Dave Chappelle has once again managed to trigger just about everyone during his opening monologue as host of Saturday Night Live this weekend – including SNL staff members who reportedly extremely unhappy about his appearance.

Commentary ranged from Kanye West, Jews, and why Donald Trump won the 2016 US election.

Kicking things off, Chappelle read a note which said: “I denounce antisemitism in all its forms, and I stand with my friends in the Jewish community,” adding “And that, Kanye, is how you buy yourself some time.”

He then noted how Kanye, who now goes by Ye, ‘lost $1.5 billion in one day’ after speaking against Jews.

“I learned that there are two words in the English language that you should never say together in sequence. And those words are ‘the’ and ‘Jews,'” said Chappelle, who later said that it’s a game of ‘perception’ – “If they’re black, it’s a gang. If they’re Italian, it’s a mob. If they’re Jewish, it’s a coincidence and you should neeeever speak about it.”

He then turned his attention to politics, which included saying that Herschel Walker is “observably stupid,” and then explaining why Trump won the 2016 US election.

“He’s very loved. And the reason he’s loved is because people in Ohio have never seen somebody like him,” said Chappelle, who then described how the billionaire captured hearts and minds by admitting “I know the system is rigged because I use it.”

Of course, Chappelle then suggested that Trump was colluding with Russia (as opposed to the Obama DOJ, FBI, and Hillary Clinton setting him up), and suggested that Melania Trump “looks like the type of chick that James Bond would smash but not trust.” So he either sold out on that one or is woefully under-informed.

Unsurprisingly, the left was outraged:

As for the actual show itself, a “House of the Dragon’ parody appears to have been the most popular:

A new YouGov survey has found that 42% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents would prefer Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis over former President Trump as the party’s 2024 presidential nominee.

Just 35% polled said they would prefer Trump over DeSantis.

That said, those who consider themselves “strong Republicans” were more likely to support a third Trump run (45%) over the Florida governor, while 43% said they would prefer DeSantis.

The difference was far more pronounced among the ‘Republican-leaning’ respondents, of which 45% preferred DeSantis vs. 21% for Trump. 38% of those who described themselves as “not very strong Republicans” prefer DeSantis, vs. 31% who picked Trump.

The poll comes after Trump lashed out at DeSantis following the governor’s resounding midterm victory last week – cementing his position as a top GOP candidate to run against Trump in the 2024 GOP primaries.

Trump nicknamed DeSantis “Ron DeSanctimonious” during a rally last week, before going further and releasing a statement in which he took credit for DeSantis’ political success.

The former president then suggested that he could share damaging private information about DeSantis “that won’t be very flattering” if the Florida governor runs in 2024, and that DeSantis is actually a RINO.

“I think if he runs, he could hurt himself very badly,” said Trump, adding “I know more about him than anybody — other than, perhaps, his wife.”

Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

War criminal George W Bush and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will be appearing at an event next week at the George W. Bush Presidential Center, in partnership with US government-funded narrative management operations Freedom House and National Endowment for Democracy. The goal of the presentation will reportedly be to address the completely fictional and imaginary concern that congressional Republicans won’t continue supporting US proxy war efforts in Ukraine.

CNN reports:

Former US President George W. Bush will hold a public conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky next week with the aim of underscoring the importance of the US continuing to support Ukraine’s war effort against Russia.

The event, which will take place in Dallas and be open to the public, comes amid questions about the willingness of the former president’s Republican Party to maintain support for Ukraine.

“Ukraine is the frontline in the struggle for freedom and democracy. It’s literally under attack as we speak, and it is vitally important that the United States provide the assistance, military and otherwise to help Ukraine defend itself,” David Kramer, the managing director for global policy at the George W. Bush Institute, told CNN. “President Bush believes in standing with Ukraine.”

The Struggle for Freedom event will take place on Wednesday, in partnership with the Freedom House and the National Endowment for Democracy, at the George W. Bush Presidential Center.

NEW: President George W. Bush, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen will participate in the Bush Institute’s Nov. 16 event on advancing freedom.

More from @kylieatwood @CNN: https://t.co/cGvBylur7G

— George W. Bush Presidential Center (@TheBushCenter) November 10, 2022

To be clear, there is absolutely no reality-based reason to believe Republicans will meaningfully shy away from full-scale support for arming and assisting the Ukrainian military. The proxy war has only an impotent minority of opposition in the party and every bill to fund it has passed with overwhelming bipartisan support. Some “MAGA” Republicans have claimed that funding for the war would stop if the GOP won the midterm elections, but they were lying; there was never the slightest chance of that happening.

Bush, you may remember, drew headlines and laughter earlier this year with his Freudian confession in which he accused Vladimir Putin of launching “a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq — I mean, of Ukraine.” The fact that the president who launched a full-scale ground invasion which destabilized the entire region and led to the deaths of over a million people is now narrative managing for the US empire’s current aggressively propagandized intervention says everything about the nature of this war.

