Week in Review

---

Week in Review

07/22/2023

For the week 7/17-7/21

[Posted 5:30 PM ET, Friday]

Note: StocksandNews has significant ongoing costs and your support is greatly appreciated.  Please click on the gofundme link or send a check to PO Box 990, New Providence, NJ 07974.

Edition 1,266

---

I’ve been writing the last month or so of the density of mines between Russia’s defensive lines, crediting the ‘discredited’ Russian Defense Minister Shoigu for the strategy, and then this past weekend you no doubt saw a slew of articles on the topic.  The mines have had a big impact in slowing Ukraine’s counteroffensive.

Ukraine also appears to have been a bit shellshocked when early on in the counteroffensive, 15 Bradly Fighting Vehicles, supplied by Washington, were destroyed in a single village in the Zaporizhzhia region on June 8 and 9 when Russian helicopters attacked as they were bogged down in a minefield.

There are some in Washington questioning the pace of Ukraine’s counteroffensive, saying Ukraine has the mine-clearing equipment it needs, supplied by the U.S., but it seems the U.S. has not provided enough of it for comfort.

What Ukraine needs are the F-16s or some sort of improved air supremacy so that the Bradleys and Leopard tanks aren’t caught in the open fields with little cover.

Ukraine also continues to hold back its main forces, who by now have been extensively trained by both the U.S. and Britain, and I’m continually reminded of the comment a Ukrainian commander made back in January (WIR 1/14/23), concerning the fighting around Bakhmut:

“So far, the exchange rate of trading our lives for theirs favors the Russians.  If this goes on like this, we could run out.”

And that is exactly what Ukraine is most worried about, aside from running out of ammunition.  They just don’t have the numbers that Russia is throwing at them.  Apparently, large numbers of Ukrainian soldiers were killed in the first days of the counteroffensives, which gave Ukraine pause.  Before they commit their main brigades, they need to make progress on Shoigu’s defenses and begin to punch holes for the heavy armor to get through.

The Economist added this week: “Russian commanders have defended against Ukraine’s counteroffensive well ahead of prepared fortifications, instead of falling back to defensive positions. This slows the Ukrainian’s progress.  As one foreign military official put it: ‘It is like hitting a brick wall with a sledgehammer.’  But Mr. Prigozhin’s mutiny showed that if the wall crumbles, there may not be much behind it.”

Except the mines.

Meanwhile, we have the new threat on shipping in the Black Sea, as detailed below, with the U.S. warning Russia is preparing a false flag operation…taking out a civilian vessel and blaming it on Ukraine as part of Moscow’s goal of destroying all of Ukraine’s grain and critical port infrastructure.  [That is the grain they can’t steal first.]

This was an eventful week in the war.  Nothing that was good.

A new Quinnipiac University national poll has a third of American (33 percent) thinking the United States is doing too much to help Ukraine, 18 percent think the U.S. is doing too little, and 41% think the U.S. is doing about the right amount to help Ukraine.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans (64 percent) think supporting Ukraine is in the national interest of the U.S., while 29 percent feel it is not in the national interest of the country.

Americans disapprove of President Biden’s decision to send cluster munitions to Ukraine by a 51-39 margin, which shows you just how ignorant many are.  [Russia has been using them on civilians in Ukraine since day one and going back to the 2014 invasion.]

---

Before I get back to Ukraine, the “experts” say that China won’t attempt to invade Taiwan until 2027, for various reasons.  I’ve long thought China would have done it before 2023!  I never thought an invasion was necessary…just a massive missile strike on the key airfields, show off the capability, and then force Taiwan to sue for peace…and a Hong Kong-style takeover.

But as I discuss below, with the state of China’s economy, including tens of millions of homeowners underwater on their investment, the sky-high youth unemployment rate, and China’s issues with the U.S. on the technology front, President Xi has to be getting closer to playing the “nationalism card” to divert attention from the everyday crappy life crucial segments of his population have.

At this point, China would wait until Taiwan holds its presidential election next January, which is less than six months away, but assuming the current ruling party wins, Xi could make a move then.

Just an opinion.

---

This Week in Ukraine….

--Ukrainian and Polish officials said Saturday that fighters from the Wagner Group have arrived in Belarus from Russia, a day after Minsk said the mercenaries were training the country’s soldiers southeast of the capital.

“Wagner is in Belarus,” Andriy Demchenko, a spokesman for the Ukrainian border agency, said in a statement.  He said the movement of “separate groups’ from Russia had been observed, and that some Wagner fighters have been in Belarus since the previous Tuesday.

Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin has still not been seen in public since the mutiny of June 24, though he was seen in a grainy video, supposedly from Belarus.  Poland said “several hundred” Wagner fighters were in Belarus, as Poland previously announced it was bolstering its border.

[At the same time, troops from Wagner arrived in the Central African Republic, some of them returning after the short-lived mutiny in Russia.  According to the CAR, the mercenaries will oversee an upcoming constitutional referendum, which could allow the president, Faustin-Archange Touadera, to run for a third term.  Wagner has operated in the CAR since 2018.]

--Ukrainian and Russian officials blamed each other for attacks in Zaporizhzhia on Saturday, with numerous casualties reported, the Zaporizhzhia region a focus of the counteroffensive.

President Zelensky vowed again to liberate all the land that Russia occupies.  “We cannot leave any of our people, any towns and villages under Russia occupation,” he said in his nightly video address.  “Wherever the Russian occupation continues, violence and humiliation of people reign.”

--Russia’s air defense forces and fleet in the Black Sea were engaged in repelling Ukrainian drone attacks over the Crimean port of Sevastopol early on Sunday, a Moscow-installed official said.  There were no real details of the scale of the attack or any damage from the attacks on the Crimean Peninsula.

--Traffic on a key military supply bridge connecting Crimea to Russia’s mainland came to a standstill Monday after one of its sections was blown up, killing two people and wounding a third, Russian officials said, blaming Ukraine for the attack, which Kyiv later took credit for, through Ukrainian news outlets…the operation planned jointly by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and the Ukrainian Navy, which employed sea drones.

The strike was on the 12-mile Kerch Bridge, a $3.6 billion bridge that was Vladimir Putin’s pet project following Russia’s capture of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.  It’s the longest bridge in Europe and is crucial for enabling Russia’s military operations in southern Ukraine.

The attack comes as Ukrainian are attempting to press their counteroffensive.

Putin said Monday his defense ministry was preparing proposals for a response.  At the end of a televised meeting with national and regional officials to assess the consequences of the attack, Putin called it a cruel and senseless act, as he said the bridge had not been used for months to supply Russian forces fighting in Ukraine, which is a lie.

Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin said the bridge would be completely repaired by Nov. 1, and that road traffic would resume in one direction by Sept. 15, with traffic in both directions restored by Nov. 1.  The parallel railway bridge was not damaged in the attack.

What we know is the bridge was seriously damaged and Putin demanded concrete proposals on ensuring the security of it after what he called a “terrorist act.”

Until it’s repaired, there is only one ground supply line for Russia – the coastal highway on the Sea of Azov.

In the aftermath, this reporting from Reuters sums it up:

“In the run-up to Monday’s attack…state TV broadcast footage of long traffic jams in southern Russia as tourists waited in their cars for hours to cross over to start their summer holidays. After explosions tore through the road bridge, killing a couple who had planned to holiday in Crimea and wounding their daughter, it broadcast traffic jams going in a different direction as tourists tried to drive home through Russian-controlled southern Ukraine, territory that Kyiv is fighting to take back….

“At a time when Russians’ options to holiday in the West are limited because of visa bans and flight restrictions, the attack deals a blow to the idea, pushed by Moscow, that a peninsula famed for its rugged landscape, scenic bays, warm weather and wines can be enjoyed safely.”

For its part, Kyiv says Russian tourists have no business holidaying on seized territory, especially when Ukraine is being bombed.

--Also Monday, Russia said it has halted an unprecedented wartime deal that allows grain to flow from Ukraine to countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia where hunger is a growing threat and high food prices have pushed more people into poverty.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov announced the halting of the deal in a conference call with reporters, adding that Russia will return to it after its demands are met.

“When the part of the Black Sea deal related to Russia is implemented, Russia will immediately return to the implementation of the deal,” Peskov said.

This is big, and rather unfortunate.  According to the European Commission, Ukraine is responsible for 10% of the global wheat supply and 15% of corn, as well as 13% of barley and a major source of sunflower oil and other affordable food products that developing nations rely on.

It’s thus the end of a breakthrough accord that the United Nations and Turkey brokered last summer to allow food to leave the Black Sea region after Russia invaded its neighbor.  A separate agreement facilitated the movement of Russian food and fertilizer amid Western sanctions.

Russia has complained that restrictions on shipping and insurance have hampered its exports of food and fertilizer – also critical to the global food chain.

But analysts and export data say Russia has been shipping record amounts of wheat and its fertilizers also have been flowing.

It’s Moscow’s way of sticking it to Ukraine, again, and in recent months, the amount of food shipped and the number of vessels departing Ukraine have plunged, with Russia accused of limiting additional ships able to participate.

Wheat prices surged on the news Monday morning (up 18% by Thursday, but down sharply Friday), though there isn’t expected to be an extended issue at least in the short term, with Russia and also Brazil ratcheting up wheat and corn exports.  Nonetheless, food insecurity is growing in the places that can ill afford a halt to supplies.

