"Reduced Risk of Negative Policy Rates Lifts Sterling and the Kiwi"

"Dad, why do people trade the New Zealand currency?"
"I don't know son, I just don't know."

From Marc to Market:

Overview: Investors are trying to figure out the impact of the likelihood of a vaccine. One thing that has happened is that the market perceives less chance that the UK or New Zealand will adopt negative rates, and their respective currencies are adjusting higher. Meanwhile, the equity rally is continuing in Asia and Europe. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index rose to new two-year highs in its seventh consecutive advance. During the Nikkei's seven-day rally, it has gained around 10% to near 30-year highs. Today, Taiwan, South Korea, and Australia rose over 1%, leaving China and Hong Kong in the red. The Dow Jones Stoxx 600 is rising for the eighth session of the past nine, during which time it has risen around 13%. It is at fresh highs since March. US shares are trading firmer, and the NASDAQ is trying to snap a three-day slide. The US cash bond market is closed today, while yields are firmer in Europe and the Asia Pacific. The dollar is mostly firmer, though the Antipodeans are firm, and the New Zealand dollar traded above $0.6900 for the first time since March 2019. Most of the freely accessible emerging market currencies are moving higher, led by the Turkish lira. After falling for the previous six sessions, the JP Morgan Emerging Market Currency Index is higher for the seventh consecutive session. Gold is trading quietly in roughly a $5 range on either side of $1880. Oil is trading higher, and the December WTI contract traded above $42.60 for the first time since early September. If the EIA confirms the API estimate of a five million barrel draw, US inventories would be at their lowest since March.

Asia Pacific
The Reserve Bank of New Zealand offered a new loan facility that will be launched next month (Funding for Lending Program), NZD$28 bln), and left its bond-buying (NZD$100 bln) and cash rate target (25 bp) unchanged. It also delayed the imposition of new capital buffer rules for a second time. The central bank upgraded its economic outlook. The market responded by removing the risk that negative rates are adopted. They had been priced in for next year. Governor Orr was more circumspect. While acknowledging the economy has been more resilient than expected, he was reluctant to eschew any policy option, including negative rates. New Zealand's 10-year yield jumped nearly 15 bp to 0.85%. The two-year yield jumped 10 bp to 0.18%. The New Zealand dollar's advancing streak has been extended to the eighth consecutive session.

China's Single's Day sales were impressive, but the focus is on the new antitrust action that threatens to curtail the growth of its internet giants like Alibaba. This saw the internet companies sell-off hard today and drag down the major benchmarks. Although Europe and US regulators have begun pushing back against the large US tech companies, Beijing's actions are catching many investors and observers by surprise. Separately, China reported lending slowed considerably in October. It is difficult to know the extent that the long holiday was the main driver or if the reduced government bond sales part of a larger policy adjustment.

A new law in Hong Kong making "patriotism" a requirement for lawmakers disqualified four opposition officials. In response, the entire opposition bloc resigned today. They accounted for 15 seats in the 70-member legislative body. Legislative Council elections were scheduled for this past September but were postponed a year. ....

....MUCH MORE

Capital Markets: Central Banks Making Changes

"Dad, why is the New Zealand dollar considered a major currency?"

"I don't know son, I just don't know."

 From Marc to Market:

RBNZ Moves Ahead of the Queue, Will the Bank of Canada Maintain its Place?

Overview: The Reserve Bank of New Zealand jumped to the front of the queue of central banks adjusting monetary policy by announcing the end of its long-term asset purchases. New Zealand's s 10-year benchmark yield jumped seven basis points, and the Kiwi is up almost 1%, to lead the move against the greenback today. Sterling is up around a quarter of a percentage point after it reported a larger than expected rise in CPI. Most of the other major currencies, but the Swiss franc and Swedish krona are posting small gains. Emerging market currencies are also narrowly mixed, leaving the JP Morgan EM index virtually flat on the session. Of note, ahead of Turkey's central bank decision, the lira has stabilized after rising for the past four sessions. Equity markets are struggling today. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index fell for the first time this week. Of the large markets, only Australia and India indices gained. Europe's Dow Jones Stoxx 600 is also threatening to post its first loss of the week. US futures are little changed. The US 10-year yield slipped lower after yesterday's unexpectedly strong CPI print but reversed with the help of a poor 30-year auction that generated a four basis point tail, the biggest this year. The benchmark yield is off a couple basis points today and is back below 1.40%. European bond yields are little changed, though, on the back of a strong CPI report, the 10-year Gilt yield is up four basis points. Gold is firm, within yesterday's range, around $1815. Oil prices have come back softer after yesterday's 1.5%-1.7% gain. Industrial metals are mixed. Iron ore prices rose for the third consecutive session, while copper prices are heavy and have not risen this week. The CRB Index rose yesterday for the fourth consecutive session.

Asia Pacific
The Reserve Bank of New Zealand met and surpassed the more hawkish shift in market expectations. It announced that its long-term asset purchases were no longer necessary and will stop these operations by the end of next week. Its statement dropped the reference to the need for patience to achieve its dual mandate. The market had been leaning toward a rate hike in November and solidified those expectations today. Some aggressive participants may see a hike at the August 18 RBNZ meeting. Note that at the end of this week, New Zealand reports Q2 CPI. The year-over-year rate is expected to rise to 2.7% from 1.5% in Q1.

Australia reports June employment data tomorrow. The tight border restrictions have helped the labor market recover. It filled 97.5k full-time positions in May but cannot maintain that pace. Sydney's lockdown has been extended another couple of weeks, but Westpac's measure of consumer confidence improved from June (1.5% vs. -5.2%). Separately, South Korea, Indonesia, and Malaysia are reporting a record number of covid cases. Meanwhile, Japan's May industrial output was revised lower. Rather than contract by 5.9% on the month, as initially reported, it fell 6.5%. The BOJ's two-day meeting starts tomorrow and today's data reinforces ideas that it will revise down its growth forecast from its previous projection of 4% growth. Elsewhere in the region, South Korea reported its fourth consecutive month of jobs gains, while Singapore's economy contracted by 2% in Q2, a little more than expected, after a 3.1% quarter-over-quarter expansion in Q1...

