Boeing’s 747 assembly line is winding down. The aircraft manufacturer only has 12 orders left to fill. When the last jumbo rolls off the assembly line, it will mark the end of an era for an aircraft that’s spanned fifty-plus years. Production of the plane is expected to wrap up next year.

Boeing’s list of unfilled orders, current at March 31, confirms the 12 unfilled deliveries. According to Boeing, four Boeing 747-8Fs are going to Atlas Air, seven Boeing 747-8Fs are going to UPS, and a single 747-8 is going to an unidentified customer.

Last Boeing 747 order placed in January

The U.S. government’s budget debt increased to a record of $1.7 trillion for the first six months of this budget year, nearly double the previous record, as President Joe Biden pushes another round of economic-support checks that added billions of dollars to the debt last month.

In its monthly budget report, the Treasury Department said Monday that the debt for the first half of the budget year—from October through March—was up from a shortfall of $743.5 billion for the same period a year ago.

Texas' power grid operator, Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which came under immense pressure months ago for mishandling the historic winter storm in mid-February, urged customers Tuesday afternoon to "reduce their electricity use" as a cold front swept through, causing power demand to spike.

ERCOT told customers to please "conserve energy at this time. Consumers and businesses are urged to reduce their electricity use this afternoon and into the evening."

Texas' power grid operator also said:

"Due to a combination of high gen outages typical in April & higher-than-forecasted demand caused by a stalled cold front over TX, ERCOT may enter emergency conditions.

With a cold front moving through the Lone Star state some generation units were already down for repair work. Bloomberg reports one spot price for Texas power jumped as much as 10,000% on Tuesday.

Rising Middle Eastern oil production is making the commodity that comes out of this region cheaper compared to Brent-linked grades, which may lead to a price war, Bloomberg has reported, citing an FGE analyst.

“There’s much cheaper crude, and a lot of it coming from the Middle East,” Grayson Lim, a senior oil analyst at the energy consultancy, told Bloomberg.

“Those Brent-linked cargoes will need to be offered at a huge discount for buyers in the [Asia] region to snap up the barrels,” he explained. “But if they’re heavily discounted, there’s a chance that Chinese buyers may come out to buy.”

The warning comes as OPEC+ prepares to start boosting production in response to higher oil prices and the prospect of improving oil demand. However, uncertainty remains heightened as the pandemic shows no signs of subsiding in many parts of the world, including in key markets such as India and the United States.

Consumer prices shot higher in March, given a boost by a strong economic recovery and year-over-year comparisons to a time when the Covid-19 pandemic was about to throttle the U.S. economy, the Labor Department reported Tuesday.

The consumer price index rose 0.6% from the previous month but 2.6% from the same period a year ago. The year-over-year gain is the highest since August 2018 and was well above the 1.7% recorded in February.

The index was projected to rise 0.5% on a monthly basis and 2.5% from March 2020, according to Dow Jones estimates.

The report “is the clearest indication so far that the signs of mounting inflation evident in business surveys and producer prices are feeding through to stronger consumer prices,” wrote Michael Pearce, senior U.S. economist at Capital Economics. “For all the focus on supply disruptions pushing goods prices higher, the strongest upward pressure on prices is coming from the services sector.”

The business world’s discrimination against anything “Trump” has reached an epidemic level, touching former aides to the president, anybody pictured near the Jan. 6 Capitol protest, and now those who endorsed him on social media posts.

A new survey of hiring managers provided to Secrets found that backing Trump on social media is the top reason to reject a job applicant.

The apparent reason: Human resources departments want to avoid “tiffs” between employees.

“Likely to avoid future office tiffs, a significant portion of hiring managers admitted to negatively judging candidates based on the political content posted. For 27% of hiring managers, social media posts endorsing Donald Trump for president would negatively impact their decision to hire a candidate,” read the analysis of the poll done for Skynova, an online business software company.

A “Black Swan” is best defined as an unforecastable, low-probability, high-impact event. They may include more prosaic natural disasters, like earthquakes, but are more generally understood to be unforeseeable economic, financial and political calamities.

While Black Swan events are, by this definition, unforecastable, the trends building up to them can often be observed, and that process has been our aim since the inception of GnS Economics in 2012. For example, it’s nowadays often possible to observe the buildup of pressure in volcanos. This does not guarantee an eruption, naturally, but it provides an indication that such an event could occur.

Over 100 Wall Street corporate chieftains met in a private meeting recently to discuss collusion possibilities after the passage of electoral reform in several states, including Georgia.

The corporate elite is striking back, exerting their vast economic privilege to punish the people and undermine the political process. It is clear they do not want a non-globalist to ever be elected president again.

The Wall Street tycoons have cravenly refused to list their identities, as they understand that opposing voter security may have negative consequences in the marketplace. This is why they are hiding behind anonymity in making their threats against states that are implementing common sense reforms.

