Baltic Dry Index. 2669 +188 Brent Crude 72.26
Spot Gold 1900
Coronavirus Cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,100
Coronavirus Cases 11/06/21 World 175,622,445
Deaths 3,788,723
“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?”
The G-7, with apologies to Alice.
In our ever more Kafkaesque world, all the global free Magic Money Tree money created since March 2020, has all but broken the US and global economy.
While the G-7 Great Leaders slum it in 5 star luxury in North Korean style isolation from the populace of Cornwall, pondering on how to protect planet earth from the rest of us and how to force us into using fatally flawed for most of us Electric Vehicles, the global economy is breaking apart, inflation, especially food inflation, is soaring. Cost push inflation has joined demand pull inflation in a race towards eventual fiat currency revulsion.
Social disorder lies right around the next corner, just don’t tell anyone at the Great Leaders Dreamers Slummit.
Up first, Wall Street MMT inflation heads for a new record.
Asia-Pacific stocks mixed as S&P 500 sails to record close on Wall Street
SINGAPORE — Shares in Asia-Pacific were mixed in Friday afternoon trade, following gains overnight on Wall Street that saw the S&P 500 sailing to a record closing high.
Stocks in Japan were little changed as the Nikkei 225 hovered above the flatline while the Topix sat about 0.1% lower. Over in South Korea, the Kospi edged 0.6% higher.
Mainland Chinese stocks declined as the Shanghai composite fell 0.25% while the Shenzhen component slipped 0.515%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index advanced 0.39%.
Shares in Australia were higher as the S&P/ASX 200 climbed 0.31%.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan advanced 0.35%.
Overnight stateside, the S&P 500 rose nearly 0.5% to a record closing high of 4,239.18. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 19.1 points to 34,466.24 while the Nasdaq Composite gained 0.78% to 14,020.33.
The gains came on the back of the release of a closely-watched U.S. inflation report. U.S. consumer prices jumped 5% in May — the fastest pace since August 2008 — the U.S. Labor Department reported Thursday. That was higher than a gain of 4.7% forecasted by economists surveyed by Dow Jones.
The U.S. dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of its peers, was at 89.991 after swinging around the 90 level for much of this week.
The Japanese yen traded at 109.39 per dollar, stronger than levels above 109.6 seen against the greenback yesterday. The Australian dollar changed hands at $0.7752, as compared with levels around $0.776 seen earlier in the trading week.
Oil prices were lower in the afternoon of Asia trading hours, with international benchmark Brent crude futures down 0.48% to $72.17 per barrel. U.S. crude futures shed 0.48% to $72.17 per barrel.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/11/asia-markets-sp-500-record-close-us-inflation-currencies-oil.html
Consumer prices jump 5% in May, fastest pace since the summer of 2008
Published Thu, Jun 10 2021 8:31 AM EDT
Consumer prices for May accelerated at their fastest pace in nearly 13 years as inflation pressures continued to build in the U.S. economy, the Labor Department reported Thursday.
The consumer price index, which represents a basket including food, energy, groceries, housing costs and sales across a spectrum of goods, rose 5% from a year earlier. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been expecting a gain of 4.7%.
The reading represented the biggest CPI gain since the 5.3% increase in August 2008, just before the financial crisis sent the U.S. spiraling into the worst recession since the Great Depression.
Though the inflation readings are well above anything seen since the 2008-09 financial crisis, the Federal Reserve has been largely dismissive of the numbers. Central bank officials believe the current rise is due to temporary factors that will abate as the year goes on and look higher because of comparisons to the year-ago period, when much of the economic activity remained restricted due to pandemic precautions.
Consequently, market participants generally do not expect to see the Fed react to the latest numbers when the policymaking Federal Open Market Committee meets next week.
“The strength in the top line indices was driven largely by categories that have been heavily disrupted by COVID and remain under pressure from supply chain disruptions,” wrote Eric Wingorad, senior economist at Alliance Bernstein. “The more persistent categories of inflation — the ones that do a better job of capturing the sustainable trend—are significantly more subdued. That means that the details of today’s print continue to support the idea that the spike in inflation is transitory, even if it is more intense than most forecasters (myself included) would originally have anticipated.”
Used cars and truck prices continued their climb higher, rising 7.3% on the month and 29.7% for the past 12 months. The new vehicles index increased 1.6%, its biggest-single month gain since October 2009 and was up 3.3% for the 12-month period, the highest move since November 2011.
However, the energy index was about flat for the month despite the huge runup in gasoline prices this year, while the food index repeated its April rise of 0.4%.
