Baltic Dry Index. 1343 -48 Brent Crude 87.90
Spot Gold 1848
Coronavirus Cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,100
Coronavirus Cases 26/01/22 World 359,349,527
Deaths 5,634,665
If a government resorts to inflation, that is, creates money in order to cover its budget deficits or expands credit in order to stimulate business, then no power on earth, no gimmick, device, trick or even indexation can prevent its economic consequences.
Henry Hazlitt.
In the absence of a Ukraine war, it’s Fed Chairman Powell’s big day. Rescue the stock casinos or kill them by tackling inflation.
Tackling inflation is the right course for the US (and global economy,) but my guess is that Chairman Powell will wimp out in favour of the stock casinos. Powell’s no Volker, at least so far.
Asia stocks trade mixed as investors look ahead to Fed meeting conclusion
INGAPORE — Asia markets traded mixed on Wednesday, after U.S. equities tumbled overnight in another volatile session as investors await the Fed meeting statement later stateside. Oil and gold prices also jumped on Russia-Ukraine tensions.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index rose 0.13%, while the Shanghai composite was up 0.14%, and the Shenzhen component inched down 0.17% after earlier gains.
Chinese tech stocks recovered slightly after losses the day before, with Tencent rising 0.69%, and JD up 1.28%. The Hang Seng Tech index pared some earlier gains, last trading 0.74% higher.
Meanwhile, embattled property developer Evergrande is reportedly set to hold a call with investors together with its financial advisors, Reuters reported, citing sources. That would be Evergrande’s first call since it defaulted on some offshore bond payments last month, Reuters said.
Evergrande shares last rose 1.15%.
Elsewhere, Japan’s Nikkei 225 was down 0.17%, while the Topix inched up marginally.
Over in South Korea, the Kospi rose 0.18%. Singapore’s Straits Times index jumped 0.86%.
Markets in Australia and India are closed for holidays on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund downgraded its global growth forecast for this year as rising Covid-19 cases, supply chain disruptions and higher inflation hamper economic recovery. It said in a report published Tuesday that it expects global gross domestic product to weaken from 5.9% in 2021 to 4.4% in 2022 — with this year’s figure being half a percentage point lower than previously estimated.
Markets will be looking ahead to the Fed’s conclusion of its meeting on Wednesday, where it’s expected to issue a statement signaling a rate hike as soon as March and more policy tightening on the table to address high inflation.
Ahead of the Fed meeting statement, stocks stateside tumbled following a volatile session on Monday.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down Tuesday, shedding 67.77 points, or 0.2%, to close at 34,297.73. The index swung from a nearly 819-point deficit at its lows to a roughly 226-point rally at its highs during the session. The S&P 500 dipped 1.2% to 4,356.45. The technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell 2.3% to 13,539.30.
Elsewhere, geopolitical tensions continued to rattle investors as Western allies prepared for some kind of military confrontation, getting troops in place in the event that Russia does invade Ukraine.
Oil prices rose over 2% on Tuesday on concerns that supplies could become tight due to those Ukraine-Russia tensions, among other factors.
U.S. crude was down 0.46% to $85.22 during Asia trading hours, while Brent fell 0.29% to $87.94 per barrel.
Gold prices also jumped to a more than two-month high overnight over the geopolitical tensions, with spot gold hitting its highest since Nov. 19 at $1,852.65. During Asia hours on Wednesday morning, spot gold was last at $1,846.
“Gold is rallying as investors run to safety over fears the Fed will aggressively tighten policy and as the list of geopolitical risks continues to grow: The Russian-Ukraine standoff will remain a tense situation for the foreseeable future, North Korea may resume nuclear tests, and Iran nuclear talks are approaching a decisive moment,” said Edward Moya, senior market analyst at foreign exchange trading firm Oanda.
In other news, snow and ice in Miami? Worth a punt in orange juice futures?
Arctic air to drive cold deep into the Sunshine State and beyond
Jan. 25, 2022 / 7:26 PM
A rapidly intensifying storm that is projected to pound parts of the Eastern Seaboard with snow and wind this weekend will also unleash frigid air and send temperatures nosediving as far south as Cuba and the Bahamas.
