Last autumn, former Prime Minister Liz Truss’ disastrous mini-budget sparked financial turmoil across UK markets. The Bank of England was forced to intervene with a massive bond-buying scheme to halt pension fund deleveraging. One market that was exceptionally roiled by the chaos was the UK commercial property market. 

Truss’s then-chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, caused financial turbulence and fears of a 2008-style financial crisis by unveiling the mini-budget, also known as “The Growth Plan,” which was designed to boost economic growth through tax cuts that were funded by fiscal stimulus. This caused dysfunction in the UK gilt market and led to pensions unloading everything from stocks, bonds, collateralized-loan obligations, and even office buildings. That quickly cooled investments in London office buildings in the fourth quarter. 

Real estate information provider CoStar Group Inc. revealed £400 million ($488 million) of offices in the UK were bought and sold in the fourth quarter, an 88% plunge from the prior quarter. 

Bloomberg noted, “the dealmaking freeze — worse than the decline during the financial crisis or Covid-19 lockdowns — came as former Prime Minister Liz Truss’s proposals for unfunded tax cuts spooked markets.” 

CoStar’s data shows the two-decade quarterly average for offices bought and sold is around £3.5 billion ($4.2 billion). So the last quarter’s figure reflects the turmoil sparked by Truss. Also, buyers are on the sidelines as they wait for price adjustments due to higher borrowing costs and the rising risk of recession.  

At the time of the turmoil last fall, pensions were unloading positions in the UK’s largest property funds, causing these funds to gate redemptions to avoid asset “firesales.”  

And the turmoil is unlikely to be over. US fund manager BlackRock recently suspended redemption requests from investors in its £3.5 billion ($4.2 billion) UK property fund. 

The net asset value of the BlackRock UK Property Fund has been on a rollercoaster ride in the last few quarters and roundtripped Covid lows. 

It seems like a combination of Truss’ disastrous mini-budget sparking financial chaos late last year and increasing economic uncertainty have led to freezing the UK office property market. 

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

A Ukrainian activist who has been lauded by legacy media outlets called for “all Russians” to be “wiped off the face of the Earth.”

The genocidal remarks were made by blogger Melania Podoliak in response to a missile hitting an apartment block in the Ukrainian city of Dnepr.

The building was struck after a Russian missile was shot down by a Ukrainian anti-air weapon, according to Aleksey Arestovich, an adviser to President Vladimir Zelensky.

“It’s absolutely fair for me to wish for all Russians and Russia to be wiped off the face of the Earth,” Podoliak tweeted.

“It’s not hate speech, it’s not horrible of me, it’s just FAIR,” she added.

It’s absolutely fair for me to wish for all Russians and Russia to be wiped off the face of the Earth. It’s not hate speech, it’s not horrible of me, it’s just FAIR.

14.01.2013, Dnipro, a residential building after Russian missile attack. pic.twitter.com/4TPHYm13a8

— Melaniya Podolyak (@MelaniePodolyak) January 14, 2023

Quite how it was “fair” for all Russians to be killed in response to their government being embroiled in a war wasn’t explained by Podoliak.

Her comments were flagged after it was noted that Podoliak has been given a platform by numerous western legacy media outlets, including on NBC News as a “political activist” and by Fox News as a “media consultant.”

Critics accused Podoliak of being “pro-ethnic cleansing,” to which she responded by tweeting swear words.

Fuuuuuck you

— Melaniya Podolyak (@MelaniePodolyak) January 14, 2023

After some respondents said they knew Podoliak’s home address, she told them they were in for “a big fucking treat,” posting a photo of herself holding a shotgun.

Cool, now these bots threaten me by letting me know they have my address

Well if you know that, you also know your in for a big fucking treat. Cya!

(Unless you want to waste an entire missile on me, which is going to change nothing for you, you’re still gonna get fuucked) https://t.co/4iesIszNGw pic.twitter.com/EbRkD8krPp

— Melaniya Podolyak (@MelaniePodolyak) January 15, 2023

This isn’t the first time we’ve heard such genocidal rhetoric.

As we previously highlighted, Ukrainian TV host Fahruddin Sharafmal took to the airwaves to demand the genocide of Russian children, quoting top Nazi Adolf Eichmann as he called for “killing children.”

*  *  *

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Record warmth spread across Europe in the first half of January. Temperatures in the energy-stricken continent felt more like spring as several metropolitan areas recorded the warmest temperatures on record. Now a pattern shift is underway as parts of northwest Europe brace for a cold snap starting Monday. 

The latest runs for global weather models, including GFS Operational and ECMWF Operational, show what appears to be a downward shift in temperatures for northwest Europe. Average temps are expected to average in the low 30s degrees Fahrenheit this week, below 5,10, and 30-year averages. 

GFS and ECMWF models show temperatures in London could decline to the low 30s by tomorrow — well below average for this time of year. 

A similar cold spell in Paris is slated for early this week. 

As well as colder temperatures in Berlin. 

Freezing temperatures across northwest Europe for the second half of the month will push up heating demand.  

Mild temperatures curbed heating demand and allowed for injections into natural gas storage at a time when supplies should be drawing. But that could change with the return of winter. 

