"Old Macdonald Had a Drone: Inside Farming’s Tech Boom"

One more post on agriculture. But this one is a few millennia past the neolithic and has drones and machine learning but somehow omits the laser weedkillers that can scorch 200,000 of the intrusive competitors per hour. There are also autonomous laser blasters that can take care of 100,000 per hour.

From Canada's The Walrus, April 22:

Farmers are struggling to compete against larger operations. Is automation the answer?

The MacLellans can pinpoint the moment their farm in Kensington, Prince Edward Island, underwent a significant change: spring 2009. That’s when the family tractors were outfitted with GPS. “You can take someone with less experience, throw them in the tractor, and the tractor drives itself,” says Bevin MacLellan.

At twenty-four, Bevin is the youngest son of the family and works on the property with his older brother, Rylan. Together, the men will eventually inherit the farm, the ninth generation of the MacLellans to do so. They farm potatoes, barley, and wheat on a three-year crop rotation and have a crew of about eleven employees outside of the family. The MacLellans can trace their farming history back to roughly 1790, when their forebears broke ground on sixty acres. Each generation has since brought something new to the operation, a different set of ideas to boost productivity, starting with the first MacLellan to hitch his plow to a horse. Bevin, who studied plant sciences in university, is the agronomics guy, looking at new fertilizer formulations and seed mixes; Rylan, with a diploma in agriculture business, deals with the machinery. Alongside their father and grandfather, they plan the planting, cultivating, and harvesting. But while farming is still a physical job, the men know they live in an era where more and more of it can be done on smartphones, using apps that run extensive irrigation networks or receive real-time analysis of soil health and nutrient levels.

Bevin and Rylan get excited about the possibilities of tech to make their farming smarter, more strategic, but given the costs, the brothers have to be selective. No shots in the dark; additions to the farm have to be proven. “There’s always someone coming in your driveway, trying to sell you something,” Rylan says. Everything comes back to efficiency. How many tasks can you squeeze out of a day? How much faster can you move? GPS in the tractors doesn’t just mean that a specialized crew member might be freed up to work more demanding jobs. It means that, by moving perfectly up and down the rows, the tractor shaves off precious seconds every time it traverses the field. The family can thus get more done with a single machine. As the farm grows, they rely increasingly on these kinds of hacks, wringing more out of each day than the previous one. 

At 1,800 acres, their farm has tripled in size from the time their grandfather, Kenny, seventy-four, took charge in the 1970s. He brought his son, Billy, on board in the early 1990s, and the operation has since expanded the way many farming families have—by buying up parcels of adjoining land after those neighbours aged out of the field. With costs being so high, one of the ways independent farmers can reliably make a profit is through sheer volume. “Unless you’re into something that’s a really specialized thing, and you found a market for it, you will not make a living off of that farm,” Kenny explains, Bevin nodding in agreement. “You can’t afford not to grow with the rest of them,” says Bevin. “They’ll out-compete you.”  

One day, the young men hope to sit in their grandfather’s and father’s chairs, watching future generations of MacLellan farmers. Their ultimate goal for the farm, and the family’s legacy, is to maintain their success. For that, they have to keep growing. “People think you’re still putting the same kind of seed in the ground,” says Rylan, “you’re still growing the same crop at the same time of the year with the same type of equipment.” But the moment you stop evolving with the industry is the moment you fall behind. They’ll have to bring on more tech to survive.

An image of farmers persists. Mom and Pop, likely white, smile in well-worn overalls and plaid shirts, big red barn behind them. Horses or cows are nearby. They get up with the sun, tend animals and the crops by hand. It’s romantic, unsophisticated, a haven for Luddites.

It’s also completely false. (Except the race part. Only 3.7 percent of Canadian farmers, according to the 2021 census, belong to a racialized group.) Farmers are among the earliest of early adopters, always ready to experiment in the name of efficiency. The first steam-powered combine harvesters arrived in North America in the 1880s, and the first tractors were widely introduced in the early 1900s. Wind energy may be used to power homes now, but American homesteads relied on windmills to mill grain and pump water from wells. Satellite imagery became available to farmers as early as 1972, long before Google Earth....

....MUCH MORE

"The Cult of Creativity: A Surprisingly Recent History"

From the Milken Institute Review,  

Once upon a time, the corporate motto “THINK,” decreed by IBM’s charismatic autocrat, Thomas J. Watson, Jr., was emblazoned on office walls and memo pads alike.

In the information age that followed, Steve Jobs saw Watson and raised him with the mantra, “Think Different.” Today IBM is back in the game, with a new motto in a recent full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal imploring prospective customers to “Let’s create!”

Whatever the reality in high-tech corporations over the decades, there are few values nominally more prized than creativity — unless it is that kindred standby, innovation. In The Cult of Creativity, the cultural historian Samuel Franklin supplies a vital missing chapter of business history by refusing to accept creativity as a self-evident good and reframing it as a movement binding academic social scientists, university administrators, corporate managers and government agencies. It began during the Cold War and continues to mutate in our own times.

In the Beginning
The American creativity movement began not among artists, writers, or musicians but in business circles where corporate bureaucrats had long replaced shirtsleeve entrepreneurs. Today, the world of William H. Whyte’s Organization Man, with its lifetime white-collar careers and affordable suburban ranch houses, seems a fantasy. But Whyte’s book became a bestseller partly because the men who led the system recognized the dangers of bureaucratic risk aversion, already stigmatized as conformity and even now notorious as groupthink.

The centripetal forces within mass society might be irreversible. But in the zeitgeist of the time, the challenge of international communism seemed to demand a capitalist alternative rooted in defense of the individual against the collective — a Cold War humanism that promised what Watson called “a new age of Pericles,” its citizens liberated from drudgery to pursue higher purposes.

However, according to Franklin, neither executives like Watson nor journalists like Whyte launched the creativity movement. That honor goes to psychologists, “nominally scientists” (ouch!). Psychologists, it seems, could define new social norms with an objective authority that clerics and philosophers could not claim, giving creativity an apparently unassailable status.

The president of the American Psychological Association, Joy Paul Guilford, started the snowball rolling in his address to the APA’s annual meeting in 1950. His audience was then turning against what were perceived as the manipulative collectivist movements of the century’s first half — the behaviorism of BF Skinner and the time-and-motion studies of Frederic Winslow Taylor. And crucially, research funders like the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research and the Carnegie Corporation of New York responded enthusiastically, as did many academic notables outside psychology.

Creativity neatly squared the circle because, as Franklin notes, the idea helped reconcile psychologists’ potential conflicts of interest between contractual obligations to corporate and government clients with their ethical commitment to individuals. Best of all, creativity was a trait that could be nurtured in every person — a universal form of excellence....