....MUCH MORE

The World Economic Forum's Young Global Leaders Program Has Some Interesting Members

This list comes by way of Swiss Policy Research, formerly known as Swiss Propaganda Research which should set off some low-level alarm bells that we might be moving into a weird place.

However, our readers are full-grown adults who can make their own calls as to veracity and sourcing, and since I haven't seen this list put together by the Washington Post we will go with the SPR.

And thinking about it, I should maybe start using the "...we might be moving into a weird place." heads-up when linking to the Washington Post. (j.k., we don't actually link to the WaPo much anymore, since Bezos bought it they have become hard to trust and boringly blatant in their position as the favorite mouthpiece of the spies and spooks community).

On the SPR "About us" page they list:

....Criticism of SPR

• A negative Wikipedia article (2020) – More about Wikipedia here.
• A negative review by NewsGuard (2020) – More about Newsguard here.
• A negative review by MediaBias (2020) – More about MediaBias here.

Something I couldn't find about the WaPo on the WaPo's site.

Anyhoo, onward. From SPR, October 6, 2021:

The WEF and the Pandemic 

How is the Davos World Economic Forum involved in the coronavirus pandemic?

The Davos World Economic Forum (WEF) is a premier forum for governments, global corporations and international entrepreneurs. Founded in 1971 by engineer and economist Klaus Schwab, the WEF describes its mission as “shaping global, regional and industry agendas” and “improving the state of the world”. According to its website, “moral and intellectual integrity is at the heart of everything it does.”

The WEF has been involved in the coronavirus pandemic in several ways.....

[cutting to the chase, our area of interest being prospect lists of possible recruits to Climateerism - "join the cult, get the tote-bag for free!"]

....Finally, the WEF has been running, since 1993, a program called “Global Leaders for Tomorrow”, rebranded, in 2004, as “Young Global Leaders”. This program aims at identifying, selecting and promoting future global leaders in both business and politics. Indeed, quite a few “Young Global Leaders” have later managed to become Presidents, Prime Ministers, or CEOs (see below).

During the coronavirus pandemic, several WEF Global Leaders and Global Shapers (a junior program of the Global Leaders) have played prominent roles, typically promoting zero-covid strategies, lockdowns, mask mandates, and ‘vaccine passports’. This may have been a (largely failed) attempt to protect public health and the economy, or it may have been an attempt to advance the global transformation agenda outlined above, or perhaps both.

In this regard, some notable Young Leaders include Jeffrey Zients (US White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator), Stéphane Bancel (CEO of Moderna), Jeremy Howard (founder of influential lobby group “Masks for All”), Leana Wen (zero-covid CNN medical analyst), Eric Feigl-Ding (zero-covid Twitter personality), Gavin Newsom (Governor of California, selected in 2005), Devi Sridhar (British zero-covid professor), Jacinda Ardern (Prime Minister of New Zealand), Greg Hunt (Australian Health Minister and former WEF strategy director), French President Emanuel Macron, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, German Chancellor Angela Merkel (selected in 1993), German Health Minister Jens Spahn, and former British PM Tony Blair (a leading proponent of ‘global vaccine passports’).

To get a full overview of their members, see Global Leaders for Tomorrow and Young Global Leaders on WikiSpooks (a Wiki focusing on covert power structures) as well as the official Young Global Leaders website. For an overview of some notable members in politics and the media, see below.....

....WEF “Young Global Leaders”

An overview of some WEF Young Global Leaders (2005-2021) and Global Leaders for Tomorrow (1993-2003) in politics and the media. The list is not exhaustive.

Sources: Global Leaders for Tomorrow and Young Global Leaders on WikiSpooks.

United States

Politics and Policy

Jeffrey Zients (White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator since 2021, selected in 2003), Jeremy Howard (co-founder of lobby group “masks for all”, selected in 2013), California Governor Gavin Newsom (selected in 2005), Pete Buttigieg (selected in 2019, candidate for US President in 2020, US secretary of transportation since 2021), Chelsea Clinton (Clinton Foundation board member), Huma Abedin (Hillary Clinton aide, selected in 2012), Nikki Haley (US ambassador to the UN, 2017-2018), Samantha Power (US ambassador to the UN, 2013-2017, USAID Administrator since 2021), Ian Bremmer (founder of Eurasia Group), Bill Browder (initiator of the Magnitsky Act), Jonathan Soros (son of George Soros), Kenneth Roth (director of “Human Rights Watch” since 1993), Paul Krugman (economist, selected in 1995), Lawrence Summers (former World Bank Chief Economist, former US Treasury Secretary, former Harvard University President, selected in 1993), Alicia Garza (co-founder of Black Lives Matter, selected in 2020), Stéphane Bancel (Moderna CEO).

Media

Covid Twitter personality Eric Feigl-Ding (a ‘WEF Global Shaper‘ since 2013), CNN medical analyst Leana Wen (selected in 2018), CNN chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta (2010), CNN host Fareed Zakaria (2001), CNN anchor Anderson Cooper (2008), Andrew Ross Sorkin (New York Times financial columnist, 2007), Thomas Friedman (New York Times columnist, 1995), George Stephanopoulos (ABC News, 1993), Lachlan Murdoch (CEO of Fox Corporation, 1997).

Technology and Social Media

Microsoft founder Bill Gates (1993), former Microsoft CEO Steven Ballmer (2000-2014, selected in 1995), Amazon founder Jeff Bezos (1998), Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page (2002/2005), former Google CEO Eric Schmidt (2001-2017, selected in 1997), Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales (2007), PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel (2007), eBay co-founder Pierre Omidyar (1999), Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg (2009), Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg (2007).

Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand

Professor Devi Sridhar (a leading ‘zero covid’ proponent, selected in 2020/21), former British Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown (both selected in 1993), BBC World Service journalist Dawood Azami, Lynn Forester de Rothschild (co-owner of The Economist), Nathaniel Rothschild (son of Lord Rothschild), historian Niall Ferguson (selected in 2005), William Hague (Foreign Secretary, 2010-2014), Charles Allen (CEO of ITV, 2004-2007; Chairman of EMI, 2008-2010).

