In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value.

This weekend’s articles don’t need much input from me thankfully. All of the sections pretty much cover themselves.

However, unable to resist writing something, I suggest that it’s crazy, in current circumstances, to go ahead with the Olympics in July.

Do we really want thousands of competitors and their support team, plus crowds of media creepies, flying out to Japan and back, risking a new coronavirus wave across the planet? And for what? Why play Covid-19 Roulette?

U.S. stocks end mixed as Dow recovers on strong economic data

May 21, 2021 11:50 AM By Krystal Hu, Medha Singh

(Reuters) - Wall Street closed mixed at the end of a volatile week of trading, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average being the only bright spot, as inflation concerns loom over growth names.

The Dow was lifted by industrial heavyweights, including Boeing and Caterpillar Inc.. Boeing jumped 3.1% as industry sources said the planemaker has drawn up preliminary plans to increase in 737 MAX output to as many as 42 jets a month in fall 2022..

Banks, including Goldman Sachs, and JP Morgan , also supported the Dow.

The S&P 500 pared its earlier gains, down 0.08% to 4,155.86, marking the index’s drop for a second consecutive week. Information technology and consumer discretionary led the selloff while economy-linked financials and energy posted biggest sectoral gains.

Analysts expect the rotation trades to continue to play out with the vaccine rollouts and reopening of the economy.

---- Nasdaq Composite finished Friday down by 64.75 points, or 0.48%, to 13,470.99. Despite the weakness on Friday, the Nasdaq quit a four-week losing streak as investors continue to rotate around tech-related mega-cap shares, which recently took the biggest hit on inflation worries.

---- Bitcoin dropped after China’s Vice Premier Liu He said his government will crack down on the virtual currency’s mining and trading activities. Cryptocurrency-related stocks such as Coinbase Global fell by 3.9%.

---- Volume on U.S. exchanges was 9.08 billion shares. Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a 1.46-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.26-to-1 ratio favored advancers.

The S&P 500 posted 25 new 52-week highs and no new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 119 new highs and 34 new lows.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-stocks/u-s-stocks-end-mixed-as-dow-recovers-on-strong-economic-data-idUSKCN2D2161

Stocks could be volatile in week ahead amid turbulence from cryptocurrency

Published Fri, May 21 2021 5:56 PM EDT Updated Fri, May 21 2021 6:16 PM EDT

The trading pattern of the past two weeks – particularly alongside cryptocurrency’s movements – suggests stocks could continue to be volatile in the week ahead.

Investors are watching the wild swings in bitcoin and trying to gauge whether technology shares can gain traction after a rally attempt in the past week.

The Dow and S&P 500 were lower in the past week, but Nasdaq was slightly higher, helped by a positive move in tech, as well as buying in biotech and big cap growth names like FANG members Alphabet, Facebook and Netflix.

A steep plunge in bitcoin after China announced new regulations soured the mood for risk assets during the past week. The U.S. also called for stricter compliance with the IRS. Further, on Friday, China said it would crack down on bitcoin mining and trading.

“What’s interesting is the market is being bullied around by where bitcoin goes,” said Peter Boockvar, chief investment officer with Bleakley Advisory Group. Bitcoin plunged by as much as 30% on Wednesday, to about $30,000. Though it recovered to above $42,000, it slid again on Friday.

The cryptocurrency was down about 9% late Friday, hovering around $36,000, according to Coin Metrics.

----There is some key data in the week ahead. Consumer confidence, home price data and new home sales are out on Tuesday. Durable goods will be released Thursday, and the consumer sentiment report is issued Friday.

But the most important data will be the personal income and spending data, which includes the personal consumption expenditure price deflator, the Fed’s preferred inflation measure.

“The key to next week is going to be the inflation numbers. The inflation numbers are now becoming the new payroll numbers in terms of market performance,” said Boockvar. “What will also be interesting is inside the consumer confidence numbers, is where the inflation expectations go.”

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/21/stocks-could-be-volatile-in-week-ahead-amid-turbulence-from-cryptocurrency.html

Bitcoin’s Claim of Rivaling Gold as Portfolio Hedge Loses Luster

By Eric Lam and Ranjeetha Pakiam

21 May 2021, 09:33 BST

· Wild swings in price, swoon in face of CPI, among setbacks

· Crypto regulatory scrutiny also growing, may hamper tokens

One-day swings of 31%. A slump amid a jump in U.S. inflation. Ever more critical regulatory scrutiny. Bitcoin delivered all of these in the past few days, undermining its claimed role as a portfolio hedge rivaling gold.

