Baltic Dry Index. 1896 -72 Brent Crude 93.63
Spot Gold 1874
Coronavirus Cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,100
Coronavirus Cases 17/02/22 World 418,186,917
Deaths 5,869,101
Term limits aren't enough. We need jail.
P. J. O'Rourke.
In the stock casinos more European war confusion. Moscow says it’s de-escalating, Washington says Russia’s still escalating.
Estonian intelligence says Russia now has 170,000 troops surrounding the Ukraine, if true, western “intelligence,” has escalated from 100,000 last week, to 130,000 at the weekend, to 170,000 Russian troops now. [Supposedly Russia has about 250,000 troops.]
What do I know, but someone somewhere seems to have an agenda for starting a new European war? Why?
What’s a poor punter in the stock casinos to make of all this war talk too?
In the gold market, the punters are back betting on war.
In the crude oil market, the punters are trying to weigh up war concerns against rumours that the US has reached a deal with Iran. If so, that means more Iranian oil becomes available later in the year.
Almost unnoticed in all this war hysteria, the Fed minutes released yesterday suggested that the Fedsters might finally be serious about tackling runaway US inflation.
If so, US stocks are in for a nasty 2022 shock. If not, the US public, billionaires excepted, are in for a nasty 2022 inflation shock.
Asia-Pacific stocks mixed as investors monitor Ukraine situation
SINGAPORE — Stocks in Asia-Pacific were mixed in Thursday trade as investors continue to monitor the situation surrounding Ukraine.
The Nikkei 225 in Japan declined 0.96% while the Topix index shed 0.83%.
Japan’s January exports came in far below expectations, with official data released Thursday showing a 9.6% year-on-year rise for that month. That was against expectations by economists for a 16.5% gain, according to Reuters.
Mainland Chinese stocks were up, with the Shanghai composite rising 0.35% and the Shenzhen component climbing 0.777%. The Hang Seng index in Hong Kong slipped 0.62%.
Elsewhere, South Korea’s Kospi gained 0.6%.
Shares in Australia rose, with the S&P/ASX 200 up 0.23%.
Australia added 12,900 jobs for January, data released Thursday showed. That was above market forecasts for a flat outcome, according to Reuters. The country’s unemployment rate held steady at 4.2%, according to figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, in line with expectations from a Reuters poll.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan traded little changed.
Investors will continue to monitor Russia-Ukraine tensions, as NATO on Wednesday accused Russia of increasing the number of troops it has gathered at the Ukrainian border — a day after Moscow claimed it had begun withdrawing some of its military units.
A senior Biden administration official told reporters that as many as 7,000 troops have joined the 150,000 already near the border in recent days, according to a NBC News report.
More
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/17/asia-markets-australia-jobs-data-japan-economy-currencies-oil.html
Next, the Fed trapped over a barrel of its own making.
Fed Eyeing Potential for Faster Rate Increases to Ease Inflation
Updated Feb. 16, 2022 5:41 pm ET
Federal Reserve officials at their meeting last month discussed an accelerated timetable for raising interest rates, beginning with an anticipated increase in March amid greater discomfort with high inflation.
They agreed that “if inflation does not move down as they expect, it would be appropriate for the committee to remove policy accommodation at a faster pace than they currently anticipate,” said the minutes of the Jan. 25-26 meeting, which were released Wednesday.
When the Fed raised interest rates between 2015 and 2018, it did so gradually—and never more than once every quarter. Under the economic outlook they judged most likely last month, most officials last month “suggested that a faster pace of increases…than in the post-2015 period would likely be warranted,” the minutes said.
The discussion indicated officials were prepared to raise interest rates at consecutive policy meetings, which occur roughly every six weeks, something they haven’t done since 2006. That could set up a series of rate increases in March, May and June.
----The minutes also showed officials continued their deliberations over how aggressively to shrink their $9 trillion asset portfolio, but provided few new clues about how that might happen later this year. The move is another way for the Fed to tighten financial conditions to cool the economy.
Fed officials last month agreed to phase out their pandemic-era bond-buying stimulus program in early March.
The minutes indicated Fed officials were satisfied last month with how financial markets had interpreted their recent signaling around coming rate increases. But the Fed’s debate over how fast to raise rates has intensified because of data released since then.