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern (since 2017, selected in 2014), Australian Health Minister Greg Hunt (selected in 2003; former WEF strategy director), Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland (selected in 2001; former managing director of Reuters). Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is a WEF participant, but is not a confirmed Young Global Leader.

Germany

Chancellor Angela Merkel (selected in 1993, 12 years before becoming Chancellor), current Health Minister Jens Spahn and former Health Ministers Philipp Roesler and Daniel Bahr, current co-chair of the Green Party and failed Chancellor candidate Annalena Baerbock (selected in 2020), former co-chair of the Green Party Cem Özdemir (selected in 2002), media mogul and Axel Springer CEO Mathias Doepfner (selected in 2001), talk show host Sandra Maischberger, late Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor Guido Westerwelle (1997), former German President Christian Wulff (selected in 1995, 15 years before becoming President), Reto Francioni (former CEO of Deutsche Boerse).

European Union

EU Commission Presidents Jose Manuel Barroso (2004-2014, selected in 1993) and Jean-Claude Juncker (2014-2019, selected in 1995), French President Emanuel Macron (since 2017, selected in 2016), former French President Nicolas Sakozy (2007-2012, selected in 1993), Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, former Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi (2014-2016, selected in 2012), former Spanish Prime Ministers José Maria Aznar (1996-2004, selected in 1993) and José Luis Zapatero (2004-2011, selected in 2001), Klaus Regling (CEO of the European Financial Stability Mechanism), Belgian Prime Minister Alexander de Croo (since 2020, selected in 2015), Guy Verhofstadt (former Belgian Prime Minister, Chair of the Brexit Steering Group), Danish Minister for the Environment Lea Wermelin, Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin, former Finnish Prime Minister Alexander Stubb, and Mark Leonard (founding director of the Soros-funded European Council on Foreign Relations).

Switzerland

Natalie Rickli (Director of Health of the Canton of Zurich, selected in 2012), former Presidents of the Swiss National Council Christa Markwalder (selected in 2011) and Pascale Bruderer-Wyss (selected in 2009), Geneva politician Pierre Maudet (selected in 2013), NZZ media group CEO Felix R. Graf (selected in 2007), former Swiss Justice Minister Ruth Metzler (selected in 2002), former Swiss television CEO Roger de Weck (2011-2017, selected in 1994), former UBS CEOs Peter Wuffli (selected in 1994) and Marcel Rohner (selected in 2003), former Credit Suisse CEO Tidjane Tiam (1998).

2005 YGL Nomination Committee

The 2005 WEF Young Global Leaders Nomination Committee consisted primarily of major media publishers and editors, including Arthur Sulzberger and Steve Forbes (USA); James Murdoch, Jonathan Rothermere and Tom Glocer (UK); Arnaud Lagardère (France); Mathias Doepfner and Hubert Burda (Germany); Michael Ringer (Switzerland); and Carl-Johan Bonnier (Sweden)....

....MUCH MORE  

As a point in our favor, I don't think membership in WEF: Young Global Leaders comes with a complimentary tote-bag.

Jus' sayin'.

Capital Markets: "Kiwi Pounded on Dovish Guidance by RBNZ and UK Gilts Rise despite Higher than Expected CPI"

"Dad, why do people trade the New Zealand currency?"
"I don't know son, I just don't know."

From Marc Chandler at Bannockburn Global Forex:

Overview: Leaving aside the New Zealand dollar, which has been tagged for more than 1% after the dovish forward guidance following the central bank's well-telegraphed rate cut, and the Australian dollar, which has been dragged lower after yesterday's poor price action, the G10 currencies are little changed. The greenback is firmer against most emerging market currencies. Outside of New Zealand, the macro data has been limited to a larger than expected Japanese trade deficit, as exports to the US, EU, and China fell, and firmer than expected UK July inflation. The highlight from the US today are the FOMC minutes, which seem less relevant after the August 1 jobs report and official comments. 

While Japanese, Taiwan, and South Korea stocks sold off, most of the other markets in the Asia Pacific region rose with China's CSI 300 rising more than 1% and the Shanghai Composite reaching a new 10-year high. Europe's Stoxx 600 is posting a minor gain but sufficient to extend its advance for the third consecutive session and the sixth in past seven. US index futures are nursing small losses after yesterday's sell-off. European benchmark 10-year yields are mostly 1-2 bp lower, but the UK 10-year Gilt yield is off four basis points, despite the higher CPI reading. The 10-year Treasury yield is off almost a single basis point to slip back below 4.30%. Gold has steadied after losing 0.5% yesterday. It dipped below $3312, its lowest level since August 1, but recovered to session highs, a little above $3327 in Europe. October WTI continues to trade in Monday's range ($61.45-$63.00).  

USD: The Dollar Index has not gone anywhere really in the past five sessions....

....MUCH MORE 

Big Money: "Millionaire Farmers: Top 10 Families That Made Millions from Agriculture"

Not your typical list of High Net Worth folks and not your typical list of farmers-who-are-millionaires-because-they-own-a-hundred-acres somewhere in Iowa.

From Millionaire Mob:

Farming and agriculture has a poor image in popular culture, but it remains a solid investment for families and people around the world. With a growing population and a shrinking land base, I anticipate farming will only need to get more efficient. Here are several millionaire farmers that have built wealth by following their plan and growing their agriculture business. 

Millionaire Farmers: Top 10 Families That Made Millions from Agriculture
Modern agriculture and new technologies have helped foster the development of successful farms around the world. Many millionaire farmers around the world have made a fortune through the use of new technology.

Farming is undoubtedly one of the most proven ventures in history. I can’t remember the last time we didn’t have food on earth… That’s a joke. We need food now more than ever before. At the same time, we will always need food. A strong agriculture system is core to our well-being.
An ideal tip on how to become a successful farmer is to treat agriculture like any other business. Farming also requires the formulation of proper strategies and keeping of accounts of the business cash flows. In order to accumulate wealth, you need to own something. One thing I admire about farmers is that they love taking ownership of their work.

Farmers simply don’t get enough credit for what they do. I’m bullish on farming for years to come. Not just traditional farming, but city farming and greenhouses. Let’s get into some background about farming and money.

