SINGAPORE (Reuters) -
Cryptocurrencies extended gains in Asia on Tuesday, with bitcoin and ethereum
reaching record highs, in the wake of a Tesla Inc investment in bitcoin.
Bitcoin posted its largest daily
percentage gain in more than three years overnight, after Tesla made the
announcement in its 2020 annual report.
Bitcoin added as much as 2.5% to hit
a record high of $47,565.86 on Tuesday and has gained 61% for the year so far.
Ethereum hit a record of $1,784.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-crypto-currency/bitcoin-extends-gains-above-47000-in-asia-idUSKBN2A902T?il=0
Chinese regulators call in Tesla
over customer complaints February 8, 2021 1:34 PM
BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese
government officials have met representatives from U.S. electric carmaker Tesla
Inc over reports from consumers about battery fires, unexpected acceleration
and failures in over-the-air software updates, a regulator said on Monday.
China’s State Administration for
Market Regulation said in a social media post its officials, along with those
from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Ministry of Emergency
Management, Cyberspace Administration and Ministry of Transportation, had met
Tesla “recently”, without giving a date.
The officials urged Tesla to operate
according to China’s laws and protect customer rights, the regulator said.
In response, Tesla said it would
thoroughly investigate the problems reported by consumers and step up
inspections.
“We will strictly abide by Chinese
laws and regulations and always respect consumer rights,” a company
representative said in a text message, adding that Tesla accepted the guidance
of the Chinese government departments.
Tesla is building Model 3 electric
sedans and Model Y sport-utility vehicles at its Shanghai factory. It sold
15,484 China-made vehicles in January.
The industry ministry in May urged
Tesla to ensure consistency in its China-made vehicles after some Chinese
customers complained about less advanced computer chips in their cars.
China, the world’s biggest auto
market, is pushing the industry to make more electric vehicles as it tries to
reduce air pollution.
Sales of electric, plug-in hybrid
and hydrogen-powered vehicles in China are forecast to rise to 20% of all new
car sales by 2025 from just 5% now, the State Council said last year.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-china/chinese-regulators-call-in-tesla-over-customer-complaints-idUSKBN2A818V?feedType=mktg&feedName=&WT.mc_id=Newsletter-US&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Workday%20Q1%202021%202018%20Template:%20UK%20TECHNOLOGY%20ROUNDUP%20-%202/8%20-%20France&utm_term=NEW:%20UK%20Technology%20Roundup
'These are dangerous times' —
market mania and how to survive it David Rosenberg: Fundamentals can only stay out of
vogue for so long, as history teaches us time and again
David Rosenberg Feb 08, 2021
----
These are dangerous times, though many investors have adopted “new era”
thinking just as they typically do at every market top. What is generally
referred to as “liquidity” is really more about “momentum” and “speculation.”
This is not about earnings: this past quarter’s EPS will end up being nearly 20
per cent below where the consensus estimate was exactly a year ago in level
terms. But the market is up, not just 70 per cent from the lows, but 15 per
cent from a year ago, when the market believed profits would be almost 20 per
cent higher than is actually the case.
In
other words, the P/E multiple is doing all the work, and investors have an
extremely high level of confidence about the future of the economy and
corporate profits. I sense that these are going to prove to be false hopes,
because I see a bumpy ride after we get to the light at the end of the dark
tunnel.
The one thing that rarely gets
discussed is how these massive deficits and debts being amassed during the
pandemic will get resolved. The total debt-to-GDP ratio across the entire U.S.
economy has ballooned to a record 365.5 per cent, from 326.7 per cent before
the crisis. In just three quarters, as much debt was added to the nation’s
books as in the prior two decades combined. In dollar terms, that’s US$77.4
trillion, or US$620,000 per household. Contemplate that latter figure since
this overhang keeps getting bigger and bigger: it was US$260,000 per household
at the height of the 2000 tech bubble, and $475,000 at the peak of the 2007
housing and credit bubble.
