US Decries “Outrageous” China & Russia Veto Of Its Gaza Ceasefire Resolution At UN
On Friday Russia and China, along with Algeria, vetoed a US draft resolution on Gaza calling for ceasefire, with the objectors complaining that the language fell short of a clear and unequivocal demand for a ceasefire.
The draft ceasefire sought to directly link an immediate ceasefire with the release of all hostages from Gaza. China and Russia saw in it language that paves the way for okaying an Israeli offensive against Rafah.
US ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said of the proposed resolution, “We want to see an immediate and sustained ceasefire as part of a deal that leads to the release of all hostages being held by Hamas and other groups and that will allow much more life-saving, humanitarian aid to get into Gaza.”
But Russian ambassador to the Security Council Vasily Nebenzya accused the US of engaging in “hypocritical” posturing:
He accused the United States of doing nothing to rein in Israel in Gaza, and mocked Washington for speaking of a ceasefire after “Gaza has been virtually wiped off the face of the Earth”.
“We have observed a typical hypocritical spectacle,” he said.
Nebenzya said that the resolution offered by the Biden administration would have “ensured the impunity of Israel, whose crimes are not even assessed in the draft.”
This comes after several prior US vetoes of attempted ceasefire resolutions. Friday marks the fourth attempt to move forward a ceasefire resolution. In this case, the Biden administration can seek to lay blame on Russia and China for not wanting to seek peace:
Thomas-Greenfield has reacted to Russia’s and China’s vetoes of the US resolution by saying the two countries “refuse to condemn Hamas for burning people alive, for gunning down innocent civilians at a concert and for raping women and girls”.
“This was the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust, and a permanent member of the Security Council cannot even condemn it,” she said. “I’m sorry, but this is outrageous and is below the dignity of this body.”
An alternative resolution is soon next to be put before the Security Council which urges an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan, out of which could come a hoped-for permanent ceasefire. The US is expected to veto it.
Given the death toll in Gaza has reportedly surpassed 30,000 mostly civilians killed, the war is becoming increasingly unpopular internationally, and Israel’s actions have been especially condemned by Global South countries.
Russia & China Strike Shipping Deal With Houthis To Ensure Safe Vessel Transits, Report Says
According to Bloomberg’s sources, Russia and China have sealed a deal with Iran-backed Houthis to allow their commercial vessels to transit the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden without fear of drone and or missile attacks.
One of the sources said China and Russia reached a deal with diplomats in Oman with Mohammed Abdel Salam, one of the Houthis’ top political leaders. They said the safe passage of vessels is in exchange for the Houthis’ political support at the United Nations Security Council.
Bloomberg noted, “It’s not entirely clear how that support would be manifested, but it could include blocking more resolutions against the group.”
Since November, Houthi rebels have repeatedly attacked vessels in the Red Sea. Rebels assert that their attacks are aimed only at ships connected to Israel, demonstrating their support for the Palestinians amid the ongoing Gaza conflict.
In response to the Red Sea crisis, the Biden administration launched Operation Prosperity Guardian, a military operation led by the US and other allied countries to protect the critical shipping lane. However, months later, the operation failed to protect ships. Furthermore, the US and UK have launched bombing raids on Yemen and other Middle Eastern countries to fight back against Iran-backed terror groups.
“China and Russia are deepening their strategic alliance with Iranian-backed terrorists. It’s a further sign of an emerging new world disorder that threatens freedom of navigation, commerce, transit, and communications,” said David Asher, a senior fellow at Hudson Institute, who commented on the Bloomberg report.
Asher continued: “No one should doubt that Putin and Xi are increasingly coordinating their moves with Tehran while the US embraces appeasement, including via releasing billions of dollars to the Iranians with no substantive result to American interests, power, and prestige.”
Did you hear the news? England’s National Health Service (NHS) has decided that children diagnosed with gender dysphoria will no longer receive puberty blockers because “there is not enough evidence to support the safety or clinical effectiveness … to make the treatment routinely available at this time.”
