Baltic Dry Index. 2285 +68 Brent Crude 79.98
Spot Gold 1816
Coronavirus Cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,100
Coronavirus Cases 05/01/22 World 295,602,415
Deaths 5,474,220
Biden said people who are unvaccinated should be alarmed by omicron’s rapid spread in the U.S., warning many of them will get infected and develop severe illness.
“Some will die — needlessly die,” Biden said. “Unvaccinated are taking up hospital beds and crowding emergency rooms and intensive care units. That’s displaced other people who need access to those hospitals.”
Just as the increasing data on omicron suggests it’s more transmissible but less pathogenic, President Biden and President Macron of France, faced with falling poll numbers, seem to have gone into full panic mode. More on that in the Covid section.
In the Asian stock casinos, rising US bond yields in response to surging global inflation that’s far from “transitory,” is causing growing nervousness.
Not a panic yet, but if a panic occurs, getting out first always beats getting carried out last.
Asia-Pacific stocks mostly fall; tech stocks under pressure amid rising U.S. bond yields
SINGAPORE — Shares in Asia-Pacific were largely lower in Wednesday trade, as technology stocks in the region came under pressure amid rising U.S. bond yields.
Hong Kong-listed shares of Tencent fell 3.47% by the afternoon. The Chinese tech giant on Tuesday announced that it will be divesting 2.6% of its equity interest in Sea Limited.
Shares of other Chinese tech firms listed in the city also declined, with Meituan down 9.43% while Kuaishou plunged 6.23%. The Hang Seng Tech index plummeted 3.54%.
Elsewhere in the region, South Korea’s Samsung Electronics dropped 2.54% while Kakao fell 4.93%. In Australia, shares of Afterpay slipped more than 4%.
Those moves came as investors monitored interest rates in the bond market, with U.S. Treasury yields rising at the fastest new year pace in two decades. The benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury yield rose to as high as 1.71% on Tuesday, last sitting at 1.6455%.
Technology stocks, whose future earnings are less attractive to investors when yields are higher, tend to be hit when rates rise.
In other corporate developments, Hong Kong-listed shares of China Mobile jumped 5.52%. The firmed made its Shanghai debut on Wednesday in China’s largest public share offering in a decade, according to Reuters. Mainland-listed shares of China Mobile were last up 3.803%.
Meanwhile, shares of China Huarong Asset Management plunged more than 50% after resuming trade from a nine-month suspension.
In the broader Asia-Pacific markets, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index slipped 0.85%. The Shanghai composite in mainland China dipped 0.81% while the Shenzhen component fell 1.573%.
Over in South Korea, the Kospi dropped 1.52%. The S&P/ASX 200 in Australia shed 0.23%.
Elsewhere, the Nikkei 225 in Japan traded above the flatline while the Topix index climbed 0.29%.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan declined 0.87%.
Overnight on Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 214.59 points to 36,799.65. Other major indexes stateside declined amid the spike in bond yields as investors rotated out of tech stocks. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite dropped 1.33% to 15,622.72 while the S&P 500 dipped fractionally to 4,793.54.
Biden disapproval hits new high as voters give him bad grades on economy, new CNBC/Change poll says
President Joe Biden’s disapproval rating hit a new high in December as more voters signaled their unhappiness with his administration’s supervision of the economy and the Covid-19 pandemic.
Fifty-six percent of voters now say they disapprove of the job Biden is doing, the worst such reading of his presidency as he approaches the end of his first year in office, according to new CNBC/Change Research poll. Prior polls in the series showed Biden’s disapproval rating at 54% in early September and 49% in April.
Biden’s approval rating is now at 44%, down from 46% in September and 51% in April.
The latest sign of trouble for Biden comes as his administration looks to tackle a wide range of economic and political problems ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, which will decide the balance of power in Congress.
The White House is scrambling to quell fears about price acceleration and inflation, resurrect the president’s Build Back Better climate-and-family legislation, and rejuvenate the country’s public health response as the omicron variant drives a new spike in Covid cases.
