The US economy may be barrelling towards stagflation, an outcome worse than recession. The latest GDP and inflation readings were what investors were least eager to see, and could hint at serious trouble ahead. "This was a worst of both worlds report – slower than expected growth, higher than expected inflation," wrote David Donabedian, chief investment officer of CIBC Private Wealth US. It's also bad news for the economy, as sputtering growth and higher prices are the key ingredients for stagflation, which is characterized by economic listlessness and stubbornly elevated inflation over a prolonged period. Such a scenario that can be even harder to combat than a recession, because of the dynamic outlined above: the Fed's hands are largely tied.
US government debt is now rising vertically.
Ford just reported a massive loss on every electric vehicle it sold. Ford’s electric vehicle unit reported that losses soared in the first quarter to $1.3 billion, or $132,000 for each of the 10,000 vehicles it sold in the first three months of the year, helping to drag down earnings for the company overall. Ford, like most automakers, has announced plans to shift from traditional gas-powered vehicles to EVs in coming years. But it is the only traditional automaker to break out results of its retail EV sales. And the results it reported Wednesday show another sign of the profit pressures on the EV business at Ford and other automakers.
The AI bubble is noticeable in the number of companies mentioning the word during Q4 2023.
Medical device companies pay millions to NHS while pushing products, says study. An analysis of disclosures by medical device companies found that between 2017 and 2019 they reported €425m (£367m at today’s rates) in payments to healthcare organisations in Europe, according to the study in the journal Health Policy and Technology. James Larkin, one of the authors of the study and a postdoctoral researcher at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, said the filings did not include consultancy fees for medical staff and many companies did not register their payments. “This is just the tip of the iceberg,” he said. “There is a huge number of payments that are not being disclosed. The descriptions for payments which are disclosed are very vague and it is not completely clear what they are for.” There are concerns that payments from pharmaceutical and medical companies to health organisations can influence clinical decisions to use certain drugs and products.
This Artificial Sweetener May Harm the Gut. Neotame, a newer type of artificial sweetener used in things like soft drinks, cakes, and chewing gum can damage the intestine and cause health issues like irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and sepsis, according to a new in vitro study published in the Frontiers in Nutrition. It is around 8,000 times sweeter than table sugar and 40 times sweeter than aspartame, another artificial sweetener made by the same manufacturer. It was developed in the 1990s as a derivative of aspartame and was expected to be the sweetener’s potential successor.
The US fertility rate has fallen to 1.62 births per woman, the lowest since records began in the 1930s.
Conflicts in Cancer Data. The data published by the UK on this topic is contradictory but data from around the world is signifying there is a genuine problem. The first to raise the alarm were those with experience of noticing trends in data in the financial world. Within medicine great emphasis is placed on statistically significant (ie at the 95% level) deviations, a high bar which means that early signals, noticed as a change in direction, get ignored.
Politics
Jeffrey Sterling: “I witnessed the obsession with Iran in the CIA. Assange? No chance he will receive a fair trial and humane treatment in the US”. Jeffrey Sterling was attempting to serve his country working in the shadowy world of the CIA under cover operations, until he blew the whistle on a botched operation against Iran and paid an immense price. In 2011, he was arrested and charged with Espionage Act violations, accused of having leaked classified information to an American journalist working for the New York Times, Pulitzer Prize winner James Risen. Although the U.S. authorities were unable to bring any incriminating evidence proving that he was the leaker, and although he has always professed his innocence, he was sentenced to three and a half years in prison.
Poland "ready" to host NATO nuclear weapons, President Andrzej Duda says. Poland, a NATO member and staunch supporter of Ukraine, shares a border with both Russia's Kaliningrad exclave and with Belarus, Moscow's ally. "If our allies decide to deploy nuclear arms on our territory as part of nuclear sharing, to reinforce NATO's eastern flank, we are ready to do so," Duda said in an interview published by the Fakt daily. Moscow in response warned it would take steps to "ensure its security" if Warsaw got the weapons.
N. Korea says Kim guided simulated nuclear counterattack drills for 1st time. The announcement came a day after South Korea said the North fired several short-range ballistic missiles from the Pyongyang region. They flew about 300 kilometers before falling into the East Sea. The North's main newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, said the drills were conducted within a national nuclear weapons management system as it denounced recent joint military drills by South Korea and the United States.
