Let's look at two cities that have a great deal in common. Both were under British rule for extended periods. Both were, as recently as 1950, backward regions with little or no economic activity; one was a "barren island" whose 600,000 residents had been left stripped by four years of WW2 occupancy by Imperial Japan, while the other was part of a territory administered by Egypt for a period before being taken by Israel in 1967, part of a larger package with no real economy and only 120,000 residents.

Today, one of these cities remains (despite, not because of, being re-absorbed into China) an economic powerhouse, a major global banking center, a place with a fully modern technological society and a high standard of living. The other remains a Third World hell-hole, governed by maniacs, ruled by hatred.

These two cities, of course, are Hong Kong and Gaza.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/10/18/why-couldnt-gaza-be-another-hong-kong/

Townhall.com
@townhallcom
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GAETZ: "We are devaluing American money so rapidly that in America today, you can’t even bribe Democrat Senators with cash alone! You need to bring gold bars to get the job done, just so that the bribes hold value!"
10:23 PM · Sep 26, 2023

Exports rankings have been greatly influenced by political and economic changes between 1991 and 2021. For instance, the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 led to significant changes in the export profiles of its successor states. Additionally, the accession of new countries to the European Union has affected the rankings of some European nations.

Berkshire Hathaway purchased $123 million worth of shares in Occidental Petroleum. Even more interesting, over the past 18 months, Buffett has bought $13 billion worth of Occidental shares, bringing his total investment in the oil-producing giant to more than 25 percent.

Buffett has also been busy gobbling up shares of oil-producer Chevron. Berkshire Hathaway currently holds close to $26 billion in Chevron stock.

At his recent annual meeting, Buffett made it clear that he thinks oil production remains central to U.S. prosperity. “In the United States, we’re lucky to have the ability to produce the kind of oil we’ve got from shale,” he said. He also declared, “We do not think it’s un-American to be producing oil,” and vowed, “We will make rational decisions” in reference to fossil fuel investment.

Moreover, Buffett seems to be suspicious of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing, which seeks to divest in fossil fuel companies while promoting nebulous social justice causes, even when these efforts reduce returns for investors.

In fact, Buffett has referred to ESG as “asinine,” and believes it belies Berkshire Hathaway’s sole purpose: increasing returns for clients.

Charlie Kirk @charliekirk11
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BREAKING: JP Morgan just downgraded Target's stock, after its longest losing streak in 23 years citing "too many concerns rising’.

Happy Pride Month Target!!
Elon Musk @elonmusk
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Won’t be long before there are class-action lawsuits by shareholders against the company and board of directors for destruction of shareholder value
9:01 AM · Jun 2, 2023

Not Raising the Debt Limit Just Means Balancing the Budget
The debt limit is a law restricting how much the federal government may borrow. The current law says $34.4 trillion. If Congress refuses to change the law, it will remain at $34.4 trillion. Borrowing more than that is illegal. So the government will have to pay its debt obligations out of current revenue.

Could the federal government do that? Sure.

Current revenue is about eight times current interest payments. (In other words, debt service is about 13 percent of revenue.) Obviously, there’s enough money coming in to pay existing debt while retaining most government services. Of course, the feds would have to trim other parts of the budget. I’m sure readers have many suggestions on that score.

These facts are no secret. Moreover, they’re buttressed by experience: We have reached earlier debt limits on many occasions, but there has been no default. Mostly what happens is a few federal facilities close. (When that happened last time, the feds closed Rocky Mountain National Park. No problem: Colorado state government took over the job.)

Still, every time we approach a new debt limit, unscrupulous politicians and their media propagandists claim we’re at risk of default. This is so patently false that we can only conclude that what concerns them isn’t default but something else.

What is that “something else?” That people might learn they really don’t need all that exorbitant federal spending. That they might decide they like the budget being balanced.

Since all those “improvements,” airline fares have gone up 17.7 percent in just the last year alone. Given that travel had already reached pre-COVID levels by mid-2022, you can’t just blame that on increased demand either. //

Some people actually do want a budget flying experience without all the bells, whistles, and perks. If Biden gets his way with this latest executive order, mandating all sorts of new costs for airlines, that 17.7 percent jump in prices since 2022 will look small by comparison. Is that really what Americans want? Because there’s a difference between something that sounds good and something that produces a deluge of unintended consequences.

