Baltic Dry Index. 3618 -89 Brent Crude 72.67
Spot Gold 1788
Coronavirus Cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,100
Coronavirus Cases 09/09/21 World 223,436,470
Deaths 4,610,470
John Kenneth Galbraith. The Great Crash: 1929.
Short term and longer term, the stock casinos seem to have run into trouble.
Short term, from problems in China and problems caused by China’s President Xi.
Longer term, from complications from growing supply chain problems plus a shortage of skilled and unskilled worker problem.
Slamming into the short and longer term picture for the stock casinos, rising central bankster awareness that their spin and hype that our inflation is only “transitory” and temporary, isn’t working anymore. The public increasingly sees through their lies every day at the petrol pump and in the necessities of everyday life.
Long, long term, higher taxes to pay for all the trillions of “free” money issued from the Magic Money Tree forest since March 2020.
Below, more stock wobble or something more? The dreaded “rolling over?”
Asia-Pacific stocks slip; Tencent and Netease shares drop
Published Wed, Sep 8 2021 7:40 PM EDT
SINGAPORE — Hong Kong stocks fell in Thursday trade, with shares in the rest of Asia-Pacific also largely declining.
Shares of Tencent and Netease in Hong Kong dropped 5.7% and 6.98% respectively by Thursday afternoon in the city, after Chinese state media reported that the two were among video game firms summoned to a meeting with regulators.
Issues discussed during the meeting included requiring firms to limit the gaming time for minors, as well as to forbid any form of “account renting services” for minors. New rules were published late August banning those under 18 years old in China from playing online games for more than three hours per week.
Private education stocks also took a hit following China’s Wednesday ban on private tutors giving classes online or in unregistered venues. New Oriental Education & Technology’s stock plunged 6.67%, while smaller rival Koolearn Technology fell 5.18%.
Meanwhile, shares of China Evergrande Group in Hong Kong plunged more than 9% as uncertainty continues to surround the embattled property developer’s debt situation.
The broader Hang Seng index in Hong Kong dropped 1.6%.
The Shanghai composite in mainland China hovered fractionally higher while the Shenzhen component dipped 0.628%.
China’s consumer price index rose 0.8% year-on-year in August, compared to expectations for a 1% increase in a Reuters poll. Meanwhile, the producer price index jumped 9.5% from a year ago, as compared to forecasts of a 9% rise in a Reuters poll.
Elsewhere, the Nikkei 225 in Japan dipped 0.46% while the Topix index fell 0.48%. South Korea’s Kospi declined 0.9%.
In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 fell 1.41%.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan dropped 1.21%.
Overnight stateside, the Dow and S&P 500 fell for a third straight day, while the Nasdaq dropped for its first session in five. The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 68.93 points to 35,031.07 while the S&P 500 dipped 0.13% to 4,514.07. The Nasdaq Composite declined 0.57% to 15,286.64.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/09/asia-markets-china-inflation-data-currencies-oil.html
Exclusive: Share price drops and less access to capital loom if supply chain issues persist, City insiders warn
Wednesday 8 September 2021 9:25 am
Investment managers in the City and across the UK warn that companies without sustainable supply chains will attract less investment and see share prices fall, according to a new report shared exclusively with City A.M. this morning.
Nearly 85 per cent of investment managers believe that businesses who do not fix supply chain sustainability initiatives will see share prices fall as a result over the next decade, according to the research.
In fact, investors are so concerned about inaction that 84 per cent also stated that issues with supply chain sustainability and ESG standards are a risk to their investments, procurement consultancy Proxima found in its survey.
The firm assessed supply chain sustainability through the lens of the investment manager, writing in its report that there is “overwhelming evidence” that supply chain sustainability is at the top of the investor’s agenda with 97 per cent of investment managers telling the firm they consider the sustainability standards of a business’ supply chain when making investment decisions. This is reflected on both sides of the Atlantic, with US and UK-based investment managers in agreement.
Long term access to capital
Supply chain sustainability matters to investors over the long-term, as most managers indicated they firmly believe this topic will dominate the agenda during the next decade.
88 per cent of investment managers said that supply chain sustainability standards will be a key criterion for investment decisions over the next ten years.
---- “It is clear that investors have supply chain sustainability in their sights as we look to build a better post-pandemic world,” Simon Geale, Executive Vice President at Proxima, told City A.M. this morning.