Also appearing with Bush will be the leader who’s slated to become the face of the US empire’s next proxy war, Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan. CNN writes:

Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen will also take part in the event next week. She will deliver a recorded message, in which she is expected to underscore that the struggle for freedom is a global challenge.

And sure, why not. If you’re going to manufacture consent for proxy warfare against multiple powers as your empire flails around frantically scrambling to prevent the emergence of a multipolar world, you may as well save time and promote them all on the same ticket.

Former President George W. Bush: “The decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq. I mean of Ukraine.” pic.twitter.com/UMwNMwMnmX

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) May 19, 2022

Many people who support the US proxy war in Ukraine now recognize that the Iraq war was a horrific disaster, but Ukraine isn’t the good war, it’s just the current war. Western propaganda means people always oppose the last war but not the war that’s currently being pushed by the propaganda of today. The US provoking and sustaining its Ukraine proxy war is no more ethical than its invading of Iraq; it just looks that way due to propaganda.

It is only by the copious amounts of propaganda our civilization is being hammered with that this is not immediately obvious to everyone. In the future (assuming we don’t annihilate ourselves first), the propaganda will have cleared from the air enough for people to look back with clarity on 2022 and realize that they were lied to, yet again.

It’s easy to oppose the last war. It’s hard to oppose current wars as the propaganda machine is shoving them down our throats. Everyone’s anti-war until the war propaganda starts.

*  *  *

My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, buying an issue of my monthly zine, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my American husband Tim Foley.

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Just days after China unexpectedly eased covid zero restrictions, sending commodities across the globe soaring amid hopes that China’s covid crackdown may be finally ending, Bloomberg reported late on Saturday that Beijing has issued “sweeping relaxation measures on property and Covid controls”, in what the media outlet called the strongest signal yet that President Xi Jinping is now turning his attention on rescuing the economy.

Confirming that China is increasingly concerned about its sinking economy, not to mention the local property market which Goldman last year calculated was the world’s largest asset class…

… Bloomberg reported that Beijing issued its most extensive 16-point rescue package for the struggling real estate market, citing “people familiar with the matter”, marking a decisive effort to turn around an economy devastated by two years of Covid Zero curbs.

Specifically, the PBOC and the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission on Friday jointly issued a notice to financial institutions laying out plans to ensure the “stable and healthy development” of the property sector. Unlike previous piecemeal steps which were purposefully vague, the notice included 16 measures that range from addressing the liquidity crisis faced by developers to loosening down-payment requirements for homebuyers.

As part of the rescue plan, developers’ outstanding bank loans and trust borrowings due within the next six months can be extended for a year, while repayment on their bonds can also be extended or swapped through negotiations, Bloomberg sources added.

The major policy shifts by Xi’s government, first on covid and now on property, will aid China’s growth outlook and add fuel to a market rally that sent a gauge of Chinese shares in Hong Kong up 17% in the past two weeks. It also ends a long period of policy paralysis before last month’s Communist Party congress when Xi jockeyed for a third term.

It’s also a stark reversal from the gloom that descended over markets in late October, after Xi’s elevation of close allies to the highest rungs of power stoked concern that ideology would trump pragmatism for the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong. The Hang Seng China Enterprises Index has now erased losses suffered in the immediate wake of the party congress, swinging from one of the world’s worst-performing stock gauges to among the best.

The economy still matters to Xi Jinping. He needs growth to gird China for competition with US. Having just adjusted covid response, Beijing is now pulling back from a years-long crackdown on property to shore up growth. w/@yifanxie @caocli
https://t.co/Nv77ikQkCR via @WSJ

— Lingling Wei 魏玲灵 (@Lingling_Wei) November 13, 2022

…restrictions aimed at curbing property developer debt and give lenders permission to extend loans to home builders in financial trouble. The new measures are “massive in scale,” said Dan Wang, chief economist at Hang Seng Bank China …

— Lingling Wei 魏玲灵 (@Lingling_Wei) November 13, 2022

“These property measures, on top of announcements of Covid loosening, are a clear indication that Beijing’s efforts to support growth are intensifying,” said @MichaelHirson

— Lingling Wei 魏玲灵 (@Lingling_Wei) November 13, 2022

“It’s a meaningful easing,” said Larry Hu, head of China economics at Macquarie. “It seems that the room for policy change has widened on various fronts after the Party Congress, including for the two major headwinds to the Chinese economy: Covid Zero and property.”

