Baltic Dry Index. 3103 +45 Brent Crude 73.57
Spot Gold 1804
Coronavirus Cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,100
Coronavirus Cases 23/07/21 World 193,422,021
Deaths 4,151,655
“Programmers are like God. We create defects and also kill them too. We spend the whole day fixing a defect, and the patch itself gives birth to a few more defects of its own.”
Anon.
In the stock casinos, a renewed wobble in Asia as China continues cracking down on tech stocks.
But the really big stories of today are the Great Olympic Covid-19 gamble getting underway in Tokyo today and just how secure is our global internet economy?
Not too secure it seems to me. A disaster waiting to happen? I hope not, but shouldn’t we be relying on more than hope?
Asia-Pacific stocks slip as China tech shares in Hong Kong fall amid renewed regulatory fears
SINGAPORE — Shares in Asia-Pacific were lower in Friday trade as investors monitored Chinese tech stocks in Hong Kong after regulatory concerns resurfaced.
By Friday afternoon in Hong Kong, shares of Chinese tech firms listed in the city fell. Kuaishou plunged 9.1% while Tencent slipped 0.74% and Meituan dropped 1.43%. The broader Hang Seng Tech index declined 2.19%.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index overall fell 0.99%.
Bloomberg News reported that Beijing is considering harsh penalties on ride-hailing giant Didi. The penalties being planned range from a fine likely bigger than the record $2.8 billion Alibaba paid earlier this year to even a forced delisting after Didi’s IPO last month.
Shares of Didi stateside plunged more than 11% on Thursday. Earlier in July, the firm was forced to stop signing up new users and also had its app removed from Chinese app stores due to alleged collection and use of personal data.
That development came as Beijing continues its months-long crackdown on China’s tech behemoths, targeting issues from anti-trust to data regulation.
Mixed Asia-Pacific markets
The broader Asia-Pacific markets also declined. In mainland China, the Shanghai composite fell 0.65% while the Shenzhen component shed 1.408%.
South Korea’s Kospi was little changed. In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 slipped 0.11%.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan fell 0.61%.
Markets in Japan are closed on Friday for a holiday.
Overnight stateside, the Dow Jones Industrial Average edged 25.35 points higher to 34,823.35 while the S&P 500 gained 0.2% to 4,367.48. The Nasdaq Composite rose 0.36% to 14,684.60.
More
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/23/asia-markets-china-tech-stocks-currencies-oil.html
Next, today’s big story. Just how vulnerable is our modern global economy? What happens if one day an outage is unfix-able, or unfix-able for several days? What happens to the global payments system? What happens as stores start running out of supplies especially foodstuffs?
Widespread Outage Disrupts Major Retail, Financial, Travel, Olympic Websites Worldwide
Some of the world's largest financial, retail, travel and gaming websites were briefly unavailable as of midday Thursday
July 22, 2021 at 3:50 pm
A widespread disruption caused severe outages for some of the world's biggest websites on Thursday afternoon - and it was all caused by a software update gone horribly wrong.
DownDetector.com showed a sharp and simultaneous spike in outage reports for prominent travel, retail, financial and gaming websites globally. In most cases, the spike in outage reports appeared to start around 11:40 a.m. ET.
Even the Tokyo Olympics website and app were reported to be intermittently down, just hours before the Opening Ceremony.
Some municipal governments reported disruptions to 911 service as well in places like Illinois and Virginia.
Akamai, which operates one of the world's largest and most crucial content delivery networks, reported a problem with its service at about 12:10 p.m. ET. Many partners, including Britain's National Health Service, specifically cited that disruption as a cause of the outage.
At 12:47 p.m. ET, Akamai tweeted that it had implemented a fix and that systems were returning to normal. The company later confirmed that the outage was not the result of a cyberattack - but rather, a bad software update that disrupted the DNS system, which directs users to websites.
"We apologize for the inconvenience that resulted. We are reviewing our software update process to prevent future disruptions," the company tweeted.
The outages did not appear to have any operating impact on the Tokyo Olympics, where competition was already underway ahead of the Opening Ceremony on Friday.