The premier of Alberta, Canada, is planning legislation to restrict “gender-affirming” surgeries such as mastectomies for minors and puberty blockers for youth aged 15 and under. Other socially liberal nations have also hit the brakes on “gender affirmation,” in children, including Norway, Finland, France, Denmark, Sweden, and New Zealand. So have a score of American states.
Why did it take so long for common sense to return to this contentious issue? Blame the cultural imperialism of gender ideologues who, while most of us were not paying attention, successfully instituted “treatment guidelines” that focused almost exclusively on “affirming” a child’s gender confusion as medically necessary, while branding the more cautious approach of deeply exploring the mental health issues that could have contributed to the patient’s confusion as “transphobic,” and, even, likely to drive gender-confused children to suicide.
WPATH—which stands for the World Professional Association for Transgender Health—led the charge. Members of the organization are committed to the belief that “gender”—as opposed to sex—constitutes a human being’s true self and that gender “identity” can be known by the child when very young—in some cases, even before starting school.
Moreover, when a child claims a particular gender identity different from that “assigned at birth”—male, female, nonbinary, transgender, etc.—that patient must be believed, “affirmed,” and set on the road to an eventual “transition.”
But gender ideologues didn’t just promote their views about how gender dysphoric children should be treated in the marketplace of ideas. Rather, the entirety of the woke cultural infrastructure mobilized to punish those who challenged the new orthodoxy.
Social authoritarianism became the order of the day. Many elementary and high schools were at the vanguard. Administrators ordered teachers not to alert parents to their child’s gender confusion at the risk of job loss. Teachers were fired if they “mis-pronouned” a gender-confused student or used the child’s “dead” (given) name instead of the gender-affirming name chosen by the child. Some teachers even proselytized gender ideology to their students, for example by placing LGBT flags in classrooms and assigning readings from pro-gender transitioning books.
Meanwhile, social media companies canceled the accounts of those who disputed affirmation as the “medically necessary, life-saving standard of care.” Blue states such as California passed laws threatening to remove the custody of children from parents who refused to affirm their child’s declared gender identity. Medical professionals who sought to continue the more traditional approaches to care were accused of engaging in hateful “conversion therapy” and threatened with professional discipline.
For a time, the ideological juggernaut seemed unstoppable. But as the old saying goes, eventually truth “will out.” Less ideological medical professionals reviewed the actual data and noticed that the supposedly settled science was much less certain than the activists claimed. Moreover, the potential medical harm from puberty blocking and performing surgeries on healthy bodies came to the forefront—in large part thanks to the advocacy of “de-transitioners” who were affirmed in their gender confusion but came to realize that they are, indeed, the sex they were born. The tragic testimonies of young women without breasts and boys with potential lifelong sexual dysfunction exposed the potential cruelty of the gender-affirming approach.
And now, a shocking new report—“The WPATH Files,” published by Environmental Progress—has exposed WPATH’s rank ideological method as primarily “consumer-driven and pseudoscientific”—as opposed to evidence-based—and (appearing) to be “political activism, not science.”
Not only that, but the study demonstrates that contrary to WPATH’s claims, the “psychiatric condition of gender dysphoria is not a fatal illness, and the best available studies show that in the case of minors, with watchful waiting and compassionate support, most will either grow out of it or learn to manage their distress in ways less detrimental to their health.” In other words, alternative non-invasive approaches can help young patients overcome their gender confusion without mutilating their bodies.
Backing up the study’s many data-derived criticisms, author Mia Hughes also quotes actual transcripts of some WPATH members’ shocking disregard for the wellbeing of their patients made in private communications. For example, the report quotes one of the authors of WPATH’s standards of care guidelines admitting that children are too immature to comprehend the enormity of the transition they may desire: “[It is] out of their developmental range to understand the extent to which some of these medical interventions are impacting them.”
Another WPATH member shrugs that minor patients do not fully appreciate the consequences of sterility that some medically “affirming” treatments can cause. “It’s always a good theory that you talk about fertility preservation with a 14-year old, but I know I’m talking to a blank wall. They’d be like, ew, kids, babies, gross.”
