Baltic Dry Index. 2035 +04 Brent Crude 104.36
Spot Gold 1969
Coronavirus Cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,100
Coronavirus Cases 13/04/22 World 501,166,658
Deaths 6,209,687
"The secret of politics? Make a good treaty with Russia."
Count Otto Von Bismarck.
In the stock casinos, spin, massive spin. US inflation has peaked!
Well, if they say so it must be true I suppose, just like “Russia was prepared to use chemical weapons in Ukraine, that China would be providing military equipment to Russia, that Russian President Putin was being fed misinformation by his advisors,” or that this bout of inflation is only transitory.
Call me sceptical. Besides, the real cost of our new unnecessary European war is only just starting to arrive.
Below, the latest updates with no need for additional comment from me.
Asia-Pacific stocks mixed; New Zealand announces biggest rate hike in more than 20 years
SINGAPORE — Shares in Asia-Pacific were mixed in Wednesday trade as investors watched for market reaction to the release of a slightly hotter-than-expected U.S. inflation report. New Zealand also hiked its rate by 50 basis points, its biggest increase in more than 20 years.
Mainland Chinese stocks were mixed ahead of the release of dollar-denominated China trade data for March, as concerns around the mainland’s Covid situation continue to weigh on investor sentiment.
The Shanghai composite slipped 0.44% while the Shenzhen component dipped 0.841%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index recovered from earlier losses, rising 0.16% by the afternoon.
The Nikkei 225 in Japan climbed 1.76% while the Topix index advanced 1.11%.
South Korea’s Kospi rose 1.47% while the S&P/ASX 200 in Australia edged 0.35% higher.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific stocks outside Japan gained 0.84%.
RBNZ rate hike
The Reserve Bank of New Zealand on Wednesday announced its decision to raise the official cash rate by 50 basis points to 1.5%. The move represented the RBNZ’s fourth consecutive hike and its largest rate increase in more than 20 years, according to data from Factset.
----U.S. consumer prices rose 8.5% in March as compared with a year ago, the fastest annual gain since December 1981, according to official data released Tuesday. The consumer price index print was above the Dow Jones estimate for 8.4%.
The core consumer price index which excludes food and energy, however, showed signs it may be ebbing. It rose 0.3% for the month, lower than the 0.5% estimate.
The inflation report released Tuesday “validates expectations” for a 50 basis points rate hike by the U.S. Federal Reserve in May, Silvia Dall’Angelo, senior economist at Federated Hermes, wrote in a note.
----“US CPI inflation might have peaked this month, assuming there is no further escalation of the conflict in Ukraine and oil prices evolve in line with the future curve going forward. However, there are still considerable external and domestic price pressures in the pipeline,” Dall’Angelo said.
Shares on Wall Street slipped overnight following the U.S. inflation report release. The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 87.72 points, or 0.26%, to 34,220.36. The S&P 500 dipped 0.34% to 4,397.45 while the Nasdaq Composite declined 0.3% to 13,371.57.
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A Russia-Germany ‘trade rupture’ could trigger a financial shock, says S&P chief economist
A financial shock could be on the cards if there’s a “trade rupture” between Russia and Germany, warned S&P Global’s chief economist on Tuesday.
“Looking at a downside scenario … there’s kind of several different ways to play that but we think the one that would really move the macro needle is some sort of trade rupture between Russia and Europe,” Paul Gruenwald told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia.”
“This is not just cutting off the gas — whether Germany stops buying or Russia cuts it off,” he added.
Following Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, several world powers including the U.S., Japan and Canada have hit Moscow with sanctions. The European Union is considering whether to ban oil imports from Russia, and has pledged to eventually cut its reliance on Russian gas by two-thirds.
----Gruenwald added: “We’ve got the energy complex, we’ve got commodity prices, we’ve got industrial inputs that Europe’s importing, such as nickel and titanium and other things like that.”
Research and consultancy firm Wood Mackenzie also warned that the global economy could undergo “more permanent changes” with global trade possibly altered by the crisis.
“If the Covid-19 pandemic highlighted a need to shorten supply chains, the war in Ukraine underscores the importance to have reliable trading partners,” research director Peter Martin wrote in a Tuesday note.
“These forces could lead to a lasting realignment of global trade. The global economy becomes more regionalised — shorter supply chains with ‘reliable’ partners.”
Trade between Germany and Russia
A trade rupture between Germany and Russia could put a dent in German manufacturing – one of three global manufacturing centers besides the U.S. and China, Gruenwald said.
“That would feed through to ... lower GDP, lower employment, lower confidence — and then we would get a kind of a macro financial shock out of that. So that’s the sort of scenario we’re worried about that could move the needle,” he warned.