The return of freezing conditions did very little to boost EU nature gas prices, which fell to the lowest level since September 2021 as the supply outlook remained robust. 

“There currently appears to be no end to the losses on the European gas market,” analysts at trading firm Energi Danmark A/S wrote in a note. They added: 

“The panic-like situation from last year has been replaced by confidence that Europe will get through this winter without any supply issues.”

Still, some are warning winter isn’t over:

#natgas
Weather models are cooling by the day. European snow cover is forecast over half of Europe including Greece, Italy, Turkey, even Lebanon and North Africa reaching 3 foot of snow. #natgas pic.twitter.com/L5hjnXWgbW

— Heinrich Leopold (@LeopoldHeinrich) January 16, 2023

forecast #polarvortex pic.twitter.com/2rqHLgNv9N

— PV-Forecast (@PvForecast) January 16, 2023

#natgas
To the astonishment of weather forecasters models (Jan17,23,31) are becoming colder and colder in Europe. This is exactly what the weakening of the polar vortex suggests. This will intensify as an historic strong vortex has accumulated a record amount of arctic cold air. pic.twitter.com/jI9txxPD8n

— Heinrich Leopold (@LeopoldHeinrich) January 15, 2023

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov told BBC on Friday that Ukraine is a “de facto” NATO member since it’s equipped with so many of the alliance’s weapons and dismissed the idea that his comments were controversial.

Reznikov said he was confident that Ukraine’s Western backers would supply Kyiv with warplanes and tanks despite some concerns about escalating the war. A day later, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak confirmed he would be sending Challenger 2 tanks.

“This concern about the next level of escalation, for me, is some kind of protocol,” Reznikov said. “Ukraine as a country, and the armed forces of Ukraine, became the member of NATO. De facto, not de jure [by law]. Because we have weaponry, and the understanding of how to use it.”

Reznikov made similar comments earlier this month when he said in an interview on Ukrainian TV that his country was “shedding blood” for a “NATO mission.”

His view aligns with that of Russian officials who have repeatedly stated that they are not just fighting a war against Ukraine but also against the US and NATO.

In comments to BBC, Reznikov dismissed the idea that what he was saying is controversial even though it implicates that NATO is a direct party to the conflict…

“Why [would it be] controversial? It’s true. It’s a fact. I’m sure that in the near future, we’ll become member of NATO, de jure,” he said.

The implication that NATO is directly involved in the war gives Russia a pretext to launch an attack on NATO bases in Europe if it chooses to do so. Right now, there’s no sign that Moscow is looking to take such a step, but as the US and its NATO allies continue to ramp up military aid, further escalation becomes more likely.

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

Shadows are falling / And I’ve been here all day / It’s too hot to sleep / And time is running away / Feel like my soul / has turned into steel /I’ve still got the scars / That the sun didn’t heal / There’s not even room enough / To be anywhere / Lord it’s not dark yet, / but it’s getting there

Bob Dylan, Not Dark Yet

Lights! Action! Reset!

The World Economic Forum (WEF)’s Davos Freak Show is back in business on Monday.

The mainstream media of the collective West, in unison, will be spinning non-stop, for a week, all the “news” that are fit to print to extol new declinations of The Great Reset, re-baptized The Great Narrative, but actually framed as a benign offer by “stakeholder capitalism”. These are the main planks of the shady platform of a shady NGO registered in Cologny, a tony Geneva suburb.

The list of Davos attendees was duly leaked. Proverbially, it’s an Anglo-American Exceptionalist fun fest, complete with intel honchos such as the US Director of National Intelligence, Avril “Madam Torture” Haines; the head of MI6 Richard Moore; and FBI director Christopher Wray.

Remixed Diderot and D’Alembert Encyclopedias could be written about the Davos pathology – where a hefty list of multibillionaires, heads of state and corporate darlings (owned by BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street and co.) “engage” in selling Demented Dystopia packages to the unsuspecting masses.

But let’s cut to the chase and focus on a few panels next week – which could easily be mistaken for Straight to Hell sessions.

The Tuesday, January 17 list is particularly engaging. It features a “De-Globalization or Re-Globalization?” panel with speakers Ian Bremmer, Adam Tooze, Niall Ferguson, Péter Szijjártó and Ngaire Woods. Three Atlanticists/Exceptionalists stand out, especially the ultra-toxic Ferguson.

After “In Defense of Europe”, featuring a bunch of nullities including Poland’s Andrjez Duda, attendees will be greeted with a Special Season in Hell (sorry, Rimbaud) featuring none other than EC dominatrix Ursula von der Leyen, known by a vast majority of Germans as Ursula von der Leichen (“Ursula of Cadavers”) in a tag team with WEF mastermind, Third Reich emulator Klaus “Nosferatu” Schwab.

Rumors are that Lucifer, in his privileged underground abode, is green with envy.

There’s also “Ukraine: What Next?” with another bunch of nullities, and “War in Europe: Year 2” featuring Moldova woke chick Maia Sandu and Finnish party girl Sanna Marin.

In the War Criminal section, pride of place goes to “A Conversation with Henry Kissinger: Historical Perspectives on War”, where Dr. K. will sell all his trademark Divide and Rule permutations. Added sulphur will be provided by Thucydides strangler Graham Allison.

