What's happening in the world ?
The following are some of the news items mentioned in the last few days:
- Trump’s global order assault
- Imposition of 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico
- Imposition of additional 10 percent tariffs on China on the existing 10 percent announced earlier
- Impending tariffs on EU - expected 25%
- Suspension of military aid to Ukraine
- Will these help ? Unlikely because federal fiscal deficit still stands at 6 percent of GDP and is showing no signs of coming down
- 27 percent of Canada’s GDP exports are to US.
- 21 percent of Mexico’s GDP are exports to US
- EU exports to the goods to US are only 2.9 percent to US
- Trump is conducting a heist in broad day light
- Cryptocurrency reserves
- Scrapping anti-money laundering measure
- Shutdown anti-kleptocracy initiative
- Trump and his wife have launched their own meme coins
- It is possible that investors and central bankers around the world will move
to Euro. The main reason for this is Trump’s policies are increasingly seen
putting pressure on dollar
- Dollar makes up 57 percent of global official reserves and Euro accounts for 20 percent
- Musk is the fox in the henhouse of science
- A fox in the henhouse is a classic metaphor for someone who is given access to something they are expected to protect but instead exploits or harms it.
- In this context, science represents the “henhouse,” meaning the established norms, institutions, or ethical frameworks of the scientific community.
- Musk, despite his influence in scientific and technological fields (e.g., SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink), is acting in a way that challenges or undermines traditional scientific principles, ethics, or institutions—whether through aggressive commercialism, skepticism of certain scientific norms, or prioritization of profit over research integrity.
- Saudi Aramco’s net income for the year was 106B USD as compared with 121B in
2023 as energy prices fell. The company said it would pay a total dividend of
just over 85B USD compared to 124B USD in the previous year
- In the past the ooil major’s dividend has helped to fund Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s economic transformation of Saudi Arabia
- Opec+ oil cartel has agreed to the first oil production increase by the group since 2022
- Most European indices are up to 12 percetn or more in dollar terms so far this year as compared to a flat performance by S&P
- German stock market performance has been even more striking. Dax index is seeing the second-best start to the year since German reunification, rising 13 percent in Euro terms and 15 percent in dollar terms