European Union foreign ministers signed off on Monday on a military assistance mission to train 15,000 Ukrainian personnel in various member states. “Today we step up our support to Ukraine to defend itself from Russia’s illegal aggression. The EU Military Assistance Mission will train the Ukrainian Armed Forces so they can continue their courageous fight,” said the EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrell in a statement. The plans would mean both Ukrainian recruits and specialised personnel would receive training on EU soil over the coming two years. The idea for the EU Military Assistance Mission was first floated by the bloc’s High Representative Josep Borrell in a non-paper released in August following a request from Ukraine. It is loosely based on a proposal pre-dating Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to provide high-level training within the country’s border which never came to fruition.

An EU diplomat described the plan as “radically new and very substantial”.

Several EU countries are already providing training to Ukrainian forces on a bilateral basis although this tends to be limited to ensuring they can operate the military equipment these member states have provided the country to defend itself against Russian forces. The EU military assistance is set to broaden the scope of the training with a clear command structure that coordinates supply and demand between Ukrainians and EU countries as well as with other partners and allies already providing Ukraine’s troops with training including Canada, the UK and the US. Borrell told reporters in Luxembourg on Monday morning that “it’s clear (that if) the European Union armies pull together all their capacities, they can do much more than each one of their side.” “I’m strongly convinced that (by) putting together the capacities of the European armies we can offer a much better product,” he added. The operational headquarters of the mission will be within the European External Action Service (EEAS) in Brussels and the mission will be open to the participation of third states, the Council’s statement also read.  It is still unclear which EU states will offer personnel, instructors and training modules as well as how and from where the Ukrainian troops enter and leave the EU.

• Ukraine war: Russian army will be ‘annihilated’ if it launches a nuclear attack, warns Josep Borrell
• Fifteen European countries unite to boost air defence capabilities

France’s Armies Minister, Sebastien Lecornu, meanwhile announced over the weekend that the country will train some 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers. “Ireland has niche skill sets that I think can be useful in terms of that training, particularly around, you know, managing explosives, counter IED,” Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said on Monday morning. “There are, unfortunately, many, many thousands of landmines placed across Ukraine, which I think Ireland, I hope Ireland can be part of helping to train Ukrainian military to deal with safely, he added. The Hungarian government, which has been calling for sanctions against Russia to be scrapped and has struck a deal with Gazprom to receive more Russian gas, has confirmed that it will not offer any training to Ukrainian troops. “Hungary was the only one not to vote on this proposal. It used the option of constructive abstention,” Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó told reporters, adding: “We don’t participate in this training mission, we don’t send trainers, we don’t contribute to the costs of the operation.” Austria, which has a policy of military neutrality, is also not expected to take part. A senior EU official said that the mission is needs-based and that the type of training offered will adapt as the conflict evolves. The number of Ukrainian troops receiving training could also increase. The UK, for instance, has already trained 10,000 Ukrainian troops since the beginning of the Russian invasion on 24 February and is providing air bases for Canada to offer its own training to another 10,000 Ukrainian troops. US training is provided in Germany.  “We are probably, unfortunately, in the long haul when it comes to the war against Russia to stop Putin’s aggression against Ukraine. Therefore, we need also long-term planning and training,” Danish Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod told reporters. “It’s historical for us,” he added, citing the June 1 referendum in Denmark which abolished the country’s defence opt-out. The military assistance mission is expected to cost up around €106 million over two years.  Ministers also approved the disbursement of the sixth tranche of funds from the European Peace Facility (EPF). The additional €500 million will take the total amount given to Ukraine through the EPF — with which Kyiv procures weapons — to €3.1 billion. NN: Backing into WWIII. Really? NATO is not at war with Russia. Of course they are…. This war is escalating by the day. Remember their are 4 countries with the nuclear capacity to annihilate mankind. Classified studies show that any country the can unleash over 200 large scale nuclear weapons can end all life on the planet. Their are 4 countries that meet this criteria. Of those 4 nuclear powers 3 are actively involved in the Ukraine war aligned against Russia. And one of them China supports Russia. Global Warming will not annihilate mankind. Nuclear war will.

In order of this capacity.