As part of its attempt to kickstart the economy, on Friday Beijing also issued a set of measures to recalibrate their pandemic response, publicly outlining a 20-point playbook for officials aimed at reducing the economic and social impact of containing the virus, although as Bloomberg was quick to note, “the changes by no means signal the end of Covid Zero” and indeed, a day after releasing the new parameters, officials were quick to clarify that Covid rules were being refined, not relaxed, and a strict attitude toward stamping out infections remains China’s guiding principle.

The proposed changes take place just before Xi is set to meet US President Joe Biden Monday on the sidelines of a G-20 summit, in the first head-to-head meeting between the two heads of state since the pandemic began. Bloomberg adds that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will seek information on China’s Covid lockdown policies and the troubled property sector during a meeting with central bank Governor Yi Gang this week, according to senior Treasury Department officials.

Meanwhile, even with the rescue package, investors of Chinese property dollar bonds are still likely facing massive losses.

“The extreme pessimism in markets has finally led to a key policy change on the two biggest overhangs over the economy,” said Shen Meng, a director at Beijing-based investment bank Chanson & Co. “It’s still hard to say whether this is going to be a turning point for the economy though.”

Authorities have sought to defuse the property crisis with a raft of (largely toothless) measures in the past few months, including cutting interest rates, urging major banks to extend 1 trillion yuan ($140 billion) of financing in the final months of the year, and offering special loans through policy banks to ensure property projects are delivered. None of those measures, however, have made any material dent in China’s rapidly slowing property market.  Last week, China also expanded a key financing support program designed for private firms including real estate companies to about 250 billion yuan, a move that could help developers sell more bonds and ease their liquidity woes.

One of the biggest policy changes in the latest notice is to allow a “temporary” easing of restrictions on bank lending to developers.  As a reminder, China began imposing caps on bank’s property lending in 2021, as authorities sought to tighten the reins on a bubble-prone industry and curb leverage at some of the nation’s largest developers. Banks not meeting the current restrictions will be given extra time to meet the requirement, said the people.

In addition, regulators encouraged lenders to negotiate with homebuyers on extending mortgage repayment, and emphasized that buyers’ credit scores will be protected. That may alleviate the risk of social unrest among homebuyers who have engaged in a widespread boycott on mortgage payments since July.

Meanwhile, China’s $2.4 trillion new-home market remains fragile and property debt defaults have surged, sparking increasingly concerns about social unrest. Price declines in the existing-home market were the most extreme in almost eight years in September, according to the latest official data. At banks, the proportion of bad loans related to property has surged to 30%, according to Citigroup estimates.

But while Chinese stocks have suffered depression-level declines in recent weeks, as a result of relentless home price declines, now in their second year…

… signs of easing property curbs and pandemic restrictions have led to a sharp rebound in China assets. A Bloomberg Intelligence gauge of Chinese developers’ stocks jumped a record 18% Friday, with Country Garden Holdings Co. surging 35%.

Still, Bloomberg cautions that the financial backstop is dwarfed by the looming debt maturities facing developers. China’s property sector has at least $292 billion of onshore and offshore borrowings coming due through the end of 2023. That includes $53.7 billion in borrowings this year, followed by $72.3 billion of maturities in the first quarter of next year.

So while Beijing’s move is welcome, much more will be needed to convince markets that systemic risk has been mitigated: “China developers are facing another peak in debt maturity next year, if regulators don’t make adjustments for property-related policies, developer liquidity will continue to deteriorate,” said Shen. “This will very likely trigger systemic financial risk.”

By Peter Tchir of Academy Securities

Was There an Election this Week?

There was an election this week. The results apparently suited the market. I use “apparently” because the final results are not in. I’ve lost the ability to figure out if this is due to people being extremely cautious about calling elections, the fact that the results are still too close to call because of all the remaining uncounted ballots, or because of the run-offs. Maybe you have found websites that explain the uncalled seats better than the ones that I’ve found. In any case, it looks like Republicans will win the House, which is enough to create some gridlock. There were no red, blue, or green waves.

But it wasn’t the elections that drove stocks, it was mostly the inflation story! CPI sparked a massive one-day rally in spite of the Michigan data (which a few weeks ago would have been viewed negatively) and the “demise” of FTX. Technically the phrase I’m looking for is “filed for bankruptcy,” but demise seems more appropriate.

Two Ways to Lose Money

We will dig into inflation and the Fed, but let’s start with FTX and what happened to crypto this week. I think that it is important because Crypto Crashes Impact the Economy & Markets. We will address that, but let’s start with the two ways to lose money:

1. You buy something that goes down in price (or short something that goes up). There are a myriad of ways to do this and 2022 has given us plenty of opportunities to lose money the “old-fashioned” way. Whether you bought bonds, stocks, or many other things (other than energy), it has been easy to lose money this year. Sometimes it is easy to figure out how you lost money (the Fed tightened a lot, earnings were weak, etc.). Sometimes you can assess “intrinsic” value (based on cash flow, property, plant, & equipment, etc.). And sometimes you just don’t have a clue! I don’t know what a Polkadot is or does, but it still has $6.5 billion of market value according to coinmarketcap.com, even with the price at $5.68 (down from a high of $52.20 on November 7th, 2021). Losing money in something where it is difficult to figure out the intrinsic value is a frustrating way to lose money. Making it even worse, it is even more difficult to figure out when people might step in and buy.

