Fedsters Day Two. The 70s Return?

 Baltic Dry Index. 2889 +81 Brent Crude 66.46

Spot Gold 1771

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

Deaths 53,100

Coronavirus Cases 28/04/21 World 149,359,111

Deaths 3,149,381

A permanent Governor of the Bank of England [your central bankster here] would be one of the greatest men in England. He would be a little “monarch” in the City; he would be far greater than the “Lord Mayor.”  He would be the personal embodiment of the Bank of England; he would be constantly clothed with an almost indefinite prestige. Everybody in business would bow down before him and try to stand well with him, for he might in a panic be able to save almost anyone he liked. A day might come when his favour might mean prosperity, and his distrust might mean ruin. A position with so much real power and so much apparent dignity would be intensely coveted.

Walter Bagehot. Lombard Street. 1873.

It is day two of the Lords of the Universe Meeting in Washington, and afterwards Fed Chairman Powell gets to tell the lesser mortals just how well they are doing on our behalf.

Of course, though they are all doing a stellar job, there’s still plenty more to do to get America back to a full recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, but rest assured, everything is under their full control and a little run of temporary inflation is planned, expected, and nothing to worry about.

Well, if he says so, it must be true, right?  I mean, he wouldn’t sugar coat the real picture on the coming inflation, would he?

Fed likely to stay the course despite U.S. economy's growing momentum

April 28, 2021  6:07 AM  By Howard Schneider

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. economy has had a steady run of good news in recent months, with job gains accelerating as businesses reopen and forecasters projecting that 2021 will see the strongest GDP growth in decades.

But the Federal Reserve has shown no sign that there has been enough progress yet to ease the support for the economy that it put in place at the onset of the pandemic, including a promise to keep its key overnight interest rate near zero for years to come and to keep buying $120 billion in government bonds and mortgage-backed securities each month.

The U.S. unemployment rate edged down to 6% in March, but that still left it about 2.5 percentage points higher than its level right before the pandemic; there are still about 8.5 million fewer jobs; the unemployment rate for Blacks, the labor force participation rate for women, and other factors the Fed is now watching all remain elevated. Finally, there is no sign yet that inflation is either headed for a persistent spike or durably set at the Fed’s flexible 2% target.

The U.S. central bank’s policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) will end its latest two-day meeting on Wednesday. Its policy statement, due to be released at 2 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT), is expected to largely follow the mold established in December, when the Fed said it would not change monetary policy until there had been “substantial further progress” in meeting its maximum employment and 2% inflation goals.

Economic data since Fed policymakers last met in March “has been generally strong,” JP Morgan economist Michael Feroli wrote in an advance analysis of this week’s meeting. But with tens of thousands of new coronavirus infections each day in the United States and millions still out of work because of the pandemic, “we look for no changes in the statement’s forward guidance regarding either overnight interest rates or asset purchases,” Feroli said.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell, who will hold a news briefing about half an hour after the release of the statement, “will continue to be patient in his assessment of when substantial further progress on employment and inflation will be achieved,” Feroli said.

There’s little argument that economic conditions are getting better almost across the board. The nearly 1 million jobs added in March were concentrated in the leisure and hospitality sector, which was devastated at the start of the pandemic and is seen as the one most likely to rehire large numbers of the least-skilled and lower-paid workers who are at the greatest risk of a long-term economic shock.

Many economists expect strong job gains in coming months, with economists from Jefferies, at the high end among forecasters, penciling in 2 million new jobs being added this month. The U.S. Labor Department is due to release its April nonfarm payrolls report on May 7.

More

https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-fed/wrapup-1-fed-likely-to-stay-the-course-despite-u-s-economys-growing-momentum-idUSL1N2MK0XO

Coming this summer: Gas stations running out of gas

By Chris Isidore, CNN Business

Updated 1944 GMT (0344 HKT) April 27, 2021

New York (CNN Business)Millions of people stuck at home for more than a year are expected to hit the road for much-needed post-pandemic vacations this summer. Good luck finding gas.

