Baltic Dry Index. 3039 -34 Brent Crude 73.59
Spot Gold 1812
Three economists went out hunting and came across a large deer. The first economist fired, but missed by a meter to the left. The second economist fired, but also missed, by a meter to the right. The third economist didn't fire at all, but jumped up and down and shouted in triumph, "We got it! We got it!"
In the stock casinos Friday, the pause became more of an inflation and Covid-19 wobble.
But the US bond market suggests that this pause is nothing more than a pause unless the Fed were to scale back its bond support and Magic Money Tree programs.
There’s as much chance of that happening any time soon, as space tourism taking place anytime soon from London’s Heathrow airport.
Expect a new stock casino rally at some point next week, with US inflation to creep into the low double digits later in the year and still Fed Chairman Powell won’t act.
“Capitalism’ broken,” wailed former Fed Chairman “Bubbles” Greenspan back in the 90s and he was right. What we have now is central bank state socialism. Cut off the “free” money and the whole economic system implodes.
That it implodes eventually is a certainty, under the weight of trying to provide free money for everyone to prevent an implosion such as incurring in South Africa right now, but it won’t come by the central banksters shutting down the Magic Money Tree forests.
Inflation it is to be, to scale down the gargantuan debt.
Wall Street ends down as Delta variant drives fears
The bond market is defying Wall Street forecasters, as long-term Treasury yields keep heading lower despite a strong economy and rising inflation.
A decline in bond yields, which move opposite price, can be a sign of expectations for a weaker economy. But strategists say it’s not just concern of slower growth that’s driving the move. Momentum and positioning are also playing a role, as are some technical factors.
“It’s confounding,” Wells Fargo director of rates strategy Michael Schumacher said. “You’ve got some number of big players who for various reasons are pretty comfortable with the thought that economic growth is, I would not say weak, but not as spectacular as some people expected.”
The most closely watched U.S. interest rate metric — the 10-year Treasury note yield — again skidded below 1.3% on Thursday, a level where it last traded in February, prior to last week. It was at 1.32% on Friday. The surprise and swift decline is being blamed on a number of things, including short-covering, technicalities, peaking growth — and the Federal Reserve.
The 10-year yield is important since it has been a foil for tech stocks. When it has fallen, tech and growth shares have mostly risen lately. It also influences mortgage rates and other consumer and business loans. Many strategists expected the 10-year to hold at higher levels and march toward 2% or above by year-end.
But instead, strategists say the bond market hit a turning point after the Fed’s last meeting. The Fed said last month it was beginning to discuss tapering its bond purchases. Fed officials also added two interest rate hikes to their 2023 forecast. There were no rate hikes in the forecast previously.
Those slightly “hawkish” developments came at the same time inflation has been rising at a blistering pace. The June Consumer Price Index this past week indicated consumer inflation had risen by 5.4% year over year.
---- Simply put, strategists say the market is rethinking the strength of the recovery and the Fed’s response to inflation. A lower terminal rate would mean a lower end point for the Fed once it begins to raise interest rates.
While interest rate hikes are still far in the future, the market has been debating whether hotter inflation could get the Fed to move sooner to end its bond buying program and start its rate hiking agenda. The concern is that tightening could then short circuit the recovery.
The Fed’s mettle could be tested by this rate move, since officials have viewed inflation as temporary. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell reinforced that idea in Congressional testimony Wednesday and Thursday. But since the pandemic, the Fed has also changed how it will react to inflation, and the market is unclear what would trigger a Fed response.
More
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/16/the-mystifying-bond-market-behavior-could-last-all-summer.html
Cash-flush Americans lift U.S. retail sales; shortages depress auto purchases
Emergency workers in western Germany and Belgium rushed Friday to rescue hundreds of people in danger or still unaccounted for as the death toll from devastating floods rose to more than 125 people.
Authorities in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate said 63 people had died there, including 12 residents of an assisted living facility for disabled people in the town of Sinzig who were surprised by a sudden rush of water from the nearby Ahr River. In neighboring North Rhine-Westphalia state officials put the death toll at 43, but warned that the figure could increase.
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said he was “stunned” by the devastation caused by the flooding and pledged support to the families of those killed and to cities and towns facing significant damage.
“In the hour of need, our country stands together,” Steinmeier said in a statement. “It’s important that we show solidarity for those from whom the flood has taken everything.”
A harrowing rescue effort unfolded In the German town of Erftstadt, southwest of Cologne, where people were trapped when the ground gave way and their homes collapsed.
