Baltic Dry Index. 2045 +81 Brent Crude 96.83
Spot Gold 1909
Coronavirus Cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,100
Coronavirus Cases 22/02/22 World 426,474,780
Deaths 5,909,675
The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war.
Norman Schwarzkopf.
This morning we are a giant step closer to a new European war.
Asian stock casinos are falling, crude oil and gold rising. US markets reopen after yesterday’s holiday playing catch up.
The really big question of today, is can a new European war be averted or is it already to late to be stopped?
Has Russia, America and NATO already talked themselves into a corner with no feasible exit for any or all?
Time to fill up the car, stock up on necessities like gin and scotch, gold and silver and hope that some common sense breaks out fast. There are few winners in most wars and with modern weaponry there are likely to be many, many losers.
Below, waiting for the next shoe to drop.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index drops about 3% as tensions between Russia and Ukraine escalate
SINGAPORE — Shares in Asia-Pacific declined in Tuesday trade as tensions surrounding Russia and Ukraine continue to keep investors on edge.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index led losses regionally, falling 3.11% in afternoon trade.
Hong Kong-listed shares of Alibaba dropped 3.74% following a Bloomberg report that Chinese authorities have told banks and state firms to report exposure to Ant Group.
Other Hong Kong-listed Chinese tech shares also declined, with Tencent falling 1.98% and Meituan plunging 5.82%. The Hang Seng Tech index slipped 2.84%.
The Shanghai composite in mainland China dipped 1.36% and the Shenzhen component dropped 1.655%.
The Nikkei 225 in Japan also saw sizable losses, last down 1.94% while the Topix index slipped 1.67%. In South Korea, the Kospi fell 1.67%.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 dropped 1.27%.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan traded 1.9% lower.
Investors will continue to monitor geopolitical tensions, after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered forces into two breakaway regions of eastern Ukraine, following a Monday announcement that he would recognize their independence.
After that development, the White House responded, with U.S. President Joe Biden ordering sanctions against the separatist regions of Ukraine.
Oil prices jumped in the afternoon of Asia trading hours, with international benchmark Brent crude futures up 1.46% to $96.78 per barrel. U.S. crude futures soared 3.06% to $93.86 per barrel.
Shares of oil firms also rose in Tuesday trade, with Beach Energy in Australia gaining 3.04% while Santos advanced 3.06%. In Japan, shares of Japan Petroleum Exploration jumped 2.76%.
The U.S. markets were closed for a holiday on Monday, though moves in stock futures Monday night stateside pointed to losses ahead for Wall Street at the Tuesday open.
Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 416 points, or 1.22%. S&P 500 futures fell 1.59% while Nasdaq-100 futures slipped 2.12%.
More
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/22/asia-markets-russia-ukraine-tensions-currencies-oil.html
In dubious news, Reuters is reporting only a limited US reaction. I think this unlikely to last if it happens at all.
Russian troops in Ukraine's Donbas won't trigger broader sanctions - U.S. official
By Jeff Mason February 22, 2022 1:56 AM GMT
WASHINGTON, Feb 21 (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin's decision to send troops he called peacemakers into breakaway regions of Ukraine did not constitute a further invasion that would trigger a broader sanctions package, a Biden administration official told Reuters on Monday, but the White House believes a full invasion could come at any time.
The United States will continue to pursue diplomacy with Russia until "tanks roll," another official told reporters.
The Russian president's recognition of the two breakaway regions as independent and his order to send in troops upped the ante with the West over Ukraine.
The White House announced after Putin's announcement that it would prevent U.S. investment in those breakaway areas and the official who spoke to reporters said additional measures would be announced on Tuesday. But those measures were separate from a wider package of sanctions that Washington has promised to implement with its allies if Russia invades Ukraine.
The first administration official told Reuters sending Russian troops into the separatist regions was not a departure from what Russia had done already, which was why it did not trigger the broader sanctions.
"This isn't a further invasion since it's territory that they've already occupied," that official said.
