Baltic Dry Index. 3428 -91 Brent Crude 84.69
Spot Gold 1794
Coronavirus Cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,100
Coronavirus Cases 02/11/21 World 247,868,468
Deaths 5,020,709
"It is a mistake to try to look too far ahead. The chain of destiny can only be grasped one link at a time."
Sir Winston Churchill.
In the stock casinos, a bit of a wobble ahead of the Fed’s two day meeting in Washington. Like the punters in the stock casinos, I wish I knew how Chairman Powell and the rest of the Fed gang were positioned in the markets.
Short bonds and stocks or long bonds and stocks? Short bonds but long stocks? Just long stocks?
Below, will the Fed’s two day coven in the District of Crooks trump the COP26 forestry news?
European markets head for somber open as investors gear up for Fed meeting
LONDON — European stocks are expected to open lower on Tuesday after a strong start to trading in November.
The U.K.’s FTSE index is seen opening 8 points lower at 7,289, Germany’s DAX lower by 36 points at 15,784, France’s CAC 40 down 12 points at 6,888 and Italy’s FTSE MIB 14 points lower at 27,030, according to IG data.
Investors around the world are gearing up for a busy week of corporate earnings, a key U.S. Federal Reserve meeting and October’s U.S. jobs report (out on Friday) which will give the latest indication of the state of health of the world’s biggest economy.
The Federal Reserve’s highly-anticipated Federal Open Market Committee meeting kicks off on Tuesday. It is widely expected to lead to the central bank announcing it will begin to wind down its $120 billion in monthly bond purchases and end the program entirely by the middle of 2022.
Investors will also be looking for the Fed’s comments on rising prices as inflation has been running at a 30-year high. The meeting concludes on Wednesday.
In other news, global investors are continuing to follow developments at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow. The UN summit is widely seen as a make-or-break moment for global leaders to take decisive action to limit carbon emissions but hopes are not high for ambitious targets.
Shares in Asia-Pacific were mixed in Tuesday trade, with South Korea leading gains in the region. Australia’s central bank announced its decision to keep its cash rate target unchanged. U.S. stock futures were slightly lower in overnight trading.
European earnings are also in focus on Tuesday with the latest figures coming from Fresenius, HelloFresh, DSM, Adecco Group, Standard Chartered, BP and Ferrari on Tuesday.
Data releases include Portuguese unemployment data for September and Spanish car registrations for October.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/02/european-markets-investors-gear-up-for-key-fed-meeting.html
But talk is cheap. Actions speak louder than words. I still remember London Mayor Khan’s election promise to plant 2 million trees by 2020 to clean up London’s air. As we approach the end of 2021, how many are planted? A near as makes no difference, just over one tenth. Will COP26 do any better by 2030?
COP26 leaders vow new drive to save forests
Issued on:
World leaders meeting at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow will on Tuesday issue a multibillion-dollar pledge to end deforestation by 2030 but that date is too distant for campaigners who want action sooner to save the planet's lungs.
According to summit hosts the British government, the pledge is backed by almost $20 billion in public and private funding and is endorsed by more than 100 leaders representing over 85 percent of the world's forests, including the Amazon rainforest, Canada's northern boreal forest and the Congo Basin rainforest.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the agreement on deforestation was pivotal to the overarching ambition of limiting temperature rises to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
"These great teeming ecosystems –- these cathedrals of nature -- are the lungs of our planet," he was expected to say in Glasgow, according to Downing Street.
"Forests support communities, livelihoods and food supply, and absorb the carbon we pump into the atmosphere. They are essential to our very survival," said Johnson, who is chairing the summit.
"With today's (Tuesday's) unprecedented pledges, we will have a chance to end humanity's long history as nature's conqueror, and instead become its custodian."
The signatories include Brazil and Russia, which have been singled out for accelerating deforestation in their territories, as well as the United States, China, Australia and France.
The government of Brazil, much criticised for its environmental policies, announced Monday at the summit that it would cut 2005-level greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 -- up from a previous pledge of 43 percent.
"We are presenting a new, more ambitious climate goal," Environment Minister Joaquim Leite announced in a message transmitted from Brasilia to Glasgow.
Leite also said Brazil would aim to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.