In his Special Address, “Liver Sausage” Chancellor Olaf Scholz will be side by side with Nosferatu, hoping he won’t be – literally – grilled.

Then, on Wednesday, January 18, comes the apotheosis: “Restoring Security and Peace” with speakers Fareed Zakaria – the US establishment’s pet brown man; NATO’s Jens “War is Peace” Stoltenberg; Andrzej Duda – again; and Canadian warmonger Chrystia Freeland – widely rumored to become the next NATO Secretary-General.

And it gets juicier: the coke comedian posing as warlord may join via zoom from Kiev.

The notion that this panel is entitled to emit judgments about “peace” deserves nothing less than its own Nobel Peace Prize.

How to monetize the whole world

Cynics of all persuasions may be excused for lamenting Mr. Zircon – currently on oceanic patrol encompassing the Atlantic, the Indian Ocean and of course “Mare Nostrum” Mediterranean – won’t be presenting his business card at Davos.

Analyst Peter Koenig has developed a convincing thesis that the WEF, the WHO and NATO may be running some sort of sophisticated death cult. The Great Reset does mingle merrily with NATO’s agenda as agent provocateur, financer and weaponizer of the proxy Empire vs. Russia war in black hole Ukraine. NAKO – an acronym for North Atlantic Killing Organization – would be more appropriate in this case.

As Koenig summarizes it, “NATO enters any territory where the ‘conventional’ media lie-machine, and social engineering are failing or not completing their people-ordaining goals fast enough.”

In parallel, very few people are aware that on June 13, 2019 in New York, a secret deal was clinched between the UN, the WEF, an array of oligarch-weaponized NGOs – with the WHO in the front line – and last but not least, the world’s top corporations, which are all owned by an interlinked maze with Vanguard and BlackRock at the center.

The practical result of the deal is the UN Agenda 2030.

Virtually every government in the NATOstan area and the “Western Hemisphere” (US establishment definition) has been hijacked by Agenda 2030 – which translates, essentially, as hoarding, privatizing and financializing all the earth’s assets, under the pretext of “protecting” them.

Translation: the marketization and monetization of the entire natural world (see, for instance, here, here and here.)

Davos superstar shills such as insufferable bore Niall Ferguson are just well rewarded vassals: western intellectuals of the Harvard, Yale and Princeton mould that would never dare bite the hand that feeds them.

Ferguson just wrote a column on Bloomberg titled “All is Not Quiet on the Eastern Front” – basically to peddle the risk of WWIII, on behalf of his masters, blaming of course “China as the arsenal of autocracy”.

Among serial high-handed inanities, this one stands out. Ferguson writes, “There are two obvious problems with US strategy (…) The first is that if algorithmic weapons systems are the equivalent of tactical nuclear weapons, Putin may eventually be driven to using the latter, as he clearly lacks the former.”

Cluelessness here is a euphemism. Ferguson clearly has no idea “algorithmic weapons” mean; if he’s referring to electronic warfare, the US may have been able to maintain superiority for a while in Ukraine, but that’s over.

Well, that’s typical Ferguson – who wrote a whole Rothschild hagiography just like his column, drinking from the Rothschild archives that appeared to have been sanitized as he knows next to nothing meaningful about their history.

Ferguson has “deduced” that Russia is weak and China is strong. Nonsense. Both are strong – and Russia is more advanced technologically than China in their advanced offensive and defensive missile development, and can beat the US in a nuclear war as Russian air space is sealed by layered defenses such as the S-400 all the way to the already tested S-500s and designed S-600s.

As far as semiconductor chips, the advantage that Taiwan has in chip manufacture is in mass production of the most advanced chips; but China and Russia can fabricate the chips necessary for military use, though not engage in mass commercial production. The US has an important advantage here commercially with Taiwan, but that’s not a military advantage.

Ferguson gives away his game when he carps about the need to “deter a nascent Axis-like combination of Russia, Iran and China from risking simultaneous conflict in three theaters: Eastern Europe, the Middle East and the Far East.”

Here we have trademark Atlanticist demonization of the top three vectors of Eurasia integration mixed with a toxic cocktail of ignorance and arrogance: it’s NATO that is stoking “conflict” in Eastern Europe; and it’s the Empire that is being expelled from the “Far East” (oh, that’s so colonial) and soon from the Middle East (actually West Asia).

An AMGOT tale

Nobody with an IQ over room temperature will expect Davos next week to discuss any aspect of the NATO vs. Eurasia existential war seriously – not to mention propose diplomacy. So I’ll leave you with yet another typical tawdry story about how the Empire – who rules over Davos – deals in practice with its vassals.

While in Sicily earlier this year I learned that an ultra high-value Pentagon asset had landed in Rome, in haste, as part of an unscheduled visit. A few days later the reason for the visit was printed in La Repubblica, one of the papers of the toxic Agnelli clan.

That was a Mafia scam: a face-to-face “suggestion” for the Meloni government to imperatively provide Kiev, as soon as possible, with the costly anti-Samp-T missile system, developed by an European consortium, Eurosam, uniting MBDA Italy, MBDA France and Thales.

