Baltic Dry Index. 2013 -68 Brent Crude 99.38
Spot Gold 1727 US 2 Year Yield 3.03 -0.04
Coronavirus
Cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,100
Coronavirus Cases 13/07/22 World 563,063,015
Deaths 6,376,925
-----But the U.S. government has a technology, called a printing
press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many
U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost. By increasing the number of
U.S. dollars in circulation, or even by credibly threatening to do so, the U.S.
government can also reduce the value of a dollar in terms of goods and
services, which is equivalent to raising the prices in dollars of those goods
and services. We conclude that, under a paper-money system, a determined government
can always generate higher spending and hence positive inflation.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/Speeches/2002/20021121/default.htm
In the stock casinos this morning, hopium that June saw the top for global inflation.
Well maybe, but probably not the top in food price inflation.
However, with yet more Covid lockdowns happening in China plus rising interest rates nearly everywhere, commodity markets from “Dr. Copper” to crude oil are now signalling that a recession is/or will soon be underway.
If they’re right and they probably are, big trouble for the casinos and G-7 governments lies directly ahead. Back to the Magic Money Tree forests and PDQ?
If the central banksters do, back up the trucks for gold still in the teens.
Tianqi Lithium
plunges in market debut as Asia stocks mostly rise; two central banks raise
rates
SINGAPORE — Shares in the Asia-Pacific were higher
on Wednesday as China releases trade data, and the Bank of Korea and Reserve
Bank of New Zealand hike rates.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index rose
0.62%, and the Hang Seng Tech index was 1.75% higher. Airline stocks jumped
after a report said quarantine-free travel may be allowed by
November under some conditions.
Cathay Pacific was
up 1.9% and China
Southern Airlines jumped 4.28%.
Tianqi Lithium plunged around 10% at its market
debut in Hong Kong from its offer price of 82 Hong Kong dollars ($10.45). It
was last down around 3.5%.
Miniso shares also
dropped in its debut on the Hong Kong market.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose
0.34%, and the Topix index gained 0.16%.
In South Korea, the Kospi advanced
0.61% and the Kosdaq was 1.29% higher.
Taiwan’s benchmark Taiex jumped more
than 3% in morning trade after the finance ministry said it would use its stock
stabilization fund to intervene in the market, according to Reuters. The index
was last up 2.76%.
The S&P/ASX 200 in
Australia was about flat.
Mainland China
markets struggled for direction but last traded higher. The Shanghai Composite gained
0.36% and the Shenzhen Component rose
0.57%.
Chinese trade data
released Wednesday showed a 13.2% increase in yuan-denominated exports for the
first half of 2022, while imports rose 4.8%, Reuters reported.
MSCI’s broadest
index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was 0.77% higher.
Investors will also
be looking ahead to the U.S. inflation report for June.
The Bank of Korea
raised rates by 50 basis points for the first time, bringing
the rate to 2.25%, Reuters reported. That’s in line with analyst expectations
in a Reuters poll. The Korean won stood at 1,304.78 against the greenback.
The Reserve Bank of New Zealand also
increased rates by 50 basis points to 2.5%. The currency was at $0.6125.
Major indexes in the U.S. see-sawed during
the trading day before closing lower.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average
dipped 192.51 points or 0.62% to 30,981.33, while the S&P 500 dropped 0.92%
to 3,818.80. The Nasdaq Composite slid 0.95% to close at 11,264.73.
The U.S. will report consumer price
index data later Wednesday, and markets
are expecting hot inflation, which would keep the Fed firmly on
its hiking path.
“Sharp weakness in oil prices in
July suggests that June may mark a peak,” ANZ Research said in a note
Wednesday. That could mean the most dynamic phase of Fed tightening could end
after the central bank raises rates on July 27.
“However, our expectation is that
underlying strength in core inflation and still deeply negative real policy
rates means 50bps rate rises will still be appropriate after the summer,” the
note said.
Asia
markets: China exports, imports, central banks, interest rates (cnbc.com)
In northern hemisphere grain news, good and bad news this morning. Ukraine says it can now export some grain via some disused grain ports in the Romanian Danube river delta. Well, if they say so I suppose.
More
seriously, Europe will be adding to the global grain supply problem this year
rather than helping. Over to the USA and Canada.
French Heat and Drought Shrinks Wheat
Harvest in Key EU Exporter
·
The country’s soft-wheat
harvest is seen falling 7% this year
·
A smaller harvest risks adding
to global supply strain
12 July 2022 at 10:40 BST
Heat, drought and storms have shrunk the wheat harvest in France, the
European Union’s top exporter, further straining global supplies.
The country’s soft-wheat output will drop about 7% to 32.9
million tons this year, coming in below the five-year average, the
agriculture ministry said Tuesday in its first forecast for the season. One of
France’s driest and warmest springs on record hurt yields during a crucial
development period.
That’s threatening to reduce the surplus grain available to ship abroad that
many importers may need to turn to. Russia’s invasion has hampered harvests and
exports from the breadbasket nation of Ukraine, tightening world supplies.
While benchmark wheat futures have slid from a record set in March, they remain
historically high.
EU wheat exports are expected to surge in the
wake of the war, as buyers seek alternatives to Ukrainian supplies. The bloc
projects soft-wheat shipments in the season that began this month to rise 27%
to 38 million tons, curtailing the region’s
stockpiles.
May temperatures were the highest ever for
the month in France and rainfall was extremely low, according to Meteo France. The country is now being gripped
by another heatwave and while that could accelerate wheat
harvesting, it risks hurting yields for later-planted crops like corn.
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.