--After the attack on the Kerch Bridge, Russia launched vicious attacks on Odesa Monday and Tuesday nights, with residents urged to stay in shelters.

Odesa is one of Ukraine’s main ports for exporting grain, and the attacks followed a pledge of retaliation by Russia.  Ukraine’s Air Force warned of probable Russian cruise missile launches from the Black Sea, with all of the eastern part of Ukraine under air raid alerts, starting after midnight Wednesday.  Pro-Kremlin military bloggers said that the strikes were “massive” and Moscow was using a combination of missiles and drones to attack Odesa and other regions.  On Tuesday, Russia’s Defense Ministry said it had hit military targets in two Ukrainian port cities overnight as “a mass revenge strike.”

Ukraine then said later Wednesday it downed 37 out of 63 targets in the vast overnight attack, including 23 suicide drones and 14 cruise missiles, but that is not the usual high percentage.

Wednesday, Ukrainian officials said at least 12 civilians sustained injuries in the attack on Odesa, with the regional Gov. Oleyh Kiper saying the strikes included “dozens of missiles and strike drones” aimed at the port and infrastructure facilities. Debris from missiles and drones that were shot down fell on apartment buildings, seaside resorts and warehouses, sparking fires and injuring several people.  Grain and oil terminals were hit.

An adviser to President Zelensky, Mykhailo Podolyak, said on Twitter the attacks on Odesa reflected Russia’s attitude towards food security.

“The main objective is to destroy the possibility of shipping Ukrainian grain,” he said.

Russia destroyed an estimated 60,000 tons of grain in the attacks, according to the Ukrainian military.  “Grain terminals were damaged as well as an industrial facility, warehouses, shopping malls, residential and administrative buildings and cars,” according to Reuters.

Ukrainian officials said they are working with Romania to establish a second corridor to move grain out of Ukraine and to ports abroad, especially “African countries that are most critically dependent on the import of agricultural food,” President Zelensky said Wednesday.  “Together, we must do everything possible to ensure that the global food market remains stable, despite Russia’s apparent efforts to provoke new crises and use hunger and destabilization as weapons,” he added.

Russian forces, meanwhile, are using an occupied Ukrainian port to export confiscated grain to its customers abroad, Ukraine’s military said Wednesday.  Russia is believed to have stolen 4 million tons of Ukrainian grain as of May, according to Ukrainian officials.

Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, urged the Kremlin to retaliate with “targeted and quite inhumane steps” against those involved in the bridge attack.  “Their own homes and the houses of their relatives should be blown up,” Medvedev said, adding that Russian authorities must “search for and wipe out their accomplices.”

Meanwhile, Russian emergency officials in Crimea said that more than 2,200 people were evacuated from four villages because of a fire at a military facility, which Ukraine claimed credit for.

Russia also announced it downed 28 Ukrainian drones over Crimea early on Tuesday.

A third night of Russian air attacks then pounded Ukraine’s southern cities Thursday, with another widespread attack on Odesa, and Mykolaiv, a southern city close to the Black Sea where 19 people were injured, according to the region’s governor in a statement on Telegram.  Over two dozen were injured overall.

The strikes on Odesa included damage to buildings in the city center.  Massive fires were ignited in both cities.

Russia used 38 cruise missiles and exploding drones in Thursday’s attacks, 18 of which were shot down by Ukrainian forces.

The European Union’s foreign affairs chief condemned Russia’s targeting of grain storage facilities.

Commenting on Moscow’s recent tactics, Josep Borrell said, “So not only they withdraw from the grain agreement…but they are burning the grain.”

Borrel said: “One cannot imagine that millions of tons of wheat remain blocked in Ukraine while in the rest of the world people are suffering hunger.  This is a real war crime.”

Furthermore, as noted above, we have the warning from the White House that Russia is preparing possible attacks on civilian shipping vessels in the Black Sea.  The warning could alarm shippers and further drive up grain prices.

Russia has laid additional sea mines in the approaches to Ukrainian ports, the White House said.

Russia said Thursday its military would consider civilian ships going to Ukrainian ports via the Black Sea “potential carriers of military cargo.”

Ukraine’s military then said it could do the same to Russian ships going to Russian ports or occupied Ukrainian ones as they were likely carrying munitions and hardware.

Russia then pounded Ukrainian food export facilities for a fourth day in a row on Friday and practiced seizing ships in the Black Sea.  “Unfortunately, the grain terminals of an agricultural enterprise in Odesa region were hit.  The enemy destroyed 100 tons of peas and 20 tons of barley,” regional governor Oleh Kiper said on Telegram.

--Russia and Ukraine presented vastly different accounts of fighting in northeastern Ukraine on Tuesday, with Moscow reporting advances by its troops and Kyiv saying it had seized the initiative in the region.  Both sides reported no letup in the fighting.

Ukraine has reported a measure of progress in the counteroffensive in the east and the south, while Moscow says it has contained any move forward by Kyiv’s forces.

U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Mark Milley said he believed Ukraine’s counteroffensive was far from a failure, but the fight ahead would be long and bloody.

A Russian Defense Ministry spokesman said its forces had advanced up to 2km (1.2 miles) in the direction of Kupiansk, an important railway junction in the northeastern Kharkiv region.  But Ukraine said the initiative in the area had switched to Ukrainian forces.  “The enemy’s offensive in the Kupiansk sector is having no success at this time,” Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar wrote on Telegram.

Maliar also said on national television, “The enemy’s key task is to stop us here.  They are doing this with all their might.  Our forces must first overcome these obstacles and prepare the ground so we can advance more effectively.”

Ukraine’s military has said Russia has more than 100,000 troops and more than 900 tanks in the Kupiansk area.

Maliar said Ukraine has retaken 81 square miles of land in the counteroffensive, which is not much.

In an interview with the BBC, Ukrainian Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, the man overseeing Ukraine’s offensive in the east, admitted that more than a month after it started, the operation is going slower than many had hoped.

He says in the east, just like the south, the area is saturated with mines and defensive barriers.  The Russians, he says, have many strongholds: “Therefore, our advances are really not going as fast as we would like.”

Friday, the governor of the southern region of Zaporizhzhia, reported 80 Russian attacks on settlements in the region in the previous 24 hours, and said that four people had been killed.

President Zelensky said in one of his nightly videos this week that the government must keep a tight rein on spending in wartime, prompting his culture minister, a proponent of several high-profile and costly projects, to offer his resignation.  “Cobblestones, city decorations, fountains will have to wait.  Victory first,” Zelensky said.

--Ukrainian forces have begun using U.S.-supplied cluster bombs in the “last week or so” and they are “having an impact” on Russian defenses, a White House spokesperson said on Thursday.

Ukraine has pledged to only use the controversial bombs to dislodge concentrations of Russian enemy soldiers.

--The Belarusian Defense Ministry on Thursday said the country’s military continues to train with fighters from the Wagner Group, on a training ground near the border with Poland.  President Alexander Lukashenko has said that his country’s military could benefit from the mercenaries’ combat experience.  Poland continued to strengthen its forces, with people living on the border saying they can hear the firing and helicopters across the border in Belarus.

--The head of the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service said Vladimir Putin is under pressure as fissures in his inner circle appear and his forces have little chance of regaining momentum in Ukraine.

In a rare public speech in Prague, Richard Moore, who heads the spy agency known as MI6, said Putin’s offer of clemency to Yevgeny Prigozhin after the Wagner leader’s march on Moscow was “humiliating” for the Russian leader.  Prigozhin appears to still be at large and there are “deep fractures” in the elite circle around Putin, Moore said.  Wagner’s operations in Africa appear still to be functioning but the group is no longer active in Ukraine, he said.

The British intel chief said he remained hopeful that Ukraine can gain the upper hand as “there appears now to be little prospect of the Russian forces regaining momentum.”  In the past month, Ukraine has recovered more territory than Russia captured in the past year, Moore said, urging Western allies to arm Ukraine for as long as it takes.  Ukraine’s counteroffensive is progressing slowly in an attempt to keep losses down, he said.

Moore also made a public call for Russians to spy on the Kremlin to avoid being on the “wrong side of history.”

“I invite them to what others have already done this past 18 months and join hands with us,” he said. “Our door is always open.”

--Ukraine’s Kherson region will have little or no harvest due to a shortage of water in the North Crimean and Kakhovka canals, Russian-installed governor Vladimir Saldo said on Thursday.  The Kakhovka dam was breached in June, exploded by Russia, which unleashed flood waters across the war zone, and largely drained the vital canals.

---

--A Moscow court on Saturday issued criminal charges against seven people “motivated by national hatred” to kill two prominent Russian journalists in a Ukrainian-backed plot, Russia’s state-owned TASS reported. 

The court approved the detention until Sept. 14, under criminal charges of “hooliganism,” of five minors born in 2005 and 2006 and two men it said were part of an organized group.

TASS said Russia’s FSB security service detained an unspecified number of people on Friday who carried out reconnaissance near the homes and workplaces of journalists Margarita Simonyan and Ksenis Sobchak.  Interfax news agency quoted the FSB as saying that the detainees had admitted preparing attacks on the two women on behalf of Ukraine and had been promised a reward of $16,600 for each one. 

Simonyan, head of state media outlet RT and a vocal supporter of the war, posted a message on Telegram about the alleged plot, urging the security services to “Keep on working, brothers!”  Sobchak is a well known journalist and TV host who also ran as a presidential candidate in 2018.

