Japan also reported record news cases as
Tokyo raised its pandemic alert to the highest level, shoving the Nikkei .N225 down 0.8% and away from a
29-year closing top.
Yet, the U.S. death toll still neared a
world record of a quarter million as government officials in dozens of states
weighed or implemented shutdown measures.
New York closed its schools on Wednesday,
while Minnesota ordered bars and restaurants to cease in-door dining.
---- The drag from new U.S. restrictions was
only amplified by the total lack of progress on a fiscal stimulus bill,
fuelling speculation the Federal Reserve would have to expand its asset-buying
campaign at a December policy meeting.
November
19, 2020
5:32 AM By Leika Kihara
TOKYO (Reuters) - More than 30 major
Japanese firms will begin experiments next year towards issuing a common,
private digital currency to promote digitalisation in one of the world’s most
cash-loving countries, the group’s organising body said on Thursday.
The move follows the Bank of Japan’s recently announced plan to
experiment with issuing a digital yen, underscoring a growing awareness of the
need for Japan to catch up to rapid global advances in financial technology.
The group, consisting of Japan’s three biggest banks as well as
brokerages, telecommunication firms, utilities and retailers, will conduct
experiments for issuing a digital currency that will use a common settlement
platform.
“Japan has many digital platforms, none of which are big enough to beat
cash payments,” Hiromi Yamaoka, a former BOJ executive who chairs the group,
told an online briefing.
---- Private
banks will be in charge of issuing the digital currency in the experiments,
though the possibility of other entities issuing a digital yen will not be
ruled out, he said.
Japan has among the most cash-loving people in the world, with cashless
payments making up only 20% of total settlement - well below the United States,
with 45% and China with 70%.
Authorities have been keen to promote cashless transactions to increase
productivity, though progress has been slow partly due to the inconvenience of
digital payment.
Various digital platforms compete and remain incompatible with one
another in Japan unlike in China, where a handful of huge platforms dominate
the market.
Japan’s three megabanks - Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc, Mizuho
Financial Group Inc and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc - have eached
rolled out their own digital payment systems. But they lag efforts by tech
firms such as SoftBank Group unit PayPay.
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-banking-digital-currencies-japan/japan-inc-to-begin-experiments-issuing-digital-yen-idUKKBN27Z0HW?il=0
Back in the real world, even free money doesn’t work for
long. Covid-19 and mindless lock downs have forever changed about half of the
21st century economy. Social trouble lies ahead, with or without perfect
vaccines.
Hundreds of
Companies That Got Stimulus Aid Have Failed Recipients of PPP loans have filed for
bankruptcy after the money ran out Updated Nov. 17, 2020 9:45 am ET
About 300 companies that received as much as half a billion
dollars in pandemic-related government loans have filed for bankruptcy,
according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of government data and court
filings.
Many of the companies, which employ a total of about 23,400
workers, say the funds from the Paycheck Protection Program weren’t enough to
keep them going as the coronavirus and lack of additional stimulus payments
weighed on their businesses.
The total number of companies that failed despite getting
PPP loans is likely far higher. The Journal only analyzed the big borrowers
from the program, which accounted for about half of the overall loans though
only about 13.5% of the total participants. And many small businesses simply
liquidate when they run out of cash rather than file for bankruptcy.
The government awarded a total $525 billion in PPP loans to
5.2 million companies since April, according to the Small Business
Administration. The SBA has only released data on the largest borrowers, which
the Journal linked to bankruptcy filings.
More
https://www.wsj.com/articles/hundreds-of-companies-that-got-stimulus-aid-have-failed-11605609180?mod=mhp
Finally, more on Germany’s Wirecard fraud. Forget the 2
billion euros missing. The true number missing may be as high as 12.5 billion
Euros. Who was the auditor of Wirecard?
Wirecard creditors claim at least
12.5 billion euros November 18,
2020 10:32 AM
MUNICH (Reuters) - Creditors of the collapsed German payments company
Wirecard have made claims for at least 12.5 billion euros ($14.85 billion), a
German court said on Wednesday.
Wirecard, in a dramatic fall from grace and blow to Germany’s
reputation, filed for insolvency earlier this year after disclosing that 1.9
billion euros it claimed to hold in accounts was missing.
The firm’s assets are in the process of being sold off around the globe.
The claims were made against Wirecard’s holding company at a meeting of
creditors and the company’s insolvency administrator in a Munich beer hall.
Creditors are likely to see only a fraction of their claims repaid.
Claims beyond the 12.5 billion euros were also made against various
subsidiaries, but they were not made public.
Wirecard’s shares had been listed as one of Germany’s top 30 blue chip
companies.