Their statement indicates that these “CEOs indicated readiness to act individually and collectively to shore up American democracy and ensure Americans have access to a world class voting system.”

If there were a prime example of all that is wrong with modern-day agriculture, Iowa would be a strong frontrunner. In 2019, the state had 3,963 large concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) — which refers to those with 1,000 animals or more — up from 789 in 1990.1 The average large hog CAFO in Iowa has at least 2,500 pigs, while some house 24,000.

As the leader among hog-producing states, Iowa had more than 22.7 million hogs in 2017, which produce 68 billion pounds of manure annually — at least 68 times the amount of fecal waste produced by Iowa’s 3.15 million residents, the Environmental Working Group reported.2

By 2021, the number of hogs in Iowa had grown to 25 million, according to an editorial by Art Cullen, editor of The Storm Lake Times,3 who noted, “To feed those hogs, we cultivate 92% of the state’s acres to grow corn and soybeans, the most of any state.”

Fruit growers and winemakers in France have reported that the majority of their harvest this year has been lost to the significant cold snap that spread through parts of Europe from Wednesday, April 7 to Friday, April 9, 2021. Many industry experts believe that the frost damage might be the worst since the 1990s.

French farmers started counting the cost on Friday, April 9, after a deep cyclonic vortex from North Atlantic went down on northern Europe. Frosty conditions covered much of France, where many areas recorded their lowest April temperature on record.

"No region has been spared-- beets, rape, barley, vines fruit trees [have been lost]. All the different kinds of support must be activated urgently," said the National Federation of Unions for Farmers (FNSEA). "Exceptional situations call for exceptional measures."

Before his 1987 killing, Burkinabe President Thomas Sankara predicted his defiance of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), debts to which he encouraged African nations to refuse to pay, would get him killed.

Blaise Compaoré, the ousted former president of Burkina Faso, has been charged alongside 14 other people in connection with the 1987 killing of his predecessor, the pan-African communist revolutionary Sankara.

According to court documents viewed by Reuters, a Burkinabe military tribunal has charged Compaoré with complicity in the October 15, 1987, assassination of then-President Sankara. The charges include undermining state security and receiving cadavers.

Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov does not rule out the risk of Russia’s disconnection from Western payment systems, given the unfriendly attitude towards the country from a number of states, he told reporters on Tuesday.

"We can say one thing with certainty, that in one form or another, restrictions against Russia are being used by a number of states that pursue the goal of illegally, from the standpoint of international law, containing Russia," he said. "These restrictions are manifested in various forms, and this is a rather unpredictable process. So, within the framework of this process and given such unfriendly, and at times even hostile behavior towards us, nothing can be ruled out," Peskov elaborated.

President Joe Biden is preparing an executive order that would compel companies to reveal the risks they face from climate change, special climate envoy John Kerry said this week.

Kerry didn’t embellish on the features of the order or the timing, but the step would meet a promise Biden made on the campaign path to require all public corporations to report their effusions and climate-related dangers.

Now, the Biden administration has taken several steps to sustain capacity at agencies such as the Treasury Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and the Federal Reserve to discuss the dangers climate change poses to the financial system. Last month, the SEC asked for input on installing a regime for climate exposures.

The White House is in talks to appoint a special envoy to lead negotiations on halting the construction of Russia-to-Germany gas pipeline Nord Stream 2, current and former U.S. officials said, as the Biden administration grapples with how to stymie a nearly completed energy project that would serve as a major financial and geopolitical boon to Moscow.

Amos Hochstein, who served as the special envoy and coordinator for international energy affairs under President Barack Obama and was a close adviser and confidant to then-Vice President Joe Biden, was informally offered the role by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan late last month and is being vetted, the officials said, but he has not yet accepted the job.

Only a fifth of President Joe Biden’s introduced “infrastructure” plan is subjected to be spent on actual infrastructure projects such as bridges, trains, waterways, and roads.

The remaining portions would be spent to support industrial policy and what has commonly been called “pork barrel” projects. Of the suggested spending, 26 percent would back the administration’s proposed industrial policy, which would favor domestic manufacturing and green technology.

Shortly after the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a global pandemic on March 11, 2020, markets collapsed and economies around the world plunged into recession. At the same time, hundreds of billionaires fell from the ranks of Forbes’ World’s Billionaires list, capturing a snapshot of the pandemic’s impact on the fortunes of the world’s wealthiest people.

Just around the time Joe Biden was concluding a meeting with more than a dozen CEOs on Monday addressing the global chip shortage that has snarled supply chains and brought high-tech industries to a stop (a meeting in which he offered $50 billion for semiconductor manufacturing and research), China's Huawei Technologies - which has been stockpiling chips at an unprecedented pace for the past 4 years - blamed the U.S. for the chip crunch rocking the global tech industry, saying Washington's sanctions against Chinese companies have spurred panic buying of semiconductors and other supplies.

