Baltic Dry Index. 453 +26 Brent Crude 34.97
Spot Gold 1749
Coronavirus Cases 20/5/20
World 5,002,247
Deaths 325,172
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear,
simple, and wrong.
H. L. Mencken
Buy gold and
silver and land. The Atlantic magazine says America has a free lunch and should
eat it now.
I have no doubt
that what The Atlantic advocates will come to pass, along with a similar “free
lunch” in GB, Europe, Canada and Australia, among others, it’s just that I
don’t think that the lunch comes free.
Nationalising the
economy, or most of it, with newly created fiat money out of nowhere, merely
delays the new depression, but doesn’t prevent it.
Subsidising
malinvestment doesn’t turn malinvestment into productive investment. Much of
the old 2019 economy is never coming back, nor should it.
Sooner or later,
the central banksters know that unlimited fiat money creation has to come to
its end.
Most of the same
bad choices will still exist when the unlimited money creation stops. The only all too foreseeable difference is
that by the time it stops, the fiat money has been debased.
At best, there’s
no hyperinflation, as somehow along the way we managed to increase goods and
services to match up with all the new fiat money. I think this unlikely.
At worst, there’s
a giant hyperinflation, as a vastly expanded fiat money supply chases a much
more limited supply of goods and services, and even worse shuns subsidised
goods and services no one needs or wants. I think this highly likely.
The big unknowable
question is, how much time does this buy us?
Paying people not
to work doesn’t make sense in the long run. We have to transition to something
more productive.
Propping up failed
hedge funds, failed MBS, bankrupt shopping malls, bust out Wall Street
speculators, unprofitable shale oil frackers, makes little sense either.
Below, as Asian
markets pause, The Atlantic covers that free lunch.
Asian stocks adrift as vaccine rally falters
May 20, 2020 /
1:02 AM
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Asian stocks struggled to extend the week’s rally
on Wednesday and gold and bonds firmed as a sceptical press report dented some
hopes for a COVID-19 vaccine and concerns about bumps in the global recovery
from the pandemic returned.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was flat. The
risk-sensitive Australian dollar retreated from an overnight two-month high and
safe-haven demand drove U.S. Treasury yields back under 0.7%.
The moves follow a downbeat end to the day on Wall Street, after a
report from medical news website STAT cast doubt over positive early results
from a Moderna Inc COVID-19 vaccine trial. The report said the results, which
had rallied global stocks this week, lacked detail.
Chinese stocks began the day a little lower and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng
slipped 0.1%. Australia’s benchmark was flat while a soft yen helped the Nikkei
0.7% higher.
“This is probably more a stabilisation than anything else, because
markets have rallied hard on opening up and the potential for a V-shaped
recovery,” said Jun Bei Liu, a portfolio manager at Australia’s Tribeca
Investment Partners.
“The market is a little bit directionless...from here on, it certainly
feels like we will see a lot more poor economic data,” she said, with investors
likely to take their strongest cues from company outlook commentaries and
confidence surveys.
Two thirds of 223 fund managers surveyed by Bank of America reckon
recent gains are a bear-market rally.
---- Doubts about the outlook held back commodity prices from further gains, as more bad news poured forth.
Japanese business confidence slumped to a decade low as the economy
entered recession while Australian retail sales suffered their steepest ever
dive in April. British jobless claims are at their highest in 20 years.
And the U.S. economy won’t recover its lost ground until sometime after
next year, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said on Tuesday.
More
ASX drops on doubts about Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine, Dow Jones sinks 390 points
By business reporter David Chau, wires Posted Yesterday,
---- Share traders hit the
"sell" button after focusing on a report that raised doubts about US
drug maker Moderna's early-stage COVID-19 vaccine trial.
Medical news website STAT said Moderna's figures "don't mean much
on their own, because critical information … was withheld", including data
tables and detailed numbers.
It also wrote that "experts suggest we ought to take the early
readout with a big grain of salt".
