Authored by Eric Utter via AmericanThinker.com,

Sausage multi-millionaire Pavel Antov, Russia’s “highest-earning elected politician,” was recently in India celebrating his 66th birthday when he reportedly fell to his death from a hotel window.

(I hate it when that happens.)

In totally unrelated news, Antov had recently criticized Putin’s actions in Ukraine, characterizing air strikes on Kyiv as “terror.”

Oddly, Antov perished shortly thereafter and just two days after a close friend of his unexpectedly died “from a heart attack.”

Antov had highlighted a Russian missile strike, saying:

A girl has been pulled out from under the rubble, the girl’s father appears to have died. The mother is trying to be pulled out with a crane – she is trapped under a slab. To tell the truth, it is extremely difficult to call this anything other than terror.

This led Antov to come under intense pressure… after which he withdrew the comment and issued a sniveling apology, claiming his social media post had been “an unfortunate misunderstanding” and a “technical error.”

Alexei Idamkin, the Russian Consul General in Kolkata, told TASS that Antov “fell” out of a hotel window in Rayagada, Odisha state.

This means Antov joins the expansive ranks of Russian doctors who, in recent years, have also inexplicably met their tragic demise falling out of hospital windows.

[ZH: And follows the death of Ravil Maganov, the vice president and chair of the board of directors of Russian oil giant Lukoil, who died in September after falling out of a sixth floor hospital window in Moscow… who was the latest in a string of unexplained or untimely deaths of Russian magnates connected to the energy industry in the last months.]

Perhaps the Biden administration should start using the same tactic to deal with its perceived enemies? It’s obvious that the Clintons would embrace such measures. And the American mainstream media would love to report that Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Lauren Boebert, et. al., “fell out a window” to their deaths.

However, if there were many rational people left on this orb, such preposterous “explanations” for the deaths of our rulers’ political opponents would not go unchallenged.

Vlad should’ve claimed that Antov died as a result of something less preposterous than falling out of a hotel window in the winter. Maybe he should have said Antov was hit by a meteor. Or, better yet, a stray Ukrainian missile. Or that he died of climate change.

But, unfortunately, in today’s world, sanity is out the window.

Just like Antov.

US stock futures edged higher on Wednesday alongside European bourses, as a selloff in tech was set to pause following a drop on the Nasdaq in the previous session, with Tesla shares erasing earlier declines as dip-buyers returned to the stock after a seven-day losing streak. Nasdaq 100 futures rose 0.3% at 7:45 a.m. in New York, reversing earlier losses, while S&P eminis were up 0.3%. Treasury yields ticked lower as a global bond selloff eased, and a gauge of the dollar slipped.

Tesla’s brutal 11% plunge on Tuesday following a report of a plan to temporarily halt production at its China factory – which is odd since that will merely result in more output once China reemerges from its final covid lockdown, this time with natural immunity – rekindled worries about growth prospects for the broader technology industry. The shares erased a drop of over 4% in premarket trading to trade higher by 2%, after seven days of declines.

Similarly, Apple shares rose modestly in premarket trading after closing at their lowest level since June 2021 amid concerns over iPhone supply in the key holiday period. Here are some other notable premarket movers:

• Jounce Therapeutics jumpedas much as 95% after drugmaker Gilead agreed to acquire all remaining rights to potential first-in-class immunotherapy GS-1811.
• Prison operators CoreCivic and GEO Group drop after the US Supreme Court ordered pandemic-era border restrictions to remain in effect.

Reports that China would drop quarantine requirements for inbound visitors and begin issuing passports and Hong Kong travel permits to mainland residents may be a boost for the global economy, but they’re also raising concern about inflation pressures which could prompt the Federal Reserve to maintain tight monetary policy for long to keep inflation in check once China fully reopens.

“The stronger the positive impact on growth from Chinese reopening, the faster the global inflation, and the faster the global inflation the more aggressive the central bank actions will be,” Swissquote Bank analyst Ipek Ozkardeskaya wrote in a note.  Fears that interest rates might rise further than expected are adding pressure on technology stocks which typically suffer during monetary tightening cycles and are among the biggest stock-market losers of 2022.

The cautious mood has killed hopes for a Sasnta rally in the last trading week of 2022 after a brutal year for financial markets. Global equities have lost a fifth of their value, the largest decline since 2008 on an annual basis, and an index of global bonds has slumped 16%. The dollar has surged 7% and the US 10-year yield has jumped to above 3.80% from just 1.5% at the end of 2021.

“We may get a pivot later on next year from the Fed where they actually start cutting rates, but that’s going to happen when the situation is going to become much more dire than it is now,” Matt Maley, chief market strategist for Miller Tabak + Co., said on Bloomberg TV. “If we just have this slow grind lower, the Fed’s going to keep interest rates at high levels even if they stop raising rates in any kind of way.”

In Europe, the Stoxx 600 index advanced, led by basic-resources companies as prices for industrial metals including copper climbed. Most European bonds gained, with Germany’s 10-year yield falling more than five basis points, after hitting 2.524% yesterday, the highest in over 11 years.

Asian stocks dropped, dragged by losses in technology shares, pausing a two-day gain spurred by China’s border reopening. Hong Kong equities jumped in a catch-up rally after holidays. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index pared most of its earlier losses of as much as 0.6%. Chipmakers Samsung and TSMC were the biggest drivers of the loss. South Korea led declines in the region with the benchmark Kospi sinking more than 2% as Samsung and other key stocks traded without rights to the next dividend. Tesla-related shares including battery suppliers fell after the EV maker sank amid plans to temporarily halt Chinese production. 

Hong Kong stocks defied the broader decline in the region, with the Hang Seng surging as much as 2.6% as investors reacted to China’s removal of tourism barriers. Benchmarks of mainland shares posted drops after climbing for two days. “There are expectations that China’s normalization would work as a buffer to the global economy,” Han Jiyoung, an analyst at Kiwoom Securities, wrote in a note. “Markets will become increasingly sensitive to the actual demand recovery in China and how much it could push up inflation.” The key MSCI Asia stock gauge is poised for a December loss of 0.3% after a 15% jump in November. The index is on course for its worst year since 2008 with a 19% drop, in line with an index of global equities.

