Via Remix News,

Czechia may produce much of its own food, but that has not stopped the country from seeing a dramatic increase in food prices. On top of the usual suspects such as rising energy prices, part of the problem for Czechs is that a substantial amount of that domestically produced food is exported abroad.

Food prices rose by more than a quarter in the Czech Republic in October. This was not only due to soaring energy prices but also partly because Czech stores copy prices in Germany, which has also seen an explosive growth in food prices this year.

The data shows just how bad food inflation in Czechia has become. The country experienced the largest percentage rise in sugar prices in Europe; the second-largest in vegetable oils; and the third-largest price increase in butter, milk, and bread.

Part of the problem is that Czech producers continued to export many of these commodities abroad, creating a shortage at home and keeping prices high, according to Czech news outlet Seznamz Pravy. The situation the country finds itself in reveals some of the downsides of free trade and globalization, in which companies and producers can often profit more by selling key products abroad rather than selling domestically.

In October, Eurostat data showed domestic food prices rose by 26.7 percent, the seventh-fastest rate in Europe after Hungary, Slovakia, and Bulgaria. At the same time, Czechia has food in abundance from its own production, or at least enough to cover most of its domestic needs.

The increase in the price of sugar by 100 percent, and butter, flour, and vegetable oils by more than 50 percent, is hard to compare in Europe. Inflation is mainly kept below a tolerable level by imported goods, such as fish, vegetables, fruit, and chocolate, where price growth is below the 10 percent mark compared to last year.

Oldřich Reinbergr, the former director of the largest sugar company in Czechia, Tereos TTD, explained the increase in the price of sugar, which occurred at the beginning of October in all supermarkets. He said that sugar factories’ old contracts for energy have expired, and they now have to buy the energy to produce sugar at a higher price.

“Farmers are facing the same problem,” he said in an interview with the Seznam Zprávy news outlet.

Yet there is a simpler explanation.

On Oct. 4, all supermarkets in Germany raised the price of sugar; instead of 80 cents per kilogram, they suddenly asked for €1.30. Czech retailers simply copied the price of their neighbors.

For domestic customers, this has the disadvantage that they pay the same for sugar as rich Germans.

That was not the norm for most foods until now because according to Eurostat, Czechs paid less than 90 percent of the European average for food last year. Because this year’s inflation hit Czechia more strongly in terms of food prices, local prices reached 96 percent of the EU average. The situation can be even worse for food produced in the Czech Republic.

Detailed foreign trade statistics from the Czech Statistical Office show that during the year, local producers took advantage of bottlenecks in the supply of certain foodstuffs, especially in the south of Europe, and began to export more. For example, temporary shortages in neighboring countries allowed them to raise export prices for wheat and sunflower oil by 40 percent to 50 percent. Logically, they demanded the same price from domestic customers. In other cases, for example in the case of sugar and eggs, they increased export quotas and thus limited what was offered on the Czech market.

Less than a week following the errant Ukrainian missile fiasco which killed two people just inside the Polish border, but which was initially blamed on Russia, Poland has confirmed it will host a US-made Patriot air defense system on the Ukrainian border.

Bloomberg reported on Monday, “Germany will send Patriot missiles and fighter jets to Poland as part of an air-defense deal following a strike that raised fears of a significant escalation between NATO allies and Russia.”

German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht said in relation to the deal, “Poland is our friend, ally and stands out as a neighbor of Ukraine.”

It comes as a bit of a surprise given tensions are high between Warsaw and Berlin after the former recently requested $1.3 trillion in war reparations from World War II. Polish officials have also of late heavily criticized German Chancellor Olaf Scholz for unwillingness to issue greater commitments in arming Ukraine. 

According to more via The Associated Press:

Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said he received Germany’s offer of additional Patriot missiles “with satisfaction” and will have them deployed close to the border with Ukraine.

He tweeted that during a phone conversation Monday with the German side, he will suggest the location for the Patriot missile reinforcement. Poland already has a deployment of U.S. Patriot missiles.

Ironically all of this comes in response to a deadly border incident which later was shown not to have involved Russia. Instead the Nov. 15 explosion was likely the result of a Ukrainian anti-air missile, despite the Ukrainian government insisting that Russian forces had “attacked” NATO member ally Poland. 

But rare tensions emerged between the Zelensky government and his Western backers after both NATO and the White House laid out a clear case that it was an accidental Ukrainian missile which landed on the Polish village of Przewodów, very close to the border with Ukraine. 

Authored by ‘Alexandria’ – a citizen of Zimbabwe – via BitcoinMagazine.com,

Bitcoin offers financial opportunities that have been explicitly taken from Africans in recent history…

HAVE THE MAJORITY OF AFRICANS EVER HAD ACCESS TO WEALTH LIKE BITCOIN?

