Saturday 25 February 2023

Special Update25/02/2023 Inflation – Higher For Longer.

 Baltic Dry Index. 883 +67      Brent Crude 83.16

Spot Gold 1811       U S 2 Year Yield 4.78 +0.12

Covid-19 cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000

Deaths 53,100

Covid-19 cases 25/02/23 World 679,503,595

Deaths 6,797,250

By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.

John Maynard Keynes.

Two days ago we posited, Rates or Inflation, higher for longer?

We didn’t have to wait long for the answer. Inflation it is and the longer Europe’s useless proxy war on Russia goes on, the less likely Ukraine is likely to continue to be the breadbasket of the world.

It doesn’t look like anything is going to get better anytime soon.

Stocks close lower Friday after hot inflation report; major averages log worst week in 2023: Live updates

UPDATED FRI, FEB 24 2023 5:29 PM EST

U.S. stocks fell sharply Friday, wrapping up their worst week of 2023, after the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge showed a stronger-than-expected increase in prices last month.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by 336.99 points, or 1.0%, to end at 32,816.92. The S&P 500 dropped 1% to close at 3,970.04. The Nasdaq Composite slid 1.7% to end at 11,394.94. The Dow fell as much as 510 points, or 1.54%, earlier in the trading session.

The major averages also ended the week with their biggest losses in 2023. The S&P 500 was down 2.7%, marking its worst week since Dec. 9. The Dow fell almost 3.0% this week — its fourth straight losing week. The Nasdaq closed 3.3% lower, notching its second negative week in three.

Boeing shares slipped more than 4% after the company temporarily halted delivery of its 787 Dreamliners over a fuselage issue. Shares of Microsoft and Home Depot fell 2.2% and 0.9%, respectively.

The core personal consumption expenditures price index, the Fed’s preferred measurement of inflation, rose 0.6% in January and 4.7% from the prior year, coming in above economists’ expectations.

The report added to worries that the Fed may have to keep rates higher for longer to quell inflationary pressures.

Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment strategist at Charles Schwab, believes there is more to the market’s downturn besides the PCE numbers.

“Another reason why the market is having trouble to some degree, I think, is not just about inflation being hotter or concerns that the Fed has to stay tighter for longer,” Sonders said on Friday.

“But there was just a lot of speculation that kicked back in —speculative froth. And the market tends to move in a contrarian fashion when sentiment gets a little too frothy. So I think some of the move has has to do with sentiment. Not just these macro forces,” she added.

The strategist believes that inflation cannot come down without a broader economic downturn.

“I think something would have to give either broadly in the economy, or more specifically in the labor market,  to bring the immaculate disappearance of inflation,” Sonders said. “Without that commensurate hit to the economy or the labor market, I think it’s a stretch.”

Stock market today: Live updates (cnbc.com)

Key US inflation measure surges at fastest rate since June

February 24, 2023consumer spending. (AP Photo/

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge rose last month at its fastest pace since June, an alarming sign that price pressures remain entrenched in the U.S. economy and could lead the Fed to keep raising interest rates well into this year.

Friday’s report from the Commerce Department showed that consumer prices rose 0.6% from December to January, up sharply from a 0.2% increase from November to December. On a year-over-year basis, prices rose 5.4%, up from a 5.3% annual increase in December.

Excluding volatile food and energy prices, so-called core inflation rose 0.6% from December, up from a 0.4% rise the previous month. And compared with a year earlier, core inflation was up 4.7% in January, versus a 4.6% year-over-year uptick in December.

The report also showed that consumer spending rose 1.8% last month from December after falling the previous month.

January’s price data exceeded forecasters’ expectations, confounding hopes that inflation was steadily decelerating and that the Fed could relent on its campaign of rate hikes. It follows other recent data that also suggested that the economy remains gripped by inflation despite the Fed’s strenuous efforts to tame it.

Last week, the government issued a separate inflation measure — the consumer price index — which showed that prices surged 0.5% from December to January, much more than the previous month’s 0.1% rise. Measured year over year, consumer prices climbed 6.4% in January. That was well below a recent peak of 9.1% in June but still far above the Fed’s 2% inflation target.

