04 20:32 Section: Daily Dispatches
8:30p ET Thursday, April 4, 2024
Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:
Interviewed today by Michelle Makori of Kitco News, gold mining and movie entrepreneur Frank Giustra says the longtime Western suppressors of the gold price seem to have been suddenly pushed out of the way by Asian buyers.
The interview is not quite 10 minutes long and can be viewed at YouTube here:
CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc. CPowell@GATA.org
Weeks after Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell evaded a sitting congressman’s questions about the central bank’s foreign gold holdings, the Fed has also declined to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request for records about such holdings.
The Federal Reserve’s lack of transparency comes amidst reports that countries are removing their gold and other assets from the U.S. in the wake of the unprecedented Western sanctions imposed on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. According to a 2023 Invesco survey, a “substantial percentage” of central banks expressed concern about how the U.S. and its allies froze nearly half of Russia’s $650 billion gold and forex reserves.
Rep. Alex Mooney, R-W.Va., asked Powell about the matter in a December letter, only to have the Fed chair respond last month with evasive non-answers, telling him that the Federal Reserve does not own gold but holds it as a custodian for other entities—a fact that the congressman presumably already knew.
Following Powell’s evasive response, Headline USA filed a FOIA request with the Fed for records reflecting how much gold the Federal Reserve Bank of New York currently holds in its vault, as well as records reflecting the ownership stake that each of FRBNY’s central bank/government clients have in that gold. The FOIA request also sought records about the Fed’s gold holdings prior to Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
However, the Federal Reserve denied the FOIA request on Wednesday.
“Board staff consulted with staff at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (‘Reserve Bank’) and have been advised that such records, if they exist, would be Reserve Bank records, and consequently, not subject to the Board’s Rules Regarding Availability of Information,” the Fed said.
The Federal Reserve said that this publication could take its request to the New York Fed. However, that institution isn’t subject to FOIA.
Meanwhile, sound-money advocates are blasting the Fed’s lack of transparency.
“They’re just passing the buck to the New York Fed. The FRB could obtain the data from the New York Fed if it wanted to, and then could share it with you if it wanted to. The Fed chairman has already essentially told Representative Mooney that the Fed doesn’t want to disclose the information,” said Chris Powell, secretary-treasurer of the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee.
“If only other news organizations dared to ask such relevant questions about the secret operations of the Federal Reserve System,” he said.
According to Stefan Gleason, CEO of Money Metals Exchange, a large online precious metals dealer and depository based in Idaho, “The Fed doesn’t want anyone to know that foreign governments and other central banks are yanking their gold from America’s shores because it would reveal the folly of U.S. monetary and foreign policy.”
end
5 a. IMPORTANT COMMENTARIES ON COMMODITIES/VANILLA BEAN./COCOA BEANS
This is hurting me terribly: I am a chocoholic and I love vanilla ice cream
(zerohedge)
Dear Mr. President: A Vanilla Bean Shortage Could Be Nearing
THURSDAY, APR 04, 2024 – 06:40 PM
Dear Mr. President, the leading global supplier of vanilla has been battered by a cyclone, potentially leading to a shortage of vanilla ice cream.
Bloomberg reports Madagascar’s vanilla-growing farmland has been battered by Cyclone Gamane, resulting in flooded fields and high winds that stripped vanilla pods from their vines.
Georges Geeraerts, president of the Indian Ocean island’s union of vanilla exporters, told the media outlet that this year’s vanilla harvest could be halved.
“On a bad year, production is about 1,500 tons compared with a range of 2,000 to 2,500 tons,” Geeraerts said.
He noted, “A conservative estimate, ahead of more detailed analysis from the growing region, means that the output for the current harvest could be as low as 1,000 tons.”
What did you say?
And it’s not just vanilla lovers who could soon face higher prices due to tightening supplies. On the West Coast of Africa, especially across the Ivory Coast, the world’s largest cocoa producer, drought and disease have been major catalysts for lower production, which has sent prices through the roof.
In recent weeks, cocoa futures in New York jumped over the $10,000 per ton mark—the highest on record. Prices have subsided to around $9,500 and are expected to trade at these high levels amid tightening supplies.
What’s the plan, Mr. President?
Does the US have strategic vanilla and cocoa bean reserves?
END
‘Cocoa Could Double From Here’ – Oil-Bull Andurand Gets Greedy On Chocolate
THURSDAY, APR 04, 2024 – 10:40 PM
Oil trader Pierre Andurand suffered record losses last year in the commodities world, though the money manager has so far crushed it on the cocoa trade.
Bloomberg reports Andurand opened a “small, long position” in cocoa futures in early March. Since then, prices have soared as much as 73%. People familiar with the trade did not specify where the famed oil trader opened the position or whether he’d taken profits.
Futures in New York have jumped as high as $10,300 a ton in recent weeks, surging from the $6,000 level in early March.
Andurand emailed Bloomberg that cocoa prices “could break $20,000 later this year.” Hyperfinlating cocoa prices are caused by drought and disease, which are ravaging the world’s largest cocoa farms in West Africa.
Andurand said his analysts forecast cocoa bean production globally to be down at least 18% on the year, compared to most analysts’ expectations of 10-11%.
“This means that we will finish the year with the lowest stocks-to-grinding ratio ever, and potentially run out of inventories late in the year,” he warned.
Per Bloomberg:
The firm sees that ratio — which measures stockpiles relative to annual demand — will end the 2023-24 season around 16% in a base-case scenario. That would push the indicator below the previous record low set in the mid-1970s, when prices hit $5,000 a ton — equivalent to about $26,000 when adjusted for inflation, according to Bloomberg calculations.
Any higher cocoa prices and chocolate makers, like the US Hershey Company, will see demand destruction. Soaring cocoa prices are already weighing on the company’s stock.
This once-in-a-generation cocoa crisis will likely result in higher prices. Have the folks at r/WallStreetBets figured out about this trade?
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 DOWN 7.2337
OFFSHORE YUAN: UP TO 7.2416
SHANGHAI CLOSED DOWN 5.66 PTS OR .18%
HANG SENG CLOSED DOWN 1.18 PTS OR .01%
2. Nikkei closed DOWN 781.06 OR 1.96%
3. Europe stocks SO FAR: ALL RED
USA dollar INDEX DOWN TO 104.03 EURO RISES TO 1.0833 DOWN 4 BASIS PTS
3b Japan 10 YR bond yield: RISES TO. +.770Japan buying 100% of bond issuance)/Japanese YEN vs USA cross now at 151.35/JAPANESE YEN NOW FALLING 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 DOWN CHINESE ONSHORE YUAN: DOWN/ OFFSHORE: DOWN
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 YIELD DOWN TO +2.3610***/Italian 10 Yr bond yield DOWN to 3.738* /SPAIN 10 YR BOND YIELD DOWN TO 3.204…**
3i Greek 10 year bond yield DOWN TO 3.204
3j Gold at $2292.90 silver at: 26.76 1 am est) SILVER NEXT RESISTANCE LEVEL AT $28.40
3k USA vs Russian rouble;// Russian rouble DOWN 0 AND 15 /100 roubles/dollar; ROUBLE AT 92.39//
3m oil into the 86 dollar handle for WTI and 90 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 151.35// 10 YEAR YIELD AFTER FIRST BREAKING .54% LAST YEAR NOW EXCEEDS THAT LEVEL TO 0.770% 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 0.9029 as the Swiss Franc is still rising against most currencies. Euro vs SF: 0.9782 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: 4.332 UP 2 BASIS PTS…
USA 30 YR BOND YIELD: 4.491 UP 2 BASIS PTS/
USA 2 YR BOND YIELD: 4.658 UP 2 BASIS PTS
USA DOLLAR VS TURKISH LIRA: 31.89…(TURKEY SET TO BLOW UP FINANCIALLY)
GREAT BRITAIN/10 YEAR YIELD: UP 1 BASIS PTS AT 4.083
end
2.a Overnight: Newsquawk and Zero hedge,
Futures Rebound As Oil Remains Above $90; All Eyes On Payrolls
FRIDAY, APR 05, 2024 – 07:58 AM
US futures rebounded from yesterday’s late day rout even as European stocks slumped the most in almost two months and Asian markets tumbled the most in a month, tracking Thursday’s broad market retreat as oil prices held near five-month highs above $90 and investors braced for today’s jobs report where the whisper is of a hotter than expected print. As of 7:30am, S&P futures rose 0.3% after tumbling 1.4% yesterday; even with the modest gain the index is on track for its biggest weekly decline since mid-February. Europe’s Stoxx 600 slid more than 1%, following the previous session’s sharp retreat on Wall Street and losses in Asia earlier on Friday. US and euro-area bond yields inched higher as fears of an escalation in the Middle Eastern conflict kept Brent crude futures near $91 a barrel, fanning inflation concerns. The USD is stronger, bitcoin has resumed selling, commodities are higher led by Energy products and base metals. From a macro perspective, NFP is the focus, survey is +214k survey vs. BBG whisper +230k; both are down from the +275k prior.
In premarket trading, Mag7 and Semis are higher pre-mkt; Samsung earnings may aid the move. Here are some other notable premarket movers:
Altice USA shares slip 3.9% after a downgrade to underweight at Wells Fargo.
Cinemark shares rise 3.4% after an upgrade to overweight at Wells Fargo.
Krispy Kreme shares gain 5.7% trading after the doughnut chain was upgraded to overweight from neutral at Piper Sandler following last week’s announcement of a national partnership with McDonald’s.
According to JPM’s market intel desk, yesterday’s sell-off had a number of reasons offered for the move: Middle East Escalation, Oil Price Spike, No Rate Cuts, etc; and since the moves appeared to be a flight to safety, the likely answer is all of the above. We have now seen the first week of the year where the SPX has lost at least 70bps twice and is the first time since the week of Oct 23, 2023 whose close that Friday market the bottom before this current rally.
“Clearly, geopolitical risks are rising and that is on everyone’s radar right now, hence some softness in equity markets and credit spreads,” said Luke Hickmore, a portfolio manager at Abrdn Investment Management Ltd. He added that he was also focused on the upcoming US employment report for March.
Oil’s 18% surge this year, alongside gains across other crucial commodities such as copper and palm oil, raised the prospect of higher-for longer inflation. Minneapolis Federal Reserve President Neel Kashkari on Thursday flagged the possibility that rate cuts may not be needed this year at all if progress on inflation stalls.
All eyes today will be on the March nonfarm payrolls report which are expected to show more than 200,000 new jobs (most of them going to illegal immigrants) added to the economy last month. A further sign of robust activity may lead the Fed to keep interest rates higher for longer. Currently, money markets are expecting fewer than three US rate cuts this year. As we discussed in our preview post, while most big data hints at a weaker than expected number…
… the relentless surge in illegal immigrants may lead to another 200K+ print.
That said, a number between 150K and 250K will likely lead to some market gains while outliers in either direction will be met with selling. Here is Goldman S&P’s reaction function for the NFP number.
<100k S&P sells off at least 50bps
100k – 150k S&P +/- 25bps
150k – 200k S&P +50 – 75bps
200k – 250k S&P +25 – 50bps
250k – 300k S&P +/- 25bps
>300k S&P also sells off at least 50bps
European stocks fall with Financial Services leading the market lower as all sectors decline while energy stocks outperform as oil rises for a fourth day on escalating tensions in the Middle East, with concerns on jet-fuel costs weighing on travel stocks. Rising oil prices have forced a broad market retreat with bonds also slipping. FTSE 100 down 1% but outperforms peers, FTSE MIB lags with a 1.9% drop. Here are the most notable movers:
Shell shares rise as much as 0.8% after giving a guidance update for the first quarter which analysts said was positive overall, highlighting an improvement in volumes and better margins.
Marel shares gain as much as 6.4% as JBT says it expects to launch an offer for the food processing company in May. Oddo says the move indicates a potential takeover is a “done deal.”
Billerud shares rise as much as 3.3%, the most since March 21, after DNB reiterated its buy rating and slightly boosted its price target, citing good positioning for 2024.
Implenia shares gain as much as 7.4% after BURU Holding AG, owned by the Buhofer family of industrialists, bought a 13.7% stake in the Swiss group from anchor investor Max Roessler.
Europe’s aviation stocks slide as escalating tensions in the Middle East drive a sustained rally in oil prices, spurring worries over pressure on costs.
UK retailers are underperforming the broader market after a report showed wet weather prevented shoppers from rushing back to stores in March.
Carlsberg shares decline as much as 2.5% after being downgraded by Barclays, which warns the beer brewer faces more challenges in China that could jeopardize its long-term sales guidance.
Bureau Veritas shares fall as much as 3.7% after Wendel completes sale of 40.5m shares in the French goods-inspection company for total proceeds of about €1.1 billion.
Renk shares fall as much as 9.8%, the most on record, after Oddo downgraded the defense firm to neutral from outperform seeing a strained valuation.
Earlier in the session, Asian stocks slumped by the most in nearly four weeks, driven by the selling of technology stocks, amid concerns over US monetary policy and signs of rising risks in the Middle East.The MSCI Asia Pacific Index fell as much as 1.2%, with Toyota, Tokyo Electron and Samsung among the biggest drags. Most markets declined, led by Japan after the yen strengthened. Energy stocks outperformed as oil climbed amid tensions between Israel and Iran. Hong Kong stocks dropped after a holiday, tracking losses across the region after Minneapolis Fed chief Neel Kashkari floated the possibility of no rate reductions this year. Markets were closed in mainland China and Taiwan.
Nikkei 225 retreated beneath 39,000 with intraday losses of around 1,000 points amid currency strength.
KOSPI was dragged lower with Samsung Electronics pressured following its preliminary Q1 results in which operating EPS topped forecasts but it missed on revenue.
ASX 200 suffered amid weakness in tech and mining stocks, while data showed a monthly contraction in Australian exports.
In FX, the Bloomberg dollar spot index is steady. NOK outperformed G-10 FX while CHF underperforms; the yen stood out as it hit a two-week high as Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda stoked bets about an additional interest rate hike later in the year. The currency’s rise on Thursday pulled it back from levels that traders speculated would spark intervention.
In rates, Treasuries were slightly cheaper across the curve, partially unwinding the haven bid into Thursday’s US close after a flare-up of geopolitical tension between Israel and Iran. Treasury yields cheaper by 1b to 2bp across the curve, spreads within 1bp of Thursday’s close; 10-year around 4.33% is nearly 2bp higher on the day, underperforming bunds by 1.5bp while gilts lag, underperforming the rest of core Europe
In commodities, WTI trades within Thursday’s range at about $86. Brent rises to around $90. Spot gold falls roughly $4 to trade near $2,287/oz. Base metals are mixed; LME lead falls 0.6% while LME tin gains 0.5%.
Bitcoin a touch softer as markets await the NFP print and any fresh geopolitical developments to drive the macro narrative into the weekend.
Looking to the day ahead now, and the main highlight will be the US jobs report for March. Otherwise, data releases include German factory orders and French industrial production for February, along with the construction PMIs for March from the UK and Germany. From central banks, we’ll hear from the Fed’s Collins, Barkin, Logan and Bowman.
Market Snapshot
S&P 500 futures up 0.3% to 5,213.25
STOXX Europe 600 down 1.1% to 505.08
German 10Y yield little changed at 2.36%
MXAP down 0.6% to 175.33
MXAPJ down 0.4% to 537.38
Nikkei down 2.0% to 38,992.08
Topix down 1.1% to 2,702.62
Hang Seng Index little changed at 16,723.92
Shanghai Composite down 0.2% to 3,069.30
Sensex little changed at 74,281.20
Australia S&P/ASX 200 down 0.6% to 7,773.27
Kospi down 1.0% to 2,714.21
Euro little changed at $1.0844
Brent Futures up 0.1% to $90.78/bbl
Gold spot down 0.1% to $2,289.16
US Dollar Index little changed at 104.22
Top Overnight News
BOJ’s Ueda warns that inflation will likely accelerate from the summer toward the fall due to strong wage hikes, signaling another rate hike could arrive over the coming months. RTRS
The Indian central bank’s key interest rate was kept unchanged for a seventh straight policy meeting on Friday as growth in the economy is expected to remain robust while inflation stays above the 4% target. “Robust growth prospects provide the policy space to remain focused on inflation and ensure its descent to the target of 4%,” RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das said in his prepared statement. Inflation was the “elephant in the room” for the Indian economy two years ago, Das said. “The elephant has now gone out for a walk and appears to be returning to the forest. We would like the elephant to return to the forest and remain there on a durable basis.” RTRS
Samsung Electronics plans to more than double its total semiconductor investment in Texas to roughly $44 billion, according to people familiar with the matter, a significant breakthrough in the U.S.’s quest to make more of the world’s cutting-edge chips. WSJ
The EU launched investigations into two Chinese solar panel makers, the latest sign of Brussels taking steps to defend itself against Beijing’s alleged anticompetitive support for certain industries, including solar panels and autos/EVs. FT
Argentine President Javier Milei said he won’t touch existing trade deals with Beijing — including a gigantic $18 billion swap line — walking back his campaign pledge to curb ties with China. BBG
The Biden administration is drawing up plans to require goods produced in Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank to be clearly labelled as coming from there, according to US officials, another sign of White House unhappiness with the government of Benjamin Netanyahu. The final go-ahead for the move, and its timing, have not been decided but it is intended to increase pressure on Israel over rising settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, and comes amid US frustration with the Jewish state’s conduct of the war in Gaza. FT
The Biden administration is poised to issue a proposal aimed at reducing or eliminating student loan balances for millions of borrowers, according to people familiar with the matter, marking President Biden’s second attempt at large-scale loan forgiveness. WSJ
The global supply of public equity is shrinking at its fastest pace in at least 25 years, as economic and geopolitical uncertainty weighs on new share sales while companies keep buying back large volumes of their own stock. Data shows that the global universe of public equities has already shrunk by a net $120bn this year, exceeding the $40bn taken out over all of last year. That puts the net figure on course for a third consecutive year of decline — a phenomenon not seen since the bank’s data series began in 1999. FT
We now estimate nonfarm payrolls rose by 240k in March—above consensus of +213k. Our forecast reflects a continued boost from above-normal immigration, as new entrants to the labor force are matched to open positions. Big Data measures also generally indicate a solid or strong pace of job gains, and our layoff tracker indicates that the pace of layoffs remains low. We nonetheless assume a slowdown from the February payroll gain of +275k because we believe a favorable swing in the weather boosted that report by as much as 75k. GIR
Net US immigration surged in 2023. Recent reports from the Congressional Budget Office and border encounter data from the Office of Homeland Security suggest that net US immigration was running above the estimate implied by the change in the foreign-born population in the household survey over the last couple of years. We estimate that net US immigration surged to roughly 2.5 million in 2023, the highest level in the last two decades. GIR
A more detailed look at global markets courtesy of Newsquawk
APAC stocks followed suit to the losses in the US amid geopolitical concerns and hawkish-leaning Fed rhetoric. ASX 200 suffered amid weakness in tech and mining stocks, while data showed a monthly contraction in Australian exports. Nikkei 225 retreated beneath 39,000 with intraday losses of around 1,000 points amid currency strength. KOSPI was dragged lower with Samsung Electronics pressured following its preliminary Q1 results in which operating EPS topped forecasts but it missed on revenue.