Until this massive overhang is
redressed, one can reasonably expect the credit multiplier on the real economy
to be continuously impaired, money velocity to remain on its secular downward
trajectory, precautionary savings rates to stay at elevated levels,
deflationary pressures to persist as a result, and interest rates to remain at
rock bottom levels.
These low rates can be supportive of
asset prices for a while, but their underpinnings will wane as it becomes
obvious that we are not heading to the Roaring Twenties and earnings
disappoint. It was not interest rates that pricked the 2000 and 2007 bubbles;
it was faulty assumptions facing economic reality. We will soon find that
central banks are not actually bigger than the market and the business cycle.
But at least we have until after the second quarter before these very lofty
current economic expectations are put to the test.
---- The mania has culminated in a view that the retail
investor has taken on the institutional investor, but the reality is that the
latter is also very one-sided in its overly optimistic view of how things will
play out. The retail investor is loading up on the most speculative stocks,
whereas the typical portfolio manager, views aside, is trained to manage risk
and actually knows, or should know, how to assess the present value of future
cash flow streams. If you can’t do that, don’t call yourself an investor. Call
yourself a trader or a speculator.
The day will come when playing the
game of pin the tail on the donkey isn’t going to work anymore and when
companies that don’t make money will no longer outperform those with solid
business fundamentals and a credible plan to build future residual cash flow
streams. Fundamentals can only stay out of vogue for so long, as history
teaches us time and again.
More
https://financialpost.com/investing/investing-pro/david-rosenberg-these-are-dangerous-times-market-mania-and-how-to-survive-it
Around the globe, virus cancels
spring travel for millions By
DAVID McHUGH, CASEY SMITH and JOE McDONALD February 8, 2021
FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — They are
the annual journeys of late winter and early spring: Factory workers in China
heading home for the Lunar New Year; American college students going on road
trips and hitting the beach over spring break; Germans and Britons fleeing drab
skies for some Mediterranean sun over Easter.
All of it canceled, in doubt or
under pressure because of the coronavirus.
Amid fears of new variants of the
virus, new restrictions on movement have hit just as people start to look ahead
to what is usually a busy time of year for travel.
It means more pain for airlines,
hotels, restaurants and tourist destinations that were already struggling more
than a year into the pandemic, and a slower recovery for countries where
tourism is a big chunk of the economy.
Colleges around the U.S. have been
canceling spring break to discourage students from traveling. After Indiana
University in Bloomington replaced its usual break with three “wellness days,”
student Jacki Sylvester abandoned plans to celebrate her 21st birthday in Las
Vegas.
Instead she will mark the milestone
closer to home, with a day at the casino in French Lick, Indiana, just 50 miles
(80 kilometers) away.
---- At bus and train stations in China, there
is no sign of the annual Lunar New Year rush. The government has called on the
public to avoid travel following new coronavirus outbreaks. Only five of 15
security gates at Beijing’s cavernous central railway station were open; the
crowds of travelers who usually camp on the sprawling plaza outside were
absent.
The holiday, which starts Feb. 12,
is usually the world’s single biggest movement of humanity as hundreds of
millions of Chinese leave cities to visit their hometowns or tourist spots or
travel abroad. For millions of migrant workers, it usually is the only chance
to visit their hometowns during the year. This year, authorities are promising
extra pay if they stay put.
The government says people will make
1.7 billion trips during the holiday, but that is down 40% from 2019.
Departures from Beijing and Chengdu in the southwest are forecast to drop 75%,
according to travel associations.
More
https://apnews.com/article/travel-coronavirus-pandemic-china-germany-indiana-3acb00dcb30aa8b4d1f7858f857237f5
Finally, after almost a year of populist kicking the can
down the road, the coronavirus chaos starts. Sounds like another job for
Bailout Biden and Fed Chairwoman Yellen. Shame about the fiat dollar.
“We take direct action to intervene in a
violent system that exists to protect private profits at the expense of human
lives,” said KC Tenants director Tara Raghuveer, 28.