---- Aerial photos showed what appeared to be a massive landslide at a gravel pit on the town’s edge..
“One has to assume that under the circumstances some people didn’t manage to escape,” Rock said.
Authorities were trying to account for hundreds of people listed as missing, but they cautioned that the high number could be due to duplicated reports and difficulties reaching people because of disrupted roads and phone service.
After Germany, where the death toll stood at 106, Belgium was the hardest hit by the floods that caused homes to be ripped away. Belgian Interior Minister Annelies Verlinden told the VRT network Friday that the country had confirmed the deaths of 20 people, with another 20 still missing.
Water levels on the Meuse Rriver that runs from Belgium into the Netherlands remains critical, and several dikes were at risk of collapsing, Verlinden said. Authorities in the southern Dutch town of Venlo evacuated 200 hospital patients due to the looming threat of flooding from the river.
Flash floods this week followed days of heavy rainfall in Western Europe. Thousands of people remained homeless in Germany after their houses were destroyed or deemed at-risk by authorities.
The governor of North Rhine-Westphalia, who is hoping to succeed Chancellor Angela Merkel as the nation’s leader after Germany’s election on Sept. 26, said the disaster had caused immense economic damage to the country’s most densely populated state.
More
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/16/floods-in-germany-claim-81-victims-more-than-1000-missing.html
Next, a new warning that the Atlantic hurricane season may be more active than usual.
Hurricane Elsa’s Early Arrival Could Mean a Busier-Than-Usual Storm Season in the Atlantic
Following Elsa, the fifth hurricane so far, experts now forecast at least 20 named tropical storms and nine named hurricanes in total
By David Kindy smithsonianmag.com July 15, 2021 3:32PM
When Hurricane Elsa formed south of the Tropic of Cancer on July 2, some researchers became concerned the storm is a "harbinger of a very active season." While Elsa quickly downgraded to a tropical storm, it was one of only a handful of hurricanes in recorded history to develop that far south before August.
Following Elsa’s progression, atmospheric scientist Phil Klotzbach of the Colorado State University and his team upgraded their predictions for the 2021 hurricane season to a more active forecast.
“In general, early season Atlantic hurricane activity has very little correlation with overall Atlantic hurricane activity,” he tells Josh Fiallo of the Tampa Bay Times. “But when this activity occurs in the tropics, that is typically a harbinger of a very active season.”
The university’s Tropical Meteorology Project increased its forecast to 20 named storms and nine hurricanes. In April, it had predicted the 2021 season would net 17 named storms and eight hurricanes.
Most hurricanes form between the Equator and Tropic of Cancer, known as the “main development region.” However, those storms usually develop in September and October. In the past, when hurricanes formed before August 1, the National Hurricane Center labeled those seasons as “hyperactive,” the Tampa Bay Times reports.
---- Early season hurricanes could indicate a far more active storm period in the Caribbean and along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts of the United States. Last year’s record-breaking season wreaked havoc in those areas with 30 named storms and 14 hurricanes.
More
Finally, Miami needs an infrastructure bill all of its own, it seems. Sounds like another job for President “build back better,” to use the trite slogan first coined in Davos 2019.
Two-Thirds of Miami Condo Buildings Are Older Than 30 Years. The Repair Bills Are Coming Due.
Many towers line the beachfront, where salt corrosion is speeding their decline; decision-making is often left to condo boards
July 14, 2021 10:09 am ET
Engineers say it can take just 30 years for condominium buildings to reach a point when owners can no longer delay making critical repairs.
In the Miami region, two out of every three condo buildings are more than 30 years old, according to data compiled by real-estate data firm Zillow for The Wall Street Journal. In at least seven other Florida cities, some three-quarters of condo buildings have hit that age.
Many of the aging towers line the beachfront, where salt corrosion and other forces are speeding their decline. That is leaving thousands of buildings saddled with multimillion-dollar repair costs—and little notion of how to pay for them.
Investigators are still trying to determine the cause of last month’s collapse of the 40-year-old Champlain Towers South condominium, which left at least 95 dead. The property showed multiple points of strain, including eroded concrete and failed waterproofing at its base, according to a 2018 engineering report.
More
https://www.wsj.com/articles/miami-condo-buildings-old-age-collapse-champlain-towers-11626271508
Global Inflation Watch.
Given our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians, inflation now needs an entire section of its own.
