Economy
Top Putin Aide Predicts “Global Famine” by the End of This Year
Humanitarian disaster looming.
A top aide to Vladimir Putin has predicted a “global famine” that will occur before the end of the year as a result of worldwide grain shortages caused by the war in Ukraine.
Maksim Oreshkin asserts that the United States’ attempt to takeover Ukraine’s grain reserves is going to lead to a humanitarian disaster.
“It is important that in the conditions, for example, of a global famine that will occur closer to autumn, by the end of this year all over the world, Russia should not suffer, but be fully provided with food,” Oreshkin said.
Oreshkin blamed inflation caused by the Federal Reserve overprinting the dollar since 2020 as one of the causes, but also zeroed in on the Biden’s administration’s more recent actions in Ukraine.
“In fact, what America is trying to do with Ukraine now is to take out the grain reserves that Ukraine currently has in its possession – just another action that dooms Ukraine to serious humanitarian problems, but also dooms the global community to having big problems with hunger,” he warned.
Russia and Ukraine account for almost a third of the world’s wheat exports, with sanctions on Russia and the war in Ukraine having led to a 60 per cent price surge so far this year.
As we previously highlighted, Italian League party leader Matteo Salvini has warned that if the war in Ukraine is not brought to a conclusion by the end of this month, chronic food shortages will cause an immigration wave that will lead to 20 million African migrants trying to enter Europe.
“Significant hunger is expected on the African continent, which will be a humanitarian, then a social, and finally an Italian problem,” said Salvini.
“Without peace there will be famine in the autumn and 20 million Africans will be ready to go,” he added.
British TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson, who owns a farm which was the basis for his hit Amazon Prime show Clarkson’s Farm, warned in a Sunday Times piece that farmers in the UK are letting their fields go fallow.
“The problem is that next year many farmers will decide that, because of the costs involved, they’ll use less fertiliser,” he wrote. “Some will doubtless try to use none at all. Others will try to use cardboard or lawn clippings or faeces instead. Either way they will produce less food. Some farmers — I know of three in my area alone — have already decided to fallow their fields next year and grow nothing at all.”
“And this is not just happening in the UK. It’s a global phenomenon and it could well result in there being maybe 20 per cent less food in the shops than is necessary. That’s bad. And then it gets worse because, between them, Russia and Ukraine grow more than a quarter of global wheat exports.”
Clarkson fears that the world is “hurtling down a well-watered slide into the pit of hunger, misery and death.”
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At the start of May we explained that it’s not just the Fed’s rate hikes that are behind the nascent regional bank crisis(because with Fed Funds rate at 5.25% and both T-Bills and money market funds offering similar yields, there is no way small banks can compete with these returns, prompting a bank jog (which periodically turns to a sprint) and deposit flight from both checking and saving accounts).
We said that the Fed’s ongoing QT is a just as pernicious threat to the viability of small/regional banks because with every dollar drained from the system as part of the Fed’s quantitative tightening, a matching deposit dollar is also destroyed, to wit:
Under an ample reserves framework, virtually all deposits are created by the Fed.
That’s why banks were forced to load up on low-yielding securities during 2000-2001 and are now getting crushed as yields soar and fixed income/loan prices plunge.
It also means that under QT as Fed reserves shrink, deposits must follow: as such deposits are either forced to shift into Bills/TSYs or are destroyed (bank failures).
Thus, the bank crisis is an inevitable side effect of Fed tightening.
Now, by now everyone knows that when it comes to banks failing (and capitalizing on it) few are as experienced as JP Morgan, aka JP Mega…
… aka JP More-gain, which now has more than 13% of the nation’s deposits and 21% of all credit card spending: in other words, there has never been a bank that is more systematically important than JPMore-gain… and with every small bank failure, Jamie Dimon’s goliath is only getting bigger. Which is why we found it curious that none other than Jamie Dimon confirmed what we said three weeks ago during JPM’s Investor Day on Monday.
This is what the billionaire CEO said:
We haven’t been through Quantitative Tightening. So we really don’t know what’s going to happen to deposits at all [ZH; actually we do: deposits will shrink dollar for dollar alongside reserves]. And that’s why I’ve been quite concerned about that. I’m probably more concerned about quantitative tightening with anybody in this room.
We’ve never had QT before. It just started, okay? And you see huge distortions in the marketplace already. We’ve never had the Fed in the market like this with that RRP program that Jeremy mentioned ever. They have $2.3 trillion basically lent out to money funds. And I don’t know the full effect of that. And obviously, that’s a direct deduction from deposits are rolling out it made sense to do.
