Saturday, 13 June 2020

Special Update 13/06/2020 USA – Best Ever Year 2021 Official.


Baltic Dry Index. 923 +84  Brent Crude 38.73
Spot Gold 1731

Covid-19 cases 09/05/20 World 4,014,265
Deaths 276,236

Covid-19 cases 06/06/20 World 6,895,132
Deaths 400,982

Covid-19 cases 13/06/20 World 7,862,255
Deaths 433,526

“I see the numbers also, and do MUCH better than they do,” Trump said of the Fed, without mentioning Powell by name. “We will have a very good Third Quarter, a great Fourth Quarter, and one of our best ever years in 2021,” the president said.

In the White House bunker 2020, as in Berlin bunker January through April 1945, hope and self delusion replace reality.

From what I see in my limited view in the once prosperous middle Thames Valley, many boarded up firms don’t seem likely to reopen at all, let alone next week.

Many older UK residents, I live in a complex catering to the over 60s that allowed medium sized dogs like my late Border Collie Rosie, seem to like and have adapted to down sized shopping and spending. Many seem to have taken up vegetable and tomato growing again.

I suspect, returning to 2019s conspicuous consumption levels again, is many months, if not years away.

Worryingly, in reopening US states, we seem to be reopening Covid-19 cases again. Has all the recent global social disorder just triggered a second Covid-19 wave?

But we open with yesterday’s relief rally in stocks. After three days of Dow minus 2,300, the relief rally generated a 477 point bounce. How they all rejoiced in the White House bunker, like January 45 in Berlin.

That sleepy Joe Biden isn’t headed for a landslide victory says much about the politics of USA 2020.

Dow closes nearly 500 points higher as stocks make partial rebound from worst day in three months


Published: June 12, 2020 at 10:36 p.m. ET
U.S. stocks closed higher Friday in choppy trading as Wall Street attempted to recover from Thursday’s steep losses but left the benchmark indexes with their biggest weekly losses since March 20.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +1.90% gained 477.37 points, or 1.9%, to close at 25,605.54, after touching an intra-session peak of 25,965.55 and a low of 25,183.

The S&P 500 index SPX, +1.30% added 39.21 points, or 1.3%, at 3.041.31, off its intraday peak at 3,088 but also off its low at 3,003.10. The Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, +1.01% climbed 96.08 points, or 1%, to 9,588.81, after briefly slipping into negative territory at 9,485.04.

On Thursday all three indexes saw their sharpest one-day drops since March 16. The S&P 500 and the Dow finished at their lowest levels since May 26, while the Nasdaq ended at its lowest since May 29, according to Dow Jones Market Data.

For the week, the Dow lost 5.55%, the S&P 500 fell 4.8%, and the Nasdaq was off 2.33%.

Investors are assessing the state of the stock-market’s 10-week rally, a day after equity indexes registered a bruising decline prompted by fears of a resurgence in the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S. and a bleak economic outlook from the head of the Federal Reserve.

Indeed, the International Monetary Fund’s Gita Gopinath said that the global economy is recovering more slowly than expected and faces “significant scarring,” Bloomberg News reported. In a video released Friday but recorded June 4, Gopinath said the IMF will release updated growth projections on June 24 that will likely be worse than April projections for a global contraction of 3%, if the disease lingers.

Fears of an emerging second wave of the epidemic in the U.S. persist, with half a dozen states, including Texas and Arizona, facing rising infections of COVID-19. Arizona, Utah and New Mexico all posted rises in new cases of 40% or higher, while Florida, Arkansas, South Carolina and North Carolina saw cases rise by more than 30% for the week ended June 7, on a rolling seven-day basis, according to Reuters.

