Thursday 12 August 2021

Poly Put The Kettle On! Inflation’s Over.

 Baltic Dry Index. 3410 +35  Brent Crude 71.50

Spot Gold 1752

Coronavirus Cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000

Deaths 53,100

Coronavirus Cases 12/08/21 World 205,539,957

Deaths 4,337,542

Inflation is the parent of unemployment and the unseen robber of those who have saved.

Margaret Thatcher.

Asian markets this morning are largely biding time, waiting for something to turn up to give the casinos something to bet on.

Weighing on the punters, the continuing rise of the Delta variant in the coronavirus pandemic.

Even bullish pro-stocks propaganda about US inflation figures being better than expected, if you strip out food and energy which no one needs or uses, and ignore the coming hit to US inflation from housing and rents, wasn’t sufficiently bullish for Asia today.

Below, a pause, a wobble, or the fear of Friday the thirteenth?

Asian markets higher as currencies rise on weaker dollar; EV maker Li Auto shares slip on debut

SINGAPORE — Asia-Pacific stocks were little changed on Thursday, as U.S. markets again notched highs after data showed inflation was not as bad as feared. The dollar weakened while Asian currencies rose.

Chinese stocks were subdued in early trade. The Shanghai composite was flat, while the Shenzhen component was below the flatline.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index was down 0.44%. In its Hong Kong debut, Chinese electric vehicle maker Li Auto’s shares dipped as much as 1.8% below their offer price, according to Refinitiv Eikon data. It later pared some of those losses to trade just below the flatline.

The Nikkei 225 in Japan rose 0.25%, while the Topix was up 0.29%. In South Korea, the Kospi marginally rose.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 was just above the flatline.

MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan lost 0.28%.

In earnings, Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision Industry, better known as Foxconn, is due to report its second-quarter financial results Thursday.

Markets will continue to monitor the Covid situation in the region after the World Health Organization warned global cases could pass 300 million by early next year if the pandemic continues in its current direction. The projection came just a week after the WHO reported 200 million Covid cases worldwide and six months after the globe topped 100 million cases.

Meanwhile, South Korea reported a new daily record of more than 2,200 cases, its health minister said Wednesday, according to Reuters.

In Australia, Melbourne extended its lockdown by another week as it struggles to contain the highly infectious delta variant.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 rose Wednesday after inflation jumped less than investors feared when stripping out volatile food and energy prices.

The 30-stock Dow gained 220.30 points, or 0.6%, to 35,484.97 to close at a new record. The S&P 500 traded up 0.2% to 4,447.70, also notching an all-time high. The technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite slipped more than 0.1% to 14,765.14.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/12/asia-markets-foxconn-earnings-wall-street-record-highs-on-inflation-data.html

Next, Magic Money Tree free money for almost all says Washington. What could possibly go wrong?

Senate OKs Dems’ $3.5T budget in latest win for Biden

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats pushed a $3.5 trillion framework for bolstering family services, health, and environment programs through the Senate early Wednesday, advancing President Joe Biden’s expansive vision for reshaping federal priorities just hours after handing him a companion triumph on a hefty infrastructure package.

Lawmakers approved Democrats’ budget resolution on a party-line 50-49 vote, a crucial step for a president and party set on training the government’s fiscal might on assisting families, creating jobs and fighting climate change. Higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations would pay for much of it. Passage came despite an avalanche of Republican amendments intended to make their rivals pay a price in next year’s elections for control of Congress.

House leaders announced their chamber will return from summer recess in two weeks to vote on the fiscal blueprint, which contemplates disbursing the $3.5 trillion over the next decade. Final congressional approval, which seems certain, would protect a subsequent bill actually enacting the outline’s detailed spending and tax changes from a Republican filibuster in the 50-50 Senate, delays that would otherwise kill it.

Even so, passing that follow-up legislation will be dicey with party moderates wary of the massive $3.5 trillion price tag vying with progressives demanding aggressive action. The party controls the House with just three votes to spare, while the evenly divided Senate is theirs only due to Vice President Kamala Harris tie-breaking vote.

https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-business-health-coronavirus-pandemic-police-reform-da99a456faafc0a310eb48a2fbab9a67

Finally, so you really, really, really want a safer investment than the fiat currencies? Perhaps digital currency isn’t the way to go.

Below, Poly put the kettle on, we’re going to need an awful lot of strong tea.

Crypto platform Poly Network hacked in estimated $600 mln cyberheist

HONG KONG/SINGAPORE/LONDON, Aug 11 (Reuters) - A cryptocurrency platform has lost an estimated $600 million in digital tokens after one of the sector's biggest ever hacking attacks, according to details of the heist which emerged on Wednesday.

Poly Network, a decentralised finance platform (DeFi), announced the hack on Twitter and posted details of digital wallets to which it said the money was transferred, urging people to blacklist tokens from those addresses.

The value of the tokens in the wallets cited by the platform was just over $600 million at the time of the announcement, according to crypto trade publication The Block.

Poly Network did not immediately respond to a request for more detail about the incident. It was not immediately clear where the platform is based, or whether any law enforcement agency was investigating the heist.

The platform tweeted it planned to take legal action and urged the hackers to return the stolen funds to several of its digital addresses.

The plea looked to be gaining some traction, with around $2 million in stolen tokens returned by Wednesday morning, according to public blockchain records and crypto tracking firm Elliptic.

The theft appeared to be one of the biggest ever in cryptocurrency markets and compares with the $530 million in digital coins stolen from Tokyo-based exchange Coincheck in 2018.

The Mt. Gox exchange, also based in Tokyo, collapsed in 2014 after losing half a billion dollars in bitcoin.

The latest attack comes as losses from theft, hacks and fraud related to decentralised finance hit an all-time high, raising the risk of both investing in the sector and of regulators looking to shake it down.