2. You trust your money (or asset) with a counterparty that doesn’t fully pay you back. You can make good or bad investment decisions, but if you cannot get your money (or asset) back, you have lost. This, to me, is the absolute worst way to lose money, because to a large degree, it is often preventable. Some amount of due diligence can help determine the counterparty’s ability and willingness to pay you back. Some analysis of corporate structure, domicile, etc., can help identify risks. Examining the character of the individuals may also help spot risks. I will never forget (and I’ve mentioned this before) the time that the Head of Credit at Bankers Trust spoke to the trainee program (mostly a bunch of derivative nerds) about credit. It seemed like a dull topic, but it was the only part of the training program that I remember (other than betting on Series 7 scores). He emphasized that the ability to pay is the “easy” part of credit analysis, but it is the “willingness” to pay that is difficult and often the more important. In hindsight, at least for those holding assets at FTX, there should have been more soul searching given what went on with Three Arrows Capital and Celsius. I expect a lot more scrutiny in the crypto space now.

When people lose money, they take measures to avoid it. On the asset side, maybe you sell to mitigate losses. Maybe you buy more to dollar cost average, which allows you to claw back a little extra money on any rebound. On the “custodial” side you can figure out a “safer” place to move your assets, assuming you decide not to sell them outright.

Will there be opportunities in crypto?

• Could we be oversold/have we over-reacted? That is possible, but I don’t think so. Remember, Lehman was NEVER a moment, it was just one part of a story that started playing out a year before they went bankrupt and played out for another 6 months or more after their bankruptcy. FTX is just too big and too mainstream (the list of investors in their seed rounds is a literal who’s who of the private equity space) to not have knock-on effects. I expect to see crypto struggle from here. Not that there can’t be bounces, but I’m looking for bitcoin to break $10,000 before year-end (this is not a new call – see Traditional versus Disruptive Portfolio Construction).

• Could some entities that offer the best transparency, audited financials, and possibly even regulation be big beneficiaries of the chaos? That is possible. I certainly expect “smart” investors in the crypto space to do more to “secure” their holdings! There are some companies that purportedly are much more diligent on custodial services, have better backing, and have better internal systems than others. They should benefit, but for me, the question is if they will just get a bigger market share of a market that is dying rapidly.

Does this mean anything for markets or the economy?

• Fortunately, it means less for MARKETS than it did even a few months ago. The “disruptive” portfolio has already had so much pain, the positioning is lower, and any use of leverage has decreased dramatically (ARKK as a metric for disruptive investing is down 57% YTD, 65% for one year, and 75% since its peak in February 2021). Crypto returns have been worse (in many cases) than that. It has been impossible to maintain leverage in the “disruptive” portfolio. More importantly (from my perspective) is that people have stopped equating disruptive stocks with crypto. Companies conduct business, have customers, cash flow, etc. These are the things that help investors put valuations on them. While some of those valuations may have been way off (many stocks are down 75% or more), at least there is a process to figure out what these companies might be worth. For the last six months or so (since the Disruptive Portfolio piece was published), investors have treated crypto very differently than stocks and that is a good thing for markets right now because crypto losses won’t have such an immediate impact on the broader stock market.

• I’m more worried about the ECONOMY. Many of the crypto haters are so dismissive that they don’t give crypto the credit that it is due! Cryptocurrencies grew to as much as $3 trillion and are well under $1 trillion now. This is my best estimate after taking a look at CoinMarketCap and seeing that bitcoin is down to $350 billion. That is an immense loss in a relatively short period of time! That should (must) affect some spending! At a time when people could quite literally make a living waiting for NFTs to “drop” so they could sell them, there was a lot of “free” money available to be spent. Do not underestimate the fact that much of the inflationary pressure we felt in 2021 was attributable to people making money in cryptocurrencies and NFTs. But that is only one part of the equation. The second part of the equation is the companies in the space. FTX allegedly raised over $1.5 billion in various funding rounds (the Crunchbase stories came up high enough in my searches for FTX funding rounds and seem in line with other stories I’ve read). How much of that money went into buying technology? At its heart, FTX was a technology company that presumably needed servers (not just so Sam could play Lord of Legends with minimal lag), cloud services, etc. What were they spending on ads? They got an arena in Miami named for them, but presumably that was just a small portion of their ad spending. Who knows how much was paid to promoters. How much energy were they using? FTX spent money on technology, ads, and paying people and they likely were significant users of energy. That might actually help decrease energy usage (though watching hash rates, this might not come down for a bit). In any case, companies involved in the crypto space have raised and spent a lot of money (billions) that won’t be spent going forward! In addition to the tightening of purse strings by virtually every private company that now needs to avoid funding at what they view as extremely low valuations, mega-caps like META have had several headlines related to cost cuts recently. The spending that was generated by crypto and disruptive tech was a big part of the inflationary (easy money) push post-COVID and will be greatly diminished (in fact, it is already greatly diminished). Those who benefited from the spending (often big tech of all types) could face pressure and it looks like that already happened in last quarter’s earnings for a lot of big tech companies. That could further slow spending in the economy because when one’s customers suffer, you often also have to take steps to cut costs.