1.US 9,400

2. Russia 13,000

3. France 300

4. China  240…. In reality they have built twice that number

 

Institutional investors were souring on cryptocurrencies even before this week. The sudden downfall of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX.com may have permanently damaged their prospects of being included in mainstream portfolios. While plenty of industry die-hards remain, many professional money managers are saying the case for crypto as a portfolio diversifier or digital gold has been debunked. The losses are too great and the market structure is too risky, they say.  “What’s become clear is it will not find a home in institutional asset allocation,” said Hani Redha, a multi-asset portfolio manager at Pinebridge Investments in London. “There was a period when it was being considered as a potential asset class that every investor should have in their strategic asset allocation and that’s off the table entirely.”

The FTX collapse is “raising questions on the viability of the crypto ecosystem,” said Salman Ahmed, chief investment strategist at Fidelity International, which oversees $646 billion from London. “It was always tough to make a case for including crypto, but the set up has come under more pressure.” His firm launched an Bitcoin exchange-traded product in February, aimed at professional European investors. It has lost about 55% since inception.  Just a year ago, crypto mania was at its height and Bitcoin had topped $67,000. In January, Bridgewater estimated that 5% of Bitcoin was held by institutional-level investors. Frothy predictions were everywhere back then. JPMorgan Chase & Co. strategist Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou wrote Bitcoin could theoretically reach $146,000 in the long-term by crowding out gold. A survey by PWC from April found that 42% of crypto hedge funds were predicting Bitcoin to trade between $75,000 and $100,000 by the end of 2022.

FTX Empire Goes Bankrupt in Sudden Fall of Bankman-Fried Bankman-Fried’s Assets Plummet From $16 Billion to Zero in Days Scaramucci Says SkyBridge Is Trying to Buy Back Stake from FTX Bankman-Fried’s ‘Effective Altruism’ Implodes With His Fortune NN: they really fucke up this time…. Look out below!

‘Central banks came too late to the game’ to fight inflation, says Jamie Dimon

TOKYO — Conditions for an economic storm, including monetary tightening, inflation and the war in Ukraine, have all fallen into place, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon told Nikkei, warning that the world could see more “surprises” like the near meltdown of U.K. pension funds. Dimon had previously predicted an economic “hurricane” in June, challenging the more bullish outlook held by other Wall Street executives at the time. “The storm I was talking about, or the potential storm, includes inflation, higher rates, global tightening, quantitative tightening and the effect of the war on the global economy — particularly oil prices, food prices, supply chain issues, etc.,” he said. “Those things have all kind of happened.” “These are very serious issues we have had to deal with” and “we still don’t know what the outcome will be,” he said. The U.S. Federal Reserve raised interest rates by 0.75 point for the fourth straight time October. But “central banks came too late to the game” because they saw inflation as a temporary phenomenon, Dimon said. “It looks like the United States will go to close to 5%” by the end of the year then take a pause, he said, predicting that “hopefully inflation will be coming down” by then. But he also pointed to factors that could lead the Fed to continue raising rates. “There are plentiful jobs. Wages are going up,” he said. “Usually what happens is that the unemployment rate goes up a little bit, and the jobs are not as plentiful as before, and that reduces wage inflation. You haven’t quite seen that yet.” Barring major economic impacts from the Ukraine war, the economy is likely headed into a “mild recession,” he said. NN: Inflation has not been put to bed yet… Far from it. Below is what is referred to as the Feds wage inflation index……..

The Atlanta Fed’s Wage Growth Tracker

The Atlanta Fed’s Wage Growth Tracker (a three-month average of median wage growth) was 6.4 percent in October, similar to September’s reading of 6.3 percent. For people who changed jobs, the Tracker in October was 7.6 percent, compared to 7.9 percent in September.

• FTX announced it was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy along with Alameda Research and affiliated companies.
• Sam Bankman-Fried resigned from his role as CEO of FTX, though he will remain to assist an orderly transition.
• The new CEO, John J. Ray III, previously was brought in by Enron to clean up its finances.

It’s still a bear market and the inverted yield curve is concerning, says Carl Icahn

Jonathan Mondillo, abrdn head of North American fixed income, says they still expect the Federal Reserve to keep raising rates.

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Financial investors might be underestimating the “persistence of inflation”, the European Central Bank’s vice-president Luis de Guindos said on Friday as he listed possible risks to financial stability. He added there needed to be a clear deceleration in headline and underlying inflation for expectations about future ECB interest rate hikes to stabilise.  NN: I am selling the shit out of this crap.

