Baltic Dry Index. 2277 -12 Brent Crude 81.30
Spot Gold 1807
Coronavirus Cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,100
Coronavirus Cases 11/01/22 World 311,112,973
Deaths 5,512,508
I will tell you the secret to getting rich on Wall Street. You try to be greedy when others are fearful. And you try to be fearful when others are greedy.
Warren Buffett.
Though the USA – Russia war talks over the Ukraine went badly, no one in the stock casinos care.
Nasdaq made a suspicious recovery.
Jamie Dimon sees a major boom ahead even if the Fed raises interest rates. If he’s right, US inflation will hit double digits.
Are the China Olympics now in doubt thanks to omicron?
Another dodgy Fedster leaves the probity challenged, Powell Fed. Three down, how many more to go?
European stocks set for higher open as investors focus on next U.S. inflation data
LONDON — European stocks are expected to open higher on Tuesday as investors look ahead to the next U.S. inflation reading on Wednesday.
The U.K.’s FTSE index is seen opening 31 points higher at 7,464, Germany’s DAX 78 points higher at 15,886, France’s CAC 40 up 44 points at 7,174 and Italy’s FTSE MIB higher by 114 points at 27,300, according to data from IG.
Global markets are focused this week on the latest U.S. inflation data due out this week; the latest U.S. consumer price index is set for release Wednesday and the producer price index is slated for Thursday.
Consumer prices in Europe and the U.S. jumped in recent months. Last Friday, inflation in the euro zone hit a new record high in December and came in at 5% compared with the same month the previous year.
Asia-Pacific markets were mixed across the board on Tuesday as investors remain concerned about inflation, as well as likely policy tightening from central banks like the U.S. Federal Reserve.
Global investors will be looking for any clues from Fed officials as to the timing of interest rate hikes too; on Tuesday Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s confirmation hearing will take place. Kansas City Fed President Esther George is also scheduled to speak about on economic policy, as is St. Louis Fed president James Bullard later in the day.
U.S. futures were flat overnight after the major averages extended declines on Monday, except the Nasdaq which managed to snap a four-day losing streak.
Data releases include the latest reading of the U.K.’s GDP in the three months to November, and U.K. industrial and manufacturing output for November as well as Greek unemployment data for the same month.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/11/european-stocks-investors-await-comment-from-feds-powell.html
Jamie Dimon sees the best economic growth in decades, more than 4 Fed rate hikes this year
Jamie Dimon said the U.S. is headed for the best economic growth in decades.
“We’re going to have the best growth we’ve ever had this year, I think since maybe sometime after the Great Depression,” Dimon told CNBC’s Bertha Coombs during the 40th Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. “Next year will be pretty good too.”
Dimon, the longtime CEO and chairman of JPMorgan Chase, said his confidence stems from the robust balance sheet of the American consumer. JPMorgan is the biggest U.S. bank by assets and has relationships with half of the country’s households.
“The consumer balance sheet has never been in better shape; they’re spending 25% more today than pre-Covid,” Dimon said. “Their debt-service ratio is better than it’s been since we’ve been keeping records for 50 years.”
Dimon said growth will come even as the Fed raises rates possibly more than investors expect. Goldman Sachs economists predicted four rate hikes this year and Dimon said he would be surprised if the central bank didn’t go further.
“It’s possible that inflation is worse than they think and they raise rates more than people think,” Dimon said. “I personally would be surprised if it’s just four increases.”
Dimon has expressed expectations for higher rates before. Banks tend to prosper in rising-rate environments because their lending margins expand as rates climb.
Indeed, bank stocks have surged so far this year as rates climbed. The KBW Bank Index jumped 10% last week, the best start to a year on record for the 24-company index.
However, Dimon said that while the underlying economy looks strong, stock market investors may endure a tumultuous year as the Fed goes to work.
“The market is different,” Dimon said. “We’re kind of expecting that the market will have a lot of volatility this year as rates go up and people kind of redo projections.”
“If we’re lucky, the Fed can slow things down and we’ll have what they call a `soft landing’,” Dimon added.
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In other news, Russia says the USA’s not listening. War still remains on the table.
US, Russia talks end with 'no progress': Here's what you need to know
January 10, 2022
U.S. and Russian officials held over seven hours of talks Monday, but the two sides did not negotiate or appear any closer to a resolution over heightened fears that Russia will attack its neighbor Ukraine.
