Deflation & Barter Economy Coming – Rick Ackerman

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com (Saturday Night Post)

Analyst, financial writer and professional trader Rick Ackerman is forecasting a “deflationary end” to our debt-bloated financial system. Ackerman contends, “I think everybody agrees we have more debt than we can ever repay. So, it’s going to have to be repaid one way or another. The debt has to be discharged. Every penny of every debt has to be paid, if not by the borrower, by the lender. Hyperinflation would let borrowers skip free. . . . The powers that be are not going to go for that. The lenders are going to be in charge.

Former 7UP ingredient Could Bankrupt EV Manufacturers

No one wants metal in their soft drink.

But in the 20th century, lithium was used as the “active” ingredient in 7-Up, just enough to provide a small mood boost.

Other than that, there were few industrial applications for the metal.

That’s changing extremely fast.

In just a few years, lithium has become a key element required for human survival.

Its unique properties—it’s lightweight, malleable, and has extremely high energy density—make it ideal for energy storage in the form of a lithium-ion battery.

And reducing carbon emissions to keep the planet from burning is going to require a lot of batteries:

The entire transportation sector, which accounts for a full 25% of U.S. emissions, must be fully electrified.

Utility-scale storage must be built out for the entire energy grid.

The electrification of the U.S. transportation system alone will require hundreds of billions of lithium-ion batteries.

That may sound like an exaggeration to you. I assure you that it is not.

A single EV battery pack uses more than 7,000 individual batteries.

A Spot Bitcoin ETF Will Open the Floodgates to Crypto

Houston Molnar

In 1990, oil trader Andy Hall made a bet that earned him the nickname “God.”

Hall was one of the most successful oil traders of all time. He was on the right side of some of the biggest oil trades in history.

He made a fortune during his nearly 45-year career. But his most famous trade came in 1990 when cheap oil prices created tension among OPEC members.

To bet on oil prices rising, Hall rented every oil tanker he could… filled them with cheap oil… and parked them at sea.

He could see tensions in the region were reaching a breaking point. And by August 1990, Hall’s prediction played out… Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.

Oil prices soared 10% overnight. And within the next few months, they more than doubled.

Hall made an absolute fortune while most investors watched from the sidelines.

You see, investing in oil in the 1990s was a market that only the big players could operate in. Even if you came to the same conclusion that Hall did, you couldn’t make the same bet.

Ten-Year Treasury Yield Hits 15-Year High, Market Wades out of Denial, Sees “Higher-for-Longer,” Tsunami of Issuance, QT

“Higher for longer be damned”: consumers and businesses.

By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.

The 10-year yield closed at 4.28% today, according to Treasury Department data, the highest since, well, let’s look here, November 14, 2007, so about 15 years ago, having edged past November 2022 and June 2008 by a hair. 2007 is notable in that it was the last year before the arrival of QE.

What is hilarious in a twisted way is that the 10-year yield had dropped to 0.5% in August 2020, and everyone and their dog were preaching to the world that longer-term yields would drop into the negative in the US, as they’d already done in Europe, because of course the 40-year Great Bond Bull Market – Great Bong Bull Market? – would have to continue for evermore, with yields falling deeper and deeper into the negative. I have a term for this: Consensual Hallucination.

The entire sucker-rally from November last year through May this year has now been mopped up.

America's Credit Woes Won't Dampen Stocks for Long

By Sean Michael Cummings

America received a credit downgrade for the second time in history... But it shouldn't kill the bull run in stocks.

See, around the globe, sovereign debt is rated by three major credit agencies – Fitch Ratings, Moody's, and Standard & Poor's.

Until recently, all three agencies rated U.S. sovereign debt as "AAA" or "risk free." But in 2011, Standard & Poor's downgraded U.S. debt to "AA+," the next tier lower.

The market reaction was so severe that it became known in Wall Street circles as "Black Monday 2011." The S&P 500 Index plunged about 7% the morning after the downgrade.