Baltic Dry Index. 2715 -54 Brent Crude 82.74
Spot Gold 1818
Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.
Milton Friedman.
House passes $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill that includes transport, broadband and utility funding, sends it to Biden
The House passed a more than $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill late Friday, sending it to President Joe Biden’s desk in a critical step toward enacting sprawling Democratic economic plans.
The Senate approved the revamp of transportation, utilities and broadband in August. The legislation’s passage is perhaps the unified Democratic government’s most concrete achievement since it approved a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package in the spring.
The measure passed in a 228-206 vote. Thirteen Republicans supported it, while six Democrats voted against it. Biden could sign the bill within days.
----Democrats entered the day planning to pass both the infrastructure legislation and the party’s larger $1.75 trillion social safety net and climate package. A demand from a handful of centrists to see a Congressional Budget Office estimate of the social spending plan’s budgetary effects delayed its approval. Progressives sought assurances the holdouts would support the bigger proposal if they voted for the infrastructure bill.
After hours of talks — and a Biden call into a progressive caucus meeting urging lawmakers to back the infrastructure bill — the party’s liberal wing got assurances from centrists that they would support the larger package. The social and climate plan then cleared a key procedural hurdle early Saturday morning.
Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., said the group reached a deal to back the infrastructure plan in exchange for a commitment to take up the safety-net bill “no later than the week of November 15.” A group of five centrists separately issued a statement saying they would back the Build Back Better legislation pending a CBO score that assuages their concerns about long-term budget deficits.
In a statement after the House vote, Biden said the legislation would “create millions of jobs, turn the climate crisis into an opportunity, and put us on a path to win the economic competition for the 21st Century.” He also noted that the procedural vote on the second Democratic bill will “allow for passage of my Build Back Better Act in the House of Representatives the week of November 15th.”
The House is out of Washington next week, and it could take the CBO days or weeks to prepare a score of the legislation.
U.S. job growth picks up in October; unemployment rate falls to 4.6%
November 5, 2021 12:46 PM GMT
WASHINGTON, Nov 5 (Reuters) - U.S. employment increased more than expected in October as the headwind from the surge in COVID-19 infections over the summer subsided, offering more evidence that economic activity was regaining momentum early in the fourth quarter.
Nonfarm payrolls increased by 531,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department said in its closely watched employment report on Friday. Data for September was revised higher to show 312,000 created instead of the previously reported 194,000.
Economists polled by Reuters had forecast payrolls rising by 450,000 jobs. Estimates ranged from as low as 125,000 jobs to as high as 755,000. Worker shortages persisted, even as federal government-funded unemployment benefits wound down in early September and schools reopened for in-person learning.
Still, the report joined rising consumer confidence and services sector activity in painting a more favorable picture of the economy, after the Delta variant of the coronavirus and economy-wide shortages of goods restrained growth in the third quarter to its slowest pace in more than a year.
The unemployment rate fell to 4.6% from 4.8% in September. While companies desperately want to hire, millions remain unemployed and outside the labor force.
This labor market disconnect has been blamed on caregiving needs during the pandemic, fears of contracting the coronavirus, early retirements, massive savings and career changes as well as an aging population and the recently ended expanded unemployment benefits. With many people who moved out of cities during the pandemic yet to return, there could also be a mismatch between the open jobs and location.
here has also been a rise in strikes as workers take advantage of the tight labor market to demand more pay and better conditions. The walk out by about 10,000 Deere & Co workers had no impact on October's payrolls as it started in the middle of the period during which the government surveyed households and businesses for the employment report.
The scramble for workers continued to boost wage growth, which together with record savings should help to underpin consumer spending over the holiday session, though salaries are lagging inflation and shortages of goods are abound.
David Rosenberg: These green economy commodities are beating the best runs of the China supercycle
New index tracks performance of up and comers, including carbon credits
Author of the article: Publishing date:Nov 05, 2021
The surge in commodity prices has been impressive since mid-2020, predictably resulting in calls that a new “supercycle” is underway. We have questioned that narrative, given the apparent supply-demand imbalances plaguing the globe and boosting prices in the process. But one theme we do agree with is the long-term secular tailwinds behind a number of commodities required in the transition to a green economy in order to address climate change.
To better visualize commodity performance and gauge investor sentiment to the “greening of the world” thematic, we created an index tracking those we believe will be relied upon in this transition. This is not an exhaustive list, however, as reliable pricing and data sources are hard to come by for some commodities. That said, we feel it best captures the most relevant ones for a low carbon/greener world. The components are mentioned below along with a brief summary of their outlook.
