Financial Post (January 13)
“The peculiar clemency of Europe’s winter weather this year is proving a game changer for the region’s prevailing economic and investment trends. A halving in natural gas prices over the past month alone reflects one of the mildest winters on record in the region and takes significant sting out of the Russian gas shock that followed Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine last year.”
Tags: Clemency, Economic, Europe, Game changer, Halving, Invasion, Investment, Mildest, Natural gas, Prices, Russia, Weather, Winter, Winters
Gizmodo (January 12)
“Tesla and Twitter CEO Elon Musk has broken the world record for the person to lose the largest amount of personal wealth in history.” After losing an estimated $182 billion since November 2021, Musk has displaced the previous record “set in 2000 by Japanese tech investor Masayoshi Son.” Nevertheless, “Musk still remains the second-richest person in the world, falling right behind LVMH’s CEO Bernard Arnault.”
Tags: $182 billion, Arnault, CEO, History, Japan, Lose, LVMH, Musk, Personal wealth, Richest, Son, Tech investor, Tesla, Twitter, World record
Wall Street Journal (January 10)
“Based on the growth of the money supply, Japan clearly fails to qualify as ultra-loose. On the contrary, it has been ultra-tight for decades.” Based on the quantity theory of money and Milton Friedman’s insights, “that tightness put Japan right where anyone… would expect: with ultra-low inflation.” That’s right, “Japan’s ultra-low inflation rates have been the result of ultra-tight, not ‘ultra-loose,’ monetary policy. The Bank of Japan’s attraction to this fallacy has resulted in Japan’s lost decades.”
Tags: BOJ, Fallacy, Friedman, Growth, Japan, Lost decades, Monetary policy, Money supply, Rates, Ultra-loose, Ultra-low inflation, Ultra-tight
American Banker (January 10)
“When depositors began pulling money out of Silvergate Capital Corp. following the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, the California bank shored up its liquidity by tapping a quasi-government agency not typically known as a lender of last resort.” The $4.3 billion lifeline that “Silvergate got from the Home Loan Bank System shows one way in which the crypto industry has managed to find its way into the mainstream banking system.”
Tags: $4.3 billion, Bank, California, Cryptocurrency exchange, Depositors, FTX, Home Loan Bank System, Lender of last resort, Lifeline, Liquidity, Money, Silvergate Capital. Collapse
Institutional Investor (January 9)
“Amid market volatility in 2022, defensive stocks, most of which are dividend payers with stable earnings, had a good run. While they tend to underperform growth or cyclical stocks in bull markets, they are usually perceived as safer bets during recessionary periods. Dividend stocks gained 2 percent from January to October 2022, beating the market by more than 20 percent.”
Tags: 2022, Bull markets, Cyclical, Defensive, Dividend stocks, Growth, Market volatility, Recessionary, Safer, Stable earnings, Underperform
CNN (January 9)
“The events in Brasilia are the latest chapter in the ongoing divisions of a deeply polarized country.” Containing “echoes of January 6,” the Brazil’s insurrection springs from a similar political dynamic. “There is no way to sugarcoat what happened on Sunday – these attacks were the opening act of an attempted coup d’etat.”
Tags: Attacks, Attempted coup, Brasilia, Brazil, Echoes, Events, Insurrection, January 6, Ongoing divisions, Polarized, Political dynamic, Sugarcoat, U.S.
Oilprice.com (January 9)
“The last month has been a month of celebration in the European Union. Gas demand is down because of the unusually warm weather. As a result, prices are down, and the crisis, according to analysts, appears to be averted.” Nevertheless, “these prices are not going to go much lower for the very simple reason that LNG could never be as cheap as pipeline gas.”
Tags: Analysts, Averted, Celebration, Cheap, Crisis, Demand, Down, EU, Gas, LNG, Prices, Warm weather
New York Times (January 8)
“It is not just fusion. The advance of wind and solar and battery technology remains a near miracle. The possibilities of advanced geothermal and hydrogen are thrilling. Smaller, modular nuclear reactors could make new miracles possible…. Clean, abundant energy is the foundation on which a more equal, just and humane world can be built.”
Tags: Abundant, Advance, Advanced, Battery technology, Clean, Energy, Fusion, Geothermal, Hydrogen, Just, Miracles, Nuclear, Possible, Solar, Thrilling, Wind
Washington Post (January 6)
“The Republican Party’s troubles are severe” and it’s “having a nervous breakdown in full public view…. But it is not alone. In many countries around the world, populists are flailing.” They have emerged “as an opposition movement,” but the “shallowness of its policy proposals” is being exposed. “The world’s complicated problems will always allow for someone who proposes answers that are simple, seductive and wrong. But let us hope that 2023 will see populism exposed for the sham that it is.”
Tags: 2023, Exposed, Flailing, Nervous breakdown, Opposition movement, Populists, Republican Party, Seductive, Severe, Shallowness, Sham, Simple, Troubles, Wrong
Newsweek (January 4)
“For all its love of control, the Chinese leadership appears to have condemned its public to relive the uncertainty of early 2020, when Western capitals couldn’t grasp the spread of COVID. For those hoping to track the country’s first nationwide outbreak, it’s nothing short of a guessing game.”
Tags: 2020, Condemned, Control, Covid, Leadership, Nationwide, Outbreak, Public, Relive, Spread, Uncertainty
