The latest Bloomberg Trade Tracker reveals an ominous outlook for world trade due to soaring interest rates, the war in Ukraine, a slowdown in the US economy, and zero Covid in China. A shortage of containers has entirely reversed into a glut as crashing shipping rates and canceled sails gain momentum during what is supposed to be the busiest shipping period of the year. 

“The world’s two biggest economies are feeling glum about the export outlook, with both the US and China gauges in contraction in October and the American one in “below-normal” range on the Tracker,” according to Bloomberg. 

Earlier this week, we explained that economic storm clouds are gathering worldwide as some of the largest shipping companies warn about decelerating global trade. US shipper FedEx and Danish shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S have been vocal about emerging signs of a global slowdown.

“Global trade is moving backwards this year,” Maersk’s chief executive officer Soren Skou told Bloomberg Television at the start of November. 

FedEx CFO Michael Lenz told an audience Tuesday at the Robert W Baird Global Industrial Conference earlier this week that his company parked planes cut costs in response to weak demand for package delivery. 

The Covid boom for goods has evaporated. Consumers have switched from buying computers and television to spending whatever money they have left on experiences. 

We predict in May that an inventory glut, i.e., the reverse bullwhip effect, would cool the booming freight market. It’s now peak shipping season — retailers have already canceled overseas orders as freight companies reduce shipping capacity ahead of Black Friday and Christmas. 

Trans-Pacific shipping rates are cratering. 

Slumping global demand and faltering world trade has led to another problem: a massive container glut at ports. 

“There is just not enough depot space to accommodate all the containers. With the further release of container inventory into the market (e.g., from the disposal of leasing fleets), there will be added pressure on depots in the coming months. 

“This will be a key challenge for some and a competitive advantage for others in the business, especially in China because of the empty container repositioning there,” Christian Roeloffs, cofounder and CEO of Container xChange, said in an industry update this week. 

Italian container depot owner Sogese chief executive Andrea Monti told Container xChange:

“Whatever was coming in and out of, for instance, our Milan depot is quite stuck. And the container volume at the depots is increasing to an extent that we are returning some requests for depot service agreements. We are in a situation where we are not able to accept new clients for some locations.”

Monti told Container xChange that peak shipping season “technically did not happen this year” because of the global slowdown, as many retailers are left holding high inventory levels. 

Johannes Schlingmeier, cofounder and CEO of Container xChange, said:

“There is enough inventory with retailers. Once these inventories exhaust in North America and Europe, companies will order again, and demand for shipping capacity will pop back up. This won’t go back to max pandemic levels but certainly be back to the long-term average upward trend. What has happened now is that the cargo is “on time” again and hence you’ll see a slowdown in new ordering as companies adjust to this more efficient turnaround times in ocean freight delivery.

“For container owners, this could potentially mean a rise in container storage fee by depots as more containers pile up to disincentivize longer staying containers at the depots.”

The rise in canceled sailings was reported by maritime research company Drewry, indicated between late November and early December, 14% of sailings have been canceled on the world’s top shipping lanes. 

Container prices on the Los Angeles to Shanghai line and JP Morgan’s consolidated global manufacturing PMIs have declined since late 2021. 

This year’s monetary tightenings by global central banks take about 9-12 months to filter through the real economy, which means world trade will slow even more in the quarters ahead. The latest evidence of trouble ahead if a glut of containers at ports. 

A highly-anticipated Friday night update of voting results from Arizona’s Maricopa County defied GOP boosters’ predictions by resulting in net losses for Republican candidates. Nevada’s evening releases likewise brought bad news for the GOP. 

The Arizona update prompted Associated Press and other major outlets to declare that Democratic incumbent Senator Mark Kelly has clinched re-election. With two Senate seats still in play in Nevada and Georgia, Democrats are within one victory of renewing control of the upper chamber for another two years. 

The odds of Democrats winning the Nevada Senate race went up on Friday night, as new results, including a batch from Reno’s Washoe County, trimmed Republican Adam Laxalt’s lead to just 821 votes over incumbent Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto.

