Stocks & Bonds Puke After Fed's Mester Drops 'Hawk Bomb’

by Tyler Durden Thursday, Feb 16, 2023 - 09:10 AM

After hot PPI, Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester rubbed salt in the wounds of the market this morning when said shesaw a compelling case for rolling out another 50 basis point hikeearlier this month and the US central bank has to be prepared to move interest rates higher if inflation remains stubbornly high.

“At this juncture, the incoming data have not changed my view that we will need to bring the fed funds rate above 5% and hold it there for some time,” Mester said Thursday in remarks prepared for an event organized by the Global Interdependence Center and the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee.

“Indeed, at our meeting two weeks ago, setting aside what financial market participants expected us to do, I saw a compelling economic case for a 50 basis-point increase, which would have brought the top of the target range to 5%.”

Additionally, as Bloomberg reports, Mester said inflation risks remain tilted to the upside because of the war between Russia and Ukraine, which adds more uncertainty for food and energy prices. China’s reopening could also increase demand for commodities, she said.

Mester, one of the more hawkish Fed policymakers, said those upside risks support the case for “overshooting” on policy.

“Over-tightening also has costs, but if inflation begins to move down faster than anticipated, we can react appropriately,” Mester said.

As a reminder, Mester's opinion matters since ifAustan Goolsbeeis appointed as Vice Chair (replacing Lael Brainard who is leaving to work at The White House), then Mester will become a 'temporary' voter until Goolsbee's replacement is chosen. This means The Fed 'voters' lose an uber-dove (Brainard) and get an uber-hawk (Mester) in the short-term.

The reaction was not a positive one as stocks tanked…

Treasury yields rose on her comments…

Of course, the STIRs market had already started to price a more aggressive (for longer) Fed…

And the odds of 3 more 25bps hikes continue to rise…

The dollar rallied on her hawkish comments…

So is this just stocks waking up to reality?

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/stocks-bonds-puke-after-feds-mester-drops-hawk-bomb

Total Number Of Americans Claiming Jobless Benefits Hovers Near One-Year Highs

by Tyler Durden Thursday, Feb 16, 2023 - 08:59 AM

While initial jobless claims continues to ignore the mass layoff announcements (due to severance etc for example), continuing claims ticked up modestly last week to1.696mm Americans…

Source: Bloomberg

After the prior week's surge in California's jobless claims, the last week saw a major decline, withOhio and Michiganseeing the biggest increase in claims last week…

The total number of Americans on some form of unemployment benefit continues to hover near one-year highs, over 1.9 million Americans…

https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/total-number-americans-claiming-jobless-benefits-hovers-near-one-year-highs

(So much for Bidan bragging/lying at SOTU employment claims going down! What has happened in Michigan lately, these are targeted states, imho)

Barclays Vows To Stop Financing Oil Sands Projects (Virtue Signaling Banks lie about lending)

by Tyler Durden

Thursday, Feb 16, 2023 - 06:30 AM

By Michael Kern of Oilprice.com,

Barclays on Wednesday said it would no longer provide financing to oil sands companies or oil sands projects and tightened conditions for thermal coal lending in an updated policy, which fell short of announcing overall pledges or targets in funding oil and gas.

In the annual report for 2022 published today, the UK-based banking giant vowed not to provide financing for any oil sands projects, compared to a previous policy which stated that it would only provide financing to oil sands exploration and production clients that had projects to materially reduce their overall emissions intensity.

In coal lending, Barclays now aims to phase out financing to clients engaged in coal-fired power generation in the EU and OECD by 2030, compared to phasing out such lending only to clients in the UK and the EU in the previously announced policy.

Commenting on Barclays’ new targets, Jeanne Martin, Head of Banking Programme at ShareAction, said in a statement, “Disappointingly, despite not having published a new oil and gas policy for the last three years, the bank’s fracking policy remains unchanged and there is no mention of new oil and gas. This means Barclays continues to be out of step with current minimum standards of ambition within the industry.”

Pressured by ESG trends and shareholders, other banks have already started to announce cuts to lending to the oil and gas industry.

At the end of last year, two prominent banks in Europe vowed to significantly cut exposure to the fossil fuels sector. Credit Agricole, the largest retail lender in France, said in early December that it targets to have no new financing granted for oil extraction projects by 2025, and to cut its oil exploration and production exposure by 25% by 2025 compared to 2020.

Banking giant HSBC announced in December that it would stop funding new oil and gas field developments and related infrastructure as part of a policy to support and finance a net-zero transition.

Following HSBC’s pledge, the pressure is now on U.S. banks to halt funding for new oil and gas projects, RAN and other climate community groups said.

