The Death Of Free Hong Kong. A Supercycle Starts.

Baltic Dry Index. 1418  +44 Brent Crude 53.85

Spot Gold 1947

Coronavirus Cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000

Deaths 53,100

Coronavirus Cases 06/01/21 World 86,839,226

Deaths 1,876,243

"It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong."

Voltaire.

The big news today will likely be the outcome of the Senate elections in Georgia. With it well covered by mainstream media, there’s no need for me to speculate on the outcome, or its possible affect on the coming Biden Presidency.

Results of Georgia Senate races won't be known until at least noon Wednesday - official

January 6, 2021  5:22 AM

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Vote counting in the two U.S. Senate races in Georgia will stop overnight and resume in the morning, and more should be known by noon on Wednesday about the results of the very close elections, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger told CNN late on Tuesday.

“They’re probably going to take a break here, I think, in the next hour. Try and get as much work as they can done tonight ... At least, record exactly how many ballots are out there and then get as much scanning done tomorrow. Hopefully by noon we’ll have a better idea where we are,” he said.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-election-georgia-raffensperger/results-of-georgia-senate-races-wont-be-known-until-at-least-noon-wednesday-official-idUKKBN29B0HB?il=0

Stocks fall as investors brace for possible 'blue sweep' in Georgia

January 6, 20211 2:58 AM By Hideyuki Sano

TOKYO (Reuters) -Global stock prices slipped and bond yields rose on Wednesday as investors braced for the prospect that Democrats could win both races in a U.S. Senate run-off election in Georgia, handing them control of the chamber.

Along with their narrow majority in the House of Representatives, a “blue sweep” of Congress could usher in larger fiscal stimulus and pave the way for President-elect Joe Biden to push through greater corporate regulation and higher taxes.

While the races were too close to call, with 98% of votes tallied, Democrat Raphael Warnock held a slight lead over incumbent Kelly Loeffler while Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff trailed Republican David Perdue by just 3,600 votes.

“With Biden proposing to reverse President Donald Trump’s tax cut, increase the minimum wage, and strengthen oversight on various industries, some might argue that his agenda is not particularly market-friendly,” said Vasu Menon, investment strategy executive director at OCBC Bank in Singapore.

Futures for the S&P 500 fell 0.8%, while Nasdaq futures shed 1.6% on fears Democrats could pursue tighter regulations on big tech firms.

Other industries, such as banks, oil and gas and healthcare, could come under heavier scrutiny, while infrastructure and alternative energy sectors could benefit.

Japan’s Nikkei fell 0.4% while MSCI’s index of Asian-Pacific excluding Japan erased earlier gains to trade 0.2% lower.

More

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-global-markets/stocks-fall-bond-yields-rise-as-investors-brace-for-possible-democrat-triumph-in-georgia-idUKKBN29B034

Next, the death of free Hong Kong. Lesson: Never trust communists to respect treaties.

Dozens of HK democracy activists arrested under security law as crackdown intensifies

January 6, 2021  12:38

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong police arrested dozens of leading democratic activists on Wednesday on suspicion of violating the city’s controversial security law in the biggest crackdown yet against the opposition camp since Beijing imposed the law in 2020.

The dawn swoop of the most prominent pro-democracy advocates in Hong Kong was tied to an unofficial, independently organised vote in July 2020 to select opposition candidates for a since-postponed legislative election.

As part of the operation, police also searched the offices of a pollster and a law firm and went to the offices of media outlets Apple Daily, Stand News, and Inmediahk, according to local media.

The mass arrests, confirmed by the Democratic Party and individual social media accounts of dozens of other activists and politicians arrested, will further raise alarm that Hong Kong has taken a swift authoritarian turn.

The crackdown since the June 2020 imposition of the new security law, which critics say crushes wide-ranging freedoms, places China further on a collision course with the United States just as Joe Biden prepares to take over the presidency.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Biden’s pick for secretary of state Antony Blinken said on Twitter the arrests were “an assault on those bravely advocating for universal rights.”

