WORD ON THE STREET 

• Wait, Caffeine Is Bad For You? – Well, I’m probably in trouble. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is demanding the FDA investigate PRIME, an energy drink marketed by YouTube stars Logan Paul and KSI. Senator Schumer accused the brand of “fiendishly target[ing]” young people.

• Chinese Recovery Stagnates Again – Annual producer prices were down 5.4% last month – 9 straight months of declines in China and the worst plunge since December 2015. It’s the latest sign the so-called Chinese economic recovery has been essentially DOA since the end of the pandemic, raising fears for the overall health of the global economy.

• “Constructive” Visit In China Says Yellen – Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen played good cop in China, trying to soothe Beijing’s fears about new sanctions. “I do think my trip has been successful in forging those relationships and creating the opportunity for a deeper set of more frequent contacts at our staff levels,” she said. Platitudes, got it. Good work.

• Futures Down Before Big Inflation Data – The consumer price index data will be out on Wednesday and then we’ve got the producer price index coming out on Thursday. The one-two punch will shape the market’s expectations on inflation and the Fed’s reaction. With futures down this morning, expectations are not great.

HOT SPOTS: What’s Going on in Geopolitics

• India Will Surpass US Economy By 2075 – According to Goldman Sachs, India will become the world’s second largest economy by 2075. Demographic factors are the one of the keys to the country’s future success. “Over the next two decades, the dependency ratio of India will be one of the lowest among regional economies,” said Goldman’s India economist, Santanu Sengupta.
  

• Alibaba Up Big – Alibaba rose sharply on the Hong Kong exchange after reports that the Chinese government’s investigation into Ant Group is finally ending. The worst may be over for Ant Group, which had to pay $985 million on Friday, part of Beijing’s general crackdown on tech companies. The accusations of wrongdoing were more likely cover for a political campaign to assert control over the tech sector.

• Biden Rules Out Ukraine Membership In NATO Before War’s End – President Joe Biden said that NATO is not united about bringing Kyiv into the alliance before the war is over, warning that this could undermine the promise of automatic military commitment. “If the war is going on, then we’re all in war,” he said. “We’re at war with Russia, if that were the case.”

CUTTING EDGE: What‘s Happening In Tech

• Sarah Silverman And Authors Sue OpenAI And Meta – The comedienne and authors Richard Kadrey and Christopher Golden argue Meta and the company responsible for ChatGPT used their work without permission. Summaries generated by ChatGPT show, according to the plaintiffs’ filing, that copyrighted work was used to train the bot. I doubt this will be the last lawsuit.

• Elon Musk Sues Someone Else – Lawsuits, lawsuits, lawsuits! Elon Musk, or at least X Corp (Twitter), has sued Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz LLP over an “unconscionable” last minute package of fees imposed during the Twitter takeover last year. X Corp. wants excess fees out of the $90 million paid in 2022 – which doesn’t seem like much considering the takeover cost $44 BILLION.

• Electric Bugs – Volkswagen will begin testing autonomous vehicles in Austin, Texas this month. The “ID Buzz,” the company’s EV version of the VW bus, is expecting a commercial launch of self-driving vehicles by 2026.

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