Baltic Dry Index. 624 -02 Brent Crude 26.24 Spot Gold 1585
Covid-19 Pandemic
underway, according to the WHO, at long last!
Coronavirus Cases 02/4/20
World 961,448 Deaths 49,163
(Maybe.)
21st
century adage: Is that true, or did you hear it on the BBC?
Despite
what listeners may have heard on the BBC World Service news this morning, the “rate
of increase” in coronavirus cases and deaths is not “increasing,” but falling,
though perhaps only temporarily we need to wait a little longer to know, but “cases”
and “deaths” are still increasing. Someone needs to educate the BBC on the
difference.
Still,
cases probably crosses the million mark tomorrow, although I suspect that if China
and Iran were reporting more accurately, we probably passed that figure in late
February or early March.
In
our casinos, once formerly known as stock markets, fear or reality is back,
trumping greed for now. With a disastrous stock market crash opening the year,
a great wave of mutual fund and hedge fund redemptions is still to come.
There
will be plenty of time in 2020 before there’s any need to start bottom fishing
in global stocks.
Asian stocks little changed as fear descends on global market
Published: April 2, 2020 at 12:17 a.m. ET
BEIJING — Asian stocks were meandering Thursday after a
White House warning that as many as 240,000 Americans might die of the
coronavirus sent Wall Street tumbling and signs of the outbreak’s global
economic cost increased.Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 NIK, -1.221% lost 0.2%, adding to the previous session’s 4.5% loss. The Hang Seng HSI, -0.417% in Hong Kong was about flat. The Shanghai Composite Index SHCOMP, 0.161% gained 0.3%. The Kospi 180721, 0.812% in Seoul rose 0.7% while Sydney’s S&P/ASX 200 XJO, -1.98% declined 1.7%.Benchmarks in New Zealand NZ50GR, -0.55% and Southeast Asia also retreated.
U.S. futures ES00, 1.174% were higher.
The U.S. warning added to anxiety among investors who are trying to figure out how long and deep this history-making global economic downturn might be.
“Fear, fear and more fear descended upon the market,” said Jingyi Pan of IG in a report.
Traders say markets will be turbulent until numbers of new cases decline, but Pan said that “still looks to be a distance away.”
The White House jolted financial markets with its announced Wednesday that anywhere from 100,000 to 240,000 Americans might die from the virus even if the country avoids shopping trips, eating in restaurants and other public activities through April.
Florida’s governor became the latest to issue a statewide stay-at-home order.
On Wall Street, the benchmark S&P 500 index SPX, -4.41% lost 114.09 points on Wednesday to 2,470.50. The index is coming off its worst quarter since 2008 with a 20% loss.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -4.44% lost 4.4% to 20,943.51. The Nasdaq composite COMP, -4.40% fell 4.4% to 7,360.58.
More
Next,
President Trump says he has sorted out the massive oil price crash. Well maybe,
but given the source, I’ll wait to see what happens later in April when the
world runs out of expensive storage capacity for all the current daily excess
oil production.
Oil jumps as Trump talks up truce hopes for Saudi-Russia price war
April 1, 2020 /
11:25 PM
SINGAPORE
(Reuters) - Crude oil futures surged on Thursday after U.S. President Donald
Trump said he expected Saudi Arabia and Russia to reach a deal soon to end
their oil price war and Russian President Vladimir Putin called for a solution
to “challenging” oil markets.
Brent crude futures rose 5.9%, or $1.46, to $26.20 as of 0418 GMT, while
U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were up 4.6% or 94 cents, at
$21.25.
Trump said he had talked recently with the leaders of both Russia and
Saudi Arabia and believed the two countries would make a deal to end their
price war within a “few days” - lowering production and bringing prices back
up.
He also said he would be meeting with oil executives, where he is
expected to discuss a range of options to help the industry amid the sharp hit
to demand as the coronavirus outbreak has hammered industrial activity and kept
cars off the road.
Speaking at a government meeting on Wednesday, Putin said that both oil
producers and consumers should find a solution that would improve the
“challenging” situation of global oil markets.
Some analysts cautioned there is still a long way to go before any
output cut agreement is struck.
With markets facing 15 million barrels per day (bpd) of oversupply in
the second quarter and storage maxing out in April, extraordinary curtailments
of oil supply will be needed in May and June, said Kang Wu, head of Asia
analytics at S&P Global Platts.
Brent prices need to drop to low-$10 per barrel to force immediate
supply curtailment, he added, forecasting global oil demand to decline around
4.5 million bpd this year.
Research firm Rystad Energy estimates global crude oil demand in April
will fall nearly 23% year-on-year to 77.6 million bpd.