An estimated 94% of Nevada’s results are in. According to the Nevada Independent‘s Jon Ralston, between 23,000 and 25,000 of the remaining 61,795 votes will come from Las Vegas’s Clark County, where Laxalt has thus far trailed 52% to 45%.

.@RalstonReports breaks down what to expect next in the Nevada Senate race. pic.twitter.com/kykjf9K8Pa

— 11th Hour (@11thHour) November 12, 2022

The Arizona governor’s race is still considered too close to call. In the lead-up to Friday night’s Maricopa update, Republican gubernatorial hopeful Kari Lake assured followers that “our votes are about to start.” 

Arizona & America:

Rest assured that I have the brightest & best attorneys in the Nation, right here on the ground in Arizona.

Every ballot has eyes on it.

GOP Ballots (Election Day) ballots start dropping tonight.

Keep your Champagne cold, our votes are about to start.

— Kari Lake (@KariLake) November 12, 2022

When the numbers hit, however, they boosted Democrat Katie Hobbs’ lead to 31,097 votes. With Democrats having hoped that the latest result would merely not hurt Hobbs too much, even MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki looked genuinely surprised to see the numbers actually helped her.  

The latest batch of votes from Maricopa County — home to Phoenix — was reportedly composed primarily of “early vote drop-offs” — early-voting ballots that voters completed and then brought to a polling station on Election Day rather than mailing them in. 

“When people are told to drop off their early ballot on Election Day, those can’t be counted that night. You can’t just run them through a machine. They have to be signature checked, scanned first, then processed by a bipartisan board before they can be counted,” former Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell told Fox News.  

The governor’s race is not over, though — there’s a chance Lake’s predicted votes for her are still out there. 

Phoenix ABC15 data/political analyst Garrett Archer, a former elections analyst for the Arizona secretary of state, cautioned Democrats against premature celebration, tweeting that there remain “some very, very friendly batches coming for [the Republican] slate in Maricopa.” 

Lake is “very much in this,” he added. About 275,000 ballots remain to be counted in Maricopa, out of about 406,000 statewide.  

Not that I want to rain on anyone’s party. But a reminder that based on the affidavit transmission party data we still have some very, very friendly batches coming for R slate in Maricopa. Almost certainly not friendly enough for Masters.
Lake and Hamadeh are very much in this.

— The AZ – abc15 – Data Guru (@Garrett_Archer) November 12, 2022

While Lake’s Twitter account had been a steady stream of victory-guarantees all week, her only Friday evening tweet after the latest update was a Veterans Day message.   

There was some good news for Republicans on Friday: Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo was declared the winner of the Nevada governor race, dislodging Democratic incumbent Steve Sisolak. With 94% of the vote counted, Lombardo leads 49.2% to 47.0%. 

Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

The European Union will need up to $462 billion (450 billion euros) in investment just to keep the current level of its nuclear power generation capacity, the EU Commissioner for Energy, Kadri Simson, said at a nuclear energy forum this week.

Nuclear power will have an important role to play in the EU’s climate targets of low-carbon electricity generation, Simson said at the European Nuclear Energy Forum in Prague.  

“The backbone of the future European carbon free power system will be predominantly renewables. But the reality is that these renewables will need to be complemented with a stable baseload electricity production. This is why nuclear energy is not just a safety and security concern, but also a real solution,” she added.

This year, a year when surging energy prices have highlighted the importance of energy security, the EU is particularly focused on its nuclear power availability.

According to the EU modeling, nuclear power generation will account for around 15%-16% of the EU’s power output in 2030 and 2050, Simson said.

The EU needs a stable generation capacity, at the level of just over 100 GW, in the coming decades. Yet, a lot of investment will be needed to keep that generation capacity in the future.

“Our analysis shows that without immediate investment, around 90% of existing reactors would be shut down around the time when we need them most – in 2030,” Simson noted.

The EU will need between $360 billion (350 billion euros) and $462 billion (450 billion euros) of investment just to maintain the current generation capacity, and another up to $51.3 billion (50 billion euros) in the long-term operation of existing reactors, according to the EU commissioner.

New technology, such as Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), could be the solution to integrate the energy system and decarbonize the sectors that pose the biggest challenge, said Simson, adding that the EU aims to have the first European SMRs go live in the early 2030s.