If the question were to be posed, “Do many people in Africa have shares in Google, Amazon or Microsoft?” or “Have many people, from Africa, built wealth from any of the above listed public companies?” The answer, for the majority of individuals in Africa, would be a resounding “No.”

The main reason why a lot of Africans are not able to participate in the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is that one has to have banking interoperable with American systems. Within this American system, individuals operate and deal with either American brokers or American banks that are all part of an exclusive and impenetrable closed monetary network. These financial institutions and organs almost always require sizable amounts of money from foreigners for the minimum account opening deposits or balances.

In recent years another crippling stipulation posed to non-American applicants is that their country of citizenry must presently have good bilateral relations with the United States of America. If, like myself, you were born in a sanctioned country, you will suffer from unilateral illegal sanctions imposed by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) which will block any access to the NYSE and many other Financial markets and services.

“I was born in 1930 the odds were probably 40/1 against me being born in the United States. I did win the ovarian lottery on that first day and on top of that I was male and if I’d been female my life would have been far different. So put that down as 50/50 shot and the out of the odds are 80/1 against being born a male in the United States and it was enormously important in my whole life.”

– Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett states that it was enormously important that he was born in the USA. This is true because if you were to Google search Warren Buffett’s annual report you would see that his returns, over the last 57 years, averaged 20% returns on compound interest alone. This resulted in Warren Buffett achieving a compounded 3,641,613% return on his investments.

Warren Buffet demonstrates the numerical importance of accessibility and the importance of participation in financial markets, especially markets as liquid as the NYSE. This, for the most part, excludes Africans.

ACCESSIBILITY TO WEALTH THROUGH CREDIT FOR AFRICANS AND AFRICAN AMERICANS

The Great Depression may have started because of a stock market crash, but what hit the general economy was a disruption of credit — every citizen was unable to borrow money, rendering them incapable of doing anything. Credit has the ability to build a modern economy, but lack of credit has the ability to destroy them, swiftly and absolutely.

Let’s start off with the subject of discrimination that has lead to part of the impoverishment of my people.

AFRICAN AMERICAN ACCESS TO CREDIT:

Redlining: The term came about when the government created color-coded maps that told banks where they could give out housing loans. Green sections were a go ahead and red sections populated by black people were deemed too risky. Redlining blocked off entire black neighborhoods from access to public and private investment. Banks and insurance companies used these maps for decades to deny black people access to loans and other services based purely on race. Home ownership is the primary driver of wealth but African Americans in their neighborhoods paid higher insurance premiums, higher interest rates and were denied mortgages more often.

“You can’t get a loan, you can’t own a home, you can’t start a business. Which means you can’t build wealth. You’re excluded from the American dream. Why is it so important to you to exclude an entire race of people from the American dream?”

–  Anthony Mackie in, “The Banker”

AFRICAN ACCESS TO CREDIT:

In 1930 the land apportionment in Rhodesia (now known as Zimbabwe) made it illegal for native Africans to purchase land outside of the established native lands. The native African population was above 1 million while that of the Europeans was less than 50,000. That put the European population at only 5% of the population yet they had more than 51% of the land while 95% of the population only got 28% of the dry rocky lands which were called “reserves.”

In 1980 Zimbabwe became independent, after a long war. They then began negotiations for a settlement at the end of the war which led to an agreement termed The Lancaster House Agreement. The Lancaster House Agreement stated that the new government could not draft legislation to compulsorily take land for the next 10 years. The only way landless black people could be resettled is if they were to buy from whites that wanted to sell. Only a few white farmers did sell. Up until the 1990s less than one million hectares of land was given up for resettlement only.

“Only 19% of the almost 3.5 million hectares of resettled land was considered prime or farmable. 75% of the best land was still about 4500 white farmers.”

– Human Rights Watch

In 2000 land reform programs began, white farmers were forcefully displaced from farms and were replaced by new black farmers. This was a massive deal internationally and historically. It had never been attempted before. Zimbabwe also challenged imperialistic powers by joining the fight for an apartheid-free in South Africa. Zimbabwe also joined the fight against imperialism in The Congo. So in 2001 the United States of America reacted by enacting two types of sanctions.

The first were Congestional Sanctions: ZIDERA , Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act Stops Zimbabweans from getting loans from multilateral lending institutions. Especially restructure and development loans.

The second are Executive Order sanctions. America has tried to call it targeted sanctions but when you look at the list of targeted sanctions you see a prohibition for any company in the world to do business with Zimbabwe. Otherwise those companies will be penalized or face jail sentences according to the International Economic Emergency Powers Act.

