Baltic Dry Index. 3059 +20 Brent Crude 68.66
Spot Gold 1817
Coronavirus Cases 02/04/20
World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,100
Coronavirus Cases 20/07/21
World 191,733,410
Deaths 4,113,054
The Democratic president said his plans to invest more
in infrastructure, as well as better care for older people and children, would
help reduce inflationary pressures in the future by boosting productivity.
“These steps will enhance our productivity, raising
wages without raising prices,” he said. “It will take the pressure off of
inflation, give a boost to our workforce which leads to lower prices in the
years ahead.”
President
Biden.
Well, if Chief
Economist, President “Honest” Joe Biden says so, it must be true, right?
But what if somehow he’s
wrong, and “infrastructure” projects like bribing voters with free “better care
for older people and children” plus “raising wages,” doesn’t “enhance
productivity” enough to stop prices rising?
After all, classical
economics suggests just the opposite, and that everywhere socialist free money
for all policies have been put in place to bribe the voters, it somehow or
other never worked out as promised.
Not to worry though, “this
time it’s different,” right.
Well maybe, maybe
not.
Global stock casinos
yesterday and this morning, seem to have other things on their mind.
Better send for Fed
Chairman Powell’s, NY Fed Plunge Protection Team ASAP. After all, the “independent”
Fed central bank wouldn’t want to destroy President Biden’s Utopia even before
it got started.
Stocks falter as virus outbreaks
fan global recovery fears July
20, 2021
3:19 AM
HONG KONG (Reuters) - Asian stocks
were down early on Tuesday as growing fears the spreading Delta variant of the
coronavirus would harm the global economic recovery sent riskier assets,
including oil, skidding sharply.
MSCI’s gauge of Asia Pacific stocks
outside Japan fell as much as 0.29%, with Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 down
0.39%.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 hit a six-month
low in early trade and widened the losses to 1.05%.
The Hang Seng Index opened 0.3%
lower and China’s benchmark CSI300 Index slid 0.7% at the start.
In Beijing, policymakers kept the
benchmark lending rate for corporate and household loans unchanged at its July
fixing on Tuesday, despite growing expectations for a cut after a surprise
lowering of bank reserve requirements.
“The markets are clearly on risk-off
mode,” said Edison Pun, senior market analyst at Saxo Markets, adding that Wall
Street’s uptrend is weakening.
Stocks on Wall Street fell as much
as 2% on Monday, with the Dow posting its worst day in nine months as COVID-19
deaths increased in the United States.
Riskier assets globally have come
under pressure recently as many countries struggle to contain the outbreak of
the fast-spreading Delta virus variant, raising fears that further lockdowns
and other restrictions could upend the worldwide economic recovery.
“Despite the vaccine rollout,
markets do not appear to be learning to live with COVID-19,” ANZ analysts wrote
in a note to clients.
“Sentiment appears to have shifted,
at least for the moment, to a persuasion that growth and earnings expectations
may be overdone,” they said, noting that risk-averse investors were bailing out
of commodities.
Oil prices plunged more than 6%,
driven down both by worries about future demand and by an OPEC+ agreement to
increase supply. U.S. yields turned higher on Tuesday following Monday’s
searing rally. The 10-year yield rose to 1.2087% from a close of 1.181%, a
level last seen in February, and the 2-year yield edged up to 0.2196% from
0.21% Tuesday.
However, while the U.S. yield curve
steepened slightly, the spread between the U.S. 10-year and 2-year yield
remained near February lows, signalling investor doubts about the growth
outlook.
Japan’s core consumer prices rose
0.2% in June from a year earlier to mark the fastest annual pace in over a
year, driven largely by higher energy costs, a sign the impact of global
commodity inflation was gradually broadening.
More
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-markets/stocks-falter-as-virus-outbreaks-fan-global-recovery-fears-idUSKBN2EQ064
Dow tumbles 700 points for its
worst drop since October as investors fear a Covid resurgence Updated
Mon, Jul 19 2021 6:48 PM EDT
U.S. stocks fell aggressively
Monday on concern a rebound in Covid cases would slow global economic growth.
The selling picked up as the session went on, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average had
its worst day since last October.
The Dow dropped 725.81 points, or 2.1%, to 33,962.04 in a
broad-based rout that sent all 30 members lower. At one point during the
session, the Dow was down 946 points before recovering some ground into the
close.