Trade between Germany and Russia jumped significantly in 2021 compared to the year before, with the value of goods surging 34.1% to 59.8 billion euros ($65 billion), according to Germany’s Federal Statistical Office.
More
WTO Says Global Trade to Slow as War Boosts Costs, Supply Snarls
By Brendan Murray 12 April 2022, 12:16 BSTGlobal trade growth posted a massive rebound of nearly 10% last year from a 5% decline in 2020, providing a surprising tailwind for the world economy through most of the pandemic.
Thanks to Russia’s war in Ukraine, this year looks more like a return to pre-Covid trend of around 3% growth.
That’s among the takeaways from a revised outlook released Tuesday from the World Trade Organization. (Click here for the full story from Bloomberg’s Bryce Baschuk in Geneva.)
The Geneva-based trade body lowered its projection for growth in global merchandise trade this year to 3%, down from its previous projection of 4.7%. The WTO also said Tuesday it expects global trade growth of 3.4% in 2023.
The WTO cited two of the main reasons why:
- “Despite their small shares in world trade and output, Russia and Ukraine are key suppliers of essential goods including food, energy, and fertilizers, supplies of which are now threatened by the war.”
- “Lockdowns in China to prevent the spread of COVID-19 are again disrupting seaborne trade at a time when supply chain pressures appeared to be easing. This could lead to renewed shortages of manufacturing inputs and higher inflation.”
But there’s wider potential damage that the WTO expressed concern about — geopolitical strains that threaten to undo a global economy tied together by commerce.
“History teaches us that dividing the world economy into rival blocs and turning our backs on the poorest countries leads neither to prosperity nor to peace,” WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said. “The WTO can play a pivotal role by providing a forum where countries can discuss their differences without resorting to force, and it deserves to be supported in that mission.”
Finally, more terrible news from the war that Washington’s, London’s and NATO’s failure to back Macron’s diplomatic solution attempt, caused.
Why? For what? Who gained/gains? Did some actually want this war?
CIA Admits Feeding Americans False Info About Ukraine
Ron Paul Posted on April 12, 2022
---- Last week an extraordinary article appeared in, of all places, NBC News, reporting that the US intelligence community is knowingly feeding information it does not believe accurate to the US mainstream media for the American audience to consume.
In other words, the article reports that the US “deep state” admits to being actively engaged in lying to the American people in the hopes that it can manipulate public opinion
According to the NBC News article, “multiple US officials acknowledged that the US has used information as a weapon even when confidence in the accuracy of the information wasn’t high. Sometimes it has used low-confidence intelligence for deterrent effect…”
Readers will recall the shocking headlines that Russia was prepared to use chemical weapons in Ukraine, that China would be providing military equipment to Russia, that Russian President Putin was being fed misinformation by his advisors, and more.
All of these were churned out by the CIA to be repeated in the American media even though they were known to be false. It was all about, as one intelligence officer said in the article, “trying to get inside Putin’s head.”
That may have been the goal, but what the CIA actually did was get inside America’s head with false information meant to shape public perception of the conflict. They lied to propagandize us in favor of the Biden Administration’s narrative.
More
World Bank Warns of Bleak Economic Outlook for Ukraine, Region
April 10, 2022 10:24 PM
The World Bank issued dire forecasts for Ukraine as Russia's invasion impacts both the country and its neighbors, warning in a report released Sunday of an even bleaker economic outlook if the conflict drags on.
Ukraine's economy will collapse by 45.1% this year, the bank predicted, far worse than the 10% to 35% downturn the International Monetary Fund projected last month.
Russia will see an 11.2% decline in GDP, and the World Bank said the entire region is suffering economic consequences from the war, which began in late February and has caused more than 4 million Ukrainians to flee to Poland, Romania and Moldova.
The conflict also has caused prices of grains and energy to soar.
"The results of our analysis are very sobering. Our forecasts show that the Russian invasion in Ukraine has reversed the region's recovery from the pandemic," said Anna Bjerde, World Bank vice president for Europe and Central Asia.
"This is the second major shock to hit the regional economy in two years and comes at a very precarious time for the region, as many economies were still struggling to recover from the pandemic," she told reporters.
----Ukraine faces the starkest outlook, with its economy under "severe strain" from shrunken government revenues, businesses that have closed or are only partially operational and trade in goods that is severely disrupted.
Grain exports and other economic activity have "become impossible in large swaths of the country due to heavy damage to infrastructure," Bjerde said.
The bank's forecasts assumed the war would continue for a few more months but cautioned that they "are subject to significant uncertainty."