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/widespread-outage-disrupts-major-retail-financial-travel-websites-worldwide/3168859/
Kaseya obtains key to decrypt systems weeks after ransomware attack
By Maggie Miller - 07/22/21 03:25 PM EDT
Software company Kaseya on Thursday obtained a key to decrypt its systems and that of customers, which were locked down by a ransomware attack earlier this month.
A spokesperson for the company told The Hill in an emailed statement that Kaseya had been given an “effective decryptor and we are actively using it to help our customers.”
“We obtained the tool from a trusted third party and for confidentiality reasons I can’t say more than that,” the spokesperson said.
The key will likely be used to assist the up to 1,500 companies impacted by the ransomware attack on Kaseya. Cybersecurity experts have linked to Russian-based cyber criminal group REvil, though the federal government has not yet formally assessed who is behind the attack.
Kaseya noted at the time of the attack that many of its customers were “managed service providers, using Kaseya’s technology to manage IT infrastructure for local and small businesses with less than 30 employees, such as dentists’ offices, small accounting offices and local restaurants.”
The hackers behind the attack initially demanded $70 million to decrypt the system, later lowering their demand to $50 million. The spokesperson for Kaseya did not comment on whether the company had paid the ransom to obtain the key.
Websites used by REvil on the dark web went offline last week, though it remains unclear who or what was behind the takedown.
The ransomware attack, which experts have assessed to be one of the largest ransomware incidents in history, came on the heels of a string of attacks on other critical organizations worldwide.
Hospitals, schools, and government agencies have been targeted throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, while ransomware attacks on Colonial Pipeline and meat producer JBS USA in May temporarily disrupted critical supply chains. Both Colonial and JBS chose to pay the ransoms in order to get their systems back up and running quickly.
The Biden administration has stepped up its efforts to combat ransomware attacks and other cyber threats, including President Biden signing an executive order to strengthen federal cybersecurity in May, and through assembling an interagency federal task force to coordinate actions related to ransomware.
More
Russia disconnected from global internet in tests - RBC daily
by Reuters Thursday, 22 July 2021 10:56 GMT
Tests were carried out between June and July to test the ability of the 'Runet', as part of Russia's cybersecurity efforts
MOSCOW, July 22 (Reuters) - Russia managed to disconnect from the global internet during tests in June and July, the RBC daily reported on Thursday, citing documents from the working group tasked with improving Russia's internet security.
Russia adopted legislation, known as the "sovereign internet" law, in late 2019 that seeks to shield the country from being cut off from foreign infrastructure, in answer to what Russia called the "aggressive nature" of the United States' national cyber security strategy.
The legislation tightened Moscow's control over the global network and caused consternation among free speech activists, who feared the move would strengthen government oversight of the country's cyberspace.
Tests involving all Russia's major telecoms firms were held from June 15 to July 15 and were successful, according to preliminary results, RBC cited a source in the working group as saying.
"The purpose of the tests is to determine the ability of the 'Runet' to work in case of external distortions, blocks and other threats," the source said.
Another RBC source said the capability of physically disconnecting the Russian part of the internet was tested.
It was not immediately clear how long the disconnection lasted or whether there were any noticeable disruptions to internet traffic.
The law stipulates that tests be carried out every year, but operations were called off in 2020 due to complications with the COVID-19 pandemic, RBC said.
The Kremlin was aware of the tests, spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, describing them as timely and saying that Russia had to be ready for anything.
The legislation seeks to route Russian web traffic and data through points controlled by state authorities and build a national Domain Name System to allow the internet to continue working even if Russia is cut off.
In June 2019, President Vladimir Putin said Moscow had to ensure that the 'Runet' could function in a reliable way to guard against servers outside of Russia's control in other countries being switched off and their operations compromised.
More
https://news.trust.org/item/20210722094330-21wee
Finally, more on that flooding in China.
Chinese city picks through the debris after record rains kill 33
Issued on: 22/07/2021 - 06:00
Piles of cars were strewn across a central Chinese city Thursday as shocked residents picked through the debris of a historic deluge that claimed at least 33 lives, with more heavy rain threatening surrounding regions.
An unprecedented downpour dumped a year's rain in just three hours on the city of Zhengzhou, weather officials said, instantly overwhelming drains and sending torrents of muddy, swirling water through streets, road tunnels and the subway system.
Hundreds of thousands of people in the surrounding area have been affected by the flood, authorities said, as farmland was inundated and road and rail links severed.
