By Steve
Holland , Jarrett Renshaw
PITTSBURGH (Reuters) -President Joe
Biden on Wednesday called for a sweeping use of government power to reshape the
world’s largest economy and counter China’s rise in a $2 trillion-plus proposal
that was met with swift Republican resistance.
The president’s “American Jobs Plan”
would put corporate America on the hook for the tab as the government creates
millions of jobs building infrastructure, such as roads, tackles climate change
and boosts human services like care for the elderly.
“It’s a once-in-a-generation
investment in America, unlike anything we’ve seen or done since we built the
interstate highway system and the space race decades ago,” Biden said in
unveiling the program in Pittsburgh.
He said he had no problem asking
companies to foot the bill and is “gonna put an end” to Amazon.com Inc and
other major companies paying little to nothing in federal taxes.
Biden’s second multitrillion-dollar
legislative proposal in two months in office sets the stage for a partisan
clash in the U.S. Congress, where members largely agree that investments are
needed but are divided on the total size and inclusion of programs
traditionally seen as social services.
Another economic proposal Biden will
release in April could add a further $2 trillion to the total price tag.
Coupled with his recently enacted
$1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, Biden’s infrastructure initiative
would give the federal government a bigger role in the U.S. economy than it has
had in generations, accounting for 20% or more of annual output.
Biden’s team believes a
government-directed effort to strengthen the economy is the best way to provide
support to an economy walloped by the coronavirus pandemic and contend with
increased competition and a national security threat posed by China.
The proposal was greeted icily by
conservatives and major business groups.
---- The plan includes $621 billion to
rebuild infrastructure, such as bridges, highways and ports, and a historic
$174 billion investment in the electric vehicle market that sets a goal of
building a nationwide charging network by 2030.
The program’s focus on
union-represented jobs and projects to mitigate climate change would deliver
long-sought liberal goals.
Administration officials also said
they hoped to address economic inequality created by racial discrimination, for
instance cutting air pollution that affects Black and Hispanic communities near
ports or power plants.
Congress will be asked to invest
$400 billion in expanding access to affordable community-based care for aging
Americans and people with disabilities. It is aimed at low-wage workers in that
industry, who are disproportionately women of color.
There
is $213 billion included to build and retrofit environmentally sustainable
homes along with hundreds of billions to support U.S. manufacturing, bolster
the nation’s electric grid, enact nationwide high-speed broadband and revamp
the nation’s drinking water systems.
---- A
second legislative package being marketed as helping families is due within
weeks .[My emphasis.]
That package is expected to include
the expansion of health insurance coverage and child tax benefits, as well as
paid family and medical leave.
House of Representatives Speaker
Nancy Pelosi has signaled she hopes to pass the infrastructure plan by July 4,
although that time line could easily slip as Democrats with narrow majorities
in both the House and Senate race to strike a deal on the details.
The jockeying has already begun.
Moderate Democrats have said the package should be more targeted to traditional
infrastructure projects to attract Republican votes. Liberal lawmakers want to
tackle climate change and economic inequality with resources that reflect the
size of those challenges.
More
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-biden-infrastructure/biden-says-2-trillion-jobs-plan-rivals-the-space-race-in-its-ambition-idUSKBN2BN13C
New round of inflation fears as
investors demand higher rates March 31, 2021
------Since I wrote last July about the prospects for a new round of inflation have begun to concede
It also means that people are
watching very closely for what central banks say, and what they do, that could
influence interest rates in the long term.
They are also watching the bond
markets.
The bond rate that is attracting attention this week is
called the U.S. ten-year Treasury. Considered one of the safest
investments on earth because they are backed by the government of the
United States, investors are willing to pay for that safety by accepting low
interest rates. That means the bond sets set a global standard for low
rates. More risk demands a higher interest rate.
----There are a number of ways of framing it, but one way
of describing what is happening in the bond market is that traders see a boom
ahead.
"Coronavirus vaccine rollouts and
planned infrastructure spending boosted expectations of a broad recovery and
rising inflation," the business news network CNBC
With growing confidence in the
economy, investors are no longer willing to lock in their money for ten years
at 0.51 per cent the way they were last summer when they were so nervous about
what the future held.
