David Fuller and Eoin Treacy's Comment of the Day
Category - General

    Sunak Plans to Strengthen Anti-Protest Laws With Police Powers

    This article from Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak plans to strengthen anti-protest legislation, giving police additional powers to clamp down on demonstrations even before they’ve caused any disruption.

    The government on Monday will propose an amendment to its own Public Order Bill — currently working its way through the House of Lords — to broaden the definition of what constitutes “serious disruption,” according to a statement from Sunak’s office. 

    “We cannot have protests conducted by a small minority disrupting the lives of the ordinary public: it’s not acceptable and we’re going to bring it to an end,” Sunak said in the statement. “The police asked us for more clarity to crack down on these guerrilla tactics, and we have listened.”

    The legislation is aimed at strengthening the police’s ability to deal with protests such as those in recent years from environmental campaigners at Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion, who have brought traffic and public transport to a standstill by blocking bridges, motorways and London’s subway network. But it’s provoked the ire of civil liberty groups and of the opposition Labour Party. 

    Labour’s policing spokeswoman, Sarah Jones, said in a statement that the police already have powers to deal with disruptive protests. She criticized Sunak for not focusing instead on tackling “the epidemic of violence against women and girls” or on prosecuting criminals. 

    The amendment will include allowing police to consider the total impact of a series of protests rather than treating them as a single incident; giving officers the right to step in even before a protest has resulted in disruption, and letting them deal with long-running campaigns designed to cause chaos repeatedly, according to the statement.

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    Eoin's personal portfolio: cash rolled, investment positions opened, trading positions opened and short profits taken January 6th 2023

    Egypt Inflation Exceeds 21% in Spreading Devaluation Fallout

    This article from Bloomberg may be of interest. Here is a section:

    Egypt is grappling with its worst foreign-currency crunch in years and has recently seen the emergence of a black market for dollars. It secured a $3 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund and sought help from its wealthy Gulf Arab allies. 

    Core inflation, the gauge used by the central bank that strips out volatile items, accelerated to 24.4% in December from 21.5% in November. 

    This week the government said it would curb state spending, including through halting costly new infrastructure projects. The central bank announced in December it was targeting inflation at an average of 7%, plus or minus 2 percentage points by the fourth quarter of 2024.

    Allen Sandeep, director of research at Naeem Holding in Cairo, has said the latest bout of depreciation sets the stage for a pickup in inflation to around 23%-25% and higher government borrowing costs. 

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    Fed on Track for Rate-Hike Downshift After Cool Inflation Data

    This article from Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:
     

    The Federal Reserve is on track to downshift to smaller interest-rate increases following a further cooling in US inflation, though it’s likely to keep hiking until price pressures show more definitive signs of slowing.

    Philadelphia Fed President Patrick Harker, speaking Thursday morning shortly after the Labor Department’s release of consumer price data, said rate hikes of a quarter-percentage point “will be appropriate going forward,” following bigger increases throughout most of 2022. Harker’s comments echoed remarks a day earlier from Susan Collins, his counterpart at the Boston Fed.

    Consumer prices rose 6.5% in the 12 months through December, marking the slowest inflation rate in more than a year. So-called core inflation, which excludes food and energy, was up 5.7% over the same period, the smallest advance in a year. Both figures matched median forecasts.

    “The trend in services inflation seems to be abating. That’s what the Fed will be looking at in today’s report,” said Thomas Costerg, a senior US economist at Pictet Wealth Management in Geneva, Switzerland. “At the margin, this means an increased probability of a 25-basis-point rate hike on February 1st.”

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    Saudi Arabia Says $3 Billion Mining Funds Are Moving Target

    This article from Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    Saudi Arabia’s 11.95 billion riyals ($3.2 billion) of funding for a joint venture that will invest in mining assets internationally is “going to be a moving target,” Mining Minister Bandar Alkhorayef said in an interview with Bloomberg TV.

    “We are establishing a governance between this JV with the ministry to make sure that this JV allows the country to get the right minerals needed for our industrial strategy and our needs in general,” he said

    In 2022, Saudi Arabia saw as much as $32 billion of investments in the mineral sector, a 50% growth in revenues from 2021, the minister said in a separate interview

    Saudi Arabia had previously estimated its mineral wealth at $1.3 trillion, but that’s now considered conservative because discoveries have been better than expected, he said

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    Travel Schedule - Future Minerals Forum 2023

    I have accepted the Saudi Arabian government's invitiation to attend the Future Minerals Forum again this year. I am due to fly out Monday evening and will arrive in Riyadh on Tuesday evening with a stop in Frankfurt along the way. I expect to be back in Dallas Friday afternoon. I expect to keep up with the publishing schedule but the time I post articles will be affected by travel. 

    At present, I have meetings arranged with the CEOs of Polymetal, Alien Metals, Perseus Mining, Pyx Resources, Aurora Minerals Group, Silver X Mining, Goviex Uranium, Kuya Silver, Esper Satellite Imagery, Saudi Gold Refinery with more to come. If subscribers have any questions they would like me to ask just let me know.