Richmond Federal Reserve Bank President Tom Barkin on Friday, during a webcast panel discussion sponsored by the Virginia Tech Office of Economic Development, said that the pandemic could have effects that last beyond the next couple of months and cautioned that some of the millions of jobs that have been lost during the viral outbreak may never return, echoing similar remarks made by Fed Chairman Jerome Powell on Wednesday.
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"The Stock Market Is Deluding Itself"

Prominent American economist Nouriel Roubini does not believe the global economy will recover quickly. He believes that the dire situation will produce a summer of protest in the U.S. and years of difficulties in Europe as well.

Interview Conducted by Tim Bartz  12.06.2020, 18.26 Uhr

DER SPIEGEL: Mr. Roubini, the pandemic has brought the global economy to its knees, and millions of people have lost their jobs. Is the crisis as severe as the Great Depression of the 1930s?

Roubini: The crash is even greater than it was then. It took years from 1929 until the full extent of the crisis became visible. Compared to today, it was like a slow-motion train wreck. Now the world economy has collapsed within weeks, and in the U.S. alone, more than 40 million people are unemployed. Many believe that the economy will pick up again just as quickly, but that is a fallacy.

DER SPIEGEL: You don't believe in a V-shaped recovery despite the huge economic stimulus packages? After all, 2.5 million new jobs were created again in the U.S. in May.

Roubini: Of course, we will see an upswing in the second half of the year. But it will not be a real one, but a delusion. The economy has fallen so steeply that it is practically inevitable that it will pick up again at some point. But that won't compensate for the crash in any way. Even at the end of 2021, the U.S. economy will still be below the level of early 2020; too much has broken down. And the unemployment rate will level off at 16 or 17 percent - during the financial crisis it was only 10 percent. The job creation in May was only 2.4 million after 42 million lost their jobs in the last few months. And the actual unemployment rate is much higher than officially measured.

DER SPIEGEL: The stock market obviously sees things differently, with shares already trading at the same level as at the beginning of the year.

Roubini: The stock market is deluding itself. Investors are betting that there will be further economic stimulus packages and a V-shaped recovery of profits. But for the people here in the U.S., that means nothing.

DER SPIEGEL: Since when have Americans not cared about the stock market?

Roubini: On Wall Street, big corporations set the tone, banks and technology companies in particular. They will survive the crisis because the state will never let them go under. They will kick people out, cut costs and in the end, they will have even more market power than before. But what we here call Main Street, small- and medium-sized companies, can't do that. They just go bankrupt. I estimate that every second restaurant in New York City will have to close, but McDonald's will survive. But that's not all.
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Last Saturday we wrote: 

“On Friday, the US  Bureau of Lying Statistics blitzed US economists taking no prisoners along the way. In a fantasyland, seemingly at war with itself, far from a rise in unemployment of about 7.8 million, the economist consensus figure, according to the BLS, there was a surprise rise of 2.5 million new jobs in the US economy in May.


The word “surprise” being something of a British understatement.”

Today, a little more on the magic of lying statistics.

The great economic data crisis

Jun 8, 2020
Economists have long been disparaged for inaccurate predictions, but Friday's jobs report laid bare a new problem for the world's largest economy: questionable data.

Why it matters: Economic data is a crucial element in the movement of asset prices that determine what Americans pay for just about everything.
  • It's not just the stock market — the yield on U.S. Treasury bonds helps set rates for mortgages, student loans, credit cards and more.
  • Market moves also determine the value of assets like oil and the dollar, based largely on economic data.
Driving the news: The government's jobs report on Friday wasn't just much better than expected — showing the U.S. added 2.5 million jobs in May, 10 million more than economists predicted — it was full of inexplicable holes and numbers that contradicted other government readings.
  • To wit, as DRW Trading rates strategist Lou Brien points out, the Labor Department's unemployment insurance report showed that for the week ending May 16 there were 29,965,415 unemployed people receiving unemployment benefits.
  • The Labor Department's jobs report — which surveys individuals and businesses during the week of May 16 — found there were 20,985,000 unemployed people.
  • That would mean there were 9 million more people receiving unemployment benefits than there were unemployed people during the exact same survey week.
What they're saying: "Safe to say it is fair to be a bit skeptical of the numbers," Brien said in a note to clients.
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https://www.axios.com/economic-data-questionable-may-jobs-report-86fbf2fe-d7c5-4fdb-8b55-3e2d5ca1675d.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosmarkets&stream=business

From Axios elsewhere on the same subject.