On the metals/mining front, the World Bank estimates more than three billion tons of metals and minerals will be needed for renewable energy infrastructure by 2050 in order to achieve the goals from the Paris Agreement. We include copper, graphite, nickel, lithium and cobalt, since all are essential in the electrification process, the transition from internal combustion engines to electric vehicles, and the building of energy storage technologies — a requirement in the widespread adoption of renewable sources as energy demand and energy supply do not match as easily compared to fossil fuel sources.
A recent International Monetary Fund report sums up the demand picture nicely. Consumption of lithium and cobalt are expected to rise by a factor of six in order to reach the net-zero-by-2050 scenario; copper demand will increase twofold; and nickel will rise by a factor of four (all are front-loaded with the majority happening between now and 2030 due to the large initial requirements). To a lesser degree, aluminum and silver will also have a role to play and have also been included in our composite.
More
The COP26 climate summit is drawing parallels to the disastrous Copenhagen meeting of 2009
Published Fri, Nov 5 2021 4:56 AM EDT
GLASGOW, Scotland — U.N.-brokered climate talks in Scotland’s largest city have been compared to a summit held in Copenhagen over a decade ago that ended in disarray. It is a bleak early assessment of one of the most important diplomatic meetings in history.
World leaders and delegates representing almost every country have convened in Glasgow, U.K., for talks aimed at bringing climate change under control.
Less than a week into the meeting, known as COP26, and the mood is mixed. There have been positive developments, such as pledges to end and reverse deforestation, a deal to cut methane emission levels by 30% by 2030 and new commitments to phase out coal power.
Ultimately, however, the success of the summit will be judged on whether countries and companies can keep the 1.5 degrees Celsius goal alive. This critically important temperature threshold refers to the aspirational target of the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement.
Experts say it is difficult to see how COP26 can steer the world toward 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Crossovers between COP15 and COP26?
Asad Rehman, a spokesperson for the COP26 coalition, a U.K.-based civil society that represents indigenous communities, frontline activists and grassroots campaigns from the global south, told CNBC that he had been struck by the comparisons between the meeting in Glasgow and previous talks in Copenhagen.
The 2009 summit in Denmark’s capital city is widely regarded as a failure, with a deal many countries criticized for falling short of the action needed to tackle the climate crisis.
“There are, of course, already parallels in that it is a cold, wet northern European city,” Rehman said. “But there are also the more important comparisons.”
As with COP26 in Glasgow, Rehman said talks in Copenhagen were billed as humanity’s last and best chance to prevent the worst of what the climate crisis had in store. Both summits were “hugely expensive” for the global south, he added, with a lack of affordable accommodation and civil society groups “locked out” of negotiations.
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Two banksters are flying in a hot air balloon. But the wind turns fickle and they drift away far from their intended course and they have no idea where they are. So they go down to 30 feet above ground and ask a passing pedestrian. "Could you tell us where we are?"
"Yes, you are in a balloon." He promptly replied.
So the first bankster said to the other:
"The answer is perfectly right and absolutely useless. The man must be an economist"
Global Inflation/Stagflation Watch.
Given our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians, inflation now needs an entire section of its own.
After missing its inflation boat, the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street tries to explain why.
Bank of England’s Bailey says ‘the warning signs are there’ on inflation
Published Thu, Nov 4 2021 12:11 PM EDT Updated Thu, Nov 4 2021 1:29 PM EDT
LONDON — Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey told CNBC the “warning signs are there” on inflation, but the central bank will need to see further evidence from the labor market before hiking rates.
The Bank surprised markets somewhat by keeping interest rates unchanged on Thursday, with many investors having backed it to become the first major central bank to hike rates since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.
Bailey had been among the officials striking a hawkish tone in the run up to the November policy meeting, but the Monetary Policy Committee voted 7-2 to hold its benchmark interest rate at its historic low of 0.1%. However, it strongly indicated that rates will have to rise imminently, with markets now expecting a hike at its final meeting of the year in December.
Asked whether Thursday’s policy decision had damaged the Bank’s credibility, Bailey stressed that his previous remarks that the MPC would have to act on inflation were “conditional” on whether it begins to see medium-term inflation expectations becoming “de-anchored.”
“We don’t yet see, and we don’t see, evidence of that happening, but of course we are in what I might call a sort of very fragile period, in that sense, because we’ve got inflation going well above target,” Bailey told CNBC’s Geoff Cutmore shortly after the rate decision.
“The warning signs are there, the bells are ringing, as it were, so we have to watch this carefully, and that’s what we’re doing.”
The MPC also voted 6-3 to continue existing program of U.K. government bond purchases at a target stock of £875 billion ($1.2 trillion).
Bailey said the decision to keep rates at 0.1% was a “close call,” adding that the reason policymakers held off was that it hadn’t yet seen evidence on the state of the labor market after the end of the country’s furlough scheme on Sept. 30. Around 1 million workers were still on the scheme when it ended, which exceeded the Bank’s prior expectations.
