Is Inflation Here? Does Biden = Carter?

Baltic Dry Index. 2215 +110 Brent Crude 63.39

Spot Gold 1732

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

Deaths 53,100 

Coronavirus Cases 19/03/21 World 122,376,902

Deaths 2,703,255

Things are seldom what they seem,
Skim milk masquerades as cream;
Highlows pass as patent leathers;
Jackdaws strut in peacock's feathers. 

H. M. S. Pinafore.

In Alaska this morning, “diplomacy” is off to a cold war start. But, on the bright side, so far no one has yet called President Xi a “killer.” An opening for President Biden this weekend perhaps?

In the casinos, disturbing signs that despite Fed Chairman Powell’s oily assurances that inflation is under control and interest rates can be kept near zero all the way out to 2024, more and more punters have their doubts. 

What does the crude oil selloff mean, if anything. In great commodity super-cycles, wild bull and bear action becomes the norm.

There are probably few dinosaurs like me that remember the wild commodity futures markets of the 1970s. Great fun for those who don’t go broke.

But has inflation already arrived?

Asia stocks unsettled by yields and oil, Nikkei hit by BOJ shift

March 18, 2021  11:11 PM By Wayne Cole

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Asian share markets slipped on Friday after a spike in global bond yields soured sentiment toward richly priced tech stocks, while a stampede out of crowded positions may have put an end to the bull run in crude oil.

Having plunged 7% overnight, Brent crude futures managed a feeble bounce of just 11 cents to $63.39 a barrel, while U.S. crude added 6 cents to $60.06. [O/R]

The retreat wiped out four weeks of gains in a single session amid worries world demand would fall short of high expectations.

Markets were also unsettled by the Bank of Japan’s (BOJ) decision to slightly widen the target band for 10-year yields and tweak its buying of assets.

The bank portrayed the changes as a “nimble” way to make easing more sustainable, though investors seemed to take it as a step back from all-out stimulus.

A decision to confine purchases to only TOPIX-linked ETFs knocked the Nikkei down 1.6%, while South Korea lost 1%. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan followed with a fall of 1.5%.

Chinese blue chips shed 1.9%, perhaps unnerved by a fiery exchange between Chinese and U.S. diplomats at the first in-person talks of the Biden era.

Nasdaq futures went flat, after a sharp 3% drop overnight, while S&P 500 futures added 0.1%. European futures followed the overnight fall with the EUROSTOXX 50 off 0.8% and FTSE futures 0.6%.

Investors are still reflecting on the U.S. Federal Reserve’s pledge to keep rates near zero out to 2024 even as it lifted forecasts for economic growth and inflation.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell seems likely to drive home the dovish message next week with no less than three appearances lined up.

---- “The message for bonds is more mixed: while the anchoring of the short end is a positive, market participants may come to worry that the forecast rise in inflation might not be temporary and that the Fed risks ‘overcooking it’.”

Yields on U.S. 10-year notes spiked to the highest since early 2020 at 1.754% and were last at 1.71%. If sustained, this would be the seventh straight week of increases worth a huge 64 basis points in total.

More

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-markets/asia-stocks-unsettled-by-yields-and-oil-nikkei-hit-by-boj-shift-idUSKBN2BA2Y6

U.S. Construction Material Cost Shock Escalates - constructconnect.com

Alex Carrick March 18, 2021

---- In February, the softwood lumber PPI was +79.7% year over year and +38.0% during the latest three months; plywood, +44.1% y/y and +8.1% over latest three months; and particle board and oriented strand board, +62.5% y/y, although only +1.9% in the past three months.

While forestry products started the wave, sizable price advances have recently migrated to many other material categories as well.

From Table 1, steel bar, plate and structural shape prices are +15.2% y/y after climbing +16.2% in the latest three months. They’ve been driven higher by iron and steel scrap prices, +45.7% y/y and +36.1% over the latest three months.

Copper wire and cable prices are +18.2% y/y and +10.7% in the latest three months.

Diesel fuel is +36.5% y/y and +31.4% versus three months earlier.

Adding to the upward trajectory of material costs, as recorded in the latest three months, are aluminum mill shapes, +7.5%; asphalt, +34.0%; and regular unleaded gasoline, +39.1%.

