Baltic Dry Index. 1270 -09 Brent Crude 97.02
Spot Gold 1737 US 2 Year Yield 3.37 +0.03
Coronavirus
Cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,100
Coronavirus Cases 23/08/22 World 601,811,081
Deaths 6,474,253
"It's strange that men should take up crime when there are
so many legal ways to be dishonest. “
Al Capone.
In the stock casinos, Bruno the Grizzly Bear returned from his summer holiday.
The Greater Fool rally over, the stock casinos got back to forward looking at higher interest rates, higher inflation, higher wages, a looming winter of fuel and food shortages, and a looming winter recession with social discontent.
Not
to worry though, team Biden, Trudeau, Macron, Scholz, Van der Leyen, and a UK
PM yet to be announced are on the case. What could possibly go wrong?
Asia-Pacific
markets trade lower after Wall Street’s sharp declines
UPDATED TUE, AUG 23 2022 12:11 AM
EDT
Asia-Pacific
markets traded lower on Tuesday morning after major indexes on Wall Street
finished their worst day since June amid mounting rate hike concerns.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index was
down 0.27%. The was
flat and the fell
0.23%.
Japan’s Topix traded 1.08% lower, fell
1.25%, while South Korea’s was down
0.77%. declined
0.49.
Oil prices edged up after Saudi Arabia said OPEC could cut output, with trading
0.85% higher, while rose
0.83%.
Investors will be watching markets for reaction
to a sharp
tumble on Wall Street overnight, as the fell
more than 600 points in its worst day since June, as the summer rally fizzled
out and fears of aggressive interest rate hikes returned to Wall Street. The also
tumbled 2%.
“There was a big hit to risk
appetite in what was a night devoid of any top tier data. Instead markets are
apprehensive ahead of US Fed Chair Powell’s Jackson Hole speech,” Tapas
Strickland of National Australia Bank said in a Tuesday note.
Australia’s Manufacturing
Purchasing Managers (PMI) Index signaled the first contraction in the private
sector’s output since January, while Singapore is set to release its core
inflation data later in the afternoon.
More
Asia-Pacific
markets: Wall Street, Singapore inflation, PMI (cnbc.com)
Dow slumps 600
points Monday to wrap worst day since June as summer rally fades
UPDATED MON, AUG 22 2022 9:53 PM
EDT
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell sharply
Monday, in its worst day since June, as the summer rally fizzled out and fears
of aggressive interest rate hikes returned to Wall Street.
The Dow fell 643.13 points, or
1.91%, to 33,063.61. The S&P 500 dropped 2.14% to 4,137.99, and the Nasdaq
Composite tumbled 2.55% to 12,381.57, respectively. It was the worst day of
trading since June 16 for the Dow and the S&P 500.
Those losses come on the back of
a losing week, which
snapped a four-week winning streak for the S&P 500. Still,
the broader market index remains about 13% above its June lows.
Investors are anticipating what
could be a volatile week of trading ahead of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome
Powell’s latest comments on inflation at the central bank’s annual Jackson Hole
economic symposium.
---- Tech stocks declined on concerns over more aggressive rate
hikes from the Fed. Amazon fell 3.6%. Semiconductor stocks dropped with Nvidia
down about 4.6%. Shares of Netflix were roughly 6.1% lower following a downgrade to sell from CFRA.
Dow
slumps 600 points Monday to wrap worst day since June as summer rally fades
(cnbc.com)
In energy news, don’t blame us for your mistakes creating high energy prices, says OPEC.
Germany,
and the rest of the EUSSR, faces industrial bankruptcy from the soaring price
of natural gas. Taking down Russia appears more likely to take down the EUSSR.
6:13 AM EDT
New OPEC
Secretary-General Haitham Al Ghais said Wednesday that the influential producer
group is not to blame for soaring inflation, pointing the finger instead at
chronic underinvestment in the oil and gas industry.
“OPEC is not behind
this price increase,” Al Ghais told CNBC’s Hadley Gamble.
“There are other factors beyond OPEC that are
really behind the spike we have seen in gas [and] in oil. And again, I think in
a nutshell, for me, it is underinvestment — chronic underinvestment,” he added.