Japanese stocks fell, following US peers lower, amid growing fears over global inflationary pressure stoked by China’s reopening.  The Topix Index dropped 0.1% to 1,909.02 as of the market close in Tokyo, while the Nikkei declined 0.4% to 26,340.50. SoftBank Group contributed the most to the Topix’s loss, decreasing 1.5%. Out of 2,162 stocks in the index, 947 rose and 1,076 fell, while 139 were unchanged. “If China reopens, the focus will be on the increased demand for energy and goods, which might lead to concerns around inflation and further monetary tightening,” said Tetsuo Seshimo, a portfolio manager at Saison Asset Management.

In FX, the Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index was little changed in mixed trading. The Australian and New Zealand dollars led Group-of-10 gains while Japan’s yen and Norway’s krone slid. The yen declined for a second day after a Bank of Japan board member said it should continue with monetary easing, while the central bank offered to buy more bonds to cap rising yields. USD/JPY rose 0.5% to 134.17 following Tuesday’s 0.5% gain. End of month flows by Japanese companies and some real-money demand for dollars is starting to emerge, according to Asia-based FX traders.

In rates, treasury yields were mixed in early US trading with curve modestly flatter as long end outperforms. 10-year yields are lower by ~4bp at 3.80%, but near the highest since mid- November and just above 50-DMA level; most euro-zone 10-year yields are lower by 4bp-5bp on the day after leading Tuesday’s global bond selloff. The final coupon auction cycle of the year continues with $43BN 5-year note sale at 1pm New York time; Tuesday’s 2-year stopped through after a selloff into the bidding deadline. UK yields are higher as market reopens after extended holiday. 5s30s curve is flatter by ~1.3bp on the day ahead of 5Y note auction. Bonds in Asia are mostly lower, spurred by a drop in US Treasuries overnight as well as inflation concerns from China’s reopening. Bank of Japan conducted an unscheduled bond-buying operations. 

In commodities, oil dipped amid thin liquidity as investors weighed the fallout from a Russian ban on exports to buyers that adhere to a price cap. West Texas Intermediate crude fell 0.3% to $79.27 a barrel. Iron ore surged to its highest since early August, while copper gained in New York as China’s rollback of pandemic curbs boosted prospects for commodities demand in 2023. Gold futures fell 0.7% to $1,811.20 an ounce.

It is a slow news day with just the Richmond Fed report on deck (exp. -10, down from -9) and Pending Home Sales.

Market Snapshot

• S&P 500 futures little changed at 3,855.25
• STOXX Europe 600 little changed at 428.17
• MXAP down 0.2% to 155.94
• MXAPJ little changed at 507.94
• Nikkei down 0.4% to 26,340.50
• Topix little changed at 1,909.02
• Hang Seng Index up 1.6% to 19,898.91
• Shanghai Composite down 0.3% to 3,087.40
• Sensex little changed at 60,914.68
• Australia S&P/ASX 200 down 0.3% to 7,086.41
• Kospi down 2.2% to 2,280.45
• German 10Y yield little changed at 2.48%
• Euro little changed at $1.0638
• Brent Futures down 0.7% to $83.73/bbl
• Brent Futures down 0.7% to $83.76/bbl
• Gold spot down 0.7% to $1,800.97
• U.S. Dollar Index little changed at 104.27

Top Overnight News from Bloomberg

• The Bank of Japan’s shock move to double its yield cap was aimed at keeping stimulus on tap, not at changing the trajectory of policy, according to a summary of opinions from the December meeting that contributed to a weakening of the yen Wednesday
• Stocks in Europe struggled for direction along with US equity futures as news of further moves by China to reopen its economy failed to lift investor sentiment in the final week of a dismal year for markets
• Hong Kong will end some of its last major Covid rules, scrapping gathering limits to vaccination checks and testing for travelers, in a sweeping overhaul of policies aimed at reviving its reputation as a global financial center
• Nations across the globe are implementing or considering measures to test or restrict travelers from China as the country of 1.4 billion abandons its Covid Zero policy and prepares to reopen borders in early January

US Event Calendar

• 10:00: Dec. Richmond Fed Index, est. -10, prior -9
• 10:00: Nov. Pending Home Sales YoY, prior -36.7%
• 10:00: Nov. Pending Home Sales (MoM), est. -1.0%, prior -4.6%

Authored by John Haughey via The Epoch Times,

Mississippi could become the nation’s 10th state to eliminate its personal income tax, with Republican Gov. Tate Reeves and House Speaker Philip Gunn (R-Clinton) backing differing plans to do away with the levy when lawmakers convene their 2023 session on Jan. 3.

Similar 2023 proposals to erase immediately, or phase-out, state income taxes are also expected to be filed in West Virginia, Arkansas, Iowa, Georgia, North Dakota, Utah, and, perhaps, Wisconsin. 

Such measures are not unusual in state houses but are usually symbolic bills lodged by fiscal conservatives who argue taxing individual incomes to fund state—and in some cases, local— governments is counter-productive, especially with an array of alternate assessments available to replace “lost” revenues generated by personal income taxes.

But as legislatures enter their third sessions since the 2020 pandemic pumped trillions in federal recovery and stimulus assistance into state and local government coffers, and with tax revenues rebounding far faster than anticipated, many state budgets are touting temporary surpluses.

Some governors and lawmakers say these surpluses should be funneled back to taxpayers. During 2022 sessions, Washington, D.C.-based Tax Foundation reports more than half the states approved personal tax rebates, 38 trimmed assorted taxes, and at least 11 debated phasing out personal income levies altogether. 

As state leaders assemble 2023 budget projections, the same issues are on the front burner, with revenue surpluses prodding lawmakers to push for another round of tax cuts despite acknowledging the largesse is temporary and amid calls for prudence in the face of a potential recession, that some economists say the nation is already experiencing. 

Nine states right now don’t assess personal income taxes—Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming—with Mississippi the most likely to join their ranks in 2023.

In 2022, Mississippi lawmakers adopted the largest tax cut in state history, a phased $525 million cut beginning this year before implementing a flat 4-percent income tax by 2026. 

In doing so, Mississippi became the 10th state to adopt a flat tax, meaning the same tax rate is assessed for all earners regardless of income. Flat tax proposals are also a trend in state legislatures. 