Container Rates to U.S. Top $10,000 as Shipping Crunch Tightens
By Brendan Murray 15 July 2021, 17:00 BST· ‘I don’t see it really getting better this year,’ CEO says
· The queue of anchored ships off L.A.-Long Beach persists
Container shipping rates from Asia to the U.S. and Europe increased to new record levels over the past week, ensuring transportation costs will stay elevated for companies heading into a peak season for rebuilding inventories.
The spot rate for a 40-foot container from Shanghai to Los Angeles increased to a record $9,733, up 1% from the previous week and 236% higher than a year ago, according to the Drewry World Container Index published Thursday. The Shanghai-to-Rotterdam rate rose to $12,954. The composite index, reflecting eight major trade routes, hit $8,883, a 339% surge from a year ago.
Among the reasons for the tight market: a persistent shortage of containers along the busy transpacific lane carrying American imports. Goods in containers are flooding into the biggest U.S. gateway for seaborne trade at five times the volume of steel boxes full of exports.
“The backlog of getting containers, getting the product, getting it on the ships and just the delays in getting any of those products is significant today,” Clarence Smith,
The backlog of getting containers, getting the product, getting it on the ships and just the delays in getting any of those products is significant today,” Clarence Smith, chairman and CEO of Atlanta-based Haverty Furniture Cos., said during an investor conference this week.
Asked how long he expects the supply problems to last, Smith said “I’m hearing it’s going to go into next year. I don’t see it really getting better this year, maybe a little bit better. We’re having to pay premiums to get containers.”
More
Two central banksters are flying in a balloon. But the wind changes and they stray far away from their course and they have no idea where they are. So they go down to 40 feet and ask a passing economist. "Could you tell us where we are?"
"Yes,” he promptly replied. “You are in a balloon."
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
WHO chief says it was ‘premature’ to rule out COVID lab leak
BERLIN (AP) — The head of the World Health Organization acknowledged it was premature to rule out a potential link between the COVID-19 pandemic and a laboratory leak, and he said Thursday he is asking China to be more transparent as scientists search for the origins of the coronavirus.
In a rare departure from his usual deference to powerful member countries, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said getting access to raw data had been a challenge for the international team that traveled to China earlier this year to investigate the source of COVID-19. The first human cases were identified in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
Tedros told reporters that the U.N. health agency based in Geneva is “asking actually China to be transparent, open and cooperate, especially on the information, raw data that we asked for at the early days of the pandemic.”
He said there had been a “premature push” to rule out the theory that the virus might have escaped from a Chinese government lab in Wuhan - undermining WHO’s own March report, which concluded that a laboratory leak was “extremely unlikely.”
“I was a lab technician myself, I’m an immunologist, and I have worked in the lab, and lab accidents happen,” Tedros said. “It’s common.”
In recent months, the idea that the pandemic started somehow in a laboratory — and perhaps involved an engineered virus — has gained traction, especially with President Joe Biden ordering a review of U.S. intelligence to assess the possibility in May.
More
Remdesivir offers no clinical benefit for COVID-19, extends hospital stay for many
July 15, 2021 / 11:01 AM
July 15 (UPI) -- Treatment with the the antiviral drug remdesivir offered no clinical benefit to patients hospitalized with COVID-19, even prolonging their stay in healthcare facilities, a study published Thursday by JAMA Network Open found.
Patients treated with the drug, which originally was developed to treat the Ebola virus, stayed in the hospital an average of roughly six days, while those who did not receive it were discharged after about three days, the data showed.
However, many of the remdesivir-treated patients may have been kept in the hospital simply to complete their course of the drug, and not because of any side effects or complications related to the treatment, the researchers said.
Still, 12% of the patients given remdesivir in the study died from COVID-19, while 11% of those who served as controls and were not treated with the drug did not survive the virus.
More
https://www.upi.com/Health_News/2021/07/15/coronavirus-remdesivir-study/8251626356176/
Down to Earth is Science and Environment fortnightly published by the Society for Environmental Communication, New Delhi. We publish news and analysis on issues that deal with sustainable development, which we scan through the eyes of science and environment. Approx, 7 minutes.
Ivermectin and Covid-19
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1iKNSWxJMU
Ivermectin, in detail (biochemical mechanism) how it works against parasites and why it might work against SARS-2. Approx 11 minutes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTTuUa6Di-c
Next, some very useful 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
FDA information. https://www.fda.gov/media/139638/download
Regulatory Focus COVID-19 vaccine tracker. https://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/news-articles/2020/3/covid-19-vaccine-tracker
Some more useful Covid links.
