Baltic Dry Index. 3643 +25 Brent Crude 71.85
Spot Gold 1797
Coronavirus Cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,100
Coronavirus Cases 10/09/21 World 224,047,692
Deaths 4,621,180
The
bankster asked a young economist right out of college, "What starting
salary were you thinking about?" The economist answered "I was
thinking about 150,000 a year, depending on the benefits".
Well how about, 5 weeks vacation, 2 weeks paid holidays, full mental and
dental, a company car-lets say a corvette.
The economist jumped out of his chair " Wow,
are you kidding?"
"Yeah, but you started it", the bankster
replied.
In the Asian stock casinos, did someone just profit from an erroneous story in the South China Morning Post and its clarification?
To this old dinosaur market watcher, was it an error, comes to mind. If I didn’t know better, of course, I might think the Asian stock casinos have become commoditised.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index surges nearly 2% as Chinese video game stocks bounce back
SINGAPORE — Shares in Asia-Pacific rose in Friday trade, as investors monitored Hong Kong-listed stocks of firms in regulation-hit sectors such as video games.
By Friday afternoon in Hong Kong, shares of Tencent in the city jumped 1.67% while Netease gained 2.32% — a partial recovery after the heavy losses seen Thursday.
Gaming stocks had tumbled on Thursday as the South China Morning Post reported that the Chinese government will suspend approvals for new online games in the country. After the market close, however, the media outlet corrected the report to instead say regulators will slow the approvals process.
Meanwhile, Hong Kong-listed shares of embattled Chinese property developer China Evergrande Group slid 0.85% as concerns remain around the firm’s debt situation.
The broader Hang Seng index in Hong Kong jumped 1.65%, following its more than 2% decline on Thursday. Mainland Chinese stocks edged higher, with the Shanghai composite rising 0.43% while the Shenzhen component gained 0.595%.
In Japan, the Nikkei 225 rose 1.1% while the Topix index advanced 1.01%. South Korea’s Kospi edged 0.39% higher.
The S&P/ASX 200 in Australia gained 0.39%.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan traded 0.42% higher.
Meanwhile, the European Central Bank announced Thursday a slowing in the pace of net asset purchases under its pandemic emergency purchase program.
Overnight on Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 151.69 points to 34,879.38 while the S&P 500 shed 0.46% to 4,493.28. The Nasdaq Composite dipped 0.25% to 15,248.25.
More
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/10/asia-markets-european-central-bank-china-stocks-currencies-oil.html
Next, Moscow, like Beijing’s announcement last week of a new SME market to open in Beijing, wants to muscle in on Wall Street’s pitch.
Moscow Exchange to start trading foreign shares in U.S. dollars from Sept. 27
September 9, 2021 10:19 AM
MOSCOW, Sept 9 (Reuters) - The Moscow Exchange will start trading foreign securities in U.S. dollars from Sept. 27, the head of the bourse’s stock market department, Boris Blokhin, said on Thursday.
The exchange said in July it was planning to expand the number of foreign securities on offer to 1,000 by the end of 2022, focusing on U.S. companies as well as shares from Hong Kong, China and Europe.
Trading is currently only offered in roubles. (Reporting by Elena Fabrichnaya; Writing by Alexander Marrow; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
In other news, the US and China are talking again after President Biden asked for a call to President Xi.
While it’s good that leaders talk, I’m not sure this timing helps, coming one day before the remembrance of the 9/11 atrocity and under one month from the US-NATO defeat in Afghanistan.
It’s likely to be misconstrued in Beijing, Moscow, Taipei, Tokyo, Seoul and elsewhere.
