Stocks Getting Closer To Reality. Politics.

 Baltic Dry Index. 1134 +19 Brent Crude 44.20

Spot Gold 1869

Coronavirus Cases 20/11/20 World 57,239,964

Deaths 1,365,695

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.

H. L. Mencken

In the casinos, a mixed bag. US unemployment rose as did new Covid infections. The US Treasury ended an (largely unused) emergency loan program. “Senate Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had agreed to revive talks to craft a new fiscal relief package.”

Sooner or later, stocks face a date with the harsh reality of the real economy.

Stocks wobble after Mnuchin pulls plug on Fed stimulus

November 20, 2020  1:03 AM  By Swati Pandey

SYDNEY (Reuters) - World financial markets stalled on Friday as news U.S. Treasury was ending emergency loans programmes dealt a blow to economic recovery hopes just as California announced curfews to try and fight surging coronavirus infections.

S&P500 futures slipped 0.5% while Dow futures fell 0.6%, cancelling out a firmer lead from a strong Wall Street session overnight.

The dollar was slightly weaker and the 10-year Treasury yield slipped to the lowest in 10 days at 0.818%.

Eurostoxx futures started almost flat while London’s FTSE futures was up 0.25%

In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei stumbled 0.5% while Australian shares were flat. Chinese shares were little changed while South Korea’s KOSPI index was a shade firmer.

That left MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares excluding Japan up 0.3%. It is up 1.5% so far this week.

In a letter to U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the $455 billion allocated to Treasury under the CARES Act should be instead available for Congress to reallocate.

“This divide between the Treasury and the Fed risks undermining the unwavering faith that investors have placed on continuous policy support to help the economy weather the pandemic,” Singapore-based DBS wrote in a note.

Although the programmes were not used extensively, Fed officials felt their presence reassured financial markets and investors that credit would remain available to help businesses, local agencies and even nonprofits through the pandemic downturn.

Mnuchin’s decision added to market anxiety about broader economic growth as data shows the early fast recovery from a historic plunge in the U.S. economy is fading, with more than 10 million who had jobs in January still out of work.

“The Fed has been one of the only sources of stability in Washington and removing its latitude to offer support in a shaky recovery is simply nonsensical,” said Isaac Boltansky, director of policy research at Washington-based Compass Point Research & Trading.

---- All three major U.S. stock indexes, however, got a healthy boost overnight after Senate Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had agreed to revive talks to craft a new fiscal relief package.

A senior Democratic aide told Reuters there had been a mid-afternoon meeting on Thursday among congressional aides that discussed coronavirus relief and efforts to pass a $1.4 trillion bill to keep government agencies operating beyond Dec. 11 when current funding expires.

The Dow rose 0.15%, the S&P 500 gained 0.39% and the Nasdaq added 0.87%.

More

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-global-markets/stocks-wobble-after-mnuchin-pulls-plug-on-fed-stimulus-idUKKBN28003G?il=0

Back in the real world, get ready for more lay-offs after Christmas.

US jobless claims increase to 742,000 as pandemic worsens

By CHRISTOPHER RUGABER  November 19, 2020

WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of Americans seeking unemployment aid rose last week to 742,000, the first increase in five weeks and a sign that the resurgent viral outbreak is likely slowing the economy and forcing more companies to cut jobs.

The Labor Department’s report Thursday showed that applications for benefits rose from 711,000 in the previous week. Claims had soared to 6.9 million in March when the pandemic first intensified. Before the pandemic, applications typically hovered about 225,000 a week.

The economy’s modest recovery is increasingly at risk, with newly confirmed daily infections in the United States having exploded 80% over the past two weeks to the highest levels on record. More states and cities are issuing mask mandates, limiting the size of gatherings, restricting restaurant dining, closing gyms or reducing the hours and capacity of bars, stores and other businesses. At least 15 states have tightened curbs on businesses to try to slow infections.

Evidence is emerging that consumers are losing confidence in the economic outlook and pulling back on shopping, eating out and other activities. Spending on 30 million credit and debit cards tracked by JPMorgan Chase fell 7.4% earlier this month compared with a year ago. That marked a sharp drop from two weeks earlier. Consumer sentiment also declined in early November and is down nearly 21% from a year ago, according to a University of Michigan survey.