The official speaking to reporters on a conference call said sending Russian troops into the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine was not new.
"Russian troops moving into Donbas would not itself be a new step. Russia has had forces in the Donbas region for the past eight years... They are currently now making decisions to do this in a more overt and ... open way," he said.
The United States will continue to pursue diplomatic talks until or unless an invasion occurs, he said. "Russia continues to escalate this crisis that it created in the first place. We'll continue to pursue diplomacy until the tanks roll, but we are under no illusions about what is likely to come next."
Putin told Russia's defense ministry to deploy troops into the two regions to "keep the peace" in a decree issued shortly after he announced recognition for Russia-backed separatists there. read more
More
https://www.reuters.com/world/us-casts-doubt-biden-summit-with-putin-eyes-new-sanctions-tuesday-official-2022-02-21/
War fears grow as Putin orders troops to eastern Ukraine
MOSCOW (AP) — A long-feared Russian invasion of Ukraine appeared to be imminent Monday, if not already underway, with Russian President Vladimir Putin ordering forces into separatist regions of eastern Ukraine.
A vaguely worded decree signed by Putin did not say if troops were on the move, and it cast the order as an effort to “maintain peace.” But it appeared to dash the slim remaining hopes of averting a major conflict in Europe that could cause massive casualties, energy shortages on the continent and economic chaos around the globe.
Putin’s directive came hours after he recognized the separatist regions in a rambling, fact-bending discourse on European history. The move paved the way to provide them military support, antagonizing Western leaders who regard it as a breach of world order, and set off a frenzied scramble by the U.S. and others to respond.
Underscoring the urgency, the U.N. Security Council held a rare nighttime emergency meeting on Monday at the request of Ukraine, the U.S. and other countries. Undersecretary-General Rosemary DiCarlo opened the session with a warning that “the risk of major conflict is real and needs to be prevented at all costs.”
The White House issued an executive order to prohibit U.S. investment and trade in the separatist regions, and additional measures — likely sanctions — were to be announced Tuesday. Those sanctions are independent of what Washington has prepared in the event of a Russian invasion, according to a senior administration official who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity.
The State Department, meanwhile, said U.S. personnel in Lviv — in Ukraine’s far west — would spend the night in Poland but return to Ukraine to continue their diplomatic work and emergency consular services. It again urged any American citizens in Ukraine to leave immediately.
The developments came during a spike in skirmishes in the eastern regions that Western powers believe Russia could use as a pretext for an attack on the Western-looking democracy that has defied Moscow’s attempts to pull it back into its orbit.
Putin justified his decision in a far-reaching, pre-recorded speech blaming NATO for the current crisis and calling the U.S.-led alliance an existential threat to Russia. Sweeping through more than a century of history, he painted today’s Ukraine as a modern construct that is inextricably linked to Russia. He charged that Ukraine had inherited Russia’s historic lands and after the Soviet collapse was used by the West to contain Russia.
More
Finally, in other news, if this happens, lookout below in stocks and bonds. But would the Powell Fed dare stab President Biden and the Democrats in the back?
But it maybe moot anyway depending on what happens next in
Ukraine. Would the Fed hike going into war?
JPMorgan now expects the Federal Reserve to hike interest rates for 9 straight meetings, posing a major risk to markets
Mon, February 21, 2022, 10:54 AM
JPMorgan now expects the Federal Reserve to hike interest rates for nine consecutive meetings as the central bank grapples with the strongest inflation in 40 years.
Central banks hiking interest rates more quickly than investors previously expected is now the most significant threat to otherwise healthy markets and economies, analysts at the bank said in a note this weekend.
The analysts, led by chief economist Bruce Kasman, said they now think the Fed will raise rates by 25 basis points (0.25 percentage points) at every meeting until March 2023 – nine hikes in total.
The federal funds target rate – the Fed's main interest rate – currently stands at a record low of between 0% and 0.25%. Nine straight 25 basis point hikes would take the rate to 2.25% to 2.5%.