....MUCH MORE

A Wobbly Earth, Climate, And The Invention Of Agriculture (plus the importance of storage)

The invention/adoption of/ adaptation to agriculture was such a big deal, and the fact that it happened more than once, both tend to imply some very powerful motivating factor.

This paper has been making the rounds this month due to a version published by Oxford University Press on April 19. (gated)

Here is an earlier version hosted at the author's personal website:

The Ant and the Grasshopper:
Seasonality and the Invention of Agriculture

Andrea Matranga∗
Chapman University
October 31, 2022

Abstract
During the Neolithic Revolution, at least seven different human populations independently invented agriculture, without any contact with one another. How is it possible that these rapid advancements in agricultural techniques all occurred in the same, relatively short period of time? In this paper, I argue that rapid agricultural innovation was a response to a large increase in climatic seasonality. In the regions most affected by this process, hunter-gatherers abandoned their traditional nomadism in order to store food and smooth their consumption. As a result of their newfound sedentary lifestyle, it was much easier for hunter-gatherers to invent and adopt agriculture. I present a model that captures the key incentives for the Neolithic Revolution, and I test the resulting predictions against a global panel dataset of climate conditions and Neolithic adoption dates.

I find that invention and adoption were both systematically more likely in places with higher seasonality. The findings of this paper imply that seasonality patterns 10,000 years ago, were one of the major determinants of the order in which different regions adopted agriculture. JEL Codes: O33, O44, N50.

1 Introduction

How and why was agriculture invented?

The long run advantages of abandoning hunter-gathering techniques and adopting agriculture are clear: farming brought about food surpluses that allowed population densities to rise, labor to become increasingly specialized, and cities to be constructed. Despite these seemingly intuitive advantages, we still don’t know what motivated the transition from hunter-gathering to farming in the short run (Gremillion et al., 2014; Smith, 2014). 

After 200,000 years of hunting and gathering, agriculture was invented independently at least seven times, on different continents, within a 7,000 year period. Archaeologists agree that at a very minimum, independent inventions of agriculture occurred in the Fertile Crescent, sub-Saharan Africa, North and South China, the Andes, Mexico, and North America. 

Interestingly, the first farmers were shorter and had more joint diseases, suggesting that they ate less than hunter gatherers and worked more (Cohen and Armelagos, 1984). The question thus arises: why would seven different human populations decide to adopt remarkably similar technologies, around the same time, if it meant they would work more for less food?

I propose a new theory for the Neolithic Revolution, construct a model capturing its intuition, and test the resulting implications against a panel dataset of climate and adoption. I argue that the invention of agriculture was triggered by a large increase in climatic seasonality, which peaked approximately 12,000 years ago, shortly before the invention of agriculture. 

This increase in seasonality was caused by oscillations in the tilt of Earth’s rotational axis, and other orbital parameters that have been well documented by astronomers and geophysicists (Berger, 1992). The harsher winters and drier summers, made it hard for hunter-gatherers to survive during part of the year, and some of the most affected populations responded to these changes by storing wild foods. This in turn forced them to abandon their nomadic lifestyles, since that would have forced them to spend most of the year next to their granaries, either stocking, or drawing from them.

While these newly formed sedentary communities still hunted and gathered wild foods rather than grow crops, sedentarism and storage made it easier for them to eventually adopt farming....

....MUCH MORE (67 page PDF)

From there it was just a hop, skip, and a jump to Piketty and inequality:

 

Move Over Industrial: On the Economics of the NEOLITHIC Revolution
I had intended to post this last year but it got knocked out of the queue by a Nobel Laureate talking about coffee and kidneys....

 

To Create A "1%" In A Social Hierarchy You Don't Need An Economic Surplus, Just A Storable Form Of Wealth

This is a repost from January 2, 2017.
 Original post:

So there I was, reading the abstract of "Hazelnut economy of early Holocene hunter–gatherers: a case study from Mesolithic Duvensee, northern Germany", thinking about Nutella and Frangelico when this grabbed my eye:

...High-resolution analyses of the excellently preserved and well-dated special task camps documented in detail at Duvensee, Northern Germany, offer an outstanding opportunity for case studies on Mesolithic subsistence and land use strategies. Quantification of the nut utilisation demonstrates the great importance of hazelnuts. These studies revealed very high return rates and allow for absolute assessments of the development of early Holocene economy. Stockpiling of the energy rich resource and an increased logistical capacity are innovations characterising an intensified early Mesolithic land use...

Stockpiling, storage, commodities, well that's right in our wheelhouse,* and if I can combine it with the last remnants of interest in Piketty's approach to inequality.....maybe I can synthesize something halfway original...

Yeah, it's already been done.

Here's VoxEU, September 2015:

Cereals, appropriability, and hierarchy
The Neolithic Roots of Economic Institutions

Conventional theory suggests that hierarchy and state institutions emerged due to increased productivity following the Neolithic transition to farming. This column argues that these social developments were a result of an increase in the ability of both robbers and the emergent elite to appropriate crops. Hierarchy and state institutions developed, therefore, only in regions where appropriable cereal crops had sufficient productivity advantage over non-appropriable roots and tubers. 

What explains underdevelopment?
One of the most pressing problems of our age is the underdevelopment of countries in which government malfunction seems endemic. Many of these countries are located close to the Equator.¹ Acemoglu et al. (2001) point to extractive institutions as the root cause for underdevelopment. Besley and Persson (2014) emphasise the persistent effects of low fiscal capacity in underdeveloped countries. On the other hand, Diamond (1997) argues that it is geographical factors that explain why some regions of the world remain underdeveloped. In particular, he argues that the east-west orientation of Eurasia resulted in greater variety and productivity of cultivable crops, and in larger economic surplus, which facilitated the development of state institutions in this major landmass. Less fortunate regions, including New Guinea and sub-Saharan Africa, were left underdeveloped due to low land productivity.

In a recent paper (Mayshar et al. 2015), we contend that fiscal capacity and viable state institutions are conditioned to a major extent by geography. Thus, like Diamond, we argue that geography matters a great deal. But in contrast to Diamond, and against conventional opinion, we contend that it is not high farming productivity and the availability of food surplus that accounts for the economic success of Eurasia.

• We propose an alternative mechanism by which environmental factors imply the appropriability of crops and thereby the emergence of complex social institutions.

To understand why surplus is neither necessary nor sufficient for the emergence of hierarchy, consider a hypothetical community of farmers who cultivate cassava (a major source of calories in sub-Saharan Africa, and the main crop cultivated in Nigeria), and assume that the annual output is well above subsistence. Cassava is a perennial root that is highly perishable upon harvest. Since this crop rots shortly after harvest, it isn't stored and it is thus difficult to steal or confiscate. As a result, the assumed available surplus would not facilitate the emergence of a non-food producing elite, and may be expected to lead to a population increase.