More

https://canada.constructconnect.com/dcn/news/economic/2021/03/u-s-construction-material-cost-shock-escalates

In other news, who needs the stock casinos anyway?

Cheltenham Festival 2021: Punter cashes out to win at least £250,000 from £5 stake

By Frank Keogh BBC Sport at Cheltenham 18 March, 2021

A punter will win at least £250,000 from a £5 bet after deciding to 'cash out' on the final leg of his accumulator at Cheltenham.

Paul Dean was eyeing a potential £511,000 payday on Thursday if the last runner in his five-horse wager - hot favourite Envoi Allen - triumphed.

But he has decided not to risk it all and will collect £300,000 from Betfair if Envoi Allen wins.

Dean will net £250,000 if the Marsh Novices' Chase favourite is beaten.

"So after celebrations last night, four hours sleep, an hour's walk at 5am, I've decided to take a partial cash out offer of 300 Envoi/250 the field," he said.

"With other bets my position on the race is £322,000 Envoi or £250,000 the field."

• 'I gambled £50,000 on a horse at Cheltenham and lost everything'

More

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/horse-racing/56435950

Elsewhere, round one of the USA v China talks gets off to a less than diplomatic start. President Trump’s agenda dominates. China responds in kind.

Does President Biden also think President Xi is a “killer?” How does it help if he publicly names him? It’s business as usual with Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman.

Top American, Chinese diplomats clash publicly at start of first talks of Biden presidency

March 18, 2021  5:19 PM  By Humeyra Pamuk, Michael Martina, David Brunnstrom

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - The United States and China leveled sharp rebukes of each others’ policies in the first high-level, in-person talks of the Biden administration on Thursday, with deeply strained relations of the two global rivals on rare public display during the meeting’s opening session in Alaska.

The United States, which quickly accused China of “grandstanding” and violating the meeting’s protocol, had been looking for a change in behavior from China, itself having expressed earlier this year a hope to reset sour relations.

On the eve of the talks, Beijing had presaged what would be a contentious meeting, with its ambassador to Washington saying the United States was full of illusions if it thinks China will compromise.

Sparring in a highly unusual extended back-and-forth in front of cameras, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan opened their meeting with China’s top diplomat Yang Jiechi and State Councilor Wang Yi in Anchorage, fresh off of Blinken’s visits to allies Japan and South Korea.

“We will ... discuss our deep concerns with actions by China, including in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Taiwan, cyber attacks on the United States, economic coercion of our allies,” Blinken said in blunt public remarks.

“Each of these actions threaten the rules-based order that maintains global stability,” he said.

Yang responded with a 15-minute speech in Chinese while the U.S. side awaited translation, lashing out about what he said was the United States’ struggling democracy, poor treatment of minorities, and criticizing its foreign and trade policies.

“The United States uses its military force and financial hegemony to carry out long arm jurisdiction and suppress other countries,” Yang said.

“It abuses so-called notions of national security to obstruct normal trade exchanges, and incite some countries to attack China,” he added.

“Let me say here that in front of the Chinese side, the United States does not have the qualification to say that it wants to speak to China from a position of strength,” Yang said.

“...the U.S. side was not even qualified to say such things, even 20 years or 30 years back, because this is not the way to deal with the Chinese people...”

More

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-alaska/top-american-chinese-diplomats-clash-publicly-at-start-of-first-talks-of-biden-presidency-idUSKBN2BA2A7

Finally, after years of US colour revolutions against Russia, Russia is getting set to move on. Biden calling Putin a killer probably didn’t help. Given all the US drone slaughter, pot calling kettle black comes to mind.

But will America and the other “five eyes” try to hack it and stop it?

New era in space cooperation: Russia interested in joint lunar station with China

Issued on: 18/03/2021 - 12:10

Russia and China have signed a memorandum of cooperation to build an international moon station, Russia's space corporation Roscosmos said Wednesday. The head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, made the announcement as he unveiled the Luna-25 lander, a spacecraft due to be launched this coming October.

https://www.france24.com/en/video/20210318-new-era-in-space-cooperation-russia-interested-in-joint-lunar-station-with-china

Kremlin says Biden does not want to improve ties with Russia

Issued on: 18/03/2021 - 12:08

Russia said Thursday US President Joe Biden had no interest in improving ties with Russia after he referred to Vladimir Putin as a "killer", sparking the biggest crisis in years between the former Cold War rivals.