While true believers still tout Bitcoin’s merits as a store of value akin to digital bullion, recent events show how controversial that view is. The largest token has shed 40% after hitting a mid-April record, and its volatility compared with the precious metal jumped during this week’s cryptocurrency rout.

“For all of 2020 and pretty much up until April, Bitcoin has been the best performing asset, so it wasn’t hard to say it was an inflationary hedge given all the stimulus that keeps getting pumped into the global economy,” said Edward Moya, senior market analyst with Oanda Corp. “This week’s crypto plunge and rebound was a wake-up call. Bitcoin will still act like a leveraged risk-on trade and not a proper inflation hedge.”

Bitcoin’s 60-day realized volatility is far higher than that of gold and currently pulling away. The token tumbled 31% on Wednesday before rising by about the same percentage that day. For the week, it’s down some 10%, sapped by Elon Musk’s criticisms of its energy use, a Chinese regulatory broadside and a possible U.S. tax crackdown.

Gold, meanwhile, is heading for a third weekly gain, bolstered by a weaker dollar and wavering Treasury yields, which boost the allure of non-interest-bearing bullion. It’s also benefiting from the crypto crash, according to Brian Lan, managing director of Singapore-based dealer GoldSilver Central Pte.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-21/bitcoin-s-claim-of-rivaling-gold-as-portfolio-hedge-loses-luster

SocGen says bitcoin’s place in a portfolio ‘remains highly contested,’ gold is a better stabilizer

Published Fri, May 21 20214:41 AM EDT

After bitcoin’s recent plunge and subsequent partial recovery, analysts at Societe Generale argued in a recent note that questions remain around the cryptocurrency’s place in investment portfolios.

“It comes as no surprise that the place of Bitcoin in any investment portfolio remains highly contested, precisely because of its erratic price movements,” Societe Generale’s Alain Bokobza and Arthur Van Slooten wrote in a Thursday note.

On Wednesday, bitcoin dived 30% to nearly $30,000 at one point, before paring some of those losses. Other cryptocurrencies were not spared as the overall value of the crypto market dropped by hundreds of billions of dollars in a single day. Bitcoin later recovered to hover around the $40,000 level on Thursday.

Bokobza and Van Slooten argued that the risks to bitcoin “remain on the downside,” citing factors such as potential regulation ahead, which the two characterized as the “biggest threat” looming for the cryptocurrency.

---- But without generating any yield on their own, “the only potential reward to investors in Bitcoin and gold is from their positive price movement, which is essentially the only thing they have in common, apart from their ability to trigger rush buying,” the analysts said.

For its part, Societe Generale currently assigns a 5% direct weighting to gold in its multi-asset portfolio as a stabilizer.

In the case of rising inflation, gold can “partially offset capital losses on bonds,” the analysts said. Furthermore, gold also has a “protective role in partially offsetting losses” on stocks in the events of either runaway inflation or a return to deflation.

“History shows that over time the price of gold closely tracks real bond yields,” the analysts said. “Also, the price ratio of copper (the most cyclical metal) to gold (the most defensive) has proved a neat model for anticipating higher US Treasury yields.”

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/21/socgen-says-bitcoins-place-in-a-portfolio-remains-highly-contested.html

By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.

John Maynard Keynes

Global Inflation Watch.

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

Fed officials, new data, start lowering expectations for U.S. jobs in May

May 21, 2021 6:36 PM By Ann Saphir, Howard Schneider

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Federal Reserve officials and new Dallas Fed data have begun lowering expectations for May jobs growth in the United States as business hiring plans continue to outrun the supply of people able or willing to work.

Dallas Federal Reserve president Robert Kaplan said Friday that hiring difficulties have continued through May, and will likely lead to another weak jobs report following the lower-than-expected 266,000 positions added in April.

A survey published by the Dallas Fed earlier in the day, meant to provide a mid-month check on national employment trends, pointed to weakening job growth as well.

That has been attributed to a number of factors including ongoing unemployment benefit payments and a lack of child care, and “these structural issues, which we saw in the report for April...all those tensions are not going to go away” immediately, Kaplan said at a Dallas Fed conference on technology. “We think you are going to see another odd or unusual report...Businesses are telling us they got plenty of demand but they cannot find workers either skilled or unskilled.”

Fed officials had hoped to see a “string” of months in which a million or more new jobs were added to U.S. payrolls, helping the country quickly claw back the 8.2 million positions still missing from before the pandemic.

