Baltic Dry Index. 1269 -27 Brent Crude 39.93
Spot Gold 1939
Coronavirus Cases 11/9/20 World 28,276,861
Deaths 922,633
Gold would have value if for no other reason than that it
enables a citizen to fashion his financial escape from the state.
William F. Rickenbacker
In the central bankster stock casinos, more of the same.
Churn and burn, burn and churn, easy come easy go, fiat money, paper wealth
destruction.
If I didn’t know better, of course, I might think that
the central banksters were losing control of their “no billionaire left behind”
money giveaway program.
Or worse, some on Wall Street are sabotaging President
Trump’s re-election campaign, although he doesn’t seem to need any help
achieving that at present.
The big question today and this weekend, is this just
another run of the mill correction, or are the over-priced, over-rigged tech
stocks just starting out on the down leg of the infamous “round-trip?”
Will the traditional crash month of October get squeezed into
September this year due to the November US elections?
Below, coverage of yesterday’s destructive action. Will Robinhood and his merry day-trade men
surge into buying action later today to try to rescue the “triple As, Microsoft
and Facebook? Assuming that is, the Robinhooder’s have any fiat money left.
Tech drags Dow down 405 points, oil prices fall amid crude buildup
Sept. 10, 2020 /
5:06 PM
Sept. 10 (UPI) -- Tech stocks dragged U.S. markets down on Thursday, as
oil prices also fell amid data showing a buildup in crude stockpiles.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 405.89 points, or 1.45%, the
S&P 500 dropped 1.76% and the Nasdaq Composite ended the day down 1.72% as
tech stocks continue to drive the markets' fortunes.
Apple stock closed down 3.26%, Amazon stock dropped 2.86%, Microsoft declined 2.8%, Facebook fell 2.1% and Google's parent company, Alphabet, slid 1.37% after all five stocks rebounded to drive the market higher on Wednesday.
The S&P 500 tech sector has fallen 11.4% from Sept. 2 -- when the overall market hit an all-time high -- and Tuesday and the S&P 500 overall has fallen 7% in that time.
Oil prices also dropped Thursday as the Energy Information Administration reported that U.S. crude inventories increased by 2 million barrels for the week ending on Sept. 4, its first weekly gain in seven weeks.
West Texas Intermediate crude, the U.S. benchmark, fell 2% to $37.30 a barrel and Brent Crude, the global benchmark, dropped 1.8% to $40.06.
Thursday's declines came after markets bounced back Wednesday following a three-day losing streak as the Dow climbed 1.6% and the Nasdaq recorded its largest single-day gain since April.
U.S. Stocks Resume Selloff With Tech Battered Anew: Markets Wrap
By Claire Ballentine and Katherine Greifeld
Updated on September 10, 2020, 9:02 PM GMT+1
A fresh selloff in megacap technology shares sent stocks to the fourth
loss in five days as investors remain worried that valuations got stretched too
far in a five-month rally. Treasuries rose with the dollar.
The S&P 500 dropped as much as 2.1%. Volatility has been even more
prevalent in the Nasdaq 100, where close-to-close runs have been at least 1%
for seven sessions. Energy companies, a small cohort in major averages, plunged
as crude dropped back toward $37 a barrel in New York. Treasuries reversed
losses as the equity decline picked up speed. Gold turned lower, while copper
tumbled. The dollar strengthened versus major peers.
Volatility continued to grip American financial markets after a rally
that added $7 trillion to U.S. equity values over five months. Reasons for
caution were plenty, though no single factor alone set the tone. Signs mounted
that the pandemic continues to upend the global economy. In the U.S., data
showed cracks in recent labor-market strength, while Europe re-emerged as a
virus hot spot. Congress remained far apart on a fresh relief bill.
“We likely have not seen the full correction play out yet,” said Matt
Forester, chief investment officer at BNY Mellon Lockwood Advisors. “It’s
difficult to point to a specific catalyst, but currency volatility rose today
on concerns about a hard Brexit and we’ve seen some worse news about the virus
in Europe.”
More
Back in the real world, six months of sugar boosts, and smoke and mirrors economics
is coming to an end.
Money for $300 unemployment boost to run out after 6 weeks
The temporary $300-a-week unemployment
insurance boost implemented by President Donald Trump is about to end, with no
extension in sight.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency said
Thursday in an email to The Associated Press that it has distributed $30
billion of the $44 billion it had set aside for the benefit. The agency said
the fund was enough to cover six weeks of additional jobless aid starting Aug.
1, so unemployed workers won’t receive any more after this week.
FEMA emphasized that all eligible recipients
will get the $300 boost to cover six weeks, a period that ended Sept. 5.
Some states had technical obstacles that have
delayed the payments, and the federal government is still in the process of
approving other states’ plans to distribute the money. Eligible workers who
have not yet received the $300-a-week supplement or have received less than six
weeks’ worth, will receive payments for their full share, according to FEMA.