For his part, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a target of net-zero emissions by 2070.
More
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20211102-cop26-leaders-vow-new-drive-to-save-forests-1
Sadiq Khan breaks tree planting election pledge
Updated: Oct 29, 2020
This means that the Mayor, who is now serving an extra year after his first term expired due to the coronavirus outbreak delaying London’s mayoral election, has only planted 14 per cent of the trees he promised he would by 2020.
The new figures also give a borough-by-borough break down, which reveals how the level of tree planting across the city has varied hugely. For example, more than 49,000 trees have been planted in Ealing since 2016, but only 3,271 in Islington.
Conservative London Assembly Member, Shaun Bailey AM, commented: “Sadiq Khan has failed to deliver on his pledge to plant two million trees by 2020, just as he has failed Londoners on transport and law and order.
Next, at COP26, all that glitters isn’t gold. There are lies, damned lies and statistics, everywhere.
As ever, one entrance for the Great Lords of the Universe attending by private plane, another humbler one for the lower orders.
Glasgow in November? Really! St Mungo bring them some warmer climate change before most journos waiting in line run out of aqua vitae, the “water of life.”
That parade of private planes.
Despite their climate pledges, the U.S. and others export huge amounts of fossil fuels
Jeff Brady October 31, 2021 7:00 AM ET
The U.S. may be on the verge of passing the most consequential climate change legislation ever. President Biden is expected to tout it at a big climate change meeting in Glasgow this week. But that won't change one of the country's major sources of greenhouse gas emissions: fossil fuel exports.
The U.S. is among countries that plan to keep exporting oil, natural gas and coal for decades to come even as they work to zero out climate-warming fossil fuel emissions at home. In an increasingly controversial quirk, this is perfectly acceptable under the Paris climate agreement.
Under that deal, countries set targets to reduce their climate-warming emissions. But fossil-fuel exporting countries, including the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Norway, do not have to count emissions produced by their exports. Instead, they are counted by the country that ultimately burns them.
After the oil supply crisis in the 1970s, the U.S. banned crude oil exports for 40 years. A fracking-fueled boom ended production worries and the ban was lifted six years ago in a budget bill. The timing was ironic.
"The ban was lifted in December 2015, actually while many of us were in Paris at the 2015 climate talks," says Kassie Siegel, senior counsel at the Center for Biological Diversity.
If the U.S. stopped exporting fossil fuels now, says Siegel, they might never get drilled or mined in the first place. She wants President Biden to bring back the export ban.
"The president can declare a national emergency under the National Emergencies Act and then reinstate the crude oil export ban on year-by-year basis," says Siegel.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm recently suggested that possibility, though more because of high oil prices than climate concerns.
A new ban likely would mobilize the same powerful petroleum industry interests that worked to get the ban lifted in 2015.
----Last year, oil shipped to places like China and India brought in about 50 billion dollars and helped reduce the U.S. trade deficit for the first time since records began in 1974.
Also big business these days is U.S. natural gas exports, about half of which is sent by pipeline to Mexico and Canada. But the fastest growth has been in liquified natural gas (LNG) that's transported on ships. Asian countries, such as South Korea, China and India, are among the biggest customers.
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The Latest: COP26 delegates face big lines as leaders arrive
November 1, 2021.
GLASGOW, Scotland — Scores of world leaders are being welcomed to Glasgow for a climate conference amid gloom over the meeting’s chances of agreeing to new measures to limit global warming.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres welcomed leaders one by one with elbow bumps and smiles Monday morning in front of a giant planet Earth on a blue background. The greetings were due to go on for hours, since more than 120 leaders are coming to Glasgow for the first two days of the 12-day summit.
Delegates, observers and journalists had a less welcoming experience as they arrived at the huge conference venue beside the River Clyde in Glasgow. Thousands lined up in a chilly wind to get through a bottleneck at the entrance to the venue, long before security. Some already turned back and decided to work from their hotels amid concern they won’t make it in on time for negotiating meetings.