Italy possesses only 5 batteries of this system, not exactly brilliant against ballistic missiles but efficient against cruise missiles.

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan had already called Palazzo Chigi to announce the “offer you can’t refuse”. Apparently that was not enough, thus the hasty envoy trip. Rome will have to toe the line. Or else. After all, never forget the terminology employed by US generals to designate Sicily, and Italy as a whole: AMGOT.

American government occupied territory.

Have fun with the Davos freak show.

How much money is a brand truly worth?

As Visual Capitalist’s Omri Wallach details below, for some companies, a brand is something that helps slightly boost customer engagement and sales. But for others, including some of the largest companies in the world, a strong brand is one of their most valuable assets.

this animated graphic by James Eagle uses the annual brand rankings from Interbrand to track the world’s most valuable brands from 2000 to 2022.

Measuring Brand Value

One of the difficulties of brand valuation is its subjectivity.

In accounting, the value of a brand is sometimes represented as an intangible asset called goodwill on the balance sheet. That’s because the brand power associated with a company (i.e. brand recognition, brand loyalty, customer base, reputation, etc.) often makes a company more valuable than just the sum of its tangible assets like land, buildings, or product inventory.

This works for accounting purposes but is still a rough estimation, and doesn’t precisely quantify a brand’s true value.

For Interbrand’s studies, a consistent formula for brand strength was utilized which is based on a company’s financial forecast, brand role, and brand strength. It uses estimates of the present value of earnings a brand is forecasted to generate in the future.

The Top 10 Most Valuable Brands Since 2000

When the 2000s started, the internet was top-of-mind in terms of both markets and customer perception. The Dotcom bubble was driving the world’s largest companies, and brand value at the time reflected tech’s popularity:

Half of the top 10 most valuable brands at the time were in tech or telecom, including Microsoft, IBM, and Nokia.

Others were classic American brands and companies at the top of their fields, including Coca-Cola, General Electric, Ford, and McDonald’s.

But over the next 20 years, much of the old guard was replaced by new and rising brands. By 2022, only three of the top 10 most valuable brands from 2000 remained at the top:

Apple’s brand is now worth an estimated $482 billion, even though the company didn’t even crack the top 10 list back in the year 2000.

In fact, four of the top five brands on the 2022 list are directly in tech, and even Amazon (#3) is often considered a tech giant. Not surprisingly, brand value in the top 10 has grown almost across the board, though Coca-Cola is a notable exception, dropping $15 billion in estimated brand value over 22 years.

How will the most valuable brands continue to evolve over the coming decades?

Authored by Judith Bergman via The Gatestone Institute,

The United States recently banned TikTok from all federal government devices over growing security concerns. That is a good start.

TikTok, FBI Director Christopher Wray warned at the beginning of December, is controlled by the Chinese government, which is a national security concern.

TikTok, a video-sharing app owned by Chinese company ByteDance, has, according to TikTok’s own estimates, 1 billion users worldwide. In 2021, TikTok had approximately 87 million users in the US, according to Statista. Disturbingly, a recent study found that 10% of US adults get their news from the Chinese app, up from 3% in 2020.

Wray said that China’s government can control the app’s recommendation algorithm, “which allows them to manipulate content, and if they want to, to use it for influence operations.”

“All of these things are in the hands of a government that doesn’t share our values, and that has a mission that’s very much at odds with what’s in the best interests of the United States. That should concern us,” Wray said in a speech at the University of Michigan.

Wray’s comments echoed those he made at the “Worldwide Threats to the Homeland” hearing held at the House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee on November 15.

“We do have national security concerns at least from the FBI’s end about TikTok,” Wray stated.

“They include the possibility that the Chinese government could use it to control data collection on millions of users. Or control the recommendation algorithm, which could be used for influence operations if they so chose. Or to control software on millions of devices, which gives it opportunity to potentially technically compromise personal devices.”

Wray’s concerns are not new — actually, they come a bit late. In 2020, President Donald J. Trump, citing similar security concerns, tried to ban the app in the US, in addition to sanctioning the company, but several federal judges ruled against both sanctions and a ban, blocking his attempts. One judge ruled that the ban failed “to adequately consider an obvious and reasonable alternative before banning TikTok” and that the ban was “arbitrary and capricious.”

“ByteDance’s submission and compliance with Chinese law has rendered it a reliable, useful, and far reaching ear and mouthpiece for the Party and State,” the Trump administration wrote at the time in a document motivating the proposed ban. The document cited ByteDance’s commitment to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as resulting in “systemic censorship of content across its platforms” and “the harvesting of user data.”

In the document, the Trump administration stressed noted:

“ByteDance, as a company, and its subsidiaries are subject to PRC national security laws that require or compel the assistance of any Chinese citizen or entity in surveillance and intelligence operations. As ByteDance is subject to PRC jurisdiction, PRC laws can compel cooperation from ByteDance…”

Chinese law requires all Chinese companies to turn over information to the Communist Party upon request — and ByteDance reportedly employs more than 130 Party members to ensure compliance, among other matters.