The Labor Department earlier this month reported surprisingly big job gains in January despite a surge in infections due to the Omicron variant of Covid-19. Last week, the Labor Department reported that inflation rose to another four-decade high in January.
More
The Fed's battle to fight inflation could cause more pain than higher prices
New York (CNN Business)Rapidly rising prices have caused economic hardship for millions of Americans. But drastic action to rein in prices could lead to even more pain, including job losses.
Overall prices jumped 7.5% during the last year, according to the January consumer price index reading, the fastest pace in nearly 40 years. The increases have squeezed household budgets for consumers, caused political problems for Joe Biden and resulted in calls for the Federal Reserve to take relatively severe action, such as its first half-percentage-point hike since 2000.
But some economists are cautioning that would be a very bad idea, hurting the people that the battle on rising prices is meant to help.
That's because the main tool available to the Fed to fight inflation — raising interest rates — is designed to curb inflation by slowing what has been a very strong economy.
Even with the best year of economic growth and job gains in decades, the economy still has 2.5 million fewer jobs than it did heading into the pandemic. So employers need to continue hiring. But a slower economy means fewer job gains, perhaps even job losses for the lowest income segment of the workforce.
"The people you're drafting into the fight against inflation when you raise interest rates and slow the economy are the most vulnerable," said Robert Reich, the former US Labor Secretary under President Bill Clinton and a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley. "The purpose of raising interest rates is to take the air out of the sails of the economy. If it works, you are by definition are going to have fewer jobs. Even small increases in interest rates, if they have the desired effect, will cause job losses and wage losses."
Still it's clear that high prices are a major concern for many Americans. It is widely accepted that the Fed must take action against inflation.
More
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/16/economy/inflation-fight-pain/index.html
In new European war news, who’s right and who’s wrong? Talk is cheap, show us the money!
Russia's military build-up near Ukraine is growing, not shrinking, warns West
February 17, 2022 4:54 AM GMT
MOSCOW/KYIV, Feb 16 (Reuters) - There is a growing Russian military presence at Ukraine's borders, Western countries warned on Wednesday, as Estonia said battle groups were moving ahead of a likely attack to occupy "key terrain," contradicting Moscow's insistence of a pullback.
More armored vehicles, helicopters and a field hospital have been spotted, Britain's defense intelligence chief said in rare public comments.
Up to 7,000 more troops have moved to the border in recent days, including some arriving on Wednesday, a senior official in U.S. President Joe Biden's administration said, without providing evidence.
World powers are engaged in one of the deepest crises in East-West relations for decades, jostling over post-Cold War influence and energy supplies as Russia wants to stop Ukraine ever joining the NATO military alliance.
Western nations have suggested arms control and confidence-building steps to defuse the standoff, which has prompted them to urge their citizens to leave Ukraine because an attack could come at any time. Russia denies it has any plans to invade.
"There's what Russia says. And then there's what Russia does. And we haven't seen any pullback of its forces," U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in an interview on MSNBC.
"We continue to see critical units moving toward the border, not away from the border."
Estonian intelligence is aware of around 10 battle groups of troops moving toward the Ukrainian border, where it estimates about 170,000 soldiers are already deployed, said Mikk Marran, director general of the Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service.
The attack would include missile bombardment and the occupation of "key terrain," he added.
"If Russia is successful in Ukraine, it would encourage it to increase pressure on the Baltics in the coming years," he said. "The threat of war has become the main policy tool for Putin."
Russia's defense ministry said its forces were pulling back after exercises in southern and western military districts near Ukraine, and Moscow's ambassador to Ireland insisted forces in western Russia would be back to their normal positions within three to four weeks.
It published video that it said showed tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and self-propelled artillery units leaving the Crimean peninsula, which Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014.
But NATO military commanders are drawing up plans for new combat units that diplomats said could be deployed in Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Slovakia.
Such units - designed to buy time for additional soldiers to reach the front line if needed - already exist in Poland and the Baltic states.
Britain will double the size of its force in Estonia and send tanks and armored fighting vehicles to the small Baltic republic bordering Russia as part of the NATO deployment.
