Baltic Dry Index. 1189 -39 Brent Crude 87.14
Spot Gold 1746 US 2 Year Yield 4.51 +0.08
Coronavirus
Cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,100
Coronavirus Cases 21/11/22 World 643,136,385
Deaths 6,626,124
Why did I take up stealing? To
live better, to own things I couldn't afford, to acquire this good taste that
you now enjoy and which I should be very reluctant to give up.
Ebenezer Squid, with apologies to Cary Grant. To Catch A Thief.
In the stock casinos, rising caution. How far will the FTX fraud spread?
How much damage has rising global interest rates already done to future corporate profits? How much higher will interest rates go?
Will the dress up stocks Santa Claus year-end rally, this year turn into a year-end Santa Claus bust, as everyone wants out ahead of the Great Biden Bust of 2023?
In China, is a new wave of Covid-19 already spiralling out of control?
In Europe, just how bad will the arriving
winter be for a European economy already in recession? Continental Europe still
seems to want to commit economic suicide over Ukraine.
European markets
head for lower open as investors gauge economic outlook
UPDATED MON, NOV 21 2022 12:31 AM
EST
European
markets are heading for a lower open on Monday as investors continue to assess
inflationary pressures and the possible trajectory of central bank interest
rates.
European markets closed higher on
Friday last week as investors continued to assess the trajectory of monetary
policy after some tough statements from U.S. Federal Reserve officials.
Global markets have taken some
heart from lower-than-expected consumer and wholesale inflation prints recently,
prompting bets that the U.S. central bank would have to slow its aggressive
interest rate hikes.
However, St. Louis Fed President
James Bullard said
last Thursday that “the policy rate is not yet in a zone that
may be considered sufficiently restrictive” and suggested that the terminal
federal funds rate could reach the 5% to 7% range, higher than the market is
currently pricing.
Overnight, shares
in the Asia-Pacific mostly fell on Monday amid growing Covid
concerns in China as its central bank kept
the benchmark lending rates, or loan prime rates, on hold.
Meanwhile, S&P
500 futures fell slightly Sunday evening ahead of another batch
of retail earnings to kick off a shortened week in the U.S. ahead of the
Thanksgiving holiday.
European
markets open to close, stock moves, news and data (cnbc.com)
Asia
shares, oil prices skid on China COVID outbreaks
November 21, 2022 4:27 AM GMT
SYDNEY, Nov 21
(Reuters) - Asian share markets and oil prices slipped on Monday as investors
fretted about the economic fallout from fresh COVID-19 restrictions in China,
with resulting risk aversion benefiting bonds and the dollar.
Beijing's
most populous district urged residents to stay at home on Monday as the city's
COVID case numbers rose, while at least one district in Guangzhou was locked
down for five days. read more read more
The rash of
outbreaks across the country has been a setback to hopes for an early easing in
strict pandemic restrictions, one reason cited for a 10% slide in oil prices
last week.
Chinese
blue chips (.CSI300) fell 1.3% in early trade,
dragging MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan (.MIAPJ0000PUS) down 1.4%. Japan's Nikkei (.N225) was
flat and South Korea (.KS11) lost 1.2%.
S&P
500 futures were down 0.3%, while Nasdaq futures slipped 0.2%. EUROSTOXX 50
futures lost 0.4% and FTSE futures 0.2%.
The U.S.
Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday combined with the distraction of the soccer
World Cup could make for thin trading, while Black Friday sales will offer an
insight into how consumers are faring and the outlook for retail stocks.
Minutes
of the U.S. Federal Reserve's last meeting are due on Wednesday and could sound
hawkish, judging by how officials have pushed back against market easing in
recent days.
Atlanta Federal
Reserve President Raphael Bostic on Saturday said he was ready to step down to
a half-point hike in December but also underlined that rates would likely stay
high for longer than markets expected. read more
Futures
imply an 80% chance of a rise of 50 basis points to 4.25-4.5% and a peak for
rates around 5.0-5.25%. They also have rate cuts priced in for late next year.
More
Asia
shares, oil prices skid on China COVID outbreaks | Reuters
Europe rushes to fill up on Russian diesel before ban begins
November 21, 2022 1:03
AM GMT
LONDON, Nov 21
(Reuters) - European traders are rushing to fill tanks in the region with
Russian diesel before an EU ban begins in February, as alternative sources
remain limited.
The
European Union will ban Russian oil product imports, on which it relies heavily
for its diesel, by Feb. 5. That will follow a ban on Russian crude taking
effect in December.
Russian
diesel loadings destined for the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp (ARA) storage
region rose to 215,000 bpd from Nov. 1 to Nov. 12, up by 126% from October,
Pamela Munger, senior market analyst at energy analytics firm Vortexa, said.
