Month: February 2024

The Biden administration is planning to launch a days-long or even potentially weeks-long bombing campaign on Iranian assets across the Middle East, although there doesn’t appear to be plans to hit Iran directly, according to US officials speaking to NBC and CBS.

The attacks which will reportedly focus on ‘Iranian targets’ inside Syrian and Iraq are meant as retaliation and a supposed deterrent in response to the weekend drone attack which killed three American soldiers at a Jordanian base near the Syrian border. The attacks might extend to the Iranian navy as well, in addition to targeting Iranian personnel or ‘Iran-backed militias’ in Syria and Iraq.

While the Pentagon has said that said the Jordan base attack had the “footprints” of Kataib Hezbollah (or the Shia ‘resistance’ group of Iraq), no culprit has been definitively named, and US officials have also admitted they have not evidence Iran was behind it. But they are now reportedly saying the drone used in the attack was manufactured in Iran.

The New York Times additionally has conceded that despite it being well-known that Tehran arms and funds the main Shia militias in Iraq, there remains no evidence that Tehran is “calling the shots” when it comes to events like attacks on US personnel out of Syria or Iraq.

The chorus of US officials now telegraphing the extent of the strikes to the media strongly suggests at least a days-long campaign of several waves of attacks. “The first thing you see won’t be the last thing,” national security council spokesman John Kirby has said. He added that the operation won’t be a “one-off” as such bombings have tended to go in the past.

However, the longer the bombing lasts, the greater the possibility for things spiraling out of control, possibly growing into a hot war with Iran and its assets. “The Islamic Republic would decisively respond to any attack on the county, its interests and nationals under any pretexts,” Iran’s ambassador to the UN Amir Saeid Iravani has responded.

According to more details via fresh CBS reporting Thursday:

U.S. officials have confirmed to CBS News that plans have been approved for a series of strikes over a number of days against targets — including Iranian personnel and facilities — inside Iraq and Syria. The strikes will come in response to drone and rocket attacks targeting U.S. forces in the region, including the drone attack on Sunday that killed three U.S. service members at the Tower 22 base inside Jordan, near the Syrian border.

Weather will be a major factor in the timing of the strikes, the officials told CBS News, as the U.S. has the capability to carry out strikes in bad weather but prefers to have better visibility of selected targets as a safeguard against inadvertently hitting civilians who might stray into the area at the last moment. 

As it became clear this week that the Pentagon is poised to respond in a big way, Kataib Hezbollah announced a suspension of its operations against US forces. The Pentagon has ignored this as essentially too late and irrelevant. 

But the Shia militia group’s ‘pause’ in operations appears to have held. “There have been no new attacks on U.S. troop locations in the region since the Iran-backed militia Kataib Hezbollah announced Wednesday that it was suspending military operations against American forces,” reports CBS. And yet, “There was no indication from U.S. officials that the group’s declared suspension was delaying the American military’s retaliatory strikes.”

Western reports commonly estimate there’s been at least 140 rocket, mortar, and drone attacks targeting US personnel in Syrian and Iraq since mid-October, connected to events in Gaza…

For several weeks now, Israel has repeatedly bombed areas of Damascus in what have been reported as targeted strikes against Iranian personnel. It’s unclear whether the coming US strikes will also include targets in or near Syrian government centers. While US attacks have over the course of years sporadically hit militant groups in the northeast, especially in Deir Ezzor region, Washington has refrained from attacking Damascus directly over the past few years.

Another interesting question which remains is whether the Pentagon will tip off the Russian side in advance. Russia has a major military presence in Syria and actively monitors some airspace. In prior significant US attacks, the Pentagon has issued advanced warning to the Russians within moments before the launches, so as to avoid inadvertent military confrontation between the two superpowers.

Just out of the hospital and home recovery, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin says the president “will not tolerate attacks on American troops” at this “dangerous moment in the Middle East.” He also asserted, “Our soldiers were killed by Iranian agents.” Austin at one point “apologized to the American people” for the way he handled his hospital stay, which included days of the White House being left in the dark.