Russia's relationship with the West has eroded over a spate of disagreements, but relations plunged to new depths Wednesday after Biden agreed Putin was a "killer" in a US television interview.

"These statements from the president of the United States are very bad," Putin's spokesman Dmirty Peskov told reporters.

"It is clear that he does not want to get the relationship with our country back on track, and we will proceed from that," he added.

In a swift response to Biden's comments, Moscow on Wednesday evening recalled its ambassador in the United States for urgent consultations -- an unprecedented move in recent Russian diplomacy.

Its embassy in Washington said ambassador Anatoly Antonov was set to depart for Russia on Saturday to discuss "ways to rectify Russia-US ties, which are in crisis".

Peskov on Thursday said that Putin would receive Antonov "if need be", but declined to say if Moscow was ready to sever diplomatic ties with the United States altogether.

---- Commenting on Moscow's decision to recall Antonov, the embassy warned that Biden's comments had pushed bilateral ties to the brink.

"Certain ill-considered statements of high-ranking US officials have put the already excessively confrontational relations under the threat of collapse," it said.

Moscow and Washington share a deep and mutual distrust that flared after the Kremlin's annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014.

More

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20210318-kremlin-says-biden-does-not-want-to-improve-ties-with-russia

Black sheep dwell in every fold;
All that glitters is not gold;
Storks turn out to be but logs;
Bulls are but inflated frogs.

H. M. S. Pinafore.

Covid-19 Corner                       

This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.

Germany, France among nations to resume use of AstraZeneca vaccine after regulators back shot

March 18, 2021 4:22 PM  By Anthony Deutsch, Toby Sterling, Alistair Smout

AMSTERDAM/LONDON (Reuters) - Germany, France and other European nations announced plans to resume using AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine on Thursday after EU and British regulators moved to shore up confidence in the shot, saying its benefits outweigh the risks.

Reports of rare brain blood clots had prompted more than a dozen nations to suspend use of the shot, the latest challenge for AstraZeneca’s ambition to produce a “vaccine for the world”, as the global death toll from the coronavirus passes 2.8 million.

The European Medicines Agency’s (EMA) “clear” conclusion following an investigation into 30 cases of unusual blood disorders was that the vaccine’s benefits in protecting people from coronavirus-related death or hospitalisation outweighs the possible risks, though it said a link between blood clots in the brain and the shot could not be definitively ruled out.

“This is a safe and effective vaccine,” EMA director Emer Cooke told a briefing. “If it were me, I would be vaccinated tomorrow.”

More

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-eu-astrazeneca/germany-france-among-nations-to-resume-use-of-astrazeneca-vaccine-after-regulators-back-shot-idUSKBN2BA25E

UK vaccine roll-out to be slower than hoped, deliveries to pick up from May

March 18, 2021  7:21 AM By Guy Faulconbridge, Kate Holton

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain said on Thursday that global supply bumps meant its vaccine roll-out would be slower than hoped in coming weeks but it expected deliveries to increase again in May, June and July.

British health officials warned on Wednesday that the world’s fastest big economy roll-out of the vaccine would face a significant reduction in supplies from March 29.

Pfizer Inc and AstraZeneca Plc said their delivery schedules had not been impacted, and Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick refused to be drawn on whether the issue was due to a problem with supply from India.

“We have less supply than we might have hoped for the coming weeks but we expect it to increase again later,” Jenrick told the BBC.

“The vaccine roll-out will be slightly slower than we might have hoped but not slower than the target,” he said. “We have every reason to believe that supply will increase in the months of May, June and July.”

Britain is on track to have given a first shot to half of all adults in the next few days, making it one of the fastest countries to roll out a vaccine.

So far 25.27 million people in the United Kingdom have had a vaccine, around 48% of adults, and Jenrick said Britain remained on track to have vaccinated priority groups by April 15 and all adults by the end of July.