Freezing temperatures could grip areas as far south as the Florida Everglades amid the bitter blast, putting records in jeopardy, AccuWeather forecasters warn. Farther to the north, those that will feel the effects of the storm will also endure icy air in its wake -- with dangerous consequences in some areas.
The second half of January has already delivered some waves of cold air to the Southeast, including a couple of frosty nights that extended as far south as northern Florida. Freezing air will surge southward again, but with even more ferocity than any previous cold blast this year. In fact, temperatures could reach the lowest levels in years across some parts of the Southeast.
The cold air will settle into the Southeast from Friday night into Sunday. Temperatures from Mississippi to Georgia and upstate South Carolina will slip into the 20s F Friday night and will be stuck in the 30s for daytime highs Saturday. However, Saturday night is when temperatures in most of the region will take the biggest plunge.
The daily record low for Jan. 30 in Orlando is 31 degrees set back in 1966. Low temperatures will at least challenge that reading by dawn Sunday in Orlando, and many outlying areas around the city will plummet into the upper 20s F. This can threaten much of the citrus crop in the region. Even Miami could have temperatures drop into the 30s, threatening the record for Jan. 30 of 39 degrees also set on the date in 1966.
More
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2022/01/25/winter-weather/6491643154349/
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 and supply chain crisis to throttle UK economy, IMF warns
Tuesday 25 January 2022 3:10 pm
The global supply crunch and roaring inflation will choke UK growth this year, the world’s economic watchdog warned today.
A combination of the supply chain crisis rumbling on and the cost of living corroding Brits’ incomes has prompted the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to downgrade their forecasts for UK economic growth this year to 4.7 per cent from five per cent previously.
Weaker confidence in Britain’s prospects underlines the severity of the inflation spike sweeping across the country.
The Bank of England needs to urgently tighten monetary policy in order to get on top of the soaring cost of living in the UK, the IMF said.
In developed economies “where high inflation runs the risk of becoming entrenched… extraordinary monetary policy support should be withdrawn,” Gita Gopinath, first deputy managing director at the IMF, warned.
Inflation is running at its highest level in nearly 30 years, hitting 5.4 per cent last month, according to the Office for National Statistics.
Former members of the Bank’s rate setting committee have criticised Threadneedle Street’s inertia as contributing to the cost of living taking off.
Sir Charlie Bean yesterday said the Bank missed an opportunity to combat price rises at the back end of 2021, meaning it will have to launch a cycle of rapid rate hikes to tamp down on inflation.
Some economists expect the Bank to lift interest rates four times this year, taking them to 1.25 per cent by the end of 2022.
Jerome Powell, Chair of the US Federal Reserve, is also widely expected to tell markets to get ready for a rapid tightening of monetary policy this year at the central bank’s meeting of policymakers tomorrow.
More
https://www.cityam.com/inflation-and-supply-chain-crisis-to-throttle-uk-economy-imf-warns/
Goldman economist says it’s tough to sustain wage gains of 5% to 6% without ‘meaningfully high’ inflation
Published Tue, Jan 25 2022 2:54 AM EST
Goldman Sachs’ chief economist said it would be difficult to sustain wage gains of 5% to 6% without causing “meaningfully high” inflation.
Jan Hatzius told CNBC on Tuesday that the pace of wage increases in the U.S. needs to slow down, as inflation heats up and becomes a central focus for the Fed and markets alike.
“I think 4% is OK. 5% to 6% is probably difficult to sustain without meaningfully higher inflation so that does need to come down,” Hatzius added.
The quarter-on-quarter annualized growth rate of wages has been running “well above” 4%, said Hatzius, who is also Goldman Sachs’ head of global investment research.
“The pace of wage gains that we’ve seen over the last couple of quarters now probably does need to slow somewhat,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia.”
Overall, average pay in the U.S. jumped significantly in 2021 — to more than $31 an hour, a 4.7% annual increase, the U.S. Labor Department reported in early January.
