“The Global Economy Has Become a Battlefield.
“Soaring energy prices in Europe, an alleged attempt to detain a Fed official in China, efforts to diversify chip supply away from Taiwan Semiconductor: We are in a global financial war…
“Anodyne words such as “globalization” obscure the gritty connections of cause and effect. Over the past two centuries we have learned how to produce food and build shelter efficiently, and we now feed and house eight billion people more easily than prior centuries did one billion.
“The causes were industrialization, mechanization, electrification and automation, joined with the ability to finance such innovations [plus a colossal, rising throughput of energy, mostly from fossil fuels]…
“The sophistication of this system is also its vulnerability.”
“Beijing rebukes U.S. over alleged cyberattack on Chinese university.
“China denounced the U.S. Embassy in Beijing following a joint report from two of the country’s most prominent cyber authorities accusing the National Security Agency of stealing “sensitive information” from Chinese institutions.”
https://therecord.media/beijing-rebukes-u-s-over-alleged-cyberattack-on-chinese-university/
“Currency shifts add to global economic woes… The US dollar still has an outsized influence on trade and finance…
“As if the energy crisis and the highest inflation rates in four decades were not disruptive enough, the global economy is also being rattled by big realignments in exchange rates.”
https://www.ft.com/content/593010c7-72f0-4801-be30-d1175d7c1c21
“The World’s Hottest Housing Markets Are Facing a Painful Reset…
“From Sydney to Stockholm to Seattle, buyers are pulling back as central banks raise interest rates at the fastest pace in decades, sending house prices falling. Meanwhile, millions of people who borrowed cheaply to purchase homes during the pandemic boom face higher payments as loans reset.”
“Funds cut diesel positions amid fears of economic slowdown.
“Investors sold petroleum last week with the fastest sales concentrated in middle distillates as the economic outlook on both sides of the Atlantic deteriorated… the heaviest proportional sales were in U.S. diesel (-8 million barrels) and European gas oil (-8 million barrels) with both experiencing the fastest sales since March 8, shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine.”
“U.S. emergency oil reserves tumble to lowest since 1984.
“President Joe Biden in March set a plan to release 1 million barrels per day over six months from the SPR to tackle high U.S. fuel prices, which have contributed to soaring inflation. The Biden administration is weighing the need for further SPR releases after the current program ends in October…”
“Pentagon needs an extra $42 bln due to soaring inflation – industry group…
“”Significant inflation is a major challenge” for the Pentagon and its thousands of contractors, compounding the challenge from COVID-19 and dealing with the supply-chain crisis, said the National Defense Industrial Association report, which was reviewed by Reuters ahead of publication.”
“Sweden election: Right-wing bloc starts talks to form new government.
“The anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats have already started talks with other right-wing parties about forming the Nordic country’s next government. According to Swedish media outlets, Sweden Democrats leader Jimmie Åkesson met at lunchtime in Stockholm with the leader of the Moderates Ulf Kristersson.”
“Denmark’s Inflation Hits New High as Food, Energy Prices Soar…
““Inflation is the Achilles’ heel in both the Danish and the European economy,” Mathias Dollerup Sproegel, a senior economist at Sydbank, said in a note. Current prices mean that an average Danish family will have to spend an extra 40,000 kroner ($5,400) a year on consumer goods, compared with 2021, he said.”
“There is a risk of food shortages in the UK this winter, experts have said, as the drought and high gas prices put pressure on farmers.
While growers who use glasshouses are either not sowing or waiting until spring when there are more daylight hours, the crops that would usually have sustained the country during fallow periods, such as cabbages, carrots and potatoes, are likely to have reduced yields because of the drought…”
“Staff at Britain’s biggest container port Felixstowe to strike again.
“Workers at Britain’s biggest container port Felixstowe plan to stage a second eight-day strike over pay, a notice on the port operator’s website said on Tuesday, adding to a wave of industrial unrest caused by soaring inflation.”
https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uks-felixstowe-port-faces-eight-day-strike-2022-09-13/
“More than a hundred “yellow vest” demonstrators have been arrested in Paris in a reappearance of the grassroots protest movement amid discontent around France over rising prices and unpopular reforms by President Macron.
“Mobile riot police intervened swiftly to break up unannounced, and therefore illegal, protests by several hundred people wearing gilets jaunes, some in masks, around the Place de la République and also near the Champs Elysées on Saturday.”
“Eiffel Tower goes dark due to energy crisis: Iconic Paris landmark will turn lights off an hour earlier…
“‘It’s a highly symbolic gesture – part of the growing awareness around energy sobriety,’ Jean-François Martins, the head of the tower’s management told The Guardian… Officials in other French cities are also planning to reduce the night-time lightening of important sites.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11203451/Eiffel-Tower-goes-dark-energy-crisis.html
“Germany is facing a shortage of AdBlue, a key ingredient for modern diesel cars and trucks, as soaring energy prices send shock waves through the economy.