Not that there's a looming shortage of crude oil or gasoline. Rather, it's the tanker truck drivers needed to deliver the gas to stations who are in short supply.

According to the National Tank Truck Carriers, the industry's trade group, somewhere between 20% to 25% of tank trucks in the fleet are parked heading into this summer due to a paucity of qualified drivers. At this point in 2019, only 10% of trucks were sitting idle for that reason.

"We've been dealing with a driver shortage for a while, but the pandemic took that issue and metastasized it," said Ryan Streblow, the executive vice president of the NTTC. "It certainly has grown exponentially."

Indeed, drivers left the business a year ago when gasoline demand ground to a near halt during the early pandemic-related shutdowns.

"We were even hauling boxes for Amazon just to keep our drivers busy," said Holly McCormick, vice president in charge of driver recruitment and retention at Groendyke Transport, an Oklahoma tanker company. "A lot of drivers didn't want to do the safety protocols. We're also working with an aging work force. Many said 'I might as well take it as a cue to retire.'"

Not just any truck driver is allowed to drive a tanker truck. It requires special certification, including a commercial driver's license, and weeks of training after being hired. And while the jobs are more attractive than some long-haul trucking jobs that can keep drivers away from home for days or weeks at a time, it is strenuous, difficult work.

More

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/04/27/business/summer-gasoline-shortage/index.html

U.S. Home Prices Surge Most Since 2006 With Tight Inventory

Craig Giammona  April 27, 2021, 9:00 AM EDT

U.S. home prices soared the most in 15 years, with low mortgage rates and a scant inventory of properties to buy fueling a tight housing market.

Nationally, the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller index of property values climbed 12% in February from a year earlier, the biggest jump since 2006. That followed an 11.2% gain in January.

Home prices in 20 U.S. cities jumped 11.9%, meanwhile, beating the median estimate of 11.8% in a Bloomberg survey of economists.

Historically low mortgage rates have been at the center of the pandemic housing rally, increasing buying power as Americans look to upgrade their properties. The average for a 30-year loan dropped to 2.97% in the most recent data, moving closer to the record low 2.65% set in January.

With inventory tight, especially in suburban markets, prices have jumped to record highs.

“These data remain consistent with the hypothesis that Covid has encouraged potential buyers to move from urban apartments to suburban homes,” according to the S&P report released Tuesday.

More

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-27/home-prices-in-u-s-surge-most-since-2006-with-inventory-tight?srnd=premium-canada

Finally, tomorrow will not be like today which was like yesterday. Tomorrow will be leaner with far less business travel.

I remember commuting London – New York every three to four weeks for almost two years in the late 70s great commodities boom. I saw GB’s winter of discontent firsthand. 

Back then, I once drove round a blacked out Marble Arch roundabout down Park Lane to my hotel. The blackout was caused by industrial action by the communist run unions, and led directly to Margaret Thatcher’s victory at the next election. Yes, the good old days.

HSBC to Cut Office Space 20%, Reduce Business Travel by Half

By Silla Brush and Harry Wilson

27 April 2021, 12:36 BST

·         Shift to hybrid working is changing demand for offices

·         Lender sees some business trips being replaced by video calls

HSBC Holdings Plc expects to cut its office footprint by 20% this year and is budgeting for half its previous business travel costs as the adoption of flexible working spurs changes to longstanding practices.

The bank, which has already committed to a 40% reduction in office space in the long term, expects to get halfway to its goal over the course of this year, Chief Financial Officer Ewen Stevenson said in an interview with Bloomberg Television Tuesday.

“We do very much want to move to a hybrid working environment,” he said.

HSBC’s pace highlights how quickly the pandemic has redrawn the office market as businesses debate the type and extent of space required for their newly-remote workforces. Vacancies have soared in financial centers such as London, and even Chief Executive Officer Noel Quinn and his senior team at HSBC are hot-desking to help reduce the bank’s footprint at its Canary Wharf headquarters.