Since March of last year, the Fed has attacked inflation by raising its key interest rate eight times. Yet despite the resulting higher borrowing costs for individuals and businesses, the job market remains surprisingly robust. That is actually a worrisome sign for the Fed because strong demand for workers tends to fuel wage growth and overall inflation. Employers added a sizzling 517,000 jobs in January, and the unemployment rate fell to 3.4%, its lowest point since 1969.

“Reaccelerating price pressures, coupled with a still-strong labor market that is restoring incomes and is supporting demand, will keep the Fed on track to hike rates further over coming meetings,” said Rubeela Farooqi, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics.

The Fed is thought to monitor the inflation gauge that was issued Friday — the personal consumption expenditures price index — even more closely than it does the government’s better-known CPI.

Typically, the PCE index shows a lower inflation level than CPI. In part, that’s because rents, which have soared, carry twice the weight in the CPI that they do in the PCE.

The PCE price index also seeks to account for changes in how people shop when inflation jumps. As a result, it can capture emerging trends — when, for example, consumers shift away from pricey national brands in favor of less expensive store brands.

The consumer price index showed a worrisome rise from December to January: It jumped 0.5% — five times the November-to-December increase.

Likewise, the government’s measure of wholesale inflation, which shows price increases before they hit consumers, accelerated 0.7% from December to January after having dropped 0.2% from November to December.

Key US inflation measure surges at fastest rate since June | AP News

As new data shows inflation rose in January, here’s what consumers can expect next

A new U.S. government reading showing persistent high inflation rattled Wall Street on Friday.

Consumers can expect the rate of price growth will likely stay higher than average through 2023.

“Inflation is going to come down gradually, if the Fed conducts policy the way it says it intends to,” said William Luther, director of the American Institute for Economic Research’s Sound Money Project.

“We’re looking at higher than normal price increases, certainly through 2023 and probably through much of 2024, as well,” Luther said.

---- Declines in inflation that have happened since June actually reversed in January.

“It’s possible that this is just a blip, that we had more price increases in January and fewer price increases in December,” Luther said.

---- The personal consumption expenditures price index, or PCEPI, is the central bank’s preferred measure as it seeks to bring inflation down to a 2% target.

There are two reasons why the PCEPI may be a better measure than the CPI, according to Luther.

First, the PCEPI measures all consumption expenditures, including those that are not coming directly out of consumers’ discretionary income, such as those made on their behalf by the government or employers.

“It puts more accurate weights on the categories of expenditures that are being made in the economy by consumers,” Luther said.

The CPI, on the other hand, only looks at a basket of goods purchased from individuals’ discretionary incomes. Moreover, the basket of goods the CPI tracks is updated every year, while the PCEPI gets updated each month.

That really matters in cases where you have some individual prices that are changing a lot, according to Luther.

More

As new data shows inflation rose in January, what consumers can expect (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.

This weekend, does Germany need Grexit?

UK edges further away from recession as families’ economy and inflation outlook brightens

FRIDAY 24 FEBRUARY 2023 7:00 AM

Another brighter than expected set of economic numbers out today indicate the UK has a chance of avoiding a much-tipped recession this year.

Consumer confidence climbed faster than forecast to minus 38 points this month, up seven points from minus 45 points in January, according to research firm Growth for Knowledge’s index which has been running since the 1970s.

Despite the shock upturn, confidence is still running at historically low levels after rebounding from the lowest reading ever when Liz Truss took charge of the country in September.

The survey is the latest in a string of data that indicate the UK economy is holding up much better than experts had forecast just a few months ago.

Numbers out earlier this month revealed the country narrowly avoided a recession at the end of last year, while the Office for National Statistics last week said inflation in January fell for the third straight month to 10.1 per cent, a faster descent than analysts had forecast.

That body of evidence has prompted City economists to trim their projections for how much gross domestic product will drop this year.

