Baltic Dry Index. 1895 -50 Brent Crude 110.01
Spot Gold 1766 US
2 Year Yield 2.89 +0.04
Stocks rally for a third day to cap a winning week,
major averages post best month since 2020
Intel stock closed down 8% on Friday, a day after the
company reported disappointing
second-quarter earnings that missed on the top and bottom lines.
Intel’s revenue declined 22% year
over year and missed consensus by 14%, the company’s largest top-line
disappointment since 1999, according to Refinitiv data. It ended the quarter
with a $454 million net loss, compared with net income of $5 billion in the
year-ago quarter.
The company also lowered its
full-year expectations. Intel said it now sees full-year adjusted earnings of
$2.30 per share and revenue of $65 billion to $68 billion, which is lower than
guidance from three months ago.
The updated forecast factors in economic weakness
that might result in organizations putting off PC refresh cycles, David
Zinsner, Intel’s finance chief, told CNBC in an interview. He said small and
medium-sized businesses have slowed down their computer purchasing, but the
enterprise has been holding up.
“We do think we’re on the bottom,” Zinsner said.
Analysts from Susquehanna downgraded shares of
Intel from neutral to negative and said that while they would like to think
this was a one-time reset, problems persist.
“For decades, Intel was able to cover up a litany
of failed projects, poor acquisitions, and strategic foibles by pushing Moore’s
Law and process leadership,” the analysts wrote in a report on Friday. “Unless
they regain this leadership (we think unlikely), or change strategic direction,
we expect growth, profitability, and cash flow problems to persist at
Intel.”
Baird analysts also downgraded Intel, citing
concerns over supply chain delays and shifts in consumer patterns following the
pandemic.
More
Intel stock slumps 8% after poor earnings show softening demand (cnbc.com)
Isolation
complication? US finds it’s hard to shun Russia
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration likes to say
Russia has become isolated internationally because of its
invasion of Ukraine. Yet Moscow’s
top officials have hardly been cloistered in the Kremlin. And now, even the
U.S. wants to talk.
President Vladimir Putin has been meeting with world leaders, including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose
country is a NATO member. Meanwhile, his top diplomat, Foreign Minister Sergey
Lavrov, is jetting around the world, smiling, shaking hands and posing for photos with
foreign leaders — including some friends of the U.S.
And on Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said
he wants to end months of top-level U.S. diplomatic estrangement with Lavrov to
discuss the release of American detainees as well as issues related to Ukraine. The call has
not been scheduled but is expected in coming days.Updates with hyperlinks.
The handshakes and phone calls cast doubt on a core part
of the U.S. strategy aimed at ending the Ukraine war: that diplomatic and
economic isolation, along with battlefield setbacks, would ultimately force
Russia to send its troops home.
Even
as he announced plans for the call, Blinken continued to insist Russia is
indeed isolated. He argued the travel of its top officials is purely damage
control and a reaction to international criticism Moscow is facing for the
Ukraine war.
U.S. officials say Russia is trying to shore up the few alliances
it has left — some of which are American adversaries like Iran. But countries
that are ostensibly U.S. partners, like Egypt and Uganda, are also warmly
welcoming top Russians.
And after making the case since February that there’s no
point in talking to Russia because Russia is not serious about diplomacy and
cannot be trusted, the U.S. has conceded it needs to engage with Moscow as
well.
The public outreach to Lavrov combined with the
announcement of a “substantial proposal” to Russia to win the release of
detained Americans Paul
Whelan and Brittney
Griner took many by
surprise.
A Blinken-Lavrov conversation would be the highest-level contact between the U.S.
and Russia since Feb. 15, before the Russian invasion, and could set the stage
for possible in-person discussions, although administration officials say there
are no plans for that.
Isolation
complication? US finds it's hard to shun Russia | AP News
Click to copy
Ukraine’s
grain is ready to go. But ships aren’t. Why? Risk
Shipping companies are not rushing to export millions of
tons of grain trapped in Ukraine, despite a breakthrough deal to provide safe corridors through the Black Sea.
That is because explosive mines are drifting in the waters, ship owners are
assessing the risks and many still have questions over how the deal will
unfold.
The complexities of the agreement have set off a slow,
cautious start, but it’s only good for 120 days — and the clock began ticking
last week.
The goal over the next four months is to get some 20 million tons of grain out of three Ukrainian sea ports blocked since
Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion. That provides time for about four to five large bulk
carriers per day to transport grain from the ports to millions of
impoverished people worldwide facing hunger.
It also provides ample time for things to go awry. Only
hours after the signing Friday, Russian missiles struck Ukraine’s port of Odesa — one of those included in the agreement.
Another key element of the deal offers assurances that
shipping and insurers carrying Russian grain and fertilizer will not get caught in the wider net of Western
sanctions. But the agreement brokered by Turkey and the U.N. is running up
against the reality of how difficult and risky the pact will be to carry out.