Consider now another hypothetical farming community that grows a cereal grain – such as wheat, rice or maize – yet with an annual produce that just meets each family's subsistence needs, without any surplus. Since the grain has to be harvested within a short period and then stored until the next harvest, a visiting robber or tax collector could readily confiscate part of the stored produce. Such ongoing confiscation may be expected to lead to a downward adjustment in population density, but it will nevertheless facilitate the emergence of non-producing elite, even though there was no surplus.

Emergence of fiscal capacity and hierarchy and the cultivation of cereals
This simple scenario shows that surplus isn't a precondition for taxation. It also illustrates our alternative theory that the transition to agriculture enabled hierarchy to emerge only where the cultivated crops were vulnerable to appropriation.

• In particular, we contend that the Neolithic emergence of fiscal capacity and hierarchy was conditioned on the cultivation of appropriable cereals as the staple crops, in contrast to less appropriable staples such as roots and tubers.

According to this theory, complex hierarchy did not emerge among hunter-gatherers because hunter-gatherers essentially live from hand-to-mouth, with little that can be expropriated from them to feed a would-be elite.²

• Thus, rather than surplus facilitating the emergence of the elite, we argue that the elite only emerged when and where it was possible to expropriate crops....

...MORE

*See, for example:
The Golden Age of Commodities Market Manipulation: Corners, Storage and Squeezes

These days however, to purloin that wealth, you don't even need to be dealing with storables:
How to Manipulate Non-storable Commodities Markets

On the other hand, storing electricity is pretty much the ultimate dream of venture capitalists:

• Storage: How to Hoard Electricity (GE; SI)
• Bill Gates: "It Is Surprisingly Hard to Store Energy"
• Batteries: The Venture Capitalist's Holy Grail

And:
"Intergenerational wealth and inequality in the animal world" (plus human elites and theft)

And:
Following Up On "Commodity traders superior to chimpanzees": The Importance of Pockets
We left Thursday's "Commodity traders superior to chimpanzees, research shows" with the observation that any advantage commodity traders had over their simian cousins could probably be ascribed to pockets or other forms of storage...

And:
Storage: Very Important To Roman Emperors and Commodities Market Manipulators
And:
Intensification of agriculture and social hierarchies evolve together, study finds
And:
Mechanization, Productivity and Inequality: It Was Ever Thus
Ox-drawn plows to blame for increased inequality in Eurasia beginning in 4,000 BC
And:
Thieving Elites And Complex Societies and What's With Larry Fink And All The Other Bald Guys?

And finally:
Fairness, Capuchin Monkeys and Wall Street
This is a few years old but contains some good lessons so is probably worth reposting
The speaker, Frans de Waal, is one of the heavyweights of the primate world. Actually, we all are among the heavyweights of the primate world but he's up there with Jane Goodall in the study of primates.

"Vulcan Energy starts its first lithium chloride production in Germany"

We've been following this one for a while, some links below.

From Reuters, April 10:

Lithium supplier Vulcan Energy on Wednesday announced the start of production of the first lithium chloride at its extraction plant in Germany using geothermal energy, an essential step toward producing battery-grade lithium hydroxide.

"To the best of our knowledge, it is the first locally produced resource, meaning that the lithium comes from Germany, from the resource underneath our feet," Vulcan Energy Chief Executive Cris Moreno told Reuters.

 

Vulcan Energy has obtained licences for more than 1,000 kilometres of land in Germany's Upper Rhine Valley region to extract super-hot lithium-rich brine from underground reservoirs, using the heat to produce electricity and draw out lithium from the brine.

 

The European Union has set targets to dig up, recycle and refine lithium, cobalt and other metals it needs for its green transition, but a shortage of new money, crippling energy costs and local opposition could put them beyond reach....

....MUCH MORE

 

Other than that, clear sailing?
Actually Vulcan's progress has impressed this rather jaded observer. Previously:

June 2021: "Germany plans to mine boiling-hot lithium deep beneath the Rhine River" 

 

July 2021: "Peugeot, Jeep, Dodge, Maserati-Maker Stellantis: New Models, New Sources of Lithium (STLA)
Stellantis, the world's fourth-largest automaker with brands that include Jeep and Peugeot, has signed memorandums of understanding for lithium supply with geothermal brine projects in California and Germany, according to two sources..... 

 

September 2022: "Which country produces the essential metals for clean energy?":
....There's lithium in Germany. it seeps into the Rhine but the Green's don't want to use it.
They may be trying to keep the Dutch downstream calm.
Or something....
 

February 2023: "Vulcan Energy to mine 60% more German lithium than planned":
I thought the Greens in the government were trying to shut this down.

"A Scientist Says He Has the Evidence That We Live in a Simulation"

How can we use this knowledge?

From Popular Mechanics, April 24:

The “Second Law of Infodynamics” could prove it.

• Many philosophers and scientists have pondered if we live in a simulated universe, and University of Portsmouth scientist Melvin Vopson believes he has evidence.
• Using his previously formulated Second Law of Infodynamics, Vopson claims that the decrease of entropy in information systems over time could prove that the universe has a built-in “data optimization and compression,” which speaks to its digital nature.
• While these claims warrant investigation, they’re far from a discovery themselves, and would likely need rigorous proof for the scientific community at large to seriously consider this theory.

In the 1999 film The Matrix, Thomas Anderson (a.k.a. Neo) discovers a truth to end all truths—the universe is a simulation. While this premise provides fantastic sci-fi fodder (and explains how Neo can learn kung-fu in about five seconds), the idea isn’t quite as carefully relegated to the fiction section as one might expect.

University of Portsmouth scientist Melvin Vopson, who studies the possibility that the universe might indeed be a digital facsimile, leans into the cinematic comparison. In an article published on website The Conversation this past October, Vopson invoked the Wachowskis’ sci-fi masterpiece, and around the same time, he published a book on the subject—Reality Reloaded, a subtle hat tip to the title of the less successful Matrix sequel. While he is just one among many who’ve contemplated the idea, Vopson claims to have one thing that those before him lacked: evidence.

Related Story
Scientist Reveals How to Escape Our Simulation

“In physics, there are laws that govern everything that happens in the universe, for example how objects move, how energy flows, and so on. Everything is based on the laws of physics,” Vopson said back in 2022. “One of the most powerful laws is the second law of thermodynamics, which establishes that entropy—a measure of disorder in an isolated system – can only increase or stay the same, but it will never decrease.”

Based on this famous law, Vopson similarly expected that entropy in information systems—which his previous research defined as a “fifth state of matter”—should similarly increase over time. But it doesn’t. Instead, it remains constant, or even decreases to a minimum value at equilibrium. This is in direct contrast to the second law of thermodynamics, which inspired Vopson to adopt the Second Law of Information Dynamics (or Infodynamics).

