Baltic
Dry Index. 676 -01 Brent Crude 86.10
Spot Gold 1932 US 2 Year Yield 4.19 +0.02
Coronavirus
Cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,103
Coronavirus Cases 30/01/23 World 674,847,063
Deaths 6,759,381
In central banking as in diplomacy, style, conservative
tailoring, and an easy association with the affluent count greatly and results
far much less.
John Kenneth Galbraith.
It is central bank week, with the US Fed due to meet Tuesday and Wednesday, announcing their interest rate decision on Wednesday February 1.
The next day the BOE and ECB meet independently to set their key interest rates for the month.
All are expected to raise rates by a quarter of one percent, which is already priced into the stock and bond markets.
Of the three meetings, only the Fed’s meeting and Chairman Powell’s message afterwards is really important, though there seems little reason for him to roil the stock casinos with something unexpected.
European markets
head for lower open as investors focus on Fed meeting this week
UPDATED
MON, JAN 30 2023 12:35 AM EST
European markets are heading for a lower open
Monday as investors focus on the next U.S. Federal Reserve meeting that begins
Tuesday. The two-day meeting will conclude with the central bank’s Federal Open
Market Committee announcing its latest interest rate decision.
The Fed is expected to hike rates
by one-quarter of a percentage point. Investors will be looking for clues about
how much higher the central bank will take rates in the fight against
inflation.
Overnight in the
Asia-Pacific region, stocks traded mostly lower on Monday as shares
of Adani Group remained volatile after the conglomerate rebutted short seller
firm Hindenburg’s accusations of embezzlement and fraud.
U.S.
stock futures were modestly lower on Sunday evening as
investors geared up for a week of key corporate earnings and the possible
interest rate hike from the Fed.
European
markets open to close: stocks, data, earnings and news, Fed (cnbc.com)
Wall Street Breakfast: The Week
Ahead
Jan.
29, 2023 7:22 AM ET
A blockbuster week ahead includes the FOMC meeting, a key OPEC gathering, and a flurry of heavyweight earnings reports. The Federal Reserve is largely anticipated to fire off a 25-point rate hike to take the target federal funds rate to 4.50% to 4.75%. The consensus view is that the Fed will continue with its tightening policy and signal more rate hikes are still in the mix.
Seeking Alpha author Bill Conerly said in his Fed preview article that the transitory elements of inflation have come down, but the underlying problem of excessive stimulus remains.
OPEC oil ministers will meet online during the week to review levels of output. The Joint Ministerial Monitoring Committee of OPEC+ is expected to endorse the current oil output policy of the group.
Also on the macroeconomic calendar, the unemployment report at the end of the week is expected to show a rise in nonfarm payrolls of 225K with the end of a strike by University of California workers in late December a positive factor. Private payrolls are forecast to rise by 200K following a 220k increase in December.
Bank of America thinks behind the strong payroll print, some details will show cracks in the foundation, particularly in manufacturing.
The heavy
earnings slate includes reports from tech heavyweights Amazon (AMZN), Apple (AAPL), Alphabet (GOOG), and Meta Platforms (META). Investors are looking to see the focus return
back to growth after recession worries, high-profile job layoffs and supply
chain snarls dented sentiment.
More
Wall
Street Breakfast: The Week Ahead | Seeking Alpha
Stock futures
fall slightly ahead of busy week of earnings, Fed meeting
UPDATED
SUN, JAN 29 2023 6:49 PM EST
Stock futures were
modestly lower on Sunday evening as investors geared up for a week of key
corporate earnings and a possible interest rate hike from the Federal Reserve.
Futures tied to the
Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 56 points, or about 0.2%. S&P 500
futures ticked down 0.2%, and Nasdaq 100 futures edged lower by 0.2%.
Wall Street is
coming off a winning week as the stock market’s January rally continued. The
Nasdaq Composite gained 4.3% for the week, while the S&P 500 and Dow added
2.5% and 1.8%, respectively.
There are several
tests this week for this 2023 rally. A busy stretch of corporate earnings
season includes reports from McDonald’s and General Motors on Tuesday followed
by tech giants Apple, Meta Platforms, Amazon and Alphabet later in the week.
The Federal Open
Market Committee meets on Tuesday and Wednesday, when the Fed is expected to
hike rates by one-quarter of a percentage point. Investors will be looking for
clues about how much higher the central bank will take rates in the fight
against inflation.
“Inflation has
shocked the Fed to the upside; they need to be cautious not to inadvertently
lower rates too early. Don’t buy into this gobbledygook about a couple of rate
cuts being priced into December. For now, the Fed is only around to help
in the very unlikely event of a crash landing,” David Zervos, chief market
strategist at Jefferies, said in a note to clients.
Stock
futures fall slightly ahead of busy week of earnings, Fed meeting (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.
Inflation, economic volatility and war displace
climate and cyber risks as top threats to business
Mon Jan 30 2023 - 05:30
Inflation, macroeconomic volatility and geopolitical
conflict are now seen as the top threats to business here and abroad,
displacing climate change, cyber and health risks, according to PwC.
The firm’s annual survey of chief executives reflects the changed
priorities of business leaders after a year of turbocharged inflation and war
in Ukraine.
While CEOs are concerned about the prospects for both the Irish and
global economies, Irish CEOs are more upbeat about the economy and their own
company’s prospects than their international counterparts. An overwhelming 85
per cent of bosses here are confident their companies will see revenue growth
in the year ahead despite the uncertain economic backdrop.
