Baltic Dry Index. 1471 -17 Brent Crude 45.90
Spot Gold 1963
Coronavirus Cases 02/9/20 World 25,855,655
Deaths 866,220
This is the way things are, and the Game has been
so successful that, like everything, it will get more and more successful until
it stops being successful.
George
Goodman, aka Adam Smith, The Money Game. 1968.
In the stock casinos, more piling on in the technology
bubbles. Onwards and ever upwards, until as in 1720’s South Sea bubble, one day
something’s different. The smart money’s already gotten out, leaving a scramble
to get out for everyone else. Getting out early always beats getting carried
out last.
Somebody has to be on the other side.
George Goodman, aka Adam
Smith. The Money Game. Why Are The Little People Always Wrong?
Stocks gain on brisk U.S. manufacturing survey, stimulus hopes
September 2, 2020
/ 1:13 AM
TOKYO/NEW
YORK (Reuters) - Asian shares inched up on Wednesday following buoyant U.S.
manufacturing indicators and a rally in U.S. tech shares, with investors also
expecting more policy support from Washington.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan gained 0.25%
while Japan’s Nikkei advanced 0.35%.
Mainland Chinese shares slipped a tad, with bellwether CSI300 index
giving up 0.3% on investor caution after having hit a five-year high earlier
this week.
On Wall Street, both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq boasted record closing highs,
with gains of 0.75% and 1.39% respectively, with the technology sector leading
the charge.
Apple, the world’s biggest company by market capitalisation, rose just
under 4% to take its value to almost $2.3 trillion after a media report that
the company had asked suppliers to make at least 75 million 5G iPhones for
later this year.
U.S. manufacturing indicators showed expansion, with the reading from
the Institute for Supply Management hitting its highest level in nearly two
years.
Euro zone manufacturing activity also grew last month to stay on a path
toward recovery, though factory managers remained wary about investing and
hiring more workers.
---- U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Tuesday he would telephone House Speaker Nancy Pelosi about stalled coronavirus aid negotiations later in the day.
White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said Senate Republicans are
likely to bring up a targeted COVID-19 relief bill next week.
The U.S. Federal Reserve dabbed in more support for the economy as Governor
Lael Brainard said the central bank would need to provide more stimulus to
fulfil its promise of stronger job growth and higher inflation.
“We are entering the second stage of central bank-financed government
stimulus,” said Hiroshi Watanabe, senior economist at Sony Financial Holdings.
“This means U.S. nominal bond interest rates will be kept low and real
interest rates will decline. The dollar will continue to fall while boosting
various asset prices from gold to stocks.”
More
Back
in the real world, gloom and doom follows doom and gloom. Hopium and spin,
follows spin and hopium. But now governments and central banksters face tough
choices. Scale back all the fiat money support programs and risk imploding the “recoveries.”
Expand and continue the existing fiat money support programs and risk imploding
the fiat currencies. We all know which way the banksters and bent politicians
will opt.
How long before
the fiat currencies implode?
Australia's second quarter GDP shrinks at record pace as coronavirus pushes country into recession
September 2, 2020
/ 4:14 AM
SYDNEY
(Reuters) - Australia suffered its worst economic downturn on record last
quarter as it battled the coronavirus crisis, while fresh outbreaks threaten to
upend an already bumpy road to recovery and pile pressure on the government to
keep fiscal taps open.
Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Wednesday showed the
country’s A$2 trillion (1.10 trillion pounds) economy shrank 7% in the three months
to end-June from a 0.3% decline in the March quarter.
This is the largest fall in quarterly gross domestic product (GDP) since
records began in 1959. GDP declined by 6.3% from a year ago.
The contraction, which was deeper than median forecasts of 5.9%, comes
as Australia’s second most-populous state of Victoria remains in a lockdown to
curb the spread of the coronavirus while international borders are shut too.
More than a million people have lost their jobs since March when
Australia shut down entire sectors of the economy, hitting private sector
demand and investments.