“Firms have told us that they remain committed to retaining a central London hub but how they operate will inevitably change to reflect post-pandemic trends, such as hybrid and flexible working,” Catherine McGuinness, chair of the policy and resources committee at the City of London Corporation, said in a statement Tuesday.

Less Travel

As well as cutting commutes to the office, Stevenson expects bankers to pare back their business trips, replacing some with video conferences.

“We’re going to travel a whole lot less,” Stevenson said. “We’ve basically baked in about half the costs of travel going forward by using lot more video technology and having people go on fewer, longer trips when they do travel.”

With HSBC implementing a strategic shift to Asia, changes to real estate are more likely in London than Hong Kong, Quinn said in a call with reporters Tuesday. But he also took pains to reaffirm the lender’s commitment to the U.K.

London remains a good place for the firm’s headquarters and the company has no plans to review its domicile, according to Quinn.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-27/hsbc-to-cut-office-space-by-20-in-2021-halves-business-travel?srnd=premium-europe

No real English gentleman, in his secret soul, was ever sorry for the death of a political economist.

Walter Bagehot.

Global Inflation Watch.           

Given our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians,  inflation now needs an entire section of its own.

METALS-Copper climbs towards record as market frets about supply

April 27, 2021  11:21 AM  By Pratima Desai

LONDON, April 27 (Reuters) - Copper prices climbed on Tuesday towards the record above $10,000 a tonne seen a decade ago as worries about supply disruptions in Chile due to strikes and robust demand reinforced expectations of shortages this year.

Benchmark copper on the London Metal Exchange traded up 1.5% at $9,894 a tonne in official rings, a gain of 27% this year. Prices of the metal used in power and construction earlier touched $9,965, close to the all-time high of $10,190 hit in February 2011.

“Chilean port workers called a strike over pension-related issues. They are being supported by the mining unions. There is no indication of supply disruptions, but copper prices have rallied,” said Julius Baer analyst Carsten Menke.

“Chinese copper demand is set to fade against the backdrop of unfavourable demographics and the economy’s transition from investment-driven to consumption-driven growth. We do not see the copper market entering a super cycle.”

SUPPLY: ED&F Man Capital Markets analyst Edward Meir said another reason behind copper price strength may be elections in Peru, the world’s no. 2 copper producer, where the presidential front-runner has proposed nationalising mining.

PHYSICAL: The Yangshan copper premium SMM-CUYP-CN fell to $46.50 a tonne, its lowest since Nov. 17, indicating weakening demand from China, which accounts for about half of global demand estimated at around 24 million tonnes this year.

Surveys of purchasing managers in China’s manufacturing sector later this week and early next week will be watched closely for clues on demand prospects.

INVENTORIES: Stocks of copper in LME registered warehouses at 154,600 tonnes MCUSTX-TOTAL have fallen about 10% over the past couple of weeks.

Cancelled warrants, metal earmarked for delivery, at 53% indicate more copper will soon be leaving LME warehouses.

This and one large holding of copper warrants and cash contracts <0#LME-WHC> have fuelled worry about supplies on the LME market and created a premium for cash copper over the three-month contract CMCU0-3.

https://www.reuters.com/article/global-metals/metals-copper-climbs-towards-record-as-market-frets-about-supply-idUSL1N2MK0I4

Biden to sign executive order raising federal contractors' minimum wage to $15 an hour

The increase from $10.95 an hour would begin rolling out in January.

April 27, 2021, 11:01 AM BST

President Joe Biden is expected to sign an executive order Tuesday that would raise the minimum wage for federal contractors and tipped employees working on government contracts to $15 an hour, senior administration officials said.

The raise from $10.95 an hour would begin in January, and agencies would have to implement the measure no later than March. Biden has signed a separate order to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour for federal employees.

The new order also directs federal agencies to raise the tipped minimum hourly wage to $15 by 2024 and to ensure that tipped employees working on federal contracts earn the same minimum wage as other employees on federal contracts.

The new order raises the minimum wage to the same level for federal contract workers with disabilities, and it includes a cost-of-living increase every year beginning in 2022.

