Baltic Dry Index. 1246 +192 Brent Crude 40.56
Spot Gold 1728
Coronavirus Cases 18/6/20
World 8,484,348
Deaths 454,121
In central banking as in diplomacy, style, conservative
tailoring, and an easy association with the affluent count greatly and results
far much less.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Another
day, another warning on the Great Disconnect, Fedster every-stock bubble. This warning
from an investment strategist who called out three earlier bubbles that nearly
everyone else pretended not to see.
All
bubbles, from tulips, to the South Sea, to railways, to the Knickerbocker Trust
(copper company, 1907) to 1929, 1987, 2008, to 2020, end badly.
But
2020s Fedster multi-trillion dollar free money stock inflation bubble, is
likely to end up worse than all the others, in that as it ends it threatens to
bring down the global financial system that’s existed since the Great Nixonian
Error of Fiat Money, communist money, started August 15, 1971.
Were
that to happen, global supply chains of just about everything will lock up,
generating in short order, food shortages, energy disruption, poverty, destitution,
and vast social disorder.
The
Fed, and supporting cast of fiat money central banksters, are now playing “Russian
roulette” with the financial system. They haven’t got a clue on the outcome.
Stock-market legend who called 3 financial bubbles says this one is the ‘Real McCoy,’ this is ‘crazy stuff’
By Mark DeCambre Published: Jun 18, 2020 12:00 am ET
That is Jeremy Grantham, co-founder and chief investment strategist at
Boston-based money manager Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo & Co., offering up
a stark warning to speculators driving the stock market to new heights amid the
greatest pandemic of the past century.
“This is really the real McCoy, this is crazy stuff,” said Grantham
during a Wednesday afternoon interview on CNBC that appeared to knock some of
the stuffing out of a market that had been drifting along listlessly on
Wednesday.
Read: The rise of mom-and-pop investors in the stock market will ‘end in tears,’ warns billionaire Cooperman
“It is a rally without precedence,” he told CNBC, noting that the run-up comes amid a period in which U.S. economic health is at a low point, with millions of people out of work and bankruptcies likely to continue to rise due to a slowdown in business activity and closures that have come in the aftermath of lockdowns implemented to curb the spread of the deadly COVID-19 pathogen.
Markets, however, have been busting higher since hitting a low on March 23. Indeed, the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA-0.65% has zoomed 40.5% higher since late March, the S&P 500 SPX-0.36% has climbed 39% and the technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index COMP+0.15% has soared more than 44% over the period, establishing an all-time high last week for the first time since Feb. 19
Grantham is worth paying attention to due to his prescient calls over the years. He said that stocks were overvalued in 2000 and again in 2007, anticipating those market downturns, the Wall Street Journal reports. Grantham also signaled that elements of the financial market had become unmoored from reality leading up to the 2008-09 financial crisis.
Asked what level of exposure investors should have to U.S. equities,
Grantham offered an unflinching view that may leave some bulls gobsmacked.
“I think a good number now is zero and less than zero might not be a bad
idea if you can stand that.”
The investment expert noted that monetary stimulus from the Federal
Reserve, whose balance sheet has jumped from $4 trillion in March to $7.21
trillion last week, and efforts by the government to help average Americans has
been a factor that has helped boost equity values amid this crisis.
“Clearly, the Fed scattering money around has created a favorable
environment.”
More
David Rosenberg: Don't fight the Fed? Why investors should be wary of market manipulation
There is zero chance this ends well
June 17, 2020 11:04 AM EDT
All I hear over and over again is, “Don’t fight the Fed!” It has become
the most overused refrain in the business. Yes, yes, the legendary Marty Zweig
is said to have come up with that glib remark, but it was in the context of
buying into an undervalued and oversold market when the U.S. Federal Reserve
was pumping the system with liquidity in the latter stages of a recession.
