Baltic Dry Index. 1667 +62 Brent Crude 41.92
Spot Gold 1962
The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.
Ecclesiastes 1:9 King James Version.
In the stock casinos, the punters seem to have trapped themselves in a vicious, endless, whipsaw market. Few gamblers make money in such markets. The public doesn’t much like it either. They tend to be confidence sapping.
Still, the big news event this weekend is likely to be President Trump’s pick to be the next Supreme Court Justice.
The anti-Trump media has already gone into anti-Catholic delegitimization mode in anticipation that he will announce Court of Appeals Justice Amy Coney Barrett as his nominee. We should know by about 5 pm London time later today.
The extreme left wing BBC has already gone into full neo-communist smear mode. How dare he! Prepare for poor Amy to be “Kavanaughised, or Thomased!”
"On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.”
George Orwell.
Stocks rally to end bitter week; dollar up the most since April
September 25, 20201:06 AM
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks fell 2% around the globe this week and the dollar posted its strongest weekly performance since April as concern over the economic effect of a second wave of coronavirus-related lockdowns weighed on investors’ risk appetite.
But tech stocks led the way higher on Wall Street on Friday, as they have of late on days governed by worries over the economic recovery. The gains more than offset losses in Europe and an index of major stock markets globally rose 1% on the day.
Other than COVID-19 angst, the week was dominated by speculation over the likelihood of another stimulus package to support the American economy.
“There’s evidence of a slowdown in the United States, which we think is temporary, but it would be reinforced if there is no additional fiscal package,” said Sebastien Galy, senior macro strategist at Nordea Asset Management.
On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose 358.52 points, or 1.34%, to 27,173.96, the S&P 500 .SPX gained 51.87 points, or 1.60%, to 3,298.46 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added 241.30 points, or 2.26%, to 10,913.56.
The S&P posted four consecutive weekly losses, the longest such streak in over a year. It is down nearly 6% in September.
The pan-European STOXX 600 index .STOXX lost 0.10% and MSCI's gauge of stocks across the globe .MIWD00000PUS gained 1.03%. Despite Friday's strong gains, the global index fell 2% for the week.
---- “Overall the market remains fairly range-bound. There is some intraday, intra-week volatility that when you really look at it, we just don’t go anywhere,” said Justin Lederer, an interest rate strategist at Cantor Fitzgerald.
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Trump plans to nominate conservative judge Amy Coney Barrett to Supreme Court
September 25, 20209:21 PM
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump plans to announce conservative federal appeals court judge Amy Coney Barrett on Saturday as his Supreme Court nominee, two sources said on Friday, as he moves to shift it further to the right and sets up a heated Senate confirmation fight with Democrats 5-1/2 weeks before the U.S. election.
If confirmed by the Senate, which is controlled by Trump’s fellow Republicans, Barrett would replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal icon who died at age 87 on Sept. 18. Barrett is a favorite of religious conservatives, a key Trump constituency, and he has asked the Senate to confirm her before the Nov. 3 election in which he is seeking a second term and Democrats are aiming to seize control of the chamber.
Barrett, 48, was appointed by Trump to the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2017. If confirmed to the lifetime post, she would become the fifth woman ever to serve on the high court while expanding its conservative majority to a rock-solid 6-3.
Her selection was viewed with alarm by liberal advocacy groups. Abortion rights groups have expressed concern that on the Supreme Court Barrett could help overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide.
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Next, yet another warning from one of the few. The few economists who called 2008-2009 ahead of time.
Economist Stephen Roach issues new dollar crash warning, sees double-dip recession odds above 50%
Published Wed, Sep 23 20207:11 PM EDT Updated Wed, Sep 23 20208:18 PM EDT
Economist Stephen Roach warns next year will be brutal for the dollar.
Not only does he see growing odds of a double-dip recession, the Yale University senior fellow believes his “seemingly crazed idea” that the dollar would crash shouldn’t be so crazy anymore.
