Baltic Dry Index. 3025 +81 Brent Crude 74.64
Spot Gold 1821
Coronavirus Cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,100
Coronavirus Cases 17/06/21 World 177,815,072
Deaths 3,848,922
By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.
John Maynard Keynes.
At the ever so genteel battle of Geneva, both contestants prodded and pushed each other for less than 4 hours, and then declared victory in separate press conferences. The main outcome, both countries will return their ambassadors to each other’s capitals and arms control talks are to resume.
The main battle seemed to be among the Press Corps in an unseemly battle for access to the front door of Villa La Grange.
Elsewhere, in far away Washington, District of Crooks, the Fedsters, led by Fed Chairman Powell, seemed less certain that inflation is transitory or under control. Perhaps they had sticker shock when they sent out for lunch.
That said, as expected they decided to remain officially asleep at the wheel of the racing, self-driving, Tesla. Look away from the oil price and shipping indexes now.
In the central bankster funded stock casinos, the most nervous gamblers headed for the exits.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 drops 1% as Asia markets trade mixed after U.S. Fed signals rate hikes in 2023
SINGAPORE — Shares in Asia-Pacific were mixed in Thursday morning, as investors watched for market reaction after the U.S. Federal Reserve on Wednesday moved up its timeline for rate hikes.
In Japan, the Nikkei 225 fell 1.18% in afternoon trade while the Topix index dipped 0.75%. South Korea’s Kospi declined 0.38%.
Mainland Chinese stocks were higher by the afternoon, as the Shanghai composite gained 0.17% while the Shenzhen component advanced 0.86%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index rose 0.28%.
The S&P/ASX 200 in Australia fell 0.2%. Australia’s employment increased by 115,000 people from April to May, the country’s Bureau of Statistics said Thursday. That was far higher than a 30,000 increase in employment expected by analysts in a Reuters poll.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan fell 0.49%.
Trading of Next Digital shares in Hong Kong was halted on Thursday, according to an exchange notice.
That came after the Apple Daily, which is published by Next Digital, reported Thursday that five of its directors — including the publication’s editor-in-chief and CEO — were arrested by Hong Kong police.
The Hong Kong police had earlier said it arrested five directors of an unnamed company for “collusion with a foreign country or with external elements to endanger national security.”
The Fed on Wednesday brought forward the time frame on which it will next raise interest rates, with the so-called dot plot of individual member expectations pointing to two hikes in 2023.
“The new Fed ‘dot plot’ indicating that the median FOMC member now forecasts two Fed rate hikes in 2023, versus none in the March iteration, represented the hawkish surprise out of the June Fed meeting,” Ray Attrill, head of foreign exchange strategy at National Australia Bank, wrote in a note.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 265.66 points overnight stateside to 34,033.67 while the S&P 500 slipped 0.54% to 4,223.70. The Nasdaq Composite shed 0.24% to 14,039.68.
More
Fed Officials Rattle Rate-Hike Saber as Price Pressures Surprise
By Craig Torres
· Powell says there’s a ‘lot of uncertainty’ over inflation
“Is there a risk that inflation will be higher than we think? Yes,” Chair Jerome Powell told a press conference. He spoke after financial markets were taken by surprise when policy makers signaled they expect to make not one, but two, hikes to interest rates in 2023 from near zero now.
The Fed has been in a tug-and-pull with investors and critics over whether recent spikes in prices as the economy reopens from the pandemic will be transitory, as officials have argued, or prove more lasting.
Read More: Fed Sees Two Rate Hikes by End of 2023, Inches Towards Taper
More
Poultry prices soar to record amid U.S. chicken-sandwich wars
By Michael Hirtzer and Dominic Carey
Chicken-sandwich fever means poultry is pacing U.S. food inflation in the meat case.
U.S. producer prices for processed poultry jumped to an all-time high in May, climbing 2.1% in the eighth straight monthly increase, U.S. government data showed Tuesday. Gains in poultry outpaced the 0.8% increase in the broader producer price index.
The surge comes after several large fast-food restaurant chains recently launched fried-chicken sandwiches in a bid to match Popeyes’ 2019 viral success. Sales have also surged with consumers preparing more meals at home during the pandemic. Meanwhile, poultry producers have struggled to keep up with the growing demand, with labor shortages at meat plants and severe winter storms that killed thousands of birds constricting chicken supplies.
McDonald’s Corp., KFC and Burger King have all recently introduced new chicken sandwiches. At U.S. restaurants, orders for chicken entrees were up 4% for the year ending in April 2021, according to market researcher NPD Group. Beef orders were down 14% and pork was down 18%.
