Baltic Dry Index. 1413 +11 Brent Crude 40.50
Spot Gold 1909
Coronavirus Cases 28/10/20 World 44,131,513
Deaths 1,169,205
It is the highest impertinence and presumption… in kings and ministers, to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expense... They are themselves always, and without any exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society. Let them look well after their own expense, and they may safely trust private people with theirs. If their own extravagance does not ruin the state, that of their subjects never will.
Adam Smith. The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
With less than a week to go to the US elections, the punters in the central banksters stock casinos seem to be getting ever more skittish about the prospect of a Democrat Socialist sweep.
Officially, stock promoters, Robinhooders, and Wall Street perma-bulls, all tout the line that Biden and Co., will be very bullish for stocks. Magic Money Tree money will flow like never before. And perhaps it will.
But under the Biden-Harris Democrat Socialists, it is unlikely to be flowing into Wall Street rather than Main Street. In fact, many Democrat Socialists are looking to Wall Street and the Billionaires Club to pick up the tab.
To this old dinosaur commodities trader, a Biden-Harris sweep probably tips the rigged playing field away from Wall Street to in favour of those who just elected Biden-Harris.
Not only will the punch bowl be taken away from Wall Street, but Wall Street and the techies are likely to be put on a bread and water diet but at high cost.
Asian shares, U.S. stock futures sag on coronavirus, U.S. election worries
October 27, 2020
TOKYO (Reuters) - Global shares slipped on Wednesday as coronavirus infections grew at an alarming pace in the United States and Europe, while uncertainty over next week’s U.S. elections added to a “risk off” tone.
Asian shares, U.S. stock futures sag on coronavirus, U.S. election worries MSCI’s ex-Japan Asia index dipped 0.15% in early trade while Japan’s Nikkei fell 0.6%.
Futures for U.S. S&P500, Dow Jones and Nasdaq all fell 0.5%-0.6% in Asian trade on Wednesday, rattled by a media report that French government may bring in a national lockdown from midnight on Thursday.
The United States, Russia, France and other countries have registered record numbers of infections in recent days, and European governments have introduced new curbs to try to rein in the fast-growing outbreaks.
Data on Tuesday showed U.S. consumer confidence unexpectedly fell in October, although other economic figures were mostly positive, with orders for key capital goods hitting a six-year high.
The fall in U.S. stock futures came after a mixed session on Wall Street, where the S&P 500 lost 0.30% on virus worries while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite added 0.64%.
Microsoft kicked off a slate of reporting from tech heavyweights by beating Wall Street estimates for quarterly revenue, buoyed by its flagship cloud computing business amid increased work-from-home arrangements. But its shares slipped 1.7% after the bell.
Apple Inc, Amazon.com, and Google-parent Alphabet are among major tech players reporting later this week.
Investors appeared content to steer clear of risk with looming uncertainty, headlined by the Nov. 3 U.S. presidential election.
---- “It appears the gap between Biden and Trump is shrinking a bit lately. In particular, Biden’s lead in swing states doesn’t look that different from (Democratic candidate) Hilary Clinton’s in 2016,” said Nobuhiko Kuramochi, market strategist at Mizuho Securities.
“People still remember the 2016 experience and those who have bet on a blue wave are probably taking some profits now ahead of the event,” he added.
Wall Street’s volatility index, a measure of market expectations in share price swings, rose to 33.35, its highest in almost two months.
Some market players see that as a sign more investors are wary of the possibility that the election outcome can be contested, possibly leaving markets in limbo for weeks.
That would likely further delay any negotiation on economic relief package U.S. policymakers have been struggling to agree on. Trump acknowledged an economic relief package would likely come after the Nov. 3 election.
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If Biden wins what would the first 100 days of his presidency look like?
If he succeeds in defeating Trump, the Democrat will have to urgently tackle the coronavirus pandemic as well as rebuild global relationships
Wed 28 Oct 2020 06.26 GMT
If Joe Biden wins the 2020 US election against Donald Trump next week, the new president-elect will face enormous pressures to implement a laundry list of priorities on a range of issues from foreign policy to the climate crisis, reversing many of the stark changes implemented by his predecessor.
But Biden’s first and most pressing task for his first 100 days in the White House would be to roll out a new nationwide plan to fight the coronavirus crisis, which has claimed more than 220,000 lives in the US and infected millions – more than any other country in the world – as well as taking steps to fix the disastrous economic fallout.