Two prominent pro-war Russian figures, journalist Darya Dugina and military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky, have been killed in bomb attacks inside Russia in the past year.  Russia blamed the killings on Ukraine, Ukraine denied that and portrayed them as evidence of Russian infighting.

--Russian state prosecutors on Thursday asked a court to sentence opposition politician Alexei Navalny to a further 20 years in a penal colony on criminal charges, including extremism, at the close of his trial, his supporters said.

The 47-year-old has been on trial behind closed doors for a month at the IK-6 penal colony in Melekhovo, about 145 miles east of Moscow, where he is already serving sentences totaling 11 ½ years on fraud and other charges which he says were trumped up to silence him.

Navalny’s aides said the verdict would be announced on Aug. 4.

In his closing statement, Navalny told the court: “I continue to fight against this unscrupulous evil that calls itself ‘the state power of the Russian Federation.’”  “I am accused of inciting hatred towards representatives of the authorities and special services, judges and members of the United Russia party.  No, I don’t incite hatred. I just remember that a person has two legs: conscience and intellect,” he said, according to a text supplied by his aides.

Navalny said there were only 18 people present in the court, seven of them with their faces covered by black masks. He told them: “When you finally understand that the rejection of conscience will eventually lead to the disappearance of the intellect, then maybe you will stand on those two legs on which a person should stand, and together we can bring the Beautiful Russia of the Future closer.”

At the start of his trial, Navalny, who in the 2010s brought people onto the streets in the tens of thousands, urged Russians to “join forces in the fight against Putin’s lies and Kremlin hypocrisy” ahead of a presidential election in 2024.

---

Wall Street and the Economy

It’s all about next week’s Federal Reserve Open Market Committee meeting, where Chair Jerome Powell and his band of merry pranksters are expected to hike rates 25 basis points.

According to a poll of 106 economists by Reuters, the Fed will raise its benchmark funds rate on Wednesday, with a majority still saying this will be the last increase of the current tightening cycle.  There is indeed a lot of inflation data between July 26 and the Sept. 19-20 gathering of the FOMC so I’m sure the accompanying Fed statement, and Chair Powell’s press conference comments after, will be all about that… ‘In September we are likely to go where the data takes us,’ something to that effect.

As in between now and then, two CPI reports, two personal consumption expenditures datapoints (including next Friday) and two jobs reports.

This week’s economic data didn’t contain anything really Fed worthy.  June retail sales were a little shy of expectations, up 0.2%, ditto ex-autos.  June industrial production fell 0.5%, worse than forecast.

June housing starts came in at a 1.43 million annualized rate, down 8%, with the prior reading revised down to 1.559m.

And June existing home sales declined by 3.3% to a 4.16 million seasonally adjusted pace, down nearly 19% from a year earlier, as reported by the National Association of Realtors.

The median price for all housing types in June was $410,200, the second-highest price of all time and down 0.9% from the record-high of $413,800 in June 2022.

“The first half of the year was a downer for sure with sales lower by 23%,” NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said. “Fewer Americans were on the move despite the usual life-changing circumstances. The pent-up demand will surely be realized soon, especially if mortgage rates* and inventory move favorably.”

*Freddie Mac’s 30-year fixed-rate mortgage this week was at 6.78%.

Total housing inventory registered at the end of June was 1.08 million units, identical to May but down 14% from one year ago.

“There are simply not enough homes for sale,” Yun added.  “The market can easily absorb a doubling of inventory.”

[Homebuilder D.R. Horton, which focuses on creating entry-level housing, beat earnings expectations for its fiscal third quarter and raised its outlook on Thursday, saying there is still a robust market for affordable, newly built homes amid the shortage of existing homes for sale and high mortgage rates.  Net sales orders increased 37% from the same time last year.  As Lawrence Yun basically said, ‘build it and they will come,’ given the lack of inventory.]

One more. The Conference Board’s index of Leading Economic Indicators fell for a 15th straight month in June, marking the longest streak of decreases since the lead-up to the 2007-2009 recession.  The LEI is a measure that anticipates future economic activity.

“Taken together, June’s data suggests economic activity will continue to decelerate in the months ahead,” Justyna Zabinska-La Monica, senior economist at The Conference Board, said in a statement.  “Elevated prices, tighter monetary policy, harder-to-get credit, and reduced government spending are poised to dampen economic growth further.”

The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow is at 2.4% for the second quarter, with the first official reading on Q2 growth next week.

Europe and Asia

--We had the final key inflation data for the month of June in the eurozone on Wednesday, down to 5.5% from 6.1% in May.  A year earlier, the rate was 8.6%.  Ex-food and energy, however, the core rate is still 6.8%, down a tick from May’s 6.9%, as reported by Eurostat.  And therein lies the rub in terms of the European Central Bank, which is expected to hike rates again next week.

Headline rate….

Germany 6.8%, France 5.3%, Italy 6.7%, Spain 1.6%, Netherlands 6.4%, Ireland 4.8%.

Consumer prices in the UK rose 7.9% in June, down from 8.7% in May.

Food prices there rose 17.3%, but that was down from April’s peak of 19%.  Core inflation was 6.9%, down from 7.1% the previous month.

Eurostat also released first-quarter government debt figures (debt to GDP), which ticked down to 91.2% from 91.4% the prior quarter in the EA20, 95.0% in 2022Q1.

Germany 65.9%, France 112.4%, Italy 143.5%, Spain 112.8%, Netherlands 48.3%, Greece 168.3% (but down from 189.4% a year earlier).

Britain: Prime Minister Rishi Sunak avoided total disaster in three by-elections for important parliamentary seats, losing two but unexpectedly retaining Boris Johnson’s old constituency in a setback for the opposition Labour Party.  The result won Sunak some breathing space to try to narrow Labour’s large lead in the polls ahead of a national election expected next year.

But a new YouGov poll showed Sunak with a record-low 25% approval rating, 65% disapproval.

Turning to Asia…China released a slew of key economic data and it was not good.  Second-quarter GDP rose 6.3% vs. a year ago, but in the April-June 2022 period the Chinese economy was in the midst of crippling lockdowns.  GDP rose only 0.8% over the first quarter, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

The NBS also said for June, industrial production was up 4.4% year-over-year, retail sales rose 3.1% Y/Y, and fixed asset investment increased 3.8% year-to-date, all pretty tepid.

The June unemployment rate was 5.2%, but the youth unemployment rate was a worrisome 21.3%. [Worrisome as in this could spell protests down the road…these are largely college grads, once promised a future who now have none.]

Investment in property development, a vital driver of both industrial and consumer demand, sank 7.9% in the first half of the year.

Deflation is the new risk…prices falling due to weak demand.

On the U.S.-China trade front, China does not want a trade or tech war but will definitely respond if the United States imposes more curbs on its chip sector, China’s ambassador to Washington said on Wednesday.

Ambassador Xie Feng told the Aspen Security Forum China did not shy away from competition, but the way it was defined by the United States was not fair.  He highlighted existing U.S. prohibitions on Chinese imports of equipment to make advanced chips.  “This is like…restricting the other side to wear outdated swimwear in a swimming contest, while you yourself (are) wearing a Speedo,” he said.

Xie referred to reports that Washington is considering an outbound investment review mechanism, and further prohibition on the export of AI chips to China.

“The Chinese government cannot simply sit idly by. There’s a Chinese saying that we will not…make provocations, but we will not flinch from provocations,” he said.  “China, definitely…will make our response.  But definitely it’s not our hope to have a tit for tat. We don’t want…a trade war, technological war, we want to say goodbye to the Iron Curtain as well as the Silicon Curtain.”

Japan reported on its June trade picture, with exports up just 1.5% from a year ago, imports down 12.9%.

And then Thursday, the government released its latest inflation data for June, up 3.3% vs. 3.2% in May, the 15th consecutive month above the Bank of Japan’s target of 2%, with the core rate, ex-food and energy, at 4.2%, down from 4.3% prior.  The BOJ meets next week and the comments will be watched closely.

Street Bytes

--Stocks finished mixed on the week, though the Dow Jones, up 2.1% to 35227, has now risen ten straight days, the longest such streak since Aug. 2017.  The S&P 500 rose 0.7%, while Nasdaq fell 0.6%, just its 2nd losing week in 13, with Netflix and Tesla leading the way.

Broadly speaking, stocks have been rising recently on growing confidence the Fed is engineering a soft landing.  Personally, I feel the markets are blissfully ignoring what is to come on the Russia-Ukraine front.

--U.S. Treasury Yields

6-mo. 5.45%  2-yr. 4.84%  10-yr. 3.83%  30-yr. 3.90%

The yield on the 10-year was unchanged this week, the 2-year yield rose 8 basis points, the bond market awaiting further Fed guidance.

Euro bonds continued their rally on the feeling the European Central Bank could be ‘one and done,’ a la the Fed…or so bond traders say.

--Oil is up to $76.88 on West Texas Intermediate primarily on evidence of tightening global supplies, benefiting the Saudis and Russians, in particular.  Regarding the latter, this isn’t good in terms of the war in Ukraine.  Even though Russia is deeply discounting the oil it is selling to the likes of China and India, I’m sure there are escalator clauses, and China and India shouldn’t be buying it in the first place!

--Bank of America beat Wall Street estimates for second-quarter profit on Tuesday as it earned more from customers’ loan payments, while its investment banking business fared better than expected. 

