Baltic Dry Index. 556 -26 Brent Crude 23.43 Spot Gold 1618
Covid-19 Pandemic finally
underway, according to the WHO, at long last!
Coronavirus Cases 30/3/20
World 724,874 Deaths 34,101 (Maybe.)
Experience
is what makes you pause briefly before going ahead and making the same mistake.
Mad
Magazine.
What a spectacular
central bankster crash! In just over a month, our central bankster market
rigged world, has gone from the “everything bubble” world of “all news is good
news,” to the “all news is bad news” world, and the first global depression
arriving in close to 90 years. Both crude oil and the Baltic Dry (shipping)
Index continue to sink.
Officially, our crooked
central banksters and bent politicians will blame it all on the coronavirus
crisis. History will judge it very differently. Blame will ultimately fall on
the Great Nixonian Error of Fiat Money, August 15, 1971, and the great
financialised gambling economy it caused with multiple financial crashes 1987,
1991, 1998, 2001, 2008, 2018, 2020.
Below, despite
helicopter money on an astronomical scale, all the King’s central banksters can’t
put Humpty Dumpty back together again. Below, when central banksters and bent
special interest politicians play God.
Asia shares suffer virus chills, central banks offer what they can
March 29, 2020 /
11:57 PM
SYDNEY (Reuters) -
Asian shares slid on Monday and oil prices took another tumble as fears mounted
that the global shutdown for the coronavirus could last for months, doing
untold harm to economies despite central banks’ best efforts.
“We continue to mark down 1H20 global GDP forecasts as our assessment of both the global pandemic’s reach and the damage related to necessary containment policies has increased,” said JPMorgan economist Bruce Kasman.
They now predict global GDP could fall at a 10.5% annualised rate in the first half of the year.
There was much uncertainty about whether funds would have to buy or sell for month- and quarter-end to meet their benchmarks, many of which would have been thrown out of whack by the wild market swings seen over March.
E-Mini futures for the S&P 500 ESc1 skidded 1.2% right from the bell, and Japan's Nikkei .N225 3.7%. EUROSTOXXX 50 futures STXEc1 fell 0.6% and FTSE futures FFIc1 1.3%.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS lost 1.1%, while Shanghai blue chips .CSI300 shed 1.4%.
Central banks have mounted an all-out effort to bolster activity with rate cuts and massive asset-buying campaigns, which have at least eased liquidity strains in markets.
China on Monday became the latest to add stimulus with a cut of 20 basis points in a key repo rate.
Singapore also eased as the city-state’s bellwether economy braced for a deep recession, while New Zealand’s central bank said it would take corporate debt as collateral for loans.
Rodrigo Catril, a senior FX strategist at NAB, said the main question for markets was whether all the stimulus would be enough to help the global economy withstand the shock.
“To answer this question, one needs to know the magnitude of the containment measures and for how long they will be implemented,” he added. “This is the big unknown and it suggests markets are likely to remain volatile until this uncertainty is resolved.”
It was not encouraging, then, that British authorities were warning
lockdown measures could last months.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday extended guidelines for social
restrictions to April 30, despite earlier talking about reopening the economy
for Easter.
Japan on Monday expanded its entry ban to include citizens travelling
from the United States, China, South Korea and most of Europe.
More
China's Geely 2019 net profit drops 35% amid broader market slump
March 30, 2020 /
5:40 AM
BEIJING (Reuters)
- China’s Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd (0175.HK)
said on Monday lower sales drove its 2019 net profit down 35%, as China’s
overall auto market suffered a prolonged slump last year.
China’s most
globally high-profile automaker - due to parent Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co
Ltd’s investments in European manufacturers Volvo Car and Daimler AG (DAIGn.DE)
- posted full-year net profit of 8.19 billion yuan ($1.15 billion) versus the
previous year’s 12.55 billion yuan.
The result compared with the 9.14 billion yuan average of 33 analyst
estimates, Refinitiv data showed.