The S&P 500
fell 1.6% to 4,258.49. Energy, financials and industrials were the
worst-performing sectors.
The tech-dominated Nasdaq Composite slid 1.1% to
14,274.98, posting its fifth-straight day of losses and worst losing streak
since October.
The 10-year
Treasury yield reached a five-month low of 1.17%, exacerbating fears
about the slowing economy. The small-cap Russell 2000 dropped 1.5% and
briefly dipped into correction territory on an intraday basis - down more than
10% from its March high.
“You have two concerns coming together ... concerns about
market technicals and concerns about growth,” Allianz chief economic advisor
Mohamed El-Erian told CNBC’s “Squawk
Box ” on Monday. “That’s what all the asset classes are telling you.”
Covid cases have rebounded in the U.S. this month, with the
delta variant spreading among the unvaccinated. The U.S. is averaging nearly
26,000 new cases a day in the last seven days through Sunday, up from a
seven-day average of around 11,000 cases a day a month ago, according to CDC data . Cases were already flaring up around
the world because of the delta variant.
The Cboe
Volatility Index surged as high as 25 amid the broad market
sell-off, its highest level since May. The so-called fear gauge looks at
prices of options on the S&P 500 to track the level of fear on Wall Street.
Airlines got hit as investors reassessed whether travel
among consumers would live up to high expectations, with shares of Delta and
American sinking about 4% each. United lost 5%.
Key stocks linked to global economic growth also fell.
Boeing shed 5%, and General Motors and Caterpillar dropped about 2% each.
“The market appears ready to take on a more defensive
character as we experience a meaningful deceleration in earnings and economic
growth,” Morgan Stanley chief U.S. equity strategist Mike Wilson said
in a note Monday . “Market breadth has been deteriorating for months and is
just another confirmation of the mid-cycle transition, in our view. It usually
ends with a material (10-20%) index level correction.”
More
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/18/stock-market-futures-open-to-close-news.html
In
other news, now even Japan has inflation!
Japan’s core inflation hits
15-month high on energy costs Published
Mon, Jul 19 2021 11:02 PM EDT
Japan’s core consumer prices rose 0.2% in June from a year
earlier to mark the fastest annual pace
But the increase, driven largely by higher energy costs,
was much smaller than that of other major economies due to weak consumption,
reinforcing expectations the Bank of Japan will be forced to maintain its massive
stimulus for the time being.
The rise in the core consumer price index (CPI), which
includes oil products but excludes volatile fresh food prices, matched a median
market forecast for a 0.2% gain and followed a 0.1% increase in May. It was the
fastest annual pace since a 0.4% gain marked in March 2020.
Some countries, including the United
States and Britain, have seen inflation rise faster than expected as demand
recovers from the coronavirus pandemic, triggering debate on how quickly they
should wean their economies off stimulus.
While global commodity inflation has
pushed up wholesale prices in Japan, consumer prices have barely risen as
companies remain cautious about passing on higher costs to households.
A resurgence in Covid-19 infections
forced the government to impose new state of emergency curbs in Olympic host
city Tokyo from Monday through August 22, dashing policymakers’ hope for a
solid rebound in economic growth in July-September.
In fresh quarterly projections
released on Friday, the BOJ cut its economic growth forecast for the fiscal
year ending in March 2022 to 3.8% from 4.0% due in part to the new curbs.
It revised up this year’s core CPI
forecast to 0.6% from 0.1% largely reflecting the boost from higher energy
prices.
More
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/20/japans-core-inflation-hits-15-month-high-on-energy-costs.html
There can be few fields of human
endeavour in which history counts for so little as in the world of finance.
Past experience, to the extent that it is part of memory at all, is dismissed
as the primitive refuge of those who do not have the insight to appreciate the
incredible wonders of the present.
John
Kenneth Galbraith.
Global Inflation
Watch. Given our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our
spendthrift politicians, inflation now needs an entire section of its own.
Biden says inflation temporary;
Fed should do what it deems necessary for recovery July 19, 2021
5:14 PM
WASHINGTON
(Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday said an increase in prices was
expected to be temporary, but his administration understood that unchecked
inflation over the longer term would pose a “real challenge” to the economy and
would remain vigilant.