That means traders have been selling
those ten-year bonds and only buying bonds that yield something closer to
1.8 per cent. Therefore, the price of those existing lower-interest rate bonds
had to fall in value until the returns evened out and the old
bonds "yielded" the new higher rate, in what the
Financial Times called "a brutal [first] quarter for global government
bonds."
More
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/inflation-housing-treasury-bond-1.5969467
Finally, in market
panics, getting out first beats getting carried out last. Were Goldman
Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank just lucky or was
some skulduggery involved leaving Credit Swiss and Nomura getting torched in
the panic?
Well, this is Wall
Street after all. For well over 150 years separating fool’s from their money. Nice
guys finish last! “God’s work,” apparently.
“The
first one out is not panicking,” said Matt Freund, co-chief investment officer
at Calamos Investments. “It doesn’t make sense to join a panic but sometimes it
makes sense to start one.”
In Archegos fire sale, Credit
Suisse, Nomura burned by slow exit March 31, 2021 1:05 AM
By Matt
Scuffham , Elizabeth Dilts Marshall , Brenna Hughes Neghaiwi
NEW YORK/ZURICH (Reuters) -While banks
including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank were able to exit
their trades with Archegos Capital relatively unscathed, Credit Suisse and
Nomura have been burned in the fire sale.
The blowup of the Archegos fund, a
family office run by former Tiger Asia manager Bill Hwang, is still
reverberating across the financial system, with global banks so far standing to
lose more than $6 billion.
Switzerland’s Credit Suisse and
Japan’s Nomura are expected to bear the brunt of that.
They had hoped that rival banks that
had also financed and processed trades for Archegos would hold off from exiting
their positions, but were left exposed when Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley
began unwinding their trades with the fund, according to three people with
direct knowledge of the matter.
So far, it appears the banks that
got out of the trades the quickest have suffered the least and Goldman Sachs
may even have profited, said three sources familiar with the trades.
Goldman Sachs declined to comment.
---- “Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley got
out quicker and got better prices. They know more about what’s going on. Credit
Suisse and Nomura don’t have the same standing,” said Viola Risk Advisors
analyst David Hendler.
Morgan Stanley and Nomura declined
to comment. Credit Suisse did not respond to requests for comment.
More
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-markets-blocktrades-banks-focus/in-archegos-fire-sale-credit-suisse-nomura-burned-by-slow-exit-idUSKBN2BN00F
“We’re very important. We help companies to grow by
helping them to raise capital. Companies that grow create wealth. This, in
turn, allows people to have jobs that create more growth and more wealth. It’s
a virtuous cycle.”
"I know I could slit my wrists and people would
cheer"---but I’m "doing God's work."
Lloyd Blankfein, November 2009, The Times, London. At
the time CEO Goldman Sachs.
Covid-19 Corner This
section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
Ontario May Be Locked Down;
Sweden Halts Astra Jab: Virus Update Bloomberg News 31
March 2021, 23:48 BST Updated on 1 April 2021, 06:02 BST
The Canadian province of Ontario, home to Toronto and the
capital Ottawa, will be locked down for 28 days to fight the spread of the
virus, CBC News said . Brazil detected a new Covid-19
variant, similar to the one found in South Africa, as it again reported record
deaths.
Sweden is halting AstraZeneca Plc vaccinations
while the European Medicines Agency reviews
possible side effects. Pfizer Inc.
said its vaccine was 100% effective in a final-stage trial in kids age 12 to
15. The World Health Organization said China’s coronavirus jabs appeared safe
and effective.
France will impose a four-week lockdown from Saturday, and
Italy extended restrictions on movement and business openings. They’re the
latest signs Europe is yet again losing control of the pandemic.
Key
Developments: Sweden Halts AstraZeneca Jabs
(12:50 p.m. HK) Sweden’s Public Health Authority has decided to halt
inoculations using AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine while the European Medicines
Agency reviews possible side effects from the jab.
“We are doing it out of precaution,” State Epidemiologist
Anders Tegnell said in a statement late March 31. Sweden was giving the
AstraZeneca vaccine only to people 65 years old and older.