In worst-hit Zhengzhou, grim images of the horror inside the subway system were relayed in real-time over social media, showing water rising during Tuesday's rush hour from the ankles of passengers to their necks.
At least a dozen people died before rescuers were able to cut survivors free from carriages.
As the water retreated -- with piles of cars a monument to its deadly power -- residents prepared for another day of bad weather, moving vehicles to higher ground and trying to plot journeys out from the stricken city, where communications and power were still patchy.
Trucks pumped muddy water from its underground tunnels as business owners counted the cost of torrent and meteorologists issued 'red' rain alerts, warning of the threat of fresh landslides and flooding in the surrounding areas.
"I am waiting for the power to be restored, but it may take several more days I think," Chen, the owner of a local food and pork sandwich restaurant told AFP.
"My losses? They are okay, compared to what happened in the tunnel there," he said gesturing towards the tunnel where floods trapped many cars on Tuesday - potentially with motorists still inside.
Questions turned to how China's bulging cities could be better prepared for freak weather events like Tuesday's storm, which experts say are happening with increased frequency and intensity due to climate change.
Anyang city, a short journey north of Zhengzhou, issued red alert on Thursday for heavy downpours after some areas had received over 100mm of rain, ordering schools to close and most workers to stay at home.
Weather experts dissected the reasons behind Tuesday's record rains.
Chen Tao, chief forecaster of the National Meteorological Center (NMC), said a mix of Henan's topography and Typhoon In-Fa favoured the rains.
Although the typhoon has not landed in China, under the influence of winds, "a large amount of water vapour from above the sea gathered towards Henan", providing a source of water for the downpours, Chen said.
More
“Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that’s even remotely true!”
Homer Simpson.
Global Inflation Watch.
Given our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians, inflation now needs an entire section of its own.
European Central Bank vows a ‘persistently accommodative’ stance in new guidance
Published Thu, Jul 22 2021 7:49 AM EDT
The European Central Bank on Thursday held monetary policy steady, but tweaked its guidance to reflect its recently-hiked inflation target.
The ECB has committed to purchasing 1.85 trillion euros ($2.2 trillion) of bonds until March 2022 as part of its Pandemic Emergency Purchase Program, and policymakers voted to keep this stimulus on the table for the time being.
Interest rates were also left unchanged, with the rate on the main deposit facility remaining at -0.5%, the benchmark refinancing rate at 0% and the marginal lending facility at 0.25%.
However, the euro zone central bank’s Governing Council revised its forward guidance on interest rates, having upgraded its inflation target to a symmetric 2% over the medium term at its recent strategy review.
The ECB said in a statement that it expects interest rates to remain “at their present or lower levels until it sees inflation reaching two per cent well ahead of the end of its projection horizon and durably for the rest of the projection horizon, and it judges that realised progress in underlying inflation is sufficiently advanced to be consistent with inflation stabilising at two per cent over the medium term.”
“This may also imply a transitory period in which inflation is moderately above target,” it added.
The dovish tilt effectively ties inflation closer to interest rates and was seen as a promise to be more accommodative for a longer period of time.
More
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/22/european-central-bank-holds-interest-rates-but-tweaks-guidance.html
Another 2.2 million stimulus checks have gone out. Here’s who received the payments
Published Wed, Jul 21 2021 4:04 PM EDT
About 2.2 million more stimulus checks have gone out over the last six weeks, the government said Wednesday.
The latest batch brings the total number of payments disbursed to more than 171 million, with an aggregate value of $400 billion, according to the announcement from the IRS, Treasury Department and Bureau of the Fiscal Service. These payments started going out in March when the American Rescue Plan Act was signed into law by President Joe Biden.
That legislation authorized payments of up to $1,400 per person, plus $1,400 per eligible dependent, for individuals and families who fall under certain income thresholds and also meet other requirements.
For the latest tranche, about 1.3 million of the payments — with a value of about $2.6 billion — were sent to eligible individuals for whom the IRS previously did not have information to issue a stimulus check but who recently filed a tax return.
This batch also includes supplemental payments for individuals who earlier this year received payments based on their 2019 tax returns yet were eligible for a new or larger amount based on their 2020 tax returns, which would have been processed more recently.