“Despite widely reported headwinds of inflation continuing to outstrip wage rises, and the ongoing household challenge from the cost-of-living crisis, consumers have suddenly shown more optimism about the state of their personal finances and the general economic situation, especially for the coming year,” Joe Staton, client strategy director at GfK, said.

While inflation is in the early throes of a sustained decline this year that some City experts have predicted will bring it down to the Bank of England’s two per cent by Christmas, wage growth is expected to trail it for most of the year, delivering a record hit to spending power.

All of GfK’s measurements that generate the overall consumer confidence index strengthened in February.

More

UK edges away from recession as economic and inflation outlook brightens (cityam.com)

 

German economy shrinks 0.4% in fourth quarter, weak start to 2023 seen

BERLIN, Feb 24 (Reuters) - The German economy contracted more strongly than expected in the final three months of 2022, as inflation and the energy crisis took their toll on household consumption and capital investment.

The German economy shrank by 0.4% in the fourth quarter of 2022 compared with the previous three months, the statistics office said on Friday.

Preliminary data from the office had pointed to a 0.2% quarter-on-quarter contraction adjusted for price and calendar effects. In the third quarter of 2022, gross domestic product saw slight growth of 0.5% compared to the three months prior.

The second consecutive drop in the Ifo's current assessment component, a falling manufacturing PMI, weak consumer confidence and a willingness to spend close to historical lows, all point to a contraction of the German economy once again in the first quarter, ING's global head of macro Carsten Brzeski said.

The worse-than-expected final result for the fourth quarter increases fears of a winter recession. A recession is commonly defined as two successive quarters of contraction.

"Today's numbers show that the sharp rise in energy prices has noticeably slowed down the economy despite the government's extensive aid measures," Commerzbank's economist Ralph Solveen said. With the global tightening of monetary policy, Solveen said a noticeable economic recovery is hardly to be expected.

After relief measures such as the fuel discount and the 9-euro transport ticket ended, consumers spent less in the fourth quarter than in the third quarter, the statistics office said. Household spending was down 1.0%, while government spending rose 0.6% compared to the previous quarter.

More

German economy shrinks 0.4% in fourth quarter, weak start to 2023 seen | Reuters

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

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/environmental-disaster-ev-battery-metals-crunch-horizon-industry-races-recycle

Covid-19 Corner

This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.

COVID-19 linked to 40% increase in autoimmune disease risk in huge study

February 22, 2023

Catching COVID-19 may raise the risk of developing autoimmune disease by 43% in the months following the infection, according to the largest study of its kind. 

 

"The impact of this study is huge — it's the strongest evidence so far answering this question of COVID-19 and autoimmune disease risk," said Anuradhaa Subramanian(opens in new tab), a research fellow in health informatics at the University of Birmingham, who was not involved in the study. The new research, which has yet to be peer reviewed, was posted Jan. 26 in the preprint database medRxiv(opens in new tab).

 

Scientists previously linked COVID-19 to an increased risk of autoimmune disease, in which the immune system mistakenly attacks healthy parts of the body. However, this research was limited to small studies that focused on just a few conditions, such as autoimmune hemolytic anemia, which affects red blood cells, and Guillain-Barre syndrome, which affects nerve cells. 

 

Now, researchers have analyzed the health records of 640,000 people in Germany who caught COVID-19 in 2020 and 1.5 million people who didn't knowingly catch the coronavirus that year to explore how the infection might affect the risk of developing any of 30 autoimmune conditions.

They examined the rate at which people were newly diagnosed with autoimmune diseases in the three to 15 months after they tested positive for COVID-19. They compared these rates to those of the people who hadn't caught COVID-19. Roughly 10% of the participants in each group had preexisting autoimmune diseases.

Among the people with no history of autoimmunity, more than 15% of people who'd caught COVID-19 developed an autoimmune disease for the first time during the follow-up period, compared with roughly 11% of the people who hadn't caught COVID-19. In other words, the COVID-19 group had a 43% higher likelihood of autoimmune disease than the control group.

Among those with existing autoimmunity, those who caught COVID-19 had a 23% higher chance of developing an additional autoimmune disease in the follow-up period.

