Member Info for nomlungu

I see that someone has posted an emoji on the Lloyd's board so...

🇬🇧 🇬🇧

pictographs?

☠︎

A warning about ZA: "SA’s entire food industry is under existential threat, with a high likelihood of social unrest relating to food shortages and possible store closures if blackouts are escalated, Pick n Pay chairperson Gareth Ackerman has warned."

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2023-05-04-pick-n-pay-chairperson-warns-of-possible-food-shortages-and-social-unrest-if-rolling-blackouts-escalate/

---- and -----

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2023-05-06-brace-yourself-for-a-long-cold-dark-winter-as-sa-teeters-on-the-edge-of-stage-7-8-rolling-blackouts/

Lights out for a Winter of Discontent?

Buybacks were very popular when interest rates were near zero... People were borrowing against the increasing value of their portfolios (and still do); instead of having to pay tax on dividends or capital gains, they could just borrow at a percent and a half.

If these perverse incentives were not in place, cash would be directed to more profitable parts of the economy.

Former British Soldier Exposes King Charles

https://twitter.com/DoubleDownNews/status/1654044932900892672

My views are not as strong...

£4m company suing for £195m? The rampers will smell free lunch...

'Bank Failures, Devalued Commercial Real Estate, And Working From Home'

https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardmcgahey/2023/05/05/bank-failures-devalued-commercial-real-estate-and-working-from-home

Forbes highlights the reasons for the demise of commercial real estate and the coming wave of remortgaging (or at least attempts to remortgage). The US firesales are going to force losses to be recognised here as well...

Some of the rampers are clearly in too deep when they do not know how nominal values of shares work.

Its coming... I reckon the BoE is going to force the banks to account for the unrecognised losses on their balance sheets as the sooner the holes are repaired the better. I expect that UK banks will have unrecognised losses well in excess of £100 billion; the sooner they start raising the money / stop paying dividends the better if the banking industries as the US and EU have the same problems.

The only reason the BoE has done fek all so far is that it will force fire sales in commercial property and squeeze the wider economy as mortgages and other loans are rationed at higher rates. But that would force money into areas where it is more productive so not a bad thing... But devastating for the Tories; will the BoE be seen to mortally wound them?

'Off topic but relevant'

Very relevant; the more generous tax reliefs offered in Australia means trials are heading there. Just what you need when you are setting up a lab in the UK to create more local capacity for a shrinking market. All thanks to the #CONservatives and their Brexit Brilliance.

I would not get the bunting out yet:

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-03-29/south-africa-is-on-the-road-to-becoming-a-failed-state

Story about Kobold (BlueJay's partner in Greenland)

https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-mining

IEEE article about Kobold:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-mining

From as Axios story:

'If there’s a change of control (e.g., a sale) then all of a bank's loans must get marked to market. So, instead the banks are looking for minority investments or other solutions that allow them to keep their loans booked at par.'

https://www.axios.com/2023/05/04/the-regional-banking-crisis-is-expanding

The banks keep pretending that there are no gaping holes in their balance sheets but recognising the bonds they bought at par instead of what they can actually sell them at. The banking sector will not be safe until the unrecognised losses are recognised.

My postal ballot did not arrive, and I thought that it must be Royal Mail as there have been long postal delays in my area thanks to the Posties needing to strike to keep their terms, conditions, pay etc.

So I phoned the Council, only to be told there was a good reason I had not received the ballot papers; there are no elections where I live...

From todays email from Matt Levine:

'A ton of banks have big mark-to-market losses due to interest-rate moves: They estimate that “2,315 banks — accounting for $11 trillion of assets in aggregate — fall below” zero equity if their assets are marked to market.'

Would you want to have money in a small bank? Is the bank disease metastatic?

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-05-04/nobody-trusts-the-banks-now?leadSource=uverify%20wall

The asset fire sales are coming; with changing work practices and an aging population the commercial properties that currently exist are no longer fit for purpose.

PacWest Bancorp - down 54% after hours

https://www.google.com/search?q=pacwest+share+price

Pity you let idiots think for you and have become infected with their stupidity... the vaccines were not passed on; antibodies were.

https://www.geoengineer.org/news/block-caving-a-new-mining-method-arises

'The cost of block cave mining is about 1/10 of the correspondent cost of conventional methods.'

evi,

The article refers to "block caving" - a new technique making lower grade deposits economic (provided they are large enough to pay back the infrastructure costs):

'Oyu Tolgoi, which Rio forecasts will be the world’s fourth-largest copper mine when it is at full production, uses a complex method that allows access to deeper deposits called “block caving”, which involves digging under the ore body, blowing gaps underneath that allows the ore to collapse and fall down funnels to a lower level where it is collected, crushed, and sent to the surface on conveyor belts.

A cost-effective way of mining large deposits less rich than those of the past, its popularity is spreading, but the technique remains a challenge. Rio found early on that its ore collapsed all too well. Then there’s the hefty initial investment.'

Copper Copper Copper Copper Copper Copper Copper

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-05-02/copper-faces-troubled-future-as-renewable-energy-causes-demand-to-surge?re_source=boa_mustread&leadSource=uverify%20wall