Baltic Dry Index. 1501 +01 Brent Crude 44.40
Spot Gold 2036
If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents,
he would promise them missionaries for dinner.
H. L. Mencken.
As our central banksters, led
by America’s Fed, flood planet earth with unlimited amounts of new fiat cash created
out of nothing, nothing other than a new stock mania and bubble on Wall Street seems
to be the result.
On Main Street, the employment
dead cat bounce seems to be over. Killed off by America’s apparent inability to
get control of the Covid-19 pandemic and get the US non-financial economy out
of its one foot in the grave posture.
Of course, none of the wider
economy is helped by Washington politicians all fighting over the spoils of the
November elections. President Trump reigniting his trade wars on China and
Canada. Both have promised an eye for an eye.
Nor, given the precarious
employment prospects in nearly all of the G-20 nations, an increasing unwillingness
to spend in the general public, and an increasing preference to save among
those fortunate to be able to save.
But perhaps, most worrying of
immediate concern, nearly all of America’s multi millions of newly unemployed,
are facing their second weekend without that extra $600 supplement from the
Federal government. That the Fed is driving “stocks to the moon, leaving no billionaire
behind,” is of little consequence to most I suspect.
Below, when something is about
to give. Bunker time.
Stimulus negotiations stall; Trump promises to take action
Aug. 7, 2020 / 10:14 AM / Updated Aug. 7,
2020 at 7:59 PM
Aug. 7 (UPI) -- During a primetime news conference Friday, President Donald
Trump said he plans to take action to extend some coronavirus relief
benefits after negotiators were unable to come to terms on a stimulus package
earlier in the day.He made the announcement during a last-minute news conference at the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster in New Jersey, where he traveled to late Thursday.
It's unclear if he imminently plans to sign executive orders or if his remarks Friday were meant to pressure Democrats to support the terms he seeks in the next coronavirus relief bill.
"If Democrats continue to hold this critical relief hostage, I will act under my authority as president to get Americans the relief they need," Trump said.
He accused Democrats of insisting on "radical, left-wing policies that have nothing to do" with the novel coronavirus that has killed more than 160,000 Americans.
Of the benefits he seeks to implement are a deferment of the payroll tax retroactive to July 1 until the end of the year; an extension of enhanced unemployment benefits until the end of the year; an extension of the eviction moratorium; ad a deferment of student loan payments and interest accrual "until further notice."
Trump's announcement comes after negotiations between Democrats and administration officials fell apart. The leaders set Friday as a deadline to come to an agreement for the next stimulus package, but were unable to do so.
More
Jobs Report Satisfies Everyone and No One
Brian Chappatta August 7, 2020
(Bloomberg Opinion)
-- Investors who expected that the July jobs report would compel congressional
officials to avoid a collapse in negotiations on a new coronavirus relief
bill were met instead with data that seems likely to entrench Democrats and
Republicans in their positions.
Just
consider the headline number: U.S. payrolls increased by 1.76 million in July.
On the one hand, that beat estimates for a 1.48 million gain, but it’s also
down from a 4.79 million pickup in June and 2.72 million advance in May. Is
this a sign that the economic recovery is better than expectations or
an indication that progress is sputtering? Either way, the jobless rate
remains in the double digits, which would seemingly bolster the argument of
Democrats that Congress needs to extend the $600-a-week supplemental
unemployment insurance payment from the last stimulus.
---- Ian Lyngen, head of U.S. rates
strategy at BMO Capital Markets, captured the market mood before the jobs data:
“Given stocks are near the highs and Treasury yields near the lows, it follows
intuitively that ‘something’s got to give.’”
Or, perhaps
not. The benchmark 10-year Treasury yield was little changed, hovering around
0.53%, and the rest of the yield curve barely budged. The S&P 500 Index
fluctuated. Few traders, if any, are betting that Congress will fail entirely
to come up with any sort of relief deal — the stakes are simply too high
to let that happen. But it’s probably not going to match the size of the last
package. “The easiest progress is behind us,” Chris Low at FHN Financial wrote
before the jobs data.
If July’s
jobs report leads to a more subdued fiscal package, it stands to reason that
the Federal Reserve will be more likely to dig deeper into its own monetary
policy toolkit to ignite the U.S. economy. For instance, 30-year yields are
settling in at less than 1.2%, perhaps on wagers that the central bank will
skew its bond purchases to the longest-dated debt. It’s also worth
noting that the yield spread between two-year and three-year
Treasuries briefly inverted this week for the first time since March. There’s
not really any good reason for that to happen if you believe Chicago Fed
President Charles Evans, Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester and Dallas Fed
President Robert Kaplan, each of whom dismissed negative interest rates just
this week. But if the economy is still struggling in 2022, might they change
their tune?
One ominous
long-term figure from July’s jobs report: the labor force participation rate.
Even during the longest U.S. expansion on record, it never came close to
reaching its pre-financial crisis levels. After suffering a record decline
in April, it looked as if it was on the rebound in May and June. But it dipped
last month, in contrast to estimates for another increase, and if that
continues it could be a significant drag on growth.