Biden said he told Federal Reserve
Board Chair Jerome Powell recently that the Fed was independent and should take
whatever steps it deems necessary to support a strong, durable recovery.
“As our economy comes roaring back,
we’ve seen some price increases,” Biden said, while rejecting concerns the
recent increases could be a sign of persistent inflation.
He said his administration was doing
all it could to address supply chain bottlenecks that had pushed up the price
of cars, and noted that lumber prices were now easing after spiking higher
early in the recovery.
“I want to be clear: my
administration understands that were we ever to experience unchecked inflation
in the long term, that would pose a real challenge for our economy,” he said.
“While we’re confident that isn’t what we’re seeing today, we’re going to
remain vigilant about any response that is needed.”
Biden said he had also made that
point clear to Powell: “The Fed is independent. It should take whatever steps
it deems necessary to support a strong, durable economic recovery.”
Growing concerns about inflation
dragged U.S. consumer sentiment in early July to its lowest level in five
months, a survey showed Friday, after a 0.9% jump in consumer prices in June,
the biggest increase in 13 years, but economists continue to believe that
higher inflation is transitory.
more.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-biden-economy/biden-says-inflation-temporary-fed-should-do-what-it-deems-necessary-for-recovery-idUSKBN2EP1PG
Surging inflation to add £10bn to
government's debt burden Monday 19 July 2021 7:57
am
Surging inflation is likely to add £10bn to the
government’s debt burden, putting further pressure on the UK’s public finances.
Around a quarter of the government’s stock of debt is
linked to the retail price index, meaning the Treasury needs to increase
interest payments to savers if prices rise.
Read more: UK
inflation hits 2.5 per cent in June
The government is on the hook for around £460bn of
inflation-linked debt, highlighting the scale of extra money Rishi Sunak will
have to find if inflation continues to surge.
Prices in June increased 3.9 per cent annually, but
analysts expect the RPI to rise further as the severe supply and demand
imbalances across the global economy pushes up costs.
Analysts at investment banks including Barclays and Bank of
America expect RPI to reach at least 4 per cent this year.
The Office for Budget Responsibility, the government’s
fiscal watchdog, predicts RPI to hit 3.1 per cent in the second quarter of this
year.
Martin Beck, senior economic advisor to the EY Item Club,
said: “What had been a brighter outlook for the public finances now faces a
threat from rising
inflation and the risk that interest rates might rise sooner than
expected.”
https://www.cityam.com/surging-inflation-to-add-10bn-to-governments-debt-burden/
BoE's Haskel sees no need to curb
stimulus in foreseeable future July 19, 2021 11:46 AM
LONDON (Reuters) - Bank of England
interest-rate setter Jonathan Haskel said reducing stimulus was not the right
option for the foreseeable future, despite rising inflation, distancing himself
from two colleagues who last week said tighter policy might be needed.
“In the immediate term, the risk of
a pre-emptive monetary tightening curtailing the recovery continues to outweigh
the risk of a temporary period of above-target inflation,” Haskel, a member of
the BoE’s Monetary Policy Committee, said in a speech during an event organised
by the University of Liverpool.
“For the foreseeable future, in my
view, tight policy isn’t the right policy.”
The value of sterling slipped after
Haskel’s comments and British government bond prices rose to a day’s high.
Last week, two other MPC members
said the time might be nearing for the BoE to rein in the huge stimulus
programme it deployed last year to steer the British economy through the
coronavirus pandemic.
Haskel said inflation was likely to
exceed 3% by the end of the year - well above the BoE’s 2% target - but that
this would probably be fleeting due to the effect of a one-off rise in energy
prices and comparing prices now with the deep economic slump of 2020.
More
https://www.reuters.com/article/britain-boe-haskel/update-1-boes-haskel-sees-no-need-to-curb-stimulus-in-foreseeable-future-idUSL8N2OV289
Below, why a “green energy” economy may not be possible
anyway, and if it is, it won’t be quick and it will be very inflationary,
setting off a new long-term commodity Supercycle. Probably the largest seen so
far.
The “New Energy Economy”: An Exercise in Magical
Thinking
https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/sites/default/files/R-0319-MM.pdf
Mines, Minerals, and "Green" Energy: A
Reality Check
https://www.manhattan-institute.org/mines-minerals-and-green-energy-reality-check
Covid-19 Corner This
section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
Tokyo organisers insist Olympic
Village 'safe place to stay' Issued on: 19/07/2021 -
08:56
Tokyo Games organisers insisted
Monday that the Olympic Village is "a safe place to stay", as fears
of a coronavirus cluster emerged just days before the opening ceremony.