U.S. banks are the biggest funders of fossil fuel projects in the worldand “are still refusing to make real commitments on climate,” the environmental groups added. (Kek because they are not stupid!)

https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/barclays-vows-stop-financing-oil-sands-projects

(No Way HSBC stops funding this projects, they just give the money to another bank to launder to the industry. They fund everything from drug & human trafficking to biolabs!)

Jack Posobiec @JackPosobiec

BREAKING:RUSSIA PLANNING MASSIVE OFFENSIVE AS 1-YEAR MARK APPROACHES

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/human-events-daily-with-jack-posobiec/id1585243541?i=1000599844296

7:27 PM · Feb 15, 2023·

https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1626015379200827392

>>18359558

Does anyone else think it's possible that the Bidan Admin sent in a "whistleblower" to feed Seymour Hersh the true story to get Russia to accelerate any fighting or plans?

Wow Lemon is losing it!

Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 @JackPosobiec

Don Lemon also called out Kamala Harris for not being African-American

"Jamaica's not America"

From Woj 🇵🇱

11:58 AM · Feb 16, 2023

https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1626264713255440384

Is the Band getting back together?That would be fun!!!!

https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1626301739128201221?s=20

What's the deal, Lemon is crashing and burning all their sacred cows, why?

Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸@JackPosobiec

Don Lemon: "Nikki Haley isn’t in her prime. Sorry, when a woman is considered to be in her prime in her 20s, and 30s, and maybe 40s"

From Townhall.com

11:13 AM · Feb 16, 2023

https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1626253329780047873?s=20

The state knew he wouldn't prosecute crime, but they also believe they have un-rigged elections! Send him and Fetterman back to the coal mines now!

https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1626295750429749250?s=20

>>18359601

Did he mean "They decided to burn it all down, with us inside" that he knew all the media are lying about the stolen election by Bidan and they sold their souls.

Pretty fascinating, what is he doing now? He didn't have some accident or something right? because I can't imagine how NBC felt about that sign off.

16 Feb, 2023 19:56

Kiev’s security chief gives his take on Soviet Union collapse

Ukrainians were behind the fall of the USSR, Aleksey Danilov claims, threatening that his country can now do the same to Russia

The collapse of the USSR in the early 1990s was the achievement of a handful of Ukrainians, the secretary for Kiev’s National Security and Defense Council, Aleksey Danilov, said on Thursday.

Speaking on air during a local telemarathon, Danilov declared he could “confidently say that it was we, the Ukrainians, who destroyed the Soviet Union.” According to him, of the 176 miners that participated in the first strike in the USSR in 1989, 94 were Ukrainians. Danilov noted that these strikes were the catalyst that caused the eventual collapse of the Union in December 1991.

The security official went on to claim that Kiev today was also capable of “destroying Russia as a state” and warned that, by the summer, the situation on the battlefield between Moscow and Kiev would be a “different picture.”

This isn’t the first time Danilov has issued such threats. Last December, he also called to destroy Russia and exclude any peaceful negotiations with Moscow. “They must simply be destroyed so that they, as a country, no longer exist within the borders in which they now exist,” Danilov said at a Kiev Security Forum. He also called Russians “barbarians” and stated it was “unbefitting” of the Ukrainian people to negotiate with them.

That same month, Danilov also warned that there would be “blasts” across Russia so long as Moscow continued to stick to its policies and refused to withdraw from territories Kiev claims as its own. In October, he also called for the eradication of the Russian language from Ukraine and urged to make English mandatory.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, has previously emphasized that the West tried to create an enclave in Ukraine meant to cause the collapse of Russia and disintegrate it into a number of petty states.

During a televised address in September, the president also stressed thatthe West had already openly taken credit for breaking up the Soviet Union, and that it now wanted to do the same by fostering hatred towards Russia in neighboring territories. Putin noted that this was one of the reasons Moscow ultimately decided to launch its military operation in Ukraine in late February of last year.

https://www.rt.com/russia/571602-ukrainians-caused-ussr-collapse/

I think these guys are fucking with a nation that’s had enough of the bullshit, he should be careful.

16 Feb, 2023 19:57

US increasingly sees Ukraine aid as ‘finite’ – media

Kiev no longer has a “blank check” from Washington, and support may wane as political opposition grows, Newsweek says

Support among US lawmakers for continuing aid to Ukraine is “fairly robust,” but as the conflict with Russia drags on and the 2024 election approaches, Washington’s backing for Kiev may waver, Newsweek reported on Wednesday.

Members of Congress increasingly view Ukraine aid as “finite,” and more and more of their constituents believe the US is giving too much to Kiev, the media outlet said. “There has been a decline in the share of Americans who see the war as a direct threat to US national security,” University of London professor Rob Singh told Newsweek.