“We’ve got data that’s confirmed both the saving and current account dynamic in a much more dramatic fashion than even I was looking for,” Roach told CNBC’s “Trading Nation” on Wednesday.
Roach highlights two ominous second quarter figures.
“The current account deficit in the United States, which is the broadest measure of our international imbalance with the rest of the world, suffered a record deterioration in the second quarter,” he said. “The so-called net-national savings rate, which is the sum of savings of individuals, businesses and the government sector, also recorded a record decline in the second quarter going back into negative territory for the first time since the global financial crisis.”
Right now, the U.S. Dollar Index is trading around 94. When Roach predicted on “Trading Nation” last June the index would plunge 35%, it was trading around 96.
At the time, Roach estimated it would happen in the next year or two, maybe more. But now, he sees it happening by the end of 2021.
“Lacking in saving and wanting to grow, we run these current account deficits to borrow surplus saving, and that always pushes the currencies lower,” he said. “The dollar is not immune to that time honored adjustment.”
Roach, who’s former chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia and lived in Asia during the deadly 2003 SARS epidemic, is also worried about the state of the economic recovery as U.S. coronavirus deaths top 200,000 and Europe sees a resurgence in infections.
He puts the probability of a U.S. double-dip recession above 50%.
More
In crooked bankster news, they can resist anything except temptation. Is there such a thing as an honest bankster?
Two ex-Deutsche Bank traders convicted in U.S. over fake orders
September 26, 20201:34 AM
(Reuters) - Two former Deutsche Bank AG DBKGn.DE traders were found guilty on Friday by a federal jury in Chicago of placing fraudulent "spoof" orders for precious metals futures contracts, the Justice Department said.
After a two-week trial, Cedric Chanu, of France and the United Arab Emirates, was convicted on seven counts of wire fraud, and James Vorley, of the UK, was found guilty of three counts of wire fraud, the department said in a statement.
Vorley and Chanu engaged in a multi-year conspiracy to defraud other traders through spoofing, the placing of orders to buy or sell futures contracts that they never intended to complete, according to their indictment.
Vorley worked for Deutsche Bank in London from 2007 to 2015, and Chanu worked for the bank in London and Singapore from 2008 to 2013, the indictment said.
Their sentencing has been scheduled for Jan. 21.
Finally, with President Trump due to announce his Supreme Court nomination later today, a look back at some of the history of Supreme Court fights of the good old days. There is nothing new under the sun.
The History of ‘Stolen’ Supreme Court Seats
As the Trump administration seeks to fill a vacancy on the Court, a look back at the forgotten mid-19th century battles over the judiciary
March 20, 2017 | Updated: September 25, 2020 6:11PM
A Supreme Court justice was dead, and the president, in his last year in office, quickly nominated a prominent lawyer to replace him. But the unlucky nominee’s bid was forestalled by the U.S. Senate, blocked due to the hostile politics of the time. It was 1852, but the doomed confirmation battle sounds a lot like 2016.
“The nomination of Edward A. Bradford…as successor to Justice McKinley was postponed,” reported the New York Times on September 3, 1852. “This is equivalent to a rejection, contingent upon the result of the pending Presidential election. It is intended to reserve this vacancy to be supplied by Gen. Pierce, provided he be elected.”
Last year, when Senate Republicans refused to vote on anyone President Barack Obama nominated to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia, Democrats protested that the GOP was stealing the seat, flouting more than a century of Senate precedent about how to treat Supreme Court nominees. Senate Democrats such as Chuck Schumer and Patrick Leahy called the GOP’s move unprecedented, but wisely stuck to 20th-century examples when they talked about justices confirmed in election years. That’s because conservatives who argued that the Senate has refused to vote on Supreme Court nominees before had some history, albeit very old history, on their side.
What the Senate did to Merrick Garland in 2016, it did it to three other presidents’ nominees between 1844 and 1866, though the timelines and circumstances differed. Those decades of gridlock, crisis and meltdown in American politics left a trail of snubbed Supreme Court wannabes in their wake. And they produced justices who—as Neil Gorsuch might—ascended to Supreme Court seats set aside for them through political calculation.