Revenue reached 97.40 billion yuan, versus 106.60 billion yuan a year
prior. Analysts had estimated 99.43 billion yuan.
Geely Automobile sold 1.36 million cars in 2019 and aims to sell 1.4
million cars in 2020.
Coronavirus: India's pandemic lockdown turns into a human tragedy
When I spoke to him on the phone, he had just returned home to his
village in the northern state of Rajasthan from neighbouring Gujarat, where he
worked as a mason.
In the rising heat, Goutam Lal Meena had walked some 300km (186 miles)
on macadam in his sandals in the rising heat. He said he had survived on water
and biscuits.
In Gujarat, Mr Meena earned up to 400 rupees ($5.34; £4.29) a day and
sent most of his earnings home. Work and wages dried up after India declared a
21-day lockdown with four hours notice on the midnight of 24 March to prevent
the spread of coronavirus. (India has reported more than 1,000
Covid-19 cases
and 27 deaths so far.) The shutting down of all transport meant that he was
forced to travel on foot.
"I walked through the day and I walked through the night. What
option did I have? I had little money and almost no food," Mr Meena told
me, his voice raspy and strained.
He was not alone. All over India, millions of migrant workers are
fleeing its shuttered cities and trekking home to their villages.
These
informal workers are the backbone of the big city economy, constructing houses,
cooking food, serving in eateries, delivering takeaways, cutting hair in
salons, making automobiles, plumbing toilets and delivering newspapers, among
other things. Escaping poverty in their villages, most of the estimated 100
million of them live in squalid housing in congested urban ghettos and aspire
for upward mobility.
Last week's lockdown turned them into refugees overnight. Their
workplaces were shut, and most employees and contractors who paid them
vanished.
Sprawled together, men, women and children began their journeys at all
hours of the day last week. They carried their paltry belongings - usually
food, water and clothes - in cheap rexine and cloth bags. The young men carried
tatty backpacks. When the children were too tired to walk, their parents
carried them on their shoulders.
They walked under the sun and they walked under the stars. Most said
they had run out of money and were afraid they would starve. "India is
walking home," headlined The Indian Express newspaper.
The staggering exodus was reminiscent of the flight of refugees during
the bloody partition in 1947. Millions of bedraggled refugees had then trekked
to east and west Pakistan, in a migration that displaced 15 million people.
This time, hundreds of thousands of migrant workers are desperately
trying to return home in their own country. Battling hunger and fatigue, they
are bound by a collective will to somehow get back to where they belong. Home
in the village ensures food and the comfort of the family, they say.
Clearly, a lockdown to stave off a pandemic is turning into a
humanitarian crisis.
----
As the crisis worsened, state governments scrambled to arrange
transport, shelter and food.
But trying to transport them to their villages quickly turned into another nightmare. Hundreds of thousands of workers were pressed against each other at a major bus terminal in Delhi as buses rolled in to pick them up.
Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal implored the workers not to leave the capital. He asked them to "stay wherever you are, because in large gatherings, you are also at risk of being infected with the coronavirus." He said his government would pay their rent, and announced the opening of 568 food distribution centres in the capital. Prime Minister Narendra Modi apologised for the lockdown "which has caused difficulties in your lives, especially the poor people", adding these "tough measures were needed to win this battle."
Whatever the reason, Mr Modi and state governments appeared to have bungled in not anticipating this exodus.
More
In other news, food
shortages loom. There’s no quick fix to the shortage of global ventilators or
trained medical professionals to operate them.
From Spain to Germany, Farmers Warn of Fresh Food Shortages
By Megan Durisin, Thomas Gualtieri, and Alessandra Migliaccio 27 March 2020
·
Virus fears have kept farm workers from reaching
the fields
·
“Even those of us who can harvest have trouble
selling”
In his three decades growing strawberries and blueberries, Cristobal
Picon has learned how to grapple with problems ranging from droughts and
driving winds to floods and freezes. But this year, the coronavirus outbreak
has proven too much.
