Baltic Dry Index. 1764 -109 Brent Crude 86.23
Spot Gold 1819
Coronavirus Cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,100
Coronavirus Cases 17/01/22 World 328,827,935
Deaths 5,557,760
“I've
read hundreds of books about China over the decades. I know the Chinese. I've
made a lot of money with the Chinese. I understand the Chinese mind.”
The Art of the Deal
This morning and probably all week, barring a Russian invasion of Ukraine, it’s all about China.
The latest data out of China suggests that the world’s number two economy is, slowing/growing/staying the same, but are the figures accurate? See the Covid section for why China’s statistics are often command statistics, where those compiling the statistics strive to meet the official target.
Predictably, China’s Covid complete lockdowns policy seems to be failing under the assault of omicron.
“The possibility that the Omicron case in Beijing was infected through imported goods can't be ruled out, Pang Xinghuo, an official at the city's disease control authority, said on Monday.”
Well, if he says so he must be right I suppose, though nowhere else got omicron through imported goods.
With the Chinese Lunar New Year travel starting this week, what happens next in China over the next 4 weeks is a gigantic omicron experiment.
China shares rose as official data showed economic growth topped 8% last year
SINGAPORE — Chinese shares rose Monday in a mixed trading session across the Asia-Pacific as official data showed the world’s second largest economy grew faster than expected between October and December.
The Shanghai composite added 0.32% while the Shenzhen component gained 0.89%.
Numbers from China’s National Bureau of Statistics showed the Chinese economy grew by 8.1% in 2021, slightly below the market’s expectation for around 8.4% growth for the year. In the fourth quarter, China’s GDP rose 4% from a year ago, topping a Reuters poll that predicted a 3.6% increase.
Industrial production also rose and beat expectations, but retail sales had a more muted growth.
China requires more policy support
Economists were expecting Monday’s data dump to underline a slowdown in growth, in part due to factors like China’s strict measures to contain the omicron Covid variant as well as problems in its property sector and sluggish consumption.
“Retail sales was a big miss,” Johanna Chua, head of Asia economics and strategy at Citi Global Markets Asia, told CNBC’s “Street Signs Asia” on Monday. “This is one area where I think it really requires a little bit more policy support.”
China’s central bank also cut the borrowing costs of its medium-term loans for the first time since April 2020, Reuters reported. The People’s Bank of China said it was lowering the interest rate on 700 billion yuan ($110.19 billion) worth of one-year medium-term lending facility loans to some financial institutions by 10 basis points to 2.85%, the news agency reported.
Citi’s Chua said while the timing of the reduction was in line with the investment bank’s expectations, it was still a larger than expected cut. “Which really suggests that, I think, policymakers now are much more concerned about growth, and we should see concerted action going forward,” she added.
Chua also said she does not expect to see China abandon its zero-Covid policy anytime soon.
Last week, U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs slashed its 2022 forecast for China economic growth from 4.8% to 4.3%.
The rest of Asia-Pacific markets traded mixed.
The Nikkei 225 in Japan rose 0.69% while the Topix index added 0.42%.
Australian shares also eked out gains as the ASX 200 was up 0.12%. The heavily-weighted financials subindex gained 0.32% and the energy sector was up 1.08%.
South Korean shares, however, faltered as the Kospi slipped 1.13% and the Kosdaq was down 0.95%. Hong Kong shares also struggled for gains as the Hang Seng index fell 0.72%.
The session in Asia follows a mixed finish in the U.S. last Friday, where Wall Street notched a second straight negative week to start the year.
----U.S. markets are closed Monday for Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
More
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/17/asia-markets-china-q4-gdp-dollar-oil-prices.html
China's economy loses steam as COVID-19 erupts, c.bank cuts rates
January 17, 2022 4:23 AM GMT
BEIJING, Jan 17 (Reuters) - China's economy rebounded in 2021 from its pandemic-induced slump helped by robust exports but weak consumption at the year-end and a property slowdown point to cooling momentum and the need for more policy support.
The central bank on Monday cut loan rates to cushion the world's second-largest economy as its confronts headwinds from a rapidly cooling property sector and sporadic COVID-19 outbreaks.
Several Chinese cities went on high COVID-19 alert ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday travel season, as the Omicron variant reached more areas including Beijing.
The economy grew 8.1% in 2021, faster than a forecast 8.0% and well above a government target of "above 6%" and 2020's revised growth of 2.2%.
Gross domestic product (GDP) expanded 4.0% in the October-December period from a year earlier, according to National Bureau of Statistics data, faster than expected but still its weakest pace in one-and-half years. Growth was 4.9% in the third quarter.
On a quarter-on-quarter basis, GDP rose 1.6% in October-December, compared with expectations for a 1.1% rise and a revised 0.7% gain in the previous quarter.
