EXCLUSIVE: Canadian Gov. Attempts To Euthanize Woman Paralyzed By COVID Shots
Covid-19 vaccine victim Kayla Pollock joins Alex Jones LIVE to detail how she was paralyzed by the Moderna jab — only to then be offered assisted suicide by the Canadian government.
Also check out: Medical Staff Offers Assisted Suicide To Canadian Woman Paralyzed From COVID Shots
Supermarkets Introduce ‘Edible Insect Kits’ To Help Families Through ‘Global Food Crisis’
Supermarkets are introducing “edible insects” as part of a campaign to help families survive the “cost of living crisis” and the upcoming “global food shortage,” according to reports. Bill Gates and his World Economic Forum […]
The post Supermarkets Introduce ‘Edible Insect Kits’ To Help Families Through ‘Global Food Crisis’ appeared first on The People’s Voice.
Tom Hanks Confesses To Urgent ‘Short Term Concerns’ If Trump Is Re-Elected
Hollywood celebrity Tom Hanks has admitted he is facing urgent “short-term” concerns if Donald Trump is re-elected in November. During an interview Thursday with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, Hanks urged Americans to vote for Biden despite […]
The post Tom Hanks Confesses To Urgent ‘Short Term Concerns’ If Trump Is Re-Elected appeared first on The People’s Voice.
Oil Prices Show Weakening Demand, but Not Because of Electric Cars
The latest OPEC meeting conclusions show that the global economy is not as strong as headlines suggest and that industries all over the world are struggling to recover. Indeed, many manufacturing PMIs (purchasing managers’ indexes) continue to signal contraction.
Oil prices have weakened in recent weeks despite the war in Gaza and rising geopolitical risk. At the close of this article, Brent is trading at $81.62 per barrel and WTI at $76.99. This is a mere 7% rise year-to-date. The average price of the OPEC basket in the latest figure of June 2024 was $83.08.
OPEC+ has agreed to extend its production cuts until 2025 because the outlook for demand remains uncertain. Members of the oil production group see that copper prices have soared 72% in the past five years, rising 22% in the last year alone, and may fear that the push for electric vehicles is shifting demand elsewhere. Oil prices have performed adequately in the past five years, but they are nowhere close to the levels that producers would consider adequate to balance their budget. If copper can tell us anything, it is that Chinese demand and the development of electric vehicles are much stronger forces than fossil fuel demand. However, this may be an incorrect way of looking at things.
Oil prices have stabilized above the $80 a barrel level (Brent) and the OPEC basket is above what analysts consider the price required to balance producers’ budgets. Furthermore, we cannot forget that the concept of a price needed to balance the government budget means nothing. All producing countries are generating excellent profits at these levels. If their government budgets are filled with unnecessary subsidies and items that have nothing to do with energy production, they cannot expect prices to cover social or defense expenditures.
Demand is likely to continue to be weak but growing. Furthermore, one thing is clear: oil is likely to continue to be a significant part of primary energy needs globally.
OPEC should worry about the United States and non-OPEC supply. The doom predictions of a collapse in oil production from unconventional oil have failed. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) shows that average daily production in 2024 is 13.12 million barrels per day, a 7.1% production increase over 2023 figures and 1.4% above its previous all-time high. The United States production has become stronger and more efficient, breaking even at $40 a barrel. Additionally, government measures to place regulatory burdens on energy production have failed. The United States production level is robust, sustainable and, more importantly, adaptable to regulatory risks.
OPEC members seem overly concerned about the environmental policies of Western governments. However, they should not fear too much. OPEC member governments may disagree, but central planning never works. In the same way that central planning does not make oil prices rise to the levels that some may desire, interventionism is not working toward its objective of decarbonizing by 2030. The good news for OPEC members is that Western governments have decided to implement interventionist policies and ignore competition, technology, and creative destruction. As such, oil is likely to remain a key source of energy supply for a long time. The world’s energy transition can only come if we find an alternative to oil that is abundant, has a stable and constant supply, and is economically viable. Solar, wind, and natural gas are essential to a competitive energy transition, but there is no possibility of a real change if the world abandons natural gas and nuclear.
We need to understand that the energy transition cannot come from banning efficient energy sources. It can only come from technology and competition. From free markets. We must understand that oil will continue to be a major source of energy production and that it is perfectly compatible with respect for the environment if technology is used to improve efficiency and sustainability. Ignoring the mining requirements of green energy is as dangerous as forgetting the sustainability potential of fossil fuel production. Instead of using ideology to drive energy policy, we should use technology and open markets.
POWERFUL — MUST WATCH: The Globalist System Is Collapsing In Real Time, Warns Bilderberg Expert Daniel Estulin
The Unsustainable AI-Driven Lending Boom
For lending, as in all things, necessity is the mother of invention. No matter the rate, lenders want to lend and borrowers want to borrow, with both sides tending to overdo it.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the newest collateral thing is the AI chip. Wall Street heavyweight Blackstone led a $7.5 billion financing last week for CoreWeave, “a New Jersey–based startup that owns artificial-intelligence chips and associated computing gear in data centers.”
The collateral of the realm these days is Nvidia’s graphics-processing-unit, or GPU, chip. For the moment, Nvidia can’t keep up with demand from the likes of Amazon and Microsoft. These companies are gorging themselves on the chips, sending GPU chip prices skyward. “For Wall Street, their utility has given them another kind of power, turning them into assets that can backstop loans,” write Asa Fitch and Miriam Gottfried for the WSJ.