The government did step up, splashing record amounts of cash to support
jobs and incomes, though Wednesday’s gloomy data underlines the need for more
stimulus as the recovery is expected to be uneven and bumpy.
“Looking ahead, it is clear that the path back from the COVID-19
recession will be protracted,” said Sarah Hunter, chief economist for BIS
Oxford Economics.
“Growth in the September quarter will be weighed down by the lockdown in
Victoria, and beyond this continued health concerns, ongoing restrictions and
the dialling back of income support will all weigh on the economy,” Hunter
added.
More
Maersk to cut jobs in major reorganisation, internal email says
September 1,
2020 / 9:14 AM
COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Shipping group Maersk (MAERSKb.CO) will cut job
cuts as part of a major reorganisation, an internal email sent to Maersk
employees shows. Maersk, which handles about one in five containers shipped worldwide, has been under pressure from investors to speed its transformation from an unwieldy conglomerate.
The company sold its oil and gas assets in 2017 to Total (TOTF.PA) as part of efforts to become a more streamlined company focused on its container and in-land logistics business for large customers such as Walmart (WMT.N) and Nike (NKE.N).
The integration of its Damco freight forwarding business and Africa-focused carrier Safmarine will take place by the end of this year, with its Hamburg Sud operation also affected by the shake-up, the email said.
“Simplifying the organisation will regrettably impact jobs due to duplicate roles and roles that will no longer be needed,” Chief Commercial Officer Vincent Clerc said in the email.
Maersk declined to comment on the internal email. The email gave no detail on the number of job cuts or employees affected.
More
UK to ramp up return-to-workplace campaign after COVID slump
September 1, 2020
/ 1:21 PM
LONDON (Reuters) -
Britain will urge people this week to get back to their places of work, ramping
up Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s calls to revive the economy after its hammering
during the coronavirus lockdown.
The government will launch a media campaign to explain to workers that
they will be safe if they return to their offices and other places of
employment.
Data has shown only 17% of workers in British cities had returned to
their workplaces by early August, and one business leader said last week that
big urban centres looked like ghost towns.
The government hopes that reopening schools, which began in England this
week, will allow parents to go back to their workplaces after working from home
since March in many cases.
“People are going back to the office in huge numbers across our country
and quite right too,” Johnson said.
A spokesman was unable to say what data this was based upon.
---- Britain, slower than most European countries to order a lockdown when the pandemic swept the world, has suffered Europe’s highest death toll from COVID-19.
Bank of England officials fear households will be slow to regain
confidence.
Britain’s economic output shrank by more than 20% in the April-June
period, the most severe contraction among large industrialised nations, and
there are signs that recovery has been modest so far.
As of Aug. 28, mobility on public transport remained down by half
compared with usual levels in London as a whole, rising to 71% in the City of
London financial district, according to data from Google.
By comparison, public transport mobility was down by 32% in Paris and
its surrounding region and 19% in Berlin.
More
Airlines Bleed Cash as Jets Half Empty, Long-Haul Still Grounded
By Richard Weiss and Christopher JasperPassenger traffic was down almost 80% in July compared with a year earlier, the International Air Transport Association reported Tuesday, saying the slump is steeper than expected at a time when carriers are rushing back flights.
Cross-border traffic reached only 8% of 2019 levels as travel curbs strangled off demand, the trade body said, while an analysis of capacity plans and booking data shows that the gap between supply and demand is widening, draining reserves and dashing hopes for an extended peak season.
The figures suggest that airlines face a grim future in the absence of a Covid-19 vaccine that might spur more people to take a flight and remove the need for restrictions that IATA says are holding back a recovery. The aviation industry has cut 350,000 jobs in the past six months, mostly at airlines, with the total likely to climb toward 500,000 as government furlough support ends, consultants Five Aero said earlier.