At the same time more than half (52 per cent) believe that economic
growth in Ireland will decline over the next 12 months, while three-quarters of
global CEOs say the global economy will decline.
---- PwC’s annual CEO survey is now an established barometer
of company and business sentiment. As part of its 2023 report, it surveyed 87
Irish CEOs and 4,410 CEOs globally in October and November of last year.
More
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.
Pfizer Responds After Director
Says Company Is Developing Ways to Mutate COVID-19
January 28, 2023Updated: January 28, 2023
Pfizer late Jan. 28 responded to comments from a director at
the company about exploring
ways to mutate COVID-19 as a method to “preemptively develop new vaccines.”
“In the ongoing development of
the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, Pfizer has not conducted gain of function
or directed evolution research,” Pfizer said in a lengthy written statement after days of ignoring queries from The Epoch
Times and other outlets.
Pfizer did say that it has
conducted research “where the original SARS-CoV-2 virus has been used to
express the spike protein from new variants of concern.”
“This work is undertaken once a
new variant of concern has been identified by public health authorities. This
research provides a way for us to rapidly assess the ability of an existing
vaccine to induce antibodies that neutralize a newly identified variant of
concern. We then make this data available through peer reviewed scientific
journals and use it as one of the steps to determine whether a vaccine update
is required,” the company added.
Pfizer did say it has conducted
experiments in a level 3 laboratory.
----In its
statement, Pfizer did not dispute that Dr. Jordon Walker, who told a Project Veritas journalist that Pfizer is exploring how to “mutate” the COVID-19
virus, was or is a Pfizer employee.
Professional profiles for Walker,
which have since been taken down, listed him as a director of messenger RNA
research at the company. Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine utilizes messenger RNA. The
profiles also listed a Pfizer email address, and an email sent to that address
did not bounce back. A receptionist at Pfizer on Thursday also told The
Epoch Times that Walker had an internal company profile, but a different
receptionist on Friday said there was no listing for the doctor, indicating he
might have been terminated after the comments were made public.
Malone
Dr. Robert Malone, who helped
develop the messenger RNA technology, said that the experiments Pfizer
described met the definition of “gain of function.”
“Pfizer is basically
acknowledging that they are doing the same type of gain of function research
that Boston University was caught doing, but they are denying that it is gain
of function or directed evolution,” Malone wrote on Twitter.
Malone pointed to Pfizer’s
comment about taking the original SARS-CoV-2 virus and using it “to express the
spike protein from new variants of concern.”
Gain of function generally
describes experiments that aim to increase functions of a virus such as
transmissibility and virulence. Walker had said in his comments that the
work he was describing was not gain of function, but “directed evolution.”
Researchers with Boston
University revealed in 2022 that they had developed a strain of COVID-19
that killed 80 percent of mice infected with it.
The U.S. National Institutes of
Health (NIH) is supposed to oversee risky research conducted in or funded by
the United States but has faced criticism for only reviewing a handful of projects—none since 2019—under the oversight system.
----In a notice sent to Project Veritas,
Google-owned YouTube cited its medical misinformation policy, which bars
“claims about COVID-19 vaccination that contradict expert consensus from local
health authorities or the World Health Organization (WHO).”
A
Google spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email that the portion of the
video featuring O’Keefe stating that Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccines “are
ineffective against virus variants” violated the policy.
The
spokesperson did not immediately respond with a request for citations for the
vaccine being effective against variants.
More
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.
MightyFly's
new autonomous cargo drone carries 100 lb for 600 miles
Loz Blain January 24, 2023
Carrying up to 96 small USPS packages
in its internal cargo bay, the new Cento needs nothing more than two parking
spaces for takeoff, landing and automatic unloading. Bay Area company MightyFly
is working with the FAA to expand its long-range flight authorization.
The Cento
uses a large carbon-fiber airframe, weighing 355 lb (161 kg) when fully loaded
up with a 100-lb (45-kg) payload. It's a simple lift and cruise design, using
eight lift props mounted on propulsion pods that look a bit like landing skids,
as well as a pusher prop on the back for efficient cruise flight, supported on
high-mounted wings. As well as completely negating traffic, it covers distance
at a max speed of 150 mph (240 km/h), making it much faster than road transport.
The key to its
monster 600-mile (1,000-km) range is of course a long-endurance hybrid
powertrain; all the propulsion is electric, but a combustion engine burns
hydrocarbon fuel to keep the battery topped up during flight.
Its 13.1 ft by 16.7
ft (4 m by 5 m) footprint, says MightyFly, is smaller than two compact cars, so
once it's in commercial operation, anyone that can rope off a couple of parking
spaces, or another flat area that size, can accept deliveries or book pickups.
Indeed, you don't even need to open the thing up; it'll deploy an autonomous
conveyor belt from its cargo bay, so you can pick things up and drop them off
very easily.
It's been
in flight testing since December, says MightyFly. The FAA has granted the
company a Special Airworthiness Certificate allowing flight testing, but not
the ability to carry cargo in commercial operations at this stage. It's also
granted a Certificate of Authorization that gives MightyFly a 230-sq-mi
(596-sq-km) airspace and a 5,000-foot (1,500-m) altitude ceiling for testing
the transition from hover to cruise. The company hopes it'll soon be able to
demonstrate a 600-mile mission carrying a full 100 lb of cargo, which it says
is an unprecedented feat.
More
MightyFly's
new autonomous cargo drone carries 100 lb for 600 miles (newatlas.com)
Economics is extremely useful as a form of
employment for economists.
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