More
The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop.
P.
J. O'Rourke.
Global Inflation/Stagflation Watch.
Given our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians, inflation now needs an entire section of its own.
Oil could vault as high as $150 a barrel, veteran analyst warns, as undersupply meets surging demand
Published Wed, Feb 16 2022 5:26 AM EST
Oil prices are soaring and nothing appears to be stopping their ascent. December to January saw international benchmark Brent crude climb by roughly $11 a barrel, and it’s gone up nearly the same amount since the start of February, underpinned by supply concerns, rising inflation and geopolitical tensions.
Brent surpassing $100 a barrel is almost a given at this point, energy analysts say; but now, an increasing number of forecasters predict the commodity surpassing $125 a barrel and even higher.
″Given that you’ve got this underinvestment in capital exploration, we’re running low on physical oil, we’re running short of supply,” John Driscoll, director of JTD Energy Services, told CNBC on Monday. “There is a scenario where we could vault past $120, even as high as $150” a barrel.
Brent crude crossed $95 a barrel in the last week, its highest level since the summer of 2014 and a 63% increase year-on-year. It was trading at $93.98 per barrel on Wednesday at 10:20 a.m. in London.
Tensions over the threat of a Russian invasion into Ukraine have also helped to push prices up, though a partial drawdown of Russian troops from Ukraine’s border areas on Tuesday led the commodity’s price to retreat about 3% from the previous day. While Moscow has rejected the assumption of an impending invasion, NATO leaders and U.S. President Joe Biden insist that the risk of war remains high.
But it’s “not only the geopolitical tailwinds that we’re picking up, but the fundamentals,” Driscoll said.
“The market is in what we call a steep backwardation which gives a premium to any prompt physical available oil. We’re starting to sense that demand is on its way to recovering, and
we’re looking at supply shortfalls,” he explained.
Those shortfalls exist both in terms of OPEC+ production — the alliance of OPEC and several non-OPEC countries — pumping oil below the levels it promised to add to markets, and sector underinvestment in the U.S. and other countries in the wake of Covid-19 and governments’ pushes to switch to renewables.
OPEC+ members with quotas were short of their production targets by 700,000 barrels per day in January, with co-leaders of the group Saudi Arabia and Russia also pumping below their quotas, according to S&P Global Platts.
More
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/16/oil-could-vault-as-high-as-150-a-barrel-veteran-analyst-warns.html
Here comes $7 gas prices, warns oil strategist in dire outlook
Wed, February 16, 2022, 5:18 PM
Drivers best start bracing for another surge in gas prices amid the conflict between Russia and Ukraine and years of under-investment by the oil industry, warns one veteran energy strategist.
"My guess is that you are going to see $5 a gallon at any triple-digit [oil prices] ... as soon as you get to $100. And you might get to $6.50 or $7. Forget about $150 a gallon,[barrel] I don't know where we will be bv then," Energy Word founder Dan Dicker said on Yahoo Finance Live.
Dicker said oil prices could shoot higher to $150 a barrel, or in line to the "super spike" highs from 2007.
Oil prices have been red-hot lately as geopolitical tensions rise between Russia and the rest of the world.
----Russia produces 10 million barrels of oil a day, the equivalent of 10% of global demand. Any loss of that oil due to geopolitical issues could cause a tightly supplied market to become tighter, pushing prices for the hydrocarbon up.
The march up in oil has pushed gas prices further higher from already elevated levels.
More
https://news.yahoo.com/here-comes-7-gas-prices-warns-oil-strategist-in-dire-outlook-171816915.html
U.S. Freight Cost Blowout May Mean Little Inflation Relief Soon
By Vince Golle 16 February 2022, 12:00 GMTGetting goods to market in the U.S. is becoming costlier by the month and that suggests American shoppers will find little relief from high inflation any time soon.
The costs of transportation and warehousing goods for final demand climbed another 1.4% in January from a month earlier, the government’s latest Producer Price Index showed. Compared with a year ago, the Labor Department’s gauge was up a whopping 16%, the largest annual advance in data back to 2009.
Looking across the various modes, the data showed an 18.3% jump in shipping by truck and a 29% surge in ocean freight costs from January of last year, the largest 12-month increases on record.
