Baltic Dry Index. 1788 +28 Brent Crude 89.26
Spot Gold 1700 US 2 Year Yield 4.12 -0.10
Coronavirus
Cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,100
Coronavirus Cases 04/10/22 World 623,690,604
Deaths 6,551,752
Somebody has to be
on the other side.
George Goodman, aka Adam Smith. The Money Game. Why
Are The Little People Always Wrong?
Stocks are rallying across Asia this morning, following the USA casinos yesterday rally, largely based on hopium that the new bear market in stocks will force the Fed and the other central banks to give up raising interest rates to fight inflation.
Gold and silver surged in case they do!
Well they might, I suppose, but my bet is that they won’t.
Giving up on inflation fighting now will send most nations inflation into double digits, although many are already in double digits, with others like the UK on the threshold of double digits.
Double digit inflation in the USA and EU will generate an angry, unpredictable social backlash, one that threatens global economic rising chaos.
For now and well into next year, hopium
rallies are exit rallies for investors rather than gamblers known as
speculators, to take advantage of exit rallies.
Australia stocks jump after smaller-than-expected rate hike; Asia markets rise
UPDATED TUE, OCT 4 2022 12:04 AM EDT
Asia-Pacific shares traded higher on Tuesday
after stocks
on Wall Street rallied overnight.
The Nikkei 225 in
Japan rose 2.79% in early trade, and the Topix index was 2.99% higher. South
Korea’s Kospi advanced
2.44% on its return to trade after a holiday. The Kosdaq added 2.86%.
MSCI’s broadest
index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan gained 1.58%. In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 jumped
3.63%. The Reserve Bank of Australia raised its benchmark interest rate by 25
basis points.
Australia
stocks jump after central bank hikes rates less than expected
Markets in mainland
China and Hong Kong are closed for a holiday.
The Dow Jones
Industrial Average popped 765.38 points, or nearly 2.7%, to close at 29,490.89.
The S&P 500 advanced about 2.6% to 3,678.43. The Nasdaq Composite added
nearly 2.3% to end at 10,815.43.
It was the best day
since June 24 for the Dow, and the S&P 500′s the best day since July 27.
Australia’s rate hike
will help balance demand and supply: RBA statement
The Reserve Bank of
Australia said its rate hike of 25 basis points will “help achieve a more
sustainable balance of demand and supply” in the nation’s economy.
The central bank
said it expects to continue increasing rates over the period ahead.
It also noted that
Australia’s unemployment rate is at its lowest in almost 50 years and said an
increase in the rate is expected with slowing economic growth.
Australia stocks jump after smaller-than-expected rate hike; Asia markets rise (cnbc.com)
In other news, GB got a winter warning of
energy shortages. The UK’s inept “government” reversed part of its tax policy
one day after the “Prime Minister” said that they wouldn’t.
Euroland lacking a vibrant German economy,
faces a repeat of the 2007-2009 Great Financial crisis.
Significant risk’ of gas shortages
this winter, Ofgem warns
August Graham – 3 October, 2022
Britain faces a “significant risk” of gas shortages this winter,
regulator Ofgem has warned as the supply from Russia to Europe has been all but
cut off.
The regulator said the country might
face a “gas supply emergency”, in a letter obtained by The Times.
Great Britain produces a lot of its
own gas, but the majority is still imported. It has pipeline connections to
Norway, which supplies a large amount of the country’s gas.
Due to the war in Ukraine and gas
shortages in Europe, there is a significant risk that gas shortages could occur
during the winter 2022/23 in Great Britain
Ofgem
Britain imported very little Russian
gas before the war, but will still be affected by the shortages likely to be
faced in Europe.
During winter cold snaps Britain
normally imports gas from storage sites in mainland Europe – it has very little
storage of its own. But now European countries are likely to need this gas
themselves after losing the supply from Russia.
Ofgem wrote: “Due to the war in
Ukraine and gas shortages in Europe, there is a significant risk that gas
shortages could occur during the winter 2022/23 in Great Britain.
“As a result, there is a possibility
that GB could enter into a gas supply emergency.”
More than eight in 10 UK households
use gas to heat their homes and more than 40% of the electricity generated in
Britain over the last year came from gas-powered plants.
If a potential supply emergency gets
bad enough this winter, these power plants, and other big gas users, might be
cut off temporarily, Ofgem said.
More
‘Significant risk’
of gas shortages this winter, Ofgem warns (msn.com)
Britain's
tax backdown bounces stocks and sterling
October 4, 2022 2:45 AM GMT+1Last Updated 3 hours
ago
SYDNEY, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Asian stocks bounced on Tuesday after
Britain scrapped bits of a controversial tax cut plan, tentatively improving
global market sentiment and rallying bonds and the pound.