“We continue to see a healthy U.S. economy that is growing at a slower pace, with a resilient job market,” CEO Brian Moynihan said in a statement, echoing comments from his peers.  The bank reported a profit of 88 cents per share, beating estimates of 84 cents.

The lender, alongside rivals JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo, earned a windfall from charging clients higher interest rates as the Fed raised borrowing costs.  BofA’s net interest income rose 14% to $14.2 billion in Q2.

Global mergers and acquisitions activity fell 36% year-on-year in the second quarter, but there has been optimism that the stock market’s recovery will restore confidence in dealmaking.  In a surprise bright spot, the bank’s sales and trading revenue outperformed expectations to post a 3% increase in revenue to $4.3 billion.  Revenue from the fixed income currencies and commodities business rose 7% to $2.7 billion from a year earlier.  Consumer banking revenue rose 15% to $10.5 billion.

But due to the troubled commercial real estate market, provision for credit losses rose $602 million to $1.1 billion in the quarter.  Revenue, net of interest expense, increased 11% to $25.2 billion in the quarter.  Net income rose to $7.41 billion, compared with $6.15bn a year earlier.

--Morgan Stanley’s profit beat estimates as growth in its wealth management business offset lower trading revenue in the second quarter, and executives expressed optimism about the economic environment.  The shares rose 6% in response, shrugging off a 13% drop in profits.

Ex-items, MS earned $1.24 a share on revenue of $13.46 billion, comfortably beating estimates of $1.15 and $13.08bn.  Net income was $2.18 billion vs. last year’s $2.49bn.

“We ended the quarter overall in a better place with a better tone,” CEO James Gorman said, after the period started with uncertainty over the banking crisis, geopolitical tension and the path of interest rates.

“While we may not be quite at the end of rate increases, I believe we are very close to it,” he told analysts on a conference call. 

The wealth management unit’s net revenue rose 16% to a record $6.7 billion for the quarter, and it gained almost $90 billion in new assets.  Those results helped smooth the drop in trading revenues as volatility declined.  Fixed income revenue sank 31%, while equities fell 14%.  Revenue from investment banking was flat at $1.16bn.  CFO Sharon Yeshaya said in an interview, “We expect investment banking to lead the recovery in the next quarter.”  Mergers and acquisitions are picking up in some industries such as financials and energy, and the bank’s backlog of deals is growing, she said.

CEO Gorman announced in May he would step down within a year.

--Goldman Sachs Group reported a bigger-than-expected drop in second-quarter profit as a retreat from consumer businesses and declining investment values took a toll on the Wall Street giant.  The bank took a writedown of $504 million tied to its GreenSky business and $485 million related to its consolidated real estate investments.  It was Goldman’s lowest quarterly profit since the second quarter of 2020.

Earnings fell more than 60% to $1.07 billion, or $3.08 per share, for the three months ended June 30.  That compares to $2.79 billion, or $7.73 per share, a year earlier.  Analysts expected a profit of $3.18 per share.

GreenSky, which facilitates home improvement loans to consumers, was acquired for $2.2 billion in 2021 and the deal was closed at $1.7 billion.  CEO David Solomon told analysts in April that GreenSky is a “good business” but the bank might not be the “best long-term holder of this business” given its strategic priorities.

So why the hell did you buy it?!

Goldman’s Marcus unit was also folded into its merged asset and wealth management arm last year, as the investment bank began pulling back from retail banking.

Investment banking fees for the quarter fell 20% to $1.43 billion. Trading revenue for fixed income, currency and commodities fell 26%, while equities trading revenue was broadly unchanged.

--Wall Street’s biggest banks whittled down their ranks by about 21,000 people in the first six months of the year as they rejiggered workforces amid the slump in dealmaking and capital markets activity.

--United Airlines benefited from surging international travel as it more than tripled its profit during the second quarter, and the carrier strengthened its outlook for the rest of the year.

United reported profit of $1.08 billion, up from $329 million the same period a year ago.

United stumbled at the end of June, when summer storms hit its Newark, N.J. hub and rippled across its network, leaving crews and planes out of place and resulting in thousands of flight cancellations.  CEO Scott Kirby attributed some of the challenge to air-traffic control’s response to the weather and said the airline will have to curtail some flying at Newark to get a better handle on operations at the congested airport.

[United then said at week’s end it would reduce flights at Newark to about 390 a day, after already reducing to 410 from 435 in an attempt to avoid delays and cancellations.] 

United didn’t break out the cost of the nearly weeklong snarl, but said it expects adjusted earnings of $3.85 to $4.35 per share during the third quarter, above what analysts had been anticipating.  The airline also updated its profit outlook for the full year to a range of $11 to $12 per share, versus the $10 to $12 range it previously predicted.

Cheaper fuel is helping.  United spent $1 billion less on fuel than it did in the same quarter last year.

Ex-items, United reported a profit of $5.03 per share – a record figure that exceeded the $4.03 analysts had forecast – on revenue of $14.18 billion.

The adjusted profit excluded one-time expenses, including a $765 million bonus payment the airline expects once pilots ratify a preliminary contract deal announced Saturday.

Speaking of which, the labor agreement will give the pilots a significant pay increase, after the union rejected an earlier offer last year instead to seek even higher wages with pilots in short supply.  The pilots will get a cumulative 34.5%-40.2% increase in pay in a new four-year contract, the Air Line Pilots Association said.

With fewer pilots, the group has been enjoying enhanced bargaining power.  Consumers have kept up spending on travel even with inflation high, and the industry is short thousands of pilots.

The deal comes months after pilots at Delta Air Lines ratified a new contract that includes over $7 billion in cumulative increases in pay and benefits over four years.  Industry officials say Delta’s new contract became the benchmark for contract negotiations in North America, though there are late problems in ratifying American’s new contract with its pilots.

Delta, American, United and Southwest are estimated to hire about 8,000 pilots this year.  Analysts estimate the United States is short about 10,000 pilots and the supply-demand gap is projected to last until 2027.

--While United shares rose 3% on the earnings news, American Airlines shares fell 6% despite the company raising its forecast for adjusted profit on Thursday, powered by strong demand for domestic and international travel. 

American forecast adjusted profit of $3.00 to $3.75 per share compared with its prior outlook of $2.50 to $3.50 for 2023.  Boosting profits, jet fuel costs in North America are down about 30% from a year ago, but there are signs flight fares might be cooling off, and AAL shares fell largely because the company said it expects total revenue per available seat mile, a proxy for pricing power, for its third quarter to be down about 4.5% to 6.5% compared to last year.

American’s adjusted net income for the second quarter was $1.92 per share, beating analysts’ average expectation of $1.59.  Total operating revenue rose 4.7% to $14.06bn, above consensus of $13.74bn.

--TSA checkpoint numbers vs. 2019

7/20…101 percent of 2019 levels
7/19…98
7/18…96
7/17…104
7/16…100
7/15…104
7/14…99
7/13…100

--According to the World Tourism Organization, despite the rush to travel overseas this summer, travel to and within Europe overall is down 10% from 2019, but that is partly due to fewer people visiting countries close to Ukraine, including Lithuania, Finland, Moldova and Poland.

In addition, Chinese visitors have not fully returned, with flights from China and other Asia-Pacific countries down 45% from 2019.

A good barometer nation, Greece, expects 30 million visitors this year, still shy of 2019’s record 34 million.

--Netflix Inc. beat Wall Street earnings forecasts for the second quarter on Wednesday but fell short on revenue even as a password-sharing crackdown helped the company pick up 5.9 million new streaming TV customers.  The shares fell about 6% in after-hours and pre-opening trade.

Netflix’s projection for third-quarter revenue also fell short of expectations.  “While we’ve made steady progress this year, we have more work to do to reaccelerate our growth,” the company said in its quarterly letter to shareholders.  Netflix said it planned to kick-start revenue growth by “creating a steady drumbeat of must watch shows and movies; improving monetization; growing the enjoyment of our games; and investing to improve our service for members.”

The company reported earnings per share of $3.29 for the second quarter, ahead of the $2.86 consensus.  Its nearly 6 million subscriber additions outpaced the 1.9 million the Street expected.

Quarterly revenue climbed to 2.7% from a year earlier to $8.2 billion, shy of analyst forecasts of $8.3 billion.  The company estimated the third quarter would hit $8.5 billion, with the Street forecasting $8.7bn.  Net income for Q2 topped estimates at $1.5bn.

Netflix has been looking for new ways to make money as streaming competition intensifies and it nears market saturation in the United States. The company launched a cheaper tier with advertising last November and started asking password borrowers to pay in a widespread crackdown that rolled out in May.

The continuing Hollywood writers and actors’ strikes have led Netflix to spend less on content this year, the company said.

“The strike is not the outcome that we wanted,” Co-CEO Ted Sarandos said.  The company had hoped to have reached new contracts with the unions by now and is committed to forging an agreement “as soon as possible,” he said.  Analysts say Netflix has an advantage because of its global production.

--Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. cut its annual outlook for revenue and postponed the start of production at its signature Arizona project to 2025, twin setbacks for a chipmaking linchpin struggling with geopolitical tensions and a deep market slump.

TSMC’s surprise cut in 2023 revenue projections sent a warning to investors that the global electronics slump may persist for some time despite a boom in AI development. And the delay in the U.S. – a consequence of both a lack of skilled American workers and ballooning costs – underscores the difficulties in making chips there despite Washington’s insistence to reduce a global reliance on Asian facilities.