The cost of shipping by rail was up by the most since 2011 and air cargo inflation was the highest in a decade, according to the government’s detailed report on producer prices. (Click here for the full story.)
Delivering Inflation
The soaring cost of shipping freight in the U.S. shows no sign of letting up
What’s more, the prices of support services and warehousing have also soared. Arrangement of freight and cargo services cost a record 83.6% more in January than a year ago, while storage services were up an unprecedented 17.4%.
Shipping costs have become a bigger headache for companies such as Under Armour and Hasbro. Consumers, meanwhile, are already experiencing the worst inflation in four decades.
“The biggest challenge we have on the gross margin side right now is the freight costs,” David Bergman, Under Armour’s chief financial officer, said on the company’s Feb. 11 earnings call, adding that seaborne freight rates are “probably going to take a little bit longer to subside.”
Hasbro has “price increases scheduled to take effect in the second quarter, to offset the anticipated continuation of supply chain challenges and resulting higher input and freight costs,” Deborah Thomas, the toy maker’s CFO, said on a Feb. 7 earnings call.
‘Continued Challenges’
“We do expect continued challenges with freight costs and input costs for the better part of this year,” Thomas added. “We do have the pricing coming into play, but it still remains a challenging environment we think in 2022.”
The most-recent market demand index from Truckstop.com and FTR Transportation Intelligence showed a 3.6% increase in the week ended Feb. 11, reflecting a rise in available loads and a drop in truck availability. Compared with last year, the gauge is up nearly 15%, while market rates are 21% higher.
“We believe freight transportation costs will remains robust this year,” said Lee Klaskow, senior industry analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence.
Persistently tight labor capacity in a trucking market that’s also contending with soaring diesel prices, also explains a 31% surge in January freight expenditures, Cass Information Systems data showed. A month earlier, the Cass index of outlays for freight shipments reached the highest level in data going back to 1990.
Inflation nears 30-year high as consumer price index climbs to 5.5 per cent
Wednesday 16 February 2022 7:47 am
UK inflation has remained at a near 30-year high after rising further in January as Britain remains in the grip of a tightening cost-of-living squeeze, according to official figures.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said Consumer Prices Index (CPI) inflation reached 5.5 per cent in January, up from 5.4 per cent in December and remaining at the highest level since March 1992, when it stood at 7.1 per cent.
The ONS said the cost of clothes and footwear pushed inflation higher last month, with the lowest January discounts in shops since 1990.
But inflation is soaring across the economy, driving CPI up to more than double the Bank of England’s 2 per cent target.
Rising energy prices and fuel costs have been the biggest factors in driving inflation up to near 30-year highs, though food and drink prices and many everyday essentials have also been on the rise.
The Bank hiked interest rates earlier this month to 0.5% in the first back-to-back increase since 2004, signalling more are on the way as it looks to rein in rampant inflation.
It is forecasting that inflation will soar further due to painful energy price rises before peaking at 7.25 per cent in April – the highest level since August 1991.
Grant Fitzner, chief economist at the Office for National Statistics (ONS), said: “Inflation ticked up again in January, reaching a near 30-year high.”
More
If it were not for government regulation of big corporations, executives at companies like Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, they could have cheated investors out of millions.
P.
J. O'Rourke.
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
Moderna CEO says it’s ‘reasonable’ to think the pandemic may be in its final stages
Published Wed, Feb 16 2022 2:28 AM EST
Moderna’s CEO Stephane Bancel said it’s “reasonable” to assume that we may be approaching the final stages of the pandemic.
“I think that is a reasonable scenario,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” when asked about views that the Covid-19 pandemic may now be in its final stages.
“There’s an 80% chance that as omicron evolves or SarsCov-2 virus evolves, we are going to see less and less virulent viruses,” he said Wednesday.
He also said there’s another “20% scenario where we see a next mutation, which is more virulent than omicron.”
“I think we got lucky as a world that omicron was not very virulent, but still are we see thousands of people dying every day around the planet because of omicron,” he said.
According to the World Health Organization, there were 15.47 million new cases reported in the last 7 days worldwide, and 73,162 deaths in the same period.