Even as President Joe Biden and members of his administration continue to publicly pledge support “as long as it takes” for Ukraine to win the conflict, US officials are emphasizing to Ukraine’s leaders in private that “we can’t do anything and everything forever,” the Washington Post reported earlier this week. Newsweek cited the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank, as saying US officials have also signaled to Kiev that Western security aid is “finite.”

The shift in mood came after Republicans won control of the House of Representatives in November’s midterm elections. The victory came after Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, now House speaker, said in October that the US would no longer give a “blank check” to Ukraine if his party won House control.

Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida last week introduced a resolution, co-signed by ten of his colleagues, calling for the US to suspend its aid to Ukraine and urge Kiev and Moscow to negotiate a peace deal. Such opposition will make it tougher for strong aid packages to get through Congress, Singh said. He added that the issue will likely become more divisive as former President Donald Trump and other US presidential candidates debate Biden’s aid policy.

Such military aid can never be infinite, Kings College London professor Michael Clarke told Newsweek. “These present indications of potential reluctance to continue are really only expressions of what is existentially true – that Ukraine must not just keep fighting this year but come up with some decisive shift on the battlefield that somehow shifts the dynamic clearly in its favor.”

https://www.rt.com/news/571607-us-lawmakers-see-ukraine-aid-as-finite/

Why is the Admin releasing these messages, do they really believe this? Take Russia off guard? It won’t work.

>>18359503

He's got his billions over there, so he's saying that for a head fake, he has to get the money out

>>18359464

Excellent article andnotable

The view from inside

Put yourself for a moment in the position of people like FBI director Christopher Wray, or his predecessor, James Comey. Looking out upon Trump’s foreign policy vandalism, you would feel deep concern. If, like the majority of DC elites, you see American global leadership as fundamentally moral, even vital and indispensable, then Trump’s brazen attacks upon it are extremely dangerous. From such a vantage point, the truly responsible thing to do would be to sabotage Trump’s policy, his legitimacy, his base, and the possibility of his reelection.

Worse yet, Trump is a demagogue. He has created a grassroots movement of deeply devoted followers: the America First movement that subscribes to his Make America Great Again, or MAGA, slogan. They also demand containment; their neo-isolationist politics need to be discredited lest they spread and become mainstream.

The FBI and the CIA have illegally intervened in domestic politics, historically by targeting left-wing social movements. We know they infiltrated Trump’s 2016 campaign, then worked to paint him as a Russian puppet throughout his presidency.Are we to believe that the intelligence agencies would not and could not have intervened to prevent the reelection of Donald Trump?Or that they would not have attempted to entrap, then hound and severely punish the MAGA that that rioted for several hours at the US Capitol on January 6th 2021? Such a proposition strikes me as ridiculous. Yet, many of my left-wing friends refuse to explore the mounting evidence suggesting that such agencies moved against Trump and his base because they cannot see why the intelligence agencies might have pressing reasons to do so.

But look abroad. Trump threatened the entire system of US global hegemony. He threatened it for different reasons and in different ways than might grassroots, socialist, anti-imperialists,but he threatened US empire nonetheless.

https://thegrayzone.com/2023/02/15/trump-empire-they-hated-him/

>>18359464

some of the funny quotes from this article:

Trump treated powerful allies as poorly as he treated subcontractors during his real estate days. Recall the G-7 summit of 2018: Trump arrived late, left early, and refused to sign a joint communiqué reaffirming the G-7’s commitment to a “rules based international order.” When then-German Prime Minister Angela Merkel pressured him to sign, Trump took two Starburst candies from his pocket, tossed them across the conference table and sneered, “Here, Angela, don’t say I never give you anything.”

Trump regularly demeaned and insulted his foreign policy team. In a conversation that included the Irish Prime Minister, Trump called across the room to his National Security Adviser, the dementedly bellicose John Bolton, “John, is Ireland one of those countries you want to invade?” In 2019, Trump unceremoniously fired Bolton by tweet.

Trump’s first Defense Secretary, Jim “Mad Dog” Mathis, openly opposed most of the administration’s foreign policy moves.Displeased, Trump started calling Mathis “Moderate Dog.” In January 2019, when Trump ordered US troops withdrawn from Syria, Moderate Dog resigned.

Not so funny sabotage

Those who dismiss Trump’s treaty with the Taliban do not understand how the US withdrawal from Afghanistan unfolded. While thirteen American soldiers were killed in an Islamic State suicide bombing at the gates of the Kabul airport and the United States left vast amounts of hardware such as Humvees and helicopters – in large part because the Pentagon refused to cooperate until it was too late – had the Trump Administration not reached an agreement with the Taliban, the US withdrawal would have been a desperate fight to escape.