In a more pessimistic scenario, which reflects an escalation of the conflict, there would be a larger negative impact on the euro area, increased Western sanctions and a financial shock due to eroding confidence.
The region's economy would contract by nearly 9% -- worse than the 2008 global financial crisis -- with a 20% decline for Russia and a 75% collapse for Ukraine, the report said.
Another cause for concern is a projected increase in poverty in Ukraine.
The proportion of the population living on $5.50 a day is expected to rise to 19.8% this year from just 1.8% in 2021, according to the World Bank.
Even if the region avoids the worst-case scenario, Eastern Europe alone is expected to see its GDP plummet by 30.7% rather than grow by 1.4%, as projected before the invasion.
More
https://www.voanews.com/a/world-bank-warns-of-bleak-economic-outlook-for-ukraine-region-/6523675.html
Russian war worsens fertilizer crunch, risking food supplies
KIAMBU COUNTY, Kenya (AP) — Monica Kariuki is about ready to give up on farming. What is driving her off her 10 acres of land outside Nairobi isn’t bad weather, pests or blight — the traditional agricultural curses — but fertilizer: It costs too much.
Despite thousands of miles separating her from the battlefields of Ukraine, Kariuki and her cabbage, corn and spinach farm are indirect victims of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion. The war has pushed up the price of natural gas, a key ingredient in fertilizer, and has led to severe sanctions against Russia, a major exporter of fertilizer.
Kariuki used to spend 20,000 Kenyan shillings, or about $175, to fertilize her entire farm. Now, she would need to spend five times as much. Continuing to work the land, she said, would yield nothing but losses.
“I cannot continue with the farming business. I am quitting farming to try something else,” she said.
Higher fertilizer prices are making the world’s food supply more expensive and less abundant, as farmers skimp on nutrients for their crops and get lower yields. While the ripples will be felt by grocery shoppers in wealthy countries, the squeeze on food supplies will land hardest on families in poorer countries. It could hardly come at a worse time: The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said last week that its world food-price index in March reached the highest level since it started in 1990.
The fertilizer crunch threatens to further limit worldwide food supplies, already constrained by the disruption of crucial grain shipments from Ukraine and Russia. The loss of those affordable supplies of wheat, barley and other grains raises the prospect of food shortages and political instability in Middle Eastern, African and some Asian countries where millions rely on subsidized bread and cheap noodles.
The U.N. says Russia is the world’s No. 1 exporter of nitrogen fertilizer and No. 2 in phosphorus and potassium fertilizers. Its ally Belarus, also contending with Western sanctions, is another major fertilizer producer.
Many developing countries — including Mongolia, Honduras, Cameroon, Ghana, Senegal, Mexico and Guatemala — rely on Russia for at least a fifth of their imports.
The conflict also has driven up the already-exorbitant price of natural gas, used to make nitrogen fertilizer. The result: European energy prices so high that some fertilizer companies “have closed their businesses and stopped operating their plants,” said David Laborde, a researcher at the International Food Policy Research Institute.
More
One Of Europe's Biggest Steel Works Damaged in Ukraine's Mariupol
March 20, 2022 1:56 AM
KYIV, UKRAINE — One of Europe's biggest iron and steel works, Azovstal, has been badly damaged as Russian forces lay siege to the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, officials said Sunday.
"One of the biggest metallurgic plants in #Europe destroyed. The economic losses for #Ukraine are huge. The environment is devastated," tweeted Ukrainian lawmaker Lesia Vasylenko.
Vasylenko posted a video of explosions on an industrial site, with thick columns of grey and black smoke rising from the buildings.
One of her colleagues, Serhiy Taruta, wrote on Facebook that Russian forces "had practically destroyed the factory."
"We will return to the city, rebuild the enterprise and revive it," Azovstal's director general, Enver Tskitishvili, wrote on messaging app Telegram, without specifying the extent of the damage.
He said that when the invasion began on Feb. 24, the factory had taken measures to reduce the environmental damage in the event of being hit.
"Coke oven batteries no longer pose a danger to the lives of residents," he wrote. "We have also stopped the blast furnaces correctly."
Azovstal is part of the Metinvest group, which is controlled by Ukraine's richest man, Rinat Akhmetov.
Considered pro-Moscow before the war began, Akhmetov has since accused Russian troops of committing "crimes against humanity against Ukrainians."
"Casualty reports on either side are never accurate, seldom truthful, and in most cases deliberately falsified."
Carl von Clausewitz.
Global Inflation/Stagflation Watch.
Given our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians, inflation now needs an entire section of its own.