Much of Wall Street expects the Fed to start raising interest rates in March, with most analysts expecting five or six hikes in 2022. Raising interest rates makes borrowing more expensive and aims to reduce spending and demand, hopefully cooling inflation.
JPMorgan said recent inflation reports had come in considerably higher than expected. That's caused a rethink among the bank's economists, who no longer expect price rises to slow down this quarter.
"These developments align with the hawkish signals from central banks, and we have accelerated projected policy rate normalization paths in response," Kasman and colleagues wrote.
However, they said that more rapid and sustained central-bank action posed a danger to markets and economies.
"We think the risk that central banks shift and perceive a need to generate slow growth — and the corresponding impact on global financial conditions — is now the most significant threat to an otherwise healthy global backdrop."
https://www.yahoo.com/news/jpmorgan-now-expects-federal-hike-105456605.html
Mohamed El-Erian details 'fundamental change to the marketplace' as the Fed moves
Julie Hyman Sun, February 20, 2022, 2:23 PM
Along with being expected to start a rate hike cycle in March, the U.S. Federal Reserve is expected to stop purchasing assets to add to its $9 trillion balance sheet.
And while multiple rate hikes seems to be largely factored into the stock market, winding down the balance sheet — i.e., start selling assets into the market as opposed to buying — is a less understood variable.
“When... the most reliable buyer with its own printing press and an incredible willingness to buy – when they step out of the market, that is a fundamental change to the marketplace,” Mohamed El-Erian, president of Queen’s College at Cambridge University and Chief Economic Advisor at Allianz, told Yahoo Finance Live this week (video above). "So it shouldn't come as a surprise that [stock prices] are lower, because $120 billion a month of asset purchases are disappearing."
El-Erian stressed that unwinding the balance sheet "need not be disorderly. If you can establish and you still have strong fundamentals, people will come in and take the leg up based on something much more lasting than a liquidity regime. The concern we have is by being late, the Fed also puts economic growth in play. And that means earnings become more uncertain. So that's why this is a very delicate period. There is still a window to get this right. But unfortunately, that window is closing."
More
https://www.yahoo.com/news/mohamed-el-erian-fundamental-change-market-fed-142353665.html
Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die.
Herbert Hoover.
Global Inflation/Stagflation Watch.
Given our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians, inflation now needs an entire section of its own.
Rents reach 'insane' levels across US with no end in sight
February 21, 2022
Krystal Guerra’s Miami apartment has a tiny kitchen, cracked tiles, warped cabinets, no dishwasher and hardly any storage space.
But Guerra was fine with the apartment’s shortcomings. It was all part of being a 32-year-old graduate student in South Florida, she reasoned, and she was happy to live there for a few more years as she finished her marketing degree.
That was until a new owner bought the property and told her he was raising the rent from $1,550 to $1,950, a 26% increase that Guerra said meant her rent would account for the majority of her take-home pay from the University of Miami.
"I thought that was insane," said Guerra, who decided to move out. "Am I supposed to stop paying for everything else I have going on in my life just so I can pay rent? That’s unsustainable."
Guerra is hardly alone. Rents have exploded across the country, causing many to dig deep into their savings, downsize to subpar units or fall behind on payments and risk eviction now that a federal moratorium has ended.
In the 50 largest U.S. metro areas, median rent rose an astounding 19.3% from December 2020 to December 2021, according to a Realtor.com analysis of properties with two or fewer bedrooms. And nowhere was the jump bigger than in the Miami metro area, where the median rent exploded to $2,850, 49.8% higher than the previous year.
Other cities across Florida — Tampa, Orlando and Jacksonville — and the Sun Belt destinations of San Diego, Las Vegas, Austin, Texas, and Memphis, Tennessee, all saw spikes of more than 25% during that time period.
---- Economists worry about the impact of rent increases on inflation because the big jumps in new leases feed into the U.S. consumer price index, which is used to measure inflation.