Saudi Arabia’s crude supply rose on Wednesday to a record of more than
12 million barrels per day, two industry sources said, despite a plunge in
demand and U.S. pressure on the kingdom to stop flooding the market.
“This is a clear sign that the Saudis are not ready to back off in the
price war, despite the Russians now saying that they will not increase output
given the current oversupply in the market,” ING said in a research note on
Thursday.
U.S. crude stockpiles rose 13.8 million barrels in their biggest weekly
increase since 2016 and analysts expected stocks to keep rising as refineries
curb output and gasoline demand falls.
“At the current price, many U.S. oil exploring energy companies won’t be
able to make a profit and drilling activities might fall in North America,” CMC
Markets analyst Margaret Yang said.
U.S. shale producer Whiting Petroleum Corp, once the largest oil
producer in North Dakota, on Wednesday became the first publicly traded
casualty of the oil price collapse as it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Now
back to the coronavirus crisis killing national economies and jobs all around
planet earth.
Virus seen halving profits, dividends in Europe - analysts
April 1, 2020 /
7:25 AM
LONDON
(Reuters) - Profits and dividends paid out by European companies could halve
this year due to the economic fallout of the coronavirus outbreak, analysts
estimate, similar to the effects of the financial crisis in 2008.
Countries around the world are forcing people to stay at home in an
attempt to contain the fast-spreading coronavirus, leading to businesses
shutting down and grinding economic activity to a halt.
Barclays and Citi were among the few banks so far to put an estimate on
the eventual impact, warning of a 40% to 50% hit to profits and dividends.
“We expect the economic fallout from COVID-19 (coronavirus) to be as
severe as the 2008-09 recession, but briefer,” said Emmanuel Cau, Barclays
European equity strategist.
Euro zone manufacturing activity collapsed last month as breaks in
global supply chains crushed output, and the nosedive could worsen in coming
months, a survey showed on Wednesday.
Companies listed on the pan-European STOXX 600 are expected to report a
21.9% decline in earnings in the second quarter, a deterioration in outlook
from a drop of 14.9% forecast the week before. For the third quarter, analysts
see a 15.4% fall, according to Refinitiv consensus forecasts.
Those forecasts could worsen, as some analysts are finding it difficult
to make any prediction at this stage of the crisis.
More
Asia's factory activity plunges as coronavirus shock deepens
April 1, 2020 /
5:43 AM
TOKYO
(Reuters) - Factory activity contracted sharply across most of Asia in March as
the coronavirus pandemic paralyzed economic activity across the globe, with
sharp falls in export power-houses Japan and South Korea overshadowing a modest
improvement in China.
Manufacturing gauges also tumbled in Indonesia, Vietnam and the
Philippines, Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) surveys showed on Wednesday,
underscoring the widening damage brought by the pandemic that has infected more
than 700,000 people, upended supply chains and led to city lockdowns worldwide.
China’s factory activity improved slightly more than expected in March
after plunging a month earlier, a private business survey showed, but growth
was marginal, highlighting the intense pressure facing businesses as domestic
and export demand slumps.
While factories in China gradually restarted operations after lengthy
shutdowns and a fall in virus cases allowed the country to start relaxing
travel restrictions, activity in South Korea shrank at its fastest pace in 11
years as many of its trading partners imposed dramatic measures to curb the
virus’ spread.
“If you look at the Korean numbers, they’re fairly bad ... They’re
likely to get worse still because Korea will be dependent on parts from Europe
and the United States,” said Rob Carnell, Asia-Pacific chief economist at ING
in Singapore.
---- Japan’s factory activity contracted at the fastest pace in about a decade in March, adding to views that the world’s third-largest economy is likely already in recession.
A separate “tankan” survey by the Bank of Japan showed on Wednesday that
business sentiment soured to a seven-year low in the three months to March, as
the outbreak hit sectors from hotels to carmakers.
“The tankan clearly shows a sharp deterioration in business sentiment
and confirms the economy is already in recession,” said Yasunari Ueno, chief
market economist at Mizuho Securities.
China’s Caixin/Markit Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI)
rose to 50.1 last month, from February’s record low of 40.3, and just a notch
above the 50-mark that separates growth from contraction.
South Korea’s IHS Markit PMI plunged to 44.2, its lowest since January
2009 when the economy was reeling from the global financial crisis. The index
was 48.7 in February.
Japan’s PMI fell to a seasonally adjusted 44.8 from a reading of 47.8 in
February, its lowest since April 2009. The ruling coalition has called on the
government to secure a stimulus package worth at least 60 trillion yen ($553
billion), with 20 trillion yen in direct spending.