Earlier this month, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said “there is real wage inflation everywhere.” Compensation costs at Goldman jumped 33% to $17.7 billion for 2021, a whopping $4.4 billion increase fueled mostly by pay increases for good performance, executives said.
Meanwhile inflation is picking up with the U.S. consumer price index jumping 7% in December, the fastest rate since June 1982.
Those higher consumer prices are eating into workers’ salary increases despite their pay bumps. Effectively, the average worker got a 2.4% pay cut last year, according to seasonally adjusted data published by the Labor Department.
More
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/25/goldman-sachs-chief-economist-on-wage-gains-inflation-in-the-us.html
Lithium Hits ‘Ludicrous Mode’ as Battery Metal Extends 400% Gain
Mon, January 24, 2022, 12:23 PM
(Bloomberg) — Lithium prices are continuing their breakneck ascent in China, with surging electric-vehicle sales underpinning a fivefold gain over the past year.
Chinese lithium carbonate prices tracked by Asian Metal Inc. rose to a fresh record on Monday, as data showed a 35% month-on-month jump in electric-vehicle registrations in December. Nearly 400,000 EVs were registered during the month, according to the China Automotive Technology and Research Center. Tesla Inc. supplied about 18% of the total.
The sales figures offer the latest evidence that the electric-vehicle revolution is now arriving in full force, fueling sharp gains in the shares of carmakers and mining equities alike. Ganfeng Lithium Co., which signed a long-term supply deal with Tesla in November, said its profits for 2021 will be up as much as 437%, fueled by the “fast development” of the EV industry.
But with lithium prices blowing past previous records, there’s a growing risk that raw-material inflation could soon create headwinds for the burgeoning industry. BloombergNEF predicts a 2% rise in battery pack prices this year, potentially pushing out the point at which electric vehicles will reach cost parity with conventional cars to 2026, two years later than its earlier forecast.
And despite the bumper profits on offer, many analysts see the lithium market moving into deeper deficits in the years ahead as producers struggle to bring new projects online. Last week, Serbia blocked plans for Europe’s biggest lithium mine, in a dramatic response to local opposition to the project that’s set to pile more pressure on future supply.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/lithium-hits-ludicrous-mode-battery-122318700.html
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
Today, was omicron natural or was it too created in a lab, as a kind of “kill switch?”
Ivermectin’s effective, so why was it blocked and by whom? How many deaths were unnecessary?
Omicron's Radical Evolution
Mon, January 24, 2022, 7:18 PM
As nurses and doctors struggle with a record-breaking wave of omicron cases, evolutionary biologists are engaged in a struggle of their own: figuring out how this world-dominating variant came to be.
When the omicron variant took off in southern Africa in November, scientists were taken aback by its genetic makeup. Whereas earlier variants had differed from the original Wuhan version of the coronavirus by a dozen or two mutations, omicron had 53 — a shockingly large jump in viral evolution.
In a study posted online last week, an international team of scientists further deepened the mystery. They found that 13 of those mutations were rarely, if ever, found in other coronaviruses, suggesting they should have been harmful to omicron. Instead, when acting in concert, these mutations appear to be key to some of omicron’s most essential functions.
Now the researchers are trying to figure out how omicron defied the normal rules of evolution and used these mutations to become such a successful vector of disease.
“There’s a mystery here that someone has to figure out,” said Darren Martin, a virus expert at the University of Cape Town who worked on the new study.
Mutations are a regular part of a coronavirus’s existence. Every time a virus replicates inside of a cell, there’s a small chance that the cell will create a flawed copy of its genes. Many of those mutations would make new viruses defective and unable to compete with other viruses.
But a mutation can also improve a virus. It could make the virus stick more tightly to cells, for example, or make it replicate faster. Viruses that inherit a beneficial mutation may outcompete others.
Over most of 2020, scientists found that different lineages of the coronavirus around the world gradually picked up a handful of mutations. The evolutionary process was slow and steady, until the end of the year.