“We know the universe is expanding without the loss or gain of heat, which requires the total entropy of the universe to be constant,” Vopson wrote in The Conversation. “However we also know from thermodynamics that entropy is always rising. I argue this shows that there must be another entropy—information entropy—to balance the increase.”....

....MUCH MORE 

Hmmm....Using our previously formulated Second Law of Climodynamics (not to be confused with Cliodynamics)....

"Republic First Bank Seized By Regulators—First Bank Collapse Of 2024" (FRBK)

From Forbes via MSN, April 26:

Topline
Troubled Philadelphia-based regional bank Republic First Bancorp was seized by Pennsylvania regulators Friday, marking the first regional banking failure this year following a series of high-profile collapses in 2023—though the bank is far smaller than those that collapsed last year and its nearly three dozen branches are set to reopen under a new name....

....MUCH MORE

 

"Operation Menai Bridge: The plan for King Charles III’s death explained "

From Page Six, April 25:

King Charles III ascended to the throne following the September 2022 death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II.

After more than one year of reigning, the royal family was hit with the devastating news that Charles was diagnosed with cancer following a January 2024 surgery for benign prostate enlargement.

In April 2024, it was reported that the monarch’s health was declining and plans for his funeral were being updated. 

“Speaking to friends of the king in recent weeks about his health, the most common response is … ‘It’s not good,’” Tom Sykes of the Daily Beast reported.

A friend of the monarch claimed Charles was “determined to beat it and they are throwing everything at it,” adding, “Everyone is staying optimistic, but he is really very unwell. More than they are letting on.”

As Charles’ health issues persist, plans about the future of the throne have been put in place under a code name.

Find out more about Operation Menai Bridge below....

....MUCH MORE

I hope he's not in a lot of pain. Beyond that, despite a fair number of posts on the Prince-then-King, the one that came bubbling up from long ago was May, 2014's:

More On the Inclusive Capitalism Conference

Following up on yesterday's "Big Eared Bloke: 'reform capitalism to save the planet'" I should probably explain the Prince Charles/Big Eared Bloke bit.

Some 25 years ago HRH was officiating at an agricultural fair and talking to some of the prize-winners when a TV news crew asked a hog farmer his impressions upon meeting the Prince. The fellow said:
"Well, he's a big-eared bloke".

"Nvidia Stock Rises. What Microsoft and Google CEOs Said About Its Chips" (plus some NVDA - TSLA history)

It's good when people with money like what you're selling.

From Barron's, April 26:

Updated April 26, 2024 9:54 am ET / Original April 26, 2024 6:41 am ET
Microsoft and Alphabet's CEOs both called out their use of Nvidia chips in earnings calls.

Nvidia stock was rising early on Friday, as the latest earnings reports from big technology companies showed continued investment in artificial-intelligence infrastructure. 

Nvidia shares were up 1.3% at $837.19 in morning trading. The stock closed up 3.7% on Thursday. 

Microsoft and Google-parent Alphabet emphasized their investment in AI technology in earnings reports on Thursday and their chief executives specifically noted their use of Nvidia chips in earnings calls with analysts, although both CEOs said they were using in-house chips as well. 

“We offer the most diverse selection of AI accelerators, including the latest from Nvidia, AMD [Advanced Micro Devices], as well as our own first-party silicon,” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

“We offer an industry-leading portfolio of Nvidia GPUs [graphics-processing units] along with our TPUs [tensor processing units],” Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said....

....MUCH MORE

And a reminder, MSFT, META and the GOOG all have their own chips either being produced - usually by TSMC - or in development. On the other hand:

Nvidia's Jensen Huang: “even when the competitors’ chips are free, it’s not cheap enough.” (NVDA)

The chips being praised are the current state of the art H100's, the Blackwell's won't ship until later this year or, I think it was in META's case, not until early 2025. 

On the Tesla conference call Mr. Musk said they had 35,000 H100's, worth a cool billion at retail, and would end the year at 85,000 of the tiny treasures.

We looked back at some of the Tesla - Nvidia history in the outro of a 2023 post:

NVIDIA Partner Tesla Reportedly Developing Chip With AMD (TSLA; NVDA; AMD) 
Today in leveraged WTFs....

"During a talk at a private party, Elon Musk said Tesla is developing specialized AI hardware "'That we think will be the best in the world;" (TSLA)  

"Tesla says it’s dumping Nvidia chips for a homebrew alternative" (TSLA)
The only reason for Tesla to do this is that NVIDIA's chips are general purpose whereas specialized chips are making inroads in stuff like crypto mining (ASICs), Google's Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) for machine learning and Facebook's hardware efforts. 

 

 Watch Out NVIDIA: "Google Details Tensor Chip Powers" (GOOG; NVDA)
We've said NVIDIA probably has a couple year head start but this bears watching, so to speak....

Culminating in August 2018's
"Nvidia CEO is 'more than happy to help' if Tesla's A.I. chip doesn't pan out" (NVDA; TSLA)

NVDA is up  $43.96 (+5.32%) at $870.28 while TSLA might make it four green days in a row, currently at $171.50, up $1.32 (+0.78%) although it seems extended, up 23% from  Monday's $138.80 low print.

Things You Don't See Every Day: The Tree-Climbing Lions Of Uganda

From the Kampala News:

....MUCH MORE

They seem pretty chill.

Treasury Cash Balance Means Fewer Bills-n-Bonds to Be Sold (for now)

Fewer notes too but they're not alliterative.

From the ZH eXtwitter feed:

Treasury cash soars by $173BN on April 15 to $897BN, as taxes come in; this is the highest in two years and gives TSY $150BN in stimmy dry powder (less Bill issuance, less RRP drain). pic.twitter.com/tqa7vFE90w

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) April 16, 2024

"How China plans to win the global EV war" (plus the IEA’s Global EV Outlook-2024)

Well, the West had a good run. I suppose we can all become models and influencers now.

From The Australian Financial Review, April 25:

The Biden administration and European governments are increasingly alarmed at the potential for China’s EV ambitions to put their own car manufacturers at risk. 

China wants to replicate its spectacularly successful strategy in flooding global markets with cheaper manufactured goods that drive most Western competitors out of business.

A key battleground is the supply of electric vehicles – using an ever more advanced version of technology exports to leverage global efforts on emissions reduction.

The contradictions between the experience and expectations of Chinese EV car makers compared with those in Europe and the US are obvious in the International Energy Agency’s latest report on EVs.

The report predicts more than one in five cars sold this year will be electric, 17 million globally. In the first three months of 2024, numbers are up by 25 per cent – around the same percentage increase as a year ago, but from a larger base.

An optimistic IEA executive director Fatih Birol maintains continued momentum is clear in the data. “Rather than tapering off, the global EV revolution appears to be gearing up for a new phase of growth,” he says. “The wave of investment in battery manufacturing suggests the EV supply chain is advancing to meet automakers’ ambitious plans for expansion.”