How Farmers Make Money
Farming is one of the most straightforward business ventures in the world. It is not without cycles, however. Farmers can be somewhat reliant on weather conditions and external factors that will truly influence how much money you can make. However, these millionaire farmers have isolated their businesses away from weather reliant products.

Then, most of these farmers scaled their land from ordinary farmer to millionaire farmer. Farmers make money by selling consumer products to distributors that bring these products to grocery and retail stores.

Farmers have large upfront costs, but if you own the land and assets, you can live off of the income forever. If you reinvest the income from farming, you can really take your business from ordinary farm to an everlasting enterprise.

How to Become a Successful Farmer
If you are trying to become a rich farmer or a successful farmer, there are a few guidelines for success.
Successful farmers don’t always have to be rich farmers. Based on my review successful farmers that have eventually become rich from farming possess the following:

• Successful farmers always have the highest yielding equipment and continue to reinvest into their business.
• They focus on mergers and acquisitions to expand the business into new verticals or lines of distribution.
• Isolate or diversify their business from weather patterns.
• Successful farmers possess the true entrepreneurial spirit. They certainly learned from these accumulated wealth tips. I don’t think they spent much time monitoring their Personal Capital net worth. They focused on investing in their business.

There are many other traits of successful farmers, but these are some of the top traits of successful farmers that come to mind. A few of these farmers on our list are not just millionaires, they are billionaires. Let’s get into our list of the top millionaire farmers in the world.

List of the Top 10 Millionaire Farmers in the World
Our list of millionaire farmers features families from across the world in all different continents. These farmers made the list due to their devotion to growth in business and entrepreneurial savvy. They started as farmers, but grew into much more than that. Some of the richest farmers in the world no longer focus on the grass roots of farming. However, that’s okay.
Without further ado, let’s look at the top ten wealthiest farmers in the world (not in any particular order).

1. Liu Yonghao and Family

Liu Yonghao is among the most prosperous farmers in the world. He is among the most successful millionaire farmers in China from a humble beginning as a chicken farmer. In addition, he has a net worth of $6.6 billion. He is the man behind New Hope Group. New Hope Group is a conglomerate that controls New Hope Liuhe where Liu’s daughter is a chairperson.

Mr. Liu was once a technical school tutor until 1982 when he quit and began a bicycles business together with his three brothers. He managed to raise $120 start-up capital which he invested in breeding quails and chickens to sell to other farmers near their home in rural Sichuan province.
Soon he branched out into the animal-feeds business. He formed East Hope Group Company in the early 1990s after an amicable business split from his brothers. The Hope Group company was one of the largest animal-feed groups in China and one of the largest non-government conglomerates in the country in 1992.

Taking Farming to the Next Level
Being a founder of China Minsheng Bank, the only bank in the country since 1949 to be established without direct state ownership, Liu holds about 7% of China Minsheng Bank’s shares. His New Hope Group maintains extensive interests in animal feed, property, logistics and dairy products.
Liu and his brothers are millionaire farmers and made it to the top wealthiest farmers list by focusing mostly on the agriculture and animal husbandry sector. By the end of 2013, China Minsheng Bank had more than 500 subsidiaries and branches.

East Hope Group specializes in producing animal feed for pigs, ducks, chickens, and fish among others.  It is present mostly in the Chinese market, but also in a few countries abroad, such as Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, or Cambodia.

The company has developed support services and products, such as fodder, plant cultivation and food processing around animal husbandry. Their family is one (if not the) richest farming families in the world.

2. Howard Buffet

Howard Buffet is a son of US billionaire investor, Warren Buffet and is not only a businessman but also among the wealthiest American farmers. He has spent most of his life as a farmer.
With little financial support from his father, Howard managed to rank among the topmost agriculture millionaires. However, he recently got appointed the CEO and Chairman of the Howard G. Buffett Foundation.

Buffett has traveled to over 130 different countries around the world. He documents the challenges of preserving biodiversity and providing sufficient resources to support the ever-growing human demands.

The Howard G. Buffett Foundation supports projects in the areas of agriculture, water, conservation, nutrition, humanitarian, and conflict/unaccompanied persons. His wealth is approximately $200 million. Howard Buffett is thus among the once of many millionaire farmers in the world today. I admire Howard Buffett for his devotion to impact investing and leaving a lasting legacy. Not only that, but from what I’ve heard, he’s one of the most down to earth businessmen out there.

3. Colin and Dale Armer

Colin and Dale Armer is a couple from New Zealand. They are one of the most celebrated dairy millionaire farmers in the world. They own Armer Farms, a company in New Zealand’s North Island.
The Armers have 13,000 cows for milking on 14 farms. They are significant shareholders in corporate business Dairy Holdings which own 59 dairy farms, 48,010 cows and produce 17.3 million kilograms of milk solids per year.

The two brothers began developing their dairy operation around 40 years ago. Having started with zero capital, Colin and Dale bought 140 cows to share the farm with a focus on making profits. Colin and Dale’s wealth is around $240 million, and they also own the Dairy Holding whose value is approximately $535 million.

4. Harry Stine

Another gentleman among the top millionaire farmers is Harry Stine. Harry is not only an entrepreneur and innovator but also one of the wealthiest farmers in the world. He grew up on the family property in Dallas County, Iowa. Harry graduated from Central Dallas High School and McPherson College in Kansas. He joined his father’s soybean cleaning business in Adel, Iowa in 1964.

Harry’s found some unusual soybean plants in one of the company fields which piqued his interest in research and seed breeding. He recognized the value and potential opportunities of reproduction, developing and growing newer higher-yielding soybean varieties for his company and farmers.
While yield-checking the soybean lines, he gained an understanding of what a conventional breeding program could bring to the soybean industry and growers.  His net worth is around $3.4 billion.

Harry Stine made his fortune by licensing corn and soybean genetics to large multinationals, such as Syngenta or Monsanto. He is mildly autistic and dyslexic, but he never allows these challenges overcome his drive and ambitious. Harrys’ company, Stine Seeds, is the largest private seed company in the world. Stine Seeds has created some of the most genetically robust soybean seeds.