Over $10 billion has been raised using GPU chips as collateral. Startups in the AI space, while growing quickly, are not profitable. Thus, loan interest rates are in the low double digits as traditional lenders, which charge lower rates, have avoided the sector. Instead, asset-based lenders, which small businesses and real estate developers have typically had to turn to are providing capital for this high-flying technology niche.
“When you’re trying to build and scale a company at the speed that we’re going, it is access to capital that defines success or failure,” Michael Intrator, CoreWeave’s chief executive, told the WSJ. Over time, he hopes his company can obtain cheaper funding. However, for now, “it gets us what we need, which is the powder to be able to move at this size and scale.”
Fitch and Gottfried describe the deal structure as “a metaphorical lockbox, housing all of CoreWeave’s AI chips,” with all “revenue the company generates from clients using those chips . . . [going] first toward paying its lenders.” Most accounts-receivable factoring structures work much the same way. However, the term “metaphorical lockbox” will make a veteran lender scoff.
“When I started doing this, everybody thought I was nuts. Now people are starting to see the light,” said Stéphane Fisch, a principal at Argo Capital who has pitched one such deal.
At the retail investor end of the AI boom, lending and borrowing continues apace. Almost Daily Grant’s reports that the people’s brokerage, Robinhood, has cut margin lending rates to “6.75% financing on balances up to $50,000, with that rate dropping to 5.7% on accounts of $50 million and above.” The favorite of millennials and Gen Zers previously was made to pony up margin loan rates ranging from 8 percent to 12 percent. Rival brokerage Charles Schwab offers much stiffer rates of 11.83 percent to 13.58 percent.
For readers wondering when the next market accident is about to happen, Robinhood chief brokerage officer Steve Quirk may be offering a clue when he told MarketWatch, “People use [margin investing] episodically when they see a great opportunity or love a specific investment. But I think where the opportunity lies is, in addition to our current customers, we’re seeing a whole lot of new customers that are more frequent margin users with larger balances.”
Almost Daily Grant’s warns us that “aggregate margin debt outstanding registered at $775.5 billion at the end of April according to FINRA. That’s up 23% from the same period last year and equivalent to 2.8% of 2023 GDP, roughly matching the output-adjusted figure logged at the peak of the late 1990s dot.com bubble.”
Those numbers are no match for the $936 billion reached in the fall of 2021, equivalent to 3.43 percent of the gross domestic product.
Of course, lending and borrowing success depends on the strength of the AI boom. For the moment, the demand for AI chips appears insatiable. At the same time, big tech companies and startups can’t seem to generate enough revenue from AI to justify the cost of the computing power that underlies it—a story that sounds very familiar.
POWERFUL — MUST WATCH: The Globalist System Is Collapsing In Real Time, Warns Bilderberg Expert Daniel Estulin
Houthis Tout Radar-Evading ‘Palestine’ Missile That Resembles Iranian Hypersonic
Yemen’s Houthis have for the first time announced a strike on Israel that was coordinated with allies in Iraq, namely the ‘Islamic Resistance in Iraq’ – an umbrella organization of Iran-linked Shia paramilitary groups.
The leader of Yemen’s Houthi militia, Abdul Malik Al-Houthi, announced Thursday, “Today at daybreak, our military forces commenced coordinated operations with the Islamic Resistance in Iraq by carrying out an important operation towards the port of Haifa.”
“The Yemeni Armed Forces conducted two coordinated military operations with the Iraqi Islamic Resistance. The first targeted two ships carrying military equipment in Haifa’s harbor,” a follow-up Houthi military statement had sadi.
However, the Israel Defense Forces had quickly issued a statement denying that there was any successful strike on Haifa port, which is in the north. “It’s not true,” a military spokesman said. Reaching Haifa would have indeed been a significant long-range achievement, but there’s as yet no evidence of this.
Iraqi militants aligned with Tehran have since Oct.7 conducted several attempted drone or missile operations against Israel, with the projectiles often being intercepted once they get near Israeli airspace.
The Houthis have also fired missiles into southern Israel, which have either fallen into the desert or been intercepted by the country’s significant anti-air capabilities.
Yemen’s Houthis are currently touting that they’ve engaged in the following operations in the past 30 days alone in the Red Sea, Arabian Sea, and Mediterranean:
- fired 91 ballistic missiles
- 38 operations against ships
- unveiled and launched a long-range ballistic missile capable of evading radar
Footage from the launch of the Palestine’ ballistic missile.
The Yemen’s new Ballistic Missile
pic.twitter.com/Z51tV6TIKD— محمد عبدالملك – Mohamed (@Almutawakkil560) June 5, 2024
As for the new missile, the Houthis have said they’ve already fired the new “Palestine” missile Monday at southern Gulf of Aqaba port of Eilat in Israel. According to a description and some details in Associated Press:
Yemen’s Houthi rebels have unveiled a new, solid-fuel missile in their arsenal that resembles aspects of one earlier displayed by Iran that Tehran described as flying at hypersonic speeds.
…Footage released by the Houthis late Wednesday showed the Palestine being raised on what appeared to be a mobile launcher and rising quickly into the air with plumes of white smoke coming from its engine. White smoke is common with solid-fuel missiles.
There is widespread suspicion the Houthis got the technology or even the whole missile itself and its components from Iran. There also remains deep skepticism that the Houthis actually have in their possession radar-evading hypersonic missiles.
If there are any successful strikes on Israeli positions using the ‘Palestine’ missile, there’s a likelihood Israel won’t publicize it, also to avoid handing the Houthis a propaganda ‘win’.
POWERFUL — MUST WATCH: The Globalist System Is Collapsing In Real Time, Warns Bilderberg Expert Daniel Estulin