St. Louis Fed president James Bullard earlier this week however called that figure “hyped up,” and said a “more realistic” expectation was for perhaps half a million jobs a month.

The comments highlight a growing dilemma at the Fed as it wrestles over how long to keep emergency levels of economic support in place as the pandemic ebbs and the economy revs up for what may be the strongest year of economic growth since the early 1980s.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fed-kaplan-wrap/fed-officials-new-data-start-lowering-expectations-for-u-s-jobs-in-may-idUSKCN2D22BT

Euro zone business growth hits three-year high on services resurgence

May 21, 2021 9:06 AM By Jonathan Cable

LONDON (Reuters) - Euro zone business growth accelerated at its fastest pace in over three years in May, as a strong resurgence in the bloc’s reopening service industry added to the impetus from an already-booming manufacturing sector, a survey showed on Friday.

After a slow start to vaccination programmes across the region the pace is picking up, allowing some restrictions imposed to quell the spread of the coronavirus to be lifted.

A deal agreed by the European Union on Thursday to open up tourism across the 27-nation bloc this summer should provide a boost to tourism-dependent economies that were hammered by restrictions last year.

With more businesses reopening - or at least adapting to lockdowns - IHS Markit’s flash Composite Purchasing Managers’ Index, seen as a good guide to economic health, climbed to 56.9 from April’s final reading of 53.8.

That was its highest level since February 2018 and comfortably above the 50 mark separating growth from contraction, as well as the more modest increase to 55.1 predicted in a Reuters poll.

The bloc’s economy will expand 1.4% this quarter, according to a Reuters poll last week that also found forecasts for the rest of the year had been downgraded from last month. [ECILT/EU]

“May’s increase in the euro zone Composite PMI reflects the further lifting of virus restrictions in many parts of the region and suggests that the economic recovery is now underway,” said Jessica Hinds at Capital Economics.

In Germany, Europe’s largest economy, services activity rose by the most in nearly a year, helped by a loosening of restrictions. But supply bottlenecks in manufacturing led to production problems at a growing number of factories.

The lifting of a lockdown in France unleashed a business boom there, with activity surging past expectations to set the stage for an economic rebound.

In Britain, outside the European Union and its common currency area, the flash composite PMI hit a record high. Many services firms reopened their doors and factories rode a wave of demand from a recovering global economy, prompting a jump in both hiring and prices.

---- A preliminary PMI covering the 19-country euro zone’s dominant service industry bounced to 55.1 from April’s 50.5, well above the 52.3 median forecast in the Reuters poll and its highest since June 2018.

Services firms benefited from the release of pent-up demand. The new business index - which has been below 50 almost throughout the pandemic - soared to 56.7 from 49.7, its highest since January 2018.

---- But supply-side issues have made it a seller’s market for purveyors of raw materials and factories faced a record increase in input costs. The sub-index soared to 86.5 from 82.2, its highest since the survey began in June 1997.

“The combination of demand returning quickly for services and input shortages emerging are creating a perfect environment for surging pipeline inflation,” said Bert Colijn at ING.

https://www.reuters.com/article/eurozone-economy-pmi/update-1-euro-zone-business-growth-hits-three-year-high-on-services-resurgence-idUSL2N2N80IR

Retail sales soared in April as Brits came out of third Covid-19 lockdown

Friday 21 May 2021 7:23 am

The amount of money changing hands in stores across the UK jumped 9.2 per cent in April compared with March as Covid-19 lockdown restrictions eased and most retailers could reopen, according to Office for National Statistics (ONS) data.

Compared with April 2020 – at the height of the first Covid-19 lockdown – sales were up 43 per cent and still up 9.9 per cent compared with the last month of trading before the Covid-19 pandemic hit

Unsurprisingly, e-commerce companies dominated their bricks-and-mortar rivals throughout the pandemic, the shopping data showed.

Online-only retailer sales were up 56 per cent when compared with April 2019.

Last month’s continuation of working from home for many, alongside reduced travel, meant petrol stations suffered, with sales down 13.3 per cent compared with the same month two years ago.

https://www.cityam.com/retail-sales-soared-in-april-as-brits-came-out-of-third-covid-19-lockdown/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Before+the+Open

Australian state offering $1,100 to relocate, work tourism jobs

May 20, 2021 / 3:38 PM

May 20 (UPI) -- The state government in Queensland, Australia, is attempting to offset a labor shortage by offering workers more than $1,000 cash to relocate and take tourism jobs.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced the "Work in Paradise" campaign will pay $1,165.35, offer travel vouchers of up to $195 and provide access to low-cost housing for workers willing to relocate and fill vacant positions in the tourism sector.

