Baltic Dry Index. 1230 +08 Brent Crude 48.18
Spot Gold 1788
Stocks at record high but yields fall, dollar under pressure
It has been a year many would prefer to forget and a month of 2020 still remains -- one replete with events that could trip up markets. Here they are:
Dec. 1: A month before the UK-EU transition deal ends.
Dec. 8: Deadline to complete U.S. state-level vote recounts and court contests over the election.
Dec. 10: European Central Bank meets and should increase emergency stimulus.
Dec. 11: U.S. government funding lapses unless lawmakers agree a 12-bill spending package.
Dec. 10-11: EU council meeting. Issues are Brexit and the risk that Poland and Hungary will scupper an EU stimulus spending plan.
Dec. 14: The U.S. electoral college votes, with the risk that some “faithless” electors break the rule requiring them to vote in line with the popular vote.
Dec. 15-16 - U.S. Federal Reserve meets. Will it expand bond-buying or signal a yield cap?
Dec. 28: European Parliament could vote on any Brexit deal.
2/HARD WORK
An explosion in new COVID-19 infections and business restrictions have been undermining the U.S. labour market recovery so Friday’s November payrolls figures will be closely watched.
Last month saw 638,000 new jobs amid signs the economy was healing from the pandemic-induced downturn. But it was the smallest gain since the jobs recovery started in May and left employment 10.1 million below its February peak.
November is likely to be the seventh straight month of jobs gains, but expectations are that only 520,000 jobs were added.
-U.S. weekly jobless claims rise as COVID-19 infections surge
-U.S. consumer spending rises; income falls in October
More
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-global-markets-themes/take-five-dark-december-idUKKBN28724Q?il=0
Germany urges Europe to close ski resorts ahead of holiday season
Nov. 27, 2020 / 12:35 AM
Nov. 26 (UPI) -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she is seeking a ban on ski resorts throughout Europe ahead of the holiday season to stem the surging spread of the coronavirus, but not all countries are on board.
"The ski season is approaching. We are trying to come to an agreement in Europe on whether we manage to close down all ski resorts," Merkel said before the German Parliament on Thursday, calling for an EU-wide ban on ski resorts to prevent unnecessary contact among tourists.
"When we hear from Austria, it does not seem we can succeed easily, but we will try," she said.
During the early stages of the coronavirus outbreak in Europe, clusters were connected to ski resorts.
Italy and France have both shown support for the ban.
Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has asked Italians to stay home during the holiday season and placed restrictions on ski resort operations but said if neighboring countries don't do similarly their measures won't have much effect.
"It will not be possible to allow holidays on the snow this year, we cannot afford it," he said. "If Italy closes its lifts without support from France, Austria and others, Italians could go abroad and bring the disease back."
Emmanuel Macron, the president of France where ski resorts are currently closed, said "it will not be possible" for them to re-open this holiday season, stating it might be possible in January to do so if conditions are safe.
Ski resorts in Austria are also currently closed due to a lockdown but are set to reopen following the measure's expiration on Dec. 7.
Austria's Finance Minister Gernot Blumel said that if an EU-ban was enforced, "they will have to pay for it."
Salzburg Gov. Wilfried Haslauer told local news that he would be opening his city's ski resorts around Dec. 19, The Local reported.
The Austrian governor acknowledge that the ski season wouldn't be the same as usual but promised visitors "safe" skiing and that the companies "are well prepared."
Germany's call to ban skiing came a day after it agreed on Wednesday to extend coronavirus safety restrictions that have been in place since late October until Dec. 20.
"This winter will be hard but it will come to an end," Merkel said Thursday. "And now, when we are thinking so much about Christmas and New Year, I wish for myself and I wish for all that we pull together and that we are there for one another more than ever before. If we can embrace that, we will get through this crisis."
Last week, World Health Organization Director for the European Region Dr. Henri P. Kluge said they are seeing indicators of overwhelmed health systems as more than 4 million cases were added so far this month while deaths linked to the virus have climbed by 18% in the past two weeks.
"That's one person dying every 17 seconds in the European region from COVID-19," he said.
“Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There's no better rule.”
Great Expectations.
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
U.S. vaccine plans take shape but no let-up on restrictions
WASHINGTON, D.C. (Reuters) - U.S. health authorities will hold an emergency meeting next week to recommend that a coronavirus vaccine awaiting approval be given first to healthcare professionals and people in long-term care facilities.
The meeting, announced on Friday by a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) committee on immunizations, suggests that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) may be close to authorizing distribution of the long-awaited medication, at least to those considered most vulnerable.
United Airlines has begun moving shipments of the vaccine, developed by Pfizer Inc, on charter flights to ensure it can be quickly distributed once it is approved, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices will vote on Tuesday to recommend that the FDA allow healthcare professionals and long-term care facilities to be the first two groups to get initial vaccine supplies, a CDC spokeswoman said.
A green light for any vaccine would come as welcome news to Americans, who political leaders have clamped under increasingly aggressive measures to curtail the spread of the virus.
Los Angeles County health officials on Friday banned all public and private gatherings for at least three weeks and urged residents to stay home as much as possible.