“The Biden-Harris administration will stand with the people of Hong Kong and against Beijing’s crackdown on democracy.”

---- At the time, the local government and Beijing warned the unprecedented unofficial vote may violate the new law, saying a campaign to win a majority in Hong Kong’s 70-seat legislature with the purpose of blocking government proposals to increase pressure for democratic reforms could be seen as subversive.

That reasoning was cited by police when making the Wednesday arrests, according to the Democratic Party’s Facebook page and other social media accounts of those arrested.

Police did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The legislative election was due in September last year but was postponed, with authorities citing coronavirus risks. It is unclear who could run for the opposition in any future polls following the mass arrests.

Maya Wang, senior China researcher at Human Rights Watch, said the raids and arrests showed Chinese authorities were now “removing the remaining veneer of democracy in the city”.

---- Public broadcaster RTHK said American lawyer John Clancey was arrested during a raid of law firm Ho, Tse, Wai & Partners.

More

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-hongkong-security/dozens-of-hk-democracy-activists-arrested-under-security-law-as-crackdown-intensifies-idUKKBN29B025?il=0

Hong Kong security secretary says govt will not tolerate "subversive" acts

January 6, 2021 5:44 AM 

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong’s security secretary said on Wednesday the government will not tolerate “subversive” acts, hours after authorities arrested dozens of pro-democracy activists in a dawn swoop.

Secretary for Security John Lee, speaking at the city’s Legislative Council, confirmed a group of people had been arrested in an operation targeting people suspected of “overthrowing” the city’s government.

Earlier, authorities arrested prominent pro-democracy advocates tied to an unofficial, independently organised vote in July 2020 to select opposition candidates for a since-postponed legislative election.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-hongkong-security-johnlee/hong-kong-security-secretary-says-govt-will-not-tolerate-subversive-acts-idUKKBN29B0IZ?il=0

In commodities news, are we at the start of a new commodities “supercycle? Goldie says yes.

Goldman proclaims the dawn of a new commodity supercycle: Andy Home

January 5, 2021  3:23 PM  By Andy Home

LONDON (Reuters) -Will COVID-19 kick-start a new commodities supercycle? Goldman Sachs thinks so.

While last year’s strong rebound in many commodity prices might be viewed as a “V-shaped vaccine recovery”, the bank contends it is just “the beginning of a much longer structural bull market for commodities”.

“Looking at the 2020s, we believe that similar structural forces to those which drove commodities in the 2000s could be at play,” Goldman argues. (“2021 Commodities Outlook: REVing up a structural bull market”, Nov. 18, 2020)

The 2000s were transformative for metal prices, which experienced a tectonic demand boost from industrialisation and urbanisation in emerging nations, China in particular.

Copper, the bellwether of the industrial metals sector, rose from under $2,000 per tonne in 2000 to a record high of $10,190 in February 2011.

But the supercycle hype dissipated over the course of a four-year bear market which only troughed late in 2015, leaving many investors disillusioned with the sector.

No-one has talked much about a commodities supercycle since then, which makes Goldman’s call all the more remarkable.

So what’s a supercycle, why was the last one so short-lived and what makes one of Wall Street’s finest think another one is coming?

More.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-metals-supercycle-ahome/goldman-proclaims-the-dawn-of-a-new-commodity-supercycle-andy-home-idUKKBN29A1QM

Saudis Take Charge of Oil Market With Surprise Production Cut

By Javier Blas, Grant Smith, and Salma El Wardany

January 5, 2021, 4:06 PM GMT Updated on January 6, 2021, 12:01 AM GMT

Kingdom to curb 1 million b/d of supply in February, March

·         Crude surged to 10-month high above $50 a barrel in New York

More

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-05/saudi-arabia-said-to-plan-voluntary-oil-output-cut-in-february

 Finally, spend, spend, spend, like there’s no tomorrow, from the Magic Money Tree forest, says the OECD. But what if there is a tomorrow, and under Biden-Harris MMT spending, it sets off a massive inflation?

 Impossible, according to the new world order OECD. There is a free lunch and we should all eat it too.