Mississippi lawmakers will have $3.9 billion in surplus “unencumbered money” when they convene their 2023 session, with about a third of that emanating from recurring tax revenues. 

Gov. Reeves has vowed to lobby for the full elimination of the state’s income tax in the coming year, telling the Mississippi Economic Council in October that the state is in the best fiscal and financial shape in its history, collecting billions in “excess revenue” that would allow it to eliminate the income tax without cutting expenditures.

Lawmakers have discussed eliminating the income tax during their last two sessions but, in 2022, settled on the phased $525 million cut over the next four years.

Reeves objective is supported by House Speaker Gunn, who does not want tax rebates—as many lawmakers advocate—but “permanent, long-term tax relief.” 

While Reeves and Gunn share the same goal, their proposed paths in replacing “lost” income tax revenues vary and are opposed by Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and GOP Senate leaders, who prefer giving taxpayers one-time rebates from the surplus.

How these proposals play out will be among the top issues debated between January and April in Jackson. Other states will also deliberate similar initiatives.

West Virginia Republican Gov. Jim Justice has supported eliminating the state’s income tax since 2020, but the state Senate “has other ideas,” according to House Del. Amy Summers. (Saul Loe/AFP via Getty Images)

Where Eliminating Personal Income Tax is on Tap

—West Virginia: In 2022, the House passed House Bill 4007, which would have implemented a 10-percent cut to each of the state’s personal income tax brackets as a precursor to whittling the levy away altogether.

The Senate rejected HB 4007 and instead placed a ballot measure before voters that would have accorded lawmakers the capacity to eliminate six categories of tangible personal property taxes, including levies on machinery and equipment, inventory, and motor vehicles. 

 The measure, Amendment 2, was opposed by Republican Gov. Jim Justice, who has called for eliminating the state’s personal income tax since 2020 and was shot down by voters in November.

Del. Amy Summers (R-Flemington), one of HB 4007’s sponsors, told The Epoch Times, “Yes, there absolutely is interest” in the House in proposing a similar bill in 2023.

“We’re hoping to make a good stab at that—a minimum of 10 percent up to 30 percent. The governor will support that,” she said, noting the slash would “draw business and population to the state.”

As of mid-December, no formal proposal had surfaced at the House. “The next step will be to see what the Senate does,” Summers said, noting Senate leaders have “a different idea” centered on “trying to do workarounds. We’re not sure if we’re interested in workarounds” or targeted slashes.

“You will see a bill the first week,” she said,

Del John Paul Hott (R-Petersburg), also an HB 4007 co-sponsor, told The Epoch Times he was unsure what would happen in 2023. 

“We’ll have to wait and see what they (the Senate) move forward with. I have always openly supported a cut in personal income tax,” he said, noting there are “really good ideas” being bantered about for 2023.

Like Summers, Hott said the ultimate goal is to “continue to position West Virginia to compete with neighboring states” and be in “a competitive position with job opportunities and low taxes to allow workers to keep more of what they earn.”

That’s more possible now than ever before, he said, “We have a surplus here in West Virginia of $1 billion—that’s billion with a ‘b,’” he said.

Georgia governor Brian Kemp pictured during a dinner reception in Atlanta, Ga., on June 6, 2022. (Laurie Dieffembacq/Belga Mag/AFP via Getty Images)

—Georgia: In April, Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed HB 1437 into law. The bill replaces Georgia’s income tax brackets with a 5.25 percent flat-rate income tax that will be shaved back to 4.99 percent by 2029. 

Georgia’s top income tax rate was 5.75 percent, which applied to earned income over $7,000 for a single person or more than $10,000 for a married couple or single person with dependents.

Some lawmakers during the 2022 session lobbied to cut personal income taxes further, with several Republicans in both chambers proposing to eliminate the levy altogether.

Among them was former Senate President Pro Tem Sen. Butch Miller (R-Gainesville), who defined income tax “as theft, pure and simple,” and former Sen. Burt Jones, R-Jackson. 

Miller lost his campaign for Georgia secretary of state in November, so he is no longer in the Senate, while Jones was elected lieutenant governor which, under Georgia’s Constitution, makes him Senate President.

House Ways & Means Committee Chair Rep. Shaw Blackmon (R-Bonaire) said he was uncertain how the legislature would proceed in 2023, noting committee assignments—including his leadership of the key House panel—won’t be confirmed until lawmakers convene on Jan. 9.

He is certain taxes, in general, will again be among issues addressed by state lawmakers in 2023 but was hesitant to speculate on specifics until the session convenes.

“I think, generally, our goals would be continue to find ways to relieve the burden on taxpayers,” Blackmon told The Epoch Times.

—Wisconsin: In 2022, Sen. Roger Roth (R-Appleton) introduced a bill that would eliminate Wisconsin’s income tax, which is the nation’s oldest—first levied in 1912—when tax collections exceed expenditures. 

Roth’s bill would have reduced the state’s individual income tax rates by $1.7 billion for the 2022 tax year based on excess revenue in state coffers. The initiative was shelved until the 2023 legislative session after the Republican-controlled legislature rejected Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ proposal to dedicate the surplus to education and cut a one-time $150 check for every state resident.

Wisconsin Republican state senator Roger Roth. (The Epoch Times)

The issue will be discussed again in 2023. House Finance Committee Chair Rep. Marl Born (R-Beaver Dam) told The Epoch Times in an email comment

“Wisconsin Republicans have prioritized cutting taxes for over a decade, resulting in over $21 billion of savings for Wisconsinites,” he said. “The budget surplus is another opportunity to implement tax reform in our state, and we will be looking at a variety of options to reduce the tax burden on hardworking taxpayers.”

—Arkansas: Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson signed a bill in August 2022 that trimmed the state’s income tax rate to 4.9 percent, the lowest in state history, but eliminating it altogether was among initiatives incoming Republican Gov. Sara Huckabee Sanders campaigned on in winning her election in November.

Opportunity Arkansas Founder & CEO Nicholas Horton maintains it is possible to gradually eliminate the state’s income tax without devastating state revenues. 

“We are definitely on board and supportive of that idea,” he told The Epoch Times. “There is a lot of legislative interest” in doing so in 2023.

Horton said support for income tax reductions, if not elimination, has become “a litmus test over the last couple of election cycles. There is a lot of consensus that this is something that needs to happen. There is less consensus in how to get there.”