China's economy got off to a strong start in 2021 as activity rebounded but it has lost steam due to a property downturn, curbs on debt and strict anti-virus measures which have hit consumption.
China's central bank unexpectedly cut the borrowing costs of its medium-term loans for the first time since April 2020, leading some analysts to expect more policy easing this year to guard against developers' mounting risk of default.
The People's Bank of China (PBOC) said it was lowering the interest rate on 700 billion yuan ($110.2 billion) worth of one-year medium-term lending facility (MLF) loans to some financial institutions by 10 basis points to 2.85% from 2.95% in previous operations. read more
"Economic momentum remains weak amid repeated virus outbreaks and a struggling property sector. As such, we anticipate another 20 bps of cuts to PBOC policy rates during the first half of this year," said analysts at Capital Economics, in a note.
More
https://www.reuters.com/markets/asia/chinas-q4-2021-gdp-grow-faster-than-expected-2022-01-17/
“China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese.”
Global Inflation/Stagflation Watch.
Given our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians, inflation now needs an entire section of its own.
China 2021 aluminium output climbs to record despite power curbs
January 17, 2022 4:23 AM GMT
BEIJING, Jan 17 (Reuters) - China's annual aluminium output rose 4.8% from the previous year to a record in 2021, official data showed on Monday, reaching 38.5 million tonnes despite curbs on energy consumption at factories imposed to meet climate goals last year.
Primary aluminium output for December was 3.11 million tonnes, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said, slightly up from 3.10 million tonnes in November and 4% lower year-on-year.
On a daily basis, the December output worked out to about 100,300 tonnes a day versus about 103,300 tonnes in November - the lowest daily rate since July 2020, according to Reuters' calculations.
"In 2021, we had a strong first half, but the energy shortages and coal problems handicapped the growth. We expect minimal increase in production (in 2022) due to similar reasons," said Paul Adkins, managing director of aluminium consultancy AZ China.
"We expect demand to exceed supply in 2022, leading to increased imports."
Energy-intensive aluminium production in some Chinese regions was cut last year due to government efforts to curb power consumption amid a supply crunch. read more
Meanwhile, output of 10 non-ferrous metals, including copper, aluminium, lead, zinc and nickel, was 5.47 million tonnes in December, the statistics bureau said, up from 5.35 million tonnes in November, but down 3.8% year-on-year.
Annual production of the 10 nonferrous metals for 2021 was at 64.54 million tonnes, also a new record high and up 5.4% from 61.68 million tonnes in the previous year.
The other metals in the group are tin, antimony, mercury, magnesium and titanium.
China's 2021 oil refinery output rises 4.3% to record on strong demand
January 17, 2022 4:43 AM GMT
SINGAPORE, Jan 17 (Reuters) - China's refinery output hit a record in 2021, up 4.3% from 2020, on robust first-half fuel demand and as refiners ramped up processing to fill a supply gap after a hefty new tax closed loopholes in blending fuel imports.
Total refinery throughput last year reached 703.55 million tonnes, or 14.07 million barrels per day (bpd), data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed on Monday, roughly 620,000 bpd above the 2020 level.
December output was 58.73 million tonnes, or 13.83 million bpd, down 2.1% on year, reversing a rebound in November when state refiners raised processing to plug a short-lived diesel supply crunch.
"With the product market flipping into surplus, state-owned refiners cut runs while independents' runs continued to trend lower in December," said Shi Fenglei, an analyst with IHS Markit.
Output surged nearly 11% on the year in first-half 2021, as a rebound in car sales bolstered gasoline use and booming domestic air travel lifted aviation fuel consumption. read more
----Monday's data also showed China's crude oil output gained 2.4% on year to 199 million tonnes, or 3.98 million bpd, the highest since 2016, as the industry strived to sustain a 4 million bpd mark by developing more challenging terrains to make up for depleting mature fields. read more
Natural gas oil production rose 8.2% to a record 205.3 billion cubic metres, with December volume up 2.3% on the year amid the peak heating demand season.
“A turbulent history has taught Chinese leaders that not every problem has a solution and that too great an emphasis on total mastery over specific events could upset the harmony of the universe.”
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
Up first, yet another US mainstream media scare story with very little science behind it. Why? To sell more dubious vaccines?
Expect more worrisome variants after omicron, scientists say
Get ready to learn more Greek letters. Scientists warn that omicron’s whirlwind advance practically ensures it won’t be the last version of the coronavirus to worry the world.
Every infection provides a chance for the virus to mutate, and omicron has an edge over its predecessors: It spreads way faster despite emerging on a planet with a stronger patchwork of immunity from vaccines and prior illness.
That means more people in whom the virus can further evolve. Experts don’t know what the next variants will look like or how they might shape the pandemic, but they say there’s no guarantee the sequels of omicron will cause milder illness or that existing vaccines will work against them.