This was in contrast to yesterday's surge, sparked by Moderna announcing
the trial of its vaccine on eight people showed "promising" results
— raising hopes of a medical breakthrough that could pave the way for a
global economic recovery.
The Dow Jones index dropped by a steep 390 points (1.6 per cent) to
24,207 overnight.
The S&P 500 and Nasdaq fell by 1.1 and 0.5 per cent respectively.
In the past two months, the S&P has rebounded by 35 per cent thanks
to trillions of dollars worth of government and central bank stimulus.
"The market is keen on healthcare news much more than it is on
economic data," said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at National
Securities in New York.
"We are largely baking in the second quarter being down
significantly — GDP growth rates, earnings, economic data — but what we don’t
know, what will drive markets will be incrementally good news on the healthcare
front."
More
We Can Prevent a Great Depression. It’ll Take $10 Trillion.
Don’t think of that number as “big” or “bold.” Just think of it
as the appropriate dosage for a once-in-a-century economic affliction.
May 18, 2020
Last week, House Democrats unveiled their latest pandemic-relief package. The bill combines aid for families, a bailout for struggling cities and states, and additional funds for testing, tracing, and hospitals. The price tag is about $3 trillion—and it comes just weeks after the president signed an economic-relief package worth about $2 trillion.
Republicans have assailed the bill as a profligate wish list. Even Americans who are suffering from the health and economic ravages of the pandemic may feel a bit stunned by the dollar amount. Does the government really have to spend $5 trillion in three months? Can the United States afford to dump such unfathomable amounts of money into the economy?
The answers to those questions are yes and absolutely yes.
Small-business activity has plunged nationwide by nearly 50 percent. Hundreds of thousands of companies have already failed. Big retailers such as J.Crew and Neiman Marcus have filed for bankruptcy, while others, including Macy’s, are teetering. By some measures, scarcely one-third of Americans say they are working. Next month’s jobs report will likely show that, for the first time since World War II, a majority of Americans aren’t officially employed.
“The scope and speed of this downturn are without modern precedent,” Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said on Wednesday. “Additional fiscal support could be costly but worth it if it helps avoid long-term economic damage and leaves us with a stronger recovery.”
To understand why the U.S. needs additional fiscal support, let’s review where we stand on government assistance.
In March, the U.S. passed the CARES Act, which helped families and small businesses in a variety of ways. Most famous, perhaps, were the $1,200 checks for tens of millions of families. Unemployment Insurance got a $600-a-week bump. Congress also created the Paycheck Protection Program to accelerate the distribution of emergency cash to small and medium-size businesses.
While the CARES Act was an impressive start, and the largest stimulus or relief package ever signed in U.S. history, it wasn’t enough. The $600 benefit for unemployed workers will lapse on July 31. Thousands of small businesses failed to snag necessary funds in the early rounds of the PPP. And now state and local governments are facing a catastrophic loss of tax revenue from sales and income taxes, which could force them to fire hundreds of thousands of people and slash funding for health care in the middle of a pandemic.
Preventing another Great Depression requires more relief, spread in at
least four directions. The ideas and price tags below are a result of
interviews with sources on the Hill.
For families: With unemployment projected to scream past 20 percent, the federal
government has to step in to replace a big chunk of private-sector income. That
should include adding another direct payment to families in the $1,000 range,
an extension of the $600 unemployment-insurance benefit, and measures for food
and housing, such as rental and mortgage support for families who might
otherwise face eviction. The ideal economic-relief bill should also include a
“hiring bonus” for workers who go off jobless benefits, to accelerate the
labor-market recovery. Total cost: $1.2 trillion.
----
When you add it all up—the $3 trillion already spent, the $3 trillion now
required, and trillions more to accelerate the U.S. recovery—the total price
tag for averting another Great Depression could be about $10 trillion.