What we have now is nothing short of market manipulation. Reducing the
cost of overnight funds is one thing. Extending the intervention to Treasuries
or high-quality securities is something we became accustomed to in the
aftermath of the last Great Recession. That’s when the Fed became a duration
bond manager.
But the central bank is now becoming a hedge fund. Adding low-quality
corporate credits to its balance sheet is a whole different game: keeping
zombie companies alive, rendering fundamental analysis and price discovery
obsolete, and leading to a complete misallocation of resources.
More
Back
in the real world, the pain is just starting and will go on for months. The
tide has just turned and is going out. A massive wave of corporate fraud and
malinvestment is about to get exposed. A massive real estate repricing and
insolvency wave lies just ahead.
The dollar is going to fall very, very sharply,’ warns prominent Yale economist
Published: June 17, 2020 at 9:43 a.m. ET Stephen Roach, Yale University senior fellow and former Morgan Stanley Asia chairman, has a warning for U.S. dollar bulls. The prominent economist says that the era of the U.S. buck may be coming to an end and is forecasting a 35% decline soon in the U.S. currency against its major rivals, citing increases in the nation’s deficit and dwindling savings.The lecturer said during CNBC’s “Trading Nation” on Monday that the rise of China and the decoupling of the U.S. from its trade partners is setting the stage for a dramatic weakening of the U.S. currency in the next few years that is likely to end the supremacy of the monetary unit as the world’s reserve currency.
“The dollar is going to fall very, very sharply,” he told the business network.
Roach’s comments follow similarly themed op-ed that he wrote in Bloomberg last week, in which he specifically declared that the “era of the U.S. dollar’s ‘exorbitant privilege’ as the world’s primary reserve currency is coming to an end.
In that article, the economist said that the U.S. economy is already “stressed” by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and suggested that the recession that has gripped the U.S. in February amid the public health crisis will only amplify the dollar’s woes.
More
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-dollar-is-going-to-fall-very-very-sharply-warns-prominent-yale-economist-2020-06-16?mod=mw_latestnews
HSBC Resuscitates Plan to Cut 35,000 Jobs to Boost Growth
By Alfred Liu and Harry Wilson June 17, 2020 HSBC Holdings Plc has restarted cutting as many as 35,000 jobs, three months after the coronavirus outbreak forced it to pause a long-awaited overhaul to boost profitability.“Since February we have pressed forward with some aspects of our transformation program, but we now need to look to the long term and move ahead with others, including reducing our costs,” Chief Executive Officer Noel Quinn said in a memo published Wednesday.
The bank joins rivals such as Deutsche Bank AG and UniCredit SpA in forging ahead with job cuts that were put on hold at the outset of the pandemic. HSBC is also grappling with heightened global tensions, as its support for China’s planned Hong Kong security law opened up fault lines in its key market.
More
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-17/hsbc-restarts-plan-to-cut-35-000-jobs-to-boost-profit-growth?srnd=premium-europe
Air France Readies Plan for 8,300 Voluntary Job Cuts
By Tara Patel
June 17, 2020, 12:38 PM GMT+1
Air France plans to offer about 8,300 staff
incentives to leave the airline, in a bid to cut costs without stirring a
political backlash after receiving a massive state bailout, people familiar
with the proposal said.The Air France-KLM unit will seek the voluntary exit of around 300 pilots, 2,000 cabin crew and 6,000 ground staff, according to the people, who asked not to be named because the plans aren’t public. The cuts could affect 17% of workers, though that may change after union and management talks, they said.
More
Frankfurt Airport Operator to Cut as Many as 4,000 Jobs
By Richard Weiss Fraport AG, the operator of Frankfurt airport, plans to eliminate as many as 4,000 jobs as it braces for years of fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.The company, which employed 22,514 at the end of last year, is downsizing in areas including ground handling and administration, Chief Executive Officer Stefan Schulte said in an interview. Negotiations with unions will begin soon, he added.
“As tough as it is, we will be able to employ between 3,000 to 4,000 fewer people,” the CEO said at an event at the airport. “This is about our perspectives into 2023 and 2024.”