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-wirecard-accounts/wirecard-creditors-claim-at-least-12-5-billion-euros-idUKKBN27Y177?il=0
Wirecard Ex-CEO Braun Makes First
Outing from Jail to Testify By Sarah Syed ,
Arne Delfs ,
and Karin
Matussek November 19, 2020, 12:00 AM EST
Wirecard AG ’s former chief executive officer will
briefly swap a prison cell for his first public appearance since being arrested
in June to face lawmakers’ questions about his role at the once high-flying
payment company, which he ran for more than a decade before its collapse five
months ago.
Markus Braun will be grilled on Thursday in Berlin by a
German parliamentary committee investigating allegations that the former CEO
and others conspired to obtain about 3.2 billion euros ($3.8 billion) in
fraudulent loans. Lawmakers will want to establish Braun’s ties into the
government, which took a keen interest in Wirecard particularly after the
company joined the prestigious DAX benchmark index in 2018.
More
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-19/wirecard-ex-ceo-braun-makes-first-outing-from-jail-to-testify?srnd=premium-europe
I don't owe a penny to a single soul--not counting tradesmen, of course.
Graeme,
with apologies to P.G. Wodehouse.
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.
Northern Eur-Asia turned snowy fast in
mid-October. The Arctic sea ice
expansion was slow, and from a very low level at the end of September, but with
the vastly expanded snow cover, sea ice formation sped up.
While the Kara and Laptev sea ice initially
sped up, especially in the Laptev Sea which is virtually back to normal, the
Kara Sea ice is still well below normal, as is the snow cover of Finland, Sweden
and Norway. The outcome, I’m going back to my earlier instinct of a normal to warmer
western European winter.
Arctic
and Antarctic Sea Ice.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
Covid-19 Corner This
section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
Vaccines, Moderna compared to
Pfizer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZvsqBCvB00
Government-Funded Scientists Laid
the Groundwork for Billion-Dollar Vaccines Posted on November
18, 2020 by Jerri-Lynn Scofield
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/11/government-funded-scientists-laid-the-groundwork-for-billion-dollar-vaccinesby.html
Tokyo Alert Level at High; U.S.
Deaths Top 250,000: Virus Update Bloomberg News November
18, 2020, 10:50 PM GMT Updated on November 19, 2020, 6:08 AM GMT
The metropolis of Tokyo is raising its virus alert to its
highest level, following reports of record high new daily cases, Governor
Yuriko Koike told a meeting of virus experts. She is urging people to keep
year-end parties small.
New coronavirus cases in Tokyo reached 534 on Thursday,
bringing the cumulative total to 36,256. Japan’s daily Covid-19 cases rose to a
record of more than 2,000 on Wednesday, according to local media tallies, while
infections in Tokyo jumped by 493, surpassing a previous daily high set in
August.
U.S. deaths from the coronavirus surpassed 250,000, marking
a grim milestone as the nation struggles to contain a new surge in cases. South
Australia began one of the world’s toughest lockdowns, with even outdoor
exercise and dog-walking banned as the state tries to contain a cluster of
Covid-19 infections.
New York City said it will shut schools after infections
crossed a critical threshold. Pfizer Inc.
said a final analysis of clinical-trial data showed its vaccine was 95%
effective, paving the way for the company to apply for the first U.S.
regulatory authorization for a coronavirus shot within days.
Key Developments:
More
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-18/u-s-deaths-surpass-250-000-nyc-to-shut-schools-virus-update?srnd=coronavirus
Global daily coronavirus deaths
cross record of 10,733 single-day deaths – Reuters tally November 18,
2020 9:12 AM By Kavya B , Anurag
Maan
(Reuters)
- The number of reported global daily deaths from the coronavirus stood at
10,816 on Tuesday, according to a Reuters tally, the highest single-day death
count as the virus’s global epicenter the United States entered winter.
The previous record of global daily deaths was 10,733, registered on
Nov. 4, according to the Reuters tally.
The United States, the worst-affected country worldwide, has reported
about 11.38 million infections and 248,574 deaths since the pandemic started,
the tally showed.
The United States leads the world in the daily average number of new
deaths reported, accounting for one in every 12 deaths reported worldwide each
day, according to a Reuters analysis.
Brazil, with 166,699 coronavirus deaths, followed by India with 130,993
are the only two other countries who have reported more than 100,000 deaths
since the first coronavirus-related death was reported in Wuhan, China this
January.
In Europe, which accounts for almost a quarter of the 1.3 million
deaths, Britain has reported the highest number of deaths in the region.
Britain is also the only European nation to report more than 50,000
fatalities, followed by Italy with 46,464 fatalities and France with 46,273,
according to the Reuters tally.