Top Asian news
US Treasury Secretary Yellen seeks healthy China ties and warned of overcapacity during China visit, according to Bloomberg.
US Commerce official Lago met with a Chinese official where she raised commercial and market access issues impacting US companies and workers like data flows and regulatory transparency, while she also raised ‘strong concerns’ regarding growing overcapacity in a range of Chinese industrial sectors that impact US workers and businesses, according to the Commerce Department.
BoJ Governor Ueda said the chance of sustainably and stably achieving the bank’s 2% inflation target is in sight and likely to keep heightening, while he added the BoJ will adjust the level of interest rates in accordance to the distance towards sustainably and stably achieving 2% inflation, according to Asahi newspaper. Ueda said whether to raise interest rates again this year will be dependant on data and if the BoJ become more convinced that trend inflation will approach 2%, that will be one reason to adjust interest rates but also stated as long as trend inflation is below 2%, it is necessary to maintain accommodative monetary conditions. Furthermore, he said if FX moves appear to have an impact on the wage-inflation cycle in a way that is hard to ignore, they could respond via monetary policy.
Japanese Finance Minister Suzuki said rapid FX moves are undesirable and he is closely watching FX moves with a high sense of urgency, while he reiterated it is important for currencies to move in a stable manner reflecting fundamentals and won’t rule out any options to deal with excessive FX moves.
RBI kept its Repurchase Rate unchanged at 6.50%, as expected, while it maintained the stance of remaining focused on the withdrawal of accommodation in which 5 out of 6 members voted in favour of the rate and policy stance. RBI Governor Das stated monetary policy must be actively disinflationary and the MPC will remain resolute in its commitment to aligning inflation to the target, while he also stated that they must ensure the descent of inflation to the target of 4% and the last mile of disinflation is challenging.
Equities lower across the board on catch-up play from the late selling seen on Wall Street given geopols/hawkish Fed rhetoric; Stoxx 600 -1.0%. Sectors in-fitting with defensives outperforming slightly given the tone and macro drivers. Stateside, futures are slightly firmer but action is more a consolidation than an uptick after the pressure seen late doors on Thursday, ES +0.3%.
Top European news
Hungary’s Industry Returns to Growth After More Than a Year
Maersk Reinstates Panama Canal Transit as Drought Subsides
Europe Gas Prices Jump as Mideast Tensions Rattle Energy Markets
Russian Governor Stabbed in Rare Attack on Official
Latvia Deploys Finance Tools to Fight Russian Sanctions Evasion
UK Retailers Slide as Decline in Shoppers Persists in March
Israel Debate Opens Fresh Rift in Sunak’s Fractious Cabinet
FX
DXY is essentially unchanged in 104.13-35 parameters as markets count down to the NFP report. Strong release could see a test of 105.00 while a softer print brings 104.00 and below into play.
G10 peers generally rangebound given the tepid USD action into Payrolls with specifics otherwise light as broader market focus remains on geopols into a potential risk-filled weekend.
GBP slightly softer despite the Construction PMI moving back into expansionary territory, EUR treading water into the data and was unaffected by the morning’s German data points.
USD/JPY holding at the top-end of a 150.82-151.45 bound; little move to familiar commentary from officials overnight.
Fixed Income
Benchmarks slightly softer as they give back some of Thursday’s risk-inspired upside which more than offset any hawkish impulses at the time from Fed speak.
Bunds at the session low of 132.53 with no real reaction to a handful of German data points as markets remain focused on Payrolls.
Gilts are pulling back a touch more than peers, with losses in excess of 30 ticks currently but holding just above Thursday’s 98.64 trough, a pullback which is largely a function of their relative outperformance on Thursday.
USTs a touch softer but remain towards the top-end of Thursday’s parameters; NFPs and Fed speak the highlights ahead where an above-forecast number could see a resumption of the earlier bear-steepening while a soft print could see this unwind further – geopolitical updates also a potential key factor.
Commodities
Modest gains across the crude complex following yesterday’s geopolitically-induced upside which led a bid into the settlement. Rhetoric this morning remains heightened, but as of yet no significant follow through to price action.
WTI and Brent currently firmer by around USD 0.20/bbl, towards the top-end of Thursday’s parameters.
Mixed trade for precious metals with slight underperformance in silver/palladium while gold is more resilient and underpinned by remarks from RBI’s Das that they are building reserves; XAU near highs of USD 2293/oz.
RBI Governor Das says they are building up gold reserves.
LME says no further deliveries of aluminium alloy brand SMI, produced by State Metals Industrial, will be accepted for LME warranting with effect from 05 July.
Geopolitics: Middle East
Israel told the US that if Iran launched an attack from its soil against Israel in retaliation for the killing of an Iranian General earlier this week, it would draw a strong response from Israel and take the current conflict to another level, according to Axios.
White House said US President Biden emphasised to Israeli PM Netanyahu that the strikes on humanitarian workers and the overall humanitarian situation are unacceptable, while Biden made it clear Israel needs to announce and implement a series of specific, concrete, and measurable steps to address, civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers. It was also stated that US policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by its assessment of Israel’s immediate action of these steps.
US President Biden’s administration recently authorised the transfer of over 1k 500-pound bombs and over 1k small-diameter bombs to Israel, despite US concerns over the country’s conduct in Gaza, according to CNN sources. It was also reported that the White House said the process of US military aid to Israel was not tied to the Hamas conflict.
Israeli government approved opening Erez crossing into Gaza and opening of Ashdod Port to expand aid into Gaza, according to Times of Israel.
“IRGC commander: Any aggression against Iran will not go unanswered”, according to Sky News Arabia; “IRGC commander: Israel is in our crosshairs and knows what will happen”, via Al Arabiya.
Iranian official says the decision to retaliate against Israel has been made and will be implemented, via Al Arabiya.
Geopolitics: Other
US Secretary of State Blinken commented via X that the US and its allies are united in their commitment to Ukraine, while he added they reaffirmed at the Foreign Ministers meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council that Ukraine’s future is in NATO.
Japan’s METI announced Japan will expand the export ban to Russia to include more industrial items such as lithium-ion batteries, thermostats and grinders effective April 17th.
Russian Foreign Ministry said Sweden’s plans to set up a NATO base on Gotland Island are provocative, according to RIA.
US Event Calendar
08:30: March Change in Nonfarm Payrolls, est. 214,000, prior 275,000
March Change in Private Payrolls, est. 170,000, prior 223,000
March Change in Manufact. Payrolls, est. 3,000, prior -4,000
March Unemployment Rate, est. 3.8%, prior 3.9%
March Underemployment Rate, prior 7.3%
March Labor Force Participation Rate, est. 62.6%, prior 62.5%
March Average Hourly Earnings MoM, est. 0.3%, prior 0.1%
March Average Hourly Earnings YoY, est. 4.1%, prior 4.3%
March Average Weekly Hours All Emplo, est. 34.3, prior 34.3
15:00: Feb. Consumer Credit, est. $15b, prior $19.5b
Central Bank Speakers
08:30: Fed’s Collins Gives Opening Remarks
09:15: Fed’s Barkin Speaks on Economic Outlook
11:00: Fed’s Logan Speaks at Duke University
12:30: Fed’s Bowman Speaks on Risks in Monetary Policy
DB’s Jim Reid concludes the overnight wrap
Markets took a sharp risk-off turn in the US afternoon yesterday, continuing their tough start to Q2. The main catalyst were rising tensions in the Middle East, with Brent crude oil prices closing above $90/bbl for the first time since October, which in turn added to existing fears about inflation. Moreover, there were also some hawkish remarks from Fed officials, with Minneapolis Fed President Kashkari saying that if “we continue to see inflation move sideways, then that would make me question whether we needed to do those rate cuts at all.” So there was an open acknowledgement that rate cuts might not happen in a scenario with more persistent inflation, which the latest rise in oil prices won’t help with.
All that meant the S&P 500 fell by over 2% intraday, ending the session down -1.23%. That leaves the index on course for its worst weekly performance since October, having shed -2.04% since the start of the week. And it marks a big shift from its relentless run-up since the end of October. In fact, the S&P 500 is now -0.2% beneath its level 4 weeks earlier, which makes this the biggest 4-week decline for the index since 2024 began.
The equity selloff coincided with the sharp run-up in oil prices yesterday, which came amidst the news that Israel was preparing for a possible attack by Iran. This brought fears of a broader regional conflict back into the market’s view, leading oil prices to spike by almost 3% from the day’s lows. That took Brent crude up +1.45% to $90.65/bbl, while WTI (+1.36% to $86.59/bbl) extended its year-to-date gain above 20%. And overnight there’ve been further gains for oil, with Brent crude up +0.31% to $90.93/bbl.
This backdrop weighed heavily on equities, with the S&P 500 closing -1.23%, its biggest decline since mid-February, after being up +0.8% intraday. Notably, that also helped push the VIX index of volatility up to a 5-month high of 16.35pts. The decline was a broad one, with 23 of the 24 S&P 500 industry groups lower on the day, and tech stocks slightly underperformed, with the NASDAQ down -1.40%. The Magnificent 7 (-1.06%) saw diverse moves, with Nvidia (-3.44%) and Alphabet (-2.83%) posting large declines, whereas Tesla (+1.62%) and Meta (+0.82%) both advanced.
Treasuries benefited from the risk-off turn, with 10yr yields down -3.8bps to 4.31%, while 2yr yields fell by -2.5bps. Notably, this was fully driven by real yields, with breakevens higher on the day, as the 5yr inflation swap rose to its highest level in nearly 5 months (+2.9bps to 2.54%). Fed funds futures saw sizeable volatility, with pricing of a June cut moving from 63% earlier on to as high as 80%, before settling at 74% by the close. Earlier in the day, the jobless claims data further cemented expectations of a June cut, after initial claims rose to 221k over the week ending March 30 (vs. 214k expected), their highest level since January.
Looking forward, the next focal point will be the US jobs report for March today, which will offer fresh clues as to the likelihood of future rate cuts. In recent months, nonfarm payrolls have seen a noticeable improvement, and the 3m average gain was up to +265k in February, which is its fastest since June last year. So when you combine that with the upside inflation surprises over January and February, that’s seen investors push out the likely timing of rate cuts. In terms of what to expect today, our US economists are forecasting growth in nonfarm payrolls of +200k, with the unemployment rate ticking down a tenth to 3.8%. They see the risks to their payroll forecasts as roughly balanced, but when it comes to the Fed, they think that unless there are any substantial surprises, the inflation report next week will get more attention given the Fed’s focus on the inflation outlook. For more details, see their full preview along with how to register for their webinar (link here)
Yesterday also brought several Fed speakers before the jobs report. In aggregate, they did little in aggregate to move the needle on rate cut expectations. However, there was some hawkishness from Minneapolis Fed President Kashkari, who described the January and February inflation prints as “a little bit concerning”, and as mentioned at the top, he questioned whether rate cuts would need to happen at all if inflation did move sideways. Apart from Kashkari, Cleveland Fed President Mester said she wanted “to see a couple more months data” to discern if there was enough confidence in the inflation decline to begin lowering rates. Chicago Fed President Goolsbee suggested that the higher January and February inflation readings “should not knock us off the path back to target”, though he was watchful over the still elevated housing inflation. And Richmond Fed President Barkin said that “Given a strong labor market, we have time for the clouds to clear before beginning the process of toggling rates down ”, which was similar to Chair Powell’s comment the previous day.
This negative tone has continued in Asian markets overnight, where the Nikkei (-1.93%) and the KOSPI (-1.05%) have both experienced sharp losses. Otherwise, the Hang Seng (-0.71%) saw a smaller decline as it caught up after the previous day’s holiday, whilst markets in mainland China remain closed for a second day. Meanwhile, the Japanese Yen strengthened after comments from BoJ Governor Ueda that suggested another potential rate hike later this year. In particular, he said that the “possibility of achieving the BOJ’s long-awaited target will further increase as wage hikes are reflected in higher consumer prices from summer through autumn”. That supported a further rise in front-end government bond yields, with the 2yr Japanese yield up +2.1bps to 0.20%, its highest level since 2011.
Back in Europe, markets closed before the late run-up in oil prices, so yesterday’s session had been more cheerful for investors. Bonds experienced a sizeable rally, with yields on 10yr bunds (-3.4bps), OATs (-4.1bps) and BTPs (-10.9bps) all seeing a noticeable decline. And most European equity indices posted modest gains, with STOXX 600 up +0.16%. In part, sentiment was supported by the final services and composite PMIs for March. Those saw upward revisions compared to the flash PMIs, and the Euro Area composite PMI was up to 50.3 (vs. flash 49.9), marking its first time it’s been in expansionary territory in 10 months. A similar pattern of upward revisions was evident elsewhere, with the German composite PMI at 47.7 (vs. flash 47.4), whilst France’s was at 48.3 (vs. flash 47.7). The main exception to that pattern was in the UK, where the final composite PMI was down a tenth from the flash reading to 52.8.
Elsewhere in Europe, we saw the release of the accounts of the ECB’s March meeting, which were consistent with the ECB seeing June as the baseline for the first rate cut. The accounts noted that “While it was wise to await incoming data and evidence, the case for considering rate cuts was strengthening”, and pointed out that “the Governing Council would have significantly more data and information by the June meeting, especially on wage dynamics. By contrast, the new information available in time for the April meeting would be much more limited”. For more, see our European economists’ take on the accounts here.
To the day ahead now, and the main highlight will be the US jobs report for March. Otherwise, data releases include German factory orders and French industrial production for February, along with the construction PMIs for March from the UK and Germany. From central banks, we’ll hear from the Fed’s Collins, Barkin, Logan and Bowman.
2 B) NOW NEWSQUAWK (EUROPE/REPORT)
Relatively contained trade into NFP as Europe catches up to geopols – Newsquawk US Market Open
FRIDAY, APR 05, 2024 – 06:33 AM
European equities lower across the board in catch-up play from the late selling seen on Wall St.
DXY unchanged with G10s rangebound into NFP
Fixed income benchmarks slightly softer as they give back some of Thursday’s risk-inspired upside
Commodities feature modest gains for crude and XAU
Payrolls aside, markets attentive for any further escalation in geopolitical tensions into a potential risk-fuelled weekend
Looking ahead, highlights include US NFP, Canadian Jobs. Comments from Fed’s Collins, Barkin, Bowman & Logan.
DXY is essentially unchanged in 104.13-35 parameters as markets count down to the NFP report. Strong release could see a test of 105.00 while a softer print brings 104.00 and below into play.
G10 peers generally rangebound given the tepid USD action into Payrolls with specifics otherwise light as broader market focus remains on geopols into a potential risk-filled weekend.
GBP slightly softer despite the Construction PMI moving back into expansionary territory, EUR treading water into the data and was unaffected by the morning’s German data points.
USD/JPY holding at the top-end of a 150.82-151.45 bound; little move to familiar commentary from officials overnight.
Click here for today’s option expiries for the NY cut.
FIXED INCOME
Benchmarks slightly softer as they give back some of Thursday’s risk-inspired upside which more than offset any hawkish impulses at the time from Fed speak.
Bunds at the session low of 132.53 with no real reaction to a handful of German data points as markets remain focused on Payrolls.
Gilts are pulling back a touch more than peers, with losses in excess of 30 ticks currently but holding just above Thursday’s 98.64 trough, a pullback which is largely a function of their relative outperformance on Thursday.
USTs a touch softer but remain towards the top-end of Thursday’s parameters; NFPs and Fed speak the highlights ahead where an above-forecast number could see a resumption of the earlier bear-steepening while a soft print could see this unwind further – geopolitical updates also a potential key factor.