These were unilateral sanctions imposed by the United States of America. These unilateral sanctions were only possible because the United States currency dominates the world’s payment systems and a major portion of the world’s global business is done in America. So anybody that wants to do business often has to do it with America and has to cooperate with America. They need to have a bilateral agreement and relationship with America. Yet these bilateral relationships are the ones that America uses to enforce its sanctions or what we call the executive order Sanctions and these ensure that other countries across the world implement those sanctions or suffer secondary sanctions.

Executive order sanctions actually state that if a country or company assists the government of Zimbabwe with software, finance, logistics, machinery, equipment in trade that company can also face sanctions because the Americas are trying to make the sanctions effective. However, those who place international sanctions argue that our sanctions are actually self imposed sanctions due to the fact that even before the ZIDERA sanctions of 2001 — in 1999 Zimbabwe failed to pay its debts to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank which meant that Zimbabwe was banned from access to credit from these two multilateral institutions. Then again there is a misconception that sanctions in Zimbabwe did not start in 2001 but rather actually started in 1980 when we got independence. At independence Zimbabwe was left with Rhodesia’s debt. Additionally Zimbabweans were not given reparations for the destruction made by the Rhodesians that cost the nation over a trillion dollars.

ANOTHER CASE OF SELF-IMPOSED SANCTIONS

In Zimbabwe the interest rate is 30% per month. In only four months the interest paid on the loan would be more than the principal. This is because Zimbabwe’s interest rates have to continuously be re-adjusted in order to compensate for the hyperinflation which peaked at a whopping 600%. In addition — Zimbabwe does not have a sovereign credit rating from the three international credit rating agencies. The government has not yet solicited a rating from the big three rating agencies. It is among the African countries that are yet to request an international sovereign rating. A favorable rating enables governments and companies to raise capital in the international financial market. Institutional investors in both the developed and developing world rely heavily on rating agencies in making investment decisions.

Being unrated makes it harder for the government to get funds for big debt projects or to get debt relief. It makes it harder for entrepreneurs who are struggling to grow their businesses due to lack of funding. Individuals who lack funding cannot get a mortgage and hence cannot own a home of their own. The end result is that under these circumstances one cannot build wealth.

CAN BITCOIN FINALLY GRANT AFRICANS FAIR AND FREE ACCESS TO WEALTH?

For centuries, Africans and African Americans have suffered from severe discriminatory policies in regards to access to credit through redlining and sanctions which both prohibited credit or increased the cost of credit. The innovation of Bitcoin was imperative for Africa and African Americans as it allowed anyone on earth access to it, and this time it includes Africans. It is not a surprise at all that Sub-Saharan Africa is leading in Bitcoin adoption.

This time Africans and African-Americans don’t have to worry about discrimination. Thanks largely to the innovation of DeFi on bitcoin, this is the long awaited-for innovation and crucial step in Bitcoin scalability and utility in Africa. 

He just can’t help himself: disgraced sociopath, record-breaking fraudster and prolific Democratic donor – not necessarily in that order – Sam Bankman-Fried, has issued another apology to his staff in a letter that outlined a crash in “collateral” to less than $9 billion from $60 billion.

“I didn’t mean for any of this to happen, and I would give anything to be able to go back and do things over again,” the corpulent 30-year-old who may or may not be in the Bahamas apologized yet again in the message sent to employees Tuesday, although he really should be apologizing to the millions of clients whom he wiped out. Alas, like the recurrent ramblings of a psychopath, Sam’s takeaway was that the implosion at FTX was the side-effect of an unfortunate bank run, and had nothing to do with SBF’s actions; that’s because SBF still refuses to take any responsibility for what happened and makes zero admission that the factors that led to this historic bankruptcy were in his control all along. Sam claims that he didn’t “realize the magnitude of risk.” His main remorse – like that of any pathological individual – is that he got caught.

Still don’t believe us he was a sociopath? Read this:

I didn’t mean for any of this to happen, and I would give anything to be able to go back and do things over again. You were my family. I’ve lost that, and our old home is an empty warehouse of monitors. When I turn around, there’s no one left to talk to. I disappointed all of you, and when things broke down I failed to communicate. I froze up in the face of pressure and leaks and the Binance LOI and said nothing. I lost track of the most important things in the commotion of company growth. I care deeply about you all, and you were my family, and I’m sorry.

No he isn’t, and if it wasn’t his fault, whose fault was it? Well, as he “describes” the sequence of events, you see it was all the market’s fault as a slide in digital-asset markets in spring roughly halved collateral from $60 billion to $30 billion, while liabilities were $2 billion. A combination of a credit squeeze, a further selloff in virtual coins and a “run on the bank” left collateral at $9 billion ahead of FTX’s Nov. 11 bankruptcy, he wrote. The estimate for liabilities had reached $8 billion by then. Here is how, in his words, what was initially a $58 billion overcollateralized balance sheet ended up having more liabilities than assets.

