Baltic Dry Index. 2331 Fri. Brent Crude 113.29
Spot Gold 1835 US 2 Year Yield 3.04 +0.03
Coronavirus Cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,100
Coronavirus Cases 27/06/22 World 549,024,362
Deaths 6,350,913
A society that chooses between capitalism and socialism does not choose between two social systems; it chooses between social cooperation and the disintegration of society.
Ludwig von Mises.
We are approaching the end of month and end of quarter and end of half year, time to dress up the stock casinos and all important stock indexes. There are money manager bonuses at stake.
Oily words will flow from the stock promoters and central banksters suggesting that the end of inflation is in sight, it isn’t, that the Powell Fed will shortly wimp out on interest rates, plus that the bottom is in for stocks or at least within sight.
At the G-7 meeting in Germany, more Magic Money Tree money for Ukraine, Africa, and anywhere else willing to join in the proxy war on Russia and increasingly likely soon to be proxy war on China.
There President Xi is headed to Hong Kong to join in the 25th anniversary celebrations of Hong Kong’s handover back to China.
Almost forgotten now, Covid-19 and the reality of stagflation moving on into recession in most of the G-7.
In much of the G-7, organised and unorganised Labour is asking why they can’t get more of this Magic Money Tree money that’s pouring out into Ukraine and elsewhere, after all, it’s only fiat Magic Tree Money after all, and there’s plenty more where that comes from! Just ask the UK’s railway unions.
A summer of discontent lies ahead for most of the G-7.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rises 3% as Asia-Pacific markets gain
SINGAPORE — Shares in the Asia-Pacific traded higher on Monday as investors assess inflation and recession fears.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index led gains in the region, rising 3%, while the Hang Seng Tech index popped 5.51%. Alibaba’s shares in the Chinese city rose 5.44% while Meituan was up around 5%.
Mainland Chinese markets also gained. The Shanghai Composite climbed 0.88%, and the Shenzhen Component rose 1.23%.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 gained 1.32%, while the Topix rose 1%. In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 advanced nearly 2%.
The Kospi in South Korea gained 1.94%, and the Kosdaq was 3% higher.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares rose 2%.
Russia defaulted on foreign-currency sovereign debt for the first time in more than 100 years, Bloomberg reported. The country’s central bank foreign reserves remain frozen.
At the G7 summit, U.S. President Joe Biden and other world leaders announced a $600 billion infrastructure program that aims to focus on key areas such as building health systems and information and communication technology networks.
Construction materials company James Hardie Industries, which is listed in Australia, saw its stock rise 2.86%. Boral’s shares gained 2.54%.
In company news, Trip.com is set to report its first-quarter financial results on Monday in the U.S. after the market close. The firm’s shares in Hong Kong were 6.58% higher ahead of the announcement.
Later this week, China and Japan will be reporting Purchasing Managers’ Index data, while Hong Kong will commemorate the 25th anniversary of its handover. China’s President Xi Jinping will be attending the anniversary events, state media Xinhua reported over the weekend.
On Friday in the U.S., stocks rallied to snap previous losing streaks.
“It just highlights the fact that markets are going to be very volatile until we do pass that peak in inflation and the outlook for central banks being as hawkish as they are,” said Kerry Craig, global market strategist at JPMorgan Asset Management.
He said markets tend to be choppy as many central banks in developed economies enter a new cycle for rate hikes.
“It’s when you have clarity on that path forward, then you start to refocus on the fundamentals,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Monday.
Futures rose slightly on Sunday night following last week’s comeback.
More
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/27/asia-markets-recession-currencies-oil-russian-debt.html
Analysis: Food export bans, from India to Argentina, risk fueling inflation
June 27, 2022 2:22 AM GMT+1
MUMBAI/BUENOS AIRES/LONDON, June 27 (Reuters) - It only took 24 hours last month for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government in India - the world's second-largest producer of wheat - to shelve its plans to "feed the world".
In April, Modi had said publicly that the world's most populous democracy was ready to fill part of the gap left by Ukraine in global grains markets by increasing its wheat exports, following five consecutive record harvests. India traditionally exports only a modest amount of wheat, retaining most of its crop for domestic consumption.
On May 12, India's Ministry of Commerce & Industry said it was preparing to send delegations to nine countries to export a record 10 million tonnes of wheat this fiscal year - sharply up the previous season.
But a barrage of alarming data changed all that.
First came a downward revision to India's wheat crop in early May as a sudden heatwave hammered yields. Then data on May 12 showed inflation in the nation of 1.4 billion had jumped to a near eight-year high due to higher food and fuel prices, driven by the Ukraine war. read more
Alarmed by rising inflation, which had contributed to toppling the previous Congress party government in 2014, Modi's office told the Ministry of Commerce on May 13 to put the "brakes on" wheat exports immediately, according to one government official, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue. read more
"This (inflation data) prompted the government to issue an order at midnight" imposing a ban on wheat exports, said a second source.