The number of people who are continuing to receive traditional unemployment benefits fell to 6.4 million, the government said, from 6.8 million. That shows that more Americans are finding jobs and no longer receiving unemployment aid. But it also indicates that many jobless people have used up their state unemployment aid — which typically expires after six months — and have transitioned to a federal extended benefits program that lasts 13 more weeks.

The worsening viral outbreak coincides with the impending expiration of two federal unemployment programs at year’s end that could eliminate benefits for 9.1 million people, according to a report from The Century Foundation. Congress has so far failed to agree on any new stimulus package for jobless individuals and struggling businesses. The cutoff of aid will sharply reduce income for the unemployed, force a further reduction in their spending and perhaps weaken the economy.

One of those programs is Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, which made self-employed and contract workers eligible for unemployment aid for the first time. PUA was established by a multi-trillion-dollar aid package that Congress enacted in the spring.

The second measure in the stimulus package provided the additional 13 weeks of benefits for unemployed people who have used up their state benefits.

When those two programs expire on Dec. 26, the Century Foundation estimates that 12 million people will lose their benefits. About 2.9 million might be able to transition to a state extended benefit program that can last from six to 20 weeks, the report said. But the rest will lose benefits that average about $320 a week nationally.

More

https://apnews.com/article/pandemics-jobless-claims-unemployment-coronavirus-pandemic-united-states-a9abee07cc3eb7246e7e3c8603430a49

Thyssenkrupp cuts another 5,000 jobs as losses deepen

November 19, 2020 9:38 AM  By Christoph Steitz, Tom Käckenhoff

FRANKFURT/DUESSELDORF (Reuters) - German conglomerate Thyssenkrupp TKAG.DE plans to cut another 5,000 jobs to stem losses across its sprawling empire after posting a 1.6 billion euro (1.4 billion pounds) operating loss in its latest financial year, the company said on Thursday.

The company said it expected to make a decision about what to do with its struggling steelmaking business in the spring of next year after the division swung to a loss of nearly a billion euros as the global slowdown from COVID-19 lockdowns hit demand.

“We’re not yet where we need to be. The next steps could be more painful than the previous ones. But we will have to take them,” Chief Executive Martina Merz said in a statement.

Thyssenkrupp said its adjusted operating loss would narrow in the year through September 2021 to the low hundreds of millions of euros though it would still have negative cash flow from ongoing businesses of about 1.5 billion euros.

Shares in the company, which have already fallen about 60% this year, slumped more than 7% with analysts saying the outlook for the coming year was disappointing.

The new job cuts come on top of 6,000 layoffs announced last year, moves that have angered powerful labour representatives on the company’s board.

More

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-thyssenkrupp-results/thyssenkrupp-cuts-another-5000-jobs-as-losses-deepen-idUKKBN27Z148?il=0

California, Ohio order nightly curfews on gatherings as coronavirus surges

November 19, 2020  4:17 PM  By Sharon Bernstein, Maria Caspani

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) - California’s governor on Thursday imposed a curfew on social gatherings and other non-essential activities in one of the most intrusive of the restrictions being ordered across the country to curb an alarming surge in novel coronavirus infections.

The stay-at-home order will go into effect from 10 p.m. until 5 a.m. each day, starting Saturday night and ending on the morning of Dec. 21, covering 41 of California’s 58 counties and the vast majority of its population, Governor Gavin Newsom said.

“The virus is spreading at a pace we haven’t seen since the start of this pandemic, and the next several days and weeks will be critical to stop the surge,” Newsom, a Democrat, said in a statement announcing the measure a week before the Thanksgiving holiday.

A similar 10 p.m.-to-5 a.m. curfew order was issued on Thursday in Ohio and will remain in effect for the next 21 days, Governor Mike DeWine, a Republican, announced separately.

As in California, the Ohio curfew would not prohibit grocery stores from remaining open past 10 p.m, or keep restaurants from staying open late for takeout orders. Individuals would likewise be permitted to venture out for food, medical care, or other necessities, as well as to take a jog or walk a dog.

