Baltic Dry Index. 1556 -36 Brent Crude 99.11
Spot Gold 1790 US 2 Year Yield 3.23 unch.
Coronavirus
Cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,100
Coronavirus Cases 12/08/22 World 593,404,182
Deaths 6,449,006
“There’s no honorable way to kill,
no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing good in war, except its ending.”
Abraham Lincoln.
In the stock casinos, I am oddly reminded of the
summer of 1987. Nothing mattered across a lazy summer, life went on as usual
even as the US Treasury Secretary picked a verbal fight with Germany over
exchange rates, then one day in late October, everything mattered and the roof
fell in.
It took heavy market rigging by “Bubbles” Greenspan
the next day in the MMI futures in Chicago, on the delayed opening of the NYSE,
to stabilise the casinos and our financialised economies have been heavily
rigged by the central banksters ever since.
But this time feels different. We have one never-ending
war underway, with US politicians going all out to start another one in the far
east.
We have the US Treasury yield curve screaming
recession ahead.
We have massive droughts in Europe and the western
part of the USA.
We have “good” inflation just about everywhere, in the
UK, USA and EUSSR. Argentina’s just hit 70 percent.
We have just about everywhere massive mountains of
unrepayable debt.
Worst of all, we have cost of living crises now
starting to explode into anarchy and violence in some parts of the world.
On the plus side though, we have leaders like Biden,
Trudeau, outgoing Johnson, Van der Leyen, Scholz, Macron and their supporting B
teams, what could possibly go wrong?
Japan’s Nikkei
225 rises around 2% on return to trade; Asia shares mixed
SINGAPORE — Japan
stocks surged on return to trade, while shares in the Asia-Pacific
were mixed on Friday following strong gains in the previous session as
investors digested the U.S. inflation report.
The Nikkei 225 jumped
2.4%, while the Topix index rose 1.86%. Japanese markets were closed Thursday
for a holiday.
Japan’s Prime
Minister Fumio Kishida on Friday said he will ask his government to come up
with ways to address rising fuel and food prices in the country, Reuters
reported. Inflation in Japan is not as hot as in other countries, but is
hovering above the central bank’s 2% target.
In Australia, the shed 0.75%.
South Korea’s was flat,
while the Kosdaq added 0.12%.
Shares of Samsung Electronics rose
0.83% as South Korea’s president, Yoon Suk-yeol, officially
pardoned the company’s vice chairman, Jay Y. Lee.
“I will live up to the country’s
expectations and the government’s considerations and revitalization the economy
by sustained investment and job creation for young people,” Lee said, according
to a CNBC translation.
Mainland China markets dipped. The shed
0.16% while the lost
0.23%.
China’s largest chipmaker reported a net profit of $514 million
in the second quarter of 2022, a 25% drop from the same period a year ago.
Revenue grew 42% to $1.9 billion.
SMIC’s Hong Kong-listed shares
dropped by 1.58%. The broader was
0.32% higher.
----Overnight in the U.S., major indexes struggled for
direction before closing mixed.
The S&P 500 was fractionally
lower at 4,207.27, while the Nasdaq Composite shed 0.58% to 12,779.91. The Dow
inched 27.16 points, or 0.08%, higher to 33,336.67. The three major averages
opened the session higher but lost steam as the day progressed.
“Financial markets initially
reacted positively to the Producer Price Index data that showed inflation in
the U.S. is moderating, but gains then whittled away on concerns the market may
have overreacted,” according to an ANZ Research note on Friday.
The
PPI for July dropped 0.5% from June, compared with an expected
0.2% rise, according to a Dow Jones survey.
More
Asia
markets: Japan's Nikkei 225 up more than 2% (cnbc.com)
Column: Deep U.S. curve inversion hastens
the recession it predicts
August 11, 2022 7:00 AM GMT+1
ORLANDO, Fla., Aug 10 (Reuters) -
An inverted U.S. Treasury yield curve almost always heralds recession, but the
yawning gap between high short-term funding costs and falling long-term
borrowing rates may accelerate the economic downturn it presages.
More
Column:
Deep U.S. curve inversion hastens the recession it predicts | Reuters
In energy news, cutting off Russian oil, gas and coal
has set off a revival in coal and oil usage. So much for climate change I
suppose. No one really believed it anyway and saving what’s left of Ukraine is
far more important to Washington, London and NATO Brussels than saving the
planet, it seems.
Switch from gas
boosts oil demand, but economic headwinds loom — IEA
PUBLISHED THU, AUG 11 2022 4:33
AM EDT
Sweltering summer
temperatures and soaring gas prices have boosted the use of oil in power
generation, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Thursday, increasing
demand but masking weakness in
economies beset by recession fears.