News of the ban by India, which is the only major wheat exporter at that time of year, drove Chicago wheat futures 6% higher after markets reopened on Monday.
Neither Modi's office nor the Ministry of Commerce responded to a request for comment.
India is one of at least 19 countries that have introduced food export restrictions since the war in Ukraine sent prices soaring, hampering international trade flows for several agricultural products and sparking violent protests in some developing nations. read more
From Delhi to Kuala Lumpur, Buenos Aires to Belgrade, governments imposed restrictions, at a time when the economic damage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, combined with factors such as extreme weather and supply chain bottlenecks, had already driven hunger across the globe to unprecedented levels.
The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) said in April the number of people facing acute food insecurity - when their inability to consume adequate food puts their lives or livelihoods in danger - had already more than doubled since 2019 to 276 million in the 81 countries in which it operates, before the Ukraine conflict began.
More
Global Inflation/Stagflation Watch.
Given our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians, inflation now needs an entire section of its own.
IMF slashes U.S. growth forecast, sees 'narrowing path' to avoid recession
June 24, 2022 11:09 PM GMT+1
WASHINGTON, June 24 (Reuters) - The International Monetary Fund on Friday slashed its U.S. economic growth forecast as aggressive Federal Reserve interest rate hikes cool demand but predicted that the United States would "narrowly" avoid a recession.
In an annual assessment of U.S. economic policies, the IMF said it now expects U.S. Gross Domestic Product to grow 2.9% in 2022, less than its most recent forecast of 3.7% in April.
For 2023, the IMF cut its U.S. growth forecast to 1.7% from 2.3% and it now expects growth to trough at 0.8% in 2024.
Last October, the IMF predicted 5.2% U.S. growth this year, but since then, new COVID-19 variants and stubborn supply chain disruptions have slowed recovery, while a sharp spike in fuel and food prices prompted by Russia's war in Ukraine further stoked inflation to 40-year highs.
"We are conscious that there is a narrowing path to avoiding a recession in the U.S.," IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva told a news conference, noting that the outlook had a high degree of uncertainty.
"The economy continues to recover from the pandemic and important shocks are buffeting the economy from the Russian invasion of Ukraine and from lockdowns in China," she said. "Further negative shocks would inevitably make the situation more difficult."
More
Romanian port struggles to handle flow of Ukrainian grain
June 24, 2022
CONSTANTA, Romania (AP) — With Ukraine’s seaports blockaded or captured by Russian forces, neighboring Romania’s Black Sea port of Constanta has emerged as a main conduit for the war-torn country’s grain exports amid a growing world food crisis.
It’s Romania’s biggest port, home to Europe’s fastest-loading grain terminal, and has processed nearly a million tons of grain from Ukraine — one of the world’s biggest exporters of wheat and corn — since the Feb. 24 invasion.
But port operators say that maintaining, let alone increasing, the volume they handle could soon be impossible without concerted European Union support and investment.
“If we want to keep helping Ukrainian farmers, we need help to increase our handling capacities,” said Dan Dolghin, director of cereal operations at the Black Sea port’s main Comvex operator.
“No single operator can invest in infrastructure that will become redundant once the war ends,” he added.
Comvex can process up to 72,000 tonnes of cereals per day. That and Constanta’s proximity by land to Ukraine, and by sea to the Suez Canal, make it the best current route for Ukrainian agricultural exports. Other alternatives include road and rail shipments across Ukraine’s western border into Poland and its Baltic Sea ports.
Efforts to lift the Russian blockade have got nowhere, and the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization projects up to 181 million people in 41 countries could face food crisis or worse levels of hunger this year in connection with the Ukraine war.
Just days into the Russian invasion, Comvex invested in a new unloading facility, anticipating that the neighboring country would have to reroute its agricultural exports.
This enabled the port over the past four months to ship close to a million tons of Ukrainian grain, most of it arriving by barge down the Danube River. But with 20 times that amount still blocked in Ukraine and the summer harvest season fast approaching in Romania itself and other countries that use Constanta for their exports, Dolghin said it’s likely the pace of Ukrainian grain shipping through his port will slow.
More
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.
With Covid-19 starting to become only endemic, this section is close to coming to its end.
The FDA’s ‘Future Framework’ for COVID Vaccines Is a Reckless Plan
BY Toby Rogers June 24, 2022
Pfizer and Moderna have a problem. Their mRNA COVID-19 shots do not stop infection, transmission, hospitalization, nor death from the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Over half a billion doses have been injected into Americans in the past 17 months and these shots have made no discernible impact on the course of the pandemic. Far more Americans have died of coronavirus since the introduction of the shots than before they were introduced.
Pfizer and Moderna are making about $50 billion a year on these shots and they want that to continue. So they need to reformulate. Maybe target a new variant, maybe change some of the ingredients—who knows, these shots have disappointed so it’s not clear what it will take to get them to work.
This is a problem because reformulated shots mean new clinical trials and new regulatory review by the FDA. There is a decent chance that any reformulated shot might fail a new clinical trial, and the public is deeply skeptical of these shots already, so the scrutiny would be intense.