Johns Hopkins Coronavirus resource centre
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
Rt Covid-19
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. Is converting sunlight to usable cheap AC or DC energy mankind’s future from the 21st century onwards.
New mechanism of superconductivity discovered in graphene
Placing a 2D Bose-Einstein condensate in the vicinity of a graphene layer confers superconductivity to the material
Date: July 14, 2021
Source: Institute for Basic Science
Summary: New mechanism of superconductivity discovered in graphene. Placing a 2D Bose-Einstein condensate in the vicinity of a graphene layer confers superconductivity to the material.
Superconductivity is a physical phenomenon where the electrical resistance of a material drops to zero under a certain critical temperature. Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) theory is a well-established explanation that describes superconductivity in most materials. It states that Cooper pairs of electrons are formed in the lattice under sufficiently low temperature and that BCS superconductivity arises from their condensation. While graphene itself is an excellent conductor of electricity, it does not exhibit BCS superconductivity due to the suppression of electron-phonon interactions. This is also the reason that most 'good' conductors such as gold and copper are 'bad' superconductors.
Researchers at the Center for Theoretical Physics of Complex Systems (PCS), within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS, South Korea) have reported on a novel alternative mechanism to achieve superconductivity in graphene. They achieved this feat by proposing a hybrid system consisting of graphene and 2D Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). This research is published in the journal 2D Materials.
Along with superconductivity, BEC is another phenomenon that arises at low temperatures. It is the fifth state of matter first predicted by Einstein in 1924. The formation of BEC occurs when low-energy atoms clump together and enter the same energy state, and it is an area that is widely studied in condensed matter physics. A hybrid Bose-Fermi system essentially represents a layer of electrons interacting with a layer of bosons, such as indirect excitons, exciton-polaritons, etc. The interaction between Bose and Fermi particles leads to various novel fascinating phenomena, which piques interests from both the fundamental and application-oriented perspectives.
In this work, the researchers report a new mechanism of superconductivity in graphene, which arises due to interactions between electrons and "bogolons," rather than phonons as in typical BCS systems. Bogolons, or Bogoliubov quasiparticles, are excitation within BEC which has some characteristics of a particle. In certain ranges of parameters, this mechanism permits the critical temperature for superconductivity up to 70 Kelvin within graphene. The researchers also developed a new microscopic BCS theory which focuses specifically on the novel hybrid graphene-based system. Their proposed model also predicts that superconducting properties can be enhanced with temperature, resulting in the non-monotonous temperature dependence of the superconducting gap.
Furthermore, the research showed that the Dirac dispersion of graphene is preserved in this bogolon-mediated scheme. This indicates that this superconducting mechanism involves electrons with relativistic dispersion -- a phenomenon that is not so well-explored in condensed matter physics.
"This work sheds light on an alternative way to achieve high-temperature superconductivity. Meanwhile, by controlling the properties of a condensate, we can tune the superconductivity of graphene. This suggests another channel to control the superconductor devices in the future.," explains Ivan Savenko, the leader of the Light-Matter Interaction in Nanostructures (LUMIN) team at the PCS IBS.
This weekend’s musical diversion. Some incidental music from Heinichen’s never performed opera Flavio Crispo. No, not an opera about crisp flavors, but about Emperor Constantine’s son Flavius Crispus. And no, I hadn’t heard of him either.
All three pieces are about one and a half minutes long and I think in the right order had they been performed.
Flavio Crispo, Act I: Sinfonia. Allegro (I)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeBYXpcq3RQ&list=OLAK5uy_mIm8NQn5ovID1ztxJhuC05MTsZo9fInks
Flavio Crispo, Act I: Sinfonia. Allegro (II)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQxFwBr07Jk&list=OLAK5uy_mIm8NQn5ovID1ztxJhuC05MTsZo9fInks&index=4
Flavio Crispo, Act II: Sinfonia. Allegro (I)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shqdkx2h8gI&list=OLAK5uy_mIm8NQn5ovID1ztxJhuC05MTsZo9fInks&index=30
Below, why it was never performed.
Flavio Crispo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flavio_Crispo
That, and it was about 74 pieces of music long. Probably a bit long, even for people who say they like opera!
This weekend’s maths update. A most interesting lecture on maths symbols history, although warning, the very knowledgeable professor does wave her hands and arms around like some demented Italian. Approx. 1 hour.
Where do Mathematical Symbols Come From?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Edewyp87W-Q
What are the first two laws of economics?
For each economist, there exists an equal and opposite economist; the second law states that they're both wrong.
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