IMF predicts, Hezbollah backtracks, Musk for cyborgs…
The IMF expects the world economy to grow by 3.1% in 2024, but bear in mind that they are usually wrong. Despite Germany’s contracting economy, and the EU’s stalled growth, the IMF reckons that the dazzling US economy and a belief that Beijing’s fiscal support of Chinese markets will restart its “miracle.” The 4717 suggests that this might be a tad optimistic.
Tall Pour: The liquidation of Evergrande — which will get stalled by the Chinese Communist Party — will make 2024 China’s “Year of the Train-wreck.” And its allies war on global trade is not going to do the Worlds Workshop or anyone else any favors. Nor is US pausing new LNG exports. The QED being that energy and food prices are almost certainly going to rise this year.
Kataib Hezbollah, another Iran-backed militia operating in Iraq, and likely the ones behind the Tower 22 attack, has announced that they have “suspended operations against US forces.” Or more to the point, “we didn’t actually think that we’d get away with it and now you seem mad. So we won’t do it again.”
Tall Pour: The Biden Administration has announced that it has decided on a “multi-tiered” response, which would deviate from its current, and largely pointless, flyswatter approach. The back-tracking by Kataid Hezbollah is likely a fear strikes against Iran itself will cause the country to lose control of it holds over Iraq through its militias. Practically, Iran is overestimating this threat of direct retaliation, but there is no harm in letting them sweat it out.
After promising to play nice with at least plausibly fair elections, Venezuela managed to get the Biden administration to hit a pause on the country’s sanctions. Yet the high court is still ruling the leading opposition candidate can’t run, largely on the grounds that he might win. The administration has opted not to extend the pause which, practically, won’t affect current global supplies. After an increased US naval presence in the area, Caracas has decided to but a pin in the whole annexing 2/3 of neighboring Guyana, though. Which absolutely would.
Elon Musk — founder of Tesla and a cologne that smells like burnt hair -has announced that Neuralink, the latest start-up the world didn’t know it needed, has performed its first successful brain-chip implant. The chip, called Telepathy, is for people who identify as their remote control. No news yet from America’s Ivy League on whether cyborgs get their own bathrooms. They’ll get back to us.
Richard Murff is the founder of 4717 Insights. For more on the world, how it got here and a stiff drink, head to the 4717. Murff is the author of Pothole of the Gods: On Holy War, Fake News & other Ill-Advised Ideas, Drunk as Lords, and the upcoming Horrible Political Jokes in Ukraine.