More
Eurozone manufacturing PMI slumps to 92-month low in March
Published: April 1, 2020 at 4:07 a.m. ET
The
IHS Markit eurozone manufacturing purchasing managers index fell in March to
44.5 from 49.2 in February. That's the lowest reading in 92 months but wasn't a
surprise as the flash estimate was 44.8. Around Europe, Italy's manufacturing
PMI fell to 40.3 from 48.7, that country's worst since April 2009, while
Spain's fell to 45.7 from 50.4 and Greece's fell to 42.5.
"Even
the slide in the PMI to a seven-and-a-half year low masks the severity of the
slump in manufacturing as it includes a measure of supply chain delays, which
boosted the index," said Chris Williamson, chief business economist at IHS
Markit.
High noon in a coronavirus-stricken world
April 1, 2020 /
2:24 PM
(Reuters) - Lockdowns to halt the spread of the coronavirus have brought
an uncanny silence to some of the world’s busiest places. Transport hubs that
should be teeming with travellers such as New York’s Grand Central station or
Istanbul’s Eminonu ferry docks are all but deserted.
Our best loved tourist sites or promenades, the Malecon seafront in the
Cuban capital Havana, the Damascus Gate entrance to Jerusalem and the Old Town
Square in the Czech capital Prague are empty of visitors and the traders that live
from them, as borders close and tourists stay home.
Cairo’s Tahrir Square and Kiev’s Maidan, squares where just a few years
ago people swarmed in their masses to bring about revolution, are clear.
Reuters photographers have captured the hush that has descended on some
of the world’s best-known sites on the same day, at noon.
British Airways could suspend 36,000 employees - BBC
April 2, 2020 /
12:19 AM
(Reuters) - IAG-owned British Airways (ICAG.L)
is expected to announce a suspension of about 36,000 of its employees, BBC News
reported on Wednesday.The airline has reached a broad deal with Unite union that will include suspension of jobs of 80% of BA's cabin crew, ground staff, engineers and those working at head office, the news agency reported bbc.in/3498I5J, adding that no staff were expected to be made redundant.
Talks with the union are still ongoing, British Airways said in a brief statement to Reuters.
British Airways had said on Tuesday it was temporarily suspending flights from Gatwick Airport, Britain’s second-busiest airport, as the aviation sector reels under the coronavirus crisis.
Boeing to offer voluntary layoffs to employees amid coronavirus fallout - source
April 2, 2020 / 5:26 AM
SEATTLE (Reuters) - Boeing Co (BA.N)
was set to offer employee buyout and early retirement packages, two people
familiar with the matter said on Wednesday, a bid to mitigate the financial
fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. Boeing Chief Executive Dave Calhoun was expected to detail a voluntary layoff plan in a memo to employees as early as Thursday, one of the people said.
Finally, yet more food chain supply worries. Much will
depend on the norther hemisphere crops this year. Will the coronavirus crisis
and lockdowns impact northern hemisphere food production in 2020? Might be a
good year to keep the fridge stocked up.
Ongoing drought in Brazil, Argentina threatens crucial crop harvests
March 31, 2020 /
3:57 PM
An unusually dry end to the summer season across parts of South America
is expected to impact the harvests of important crops in the region.
"Rainfall averaged below normal across much of southern Brazil,
including [the states of] Rio Grande Do Sul, Santa Catarina, for the month of
March, and in many instances the entire summer season," said AccuWeather
senior meteorologist Jason Nicholls.
Some major cities in these states include Porto Alegre, Santa Maria and
Florianopolis, although even Curitiba in Parana had a drier-than-normal month
of March.
All of the above cities saw 35 percent or less of their normal rainfall
for the month, which has proven significant for growing areas of corn and
soybeans.
Although not as extreme, parts of northern Argentina, which are also contributing producers of these crops, only recorded 30 percent to 65 percent of their normal rainfall during the month of March.
"The resulting drought from the lack of rainfall across these crop-heavy regions, in addition to bouts of heat, have stressed corn and soybean crops and has led to a reduction in crop yields," added Nicholls.
Argus reported in mid-March that Rio Grande do Sul lowered the estimates for their soybean and corn harvest for the second time in less than two weeks. Unlike other regions of Brazil, the geography of the region keeps the state from having a second harvest, like many other states in the country.
Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina alone account for 30 percent of Brazil's first corn crop and over 16 percent of the country's soybean crop. Reductions in both could cause shortages as well as affect pricing and the economy.
Further complicating how this crop yield could affect the world's economy is the COVID-19 pandemic. Argentinian President Alberto Fernandez announced on Sunday that the mandatory countrywide quarantine would extend into mid-April.