“Natural gas and
electricity prices have soared to new records, incentivising gas-to-oil
switching in some countries,” the Paris-based agency said in its monthly oil report
in which it raised its outlook for 2022 demand by 380,000 barrels per day
(bpd).
“These extraordinary
gains, overwhelmingly concentrated in the Middle East and Europe, mask relative
weakness in other sectors,” the IEA warned.
It cited reduced use
of fuels for road transport in developed countries and slowing growth by the
year’s end “aligning with more negative economic sentiment to suggest a
considerable 2H22 contraction”.
Meanwhile global oil
supply in July broke past pre-pandemic highs, buoyed by higher-than-expected
output by Russia, whose exports the IEA said fell by 115,000 bpd in July to 7.4
million bpd - a decline of just 600,000 bpd from the start of the year.
Russian oil export
revenues were down $2 billion in July to $19 billion mostly because of lower
prices, and the IEA flagged that China overtook Europe for the first time as
the main destination for Russia’s crude.
Switch from gas
boosts oil demand, but economic headwinds loom — IEA (cnbc.com)
Exclusive:
OEUK warns against undermining investor confidence with windfall tax tampering
THURSDAY 11 AUGUST 2022 8:00
AM
Industry body Offshore Energies UK (OEUK) has
warned against further changes to the windfall tax, which it fears would
“undermine investor confidence” and hamper an industry that will be “vital to
the UK’s energy security for the years ahead.”
This follows media reports – first covered in The
Sun – that the Government was considering potentially raising the rate of the
Energy Profits Levy or scrapping planned investment relief to develop domestic
energy projects.
The Labour Party has ignited calls for the 91p
relief rate to be removed after multiple energy firms including BP and Shell
revealed bumper second quarter profits amid soaring oil and gas prices.
However, OEUK argued that further costs imposed on
the North Sea oil and gas sector jeopardised plans to invest in gas and oil
projects, which would help ensure secure supplies and reduce the UK’s reliance
on overseas vendors.
A spokesperson told City A.M.: “The
current media and political focus is on short-term profits but this industry
will be vital to the UK’s energy security for years ahead. It needs to be
managed and supported for the long-term.”
The Energy Profits Levy is a 25 per cent tax on oil
and gas operators producing supplies from the UK Continental Shelf.
This is on top of the 40 per cent special rate they
already pay – meaning energy firms working offshore pay a combined tax rate of
65 per cent – the highest faced by any business sector.
Former Chancellor Rishi Sunak brought in the tax to
help fund his £15bn support package for households.
More
Russian oil production to fall by a fifth since EU import ban, IEA says
Suban Abdulla Thu,
11 August 2022 at 11:47 am
Russian oil production is set to
drop by 20% next year as the European Union’s import ban on Russian oil-product
shipments kicks in, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
The Paris-based agency said on
Thursday that gradual monthly declines in output will start as soon as this
month as the Kremlin cuts back oil refining, and will quicken as the embargo
comes into force.
The IEA expects to see close to 2
million barrels a day shut in by the start of 2023, despite a healthy recovery
in production in recent months.
Brent crude (BZ=F)
was up 1.1% to $98.43 a barrel, while US West Texas Intermediate crude (CL=F)
also rose 1.1% to $92.96.
From 5 December, the EU is set to
halt most crude purchases from Russia in a bid to cut off revenue streams that
Russia uses to finance its war in
Ukraine, before the restriction takes effect on 5 February 2023.
In the past three months, Russia’s oil
output has risen, reaching nearly 10.8 million barrels a day last
month amid higher domestic oil-processing and robust exports as the country
redirects crude flows away from the EU to Asia.
It estimates some 1 million
barrels per day of Russian products and 1.3 million barrels per day of crude
would have to find new homes due to the planned EU bans.
More
Russian
oil production to fall by a fifth since EU import ban, IEA says (yahoo.com)
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.
If
this happens, how long before the UK turns out like Sri Lanka, Sierra Leone or
Argentina? Europe undone by suicidal
economic sanctions on Russia.
100,000
rebel Brits pledge non-payment of energy bills by cancelling their direct
debits
THURSDAY 11 AUGUST 2022
11:47 AM
Over a hundred thousand people will soon have added
their name to a pledge to cancel their direct debits for gas and electricity on
1 October if the government fails to adequately address the crisis of sky
rocketing energy bills.
The live tally of number of pledges can be viewed
at dontpay.uk – currently at over 99,000 people.
In addition, over 31,000 people have signed up as
activists in their local communities, and over 3,000 people have joined 150
Don’t Pay groups across the country.
“In just a few weeks, over 100,000 of us from
across the country have come together to say we will refuse to be pushed into fuel
poverty and we no longer want to pay for the profits of the energy companies,”
a spokesperson for Don’t Pay told City A.M. this morning.