“Truckers say suppliers are limiting deliveries of AdBlue, while some orders to gas stations are being cut, according to industry groups… AdBlue supply at gas stations is currently “tense and going to be tight in the coming months,” said Juergen Ziegner, executive director of Germany’s petrol stations association ZTG.”
“Italian business lobby in talks over potential gas rationing.
“Italy’s main business lobby group Confindustria is in talks with the government about potential gas rationing, the head of the organisation said on Monday. The measures would be required to reduce risks linked to a total halt to Russian gas flows in the coming winter season…”
“China gave tens of billions in secretive ‘emergency loans’ to vulnerable nations, emerging as world’s major creditor and IMF competitor.
“In recent years, China has shelled out tens of billions in opaque “emergency loans” for at-risk nations, indicating a shift to providing short-term emergency lending rather than longer-term infrastructure loans… Experts are concerned about what comes next, as many of the nations that took loans from China are facing an extraordinary debt crunch amid an era of inflation and climate change.”
“Clashes have erupted between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops, according to Russian news agencies, in a resumption of decades-old hostilities linked to the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.
“Azerbaijan, which re-established full control over the territory in a six-week conflict in 2020, acknowledged casualties among its forces. Armenia made no mention of losses, but said clashes persisted overnight.”
“The Pakistani rupee continued to slide against the US dollar on Tuesday as cataclysmic floods and continuous political instability forced the local unit to depreciate…
“Traders have said the Pakistani rupee is expected to continue depreciation against the greenback during the ongoing week as no clear strategy to turn around the economy is driving away investors.”
“‘A health hazard’: Lebanon burns toxic fuel to avoid total blackout…
““This black smoke contains heavy carcinogen metals, which constitute a public health hazard in the long term”, said opposition MP Najat Saliba, a chemistry professor at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon… With the central bank’s dollar reserves dwindling, cash-strapped Lebanon is struggling to secure fuel imports for its power plants.”
“Lebanon central bank stops fuel subsidies, prices set to rise.
“Lebanon’s central bank says it has stopped providing dollars for gasoline imports, a move that will likely lead to higher and more volatile prices as well as increased pressure on the local currency, which continues to lose value as the country’s economic crisis shows few signs of abating.”
“Crude oil exports out of Nigeria plunged to below 1 million barrels per day bpd, their lowest level on record, last month, oil export analytics firm Petro-Logistics said on Monday.
“Over the past three years, Nigeria’s crude oil exports have essentially halved, according to Petro-Logistics. Persistent underinvestment in the Nigerian oil industry and the perennial problem of oil theft from pipelines have plagued the sector in recent years.”
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Nigerias-Oil-Exports-Plunge-To-Record-Low.html
“Eskom May Need More State Money to Battle Costs.
“Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd has spent nearly half a billion dollars (7.7 billion rand) over the past six months burning diesel in efforts to ease rolling blackouts. That amount is already above what the state-owned company had estimated it would spend for the full year…”
“Soaring Food Prices in Brazil Lead Many to Take Up Urban Farming.
“As a teenager in the Manguinhos slum community in northern Rio de Janeiro, Leonardo Ferreira said he used to spend his mornings packaging cocaine between shootouts with the police. Now, he tends to his lettuce in the favela’s vast vegetable garden, one of thousands of urban farms…
““People are desperate. We sell the vegetables cheap to the locals at a fair on Fridays—it’s normally all gone within 30 minutes,” said Mr. Ferreira, 26, who swapped his assault rifle for a garden hose under pressure from his wife.”
You can read the previous “Economic” thread here. I’ll be back tomorrow with a “Climate” thread.
If you found value in this content, please help me continue this work by becoming a patron of my work via Patreon. And if you are already a subscriber or have donated – thank you! It is an enormous help as the cost of living crisis ratchets up here in the UK.
Please consider adding an occasional introductory paragraph summarizing any significant changes you detect. So much going on these days it’s difficult to detect changes in the signal.
Rob, that is a very good idea. I do detect changes in the signal, as it were. Over time my search terms will adapt and evolve to keep up with new trends. For example, strikes and labour issues are now much more of a problem than when I started out the blog. And, of course, people want to have a general sense of what is getting worse. I’ll put my thinking cap on…
Climate change tipping points will be passed sooner than thought: Study
Ben Adler
Ben Adler
A new study in the journal Science finds that even the most aggressive goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions aren’t sufficient to avoid several major climate change tipping points, in which rising temperatures cause irreversible damages that in turn cause more global warming.
One of the most worrisome risks of climate change, for example, is that permafrost —
Another emerging tipping point is the dieback of the Amazon rainforest.
We can see signs of destabilization already in parts of the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, in permafrost regions, the Amazon rainforest, and potentially the Atlantic overturning circulation as well,” the Science study’s lead author, David Armstrong McKay, who is affiliated with the Stockholm Resilience Centre and the University of Exeter, said. “The world is already at risk of some tipping points. As global temperatures rise further, more tipping points become possible.”
Looks as if we are looking in the rear view mirror..
Given how much warming is already baked in and how problematic any loss of dimming may prove moving forwards, I suspect we are, unfortunately.