“The spectre of a wider conflict in the Middle East poses a fresh threat to the global economy just as the world emerges from shocks triggered by Covid-19 and the Ukraine war, finance ministers and officials have warned…
“If we are facing any escalation or extension of the conflict to the whole region we will face big consequences,” Bruno Le Maire, France’s finance minister, told the Financial Times, adding that risks ranged from higher energy prices stirring inflation, to a decline in confidence…
“On the other side of the Atlantic, Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan, called this “the most dangerous time the world has seen in decades”.”
https://www.ft.com/content/3c358b32-33ff-4118-841c-689c27a4dd89
“Western capitals urge restraint in private discussions with Israel…
“…privately the messaging has shifted to focus on containing the war to prevent it escalating into a broader regional conflict. There are fears that a new front risks being opened on Israel’s northern border with Hizbollah, the powerful Iran-backed Lebanese militant movement, as well as the dangers of an explosion of violence erupting in the occupied West Bank.”
https://www.ft.com/content/ace598c3-868d-4a05-ba09-022eb89b7b1d
“Netanyahu tells his forces Israel is with them as the ‘fateful hour’ to attack Gaza Strip by land, sea and air draws near…
“Israel’s imminent invasion of Gaza could turn into an occupation lasting 18 months in order to dismantle the ‘bloodthirsty monsters’ of Hamas. Rainy weather delayed the full-scale onslaught yesterday but Israel’s prime minister vowed to ‘demolish’ the terror group.”
“Gaza residents face food and water shortages as they flee south…
“Across Gaza, shellshocked residents awoke to the ninth day of a punishing war between Israel and Hamas… On Sunday, there were scant supplies of food, fuel, water and electricity in Gaza, home to 2.3 million people, and phone and internet connections were intermittent as critical infrastructure collapsed.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/15/gaza-crisis-israel-hamas-war/
“Tens of thousands rally around the world in solidarity with Palestine.
“Thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters gathered in the US capital on Saturday, marching past the White House to chants of “Free Palestine” as the death toll continued to climb in the conflict between Israel and Hamas.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2023/10/15/palestinian-support-demonstrations-around-the-world
“For American Evangelicals Who Back Israel, ‘Neutrality Isn’t an Option’.
“Some evangelicals see Israel’s existence connected to biblical prophecy about the last days of the world before a divine theocratic kingdom can be established on earth… Conservative evangelicals have long formed the backbone of the Republican Party’s support of Israel.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/15/us/american-evangelicals-israel-hamas.html
“US warns Iran against escalating Israel-Hamas war into regional conflict.
“The US has held back-channel talks with Iran to warn the Islamic republic against escalating the war between Israel and Hamas into a broader regional conflict, according to President Joe Biden’s top security adviser.”
https://www.ft.com/content/8f78ed3e-0471-4bdf-b49f-54e4d614b2af
“All Eyes On Iran For Security Of Oil Supply.
“”The main thing to watch for is whether Iran becomes actively involved in the conflict and the reason why is because of Iran’s proximity to the really crucial waterway called the Strait of Hormuz,” Rapidan Energy Group’s global oil service director Clay Siegle told Bloomberg this week.”
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/All-Eyes-On-Iran-For-Security-Of-Oil-Supply.html
“We are one miscalculation short of a Middle East firestorm and the next world oil crisis…
“The grand bargain between the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia is already a dead letter… One can only assume that Hamas intended to provoke total conflagration… There must be a high risk that the unstoppable chain of events will trigger an assault by the Lebanese Hezbollah, backed by Iran…”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/10/13/israel-hamas-gaza-world-oil-crisis/
“Lebanon border fire stokes fears of regional spillover from Israel-Hamas war…
“Clashes between the pro-Iranian militants of Hezbollah and the Israeli army have grown more intense in recent days along Israel’s border with Lebanon. Over the past week, about a dozen deaths have been reported on the Lebanese side, most of them combatants but also a Reuters journalist and two civilians.”
“The Israeli defence ministry has announced that it will evacuate residents who live within two kilometres of the Lebanese border as concerns Hizbollah will enter the fray mount.
“There are 28 villages within the two kilometre zone that will be evacuated and put up in state-funded guesthouses.”
“The war between Israel and Hamas is heaping pressure on borrowing costs in neighbouring countries, as international investors grow increasingly concerned that the conflict will rapidly escalate.