While IATA blamed border restrictions for the stuttering recovery, outside of China domestic travel is also foundering, the July figures show, with traffic down 90% on flights within Australia and 73% on intra-U.S. services, largely because of major flareups in infection levels.
IATA Chief Executive Officer Alexandre de Juniac repeated pleas for governments to embrace virus testing at the airport as an alternative to other measures such as quarantines. He called on the European Union to extend over the winter a waiver allowing carriers to keep takeoff and landing slots that they don’t use.
More
Factories worldwide shake off COVID-19 gloom but outlook shaky
September 1, 2020
/ 3:42 AM
LONDON/TOKYO/WASHINGTON
(Reuters) - Factories across Europe, Asia and North America continued to shake
off the coronavirus gloom in August as the global economy emerged from a
downturn triggered by the health crisis, thanks in part to massive fiscal and
monetary stimulus programmes.
Surveys showing an expansion in manufacturing activity may reduce
pressure on policymakers to take bolder steps to avert a deeper recession. J.P.
Morgan’s measure of global manufacturing activity rose to a 21-month high of
51.8 in August from 50.6 in July, the second straight month above the neutral
reading of 50.
Many analysts expect the recovery to be choppy, however, as renewed
waves of coronavirus infections curb business activity and prevent some nations
from fully reopening their economies. Fears of a resurgence in infections in
some economies may discourage firms from boosting capital expenditure and delay
a sustained rebound, some analysts say.
“We expect that ongoing coronavirus-related headwinds will constrain the
manufacturing sector’s recovery to only a modest pace going forward,” analysts
at Oxford Economics wrote following data showing U.S. factory activity near a
two-year high.
“Indeed, the latest Eurozone and Asian PMI manufacturing readings signal
the recovery is losing steam, even in countries that did arguably a better job
at containing the virus than the U.S.”
---- “With concerns about double-dips increasing and virus cases up across Europe, the PMI - especially on the services side - provides reason to worry about the pace of the recovery and perhaps even a reversal of output growth.”
German manufacturers’ recovery from lockdown measures continued last
month, but activity in France slipped back into contractionary territory as the
second-biggest euro zone economy grappled with hits to business caused by the
pandemic.
More
Finally, reopening at 25 percent. How to go broke in a
hurry. How to kill off the velocity of money too.
NYC Eateries Stay Shut as N.J. Indoor Dining Set to Resume
By Elise Young and Keshia Clukey
August 31, 2020, 2:19 PM GMT+1 Updated on August 31, 2020,
7:16 PM GMT+1
New York City’s indoor dining will remain shut as
neighboring New Jersey’s is set to reopen starting Friday, along with the
state’s movie theaters.In its final step toward reopening, New Jersey set restaurant capacity limits at 25%, with social distancing between tables. “Reopening responsibly will help us restore one of our state’s key industries while continuing to make progress against #COVID19,” Governor Phil Murphy said Monday in a tweet.
At a news conference, Murphy said the reopening “will come with strong limits on capacities as well as other requirements, which will be strictly enforced.”
Windows must be open and air conditioners must be set to pull fresh air from outdoors. Staff must be wear masks at all times, as must diners when they aren’t seated, Murphy said. Food and beverages may be consumed only when patrons are seated.
“Walking around with a drink indoors will not be tolerated,” he said.
Governor Andrew Cuomo said he is aware of the “competitive disadvantage” for New York City restaurants, and is watching to see what happens with the flu season approaching and schools set to reopen for in-person learning after Labor Day.
“We know in New York City there have been compliance issues,” Cuomo said. “We know it’s an ongoing problem.” Local governments need to focus on enforcement, he said.
Limits Raised
Indoor dining has been shut in New Jersey and New York City since March. In the Garden State, gyms can open starting Sept. 1 and movie theaters on Friday, both with restrictions, Murphy said.He also raised indoor gathering limits from 25 to 150 people or 25% capacity, whichever is less, at churches, weddings, memorial services, political rallies and other group activities.