In California, the restriction essentially marks a return to the first-in-the-nation, statewide stay-home order that Newsom imposed in March, except it applies only during the designated curfew hours rather than around the clock.

Signs of a resurgent public health crisis have emerged more starkly across the country, with officials forced to retreat from tentative steps to normalize daily life during what had been a brief lull in the pandemic.

More

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-usa/california-ohio-order-nightly-curfews-on-gatherings-as-coronavirus-surges-idUKKBN27Z2GF?il=0

Finally, the madness of the modern lock down world. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

South Australia says man's 'lie' caused coronavirus lockdown as harsh curbs eased

November 20, 2020  2:03 AM  By Wayne Cole

SYDNEY (Reuters) - South Australia’s drastic six-day coronavirus lockdown was triggered by a “lie” to contact tracers from a man who tested positive and restrictions across the state are set to be lifted much sooner than first planned, authorities said on Friday.

The shock announcement came just two days after the state government ordered people to stay at home and shut many businesses to combat what was considered a highly contagious outbreak of coronavirus.

South Australia state Premier Steven Marshall told a media conference in Adelaide that one man at a pizza bar tied to the outbreak told contact tracers he had only bought a pizza there, when he had actually worked several shifts at the food outlet alongside another worker who tested positive.

Authorities assumed the man, who wasn’t named, had caught the virus during a very short exposure, leading them to believe the strain must be highly contagious.

“Their (the man’s) story didn’t add up. We pursued them. We now know that they lied,” Marshall told reporters. “Had this person been truthful to the contact tracing teams, we would not have gone into a six-day lockdown.”

“To say I am fuming about the actions of this individual is an absolute understatement. This selfish actions of this individual have put our whole state in a very difficult situation.”

More

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-australia/south-australia-says-mans-lie-caused-coronavirus-lockdown-as-harsh-curbs-eased-idUKKBN2800CT?il=0

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/

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

H. L. Mencken

Covid-19 Corner                       

This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.

AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine shows promise in elderly, trial results by Christmas

November 19, 2020 7:13 AM  By Kate Kelland, Alistair Smout

LONDON (Reuters) - AstraZeneca and Oxford University’s potential COVID-19 vaccine produced a strong immune response in older adults, data published on Thursday showed, with researchers expecting to release late-stage trial results by Christmas.

The data, reported in part last month but published in full in The Lancet medical journal on Thursday, suggest that those aged over 70, who are at higher risk of serious illness and death from COVID-19, could build robust immunity.

“The robust antibody and T-cell responses seen in older people in our study are encouraging,” said Maheshi Ramasamy, a consultant and co-lead investigator at the Oxford Vaccine Group.

“We hope that this means our vaccine will help to protect some of the most vulnerable people in society, but further research will be needed before we can be sure.”

Late-stage, or Phase III, trials are ongoing to confirm the findings, researchers said, and to test whether the vaccine protects against infection with SARS-CoV-2 in a broad range of people, including people with underlying health conditions.

Results of those trials should definitely be known by Christmas, the Oxford Vaccine Group’s director, Andrew Pollard, said, adding it was too early to know whether and how well the vaccine works in preventing COVID-19 disease.

---- The Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine candidate, called AZD1222 or ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, had been among the front-runners in global efforts to develop shots to protect against infection with the novel coronavirus, or SARS-CoV-2.

But rival drugmakers Pfizer Inc PFE.N, BioNTech 22UAy.F and Moderna Inc MRNA.O have in the past 10 days edged ahead, releasing data from late-stage COVID-19 vaccine trials that shows more than 90% efficacy.

“We’re not in a rush. We and it’s not a competition with the other developers,” Oxford’s Pollard said, adding that AstraZeneca would release headline efficacy data before it was published in an academic journal.

Oxford University has set a target of 53 infections to start the interim analysis of its late-stage trial results, though “lots of cases” in its trial arms in Britain, South Africa and Brazil mean the exact number of infections reported could differ.

