Baltic Dry Index. 2217 -02 Brent Crude 76.18
Spot Gold 1810
Coronavirus Cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,100
Coronavirus Cases 27/12/21 World 280,339,663
Deaths 5,416,735
The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.
H.
L. Mencken
In a usually quiet holiday shortened week, the professional money sharks usually try boosting stocks higher in order to boost their year-end bonuses, but 2021 was another central bankster market rigged year, which came with an omicron covid-19 sting in its tail.
Now we are all waiting to see what omicron does next to the global economy.
At worst, shutting down much of the global economy again, cancelling the Chinese New Year celebrations, cancelling the winter Olympics and Australian tennis competition.
At best, everyone gets omicron but it turns out to be of only common cold severity, although for an already compromised few that can be fatal.
We will know, one way or the other in then next two to three weeks.
Asia stocks, oil struggle as Omicron worries weigh
December 27, 2021 2:50 AM GMT
TOKYO, Dec 27 (Reuters) - Asian stock markets were generally weaker with U.S. crude in holiday-thinned trading on Monday, as uncertainty over the economic impact of the Omicron coronavirus variant weighed on investor sentiment.
U.S. airlines have cancelled or delayed thousands of flights over the past three days due to COVID-19-related staff shortages, while several cruise ships had to cancel stops after outbreaks on-board. read more
In Asia, China reported its highest daily rise in local COVID-19 cases in 21 months over the weekend as infections more than doubled in the northwestern city of Xian, the country's latest COVID hot spot. read more
Japan's Nikkei (.N225) lost 0.20% while South Korea's Kospi (.KS11) fell 0.11%.
Mainland Chinese shares, though, were mixed, with Shanghai's benchmark (.SSE50) sliding 0.37% but an index of blue chips (.CSI300) edged 0.05% higher.
Australia, Hong Kong and Britain are among markets closed Monday for holidays.
"There is concern over the widening spread of the Omicron variant, which is overall making people cautious about taking stocks higher" in Japan, said a market participant at a Japanese securities firm.
Wall Street trading resumes later in the global day following a holiday on Friday. U.S. stocks closed at records on Thursday amid signs Omicron may cause a milder level of illness, even as the highly transmissible strain led to a surge in case numbers around the world.
Emini futures point to a 0.1% rise for the S&P 500 (.SPX) when it reopens.
More
https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/global-markets-wrapup-1-2021-12-27/
Japanese shares end lower on Omicron fears, SoftBank falls
December 27, 2021 6:28 AM GMT
TOKYO, Dec 27 (Reuters) - Japanese shares ended lower on Monday, with SoftBank Group leading losses, as concerns over the impact of the Omicron COVID-19 variant offset gains in heavyweight technology stocks.
The Nikkei share average (.N225) slipped 0.37% to close at 28,676.46, while the broader Topix (.TOPX) lost 0.45% to 1,977.90.
Global technology investor SoftBank Group (9984.T) fell 2.96% on news that Credit Suisse is seeking information through U.S. courts, which could lead to it taking legal action in Britain against the Japanese company to recover certain funds. read more
"We do not have market moving events at home or abroad, and many people are still away from the markets, it is hard to make active bets," said Shigetoshi Kamada, general manager at the research department at Tachibana Securities.
The volume of shares traded on the Tokyo Stock Exchange's main board was 0.78 billion, compared with the average of 1.19 billion in the past 30 days.
More
Coronavirus Can Persist for Months After Traversing Body
(Bloomberg) -- The coronavirus that causes Covid-19 can spread within days from the airways to the heart, brain and almost every organ system in the body, where it may persist for months, a study found.
In what they describe as the most comprehensive analysis to date of the SARS-CoV-2 virus’s distribution and persistence in the body and brain, scientists at the U.S. National Institutes of Health said they found the pathogen is capable of replicating in human cells well beyond the respiratory tract.
The results, released online Saturday in a manuscript under review for publication in the journal Nature, point to delayed viral clearance as a potential contributor to the persistent symptoms wracking so-called long Covid sufferers. Understanding the mechanisms by which the virus persists, along with the body’s response to any viral reservoir, promises to help improve care for those afflicted, the authors said.
Read more: Why Impact of ‘Long Covid’ Could Outlast the Pandemic
“This is remarkably important work,” said Ziyad Al-Aly, director of the clinical epidemiology center at the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care System in Missouri, who has led separate studies into the long-term effects of Covid-19. “For a long time now, we have been scratching our heads and asking why long Covid seems to affect so many organ systems. This paper sheds some light, and may help explain why long Covid can occur even in people who had mild or asymptomatic acute disease.”