“We have to work very hard to now understand the detail
of how this is going to work practically,” said Guy Platten, secretary-general
of the International Chamber of Shipping, representing national shipowners
associations that account for about 80% of the world’s merchant fleet.
“Can we make sure and guarantee the safety of the crews?
What’s going to happen with the mines and the minefields, as well? So lots of
uncertainty and unknowns at the moment,” he said.
Getting
wheat and other food out is critical to farmers in Ukraine, who are running out of storage capacity amid a new harvest. Those grains are vital
to millions of people in Africa, parts of the Middle East and South Asia, who are already facing food shortages and, in some cases, famine.
More
Ukraine's
grain is ready to go. But ships aren't. Why? Risk | AP News
Global
Inflation/Stagflation/Recession Watch.
Given
our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians, inflation now needs an entire section of its
own.
High energy prices push inflation to
nearly 9% in 19 euro-using countries
JULY 29, 2022 / 8:36 AM
July 29 (UPI) -- A sharp rise in energy prices
aided by Russia's war in Ukraine has helped fuel rising inflation in countries
that use the euro, official statistics said on Friday.
According to the figures by Eurostat, prices in the
eurozone nations reached a record-high 8.9% over the past 12 months.
The July inflationary increase was up from 8.6% in
June. Energy costs rose 42% and continue to be heavily affected by the fighting
in Ukraine, which has severely disrupted global energy markets.
Energy prices were expected to continue to rise at
a high clip of 39.7% in July.
"Energy is expected to have the highest annual
rate in July, followed by food, alcohol and tobacco, non-energy industrial
goods and services," Eurostat said in a statement.
While the inflation spike is connected with
Ukraine, prices in the 19-nation eurozone have been on the rise since last
August when inflation stood at 3.2% and steadily increased over the past 12
months.
Inflation later rose to 5.6% in January, a month
before the war in Ukraine, and then 6.2% in February.
Despite the high inflation, economic health in the
eurozone was up in the most recent quarter, Eurostat said. Gross domestic
product in the zone increased 0.7% for the second quarter and 0.6% in the
European Union. The rise follows a 0.5% increase in the first quarter.
High
energy prices push inflation to nearly 9% in 19 euro-using countries - UPI.com
German
economy stagnates in second quarter as France resumes growth
With the gas crisis unfolding, growth is expected to slow
significantly ahead.
BY JOHANNA TREECK AND WILHELMINE
PREUSSEN
July 29, 2022 10:48 am
FRANKFURT
— German economic growth ground to a halt in the second quarter of this year,
disappointing expectations of a slight expansion, according to data released by
Germany’s statistics office Friday.
After
posting 0.8 percent growth in the first quarter of the year, Europe’s largest
economy stagnated.
“Difficult
global economic conditions with the ongoing corona pandemic, disrupted supply
chains, rising prices and the war in Ukraine are clearly reflected in economic
developments,” the statistics office said.
The
German release follows French GDP data, which showed the
eurozone’s second largest economy expanding 0.5 percent in the second
quarter after contracting 0.2 percent from January to March.
Meanwhile,
the Spanish economy expanded by 1.1 percent on the quarter, its statistics
office reported this
morning.
The first
second-quarter growth estimate for the wider eurozone is due to be released at
11:00 CET. A Reuters survey of analysts conducted before national data became
available showed that they expect growth to slow to a near halt of 0.1 percent,
from 0.6 percent in the previous quarter.
As the
gas crisis is unfolding, growth is set to slow significantly further ahead. The
latest PMI survey suggested that eurozone business activity contracted in
July.
German
economy stagnates in second quarter as France resumes growth – POLITICO
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.
The dodgy BBC “News” undone again.
Has the lab leak theory really been disproved?
There
doesn't seem to be a smoking gun in the latest
'evidence'
27 July 2022, 4:19pm
The
BBC carried a story this
week with the headline ‘Covid origin studies say evidence points to Wuhan
market’. Bizarrely the paper in Science they are referring to, by Michael Worobey and
colleagues, says no such thing. It says: ‘the observation that the
preponderance of early cases were linked to the Huanan market does not
establish that the pandemic originated there’.
All
three of the scientists quoted in the BBC story have been highly dismissive
about even discussing the possibility that the pandemic began as an accident in
a Wuhan laboratory. Their vested interest is clear: they worry that the
reputation of their field of virology would be threatened by such a discussion.
But the many scientists who say such a debate is needed are largely ignored by
the BBC: none are quoted in this week’s article.
