marsh
On TB every waking moment
1:14:17 min
Unredacted Emails Finally Reveal the Shocking Truth
Peak Prosperity
3 hours ago
(No summary given. Have not watched.)
GOV/MIL Main "Great Reset" Thread
- Thread starter marsh
- Start date
1:14:17 min
Peak Prosperity
3 hours ago
(No summary given. Have not watched.)
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Shipping Industry In Collapse ( What This Says About Supply Chain )
The Economic Ninja
5 hours ago
The economic ninja talks about the Shipping Industry In Collapse ( What This Says About Supply Chain ) and how the shipping industry is changing fast.
^^^^
Shipping: Freight rates slowly getting back to normal – DW – 11/25/2022
For more than two years the only way for container shipping prices was up. That trend is now reversing as backlogs at ports dissolve and supply chain snarls ease.
www.dw.com
Shipping: Freight rates slowly getting back to normal
Dirk Kaufmann11/25/2022November 25, 2022
For more than two years the only way for container shipping prices was up. That trend is now reversing as backlogs at ports dissolve and supply chain snarls ease.
As the immediate aftershocks of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine on global trade gradually subside, signs are growing that the finely tuned system of ocean shipping is getting out of the crisis mode.
The massive disruptions to global supply chains, caused mainly by COVID lockdowns in China and having found a vivid expression in ship backlogs at ports, are showing signs of easing. Seabound shipping is ready to assume its overwhelming importance of carrying 90% of all transportation across the world.
Freight rates drop to prepandemic levels
In Germany, the shipping chaos has been brought under control also because of a bargaining deal struck between dock workers and port authorities that ended a disruptive strike this fall.Martin Kröger, chief executive of the German Shipowners' Association (VDR), says the situation has eased "almost back to normal."
"The backlogs of ships along European coasts have been overcome," he told DW, adding that shipping capacity wasn't so tight anymore as at the end of last year. Another piece of good news, he said, was that ocean freight rates are falling significantly. "Shipping conditions are similar to what they were before the pandemic."
German business daily Handelsblatt has published data showing that shipping rates have come down to prepandemic levels, with a 20-foot container from China to Northern Europe, for example, now costing $1,479 (€1,420) on average, compared with around $8,000 at the beginning of 2022. Shipping a container from Shanghai to the US West Coast "is even cheaper than in 2019," the newspaper reported.
Supply chain hell
Vincent Stamer from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy explains that a surge in demand and so-called front-loading [the process of allocating costs at the beginning of a project or contract — the ed.] by importers had led to the previous supply bottlenecks."During the pandemic, consumers in Europe and North America massively bought consumer electronics devices, furniture and sports apparel, causing importers to hastily fill their inventories to meet the demand," he told DW.
However, the boom is now subsiding and demand for such goods is dropping, he added.
With the United States hovering on the brink of a recession, and growth in Europe already falling off the cliff, the prospects for further economic expansion are indeed dramatically reversing. "Fears of rising inflation and an economic downturn are weighing on the demand for goods," Stamer said, driving down the "need for shipping space and the level of freight rates" at the same time.
Good news for inflation-plagued consumers?
Stamer also thinks the fall in global shipping rates will trickle down to consumer prices as goods manufacturers previously had to spend "a tenth of each dollar earned" on transportation and logistics. "Therefore, an easing of freight rates will lower the costs for companies and, finally, also consumer prices."But Martin Kröger disagrees, saying shipping costs make up only a "very tiny amount" of the shelve prices to be paid by consumers. He even thinks that freight rates are not going to fall any further, as additional expenditures for shippers caused, for example, by higher environmental standards would cost "a lot of money."
"Stringent new CO2 regulation imposed by the EU and aimed at gradually introducing less polluting fuels in shipping will increase our costs because they are much more expensive than the conventional fossil fuels we currently use," he said.
Cost wave building
Kröger expects the new environmental standards on fuels to hit global shipping rates "as early as next year." Industry pundits are expecting "an elevated demand for tonnage," he said, as companies would "lower the speed of their ships to bring down their emissions."For the medium term, industry representatives like the German VDR expect a change in shipping companies' investment policies, including ordering smaller ships with less tonnage to meet emissions targets. All of this would drive up shipping rates, Kröger says.
Shipping: An industry’s slow boat to change
Video on website 6:22 minTransportation 'pork cycle'
In economics, the term "pork cycle" describes the phenomenon of cyclical fluctuations of supply and prices in livestock markets. It was first observed in 1925 in pig markets in the US when prices were high enticing pork breeders to boost their investments. Eventually, the market became saturated, leading to a decline in prices. Production is thus decreased and again prices increase.Kiel institute's Stamer is convinced that shipping companies are now seeing "the beginning of a pork cycle" in which nobody can currently say exactly when demand for tonnage will match supply.
The VDR industry group sees German shipowners "on the right way" with their strategy to upgrade their ships to the newest environmental standards. But Stamer has his doubts and points to some dangerous pitfalls for the industry.
New investment in less polluting ships would "increase transport capacity thus exerting downward pressure on freight rates," he said. As a result, German shippers "cannot expect the huge profits of the past to continue into the future."
While the jury is still out on the industry's future investment in capacity, VDR is hoping for the good times to last a little longer, even though the exorbitant margins of the past year are definitely over, it admits. Making a good profit though is "essential," VDR's Kröger said, for the industry to be able to "afford all the required climate-saving technologies needed to meet the emission reduction targets."
marsh
On TB every waking moment
6:10 min
Used Car Prices...
The Economic Ninja
6 hours ago
^^^^^
Used car prices are falling — but monthly payments are spiking as Fed hikes rates
Interest-rate hikes from the Fed are raising average monthly car payments despite falling prices for used cars, according to a study. The average monthly payment for used cars is 47% higher this ye…
nypost.com
Used car prices are falling — but monthly payments are spiking as Fed hikes rates
Quratulain TejaniNovember 18, 2022 5:04pm
Interest-rate hikes from the Fed are raising average monthly car payments despite falling prices for used cars, according to a study.
The average monthly payment for used cars is 47% higher this year, hitting $551 a month, as compared to 2019, according to analysts at Cox Automotive, a platform that facilitates faster vehicle transactions.
The firm expects monthly car tabs to keep increasing, touching $570 by the end of the year, with the trend continuing in 2023.
“There’s been a marked shift in consumer and dealer sentiment about where the used vehicle market is headed as we close out the year,” wrote Dale Pollak, the executive vice president for Cox Automotive and the founder of VAuto, a platform that provides live market views to new and used inventory management for the automotive industry, in an analysis for the platform.
The Fed’s aggressive, inflation-fighting policies are hastening an “affordability crisis” in the used vehicles space, said Jonathan Smoke, Cox Automotive’s chief economist. Higher rates coupled with a potential recession are adding flames to the fire, he added.
Used car dealers are struggling with significant drops in sales. Michael Ward, an Equity Research Analyst covering the automotive sector with Benchmark, said that used car sales were down 13% in the third quarter, compared to last year.
Carvana, the online car dealer, recently reported sales of 102,570 vehicles, down from 117,564 from the third quarter of the previous year.
Cox Automotive analysts have lowered their projections of retail used vehicle sales in 2022 to 19.1 million, down almost 2 million units from last year.
Affordability and supply chain issues will be carried forward in 2023, dampening demand and sales even further, the firm said.
The auto industry has been struggling with supply chain issues since the pandemic. With the shortage of semiconductor chips, car dealers were able to push prices above MSRP. Sales volume, however, dropped.
New car sales are estimated to close at 13 million units in 2022, approximately three million below the levels of previous years.
New car prices are also beginning to cool. They are still selling for more than the manufacturers’ sticker prices on average, but are closer to the MSRP.
A number of brands are selling their models below the sticker price, something that was once normal but that had become rare over the past year or more.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
9:13 min
Balenciaga's BDSM Ads Are Horrifying and SICK | @AllieBethStuckey
BlazeTV
6 hours ago
AllieBethStuckey reacts to photos that have emerged from Balenciaga's latest ad campaign depicting kids with BDSM gear.
^^^^
14:10 min
Balanciaga's DARKNESS goes WAY FURTHER than teddy bears
Glenn Beck
Nov 29, 2022
Balanciaga is under heavy fire this week after releasing photographs featuring child models posting with teddy bears dressed in disgustingly inappropriate outfits. But the fashion company’s dark undertones goes WAY FURTHER than this. In this clip, Glenn exposes just how EVIL this brand’s creative direction seems to be. But this isn’t just Balanciaga. In fact, this scandal mirrors a turning tide within society as a whole, which is why we MUST call it out.
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marsh
On TB every waking moment
32:08 min
LIVE NOW: President Biden on his Economic Plan
JeffMAC
Streamed 7 hours ago
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Media Finds DANGEROUS LINK between Elon Musk and Donald Trump!!! 7:45 min
(No summary given. Did not watched)
Media Finds DANGEROUS LINK between Elon Musk and Donald Trump!!!
