Wishing You and Yours a Very Happy Holidays 

Notes today: 

• reuters: widespread covid in china could result in up to 2m deaths.
• Crematoriums across China are straining to deal with an influx of bodies as the country battles a wave of COVID-19 cases that authorities have said is impossible to track. Cases are soaring across China, with hospitals struggling and pharmacy shelves stripped bare.

• As anticipate, the Bank of Japan, the developed world’s last holdout for rock-bottom interest rates inches toward policy normalization. 
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• Petulant Elon’s Twitter BS is leaking into tesla. Tesla stock tanking today, down 3%, 63% YTD. New low on the move. 
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• Not sure that the crypto disaster / scheme will not bleed into the rest of the markets – and be supportive to traditional (Gold/Silver) hard assets.
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Covid is spreading faster than ever in China. Hospitals appear completely overwhelmed ever since restrictions dropped. Some Epidemiologist estimate >60% of China & 10% of Earth’s population will most likely be infected over next 90 days. Deaths could be in the millions—Some experts think that doubling time may now be hours.

• But hell, let’s not get BioNTech or Moderna – Vaccines that work!

A fundraiser that will make history

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 Musk/ Twitter suspends ....

Anyone critical of his disastrously failing operations and connections.

Keith Olbermann

Aaron Rupar

Donie O' Sullivan

Drew Harwell,  and others - links to competitors such as Mastodon no longer appear to be allowed!

• This dude is acting as if he is in financial trouble and it is affecting his judgment..
• Twitter Bankruptcy looks likely  .

• Twitter will probably be history in the EU in the near future.

• What a self-destructive jerk! Laurence Tribe

• Eric Garland         @ericgarland

Washington Post expected more democratic values from the South African dude who just hired a member of the Chinese Communist Party to run his car company in Texas.

 

• Elon Musk starts banning critical journalists from Twitter

   / 

  The reporters have tweeted about his private jet recently.

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CPI ex shelter and used vehicles

 

Hail to the New Troll-in-Chief 

“He’s studied Trump and knows how to say the most outrageous shit and drive the news cycle,” Bannon confirmed. And his wealth has been cut in half from its $340 billion peak partly due to his Twitter purchase.

• Tesla investors voice concern over Elon Musk’s focus on Twitter ..

• Musk/Twitter has stopped paying rent on offices and is considering not paying severance packages to former employees, among other measures. 

Nestle to launch new Ukraine facility in rare war-time investment

US Companies continue to buy back  stock.

The Bird is beyond saving. 

Check out Mastodon

For the record: Dr. Fauci has done nothing wrong, except serve our nation. In the meantime, Mr. Musk should know that 200,000 Americans needlessly lost their lives from Covid due to this kind of antiscience rhetoric and disinformation. Elon, I’m asking you to take down this Tweet.

Prof Peter Hotez MD PhD  @PeterHotez

Central Banks stockpiling Gold

 

Quick Overview is up to date

 Renting versus Buying - historically high..

 Yield Curve:

Birds are departing twitter.. 

New mastodon users

 

S&P 500 Stocks at 52 week highs

Notes today: 

• Highlights from the lates Crypto disaster: 

• Sam Bankman-Fried’s bankrupt crypto empire owes its 50 biggest unsecured creditors a total of $3.1 billion, new court papers show, with a pair of customers owed more than $200 million each. This dude bragged that he never reads a book – a clue perhaps?

• FTX Bankruptcy, (third-largest, was valued at $32bn) - is worse than anyone imagined. 
• Software was allegedly used to conceal the misuse of customer funds. 
• A single, unsecured group email was used to access private keys and sensitive data around the world. 
• Corporate funds of FTX Group were used to buy homes and other personal items for employees. 
• Employees of the FTX Group submitted payment requests through an on-line ‘chat’ platform. we do Big Business based onemojis in the chat.

•  But hey, these dudes where decentralizes and disruptors, not boring financiers.

• My Crypto definition = pure speculative rubbish,  fundamentally worth ZERO.

• (The Tulip mania 1634-1637 had more intrinsic value. Tulips are beautiful and some smell very nice)

• Nassin Nicholas Taleb on Crypto / Bitcoin 

Notes today: 

• Mortgage Rates Could Tank Home Prices by 20%, Fed Study Finds

• BREAKING: A senior U.S. official states that Russian missiles have crossed into Poland (killing two) - Eagerly awaiting Kremlin explanation-  on purpose or accident?

• Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s Charlie Munger, a longtime critic of crypto, called digital currencies a combination of delusion and fraud in the wake of the blowup of exchange FTX. "Partly fraud and partly delusion. That’s a bad combination."

“This is a very, very bad thing," Munger said. "The country did not need a currency that was good for kidnappers.

 

 

 

 

• JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s asset-management arm entered into a deal to acquire more than $1 billion of single-family rentals, a sign that choppy markets haven’t scared investors away from suburban housing.
• Invitation Homes - a company with a portfolio of some 80,000 homes.

