Baltic Dry Index. 1356 +19 Brent Crude 95.15
Spot Gold 1709 US 2 Year Yield 4.67 -0.05
Coronavirus
Cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,100
Coronavirus Cases 09/11/22 World 638,463,009
Deaths 6,608,179
“Democracy is
a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.”
As I write this morning it looks like the Republicans have taken control of the House but not the Senate which probably leads to two years of political stalemate in US politics.
That likely means scaled back inflationary hard left spending plans, which just might make it easier for the Fed, the US central bank, to scale back its future interest rate hikes or at the least to end them a bit earlier.
But with our new global recession already getting underway, inflation caused strikes underway across Europe, and a couple more interest rate hikes to come in Europe and the USA, any bear market Santa Claus relief rally is likely to be “transitory.”
Coming up next in short order, a debt
servicing and repayment problem, plus an all too likely strong dollar currency
crisis.
Asia markets
mixed as U.S. awaits midterm results; China’s producer prices dropped in
October
UPDATED WED, NOV 9 2022 12:31 AM EST
Asia-Pacific
stocks were mixed as investors await the results of the United
States midterm elections and China’s annualized producer
prices fell for the first time in October since December 2020.
The Hang Seng index in
Hong Kong lost 1.48% In mainland China, the Shanghai Composite shed
0.43% while the Shenzhen
Component was 0.625% lower. The Chinese yuan weakened past
7.25-levels after its latest economic data release.
The Nikkei 225 in
Japan lost 0.55% and the Topix was 0.49% lower, while the Kospi in South Korea
gained 0.96%. In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 rose
0.58%.
Overnight on Wall Street,
U.S. stocks are coming off three-straight days of gains. The bounce for
equities may be partly due to the elections, where investors are expecting
Republicans to gain ground and create gridlock in Washington.
European markets
head for lower open as investors await U.S. midterm results
UPDATED WED, NOV 9 2022 12:26 AM EST
European
markets are heading for a lower open on Wednesday as global investors await the
results of the U.S. midterm elections.
The midterm elections will
determine whether Democrats keep their slim majorities in the House and Senate,
or if Republicans will seize control of one or both chambers of the
legislature, an outcome that would mean there’s a significant power shift in Washington
and the potential for gridlock.
The outcome could make all the
difference for President Joe
Biden, whose legislative hopes rest on whether Democrats can push
his agenda through a hyper-partisan Congress.
Overnight, U.S. stock
futures were basically flat while Asia-Pacific stocks were mixed as investors
awaited the results of the midterms.
European
markets: Investors watch U.S. midterm results (cnbc.com)
China’s Covid
controls are hurting more of the economy
BEIJING — China’s Covid situation is only getting
worse, preventing the country from stamping out the virus and relaxing
controls.
The daily case count surged
to six-month highs over the weekend. Guangzhou indefinitely
delayed its auto show that was supposed to kick off next week. And schools in
Beijing are waffling over whether to shift classes online, according to social
media.
As of Monday, China’s Covid
controls negatively affected 12.2% of national GDP — up from 9.5% a week ago,
according to Nomura’s model. The Japanese bank said more than one-fifth of
China’s population was subject to some kind of control measures.
The southern province
of Guangdong is the hardest hit, with cases mostly concentrated in one
district. Recent Covid infections have been reported in more than 20 of China’s
31 province-level regions.
“One thing is very
clear, a lot of business events have been cancelled and postponed,” Klaus
Zenkel, vice president at the EU Chamber of Commerce in China and chairman of
its South China chapter, said Tuesday.
“People don’t dare to
travel. Too many restrictions,” he said, noting how companies from Guangzhou
and Shenzhen “cannot even join” China’s international import expo in Shanghai
this week. “How to maintain customer relations when we can’t meet face to
face?”
It was not
immediately clear whether there was any impact on factory production in the
South China region. China’s Ministry of Commerce did not immediately respond to
a CNBC request for comment.