SINGAPORE (Reuters) -Oil prices jumped more than 2% on Friday after health authorities in China, the top global crude importer, eased some of the country’s heavy COVID curbs. Brent crude futures rose $2.39, or 2.6%, to $96.06 a barrel by 0745 GMT, extending a 1.1% rise in the previous session. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures gained $2.24, or 2.6%, to $88.71 a barrel, after climbing 0.8% in the previous session. The easing curbs include shortening quarantine times for close contacts of cases and inbound travellers by two days, as well as eliminating a penalty on airlines for bringing in infected passengers. “Oil traders are applauding the news. The key for oil markets is to continue watching developments closely for this and further marginal positive changes in the government’s zero-COVID stance,” said Stephen Innes, managing partner at SPI Asset Management. The move towards liberalising the COVID-zero policy will provide a springboard for oil markets, given that lockdowns hurt mobility and oil prices more than economic activity, he said. Prices also picked up on Friday after milder-than-expected U.S. inflation data reinforced hopes that the Federal Reserve would slow down rate increases, boosting chances of a soft landing for the world’s biggest economy. [MKTS/GLOB] Still, the benchmark oil contracts were headed for weekly declines of more than 1% due to rising U.S. oil inventories, and lingering fears over capped fuel demand in China amid an uptick in daily COVID cases. China’s COVID-19 case load soared to its highest since the lockdown in Shanghai earlier this year. Both Beijing and Zhengzhou reported record daily cases.Besides work-from-home orders reducing mobility and fuel demand, travel across China remained subdued as people wanted to avoid the risk of being caught up in quarantine, ANZ Research analysts said in a note. NN: after the peoples congress things will change. The communist central party wanted to make sure COVID did not rain on their parade. That’s over. They will open up… But they must save face…. Understand that and you will see China the worlds biggest oil importer is back in the game. Thirstier  then ever. I love our oil trade!!

Cryptocurrencies extended their slide for a second day Wednesday as the market absorbed the potential collapse of popular crypto exchange FTX. Prices were pressured to start the day and plunged by late afternoon as Binance, the largest global exchange by volume, abandoned plans to acquire Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX after a due diligence exam and recent reports of mishandled customer funds and alleged U.S. agency investigations of FTX. Bitcoin fell 12% before 4:30 p.m. ET to just under $16,000, hitting a low not seen since November 2020, according to Coin Metrics. It reached its all-time high of $68,982.20 one year ago Thursday. Meanwhile, ether tumbled 14%, to $1,128.87. The Bankman-Fried empire quickly unraveled after a report last week showed a large part of the balance sheet at Alameda Research, the trading company where Bankman-Fried was also CEO, had been concentrated in FTX Token (FTT), the native token of the FTX trading platform. After some light sparring on Twitter with Bankman-Fried, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao announced his company was offloading the FTT on its books, leading to a run on the popular FTX exchange and a liquidity crisis. FTX counts some of the biggest names in finance — including SoftBank, BlackRock, Tiger Global, Thoma Bravo, Sequoia and Paradigm — among its investors. FTT slumped another 63% Wednesday, after plunging more than 75% the day before. The Solana token also continued to fall. It was last down 45%, after dropping more than 26% Tuesday. Alameda Research, the trading firm owned by Sam Bankman-Fried, who also runs FTX, was an early backer of the Solana project. “Market factors such as providing SOL token liquidity as well as support for Solana ecosystem projects on FTX exchange has been an important driver for Solana’s success,” Bernstein’s Gautam Chhugani said in a note Wednesday. “This is an adverse event for the Solana ecosystem in the short run. Further, given FTX/Alameda’s balance sheet situation, there may be near term pressure on its Solana holdings, as the situation resolves.” The bombshell will set the crypto industry back. Analysts foresee further regulatory scrutiny of offshore exchanges, where the majority of crypto derivatives trading takes place. It’s also unclear how much financial contagion will spill into the rest of the market. Additionally, Bankman-Fried, known as SBF, had recently been praised as a “white knight” in the industry, coming to the rescue of crypto service firms such as BlockFi and Voyager that succumbed to the crypto contagion last spring. For newcomers to the crypto market, SBF and FTX became the faces of the industry, securing the naming rights to the Miami Heat basketball team’s stadium last year, bringing on Tom Brady and Giselle Bündchen as company ambassadors, and becoming a megadonor to Democratic politics. “Given the public-facing nature of FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and the size of FTX, we believe that the week’s events could cause some loss of consumer confidence in the crypto industry, beyond that seen in the aftermath of the 3AC, Celsius, and Voyager events that took place earlier this year,” especially if panic spreads and crypto prices keep dropping, KBW analysts said in a note Tuesday. “It may take time for customers to regain trust in the industry, broadly speaking (and we think regulation could help this).”  NN:

