Notes today:

 

• Canadian dollar rallies as current account surplus hits 14-year high 

• At this point, any presentation of bitcoin as an inflation hedge, crisis protection, transactional currency, or repository of value is purely hallucinatory & deserves locking up the perpetrator to prevent further self-harm.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb @nntaleb (author of Black Swan) BitCoin to 0

Speculators have plowed more than 40 Billion into crypto start ups since 2021

• Vietnam Tourist Arrivals Climb 1,274% YoY in May 

• Europe’s unity ‘crumbling’ on Russia sanctions, Germany warns. 

• India has decided to restrict the sale of sugar on international markets, just days after it banned wheat exports. 

Realtor .com Reports Weekly Inventory Up 9% YoY  (real estate)

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Notes today:

• A $5 Trillion ‘Wealth Shock’ Is Cracking Americans’ Nest Eggs

• Economist: Almost 40% of African-Americans under 40 own cryptocurrency, compared with 29% of whites. 

• Lagarde reiterated her concerns over cryptocurrencies & desire for regulation: "My very humble assessment is that it is worth nothing, it is based on nothing, there is no underlying asset to act as an anchor of safety," Lagarde said in an interview on Dutch TV. 

• Russia bans 963 Americans, including Biden and Harris — but not Trump!
• “Russia also named former senators John McCain, Harry M. Reid, and Orrin G. Hatch as among the current or ex-lawmakers barred from entering the country, even though they are all dead.” 

• Crashing Crypto: Is This Time Different? (Krugman)  

Well, maybe the crypto skeptics are wrong. But on the question of folly and gullibility, the answer is yes, we can.

For as long as the price of an offset remains below $20, cattle farming in the Amazon will remain attractive.

 

Later 

 

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‘Forever chemicals’ may have polluted 20m acres of US cropland, study says

PFAS-tainted sewage sludge is used as fertilizer in fields and report finds that about 20m acres of cropland could be contaminated

Our Dow Theory Opinion:

On 2/22/2022 our view of Dow Theory turned to bearish . Currently our view will return to bullish when the DJI closes above 35342, and the DJT close above 16577.

A looooooooong term look at U.S. Real Estate  

Euro Area Consumer Confidence

FED Funds biggest lag "ever" !

Soybean Oil

Investor Intelligence Bullish View

Libor & Fed Funds Spread

 NASDAQ Advance  Decline Line 

20 years of Euro Dollar Rates (P&F)

Munger and Buffett (some) Nuggets today via Bloomberg:

• A question about oil production, and whether the U.S. should be doing something differently.
• Munger takes this one. He says he likes having big reserves of oil -- he’d prefer to pay for oil from the Middle East and conserve domestic supplies. He concedes it’s a rare view. “It doesn’t bother me, I just think they’re all wrong.”

• Buffett: “I essentially believe people are now behaving somewhat more tribal than they have for a long time. People are always going to be partisan, they’re going to have religious beliefs... but it gets pretty tribal.”
• “I’ve been tribal. We’re confessing today,” he said. “It’s fun to participate in, but it can get very dangerous when one group of people say 2+2 is five, and another group says 2+2 is three.”

• “It’s stupid because its likely to go to zero, it’s evil because it undermines the Federal Reserve system,” Munger says. “It makes us look foolish compared to the communist leader in China,” who banned Bitcoin.
• Munger says he has a slightly different way of looking at it.  “In my life I try and avoid things that are stupid, evil and make me look bad in comparison with somebody else. And Bitcoin does all three.”

Notes today: 

• Pakistan scorching temps up to 120.2F or 49C today "IN APRIL"

• NASDAQ Composite ending Friday down by 4% and the whole of April by 13%: its worst monthly performance since 2008. 

• Bloomberg: Lin argues China should aim for GDP per capita in 2050 to be 50% that of the U.S.—up from around 16% today. 

• Seems to me that figuring out how to build and sell a car is a lot easier than figuring out free speech – so good luck with that Elon. Btw, Mobileye seems to be ahead of you with the car part..