Environmental Progress’s exposé illustrates the danger of meekly following “the experts.” This is particularly true when the main defense of a new and radical agenda is based on a supposed consensus, and that therefore, the science is now “settled.” As my Discovery Institute colleague Stephen C. Meyer says: If you have to rely on a supposed “consensus” to defend your [scientific] position, it means there isn’t really a consensus. That goes double when skeptics are coerced into silence to maintain the primacy of a particular cultural orthodoxy.
“The WPATH Files” demonstrates that courageous resistance to destructive social fads is never futile. But good golly it can be difficult when ideology successfully masks as science. Hopefully, the report will hasten the end of our destructive transgender moral panic—at least as it impacts minors—and we will finally protect these agonized youngsters in the way all vulnerable children deserve.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.
“Our Country Is Being Poisoned”: 270,000 Overdose Deaths Catapult Fentanyl As Major Voter Topic In Presidential Race
In a recent interview on Fox News, former President Donald Trump warned, “Our country is being poisoned from within by the drugs and by all of the other crime that’s taking place.”
According to the latest provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, between November 2019 and October 2023, there have been a shocking 270,000 overdose deaths from synthetic opioids – or about 80,000 overdose deaths per year – across the nation.
Under the Biden administration’s first term, Americans have been increasingly traumatized by the tsunami of overdose deaths as disastrous open southern border policies flood the nation with illegal drugs and millions of unvetted migrants that have sparked chaos across major metro areas.
American voters are increasingly frustrated with progressive policies that have backfired, resulting in the loss of countless American lives, many of them young people.
This is how China uses open southern borders to poison the American people.
A new Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll of nearly 5,000 registered voters shows 8 in 10 voters in seven swing states believe fentanyl misuse is a “very important” or “somewhat important” issue when deciding who to vote for in November. The drug overdose issue trumps abortion, climate change, labor and unions, or the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.
Early in President Biden’s first term, he stated one of the central pillars of his “Unity Agenda” was to solve the overdose crisis. Fast-forward to today, Biden’s team of clowns has failed as they prioritize open southern borders over the well-being and health of law-abiding taxpayers. Just think about that for a few seconds…
A senior US military official said the Pentagon has not yet ruled out an American deployment to Haiti, which has seen a spike in violent unrest that prompted the resignation of the country’s prime minister last week.
Speaking during an event hosted by the Atlantic Council on Tuesday, US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) head General Laura Richardson was asked whether she envisions “boots on the ground” in the Caribbean nation.
“Not right now,” she said, before adding “They could be at the end of the day. We wouldn’t discount that at any time.” Without elaborating, Richardson also went on to suggest that Haitian refugees fleeing violence could be housed at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay – the notorious torture prison which has held hundreds of foreign terrorism suspects without charges for years on end.
Haiti has been gripped by a long bout of chaos since the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise, who was replaced by Prime Minister Ariel Henry – then the West’s favored successor. Also assuming the powers of the presidency, Henry took office in lieu of a popular vote, repeatedly postponing elections even after lawmakers’ terms expired last year and left the legislature crippled.
However, with Henry failing to rein in gangs and armed groups running rampant across Port-au-Prince – some even seizing control of ports and other key infrastructure – the PM gradually lost his international backing, agreeing to resign last week under pressure from Washington and other regional states.
The premier will be replaced by a nine-member transition council intended to pave the way to future elections – at a yet-unspecified date – and create an “action plan for near-term security,” according to Guyanese President Irfaan Ali, who helped to broker Henry’s resignation.
After repeated appeals to the United Nations for an international security force to help quell the violence, Henry finally struck a deal earlier this month for a Kenyan-led mission backed by other nations and largely financed by the United States. It is that initiative which Richardson suggested US troops could ultimately join.
With Henry stepping down, however, Nairobi has signaled that the multi-national security mission would be delayed until the new council is established, leaving it unclear when – or whether – the plan will come to fruition.
“The deal they signed… still stands, although the deployment will not happen now because definitely we will require a sitting government to also collaborate with,” Kenyan Foreign Ministry spokesman Salim Swaleh told the New York Times last week. “You don’t just deploy police to go on the Port-au-Prince streets without a sitting administration.”