More
https://www.farmprogress.com/poultry/poultry-prices-soar-record-amid-us-chicken-sandwich-wars
Next, so you really want a life of crime paid in Bitcoin, think again.
Untraceable Bitcoin Is a Myth
How could the FBI recover $2.3 million of the pipeline ransom? It isn’t a mystery.
By Ezra Galston June 16, 2021 12:27 pm ET
How did the Justice Department recover $2.3 million of the ransom paid by Colonial Pipeline to a group of hackers known as DarkSide? Isn’t bitcoin, the cryptocurrency in which the payment was made, supposed to be untraceable? Actually, no. Bitcoin is anonymous, but it’s far from private—an important but often overlooked distinction. The Justice Department recovered more than $1 billion in bitcoin in various investigations during 2020 alone.
The blockchain—bitcoin’s historical ledger of all transactions—is publicly viewable at all times by anyone, so that there can’t be any under-the-table cash transactions. Software firms such as Chainalysis and Elliptic have supported federal investigators with a suite of analysis tools intended to help trace criminals and tax cheats, including those who try to obscure the bitcoin trail through dozens of successive transactions.
What complicates recovery is bitcoin’s anonymity. Senders and recipients are denoted by wallet addresses—a string of numbers and letters—rather than names or Social Security numbers. Other cryptocurrencies such as Monero, zCash and Haven are working on technologies that would offer both anonymity and privacy. But even then, users would face the “off-ramp” dilemma.
That arises when criminals need to spend their bitcoin or convert it into conventional currency. The final transaction deanonymizes the participant and usually triggers the jurisdiction of one or more government agencies. Thus, once criminals transfer their coins into an exchange wallet—even one that doesn’t adhere to the exchange’s Know Your Customer/Anti-Money-Laundering requirement—investigators have what they need to freeze and ultimately claim those assets. That’s likely what happened in the case of Colonial Pipeline.
More
https://www.wsj.com/articles/untraceable-bitcoin-is-a-myth-11623860828?mod=opinion_lead_pos8
Related, when Big Brother really wants you, no one’s safe.
Alibaba Falls Victim to Chinese Web Crawler in Large Data Leak
Software developer scrapes 1.1 billion pieces of user data, including IDs and phone numbers, over eight months
Updated June 15, 2021 10:46 pm ET
A Chinese software developer trawled Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. ’s popular Taobao shopping website for eight months, clandestinely collecting more than 1.1 billion pieces of user information before Alibaba noticed the scraping, a Chinese court verdict said.
The software developer began using web-crawling software he designed on Taobao’s site starting in November 2019, gathering information including user IDs, mobile-phone numbers and customer comments, according to a verdict released this month by a district court in China’s central Henan province. When Alibaba noticed the data leaks from Taobao, one of China’s most-visited online retail sites, the company informed the police, the court said.
A spokeswoman said Alibaba proactively discovered and addressed the incident and was working with law enforcement to protect its users. She wouldn’t elaborate on how many people were affected. No user information was sold to a third party and no economic loss occurred, she said. About 925 million people use Alibaba’s Chinese retail platforms at least once a month, according to the company.
While the developer didn’t obtain encrypted information such as passwords, some of the data he scraped, including phone numbers and a portion of usernames, isn’t publicly presented on the website.
Chinese legal experts say a data leak involving mobile-phone numbers would have more far-reaching consequences in China than in other parts of the world. In China, where people are required to register with real name identification before obtaining a mobile phone number, such numbers are considered by law to be personal information, said Annie Xue, a Beijing-based lawyer at GEN law firm.
Finally, a potential US scandal to rival Europe’s Greensill?
The Making of an Electric-Vehicle Fiasco
Free credit, taxpayer EV subsidies, and political cheerleading.
June 14, 2021 6:36 pm ET
Yield-hungry investors have been driving headlong into SPACs (special-purpose acquisition companies), and some are now getting burned. Witness the trouble at electric-truck manufacturer Lordstown Motors, which may be a canary in the supposed SPAC gold mine.
The startup’s CEO Steve Burns and CFO Julio Rodriguez resigned Monday after a board committee report found the company had made inaccurate statements about sales preorders. Last week the company warned it didn’t have enough cash to begin commercial production and there was “substantial doubt” about its ability to continue as a going concern.
There’s plenty of blame to go around, including among the political class. Republicans used Lordstown to flog a Rust Belt revival. Vice President Mike Pence gave a speech hailing a manufacturing comeback at the maiden plant in Lordstown, Ohio, which GM had discarded in a fire sale. Donald Trump unveiled a model truck at the White House in September with Mr. Burns.