“We are building the biggest mass non-payment
campaign since the Poll Tax and we are showing the powers that be that our
collective power will force an end to this crisis.”
He aded: “For too long we have sat by while power
and wealth in this country have been accumulated by too few people at the
expense of everyone else.”
Thai central bank
governor says there’s no need to ‘undertake heroically large rate hikes’
PUBLISHED THU, AUG 11 20224:12 AM EDT
Bank of Thailand
Governor Sethaput Suthiwartnarueput said there’s no need for the central bank
to “undertake heroically large rate hikes” as the country’s economy is only
expected to return to pre-pandemic levels at the end of the year.
On Wednesday, the
Bank of Thailand raised its key interest rate for the first time since 2018 as
inflationary pressures continue to weigh on the economy.
Suthiwartnarueput
said the 25-basis-point hike to 0.75% was a “gradual and measured approach,”
given the country is in a “very different part of [its] economic cycle”
compared with countries that have raised rates more aggressively.
Thailand’s economy remains sluggish, growing only
by 2.2% year-on-year in the first quarter, and raising rates higher could
further slow down its economy, said Shreya Sodhani, regional economist at
Barclays.
Sodhani supported the central bank’s modest hike,
saying the country’s economic growth is not “good enough” to warrant a
50-basis-point increase. Still, Barclays expects two more 25-basis-point hikes
this year.
While more advanced economies are tightening
monetary policy at a faster rate, Thailand’s gradual and measured approach will
ensure the country’s economic recovery remains intact, Suthiwartnarueput said.
″[Advanced economies] are looking for a soft
landing, but we’re looking at trying to ensure a smooth takeoff,” he added.
Inflation forecast
The Bank of Thailand said it expects “headline inflation will remain at a
high level throughout 2022, largely
unchanged from the previous forecast, before gradually falling into the target
range in 2023 as the supply-side inflationary pressures subside.”
The country’s inflation rate hit a 14-year high of
7.66% in June. Although it dipped slightly in July to 7.61%, it is still well
above the central bank’s 1% to 3% target.
“Inflation has been tracking quite high,” BOT’s
Suthiwartnarueput said. “But we don’t see any kind of demand side inflationary
pressure, it’s all been driven by the supply side.”
He said the central bank expects headline
inflation to peak sometime in the third quarter. Barclays shares a similar
position, expecting Thailand’s inflation to peak in August.
Although inflation has been rising at a much
faster rate in the past two months, Barclays’ Sodhani said the central bank’s
2022 headline inflation expectation of 6.2% “is much lower than our forecast of
7% for this year.”
More
Thai central bank says no need to 'undertake heroically large rate hikes' (cnbc.com)
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 US is on a Covid plateau, and no one's sure what
will happen next
(CNN)The United States
seems to have hit a Covid-19 plateau, with more than 40,000 people hospitalized
and more than 400 deaths a day consistently over the past month or so.
It's a dramatic improvement from this winter --
there were four times as many hospitalizations and nearly six times as many
deaths at the peak of the first Omicron wave -- but still stubbornly high
numbers.
And there are big question marks around what might
happen next, as the coronavirus' evolution remains quite elusive 2½ years into
the pandemic.
"We've never really cracked that: why these
surges go up and down, how long it stays up and how fast it comes down,"
said Dr. Eric Topol, a cardiologist and professor of molecular medicine at
Scripps Research. "All these things are still somewhat of a mystery."
BA.5 remains the dominant subvariant in the US for
now, causing most new cases as it has since the last week of June.
Data from the US Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, published Tuesday, shows that the Omicron offshoot
accounted for 87% of new cases in the first week of August, inching up a few
percentage points from the week before.
That slight increase in
prevalence is a sign that no other variants are outcompeting it -- and
promising for future trends.
BA.5 "has been very formidable because it's so
transmissible and has so much immune evasion," Topol said. But the plateau
in hospitalizations is "encouraging" because it means the subvariant
probably has worked its way through most of the hosts it can find.
"Right now, the question is what comes as we
descend from BA.5. It could take weeks."
CDC ensemble forecasts predict stable trends in
hospitalizations and deaths over the coming weeks, and experts agree that the
worst of the wave has probably passed.
But it's hummed along at a high level because it
continues to find people whose immunity from vaccination or infection has waned
over time -- something that will continue to happen, said William Hanage, an
epidemiologist and associate professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of
Public Health.
And with children going back to school, a change in
seasons and other variants on the horizon, it's unclear when the plateau will
drop -- and by how much.