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Ayrshire Pullman Motor Services v Inland Revenue [1929]
"No man in the country is under the smallest obligation, moral or other, so to arrange his legal relations to his business or property as to enable the Inland Revenue to put the largest possible shovel in his stores. The Inland Revenue is not slow, and quite rightly, to take every advantage which is open to it under the Taxing Statutes for the purposes of depleting the taxpayer's pocket. And the taxpayer is in like manner entitled to be astute to prevent, so far as he honestly can, the depletion of his means by the Inland Revenue"
Lord Clyde, President of the Court of Session.
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
China Halts Some Imports; Fauci Cautions U.S.: Virus Update
Bloomberg NewsSeptember 25, 2020, 11:07 PM GMT+1 Updated on September 26, 2020, 6:07 AM GMT+1
China stopped seafood imports from two Russian ships and a Brazilian firm after finding Covid-19 in samples. Authorities reported 15 new cases, saying all of them were imported.
The health minister of Australian virus epicenter Victoria resigned. South Korea reported dozens of new cases after bolstering restrictions to ward off a resurgence during national holidays. Singapore will quarantine fewer foreign workers in their dorms.
Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the U.S. could face a “problematic” fall and winter in the fight against the virus. U.S. cases breached 7 million.
Key Developments:
- Global Tracker: Cases top 32.4 million; deaths exceed 987,000
- Singapore to isolate fewer migrant workers
- Health minister of Australia’s virus epicenter resigns
- Newsom vetoes genetic testing data disclosure law
- American CEO living in Sweden has Covid lesson to share
- Who’s succeeding against the coronavirus and why?: QuickTake
Germans Disappointed by Coronavirus Tracking App
Officials touted it as an important weapon in the fight against the pandemic, but there have been numerous glitches and shortcomings with Germany's corona app. Some argue it does more harm than good.
By Marcel Rosenbach und Cornelia Schmergal 24.09.2020, 14.51 Uhr
On a June morning, an giant blue and red "C” logo was displayed in front of the Federal Press Office in Berlin, located on the Spree River in the heart of the capital. It was essentially the German government screaming for attention, and why not? Germany’s flagship project in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic was ready for prime time. Finally. "#Ichappmit,” a billboard read. "I’m using the app.”
Inside, five representatives of the German government and two board members from Deutsche Telekom and the software company SAP were on the stage, along with the president of Germany’s center for disease control, the Robert Koch Institute. They could easily have been mistaken for happy parents after a difficult birth.
Helga Braun, the head of Angela Merkel’s Chancellery and a member of her conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), said that although it wasn’t the first, it was perhaps the "best” corona app available worldwide. Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, likewise of the conservatives, praised the "first class” experts in the ministries. The CEO of Deutsche Telekom enthused that the app was a "rock star.”
----That moment of euphoria was almost 100 days ago. Since then, more than 18 million people have downloaded the app, and it has been rated on the Apple and Google app stores with 4.4 and 3.1 out of five stars. The German government, for its part, considers it to be a great success.
In fact, though, hopes that the virus might be contained using the app have given way to disillusionment. There is no longer any talk of the "very central building block” of pandemic management, as government spokesman Steffen Seibert described it even before the app’s launch. It has since become "one tool among many.”
----Comments on the internet suggest that many users are annoyed by the app and its strange error messages or confusing warnings. One customer recently asked in the App Store what the new error message "EN_Error” meant. One developer replied that it was an Apple problem. "Neither a reinstall nor restarting” the app would help, the developer wrote, but "sometimes the errors go away by themselves.”
More
Poland reports fresh record daily increase in coronavirus cases
September 25, 20209:56 AM
WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland reported a record daily rise in coronavirus cases for the second consecutive day on Friday, with the biggest spike in the central region of the country, the health ministry said.