Investors went along for the ride. Last fall Lordstown went public through a SPAC, which is a shell company sponsored by sophisticated investors. A SPAC raises cash through an initial public offering and then merges with a startup. This allows a startup to avoid the IPO regulatory rigmarole and to make sometimes exaggerated projections without incurring liability.
SPACs have become the rage on Wall Street as investors hunt for yield amid negative real interest rates. SPACs have raised capital in 331 IPOs so far this year, up from 248 for all of last year and 59 in 2019. Electric-vehicle and battery startups are especially hot with investors chasing a green rush of government subsidies.
Like Lordstown, electric-truck startup Nikola went public through a SPAC last year. Questions soon arose over the viability of its technology, and a short-seller accused it of fraud, which the company denies. An internal company review found numerous inaccuracies in its statements, and its stock has fallen more than 70% since last June when it started trading on Nasdaq.
Fear and euphoria are dominant forces, and fear is many multiples the size of euphoria. Bubbles go up very slowly as euphoria builds. Then fear hits, and it comes down very sharply. When I started to look at that, I was sort of intellectually shocked. Contagion is the critical phenomenon which causes the thing to fall apart.
Alan Greenspan.
Global Inflation Watch.
Given our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians, inflation now needs an entire section of its own.
ECB Should Be Ready for Helicopter Money, French Adviser Says
By William Horobin16 June 2021, 10:00 BST
· Tool would be effective if inflation is persistently too low
· Direct transfers to individuals are easier to manage than QE
The European Central Bank should consider using so-called helicopter money -- direct cash transfers to the population -- to boost inflation if price growth is persistently weak after the pandemic, according to a French thinktank which reports to the nation’s prime minister.
The non-partisan Council of Economic Analysis noted that the ECB has failed to sustainably hit its inflation target since 2015 despite negative interest rates, quantitative easing and free loans to banks. At the same time, those tools have raised questions about the impact on inequality and the central bank’s independence from governments.
“Adding this instrument to monetary policy would limit the
continuous increase of asset purchase programs with their potential collateral
effects,” authors Philippe Martin, Eric Monnet and Xavier Ragot wrote. “Given
the uncertainties related to getting out of the Covid-19 crisis, we consider
that this contingent strategy should be decided once health
restrictions have been lifted.”
The ECB has spent more than 4 trillion euros ($4.9 trillion) on its two main bond-buying programs, cut interest rates to -0.5%, and effectively subsidized banks with long-term loans. While the nascent economic recovery has pushed inflation to 2%, just above target, policy makers say it will fade again.
The Council of Economic Analysis acknowledged that helicopter money is considered controversial, and said it should be a “last resort,” but went on to show how effective it could be.
Value for Money
It estimates that a monetary transfer to individuals amounting to 1% of economic output would increase the inflation rate by 0.5 percentage point over a year. It reckons that step would only cost the equivalent of 385 euros per individual -- far below the amount the U.S. government sent to households as part of its fiscal stimulus package this year.
The measure could be renewed as long as the inflation target isn’t met, and would be easier to wind down than the bond-buying programs, which affect the management of public debt.
It would need to be coordinated with fiscal policies, so that governments don’t counteract it with tax increases.
“If the introduction of helicopter money succeeds in bringing the inflation rate back toward its target, it would allow for a more rapid normalization of monetary policy with regard to both asset purchases and interest rates,” the authors wrote. “From this point of view, this monetary instrument might be more acceptable to some countries -- eg Germany -- for which the ECB’s unconventional monetary policy is most problematic.”
Social Security cost-of-living adjustment for 2022 could be higher based on rising consumer prices
Rising consumer costs have helped push the latest estimate for next year’s Social Security cost-of-living adjustment to 5.3%.
Whether that will actually be the bump retirees see to their monthly checks in 2022 depends a lot on the economy, including whether the Federal Reserve decides to raise interest rates.
The 5.3% estimate was calculated by The Senior Citizens League, a non-partisan senior group, based on Consumer Price Index data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics through May.
If that amount were to go through, it would be the highest annual adjustment since 2009, when benefits saw a 5.8% boost.
In 2021, Social Security beneficiaries received a 1.3% increase to their monthly checks.
Social Security’s annual cost-of-living adjustment is calculated from the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers, or CPI-W. There is still four more months of data before the official estimate for next year is determined.
The month-to-month jump in The Senior Citizens League’s estimate is due to rising costs caused by inflation, according to Mary Johnson, Social Security and Medicare policy analyst at the Senior Citizens League.
The price of gasoline saw the biggest hike, rising 56.2% from May 2020 to May 2021.