Some studies have shown that while the omicron variant appears more contagious, it generally doesn’t make people as sick as delta does.
Health officials have also highlighted that omicron’s threat may be fading.
More
Beset in mucus, coronavirus particles likely travel farther than once thought
February 15, 2022 by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Experiments dating to the 1930s proposed two paths for respiratory droplets like those from a sneeze or cough. Either they are big and heavy, plummeting to the ground without much chance of infecting another person. Or they are so small and light that they dry out almost instantly, remaining airborne but becoming harmless very quickly. The dryness renders "enveloped" viruses like coronaviruses unable to infect.
But a new study from scientists at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory suggests a third option—that small respiratory particles can remain moist and airborne for a longer time and greater distance than scientists have recognized.
"There are reports of people becoming infected with a coronavirus downwind of an infected person or in a room several minutes after an infected person has exited that room," said Leonard Pease, the corresponding author of the study. The findings were published in the February issue of the journal International Communications in Heat and Mass Transfer.
"The idea that enveloped virions may remain well hydrated and thus fully infective at substantial distances is consistent with real-world observations. Perhaps infectious respiratory droplets persist longer than we have realized," Pease added.
The PNNL team took a long look at the mucus that coats the respiratory droplets that people spew from their lungs. Scientists know that mucus allows many viruses to travel further than they otherwise would, enabling them to journey from one person to another.
Conventional wisdom has been that very small, aerosolized droplets of just a few microns, like those produced in the lungs, dry out in air almost instantly, becoming harmless. But the PNNL team found that mucus changes the equation.
The team found that the mucus shell that surrounds respiratory droplets likely reduces the evaporation rate, increasing the time that viral particles within the droplets are kept moist. Since enveloped viruses like SARS-CoV-2 have a fatty coating that must be kept moist for the virus to be infectious, the slower evaporation allows viral particles to be infectious longer.
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.
Researchers create molecule that can pave way for mini-transistors
Date: February 15, 2022
Source: Lund University
Summary: Researchers have succeeded in developing a simple hydrocarbon molecule with a logic gate function, similar to that in transistors, in a single molecule. The discovery could make electric components on a molecular scale possible in the future.
Researchers at Lund University in Sweden have succeeded in developing a simple hydrocarbon molecule with a logic gate function, similar to that in transistors, in a single molecule. The discovery could make electric components on a molecular scale possible in the future. The results are published in Nature Communications.
Manufacturing very small components is an important challenge in both research and development. One example is transistors -- the smaller they are, the faster and more energy efficient our computers become. But is there a limit to how small logic gates can become? And is it possible to create electric machines on a molecular scale? Yes, perhaps, is the answer from a chemistry research team at Lund University.
"We have developed a simple hydrocarbon molecule that changes its form, and at the same time goes from insulating to conductive, when exposed to electric potential. The successful formula was to design a so-called anti-aromatic ring in a molecule so that it becomes more robust and can both receive and relay electrons," says Daniel Strand, chemistry researcher at Lund University.
Many organic molecules consist of aromatic benzene rings, ie flat rings made up of six carbon atoms. A simple example is graphene. However, such molecules do not change properties or shape if subjected to electric potential. Therefore, the research group chose to look at hydrocarbons made up of rings with eight carbon atoms. These are anti-aromatic and bent into a tub-shape. If two electrons are injected into such a molecule, it flattens and goes from insulating to conducting -- a function similar to that of a transistor switching from 0 to 1.
"A unique aspect of the molecules is that they are so simple. They only consist only of carbon and hydrogen atoms which makes them easier to produce synthetically," says Daniel Strand.
The discovery means researchers can now think about how to develop both electrical switches and new mechanical systems at the single-molecule level using anti-aromatic hydrocarbons.
"Molecules that change form in response to electric potential lead to exciting possibilities. One can imagine energy-efficient computer architectures and in the future perhaps electric machines on a molecular scale," concludes Daniel Strand.
Our earliest evidence of government, in the ruins of Babylon and Egypt, shows nothing but ziggurats and pyramids of wasted taxpayer money, the TARP funds and shovel-ready stimulus programs of their day.
P. J. O'Rourke.
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