They urge wider vaccination now, while today’s shots still work.
“The faster omicron spreads, the more opportunities there are for mutation, potentially leading to more variants,” Leonardo Martinez, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Boston University, said.
Since it emerged in mid-November, omicron has raced across the globe like fire through dry grass. Research shows the variant is at least twice as contagious as delta and at least four times as contagious as the original version of the virus.
Omicron is more likely than delta to reinfect individuals who previously had COVID-19 and to cause “breakthrough infections” in vaccinated people while also attacking the unvaccinated. The World Health Organization reported a record 15 million new COVID-19 cases for the week of Jan. 3-9, a 55% increase from the previous week.
Along with keeping comparatively healthy people out of work and school, the ease with which the variant spreads increases the odds the virus will infect and linger inside people with weakened immune systems - giving it more time to develop potent mutations.
“It’s the longer, persistent infections that seem to be the most likely breeding grounds for new variants,” said Dr. Stuart Campbell Ray, an infectious disease expert at Johns Hopkins University. “It’s only when you have very widespread infection that you’re going to provide the opportunity for that to occur.”
More
Chinese cities on high COVID-19 alert as Lunar New Year travel season starts; Omicron spreads
January 17, 2022 5:35 AM GMT
BEIJING, Jan 17 (Reuters) - Several Chinese cities went on high COVID-19 alert as the Lunar New Year holiday travel season started on Monday, requiring travellers to report their trips days before their arrival, as the Omicron variant reached more areas including Beijing.
Authorities have warned the highly contagious Omicron adds to the increased risk of COVID-19 transmission as hundreds of millions of people travel around China for the Lunar New Year on Feb. 1.
Cities such as Luoyang in central China and Jieyang in the south said on Sunday travellers need to report to communities, employers or hotels their trips three days ahead of arrival.
The southwestern city of Yulin said on Saturday those who want to enter should fill in an online form, including their health credentials and trip details, one day in advance.
Over the weekend, the capital Beijing and the southern technology hub Shenzhen each detected one domestically transmitted Omicron case.
The possibility that the Omicron case in Beijing was infected through imported goods can't be ruled out, Pang Xinghuo, an official at the city's disease control authority, said on Monday.
Li Ang, vice director at the Beijing Municipal Health Commission, said a local hospital had admitted nine Omicron infections, with six still being treated. He did not say when the infections arrived or why they hadn't been disclosed earlier.
The city of Meizhou in Guangdong province found one Omicron infection linked to an outbreak in Zhuhai, state television said on Monday.
So far, at least five provinces and municipalities reported local Omicron infections, while 14 provincial areas found the variant among travellers arriving from overseas.
---- China is yet to show any solid sign of shifting its guideline of quickly containing any local infections, despite a high vaccination rate of 86.6%. The strategy has taken on extra urgency in the run-up to the Winter Olympics, to be staged in Beijing and neighbouring Hebei province starting Feb. 4.
Many local governments have already advised residents not to leave town unnecessarily trips during the holiday, while dozens of international and domestic flights have been suspended.
More
When will this COVID surge end? Scientists search your sewage for clues
Fri, January 14, 2022, 11:16 PM
As the saying goes, never let a crisis go to waste.
And with COVID-19, a growing body of researchers and public health experts are taking that advice literally.
Scientists are increasingly using raw sewage as a tool to help determine how infections are trending in hundreds of communities across the country. By taking regular samples from wastewater treatment plants and scanning feces for the virus, they’re able to tell where infections are trending upward or downward, and in many cases, how the amount compares to prior waves of the virus.
The use of the technology made waves this week, when researchers used it to note that it appears the latest COVID-19 surge, fueled by the omicron variant, may be on the decline in Boston. Experts told USA TODAY that while the data isn’t a certainty, it very well could be one of the first indicators the nation may have hit the omicron high-water mark.
“Data has shown a pretty steep decrease, which is extremely encouraging,” said Newsha Ghaeli, president of BioBot Analytics, a private analytics company performing the testing in Boston. “And which might suggest we are actually past omicron’s peak.”
Experts say early detection of trends is one of the key benefits that wastewater testing can provide.
Marlene Wolfe, an assistant professor of environmental health at Emory University in Atlanta, is part of the Sewer Coronavirus Alert Network, a team of scientists that evaluates sewage treatment plants in California communities. They can collect, analyze, and publish data in about 24 hours, delivering nearly real-time information on how COVID-19 is trending. That’s significantly faster than analyzing positive tests from swabs, which can take a week or more in some areas.
But experts say, because wastewater testing doesn’t require any individual testing, it gives officials an important second data set to evaluate trends.
“Wastewater’s huge value is in that it solves for most of these issues in terms of informing public health and communities about outbreaks and surges,” Wolfe said.
