Forecasting

Putin Orders Daily Coronavirus Projections as Russia's Tally Nears 37,000

 Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the government to provide daily forecasts of the spread of the novel coronavirus as Russia recorded almost 5,000 new cases in a single day.

Coronavirus infections in Russia began rising sharply in April after reporting far fewer infections than many western European countries in the outbreak's early stages.

On Saturday, Russia's official tally of coronavirus cases was 36,793, a record overnight rise of 4,785, and death toll rose by 40 to 313.

The government must "provide a short-term prognosis of the number of citizens who may contract the new infectious disease (COVID-19)" and report its estimates on a daily basis, according to an order published on the Kremlin's website.

In Moscow, a city of 12.7 million people which became the epicentre of Russia's coronavirus outbreak, cases jumped by 2,649 to 20,754, and the capital city accounted for half of all new fatalities reported on Saturday.

However, Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said the lockdown measures first introduced in March were bearing fruit.

Forecasting

Crossing the Rubicon

Not the start investors were looking for as immediate concerns fall on Iran’s retaliation in the wake of the US airstrikes.
 
Asset markets reacted reasonably and predictably with gold trading above $ 1550/oz and Brent temporarily nudging above $ 70.00 per barrel’s as Traders hedged the heightened geopolitical tail risk following the successful US targeting of Qassem Soleimani. The moderate, knee-jerk risk-off move (dollar slightly higher, oil/gold higher, equities lower, and yields ticking down) could very well be a bit of an overreaction. But fears over just how far both sides are willing to escalate the situation will likely limit the extent to which these haven hedges unwind.

Oil Markets
 But even $65 WTI oil (current $63) is unlikely to be a significant hindrance to the US consumer. And unlike the attack on the state-owned Saudi Aramco oil processing facilities at Abqaiq, the surge in oil prices is being driven solely by an increase in the geopolitical risk and war premiums and not a supply disruption. This dissimilarity creates a significant differentiation when factoring it into the current supply and demand calculations. The former we can quantify, the latter we can't. So, into next week, the focus is already back on the next wave of Middle East headlines to move markets, rather than for follow-through of last week's US military actions.  

 
Could Iranian retaliation change this calculation? Yes! But the likelihood of a retaliatory strike of significant magnitude is remote... 

Forecasting

One of Wall Street's most-followed forecasters has a wild new prediction for the US economy

One model that forecasts the US economy's performance could shock even President Donald Trump if it ends up being accurate.

The Atlanta Federal Reserve's GDPNow model projects that gross domestic product would increase at a 5.4% annualized rate in the first quarter.

The last time the economy grew that much was in the third quarter of 2003. If correct, this would be the first period of more than 5% growth since the third quarter of 2014. Additionally, the forecast is much higher than that of the most bullish economist polled in the Blue Chip forecast.

The model spiked Thursday after the Institute of Supply Management released monthly data on US manufacturing, which raised the outlook for the biggest driver of growth: consumer spending. Also, data on construction spending raised the Atlanta Fed's forecast for business investment via real private fixed-investment growth.

Forecasting

TRANSPARENCY ADVOCATES WIN RELEASE OF NYPD “PREDICTIVE POLICING” DOCUMENTS

LATE LAST MONTH, a Manhattan judge ordered the New York City Police Department to release documentation about the department’s use of secretive and highly controversial “predictive policing” surveillance technology, scoring a win for advocates of transparency on police policy. The documents came to light as part of a lawsuit against the city filed by the Brennan Center for Justice, a New York-based policy institute.

Little is known about how the largest domestic police force in the United States uses crime-forecasting software, which works through analysis of historical crime data like arrest records, incident reports, gang documentation, and “stop and frisk” encounters to generate individual or geographic predictions of crime. In July 2015, then-NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton branded predictive policing as “the wave of the future” and entered into a trial program with at least one predictive policing company, the Philadelphia-based Azavea.

Forecasting

Intelligence Community Looking At Crowdsourcing For Predicting Geopolitical Events

NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Seth Goldstein, a program manager for Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, about the $200,000 prize offered to anyone able to demonstrate accurate forecasting of a geopolitical event via crowdsourcing.

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

Say you're a spy and you want to know who will win the upcoming presidential election in Brazil or what the spot price of Brent crude oil will be on a certain date a year from now. Well, you could turn to gadgets and gizmos and satellite intel, networks of agents, or you could outsource it to the wisdom of crowds. Here, I'll let him explain.

SETH GOLDSTEIN: My name is Seth Goldstein. I'm a program manager at the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity.

KELLY: IARPA, as it's called.

GOLDSTEIN: That's right.

KELLY: IARPA being the office inside the intelligence community that is devoted to thinking outside the box, thinking of new ways to do stuff.

GOLDSTEIN: I think that's a fair description.

KELLY: And the challenge you've got on the horizon coming up next month is you are launching a crowdsourcing challenge. Explain.

GOLDSTEIN: That's right. We're launching a challenge called the Geopolitical Forecasting Challenge. What we're going to do here is allow anyone who's interested - citizen scientists, hobbyists - to develop forecasting methods to attempt to anticipate what events are going to occur sort of in real time.

Forecasting

Forecasting the Syrian Civil War

The forecasts presented in this paper are undergirded by several fundamental assumptions. First, the recent deployment of Russian military forces to Syria will maintain a defensive posture to prevent the collapse of the Syrian regime rather than a direct offensive posture to seize territory from anti-regime actors. Second, the Iranian nuclear accord and its corresponding sanctions relief for the Iranian government will be implemented in full. Third, the U.S. and Turkey will succeed in organizing and launching some form of offensive by rebel forces on the ground in an attempt to implement an “ISIS-free” zone in northern Syria. Fourth, Turkey will not take hostile action against the Syrian Kurdish YPG due to pressure on both parties by the U.S. Fifth, neighboring states – particularly Lebanon – will remain relatively stable. Sixth, the Iraqi Security Forces will continue their current pace and scale of anti-ISIS operations in Iraq with a prioritization of Anbar Province. If one or more of these assumptions prove false over the 90 day timeframe, this forecast will need to be adjusted to account for a significant inflection in the Syrian Civil War. 

Forecasting

THE REAL PROBLEM WITH STRIKES ON MAINLAND CHINA

Here’s the nightmare for any U.S. war plan that requires conventional strikes on mainland China: The president will balk. Even in the midst of a full-scale war, he or she would reject mainland strikes for fear of precipitating a nuclear exchange. American fears of a nuclear war would then provide China with what one analyst has called a “heckuva sanctuary” from which to attack U.S. forces. That’s why examining military history to understand the likelihood of this scenario is worthwhile. More on that shortly.

Forecasting

Unthinkable: Brazilian Journalist Mulls Soviet-Style Collapse of US


In his article, published in Brazilian news and analysis portal Carta Maior, Dr. Gelis-Filho begins by noting that the US, which has suffered a "long sequence of…geopolitical and economic failures since the turn of the century," now faces "another brutal element: the threat of a nuclear attack on American soil by the Islamic State."