More
WHO sees more evidence that Omicron causes milder symptoms
January 4, 2022 7:26 PM GMT
GENEVA, Jan 4 (Reuters) - More evidence is emerging that the Omicron coronavirus variant is affecting the upper respiratory tract, causing milder symptoms than previous variants and resulting in a "decoupling" in some places between soaring case numbers and low death rates, a World Health Organization official said on Tuesday.
"We are seeing more and more studies pointing out that Omicron is infecting the upper part of the body. Unlike other ones, the lungs who would be causing severe pneumonia," WHO Incident Manager Abdi Mahamud told Geneva-based journalists.
"It can be a good news, but we really require more studies to prove that."
Since the heavily mutated variant was first detected in November, WHO data shows it has spread quickly and emerged in at least 128 countries, presenting dilemmas for many nations and people seeking to reboot their economies and lives after nearly two years of COVID-related disruptions.
However, while case numbers have surged to all-time records, the hospitalisation and death rates are often lower than at other phases in the pandemic.
"What we are seeing now is....the decoupling between the cases and the deaths," he said.
More
'We can't jab the whole planet every six months'
There is no point in trying to stop all infections, says the head of Britain's vaccine body: 'Society has to open up'
Jan 04, 2022 • 11 hours ago
Fourth COVID jabs should not be offered until there is more evidence they are effective, the head of Britain’s vaccine body has warned, as he said giving boosters to the whole population every six months was “not sustainable”.
In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Prof Sir Andrew Pollard, the chairman of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), said that in future “we need to target the vulnerable” rather than giving boosters to all over-12s.
Sir Andrew said there was no point in trying to stop all infections, and that “at some point, society has to open up”.
He also suggested that “misinformation” about the risks of the AstraZeneca vaccine spread by European leaders including France’s President Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Angela Merkel was “highly likely” to have cost lives in Africa.
Sir Andrew’s comments come as England and Wales go back to work after the festive break and schools start to return amid concerns they could be shut down by the spread of Omicron.
Ministers will meet to finalise plans to keep the economy, hospitals and schools running by fast-tracking tests to up to 10 million “critical” workers through their employers.
Up to 50 per cent of staff in some front-line services including care homes and the police have been forced off work by COVID. The shortages have been exacerbated by staff having problems accessing lateral flow tests or getting PCR results.
Nadhim Zahawi, the Education Secretary, yesterday promised tests would “absolutely be there” for schools, after ordering 45 million test kits to be delivered within the first two weeks of term.
More
https://nationalpost.com/news/world/we-cant-jab-the-whole-planet-every-six-months
Finally, the world’s largest trade pact is now in force. The sclerotic rump-EU is tiny in comparison.
World’s largest trade deal is in force, but there’s still ‘work to be done,’ says Singapore minister
Published Tue, Jan 4 2022 12:29 AM EST
SINGAPORE — From cost savings to greater market access, there will be clear benefits for Singapore businesses as the world’s largest trade deal comes into force, the city-state’s trade minister said on Tuesday.
The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, or RCEP, is a mega trade agreement signed by 15 countries, which collectively cover about one-third of the world’s population and make up 30% of the global economy. It includes China, but excludes the U.S., and came into effect on Jan. 1.
RCEP is an important agreement that will boost trade collaboration and integration within the region, Gan Kim Yong, Singapore’s minister for trade and industry, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia.”
“For the businesses, I think they can look forward to quite a lot of benefits. For a start, in terms of tariffs, businesses can enjoy up to 92% in terms of tariff reduction,” Gan said. “This will save costs for businesses, it will also facilitate market access.”
The trade deal was signed by the 10 member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and five of their largest trading partners: China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. Those countries make up a market of 2.2 billion people and $26.2 trillion of global output.
The pact will allow for greater transparency and facilitate services exports in areas such as professional services, computer and business services as well as logistics and distribution, the trade minister said. Investors can also benefit from greater certainties around their investments, he added.
“RCEP is also an important signal to the rest of the world that the member countries look at integration and collaboration as an important way to continue to fuel the economic growth in the region, so, they believe in a rules-based multilateral trading system,” Gan said.
More
'Emergencies' have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.