HAITI REMAINS AS THE MOTHER OF ALL FAILED STATES.
Americans are gradually being evacuated via helicopter to the neighboring Dominican Republic as Haiti is engulfed in chaos.
“The Haitian people have kept the bitter taste of a foreign force in charge of our situation: theft, rape, cholera, food dependence, deregulation of the economic system, without mentioning the fact that we don’t remember seeing then-gang leaders be arrested or rendered unable to do harm,” Haitian think tank Groupe de Travail sur la Securite (Security Working Group) said in a statement in 2022, soon after Henry’s first appeal for an international deployment.
Large US Banks Suffer Another Weekly Deposits Outflow; Stocks & Fed Reserves Completely Decoupled
With The Fed’s bank bailout facility now expired, the 12-month term loans are starting to mature and the fund dropped over $17.2BN last week…
Source: Bloomberg
Money-market funds saw a big outflows of almost $62BN, which we wonder if related to tax-year liquidity issues, but it is a little early in the year…
Source: Bloomberg
And as money-markets saw outflows, so banks saw deposit inflows… +$38.2BN (SA) and +$41.3BN (NSA) in total deposit increases…
Source: Bloomberg
Excluding foreign deposits, domestic banks saw their second straight week of SA inflows +$23.5BN (Large Banks -$8.7BN, Small Banks +32BN), while NSA deposits saw a third straight week of inflows +50.1BN (Large banks +47.4BN, Small banks +2.7BN)
Source: Bloomberg
Large Domestic US banks have seen deposit outflows for 5 of the last 6 weeks (while Small banks saw a huge deposit boost)…
Source: Bloomberg
Overall loan volumes rose, but very modestly (Large banks +$1.9BN, Small banks +$1.8BN)
Source: Bloomberg
Interestingly, there was a large jump in small bank cash relative to total assets last week (and viuce versa for large banks) which happens to coincide with the end of the BTFP facility
Source: Bloomberg
Finally, US bank reserves at The Fed shrank this week as US equity market cap soared to a new record high…
Russia Demands Answers From US Over Moscow Attack That Left At Least 40 Dead
Update(1635ET): Moscow has come out with fighting words while also pointing the finger at Washington about ‘what it knew’ ahead of time and when:
Medvedev threatens Ukraine’s top officials will be ‘destroyed mercilessly as terrorists’ if the ‘Kyiv regime’ is linked to Moscow concert hall attack.
The former president Deputy Chairman of the Security Council is known to routinely issue threatening and hawkish words, but the Russian foreign ministry has issued the following as cited in Reuters:
“On what basis do officials in Washington draw any conclusions in the midst of a tragedy about someone’s innocence?” She added that if Washington had information, it should be shared and that if Washington had no information, it should not be talking in such a way.
At least one of the attackers is said to be in Russian custody, also as security services inspect a van in the vicinity and other suspicious vehicles. The mall and concert hall venue previously rampaged by heavily armed gunmen continues to be engulfed in flames, according to a summary in RT:
Multiple fire brigades and aircraft have been deployed to put out the blaze at a large mall outside Moscow that was attacked by terrorists on Friday night. The popular shopping center and music venue is located in Krasnogorsk, just northwest of the Russian capital.
A group of gunmen stormed the Crocus City Hall on Friday night, killing at least 40 people, according to the authorities.
The assailants reportedly set the building on fire. Witnesses also said they heard explosions inside the mall.
According to regional emergency services, around 100 people have been evacuated from the underground floor. The rescuers are working to evacuate people from the roof.
There have been reports that parts of the roof over the complex collapsed, with hundreds of emergency responders battling the blaze and seeking any gunmen who may be at large.
* * *
Update(1440ET): Russian state media as well as The Wall Street Journal’s regional correspondent is reportingat least 40 people killed, and over 100 wounded and injured, in the unfolding major terror attack on Moscow’s largest concert hall.
Initial videos have emerged showing what appears to be attackers in combat fatigues with assault rifles going around the mall part of the venue (which is attached to the concert hall) and shooing randomly. There are reports from RT of follow-up blasts happening even amid a huge security, police, and emergency response.