Dr Steve Turley Published November 29, 2022(No summary given. Did not watched)
marsh
On TB every waking moment
In Focus - Border Patrol Agents Break Their Silence On Biden's Crisis 8:33 min
With Anna Giaritelli (11/28/2022)
In Focus - Border Patrol Agents Break Their Silence On Biden's Crisis
One America News Network Published November 29, 2022With Anna Giaritelli (11/28/2022)
marsh
On TB every waking moment
24:52 min
And So It Begins… [China]
Neil McCoy-Ward
8 hours ago
(No summary given. Did not watch)
marsh
On TB every waking moment
39:01 min
Looming Rail Strikes Could Meet a Forceful End; Twitter Becomes Center of New Culture War
Crossroads with JOSHUA PHILIPP
Streamed 12 hours ago
(Breaking down of American logistics system. Atlas Shrugged. Biden Admin may go against the unions. Debate over what freedom of speech looks like. Exposing Big Corporations an ties to government. ANTIFA ties to child porn and deplatforming. Shadow State documentary)
marsh
On TB every waking moment
4:09 min
Fired Keystone Pipeline worker rejects White House's latest oil claims
https://yt3.ggpht.com/ytc/AMLnZu_64n1WvB5AW__6tdA7RqqQiX73ix5yeF****iK1AI=s88-c-k-c0x00ffffff-no-rj
Fox NewsNov 29, 2022
Former Keystone XL Pipeline worker Neal Crabtree on the Biden administration pushing back on claims that they do not support domestic oil production (There may be leases, but permitting agencies have shut things down.)
marsh
On TB every waking moment
2:48 min
Biodiversity as an Asset Class Ep 2: The Valuation of Natural Capital
World Economic Forum
Nov 29, 2022
With our current economic system treating nature as an ‘externality’, how can market processes adjust to price risk associated with the loss of nature and biodiversity? Bernardus J. Marttin, Member of the Managing Board with Rabobank, argues for the concept of natural capital which factors in such externalities, integrating nature’s welfare into any measures on prosperity.
Biodiversity as an Asset Class is a five episode series that profiles leading global thinkers on how we must reconstruct our economic system in order to protect nature and the future of life on Earth. Each episode explores topics that include removing barriers to action, the valuation of natural capital, a nature-positive business approach, and the role of philanthropic capital. Learn more about the work of the World Economic Forum’s financial and monetary platform here: https://www.weforum.org/topics/global...
(Starting with the farm - valuating what you are using of biodiversity in the real costs.)
von Koehler
Has No Life - Lives on TB
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8EIkgd55Nc
32:35 min
MASSIVE Protest Erupt In China Over Covid Lockdown, Protesters DEMAND END To Xi Jinping Reign
Tim Pool
3 hours ago
MASSIVE Protest Erupt In China Over Covid Lockdown, Protesters DEMAND END To Xi Jinping Reign. Biden and The White House Condemned Chinese crackdown on protests. …
Historically every Chinese dynasty, without a single exception, fell during a mini ice age.
The current CCP will not be the exception. After it's fall, a new power will rise in China.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
28:47 min
(starts at 1:34 min)
THE UNITED STATES OF BANANA REPUBLICS
Operation Freedom
Nov 29, 2022
In this edition of Dave Vs.The MSM, Dr. Dave takes an objective look at some signs that indicate the US may be slipping deeper into "banana republic" mentality. He takes a look at some recent fiscal policy decision as well as a few critical foreign policy elements.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
The White House Just Changed Its Plan To Refill SPR At $70 Per Barrel | ZeroHedge
ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
www.zerohedge.com
The White House Just Changed Its Plan To Refill SPR At $70 Per Barrel
TUESDAY, NOV 29, 2022 - 07:25 PMSeveral months ago, we mocked the ridiculous idea spawned by some of the "best and brightest" progressives currently cogitating and advising the 80-year-old in the White House, according to which even as Biden was actively steamrolling US energy companies by vowing to end US fossil fuel usage in a few decades and single-handedly crushing the price of oil through the biggest ever release of crude from the strategic petroleum reserve (where the term "emergency" now means not war or a natural disaster but Democrats lagging in the polls) he would be throwing them a bone by "promising" to buy oil if and when it hit a price of $72/barrell, as otherwise US producers would have zero incentive ever to invest even one dollar in growth (or even maintenance) capex, thereby guaranteeing much, much higher oil prices once the current SPR drain inevitably drew to a close (which may or many not happen in what's left of the president's lifetime).
And while on paper this noble lie may have looked appealing - after all by giving an oil price floor, Biden would at least tacitly encourage US majors to invest in much needed growth capex - we warned that it was still nonetheless just that: a lie.
Today, that was confirmed after Biden's Energy Security Advisor Amos Hochstein said that the White House would look to refill the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserves when oil prices were “consistently” at $70 per barrel, Bloomberg said.
As a reminder, in mid-October, the White House released a fact sheet that outlined the administration's intention to refill the SPR when oil prices were between $67 and $72 per barrel, following the President’s release of 200 million barrels from the SPR to help bring down the price of oil.
According to the White House statement at the time, the Administration was counting on its repurchase of crude oil helping to create some certainty around future crude oil demand, stimulating greater domestic oil production. The United States has added 15 oil-directed drilling rigs since that announcement was made.
And now, just as we expected, the Administration is walking back that plan by clarifying that its repurchase program would begin only when crude oil prices were $70 or below “consistently”.
Hochstein did not say how long prices would need to stay at the level before repurchasing would begin.
One thing is certain: if and when oil prices are below $70 "consistently", the White House will next lower the bogey to $60, $50, $40 and so on... as E&Ps watch in disgust and scrap any plans to expand production in the next decade.
Oil prices have been experiencing significant volatility over the past month, with OPEC’s production plans, the EU’s price cap plan and export ban, China’s Covid struggles, and stagnating U.S. production at the center of the volatility.
The amount of crude oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve has declined by 204.3 million barrels so far this year, with the current levels at just 389.1 million barrels—the lowest level since March 1984.
“Refining and refilling the reserve at $70 a barrel is a good price for companies and it’s a good price for the taxpayers, and it’s critical to our national security,” The White House said in October. It lied, just as it has lied about everything else.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
End Of Zero-COVID Will Not Cure China's Deep-Set Debt Problem | ZeroHedge
ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
www.zerohedge.com
End Of Zero-COVID Will Not Cure China's Deep-Set Debt Problem
TUESDAY, NOV 29, 2022 - 05:05 PMAuthored by Simon White, Bloomberg macro strategist,
China’s risk of slipping into “debt deflation” will be the longer-term driver of its asset markets even after the country finally manages to exit its Covid Zero policy. A much weaker yuan remains likely as one of the tools to alleviate the problem.
China’s stocks and the yuan bounced today after the government said it would ramp up vaccination among its elderly population and avoid excessive virus restrictions.
Furthermore, more property easing measures were announced, with the removal of restrictions for builders to issue shares. This adds to 16 targeted easing measures for the property market announced earlier this month.
The debt of property companies, which had slumped by 80%, has rallied over 50% off the lows.
Still, this will not be enough on its own to resolve China’s longstanding debt problem, and the risk that the country sinks into debt deflation. The essence of debt deflation (see diagram below) is when the value of assets and the income from these assets declines in relation to the value of liabilities, meaning the debt becomes increasingly difficult to service and pay back, leading to slower growth and ultimately deflation.
The property downturn is a particular problem for China as local government debt - of which there is an estimated $8 trillion of outstanding, half of China’s GDP - is often collateralized by land values.
Falling land values increase the chance of collateral calls, leading to the distressed sale of other assets, adding to deflationary dynamic.
China saw the largest rise in private debt since 2010 of any country in the world, with the private-debt-to-GDP ratio rising a dizzying 90 percentage points.
That has led to China’s debt service ratio, the ratio of its debt service repayments to private disposable income, to rise above 20%.
The BIS notes that DSRs of 20%-25% have preceded financial crises in other countries. Hong Kong’s DSR is even worse at over 30%.
One increasingly likely lever China will pull (and has been pulling) to ease the debt problem is allowing the yuan to weaken, and perhaps eventually dropping the fixed-rate exchange system altogether. Property easing measures and an eventual exit from Covid restrictions will help, but the debt problem is not going away.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
'Gaslighting' Is The Word Of The Year For Good Reason | ZeroHedge
ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
www.zerohedge.com
'Gaslighting' Is The Word Of The Year For Good Reason
TUESDAY, NOV 29, 2022 - 03:05 PM
Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,
Every year Merriam-Webster picks a word to capture the culture of a moment in time. The choice is based on the frequency and quantity of search as well as the departure from the norm. This year the choice seems perfect: gaslighting.
It’s drawn from the 1944 film noir starring Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman.
The term means to be subjected to extended psychological trickery to cause the victim to question his or own reality. In the film, Boyer plays a handsome stranger who meets the beautiful heiress Bergman on a foreign journey and they fall in love. He convinces her to marry and move back together to London to her family home, whereby he embarks upon a subtle campaign to convince her she is bonkers while he secretly searches the home for legacy jewels he intends to steal.
It’s painful to watch but the experience connects with our own as we watch mainstream media, see respectable scientists canceled for supposedly spreading disinformation, or when we watch a White House press conference.
They try to convince us that they are normal and we are the crazy ones, probably guilty of wrongthink or not aware of the full facts. The more they insist on their version of truth, the more we are invited to see ourselves as nuts for failing to give them all the benefit of our doubt.
The film has this crucial moment when Bergman flips from believing that she is a broken spirit and confused person suddenly to realizing that she is the victim of an elaborate hoax. Once she realizes this, and all the pieces fall into place, she calls him out as a fraud and a thief. The film ends as this genre must in those days. He is arrested and the victim is made whole.
So it is for all of us over this past year, as vast numbers of people realize that we are being gaslit by major media, Big Tech, and government. We were told that we faced a crisis so grim and horrible that we had to surrender our freedoms in the name of pathogenic control, even though we could clearly read the data on the risk. They closed schools, businesses, and weekly worship and told us it was for our own good.
To this day, they won’t admit that they were wrong. They were gaslighting us the entire time.