He said Opportunity Arkansas would release a plan in “how to get there” before state lawmakers convene Jan. 9 in Little Rock. The proposal will be prudent and ensure the state can pay its bills.

“We don’t want to end up being compared to the dog who chases the car and gets ahold of the wheel and it’s ‘what do we do now?’” he said.

Eliminating the income tax “is a really simple path. It’s not necessarily easy, but simple,” Horton said. “When you look at the state and federal money in the budget—a little over $32 billion a year—the state income tax only, and I say only in context of government spending, brings in $2.5 billion, less than 10 percent of what the state government spends. You start digging into the details, into where we spent money, where we get money” and doing away with the income tax is feasible.

The Arkansas State Flag and U.S. flag fly in front of the State Capitol in Little Rock on Dec. 1, 2022. (Janice Hisle/The Epoch Times)

One component of the state’s tax structure that should be examined by lawmakers is “special carveouts and exemptions for different groups and corporations—the state gives away about $1.2 billion a year” in exemptions, he said, adding, “Those figures are a few years old. Probably $2 billion now.”

Examples include not assessing sales taxes for the sale of chicks and newspapers. “That’s because somewhere in the past, (lawmakers decided) we shouldn’t tax the sale of baby chickens,” Horton said, saying the exemptions provide lawmakers with a “process of picking who pays and who doesn’t. We could almost pay for the entire state income tax just by getting rid of all state sales tax exemptions.”

By mid-December, no personal income tax bills had been pre-filed “that I have seen,” he said. “There are a lot of tax bills floating around,” however, that propose slashing other taxes, such as property taxes and sales taxes on groceries. 

“In the next couple of months, you’ll hear a lot of chatter. We are going to release our plan before the legislature convenes,” Horton said, noting there are “different camps and different schools of thought.”

Rep. Aaron Pilkington (R-Knoxville), who serves on the Legislative Joint Auditing Committee, said initiatives to “lower the tax burden” will be a featured topic in the 2023 session.

“We have a plan to phase out the income tax in Arkansas over the next 10 years,” Pilkington told The Epoch Times. “We are going to accelerate that,” with Saunders assuming the governorship in January.

—Colorado: Colorado voters in November approved Proposition 121, which trims the state’s flat income tax from 4.55 percent to 4.4 percent. The state’s income tax rate has gradually declined since the late 1980s when it was 5 percent. 

Denver-based Independence Institute and some Republican lawmakers want to eliminate the income tax altogether. The Independence Institute’s Path 2 Zero plan maintains that eliminating the state income tax would induce more productivity from earners now “penalized by an income tax.”

Democratic Gov. Jared Polis supports eliminating the personal income tax but counsels prudence in replacing “lost” income revenues.

Colorado Governor Jared Polis speaks about the American Rescue Plan Act on the one-year anniversary of the law during his visit to the Mi Casa Resource Center in Denver, Colo., on March 11, 2022. (Jason Connolly/Pool/Getty Images)

Independence Institute Fiscal Policy Center Director Ben Murrey told The Epoch Times that he doubts there will be any viable proposals to eliminate the state’s income tax in 2023. 

“We won’t be doing something like that this year” during the legislative session, and a ballot measure proposing such is unlikely for at least two years. “There could be a citizen initiative filed regarding the real estate transfer tax. I don’t know if that is going to go anywhere,” he said.

The Path 2 Zero plan would “eliminate the income tax entirely over time. Last year, a Republican bill that essentially adopted that plan,” but it went nowhere and is unlikely to find traction until 2024 or beyond after November’s elections.

“Democrats won everything that they could win” in the midterms, Murrey said. “Any (state legislature race) that was competitive, they won. They are one seat away from a supermajority in both chambers. The ‘red wave’ certainly didn’t materialize in Colorado, but we have a governor who supports eliminating the income tax based on his rhetoric. He could make an interesting ally for us” in the coming years.

This year has been shaped by uncomfortable macroeconomic headwinds.

Trillions of dollars were erased in public company market capitalizations, investor confidence waned, and cost pressures squeezed consumer pocketbooks.

Taken together, many of the world’s largest companies experienced sharp declines in market share. Still, a few companies in key sectors had positive growth over the year.

As 2022 comes to a close, Visual Capitalist’s Dorothy Neufeld shows the infographic below, the biggest companies in the world, using data from Companiesmarketcap.com.

The World’s Largest Public Companies in 2022

Today, Apple stands as the world’s most valuable company, towering at a $2.3 trillion valuation.

Despite the tech downturn of 2022—driven by rising interest rates and slower sales—Apple maintained its top spot. This was largely thanks to record revenues and healthy consumer demand for iPhones, which drive about half of its total revenue.

Following Apple is Microsoft. Unlike Apple, Microsoft has faced slower earnings over the year due to lower demand for personal computers and the weighing impact of a strong U.S. dollar. Overall, about 50% of the company’s sales take place overseas.

As we show below, there are now only four companies left in the trillion dollar market cap club.

Oil giant Saudi Aramco is the third largest publicly-traded company globally, at $1.8 trillion. It’s also the only non-U.S. company in the top 10.

In May, the state-run company briefly became the most valuable company on the planet as soaring energy prices boosted earnings. Saudia Arabia is the largest exporter of oil in the world, and the country’s economy is forecast to grow 7.6% in 2022—one of the fastest globally.

Overall, 62 companies of the 100 largest are headquartered in the U.S., 11 are based in China, and five are located in France.

Top 10 Performance in 2022

For many of the world’s largest companies, 2022 was a brutal year for performance.

As the above graphic shows, the vast majority of the world’s titans saw their market values decline. Half of these companies saw double-digit drops.

Tesla has witnessed nearly 70% of its market cap being erased this year. Two main factors are behind this drop: falling demand, especially in China, and CEO Elon Musk’s volatile and risky acquisition of Twitter.

On the other hand, UnitedHealth Group has seen the strongest performance among the top 10.

The company, which rakes in a large share of its earnings from employer-backed insurance plans, said that recessionary impacts had not yet begun materializing in 2022.

Biggest Companies in the World, by Sector

Even with sinking market values across the sector in 2022, tech remains dominant.