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Hypocrite airways? Jeff Bezos's £48m Gulf Stream leads parade of 400 private jets into COP26 including Prince Albert of Monaco, scores of royals and dozens of 'green' CEOs - as huge traffic jam forces empty planes to fly 30 miles to park
Published: 11:15, 1 November 2021 | Updated: 01:56, 2 November 2021
Saint Mungo
Kentigern (Welsh: Cyndeyrn Garthwys; Latin: Kentigernus), known as Mungo, was a missionary in the Brittonic Kingdom of Strathclyde in the late sixth century, and the founder and patron saint of the city of Glasgow.
In Wales and England, this saint is known by his birth and baptismal name Kentigern (Welsh: Cyndeyrn). This name probably comes from the British *Cuno-tigernos, which is composed of the elements *cun, a hound, and *tigerno, a lord, prince, or king. The evidence is based on the Old Welsh record Conthigirn(i).[2] Other etymologies have been suggested, including British *Kintu-tigernos 'chief prince' based on the English form Kentigern, but the Old Welsh form above and Old English CundiÊ’eorn do not appear to support this.[3]
Particularly in Scotland, he is known by the pet name Mungo, possibly derived from the Cumbric equivalent of the Welsh: fy nghu 'my dear (one)'.[4] The Mungo pet name or hypocorism has a Gaelic parallel in the form Mo Choe or Mo Cha, under which guise Kentigern appears in Kirkmahoe, for example, in Dumfriesshire, which appears as 'ecclesia Sancti Kentigerni' in the Arbroath Liber in 1321. An ancient church in Bromfield, Cumbria is named after him, as are Crosthwaite Parish Church and some other churches in the northern part of Cumbria, for example St Mungo's Church, Dearham.
More
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Mungo
"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened."
Winston S. Churchill.
Global Inflation/Stagflation Watch.
Given our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians, inflation now needs an entire section of its own.
Inflation, wage data, challenge Fed 'transitory' narrative
November 1, 202110:07 AM GMT
WASHINGTON, Nov 1 (Reuters) - Price and wage increases running at multi-decade highs may challenge Federal Reserve officials this week as they try to maintain a balance between ensuring inflation remains contained and giving the economy as much time as possible to restore the jobs lost since the pandemic.
With investors already wagering the Fed will raise rates twice next year, a much sooner and faster pace than policymakers themselves have projected, economists at Goldman Sachs have become the latest to accelerate their rate hike call - moving it ahead a full year to July 2022.
By then, Goldman economist Jan Hatzius and others wrote that they expect inflation as measured by the closely monitored core personal consumption expenditures price index, still to be above 3% - a run of inflation not seen since the early 1990s and one well above the Fed's 2% target.
Aspects of the job market, particularly the labor force participation rate, are unlikely to have recovered to pre-pandemic levels, and would seemingly still be short of the "maximum employment" the Fed has promised to restore before raising interest rates. But at that point, the Goldman team wrote, Fed officials would "conclude that most if not all of the remaining weakness in labor force participation is structural or voluntary," and proceed with rate hikes to be sure inflation remains controlled.
"Since the (Federal Open Market Committee) last met in September, the unemployment rate has fallen further, average hourly earnings and the employment cost index have posted strong increases, inflation has remained high," they wrote, challenging the Fed's narrative that inflation will pass on its own without using a rate increase to tighten credit conditions and slow business and household purchases.
COLLAPSING TIMETABLE
The Fed meets this week and will issue a new policy statement on Wednesday at 2 p.m. (1800 GMT), with a press conference following at 2:30 p.m. (1830 GMT) by Fed Chair Jerome Powell. Officials are expected to approve plans for scaling back their current $120 billion in monthly bond purchases that would phase them out completely by the middle of next year - a first step away from the core policies put in place in early 2021 to battle the economic fallout from the pandemic.
More
https://www.reuters.com/business/inflation-wage-data-challenge-fed-transitory-narrative-2021-11-01/
China urges families to keep stocks of daily necessities ahead of winter
November 2, 20215:49 AM GMT
SHANGHAI/BEIJING, Nov 2 (Reuters) - The Chinese government has told families to keep daily necessities in stock in case of emergencies, after COVID-19 outbreaks and unusually heavy rains that caused a surge in vegetable prices raised concerns about supply shortages.
The directive by the commerce ministry stirred some concern on domestic social media that it may have been triggered by heightened tensions with Taiwan.