The main chipmaker for Apple and Nvidia projected a 10% fall in sales this year, versus previous guidance for a single-digit decline.  Executives also warned investors to temper their expectations for a boom in chips for training AI models, saying it was uncertain whether the surge in demand in the wake of ChatGPT was long-term or sustainable.

“The short-term frenzy about AI demand definitely cannot be extrapolated for the long term,” Chairman Mark Liu told analysts on a conference call.  “Neither can we predict for next year how the sudden demand will continue or flatten out.”

TSMC delivered the outlook after posting its first quarterly profit decline in four years, underscoring the extent of a global slide in smartphone and PC demand. Net income fell 23% to $5.85 billion.

--Shares in AT&T rose about 8% on Wednesday after the telecom company said lead cables made up only a small part of its wireline network, easing fears of an expensive clean-up.  Rival Verizon also rose by a similar margin, helping the companies rebound from a selloff sparked by a Wall Street Journal report I cited last week that several telecom giants abandoned a sprawling network of underground toxic lead cables.

In a court filing related to plans to remove two lead-clad cables in Lake Tahoe, AT&T said it will halt plans to do so to allow for additional testing for lead and “maintain the Lake Tahoe cables in place while working cooperatively with regulators and other stakeholders on an appropriate risk assessment.”

In a memo sent Tuesday to employees, AT&T CEO John Stankey said the company expects an extended public discussion about how to manage lead-clad cables and estimated that “these cables represent less than 10% of our copper footprint of roughly 2 million sheathed miles.”

“We feel strongly that the Journal’s reporting conflicts with what independent experts have long stated about the safety of lead-clad telecom cables and our own environmental testing,” Stankey wrote.  “If there’s any new scientific data, we’ll work cooperatively with all stakeholders to address new safety concerns.”

Verizon has said that it is “taking these concerns regarding lead-sheathed cables very seriously” and that only a small percentage of its existing network includes lead-sheathed cable.

AT&T shares hit a three-decade low on Monday, Verizon a 13-year low.  Bottom line, this is a serious issue and no one knows the potential financial risks for AT&T and the others as yet.  The lead-sheathed cables that are underground are possibly contaminating neighboring soil and drinking water sources.

--Ford Motor deepened a price war in the electric-vehicle industry on Monday by slashing the price of its F-150 Lightning trucks*, including a 17% cut for the base model, as it aims to boost its share of an EV market dominated by Tesla.  Shares of Ford fell about 5% in response.

Ford, which had raised Lightning prices earlier this year, said it was able to cut prices on improvements in scale and battery raw material costs.  The move comes amid a price war started by Tesla a few months ago, which has seen the EVs of legacy automakers piling up at dealers as sales slow.  In the quarter through June, Ford’s EV sales fell 2.8%.

*The base Pro variant of Lightning now carries a suggested retail price of $49,995, compared to its prior price of $59,974.

--Tesla announced earnings after the close Wednesday, and Elon Musk’s big bet that price cuts could boost sales and profits amid increasing competition and poor economic sentiment appears to be yielding mixed results.  The company beat analyst expectations for net income in the April-June quarter, but the shares fell about 4%.

The maker of electric vehicles, solar panels and batteries reported net income of $2.7 billion in the quarter, a 20% increase from a year ago.  Earnings per share also rose 20% to 78 cents.

Analysts, however, tend to focus on Tesla’s own measurement of profit, which excludes stock-based compensation expense, and by that measure, Tesla’s net income zoomed to $3.15 billion, or 91 cents a share, sharply exceeding consensus of 80 cents.

Total revenue rose 47% to $24.93 billion.

The company reported strong vehicle delivery numbers on July 2, saying they rose 83% compared to the year-earlier quarter after the company cut prices several times on its four EV models. The company sold a record 488,140 vehicles worldwide from April through June, nearly double 254,695 it sold during the same period a year earlier.  The vast majority of the sales involved Tesla’s popular Model 3 sedans and Model Y crossover SUVs.

But the earnings report provided mixed messages on one of the larger questions facing the company: whether the automaker’s discounting strategy can boost sales enough to preserve its profit margins.

Tesla’s operating margin fell to 9.6% in Q2, down significantly from 14.6% a year earlier.

Elon Musk cautioned investors that more price reductions might be required and that the company would scale back production this quarter as it updates its factories, though he still says production for the full year can hit 2 million.

The company is seeking to boost production capacity to handle making 20 million vehicles annually by 2030.  Last year, Tesla delivered 1.31 million.

--Online used-car dealer Carvana saw its shares soar 40% on Wednesday as the company announced a plan to resolve a long-running standoff with its lenders and relieve a looming cash crisis.

The company said it would exchange some of its outstanding bonds for new notes that would allow it to delay some of Carvana’s interest payments over the next two years.

The company will also issue $350 million in new shares, with CEO Ernie Garcia III and his father Ernie Garcia II, the company’s biggest shareholder, required to purchase $126 million of the offering. The equity sale will provide cash to help pay creditors in the debt exchange.

Carvana also announced it sold 76,530 cars between March and June, a 35% drop compared with the same period last year, with a quarterly loss of $105 million compared with $439 million last year as its turnaround campaign has focused on reducing the startup’s voracious appetite for cash.

--IBM’s second-quarter revenue fell short of Wall Street expectations on Wednesday, bogged down by a decline in sales of its mainframe computers as businesses cut tech spending.  IT companies have warned of more pain as businesses striving to cut costs in the face of inflation snip tech budgets, hurting the industry that saw rapid growth during the pandemic when businesses rushed to adopt hybrid work.

IT majors such as Accenture and India’s Tata Consultancy Services have also flagged demand weakness, with the former missing market estimates for quarterly revenue last month after its North America revenue grew at its slowest rate in about three years.

IBM reported the top line of its business that houses the mainframe computers shrank by 14.6%. Growth in RedHat software and consulting segment slowed likely due to a tougher IT spending environment.

Total revenue for the quarter ended June 30 fell 0.4% to $15.48 billion compared with analysts’ average estimate of $15.58bn.

IBM has joined tech firms in boosting its artificial intelligence offerings, launching a platform, watsonx (sic), in May to help companies integrate generative AI into their products and services after chatbot ChatGPT’s stellar success.  Analysts expect watsonx to aid the software business, which grew 7.2% to $6.6 billion during the reported quarter.  Ex-items, the company earned $2.18 per share, beating estimates of $2.01.

--Microsoft unveiled a plan to monetize its AI technology, the company announcing it will charge businesses $30 a month for its artificial intelligence-powered Microsoft Office apps.

The price was more than expected and sent the stock to a record high.  It also highlights the pricing power of AI, and is driving another move higher for the usual suspects, including Nvidia, C3.ai, and Palantir.

Microsoft, alive to the threat of Meta Platform’s new free AI language model Llama 2, has teamed up with its peer to make the software available to companies.

Llama 2 is a direct challenger to OpenAI, in which Microsoft has invested billions, but the unlikely partnership only adds to the pressure on Alphabet’s Google, which has more to lose than gain – especially when it comes to its search engine dominance.

Microsoft said the plan offers AI to users to draft emails in Outlook and write documents in Word, among other functions.

Separately, Apple is developing AI tools and a chatbot app that could challenge OpenAI and Google.

--Twitter CEO Elon Musk said the company has lost almost half of its advertising revenue since he bought it last October, Musk himself tweeted over the weekend.  He said Twitter had not seen the increase in sales that had been expected in June, but added that July was a “bit more promising.”

Musk sacked about half of Twitter’s 7,500 staff when he took over in 2022 in an effort to cut costs.  But it’s still struggling under a heavy debt load and cash flow remains negative, Musk said.

“Need to reach positive cash flow before we have the luxury of anything else,” he tweeted.

Musk said the company is on track to post $3 billion in revenue in 2023, down from $5.1bn in 2021.

--Johnson & Johnson forecast 2023 profit above Wall Street estimates on Thursday, banking on strong demand for its cancer drugs and a recovery in sales of its medical devices due to an uptick in surgical procedures such as hip and knee replacements.

CFO Joseph Wolk said the company felt confident enough to raise its full-year outlook because of growth across the business.

“We beat expectations on the guidance we gave in January for the full year, but we qualified it to be responsibly cautious,” Wolk said in an interview.  “The qualifiers are now off, and if you look across our entire portfolio, just strength across the board.”  He added that despite concerns in the last quarter, inflation had stayed about the same.

JNJ has placed huge bets on its newer cancer drugs, while trying to bolster growth at its pandemic-hit medical devices business, as it looks to counter a potential slowdown in sales of its blockbuster Stelara arthritis drug, which faces the threat of new competition in 2025.

The company, which took a hit from delayed surgeries and hospital staffing shortages during the pandemic, said the volume of procedures and staffing levels were expected to be “stable” for the rest of the year.

Q2 sales for the company’s medical device unit were $7.79 billion, topping estimates of $7.55bn.  JNJ now expects adjusted 2023 profit of $10.70 to $10.80 per share, above estimates of $10.65 and its prior forecast of $10.60 to $10.70. To which former NBA great Derrick Coleman would have said, “Whoopty-damn-do.”

But the company did report earnings of $2.80 per share vs. consensus of $2.62 and the shares rose 6%...to a level that matches the fall of 2021.

--Paramount Pictures’ “Mission Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” opened at the top of the domestic box office over last weekend, amassing $56.2 million during the regular Friday-Sunday window, according to studio estimates, and $80 million since its Wednesday opening for the U.S. and Canada, coming in shy of expectations of $90 million .