NOW – Austin: “This is a dangerous moment in the Middle East.” pic.twitter.com/9NSevexEhL

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) February 1, 2024

This whole US ‘retaliatory’ exercise is likely to see most airstrikes focused on eastern Syria. Given the Pentagon has already repeatedly conducted operations in this area in the context of the years-long occupation of Syria’s oil and gas region, it seems Biden wants to show he’s “doing something” ahead of the election, but an operation which poses less risk for rapid direct escalation with Tehran. He’s going for the “easy” lay up of attacking Syria again. 

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Last year, I criticized the lawsuit of Disney against Florida after losing its special status in the former Reedy Creek Improvement District. U.S. District Judge Allen Winsor in Tallahassee appears to view the matter as dimly as I did. He just dismissed the action in a major loss for the House of Mouse.

Disney decided to go public with a campaign against the popular parent rights legislation for Florida schools. Florida responded by removing the special status long enjoyed by the company. There is another lawsuit pending in state court.

Judge Winsor found that Disney lacked standing to sue DeSantis, the secretary of the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity and the new governing district. The separate lawsuit is still pending in state court in Orlando.

The court found that the law was constitutional on its face. As a result, it found no standing to challenge the law under the First Amendment. As I noted earlier, Disney was effectively saying that a state legislature could not remove special status and create greater uniformity with all companies under this law. Even if there were retaliatory purposes, there was clearly a public policy reason for seeking such uniformity. If the courts were to block it, it would invite a major intrusion of the courts into decisions on the priorities of legislatures. As the court noted, Disney is “not the district’s only landowner, and other landowners within the district are affected by the same laws.”

Disney seems to be doubling down and said it would “press forward with our case.” It insisted that “this is an important case with serious implications for the rule of law, and it will not end here.” So once again, what does the company hope to achieve? Is a court truly going to order Florida to maintain special status ad infinitum?

Judge Winsor noted:

“It is true that the laws did not affect all districts, and it is true (at least accepting Disney’s allegations) that Disney faces the brunt of the harm. But Disney offers no support for its argument that the court is to undertake line drawing to determine just how many others a law must cover to avoid ‘singling out’ those they affect most. Here, it is enough to say—as in Hobart—that the law ‘challenged in this case is not pinpointed against a named individual or group; it is general in its wording and impact.””

Disney’s lawyers seem to be pushing a legal claim with the same logic of many of the company’s new movies: waiting for the audience to change its mind rather than changing its strategy.

We have been discussing the shareholder revolt in some companies over social and political agendas that are suppressing profits at companies like Disney and BudLight. Recently, Disney admitted that it was driving away consumers with its controversial positions and Disney CEO Bob Iger has indicated that he wants to return to selling products and not social reforms. With Disney films cratering and the company losing its position as the top grossing film company, shareholders are threatening to take action.

The problem for Iger is turning a massive company around after years of reinforcing this role as a corporate culture warrior, including layers of hires over the years reinforcing this culture. It also needs to address damaging public comments from Disney figures.

Disney recently seemed to acknowledge that it is facing its own Bud Light moment. In its annual SEC report, Disney acknowledges that “we face risks relating to misalignment with public and consumer tastes and preferences for entertainment, travel and consumer products.” In an implied nod to Smith, the company observes that “the success of our businesses depends on our ability to consistently create compelling content,” and that “generally, our revenues and profitability are adversely impacted when our entertainment offerings and products, as well as our methods to make our offerings and products available to consumers, do not achieve sufficient consumer acceptance. Further, consumers’ perceptions of our position on matters of public interest, including our efforts to achieve certain of our environmental and social goals, often differ widely and present risks to our reputation and brands.”

Yet, the company is continuing to litigate against a popular parental rights law to demand a special status denied to other companies. That is unlikely to play any better in court than many of these films have played in theaters. What is not clear is whether shareholders support this ill-conceived legal effort. This week, Disney is hardly the happiest place on Earth but it certainly seems like the most litigious.