Friedrich
August von Hayek
Global Inflation/Stagflation Watch.
Given our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians, inflation now needs an entire section of its own.
Russia May Be Nearing Limit Of Oil Output Capacity
Mon, January 3, 2022, 5:00 PM
Russia may be nearing the limit of its oil production capacity, according to recent media reports.
Bloomberg reported that the country's December oil and condensate output together totaled 10.903 million bpd, which was flat on November, suggesting it was using up all its available production capacity.
The report notes it assumes a flat production of condensates, which are included in Russia's total oil output, which would mean that crude oil output alone was 37,000 bpd below Russia's OPEC+ quota for December.
At the same time, Reuters reported that analysts expected Russia to fall short of its target of returning to pre-pandemic levels of oil production by May this year. Yet the analysts added the country could boost its spare capacity and production alike later in the year.
"It's possible that Russia will be behind the output increase schedule in the first half of 2022 and not reach its pre-crisis level until the end of summer," the report quoted Dmitry Manchenko from Fitch Ratings as saying.
Yet Russia has production boost plans for the year. Deputy Prime Minister and top OEPC+ negotiator Alexander Novak said last month, as quoted by Argus, that plans were to boost oil and condensate output this year by 3 to 5 percent.
This would mean a daily average of between 10.8 and 11 million bpd, Argus reported, up from an average of 10.5 million bpd last year. The report noted that Russia had exceeded its OPEC+ production quota every month of 2021 until November.
The Bloomberg report noted that most of Russia's production growth so far this year has been from reopened wells that were shut down last year amid the pandemic demand crunch. Now, it's down to new drilling to add more barrels, according to officials from Lukoil and Gazprom Neft. The latter, by the way, expects strong growth in production and revenues this year.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/russia-may-nearing-limit-oil-170000032.html
Money has never felt more fake
The market feels like a bubble. Does it matter?
He’s right that NFTs — non-fungible tokens, little digital assets that exist on a blockchain — are having a moment. What’s not really clear is why. Then again, everything about money feels a little strange at the moment. Between NFTs, crypto, and GameStop, AMC, and other meme stocks, money has rarely felt more fake. Or, at the very least, value has rarely felt so disconnected from reality.
The concept of value is a fuzzy one, and valuation is often more art than it is science. Psychology has always played a role in money and investing — and there have always been bubbles, too, where the price of an asset takes off at a rapid pace and disconnects from the fundamental value. As Jacob Goldstein wrote in Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing, all money is sort of a collective myth. “Money feels cold and mathematical and outside the realm of fuzzy human relationships. It isn’t,” he wrote. “Money is a made-up thing, a shared fiction. Money is fundamentally, unalterably social.”
----But why certain groups of people have trained their focus on certain items is hard to parse. Becerra insists there’s a utility to the apes — there’s merchandise, events, and he sees having them as the “new world flex,” like a watch or a nice car. “Everything’s hype, a social media world, right?”
Lately, the hype aspect of money has felt more true and important than ever.
It’s been a weird year in money
Historically, the economy was theoretically based on labor and value creation at the individual level, and on the structural level, voting shares in companies based on their financial fundamentals and future value, said tech industry veteran Anil Dash, CEO of the programming company Glitch. But that idea died long ago. “A machine is what it does, and the purpose of the system is the output of the system. And the purpose of our financial systems ... is to create ever more detached financialization that can just generate what the industry calls wealth and what the rest of the world just doesn’t see.” In other words, the confusing status of value today is a feature, not a bug.
You can see this clearly in the markets in 2021.
----During the 2008 financial crisis, for example, exotic financial instruments created out of subprime mortgages among Wall Street and banks helped take the economy down. They also revealed regulators to be asleep at the wheel. Very recent history makes it hard to take the Very Serious People in finance and government seriously as responsible stewards of the global economy. The financial industry has gone to great lengths to create new financial products with the potential to do more harm than good in the name of making more money.
“To have a boomer burn down the planet and then have them wag a finger that crypto’s bad for the environment? Please, that’s absurd,” Dash said.