The cult of ‘my truth’ - NPR is only the latest institution to fall to woke relativism. It’s never a good sign when a society’s cultural elites start to see facts as an inconvenience. When leading figures in the media describe the truth as an obstacle to ‘getting things done’, you know you’re in serious trouble. These are the words of Katherine Maher, the new CEO of America’s National Public Radio (NPR). During a TED talk in 2022, when Maher was still CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation, which owns Wikipedia, she announced that ‘our reverence for the truth might be a distraction that is getting in the way of finding common ground and getting things done’.
Why Indonesia Is China’s New Best Friend in Southeast Asia. When Indonesia’s President-elect Prabowo Subianto chose to visit China months before his inauguration, it caused eyebrows to raise across the region. Jakarta has long sought to balance its relationship with Beijing and its close ties with the US, so to send such a strong message caught many off guard. Yet the blossoming relationship is a sign that these Asian economic giants are finding fresh ways to engage. China and Indonesia’s friendship is being cemented along the lines of increased opportunities for investment, but it’s not just that. Indonesians are increasingly concerned about the Biden administration’s failure to restrain Israel’s actions in Gaza.
The Wikipedia fundraising scam. Wikipedia, and its parent organization Wikimedia, has been making the rounds on Twitter. This seems to be because Chris Rufo is attacking the new CEO of NPR (US public ‘radio’), Katherine Maher. It turns out that Maher previously served as the CEO of Wikimedia. This got a lot of people looking into her behavior there, and this brought up the Wikipedia fundraising scam into the limelight. It’s another anti-European (and anti-USA), anti-male, quasi-Marxist organization. This is what your donations to Wikipedia are going to. Wikipedia spends more money on left-wing causes than actually running an encyclopedia, and by a very long-shot.
Russia vetos UN resolution to prevent nuclear arms race in space. The resolution, sponsored by the United States and Japan, would have called on all countries not to develop or deploy nuclear arms or other weapons of mass destruction in space, which are already banned under a 1967 international treaty. Russia’s UN Ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, dismissed the resolution as “absolutely absurd and politicised,” and said it didn’t go far enough in banning all types of weapons in space. The vote in the 15-member Security Council was 13 in favour, Russia opposed and China abstaining.
Now We Are Supposed to Cheer Government Surveillance? They are wearing us down with shocking headlines and opinions. They come daily these days, with increasingly implausible claims that leave your jaw on the floor. The rest of the text is perfunctory. The headline is the takeaway, and the part designed to demoralize, deconstruct, and disorient. A few weeks ago, the New York Times told us that “As It Turns Out, the Deep State Is Pretty Awesome.” These are the same people who claim that Trump is trying to get rid of democracy. The Deep State is the opposite of democracy, unelected and unaccountable in every way, impervious to elections and the will of the people. Now we have the NYT celebrating this.
Washington has lost touch with reality. If it doesn't adapt, the world will pay. The US-led rules-based international system is a more recent evolution of American political thinking: a self-referential mindset twisted to the interests of Washington and its allies. The global order is shifting from a unipolar configuration centred on the US to a multipolar one. Throughout history, empires have risen and then collapsed. US policymakers would be wise to adjust to these rules of history and give up on the notion of their indispensability. They now face a binary choice: accept history’s verdict, as the UK has progressively done since 1945, or catastrophically resist it.
On Donald Trump’s ‘Truth Social’ he writes his views about JFK Jr - “I lived with RFK Jr. in New York and watched him convince Governor Cuomo to make Environmental moves that were outright NASTY. Upstate New York was not allowed to drill or frack as Ohio, Pennsylvania, and others ripped off New York Energy. Because of this, prices have skyrocketed all over that part of the Country, but especially Upstate New York and New England. Their Energy Costs are the highest in the U.S., with the exception of California, run by Gavin Newscum, the Worst Governor in the State’s History. I’d even take Biden over Junior’, because our Country would last a year or two longer prior to collapse - But it would be dead either way. His Views on Vaccines are FAKE, as is everything else about his Candidacy. Let the Democrats have RFK Jr. They deserve him!”
The strange death of the family - The world is sleepwalking towards a depopulation crisis. Last year’s global population growth was the smallest since 1950. Far from humans breeding themselves out of existence, today almost half of the world’s people live in countries with fertility rates well below replacement level. This week, the US Census announced the lowest birthrate in American history. Rather than relentlessly continuing to rise, as per Ehrlich’s prophecies, the UN predicts that the world’s population will peak between 2053 and in 2086. By 2100, the rate of growth will have virtually stalled. We are entering demographic territory not seen since the plague-cursed Medieval period.
- From The Naked Emperor Substack