All Change. An Iffy Dollar Problem. 50 Million And Rising.

Baltic Dry Index. 1196 +02  Brent Crude 40.48 

Spot Gold 1962

Coronavirus Cases 09/11/20 World 50,474,057

Deaths 1,257,376 

Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency.

---- Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and it does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose. 

John Maynard Keynes.

As President Trump attempts to fight on in the courts to claim victory, President elect Biden and most of the world get on with preparing for life after President Trump.

I can’t see any US court overturning President Biden’s victory, so I think the world is right to start preparing for a very different world next year under the very left leaning President Biden. 

Hopefully, when vaccines become widely available, the global Covid-19 pandemic will start to fade away. Until then, however, massive economic damage is still occurring led by the USA and Europe, making our present stock casino’s rallies probably premature.

Below, the USA and the world brace for a very wobbly dollar.

Risk assets cheer Biden win, dollar nurses losses

November 8, 202010:46 PM Updated 37 minutes ago

By Swati Pandey

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Shares surged, oil prices jumped and the U.S. dollar remained weak on Monday as expectations of fewer regulatory reforms and more monetary stimulus under U.S. President-elect Joe Biden supported risk appetite.

The Democratic candidate’s election victory was already largely priced in by markets, which had been trading with the view of a Biden presidency and a Republican-controlled U.S. Senate since last week.

E-mini futures for the S&P 500 ESc1 jumped more than 1.5% on Monday while Nasdaq futures NQc1 rallied over 2%, signalling a positive start for U.S. markets.

Eurostoxx 50 futures STXEc1 gained 1.7%, Germany's DAX futures FDXc1 climbed 1.8% and FTSE futures FFIc1 rose 1.4%.

The mood was also upbeat in Asia, with all major indexes in the green.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia Pacific shares outside of Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS jumped 1.4% to 614.73 points, the highest since January 2018. It climbed 6.2% last week to clock its best weekly performance since early June.

“While lots of attention was given to Trump vs Biden, markets have reacted strongly to the (likely) split congress, which means more confidence that interest rates will be lower for longer,” said Dave Wang, portfolio manager at Nuvest Capital in Singapore.

---- Chinese shares started higher with the blue-chip CSI300 index .CSI300 up 2.2% on hopes of better Sino-U.S. trade relations under Biden.

Japan .N225 rose 2.4% while the main indexes of Australia .AXJO, Hong Kong .HSI and South Korea .KS11 gained 1.5% each.

Equities rallied hard last week, with the S&P500 .SPX up 7.3%, clocking the best gain in an election week since 1932, according to National Australia Bank analyst Tapas Strickland.

---- Analysts said the outlook might get tougher from here as investors focus on Biden’s ability to expand fiscal stimulus and measures to reduce the spread of COVID-19.

The United States saw a record number of new coronavirus infections last week, with the total number of cases nearing 10 million.

More

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-global-markets/risk-assets-cheer-biden-win-dollar-nurses-losses-idUKKBN27O0WT?il=0

Brent crude tops $40 after Biden's win lifts risk-takers

November 9, 2020 1:21 AM  By Florence Tan

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Oil prices gained more than 2% on Monday, with Brent futures rising above $40 a barrel, after Joe Biden clinched the U.S. presidency and buoyed risk appetites, offsetting worries about the impact on demand from a worsening coronavirus pandemic.

Brent crude futures LCOc1 for January climbed $1.06, or 2.7%, to $40.51 a barrel by 0453 GMT, and U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude CLc1 for December was at $38.21 a barrel, up $1.07, or 2.9%.

Oil recovered from a 4% decline on Friday, rising along with other financial markets after Biden emerged as the winner in the U.S. presidential race on Sunday. Meanwhile, the dollar weakened, boosting commodities priced in the greenback as they became more affordable for investors holding other currencies.

“Trading this morning has a risk-on flavour, reflecting increasing confidence that Joe Biden will occupy the White House, but the Republican Party will retain control of the Senate,” Michael McCarthy, chief market strategist at CMC Markets in Sydney.

“The outcome is ideal from a market point of view. Neither party controls the Congress, so both trade wars and higher taxes are largely off the agenda.”

U.S. President-elect Biden and his team are working on tackling the worsening health crisis. The United States became the first nation worldwide since the pandemic began to surpass 10 million COVID-19 infections, according to a Reuters tally on Sunday.

“There will be some repercussions further down the road,” said OCBC’s economist Howie Lee, raising the possibility of lockdowns in the United States under Biden.

“Either you’re crimping energy demand or consumption behaviour.”

Separately, U.S. oil production is set to climb as producers are tapping into a backlog of drilled wells left uncompleted to boost output. The number of operating oil and gas rigs in the United States rose for an eighth week last week, according to Baker Hughes.

Key members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) are wary of Biden relaxing measures on either Iran or Venezuela in years to come, which could mean an increase in production that would make it harder to balance supply with demand.

---- OPEC and its allies, a group known as OPEC+, are cutting output by about 7.7 million barrels per day to balance global oil markets.

China, the world’s top crude importer, posted a 12% decline in October imports compared with September.