“Supply chains are going to be at the heart of the change. They can be complex, and frequently are, but ultimately remain a key part of the solution along with innovation and collaboration. It’s vital that a business brings in the expertise it needs to address the challenge,” Geale added.
More
The six reasons why Jim Cramer is concerned about the stock market in September
Published Wed, Sep 8 2021 6:34 PM EDT
- CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Wednesday he sees multiple reasons to be concerned about the stock market in September.
- The “Mad Money” host is worried about negative pre-announcements, Congress and more companies going public, among others.
- “At the end of the day, I think we can deal with any of these issues, but not all at once—at least not without lower stock prices,” Cramer said.
More
In better news for Europe especially Germany, the second Nord Stream 2 pipeline now complete, Gazprom wants to start pumping gas as soon as October 1st. It can’t come soon enough given Europe’s historically low level of natural gas inventory with winter approaching.
Gazprom Plans to Start Nord Stream 2 Gas Pipeline Next Month
By Irina Reznik and Elena Mazneva8 September 2021, 14:33 BST
· Russian gas giant is targeting Nord Stream 2 flows from Oct. 1
· Both lines of the link should be flowing gas two months later
Gazprom PJSC is planning to start flowing natural gas through one of the world’s most controversial pipelines next month, according to people with direct knowledge of the company’s plan.
The Russian gas giant wants to begin shipping the fuel through the first leg of the Nord Stream 2 link to Germany on Oct. 1, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. The timing of actual flows into Europe’s gas grid will still depend on a decision by the German regulator.
More
Electricity and gas prices in UK and Europe hit records
Squeeze compounded by lower-than-expected power generation from wind
6 September, 2021
Consumers in the UK and continental Europe are facing a growing price crunch for energy as wholesale electricity costs surpassed their highest ever level on Monday, boosted by low wind generation and the rally in natural gas to record heights.
Benchmark wholesale electricity prices in Germany for delivery next year reached more than €90 per megawatt hour, or roughly double the level at which they started the year, surpassing the previous record hit in summer 2008 when oil prices were approaching $150 a barrel.
Gas prices in the UK and continental Europe, which have hit a series of record highs in recent weeks, also rose with day-ahead prices at the UK National Balancing Point, a virtual trading venue for natural gas, reaching £1.31 per therm, more than four times higher than this time last year.
Carlos Torres-Diaz, head of power and gas markets at consultancy Rystad Energy, said lower gas supplies from Russia this year had led to lower inventories in storage across Europe, while greater competition with Asia for liquefied natural gas (LNG) shipments had also forced prices higher.
Gas levels in European storage are “way below the five-year average”, he said, warning of tight supplies this winter. These have in turn pushed up the price of electricity, as gas is used in power generation as well as for heating and industrial uses.
More
https://www.ft.com/content/bf84f4a9-4720-4655-801f-a40d57b634e6
Finally, let’s blame it on Brexit (again.) Except while the UK is allegedly short of 100,000 Heavy Goods Vehicle drivers, The EU itself is short of 400,000 HGV drivers. It’s nothing to do with Brexit, just don’t tell the BBC, AFP, or the rest of the in denial EUSSR Remainiacs.
Besides, who drinks milk or water?
No milk or water: Shoppers face shortages at UK grocery stores
Issued on: 08/09/2021 - 13:54
The supply chain troubles caused by Brexit and the pandemic have been so bad for Satyan Patel that the shelves at his convenience store in central London are seriously lacking water and soft drinks.
"Last week I ran out of Coca-Cola. I haven't had large bottles of Evian for three weeks," said Patel.
"Without products, there's no business. With empty shelves like this, no one is going to come in the shop anyway," he added.
A wide range of businesses have suffered through shortages for several months in the UK -- from milkshakes at McDonald's to beer at a pub chain to mattresses at Ikea.
But shoppers are also facing empty shelves for things as basic as water and milk at UK supermarkets and grocery stores.
The coronavirus crisis has severely disrupted the global supply chain, but Britain's divorce from the European Union late last year has exacerbated the problem in the UK.
Shops are not getting products delivered to them as rules making it harder to hire EU citizens has left haulage companies with a drastic shortage of lorry drivers.
Many people who returned to their home countries from Britain during the lockdown have not returned.
Co-op, a cooperative supermarket group, said it was "impacted by some patchy distribution" to its deliveries but it was working with suppliers to re-stock quickly.
