Inflation – The Fed Doesn’t Get It.

 Baltic Dry Index. 3119 -71   Brent Crude 75.31

Spot Gold 1782

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

Deaths 53,100

Coronavirus Cases 23/06/21 World 179,933,626

Deaths 3,898,160

Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied.

Count Otto von Bismarck.

In his testimony yesterday, Fed Chairman Powell was either deliberately misleading or clueless about the current bout of US and global inflation. 

Either way, it all ends badly, but when?

Most likely it ends when the Fedsters are forced to face the reality that real world inflation isn’t temporary nor under control. That possibly comes later this year if the Great Western US Drought doesn’t abate and impacts on the US and Canadian grain harvest. 

Below, was the Fed Chairman deliberately dissembling or does he actually believe it?

“Sometimes I wonder if the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.” 

Mark Twain.

Fed Chair Powell says it’s ‘very, very unlikely’ the U.S. will see 1970s-style inflation

Published Tue, Jun 22 2021 5:03 PM EDT

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell acknowledged Tuesday that some inflation pressures are stronger and more persistent than he had anticipated, though still not on par with some of the worst episodes the U.S. has seen historically.

Under questioning from a special House panel, the central bank leader continued to attribute most of the recent inflation surge to factors closely tied to the economic reopening.

Among them, Powell cited airline tickets, hotel prices and lumber along with generally surging consumer demand pumping up an economy that a year ago faced substantial government-imposed restrictions in the early days of Covid-19.

Those factors, he said, should “resolve themselves” in the coming months.

“They don’t speak to a broadly tight economy and to the kinds of things that have led to higher inflation over time,” he told the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis. Powell’s mandated testimony provided an economic update and covered the pandemic-related tools Congress gave the Fed during the crisis.

“I will say that these effects have been larger than we expected, and they may turn out to be more persistent than we have expected,” he added. “But the incoming data are very consistent with the view that these are factors that will wane over time, and inflation will then move down toward our goals and we’ll be monitoring that carefully.”

Headline price inflation was up 5% year over year in May, the highest in nearly 13 years amid a jump in used car prices and a slew of other goods that have seen surging demand as restrictions have loosened.

The latest update on the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, the core personal consumption expenditures price index, comes Friday. The Dow Jones estimate is for a 3.4% year-over-year increase in May, higher than the 3.1% in April. If that estimate is correct, it would be the highest reading since April 1992.

Committee Republicans repeatedly pressed Powell on whether the economy was headed toward the hyperinflation of the 1970s and early ’80s when inflation peaked above 10%.

Powell said such a scenario is “very, very unlikely.”

“What we’re seeing now, we believe, is inflation in particular categories of goods and services that are being directly affected by this unique historical event that none of us have ever lived through before,” he said.

More

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/22/feds-powell-very-very-unlikely-the-us-will-see-1970s-style-inflation.html

Shares in Hong Kong and Taiwan lead gains as Asia markets rise

Published Tue, Jun 22 2021 7:41 PM EDT

SINGAPORE — Shares in Asia-Pacific were largely higher in Wednesday trade, following overnight gains stateside that saw the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite rising to a record high.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index was among the biggest gainers regionally as it advanced 1.46%. Taiwan’s Taiex also saw robust gains, rising 1.22%.

Mainland Chinese stocks were higher by the afternoon, with the Shanghai composite rising 0.46% and the Shenzhen component gained 1.029%.

The Nikkei 225 in Japan was fractionally higher while the Topix index slipped 0.29%.

Minutes from the Bank of Japan’s April monetary policy meeting released Wednesday showed members agreed that stimulus measures, particularly those in advanced economies, could result in a “faster than expected” pace of recovery for Japan and other countries.

South Korea’s Kospi edged 0.39% higher. Meanwhile, shares in Australia declined as the S&P/ASX 200 fell 0.49%.

MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan traded 0.73% higher.

Tech shares mixed

Technology shares in Asia-Pacific were mixed in Wednesday trade.

Hong Kong-listed Chinese tech stocks were largely higher, with Alibaba rising 1.87% and Baidu jumping 2.12%. NetEase shares, however, fell 0.78%. The broader Hang Seng TECH index rose 1.87%.

In Japan, shares of conglomerate SoftBank Group rose 0.19% while South Korea’s Naver surged 7.16%.

Those moves came after the Nasdaq Composite touched a new intraday record overnight on Wall Street, climbing 0.79% on the day to 14,253.37.

The S&P 500 also gained 0.51% to 4,246.44 while the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 68.61 points to 33,945.58.