In the coming days and weeks, I am less worried about how crypto will affect markets, but I am EXTREMELY worried that we’ve only seen the beginning of spending cuts related to crypto wealth and crypto/disruptive companies! That will be bad for the economy and it will bleed into certain stocks if I’m correct.

Five More Weeks!

We have almost 5 weeks until the next FOMC meeting and presser on December 15th. Plenty of time for the Fed to Stop Seeing Dead People. There is one more jobs report and a few more inflation prints (including another CPI print).

On jobs, you know that we’ve questioned the disparity between the Household and Establishment data, questioned the potential overstatement of JOLTS data (I’ve been seeing some interesting work in this space), and even questioned the birth/death model adjustments (which is something some serious economists are also questioning). Jobs may remain strong, and it is the one thing that the Fed can use to justify its hawkish stance (though it would be nice to declare victory on inflation and not force Americans into the unemployment lines.)

On inflation:

• See Inflation Dumpster Dive and More Inflation Dumpster Diving.

• If you skipped the previous section, all you need to know is that I believe crypto and NFT profits and spending by disruptive companies fueled inflation (tech/semiconductors, various services, advertising, and even energy usage) and that trend has abated and may be reversing. This was a really big contributor to spending that was largely off the radar of mainstream economists (crypto deniers in particular) and is now helping the case for deflation. If you didn’t model it as inflationary before, you won’t pick it up as deflationary now, but two wrongs don’t make a right and won’t help you find inflection points!

• The rent calculations in CPI are absurd. Talk about two wrongs not making a right! Using data that is “knowingly” lagged (amongst other potential flaws) to determine current policy is so wrong that it continues to make my head hurt! A month ago we sent out OER Seems Crazy. The only thing that I could bring myself to send regarding Thursday’s CPI print was from the BLS Report:

“The index for all items less food and energy rose 0.3 percent in October, following a 0.6-percent increase in September. The shelter index continued to increase, rising 0.8 percent in October, the largest monthly increase in that index since August 1990. The rent index rose 0.7 percent over the month, and the owners’ equivalent rent index rose 0.6 percent.”

• Are they trying to tell me that October rents experienced the biggest monthly gain since 1990 and the second highest gain was in September? That is just unbelievable! If you told me that last summer (when we were still doing QE with rates at 0) was out of control on the rent front and the worst in 3 decades, I would have believed you, but now?

• On the bright side, even the erroneous data will start picking up the smaller increases that started late last year (and early this year) in the real world as opposed to the BLS world.

• On the commodity side (see chart below), we might see some month-on-month upticks, but the annual data will look great for many commodities!

A few weeks ago, I was asked to do a yield forecast for a client (though I’m really more about figuring out the next few months or big moves). What I sent at the time seemed almost outlandish, but it feels like it has some hope now as we get more (non-inflationary) inflation data! Yes, my “base case” is “too far too fast”! The India inspired commodity boon is also an interesting possibility in 2023.

While the Fed is likely to jawbone to the hawkish side, I fully expect 5 more weeks of data to weaken the case for more hikes rather dramatically!

Other “Stuff”

I feel obligated to discuss a few other “things” that could impact the market in the coming weeks:

• Seasonality. Seasonality could help the market as we head into the holiday season. Recent upward price action could be enough to chase some money off of the sidelines. My sense of “sentiment” is that it remains heavily skewed towards inflation, the Fed, and higher bond yields/lower stock prices despite some chatter about seasonality. Basically “fade the move” still dominates the “seasonality” chatter, but I think that will reverse.

• Russia. Our Geopolitical Intelligence Group expects little change in the war (Russia will make another push west once the rivers freeze, but Ukraine will defend itself well with all their weapons). However, there is a chance that with the midterm elections behind us and new and more severe energy related sanctions starting to approach (which will hurt the West more than Russia), we could see attempts to cobble together some sort of a deal. China also seems to be gently nudging (if not pushing) Russia in that direction.