The
Beeb’s story says that ‘this evidence paints a picture that Sars-CoV-2 was
present in live mammals that were sold at Huanan market in late 2019’. This too
is wrong. Nobody has found any evidence of Sars-CoV-2 in live mammals at the
market. They have found some evidence – they cite only a YouTube video – that
mammals were on sale in the market, which we already knew, but not that the
mammals were infected. That would be the very minimum requirement for asserting
that the pandemic began in the market. In 2003 scientists refused to assert
that Sars began in markets till they found infected animals.
The
new paper shows that lots of early cases had visited the Huanan seafood market
or lived near it, which we already knew. But for the first two weeks of January
2020, the Chinese authorities were defining pneumonia cases as (what we now
call) Covid only if they had visited or lived near the market: so it is a
circular argument. The scientists dismiss this ‘ascertainment bias’ problem by
citing one of their own papers, which simply asserted that this problem could
be ignored. As Dr Alina Chan of MIT and Harvard puts it: ‘Worobey et al. are claiming that there is no
ascertainment bias because their lead author said so.’
The
new Science paper has an ignominious history. It began life
as a ‘preprint’ whose data and logic were torn apart within days by independent
researchers. Even the Chinese Academy of Sciences panned it for
‘obfuscating the epidemic outbreak place…and the origin’ and for ‘overstating
conclusions based on limited data and unrealistic simulations’. Senior Chinese
scientists published a preprint the same week reiterating their conclusion that the
market was a place where the early outbreak was amplified, not where it
began. It’s quite something when western scientists go further than those
supervised by the Chinese Communist party in trying to exonerate a possible lab
leak. Yet its conclusions were reported by the Times as
having ‘found patient zero’ and the New York Times as saying
'the virus was present in animals’ at the market – both entirely false claims.
More,
much, much more.
Has the lab leak theory really been disproved? | The
Spectator
World
Health Organization - Landscape of COVID-19 candidate vaccines. https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/draft-landscape-of-covid-19-candidate-vaccines
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 more useful Covid links.
Johns Hopkins Coronavirus
resource centre
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.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.
The super material reinforcing rinks, cars and buildings
By
Chris Baraniuk Technology
of Business reporter
It looked like normal concrete. It poured like normal concrete. But it had a super power.
James Baker, chief executive of Graphene@Manchester, couldn't quite believe what he was seeing as he observed the installation of a new roller disco floor in Manchester's Depot Mayfield development.
The concrete slab was setting so fast, and so strong, that the builders had begun gliding polishing machines over the driest part of the floor while their colleagues were still pouring the other end of the rink.
"Normally, you'd have to wait a week before you could do that," he says. The installation, in October last year, took less than a day.
This concrete was special because it contained a
tiny but transformative amount of graphene, microscopic flakes of carbon atoms arranged
in a honeycomb lattice.
Graphene is the
strongest material ever discovered but for nearly two decades has struggled to
find a revolutionary role in commercial products. Is that about to change?
Besides
improving the mechanical properties of certain materials, it is hoped graphene
could also make some projects more environmentally-friendly.
"By adding
as little as 0.1% graphene into cement and aggregate, you can potentially use
less material to get the same performance," explains Mr Baker. Reducing
the amount of concrete used in construction for instance by 30%, could lower
global CO2 emissions by 2-3%, he estimates.
Besides the
roller disco, Mr Baker and his colleagues have also trialled the
graphene-infused concrete, known as concretene, in a gym floor in Wiltshire and
some road projects, including a section of the A1 several hundred metres long in Northumberland.
The team will
also pour concretene in an as-yet undisclosed project in the United Arab
Emirates this year.
These early
trials have comprised fairly straightforward projects, Mr Baker explains -
floor slabs, rather than walls or elevated platforms, which might be more
risky. So far, the concretene has performed as expected, though.
More
The
super material reinforcing rinks, cars and buildings - BBC News
This
weekend’s music diversion. Vivaldi again with an exceptional violin US genius. From
New Jersey, no less! Approx. 7 minutes.
Vivaldi:
Concerto in D Major RV 212 "St. Antonio," Alana Youssefian &
Voices of Music, with cadenza!
This
weekend’s chess update. Approx. 15 minutes.
Master
of the Mystic Arts! || Réti vs Alekhine || Baden-Baden (1925)
Master of the Mystic Arts! || Réti vs Alekhine || Baden-Baden (1925) - YouTube
This
week’s maths update. Approx. 12 minutes.
Multiplying
monkeys and parabolic primes
Multiplying
monkeys and parabolic primes - YouTube
July 30, 1914 - Austrian warships bombard Belgrade, capital of Serbia.
July 31, 1914 - Reacting to the Austrian attack on Serbia, Russia begins full
mobilization of its troops. Germany demands that it stop.
August 1, 1914 - Germany declares war on Russia. France and Belgium begin full
mobilization.
August 3, 1914 - Germany declares war on France, and invades neutral Belgium.
Britain then sends an ultimatum, rejected by the Germans, to withdraw from
Belgium.
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