Baltic Dry Index. 623 -08 Brent Crude 30.76 Spot Gold 1503
Covid-19 Pandemic finally
underway, according to the WHO, at long last!
Coronavirus Cases 17/3/20
World 182,849 Deaths 7,174 (Maybe.)
"We pay the debts of the
last generation, by issuing bonds payable by the next generation."
Dr. Laurence J. Peter, author,
The Peter Principal.
As governments everywhere
put planet Earth into lock down, the economic order as we knew it has come to an
end. The question before us now is are we entering a recession or worse, a depression?
Politicians
everywhere, plus their compliant incompetent central banksters who created this
giant fiasco with their rigged interest rates and fiat money games, are busy
promising unlimited money to tide everyone and their dog through the global
shutdown.
But that’s easier
said than done. It also takes time to put into effect, while the lock down
losses are immediate.
With restaurants,
bars, schools, sporting events, travel, and much, much more closed, millions
all around the planet are suddenly without an income. Many will have scant
savings put away for a rainy day. All will have immediate outgoings.
Almost as bad,
hundreds of thousands more are in jobs with no immediate purpose. Producing
cars for no immediate buyers. Producing airline meals for airlines no longer in
need of meals. Servicing hotel rooms that no longer have any guests. Providing
school meals for schools with no one in them to eat them.
I could go on, but
you already get the point. Even if the close down only were to last two weeks,
unlikely, “normal” activity won’t restart instantly. If the shutdown goes on for a month or more
as seems likely, a massive financial shock is set to rattle the world.
But if everyone
electronically prints up trillions of new currency and distributes it, what
kind of new economic era will we be entering? Fiat dollar supremacy will end
overnight. Local currency systems will prevail.
Better have some fully paid up physical gold and silver as backup. The
Great Nixonian Error of fiat money will get tested to breaking point.
But if instant
money is not going to be there for most, giant social unrest lies directly
ahead.
Below, one era
ends and a new one starts. At this point in that new era, a very uncertain new
era indeed.
Asian stocks fall in volatile session after historic Wall Street plunge
March 17, 2020 /
12:54 AM
TOKYO (Reuters) - Asian shares fell on
Tuesday in a topsy-turvy session following one of Wall Street’s biggest one-day
routs in history as headlines about the coronavirus outbreak and its global
economic impact whiplashed investor sentiment.
While some markets such as U.S. stock futures bounced in Asian trade after the major plunge, there were no convincing reasons for a sustained rally.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS gave up early gains to trade 0.5% lower. Japan's Nikkei stock index .N225 fell 0.06% and South Korea's KOSPI .KS11 was off 2.16%. Australian shares were up 2.73% although this followed a plunge of almost 10% on Monday.
---- “The focus is shifting to the fiscal response
to the virus. We’re locked in a pattern where markets bounce and then resume
falling.”
U.S. stock futures ESc1 rose by their daily limit in Asian trading, also
driven in part by hopes for big U.S. fiscal spending. This lifted some Asian
bourses into positive territory, but the gains did not last.
Some $2.69 trillion in market value was wiped from the S&P 500 on
Monday as it suffered its third-largest daily percentage decline on record.
Over the past 18 days, the benchmark index has lost $8.28 trillion.
----
Oil futures rebounded in Asia, but downside risks remain due
to an expected slump in global energy demand and Saudi Arabia’s plans to
increase crude output to expand its market share.
---- Traders are looking ahead to data due later on Tuesday, which is forecast to show German investor sentiment tumbled in March.
The United States will also release retail sales and industrial
production for February, which is unlikely to reflect the impact of the
coronavirus.
Some investors say markets will not settle unless the U.S. government
announces a big fiscal spending package to match the Fed’s bold actions to
slash rates and keep credit markets functioning.
Others say liquidity in some financial markets is starting to fall
because there’s such a high degree of uncertainty, meaning even some
traditional safe-havens may not be that safe.
Spot gold XAU= fell 1.12% to $1,497.60 per ounce. [GOL/]
More
'D' word rears head as coronavirus-hit markets brace for recession
March 17, 2020 /
5:06 AM
NEW
YORK (Reuters) - The coronavirus shockwaves rippling through U.S. stocks are
forcing investors to contemplate outcomes more dire than a recession, including
several quarters of declining economic activity, a credit crisis or even a
depression.
The rising global toll from the pandemic and the uncertainty over how
far it may spread has left investors and economists scrambling to gauge the
financial fallout.
“This market looks like it has already priced in most of a garden
variety recession,” said Frances Donald, global chief economist at Manulife
Investment Management. “It is now on top of that having to price in some
probability of a credit crisis.”