The findings and the techniques haven’t yet been reviewed by independent scientists, and mostly relate to data gathered from fatal Covid cases, not patients with long Covid or “post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2,” as it’s also called.
More
Global Inflation/Stagflation Watch.
Given our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians, inflation now needs an entire section of its own.
Today, fun and games and tokenism in oil and gas.
Russian gas flows via Yamal-Europe pipeline reversed for 6th day
December 26, 2021 4:32 PM GMT
FRANKFURT/PRAGUE, Dec 26 (Reuters) - The Yamal-Europe pipeline that usually delivers Russian gas to Western Europe was sending the fuel back to Poland for a sixth straight day on Sunday, according to data from German network operator Gascade.
Data showed that flows at the Mallnow metering point on the German-Polish border were going east into Poland at an hourly volume of nearly 1.2 million kilowatt hours (kWh/h) on Sunday.
Auction results showed Russian gas exporter Gazprom had not booked gas transit capacity for exports via the Yamal-Europe pipeline for Monday.
Gascade, which gets Russian gas and transports it within Germany, is owned by WIGA, a joint venture of Gazprom and oil and gas company Wintershall DEA (WINT.UL). Wintershall DEA is co-owned by German chemicals group BASF (BASFn.DE) and Russia's LetterOne.
Russia said this week the flow reversal was not a political move, though it coincides with rising tensions between Moscow and the West over Ukraine and has pushed gas prices to record highs. read more
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday Germany was reselling Russian gas to Poland and Ukraine rather than relieving an overheated market, putting blame for the reversal, and rocketing prices, on German gas importers.
More
Japan to auction more than 600,000 bbl of oil from national reserves in Feb
December 27, 2021 6:06 AM GMT
TOKYO, Dec 27 (Reuters) - Japan's industry ministry said on Monday it will hold an auction on Feb. 9 to sell about 100,000 kilolitres, or 628,980 barrels, of crude oil from its national reserve as a part of a U.S.-led coordinated release of oil reserve to cool rising prices.
The supply, to be taken from its Shibushi tank in southwestern Japan, will become available to the winning bidder on March 20 or later, it said in a statement.
Japan's government said last month that it would release "a few hundred thousand kilolitres" of oil in response to a U.S. request, and the sale would be done as part of a switch in the composition of the types of oil held in the national reserve. read more
"This is the first round of the planned releases and we will conduct more auctions when we are ready and while we closely watch the international energy markets," an official at the ministry told Reuters.
Global oil prices have slipped by more than $5 a barrel since the ministry announced the plan late in November, as the spread of the Omicron coronavirus variant has raised concerns that fuel demand might decrease.
But industry minister Koichi Hagiuda said earlier this month that Japan's oil release plan remained unchanged despite the drop. read more
The U.S. Department of Energy said earlier this month it will sell 18 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, with offers from companies to purchase it due on Jan. 4, as part of the release aimed at cooling fuel prices. read more
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
Factbox: Latest on the worldwide spread of the coronavirus
December 27, 2021 4:32 AM GMT
Dec 26 (Reuters) - China's local symptomatic COVID-19 cases crept up again, with most new infections reported in Xian city as it entered a fifth day of a lockdown, while Australian authorities refrained from imposing new curbs despite the country's first Omicron death. read more
EUROPE
* Britain reported another day of record cases on Friday, with new estimates showing swathes of London's population are carrying the virus. read more
* France broke the 100,000 cases threshold for the first time since the pandemic began as the Omicron variant continued its rapid spread, while Italy reported a third successive record tally of cases on Saturday. read more
* Ireland on Friday reported its highest number of daily cases since the pandemic began but those requiring critical care fell further amid a rapid roll-out of booster vaccines. read more
AMERICAS
* U.S. airlines cancelled more than 1,300 flights on Sunday as COVID-19 thinned out the number of available crews, while several cruise ships had to cancel stops after outbreaks on board, upending the plans of thousands of Christmas travellers. read more
* The Dominican Republic has identified its first case of the Omicron variant. read more
ASIA-PACIFIC
* India will start administering booster shots as a precautionary measure to healthcare and frontline workers from Jan. 10, as Omicron cases rose across the country. read more
* Japan's Kyoto and Fukuoka prefectures detected new infections involving the Omicron variant, including cases of possible community transmission, a government representative and local media said. read more
MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA
* Iran has banned the entry of travellers from Britain, France, Denmark and Norway for 15 days. read more
* Omani authorities require foreign travellers aged 18 or older to have received at least two vaccine doses to enter the sultanate, the state news agency reported. read more
* The Palestinian health ministry said it had identified the first case of Omicron in the Gaza Strip. read more
* A major Israeli hospital will begin administering a fourth vaccine shot to 150 staff on Monday in a trial aimed at gauging whether a second booster is necessary nationwide. read more
More
Fauci says Covid cases will go much higher as omicron spread continues, warns against getting complacent
Cases of Covid-19 are likely going to keep surging as the omicron variant rapidly spreads across the globe, U.S. infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said Sunday.