----A separate gauge that excludes volatile food and energy prices increased 3.8%, vs the Dow Jones estimate of 3.5% for so-called core inflation. That was the fastest pace since May 1992.
Another report released Thursday showed that jobless claims for the week ended June 5 came in at 376,000. The estimate was 370,000. The total still marked the lowest of the pandemic era.
More
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/10/cpi-may-2021.html
Federal Taxes, Spending and Deficit All Set Records Through May
By Terence P. Jeffrey | June 10, 2021 | 4:01pm EDT
(CNSNews.com) - The federal government set new records in the taxes it collected, the spending it engaged in and the deficit it ran through the first eight months of fiscal 2021 (October through May), according to the Monthly Treasury Statement.
Federal taxes hit a record $2,606,879,000,000 while federal spending climbed to $4,670,668,000,000, resulting in a federal deficit of $2,063,789,000,000.
When the historical October-through-May tax revenues are adjusted for inflation into May 2021 dollars (using the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator), the second-highest tax revenues for the October-through-May period came in fiscal 2016. That year the Treasury collected $2,397,198,010,000 in total tax revenues (in constant May 2021 dollars) in the first eight months of the fiscal year.
When the October-through-May spending numbers are adjusted into May 2021 dollars, the second-highest spending during that period came in fiscal 2020, when the Treasury spent $4,094,228,390,000 (in constant May 2021 dollars) in the first eight months of the fiscal year.
When the October-through-May deficit numbers are adjusted into May 2021 dollars, the second-highest deficit also came in fiscal 2020, when the federal government ran a deficit of $1,974,173,660,000 in the first eight months of the fiscal year.
Table 9 of the Monthly Treasury Statement, which lists tax receipts by source and expenditures by function, lists the largest spending category so far in this fiscal year as “income security.” The federal government has laid out $1,273,013,000,000 for this function in the October-through-May period.
The House Budget Committee describes “income security” spending as follows: “Function 600 (Income Security) consists of programs that keep Americans healthy and safe, separated into six categories: general retirement and disability insurance, federal employee retirement and disability (including military retirement); unemployment compensation; housing assistance; nutrition assistance; and other income security, which includes programs like foster care, Supplemental Security Income, and the earned income and child tax credits.”
In addition to the $1,273,013,000,000 that the Monthly Treasury Statement says the federal government has spent so far this fiscal year on “income security,” the government has also spent $749,551,000,000 on Social Security and $454,873,000,000 on Medicare.
Next, China says anything you can do, we can do too, and better. Does this all end in World War Three?
China passes law to retaliate against foreign sanctions
Thursday 10 June 2021 9:39 am
China has passed a law today that will allow it to counter foreign sanctions, according to state broadcaster China Centra Television (CCTV).
The bill was passed by China’s National People’s Congress (NPC) standing committee after a second review, after a secret first review in April.
Little is yet known of the law, but it comes after a slew of sanctions against Beijing’s treatment of Uighers, Tibetans and those in Hong Kong.
It is thought that the law will offer a legal framework through which China can retaliate sanctions.
It may also allow Chinese firms to seek compensation over foreign sanctions, which means it could even extend to sanctioned public officials.
Government advisers say Beijing pushed the pedal on the plans after US president Joe Biden failed to take a softer stance on China than former president Donald Trump, sources told the South China Morning Post.
The sources added that talks began last year during Trump’s presidency, but said Beijing was eyeing signs that the White House would foster a different approach towards its human rights treatment.
Just last week, a London tribunal heard that around 1m people, mostly Muslim Uighurs of the Xinjiang region, are thought to have been detained inside “re-education camps”.
The UK joined the EU and the US in applying sanctions against four senior Chinese officials and one Chinese agency involved in human rights abuses against Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang in March.
The government also unveiled a raft of asset freezes and travel bans against the Chinese officials over their treatment of Uighur Muslims in the northwestern Chinese province.
More
https://www.cityam.com/china-passes-law-to-retaliate-against-foreign-sanctions/
“Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
Alice.
Global Inflation Watch.
Given our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians, inflation now needs an entire section of its own.
Latest economic figures shows Bidenomics is not working
By Charles Gasparino June 10, 2021 | 4:30pm
The Biden Administration keeps insisting inflation is “transient,” but there are now real signs inflation is here and possibly for the long haul.
Thursday’s consumer price index increase of 5 percent year-on-year — its highest level in 13 years — is the latest and most visible piece of evidence that this scourge is making a comeback.