The company last month said the number of passengers at its main hub in Frankfurt could decline by up to 60% this year and still remain as much as 20% below 2019 levels in 2022 or even 2023.
Frankfurt airport says full traffic recovery will take
years
Airlines across Europe and the Middle East have announced more than 100,000 job cuts since the start of the pandemic, with redundancies at manufacturers of aircraft and turbines and at airports swelling the number to more than 130,000, according to Bloomberg calculations.
Fraport is hoping many of the job reductions will come through retirements, and others will have their working hours cut temporarily, the CEO said.
More
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-17/frankfurt-airport-operator-to-cut-as-many-as-4-000-jobs?srnd=premium-europe
Briggs & Stratton Misses Interest Payment, Starts Clock on Grace Period
Board votes to award over $5 million to top executives and employees after company skips interest payment
By June 17, 2020 2:52 pm ET
Briggs & Stratton Corp., the maker of small engines for lawn mowers and other
outdoor maintenance equipment, missed an interest payment this week as it
fights to preserve cash.
The missed payment starts the clock
ticking on a 30-day grace period. The company is unlikely to make up for the
missed $6.7 million interest payment within the 30 days, according to S&P
Global Ratings. Briggs & Stratton has close to $600 million in debt,
including $195 million in bonds maturing Dec. 15. Those bonds have recently
traded around 30 cents on the dollar, according to FactSet.
A company spokesperson wasn’t
immediately available for comment.
Founded 110 years ago, Briggs &
Stratton is the world’s largest maker of small engines. Todd Teske, the
company’s chief executive, said in an earnings call last month that April sales
were down 30%.
The company had been struggling
even before the recession caused by the coronavirus pandemic. In
2019 the company’s sales were soft because of unfavorable weather and the
closure of many Sears stores, where it sold its appliances, according to
S&P.
The company’s net sales fell 18% to
$473 million in the first quarter. It reported a loss of $144 million for the
quarter, compared with year-earlier net income of $8 million.
Briggs & Stratton has taken
steps in the past year to preserve cash in the face of declining sales and
losses since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, such as cutting employee
salaries and benefits and shutting down plants and pursuing sales of its real
estate, according to filings.
While the Wauwatosa, Wis.,
business opted to skip the interest payment, its board voted last week to award
four executives and certain key employees $5.1 million in retention bonuses,
and to restore the salaries of Mr. Teske and other top executives to
prior levels following a pay cut in April, according to regulatory filings. Mr.
Teske will receive a $1.2 million retention bonus.
More
In
China news, yet another accounting mistake surfaces. What is it with Chinese
companies and probity, that Chinese companies have so much difficulty with?
Exclusive: EY finds China copper smelter Fangyuan has misstated accounts - sources
June 17, 2020 /
7:01 AM
BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) - A report by auditor EY found that Shandong
Fangyuan Nonferrous Metals Group, China’s biggest privately held copper
smelter, has been overstating its profit and production levels while
understating its debt, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter.
Its core unit, Dongying Fangyuan Nonferrous Metals Co Ltd, and group
firm Dongying Lufang Metals Material Co Ltd had “significantly higher debt,
lower profitability, (and) lower production volumes,” than publicly disclosed,
one source quoted a summary of the EY report as saying.
The audit covered 2018 and the first three quarters of 2019 for Dongying
Fangyuan, Dongying Lufang, and four other Fangyuan units, the source said.
The second source, who works for a lender to the Fangyuan group and was
briefed on the report prepared for domestic creditors, also told Reuters the
auditor had found Dongying Fangyuan and Dongying Lufang had been misstating
their figures. The source added EY was continuing to dig into the matter and
would be updating creditors.
A Fangyuan group representative said he had no comment. EY said it did
not comment on client matters.
Reuters has not viewed a copy of the report and could not independently
verify its findings.