In dueling press conferences after the talks, the top U.S. and Russian diplomats said their meetings were constructive, as they now move on to a second round at NATO's headquarters on Wednesday.
But while U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman urged caution and praised the "frank and forthright" tone, her counterpart, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, warned the U.S. is moving too slowly and not taking seriously Moscow's key demands.
Whether that sets the stage for genuine negotiations, or whether Russian leader Vladimir Putin is seeking a pretext for war, remains unclear, as Russia pushes to reclaim its Soviet sphere of influence and present its clearest, most fundamental challenge to European security in three decades.
Ryabkov said it is impossible for any progress to be made until the U.S. gives legal guarantees Ukraine and Georgia will never join NATO.
"We are fed up with loose talk, half promises. Ukraine and Georgia will never -- never ever -- become members of NATO," Ryabkov told reporters afterward, reiterating Russia's top demand, laid out last month in two draft treaties. "We do not trust the other side. We need ironclad, waterproof, bullet-proof, legally binding guarantees. Not safeguards -- guarantees."
He has said "no progress" was made on Russia's central demands and warned the U.S. is failing to understand the urgency of the situation.
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In winter Olympics news, will omicron postpone the games?
China locks down third city, raising affected to 20 million
January 11, 2022
BEIJING (AP) — A third Chinese city has locked down its residents because of a COVID-19 outbreak, raising the number confined to their homes in China to about 20 million people.
It wasn’t clear how long the lockdown of Anyang city, home to 5.5 million, would last as a notice said it was being done to facilitate mass testing but did not indicate if it would end when the testing is completed.
Another 13 million people are locked down in the city of Xi’an and 1.1 million in Yuzhou.
The lockdown of Anyang followed the confirmation of two cases of omicron on Monday that are believed to be linked to two other cases found Saturday in the city of Tianjin. It appears to be the first time omicron has spread in China beyond people who arrived from abroad and their immediate contacts.
Residents are not allowed to leave their homes, non-essential vehicles are banned from streets and stores have been ordered shut except for those selling necessities, according to a city notice shared by state media late Monday.
Xi’an and Yuzhou are both battling the delta variant and neither has reported any omicron cases. About 2,000 people have been infected in Xi’an, an ancient capital that is home to the Terracotta Warrior ruins, in what is by far the largest outbreak in China.
https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-health-china-64ca91f0f2315eabea84bb4a9d0801eb
China Wages Two-Front War With Omicron and Delta on Eve of Winter Olympics
By Wang Xintong, Jiang Moting and Jia Tianqiong Jan 10, 2022 08:12 PM
A city in China’s central province of Henan was the latest to report new local cases of the omicron variant of Covid-19 on Monday, as the country battles multiple flare-ups of the highly transmissible delta and omicron variants.
Posing a challenge to Beijing, which is scheduled to host the Winter Olympics next month, the emergence of local omicron cases in the northern port city of Tianjin over the weekend and the rise in delta infections in the provinces of Henan and Shaanxi have put local authorities on high alert, forcing them to beef up travel restrictions and mass testing.
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Finally, another dodgy Fedster bites the dust. Where’s the Diogenes of Washington, District of Crooks?
Fed Vice Chair Clarida to step down early following scrutiny over his trades during pandemic
Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Richard Clarida said Monday he will be leaving his post with just a few weeks left on his term and amid revelations regarding his trading of stock funds.
In an announcement released Monday afternoon, Clarida said he will be stepping down from his post this Friday. His term expires on Jan. 31.
The move comes following additional disclosures regarding trades Clarida made in February 2020, around the time when the Fed was getting ready to roll out what eventually would become its most aggressive policy tools ever, in an effort to combat the Covid crisis.
“Rich’s contributions to our monetary policy deliberations, and his leadership of the Fed’s first-ever public review of our monetary policy framework, will leave a lasting impact in the field of central banking,” Fed Chairman Jerome H. Powell said in a statement. “I will miss his wise counsel and vital insights.”
Clarida’s exit comes amid heightened scrutiny over what he had described as pre-planned portfolio rebalancing on Feb. 27, 2020. However, recent disclosures, first reported by the New York Times, showed that three days earlier, Clarida sold shares in three stock funds that he would repurchase on the 27th.
Markets dropped on Feb. 24 amid worries that the spreading coronavirus could cause substantial economic damage. On Feb. 26, Fed policymakers huddled to discuss what policy moves they might take to combat what eventually would become a full-blown pandemic.
