Cave Man

The last time the wealth gap between rich and poor was this large, it was followed by a 64.8% drop in personal dividend income and a world war. It took 18 years to get back to 1929 dividend levels. $TLT $EDV $SPY youtube.com/shorts/DI0x6wy…

The UK energy crisis just got worse. Step 1) Go all in on renewables Step 2) Use gas to produce electricity when renewables don’t Step 3) Kill the gas industry: ban new gas exploration and tax producers 80%+ The result: UK industrial electricity prices are the highest in the world, triggering the fastest pace of deindustrialization in the developed world, even before the Iran war. Now, with just 2 days of gas storage left, the UK might become the first developed country to reach Net Zero. Zero industry = zero emissions.

Campbell's Soup $CPB falls to lowest price in nearly 23 years 📉📉

Qatar Gas CEO : We incurred a $20 billion loss at the facility we built for $26 billion two years ago.

Almost no return on $BABA 12 years post IPO

It's a good time to remember that the Empire State Building was built in 390 days using machinery and technological processes from nearly a 100 years ago.

The Indian rupee has been at its lowest in recorded history against the US dollar. This is a disaster for India, a country that needs to import most of its energy and industrial/consumer products.

Impact on real GDP growth of an oil price increase from $70 to $85: - Singapore: -1.5% - Taiwan: -1.2% - China: -0.1% China stockpiling oil at low price levels is now paying off.

I'm currently in Dubai and the banks are getting weird. Citi and Standard Chartered literally evacuated their offices this week. Told staff go home, work remote. HSBC closed their Qatar branches. Hedge funds are in "contingency mode." That's a polite way of saying they're bricking it. Analysts are saying customers could pull out $307 BILLION if this goes on another month. $307 billion. Let that number sit for a second. Bank withdrawals are "elevated" — that's the official word. A guy I know who works at Emirates NBD told me they've had more wire transfer requests in the last two weeks than in all of Q4 last year. Iranian accounts? Those are getting flagged and frozen quietly. No announcement. The UAE central bank just launched their biggest support package since COVID. That's not a good sign — that's a panic button. People are moving money to Singapore, Switzerland, anywhere that isn't in Iran's flight path. The dirham is pegged to the dollar so it looks stable. But that peg costs money to defend, and everyone's watching it.

Japan is now openly buying Russian oil with the yuan. The Trump administration tried to strong-arm Takaichi into a joint statement on the Strait of Hormuz, and Japan said no. Publicly, Officially, Finally. So even America’s so-called ‘closest ally’ is spitting on the petrodollar.....

The Victorian era was unfolding at the same time as the Wild West in the United States.

“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.” ―Alexis de Tocqueville

Don't look now, but the UK bond market is trading like an emerging market again GB2Y up 30bps just today alone and 80bps in the past 3 weeks 73bps above their overnight rate Imagine if rate hikes actually make a return

In 1796 Italy was not one country but a collection of kingdoms, republics, and smaller states

Wow. The UK 2-year gilt yield just surged by an eye-catching 0.40 percentage points after the Bank of England left rates unchanged and warned that it “stands ready to act” against inflation, which is now set to rise on the back of higher energy prices. That marks the biggest one-day jump since the Liz Truss mini-budget, the episode that came dangerously close to breaking the UK bond market, along with parts of the insurance and pension industry. Not coincidentally, that moment forms the opening of my book, The Great Rebalancing, where I argue that, over the longer term, interest rates will have to stay low while inflation remains structurally higher. The result is a world of persistently negative real interest rates, one that gradually pushes investors out of bonds and into scarce assets such as gold. Gold, meanwhile, is down 5% today as liquidity tightens and higher interest rates raise the opportunity cost of holding a non-yielding asset. But we have seen this pattern many times before. Once markets settle, investors tend to recognise the fundamental issue: bonds no longer provide what they once did, neither real return nor genuine portfolio protection. And that is one of the central forces behind the Great Rebalancing.

Fun

American Oil is Cheap Global oil is in the middle of its biggest supply shock in recorded history. And American crude is trading at its STEEPEST discount to Brent in 11 years.

One of the more interesting things in the housing market right now is the divergence between Builders and existing owners. Builders are now near 9 months of supply (heavy correction / near crash level) But existing owners are at only 4 months (somewhat normal). First time in 40 years this kind of divergence has taken place. My bet is that builders are signaling what will happen in re-sale market as cheap mortgages get phased out. Existing owners, meanwhile, are holding on for dear life and hoping the market bounces back for listing their house.

The definition of “progressive” was intentionally changed to remove its economic content.

They have change progressive to be race, gender, sexuality instead of economic progressive like the US's founding. Henry Carey & Lincoln spoke constantly about: labor vs capital, preventing wealth concentration, spreading productive assets, broad prosperity, economic independence

@Handre The gold standard caused the problems. The bankers wanted control of the economy in private hands with gold and caused the world economic crisis.