So Pfizer and Moderna have figured out a way to use regulatory capture to get their reformulated COVID-19 shots approved WITHOUT further clinical trials. Their scheme is called the “Future Framework” and it will be voted on by the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) on June 28.
Viruses vary by region. At any given time, the influenza strain circulating in England is different than it is in Thailand, the United States, or South Africa. However, pharmaceutical companies prefer to create one-size-fits-all vaccines in order to decrease manufacturing costs and thereby increase profits. So the WHO and public health agencies around the world (including the FDA and CDC) have created a vast “influenza surveillance network” that identifies the different influenza strains in circulation.
Then they engage in an elaborate performance called the “flu strain selection process” where they select four influenza strains that will go into the flu vaccine that year (there is one flu shot for all countries in the Northern Hemisphere and one flu shot for all countries in the Southern Hemisphere, that’s it).
This carefully choreographed process results in failure more often than not. This is not a surprise—using a one-vaccine-fits-all approach to prevent a rapidly evolving virus that varies by region is unlikely to work. Lisa Grohskopf from the CDC’s Influenza Division reports that last year the flu shot was somewhere between 8 percent to 14 percent effective (based on data from seven sites that participate in the U.S. Flu Vaccine Effectiveness Network.)
More
COVID-19 Vaccination Reactivates Highly Contagious Virus: Studies
Reports of people being diagnosed with shingles on the rise
By June 22, 2022 Updated: June 24, 2022
Doctors and scientists are seeing an increase in the reactivation of the chickenpox virus, known as varicella-zoster virus (VZV), following the COVID-19 injections.
The chickenpox virus is one of the eight herpes viruses known to infect humans. After a person contracts and recovers from chickenpox, the virus never leaves the body but lies dormant in the nervous system for life.
The chickenpox virus will show up as shingles, or herpes zoster (HZ) when it gets reactivated.
Federal health authorities claim that there’s no correlation between COVID-19 injections and shingles, but studies show that there is a higher incidence of shingles in people who’ve received the vaccine.
Israel was one of the earlier countries to publish a case series of six women (out of 491 participants) with an autoimmune disorder who developed shingles 3 to 14 days after receiving the first or second dose of Pfizer COVID-19 shot. None of the 99 participants in the control group developed shingles. The study was published in the journal Rheumatology in April 2021.
“To our knowledge, there were no reports of varicella-like skin rash or HZ in the mRNA-based vaccines COVID-19 clinical trials and our case series is the first one to report this observation in patients within a relatively young age range: 36–61, average age 49 ± 11 years,” the authors wrote.
They hoped that publishing the case series would “raise awareness to a potential causal link between COVID-19 vaccination as a trigger of HZ reactivation in relatively young patients with stable AIIRD [autoimmune inflammatory rheumatic diseases].”
In a different case study from Taiwan, researchers reported three healthy men ages 71, 46, and 42 who developed shingles two to seven days following the first dose of the Moderna or AstraZeneca COVID-19 injection.
“HZ does not often appear after the administration of other kinds of vaccinations,” the researchers wrote. “But we believed that there might be a link between COVID-19 vaccine and HZ emergence.”
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
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.
China's CATL to produce next-generation EV battery in 2023
June 23, 2022 10:03 AM GMT+1
SHANGHAI, June 23 (Reuters) - Chinese battery giant CATL (300750.SZ) will start mass production next year of its latest generation product, with greater efficiency that lets electric cars drive longer distances on each charge, the company said on Thursday.
The world's biggest battery maker is scrambling to retain its top position against competition from rivals such as BYD (002594.SZ), which will soon start supplying batteries to Tesla. read more
CATL's new battery, called Qilin, will boost volume utilisation rate to 72%, the world's highest, versus 50% for its first generation launched in 2019, the firm said, and increase the battery system's energy density to 255 Wh/kg.
But the firm did not say if any electric vehicle maker had placed orders for the new battery.
CATL, which supplies batteries supplier to automakers such as Tesla, Volkswagen, BMW and Nio suffered a fall of 24% in first-quarter net profit, hit by soaring metal costs.
In May, the company said it expected a better profit margin in the second quarter, after raising prices and passing on costs to automaking clients.
CATL sold the equivalent of 41.5 GWh of batteries in the first four months, more than double the sales of second-placed LG Energy Solution (373220.KS), Seoul-based SNE Research says.
As it ramps up overseas expansion, CATL is in the final stages of vetting sites in the United States to build electric vehicle batteries, Reuters has reported.
The firm, based in the city of Ningde in the southern province of Fujian, has said it would start supplying cylindrical cells to BMW from 2025 for a new series of electric vehicles.
Tesla (TSLA.O) is also ramping up output of its "4680" batteries that hold about five times the energy of the existing 2170 cells.
Credit expansion can bring about a temporary boom. But such a fictitious prosperity must end in a general depression of trade, a slump.
Ludwig von Mises.
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