China's yuan touches 1-week high after Biden and Xi hold second phone call
SHANGHAI, Sept 10 (Reuters) - China's yuan touched aone-week high against the dollar on Friday and looked set forits third straight weekly gain after U.S. President Joe Bidenand his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping discussed the need to manage competition between their countriesand avoid conflict. Relations between Washington and Beijing have been at theirlowest point in decades and it was only the second call betweenthe leaders since Biden took office in January. The conversationfocused on economic issues, climate change and COVID-19, asenior U.S. official said. "Signs of willingness to nudge bilateral conversations ontoa more serious path could be a net positive for regional riskassets, but spillovers to sentiments could be constrainedwithout more discernible translation to policy changes,"analysts at Maybank said in a note. Prior to the market opening, the People's Bank of China setthe midpoint rate at 6.4566 per dollar, 49 pips or0.08% firmer than the previous fix of 6.4615. In the spot market, the onshore yuan opened at6.4552 per dollar and was changing hands at 6.4472 at midday, 88pips firmer than the previous late session close. If the yuan finishes the late night session at the middaylevel, it would have gained 0.18% to the dollar for the week,booking the third straight winning week in a row. While Chinese markets have grown somewhat used to strainedSino-U.S. ties over trade and a host of other issues over thepast few years, news of the leaders' phone call supportedsentiment. "Overall it is a good sign," said a trader at a Chinesebank. However, some market participants also noted that a breachof the psychologically important 6.45 per dollar level hastriggered dollar demand from both corporate clients and banks'proprietary accounts to limit the gains in the yuan. Markets are now awaiting China's August credit and activitydata in the coming week for more clues on the health of theeconomy. While exports beat analysts' forecasts and lending isseen rebounding, industrial output and retail sales growth areexpected to weaken further, adding to the debate over whethermore stimulus is needed.
More
The semiconductor shortage is affecting consumers’ ability to buy cars, smartphones and virtually all electronics — and there may be little relief in sight.
According to economist John Rutledge, the Covid-19 pandemic will continue to inflict pain on the global supply chain and contribute to the semi logjam into 2023.
“The nature of epidemics is that they don’t just have a one-and-done wave of infections. They have many waves of infections,” Safanad’s chief investment strategist told CNBC’s “Trading Nation” on Thursday.
Rutledge, who played a major role in President Ronald Reagan’s economic plan, warns that Covid variants will continue to close ports. It’s something that happened last month at China’s Ningbo-Zhoushan port, which is the third busiest in the world.
“That’s because of a small number of infections that developed there,” Rutledge said. “Seamen have not been inoculated around the world. So, some port, somewhere, is going to close again, and it’ll hit semis, but other things as well.”
He notes the closures, along with a lack of supplies and materials, are having widespread global impact.
“Mostly, you produce more slowly, and that’s what hits GDP,” said Rutledge, a CNBC contributor. “If you can’t get the materials you need, you have to slow down production.”
Rutledge also lists worker shortages as a major reason why supply chain troubles will linger.
“It’s not clear how many of those workers are afraid to go to work, don’t want to go to work or still have plenty of cash,” he said. “But it’s pretty clear to me that this worker shortage is not going to go away in three months or six months or 12 months.”
Rutledge attributes half of inflation to supply chain troubles.
More
China's factory inflation hits 13-year high as materials costs soar
September 9, 2021 2:57 AM By Reuters Staff
BEIJING (Reuters) -China’s factory gate inflation hit a 13-year high in August driven by roaring raw materials prices despite Beijing’s attempts to cool them, putting more pressure on manufacturers in the world’s second-largest economy.
The producer price index (PPI) rose 9.5% from a year earlier in August, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Thursday, faster than the 9.0% increase tipped in a Reuters poll and the 9.0% reported in July. That was the fastest pace since August 2008.
China’s economy has recovered strongly from last year’s coronavirus slump but has been losing steam recently due to domestic COVID-19 outbreaks, high raw material prices, tighter property curbs and a campaign to reduce carbon emissions.
Commodity prices have been on a tear in recent months, hurting the bottom lines of many mid- and downstream factories. China’s coal prices soared to a record high on Tuesday over supply concerns as major coal regions started fresh rounds of safety checks.
Earnings at China’s industrial firms have slowed for five straight months.
But coal and metals prices will likely drop back as construction activity falls amid restrictions on the property sector and slowing credit growth, Julian Evans-Pritchard, senior China economist at Capital Economics, wrote in a note.
And the higher comparison base towards the end of last year will also pull down overall inflation. “We doubt producer price inflation will rise much further,” he said.
The coal, chemicals and metals industries drove much of the price increases in August, according to a statement released alongside the data by Dong Lijuan, an NBS official.
Prices in the coal mining and washing sector grew 57.1% in August from a year earlier.
More
An economist is someone who will know tomorrow why the things she or he predicted yesterday didn’t happen.