And it’s not like we weren’t warned you this was coming. If you grew up in the 1970s (as I did) you might recall long gas lines, consumers goods too expensive to afford. and something called Hamburger Helper — which people used to stretch ground beef because meat was so expensive. Inflation is a regressive tax that hits hardest at working class and poor Americans.
Inflation can be caused because the Federal Reserve keeps interest rates too low for too long, or due to massive government expenditures on stuff like infrastructure and cradle-to-grave welfare payments.
Today we have both — on steroids. The Fed has kept interest rates at zero for more than a year because of COVID shutdowns, and the Biden Administration can’t spend money fast enough.
Reality check: The COVID shutdowns are nearly over, and many were regionally based to begin with (Florida and Texas have been open for months). That’s why when you talk to most mainstream economists, they will tell you Biden and Powell are throwing money at a problem that doesn’t exist.
They are spending so much money on unemployment benefits that it’s keeping people out of the work force, despite companies desperate to hire.
Biden is playing with fire, both economically and politically. Again. I remember the 1970s and the reason Jimmy Carter was a one-term president. Then-Fed chairman Paul Volcker induced a recession to cure massive inflation during the Carter presidency, all but guaranteeing Ronald Reagan’s victory and his free-market revolution.
More
https://nypost.com/2021/06/10/latest-economic-figures-shows-bidenomics-is-not-working/
‘Impotent’ Fed policy will fail to contain 1970s-type inflation, investor Peter Boockvar predicts
Published Wed, Jun 9 2021 7:31 PM EDT
Most people want to forget this part of the 1970s.
But inflation is back, and investor Peter Boockvar predicts it will be the most widespread in decades.
“Monetary policy ... is right now impotent in its ability to stimulate economic activity,” the Bleakley Advisory Group chief investment officer told CNBC’s “Trading Nation” on Wednesday.
Boockvar warns the issue is particularly evident in the housing market, which is the most sensitive to changes in rates.
“We are at a point where very low interest rates are no longer stimulative to the housing market,” he said. “On the purchase side, we know the dearth of inventories and sticker-shock price increases are slowing the pace of transactions.”
Boockvar, a CNBC contributor, also points to the refinancing rate. According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, fewer people are refinancing. Last week, total mortgage application volume dropped 3.1%, it reported.
---- Boockvar went on inflation watch in the middle of last year. On “Trading Nation” in August, he said significant progress on the Covid-19 vaccine front would ultimately spark sharp demand. As a result, inflation would break out.
So, can anything be done right now to contain inflation?
“The Fed knows how to tackle it,” he said. “It’s just a question of whether they have the guts to do so.”
Boockvar doubts the Fed will end quantitative easing or hike interest rates sooner than Wall Street anticipates because of the likely fallout on the stock market and economy.
“I’m in the camp that it [inflation] lasts longer than others think,” said Boockvar, who suggests higher prices will hit almost every corner of the economy. Once businesses hike prices, he warns, they don’t recede at a flick of a switch.
Due to inflation pressures, he anticipates the benchmark 10-year Treasury Note yield will break above 2% before year’s end.
“That will create its own hurdles for the stock market,” Boockvar said. “The stock market has rallied here of late, and it’s back to highs because of the pullback in yields.”
From Beans to Burgers, Food Is Getting More Expensive
Chipotle, Shake Shack and Piggly Wiggly are all raising prices to cover higher costs
Updated June 10, 2021 4:11 pm ET
Soup, Spam and Shake Shack SHAK -1.24% burgers are all getting more expensive as food companies pass along higher costs to consumers.
General Mills Inc., GIS 0.72% Campbell Soup Co. CPB -0.44% , Unilever UL 0.95% PLC, and J.M. Smucker Co. SJM -0.21% are among food makers raising prices at supermarkets. Restaurants including Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. CMG 1.21% and Cracker Barrel Old Country Store Inc. CBRL -1.71% have raised menu prices. Executives say they expect more price increases this summer as costs remain elevated for labor, commodities and transport.
“We’re in a period of unprecedented commodity inflation,” Unilever Chief Executive Officer Alan Jope told investors Monday. He said Unilever would recover some of those costs in part by selling smaller packages of some foods at the same price as a larger size.
Higher prices on grocery-store shelves and restaurant menus are part of a broader rise in inflation. U.S. consumer prices surged 5% in May from a year ago to reach the highest annual inflation rate in nearly 13 years.
More expensive used cars and trucks fueled the increase, according to Labor Department data, and prices for furniture and airfare also jumped. Food prices are rising because of the higher costs for labor and transport but also ingredients including corn, soybean oil and wheat. Rising meat prices got another bump up last week when a ransomware attack briefly knocked offline JBS SA plants that process nearly a quarter of U.S. beef and a fifth of chicken and pork.