In trade thinned by holidays
in China and Hong Kong, MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside
Japan (.MIAPJ0000PUS) rose 1%, led by a 2.5%
gain in Australia.
Japan's Nikkei (.N225) rose
2.6%. Sterling drifted up to an almost two-week high of $1.1343, making for a
bounce now of almost 10% from a record low hit last week after plans for
unfunded tax cuts unleashed chaos on British assets.
The about-face
... will not have a huge impact on the overall UK fiscal situation in our
view," said NatWest Markets' head of economics and markets strategy John
Briggs.
"(But)
investors took it as a signal that the UK government could and is at least
partially willing to walk back from its intentions that so disrupted markets
over the past week."
Investors
also took heart from stability at the long end of the gilt market, even though
emergency purchases from the Bank of England were only relatively modest.
More
Britain's
tax backdown bounces stocks and sterling | Reuters
'Markets could break': Eurozone on brink of financial
meltdown as inflation surges
Analysts say stresses within the EU's
financial system have already reached levels last seen over a decade ago during
the sovereign debt crisis.
By JOHN VARGA 13:41, Sun, Oct 2, 2022 |
UPDATED: 13:47, Sun, Oct 2, 2022
The eurozone is standing
on the brink of a financial meltdown that could rival the 2008 debt crisis. The
warning comes amid surging energy costs that have sent inflation across the
bloc to a record 10 percent. Analysts say stresses within the EU's financial
system have already
reached levels last seen over a decade ago during the sovereign debt crisis.
The European Central
Bank's financial stress index has risen steeply since the beginning of 2022.
The indicator examines and
measures strains in bonds, stocks and money markets across the region.
Over the course of the
year, the stress index has jumped from below 0.1 to almost 0.5 today, according
to Saxo Bank.
During the previous debt
crisis, the index exceeded 0.6.
Experts believe the ECB
may be forced to follow the Bank of England's lead and intervene in markets to
buy up distressed assets.
Christopher Dembik, head
of macroeconomic research at Saxo Bank, said: "If it continues increasing,
it could reach in a matter of weeks levels of 2011 – at the peak of the
European sovereign debt crisis.
Tension is increasing in
global credit markets, especially in the eurozone."
He added: "We are now
in a situation where the markets could easily break.
"We cannot exclude
that other central banks will step in, following the examples of the Bank of
England, if financial conditions continue to deteriorate.”
The eurozone's last debt
crisis began in 2008 with the collapse of banks in Iceland.
The crisis soon spread
throughout the EU and was most keenly felt in Greece, Spain, Ireland, Portugal,
and Cyprus.
The aforementioned EU
countries were unable to repay or refinance their government debt.
More
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.
5
signs the world is headed for a recession
October
2, 2022 7:21 PM
Around the world, markets are flashing warning
signs that the global economy is teetering on a cliff’s edge.
The question of a recession
is no longer if, but when.
Over the past week, the pulse
of those flashing red lights quickened as markets grappled with the reality —
once speculative, now certain — that the Federal Reserve will press on with its most aggressive monetary tightening
campaign in decades to wring inflation from the US economy. Even if that means
triggering a recession. And even if it comes at the expense of consumers and
businesses far beyond US borders.
There’s now a 98% chance of a global recession, according to research firm Ned
Davis, which brings some sobering historical credibility to the table. The
firm’s recession probability reading has only been this high twice before — in
2008 and 2020.
Consumer spending accounts for
roughly two-thirds of US gross domestic product. That growth engine is
beginning to sputter. - Richard B. Levine/Levine Roberts/ZUMA Press
When economists warn of a downturn,
they’re typically basing their assessment on a variety of indicators.
Let’s unpack five key trends:
The mighty US dollar
The US
dollar plays an outsized role in the global economy and international finance.
And right now, it is stronger than it’s been in two decades.
The simplest explanation comes back to the Fed.
When the US central bank raises interest rates, as it
has been doing since March, it makes the dollar more appealing to investors
around the world.
In any economic climate, the dollar is seen as a safe
place to park your money. In a tumultuous climate — a global pandemic, say, or
a war in Eastern Europe — investors have even more incentive to purchase
dollars, usually in the form of US government bonds.
While a strong dollar is a nice perk for
Americans traveling abroad, it creates headaches for just
about everyone else.