“The spreads — or gaps — between the average yields on both Jordan’s and Egypt’s dollar-denominated bonds and equivalent US Treasuries have shot up this week…”
https://www.ft.com/content/d9871d2e-97d8-48ad-948d-f9ed5247a067
“Blinken warned lawmakers Azerbaijan may invade Armenia in coming weeks…
“Azerbaijiani President Ilham Aliyev has previously called on Armenia to open a “corridor” along its southern border, linking mainland Azerbaijan to an exclave that borders Turkey and Iran. Aliyev has threatened to solve the issue “by force.””
“Our Current Bond Crisis Should Scare You…
“Looking to history for comforting answers on the biggest bond rout in more than a century won’t provide many. Last year was in fact US bond investors’ worst year since 1871… For 2023, the year-to-date return has been almost minus 10%; annualized, that’s minus 17.3% — even worse than 2022. We are looking at bond investors’ two worst years in a century and a half.”
“Time Is Running Out for the ‘Year of the Bond’ as Losses Mount…
“At HSBC Holdings Plc, Steve Major says he was “wrong” to assume the US government’s growing supply of bonds didn’t matter. Earlier this month, Morgan Stanley finally joined Bank of America and moved to a neutral position on Treasuries. “It’s been a very, very humbling year,” Hunt said.”
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/time-running-bond-losses-mount-200000822.html
“Default risks loom for nearly $2 trillion of junk-rated debt as US companies hit with higher interest rates.
“Non-investment grade US companies face growing refinancing and default risks with interest rates expected to stay high and financial conditions for borrowers tightening, according to Moody’s Investors Service. The ratings agency says about $1.87 trillion of junk-rated debt is maturing between 2024 and 2028.”
https://uk.sports.yahoo.com/news/default-risks-loom-nearly-2-201501420.html
“Amid tensions with Russia, UK to deploy 20,000 troops, 8 warships to Northern Europe.
“Britain has pledged to send 20,000 troops to northern Europe next year in a drive to keep Russia at bay in the Baltic Sea and prevent sabotage of a “spaghetti” of undersea cables, the National News reported. According to the report, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak made the commitment at a summit in Sweden.”
“Gas prices have soared this week, with geopolitical volatility rattling spot markets and escalating fears of supply shortages this winter.
“Having seemingly calmed from last year’s bumper commodity rally when prices topped out at record highs following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Europe’s benchmarks are surging again – with the UK recording its highest prices since February.”
https://www.cityam.com/surging-gas-prices-expose-cost-crisis-for-consumers-this-winter/
“The nuclear dispute driving a wedge between France and Germany…
“France and Germany’s split over nuclear power is a tale of diverging mindsets fashioned over decades, including since the Chernobyl disaster in USSR-era Ukraine. But it has now become a major faultline in a touchy relationship between Europe’s two biggest economies.”
https://www.ft.com/content/b1dbd7b4-d8b9-45eb-bd18-4976f7c9af5e
“China’s slowdown casts pall over Xi’s Yangtze Delta project.
“…even Xi’s goal of creating a more efficiently run economic bloc and high-tech Arcadia hasn’t been spared the impact of the recent uncertainties. “As the world splits into blocks, we don’t know to what extent trade would be curtailed,” said Shanghai-based independent economist Andy Xie. “International trade drives wealth creation here.””
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/business/2023/10/15/economy/china-slowdown-yangtze-project-peril/
“China Local Governments Are Finding It No Longer Cheap to Borrow.
“China’s local authorities are finding it more expensive to sell bonds, the latest sign of rising stress as policymakers ramp up borrowings to stimulate growth and defuse short-term payment risks.”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/china-local-governments-finding-no-230000848.html
“Evergrande bankruptcy fears spark a bank run in China.
“One of heavily indebted Chinese property developer Evergrande’s local lenders displayed this week a “cash wall” of renminbi notes at its office after depositors queued up to withdraw their deposits in what could be the front edge of a bank run crisis in China. Hundreds of people have queued up at the Bank of Cangzhou’s head office in Hebei province…”
https://asiatimes.com/2023/10/evergrande-bankruptcy-fears-spark-a-bank-run-in-china/
“Rohingya face ‘second genocide’ as violence surges in Bangladesh refugee camps…
“Escalating violence in the camps and increasing repression by Bangladeshi authorities have left Rohingya refugees devoid of protection or justice. Many Rohingya have also fallen prey to armed gangs involved in smuggling drugs, human trafficking and abductions for ransom.”
