SWIFT, the messaging network that connects banks worldwide, is developing a system to connect the international financial system to the array of central banks’ digital currencies (CBDCs) expected to come into use over the next few years.
ECONOMIC UPDATE – MARKET OVERVIEW
The U.S. equity markets are on a tear, racking up one of the strongest first quarters in 75 years, and The Street is betting that they will keep going higher.
MARKETS: EXPECT MASSIVE PRICE ACTION DISTORTIONS TO WORSEN
Despite a world economy contracting at its fastest pace on record, stock prices are rising at a staggering pace. Here in the United States alone in just the first three months of the year, the stock market has hit a new record TWENTY TIMES!
FEBRUARY HOME SALES UP MOST IN A YEAR
In February, 9.5 percent more U.S. homes sold than in January, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported. Although sales were down 3.3 percent year on year, February this year marked the largest monthly jump since February 2023.
AI WITH “FEELINGS” > CITIZENS
Think illegals, drug smugglers and squatters are having a field day with the current absurdities of American society and “justice”?
U.S. MEDIA IGNORES FACT THAT KUSHNER LOVES GENOCIDE. GET RID OF PALESTINIANS AND DEVELOP GAZA “WATERFRONT PROPERTY”
Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, the little daddy’s boy born on third base and thinks he hit a home run, told an event at Harvard earlier this month that “Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable … if people would focus on building up livelihoods.”
WWIII: RUSSIA BLAMES UKRAINE FOR MOSCOW CONCERT MASSACRE. U.S., SELLS ANOTHER LINE
The U.S. was fast to reject any notion that Ukraine played a role in the Moscow concert massacre—Russia’s biggest terror attack in years.
Global Economy
SPOTLIGHT: BIGS GETTING BIGGER
Merger and Acquisition took a break when the Federal Reserve and EU began aggressively raising interest rates from their zero and negative levels back in March and July 2022 respectively.
“REINVENT YOURSELF,” IMF TELLS CHINA
“China faces a fork in the road” and needs to "reinvent itself" with dramatically new economic policies that will end its 30-month-long property crisis, jump-start consumer spending, and raise productivity, Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on 24 March.
CHINA’S MIDDLE CLASS GOING DOWN, GOLD BUYING GOING UP
China’s middle class blossomed from the 1980s until Beijing launched the COVID War in January 2020 on it Lunar New Year, “The Year of the Rat,” and imposed three years of draconian zero-COVID policy which destroyed the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of its citizens.
The Israel War
U.S. DENIES ISRAEL IS WITHHOLDING AID FROM PALESTINIANS IN GAZA
Matt Miller, a U.S. State Department spokesman, said Monday that Washington has not found Israel to be in violation of international humanitarian law as it carries out its genocide in Gaza.
U.S. MEDIA IGNORES FACT THAT KUSHNER LOVES GENOCIDE. GET RID OF PALESTINIANS AND DEVELOP GAZA “WATERFRONT PROPERTY”
Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, the little daddy’s boy born on third base and thinks he hit a home run, told an event at Harvard earlier this month that “Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable … if people would focus on building up livelihoods.”
THOUSANDS OF GAZAN CHILDREN SEE THEIR LIVES SHATTERED AFTER LOSING LIMBS
By the end of December, at least 12,000 Gazans—including 5,000 children—had lost at least one limb in the Israeli bombardment of the small coastal enclave—with the number surely reaching much higher since but impossible to count because of the lack of telecommunications from the city.
AI
THERE’S A NEW CHIP ON THE BLOCK
Nvidia has unveiled its new Blackwell family of graphic processors, the hardware essential to training AIs.
CAN AI BE MORE CREATIVE THAN PEOPLE?
Researchers at the University of Arkansas tested ChatGPT-4 against 151 students to see which did better at divergent thinking, a standard measure of creative ability.
APPLE, GOOGLE MAY TEAM UP ON AI
Apple is talking with Google about putting the latter’s Gemini AI into iPhones, people familiar told Business Insider. The combination could happen sometime this year.
Hi-Tech Science
PATCH LETS PEOPLE SPEAK WITHOUT VOCAL CORDS
A small, self-energizing patch worn on the front of the throat can translate the movement of neck muscles into spoken words.
FLATLAND: SCIENTISTS ARE BUILDING A CATALOG OF TWO-DIMENSIONAL MATERIALS
Graphene, a sheet of carbon atoms a few atoms thick, is seen as a miracle material: it’s 200 times tougher than steel per unit of weight, is an excellent electrical conductor, and weighs only a fifth as much as aluminum.
TOP TREND 2024, EV GO FU: CENTURY-OLD BATTERY DESIGN STALLS EVs
Owners of some electric vehicles (EVs) are finding their new cars have an Achilles heel: a battery design more than a century old.