"Going forward, a front will bring rain and thunderstorms to the area on Thursday. However, this is unlikely to bring enough rainfall to ease the drought conditions," said Nicholls.
More
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2020/03/31/Ongoing-drought-in-Brazil-Argentina-threatens-crucial-crop-harvests/3001585681277/?ts_=8
The BBC, taxing poor people in Britain to pay astronomical sums to rich people, who then insult their Brexit beliefs and views.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.
Today, the UK’s Telegraph ponders on the next shoe
to fall on our failed central banksters.
Get used to more debt and higher inflation
Jeremy Warner31 March 2020 • 8:16pm
---- The juncture we stand at is nevertheless an old
one; are we about to be tipped into a prolonged, deflationary depression, or
are we at the beginnings of a new inflationary age, such as the Seventies and
Eighties? We’ve been having this debate on and off for much of the last 20
years, and so far, the deflators have tended to have the better of it. The
coronavirus pandemic may be about to turn those perceptions on their head.
Which way it goes depends crucially on how long Western lockdowns last.
If they go on for a long time, then many businesses and banks won’t survive,
regardless of government support schemes. Already we are seeing firms throwing
in the towel, never to re-open, rather than lie there clocking up debt in the
hope of later recovery.
If they do start up anew when all this is over, it will be in smaller,
less ambitious form. Some will use the crisis as a way of escaping legacy debts
altogether. In any case, prolonged lockdown might give rise to lasting
fragmentation of supply chains, persistent unemployment, and a lengthy
depression.
Lifting the restrictions is therefore a matter of growing urgency for
all governments. Yet, however quickly this is done, there are going to be
long-run effects.
For now, the most glaring indicator of the coronavirus-induced, global
collapse in output is the oil price, which is languishing at less than $23 a
barrel for Brent crude. We are in the midst of a perfect deflationary storm of
plummeting demand and rising supply, as producers scramble for a greater share
of a diminishing pie. Some analysts have suggested that the price might even
turn negative in the weeks ahead, so desperate are producers to offload the
stuff rather than pay for costly storage, nevermind – with storage facilities
already full to capacity – finding it.
A lot of high-cost production will therefore disappear during the course
of the economic hiatus, setting things up, when demand eventually comes surging
back, for an oil price shock possibly as serious as those of the Seventies and
Eighties. This loss of supply could be mirrored across sectors, with
significant inflationary consequences.
Support for this view comes from Tim Congdon, head of the Institute of
Monetary Research at the University of Buckingham and one of Britain’s leading
monetarists. Monetary financing of deficits on the scale now being practised
could have significant inflationary consequences, he argues in his latest newsletter.
“The annual rate of [US] money growth to spring 2021 might be between 10pc and
15pc, perhaps even heading towards 20pc. If so, the right sort of maximum
inflation rate to expect in the next few years would be in the 5pc to 10pc
band.”
Here in Britain, the Debt Management Office has just announced plans to
raise £45bn in April alone to help fund the coronavirus response, with debt
auctions virtually every working day of the month. We’ve never seen debt
issuance on such a scale before, which requires the Bank of England to be
constantly acting as buyer of last resort to ensure that it all gets mopped up.
The debate over whether these purchases should be through secondary
markets, or directly from the Government (primary financing of the deficit) is
really only of academic importance now. In economic terms, the two are much the
same thing.
As inflation comes back, interest rates will rise, increasing debt
servicing costs to governments loaded up with borrowed money by the coronavirus
response; that in turn will increase the incentives for “financial repression”,
or capping rates at affordable levels.
This is backdoor default; keeping interest rates below the rate of
inflation played an important part in reducing debt to GDP ratios in the aftermath
of the Second World War, both in the US and Britain. Such practices may be
about to make a comeback. It’s good for public balance sheets, but terrible for
bond investors, who would see their capital badly eroded by inflation.
Careful, parsimonious management of the public finances by European states such as Germany, the Netherlands and the Nordics has produced plenty of self congratulation of late. High levels of household savings has made them doubly pleased with themselves, with strong national balance sheets likely to provide some headroom in absorbing the costs of the pandemic.
But they also seem to have forgotten one of the first rules of economics – that when the debtor cannot pay, it is the creditor who suffers most. Many of these nations will end up taking big haircuts, either through outright default and debt restructuring, or via inflation.
This brings us to one of the other possible long-term consequences of the coronavirus crisis. Less than a month ago, before the full scale of the economic close-down became apparent, I wrote a column suggesting that though the virus might spark another existential crisis for Europe’s monetary union, the single currency would probably survive it. Too much political capital had already been expended for European governments to give up on the euro now. Reluctantly, belatedly, and inadequately, Germany would do just enough to ensure its survival.