5. Stewart and Lynda Resnick

Stewart and Lynda Resnick are millionaire farmers and among the wealthiest American farmers. They now own a company called the Wonderful Company. It all began in 1978 when the Resnicks moved into the agricultural business after the purchase of some orange groves in Kern County.

They got their fortune first from the Teleflora flower delivery service. They later expanded their assets and bought cheap farms during the drought years of the late 1980s. The company which was then known as Paramount Farm soon became the largest pistachios and almonds producers in the world.

Their many brands include Wonderful Pistachios, Fiji Water, Halo clementines, and POM Wonderful. Nearly half of all Americans today purchase one of their products, including Halos mandarin oranges, POM Wonderful, and Fiji Water.

The two millionaire farmers have a net worth of $4 billion. It made lots of it from their almonds, oranges, and grapefruits they grow on their land. The family owns property in the Central Valley of California and South Texas....

....MUCH MORE

Capital Markets: "Ceasefire Frays, Tempers Enthusiasm, but Hope Lingers"

From Marc Chandler at Bannockburn Global Forex:

The US dollar is trading with a slightly firmer bias against most currencies today. New hostilities in the Middle East war have blunted the hopes of an extended ceasefire, but such skirmishes are not uncommon in such situations. On Polymarket, the odds that the Strait of Hormuz opens by the end of June was cut to about 45% from a peak of almost 60% at the end of last week. August Brent crude oil is paring yesterday’s nearly 6.8% drop but is still holding mostly below $97 a barrel. July WTI is a little below $92 after settling last week near $96.60. 

Outside of the Middle East, the news stream is light and the North American response to the geopolitical developments will set the for the remainder of the session. Although the offshore yuan is nearly flat, the PBOC set the dollar’s reference rate at a new three-year low. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand meets first thing tomorrow and is expected to keep its target rate at 2.25%....

....MUCH MORE 

Previously:

"Dad, why do people trade the New Zealand currency?"
"I don't know son, I just don't know." 

Capital Markets: "RBNZ Delivers a Dovish Hike and UK Inflation Surprises to the Upside"

"Dad, why do people trade the New Zealand currency?"
"I don't know son, I just don't know."

—"Reduced Risk of Negative Policy Rates Lifts Sterling and the Kiwi", November 11, 2020

From Marc to Market:

Overview: Equities in the Asia Pacific region and Europe are being led lower by the sell-off in the US yesterday. All the large Asia Pacific markets fell with Hong Kong and mainland shares setting the pace. Europe's Stoxx 600 is off nearly 1.5%, which would be the largest loss in two months. Consumer discretionary, financials and real estate sectors are off nearly 2%. US equity futures have a softer bias. European 10-year yields are mostly 2-3 bp lower, but the UK inflation shock (1.2% month-over-month and a new cyclical high in the core rate) has seen 10-year Gilt yields jump around eight basis points to near 4.25%, the highest since last October.

The greenback is mostly firmer against the G10 currencies. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand's dovish hike has seen the Kiwi drop around 1.8% and dragged the Aussie below the $0.6600 area. The UK's inflation surprise has seen sterling reverse from the $1.2475 area to push below $1.2400. The euro and yen are straddling unchanged levels. Emerging market currencies are more mixed. Of note the Hungarian forint is better bid today after easing on the central bank's rate cut yesterday. Also, the Mexican peso, which fell to around a three-week low is also better bid today, ahead of the first half of May CPI today. Gold held support near $1950 yesterday. It looks poised to test the upper end of its recent range near $1985. July WTI is extended yesterday's recovery, helped by the Saudi warning against bearish speculators and an estimated 6 mln barrel draw down of US stocks by API. A move above $75 would target this month's high near $76.50. Lastly, we note that July copper is extended its losses and is now below $360 for the first time since last November....

....MUCH MORE 

End of the Oppenheimer Era at DeBeers: Nicky Oppenheimer on What the Family Will Do With the $5.1 Billion

I almost put the old DBRSY symbol into the headline.
First up, from the New Zealand Herald:
De Beers sale signals end of an empire

After ruling the diamond industry for close to a century, South Africa's unofficial Royal family, the Oppenheimer's, have signalled the end of an era by selling out of De Beers.

The descendants of Ernest Oppenheimer, the swashbuckling diamond trader who wrested control of De Beers in 1927, sold their remaining 40 per cent stake in the world's biggest diamond producer to Anglo America for US$5.1 billion (NZ$6.4bn).

The deal will hand control of De Beers to Anglo American by hiking its stake in the private company to 85 per cent. It will mark a new era for the family, which has not only played a key role in De Beers for more than eight decades but also founded Anglo American.

It also represents the new stage for De Beers, a company inextricably linked with Britain's colonial past that this year recorded record interim sales, and for Anglo American, with diamond sales set to accelerate in the coming years.

Des Kilalea, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets in London, said: "It is the end of an era because the Oppenheimers are intrinsically associated with De Beers and Anglo American."

Ernest's 65-year grandson, Nicky, studied at Harrow and Oxford before spending 43 years at De Beers. He will step down as chairman after the deal goes through. Nicky's departure from De Beers comes eight months after he retired as a non-executive director of Anglo American after nearly four decades, leaving the mining company without a founding family member on its board for the first time....MORE
And from MineWeb:
De Beer's Selling out to Anglo - Nicky Oppenheimer
Nicky Oppenheimer speaks on what the family is planning to do with the $5.1bn it will receive from Anglo American for its stake in De Beers

Download this interview
 

ALEC HOGG: The big story of the day is the Oppenheimer family selling out of De Beers. Peter Major, the mining consultant at Cadiz Corporate Solutions joins us now. Peter, I must tell you I'm very partial to the Oppenheimers, certainly to the grand old lady of racing - she's our first lady in the racing industry, Bridget Oppenheimer. I would have thought in a case like this she and Harry had spent so much time together - this was their company - couldn't the kids have waited a little bit longer?

PETER MAJOR: Gee, I don't know, Alec. If you say that the diamond price hit an all-time high three months ago - and that means they were much higher, like 25%, 30% higher than at the peak in 2008, and I'm guessing this deal was probably consummated three, four months ago at its peak - I'd say perfect timing. You know, if you wait two more years it might look like the bottom or too late, when the company was going cap in hand trying to borrow 1.5bn, 2bn just to keep it liquid.