“I did not realize the full extent of the margin position, nor did I realize the magnitude of the risk posed by a hyper-correlated crash,” Bankman-Fried said. He didn’t give exact details on the makeup of the collateral or the liabilities. If he did, it would look something like this chart from Morgan Stanley:

What happens next is what any sniveling sociopath posing as a CEO would say: I had no idea any of this could happen:

I did not realize the full extent of the margin position, nor did I realize the magnitude of the risk posed by a hyper-correlated crash.

And it is here, that we get the first admission that something nefarious happened: i.e., loans  – to related parties, such as the $4 billion “given” from FTX to SBF – and the “secondary sales” which we now knows SBF pocketed some $300 million for personal use.

The loans and secondary sales were generally used to reinvest in the business—including buying out Binance—and not for large amounts of personal consumption.

And so, ladies and gents of the jury, would you consider a $40 million penthouse to be a “large amount of personal consumption.” And what about a private jet: in this day and age everyone needs one, how can one possibly define that as “large amount of personal consumption.” As for the meaning of “generally”, we are confident SBF’s close buddy Bill Clinton will give him the proper definition of that word.

Prudently, there was zero mention in Sam’s meandering word salad that FTX had illegally commingled and sent billions in customer funds to SBF’s personal hedge fund, Alameda, which despite frontrunning virtually every crypto transaction still lost $3.7 billion before 2022. That’s ok, Sam can discuss that in court.

There was, however, the usual lies, including SBF’s increasingly warped representation of reality, which is to be expected: as noted above, he is after all, a sociopath.

We likely could have raised significant funding; potential interest in billions of dollars of funding came in roughly eight minutes after I signed the Chapter 11 docs. Between those funds, the billions of dollars of collateral the company still held, and the interest we’d received from other parties, I think that we probably could have returned large value to customers and saved the business.

Narrator: none of this happened, and none of this will happen either:

Maybe there still is a chance to save the company. I believe that there are billions of dollars of genuine interest from new investors that could go to making customers whole. But I can’t promise you that anything will happen, because it’s not my choice.

That’s right: it is now all in the hands of the person who presided over the Enron bankruptcy and who thinks your fraud is way worse.

And speaking of fraud, there was one sentence in the whole letter where this pathological liar may have told the truth, if inadvertently:

… None of this changes the fact that this all sucks for you guys, and it’s not your fault, and I’m really sorry about that. I’m going to do what I can to make it up to you guys—and to the customers—even if that takes the rest of my life. But I’m worried that even then I won’t be able to.

No, you won’t be able to, but when it comes to “the rest of your life”, both the “guys” and the customers who you left with nothing because of your infinite greed, fraud and incompetence, they all have an idea where you can spend it.

Whether or not that happens will depend on just how broken the US legal system is, where a few million in donations to prominent democrats may be all it takes to get a lifetime “get out of jail” card.

SBF’s full letter to his now former employees is below

Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Sperm counts worldwide have halved over the past 45 years, according to a study published on Nov. 15 in the journal Human Reproduction Update.

The study was conducted by an international team of researchers led by professor Hagai Levine of Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Hadassah Braun School of Public Health.

They aimed to examine trends in sperm count among men from all continents and analyzed 223 studies based on sperm samples taken from over 57,000 men across 53 countries including the United States, Europe, and Australia between 1973 to 2018.

Previously, a 2017 study conducted by the same team of researchers reviewed sperm count data in North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. The new analysis updates that review to include data from Central and South America, Asia, and Africa for the first time.

Researchers in the latest study found an “appreciable decline” in sperm count during that time period.

Specifically, researchers found that men in South America, Asia, and Africa shared a similar decline in total sperm counts and concentration as was previously observed in their study concentrated across Europe, North America, and Australia.

Sperm Counts Fall Over 62 Percent

Overall, results showed the mean sperm count fell by 51.6 percent between 1973 and 2018 across men from all continents, dropping on average by 1.2 percent per year from an estimated 101.2 million per milliliter to 49 million per milliliter from 1973 through 2018.

Total sperm counts fell by 62.3 percent during the same period.

Men are considered to have a low sperm count if they have less than 15 million sperm per milliliter or less than 39 million sperm total per ejaculate, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Additionally, they found that data from the year 2000 showed a decline in sperm concentrations of more than 2.6 percent per year, doubling compared to the previous decline of 1.16 percent annually from 1972.

Researchers said the “substantial and persistent decline is now recognized as a significant public health concern” and that further research on the causes of the decline is urgently needed to prevent further disruption of male reproductive health.

“We hope that the new evidence provided here will receive attention not only from clinicians and scientists but also from decision-makers and the general public,” the researchers wrote.

Men who suffered from infertility were excluded from the study.