BREAKING: Footage shows deadly shooting in Moscow — 40 killed, 100 injured in terror attack in Moscow concert hall, local media reports
Below: 20 seconds into clip… is that a flamethrower?
Multiple gunmen have broken into the Crocus City Hall concert venue in Moscow, opening fire on those inside. Raw footage shows the terrorists opening fire on civilians and security forces. pic.twitter.com/ynTelGwqUu
A mere days ago the US Embassy in Moscow released the following alert telling all US nationals still in the country to avoid large gatherings and public venues. What did they know?
Russia has called the shooting a ‘bloody terrorist attack’ in an initial statement. The White House has also issued an initial assessment as follows:
WHITE HOUSE: NO INDICATION AT THIS TIME THAT UKRAINE INVOLVED IN MOSCOW SHOOTING
MOSCOW CANCELS ALL THE WEEKEND MASS GATHERINGS – MAYOR
Unconfirmed reports say some of the attackers may still be at large. Below–Warning, Graphic:
WARNING 🔞 Not for the faint-hearted
Terrorist attack at the Crocus City Hall in the Moscow region: The death toll has risen to 140 — local media. It is reported that special forces are already in the building, and gunfire can be heard.
Some kind of major attack just occurred at a Moscow concert hall with contradictory breaking reports emerging from on the ground and several circulating unconfirmed videos. There are possibly at least ten casualties and videos from the scene showing a large fire and plumes of black smoke over the venue. It may have been the result of a large explosion, or possibly even a cross-border drone strike, but conflicting reports say this is likely a mass shooting situation. According to the breaking Associated Press report, at least three gunmen in combat gear stormed the concert hall, with riot police responding:
Several gunmen in combat fatigues burst into a big concert hall in Moscow on Friday and fired automatic weapons at the crowd, injuring an unspecified number of people, Russian media said.
Russian news reports said that the assailants also used explosives, causing a massive blaze at the Crocus City Hall on the western edge of Moscow. Video posted on social media showed huge plumes of black smoke rising over the building.
Russia’s state RIA Novosti news agency said that several gunmen opened fire on the crowd in Moscow concert hall, resulting in unknown casualties, the AP has cited.
The incident has unfolded at during a week of rapidly escalating cross-border attacks on Russian territory from Ukraine, and also large-scale retaliatory strikes on Ukraine by Russian aerial forces.
Reports of armed men storming the concert hall, but the visuals also strongly suggest a large explosion…
An apparent terrorist attack at a club/shopping center in Moscow before a performance started. Dozens wounded and dead. There was also an explosion and the building is on fire.
Early videos show multiple men (3, per state media) in camo shooting rifles. pic.twitter.com/WCRmznrldq
“Those who organized the disaster will take advantage of the inevitable discontent arising from efforts to overcome it, for if there is one thing that they are skilled in, it is demagoguery.”
– Theodore Dalrymple
Can you feel it? The tension rising to the red-line? It runs clear through all of Western Civ. We are ruled by governments of fiends. But now, the sun rides higher in the sky. The sap is rising in the northern forests. The earth heaves. The buds swell and blush. Something is in the air. The animals are waking from their long winter sleep. The natives are restless.
The two traditional political divisions, liberal and conservative died with Covid. Now there are simply the sane versus the insane. The sane have had enough of being pushed around by the insane. The insane don’t register much of what reality tries to tell them. They have a body of insane ideas to comfort and protect them from the reality’s rigors. To call that body of ideas an “ideology” is way too polite.That the insane call themselves “progressive,” is a signature of their insanity.
Progress toward what better state of things? Toward a supremacy of fiends, sadists, degenerates, and morons seizing riches and power by every dishonest means possible outside the rule of law and common decency? It’s not even suitable to call them “communists.” They lack the necessary idealism for that.
They don’t expect to put their shoulders to the wheel with their fellow man. They just want to grab your stuff and then kill you so they don’t have to hear any complaints.
