Grim art, the BoJ's last stand, Ukrainian refugees and the border-industrial complex

Great links, reading and images from Chartbook Newsletter by Adam Tooze

'The New Camden', Jennifer Elizabeth Brown, oil on board, 1976.

Inspiration for today’s art is the great GrimArt feed that highlights British urban landscapes in all their grim glory.

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Bank of Japan in the last ditch?

In defense of its policy of yield curve control, that pins the interest rate for 10-year bonds at 0.00-0.5 percent, the Bank of Japan is buying ever more gigantic quantities of bonds.

Trevor Noren @trevornoren

In just 4 days recently, the BoJ spent ~$32b in its fixed-rate operations. BoJ bond purchases now dwarfing Fed QT, meaning global QE is rising at its fastest pace since mid-2021. Even removing the FX impact, the global contraction of liquidity has stopped.

Three stories that add up to a German nightmare:

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Newport Pagnell services, M1

Jen Orpin Oil on board

The M1 wasBritain’s first motorway. This was the UK’s first service area to open to all traffic in 1960.

China steals a march in hydrogen

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Will the Ukrainian refugees go home?

The refugees have been taken in by countries with much higher per capita incomes than Ukraine.

Remittances make up a relatively large part of Ukrainian GDP already.

Source: Bruegel

Belinda Powell @Belinda34106799

Just the place for your New Year's Day breakfast 😂😂

Evokes indelible childhood memories of coming down to the kitchen late in the evening and seeing pots of tripe gently boiling on the stove!

“Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will”

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The border-industrial complex

Had the border industrial complex gone big time? Well, maybe. It turns out that 2022 was by far the biggest year for CBP and ICE contracts, at $7.5 billion. This was over a billion dollars more than the previous record in 2020 ($6.2 billion) and up from 2021 ($6.02 billion). Generally, this follows a trend of a steady growth of contracts since 2014. Since 2008, CBP and ICE have issued 112,575 contracts for a total of $69.6 billion. Of course, Accenture’s revenue comes from many places, but the company is also part of this growing industrial complex.

This chart indicates the amount of border contracts issued by CBP and ICE from 2008 to present.

In the 9,001 contracts that CBP and ICE made payments on in 2022—that’s about 25 contracts a day—Accenture joins a host of other companies, such as Lockheed Martin, General Atomics, Elbit Systems, General Dynamics, Leidos, Anduril, Palantir, CoreCivic, and GEO Group, to name a few. Cadell Construction was awarded a $167 million contract for border infrastructure (that is, the wall), presumably following up on previous wall construction contracts in which they also made roads and deployed camera systems.

From the excellent newsletter:

The Border Industrial Complex Goes Big Time

Dreamland, Margate, Kent by @gsw41958