Tellingly, last year’s word was vaccine. The year before was pandemic. So you see how this goes. Pandemic to vaccine to gaslight. Yep, that pretty well sums up the last three years in a nice narrative from beginning to end. One hopes that we are all now waking up to the scam that has been perpetuated on us.
The notion that it was the “worst pandemic in a hundred years” is certainly disputable. We still don’t have real clarity on precisely how many people died from COVID, and this confusion is due to vast false positives of PCR testing backed by subsidized and rampant death misclassification. To this day, we do not know precisely how many people died from COVID or merely with COVID, or even if they truly had symptomatic COVID at all. None of this do we know for sure.
Then we can talk about the vaccine, which was never sterilizing of the virus simply because it is not possible to create such a thing around a fast-mutating coronavirus, a fact which we knew long before the pandemic began. So they called it a vaccine and lied that it would prevent infection and stop transmission even though that was never possible. Once this became obvious, and the whole point of mandates disappeared, they demanded we get it anyway at the pain of losing our jobs.
Now we have major media outlets admitting that more people are dying with the vaccine than without. And yet we are supposed to move on with our lives as if no one ever said anything false. There are no regrets, no apologies, no admissions of guilt. Even now, foreign nationals cannot travel to the United States to see the Statue of Liberty without showing proof of vaccination!
In a word, we’ve been gaslit at every turn.
One hopes that Americans watching events in China today get the point. Zero COVID was never epidemiology. It was an ideology of totalitarianism, a great excuse to do to us what bad actors in tech, media, and government wanted to do anyway but could not get away with in normal times. China easily migrated from virus-control theater to full surveillance. Even now, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is combing through cell-phone data to ferret out political dissenters. The point is to punish in ways that were not possible decades ago.
Sadly, it will likely work. If your ability to work and live, and feed yourself and your family, are contingent on political obedience, the party in control enjoys more security in ways that dictators of old could only have dreamt.
The heck of it is that our own experience with virus control was in fact copied directly from the CCP model. In the third week of February 2020, Anthony Fauci sent his deputy assistant Clifford Lane on a WHO junket to Wuhan and other cities. The WHO produced a disgusting report that wholly recommended the China approach to the world. It said:
“Achieving China’s exceptional coverage with and adherence to these containment measures has only been possible due to the deep commitment of the Chinese people to collective action in the face of this common threat. At a community level this is reflected in the remarkable solidarity of provinces and cities in support of the most vulnerable populations and communities.
Despite ongoing outbreaks in their own areas, Governors and Mayors have continued to send thousands of health care workers and tons of vital PPE supplies into Hubei province and Wuhan city.
“At the individual level, the Chinese people have reacted to this outbreak with courage and conviction. They have accepted and adhered to the starkest of containment measures—whether the suspension of public gatherings, the month-long ‘stay at home advisories or prohibitions on travel. Throughout an intensive 9-days of site visits across China, in frank discussions from the level of local community mobilizers and frontline health care providers to top scientists, Governors and Mayors, the Joint Mission was struck by the sincerity and dedication that each brings to this COVID-19 response.”
In a word, barf. Actually, Fauci, Lane, and everyone else involved in this gaslighting deserves full moral condemnation. They told us that the right way to manage a pandemic but their virus control very quickly and easily became political control.
This is true not only in China but also the United States. Early on, any protests against lockdowns were regarded not only as contrary to public health but also politically seditious. The media played along with this. And later with the vaccines, the refusal to get the shot was treated nearly as an act of treason.
Which is one of many problems with lockdowns. Not only do they not work at stopping the pathogen over the long term—at best they “slow the spread” for no good reason—but they intensify political control over society and attack fundamental rights and liberties. Fauci himself made frequent statements that disparaged the very idea of freedom itself, while meme culture jumped on the idea and started a deliberate misspelling: “freedumb.”
That movie “Gaslight” is a painful experience as the viewer watches a wretched man gradually crush the spirit of a sincere and trusting woman. It’s utterly abusive but at some point she wakes up to the racket and works to see justice done. So should we all.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Goldman's Supply Chain Congestion Indicator Signals Largest Weekly Decline This Year | ZeroHedge
ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
www.zerohedge.com
Goldman's Supply Chain Congestion Indicator Signals Largest Weekly Decline This Year
TUESDAY, NOV 29, 2022 - 02:45 PMThe supply chain pressures that drove up US inflationary pressures at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic are rapidly waning as global trade comes to a crawl.
On Monday, Goldman Sachs published its proprietary supply chain tracker that showed "weekly bottleneck scale dropped to '3' from '4' this week as the absolute level of our congestion index moved significantly lower (-21% w/w; Exhibit 1 ); we are now 19% below '4' and 20% above '2' territory."
"The number of container ships waiting to dock and unload goods along the West Coast was cut in half (5 ships vs. 10 last week), while East Coast backlogs decreased significantly (42 ships vs. 52 last week); the combined backlog decline was ~24% w/w, or the single largest week of relief seen for all of 2022," Goldman analyst Jordan Alliger wrote in a note.
Economic storm clouds are gathering worldwide as some of the largest shipping companies warn about sliding global trade. US shipper FedEx and Danish shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S have been vocal about emerging signs of a worldwide slowdown. FedEx has parked planes while Maersk has canceled sails.
In May, we outlined that a reversal of the "shortage of everything" bullwhip effect was nearing, as skyrocketing inventories (the result of Covid-era overordering due to snarled supply chains) was about to hit a faltering economy, and prices of goods would decline as companies would be forced to liquidate excess inventories into a recession (see "Bullwhip Effect Ends With A Bang: Why Prices Are About To Fall Off A Cliff" from May 23). We reminded readers about this a few times over the summer ("Bullwhip-Effect Reversal Is The Major Downside Growth Risk" and "Container Rates Slump As "Bullwhip Effect" Enters Terminal Phase").
Companies across the board are bloated with inventories. This can be shown in the inventory-to-sales ratio, reaching multi-decade highs -- forcing importers to reduce shipments from overseas suppliers.
Now US importers have dialed back on shipments from Asia, sending container rates crashing down.
Goldman's Alliger pointed out in the latest earnings season that supply chain disruption mentions on calls between management teams and analysts have been plunging all year.
As for the three largest West Coast ports, including Ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Oakland, inbound loaded containers on a yearly basis in October are dropping to levels not seen in years.
"Total inbound containers for the Ports of LA, Long Beach, and Oakland -23% YoY in October vs. -17% YoY in September. Note that the -7% MoM decline in October fell well short of the +0.8% MoM average over the last five years, indicating slower-than-seasonal West Coast import container growth," Alliger wrote.
Supply-related issues are diminishing rapidly and could soon be at levels that would provide the Federal Reserve with a view that it's winning the war on inflation as the most aggressive interest rate hikes in four decades crushes the demand side of the economy.
Notice how transport prices for producers topped out just before the consumer price index.
Freight markets have been a reliable leading economic indicator and may only suggest trouble ahead for the global economy. As well as possibly confirming the peak inflation narrative.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
"I'm Witnessing History In The Making", Says Protester In Shanghai | ZeroHedge
ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
www.zerohedge.com
"I'm Witnessing History In The Making", Says Protester In Shanghai
TUESDAY, NOV 29, 2022 - 02:25 PM
Authored by Kelly Song via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Protests demanding an end to COVID lockdowns broke out in the center of Shanghai on Sunday, following outrage over an apartment building fire in Urumqi, Xinjiang, that killed 10 people on Thursday.
People sing slogans while gathering on a street in Shanghai to protest on Nov. 27, 2022. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)
Those who perished in the fire were trapped in their apartments under strict zero-COVID lockdown measures.
After the news of the fire spread via social media, hundreds of angry Shanghai residents gathered at central Wulumuqi Road, which is named after Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang region.
The Epoch Times spoke with one of the protesters, who used the pseudonym Zhengyi Dong, who took to the streets with her boyfriend on Sunday.
At Wulumuqi Road, Dong said she saw some protesters holding blank pieces of paper, some got into scuffles with police, some were beaten, and some were taken into police buses.
Dong described the scene as “shocking.”
“I was very moved. The people have been suppressed for too long. It was not fear. I felt that my blood was boiling,” she said.
Police and people clash during a protest against China’s zero-COVID policy in Shanghai on Nov.27, 2022. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)
Dong said there were at least 100 police at the location, and they had blocked off the road and taken down the road sign.
Videos online show protesters chanting slogans such as “Down with the Chinese Communist Party” and “Remove Xi Jinping from office.”
Before Dong left the scene at around 8 pm, she saw at least three protesters arrested. Other protesters were shouting, “release them, release them,” but to no avail, she said.
There were other reports of protesters being arrested, with some being beaten, with one witness stating that he saw one female protestor being beaten by a dozen police, reported RFI.
Other protesters estimated several dozen people were arrested. The exact number of arrests cannot be confirmed.
BBC reported that one of its reporters was arrested when interviewing protesters. The reporter was released several hours later.
Dong’s parents live in Xinjiang, and her grandmother died during the pandemic.
She said she used to trust the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and thought that China would improve and that the police were there to protect society.
After she saw the protest scene, she said she was shocked, “the people’s police were actually taking down the road signs and beating the people!”
“This cannot solve the problem but exacerbate the issue. We will go to protest again,” Dong said.
Someone posted on social media a picture of the street sign Wulumuqi Road being taken down by police. Some suggested changing the road name to “Zero-COVID Road.”
Dong said that she is not easily swayed, adding that the protest had a legitimate reason—concern over the deadly fire in Urumqi.
“I don’t know about other people, but no one told me to go there; I went there out of my own will,” Dong said.