The heightened impact of Covid
on China’s economy came during a week in which many investors
speculated that China would soon relax its stringent Covid policy.
Officials dispelled the rumors on
Saturday, affirming at a press conference that the current zero-Covid policy
remains.
“We continue to believe that, while
Beijing may fine-tune some of its Covid measures in coming weeks, those
fine-tuning measures could be more than offset by local officials’ tightening
of the [zero-Covid strategy],” Nomura’s Chief China Economist Ting Lu and a
team said in a report Monday.
More
China's Covid controls are hurting more of the economy (cnbc.com)
In other news, is it finally good night for
cryptocurrencies?
Crypto
Crash Intensifies Amid Downfall Of Industry's 'White Knight' Bankman-Fried
Nov 8, 2022,04:03pm EST
Bitcoin
fell to a two-year low and the crypto market slid after a shocking run on
billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX cryptocurrency exchange and subsequent pact
for an acquisition from rival Binance, as the crypto industry shook from the
collapse of one of its foremost institutions.
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao announced early
Tuesday that his company signed a letter of intent to acquire FTX due to a
“significant liquidity crunch” at Bankman-Fried’s firm.
The instability at one of crypto’s most trusted institutions sent related assets tumbling, and bitcoin tanked 11% to $18,300 Tuesday, a nearly 75% loss from its peak of just under $68,000 last November.
Other currencies crumbled as well, with the second-most valuable crypto token Ethereum falling 16% Tuesday and FTX’s coin falling a whopping 79%, arriving at a market capitalization of just over $1 billion compared to its $14 billion valuation in March.
Publicly-traded crypto stocks tanked, with shares of exchange Coinbase and
MicroStrategy, a tech company heavily exposed to bitcoin, each falling 10% or
more Tuesday.
The crypto collapse coincides with a generally strong time for the stock
market: The S&P 500 rose 0.6% Tuesday and is up 6% over the last month,
compared to respective 6% and 1% losses for bitcoin and ethereum.
$6
billion. That’s the amount of withdrawals requested by FTX users between
Saturday and early Tuesday, Bankman-Fried wrote in a note to employees viewed
by Reuters. The FTX boss promised in a
Tuesday tweet “all assets will be covered 1:1” but it “may take a bit to
settle.”
KEY BACKGROUND
Binance’s
helping hand comes after a bitter back-and-forth between
Zhao and Bankman-Fried spurred FTX’s collapse, with Zhao announcing Sunday
his firm would sell all of its FTX holdings due to “recent revelations,” which
Bankman-Fried dismissed as a
“competitor...trying to go after us with false rumors.” The so-called “crypto winter” has
loomed over much of 2022, marked by bitcoin’s falter, widespread layoffs and
bankruptcies at several notable firms, including Three Arrows Capital and
Celsius. But the 30-year-old Bankman-Fried had previously been a massive
stabilizing force in the industry, with his FTX extending $650 million to
embattled crypto lender BlockFi in July, entering an agreement to acquire the
company, and offered a $200
million credit line to Voyager Digital in June.
CRUCIAL QUOTE
“Today is
a bad day in crypto,” OANDA analyst Edward Moya wrote in a Tuesday note. “This
is a major setback for many investors in cryptos who viewed [Bankman-Fried] as
a white knight and one of the leaders in the space that was supposed to thrive
once we got beyond this crypto winter.”
TANGENT
Bankman-Fried donated $39.9
million to Democratic causes ahead of Tuesday’s midterm elections, placing him
among the 10 largest individual
political donors in the country.
Crypto
Crash Intensifies Amid Downfall Of Industry's 'White Knight' Bankman-Fried
(forbes.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.
Scorching
inflation raises fears of Christmas spending slump
TUESDAY 08 NOVEMBER 2022
6:00 AM
Scorching inflation hobbling Brits’
finances has triggered a spending squeeze that could bleed into Christmas,
research out today reveals.