ALEC HOGG: So the timing was right. Nicky's done a good thing. What about his son, though, Jonathan? He had shown interest in getting involved at De Beers.

PETER MAJOR: He had, and he's been quite involved in the business at different levels. But I'm trying to think through in how many companies the fourth generation is really strong, committed, and desirous to keep it going. You can maybe say Ford Motor Company has three, four generations there, with Bill running it. But are Bill Gates' kids really going to want to take over Microsoft? Are Steven Jobs kids going to want to run Apple? So I think you get more removed as the generations go by, and the companies that always - do I say are always under threat? - yes, it's a monopoly. Times are changing, you've got big competitors, like Russia, Canada, Australia, Angola and Botswana wanting a bigger say in things. Nicky's mid-60s.

    So I don't know if it would be worth Jonathan's while to say: "Let's keep all the family fortune, De Beers, and darn it, I want to keep running it - or trying to run it."

ALEC HOGG: Well, the man you're talking about, Nicky Oppenheimer, in fact joins us now. Nicky, good to have you on the programme. We are very sad, some of us, to see that the family is leaving the De Beers myth. It couldn't have been an easy decision.

NICKY OPPENHEIMER: Alec, evening to you. No, obviously very emotional for all of us in the family when we debated whether this was the right thing to do or not. You know, it's a 100 years of history - 1902 when my grandfather came out here first to join the diamond business in Kimberley. So indeed very emotional. But at the end of the day we in the family decided this was indeed the right thing to do, and it was a unanimous decision. And in a sense you've got to move on and now's the time to look to the future and think what exciting things we can do in Africa in the future....MORE

Nothing is forever.
Except, maybe, Neil Diamond.

WEIRD People (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic)

From Quillette, September 8:

The WEIRDest People in the World—A Review
A review of The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous by Joseph Henrich, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 704 pages (September, 2020).

A decade ago, researcher and scholar Joseph Henrich, together with psychologists Steven Heine and Ara Norenzayan, published a landmark paper in Behavioral and Brain Sciences titled, “The weirdest people in the world?”¹ No, the target of the label “weird” were not the Araweté horticulturalists of lowland South America, where mothers-to-be seek sex with multiple men in the belief that semen from multiple fathers is needed to form the fetus.² Nor were they the Māori of New Zealand, who have been known to collect and preserve the heads of enemy chiefs they killed in battle as trophies of war, (the mokomokai.) The target of the weird label was Western people. More specifically, Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic, or WEIRD.

WEIRD was not meant as a pejorative, but as an apt description of this group of psychologically peculiar people, who are distinct from the majority of humanity both now and throughout human history.

Indeed, WEIRD individuals are psychologically peculiar in a number of ways. For instance, if asked the question, “Who are you?” WEIRD people are more likely to describe themselves in terms of their skills, occupation, achievements, and talents rather than by their relationships—they are “a doctor,” “hardworking,” or “a pianist” rather than “Alex’s son” or “Clara’s boyfriend.” Additionally, when judging others, they are typically more likely to assign responsibility to personal characteristics rather than external circumstances. For instance, they are likely to assume that the guy driving recklessly ahead of them on the highway is a complete idiot and terrible driver rather than a worried son rushing his father to the nearest emergency room. While WEIRD people are more individualistic, self-centered, impersonally prosocial, guilt-ridden, and analytical, many non-WEIRD people, from the Chinese to the Ju/’hoansi of the Kalahari Desert, display opposite psychological trends. Non-WEIRD people tend to be more collectivistic, other-focused, more partial to their in-groups, shame-ridden, and holistic thinkers.

The central argument of Henrich and his collaborators is that there has been and continues to be an over-reliance on WEIRD samples in research. And while many of these findings purport to shed light on the human mind and behavior in general, they actually only illuminate the psychology of a small proportion of the human species. WEIRD people make up only around 12 percent of the world’s population and yet over 90 percent of the subjects in psychology research.¹ While this methodological critique was and continues to be extremely important for researchers, it left the question of how WEIRD psychology came to be, unresolved. Explaining WEIRD psychology, together with elucidating the key factors that contributed to the scaling-up of small Western societies into large complex states, are the two central focuses of The WEIRDest People in the World. Joseph Henrich addresses them in this sweeping and magisterial book, likely to become as foundational to cultural psychology as the WEIRD acronym he and his colleagues coined a decade ago....

....MUCH MORE

The WEIRDest People in the World—A Review

Before getting to the main course, where the reviewed book points up the importance of kinship in explaining social development we'll lift the introduction from a different 2020 post and re-purpose, re-use and re-cycle:

December 26, 2020
Tribalism
The title of this piece was "Is Tribalism a Natural Malfunction?" but that seems an incorrect characterization.

It's all about trust, which is one of the reasons globalists have a problem convincing ordinary people to share their grand dreams and visions. Many of the things globalists have promised turned out not to be true so people go to the population size they feel they can trust.

Can't trust the U.N. after the Oil-for-Food frauds and the Rwandan genocides? Let's try nation-state.

Can't trust nation-states because one part of the populace cheats or shows themselves to be hypocrites? 

(And it is this very point, Orwell's “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” where globalists lose the masses)

Let's try states.

And then city-states and if you can't trust your fellow metropolitans we'll go with blood relations, first tribes and if there are schisms there, to immediate family. Consanguinity and all that.

Tribalism isn't a "mal" anything, it's a survival mechanism for when you really, really have to increase the odds that you will be able to trust another person....

And from Quillette, September 8, 2020:

The WEIRDest People in the World—A Review 

A review of The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous by Joseph Henrich, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 704 pages (September, 2020).

A decade ago, researcher and scholar Joseph Henrich, together with psychologists Steven Heine and Ara Norenzayan, published a landmark paper in Behavioral and Brain Sciences titled, “The weirdest people in the world?”¹ No, the target of the label “weird” were not the Araweté horticulturalists of lowland South America, where mothers-to-be seek sex with multiple men in the belief that semen from multiple fathers is needed to form the fetus.² Nor were they the Māori of New Zealand, who have been known to collect and preserve the heads of enemy chiefs they killed in battle as trophies of war, (the mokomokai.) The target of the weird label was Western people. More specifically, Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic, or WEIRD.