----
France, which became the first European county to cross 2 million coronavirus
cases on Tuesday, has got some respite from the virus in the past few days as
it reported its one-month low daily cases numbers on Monday.
Already facing the prospect of a wave of job losses and business
failures, governments across the region have been forced to order control
measures including local curfews, closing non-essential shops and restricting
movement.
In United States, many state governors in the past week have put back
restrictions to control the spread of the virus.
Several state officials also have urged citizens to exercise caution around
the Thanksgiving holiday and not travel or socialize with extended family for
the traditional indoor feast.
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-global-casualties/global-daily-coronavirus-deaths-cross-record-of-10733-single-day-deaths-reuters-tally-idUKKBN27Y0ZC
Sinovac's COVID-19 vaccine
induces quick immune response: study November 17, 2020
11:35 PM Updated 3 hours ago By Miyoung
Kim ,
Roxanne
Liu
SINGAPORE/BEIJING
(Reuters) - Sinovac Biotech’s experimental COVID-19 vaccine CoronaVac triggered
a quick immune response but the level of antibodies produced was lower than in
people who had recovered from the disease, preliminary trial results showed on
Wednesday.
While the early to mid-stage trials were not designed to assess the
efficacy of CoronaVac, researchers said it could provide sufficient protection,
based on their experience with other vaccines and data from preclinical studies
with macaques.
The study comes hot on the heels of upbeat news this month from U.S.
drugmakers Pfizer and Moderna as well as Russia that showed their experimental
vaccines were over 90% effective based on interim data from large, late-stage
trials.
CoronaVac and four other experimental vaccines developed in China are
currently undergoing late-stage trials to determine their effectiveness in
preventing COVID-19.
The Sinovac findings, published in a peer-reviewed paper in medical
journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases, came from results in Phase I and Phase
II clinical trials in China involving more than 700 participants.
“Our findings show that CoronaVac is capable of inducing a quick
antibody response within four weeks of immunisation by giving two doses of the
vaccine at a 14-day interval,” Zhu Fengcai, one of the authors of the paper,
said.
“We believe that this makes the vaccine suitable for emergency use
during the pandemic,” Zhu said in a statement published alongside the paper.
Researchers said the findings from large, late-stage studies, or Phase
III trials, would be crucial to determine if the immune response generated by
CoronaVac was sufficient to protect people from the coronavirus infection.
Sinovac is currently running three Phase III trials in Indonesia, Brazil
and Turkey.
More
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-sinovac/sinovacs-covid-19-vaccine-induces-quick-immune-response-study-idUKKBN27X354
Spain authorises Phase III trial
of Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine November 18,
2020 10:31 AM
MADRID (Reuters) - Spain’s medicines agency authorised the launch of
late-stage trials of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine on Wednesday as
the race to develop successful vaccines intensifies.
The Phase III trial of the two-dose vaccination will be carried out in
nine hospitals throughout Spain on volunteers both with and without previous
health conditions, the AEMPS agency said in a statement.
J&J started mid-stage phase II trials in Spain and other countries
in September and launched a late-stage trial in Britain on Monday.
The Phase III trials will be carried out on 30,000 volunteers in nine
countries.
The two-dose study will run in parallel with a trials of a single shot
regimen involving 60,000 participants which was launched in September.
The Spanish hospitals involved in the trials will enrol volunteers as
soon as possible, the AEMPS said, adding that 20% will be younger than 40 and
30% older than 60.
They will be given a first dose of either a placebo or the experimental shot,
currently called Ad26COV2, followed by a second dose or placebo later.
Conclusions will only be available after analysing the data at the end
of the trials, the Spanish medicines agency said.
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-vaccine-spain/spain-authorises-phase-iii-trial-of-johnson-johnson-covid-19-vaccine-idUKKBN27Y173?il=0
Analysis: Can first COVID-19
vaccines bring herd immunity? Experts have doubts November 18, 2020
9:26 AM By Ludwig Burger , Kate
Kelland
FRANKFURT/LONDON
(Reuters) - Governments and officials are voicing hopes that COVID-19 vaccines
could bring “herd immunity”, with some calculating that immunising just
two-thirds of a population could halt the pandemic disease and help protect
whole communities or nations.
But the concept comes with caveats and big demands of what vaccines
might be capable of preventing. Some experts say such expectations are
misplaced.
For a start, figuring out what’s needed to achieve herd immunity with
COVID-19 vaccines involves a range of factors, several of which are unknown.
What is the rate of the spread of the COVID-19-causing virus? Will the
first vaccines deployed be able to stop transmission of the virus, or just stop
people getting ill? How many people in a population will accept a vaccine? Will
vaccines offer the same protection to everyone?