With few
immediate cost-effective alternatives, diesel from Russia has made up 44% of
Europe's total imports of the road fuel so far in November, compared with 39%
in October, Refinitiv data shows.
Although
Europe's reliance on the Russian fuel has fallen from more than 50% before
Moscow's February invasion of Ukraine, Russia is still the continent's largest
diesel supplier.
"The EU will
have to secure around 500-600 kb/d of diesel to replace the Russian volumes,
replacements will come from the US as well as east of Suez, primarily the
Middle East and India," Eugene Lindell, refining and products market
analyst at FGE, said.
The
Russian gasoil heading into ARA tanks is likely to be used or sold quickly as a
result of backwardation in Ice gasoil futures , where the current value is
higher than it will be in later months, Lars van Wageningen, at Dutch
consultancy Insights Global, said.
Part
of the influx comes as ICE Futures Europe bans low-sulphur gasoil of Russian
origin ahead of EU sanctions.
From Nov. 30,
traders must prove to ICE that no Russian product has entered any tanks in the
wider ARA region - including Flushing and Ghent - that will be used for January
delivery through the ICE futures contract.
Russian
gasoil can still arrive in ARA storage tanks in December, but it must be moved
to other tanks from which no delivery can be made, according to ICE.
More
Europe
rushes to fill up on Russian diesel before ban begins | Reuters
Finally, more on that FTX/Democrat Party, hedge
fund scam FTX. Why was it ever funded at all? Cui bono?
Collapsed
crypto exchange FTX owes top 50 creditors $3.1bn
November 20, 2022
Collapsed crypto exchange FTX has revealed it owes its 50 biggest creditors nearly $3.1bn, as it presses ahead with bankruptcy proceedings in the US.
The crypto bourse, formerly run by
disgraced founder Sam Bankman-Fried, said it owes around $1.45bn to its top 10
creditors alone, in court filings published yesterday, seen by Reuters.
FTX filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy
two weeks ago and has left around one million customers and investors facing
down billions of dollars of losses.
John Ray III, who previously oversaw
the bankruptcy proceedings of energy giant Enron, has been parachuted into
oversee its winding-up and described it as the worst instance of corporate
mismanagement he had seen.
“Never in my career have I seen such
a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of
trustworthy financial information as occurred here,” he wrote in a filing with
the Delaware bankruptcy court last week.
Under Ray, the firm has launched a
strategic review of its sprawling global assets and is preparing for the sale
or reorganisation of some businesses, in a bid to “begin to maximise
recoverable value for stakeholders.”
Ray said that some of the firms under
FTX’s umbrella “have solvent balance sheets, responsible management and
valuable franchises”.
The implosion of the firm has sent
shockwaves through the cryptocurrency market and sparked fears of contagion
across the industry.
Crypto lender Genesis has been among
the biggest firms caught up in the fallout and last week suspended withdrawals
from its website. Bosses at Genesis are reportedly scrambling to raise a $1bn
loan from investors, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Collapsed crypto exchange FTX owes top 50 creditors
$3.1bn (msn.com)
How Caroline Ellison Found Herself at the Center of the
FTX Crypto Collapse
As
CEO of Alameda Research, Ms. Ellison took a leading role in helping Sam
Bankman-Fried build the FTX empire
Nov. 20, 2022 5:30 am ET
----Prosecutors,
regulators and even FTX’s new CEO are
investigating what happened. Customers are losing hope they will
ever see their money again. Lawsuits have followed, and many
top employees have left. Ms. Ellison has
been fired along with Gary Wang and Nishad Singh. They were also top
deputies of Mr. Bankman-Fried’s.
Before
the crash, Mr. Bankman-Fried hugged the spotlight, promoting crypto and
lobbying for its interests in Washington, while Ms. Ellison remained in the
engine room. Alameda, a trading firm owned almost entirely by Mr.
Bankman-Fried, had one overarching purpose: Make money. Ms. Ellison was tasked
with keeping it running.
In
a handful of podcasts and other public appearances, Ms. Ellison was quick to
summarize her rapid ascent as almost accidental. She joined Wall Street
straight from graduating Stanford University in 2016, though the move was less
a calling than an answer to the question she found herself asking in college:
What are math majors supposed to do with their lives, anyway?
It
was at her first job, at the quant-trading powerhouse Jane Street Capital, that
she met another 20-something trader, Mr. Bankman-Fried. Like her, he had been
raised by two professors. Like her, he spoke highly of a movement called
“effective altruism,” or the idea of making big money to give away.
When
Mr. Bankman-Fried left
to start Alameda, Ms. Ellison soon followed in what she called “a blind
leap into the unknown.” She was still barely out of college—but she was also
one of the more experienced traders there, she said in an FTX podcast in 2020.