• (San Diego Union Tribune) In the service territory of San Diego Gas & Electric, more than 356,000 residential customers have missed payment deadlines through March. Applying SDG&E’s figure to its overall residential base of about 1.33 million, that means 26.7 percent of SDG&E residential customers are behind on their bills. 

• Tesla’s biggest competitor, Mobileye, is ramping up its robotaxi business this year already (in 2022). Tesla is at least two years behind.

Indonesia will ban Palm Oil exports from April 28 until further notice to control soaring domestic prices.  Indonesia accounts for 56% of palm oil exports.Further, Indonesian palm oil accounts for 36% of all major vegoil exports, combined. (Karen Braun https://twitter.com/kannbwx)

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% of 40  World Stock Markets with 5 Week Avearge above 20 Week Average. If that # ever gets back to zero it could / maybe / perhaps/ conceivably be a good time to buy. (Just perchance)  Unless of course - see below

Now this: Buffett meeting today -  Buffett says that there is a risk every day -- a very, very tiny risk. And the world’s flipping a coin everyday as to whether people who can ruin the world will do it, he says.

The major problem is for people who have large stocks of nuclear weapons. It is a very, very dangerous world, Buffett says.

Munger chimes in saying that there’s no way to protect against a nuclear attack, joking that some guy has said that he’ll crawl under his desk if there’s an attack and kiss his rear goodbye.

Buffett says that there is a risk every day -- a very, very tiny risk. And the world’s flipping a coin everyday as to whether people who can ruin the world will do it, he says.

The major problem is for people who have large stocks of nuclear weapons. It is a very, very dangerous world, Buffett says.

Munger chimes in saying that there’s no way to protect against a nuclear attack, joking that some guy has said that he’ll crawl under his desk if there’s an attack and kiss his rear goodbye.

 Latest from Florida..

Credit: @tedlittleford)

 Stahler

Later

 

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 Where have all the bulls gone?

 

Later

 Three great forces..

 Later..

 June Gold 5 above 20

Shipping rates cooling.

View of a bond in distress..

 

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Flower Power Joe Heller

UN votes on Russian suspension on Human Rights Council. SUSPENDED!

Austria and the pain of higher rates .. 

and probably not over..

Mushrooms -  vocabularies of up to 50 words, and that the distribution of these “fungal word lengths” closely matched those of human languages.

Notes today:

• President Zelenskyy tells UN Security Council: Act now on Russia or dissolve yourself altogether.

• 63 Republicans Vote Against Resolution Expressing Support for NATO 

• Bill Browder:  While nearly every Western business has exited Russia, the American Chamber of Commerce in Moscow continues to hold business events.

• Forbes says the total wealth of the world's billionaires has dropped to just $12.7 trillion. I feel for them. 

• “We appeased Viktor Orbán … and we, the union, appeased Vladimir Putin. And if we continue on this path..We will find ourselves obsolete.”

• FT: 'They are already carrying out an active campaign to hide their guilt of mass murders of civilians in Mariupol,' Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video address. 

• Denmark is temporarily shelving its debt ceiling to help finance costs related to the war in Ukraine. 

• Kinzinger on his party: "We are being governed by a bunch of children ... There's a genocide going in Ukraine -- and the outrage is what's happening in a Walt Disney" world..

• Russian Embassy in Ireland is running out of fuel for heating and hot water as Irish oil companies refuse to deliver supplies.

Cost of insuring against Russia default

Notes today:

  

Why is this regime still a member of the United Nations "Security" council with veto rights?

 

• AP: Lithuania says it has cut itself off entirely of gas imports from Russia, apparently becoming the first of the European Union's 27 nations using Russian gas to break dependence from Moscow. In 2015, it was almost entirely dependent on Russian gas imports.

• 
  
  It is high time, for ALL Europeans to stop all oil and gas purchases from Russia.

If You Wonder..

 

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Great question 

#cartoon (Credit: @WardSutton)