Update (0915ET): 

A post in FTX’s Telegram channel called the unauthorized transactions a “hack,” according to WSJ. 

NEW: FTX said in a statement in its official Telegram channel that it had been hacked, instructing users to delete all FTX apps and don’t access the company’s website

— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) November 12, 2022

Tom Robinson, the co-founder of blockchain analysis company Ellipticm, said at least $473 million in crypto appeared to be taken from FTX. He said the tokens were converted to ether. 

***

Another day, another plot twist in the FTX bankruptcy saga. 

FTX — which was clearly insolvent after the biggest fraud in crypto history — filed for bankruptcy on Friday. The official Twitter account of FTX retweeted Ryne Miller, the company’s US general counsel, who warned late Friday: 

“Investigating abnormalities with wallet movements related to consolidation of ftx balances across exchanges – unclear facts as other movements not clear. Will share more info as soon as we have it.” 

Investigating abnormalities with wallet movements related to consolidation of ftx balances across exchanges – unclear facts as other movements not clear. Will share more info as soon as we have it. @FTX_Official

— Ryne Miller (@_Ryne_Miller) November 12, 2022

Miller then tweeted:

“Following the Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings – FTX US and FTX [dot] com initiated precautionary steps to move all digital assets to cold storage. Process was expedited this evening – to mitigate damage upon observing unauthorized transactions.

Following the Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings – FTX US and FTX [dot] com initiated precautionary steps to move all digital assets to cold storage. Process was expedited this evening – to mitigate damage upon observing unauthorized transactions.

— Ryne Miller (@_Ryne_Miller) November 12, 2022

Then another twist emerged when an administrator on the Telegram support group for FTX stated: 

“FTX has been hacked . . . Don’t go on FTX site as it might download Trojans.”

“With all eyes on FTX, the late-night fund transfers on a Friday night raised questions about the company’s intent. While some blockchain investigators saw it as the start of the bankruptcy process, speculations around ill-intent or an external hack surfaced across the crypto ecosystem,” Cointelegraph explained. 

If you’re wondering WTF happened overnight…

• $600m left FTXs wallet
• FTX’s telegram said it was a hack
• The Site/App are infected
• Blackhat theft at ~450m
• FTX rescued ~200m
• soBTC on Solana has lost peg (-77%)
• and more.

Hacker or inside job? 🤔

— Edgy – The DeFi Edge 🗡️ (@thedefiedge) November 12, 2022

Fraud running rampant.

Millions of funds are currently flowing off of FTX. https://t.co/z9aZYRvCds

— Dylan LeClair 🟠 (@DylanLeClair_) November 12, 2022

SBF literally just hacked the remaining assets at FTX. Guarantee it’s him. He’s done this before (see my previous tweet).

The fact he has not been arrested already shows negligence of @DOJPH & @SECGov. Do your FREAKING job.

— Ben Armstrong (@Bitboy_Crypto) November 12, 2022

🚨MASSIVE REVELATION
“The hack seems to be internal” – Alameda security auditor live on the space

The ‘mango hack’ was funded by an FTX wallet. Auditor brought the issue up to FTX and were ghosted.

👇

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) November 12, 2022

JUST IN: SBF had a “backdoor” built into FTX’s accounting system, allowing him to alter the company’s financials without alerting executives and auditors – Reuters

— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) November 12, 2022

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried resigned yesterday and was replaced by John J. Ray, III – the lawyer who helped clean up Enron – as incoming CEO.

SBF’s crypto empire collapse resulted in Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index downgrading his net wealth from $15.6 billion on Nov. 4 to zero by Friday. 

Many on Twitter speculate SBF jumped on a private jet to Argentina. 

The plane CT thinks is transporting SBF is now over Argentina

(LVKEB is you want to follow on flightradar) pic.twitter.com/tdyiDtDHZ9

— Ivan on Tech 🇺🇦🥑 – Building Moralis Web3 (@IvanOnTech) November 12, 2022

Ok SBF is definitely on the run now. I need a bounty hunter to take me to him… it’s the only correct way the movie can end.