After that, the fund will be dry.
The program was designed to leave money to deal
with natural disasters, such as the wildfires now sweeping the West, even after
the unemployment boost was gone.
Trump created the program after a more generous
$600-a-week benefit adopted by Congress expired. The federal government
initially did not have an estimate of how long the money would last, but six
weeks is in line with what experts expected.
The Trump administration and congressional
Republicans and Democrats have been unable to agree on a new coronavirus relief
package that would include an extension of the unemployment supplement.
Recipients have said the extra jolt of money
from the federal government kept them afloat as the economy cratered amid
stay-at-home orders and business closings. On Thursday, the government reported
that 13.4 million Americans continue to receive state unemployment benefits,
although not all of them are receiving the additional $300.
The extra weekly payments came with a
significant string attached: It was available only to people receiving at least
$100 a week in other unemployment insurance benefits. That cut out hundreds of
thousands of low-wage earners, people who had jobs for short periods and gig
workers.
More
Yesterday we looked at the growing NYC and Toronto
commercial real estate crisis. Today, via the New York Times take a look at
London’s CRE bubble, and a one off sugar boost to UK home prices. But what
happens when “stamp duty” returns?
London Offices Aren’t Refilling Fast Enough for Shops Relying on Them
The British government and business lobby want workers to return to support surrounding businesses, but some city offices are only 15 percent full.
LONDON — Schroders, a big asset management firm, wants more of its workers to return to its office in the City of London. Over the summer, it encouraged people to come in for a day to test their commute and so the firm could demonstrate the new safety measures in place, including an app to order food from the canteen.
Last week, about 15 percent of its 2,500 employees were in the office.
A 15-minute walk away, in the building where the law firm Dentons employs 750 workers, fewer than 10 percent were in the office. Two streets to the west, Goldman Sachs’s new 826,000-square-foot European headquarters were about 15 percent full. In east London, in Canary Wharf’s cluster of towers, Citigroup had about 15 percent of its employees in an office that usually fits 5,000. In cities across the country, the offices of the advertising firm WPP were only at 3 percent capacity.
Britain’s sparsely populated offices have put the economy in a quandary. The dry cleaners, coffee shops, lunch places and clothing retailers specializing in suits that serve areas packed with offices are starved of their customers. Many are still shut. In a country that relies on consumer spending to fuel economic growth, the government and business lobby are urging people to return to their offices, pressuring civil servants to set an example, and in turn spend more money on food and travel and in city center shops.
The U.K.’s Stamp Duty Holiday Lifts London’s Real-Estate Market
The temporary tax break has provided a big boost to sales and piqued buyer interest in homes around the city
By Ruth Bloomfield
Sept. 9, 2020 4:00 pm ET
Mary Lee and Andrew Muir were in pessimistic mood when they put their
two-bedroom ground floor apartment in the southeast London neighborhood of West
Dulwich on the market. They were confident the apartment would sell but, with
the U.K. still struggling to contend with Covid-19, not necessarily at its
asking price of £525,000.
“I was a little nervous,” said Mrs. Muir, 56, of the home she and her
husband bought in 2017 for £485,000. “I had confidence that I would find a
buyer. What I was not sure about was whether I would get the price that I
wanted because there is a glut of two-bedroom flats for sale in the area. I was
really worried about price point.”
She needn’t have been concerned. On July 8, just a few weeks before the
Muirs’ property was listed at the start of August, the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, the government minister in charge of the British economy, announced
that primary homes in England and Northern Ireland priced at £500,000,
equivalent to $650,500, or less would be entirely exempt from stamp duty. The
tax holiday extends to purchases made until March 31, 2021.
Stamp Duty Land Tax, or SDLT as it is known, is a buyers’ tax payable to
the government on the sale of all properties in the U.K. Previously, primary
home buyers (excepting first-time buyers who already enjoyed certain tax
breaks) had to pay up to £15,000 in tax on purchases between £125,000 and
£500,000. As part of the tax holiday, buyers can avoid tax entirely on
purchases up to £500,000. As the purchase price rises from there, incremental
stamp duty rates apply; those rates are the same as they were before the tax
holiday. Second-home and foreign buyers can even get in on the act. They pay
higher stamp duty than primary-home buyers, but will see their tax burden
reduced, although not eradicated.
The Muirs’ property was sold, subject to contracts, for its full asking
price within 48 hours of its first showing. Now that their home is under
contract, the couple has been able to make an offer on a house in the historic
market town of Midhurst.
More
You have to choose (as a voter) between trusting to the natural
stability of gold and the natural stability of the honesty and intelligence of
the members of the Government. And, with due respect for these gentlemen, I
advise you, as long as the Capitalist system lasts, to vote for gold.