The increase builds on a 2015 executive order signed by President Barack Obama that raised the minimum wage for federal contractors, including tipped workers and workers with disabilities, to its current level. Biden has made raising the national minimum hourly wage, which has been stuck at $7.25 since 2009, a priority.

----A study released by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office in February found that raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour would bring nearly 1 million people out of poverty over the next four years, but it also found that it would result in the loss of 1.4 million jobs, raise the cumulative budget deficit by $54 billion from 2021 to 2023 and result in higher prices for goods and services.

More

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-sign-executive-order-raising-federal-contractors-minimum-wage-15-n1265427

Germany lifts GDP growth forecasts, sees consumer-led rebound

April 27, 2021  11:22 AM  By Michael Nienaber

BERLIN (Reuters) -The German government raised its growth forecast for Europe’s largest economy to 3.5% from a previous estimate of 3% as it expects household spending to support the recovery once COVID-19 restrictions are lifted, the economy minister said on Tuesday.

Germany is struggling to contain an aggressive third wave of COVID-19 infections as efforts have been complicated by the more contagious B117 variant, first discovered in Britain, and a relatively slow introduction of vaccines against the pandemic.

Presenting the government’s updated growth forecast, Economy Minister Peter Altmaier said Berlin expected gross domestic product to grow by 3.6% next year and the economy to reach its pre-pandemic level in 2022 at the latest.

“Today’s spring projection is an encouragement despite the currently serious infection situation,” Altmaier said.

The Ifo economic institute said on Monday that the third wave of COVID-19 cases and supply bottlenecks with chips and other industrial components were holding back the recovery and dampening Germany’s business outlook.

Asked how much growth the chip shortages will cost the German economy this year, Altmaier said the impact was hard to quantify at this stage.

Several German companies have already warned that the supply problems with chips and other components will lead to weaker-than-expected production in the second quarter.

The supply bottlenecks in production and overall economic recovery are expected to push up price pressures in Germany, with the government forecasting consumer price inflation to jump to 2.2% this year and to ease to 1.5% next year.

Altmaier said authorities should be able to lift most of the restrictions to contain the pandemic in the course of the summer.

More

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-economy/germany-lifts-gdp-growth-forecasts-sees-consumer-led-rebound-idUSKBN2CE13T

Recovery plan is 'opportunity of the century' for EU - Commission head

April 27, 2021  1:46 PM  By Jan Strupczewski

BRUSSELS, April 27 (Reuters) - The European Union’s 750 billion euro plan to rebuild the economy greener and more digital after the pandemic is an opportunity of the century for the bloc, the head of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen said on Tuesday.

In a video message issued shortly before France and Germany are to jointly present their national plans on how to spend their share of the EU fund, von der Leyen said the EU executive would make sure the multi-year schemes lived up to expectations.

“We want to build a Green Europe, which protects our climate and our environment and which creates sustainable jobs,” she said. “We want to invest in a digital Europe, innovative and competitive in global markets. And we want a resilient Europe, which is better prepared to face future crises.

“We have 750 billion Euros to build our future Union. This is the opportunity of the century for Europe. A truly historic moment,” she said.

Italy presented its multi-billion-euro recovery plan to overhaul the economy with investment and reforms on Monday, with Prime Minister Mario Draghi telling lawmakers it held the key to the country’s future wellbeing after the ravages of the coronavirus.

France and Germany, which in May 2020 came up with the idea of a special EU fund for recovery after the pandemic, will jointly present their plans later on Tuesday.

The soft deadline for each of the EU’s 27 governments to submit its own plan on how to spend the billions they will get from the jointly borrowed EU money through 2026 is on April 30, but it is likely that half of the countries will only send in their schemes in May.

The EU scheme requires governments to spend 37% of the money they get on reducing CO2 emissions in their economies and 20% on digitalising them, for instance through improving computer literacy or building high-speed Internet networks.

The Commission has two months from the moment it gets a national scheme to check whether it meets the required criteria. EU finance ministers then have another month to make their own evaluation, before the submitting country gets its first cash.