Bankman-Fried (FRYED)… Crypto’s white knight lost 94% of his wealth in a single day

Sam Bankman-Fried, the crypto entrepreneur known for providing a financial lifeline to struggling firms in the industry, is now in need of a bailout himself.  Bankman-Fried, widely known as SBF, started this week firmly in the realm of billionaires, with an estimated fortune of more than $15 billion, according the Bloomberg Billionaire Index. After the collapse of his crypto exchange, FTX, in a matter of days he may find himself out of the club. Carnage in crypto markets grows as doubts emerge over FTX bailout His most valuable assets were his stakes in FTX, the crypto exchange he founded, and Alameda, a crypto trading house. The Bloomberg index assumes that SBF and all other investors in the exchange will be wiped out, and that FTX and Alameda will become suddenly worthless if they are bailed out by Binance. (Terms of that deal weren’t known, and multiple reports on Wednesday suggested Binance was poised to back out of the deal.) That would leaves SBF’s net worth at about $1 billion — a 94% collapse and the biggest one-day loss by a person tracked by the index.   NN: I have watched this boy wonder of cryptocurrencies make the bizz shows rounds as the crypto currencies went into meltdown. I laughed my ass off  as the “hero” offered to bail out his associates. I new all along he was trying to save his cross trades. I have been watching as his empire  has vaporized nearly overnight, leaving depositors scrambling and investigators taking a look. The fun part is his “investors”  are mainly institutional trillion dollar funds that have far more money and algorithms then brains

Energy costs for households across Europe nearly doubled compared to a year ago, new data has revealed. Gas bills have soared 111% and electricity ones 69%, according to the latest figures from the Household Energy Price Index.  Averaged, these two figures mean an energy bill increase of 90% — or nearly double — compared to October 2021.   The research, published on Monday by Energie-Control Austria, the Hungarian Energy and Public Utility Regulatory Authority (MEKH) and VaasaETT, highlights the bruising impact of the Ukraine war on Europe, which has triggered a cost of living crisis and plunged many economies into recession. Pinpointing how the Russian invasion impacted energy prices, the authors said it had caused “uncertainty over energy security” and “reduced deliveries of Russian gas or [the] complete termination of supply”. Gas bills have soared 111% and electricity ones 69%, according to the latest figures from the Household Energy Price Index.

The figures mean an energy bill increase of 90% — or nearly double — compared to October 2021.  In Germany they are paying over .30 cents Euro per kilowatt.

The research, published on Monday by Energie-Control Austria, the Hungarian Energy and Public Utility Regulatory Authority (MEKH) and VaasaETT, highlights the bruising impact of the Ukraine war on Europe, which has triggered a cost of living crisis and plunged many economies into recession. Pinpointing how the Russian invasion impacted energy prices, the authors said it had caused “uncertainty over energy security” and “reduced deliveries of Russian gas or [the] complete termination of supply”.  Russia reduced and eventually halted Nord Stream gas supplies to Europe in September, after western countries sanctioned Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine, with the US accusing Russia of “weaponising energy”.  The Household Energy Price Index report looked at gas and electricity prices from 2009 to October 2022 in 33 European countries — including EU member states as well as Montenegro, Norway, Serbia, Ukraine, the UK and Switzerland. It found that recent energy price spikes followed record-breaking increases in 2021 caused by higher demand as people and businesses recovered from the COVID pandemic. “Significantly higher [energy prices] compared to one year ago … can be attributed to a combination of factors, such as increased demand connected to post-pandemic economic recovery and extraordinary weather conditions, the record-high prices for natural gas, and high CO2 emissions allowances,” wrote the authors. NN: AT 30 to 40 cents a kilowatt electricity rapidly becomes for the masses a more unaffordable luxury as the price rises. And in 3rd world shit holes its beyond reach. And only exasperates the pollution problem. Cooking with gas is a hell of a lot cleaner then wood or charcoal. This ends in disaster.