"Because of the U.S. sanctions against Huawei, we have seen panic stockpiling among global companies, especially the Chinese ones. In the past, companies were barely stockpiling, but now they are building up three or six months' worth of inventory ... and that has disrupted the whole system," Rotating Chairman Eric Xu said at the company's 18th Huawei Analyst Summit, the Nikkei reported.

The US House of Representatives has passed a bill called the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act. If the Senate passes the bill and the President signs it, this would usher in a union labor coup.

It would become illegal for employers to attempt, in any way, to influence employees to not join a labor union or participate in collective bargaining. The bill would overturn right to work laws in 27 states. These laws prohibit unions from requiring workers to join a union, and prohibit unions from forcing non-union members to pay dues.

The bill would also force employers to share employees' private information with union organizers:

“a voter list to a labor organization... shall include the names of all employees in the bargaining unit and such employees’ home addresses, work locations, shifts, job classifications, and, if available to the employer, personal landline and mobile telephone numbers, and work and personal email addresses.”

The Biden administration is stepping up scrutiny of China’s plans for a digital yuan, with some officials concerned the move could kick off a long-term bid to topple the US dollar as the world’s dominant reserve currency, according to people familiar with the matter.

Now that China’s digital currency efforts are gathering momentum, officials at the US Treasury, State Department, Pentagon and National Security Council are bolstering their efforts to understand the potential implications, the people said.

President Biden has humiliated Germany by placing a former gas lobbyist and board member of a Ukrainian state gas company in charge of thwarting the Nord Stream 2 project.

Caleb Maupin, journalist and political analyst, joins us to talk about this week's important stories. The Amazon union vote in Bessemer, Alabama seems to be going in favor of the company, but union officials are crying foul. Iran is signaling that the nuclear agreement negotiations in Vienna are going well, but they will hold their ground on reasonable demands. Also, the US agreement to leave Iraq has no timetable which many observers interpret as a neocon stalling tactic.

John Burris, civil rights attorney, joins us to discuss the Derek Chauvin trial. Medical experts have testified that the death of George Floyd was caused directly by the pressure of a knee placed on his neck for over nine minutes. Also, an array of police personnel in Chauvin's department testified on behalf of the prosecution.

The spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry says the Islamic Republic is considering counter-sanctions in response to new bans imposed on several Iranian individuals and entities by the European Union while suspending all talks with the bloc in various fields.

Saeed Khatibzadeh made the remarks on Monday after the European Union announced it has imposed sanctions ranging from travel bans to asset freezes on eight Iranian individuals, including the chief commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Major General Hossein Salami, and three prisons on baseless human rights-related grounds.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran is considering reciprocal sanctions in reaction to the EU’s measure, whose details will be announced later,” the spokesman said, adding, “Iran strongly condemns this measure and considers it as lacking any credebility.”

What’s the most common "people" sight in any public place, anywhere? At this point in our evolution the answer is easy: hunched over individuals tapping away on smartphones.

It doesn’t matter one bit if the locale is rich or poor. The gadgets are everywhere.

The other day at the library your writer spied a homeless man, surrounded by presumably all of his worldly possessions. Those possessions included a smartphone. He had it hooked up to a power source outside the library’s main entrance.

Please think about this for minute or two. A homeless American man was charging a communications device that wasn’t available in capability and speed to the richest of the rich probably even five years ago. Certainly not ten.

It’s a reminder that what the rich enjoy exclusively is always and everywhere a preview of what we’ll all eventually enjoy if markets remain free, and wealth largely stays where it’s created: in the private sector.

The covid crisis may be over (with nearly 60% of the population vaccinated, one would certainly hope it's over), but covid crisis spending is here to stay.

At 2pm, the Treasury released its latest Monthly Treasury Statement which showed that in March, the US budget deficit exploded once again, surging to $660BN, up five-fold from a tiny $119BN last March, driven by a 160% increase in government Outlays which soared to $927 billion - the third highest on record - from $355.7BN a year ago, and from $559.2BN in February.

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm confirmed over the weekend that the Biden administration will no longer use “past definitions” of ‘Infrastructure’ when allocating trillions of dollars for his new spending spree of taxpayer dollars.

“What is infrastructure? Historically, it’s been what makes the economy move, what is it that we all need to ensure that we as citizens are productive,” Granholm said.

“So we need roads, we need bridges, we need transmission, you need lights in people’s homes and offices, you need to make sure that people can actually go to work if they have an aging parent or a child,” she added.

Watch the Secretary’s revealing comments above.