• China COVID 0.1 policy. China is unlikely to back off COVID 0 until after the winter, but with our demand down (and potentially shrinking further) the inflationary supply pressures are receding anyway! Baltic Dry (one measure of international shipping costs) has been receding again and it is down 56% in the past 6 months.

Bottom Line

Let the “everything” rally play out a bit longer.

• For stocks, I think somewhere between the middle of August and the middle of September levels are a good target. On SPX, we were at 4,305 on August 16th and 4,110 on September 12th, which I guess is a complex way of saying the S&P target is 4,200. This also seems to be the right stopping point if we breach the 200-day moving average of 4,080 (causing a wave of panic buying).

• On rates, look for bull steepeners! All yields should come down, but the front-end should respond extremely well if I’m correct on the inflation and jobs data and what that means for the Fed.

And there it is: the final curve inverted – Powell’s personal favorite, the 3M-3M18M fwd.

And now we go all-in steepeners pic.twitter.com/43BVckRdGM

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) November 12, 2022

• Credit should rip tighter here, with high yield poised to do extremely well as credit risk gets priced out of the market, even with an overhang of some big deals that banks will want to offload on any strength (ideally ahead of year-end).

• Don’t touch crypto, but also don’t expect weaker crypto to drag stocks down!

Ultimately, I think that this all ends with risk-off trading taking us to much lower yields AND lower stock prices, but it is too early to bet on that as we first need to get through the “lower yields are good for stocks” phase!

The United States and Russia were unable to agree on language for a joint statement following the multilateral ASEAN summit in Cambodia, making it unlikely that G20 nations will achieve a consensus this week in Indonesia, Bloomberg reports.

According to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, America and its allies are to blame for a lack of communique at the 19-nation summit, claiming on Sunday that the US “insisted on absolutely unacceptable language regarding the situation in Ukraine.”

Russia refuses to describe its invasion of Ukraine as a war, and insists on it being recognized as a “special military operation.”

Lavrov also accused the US of dividing the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations and criticized NATO for stepping up activity in the region. His comments on NATO echo a growing concern of China, even though the US alliance system in Asia doesn’t include NATO’s collective defense agreements. -Bloomberg

“NATO is no longer saying that this is a purely defensive alliance,” said Lavrov, who was dressed like an Indonesian Klingon. “There is a clear trend on militarization of the region through coordination of efforts of local US allies such Australia, New Zealand, Japan with NATO enlargement.“

On Monday, US President Biden – who accidentally thanked Colombia instead of Cambodia for hosting the ASEAN summit, will meet in person with Chinese President Xi Jinping – Russia’s most crucial diplomatic partner.

Indonesia, which currently holds the rotating G-20 presidency, has sought to strengthen ties between Russia and G-7 countries, however in the days leading up to the summit, hope was dwindling that the two sides could reach a joint communique.

Ahead of the summit, a Japanese government official told reporters that G-7 nations were insisting on mentioning Russia’s invasion in any communique. While Indonesia was seeking some middle ground, and Japan wanted to support the efforts of the Southeast Asian nation, ultimately the G-7 needed to maintain its principles on Russia, the official said. -Bloomberg

“On this particular paragraph related to war maybe there will be no agreement, but we’re still trying,” said Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati in a Sunday statement to Bloomberg TV, adding that the G-20 can still deliver “very tangible and concrete deliverables” when it comes to things like climate change and Covid-19, even without a joint agreement.

Amid growing speculation of his whereabouts, Bloomberg reports that Sam Bankman-Fried was interviewed by Bahamian police and regulators on Saturday, although Bloomberg was quick to add that in the Bahamas, law-enforcement inquiries don’t necessarily mean someone will be arrested or charged with a crime.

In a separate report, Bloomberg also notes that the Bahamian police said they’re working with the Bahamas Securities Commission to investigate whether there was any criminal misconduct in the collapse of the crypto exchange FTX (narrator: there was).

“In light of the collapse of FTX globally and the provisional liquidation of FTX Digital Markets Ltd., a team of financial investigators from the Financial Crimes Investigation Branch are working closely with the Bahamas Securities Commission to investigate if any criminal misconduct occurred,” a police spokesperson said in a statement Sunday.

Separately, CoinTelegraph adds that in addition to SBF, the low profile FTX co-founder Gary Wang and director of engineering Nishad Singh are also said to be in the Bahamas and are “under supervision” by the local authorities. A source familiar with the matter told Cointelegraph that the three former FTX executives, as well as Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison, are looking for ways to flee to Dubai. While the plan was made assuming that the United States “doesn’t have any extradition treaties” with the UAE, the nations signed a mutual legal assistance treaty (MLAT) back on Feb. 24, 2022, to work against criminals.