Unlike the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna shots, both of which use new technology known as messenger RNA (mRNA), AstraZeneca’s is a viral vector vaccine made from a weakened version of a common cold virus found in chimpanzees.

The Phase II trial reported in The Lancet involved a total of 560 healthy volunteers, with 160 aged 18-55, 160 aged 56-69, and 240 aged 70 or over.

More

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-oxford-astrazeneca/astrazeneca-covid-19-vaccine-shows-promise-in-elderly-trial-results-by-christmas-idUKKBN27Z0PL?il=0

China Sinopharm's coronavirus vaccine taken by about a million people in emergency use

November 19, 2020  7:22 AM

BEIJING (Reuters) - Nearly one million people have taken an experimental coronavirus vaccine developed by China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm) through the country’s emergency use programme, the firm said late on Wednesday.

China launched the emergency use programme in July, which so far includes three vaccine candidates for essential workers and other limited groups of people even as clinical studies have yet to be completed to prove their safety and efficacy.

No serious adverse reaction has been reported from those who received the vaccine in emergency use, Sinopharm said in an article on social media WeChat, citing Chairman Liu Jingzhen from a recent media interview.

Two vaccine candidates developed by Sinopharm’s subsidiary China National Biotec Group (CNBG) and third one developed by Sinovac Biotech have been used for the emergency programme.

It’s unclear which vaccine Liu referred to, and Sinopharm was not immediately available to comment.

Sinopharm’s vaccines, which use inactivated virus unable to replicate in human cells to trigger immune responses, require two doses, clinical trial registration data showed.

The experimental vaccines are undergoing Phase 3 clinical trials overseas that have recruited nearly 60,000 people, and blood samples of more than 40,000 participants have been taken 14 days after they took the second dose, the article said citing Liu, without breaking down the numbers for each vaccine.

Among construction project employees, diplomats and students who went abroad after taking Sinopharm’s vaccine, no one has been infected, it added.

But experts have cautioned against using data solely from emergency use programme, without comparable results from a clinical trial-standard control group, to determine a vaccine’s effectiveness.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-vaccine-sinopharm/china-sinopharms-coronavirus-vaccine-taken-by-about-a-million-people-in-emergency-use-idUKKBN27Z0PS?feedType=nl&feedName=ukmorningdigest&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2018%20Template:%20UK%20MORNING%20DIGEST%202020-11-19&utm_term=NEW:%20UK%20Morning%20Digest

WHO Advises Doctors Not to Use Gilead’s Remdesivir for Covid

By Anna Edney

November 20, 2020, 12:01 AM GMT

The World Health Organization recommended against using Gilead Sciences Inc.’s remdesivir to treat hospitalized Covid-19 patients less than a month after U.S. regulators granted the drug a speedy approval.

“There is currently no evidence that it improves survival or the need for ventilation,” a panel of WHO-convened experts developing Covid-19 treatment guidelines said in The BMJ medical journal.

The recommendation is a blow to Gilead’s drug, which was one of the first thought to offer a meaningful benefit in treatment of coronavirus patients after a study showed it reduced their recovery time. The antiviral has been used widely to treat Covid and was among the drugs President Donald Trump received when he was diagnosed with the disease in early October.

The experts made the recommendation after the results of a global trial sponsored by the WHO, called Solidarity, found last month that remdesivir didn’t reduce deaths. They also reviewed data from three other trials and said the drug “has no meaningful effect” on the time it took patients to clinically improve.

The Solidarity results were published Oct. 15. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the drug a week later, basing its decision on a trial run by the National Institutes of Health that showed remdesivir reduced hospitalized patients’ recovery time by five days.

Gilead has questioned the results of WHO’s trial and said the agency still has not released key data to allow the company or others to evaluate the reliability of the interim results.

Multiple studies published in peer-reviewed journals have show remdesivir, also known by its brand name, Veklury, is beneficial against the virus, particularly in improving recovery time, “which can free up limited hospital resources,” Gilead said in a statement Thursday.

“We are disappointed the WHO guidelines appear to ignore this evidence at a time when cases are dramatically increasing around the world and doctors are relying on Veklury as the first and only approved antiviral treatment for patients with Covid-19 in approximately 50 countries,” according to the statement.