Inflation jumped 7.5% in January from a year earlier, the biggest increase in four decades. While many economists expect that to decrease as pandemic-disrupted supply chains unravel, rising rents could keep inflation high through the end of the year since housing costs make up one-third of the consumer price index.
More
https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/rents-reach-insane-levels-across-us-with-no-end-in-sight
Housing prices and interest rates ‘aren’t going back down,’ expert says
Gabriella Cruz-MartinezSun, February 20, 2022, 12:54 PM
Mortgage rates surged to the highest level in two years, leaving homebuyers on high alert as further increases loom.
“Things aren’t going back down,” DLB Financial Services CEO Debbie Boyd told Yahoo Finance Live (video above). “So we have to quit thinking this is a bubble and just start thinking that this is it now. This is the real thing.”
The rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage — the most common loan for homebuyers — increased to 3.69% last week from 3.55% the previous week. That’s the highest level since January 2020, according to Freddie Mac, and well above the average of 2.73% a year ago.
The surge in rates followed an increase in 10-year Treasury yields, which rose above 2% for the first time since 2019 this week. Solid employment growth for January and a high inflation report are likely to accelerate the Federal Reserve’s plan to increase benchmark interest rates to combat inflation, which is running at a 40-year high.
“I think we're going to have three, maybe four hikes this year. Doesn't mean they're all going to be huge,” Boyd said. “But even an eighth of a point, or a quarter of a point does trickle down through the markets, and it makes everybody nervous.”
----The average sales price across the country for an existing single-family home rose 14.6% to $361,700 in the fourth quarter of 2021, according to the National Association of Realtors. As a result, entry-level homebuyers generally spent up to 25.6% of their household income on mortgage payments, further straining affordability for young buyers.
More
German Producer Price Inflation Highest Since 1951
Dec. 17, 2021, 02:50 AM
(RTTNews) - Germany's producer prices rose at the fastest pace in seven decades in November, mainly driven by higher energy prices, preliminary data from Destatis showed Friday. The producer price index rose 19.2 percent year-on-year after an 18.4 percent increase in October. Economists had forecast 19.9 percent producer price inflation. The latest increase in producer prices was the biggest since November 1951, when they surged 20.6 percent, Destatis said. Energy prices jumped 49.4 percent from a year ago, mainly led by an 83.4 percent surge in natural gas distribution costs and a 48 percent climb in electricity prices.
Excluding energy, producer price inflation was 9.9 percent in November versus 9.2 percent in October. Prices of intermediate goods increased 19.1 percent annually, mainly due to higher prices of metal. Producer prices of non-durable consumer goods rose 3.7 percent and those of durable consumer goods increased 3.7 percent.
Capital goods prices climbed 3.6 percent from a year ago. Compared to the previous month, producer prices increased 0.8 percent in November, which was slower than the 1.4 percent rise economists had predicted.
In October, prices rose 3.8 percent. The latest increase was the weakest in seven months.
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
So was SARS-CoV-2 lab made after all?
Front.Virol., 21 February 2022 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fviro.2022.834808
MSH3 Homology and Potential Recombination Link to SARS-CoV-2 Furin Cleavage Site
---- Among numerous point mutation differences between the SARS-CoV-2 and the bat RaTG13 coronavirus, only the 12-nucleotide furin cleavage site (FCS) exceeds 3 nucleotides. A BLAST search revealed that a 19 nucleotide portion of the SARS.Cov2 genome encompassing the furing cleavage site is a 100% complementary match to a codon-optimized proprietary sequence that is the reverse complement of the human mutS homolog (MSH3). The reverse complement sequence present in SARS-CoV-2 may occur randomly but other possibilities must be considered. Recombination in an intermediate host is an unlikely explanation. Single stranded RNA viruses such as SARS-CoV-2 utilize negative strand RNA templates in infected cells, which might lead through copy choice recombination with a negative sense SARS-CoV-2 RNA to the integration of the MSH3 negative strand, including the FCS, into the viral genome. In any case, the presence of the 19-nucleotide long RNA sequence including the FCS with 100% identity to the reverse complement of the MSH3 mRNA is highly unusual and requires further investigations.