Prior to the pandemic, which has killed almost 16,000 New Jerseyans, the state had about 25,000 restaurants and bars.
“Summer is over and for the 35% of the restaurants that are closed, it is too late for them,” Marilou Halvorsen, president and chief executive officer of the New Jersey Restaurant & Hospitality Association, said by telephone. “We’re not going to get those back.”
Halvorsen said owners were grateful to have an opening date, but cautioned that smaller establishments won’t find it profitable to seat so few people, so more places are likely to close permanently.
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.Australia First Recession Since 1991; Plasma Doubt: Virus Update
Bloomberg News
Updated on September 2, 2020, 5:34 AM GMT+1
Australia fell into its first recession in nearly 30 years
as the nation battles a resurgence of the virus with a lockdown in its
second-biggest city.In the U.S., cases and hospitalizations continued to ease in hot spots such as California and Texas, while warnings grew of new outbreaks across America’s Midwest. In Asia, Thailand marked 100 days with no new local infections, while Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing made $3.2 billion in one day from his Zoom stake.
A U.S. panel of experts undercut an emergency authorization on plasma treatment issued just days ago by the Food and Drug Administration, saying there’s not enough evidence to recommend the therapy for hospitalized coronavirus patients.
Key Developments:
- Global Tracker: Cases surpass 25.5 million; deaths exceed 852,000
- Vaccine front-runner held back by China’s spat with Canada
- U.K. faces October cliff edge with end of wage and loan support
- China in uneven recovery as shoppers splurge, restaurants suffer
- Airbus jet use shows fragile recovery propped up by China
- Vaccine Tracker: Where we are in the race for protection?
CDC: Nearly 30% of health workers with COVID-19 didn't know they had it
Aug. 31, 2020 /
5:20 PM
Aug. 31 (UPI) -- Up to 6% of the staff caring for patients with COVID-19 at 13
hospitals across the country tested positive for the virus -- but nearly 30% of
them were asymptomatic -- according to a report released Monday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Researchers say the doctors, nurses and physicians assistants who remained asymptomatic may have spread the infection unknowingly to patients and coworkers.
Based on these findings, enhanced screening in hospitals -- including
frequent testing of front-line health workers and universal use of face
coverings and personal protective equipment, or PPE -- can help reduce spread
of the disease, the report's authors said.
"[Our] study resulted in the identification of two factors
potentially associated with [COVID-19] infection among healthcare personnel:
PPE shortages and interacting with patients without wearing a face
covering," the CDC researchers wrote.
"Universal masking has been associated with a significantly lower rate of infection among healthcare personnel," they said.
The report's findings are based on an analysis of 3,248 healthcare workers at the 13 hospitals, all of whom underwent blood tests for COVID-19 antibodies -- immune cells that help the body fight off viruses -- between April 3 and June 19.
Nearly 200 of the workers were found to have antibodies for the virus, meaning they had been infected sometime after it first came to the United States in early February.
Of the hospitals, Montefiore Medical Center in New York City had the highest percentage of staff members with COVID-19 antibodies at 31%, while Ohio State University's Wexner Medical Center had the lowest, less than 1%, researchers said.
New York City was the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States in March, April and May.
Among those who tested positive, 29% reported never having symptoms of COVID-19 and 69% said they were not diagnosed with the disease, the researchers said.
More
A Grim Reality of Reopening: More Mold
Unoccupied buildings, abandoned during the
coronavirus shutdowns, give fungi a great opportunity to move in.
09.01.2020 01:24
PM
Last month, I took a road trip to North Carolina. The area had just experienced an extremely wet and rainy spring, and the Airbnb I was staying in had been unoccupied since Covid-19 halted almost all travel in March. When I unlocked the door, a putrid smell hit my nose immediately, like a wet beach towel left too long in a hot car. I was now sharing my rental house with some sort of mold.