Anon.
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
COVID-19 surge in the US: The summer of hope ends in gloom
WASHINGTON (AP) — The summer that was supposed to mark America’s independence from COVID-19 is instead drawing to a close with the U.S. more firmly under the tyranny of the virus, with deaths per day back up to where they were in March.
The delta variant is filling hospitals, sickening alarming numbers of children and driving coronavirus deaths in some places to the highest levels of the entire pandemic. School systems that reopened their classrooms are abruptly switching back to remote learning because of outbreaks. Legal disputes, threats and violence have erupted over mask and vaccine requirements.
The U.S. death toll stands at more than 650,000, with one major forecast model projecting it will top 750,000 by Dec. 1.
“It felt like we had this forward, positive momentum,” lamented Katie Button, executive chef and CEO at two restaurants in Asheville, North Carolina. “The delta variant wiped that timeline completely away.”
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. More than six months into the U.S. vaccination drive, President Joe Biden held a White House party on July Fourth to celebrate the country’s freedom from the virus, and other political leaders had high hopes for a close-to-normal summer.
Then the bottom fell out.
The summer wave was fueled by the extra-contagious delta variant combined with stark resistance to vaccinations that formed along political and geographic lines, said Dr. Sten Vermund, of the Yale School of Public Health.
“The virus was more efficient in spreading among the unvaccinated so that you blunted the expected benefit of vaccines,” Vermund said.
The crisis escalated rapidly from June to August. About 400,000 COVID-19 infections were recorded for all of June. It took all of three days last week to reach the same number.
The U.S. recorded 26,800 deaths and more than 4.2 million infections in August. The number of monthly positive cases was the fourth-highest total since the start of the pandemic.
The 2021 delta-driven onslaught is killing younger Americans at a much higher rate than previous waves of the pandemic in the Northeast last spring, the Sun Belt in the summer of 2020 and the deadly winter surge around the holidays.
More
Microsoft return to U.S. offices delayed indefinitely
By AP News Staff Published
REDMOND, Wash. - Microsoft told employees Thursday that it has indefinitely delayed their return to U.S. offices until it’s safer to do so.
"Given the uncertainty of COVID-19, we’ve decided against attempting to forecast a new date for a full reopening of our U.S. work sites," Jared Spataro, a corporate vice president, wrote in a blog post.
Microsoft had already postponed its planned return to the workplace from September to no earlier than Oct. 4, but now says the re-opening won’t be next month.
Microsoft employs about 181,000 full-time workers, of whom 103,000 are in the U.S.
Microsoft will wait for public health guidance on when it is safe to return, Spataro said. It will then give workers a 30-day transition period to prepare.
Last month Microsoft said it will require proof of vaccination for all employees, vendors and visitors to its U.S. offices starting this fall.
https://www.fox5ny.com/news/microsoft-return-to-u-s-offices-delayed-indefinitely
Thai device tests for coronavirus in armpit sweat
Issued on: 09/09/2021 - 11:00
For Bangkok market sellers, the armpit sweat soaking their T-shirts during the humid monsoon season may contain subtle signs of coronavirus infection, local scientists have said.
Thai researchers are developing a sweat-based mobile virus detector, and road-tested it on shopkeepers at a Bangkok food market this week.
"From the samples, we found that people infected with Covid-19 secrete very distinct chemicals," said Chadin Kulsing from Bangkok's Chulalongkorn Universit
"We used this finding to develop a device to detect the specific odours produced by certain bacteria in the sweat of Covid-19 patients.
Chadin -- who said the test was 95 percent accurate -- hopes it might be rolled out as an affordable alternative to more expensive swab tests that require lab processing.
It is however still in the development stage, and the research behind it is yet to be published or peer-reviewed.
The scientists adapted a device usually used to detect toxic chemicals in the environment.
Subjects place a cotton swab under their arms for 15 minutes, before the swab is put in a glass vial and sterilised with UV rays.
"The technician then draws an appropriate amount of the sample using a suction hose, and pressurises it into the analyser to check the results," Chadin said.
Sample collection takes 15 minutes and the results are ready in 30 seconds.
The sweat tests received the thumbs-up from Bangkok market vendors, who said it was much more pleasant than nostril swab tests.
