Baltic Dry Index. 1426 +62 Brent Crude 41.52
Spot Gold 1852
Coronavirus Cases 24/9/20 World 31,948,912
Deaths 981,604
Alan Schwartz, CEO Bear Stearns, March 12, 2008. Bust March 16, 2008.
With global official count Covid-19 cases closing in on 32 million, and the official death count closing in on 1 million, the real numbers are several times higher most experts say, our central bank funded stock casinos are getting nervous over what lies directly ahead.
October, the markets traditional crash month, for one thing. A highly disputed “dirty tricks” US presidential election, for another, with President Trump suggesting yesterday that he might not hand over power next January if he lost due to mail-in voting.
A probably highly contentious party political fight over President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee.
But most pressing of all, a Federal Reserve Board starting to panic over the politicians inability to pass more unemployment and economy relief packages.
The Fedsters know only too well what follows on in the economy once the existing relief programs end or taper out. Think back 12 years to the Lehman Brothers crash.
Below, stock indexes flirt with correction territory. Not helpful for professional money manager fees and bonuses as we head towards the month-end and end of quarter accounting.
Asian shares tumble as global recovery hopes falter
September 24, 20201:30 AM
SHANGHAI/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Asian shares fell on Thursday following a slump on Wall Street overnight, as a series of warnings from U.S. Federal Reserve officials underscored investor worries over the resilience of the economic recovery.
U.S. Federal Reserve Vice Chair Richard Clarida said on Wednesday that the U.S. economy remains in a “deep hole” of joblessness and weak demand, and called for more fiscal stimulus, noting that policymakers “are not even going to begin thinking” about raising interest rates until inflation hits 2%.
Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank President Loretta Mester echoed Clarida, saying that the U.S. remains in a “deep hole, regardless of the comeback we’ve seen.”
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS tumbled 1.35% in the morning session on broad losses across the region.
Chinese blue-chips .CSI300 dropped 1.09%, Hong Kong's Hang Seng .HSI fell 1.72%, Seoul's KOSPI .KS11 sank 1.73% and Australian shares .AXJO were 1.18% lower.
Japan's Nikkei .N225 fell 0.74%.
“Have we overpriced the rebound in the economy? After the stern warning from Clarida, I say we have,” said Stephen Innes, chief global markets strategist at AXI.
---- U.S. stocks fell on Wednesday after data showed business activity slowed in September, with gains at factories more than offset by a retreat at services industries.
Investors now await weekly data due later on Thursday, which is expected to show U.S. jobless claims fell slightly but remained elevated, indicating the world’s largest economy is far from recovering.
---- On Wednesday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI fell 1.92%, the S&P 500 .SPX lost 2.37% and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC dropped 3.02%.
More
Dow falls 525 points, S&P 500 dips near correction territory as tech stocks fall
Sept. 23, 2020 / 5:01 PM
Sept. 23 (UPI) -- The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 525.05 points as tech stocks dragged the major U.S. markets down on Wednesday.
The blue-chip index ended the day down 1.92% after having been up as much as 176 points earlier in the day. The S&P 500 also fell 2.34% pushing it closer to correction territory, which is defined as 10% below a record high, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq slid deeper into correction territory as it fell 3%.
Apple stock led a decline in big tech falling 4.19%, Amazon dropped 4.13%, Microsoft slid 3.29% and Facebook ended the day down 2.25%.
The S&P 500 has fallen 7.4% in September, while the Dow has dropped 5.9% and the Nasdaq has declined 9.7% in the month as shares of Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Alphabet and Microsoft have all dropped 10%.
"This rotation out of tech and into cyclical stocks has picked up legs in September," Art Hogan, chief marketing strategist at National Securities told CNBC. "September is a historically tough month and this one has been a quagmire of headwinds. Today is reflective of that."
Tesla stock also fell 10.34%, while Nike bucked the trend by rising 8.76%.
Fed Pleads Anew for Stimulus, and Markets Start to Give Up Hope
By Christopher Condon, Steve Matthews, and Catarina SaraivaSeptember 23, 2020, 7:24 PM GMT+1
A parade of Federal Reserve officials Wednesday stressed that more fiscal stimulus is critical to sustaining the economic recovery, and U.S. stocks tumbled as pessimism began sinking in that Congress would ever deliver a new aid package.
Chairman Jerome Powell continued to wave the fiscal flag carefully at a congressional hearing -- amid a political stalemate -- saying that more support was likely to be necessary. Others were more full-throated, with Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester saying it was very much needed given the “deep hole” the economy is climbing out of.
Chicago Fed President Charles Evans expressed concern the stimulus he penciled in won’t be forthcoming, while Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren suggested it’ll take another wave of infections to prompt action, and likely not until next year.