The Trump administration stated :

“One of the foremost national security risks presented by the TikTok mobile application in the United States is the possibility that the PRC government could, through lawful authority, extralegal influence (Communist Party) influence, or PRCISS, compel TikTok to provide systemic access to U.S. user’s sensitive personal information. A number of press reports clearly indicate the PRC Government has already compelled TikTok to assist them for domestic surveillance, censorship, and propaganda action within China, and their compliance is indicative of how they are likely to respond to intelligence requests on U.S. users. Given the bounty of information TikTok could offer on foreign users, as well as the aforementioned cyber tactics employed by the PRC, the Department of Commerce assesses the PRC and PRCISS would not limit their use of TikTok to domestic concerns and would instead use it for foreign intelligence and surveillance.”

Furthermore, similar to the concerns expressed by Wray, the Trump administration argued,

“The PRC government and the CCP can exert influence on ByteDance and, through the TikTok app, censor and shape content available to U.S. users in ways that can influence their opinions and views of China.”

In April 2021, U.S. Senator Josh Hawley wrote:

“TikTok is a Trojan Horse for the Chinese Communist Party that has no place on government devices—or any American devices, for that matter…. TikTok has repeatedly proven itself to be a malicious actor.”

According to Adonis Hoffman, a former chief of staff and senior legal advisor at the FCC who has served in legal and policy positions in the U.S. House of Representatives:

“Its algorithm is at once simple and sinister. Download the app on your smartphone and you have given China access to all your data… This opens a treasure trove of data on millions of Americans for the Chinese government to use whenever and however they choose. And history shows they use that data for nefarious purposes.”

President Joe Biden reversed Trump’s attempt at banning TikTok, signing an executive order in June 2021 that revoked Trump’s proposed ban. Instead, the Biden administration has sought to work out the security concerns with ByteDance through a negotiated deal with the Chinese company that would reportedly allow TikTok to continue operating in the US without any change of ownership.

“Well, I think Donald Trump was right,” Senator Mark Warner, D-Va., chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, recently said.

“I mean, TikTok is an enormous threat. So, if you’re a parent, and you’ve got a kid on TikTok, I would be very, very concerned. All of that data that your child is inputting and receiving is being stored somewhere in Beijing.”

Brendan Carr, a Republican commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission, said in November that the only way to resolve the national security concerns regarding TikTok would be to ban the app.

“I don’t believe there is a path forward for anything other than a ban,” Carr said. According to Axios:

There simply isn’t “a world in which you could come up with sufficient protection on the data that you could have sufficient confidence that it’s not finding its way back into the hands of the [Chinese Communist Party],” Carr said.

In October, Forbes revealed that a China-based team at ByteDance had planned to use TikTok to track the locations of an unspecified number of Americans.

In December, it was revealed that ByteDance had used the app to surveil several journalists to track down the journalists’ sources.

According to Texas Governor Greg Abbott:

“TikTok harvests vast amounts of data from its users’ devices — including when, where and how they conduct internet activity — and offers this trove of potentially sensitive information to the Chinese government,”

Also in December, Indiana became the first U.S. state to sue TikTok, for misleading users about the Chinese government’s capacity to access their data and showing mature content to minors.

“The company’s ownership of TikTok is problematic for two reasons,” wrote Republican Senator Marco Rubio and Republican US Representative Mike Gallagher.

“First, the app can track cellphone users’ locations and collect internet-browsing data — even when users are visiting unrelated website.

“That TikTok, and by extension the CCP, has the ability to survey every keystroke teenagers enter on their phones is disturbing. With this app, Beijing could also collect sensitive national security information from U.S. government employees and develop profiles on millions of Americans to use for blackmail or espionage…

Even more alarming than that possibility, however, are the potential abuses of TikTok’s algorithm…

Its algorithm is a black box, in that its designers can alter its operation at any time without informing users… in the hands of ByteDance, it could also be used to subtly indoctrinate American citizens.

TikTok has already censored references to politically sensitive topics, including the treatment of workers in Xinjiang, China, and the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square. It has temporarily blocked an American teenager who criticized the treatment of Uyghurs in China. In German videos about Chinese conduct toward Uyghurs, TikTok has modified subtitles for terms such as ‘reeducation camp’ and ‘labor camp,’ replacing words with asterisks.”

In China, the content available on TikTok could not be more different. China serves up the “spinach version“: science, physics, engineering and patriotism. In the US, TikTok serves up the “opium version.” Tristan Harris, a former Google employee, said of China’s approach to TikTok on CBS’ 60 Minutes:

“It’s almost like [the Chinese] recognize that technology is influencing kids’ development, and they make their domestic version a spinach version of TikTok, while they ship the opium version to the rest of the world.”

“If you’re under 14 years old, they show you science experiments you can do at home, museum exhibits, patriotism videos and educational videos,” said Harris of the content served by TikTok within China, adding that Chinese children were limited to only 40 minutes a day on the app.

“There’s a survey of pre-teens in the U.S. and China asking, ‘what is the most aspirational career that you want to have?’ and in the U.S., the No. 1 was a social media influencer, and in China, the No. 1 was astronaut. You allow those two societies to play out for a few generations and I can tell you what your world is going to look like.”