Here is the decision: Disney Dismissal-Order

Rubber bullets and water cannons were deployed against hundreds of European farmers protesting outside the EU Parliament building in Brussels on Thursday. The farmers threw eggs, set off fireworks, and started fires near the building while demanding that European leaders stop punishing them with more taxes and rising costs imposed to finance a so-called ‘green agenda.’

The protests coincide with a Thursday summit of EU leaders, with the farmers calling on them to scrap agricultural and environmental regulations implemented by leadership in Brussels.

Manifestation des #AgriculteursEnColere à #Bruxelles : premières tensions devant le Parlement Européen. @CLPRESSFR pic.twitter.com/kRy7mT1BI5

— CLPRESS / Agence de presse (@CLPRESSFR) February 1, 2024

According to reports, farmers have broken through the barricades outside of Parliament and also ignited smoke bombs.

Breaking: Farmer protests escalate at EU Parliament with barricades breached and fires ignited. pic.twitter.com/NeIzCaVEqL

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) February 1, 2024

“We want to stop these crazy laws that come every single day from the European Commission,” said Jose Maria Castilla, a farmer in Brussels representing the Spanish farmers’ union, Asaja.

The protests come as EU leaders met to discuss a $50 billion aid package for Ukraine. Belgian PM Alexander De Croo said that the farmers’ concerns would be added to the summit’s agenda, saying “It is important that we listen to them,” adding “They face gigantic challenges,” the Washington Post reports.

The growing unrest over Europe’s punishment of farmers has also been seen in Italy, Portugal, France, Greece and Germany, as farmers express outrage over green regulations and cheap imports.

🚨🇧🇪BREAKING: FARMERS TARGET EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT IN BRUSSELS

As anger sweeps through farming communities in Europe, protesters in Belgium have begun to build barricades and start fires outside the EU parliament.

They’re protesting new environmental regulations they call… https://t.co/nqmrV9k5OS pic.twitter.com/vWSgWVJyBr

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) February 1, 2024

Well, they got 50 billion reasons to be angry. pic.twitter.com/3qsA968FrK

— CaptainKhan (@iamtabish_khan) February 1, 2024

 

By Michael Every of Rabobank

Central bankers are no soothsayers: and what Fed Chair Powell said didn’t soothe. He didn’t cut rates, as the pink, dayglo-frosted end of market ‘Fed Put 101’ cereal-box thinking had it; and he made it clear he won’t sprinkle sugar-coated mini donuts with a rate cut in March either. As hopes for March subsided, markets moved: stocks down, the US dollar up, but bond yields looking more to slightly softer data than Powell’s guidance.

Some think a near-term Fed cut can still be forced by a quick stab in the back, like the assassination of Caesar (15 March), which we can fit in before the next FOMC meeting. Lo and behold, we have the falling knife of shares in New York Community Bankcorp, which had helped out Signature Bank in the 2023 banking wobble, and related issues with commercial real estate. Yet the Fed has acronymic firepower that can be used instead of easing monetary policy: it can just extend its Bank Term Funding Programme (BTFP) if needed.  

Clearly, the FOMC are no longer biased towards policy tightening, and are looking to when it may be appropriate to loosen. However, that never meant they were about to pour immediate, large policy easing into our cereal bowls, then add chocolate milk, then sprinkle candy on top, like a traditional, healthy American breakfast. As our Fed watcher Philip Marey puts it, ‘Forget about March’. He expects a first, 25bp, cut in Fed Funds in June, and then a steady-as-she-goes pace of one cut a quarter, depending on how things play out on both the economy and inflation, which is now partly determined geopolitically. This is an uncertain process in very uncertain times.

• In the US there is push-me-pull-you on key data and in terms of fiscal policy: the House just passed a $78bn business and child tax-break bill that does not scream ‘rate cuts!’ Of course, the US, and Canada and Mexico, soon holds elections that could shake the policy box even more.