“South Sudan buckles from stream of refugees fleeing Sudanese war.
“”We are calling on the world to pay more attention to what is happening in South Sudan,” said Charlotte Hallqvist, a spokesperson for the UN’s refugee agency, the UNHCR. “It’s a sad reality that it’s one of those crises that has fallen out of the media spotlight.””
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/south-sudan-buckles-stream-refugees-102217101.html
“How a Fertilizer Shortage Is Spreading Desperate Hunger.
“Across Africa and in parts of Asia, disruption to the supply chain for fertilizer is raising food prices and increasing malnutrition… The breakdown in fertilizer production challenges the orthodoxy that has dominated international trade for decades. Prominent economists have promoted globalization as insurance against upheaval…”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/15/business/nigeria-fertilizer-shortage.html
“IMF, World Bank make desperate call for cooperation, but is anybody listening?
“As weak growth and high debt forces the Global South to cut critical spending from education to climate mitigation, the Marrakech Principles are yet another rallying call for global cooperation in a divided world that seems likely to go unheeded.”
“Break-up of world economy into competing blocs poses huge risk to human society.
“Fragmentation will mean a more divided world where essential solutions—on climate, financial crises or new pandemics—will be much harder to reach, and where the risks of conflict will be that much greater.”
“This Is What It Looks Like Right Before A Depression Starts…
“Often, the period leading up to a depression can seem deceptively stable. Markets may be booming, and the general public might be optimistic. For example, before the Great Depression, the Dow Jones Industrial Average reached an all-time high of 381.17 in September 1929. However, beneath the surface, several indicators can signal a looming economic downturn, such as rising private debt and over-leveraged financial institutions.”
https://www.newtraderu.com/2023/10/14/this-is-what-it-looks-like-right-before-a-depression-starts/
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.
I rely on you everyday to fill me on what’s happening. I respect your work highly.
Individually these stories would be worrying but the world has faced major crisis before and survived. What I think is a problem this time is multiple major crisis all coming at once. I am not sure if the powers to be have the resources to fire fight them all. The other problem is how they will interact with each other. I think the law of unexpected consequence will run riot and probably join the other 4 horsemen of the apocalypse.
Thank you Pan for the overview which seems sadly lacking elsewhere.
I agree. The great convergence.
Thank you, Bry, Regan and Kali for the very kind words.
“What I think is a problem this time is multiple major crisis all coming at once.”
This awareness does seem to be leaking out into mainstream news articles now with talk of “perfect storms” and “permacrisis” [edit: I forgot “polycrisis”]… It’ll be interesting to see how the language of calamity evolves over the next year, particularly with El Nino kicking in. I kind of feel climate scientists have shot their bolt with Zeke Hausfather’s “Gobsmackingly bananas!” comment. I mean, where do you go from there? 😆
Experts overwhelmingly blame one person for climate change confusion: ‘One of the greatest climate villains’
Leo Collis
Mon, October 16, 2023 at 1:30 AM EDT
https://www.yahoo.com/news/experts-overwhelmingly-blame-one-person-053000672.html
The findings were summarized by the Guardian, and the contribution of Murdoch’s News Corp to that figure was shocking.
…The Guardian said that 97% of comment pieces in the Herald Sun, under Murdoch’s media empire, published climate-skeptic views. Syndicated columnist Andrew Bolt was responsible for a number of these articles, with similar work also published in The Advertiser, NT News, and Daily Telegraph.
Other scientists did not give Murdoch particularly glowing reviews upon the news of his decision to hand over control of the media empire to his son, Lachlan.
Climate scientist and University of Pennsylvania professor Michael Mann added, per the Guardian: “He has wielded his global media empire as a cudgel to sow confusion and doubt about the science and the solutions. He will go down in history as one of the greatest climate villains.”
Comment..Climate change is a symptom…nothing more. Over population is the problem….along with other things our earth does. Think of where our co2 would be if the world population was, if we only had 3.5 Billion, instead of being on our way to 9
Yep, plenty of blame to go around…awareness….hmmm… interesting concept
Climate deniers are irksome, for sure, and to abuse power by knowingly orchestrating climate disinformation campaigns takes a special kind of douchebag, but I can’t find it in myself to get too worked up about Murdoch and his ilk at this point.