Researchers did note limitations to their study, however, including how the data was collected and reported as standards and methods for counting sperm have changed markedly over time. That makes it harder to compare the latest sperm counts to historical data. Additionally, researchers noted that complete elimination of all selection/recruitment bias was impossible because they were not able to collect semen samples at random.

‘Not a Cause for Panic’

“I think this is another signal that something is wrong with the globe and that we need to do something about it. So yes, I think it’s a crisis, that we [had] better tackle now, before it may reach a tipping point which may not be reversible,” Levine, the leading author of the research, told The Guardian.

Read more here…

Russia’s energy giant Gazprom on Tuesday accused Ukraine of stealing natural gas supplies intended for Moldova by siphoning it off during transit. Gazprom is now threatening to halt deliveries via the key the Sudzha route. 

“The volume of gas supplied by Gazprom to the ‘Sudzha’ gas measuring station (GMS) for transit to Moldova via Ukraine exceeds the physical volume transmitted at the border of Ukraine with Moldova,” Gazprom’s statement said.

The allegation further specified that the Ukrainian government stole 52.52 million cubic meters of gas which was intended for Moldova. Gazprom said that amount of gas never left Ukraine’s territory while in transit.

According to the fresh statement as presented in state media: 

The Russian energy company further warned that if the transit imbalance persists then it would begin slashing gas supply to the Sudzha GMS for transit via Ukraine from 10 am (7am GMT) on November 28, “in the amount of the daily underderlivery.”

Ukraine has a sprawling network of natgas transmission pipelines from Russia that feed into Europe, which now ironically enough remain the only key supply route to western and central European countries following the Nord Stream sabotage blasts. 

Despite the raging war which has been on for nine months, some 42 million cubic metres (mcm) per day still transits through Ukraine via the Sudzha route.

Gas inflow for transit from Russia to Europe in Ukraine from February 1 to November 14, 2022, by entry point(in million cubic meters):

You will find more infographics at Statista

Moldova is very heavily dependent on Russia for its energy supplies, and has been suffering rolling blackouts of late. On Monday donor countries gathered in Paris where they pledged hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to help salvage Moldova’s energy infrastructure, and to prevent political destabilization at such a sensitive time. Moldova has recently applied for EU membership.

Western officials have long accused Russia of seeking to takeover Moldova amid its “special operation” in Ukraine. International media has tended to blame tiny Moldova’s energy woes on Moscow and its ‘weaponizing’ energy.

Authored by Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog,

More people than ever are facing dire circumstances, and we’re just getting started with this economic disaster. And what is our government doing?

Why, they’re giving our money away.

To other countries, no less.

The U.S. government agreed to pay “climate reparations.”

But the plight of our own countrymen seems to be less important than those in other countries affected by climate change. The United States has just agreed to pay up to a billion dollars to poor countries for “climate reparations.” As per an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal:

The use of climate policy to soak Americans keeps getting worse, and the United Nation’s climate conference in Egypt ended this weekend with agreement on a new fund to pay reparations to poor countries. Welcome to the latest climate shakedown.

The 2015 Paris accord suggested rich countries compensate poor countries for climate damage—the rationale being that industrialization has increased temperatures and led to natural disasters. Poor countries finally forced discussion of a formal mechanism to pay climate reparations onto this year’s U.N. conference agenda.

…on Thursday Europe abandoned the U.S. by proposing a deal, and Mr. Kerry rolled over.

Wealthy countries will now set up a fund to cover climate damage for the least developed countries—i.e., not China or middle-income nations. This will be financed from “a broad donor base” and “mosaic of solutions,” such as international development banks and taxes on aviation, shipping and fossil fuels.

Some reports suggest that the US will be on the hook for up to a billion dollars. In October, it was reported that the total amount due would be $4.3 trillion.

That’s the sum the US and other major carbon polluters will face at the COP27 climate summit in Egypt next month.

Well, other polluters except for China.

China is not contributing jack sh*t. It’s essential to note that out of all the polluters in the world, China is the worst offender, creating 30% of the world’s carbon emissions.

Yet, they’re exempt from this outrageous bill. Not one thin dime shall they pay. I’m not a fan of China’s dystopian policies and government, but at least they aren’t causing shortages and suffering in their own country in order to virtue signal how green they are.

In the end, it’s just the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. Says the WSJ:

Countries might also shake down U.S. fossil-fuel producers in their own courts. Climate reparations will merely serve as another form of global income redistribution. The Biden Administration’s surrender shows again that the religion of climate change is progressive penance for the sin of being prosperous.

In doing this, they ignore the plight of everyday Americans who can’t afford to run their heat or keep their homes.

Meanwhile, Americans are truly suffering.