More
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fviro.2022.834808/full
Studies show many people may not need a fourth COVID-19 booster for several months, or even years
Tue, February 22, 2022, 3:33 AM
· Studies show that 3 vaccines may be enough to protect against coronavirus variants for a long time.
· An expert told the New York Times that they're seeing diminishing returns from additional doses.
· Medical officials are still considering the official guidance around additional boosters in the US.
If you recently got a booster shot to protect against COVID-19, you may not need another for several months, or even several years, new studies suggest.
According to one study released earlier this week and reported on by Apoorva Mandavilli for The New York Times, receiving three mRNA vaccinations from Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna helps the body create a wide array of antibodies that are especially effective in not only preventing death and severe illness, but also in protecting against variants.
John Wherry, director of the Institute for Immunology at the University of Pennsylvania, told the New York Times that scientists are "starting to see now diminishing returns on the number of additional doses," noting that a fourth vaccination may be unnecessary to protect against death and serious illness for the average adult.
The NYTimes also cited at least four studies that found that the immune system — using specialized T cells produced by the vaccines or after an infection — is capable of remembering and attacking the virus after several months and may even be able to do so for many years.
It's not impossible to imagine this outcome since scientists have already observed this exact response in individuals infected with the SARS coronavirus.
In the case of SARS, a study found that individuals exposed to the virus during the 2003 outbreak still carried T cells that could remember and target the virus more than 17 years later. Health officials believe this may also be the case with COVID-19.
Still, the data is inconclusive as experts continue to gather more information. The studies come as medical officials consider guidance around additional boosters, a discussion that Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden's chief medical advisor, said in December was "too premature."
More
https://news.yahoo.com/studies-show-many-people-may-033352141.html
Next, some vaccine links kindly sent along from a LIR reader in Canada.
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.
Liquid electronics: Wrapping droplets in graphene for printed microchips and wearable sensors
Date: February 15, 2022
Source: University of Sussex
Summary: Physicists have coated droplets in atomically-thin graphene that can be used to wrap any liquid, in liquid tech advance.
New research from physicists at the University of Sussex will 'significantly advance' the new technology area of liquid electronics, enhancing the functionality and sustainability of potential applications in printed electronics, wearable health monitors and even batteries.
In their research paper published in ACS Nano, the Sussex scientists have built on their previous work to wrap emulsion droplets with graphene and other 2D materials by reducing the coatings down to atomically-thin nanosheet layers. In doing so they were able to create electrically-conducting liquid emulsions that are the lowest-loading graphene networks ever reported -- just 0.001 vol%.
This means that the subsequent liquid electronic technology -- whether that might be strain sensors to monitor physical performance and health, electronic devices printed from emulsion droplets, and even potentially more efficient and longer-lasting electric vehicle batteries, will be both cheaper and more sustainable because they will require less graphene or other 2D nanosheets coating the droplets.
Another significant development was that the scientists can now make these electronic droplet networks using any liquids -- whereas previous research focused on conventional oils and water -- because they have discovered how to control which liquid droplets are wrapped in graphene, meaning that they can design the emulsions specifically to the desired application.
---- "Another exciting development for our research group is that we can now also design and control our emulsions towards specific applications such as wrapping soft polymers such as silicone for wearable strain sensors that exhibit increased sensitivity at low graphene loading, and we are also investigating emulsion assembly of battery electrode materials to enhance the robustness of these energy storage devices."
Professor of Experimental Physics at the University of Sussex, Alan Dalton, who was first inspired by the making of a salad dressing to explore the potential of adding graphene to liquid emulsions, explains why this development is exciting: "In bringing the graphene coatings of the liquid droplets down to atomically-thin layers and in opening wide the potential for real-world applications by being able to do so with any liquid material, this research development will significantly advance the emerging and scientifically exciting field of liquid electronics."
“Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by
smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.”
Mark Twain.
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