More

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/23/asia-markets-bank-of-japan-monetary-policy-meeting-minutes-technology-shares-currencies-oil.html

Elsewhere, Magic Money Tree boom times too. Where and how will it all end?

Many Restaurant Job Applicants Aren’t Showing Up For Interviews

By Susan-Elizabeth Littlefield June 21, 2021 at 10:52 pm

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — It may be hard to get a table or quick service at your favorite restaurant.

While fully open, many Twin Cities bars and restaurants are having trouble filling their staff.

State officials say about 1,500 people were hired last month. Just less than half were in hospitality, and many in the restaurant industry. But as WCCO found out, turning applicants into workers isn’t as easy as you may think.

With a skyline view, and a Scandinavian kitchen, the Hewing Hotel is back in full swing. Like almost every restaurant around, they’re hiring. Nyle Flynn is the executive chef at the hotel’s Tullibee restaurant.

“As executive chefs, it’s our jobs to take cooks and turn them into sous chefs, take sous chefs and turn them into chefs, and that’s how you keep people in the industry for a long time,” Flynn said.

But lately, that’s gotten really tricky. Take last week for instance.

“Out of the 12 interviews, three showed up, nine no-called, no-showed, and never answered for a follow-up phone call,” Flynn said.

He’s had an increase in applicants and a decrease in people following up — something he’s never seen in his 16 years in the industry.

Celebrity chef Justin Sutherland tells WCCO he’s recently had 50 different applicants not show up for interviews at his St. Paul restaurant, Handsome Hog.

The situation is even worse for Chef Stephan Hesse, the partner of Pajarito and 14 total regional restaurants.

“Out of a 100, 150 people that have applied that are looking for jobs that I set up interviews for, half a dozen to a dozen actually show up,” Hesse said. “It’s been pretty difficult.”

In order to maintain unemployment insurance in Minnesota, job seekers are told they must seek jobs weekly, and record that in the self-reporting system.

“I don’t know if it’s the unemployment benefits, it’s hard to say because you just don’t know,” Hesse said.

More

https://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2021/06/21/many-restaurant-job-applicants-arent-showing-up-for-interviews/

UK factories see fastest output growth on record, price pressure growing - CB

June 22, 2021 11:20 AM

LONDON (Reuters) - British manufacturers reported the strongest growth in output on record but also expect to raise their prices at the fastest pace in nearly 40 years, according to a survey which adds to signs of growing inflation pressures.

The Confederation of British Industry’s monthly index for industrial output growth over the past three months was the highest since the CBI records began in 1975 at +37, helped by the lifting of coronavirus restrictions.

The CBI’s orders balance - measuring the difference between the proportion of employers who say order levels are above or below normal - hit +19 in June from +17 in May, its highest since 1988.

Economists polled by Reuters had expected a reading of +18.

“Encouragingly, this performance is reflected in the majority of manufacturing sub-sectors and looks set to continue in the coming quarter,” Anna Leach, the CBI’s deputy chief economist, said.

“However, supply shortages continue to bite, and firms expect that to push through into prices in the months ahead.”

The survey’s price balance rose to +46 from +38 in May, the highest since 1982 and well above its average of +3.

https://www.reuters.com/article/britain-economy-indicator/uk-factories-see-fastest-output-growth-on-record-price-pressure-growing-cbi-idUSL5N2O42BN

Finally, despite US Presidents and politicians vary of Chinese IPOs on US stock casinos, there’s no slowing, or stopping Goldie and the gang when large lucrative fees are involved.

China's Full truck Alliance raises $1.6 billion in U.S. IPO

June 22, 2021 11:30 AM  By Reuters Staff

(Reuters) - China’s Full Truck Alliance Co Ltd raised nearly $1.6 billion through a U.S. initial public offering on Tuesday, giving it a valuation of around $20.6 billion and marking another high-profile Chinese float in New York this year.

The company, which styles itself as the “Uber for trucks”, sold 82.5 million American depositary shares (ADS) at $19 per ADS, the upper end of its target range of $17 and $19 per ADS. Each ADS represents 20 Class A ordinary shares.

Backed by high-profile investors such as SoftBank’s Vision Fund and Tencent Holdings, Full Truck Alliance was formed in 2017 out of a merger between Chinese digital freight platforms Yunmanman and Huochebang.

The company runs a mobile app that connects truck drivers to people that need to ship items within China.

It is set to debut on the New York Stock Exchange later on Tuesday and will trade under the ticker symbol “YMM”.

Several richly valued Chinese tech startups have targeted IPOs in the United States in recent years, as they can tap into the deepest capital pool in the world and avoid tighter regulatory scrutiny in major Asian exchanges such as Hong Kong.