The sources, who declined to be identified as they were not authorised
to speak on the matter, said the report was distributed to creditors in March
and April.
---- ABN AMRO, a lead arranger of a $430 million syndicated loan from mostly foreign banks for Dongying Fangyuan and Dongying Lufang, declined to comment on the status of its loans. The other lenders did not respond to requests for comment.
Concerns about the Fangyuan group’s financial health intensified late
last year after sharp declines in spot treatment charges for copper concentrate
AM-CN-CUCONC led to fears it would not be able to repay debt.
The group in a statement in December denied speculation circulating in
China online that it had filed for bankruptcy, but said it had “a certain
degree of liquidity shortage”.
More
Rest of the World: What, never?
China: No, never!
Rest of the World: What, never?
China: Well, hardly ever!
With apologies to W. S. Gilbert
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.
The Virus Hunters
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists were searching for potential human pathogens in wild animals. They’ve found thousands
By
SMITHSONIAN
MAGAZINE | July 2020
For more than a decade, Anthony had been discovering new viruses, trying to understand which changes in their makeup transformed them from quiescent inhabitants of bats to ferocious threats to human beings. He’d also been reading the news, and almost as an afterthought, he added a sentence to his grant proposal: At that moment, he said, China was reporting that one person had died from an infection caused by a coronavirus that had never been reported before.
The
next day, he was reading the news on his phone as he walked the six blocks
between his apartment and his lab, and learned that there had been more than
one death. He changed the number in his proposal. A day later, he had to change
it again. “Over the course of a week, the deaths went up, and up, and then they
jumped up,” he recalled to me. “And there was a moment when I thought, Oh my
God. This really could be it. The thing we’ve been talking about for the last
ten years.”
Anthony, who is an assistant professor at Columbia’s Center for Infection and Immunity, has long been aware that the animal world is teeming with pathogens our immune systems have never experienced—and that one of these might trickle unnoticed into the human world and spark a conflagration. But Anthony is also part of a small, influential cadre of researchers who believe that such epidemics can be prevented—if viruses can be detected before they make the fatal leap.
Almost two-thirds of human diseases originate in animals. Measles, first described in the ninth century, is thought to have come from cattle. HIV most likely leapt into our world via monkeys and apes in the 20th century. The most terrifying epidemics of the past generation—West Nile virus, SARS, MERS, Ebola—began when an animal pathogen found its way into a human.
Once or twice a year, a “spillover” of an animal pathogen into people ignites a new infectious human disease. It’s possible there are many more such eruptions in which an animal pathogen flares briefly to life in one or several people and then dies out—either because the virus isn’t well adapted for human spread, or because the infected people live in isolated places and don’t have high levels of contact with others. By one estimate, there are more than 827,000 viruses in the animal world that have the potential to infect humans. We encourage these spillovers whenever we cut roads through the wilderness, clear forests to grow crops, catch wildlife to sell as trophies or butcher for food, or pen chickens and swine in places where bats and wild birds can mingle with them.
More
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/scientists-hunt-viruses-animals-before-strike-humans-180975081/?utm_source=smithsoniandaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20200616-daily-responsive&spMailingID=42746037&spUserID=NjUwNDIzNTUzNDE0S0&spJobID=1781415322&spReportId=MTc4MTQxNTMyMgS2
A Brief History of Johns Hopkins University
Kate Elizabeth
Orgera 15 April 2018
As America’s first
research university and the basis for modern medical education, Johns Hopkins
University has had an incredible impact on its home city of Baltimore and the
world. With a history of over 140 years, here’s a brief overview of this
American institution.
Johns Hopkins (whose unusual
first name came from his great-grandmother’s surname) was a charitable
businessman in 19th-century Baltimore and a key investor in the Baltimore
& Ohio Railroad, the first major railroad in the United States. Hopkins
had been pulled out of school to help run the family plantation as a boy, but
he desired to give others the opportunity to get an education.