“When we heard the news, we were outraged. At the time, nothing but the fire was discussed on WeChat, Tik Tok, or other platforms. But these platforms keep deleting the posts.”
She said, “I have had three accounts on WeChat banned.”
Dong said she felt that her blood was boiling at the protest—there was no fear but only astonishment.
“I felt that I was witnessing history in the making. I had goosebumps,” she said.
Read more here...
marsh
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Cyber Monday Sales Hit Record $11.3B, Fueled By Deep Discounts
TUESDAY, NOV 29, 2022 - 04:45 PMThanks to deeper than expected discounts, Cyber Monday set new records yesterday - with online retailers pulling in $11.2 billion in sales, a 5.1% jump over 2021 when $10.7 billion of sales were recorded, according to figures from tracking firm Adobe Analytics.
The figure tops Black Friday, which saw $9.12 billion in sales - while Thanksgiving saw $5.29 billion in sales. There was roughly $9.55 billion in sales over the weekend on top of that. Altogether, "Cyber Week" is expected to reach $35.27 billion in online sales, up 4% over last year. The week accounts for 16.7% of all sales in November and December, according to TechCrunch.
Via AdobeAnd as we noted on Monday, the record sales were underpinned by record discounts - with electronics, toys and apparel leading the charge.
Discounts on electronics were as high as 25% (vs 8% in 2021), while toys had an average discount of 34%.
Followed by televisions, sporting goods, computers, furniture and appliances.
Top products included games, gaming consoles, Legos, Hatchimals, Disney Encanto, Pokémon cards, Bluey, Dyson products, strollers, Apple Watches, drones, and digital cameras, according to the report (via TechCrunch).
More via Techrunch:
Adobe expects $210 billion in sales for the two months, and so far in the season mobile has accounted for 44% of sales.
Salesforce separately released its own preliminary figures of $6 billion for Cyber Monday in the evening Monday. We'll update these as we get more complete results.
Notably, although inflation is definitely being felt in the U.S., Adobe said that these figures were based on more transactions overall. At the peak, people were spending $12.8 million per minute on Monday, and Adobe said that its digital price index, which tracks prices across 18 categories, said that prices have been nearly flat in recent months.
Deep discounts -- retailers perhaps anticipating needing to have something more to lure shoppers -- have played a big role, too, as have the sheer availability of goods after shortages of the years before.
"With oversupply and a softening consumer spending environment, retailers made the right call this season to drive demand through heavy discounting," according to Adobe Digital Insights lead analyst, Vivek Pandya. "It spurred online spending to levels that were higher than expected, and reinforced e-commerce as a major channel to drive volume and capture consumer interest."
As far as buying trends, buy-now-pay-later transactions (BNPL) were down slightly on Cbyer Monday vs Black Friday and the weekend. According to Adobe, people tend to use BNPL when the overall shopping cart size is higher.
marsh
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Canadian Fashion Firm Releases Ad Celebrating "Beauty" Of Assisted Suicide | ZeroHedge
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Canadian Fashion Firm Releases Ad Celebrating "Beauty" Of Assisted Suicide
TUESDAY, NOV 29, 2022 - 02:05 PMThe prominent Canadian fashion and home decor retailer Simons is coming under fire for glorifying suicide as a marketing ploy.
The company recently produced and released a three-minute film which celebrates the planned assisted suicide of Jennyfer Hatch. More recently, after the project was completed, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation confirmed that "The 37-year-old died on Oct. 23 and chose medical assistance in dying (MAID) after dealing with complications and chronic pain associated with her diagnosis of Ehlers Danlos syndrome, a group of inherited disorders that affect the connective tissue supporting many body parts." A snippet of the fuller ad can be viewed below...
View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1596866746442747904
.30 min
And now she's the subject of the short film and ad campaign "All is Beauty" - which the company claims is all about building a "human connection" and reflects its "values" (so... death/suicide). "Even now as I seek help to end my life, there is so much beauty," Hatch narrates in the video for the Canadian clothes retailer.
CEO Peter Simons went so far as to reference lessons learned and the hardships of the Covid-19 pandemic as inspiration for the commercial/short film:
"We really felt — after everything we've been through in the last two years and everyone's been through — maybe it would resonate more to do a project that's less commercially oriented and more focused on inspiration and values that we hold dear," said Simons.
However, given the subject matter and eerie scenes like the below, it seems like something more out of a Black Mirror episode...
Consider too how loose the Canadian government's "medical assistance in dying" (MAID) law is and how actively it is being promoted. A simple Google search of "Canada euthanasia law" returns info encouraging users to learn about their "rights" - which includes the following dystopian and disturbing aspect to the law...
"...the law no longer requires a person's natural death to be reasonably foreseeable to access medical assistance in dying."
But again, keep in mind that the "All is Beauty" ad film is ultimately all about a 'woke' corporation selling more of its product. As Rod Dreher of The American Conservative aptly points out:
This is so evil. They are making a sick woman's decision to end her life into an occasion of beauty, and created a short film glorifying suicide ... for the sake of selling fashion and home decor! And that's the truly creepy part about it: that they're using a glamorized suicide to encourage people to think sympathetically of their brand, so they'll buy clothes and furnishings there. (Note: an ad like this doesn't have to directly market the product; a Japanese luxury car brand in the early 2000s, I think it was, pioneered this kind of advertising, designed to associate a certain aesthetic vibe around a product or company.)
See the full 3-minute version of the Simons short film below:
3:09 min
Dreher further concludes in the following: "First Balenciaga, which its child sex chic, and now Simons, selling frocks and trousers by selling suicide. This is beyond Late Roman Empire stuff. A culture that glorifies death like this has lost its collective will to live. And it won't."
And one commenter on Simons' YouTube channel laments that "This woman was murdered and betrayed by every single person she knew who did not try to stop this. And now her death has been commodified and commercialized."
marsh
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Big-Tech & Bonds Sink As Global Yield Curve Inverts For First Time In Decades | ZeroHedge
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Big-Tech & Bonds Sink As Global Yield Curve Inverts For First Time In Decades
TUESDAY, NOV 29, 2022 - 01:00 PMA wave of deflationary impulses overnight from European inflation data combined with headlines suggesting China could be easing its COVID restrictions supported futures overnight but by the time the US cash markets opened, stocks were already leaking lower (not helped by weak housing data).
At around 1057ET, a headline hit that the Chinese city that houses the key iPhone production plant is set to loosen COVID restrictions - which would seem like good news - but instead it sent AAPL reeling and that dragged the entire market lower...
By the close, Small Caps managed gains. The Dow managed to get back to unch with some last minute magic, but Nasdaq the biggest loser...
The S&P traded around CTA momentum triggers:
- short-term 3879
- medium-term 3969 (most important)
- long-term 4064
Fed Chair Powell is due to speak tomorrow - his last public address before the FOMC meeting - which will be followed by Payrolls later in the week, and we suspect some anxiety on positioning is likely to have added to today's fragility.
Source: Bloomberg
Treasury yields ended higher on the day, with the long-end underperforming as AMZN hit the calendar with some major issuance prompting rate-locks to reverse the TSY gains overnight...
Source: Bloomberg
The 10Y yield spiked up from overnight lows to run stops at Friday's yield highs...
Source: Bloomberg
The dollar ended the day lower but followed a similar trajectory top yesterday with overnight weakness reversing into gains during the EU/US session...
Source: Bloomberg
Overnight saw a bid hit Bitcoin, lifting the crypto back above $16,500...
Source: Bloomberg
Oil prices ended the day higher - though faced significant intraday volatility amid China and OPEC headlines...
Gold managed gains on the day, despite closing well off the intraday highs...
Finally, for the firs time since at least 2000 (since Bloomberg's records began), the average yield on global sovereign debt maturing in 10 years or more has fallen below that of securities due in one-to-three years...
“Central bankers paralyzed by inflation fears will keep cash rates anchored in the restrictive zone for longer,” said Prashant Newnaha, a rates strategist at TD Securities Inc. in Singapore.
“This will be a key catalyst for ongoing curve flattening.”
The inversion of the yield curve is typically seen to herald a recession, as investors switch money to longer-term bonds due to pessimism over the economic outlook. Those fears are growing as policy makers around the world pledge further monetary tightening to tame rising consumer prices.
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Democrat-Run House Votes To Push Labor Deal Down Railroad Unions' Throats | ZeroHedge
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Unions Furious As Biden, Pelosi Push Bill To Avert Rail Strike
TUESDAY, NOV 29, 2022 - 11:40 AM
Under pressure from President Biden, Speaker Pelosi said that House lawmakers will take up legislation on Wednesday to stop a nationwide strike by railroad workers by imposing a proposed contract that members at four railroad unions had rejected, saying Congress needs to intervene to prevent devastating job losses.
“I don’t like going against the ability of unions to strike, but weighing the equities, we must avoid a strike. Jobs will be lost, even union jobs will be lost, water will not be safe, product will not be going to market,” she said.
Both sides in the negotiations had agreed to a cooling-off period until Dec. 9 with the sticking points involving work schedules and paid sick time.
As The Wall Street Journal reports, under the Railway Labor Act, Congress can make both sides accept an agreement that their members have voted down.
As you would expect some Democrats are hesitant to bite the hand that feeds them and tell labor unions what to do; and some union leaders have already expressed their ire at the intervention.
“We’ve made it clear we wanted this process to play out, and we even asked Congress not to intervene in this process because by doing that, it takes away any leverage we have with the industry,” said Michael Baldwin, president of the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen.