The group said it was recruiting 3,000 temporary workers "to keep depots working to capacity and stores stocked as quickly as possible".
- Where's the milk? -
According to recent estimates, the UK currently faces a shortage of about 100,000 lorry drivers.
"We had already decided to reduce our stock because of Covid... but now we're finding it hard to get some products as well because they're just not available," Patel said.
At a supermarket near his store, the soft drinks aisle was a little short of bottles and cans but other shelves were full.
But 22-year-old sales assistant Toma said the situation was grim.
"We don't have stock, we have nothing in our warehouse," said Toma, who declined to give her last name.
"We have gaps everywhere," she said. "Sometimes we receive only a certain amount (of some products). We don't even have water."
The shortages began when the pandemic hit and got worse after Brexit came into force on January 1, Toma said.
Some customers complain to supermarket staff and "say it's us to blame", she added.
At another major supermarket in southeast London, water bottles were sparse and milk was missing from shelves.
Frozen-food group Iceland and retail giant Tesco have warned of Christmas shortages.
More
Stop blaming Brexit for beer supply issues, says Wetherspoon’s Tim Martin
Thursday 2 September 2021 3:27 pm
Brexit is not the cause of driver shortages as pub chain Wetherspoon’s was hit by beer supply issues earlier this week, the company’s founder Tim Martin said this afternoon.
The group apologised to customers on Wednesday after it said supplies of Heineken, Carling and Coors beers ran dry in some pubs.
Martin, an ardent supporter of Brexit, said the shortages were mainly driven by industrial action in recent weeks by drivers and warehouse staff acting on behalf of Heineken.
Strikes at drinks distributor XPO Logistics called off industrial action last month after an improved pay offer.
“Strenuous efforts are being made to link supply issues to Brexit,” the executive chairman said.
“In this case the main link relates to industrial action, Brexit gave the power to the UK Government to allow more HGV drivers in, should it choose to do so. There are supply chain issues in many EU countries following the pandemic.
“It has been widely reported that there are shortages of 400,000 HGV drivers in Germany, France and Spain, for example, and Germany, in particular, is struggling with major worldwide supply chain issues.”
A spokesman for Wetherspoons had said that stocks of Carling and Coors had been depleted when customers bought more after industrial action impacted deliveries from Heineken, the pub group’s biggest supplier.
More
https://www.cityam.com/stop-blaming-brexit-for-beer-supply-issues-says-wetherspoons-tim-martin/
Global Inflation Watch.
Given our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians, inflation now needs an entire section of its own.
Bailey warns worker shortages could produce sticky inflation
Wednesday 8 September 2021 5:18 pm
The governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, has signalled he is pessimistic about the current worker shortages crippling the UK economy ending soon.
Giving evidence to the Treasury Committee, Bailey said the main problem in the economy is now “getting jobs filled.”
Responding to questions on whether inflation will persist for longer than the Bank expects, Bailey said he has deep “concern[s] about the persistence in the labour market story.”
Bailey also revealed there was a 4-4 tie among members of the monetary policy committee over whether the Old Lady’s previous forward guidance for tightening monetary policy had been met at the previous round of meetings.
Bailey revealed he personally thought the old forward guidance on reducing quantitative easing had been met.
The MPC voted to maintain the pace of bond purchases to ensure the stock of the Bank’s assets swell to £895bn and keep rates unchanged at 0.1 per cent in their previous meeting in August.
The MPC is scheduled to publish the results of its next round on meetings on 23 September, the first to include new chief economist, Huw Pill.
Other members of the Bank’s ratesetting committee, appearing at the session, also voiced their concerns over worker shortages clearing.
---- The Bank thinks inflation will reach at least four per cent by the end of the year. The Office for National Statistics currently estimates CPI inflation is running at two per cent annually, a substantial drop from 2.5 per cent from its previous estimate.
Over the course of the pandemic, the Bank has routinely undershot its inflation forecasts. In its previous monetary policy report, published in May, it expected inflation to reach 1.7 per cent annually in June, a 0.8 percentage point undershoot.
https://www.cityam.com/bailey-warns-worker-shortages-could-produce-sticky-inflation/
Diamond Rebound Rolls On as De Beers Reports Another Bumper Sale
By Thomas Biesheuvel8 September 2021, 08:32 BST
· De Beers sold $515 million of diamonds at latest sale
· It’s the company’s biggest rough diamond sale since February
The diamond industry’s resurgence showed no sign of slowing down with De Beers reporting its biggest gem sale since February as consumers continued to buy jewelry.