But while the market effects of Biden’s proposal are clearly seen, is there a more insidious explanation for his move than simply trying to protect consumers? What happens if airline travel becomes even more expensive? The answer is that demand will eventually drop, which means fewer people flying.

Ask yourself, given the left’s obsession with global warming, what would make them happier than for you and others to be stuck at home and not on an airplane? As far as the White House is concerned, hammering the airlines accomplishes two goals. It lets them pose as faux warriors for the little people, but more importantly to them, it crushes an industry that they despise.

New York’s pandemic-induced exodus is killing the state’s bottom line.

The Empire State’s pool of adjusted gross income shrank by nearly $16 billion in 2021 compared to just two years ago — representing a major loss in potential tax revenue compared to pre-COVID levels, according to newly released data from the Internal Revenue Service cited by the Wall Street Journal. //

Much of that has wound up in Florida, which has seen a $10 billion windfall in 2021 stemming from newly arrived New York transplants, according to the data.

According to data published by the United Nations Statistics Division, China accounted for 28 percent of global manufacturing output in 2018. That puts the country more than 10 percentage points ahead of the United States, which used to have the world’s largest manufacturing sector until China overtook it in 2010.

With total value added by the Chinese manufacturing sector amounting to almost $4 trillion in 2018, manufacturing accounted for nearly 30 percent of the country’s total economic output. The U.S. economy is much less reliant on manufacturing these days: in 2018, the manufacturing sector accounted for just 11 percent of GDP in the world’s largest economy.

More than a year before a shocking collapse that led to a near-crisis in the financial sector, Silicon Valley Bank was the subject of an investigation set in motion by the Federal Reserve in San Francisco, according to a new report.

Bloomberg is reporting today that the investigative team, made up of senior examiners for the Fed, was tasked with assessing the firm and its potential risks. What they found, it seems, should have been enough to get regulators involved long before the bank collapsed and sent shockwaves through the tech and financial sector – and long before taxpayer bailouts became an option.

According to Bloomberg, those investigators “fired off a series of formal warnings to the bank’s leaders, pressing them to fix serious weaknesses in operations and technology, according to people with knowledge of the matter.” //

In a twist, the San Francisco Fed’s deputy point person in charge of monitoring the bank until late 2021 received a new assignment afterward, becoming the regulator’s point person on Silvergate Capital Corp., according to people with knowledge of the situation. Silvergate also shut this month because of similar flaws in its deposit base and the positioning of its balance sheet. //

As the Democrats call for more regulation of the banking industry, this report highlights a familiar problem – namely, that the regulations and safeguards already in place don’t appear to be working.

As has been widely reported, over a nine-month span before its demise, SVB did not employ a chief risk officer. However, SVB made sure it had a chief diversity, equity, and inclusion officer on board at all times. Misplaced priorities, anyone?

When the rubber hit the road and the Fed’s decade-long money printing binge came to an end, banks like SBV, which didn’t see the economic writing on the wall because they were so concerned with showcasing their woke bona fides, were caught in a very perilous position.

To make a long story short, SBV had spent years taking cheap money from the Fed and investing poorly, mostly in long-term Treasury bonds. When the Fed hastily reversed course and started raising interest rates, short-term Treasury bonds began to pay a higher yield than long term Treasury bonds.

This is what economists call an inverted yield curve, and it was a huge flashing red sign that the economy is on unsound footing. Shockingly, even as this was happening, SVB and Signature just kept plugging along, business as usual.

Capitalism and free markets are messy. They work best when non-idiots are at the helm but manage to plug along no matter what. If the nation decides that the government must insure every penny deposited in a bank, then sure as the sun rises, two things will follow. Next, stockholders and creditors will be protected because it wouldn’t be “fair” otherwise. Next, the federal government will take a much more active role in managing banks bringing with it all that implies.