Stocks Slide
The S&P 500 fell 2.4%, the biggest drop since Sept. 8 and the fifth decrease in six days, a sign that investors are becoming more downbeat on prospects for stimulus once seen as a near-certainty. Rates markets showed traders were easing up on inflation bets, a sign of pessimism that the Fed alone won’t be able to bring price gains to its 2% goal in coming years.
Declines in the stock market, until recently attributed to a reversal of excessive tech-share gains, have increasingly been ascribed in part to worries about the recovery and the need for more stimulus.
Democrats and Republicans have been at loggerheads over another virus relief package, with no formal negotiations since early August. Chances of aid faded further after Friday’s death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg put the fight over a Supreme Court seat at center stage, moving stimulus talks to the background.
The drop in stocks hasn’t yet been as pronounced as during the financial crisis in September 2008, when Congress’s rejection of bailout funds spurred the sharpest decline in two decades -- leading lawmakers to walk back the rejection.
‘Maximum Pressure’
“The Fed wants to put maximum pressure on Congress to re-up fiscal support given the limits to monetary policy in dealing with the severe and asymmetric virus shock amid fears of a new fall wave,” Evercore ISI analysts Krishna Guha and Ernie Tedeschi wrote in a note Wednesday.
At the same time, Fed policy makers need to be careful not to shake confidence that they still have ammunition they can use, they wrote.
“The most difficult part of the recovery is still ahead of us,” Rosengren said. He said he was more pessimistic than his colleagues over how many Americans will return to work over the next 15 months.
The Boston Fed chief raised particular concern over “disturbing” signs in commercial real estate. The sector saw risky behavior before the pandemic and is now being hit by the coronavirus’s impact on everything from hotels to strip malls, he said.
Like Powell, Fed Vice Chair Richard Clarida, in an interview on Bloomberg Television, emphasized the recovery has so far been stronger than officials predicted a few months ago. He also made clear the road ahead will be difficult and repeated the theme that fiscal support would help.
‘Worst’ Hit
“The economy is recovering robustly, but we are still in a deep hole,” he said. “Long term, the U.S. needs to get back on a sustainable fiscal path, but you don’t want to start that in the midst of the worst economic hit in 90 years.”
In new economic forecasts released Sept. 16, Fed officials had a median projection for unemployment at 7.6% next quarter, down from the 8.4% recorded in August, with a further drop to 5.5% at the end of 2021.
Rosengren said his own projections were “less optimistic.” Evans noted that his own forecast incorporated an expectation of $1 trillion of further fiscal support.
Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic said in a virtual speech to an Alabama chamber of commerce that he’s “hopeful that policy makers in Washington as well as at the state level find creative ways to get that support out there.”
“With relief running out there is a pretty significant chance that some of the temporary disruption and dislocation can become permanent,” Bostic said. “That just means the hurdle that we have to climb is going to be that much higher.”
Met Opera Cancels 2020-21 Season
Company says opera performances would resume in fall 2021, after a Covid-19 vaccine is in wide use and social distancing is no longer medically necessary
Sept. 23, 2020 12:00 pm ET
The Metropolitan Opera has canceled all performances for its 2020-21 season, saying the coronavirus pandemic remains too great an ongoing health concern.
In a release, the New York City company said Wednesday that, based on the advice of health officials, it could not safely begin operations “until a vaccine is widely in use, herd immunity is established and the wearing of masks and social distancing is no longer a medical requirement.”
The company, one of the most august cultural institutions in the world, previously announced the cancellation of performances through Dec. 30 because of the pandemic. The Met shut down in mid-March, as did other theaters and arts-presenting organizations in the city, though the company initially anticipated a much shorter stoppage of just a few weeks.
The Met added that it plans to resume performances in the fall of next year.
---- Nevertheless, officials made it clear that the loss of an entire season is no small matter.
“The inability to perform is taking a tremendous toll on our company,” General Manager Peter Gelb said in a statement.
The Met, with a pre-pandemic annual budget of around $300 million, has already furloughed its orchestra and chorus in an effort to keep its finances in check during the health crisis.
More
https://www.wsj.com/articles/met-opera-cancels-2020-21-season-11600876800
Finally, in the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s time to send in the lawyers. While it won’t cure the sick nor bring back the dead, it will make a whole lot of Austrian lawyers feel very much better.
Civil lawsuits filed over COVID-19 outbreak at Austrian ski resort Ischgl
September 23, 20209:13 AM
VIENNA (Reuters) - A consumer rights group said on Wednesday it had filed civil lawsuits against the Austrian government over a coronavirus outbreak at the ski resort of Ischgl last winter, but it held off on a class-action suit for the time being.
The outbreak at Ischgl, which calls itself the “Ibiza of the Alps”, was Austria’s biggest and helped spread the virus across Europe. Hundreds of Austrians were infected and thousands of foreign tourists say they were too as the virus found a breeding ground in crowded apres-ski bars in February and early March.