“This is the harsh reality that
people have to wake up to and policymakers have to wake up to. Once that is
realized I think then we can start to think of a solution here. And the
solution is very clear. OPEC has a solution: invest, invest, invest,” Al Ghais
said.
Earlier this year, Kuwait’s Al
Ghais was appointed for a three-year term as OPEC’s secretary general. He
succeeds Nigerian oil industry veteran Mohammad Barkindo, who
died at the age of 63 last month just days before he was due to
step down from the organization.
The International Energy Agency said in June that global energy
investment was on track to increase by 8% this year to reach $2.4 trillion,
with most of the projected rise coming mainly in clean energy.
It described the findings as
“encouraging” but warned investment levels were still far from enough to tackle
the multiple dimensions of the energy crisis.
For oil and gas, the IEA said investment jumped 10% from last year but
remains “well below” 2019 levels. It said today’s high fossil fuel prices
provided “a once-in-a-generation opportunity” for oil and gas-dependent
economies to undergo a much-needed transformation.
The IEA has previously said
investors should not fund new oil, gas and coal supply projects if the world is
to reach net-zero emissions by the middle of the century.
To be sure, the burning of fossil
fuels, such as oil, gas and coal, is the chief driver of the climate emergency.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio
Guterres warned in April that it is “moral and economic madness” to fund new
fossil fuel projects.
Al Ghais’ comments come shortly after the
influential producer group of OPEC and non-OPEC partners, an energy alliance
often referred to as OPEC+, surprised market participants at its Aug.
3 meeting by announcing plans to add only 100,000 barrels per
day from next month.
The group said that “severely
limited availability of excess capacity” meant it was necessary to proceed with
“great caution.”
It was seen
as a snub to U.S. President Joe Biden, who during a visit to OPEC
kingpin Saudi Arabia last month had called for the group to pump more crude to
help the U.S. and global economy.
OPEC and non-OPEC producers are
next scheduled to meet on Sept. 5.
More
Haitham
Al Ghais: OPEC not to blame for soaring inflation (cnbc.com)
European gas
prices surge as Russian pipeline maintenance fuels fears of a total shutdown
PUBLISHED MON, AUG 22 2022 7:40 AM EDT
European natural gas prices surged on Monday after
Russia’s state-owned energy giant Gazprom said it would shut down Europe’s
single biggest piece of gas infrastructure for three days from the end of the
month.
The unscheduled maintenance works on the Nord
Stream 1 pipeline, which runs from Russia to Germany via the Baltic Sea, deepen a gas dispute between Russia and the European
Union and exacerbate both the risk of
a recession and a winter shortage.
The front-month gas price at the Dutch TTF hub, a European benchmark for
natural gas trading, jumped 19% on Monday to reach 291.5 euros ($291.9) per
megawatt hour.
The contract closed
on Friday at a record high of 244.55 euros per megawatt hour, registering its
fifth consecutive weekly gain.
Gazprom said Friday
that the shutdown was because the pipeline’s only remaining compressor required
servicing. Gas flows via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline will be suspended for the
three-day period from Aug. 31 to Sept. 2.
Gazprom said gas
transmission would resume at a rate of 33 million cubic meters per day when the
maintenance work is completed “provided that no malfunctions are identified.”
The announcement of
the temporary shutdown comes as European governments scramble to fill
underground storage facilities with natural gas supplies in a bid to have
enough fuel to keep homes warm during the coming months.
Russia has drastically reduced natural gas
supplies to Europe in recent weeks, with flows via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline
currently operating at just 20% of the agreed-upon volume.
Moscow has previously blamed faulty and delayed
equipment for the sharp drop in gas supplies.
Germany, however, considers the supply cut to be a
political maneuver designed to sow uncertainty across the bloc and boost energy
prices amid the Kremlin’s onslaught against Ukraine.
Two grave risks
Until recently, Germany bought more than half of
its gas from Russia. And the government of Europe’s largest economy is now
battling to shore up winter gas supplies amid growing fears that Moscow could
soon turn off the taps completely.
What’s more, Europe’s race to save enough gas
comes at a time of skyrocketing prices. The surge in energy costs is driving up
household bills, pushing inflation to its highest level in decades and
squeezing people’s spending power.
Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg
Bank, said Gazprom’s latest announcement was an apparent attempt to exploit
Europe’s dependence on Russian gas.