Surveys out from Barclaycard and the British Retail Consortium (BRC) show retail sales volumes likely fell in October.
While the organisations measured a jump in consumer spending of 3.5 per cent and 1.6 per cent respectively, when accounting for inflation, which climbed to a 40-year high of 10.1 per cent in October, spending likely dropped.
The increases are “being driven by
inflationary pressures and [do] not tell the true picture of sales volumes
dropping as consumers purchase fewer products per shop,” Paul Martin, UK head
of retail at KPMG, who helped compile the BRC’s report, said.
Discretionary spending is undergoing
the biggest pullback, driven by consumers’ budgets being gobbled up by higher
food, energy and mortgage bills. Essentials spending climbed 5.5 per cent over
the last year, Barclaycard said.
Hospitality businesses are on course
to be hit hardest by Brits tightening their belts due to spending on
non-essentials typically being the first thing to go to shore up finances.
Bars, pubs and clubs notched a 1.7
per cent rise in demand, but, excluding September’s poor reading, that would
have been the smallest jump since March 2021, Barclaycard found.
Businesses hoping for a Christmas spending surge to boost their finances could be disappointed, raising concerns over the health of the UK’s drinking holes, cinemas, theatres and other leisure and hospitality firms, which are still grappling with legacy Covid-19 debt.
---- “Retailers
are facing possibly their toughest festive season in a decade as shoppers look
to trade down, search out bargains and purchase less to meet the economic
challenges ahead,” Martin added.
Experts also said consumers could be
mothballing purchases until black Friday on 25 November to bag themselves a
bargain.
“With November black Friday sales
just around the corner, many people look to be delaying spending, particularly
on bigger purchases,” Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the BRC, said.
More
Scorching inflation raises fears of Christmas spending slump (cityam.com)
Household grocery bills 'rise by almost £40' in a month
8 November, 2022
The cost of the average annual grocery shop has risen by almost £40 in just one month, according to an industry report which is warning it is too early to say when food price inflation will peak.
Kantar Worldpanel reported a fresh
record grocery inflation figure of 14.7% for the four weeks to 30 October,
saying that shoppers now faced paying an average £682 a year more for their
groceries, on a same-selection basis, compared to 12 months ago.
The sum was £643 the previous month,
based on a grocery inflation figure of 13.9%.
There was also strong evidence to
support a claim by Sainsbury's last week that people were eating at home more
to keep costs down as they prepared to face the impact from record winter
energy bills.
Kantar reported a 5.2% leap in
grocery sales over the 12 weeks to the end of October - the fastest rate of
growth since April 2021.
---- Careful budgeting
was very clear within Kantar's figures.
Its report said that sales of
supermarkets' own label goods sales were 10.3% higher during the past four
weeks, while demand for the cheapest ranges was 42% up.
Fraser McKevitt, head of retail and
consumer insight at Kantar said: "Yet again, we have a new record high
figure for grocery price inflation and it's too early right now to call the
top.
"Consumers face a £682 jump in
their annual grocery bill if they continue to buy the same items and just over
a quarter of all households (27%) now say they're struggling financially, which
is double the proportion we recorded last November.
"Nine in 10 of this group say
higher food and drink prices are a major concern, second only to energy bills,
so it's clear just how
much grocery inflation is hitting people's wallets and adding to their domestic
worries."
Kantar said that dairy and dog food
continued to be among products rising the highest in percentage terms.
Its data also showed that 10% of
households purchased a pumpkin ahead of Halloween this October, while 700,000
fewer Christmas puddings were bought in advance of December.
Household grocery bills 'rise by almost £40' in a month (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
Corne
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.
Vaccine confidence 'another victim of the
COVID-19 pandemic', study finds
Researchers
found a fall in confidence in nearly one in four participants since 2020,
regardless of their age, gender, religious belief, education or ethnicity.
Monday 7 November 2022 12:37, UK
Confidence in
vaccines has declined "significantly" since the start of the COVID
pandemic, according to a new study.