1 big thing: The truth about the May jobs report

The responses of less than 41,000 people were used to determine a major part of last month's U.S. unemployment rate, the Bureau of Labor Statistics tells Axios.

Why it matters: That's the lowest number in modern history and is one of many unusual developments in government data collection that have been impacting important readings for months.

What it means: The surprises in May's nonfarm payrolls report, which found there were only 21 million unemployed while 30 million Americans were collecting unemployment insurance benefits, were largely the result of oddities in data collection.
  • A portion of the jobs report is determined by a household survey in which government workers interview people at their homes and determine whether any person over the age of 16 is "employed, unemployed, or not in the labor force" — the only three possible designations.
What's happening: The coronavirus pandemic has "depressed" survey responses since March, as BLS stopped conducting in-person meetings, restricting its ability to reach new households, Julie Hatch Maxfield, BLS associate commissioner for employment and unemployment statistics, tells Axios.
  • "The first month of the sample we get a lot of information and that sets up the whole thing going forward," she says.
  • This has taken the response rate from 82% in January to 73% in March to 67% in May.
  • "Response rates probably will be depressed even when interviewers go back into the field," Maxfield notes.
What else: In May, BLS identified 9 million people who had lost their jobs but were counted as "not in the labor force" rather than unemployed because they hadn't been searching for a job in the last four weeks due to the pandemic.
  • If those people were considered unemployed it would have taken the unemployment rate to 17.9%.
  • A similar calculation would have put the unemployment rate at 19.8% in April and 7.5% in March, BLS says in a report about the coronavirus pandemic's impact on its data.
  • A separate "misclassification error" categorized millions of workers who had been absent and likely lost their jobs as employed.
  • Additionally, workers who were paid by their employer for any part of the pay period including the 12th of the month were counted as employed, even if they weren't actually at their jobs.
End.

In other news, did pilots forget how to fly during all the lockdowns?

FAA Warns of Tail Strikes, Off-Course Flying by Near-Empty Jets Alan Levin Jun 12 2020, 1:30 PM

Jun 12 2020, 1:30 PM Jun 12 2020, 6:09 PM

One nearly empty passenger jet “climbed like a rocket,” prompting the pilots to exceed their assigned altitude. Others have scraped their tails on takeoff, gone off course or strayed close enough to other aircraft to prompt mid-air collision alerts. The common thread: the massive disruptions to the U.S. airline industry caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

While the plunge in travel has in many ways eased pressure on roads and the aviation system, it has at times had the opposite effect on safety. The rate of highway deaths has actually risen as motorists speed on empty roads. And the drop in airline passengers has triggered an unusual spate of incidents that are challenging flight safety, according to publicly available reports as well as government, industry and union officials. Moreover, the slow rise in air traffic is creating its own demands as parked aircraft are restored to service and pilots who may have missed training sessions are recalled.

The Commercial Aviation Safety Team, comprised of the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, unions and airline officials, last month issued more than 50 warnings to carriers on the unusual factors they need to monitor more closely during the recent industry disruptions, according to documents reviewed by Bloomberg.

They include tracking safety data related to unusually light aircraft, the stresses from employees fearing they could become infected by Covid-19 and possible fuel contamination on planes that were parked. “These dynamic changes are creating stress points on our systems and processes,” the group said in one of the documents.
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Finally, some seriously bad news on the Covid-19 front.

Florida sees biggest number of coronavirus cases in one day since outbreak began

Published: June 12, 2020 at 4:40 a.m. ET
Florida on Thursday broke its record for the highest number of coronavirus cases reported in a single day since the beginning of the pandemic.