Ghaeli qualified the recent data indicating a downtick in omicron. She said the company will want to see additional data to ensure the decrease is a lasting trend. There are also questions of what comes next: Will omicron and COVID-19 rates fall as precipitously as they rose in early December? Or will they level off? And what would that mean for public health?
More
https://www.yahoo.com/news/covid-surge-end-scientists-search-100121656.html
China’s True COVID-19 Death Toll 366 Times Higher Than Official Figure, Analyst Says
By and
January 13, 2022 Updated: January 15, 2022
The Chinese regime has likely understated the COVID-19 death rate by as much as 17,000 percent in a systematic data suppression campaign to sustain its political image, according to a U.S. analyst.
That would put the number of COVID-19 deaths in China at around 1.7 million rather than 4,636, the two-year cumulative death figure that the Chinese authorities have maintained on the books. That’s 366 times the official figure.
Those findings made by George Calhoun, director of the quantitative finance program at Stevens Institute of Technology, were based on data as of January generated by a model developed by The Economist.
A vast majority of China’s officially recorded deaths came from Wuhan during the first three months of the pandemic, with only hundreds more reported in the rest of the country.
The Chinese regime only reported two additional deaths since April 1, 2020, ranking China as having the world’s lowest COVID-19 death rate, which Zhong Nanshan, the Chinese epidemiologist overseeing China’s outbreak response, boasted about just last week.
But that jaw-dropping data point—hundreds of times lower than that of America, gave Calhoun pause.
“That’s impossible. It’s medically impossible, it’s statistically impossible,” Calhoun told NTD, an affiliate of The Epoch Times.
More
The Lab Leak: The Plots and Schemes of Jeremy Farrar, Anthony Fauci, and Francis Collins
Jeremy Farrar is a former professor at Oxford University and the head of the Wellcome Trust, an extremely influential non-government funder of medical research in the UK and a big investor in vaccine companies.
Some people regard Farrar as the UK’s Anthony Fauci. He had much to do with the pandemic response, including the lockdowns and mandates in the UK. For the entire pandemic ordeal, he has been in touch with his colleagues around the world. He has written a book (it appeared July 2021 but was probably written in the Spring) on his experience with the pandemic.
In general, the book is chaotic, strongly backing lockdowns without ever presenting a clear rationale for why, much less a road map for how to get out of lockdowns. I swear you could read this book carefully front to back and not know anything more about pandemics and their course than you had at the beginning. In this sense, the book is an abysmal failure, which probably explains why it is so little talked about.
That said, the book is revealing in other ways, some of which I did not cover in my review. He carefully presents the scene at the beginning of the pandemic, including the great fear that he, Fauci, and others had that the virus was not of natural origin. It might have been created in a lab and leaked, accidentally or deliberately. This awesome prospect is behind some of the strangest sentences in the book, which I quote here:
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.
One of the world’s biggest offshore wind farms gears up for full operations
Published Fri, Jan 14 2022 9:15 AM EST Updated Fri, Jan 14 2022 11:48 AM EST
Turbine commissioning at one of the world’s biggest offshore wind farms is complete and full operations are slated to begin in the first quarter of 2022, according to German power firm RWE.
The 857 megawatt Triton Knoll Offshore Wind Farm is situated in waters off England’s east coast and uses 90 wind turbines from Danish firm Vestas.
In a statement Thursday RWE said Triton Knoll would produce “sufficient electricity to meet the needs of around 800,000 homes each year.” Investment in the project amounts to approximately £2 billion (around $2.74 billion).
RWE has a 59% stake in Triton Knoll. Its other owners are Kansai Electric Power and J-Power, who have stakes of 16% and 25%, respectively. RWE is responsible for the project’s construction, operation and maintenance.
Triton Knoll produced its first power in March 2021and its final turbine was installed last September.
The North Sea, where Triton Knoll is located, is home to a number of large-scale offshore wind facilities. These include the 1.2 gigawatt Hornsea One development, which is located in waters off Yorkshire and uses 174 turbines.
Looking ahead, major projects planned for the North Sea include the Dogger Bank Wind Farm, which will have a total capacity of 3.6 GW once completed. The development of the project is taking place in three phases.
U.K. authorities want 40 GW of offshore wind capacity by 2030. The European Union, which the U.K. left in January 2020, is targeting 300 GW of offshore wind by the middle of this century.
Across the Atlantic, the U.S. has some way to go to catch up with Europe. America’s first offshore wind facility, the 30 megawatt Block Island Wind Farm in waters off Rhode Island, only started commercial operations in late 2016.
Change looks to be coming, however. In November ground was broken on a project dubbed the United States’ “first commercial scale offshore wind farm.”
“There lies a sleeping giant. Let him sleep! For when he wakes, he will shake the world.”
Napoleon Bonaparte on China.
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