'This is not justice.' Tenant
activists upend U.S. eviction courts February
8, 2021 11:05 AM By Michelle Conlin
(Reuters)
- As freezing temperatures settled over Kansas City, Missouri, on Jan. 28,
Judge Jack Grate opened his online courtroom. The first of 100 cases on his
docket was that of Tonya Raynor, a 64-year-old who owed $2,790 in back rent and
fees on an apartment on the city’s east side, a swath of vacant storefronts and
boarded-up properties.
“Miss Raynor, are you there?” asked
Grate, a burly 71-year-old sporting a beard, a buzz cut and a rumpled, orange
short-sleeve shirt.
A booming voice responded: “This is
not justice. This is violence.” Soon a chorus joined in: “Judge Grate, you are
making people homeless! You are killing people!”
The voices in the virtual courtroom
of the Jackson County Circuit Court belonged to members of KC Tenants, a group
that brought Kansas City’s eviction operation to its knees last month. The
group is one of scores of tenants’ unions and anti-eviction activist groups in
cities nationwide whose memberships have exploded during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Housing experts liken their
combative tactics to the rent strikes that swept the United States during the
Great Depression.
Some of these activists operate
loosely under the umbrella of the Autonomous Tenants Union, which works to end
evictions nationally. Others, like KC tenants, are independent. Their anthems
are “Cancel Rent,” “No Debt,” and “No Evictions.”
They are calling for more federal
relief to help tenants pay back rent. Landlords, some of whom haven’t been paid
in nearly a year, say they are hurting financially too, and are being unfairly
villainized for a housing crisis created by a once-in-a-century pandemic.
In Kansas City, Judge Grate ignored
the protestors and tried to talk over them at the Jan. 28 hearing, seemingly
unaware of the mute button. Ultimately, he shut down the proceedings.
Judge Grate declined to comment.
It was yet another showdown in a
months-long campaign by KC Tenants that culminated in the delay of 854
evictions in Jackson County in January, according to Jordan Ayala, an eviction
researcher and Ph.D candidate at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, who
analyzed the court filings. That number matches estimates from KC Tenants’
leadership.
Valerie Hartman, the court’s public
information officer, disputes that figure but said the court does not track the
number of hearings or their outcomes.
In September, the U.S. Centers for
Disease Control banned evictions nationally amid concerns about the public
health risks of putting people out of their homes during a pandemic. President
Joe Biden has extended that moratorium to March 31.
Still, exceptions in the measure
have allowed some evictions to proceed. No comprehensive database exists to
track those figures. But since the spring, nearly 250,000 tenants have been
evicted in 27 U.S. cities tracked by Princeton University’s Eviction Lab. When
the federal ban lifts, up to 40 million people - owing more than $57 billion in
back rent - could be evicted, according to Moody’s Analytics, an economic
research firm, and the Aspen Institute, a global think tank.
More
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-evictions-insi/this-is-not-justice-tenant-activists-upend-u-s-eviction-courts-idUSKBN2A8112
"Markets can remain irrational
longer than you can remain solvent."
John Maynard Keynes.
Covid-19 Corner This
section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
Today,
what if this is the mutation fate of all the different vaccines? We cannot keep
the global economy strangled forever.
South Africa halts AstraZeneca
vaccine after shots fail against new variant February
8, 2021 7:33 AM By Guy Faulconbridge , Kate
Holton
LONDON
(Reuters) - South Africa halted Monday’s planned rollout of AstraZeneca’s
COVID-19 vaccinations after data showed it gave minimal protection against mild
infection from one variant, stoking fears of a much longer cat-and-mouse battle
with the pathogen.
The coronavirus has killed 2.3
million people and turned normal life upside down for billions but new variants
have raised fears that vaccines will need to be tweaked and people may have to
have booster shots.
Researchers from the University of
Witwatersrand and the University of Oxford said in a prior-to-peer analysis
that the AstraZeneca vaccine provided minimal protection against mild or
moderate infection from the South African variant among young people.
“This study confirms that the
pandemic coronavirus will find ways to continue to spread in vaccinated
populations, as expected,” said Andrew Pollard, chief investigator on the
Oxford vaccine trial.
“But, taken with the promising
results from other studies in South Africa using a similar viral vector,
vaccines may continue to ease the toll on health care systems by preventing
severe disease.”