Morgan Stanley, CICC and Goldman Sachs were the lead underwriters for Full Truck Alliance’s offering.

https://www.reuters.com/article/full-truck-alliance-ipo/chinas-full-truck-alliance-raises-1-6-bln-in-u-s-ipo-idUSL3N2O426M

Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain.

Napoleon Bonaparte.

Global Inflation Watch.           

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

The four most expensive words in the English language are, ‘This time it’s different.’

Sir John Templeton.

Fed will not raise rates on inflation fears alone, Powell says

June 22, 2021 11:18 AM

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Tuesday reaffirmed the U.S. central bank’s intent to encourage a “broad and inclusive” recovery of the job market, and not to raise interest rates too quickly based only on the fear of coming inflation.

“We will not raise interest rates pre-emptively because we fear the possible onset of inflation. We will wait for evidence of actual inflation or other imbalances,” Powell said in a hearing before a U.S. House of Representatives panel.

Recent price increases have pushed the consumer price index to a 13-year high, prompting Republicans on the committee to offer charts detailing spikes in consumer items like bacon and used cars to suggest price increases are getting out of hand.

“We have unstable employment and higher inflation,” said Representative Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican, referring to the Fed’s congressionally mandated goals of ensuring maximum employment and stable prices. “Something has to give.”

The recent high inflation readings, however, “don’t speak to a broadly tight economy” that would require higher interest rates, Powell said, referring to a “perfect storm” of rising demand for goods and services and bottlenecks in supplying them as the economy reopens from the pandemic.

Those price pressures should ease on their own, Powell said.

In setting upcoming monetary policy, the Fed chief pledged that the central bank would keep its eyes focused on a broad set of labor market statistics, including how different racial and other groups are faring.

---- Yet since Powell last appeared before the subcommittee in September, the central bank’s outlook for inflation has doubled. Projections released by the Fed last week showed prices in 2021 are expected to increase at a 3.4% rate, compared with the 1.7% projected as of last September.

Recent job growth, meanwhile, has been slower than hoped. Some of Powell’s colleagues are now openly suggesting the pandemic prompted so many people to retire it may be unrealistic to think the United States can return to the pre-crisis level of employment before the Fed needs to tighten monetary policy.

That is a stance counter to Powell’s own focus on restoring the economy to the conditions of early 2020, and to that of the subcommittee’s influential Democratic chairman, Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina, who pushed Powell on Tuesday to ensure a fair and equitable jobs recovery.

More

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fed/fed-will-not-raise-rates-on-inflation-fears-alone-powell-says-idUSKCN2DY0YB

U.S. Existing-Home Prices Hit Record High in May

Year-over-year price increase is biggest recorded in real-estate group’s data going back to 1999

Updated June 22, 2021 4:11 pm ET

U.S. home prices in May experienced their biggest annual increase in more than two decades, as a shortage of properties and low borrowing rates fueled demand.

The median existing-home sales price in May topped $350,000 for the first time, the National Association of Realtors said Tuesday. The figure was nearly 24% higher than a year ago, the biggest year-over-year price increase NAR has recorded in data going back to 1999.

Sales prices have been climbing sharply since last summer, when lockdowns related to the Covid-19 pandemic eased across the country and many people rushed to find more space and bigger homes. Others working remotely seized on the chance to move to a less expensive city.

More

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-existing-home-prices-hit-record-high-in-may-11624371222

‘Prices That We’ve Never Seen Before’: Rising Food Costs Hitting Restaurants Hard

By Christina Hager June 21, 2021 at 5:25 pm

BOSTON (CBS) – Have you noticed how much it costs to fill your fridge these days? Some grocery store customers are feeling sticker-shock. “The cost of produce the cost of meat, deli, things that are prepared have gotten more expensive now,” said Melanie Kinsley of Franklin.

“They haven’t gone up. They’ve almost doubled,” said Nick Rando, who owns Ziti Trattoria in Natick. He compared what he paid back in January to today’s prices. “Red meat for steak tips and steak was $7.35 a pound. Last week, it was $13.20 a pound.”

It’s not just meat. According to the National Bureau of Labor Statistics, cereal and bakery items are up 5%. Fruit and vegetables are up 1%, and dairy products are up 6%.

For businesses buying in bulk, that can hurt when it adds up. “Yea you see it at the register, but when you’re buying like 300 pounds a week and all, then it starts to hurt,” said Rando. He has to raise prices on his menu to avoid operating at a loss.

“We have seen prices that we’ve never seen before,” said Jim Tselikis, who runs Cousins Maine Lobster, a national chain of lobster roll trucks, along with his sister. “We’re just seeing this continuing ramp-up of demand on the lobster system,” said Annie Tselikis.