I guess if I felt there had been viable societal mechanisms in place to alter our trajectory and Murdoch etc. had prevented that from happening then I would be out there furiously throwing orange paint over him or pursuing him through the courts or whatever – but I don’t.
Mann, quoted in the article, thrives on being the “good guy” in a moral crusade but he is peddling non-solutions like voting Democrat and putting up gazillions of solar panels and wind turbines. Ultimately it is all “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,” as Macbeth said.
The planet’s self-regulating intelligence will have the last word.
Aren’t the same ingredients used for the manufacture of fertilizer and explosives? Isn’t is at least possible that the untrammeled production of one leaves less for the other? Just as using food to make a product to adulterate gasoline, reducing the MPG’ of every vehicle in America, uses fertilizer that would be plentiful we’re it not being used to “grow fuel”, not arming every nation to the teeth would leave plenty of the raw materials needed for food production.
Also, I recently read Hobson’s “Imperialism”, and so-called globalization is exactly what Hobson describes: they are one and the same.
“Aren’t the same ingredients used for the manufacture of fertilizer and explosives?”
Rob, that is a good point. I had to Google because I got an underwhelming C in my last chemistry exam and that was 34 years ago: ammonium nitrate is indeed common to fertilizers and explosives. Explosives made from ammonium nitrate tend to be used for mining and quarrying but also for nefarious purposes by those who cannot access military-grade explosives.
You need a lot of it to generate a decent sized explosion, hence “truck bombs”, as used, for example, by Timothy McVeigh in the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995. If you have 3,000 tonnes of it degrading in a warehouse then it can take out enough of a city to leave nearly 300,000 people homeless, as poor Lebanon found to its cost in 2020.
There’s a city called West, Tx that ended up in ruins from a fertilizer explosion that happened precisely as you described. It’s also used to spread all over the prairie (how is it we feel we have the right to tell Brazilians to protect the rainforest even as we simultaneously destroy the ecosystem of the vast prairie lands of North America?) to grow “renewable” fuel using non-renewable inputs? (draining the Oglala aquifer, burning oil via diesel for the machinery, using natural gas for the fertilizer, and burning coal to process the corn into ethanol: 4 non-renewable inputs to manufacture “renewable” fuel. And 98% of US citizens more’n likely, have no idea ethanol is even used in their gasoline).
My goodness – I never heard of this:
“On April 17, 2013, an ammonium nitrate explosion occurred at the West Fertilizer Company storage and distribution facility in West, Texas, United States (18 miles (29 km) north of Waco), while emergency services personnel were responding to a fire at the facility. Fifteen people were killed, more than 160 were injured, and more than 150 buildings were damaged or destroyed. Investigators confirmed that ammonium nitrate was the material that exploded.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Fertilizer_Company_explosion
Pan, Thanks for all you do. Too bad it is not sinking into 8 billion monkey minds.
I followed all the bubble headed talking heads covering the Hamas -Israeli war & a question popped into my vertebrate primate mind. Who’s the mostest stupidist?
Ukraine giving up nuclear weapons & not arming every citizen with AK-47s & 10,000 rounds of ammo or Israel not arming every citizen with Uzis & 10,000 rounds when they live in a rocks throw from an enemy. I guess one could say; Suffer the
consequences. Right wing Israeli idiocy doesn’t seem to be working out so well.
AGW just sent me a text saying all the media,politicians,economists,religionalists will face consequences for their overpopulation & destruction of the habitat that will make all the wars ever fought look like kindergartners, coloring outside the lines.
I want to see the world’s reaction if Iran attempted to slow or stop the flow of oil.
Don’t mess with someone’s wallet,you might be dealt with,harshly.
.
My wife & I were watching more talking heads with their furrowed brow concern about the Middle East. She said something about their compassion & “Anyone looking for sympathy can find it in the dictionary between shit & syphilis.” She’s as unfiltered as I am. 😉
These peace loving delusional religions,Judaism, Christianity, Islam have been fighting my whole life. Sunni & Shia also love to kill each other.
I’ve got the solution. Spread highly radioactive bacon bits & pulled pork over the Dome of the Rock & the Temple Mount making it a no go zone. That would remove one reason for the idiots to stop fighting. Just call me the peacemaker. 😉
“Pan, Thanks for all you do. Too bad it is not sinking into 8 billion monkey minds.”
TR, you are welcome. And I am resigned to being niche!