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Of all $1.67 trillion in auto loans and leases outstanding, only about 14% were rated subprime and deep-subprime at the time of origination. 60-plus-day delinquency rate for all auto loans ticked up 1.61% in December. US debt-to-GDP ratio rises to 122% in Q4, highest since Covid Spike. Short of a recession that reduces demand we can expect inflation to continue its upward. The lifestyle Americans cherish is built on a mountain of debt. There had been 14 years of roughly no growth in power generation from 2007 through 2021, despite the growing economy and population. The political benefits of carbon pricing will soon outweigh the costs, and more governments will get on board. The more centralized a political system is, the more likely it is that national interests and goals will take a backseat to the leaders personal whims, desires, and insecurities. Hilary Allens new book, FinTech Dystopia, is a summer beach read about Silicon Valley and how its ruining things. Allen: I think we wouldve seen more of the bigger structural things that youre talking. Freddie Mac House Price Index Up 0.7% Year-over-Year in December. Punta Gorda House Prices Down 20% from Recent Peak, Austin Down almost 19%. Government should be careful now to not stimulate inflation, whether through tariffs, budget deficits, or other factors. China has had a period of sustained rapid growth such as the world has seen. A Beijing think tank offered a frank review of Chinas technological weaknesses. People still view gold as a safe haven in times of uncertainty. Bitcoin Weekly Round-Up: The Fix-Everything Button - by Noah Smith Noahpinion. Bitcoin faces slide to $54,000 if the next demand zone fails. Bitcoin enters high-risk window as credit stress builds beneath a record 206% stock bubble. Bitcoin fell 7.12% from $68,057 to $63,214, and the high to low span widened to 8.80%. By Tuesday morning, it sat at $63k, a level that places the price inside the lower band on my two-year channel map. Bitcoin difficulty printed a historic -11.16% — if the next epoch stays red, miners are in trouble. Bitcoin mining and other security standards including smells whiff Hof medimAh oversees vodka Morales Bitcoin drop to $64,000 is result of compounding macro shocks landing on a market carrying significant leverage, analysts say. Anthropic has set aside 20% of its equity for the token initiative. Reddit sued Anthropic, accusing it of scraping more than 100,000 posts and comments and using the data to fine-tune Claude. Bitcoin is down 50% from its all-time high as well as a bearish, according to Decrypt GM. Meta confirms plans to re-enter stablecoins across Facebook, Whatsapp and IG. Rystad Energy analysis suggests the EU could boost production in the Barents Sea.