Internationally, the film has earned $155 million for a worldwide total of $235 million.

With an estimated budget of $300 million, the movie has a long way to go to become profitable but the film received good reviews and it could be a summer mainstay.

This weekend, however, it’s all about the openings for “Oppenheimer” and “Barbie,” with many vowing to see both, “Barbenheimer.”

I’ve got to carve out time next week for “Oppenheimer,” which received a terrific review today in the Wall Street Journal.

Foreign Affairs, Part II

China: Taiwan’s leading presidential candidate William Lai Ching-te has been slammed for “betraying the totality of the Chinese nation,” in an opinion piece provided by China’s embassy in Washington that was published in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.

The article, credited to Liu Pengyu, an embassy spokesman, was Beijing’s response to an earlier comment piece from Lai published in the same paper on July 4.

Lai, who was nominated in April by Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to run for the island’s top post, is currently Taiwan’s vice-president.

In his opinion piece, the 63-year-old front runner in next year’s election stressed pragmatism and consistency as his top priorities if he won the race.

Liu, however, argued that Lai’s support for “cross-strait status quo” was actually support for “so-called ‘peaceful separation’ and ‘one China, one Taiwan.’”

Taiwan’s would-be leader said he has no plans to declare independence, and offered a “four-pillar plan for peace” to ensure stability on the self-ruled island, which the embassy said was only a plan to “sell out Taiwan to the U.S.” and “show his loyalty to his American patron.”

Lai’s election platform includes building up Taiwan’s deterrence in the face of growing threats from Beijing, ensuring supply chain security, and promoting “steady and principled” cross-strait leadership.

In Tuesday’s piece, however, Beijing said Lai’s proposal to “build up Taiwan’s deterrence” was in reality a way to “resist by force the motherland’s reunification.”

“Squandering 2.6 percent of local GDP [to purchase U.S. weaponry], the DPP is turning the island into a powder keg,” Liu wrote.

In line with the above on Taiwan’s defense, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Mark Milley said American arms sales and deliveries of weaponry to the island should be faster if the U.S. is to dissuade Beijing from taking military action against it.

Milley said this in Tokyo, where he met with Japanese leaders before leaving for Seoul.

“If Taiwan has the military capability to signal to the leadership in Beijing that an attack on Taiwan, the cost, risk, of an attack on Taiwan, would exceed any potential benefit, then theoretically, if the leaders in Beijing are rational, they won’t do that militarily,” Milley said.  “They will try some other nonmilitary means of doing it.”

U.S. officials last November acknowledged a $19 billion backlog of arms deliveries to Taiwan, weaponry that had already been approved that had yet to reach Taipei.

On the topic of John Kerry’s visit to China….

Editorial / Wall Street Journal

“China said Monday that its economy nearly stalled to a 0.8% growth rate in the second quarter, but never fear, John Kerry is here. The U.S. climate envoy is in Beijing this week to tell Chinese officials that they need to follow America in putting their economy further at risk by moving away from fossil fuels at a rapid pace.

“Mr. Kerry said last week that he’ll discuss cuts to methane emissions and coal, among other items.  Somehow we doubt his Chinese counterparts will take Mr. Kerry’s advice, though they might do their diplomatic best to humor him. That’s how they’ve strung the world along on climate for years.

“China signed the 2015 Paris climate accord, but that deal gave Beijing a pass to increase its emissions until 2030. And that’s exactly what it’s doing. According to the Climate Action Tracker, which monitors national progress under the Paris agreement, ‘China’s emissions under current policies remain sky high with no sign of substantial emission reductions before the 2030 peaking timeline.’

“The Climate Action Tracker says that between 2015 and 2022 China’s greenhouse gas emissions increased nearly 12%, while U.S. emissions declined some 5%. China’s methane emissions rose about 3% from 2015 to 2021, the latest year with good data, while the U.S. cut them by 5%.

“Mr. Kerry will have an uphill climb on Chinese coal in particular. The Climate Action Tracker says China’s ‘coal production reached record levels in 2022 for the second year running,’ and ‘coal is set to remain the backbone’ of China’s energy system.  No kidding: Between 2020 and 2022, China added some 113 gigawatts of new coal-fired power plants, according to S&P Global Commodity Insights.  The entire world managed to retire some 187 gigawatts of coal plants between 2017 and 2022….

“As of April China also had 180 new coal mines or mine expansions proposed, permitted or under construction, the nonprofit reported. These would produce some 657 million metric tonnes per year upon completion and could release as much as eight million tonnes of methane emissions a year….

“All of this suggests the Communist Party won’t make climate concessions at the expense of economic growth, and you don’t have to take our word for it.  In a January 2022 speech, President Xi Jinping said carbon goals shouldn’t come at the expense of the ‘normal life’ of Chinese people or energy or food security, according to a Reuters article citing the state-run Xinhua news service.

“Carbon-neutrality goals ‘can’t be detached from reality,’ Mr. Xi reiterated in March, according to a South China Morning Post article citing the state-run People’s Daily.  ‘We can’t toss away what’s feeding us now while what will feed us next is still not in our pocket.’….

“Mr. Kerry can tilt at climate targets all he wants, but Beijing isn’t going to risk the political upheaval of mass unemployment to meet emissions targets while raging wildfires in North America offset any CO2 reductions.

“The risks for U.S. interests is that the Biden Administration will make consequential concessions on technology export controls, arms to Taiwan or something else of strategic importance in exchange for climate promises Beijing has no intention of keeping.”

So while Kerry was in Beijing, President Xi told dozens of officials at the same time that China’s path to reducing carbon emissions should be determined by China and not controlled by anyone else.

Xi was speaking at a two-day national conference on ecological and environmental protection, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported.

“China’s commitments are unswerving, but the path towards the goals as well as the manner, pace and intensity of efforts to achieve them should and must be determined by the country itself, rather than swayed by others,” he said.

“[We should] actively and steadily work toward carbon peaking and carbon neutrality, foster a clean, low-carbon, safe and efficient energy system, accelerate the formation of a new power system and strengthen the country’s capability of guaranteeing oil and gas security.”

Kerry then wrapped up his four-day visit on Wednesday by meeting Chinese Vice-President Han Zheng, who told him Beijing was willing to cooperate in efforts to right global warming.

“China is willing to work with the United States to seek the greatest common ground on the basis of respecting each other’s core concerns and full communications…and make new contributions to addressing global challenges such as climate change,” Han said.  Of course just total pablum.

For his part, Kerry told a press conference: “There are a lot of things that we very clearly agreed on after all this time.  But there are also some issues that are going to have to be resolved that are going to take a little more time.”

The two countries did not issue a joint declaration at the end of the trip, which Kerry said was “because we’re not finished finding the pathway with clarity on both sides that will allow us to achieve what we need to achieve.”

As in, ‘To be honest, sports fans, at least I had some good meals.  Otherwise, I’d rather be home wind-surfing.’

Lastly, where is Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang?  Qin, supposedly the face of the country on the diplomatic front, has been out of the public view since June 25, missing some important regional events and gatherings of foreign ministers, as well as a number of visits by senior American figures.

So far Beijing has been tight-lipped about his whereabouts, attributing his absence to unspecified “health reasons” despite growing speculation it is something more.

President Xi handpicked Qin for the job just seven months ago.  The unexplained absence is becoming a major embarrassment.

North Korea: Pyongyang launched two short-range ballistic missiles eastward early on Wednesday, Japan’s and South Korea’s militaries said, just hours after a U.S. ballistic missile submarine arrived in a South Korean port (Busan) for the first time in four decades.

Both of the missiles appeared to have fallen outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone, the Japanese Defense Ministry said.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff called on the North to cease such launches.  “We strongly condemn North Korea’s successive ballistic missile launches as grave provocative acts that undermine the peace and stability of the Korean Peninsula as well as the international community, and are a clear violation of UN Security Council resolutions,” the JCS said in a statement.

The first missile reached an altitude of 31 miles and covered a range of 341 miles, while the second one rose as high as 31 miles (50km) and flew 372 miles (600km), Japan’s defense minister said.

The firing comes nearly a week after North Korea tested its latest Hwasong-18 intercontinental ballistic missile, which Pyongyang called a warning to the United States and its adversaries.

This week’s launches were no doubt tied not just to the U.S. nuclear-armed sub, the USS Kentucky, reaching port in South Korea, but also because a new U.S.-South Korea nuclear war planning group met for the first time on Tuesday.

North Korea then said on Thursday that the deployment of U.S. aircraft carriers, bombers or missile submarines in South Korea could meet criteria for its use of nuclear weapons, state media KCNA reported, citing the country’s defense minister, Kang Sun Nam.

“The phase of a military clash on the Korean Peninsula has surfaced as a dangerous reality,” the report said.

“North Korea will get no concessions from the South Korea-U.S. alliance for its nuclear development and threats which will only lead to worsening isolation and hardships,” the South Korean ministry said in a statement.

North Korea also detained a U.S. soldier, Private First Class Travis King, after he crossed the border during a tour of the Joint Security Area between the two Korean states.

King did so willfully and without permission, according to the U.S. military.  He recently served time in detention in South Korea for unknown reasons, U.S. officials said, and was expected to return to his home unit stateside to face disciplinary action for an alleged assault in South Korea and he was to be “terminated” from the military.