Within weeks, the Fed would cut its benchmark interest rate to zero and institute an unprecedented array of lending and liquidity programs to help the economy and financial markets function.
Clarida’s announcement did not mention anything about the controversy, which has been a focal point of Fed criticism from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) and some other lawmakers. Two regional Fed presidents, Eric Rosengren of Boston and Robert Kaplan of Dallas, both resigned following questions over their trading activities.
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Diogenes made a virtue of poverty. He begged for a living and often slept in a large ceramic jar, or pithos, in the marketplace.[5] He became notorious for his philosophical stunts, such as carrying a lamp during the day, claiming to be looking for a man (often rendered in English as "looking for an honest man").
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diogenes
Global Inflation/Stagflation Watch.
Given our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians, inflation now needs an entire section of its own.
Philippines urges Indonesia to lift coal export ban
January 10, 2022 3:05 AM GMT
MANILA, Jan 10 (Reuters) - The Philippines' energy secretary Alfonso Cusi has appealed to Indonesia to lift its coal export ban, saying the policy will be detrimental to economies heavily reliant on the fuel for power generation, Manila's Department of Energy said on Monday.
Indonesia, the world's biggest thermal coal exporter suspended exports on Jan. 1 after its state power utility reported dangerously low inventory levels of the fuel at its domestic power stations. read more
The Philippines' move follows similar requests from other Asian governments such as Japan and South Korea. read more
Cusi made the appeal in a letter sent via the Department of Foreign Affairs to Indonesia's Minister of Energy & Mineral Resources, Arifin Tasrif, the energy department said in a news release, without specifying when the letter was sent.
Cusi had asked the foreign affairs department to intercede and appeal on behalf of the Philippines through the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) cooperation mechanism.
The ban drove coal prices in China and Australia higher last week, while scores of vessels slated to carry coal to major buyers such as Japan, China, South Korea and India have been in limbo off Kalimantan, home to Indonesia's main coal ports.
The Philippines, which is still heavily dependent on coal for power generation, buys most of its requirements from Indonesia, and some, more expensive, supplies from Australia and Vietnam.
Nearly 70% of the 42.5 million tonnes of Philippine coal supply in 2020 was imported, according to government data.
Power generated by coal comprises about 60% of the country's power mix, and in 2021 the country sourced 2.3 million tonnes per month from Indonesia to fuel its power plants, the energy department said.
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Nickel price buoyed by strong demand, dwindling stocks
January 10, 2022 11:11 AM GMT
LONDON, Jan 10 (Reuters) - Nickel prices held near their highest in more than two months on Monday boosted by demand from the electric vehicle battery sector lowering stocks held in London Metal Exchange (LME) approved warehouses.
Benchmark nickel on the LME was up 1% at $20,940 a tonne at 1056 GMT having last week touched $21,165 a tonne, the highest since November 24.
"Nickel stocks in LME warehouses are being drawn because they can be used to make nickel sulphate for the batteries used in electric vehicles," said ING analyst Wenyu Yao.
Electric vehicle demand has been particularly strong in China, where Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE), General Motors (GM.N), Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T) and Tesla (TSLA.O) are ramping up production. read more
INVENTORIES: Nickel stocks in LME warehouses at 99,954 tonnes have fallen by around 62% since April 2021.
About 75% of the total is bagged briquette, easily crushed into small particles and dissolved in sulphuric acid to make nickel sulphate.
Cancelled warrants -- metal earmarked for delivery -- at 49% of total stocks indicate more metal is due to be delivered out over the coming days and weeks.
SPREADS: Worries about nickel supplies on the LME market have created a premium of $125 a tonne for the cash over the three-month contract , a one-month high.
ALUMINIUM: Production cuts in Europe due to soaring power costs are expected to fuel further rises in aluminium prices , which hit $2,980 a tonne on Friday, the highest since October 21.
It was last up 1.1% at $2,946.5 a tonne.
Aluminium stocks in LME warehouses at 911,500 tonnes are down more than 30% since mid-September.
More
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
Today, did a lab make a contamination mistake?
With omicron, is the common cold better protection than a Pfizer vaccine? Does it matter anyway?