Michael Paul Lindsey, a locomotive engineer in Idaho and steering committee member for Railroad Workers United, told Insider it was a "blatant betrayal," but he wasn't surprised.
"I thought it was kind of laughable that anyone would think that either the Democrats or the Republicans actually cared. Bottom line, they care about money," he said.
Even so, "there was always that hope in the back of my mind that maybe someone would do something that was actually right for the American worker for once — instead of just what's right for corporate America."
Republicans have traditionally philosophically-opposed government intervention into private contractual obligations, and Senator Marco Rubio has vociferously defended the workers' rights:
“Just because Congress has the authority to impose a heavy-handed solution does not mean we should,” he said.
“It is wrong for the Biden administration, which has failed to fight for workers, to ask Congress to impose a deal the workers themselves have rejected.”
We will see tomorrow if Pelosi really does have the votes she claims to pass this bill.
marsh
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Rand Paul Calls Out Complete Lack Of Oversight On Ukraine Aid | ZeroHedge
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Rand Paul Calls Out Complete Lack Of Oversight On Ukraine Aid
TUESDAY, NOV 29, 2022 - 10:43 AMAuthored by Steve Watson via Summit News,
Senator Rand Paul reacted Monday to news that the Biden administration is struggling to account for some $20 billion in aid that was sent to Ukraine, noting that both political parties ignored his call for an inspector general to overlook it.
A report from Fox News, linked in a tweet by Paul, notes that according to there Washington Post, the Biden administration inspected only 10% of 22,000 weapons the U.S. has provided to Ukraine between February and November.
It also outlines how Republicans could push for audits to determine where all the military aid is going and how much of it is ending up in the wrong hand.
“Didn’t someone try to legislatively mandate a special inspector general to scrutinize Ukrainian spending?” Paul urged, adding “Oh, that’s right, it was my amendment and most Democrats AND Republicans opposed any semblance of oversight.”
Just a fortnight ago, following the throughly debunked “Russian missile attack” on a Polish border town, which turned out to be a Ukrainian missile that had stayed off course, Biden asked Congress to provide another $37.7 billion in emergency aid to Ukraine.
3:41 min
The United States has already pledged more than 52 billion euros in military, financial and humanitarian aid to Ukraine since the war began in February 2022 and October 3, way more than any other nation or nations combined.
7:48 min
marsh
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Tornado Outbreak Warning Across Deep South For Millions Of Americans | ZeroHedge
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Tornado Outbreak Warning Across Deep South For Millions Of Americans
TUESDAY, NOV 29, 2022 - 11:01 AMMillions of people across the Deep South reside in areas that could see extreme weather on Tuesday afternoon and evening.
Forecasters at the Storm Prediction Center issued a storm threat of "moderate" or level 4 out of 5 on the severity scale -- for parts of northeast Louisiana, much of Mississippi, and northwest Alabama. These areas could see the most severe storms that could produce "strong tornadoes, very large hail, and severe wind gusts," the weather agency warned.
"Multiple rounds of severe thunderstorms -- some capable of long-tracked tornadoes with EF3+ damage potential — will be possible this afternoon into tonight over parts of the lower Mississippi Valley region and Mid-South," National Weather Service wrote in the most recent weather update.
Axios quoted NWS stating at least 40 million people in the South are at risk today of severe storms. About five million people live in the "enhanced" or "moderate" area.
Bill Parker, the meteorologist in charge at the NWS office in Jackson, Mississippi, told NYTimes not to look at the big red circle on the map but understand the entire state of Mississippi is "pretty much under threat for severe weather today."
Parker said his top concern is "a large population of mobile homes in our state ... and when it comes to tornadoes, even weak tornadoes can do significant damage."
marsh
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Derailing Supply Chains | ZeroHedge
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Derailing Supply Chains
TUESDAY, NOV 29, 2022 - 07:55 AM
By Philip Marey, Senior US Strategist at Rabobank
Derailing supply chains
Yesterday, market sentiment was undermined by street protests against zero covid policy in China. Most European stock markets declined and the Euro Stoxx 50 lost 0.68%. Then in the US the S&P500 lost 1.54% after hawkish comments from Fed speakers added to the bad mood. The upward impact on US treasury yields remained modest however, while the EUR/USD had already peaked by noon CET.
Fed speakers yesterday confirmed that the terminal rate from the September dot plot is heading for an upward revision. New York Fed’s Williams said that “stronger demand for labor, stronger demand in the economy than I previously thought, and then somewhat higher underlying inflation, suggest a modestly higher path for policy relative to September. Not a massive change, but somewhat higher.” Richmond Fed’s Barkin said he favored slowing the pace of rate hikes in recognition of past aggressive moves and that the peak may need to be held for longer at potentially higher levels to dampen inflation. Fed Vice Chair Brainard said that the Fed must lean against the risk of inflation expectations rising above the 2% target and St. Louis Fed’s Bullard repeated his view that that the Fed needs to at least reach the bottom of the 5-7% range. He said that markets are underestimating the chances that policymakers will need to be more aggressive next year in raising interest rates to curb inflation and that there is still a heavy degree of expectations that inflation will go away naturally. Tomorrow, Fed Chair Powell will add his views in a speech and Q&A about the economic outlook and the labor market at the Brookings Institution.
The zero covid policies and protests in China have raised new supply chain concerns. Meanwhile, there is also a threat of a supply chain disruption in the US. Yesterday, Congress returned to work for the lame duck session. One of the priorities is to fund the federal government before a December 16 deadline, otherwise a partial government shutdown may be necessary.
However, a major distraction has presented itself already. While supply chain bottlenecks have eased in the United States, railway union workers are threatening with a strike again, this time in December. In the summer, the White House appointed a mediation panel that helped broker a five year agreement that offers railway workers a 24% increase in wages from 2020 through 2024 and one additional paid day off. However, 4 out of 12 unions have rejected the deal. In contrast, the other 8 have ratified it. Both sides have agreed to a cooling off period until December 9. The impact of a railway strike on the economy could be substantial. About 40% of long distance cargo in the US takes place by railroad. This includes feedstock, coal, lumber, construction material and automotive parts. What’s more, even a short strike could have long term repercussions in the supply chain.
However, Congress is likely to intervene before this happens. Under the Railway Labor Act, Congress can order negotiations to continue and delay the strike deadline for a certain period. Alternatively, Congress could also send the dispute to outside arbitrators. Ultimately, Congress can make both sides accept an agreement that their members have voted down. This is what President Biden is urging Congress to do. He said that the mediated agreement should not be modified because there is little time to reopen negotiations. Speaker Pelosi said the House of Representatives would vote this week on legislation to adopt the tentative agreement. However, the railroad companies often take precautionary measures ahead of the deadline, such as no longer accepting certain types of cargo days before the strike deadline.
This means that we could still see supply chain repercussions, even if a strike is averted.
Day ahead
Today, the German CPI for November will be published. The Bloomberg consensus expectation is that the inflation rate remained unchanged at 10.4% (year-on-year). The EU harmonized version of the German CPI is even expected to fall to 11.3% from 11.6%. Later today, we get US house prices (Case-Shiller) and US consumer confidence (Conference Board). Expectations are that US house prices have declined again month-on-month, by 1.20% in September, after a 1.32% decrease in August. House prices have been falling since July, as the housing market is one of the first casualties of the Fed’s late but steep hiking cycle. In year-on-year terms, house prices have been falling since April. This means that shelter inflation, an important component of core inflation, will eventually come down as well. Residential investment has already receded and this contributed to the technical recession in the first half of this year. So far, monetary policy is working, but the lags for consumer spending could be much larger. Consumer confidence, as measured by the Conference Board, has been falling back since inflation broke out. The expectation for today is a further decline, to 99.9 in November, from 102.5 in October.
However, the tight labor market and savings from the pandemic era are still supporting consumer spending. We expect it will take until the second half of 2023 for the US economy to fall into an NBER-approved recession, i.e. one that includes a substantial rise in unemployment.
Unfortunately, the Fed will have to make sure that inflation has been squeezed out of the economy, before it can loosen monetary policy again.
Therefore, we don’t expect rate cuts before 2024. As Powell explained in Jackson Hole, the Fed wants to slay the inflation dragon in one go, and not make Volcker’s mistake of prematurely cutting rates before inflation was under control.
marsh
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The "Oil Curse" And Splashy PR Announcements Of Oil Production Cuts | ZeroHedge
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The "Oil Curse" And Splashy PR Announcements Of Oil Production Cuts
TUESDAY, NOV 29, 2022 - 06:15 AM
Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
It's not just the price of oil that matters: how much disposable income consumers have left to buy more goods and services matters, too.
The Oil Curse (a.k.a. The Resource Curse) refers to the compelling ease of those blessed with an abundance of oil/resources to depend on that gift for the majority of state/national revenues. The risks and demands of developing a diverse, globally competitive economy don't seem worth the effort when the single-source wealth of oil offers such a low-risk bounty of revenues.
This dependence becomes a curse when the market value of the oil/resources plummets. Having come to depend on that seemingly inexhaustible source of massive revenues, even states that have set aside prudent reserves soon find their expenses cannot align down to diminished oil revenues without unbearable political/social pain.
The ideal solution to this problem is to jawbone oil prices higher by splashily announcing major cuts in oil production and then ignoring the proposed cuts to pump as much oil as possible to restore spending to politically viable levels.
The problem is every other oil producer is pursuing the same game plan and so production doesn't actually decline. As global demand continues sagging in a global recession, oil supply remains at high levels. Since oil and other commodities are priced on the margin, even modest misalignments of supply and demand can generate huge swings in price.