More
TOTAL CATASTROPHE OF THE CURRENCY SYSTEM
May 13, 2020
by Egon von
Greyerz
As the Nasdaq makes a new high for the year, the world outside the stock market timebomb is falling apart. For example the UN agency, The International Labour Organisation (ILO) reports that 1.6 billion jobs are at risk in the global economy. That is half of the global workforce of 3.3 billion.
Particularly vulnerable are the 2 billion people in the informal economy. For most of these vulnerable people, this means no income, no food and no security reports the ILO. This is a human tragedy on a massive scale and most people in the Western world are totally unaware.
HALF UK ADULTS PAID BY THE STATE
Looking at the UK, 23 million people which is half of all adults are now paid by the state. This includes people being furloughed, on unemployment benefits and public sector workers and pensioners. That is just an incredible proportion of the population which are getting free money for making no productive contribution. Yes, the human side is of course incredibly important and suffering people should be helped. The problem is only that THERE IS NO MONEY. What half of the adult population is receiving is money that doesn’t exist but is just printed out of thin air and thus has no real value.REAL US UNEMPLOYMENT 39%
If we take the US, Q2 GDP is forecast at -35%. Over 20 million have lost their jobs and both small and big businesses are going into a black hole. Most of these 20 million have no savings and couldn’t survive for one month without government handouts. If we take the real US unemployment figure based on ShawdowStats, it is now 39%. If we compare that to the 25% unemployment during the depression in the 1930s, it is a staggering figure.If the world, as I believe, has now entered a secular downturn of major proportions, many of these 20 million will never get their jobs back. That either means no income, no food, and nowhere to live or the government assisting these people permanently. Both of these outcomes will lead to perdition. No income means misery, disease and eventually a lot of people dying. Money printing is sadly no solution either. Once money is printed on a larger scale, the currency will be totally debased, become worthless with hyperinflation to follow. Just look at Venezuela with a major part of the population struggling to survive.
THERE IS NO SOLUTION
This is what is so sad with the current economic crisis – there is no solution. Nobody should believe that it is the Coronavirus that has caused this catastrophe for the world. CV was the catalyst but the underlying problems have been there for a long time. The Great Financial Crisis in 2006-9 was temporarily patched up with trillions of money printing but it was never solved. The GFC was only a rehearsal and now the world is facing the inevitable collapse of the financial system.CENTRAL BANKS PANICKED IN AUTUMN OF 2019
That there was something rotten in the Kingdom of Denmark the World became crystal clear in the late summer and early autumn of 2019. The ECB then made it clear for a second time that they will do whatever it takes. And then the Fed started with daily and weekly Repos of $100s of millions. We have never been told the reason for these Central Banks’ panic actions but it is totally clear that the financial system is crumbling under the burden of massive debts and derivatives.And then in February-March this year the most horrible catalyst in the form of a pandemic hit a fragile world economy at the worst possible moment. In my opinion, the world economy, lumbered with debts and deficits, would have crashed without the Coronavirus. But CV makes the problem much bigger and will cause the economic collapse to happen much faster.
What central banks around the world are doing will not make one iota difference when it comes to saving the world economy. You cannot solve a debt problem with more debt. The bankers have managed for some time to fool the world that creating money out of thin air can create wealth. But the world will very soon realise that it can’t. Global debt has more than doubled since the last crisis started. It was $125 trillion in 2006 and now global debt is over $270 trillion. With the current money printing that figure will soon be over $300T and later increase by $100s of trillions.
More
https://goldswitzerland.com/total-catastrophe-of-the-currency-system/
Americans are in financial trouble — why $1,200 stimulus checks are only a Band-Aid
More than 130 million stimulus checks are already winding their way to millions of Americans.
They’re a key part of the government’s $2.2 trillion CARES Act, but furloughed and laid-off workers say a maximum $1,200 payment is not nearly enough to see them through what could be an even bigger economic crisis than the Great Recession.
LendingTree TREE, +1.53% analyzed income data in the 98 cities with the highest number of families per capita to determine their monthly expenses and estimate how much of a household’s monthly expenses $3,400 in economic impact payments would cover. That’s two $1,200 stimulus checks, plus $500 each for two dependents.