• In Brazil, rates were cut 50bp to 11.25%. Argentina is in a Milei maelstrom. Sanctions might go back on Venezuelan oil: and the worry is if Venezuela goes into Guyana for its oil.

• In the UK, data are gloomy, an election looms, the government seems doomed, yet the opposition will inherit so many problems and contradictory policy stances it’s unclear what they will be able to achieve. And the BOE has to steer through this all.

• In Europe, we have disinflation; and deindustrialisation; and Macron, Scholz, and Rutte saying Europe must rearm to help Ukraine beat Russia’s war economy – this from a Chancellor who didn’t arm Ukrainians, and a PM who didn’t arm the Dutch.

• In the Middle East, we might get another Israel-Hamas ceasefire and hostage release: but the view is this will still be followed by more fighting, with the risks of an Israel-Hezbollah conflict evident. That, as we wait to see what the US is going to do to Iran, if anything.

• In India, it’s federal budget day ahead of a crucial election, as its economy grows steadily, stocks and bonds rally, and foreign investors turn their heads towards it.

• In China, the Caixin PMI was 50.8, as the CCP again skipped setting a date for the already-delayed Third Plenum supposed to lay out its longer-term economic plans; as local stocks shrug off the $278bn bailout floated last week, and local media suggests foreign investors are at the back of the queue for any cash if property giant Evergrande gets liquidated.

Yet even as much of the world looks like the Elmo-as-Satan meme, parts of the market —taking a lead from the US president— are listening to the platitudes of muppets and waiting for ‘Fed Put 101’ sugar. I would beware of them as much as the Ides, and subsides, of March!

Against a backdrop of strengthening ‘hard’ data, manufacturing surveys signaled a strong rebound in January.

• S&P Global’s Manufacturing PMI spiked from 47.9 in Dec to 50.3 prelim to 50.7 final in January.

• ISM’s Manufacturing PMI jumped from 47.1 (revised lower) in Dec to 49.1 in January, well above the 47.2 expected.

Source: Bloomberg

The jump in the S&P Global print, to its highest since September 2022, is the biggest since at least 2020.

While the PMI data was still below 50, it was above all but one estimates, and the 5.5-point increase in the orders index marked the largest monthly advance in more than three years.

The PMI’s employment index deteriorated further (below 50 for the fourth month in a row).

Chris Williamson, Chief Business Economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence, said:

“Manufacturers have started the year with a spring in their step. Business optimism about the year ahead has surged to its highest since early 2022 thanks to a jump in demand. New orders are rising at a pace not seen for over a year and a half, improving especially sharply for consumer goods as households benefit from signs of an easing in inflation and looser financial conditions.

“Factories are also showing signs of restocking, with some firms buying more inputs to support higher production in the coming months. Payroll numbers are also rising again as firms seek to build extra operating capacity, boding well for the upturn to gain further strength as we head through the first quarter.

However, amid all the exuberance, there is worrying trend:

“The brighter news is tempered by signs of factory costs rising on the back of supply delays, with costlier deliveries often linked to adverse weather and recent disruptions to global shipping. These higher costs are feeding through to increased prices charged for goods by factories, which rose in January at the fastest pace since last April.

Some renewed upward pressure on consumer prices could therefore appear in the months ahead if these supply-linked inflationary trends persist.”

It appears Powell was right to want “more confidence”.

On Wednesday, the House passed a $78 billion bipartisan tax package which revives various business tax breaks relat4ed to R&D and capital expenses, and expands the child tax credit.

While the package passed by a vote of 357-70, a major win for House Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith (R-MO), and it handed Democrats a significant win on the child tax credit, it faces serious hurdles in the Senate.

As Punchbowl News suggests: “This popular bipartisan tax bill is going to get caught up in a Senate legislative logjam over the next few weeks Just consider what’s on the agenda already for the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body”:

• The Senate is currently in the middle of trying to craft a national defense supplemental, including border security money and aid to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan. This is the chamber’s top priority right now. 