More
How
Caroline Ellison Landed at the Center of the FTX Crypto Collapse - WSJ
‘There is no such
thing as a free lunch.’ 4 lessons for crypto investors from the FTX collapse
After a difficult year for digital assets, many
investors were blindsided by the recent collapse
of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, as customers wait for answers about
an estimated $1
billion to $2 billion of missing funds.
While the future of the company —
and investigations into the vanishing assets — are in limbo as FTX enters
bankruptcy protection, experts say there are key lessons for crypto
investors.
“The FTX collapse provides harsh
reminders that ‘there is no such thing as a free lunch’ when trying to make a
quick buck in a still fairly new, unregulated financial industry,” said
certified financial planner Jon Ulin, CEO of Ulin & Co. Wealth Management
in Boca Raton, Florida.
You should invest “what you are willing to lose
100%, like in Vegas,” and “discretion and skepticism” should be exercised when
weighing assets and related products pitched
by “pro-athletes, celebrities and media personalities,” Ulin
said.
Here are four other lessons for
investors from FTX’s downfall.
More
4
lessons for cryptocurrency investors from the FTX collapse (cnbc.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.
Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk,
and Ken Griffin are sounding the alarm on a US recession. Here are 12 dire
economic warnings from elite commentators.
Sun,
20 November 2022 at 11:30 am
Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Ken
Griffin have sounded the alarm on a looming US recession, joining a chorus of
CEOs, investors, and academics predicting a prolonged economic downturn.
Carl Icahn, Jamie Dimon, and
Charlie Munger are also bracing for the economy to shrink and unemployment to
spike. These experts have flagged numerous growth headwinds, including the
Federal Reserve hiking interest rates to cool red-hot inflation, and the
Russia-Ukraine war and China's ongoing lockdowns disrupting global trade.
Here are 12 recent recession
warnings, lightly edited for length and clarity:
1. Jeff Bezos, Amazon's founder and
executive chairman:
"The economy does not look great right now. Things are slowing down, you're
seeing layoffs in many, many sectors. The probabilities say if we're not in a
recession right now, we're likely to be in one very soon. Take as much risk off
the table as you can. Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst."
"The probabilities in this
economy tell you to batten down the hatches."
2. Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, SpaceX,
and Twitter:
"There's going to be
probably a year or two of serious recession."
"Frankly, the economic
picture ahead is dire, especially for a company like ours that is so dependent
on advertising in a challenging economic climate."
3. Ken Griffin, CEO of Citadel:
"For the Fed to truly
conquer inflation here, we're going to put unemployment somewhere in the mid-4%
range. I find it hard to believe we're not going to have a recession at that
point in time, sometime in the middle to back half of 2023."
4. Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's
business partner and vice-chairman of Berkshire Hathaway:
"I think the Fed is willing
to have a little recession in order not to have out-of-control inflation.
That's what they're supposed to do. They're supposed to be the one guy at the
party that doesn't hang around the punch bowl getting drunk."
5. Carl Icahn, chairman of Icahn
Enterprises:
"Whenever you have higher
interest rates that have moved as they have here, you have an inverted yield
curve, Treasuries at close to a 5% yield — you are going to have a recession.
And I think we do have a recession already. There's a lot of things that have
to happen to turn this economy around, to get us out of a recession."
More
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.
More on that Great Covid-19 Vaccination scandal in the USA and elsewhere. We were only joking, no really, honestly, cross my heart.
FDA Says Telling People Not to Take Ivermectin for COVID-19 Was
Just a Recommendation
By November
19, 2022 Updated: November 19, 2022
The
U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) telling people to “stop” taking ivermectin
for COVID-19 was informal and just a recommendation, government lawyers argued
during a recent hearing.
“The
cited statements were not directives. They were not mandatory. They were
recommendations. They said what parties should do. They said, for example, why
you should not take ivermectin to treat COVID-19. They did not say you may not
do it, you must not do it. They did not say it’s prohibited or it’s unlawful.
They also did not say that doctors may not prescribe ivermectin,” Isaac Belfer,
one of the lawyers, told the court during the Nov. 1 hearing in federal court
in Texas.
“They
use informal language, that is true,” he also said, adding that, “it’s
conversational but not mandatory.”
The
hearing was held in a case brought by three doctors who say the FDA illegally interfered with their
ability to prescribe medicine to their patients when it issued statements on
ivermectin, an anti-parasitic that has shown positive results in some trials
against COVID-19.
Ivermectin is approved by the FDA but not for COVID-19. Drugs
are commonly used for non-approved purposes in the United States; the practice
is known as off-label treatment.
The FDA
created a webpage in
2021 titled “Why You Should Not Use Ivermectin to Treat or Prevent COVID-19”
and later posted a link to the page on Twitter while
writing: “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.” A
second post stated: “Hold your horses, y’all. Ivermectin may be trending,
but it still isn’t authorized or approved to treat COVID-19.”