Used car and truck prices rose by 29.7% in that one-year period.
Other day-to-day items also saw a spike in prices. Bacon rose 13%, citrus fruits are up by 9% and milk is up 7.2%.
Not everything rose, however.. The cost of ground beef, for example, declined by 5.8%.
How those prices shape up in the coming months — and whether next year’s cost-of-living adjustment stays the same, goes up or declines — will depend on those consumer costs.
More
People don't realize that we cannot forecast the future. What we can do is have probabilities of what causes what, but that's as far as we go.
Alan Greenspan.
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
Ivermectin succeeds yet again, so why aren’t governments using it? How many of the nearly 4 million dead might have been saved? How many lockdowns could have been prevented?
Favorable outcome on viral load and culture viability using Ivermectin in early treatment of non-hospitalized patients with mild COVID-19 – A double-blind, randomized placebo-controlled trial
View ORCID ProfileAsafBiberMichalMandelboimGevaHarmelinDanaLevLiRamAmitShahamItalNemetLimorKlikerOranErsterEliSchwartz
doi:
Abstract
Background Ivermectin, an anti-parasitic agent, also has anti-viral properties. Our aim was to assess whether ivermectin can shorten the viral shedding in patients at an early-stage of COVID-19 infection.
Methods The double-blinded trial compared patients receiving ivermectin 0·2 mg/kg for 3 days vs. placebo in non-hospitalized COVID-19 patients. RT-PCR from a nasopharyngeal swab was obtained at recruitment and then every two days. Primary endpoint was reduction of viral-load on the 6th day (third day after termination of treatment) as reflected by Ct level>30 (non-infectious level). The primary outcome was supported by determination of viral culture viability.
Results Eighty-nine patients were eligible (47 in ivermectin and 42 in placebo arm). Their median age was 35 years. Females accounted for 21·6%, and 16·8% were asymptomatic at recruitment. Median time from symptom onset was 4 days. There were no statistical differences in these parameters between the two groups.
On day 6, 34 out of 47 (72%) patients in the ivermectin arm reached the endpoint, compared to 21/ 42 (50%) in the placebo arm (OR 2·62; 95% CI: 1·09-6·31). In a multivariable logistic-regression model, the odds of a negative test at day 6 was 2.62 time higher in the ivermectin group (95% CI: 1·06–6·45). Cultures at days 2 to 6 were positive in 3/23 (13·0%) of ivermectin samples vs. 14/29 (48·2%) in the placebo group (p=0·008).
Conclusions There were significantly lower viral loads and viable cultures in the ivermectin group, which could lead to shortening isolation time in these patients.
The study is registered at ClinicalTrials.gov NCT 044297411.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.31.21258081v1
WHO says delta Covid variant has now spread to 80 countries and it keeps mutating
The delta Covid variant, first detected in India, has now spread to more than 80 countries and it continues to mutate as it spreads across the globe, World Health Organization officials said Wednesday.
The variant now makes up 10% of all new cases in the United States, up from 6% last week. Studies have shown the variant is even more transmissible than other variants. WHO officials said some reports have found that it also causes more severe symptoms, but more research is needed to confirm those conclusions.
The WHO is also tracking recent reports of a “delta plus” variant. “What I think this means is that there is an additional mutation that has been identified,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s Covid-19 technical lead. “In some of the delta variants we’ve seen one less mutation or one deletion instead of an additional, so we’re looking at all of it.”
The United Kingdom recently saw the delta variant become the dominant strain there, surpassing its native alpha variant, which was first detected in the country last fall. The delta variant now makes up more than 60% of new cases in the U.K.
More
Yale study shows COVID-19 infection can be hampered by the common cold
Rich Haridy June 15, 2021
A compelling new study has demonstrated how acute exposure to the common cold can slow the onset of a SARS-CoV-2 infection by stimulating the immune system to jump into action early. The research shows in impressive detail how the immune system can be primed for action by a rhinovirus infection allowing it to more effectively stifle the early replication of coronavirus.
SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, is known to enter the body through the nose or mouth and begin its first wave of replication in the upper respiratory tract. In these first first days of infection, before any symptoms of COVID-19 disease appear, the virus has demonstrated a clever ability to evade detection from the body’s primary defense mechanisms.
Antigens, T-cells, and other more comprehensive immune responses can take days to get going, so our bodies have a more immediate cellular mechanism to act as an alarm for viral infection. These frontline signaling proteins are called interferons.