And, while the new president might be fresh from victory, the moderate Biden will also have to wrangle with his own side – a Democratic party with an increasingly influential liberal wing, hungry for major institutional changes to try to answer some of the most urgent questions over the country’s future.
“He basically has to do something historic,” said Saikat Chakrabarti, a Democratic activist and former chief of staff to the progressive New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “He’s being handed a depression, a pandemic, and he’s being elected on a mandate to actually solve this stuff and do something big.”
In the best-case scenario for Biden, he would be elected in a landslide, and the Democrats would flip the Senate, taking control of both chambers of Congress. If that happens, Biden and his team could enact their most ambitious plans for a presidency with the same feel as Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s, which saw the sweeping New Deal recovery and relief programs in response to the economic crisis of the 1930s.
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/28/joe-biden-presidency-first-100-days
Back in the real world far from the central bankster fuelled stock casinos, prepare for a winter of trouble ahead, no matter which old age pensioner gets to occupy the White House.
Struggling Rental Market Could Usher in Next American Housing Crisis
Millions of renters are behind on their payments; mass evictions could come soon
By Oct. 27, 2020 5:30 am ET
A housing crisis centered on the vast apartment and home-rental markets is emerging in the U.S., threatening to send millions of renters into eviction and leave landlords short billions of dollars.
A large number of renters have been unable to pay some or even all of their rent since March, when the pandemic temporarily shut down most businesses. Many businesses remain closed or only partially open, pushing renters into unemployment and draining their savings.
Federal and local eviction moratoriums have protected many of them from losing their homes if they missed payments during the pandemic. But the national eviction ban and some state and city protections are set to expire by January or sooner. Renters will then be on the hook for months of missed payments, which even those who have jobs could struggle to pay.
Estimates of total outstanding rent debt vary widely. Yet by any measure, the fallout from missed rent payments is bound to imperil a large swath of the U.S. population and wash over the broader economy.
A study of unemployed workers released last week by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia calculated outstanding rent debt would reach $7.2 billion before the close of 2020. Moody’s Analytics estimates that it could reach nearly $70 billion by year-end if there is no additional stimulus spending. The economic-research firm calculated that 12.8 million Americans would then owe an average of $5,400 from missed payments.
Even the larger figure would be far less than what was lost when the $1.3 trillion subprime-mortgage bubble burst, leading to a national wave of defaults and foreclosures. But the tens of millions of people potentially caught in a web of home-rental debt and eviction would far exceed the 3.8 million homeowners who were foreclosed on in 2007-2010.
The ballooning debt issue for renters is another sign of how Covid-19 is punishing the less well-off far worse than the more affluent.
Most Americans financially secure enough to own a home are feeling flush, despite the economic downturn and a high unemployment rate that has spared most white-collar professionals. Houses are selling at record rates, and home prices have rarely been higher. Recently moribund suburban-housing markets in the Northeast and other regions have sprung back to life as buyers seek more space while working at home.
But about a quarter of American renter households with children are now carrying debt from not paying rent, U.S. Census Bureau surveys show. Women and people of color are disproportionately more likely to owe rent, according to the census data. Black and Latino Californians were twice as likely as their white counterparts to face rent insecurity amid the pandemic, an analysis by the University of California, Los Angeles found.
Mounting rental debt could also impede the path to a U.S. economic recovery, when 30 million to 40 million people from New York City to San Francisco face potential eviction once moratoriums expire, according to estimates cited by federal government officials.
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Winter Watch.
The Arctic winter sea-ice expansion and northern hemisphere snow cover. From around mid-October, the northern hemisphere snow cover usually rapidly expands, while the Arctic ice gradually expands back towards its winter maximum.
Over simplified, a rapid expansion of both, especially if early, can be a sign of a harsher than normal arriving norther hemisphere winter. Perhaps more so in 2020-2021 as we’re in the low of the ending sunspot cycle, which possibly also influenced this year’s record Atlantic hurricane season.
Adding to this year’s winter concerns, a developing La Nina weather pattern in the Pacific. While the La Nina effect on the winter weather of western Europe is weaker than that of an El Nino pattern, which tends to make for a milder winter, a La Nina pattern tends to make for a colder winter.
The early take, Eur-Asia turned snowy fast in mid-October. North America is now playing catchup. The Arctic sea ice expansion is slow, and from a very low level at the end of September, but with the vastly expanded snow cover, sea ice formation will probably now speed up.
US National Ice Center.
https://www.natice.noaa.gov/ims/
Arctic blast brings minus-29 degree cold to Montana as snow and ice plaster central U.S.