Ontario added 2,333 new cases of Covid-19 on March 30,
bringing its total case count to 349,903, according to Public Health Ontario.
Japan Seeks Restrictions in 3 Regions (9:28 a.m. HK) Japan’s government is seeking to impose new restrictions on
Osaka and two other regions to control the coronavirus, Economy Minister
Yasutoshi Nishimura said Thursday.
The new measures would allow local governments in Osaka,
Hyogo and Miyagi to order bars and restaurants to close early, and impose fines
on those that refuse.
Case numbers in Osaka hit 599 Wednesday, higher than Tokyo,
despite having a population only two-thirds the size of the capital. Infections
have been rising in Osaka since a state of emergency was lifted at the end of
February.
Chinese Cluster Grows as City Gets Tested (7:34 a.m.
HK) China reported 6 new confirmed cases and
23 asymptomatic cases in the city of Ruili in the southwestern province of
Yunnan, near the border with Myanmar.
The cluster is China’s first since mid-February, and
authorities are testing Ruili’s entire population of 210,400. Yunnan boasts
caves that are the natural habitat for bats, from which Chinese scientists
found a distant relative of the Sars-CoV-2 virus years before the pathogen
caused an outbreak in Wuhan.
Four of the six confirmed cases are Chinese nationals,
while the other two are from Myanmar. All Ruili residents must quarantine at
home for one week.
J&J
Production Error Affects 15 Million Doses (6:40 a.m. HK) A manufacturing error at a Baltimore plant affected 15
million doses worth of an ingredient for Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine,
according to two sources familiar with the matter, but the company downplayed
the situation and said it met its most recent vaccine delivery target.
In a statement, J&J said a batch of drug substance
failed its quality test. Johnson & Johnson said it beat its March delivery
target, providing the U.S. government more than 20 million doses, and that it
expects to deliver another 24 million by the end of April.
More
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-31/j-j-production-error-france-italy-extend-curbs-virus-update?srnd=coronavirus
Today, more on the scandal of ignored repurposed, cheap,
widely used, widely tolerated, drug, ivermectin.
It’s Time To Talk About
Ivermectin Posted on March 30, 2021 by
Nick Corbishley
I’d like to start this article with a
couple of disclaimers and a caveat. First of all, I am not a medical doctor.
This article is not intended as medical advice. It’s a layman’s account of how
an extremely cheap, safe and widely available off-patent medicine called
ivermectin appears to be saving the lives of countless Covid-19 patients across
Latin America and beyond. Yet hardly anybody is talking about it.
Here’s the caveat: The first section of
the article, which was completed on Friday, is about Mexico City’s recent
deployment of ivermectin in its fight against Covid-19. On Saturday, Mexico’s
Ministry of Health jacked up
its total excess death count due to Covid (for the whole country) by 60%, from
182,000 to 294,000. However, most of these deaths took place before Mexico City
began using ivermectin as part of its its test-and-treat approach to Covid.
Covid-19 vaccines are reaching most emerging and developing
economies in only drips and drabs, with a few notable exceptions such as Chile.
In many countries, locking down entire cities or regions and paying millions of
non-essential workers not to work while front-line doctors and nurses battle to
contain the virus is not an option. There simply isn’t enough money available.
This has left doctors and health authorities with little choice but to try out
cheap, widely available generic medicines. Those drugs include ivermectin, a
“well-studied, well tolerated,” (in the words of a 2013 FT article ) off-patent anti-parasitical.
The results have been extremely promising, according to almost all of the
clinical studies conducted thus far. Many of the studies took place in Latin
America where around half of the countries in the region have used or are using
ivermectin to some degree or another. A meta analysis of 42 clinical trials,
involving approximately 15,000 patients, found that 83%
More, much, much more.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/03/its-time-to-talk-about-ivermectin.html
From the comments section. Perhaps the reason repurposed
drugs are suppressed.
Yves Smith
A lawyer sent a similar comment by e-mail:
It [Ivermectin] actually had an EUA [Emergency Use
Authorisation,] March to June, but
revoked I think on June 25, no doubt due to industry pressure. One of the dirty
little secrets of the vaccine EUA’s is that by law they can’t be used unless
FDA is able to find there is no other alternative, preventive, or treatment. So
widely available HCQ or Ivermectin would have prevented the vaccine EUA which
would have required proceeding to a full BLA [biologics license application]
and that would have taken years or so, even ‘hurrying’ as much as possible.