---- "These findings just cannot be ignored," Subramanian said. "We need to pursue research into how COVID-19 is potentially triggering autoimmunity because many people are continuing to suffer from the effects of COVID-19." There are several hypotheses as to how COVID-19 might trigger autoimmunity, and it's possible that different mechanisms affect different organ systems, the researchers noted. 

"Understanding how COVID-19 impacts autoimmune disease risk will help in executing the prevention measures and early treatments to prevent associated morbidity and mortality," said Jagadeesh Bayry(opens in new tab), a professor of biological sciences and engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Palakkad who was not involved in the study.

More

COVID-19 linked to 40% increase in autoimmune disease risk in huge study | Live Science

World Health Organization - Landscape of COVID-19 candidate vaccineshttps://www.who.int/publications/m/item/draft-landscape-of-covid-19-candidate-vaccines

NY Times Coronavirus Vaccine Trackerhttps://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/science/coronavirus-vaccine-tracker.html

Regulatory Focus COVID-19 vaccine trackerhttps://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/news-articles/2020/3/covid-19-vaccine-tracker

Some more useful Covid links.

Johns Hopkins Coronavirus resource centre

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.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, I’ve added this section.

Ramping up domestic graphite production could aid the green energy transition

A key ingredient to lithium-ion batteries' supply chain is not built to last

Date: February 22, 2023

Source:  Northwestern University

Summary:  Given the growing importance of graphite in energy storage technologies, a team of esearchers has conducted a study exploring ways to reduce reliance on imports of the in high-demand mineral, which powers everything from electric vehicles (EVs) to cell phones.

The paper, which published this week in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, is the first natural and synthetic graphite material flow analysis for the U.S., and considers 11 end-use applications for graphite, two waste management stages and three recycling pathways.

"If we want to produce more batteries domestically, we're going to need to increase our production of graphite," said Northwestern University chemical engineer Jennifer Dunn. "But the question is, how can we do so in a way that contributes to decarbonization goals?"

Dunn is an associate professor of chemical and biological engineering at Northwestern's McCormick School of Engineering and director of the Center for Engineering Sustainability and Resilience. The paper was co-authored by Jinrui Zhang, who at the time of the study initiation was a post-doctoral scholar in chemical and biological engineering, and Chao Liang, previously a member of Northwestern's Institute for Sustainability and Energy (ISEN). Both co-authors are alumni of Dunn's research group.

The U.S. uses mostly synthetic graphite, which is produced from by-products of the fossil fuel industry and creates a paradoxical relationship between graphite and technologies like electric vehicles (EVs) that aim to remove fossil fuel supply chains from transportation and cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Natural graphite, alternately, is sourced from mines and imported to the U.S. mostly from China. Nearly all the graphite used in the U.S. goes into electrodes for steel manufacturing. As the battery supply chain in the U.S. ramps up, measures like the Inflation Reduction Act seek to incentivize the use of domestically sourced materials -- including graphite -- in U.S.-made batteries.

Given the growing importance of graphite in energy storage technologies like lithium-ion batteries, the team carried out this analysis to characterize the major production routes of the mineral, its main uses and opportunities to reduce consumption through recycling. Data from 2018 -- the most recent period with sufficient data for this type of analysis -- was used for the study.

More

Ramping up domestic graphite production could aid the green energy transition: A key ingredient to lithium-ion batteries' supply chain is not built to last -- ScienceDaily

This weekend’s music diversion.  Approx. 11 minutes.

Antonín Reichenauer Bassoon Concerto in C major, Sergio Azzolini

Antonín Reichenauer Bassoon Concerto in C major, Sergio Azzolini - YouTube

This weekend’s chess update. Approx. 11 minutes.

Greek Gift or Greco's Gift || Error in Translation?

Greek Gift or Greco's Gift || Error in Translation? - YouTube

This weekend’s math’s update. Approx. 14 minutes.

9.999... really is equal to 10

9.999... really is equal to 10 - YouTube

Inflation is taxation without legislation.

Milton Friedman.

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