— Ben Armstrong (@Bitboy_Crypto) November 12, 2022

It remains unclear if the late-night fund transfers, totaling more than $600 million, according to CoinDesk, are part of the bankruptcy process or something more sinister, such as a hack. 

Reuters spoke with two people familiar with the matter who said upwards of $1 billion of customer funds have vanished from FTX. 

CoinDesk said, “Many FTX wallet holders are also reporting that they are seeing $0 balances in their FTX.com and FTX US wallets.”

Hmmm…

This tracks.#FTX #FTXbankruptcy #ftxwithdrawal #ftxhack pic.twitter.com/bjgl3XvZxk

— Jypto | Crypt3d Punk (@JyptoCrunky) November 12, 2022

Britain’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) on Friday said the nation’s economy contracted 0.2% in the July-September period, the first quarterly contraction in over a year.

Commenting on the GDP data, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said:

“I am under no illusion that there is a tough road ahead — one which will require extremely difficult decisions to restore confidence and economic stability”

The 0.2% contraction in the UK contrasts with the 0.2% expansion seen across the EU.

Samuel Tombs, chief UK economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said the UK economy had slipped to the back of the G7 pack again, “beset by more intense headwinds from fiscal and monetary policy, and substantial long-term supply-side damage from Covid and Brexit”.

Source: Bloomberg

Additionally, ONS said that GDP fell 0.6% between August and September (worse then expected), reportedly impacted in part by businesses closing for the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II.

Finance spokeswoman for the main opposition Labour party described the third-quarter GDP numbers as “extremely worrying”.

As well as a recession, Britain is facing a cost-of-living crisis with UK inflation at a four-decade high above 10 percent, screaming ‘stagflation‘ – the central bankers’ nemesis.

In the quarter, real household expenditure fell 0.5% and output in consumer-facing services fell 0.8%. There were also widespread declines across most manufacturing industries.

Sanjay Raja, economist at Deutsche Bank, said the GDP contraction in the third quarter was the result of “continued weakness in household and business confidence, higher inflation and higher interest rates in the economy”.

But it gets worse…

As Bloomberg reports, Britain’s real estate sector recorded its worst return in more than 13 years in the third quarter of 2022 after a sharp rise in borrowing costs weighed on the industry.

The MSCI UK Quarterly Property Index, which tracks retail, office, industrial and residential property, plunged by 4.3% in the three months through September.

That’s the worst performance since the second quarter of 2009, according to research published by MSCI.

“The evaporation of property’s yield premium — amid the recent deteriorating macroeconomic outlook and rising inflation and interest rates — weighed on performance,” Niel Harmse, a senior associate in MSCI’s global real estate research team, wrote in the report.

All of this suggests that UK’s already “miserable” Misery Index is set to soar higher – worse than at any time in the last 30 years…

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, we note that this ugly data data comes ahead of the Conservative government’s crucial budget announcement next week aimed at bringing much-needed economic and political stability to Britain.

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

The announcement of the Kherson Retreat may have signaled one of the gloomiest days of the Russian Federation since 1991.

Leaving the right bank of the Dnieper to set up a defense line on the left bank may spell out total military sense. General Armageddon himself, since his first day on the job, had hinted this might have been inevitable.

As it stands in the chessboard, Kherson is in the “wrong” side of the Dnieper. All residents of Kherson Oblast – 115,000 people in total – who wanted to be relocated to safer latitudes have been evacuated from the right bank.

General Armageddon knew that was inevitable for several reasons:

• no mobilization after the initial SMO plans hit the dust;

• destruction of strategic bridges across the Dnieper – complete with a three-month methodical Ukrainian pounding of bridges, ferries, pontoons and piers;

• no second bridgehead to the north of Kherson or to the west (towards Odessa or Nikolaev) to conduct an offensive.

And then, the most important reason:

• massive weaponization coupled with NATO de facto running the war translated into enormous Western superiority in reconnaissance, communications and command and control.

In the end, the Kherson Retreat may be a relatively minor tactical loss. Yet politically, it’s an unmitigated disaster, a devastating embarrassment.

