COVID
There is 1 active community case in NSW, and 15 active community cases in QLD. That’s it. And before you wondering why there’s no border closure? It’s because the 1 case in NSW is in hospital, and the total 57 in QLD (which includes the 15 community cases) are also all in hospital. In Victoria there is only 1 active case and that’s from overseas. So in effect that’s like saying there’s zero cases in the wild in Australia.
I would like to remind some people that COVID-19 is basically the more successful spreading version of SARS that hit Asia all those years ago.
The universities are getting desperate in Victoria, and they will now offer pay to fly in international students and also pay for their quarantine, as they cannot survive another year of border closures. Remote work is here to stay as office occupancy remains low in Melbourne. I have even heard some people at fairly large organization say they haven’t even been back to the office at all this year.
7 people died in the UK from blood clots from the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is probably a low number compared the the amount of people who have received it. Now the Johnson & Johnson is getting the review by the European Medicine agency over blood clots. It’s still early in our understanding of the side effects and who is at risk. Australia’s roll out of the vaccine has been put into disarray with the restrictions now being placed in Australia on who can get the AstraZeneca vaccine.
The world is at 23,673,798 active cases, or 2,941,268 people deceased out of a total of 112,456,245 total cases, so that’s 2.6% mortality rate. The Belgians are now chanting liberté, they are tired of lockdowns. This family was kicked off a flight because their two year old who was eating didn’t have a mask on. Fortunately the airlines didn’t agree with the steward, and the family was allowed back on, while the steward had to stay behind.
By the time a vaccine passport/app gets up and running with all countries agreeing – it will be irrelevant. In the same way as why we don’t have a vaccine passport for Mumps. A vaccine passport, stops people from poorer countries who haven’t been allocated enough vaccine doses from traveling. Inequality politics shall prevail. Vaccine passport? War on Cash? The common thread is that these ideas are war on our freedom. Total surveillance has been sought by authoritarians for thousands of years; always with the goal of trying to control how people move, or how they spend their money.
Finance and Economics
The question I have been pondering is – how does the world head back into an environment of yield – where you earn meaningful interest in the bank. Central banks have set and left interest rates at close to or below zero to try and stimulate and support the world economies by trying to flood it with money. So with interest rates on bank account so low, people are trying to get yield through riskier investments or through capital growth in the stock market or property markets. And one would think that all this money flooding the system is causing lot of people (and entities) to borrow at ridiculously low rates. So then the question is what happens when central banks want interest rate to rise, it’s going to cause so many systemic problems that they maybe unable to raise rates ever again. And so low interest rates encourages more people to borrow which cause more debt. There will need to be a restructure of all that debt at some point. And if the debt is government level debt, they will need to restructure the debt. How is that done? If the history of places like Argentina is a guide, then there will need to be a swapping of currency, and the perfect candidate for that is Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). Changing currency has always resulted in people’s savings getting destroyed. China is by far the country that’s furthest ahead in the creation of a CBDC, and they are experimenting with having money that has an expiration date to encourage users to spend it quickly. However all of that with a grain of salt, as I’m not sure if I understand how the whole system of fiat currency works in it’s entirety yet.
Why has yield been important in the past? The magic number was something around 25. You use this magic number to work out how much money you needed to quit your job and maintain your currently life style. Let’s just for argument sake your currently yearly expenses (bills, food, shelter, holiday, everything) is $50k per year, and interest rates are around 4%. You take $50k and then multiple it by 25, which gives you $1.25mil. So if you had $1.25mil in the bank earning an interest rate of 4% per year, you can quit your job and never need to work again as the interest you earn will be $50k. It’s a fairly basic way of looking at things. However with interest rates at 0.1%, you now need $50mil to retire and earn that same $50k, instead of the $1.25mil, so that’s like saying current inflation rate on retirement is 4,000% in my hypothetical example. And that’s why when Michael Saylor says the most important measure of inflation is your retirement, because the cost of that has gone through the roof. I’m not a finance guy so don’t take what I say as the truth, look at things and validate them for yourself. But I do think the system is broken..
Bitcoin is hope. Literally https://www.hope.com/. If you are on the bitcoin education path, maybe a good place to start by checking out the introduction videos on that site. BTC exchange rate is now at $78,080 AUD or $59,430 USD. Wish someone had told me about this physics defying 180% drop, it dropped 100% to zero, then another 80% to negative zero.
Bitcoin is now bigger than Australia’s M1 supply. If you are wondering why M1 doesn’t include people’s savings account. It because everyone’s savings in the bank is considered an unsecured loan to the bank. Look at the ambiguity in the laws in Australia, in a hypothetical situation if a bank “was on the verge” of collapse in Australia, then you would in effect get your savings converted to shares in the bank. The 250k guarantee wouldn’t apply since it hasn’t collapsed yet. In Europe, the experience in Italy has been that people have had restriction put on their withdrawals in the event where a bank is in trouble, to the point where people couldn’t feed themselves. In NZ, the law is much more clear cut and it stipulates that your deposit is a loan to the bank in the event the bank is in trouble.
There was some dumping of tech names in Asia in the last few weeks (look at a chart for Baidu – the Chinese google) which has been attributed to the implosion of a large hedge fund. Else where in hedge fund world, from the Coinbase SEC filing, it list Third Point LLC a $17 billion hedge fund as a client of their custody arm.
The debate of if the mandatory super amount should go up is still going on. A majority of businesses are not going to give you a pay rise, so that increase in mandatory super will just come out of your take home packet.
JP Morgan’s CEO Jamie Dimon gets shown ownership courtesy the laws of mathematics.
Tech
5 signs that your computer has been hacked. It takes 4 mins to setup a hacking server. The moral of the story is, if you get links or attachments via SMS or email or whatever. DO NOT CLICK ON IT. Especially if it looks like it’s from a company, government agency, a bank that you know. Login directly to those websites to check for your message. DO NOT CLICK ANY LINKS AT ALL. NO EXCEPTION! Just assume EVERYTHING is a phishing scam attack. DO NOT even click on your bill in your email. Login directly to the website to get it.
All your data has been leaked from Facebook. Companies shouldn’t be collecting these data, as there’s two type of companies – companies that have their data leaked, and companies that will eventually have their data leaked. If the NSA can’t keep their data secure, what makes you think a company can. We will of course continue to collect all this data, so that when China’s super AI takes over the world, it can get a hold of that data also.
This monkey has been implanted with Neuralink, and can control a computer with his brain. The future feels scary, but if you lost the use of your limbs, then this will be amazing. But maybe it’s scary to me, just like how Wifi is scary for older generation
Other Stuff
I’m on a physics binge watch. I have a new favorite channel where Sabine Hossenfelder talks about “Albert Einstein taught us that gravity is not a force”, and what that means. What is time, and does it even exist. We travel through time at the speed of light.
The speed at which Rika Usami attacks is amazing! Holy smokes. Watch her teaching as well. You wouldn’t want to meet this girl down a dark alley.
No one should ever be too busy to walk their kids to school. It’s amazing how close this 9 year old came close to being kidnapped.
Have a great week all.