More
Canada to impose tariffs on $2.7 billion in U.S. goods after Trump reignites trade feud
“Canada will respond swiftly and strongly,” Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said at a news conference.
“We will impose dollar-for-dollar countermeasures in a balanced and perfectly reciprocal retaliation,” she said. “We will not escalate and we will not back down.”
Freeland said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will spend the next 30 days consulting with Canadian citizens and businesses on a broad list of aluminum-containing products. Canada’s new duties on U.S. imports, she said, will total 3.6 billion Canadian dollars ($2.7 billion).
Trump, during a speech Thursday at a Whirlpool manufacturing plant in Ohio, announced that he had signed a proclamation reimposing 10% tariffs on aluminum imports from Canada that had been lifted more than a year earlier. The president complained that Canada was putting American workers in the aluminum industry at a disadvantage.
“The aluminum business was being decimated by Canada,” he said.
Trudeau vowed to enact countermeasures against the U.S. just hours after Trump’s announcement.
More
In Covid-19 news, a little
good news and a lot of bad news.
U.S. surpasses 160,000 coronavirus deaths as school openings near
U.S. deaths
from the coronavirus pandemic exceeded 160,000 on Friday, nearly a quarter of
the world’s total, according to a Reuters tally, as the country debates whether
schools are ready to reopen their doors in the coming weeks.
The country
with the most coronavirus cases, the United States recorded 160,003 deaths and
4.91 million cases. Coronavirus deaths are rising in 23 states and cases in 20
states, according to a Reuters analysis of data the past two weeks compared
with the prior two weeks.
On a
per-capita basis, the United States ranks 10th highest in the world for both
cases and deaths.
The grim
milestone marks an increase of 10,000 deaths in nine days in the United States.
Many of the
new deaths have come from California, Florida and Texas, the top three U.S.
states for total cases. While infections appear to be declining in those
states, new outbreaks are emerging coast to coast.
White House
coronavirus task force coordinator, Dr. Deborah Birx, warned that Boston,
Chicago, Detroit and Washington could face outbreaks due to increases in the
percentage of coronavirus tests coming back positive.
More
Smell-Loss Survey Suggests Covid Widespread in Health Workers
By Theo Golden
August 6, 2020, 11:30 PM GMT+1
A large proportion of U.K. health-care workers may have
been infected with coronavirus early in the pandemic, according to a survey
suggesting that loss of smell and taste may be a guide to determining its
prevalence in populations.About two-thirds of the London National Health Service staffers surveyed reported diminished ability to taste or smell -- one of the prominent, early symptoms of Covid-19 -- just weeks after the coronavirus arrived in the U.K., according to research published Thursday in The Lancet Microbe journal.
Health-care professionals on the front lines are far more likely to contract the virus compared with individuals in the general community, earlier studies have found. Yet it’s unclear how many NHS staff have contracted the virus as testing has been limited. The high rate of the loss of smell, called anosmia, suggests that a larger proportion may have been infected than previously thought.
“Some people get smell loss before other symptoms, or as the only symptom,” of Covid, said Carl Philpott, professor of rhinology at the University of East Anglia’s Norwich Medical School, in an interview. “It has a sudden onset, so people really notice the difference.”
Anosmia
should be used more frequently to identify Covid-19 outbreaks and patients,
Philpott said. Data from coronavirus tracking apps has shown that smell loss
and fatigue are more likely to occur than cough and fever in patients, he said.
Philpott
said he’s collected more data showing that anosmia was widespread among health
workers in other U.K. regions, including including Norfolk and the North West.
Greater recognition of the early symptom might allow more infected people to be
isolated early on, rather than spreading the virus unaware of their status, he
said.
People who
experience the symptom also risk longer term sensation deficits, he said.
“We think
about 60% of people with coronavirus are experiencing smell loss and 10-15% of
those have permanent smell loss that doesn’t resolve in 3-4 weeks,” he said.
“These are unprecedented numbers.
The survey
was completed by 242 health workers in the week ending April 23, before the
U.K. officially added smell loss to Covid’s symptoms on May 17.
Immunology Is Where Intuition Goes to Die
Which is too bad because we really need to understand how the
immune system reacts to the coronavirus.
Ed YongAugust 5, 2020
---- Immunity, then, is usually a matter of degrees, not absolutes. And it lies at the heart of many of the COVID-19 pandemic’s biggest questions. Why do some people become extremely ill and others don’t? Can infected people ever be sickened by the same virus again? How will the pandemic play out over the next months and years? Will vaccination work?
To answer these questions, we must first understand how the immune system reacts to SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. Which is unfortunate because, you see, the immune system is very complicated.
It works, roughly, like this.
The first of three phases involves detecting a threat, summoning help, and launching the counterattack. It begins as soon as a virus drifts into your airways, and infiltrates the cells that line them.
When cells sense molecules common to pathogens and uncommon to humans, they produce proteins called cytokines. Some act like alarms, summoning and activating a diverse squad of white blood cells that go to town on the intruding viruses—swallowing and digesting them, bombarding them with destructive chemicals, and releasing yet more cytokines. Some also directly prevent viruses from reproducing (and are delightfully called interferons). These aggressive acts lead to inflammation. Redness, heat, swelling, soreness—these are all signs of the immune system working as intended.