Pete Buttigieg walked back Sunday on his claim Joe Biden's infrastructure package would create 19 million jobs in American – clarifying the plan would still create jobs, but at a much lower number of 2.7 million.

Fox News host Chris Wallace asked President Biden's transportation secretary why he 'misled folks' by claiming the number was more than 16 million than what he is now sharing.

'You're right. I should have been more precise,' Buttigieg admitted.

Despite trillions in Fed "stimulus" and endless government handouts, John Stanford, co-executive director of the Small Business Roundtable, told CNBC this week that "it continues to be a very painful time for small businesses."

"We have to remember, PPP was a bridge program," Stanford said.

"It was meant to keep people on the payroll, it wasn’t meant necessarily to keep businesses open."

In what will likely come as a surprise to many, amid political pressure to reopen nationwide - since lockdowns have been shown to be utterly useless - 22% of U.S. small businesses were closed in February, up significantly from October's 14%, and back near May's pandemic peak when 23% of small and medium-size businesses closed (just 1 percentage point higher than the current closure rate).

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has warned that the biggest risk to the US economy is the threat of cyberattacks, which could bring financial institutions to a halt by taking away their ability to track payments.

Speaking to the CBS News show ‘60 Minutes’, Powell outlined his concerns “as the world evolves,” and discussed how the US can protect its economy from emerging threats, as well as how the US economy can rebound from the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Issuing a warning, the head of America’s central banking system said, the risk that the Federal Reserve is keeping its “eyes on the most now is [the] cyber risk,” laying out a situation in which a hack could easily take financial institutions offline.

New tax increases proposed by President Joe Biden would kill one million jobs and harm the economy, a new study released by the nation’s largest manufacturing association states.

For manufacturers, the tax reform of 2017 was like “rocket fuel” and if the new administration rolls back those reforms, “manufacturing workers will lose out on jobs, growth, and raises,” according to Jay Timmons, president and CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM).

“After decades of advocating for a tax system that provided competitive rates and modern international tax provisions, manufacturers in America kept our promises following the enactment of the 2017 tax reforms: we raised wages and benefits, we hired more American workers, and we invested in our communities,” Timmons said in a press release.

“If we undo those reforms, all of that will be put at significant risk.”

Levi Strauss & Co. CEO Chip Bergh announced his organization is “very concerned” about state governments allegedly attempting to restrict voter access while continuing to operate his business in China, a country that is well known for impeding its own election process.

During a segment on Friday’s CNN Newsroom, Bergh told host Poppy Harlow that his company was “going to do everything that we can to work with the legislatures to make sure that these restrictive laws don’t go into place.”

San Francisco residents are leaving the city in packs, with a large number leaving to Texas and Florida, according to a report published Thursday by the commercial realty firm CBRE Group.

The city lost the most residents out of every major city between 2019 and 2020, with 70 percent moving to nearby Sacramento, according to data that was collected from the United States Postal Service records through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Every day I open up my web browser to see yet another example of the basic functions of society breaking down. Last week it was the vaporization of Archegos capital. I told you what I thought of this in a post that I hope, got people thinking.

Previous to Archegos, over the past two months we’ve seen the electrical grid collapse in Texas, hedge funds blown up over a meme stock. Bitcoin is screaming that the national fiat currencies are all hyperinflating at the same time.

In the case of the recently solved Suez Canal incident, it doesn’t matter if it was incompetence or malicious behavior which caused the Ever Given to stick in the mud, in a world this fragile the smallest mistake can have outsized consequences.

The few days the canal was blocked caused an enormous pile up and re-routing of basic supplies and fundamentally important goods to Europe and North America that, to me, is a harbinger of where we are headed.

In the whirlwind of diplomatic activity in Europe and the U.S. related to the upsurge in fighting in the Donbass region of Ukraine, the coming and going of government and military officials in the Ukrainian capital can provide revealing insights. The head of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Military Committee was in Ukraine on April 6 and 7 and the foreign minister of Poland was there the following day.

Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau returned to Warsaw on April 9, summing up the purpose of his visit as to “reaffirm our policy that Ukraine is not alone in defending its sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the inviolability of its borders.” Poland is not a member of either of the two negotiating arrangements established in 2014 to resolve the armed conflict in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine, the Normandy Format and the Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine.

The US Senate’s new legislation, the Strategic Competition Act of 2021, lays out a wide-ranging strategy for the first time to contain China’s global expansion, providing a significant milestone as the relationship between the two economic and hi-tech superpowers deteriorate.

“The legislation will have a profound effect on every Chinese technology firm,” said Cameron Johnson, an adjunct faculty instructor at New York University and a partner at Shanghai-based Tidal Wave Solutions.

“This includes in terms of developing new technologies, global investment strategies, selling into US-allied countries, receiving support from the Chinese government, and how the country’s technology market interacts and influences global governance and standards-setting.”