Among the world’s biggest companies, 20 are in tech, spanning a combined market value of $9.2 trillion. For perspective, that’s about 31% of the market value of the 100 largest companies.

Companies are classified according to the FTSE Russell Industry Classification Benchmark. *As of Dec 12, 2022.

Consumer discretionary and health care sectors fall next in line, with big players such as Amazon and Johnson & Johnson among their ranks.

At the other end of the spectrum is utilities, the smallest sector overall at least pertaining to the largest companies list. NextEra Energy, the sole utilities company among the rankings is one of the world’s largest developers of wind and solar energy. Over the next three years, it plans to invest up to $95 billion in greening its power operations.

Change of Fortune

It comes as no surprise that many of the biggest companies in the world are long-established players in global markets.

Yet within the rankings, some of the notable risers compared to 2021 are UnitedHealth Group, which launched from #19 in 2021 to #8 this year and NVIDIA which has climbed to become the 11th largest company globally, up from #24 last year.

By contrast, some of the biggest losers are Meta (Facebook’s parent company) and Alibaba. Meta has fallen across the rankings to #26 in 2022 from #6 in 2021. Meanwhile, Alibaba was once the ninth largest globally but has tumbled to #36. Both companies have seen considerable value wiped from their market caps—roughly 66% and 28%, respectively​​—amid lagging earnings.

With the year coming to a close, it remains to be seen whether the world’s biggest companies stage a comeback in 2023, or face more challenging conditions ahead.

Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

Mild winter weather in many parts of Europe, rising wind power generation, and lower electricity consumption were dragging European natural gas and power prices lower on Tuesday.

Prices at the Title Transfer Facility (TTF), Europe’s key gas benchmark, were down to a six-month low at midday on Tuesday due to milder winter compared to early December and still comfortable gas storage levels across Europe.  

The TTF natural gas traded close to $85 (80 euros) per megawatt-hour (MWh) on Tuesday morning, “a six-month low as mild winter weather lifts the year-on-year storage surplus to 325 TWh, some 25 TWh above what was withdrawn during Q1-2021,” Ole Hansen, Head of Commodity Strategy at Saxo Bank, commented on Tuesday.

“It looks like we will enter January with near 90% full storages and mild temperatures,” a trader told Reuters, commenting on the European gas price move today.

Refinitiv meteorologist Georg Mueller expects weather in Europe to be “milder than normal and partially unsettled and windy, with no major colder-than-normal spells before mid-January.”

According to Gas Infrastructure Europe, gas storage levels across the EU were 83% full as of December 25.

Milder weather and higher wind power generation also dragged down the benchmark power prices in Europe on Tuesday.

Day-ahead prices in Germany plummeted amid expectations of high wind power generation and lower demand.

By mid-morning on Tuesday, Germany’s delivery baseload power for Wednesday plunged by 54.3% to $68.20 (64 euros) per MWh, while the day-ahead French contract was trading down by 34.4%.

The natural gas price in Europe is currently well below the price cap the EU endorsed last week, which would be triggered if the month-ahead price on the TTF exceeds $191 (180 euros) per MWh for three working days, and the month-ahead TTF price is $37 (35 euros) higher than a reference price for LNG on global markets for the same three working days. 

Lithium is often dubbed as “white gold” for electric vehicles.

The lightweight metal plays a key role in the cathodes of all types of lithium-ion batteries that power EVs. Accordingly, the recent rise in EV adoption has sent lithium production to new highs.

In the infographic below, Visual Capitalist’s Govind Bhutada and Sam Parker chart more than 25 years of lithium production by country from 1995 to 2021, based on data from BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy.

The Largest Lithium Producers Over Time

In the 1990s, the U.S. was the largest producer of lithium, in stark contrast to the present.

In fact, the U.S. accounted for over one-third of global lithium production in 1995. From then onwards until 2010, Chile took over as the biggest producer with a production boom in the Salar de Atacama, one of the world’s richest lithium brine deposits.

Global lithium production surpassed 100,000 tonnes for the first time in 2021, quadrupling from 2010. What’s more, roughly 90% of it came from just three countries.

Australia alone produces 52% of the world’s lithium. Unlike Chile, where lithium is extracted from brines, Australian lithium comes from hard-rock mines for the mineral spodumene.

China, the third-largest producer, has a strong foothold in the lithium supply chain. Alongside developing domestic mines, Chinese companies have acquired around $5.6 billion worth of lithium assets in countries like Chile, Canada, and Australia over the last decade. It also hosts 60% of the world’s lithium refining capacity for batteries.

Batteries have been one of the primary drivers of the exponential increase in lithium production. But how much lithium do batteries use, and how much goes into other uses?

What is Lithium Used For?

While lithium is best known for its role in rechargeable batteries—and rightly so—it has many other important uses.

Before EVs and lithium-ion batteries transformed the demand for lithium, the metal’s end-uses looked completely different as compared to today.

In 2010, ceramics and glass accounted for the largest share of lithium consumption at 31%. In ceramics and glassware, lithium carbonate increases strength and reduces thermal expansion, which is often essential for modern glass-ceramic cooktops.

Lithium is also used to make lubricant greases for the transport, steel, and aviation industries, along with other lesser-known uses.

The Future of Lithium Production

As the world produces more batteries and EVs, the demand for lithium is projected to reach 1.5 million tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) by 2025 and over 3 million tonnes by 2030.

For context, the world produced 540,000 tonnes of LCE in 2021. Based on the above demand projections, production needs to triple by 2025 and increase nearly six-fold by 2030.

Although supply has been on an exponential growth trajectory, it can take anywhere from six to more than 15 years for new lithium projects to come online. As a result, the lithium market is projected to be in a deficit for the next few years.

Authored by Lear Zhou via The Epoch Times,

Li Zhang, a Chinese billionaire who is cofounder and CEO of Guangzhou R&F Properties, was arrested in London on Nov. 30 under a provisional warrant issued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office of Northern California District.

Zhang was accused of “participating in a scheme to bribe public officials” between 2015 and 2020, according to Reuters.

Zhang, 69, is worth $2.3 billion, according to Forbes magazine. He was granted bail under 15 million pounds (approximately $18.4 million) ahead of a legal battle against extradition to the United States. He did not show up at a Dec. 12 hearing.