Every spring, Picon’s fields in Huelva, on the Atlantic coast of Spain
tucked between Seville and the border with Portugal, are normally teeming with
some 200 workers mostly from Morocco and Romania pulling the delicate berries
from the plants and packing them for shipment. But this year, there are fewer
than 100, largely locals — and Picon has no clue how he’s going to get the
harvest in.
“You can cushion a bad crop, but when you have 80% of your production
ready to be picked and no one to do it, you feel powerless,” Picon said. “We
don’t know how this is going to end.”
From Huelva to Hamburg and Newcastle to Naples, Europe’s farmers are
struggling to find people to bring in rapidly ripening fruits and vegetables,
which frequently must be hand-picked, usually within a window of just a few
days. They typically rely on seasonal workers from eastern Europe or northern
Africa, but fears of the coronavirus are keeping hundreds of thousands of
migrant laborers from leaving home, and controls on once-unfettered borders are
stopping many of those willing to make the trip.
More
Interview with German Ventilator Manufacturer "Absolutely Mission Impossible"
Drägerwerk is a world leader in the
production of ventilators. In an interview, company head Stefan Dräger, 57,
discusses the challenges of keeping up with current demand as the corona crisis
accelerates.
Interview Conducted by Lukas Eberle und Martin U. Müller
27.03.2020, 18:30 Uhr
DER SPIEGEL: Mr. Dräger, your company is currently receiving a record number of
orders and shares in your company are in greater demand than ever. Are you able
to derive any satisfaction because of it?
Dräger: The situation is humbling, but it does make me proud. We are aware of
our responsibility.
DER SPIEGEL: The German government has contracted you to build 10,000 ventilators.
How far along are you?
Dräger: The contract has a detailed delivery plan that spans the entire year.
The first devices are now finished. When the news came in from Wuhan, the
consequences were almost predictable. We are familiar with them from the SARS
crisis. But the contract with the German government represents only part of our
output. A larger portion is made up of customers from outside the country.
DER SPIEGEL: Who all is buying equipment from you?
Dräger: Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz was on the phone earlier. He needs
1,000 ventilators, but we can only make 50 available to him at this point.
Countless ministers from all kinds of countries have called, and last weekend,
the king of the Netherlands called.
DER SPIEGEL: Can you meet the demand?
Dräger: Not completely. We doubled our production volume in February and will
ultimately quadruple it. In Lübeck alone (where the company is based),
we are hiring up to 500 new employees.
DER SPIEGEL: Given the number of contracts, you have little choice but to set
priorities. Is "Germany First” the rule?
Dräger: No. At first, almost all of the devices went to China, where need was
greatest. They needed a rather simple device, and we were able to produce 400
of them a week. The device turns ambient air into purified air, only requires
an electrical socket and, if necessary, an oxygen cylinder, and requires no
connection to a hospital's medical gas supply system.
DER SPIEGEL: How do you decide these days whose order gets filled?
Dräger: That does, in fact, present some difficulties. We are currently
receiving news every hour about the situation in various countries that we need
to take into account. This means we put human factors first.
DER SPIEGEL: Car manufacturers and other firms have announced that they can
manufacture ventilator components. Is that purely a PR move or is it actually
helpful?
Dräger: There is little point in adapting unused production capacity to
manufacture respiratory aids. I spoke with Daimler over the weekend. They would
also like to help. But it’s unfortunately not so simple. We can’t build cars
either. Before we invest too much thought into this, we should focus on getting
devices that are sitting around in a basement somewhere back into working
order. Or can we repurpose other devices? There is a lot of potential there.
DER SPIEGEL: Where do you think these kinds of reserves would come from?
Dräger: I believe it’s possible to use devices from ambulance service or
anesthesiology departments. Such devices aren't meant for long-term
respiration, but they can serve that purpose. We estimate that in Germany
alone, 5,000 devices could be mobilized from this reserve. To make that
possible, hospital staff, of course, need to be instructed in how to use these
devices. And it also requires action on behalf of the regulatory authorities.