There is no real enforcement of heavily promoted production cuts. The pressure on every oil producer is to assure the world they're complying to cover the reality that they're not actually cutting production because they can't afford to lose any more revenues.
The price of oil appears to be reflecting the global recession that's baked into receding stimulus and liquidity and higher inflation. China's attempt to secure Zero Covid is also exerting downward pressure on oil demand. As consumers globally come to grips with layoffs, depleted savings and maxed-out credit cards, demand can be expected to drop further.
All those who treated themselves to high living (vacations, dining out, etc.) on credit will soon find the noose of interest payments tightening around their necks, and all goods and services priced on the margin may fall with weakening demand, decimating hours worked, employment and profits.
There's another twist to The Oil Curse story: now that the easy-to-get oil is gone, it now requires massive, permanent investments in future production to keep the oil flowing. Governments seeing their revenues decline will naturally slash investment to fund the politically essential welfare-graft that enables their grip on power.
Starved of essential investment, oil production inevitably declines, further reducing revenues of oil-dependent states. This feedback loop is unforgiving: less investment leads to less oil which leads to less revenues which further squeezes investment.
It's not just the price of oil that matters: how much disposable income consumers have left to buy more goods and services matters, too. Put another way: demand can fall below supply for longer than oil producers can remain solvent.
marsh
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Sweden Seeks To Revoke Permanent Residency Permits In Migrant Crackdown | ZeroHedge
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Sweden Seeks To Revoke Permanent Residency Permits In Migrant Crackdown
TUESDAY, NOV 29, 2022 - 03:30 AM
Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News,
Sweden’s newly elected center-right government is proposing to amend existing migration laws to change permanent residency given to migrants to temporary permits, local media reported on Friday.
The coalition agreement was signed by the Moderate party, the Christian Democrats, and the Liberals, and was approved by the Swedish Democrats, who are not a part of the government but offer a confidence and supply agreement. It pledged to abolish “the institution of permanent residence permits,” with plans plans to convert these to temporary, conditional passes.
The Tidö Agreement, a 60-page document outlining the agreed upon plans of the coalition government, included numerous pledges to tackle legal and illegal immigration into Sweden, including a requirement for “proposals to remove the system of permanent residence permits to be presented by 2024 at the latest.”
Additionally, the government vowed to “investigate whether to withdraw residence permits in several cases, including for those who no longer ‘meet the requirements for the permit.'”
Mikael Ribbenvik, the general director of the Migration Agency, told broadcaster SVT that “an investigation will look into under what circumstances existing permanent residence permits could be turned into temporary residence permits.”
“This would be the first time this has happened in Sweden. We haven’t had this before,” Ribbenvik added, explaining that once a permit is permanent, there are no further checks on the holder’s eligibility.
More than 300,000 migrants in Sweden currently hold permanent residence permits, and Ribbenvik told the Swedish broadcaster that he would be worried about the government’s plans if he was one of them.
“It says that they want to investigate whether they can convert permanent residence permits into temporary ones, so I would be worried about that,” he said.
New Migration Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard added further clarity to the plans over the weekend, explaining that anyone who wants to stay in Sweden indefinitely should apply for citizenship and not remain a holder of a residence permit.
“You should not be here forever on a permanent residence permit. A clear path to citizenship is needed,” Stenergard was reported as saying in Svenska Dagbladet.
“I envision that you will receive individual plans for how to achieve this. Learn the language, earn a living, and have knowledge of Swedish society so that you can fully become a Swedish citizen,” she added.
marsh
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US Recession: When, Not If | ZeroHedge
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US Recession: When, Not If
TUESDAY, NOV 29, 2022 - 04:20 AMBy Simon White, Bloomberg Markets Live reporter and commentator
A signal based on the manufacturing indices compiled by the regional Fed banks indicates a recession next year. However, positive cyclical equity data suggests one is not imminent, while stock indices are not yet fully pricing one in.
Next year is set to be dominated by when the US will go into a recession, thus the more ways this question can be answered, the better.
Several of the regional Fed banks produce manufacturing and business outlook surveys for their region. Their releases are followed by the market to help build a more timely picture of what is happening at a national level, but they suffer from being very volatile, so are less reliable on a month-to-month basis.
However, we can increase the information content if we look at the surveys together. I built a simple recession model based on the percentage of the regional Fed surveys in contraction. The signal triggers when 100% of the indices are in that state.
As we can see it does a pretty good job. It triggered for every recession going back to 1970, but it also gave two false positives, in the mid-1990s and 2015. It also suffers from triggering a little too late sometimes, although it did go off prior to the 1981 and 1990 recessions.
It triggered in October, so we will find out in the coming months if this is another correct signal. Still, this is only one signal, and the best way to gauge recession risk is by combining several different indicators that approach the question from different angles.
One such other reliable signal is the Philadelphia Fed State Diffusion Indicator.
It measures the net number of states whose coincident data are rising. After rebounding back to +68% in September, the recently-released October reading slumped to -4%. Every time it has hit that level, the US has subsequently gone into a recession.
Nevertheless, a recession is not imminent, based on the behavior of cyclical stocks (the “Druckenmiller Indicator”), along with other data, but one is looking very likely by the second half of next year.
It’s a case of when, not if, for a recession in 2023. Either way, though, equities have yet to fully price in this reality.
marsh
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Did European Inflation Just Peak? | ZeroHedge
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Did European Inflation Just Peak?
TUESDAY, NOV 29, 2022 - 05:50 AMOn the heels of a major tumble in German PPI last week...
Germany's headline CPI just fell 0.5% MoM (notably worse than the 0.2% decline expected) - its biggest monthly decline since Dec 2020, pulling the YoY CPI down from 10.4% to 10.0% with factors including energy costs being the driver of the drop in prices.
Source: Bloomberg
In fact, the 'deflationary' impulse is everywhere across Europe this morning with Spanish CPI rising less than expected (+6.6% YoY vs +7.1% YoY exp) as consumer prices fell 0.1% MoM (for the fourth straight month); all the regional German CPIs tumbled MoM (Hesse -0.4% MoM), Baden Wuerttemberg -0.2% MoM, Bavaria -0.3% MoM,Brandenburg -0.5% MoM, and Saxony -0.3% MoM); Italian PPI tumbled 4.3% MoM; and Belgium's CPI fell to 10.63% in the 12 months to November from 12.27% in October.
And while all of these may be positive signs for some (ECB tightening pressure may be relieved), it is doing nothing for European Industrial Confidence which tumbled more than expected to -2.0 - the lowest since Jan 2021...
Source: Bloomberg
Inflation data for the 19-nation euro zone are due tomorrow, with economists also estimating a slight moderation - the first in 18 months.
Goldman has downgraded their Euro area headline inflation forecast to 10.84%yoy, from 11.00%yoy previously, and marked down slightly their core inflation tracking estimate by 3bp to 4.98%yoy.
That reading will be crucial as ECB officials weigh a third straight 75 basis-point hike in borrowing costs or a smaller half-point move before a likely recession.
For now, the odds of a 75bps hike In December have tumbled notably.
However, contrary to some investors and even her own deputy, Luis de Guindos, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde pushed back on expectations the high watermark for price growth had been reached.
“We do not see the components or the direction that would lead me to believe that we’ve reached peak inflation and that it’s going to decline in short order,” Lagarde told the European Parliament.
She added that ECB economists still saw clear “upside” risks - financial jargon for the risk that inflation readings could come in higher than expected.
marsh
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Apple Turned Off Protest Communication Tool Right Before Anti-Lockdown Uprising In China | ZeroHedge
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Apple Turned Off Protest Communication Tool Right Before Anti-Lockdown Uprising In China
TUESDAY, NOV 29, 2022 - 08:40 AMAuthored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,
As it mulls kicking Elon Musk’s Twitter off the app store, it has now been revealed that Apple restricted the use of AirDrop in China, a move that harmed the organizational efforts of demonstrators protesting against the CCP’s lockdowns.
Over the past week, multiple major cities across China have seen massive protests against lockdowns, with the normally compliant Chinese exploding into rage in response to their government’s ‘zero COVID’ policy.
Much of the unrest blew up in response to an incident in Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi, where at least 10 people, some say up to 40, were killed during an apartment fire because lockdown rules stopped residents from fleeing the burning building.
Most of the city’s residents have been prevented from leaving their homes for over 100 days as a result of the draconian rules, which are still in place nearly three years after the pandemic began.
With Beijing now trying to contain what some are calling the most serious mass uprising since Tiananmen Square, Apple is apparently helping them to crush dissent.
Earlier this month, Apple restricted the use of AirDrop in China, which protesters had been using to evade censorship.
AirDrop allows local connections between devices, meaning it cannot be monitored or censored by local authorities.
However, Apple launched an update to the app in China that restricted usage to just 10 minutes, making it harder for protesters to communicate with other activists, as well as send messages nearby bystanders and tourists.
AirDrop was also being used by protesters in Hong Kong, who were brutally suppressed by the CCP during months of unrest in 2019.
The smartphone company chose to roll out the new “feature” in China only right as the country experienced its biggest demonstrations in decades, which some would suggest is more than just a coincidence.
“Apple has helped Beijing to suppress public dissent multiple times, mostly by complying with its requests to remove apps used by protestors for information and communication,” reports Reclaim the Net.
“Apple also helps the Chinese Communist Party prevent users from remaining private by banning VPNs in the region.”
The development coincides with Elon Musk revealing that Apple is threatening to remove Twitter from the app store entirely over its support for – God forbid – free speech.