As part of his bail conditions, Zhang will be confined to an apartment 24 hours a day and subject to CCTV and security monitoring by a London investigation and security risk firm. He will be handcuffed to a representative of the security firm when he leaves the apartment to attend court hearings, according to South China Morning Post.

Guangzhou R&F Properties issued an announcement in its official WeChat channel, stating: “Li Zhang was accused of bribery for hosting a banquet in China and providing hotel accommodation for the former San Francisco Public Works Director.”

This was the first time R&F Properties responded on the alleged bribery accusation against Zhang. The announcement confirms that the person called “DEVELOPER 1” in the corruption case of Mohammed Nuru, the former San Francisco Public Works Director, is Zhang.

In December 2021, Nuru pleaded guilty to the charge of honest services wire fraud, including a string of briberies and corruption during his years in office, and was sentenced to seven years by U.S. District Judge William H. Orrick in August 2022.

According to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office Northern District of California, Nuru admitted in the plea agreement that he “received free travel, gifts, and benefits, for working with Walter Wong to use Nuru’s official position to benefit a billionaire developer from China.”

Zhang (referred to as “DEVELOPER 1”) first surfaced in the FBI investigation into the Nuru case in the fall of 2018, when Nuru was talking on his cell phone about his then-upcoming trip to China, according to the affidavit of FBI agent James A. Folger.

On a phone call with his girlfriend, official Sandra Zuniga, in November 2018, Nuru described how he was flattered by a luxury hotel: “We get there, they take us to our rooms and everything, and everybody’s in their room, and then as soon as I come out, they’re like still outside our room. I’m like, ‘Oh man, what’s going on?’”

Nuru also said in the phone call that he did not realize how rich Zhang is before this trip to China.

He said in the call: “I’m helping him with a project here, San Francisco. So whenever he comes, I always go to see him. I didn’t know … he has this plane; I didn’t know that, how big he was, until I got to China.”

The project Nuru mentioned is 555 Fulton Street in San Francisco, developed by R&F’s U.S. affiliate Z&L Properties Inc., which was referred to in the complaints against Nuru as “Multimillion-Dollar Mixed-Use Development.” Wong was working as a consultant of that project.

The building project 555 Fulton Street in San Francisco on Dec. 20, 2022. (Lear Zhou/The Epoch Times)

On the same phone call with Zuniga, Nuru said, “He [Zhang] had a whole list of things that we need to get done.”

Nuru also mentioned that the project couldn’t get a certificate due to a possible defect in the glass windows made in Mexico.

He added, “Yup, and he’s very upset about [it] because he’s, you know, he thinks he’s lost, he’s spent so much money and … can’t see the end of the tunnel.”

The glass issue was mentioned by one of Nuru’s employees when Nuru was in China in 2018. In a phone call, Nuru directed one of his managers to solve the problem and expedite the process.

According to a report by the San Francisco Chronicle in 2019, 555 Fulton St. was in the “finalizing construction” stage after a massive delay. More than one year of the delay was caused by the developer redesigning the building’s exterior without city permission. The builder was forced to go back to the approved yet more expensive design, which had a glass exterior.

Tom Hui, former director of the Department of Building Inspection (DBI), who went to dinner with Zhang and Wong in February 2019, stepped down in March 2020 following internal investigations by then City Attorney Dennis Herrera.

It was not clear whether Hui helped with the 555 Fulton Street project’s permit. In early 2020, after Nuru was arrested and indicted, the FBI raided the DBI’s server room, according to Mission Local. Hui was not charged with any federal crimes.

The Epoch Times reached out to the U.S. Attorney’s Office of Northern California District for comment but did not receive a response.

First, it was that world-renowned incubator of policy idiocy, California, that decided that the best way to fight stimulus-driven inflation was with more stimulus, announcing this summer that it would send out up to $1,050 in “inflation relief” checks in the process of course making inflation even worse.

Then, it was Italy’s turn to announce in August that it would also inject billions in fresh stimulus to – wait for it – fight inflation (the same inflation that was the result of billions in fresh stimulus during the covid pandemic and which has led to the worst global recession and bear market since Lehman).

And since stupidity is contagious, today Spain became the latest country to unveil some €10 billion ($10.65 billion) worth of measures to “ease the pain of inflation” in its third major package this year, bringing total aid to 45 billion euros since early 2022.

Spain, like all other European countries, has been grappling with a cost-of-living crisis exacerbated by the impact of the war in Ukraine on energy prices. The package includes a one-off bonus of 200 euros for about 4.2 million households with annual incomes up to 27,000 euros and the extension of tax cuts for energy bills into the first half of next year, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez told reporters.

And since the bonus does nothing to alleviate the supply-driven constraints that have pushed the price of energy in Europe to the limit, all Spain – and every other European country – have done is boost the coffers of LNG/Oil exporters like Russia, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and re-exporters such as China and India.

The package follows similar announcements in March and June that included direct aid, tax cuts, soft loans and rental controls.

Amusingly, Reuters says that Europe’s desperate measures coupled with an agreement negotiated with the European Union to place a limit on gas prices for electricity production ” have had some success” and cites that “inflation for the past 12 months slowed to 6.7% in November, the lowest rate in the 27-country EU bloc.” What Reuters should be saying is that having hiked rates to the highest level in almost two decades, the ECB has assured that Europe is facing a brutal recession – if not depression – all just to own Vladimir Putin.

And while slowing inflation has indeed been aided by a fall in electricity prices, which decreased by 22.4% from a year earlier in November, largely as a result of mass hoarding of natural gas this winter, a feat that Europe will find very difficult to repeat next year, food prices have continued to hit Spaniards’ wallets, climbing 15% during October and November from a year earlier.

And yes, injecting even more “inflation-fighting” stimmies means that food (and energy) prices will only go higher unless of course those stimmies are used to boost the supply of rare commodities, which they won’t be.

Meanwhile, to deflect attention from its latest stupidity (because in one year the magicians at the ECB will be so very confused why  inflation remains so sticky and why it has to keep hiking even more as the recession transforms into a depression) the government said it will cut value added tax on essential foods such as bread, cheese, milk, fruit and vegetables and cereals to 0% from 4%, while pasta and cooking oils will have VAT slashed by half to 5%.