More
https://www.wsj.com/articles/from-beans-to-burgers-food-is-getting-more-expensive-11623344185
G-20 GDP returns to pre-pandemic levels, with China seeing a massive rebound
Published Thu, Jun 10 2021 6:14 AM EDT
The Group of Twenty (G-20) economies saw gross domestic product return to pre-pandemic levels in the first quarter of 2021, but with large differences emerging between nations.
GDP of the G-20 area grew by 0.8% in the first quarter, compared with the fourth quarter of 2020, according to the latest data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development released Thursday.
Year-on-year GDP growth for the G-20 area rebounded to 3.4% in the first quarter of 2021, following a contraction of 0.7% in the previous quarter.
China, where the coronavirus pandemic first emerged, recorded the highest annual growth (18.3%), while the U.K. recorded the largest annual fall (minus 6.1%).
Europe fared particularly badly in the first quarter, a period when a third wave of Covid infections swept the region, in contrast with other countries.
India, Turkey and China (whose GDP was already above pre-pandemic levels in the previous quarter) continued to see a recovery in the first quarter of 2021, growing by 2.1%, 1.7% and 0.6%, respectively.
In addition, Australia, South Korea and Brazil saw growth return to pre-pandemic levels in the first quarter.
But for the remaining G-20 economies, GDP is still lagging behind pre-pandemic levels, with countries recording startling divergences in the first quarter of 2021.
While GDP growth accelerated in the United States (to 1.6%, after 1.1% in the fourth quarter of 2020) and Italy, growth slowed in Indonesia, Canada, South Africa and Mexico.
More
“I'm not crazy, my reality is just different than yours”
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
India reports more than 6,000 daily Covid deaths — highest ever in the world
Published Thu, Jun 10 2021 2:14 AM EDT
India’s daily reported death toll from the coronavirus crisis reached a record high on Thursday, with more than 6,000 people succumbing to the disease.
That surpassed a record number of daily fatalities reported by the United States this year.
India’s health ministry data showed 6,148 Covid-related deaths were recorded over a 24-hour period, as daily reported cases remained below 100,000 for the third consecutive day
The fatalities rose after one of India’s poorest states, Bihar, revised its total Covid-19 related death toll on Wednesday from about 5,400 to more than 9,400, accounting for people who died at home or in private hospitals, Reuters reported.
India is fighting a devastating second wave of outbreak that started in February and accelerated in April and early May, which overwhelmed the country’s health-care infrastructure. The sector struggled with shortages of beds, oxygen and medication while many doctors and other health-care workers succumbed to the disease.
While cases peaked in early May, government officials have sounded the alarm over a potential third wave that could hit the country later this year.
Experts say that ramping up the vaccination program is the way forward for India, both to bring its economy out of the Covid crisis and to mitigate the effects of a third wave. But the rollout, which began in January, faced problems including a vaccine shortage, resulting in less than 5% of the population so far receiving both doses.
The government estimates that more than 2 billion doses of vaccine could be available by December as more vaccine candidates are expected to receive regulatory approval. Prime Minister Narendra Modi this week said that India will provide free Covid-19 vaccines to all adults.
India has reported more than 29 million cases and over 353,000 deaths since the pandemic began last year.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/10/india-covid-crisis-more-than-6000-deaths-recorded-in-24-hours.html
Asia welcomes US vaccine donations amid cold storage worries
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Health officials and experts in Asia have welcomed U.S. plans to share 500 million more doses of the Pfizer vaccine with the developing world, but some say it would take more than donations alone to address huge vaccination gaps that threaten to prolong the pandemic.
President Joe Biden was set to make the announcement Thursday in a speech before the start of the Group of Seven summit in Britain. Two hundred million doses — enough to fully protect 100 million people — will be provided this year, with the balance donated in the first half of 2022, according to the White House.
Jaehun Jung, a professor of preventive medicine at South Korea’s Gachon University College of Medicine, said the U.S. donations may prove to be a “huge turning point” in the global fight against COVID-19, but also lamented that the help didn’t come earlier.
He said the extremely cold storage temperatures required for Pfizer shots would also present challenges for countries with poor health systems and infrastructure and called on U.S. officials and the drugmaker to help those nations overcome these challenges. Partially because of these concerns, many of the vaccines currently being used in the developing world are shots that have simpler storage requirements, such as AstraZeneca’s.