The insane do not believe any of the theoretical bullshit they want to force you to swallow. They don’t care about climate change. It’s just a cudgel they use to beat everyone over the head so they can steal your stuff. They don’t care about “democracy.” It’s just a line of bullshit to cover up their election-stealing. Do you suppose that sane people would keep using electronic vote-tabulating machines that were demonstrably connected to the Internet, and thus hackable, if they cared about election integrity? Of course not. They would arrange p.d.q. to junk them and use paper ballots, and only in person at polling places, with “absentee” exceptions only for people out of the country.
The insane do not care about public health. Everything that is known about the Covid-19 vaccinations tells you that they are unsafe and don’t prevent infection or transmission of a flu-like illness that might not even be what it was officially labeled as. Our public health officials in the FDA, the CDC, and in other corners of the Department of health and Human Services, lie about everything they’re responsible for. This week, the CDC (under Director Mandy Cohen) released a 148-page study on myocarditis reactions to mRNA shots. Every word on every page of the document was redacted. The CDC printed countless copies of the report with 148 utterly blank pages, and then proffered them to the news media. How is that not insane?
The insane do not care about the rule of law. The conduct of “Lawfare” is the subversion of the law by dishonest means. It is a species of racketeering. And that is why Lawfare rogues such Marc Elias, Norm Eisen, Andrew Weissmann, Mary McCord, Lisa Monaco, Matthew Graves, and Merrick Garland, should be charged under the federal RICO statutes for conspiring to deprive sane citizens of their rights and property in the many cases related to the 1/6/21 riot at the US Capitol.
It is, so far, an abiding mystery of contemporary history as to how New York Attorney General Letitia James managed to get away with prosecuting a real estate case against Donald Trump that was no more than victimless business-as-usual between a borrower and his lenders. Ms. James ran for that elected office promising to “get” Mr. Trump on something, anything. That is not how the rule of law works. Under the rule of law, first you determine that there is a crime and then look for who did the crime.
Letitia James must be insane and/or pretty stupid. The short-term gain of stealing Mr. Trump’s property under a false color-of-law and creating impediments to his election campaign, will, sooner or later, blow back at her as a matter of malicious prosecution and, plausibly, racketeering as well. (With whom did she conspire to bring this case? We shall find out.) She will eventually be disgraced publicly as her teammate Fani Willis has already been disgraced in Fulton County, Georgia. I’ll tell you something that all sane people now know but won’t talk about for fear of being crushed by the levers of Lawfare: this looks like a concerted effort by people-of-color to railroad people of non-color. If you think that is a good thing for race relations in our country, then you are insane.
Here are a bunch of other things that are insane: Re-litigating the first amendment is insane. It means what it says, and states it plainly. The open border is insane. No credible sovereign polity would allow it. It would be opposed with force, if necessary. Turning children into transsexuals on a wholesale basis is insane, and fiendishly so. Everybody knows that it is not good for the children or for our society as a whole. But fiends got to fiend, and if you try to deprive them of being fiends then you are guilty of “hate.”
The war in Ukraine is insane. We certainly didn’t ignite it in the service of “democracy.” Our pawn there, Mr. Zelensky, canceled the national elections last year. The war was arguably an effort by our CIA to deprive Russia of its market for natgas in Europe, and thus deprive Russia of a great deal of money, that is, of prosperity. The project failed. Russia overcame NATO’s proxy army and found other markets for its gas. Blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines only served to impoverish and weaken our NATO allies, who no longer have affordable gas to run their industries. The leaders of those allies were too insane to recognize that the Nord Stream op was an act-of-war against them. They were also busy destroying themselves, like the USA, with open borders. They will end up in a new medievalism, ruled by savages. You’d have to be insane to arrange that for yourself.
What’s most obviously insane in our country is that the insane party is pretending to nominate the mentally unfit White House place-keeper, “Joe Biden,” for reelection. You would think that if this party wanted to retain power, they would run a candidate who, though insane, was not also visibly senile. But the rank and file of this party are too insane to see that this dodge is not working. They are pretending with all their might that this is okay, that the growing faction of the sane don’t notice.
