Baltic Dry Index. 3418 +94 Brent Crude 75.07
Spot Gold 1760
Coronavirus Cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,100
Coronavirus Cases 30/06/21 World 182,589,853
Deaths 3,953,901
The chief evil is unlimited government, and nobody is qualified to wield unlimited power.
Friedrich August von Hayek.
It is the end of month, quarter and half year. Time to dress up, even more the stock casino indexes, for all those professional money manager bonuses.
Of course, no one at the Fed, whose Magic Money Tree policies actually boosted those same stock casino indexes get any bonuses, just a good job on Wall Street when they exit out via the Fed’s revolving door.
Up first, the top?
Asia markets trade higher; data shows Chinese factory activity slowed in June
SINGAPORE — Asian markets were in positive territory on Wednesday, with oil prices continuing to rise. Meanwhile, China released its data on manufacturing activity in the morning.
Mainland Chinese stocks rose in early trade. The Shanghai composite was up 0.19%, while the Shenzhen component was nearly flat.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index was subdued, edging down 0.25%.
China’s official manufacturing Purchasing Manager’s Index (PMI) grew at a slower clip in June — hit by a resurgence of Covid-19 cases in the major export province of Guangdong that led to port disruptions.
The reading eased to 50.9 in June from 51 in May, according to Reuters. The 50-point mark separates growth from contraction.
“The latest survey readings are consistent with our view that the pace of growth will wane this year now that the economy is already above its pre-virus trend,” Julian Evans-Pritchard, senior China economist at Capital Economics, wrote in a note. “Foreign demand for Chinese consumer goods is likely to drop back further over the coming quarters as vaccine rollouts allow global consumption patterns to normalise.”
Japan’s Nikkei 225 was just above the flatline, and the Topix edged up 0.13%.
South Korea’s Kospi was up 0.38%. Tech stocks jumped, with SK Hynix up 2.8% and LG Electronics rising 1.55%.
Over in Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 jumped 0.61%. Major mining names were in positive territory, with Rio Tinto and Fortescue Metals jumping more than 2%.
Over on Wall Street, stocks were little changed in light trading although the S&P 500 did notch its 4th straight positive session and an all-time high. The Dow rose 9 points, or less than 1%. The S&P 500 ended the day 0.03% higher and the Nasdaq Composite ended the day up 0.2%
Oil prices continue to rise this week after hitting their highest level since 2018 last week.
On Wednesday, international benchmark Brent crude futures edged up 0.42% to $75.20 per barrel, while U.S. crude futures jumped 0.79% to $73.50 per barrel.
More
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/30/asia-markets-china-manufacturing-pmi.html
In other news, our central banksters are all over the place predicting the future. But will the future be predictable at all as we transform from a planet running on hydrocarbons to a planet running on “green” electricity and “green” hydrogen?
Uneven global recovery creates 'daunting challenges' for policymakers, BIS says
June 29, 2021 1:00 PM By Marc Jones
LONDON, June 29 (Reuters) - An uneven global recovery from the COVID-19 crisis will make recalibrating the fiscal and monetary stimulus a “daunting” challenge for policymakers, the Bank for International Settlement’s annual report said on Tuesday.
Dubbed the central bank to world’s central banks, the Swiss-based BIS said its main scenario was one of a solid global pick-up, albeit at varying speeds across countries.
The bank set out two alternative scenarios. One where large fiscal stimulus and a drawdown of accumulated savings results in stronger growth but also higher inflation and a substantial tightening in global financial conditions. In the other, growth disappoints as the virus proves harder to control.
“While the recovery is under way and the central scenario is relatively benign, we are not out of the woods yet,” BIS head Agustin Carstens said.
The uneven recovery could leave emerging market countries at the sharp end of any difficulties, especially in the higher inflation scenario, where major central banks like the U.S. Federal Reserve start looking to raise interest rates.
Carstens, who headed Mexico’s central bank before joining the BIS, said it was healthy that some emerging markets were already raising rates in response to rising inflation, but stressed he expected advanced economies to wait.
“It would not be appropriate to tighten monetary policy today just to reduce measured inflation and sacrifice a recovery of the economy,” Carstens told Reuters. “Is that something (major) central banks would want to do today? I don’t think so.”
Instead he predicted more periods of “noisiness” for financial markets after volatility in bond and equity prices between January and March, when vaccination programmes prompted investors to try to pre-empt a tapering of Fed support.