Japan's wholesale inflation stays near record on Ukraine war, weak yen
April 12, 2022 3:16 AM GMT+1
TOKYO, April 12 (Reuters) - Japan's wholesale inflation remained near record-high levels in March as the Ukraine crisis and a weak yen pushed up fuel and raw material costs, data showed on Tuesday, adding strains to the resource-poor economy heavily reliant on imports.
While rising wholesale prices will help accelerate consumer inflation toward the central bank's elusive 2% target, it could hurt an economy still reeling from the coronavirus pandemic, analysts say.
The corporate goods price index (CGPI), which measures the price companies charge each other for their goods and services, rose 9.5% in March from a year earlier, data showed.
That followed a revised 9.7% spike in February, which was the fastest pace on record, and exceeded a median market forecast for a 9.3% gain. The March index, at 112.0, was the highest level since December 1982, the Bank of Japan (BOJ) said.
"With raw material costs rising so much, companies won't be able to make money unless they raise prices. The days of discount war are over," said Takeshi Minami, chief economist at Norinchukin Research Institute.
"Core consumer inflation may accelerate to around 2.5% later this year and stay above 2% for longer than initially expected, weighing on consumption and the economy," he said.
The yen-based import price index jumped 33.4% in March from a year earlier, the data showed, a sign the yen's recent declines are inflating the cost of imports for Japanese firms.
Japanese companies have been slow in passing on rising costs to households as soft wage growth weighed on consumption, keeping consumer inflation well below the BOJ's 2% target.
But analysts expect core consumer inflation to accelerate around 2% from April due to surging fuel costs and the dissipating effect of past cellphone fee cuts.
More
Australia business conditions surge in March, inflation runs hot
April 12, 2022 2:53 AM GMT+1
SYDNEY, April 12 (Reuters) - A measure of Australian business conditions picked up sharply in March as firms saw strong sales and labour conditions, while surging costs pushed retail prices higher in a worrying sign for inflation.
Tuesday's survey from National Australia Bank (NAB) (NAB.AX) showed its index of business conditions doubled to +18 in March, while confidence added 3 points to +16.
The upbeat result will likely be welcomed by Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who is in the middle of a tough election campaign. read more
The survey's measure of sales jumped 13 points to +24, while profitability rose 8 points to +13. The employment index added 4 points to +12, suggesting the jobless rate will soon drop under 4% for the first time since the early 1970s.
"The improvement was largely driven by the retail sector, which saw conditions rise 23 points, as well as recreation & personal services and finance, business & property," said NAB chief economist Alan Oster.
---- Inflation remained a headache with purchase costs and labour costs rising at the fastest pace in the history of the survey, which in turn pushed up retail prices.
"The continued escalation in price growth over recent months suggests a strong Q1 CPI reading is likely when released later in the month," said Oster.
Analysts have been warning the March quarter consumer price index would likely surprise on the high side and put pressure on the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) to start raising interest rates as early as June.
More
Ships Entering the Black Sea Are Becoming Almost Uninsurable
April 8, 2022, 3:03 PM
- Insurers insisting on 10% of hull value to cover vessels
- Cost has surpassed that of hiring ships to haul cargoes
The cost of insuring merchant ships sailing to ports in the Black Sea has spiraled out of control, becoming a huge potential impediment to the movement of Russian cargoes from the region.
Underwriters are charging as much as 10% of the value of a ship’s hull -- basically the vessel’s worth as an asset -- for what is called additional war-risk premium, according to four people involved in the market. Some are simply quoting to cover at prices that they know will be refused. There was almost zero cost prior to the war.
More. Subscription required.
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.
New omicron XE Covid variant first detected in the UK spreads to Japan as cases rise
Published Tue, Apr 12 2022 1:18 AM EDT
Japan has reported its first case of omicron XE — a new Covid-19 strain first detected in the U.K. — just as British cases of the subvariant rise.
The XE variant was found in a woman in her 30s who arrived at Narita International Airport from the U.S. on March 26. The woman, whose nationality was not immediately disclosed, was asymptomatic, Japan’s health ministry said Monday.
It comes as cases of the new strain have almost doubled in Britain, according to the latest statistics from the U.K. Health Security Agency.
As of April 5, 1,125 cases of XE had been identified in the U.K., up from 637 on March 25. The earliest confirmed case has a specimen date of Jan. 19 of this year, suggesting it could have been in circulation in the population for several months.
XE has since been detected in Thailand, India and Israel. It is suspected that the latter Israeli cases may have developed independently. The U.S. has not yet reported any XE cases.
What is omicron XE?
XE is what’s known as a “recombinant,” a type of variant that can occur when an individual becomes infected with two or more variants at the same time, resulting in a mixing of their genetic material within a patient’s body.