So I think people should build into their mindset that they may have to move deposit beta more than they think and manage that. So I mean, if I was any bank or any company, I’d be saying, can you handle higher interest rates and surprise in deposits, etc?
And this is how JPM itself shows the impact of the shrinking Fed balance sheet and TGA/RRP liquidity drains soak up commercial bank deposits.
By the way, “deposit beta”, as Jamie calls it, for those unfamilliar is a polite way of saying bank run, which is a less polite way of saying bank failure. As for Dimon’s rhetorical last question, the answer is a resounding no, or so JPM’s shareholders would like because for the second time in a month, JPM hiked its Net Interest Margin forecast, this time courtesy of the bank’s FDIC/taxpayer-funded gift in the form of First Republic Bank.
According to a slide in the bank’s Investor Day presentation, JPMorgan will gain an even bigger benefit from rising interest rates because of its “purchase” of First Republic Bank. We put purchase in quotes because in reality it was a gift by the FDIC, which gave JPM all the good parts of the collapsed California bank, while taxpayers were left holding the nuclear waste.
The biggest US bank raised its guidance for net interest income this year to $84 billion up from a previous forecast of $81 billion, according to an Investor Day presentation. The reason: the failure of First Republic which directly boosted JPM’s top line by billions!
In other words, as other banks fail, JPM prospers: here is a history of JPM’s Net Interest Income courtesy of Bloomberg. It will only keep rising…
… as more banks fail.
It is no surprise then that it is Jamie’s sincerest wish for rates to keep rising…
… after all that’s the surest way for John Pierpont’s bank – which still pays 0.01% interest on most of its deposits – to once again become bigger than the US and to finally fulfill the reason behind creation of the Federal Reserves.
This post was originally published at Zero HedgeEconomy
Debt Ceiling Negotiations Crumble, McCarthy And Biden To Hold Sunday Call As Impasse Intensifies
While Warren Buffett’s insights on the economy are traditionally cheerful and uplifting – usually hitting at time of peak pessimism in the form of self-serving NYT op-eds or CNBC vignettes (and usually around the time the Omaha billionaire knows that the government will backstop his TBTF investments, unlike those of pretty much anyone else), on Saturday the head of Berkshire Hathaway had a far more downbeat and gloomy prediction for his own businesses – and the broader economy in general – the good times may be over.
Speaking at Berkshire’s annual general meeting in Omaha, Nebraska, the billionaire investor said he expects earnings at the majority of the conglomerate’s operations to fall this year as the coming economic downturn slows corporate activity further. He made his pessimistic comments even as Berkshire posted an almost 13% gain in operating earnings to $8.07 billion for the first quarter, up from $7.04 billion a year ago.
“The majority of our businesses will report lower earnings this year than last year,” Buffett, 92, said, before crowds of thousands at the event on Saturday according to Bloomberg. During the last six months or so, the “incredible period” for the US economy has been coming to an end, he said.
As Bloomberg notes Berkshire is often viewed as a proxy for economic health owing to the expansive nature of its businesses ranging from railroad to electric utilities and retail. Buffett himself has said Berkshire owes its success to the incredible growth of the US economy over the decades, but his prediction for a slowdown at his firms comes as upheaval at regional banks threatens to curtail lending as inflation and higher rates continue to bite.
Buffett’s long-time business partner Charlie Munger, 99, who joined him on stage, said the more-difficult economic environment will also make it harder for value investors, who typically buy stocks that look cheap compared to the intrinsic value of the businesses.
“Get used to making less,” Munger said.
Despite the broader pessimism, Buffett said he expects earnings at its insurance underwriting operations — which are less correlated to business activity — to improve this year. Berkshire already reported higher earnings at those businesses including auto-insurer Geico, which swung to profitability following six quarters of losses.
Geico posted $703 million in earnings as higher average premiums and lower advertising spending contributed to the gain even as claim frequencies fell, Berkshire said in a statement reporting its earnings Saturday. That revival follows a difficult period for the underwriting business as inflation took its toll on the cost of materials and labor.
Geico has been facing particular pressure from rivals including Progressive, which Buffett has called “well-run,” and Allstate which had long used telematics programs to track drivers and encourage better behavior before Geico introduced the offering. Geico’s profit also helped Berkshire’s insurance underwriting businesses deliver $911 million in profit compared with $167 million a year earlier.
Berkshire previously said it expected Geico to return to operating profitability in 2023, after securing premium rate increases. Still, Geico remains an issue for Berkshire, with top line growth in the quarter of less than 1% that “significantly lags peers,” CFRA analyst Cathy Seifert said.