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Fed's Kashkari says banks can't expect government to bail them out of every crisis - FT
June 29, 2021 4:49 AM
(Reuters) - Banks cannot expect the government to bail them out of every crisis and must increase their equity funding to protect against the next “unexpected shock,” Minneapolis Federal Reserve President Neel Kashkari wrote in an op-ed for the Financial Times.
Kashkari wrote in the newspaper on Monday that the losses in the banking sector were far smaller than his analysis during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Does their performance during the COVID downturn indicate that large banks are strong enough? No, it does not,” he wrote, adding that the losses in the banking sector were much smaller than expected because governments were aggressive in providing fiscal support for families and businesses affected by the crisis.
While Kashkari said it was right on the part of fiscal authorities to support the economy during the COVID-19 downturn, he added that “this was also a banking bailout.”
“Absent these fiscal interventions, losses in the banking sector would have been much larger,” he wrote in the newspaper.
“The public must decide: should banks be resilient on their own or always dependent upon the generosity of taxpayers?”
Laws and rules passed since the 2007-2009 crisis have forced banks to increase the capital they have on hand against losses, but Kashkari has urged even higher requirements.
In April 2020, Kashkari said that big U.S. banks should raise $200 billion in capital and stop paying dividends to prepare for the deep economic downturn due to the coronavirus. “Banks did not heed my advice”, he wrote.
Top investment strategist David Roche warns the Fed could burst a market ‘bubble’
Published Tue, Jun 29 2021 12:13 AM EDT
As the S&P 500 notches record highs despite the backdrop of potential monetary tightening and the new delta Covid-19 variant, veteran investor David Roche says investors should be wary of the bubble bursting.
The flagship U.S. stock index on Friday chalked up its strongest week since February, despite the rapid spread of the highly contagious new variant and lingering concerns over whether the U.S. Federal Reserve will be forced to scale back its unprecedented stimulus program sooner than planned, with inflation running well above target.
The Fed recently surprised markets with a slightly hawkish pivot, upping its inflation expectations and bringing forward its interest rate hike schedule to indicate two raises in 2023.
Speaking to CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Monday, Roche, president of investment firm Independent Strategy, said current valuations were a “bubble.”
“These things always come to an end, and it’s very hard to say what the catalyst that will bring it to an end will be. It could be another Covid variant, at the moment I think that is fairly unlikely,” he said.
“The most likely [catalyst] from my view is that the Fed actually is forced to stop giving a double message and starts having to talk quite seriously about the days of additional monetary stimulus and financing of budget deficits [being] over,” he said.
While some Fed officials have indicated a need to bring forward the conversation about tapering the central bank’s asset purchase program, Chair Jerome Powell moved to soothe the markets by suggesting the projections be taken with a “big grain of salt.”
Roche suggested the spread of the delta variant was unlikely to be the trigger for pent-up consumer savings to be withheld and for markets to pull back.
“With regards fiscal stimulus, the likelihood is that the combination of excess savings in both the housing sector and in the corporate sector, plus the fact that there will be more stimulus coming down the line, will keep people fairly optimistic about growth,” he said.
Along with the unprecedented fiscal stimulus already in place to support the economy through the pandemic, a bipartisan group of lawmakers closed a deal on infrastructure spending on Thursday. The framework will include $579 billion in new spending to improve the country’s roads, bridges and broadband.
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Food for thought, if nobody is buying hydrocarbons come 2030 to 2050 what is going to happen to international trade and the dollar reserve standard?
Everyone needs dollars right now to pay for oil. Green electricity outside of the USA doesn’t need US dollars. Does the IMF or BIS start issuing Bancors?
If a massive redundancy of fiat dollars is just getting underway, there are globally trillions of fiat dollars that need to be converted into what?
Liberals say by 2035 all new cars, light-duty trucks sold in Canada will be electric
The Liberal government has already poured at least $300 million into a rebate program that offers consumers a break when they buy electric cars
Stephanie Taylor, The Canadian Press Jun 29, 2021
OTTAWA — The Liberal government is speeding up its goal for when it wants to see all light-duty vehicles sold in Canada to be electric.
Transport Minister Omar Alghabra announced Tuesday that by 2035 all new cars and light-duty trucks sold in the country will be zero-emission vehicles.
Until now the government had set 2040 as the target for when it wants to see all passenger vehicles sold to be powered by this technology.
More
Finally, while northwest Americans and Canadians swelter away in their current heatwave thinking they have reached hell, spare a thought for those mostly unairconditioned Pakistanis who really are living in hell.