That momentum will also pick up due to steadily falling prices. Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen will no doubt be delighted by the impact on Australian consumers’ low take-up of EVs.

But how does this fit with evidence of slowing customer enthusiasm for EV purchases in most Western countries? Yes, numbers are growing – just not as quickly as anticipated in the broader consumer market now early adopters have been accommodated and mass market buyers are more concerned about range and charging facilities as well as cost.

Birol concedes the momentum is stronger in some markets than others.

The reluctance is most obvious in the US – despite the Biden administration’s subsidies – but is also showing up in weakening sales growth in Europe. The results have already led to many traditional automakers cutting back or delaying their investment plans to shift away from internal combustion engine vehicles.

The catch for them is that Chinese exporters, led by BYD, are driving much of what growth there is in EV sales by savagely undercutting them on prices....

....MUCH MORE

Also at the AFR: "Retirement made me feel invisible – so I became a male model" 

Here's the IEA:

Global EV Outlook 2024
Moving towards increased affordability 

As we mentioned regarding Tesla before the last earnings report, a few days ago:
"Is Elon Musk About To Force Everyone To View Tesla As An AI Company After Earnings?" (TSLA)

It is possible that Mr. Musk knows more about electric vehicles and the retail market for electric vehicles than I do. And it is possible that he intuits something about the industry or the regulatory or government policy framework toward electric vehicles that he hopes to either guard against or take advantage of.

And it's possible he's just a self-made centibillionaire loony....

"U.S. solar companies, imperiled by price collapse, demand protection"

It's also a demand problem. Residential rooftop installer SunPower just announced they were laying off one-quarter of their workforce due to declining demand. From PV Magazine, April 24:

SunPower to close business units, cut about 26% of workforce

And the headline story from the Washington Post, April 24/25:

In a federal complaint, American companies accuse Asian firms of illegally flooding the United States with Chinese-subsidized solar panels

Several of the largest American solar manufacturing companies are demanding aggressive action against cheap imports, arguing in a petition filed Wednesday with the Commerce Department that firms in four Asian countries are illegally flooding the U.S. market with Chinese-subsidized panels....

....MORE

Related, April 3:
"China has flooded the market with so many solar panels that people are using them as garden fencing"

For folks keeping score, China now dominates batteries, the solar supply chain from polysilicon ingots to solar panels, electric vehicles and wind generation.

"What Biden Can and Can’t Do After Declaring a Climate Emergency"

The rumors are once again circulating that the President is planning to issue some sort of Executive Order regarding climate and we happened to have this piece in the link-vault.

Blow a bit of dust off and its good as new. From Bloomberg, July 19, 2022:

Democrats and environmental activists are pushing President Joe Biden to declare a “climate emergency” and unlock sweeping powers to combat global warming after broad legislation stalled in Congress.

Biden has already vowed to “take strong executive action” if Congress doesn’t “tackle the climate crisis.” And White House officials are now weighing

the possibility of an emergency declaration that would empower the president to curtail oil drilling, curb fossil-fuel flows and fund clean-energy construction.

1. How would it work?
An emergency declaration by Biden would trigger powers laid out by a suite of federal laws — including energy statutes, the National Emergencies Act and the Stafford Disaster Relief and Emer­gency Assistance Act — that the president could wield to address the climate crisis.

Biden could curtail or block crude exports thanks to a national security exemption in a 2015 law that would allow him to re-impose licensing requirements and other restrictions on those flows. At the same time, the Aviation and Transportation Security Act — enacted after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks — could empower him to coordinate domestic transportation in ways that limit the movement of fossil fuels.

Under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act that governs energy development in US coastal waters, he could also suspend offshore drilling, even on existing leases. That provision was invoked to suspend some activity in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010.

2. What about clean energy?
A climate emergency would let Biden take advantage of a law typically used after major hurricanes and other natural disasters -- the Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act -- to direct the Federal Emergency Management Agency to construct renewable energy projects using federal money. FEMA has $19 billion budgeted for fiscal year 2022 to address ongoing disasters, according to the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group urging the move.

Biden could also use the Cold War-era Defense Production Act and the federal procurement budget of $650 billion per year to manufacture clean transportation technologies and generate renewable energy, according to a report by the center. Biden has already used the same law to boost production of baby formula amid a national shortage. But the law specifically contemplates power production; the statute uniquely singles out renewable energy and storage as critical materials for national defense.

3. What can’t he do?
Some of the most powerful tools for propelling renewable power projects and advanced energy manufacturing were tax credits — now stymied in Congress — that can’t be easily duplicated through executive order. Any federal funding directed at the sector is finite, and can be quickly ended once a new president is in office....

....MUCH MORE

If one is interested, we saved the proposed Executive Orders prepared by the University of Colorado for President Obama in 2008. It runs to 213 pages and serves as the outro from August 2023's "Ahead Of A Possible Climate Emergency Declaration, Some Interesting Phenomena".

"Huawei Revs Up Intelligent Driving Push With Software Launch"

Huawei is taking their profits from the phone business and doing a lot of investing in their futuretech. I just wish they had done the lasers on sharks thing.

From AsiaFinancial, April 24:

The Chinese tech firm has also launched seven EV models in partnership with domestic automakers as it bids to become a major player in the sector

Chinese tech giant Huawei has unveiled a new intelligent driving software brand which it’s aiming to see installed in 500,000 vehicles before the end of the year.

The new brand, Qiankun, symbolising a combination of heaven and the Kunlun Mountains, plans to provide self-driving systems involving the driving chassis, audio and driver’s seat, Jin Yuzhi, CEO of Huawei’s Intelligent Automotive Solution (IAS) business unit, said during an event on Wednesday ahead of the Beijing auto show.

“2024 will be the first year for mass commercialisation of smart driving and the cumulative number of cars on road equipped with the Huawei self-driving system will top 500,000 by the year-end,” Jin said.

He also expected within a year more than 10 car models adopting Huawei’s Qiankun system would hit the market.

The Shenzhen-based tech conglomerate launched its smart car unit in 2019 with the aim that it could become the equivalent of German automotive supplier Bosch of the intelligent EV era and supply software and components to partners....

....MUCH MORE

There's also this yesterday, Reuters via Yahoo Finance:

A group of Chinese chip companies led by Huawei Technologies and backed by the country's government aims to produce high-bandwidth memory (HBM) semiconductors, a key component in AI chips by 2026, The Information reported on Thursday....

Recently:

Chips: "Huawei building vast chip equipment R&D center in Shanghai"
At the moment I don't think ASML has to worry but U.S. policymakers should be dusting off their contingency plans. They have contingency plans, right? I think they're in the same drawer as the CDC's pandemic response folder....