George Bernard Shaw
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.Europe Passes U.S. in New Covid Cases, Returning as Hot Spot
By Thomas Mulier
Updated on September 10, 2020, 7:24 PM GMT+1
Western Europe surpassed the U.S. in new daily Covid-19
infections, re-emerging as a global hot spot after bringing the pandemic under
control earlier in the summer.The 27 countries in the European Union plus the U.K., Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein recorded 27,233 new cases on Wednesday, compared with 26,015 for the U.S. That follows several weeks of resurgent infections in Spain, France and other countries across the continent.
“We’ll have decisions to make,” said French President Emmanuel Macron, a day before a national security cabinet meeting on Friday to discuss the government’s response. “We have to continue to be rigorous, realistic, without giving in to any kind of panic.”
France
reported almost 10,000 new cases on Thursday, the most since a national
lockdown ended in mid-May. New infections in Spain, which has the most cases in
the EU, slowed to 4,137 on the day. Italy’s pace increased slightly, with almost
1,600 infections reported.
Europe’s
move ahead of the U.S. is a major setback for a part of the world that seemed
to have gotten a grip on the coronavirus after the pandemic spread from China
to Italy and other countries across the region last winter. After health
systems were pushed to the brink, strict lockdowns brought the outbreak under
control.
The comparison is based on data from the World Health Organization for the U.S. and Bloomberg calculations using numbers from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.
Now Europe is experiencing a new spike in infections, many of them linked to vacationers who caught the virus and brought it home, as well as young people socializing. The upturn has alarmed policy makers just as students return to school and offices try to bring back employees who have been working from home.
So far, the new upturn in infections has not resulted in a surge in deaths, which are at a small fraction of the levels in March and April, when the pandemic tore through Europe’s nursing homes. Many of the new patients are younger and healthier, testing has expanded vastly -- turning up asymptomatic infections that previously went undetected -- and treatment has improved.
More
Tokyo reports 276 new coronavirus cases; nationwide tally 692
September 10, 2020 04:04 pm JST
TOKYO
The Tokyo metropolitan government on Thursday reported 276
new cases of the coronavirus, up 127 from Wednesday. The number is the
result of 5,826 tests
conducted on Sept 7.The age groups with the most cases were people in their 30s (71), 40s (57) and 20s (56).
The tally brought Tokyo's cumulative total to 22,444.
The number of infected people with severe symptoms is 23, one down from Wednesday, health officials said.
Nationwide, the number of reported cases was 692. After Tokyo, the prefectures with the most cases were Kanagawa (112), Osaka (92), Aichi (36), Saitama (30), Chiba (28), Fukuoka (24), Hyogo (21) and Hokkaido (11).
No deaths were reported.
Covid vaccine: 8,000 jumbo jets needed to deliver doses globally, says IATA
September 10, 2020
The equivalent of 8,000 Boeing 747s will be needed, the International
Air Transport Association (IATA) has said.There is no Covid-19 vaccine yet, but IATA is already working with airlines, airports, global health bodies and drug firms on a global airlift plan.
The distribution programme assumes only one dose per person is needed.
"Safely delivering Covid-19 vaccines will be the mission of the century for the global air cargo industry. But it won't happen without careful advance planning. And the time for that is now," said IATA's chief executive Alexandre de Juniac.
While airlines have been shifting their focus onto delivering cargo during the severe downturn in passenger flights, shipping vaccines is far more complex.
Not all planes are suitable for delivering vaccines as they need a typical temperature range of between 2 and 8C for transporting drugs. Some vaccines may require freezing temperatures which would exclude more aircraft.
"We know the procedures well. What we need to do is scale them up to the magnitude that will be required," added Glyn Hughes, the industry body's head of cargo.
Flights to certain parts of the world, including some areas of South East Asia, will be critical as they lack vaccine-production capabilities, he added.
Military precision
Distributing a vaccine across Africa would be "impossible" right now IATA says given the lack of cargo capacity, size of the region and the complexities of border crossings.Transportation will need "almost military precision" and will require cool facilities across a network of locations where the vaccine will be stored.
About 140 vaccines are in early development, and around two dozen are now being tested on people in clinical trials.
More
Vitamin D supplement calcifediol could reduce death risk in Covid patients, Spanish study says
While researchers of the Spanish study claim that Calcifediol can reduce severe risk of infection and death in Covid patients with pulmonary symptoms, experts are not so convinced.
Mohana
Basu 9 September, 2020 3:51 pm IST
New Delhi: A
new study from Spain suggests that administering high doses of calcifediol — a
hormone produced in the liver by vitamin D — can help reduce risk of severe
infection in Covid-19 patients and even death.
The study, published
in the Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology by
researchers from the University of Córdoba in Spain and research university KU
Leuven in Belgium, reveals that calcifediol may have certain advantages over
vitamin D3 — the vitamin supplement that is usually prescribed for consumption.