This data may be bearish for global commodity markets, said OCBC’s Lee: “China might be near the end of what it needs in the raw commodity form given the amount of stockpiles that it has.”

https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-global-oil/brent-crude-tops-40-after-bidens-win-lifts-risk-takers-idUKKBN27P02G

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 northern 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.  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. Which now seems to be happening in the Kara and Laptev Seas.

It is still too early to suggest a mild western European winter ahead, but it is the way I was leaning given the slowish recovery of the Arctic sea ice. But with the Kara and Laptev sea ice speeding up fast now, especially in the Laptev Sea, at the end of the first week of November I’m starting to think that might be wrong.

US National Ice Center.

https://www.natice.noaa.gov/ims/

"There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved."

Ludwig von Mises

Covid-19 Corner                       

This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.

Global coronavirus cases exceed 50 million after 30-day spike

November 9, 20201:52 AM  Updated 3 hours ago

By Anurag Maan, Shaina Ahluwalia, Kavya B

(Reuters) - Global coronavirus infections exceeded 50 million on Sunday, according to a Reuters tally, with a second wave of the virus in the past 30 days accounting for a quarter of the total.

October was the worst month for the pandemic so far, with the United States becoming the first country to report more than 100,000 daily cases. A surge in Europe contributed to the rise.

The latest seven-day average shows global daily infections are rising by more than 540,000.

More than 1.25 million people have died from the respiratory disease that emerged in China late last year.

The pandemic’s recent acceleration has been ferocious. It took 32 days for the number of cases to rise from 30 million to 40 million. It took just 21 days to add another 10 million.

Europe, with about 12 million cases, is the worst-affected region, overtaking Latin America. Europe accounts for 24% of COVID-19 deaths.

The region is logging about 1 million new infections every three days or so, according to a Reuters analysis. That is 51% of the global total.

France is recording 54,440 cases a day on the latest seven-day average, a higher rate than India with a far bigger population.

The global second wave is testing healthcare systems across Europe, prompting Germany, France and Britain to order many citizens back to their homes again.

Denmark, which imposed a new lockdown on its population in several northern areas, ordered the culling of its 17 million minks after a mutation of the coronavirus found in the animals spread to humans.

The United States, with about 20% of global cases, is facing its worst surge, recording more than 100,000 daily coronavirus cases on the latest seven-day average, Reuters data showed. It reported a record of more than 130,000 cases on Saturday.

More

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-global-cases/global-coronavirus-cases-exceed-50-million-after-30-day-spike-idUKKBN27O0JM?il=0

Global Cases Pass 50 Million; Utah Mask Mandate: Virus Update

Bloomberg News

November 8, 2020, 11:06 PM GMT Updated on November 9, 2020, 4:53 AM GMT

The pandemic shows no signs of slowing down, with worldwide infections surpassing 50 million. Cases in the U.S. topped 100,000 for a fourth straight day, bringing the nation’s total close to the 10 million mark.

U.S. President-elect Joe Biden will speak Monday on his plan to “beat Covid 19,” setting out a more muscular response to the pandemic than he says Donald Trump has made. Biden plans to appoint a 12-member coronavirus task force. Utah, facing overcrowded hospitals, issued a state of emergency and ordered a mask mandate.

Japan is facing rising infections in the northern island of Hokkaido. South Korea is expanding nationwide testing of patients and workers at nursing homes and mental hospitals to stave off outbreaks. Melbourne residents emerged from a 16-week lockdown, after 10 days without new cases.

Key Developments:

• Global Tracker: Cases surpass 50.3 million; deaths top 1.25 million
• Biden launches transition, Covid plan
• After crushing Covid, Melbourne emerges wary and more sedate
• With U.S. cases at record levels, hospitalizations may be next
• Vaccine Tracker: Clinical trials restart in hopeful sign

More

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-08/worldwide-cases-pass-50-million-with-u-s-surging-virus-update?srnd=coronavirus

Germany's confirmed coronavirus cases rise by 13,363 to 671,868: RKI

November 9, 2020  5:16 AM

BERLIN (Reuters) - The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany increased by 13,363 to 671,868, data from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases showed on Monday.

The reported death toll rose by 63 to 11,352.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-germany-cases/germanys-confirmed-coronavirus-cases-rise-by-13363-to-671868-rki-idUKKBN27P0CO?il=0

Confused About Covid Brain Fog? Doctors Have Questions, Too

Physicians have seen this recovery symptom before, but they still don’t know why so many coronavirus survivors are being affected.

11.06.2020 09:32 AM

----The most common complaints Hope hears are fatigue, shortness of breath, and coughing. But survivors also describe sadness and depression. Hope says many carry a double burden: gratefulness for having survived, and grief over the trauma of being hospitalized and separated from family. And then there are memory problems. About a third of his patients say they can’t recall telephone numbers they used to know, or that they struggle to remember the right word, feeling like it’s on the tip of their tongue but just out of reach. They can’t remember where their keys are, what basic traffic rules are.