I imagine the Federal Reserve will find some way to rescue the depositors. I’m ambivalent about that – I suppose it will happen – but I have to ask them what part of ‘guaranteed up to $250,000’ didn’t you understand? //

A lot of folks are claiming that not making depositors whole will create a loss of faith in the system. From my point of view, the problem with our financial system is entirely too much faith. Bankers have mutated from the ultra-cautious figures of the 40s and 50s into casino hustlers. Staid, fiscally conservative local and regional banks have been absorbed by behemoth companies who insulate themselves from the consequences of their actions by being “to big to fail.”

The availability of government bailouts to depositors and investors has prevented anyone from learning the lessons of the past. With barely a decade separating us from the 2007 catastrophe, you’d think that someone would remember that when gambling with investors’ money. //

I will NOT support a taxpayer bailout of Silicon Valley Bank. pic.twitter.com/s3wAV26iNL

— Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) March 11, 2023

I hope Matt Gaetz gets support in the House and the Senate. We need to draw a line in the sand here, for the good of the financial system and the nation. If you are a bank and become insolvent, you will be shut down. If you have more than $250,000 in your insured account, you’ll get back the exact amount that is insured. Companies that fold, even if they are cute little tech companies with bazillions in venture capital backing, are just roadkill. We can’t afford to perpetually subsidize the lousy judgment and cavalier attitude that seems to infest the financial services and banking industries any longer.

Implementing net zero will depress the global economy more than the atmospheric warming that the campaign against carbon dioxide emissions is supposed to prevent, according to a comparison of research by recognized experts. In other words, abandoning efforts to eliminate the greenhouse gas emissions of fossil fuels likely would make virtually everybody richer.

The comparison is presented in a short 12-minute video titled “How human disruptions impact GDP” by Dr. Lars Schernikau, an energy economist, commodity trader, and author of The Unpopular Truth… about Electricity and the Future of Energy.

Dr. Schernikau reviews the cost of “human” disruptions such as from Covid or the Ukraine-Russia war with estimates of implementing net zero, which were calculated by consultants McKinsey & Company and Wood Mackenzie, and projections by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for atmospheric warming’s effect on GDP.

According to the data, the cost of implementing net zero would range from seven to 10 percent of GDP by 2050, while the cost of abandoning net zero would be but a fraction of that—0.5 to four percent of GDP from a temperature increase of 2.5 degrees Celsius by 2100. The difference is measured in many trillions of dollars. Moreover, the higher cost of net zero is compounded by being incurred 50 years earlier than the predicted effect of warming

Kaiser Sosei Ars Praefectus
19y
3,474
Subscriptor++
With the outbreak at the one-year mark, it is the longest bird flu outbreak on US record. And with 57 million birds dead across 47 states, it's also the deadliest, surpassing the previous record set in 2015 of 50.5 million birds in 21 states.

Sounds like a lot. Until you look up that there are 373 million egg laying hens in the US in 2022 or 15% had to be put down, yet egg prices are up roughly 50%. Why has a pound of butter gone from $2.99 about two years ago to $4.50? Like everything else, we are getting screwed because there's not a damn thing we can do about it.

apnews.com
Soaring egg prices prompt demands for price-gouging probe
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — With egg prices more than doubling in the past year, calls are coming for an investigation into possible price gouging. U.S. Sen. Jack Reed sent a letter Tuesday asking for the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether egg prices have been improperly manipulated by...
apnews.com

But even though roughly 43 million of the 58 million birds slaughtered over the past year to help control bird flu have been egg-laying chickens, the size of the total flock has only been down 5% to 6% at any one time from its normal size of about 320 million hens.
I'm fine using their numbers than my googling.

Everything’s bigger in Texas.

The state’s bean counters have recorded a historic $33 billion surplus in tax revenue this year — about the same amount as the combined annual budgets of Connecticut ($20B) Delaware ($5B) and Vermont ($8B). //

Texas’ unprecedented surplus also comes at a time when other huge states such as New York and California are staring down the barrel of $3B and $22B budgetary debts respectively.

Inflation, the curse of our pocketbooks and the Federal Reserve, has hit almost every good in the U.S. But the price of a beloved toy has managed to hover around $1 — for more than 50 years. //

While Hot Wheels has fully embraced the nostalgic adult demographic, the production of high-quality, $1 cars, remains at the heart of the company's mission, Wu said.