It reported 1,587 new COVID-19 infections, the biggest daily number since the start of the pandemic in March. In total the nation of 38 million people has registered 84,396 infections, including 2,392 deaths.
The biggest spike was reported in central Poland with 295 new infections.
The health ministry said that as of Friday there were 96 ventilators and 1,995 hospital beds devoted to COVID-19 patients. Poland has conducted over 24,200 tests in the past 24 hours.
On Thursday the ministry attributed the rise in new cases to increased direct contact between people after restrictions were lifted.
More
Next, some very useful vaccine links kindly sent along from a LIR reader in Canada. The links come from a most informative update from Stanford Hospital in California.
World Health Organization - Landscape of COVID-19 candidate vaccines. https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/draft-landscape-of-covid-19-candidate-vaccines
NY Times Coronavirus Vaccine Tracker. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/science/coronavirus-vaccine-tracker.html
Stanford Website. https://racetoacure.stanford.edu/clinical-trials/132
FDA information. https://www.fda.gov/media/139638/download
Regulatory Focus COVID-19 vaccine tracker. https://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/news-articles/2020/3/covid-19-vaccine-tracker
Some useful Covid links.
Johns Hopkins Coronavirus resource centre
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
Rt Covid-19
Covid19info.live
Technology Update.
With events happening fast in the development of solar power and graphene, and science in general, I’ve added this section. Updates as they get reported.
This weekend, an item I held over a while ago intending to use in a weekend edition and then forgot.
Orange peels used to extract valuable metals from spent batteries
Ben Coxworth August 26, 2020
ust because a lithium-ion battery no longer holds a charge doesn't mean it no longer holds any value. It still contains useful metals, which can now be reclaimed via a more eco-friendly technique – the key ingredient is orange peel waste.
Ordinarily, in a smelting process, spent lithium batteries are heated to over 500 ºC (932 ºF). This causes the contained metals to melt and run out of them. Those metals are then collected and reused. However, not only does the process require a lot of energy, but it also produces toxic gases.
One possible alternative involves shredding and crushing used batteries, then precipitating the metals from them by adding acids and hydrogen peroxide while heating the mixture. This still-experimental technique, known as hydrometallurgy, is more environmentally friendly than smelting. However, on an industrial scale, it could still produce a significant amount of pollutants.
With that limitation in mind, scientists at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University tried using orange peels instead of the usual acids and hydrogen peroxide. More specifically, they utilized oven-dried orange peels that had been ground into a powder, combined with citric acid obtained from citrus fruit.
Doing so, the researchers were able to extract about 90 percent of the lithium, cobalt, nickel and manganese from spent lithium-ion batteries. This level of efficiency is roughly what had been achieved previously. Importantly, though, when using the orange peels, the residue was found to be non-toxic.
"The key lies in the cellulose found in orange peel, which is converted into sugars under heat during the extraction process," says Asst. Prof. Dalton Tay, one of the leaders of the study. "These sugars enhance the recovery of metals from battery waste. Naturally occurring antioxidants found in orange peel, such as flavonoids and phenolic acids, could have contributed to this enhancement as well."
The researchers used the reclaimed metals in new lithium-ion batteries, that have a charge capacity similar to that of commercially available models. Further testing is now being conducted, to see if the new batteries last for a comparable number of charge/discharge cycles.
A paper on the research, which is being co-led by Prof. Madhavi Srinivasan, was recently published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.
Source: Nanyang Technological University
This weekend’s musical diversion. Vivaldi again, reworking old themes. Almost going all Irish in the second movement!
A. VIVALDI: Concerto for Violin, 2 Cellos, Strings and B.C. in C major RV 561, La Serenissima
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctX25eDCeqM
This weekend’s number problem. Germany’s Enigma machine had a fatal flaw, thank God.
Flaw in the Enigma Code - Numberphile
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4V2bpZlqx8
US Politics Betting Odds
https://www.oddschecker.com/politics/us-politics
Patriotism is usually stronger than class hatred, and always stronger than internationalism.
George Orwell.
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