That size stimulus check would cover 45% of one month’s average $7,531 budget for two-parent, two-child families, according to the study.
Families in McAllen, Texas, will benefit the most, with the stimulus checks covering 96% of their $3,500 monthly bills. Families in San Francisco, Boston, Bridgeport, Conn. and Washington, D.C. make between $158,000 and $189,000, and would only qualify for a small stimulus payment.
But most households will still struggle to make ends meet if those parents are out of work. “In 8 of the top 10 cities, the economic impact payment only covers between 60% and 71% of the estimated monthly budget for a family of four. The stimulus payment will cover 50% or more of one month’s estimated expenses in just 34 of the top 98 metro areas,” the report found.
The money can’t come soon enough for the nearly 35 million people who are out of work, and others worried about bills and rent due to the coronavirus pandemic. The Internal Revenue Service is sending $1,200 to individuals with annual adjusted gross income below $75,000 and $2,400 to married couples filing taxes jointly who earn under $150,000, plus $500 per qualifying child.
---- However, there’s growing concern among many Americans — especially those who are most in need of the checks and already have bills piling up — that the economy won’t restart in time to save them from paying the rent, their mortgage and going hungry.
---- In total, U.S. workers have lost $1.3 trillion in income, amounting to a median of nearly $9,000 per worker, according to research published Tuesday by the Society for Human Resource Management and Oxford Economics. Some 20% of the loss, or $260 billion, represents workers who remained employed. These workers either accepted a lower pay or reduced hours.
More
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/heres-how-much-trouble-laid-off-americans-are-in-and-why-1200-stimulus-checks-are-only-a-band-aid-2020-05-19?mod=home-page
Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone,
and (b) that is not true.
H. L. Mencken
Covid-19 Corner
Though
hopefully, we are passing/have passed the peak of new cases, at least of the
first SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, this section will continue until it becomes
unneeded.
Fujifilm shares fall after report Avigan not showing clear efficacy in some coronavirus trials
May 20, 2020 /
1:44 AM
TOKYO (Reuters) - Shares of Fujifilm Holdings Corp (4901.T) fell on Wednesday
after Kyodo news agency reported that so far there has been no clear evidence
of efficacy for its drug Avigan in treating the novel coronavirus in some
clinical trials.The data reported to Japan’s health ministry by hospitals treating people showing mild or no symptoms raises doubts about whether the drug can be approved by the end of this month as sought by Japan’s government, the report said, citing unidentified sources.
Fujifilm spokeswoman Kana Matsumoto said the company was not involved in the clinical research conducted mainly at Fujita Health University or other observational studies.
“Fujifilm is not aware of, nor in a position to comment on the results,” she said, adding that the company will evaluate the anti-flu drug through the clinical trials it is currently conducting in Japan and the United States.
Its shares were down 3% in morning trade.
More
Antibody neutralizes SARS and COVID-19 coronaviruses
The neutralizing antibody, called S309, is on an accelerated path toward clinical trials
May 18, 2020
An antibody first identified in a blood sample from a patient who recovered from Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in 2003 inhibits related coronaviruses, including the cause of COVID-19. The antibody, called S309, is now on a fast-track development and testing path at Vir Biotechnology in the next step toward possible clinical trials.
Laboratory research findings on the S309 antibody are reported in the May 18 edition of Nature. The title of the paper, available here, is: “Cross-neutralization of SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV2 by a human monoclonal antibody."
The senior authors on the paper are David Veesler, assistant professor of biochemistry at the University of Washington School of Medicine, and Davide Corti of Humabs Biomed SA, a subsidiary of Vir. The lead authors are Dora Pinto and Martina Beltramello of Humabs, as well as Young-Jun Park and Lexi Walls, research scientists in the Veesler lab, which for several years has been studying the structure and function of the infection mechanisms on a variety of coronaviruses
“We still need to show that this antibody is protective in living
systems, which has not yet been done,” Veesler said.