And the sharks?

....And us? Among other things we were linking to stuff like: "'More BP Gulf Oil Spill Conspiracies Flourish -- From Algae Farms to Armed Dolphins' (APC; BP; HAL; RIG)"

Which reminds me, I should probably follow up on the Chinese Security Law posts which for some reason included this tidbit:

‘At Huawei, we’re not attaching laser beams to the heads of sharks’

—Alykhan Velshi, Vice President, Corporate Affairs, Huawei Technologies Canada, Markham, Ont.

Letter to the Editor, Maclean's Magazine, published July 23, 2019

Personally I think laser-enhanced sharks would be kind of cool, it's the required handing over of data should the Chinese government request it that gives one pause.

Recapitulated in "Forget sharks with lasers, NASA kits out an elephant seal with a sensor-studded skullcap"

Nice hat, she's all set for a day at the races.
From The Register, December 6:

'Check out my great new hat! Sensors are so hot right now!'. 

Image Credit: Sorbonne University/Etienne Pauthenet

"‘A Damn Hard Thing to Do’: Tesla Co-Founder JB Straubel Takes on Battery Recycling" (Redwood Materials)

From Bloomberg via Yahoo Finance, April 25:

That’s exactly what he’s been doing for the last five years. 

The company he built, Redwood Materials, is now the largest battery recycler in North America, and it’s using those recycled materials to manufacture complex battery components that have traditionally been imported from abroad, largely from China.

Straubel recently opened the doors for a first peek at the 300-acre industrial campus he’s built in the western Nevada desert. He said it hasn’t been easy.

“It feels like we’re going at breakneck speed, but we need to do a whole lot more,” he said. “It’s a damn hard thing to do.”

Straubel, 48, drives a Tesla Cybertruck emblazoned with his company’s green infinity logo, but he's careful to note that the flashy ride is a personal vehicle — “too expensive for Redwood.” Often seen as a countervailing force to Musk while they were building Tesla, Straubel returned last year to take a seat on the electric vehicle maker’s board. He wouldn’t talk about his oversight job there, other than his general motivation for doing it.

“I want it to succeed. I love the team there, it's close to my heart — always probably will be,” he said.

Straubel spoke to Bloomberg Green on March 22, the day Redwood commissioned its first commercial-scale line to produce cathode active material, a black powder that’s largely responsible for a battery’s range and longevity — and cost. He reflected on what it’s taken to build Redwood to this point, and his plans for what comes next. What follows is an edited transcript of the conversation.

Some EV manufacturers are tapping the breaks on expansion plans right now. What’s your reading of the EV market and how it looks five years from now?

Personally I think the EV transition is kind of a slow, steady, and inevitable future course that we are going to go through — and have to go through. When we started Redwood, I was really looking at the 10, 20, 30-year horizon and how we were going to affect sustainability and transportation. I don't see any change in my long-term thinking on this.

What will a mature recycling industry look like in the US? Will it be distributed like it is in China, or a few big players that dominate?

I don’t have a one-size-fits-all, monopolistic view on this. It’s really how we can best architect a solution for the country to get as much material recovered and recycled, as quickly as possible. There may be more smaller companies at different parts of the value chain. That would be great if they can compete, and we’re happy to work with a lot of small companies.

But there weren’t really any other companies that I saw doing what was needed, so that’s kind of why we jumped in with the scope we did. There was a little bit of a gold rush that went on, when people saw what we were doing and thought it would be easy. I wish them well, but this is a long road. It’s something we need to be building for many years, maybe decades.

How necessary are government subsidies for making the numbers work on recycling?

Today, we don’t have a single dollar from the federal government. Everything we’ve built to date has been funded by either our investors or from money that we’ve made recycling and selling. We’ve had to bootstrap and move things along as we go....

....MUCH MORE

Hurry up, come public would ya!

[we are fans: https://climateerinvest.blogspot.com/search?q=redwood+materials]

"Capitalizing Truth: Pragmatism and the Logics of Capital"

We've looked at the definition and etymology of speculation a few times, more after the jump.

In the meantime, here, coming in at a different angle of attack, the blog of The Journal of the History of Ideas:

In the winter of 1891, a young John Dewey published an article in a student newspaper at the University of Michigan, where he had just begun to teach. The article, a response to what Dewey felt was a regrettable trend toward obscurantism in philosophers’ writings about truth, was titled “The Scholastic and the Speculator.” Dewey proposed a division between two ways of knowing what is true. The first way was to find a real quality of the world—a fact, or equally a moral principle—and pluck it from its context to lend it an air of universality. This was the “Scholastic’s” method. It involved “taking a thing out of relations and keeping it out” (151). “Not to put too fine a point on it,” Dewey continued, but “the Scholastic was an embezzler.” He “sav[ed] and stor[ed]” without ever giving back. Yet “this abstraction, this saving cannot be all there is to the matter,” Dewey insisted. “These must have some end, some use. What is it?” (152).

The answer came with the second way of getting at truth. “Intelligence must throw its fund out again into the stress of life,” wrote Dewey. “It must venture its savings against the pressure of facts” (152). This was the method of the Speculator, whose procedures Dewey elaborated with an extended economic metaphor:

Every judgment a man passes on life is perforce, his ‘I bet,’ his speculation. So much of his saved capital of truth he invests in the judgment: ‘The state of things is thus and so.’ The current of fact sweeps in this judgment and returns it to him with interest. His guess, his venture has won: the logicians call it verification. Or the stream of fact carries away his investment and he never sees it again. His speculation was against the set of the market and he has lost. (154)

Dewey’s economy of truth was financial. Truths were never fixed. They were contingent social creations that gained (or lost) their value over time and through their reception in the ever-changing “stream of fact.” This fluctuation of value and the uncertainty it generated were inevitable—and, what is more intriguing, they were necessary for the generation and discovery of future truths. The speculator did not know if his beliefs would make it out there in the world. Without that risk, the entire process of speculation would make no sense. Uncertainty was a happy precondition of those investments, those wagers, which brought new truths into being.

And yet if Dewey’s metaphor nodded to the productive capacities of finance, it also struck a note of caution. Healthy speculation had its limits. “There is a speculation which exists just for the sake of the speculation,” Dewey cautioned (154). The key was to remain an investor who stakes his individual funds for a social end. This, Dewey concluded, was the proper kind of truth-seeker: one who “both saves and spends, yet neither embezzles nor gambles” (154). To a striking degree, Dewey’s vision presages the model form of investment that John Maynard Keynes would lay out many decades later in his General Theory. For capitalism to work, Keynes argued, capitalists must not speculate wildly and must not hoard their money under the bed—two forms of equally destructive liquidity fetish. Instead, they must use their liquidity toward long-term, productive investments. As with capital for Keynes, so with truth for Dewey....