“Every day it goes up and up. The last weekly average was about 150,000 and it likely will go much higher,” Fauci said on ABC’s “This Week.”
As of Thursday, before the holiday weekend disrupted Covid trackers, the U.S. had reported more than 51 million total cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The U.S. also topped 800,000 total deaths from the disease in mid-December.
Driving the surge is the omicron variant, which took over as the dominant strain a week ago.
While the strain has proven to be highly transmissible, studies are starting to indicate it is less severe in terms of hospitalizations. Still, Fauci stressed now is not the time to “get complacent.”
“If you have many, many, many more people with a less level of severity, that might kind of neutralize the positive effect of having less severity when you have so many more people,” Fauci said. “And we’re particularly worried about those who are in that unvaccinated class. Those are the most vulnerable ones when you have a virus that is extraordinarily effective in getting to people and infecting them the way omicron is.”
France sees over 100,000 daily virus infections for 1st time
PARIS (AP) — France has recorded more than 100,000 virus infections in a single day for the first time in the pandemic and COVID-19 hospitalizations have doubled over the past month, as the fast-spreading omicron variant complicates the French government’s efforts to stave off a new lockdown.
More than 1 in 100 people in the Paris region have tested positive in the past week, according to the regional health service. Most new infections are linked to the omicron variant, which government experts predict will be dominant in France in the coming days. Omicron is already dominant in Britain, right across the Channel.
Meanwhile a surge in delta variant infections in recent months is pushing up hospital admissions in France, and put ICUs under strain again over the Christmas holidays. More than 1,000 people in France with the virus died over the past week, bringing the country’s overall death toll to more than 122,000.
President Emmanuel Macron’s government is holding emergency meetings Monday to discuss the next steps in tackling the virus. Some scientists and educators have urged delaying the post-holiday return to school, or suggested re-imposing a curfew.
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
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.
China Cements Rare Earths Dominance With New Global Giant
China Cements Rare Earths Dominance With New Global Giant
Thu, December 23, 2021, 6:15 PM3 min read
(Bloomberg) -- China formed a rare-earths giant by merging some key producers, creating a behemoth that will strengthen its control over the global industry it has dominated for decades.
The group is formed through merging rare-earth units of government-owned companies including China Minmetals Corp., Aluminum Corp. of China and Ganzhou Rare Earth Group Co., according to a stock exchange filing from China Minmetals Rare Earth Co. The new entity, China Rare-Earths Group, will speed the development of mines in the south, state broadcaster CCTV reported.
Bloomberg News reported in September that China was planning to create two giants -- one in the country’s north and the other in the south, each focusing on a different subset of materials. China controls most of the world’s mined output of rare earths, a broad group of 17 elements that are used in everything from smartphones to fighter jets, and has a stranglehold over processing.
The move aims to better allocate resources, realize green development and upgrade deep-processing of the rare-earth sector, according to CCTV. The State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission will hold a 31.21% stake in the new group, while Chinalco, China Minmetals and Ganzhou Rare Earth Group will each own 20.33%, it said.
“This is part of a broader repositioning of Chinese industry to feed the supply chain for the coming years of electrification, and it’s a recognition that the supply chain is the key tool for success in the coming decade,” said Jim Litinsky, the CEO of MP Materials, which is the only U.S. producer of rare earths. “It’s great for the business in the sense that I think the West is increasingly realizing that there needs to be an integrated localized supply chain.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/china-cements-rare-earths-dominance-012702578.html
There is always an easy solution to every problem - neat, plausible, and wrong.
H.
L. Mencken.
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