“Right now three of them, Sam, Gary, and Nishad are under supervision in the Bahamas, which means it will be hard for them to leave,” said the CT source, who asked to remain anonymous. The source has also revealed that Ellison is currently in Hong Kong, adding that means “she might be able to get to Dubai.” However, community member coinbureau cited his source in the U.S. government to confirm that FTX members attempting to reach Dubai will get detained at the airport and sent straight back to the United States.

A similar theory was discussed as part of a 16-hour-long Twitter Space by The Crypto Roundtable Show host Mario Nawfal, with a guest speaker claiming “trusted sources” have witnessed Bankman-Fried “in a locked space” with authorities in Albany Tower — a luxury resort located in New Providence in The Bahamas. An unverified rumor also suggests that Bankman-Fried is currently joined by his father, Joseph Bankman.

Rumors that Bankman-Fried had been arrested on the tarmac at The Bahamas Airport made the rounds on Nov. 10 with evidence suggesting that Bankman-Fried’s private jet had been grounded for 40 minutes while on the way to Miami from Nassau.

On Nov. 12, rumors then pointed to Bankman-Fried having landed in Buenos Aires in the early hours of the day after Twitter users tracked the coordinates of his private jet using the flight tracking website ADS-B Exchange.

Later in the day, Bankman-Fried in a text message to Reuters denied speculation that he had fled to Argentina, claiming that he was still in The Bahamas.

The former FTX CEO is at the center of one of the industry’s biggest scandals: the Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (DFPI) in the state of California announced on Nov. 10 that it will open up an investigation as to the “apparent failure” of the exchange. Bloomberg and WSJ have reported that SBF is also dealing scrutiny from the Securities and Exchange Commission over whether he broke securities rules.

On Saturday, the WSJ reported that there was a video conference in which Alameda Research head, Caroline Ellison admitted that she, Bankman-Fried and two other FTX executives, Nishad Singh and Gary Wang, were aware of the decision to send customer funds to Alameda, effectively making the prosecution’s case a slam dunk.

But maybe not: in his latest jab at the corrupt US system, Elon Musk – who is now a bigger non-grata persona with the US left than even Donald Trump – tweeted that Sam Bankman Fried was a major Democrat donor, “so no investigation.”

SBF was a major Dem donor, so no investigation

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 13, 2022

As a reminder, SBF was the #2 Dem donor after Soros…

… which is to say that Musk is not wrong.

If only there were signs… pic.twitter.com/J9Z9ZC35Zs

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) November 12, 2022

Authored by Terri Wu via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Instead of a “red wave,” the midterm election results look more like “a red ripple” scenario, with Republicans appearing to be headed to a narrow majority in the House.

And for the three Virginia competitive races generally perceived as national bellwethers for GOP performance, Republicans won one out of the three.

In the military-heavy 2nd Congressional District in the Virginia Beach area, Republican challenger state Sen. Jen Kiggans unseated incumbent Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.).

In both the 7th and 10th Congressional Districts in exurban areas outside Washington and a few solid red rural counties, Republican challengers fell short of flipping the seats. Prince William County Supervisor Yesli Vega lost to Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) by a narrow margin in the 7th District. And in the 10th District, retired Navy captain Hung Cao trailed Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D-Va.) by more than five percent of the vote.

Analysts summarized that the reasons for the Republican underperformance as a combination of inflated expectations, underestimation of the strength of the abortion issue, performance in diverse communities, and the Youngkin and Trump factors.

Inflated Expectations Met Reality in Northern Virginia

“Republicans had tremendously inflated expectations about the Wexton race,” Richmond-based veteran political analyst Bob Holsworth told The Epoch Times. “Republicans have not been running well in Northern Virginia. And that district, even though it includes some Republican areas, is centered in Loudoun, where the Democrats have been running very well.

“They [Republicans] watched Fox News that Loudoun is becoming a Republican county. It’s going the other way. It’s a Democratic county.”

For the Spanberger–Vega race, Holsworth said the quality of the candidate was a significant factor.

“[Spanberger] had been rated to be one of the more bipartisan members of Congress,” he said.

And the endorsement from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) mattered, according to Holsworth.

He summarized Spanberger’s election results as a solid performance in Democrat-leaning areas, noting that the congresswoman was able to reduce Vega’s margin in more Republican-leaning areas, such as Stafford, Spotsylvania, and Orange counties, compared to Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s gubernatorial race last year.

“You had a situation where this was a district [the 7th Congressional District] that Biden won by seven, Youngkin won by five, and now Spanberger won it by four to five,” Holsworth said, noting that Spanberger was an “extraordinarily energetic candidate” who raised a lot of money.

Abortion Issue and Getting Votes from Diverse Communities

Ron Wright, cofounder of the Suburban Virginia Republican Coalition, told The Epoch Times that Republicans “underestimated the strength of the abortion issue” and didn’t do well in diverse communities, such as black, Hispanic, and Asian communities.