Sensing the growing impatience with insanity among the voters, the insane party has reached its point of terminal desperation. What will they try next? Murder? Why not? Nothing else seemed to work. They are too far gone in their insanity to understand that winter is over. We’ve entered the season of rebirth and renewal, starting with a renewed appreciation for being sane and for that indispensable ingredient that makes liberty in a free society possible: good faith. Really, the only question left is: how rough do they intend to play to prevent the return of sanity and good faith?
‘Powell Put’ Sparks Surge In Stocks, Bonds, & The Dollar; Bullion & Black Gold Flat On Week
Positive macro, central bank love-fest, and AI catalysts… buy all the things…
US Macro ‘outperformed’ expectations this week amid more pro-cyclical data points…
Source: Bloomberg
…which combined with a dovish tilt by Powell (which lifted 20-24 rate-cut expectation)…
Source: Bloomberg
…and positive AI catalysts…
Source: Bloomberg
Put this all together – rates, growth, and secular momentum –and it is perhaps not surprising that stocks have reached another all-time high in the US.
Led to a solid week for all the majors with Nasdaq outperforming…
The S&P 500 trades at a 2025 P/E of 20+.
So the question may simply be: can the rates/growth/secular innovation dynamic be sustained long enough to allow corporate earnings to grow into the current market’s valuation?
Shorts were aggressively squeezed Wednesday an Thursday…
Source: Bloomberg
Treasury yields ended the week lower, including the long-end (-4bps), but the short-end outperformed (-13bps)…
Source: Bloomberg
Which left the curve (2s30s) stepper on the week….
Source: Bloomberg
The dollar roared back to six week highs this week…
Source: Bloomberg
Bitcoin ETFs saw large net outflows this week…
Source: Bloomberg
And that weighed on the underlying with spot bitcoin back at $64,000…
Source: Bloomberg
Gold ended the week around unchanged, despite a hige spike intraweek to a new record high…
Source: Bloomberg
Crude prices ended the week unchanged, roundtripping from the early week gains…
Source: Bloomberg
And finally, this is not good news for Biden and his biddies…
Source: Bloomberg
Pump prices are heading up… and Biden’s approval rating down at the sane tune.
“We Have Reached A Bottom”: Uranium Poised To Jump Again After 3 Month Correction
Uranium prices may have dipped slightly over the last 4 months, but its looking like the new “top” we’ve set over the last year is going to likely act as “support” as we forge forward into what Bloomberg is calling a “nuclear future”.
In New York, the price of uranium futures has dipped to $88.50 per pound, a decrease from the peak seen in February, which was a 16-year high, yet remains significantly above the average price of $66.60 recorded last year.
Jonathan Hinze, president of UxC, a nuclear industry research firm told the news outlet: “We have reached a bottom. The fundamentals are still strong, with increased demand and supply that hasn’t fully responded.”
According to Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Mike Kozak, there’s evidence to suggest that uranium prices have stabilized. Kozak forecasts a resurgence of fundamental buyers in the market, which is expected to propel prices upwards once more, Bloomberg wrote this week.
Optimistic investors are focusing on uranium’s future, driven by an increasing supply shortage and higher demand, as nations (finally pull their heads out from their a** and) seek nuclear energy solutions for climate change.
This interest is highlighted amid supply warnings from Canada’s Cameco and Kazakhstan’s Kazatomprom, the leading producers responsible for half of the worldwide uranium supply. Kazatomprom forecasts a significant supply deficit escalating from 21 million pounds in 2030 to 147 million pounds by 2040.
Geopolitical tensions, including a U.S. proposal to ban Russian uranium imports, which are essential for nuclear power and weapons, add complexity to the supply scenario, the report says. However, the potential resurgence of dormant mining operations due to rising uranium prices poses a risk of dampening the market rally, reminiscent of the recent boom-to-bust cycle in battery metals.
“We have a number of geopolitical factors that have a really significant influence on buyer behavior, even though fundamentally nothing has changed. Buyers can use the spot to tell them the sentiment of the day, but must look at the long-term market to see that it is marching steadily up, it hasn’t taken a hiccup at all,” concluded Treva Klingbiel, president of uranium price provider TradeTech.