Forecasters at Goldman Sachs and other banks are now projecting a steep
economic contraction in at least the second quarter as governments in the
United States and Europe start shutting restaurants, closing schools and
calling on citizens to stay home.
But there is hope among some economists that economy will start
expanding again later this year — depending in part on efforts to contain the
virus, known as Covid-19.
The S&P 500 on average has fallen 28% from peak to trough during
recessions, according to an analysis of the past 70 years from Keith Lerner,
chief market strategist at Truist/SunTrust Advisory Services. As of Monday’s
close, the benchmark index had declined 29.5% from its Feb. 19 closing record
high.
But the market’s plunge was much deeper over a decade ago during the
financial crisis, with the S&P 500 tumbling more than 50%.
“A 2008-like financial contagion is not yet priced into this market,”
Donald said, but she added the market “probably won’t have any reassurance that
we have avoided that 2008-type scenario completely until we see a calming of
credit spreads and the pace of Covid-19 cases starts to decline.”
Stocks crumbled anew on Monday a day after the Federal Reserve took
emergency action designed to cushion the economy, using tools similar to those
the central bank deployed to help the country emerge from the 2007-2009
financial crisis.
The market’s reaction on Monday after the Fed’s “drastic action” is “a
sign of a total breakdown of confidence,” said Peter Cardillo, chief market
economist at Spartan Capital Securities. “That’s raising the question of how
steep of a recession are we going to endure.”
Joachim Fels, PIMCO’s global economic advisor, said in a written
commentary that a global recession appeared to be a “foregone conclusion” and
that the task for governments and central banks was to ensure that the
recession “stays relatively short-lived and doesn’t morph into an economic
depression.”
Fels loosely defined a depression as “a combination of a prolonged slump
of activity that last longer than just a few quarters, a very significantly
rise in unemployment, and mass business bankruptcies and bank failures.”
Data out of China, where the pathogen originated late last year,
underscored just how much economic damage the disease had already done with
industrial output plunging 13.5% and retail sales 20.5%.
More
Goldman’s bear case just got a lot more bearish amid ‘unprecedented’ disruption from coronavirus
Published: March 15, 2020 at 10:21 p.m. ET
Clearly, Friday’s huge rally didn’t mark the bottom of this tumbling stock market. One look at the red splashed across stock futures on Sunday night would tell you that.
But is the end of the selling in sight? Not according to David Kostin.
The Goldman Sachs GS, +17.58% chief equity strategist, in a note to clients cited by Bloomberg News on Sunday, says the S&P 500 SPX, +9.28% will likely drop another 10% from Friday’s close.
Furthermore, if the economic impact of the coronavirus crisis worsens, “the combination of thin liquidity, high uncertainty, and positioning” could push the S&P down 26% to 2,000, which is 20% lower than his previous bottom call, according to Bloomberg News.
“The coronavirus has created unprecedented financial and societal disruption,” he wrote, adding that second-quarter earnings per share could be slashed by 15% from the prior year.
This Bloomberg chart shows what Goldman’s bear case looks like:
The Federal Reserve on Sunday, in a bid to lessen that disruption, slashed its benchmark interest rate to zero and implemented a bond-buying program, known as quantitative easing, of at least $700 billion. “The virus presents significant economic challenges,” Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said during a press conference held an hour-and-a-half after the rate decision was announced.
On a positive note, Kostin reiterated that V-shaped recoveries tend to follow “event-driven” bear markets. So, he said he expects the S&P to end 2020 at 3,200. “The lesson of prior event-driven bear markets is that financial devastation ultimately allows a new bull market to be born,” he wrote.
No sign of that bull market on Sunday night, with futures on the Dow YM00, -4.558% down more than 1,000 points. S&P 500 ES00, -4.784% and Nasdaq-100 NQ00, -4.553% futures both were also pointing to a big retreat at the opening bell.
Fed says it will offer an additional $500 billion in overnight repo funding markets
A day after a dramatic move in interest rates, the Federal Reserve on
Monday increased the amount of liquidity it’s offering in short-term lending to
the financial industry.
In a mid-day announcement, the New York Fed said it will conduct
a $500 billion repo operation this afternoon, another move targeted at keeping
money flowing through the system. Repo involves banks putting up high-quality
collateral like Treasurys in exchange for the liquidity they need to conduct
operations.
Monday’s move comes after the Fed stepped up the operations last week,
offering up to $1.5 trillion to an industry hungry for the Fed’s offerings.
The operation will have a same-day settlement, running from 1:30 to 1.:45 p.m. The minimum bid rate is 0.1%.
The move comes a day after the Fed cut its benchmark interest rate by 1 percentage point to a range of 0%-0.25%, where it was during the financial crisis. In addition, the central bank offered a number of other measures aimed at providing necessary funding to banks and the free-flow of currency swaps between the Fed and other global central banks.