As richer countries have rushed to vaccinate wide swath of their populations, inequities in vaccine supplies around the world have become more pronounced — with some poorer nations yet to administer a single dose. At the same time, there’s increasing concern over newer virus variants emerging from areas with consistently high COVID-19 circulation.
More
J&J CEO says people will likely need Covid vaccine with annual flu shot for next several years as variants spread
Published Wed, Jun 9 2021 10:16 AM EDT Updated Wed, Jun 9 2021 3:02 PM EDT
Johnson & Johnson CEO Alex Gorsky reiterated Wednesday that people will likely need to receive additional doses of the Covid-19 vaccines alongside the annual flu shot for the next “several years.”
People will need to get the Covid booster shots until herd immunity is achieved on a global level and world leaders and scientists are able to limit the spread of highly contagious variants, Gorsky said during The Wall Street Journal’s Tech Health conference.
“We could be looking at this tagging along with the flu shot, likely over the next several years,” he said, referring to the Covid vaccines.
His comments come a day after U.S. health officials urged Americans to get vaccinated to keep the Delta variant, first identified in India, from proliferating across the country.
J&J’s vaccine requires just one jab, unlike Pfizer’s and Moderna’s Covid vaccines, which currently require two doses given three to four weeks apart. All three vaccines have been shown to be highly effective against Covid, though executives now say they expect that strong protection to wane over time.
As a result, most drugmakers and some scientists now say people will likely need a booster shot of the Covid vaccines and possibly additional shots each year, just like for the seasonal flu.
BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin told CNBC in a recent interview that researchers are seeing a decline in antibody responses against the virus after eight months.
Gorsky has previously stated that people will likely need to get Covid shots annually.
During the Journal’s event Wednesday, Gorsky said the company is looking for new partners as it develops vaccines that target variants
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.
1,000-foot multi-rotor floating Windcatchers to power 80,000 homes each
Loz Blain June 07, 2021
Norway's Wind Catching Systems (WCS) has made a spectacular debut with a colossal floating wind turbine array it says can generate five times the annual energy of the world's biggest single turbines – while reducing costs enough to be immediately competitive with grid prices.
Standing more than 1,000 ft (324 m) high, these mammoth Windcatcher grids would deploy multiple smaller turbines (no less than 117 in the render images) in a staggered formation atop a floating platform moored to the ocean floor using established practices from the oil and gas industry.
Just one of these arrays, says WCS, could offer double the swept area of the world's biggest conventional wind turbines – the 15 MW Vestas V236 – and its smaller rotors could perform much better in wind speeds over 40 to 43 km/h (25 to 27 mph), when larger turbines tend to start pitching their blades to limit production and protect themselves from damage. The overall effect, says WCS, is a 500 percent boost in annual energy output, with each array making enough power to run 80,000 European homes.
Rather than using massive single components, these Windcatchers are built with smaller pieces that are much easier to work with. Once the floating base is installed, most of the rest can be done on deck, without cranes or specialized vessels, and the grid design allows easy access for ongoing maintenance. WCS says these arrays are ready for a 50-year service life, as opposed to the 30 years of a single large turbine.
The company says it's ready to start delivering offshore wind power on debut at grid parity – meaning at a levelized cost of energy (LCOE, taking capital costs into account) matching or beating the price of grid power. In Norway and the USA, that currently averages out at about US$105 per megawatt-hour. The US Energy Information Administration currently projects the capacity-weighted LCOE of new offshore wind assets coming online in 2026 to average $115.04 per megawatt-hour, with some regions capable of getting that under US$100.
So this will still be a relatively expensive way to generate electricity, especially compared to land-based wind and solar, but it could still be a cost saver for offshore wind. And WCS says its projections are based on an initial installation size that it believes will become significantly more economical as it scales up.
The company has the backing of investment companies North Energy and Ferd, and has developed the technology in conjunction with offshore wind supplier Aibel and the IFE Institute for Energy Technology.
WCS has not yet released further details about prototypes or first installations, so while it does have the appearance of a legit technology, it seems we'll have to wait some time before it proves its claims.
Source: Wind Catching Systems
https://newatlas.com/energy/wind-catching-systems-multirotor-turbine/
Another weekend, and what will our Great Leaders cook up for the rest of us at their slummit? Nothing good I’ll bet. Just more regulations, taxes, hot air over man made global warming, threats to Russia, China and a handful of other nations, topped off with massive dollops of mutual admiration. Have a great weekend everyone.
“When I used to read fairy-tales, I fancied that kind of thing never happened, and now here I am in the middle of one!”
President Biden, with apologies to Lewis Carroll and Alice.
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