Two South African footballers and a
video analyst tested positive for the coronavirus at the Village, organisers
announced Sunday.
And a further 21 players and staff
members of the South African squad were designated close contacts on Monday,
just three days before their first match.
But Games organisers played down the
risk of a cluster emerging, saying there have been "no significant
bumps" so far.
"The IOC and Tokyo 2020 are
absolutely clear that the Olympic Village is a safe place to stay," Tokyo
2020 spokesperson Masa Takaya told reporters.
"The important thing, I have to
tell you, is about the response to the positive cases."
Takaya said there have been 61
positive cases connected to the pandemic-postponed Games so far.
But that represents only a fraction
of the thousands of tests carried out, he added.
"We cannot say there will be no
positive cases within the Olympic committee, given the situation that we have a
massive number of people engaged within this project," said Takaya.
"But there are no significant
bumps, in terms of the positivity rate, compared to the same number found in
any other place."
Organisers said the 21 members of
the South African squad have been asked to stay in their rooms at the Olympic
Village, after two players and a video analyst tested positive for the virus.
The three were the first confirmed
cases among teams at the Olympic Village.
The Czech Olympic Committee said
Monday that beach volleyball player Ondrej Perusic had tested positive for
Covid-19 in the Village, which would be a fourth case.
More
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20210719-tokyo-organisers-insist-olympic-village-safe-place-to-stay
New long COVID studies warn we're
still in “uncharted territory” By Rich Haridy July
18, 2021
With
successful vaccines helping prevent hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19
scientists are racing to understand the long-term effects of this novel
disease. Dubbed "long COVID", a handful of new studies are beginning
to shed light on this unusual chronic condition, highlight who is more
susceptible and what kind of symptoms are most common.
A
new study led by researchers at University College London is
presenting the largest investigation into the symptoms of long COVID conducted
to date. The research surveyed nearly 4,000 long COVID subjects spanning 56
countries.
“While there has been a lot of public discussion around
long COVID, there are few systematic studies investigating this population;
hence relatively little is known about its range of symptoms, and their
progression over time, the severity, and expected clinical course (longevity),
its impact on daily functioning, and expected return to baseline health,” says senior author Athena Akrami .
The research focused on those initial COVID-19 cases,
diagnosed early in 2020. All participants were over the age of 18 and suffered
from symptoms lasting at least 28 days.
A striking 203 different symptoms
were identified in the study, the most common matching prior long COVID studies
– fatigue, brain fog and reductions in exercise capacity. But a huge array of
diverse symptoms were also reported, including sexual dysfunction, shingles and
bladder issues.
“Headaches, insomnia, vertigo,
neuralgia, neuropsychiatric changes, tremors, sensitivity to noise and light,
hallucinations (olfactory and other), tinnitus, and other sensorimotor symptoms
were also all common, and may point to larger neurological issues involving
both the central and peripheral nervous system,” notes Akrami.
Only 6.8 percent of the entire
cohort had completely recovered and were symptom-free by the time the study was
completed. The vast majority of long COVID patients surveyed (89.1 percent)
reported exercise or stress as the primary trigger for symptom relapses, and
almost half of the cohort were working less than they were pre-illness.
Although this new study offers a comprehensive insight into
the characteristics of long COVID, it doesn’t investigate how common the
condition is. However, its prevalence seems to be closely connected to the
severity of the first few weeks of infection.
University of Birmingham researchers have suggested those COVID-19 patients
suffering from five or more symptoms in their first week of infection are the
cohort most likely to suffer from long COVID. This finding is irrespective of
age or gender.
More
https://newatlas.com/health-wellbeing/new-study-long-covid-symptoms-coronavirus/?utm_source=New+Atlas+Subscribers&utm_campaign=f6400f3798-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2021_07_19_08_44&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_65b67362bd-f6400f3798-90625829
Senegal sees dramatic COVID-19
surge as major holiday looms By CARLEY PETESCH
and YESICA FISCH July 18, 2021
BARGNY,
Senegal (AP) — Adama Ndiaye got up before dawn to travel about 25 miles (40
kilometers), hoping that she would be able to get a sheep for the celebration
next week of the Muslim holiday of sacrifice, Eid al-Adha.