Kherson is a Russian city. Russians have lost – even if temporarily – the capital of a brand new territory attached to the Federation. Russian public opinion will have tremendous problems absorbing the news.

The list of negatives is considerable.

Kiev forces secure their flank and may free up forces to go against Donbass. Weaponizing by the collective West gets a major boost. HIMARS can now potentially strike targets in Crimea.

The optics are horrendous.

Russia’s image across the Global South is severely tarnished; after all, this move amounts to abandoning Russian territory – while serial Ukrainian war crimes instantly disappear from the major “narrative”.

At a minimum, the Russians a long time ago should have reinforced their major strategic advantage bridgehead on the west side of the Dnieper so that it could hold – short of a widely forecasted Kakhovka Dam flood. And yet the Russians also ignored the dam bombing threat for months. That spells out terrible planning.

Now Russian forces will have to conquer Kherson all over again. And in parallel stabilize the frontlines; draw definitive borders; and then strive to “demilitarize” Ukrainian offensives for good, either via negotiation or carpet bombing.

It’s quite revealing that an array of NATO intel types, from analysts to retired Generals, are suspicious of General Armageddon’s move: they see it as an elaborate trap, or as a French military analyst put it, “a massive deception operation”. Classic Sun Tzu. That has been duly incorporated as the official Ukrainian narrative.

So, to quote Twin Peaks, that American pop culture subversive classic, “the owls are not what they seem”. If that’s the case, General Armageddon would be looking to severely overstretch Ukrainian  supply lines; seduce them into exposure; and then engage in a massive turkey shoot.

So it’s either Sun Tzu; or a deal is in the wings, coinciding with the G20 next week in Bali.

The art of the deal

Well, some sort of deal seems to have been struck between Jake Sullivan and Patrushev.

No one really knows the details, even those with access to flamboyant 5th Column informants in Kiev. But yes – the deal seems to include Kherson. Russia would keep Donbass but not advance towards Kharkov and Odessa. And NATO expansion would be definitely frozen. A minimalist deal.

That would explain why Patrushev was able to board a plane to Tehran simultaneous to the announcement of the Kherson Retreat, and take care, quite relaxed, of very important strategic partnership business with Ali Shamkhani, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.

The deal may have also been the inbuilt “secret” in Maria Zakharova’s announcement that “we’re ready for negotiations”.

The Russians will leave the Dnieper riverbank in a managed military retreat. That would not be possible without managed military-to-military negotiations.

These back channel negotiations have been going on for weeks. The messenger is Saudi Arabia. The US aim, in the short term, would be towards a sort of Minsk 3 accord – with Istanbul/Riyadh attached.

No one is paying the slightest attention to coke clown Zelensky. Sullivan went to Kiev to present a fait accompli – of sorts.

The Dnieper will be – in thesis – the settled and negotiated frontline.

Kiev would have to swallow a frozen line of contact in Zaporizhye, Donetsk and Lugansk – with Kiev receiving electricity from Zaporozhye, hence cease shelling its infrastructure.

The US would come up with a loan of $50 billion plus part of the confiscated – i.e. stolen – Russian assets to “rebuild” Ukraine. Kiev would receive modern air defense systems.

There’s no doubt Moscow will not go along with any of these provisions.

Note that all this coincides with the outcome of the US elections – where the Dems did not exactly lose.

Meanwhile Russia is accumulating more and more gains in the battle for Bakhmut.

There are no illusions whatsoever in Moscow that this crypto-Minsk 3 would be respected by the “non-agreement capable” Empire.

Jake Sullivan is a 45-year-old lawyer with zero strategic background and “experience” amounting to campaigning for Hillary Clinton. Patrushev can eat him for breakfast, lunch, dinner and late night snack – and vaguely “agree” to anything.

So why are the Americans desperate to offer a deal? Because they may be sensing the next Russian move with the arrival of General Winter should be capable of conclusively winning the war on Moscow’s terms. That would include slamming the Polish border shut via a long arrow move from Belarus downwards. With weaponizing supply lines cut, Kiev’s fate is sealed.

Deal or no deal, General Winter is coming to town – ready to entertain his guest of honor Sun Tzu with so many new dishes at their dinner table.