“On its own, a brief closure of the pipeline would
not make a major difference, especially as Russia has reduced its gas exports
through NS1 to 20% of capacity since 27 July anyway,” Schmieding said in a
research note.
“But it highlights two grave risks: (i) Russia may
falsely claim that it cannot re-open the pipeline afterwards because of a
‘technical issue’ that could only be resolved if Western sanctions were lifted,
and (ii) Russia may also shut down its other pipelines to Europe later on,” he
added.
Schmieding said higher prices for even scarcer gas
supplies would “worsen the serious recession into which Europe is falling
already” and warned an immediate further cut in Russian flows would raise the
likelihood that Germany may face a winter shortage.
European gas prices surge as Russia announces Nord Stream 1 shutdown (cnbc.com)
Finally,
in truly disastrous news, the price of the UK’s staple food is set to rise. We’ll all
have to down size to baked beans on toast, I suppose.
Cost
of chips could rise within weeks after potato crops hit by heatwave, experts
say
Evie Townend & Sonia Sharma 22 August, 2022
The cost of chips could increase within weeks
and there are fears of shortages due to this summer's heatwave, experts say.
Record temperatures, which
saw parts of the UK reach 40 degrees, have caused the main potato crop to wilt.
Farmers say potatoes are particularly vulnerable to heatwaves because they are
80% water.
The
soaring temperatures were also experienced during the crop’s most important
growing period. Earlier in August, Tom Bradshaw, from the NFU union, told trade
magazine The Grocer that
the water shortage was "critical".
He said: "I can’t see how potato yields
are going to be anything but well below average — onion yields the same."
A spokesperson from the Isle of Ely Produce added: “Indications are that the
heat has really wrecked crops and any rain now could hurt yields further."
ut another wholesaler told
The Grocer magazine: "There is a lot of speculation at the moment. The
chip guys have already put through significant increases in the last 12 months
due to fuel and energy costs and this is the next opportunity for them to
increase the price. However, we
won’t get a true picture until they have lifted the crop in September or
October."
In certain parts of the UK, there has not been any
substantial rainfall since the Jubilee weekend and it has been dubbed the
driest July since 1935. Eight out of 14 areas in England were affected by the
drought alerts announced on August 12 with restrictions being put in place for
their water usage, reports The Mirror.
This
includes Devon and Cornwall, East Anglia, Thames, Kent and South London and
East Midlands. The news piles yet more pressure on fish and chip shops, which
have already felt the effects of rocketing costs.
Chippies
on the brink of closure have faced startling price rises of more than 13% - but
business owners warn the picture is even bleaker. Industry bosses fear the cost
of living crisis could force 3,000 of the UK's estimated 10,500 chippies to
close as people will no longer have the cash for the traditional treat.
Cost
of chips could rise within weeks after potato crops hit by heatwave, experts
say (msn.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.
Something
a little different today, calculators. Every calculator you ever dreamed of,
not just the one shown.
Million BTU
to Megawatt-hours Conversion
Enter the energy in
million BTU below to get the value converted to megawatt-hours.
Million
BTU to Megawatt-hours Conversion (MMBTU to MWh) (inchcalculator.com)
Citi:
UK to suffer 18.6 per cent inflation peak, near 50-year high
MONDAY 22 AUGUST 2022 11:42 AM
Inflation is set to surge above levels seen during
the oil price shock of the late 1970s in a sign the UK economy is hurtling
toward a deep slump, new forecasts published today show.
The cost of living will climb to 18.6 per cent in
January, pushed higher by the energy watchdog hiking the cap on bills even
further to pass on steep wholesale gas costs, according to Wall Street
investment bank Citi.
That would be the highest rate in
around half a century and above the just under 18 per cent inflation peak
during the oil crisis five decades ago, caused by Opec cutting supplies.
There are signs inflation has peaked in countries
comparable to the UK. The US’s rate dropped much quicker than expected last
month to 8.6 per cent.
Britain already has the highest inflation in the
G7.
Analysts at Citi said household finances are set to
come under intense pressure from the price surge, forcing them to slash
spending and tipping the UK economy into recession.
Elevated energy prices, caused by Russia’s invasion
of Ukraine disrupting the European gas market and global supply being outpaced
by sudden burst in demand after the Covid-19 unlocking, have sent inflation on
an upward spiral.