“Money feeling strange in 2021 is based on a decade of money slowly feeling strange for lots and lots of different people throughout the world,” said Lana Swartz, an assistant professor of media studies at the University of Virginia who focuses on money. “We’re at a stage where the government and financial institutions are revealed to be less dependable than we ever imagined they would be, so why not YOLO?”
More
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22832438/nft-gamestop-amc-crypto-bubble
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
Macron says he wants to 'piss off' the non-vaccinated
January 5, 2022 12:50 AM GMT
PARIS, Jan 4 (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron said on Tuesday he wanted to "piss off" the non-vaccinated, in a slangy, cutting remark that prompted howls of condemnation from opposition rivals less than 4 months before the next presidential election.
"The unvaccinated, I really want to piss them off. And so, we're going to continue doing so, until the end. That's the strategy," Macron told Le Parisien newspaper in an interview published late on Tuesday.
France last year put in place a health pass that prevents people without a PCR test or proof of vaccination to enter restaurants, cafes and other venues. The government wants to turn it into a vaccine passport that means only the vaccinated can have a health pass.
"I won't send (the unvaccinated) to prison, I won't vaccinate by force. So we need to tell them, from Jan. 15, you won't be able to go to the restaurant anymore, you won't be able to down one, won't be able to have a coffee, go to the theatre, the cinema..."
The expression "emmerder", from "merde" (shit), that can also be translated as "to get on their nerves", is considered "very informal" by French dictionary Larousse and prompted immediate criticism by rivals on social media.
More
Omicron makes up 95% of sequenced Covid cases in U.S. as infections hit pandemic record
The Covid-19 omicron variant now makes up nearly all sequenced cases in the U.S., driving a massive increase of infections across the nation that threatens to strain hospitals and disrupt daily life.
Omicron represented 95% of sequenced Covid cases in the U.S. during the week ended New Year’s Day, while the once-dominant delta variant is now only 4.6% of sequenced cases, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
----The highly contagious omicron variant has overtaken delta in just a matter of weeks. At the beginning of December, omicron represented less than 1% of sequenced cases while delta made up 99% of them.
The U.S. reported a pandemic record of more than 1 million new infections on Monday, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The nation is now reporting a seven-day average of more than 480,000 new infections, nearly double the previous week, according to a CNBC analysis of Hopkins data.
Omicron is driving up cases, at least in part, due to its ability to partially evade the immunity generated by vaccines and cause breakthrough infections in large numbers.
----A study published by the U.K. Health Security Agency last week found that Pfizer and Moderna’s two-dose vaccines are only about 10% effective at preventing symptomatic infection from omicron 20 weeks after the second dose. However, two doses still provide good protection against severe illness, according to the study.
Booster doses, on the other hand, provide the best protection and are up to 75% effective at preventing symptomatic infection, the U.K. Health Security Agency found. Public health officials in the U.S. have been closely observing data out of the U.K. because the omicron wave began in Britain a few weeks before it hit the U.S.
Biden said people who are unvaccinated should be alarmed by omicron’s rapid spread in the U.S., warning many of them will get infected and develop severe illness.
“Some will die — needlessly die,” Biden said. “Unvaccinated are taking up hospital beds and crowding emergency rooms and intensive care units. That’s displaced other people who need access to those hospitals.”
Scientists and public health officials are still trying to determine the severity of illness caused by omicron compared with delta. The U.K. Health Security Agency, in its study, found that people infected with omicron are less likely to require hospital treatment compared with those who were sickened by the delta variant.
A study from the University of Hong Kong’s Faculty of Medicine found that lung infection from omicron is significantly lower than the original strain of the virus, which might suggest less severe disease. However, omicron replicates much faster in human airways, which may explain why it spreads faster, the study found.
More
South Africa offers the world a way out of Covid as Omicron is in full retreat: New infections falling, coronavirus deaths dropping and thousands recovering
Monday 03 January 2022 1:48 pm
As Covid infection rates are dropping rapidly and tens of thousands of South Africans recovering from Omicron without having to go to hospital, it seems the country is heading for a healthy start of the year.