TikTok urgently needs to be banned from the US and the rest of the free world.

If there was any doubt that China is back – or was back even when it was still largely mostly locked down with various now defunct Covid zero restrictions – all those doubts were magically whisked away moments ago when Beijing’s not-so-random number goalseekatron published the data dump for Q4 which – drumroll – not only beat across the board, but absolutely smashed expectations.

Here is what China’s National BS (which stands for Bureau of Statistics of course), reported moments ago for a quarter when Covid Zero was still all the rage (before China mysteriously called time on the worst economic policy of the past three years):

• Q4 GDP +2.9% y/y; down predictably from the Q3 +3.9% as zero Covid policies hammered growth for most of Q4 (China was mostly locked down during the quarter), but smashing the estimate of +1.6% and not far from the highest forecast (range -1.1% to +3.5% from 28 economists).
• 2022 cumulative GDP +3% y/y; also beating expectations of +2.7%; curiously this was unchanged from the estimate of the first 9 months which was also at +3%
• Dec. industrial production +1.3% y/y; beating expectations of  +0.1%, and down from Nov’s +2.2%
• Dec. retail sales -1.8% y/y; smashing expectations of a -9% plunge, and a big improvement from Nov’s -5.9% plunge.
• Jan.-Dec. fixed-asset investment excluding rural households +5.1% y/y; also beating expectations of +5%, and a modest slowdown from the Jan.-Nov. print of +5.3%
• Dec jobless rate 5.5%, down from 5.7% in Nov.

Solid data dump aside, there was continued weakness across property and housing, although as we already know this sector is poised for a huge surge now that China is phasing out its “three red lines” and its bad debt firms are planning up to $24 billion in support for developers.

• Jan.-Dec. property investment -10% y/y vs -9.8% in Jan.- Nov.
• Jan.-Dec. residential property sales -28.3% y/y vs -28.4% in Jan.-Nov.

A snapshot of the data:

On paper, all of the above looks great. On paper, however, it’s of course all fake as Australia’s Bill Birties points out:

It is extraordinary that an economic quarter that saw restrictions across multiple cities for Covid followed by mass nationwide outbreak in December… would see not only as much economic activity as the same period a year earlier, but almost 3% more…

But while the “surprise” beat in China’s GDP (and everything else) was tonight’s big headline, there was another big headline in the big (non-surprise) decline in China’s population. As the NBS reported, China’s total population fell by 850,000 in 2022, to about 1.41 billion at end-2022, a drop for the first time since 1961, the final year of the Great Famine under former leader Mao Zedong.

China’s population started shrinking in 2022 marking the first drop since 1961, the final year of the Great Famine under former leader Mao Zedong https://t.co/waPxjeqC3q pic.twitter.com/XNR3pKbcCP

— Bloomberg (@business) January 17, 2023

According to the data, a total of 10.41 million people died, a slight increase from around 10 million recorded in recent years (good thing there were no pandemic at the time). At the same time, some 9.56 million babies were born in 2022, down from 10.62 million a year earlier, the lowest level since at least 1950, despite efforts by the government to encourage families to have more children.

“This is a truly historic turning point, an onset of a long-term and irreversible population decline,” said Wang Feng, an expert on Chinese demographic change at the University of California, Irvine.

While the decline officially began last year, with deaths outstripping births, the FT notes that some demographers argue that the trend likely started before then. Fuxian Yi, a demographer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, estimated that China’s population started to fall in 2018, but the drop was obscured by “faulty demographic data”.

“China is facing a demographic crisis that far exceeds the imagination of Chinese authorities and the international community,” said Yi, noting that the trend will act as a long-term drag on the country’s property market, a crucial engine of growth.

“Abundant labor has been the fuel that has driven China’s rapid growth for more than four decades,” said Yi, “and now China is flying at high speed without enough fuel.”

Some economists argue that the rise of automation will offset rising labour costs as the number of workers shrinks.

China’s demographic disaster aside, the stellar economic data – at least in the context of consensus expectations – was still quite poor: China’s economy grew at the second slowest pace since the 1970s in 2022 as Covid restrictions hammered activity, though better-than-forecast fourth quarter and December data add to optimism it may be primed for a recovery; it was also well below the governments target last year of around 5.5%, although that’s where 2023 comes in. According to Ho Woei Chen, an economist at United Overseas Bank in Singapore, China’s latest economic data suggest the momentum for recovery will be stronger in 1Q this year with the reopening of the borders and relaxation of the regulatory oversight in some sectors including property. And it’s all uphill from there.

“We are maintaining our forecast for 2023 at 5.2%. Economic recovery is likely to accelerate in 2Q as the population achieves herd immunity, which will pave the way for further normalization in activities and a v-shaped recovery in private consumption”

“On the key risks, we remain cautious on the external outlook and the sluggish real estate market could also take the tailwind out of this recovery.”

Still, even 5.2% might not be enough. According to the head of the National Bureau of Statistics, Kang Yi, China has to more than double the current per capita GDP of about $12,700 in order to achieve its 2035 goal, although now that the population is declining, this target may be easier to achieve even if it means eventually surrendering the superpower status to India which as of this moment is officially the world’s most populous country.