....MUCH MORE

From February 2, 2009—remember February 2009, it was in all the papers, Great Recession about to end, but not quite yet, 50%+ decline in the S&P 500 with one last out-the-door whack on the longs about to commence. Good times:

Where in the Bear are We?
Our two guiding principles right now, are:

Anything past settlement date is long term.
Anything long term is terminal....

*****

....One etymology of the word speculation:

c.1374, "contemplation, consideration," from O.Fr. speculation, from L.L. speculationem (nom. speculatio) "contemplation, observation," from L. speculatus, pp. of speculari "observe," from specere "to look at, view" (see scope (1)). Disparaging sense of "mere conjecture" is recorded from 1575. Meaning "buying and selling in search of profit from rise and fall of market value" is recorded from 1774; short form spec is attested from 1794. Speculator in the financial sense is first recorded 1778. Speculate is a 1599 back-formation.

That is not the etymology grandmother taught me. Hers had to do with Italian merchants keeping watchtowers manned to spot sails over the horizon, enabling those who could see furthest to sell off inventory before goods-ladened ships made harbor and crashed the market. More like this etymology at Wictionary:

From Latin speculātus, past participle of speculor (“‘look out’”), from specula (“‘watchtower’”), from specio (“‘look at’”)

Either way, the current market does not lend itself to either contemplation or seeing over the horizon....

"Why the U.S. and China Suddenly Care About a Port in Southern Chile"

From Americas Quarterly, April 23:

Punta Arenas sits at the very tip of South America…

Punta Arenas is at the intersection of changing shipping routes, new industries like green hydrogen, and the race for Antarctica. The U.S. and China have noticed.

This article is adapted from AQ’s special report on Latin America’s ports | Leer en español | Ler em português

PUNTA ARENAS, CHILE — Perched on the pylons of a century-old coal pier, sleek black cormorants gaze out at cruise ships, propane tankers and research vessels dotting the white-capped Strait of Magellan. Farther into the horizon, a humpback whale blows a misty plume toward the sky.

This is a postcard from the end of the world, postmarked Punta Arenas.

But it’s not as remote as you might think.

Punta Arenas has become an unlikely hotspot for global shipping, one of several seaports gaining importance today across Latin America and the Caribbean. As wars choke vital shipping lanes in the Middle East and Europe, climate change snarls the Panama Canal and technological breakthroughs such as green hydrogen come to the fore, even ports on the region’s periphery are getting new attention from governments, multinational companies and others.

The changing tide is reflected in the soaring volume of merchant ships crossing the Strait of Magellan. In January and February, traffic jumped by 25% from the same period in 2023, and by 83% compared with 2021, when supply chains were still disrupted by the pandemic. Chile’s navy is bracing for this year’s traffic to increase by as much as an additional 70%.

“We’re in a part of the world that’s increasingly strategic, and it transcends the country,” Punta Arenas Mayor Claudio Radonich told AQ.

Global powers are racing to expand their presence. China has expressed interest in building a port complex near the Strait’s Atlantic mouth just across Chile’s border in Argentina. From there, Beijing could grow its presence in the region and also project influence in Antarctica, where geopolitical rivalry is heating up as the sea ice melts. In April 2023, the head of the U.S. military’s Southern Command, General Laura Richardson, visited Argentina and Chile, stopping in Punta Arenas for a security briefing and a tour of the strait.

“For Magallanes, this will be like going back in time,
when we were a free port and ship traffic was enormous.”
—María José Navajas, regional director of Corfo

To properly seize the moment, Punta Arenas and the surrounding Magallanes region desperately need an infrastructure upgrade. At present, the region only has a few jetties and ramps, capable of receiving midsize vessels, some cruise ships and barges—but not large tankers and container vessels of the kind increasingly sailing through the strait. There are no loading cranes or protected basins. Even the navy lacks a port of its own here.

“If we want to move toward more just and inclusive development, we need more and better ports,” Chile’s President Gabriel Boric declared last October at the signing of a port expansion plan in Valparaíso. He lauded the “extraordinary modernization” of ports he had visited in China the previous week. Boric, who grew up in Punta Arenas, signed a $400 million, five-year investment program in November to upgrade ports and other infrastructure in Magallanes. But some wonder if it will be enough....

....MUCH MORE

We watch chokepoints.  

"Construction’s manufacturing boom: Mapping the biggest facilities underway in the US"

This is the part of Bidenomics (borrowing big to spend bigger) that might be justifiable. At the conclusion of the construction you have, at minimum, a building to show for the loot. Whether they are worth the money spent or if they could have been built without the handouts is for the policy peeps to argue over.

From ConstructionDive, updated April 18:

New additions to the tracker this month include a $3.9 billion SK Hynix chip plant in West Lafayette, Indiana, and a $1.2 billion Fujifilm project in Holly Springs, North Carolina.

Spending in the manufacturing sector has ballooned since the CHIPS Act was signed into law in August 2022. Projects underway include everything from plants focused on chip fabrication and electric vehicle batteries to consumer goods and cars.

Here, Construction Dive rounds up the biggest of these projects announced since August 2022, sorted by value and location, along with their contractors when available. Please check this page for regular updates.

The U.S. continues to gain ground on other countries’ manufacturing dominance a year after President Joe Biden signed the $52 billion CHIPS and Science Act in August 2022.

The renewed push to revive American manufacturing after decades of offshoring has led to over $688 billion in private company investment, according to the White House. The multibillion-dollar investments scattered across the country range from biotechnology facilities and chip fabrication plants to electric vehicle battery factories and clean energy projects.

Some major manufacturing projects added to this page over the past four weeks include a $3.9 billion SK Hynix chip plant in West Lafayette, Indiana, a $1.2 billion Fujifilm project in Holly Springs, North Carolina, and a $300 million XNRGY manufacturing facility in Mesa, Arizona.

The map also lists the contractors working on these projects when they are available. Some of the notable wins since the last update include:

• Wespac Construction’s contract on a $300 million manufacturing facility in Mesa, Arizona, for XNRGY, a Monteal-based company that makes climate systems for data centers. 
• Whiting-Turner’s award on a $300 million AstraZeneca cell therapy manufacturing facility in Rockville, Maryland....

....MUCH MORE, including the handy map 

Earlier today:

Jamie Dimon, "Now He's Worried About An Artificial Economy 'Fueled by Government Deficit Spending'"

Possibly related, yesterday at Reuters:

Biden notches another union endorsement as building trades back reelection

Also at ConstructionDive, April 25:

Apartment starts fall more than 43%

Despite Weaker GDP Numbers Jobless Claims Fall, Stock and Bond Speculators Not Happy

First up, from Yahoo Finance, April 25:

GDP: US economy grows at 1.6% annual pace in first quarter, falling short of estimates

The US economy grew at a slower pace than expected in the first quarter.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis's advance estimate of first quarter US gross domestic product (GDP) showed the economy grew at an annualized pace of 1.6% during the period. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg estimated the US economy grew at an annualized pace of 2.5% during the period.