“Right now there are no approved tools or licensed therapeutics proven
to fight against the coronavirus that causes COVID-19,” he added. If the
antibody is shown to work against the novel coronavirus in people, it could
become part of the pandemic armamentarium.
Veesler said that his lab is not the only one seeking neutralizing
antibodies for COVID 19 treatment. What makes this antibody different is
that its search did not take place in people who had COVID-19, but in someone
who had been infected 17 years ago during a SARS epidemic.
“This is what allowed us to move so fast compared to other
groups,” Veesler said.
The scientists identified several monoclonal antibodies of interest from
memory B cells of the SARS survivor. Memory B cells form following an
infectious illness. Their lineage can last, sometimes for life. They usually
remember a pathogen, or one similar to it, that the body has ousted in the
past, and launch an antibody defense against a re-infection.
Several of the antibodies from the SARS survivor’s memory B cells are
directed at a protein structure on coronaviruses. This structure is
critical to the coronaviruses’ ability to recognize a receptor on a cell, fuse
to it, and inject their genetic material into the cell. This infectivity
machinery is located in the spikes that crown the coronavirus.
The S309 antibody is particularly potent at targeting and disabling the
spike protein that promotes the coronavirus entry into cells. It was able
to neutralize SARS CoV-2 by engaging with a section of the spike protein nearby
the attachment site to the host cell.
More
India’s Virus Cases Cross 100,000, Jump at Fastest Pace in Asia
By Bibhudatta Pradhan
May 19, 2020, 7:11 AM GMT+1 Updated on May 19, 2020,
11:16 AM GMT+1
India’s coronavirus infections crossed the 100,000 mark and
are escalating at the fastest pace in Asia, just as Prime Minister Narendra
Modi further relaxed the country’s nationwide lockdown to boost economic
activities.Infections in the South Asian nation of 1.3 billion people were at 101,261, including 3,164 deaths, as of Tuesday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
India is now among the nations worst hit by the epidemic, with a 28% increase in cases since last week according to Bloomberg’s Coronavirus Tracker. Neighbor and nuclear rival Pakistan has 43,966 cases including 939 deaths. Its cases increased by 19% over the same period, the tracker showed.
----Since Monday, states have further eased restrictions for industries, shops and offices and reopened public transport, while the lockdown in the worst affected areas of the country -- including a ban on interstate and international air travel -- has been extended until May 31. The government is hoping to ease the economic impact of the world’s biggest lockdown, which has crippled business activity and left millions jobless.
Still, companies are facing difficulties reopening factories --
primarily because of travel restrictions, conflicting rules, broken supply
chains and a shortage of workers. The movement of millions of migrant workers
from the cities where they had jobs to their homes in rural villages -- and
their reluctance to return -- is one of the key challenges for the economy,
which could be heading for its first full-year contraction in more than four
decade.
China says U.S. trying to shift blame and smear Beijing over WHO
May 19, 2020 /
9:28 AM
BEIJING (Reuters) - China said the United States was trying to shift the
blame for Washington’s own mishandling of the COVID-19 crisis, responding to
President Donald Trump’s letter threatening to halt funding to the World Health
Organization.
Trump threatened on Monday to reconsider the United States’ membership
of the World Health Organization (WHO) if the organisation did not commit to
improvements within 30 days, and said the body had shown an “alarming lack of
independence” from China.
Chinese Foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told reporters on Tuesday
that the United States was trying to smear China and had miscalculated by
trying to use China to avoid its own responsibility.
Study: Global climate emissions down almost 20% since COVID-19
May 19, 2020 /
2:30 PM
May
19 (UPI) -- Carbon emissions worldwide declined
by nearly 20 percent last month due to a global downturn in activity due to the
coronavirus pandemic, researchers said in a new study Tuesday.The study in Nature Climate Change said emissions fell by 17 percent and 18.7 million tons in April, largely because of "forced confinement" worldwide intended to stem the spread of COVID-19.