Each EU country can get an up-front payment of 13% of its share of the money, once the scheme is approved. For the whole of the EU, that means around 45 billion euros this year, possibly already in July.

More

https://www.reuters.com/article/eu-recovery-commission/recovery-plan-is-opportunity-of-the-century-for-eu-commission-head-idUSL8N2MK4ST

Covid-19 Corner                       

This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.

COVID-19: India crematoriums 'underreporting bodies' as suspicion grows over true number of coronavirus deaths

Despite suspicion that official figures are too low, the Indian government insists all deaths are faithfully recorded.

Tuesday 27 April 2021 22:21, UK

There's growing concern that India's official tally of coronavirus deaths does not match what grieving relatives and others are seeing on the ground.

India has continued to post alarmingly high global record numbers of coronavirus cases, with more than 300,000 every day for the past week.

But its deaths are still low in comparison to its huge one-billion-plus population (around 190,000 deaths since the start of the pandemic).

We've visited a number of crematoriums over the past few days - in Delhi, and in Ghaziabad in neighbouring Uttar Pradesh.

In both places we found what appeared to be underreporting of the number of bodies coming into the crematoriums for funerals.

In around one hour in the Electric Crematorium in east Delhi we counted at least 30 active or prepared pyres with bodies entombed underneath the wood. Several ambulances transporting bodies arrived whilst we were there.

We spotted a single ambulance with five bodies stacked inside it. One ambulance driver from a private hospital said he was transporting "10 to 12" bodies daily - from just one of the Indian capital's hospitals.

Yet when we inquired about how many deaths were registered that day, we were told 20. The figure was a miscalculation for just the hour that we were there, never mind the entire day.

Delhi death rates are hovering around the 400 mark per day, but many we spoke to - as well as other commentators - seem convinced the numbers are far higher.

More

https://news.sky.com/story/india-crematoriums-underreporting-bodies-as-suspicion-grows-over-true-number-of-coronavirus-deaths-12288828

Asia Today: India records 320K cases as foreign help arrives

April 27, 2021

NEW DELHI (AP) — India recorded more than 320,000 new cases of coronavirus infection Tuesday as a grim surge of illness and death weighed on the country and its sinking health system started getting much-needed support from foreign nations.

Tuesday’s 323,144 new infections raised India’s total past 17.6 million, behind only the United States. It ended a five-day streak of recording the largest single-day increases in any country throughout the pandemic, but the decline likely reflects lower weekend testing rather than reduced spread of the virus.

The health ministry also reported another 2,771 deaths in the past 24 hours, with roughly 115 Indians succumbing to the disease every hour. The latest fatalities pushed India’s fatalities to 197,894, behind the U.S., Brazil and Mexico. Experts say even these figures are probably an undercount.

Foreign ministry spokesman Arindam Bagchi tweeted photos Tuesday of the first shipment of medical aid India received from Britain. It included 100 ventilators and 95 oxygen concentrators.

Other nations like the U.S., Germany, Israel and Pakistan have also promised medical aid. The countries have said they will supply oxygen, diagnostic tests, treatments, ventilators and protective gear to help India at the time of crisis, which World Health Organization’s chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called “beyond heartbreaking.”

The surge, spurred by insidious variants of coronavirus, has undermined the Indian government’s premature claims of victory over the pandemic. The country of nearly 1.4 billion people is facing a chronic shortage of space on its intensive care wards. Hospitals are experiencing oxygen shortages and many people are being forced to turn to makeshift facilities for mass burials and cremations.

India’s top health official on Monday urged Indians to wear masks at home to prevent the spread of the virus. “It’s time people start wearing masks inside their homes as well,” said Dr. V.K. Paul, the head of a government committee on medical emergency preparedness.

India has also called on its armed forces to help. India’s chief of Defense Staff, General Bipin Rawat, said oxygen supplies would be released from armed forces reserves and its retired medical personnel would join health facilities to ease the pressure on doctors.