• The federal government’s shutdown deadlines under the current continuing resolution are coming up very soon — March 1 and March 8. Each of these bills include hundreds of billions of dollars in spending, and party leaders will need plenty of time to get them across the floor.   

• The FAA’s authority expires March 8. The Senate Commerce Committee has yet to mark up the upper chamber’s version of the FAA reauthorization. But March 8 is a hard deadline for the FAA to be reauthorized.   

• Most importantly, if the House impeaches Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas — which could happen as soon as next week — the Senate will need to hold an impeachment trial immediately. Impeachment has the highest privilege in the Senate.

And after next week, the Senate will leave town for two weeks during the Presidents’ Day recess. According to the report, both the House and Senate will only be in session at the same time for just three days in February. 

That said, Senate Minority Whip John Thune said that part of the recess may be scrapped if the Senate addresses the border security-Ukraine bill by the end of next week. “I don’t know that you could let this thing hang out there much longer,” he told Punchbowl.

And even if Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer tries to move the tax legislation as a standalone bill, it would likely take at least two weeks to process.

GOP is in no rush…

In the lead-up to the House vote, Republican Senators weren’t getting on board Wednesday – and have instead been pushing for changes to the tax bill. What’s more, they’ve been pushing for it to be marked up by the Senate Finance Committee, which could stall the entire effort.

The top Republican on the Finance panel, Sen. Mike Crapo of Idaho, has been in no rush to embrace it, and he’s pointed to concerns over the child tax credit expansion as the reason why.

“I look forward to working with my colleagues to vet the legislation, address concerns, and make the necessary changes to build support,” Crapo said in a statement.

Senate Republicans have picked at the child tax credit policy in the bill, the pay-for and the broader politics.

“I think passing a tax bill that makes the president look good, may allow checks before the election — means that [Joe Biden] could be reelected and then we won’t extend the 2017 tax bill,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) told reporters. Those are the 2017 Trump tax cuts. -Punchbowl

The new tax plan would be financed by curbing the employee retention tax credit, a pandemic-era measure which was designed to keep workers on the payroll – but which as the NY Times notes, has become a magnet for fraud.

The Wednesday package that passed the house was brokered by the two top tax writers in Congress, Smith, and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), Chairman of the Finance Committee, and has the support of the White House.

Republican proponents have held up the business tax breaks as a win, and have even framed the child tax credit as a victory.

“The child tax credit reforms in this bill are pro-family policies that maintain the child tax credit structure of the Trump-era G.O.P. tax reform,” Smith said in a statement. “The child tax credit provisions in this bill help families crushed by inflation, remove the penalty for families with multiple children and maintains work requirements.”

Authored by Simon White, Bloomberg macro strategist,

Banking sector problems are a prescient reminder that elevated rates are cumulatively inflicting mounting damage across the economy. Ironically, that ultimately means yields are heading higher.

The probability of deeper and perhaps sooner Federal Reserve rate-cuts and an earlier end to quantitative tightening has – even following Wednesday’s FOMC statement – risen at the margin after New York Community Bancorp’s dividend was cut and its equity fell by over a third. This will stoke already-burgeoning inflation pressures, ultimately leaving the US household sector as the buyer of last resort for Treasuries — and it will extract a much higher yield to do so.

Colonel Jessup in A Few Good Men complained that people couldn’t handle the truth. Well, neither can the heavily indebted US economy handle rates at 5.5%. NYCB may be a smaller bank saddled with commercial real estate losses and therefore prime facie facing different problems than Silicon Valley Bank last year, but the root cause is the same: elevated interest rates and too much duration.

Treasuries are thus becoming a shunned asset. The Fed has been reducing its holdings through its quantitative tightening program. But financials in the US (banks and non-banks) and the rest of the world and have not been buying.

Instead, between the first quarter of 2022 — when the Fed started hiking rates — until the latest data from the third quarter of last year, the household and corporate sector has on net absorbed all of the over $1.5 trillion Treasuries that had hitherto been accommodated on the Fed’s balance sheet.