More
Covid-19 trends
haven't budged for weeks, and no one knows what's next - CNN
Expert urges Covid-19
autumn booster expansion amid waning immunity
Ashleigh
Webber 11 Aug 2022
A
testing expert has urged the government to offer the Covid-19 autumn top-up
vaccine to all UK adults, and start the programme for over 50s as soon as
possible, because antibody levels are falling – potentially meaning more people
could become ill with the virus over the winter months.
Last month the Joint
Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation published its final recommendations
for this autumn’s Covid booster jab programme. Those eligible for a further
dose included all adults aged over 50, all people in a clinical risk group, pregnant
women, staff working in adult care homes, frontline health and social care
workers, and household contacts of people with immunosupression.
However, the
latest Covid antibody figures from the Office for National Statistics show that
the number of people in England with a higher level of antibodies (800 ng/ml)
has fallen swiftly, from a peak of 82.4% of the population in March to 71.9% in
mid-July.
Similar levels of antibody
decline have been modelled for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Dr Quinton Fivelman, chief
scientific officer at medical testing provider London Medical Laboratory, said
that the drop was concerning as the population needed to retain a substantial
number of antibodies going into the winter months, particularly with the more
contagious Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 sub-variants in circulation. He called for the
government to offer more adults access to booster jabs.
More
Covid-19
antibodies declining: expert urges booster expansion (personneltoday.com)
Mask
mandates return in New Delhi as COVID-19 cases rise
The
Indian capital has reintroduced public mask mandates as COVID-19 cases continue
to rise across the country
August 11, 2022
The Indian capital reintroduced public mask mandates on Thursday as
COVID-19 cases continue to rise across the country.
The New Delhi government reinstituted a fine of 500 rupees ($6) for
anyone caught not wearing a mask or face covering in public.
India's Health Ministry said 16,299 new cases were recorded in
the past week.
Mask mandates return in New Delhi as COVID-19 cases
rise | 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.
Iberdrola
Plans Large Green Hydrogen Plant at English Port
Iberdrola
plans to build a green hydrogen plant at the largest freight port in the United
Kingdom; will supply the clean fuel to vehicles and machinery used at the
port.
The Spanish
multinational electric utility company will invest nearly $174 million in the
facility at the Port of Felixstowe. The project will be developed by
ScottishPower, Iberdrola’s UK subsidiary, and when the first phase is completed
in 2026 the plant will have a capacity of 14,000 metric tons of green hydrogen
per year.
The plant will be capable of fueling up to 1,300 trucks, and the
green hydrogen produced will also provide green hydrogen for trains
transporting goods to the port. The Guardian reported that 6,000 heavy transport
vehicles per year use the port.
The facility
will have the potential to double its capacity in the future and could be used
for the production of green ammonia or ethanol, according to Iberdrola.
The green
hydrogen will be produced with an electrolyzer that uses energy from renewable
sources. The port is located near offshore wind farms that Iberdrola is
developing. The company has commissioned a 714-megawatt wind farm in the area
and plans to build a bigger complex with two more facilities to bring the total
energy capacity to 2.9 gigawatts.
The Port of
Felixstowe project is one of several Iberdrola is taking on in the UK. A
project with Storegga in Cromarty will help with the decarbonization of
distillery heating processes, with an initial capacity of 4,000 metric tons and
the ability to expand to 20,000 metric tons.
Iberdrola is
also building a green hydrogen plant at its Whitelee wind farm outside of
Glasgow. That project is set to be completed next year and will be capable of
generating 3,000 metric tons of hydrogen a year. The UK government has
committed more than $11 million to that project, which will be able to fuel 550
buses a day from Glasgow to Edinburgh.
The UK has a goal of developing 10 GW of low-carbon
hydrogen capacity by 2030. Across the rest of Europe, hydrogen accounts for less than 2% of the
continent’s energy consumption, according to the European Commission. As part
of the commission’s REPowerEU plan, the European Union has a goal of
producing 10 million metric tons of renewable hydrogen as well as importing 10
million metric tons by 2030.
Multiple big
projects to help with that goal are underway.
Shell is building what is said to be the largest
green hydrogen plant in Europe at the port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands with
a capacity of producing 66 tons of the fuel per day. Plug Power is building
a facility at Port of Antwerp-Bruges with a capacity of 35 tons of green
hydrogen per day. Additionally, FuelCell Energy is partnering with TuNur
to increase the production of renewable
hydrogen in northern Africa with plans to import it to Europe through a
pipeline into Italy.
More
Iberdrola Plans Large Green Hydrogen Plant at English
Port (environmentalleader.com)
Another weekend and still Europe’s
most needless war goes on. Only the arms manufacturers and the undertakers gain
from this never-ending death and destruction.
Worse, now Washington seems to want to
start a new war over Taiwan. Have a great weekend everyone.
“War: a massacre of people who don’t know each
other for the profit of people who know each other but don’t massacre each
other.”
Paul Valery.
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