This mental fuzziness, often referred to as “brain fog,” has become one of a number of reported Covid-19 recovery symptoms. And while patients are often alarmed and frustrated that they can’t resume their normal lives, doctors say it isn’t particularly surprising. “We’ve encountered brain fog and mental fatigue commonly post-infection. We do have experience with this,” says Marie Grill, a neurologist at the Mayo Clinic who says it often follows other infections like Lyme disease, Epstein-Barr (better known as “mono”), and other types of herpes viruses. “A lot of us are not surprised at all to be encountering this, because we have seen it so many times,” she says.

But while doctors may have been expecting brain fog, there are still plenty of questions about what causes the symptom, who it affects the most, and how to treat it. “We don’t have the whole story,” says Adam Kaplin, a neuropsychiatrist at Johns Hopkins University. “What we don’t know is probably much larger than what we do know.”

What we know is that patients describe a very similar set of symptoms. They say their brains work more slowly. They can’t pick up information in conversation as easily as they used to, and they struggle with short-term memory: They’ll walk to the kitchen, for instance, and forget what they were looking for. Multitasking is impossible. It takes them longer to get things done, and they often feel confused and overwhelmed. Some patients struggle to return to work or to school.

More

https://www.wired.com/story/confused-about-covid-brain-fog-doctors-have-questions-too/?bxid=5cc9e09a3f92a477a0e84d6d&cndid=52110326&esrc=Wired_etl_load&mbid=mbid%3DCRMWIR012019%0A%0A&source=EDT_WIR_NEWSLETTER_0_DAILY_ZZ&utm_brand=wired&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_content=Final&utm_mailing=WIR_Daily_110720&utm_medium=email&utm_source=nl&utm_term=list1_p4

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 other useful Covid links.

Johns Hopkins Coronavirus resource centre

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

Rt Covid-19

https://rt.live/

Covid19info.live 

https://wuflu.live/

Centers for Disease Control Coronavirus

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html

 

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 21^st century onwards.

Blue phosphorus: How a semiconductor becomes a metal

Date: November 5, 2020

Source: Technische Universität Dresden

Summary: Blue phosphorus, an atomically thin synthetic semiconductor, becomes metallic as soon as it is converted into a double layer. The scientists describe the possibility of constructing nanoscale, highly efficient transistors consisting of only one element.

The results of these investigations were published as highlight article in the current issue of the journal Physical Review Letters.

The chemical element phosphorus is considered one of the most essential elements for life. Phosphorus compounds are deeply involved in the structure and function of organisms. Every human carries about one kilogram of it in the body. But even outside our bodies we are surrounded by phosphates and phosphonates every day: in our food, in detergents, fertilizers or in medicines.

Phosphorus occurs in several modifications that have extremely different properties. Under normal conditions, a distinction is made between white, purple, red and black phosphorus. In 2014, a team from the Michigan State University, USA, computationally predicted "blue phosphorus," which could be produced experimentally two years later.

Blue phosphorus is a so-called two-dimensional (2D) material. Due to its single-layer honeycomb-like structure, it is reminiscent of what is probably the best known 2D material: graphene. Analogous to its famous forerunner, it was then also called blue phosphorene. This novel semiconductor material has since been investigated as an extremely promising candidate for optoelectronic devices.

The Dresden chemist Prof Thomas Heine, in cooperation with Mexican scientists, has now made a unique discovery: by applying a topological concept they identified computationally a remarkably stable two-layer buckled honeycomb structure of blue phosphorene by means of highly precise calculations on high-performance computers. This two-layered compound is extremely stable. As the scientists surprisingly discovered, it has metallic properties due to the very small distance between the two layers.

Like all components, these devices must be supplied with power, which usually enters the material via metal electrodes. At the metal-semiconductor interface, energy losses are inevitable, an effect known as the Schottky barrier. Blue phosphorus is semiconducting as a single layer, but predicted to be metallic as a double layer. Metallic 2D materials are very rare, and for the first time a pure elemental material has been discovered that exhibits a semiconductor-metal transition from the monolayer to the double layer. Thus, an electronic or optoelectronic component for use in transistors or photocells can be realized from only one chemical element. Since there is no interface between semiconductor and metal in these devices, the Schottky barrier is greatly reduced and a higher efficiency can be expected.

"Imagine you put two layers of paper on top of each other and suddenly the double sheet shines metallically like gold foil. This is exactly what we predict for blue phosphorene. This work underlines the importance of interdisciplinarity in basic research. Using a topological-mathematical model and theoretical chemistry, we were able to design a new material on the computer and predict its physical properties. Applications in the field of nano- and optoelectronics are expected," explains Prof Heine.

For these promising results in basic research, first author Jessica Arcudia from Mexico has already been awarded the LatinXChem poster prize and the ACS Presidential Award. The young chemist was a guest student in the research group of Thomas Heine in 2018, where also her doctoral supervisor Prof Gabriel Merino had worked before.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/11/201105115159.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fmatter_energy%2Fgraphene+%28Graphene+News+--+ScienceDaily%29

“But it [the boom] could not last forever even if inflation and credit expansion were to go on endlessly. It would then encounter the barriers which prevent the boundless expansion of circulation credit. It would lead to the crack-up boom and the breakdown of the whole monetary system.”

Ludwig von Mises.