More
Finally, what did South Korean
spooks know and when did they know it? How? Why? Why didn’t they share it? Why
didn’t the “five eyes” pick up South Korea’s
secret?
Below, the “official” SK cover story.
South Korea's emergency exercise in December facilitated coronavirus testing, containment
March 30, 2020 /
5:15 AM
SEOUL (Reuters) -
A South Korean tabletop exercise on emergency responses to a fictional
mysterious outbreak led directly to tools the country deployed less than a month
later to manage the arrival and spread of the coronavirus, one of the experts
involved said.
According to an undisclosed government document seen by Reuters, on Dec.
17 two dozen leading South Korean infectious diseases specialists tackled a
worrying scenario: a South Korean family contracts pneumonia after a trip to
China, where cases of an unidentified disease had arisen.
The hypothetical disease quickly spreads among the colleagues of the
family members and medical workers who treated them. In response, the team of
experts at the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC)
developed an algorithm to find the pathogen and its origin, as well as testing
techniques.
Those measures were mobilised in real life when a first suspected
coronavirus patient appeared in South Korea on Jan. 20, the document said.
“Looking back over the past 20 years, humans were most tormented by
either influenza or coronaviruses, and we’re relatively doing well on influenza
but had been worried about the possibility of the outbreak of a novel
coronavirus,” said Lee Sang-won, one of the KCDC experts who led the drill.
“It was blind luck - we were speechless to see the scenario become
reality,” Lee added. “But the exercise helped us save much time developing
testing methodology and identifying cases.”
The exercise played a key role in slowing what became Asia’s largest
coronavirus epidemic outside China using aggressive and sustained testing.
After a big early outbreak, South Korea rolled out widespread testing within
days, launching an extensive programme to test people who do not have symptoms
but may be able to infect others, isolate confirmed patients and trace their
contacts.
The country won praise for containing the spread of the disease with
comparatively little disruption. It has 9,583 cases and 158 deaths, and managed
to bring the daily tally of new infections to about 100 or fewer for the past
three weeks.
The KCDC team, which Lee said was formed in 2018 as a sort of study
group, had wanted to boost large-scale DNA analysis capabilities after the
organisation earned much public criticism for its handling of a 2015 outbreak
of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome.
Soon after the drill, the coronavirus epidemic emerged in the Chinese
city of Wuhan, prompting the experts to begin considering that it might be a
novel coronavirus. Even before Beijing officially declared it, the South Korean
team was ready to begin testing, Lee said.
The document also showed the KCDC established testing methodology on
Jan. 4, three days before Chinese authorities identified the virus, and started
testing suspected cases on Jan. 9. By early March, South Korea was capable of
running as many as 20,000 tests a day, with five firms churning out kits for
domestic use and export. [wnL2N26H1K4]
More
South Korea coronavirus cases rise steadily, more financial aid expected
March 30, 2020 /
2:25 AM
SEOUL (Reuters) -
South Korea reported 78 new coronavirus cases on Monday, keeping the rate of
infections fairly steady, as President Moon Jae-in held an emergency meeting
with economic policymakers to discuss financial support for the public.
The Korea Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) said the national tally stood at
9,661, while the death toll rose by 6 to 158. It added that 195 more people had
recovered from the virus for a total of 5,228.
The daily number of new infections in South Korea has been hovering
around 100 or less for the past three weeks, but authorities have tightened
border checks as small outbreaks continued to emerge and the number of imported
cases rose. At least 13 of the latest cases were overseas travellers, KCDC data
showed.
South Korea announced on Sunday that all overseas arrivals will have to
undergo two weeks of mandatory quarantine starting on April 1.
Moon is expected to announce details of support for households later on
Monday. He has already doubled a planned rescue package for companies to 100
trillion won (65.89 billion pounds).