Hotter than the human body can handle: Pakistan city broils in world’s highest temperatures
Experts fear Jacobabad's extreme heat and humidity may worsen with climate change – and that other cities may join the club
When the full midsummer heat hits Jacobabad, the city retreats inside as if sheltering from attack.
The streets are deserted and residents hunker down as best they can to weather temperatures that can top 52C (126F).
Few have any air conditioning, and blackouts mean often there is no mains electricity. The hospital fills with heatstroke cases from those whose livelihoods mean they must venture out.
“When it gets that hot, you can't even stay on your feet,” explains one resident, Zamir Alam.
“It's a very, very difficult time when it goes beyond 50C. People do not come out of their houses and the streets are deserted,” Abdul Baqi, a shopkeeper, adds.
This city of some 200,000 in Pakistan's Sindh province has long been renowned for its fierce heat, but recent research has conferred an unwelcome scientific distinction.
Its mixture of heat and humidity has made it one of only two places on earth to have now officially passed, albeit briefly, a threshold hotter than the human body can withstand.
---- Mr Matthews and colleagues last year analysed global weather station data and found that Jacobabad and Ras al Khaimah, north east of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, have both temporarily crossed the deadly threshold. The milestone had been surpassed decades ahead of predictions from climate change models.
The researchers examined what are called wet bulb temperatures. These are taken from a thermometer covered in a water-soaked cloth so they take into account both heat and humidity.
Wet bulb thermometer readings are significantly lower than the more familiar dry bulb readings, which do not take humidity into account. Researchers say that at a wet bulb reading of 35C, the body can no longer cool itself by sweating and such a temperature can be fatal in a few hours, even to the fittest people.
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Global Inflation Watch.
Given our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians, inflation now needs an entire section of its own.
Does this sound like temporary inflation or something more?
Home prices surged in April at a ‘truly extraordinary’ rate, S&P Case-Shiller says
Published Tue, Jun 29 2021 9:00 AM EDT
Home prices in April saw an annual gain of 14.6% in April, up from a 13.3% increase in March, according to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller National Home Price Index.
Among larger cities covered by the index, the 10-city composite was up 14.4% year over year, up from 12.9% the previous month. The 20-city composite was 14.9% higher, up from 13.4% in March.
Phoenix, San Diego, and Seattle reported the highest year-over-year gains. All were up over 20% from the year before.
“April’s performance was truly extraordinary. The 14.6% gain in the National Composite is literally the highest reading in more than 30 years of S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller data,” said Craig Lazzara, managing director and global head of index investment strategy at S&P DJI.
Not only did home prices rise in all 20 cities, but the price gains accelerated in all as well and were in the top quartile of performance historically.
Five cities – Charlotte, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver and Seattle – saw their largest annual gains ever.
“We have previously suggested that the strength in the U.S. housing market is being driven in part by reaction to the COVID pandemic, as potential buyers move from urban apartments to suburban homes. April’s data continue to be consistent with this hypothesis,” added Lazzara.
Price gains have been expanding for the last eleven months, as buyer demand continues to outstrip supply.
More
Labour tops breakdown of new home costs
BY Geoff McLarney Published: June 29, 2021
While lumber prices have been soaring, research by members of the Western Retail Lumber Association shows that they represent only a small fraction of the cost of a new home. Labour costs make up fully half of that investment, while lumber represents just four percent. Mechanical, HVAC, electrical, and plumbing costs contribute 22 percent to the average bill for a new home.
“As lumber prices have reached record highs in North America, the cost of housing has been discussed at length, but material costs are only part of the bill when people plan to build a new home,” WRLA president Liz Kovach said in a release.
https://hardlines.ca/gp_dailynews/labour-tops-breakdown-of-new-home-costs/
Car Dealers Are Selling More Vehicles Above the Sticker Price
It’s a seller’s market, but production shortfalls also mean dealerships must manage with lower sales volume
June 29, 2021 5:33 am ET
The sticker price on cars isn’t sticking. In some cases, it’s going up.
Auto makers typically set what is known as the manufacturer’s suggested retail price, or MSRP, a figure that appears on the window sticker of a new model. But with inventory tight and customers clamoring for cars and trucks, auto dealers are charging more, increasing the price above sticker and in some cases requiring customers buy certain add-ons, such as protective coatings and accessories, as part of the increase.
Some buyers say they have encountered dealerships asking for thousands of dollars above MSRP. And analysts and dealers say the practice is becoming more widespread and occurring on a wider range of vehicles, including more mainstream models that typically wouldn’t be targeted for such price increases.
