Baltic Dry Index. 1711 +211 Brent Crude 91.57
Spot Gold 1834
Coronavirus Cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,100
Coronavirus Cases 10/02/22 World 403,701,606
Deaths 5,796,205
Does history repeat?
Another day in the casinos and just another day that was like yesterday, which will be like tomorrow. But will it?
With each passing day we get closer to interest rate hikes and the ending of bond purchases.
And talking of endings, we get closer to the end of the winter Olympics and with it closer to the start of the next European war?
Below, how does February 2022 compare to July 1914? Inflation wise 2022 wins by a country mile.
Asia-Pacific stocks mixed as investors await U.S. inflation data; RBI holds steady on interest rates
SINGAPORE — Shares in Asia-Pacific were mixed in Thursday trade as investors await the release of U.S. consumer inflation data.
Mainland Chinese stocks were lower by the afternoon, with the Shanghai composite down 0.1% while the Shenzhen component dipped 0.787%.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index fell 0.44%. Hong Kong-listed shares of China Evergrande Group soared about 3%. The embattled developer aims to deliver 600,000 apartments in 2022, but was not looking to a fire sale of its assets to clear its debts, Reuters reported Wednesday.
----Elsewhere, the Nikkei 225 in Japan gained 0.36% while the Topix index rose 0.41%. South Korea’s Kospi advanced 0.32%.
In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 climbed 0.28%.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific stocks outside Japan gained 0.21%.
Looking ahead, the U.S. consumer price index report is set to be released Thursday stateside.
Overnight stateside, the Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 305.28 points to 35,768.06 while the S&P 500 gained 1.45% to 4,587.18. The Nasdaq Composite outperformed, surging 2.08% to 14,490.37.
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Surging beef prices hard to stomach for US shoppers
Issued on:
Washington (AFP) – Her shopping cart is overflowing with food, but there is no trace of steak.
"Too expensive," said Lisa, a 48-year-old mother, as she left a Giant supermarket in Washington.
In the United States, land of barbecues and steakhouses, beef is becoming a luxury.
Overall consumer prices rose by seven percent over the course of 2021, an inflation rate not seen since 1982, and the data for January, due out Thursday, is expected to show the yearly increase continued.
American shoppers saw prices for meats, poultry, fish and eggs jump 12.5 percent last year, while beef has soared by as much as 23 percent, depending on the cut.
---- Prices for a quality cut of beef can cost up to $24.99 a pound (21.85 euros for 453 grams) while a butcher shop in the swanky Georgetown neighborhood charges $13 more for the same steak.
Jayson Lusk, head of the department of agricultural economics at Purdue University in Indiana cited "a variety of factors that are combining to push food prices higher."
Consumption has been boosted by high savings rates -- swelled by government aid -- for Americans largely stuck at home during the pandemic.
And "foreign buyers of US meat, particularly China, have exhibited strong demand alongside strong domestic consumer demand," Lusk said.
At the same time, wages in the meatpacking industry have increased by almost 20 percent since the start of the pandemic amid a nationwide worker shortage that also has impacted manufacturing and transportation, he said.
Tyson Foods, the largest meat processor in the United States, this week justified its price increases by saying it had to offset rising costs for labor to satisfy demand that continues to outstrip its capacity.
Over the last three months of 2021, Tyson raised beef prices by an average of nearly 33 percent compared to the same period of 2020, while the company's profits far exceeded expectations.
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https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220210-surging-beef-prices-hard-to-stomach-for-us-shoppers
In other news, the 2022 “peasant’s revolt,” is starting to bite. Buy now for Christmas and beyond,
Ford, Toyota halt some output as U.S., Canada warn on trucker protests
February 10, 2022 3:40 AM GMT
WINDSOR/OTTAWA/WASHINGTON, Feb 9 (Reuters) - Ford and Toyota on Wednesday both said they were halting some production as anti-coronavirus mandate protesters blocked U.S-Canada border crossings that have prompted warnings from Washington and Ottawa of economic damage.
Many pandemic-weary Western countries will soon mark two years of restrictions as copycat protests spread to Australia, New Zealand and France now the highly infectious Omicron variant begins to ease in some places.
Horn-blaring protests have being causing gridlock in the capital Ottawa since late January and from Monday night, truckers shut inbound Canada traffic at the Ambassador Bridge, a supply route for Detroit's carmakers and agricultural products.
A number of carmakers have now been affected by the disruption near Detroit, the historic heart of the U.S. automotive sector, but there were other factors too such as severe weather and a shortage of semi-conductor chips.