We’ve repeatedly discussed the effects our current economic crisis is having on Americans. We talked about how they’re skipping meals and how they can’t afford medical care. We’ve been warning for years that they are struggling to meet their most basic needs. We live in a nation that destroyed itself during the Covid pandemic and has left its people hanging out to dry, with no jobs, no money, and no hope.

This isn’t some abstract concept about the planet.

This is real. And it’s happening to folks in our own communities.

Read these personal statements about how the economy is crushing Americans.

Here’s how the economy is affecting housing.

Sheba Everett is a single mother living in Durham, North Carolina, an area that is facing massive increases in the cost of living due to new companies coming to the region. Lower-income people are rapidly being displaced. She works full-time as a teacher with multiple side gigs to keep a roof over the heads of herself and her daughters. They were making ends meet until she got an eviction notice. A local newspaper shared her story:

The September eviction letter caught them by surprise, she said, even though all the annual leases were converted in the last two years to month-to-month leases. Everett asked about it in March when her lease changed and said she was told it was to help tenants struggling in the post-pandemic economy. Now, everyone is in dire straits, trying to find affordable housing when the only units available are condemned or too small, she said.

“It will be three years in March (since they moved into their current home), so the prices were still somewhat reasonable (before), and so I tried to find something similar, and it’s just like double the price, so there’s just no way I can survive or stay in Durham or any of that.

I don’t know what I’m going to do, and I tried to get a loan to buy a house. Actually, in my neighborhood that I grew up in, I found a house — a five-bedroom house; it was (roughly) 1,400 square feet — in my old neighborhood that I grew up in; I was ecstatic. It was $300,000 (but) I didn’t get approved for enough to buy that house. We’re basically stuck right now. … I just couldn’t believe I’m a teacher, and I can’t afford to even live in the neighborhood that I grew up in.

I’ve reached out to the housing agencies, but since we’re in a crisis right now — one of the worst that we’ve seen in our lifetime — they’re backed up. I am one of many numbers. I’ve gotten on a couple of waiting lists, and even those things, they definitely will keep a roof over our head, but it’s not anything that actually fits my family’s needs. It’ll keep us from being homeless.

I’ll work five jobs and pay for a super-expensive place where I literally can barely breathe, but I can’t uproot my children from their home without giving it my all, because like I said, it’s way more than just a house.

As a single mom myself, I know exactly how difficult it is to have to uproot your children in the midst of financial problems. It’s heartbreaking to see them suffer because of money. When you don’t have much money, a home is the one thing that you strive to provide, no matter what.  Losing that security is almost unbearable.

(Disaster comes in many forms. Check out our free QUICKSTART Guide to better understand the four levels it can reach.)

Here’s how the economy is affecting utilities.

The high cost of energy is causing exorbitant heat bills as we move into winter.

As the first frigid weather of autumn chills the Northeast, many people are faced with a tough decision: deal with the surging costs of heating their homes or live without it.

Home heating prices are skyrocketing yet again this winter, up 18% nationwide on top of last year’s 17% spike, according to the National Energy Assistance Directors Association (NEADA).

Charmaine Johnson works in the call center at Philadelphia’s Heater Hotline, part of a non-profit that assists low-income families with their heating systems and bills. Johnson, 63, can relate to the concerns she’s hearing all day. She, too, is struggling to afford her heating bills…

…Johnson says she doesn’t qualify for government assistance with her heating bills. As inflation also pushes up her food budget and other expenses, she is bundling up and keeping the heat turned down, hoping to stretch that oil for as long as possible.

“It’s miserable,” she said. “It’s like living in an igloo.”

The elderly and children are the most likely to suffer when folks can’t afford to turn their heat to a reasonable level. Some senior citizens living on fixed incomes are talking about keeping their thermostats at a nippy 50-55 degrees.

It doesn’t matter how you heat, this year, you are going to pay more. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) predicts that:

…heating a home with natural gas will cost an extra 25% this winter, and heating with electric will run 11% higher. The steepest hike will be on heating oil, which is expected to be 45% more expensive than last winter, squeezing roughly 5 million households, mostly in the Northeast.

Many of our most vulnerable citizens are facing a long cold winter.

But by all means, let’s stash a billion dollars or so in a fund for other countries.

Imagine what we could do with a billion dollars here at home. Imagine the people who could be fed, housed, and sheltered. Sure, it wouldn’t solve all of our problems. It wouldn’t undo the damage done to our economy by disastrous lockdown policies.

But wouldn’t it be better to help the folks at home before pledging tons of money to others?

I don’t hate other countries. I don’t hate poor countries. I’ve spent a lot of time traveling the world, and I want to see other countries be prosperous too. But it cannot come at the expense of our own people, who have paid tax after tax after tax but still can’t turn their heat above 5o degrees in the winter.