WEIRD was not meant as a pejorative, but as an apt description of this group of psychologically peculiar people, who are distinct from the majority of humanity both now and throughout human history.

Indeed, WEIRD individuals are psychologically peculiar in a number of ways. For instance, if asked the question, “Who are you?” WEIRD people are more likely to describe themselves in terms of their skills, occupation, achievements, and talents rather than by their relationships—they are “a doctor,” “hardworking,” or “a pianist” rather than “Alex’s son” or “Clara’s boyfriend.” Additionally, when judging others, they are typically more likely to assign responsibility to personal characteristics rather than external circumstances. For instance, they are likely to assume that the guy driving recklessly ahead of them on the highway is a complete idiot and terrible driver rather than a worried son rushing his father to the nearest emergency room. While WEIRD people are more individualistic, self-centered, impersonally prosocial, guilt-ridden, and analytical, many non-WEIRD people, from the Chinese to the Ju/’hoansi of the Kalahari Desert, display opposite psychological trends. Non-WEIRD people tend to be more collectivistic, other-focused, more partial to their in-groups, shame-ridden, and holistic thinkers.

The central argument of Henrich and his collaborators is that there has been and continues to be an over-reliance on WEIRD samples in research. And while many of these findings purport to shed light on the human mind and behavior in general, they actually only illuminate the psychology of a small proportion of the human species. WEIRD people make up only around 12 percent of the world’s population and yet over 90 percent of the subjects in psychology research.¹ While this methodological critique was and continues to be extremely important for researchers, it left the question of how WEIRD psychology came to be, unresolved. Explaining WEIRD psychology, together with elucidating the key factors that contributed to the scaling-up of small Western societies into large complex states, are the two central focuses of The WEIRDest People in the World. Joseph Henrich addresses them in this sweeping and magisterial book, likely to become as foundational to cultural psychology as the WEIRD acronym he and his colleagues coined a decade ago.

In many ways, The WEIRDest People in the World is a sequel to Henrich’s 2016 book The Secret of Our Success, in which he argues that the distinctly human ability to create, transmit, and acquire evolved cultural systems is the major reason for our success as a species. It also calls to mind similar transdisciplinary books as Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel and Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature. All are books that attempt to answer questions as foundational and timeless as that posed by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations published in the 18th century—what explains why some countries are poor and others are rich? Such broad foundational questions necessitate bridging the gaps between disciplines since their answers are fragmented across them. Of the many qualities to admire in this book, its interdisciplinary approach is perhaps the most impressive. I imagine that Henrich stands by the contention that the boundaries between disciplines are largely arbitrary and often need to be crossed to make sense of phenomena as complex as the evolutionary history of Homo sapiens. For in arguing his case, he weaves together disciplines as different as evolutionary biology, psychology, and anthropology, among others. This method is altogether befitting of an academic who has not only been a tenured professor in four different academic disciplines, but also has reached across half a dozen or so fields to conduct his cross-cultural research on human evolution.

Henrich takes this approach especially when he argues that the origins of WEIRD psychology began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the rise of the branch of Christianity that later evolved into the Roman Catholic Church, which he calls the “Western Church.” During the period between about 400 and 1200 CE, the Western Church began gradually dismantling intensive kin-based institutions such as clans, kindreds, and segmentary lineages, which were typical of most human societies then and throughout human history. With the disbanding of these institutions came the outlawing of norms associated with them such as polygamy and cousin marriage. The Western Church began promulgating a new set of prescriptions dealing with marriage, family, identity, and inheritance, which Henrich collectively refers to as the Marriage and Family Program (MFP). The MFP inadvertently encouraged the creation of associations such as guilds, universities, and confraternities, which bound people together based on shared interests, beliefs, and skills, rather than kinship ties. Henrich argues that the rise of these more non-relational institutions in Europe created a novel environment to which these populations psychologically adapted. This cultural adaptation strongly influenced the psychology typical of WEIRD people today.

The way in which Henrich examines psychological variation through the lens of kinship intensity, meaning the strength of kin-based institutions in one’s society, provides a more direct approach to understanding mind and behavior than more abstract concepts like individualism and collectivism, or tightness and looseness. This is because kin-based institutions and their associated norms are more grounded in our evolved psychology and are primary to human social life. Additionally, the importance of these norms and institutions reverberate through multiple layers of society from the individual to the cultural group.
Henrich presents data that testify to the influence of kinship on human psychology. For example, on average, cultures with high kinship intensity relative to those with low kinship intensity possess psychological trends that are opposite to those in WEIRD societies. These include the prevalence of shame rather than guilt, in-group loyalty rather than universalism, nepotism rather than impartiality, and holistic rather than analytic thinking.

Beyond this, Henrich argues that kinship intensity does not just describe or predict psychological variation, it explains it....

....MUCH MORE

 

If interested see also 2018's "Tribes and States: Human Self-Organization" which casually drops this tidbit:  

....It is only when a tribe is part of a strong state that an independently-enforced hierarchy of chiefs can arise.¹⁶ It is at that point that stratification between the elite families and ordinary tribesmen emerges, and a chief can, to some degree, rule tribesmen. The power of the state imposes a hierarchy of authority on a tribe and weakens the tribal organization.

Tribal segmentary lineage systems provide order without a political hierarchy. Edward Evans-Pritchard famously described this arrangement as “ordered anarchy.”¹⁷

Social control is imposed through balanced opposition, and deterrence provided by norms of retaliation and vengeance. Every society needs order. Only predictability allows people to gauge the consequences of their acts, and thus to act purposefully. Without order, neither social relations nor the production and exchange required for an economy are feasible. Tribal organization provides that order.....

U.S. Farmland Has Been the Top Performing Asset Over the Last 20 Years: Goodbye to all that

We have so many posts on farmland it is easier just to do a Google search of the blog:
site:climateerinvest.blogspot.com Farmland
The top result (of 5670, not all ours) is a Dec. 19 post "Farmland Price Index Down For 13th Month In a Row".

