Myanmar Rebels Fight, Shoot Down Government Fighter Jet

Political

Tensions in Northern Myanmar

Summary:

A Myanmar government fighter jet has crashed during clashes between the military and rebel groups. Both the military government and the rebels confirmed the news. It is another setback for the junta as it faces the biggest challenge to its rule since the 2021 coup.

The plane crashed on Saturday over Kayah state in eastern Myanmar, near the Thai border, amid fighting between the military and the Karen National Defense Force (KNDF), with both sides reporting that the plane was shot down.

Junta spokesman Zaw Min Tun had told state-run MRTV that the plane crashed due to a technical problem and that the pilot had ejected safely and was in contact with the military.

The incident comes as Myanmar's military battles opposition forces on multiple fronts and an insurgency by ethnic minority and anti-junta militias that security analysts say is unprecedentedly coordinated.

Myanmar's military-appointed president said last week that the country risks secession by failing to deal more effectively with the insurgency.

Conflict in the northeastern Shan state bordering China has displaced at least 50,000 people, cut off trade routes and captured towns since three ethnic minority rebel groups launched an anti-junta offensive last month.

According to a Reuters report today, China has called on all parties to cease hostilities.

The rebel alliance said it had captured more than 100 military posts. Attacks on towns have also occurred in central Myanmar and the Sagaing region in western Shan State. Hundreds of foreign workers have been trapped in the fighting, including Vietnamese and Thai citizens, many of whom human rights activists say are victims of human trafficking.

Thailand's Foreign Ministry said on Saturday that 200 Thai nationals were waiting to be evacuated "as soon as circumstances permit."

The KNDF said on its official Facebook page that the rebels shot down the plane with heavy machine gun fire on Saturday and that its members were searching for the pilot.

Reuters said it could not verify the information.

News outlet Mizzima posted images on its Facebook page of what it said was a helmet and parachute abandoned by one of the pilots.

Article source: Radio France Internationale

Risk Warnings and Disclaimers

You understand and acknowledge that there is a high degree of risk involved in trading. Following any strategies or investment methods may lead to potential losses. The content on the site is provided by our contributors and analysts for information purposes only. You are solely responsible for determining whether any trading assets, securities, strategy, or any other product is suitable for investing based on your own investment objectives and financial situation.

Comments

Add to Favorites

JPMorgan

Economic

Central Bank

So as we barrel toward the end of the year, are markets finally finding direction?

This week has been jampacked with big-picture catalysts – from a flurry of central bank meetings to a handful of economic data prints, to a new sense of the government debt situation – and each seems to have brought a clearer sense of the path forward.

Here is what we learned, and why we think it may bring more comfort for investors:

Pretty much every major central bank has said they're done hiking (just without actually saying they're done hiking).

The Federal Reserve, European Central Bank and Bank of England all kept policy rates unchanged at their latest meetings. Only the Bank of Japan is left holding on to an easier policy stance, and still, it's slowly shifting toward tightening.

Are Markets Finally Finding Direction?_1

After months of questioning when the end would come, and even one “skip” meeting followed by a hike thereafter, conviction that the Fed is actually done with hikes is growing. Markets are pricing in just a ~30% chance of one more hike. If it comes at all, investors are betting on it happening in January. By then, policymakers should have an even clearer read on the economy, and this month's data has pointed to more cooling.

Why it matters: When the Fed has officially hiked its last time in the past, that's tended to provide a runway for markets to rally. In the last seven Fed hiking cycles, U.S. stocks and investment-grade bonds meaningfully outperformed cash – by 19% and 14%, respectively – over the following two years.

The economy is slowing a bit, and that's not a bad thing.

So far, inflation has cooled without much economic pain. As we noted last week Q3's U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) print was a case in point for how resilient growth has been.

But from here, growth probably needs to slow down a little to ensure that inflation doesn't reaccelerate (and prompt more moves from central banks). This week, from manufacturing and services reads to labor market data (see the cooldown in hiring in today's jobs report), signs have pointed to some fading momentum. CEOs have echoed the same this earnings season, with more notes of dampening demand and shifts in spending patterns (even as the overall trend is still a solid one).