The IRS said it will continue to disburse these stimulus checks on a weekly basis.
Chinese economist uses keynote speech to discuss competition with the U.S.
Published Wed, Jul 21 2021 8:00 PM EDT Updated Jul 22 2021
- Liu Yuhui, an economist at a government think tank, gave a keynote speech at a major asset manager’s investment event that focused on the U.S.-China relationship rather than a statistical growth outlook.
- The talk was billed by the organizers as a discussion of macroeconomic issues for the second half of the year.
In a sweeping presentation, Liu emphasized his confidence in the Chinese government to withstand changes in U.S. monetary policy.
BEIJING — A Chinese economist’s keynote speech at a major asset manager’s investment strategy event last week focused on international politics rather than the growth outlook.
“We are undergoing a cognitive revolution, so today my talk will not be the dissemination of an economic report,” said Liu Yuhui, director of a finance research department at a government think tank, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
---- Liu, also chief economist at Tianfeng Securities, echoed that line when speaking confidently of China’s ability to achieve its goal of becoming a “great nation.”
He added that once-a-century opportunities would emerge from a “struggle for supremacy” between the U.S. and China.
The U.S. is the largest economy in the world, while China is the second and catching up. The two countries have been embroiled in increasing tensions over the last few years, beginning with trade and spilling over into finance and technology.
Helping China, in Liu’s view, is the American embrace of a dollar-printing policy since the coronavirus pandemic. To Liu, that policy reflects an irreversible change that, among other things, has direct consequences for China’s goal of controlling inflation domestically.
However, Liu did not leave room for doubt on whether China could succeed in maintaining its growth. Echoing confidence in Beijing, he said China’s resolve would allow the country to withstand the effects of U.S. policy, weakening the U.S. economy and strengthening China’s.
‘Modern monetary theory’
In Liu’s view, the U.S. is relying on the concept of “modern monetary theory,” which holds that governments with a strong currency can print money to support their domestic economies without worrying much about budget deficits.
More
Inflation Pushes Consumer-Goods Giant Unilever to Accelerate Price Increases
Warning from maker of Dove soap and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream follows similar moves by Procter & Gamble and General Mills
Updated July 22, 2021 8:20 am ET
The maker of Dove soap and Hellmann’s mayonnaise warned of accelerating price increases across a range of products, as it seeks to counter cost inflation across its business.
Unilever UL -5.14% PLC said Thursday that it was grappling with higher costs for ingredients, packaging and transportation, which would likely lower its full-year profitability—a warning that sent shares down 5% in early trading.
The London-listed consumer-goods giant said it would step up price increases across the world, having already raised prices 1.6% in the second quarter.
“We are going to have to take a little higher levels of price increase,” Chief Financial Officer Graeme Pitkethly told reporters.
Inflation has continued to pick up pace, rising at the fastest pace in 13 years in the U.S. last month as the recovery from the pandemic gained steam and consumer demand drove up prices of everything from autos to clothes and restaurant meals. Other packaged-food manufacturers, including Procter & Gamble Co. and General Mills Inc., have also warned of rising prices this year.
Mr. Pitkethly said Unilever’s large scale and strong inventories would help to mitigate the price rises but that several costs were out of the company’s control and rising more than expected. The price of ingredients such as palm oil, crude oil and soybean oil all rose sharply in the quarter.
More
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.
Death rates soar in Southeast Asia as virus wave spreads
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Indonesia has converted nearly its entire oxygen production to medical use just to meet the demand from COVID-19 patients struggling to breathe. Overflowing hospitals in Malaysia had to resort to treating patients on the floor. And in Myanmar’s largest city, graveyard workers have been laboring day and night to keep up with the grim demand for new cremations and burials.
Images of bodies burning in open-air pyres during the peak of the pandemic in India horrified the world in May, but in the last two weeks the three Southeast Asian nations have now all surpassed India’s peak per capita death rate as a new coronavirus wave, fueled by the virulent delta variant, tightens its grip on the region.
The deaths have followed record numbers of new cases being reported in countries across the region which have left health care systems struggling to cope and governments scrambling to implement new restrictions to try to slow the spread.