Is it just me? Do you feel that this is a terrible use of American money, or do you think it’s a good call? If you could decide where to distribute a billion dollars as a government official, where would you direct it? And how the heck does China get off scot-free?

*  *  *

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Goldman’s Ben Snider has published his latest quarterly Hedge Fund Trend Monitor report, which is one of Goldman’s most widely followed research reports (and mercifully, it doesn’t include any forecasts, so there is no way Goldman can be catastrophically wrong unlike its year-ahead forecasts). This year, Goldman analyzed the holdings of 786 hedge funds with $2.3 trillion of gross
equity positions at the start of 4Q 2022 ($1.5 trillion long and $730 billion short). It’s available in the usual place for pro subscribers.

What the report found is that as the Fed attempts to navigate the US economy toward a soft landing, hedge fund portfolios were in a “holding pattern” with quarterly position turnover dropping to a new low during 3Q as PMs had literally no idea what to do or how to trade so they just stood there like deer in headlights (see more below).

The total magnitude of changes to sector tilts was the smallest since 2019, and most tilts sit near their 10-year averages. Hedge fund exposure to Growth vs. Value returned to its 20-year average. Net leverage remained at low levels, with funds using ETFs and futures to manage their exposures to a macro-driven market characterized by elevated correlations. Single stock short interest remains close to the record lows reached in 2000 and last year.

In contrast with light market exposures, hedge fund long portfolios carried an unusually large tilt away from Momentum. Momentum has recently been very negatively correlated with the direction of the equity market, as reflected by the sharp Momentum reversal alongside the market rebound in early November. While the Hedge Fund VIP basket of the most popular long positions has declined by 29% YTD…

… funds appear convicted in their favorite stocks, while aggressively shorting the year’s best S&P performer: the energy sector in general and Exxon in particular. Eventually they will figure out what the right trade is.

The average hedge fund holds 71% of its long portfolio in its top 10 positions, the highest concentration on record outside of 4Q 2018. Tech and Comm Services account for nearly half of the VIP list and 8 of the top 10 stocks. While funds paused their shift away from China ADRs during 3Q, BABA is still the only representative in the VIP list

although in contrast with light market exposures, hedge fund long portfolios carry an unusually large tilt away from Momentum.

Below, we summarize some of the key findings:

MSFT supplanted AMZN as the most popular hedge fund long position, while UBER and NFLX entered the top five. META fell out of the top five for the first time since 2014.

The VIP list contains the 50 stocks that appear most often among the top 10 holdings of fundamental hedge funds. While the basket has outperformed the S&P 500 in 58% of quarters since 2001 with an average quarterly excess return of 34 bp, the past two years have been a complete disaster.

There were 15 new constituents to the HF VIP list: APG, CEG, ET, FLEX, LBRDK, LLY, LSXMK, NVDA, PGR, SPGI, TDG, TMO, UTHR, VMW, WDAY.

But what we found more remarkable is that in the VIP mirror list, the Very Important Short Positions (VISP) for hedge funds, the top name was none other Exxon – our favorite long since the summer of 2020 when it dropped to the $30s – which has doubled this year (and quadrupled since it was kicked out of the Dow Jones). And judging by how much short covering XOM still faces, not to mention how much more buying lies in stock as hedge funds rotate from being short to going long energy, Exxon may very well double again from here.

Going back to hedge fund flows in Q3, Goldman notes that a rotation from Consumer Discretionary to Consumer Staples was the largest shift among sectors (for the reason why, just as Target which saw an exodus of clients who ended up going to “cheaper” WalMart for their purchases).

Industrials remains the largest net overweight relative to the Russell 3000, though only one stock (TRU) ranked among Goldman’s Rising Stars list of the stocks with the largest increase in hedge fund popularity during 3Q (which of course is negative for reasons we have explained every single year since 2013). Four Industrials (GXO, RHI, JCI, IAA) appeared on the list of Falling Stars

Here are some of the most notable charts from the report (which is available to pro subs in the usual place)

Hedge fund equity market exposure is exceptionally low…

And yet, short interest for the typical stock remains extremely low…

But not so at the index level: hedge funds are extremely short equity futures…

… which they are doing by shorting ETFs: there is more short activity in ETFs than usual

As a result the average stock correlation is very elevated…

Funds entered 4Q 2022 with long portfolios tilted away from Momentum…

The tilt away from Momentum has been a headwind to fund returns for most of this year, but was rewarded during the sharp Momentum reversal this month. As we noted after the CPI miss, Goldman’s long/short S&P 500 Momentum factor (GSMEFMOM) returned 20% in 2022 through November 3rd but this month experienced a sharp reversal ranking in the 1st percentile since 1980

The hedge fund tilt away from Momentum is particularly notable in light of the negative recent correlation between Momentum and the broad equity market. Momentum has also outperformed in other major periods of market stress in recent years, including 2009, 2012, 2016, and 2020. In light of this relationship, it is unlikely that Momentum will fully unwind its recent outperformance unless the market and economic outlooks improve substantially. While light hedge fund net leverage suggests funds are not optimistic about the near-term path of the market, their tilt away from Momentum appears to conflict with this view.