When a cell is infected by a virus it produces interferons, which serve as a kind of emergency beacon letting nearby cells know a viral invader is close. Interferons play a number of roles, primarily helping orchestrate immune cell activities. However, some viruses have evolved clever strategies to avoid interferon signaling allowing several days of unimpeded replication before other immune defenses catch up.
This new study, led by a team of scientists from Yale University School of Medicine, first set out to better understand what happens in those first few days of SARS-COV-2 infection. To do this the researchers looked at patients undergoing routine pre-operative COVID-19 screening, allowing them to catch pre-symptomatic subjects at the very earliest stages of infection.
Ellen Foxman, senior author on the new study, says following these patients through the earliest stages of viral infection revealed SARS-CoV-2 can rapidly replicate in the first two to three days of infection before the immune system catches on. The data indicates the viral load can double every six hours over this period.
"There appears to be a viral sweet spot at the beginning of COVID-19, during which the virus replicates exponentially before it triggers a strong defense response," Foxman explains.
Prior research has shown the presence of the common cold in a community can disrupt the spread of influenza outbreaks. So Foxman and the team then moved into the lab and began experimenting with human airway tissue models to find out if, and how, a rhinovirus infection can hamper the replication of SARS-CoV-2 in these early pre-symptomatic stages.
And the team’s hypothesis proved correct. When airway cells were infected with rhinovirus prior to SARS-CoV-2 exposure, interferons were primed and quickly stifled the coronavirus’s ability to replicate.
“One virus blocks the replication of an unrelated virus,” Foxman recently said in an interview with Inverse. “At first glance, it’s counterintuitive. But if the timing is right and the [SARS-CoV-2] viral load is low enough, it can happen.”
Unfortunately this doesn’t immediately offer clues to new COVID-19 treatments. While there are trials currently investigating whether infusions of interferons can help SARS-CoV-2 infected patients the treatment could be dangerous if administered too late. One feature of severe COVID-19 leading to death is an overactive immune response.
Nevertheless, these results do shed light on previously unknown ways viruses interact and interfere with one another. And this new study helps us understand why some people may ultimately present with mild or asymptomatic COVID-19 infections while others display high viral loads and end up with severe disease.
"There are hidden interactions between viruses that we don't quite understand, and these findings are a piece of the puzzle we are just now looking at," adds Foxman.
The new study was published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine.
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.
With hydrogen notoriously difficult to contain, I’m sceptical of the safety claims.
Blending Hydrogen into the Gas Network
By Li Yap Jun 15 2021
Hydrogen is seen as an essential part of the UK’s ambitious plan to implement the world’s first carbon-free gas network. Recognized as a zero or low-carbon alternative to natural gas, hydrogen has the potential to accelerate the decarbonization of the country’s gas supplies.
One-third of the UK’s carbon dioxide emissions are generated from the gas used for heating and cooking at home. With 85% of Britain’s homes connected to the gas network, a significant change is needed to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.
Without affecting the standard or level of heating at home, immediate and significant carbon savings can be expected by replacing, at least in part, some of the network’s natural gas with hydrogen.
Blending Hydrogen into the Gas Grid
At present, the hydrogen content in the UK’s gas network is limited by regulations to 0.1%. The Frontier Economics report on hydrogen blending published by Cadent states that this limit can be increased to a 20/80 blend of hydrogen/methane by volume without impacting gas pipelines or appliances. Increasing the hydrogen content to 20% could lead to an annual emissions saving of approximately 6 million tons of carbon dioxide – equivalent to removing 2.5 million cars off the roads.
With the 20% limit intended as a transitional arrangement towards a pure hydrogen or hydrogen/biomethane system in the future, ‘hydrogen-ready’ appliances are being prototyped through programs such as Hy4Heat.
Hydrogen Pilot Trials
The HyDeploy project was the first of its kind in the UK, where 20% hydrogen was injected into the private gas network at the Keele University campus. The project was carried out with approval from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), which considered the blend to be as safe as the natural gas currently used in the UK. This live pilot successfully demonstrated the safety and technical case for hydrogen blending as the residents could use their existing appliances as normal without any adverse impact.
The next trial will see the 20% hydrogen mix introduced to the public network to demonstrate that hydrogen blending can occur safely at scale without disruption to end-users. Starting in 2021, the test area of Winlaton will undergo trials with this mix for around 10 months. The results from this demonstration will be critical in helping the government make strategic decisions on the long-term role of hydrogen in the UK’s energy mix. Subject to successful tests and trials, the UK government and HSE aim to increase the hydrogen blend limit on the network to 20% by 2023.
More
https://www.azocleantech.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=1249
Inflation makes the wealthiest people richer and the masses poorer.
James Cook.
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