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City Law firm raises newly qualified lawyer salaries to eye-watering £147k
Friday 5 November 2021 9:33 am
Freshly qualified lawyers at the London offices of the US law firm will now take home £147,000 – with their bonus added on top – marking a neat step up from £130,000 previously, according to Legal Cheek, which first reported the news.
The move puts newly qualified lawyers at Ropes & Gray on par, in terms of pay, with their peers at London US law firms Goodwin Procter, Gump and Milbank.
Trainee salaries in the London office at Ropes & Gray were also raised, reportedly up to 15 per cent, with first years now earning £57,500. Once they move into their second year trainees will earn £62,500.
The news comes as competition for legal talent in the capital has pushed up salaries. Yesterday law firm Stephenson Harwood announced it would raised salaries for newly qualified solicitors by 20 per cent to £90,000.
The highest-paying law firm for newly qualified lawyers remains Vinson & Elkins, where trainees enjoy a pay packet of £153,300, according to Legal Cheek which compiles rankings of British law firms based on their pay, hours, targets and other facets.
https://www.cityam.com/city-law-firm-raises-newly-qualified-lawyer-salaries-to-eye-watering-147k/
Suez Canal hikes tolls during ports crisis to capitalise on booming cargo trade
Friday 5 November 2021 11:18 am
Transit tolls in the Suez Canal are rising by six per cent next year for nearly all ships, despite the waterway reporting record revenues of $5.8 billion during the pandemic.
The Suez Canal Authority is now looking to harness a booming cargo trade, with global trade traffic set to increase by nearly seven per cent in 2022.
The toll hike follows a five per cent increase in 2020 for dry bulk and liquefied petroleum gas carriers.
The canal is the fastest shipping route between Asia and Europe and a key thoroughfare for a global trade.
Nearly 17,000 ships passed through in the year to October, according to the Suez Canal Authority, with a daily record of 87 vessels on September 29
The surging demand has led to healthy profits for shipping lines, such as Maersk.
The company enjoyed record sales of $16.6bn in the third quarter, a 68 per cent jump on a year earlier.
Pre-tax profits leapt to $5.9bn, compared with $1.1bn last time round.
Nevertheless, the increase in canal tolls will eat into these margins and could be passed onto businesses, which already face higher freight costs.
Only liquefied natural gas carriers and cruise ships will be exempt from the higher levy.
They will continue to pay the current rates.
More
https://www.cityam.com/suez-canal-to-capitalise-on-record-traffic-with-six-per-cent-toll-hike/
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
"An Environmental Disaster": An EV Battery Metals Crunch Is On The Horizon As The Industry Races To Recycle
by Tyler Durden Monday, Aug 02, 2021 - 08:40 PM
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
Pfizer says antiviral pill cuts risk of severe COVID-19 by 89%
November 5, 202111:07 AM GMT
Nov 5 (Reuters) - A trial of Pfizer Inc's (PFE.N) experimental antiviral pill for COVID-19 was stopped early after the drug was shown to cut by 89% the chances of hospitalization or death for adults at risk of developing severe disease, the company said on Friday.
The results appear to surpass those seen with Merck & Co Inc's (MRK.N) pill, molnupiravir, which was shown last month to halve the likelihood of dying or being hospitalized for COVID-19 patients also at high risk of serious illness. read more
Full trial data is not yet available from either company.
Pfizer shares surged 13% to $49.47, while those of Merck fell 6% to $84.69.
Pfizer said it plans to submit interim trial results for its pill, which is given in combination with an older antiviral called ritonavir, to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as part of the emergency use application it opened in October.
The combination treatment, which will have the brand name Paxlovid, consists of three pills given twice daily.
The planned analysis of 1,219 patients in Pfizer's study looked at hospitalizations or deaths among people diagnosed with mild to moderate COVID-19 with at least one risk factor for developing severe disease, such as obesity or older age.
It found that 0.8% of those given Pfizer's drug within three days of symptom onset were hospitalized and none had died by 28 days after treatment. That compared with a hospitalization rate of 7% for placebo patients. There were also seven deaths in the placebo group.
Rates were similar for patients treated within five days of symptoms - 1% of the treatment group was hospitalized, compared with 6.7% for the placebo group, which included 10 deaths.
Antivirals need to be given as early as possible, before an infection takes hold, in order to be most effective. Merck tested its drug within five days of symptom onset.
"We saw that we did have high efficacy, even if it was five days after a patient has been treated ... people might wait a couple of days before getting a test or something, and this means that we have time to treat people and really provide a benefit from a public health perspective," Annaliesa Anderson, head of the Pfizer program, told Reuters.
More
COVID-19: UK scientists find gene linked to doubling risk of death
Around 60% of people with South Asian ancestry carry the high-risk gene, researchers at Oxford University said.