The county exempted religious services and protests from the order, citing constitutional protections in an apparent acknowledgment of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling this week that rejected New York state’s restrictions on churches and synagogues.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, dismissed the top court’s decision as “irrelevant,” saying it was narrowly tailored to specific areas no longer subject to the limits.
But the ruling could drive legal challenges against similar limits placed on houses of worship in other states, including California.
“It is fair to say that this Supreme Court ruling has broader implications and governors would be wise to be guided by it in any attempts to single out houses of worship for disparate treatment,” Randy Mastro, lead attorney for the Catholic Archdiocese of Brooklyn in the case, told Reuters.
More
COVID-19 epidemic in UK shrinking, R-rate estimated below 1
LONDON (Reuters) - The COVID-19 epidemic in Britain has retreated slightly, with the reproduction “R” number estimated to be below 1, suggesting that England’s second national lockdown is stemming infections, government scientists said on Friday.
The number of new infections across Britain is shrinking by between 0% and 2% every day, the UK Government Office for Science said, after it was estimated to be growing between 0% and 2% in last week’s release.
The R number was estimated to be between 0.9 and 1, meaning every 10 people infected will go on to infect between 9 and 10 people, down from last week’s range of 1.0-1.1.
Government scientists said the estimates were based on latest data for the United Kingdom up to Nov. 24, but that lags meant the impact of national restrictions introduced in England on Nov. 5 were only just being seen and could not yet be fully evaluated.
“R estimates for England may continue to decline in the future and may be below 1 for all regions already,” the Government Office for Science said in a statement.
The lockdown in England - home to around 85% of the UK’s total population - expires on Wednesday and will be replaced with a regional system of tiered restrictions.
More
AstraZeneca responds to concerns about COVID-19 vaccine candidate
Nov. 26, 2020 / 2:06 PM
Nov. 26 (UPI) -- AstraZeneca and Oxford University responded Thursday to questions raised over trial results for its COVID-19 vaccine candidate.
The pharmaceutical company said Monday that its vaccine candidate, AZD1222, had an average efficacy of 70%.
Some in the scientific community questioned the results and the methods of the trial and criticized the way the company initially disclosed its data. The company said a mistake led to some trial participants receiving the initial dose at half strength.
On Thursday, AstraZeneca told CNBC that it adhered to the "highest standards" in its studies.
RELATED Fauci: 'People should feel confident' COVID-19 vaccines safe, effective
"More data will continue to accumulate and additional analysis will be conducted refining the efficacy reading and establishing the duration of protection," a spokesperson told the news outlet.
The questions emerged after a smaller group of 2,741 trial participants received a half dose of the vaccine initially followed by a full dose at least a month later, with results showing 90% efficacy. A second group of 8,895 participants received two full doses of the vaccine at least a month apart, with results showing 62% efficacy.
Oxford University attributed the lower dose to "a difference in the manufacturing process."
"The methods for measuring the concentration are now established and we can ensure that all batches of vaccines are now equivalent," Oxford said.
Some U.S. scientists, including Moncef Slaoui, chief of the White House vaccine effort, Operation Warp Speed, said the 90% efficacy result was only shown for low-risk participants younger than age 55.
An analyst from investment bank SVB Leerink said the company's trials didn't meet FDA requirements for populations at increased risk, including minorities, severe cases, previously infected individuals and elderly.
AstraZeneca said an external Data Safety Monitoring Board monitored the study for safety and quality.
The vaccine candidate is the third to announce preliminary results of late-stage trials. Pfizer and BioNTech and Moderna each reported early results showing 95% efficacy for their COVID-19 vaccine candidates.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's leading infectious diseases expert, has sought to reassure people to feel confident in the safety and efficacy of a COVID-19 vaccine once regulatory approval is granted.
AstraZeneca CEO expects to run new global trial of COVID-19 vaccine - Bloomberg
November 26, 2020 4:55 PM By Reuters Staff
(Reuters) - AstraZeneca is likely to run an additional global trial to assess the efficacy of its COVID-19 vaccine using a lower dosage, its chief executive was quoted as saying on Thursday amid questions over the results of its late-stage study.
Instead of adding the trial to an ongoing U.S. process, AstraZeneca might launch a fresh study to evaluate a lower dosage of its vaccine that performed better than a full dosage, Pascal Soriot told Bloomberg News.
“Now that we’ve found what looks like a better efficacy we have to validate this, so we need to do an additional study,” he said, adding that the new, likely global, study could be faster because it would need fewer subjects as the efficacy was already known to be high.
The news comes as AstraZeneca faces questions about its success rate that some experts say could hinder its chances of getting speedy U.S. and EU regulatory approval.
---- Soriot said he did not expect the additional trial to delay British and European regulatory approvals.
Asked about the Bloomberg report, an AstraZeneca spokesman said there was strong merit in continuing to investigate the half-dose/full dose regimen. Any further insights from the data would be added to those from existing trials that are being prepared for regulatory submission, he said.
Running an additional trial might not be too much of a complication for the British drugmaker in the race to develop a vaccine to help tame the pandemic, which has killed more than a million people and roiled the global economy.