The funniest part: according to Pedro Sanchez, the billions in aid provided so far had helped Spain register strong economic growth this year, which he put at over 5%, above the government’s previous forecast of 4.4%, once again confirming that growth is nothing more than a measure of how much credit and/or liquidity enters the economy, either via monetary or fiscal channels; as for Spain’s real economy, it is slumping into a brutal recession along with the rest of Europe.

Authored by Peter Dahlin via The Epoch Times,

The holidays came early to Europe, with a gift for the rule of law and human rights protections offered not by some red-dressed, bearded man but rather by a court in Cyprus.

On Dec. 23, the court, which has been processing the first-ever extradition request from the Chinese regime since it ratified an extradition treaty, reached a verdict, which was very damning for China.

The Cypriot court is not the first court in Europe that has denied extraditions to China, of course, but the verdict itself, and the type of case it concerns, not only makes it precedent-setting in Cyprus, where China is already engaged in trying to have more people extradited, but likely to influence courts across the 46 countries across Europe bound by the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

Previously, on the rare occasion extraditions have been denied, courts have consistently relied on people’s political risks, such as adhering to Falun Gong or the more general risk of torture, when denying extradition requests from China. In this case, however, and for what is, as far as is known, the first time in Europe, the court also denied the extradition requests due to a lack of fair trials in China. To many observers, it would seem like a given due to the nature of the Chinese criminal justice system. Still, courts have consistently been hesitant to address the issue, perhaps fearing it could be used in cases in other countries with known political interference in their judicial systems. In this case, the judge was damming in assessing the high risk of deprivation of a fair trial due to the general justice system in China.

Moreover, the Cypriot court also called out the high risk of arbitrary detention, another key provision that should, if such a risk exists, block any extradition from any European country bound by the convention (ECHR).

Tourists walk past a real estate promotion billboard in Chinese, which states that buying an apartment can earn permanent resident status, on the seafront promenade in the Cypriot resort of Paphos on Jan. 24, 2013. (Yiannis Kourtoglou/AFP via Getty Images)

Similar to the Swedish Supreme Court, it also ruled that China’s diplomatic assurances would not overcome the high risk of torture, arbitrary detention, and lack of fair trial. In fact, the lack of legal basis for China to offer such assurances was a key point in my own testimony at the hearing and sparring with the prosecutor. The prosecution, which acted only on what had been fed to them by the Chinese embassy, provided one factually wrong statement after another and could, frankly, be demolished. One key point is that neither the embassy nor the foreign ministry has any legal standing to offer any assurances that are legally binding and are, therefore, meaningless.

The case in Sweden, which was for what was then “the most wanted” man by China, saw a similar line of arguments. I was there, along with the human rights group Safeguard Defenders, to drive home the point in the testimony. In that case, the Swedish prosecution actually tried to get assurances from the only two bodies with the legal standing to issue them—the Supreme Procuratorate and the Supreme Court—but the Chinese side never responded to them and doomed their own case.

For Cyprus—a small country that depends economically on countries such as Russia and China and recently ratified an extradition treaty—to make such a strong and clear decision in its first-ever concluded extradition case is a major victory for the island nation. This is especially important as Beijing has undertaken a range of actions to undermine the judicial process by trying to force the target to give up his resistance, arresting several family members in China, threatening his wife (in Cyprus), and most recently, issuing an INTERPOL Red Notice on his wife. This decision makes it clear that such attempts to subvert the judicial sovereignty of a European country are unacceptable.

With two more cases pending in Cyprus, with a case not fully concluded in Poland, and more cases in Italy, Portugal, and Spain—all of them also bound by the ECHR—the small district court in Larnaca has done Europe and the European Union a great favor, and truly offered a Christmas gift for human rights protections to us all.

Now it’s time for larger European countries to follow suit and honor their legally-biding commitments to the rule of law and protection of human rights and deny Chinese extradition requests. The only way to gain leverage to get Beijing to improve its abysmal legal system is to uphold our higher standards and force the Chinese regime to adapt to them if it wants to pursue criminals and seek judicial cooperation.

Authored by Chris Hedges,

The Democrats position themselves as the party of virtue, cloaking their support for the war industry in moral language stretching back to Korea and Vietnam, when President Ngo Dinh Diem was as lionized as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

All the wars they support and fund are “good” wars. All the enemies they fight, the latest being Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping, are incarnations of evil. The photo of a beaming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Kamala Harris holding up a signed Ukrainian battle flag behind Zelensky as he addressed Congress was another example of the Democratic Party’s abject subservience to the war machine.

The Democrats, especially with the presidency of Bill Clinton, became shills not only for corporate America but for the weapons manufacturers and the Pentagon. No weapons system is too costly. No war, no matter how disastrous, goes unfunded. No military budget is too big, including the $858 billion in military spending allocated for the current fiscal year, an increase of $45 billion above what the Biden administration requested.

The historian Arnold Toynbee cited unchecked militarism as the fatal disease of empires, arguing that they ultimately commit suicide.

There once was a wing of the Democratic Party that questioned and stood up to the war industry: Senators J. William Fulbright, George McGovern, Gene McCarthy, Mike Gravel, William Proxmire and House member Dennis Kucinich. But that opposition evaporated along with the antiwar movement. When 30 members of the party’s progressive caucus recently issued a call for Biden to negotiate with Putin, they were forced by the party leadership and a warmongering media to back down and rescind their letter. Not that any of them, with the exception of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have voted against the billions of dollars in weaponry sent to Ukraine or the bloated military budget. Rashida Tlaib voted present.

The opposition to the perpetual funding of the war in Ukraine has come primarily from Republicans, 11 in the Senate and 57 in the House, several, such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, unhinged conspiracy theorists. Only nine Republicans in the House joined the Democrats in supporting the $1.7 trillion spending bill needed to prevent the government from shutting down, which included approval of $847 billion for the military — the total is boosted to $858 billion when factoring in accounts that don’t fall under the Armed Services committees’ jurisdiction. In the Senate, 29 Republicans opposed the spending bill. The Democrats, including nearly all 100 members of the House Congressional Progressive Caucus, lined up dutifully for endless war.