Industry experts blame not only demand, but a shortage of workers, and higher transportation costs driving up prices on just about all food products. “Just a sign of the times, you know prices go up, gas goes up, groceries go up,” said grocery store customer Cathy Ross of Framingham.

Experts say they don’t know how long the food inflation will last, but as long as it does, we can expect restaurants to pass it on to customers.

https://boston.cbslocal.com/2021/06/21/food-costs-rising-boston-restaurants-demand-transportation/

Chip Shortages Are Starting to Hit Consumers. Higher Prices Are Likely.

Semiconductor companies say they face higher costs that they are passing on to customers in some cases

June 21, 2021 8:00 am ET

The global chip shortage is pushing up prices of items such as laptops and printers and is threatening to do the same to other top-selling devices including smartphones.

Price increases are snowballing their way through suppliers and key materials in chip making as the industry rushes to meet rising demand and plug supply holes. As a result, many of the world’s large chip makers are raising prices they charge to the brands that make PCs and other gadgets. Industry officials say the increases may continue.

Consumers are starting to feel the pinch. Prices of popular models of some laptop computers have crept up over the past two months, among other electronics becoming more expensive at retailers. A laptop geared toward videogamer made by Taiwanese manufacturer ASUSTek Computer Inc. that Amazon lists as its bestseller rose from $900 to $950 this month, according to Keepa, a site that tracks prices. The cost of a popular HP Inc. Chromebook rose to $250 from $220 at the beginning of June.

HP has raised consumer PC prices by 8% and printer prices by more than 20% in a year, according to Bernstein Research. HP Chief Executive Enrique Lores said the increases are driven by component shortages and that the company may adjust prices further to reflect cost increases.

Other PC makers have struck a similar note. “As we think about component cost increases, we’ll adjust our pricing as appropriate,” Dell Technologies Inc. Chief Financial Officer Thomas Sweet said on a recent earnings call. An ASUSTek executive in May said that the company was reflecting component cost increases in its pricing.

--- Chip executives maintain that they aren’t using the shortage to fatten profits, and raising prices just reflects the higher costs their companies are paying. “We’re not taking advantage of this cycle to do anything on pricing, other than where we are paying more for the additional supply that we’ve got to get on board. We’re passing that on,” Vincent Roche, the CEO of chip maker Analog Devices Inc., said.

“We see cost inflation,” said Hock Tan, CEO of Broadcom Inc., which specializes in wireless communications circuits used in Apple Inc.’s iPhones and Samsung Electronics Co. ’s flagship handsets. Customers understand the situation and have been willing to stomach higher prices, he said on a call with analysts this month.

More

https://www.wsj.com/articles/chip-shortages-are-starting-to-hit-consumers-higher-prices-are-likely-11624276801

Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of filling a vacuum, it makes one.

Benjamin Franklin. 

Covid-19 Corner                       

This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.

No apology for repeating the scandal of Ivermectin suppression. How many deaths could have been prevented if Ivermectin hadn’t been and still is being withheld? A must watch presentation.

Dr. John Campbell explains all. Approx. 22 minutes.

Money for antivirals

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Of5_oiuqDp8

New Study Links Ivermectin to ‘Large Reductions’ in COVID-19 Deaths

By Tom Ozimek  June 21, 2021 Updated: June 21, 2021

The use of the antiparasitic drug ivermectin could lead to “large reductions” in COVID-19 deaths and may have a “significant impact” on the pandemic globally, according to a recent pre-print review based on peer-reviewed studies.

For the study (pdf), published June 17 in the American Journal of Therapeutics, a group of scientists reviewed the clinical trial use of ivermectin, which has antiviral and anti-inflammatory properties, in 24 randomized controlled trials involving just more than 3,400 participants. The researchers sought to assess the efficacy of ivermectin in reducing infection or mortality in people with COVID-19 or at high risk of getting it.

Using multiple methods of sequential analysis, the researchers concluded with a moderate level of confidence that the drug reduced the risk of death in COVID-19 patients by an average of 62 percent, at a 95 percent confidence interval of 0.19–0.79, in a sample of 2,438 patients.

Among hospitalized COVID-19 patients, the risk of death was found to be 2.3 percent among those treated with the drug, compared to 7.8 percent for those who weren’t, according to the review.