Jamie
Dimon, the world’s most powerful banker: ‘Things can get much worse. We are
facing very serious problems’
David Fernández Díaz July 11 2022
----Jamie Dimon, 66, is a legend in the world of
finance. He runs the biggest bank in the world (not counting the opaque Chinese
firms), a giant with total assets of $3.74 trillion at the end of last year, $1
trillion in loans and $2.46 trillion in deposits. This privileged position
makes his words reverberate with a special echo in all the centers of power. In
early June he changed his economic forecast at a conference and the markets
began to shake: Dimon’s weather report went from “cloudy” to warnings about an upcoming economic “hurricane.”
Question. What makes you so pessimistic about the
economic future?
Answer. In my country the
situation is relatively good. The job market is very strong and consumers have
money to spend. When I said there were dark clouds on the horizon, I think
people underestimated my warning. They thought that these economic problems
were temporary, and this is not the case. Things can get much worse. We
are facing
very serious problems such as high inflation, particularly in
energy and food prices, and increases in interest rates.
Q. Do you think the US
could enter a recession before the end of the year?
A. I don’t like to make
predictions, but yes, it’s a possibility. We don’t know yet how much interest
rates will go up.
Q. Will inflation remain
at current levels much longer?
A. I
think we are nearing the top and then prices could start to drop. But again I
insist that it is difficult to make forecasts. In recent years we’ve had the
largest monetary and fiscal stimuli injections the world has seen in its entire
history. It is complex to guess the short-term consequences of these policies.
What does seem to be clearer is that inflation is not transitory. Wages are
going up, house prices too...
More, much, much 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.
Stealthy’ new Covid
variant can reinfect you every month
‘Even having had Omicron,
we’re not well protected from further
infections,’ id
12 July 2022
Health
experts across the globe are signalling alarm as they begin reporting
that Omicron BA.5, the coronavirus strain that is currently outpacing other variants
in infection and has become the dominant strain in the US and abroad, has the ability to reinfect people within
weeks of contracting the virus.
Andrew
Roberston, the chief health officer in Western Australia, told News.com.au that though previously the wisdom held that most
people would retain a certain level of protection against reinfection if they
were vaccinated or had retained some level of natural immunity due to a recent
contraction of the virus, this hasn’t been the case with the most recent
strain.
“What we
are seeing is an increasing number of people who have been infected with BA.2
and then becoming infected after four weeks,” the doctor explained during an
interview with the Australian news outlet. “So maybe six to eight weeks they
are developing a second infection, and that’s almost certainly BA.4 or BA.5.”
The
ability for strains BA.4 and BA.5 to reinfect individuals who would in previous
waves of Covid-19 had stronger immunity has led some experts to start calling
this latest strain the most transmissible yet.
“They’re
taking over, so clearly they’re more contagious than earlier variants of
omicron,” said David Montefiori, a professor at the Human Vaccine Institute at
Duke University Medical Center, in an interview with NBC News.
Federal
estimates released by the Center for Diseases Control and
Prevention on Tuesday show that BA.5 has now overtaken as the
dominant strain in the US, accounting for approximately 54 per cent of cases for
the week ending on 2 July 2022.
More
Omicron
BA.5 variant: ‘Stealthy’ new Covid variant can reinfect you every month | The
Independent
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.
Flashing creates hard-to-get 2D
boron nitride
Chemists
adapt instant process to make more valuable nanomaterials
Date: July 11, 2022
Source: Rice University
Summary: Chemists use their flash
Joule heating process to synthesize 2D flakes of boron nitride and boron carbon
nitride, highly valued for lending thermal and chemical stability to compounds.
Rice University scientists who
"flash" materials to synthesize substances like graphene have turned
their attention to boron nitride, highly valued for its thermal and chemical
stability.
The process by the Rice lab of
chemist James Tour exposes a precursor to rapid heating and cooling to produce
two-dimensional materials, in this case pure boron nitride and boron carbon
nitride. Both have until now been hard to create in bulk, and nearly impossible
to produce in easily soluble form.
The lab's report in Advanced
Materials details how flash Joule heating, a technique introduced by
the Tour lab in 2020, can be tuned to prepare purified, microscopic flakes of
boron nitride with varying degrees of carbon.
Experiments with the material showed
boron nitride flakes can be used as part of a powerful anticorrosive coating.
"Boron nitride is a highly
sought 2D material," Tour said. "To be able to make it in bulk, and
now with mixed amounts of carbon, makes it even more versatile."
At the nanoscale, boron nitride comes
in several forms, including a hexagonal configuration that looks like graphene
but with alternating boron and nitrogen atoms instead of carbon. Boron nitride
is soft, so it's often used as a lubricant and as an additive to cosmetics, and
is also found in ceramics and metal compounds to improve their ability to
handle high heat.
Rice chemical engineer Michael Wong
recently reported that boron nitride is an effective catalyst in helping to
destroy PFAS, a dangerous "forever chemical" found in the environment
and in humans.
Flash Joule heating involves stuffing
source materials between two electrodes in a tube and sending a quick jolt of
electricity through them. For graphene, the materials can be just about
anything containing carbon, food waste and used plastic car parts being just
two examples. The process has also successfully isolated rare earth elements
from coal fly ash and other feedstocks.
In experiments led by Rice graduate
student Weiyin Chen, the lab fed ammonia borane (BH3NH3) into the flash chamber
with varying amounts of carbon black, depending on the desired product. The
sample was then flashed twice, first with 200 volts to degas the sample of
extraneous elements and again with 150 volts to complete the process, with a
total flashing time of less than a second.
Microscope images showed the flakes
are turbostratic -- that is, misaligned like badly stacked plates -- with
weakened interactions between them. That makes the flakes easy to separate.
More
"In economics, hope and faith coexist with great scientific
pretension."
John Kenneth Galbraith.
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