The Fed also announced a round of asset purchases totaling $700 billion along the lines of its quantitative easing measures taken during the crisis. In Monday morning operations, the New York Fed trading desk bought $27 billion of Treasurys.
BOJ pumps $30 billion through three-month dollar operation, largest amount since 2008
March 17, 2020 /
4:36 AM
TOKYO (Reuters) - The Bank of Japan pumped $30.272 billion into markets
on Tuesday with an 84-day dollar funding operation, its first after global
central banks agreed this week to offer three-month credit to ease funding
constraints amid the coronavirus crisis.
The takeup was the largest since the BOJ offered $30.584 billion in an
84-day dollar funding operation on Dec. 2, 2008, in the wake of the market
turmoil triggered by the global financial crisis.
It also exceeded the $17 billion offered by the U.S. Federal Reserve in
its 84-day operation on Monday.
The BOJ’s move came after the world’s six major central banks took a
joint step to provide more cash dollars on Sunday as a rout in financial market
over the past week led to a scramble by banks and companies for dollar
liquidity.
---- Funding constrains could ease gradually after big dollar injections from the BOJ and other central banks, said Yusuke Ikawa, Japan strategist at BNP Paribas.
“Today’s results suggest that there are now abundant dollar cash at
least among people who have access to the BOJ. The key point now is whether
this money will spread to various companies and others that need them,” he
said.
More
IMF chief says over 20 countries seek aid, calls for coordinated spending
March 16, 2020 /
12:54 PM
WASHINGTON
(Reuters) - IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva on Monday said over 20
additional countries have asked about receiving aid from the global lender as
the coronavirus pandemic halts economic activity, and she called for strong,
coordinated fiscal stimulus to limit the damage.
In a blog post on the International Monetary Fund’s website, Georgieva
said the IMF was ready to mobilize its full $1 trillion (816.99 billion pounds)
lending capacity to help member countries deal with the crisis.
“As the virus spreads, the case for a coordinated and synchronized
global fiscal stimulus is becoming stronger by the hour,” Georgieva said.
Some of the countries expressing an interest in IMF financing to deal
with the crisis already have IMF loan programs, while others do not, an IMF
spokesman said, adding that these inquiries do not necessarily constitute
formal requests.
The spokesman declined to identify any of the countries, but said the most
logical options for many of them would be several emergency financing
facilities under which Georgieva said $50 billion would be rapidly available to
ease the economic blow from the coronavirus outbreak.
More
"We hang the petty thieves and appoint
the great ones to public office.”
Aesop.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled
over.
Coming soon to a city near
you?
Dr. Anthony Fauci, U.S.’s top infectious-disease expert, is in favor of a national lockdown
Published: March 15, 2020 at 6:41 p.m. ET
A national lockdown is not out of the question to Dr.
Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious
Disease.Asked on “Meet the Press” on Sunday if he is in favor of a 14-day national shutdown to slow the progress of the coronavirus, Fauci said, “You know I would prefer as much as we possibly could. I think we should really be overly aggressive and get criticized for overreacting.”
On CNN, he said this: “I would like to see a dramatic diminution of the personal interaction that we see in restaurants and in bars.”
For now, different states and localities are taking their own actions to contain the spread of the coronavirus.
Unlike in Italy, Spain and France, restaurants and bars remain open in the U.S. even as social-distancing efforts are ramped up. “Obviously, you’re going to have people going to restaurants anyway,” Fauci said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” This was certainly the case across several cities in the U.S. this weekend where there were lines out the door to get into bars.
NBC’s Chuck Todd pressed Fauci, who has served in his capacity under presidents of both parties and is a key member of the Trump administration’s coronavirus task force, to explain why all the states neighboring Indiana have closed schools but Indiana has not. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine announced an order to close all bars and restaurants in the state. This will go into effect at 9 p.m. on Sunday, DeWine tweeted.
“You don’t want to be complacent. You always want to be ahead of the curve,” Fauci responded, “but it depends on how far ahead of the curve you want to be.”
“Don’t even for a second think that I’m saying we shouldn’t,” Fauci said in regard to shutting down schools across the country. “I like to be criticized [as], ‘Oh you’re being too overactive’ — that’s good for me.”
The curve Fauci mentioned refers to strategies aimed at stretching the duration of the deadly illness so that public health services aren’t overwhelmed by patients requiring critical aid.
To stop this from happening, Teaneck, N.J., Mayor Mohammed Hameedudd ordered all of the town’s 41,000 residents to self-quarantine.