More
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20210909-thai-device-tests-for-coronavirus-in-armpit-sweat
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.
World's strongest fusion magnet brings new power to nuclear pursuit
Nick Lavars September 08, 2021
In the field of nuclear fusion some are going big with their pursuit of clean, inexhaustible energy, like those piecing together the seven-story building to house ITER, the world's largest tokamak reactor. Others, meanwhile, are working on more compact and affordable designs in an attempt to edge the technology forward. A new breakthrough from MIT scientists demonstrates how some of the biggest advances might just come from these projects that are smaller in stature, with the team revealing a record-setting superconductive magnet, the most powerful of its type in the world.
The development of the novel magnet was led by MIT scientists working on an experimental fusion reactor design first revealed back in 2015. Called ARC (affordable, robust, compact), the reactor is a doughnut-shaped tokamak, which like ITER seeks to recreate the conditions inside our Sun that sees hydrogen atoms fuse together under extreme heat and pressure to release massive amounts of clean energy. ARC, however, will be around half the size of ITER, with a radius of 3.3 m (10.8 ft).
Whether it is ITER, ARC or fusion reactors that twist and turn like the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator in Germany, the physics and overarching aim is largely the same. Hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium are introduced into the chamber and superheated to form a swirling plasma, which needs to then be suspended and prevented from veering into the walls, or anything solid. And to achieve this, magnets are key.
Whether it is the misaligned magnetic coils at work in the Wendelstein 7-X, or the neat, repeating sequence of magnetic coils seen in conventional tokamaks, all are designed to generate magnetic fields so intense that they can pin the plasma in place long enough for the fusion reactions to occur. But the scientists working on ARC have been pursuing a magnet technology with a key point of difference.
Where ITER relies on superconducting magnets to control its plasma, these are low-temperature magnets that become superconducting when cooled to around -269 °C (-452.2 °F). The ARC scientists are instead looking to use what they call high-temperature superconductors, which allow for a far higher magnetic field in less space. The team has been working with a commercially-available tape that comes on spools and unfurls into a flat ribbon that becomes superconducting at higher temperatures and produces a stronger magnetic field. Because this would theoretically do a better job of confining the plasma, the reactor can be smaller and cheaper to build as a result.
With this tape as the starting point, the MIT scientists together with startup Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) have spent the last three years trying to turn it into a high-powered magnet for use in a demonstration device called SPARC, a testbed for ARC that will be around half its size. The team's end product is a magnet that uses 267 km (166 miles) of the superconducting tape to form 16 plates, which are stacked together inside a D-shaped case. This magnet is cooled to around -253.15 °C (-423.7 °F), at which point it becomes superconducting and produces a powerful magnetic field.
---- As it stands, no fusion reactors have demonstrated an ability to generate more energy than they need to operate, and achieving this "break even" would be a historic moment. With their powerful new magnet, the scientists believe they have taken a significant step toward that goal.
“I now am genuinely optimistic that SPARC can achieve net positive energy, based on the demonstrated performance of the magnets," says Maria Zuber, MIT’s vice president for research. "The next step is to scale up, to build an actual power plant. There are still many challenges ahead, not the least of which is developing a design that allows for reliable, sustained operation. And realizing that the goal here is commercialization, another major challenge will be economic. How do you design these power plants so it will be cost effective to build and deploy them?”
SPARC is slated for completion in 2025. You can hear from some of the scientists involved in the research below.
Source: MIT
Another weekend and what else will go wrong in Afghanistan, the US and global economy, inflation, North American weather, the 20th anniversary remembrance of the 9/11 atrocity?
Hopefully nothing. Have a great weekend everyone. Remember, stock up now for Christmas?
Banksters.
A local charity had never received a donation from the town’s bankster, so the director made a phone-call. "Our records show you make over $500,000 a year, yet you haven’t given a penny to charity,” the director began. “Wouldn’t you like to help the community?”
The bankster replied, “Did your research show that my mother is ill, with extremely expensive medical bills?”
“Um, no,” mumbled the director.
“Or that my brother is blind and unemployed? Or that my sister’s husband died, leaving her broke with four kids?”
“I … I … I had no idea.”
“So,” said the bankster, “if I don’t give them any money, why would I give any to you?”
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