Helen Fletcher, professor of immunology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said another trial would not necessarily delay getting a green light as efficacy in the higher dose regime still met the World Health Organization’s target. It was not unusual to run new studies on approved vaccines, she said.
More
Next, some very useful 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
FDA information. https://www.fda.gov/media/139638/download
Regulatory Focus COVID-19 vaccine tracker. https://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/news-articles/2020/3/covid-19-vaccine-tracker
Some more useful Covid links.
Johns Hopkins Coronavirus resource centre
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
Rt Covid-19
Covid19info.live
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.
Update: we seem to have started new sunspot cycle 25 this month, though it’s unlikely to affect 2020-2021s coming winter.
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.
With the Laptev sea ice virtually back to normal, at the end of the third week of November I’m starting to think that it will likely be a normal to slightly warmer winter ahead for western Europe.
The failure of the Kara Sea ice to return to normal, leads me to bet on a warmer western European winter ahead.
US National Ice Center.
https://www.natice.noaa.gov/pub/ims/ims_gif/DATA/cursnow_asiaeurope.gif
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.
Tree microbes could help crops draw phosphorous from fertilized soil
Ben Coxworth November 26, 2020
Agricultural fertilizers typically contain phosphorous, as it's essential to growing plants. Unfortunately, though, it can become "locked" in the soil, and thus not available to crops. That said, it turns out that the addition of a microbe could unlock it.
When applied to crops as part of a fertilizer, phosphorous often reacts with minerals already in the soil, forming chemical complexes with them. These complexes can't be taken up by the plants' roots, so the phosphorous simply remains in the dirt.
In order to compensate for the problem, farmers will often apply excessive amounts of fertilizer to the fields. Not only is this expensive, but much of that fertilizer ends up running off into surrounding waterways, polluting them.
Led by Prof. Sharon Doty, scientists at the University of Washington previously discovered that root-dwelling microorganisms known as endophytes allow wild-growing trees to pull phosphorous from the soil. This is true even of trees growing in rocky soil alongside clear mountain-fed streams, where nutrients are in short supply.
In a more recent study – conducted in collaboration with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory – the researchers gathered endophytes from the roots of wild poplar trees, and added them to soil in which phosphorous was locked within chemical complexes.
It was found that the microbes broke apart those complexes, making the phosphorous available to poplar seedlings that had been planted in the dirt. Further testing confirmed that the phosphorous had indeed been taken up by the plants, through their roots.
The scientists now hope that commercially grown endophytes could be mixed with the soil amongst young plants, or even used to coat seeds prior to planting. Not only could the microorganisms then keep freshly-applied phosphorous available to the crops, but they could also free up phosphorous that was already locked in the soil from previous growing seasons.
The endophyte strains used in the study have been licensed to California-based company Intrinsyx Bio, with an eye toward commercialization.
A paper on the research was recently published in the journal Frontiers in Plant Science.
Source: University of Washington
This weekend’s musical diversion.
Vivaldi - Concerto for Two Mandolins in G RV532 - Mov. 2-3/3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa8L2C9WK40
This weekend’s great chess game.
All Hail Sir Knight, The Uncapturable! || So vs Rajabov || Skilling Open Knockout (2020)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5Y-gtWSBKQ
This weekend’s numbers problem.
British Mathematics Olympiad 1993 Round 1 Question 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Hl75Pap6iY
In another telegram to Hitler upon the fall of Paris a month later, Wilhelm stated, "Congratulations, you have won using my troops." In a letter to his daughter Victoria Louise, Duchess of Brunswick, he wrote triumphantly, "Thus is the pernicious Entente Cordiale of Uncle Edward VII brought to nought."[24] In a letter of 1940 to his sister Princess Margaret of Prussia, Wilhelm wrote: "The hand of God is creating a new world & working miracles.... We are becoming the U.S. of Europe under German leadership, a united European Continent."[20]
However, Wilhem's opinion of Hitler behind closed doors was much less favourable. In a 1938 interview with Ken magazine, he said of the dictator:
"There is a man alone, without family, without children, without God...He builds legions but he doesn’t build a nation. A nation is created by families, a religion, tradition: it is made up out of the hearts of mothers, the wisdom of fathers, the joy and the exuberance of children. [Of Germany under Hitler he says]...an all-swallowing State, disdainful of human dignities and the ancient structure of our race, sets itself up in place of everything else. And the man who, alone, incorporates in himself this whole State, has neither a God to honour nor a dynasty to conserve, nor a past to consult...
For a few months I was inclined to believe in National Socialism. I thought of it as a necessary fever. And I was gratified to see that there were, associated with it for a time, some of the wisest and most outstanding Germans. But these, one by one, he has got rid of or even killed...He has left nothing but a bunch of shirted gangsters...
This man could bring home victories to our people each year
without bringing them...glory...But of our Germany, which was a nation of poets
and musicians and artists and soldiers, he has made a nation of hysterics and
hermits, engulfed in a mob and led by a thousand liars or fanatics..."
Wilhelm von Hohenzollern. 15 December 1938[25]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdication_of_Wilhelm_II
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