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• Rent Inflation CPI & Zillow

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Quick Overview is up to date

Notes today:  

• Iranian parliament voted to impose the death penalty on all protesters in custody as a "hard lesson" for all rebels ...14,000-15,000 have been arrested

• The UN says that as of November 15th the planet will have 8 billion humans.

• Seven days ago, he had $16 billion. Today, he has $0. Do we think he’s … crying? I would cry:

• Cash held by Americans
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• Regarding the above chart it is perhaps worth noting that a 1950 $ is worth $12.73 today - making  the 5 trillion  looking a bit - needy? 

• Stocks rose  in a buy-the whole thing relief rally after slower-than-projected inflation  growth spurred bets that the Federal Reserve can downshift its aggressive rate-hike path. The S&P 500 climbed 5.5%... 

• BREAKING: FTX had a “backdoor” built into its accounting software by SBF, which he used to move billions without triggering alerts to other staff, auditors etc - Reuters 
• (Digital assets were "supposed" to revolutionize finance - well, reality is setting in)..

• Meanwhile: It looks that the founder of #FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried just landed his private jet in Argentina. 

• Elon Musk, in his first address to Twitter employees since purchasing the company for $44 billion, said bankruptcy was a possibility. Elon the "brilliant" business man..

• Something’s up in the silver market. Silver imports into India for the first 10 months of 2022 are now at a record 9100 tons. This, versus some 1030 tons annual world supply. Exchange stocks are dropping.  Perhaps - with all the Crypto BS, could people be realizing that some “hard” assets (a bit more difficult to steal) may not be so bad...
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• The Yen is performing as advertised - so far...
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Notes today: 

• Some good news, it seems France and Macron will support a full ban of Deep-Sea Mining. 

• Inflation in Turkey nearing 100% 

• Elon Musk in April: "For Twitter to deserve public trust, it must be politically neutral."
• Elon Musk on Monday: "I recommend voting for a Republican Congress."
• Tesla stock has dropped more than 15% since Must took over Twitter, while NASDQ is down about 1% - brand damage!

• Bank of Japan’s Suzuki; “ we must seek an exit from massive fiscal stimulus”..

"Let that sink in" 

@adamzyglis

 

Aka Brexit Stupidity..

Lula’s victory and Amazon deforestation..

How about reforestation?

People are fleeing Musk’s Twitter for Mastodon, but what is it? checking it out

-----------------------------

• According to @NBCNews’ @anblanx: Police say on the record that Paul Pelosi and his suspected attacker did not know each other prior to the attack. It was a break-in.
• This directly contradicts conspiracy theories pushed by (and since deleted by) "gullible" Twitter owner Elon Musk.👎👎

 

Quick Overview is up to date

Notes today:

• Author of BlackSwan (read it) regarding Twitter/Musk:

Nassim Nicholas Taleb  @nntaleb

Musk paid $44bn for something now worth perhaps ~15 & w/ rates no longer 0, he needs that thing only a few of us still remember called "profits". Not "valuation", but "profits" & "cash flow" (see finance 101). He badly needs the system (still) driven by the minority rule. Sorry.

(AKA - betting on the come - loaded with debt; interest alone will be billions of dollars each year.)

Btw- the second largest  investor in Musk's Twitter appears to be .. Saudi Arabia 👎 Meanwhile, an American citizen has been sentenced to 16 years in prison in Saudi Arabia for "tweeting" critically about the Saudi regime.

• Poland chose Westinghouse, an American (private) company, to build its first nuclear power plant as the country seeks to burn less coal, cutting air pollution and emissions, and to strengthen its energy security. (Economist)

• Hundreds of thousands of Russian men have fled the country in the past month to avoid being drafted. (Economist)

• A report from the International Energy Agency found that war in Ukraine has hastened the world’s transition to renewable energy.👍

• Todays quote: Star Trek’s Spock says, “It is dangerous to be ill-informed about facts”

Notes today:

• And in March of this year, the average real wealth of the American middle class—including home equity and other physical assets as well as retirement and other savings—peaked at $393,300, the highest it’s ever been, according to data assembled by economists at the University of California, Berkeley.
• Xi vows to dominate the world by 2049 - Surrounding yourself with yes men is however not a very good start – historically.

• META (nee’ Facebook) is down -13% afterhours after missing on EPS ($1.64 vs $1.88). 

• Brazil FT: Bolsonaro’s colorful personal life, with three marriages and two divorces, has not stopped him from winning support from evangelicals. He has also gained ground among the poor, thanks to a programme of cash handouts for lower-income families

• Brazil Bovespa Index (weekly)

California Poised to Overtake Germany as World’s No. 4 Economy 

The truth is that California outperforms the US and the rest of world across many industries. 

U.S, China, Japan and California 👍👍