Experts cast doubts over reported ‘deltacron’ variant, say likely due to lab contamination
Published Mon, Jan 10 2022 6:56 AM EST
Global health experts are casting doubts over reports of a new possible Covid-19 mutation that appeared to be a combination of both the delta and omicron variants, dubbed as “deltacron,” saying it’s more likely that the “strain” is the result of a lab processing error.
At the weekend it was reported that a researcher in Cyprus had discovered the potential new variant. Bloomberg News reported Saturday that Leondios Kostrikis, professor of biological sciences at the University of Cyprus, had called the strain “deltacron,” because of its omicron-like genetic signatures within the delta genomes.
Kostrikis and his team said they had found 25 cases of the mutation, with the report adding that at the time it was too early to tell whether there were more cases of the apparent new strain or what impact it could have. Bloomberg reported that the findings had been sent to Gisaid, an international database that tracks changes in the virus, on Jan. 7.
Some experts have since cast doubt over the findings, with one World Health Organization official tweeting on Sunday that “deltacron,” which was trending on the social media platform at the weekend, is “not real” and “is likely due to sequencing artifact,” a variation introduced by a non-biological process.
WHO Covid expert Dr. Krutika Kuppalli said on Twitter that, in this case, there was likely to have been a “lab contamination of Omicron fragments in a Delta specimen.”
----Other scientists have agreed that the findings could be the result of a lab error, with virologist Dr. Tom Peacock from Imperial College London also tweeting that “the Cypriot ‘Deltacron’ sequences reported by several large media outlets look to be quite clearly contamination.”
In another tweet, he noted that “quite a few of us have had a look at the sequences and come to the same conclusion it doesn’t look like a real recombinant,” referring to a possible rearrangement of genetic material.
----Another high-profile scientist, Dr. Boghuma Kabisen Titanji, an infectious diseases expert at Emory University in Atlanta, advised a cautionary approach, tweeting on Sunday that “On the #deltacron story, just because I have been asked about it many times in the last 24h, please interpret with caution. The information currently available is pointing to contamination of a sample as opposed to true recombination of #delta and #omicron variants.”
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Pfizer CEO says two Covid vaccine doses aren’t ‘enough for omicron’
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla on Monday said two doses of the company’s vaccine may not provide strong protection against infection from the omicron Covid variant, and the original shots have also lost some of their efficacy at preventing hospitalization.
Bourla, in an interview at J.P. Morgan’s healthcare conference, emphasized the importance of a third shot to boost people’s protection against omicron.
“The two doses, they’re not enough for omicron,” Bourla said. “The third dose of the current vaccine is providing quite good protection against deaths, and decent protection against hospitalizations.”
Bourla said omicron is a more difficult target than previous variants. Omicron, which has dozens of mutations, can evade some of the protection provided by Pfizer’s original two shots.
More
T-cells from common colds can provide protection against COVID-19 - study
January 10, 2022 10:12 AM GMT
LONDON, Jan 10 (Reuters) - High levels of T-cells from common cold coronaviruses can provide protection against COVID-19, an Imperial College London study published on Monday has found, which could inform approaches for second-generation vaccines.
Immunity against COVID-19 is a complex picture, and while there is evidence of waning antibody levels six months after vaccination, T-cells are also believed to play a vital role in providing protection.
The study, which began in September 2020, looked at levels of cross-reactive T-cells generated by previous common colds in 52 household contacts of positive COVID-19 cases shortly after exposure, to see if they went on to develop infection.
It found that the 26 who did not develop infection had significantly higher levels of those T-cells than people who did get infected. Imperial did not say how long protection from the T-cells would last.
"We found that high levels of pre-existing T cells, created by the body when infected with other human coronaviruses like the common cold, can protect against COVID-19 infection," study author Dr Rhia Kundu said.
The authors of the study, published in Nature Communications, said that the internal proteins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus which are targeted by the T-cells could offer an alternative target for vaccine makers.
Current COVID-19 vaccines target the spike protein, which mutates regularly, creating variants such as Omicron which lessen the efficacy of vaccines against symptomatic infection.
"In contrast, the internal proteins targeted by the protective T-cells we identified mutate much less," Professor Ajit Lalvani, co-author of the study, said.
"Consequently, they are highly conserved between the various SARS-CoV-2 variants, including Omicron. New vaccines that include these conserved, internal proteins would therefore induce broadly protective T cell responses that should protect against current and future SARS-CoV-2 variants."