In fact, Covid experts are all saying the same: the Omicron wave has passed and other countries can expect the same cycle in the next few months.
The spectacular drop in new infections and hospital admissions has led the government of South Africa to lift its strict night time curfew, marking an important milestone in the fight against Covid.
Coronavirus experts are nearly ecstatic as the Omicron variant seems to subside as quickly as it came. Infections are dropping dramatically and practically all virologists in the country are confirming the Omicron wave is subsiding quickly.
Perhaps more importantly, Omicron’s death toll is “substantially lower” than during the much more lethal and aggressive Delta variant, South African vaccinologist Shabir Mahdi told various media.
His observations are confirmed by Ridhwaan Suliman, a senior researcher at the respected South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), who said hospitalizations and deaths from this wave have proven to be “significantly lower relative to that experienced in previous waves.”
What’s even more encouraging is that the much-feared Delta mutation has largely been replaced by Omicron, which – according to multiple studies – seems to be the mildest variant so far.
Suliman said South Africa and most of the southern countries of the continent have now “surpassed the peak of the Omicron wave, driven by the significant decline in the populous province and epicentre: Gauteng,” the province that is home to Johannesburg, the country’s largest city.
Positivity rates have dropped to under 30 per cent, which shows “the decline in infections is real and not a testing artifact,” Suliman stressed.
Global path out of Omicron
The latest developments in South Africa may offer the rest of the world a way out of Omicron, as Salim Abdool Karim, one of South Afrcia’s most important infectious-diseases scientists, is convinced that “every other country, or almost every other, will follow the same trajectory.”
Karim, who has led the pandemic response in South Africa, also told various media the peak of the Omicron wave has passed, comparing the wave of cases to Africa’s highest mountain.
“If previous variants caused waves shaped like Kilimanjaro, omicron’s is more like we were scaling the North Face of Everest,” Karim said, referring to the near-vertical jump in infections that South Africa experienced during the final weeks of November and first two weeks of December.
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.
No Mo’ ’Splosions? Nanotech Energy Unveils Fireproof Graphene Battery
Nonflammable OrganoLyte electrolyte promises to last longer and charge faster.
Jan 3, 2022
Wow, the claims Nanotech Energy makes for its new graphene battery, just presented at CES Unveiled, are impressive: It retains more than 80 percent of its rated capacity through 1,400 cycles, can charge "18 times faster than anything that is currently available on the market," maintains performance at extreme temperatures (-40 to 140 degrees F), holds charge at temperatures as high as 350 degrees and won't catch fire when penetrated with a nail or heated to more than 1,300 degrees, don't require exotic materials, can be manufactured on existing equipment in various form factors (cylindrical, pouch, etc. ), and is going to be produced in a new plant in Nevada slated to open in the fourth quarter of 2022.
Given all that, we wouldn't be surprised to learn that driving an EV powered by such batteries also promoted weight loss and prevented tax audits. Here's what we know about the Nanotech Energy graphene battery.
Graphene Battery Electrodes
Graphene has been making a lot of news lately, and we explained what it is here, but here's a quickie recap: the graphene in use here is a sheet of one-atom-thick carbon. Nanotech Energy is using graphene sheets to transfer energy to and from its new batteries. Graphene is extremely strong yet pliable, which makes it capable of stretching as the lithium ions come and go from the electrodes, causing volume changes. Graphene's strong electrical conductivity lowers the battery's internal resistance, which lowers internal heat generation, enabling faster charging.
OrganoLyte Electrolyte
Nanotech Energy has yet to release exact chemical specifications of its proprietary liquid electrolyte, but it has provided MotorTrend with some general information. Most electrolytes in use today involve dissolving a lithium salt in a liquid material composed primarily of linear and cyclic chain carbonates (molecules that involve a carbon atom attached to three oxygen atoms). These liquids are typically flammable (see the photo below). OrganoLyte reportedly is not, if photos (at top) of a propane torch applied to the material are to be believed.
More
https://www.motortrend.com/events/nanotech-energy-fireproof-graphene-battery-tech/
The
whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence
clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of
hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
H.
L. Mencken.
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