Ischgl’s first case was detected on March 7, days after Iceland said that tourists had been infected there and 11 days after Austria’s first infections were confirmed. Austria’s public health agency has since said it believes the virus arrived in Ischgl far earlier, on Feb. 5.
The authorities in the province of Tyrol say they responded appropriately given what was known at the time. The private Consumer Protection Association (VSV) argues they reacted too slowly and possibly gave in to pressure from the tourism sector not to act.
---- The VSV, a group led by consumer rights activist and former environmentalist lawmaker Peter Kolba, has for months been publishing tallies of foreign tourists who say they were infected at Ischgl and other resorts in Tyrol and have signed up for a possible class-action lawsuit.
The latest tally is 6,170 people in 47 countries, including Britain, the United States and the Netherlands, though most are in Germany. Roughly three-quarters were in Ischgl.
VSV said it hoped to file a class-action suit next year.
“As a next step the VSV will try to organise one or multiple large class-action lawsuits next year,” it said, also publishing an open letter to Chancellor Sebastian Kurz urging him to reach a settlement because such lawsuits could take “years if not decades”.
Kurz’s conservatives also lead the provincial government in Tyrol. Kurz himself announced an immediate quarantine in Ischgl and the surrounding Paznaun Valley on March 13, though tourists were allowed to leave, further fuelling the spread of the virus in what the VSV called a “chaotic” process.
If the financial system goes down, our business is going down and, trust me, yours and everyone else's is going down, too.
Lloyd Blankfein’s CEO Goldman Sachs, threat 2008. “Mr. Goldman Sacks.”
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
Trump Mulls Vaccine Rule Approval; Israel Lockdown: Virus Update
Bloomberg NewsSeptember 24, 2020, 12:11 AM GMT+1 Updated on September 24, 2020, 6:10 AM GMT+1
President Donald Trump signaled that he could overrule any tightening of U.S. rules for the emergency clearance of a coronavirus vaccine, a move that could increase concerns that the race to find a Covid-19 shot is being politicized ahead of the presidential election.
The Israeli government sharply tightened lockdown restrictions for the next two weeks in an effort to rein in a coronavirus outbreak that’s spun out of control. Germany’s economy minister is quarantining at home as a precautionary measure.
Singapore will allow more people to return to offices and trial a new business travel pass for senior executives as the city moves to re-open more of its economy amid ebbing virus cases. In New York City, Mayor Bill De Blasio said “urgent action” is needed after an uptick in cases in some neighborhoods.
Key Developments:
- Global Tracker: Cases top 31.8 million; deaths exceed 974,000
- Lockdown Lite is the new strategy for fighting Covid-19
- Stay-at-Home more effective on virus with less economic cost
- Airlines face desolate future as attempts to reopen crumble
- Trump redirects testing, mask funds to boost vaccine effort
- Covid ski victims sue Austrian government for “chaotic” response
- How do people catch Covid-19? Here’s what experts say: QuickTake
More
UK looks to expose people to new coronavirus to speed up vaccine research
· So-called ‘human-challenge’ studies recruit volunteers to test effectiveness of vaccine candidates
· Scientists are still learning about a pathogen that has killed almost 1 million worldwide
The UK government was considering carrying out the first studies that would deliberately expose healthy people to the coronavirus in a bid to accelerate the development of a vaccine.
The idea of so-called “human-challenge” trials has gained momentum as the pathogen has spread around the world, sparking a debate over what kind of sacrifice was acceptable and the benefits the tests could bring. A growing number of volunteers have signed up to take part in such studies, should researchers decide to proceed.
“We are working with partners to understand how we might collaborate on the potential development of a Covid-19 vaccine through human-challenge studies,” a government representative said on Wednesday. “These discussions are part of our work to research ways of treating, limiting and hopefully preventing the virus so we can end the pandemic sooner.”
Waiting for participants to become exposed to the illness to figure out whether a vaccine works can take months or even years. Challenge tests can hasten the work by placing volunteers in the path of the virus, though scientists are still learning about a pathogen that has killed almost 1 million people in just months.
Such tests also raise ethical questions about exposing people to a potentially fatal virus, and whether some test subjects would receive a placebo for control purposes.
The government declined to provide further details, including about which vaccines would be involved.
Czech Republic reports second highest daily rise in COVID-19 cases
September 23, 20206:53 AM
PRAGUE (Reuters) - The Czech Republic recorded 2,394 new infections in its second highest daily rise since the coronavirus pandemic began, Health Ministry data showed on Wednesday.
New cases have doubled in September as infections increase at the second fastest rate in Europe, for a tally of 53,158 cases since the Czech Republic’s first detections in March.