Despite the discordance with the WHO, the FDA said in its review of remdesivir that “there were no issues identified that would benefit from discussion” by a panel of outside advisers. FDA typically convenes such a panel before deciding whether to approve a drug in situations where there are questions arising from clinical trial data.

More

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-20/who-advises-doctors-not-to-use-gilead-s-remdesivir-for-covid-19?srnd=premium-europe

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

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.

H. L. Mencken

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.

Carbyne: An unusual form of carbon

International team of researchers investigates optical band gap of carbon compound

Date: November 17, 2020

Source: University of Erlangen-Nuremberg

Summary: Which photophysical properties does carbyne have? New research has led to a greater understanding of the properties of this unusual form of carbon.

Which photophysical properties does carbyne have? This was the subject of research carried out by scientists at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), the University of Alberta, Canada, and the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, which has led to a greater understanding of the properties of this unusual form of carbon. Their findings have now been published in the latest edition of the journal Nature Communications.

'Carbon has a very special status in the periodic table of the elements and forms the basis for all forms of life due to the extremely large number of chemical compounds it can form,' explains Prof. Dr. Dirk M. Guldi at the Chair of Physical Chemistry I at FAU. 'The most well-known examples are three-dimensional graphite and diamond. However, two-dimensional graphene, one-dimensional nanotubes and zero-dimensional nanodots also open up new opportunities for electronics applications in the future.'

Material with extraordinary properties

Carbyne is a modification of carbon, known as an allotrope. It is manufactured synthetically, comprises one single and very long chain of carbon atoms, and is regarded as a material with extremely interesting electronic and mechanical properties. 'However, carbon has a high level of reactivity in this form,' emphasises Prof. Dr. Clémence Corminboef from EPFL. 'Such long chains are extremely unstable and thus very difficult to characterise.'

Despite this fact, the international research team successfully characterised the chains using a roundabout route. The scientists led by Prof. Dr. Dirk M. Guldi at FAU, Prof. Dr. Clémence Corminboeuf, Prof. Dr. Holger Frauenrath from EPFL and Prof. Dr. Rik R. Tykwinski from the University of Alberta questioned existing assumptions about the photophysical properties of carbyne and gained new insights.

During their research, the team mainly focused on what are known as oligoynes. 'We can manufacture carbyne chains of specific lengths and protect them from decomposition by adding a type of bumper made of atoms to the ends of the chains. This class of compound has sufficient chemical stability and is known as an oligoyne,' explains Prof. Dr. Holger Frauenrath from EPFL.

The researchers specifically manufactured two series of oligoynes with varying symmetries and with up to 24 alternating triple and single bonds. Using spectroscopy, they subsequently tracked the deactivation processes of the relevant molecules from excitation with light up to complete relaxation. 'We were thus able to determine the mechanism behind the entire deactivation process of the oligoynes from an excited state right back to their original initial state and, thanks to the data we gained, we were able to make a prediction about the properties of carbyne,' concludes Prof. Dr. Rik R. Tykwinski from the University of Alberta.

One important finding was the fact that the so-called optical band gap is actually much smaller than previously assumed. Band gap is a term from the field of semiconductor physics and describes the electrical conductivity of crystals, metals and semiconductors. 'This is an enormous advantage,' says Prof. Guldi. 'The smaller the band gap, the less energy is required to conduct electricity.' Silicon, for example, which is used in microchips and solar cells, possesses this important property. Carbyne could be used in conjunction with silicon in the future due to its excellent photophysical properties.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/11/201117120724.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fmatter_energy%2Fgraphene+%28Graphene+News+--+ScienceDaily%29

Another weekend and another weekend where President Trump still thinks he won the November 3^rd presidential election. Another weekend of rising SARS-CoV-2 infections too. Rising lock downs ahead of next week’s major US Thanksgiving Day holiday. 

Will Thanksgiving Day travel in the USA cause the SARS pandemic infections there to surge even more than at present? We should know by mid-December.  Have a great weekend everyone.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H. L. Mencken