Toyota (7203.T), the top U.S. seller, said it is not expected to produce vehicles at its Ontario sites for the rest of the week, output has been halted at a Ford (F.N) engine plant and Chrysler-maker Stellantis (STLA.MI) has also been disrupted.
Another border crossing, in Alberta province, has been closed in both directions since late on Tuesday.
More than two-thirds of the C$650 billion ($511 billion) in goods traded annually between Canada and the United States is transported by road.
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Next, a glimpse of the future of Starlink?
Why renewed solar storms threaten to destroy more satellites after Elon Musk’s Starlink
- Elon Musk’s SpaceX expects to lose nearly a full launch’s worth of the company’s Starlink internet satellites after a geomagnetic storm last week sent about 40 spacecraft to an early demise.
- And the sun is in a new solar cycle, with space weather experts expecting geomagnetic storms to worsen in the next few years, increasing the risk to valuable satellites.
- “A lot of these commercial ventures ... don’t understand how significantly space weather can affect satellites, especially these small satellites,” Aerospace Corp research scientist Tamitha Skov told CNBC.
The sun has been hibernating – but it’s waking up, and the next few years may see more satellites damaged or destroyed by solar storms than ever before.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX is feeling the pinch of that solar threat this week: The company expects to lose nearly a full launch’s worth of Starlink internet satellites after a geomagnetic storm disrupted the Earth’s atmosphere and sent about 40 of the spacecraft to an early, fiery demise.
But these storms are not uncommon, space weather experts explained to CNBC, and are only expected to worsen over the next few years. The sun started a new 11-year solar cycle in December 2019 and is now ramping to a “solar maximum” that is expected to hit in 2025.
“The reason why [solar storms have] not been a big deal is because, for the past three to four years, we’ve been at what we call ‘solar minimum,’” Aerospace Corp research scientist Tamitha Skov told CNBC.
Notably, the recent solar minimum coincides with a massive spike in the number of satellites in low Earth orbit. About 4,000 small satellites have been launched in the past four years, according to analysis by Bryce Tech – with the vast majority of those operating in low orbits.
“A lot of these commercial ventures ... don’t understand how significantly space weather can affect satellites, especially these small satellites,” Skov said.
----The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration measures geomagnetic storms on an increasing severity scale of G1 to G5. The storm which destroyed the Starlink satellites last week was expected to be a G1, which Erika Palmerio – a research scientist at Predictive Science – explained is both minor and “quite common,” happening as much as 1,700 times in the 11-year solar cycle.
“The G5 is the extreme storm and those ones are way, way more rare. We find about four of them per cycle,” Palmerio said.
Palmerio emphasized that a G5 storm is a threat to things such as electrical grids or spacecraft operations, but not people.
“There are no risks for humans on ground with these storms,” Palmerio said.
The side effect of the jump in atmospheric density is an increased drag on satellites in low Earth orbit, which can reduce a spacecraft’s orbit – or, in the case of the Starlink satellites, cause them to reenter and burn up.
Increased radiation of geomagnetic storms can also damage spacecraft, Palmerio said, burning instruments or detectors onboard.
Skov emphasized that Starlink satellites are “very small” but have large solar panels for power, essentially giving each spacecraft “massive” parachutes.
“It was kind of this recipe for disaster when it came to drag,” Skov said. “Some of us in the space weather community have been talking about Starlink satellites falling out of the sky for years – because we knew it was just a matter of time as soon as our sun started getting active again.”
Additionally, the Earth’s “spongy” atmosphere means there isn’t a specific minimum altitude in orbit that is safe, according to Skov. The Starlink satellites recently destroyed were at an altitude of 210 kilometers having just launched. That’s well below the 550 kilometer altitude where the rest of the network’s satellites are raised to, but Skov said “the potential for drag” still exists at the Starlink operational orbit.
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Finally, Russia gets ready for action if the USA won’t respect its “red lines.” What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. If the USA can invade Iraq and Syria, Grenada and Panama, among others, what’s a little excursion towards Kiev?
Still, no one in the casinos thinks a new European war is coming, let alone if it comes it will likely go tactical nuke in a heartbeat.
Putin's superyacht abruptly left Germany amid sanction warnings over Russia-Ukraine tensions, report says
February 9, 2022
A yacht named Graceful and said to belong to Russian President Vladimir Putin left port in Hamburg abruptly before finishing repairs, according to reports from German media.
It is unclear what prompted the move, but the $100 million yacht's relocation from German waters to Kaliningrad, part of Russian territory, came amid fears the West would impose sanctions if Russia invaded Ukraine.
While Moscow has continuously denied any plans to invade its neighbor, it has gathered over 100,000 troops at positions all around Ukraine and has even sent six assault ships into the Black Sea, moving more combat power toward the former Soviet territory.
The US and UK have warned of sanctions on Russian elites, and President Joe Biden has threatened to sanction Putin personally should Russia decide to attack Ukraine. He has also deployed troops to Eastern Europe to support NATO members and has put thousands of US troops on "heightened alert" as tensions rise.
Some have speculated that sanctions could target certain luxury assets. Graceful was spotted on a public maritime-traffic-tracking site sailing for Kaliningrad.
Graceful arrived last year in Hamburg, where the superyacht has been receiving several modifications, including two forward balconies and an extension to the swimming platform, Boat International reported.
It was built by the German shipbuilding company Blohm and Voss and officially launched in 2014. Designed by H2 Yacht Design, Graceful is classified as a tri-deck superyacht, according to Boat International.
The luxury yacht is 270 feet long and equipped with a gym, a saloon featuring a white Steinway piano, a spa, a library, and a 49-foot indoor pool that can be converted into a dance floor. The vessel is meant to accommodate up to 12 guests and 14 crew.
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Global Inflation/Stagflation Watch.
Given our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians, inflation now needs an entire section of its own.
Brits brace for ‘perfect storm’ of tax rises, spiraling inflation and an energy crisis
Published Wed, Feb 9 2022 1:18 AM EST
British households are facing the worst cost of living crisis for decades, as soaring inflation, declining real wages and an energy crisis eat into household incomes.
Inflation in the U.K. has soared to levels not seen for decades, with the latest reading hitting an annual 5.4% for December — the highest it’s been since March 1992.
Welfare payments that are linked to inflation will increase by 3.1% in April, the government announced this month, in line with the Consumer Prices Index reading from September 2021. State pensions will also be increased by 3.1%.
The latest official data showed that average earnings, when adjusted to account for inflation, fell by around 1% in November from a year earlier — the first decline in wages since the height of the coronavirus pandemic.
Meanwhile, taxes on earned income are set to increase by 1.25 percentage points from April to help fund health and social care costs. It’s a move which Prime Minister Boris Johnson is reported to be pushing ahead with, despite pressure to U-turn from lawmakers within his own party.
On Friday, data from the U.K.’s Office for National Statistics revealed that between Jan. 19 and Jan. 30, one in five British adults said they had found it difficult to pay their bills over the past month compared to a year earlier.
More than two-thirds of adults also said their cost of living had increased since November, with the most reported reason for this being the increased cost of food. The ONS interviewed almost 3,500 people.
In the four weeks to Jan. 23, grocery prices in the U.K. rose by 3.8% compared to the same period a year earlier, data from analytics firm Kantar shows. The company’s analysis looked at year-on-year price changes of more than 75,000 products.
“Taken over the course of a 12-month period, this rise in prices could add an extra £180 ($244) to the average household’s annual grocery bill,” Fraser McKevitt, head of retail and consumer insight at Kantar, said via email.
“We’re now likely to see shoppers striving to keep costs down by searching for cheaper products and promotions.”
----Sonali Punhani, U.K. economist at Credit Suisse, predicted that the Bank of England will tighten monetary policy further this year.
“We think the BoE could hike rates again by 25 basis points in March 2022, sooner than our previous forecast of May 2022,” he said in an emailed statement.
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‘If you’re a wage earner you’re going to fall behind’: Ex-Fed insider warns of ‘difficult few years’ due to inflation
Published: Feb. 8, 2022 at 12:28 p.m. ET
Former Federal Reserve insider Thomas Hoenig thinks the U.S. faces a painful reckoning because of high inflation.
Hoenig was a lone dissenter eight times in 2010, when the Fed voted to pursue a then-novel strategy, known as quantative easing, of buying trillions of dollars in Treasury and mortgage-backed bonds. The goal was to flood the U.S. with money and slash interest rates in an effort to juice up the economy.
The Fed doubled down on the strategy during the pandemic.
Then and now, Hoenig warned the policy could lead to more harm than good. Recently his warnings have gotten more attention. He was the subject of a large magazine profile in Politico and he was a guest on comedian-commentator Jon Stewart’s podcast.
Here are some of the excerpts from a Barron’s live interview with Hoenig, the former president of the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank.
“It’s going to be a very difficult couple of years for the U.S. economy and the Federal Reserve. If they raise rates to bring inflation down, then the hard part begins. Because when that happens and the economy begins to slow, they’ll worry about recession. There’ll be a likelihood they ease policy again even while inflation remains four to five percent.”
“People are if nothing else sensitive to high inflation. They know what it is doing to them. They know they are losing ground across the board. When you go to the grocery store, you see the inflation and that is what people are paying attention to.”
“I expect a modest in interest rates this year. Maybe a 1/2 point the first time [in March], depending on what inflation does from here. Then a quarter point for two or three times following that. Beyond that, I am not sure.”
“I think they will be very slow in shrinking their [$9 trillion] balance sheet. It would affect the housing market because they buy a lot of mortgage-backed securities … they don’t want to do it too quickly … we’re probably talking about a decade to get the balance sheet back to any kind of balance. The thing is, it won’t come without pain.”
“I was worried [quantative easing] would encourage a significant increase in asset values through the stock market, housing, real estate, all of which happened.”
“If you own an asset, you win just from the inflationary effect … Usually it’s the upper middle [income] and wealthy who are in that position … If you’re a wage earner you’re going to fall behind … you have to borrow more or commit more of your income to housing.”
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Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
COVID cases surpass 400 million as Omicron grips world
February 9, 2022 2:22 PM GMT
Feb 9 (Reuters) - Global COVID-19 cases surpassed 400 million on Wednesday, according to a Reuters tally, as the highly contagious Omicron variant dominates the outbreak, pushing health systems in several countries to the brink of capacity.
The Omicron variant, which is dominating the surge around the world, accounts for almost all new cases reported daily. While cases have begun to level off in many countries, more than 2 million cases are still being reported on average each day, according to a Reuters analysis. Deaths, which tend to lag cases, have increased by 70% in the last five weeks based on the seven-day average.
While preliminary evidence from several countries have shown that Omicron is milder than previous variants, a large volume of cases can potentially overburden healthcare systems globally.
It took over a month for COVID cases to reach 400 million from 300 million, compared to five months for the cases to reach 300 million from 200 million, according to a Reuters tally. The pandemic has killed over 6 million people worldwide.
The top five countries reporting the most cases on a seven-day average - United States, France, Germany, Russia, and Brazil – account for roughly 37% of all new cases reported worldwide, according to Reuters analysis.
The United States leads the world in the most cases reported each day, with a million new cases reported in the country every three days. Cases and hospitalizations in the country are slowing down from its peak in January this year, according to a Reuters analysis. On Friday, the country surpassed 900,000 deaths related to COVID.
In France, the seven-day average of new infections has held at over 210,000 per day, adding about a million new cases every five days. The cumulative total for confirmed COVID cases in France since the start of the pandemic passed 20 millionlast Thursday.
About half of all new infections reported worldwide were from countries in Europe, with 21 countries still at the peak of their infection curve. The region has reported over 131 million cases and over 2 million deaths related to COVID since the pandemic began.
Despite Europe reporting a million new cases almost every day, some countries are gradually lifting restrictions as the outbreak eases locally. Spain has scrapped a requirement for people to wear masks outdoors, extending a wider rollback of restrictions as the contagion slowly recedes in the country. On Monday, Greece started allowing tourists with a European vaccination certificate to enter the country without having to show a negative test for COVID. read more
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Sweden ends COVID-19 testing as pandemic restrictions lifted
STOCKHOLM (AP) — Sweden has halted wide-scale testing for COVID-19 even among people showing symptoms of an infection, putting an end to the mobile city-square tent sites, drive-in swab centers and home-delivered tests that became ubiquitous during the pandemic and provided essential data for tracking its spread.
The move puts the Scandinavian nation at odds with most of Europe, but some experts say it could become the norm as costly testing yields fewer benefits with the easily transmissible but milder omicron variant and as governments begin to consider treating COVID-19 like they do other endemic illnesses.
“We have reached a point where the cost and relevance of the testing is no longer justifiable.” Swedish Public Health Agency chief Karin Tegmark Wisell told the national broadcast SVT this week.
“If we were to have extensive testing adapted to everyone who has COVID-19, that would mean half a billion kronor a week (about $55 million) and 2 billion a month ($220 million),” Tegmark Wisell added.
Starting Wednesday, only health care and elderly care workers and the most vulnerable will be entitled to free PCR testing if they are symptomatic, while the rest of the population will simply be asked to stay home if they show symptoms that could be COVID-19.
Antigen tests are readily available for purchase in supermarkets and pharmacies, but those results aren’t reported to health authorities. Private health care providers can also perform tests and offer certificates for international travel, but the cost won’t be reimbursed by the state or health insurance.
High vaccination rates in Sweden are creating optimism among health officials and a late 2020 study released Tuesday showing antibodies present in 85% of samples.
Dr. Bharat Pankhania, a senior clinical lecturer at the University of Exeter Medical School in Britain, said that with a substantial percentage of people vaccinated, “an informed, educated and knowledgeable population” can be trusted to isolate if they show symptoms without the need for “wholesale testing that is not going to be value for money.”
“Sweden is leading the way, and other nations will inevitably follow,” Pankhania said. “We don’t need extensive testing for the sake of testing, but we must look nevertheless in sensitive settings such as hospitals, nursing homes and other sensitive places where there are very vulnerable people.”
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WHO says new omicron BA.2 subvariant will rise globally, but scientists don’t know if it can reinfect people
Published Tue, Feb 8 2022 3:30 PM EST Updated Tue, Feb 8 2022 5:01 PM EST
The World Health Organization expects a more transmissible version of omicron to increase in circulation around the world, though it’s not yet clear if the subvariant can reinfect people who caught an earlier version of the omicron strain.
Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s Covid-19 technical lead, said Tuesday the global health agency is tracking four different versions of omicron. Van Kerkhove said the BA.2 subvariant, which is more contagious than the currently dominant BA.1 version, will likely become more common.
“BA.2 is more transmissible than BA.1 so we expect to see BA.2 increasing in detection around the world,” Van Kerkhove said during a question and answer session livestreamed on WHO’s social media platforms Tuesday.
The WHO is monitoring BA.2 to see if the subvariant causes an increase of new infections in countries that saw a rapid increase and then a sharp decline in omicron cases, Van Kerkhove said.
Van Kerkhove emphasized that there’s no indication of a difference in the severity of infections caused by either subvariant, though she noted that research is ongoing. Omicron generally doesn’t make people as sick as the alpha and delta variants, though it does spread faster.
Researchers in Denmark have found found that BA.2 is about 1.5 times more transmissible than BA.1 and it is more adept at infecting people who are vaccinated and even boosted. However, people who are fully vaccinated are less likely to spread it than the unvaccinated.
Van Kerkhove said the shots remain highly effective at preventing severe disease and death, though they don’t prevent all infections. She called on people to get vaccinated and wear masks indoors.
Dr. Abdi Mahamud, the WHO’s Covid incident manager, said it’s unclear whether BA.2 can reinfect people who previously had BA.1.
That could have a significant impact on how much the virus is able to spread. A study in the U.K. found that two-thirds of people who caught omicron said they had Covid before.
Most states in the U.S. have confirmed the presence of BA.2, though it’s circulating at a low level with 460 total cases confirmed so far, according to an international data base that tracks Covid variants.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/08/who-says-omicron-bapoint2-subvariant-will-rise-globally.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.
Columns designed from nanographenes
Date: February 7, 2022
Source: University of Würzburg
Summary: Several layers of nanographenes stacked on top of each other: such functional elements could one day be used in solar cells. Chemists have now paved the way for this.
Graphene is a carbon material that forms extremely thin layers. Because of its unusual properties, it is interesting for many technical applications. This also applies to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which can be regarded as cut-outs of graphene. They are considered promising materials for organic photovoltaics or for field-effect transistors.
Large, single-layer PAH molecules -- often referred to as nanographenes -- are well researched. In contrast, little is known about PAHs arranged into columnar multilayer stacks.
Targeting multilayer nanographenes
Now a new approach to these materials is opening up: researchers from Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) in Bavaria, Germany, present a sophisticated method for designing precisely defined, multilayered nanographenes in the journal Nature Chemistry.
"In our lab, we have synthesised a custom-made nanographene that is equipped with two cavities on both sides of its planar core," says Professor Frank Würthner, head of the JMU Centre for Nanosystems Chemistry. The cavities are formed by the attachment of bulky substituents. As a result, the nanographene can hold a maximum of two smaller PAHs on its top and bottom sides.
In their experiments, the Würzburg chemists observed that the nanographene formed two- and three-layer PAH complexes in solution. In addition, the team was able to isolate pairs of these complexes as solids, i.e. as four- and six-layer PAHs, as well as other multilayer compounds.
---- Possible application in solar cells
"Our concept for organising multilayer nanographenes should be applicable to the design of functional organic materials," explains Professor Würthner. He says the strategy of using multilayer nanographenes for charge carrier generation in solar cells is promising.
This research was carried out at the Institute of Organic Chemistry and the Centre for Nanosystems Chemistry at JMU. The German Research Foundation (DFG) provided financial support for the work (funding code WU 317/20-2).
Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security but [also] at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth.
John Maynard Keynes.
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