Spekulatius

Here is a translation of the controversial intelligence law from 2017 that was referenced in the recent DW feature posted above. https://www.chinalawtranslate.com/en/national-intelligence-law-of-the-p-r-c-2017/ Key provisions see, to be 7 and 11. Those clearly state is that every Chinese citizen or organization has to cooperate with the national intelligence agency, be it in China or abroad. Someone tell if I took crazy pills and TikTok or any other Chinese company would not sent information on US citizens to China if the Chinese intelligence service asks them to.

Russia running out of friends. Probably the next target for an invasion: https://www.wsj.com/video/series/shelby-holliday/kazakhstan-unease-toward-russia-grows-as-ukraine-war-drags-on/2A4C2EC4-481D-401E-89E8-D94D1A185565

Isn’t this supposed to be the other way around? https://www.wsj.com/articles/gop-lawmakers-lobby-oil-industry-to-denounce-tax-and-climate-bill-11659778202?mod=hp_lead_pos1

Good jobs reports are good for the economy , but not good for stocks and almost never have been, except in a deep recession. That’s nothing new.

Russian economy in bad shape:

Well you are just describing stagflation.

What people also forget is that treatment at the start was subpar. I recall in April when my wife had a wave of COVID-19 patience coming to dialysis and they blood clogged up the machines. Nobody knew what to do and only later the doctors found the way to deal with this using steroids and blood thinners. of this first wave, the mortality was pretty high. We are now in good shape because we have vaccines, anti virals, antibodies and the treatment protocols are well established. My take from this is that you don't want to be the amongst the first patients in a pandemic. From what I have seen - fairly little seems to be known about Monkey Pox> we are not even certain if asymptotic patients can transmit it. I probably have some immunity from it due to having the Pox vaccination (and so has my wife) but as long as we don't know we should be cautious and prepare for eventualities, because we do know that an epidemic has huge right tail risk.

SP Net Advantage has some limitations but is free with my Boston Library card. I mostly use tikr.com (paid version):

I think it has a good chance to rip through childcare facilities and kindergardens. From there it could go through homes.Tell small kids not to touch other kids. From there it goes to homes. Also promiscuity is not limited to gay people. Transmission through touch is never going to be as fast then through air and aerosols, so I think it’s going to be a slow burner. Hopefully we get a few million doses quickly, so we can vaccinate health care workers and teachers and other higher risk people that can be transmission vectors, are essential, or at a greater risk of becoming seriously sick.

Zeihan is incorrect in that Russia and Ukraine have fallen off the map. It seems that Russia exports more grain than last year for example and actually fills part of the gap from lack of exports from Ukraine. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-18/russia-s-wheat-exports-are-off-to-flying-start-amid-bumper-crop Ukraine is back online too, but I think their exports will be significantly reduced , but not zero either like Zeihan claims.

Nobody really seems to have any idea. The volume is pretty small throughout the surge . Maybe the ticker symbol being identical with the HK currency (HKD) has something to do with it.

As Spock would say - fascinating: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mystery-meme-stock-no-one-162000061.html

Same here. Small add only though.

The visit was planned for quite some time, initially planned in April and delayed because Pelosi got COVID-19. So, the Chinese knew about this for many many month (probably February). They didn't need to make it a big deal, they choose to.

@Viking as I said before, this was an unforced error by China, which tried to intimidate and failed. I also came to the conclusion that Xi Jinping is tremendously overrated - he is a really poor leader for China. Now it seems that China is stuck with him for likely for a long time, the downside of an autocratic regime. China is un-investible for me. Yes, you can try to make some quick buck here and there, playing some setups but to put money long term there seems irresponsible. Investing in Apple right now isn't a whole lot better, they really need to diversify their manufacturing base away from China as quickly as possible, imo. I do respect that others have a different view.

You can make Diesel out of sweet light crude, if you have to, it’s just not economical. Heavy sour crude is way cheaper than sweet crude so it makes sense to import heavy crude and export sweet crude. But this is en economical consideration and not an energy security problem.

Actually, the USA does not need the Saudis at all. The US is energy Independent. This is different than in the 70‘s when the US needed the Saudis oil. The Saudis need the US more so than the other way around, mostly to assure safe passage of the oil and trade. The Saudis are a huge exporter of oil producers and importer of pretty much everything else. The US deals with them as a frenemy to ensure stability (around is Israel) but also for the benefit of allies like Europe and Japan.

I don't think it's as simple than that. When Den Xiaping started to change things after the Mao era, there as a genuine hope that China would become a valuable in terms of trade (which did happen) but also over time reform into a more open society that if not exactly westers would adopt some western values. The latter just did not happen. There was Tianamen , but even after this setback, I don' think all hopes were lost. Changes rarely go in strait line. With Xi Jinping however, we are not looking into China that goes it own way, they are also now keen to export their own totalitarian approach into the rest of the world. That part was news to me. I also thought that the communist party in China isn't really communist any more. I was wrong about this after view this DW documentary. Xi Is a neo Maoist (he actually went through the Mao re-education) and now tries to Mao approach but with an more open economy, which is all but a tool to make his ideology work. The problem with the Maoist approach was that it forced China almost back into the stone age and hence China lost 30+ years where they could have made their economy better. Xi knows better and uses the economic power to try Mao 2.0 and even more has a neo imperialist (belt and road fits nicely in that framework) edge to export the happiness to the rest of the world whether they like it or not. So yes, sooner or later, this will have to come

The threats were a dump move by Xi Jinping, because now he is in Zugzwang (german chess expression). If he does nothing, he "loses face" as they say in China (big deal for a leader in China), but every move is a bad one... Again, totally unnecessary and unforced error in practical terms, but not in Xi's ideology framework of course.

Schools and childcare might be the primary transmission vector. toddlers and small kids like to touch. From there it gets to the parents and pretty much everywhere else. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-29/as-monkeypox-spreads-kids-can-get-monkeypox-too Evolutionary pressure likely makes monkeypox more infective if we get enough cases. I don't think this is something to joke about - might be coming soon to your school and community. It won't be limited to gay communities.

This appears to be confirmed by the WSJ: https://www.wsj.com/articles/nancy-pelosi-begins-asian-tour-in-singapore-as-china-again-warns-against-visiting-taiwan-11659358264?mod=hp_lead_pos1 After Xi threads, Biden had no choice but to sent here there. If the US starts to respond to threads and does cave and not let US officials travel to other countries then we basically cease to be a superpower and mighty as well invite the Chinese to take the Island. Again another one of Xi Jinping's unforced errors, imo. Ball is in his court.

Yep, I think that’s the answer for the consensus. Thanks for posting.

How do you know what the market expectation for interest rate rises is at this point? Is this embedded in some future curve or the interest rate difference between several durations? I don’t think the prospect of a total 1.5% raise in the next three meetings is all that bullish.

I don’t think the Fed looks that much at the stock market these days. It’s largely irrelevant at the levels we are (far from crisis level). The bond market and exchange rate movements are probably are more in the focus. Even the latter have not shown any issues. Neither of the above or the Labor market prevents the Fed from rising rates further. What might give the Fed pause is risk spreads blowing out or unemployment going up significantly. We have not seen much of an issue with either one.

Parking this here, because it appears to be an excellent documentary about Xi Jinping - A man with a plan: Edit - the plan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Document_Number_Nine