The pandemic has forced all sorts of buildings to sit empty for long periods of time. As people venture back into their homes, schools, and offices again, they may also find an unwelcome surprise inside. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns people who are reopening buildings to watch out for potential hazards like mold and Legionella pneumophila, the bacterium that causes Legionnaires’ disease. Greg Bukowski, CEO of the mold inspection and removal firm Moldman USA, says he’s seen an uptick in customers in the Chicago and St. Louis areas where his company is based. “Homes that have been unoccupied for months have a high likelihood of having water-intrusion issues and subsequent mold issues,” he says. Water intrusion can come from something like a roof or plumbing leak or high humidity as a result of leaving the air conditioning off.
More
Some useful Covid links.
Johns Hopkins Coronavirus
resource centre
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.
A WARNING FROM HISTORY--THE CARRINGTON EVENT WAS NOT UNIQUE:
On Sept. 1st,
1859, the most ferocious solar storm in recorded history engulfed our planet.
It was "the Carrington Event," named after British scientist Richard
Carrington, who witnessed the flare that started it. The storm rocked Earth's
magnetic field, sparked auroras over Cuba, the Bahamas and Hawaii, set fire to
telegraph stations, and wrote itself into history books as the Biggest. Solar.
Storm. Ever.
But, sometimes, what you read in history books is wrong.
"The Carrington Event was not unique," says Hisashi
Hayakawa of Japan's Nagoya University, whose recent study of solar storms has
uncovered other events of comparable intensity. "While the Carrington
Event has long been considered a once-in-a-century catastrophe, historical
observations warn us that this may be something that occurs much more
frequently."
To generations of space weather forecasters who learned in school that the Carrington Event was one of a kind, these are unsettling thoughts. Modern technology is far more vulnerable to solar storms than 19th-century telegraphs. Think about GPS, the internet, and transcontinental power grids that can carry geomagnetic storm surges from coast to coast in a matter of minutes. A modern-day Carrington Event could cause widespread power outages along with disruptions to navigation, air travel, banking, and all forms of digital communication.
Many previous studies of solar superstorms leaned heavily on Western Hemisphere accounts, omitting data from the Eastern Hemisphere. This skewed perceptions of the Carrington Event, highlighting its importance while causing other superstorms to be overlooked.
A good example is the great storm of mid-September 1770, when extremely bright red auroras blanketed Japan and parts of China. Captain Cook himself saw the display from near Timor Island, south of Indonesia. Hayakawa and colleagues recently found drawings of the instigating sunspot, and it is twice the size of the Carrington sunspot group. Paintings, dairy entries, and other newfound records, especially from China, depict some of the lowest-latitude auroras ever, spread over a period of 9 days.
"We conclude that the 1770 magnetic storm was comparable to the Carrington Event, at least in terms of auroral visibility," wrote Hayakawa and colleagues in a 2017 Astrophysical Journal Letter. Moreover, "the duration of the storm activity was much longer than usual."
Hayakawa's team has delved into the history of other storms as well, examining Japanese diaries, Chinese and Korean government records, archives of the Russian Central Observatory, and log-books from ships at sea--all helping to form a more complete picture of events.
They found that superstorms in February 1872 and May 1921 were also comparable to the Carrington Event, with similar magnetic amplitudes and widespread auroras. Two more storms are nipping at Carrington's heels: The Quebec Blackout of March 13, 1989, and an unnamed storm on Sept. 25, 1909, were only a factor of ~2 less intense. (Check Table 1 of Hayakawa et al's 2019 paper for details.)
"This is likely happening much more often than previously thought," says Hayakawa.
Are we overdue for another Carrington Event? Maybe. In fact, we might
have just missed one.
In July 2012, NASA and European spacecraft watched an extreme solar
storm erupt from the sun and narrowly miss Earth. "If it had hit, we would
still be picking up the pieces," announced Daniel Baker of the University
of Colorado at a NOAA Space Weather Workshop 2 years later. "It might have
been stronger than the Carrington Event itself."
History books, let the re-write begin.
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 uly. 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.
more helpful hints
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