Modest gains across the crude complex following yesterday’s geopolitically-induced upside which led a bid into the settlement. Rhetoric this morning remains heightened, but as of yet no significant follow through to price action.
WTI and Brent currently firmer by around USD 0.20/bbl, towards the top-end of Thursday’s parameters.
Mixed trade for precious metals with slight underperformance in silver/palladium while gold is more resilient and underpinned by remarks from RBI’s Das that they are building reserves; XAU near highs of USD 2293/oz.
RBI Governor Das says they are building up gold reserves.
LME says no further deliveries of aluminium alloy brand SMI, produced by State Metals Industrial, will be accepted for LME warranting with effect from 05 July.
German Industrial Orders MM (Feb) 0.2% vs. Exp. 0.8% (Prev. -11.3%, Rev. -11.4%)
German Import Prices MM (Feb) -0.2% vs prev. 0.00% (exp. 0.00%); YY (Feb) -4.9% vs. Exp. -4.6% (Prev. -5.9%)
EU HCOB Construction PMI (Mar) 42.4 (Prev. 42.9); German HCOB Construction PMI (Mar) 38.3 (Prev. 39.1)
EU Retail Sales YY (Feb) -0.7% vs. Exp. -1.3% (Prev. -1.0%, Rev. -0.9%); MM (Feb) -0.5% vs. Exp. -0.4% (Prev. 0.1%, Rev. 0.0%)
UK S&P Construction PMI (Mar) 50.2 vs. Exp. 50 (Prev. 49.7)
NOTABLE US HEADLINES
Fed’s Barkin (voter) said it is hard to reconcile the current breadth of inflation with the progress the Fed needs to see for rate cuts and noted disinflation is likely to continue but the speed of that remains unclear and he is open to rate cuts once it is clear progress on inflation will be sustained and apply more broadly in the economy, as well as noted that businesses acknowledged less pricing power than before although are still finding strategies that may keep inflation too high.
Fed’s Harker (non-voter) said inflation is still too high and the jury is still out on whether AI will boost productivity.
US Treasury Secretary Yellen says China is too large to export its way to rapid growth, addressing industrial overcapacity is in China’s interests.
Samsung (006930 KS) is to reportedly fortify US chip revival by raising its Texas investment to USD 44bln, according to WSJ.
GEOPOLITICS
MIDDLE EAST
Israel told the US that if Iran launched an attack from its soil against Israel in retaliation for the killing of an Iranian General earlier this week, it would draw a strong response from Israel and take the current conflict to another level, according to Axios.
White House said US President Biden emphasised to Israeli PM Netanyahu that the strikes on humanitarian workers and the overall humanitarian situation are unacceptable, while Biden made it clear Israel needs to announce and implement a series of specific, concrete, and measurable steps to address, civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers. It was also stated that US policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by its assessment of Israel’s immediate action of these steps.
US President Biden’s administration recently authorised the transfer of over 1k 500-pound bombs and over 1k small-diameter bombs to Israel, despite US concerns over the country’s conduct in Gaza, according to CNN sources. It was also reported that the White House said the process of US military aid to Israel was not tied to the Hamas conflict.
Israeli government approved opening Erez crossing into Gaza and opening of Ashdod Port to expand aid into Gaza, according to Times of Israel.
“IRGC commander: Any aggression against Iran will not go unanswered”, according to Sky News Arabia; “IRGC commander: Israel is in our crosshairs and knows what will happen”, via Al Arabiya.
Iranian official says the decision to retaliate against Israel has been made and will be implemented, via Al Arabiya.
OTHER
US Secretary of State Blinken commented via X that the US and its allies are united in their commitment to Ukraine, while he added they reaffirmed at the Foreign Ministers meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council that Ukraine’s future is in NATO.
Japan’s METI announced Japan will expand the export ban to Russia to include more industrial items such as lithium-ion batteries, thermostats and grinders effective April 17th.
Russian Foreign Ministry said Sweden’s plans to set up a NATO base on Gotland Island are provocative, according to RIA.
CRYPTO
Bitcoin a touch softer as markets await the NFP print and any fresh geopolitical developments to drive the macro narrative into the weekend.
APAC TRADE
APAC stocks followed suit to the losses in the US amid geopolitical concerns and hawkish-leaning Fed rhetoric.
ASX 200 suffered amid weakness in tech and mining stocks, while data showed a monthly contraction in Australian exports.
Nikkei 225 retreated beneath 39,000 with intraday losses of around 1,000 points amid currency strength.
KOSPI was dragged lower with Samsung Electronics pressured following its preliminary Q1 results in which operating EPS topped forecasts but it missed on revenue.
NOTABLE ASIA-PAC HEADLINES
US Treasury Secretary Yellen seeks healthy China ties and warned of overcapacity during China visit, according to Bloomberg.
US Commerce official Lago met with a Chinese official where she raised commercial and market access issues impacting US companies and workers like data flows and regulatory transparency, while she also raised ‘strong concerns’ regarding growing overcapacity in a range of Chinese industrial sectors that impact US workers and businesses, according to the Commerce Department.
BoJ Governor Ueda said the chance of sustainably and stably achieving the bank’s 2% inflation target is in sight and likely to keep heightening, while he added the BoJ will adjust the level of interest rates in accordance to the distance towards sustainably and stably achieving 2% inflation, according to Asahi newspaper. Ueda said whether to raise interest rates again this year will be dependant on data and if the BoJ become more convinced that trend inflation will approach 2%, that will be one reason to adjust interest rates but also stated as long as trend inflation is below 2%, it is necessary to maintain accommodative monetary conditions. Furthermore, he said if FX moves appear to have an impact on the wage-inflation cycle in a way that is hard to ignore, they could respond via monetary policy.
Japanese Finance Minister Suzuki said rapid FX moves are undesirable and he is closely watching FX moves with a high sense of urgency, while he reiterated it is important for currencies to move in a stable manner reflecting fundamentals and won’t rule out any options to deal with excessive FX moves.
RBI kept its Repurchase Rate unchanged at 6.50%, as expected, while it maintained the stance of remaining focused on the withdrawal of accommodation in which 5 out of 6 members voted in favour of the rate and policy stance. RBI Governor Das stated monetary policy must be actively disinflationary and the MPC will remain resolute in its commitment to aligning inflation to the target, while he also stated that they must ensure the descent of inflation to the target of 4% and the last mile of disinflation is challenging.
DATA RECAP
Japanese All Household Spending MM (Feb) 1.4% vs. Exp. 0.5% (Prev. -2.1%); YY (Feb) -0.5% vs. Exp. -3.0% (Prev. -6.3%)
Australian Trade Balance (AUD)(Feb) 7.3B vs Exp. 10.5B (Prev. 11.0B)
Australian Exports MM (Feb) -2.2% (Prev. 1.6%); Imports MM (Feb) 4.8% (Prev. 1.3%
3C ASIA AFFAIRS/
FRIDAY MORNING/THURSDAY NIGHT
SHANGHAI CLOSED DOWN 5.66 PTS OR .18% //Hang Seng CLOSED DOWN 1.18 PTS OR .01% / Nikkei CLOSED DOWN 781.06 PTS OR 1.96% //Australia’s all ordinaries CLOSED DOWN 0.57%///Chinese yuan (ONSHORE) closed DOWN 7.2337 //OFFSHORE CHINESE YUAN CLOSED DOWN TO 7.2416 /Oil UP TO 86.79 dollars per barrel for WTI and BRENT DOWN AT 90.94/ Stocks in Europe OPENED ALL RED// ONSHORE YUAN TRADING ABOVE LEVEL OF OFFSHORE YUAN/ONSHORE YUAN TRADING WEAKER AGAINST US DOLLAR/OFFSHORE YUAN WEAKER
2 d./NORTH KOREA/ SOUTH KOREA/
NORTH KOREA/SOUTH KOREA
END
2e) JAPAN
JAPAN
3 CHINA
CHINA/
END
4.EUROPEAN AFFAIRS//UK /SCANDINAVIAN AFFAIRS
END
DENMARK/NATO
Red Sea failures has led Denmark to sack defense chief
(zerohedge)
Denmark Sacks Defense Chief As Red Sea Failures Pile Up For NATO
The Danish government fired Chief of Defense Flemming Lentfer on Wednesday after it was revealed that the top military official failed to report flaws in the HDMS Iver Huitfeldt frigate’s air defense and weapons systems that emerged during an attack last month by the Yemeni armed forces in the Red Sea.
“I have lost trust in the chief of defense,” Troels Lund Poulsen, Denmark’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense, told reporters on Wednesday night. Poulsen reportedly learned about the failure from the Danish military outlet Olfi.
“We are facing a historic and necessary strengthening of Denmark’s defense forces. This places great demands on our organization and on the military advice at a political level,” the Danish official added.
On March 9, the Iver Huitfeldt’s air defense systems failed for 30 minutes while engaging Yemeni attacks launched by Houthis in support of Gaza, according to a leaked document written by the ship’s commanding officer and reviewed by Olfi. The document also reported issues with the ship’s ammunition system, which caused half of its rounds to detonate before they hit their target.
“Our clear understanding is that the issue has been known for years without the necessary sense of urgency to resolve the problem,” the frigate’s commanding officer reported.
The Iver Huitfeldt eventually fended off the attack, shooting down four drones over the Red Sea in what – at the time – was presented as a success story.
Lentfer’s firing is the latest in a string of recent public embarrassments from NATO member states, particularly in the Red Sea, where a months-long campaign of US and UK airstrikes inside Yemen has failed to deter attacks against Israeli-linked vessels.
“We favor a diplomatic solution; we know that there is no military solution,” US Special Envoy for Yemen Timothy Lenderking said on Wednesday from Oman, candidly acknowledging the failure of what US military commanders called Washington’s largest naval battle since WWII.
Other recent mishaps for NATO include Germany’s use of obsolete communications systems and unsecured lines to discuss providing Ukraine with cruise missiles and Britain’s failure twice in a row to test its nuclear missiles after having two of its flagship aircraft carriers break down ahead of drills in Norway.
end
5. RUSSIA AND MIDDLE EASTERN AFFAIRS.
ISRAEL HAMAS/aid mishap
what happened!
IDF explains mistaken deaths of WCK aid workers, consequences in place
After the unfortunate sequence of events resulting in the IDF’s fatal error, the IDF issued a statement about the incident.
By YONAH JEREMY BOBAPRIL 5, 2024 13:30Updated: APRIL 5, 2024 14:23
An IDF infographic showing the area in which the strike on the World Central Kitchen aid convoy occurred.(photo credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON’S UNIT)
In a statement on Friday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) explained the series of errors that led it to mistakenly kill seven World Central Kitchens aid workers on Monday night.
According to the IDF, there were seven different action points in the incident regarding attacking the three WCK.
The drone unit saw multiple suspicious actions
The drone unit said it saw a Hamas terrorist climb onto one of the trucks and fire in the air at what it called action point two.
According to the IDF, this tactic is frequent and is used by Hamas to send signals to other Hamas fighters in the area regarding his position.
At action point three, the convoy split up.
A Palestinian inspects near a vehicle where employees from the World Central Kitchen (WCK), including foreigners, were killed in an Israeli airstrike (credit: Ahmed Zakot/Reuters)
At action point four, the convoy entered a hangar, which obscured which vehicles might be going in and out and who might be in the vehicles compared to who was in the vehicles before entering the hangar.
In the first four action points, the IDF drone unit refrained from attacking the aid trucks because they questioned their commanders and were ordered by Division 162 Brig. Gen. Itzik Cohen not to, despite a suspicion of Hamas terrorists being involved.
At the fifth action point, the aid trucks had left the hangar.
IDF tried to call aid workers, was unable to reach them
As the events developed, the IDF tried to call the aid workers involved in the field and was unable to reach them.
Next, the IDF called the WCK headquarters. The WCK headquarters tried to call its own aid workers in the field, but they did not answer.
When vehicles left the hangar, the IDF drone unit believed that these were not the same vehicles and thought that these were Hamas vehicles.
According to the IDF, attacking the trucks after all of this was a mistaken identity issue but could not lead to criminal charges.
Accordingly, the drone unit believed the order not to attack no longer applied.
Around a kilometer later, the drone unit believed it had the right to engage the trucks.
Also, the drone unit had thermal imaging that did not see the WCK aid worker sign posted on the roof of the trucks.
When the drone unit attacked three times, it believed that the “coast was clear” completely to attack what it thought were clearly Hamas targets.
The IDF said that even though this could not be a criminal issue, a colonel and major involved in the attack were being fired from their positions as they still could have refrained from attacking based on a general worry that it could still be aid workers.
Likewise, Cohen and his commanding officer, Maj. Gen. Yoel Finkleman was censured for not having standing orders, which would have infused even greater restraint within their troops.
Further, the IDF said that only an attack on the first truck could be somewhat more justified because only there had the drones positively identified Hamas terrorists, whereas the suspicions about Hamas terrorists in the second and third trucks were based more on conjecture regarding the character of the trucks themselves.
Regarding identifying the trucks themselves, the IDF said that a source of complexity was the Toyota pickup trucks involved, which are usually a characteristic of Hamas and were not typically used by the aid workers.
The IDF was uncertain about what happened to any of the Hamas terrorists who might have weaved in or out of the incident.
The IDF said it had presented the findings to the WCK and was still answering questions, and it was not sure how the organization would respond.
Following the incident, the WCK suspended all operations in the Gaza Strip and appeared to be leaning toward permanently ending all operations.
World Central Kitchen demands independent investigation
The WCK responded to the preliminary investigation on Friday afternoon, calling the disciplinary action taken and the commitment to reforms “important steps forward.”
The organization stressed, however, that “it is also clear from their preliminary investigation that the IDF has deployed deadly force without regard to its own protocols, chain of command, and rules of engagement.”
“Without systemic change, there will be more military failures, more apologies, and more grieving families,” said the WCK, adding that the “root cause of the unjustified rocket fire on our convoy is the severe lack of food in Gaza.”
The WCK demanded the establishment of an independent commission to investigate the strike in which the aid workers were killed. “The IDF cannot credibly investigate its own failure in Gaza,” said the WCK.
END
/ISRAEL /SYRIA
END
ISRAEL GAZA
END
ISRAEL//IRAN/
This is very dangerous! If Iran strikes Israel directly Israel will have no choice but to nuke Iran
(Jerusalem Post)
US: Iran is a viable threat to Israel’s safety
Iran, Israel’s arch-nemesis, has sworn revenge for the killing of two of its generals along with five military advisers in an air strike on an Iranian diplomatic compound in Damascus.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi visits the military equipment of IRGC Navy in Bandar Abbas, Iran, February 2, 2024.(photo credit: IRAN’S PRESIDENCY/WANA (WEST ASIA NEWS AGENCY)/HANDOUT VIA REUTERS)
Tehran is posting a public and viable threat to Israel, the United States said on Thursday, as Israel braced for the possibility of a retaliatory attack after its suspected killing of Iranian generals in Damascus this week. Israel said it would respond forcefully, signaling it had stiffened its military preparedness.
US President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discussed that threat during a short phone call they held on Thursday night.
“They did talk about a very public and very viable real threat by Iran to Israel security,” US National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby told reporters in Washington.
The White House, in a read-out of the calls, clarified that Biden “made clear that the US strongly supports Israel in the face of those threats.”
At the start of a security cabinet meeting on Thursday night, Netanyahu said “Iran has been acting against us for years, directly and through its proxies.
“Israel is acting against Iran and its proxies, both defensively and offensively,” Netanyahu stated. “We will know how to defend ourselves, and we will act based on the principle that we will harm those who attack us or intend to attack us.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Jerusalem, February 18, 2024. (credit: REUTERS/RONEN ZVULUN/FILE PHOTO)
Israel’s armed forces – stretched by nearly six months of the war in the Gaza Strip and on the Northern front – announced they were suspending leave for all combat units a day after they said they were mobilizing more troops for air defense units.
The possibility of Iran retaliating for Monday’s alleged Israeli air strike on Iran’s embassy compound in Damascus has raised the specter of a wider war, though two Iranian sources said Tehran’s response would be calibrated to avoid escalation.
Reuters journalists and residents of Israel’s commercial hub, Tel Aviv, said GPS services had been disrupted, an apparent measure to help ward off guided missiles.
Iran swears revenge
Iran, Israel’s arch-nemesis, has sworn revenge for the killing of two of its generals along with five military advisers in an air strike on an Iranian diplomatic compound in the Syrian capital on Monday.
Israel is believed to have carried out the strike, among the most significant yet on Iranian interests in Tehran’s close ally Syria. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied involvement.
Since then, investors have been on edge. The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange’s main TA-125 share index fell another 2.2% on Thursday to extend losses this week to around 4%. The shekel was 0.6% weaker versus the dollar at a 3.73 rate and government bond prices were down as much as 0.4%.
“In accordance with the situational assessment, it has been decided that leave will be temporarily paused for all IDF combat units,” the military said in a statement. “The IDF is at war and the deployment of forces is under continuous assessment according to requirements.”
With Israelis anxious about a possible escalation, the military later issued a statement clarifying that no changes had been made in its guidelines for the home front and that there was no need to gather food, cash, or generators.
Israel has been pressing its war on Hamas in Gaza since the terrorist group led a cross-border killing and kidnapping spree on October 7 and has also been trading fire almost daily with Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who are aligned with Tehran, have launched occasional long-range rockets at Israel’s Eilat Port.