A global chip shortage is affecting how quickly we can drive a car off the lot or buy a new laptop. WSJ visits a fabrication plant in Singapore to see the complex process of chip making and how one manufacturer is trying to overcome the shortage. Photo: Edwin Cheng for The Wall Street Journal
“I was shocked,” said Ken Baird, a 61-year-old Boca Raton, Fla., resident who was recently shopping for a Kia Telluride. The window sticker on the particular model he was looking at read $45,000, and he said he offered to pay $3,000 over that knowing the vehicle was in high demand.
But the dealership wanted $10,000 above the original sticker. “They said, ‘I’ll get the $55,000 from someone else,’” Mr. Baird said.
More
UK house prices jump by 13.4% in 12 months to June -Nationwide
June 29, 2021 7:10 AM By Reuters Staff
LONDON, June 29 (Reuters) - British house prices rose by 13.4% in June compared with the same month last year, the biggest annual increase since November 2004, mortgage lender Nationwide said on Tuesday.
In monthly terms, house prices were 0.7% higher than in May, Nationwide said.
Economists polled by Reuters had expected prices to rise by 13.7% in annual terms and by 0.7% from May.
Commodity Traders Harvest Billions While Prices Rise for Everyone Else
From oil to steel, raw material prices are surging. As the world economy recovers, how much further does the boom have to run?
29 June 2021, 05:01 BST
Doug King set up his hedge fund in the early days of the commodity super-cycle in 2004. It was perfectly timed: voracious Chinese demand lifted the price of everything from oil to copper to record highs. Investors flooded the commodities sector. At the peak, King’s Merchant Commodity Fund was managing about $2 billion.
But the boom ended abruptly after the 2008 global financial crisis and the onset of the U.S. shale revolution. Prices plunged, big institutional money got out and many specialist hedge funds closed.
Fast forward more than a decade and King is having one of the best years of his career: a broad-based commodities boom has pushed up his hedge fund nearly 50% this year as raw materials from steel to soybeans hit multi-year highs. Commodities are back, and from pension funds to physical commodity traders, everyone is making money. The question now is whether it’s a temporary snapback from the pandemic or signals a longer-term shift in the structure of the global economy. King is in no doubt.
“We are facing a structural inflation shock,” King said. “There’s a lot of pent up demand, and everyone wants everything now, right now.”
For the first time since the pre-crisis years before 2008, the commodities boom means central banks are fretting about inflation. The rally will have a political impact, too. With oil back at $75 a barrel, Saudi Arabia and Russia are back in the driving seat of the global energy market — a remarkable come back from negative prices just over a year ago. The boom is also an unwelcome development for policymakers tackling the climate crisis: rising commodities prices will make the shift more expensive.
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Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
MIT and Harvard engineers develop face mask that detects COVID-19
Rich Haridy June 28, 2021
Researchers from MIT and Harvard have demonstrated a cutting-edge biosensor technology by developing a face mask that can detect SARS-CoV-2 in a wearer’s breath within just 90 minutes. The sensor technology can be programmed to detect any kind of virus or toxin and is small enough to be integrated into clothing fabrics.
The biosensor has been in development for several years and is based on a new technology dubbed wFDCF (wearable freeze-dried cell-free). Unlike previously developed biosensors that require the incorporation of living cells, this system extracts and freeze dries the cellular machinery needed to detect organic molecules.
“Other groups have created wearables that can sense biomolecules, but those techniques have all required putting living cells into the wearable itself, as if the user were wearing a tiny aquarium,” explains Peter Nguyen, co-first author on the new study. “If that aquarium ever broke, then the engineered bugs could leak out onto the wearer, and nobody likes that idea.”
The wFDCF technology has previously been used to create experimental diagnostic tools for the Ebola and Zika viruses. Around a year ago, as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold around the world, the researchers quickly pivoted to try and turn the experimental technology into a useful product to help combat it.
“We wanted to contribute to the global effort to fight the virus, and we came up with the idea of integrating wFDCF into face masks to detect SARS-CoV-2,” notes co-first author Luis Soenksen. “The entire project was done under quarantine or strict social distancing starting in May 2020.”
Preliminary tests show the diagnostic face mask delivers highly accurate results, comparable to current PCR tests, the gold standard for SARS-CoV-2 detection. Nguyen notes the face mask is the most market-ready product the wFDCF team has developed so far but the technology offers a huge variety of uses beyond just COVID-19 diagnostics.