In more good news for a potential soft landing, word also came that the economy might be getting more “productive.” In other words, it's using all the resources it has – from all its workers and its capital to its technological investments – more efficiently than it used to. The latest read on U.S. productivity, measured by how much employees are producing per hour, advanced by the most in three years. Meanwhile, unit labor costs, or how much a business pays its workers to produce one unit of whatever it's producing, fell last quarter – its first decline since 2022. Taken together, this means inflation may be able to keep cooling while the economy avoids a meaningful contraction.

The Treasury plans to borrow less than expected next quarter.

Bond yields surged over the summer in part as the Treasury said it was going to have to issue more debt to help fund the government's spending. All else equal, more Treasury supply puts downward pressure on prices and upward pressure on yields.

Fast forward to this week: In its latest update, the Treasury said it plans to borrow less than it anticipated in Q4, and it also intends to issue less longer-dated bonds than expected to get its job done. That shift may make it easier for the market to digest the added supply.

While we still need to see how buyers will take on this latest round of supply, this week's news signals that bond markets might be faced with less volatility ahead.

Markets hate uncertainty, and they thrive on clarity.

In all, a better sense of the path forward offers more runway to rally.

It's a bond buyer's market with interest rates at today's levels. One of the most popular measures of the U.S. Treasury yield curve (i.e., the difference between 2-year and 10-year bond yields) has moved from about 100 bps of inversion in July to about 30 bps today. For investors, this means that you don't need to give up nearly as much yield to extend duration. Across the maturities, risk spectrums and issuer types, investors have the opportunity to buy bonds at yields we haven't seen in 15 years. For U.S. taxpayers, we think municipal bonds look especially compelling, offering the potential for an even greater pickup in yield, low default risk and an attractive entry point with seasonal supply trends. To echo our earlier point and add potential urgency, yields have a habit of falling (and prices rising) after the Fed is done raising interest rates.

Are Markets Finally Finding Direction?_2

We think now offers an entry point for U.S. stocks. Even after this week's rally, stocks are still pricing in a lot of bad stuff. Roughly 70% of S&P 500 stocks are in correction territory (or down 10% or more from their 52-week highs), and broadly, valuations are about back in line with long-term averages. Seasonality could also prove favorable: Going back to 1950, November and December are usually two of the best months of the year. Finally, with more stability in bond yields, investors can soon refocus on fundamentals. Earnings are having a transition quarter, and expectations from here point to future growth. That's especially true for tech+, where improving earnings and the power of artificial intelligence (AI) combine to create a compelling case.

Are Markets Finally Finding Direction?_3

Finally, if we're wrong, alternatives can be a powerful force in portfolios beyond diversification. For example, infrastructure and real assets can offer protection if inflation lingers (or, in a worst case, reaccelerates). Private credit can benefit in an environment with higher interest rates and tighter financial conditions, and experienced managers can capitalize on stress in commercial real estate.

To stay updated on all economic events of today, please check out our Economic calendar

Risk Warnings and Disclaimers

Comments

Add to Favorites

Kevin Du

Political

Palestinian-Israeli conflict

Why Biden Supports Israel so Wholeheartedly_1

“As long as the United States stands,” President Joe Biden told the people of Israel, “we will not let you ever be alone.” It was one of Biden's countless expressions of support for Israel since the October 7 attack in which Hamas terrorists murdered at least 1,400 people inside Israel and took more than 200 hostage into the Gaza Strip.

Biden was in Tel Aviv, arriving there last month just days after the fighting started, to reassure Israelis that the most powerful country on Earth would have their back. To Israel's war cabinet he reportedly said, you don't have “to be a Jew to be a Zionist, and I am a Zionist.”

The president's unwavering support for Israel, increasingly tempered with calls for Israel to make a greater effort to spare Palestinian civilians in its counteroffensive, has taken a political toll at an inauspicious time. It has angered some progressive Democrats as well as Muslim and Arab Americans just one year before the 2024 presidential election.

Clearly, Biden is not acting out of cynical political self-interest (as certain other politicians might do). If he were, he would try to thread a needle, seeking to safeguard the coalition that brought him to power. No, Biden is acting out of a conviction that transcends electoral considerations.

Why does Biden support Israel so wholeheartedly? Two powerful internal forces drive him.