Earlier in the evening, Netanyahu met with a Republican US Congressional Delegation organized by the American Israel Policy Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
He told them that US support for Israel has never been more vital, as he explained that Israel was battling forces that were also hostile to the United States, including the Iranian proxy groups Hamas and Hezbollah.
“Our battle is your battle. Our victory is your victory. And if we don’t have a victory, this will have enormous implications for American security, for our common future,” he said.
Passage of the supplemental bill offering military aid to Israel and Ukraine would help Jerusalem secure a faster victory, Netanyahu stressed.
”Give us the tools, and we’ll do the job. Give us the tools faster, and we’ll finish the job faster. I’m talking about the supplemental. I hope you find a way to give it as fast as you can,” he stated.
Reuters contributed to this report.
END
ISRAEL/IRAN
Israel gives Iran a grave warning
(Jerusalem Post)
Israel Warns Iran Of Massive Regional War If Directly Attacked
THURSDAY, APR 04, 2024 – 06:31 PM
Update(1831ET): With Israel’s embassies around the world on a heightened state of alert, and extra IDF reservists called up, and home and weekend leave for all combat troops having been abruptly canceled Thursday, the Israeli population is anxiously awaiting a response – with some reports saying residents are already seeking the safety of bomb shelters.
Tehran has vowed that vengeance is coming soon for the Monday Israeli airstrike on its embassy in Damascus. Most pundits believe this will take the form of ballistic missiles raining down on Israeli cities. But Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly vowing that if the Islamic Republic launches missiles from its soil it will ensure“a strong response” from Israel.
Israeli officials have told Axios late in the day that such an act would “take the current conflict to another level” — which most certainly would involve a direct Israel-Iran war and thus the eruption of a broader regional conflict. Axios adds the following observations:
Iranian proxies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Gaza have attacked Israel but there hasn’t been an attack from Iranian soil.
A direct Iranian strike on Israel would be unprecedented and could lead to a regional war in the Middle East.
Netanyahu informed his security cabinet Thursday that Israel’s forces have already been engaged with Iran “both directly and via its proxies, and therefore Israel is operating against Iran and its proxies, both defensively and offensively.”
A statement issued by the prime minister’s office laid out: “We will know how to defend ourselves and will operate according to the basic principle of whoever is harming or planning to harm us — we will harm him.” The White House has meanwhile issued a statement shortly after Biden and Netanyahu discussed the Gaza crisis, saying “President Biden made clear that the United States strongly supports Israel in the face of those [Iranian] threats.”
There have meanwhile been unverified reports to emerge saying that the CIA has warned Israel to expect an attack from Iran within the next 48 hours, which has also been picked up in Israeli press.
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At this point Israel’s ties with key Gulf countries like the UAE are near breaking point, after only a few short years ago diplomatic normalization was hailed through Trump’s Abraham accords. But international and Israeli press reports are confirming the UAE has announced it is halting all coordination on humanitarian aid with Israel.
Further, as Israeli media reports: “The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has announced a suspension of diplomatic coordination with Israel in the wake of the death of seven World Central Kitchen humanitarian workers in Gaza.” Simultaneously, Israel is busy putting its embassies across the world on high security alert due to the “heightened Iranian response threat” in wake of Monday’s Israeli attack on the Iranian embassy in Damascus. All of this served to send Brent soaring in the last two hours, with Brent spiking above $90 for the first time since October….
… and sending stocks tumbling to session lows.
With Iran vowing that its retaliation is coming at any moment, Israel’s military is scrambling for readiness, with the latest measure being to pause all home leave for all combat troops.
“The IDF is at war and the issue of the deployment of forces is constantly reviewed as needed,” the Israeli military said.
President Biden is meanwhile is said to be “pissed” with PM Netanyahu over the killing of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers in Gaza, though Israel acknowledged that it was a “grave mistake”.
So far this sounds like more mere empty words of “concern” – a talking point that’s been on repeat from the White House even as its Gaza policy continues slowly fracturing the Democratic base – but Biden is said to have pressed Bibi for “an immediate ceasefire”.
The call readout further said ceasefire is needed to “protect innocent civilians” in Gaza and improve the humanitarian situation. Axios writes that Biden gave his Israeli counterpart an “ultimatum” as the US president “emphasized that the strikes on humanitarian workers and the overall humanitarian situation are unacceptable.”
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//ISRAEL//HAMAS/AID
Unintentional killings of WCK workers is tragic, but Hamas is still to blame for war – editorial
Yes, these incidents do happen in the less-than-sterile conditions of battle. They have happened to every country that has ever engaged in warfare.
A Palestinian inspects near a vehicle where employees from the World Central Kitchen (WCK), including foreigners, were killed in an Israeli airstrike(photo credit: Ahmed Zakot/Reuters)
The unintentional killing of seven aid workers from the World Central Kitchen (WCK) organization in Gaza on Monday was a horrible tragedy.
It is one of the innumerable tragedies of the war in Gaza, a war callously triggered by Hamas’s invasion of Israel on October 7, its murder of 1,200 people, and its kidnapping of 240 hostages.
The tragedies of this war include the death of dozens of Gazans as they swarmed toward an aid convoy in February, the IDF’s accidental killing of three hostages seeking to escape in December, the friendly fire or military accidents which have led to some 15% of all IDF fatalities in Gaza, and the unintentional killing of Palestinian civilians used by Hamas as human shields – caught in the crossfire of a devastating urban war.
Quickly taking responsibility for the WCK accidental deaths was the correct move
Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi was correct in quickly apologizing for the WCK deaths, labeling the firing at the aid convoy as a grave mistake caused by misidentification, pledging a swift and transparent investigation of what exactly went wrong, and establishing a new Humanitarian Command Center under the IDF’s Southern Command to better coordinate between the work of the various aid organizations inside Gaza and with the IDF.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, too, was correct in saying that the unintentional harming of non-combatants “happens in war,” though – considering the attention this incident has generated around the world – he could have opted for more empathetic terminology.
World Central Kitchen (WCK) barge loaded with food arrives off the Gaza coast, March 15, 2024 (credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON’S UNIT)
Yes, these incidents do happen in the less-than-sterile conditions of battle. They have happened to every country that has ever engaged in warfare.
For instance, the US, during its war in Afghanistan in July 2008, accidentally struck a wedding party, believing those in the party to be insurgents. Forty-seven civilians, including the bride, were killed. In November of that year, another strike at a wedding in Afghanistan killed 37.
And these were not isolated incidents. As recently as 2021, a US drone shot and killed 10 civilians in Kabul – an aid worker and seven children– mistakenly believing they were terrorists.
As of May 2003, according to Brown University’s Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs, an estimated 432,903 civilians were killed in America’s post-9/11 wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, and Pakistan.
It is with those numbers in mind that US President Joe Biden’s chastising of Israel Tuesday in a White House statement over the WCK killings rings somewhat disingenuous.
“Even more tragically, this is not a stand-alone incident. This conflict has been one of the worst in recent memory in terms of how many aid workers have been killed,” Biden said, adding, “Israel has also not done enough to protect civilians.”
As if the US or any other country has in the past – or can in the future – do a better job avoiding civilian casualties under similar conditions.
There are two main problems with Biden’s statement.
The first, as pointed out in a social media post by Jason Greenblatt, a former adviser to then-president Donald Trump on the Middle East, is that “saying that Israel has not done enough to protect aid workers and other civilians is simply untrue and reckless. It gives fuel to those who spread lies about Israel.”
The second is that the president does not once, in his 314-word statement, acknowledge Hamas’ responsibility for the entire situation. It is Hamas who attacked Israel; it is Hamas who is prolonging this war by not releasing the hostages and surrendering. Hamas terrorists are the ones who have both hidden behind and disguised themselves in the past as journalists, ambulance drivers, and humanitarian workers, thereby placing those genuinely acting in those capacities at risk.
All civilian casualties in Gaza, even those mistakenly caused by Israel, need to be laid at Hamas’ doorstep. Had Hamas not attacked on October 7, or had it released the hostages shortly thereafter and surrendered, none of this would be happening.
Israel will investigate and learn the lessons of this tragedy because this is what it does and because this is what is right. It does not need any prodding to do so. What Israel does need, however, is for the international community to rein in its hypocrisy and stop treating battle zones as crime scenes, something it only inexplicably seemingly does when the Jewish state is involved.
end
Israel Sacks Top Officers Over Aid Convoy Attack As Biden Gives ‘Ultimatum’ To Netanyahu
FRIDAY, APR 05, 2024 – 12:45 PM
On Thursday President Biden spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the Israeli military’s killing of seven aid workers with the World Central Kitchen which happened Monday, and has since resulted in rare expression of US mainstream media outrage.
The White House readout suggested a tense exchange, with Biden conveying tough words to the prime minister. “President Biden emphasized that the strikes on humanitarian workers and the overall humanitarian situation are unacceptable. He made clear the need for Israel to announce and implement a series of specific, concrete, and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers,” the readout said.
“He made clear that US policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel’s immediate action on these steps,” the statement added. Widespread media reports interpreted this as an unprecedented “ultimatum” given to the close US ally.
For example Reuters wrote that Biden “threatened to condition support for Israel’s offensive in Gaza on it taking concrete steps to protect aid workers and civilians, seeking for the first time to leverage US aid to influence Israeli military behavior.”
But as the reported Palestinian death toll in Gaza reaches and surpasses 33,000 – according to local health ministry figures – the administration in reality appears no closer to taking any action on placing conditions on use of US weaponry. Going back to Oct.7, Biden has only consistently vowed the opposite – that the defense aid would flow to Tel Aviv uninterrupted. This despite that one of the aid workers was American.
But the Israelis, seeking to tap down international and US anger, have said an internal investigation has concluded that the IDF drone team behind the attack was in “serious violation” of the military’s rules. Writes The Wall Street Journal, “The Israeli drone team that killed seven aid workers from World Central Kitchen after mistaking them for Hamas militants lacked the evidence to order the strikes and twice violated the military’s operating rules, an Israeli military investigation found.”
“The investigation’s findings indicate that the incident should not have occurred,” the IDF said. “Those who approved the strike were convinced that they were targeting armed Hamas operatives and not WCK employees.” The IDF still says it was a Hamas terrorists initially being targeted. “The investigation found that the forces identified a gunman on one of the aid trucks, following which they identified an additional gunman,” the statement said.
However, once the convoy of vehicles left the warehouse where it delivered food, “one of the commanders mistakenly assumed that the gunmen were located inside the accompanying vehicles and that these were Hamas terrorists.” Further, the drone team failed to take account for the fact that the vehicles were clearly marked with large WCK branding for identification purposes. No militants, alive or deceased, were ever found near the scene of the attack. According to more via WSJ:
Maj. Gen. Benny Gal, who took part in the investigation, said militants over the past month had commandeered aid convoys by joining them in vehicles that looked similar to those the aid workers used. This convinced commanders they were witnessing a similar phenomenon, he said.
The IDF statement ultimately concluded, “The strike on the aid vehicles is a grave mistake stemming from a serious failure due to a mistaken identification, errors in decision-making, and an attack contrary to the Standard Operating Procedures.”
Israel has unveiled disciplinary steps against top officers for the“serious failure”, which has included the dismissal of two officers and the reprimand of three others. IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi has removed the chief of staff of the Nahal Infantry Brigade, Col. (res.) Nochi Mendel, as well as the brigade’s firepower coordination officer, who holds the rank of major.
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Still, the World Central Kitchen charity has hit back, pointing out that “The IDF cannot credibly investigate its own failure in Gaza.” WCK added: “Without systemic change, there will be more military failures, more apologies and more grieving families.” The White House says it is carefully reviewing Israel’s internal investigation of the strikes.
/ISRAEL//HOUTHIS
USA airstrikes against Houthis kills 37 and wounds 30
(Reuters)
Houthis say 37 killed, 30 wounded in hundreds of US, UK strikes on Yemen
File: Houthi supporters attend a rally against the US-led strikes against Yemen and in the support of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, in Sanaa, Yemen, February 16, 2024, holding a photo of Houthi leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi. (AP Photo/Osamah Abdulrahman)
Some 424 US and British airstrikes on targets in Yemen have killed 37 people and wounded 30, according to Abdul Malik al-Houthi, leader of Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
The Houthis, who control Yemen’s capital and most populous areas, have been attacking ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden since November in what they say is a campaign of solidarity with Palestinians during Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza, drawing US and British retaliatory strikes since February.
Al-Houthi, in a televised speech, says 90 ships had been targeted in the Red Sea and drone attacks had increased and expanded to additional regions.
He says 34 attacks had been launched in a month, using 125 ballistic missiles and drones.
The Houthi attacks have disrupted global shipping, forcing firms to take longer and more expensive journeys around the southern tip of Africa.
The US and Britain carried out the strikes against Houthi targets in response to the attacks on shipping.
The Biden administration in January re-designated the Houthis as a terrorist organization, partially restoring sanctions it lifted three years ago on the Iran-backed militia group.
END
RUSSIA/UKRAINE/USA
are these guys insane!! Mike Lee states it best:
NATO can have either the uSA or Ukraine but not both
(zerohedge)
Blinken Bombshell: “Ukraine Will Become A Member Of NATO”
THURSDAY, APR 04, 2024 – 03:59 PM
Update(1600ET): Secretary of State Antony Blinken just dropped an ultra-provocative bombshell statement which is sure rile Moscow further. He told reporters Thursday in Brussels, where foreign ministers are meeting to prepare for the alliance’s annual meeting in July: “Ukraine will become a member of NATO. Our purpose at the summit is to help build a bridge to that membership.”
The meeting will mark the 75th anniversary that the alliance was established. Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg is meanwhile trying to get all 32 members to commit to long-term military funding for Ukraine, to the tune of $100 billion over a five-year period. He’s hoping for final agreement to be reached at the July meeting, current holdouts like Hungary notwithstanding.
Blinken says that Ukraine will be joining NATO. Under Article 5, this means that an attack on Ukraine will be considered an attack on the United States. If you want World War 3, vote Biden in November
As The Hill has noted, “NATO allies agreed at the 2023 summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, that Ukraine can join NATO when certain conditions are met, but sparked criticism from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Baltic allies for failing to set concrete goals and a timeline for Kyiv to join the alliance.”
For the Kremlin these are fighting words. At a moment Ukraine forces are fairing badly on the battlefield, Blinken has just needlessly poured more fuel on the fire, which follows on the heels President Macron raising the possibility of sending Western troops to Ukraine.
Meanwhile, an initial solid response out of Rep. Lee…
BREAKING: Sen. Mike Lee says if Ukraine joins NATO, the US needs to leave. “NATO can have Ukraine. Or the U.S. But not both.”
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NATO members have agreed to begin planning military support for Ukraine on a long-terms basis, in but the latest indicator assuring both escalation with Russia and that the war will drag on for possibly years more to come.
On Wednesday NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg announced that allies have “agreed to move forward with planning for a greater NATO role in coordinating security assistance and training.” But it will still be an uphill battle to get some of the ‘outlier’ members on board.
He also said that Ukraine’s government and military still has “urgent needs” and that “any delay in providing support has consequences on the battlefield as we speak.”
“We must ensure reliable and predictable security assistance to Ukraine for the long haul so that we rely less on the voluntary contributions and more on NATO commitments, less on short-term offers and more on multiyear pledges,” Stoltenberg said. “The reason why we do this is the situation on the battlefield in Ukraine. It is serious … We see how Russia is pushing, and we see how they try to win this war by just waiting us out.”
Stoltenberg’s words come the day after he unveiled a $100 billion, five-year fund for Ukraine which he subsequently pitched to alliance foreign ministers as they met Wednesday.
It is meant to both close the gap after Biden’s proposed $60 billion has been stymied by Republicans in US Congress, and in future expectation of a possible Trump victory after November.
Stoltenberg said a final decision on the $100 billion fund would be made at a July summit of NATO member state leaders; however, the big hurdle will be achieving the required consensus among the 32 members,
Hungary has already announced its “opposition to increasing NATO’s coordination role in arms deliveries and training Ukrainian forces, refusing to participate in planning, operations, or funding,” according to a foreign ministry statement.
FM Péter Szijjártó announced Hungary’s opposition to increasing
‘s coordination role in arms deliveries and training Ukrainian forces, refusing to participate in planning, operations, or funding. This stance was outlined during a press briefing at the NATO foreign ministers meeting in Brussels.
Highlighting the government’s priority to protect Hungary from the neighboring conflict, Minister Szijjártó praised NATO’s unanimous decision to remain a non-combatant in the conflict and avoid direct confrontation with Russia. However, he warned of new proposals that could bring the military alliance closer to the conflict.
Despite many NATO members supporting an increased coordinating role in military support, Hungary made clear it would not engage in planning or executing related tasks, nor provide financial support for such activities.
Minister Szijjártó also reaffirmed Hungary’s position against arms shipments and sending troops to Ukraine, emphasizing no Hungarian soldier would participate in such missions. The minister underlined that strategies relying on Western arms deliveries for Ukrainian battlefield success have failed, only increasing the number of military assets in the destructive conflict.
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Thus Brussels is in for yet another fight with its wayward Hungarian member state led by Viktor Orban, who has time and again vowed to reject any measure which could pave a path of escalation to WW3 with Russia.
But Stoltenberg is already seeking to calm Budapest’s fears and bring it on board. “What we are discussing is not a NATO combat presence in Ukraine. We are discussing how we can coordinate and deliver support from outside Ukraine to Ukraine as NATO allies do,” Stoltenberg said. “And now when we initiate planning, I’m certain we can also address the concerns that Hungary has raised and find a way where we can have consensus.”
END
6.Global Issues//COVID ISSUES
special thanks to Chris Powell for providing this important piece to you:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) continues to resist disclosing information on claimed side effects and problems with its COVID-19 vaccines, including from healthcare workers. Due to a January order by U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in a Freedom of Information Act case, the CDC is being forced to turn over hundreds of thousands of “free text” entries from V-safe. The court has scolded the CDC for its continuing efforts to withhold information on these complaints.
As the CDC and the Biden White House gear up for another possible pandemic, the case reminds us that we still need to address the conduct of the government — and the reporting of the media — from the last pandemic. Once agency officials were told that they could censor those with opposing views, a culture of speech controls took hold at the CDC and the government narrative was then amplified by the media.
To question such mandates was declared a public health threat. The head of the World Health Organization even supported censorship to combat what he called an “infodemic.”
A lawsuit was filed by Missouri and Louisiana and joined by leading experts, including Drs. Jayanta Bhattacharya (Stanford University) and Martin Kulldorff (Harvard University). Bhattacharya previously objected to the suspension of Dr. Clare Craig after she raised concerns about Pfizer trial documents. Those doctors were the co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated for a more focused Covid response that targeted the most vulnerable population rather than widespread lockdowns and mandates. Many are now questioning the efficacy and cost of the massive lockdown as well as the real value of masks or the rejection of natural immunities as an alternative to vaccination. Yet, these experts and others were attacked for such views just a year ago. Some found themselves censored on social media for challenging claims of Dr. Fauci and others.
The media has quietly acknowledged the science questioning mask efficacy and school closures without addressing its own role in attacking those who raised these objections. Even raising the lab theory on the origin of Covid 19 (a theory now treated as plausible) was denounced as a conspiracy theory. The science and health reporter for the New York Times, Apoorva Mandavilli, even denounced the theory as “racist.” In the meantime, California moved to potentially strip doctors of their licenses for spreading dissenting views on Covid.
It is clear that much still has to be done to create a culture of transparency at the CDC. Judge Kacsmaryk has slammed the agency for withholding the data on the health complaints on spurious grounds. There still appears a culture at CDC in withholding data that could be used to question its decisions or conclusions.
For a year, the CDC has been fighting these efforts. The lawsuit by the Informed Consent Action Network, revealed “nearly 8% of V-safe users said they required medical care, another 12% couldn’t perform normal daily activities and yet another 13% said they missed work or school.” With limited “boxes” supplied by the CDC, people had to write in their complications. The CDC then failed to disclose those reports.
The free-text entries reportedly support one of the most controversial moves by the CDC to downplay heart complications. Litigants say that the new disclosures show a frequency of symptoms associated with myocarditis – inflammation of the the heart muscle myocardium.
Experts raising these concerns were labeled “anti-vaxxers” and conspiracists.
As I have previously testified in Congress, the surest way to combat this culture of censorship is to pass legislation barring a single dime of taxpayer funds from being used to fund censorship efforts, including third-party groups on removing “misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation.”
The government can always speak in its own voice, but we should get the government out of the business of controlling the speech of citizens and groups. It can rebut critics on its ample platforms without using third parties to silence them as surrogates.
Additionally, Congress should demand answers on the failure of the CDC to discuss opposing views and to withhold countervailing data during the last pandemic. The loss of public confidence in both the CDC and the media could prove disastrous if we face another pandemic. The years of barring and throttling opposing views (including many later vindicated by the science) has left many Americans deeply distrustful of both the government and the media. That is a real potential health danger. If we want to prepare for the next pandemic, we need to repair that trust.
U.S. has recorded over 1 million excess deaths among people aged 65 and older since the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines
According to the latest Centers for Disease Control (CDC) statistics on excess mortality, the United States has recorded over 1 million excess deaths among people ages 65 and older since the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines.
This is a shocking statistic, considering that government officials promised that this intervention was a “lifesaving” vaccine that was the only way out of lockdowns and restrictions. With the promise of saving millions of lives, Operation Warp Speed rapidly inoculated the elderly population first.
Shocking excess mortality observed in the most vaccinated age group
On December 11, 2020, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. On December 18, 2020, the FDA granted EUA for the Moderna, and on February 27, 2021, the Janssen COVID-19 vaccines hit the market. The Trump administration boasted about this success.
At the time, Americans were categorized into age groups and separated by social status to expedite the COVID-19 vaccine experiment. The elderly (65 and older) and the “essential healthcare workers” were conscripted by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to take the jabs first.
According to the U.S. Coronavirus Vaccine Tracker, more than 95 percent of Americans ages 65 and older received at least one coronavirus vaccine. A total of 51,071,667 Americans in this age group were fully vaccinated with the original covid-19 vaccine protocol.
Despite the success in manipulating 95 percent of people in this age group, the number of excess deaths among this age group was appalling. During the first 20 weeks of 2021, there was a shocking 150,085 excess deaths in the 65 and over age group compared to the 2015 to 2019 five-year average. After the successful vaccine rollout, the Biden regime claimed that America was suffering from a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” as sickness and mortality persisted in spite of the great vaccine coverage.
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If the excess death was truly coming from the “unvaccinated” then the “unvaccinated” would have surely been wiped out completely in weeks 21 to week 40 of 2021. To the contrary, there were an astounding 165,387 excess deaths among the most heavily vaccinated cohort. By week 40 of 2021, the total excess deaths rose to 315,472 among those who were most likely to get the COVID-19 vaccine.
Boosters and mandates drive further excess mortality in the elderly
The excess deaths continued, despite desperate campaigns to get the vaccinated boosted again with a reformulated COVID-19 vaccine. By the end of 2021, the most vaccinated age group saw 448,740 excess deaths. By the end of 2021, the Biden regime launched a series of “vaccine mandates” that scared many more people into compliance.
By 2022, the 65 and over’s continued to suffer historic losses. This year, another 371,466 excess deaths were recorded among this age group. The Biden regime dubbed the winter of 2021 and 2022 the “winter of severe illness and death” for the unvaccinated, but it turns out the most vaccinated age group saw the greatest losses. Vaccine mandates were painstakingly resisted, and the Biden regime lost several court battles as they tried to force this experiment onto the population.
As vaccine passports and mandates failed, more booster campaigns were launched to target the elderly, the frightened and the obedient, but the excess deaths continued to surge regardless. In the year 2023, there were an additional 257,415 excess deaths in the elderly. After the first week of 2024, the CDC confirmed another 5,482 excess deaths in this age group. This mass culling continues as the COVID-19 vaccines remain on the market, paving the way for more mRNA experiments.
Operation Warp Speed and the Biden regime’s vaccine mandates have been the driving force behind a shocking 1,069,943 excess deaths recorded among people ages 65 and over. The COVID-19 vaccines did not save millions of lives and reduce the number of people dying and suffering from severe disease. This experiment culled the American population in the most deceptive way imaginable.
I am vindicated on this one: I thought that this would be a lousy drug and I am correct.
Pfizer’s Own Study Confirms Paxlovid Sucks
THURSDAY, APR 04, 2024 – 11:20 PM
A Pfizer-funded, peer-reviewed paper authored by Pfizer scientists reveals that the company’s antiviral COVID medication Paxlovid completely sucks, confirming what everyone’s known since it came out.
In a randomized phase 2-3 trial of the drug conducted between Aug. 25, 2021 through July 25, 2022, 654 out of 1,296 patients were dosed with at least one 300mg dose of Paxlovid + 100mg of protease inhibitor ritonavir vs. a placebo group. The results showed that the median time until COVID-19 symptoms ended through day 28 was 12 days in the treatment group vs. 13 days in the placebo group.
According to the authors, the result of the drug, which is also known as nirmatrelvir, “was not significant.”
“Similar results were observed in the high-risk subgroup (i.e., participants who had been vaccinated and had at least one risk factor for severe illness) and in the standard-risk subgroup (i.e., those who had no risk factors for severe illness and had never been vaccinated or had not been vaccinated within the previous 12 months),” the authors added.
And while 0.8% of the Paxlovid group suffered ‘hospitalization or death’ vs. 1.6% of placebo recipients, the authors also concluded that it was not statistically significant, however placebo recipients had longer average hospital stays and were more likely to be admitted to intensive care units.
According to the authors, “the usefulness of nirmatrelvir–ritonavir in patients who are not at high risk for severe COVID-19 has not been established.“
The trial included adults who had tested positive for COVID-19 and shown at least one symptom, had previously received the COVID-19 vaccine, and had at least one risk factor – such as being a cigarette smoker.
Pfizer had previously announced that they were halting enrollment in the trial over “a very low rate of hospitalization or death observed in the standard-risk patient population.”
As the Epoch Times notes, Dr. Vinay Prasad, an epidemiology professor at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved with the research, said on social media platform X that the trial showed Paxlovid “doesn’t work in vaccinated people.”
“It was embarrassing to watch the administration and many ID doctors recommend this without any credible data,” he continued – criticizing the government for spending upwards of $12 billion for Paxlovid “without much trial data.”
A previous Pfizer trial, which was run to assess Paxlovid’s efficacy and safety among the unvaccinated, found that Paxlovid shortened the time to sustained symptoms alleviation and reduced the severity of COVID-19 symptoms. The trial enrolled people with COVID-19, with symptoms, and who had a risk factor for progression to severe disease or were 60 years of age or older.
Based on the results from that trial, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2023 authorized the drug for both unvaccinated and vaccinated adults with mild to moderate COVID-19 who were deemed at high risk for progression to severe COVID-19. -Epoch Times
“The benefit observed among unvaccinated high-risk persons does not extend to those at lower risk for severe COVID-19,” wrote Drs. Rajesh Gandhi and Martin Hirsch in an editorial about the new paper. That said, they also concluded that “it still appears reasonable to recommend the drug to older people and people with substantial underlying conditions.”
What?
end
Tuberculosis Cases Reported In Chicago’s Immigrant Shelters
Chicago’s Health Department has confirmed a few cases of tuberculosis among illegal immigrants who recently arrived in the city. However, officials say there is no cause for concern for the broader population as they believe the disease is contained.
Tuberculosis, or TB, is an infectious disease caused by a bacteria that generally attacks the lungs and, in some cases, other body parts. Symptoms can include chest pain, fatigue, chills, and coughing up blood. If not treated, TB can be fatal.
Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) officials confirmed in a media statement a “small number” of tuberculosis cases at city-run immigrant shelters but did not state which shelters or how many people are affected.
According to a spokesperson, there is no cause for concern at this time because the disease has been contained, and the affected illegal immigrants are being treated.
“We will continue to offer treatment to individuals as necessary and take the proper precautions to eliminate spread, but we do not consider this a matter presenting a substantial threat to the public,” the spokesperson said.
“To date, CDPH has not confirmed any reports of TB that resulted from exposure to new arrivals in Chicago.”
The CDPH claims an estimated 10 to 20 percent of people from Central and South America have a latent TB infection, which is asymptomatic and general not transmissible to others, but does result in a positive test. According to the CDPH, even those with active cases will likely recover if they receive treatment.
“For those who do have active cases of TB disease, CDPH assigns a nurse case manager to each individual and performs a contact tracing investigation,” the spokesperson said.
“TB is curable with antibiotics and is not particularly infectious, typically requiring several hours or more of prolonged close contact between individuals to spread, but CDPH continues to take cases seriously in order to keep it contained.”
The CDPH says in an average year, it expects to see between 100 to 150 tuberculosis cases in Chicago residents.
Alderman Calls for Immunization Standards for Asylum Seekers
Chicago Alderman Raymond Lopez said the infections were a wake-up call for the city, and that citizens should start putting pressure on Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson to implement American immunization standards for all asylum seekers. Chicago was also recently hit with a registered measles cases, which was reportedly the first case identified in a Chicagoan since 2019.
In an April 3 post on X, Mr. Lopez said “performative politics and hurt feelings” have led to a delayed response to an “obvious looming disaster.”
“Anyone who demanded action to protect our residents was called racist, xenophobic, and anti-immigrant by fringe politicians. And now, here we are: measles, now tuberculosis both confirmed in Chicago,” he said.
“Shame on every mouthpiece that worked so hard to keep this secret. I don’t expect apologies or an enlightened response from the performative deniers: those folks have never let facts get in the way of their narrative,” he said.
According to a March 28 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), cases of tuberculosis have jumped to their highest level in a decade. In 2023, tuberculosis case counts jumped by 1,295 from the prior year to 9,615, the agency said. This represents an increase of 16 percent and is the highest level since 2013.
The United States has one of the lowest rates of tuberculosis in the world, the CDC said. However, the uptick in cases means capacity should be strengthened in public health programs to carry out “critical disease control and prevention strategies.”
Staff shortages are killing patients coast to coast (Honolulu, Fresno, East San Jose, NM, VT), & in Canada, UK, Germany, Italy, Bulgaria, Dubai, China, S. Korea. Singapore, Thailand & all over Africa
Strain on Healthcare: Unpacking the Crisis in Emergency Rooms
February 13, 2024
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Hospitals across the globe are reporting their worst emergency figures in over two years, marking a significant strain on the healthcare system. The surge in emergency cases has put tremendous pressure on hospital capacity and resources, raising concerns about the ability to provide timely and effective care to patients. This increase in emergency cases can be attributed to a variety of factors, notably, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, seasonal illnesses, and other health-related issues. The situation necessitates urgent attention and proactive measures to address the growing demand for emergency healthcare services.
250,000 visits to Medicare Urgent Care Clinics take pressure off hospitals
April 4, 2024
The Australian Government’s network of 58 Medicare Urgent Care Clinics have made it easier for hundreds of thousands of Australians to get urgent care from a doctor or nurse, without waiting for hours in busy hospital emergency departments.
Dubai Ambulance responds to over 235,000 emergencies in 2023
April 4, 2024
The Dubai Corporation for Ambulance Services played a critical role in responding to emergencies involving 235,394 individuals in 2023, and achieved a record average response time of 7.5 minutes, a 13 percent improvement from 2022. The organisation also made crucial contributions to saving the lives of 90 individuals who had cardiac arrests in the past year.
Why patients are waiting so long in emergency rooms across Canada
February 14, 2024
As Canada’s emergency rooms grapple with persistent staffing and bed shortages, hospital admission wait times are getting longer. This past December in Ontario, patients waited in ERs for an average of nearly 22 hours before getting admitted to the hospital—almost three times longer than the provincial target time of eight hours. According to Michael Howlett, president of the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians, or CAEP, decades of underfunding fuelled systemic problems, which are now hitting a breaking point. Ontario wait times will likely only get worse, he says, particularly during respiratory virus seasons.
Hospital declares rare ‘black alert’ as patients told to avoid A&E and go home
April 4, 2024
A UK hospital has issued a rare black alert due to “exceptional demand” on its wards. Morriston Hospital in Swansea issued the warning – declaring a ‘Business Continuity Incident’ and said it is seeing high numbers of patients, including many with ‘DIY-related injuries’. People are being urged to seek medical aid elsewhere, if possible, and collect loved ones who have been discharged as soon as possible, so that beds can be freed-up for those in need.
‘Asking for the public’s help’: ER capacity stretched at Community Regional Medical Center in Fresno
March 12, 2024
FRESNO, Calif. (KSEE/KGPE) – Fresno’s Community Regional Medical Center issued a warning on Tuesday asking those who need medical attention not to arrive at the hospital’s emergency room unless it is necessary. As part of the warning, Community Regional Medical Center announced that it is experiencing extremely high numbers of patients – stretching the capacity of its emergency department. In a further statement to YourCentralValley.com, Dr. Jeff Thomas with Community Regional Medical Center said that there is not one cause behind the high patient volumes. “We are seeing patients at Community Regional Medical Center who have more severe symptoms and require more complex care, resulting in higher patient volumes and limiting our ability to discharge patients in our normal timeframes.”
CT residents report days wait, adverse outcome, staff burnout due to emergency room overcrowding
February 27, 2024
Patients are waiting days for treatment in emergency rooms across the state in an overcrowding crisis that health care professionals say is only growing worse. But the issue is there is no data to prove it. On Monday, Connecticut lawmakers heard testimony on a bill that would require hospitals to report emergency department data, including bed capacity, patient counts and wait times. The proposal is part of an effort to address a statewide crisis that contributes to staff burnout, delayed diagnoses and adverse health outcomes for patients, according to clinicians. One woman said she spent 52 hours in the hallway of Yale New Haven Hospital’s emergency department before doctors diagnosed her with meningitis in her brain and spine and Bell’s palsy.
East San Jose trauma center closure could break county hospital system
March 30, 2024
The closure of East San Jose’s only trauma center puts the entire Santa Clara County public hospital system in jeopardy and threatens the survival of east side residents suffering a heart attack, stroke or other catastrophic medical event. That was the unequivocal warning from county doctors at an emergency hearing on Wednesday. The hearing before the county Emergency Medical Services Agency comes more than a month after Regional Medical Center — owned by the company HCA Healthcare — announced plans to close its trauma, stroke and heart attack services by Aug. 12, citing financial strain.
Emergency Room Closure In Wahiawa Magnifies A Capacity Crunch
March 25, 2024
As emergency rooms filled with patients, Honolulu’s head of emergency services was tasked with coordinating ambulance arrivals. Consistent with a recent trend nationwide, Honolulu’s emergency rooms are struggling with patient capacity.