In a time of record uncertainty, hedge fund are doing the only thing they know: doubling down on their existing positions and praying for the best: as shown below, HF portfolio density has recently risen to near record highs.

A logical extension: portfolio turnover decreased to new record lows in 3Q as traders froze, terrified to buy or sell anything.

Funds remain tilted toward “real economy” sectors and away from tech…

More in the full Hedge Fund Tracker note available to pro subs.

Egg supplies are tightening nationwide as more than 37 million egg-laying hens have died this year due to the severe bird flu outbreak, accounting for a whopping 10% of production. The result has been soaring egg prices at the supermarket ahead of the holiday season. 

“Prices for eggs climbed more than 10% from September to October, according to the latest Consumer Price Index data. Prices in October were 43% higher than the same month a year ago. Eggs had the biggest jump by far on a monthly and yearly basis in any category in the US Department of Agriculture’s food price outlook,” Bloomberg reported. 

Consumers paid an average of $3.42 for a dozen Grade A, large eggs last month — up from $1.82 a year earlier. 

Readers have been well-informed this year about the devastating bird flu outbreak ravaging commercial poultry farms nationwide. 

“The recent spike is extraordinary in the shell-egg as well as egg-product markets,” Bill Lapp, president of Advanced Economic Solutions, a consulting firm specializing in food economics, told CNBC. 

Besides eggs, food inflation remained at the highest levels since the late 1970s, crushing the pocketbooks of Americans as they drain their savings and rack up credit card debt to buy essentials. Breakfast was the cheapest meal of the day but has since become expensive, thanks to soaring egg, bread, meat, and orange juice prices. 

The last bird flu outbreak was in 2015. This current outbreak appears much worse in terms of just egg prices. 

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Arizona Republican governor’s candidate Kari Lake issued a Monday update, saying her attorneys are working to obtain more information and “whistleblowers are coming forward” after reports of poll issues on Election Day in Maricopa County.

“Attorneys are working diligently to gather information,” said Lake, a former local news anchor who was backed by former President Donald Trump. “Whistleblowers are coming forward and the curtain is being lifted. Whether done accidentally or intentionally. It is clear that this election was a debacle that destroyed any trust in our elections.”

Authorities Maricopa County are, according to Lake, “still counting ballots” after “printer problems, tabulation errors, three-hour-long lines and even longer and confusing instructions given by election officials made this election day the most chaotic in Arizona’s history.”

For the past several days, Lake has been posting videos of voters complaining about their experiences during Election Day to her Twitter page.  She’s said that Republican voters were disenfranchised when they tried to cast ballots in Maricopa County, the state’s most populous county.

Officials in Maricopa County said on Nov. 8 there were problems with vote-tabulation machines and asked voters to drop their ballots inside dropboxes. Later that day, Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates and county Recorder Stephen Richer blamed an issue with printers for the problem and later said that the glitch would not stop anyone from voting.

Letter

Over the weekend, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s office sent a letter asking Maricopa County for answers about the apparent voting problems. The memo said that it has fielded hundreds of complaints about how authorities conducted the election during the in-person voting phase.

“These complaints go beyond pure speculation, but include first-hand witness accounts that raise concerns regarding Maricopa’s lawful compliance with Arizona election law,” the letter said, asking for a response before Nov. 28. Gates, in an interview with local media, said his office would comply.

“We’re reviewing this with our attorneys right now and I don’t have anything further to say at this point, but we will certainly before we hold the canvass,” he told KTAR on Monday.

Gates stated that around 70 of the county’s 223 vote centers suffered problems on Nov. 8. Technicians were able to solve the problem by the same afternoon, he remarked.

The letter said that Maricopa needs to provide a “full report” for the “myriad problems that occurred in relation to Maricopa County’s administration of the 2022 General Election.”

Hobbs Declares Victory

Last week, Democrat gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs, the Arizona secretary of state and chief election official, declared victory. Lake has not conceded yet and it appears that she will not do so anytime soon, according to her video.

“Arizonans who choose to make their voice heard on election day should not be disenfranchised or punished for choosing to vote in person,” Lake said Monday. “Yet they were I want you to know Arizona. I will continue fighting until we restore confidence and faith in our elections.”

And Lake, in reacting to the attorney general’s recent letter to Maricopa County, told the Daily Mail on Sunday she still believes “I will become governor, and we are going to restore honesty to our elections.”

Read more here…