----A variety of factors have contributed to the recent surge in the region, including people growing weary of the pandemic and letting precautions slip, low vaccination rates and the emergence of the delta variant of the virus, which was first detected in India, said Abhishek Rimal, the Asia-Pacific emergency health coordinator for the Red Cross, who is based in Malaysia.
“With the measures that countries are taking, if people follow the basics of washing the hands, wearing the masks, keeping distance and getting vaccinated, we will be seeing a decline in cases in the next couple of weeks from now,” he said.
So far, however, Malaysia’s national lockdown measures have not brought down the daily rate of infections. The country of some 32 million saw daily cases rise above 10,000 on July 13 for the first time and they have stayed there since.
More
Australia warns Covid cases could continue to rise despite weeks-long lockdown
Published Wed, Jul 21 2021 10:43 PM EDT Updated Jul 22 2021
Coronavirus cases in Australia spiked again on Thursday, despite a weeks-long lockdown, with authorities warning that infections would rise more and take a toll on the economy as the country battles to contain the highly contagious delta variant.
New South Wales (NSW), Australia’s most populous state, reported 124 new Covid-19 cases, versus 110 a day earlier, a record for this year and the highest in 16 months. Most of the infections were reported in state capital Sydney, which is in its fourth week of a lockdown.
Victoria state, entering a second week of stay-at-home orders, logged 26 new cases, up from 22.
“We anticipate case numbers will continue to go up before they start coming down and we need to brace ourselves for that,” said Gladys Berejiklian, premier of NSW.
Of most concern is the number of people moving around in the community before being diagnosed, which was 48 on Wednesday in NSW, the state’s health authorities say.
Sydney, home to a fifth of Australia’s 25 million people, was due to exit lockdown on July 30 but Berejiklian has said the number of infections in the community must be near zero first.
She urged people to get vaccinated.
More
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.
New molten salt battery for grid-scale storage runs at low temp and cost
Nick Lavars July 21, 2021
As renewable forms of power like wind and solar continue to gain prominence, there will be a need for creative solutions when it comes to storing energy from sources that are intermittent by nature. One potential solution is known as a molten salt battery, which offers advantages that lithium batteries do not, but have their share of kinks to iron out, too. Scientists at Sandia National Laboratories have come up with a new design that addresses a number of these shortcomings, and demonstrated a working molten salt battery that can be constructed far more cheaply, while storing more energy, than currently available versions.
Storing vast amounts of energy in a cheap and efficient manner is the name of the game when it comes to powering whole cities with renewable energy, and despite its many strengths, this is where expensive lithium battery technology falls short. Molten salt batteries shape as a more cost-effective solution, which use electrodes kept in a molten state with the help of high temperatures. This is something that the Sandia scientists have been working to change.
"We've been working to bring the operating temperature of molten sodium batteries down as low as physically possible," says Leo Small, the lead researcher on the project. "There's a whole cascading cost savings that comes along with lowering the battery temperature. You can use less expensive materials. The batteries need less insulation and the wiring that connects all the batteries can be a lot thinner."
In their commercial form, these batteries are known as sodium-sulfur batteries, and a few of these have been developed around the world but generally operate at 520 to 660 °F (270 to 350 °C). The Sandia team have set their sights much lower, although doing so required a rethink as the chemistries that work at high temperatures don't lend themselves well to lower temperatures.
The scientists' design consists of liquid sodium metal that sits on the opposite side of a ceramic separator material to a novel liquid mixture made of sodium iodide and gallium chloride, which the scientists call a catholyte. When the battery discharges energy, chemical reactions take place that produces sodium ions and electrons that pass through the highly-selective separator material and produce molten iodide salt on the other side.
This sodium-sulfur battery proved capable of operating at just 230 °F (110 °C), and proved its worth across eight months of testing in the lab through which it was charged and discharged more than 400 times. Further, it runs at 3.6 volts, which the scientists say is around 40 percent higher than commercially available molten salt batteries. This could equate to versions with fewer cells and therefore a higher energy density.
More
Another weekend and the Great Olympic Covid-19 gamble gets underway in Tokyo. Will the great gamble payoff with no great international spread of Covid-19 after the games end? But what if it triggers a great new surge of Covid-19 in Africa, Latin America and much of Asia? Europe and North America? A new bout of more dangerous Covid variants? And why the great gamble at all?
Have a great weekend everyone.
To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research.
Anon.
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