---- As millions in Senegal prepare for
Tabaski, health officials warn that COVID-19 cases are dramatically surging in
the West African nation. In just weeks, new confirmed cases have risen from
dozens a day to a record of 738 on Friday and then nearly doubled overnight to
1,366 on Saturday, according to the Ministry of Health.
Nearly 36% of 3,815 tests carried out in the
past 24 hours came back positive, the health ministry said Saturday. Senegal
has reported 50,374 cases and 1,214 deaths since the start of the pandemic.
Faced with the dramatic increase, President
Macky Sall and his Cabinet are limiting public gatherings and travel and urging
the public to continue wearing masks and frequently sanitize their hands. On
Friday, Sall threatened to close borders and impose a state of emergency again
if numbers continue to rise.
Many in Senegal have relaxed their use of masks
and other precautions after the country’s early surges weren’t as severe as the
outbreaks in other countries.
Tabaski, which will be celebrated on July 21 in
Senegal, sees thousands of people come together in large family gatherings.
Many health officials are worried because in the run-up to the holiday, people
throng marketplaces and gather to buy sheep.
Only about 600,000 people of Senegal’s
population of more than 16 million have been vaccinated. The country has a
limited supply of vaccines and is awaiting further deliveries of Sinopharm and
Johnson & Johnson.
More
https://apnews.com/article/lifestyle-business-health-religion-government-and-politics-d4824803976753c4d6f044f7d4bc7881
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
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.
Crystal catalyst converts methane
into methanol at room temperature By Michael Irving July 19, 2021
Scientists
have found a way to convert methane into methanol at room temperature. Using a
common crystal as a catalyst, the technique could eventually reduce methane
escaping into the atmosphere by turning it into a useful liquid fuel instead.
As
a greenhouse gas, methane is 34 times more potent than carbon dioxide, and levels in the atmosphere are
rising fast. One of the biggest sources is “fugitive” emissions caused by leaks
during extraction, processing, storage or transport of natural gas, which
accounts for up to 3.9 percent of
global greenhouse gas emissions.
A possible alternative is to convert
the gaseous methane into liquid methanol, to reduce those fugitive emissions
and make storage and transport easier. Methanol can of course be used as a fuel
itself or to make materials like paint and plastics. The problem is, converting
methane into methanol is usually an energy intensive process that requires
extremely high pressures and temperatures.
Now, researchers at Stanford and the
University of Leuven have developed a process that could perform the conversion
at room temperature, without needing any extra heat or energy. The key is a
common crystal called iron zeolite, a candidate for a methane-to-methanol
catalyst that would be promising if it wasn’t so inefficient, often
deactivating after one reaction cycle. And that’s the problem that the team has
now tackled.
On
closer inspection, the researchers found that pore size makes a big difference
in how reactive iron zeolites are and how long they keep that function. Iron
zeolites are porous minerals made up of aluminum, silica, oxygen and iron, and
when methane is infused into these crystals, the iron strips away one hydrogen
atom. That leaves behind methyl radicals that can combine to form methanol, but
frustratingly the loose methyl radicals can also drift away and deactivate
other catalyst molecules.
The
team found that smaller pore apertures slowed down the escape of the methyl
radicals, meaning more of them can convert to methanol. Better yet, it can
actually regenerate the active sites that perform the chemical reaction,
allowing them to be reused. In tests, the researchers managed to reactivate 40
percent of the active sites, over and over again.
Of course, only 40 percent means that the catalyst will
still produce diminishing returns, but it’s a step towards making the process
more efficient. Increasing that percentage is a key goal for future work, as is
adjusting it to work with ambient air as an oxygen source. In the meantime,
other room-temperature
catalysts are being investigated too.
“Catalytic cycling – the continual reactivation of
regenerated sites – could someday lead to continual, economical methanol
production from natural gas,” says Benjamin Snyder, co-author of the study.
The research was published in the journal Science .
https://newatlas.com/science/catalyst-methane-methanol-room-temperature/?utm_source=New+Atlas+Subscribers&utm_campaign=f6400f3798-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2021_07_19_08_44&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_65b67362bd-f6400f3798-90625829
I
don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.
Will
Rogers.
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