4:32 min
marsh
On TB every waking moment
'Negative Efficacy' Should Have Stopped COVID Vaccine Recommendations In Their Tracks | ZeroHedge
ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
www.zerohedge.com
'Negative Efficacy' Should Have Stopped COVID Vaccine Recommendations In Their Tracks
TUESDAY, NOV 29, 2022 - 09:05 PM
Authored by Dr. Sean Lin and Mingjia Jacky Guan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Recently, various health agencies around the world have approved and are actively pushing for another COVID booster shot, meant to enhance the vaccine efficacy against a COVD-19 infection.
However, many studies have found that the boosters do not make a significant difference in protection, especially in terms of protection against reinfection. In fact, the latest data shows vaccine efficacy against the coronavirus tends to even drop into the negatives after just a few months.
What Does Negative Efficacy Mean?
It is a well known fact that COVID vaccine effectiveness wanes quickly as time goes on; this is confirmed by countless studies.
Although the official narrative for COVID-19 vaccines nowadays only emphasizes its efficacy on protection against ICU admission and death rates, it actually implies the indisputable fact that vaccines don’t protect, contrary to their design, against infection or even symptomatic infection, especially after the emergence of various Omicron variants.
Even the protection two shots offers against hospitalization drops to about 40 percent after less than a year. It’s actually looking worse for protection against severe symptoms, as efficacy rates seem to drop into the negatives about five months into full vaccination.
When a vaccine’s efficacy drops into the negatives, it means that vaccination actually elevates the risks of hospitalization and severe diseases rather than reducing the risks. In simple terms, it does more harm than good when the efficacy is negative.
During the time prior to the pandemic, any vaccine with an efficacy less than 50 percent would be regarded as a poor product. When a product shows negative efficacy, it should be banned. It seems that the pandemic isn’t only bad for our health, but also is tugging at our common sense.
COVID Vaccines’ Declining Usefulness
It has been around three years since the first COVID-19 case was discovered in Wuhan, China. Since then, more than 600 million cases of the virus have been recorded, translating into a little less than 1 in 10 people around the world already being infected with the virus. In many countries, “living with COVID” has become the norm, along with getting “fully vaccinated” and getting those booster shots.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), it is recommended that everyone 6 months and older should receive a full vaccination and everyone 5 years and older should receive a booster shot. Booster shots are recommended as they “are an important part of protecting yourself from getting seriously ill or dying from COVID-19” according to the CDC.
However, emerging data paints a different picture.
At its crux, the vaccines were developed with the earlier strains of the coronavirus, meaning developers primarily used the original Wuhan strain in their testing. The Delta strain that came along was particularly infamous as it was known to have a high death rate, but vaccines fared quite well against it. The results, however, went south as time went on and as the Omicron strain rolled out.
Trying to Outrun Nature
Making its debut in South Africa, the Omicron strain started to dominate the world by the beginning of 2022, which caused even more turmoil in terms of vaccine efficacy. The most shocking result is the extent it dragged down the vaccine’s efficacy against infection. Data shows that the vaccine used to be around 90 percent effective for weeks on end after vaccination.
After Omicron came along, infection prevention dropped to less than 50 percent after about a month after two shots and dived into the negatives four months later. It doesn’t seem to stop after that.
This clearly suggests that the COVID-19 vaccination campaigns should’ve been suspended as soon as the Omicron variant began to dominate over Delta.
In a study which analyzed COVID-19 cases from the beginning of this year in children that were previously infected, it was discovered that vaccine effectiveness wasn’t keeping up with pre-Omicron levels. The effects of a full vaccination against a second infection drops into the negatives within a few months, and it seems that the earlier one got the vaccination, the more likely it would lose its efficacy during the omicron waves.
The results from a September 2022 British Medical Journal study highlights again the fact that vaccine potency drops rapidly with time. It concluded that protection against severe symptoms drops well below half within a few weeks of administering the full two doses, or even after a third dose is administered. It also showed that in the immunocompromised, two doses never had an efficacy rate against hospitalization over 50 percent. Things do look a little better for three doses, but not by much.
Another study published data on the efficacy of the third dose relative to primary doses and found that the mean efficacy of three doses of the Moderna vaccine against the Omicron variants are, in fact, below 0.
It is interesting to note a logical assumption made by many, which is that the more you take the vaccine the better prepared you are against the virus, isn’t necessarily true.
Data published shows that neutralizing antibody count doesn’t necessarily correlate with the number of doses.
They found that people who took the fourth dose sometimes had higher, but mostly lower, antibody concentrations in the body compared with those who took the third dose.
Also, the hazard ratio calculated by researchers for the third and fourth vaccine doses provide us with mixed results. Sometimes, it seems like a good option to stick with the third dose, as the hazard ratio actually rises for taking the second booster compared with the first one.
One possible reason vaccine data is going downhill after Omicron appeared is that the new variant had a lot of changes in its spike protein composition.
This changes the way the virus enters the body and allows it to better “bypass” the security system set up by the old vaccines, which were developed from the very first SARS-CoV-2 Wuhan strain. One can understand it as if the variants have new toys to play with the old security guards.
Another potential mechanism that leads to the significant decline of vaccine efficacy is that repeated vaccination also damages people’s immunity via immune imprinting, a phenomenon in which an initial exposure to a virus–such as the original strain of SARS-CoV-2, by infection or vaccination–limits a person’s future immune response against variants.
Meanwhile, there are numerous underlying factors that would contribute to the disease’s progression from mild to severe, or even into fatal stages. Even if the vaccination groups during clinical trials were carefully chosen to have similar comorbid medical conditions as the control or unvaccinated group, there are still many other unknown factors that would dictate the outcome of the disease progression.
It is inconceivable and overtly overambitious that any pharmaceutical company would aim so high to design a vaccine which can protect against severe diseases from the onset of research, especially since the resulting vaccine can’t seem to keep up with preventing infection in the first place.
If a vaccine reaches negative efficacy, it means that people have higher chances to get infected than if you didn’t get the shot in the first place, meaning that not getting vaccinated might just reduce the chance of infection, unwanted symptoms, and severe disease. This is not just a vaccine failure or breakthrough infection issue, but a good time to halt COVID vaccines for good. Humans will never win in this cat-and-mouse game against nature.
Are Previous Infections Still Protective?
As time goes on, the likelihood of reinfection is quite high. Studies do show that in reinfected people the chances of death, hospitalization, and some form of sequela is much higher in those infected for the first time. It also seems like a logical conclusion for the CDC to recommend that everyone gets vaccinated.
However, the data we have is rather conflicting as the aforementioned study doesn’t show much of a difference between the unvaccinated, the half vaccinated, or the fully vaccinated. They all have just about the same values for cardiovascular, thrombotic, renal, or pulmonary sequelae post infection, or chances of getting a tough COVID-19 infection in the first place.
Data also shows that previously infected and unvaccinated children were better at preventing a second infection compared with children who were in the same age category but who were vaccinated. Generally speaking, vaccine induced immunity doesn’t seem to be quite as effective as that induced by a previous, natural infection.
What this essentially means is that the vaccines cannot keep up with the constantly emerging variants and that a waning efficacy was frankly inevitable. The only question left is, what is the driving force behind the Omicron variants, or SARS-CoV-2 variants on a broad scale? What accounts for variants emerging at the same time around the world?
Microevolution cannot explain everything.
Over the past 3 years, scientists have applied the theory of evolution to describe and explain the trajectory of SARS-CoV-2. Delta was the deadly variant and now Omicron is the road runner. In theory, the virus developed these strains to best adapt to the objective environment, yet scientists are still looking for more answers.
For example, when much of the world’s population was in different degrees of “lockdown” or restriction of movements, when international travel was severely impaired, how did the Alpha and Delta variants emerge and quickly spread widely, and even become dominant globally?
If the only factor that determines which variant to become dominant or not was its fitness, i.e., its transmissibility and replication efficiency, why were there not multiple variants with better fitness that emerged and all became dominant regionally, just like how divergent strains of flowers blossom at the same time in distinct locations? Why does it appear as if there is a coordinating force behind the virus such that one strain was able to uniformly retire the previous one?
In order to answer all these questions, I believe that there needs to be a more holistic evaluation of the current pandemic. At the same time, it’s important to note that viruses adapt to the vaccines, and not the other way around.
Read more here...
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Australian Senator Malcolm Roberts declares the World Economic Forum a terrorist organization 1:57 min
AUSTRALIAN SENATOR MALCOLM ROBERTS DECLARES THE WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM A TERRORIST ORGANIZATION
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Cardinal Zen and Riots in China with Jack Posobiec on Dr. Taylor Marshall Podcast 2:20 min
CARDINAL ZEN AND RIOTS IN CHINA WITH JACK POSOBIEC ON DR. TAYLOR MARSHALL PODCAST
marsh
On TB every waking moment
(Nuclear expert Sam Briton of the Biden Admin. is non-binary. His pronouns are "they/them." He is acused of stealing a woman's luggage.)
Stolen Luggage 1:17 min
Stolen Luggage 1:17 min
STOLEN LUGGAGE
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Congressional leaders vow to block rail strike 2:41 min
Reuters 11/29/2022
CONGRESSIONAL LEADERS VOW TO BLOCK RAIL STRIKE
The U.S. House of Representatives plans to vote Wednesday to block a potential a U.S. rail strike after President Joe Biden warned of the dire economic consequences of a rail disruption that could happen as early as Dec. 9.Reuters 11/29/2022
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Child Trafficking Camp’ Discovered in Arizona is Located on Clinton Foundation Donor property .29 min
CHILD TRAFFICKING CAMP’ DISCOVERED IN ARIZONA IS LOCATED ON CLINTON FOUNDATION DONOR PROPERTY
2018 ‘Child Trafficking Camp’ Discovered in Arizona is Located on Clinton Foundation Donor CEMEX Property
marsh
On TB every waking moment
(China)
A Brave Man - denounces CCP dictator, Xi Jinping: "Xi Jinping has made China such a mess!" .44 min
Insulting Xi Jinping is a jailable felony in China.