By REUTERS NOVEMBER 5, 2021 14:36
British scientists have identified a gene that doubles the risk of dying from COVID-19, providing new insights into why some people are more susceptible to the disease than others, while opening up possibilities for targeted medicine.
Around 60% of people with South Asian ancestry carry the high-risk gene, researchers at Oxford University said on Friday, adding the discovery partly explains the high number of deaths seen in some British communities, and the effect of COVID-19 in the Indian subcontinent.
The scientists found that the increased risk is not because of a difference in genetic coding of the proteins, but because of differences in the DNA that makes a kind of "switch" to turn a gene on.
That genetic signal is likely to affect cells in the lung, while a higher risk version of the identified gene, called LZTFL1, possibly prevents the cells lining airways and the lungs from responding to the virus properly.
However, the higher risk version gene does not affect the body's immune system that makes antibodies to fight off infections, researchers said, adding that those people carrying this version of the gene should respond normally to vaccines.
"(The study) shows that the way in which the lung responds to the infection is critical. This is important because most treatments have focused on changing the way in which the immune system reacts to the virus," said Professor James Davies, co-lead of the study.
The findings were published in the Nature Genetics journal.
Next, some very useful 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 more useful Covid links.
Johns Hopkins Coronavirus resource centre
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
Rt Covid-19
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.
Physicists discover novel quantum effect in bilayer graphene
Date: November 4, 2021
Source: University of Texas at Dallas
Summary: Theorists have observed a rare phenomenon called the quantum anomalous Hall effect in a very simple material. Previous experiments have detected it only in complex or delicate materials.
Dr. Fan Zhang, associate professor of physics in the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, is an author of a study published on Oct. 6 in the journal Nature that demonstrates the exotic behavior in bilayer graphene, which is a naturally occurring, two-atom thin layer of carbon atoms arranged in two honeycomb lattices stacked together.
The quantum Hall effect is a macroscopic phenomenon in which the transverse resistance in a material changes by quantized values in a stepwise fashion. It occurs in two-dimensional electron systems at low temperatures and under strong magnetic fields. In the absence of an external magnetic field, however, a 2D system may spontaneously generate its own magnetic field, for example, through an orbital ferromagnetism that is produced by interactions among electrons. This behavior is called the quantum anomalous Hall effect.
"When the rare quantum anomalous Hall effect was investigated previously, the materials studied were complex," Zhang said. "By contrast, our material is comparably simple, since it just consists of two layers of graphene and occurs naturally."
Dr. Thomas Weitz, an author of the study and a professor at the University of Göttingen, said: "Additionally, we found quite counterintuitively that even though carbon is not supposed to be magnetic or ferroelectric, we observed experimental signatures consistent with both."
----The ability to control the electronic properties of bilayer graphene to such a high degree might make it a potential candidate for future low-dissipation quantum information applications, although Zhang and Weitz said they are primarily interested in revealing the "beauty of fundamental physics."
"We predicted, observed, elucidated and controlled a quantum anomalous Hall octet, where three striking quantum phenomena -- ferromagnetism, ferroelectricity and zero-field quantum Hall effect -- can coexist and even cooperate in bilayer graphene," Zhang said. "Now we know we can unify ferromagnetism, ferroelectricity and the quantum anomalous Hall effect in this simple material, which is amazing and unprecedented."
Other authors of the Nature article include UT Dallas physics doctoral student Tianyi Xu and researchers from the University of Göttingen and the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.
Zhang's research is funded by the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command's Army Research Laboratory and the National Science Foundation.
Winter Watch.
This weekend more on the new winter watch section. Northern hemisphere snow and the Arctic ice cover. Both by about mid-November give a pretty good indication of the winter to come.
U.S. and Northern Hemisphere Snow Cover
https://www.nohrsc.noaa.gov/nh_snowcover/
Read scientific analysis on Arctic sea ice conditions.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
This weekend’s musical diversion. That 9 or 10 year old Russian child prodigy pianist again. Approx. 12 minutes of intricate Mozart and all from memory.
Mozart Concerto no.23 in A major k.488 1part / Elisey Mysin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9jS2-UiA7o
This weekend’s maths update, Approx. 8 minutes.
How To Solve The 6s Challenge
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2vkrxvh76c
This weekend’s chess update. Approx.19 minutes.
No Wonder He's Playing Next To a Fire Extinguisher
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdD7E2BkZes
A party of economists were climbing in the Alps . After several hours they became hopelessly lost. One of them studied the map for some time, turning it up and down, sighting on distant landmarks, consulting his compass, and even the sun.
Finally he said, ' OK see that big
mountain over there?'
'Yes', answered the others eagerly.
'Well, according to the map, we're standing on top of it.'
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