Omicron-specific vaccine is coming but ‘may not matter—everybody’s going to be infected,’ says expert
An omicron-specific Covid vaccine will be ready by March but some experts warn it could be “too late” due to the variant’s highly transmissible nature.
On Monday, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla told CNBC that its vaccine with BioNTech that targets omicron — and other variants that are currently circulating — will be ready for distribution by spring and that the company has already started manufacturing doses.
But an omicron-targeted vaccine was needed in December, says Dr. William Moss, executive director of the International Vaccine Access Center at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “It still could be valuable but I do think in many ways, it’s too late” for the current omicron wave, Moss says.
Dr. Shaun Truelove, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, agrees: “Given how quickly this [variant] is happening, [the targeted vaccine] may not matter because everybody’s going to be infected,” says Truelove, a member of The Covid Scenario Modeling Hub, a team of researchers who make Covid projections.
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COVID will be 'difficult' for next three months but 'end is in sight', says WHO
Mon, January 10, 2022, 11:47 AM
The next three months of the coronavirus pandemic will 'be difficult' but 'the end is in sight', the World Health Organization has said.
Dr David Nabarro, the WHO’s special envoy on COVID-19, warned on Monday that there will be more coronavirus variants to follow Omicron.
His comments came after the UK government played down reports that free lateral flow COVID-19 tests are to be scrapped.
Dr Nabarro told Sky News: “It’s going to be difficult for the next three months at least.
“I’m afraid we are moving through the marathon but there’s no actual way to say that we’re at the end – we can see the end in sight, but we’re not there.
“And there’s going to be some bumps before we get there.”
Dr Nabarro added: “And I can’t tell you how bad they’re going to be, but I can at least tell you what I’m expecting.
“First of all, this virus is continuing to evolve – we have Omicron but we’ll get more variants.
“Secondly, it really is affecting the whole world. And, whilst health services in Western Europe are just about coping, in many other parts of the world, they are completely overwhelmed.
“And thirdly, it’s really clear that there’s no scope for major restrictions in any country, particularly poor countries.
“People have just got to keep working and so there are some very tough choices for politicians right now.”
In the UK, government ministers are reportedly looking at scaling back free lateral flow tests, as well as reducing the self-isolation period from seven days to five.
More
https://www.yahoo.com/covid-who-coronavirus-end-sight-months-114710715.html
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.
Ocean Battery stores renewable energy at the bottom of the sea
Michael Irving January 09, 2022
As useful as renewable energy sources are, they need to be backed up by storage systems that hold energy for times when the Sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing. Ocean Battery is a new design for an energy storage system that functions a bit like a hydroelectric dam at the bottom of the sea.
Developed by Dutch startup Ocean Grazer, the Ocean Battery is designed to be installed on the seafloor near offshore renewable energy generators, like wind turbines, floating solar farms, tidal and wave energy systems. It is made up of three components that together function on a principle similar to that of a hydro dam.
Buried in the seabed is a concrete reservoir that holds up to 20 million liters (5.3 million gal) of fresh water, stored at low pressure. A system of pumps and turbines connects this reservoir to a flexible bladder on the seafloor. Excess electricity from the renewable sources can be used to pump water from the reservoir into the bladder. When the energy is needed, the bladder releases and, driven by the pressure of the seawater above it, squeezes its water back down to the reservoir, spinning turbines on the way to generate electricity that’s fed out into the grid.
The Ocean Grazer team says that the system has an efficiency of between 70 and 80 percent, and should be able to run an unlimited number of cycles over an operation lifetime of more than 20 years. It’s also fairly scalable – each concrete reservoir has a capacity of 10 MWh, so adding more of these can increase the overall capacity. Extra units of the pump and turbine machinery can also be added to boost the power output, if more energy is needed quickly.
The Ocean Battery concept is intriguing, but it’s far from the only ocean battery design in the works. Subhydro outlined a similar idea to pump seawater out of tanks placed at the bottom of the sea, then when electricity is needed the water is let it back in, spinning turbines as it fills the tank. MIT also described a similar concept using hollow concrete spheres. Another recent design worked off buoyancy, using electricity to drag and hold balloon-like containers underwater, then releasing them to generate electricity.
Still, there’s not going to be one solution that suits every situation, so solving a global problem like renewable energy storage is likely going to take a whole army of these different, creative ideas.
The team describes the Ocean Battery in the video below.
I made my money the old-fashioned way. I was very nice to a wealthy relative right before he died.
Malcolm Forbes.
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