"We like to say that everyone's first car is a Hot Wheels," Wu said. "And as new parents get back into the brand for their kids, it can sometimes rekindle the joy they had for the brand as a child."

Today, more than 16 Hot Wheels cars are sold per second across the globe and more than 6 billion have been produced to date, the company said.

That so many of those billions have been sold to parents looking for an affordable toy for their child says a lot about the brand, said Pascal, the collector.

"You're gonna buy a Hot Wheel for what, $1.29 today, or whatever the average number is? It's pocket change," Pascal said. "One of the reasons why I think Mattel is so successful is, you know, there are 330 million Americans, probably every adult, every kid that you know, has played with the Hot Wheel at one time, because they're so affordable."

Compared to the world, I’m wealthy. Compared to my neighbors, I’m not. So what does it mean to steward what God has given me?

Amy Medina November 30, 2022 //

I am compelled to think on these things, and I gasp for air, wrestling in the exertion of a fish out of water. I certainly fail, and grace always catches me when I do. But it’s that same grace, so lavishly poured out on me, that compels me to stay uncomfortable, unnerved, unsettled. May the tension keep me from bowing to a counterfeit master (Matt 6:24). If the throb pressures me to analyze every dollar, so be it. If the ache reminds me that America will never be my home, even better. May the burden excavate my true treasure—imperishable, eternal—and there also may my heart be found.

A number of global banking giants have partnered with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York for a 12-week digital dollar pilot program. //

Ribald1
2 hours ago
Private industry has been doing this since the beginning of money. Ledger accounts actually predate money.
The problem here is not ledger accounts, but the government getting involved.
It's one thing for private individuals to destroy their wealth buying imaginary ledger balances (as is the case with crypto) the right to be an idiot is one of longstanding. Government forcing everyone to be an idiot always turns out poorly.

Clive Robinson • September 15, 2022 3:03 AM

@ Winter,

Re : Blockchain efficiency

“Blockchains are transparent, robust, and fast.”

No they are not.

To be transparent they need to be “public” and few people actually want every financial move they make being made naked and open to all.

Whilst they look like they are robust they are not as data structures, or systems. The only robustness they bring to the table over existing systems is by the public duplication. Which is problematical as who is going to pay for the infrastructure many times that of Googles current setup, just to implement one such? Remember you would need a minimum of four such systems[1] and all the high security communications to support it, which would make the NSA envious.

As for fast, the current systems due to the moronic “Proof of XXX” attached are so slow transactions are at best just a handful a second. Even without that “Proof of XXX” the number of global transactions at any one time numbers up in the tens of millions a second, something most do not realise.

But people do not appreciate the combined,

1. Gate Keeper Effect
2. Ripple across Effect.

This will create a significant time delay which has consequences in that high speed transactions can be done and compleated long before the blockchain gets updated, thus “High Frequency Fraud” will be a result. This will require “back-out” mechanisms that don’t exist because they destroy the blockchain security model.

Then of course any system with locked in time delay and capacity issues, is a “Sitting Duck” target for extortion by “Denial of Service”(DoS) attack.

To be honest I’m surprised there has been no real concerted effort to Ransom one of the crypto-coin blockchains by a DDoS…

As has been pointed out the idea of a global blockchain is a “Crypto-Anarchists” dream and every one elses very real nightmare.

Because like it or not, it will become not some kind of libertarian freedom, but a tool of near total oppression as it will have all the failings of hierarchical systems[2] that certain entities will lust after to control. We actually see this with blockchain gate keepers already.

[1] There is a problem with blockchains in that if someone gets more than 50% control they can “own it”. This means you need three at all times sharing effectively equitably. Add in the fact “at all times” need 100% availability, and no single system has 100% reliability means you need an absolut minimum of four, preferably more.

[2] Mankind has known many of the failings of single and hierarchical systems for as long as there has been any kind of social structure. War is just one obvious side effect, slavery or forced servitude yet another the list of hierarchical system failings is both long and grevious. For centuries at the very least people have sort out ways to robustly maintain the desirable effects of social cohesion, yet get rid of hierarchies, or atleast their many undesirable side effects, and so far the failure to do this is effectively 100%…