Matthew Cappucci October 26, 2020
A blast of frigid Arctic air has descended over the Western United States, toppling records far and wide as readings plummet to some 40 degrees below average for this time of year. Temperatures throughout much of the Rockies dipped below zero to start the week, falling as low as minus-29.2 in Potomac, Mont., early Sunday — the coldest temperature ever observed this early in the season across the Lower 48.
The cold has helped whip up a significant winter storm, which is taking shape now from the Four Corners to the southern Plains. It’s dropping heavy accumulations of snow and ice as the frigid air plunges south in its wake.
Winter storm and ice storm warnings are up for most of Colorado, New Mexico, the Texas Panhandle and Oklahoma, while winter weather advisories stretch northeast into Kansas City toward the Iowa border. Behind the system, wind chills will drop to minus-25 in the Intermountain West on Monday night.
Meteorologists sometimes refer to storms like this one as a kitchen-sink storm, a tempest that combines the worst of all seasons in which different air masses collide.
Record snow blanketed the northern U.S. last week
Central Oklahoma is preparing for its worst ice storm since 2015, with the Oklahoma City metro area under an ice storm warning.
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Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
India Near 8 Million Cases; Europe Wave Resurgence: Virus Update
October 27, 2020, 10:59 PM GMT Updated on
India’s confirmed cases reached just under 8 million as virus infections spread across the country. Europe’s resurgent coronavirus outbreak intensified, with Italy’s new cases reaching a record and France reporting the most deaths since April as stricter measures are weighed on the continent.
Japan passes a bill to offer a free vaccine. In a rare admission, U.S. President Donald Trump acknowledged that coronavirus cases are rising in “certain areas” of the Midwest. Covid-19 hospitalizations have risen at least 10% in the past week in 32 states and the nation’s capital as the month-old viral surge increasingly weighs on America’s health-care system.
Pfizer Inc. CEO Albert Bourla said the company may know by the end of October whether its vaccine is effective. Russia has begun production of a second vaccine that hasn’t completed trials.
Key Developments:
- Global Tracker: Cases top 43.9 million; deaths exceed 1.16 million
- East Europe fights for its life against virus it thought crushed
- City locked down for three months has bleak lesson for the world
- Can you get Covid twice? What reinfection cases mean: QuickTake
- Slow Covid recovery stalks health industry as new cases surge
- European governments running out of options to avoid lockdowns
- Vaccine Tracker: Vaccine trials restart, providing hop
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France Emerges as Covid-19 Epicenter as Cases Surge Across Europe
Earlier curfews and weekend lockdowns are being weighed for some hot spots to curb a second wave of infections
Updated Oct. 27, 2020 4:34 pm ET
PARIS—France has emerged as the epicenter of the second wave of coronavirus infections now sweeping much of Europe, causing hospitals to brace for a surge of new patients and pushing the government to consider tough new restrictions in some places.
The country saw daily cases top 50,000 over the weekend, while the seven-day average of new daily cases has increased by more than 50% over the past week, reaching 38,278 on Tuesday. That compares with a seven-day average of 69,967 cases in the U.S., whose population is around five times as big.
On Tuesday, health authorities reported 523 new deaths, including 235 in nursing homes and other government facilities, the highest total death toll since April.
In response, President Emmanuel Macron could implement tough new restrictions to confront Europe’s largest coronavirus outbreak, as previous measures appear to have been insufficient in containing the spread.
Earlier this month, French authorities ordered a curfew from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. in the Paris region and nine other cities.
The government is now considering earlier curfews in many parts of the country, as well as weekend lockdowns that would sharply curtail individuals’ movements in virus hot spots such as Paris, effectively confining them to home, according to a close presidential aide.
Mr. Macron is meeting with members of his government on Tuesday and Wednesday morning to decide which measures to adopt, the person added. Mr. Macron will address the nation on Wednesday evening.
The surge in infections in France comes amid a sharp rise this autumn in much of the Continent, reversing the gains Europe had won by last summer, when draconian, nationwide lockdowns in many European countries pushed infections down to a trickle.
Now, European governments are struggling to respond to the second wave, loath to impose new lockdowns that would compound the economic pain the coronavirus pandemic has already inflicted on their countries, but concerned about the steady rise in hospitalizations and deaths.
Jean-François Delfraissy, a doctor and immunology specialist who leads a scientific board advising the French government on how to tackle the pandemic, said this week that the actual number of new daily cases of infection in France is probably closer to 100,000 a day, and is likely to continue to increase.
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English COVID data patchy, researchers say, as new dashboard launched
October 28, 2020
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