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The FBI should only have 14 days, not 66 years, to produce information from Seth Rich’s laptop computer, a lawyer argued in a new court filing.

After a U.S. judge ordered the FBI to produce the information, the bureau said that it should not be required to hand it over because of exemptions to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). And if the bureau still had to produce the information, government lawyers said it should have 66 years because it needs to review the information and redact certain information.

Ty Clevenger, the attorney representing Brian Huddleston, the Texas man who sued the FBI over the information, disagreed.

He told the judge in the new filing that the FBI failed to brief on the exemptions it is now claiming following the judge rejecting an attempt to shield the information because of privacy concerns for Rich’s relatives. That failure means the FBI cannot now rely on the exemptions, Clevenger said.

“Having failed to raise an issue or brief it in a motion for summary judgment, the movant may not then salvage the issue by raising it in a motion for reconsideration,” he said, citing previous court cases. “In other words, the movant does not get a Mulligan on reconsideration, which is exactly what the FBI seeks here.”

The bureau says that FOIA exemption 7(D)-3, which enables shielding identifying information of law enforcement personnel, and information provided by the personnel, enables it to keep withholding Rich’s laptop information from Huddleston.

“In short, the compact disc containing the images of Seth Rich’s personal computer were provided to the FBI by a local law enforcement agency under implied assurances of confidentiality, and thus the FBI properly withheld the compact disc in its entirety pursuant to Exemption 7(D)-3,” government lawyers told the court.

Another exemption, 7(E)-6, lets the agency keep the information secret, the lawyers said. That exemption enables the withholding of information that would reveal methods law enforcement uses in investigations.

Clevenger, though, said that neither exemption applies.

The first doesn’t because the FBI has never provided evidence that the source of the information was given assurance of confidentiality, he said. The second doesn’t because the bureau claims it never reviewed the laptop information.

“If this is true, then how could the FBI’s investigative or analytical techniques be compromised by revealing the contents of a laptop that it never investigated or analyzed?” Clevenger told the judge.

Read more here…

Believe it or not, California thinks it has a solution to the homelessness problem that can be solved with additional taxation! Go figure.

A new measure in Los Angeles, called Measure ULA, is set to generate $900 million in taxes that will then be used for housing subsidies and tenant protections. The tax is essentially a levy on all property sales of more than $5 million, according to Bloomberg.

This “mansion tax”, if it passes, will look to “speed new construction and deliver a way out of the city’s spiraling homelessness crisis”, according to Bloomberg. It could generate some $900 million per year to provide infrastructure like affordable homes and tools like counsel for tenants in eviction courts. 

Laura Raymond, director of the nonprofit Alliance for Community Transit–Los Angeles, told Bloomberg: “This would be the biggest investment in tenant protections in the history of LA.”

Yes, and it would be another reason on a long list of reasons for Californians to continue their exodus from the state to greener tax pastures like Florida and Texas. 

She continued: ““We want to make sure that once this has passed, the housing experts, community organizations, community leaders and people who’ve been doing this work for many years are at the forefront of implementation.”

Meanwhile critics of the bill say it could ultimately wind up causing costs for developers and, subsequently rents, to rise. The city had tried to issue a bond in 2016 to provide the same type of relief, but that measure was “lackluster” in its success, the report says. 

Bloomberg explains the new tax:

The current .45% transfer tax for all properties would jump to 4% for sales of more than $5 million, while transactions that top $10 million would garner a tax of 5.5%. It’s a special tax, meaning revenues don’t go into the city’s general fund but rather a dedicated purse. There’s a set-aside of 8% of revenues for an inspector general and oversight staff; the rest goes toward housing. The split for these funds is 70% for affordable housing (construction, subsidies and preservation) and 30% for homelessness prevention (various measures and tenant protections).

“We’re talking about very, very high-wealth individuals, but even more so large real estate corporations that honestly have not been paying their fair share, and have been making a killing off of this housing market as it is now,” Raymond continued. 

Affordable housing builders would be obvious beneficiaries from the tax, which will generate $600 million to $1.1 billion per year, bolstering subsidies for such developments.