“If you
feed enough oats to the horse, some will pass through to feed the sparrows.”
John
Kenneth Galbraith.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.
Today, some of the hopeful treatments for Covid-19
from around the world. Not a cure, nor even scientific results, but perhaps
some leads for further testing.
Coronavirus Patients Taken Off Ventilators and Out of ICU After Receiving Experimental Drug Leronlimab
March 28, 2020
At least two of seven patients on
leronlimad saw significant improvement.
This follows the news on Friday that the renowned French epidemiologist Dr. Didier Raoult was able to repeat his findings from a previous study on the use of hdroxychloroquine on coronavirus patients.
The New York Post reported:
Two coronavirus patients in New York City are off ventilators and out of intensive care after they received an experimental drug to treat HIV and breast cancer.
As the skyrocketing number of cases stretches city hospitals to the limit, doctors are racing to find out which drugs on the market or in development might help in fighting the infection.
The drug, leronlimab, is delivered by injection twice in the abdomen, the Daily Mail reported.
Of seven critically ill patients who received the drug in New York, two were removed from ventilators and two showed significant improvement.
Doctors right now don’t know quite how leronlimab works, but studies suggest it calms the overly aggressive immune response.
Bahrain, Belgium report coronavirus treatment touted by Trump is working for patients
Clinical Tests of Hydroxychloroquines to Fight COVID-19 in Bahrain prove successfulLast Updated: March 26, 2020 - 11:20am
Bahrain and Belgium report their hospitals are successfully treating coronavirus patients with the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine touted by President Trump as a possible breakthrough in the pandemic.
The Kingdom of Bahrain's Supreme Council of Health chairman said his country was among the first to use the drug and that its impact has been "profound," according to the Bahrain News Agency.
Dr. Shaikh Mohamed, who leads the National Taskforce for Combating COVID-19, was also quoted by the news agency as saying hydroxychloroquine was administered according to the same regimens as those used in China and South Korea.
The first COVID-19 case in Bahrain was reported on Feb. 21, and hydroxychloroquine was first administered to patients showing virus symptoms on Feb. 26. As of March 25, the virus had caused 4 deaths in Bahrain, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.
Hydroxychloroquine is used to prevent and treat malaria and is administered to patients with rheumatoid arthritis or lupus.
Meanwhile in Europe, another U.S. ally, Brussels, is reporting similar early success with the same drug and is taking steps to ensure its availability for the sickest coronavirus patients.
More
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/bahrain-hydroxychloroquine-success-response-covid-19
For 40 years,
Cuba has been using a molecule named Interferon Alpha 2B , which has
successfully been used to combat the new Coronavirus in China and elsewhere.
"The world has an opportunity to understand that health is not a
commercial asset but a basic right," Cuban doctor Luis Herrera, the
creator of the Interferon Alfa 2-B medication, one of the most successful
medications in the fight against COVID-19 told teleSUR Tuesday.
Interferon has been known for more than 40 years: first, it was
produced from original sources in local sites, then nationally and later in the
United States and even Finland.
"At the beginning of the 80s, an important professor from Houston
came to Cuba and advised our President Fidel Castro than the Interferon we had
here was a very interesting molecule for a different purpose,"
Herrera told teleSUR.
"Then a group of people went to Finland to get training in the
production of interferon," while people were also producing
Interferon from recombined sources using genetic engineering.
---- One of the ways the virus can multiply inside the cells is by decreasing the levels of Interferon naturally produced in human cells. The molecule thus, through a different metabolic way, can create conditions to limit the replication of the virus.
During the MERS-CoV epidemic three years ago
- another type of coronavirus - people realized that Interferon was
decreased during the replication of the virus, highlighted Herrera.
---- In China, practically a few weeks after the beginning of the outbreak, people started to use Interferon in a way to avoid complications in people infected with the virus. According to Herrera, this molecule has "some side effects but not too critical."