 Well, if they say so, it must be true, right? What could possibly go wrong on communist fiat money?

But to this old dinosaur real-world markets follower, everyone now needs a little, fully paid up, physical gold and silver, held outside of the gambling financial system, as insurance.

Higher spending, lower taxes: OECD warns governments to rethink constraints on public spending

Fresh austerity risks a public backlash, says chief economist Laurence Boone

Author of the article: Financial Times Chris Giles in London Publishing date: Jan 04, 2021

The economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic should transform governments’ attitude to public spending and debt, according to the chief economist of the The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, who has warned that fresh austerity would risk a popular backlash.

Laurence Boone, who has run the economics directorate at the Paris-based organization since 2018, told the Financial Times that the public would revolt against renewed austerity or tax rises if governments sought to quickly return deficits and debt to pre-pandemic levels.

Governments and central banks across the developed world have rolled out unprecedented stimulus measures in a bid to cushion their economies from the massive impact of the pandemic. After the crisis “people are going to ask where all this money has come from,” Boone said, adding that governments would struggle to argue they could not spend to address climate change or to compensate those who lose out from policy reforms.

“If we thought there was popular resentment because the quality of jobs was going down (before COVID-19), then it’s going to be much worse after this pandemic,” she said.

She called on countries to continue using fiscal policy — higher public spending and lower taxes — to help economies recover and get unemployment down as the immediate impact of the pandemic eases, and argued there was a lesson to be drawn from the financial crisis over a decade ago.

“The mistake that we made was not a lack of stimulus during the trough in 2009… the mistake came later in 2010, 2011 and so on, and that was true on both sides of the Atlantic,” she said. “The first lesson is to make sure governments are not tightening in the one to two years following the trough of GDP.”

The OECD was a cheerleader of austerity policies after the financial crisis, but now Boone said that countries should ditch short-term numeric targets for public deficits and debt and instead embrace long term sustainability goals, including accepting that public debt burdens would rise until economies returned closer to normal.

Countries should “get out of the mindset that we have one-size-fits-all fiscal rules to get debt back to a target,” she said.

This would be a radical shift in Europe, where EU treaties force countries to aim to limit debt to 60 per cent of gross domestic product; in the U.K. the government has pledged to set the debt burden on a downward path.

Debt sustainability analyses should take into account that investors are willing to soak up the bond issuance of most advanced economies, and central banks will keep interest rates low for the foreseeable future, she added.

“Interest rates are set to remain low for a time long enough that we can reconsider what we do with fiscal policy,” Boone said. “We have to think about sustainability in a more discretionary way over a longer time period, and also a more democratic way in the sense that if the target is set at the political level then it has to be assessed with enhanced transparency.”

This means governments should take on the primary role of stabilizing the economy in the recovery with independent central banks relegated to a supporting role, Boone argued, because advanced economies needed to fundamentally rethink the relationship between fiscal and monetary policy.

https://financialpost.com/financial-times/higher-spending-lower-taxes-oecd-warns-governments-to-rethink-constraints-on-public-spending

UK offers extra £4.6 billion to firms to soften new COVID-19 recession

  January 5, 202 19:17 AM  By Andy Bruce, David Milliken

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain offered a 4.6 billion pound support package for businesses on Tuesday to soften an expected recession caused by a surge in COVID-19 cases that has prompted a third national lockdown.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the lockdown on Monday, saying a highly contagious coronavirus variant risked overwhelming the health service within 21 days.

Most people must work from home and schools have closed for almost all pupils. Hospitality venues must stay shut, as well as non-essential shops.

Britain’s economy now looks likely to tip back into recession - shrinking in the final quarter of 2020 and the first quarter of 2021 - after suffering a record 25% fall in output in the first two months of lockdown in 2020.

The new downturn is expected to be far smaller, with most businesses now much better adapted to working remotely and construction sites and factories expected to stay open.

But economists at J.P. Morgan still predicted a hefty 2.5% fall in output for the first three months of 2021.

