These
days in the stock casinos, it’s a whipsaw market. With almost each passing day
we get more sign of rising global inflation, countered by more oily words from
the Fed, Team Biden, and the co-opted US mainstream meadia.
In
Europe and Asia it’s more of the same. Rising evidence of the return of serious
inflation followed by more oily words that we can safely ignore it, from “experts”
and media that ought to know better.
Adding
to the stock casino gloom, at least in London and in the rump-EU, increasing
signs that the Greensill-Gupta-Cameron scandal, seems inevitably heading into a
fraudulent ending.
Up
first, a glimpse of the week ahead.
Earnings
reports and the Fed will test the market rally in the week ahead
Investors will see whether stocks carry their newfound
momentum into the week ahead, as major retailers, including Walmart and Home Depot,
report earnings and housing data dominates the calendar.
The Federal Reserve may also play a role. Minutes from its
last meeting will be released Wednesday, and after April’s hotter than expected
consumer and producer inflation, market pros will watch it closely.
Central bank officials are also scheduled to make comments,
including Fed Vice Chairman Richard Clarida who speaks next Monday.
Stocks have been volatile. The rally on Thursday and Friday
was unable to reverse the week’s heavy losses. The defensive consumer staples,
financials and materials were on track for a positive week among major sectors.
The worst performers were consumer discretionary, off about 3.7% for the week,
and tech, which was down 2.2%.
Technology shares were among the best performers in Friday’s
rally, up about 2.1%. Energy was the best performer, up more than
3%.
“Watch it with a certain amount of trepidation,” said Art
Hogan, chief market strategist at National Securities. “It’s not like the
things that spooked us this week, like inflation, are going away...I think the
fact we bounced at the end of the week is constructive.”
U.S. tariff
review considers commodity shortages, inflation -official
May
14, 2021
Nearly a week after a ransomware
attack led Colonial Pipeline to halt
fuel distribution on the East Coast, reports
emerged on Friday that the company paid a 75 bitcoin ransom—worth as much
as $5 million, depending on the time of payment—in an attempt to restore
service more quickly. And while the company was able to restart
operations Wednesday night, the decision to give in to hackers' demands
will only embolden other groups going forward. Real progress against the
ransomware epidemic, experts say, will require more companies to say no.
Not to say that doing so is easy. The FBI and other law
enforcement groups have long discouraged ransomware victims from paying digital
extortion fees, but in practice many organizations resort to paying. They
either don't have the backups and other infrastructure necessary to recover
otherwise, can't or don't want to take the time to recover on their own, or
decide that it's cheaper to just quietly pay the ransom and move on. Ransomware
groups increasingly
vet their victims' financials before springing their traps, allowing them
to set the highest possible price that their victims can still potentially
afford.
In the case of Colonial Pipeline, the DarkSide ransomware
group attacked the company's business network rather than the more sensitive
operational technology networks that control the pipeline. But Colonial took
down its OT network as well in an attempt to contain the damage, increasing the
pressure to resolve the issue and resume the flow of fuel along the East Coast.
Another potential factor in the decision, firstreported
by Zero Day, was that the company's billing system had been infected with
ransomware, so it had no way to track fuel distribution and bill customers.
Advocates of zero tolerance for ransom payments hoped that
Colonial Pipeline's proactive shutdown was a sign that the company would refuse
to pay. Reports
on Wednesday indicated that the company had a plan to hold out, but numerous
subsequent reports on Thursday, led
by Bloomberg, confirmed that the 75 bitcoin ransom had been paid.
Following the markets on both sides of the Atlantic since 1968. A dinosaur, who evolved with the financial system as it was perverted from capitalism to banksterism after the great Nixonian error of abandoning the dollar's link to gold instead of simply revaluing gold. Our money is too important to be left to probity challenged central banksters and crooked politicians.
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