The report noted that the present average emission level hasn't been seen since 2006.
Experts said the drop may be the largest ever recorded.
"Globally, we haven't seen a drop this big ever, and at the yearly level, you would have to go back to World War II to see such a big drop in emissions," said Corinne Le Quere, study author and professor of climate change science at Britain's University of East Anglia.
Le Quere acknowledged, however, that the decline is unsustainable and temporary.
"This is not the way to tackle climate change," she said. "It's not going to happen by forcing behavior changes on people. We need to tackle it by helping people move to more sustainable ways of living."
Other climate change experts say the new research shows how difficult it will be to cut emissions in a significant and permnent way.
"The drop in emissions is substantial but illustrates the challenge of reaching our Paris climate commitments," said Rob Jackson, chair of the Global Carbon Project at Stanford University and study co-author. "We need systemic change through green energy and electric cars, not temporary reductions from enforced behavior."
Researchers said they hope the coronavirus restrictions demonstrate that there are opportunities to "set structural changes in motion" by following "economic stimuli aligned with low carbon pathways."
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2020/05/19/Study-Global-climate-emissions-down-almost-20-since-COVID-19/7331589905188/?ls=3
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.
Highly efficient charge-to-spin interconversion in graphene heterostructures
Date:
May 18, 2020
Source:
The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)
Summary:
Physicists described a route to design the energy-efficient generation,
manipulation and detection of spin currents using nonmagnetic two-dimensional
materials. The research team observed highly efficient charge-to-spin interconversion
via the gate-tunable Rashba-Edelstien effect (REE) in graphene
heterostructures.
This research paves the way for the application of graphene as an active
spintronic component for generating, controlling, and detecting spin current
without ferromagnetic electrodes or magnetic fields.
Graphene is a promising spintronic component owing to its long spin
diffusion length. However, its small spin-orbit coupling limits the potential
of graphene in spintronic applications since graphene cannot be used to generate,
control, or detect spin current.
"We successfully increased the spin-orbit coupling of graphene by
stacking graphene on top of 2H-TaS2, which is one of the transition metal
dichalcogenide materials with the largest spin-orbit coupling. Graphene now can
be used to generate, control, and detect spin current," Professor Cho
said.
The Rashba-Edelstein effect is a physical mechanism that enables charge
current-to-spin current interconversion by spin-dependent band structure
induced by the Rashba effect, a momentum-dependent splitting of spin bands in
low-dimensional condensed matter systems.
Professor Cho's group demonstrated the gate-tunable Rashba-Edelstein
effect in a multilayer graphene for the first time. The Rahsba-Edelstein effect
allows the two-dimensional conduction electrons of graphene to be magnetized by
an applied charge current and form a spin current. Furthermore, as the Fermi
level of graphene, tuned by gate voltage, moves from the valence to conduction
band, the spin current generated by graphene reversed its spin direction.
This spin reversal is useful in the design of low-power-consumption
transistors utilizing spins in that it provides the carrier "On"
state with spin up holes (or spin down electrons) and the "Off" state
with zero net spin polarization at so called "charge neutrality
point" where numbers of electrons and holes are equal.
"Our work is the first demonstration of charge-to-spin
interconversion in a metallic TMD (transition-metal dichalcogenides) and
graphene heterostructure with a spin polarization state controlled by a gate.
We expect that the all-electrical spin-switching effect and the reversal of
non-equilibrium spin polarization by the application of gate voltage is
applicable for the energy-efficient generation and manipulation of spin
currents using nonmagnetic van der Waals materials," explained Professor
Cho.
It is hard to believe
that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in
his place.
H. L. Mencken
The Monthly Coppock Indicators finished April
DJIA: 24,346 +26 Down. NASDAQ: 8,890 +162 Up.
SP500: 2,912 +89 Down.
The NASDAQ has rebounded to
up. The S&P and the DJIA remain down.
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