In the case of XE, it contains a mix of the previously highly infectious omicron BA.1 strain, which emerged in late 2021, and the newer “stealth” BA.2 variant, currently the U.K.’s dominant variant.
Such recombinants are not uncommon, having occurred several times during the course of the coronavirus pandemic. However, health experts say it is too soon to draw conclusions on the new subvariant’s severity or ability to evade vaccines.
More
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/12/new-omicron-xe-variant-detected-in-japan-as-uk-cases-rise-.html
What do we know about “stealth omicron” so far?
What do we know about “stealth omicron” so far?
It’s an extra-contagious version of the omicron variant, but it doesn’t seem to cause more severe disease.
Since it was first identified in November, BA.2 has been spreading around the globe, driving new surges in parts of Asia and Europe. It’s now the dominant coronavirus version in the U.S. and more than five dozen other countries.
It was given the “stealth” nickname because it looks like the earlier delta variant on certain PCR tests, says Kristen Coleman at the University of Maryland School of Public Health. The original omicron, by contrast, is easy to differentiate from delta because of a genetic quirk.
In rare cases, early research indicates BA.2 can infect people even if they’ve already had an omicron infection. COVID-19 vaccines appear just as effective against both kinds of omicron, offering strong protection against severe illness and death.
Health officials also are tracking other variants including XE — a combination of BA.2 and BA.1, the original omicron — that was first identified in January in the United Kingdom. The World Health Organization is keeping tabs on XE but has not yet deemed it a variant of concern or interest.
https://apnews.com/article/covid-science-health-public-ba500eee4616f55e5f3174ee81b0a5c5
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, among other things, I’ve added this section. Updates as they get reported.
Researchers engineer electrically tunable graphene devices to study rare physics
The breakthrough could lead to the development of 'beyond-5G' wireless technology for high-speed communication networks
Date: April 7, 2022
Source: University of Manchester
Summary: Scientists have developed a tunable graphene-based platform that allows for fine control over the interaction between light and matter in the terahertz (THz) spectrum to reveal rare phenomena known as exceptional points. The work could advance optoelectronic technologies to better generate, control and sense light and potentially communications, according to the researchers. They demonstrated a way to control THz waves, which exist at frequencies between those of microwaves and infrared waves. The feat could contribute to the development of 'beyond-5G' wireless technology for high-speed communication networks.
An international team, co-led by researchers at The University of Manchester's National Graphene Institute (NGI) in the UK and the Penn State College of Engineering in the US, has developed a tunable graphene-based platform that allows for fine control over the interaction between light and matter in the terahertz (THz) spectrum to reveal rare phenomena known as exceptional points. The team published their results today (8 April) in Science.
The work could advance optoelectronic technologies to better generate, control and sense light and potentially communications, according to the researchers. They demonstrated a way to control THz waves, which exist at frequencies between those of microwaves and infrared waves. The feat could contribute to the development of 'beyond-5G' wireless technology for high-speed communication networks.
Weak and strong interactions
Light and matter can couple, interacting at different levels: weakly, where they might be correlated but do not change each other's constituents; or strongly, where their interactions can fundamentally change the system. The ability to control how the coupling shifts from weak to strong and back again has been a major challenge to advancing optoelectronic devices -- a challenge researchers have now solved.
"We have demonstrated a new class of optoelectronic devices using concepts of topology -- a branch of mathematics studying properties of geometric objects," said co-corresponding author Coskun Kocabas, professor of 2D device materials at The University of Manchester. "Using exceptional point singularities, we show that topological concepts can be used to engineer optoelectronic devices that enable new ways to manipulate terahertz light."
Kocabas is also affiliated with the Henry Royce Institute for Advanced Materials, headquartered in Manchester.
Exceptional points are spectral singularities -- points at which any two spectral values in an open system coalesce. They are, unsurprisingly, exceptionally sensitive and respond to even the smallest changes to the system, revealing curious yet desirable characteristics, according to co-corresponding author ?ahin K. Özdemir, associate professor of engineering science and mechanics at Penn State.
"At an exceptional point, the energy landscape of the system is considerably modified, resulting in reduced dimensionality and skewed topology," said Özdemir, who is also affiliated with the Materials Research Institute, Penn State. "This, in turn, enhances the system's response to perturbations, modifies the local density of states leading to the enhancement of spontaneous emission rates and leads to a plethora of phenomena. Control of exceptional points, and the physical processes that occur at them, could lead to applications for better sensors, imaging, lasers and much more."
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"All treaties between great states cease to be binding when they come in conflict with the struggle for existence."
Count Otto Von Bismarck.
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