The Sunshine’s State department of health reported 1,698 new COVID-19 infections — almost 20 percent higher than the previous daily high of 1,419 cases recorded last Thursday.

There are now at least 69,069 reported cases and 2,848 deaths tied to the outbreak in Florida, according to the latest numbers released Thursday.

Gov. Ron DeSantis was asked whether he would consider rolling back reopening plans over the increase in cases — and said the spike was tied to an increase in testing, according to Local 10 News in Tallahassee.

Florida reports having completed over 1.3 million COVID-19 tests, with 5.3 percent coming back positive, according to the outlet.
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‘It’s staggering:’ Doctors sound alarm as severely ill COVID-19 patients develop damaging blood clots

By Jennifer Horton | June 10, 2020 at 9:40 PM CDT - Updated June 10 at 11:08 PM
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (WSFA) - As a cardiology research fellow at UAB, Dr. Vibhu Parcha is treating some of the sickest COVID-19 patients.

“It was almost instantaneous that we started to know that almost every COVID patient that was admitted was having some derangement in their clotting profile,” Parcha stated.

Universally, COVID patients are being admitted to UAB with blood clotting issues, a manifestation of the virus. Even those who are very healthy aren’t immune. While some patients develop blood clots as the virus progresses, others are admitted after suffering from a stroke or heart attack brought on by the virus.

“Young patients are coming in with no comorbidities and they’re coming in with strokes and kidney failure, a lot of patients who do develop strokes do not completely recover,” he explained. “It’s staggering.”

Parcha says he recently treated a 30-year-old who attempted to fight the virus at home. Due to clotting issues, he now has permanent heart damage. Parcha says if the patient had come in three days earlier, it could have changed his life.

“We’ve had a range of patients that we’ve seen,” Parcha said of the patients’ ages and health conditions. “We had a 35-year-old guy who had a five kids, he was doing really well before the pandemic came in. He was admitted with us, we took very good care of him. We tried our best. He was with us in the intensive care unit. He did not make it.”

Most of the blood clots are in the lungs, but also impact other major organs. Some doctors go as far to say COVID-19 is one of the most clot-producing diseases they’ve ever treated.

“As more data and evidence accumulates we’ll have a better understanding of what regulates the fact that some have higher manifestations of the clotting disorder, while others don’t,” he said.

Parcha explained that some of the patients who are taking blood thinners for other health conditions prior to contracting the virus can have better outcomes.

“There is some anecdotal evidence which suggests that people who are on anticoagulants or who are given systemic anticoagulants seem to do better, especially in intensive care settings,” he said.

Parcha’s currently enrolling patients in a trial that uses nitric oxide to help the gases in the lungs transfer properly after the overall lung function is decreased by COVID-19.

“This is primarily because the blood supply to the functional portion of the lungs is restricted by these micro-clots, which is making parts of the lung nonfunctional so if there is no blood supply to the small portions of the lungs called alveoli,” he explained. “So the functional capacity of the lung goes down and that kind of manifests as the entire lung disease spectrum of the COVID-19.”
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This weekend’s musical diversion. Austria’s almost unknown W.A Mozart.  

I have had the privilege of hearing this sung during Holy Communion at 10:30 Sunday Mass in St Edward the Confessor RC Church, Palm Beach Florida. Their choir of sometimes retired professional singers, were up to any challenge and were magnificent. Not sure if they can still perform in current conditions.



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“Stupidity got us into this mess, and stupidity will get us out.”

Sleepy Joe Biden, with apologies to Homer Simpson.



DJIA: 25,383 +12 Down. NASDAQ: 9,490 +178 Up. SP500: 3,044 +83 Down.

The NASDAQ has rebounded to up. The S&P and the DJIA remain down. But the game is now totally rigged by the Fed.

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