Rural cities press for more state funding for emergency medical services
April 3, 2024
Sen. Grant Hauschild, DFL-Hermantown, represents an area that’s familiar with the issue and faces some unique challenges in supporting EMS delivery. Hauschild is authoring a bill in the Senate that proposes $120 million for EMS support. The seven ambulance services in Otter Tail County, for example, experienced an estimated $1.5 million loss last year, according to a letter to Hauschild from the chair of the Board of Commissioners. The county urged Hauchild to advocate for $120 million, and also for a second year of funds for 2025. Rep. Dave Lislegard, DFL-Aurora, one of the authors of the House version of the bill, said it’s only a “bandaid to stop the bleeding.”
ER Waits For Hospital Beds Are Deadly. Many Hospitals Aren’t Fixing The Problem
March 13, 2024
The problem of boarding—waiting in the emergency room after being admitted to the hospital—is a deadly, escalating crisis. Unfortunately, real solutions are still a long way off.
If you or a loved one has been hospitalized through an ER recently, you might have spent eight to 12 hours before going to your inpatient bed. While your initial diagnosis and treatment was correctly made by ER doctors and nurses, you could probably tell hours later that they weren’t focused on you anymore because they were handling the new, sicker patients. Ill, injured, or both, it was probably miserable lying for hours on an ER gurney in a hallway. Boarding is nothing new. This’ll surprise you. For years, hospitals have known boarding increases risks of dying in the hospital. Yet many hospitals aren’t taking steps to fix the problem. Some states have enacted laws to stop the practice. There’s even a new quality boarding metric in development. But it could be years before any real change occurs.
Chinese Hospitals Overloaded in Echoes of COVID as Pneumonia Rampages
November 27, 2023
China is grappling with an alarming surge in respiratory illness, particularly among children, in many parts of the country, according to reports in local media, state news outlets and most recently the World Health Organization. The ailments, which the global health agency believes is due in part to an upsurge of mycoplasma pneumonia, is not reported to have caused death or widespread severe illness at this time. However, the outbreak is nonetheless placing immense pressure on China’s healthcare system due to existing limitations. A concerning capacity shortfall in China’s hospitals, among other vulnerabilities, was first raised at the height of the country’s fight against widespread COVID-19 infections this year, after Beijing dropped all anti-virus controls in December—virtually overnight. The Tianjin Children’s Hospital, located in a major port city near Beijing, reported on November 18 a single-day record of 13,171 young patients across its outpatient and emergency departments, according to a local newspaper. Long queues, both inside and outside hospitals, illustrated the the overwhelming demand for medical attention. Videos reportedly showing winding lines at Tianjin Children’s Hospital as well as Shenyang Children’s Hospital, in northeastern Liaoning province, circulated on social media, reflecting the severity of the situation.
Emergency rooms at major hospitals in South Korea feel heat as medical professors cut working hours
January 4, 2024
SEOUL: Some emergency departments at major hospitals turned away patients or reduced procedures Monday as medical professors began cutting their working hours to cope with growing fatigue caused by a protracted walkout by junior doctors. The professors, who are senior doctors at major hospitals, had said cutting back their working hours is inevitable because they must focus on treating seriously ill and emergency patients while scaling back surgeries and services for outpatients, Yonhap News Agency reported on Monday.
According to the state-run National Emergency Medical Centre, the emergency department at Asan Medical Centre, one of five major general hospitals in Seoul, notified that it is unable to treat stroke patients. Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital, another major hospital in Seoul, announced that its emergency room is unable to accommodate non-critical patients.
About 12,000 trainee doctors have been on strike in the form of mass resignations since Feb. 20, with medical professors having submitted resignations in support of the walkout.
Thailand’s Government Explores Emergency Health Insurance Options for Tourists
No date
Recent incidents involving foreign tourists and their lack of access to emergency medical treatment have raised concerns about the safety and well-being of visitors. In response to these incidents, Thailand’s Tourism and Sports Ministry and the National Institute for Emergency Medicine are exploring the possibility of expanding the Universal Health Insurance Coverage for Emergency Patients (UCEP) initiative to include foreign tourists.
Opinion: How can the world solve its shortage of health workers?
December 7, 2023
Though it doesn’t get much press, there’s a looming crisis: The world does not have enough health care workers, and demand for them is growing faster than supply. The World Health Organization (WHO) projects a gap of 10 million health workers by 2030. Although no country is exempt from this growing problem, 89% of the shortage is concentrated in low- and middle-income countries. Many countries still struggle to meet the international minimum target set by WHO of 44.5 health workers for every 10,000 people.
This problem is compounded by health workers leaving their home countries to pursue opportunities elsewhere.
How Will Germany Respond to the Global Nursing Shortage?
November 20, 2023
BERLIN — The shortage of nurses around the world is extremely challenging in many ways for healthcare systems. Nurses at the World Health Summit this year discussed how to address this issue as quickly as possible. Carla Eysel, chief human resources and nursing officer at the Charité University Hospital in Berlin, and Helene Maucher, manager of corporate strategy for nursing at German private hospital group Sana Kliniken, illustrated the difficult situation in the field of nursing in Germany while offering potential solutions. The country faces a shortage of more than 35,000 nurses required to maintain the current standard in medical care. Fewer people are starting with basic nursing training, and only 70% of them graduate. Germany is far from achieving the proposed academization of the nursing profession. According to figures from the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB), the rate of prospective nurses with a university-based education was less than 2% in 2021. Moreover, academic qualifications are more common in management roles rather than in clinical positions.
Let me try to explain what I/we are thinking GVB means as to a coming wave and 2nd Smartest Guy in the world does a tremendous job with this topic and I build upon, see below (support 2nd).
What is my thesis? I wrote here with GVB and 2nd Smartest and try to expand and explain and flesh it out for you as best I see it. I must say we all stand on Geert’s shoulders and I remain proud that we are friends, that he remains principled even as the Freedom Fighter doctors and scientists ‘locked’ him out. Imagine the smartest of the group was sidelined because they envy his technical competence, do not understand it, and are completely inept and corrupted, focused on making money in COVID and not listening to GVB’s SAGE insight…
Bring this to America, we need police in America to do same to any islamist, any jihadist, any illegal dog beast rapist, any one who rapes a woman, girl, child, even priests of ANY religion; KILL them
in the front of the ship? Is that right? Why? Now we hear they are breached, damaged? Content leaking into the Baltimore water? What? Can it be an accident? MICHAEL SUEDE thinks so, see explanation
Bill Gates: Math = ‘White Supremacy’Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is pumping huge sums of money into a new “perverse” curriculum that teaches children that math is a form of “white supremacy.”READ MORE
Due to the sanctions, Russia cannot access spare parts from Western engineering companies that have provided refinery equipment in the past, leaving Russian refiners struggling to repair damaged units, multiple industry sources in Russia have told Reuters.
Western firms including America’s UOP and Swiss ABB have supplied parts and equipment to major Russian refineries in the past. After the invasion of Ukraine, they no longer fulfill new orders from Russia, leaving local engineers scrambling to find spare parts and equipment.
One example of such difficulty is Lukoil’s Norsi refinery in Nizhny Novgorod on the Volga River. A turbine malfunctioned there in early January and Russian engineers have struggled to have the equipment replaced since then, according to Reuters sources.
This has left the refinery with a reduced capacity to produce gasoline.
The malfunction at the refinery compounded last month after a fire broke out at the facility following a drone attack.
Since all major Russian refineries use at least some part of Western technology, they could struggle to repair equipment and units that broke down or have been damaged by Ukrainian drone attacks, which have intensified in recent weeks and have taken an estimated 14% of Russia’s refining capacity offline.
Russia claims it can repair all damaged units within two months.
On Wednesday, Russia’s Energy Minister Nikolai Shulginov said that all damaged refineries in the country would be restarted by the beginning of June.
“Repairs are underway at the refineries. We plan to re-launch a number of refineries after repairs in April-May, possibly before the beginning of June,” Russian news agency Interfax quoted Shulginov as saying.
“All facilities that were damaged will be re-commissioned,” the minister added.
END
Crude, Food Prices Jump As Looming Israel-Iran Conflict Spark 1970s Oil Shock Fears
FRIDAY, APR 05, 2024 – 01:25 PM
Larry MacDonald of The Bear Traps Report penned a very informative note last month that outlined, “2023-2024 look a lot like 1973-1974.” He said, “We’re one event away from a 1970s-style stagflation explosion…” History books remind us that the 1973 oil embargo shook the global energy market.
We were reminded of MacDonald’s note because the global benchmark Brent is currently being subjected to a major repricing event of geopolitical risk as Israel makes preparations for a potential retaliation by Tehran after a precision strike in Syria earlier this week killed top Iranian commanders.
“The market now knows that some kind of retaliation from Iran will likely come, but it doesn’t know when and where and what, and that creates a great discomfort and nervousness,” Bjarne Schieldrop, chief commodities analyst at SEB AB, told Bloomberg.
On Thursday, UBS desk trader Alexander Gray outlined several bullish factors into Brent’s surge that has the benchmark around $91/bbl handle:
Rally / buying right into the 14:30 New York energy close– suggests heavy index fund prepositioning ahead of GSCI roll onset tomorrow where energy will be weighted in the index
Geopolitics– reports of potential attacks within Iran and also potential retaliation toward Israel following Monday’s airstrikes.
Bullish consensus and flow– a number of Street strategists have been out today talking about upside risk toward the $95-100 range in crude. Meanwhile, flows here have skewed toward upside buying in the options space
Technicals– Front-month WTI crude oil just completed a ‘golden cross’ technical formation with the 50- and 200-day moving average crossover. The front month is aimed at $88.58 above; $91.08 is key as the 76.4% Fibonacci retracement level in Brent… which is precisely where Brent is trading at this moment..
Last week, JPMorgan Chase forecasted that crude oil would climb above $100 by September. And this is ominous, as, like MacDonald’s note, we’re just one shock away from stagflation. That shock, what the consensus now believes is possible, is a direct Israel-Iran conflict. And that could propel Brent well above the $100 mark.
“If we get a direct conflict between Israel and Iran, that’s something that will likely restrict the supply of oil coming from the Middle East,” Matt Maley, an analyst at Miller Tabak + Co., told Bloomberg.
And it’s not just Brent and WTI ripping higher on repricing geopolitical risks. In early March, we outlined that it was only a matter of time before Brent was repriced for mounting geopolitical risks (read here).
Furthermore, the inflation news worsens as the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization’s global food index jumped 1.13% in March, the highest monthly gain since July 2023.
Energy inflation will feed into food production costs and likely increase prices.
Meanwhile, a broadening and worsening conflict in the Middle East – something that appears imminent – will push crude markets higher – and America’s enemies understand weaponizing the energy market is a powerful tool to spark the next financial shock.
David Asher, a senior fellow at Hudson Institute and former investigator into Covid origins at the State Department, recently penned a note titled “Navigating the New World Disorder: Economic Faultlines, Fissures, Fractures, and Failures.”
Asher outlined that if broadening conflict in the Middle East materializes, then there is the very risk that the world’s largest processing facility and the largest crude oil stabilization plant in the world, owned by Saudi Aramco – called the Abqaiq facility – could be subjected to missile and drone attacks from Iran-backed Houthis and or other Iranian proxies.
Could Tehran use oil as an economic weapon against the West? The odds are certainly increasing.
Consider the economic impacts of previous oil shocks…
To sum up, the Middle East conflict has undoubtedly entered a new dimension this week as a direct Israel-Iran conflict looms that could send Brent crude prices into triple-digit territory, which would help to re-accelerate inflation and unleash further pain for consumers across the West – similar to the 1970s.
Let’s hope this doesn’t happen. If it does, it will wreck the Biden administration’s re-election odds.
8. EMERGING MARKETS//AUSTRALIA NEW ZEALAND ISSUES//
CANADA
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: 1.0833 DOWN .0004
USA/ YEN 151.35 UP .056 NOW TARGETS INTEREST RATE AT 1.00% AS IT WILL BUY UNLIMITED BONDS TO GETS TO THAT LEVEL…//YEN STILL FALLS//
GBP/USA 1.2632 DOWN .0007
USA/CAN DOLLAR: 1.3558 UP .0014 (CDN DOLLAR DOWN 14 BASIS PTS)
Last night Shanghai COMPOSITE CLOSED DOWN 5.66 PTS OR .18%
Hang Seng CLOSED DOWN 1.18 PTS OR .01%
AUSTRALIA CLOSED DOWN 0.57%
// EUROPEAN BOURSE: ALL RED
Trading from Europe and ASIA
I) EUROPEAN BOURSES: ALL RED
2/ CHINESE BOURSES / :Hang SENG CLOSED DOWN 1.18 PTS OR .01%
/SHANGHAI CLOSED DOWN 5.66 PTS OR .18%
AUSTRALIA BOURSE CLOSED DOWN 0.57%
(Nikkei (Japan) CLOSED DOWN 781.06 PTS OR 1.96% PTS OR 0.81%
INDIA’S SENSEX IN THE RED
Gold very early morning trading: 2294.10
silver:$26.76
USA dollar index early FRIDAY morning: 104.03 UP 14 BASIS POINTS FROM THURSDAY’s CLOSE.
The USA/Yuan, CNY: closed ON SHORE CLOSED UP AT 7.2337
THE USA/YUAN OFFSHORE: (YUAN CLOSED (DOWN)…. (7.2517)
TURKISH LIRA: 31.95 EXTREMELY DANGEROUS LEVEL/DEATH WATCH/HYPERINFLATION TO BEGIN.//ON DEATH WATCH
the 10 yr Japanese bond yield at +0.772…
Your closing 10 yr US bond yield UP 5 in basis points from THURSDAY at 4.361% //trading well ABOVE the resistance level of 2.27-2.32%) very problematic
USA 30 yr bond yield 4.506 UP 4 in basis points /12.00 PM
USA 2 YR BOND YIELD: 4.694 UP 5 BASIS PTS.
GOLD AT 11;30 AM 2318.50
SILVER AT 11;30: 27.27
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 DOWN 64.73 PTS OR 0.81%
German Dax : CLOSED DOWN 228.09 PTS OR 1.24%
Paris CAC CLOSED DOWN 90.24 PTS OR 1.11%
Spain IBEX CLOSED DOWN 174.90 PTS OR 1.58%
Italian MIB: CLOSED DOWN 443.70 PTS OR 1..29%
WTI Oil price 86.78 12: EST/
Brent Oil: 91.07 12:00 EST
USA /RUSSIAN ROUBLE /// AT: 92.47 ROUBLE DOWN 0 AND 23/100
GERMAN 10 YR BOND YIELD; +2.3900 UP 4 BASIS PTS
UK 10 YR YIELD: 4.0920 UP 5 BASIS POINTS
CLOSING NUMBERS: 4 PM
Euro vs USA 1.0834 DOWN.0003 OR 3 BASIS POINTS
British Pound: 1.2635 DOWN .0004 or 4 basis pts
BRITISH 10 YR GILT BOND YIELD: 4.100 UP 3 BASIS PTS//
JAPAN 10 YR YIELD: .772
USA dollar vs Japanese Yen: 151.60 UP 0.305//YEN DOWN 30 BASIS PTS//
USA dollar vs Canadian dollar: 1.3591 UP .0048 CDN dollar UP 48 basis pts)
West Texas intermediate oil: 86.75
Brent OIL: 90.93
USA 10 yr bond yield UP 9 BASIS pts to 4.394%
USA 30 yr bond yield UP 7 BASIS PTS to 4.543%
USA 2 YR BOND: UP 10 PTS AT 4.740%
USA dollar index: 104.09 UP 20 BASIS POINTS
USA DOLLAR VS TURKISH LIRA: 32.01 (GETTING QUITE CLOSE TO BLOWING UP/
USA DOLLAR VS RUSSIA//// ROUBLE: 92.50 DOWN 0 AND 26/100 roubles
GOLD 2320.85 3:30 PM
SILVER: 27.33 3:30 PM
DOW JONES INDUSTRIAL AVERAGE: UP 307.29 PTS OR 0.80%
NASDAQ UP 229.65 PTS OR 1.28%
VOLATILITY INDEX: 16.26 UP 0.09 PTS OR 0.55%
GLD: $215.14 UP 3,62 OR 1,71%
SLV/ $25.03 UP .54 OR 2.20%
end
USA AFFAIRS
TODAY’S TRADING IN GRAPH FORM
Oil & Gold Soar On Week, But ‘Good Data’ Wrecks Rate-Cut Hopes, Slamming Stocks & Bonds
FRIDAY, APR 05, 2024 – 04:00 PM
It was a ‘good’ week for macro data…
Source: Bloomberg
…but ‘soft’ survey data remains mired in depression as the ‘aggregate’ hard data holds strong…
Source: Bloomberg
Of course, good news is bad news for the doves and rate-cut expectations for 2024 are down (particularly after today’s big payrolls headline beat) well below three cuts expected by the ‘median’ Fed dot…
Source: Bloomberg
…and the odds of a cut in June have tumbled back to a coin-toss…
Source: Bloomberg
And to rub salt in the wounds of the doves, inflation expectations are back on the rise bigly…
Source: Bloomberg
Stocks initially down-pumped on the hjobs data (good is bad) then went into their usual BTFD insanity, ramping Nasdaq to unchanged vs Wenesday’s close (erasing yesterday’s losses). However, within minutes of that FedSpeak spoiled the party again:
1310ET *FED’S BOWMAN: INFLATION PROGRESS HAS STALLED, WON’T BE COMFORTABLE CUTTING UNTIL DISINFLATION RETURNS
And stocks started back lower…
On the week, all the majors were red with Small Caps and The Dow the worst performers. This was the S&P 500’s worst week since the first week of the year…
MAG7 stocks managed to eke out very modest gains as a basket on the week…
Source: Bloomberg
Energy stocks soared this week (to a record high) – the only sector to end green – while Healthcare and Real Estate lagged…
Source: Bloomberg
VIX saw its biggest weekly surge since August 2023…
Source: Bloomberg
Bonds were also ugly on the week, led by the long-end…
Source: Bloomberg
The 2Y Yield pushed up to 2024 YTD highs and closed at its highest yield since November…
Source: Bloomberg
The Dollar ended a choppy week modestly lower after spiking initially today into the green…
Source: Bloomberg
Interestingly, since The BoJ unleashed chaos in JPY-land, USDJPY has gone too sleep. @Bespoke notes that this is the smallest 13-day range for USDJPY since 1980…
Source: Bloomberg
Gold had another huge week, rallying to a new record high above $2330 (spot). Gold is up 9 of the last 10 days and 6 of the last 7 weeks…
Source: Bloomberg
Gold is screaming that something bad is coming (inferring negative real yields – something we have only seen deep in crises)…
Source: Bloomberg
Oil prices also surged, with Brent topping $90 and WTI topping $87.50 this week, as gepolitical tensions turned the rhetoric up to ’11’…
Source: Bloomberg
And strength in oil meant gasoline and pump prices rose too…
Source: Bloomberg
Bitcoin was down on the week, but found support at $65,000 and bounced back amid a re-ignition of net ETF inflows…
Source: Bloomberg
Ethereum underperformed on the week, breaking down to its weakest against bitcoin since May 2021…
Source: Bloomberg
Finally, with all the macro and geopolitical headlines, everyone seems to have forgotten about the whole premise for this rally was AI and wunderstock NVDA which is down 11% from its record highs one-month ago…
Source: Bloomberg
History rhymes…
END
MORNING TRADING/jobs report/another phony
March Jobs Come In Red-Hot At 303K, Above Highest Estimate, As Unemployment Rate Drops
FRIDAY, APR 05, 2024 – 08:47 AM
As we wrote in our preview, while big data hinted at a weaker than expected March jobs print, the relentless influx of immigrants would lead to a hotter than expected payrolls number.