He had also
witnessed Baltimore’s distress in the wake of war and major fever epidemics and
wanted to use his legacy to create better healthcare through education. Most
“medical schools” in the U.S. at this time were basically trade schools, which
didn’t require a degree. Upon his death in 1873, Johns Hopkins granted $7
million—then the largest philanthropic endowment in U.S. history, and worth
over $150 million today—to establish a hospital and associated training
colleges, a university, and an orphanage in his name.
The Johns Hopkins University opened in downtown Baltimore on February 22, 1876, with Daniel Coit Gilman as its first president. Gilman and the trustees dedicated the university to “Knowledge for the world,” making original research the backbone of the institution. Though built on existing German university models, this was a big change from what American colleges were doing at the time. To that end, Gilman launched a university publication agency in 1878 to print and issue their research. Later renamed the Johns Hopkins University Press, it is now the oldest continuously running university press in the U.S.
More
https://theculturetrip.com/north-america/usa/maryland/articles/a-brief-history-of-johns-hopkins-university/
Johns Hopkins
Johns
Hopkins
(May 19, 1795[2] –
December 24, 1873) was an American entrepreneur, abolitionist and philanthropist of
19th-century Baltimore, Maryland.
----Apparent
also in the literature of the times was opposition, and support for, the
various other ways he expressed opposition to the racial practices that were
beginning to emerge, and re-emerge as well, in the city of Baltimore, the state
of Maryland, the nation and in the posthumously constructed and founded
institutions that would carry his name,[21] A Baltimore American
journalist praised Hopkins for founding three institutions, a university, a
hospital and an orphan asylum, specifically for colored children, adding that
Hopkins was a "man (beyond his times) who knew no race" citing his
provisions for both blacks and whites in the plans for his hospital. The
reporter also pointed to similarities between Benjamin Franklin's and
Johns Hopkins' views on hospital care and construction, such as their shared
interest in free hospitals and the availability of emergency services without
prejudice.
This article, first published in 1870, also accompanied Hopkins'
obituary in the Baltimore American as a tribute in 1873. Cited in many
of the newspaper articles on him during his lifetime and immediately after his
death were his provisions of scholarships for the poor, and quality health
services for the underserved, the poor without regard to their age, sex and
color, the colored children asylum and other orphanages, the mentally ill and
convalescents.
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.
No technology update
today. Today something far more interesting. What is Her Majesty’s Government (and
the BBC,) hiding in the Skripal novichok poisoning case, and why?
I am told that the
first rule in spook-land is to trust no one. Not even on your own side. You
just never know who’s gone over to the “enemy,” or is actually secretly building
a case against you!
Enjoy, the whole
article is well worth the read.
Pure: Ten Points I Just Can’t Believe About the Official Skripal Narrative
7 Mar, 2019
I still do not know what happened in the Skripal saga, which perhaps
might more respectfully be termed the Sturgess saga. I cannot believe the
Russian account of Boshirov and Petrov, because if those were their real
identities, those identities would have been firmly established and displayed
by now. But that does not mean they attempted to kill the Skripals, and there
are many key elements to the official British account which are also simply
incredible.
Governments play dark games, and a dark game was played out in Salisbury
which involved at least the British state, Russian agents (possibly on behalf
of the state), Orbis Intelligence and the BBC.
Anybody who believes it is
simple to identify the “good guys” and the “bad guys” in this situation is a
fool. When it comes to state actors and the intelligence services, frequently
there are no “good guys”, as I personally witnessed from the inside over
torture, extraordinary rendition and the illegal invasion of Iraq. But in the
face of a massive media campaign to validate the British government story about
the Skripals, here are ten of the things I do not believe in the official
account:
---- 2) Raising the Roof
Three days ago Sky News had an outside broadcast from the front of the Skripals’ house in Salisbury, where they explained that the roof had been removed and replaced due to contamination with “novichok”.