Authored by Christopher Roach via AmGreatness.com,

Lately political analysis in the United States seems closer to Cold War-era Kremlinology. Small hints of what is really happening must be divined from the unintentional slips and innocuous gestures of officials. The reality of governance is concealed by a cloak of normality, procedural regularity, and legality. 

This is to be expected within party politics, where things are resolved with deals among party insiders, i.e., the proverbial “smoke filled rooms.” This is why Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, and Amy Klobuchar rather suddenly dropped out to make way for Joe Biden in 2020, after it appeared the divided field could end up with Bernie Sanders as the nominee. 

But this approach – secret groups secretly deciding how to control events – is not supposed to dominate ordinary governance. 

The Deep State Revealed Itself Under Trump

Donald Trump faced harassment from the Intelligence Community and other unelected parts of government throughout his term as president. Delaying the provision of funds Congress appropriated for Ukraine—something well within his authority as president—formed the basis of the first impeachment. A crew of insiders and bureaucrats waxed eloquent about their sacred “interagency consensus,” but the Congress and the American people were not buying it. Americans still think elections are supposed to matter. 

In spite of his manifest unpopularity and refusal even to campaign, Biden was installed as president in 2020. Having rarely met an actual Biden supporter, Trump voters were skeptical and angry. The extended recounts, unceremonious dismissal of legal challenges, and videos of disappearing ballots, along with strident denunciations of “election deniers,” did not reassure anyone. Later revelations showed the coordinated way government officials, the media, NGOs, billionaires, and others conspired to “fortify” the 2020 election. 

Biden governed as he ran: mostly hidden from the public, beholden to donors and party elders, doing as little as possible. This seemed acceptable for a while, since it allowed the various constituent parts of the government to do what they wanted with little interference. Everyone knows Biden’s never been that sharp and seems more decrepit than ever, that his vice president is even dumber than he is, and that he’s not really running anything. 

But this is all a feature, not a bug, for the cabal that brought him to office. For them, the more independence they have from oversight, the better. 

Biden Has Enemies

Lately, it seems there’s a disturbance in the force. Biden and his allies have continued their vendetta against Trump, exposing his tax returns and raiding his home for possessing documents he supposedly owed the National Archives. This did not go over as well as Attorney General (and all-around hack) Merrick Garland anticipated, and it seems Garland and the January 6 Committee have each decided to scale back their demands. 

This is why the recent exposure of top secret documents in Biden’s old office, his garage, and a mysterious third location suggests something is afoot. We went from a Monday disclosure to a special counsel being appointed on Thursday. Nothing like this happens this quickly unless it is by design. 

There are, of course, ways to deal with this situation that do not involve public exposure. Couldn’t Biden or his staff order some FBI agents or White House people to pick them up and take them to wherever they’re supposed to be stored? 

It’s in the news because somehow his lawyers found the documents and reported them before the story could go through White House channels. And, lawyers being lawyers, they followed the street-lawyer rule that if someone has to go to jail, make sure it’s your client and not you. Concerned about individual culpability for obstruction or mishandling documents, they made this hot potato someone else’s problem as fast as possible. 

Someone is responsible for the way this information came out, and that someone is an enemy of Biden. There are plenty of possibilities: some secret Republicans at the Justice Department, Kamala Harris and her people, a committee of Democratic Party insiders concerned about Dementia Joe being president for another four years. The whole thing has a whiff of a conspiracy, and, like the various allegations and pretexts employed to investigate Trump, it may very well originate in the intelligence community. 

As Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) once said, “You take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.” In this instance, the hypothesis is not completely satisfying. Biden has not really taken on the intelligence community, so far as I can tell, unless they’re still smarting about how he ended the Afghanistan boondoggle. 

Republicans Should Put Country Over Party

Republicans seem gleeful over the news. This is unsurprising. It’s the millionth example of rank hypocrisy from Democrats. But, judging by past results, pointing out such hypocrisy does not seem to get us anywhere. It may put a damper on Merrick Garland’s pursuit of Trump for his alleged violations of the Presidential Records Act, but this already seemed to have lost steam on its own.

Republican glee should be more restrained, as their excitement is akin to aristocrats in Revolutionary France cheering on Robespierre’s Terror when it turned on the revolutionaries themselves. Such a development makes things more dangerous for everyone, even if it sweeps up some of one’s enemies. 

If the exposure of Biden’s apparent mishandling of classified documents arose from an intelligence community operation, it shows that the unelected deep state is beholden to neither Democrats nor Republicans. In other words, it will have revealed itself as a completely unaccountable branch of government, subject neither to Congress, the president, the judiciary, or any ideological faction. 

This would be a profoundly un-American development, but it would not be a huge surprise. Instead of accepting the small fry of defeating an already unpopular, not-quite-elected president, Republicans should instead join forces with everyone of good will and focus on exposing and defanging the unelected portions of government, which mean to place themselves above every branch of government, as well as the American people themselves.

By Ewa Manthery of ING Economics

Copper jumped above $9,000/t for the first time since June at the beginning of 2023 on optimism about China’s economy, after Beijing abandoned its zero-Covid policy.