----But the scientists found a different pattern when they looked at the “spike” protein that studs omicron’s surface and allows it to latch on to cells.
Omicron’s spike gene has 30 mutations. The researchers found that 13 of them were extraordinarily rare in other coronaviruses — even their distant viral cousins found in bats. Some of the 13 had never been seen before in the millions of coronavirus genomes scientists have sequenced over the course of the pandemic.
If a mutation were beneficial to the virus, or even neutral, scientists would expect it to show up more often in the samples. But if it is rare or missing altogether, that’s typically a sign that it is harmful to the virus, preventing it from multiplying.
“When you see that pattern, it’s telling you something very loud and very clear,” Martin said. “Anything that sustains a change at those sites is probably going to be defective and isn’t going to survive for very long and will die out.”
And yet omicron was flouting that logic. “Omicron wasn’t exactly dying out,” Martin said. “It was just taking off like nothing we’d ever seen before.”
What makes these 13 mutations all the more intriguing is that they’re not randomly sprinkled across omicron’s spike. They form three clusters, each altering a small portion of the protein. And each of those three areas play a big part of what makes omicron unique.
More
https://www.yahoo.com/news/omicrons-radical-evolution-191819386.html
COVID is less severe with Omicron than Delta, U.S. study suggests
January 25, 2022 7:59 PM GMT
Jan 25 (Reuters) - The Omicron variant appears to result in less severe COVID-19 than seen during previous periods of high coronavirus transmission including the Delta wave, with shorter hospital stays, less need for intensive care and fewer deaths, according to a new U.S. study.
However, the fast-spreading Omicron variant has led to record numbers of infections and hospitalizations, straining the U.S. healthcare system.
Despite the steep spike in COVID cases, the percentage of hospitalized patients admitted to intensive care units (ICU) during the current Omicron wave was about 29% lower than during last winter's surge and some 26% lower than during the Delta wave, the study published on Tuesday in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report found.
More
New Omicron Offshoot BA.2 Arrives In U.S. After Spreading In U.K., Denmark, India
Tue, January 25, 2022, 12:25 AM
Just as the Omicron wave may have broken across the U.S. comes word of another version of the more transmissible variant, dubbed BA.2. It’s been nicknamed by some “stealth Omicron” because it seems to evade identification better than its predecessor.
While other new variants that seemed worrisome — like Mu or Lambda — have had little impact, and details remain sketchy, early indications are that BA.2 seems to be spreading even in countries where the original Omicron lineage, BA.1, is dominant.
In Denmark, a country whose Covid policies are often contrasted with the U.S., BA.2 now accounts for nearly half of the test samples sequenced. In the final week of December, according to data from Statens Serum Institut under the auspices of the Danish Ministry of Health, the subvariant accounted for 20% of all Covid cases in Denmark. By the second week of January, its share had risen to about 45% of the total.
“During the same period, the relative frequency of BA.1 has dropped,” according to a statement from the institute. “BA.1 and BA.2 have many differences in their mutations in the most important areas. In fact, the difference between BA.1 and BA.2 is greater than the difference between the original variant and the Alpha variant.”
An initial analysis instances of BA.2 in the country “shows no differences in hospitalisations,” according to SSI. It’s also unclear how effective the current vaccines are against the subvariant.
BA.2 “has been designated a variant under investigation” by the UK Health Security Agency. The new version of Omicron was first detected in the UK on December 6, 2021, per a HSA report. To date, there have been 426 confirmed cases, with the greatest concentration centered around London.
“Early analyses suggest an increased growth rate compared to BA.1, however, growth rates have a low level of certainty early in the emergence of a variant and further analysis is needed,” reads the report.
Those reports may also be inaccurate because U.K. officials suspect the offshoot may be harder to identify, since it does not display a telltale sign in PCR tests which has often indicated Omicron. While a PCR test would still come up with a general positive, such samples would need to be genomically sequenced, a much more costly and time-consuming process that is less common to ID the specific variant involved.
“Omicron BA.2 lacks the genetic deletion on the spike protein which produces S-gene target failure (SGTF) in some polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests, which has been used as a proxy for Omicron cases previously,” reads the U.K. document.