Researchers from the
University of Portsmouth carried out two anonymous surveys in the winters of
2019 and 2022 to gauge people's attitudes to vaccinations and to look at what
factors cause hesitancy and refusal.
After questioning more
than 1,000 adults, they found that the post-pandemic group was considerably
less confident in vaccines than the pre-pandemic group.
The paper, published in
the medical journal Vaccine, showed a fall in confidence in nearly one in four
participants since 2020, regardless of their age, gender, religious belief, education
or ethnicity.
Dr
Alessandro Siani, associate head of the School of Biological Sciences at the
University of Portsmouth, said: "While vaccine hesitancy is not a new
phenomenon, COVID-19 vaccines
have been met with particular hostility despite the overwhelming scientific
evidence of their safety and effectiveness.
"This isn't
just among conspiracy theorists though, but also those who don't consider
themselves 'anti-vaxxers' and had supported other vaccination campaigns in the
past."
Participants were
asked how much they agreed with statements including "Vaccines are
safe", "I think vaccines should be a compulsory practice",
"I believe if I get vaccinated it would benefit the wellbeing of
others" and "Vaccines are a necessity for our health and
wellbeing".
In both surveys
participants who held religious beliefs were significantly more
vaccine-hesitant than atheist and agnostic ones, and individuals from black and
Asian backgrounds were more hesitant than those of white ethnicities.
However, the
researchers say that gender showed no association with vaccine confidence.
More
Vaccine confidence 'another victim of the COVID-19 pandemic', study finds | UK News | Sky News
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.
New
charging approach could extend battery life by at least 20%
Loz Blain November 07, 2022
The many
cells that make up a lithium battery pack are not all equal; some will degrade
and die faster than others. New research out of Stanford has found that the
whole battery can live much longer if each cell gets an individual charging
treatment.
There are
many reasons why individual cells in a pack might become weaker than others.
Maybe there's variances in manufacturing or materials. Maybe some are more
exposed to heat sources than others, or located in spots that are harder to
cool. Either way, the average single battery cell lasts longer than the average
battery pack, and it's these weak cells that take the whole ship down with
them.
“If not properly
tackled, cell-to-cell heterogeneities can compromise the longevity, health, and
safety of a battery pack and induce an early battery pack malfunction,” says
Simona Onori, an assistant professor of energy science engineering at the
Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, and author on a new study aiming to
keep lithium battery packs useful for longer.
Fast charging and
discharging events are stressful for battery cells, and while they're designed
to take that stress, these are the moments in which weaker cells suffer and
deteriorate the fastest. So the Stanford team wondered whether the standard
technique of charging all a battery's cells at the same rate might be
accelerating battery death.
The researchers
painstakingly designed a computer model to test their theory over an
accelerated time frame, resulting in what they believe is an unprecedented
level of simulation detail. They attempted to accurately represent the physical
and chemical state of a battery, as well as the changes that occur in relation
to a range of stresses across its whole lifespan, including both changes that
happen in seconds, all the way up to others that might take months or years.
“To the best of our
knowledge, no previous study has used the kind of high-fidelity,
multi-timescale battery model we created,” says Onori.
Using this model,
they ran a number of simulations comparing a standard, set-rate charging
approach against other approaches, in which each individual cell's capacity
served as an indicator of how much charge it could take. The theory here was
that only the strongest cells should be subjected to the highest stresses;
cells that had already begun to degrade early – for whatever reason – should be
treated much more gently, in the hope of staving off their eventual decline.
The team found that
by individually setting the charge rate of each cell, they could minimize
temperature increase and cell degradation, to the point where these packs could
handle at least 20% more charge/discharge cycles than a battery that charges
uniformly – even using frequent fast-charging.
more
New charging
approach could extend battery life by at least 20% (newatlas.com)
The ruling power is always faced with the
question, ‘In such and such circumstances, what would you do?’, whereas the
opposition is not obliged to take responsibility or make any real decisions.”
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