The Economist was founded out of the politics of free trade and the British Corn Laws-they pushed repeal-which had an interesting effect on the McCormick family, farming and the world at large.
They've been doing this stuff for a while.
More after the jump

From The Economist:
Investing in agriculture
Barbarians at the farm gate
Hardy investors are seeking a way to grow their money

IN THE next 40 years, humans will need to produce more food than they did in the previous 10,000 put together. But with sprawling cities gobbling up arable land, agricultural productivity gains decreasing, and demand for biofuels increasing, supply is not keeping up with demand. Clever farmers, scientists and entrepreneurs are bursting with ideas. But they need money to make this jump.

Financiers more often found buying and selling companies have cottoned on to the opportunity. Farm gates have traditionally been closed to capital markets: nine in ten farms are held by families. But demography is forcing a shift: the average age of farmers in Europe, America and New Zealand is now in the late fifties. They often have no successor, because offspring do not want to farm or cannot afford to buy out family members. In addition, adopting new technologies and farming at ever-greater scale require the sort of capital few farmers have, even after years of bumper crop prices.

Institutional investors such as pension funds see farmland as fertile ground to plough, either doing their own deals or farming them out to specialist funds. Some act as landlords by buying land and leasing it out. Others buy plots of low-value land, such as pastures, and upgrade them to higher-yielding orchards. Investors who are keen on even bigger risks and rewards flock to places such as Brazil, Ukraine and Zambia, where farming techniques are often still underdeveloped and potential productivity gains immense.

Farmland has been a great investment over the past 20 years, certainly in America, where annual returns of 12% caused some to dub it “gold with a coupon”. In America and Britain, where tax incentives have distorted the market, it outperformed most major asset classes over the past decade, and with low volatility to boot (see chart). Those going against the grain warn of a land-price bubble. Believers argue that increasing demand and shrinking supply—as well as urbanisation, poor soil management and pressure on water systems that are threats to farmland—mean the investment case is on solid ground.

It is not just the asset appreciation and yields that attract outside capital, says Bruce Sherrick of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: as important is the diversification to portfolios that farmland offers. It is uncorrelated with paper assets such as stocks and bonds, has proven relatively resistant to inflation, and is less sensitive to economic shocks (people continue to eat even during downturns) and to interest-rate hikes. Moreover, in the aftermath of the financial crisis investors are reassured by assets they can touch and sniff.

Some are already getting their boots dirty. In 2009 Hassad, part of Qatar’s sovereign-wealth fund, asked Bydand Global Agriculture to buy nearly 50 farms in Australia and merge them into a single investment portfolio. Terrapin Palisades, a private-equity firm, bought a dairy company and some vineyards and tomato fields in California, and converted all to grow almonds, whose price has soared as the Chinese have gone nuts for them. Such conversions require up-front capital and the ability to survive without returns for years.

The private-equity approach can take the form of simple improvements, such as changing irrigation from antiquated dykes and canal networks to automatic spray systems: these are the equivalent of picking low-hanging fruit. Pricey robots can boost milk per cow by 10-15%. Using “big-data” analytics to plant and cultivate seeds can push crop yields up 5%. “This is an industry where the gap between the top and bottom quartile is greater than anywhere else,” says Detlef Schoen of Aquila Capital, an alternative-investment firm....MORE

HT: Farms.com

The thing to keep in mind about farmland: It is worth the cash flow it can produce which ultimately means commodity prices rule. If memory serves, U.S. farmland has outperformed prime London residential.

From our Dec. 2007 post "The End of Cheap Food- What was Old is New Again AND: Profiting from Politics":

This story from The Economist got me thinking
(I know, alert the media).

Rising food prices are a threat to many;
they also present the world with an enormous opportunity

FOR as long as most people can remember, food has been getting cheaper and farming has been in decline. In 1974-2005 food prices on world markets fell by three-quarters in real terms. Food today is so cheap that the West is battling gluttony even as it scrapes piles of half-eaten leftovers into the bin.

That is why this year's price rise has been so extraordinary. Since the spring, wheat prices have doubled and almost every crop under the sun—maize, milk, oilseeds, you name it—is at or near a peak in nominal terms. The Economist's food-price index is higher today than at any time since it was created in 1845 (see chart). Even in real terms, prices have jumped by 75% since 2005. No doubt farmers will meet higher prices with investment and more production, but dearer food is likely to persist for years (see article). That is because “agflation” is underpinned by long-running changes in diet that accompany the growing wealth of emerging economies—the Chinese consumer who ate 20kg (44lb) of meat in 1985 will scoff over 50kg of the stuff this year. That in turn pushes up demand for grain: it takes 8kg of grain to produce one of beef....

And what was I thinking about?
Farm implements!
The Economist's food-price index was created in 1845.
In 1846 The British Parliament voted to repeal the Corn (grain) Laws, reducing the tariff on imported grain, effectively opening the British market to American wheat.
Our post "Global Warming, Politics, Laws and Opportunity" had this list of annual sales of Mr. McCormick's reaper:
1840------- 2
1841--------0
1842--------7
1843------ 29
1844------ 50
1845------ 58
1846------ 75
1847-----800
As can be seen, the politics had quite an effect on the McCormick family fortunes.
In Global Warming, Politics, Laws and Opportunity--Part II:

As reported by The Economist May 16, 1846, the British House of Commons had repealed the "Corn Laws", eliminating the tariff on imported wheat, the day before. Corn in this usage is not maize but rather is generic for grain. Prime Minister Peel won the battle but lost his premiership, the quote of the day was "Peel and repeal."

Click that Economist link. I'll wait.

May 16, 1846 "Corn Laws Repealed by the House of Commons"
The bill was ushered through the Lords by the Duke of Wellington, Peel lost his job and the era of cheap food began. It lasted 160 years.

The Economist reported both ends of the story.
Not many publications can say that.

Wikipedia has this last bit:

Trivia
The Economist was founded in September 1843 by James Wilson with help from the Anti-Corn Law League; his son-in-law Walter Bagehot later became the editor of this newspaper.

If interested:
Global Warming, Politics, Laws and Opportunity
Global Warming, Politics, Laws and Opportunity--Part II



(click to enlarge)