Critics of the bill state the obvious: that it will disincentivize developers from building in Los Angeles. But “researchers” at UCLA are skeptical about the disincentives. 

Shane Phillips, housing initiative project manager for the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies and co-author on a series of studies focused on Measure ULA and transfer taxes, offered  up his best “modern monetary theory”-style explanation, telling Bloomberg: “That money has to come from somewhere. It’s not going to come from the buyer or renter. So the place it’s going to come from is the owner of the land from whom the developer buys the property.”

Raymond concluded: “In the past, we’ve had politicians get behind one solution. Right now we see criminalization of homelessness as being a major focus. That’s where they’ve poured a lot of their energy over the last couple of years, sweeping the streets. This is very different from that type of approach.”

You can read more about the details of the tax here. 

Authored by Jeff Carlson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Jan. 12, 2017, has proven to be an incredibly important date in American politics.

It was on this date that Igor Dancehnko’s soon-to-be FBI handler, Kevin Helson, sent an email regarding Danchenko with the heading: “Plan to convert into [confidential human source].” Danchenko, of course, was the primary source for former British spy Christopher Steele’s fictitious dossier on the 2016 Trump presidential campaign.

It was also on this same day that Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General Michael Horowitz announced the initiation of a sweeping review into actions taken by the DOJ and FBI in advance of the 2016 election. This probe by Horowitz—either by design or by accident—effectively tied up any outside probes into the FBI’s actions for two years.

Also, on the same date, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page was renewed for the first time.

Of particular note is the role of late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in the events leading up to that day. Without McCain’s silent endorsement and the efforts by Kramer, it’s unlikely the dossier could have been published as a prelude to the events of Jan. 12. Notably, the dossier’s publication coincided with a CNN article declaring that “Intel chiefs presented [candidate Donald] Trump with claims of Russian efforts to compromise him.”

Just seven days earlier, on Jan. 5, 2017, top intelligence officials, including then-FBI Director James Comey, then-CIA Director John Brennan, then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and then-Director of the National Security Agency (NSA) Michael Rogers had briefed outgoing President Barack Obama on the ICA report. Following the official meeting, Comey stayed behind to brief Obama on the dossier. It was at this meeting that Obama stated that he wanted his team to be “mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia” with the incoming Trump administration.

The next day, Comey and other officials including Clapper briefed President-elect Trump and his national security team on the Intelligence Community Assessment. During this portion of the meeting, the Steele dossier was mentioned in passing.

It was here that retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, the incoming national security adviser in the Trump administration, asked whether the FBI had dug into Steele’s sub-sources. Flynn’s probing questions may have precipitated his subsequent political demise at the hands of Comey.

Comey would stay behind after the initial meeting to brief Trump more fully on the dossier. Comey would later tell CNN’s Jake Tapper that he only briefed Trump on the “salacious” parts of the dossier because “that was the part that the leaders of the intelligence community agreed he needed to be told about.” News of the intelligence briefing to Trump was leaked hours later to the media.

Then on Jan. 12, The New York Times reported on then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s signing of new NSA Rules and the increased latitude of the NSA to share intercepted communications with the Intelligence Community.

This unprecedented new order significantly relaxed longstanding limits on the dissemination of information gathered by the NSA’s powerful surveillance operations, granting broad latitude to the Intelligence Community with regard to interagency sharing of information. The order had been officially signed into effect on Jan. 3, 2017, by Lynch. As we know with hindsight, leaks from the Intelligence Community would begin in earnest. And those leaks would plague the Trump administration for the next four years.

It was on the same day of Lynch’s signing of the new Executive Order that Schumer made his now infamous statement on NBC’s “Rachel Maddow Show,” where he said that if “you take on the Intelligence Community they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.” Without any trace of irony, Schumer then stated that without the Intelligence Community, the alleged Russian hacking of the 2016 presidential election would never have been discovered. In effect, Schumer was publicly warning the incoming Trump administration to stand down or the Intelligence Community would declare war on it.