"The main idea of Interferon is just to avoid complications,"
he told teleSUR. "Young people and people with a good immuno-response
perhaps don't need the medicine or people who won't have complications and
respond to the virus-like any other flu, but old people or
people susceptible to have a bad immuno-response will have better chances of
avoiding complications by using Interferon."
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.
Double-walled nanotubes have electro-optical advantages
Date:
March 27, 2020
Source:
Rice University
Summary:
Theorists find that flexoelectric effects in double-walled carbon nanotubes
could be highly useful for photovoltaic applications.
One nanotube could be great for electronics applications, but there's
new evidence that two could be tops.
Rice University engineers already knew that size matters when using
single-walled carbon nanotubes for their electrical properties. But until now,
nobody had studied how electrons act when confronted with the Russian doll-like
structure of multiwalled tubes.
The Rice lab of materials theorist Boris Yakobson has now calculated the
impact of curvature of semiconducting double-wall carbon nanotubes on their
flexoelectric voltage, a measure of electrical imbalance between the nanotube's
inner and outer walls.
This affects how suitable nested nanotube pairs may be for
nanoelectronics applications, especially photovoltaics.
The theoretical research by Yakobson's Brown School of Engineering group
appears in the American Chemical Society journal Nano Letters.
In an 2002 study, Yakobson and his Rice colleagues had revealed how
charge transfer, the difference between positive and negative poles that allows
voltage to exist between one and the other, scales linearly to the curvature of
the nanotube wall. The width of the tube dictates curvature, and the lab found
that the thinner the nanotube (and thus larger the curvature), the greater the
potential voltage.
When carbon atoms form flat graphene, the charge density of the atoms on
either side of the plane are identical, Yakobson said. Curving the graphene sheet
into a tube breaks that symmetry, changing the balance.
That creates a flexoelectric local dipole in the direction of, and
proportional to, the curvature, according to the researchers, who noted that
the flexoelectricity of 2D carbon "is a remarkable but also fairly subtle
effect."
But more than one wall greatly complicates the balance, altering the
distribution of electrons. In double-walled nanotubes, the curvature of the
inner and outer tubes differ, giving each a distinct band gap. Additionally,
the models showed the flexoelectric voltage of the outer wall shifts the band
gap of the inner wall, creating a staggered band alignment in the nested
system.
"The novelty is that the inserted tube, the 'baby' (inside)
matryoshka has all of its quantum energy levels shifted because of the voltage
created by exterior nanotube," Yakobson said. The interplay of different
curvatures, he said, causes a straddling-to-staggered band gap transition that
takes place at an estimated critical diameter of about 2.4 nanometers.
"This is a huge advantage for solar cells, essentially a
prerequisite for separating positive and negative charges to create a
current," Yakobson said. "When light is absorbed, an electron always
jumps from the top of an occupied valence band (leaving a 'plus' hole behind)
to the lowest state of empty conductance band.
"But in a staggered configuration they happen to be in different
tubes, or layers," he said. "The 'plus' and 'minus' get separated
between the tubes and can flow away by generating current in a circuit."
The team's calculations also showed that modifying the nanotubes'
surfaces with either positive or negative atoms could create "substantial
voltages of either sign" up to three volts. "Although
functionalization could strongly perturb the electronic properties of
nanotubes, it may be a very powerful way of inducing voltage for certain
applications," the researchers wrote.
The team suggested its findings may apply to other types of nanotubes,
including boron nitride and molybdenum disulfide, on their own or as hybrids
with carbon nanotubes.
The
only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.
John
Kenneth Galbraith.
The Monthly Coppock Indicators finished February
DJIA: 25,409 +75 Down. NASDAQ: 8,567 +171 Up.
SP500: 2,954 +133 Up.
Given the
severity of the still growing coronavirus crisis, I wouldn’t follow technical
signals in what I think will turn into the first depression since the 1930s.
Barring a miracle recovery in all three markets, the monthly Coppock indicators
are heading for a reversal at the month-end.
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