The JSA, a popular South Korean tourist attraction, is the only place where North and South Korean troops stand face-to-face along the 150-mile-long, 2-mile-wide demilitarized zone.  It is also a historic site where high-profile meetings involving North Korea often take place.

So Friday, the U.S. declared King AWOL, as the North Koreans refuse to take U.S. calls through intermediaries, and Pyongyang has yet to comment on the incident.

Israel: Protests against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul intensified on Tuesday with demonstrations nationwide, and a retired Israeli air force general said 161 of the corps’ reserve officers had vowed to no longer report for duty.

The drive by Netanyahu’s nationalist-religious coalition to change the judicial system and curb some Supreme Court power has sparked unprecedented protests, hurt the economy and stirred concern for Israel’s democratic health among Western allies. Some reservists have threatened not to heed call-up orders as part of the protest, which has jarred a country for which the conscript military, which draws on reserves in wartime and requires they undergo regular training, was long an apolitical issue to rally around.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant appealed for unity among the ranks.  “We cannot exist in this land without the Israeli Defense Forces,” he said.

The government is pushing to pass the law that would curb the Supreme Court’s ability to void government and minister decisions or appointments by stripping the judges of the power to deem such decisions “unreasonable.”  It aims to pass the law before a July 30 Knesset recess.

Netanyahu, who is on trial for corruption charges he denies, has defended the proposed changes, vowing to keep “Israel a Jewish and democratic nation state, free and liberal, that holds sacrosanct majority rule alongside civil rights.”  He said his government was trying to restore balance between the judiciary, legislature and executive.

Proponents of the changes say the Supreme Court has become too interventionist and that the change will facilitate effective governance.  Opponents say the change will weaken the Supreme Court, which in a country that has no constitution and a one-chamber parliament that is dominated by the government – has a critical role in protecting civil rights and liberties.

President Biden invited Netanyahu to a meeting in the U.S. later this year, in an attempt to ease tensions between the two leaders.  It would be their first meeting since Netanyahu reassumed the role in December.

The invitation came on the heels of a visit to Washington by Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, which had long been seen as a slight to Netanyahu.

But Biden used an interview with the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman to send a message to the prime minister on the issue of the judicial reform proposal.

Friedman wrote as he summed it up in his own words the essence of Biden’s message:

“Please stop now.  Don’t pass anything this important without a broad consensus, or you are going to break something with Israel’s democracy and with your relationship with America’s democracy, and you may never be able to get it back.”

The interview was just a day after Biden had his first phone conversation with Netanyahu in months.

Friedman quoted only two direct statements from Biden in his column about the pending danger of Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul plan.

“This is obviously an area about which Israelis have strong views, including in an enduring protest movement that is demonstrating the vibrancy of Israel’s democracy, which must remain the core of our bilateral relationship,” Biden said.

“Finding consensus on controversial areas of policy means taking the time you need. For significant changes, that’s essential.  So my recommendation to Israeli leaders is not to rush.  I believe the best outcome is to continue to seek the broadest possible consensus here,” the president added.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu was hospitalized briefly last weekend suffering from dehydration after spending a holiday on the Sea of Galilee.  In a video from the hospital the prime minister said, “I ask you all, spend less time in the sun, drink more water, and may we all have a good new week.”  He was released the next day.

Iran: Tehran said its morality police would resume patrols to enforce the country’s hijab laws that require women to cover their hair in public.  The practice was paused in September after a 22-year-old, Mahsa Amini, died after being detained by the force.  Her death triggered widespread protests calling for the overthrow of the theocratic regime that has ruled Iran for over four decades.

Separately, the U.S. is sending additional F-35 and F-16 aircraft along with a warship to the Middle East, the Pentagon said on Monday, in a bid to monitor key waterways in the region following Iran’s seizure and harassment of commercial shipping vessels in recent months.

Iraq: Baghdad expelled the Swedish ambassador on Thursday in protest at a planned burning of the Koran in Stockholm that had prompted hundreds of protesters to storm and set alight the Swedish embassy in Baghdad.

An Iraqi government statement said Baghdad had also recalled its charge d’affaires in Sweden, and Iraq’s state news agency reported that Iraq had suspended the working permit of Sweden’s Ericsson on Iraqi soil.

Anti-Islam protesters, one of whom is an Iraqi immigrant to Sweden that burned the Koran outside a Stockholm mosque in June, had applied for and received permission from Swedish police to burn the Koran outside the Iraqi embassy on Thursday.  In the event, the protesters kicked and partially destroyed a book they said was the Koran but left the area after one hour without setting it alight.

The Iraqi government strongly condemned the burning of the Swedish embassy, but Baghdad had also “informed the Swedish government…that any recurrence of the incident involving the burning of the Holy Quran on Swedish soil would necessitate severing diplomatic relations,” the statement said.  Again, though, it was not burned in the end.

This is a mess.  And it’s a big story because of the sensitivity of Sweden’s attempt to become a NATO member, for which it needs Turkey’s approval, which it thought it had received at the recent NATO summit.

But this makes President Erdogan’s task harder, while at the same time, Sweden’s courts have said Koran burning is protected by Sweden’s far-reaching freedom of speech laws.

Random Musings

--Presidential approval ratings….

Gallup: 43% approve of President Biden’s job performance, 54% disapprove; 41% of independents approve (June 1-22).

Rasmussen: 44% approve, 55% disapprove (July 21).

Biden receives just a 38% approval rating in a new Quinnipiac University national poll, 54% disapproval rating.  In June, the same survey had a split of 41-54.  Registered voters give him a negative 40-53 job approval rating compared to a negative 42-54 split in June.

--In a University of New Hampshire poll of likely Republican primary voters in the Granite State, Donald Trump garnered 37%, Ron DeSantis 23%, Tim Scott 8%, Chris Christie 6%, Doug Burgum 6% (huh), Vivek Ramaswamy 5%, Nikki Haley 5%.

--According to NBC News polling, 44% of registered voters say they are willing to consider supporting a third-party or independent presidential candidate if the matchup in 2024 is Joe Biden vs. Donald Trump, and the group includes more Democrats than Republicans.

Democrats are urgently warning about a potential third-party 2024 effort bankrolled by No Labels, the bipartisan political organization.

West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin made it very clear last weekend he is considering a third-party run, perhaps in partnership with former Republican Gov. Jon Huntsman.

But No Labels has said that IF it puts a ticket together, it wouldn’t announce this until after Super Tuesday, perhaps in April, to see where the two parties lie with their then-probable nominees.

Democrats should actually be worried in the short term about the Green Party candidacy of Cornel West, who could easily take 2% in the general election, and take votes from the Democratic candidate (your editor not willing to concede that Biden will actually make it to the year 2024…or Election Day…).

In the above-mentioned Quinnipiac University national poll, 47% would consider voting for a third-party candidate in 2024 and 47% said they would not consider it.  Independents say more than 2 to 1 (64-30 percent) that they would consider voting for a third-party candidate.  Democrats (61-35 percent) and Republicans (57-38 percent) say they would not consider it.

In the race for the Republican presidential nomination, Quinnipiac’s results are largely unchanged from a June 14 poll.  Donald Trump receives 54% among Republican and Republican leaning voters, followed by 24% for Ron DeSantis.  Nikki Haley and Mike Pence each receive 4%, and Tim Scott and Chris Christie 3%.  Vivek Ramaswamy is at 2%.

For the Democrats, Joe Biden receives 71%, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 14%, Marianne Williamson 7%.

Biden leads Trump 49-44 percent in a hypothetical matchup.

When registered voters were given a list of eight issues and asked which is the most important to them in deciding who to vote for in the election for president, 31% say the economy and 29% say preserving democracy in the United States.  [Abortion 7%, gun violence 7%, immigration 6%, health care 6%, racial inequality 6%, climate change 5%.]

--U.S. federal prosecutors investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results have evidence to charge the former president with three crimes, including conspiracy to violate civil rights.

The potential charges are detailed in a letter sent to Trump by prosecutors from the office of special counsel Jack Smith, who also charged Trump with retaining classified documents last month, was the clearest signal of an imminent indictment.

Prosecutors appear to have evidence to charge him with obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the United States based on the target letter, two statutes that the House select committee examining the January 6 Capitol attack issued criminal referrals for last year.

The target letter to Trump identified a previously unconsidered third charge, sources said.  That is section 241 of title 18 of the U.S. code, which makes it unlawful to conspire to threaten or intimidate a person in the “free exercise” of any right or privilege under the “Constitution or laws of the United States.”

The statute was initially enacted to protect the civil rights of Black voters targeted by white supremacy groups after the Civil War.  What the potential charge means for Trump is unclear.

Prosecutors have been examining various instances of Trump pressuring officials like former vice-president Mike Pence, but Trump’s efforts to obstruct the transfer of power could also be construed as conspiring to defraud voters more generally.

Trump called the target letter “HORRIFYING NEWS” in a post on Truth Social.  He also again called Jack Smith “deranged” and a “psycho” and said he “looks like a crackhead.”

The target letter comes weeks before the Fulton County district attorney, Fani Willis, is expected to charge Trump and his allies for their efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in the state of Georgia.

Then today, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon set a May 2024 trial date for Trump in the documents case.  Jury selection is to begin May 14, with a two-week trial period beginning May 20.

--IRS special agent Joseph Ziegler and IRS supervisory agent Gary Shapley affirmed their prior testimony to the House Ways and Means Committee that the president’s Justice Department slow-walked a five-year probe into Hunter Biden’s alleged financial crimes.