This lust for war is dangerous, pushing us into a potential war with Russia and, perhaps later, with China — each a nuclear power. It is also economically ruinous. The monopolization of capital by the military has driven U.S. debt to over $30 trillion, $6 trillion more than the U.S. GDP of $24 trillion. Servicing this debt costs $300 billion a year. We spend more on the military than the next nine countries, including China and Russia, combined. Congress is also on track to provide an extra $21.7 billion to the Pentagon — above the already expanded annual budget — to resupply Ukraine.

“But those contracts are just the leading edge of what is shaping up to be a big new defense buildup,” The New York Times reported.

“Military spending next year is on track to reach its highest level in inflation-adjusted terms since the peaks in the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars between 2008 and 2011, and the second highest in inflation-adjusted terms since World War II — a level that is more than the budgets for the next 10 largest cabinet agencies combined.”

The Democratic Party, which, under the Clinton administration aggressively courted corporate donors, has surrendered its willingness to challenge, however tepidly, the war industry.

“As soon as the Democratic Party made a determination, it could have been 35 or 40 years ago, that they were going to take corporate contributions, that wiped out any distinction between the two parties,” Dennis Kucinich said when I interviewed him on my show for The Real News Network.

“Because in Washington, he or she who pays the piper plays the tune. That’s what’s happened. There isn’t that much of a difference in terms of the two parties when it comes to war.”

In his 1970 book “The Pentagon Propaganda Machine,” Fulbright describes how the Pentagon and the arms industry pour millions into shaping public opinion through public relations campaigns, Defense Department films, control over Hollywood and domination of the commercial media. Military analysts on cable news are universally former military and intelligence officials who sit on boards or work as consultants to defense industries, a fact they rarely disclose to the public. Barry R. McCaffrey, a retired four-star army general and military analyst for NBC News, was also an employee of Defense Solutions, a military sales and project management firm. He, like most of these shills for war, personally profited from the sales of the weapons systems and expansion of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

On the eve of every congressional vote on the Pentagon budget, lobbyists from businesses tied to the war industry meet with Congress members and their staff to push them to vote for the budget to protect jobs in their district or state. This pressure, coupled with the mantra amplified by the media that opposition to profligate war funding is unpatriotic, keeps elected officials in bondage. These politicians also depend on the lavish donations from the weapons manufacturers to fund their campaigns.

Seymour Melman, in his book “Pentagon Capitalism,” documented the way militarized societies destroy their domestic economies. Billions are spent on the research and development of weapons systems while renewable energy technologies languish. Universities are flooded with military-related grants while they struggle to find money for environmental studies and the humanities. Bridges, roads, levees, rail, ports, electric grids, sewage treatment plants and drinking water infrastructures are structurally deficient and antiquated. Schools are in disrepair and lack sufficient teachers and staff. Unable to stem the COVID-19 pandemic, the for-profit health care industry forces families, including those with insurance, into bankruptcy. Domestic manufacturing, especially with the offshoring of jobs to China, Vietnam, Mexico and other nations, collapses. Families are drowning in personal debt, with 63 percent of Americans living paycheck to paycheck. The poor, the mentally ill, the sick and the unemployed are abandoned.

Melman, who coined the term “permanent war economy,” noted that since the end of the Second World War, the federal government has spent more than half its discretionary budget on past, current and future military operations. It is the largest single sustaining activity of the government. The military-industrial establishment is nothing more than gilded corporate welfare. Military systems are sold before they are produced. Military industries are permitted to charge the federal government for huge cost overruns. Massive profits are guaranteed. For example, this November, the Army awarded Raytheon Technologies alone more than $2 billion in contracts, on top of over $190 million awarded in August, to deliver missile systems to expand or replenish weapons sent to Ukraine. Despite a depressed market for most other businesses, stock prices of Lockheed and Northrop Grumman have risen by more than 36 and 50 percent this year.

Tech giants, including Amazon, which supplies surveillance and facial recognition software to the police and FBI, have been absorbed into the permanent war economy. Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Oracle were awarded multibillion-dollar cloud computing contracts for the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability and are eligible to receive $9 billion in Pentagon contracts to provide the military with “globally available cloud services across all security domains and classification levels, from the strategic level to the tactical edge,” through mid-2028.

Foreign aid is given to countries such as Israel, with more than $150 billion in bilateral assistance since its founding in 1948, or Egypt, which has received over $80 billion since 1978 — aid that requires foreign governments to buy weapons systems from the U.S. The U.S. public funds the research, development and building of weapons systems and purchases them for foreign governments. Such a  circular system mocks the idea of a free-market economy. These weapons soon become obsolete and are replaced by updated and usually more costly weapons systems. It is, in economic terms, a dead end. It sustains nothing but the permanent war economy.

“The truth of the matter is that we’re in a heavily militarized society driven by greed, lust for profit, and wars are being created just to keep fueling that,” Kucinich told me.

In 2014, the U.S. backed a coup in Ukraine that installed a government that included neo-Nazis and was antagonistic to Russia. The coup triggered a civil war when the ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine, the Donbass, sought to secede from the country, resulting in over 14,000 people dead and nearly 150,000 displaced, before Russia invaded in February. The Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to Jacques Baud, a former NATO security advisor who also worked for Swiss intelligence, was instigated by the escalation of Ukraine’s war on the Donbass. It also followed the Biden administration’s rejection of proposals sent by the Kremlin in late 2021, which might have averted Russia’s invasion the following year.

This invasion has led to widespread U.S. and E.U. sanctions on Russia, which have boomeranged onto Europe. Inflation ravages Europe with the sharp curtailment of shipments of Russian oil and gas. Industry, especially in Germany, is crippled.  In most of Europe, it is a winter of shortages, spiraling prices and misery.

“This whole thing is blowing up in the face of the West,” Kucinich warned. “We forced Russia to pivot to Asia, as well as Brazil, India, China, South Africa and Saudi Arabia. There’s a whole new world being formed. The catalyst of it is the misjudgment that occurred about Ukraine and the effort to try to control Ukraine in 2014 that most people aren’t aware of.”

By not opposing a Democratic Party whose primary business is war, liberals become the sterile, defeated dreamers in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “Notes from the Underground.”

A former convict, Dostoevsky did not fear evil. He feared a society that no longer had the moral fortitude to confront evil. And war, to steal a line from my latest book, is the greatest evil.