Also on Jan. 12, Flynn’s Dec. 29, 2016, call with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak was the subject of an article published by The Washington Post. The article portrayed Flynn as undermining Obama’s Russian sanctions and raised the possibility that Flynn had violated the Logan Act, an obscure, 200-year-old law. Interestingly, it was then-Vice President Joe Biden who first suggested using the Logan Act against Flynn at the Jan. 5 White House meeting with Comey. In 2020, declassified transcripts of Flynn’s call with Kislyak revealed that Flynn never once talked about sanctions.

It was also on Jan. 12 that James H. Baker, the director of the Defense Department’s Office of Net Assessment (ONA), suddenly issued a series of charges against Adam Lovinger, a strategic affairs analyst. The timing of these charges is of great importance, as it was on this same day that Flynn, now heading the National Security Council for the Trump administration, officially invited Lovinger to leave the ONA and join the National Security Council as a senior director. Baker filed four separate charges against Lovinger.

The reason for the targeting of Lovinger appears evident. Lovinger had grown increasingly concerned over the ONA’s use of outside contractors—in particular, those of a prominent FBI source, Stefan Halper. In 2016, Lovinger wrote a series of emails to Baker, who had recently been appointed by Obama’s defense secretary. In October 2016, Lovinger wrote to Baker, identifying Halper as a particular source of contractual concern, writing of “the moral hazard associated with the contracting of Stefan Halper.” Lovinger’s lawyer, Sean Bigley, would later state that Halper was being used “to go out essentially and engage with foreign government officials. As a contractor, that’s totally illegal.”

Lovinger would continue to criticize the use of outside contractors. In a March 3, 2017, memo, Lovinger noted, “There has never been an external review of these contractors’ research products. … It is now clear that over several decades, the office transferred millions of dollars to inexperienced and unqualified contractors.” On May 1, 2017, Lovinger was notified that his top-secret clearance had been suspended. He was the second Trump official to lose his security clearance. The loss of a security clearance is a significant matter, as it’s a requirement for many senior positions. Lovinger was then directed to leave the National Security Council and return to the Pentagon immediately.

The target of Lovinger’s complaints, Halper, met with the FBI on Aug. 11 and 12, 2016, shortly after the FBI had formally opened their July 31, 2016, Crossfire Hurricane investigation into the Trump campaign. As it turns out, Halper just so happened to have direct knowledge of two of the three men considered subjects of Crossfire Hurricane—including Page, whom Halper had met with twice during the month of July. Halper would later fashion a meeting in London with Trump campaign advisor George Papadopoulos, the one person of the three that he didn’t already know. But Halper also fabricated information on another man who was not yet being looked at by the FBI—Flynn.

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Measures like GDP are commonly used to understand the overall wealth and size of the economy. However, as Visual Capitalist’s Nick Routley details below, while looking at economic output on an annual basis is useful, there are other metrics to consider when evaluating the wealth of a nation.

Household wealth statistics reveal which country’s citizens are accruing the highest level of money and assets worldwide.

This visual utilizes data from Credit Suisse’s annual Global Wealth Report to break down the latest estimates for household wealth by country.

Household Wealth, by Country

Here’s how the world’s $463 trillion in household wealth is distributed:

As the table above demonstrates, global household wealth is far from being distributed equally.

Country-Level Wealth Concentration

Much of global wealth is concentrated in the biggest economies, with households in China and the U.S. combining to make up half of all personal wealth in the world. This differs slightly from using GDP as a measure, where the U.S. and China make up 24% and 19% of the world economy in nominal terms, respectively.

Today, just 10 countries account for 75% of total household wealth.

One of the biggest changes in recent years is the rise of wealth in China. A decade ago, China’s citizens were estimated to hold just 9% of the world’s wealth. That figure has now more than doubled, while median wealth in the country has skyrocketed from $3,111 to $26,752 between 2000 and 2021.

A Regional Look at Household Wealth

From a regional standpoint, wealth is equally split three ways, between North America, Asia, and everywhere else.

In just one decade, Europe’s share of household wealth dropped by eight percentage points, which is due, in part, to the economic momentum of China.

Surprisingly, the regions of Africa, South America, Oceania, and the Middle East combine only for about 11% of the world’s total household wealth.