Meanwhile, in a bid to tackle the shortage of beds, Indian authorities are turning to train carriages, which have been converted into isolation wards. India has also started airlifting oxygen tankers to states in need. Special trains with oxygen supplies are also running in the country.

More

https://apnews.com/article/pandemics-india-united-states-coronavirus-pandemic-asia-3b5adbaf2a94f95b31664efe83807e80

 

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.

New Chemical Process Turns Single-Use Plastics Into Fuels

Researchers say their method can break down hard-to-recycle plastics using half the energy of existing techniques

By Alex Fox smithsonianmag.com April 26, 2021 7:00AM

New research may offer a way to keep single-use plastics such as grocery bags, bottles, straws and food containers out of landfills. But instead of transforming these hard-to-recycle products back into useful plastics, the new technique reduces the plastics back down to the petroleum oil used to make them in the first place, reports Molly Taft for Gizmodo. The resulting oil can then find a new life as fuels or lubricants.

Apart from keeping single-use plastics out of landfills, if implemented at a large scale the new method could reduce the world’s oil demands. Per Gizmodo, plastic manufacturing is projected to comprise half of the world’s oil demand by 2050.

Researchers say their process, described in a paper published last week in the journal Science Advances, works best on plastics called polyolefins, which are used to make products we are often told can’t be recycled, such as plastic bags.

The basic concept is to heat the plastics to break their chemical bonds and reduce them down to their constituent parts. What’s new is that the team behind this research has found a way to achieve this at much lower temperatures than ever before, which makes the process more energy efficient and cost effective.

“This is the first technology that’s able to take the most difficult plastics and recycle them into something really useful,” Dionisios Vlachos, a chemical engineer at the University of Delaware and co-author of the paper, tells Jordan Golson of Inverse. “It’s the best way to recycle single-use plastics and packaging like polyethylene and polypropylene.”

Using heat to break down plastics is called pyrolysis, and Vlachos tells Gizmodo that most prior research focuses on processes that require temperatures ranging from 752 to 1,472 degrees Fahrenheit to work. Vlachos says his team’s technique can get the job done at just 437 degrees, and that the end result is “nearly ready-to-use fuels for cars, trucks, or airplanes and lubricants.”

The special sauce in this new method is its catalyst, which is a combination of zeolites (minerals mostly made up of aluminum and silicon) and metal oxides including platinum and tungsten, per the paper.

“Alone these two catalysts do poorly. Together, the combination does magic, melting the plastics down and leaving no plastic behind,” says Vlachos in a statement.

According to Inverse, the method can convert up to 85 percent of the original material into useful oil. Vlachos tells Inverse he estimates around 300 half-liter water bottles could produce enough oil to make a gallon of gasoline, and two pickup truck beds full of plastic bottles might fill a car’s gas tank.

Vlachos and his co-authors have filed a provisional patent on their technique and its catalyst, but he says more work is needed to translate the method to industrial-scale use.

“We need to take action on the plastics problem and develop technologies and policies to eliminate it from the environment,” Vlachos tells Gizmodo. “Research takes 10-plus years before it becomes useful. Investing in this field now is a priority.”

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/new-chemical-process-turns-single-use-plastics-fuels-180977587/?utm_source=smithsoniandaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20210426-daily-responsive&spMailingID=44870393&spUserID=NjUwNDIzNTUzNDE0S0&spJobID=1984111673&spReportId=MTk4NDExMTY3MwS2

“The mercantile community will have been unusually fortunate if during the period of rising prices, it has not made great mistakes.

Such a period naturally excites the sanguine and the ardent; they fancy that the prosperity they see will last always, that it is only the beginning of a greater prosperity. They altogether over-estimate the demand for the article they deal in, or the work they do. They all in their degree – and the ablest and cleverest the most… trade far above their means.

Every great crisis reveals the excessive speculations of many houses which no one before suspected, and which I indeed had not begun or had not carried very far those speculations, till they were tempted by the daily rise of price.”

Walter Bagehot. Lombard Street. 1873.