“In Florida, I think they’ve done a great job in reaching out to the Hispanic community and building a strong base there. I think the Republican Party of Virginia needs work,” he said.

Wright said the growth in northern Virginia is in Loudoun and Prince William counties, the exurban areas outside Washington. And those communities are diverse.

“The Republican Party is not reaching the diverse communities,” he said.

Holsworth agreed that Republicans underestimated the abortion issue.

“There’s no doubt about that nationally,” he said. “And here, it’s a 60–40 issue in Virginia in the Democrats’ favor.”

As for the Spanberger–Vega race, Wright thought Spanberger won by doing well in diverse communities and having raised much more money to pay for door-knocking to drive the turnout.

According to the Federal Election Commission, Spanberger outraised Vega by three times as of Oct. 19. With the disbursements by Oct. 19 and their final vote counts, Spanberger’s cost per vote is about three times as much as Vegas’s: $60 per vote for Spanberger compared to about $20 per vote for Vega.

Both ran an equal amount of negative ads on each other, as shown by data collected by the Virginia Public Access Project.

‘Each Election Is Its Own’

Wright didn’t think there was complacency on Vega’s part due to having Youngkin’s support but acknowledged that “big rallies don’t always turn into large votes.”

While stumping for Republican candidates in and outside Virginia, Youngkin repeatedly told the crowd that the red movement that propelled his gubernatorial win was “happening again” and attributed Virginia as the “headwaters.” On Election Day, Youngkin released a video called “This is the moment,” anticipating a red wave across the nation.

Authored by Lily Zhou via The Epoch Times,

Deaths from COVID-19 remain “extremely rare” in people under the age of 20, according to a study of follow-up data in the UK.

Between March 2020 and December 2021, while there were 185 deaths in England among children and young people (CYP) within 100 days of a lab-confirmed COVID-19 infection, fewer than half died directly because of the virus, the study found.

The peer-reviewed study, published on Nov. 8 on the PLOS Medicine Journal website, was conducted by researchers from the UK’s Health Security Agency (UKHSA). Studying the 22-month follow-up data on all 6,790 under-20s deaths, the team corroborated findings from a number of previous analyses that looked at data from a shorter period of time.

20 Healthy CYP Died From COVID-19

Excluding two stillbirth/intrauterine deaths, 81 (43 percent) deaths were attributed to COVID-19.

It accounts for 1.2 percent of all-cause CYP deaths, with a COVID-19 infection fatality rate of 7 per million (using estimated infections number) and an overall mortality rate of 6 per million (estimated CYP population).

Of the 81 deaths from COVID-19, one in four (20) were otherwise healthy, while 61 had “significant underlying health conditions,” including neuro-disability, immunocompromising conditions, Down syndrome, Edward syndrome, chronic heart disease, and four premature birth, meaning the COVID-19 mortality rate for otherwise healthy CYP was 1.5 per million.

COVID-19 deaths were also clustered among older teens and infants, with more than half (47) occurring among those aged between 16 and 19, and 22 under a year old.

Eight children from the 1- to 4-year-old group died from COVID-19, along with 12 children aged between 5 and 11, and 15 children aged between 12 and 15.

More than half (45) of the COVID-19 deaths occurred when the Delta variant of the novel coronavirus was dominant, while 21 died during the wild-type-dominant period, and 15 died during the Alpha wave.

But the Delta variant was the least deadly in terms of infection mortality rate (6 per million) compared to Alpha (8 per million), and the wild-type (10 per million) as it was more infectious than the previous variants.

The Omicron variant, which became dominant this year, wasn’t included in the study. Dr. Shamez Ladhani, pediatric infectious disease consultant at St. George’s Hospital London and consultant epidemiologist at the UKHSA who co-authored the study, told The Telegraph that “emerging data suggest that the Omicron variant is even less fatal in children compared to previous variants.”

Vaccination Status

Young adults and children over 12 years old were offered COVID-19 vaccines in staggered groups since June 2021. Under-12s weren’t offered vaccination during the studied period.

Less than a third (59) of CYP who died within 100 days of a lab-confirmed COVID-19 infection were eligible to receive COVID-19 vaccination.

Among COVID-19 deaths, 22 were eligible and two were vaccinated, one with one dose and the other with two doses.

Among non-COVID-19 deaths, 37 were eligible for COVID-19 vaccination, 10 received one dose and six had two doses.

Maternal vaccination status for infant deaths wasn’t included in the study. In an email to The Epoch Times, Ladhani said maternal vaccination wasn’t a focus of the study as it’s “very difficult to derive any robust conclusions from the small numbers of infants” included in the paper.

The UKHSA previously published an analysis saying vaccinated women had similar birth outcomes compared to unvaccinated women between January and August 2021, with slightly lower rates of stillbirth and low-birthweight babies and a slightly higher rate of premature births.