Anglo American Plc’s De Beers said it sold $515 million of rough diamond at its seventh sale of 2021, the biggest total for this time of year since 2016. The company is currently on track for its best year since 2018
More
Global reinsurance rates to keep rising next year - Moody's
September 7, 2021
LONDON (Reuters) - Global reinsurance rates are likely to continue rising next year, in the low to mid-single digit percentage range, Moody’s analysts said on Tuesday.
Reinsurance rates have been rising in the past few years after natural disasters such as hurricanes and wildfires, as well as from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We expect this (price) trend to continue,” Moody’s insurance credit analyst Helena Kingsley-Tomkins told a media briefing.
Insurers and reinsurers face the risk of future natural catastrophes, with climate change making them harder to predict. Moody’s said demand for insurance and reinsurance is also rising as the global economy recovers.
The ratings agency also raised its outlook on global reinsurers to stable from negative on Tuesday, citing rising premium rates amid a global economic rebound.
Reinsurers share the burden of large losses such as from hurricanes with insurers, in return for part of the premium.
Insurance losses as a result of the pandemic had amounted to around $37 billion so far, Kingsley-Tomkins said, far below initial industry projections of as much as $100 billion.
---- The ratings agencies usually update their outlooks ahead of an annual reinsurance event in Monte Carlo each September. The event is taking place virtually this year.
More
In central banking as in diplomacy, style, conservative tailoring, and an easy association with the affluent count greatly and results far much less.
John Kenneth Galbraith.
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
International study reveals how Delta came to dominate the pandemic
Rich Haridy September 07, 2021
A comprehensive new study, published in the journal Nature, is describing how the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 has so rapidly become dominant all over the world. The research offers thorough evidence Delta’s effective spread is through a combination of greater resistance to immune antibodies and a more efficient ability to infect cells and replicate compared to prior virus variants.
First recorded in India in December, 2020, the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 has spread across the globe at an incredible rate. Clearly outperforming all other currently circulating variants, Delta is now the dominant form of SARS-CoV-2 and present in most countries around the world.
This new study is the result of a massive international collaborative effect involving dozens of scientists. The first arm of the research investigated how effectively the Delta variant evades pre-existing immune antibodies generated either by a prior COVID-19 infection or a vaccination.
Across a series of in vitro experiments the researchers found the Delta variant was six times less sensitive to immune antibodies from individuals who had recovered from a prior COVID-19 infection, and eight times less sensitive to vaccine-induced antibodies. This sensitivity was compared to antibody responses generated against the original strain of SARS-CoV-2.
The second arm of the study focused on how the Delta variant more efficiently infects and replicates within host cells. Here the researchers generated a cellular model of an airway grown from human cells.
Observing the virus infecting these cells in detail revealed the Delta variant’s increased ability to break into cells compared to other SARS-CoV-2 variants. The researchers suggest this ability is mediated by a greater volume of what are known as cleaved spikes.
A synthetic version of Delta, known as a pseudotyped virus, was created to mimic a few key mutations. This effectively confirmed the increased number of cleaved spikes on the virus surface is what helps Delta more efficiently enter host cells.
Once inside those cells the Delta variant was also found to replicate faster than previous variants. These factors, the researchers hypothesize, are why Delta has so quickly become dominant over all other variants currently circulating.
“By combining lab-based experiments and epidemiology of vaccine breakthrough infections, we’ve shown that the Delta variant is better at replicating and spreading than other commonly observed variants,” says Ravi Gupta, a senior author on the new study from the University of Cambridge. “There’s also evidence that neutralizing antibodies produced as a result of previous infection or vaccination are less effective at stopping this variant. These factors are likely to have contributed to the devastating epidemic wave in India during the first quarter of 2021, where as many as half of the cases were individuals who had previously been infected with an earlier variant.”
Gupta says we may need to begin considering Delta-specific vaccines, as the study also analyzed around 100 vaccinated healthcare workers who were subsequently infected with the Delta variant. Current vaccines were still found to be profoundly effective at preventing severe disease, hospitalization and death, however, the research found vaccinated individuals infected with Delta were transmitting the virus to others at greater levels than previous variants.