“Moderate-certainty evidence finds that large reductions in COVID-19 deaths are possible using ivermectin. Using ivermectin early in the clinical course may reduce numbers progressing to severe disease,” the authors wrote.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_breakingnews/new-study-links-ivermectin-to-large-reductions-in-covid-19-deaths_3867278.html?utm_source=News&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2021-06-21-1&mktids=1b4522b015841ca99fc0d8ff9a7b896b&est=bho24dftZ%2ByMl2S0YZfZj%2FkA121zMrjyWKT%2BAA0T0%2BZuB67q5yP%2FXVA2TOk%3D

FINALLY: Daszak Is FIRED From Commission Investigating COVID Origins

The Lancet announces scientist who funded Wuhan lab is now “recused from Commission work on the origins of the pandemic.”

22 June, 2021

The scientist who funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s ‘gain of function’ research on coronaviruses, which many now believe to be the source of the pandemic, has finally been removed from one position of investigative authority.

As we previously reported, Peter Daszak was tapped to head up The Lancet’s UN backed commission to investigate the origins of the coronavirus that caused a global pandemic.

The British scientist was picked despite the fact that he was intimately associated with the Wuhan lab, had repeatedly dismissed the lab leak hypothesis a ‘dangerous conspiracy theory’, and created a pressure campaign via a letter published by The Lancet to force the scientific community into avoiding looking into the lab as a potential source of the outbreak.

Daszak was also the lead investigator for the World Health Organisation investigation that determined within 3 hours of visiting the Wuhan lab in February 2021 that there was no leak purely based on the word of researchers there.

Daszak was later employed as an ‘expert fact checker’ by Facebook when it was monitoring and removing ‘misinformation’ about the origins of COVID on its platform, much of which was credible scientific research. Facebook has since reversed the policy of banning any posts containing information suggesting COVID-19 was “man-made”.

More

https://summit.news/2021/06/22/finally-daszak-is-fired-from-commission-investigating-covid-origins/

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.

Organic-based EV battery turns to ethanol for a boost in energy density

By Nick Lavars  June 20, 2021

While on the face of it, the lithium-batteries that power electric vehicles play an important role in our ongoing shift to sustainable transport, they aren't without environmental problems of their own. Batteries that use organic, readily available materials in place of rare metals are seen as a promising part of the solution to this dilemma, and new research led by University of Houston scientists demonstrates how the performance of these eco-friendly devices might be brought up to speed.

As demand for electronic devices and vehicles continues to grow, so does the reliance on lithium-ion batteries that rely on scarce metals. Front and center of this dilemma is cobalt, the mining of which is not only associated with environmental degradation and pollution of water supplies, but plagued by ethical issues such as the exploitation of child labor. The use of these metals also makes recycling the batteries difficult at the end of their lives.

However, we are seeing some exciting advances being made in the development of batteries that do away with these types of materials and use organic ones instead. These have included organic-based batteries that can break down in acid for recycling, a heavier reliance on cheaper and more environmentally friendly nickel, and even one from IBM that uses materials found in seawater.

The new device marries this organic architecture with another promising branch of battery research focusing on the use of solid-state electrolytes. Typical batteries move their electrical charge between two electrodes, a cathode and anode, in a liquid electrolyte solution, but scientists are making great inroads into alternative designs that use a solid electrolyte instead. This type of architecture could also allow batteries to work with a lithium metal anode, which could store as much as 10 times the energy of current devices.

The scientists behind the new battery have solved what they say is a key limitation of organic-based, solid-state lithium batteries. Where cobalt-based cathodes afford these batteries a high energy density, ones made from organic materials suffer from limited energy density, which the team found to be because of microscopic structures within the cathode.

“Cobalt-based cathodes are often favored because the microstructure is naturally ideal but forming the ideal microstructure in an organic-based solid-state battery is more challenging,” says study author Jibo Zhang.

Working with a cathode made from an organic material called pyrene-4,5,9,10-tetraone (PTO), the scientists used ethanol as a solvent to alter its microstructure. This treatment resulted in a new arrangement that allowed for better transport of ions within the cathode and boosted its energy density to 302 Wh/kg, which the team says is 83 percent higher than current state-of-the-art solid-state batteries with organic cathodes.

“We are developing low-cost, earth-abundant, cobalt-free organic-based cathode materials for a solid-state battery that will no longer require scarce transition metals found in mines,” says Yao. “This research is a step forward in increasing EV battery energy density using this more sustainable alternative.”

The research was published in the journal Joule.

https://newatlas.com/energy/organic-ev-battery-ethanol-energy-density/?utm_source=New+Atlas+Subscribers&utm_campaign=abf722ff16-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2021_06_21_08_17&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_65b67362bd-abf722ff16-90625829

I will tell you the secret to getting rich on Wall Street. You try to be greedy when others are fearful. And you try to be fearful when others are greedy.

Warren Buffett.