The reading came in significantly lower than fourth quarter GDP, which was revised up to 3.9%....

....MUCH MORE

And from the AP via U.S. News & World Report, April 25: 

US Applications for Jobless Claims Fall to Lowest Level in 9 Weeks
Fewer Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week as the labor market continues to hold up despite higher interest rates imposed by the Federal Reserve in its bid to curb inflation 

....MUCH MORE

Bonds are getting hit, with the CBOE interest rate futures on the 10-year pricing 4.7210% (+0.0690). Major stock indices down 1.4% to 1.8%.

"Babble hypothesis shows key factor to becoming a leader"

Thanks, I think, to a friend.

From Big Think, July 28, 2021:

Research shows that those who spend more time speaking tend to emerge as the leaders of groups, regardless of their intelligence. 

A new study proposes the "babble hypothesis" of becoming a group leader. Researchers show that intelligence is not the most important factor in leadership. Those who talk the most tend to emerge as group leaders. 

If you want to become a leader, start yammering. It doesn’t even necessarily matter what you say. New research shows that groups without a leader can find one if somebody starts talking a lot.  

This phenomenon, described by the “babble hypothesis” of leadership, depends neither on group member intelligence nor personality. Leaders emerge based on the quantity of speaking, not quality.

Researcher Neil G. MacLaren, lead author of the study published in The Leadership Quarterly, believes his team’s work may improve how groups are organized and how individuals within them are trained and evaluated....

....MUCH MORE

Huh. So if someone asks if I'm familiar with "The Babel hypothesis," I'll have to remember to ask "one 'b' or two?" "two 'b's' or three"  [forgot a 'b']

Jamie Dimon, "Now He's Worried About An Artificial Economy 'Fueled by Government Deficit Spending'"

An opportunity to hammer-home what is probably the most important fact about the current iteration of the American economy.

Lifted in toto from Benzinga, April 18:

In the chaos of the 2008 recession, perhaps no bank stood more prepared than Jamie Dimon's J.P Morgan Chase & Co.

In advance of the crisis, Jamie Dimon realized that "underwriting standards were deteriorating across the industry," with late payments on subprime loans rising.

In late 2006, the bank led his firm to exit Wall Street's hot subprime business, starting with a frantic call made to J.P. Morgan's vacationing Chief of Securitized Products where he said, "I really want you to watch out for subprime! We need to sell a lot of our positions. I’ve seen it before. This stuff could go up in smoke!”

By getting out of the soon-to-be toxic products, J.P. Morgan was able to go on the offensive when other banks pulled back too late or were forced into bankruptcy.

J.P. Morgan's stock has risen nearly 260% from its pre-global-financial-crisis peak.

Reflecting on the recession, Dimon said "counter to what most people think, many of the extreme actions we took were not done to make a profit; they were done to support our country and the financial system."

Dimon is sounding the alarm on a debt-fueled economy appearing healthier than reality may be.

In his most recent annual shareholder letter, Dimon said, "The U.S. economy continues to be resilient, with consumers still spending. and the markets currently expect a soft landing." However, he offered this caveat, saying that "it is important to note that the economy is being fueled by large amounts of government deficit spending and past stimulus."

With the U.S. national debt already surpassing $34.6 trillion at a time when the Federal Reserve is still unable to cut interest rates in the face of stubborn inflation, interest payments on the debt are set to exceed U.S. defense spending this year.

Whether the increasing fiscal debt becomes a problem impacting broader markets to the extent that the subprime crisis did remains to be seen, but Dimon and his firm are prepared for anything with J.P. Morgan's self-described "fortress balance sheet."

Benzinga home page.

We visited Dimon and his letter to the JPM shareholders in "JP Morgan Chairman's Letter on Inflation, April 8, 2024 (JPM)" and "Inflation—JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon's Comments On The Bank's First Quarter Results (JPM)" and we looked at one possible end game exiting from March 20's ""Hotshot Wharton professor sees $34 trillion debt triggering 2025 meltdown as mortgage rates spike above 7%: ‘It could derail the next administration’"":

This is the sort of stuff I was thinking about in the intro to March 6's "Michelle Obama's office says the former first lady 'will not be running for president' in 2024":

...On the other hand, I'm not sure you would want to be President during the next four years, there are so many problems that have been growing and metastasizing just beneath the surface of the daily news that the person in the hot seat could end up just plain reviled.

If I were a Democrat strategist I would propose letting Donald Trump win a second term while concentrating on House and especially Senate (to bottle up judicial, including Supreme Court, nominees) races.

A Trump win would give an excuse for riots (for the visuals) and if he is handcuffed by the Legislative branch to limit the range of possible responses, you go beyond polycrisis to the omnicrisis. Throw in a bit of Frances Fox Piven with her "overwhelm the system" and "motor voter" strategies and you could see one-party rule for thirty years....

Chinese AI Regaining Some Lost Glory: SenseTime's Stock Halted In Hong Kong After Jumping As Much As 36%

Ha! We just flashed-back on SenseTime in Monday's post on the British real-time facial recognition vans and apps: ICYMI: The Most Valuable AI Start-up In the World Does Facial Recognition.

From Bloomberg, April 23/24:

China’s SenseTime Surges 36% After Unveiling a New AI Model

• US-blacklisted firm unveils fifth version of its AI platform
• The company is one of many racing to develop generative AI

SenseTime Group Inc.’s stock soared its most in more than two years after releasing the latest version of its SenseNova generative AI model, highlighting the intense interest surrounding China’s efforts to develop artificial intelligence.

The shares gained as much as 36% after the company revealed SenseNova 5.0 during its Tech Day event in Shanghai. The ChatGPT-like platform has “significantly” improved in terms of linguistic and creative capabilities, Chairman Xu Li said in a statement. Trading in the stock was suspended after the abrupt surge but will resume Thursday.

SenseTime is among a growing number of Chinese corporations and startups exploring ways to develop an answer to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. In 2023, it joined Baidu Inc. and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. in developing its own inhouse generative AI platform. The potentially transformative technology has since become a key area in which Beijing is encouraging local companies to compete with their US counterparts.

The company said in a filing it was unaware of any reasons for the dramatic share price surge apart from SenseNova 5.0, which comes with about 600 billion parameters. “It achieved significant improvements in knowledge, mathematics, reasoning and coding capabilities, and its performance is generally comparable to GPT-4 Turbo,” the company said in the filing.

....MUCH MORE

The story at BiometricUpdate is headlined:

New LLM version boosts SenseTime stock to fraction of former price