^^^^^
Protests in China are not rare. What *is* rare, are multiple protests over the same issue .33 min
^^^^
Protests against the communist party and Xi Jinping have spread throughout China 1:23 min
^^^^^
The Chinese take a move out of freedom convoy's playbook .21 min
A Brave Man - denounces CCP dictator, Xi Jinping: "Xi Jinping has made China such a mess!" .44 min
A BRAVE MAN - DENOUNCES CCP DICTATOR, XI JINPING: "XI JINPING HAS MADE CHINA SUCH A MESS!"
A Brave Man - denounces CCP dictator, Xi Jinping: "Xi Jinping has made China such a mess! Xi Jinping, I **** you, mother****er. **** your mother."Insulting Xi Jinping is a jailable felony in China.
^^^^^
Protests in China are not rare. What *is* rare, are multiple protests over the same issue .33 min
PROTESTS IN CHINA ARE NOT RARE. WHAT *IS* RARE, ARE MULTIPLE PROTESTS OVER THE SAME ISSUE
Protests in China are not rare. What *is* rare, are multiple protests over the same issue, at the same time, across the country. The protest below, apparently in central Beijing’s liangmaqiao, is astounding^^^^
Protests against the communist party and Xi Jinping have spread throughout China 1:23 min
PROTESTS AGAINST THE COMMUNIST PARTY AND XI JINPING HAVE SPREAD THROUGHOUT CHINA
We’re watching history in China right now. Protests against the communist party and Xi Jinping have spread to Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, Zhengzhou, Lanzhou, Lhasa, Hotan, Korla, Urumqi and more. No matter what happens, these people openly demanding freedom is historic!^^^^^
The Chinese take a move out of freedom convoy's playbook .21 min
THE CHINESE TAKE A MOVE OUT OF FREEDOM CONVOY'S PLAYBOOK
marsh
On TB every waking moment
YOU CAN STICK YOUR VACCINE PASSPORT UP YOUR ASS 2:45 min
YOU CAN STICK YOUR VACCINE PASSPORT UP YOUR ASS (song)
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Inflation Peaks? Perhaps…But for All the Wrong Reasons
The inflation spiral may abate, but only through a brutal unfolding recession.
stevecortes.substack.com
Inflation Peaks? Perhaps…But for All the Wrong Reasons
The inflation spiral may abate, but only through a brutal unfolding recession.
Steve Cortes
4 hr ago
For most of 2021 and into 2022, powerbrokers in Washington DC insisted that burgeoning inflation was “transitory.”
Of course, that narrative was a lie. Far from transitory, inflation embeds deeply in the American economy in a systemic fashion. Now, even corrupt entities such as the corporate media and Federal Reserve have finally recognized this undeniable reality.
So, what now lies ahead for inflation?
It is indeed possible, and perhaps likely, that inflation has now peaked. But…for all the wrong reasons.
First, even if the torrid pace of price appreciation slows a bit from the scorching trend of this past summer, a lower rate of inflationary ascent does not in any way mean that actual lower prices beckon. For comparison, even if the speed of the inflationary “rocket ship” slows a bit, the projectile still continues to climb skyward.
Second, any slowing of inflation only results from the material and marked downturn of the economy. Put simply: the inflation spiral may abate, but exclusively because of a brutal unfolding recession.
The economic punches to the gut may cease…but only to be replaced by harsh recessionary kicks to the head.
So, what evidence points to a possible slowing of the inflationary madness?
For starters, energy prices have fallen significantly from the super-spike highs of the summer. For example, January futures contracts on the benchmark West Texas Intermediate Crude Oil fell from $108/barrel in June to $78/barrel presently. This discount in Crude Oil has largely coincided with a serious economic slowing in China. For context, though, Crude Oil traded for only $48/barrel on the day Joe Biden took office. So, even with this recent correction, Oil is still up a stunning 62% in the last 22 months under Biden. See the chart:
Other energy prices tell a similar story. Gasoline sells for a national average of $3.54/gallon now. This price seems cheap compared to the recent record June highs at over $5/gallon, but still represents a huge increase over the prevailing $2.37/gallon when Biden took office.
Key food prices show similar trends. Agricultural prices are now well off the summer highs -- but still materially more expensive than just two years ago. Corn futures, for example, trade for $6.66/bushel here, a discount to the recent spike highs above $7.60/bushel, but still far elevated compared to the $4.09/bushel prices on Biden’s inauguration day. See the chart:
This recent concession in input prices flows largely from interest rate increases by the Federal Reserve Bank. After years of super lax, accommodative policy, the Fed finally grasps the gravity of the inflation crisis they themselves helped to create. Chairman Powell and other decision makers at the Fed finally find religion regarding inflation, after previously echoing the ridiculous Biden/Yellen “transitory” canard.
Now, the Fed takes aim with the zeal of converts. For example, St Louis Fed President James Bullard just sternly warned that financial markets are “underestimating the chances of higher rates.” Bullard also advised that the Fed has “a ways to go” on interest rate hikes, predicting that rates would stay elevated all next year and into 2024.
This combination of an aggressively tightening Fed with an economy that tips over into recession produces a rare interest rate scenario known as an inverted yield curve. In normal times, short-term interest rates are lower than longer term, with a gradual slope upward.
For example, here is a historically normal yield curve structure on US Treasury interest rates from 2013:
But the present 2022 yield curve looks very different indeed:
This inverted status historically has a near perfect record of predicting or coinciding with recessions, many of them deep and material. This chart shows the 2 year US Treasury vs. the 10 year US Treasury, considered the benchmark yield curve relationship by most traders. The chart extends back to 1976 and shows recession shaded in the vertical gray bars. Prior inversions A-D all correctly presaged significant economic contractions:
Because of this economic contraction, the outlook for the previously strong job market deteriorates intensely. For example, over 120,000 highly paid Tech workers have been laid off so far in 2022. Even worse, this trend of job cuts appears to be in the early stages, as a Price Waterhouse Coopers survey reveals that half of all companies expect headcount reductions in the coming months.
So, harsh economic reality slaps Washington DC policy makers in the face.
Biden’s inflationary policies provided the tipping point to burst the bubble of artificially low interest rates. Deficits suddenly matter again, with gusto. The Bond markets globally deliver a profound vote of no confidence for the US economy as presently managed, and significant job losses loom.
There is no easy exit from this mess, no painless way to fight out of this economic corner. A serious recession becomes a near-certainty and only that pain will start to expiate the fiscal sins of past decades.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Profit Tracker: Beef Packer Losses Largest since 2017
By GREG HENDERSON November 29, 2022The pendulum continues swinging toward cattle feeders as cash prices jumped $3 last week and left packers with their largest negative margins in nearly six years. Average cattle feeding margins were estimated at $165 per head the week ending Nov. 26, 2022, according to the Sterling Beef Profit Tracker.
Those average margins were up $41 per head from the previous week.
Beef packer margins were estimated at a $28 per head loss, the largest per head loss for packers since Jan. 2017, according to Sterling’s database. That compares with packer profits of $488 per head the same week a year ago.
Last week’s Choice beef cutout averaged $251.23 per cwt., down $1.86 from the previous week and down $18.81 per cwt. from a year ago.
Costs associated with finishing cattle have increased dramatically since April.
The cattle sold last week carried a total feed cost of $597 per head, which is 23% higher than the $465 feed costs for cattle sold the same week a year ago.
The Beef and Pork Profit Trackers are calculated by Sterling Marketing, Vale, Oregon.
Cattle marketed last week had a breakeven of $144.63 per cwt., while cattle placed on feed last week have a breakeven of $151.69 per cwt. Cattle placed last week are calculated to have a purchase price for 750-800 lb. feeder steers at $174.62 per cwt., and feed costs of $590 per head. The feeder steer price is 13% higher than last year.
The estimated total cost for finishing a steer last week was $2,024 per head, up 15% from last year’s estimate of $1,725 per head.
Cattle slaughter totaled an estimated 581,000 674,000 head, about 14,000 head more than the same week last year. Packing plant capacity utilization was estimated at 78.1% compared to 90.6% the previous week and 77.9% last year.
Farrow-to-finish hog producers found profits of $8 per head last week, up about $6 per head from the previous week, and up $52 per head compared to last year’s $44 per head losses. Lean carcass prices averaged $88.20 per cwt., up $0.47 per cwt. from the previous week and up $30.77 from last year (35%).
Pork packers saw losses of about $3 per head, or $10 per head less than the previous week and $53 lower than the same week a year ago. Hog slaughter was estimated at 2.223 million head, down 376,000 head from the previous week and down 31,000 head from last year.
Pork packer capacity utilization was estimated at 82.7% compared to 96.7% the previous week and 84.3% last year.
(Note: The Sterling Beef Profit Tracker calculates an average beef cutout value for the week in its estimates for feedyard and packer margins. Other prices in the weekly Profit Tracker also are calculated weekly averages. Feedyard margins are calculated on a cash basis only with no adjustment for risk management practices. The Beef and Pork Profit Trackers are intended only as a benchmark for the average cash costs of feeding cattle and hogs. Sterling Marketing is a private, independent beef and pork consulting firm not associated with any packing company or livestock feeding enterprise.)