Authorities have reinstated some measures to rein in the virus, such as mask-wearing and, from Thursday, stricter limits on opening hours for bars.
HSBC halts return to office plan in Britain
September 23, 20208:50 AM
LONDON (Reuters) - HSBC HSBA.L has paused its plan to return more staff to office working in Britain, in common with other financial firms after Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Tuesday urged workers to stay home to combat the coronavirus.
“We will pause any further consideration of ‘phase one’ teams returning to offices,” HSBC said to its staff in Britain in a memo seen by Reuters on Wednesday.
A spokeswoman for the bank confirmed the contents of the memo.
Critical workers needed for the bank and its branches to operate will continue to go in to the office, the memo said.
Kidney damage caused by COVID-19 increases risk for death, study finds
Sept. 22, 2020 / 5:05 PM
Sept. 22 (UPI) -- COVID-19 causes acute kidney injury that can lead to death in some people infected with the virus, a study published Tuesday by the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology found.
In an analysis of nearly 1,400 patients with the new coronavirus in Wuhan, where the pandemic began, 7% of those who required hospital care developed acute kidney injury, the data showed.
Of those who experienced this complication, 72% died of COVID-19, the researchers said. Among those without kidney damage, 10% died from the virus.
"Prior to this study, there was limited information concerning ... [acute kidney injury] in patients with COVID-19," study co-author Gang Xu, a researcher at Tongji hospital in Wuhan, said in a statement.
RELATED People with addiction disorders at greater risk for COVID-19
"Our results indicate that acute kidney injury is strongly associated with mortality, and that careful monitoring of acute kidney injury is necessary early in the course of infection," Xu said.
Tongji hospital was assigned responsibility for treating severe COVID-19 cases by the local government, researchers said.
Their study evaluated 1,392 patients treated at the hospital. Those with acute kidney injury were five times as likely to die from COVID-19 while in the hospital compared to those without the complication, the data showed.
More
Next, some 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
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, 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.
Universal Hydrogen and Magnix building world's largest hydrogen plane
Loz Blain September 22, 2020
Hydrogen is well and truly on the rise as the zero-emissions aviation fuel of the future, with Airbus announcing its ZeroE initiative to get hydrogen airliners into production by 2035. But that's a long way off, and innovators are pushing to get H2 aircraft operating commercially much earlier.
A new LA-based fuel logistics startup, Universal Hydrogen, has embarked on a project to develop a retrofittable hydrogen powertrain for existing airliners, and will test it with a 40-seat De Havilland Canada DHC8-Q300, commonly known as the Dash-8, that will become the world's largest hydrogen-fueled commercial aircraft.
Where Airbus plans to burn hydrogen as a combustion fuel in modified gas turbines, Universal is developing a fully electric fuel-cell powertrain complete with Magnix electric motors to drive the Dash-8's two turboprops. Magnix brings some experience to the table, after powering the world's largest electric aircraft earlier this year – a retrofitted nine-seater Cessna 208B Grand Caravan, which took its first flight in May.
Universal's hydrogen-powered Dash-8 will use a pair of two-megawatt Magnix electric motors, offering a little more power than the standard plane's pair of 1,860-kW Pratt & Whitney turboprop motors offer. The hydrogen will act as a battery, producing electricity as it's run through the aircraft's fuel cells.
According to AINOnline, the standard plane's 56-seat capacity is reduced to 40 because of large hydrogen modules that'll replace the last few rows of seats. Range will be around 400 nautical miles (460 mi, 740 km) plus reserve on gaseous hydrogen, meaning the hydrogen Dash-8 could serve about 75 percent of current Dash-8 flight routes, and once a liquid hydrogen system is implemented those figures should rise to 550 nm (630 mi, 1,020 km) and 95 percent. Fueling will be handled by standard cargo-loading equipment or even forklifts; Universal is treating the hydrogen fuel as dry freight to be loaded in and out in seven-foot-long (2-m), three-foot-diameter (0.9-m) modules.
Universal believes it can get this project into commercial service as soon as 2024, with passenger prices no higher than regular Dash-8 trips despite the limited seats and exotic fuel. The company says there's around 2,200 compatible Dash-8 aircraft operating globally that could be retrofitted, and it's working towards developing a system that can be incorporated into new aircraft designs.
Hydrogen fuel's high energy density, as well as the fact that there are many different ways to produce it, make it much more suitable for weight-sensitive aviation use than lithium batteries. As part of this initiative, Universal will have to prove the safety of a hydrogen fuel cell powertrain, including drop, burst and vent tests on the fuel modules – these should provide an answer to critics' assertions that hydrogen is inherently more dangerous than aviation fuel.
Source: Universal Hydrogen via Magnix
US Politics Betting Odds
https://www.oddschecker.com/politics/us-politics
There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them.
George Orwell.
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