But now I’m not so sure. Frustration among southern European countries over lack of solidarity whenever there is a crisis is at boiling point. Whether membership of the single currency is worth the price of lost fiscal and monetary sovereignty is questioned.
And if Covid-19 fundamentally changes the nature of the European Union, that could in turn work to Brexit Britain’s advantage in providing a looser union more accommodating to the free trade relationship the UK seeks. Against expectations, some events that seem completely transformational at the time end up not changing things much at all; but this is unlikely to be one of them.
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.
Crumpled graphene makes ultra-sensitive cancer DNA detector
Date:
March 24, 2020
Source:
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, News Bureau
Summary:
Graphene-based biosensors could usher in an era of liquid biopsy, detecting DNA
cancer markers circulating in a patient's blood or serum. But current designs
need a lot of DNA. In a new study, crumpling graphene makes it more than ten
thousand times more sensitive to DNA by creating electrical 'hot spots,'
researchers have found.
Crumpled graphene could be used in a wide array of biosensing
applications for rapid diagnosis, the researchers said. They published their
results in the journal Nature Communications.
"This sensor can detect ultra-low concentrations of molecules that
are markers of disease, which is important for early diagnosis," said
study leader Rashid Bashir, a professor of bioengineering and the dean of the
Grainger College of Engineering at Illinois. "It's very sensitive, it's
low-cost, it's easy to use, and it's using graphene in a new way."
While the idea of looking for telltale cancer sequences in nucleic
acids, such as DNA or its cousin RNA, isn't new, this is the first electronic
sensor to detect very small amounts, such as might be found in a patient's
serum, without additional processing.
"When you have cancer, certain sequences are overexpressed. But
rather than sequencing someone's DNA, which takes a lot of time and money, we
can detect those specific segments that are cancer biomarkers in DNA and RNA
that are secreted from the tumors into the blood," said Michael Hwang, the
first author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher in the Holonyak Micro
and Nanotechnology Lab at Illinois.
Graphene -- a flat sheet of carbon one atom thick -- is a popular,
low-cost material for electronic sensors. However, nucleic-acid sensors
developed so far require a process called amplification -- isolating a DNA or
RNA fragment and copying it many times in a test tube. This process is lengthy
and can introduce errors. So Bashir's group set out to increase graphene's
sensing power to the point of being able to test a sample without first
amplifying the DNA.
Many other approaches to boosting graphene's electronic properties have
involved carefully crafted nanoscale structures. Rather than fabricate special
structures, the Illinois group simply stretched out a thin sheet of plastic,
laid the graphene on top of it, then released the tension in the plastic,
causing the graphene to scrunch up and form a crumpled surface.
They tested the crumpled graphene's ability to sense DNA and a
cancer-related microRNA in both a buffer solution and in undiluted human serum,
and saw the performance improve tens of thousands of times over flat graphene.
"This is the highest sensitivity ever reported for electrical
detection of a biomolecule. Before, we would need tens of thousands of
molecules in a sample to detect it. With this device, we could detect a signal
with only a few molecules," Hwang said. "I expected to see some
improvement in sensitivity, but not like this."
To determine the reason for this boost in sensing power, mechanical
science and engineering professor Narayana Aluru and his research group used
detailed computer simulations to study the crumpled graphene's electrical
properties and how DNA physically interacted with the sensor's surface.
They found that the cavities served as electrical hotspots, acting as a
trap to attract and hold the DNA and RNA molecules.
Morehttps://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200324090014.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fmatter_energy%2Fgraphene+%28Graphene+News+--+ScienceDaily%29
Nixene Publishing
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- 2013: 14, 600 graphene academic papers reported by Science Direct
- 2017: 25,000 academic papers according to Nixene Publishing
- 2019: Cornell University’s online digital archive for electronic preprints of scientific papers noted 127, 546 graphene journal publications
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Time to dispose of the extreme left wing, anti-America, anti-British, anti-Christian, anti-Israel, anti-Trump, pro-moslem, pro-lgbt, pro-Comrade Corbyn, pro-Clinton, degenerate, trougher’s paradise of the BBC & World Service. End the BBC troughers tax. Make the troughers work for their living.
The Monthly Coppock Indicators finished March
DJIA: 21,917 +45 Down. NASDAQ: 7,700 +149 Down.
SP500: 2,585 +38 Down.
The NASDAQ and S&P have
joined the DJIA in down. All three monthly slow indexes have collapsed.
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