I cannot believe that a gel, allegedly smeared or painted onto the doorknob, migrated upwards to get into the roof of a two storey house, in such a manner that the roof had to be destroyed, but the house inbetween did not. As the MSM never questions the official narrative, there has never been an official answer as to how the gel got from the doorknob to the roof. Remember that traces of the “novichok” were allegedly found in a hotel room in Poplar, which is still in use as a hotel room and did not have to be destroyed, and an entire bottle of it was allegedly found in Charlie Rowley’s house, which has not had to be destroyed. Novichok was found in Zizzi’s restaurant, which did not have to be destroyed.
So we are talking about novichok in threatening quantities – more than the traces allegedly found in the hotel in Poplar – being in the Skripals’ roof. How could this happen?
As I said in the onset, I do not know what happened, I only know what I do not believe. There are theories that Skripal and his daughter might themselves have been involved with novichok in some way. On the face of it, its presence in their roof might support that theory.
The second thing I do not believe is that the Skripals’ roof became contaminated by gel on their doorknob so that the roof had to be destroyed, whereas no other affected properties, nor the rest of the Skripals’ house, had to be destroyed.
3) Nursing Care
The very first person to discover the Skripals ill on a park bench in Salisbury just happened to be the Chief Nurse of the British Army, who chanced to be walking past them on her way back from a birthday party. How lucky was that? The odds are about the same as the chance of my vacuum cleaner breaking down just before James Dyson knocks at my door to ask for directions. There are very few people indeed in the UK trained to give nursing care to victims of chemical weapon attack, and of all the people who might have walked past, it just happened to be the most senior of them!
The government is always trying to get good publicity for its armed forces, and you would think that the heroic role of its off-duty personnel in saving random poisoned Russian double agents they just happened to chance across, would have been proclaimed as a triumph for the British military. Yet it was kept secret for ten months. We were not told about the involvement of Colonel Alison McCourt until January of this year, when it came out by accident. Swollen with maternal pride, Col. McCourt nominated her daughter for an award from the local radio station for her role in helping give first aid to the Skripals, and young Abigail revealed her mother’s identity on local radio – and the fact her mother was there “with her” administering first aid.
Even then, the compliant MSM played along, with the Guardian and Sky News both among those running stories emphasising entirely the Enid Blyton narrative of “plucky teenager saves the Skripals”, and scarcely mentioning the Army’s Chief Nurse who was looking after the Skripals “with little Abigail”.
I want to emphasise again that Col. Alison McCourt is not the chief nurse of a particular unit or hospital, she is the Chief Nurse of the entire British Army. Her presence was kept entirely quiet by the media for ten months, when all sorts of stories were run in the MSM about who the first responders were – various doctors and police officers being mentioned.
If you believe that it is coincidence that the Chief Nurse of the British Army was the first person to discover the Skripals ill, you are a credulous fool. And why was it kept quiet?
----Conclusion
I do not know what happened in Salisbury. Plainly spy games were being played between Russia and the UK, quite likely linked to the Skripals and/or the NATO chemical weapons exercise then taking place on Salisbury Plain yet another one of those astonishing coincidences.
What I do know is that major planks of the UK government narrative simply do not stand up to scrutiny.
Plainly the Russian authorities have lied about the identity of Boshirov and Petrov. What is astonishing is the alacrity with which the MSM and the political elite have rallied around the childish logical fallacy that because the Russian Government has lied, therefore the British Government must be telling the truth. It is abundantly plain to me that both governments are lying, and the spy games being played out that day were very much more complicated than a pointless revenge attack on the Skripals.
I do not believe the British Government. I have given you the key points where the official narrative completely fails to stand up. These are by no means exhaustive, and I much look forward to reading your own views.
In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone.
John Kenneth Galbraith.
The Monthly Coppock Indicators finished May
DJIA: 25,383 +12 Down. NASDAQ: 9,490 +178 Up.
SP500: 3,044 +83 Down.
The NASDAQ has remained up.
The S&P and the DJIA still remain down despite the best efforts of the Fed
to get them to go higher.
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