"Queensland is recovering well from the pandemic, but there's still a critical shortage of workers in our regions," Palaszczuk said in the announcement. "This exciting initiative will give Queenslanders and other Australians even more reason to come work in our beautiful part of the world."

The program, which is scheduled to begin July 1, involves a wide range of available jobs.

"From chefs, waiters and bartenders through to tour guides and deckhands on the Great Barrier Reef, there are plenty of great opportunities up for grabs," Palaszczuk said.

https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2021/05/20/australia-Queensland-Australia-tourism-jobs-Work-in-Paradise/8241621538213/

Inflation is the one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation.

Milton Friedman

Covid-19 Corner

This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.

India needs to order 1 billion jabs to cover 60% of population: IMF

Last Updated: May 22, 2021, 07:06 AM IST

India should order 1 billion Covid vaccine doses to inoculate a majority of the people and encourage investment in fresh capacity, an International Monetary Fund (IMF) discussion note said. It backed centralised procurement of vaccines by the Indian government and endorsed delaying the second dose as much as possible.

“To get to 60% coverage, India will need to immediately place sufficient vaccine orders of about 1 billion doses through contracts that incentivise investment in additional capacity and augmentation of the supply chain,” said the discussion note entitled “A Proposal to End the Covid-19 Pandemic.” It was co-authored by IMF chief economist Gita Gopinath and Ruchir Agarwal, economist at the agency.

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/india/india-needs-to-order-1-billion-jabs-to-cover-60-of-population-imf/articleshow/82846432.cms

As Covid mutations spread, will herd immunity ever be possible?

Published Fri, May 21 2021 1:22 AM EDT

When the coronavirus pandemic started to sweep around the world in 2020, a number of governments and health authorities appeared to pin their hopes on “herd immunity.”

This approach would see the virus spread though society and cause infections, but also provoke an immune response in those who have recovered.

If enough people gained these antibodies — say, around 60-70% of the population — then the transmission of the virus would gradually decrease, and those who had not yet been infected would be protected by the increasingly small opportunity the virus had to spread.

---- Now we have highly effective vaccines and immunization programs are continuing apace across the world. This has sparked hope that once enough people in populations have been vaccinated, herd immunity could be achieved — that is, once enough people are vaccinated, the virus will have nowhere to go and will die out.

But yet again, Covid-19 is proving to be unpredictable, and we still don’t know how long protection from vaccines, or natural immunity acquired by previous infection, lasts.

---- Epidemiologist Lauren Ancel Meyers, director of the University of Texas Covid-19 Modeling Consortium, described herd immunity as “the idea that if we vaccinate enough people around the globe, the virus will have nowhere to spread, and the pandemic will completely fade out.”

“Unfortunately, we are very far from that reality on a global scale,” she told CNBC.

“The virus continues to spread rapidly on many continents, more contagious variants that can possibly break through immunity are continually emerging, and many countries lag far behind the U.S. in rolling out vaccines.”

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/21/is-herd-immunity-possible-new-covid-vairants-could-be-a-problem.html

‘Like hell:’ As Olympics loom, Japan health care in turmoil

By MARI YAMAGUCHI and KANTARO KOMIYA May 21 2021

TOKYO (AP) — As she struggled to breathe, Shizue Akita had to wait more than six hours while paramedics searched for a hospital in Osaka that would treat her worsening COVID-19.

When she finally got to one that wasn’t overwhelmed with other patients, doctors diagnosed severe pneumonia and organ failure and sedated her. Akita, 87, was dead two weeks later.

“Osaka’s medical systems have collapsed,” said her son, Kazuyuki Akita. He has watched from his home north of Tokyo as three other family members in Osaka have dealt with the virus, and with inadequate health care. “It’s like hell.”

Hospitals in Osaka, Japan’s third-biggest city and only 2 1/2 hours by bullet train from Summer Olympics host Tokyo, are overflowing with coronavirus patients. About 35,000 people nationwide — twice the number of those in hospitals — must stay at home with the disease, often becoming seriously ill and sometimes dying before they can get medical care.

As cases surge in Osaka, medical workers say that every corner of the system has been slowed, stretched and burdened. And it’s happening in other parts of the country, too.

The frustration and fear are clear in interviews by The Associated Press with besieged medical workers and the families of patients in Osaka. It’s in striking contrast with the tone in the capital Tokyo, where Olympic organizers and government officials insist the July Games will be safe and orderly even as a state of emergency spreads to more parts of the country and a growing number of citizens call for a cancellation.