“We
don’t have enough test kits, [and] every day more and more people will be
getting sick,” he said, according to a New York Post report. “We
need everyone to understand that they can infect someone or someone can infect
you.”
Mar 16, 2020
04:17 AM
In Depth: How the U.S. Missed Its Window for Taming the Covid-19 Virus
By Zeng Jia, Ma Danmeng, Zhang Qi and Denise Jia
It took 54 days from the time the first Covid-19 case appeared in Wuhan
Dec. 1 to the complete lockdown of the central China city of 14 million people
Jan. 23.
It also took 54 days from the report of the first American case in
Seattle Jan. 20 until U.S. President Donald Trump declared a national emergency
Friday.
That’s about where the parallels end, according to public health
experts. While China mobilized its 1.4 billion people over the past two months
to successfully fight the burgeoning coronavirus pandemic, the American
government has come under fire for a dithering response, even with a head
start.
After quickly imposing travel restrictions in early January, the U.S.
government’s epidemic prevention efforts stalled. The handling of West Coast
outbreaks at a nursing home and on a cruise ship suggested officials failed to
learn the lessons from similar situations in Asia. Complaints of insufficient
tests, shortages of masks and other medical supplies and inconsistent comments
from the Trump administration created uncertainty and panic.
The roller-coaster ride on Wall Street in the past month suggests
investors lack confidence in the government’s response. Just a month ago, the
S&P 500 hit a record high of 3386.15 on Feb. 12. Now, all major U.S.
indices have fallen more than 20% from recent peaks, sending stocks into a bear
market.
American consumers rushed to stock up on food, necessities and
sanitation products as reports of the epidemic grew ever darker, creating
shortages of toilet paper and hand sanitizer. All kinds of events were
canceled, ranging from book fairs to church services to business conferences to
almost all sporting events.
At the same time, quarantine and prevention measures have been otherwise
relatively limited and inconsistent across the country. The U.S. government
declined to suspend the highly vulnerable cruise ship industry. Decisions on
how to contain the coronavirus have largely been left to state and local
officials with little leadership from the federal level.
More
Technology Update.
With events happening
fast in the development of solar power and graphene, I’ve added this section.
Updates as they get reported. Is converting sunlight to usable cheap AC or DC
energy mankind’s future from the 21st century onwards?
Today, something a
little different. The beginning of the end for Lyme disease, named after Old Lyme, Connecticut, where it first got noticed.
Existing antibiotic found to take out the root cause of Lyme disease
March
15, 2020
Lyme
disease is an infectious condition spread by ticks that affects as many as
300,000 people in the US every year, according to the Center
for Disease Control and Prevention. Today's
treatment is largely effective in treating the infection, but a good portion of
patients do not respond and go on to endure lingering symptoms. A new study has
revealed that an already-approved antibiotic can completely eliminate the
underlying bacteria that causes the disease in mice, offering new hope of a more
comprehensive therapy for humans.
While the standard antibiotics used to treat Lyme disease do the job for
the majority of patients, somewhere between 10 and 20 percent go on to
experience its symptoms. These include muscle pain, fatigue, fever, headaches
and heart problems. There are couple of theories for why this might be.
“Some researchers think this may be due to drug-tolerant bacteria living
in the body and continuing to cause disease,” said study author Jayakumar
Rajadas. “Others believe it’s an immune disorder caused by bacteria during the
first exposure, which causes a perpetual inflammation condition. Whatever the
cause, the pain for patients is still very real.”
So the search is on for a treatment that kills off the disease in all
recipients, and the scientists at Stanton have been working toward this aim for
six years, screening around 8,000 different chemical compounds to build a list
of candidates that were then tested in the lab and in mice. The one they have
landed on is called azlocillin, and while it is not yet on the market, it has
been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration.
The team found that of all the drugs they screened and tested,
azlocillin proved most effective at killing off the bacteria that causes Lyme
disease, called Borrelia burgdorferi. This was revealed through
experiments in mice, where the animals were administered the drug at 7-, 14-
and 21-day intervals and it completely killed off the infection. Significantly,
the drug also proved effective in killing off drug-tolerant forms of B.
burgdorferi in lab dishes.
“This compound is just amazing,” said Rajadas. “It clears the infection
without a lot of side effects. We are hoping to repurpose it as an oral
treatment for Lyme disease.”
The researchers have patented the compound for the treatment of Lyme
disease and are working toward commercialization, with the next step being to
conduct clinical trials.
"If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars."
John Paul Getty, oilman.
The Monthly Coppock Indicators finished February
DJIA: 25,409 +75 Down. NASDAQ: 8,567 +171 Up.
SP500: 2,954 +133 Up.
In current circumstances,
this is no time to be blindly following technical signals.
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