“Vitamin D3 is converted by the liver into calcifediol. However, by
directly administering calcifediol instead of vitamin D3, levels of the hormone
in the blood are rapidly restored,” José Manuel Quesada Gómez, one of the
authors of the study, told ThePrint.
“It also has a more reliable intestinal absorption,” Gómez added. This
means the calcifediol is more likely to be absorbed by the body than vitamin
D3.
He also said direct administration of calcifediol is more desirable
in Covid-19 patients as the CYP2R1 enzyme, which helps convert vitamin D3 to
its more useful form, is compromised in many of them.
----The study
For the study, 50 Covid-19 patients were given calcifediol along with standard care, involving a regime of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin. Another 26 patients were only given standard care without the hormone.Of the 50 patients who received calcifediol, only one was required to be admitted into the intensive care unit (ICU). In comparison, 13 patients or 50 per cent of those who received standard care were admitted to the ICU.
Not a single patient died among those treated with
calcifediol and all were discharged without complications at the end of the
study period. However, of the 13 patients admitted to the ICU from the standard
care group, two died due to the infection.
----Experts not convinced by study
However, not all experts are convinced by the study.Satyajit Rath, a scientist at Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) in Pune, said while the study is interesting, the results are not definitive.
“It is an extremely small group of patients. It does not identify the degree of severity of Covid-19 in the patients at admission, and does not provide any details of their clinical progress other than ICU admission and death,” Rath told ThePrint.
He also noted that the study did not specify the co-morbidities that the trial patients were suffering from but instead treated all of them as having an equal risk factor, which was not the case. For instance, an obese patient is more likely to succumb to the infection.
The study also does not identify what comorbidities, if any, the patients admitted to the ICU had, Rath pointed out.
“In such a small group, the small differences between the two groups
could be enough to skew the results,” he said.
S.P Kalantri, Director-Professor of Medicine from the
Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences in Maharashtra, agreed with Rath’s
assessment and said that the study had several limitations such as a small
sample size. He noted that the randomisation process of the study seemed flawed
as well.
Morehttps://theprint.in/health/vitamin-d-supplement-calcifediol-could-reduce-death-risk-in-covid-patients-spanish-study-says/498904/
Some useful Covid links.
Johns Hopkins Coronavirus
resource centre
Rt Covid-19
Covid19info.live
Gold is money. Everything else is credit.
J. P. Morgan
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.
Paving the way for tunable graphene plasmonic THz amplifiers
Date:
September 8, 2020
Source:
Tohoku University
Summary:
Researchers have successfully demonstrated a room-temperature coherent
amplification of terahertz (THz) radiation in graphene, electrically driven by
a dry cell battery.
Tohoku University Professor Taiichi Otsuji has led a team of international
researchers in successfully demonstrating a room-temperature coherent
amplification of terahertz (THz) radiation in graphene, electrically driven by
a dry cell battery.
Roughly 40 years ago, the arrival of plasma wave electronics opened up a
wealth of new opportunities. Scientists were fascinated with the possibility
that plasma waves could propagate faster than electrons, suggesting that
so-called "plasmonic" devices could work at THz frequencies.
However,
experimental attempts to realize such amplifiers or emitters remained elusive.
"Our study explored THz light-plasmon coupling, light absorption,
and amplification using a graphene-based system because of its excellent
room-temperature electrical and optical properties," said Professor Otsuji
who is based at the Ultra-Broadband Signal Processing Laboratory at Tohoku
University's Research Institute of Electrical Communication (RIEC).
The research team, which consisted of members from Japanese, French,
Polish and Russian institutions, designed a series of monolayer-graphene
channel transistor structures. These featured an original dual-gathering gate
that worked as a highly efficient antenna to couple the THz radiations and
graphene plasmons.
Using these devices allowed the researchers to demonstrate tunable
resonant plasmon absorption that, with an increase in current, results in THz
radiation amplification. The amplification gain of up to 9% was observed in the
monolayer graphene -- far beyond the well-known landmark level of 2.3% that is
the maximum available when photons directly interact with electrons without
excitation of graphene plasmons.
More
Another weekend, and
another week closer to a second term President Trump or a soon to be first term
President Biden. What did the world do for God to visit this on planet Earth? Have a great weekend everyone.
We have gold because we cannot trust
governments.
Herbert Hoover
US Politics Betting Odds
The Monthly Coppock Indicators finished August
DJIA: 28,430 Up. NASDAQ: 11,775 Up. SP500:
3,500 Up.
The NASDAQ
remained up. The DJIA and SP500 turned up in July. With stock mania running
fueled by trillions of central bankster new fiat money programs, especially
tech stock mania in the NASDAQ, the indicators are essentially worthless after
all these years. I will discontinue this section at the end of the month.
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