Britain and Australia urged calm,
citing evidence that the vaccines prevented grave illness and death, while
AstraZeneca said it believed its vaccine could protect against severe disease.
But if vaccines do not work as
effectively as hoped against new and emerging variants, then the world could be
facing a much longer - and more expensive - battle against the virus than
previously thought.
The AstraZeneca vaccine was the big
hope for Africa as it is cheap and easier to store and transport than the
Pfizer shot, making South Africa’s move a major blow, with sweeping
implications for other regions.
---- An analysis of infections by the South
African variant showed there was only a 22% lower risk of developing
mild-to-moderate COVID-19 if vaccinated with the AstraZeneca shot versus those
given a placebo.
Protection against moderate-severe
disease, hospitalisation or death could not be assessed in the study of around
2,000 volunteers who had a median age of 31 as the target population were at
such low risk, the researchers said.
More
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-britain/south-africa-halts-astrazeneca-vaccine-after-shots-fail-against-new-variant-idUSKBN2A80ME?il=0
08 February 2021
Variant-proof
vaccines — invest now for the next pandemic COVID’s evolution signals the importance of
rational vaccine design based on broadly neutralizing antibodies
The rapid development and delivery
of highly effective COVID-19 vaccines less than a year after the emergence of
the disease is a huge success story. This was possible, in part, because of
certain properties of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 that favour vaccine design —
in particular, the spike protein on the virus’s surface. This prompts the body
to make protective neutralizing antibodies (proteins that bind to viruses and
prevent them from infecting human cells). These are most likely to be
responsible for the efficacy of current COVID-19 vaccines.
The next pathogen to emerge might be
less accommodating. A vaccine could take much longer to make. Even SARS-CoV-2
could be becoming more problematic for vaccines, because of the emergence of
new variants. We call for an alternative approach to pandemic preparedness.
A special class of protective
antibodies called broadly neutralizing antibodies (see ‘Pan-virus vaccines’)
acts against many different strains of related virus — for example, of HIV,
influenza or coronavirus. Such antibodies could be used as first-line drugs to
prevent or treat viruses in a given family, including new lineages or strains
that have not yet emerged. More importantly, they could be used to design
vaccines against many members of a given family of viruses
---- Why has vaccine design for SARS-CoV-2 been
relatively easy (so far, at least)? Infection begins when the spike protein on
the surface attaches to a receptor on human cells. The virus injects its
genetic material into the cell and takes it over to produce many copies of
itself, leading eventually to disease. Neutralizing antibodies stop this viral
entry and prevent infection. On SARS-CoV-2, the attachment site is a large,
open protein surface to which antibodies stick readily. It is thus relatively
easy for a vaccination to stimulate protective neutralizing antibodies.
In evolutionary terms, SARS-CoV-2 is
an ‘evasion-light’ pathogen. It has not had to acquire an armamentarium of
molecular features to outwit immune responses in general and neutralizing
antibodies in particular. This is because it currently transmits from one
person to another before immune responses have developed — and, in many cases,
before disease symptoms are noted.
More
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00340-4
Study: B.1.1.7 coronavirus
variant spreading rapidly throughout U.S. Feb. 7, 2021 / 5:08 PM / Updated Feb. 7,
2021 at 11:23 PM
Feb. 7 (UPI) -- A study released on Sunday reports that the B.1.1.7 COVID-19 variant
is spreading rapidly throughout the United States as the nation surpasses 27
million total infections.
The report posted on the preprint server MedRxiv found that
cases of the variant first discovered in Britain are doubling every week and a
half -- similar to trends in other countries where it is present -- as it is
35% to 45% more transmissible than strains that appeared earlier in the United
States.
"Our study shows that the U.S. is on a similar
trajectory as other countries where B.1.1.7 rapidly became the dominant
SARS-CoV-2 variant, requiring immediate and decisive action to minimize
COVID-19 morbidity and mortality," researchers in the preprint, which has
not yet been peer-reviewed or published in a journal, said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported
that 611 cases of the variant have been found in 33 states while
the United States has reported 27,004,715 cases and 463,437 deaths related to
the coronavirus since the start of the pandemic, including 102,420 new
infections and 2,618 fatalities reported Saturday, according to data gathered
by Johns
Hopkins University.