Sure enough, the illegals won again when moments ago the BLS reported that in March, the US added a whopping 303K jobs, tied for the highest since Jan 2023!
The number was not only hotter than last month’s (downward, of course) revised number of 270K (was 275K) but was above the highest Wall Street estimate of 290K (from Jobdig, Inc) and as shown below this was the latest multiple-sigma beat to expectations, this month coming in at 4x.
The March number, which will be revised substantially lower next month, follows two downward revisions, follows a 5,000 downward revision to the February number from +275,000 to +270,000, and a 27,000 upward revision to January from +229,000 to +256,000.
What is perhaps more notable is that after several months of declines in the Household survey, in March the number of people actually employed finally rebounded rising by 498K, to 161.466 million from 160.968 million. Still, as shown below, the data series has a lot of catching up to do.
Turning our attention to the unemployment rate, it unexpectedly dipped again, dropping to 3.8%, from 3.9%, in line with estimates, as the number of unemployed workers dipped modestly from 6.458 million to 6.429 million while the number of employed workers rose by almost half a million workers; the unemployment rate for Blacks (6.4 percent) increased in March to the highest level in almost two years, while the rates for Asians (2.5 percent) and Hispanics (4.5 percent) decreased. The jobless rates for adult men (3.3 percent), adult women (3.6 percent), teenagers (12.6 percent), and Whites (3.4 percent) showed little or no change over the month.
In contrast, the participation rate rose from 62.5% to 62.7%, above the 62.6% expected, as the overall civilian labor force increased slightly less than the number of employed people.
The silver lining to today’s jobs report is that despite the hot print, the average hourly earnings came in as expected, rising 0.3% MoM, up from last month’s upward revised 0.2% sequential increase (revised from 0.1%), On an annual basis, the hourly earnings rose 4.1%, as expected, and down from 4.3%. This was the lowest print in almost three years: the last time wages rose by this much was the summer of 2021.
Taking a closer look at wages, In March, average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls increased by 12 cents, or 0.3 percent, to $34.69. Over the past 12 months, average hourly earnings have increased by 4.1 percent. In March, average hourly earnings of private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees edged up by 7 cents, or 0.2 percent, to $29.79.
One reason why average hourly earnings did not increase is that in March, the average workweek for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls edged up by 0.1 hour to 34.4 hours. In manufacturing, the average workweek was unchanged at 40.0 hours, and overtime edged down by 0.1 hour to 2.9 hours in March. The average workweek for production and nonsupervisory employees on private nonfarm payrolls also edged up by 0.1 hour to 33.9 hours.
* * *
According to the BLS, the number of people not in the labor force who want a job came in little changed at 5.4 million.
“These individuals were not counted as unemployed because they were not actively looking for work during the 4 weeks preceding the survey or were unavailable to take a job.”
Also according to the report, the number of people employed part time for economic reasons, at 4.3 million. These individuals, who would have preferred full-time employment, were working part time because their hours had been reduced or they were unable to find full-time jobs.
Finally, the BLS reports that among those not in the labor force who wanted a job, the number of people marginally attached to the labor force, at 1.6 million, was little changed in March. These individuals wanted and were available for work and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months but had not looked for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. The number of discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached who believed that no jobs were available for them, was little changed at 337,000 in March.
* * *
Taking a closer look at the composition of jobs by industry we find the following:
Health care added 72,000 jobs in March, above the average monthly gain of 60,000 over the prior 12 months. In March, job growth continued in ambulatory health care services (+28,000), hospitals (+27,000), and nursing and residential care facilities (+18,000).
In March, employment in government increased by 71,000, higher than the average monthly gain of 54,000 over the prior 12 months. Over the month, employment increased in local government (+49,000) and federal government (+9,000).
Construction added 39,000 jobs in March, about double the average monthly gain of 19,000 over the prior 12 months. Over the month, employment increased in nonresidential specialty trade contractors (+16,000).
Employment in leisure and hospitality trended up in March (+49,000) and has returned to its pre-pandemic February 2020 level. Over the prior 12 months, job growth in the industry had averaged 37,000 per month.
Employment in the other services industry continued its upward trend in March (+16,000). The industry had added an average of 8,000 jobs per month over the prior 12 months. Employment in other services remains below its February 2020 level by 40,000, or 0.7 percent.
Employment in social assistance continued to trend up in March (+9,000), below the average monthly gain of 22,000 over the prior 12 months.
In March, employment was little changed in retail trade (+18,000). A job gain in general merchandise retailers (+20,000) was partially offset by job losses in building material and garden equipment and supplies dealers (-10,000) and in automotive parts, accessories, and tire retailers (-3,000).
Employment showed little or no change over the month in other major industries, including mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction; manufacturing; wholesale trade; transportation and warehousing; information; financial activities; and professional and business services.
A visual breakdown shows that the bulk of jobs was in Education/Health and Government jobs, which accounted for more than half of all March jobs.
And a closer look at the best performing job category under Biden: government. In March, this added 71K, the second most since the start of 2023.
In sum: health care added 72,000 jobs; government roles increased by 71,000; other notable gains were construction, adding 39,000, and leisure and hospitality, adding 49,000.
Finally, for those wondering if the jobs were all part-time, the answer is a resounding yes: in March, full-time jobs dropped by 6,000 as Part-time jobs soared by 691,000.
What was Wall Street’s reaction? Here are some hot takes, starting with Bloomberg’s Enda Curran who writes that since it’s an election year, these numbers will be trumpeted by the White House as evidence of their stewardship. The downside however is that they lean against calls for a rate cut, “something of a double-edged political sword.”
Echoing this, Torsten Slok, Apollo’s resident in house permabear who will never relax until you have sold all your assets to, well, Apollo writes that the number confirms the Fed will not cut rates this year:
“The source of this strength is easy financial conditions. The stock market is up +$10trn over the past five months, which is a significant wealth gain for household balance sheets. Credit spreads are tighter for IG, HY, and loans. Big rebound in IG issuance and HY issuance in January, February, and March. IPO activity is coming back and M&A activity is coming back. These factors will all support consumer spending, capex spending, and hiring over the coming quarters… We are sticking to our view that the Fed will not cut interest rates this year.”
Here is Seema Shah, chief global strategist, Principal Asset Management:
“At first sight, the jobs report leans against three cuts. Yet the average hourly earnings figures are in line with expectations and, as Powell has made quite clear in recent speeches, a strong labor market is not a concern if price pressures are moderating… Next week’s CPI report is the one that is pivotal for rate expectations. But today’s report should reassure markets that, if the Fed does not cut in June, it’s because the economy is still strong and earnings should remain in an upswing.”
Priya Misra, portfolio manager at JP Morgan Investment Management, says:
“If service inflation shows signs of picking up in the CPI and PCE reports later this month, Fed ‘patience’ might run thin. The market reaction makes sense to me – higher rates and weaker risk sentiment. I think risk assets are paying attention to rates now. Risk assets ignored the rates move until this week since Jan and Feb could be glossed over as noise. But if the economy is staying too hot, the market should question Fed cuts and the specter of Fed hikes comes back to the market.”
Ed Al-Hussainy, rates strategist at Columbia Threadneedle Investment, says:
“The key question is whether the combination of higher demand growth, momentum in employment, and the easing of financial conditions since last October start to show up in inflation. We’ll get another look at that in CPI/PPI data next week.”
Ali Jaffery, an economist at CIBC Capital Markets, sees immigration playing a role in today’s numbers:
“This has raised the sustainable level of job gains from 100K before the pandemic to about 180K. Today’s data is likely more evidence of that trend and supports the Fed’s view that the increase in labor supply is driving growth in the job market and the economy more broadly. Overall, the March employment report leans against an earlier cut by the Fed.”
Bryce Doty of Sit Investment Associates:
“Incredibly strong jobs data puts the bond market in panic mode over Fed cuts being delayed.”
But…
“I keep scratching my head wondering why so many people are deciding to get jobs now when millions of job openings have been available for at least a couple of years. It’s not as though the economy suddenly produced these jobs. So people joining the workforce now must need the jobs. As a result, I’m cautious about how strong the jobs data really is for the economy. We expect a quarter point cut in the third quarter and a half point cut in the fourth quarter.”
We close again with Bloomberg’s Enda Curran who writes that “at face value, these job numbers hardly lend themselves to a near-term rate cut.“
Bottom line: strong report, until you look under the surface. For now, however, it will serve the White House to pitch Bidenomics as some miraculous economic panacea, while the market will try to soothe itself that the number was good, but not hot enough to prevent Powell from cutting rates in June.
end
the real story!!
Behind Today’s Stellar Jobs Print: It Was Literally ALL Part-Time Jobs (And Illegals)
BY TYLER DURDEN
FRIDAY, APR 05, 2024 – 12:05 PM
First things first: unlike the last two months when both the January and February jobs prints were beyond ridiculously manipulated and goalseeked to pass a terrible number as a strong one, the March print was not a complete disaster.
To be sure, superficially the March report was another artificially goalseeked blowout that guaranteed it would have zero credibility: with 303K payrolls added which was a 4 sigma beat to the median estimate of 214K and above the highest Wall Street forecast. There is just one problem: the number of multiple-sigma beats in recent months has been so high, the entire concept of “beats” has become laughable.
Consider this: January was a 5-sigma beat to expectations; February was a 3-sigma beat and March, we just learned, beat the median estimate by 4-sigma. Not only that, but in every of the last 3 months, the actual payrolls number (at least before it was revised lower the next month), has come in higher than the highest Wall Street estimate! We kinda feel bad for Biden trying so hard to manipulate the economy and population into liking Bidenomics and approving of his disastrous economic policies. Maybe he should just report one month that jobs rose by 10,000,000 and sit back and wait for his approval rating to hit 100… or something.
The silver lining, is that unlike previous months when the Household Survey reported sharp drops in the number of actually employed workers, in March, employment finally rose by 498K to 161.466 million, the first monthly increase in the past 4 months.
Still, despite the modest rebound in employment, it still lags payrolls by almost 9 million jobs since the covid trough.
However, that’s where the mitigating factors end, because while there was some improvement in the quantitative aspect of the March report, when it comes to the qualitative aspect, it was another disaster for one simple reason: all the job gains were part time jobs!
Here is exhibit A: in March, the number of part-time jobs soared by 691K to 28.632 million, up from 27.941 million while full-time jobs dropped by 6,000, to 132.940 million from 132.946 million.
This number only gets scarier when we extend the period to the past year: as shown in the next chart, since March 2023, the number of full-time workers has collapsed by 1.347 million while the number of part-time workers exploded by 1.888 million!
There’s more.
Regular readers are aware that all the job gains since 2018 have gone to immigrants, mostly illegal immigrants, something we spent last month’s jobs post discussing in detail.
So what happened in March? It will come as no surprise that there was more of the same, and after the collapse in native-born workers in the last three months when nearly 2.5 million native-born workers lost their jobs, March saw some pick up, and 929K native-born workers were added. Meanwhile, after last month’s record increase in foreign-born workers, in March illegal immigrants added another 112K jobs, pushing the total number of foreign-born workers to a new record high of 31.114 million.
Said otherwise, not only has all job creation in the past 6 years has been exclusively for foreign-born workers…
… but there has been zero job-creation for native born workers since July 2018!
This, as we have been saying for months now, is a huge issue – especially at a time of an illegal alien flood at the southwest border…
… and is about to become a huge political scandal, because once the inevitable recession finally hits, there will be millions of furious unemployed Americans demanding a more accurate explanation for what happened – i.e., the illegal immigration floodgates that were opened by the Biden admin.
To this point, we are delighted to observe that after everyone had been ignoring what we have been saying for months, namely that all job growth has gone to illegals…
How is this not the biggest political talking point right now: since October 2019, native-born US workers have lost 1.4 million jobs; over the same period foreign-born workers have gained 3 million jobs.
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1.5M Views
… overnight none other than Goldman admitted that not only has all job growth in recent years gone to illegal immigrants, but that America is now being invaded. Below we excerpt from the note from Goldman economist Elsie Peng, who amusingly calls illegal aliens “unauthorized immigrants” in her note (available to pro subs in the usual place):
Net US immigration surged in 2023. Recent reports from the Congressional Budget Office and border encounter data from the Office of Homeland Security suggest that net US immigration was running above the estimate implied by the change in the foreign-born population in the household survey over the last couple of years. We estimate that net US immigration surged to roughly 2.5 million in 2023, the highest level in the last two decades (Exhibit 1). In today’s note, we look at where recent immigrants are coming from, what parts of the US they are heading to, and how they compare to the rest of the US labor force.
Unauthorized immigrants from South America, Central America, and Mexico have accounted for most of the recent surge in immigration. Using immigration court case data, we estimate that the number of unauthorized immigrants from these three regions likely tripled in 2023 from its pre-pandemic average (left side of Exhibit 2). We note that these estimates of unauthorized immigration inflow carry some degree of uncertainty because some immigration court cases also reflect visa overstays. In contrast, the overall level and origin composition of authorized immigrants is similar to pre-pandemic trends (right side of Exhibit 2).
Where are they going? According to Goldman, the most popular destination states for new immigrants are Florida, California, Texas, and New York, which together have received over 50% of recent immigrants.
And the punchline, or how the establishment is trying to spin the flood of illegals into a positive feature for the US economy: apparently all these illegals are little gifts from god, keeping wages low and taking jobs that nobody else would ever want.
Data from the 2023 Current Population Survey suggest that recent adult immigrants are more likely to be young or prime age (90%) than the native-born adult population (62%) or adult immigrants who arrived earlier (64%). Recent immigrants have a higher labor force participation rate than the native-born population but a lower rate than immigrants who have been in the US for longer, have a higher unemployment rate than either group, are more likely to work in construction and food services and accommodations, and earn significantly lower wages on average.
POWELL: Because, you know, immigrants come in, and they tend to work at a rate that is at or above that for non-immigrants. Immigrants who come to the country tend to be in the workforce at a slightly higher level than native Americans do. But that’s largely because of the age difference. They tend to skew younger.
PELLEY: Why is immigration so important to the economy?
POWELL: Well, first of all, immigration policy is not the Fed’s job. The immigration policy of the United States is really important and really much under discussion right now, and that’s none of our business. We don’t set immigration policy. We don’t comment on it.
I will say, over time, though, the U.S. economy has benefited from immigration. And, frankly, just in the last, year a big part of the story of the labor market coming back into better balance is immigration returning to levels that were more typical of the pre-pandemic era.
PELLEY: The country needed the workers.
POWELL: It did. And so, that’s what’s been happening.
But that’s not all: just in case praising illegal immigration wasn’t enough to keeping wage growth low (completely ignoring that all these millions in illegals will require trillions in additional welfare spending, and are the primary beneficiaries of the latest explosion in US debt), there has been a second angle this time courtesy of the CBO which recently hilarious “calculated” that illegal immigrants will boost US GDP by $7 trillion in the next decade.