Finance minister Rishi Sunak has previously announced emergency help for the economy worth 280 billion pounds, including a massive job protection scheme that will run until the end of April.

Under Tuesday’s additional measures, retail, hospitality and leisure companies will be able to claim one-off grants worth up to 9,000 pounds to get them through the coming months, costing up to 4 billion pounds in total, along with 600 million pounds of grants for other businesses.

“This will help businesses to get through the months ahead – and crucially it will help sustain jobs, so workers can be ready to return when they are able to reopen,” Sunak said.

Government forecasters in November predicted almost 400 billion pounds of borrowing this financial year, equivalent to 19% of GDP - a peacetime record but one that, at least for now, can be financed at record-low interest rates.

More

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-britain-sunak/uk-offers-extra-4-6-billion-to-firms-to-soften-new-covid-19-recession-idUKKBN29A0V1

Free Lunch

By Akhilesh Ganti  Updated Jun 21, 2019

What Is a Free Lunch?

A free lunch refers to a situation where there is no cost incurred by the individual receiving the goods or services being provided. In the world of investing, free lunch usually refers to riskless profit, which has been proven to be unattainable for any extended period of time.

---- It is patently intuitive that a free lunch cannot exist, or if it is occurring, then it is only a matter of time before it is cut off. It refers to a situation in which a good or service is received at seemingly no cost because the expense is passed along to someone else or is obfuscated.

More

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/free-lunch.asp

"In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other. "

Voltaire.

Covid-19 Corner                       

This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.

In Democrat run California and Democrat run Los Angeles, a SARS-CoV-2, Covid-19 catastrophe. No word from incoming team Biden-Harris yet of how the Democrats let it happen.

Ambulances put on alert as Los Angeles hospitals swamped by COVID-19 patients

January 5, 2021 11:08 PM By Dan Whitcomb, Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Los Angeles health officials have told first responders to stop bringing adult patients who cannot be resuscitated to hospitals, citing a shortage of beds and staff as the latest COVID-19 surge threatened to overwhelm healthcare systems in America’s second-largest city.

The order, issued late on Monday and effective immediately, marked an escalation of measures being taken by state and local officials nationwide in the face of alarming increases in COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths.

Ambulances have been forced to wait several hours to unload patients at some Los Angeles hospitals, causing delays throughout the county’s emergency response system.

“Patients in traumatic full arrest who meet current Ref 814 criteria for determination of death shall not be resuscitated and shall be determined dead on scene and not transported,” Marianne Gausche-Hill, medical director of the Los Angeles County Emergency Medical Services Agency, said in the directive.

Ref 814 refers to the county’s policy on determining and pronouncing death in a patient who has not been transported to a hospital.

California, the most populous U.S. state, has been hit particularly hard by the latest coronavirus surge, which some public health officials attribute to Thanksgiving holiday gatherings in November. Los Angeles is one of two California counties reporting a shortage of intensive care unit beds.

More

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-usa/ambulances-put-on-alert-as-los-angeles-hospitals-swamped-by-covid-19-patients-idUKKBN29A2QM?il=0

China doubles down on COVID narrative as WHO investigation looms

January 5, 2021 6:55 AM By David Stanway

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - As a team from the World Health Organization (WHO) prepares to visit China to investigate the origins of COVID-19, Beijing has stepped up efforts not only to prevent new outbreaks, but also shape the narrative about when and where the pandemic began.

China has dismissed criticism of its early handling of the coronavirus, first identified in the city of Wuhan at the end of 2019, and foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said on Monday that the country would welcome the WHO team.

But amid simmering geopolitical tensions, experts said the investigators were unlikely to be allowed to scrutinise some of the more sensitive aspects of the outbreak, with Beijing desperate to avoid blame for a virus that has killed more than 1.8 million people worldwide.

----On Saturday, senior diplomat Wang Yi praised the anti-pandemic efforts, saying China not only curbed domestic infections, but also “took the lead in building a global anti-epidemic defence” by providing aid to more than 150 countries.