Florida has reported the most infections involving B.1.1.7
with 187 as of Thursday, followed by California with 145 cases of the variant.
Overall, California leads the nation in cases with 3,335,926
infections since the start of the pandemic, including 15,064 reported
Sunday, and a death toll of 43,942 following 295 new fatalities.
Texas reported 5,278 new cases on Sunday for the nation's second greatest
total at 2,160,098 while also adding 167 new fatalities to bring its death toll
to 38,643.
More
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2021/02/07/Study-B117-coronavirus-variant-spreading-rapidly-throughout-US/8571612729998/
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on Sme.sk and Korzar.sk Next, some vaccine links
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World
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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
https://data.spectator.co.uk/city/national
Technology Update.
With events happening
fast in the development of solar power and graphene, I’ve added this section.
Updates as they get reported.
Off topic today, but interesting.
Two more coma patients' brains
jump-started with ultrasound By Ben Coxworth January 28, 2021
Five
years ago, we heard how a team at the University of California, Los Angeles
(UCLA) had used ultrasound to seemingly "jump
start" a patient out of a coma. At the time, the
scientists wondered if such results could be repeated, or if their success was
just a one-off. They have now done it two more times.
In
the 2016 case, a team led by Prof. Martin Monti utilized a coffee cup
saucer-sized device to deliver stimulating pulses of low-intensity focused
ultrasound to the thalamus of a 25 year-old coma patient. The thalamus acts as
the brain's central processing hub, and it is typically weakened in coma
patients.
After receiving the treatment, the
patient improved dramatically. Whereas he previously only showed minimal signs
of consciousness, he was now fully awake, able to understand questions, and
capable of responding by shaking or nodding his head. At the time, though, the
researchers wondered if they might have just gotten lucky – they may have
treated the patient at the same time that he was coming out of the coma on his
own, or his brain might have been uniquely receptive to the treatment.
Now, though, Monti and colleagues
have announced that they recently experienced two more successes.
One case involved a 56 year-old man
who had been in a minimally conscious state for over 14 months since suffering
a stroke. After his first ultrasound treatment, he was consistently able to
drop or grasp a ball when told to do so, and to look toward either of two
photographs of relatives when their names were mentioned. After the second
treatment, he was additionally able to raise a bottle to his mouth, use a pen
and paper, and to verbally communicate.
The second case involved a 50
year-old woman who had been in an even less conscious state ever since she
experienced a cardiac arrest two and a half years earlier. After her first
treatment, she was able to recognize objects such as a comb and a pencil –
something she hadn't been able to do since entering her coma.
In both cases, treatment consisted
of placing the ultrasound device on the side of the patient's head, then activating
it 10 times for 30 seconds each within a 10-minute period. Both patients
underwent two such sessions, spaced a week apart. The scientists state that the
treatment is safe and produces no unwanted side effects, as the relatively
small amount of energy emitted by the device is less than that used in a
traditional Doppler ultrasound scan.
It should be noted that the treatment had no effect on a
third patient, a 58 year-old man who had been in a coma for five and a half
years after being in a car accident. Nonetheless, the scientists are pleased
with the two successes they did have.
"What is remarkable is that both exhibited meaningful
responses within just a few days of the intervention," says Monti.
"This is what we hoped for, but it is stunning to see it with your own
eyes. Seeing two of our three patients who had been in a chronic condition
improve very significantly within days of the treatment is an extremely
promising result."
Additional studies are now being planned. The scientists
state that a portable commercial version of the device – which could be
routinely used in hospitals or even in patients' homes – probably won't be
available for at least another few years.
A paper on the research was recently published in the
journal Brain Stimulation
https://newatlas.com/medical/coma-patients-brains-ultrasound/
“The markets are moved by animal
spirits, and not by reason."
John Maynard Keynes.
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