| US-China relations turn tense over a balloon, earthquakes hit Turkey, and investors weigh in on ChatGPT's threat to jobs. — Kristine Aquino Pressure is mounting on President Joe Biden to hit back against China after the US sent divers to salvage what they believe is spy equipment from the Chinese balloon shot down off South Carolina. After an American F-22 fighter jet popped the balloon — which is said to be the size of at least two school buses — with a Sidewinder missile, China's Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng lodged a a formal diplomatic protest with the US Embassy in Beijing. "China will resolutely safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of the company concerned, and reserves the right to make further responses if necessary," Xie said. A 7.7 magnitude earthquake struck the Turkish city of Gaziantep just before dawn, one of the most powerful to hit the Middle East in years. A second quake registering 7.5 hit Turkey's southeast later Monday. The quakes have killed more than 1,000 people in Syria and Turkey, and forced a halt in crude oil flows to a key export terminal. Some parts of the local gas network were hit, stopping supply to Gaziantep, Hatay and Kahramanmaras provinces, Turkish state pipeline company Botas said. Turkey hopes to restore gas flows within 48 hours, according to an official with direct knowledge of the matter.  | Advanced artificial intelligence systems stand to threaten jobs primarily in the financial, legal and technology sectors, according to the latest MLIV Pulse survey. Yet more than two-thirds of 292 respondents went on to say they didn't view their own jobs as being at risk anytime soon, even as they work predominantly in the financial sector. Survey participants were split almost evenly on whether technologies such as OpenAI's ChatGPT and DALL-E products were worth investing in, and more than half said they aren't even considering using AI to help them invest. S&P 500 futures fell 0.9% as of 5:46 a.m. in New York, while Nasdaq 100 contracts slid more than 1%. The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index traded near its highs of the day, pressuring all Group-of-10 currencies. Treasuries slid across the board, mirroring declines in UK and German bond markets. Oil and gold rose, while Bitcoin fell for a second day. To catch up on the trading day in the UK and Europe, check out Monday's edition of Markets Today. At 11:30 a.m., the US will sell $60 billion in 13-week and $48 billion in 26-week bills. Earnings include Activision Blizzard, Tyson Foods, Pinterest and Loews. Here's what caught our eye over the weekend: The legendary investor Steve Eisman was listening to your bitcoin podcasts and he has a couple of complaints. On the latest episode of Odd Lots, Tracy Alloway and I talked to the Neuberger Portfolio manager -- who rose to fame with The Big Short -- about the "paradigm shift" that he sees underway in markets right now. Despite the strong start of the year for the NASDAQ, Eisman sees a wrenching handoff between the old high-tech, high-growth guard towards something new. There's a lot in the conversation on markets, specific stocks, how the investing process works and so forth. However, there's one bit that I wasn't expecting where he talked about all of the Bitcoin podcasts he listened two over the course of the pandemic: Here's Steve: So I remember during Covid, you know, I was out on Long Island in the North Fork basically living there. And I would come back to the city every Tuesday to visit my mother. And so I would drive to the city, there would be no traffic, and it would take me about two hours. So I listened to podcasts. What else are you gonna do? Right? I even listened to this podcast every now and then.
But one of the group of podcasts that I listened to were the so-called experts on Bitcoin. And there are always two questions that I had. Number one, why is Bitcoin a currency? And number two, okay, it's a currency, but how should it trade? Now on every single podcast, they completely skipped over the, "why is it a currency issue?" that was just a given <laugh> and that's not a given to me. We can get back to that. But it wasn't given. The second part of the story about how should bitcoin act, they all had the same opinion, which was as fiat currency, which is government issued currency, has been terribly debased because of all the deficits that all these countries have issued. But it's very hard to short fiat your currency because they all trade relative to one another. So if you short the dollar, your problem is that in a basketball team where everybody's five four, the dollar is five 11. So it's hard to short the dollar. Because it's taller than the other currencies, even though, quote unquote, it's been debased. So therefore you should buy Bitcoin as a hedge against the debasement of all currencies. Okay. So let's accept that theory for a second. If that's the case, then Bitcoin should go up when people are nervous and rates are going up and Bitcoin should go down when rates are going down everybody feels good. And the problem was it actually did the opposite. Right? It would go up with everything else speculative. And it would go down with everything else speculative. So what was the point? So, you know, Bitcoin is up a lot this year because it's up a lot with everything else speculative. Now you can't have a currency that moves 25% every six months. That's not a currency. That's a speculation. And the thing I don't understand about Bitcoin is what problem is it solving? You know, is there a problem with currencies? I mean, the last time you went to the store and you, you pulled out a $20 bill you paid with your credit card. Did the store owners say, oh no, I don't take dollars. I mean, it's not even an issue. And by the way, the currency markets are the most liquid markets in the world, you know, I like to say, how long does it take to buy dollar euro done? A billion dollars? Done. That's how quickly it is. So I, I don't understand what Bitcoin solves and I don't understand the purpose of owning it other than it's another form of speculation.
The fact that Bitcoin so closely to your typical tech stock -- just look at it against QQQs -- continues to undermine the claim that it's got distinct anti fear, or hedging properties. Maybe one day it will diverge. But for now? No. Check out the full episode on Apple or Spotify or anywhere else you get your podcasts. Follow Bloomberg's Joe Weisenthal on Twitter @TheStalwart | 
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