Anurag Agrawal, from India’s CSIR Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology and joint senior author on the new study, says this kind of breakthrough viral transmission is a significant problem as it allows the virus to silently spread through vaccinated communities until it catches either vulnerable populations or the unvaccinated.
“Infection of vaccinated healthcare workers with the Delta variant is a significant problem,” says Agrawal. “Although they themselves may only experience mild COVID, they risk infecting individuals who have suboptimal immune responses to vaccination due to underlying health conditions – and these patients could then be at risk of severe disease. We urgently need to consider ways of boosting vaccine responses against variants among healthcare workers. It also suggests infection control measures will need to continue in the post-vaccine era.”
The new study was published in the journal Nature.
Source: University of Cambridge
Israel’s Covid Surge Shows the World What’s Coming Next
Daniel Avis September 7, 2021
(Bloomberg) -- Israel, once a front-runner in the global race to move on from Covid-19, is now one of the world’s biggest pandemic hot spots.
The country that was once predicted to be the first to vaccinate its entire population had the highest per-capita caseload of anywhere in the week through Sept. 4, according to figures compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Its world-beating inoculation rate, meanwhile, has tumbled down the league table.
The nation of 9 million became the test case for reopening society and the economy in April when much of Europe and the U.S. were still in some form of lockdown. Yet Israel now shows how the calculus is changing in places where progress was fastest. It’s no longer just about whether people get coronavirus, but also how badly they get it and ensuring that vaccines are still working as the highly infectious delta variant threatens to undermine immunity.
More recently, it has led the way when it comes to vaccinating children and rolling out a booster shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine after research suggested reduced efficacy over time. Around 100,000 Israelis are getting inoculated every day, the vast majority of them with a third shot.
“If you are able to maintain life without lockdown, and to avoid very high numbers of hospitalizations and death, then this is what life with Covid looks like,” said Eyal Leshem, a professor specializing in infectious diseases at the Sheba Medical Center in Tel Ha-Shomer.
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.
Hmmm?
UK government calls for security review of graphene firm’s takeover by Chinese academic
Published Tue, Sep 7 20219:26 AM EDT
The U.K. government has called for an investigation into a takeover by a Chinese scientist of a small Welsh manufacturer that makes a “supermaterial” known as graphene.
British Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng has ordered the U.K. competition watchdog to complete a national security review into the takeover of Perpetuus Group by Taurus International or Zhongfu Zhou, or any enterprise associated with him or the company.
The Competition and Markets Authority has been given until Feb. 7 to submit a report to the government, which issued a public interest intervention notice to intervene in the proposed transaction.
The U.K. government declined to comment on the specific reasons behind the intervention.
Zhou is listed as the chief nanotechnology scientist on the Perpetuus website, which says he is one of the world’s leading authorities on 2D materials and their applications.
The scientist has spent several years studying advanced materials like graphene, which is a one-atom thick material that could revolutionize products in everything from computing to defense.
After graduating from the University of Science and Technology in Beijing, he went on to study a PhD in materials science at Oxford University and then became a research associate at Cardiff University in Wales.
He then moved to Aberystwyth University in 2010 to work for the Department of Physics and the Centre for Advanced Functional Materials and Devices.
He is also the managing director of the Inner Mongolia Industrial Research Institute for Composite Materials, a company based in northern China, according to his LinkedIn page.
Founded in 2013, Perpetuus had a turnover of £479,001 in 2020, down from £717,681 in 2019, according to documents filed with U.K. companies’ registry Companies House. In 2019, it had 14 staff.
Meanwhile, Taurus International was founded in Oct. 2020 and its office is registered to a semi-detached residential property in southeast London. It has one director listed on its company accounts.
“I’m pleased to see the government being more active in responding to national security concerns over takeovers,” said British lawmaker Tom Tugendhat, who leads the China Research Group, which aims to “promote debate and fresh thinking” about how Britain should respond to the rise of China, according to its website.
“Graphene, like many other U.K. innovations, offers the possibility of an extraordinary future and it’s essential that sensitive technology stays with trusted partners,” Tugendhat added.
Perpetuus and Zhou did not immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment.
The intervention comes just a few months after the U.K. government ordered a national security review of another Chinese takeover.
Nexperia, a Dutch semiconductor manufacturer that owned by China’s Wingtech, purchased the U.K.’s largest chip plant, Newport Wafer Fab, for £63 million in July.
In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone.
John Kenneth Galbraith.
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