In a
separate page, the FDA said: “Q: Should I take ivermectin to prevent or treat
COVID-19? A: No.”
Those
actions interfered with the doctors’ practice of medicine, violating the laws
including the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, the lawsuit alleges.
It
asked the court to rule the actions unlawful and bar the FDA from directing or
opining as to whether ivermectin should be used to treat COVID-19.
Jared
Kelson, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, told the court during the
hearing that that informal claim “doesn’t explain the language they actually
used: ‘Stop it. Stop it with the ivermectin.'”
The
FDA’s actions “clearly convey that this is not an acceptable way to treat these
patients,” he argued.
Plaintiffs
in the case include Dr. Paul Marik, who began utilizing ivermectin in his COVID-19
treatment protocol in 2020 while he was chief of pulmonary and critical care
medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School and director of the intensive care
unit at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital.
More
China
announces 1st COVID-19 death in almost 6 months
November 20, 2022
BEIJING (AP) — China on Sunday announced its first new
death from COVID-19 in nearly half a year as strict new measures are imposed in Beijing and across the country to ward against new
outbreaks.
The death of the 87-year-old Beijing man was the first
reported by the National Health Commission since May 26, bringing the total
death toll to 5,227. The previous death was reported in Shanghai, which
underwent a major springtime surge in cases.
China on Sunday announced 24,215 new cases detected over
the previous 24 hours, the vast majority of them asymptomatic.
While China has an overall vaccination rate of more than
92% having received at least one dose, that number is considerably lower among
the elderly — particularly those over age 80 — where it falls to just 65%. The
commission did not give details on the vaccination status of the latest
deceased.
That vulnerability is considered one reason why China has
mostly kept its borders closed and is sticking with its rigid “zero-COVID” policy that seeks to wipe out infections through
lockdowns, quarantines, case tracing and mass testing, despite the impact on normal
life and the economy and rising public anger at the authorities.
More
China announces 1st COVID-19 death in almost 6 months
| AP News
Several
Beijing districts shut schools as China COVID cases rise
November
21, 2022 5:12 AM GMT
BEIJING, Nov 21
(Reuters) - Students in schools across several Beijing districts buckled down
for online classes on Monday after officials called for residents in some of
its hardest-hit areas to stay home, as COVID cases in China's capital and
nationally ticked higher.
China
is fighting numerous COVID-19 flare ups, from Zhengzhou in central Henan
province to Chongqing in the southwest and for Sunday reported 26,824 new local
cases, nearing the country's pandemic peak in April. It also recorded two
deaths in Beijing, up from one on Saturday, which was China's first since late
May.
Guangzhou, a
southern city of nearly 19 million people that is battling the largest of
China's recent outbreaks, ordered a five-day lockdown for its Baiyun district,
its most populous. It also suspended dine-in services and shut night clubs and
theatres in Tianhe, home to the city's main business district.
The
latest wave is testing China's resolve to stick to adjustments it has made to
its zero-COVID policy, which calls for cities to be more targeted in their
clampdown measures and steer away from catch-all lockdowns and testing that
have strangled the economy and frustrated residents.
More
Several
Beijing districts shut schools as China COVID cases rise | Reuters
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.
Researchers turn asphaltene into graphene for composites
NOVEMBER 18, 2022
Asphaltenes, a byproduct of crude oil production,
are a waste material with potential. Rice University scientists are determined
to find it by converting the carbon-rich resource into useful graphene.
Muhammad
Rahman, an assistant research professor of materials science and
nanoengineering, is employing Rice's unique flash Joule heating process to convert asphaltenes instantly into
turbostratic (loosely aligned) graphene and mix it into composites for thermal,
anti-corrosion and 3D-printing applications.
The
process makes good use of material otherwise burned for reuse as fuel or
discarded into tailing ponds and landfills. Using at least some of the world's
reserve of more than 1 trillion barrels of asphaltene as
a feedstock for graphene would be good for the environment as well.
"Asphaltene
is a big headache for the oil industry,
and I think there will be a lot of interest in this," said Rahman, who
characterized the process as both a scalable and sustainable way to
reduce carbon
emissions from burning
asphaltene.
Rahman
is a lead corresponding author of the paper in Science Advances co-led
by Rice chemist James Tour, whose lab developed flash Joule heating, materials
scientist Pulickel Ajayan and Md Golam Kibria, an assistant professor of
chemical and petroleum engineering at the University of Calgary, Canada.
Asphaltenes
are 70% to 80% carbon already. The Rice lab combines it with about 20% of
carbon black to add conductivity and flashes it with a jolt of electricity,
turning it into graphene in less than a second. Other elements in the
feedstock, including hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and sulfur, are vented away as
gases.
More
Researchers turn
asphaltene into graphene for composites (phys.org)
“I
think we agree, the past is over.”
President
George W. Bush.
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