In response, the Economic Daily, a Communist Party-backed newspaper, told netizens not to have "too much of an overactive imagination" and that the directive's purpose was to make sure citizens were not caught off guard if there was a lockdown in their area.
The ministry's statement late on Monday urged local authorities to do a good job in ensuring supply and stable prices, and to give early warnings of any supply problems.
The central government typically makes extra effort to boost the supply of fresh vegetables and pork in the run-up to China's most important holiday, the Lunar New Year, which will fall in early February next year.
More
Why is the yield curve flattening and what does it mean?
November 1, 2021 5:25 AM
NEW YORK (Reuters) -A surge in the yields of short-term U.S. government debt has investors focused on the shape of the Treasury yield curve, where the yield advantage that longer-dated securities usually hold over shorter-dated ones is on track to narrow at its fastest pace since 2011.
Money managers and economists often view a shrinking of the gap between yields on shorter-term Treasuries and those maturing out years - known as yield curve flattening - as a sign of worries over economic growth and uncertainty about monetary policy.
Here’s a quick primer explaining what a flat yield curve is and how it may reflect investor expectations.
WHAT IS THE U.S. TREASURY YIELD CURVE?
The U.S. Treasury finances federal government budget obligations by issuing various forms of debt. The $14.8 trillion Treasury market includes Treasury bills from one month out to one year, notes from two years to 10 years, as well as 20-and 30-year bonds.
The yield curve plots the yield of all Treasury securities and investors watch its shape to extrapolate market expectations for U.S. growth and monetary policy.
Typically, the curve slopes upwards because investors expect more compensation for taking on the risk that rising inflation will lower the expected return from owning longer-dated bonds. That means a 10-year note will often yield more than a 2-year note because it has a longer duration. Yields move inversely to prices.
From time to time the yield curve can invert, a phenomenon that is considered bad news for the short-term economic outlook and has presaged past recessions here.
WHY IS THE YIELD CURVE FLATTENING NOW?
The Federal Open Market Committee is widely expected to announce at the conclusion of its November monetary policy meeting on Wednesday that it will begin tapering its $120 billion-per-month bond buying program.
While that move has been well-telegraphed to investors, some are starting to worry that surging inflation will force the central bank to unwind its bond buying faster and eventually raise interest rates sooner than investors had expected.
Expectations of sooner-than-expected rate increases have pushed short-term yields higher in recent days. Longer-term ones have fallen in part due to bets that a potentially more hawkish rate policy will successfully tamp down inflation, precluding the need for raising borrowing costs as high as previously projected over the longer term, analysts have said.
Rate increases can be a weapon against inflation, but they can also slow economic growth by increasing the cost of borrowing for everything from mortgages to car loans.
More
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
COVID-19′s global death toll tops 5 million in under 2 years
The global death toll from COVID-19 topped 5 million on Monday, less than two years into a crisis that has not only devastated poor countries but also humbled wealthy ones with first-rate health care systems.
Together, the United States, the European Union, Britain and Brazil — all upper-middle- or high-income countries — account for one-eighth of the world’s population but nearly half of all reported deaths. The U.S. alone has recorded over 740,000 lives lost, more than any other nation.
“This is a defining moment in our lifetime,” said Dr. Albert Ko, an infectious disease specialist at the Yale School of Public Health. “What do we have to do to protect ourselves so we don’t get to another 5 million?”
The death toll, as tallied by Johns Hopkins University, is about equal to the populations of Los Angeles and San Francisco combined. It rivals the number of people killed in battles among nations since 1950, according to estimates from the Peace Research Institute Oslo. Globally, COVID-19 is now the third leading cause of death, after heart disease and stroke.
The staggering figure is almost certainly an undercount because of limited testing and people dying at home without medical attention, especially in poor parts of the world, such as India.
Hot spots have shifted over the 22 months since the outbreak began, turning different places on the world map red. Now, the virus is pummeling Russia, Ukraine and other parts of Eastern Europe, especially where rumors, misinformation and distrust in government have hobbled vaccination efforts. In Ukraine, only 17% of the adult population is fully vaccinated; in Armenia, only 7%.
“What’s uniquely different about this pandemic is it hit hardest the high-resource countries,” said Dr. Wafaa El-Sadr, director of ICAP, a global health center at Columbia University. “That’s the irony of COVID-19.”