DeFi refers to peer-to-peer cryptocurrency platforms that allow transactions without traditional gatekeepers such as banks or exchanges. Poly Network allows users to swap tokens across different blockchains.

More.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/defi-platform-poly-network-reports-hacking-loses-estimated-600-million-2021-08-11/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=technology-roundup&utm_term=Technology%20Roundup%20-%202021%20-%20Master%20List

Hackers return nearly half of the $600 million they stole in one of the biggest crypto heists

Hackers have returned nearly half of the $600 million they stole in what’s likely to be one of the biggest cryptocurrency thefts ever.

The cybercriminals exploited a vulnerability in Poly Network, a platform that looks to connect different blockchains so that they can work together.

Poly Network disclosed the attack Tuesday and asked to establish communication with the hackers, urging them to “return the hacked assets.”

---- In a strange turn of events Wednesday, the hackers began returning some of the funds they stole.

They sent a message to Poly Network embedded in a cryptocurrency transaction saying they were “ready to return” the funds. The DeFi platform responded requesting the money be sent to three crypto addresses.

As of 7 a.m. London time, more than $4.8 million had been returned to the Poly Network addresses. By 11 a.m. ET, about $258 million had been sent back.

“I think this demonstrates that even if you can steal cryptoassets, laundering them and cashing out is extremely difficult, due to the transparency of the blockchain and the use of blockchain analytics,” Tom Robinson, chief scientist of blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, said via email.

“In this case the hacker concluded that the safest option was just to return the stolen assets.”

Once the hackers stole the money, they began to send it to various other cryptocurrency addresses. Researchers at security company SlowMist said a total of more than $610 million worth of cryptocurrency was transferred to three addresses.

SlowMist said in a tweet that its researchers had “grasped the attacker’s mailbox, IP, and device fingerprints” and are “tracking possible identity clues related to the Poly Network attacker.”

The researchers concluded that the theft was “likely to be a long-planned, organized and prepared attack.”

Poly Network urged cryptocurrency exchanges to “blacklist tokens” coming from the addresses that were linked to the hackers.

More

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/11/cryptocurrency-theft-hackers-steal-600-million-in-poly-network-hack.html

 

Global Inflation Watch.          

Given our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians, inflation now needs an entire section of its own.

July consumer prices jump 5.4%, but core inflation rises less than expected

Published Wed, Aug 11 2021 8:32 AM EDT

Prices that Americans pay for everyday goods and services accelerated in July as pent-up demand for travel and restaurants kept inflation hot, but about where economists had expected.

The Labor Department reported Wednesday that its consumer price index rose 5.4% in July from a year earlier, in line with June’s figure and matching the largest jump since August 2008.

The government said CPI increased 0.5% on a month-over-month basis, matching a consensus forecast from economists surveyed by Dow Jones.

So-called core inflation, which excludes energy and food, rose by 0.3% last month, shy of a forecasted 0.4% increase and well below June’s rise of 0.9%. The core figure is up 4.3% over the last year, a slight deceleration from June’s 4.5%.

Economists often consider core CPI to be a more reliable indicator since it’s insulated from the frequent swings in petroleum and food prices.

Sharp decelerations in inflation in select areas of the economy that had seen rapid price increases in the spring helped keep the headline numbers in check.

Used car and truck prices, which rose rapidly between April and June as Americans looked to vacation, gained just 0.2% in July after a climb of more than 10% in the prior month.

Apparel prices were flat after a 0.7% increase in June, and transportation services prices actually declined after a pop of more than 1% at the end of the second quarter.

The Federal Reserve has been keeping a close eye on inflation reports since it’s the central bank’s job to maximize employment and keep prices stable.

More

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/11/cpi-report-july-2021.html

Inflation was hot in July, but rent isn’t showing up yet and could drive prices higher

Sharp post-pandemic price increases in some parts of the economy appear to be fading, but rent is one area in which inflation is expected to stick around.

The consumer price index rose 0.5% in July, well below the 0.9% pace in June. Core consumer prices, excluding food and energy, rose 0.3% last month, shy of economists’ expectations for a 0.4% gain. Year-over-year, the CPI rose 5.4% year-over-year in July, the same as June.

Economists say there are signs the spike in inflation is temporary, as Federal Reserve officials have contended. But one big part of consumers’ out-of-pocket expenditures is rent, and that is expected to rise well into the future.

Private sector reports show double-digit increases in rents across the U.S. this year, but the consumer price index actually showed a slight moderation in rental price gains in July. Economists say that should change as the Bureau of Labor Statistics data catches up, and the increases should be enough to keep the debate going about whether rising inflation is temporary.

“The composition was mixed, but generally softer than expected, as housing inflation slowed (owners’ equivalent rent +0.29%, rent +0.16%) in stark contrast to the surging rents in the industry data,” wrote Goldman Sachs chief economist Jan Hatzius.

“Additionally, the volatile hotel category contributed 0.08pp to the core,” he added. “Both hotel and airfare price levels have returned to roughly their pre-pandemic trends, meaning that most of the inflation boost from rebounding travel services prices is now behind us.”

Rent and owners’ equivalent rent cover housing costs and are about a third of CPI. Inflation in rent is stickier and more persistent than other price pressures. In the CPI, rent rose slightly slower in July than in June.

“The rent component is dramatically understated relative to reality, which means in the next couple of months, rent is going to catch up,” Bleakley Global Advisors chief investment officer Peter Boockvar said. “Rental increases, which is the biggest chunk is only going to accelerate here. I don’t see rent increases as transitory.”

More

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/11/inflation-rent-could-be-a-persistent-factor-in-higher-consumer-prices.html

Japan wholesale inflation hits 13-year high as import costs rise

August 12, 2021

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