“I suspect rate hikes being put through to offset claim cost inflation is being met with policy cancellations,” she said. “While the loss of unprofitable policies is not always a bad thing- that’s not usually the policies — and policyholders — that leave.”
Other parts of the conglomerate took a bigger hit, with after-tax earnings from Berkshire Hathaway Energy falling 46.3% from the same time last year amid “lower earnings from the US regulated utilities, other energy businesses and real estate brokerage businesses.” Railroad results were also weaker than expected due to a fall in freight volumes and higher operating expenses, according to Edward Jones analyst Jim Shanahan.
But at one of Berkshire’s best known businesses, Brooks Running Co., Chief Executive Officer Jim Weber was skeptical of a steep consumer downturn.
“With unemployment being so low, it’s hard to be believing we’re going to fall off a cliff into a recession at the consumer level,” Weber said in an interview on Friday ahead of the meeting. “I wonder if this is going to be an asset-value recession.”
Among other topics discussed on Saturday were Buffett’s succession, the banking crisis, the US debt ceiling crisis, the company’s investment in Occidental, Chna’s upcoming invasion of Taiwan and more:
- Succession planning: Buffett named Greg Abel, 60, as heir apparent in 2021, and the vice chair for non-insurance operations has had a more pronounced presence ever since. On Saturday, Buffett reaffirmed he was “100% comfortable” with the decision and even indicated a largely business-as-usual transition, for whenever that could be. “Greg understands capital allocation as well as I do. That’s lucky for us,” Buffett said at the meeting in Omaha, Nebraska. “He will make those decisions, I think, very much in the same framework as I would make them. We have laid out that framework now for 30 years.”
- Occidental control: One analyst called it the biggest announcement of the day: Berkshire won’t make an offer for full control of Occidental Petroleum Corp., the energy firm it has spent months boosting its wagers on. The comment by Buffett likely helped temper speculation that Berkshire is seeking to own Occidental after winning approval from US regulators last year to acquire as much as 50% of the firm. Buffett didn’t rule out buying more stock of the Houston-based firm, adding it may — or may not — seek further purchases.
- Banking Turmoil: Buffett and Munger were so sure they’d be questions about the recent banking turmoil that they jokily brought placards bearing the accounting classifications spotlighted during the upheaval. One was labeled “available for sale,” while the other read “held to maturity.” Striking a more serious note, Buffett faulted the executives in charge of the failed banks, arguing they should be held accountable for mistakes that were hiding in “plain sight.” He also called out “messed up” incentives in banking regulation, as well as poor messaging by regulators, politicians and the press to the American public about the upheaval. Buffett pointed to First Republic Bank, the insolvent bank which last weekend was acquired by JPMorgan after it collapsed after offering jumbo, non-government-backed mortgages at fixed rates that were interest-only for 10 years in some cases — which Buffett called “a crazy proposition.”… “It was doing it in plain sight and the world ignored it ‘til it blew up,” Buffett said.
- Debt Ceiling: As lawmakers race to resolve a standoff around the US debt ceiling, Buffett said he couldn’t see how Washington would allow the US to default on its debt, an outcome that would tip the financial system into turmoil. Investors and politicians are zeroing in on whether or not the US government can avoid crashing into its statutory debt ceiling and a potentially catastrophic technical default that could follow. Despite the impasse, Buffett reiterated his belief in America as an “incredible society” with “everything going for us.” Given the choice, he would still want to be born in the US, he said.
- Geopolitics, Taiwan: In Q4 Buffett slashed his holding of Taiwan Semi just months after disclosing a major stake in a quick reversal that spooked investors. Buffett said Saturday the company was one of the best managed and most important in the world, but that he didn’t like the location — a reference to Taiwan amid rising tensions between the island and China. Buffett and Munger emphasized the need for smooth relations between the US and China and urged increased trade. While the two will be competitive, they will always need to judge “how far you can push the other guy without them reacting wrong,” Buffett said.
Separately, Berkshire topped up its cash pile, ending the quarter with $130.6 billion, a $2 billion increase from the $128.6 billion at the end of the year. This means that Berkshire stands to make a bonanza from interest income as the Fed keeps hiking rates: “Our investment income is going to be a lot larger this year than last year, and that’s built in,” Buffett said at the annual meeting.
The company was also a net seller of equities for the second quarter in a row, pocketing $10.4 billion in net stock sales ($13.3 billion gross) after deducting purchases of $2.9 billion.
Finally, Berkshire bought back $4.4 billion of stock, an increase from the same period last year, as Bekrshire confronted turbulent markets that offered fewer of the blockbuster deals he’s renowned for. Berkshire has turned toward buybacks more often as valuations in public markets had made it more challenging for Buffett to identify promising acquisitions.
