Beijing's Green Light | zerohedge
⬛️ "China stimulus is coming"
🔶 After repeatedly teasing the idea of incoming stimulus several times last year, getting investors' hopes up only to scale it back and disappoint, recent memos from State officials give China's stimulus plans a precise framework they are looking to deliver on. Officials indicated they are waiting to launch the long-awaited "stimulus bazooka" once improving Chinese economic data is met with deteriorating US data.
🔶 This is a historically unusual combination, as global financial flows tend to move in sync (booms and busts are global). Never before has the US entered into a downturn without China. It suggests that Beijing is waiting for signs that the Mainland economy has decoupled before deploying roaring stimulus.
🔶 Finance Minister Lan Fuan points to the fact that Chinese strength relative to US weakness would necessarily attract new foreign direct investment (FDI). Positive real GDP and new FDI coupled with massive consumption stimulus is the path China seeks out of the stubborn economic malaise it has faced since Covid.
🔶 The Chinese State Council released a better-than-expected Q1 GDP report this week, and US GDP looks to decline in Q1. That's the exact divergence Chinese officials have been waiting for to greenlight massive stimulus.
🔶 Chinese stimulus will mean inflation (rising wages, growth and improved employment) and higher bond yields. China's lenders will be in a stronger position and credit spreads will lower. Chinese equities, specifically in sectors whose performance is tied to domestic demand, will also benefit. Demand for industrial commodities - in particular oil, copper and other metals - will increase.
🔶 Western officials continue to talk up looming delisting threats and investment bans, but both look to be far off as reciprocal investment bans from China could collapse the private sector and disturb the Treasury market in ways that would make the recent stress look like a walk in the park.
By DeathTaxesandQE
Yanis Varoufakis (former Greek Minister of Finance) describes AI as a new form of capital that produces not goods, but behavioral modification. This is achieved by engineering perceptions.
The answers provided by ChatGPT, or the images rendered by StableDiffusion — as these increasingly inform our perceptions, they in turn define the reality we experience.
This is what makes AI so powerful — he who controls the AI, defines the reality of tomorrow.
⚡️🇺🇸 Some more things coming out for the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
Under the preliminary drafts of the bill, the USAF is requesting a release of $57,000,000 USD ($57.0 Million) to retire all remaining 162 A-10 Thunderbolt IIs in current service. Apart of the 2023 NDAA, there was a clause for a few million dollars to be released every so often to gradually retire the (then) 250 airframes by 2034; however due to the push by the Dept of Defense to ‘shed’ obsolete or obsolescent airframes that cannot be overhauled or upgraded further without a whole new airframe, it appears the USAF wants to retire all 162 remaining A-10s by the end of 2026.
The USAF plans to fully divest the 340-total remaining A-10s entirely, including those that currently serve in a handful of Air National Guard units in some states; which will be replaced by F-15EX Eagle IIs (like what is already happening with the Michigan State Air National Guard’s A-10s), or F-35A/Bs.
Included ...
My older sister lives in the country in between Velma Oklahoma and Duncan Oklahoma near the Fuqua Lake area, this story was told by a rural mail delivery woman who delivers the mail in the country.
The incident happened while she was on her route, when she came upon to the mailbox a male Chinese nation came out brandishing a, AK-47 rifle being very hostile,
I don't know if he pointed it at her since it is against the law to do so but she was terrified and said she was never going back and that the location that had a guard tower. Was the sheriff department notified, I don't know, did she notify her supervisor, don't know. But word is from the country folk who live in the area they have seen the guard tower at the pot place;
I refuse to call it a farm because it is an insult to farmers.
And yes she was traumatized by that ordeal