More
https://www.yahoo.com/news/omicron-offshoot-ba-2-arrives-002523964.html
Original article peer-reviewed
Ivermectin Prophylaxis Used for COVID-19: A Citywide, Prospective, Observational Study of 223,128 Subjects Using Propensity Score Matching
Lucy Kerr, Flavio A. Cadegiani , Fernando Baldi, Raysildo B. Lobo, Washington Luiz O. Assagra, Fernando Carlos Proença, Pierre Kory, Jennifer A. Hibberd, Juan J. Chamie-Quintero
Published: January 15, 2022 (see history)
DOI: 10.7759/cureus.21272
Cite this article as: Kerr L, Cadegiani F A, Baldi F, et al. (January 15, 2022) Ivermectin Prophylaxis Used for COVID-19: A Citywide, Prospective, Observational Study of 223,128 Subjects Using Propensity Score Matching. Cureus 14(1): e21272. doi:10.7759/cureus.21272
Abstract
Background: Ivermectin has demonstrated different mechanisms of action that potentially protect from both coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection and COVID-19-related comorbidities. Based on the studies suggesting efficacy in prophylaxis combined with the known safety profile of ivermectin, a citywide prevention program using ivermectin for COVID-19 was implemented in Itajaí, a southern city in Brazil in the state of Santa Catarina. The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of regular ivermectin use on subsequent COVID-19 infection and mortality rates.
---- Results: Of the 223,128 citizens of Itajaí considered for the study, a total of 159,561 subjects were included in the analysis: 113,845 (71.3%) regular ivermectin users and 45,716 (23.3%) non-users. Of these, 4,311 ivermectin users were infected, among which 4,197 were from the city of Itajaí (3.7% infection rate), and 3,034 non-users (from Itajaí) were infected (6.6% infection rate), with a 44% reduction in COVID-19 infection rate (risk ratio [RR], 0.56; 95% confidence interval (95% CI), 0.53-0.58; p < 0.0001). Using PSM, two cohorts of 3,034 subjects suffering from COVID-19 infection were compared. The regular use of ivermectin led to a 68% reduction in COVID-19 mortality (25 [0.8%] versus 79 [2.6%] among ivermectin non-users; RR, 0.32; 95% CI, 0.20-0.49; p < 0.0001).
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.
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.
Thermoelectric device wraps around hot pipes to generate electricity
Ben Coxworth January 24, 2022
We've already heard about hoses that get wrapped around existing hot water pipes, using heat radiated from the pipe to heat water inside the hose. A new wrap-around device, however, uses that same pipe-heat to generate electricity.
Created via a collaboration between Pennsylvania State University and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the experimental thermoelectric device is made up of multiple flat, square modules known as couples.
More precisely, it consists of 12 rectangular strips of six couples each, with a flexible metal foil substrate electrically connecting those strips to one another. Unlike previously developed flat, rigid setups, this design allows the 72-couple device to be wrapped around hot water pipes – or other types of pipes that get hot – in a home, factory, or anyplace else.
As is the case with other thermoelectric devices, an electrical current is generated as electrons move from the warmed inner side of each couple to its cooler outer side – the greater the temperature difference between the two sides, the stronger the current. The electricity can be channeled into a grid, or used to charge a battery.
When applied to a hot gas flue pipe, the prototype is claimed to have exhibited the highest-ever reported output power and device power density from a single thermoelectric generator. In more detail, a 3-inch (76-mm)-squared version of the device utilized a 570 ºC (1,026 ºF) temperature difference to deliver a total power output of 56.6 watts.
"Think about an industrial power plant with pipes hundreds of feet long," said Penn State's Prof. Shashank Priya. "If you can wrap these devices around an area that large, you could generate kilowatts of energy from wasted heat that’s normally just being thrown away. You could convert discarded heat into something useful."
A paper on the research was recently published in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.
The government has nothing to give to anybody that it doesn't first take from someone else.
Henry Hazlitt.
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