Ofgem, the market regulator, is on Friday expected to announce bills will climb around 75 per cent in October. Citi said bills may jump above £4,500 in January based on current gas future prices.
The new forecasts are gloomier than
the Bank of England’s projection earlier this month, which were branded by
fellow investment bank Goldman Sachs as the most downbeat ever published by a
central bank.
Governor Andrew Bailey and the rest of the monetary
policy committee think the UK will suffer a more than 13 per cent inflation
peak and that households’ living standards will fall by the biggest cumulative
2-year amount on record.
Those dynamics are set to plunge Britain into a
15-month long recession, the longest since the financial crisis, starting in
the final months of this year.
Inflation is already running at 10.1 per cent, more
than five times the Bank’s two per cent target.
Citi: UK to suffer
18.6 per cent inflation peak, near 50-year high (cityam.com)
The other
reason why food prices are rising
The United Nations’
worst-case scenario calculation is that global food prices will rise by an
additional 8.5% by 2027.
More expensive
fertilizers are contributed to those higher costs, with some fertilizers
spiking 300% since September 2020, according to the American Farm Bureau.
“Last year
[fertilizer] was around $270 per ton and now it’s over $1,400 per ton,” Meagan
Kaiser, of Kaiser Family Farms and farmer-director of the United Soybean Board,
told NBC’s “Nightly News with Lester Holt.”
----Farmers are finding themselves forced to pass some of those
costs along to customers, resulting in higher grocery prices.
Fertilizer is
essential for crops. Without fertilizer, plants may not get the nourishment
they need to result in the yields necessary to meet global demand.
According to the
International Fertilizer Association, we would only be able to feed about half
of the global population without fertilizer.
Farmers are trying to
adjust to this new normal. When surveyed in spring 2022 about what they
intended to plant, farmers said they were turning to more soybean, according to
U.S. Department of Agriculture data, or a record 91 million acres of the
legume. That may be because legumes don’t require as much fertilizer as corn to
grow.
Spikes in fertilizer
prices started when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
“It’s amazing how
dependent the world is on fertilizers from the region that we’re talking about
Russia and Ukraine,” Johanna Mendelson Forman, adjunct professor at American
University’s School of International Service, told CNBC.
The region is
responsible for at least 28% of the world’s fertilizer exports, including
nitrogen-, potassium- and phosphorus-based fertilizers, according to Morgan
Stanley.
Also factoring into
price spikes are rising natural gas costs.
“There’s a direct
relationship with what we’re seeing in fuel prices and fertilizer prices,” Jo
Handelsman, director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery at the University
of Wisconsin-Madison, told CNBC.
That’s because fossil
fuels are used in the manufacturing process of fertilizers — and is one of the
reasons that they can contribute to climate change.
More
The
other reason why food prices are rising (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.
Antibody
“master key” discovery could neutralize all COVID variants
Rich Haridy August 21, 2022
A new study
published in Nature Communications has homed in on a part of
the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein that seems to be shared across all known variants.
The research also reveals an antibody fragment that can hypothetically block
the virus from entering human cells, paving the way for future therapies to
neutralize all COVID-19 variants.
The new research offers one of the most thorough
investigations to date into the spike protein differences between a number of
SARS-CoV-2 variants. Using cryo-electron microscopy the study zoomed in on
spike proteins from Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Kappa, Epsilon, and Omicron
(BA.1 and BA.2) variants.
The researchers discovered a certain part of the spike protein is
conserved across all these variants. This spot, known as an epitope, is
vulnerable to novel antibodies that could block the virus' ability to infect
human cells.
“The epitope we describe in this paper is mostly removed from the hot
spots for mutations, which is why its capabilities are preserved across
variants,” explained Sriram Subramaniam. “Now that we’ve described the
structure of this site in detail, it unlocks a whole new realm of treatment
possibilities.”
Antibodies work to block infection by fitting into those epitopes on the
viral spike protein and interrupting the way the virus would lock onto human
cells. The new research describes the development of an antibody fragment,
dubbed VH Ab6, which can attach to that epitope found in all current SARS-CoV-2
variants.