---- Many here are stunned by what’s happening. Japan, after all, is the world’s third-biggest economy and has, until now, managed the pandemic better than many other advanced nations. But the current surge has sent the daily tallies of the sick and dying to new highs.

The turmoil is most evident in Osaka.

----As emergency measures drag on amid surging cases, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has seen support for his government slide. While he insists Japan will safely hold the Olympics, polls show 60% to 80% are against pushing ahead with the Games.

There is no indication so far the Olympics will be canceled.

https://apnews.com/article/japan-coronavirus-pandemic-business-olympic-games-2020-tokyo-olympics-72cc0b10127e8bab06406a6ec6bcedd6?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=May21_MorningWire&utm_term=Morning%20Wire%20Subscribers

Next, some very useful 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

FDA information. https://www.fda.gov/media/139638/download

Regulatory Focus COVID-19 vaccine tracker. https://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/news-articles/2020/3/covid-19-vaccine-tracker

Some more useful Covid links.

Johns Hopkins Coronavirus resource centre

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

Rt Covid-19

https://rt.live/

**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. Is converting sunlight to usable cheap AC or DC energy mankind’s future from the 21^st century onwards.

Entirely new form of carbon follows the lead of graphene

By Nick Lavars May 20, 2021

Researchers in Europe have developed an entirely new form of carbon, one that bears similarities to the wonder material graphene but with some useful differences. The incredibly thin sheets of material offer some electrical properties that other forms of carbon do not, which could open up new possibilities around electronics and advanced lithium batteries.

Graphene has generated a lot of hype in material science circles due to its incredible strength, flexibility, thinness and lightness, along with its ability to act as an excellent conductor of heat and electricity. As a two-dimensional sheet of carbon, it owes these characteristics to its unique arrangement of atoms that are organized in a honeycomb pattern, and scientists have suspected that alternative arrangements could give other two-dimensional forms of carbon their own unique qualities.

While these carbon materials have been theorized, none have yet materialized, but scientists at University of Marburg in Germany and Aalto University in Finland have now made a big breakthrough. The work begins with carbon-containing molecules that are placed on a very smooth gold surface, where they form two mirroring types of chains, like left and right hands. Unlike graphene, where different chains bind together, only chains of the same type bind together to form not just honeycomb patterns, but squares and octagons, as well. They've dubbed this new material biphenylene.

"The new idea is to use molecular precursors that are tweaked to yield biphenylene instead of graphene," explains Linghao Yan, who carried out the high-resolution microscopy experiments at Aalto University.

Confirming the structure of the new material using high-resolution scanning probe microscopy, the team found that its electronic properties differed greatly from graphene. For example, narrow strips of the material measuring 21 atoms wide behaved like metal, whereas graphene strips of the same size behave as semiconductors.

"These stripes could be used as conducting wires in future carbon-based electronic devices," says professor Michael Gottfried, at University of Marburg, who leads the team.

The scientists are now working to produce larger sheets of the new material, which they'll use to further investigate its characteristics and potential.

"This novel carbon network may also serve as a superior anode material in lithium-ion batteries, with a larger lithium storage capacity compared to that of the current graphene-based materials," says study author Qitang Fan, from the University of Marburg.

https://newatlas.com/materials/new-form-carbon-biphenylene-graphene/

This weekend’s musical diversion. Von Suppe’s tribute to the Light Cavalry. Approx. 7 minutes. I heard this played in Paddington Station forecourt by the British Rail Western Region orchestra. It made many commuters miss their regular trains.

Franz von Suppé - Leichte Kavallerie - Franz Welser-Möst

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhWRmtsPCdM

This weekend follow up to something we covered back in 2017. Approx. 18 minutes.

What Really Happened at the Oroville Dam Spillway?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxNM4DGBRMU

This weekend’s chess masterclass. Approx. 12 minutes.

У моей малой, у моей малой-ой-ой.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJurbP8scd0

This weekend’s maths masterclass. Complex numbers. Approx. 11 minutes.

Do Complex Numbers Exist?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALc8CBYOfkw&t=286s

I don't mind going back to daylight saving time. With inflation, the hour will be the only thing I've saved all year.

Victor Borge

London Irvine Report

Pages

Saturday 22 May 2021

Special Update 22/05/2021 Bitcoin. Inflation. Covid-19 Roulette.

U.S. stocks end mixed as Dow recovers on strong economic data