This is how CBO Director Phill Swagel summarized it: “as a result of those changes in the labor force, we estimate that from 2023 to 2034, GDP will be greater by about $7 trillion and revenue will be greater by about $1 trillion than they would have been otherwise.”
And there you have it: yes, the US hasn’t added any jobs to native-born Americans in six years, as instead all jobs have gone to immigrants, mostly the illegal variety, but that’s good news you see, because if it wasn’t for these lovely creatures flooding into the US, wages would be higher (that’s a bad thing according to the Fed), and the US economy would not grow by $9 trillion. Just please ignore that that $9 trillion in “growth” will come only thanks to $20 trillion in debt, almost all of it soaked up by these same illegals, and of course, a handful of corrupt, embezzling politicians.
And so the scene has been set: if and when Trump or Republicans finally get their act together and halt the flood of illegals, then and only then, will the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Bureau of Economic Analysis admit just how ugly the US economy, the labor market and inflation truly are… and then they will blame Trump for pushing the US into a stagflationary recession because he halted the record inflow of immigrants without which the US is – drumroll – doomed.
AFTERNOON TRADING/
II USA DATA
TUCKER CARLSON…
END
III USA ECONOMIC COMMENTARIES
IIIB USA COMMENTARIES RE ISRAEL/HAMAS WAR/ and PERVASIVE ANTISEMITISM/WOKISM…
end
iiiC USA COVID //VACCINE ISSUES
END
FREIGHT ISSUES/USA
END
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
END
SWAMP STORIES
New York Judge ‘Mistakenly’ Describes Trump Jan. 6 Case As “Federal Insurrection Matter”
On April 3, New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan denied a defense motion to adjourn the upcoming trial scheduled for April 15, and in his order, referred to former President Donald Trump’s case before the Supreme Court as the “Federal Insurrection Matter.”
“Defendant fully briefed the issue of presidential immunity in his motion to dismiss the matter of United States v. Trump, US Dist Ct, DDC 23 CR 25, (TSC) (hereinafter “Federal Insurrection Matter”) on October 5, 2023,” Justice Merchan wrote.
Justice Merchan is presiding over one of four criminal cases against President Trump. This one is a state case, where Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has charged President Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records, alleging a scheme to influence the 2016 elections.
The other case in question charges President Trump with four counts of obstruction and conspiracy for his acts on Jan. 6, 2021, but it does not allege insurrection in the indictment.
Special counsel Jack Smith is prosecuting the case in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, and trial proceedings have been stayed as President Trump pursues an appeal on grounds of presidential immunity.
Counsel for President Trump in the Manhattan case brought the federal case up recently in requesting that the trial be delayed, arguing that the presidential immunity they raised in state court will soon be under review by the U.S. Supreme Court.
On April 25, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on “whether and if so to what extent does a former President enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office.”
The presidential immunity defense is one President Trump has raised in several of his cases, and attorneys in other cases have requested additional hearings and delays in anticipation of a Supreme Court decision.
‘Insurrection’
It is unclear why Justice Merchan would use the “insurrection” as shorthand for the federal case.
The only appearance of the word “insurrection” is in a quote in response to an attorney saying there would be “riots everywhere” if President Trump remained in office. In response, one of the unnamed co-conspirators tells him, “Well, [Deputy White House Counsel], that’s why there’s an Insurrection Act.”
Separately, critics of President Trump have colloquially referred to the events of Jan. 6, 2021, as an “insurrection,” resulting in a wave of almost 100 state-level lawsuits to disqualify him from the ballot over the past half year.
Earlier this year, the Supreme Court heard another case involving President Trump and ruled that states have no authority to disqualify a federal candidate in elections.
However, it would be unlikely that the judge confused the two cases, as President Trump did not argue presidential immunity in the ballot disqualification case, and the Supreme Court issued a ruling ending the challenges on March 4.
Renewed Recusal Request
Defense attorneys in the Manhattan case are also renewing requests that the judge step down, arguing that he has shown partisan interest.
Last August, Justice Merchan rejected an initial motion for recusal. He stated that his small-dollar donations to President Trump’s political opponents and his daughter’s employment at a marketing firm, which has received millions from those campaigning against President Trump, would not affect his ability to try the case impartially.
However, Justice Merchan recently broadened a gag order to prevent President Trump from discussing the judge’s family members. The move follows President Trump’s renewed grievances about the judge’s daughter helping to campaign for politicians such as Vice President Kamala Harris and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).
Defense attorneys made another request that the judge recuse himself on April 1, arguing that the judge’s family has commercial interests that “are benefitted by developments in this case that harm President Trump’s penal interests.”
“The trial in this case will benefit Authentic financially by providing its clients more fodder for fundraising, Authentic will make more money by assisting with those communications, and Your Honor’s daughter will continue to earn money from these developments by virtue of her senior role at Authentic,” they wrote in a one-page pre-motion letter, recently required by the judge before a full motion is allowed to be filed.
Based on Federal Election Commission filings, the defense found that “some of those funds were paid to Authentic by entities associated with legislators and PACs that have used email and/or social media to solicit contributions specifically based on this case.”
KING REPORT
The King Report April 5, 2024 Issue 7215
Independent View of the News
The UAE halted diplomatic relations with Israel. Israel closed several of its foreign embassies and issued a worldwide alert to other embassies that Iran and/or it proxies would attack Israeli interests in coming days. The Big Guy had a phone conference with Netanyahu that reportedly lasted less than 30 minutes. Team Obama-Biden then scurried to the media and for political reasons claimed: 1) The Big Guy scolded Bibi about Israel’s prosecution of its war with Hamas; 2) demanded an immediate ceasefire; and 3) threated Bibi that if Israel’s war behavior did NOT change, the US would cease its support, thus ending the USA’s 76-year alliance with Israel. Obama averred that he would fundamentally change the USA! Team Obama-Biden rescinded its ONLY condition on Hamas: Free the hostages for a ceasefire. Team Obama-Biden has NO conditions on Hamas but gives aid into Palestinians that Hamas controls. Yes, Virgina, for purely political expediency, Team Obama-Biden has abandoned the hostages, including Americans, that Hamas has held since October 7. Ya think that Iran-Hamas knew that Team Obama-Biden would eventually tuck its tail and roll over? Bibi responded with a long statement that essentially told Team Obama-Biden and the world that Israel was fighting not just Hamas, but also Iran and its proxies. Bibi reminded ‘them’ that Iran and its proxies were avowed enemies of the USA. Ergo, Israel was fighting the US’s fight. (Full statement at link)https://t.co/0Ny0dya2r1 Team Obama-Biden’s betrayal of Israel is unlikely to garner a significant amount of votes from Arabs in Michigan. It will, however, unnerve US allies, especially those in the Middle East, namely Saudi Arabia. Finally: Team Obama-Biden and its allies/stooges are eviscerating Israel for civilian casualties; but they were silent and/or forgiving about Obama (beaucoup drone attacks) and Biden civilian casualties. U.S. Drone Warfare and Civilian CasualtiesWhen Barack Obama took office in 2009, drones had not yet become commonplace in US actions overseas. Soon after taking office, however, the drone became essential to Obama’s foreign policy strategy. According to various sources, Obama carried out ten times more drone strikes than his predecessor, allegedly telling his advisors that he was “surprisingly good at killing people.” During his presidency, Obama and his aides sought to create a legal and ethical framework for carrying out drone strikes, which was then used by future administrations. Using the Use of Force Authorization given to the Presidency after 9/11, Obama argued that he had a legal right to develop what was commonly called a “kill list” for potential al-Qaeda targets and carry out these targeted killings via drone strikes. Until around 2013, Obama carried out hundreds of drone strikes across the Middle East. In the runup to the 2016 election, Obama substantially cut down on the use of drones due to mounting public pressure. According to Airwars, a UK-based NGO that tracks civilian casualties from US airstrikes, thousands of civilians have died due to US drone strikes overseas in the Middle East…https://eagletonpoliticaljournal.rutgers.edu/us-the-world/u-s-drone-warfare-and-civilian-casualties/PS – Obama bragged that he was “reallygood at killing people.” Do you recall any outrage at that? Last Year, President Obama Reportedly Told His Aides That He’s “Really Good at Killing People”NOV 03, 2013 https://slate.com/business/2013/11/double-down-obama-said-he-s-really-good-at-killing-people.htmlFed has time to mull rate cut in face of ‘less encouraging’ data, Barkin sayshttps://t.co/8UFbdyUqRn Chicago Fed President Goolsbee: “The biggest danger to the inflation picture in my view… (is) the continued high inflation in housing services… I have been expecting it to come down more quickly than it has. If it does not come down, we will have a very difficult time getting overall inflation back to the 2% target… the last two months of inflation data are a bump; but we can’t write it off as purely noise… Apparently, Obama BBF Goolsbee no longer believes that “inflation is on a golden path” – unless he means gold is soaring due to inflation! (Minn Fed Pres) Kashkari Floats Possibility of No Rate Cuts in 2024“In March I had jotted down two rate cuts this year if inflation continues to fall back towards our 2% target,” Kashkari said in a virtual event with LinkedIn. “If we continue to see inflation moving sideways, then that would make me question whether we needed to do those rate cuts at all.”…https://finance.yahoo.com/news/fed-latest-kashkari-floats-possibility-185257365.html Philly Fed President Harker: Inflation is still too high. Traders pined for a rally because April has been unfriendly for equity bulls. However, the escalation of tensions between Israel and Iran plus overwhelmingly hawkish remarks from Fed officials, even the leftists, induced selling of stocks and commodities, except oil & gasoline, and buying of bonds. ESMs hit a daily high 5308.50 at 12:08 ET and a daily low of 5194.25 at 15:38 ET. It was very ugly. June Gold hit a daily high of 2325.30 14:56 ET; then someone decided to drive gold lower. June gold hit a daily low of 2298.70 at 15:49 ET. May WTI Oil hit a daily high of 87.22 at 14:45 ET; its low of 84.64 appeared at 12:08 ET. May Gasoline hit its high of 280.62 at 14:45 ET; it hit a low of 220.46 on 12/13. Positive aspects of previous sessionThe NFL Draft is only three weeks away! Negative aspects of previous sessionStocks and commodities, ex-energy sank, while bonds rallied on manic ‘risk off’ tradingGold soared again; but someone manipulated lower during late NYSE trading. (Qui bono?)The geopolitical situation is very perilous – and Team Obama-Biden directs the USA!Ambiguous aspects of previous sessionHow intense will the Israel-Iran conflict be?Why have Fed officials, notably leftists/doves, changed their tune about rate cuts?First Hour/Last Hour Action [S&P 500 Index]: 1st Hour from NYSE Open: Up;Last Hour: DownPivot Point for S&P 500 Index [above/below indicates daily trend to traders]: 5183.29Previous session S&P 500 Index High/Low: 5256.59; 5146.06Disney World moves forward on massive park expansion after settling lawsuits with Floridahttps://flvoicenews.com/disney-world-moves-forward-on-massive-park-expansion-after-settling-lawsuits-with-florida/ @RonDeSantis: Not quite what the media/left/corporate GOP were predicting last year Fed Balance Sheet: -$45.181B, US Treasuries -$42.92B; Reserves at Fed: -$81.833B (3rd straight drop) Today – Traders have tried to affect rallies during each session this week to no avail. They poured into ESMs and NQMs an hour before the NYSE opening and pushed stuff higher until just after noon ET. Then, all hell broke loose; ESMs and stocks plunged with no rally attempts until just before the close. The manor of the afternoon equity plunge will have a psychological impact on discerning traders and institutions. Retail and small traders might remain bullish due to classical conditioning, but there is a crystal-clear tone change in the markets. PS – Trender is now on a daily sell signal for the S&P 500. The usual suspects will play for The Friday Rally. But traders and investors with gray hairs know that it is recklessly foolish to go home long ‘risk’ ahead of a weekend that might see warlike actions. Israel warns of consequences to any attack from IranIsrael told the U.S. if Iran launches an attack from its soil against Israel in retaliation for its deadly strike in Syria earlier this week, it would draw a strong response from Israel and take the current conflict to another level, Israeli officials tell Axios… Israeli officials claim they have intelligence that shows Iran could attack Israel from its soil using long-range ballistic missiles, cruise missiles or drones…https://www.axios.com/2024/04/04/israel-iran-warn-attack-response The March Employment Report, barring an outlier NFP, should have only a transitory effect. The inflation situation and global tensions should override the March Employment Report. As always, remember that Team Obama- Biden needs a cooked NFP; and it is invariably revised lower later.PS – As noted above, Reserves at the Fed have suffered three consecutive large declines, from $3.625T to $3.414T. The last time there were 3 straight large declines was in June. Given the transformation of Fed leftists/doves to more hawkish rhetoric recently, it appears that the Fed has is now concerned about inflation, including asset inflation. Next week’s H.4.1 should be revealing. ESUs are +6.25; NQHs are +23.50; USHs are +1/32; JuneGold is -1.10 at 20:17 ET. Expected economic data: Mar NFP 214k, Mfg. 3k, Rate 3.8%, Wages 0.3 % m/m & 4.1% y/y, Workweek 34.3, Labor Force Participation Rate 62.6%; Feb Consumer Credit $15.0B Fed Speakers: Boston Pres Collins 8:30 ET, Richmond Pres Barkin 9:15 ET, Dallas Pres Logan 11 ET, Gov. Bowman 12:15 ET S&P Index 50-day MA: 5076; 100-day MA: 4867; 150-day MA: 4692; 200-day MA: 4635DJIA 50-day MA: 38,838; 100-day MA: 37,702; 150-day MA: 36,419, 200-day MA: 35,983(Green is positive slope; Red is negative slope) S&P 500 Index (5147.21) – Trender BBG trading model and MACD for key time framesMonthly: Trender and MACD are positive – a close below 4539.68 triggers a sell signalWeekly: Trender and MACD are positive – a close below 5020.17 triggers a sell signalDaily: Trender and MACD are negative – a close above 5303.18 triggers a buy signalHourly: Trender and MACD are negative – a close above 5245.17 triggers a buy signal @charliekirk11: President Trump tells Hugh Hewitt he thinks Joe Biden should be drug tested before a debate: “You know that white stuff that they happened to find which happened to be cocaine in the White House, there’s something going on there, because I watched his State of the Union, and he was all jacked up at the beginning and by the end he was fading fast.” “I think debates with him at least should be drug tested.” “He was higher than a kite.”https://twitter.com/charliekirk11/status/1775943921643995398Fiery new Trump ad shows Biden saying he’d ‘beat the hell out of him’: ‘Democrats are the party of violence’ https://t.co/g6ahKKWIFNDOJ demands prison time for Ashley Biden diary thiefhttps://nypost.com/2024/04/03/us-news/doj-demands-prison-time-for-ashley-biden-diary-thief/ Ergo, the DoJ verifies that the diary is the authentic work and property of Ashely Biden – who in the diary makes incestuous allegations against The Big Guy. Bird flu pandemic could be ‘100 times worse’ than COVID, scientists warn (Rerun 2020 scan to stop DJT) https://nypost.com/2024/04/04/us-news/bird-flu-pandemic-could-be-100-times-worse-than-covid-scientists-warn/Migrant riot ‘ringleaders’ were IDed for their role in violent border stampede — but authorities still let them go (purportedly due to ‘a lack of detention space.’) https://trib.al/Ljxy4RX Babylon Bee: Biden Still Polling Well With 3 A.M. Mail-In Ballot Demographichttps://babylonbee.com/news/biden-still-polling-well-among-3-am-mail-in-ballot-demographic@RNCResearch: BIDEN: “One of the things that I learned early on was that I had a very close relationship with the Greek American community — for real! In the heart, and, I mean, real! In the church there, as well!“https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1776017718249951248
In a surprise announcement, Secretary of State Tony Blinken said Ukraine will be joining NATO. This has grave implications for an expanded war with Russia. In 1991, the U.S. promised never to allow Ukraine to join NATO. Ukraine was supposed to be neutral and not have a robust army. All that changed in 2014 with the coup that was orchestrated by the Obama Administration. From then on, the West has inched towards war. Now, it looks like it’s an unstoppable slide of a NATO war with Russia, and NATO is inviting it with glee.
Israel attacked Iran’s embassy in Syria this week killing some high-ranking military commanders. Iran is vowing revenge. Israel is warning against attacking its territory. This could turn up the heat to high in the Middle East if these two nuclear powers start trading shots. Meanwhile, the Biden Administration is about to sell Israel $18 billion worth of F-15 fighter jets. That will settle things down. Maybe this is why renowned cycle analyst Martin Armstrong said this past week on USAW, “Everything points towards war.”
You know things are bad when true blue Dem James Carville panics and sounds the alarm about people “leaving the Democrat party in droves.” Carville put this out this week in a video where he was talking about what’s at stake if Donald Trump wins in November. Maybe the reports of Gen-Z revolting against Democrats over high inflation is another warning sign on the road to Democrat perdition. Now, it seems Democrats are concerned about high crime, high prices and high illegal immigration. It might be way too late to fix this after three years of the Biden Administration.
(Tech Note: If you do not see the video, know it is there. Unplug your modem and plug it back in after 30 sec. This will clear codes that may be blocking you from seeing it. In addition, try different browsers. Also, turn off all ad blockers if you have them. Finally, clear your Cashe and that might help too. https://its.uiowa.edu/support/article/719 All the above is a way Big Tech tries to censor people like USAWatchdog.com.)
harveyorganblog.com 
