Market Volatility Update

What Governments Around The World Are Doing To Sure Up Their Economic Footings

A few weeks ago on the show, we talked about the oligarch's yachts and how governments around the world are seizing them. And we talked about the economic implications of that. Well, I want to shift the conversation away from the yachts to the planes. There are 400 foreign owned jets stranded in Russia. They are owned by leasing companies. They lease them to airlines. A Boeing 737 costs $100 million, $3 million a year to maintain it. All that aircraft sitting on runways in Russia, they're collectively worth $40 billion and it takes $1.2 billion to maintain them. Nobody is going to fly these planes after the war because nobody's going to know what condition is that they're in and that makes all these aircraft worthless. 

The leasing companies, therefore, are filing insurance claims for $40 billion, and the insurance companies so far are refusing to pay. They say that there isn't a declared war going on anywhere and it's just a business issue if they can't fly the planes out of there. We'll have to see how it shakes out. And what are governments saying in all this? 

Global Currency Manipulation: But Can it Ease Inflation?

We're talking about the current economic environment and the stock market volatility. What are governments doing in response to all this? Well, here's a taste of things to come, perhaps. In Singapore, if you want to buy a luxury car, you must first buy a government certificate that allows you to buy the car. And the government certificate is $73,000. Meanwhile, the Treasury Department says the Swiss, Taiwan, Vietnam and others are deliberately lowering their currencies against the dollar. The yen is at a 24 year low. That's depressing its currency. Now that makes it cheaper for us to buy their products. So if you want to buy a Japanese car, that car just got really cheap. But it makes it really expensive for people in Japan to buy American cars and other products. 

You see, when they lower their currency against the dollar, it helps their economy and hurts ours. It's not just Japan - China, South Korea, Germany, Italy, India, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Mexico. The US Treasury says they're all engaging in currency manipulation, helping their economies during this global recession. Meanwhile, hurting ours. The Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, says in the midst of all this, the Biden administration, in an effort to fight inflation, might reduce the tariffs on Chinese imports.

In other words, we're going to make it cheaper for you to buy Chinese goods. What happens to the fight against human rights against China? I guess it takes a second seat to the fight against inflation.