The IRS whistleblowers said Biden-appointed U.S. attorneys interfered in the case by preventing  Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss from charging Hunter last year with tax fraud in Southern California and Washington, D.C.

Weiss and Attorney General Merrick Garland have both denied the claims, maintaining Weiss had authority to bring any charges he sought.

The two IRS agents also said federal authorities tipped off Hunter’s legal team about a potential search of his northern Virginia storage locker and a December 2020 effort to interview him, preventing either from being carried out.

Other efforts to inquire about the president’s involvement in his son’s million-dollar business deals abroad and seek felony charges for $2.2 million in missed tax payments were thwarted.

But these are investigators and Weiss is the prosecutor who accepted a deal on tax and gun charges that likely means zero prison time.

At the same time, Shapley testified that at a meeting on Oct. 7, 2022, Weiss admitted to IRS and FBI agents that he wasn’t the deciding authority, and that Weiss said he had applied and was turned down for special counsel status.

As the Wall Street Journal opined: “The IRS agents who investigated Hunter are saying live on C-Span that they were prevented from getting evidence.  The allegations are becoming more specific as the number of witnesses backing them up grows.  If Mr. Garland and Mr. Weiss want to persuade Americans they’re telling the truth, they ought to go before Congress and do what the two IRS agents have now done: answer questions under oath.”

--Former Rep. Joe Kennedy III condemned his uncle Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s claims that Covid-19 was possibly engineered to target certain ethnic groups – remarks widely criticized as racist and antisemitic.

“My uncle’s comments were hurtful and wrong,” said Joe Kennedy, an ex-representative from Massachusetts who now serves as U.S. special envoy for Northern Ireland.  “I unequivocally condemn what he said,” he tweeted Monday.

Kerry Kennedy, RFK Jr.’s sister, also condemned the remarks in a statement issued by Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, her nonprofit activist organization.

“I strongly condemn my brother’s deplorable and untruthful remark last week about Covid being engineered for ethnic targeting,” Kerry Kennedy said.

RFK Jr.’s remarks, made during a New York City dinner and first reported by the New York Post, included the Democratic presidential candidate saying he did not know whether the virus was “deliberately targeted or not,” but that there were “papers out there that show the racial or ethnic differential and impact” on different groups.

“There is an argument that it is ethnically targeted. Covid-19 attacks certain races disproportionately,” he said.  “Covid-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”

--A tornado caused extensive damage to a Pfizer drug manufacturing site in Rocky Mount, N.C., on Wednesday, threatening critical supplies for hospitals across the country.

The company estimated that one-fourth of the injectable medications it supplies to U.S. hospitals were made at the Rocky Mount property, including drugs used during surgeries and other procedures to help block pain, keep patients sedated and fight infections.

The company has yet to disclose the extent of the storm’s impact, but the damage was worst at Pfizer’s warehouse.

A lot of these medications require careful production and handling to ensure sterility and there is no guarantee Pfizer can quickly shift production elsewhere.

*Late this afternoon, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said the tornado did not seem to have damaged the production facilities, just everything else.  There’s no power there, as I write.

--According to a report from the Council on Criminal Justice, a think tank, released this week, auto theft is skyrocketing, while violent crime is receding.

Motor vehicle thefts rose 33.5% in 32 cities during the first six months of the year from the same period last year.  Some police officials said two brands in particular are responsible for the spike…Kias and Hyundais, which are easy to steal.  The thefts of all other makes of automobiles have remained relatively flat.

Videos have spread on social media showing thieves how to steal Kia and Hyundai cars using a screwdriver and a USB charger.

Homicides, on the other hand, are down by 9.4% during the first six months of the year in 30 cities, including down 22% in Los Angeles, 11% in New York City and 7% in Chicago.

But even with the drop, homicides were still 24% higher than in the first six months of 2019, before the pandemic.

The FBI isn’t expected to release national crime figures for 2022 until later this year.  Murders rose 4% in 2021 after increasing nearly 30% in 2020, according to the agency’s most recent data.

--The weather…sucks….

Scientists have said a combination of climate change and El Nino are the major drivers of the extreme heat we are experiencing across large swaths of the globe.  The past three years have been dominated by the cooler La Nina pattern, though were still among the warmest ever.

The last time a strong El Nino was in full swing, in 2016, the world saw its hottest year on record, and so meteorologists expect that this El Nino, along with the warming from climate change, will set a new record for the planet.

Globally, sea temperatures hit new records for the months of May and June*, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.  “We’re in unprecedented territory,” said Michelle L’Heureux, a meteorologist with NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center.  This year’s El Nino could lead to global economic losses of $3 trillion, according to a study published last month in the journal Science, shrinking GDP as extreme weather decimates agricultural production, manufacturing, and helps spread disease.  Countries like Peru and the Philippines have committed funds and formed special teams to deal with potential disasters (think cyclones with the Philippines).  In the case of Peru, during the last strong El Nino, anchovy stocks off the coast crashed amid the surge of warm water.  And nearly a third of the corals on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef died.

*The Atlantic Ocean hit its highest temperatures since records began in 1850, according to England’s Meteorological Office, almost 3 degrees warmer than typical for summer.

But in the Atlantic, El Nino impedes the development of tropical storms due to changes in the wind, while the tropical cyclones in the Pacific get a boost.

Thursday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration confirmed in its monthly update that June was the planet’s warmest June since global temperature record-keeping began in 1850.  The agency also predicts unusually hot temperatures will occur in most of the United States, almost everywhere except the northern Great Plains, during August.

The first two weeks of July were likely the Earth’s warmest on human record, for any time of year, according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.

From The Economist: “The level of carbon dioxide, the most important long-lived greenhouse gas, as measured at Mauna Loa, a mountain peak in Hawaii, reached 424 parts per million in May, the highest it has been for over 3m years [million].  Methane and nitrous oxide, two other long-lived greenhouse gases, have also reached levels never before experienced by humans.”

According to Mexico’s health ministry, over 100 people have died in devastated northern Mexico from heat-related causes.

The death toll in South Korea’s flooding disaster is at 44 as I write, including 14 fatalities from a tunnel in the central city of Cheongju, where 17 vehicles including a bus were trapped in a flash flood that may have filled up the passageway.  Authorities have been questioned as to why traffic was allowed to flow through.  I can’t imagine anything more scary.

President Yoon Suk Yeol criticized the rescue effort and ordered a full mobilization to rescue any possible additional survivors, assist victims and conduct recovery works.

Bucks County, PA, saw 6-7 inches of rain in 45 minutes last Saturday causing a flash flood in the Washington Crossing area that killed five.  Four to five feet of water suddenly washed over a road with an estimated 11 cars swept away.

Mayfield, Kentucky, which was devastated by a Dec. 2021 tornado that killed 57 people, took the brunt of the worst 24-hour rainfall in state history, an unofficial record of 11.28 inches within a 24-hour period.

On the temperature front, Death Valley, California, hit 128F last weekend, shy of the record 130 (some say the record there, and for the planet, is 134F).  China’s “Death Valley,” in Xinjiang (Sanbao), reported a high of 52.2C (126F), the highest temp ever recorded in China.

Tuesday was Beijing’s 27th day of the year that it had recorded temperatures above 95F, a record. [Thursday was No. 29, but then the weather broke Friday.]

Rome hit 41.8C on Tuesday, 107F, breaking the previous record of 40.7C (105) set in June 2022.  There were highs of 45C (113F) in Sardinia.

Las Vegas tied its all-time high of 117F last Sunday.

Miami has had 40 consecutive days with a heat index of 100, with no immediate relief in sight.

And then there is Phoenix, AZ.  Tuesday it broke a 49-year-old record with the city’s 19th consecutive day of temperatures above 110 degrees (43C).  Today, Friday, is day 22 at that level.  The streak could hit 30 next week!  [Phoenix on Wednesday also had its all-time record warm low…97.]

El Paso, TX, has had a record 35 straight days over 100F.

But the most astounding heat factoid I saw this week was the National Weather Service in Las Vegas measuring the temperature on the asphalt there.  Try 157.9 degrees!

In the above-mentioned Quinnipiac poll, on the issue of climate change, two-thirds of Americans (67 percent) say they are either very concerned (42 percent) or somewhat concerned (25 percent) about climate change. Roughly one-third of Americans (32 percent) say they are either not so concerned (12 percent) or not concerned at all (20 percent).

Sixty percent think extreme weather events in the United States over the past few years are related to climate change, 34 percent do not think they are related to climate change.

---

Pray for the men and women of our armed forces…and all the fallen.

Pray for Ukraine.

God bless America.

---

Gold $1964
Oil $76.88…fourth straight up week

Regular Gas: $3.58; Diesel: $3.87 [$4.44 / $5.47 yr. ago]

Returns for the week 7/17-7/21

Dow Jones  +2.1%  [35227]
S&P 500  +0.7%  [4536]
S&P MidCap  +1.2%
Russell 2000  +1.5%
Nasdaq  -0.6%  [14032]

Returns for the period 1/1/23-7/21/23

Dow Jones  +6.3%
S&P 500  +18.2%
S&P MidCap  +11.3%
Russell 2000  +11.3%
Nasdaq   +34.1%

Bulls 54.2
Bears 18.0

Hang in there.

RIP, Tony Bennett…a giant who will be sorely missed, but his music lives forever.

Brian Trumbore

---