The value of the UK pound, the euro, China’s yuan and
Japan’s yen, among many others, has tumbled. That makes it more expensive for
those nations to import essential items like food and fuel.
In response, central banks that are already fighting
pandemic-induced inflation wind up raising rates higher and faster to shore up
the value of their own currencies.
The dollar’s strength also creates destabilizing
effects for Wall Street, as many of the S&P 500 companies do business
around the world. By one estimate from
Morgan Stanley, each 1% rise in the dollar index has a
negative 0.5% impact on S&P 500 earnings.
More
5 signs the world
is headed for a recession (msn.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.
Something different today, but
something important too.
Cambridge
cancer breakthrough may prompt rethink of metastasis
Michael Irving October 02, 2022
Cancer’s
ability to spread through the body is one of its most devastating tricks.
Scientists at Cambridge have now identified a protein that plays a key role in
metastasis, which not only hints at a new potential treatment but reveals for
the first time that this process isn’t unique to cancer.
No matter
where in the body it originates, cancer can eventually begin to colonize other
organs and tissues through a process known as metastasis, which makes it much harder to treat. Unfortunately, there’s
still much about metastasis that scientists don’t understand, but ongoing
research is continually uncovering mechanisms that could lead to new
therapy options.
In the new study,
Cambridge scientists discovered not just a new mechanism for metastasis, but
completely recontextualized its role. It’s long been thought that metastasis
was an abnormal process that arises in cancer, but the new study found that
it’s a process used by healthy cells as well – cancer just hijacks it for its
own purposes.
The team made the
discovery while investigating a cellular structure known as sodium leak
channel, non-selective (NALCN). These channels are located on cell membranes
and control how salt goes in and out of the cell. In the new study, the
researchers found that NALCN also regulates the release of cells from tissues
into the bloodstream, where they can be taken up by other organs and tissues.
In tests in mice,
the scientists blocked the function of the NALCN protein, and found that it
triggered metastasis in stomach, intestinal and pancreatic cancers. That
suggests this could be a new target for preventing metastasis, potentially
improving outcomes for patients with cancer.
But the most
surprising discovery came when the team tested the technique in mice without
cancer. Blocking NALCN also caused healthy cells to migrate away from their
original organs to other ones – pancreatic cells, for instance, moved to the
kidney and became healthy kidney cells instead.
“These findings are
among the most important to have come out of my lab for three decades,” said
Professor Richard Gilbertson, Group Leader of the study. “Not only have we
identified one of the elusive drivers of metastasis, but we have also turned a
commonly held understanding of this on its head, showing how cancer hijacks
processes in healthy cells for its own gains. If validated through further research,
this could have far-reaching implications for how we prevent cancer from
spreading and allow us to manipulate this process to repair damaged organs.”
The team now plans to
investigate ways to take advantage of this discovery to prevent metastasis, including
repurposing existing drugs.
The research was published in
the journal Nature
Genetics.
Source: University of Cambridge
Cambridge cancer
breakthrough may prompt rethink of metastasis (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.
World's
largest flow battery connected to the grid in China
Nick Lavars October 02, 2022
The Chinese city of Dalian has just switched on a
world-leading new energy storage system, expected to supply enough power for up
to 200,000 residents each day. With an initial capacity of 400 MWh and output
of 100 MW, the Dalian Flow Battery Energy Storage Peak-shaving Power Station
will serve as a power bank for the city and assist in its uptake of renewable
energy sources such as wind and solar.
As a vanadium flow battery, the new energy storage system
differs from the common lithium-ion batteries in use in today's electric
vehicles and smartphones. They use massive tanks to store chemical energy in
the form of liquid electrolytes, which can be converted into electricity by
passing the fluid through a special membrane.
This makes flow batteries a relatively cheap energy storage
solution, and an attractive one when it comes to renewable energy as they can
store it away for months at a time. This lends itself well to the storage of
wind and solar, which can be intermittent by nature, and could see these
sources leveraged to help cities deal with spikes in energy demand.
We’ve seen this idea explored through a 120-MW
redox flow battery built
in underground salt caverns, supplying enough daily power for 75,000 homes in
Jemgum in northwestern Germany. The Dalian Flow Battery Energy Storage
Peak-shaving Power Station won’t quite meet this output to begin with, but is
designed to be scaled up and eventually output 200 MW with an 800-MWh capacity.
More
World's largest
flow battery connected to the grid in China (newatlas.com)
This is the way
things are, and the Game has been so successful that, like everything, it will
get more and more successful until it stops being successful.
George Goodman, aka Adam Smith, The Money
Game. 1968.
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