More

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-britain/uk-vaccine-roll-out-to-be-slower-than-hoped-deliveries-to-pick-up-from-may-idUSKBN2BA0ME?il=0

African Union says benefits outweigh risks of AstraZeneca COVID shot

March 18, 2021  10:34 AM

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - The African Union said on Thursday that it considers that the benefits of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine outweigh the risks and recommended that vaccinations continue across the continent.

The announcement came a day after the World Health Organization backed the vaccine and as more than a dozen European countries have suspended the use of it amid concerns over the risk of blood clots.

John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told a news conference that the “benefits still outweigh the risks” and that countries should “move forward” with the vaccination.

AstraZeneca said on Sunday a review of safety data of more than 17 million people vaccinated in the United Kingdom and European Union with its vaccine had shown no evidence of an increased risk of blood clots.

The head of the continent’s disease control body said that adverse reactions would be monitored and reported for future assessments on the vaccine.

Some African countries have already suspended use of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

On Friday the Democratic Republic of Congo delayed the rollout of the shot, citing the suspension of the use of the shots by European countries.

Many African states expect to receive AstraZeneca shots from the COVAX Facility, a global vaccine allocation plan co-led by the World Health Organization and partners including the Gavi vaccines alliance, which will be delivering vaccines for free to some low and lower-middle-income countries.

The European Medicines Agency is investigating reports of 30 cases of unusual blood disorders out of 5 million people who got the AstraZeneca vaccine in the EU. It said it has so far found no causal link.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-africa/african-union-says-benefits-outweigh-risks-of-astrazeneca-covid-shot-idUSKBN2BA13U

 

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/

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

Technology Update.

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

Transparent solar cells don't steal light from greenhouse crops

By Michael Irving  March 17, 2021

Advances in transparent solar cells mean that soon we might be able to install them into windows and greenhouses. But in the latter case, would they deprive plants of vital sunlight? To find out, researchers at North Carolina State University grew lettuce under various wavelengths of light, and found that the plants did just fine.

Organic solar cells are emerging as a viable system for renewable energy, thanks to a number of advantages. They can be more flexible than other technologies, be made transparent or semi-transparent, and the wavelengths of light they harvest can be adjusted.

In theory, that could make them perfect for embedding into greenhouse roofs. There, these organic solar cells could capture certain wavelengths of light while still allowing some of it to pass through to the plants below. In a previous study, the NC State team investigated how much energy this kind of setup could produce, and found that it could be enough to make greenhouses energy neutral.

But of course there’s one big piece of that puzzle missing – nobody asked the plants how it affected them. So that was the focus of the new work.

The researchers grew groups of red leaf lettuce in greenhouses for 30 days, which took them up to full maturity. The different groups were all exposed to the same growing conditions, such as temperature, water, fertilizer and CO₂ concentration. The only difference was light.

The lettuces were split into four groups – a control group that received regular white light, and three experimental groups that grew under light passed through different filters. These changed the ratio of red to blue light that they received, to mimic wavelengths that would be blocked by transparent solar cells.

Then the team monitored several markers of plant health, including number and size of leaves, weight, how much CO₂ they absorbed and the levels of antioxidants they contained. And perhaps surprisingly, it turns out that the lettuces thrived regardless of what type of light they received.

“Not only did we find no meaningful difference between the control group and the experimental groups, we also didn’t find any significant difference between the different filters,” says Brendan O’Connor, co-corresponding author of the study.

The team says that it’s currently working on testing the effects of blocking different wavelengths of light on other crops, like tomatoes.

The research was published in the journal Cell Reports Physical Science.

Source: North Carolina State University

https://newatlas.com/energy/transparent-solar-cells-light-greenhouse-crops/

Another weekend and which nuclear power leader is in President Biden’s sights for a public insult? After the tumultuous Trump presidency, President Biden seems to want to escalate the Trump tensions.  If he does, I wonder how the markets will react. Have a great Spring/Autumn Equinox weekend everyone.

Drops the wind and stops the mill;
Turbot is ambitious brill;
Gild the farthing if you will,
Yet it is a farthing still.

H. M. S. Pinafore.