But mindful of the criticism China has faced worldwide, Wang also became the highest-ranking official to question the consensus about COVID-19’s origins, saying “more and more studies” show that it emerged in multiple regions.

China is also the only country to claim COVID-19 can be transmitted via cold chain imports, with the country blaming new outbreaks in Beijing and Dalian on contaminated shipments - even though the WHO has downplayed those risks.

China has been accused of a cover-up that delayed its initial response, allowing the virus to spread further.

The topic remains sensitive, with only a handful of studies into the origins of COVID-19 made available to the public.

But there have also been signs China is willing to share information that contradicts the official picture.

Last week, a study by China’s Center for Disease Control showed that blood samples from 4.43% of Wuhan’s population contained COVID-19 antibodies, indicating that the city’s infection rates were far higher than originally acknowledged.

But scientists said China must also share any findings suggesting COVID-19 was circulating domestically long before it was officially identified in December 2019.

An Italian study showed that COVID-19 might have been in Europe several months before China’s first official case. Chinese state media used the paper to support theories that COVID-19 originated overseas and entered China via contaminated frozen food or foreign athletes competing at the World Military Games in Wuhan in October 2019.

Raina MacIntyre, head of the Kirby Institute’s Biosecurity Research Program in Australia, said the investigation needed to draw “a comprehensive global picture of the epidemiological clues”, including any evidence COVID-19 was present outside of China before December 2019.

However, political issues mean they are unlikely to be given much leeway to investigate one hypothesis, that the outbreak was caused by a leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, said MacIntyre.

“I think it is unlikely all viruses in the lab at the time will be made available to the team,” she said. “So I do not think we will ever know the truth.”

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-china-who/china-doubles-down-on-covid-narrative-as-who-investigation-looms-idUKKBN29A0LV?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

The Spectator Covid-19 data tracker (UK)

https://data.spectator.co.uk/city/national

"The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease."

Voltaire.

Technology Update.

With events happening fast in the development of solar power and graphene, I’ve added this section. Updates as they get reported.

Chemistry tweaks make for rechargeable zinc-air batteries

By Michael Irving  January 04, 2021

Zinc-air batteries are great little energy storage devices, but they have plenty of room for improvement – for one, they’re not usually rechargeable. Now a team led by the University of Münster has developed a new zinc-air chemistry that makes this type of battery more efficient and rechargeable.

Unlike most batteries, which pack all their vital components inside the cell, zinc-air batteries rely on oxygen coming in from the surrounding air. In a way, they “breathe” oxygen that interacts with the cathode, producing molecules that cross the pastey alkaline electrolyte and react with the zinc anode to generate an electric current.

The problem is, the zinc anode is “used up” after it oxidizes, making the battery non-rechargeable. Some designs get around this by making the zinc components replaceable, or using rare-earth mineral catalysts to make them rechargeable, but these introduce extra costs or complications.

For the new study, engineers created a new electrolyte that can make zinc-air batteries rechargeable. Rather than the more paste-like consistency of most electrolytes in this type of battery, in the new design it is more of a liquid. It’s based on zinc trifluoromethanesulfonate salt, making it non-alkaline, which the team says makes it more chemically stable – and most importantly, reversible (ie, rechargeable).

"Our innovative, non-alkaline electrolyte brings a previously unknown reversible zinc peroxide (ZnO₂)/O₂ chemistry into the zinc-air battery,” says Wei Sun, lead researcher on the study. “The zinc-air battery provides a potential alternative battery technology [to lithium-ion] with advantages such as environmental friendliness, high safety and low costs.”

The team says that the new batteries continued to operate stably over 320 cycles and 1,600 hours of use. Part of that is because water-repelling anions in the electrolyte keep water away from the cathode surface, which makes it more stable.

It’s an interesting development, but the team acknowledges that the design is still a fair way off practical applications. And this is just one way zinc-air batteries could be made rechargeable – other studies have swapped out the expensive rare-earth mineral catalysts for more common elements like iron, cobalt and nickel.

https://newatlas.com/energy/rechargeable-zinc-air-batteries/

Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value: zero.

Voltaire.

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