We believe there is more upside for copper prices as demand in China picks up after the Lunar New Year holiday at the end of this month.

Copper benefits from zero-Covid exit

Copper has been rallying since late November amid a series of supportive policies in China and Beijing’s abrupt abandonment of Covid controls. The red metal has also received support from the weaker US dollar, which slid to a near seven-month low recently on growing expectations for a less hawkish Federal Reserve after cooler inflation and employment data.

In our November outlook, we said China remained the big question mark for the copper market going forward. There have been important developments since then, with China making a full U-turn on its zero-Covid strategy.

The virus was officially downgraded on 8 January when international arrivals were no longer required to quarantine.

China’s lifting of Covid measures will, in time, help the economy to normalise, our China economist believes. But we can expect the short-term to be dominated by the very high level of Covid cases, which have come at a time when the economy is already very weak.

Looking at other economies in the region which have suffered similar severe waves of Covid (India’s Delta wave) we would expect this wave to last no more than three months at which time the economy could start to revert to a more normal footing. Zeng Guang, the former chief scientist at the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, has recently said that China’s Covid outbreak could continue for another two to three months.

However, this could also coincide with the US and Europe entering recession, which will weigh on any manufacturing recovery and export growth even as China’s domestic issues abate.

We believe, for copper, China’s Covid policy change should prove supportive for demand in the medium to long run, although rising Covid infections could weigh on demand in the immediate term.

Copper is rising on China reopening, slower Fed rate hikes

Property stimulus improves confidence

Beijing has released a raft of policy measures in recent weeks which have increased confidence that the economy is stabilising, improving the outlook for industrial metals, including copper. For almost two decades, China’s property sector growth and the country’s rapid urbanisation have been the key driver of growth for copper demand. 

China will return to “normal” growth soon as Beijing steps up support for households and businesses, Guo Shuqing, party secretary of the People’s Bank of China, told state media recently.

The world’s biggest consumer of copper is expected to quickly rebound because of the country’s optimised Covid response and after its economic policies continue to take effect, Guo said.

In its most recent move, China is planning to allow some property firms to add leverage by easing borrowing caps and pushing back the grace period for meeting debt targets. The move would relax the strict “three red lines” policy which had contributed to a historic property downturn, hitting demand for industrial metals. The easing would add to a raft of policy moves issued since November to bolster the ailing property sector, which accounts for around a quarter of the country’s economy.

China’s economy ended 2022 in a major slump. Factory activity in the country contracted in December at the fastest pace in nearly three years. The official manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) slumped to 47 last month from 48 in November, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

It was the biggest drop since February 2020 and also marked the third straight month of contraction for the index.

The non-manufacturing PMI, which measures activity in the services sector, plunged to 41.6 last month from 46.7 in November. It also marked the lowest level in nearly three years.

And although the government has stepped up its support for the property market, the effects are still slow to take effect – home sales fell again in December. The 100 biggest real estate developers saw new home sales drop 30.8% from a year earlier to 677.5 billion yuan ($98.2 billion) in December, according to data from China Real Estate Information Corp. That compared with a 25.5% decline in November.

Housing prices fell 0.25% in December from the previous month, the 16th consecutive month of declines.

We believe more stimulus and infrastructure spending could be unveiled at the National People’s Congress in March, which is likely to boost demand for commodities further.

Global stocks at multi-year lows

The demand boost for copper comes at a time when global stockpiles held by exchanges remain low. Last year, shrinking inventories were overshadowed by weakening global demand, but a revival in demand this year could set up the market for further squeezes and spikes in prices.

Copper stocks in LME warehouses remain low, representing just two days’ worth of global usage. Inventories on the SHFE and COMEX are also extremely low. Between the three exchanges, global copper inventories are now down to just a few days of consumption.

More price upside ahead

We have increased our 2023 copper price forecast amid China’s reopening optimism, but we maintain a cautious view for the first quarter as Covid cases across China continue to rise. We now see copper prices averaging $8,700/t in the first quarter. We believe any further gains are likely to be capped as the Lunar New Year approaches.

Following a surge in cases, economic activity will start to revert to a more normal footing with demand recovering by the second quarter.

But we expect this to be temporary and China’s Covid policy change should prove supportive for copper demand in the medium and long term.

We believe that once China gets over the current wave of Covid-19 infections and the country learns to live with Covid, a recovery in Chinese demand will boost copper prices further.

We expect prices to continue to recover from the second quarter onwards on the back of improving reopening sentiment and tight inventories with prices hovering around $9,100/t in the fourth quarter.

However, global macroeconomic headwinds are likely to persist in 2023 and the risk of global recession will remain a threat to the demand recovery in China, capping further gains.

Any further spikes in copper prices will also depend on the US Federal Reserve’s stance towards its monetary policy. Less aggressive tightening would limit any upside in the US dollar and could further boost copper prices.

Longer-term, we still believe copper demand will improve amid the accelerated move into renewables and electric vehicles (EVs). In EVs, copper is a key component used in the electric motor, batteries, and wiring, as well as in charging stations. Copper cannot be substituted in EVs or wind and solar energy, and its appeal to investors as a key green metal will support higher prices over the next few years.

ING forecasts