“Herd immunity is sometimes wrongly understood as individual
protection,” said Josep Jansa, an expert in health emergency preparedness and
response at the Stockholm-based European Centre for Disease Prevention and
Control (ECDC).
“It’s inappropriate to think ‘I will not be affected myself because
there is herd immunity’. Herd immunity refers to community protection, not to
how an individual is protected.”
The ECDC uses an estimated herd immunity threshold of 67% for its
models, while Chancellor Angela Merkel said this month that COVID-19
restrictions in Germany could be lifted if 60% to 70% of the population
acquired immunity, either via a COVID-19 vaccine or through infection.
World Health Organization experts have also pointed to a 65%-70% vaccine
coverage rate as a way to reach population immunity through vaccination.
---- Assuming complete vaccine efficacy,
herd immunity percentage thresholds for infectious diseases are calculated by
dividing 1 by the R value, deducting the result from 1, and multiplying by 100.
For instance, herd immunity from highly contagious measles, with an
estimated R value of 12 or higher, will kick in only if 92% or more within a
group are immune. For a seasonal flu strain that could have an R value of 1.3,
the threshold would be just 23%.
“The problem is that for now we don’t know exactly how fast the virus
spreads without any precautions and with the normal travel and social
activities we had a year ago,” said Winfried Pickl, professor of immunology at
the Medical University of Vienna.
More. Much more.
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-immunity-analysis/analysis-can-first-covid-19-vaccines-bring-herd-immunity-experts-have-doubts-idUKKBN27Y123?il=0
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 21st century onwards.
Newly discovered mineral offers a
blueprint for next-gen battery parts By Nick Lavars November 17, 2020
Just like standard lithium-ion batteries, sodium-ion
batteries work by sending ions back and forth between a pair of electrodes in a
liquid electrolyte, but current designs have their limitations. A research team
in Russia has discovered a new bright, blue mineral they say could solve one of
the problems with these experimental devices, which shape as a far more
cost-effective form of energy storage than today's solutions.
Owing to the cheap and widely abundant nature of salt,
sodium-ion batteries have emerged as a cost-effective alternative to the
lithium-ion chemistry that powers today’s laptops, electric vehicles and
smartphones. While we are seeing some exciting
advances that promise to bring sodium-ion batteries up to speed, there are
a still a few operational problems to solve before we see them perform as
reliably as their tried and trusted lithium-ion counterparts.
One of these relates to the cathode, which as one of the battery’s two
electrodes plays a key role in the travel of ions back and forth and the
generation of power. The trouble with current versions of sodium-ion batteries
is that as they are cycled, inactive sodium crystals tend to build up on the
cathode’s surface, which soon proves fatal to the device.
Scientists at Russia’s St Petersburg University may have found a more
free-flowing solution, tucked away in lava flows from the Tolbachik Volcano,
which erupted in 1975-1976 and again in 2012-2013. The team has discovered
dozens of unique minerals here in the past few years, but describe their latest
finding as unusual.
Dubbed “petrovite,” the new mineral is a bright blue aggregation of
sodium sulphur, copper and a “very rare” coordination of oxygen atoms, seen
only in a couple of other compounds. These make up a porous framework
consisting of voids and channels that allow sodium atoms to move freely
throughout, according to the scientists, who say this makes petrovite a
promising structure for ionic conductivity and cathode material in sodium ion
batteries.
“At present, the biggest problem for this use is the small amount of a
transition metal – copper – in the crystal structure of the mineral,” says
Stanislav Filatov, Professor at St Petersburg University. “It might be solved
by synthesizing a compound with the same structure as petrovite in the
laboratory.”
There’s obviously a lot of work to be carried out before
this discovery translates to a proof-of-concept sodium-ion battery, and even
more before it presents a solution to our energy storage woes. But at the very
least, the scientists have uncovered a pretty new mineral to look at in the
meantime.
The research was published in the journal Mineralogical Magazine .
Source: St Petersburg University
https://newatlas.com/materials/newly-discovered-mineral-blueprint-next-gen-battery/?utm_source=New+Atlas+Subscribers&utm_campaign=8cb49c01cb-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_11_18_09_26&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_65b67362bd-8cb49c01cb-90625829
He
was a boy when the great earthquake struck San Francisco at 5:12 a.m.
on Wednesday, April 18, 1906, one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history.
The man and his family survived the earthquake and subsequent
fire,
managing to get out of the destroyed city by boat. His father paid the
boatman,
who would not accept money, in gold, secreted away for emergen-
cies.
Gold, the sweat of the god as the Incas called it, is hard money. It is the
only
money when chaos ensues.
Satyajit
Das. Extreme Money. Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk
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