Why have financials not jumped at the chance to buy government debt? Wariness of massive supply is the obvious answer. But it is more nuanced than that. And in explaining this, we can see an actual mechanism of how higher inflation leads to higher yields.

The financial industry has grown rich and complacent on 60/40 portfolios – 60% equities, 40% bonds – or variations on this theme such as risk parity. That worked well in a regime of low-and-stable inflation as stocks and bonds tended to move oppositely to one another, making the second an effective hedge for the first.

But in an elevated-inflation regime, a growth shock can be accompanied by an inflation shock, and stocks and bonds start to co-move more together. That means bonds no longer improve risk-adjusted returns in multi-asset portfolios, nor do they act as a recession hedge.

And in fact we find that the US non-bank financial sector – mutual funds, pension funds, hedge funds, etc – has on net been reducing its exposure to Treasuries as a percentage of the total outstanding as the stock-bond correlation has risen and moved into positive territory.

What’s more, who’s picked up the slack? The household sector, whose ownership of USTs rose from 2.4% to 8.3% of total Treasury debt from 1Q22 to 3Q23, while the non-bank financial sector’s fell from 34.7% to 27.3%.

Despite what plenty of backward-looking analysis says, inflation is not going anywhere, rather it is poised to re-accelerate this year. That means the stock-bond ratio is set to remain positive, massively challenging the shibboleth of 60/40 investing and making bonds a lot less desirable for anyone who doesn’t have liabilities they need to match (such holders currently account for a significant $6 trillion of UST holdings).

But it’s also from banks that the household sector has been absorbing Treasuries. They are more reactive than other holders of USTs, and they are typically quick to reduce their duration exposure when the Fed is raising rates.

They have reduced their UST and MBS holdings to just under 30% of assets, but that’s still historically high, and they have typically decreased their duration by more in previous rate-hiking cycles. (One caveat here is ongoing discussions about new US bank-capital requirements, which could eventually require them to hold more Treasuries, but this is not going to happen soon.)

There are therefore no imminent signs that banks and non-banks are about to backstop Treasury demand. The same goes for overseas buyers. There are many well-telegraphed reasons for foreign actors desiring to hold less US debt, such as America’s weaponization of its financial system, making return of capital no longer a sure-fire bet if you’re considered a wayward state.

But for more mundane reasons – real interest-rate differentials – overseas buyers have just not been that into owning more Treasuries lately. The largest recent buyers are developed-market based – Canada, the UK, Japan, Europe, etc.

If we compare the net yield pick-up of what investors from these countries would earn by buying a 10y UST and hedging the FX versus their domestic government bonds, it has risen in recent months, and at the margin may be attractive, say for e.g. Germany, with a positive pick-up between bunds and Treasuries.

But inflation matters now. Adjusting the pick-ups for domestic price growth to get them in real terms, they remain significantly negative, making it unlikely we should soon expect foreign buyers of Treasuries to rush into absorbing much new issuance.

Here’s the rub. If the household sector is on the hook, it doesn’t have as anodyne a view of inflation as the market. As with the dictum that it’s impossible to get someone to understand something whose job depends on not understanding it, the market is expecting a return to 2% inflation as it does not know how to function in any other way.

Households aren’t buying it though. The sector’s expectations of long-term price growth are notably higher than their market counterparts, such as forward inflation swaps. As the chart below shows, household inflation expectations have been persistently higher than swaps since the mid-2010s.

That may not have mattered much before, but if households are now the marginal buyer of US Treasuries, then they also set the price. They’re unlikely to want them until longer-term yields are about 50-75 basis points higher, or more if inflation sees a resurgence.

Yields are lower in the wake of NYCB’s troubles: not only does that make them even less attractive to households, it’s a manifestation of deeper Fed cuts that will ultimately reignite inflation and pave the way for a secular rise in longer-term yields.

The buyer is happy to beware if the buyer also gets a margin of safety.