“Antibodies attach to a virus in a very specific manner, like a key
going into a lock. But when the virus mutates, the key no longer fits,” said
Subramaniam. “We’ve been looking for master keys – antibodies that continue to
neutralize the virus even after extensive mutations.”
At this stage the research is still speculative. The antibody fragment
demonstrated in the study is more there to demonstrate how broadly effective targeting
this particular part of the spike protein could be in neutralizing all known
variants.
So far
there has been little mutational movement in the part of spike protein
highlighted in this study. The researchers suggest future therapeutics for
COVID-19 should target this specific epitope in the hopes of developing
antibody treatments that can neutralize all variants of the virus.
Validating
these new findings is another recent study demonstrating an antibody candidate
that, so far, in animal studies, can neutralize all current SARS-CoV-2
variants. That study, published in Science
Immunology, comes from a team of researchers at Harvard Medical School
and Boston Children’s Hospital.
More
Antibody “master
key” discovery could neutralize all COVID variants (newatlas.com)
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.
Scientists blast
atoms with Fibonacci laser to make an 'extra' dimension of time
21
August 2022
By firing a Fibonacci laser pulse at atoms
inside a quantum computer, physicists have created a completely new, strange
phase of matter that behaves as if it has two dimensions of time.
The new phase of matter,
created by using lasers to rhythmically jiggle a strand of 10 ytterbium ions,
enables scientists to store information in a far more error-protected way,
thereby opening the path to quantum computers that
can hold on to data for a long time without becoming garbled. The researchers
outlined their findings in a paper published July 20 in the journal Nature.
The inclusion of a
theoretical "extra" time dimension "is a completely different
way of thinking about phases of matter," lead author Philipp Dumitrescu, a
researcher at the Flatiron Institute's Center for Computational Quantum Physics
in New York City, said in a statement. "I've been working on these theory ideas for over five years, and seeing them come
actually to be realized in experiments is exciting."
The physicists didn't set out to create a phase
with a theoretical extra time dimension, nor were they looking for a method to
enable better quantum data storage. Instead, they were interested in creating a
new phase of matter — a new form in which matter can exist, beyond the standard
solid, liquid, gas, plasma.
They set about building the new phase in the quantum computer
company Quantinuum's H1 quantum processor, which consists of 10 ytterbium ions
in a vacuum chamber that are precisely controlled by lasers in a device known
as an ion trap.
Ordinary
computers use bits, or 0s and 1s, to form the basis of all calculations.
Quantum computers are designed to use qubits, which can also exist in a state
of 0 or 1. But that's just about where the similarities end. Thanks to the
bizarre laws of the quantum world, qubits can exist in a combination, or
superposition, of both the 0 and 1 states until the moment they are measured,
upon which they randomly collapse into either a 0 or a 1.
This
strange behavior is the key to the power of quantum computing, as it allows
qubits to link together through quantum entanglement, a process
that Albert Einstein dubbed "spooky
action at a distance." Entanglement couples two or more
qubits to each other, connecting their properties so that any change in one
particle will cause a change in the other, even if they are separated by vast
distances. This gives quantum computers the ability to perform multiple calculations
simultaneously, exponentially boosting their processing power over that of
classical devices.
But the development of quantum computers is held back by a big
flaw: Qubits don't just interact and get entangled with each other; because
they cannot be perfectly isolated from the environment outside the quantum
computer, they also interact with the outside environment, thus causing them to
lose their quantum properties, and the information they carry, in a process
called decoherence.
"Even
if you keep all the atoms under
tight control, they can lose their 'quantumness' by talking to their
environment, heating up or interacting with things in ways you didn't
plan," Dumitrescu said.
To
get around these pesky decoherence effects and create a new, stable phase, the
physicists looked to a special set of phases called topological phases. Quantum
entanglement doesn't just enable quantum devices to encode information across
the singular, static positions of qubits, but also to weave them into the
dynamic motions and interactions of the entire material — in the very shape, or
topology, of the material's entangled states. This creates a
"topological" qubit that encodes information in the shape formed by
multiple parts rather than one part alone, making the phase much less likely to
lose its information.
More
Scientists blast
atoms with Fibonacci laser to make an 'extra' dimension of time (msn.com)
The
market, like the Lord, helps those who help themselves. But, unlike the Lord,
the market does not forgive those who know not what they do.
Warren
Buffett.
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