Next, could an antiviral medication called
Molnupiravir eliminate SARS-CoV2.
NEW Drugs for COVID 19 Treatment
and Prevention https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MRZX0JUp84
Approx. 7 minutes.
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
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.
The North of
Scotland Hydrogen Programme By Benedette Cuffari, M.Sc .
Over the next several years, Scotland is expected
to become a leading global producer of green hydrogen energy. To move closer
towards this goal, a multi-partner plan has been launched at the Port of
Cromarty Firth known as the North of Scotland Hydrogen Programme.
Scotland’s Bold
Goals for Hydrogen In December 2020, the Scottish Government announced that
it will contribute to more than £100 million of the £180 million Emerging
Energy Technologies Fund over the next five years to meet its ambitious
goal of achieving net-zero in its transportation, heating, and industrial
sectors.
One way in which Scotland plans to do this is by generating
5 GW of renewable and low-carbon hydrogen energy by the year 2030. The
successful production of this amount of hydrogen energy will be equivalent to
what is needed to power 1.8 million homes. As the nation continues to become an
expert in electrolysis, Scotland expects to have a hydrogen energy capacity of
25 GW by the year 2045.
Promoting Green
Hydrogen With this goal, Scotland is well on its way to becoming a
world leader in hydrogen production. This goal is largely attainable due to the
number of raw ingredients needed to produce low-cost hydrogen energy that is
readily available throughout Scotland.
Scotland is home to one of the largest concentrations of
offshore engineering expertise, thereby positioning this nation in a unique
position to harness wind, wave, and tidal power to produce green hydrogen.
In addition to reducing the emissions released by the
heating, transport, and industry sectors, the development of green hydrogen
from these offshore facilities will create high-value jobs, particularly for
those who have traditionally used their skills while working in the oil and gas
industries.
This rise in green hydrogen energy production opens the
door for Scotland to serve as a green hydrogen energy exporter to other
European nations. More specifically, the primary export markets for green
hydrogen energy produced in Scotland are expected to include Germany, the
Netherlands, and Belgium.
While many of the Scottish ports and terminals are already
well-equipped to export hydrogen energy to these nearby nations, there remains
a need to prepare the Scottish supply chain for the production, maintenance,
storage, and transportation of hydrogen energy.
The Highlands
Green Hydrogen Hub The North of Scotland Hydrogen Programme has recently been
developed to create a state-of-the-art hub that allows for the production,
storage, and distribution of green hydrogen energy to occur in a single place.
This revolutionary energy hub will be located in the Trust
Port of Cromarty Firth, which currently generates a total of £275 million each
year, while also providing jobs for one in every six people in the Invergordon
Travel to Work Area.
The Port of Cromarty Firth is currently equipped to handle
the world’s largest drilling and production units, as well as any accompanying
cargo, renewable energy structures and other components needed for this green
hydrogen energy program. The project also ensures the protection of all nearby
waters, as well as the wildlife inhabiting them, throughout each of their daily
activities.
As the second green hydrogen project of the Highlands by
ScottishPower, the North of Scotland Hydrogen Programme will allow this nation
to export green hydrogen energy throughout Scotland, as well as to various
places within the remainder of the United Kingdom and parts of Europe.
Since many of these areas outside of Scotland do not have
the same wind capacity, the development of the North of Scotland Programme will
create a significant opportunity for its decarbonization to become a reality.
Some of the specific companies located near the Cromarty
Firth that will benefit from the development of this hub include Glenmorangie,
Whyte and Mackay, and Diageo.
The incorporation of green hydrogen into these areas will
allow for their distilleries and maltings to replace their current fossil fuel
energy sources while simultaneously producing the steam needed for the
distilling process to continue operating.
Energy giants ScottishPower and Pale Blue Dot Energy
More
https://www.azocleantech.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=1199
Lenin is said to have declared that the
best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency. By a
continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and
unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method
they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the
process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this
arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security but [also] at
confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth.
John Maynard Keynes.
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