Wealthier nations with longer life expectancies have larger proportions of older people, cancer survivors and nursing home residents, all of whom are especially vulnerable to COVID-19, El-Sadr noted. Poorer countries tend to have larger shares of children, teens and young adults, who are less likely to fall seriously ill from the coronavirus.
India, despite its terrifying delta surge that peaked in early May, now has a much lower reported daily death rate than wealthier Russia, the U.S. or Britain, though there is uncertainty around its figures.
More
Corona vs. flu: Here’s how to tell the difference
OCTOBER 31, 2021 04:30
Before the coronavirus era, if you suffered from a runny nose, loss of sense of smell, fever or a headache, you thought it was the flu. But now that we’re entering winter, how can you be sure you have the flu and not corona?
The bottom line is that you can’t really tell the difference. That’s because the typical symptoms of the flu are headache, sore throat and runny nose - the same symptoms as coronavirus.
Flu is caused by a different virus strain than coronavirus. Still, most coronaviruses, like the flu, cause high fever, muscle aches, headaches, sore throats, runny nose and fatigue. People with corona suffer from respiratory symptoms that cause coughing, shortness of breath, difficulty breathing and fever. The infection can also cause pneumonia, kidney failure and in the most severe cases death.
And what about the symptom most identified with the corona - loss of smell?
Researchers from Europe whose study was published last year in the journal Rhinology found that when COVID-19 patients lose their sense of smell, it tends to be sudden and severe. In most cases they don’t have a stuffy or runny nose as most people with coronavirus can still breathe freely.
Another thing that sets them apart is the complete loss of taste caused by the loss of smell, which plays a large part in the ability to distinguish flavors. Coronavirus patients who actually experienced loss of taste couldn’t distinguish between bitter or sweet.
---- Still, in most people, flu symptoms usually peak within a day or two of being infected, while a person can show signs of corona from two and up to 14 days after exposure. In both diseases, a person may start spreading the virus at least a day (and sometimes more) before the onset of clinical symptoms, but the duration of infection in corona patients is longer than that of influenza.
More
https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/corona-vs-flu-heres-how-to-tell-the-difference-683584
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
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.
Metal-halide perovskite semiconductors can compete with silicon counterparts for solar cells, LEDs
Date: October 26, 2021
Source: American Institute of Physics
Summary: Common semiconductor materials for solar cells, such as silicon, must be grown via an expensive process to avoid defects within their crystal structure that affect functionality. But metal-halide perovskite semiconductors are emerging as a cheaper, alternative material class, with excellent and tunable functionality as well as easy processability.
Climate change and its consequences are becoming increasingly obvious, and solar cells that convert the sun's energy into electricity will play a key role in the world's future energy supply.
Common semiconductor materials for solar cells, such as silicon, must be grown via an expensive process to avoid defects within their crystal structure that affect functionality. But metal-halide perovskite semiconductors are emerging as a cheaper, alternative material class, with excellent and tunable functionality as well as easy processability.
In APL Materials, from AIP Publishing, researchers present a road map for organic-inorganic hybrid perovskite semiconductors and devices.
Perovskite semiconductors can be processed from solution, and a semiconductor ink can be coated or simply painted over surfaces to form the desired film. This can be incorporated into semiconductor devices, such as solar cells or light-emitting diodes.
"For many years, solution-processed semiconductors were viewed as unable to deliver the same functionality as specially grown crystalline semiconductors," said Lukas Schmidt-Mende, a co-author from the University of Konstanz in Germany. "The reason behind this thinking was that simple solution processing will inherently lead to a relative high number of defects within the formed crystal structure, which can negatively affect its functionality."
It turns out organic-inorganic hybrid perovskites are very defect-tolerant. Defects formed after processing do not dramatically influence device functionality, and for the first time, hybrid perovskites are enabling efficient solution-processed devices.
"We can simply change the chemical composition of the perovskite to tune its bandgap, which allows us to change the absorption profile," said Schmidt-Mende. "This can be used to prepare light-emitting diodes at different wavelengths or to tune the perovskite material for tandem solar cells to optimize the absorption profile."
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“When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.”
Winston S. Churchill.
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