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Why COVID-19 vaccines can provide stronger immunity than natural infection
Rich Haridy June 27, 2021
Eighteen months after the first officially reported SARS-CoV-2 cases appeared in Wuhan we can now begin to investigate questions that were impossible to answer early on in the pandemic, such as what kind of immunity is generated from a natural infection, how long could one be protected from re-infection, and does vaccination generate better immunity than natural exposure to the virus?
A recent preprint study, led by scientists from the University of Oxford, offers the most thorough account of immune responses in recovered COVID-19 patients to date. Nearly 80 healthcare worked were closely followed for six months post-infection and the researchers used a novel machine-learning approach to analyze immune biomarkers.
“We found that individuals showed very different immune responses from each other following COVID-19, with some people from both the symptomatic and asymptomatic groups showing no evidence of immune memory six months after infection or even sooner,” explains study author Christina Dold.
In general the research saw a correlation between disease severity and lasting immune response. Over 90 percent of asymptomatic cases showed no measurable immune response six months later. A quarter of symptomatic cases lacked lasting immunity six months after infection.
A little more worrying, however, was the finding that very few serum samples from infected subjects mounted antibody responses against newer variants of the virus. Dold says this seems to suggest those infected with the original SARS-CoV-2 strain in 2020 may have little protection from some of the newer variants beginning to circulate.
“Our concern is that these people may be at risk of contracting COVID-19 for a second time, especially with new variants circulating,” says Dold. “This means that it is very important that we all get the COVID vaccine.”
But why would immunity generated by a vaccine be any different from natural infection?
“The honest truth is, we don’t know,” says Sabra Klein, an expert in immunology from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “The immune system of people who have been infected has been trained to target all these different parts of the virus called antigens. You’d think that would provide strongest immunity, but it doesn’t.”
Natural immunity is unpredictable
One of the biggest problems with natural immunity generated from a SARS-CoV-2 infection is just how variable and unpredictable it can be. A striking study published earlier this year found a stunning spectrum of natural immune responses in recovered COVID-19 patients. Although comfortingly, the paper saw immune responses from a natural infection lasting at least eight months, it also indicated some recovered patients displayed immunity levels 100 times higher than other patients.
More
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
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 ICE-Batt project sets out to optimize battery technology using graphene and CNTs
June 29, 2021
CPI and Thomas Swan have teamed up with Johnson Matthey (JM), a company focused on sustainable technologies, to explore how to best optimize battery technology using graphene and CNTs.
The ICE-Batt project receives funding support from the Faraday Battery Challenge, managed by Innovate UK – the UK’s innovation agency – to enable the investigation of how innovative carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs) can improve battery performance. In addition, the project will explore how to improve the green credentials of battery processing.
ICE-Batt will combine Thomas Swan’s innovative GNP technology and CPI’s formulation expertise to explore how together they can help realize the full potential from JM’s high performance battery materials.
The ICE-Batt project aims to overcome existing limitations of lithium-ion batteries, including energy density, power density and low temperature performance through the application of innovative carbons. ICE-Batt will fine tune these novel carbon structures produced at an industrial scale by Thomas Swan and demonstrate how they can be best applied to enhance the overall performance of traditional lithium-ion and next generation batteries such as JM’s family of nickel-rich advanced cathode materials eLNO® and Life Power® LFP.
CPI is a founding member of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult, and will provide formulation optimization through integration, iteration and evaluation. By using CPI’s high throughput capabilities, it offers a rapid route towards improved, safer and more-sustainable technologies in the production of battery cathodes. This will support the shift away from the commonly used – but toxic and now regulated – solvents, improving sustainability and the potential for widespread adoption.
Fine-tuning the existing cathode formulations and introducing advanced carbon nano-materials into them may result in a longer life-span for lithium-ion batteries, which will have widespread economic benefits to society. In this way the ICE-Batt project will help pave the way for the next generation of high-performance, sustainable battery technology.
Dr. Amponsah Kyeremateng, Senior Research Scientist at CPI, said: “The overwhelming global warming issue is such that a widespread adoption of electric vehicles is needed, but we will never get there if we don’t have the right and affordable battery technology. The ICE-Batt project is helping to make this possible, by improving current lithium-ion battery performance while helping to establish the next generation of more sustainable, affordable and efficient battery technology.”
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To be controlled in our economic pursuits means to be controlled in everything.
Friedrich August von Hayek.
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