Shares of electric-vehicle companies have been battered since the mid-point of 2022. The price war Tesla started about one year ago has made the environment even more challenging for EV automakers. 

On Thursday, Swedish automaker Volvo Car AB announced, “As a result, Volvo Cars will no longer provide further funding to Polestar.” 

In an earnings report, Volvo said Polestar is “entering the next exciting phase of its journey with a strengthened business plan and cost actions.” It said the parent company will concentrate on developing Volvo Cars.

The Swedish firm is mulling over a reduction of its 48% Polestar stake through distribution to its own shareholders. Chinese billionaire Li Shufu’s affiliates control about 40% of Polestar, while Li holds a 79% stake in Volvo Car. 

“We are therefore evaluating a potential adjustment to Volvo Cars’ shareholding in Polestar, including a distribution of shares to Volvo Cars shareholders. This may result in Geely Sweden Holdings becoming a significant new shareholder,” Volvo continued.

Investors welcomed the move designed to stop the hemorrhaging of cash-burning Polestar that has damaged Volvo Car’s share price. 

Shares in Volvo Car jumped as much as 30% on the news. Shares are still down 38% over the past year. 

In an interview on Thursday, Volvo Cars CEO Jim Rowan told CNBC’s Silvia Amaro that today’s announcement was a “natural evolution” in the relationship between the two automakers. 

“Obviously, we spun out Polestar as a separate company a long time ago, and since then we’ve been incubating and working with Polestar for a number of years,” Rowan said.

“Now, Polestar … they’ve have got a very exciting future ahead of them, they’ve moved from being a one-car company to a three-car company, they’ve got two brand new cars coming out very shortly, in fact in the first half of this year, and that’s going to take them to a new growth trajectory.”

Rowan pointed out it’s the right time to reduce ownership in Polestar: 

“That allows us and Volvo as well to fully focus on our growth journey, especially some of the technology investments that we need to make in the next two-three years.”

Volvo’s attempt to disentangle itself from cash-burning Polestar underscores the harsh reality in the EV space. Also, Volvo cutting funding brings up viability concerns for Polestar. 

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Modernity.news,

An acid attack in London that left nine people injured has prompted a huge manhunt, although some are asking why the police haven’t released a description of the suspect.

Two children, their mother, three members of the public and at least three police officers suffered injuries when a “corrosive substance” was thrown at them during the incident, which took place in Clapham, south London last night.

The suspect involved grabbed one of the children and threw them to the ground.

“The lady then shouted ‘My eyes! My eyes! Call the police, my eyes!’” said an eyewitness.

“Then I saw him run off. It was all so traumatising.”

“Pictures from the scene show a car with the doors open in the middle of the road and a helicopter is now involved in a manhunt to catch the person responsible,” reports Sky News.

A video was released showing the incident unfold, although it was grainy and black and white.

However, authorities have not released a description of the perpetrator despite the fact that he represents a clear danger to the public, and despite asking the public to share any information that might be helpful.

Respondents on X demanded to know why.

Looked for a description in the news or from the police of the suspect in the acid attack. I guess their silence is a description of sorts.

— Burnside (@BurnsideNotTosh) February 1, 2024

If a man is still at large for the horrific acid attack in Clapham, wouldn’t it be sensible for the police to release a description of the suspect? To help the public to apprehend him/help the police – and to stay safe? 🤔 https://t.co/WwgH7v5iMq

— Martin Daubney 🇬🇧 (@MartinDaubney) February 1, 2024

No doubt this will end up being another example of how diversity is our “greatest strength,” with acid attacks now a fairly regular feature of big city life in the UK.

I preferred it when acid attacks barely happened, teachers were not threatened by organised mobs and MPs did not have to factor in a serious fear of assassination.

— Patrick O’Flynn (@oflynnsocial) February 1, 2024

Stuff like this happens in London these days and it hardly even makes a ripple in the news cycle and will be forgotten within 2 days. pic.twitter.com/zVnsIhPsBM

— Morgoth (@MorgothsReview) February 1, 2024

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