The first is a lifelong understanding of Jewish history and the indispensable role a Jewish state plays in countering millennia of antisemitism. The second is the worldview that impelled Biden to run for office and has remained the North Star of his presidency: a sense that the world is at a turning point – a potentially catastrophic one – in which dangerous powers are threatening to undo the international norms crafted over decades since World War II, norms that allowed the world to make progress in preserving peace and advancing democracy.

Biden made that point again last week, at the end of a press conference with the visiting president of Chile. “There comes a time,” he said, “maybe every six to eight generations, where the world changes in a very short time.” That is happening now, he said. “What happens in the next two, three years (is) going to determine what the world looks like for the next five or six decades.”

He was referring, as he has on other occasions, to multiple dramas at play at home and abroad, from the possibility of another Trump presidency, to the war in Ukraine, to the current war and potential for even more violence in the Middle East, to the simmering tension between China and its neighbors.

For Biden, these imperatives – strategic, historic, moral, emotional – come together in the war between Israel and Iran-backed Hamas, a terrorist group founded on the goal of destroying Israel.

Even as he stands four-square with Israel, Biden is insisting that the war must be followed by the pursuit of self-determination for Palestinians, a point he has also made repeatedly.

Biden learned Jewish history at his father's foot. He has talked about growing up hearing his father at the dinner table remark on “how the world stood silently in the 1930s in the face of Hitler,” whose rise led to the murder of 6 million Jews and to a worldwide conflagration. Biden has traveled to the Dachau death camp many times, most recently taking his granddaughter with him and walking into the gas chamber where the Nazis poisoned countless Jews to death.

When Hamas launched its brutal attack, its members recording themselves torturing and killing their victims, Biden saw the link between Jewish history and this, the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

In a searing speech on October 10, he declared, “There are moments in this life…when pure, unadulterated evil is unleashed on this world.” The carnage, he said, “brought to the surface…millennia of antisemitism and genocide of the Jewish people.”

The former Israeli ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, called the speech, “the most passionately pro-Israel in history.”

But Biden saw more than millennia. He saw the trends of the past few years. The rise of extremism fueled by autocratic, antidemocratic forces. It was the phenomenon that drove him to run for president in 2019, when he said that the sight of white supremacist neo-Nazis marching in Charlottesville, Va., “veins bulging and bearing the fangs of racism,” were chanting “the same antisemitic bile heard across Europe in the 30s” persuaded him to jump in the race.

Biden's presidency has been propelled by a mission to counter those forces at a moment he has called “an inflection point in history,” rebuilding alliances, assertively pushing against aggressive, expansionist autocrats, and demonstrating to America's friends that the US will stand by their side.

Where many see a war between Israel and Hamas, Biden sees something much larger.

The wars launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin against Ukraine and by Hamas against Israel, he said, are obviously different, but they have much in common. Both Hamas and Russia are receiving support from Iran. Both Hamas and Russia “want to completely annihilate a neighboring democracy.”

At this pivotal time in history, the president sees an indispensable role for the United States. “History,” he said, “has taught us that when terrorists don't pay a price for their terror, when dictators don't pay a price for their aggression, they cause more chaos and death and more destruction.”

He appears to see Putin's Russia, the Ayatollah's allies Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and others as destabilizing forces, rejecting neighbors, sparking wars. Defeating them would allow the US to help build what Biden describes as a Middle East that is more stable, with “less rage, less grievances, less war.”

To achieve that, it is likely – and desirable – that Biden tell Israelis that their responsibility extends beyond defeating a terrorist organization and doing it within the bounds of international law. For its own security, and for the fulfillment – or at least more progress toward the fulfillment – of Biden's historic aspirations, he must urge Israel to engage with Palestinians who seek peace and coexistence and to work toward resolving the conflict.

That has been a frustrating quest in the past, empowering the rejectionists. But it remains indispensable. With a US president that has proved he understands Israel, that he viscerally grasps the need for a Jewish homeland, Israelis owe it to Biden to heed his advice.

Source: CNN

Risk Warnings and Disclaimers

Comments

Add to Favorites

Thomas

Palestinian-Israeli conflict

Latest news on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict