Baltic Dry Index. 2128 -85 Brent Crude 102.1
Spot Gold 1921
Coronavirus Cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,100
Coronavirus Cases 07/04/22 World 495,413,360
Deaths 6,191,495
"From a strictly economic point of view, buying gold in a major inflation and holding it probably presents the least risk of capital loss of any investment or speculation."
Henry Hazlitt
Nothing much new happened yesterday, but a brutal reality set in in the stock casinos.
Inflation is going to get worse before it gets better, food price inflation probably far worse.
The war the failure of diplomacy caused, will likely go on far longer than the casinos anticipated since no one on planet Earth seems to know how to end it, only how to keep stoking it up to last longer.
The Fed, BOE and a few other central banks seem to have finally realized that the soaring inflation isn’t transitory and requires raising real interest rates to bring it under control.
The remains of the everything bubble in the stock casinos is about to burst.
The rest of 2022 is very likely to be more like 1929 than 2019 or perhaps 1939.
Japan stocks drop nearly 2%; Samsung estimates 50% jump in first-quarter profit
SINGAPORE — Japan stocks dropped nearly 2% and other Asia-Pacific markets fell on Thursday following two days of declines on Wall Street.
The Nikkei 225 in Japan fell 1.77%, while the Topix slid 1.72%. Shares of Fast Retailing dropped 2.89%.
Mainland Chinese stocks declined. The Shanghai composite was down 0.99%, while the Shenzhen component dropped 1.18%.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index slipped 1.31% and the Hang Seng tech index was 2.12% lower. Bilibili shares were down 4.27% and Alibaba’s Hong Kong shares fell 1.95%.
Vey-Sern Ling, a managing director at UBP, said Hong Kong-listed tech stocks are facing a “confluence of headwinds” given the geopolitical tensions with Russia, rising Fed rates and potential delisting of Chinese companies in the U.S.
----Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 was down 0.65%.
In Korea, the Kospi slipped 1.32% while the Kosdaq declined 1.7%.
Samsung Electronics reported its operating profit for the first quarter of 2022 likely jumped around 50% as compared to a year ago. The memory chip and smartphone maker posted an estimated 14.1 trillion won ($11.6 billion) profit, it said in its earnings guidance.
The company’s stock was down 0.73%.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan dropped 1.17%.
In central bank news, the Reserve Bank of India will continue its monetary policy meeting on Thursday.
Overnight in the U.S., major stock indexes fell for a second day as investors reacted to Fed guidance on tightening monetary policy.
Fed meeting minutes showed that officials are looking to shrink the balance sheet by $95 billion a month. Interest rates are also expected to rise more quickly.
“Arguably, the aggressive balance sheet run-off likely stole the show to deliver a much larger hawkish jolt to markets,” Vishnu Varathan, head of economics and strategy at Mizuho Bank, wrote in a note on Thursday.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 144.67 points, or 0.42%, to 34,496.51. The S&P 500 fell 0.97% to 4,481.15, and the Nasdaq Composite dropped another 2.22% to 13,888.82 after falling about 2.3% on Tuesday.
The 10-year Treasury yield rose to a three-year high above 2.65% on Wednesday and was last at 2.5846%.
On the economic front, U.S. weekly jobless claims data is set to be released Thursday morning in the U.S.
More
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/07/asia-markets-fed-minutes-currencies-and-oil.html
Dow falls 144 points as Federal Reserve officials maintain hawkish stance
April 6, 2022 / 5:06 PM
April 6 (UPI) -- U.S. markets fell for the second consecutive day on Wednesday as Federal Reserve officials continued to express a desire to tighten the central bank's monetary policy.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 144.67 points, or 0.42%, while the S&P 500 dropped 0.97% and the Nasdaq Composite closed down 2.22%.
The Fed on Wednesday shared minutes from its March meeting, in which officials "generally agreed" the central bank should shrink its balance sheet by $95 billion per month.
Markets gave up early gains Tuesday and hit session lows in the final hour of trading after Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainard said the Fed must "rapidly" shrink its balance sheet to battle rising inflation and once again hit session lows Wednesday after the Fed released its minutes.
"It was a warning to anyone who thinks that the Fed is going to be more dovish in their fight against inflation," Quincy Krosby, chief equity strategist at LPL Financial, according to CNBC. "Their message is, 'You're wrong.'"
Philadelphia Federal Reserve President Patrick Harker said Wednesday he iwas "acutely concerned" about rising inflation and said he expects "a series of deliberate, methodical hikes as the year continues and the data evolve."
San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly said Tuesday that the case for a 50 basis-point interest rate hike -- twice the Fed's typical per-meeting increase -- "has grown."
The 10-year treasury yield climbed above 2.65% to its highest level since May 2019 after ending Monday at 2.4%.
Tech stocks suffered amid the surge in yields with Tesla stock dropping 4.17%, Microsoft falling 3.66%, Amazon declining 3.23% and Apple sliding 1.85%.
Janet Yellen: Ukraine war will have 'enormous' global economic impact
April 6, 2022 / 4:08 PM
April 6 (UPI) -- U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned Wednesday that Russia's war on Ukraine and the sanctions against Russia might be a serious blow to the global economy.
"Russia's actions, including the atrocities committed against innocent Ukrainians in Bucha, are reprehensible, represent an unacceptable affront to the rules-based global order, and will have enormous economic repercussions in Ukraine and beyond." Yellen told a House of Representatives hearing on the global economic system.
n her testimony at that hearing Wednesday, Yellen said: "Treasury is committed to holding Russia accountable for its actions so it cannot benefit from the international financial system. President Biden has rallied over 30 countries, representing well over half the world's economy, to impose swift, severe sanctions and export controls on Russia."
Yellen said international financial institutions are stepping in to provide critical budget financing to help respond to the economic costs of Russia's war on Ukraine.
Since the beginning of the war, the International Monetary Fund has provided $1.4 billion in rapid financing for Ukraine. The World Bank has provided $490 million in rapid financing for Ukraine -- part of a $3 billion package of support planned over the coming months.
Yellen told the House Committee on Financial Services that global spillover from the Ukraine crisis is heightening financial vulnerabilities in many countries that are already facing economic issues as they recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Food supply is also being disrupted by Russia's Ukraine invasion, Yellen said.
"Russia and Ukraine account for nearly a third of the world's wheat exports. Russia's invasion disrupted the flow of food for millions of people around the world and caused prices to spike." Yellen testified.
In forever war news.
Russian border guards came under fire on Ukraine border, schools evacuated -officials
(Reuters) -A Russian regional official said on Wednesday that frontier guards in the Kursk region bordering Ukraine had come under fire, while schools in nearby Belgorod were evacuated after a bomb threat, according to the city's mayor.
Moscow, which sent thousands of troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24 in what it called a "special military operation", has accused Ukraine of attacking Russian targets across the border.
"Yesterday ... they tried to fire mortars at the position of our border guards in the Sudzhansky district," said Roman Starovoit, the governor of the Kursk region.
"Russian border guards returned fire ... There were no casualties or damage on our side."
Reuters could not immediately verify the report.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he did not yet have details of the incidents in the two Russian regions, but described the reports as "serious".
More
https://www.yahoo.com/news/russian-border-guards-came-under-064053006.html
Video appears to show Ukrainian soldiers executing Russian soldier captured in an ambush outside Kyiv, New York Times reports
Wed, April 6, 2022, 8:22 PM
· Video appears to show Ukrainian soldiers killing captured Russian troops, according to The New York Times.
· The video was taken about seven miles southwest of Bucha, where hundreds of civilians were killed during Russia's occupation of the city.
· The video was verified by The Times, however, the outlet decided not to publish it due to its graphic nature.
Video posted on Telegram Monday appears to show Ukrainian soldiers killing captured Russian troops in a village near Kyiv, according to a report from The New York Times.
The video was verified by The Times, however, the outlet decided not to publish it due to its graphic nature. Per The Times it shows a Ukrainian soldier shooting a Russian soldier three times while another man says "he's still alive. Film these marauders. Look, he's still alive. He's gasping."
More
https://www.yahoo.com/news/video-appears-show-ukrainian-soldiers-192219323.html
Floating mines in Black Sea endangering grain, oil trade, officials say
April 5, 2022 1:16 PM GMT+1
LONDON, April 5 (Reuters) - The risk of coming across floating mines in the major Black Sea shipping route is adding to perils for merchant ships sailing in the region, and governments must ensure safe passage to keep supply chains running, maritime officials say.
The Black Sea is key for shipping grain, oil and oil products. Its waters are shared by Bulgaria, Romania, Georgia and Turkey, as well as Ukraine and Russia, which have been at war since President Vladimir Putin invaded his southern neighbour on Feb. 24.
Ukraine and Russia have accused each other of laying mines in the Black Sea, and in recent days, Turkish and Romanian military diving teams have defused stray mines around their waters. read more
The International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) union and the Joint Negotiating Group of maritime employers said they were trying to find ways to ensure that seafarers and their vessels don't become "collateral damage in the continuing conflict in Ukraine".
"We strongly urge governments to do all in their power to mitigate the threat and secure the safe passage for vessels trading near these conflict areas," said David Heindel, chair of the ITF Seafarers’ Section.
----Two seafarers have been killed and five merchant vessels hit by projectiles - which sank one of them - off Ukraine's coast since the start of the conflict, shipping officials say.
"The information available points to a clear threat to shipping and seafarers from floating and drifting mines in areas of the Black Sea," said a spokesperson with UN shipping agency the International Maritime Organization.
NATO's Shipping Centre said in an updated advisory on April 4 that there were ongoing searches by national authorities for "mine-like objects" and that "the threat of additional drifting mines cannot be ruled out."
Last month, the insurance industry's Joint War Committee widened the high-risk area of waters around the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to include areas close to Romania and Georgia, which has contributed to underwriters raising premiums. read more
"If it transpires that there are significant numbers of live mines that exceed littoral state abilities to contain them, then JWC will move to reassess the listed areas," the Committee said in a separate note on March 31.
Finally, where there’s hope there’s spin. Well it might happen I suppose. Like I might win the lottery too. But just how likely is that?
Hope for Ukraine’s harvest as Russia retreats from ‘breadbasket of Europe’
Invaders’ apparent exit from the northern regions of Kyiv, Zhytomyr, Sumy and Chernihiv may have come just in time for farmers
5 April 2022 • 4:42pm
Russia’s retreat from parts of northern Ukraine will allow farmers to plant corn, soybeans and sunflower oil on time, boosting the outlook for the country’s harvest.
Ukraine – often referred to as the “breadbasket of Europe” – accounts for roughly 15 per cent of global corn exports, just under a tenth of wheat and almost half of the sunflower oil.
Those markets have been thrown into turmoil following Russia’s invasion, with analysts warning that disruption to planting schedules and supply chains will have major implications for global food security – especially in Africa and the Middle East.
But Russia’s apparent exit from the northern regions of Kyiv, Zhytomyr, Sumy and Chernihiv has offered a glimmer of hope.
In a normal year, these regions collectively account for 30 per cent of the land dedicated to growing corn in Ukraine, plus 24 per cent of soybean hectares and 13 per cent of sunflowers.
Farmers plant all three crops between April and early June.
“That’s not to say all those hectares will now automatically be planted,” said Mike Lee, an agronomist and director of Green Square Agro Consulting, which forecasts crop yields across the Black Sea region.
“But if Russia has pulled out of the north of Ukraine, that land will be available to be planted and fertilised – and potentially we will see a reasonable yield.”
Mr Lee added that, initially, forecasts suggested there would be a 30 to 40 per cent drop in food production in Ukraine owing to the war.
“I think when we analyse our figures again and plug in some of the latest information, it's possible we'll start to see an improvement on our initial forecast,” he told The Telegraph. “As of today, it’s a slightly better picture than we were looking at five weeks ago – with the caveat that could change rapidly.”
But there are other factors that could undermine production, including manpower, the availability of seeds, the supply of diesel needed to operate tractors, and daylight.
“In a normal year, farmers would work 24 hours a day, but no one wants to sit in a field with a tractor and lights on looking like a target,” said Mr Lee. “Farmers I know are not planting late into the night… that will restrict available hours to actually plant crops.”
It is also not clear how much fertiliser is in Ukraine. Typically between 60 to 70 per cent of fertiliser is bought by farmers ahead of the season but, amid rising global prices even before the war, this figure may have taken a knock.
More
The Texas drought is the worst in years. Are we on the brink of widespread disaster?
By Dalia Faheid Updated April 06, 2022 5:16 PM
Texas is in the worst drought conditions since 2011, when 95% of the state was in drought. Eleven years ago, parched conditions caused over $7 billion in crop and livestock losses, sparked wildfires, pushed power grids to the limit and reduced reservoirs to dangerously low levels, according to the University of Texas at Austin. As of March 29, 88% of Texas was in drought conditions, affecting an estimated 18.2 million Texans, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. About 42% of the state is seeing extreme or exceptional drought. Just three months ago, 67% of the state was in drought with 11% extreme or exceptional.
Rainfall in May and June, the wettest months of the year in Texas, will determine overall conditions. “That’s going to make all the difference as to whether we have a major drought this summer,” said Texas state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon. “You can easily get a wet May that would eliminate drought in the region, or this could be the beginning of a multi-year drought.”
The Panhandle, High Plains and southwestern Texas have been dry for years, experts say. Above-normal temperatures combined with below-normal precipitation and high winds have exacerbated drought conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Statewide, we’ve had seven consecutive months of below average rainfall, Nielsen-Gammon says. Normal rainfall from September through February is 13.09 inches; Texas has seen an average of only 7.29 inches. That makes it the eighth driest period on record in the state, according to data from the National Centers for Environmental Information.
More
https://www.star-telegram.com/news/state/texas/article260135445.html
“All the world is made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust.”
Graeme’s chance of winning the lottery, with apologies to J. M. Barrie.
Global Inflation/Stagflation Watch.
Given our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians, inflation now needs an entire section of its own.
Bank of England to launch 1980s style rate hike cycle as it scrambles to douse down rampant inflation
Wednesday 06 April 2022 10:32 am
The Bank of England will hike interest rates at the quickest pace since 1988 this year as it scrambles to douse down rampant inflation.
Threadneedle Street will lift borrowing costs four more times this year, taking the calendar year total number of hikes to six, according to forecasts by investment banking giant JP Morgan.
The Bank’s shift in policy stands in stark contrast to last year’s agenda when it kept rates at a record low 0.1 per cent for around a year and half despite inflation beginning to take off at the back end of 2021.
It kept rates at record lows to support the UK economy through the economic shock delivered by the Covid-19 crisis and restrictions on Brits’ daily lives.
Rates will settle at 1.75 per cent by the end of this year, the highest level they have been since December 2008.
Inflation in the UK is already running at a 30-year high of 6.2 per cent, stoked by a global energy crunch worsened by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Prices have soared on fears oil and gas flows could be restricted by the conflict.
Most economists, including the Office for Budget Responsibility, have warned the rate of price rises will hot up as the year rumbles on, potentially peaking at near nine per cent in October.
Living standards will erode at the steepest pace since 1956, caused by wages failing to keep pace with an average annual inflation rate of 7.4 per cent over the course of the entire year.
Threadneedle Street has been accused by former rate setters of contributing to the historic inflation peak by sitting on its hands during the second half of last year.
Higher interest rates tend to put downward pressure on inflation by curbing spending.
The monetary policy committee has already lifted rates at three meetings in a row, the first time it has done so since 1997.
China’s Port Bottlenecks Slow Ships, Delay Supply-Chain Recovery
By Ann Koh 6 April 2022, 12:00 BSTCongestion at ports in China and elsewhere around the world is gridlocking about 10% of the global container-ship fleet, according to shipping line Ocean Network Express.
Ships are “locked up waiting in congested areas” and are burning lots of fuel, Jeremy Nixon, the chief executive officer of ONE, said at the Marine Money conference in Singapore on Tuesday. “If we can release that bottleneck, we can get services back on schedule again.”
The world’s fleet consisted of 5,587 ships carrying 24.7 million TEUs of containers last year, data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture showed. That would mean more than 500 ships are being held up in queues at ports, according to Bloomberg calculations.
The world’s supply chains are still being hammered by labor shortages and logistics challenges as the pandemic enters its third year — with disruptions still varying country to country. Though congestion has eased somewhat on the U.S. West Coast after months of long delays, logjams have built up at ports like Houston and Charleston, South Carolina.
Meanwhile, lockdowns in Shanghai, Shenzhen and other Chinese cities have led to growing ship queues off China, threatening more delays in shipping goods and higher freight rates in coming months, analysts said. (Click here for a Bloomberg explainer on China’s Covid Zero policy.)
A near-record 12% of global container vessel capacity was “lost” in February because of delays, according to data from Sea-Intelligence. Looking ahead, the situation isn’t likely to improve significantly as factories in Shanghai prepare for the possibility of extended lockdowns as virus cases surge.
That’ll mean more difficulties for American and European companies that rely on Chinese suppliers. Sixty percent of respondents surveyed by AmCham China said that government-ordered shutdowns and the inability to get supplies has slowed production, while 86% of manufacturers said disruptions to trucking and shipping networks were impacting their supply chains.
“It’s almost like in a traffic jam,” said Christian Roeloffs, CEO of Container xChange. “The congestion situation on the transpacific will also not significantly improve because it’s almost like a start-stop situation. There are also labor union disputes in the U.S. waiting in the month of May, which historically always leads to slowdown at the West Coast ports.”
Below, why a “green energy” economy may not be possible, and if it is, it won’t be quick and it will be very inflationary, setting off a new long-term commodity Supercycle. Probably the largest seen so far.
The “New Energy Economy”: An Exercise in Magical Thinking
https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/sites/default/files/R-0319-MM.pdf
Mines, Minerals, and "Green" Energy: A Reality Check
https://www.manhattan-institute.org/mines-minerals-and-green-energy-reality-check
"An Environmental Disaster": An EV Battery Metals Crunch Is On The Horizon As The Industry Races To Recycle
by Tyler Durden Monday, Aug 02, 2021 - 08:40 PM
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
COVID-19 Vaccines Than Coincidence: VAERS Data Analysis
By April 3, 2022 Updated: April 5, 2022
Various health problems reported by people after receiving one of the COVID-19 vaccine shots are more likely to have been caused by the vaccines than to be coincidental, according to an analysis of data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).
VAERS has been flooded with more than 1 million reports of various health problems and more than 21,000 death reports since the introduction of the vaccines in late 2020. Some experts and public officials have downplayed the significance of the reports, noting that just because a health problem occurs after getting the vaccine doesn’t mean the problem was caused by it.
However, a deeper analysis of the data indicates that many of the adverse effects are more than just a coincidence, according to Jessica Rose, a computational biologist who’s been studying the data for at least nine months.
“The safety signals being thrown off in VAERS now are off the charts across the board,” Rose told The Epoch Times.
There are multiple ways to parse the data in order to flesh out whether the causal link between an adverse event and the vaccination is real or illusory. For example, multiple COVID-19 vaccines come in two doses. A random adverse event unrelated to the vaccine should be dose-agnostic. A stroke randomly coinciding with a vaccination shouldn’t be picky about which dose it was.
In the VAERS data, however, a number of the reported problems are dose-dependent. Myocarditis in teenagers is reported several times more often after the second vaccine dose than after the first dose. Following a vaccine booster shot, in contrast, the frequency is significantly lower than after the first dose, Rose found.
Other researchers and health authorities have already acknowledged that the shots are associated with an elevated risk of myocarditis, especially in teenage boys, although they usually also say the risk is low.
Yet dose-dependency shows up in the VAERS data for other problems as well, including fainting and dizziness, which are more common after the first dose.
Rose acknowledged that statistical analysis seldom provides definitive answers. For instance, there could be some unknown factor that leads to more reports of unrelated health events after the first or second vaccine dose. In her view, however, the data leans away from such a conclusion.
More
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.
Oxford spinoff demonstrates world-first hypersonic "projectile fusion"
Loz Blain April 06, 2022
Oxford spinoff First Light Fusion says its novel "projectile" approach offers "the fastest, simplest and cheapest route to commercial fusion power." The company is now celebrating a significant breakthrough with its first confirmed fusion reaction.
---- Most of the big tokamak and stellarator-based fusion projects in progress now intend to create monstrously high temperatures, higher than in the core of the Sun, in magnetically confined plasma, hoping to get those atoms moving fast enough to overcome the powerful repulsion between two nuclei.
But there are other approaches, including that of Australia's HB11, which takes a more targeted approach by using ultra-powerful lasers to accelerate hydrogen atoms into boron fuel pellets at tremendous speed, yielding positively-charged helium atoms, which can be directly harvested for electrical power.
First Light Fusion says it's got another approach altogether, that doesn't require expensive, powerful lasers or magnets to get the job done. Like the HB11 approach, First Light requires tremendous speed. Hypersonic speed, in fact, in the form of a projectile being fired from a railgun at a falling target, which is specifically designed to generate finely tuned, collapsing shockwaves that create momentary pressure levels nearly a billion times higher than atmospheric air pressure at sea level. Pressure levels high enough to cause small embedded deuterium fuel pellets to implode upon themselves at high enough speeds to overcome nuclear repulsion and start fusion reactions.
This technique, says First Light, is inspired by the pistol shrimp, and its famous underwater bubble-shooting weapon. These little fellas snap their claws together at incredible speed, creating a shockwave and squirting a jet of water forward at up to 60 mph (96 km/h). That's so fast that the water itself gets vaporized as it shears against the still water around it, creating tiny bubble cavities. The bubble cavities interact with the shockwave, and collapse in an infinitesimally short period of time – but for the briefest of moments, the vapor in those bubbles is heated to tens of thousands of degrees, and even emits a bright flash of light. Amazing stuff, you can hear Richard Hammond talking about it and see these shockwaves in ultra-slow motion in this BBC Earth Lab video clip.
First Light took this as a starting point and began designing ways to amplify this effect well beyond what the shrimp's claw can achieve, to a point where it can create fusion-friendly conditions. It has created and refined a series of small targets, some in cubic form with sides of about 1 cm (0.4 inches) that are designed to create a series of interacting shockwaves and bubble cavities when they're hit with coin-shaped projectiles at super-high velocities. These shockwaves intersect at planned moments to supercharge the pistol shrimp's cavitation effects, greatly multiplying the pressure around a small, precisely positioned fuel pellet in the middle.
The projectile is fired using an electromagnetic design similar to a railgun, at insane speeds around 6.5 km/sec (23,400 km/h, 14,540 mph), or just under 19 times the speed of sound. It's aimed directly at the target, which itself is dropping through the reaction chamber through the same entrance. When it hits, the impact pressure is around 100 gigapascals.
The target design uses interacting cavity collapses and pressure waves to amplify that pressure up to around one terapascal, and when the fuel pellet implodes just as massive pressure waves bear down on it from all sides, the final pressure can get as high as 100 terapascals, with the fuel accelerating to more than 70 km/sec (252,000 km/h, 157,000 mph), or Mach 204, as it implodes. You can see this in action below, with colors representing pressure levels and the small sphere in the middle representing the fuel pellet.
More
Henry Hazlitt.
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