This initial set of events is part of what’s called the innate immune system. It’s quick, occurring within minutes of the virus’s entry. It’s ancient, using components that are shared among most animals. It’s generic, acting in much the same way in everyone. And it’s broad, lashing out at anything that seems both nonhuman and dangerous, without much caring about which specific pathogen is afoot. What the innate immune system lacks in precision, it makes up for in speed. Its job is to shut down an infection as soon as possible. Failing that, it buys time for the second phase of the immune response: bringing in the specialists.
Amid all the fighting in your airways, messenger cells grab small fragments of virus and carry these to the lymph nodes, where highly specialized white blood cells—T-cells—are waiting. The T-cells are selective and preprogrammed defenders. Each is built a little differently, and comes ready-made to attack just a few of the zillion pathogens that could possibly exist. For any new virus, you probably have a T-cell somewhere that could theoretically fight it. Your body just has to find and mobilize that cell. Picture the lymph nodes as bars full of grizzled T-cell mercenaries, each of which has just one type of target they’re prepared to fight. The messenger cell bursts in with a grainy photo, showing it to each mercenary in turn, asking: Is this your guy? When a match is found, the relevant merc arms up and clones itself into an entire battalion, which marches off to the airways.
More. Much, much, more.
Machine Detects COVID-19 in 90 Minutes
Health officials are already ordering
thousands.
7 August, 2020
A small UK-based DNA testing company called DnaNudge has
come up with a toaster-sized machine that can detect COVID-19 in just 90
minutes, Bloomberg
reports, no lab analysis needed.The UK’s National Health Service has already ordered 5,000 of the machines, as well as cartridges to start testing coronavirus patients, as part of a $211 million contract.
The machine was originally designed to help people tailor their diet based on their heredity, according to Bloomberg. But founder Christofer Toumazou, a professor at Imperial College London, made a U-turn in light of the growing pandemic.
“My dream has been to bring testing like this to the consumer,” Toumazou told Bloomberg. “A test that can demystify and simplify that quickly — rather than leaving people in doubt — is going to be very useful.”
All the machine needs is a nose swab or some saliva to detect traces of the coronavirus. It can even detect other diseases such as the flu and a common virus infection called Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV). It will also notify the user if a proper sample has been taken or if a test needs to be retaken.
More
Some useful Covid links.
Johns Hopkins Coronavirus
resource centre
Rt Covid-19
Covid19info.live
08.04.2020 07:00 AM
The American Scientists Who Saved London From Nazi Drones
For months, German V-1s terrorized the
city. To take them down, US physicists had to develop a “smart fuse”—a task
they were told was practically impossible.
---- Witnesses who glimpsed the four Nazi aircraft that reached English soil that morning came to similar conclusions as the firemen. The objects looked like crippled planes. From below, observers saw “nothing but a black shape with sheets of flame spurting out behind it.” Dark silhouettes appeared over farms like burning black swords knifing through night.
It was not
until a few days later, when 73 of them reached greater London, that citizens
began to learn the truth of the German “buzz bombs.” They were V-1s,
4,900-pound winged missiles flying on autopilot. London newspapers announcing
the arrival of “pilotless warplanes” assured readers, “Our scientists will
defeat it.” The Evening Standard ran a column titled “How the Robot
Works.” Another article, “How to Spot Ghost Planes,” detailed the craft’s
telltale characteristics: its “terrific speed,” the flames from its exhaust,
and its loud buzzing vibrations. The peculiar aircraft weren’t “crashing.”
Their noisy engines were cutting out above the city, leaving the 1,800-pound
warheads to drift down silently to their marks. “When the engine of the
pilotless aircraft stops,” the Evening News advised, Londoners should
take cover, as “it may mean that the explosion will soon follow—perhaps in five
to 15 seconds.”
In the first
two weeks of the siege, the German air force launched an estimated 1,585
drones, over 1,100 of which successfully crossed the Channel. British Royal Air
Force pilots managed to shoot down only 315 of them. Five hundred and
fifty-eight struck greater London.
Ack-ack
guns, which usually defended the capital against Luftwaffe bombers, went
silent. Shooting at the V-1s over the city, after all, could only succeed in
bringing the pilotless aircraft down on their intended target. Gun sites went
silent as flocks of noxious drones moaned and blustered, dove, exploded, and
wrecked the city anew. After three weeks, Prime Minister Winston Churchill
disclosed, the V-1s had claimed 2,752 lives and injured some 8,000, devastating
figures not seen in London since the end of the Blitz three years prior.
More
T.G. ALBINONI: «La Statira» T.201 [Sinfonia], La Serenissima
The Monthly Coppock Indicators finished July
DJIA: 26,428 -1 Up. NASDAQ: 10,745 +243
Up. SP500: 3,271 +89 Up.
The NASDAQ has remained up. The DJIA and SP500 have turned up. With
stock mania running fueled by trillions of central bankster new fiat money
programs, I would not rely on the indicators.
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