Baltic Dry Index. 1587 +122 Brent Crude 78.21
Spot Gold 1901 US 2 Year Yield 4.20 +0.17
Coronavirus
Cases 01/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,103
Coronavirus Cases 15/03/23 World 681,773,300
Deaths 6,813,317
"Deficit spending is simply a
scheme for the 'hidden' confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this
insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights."
Alan Greenspan.
In the Asian stock casinos, more
relief rally now that Uncle Sam has gone on the hook of guaranteeing some $9
trillion of uninsured US bank deposits.
Quite how that will be accomplished without devaluing the dollar
to Argentine peso levels, is a problem for another day, but in the meantime it’s
boomtime for banksters from Wall Street to Sand Hill Road.
That sudden 9 trillion uninsured bank deposit guarantee came
from that same District of Crooks whose government is heading for a default on
its existing debts by about the start of June.
For the record, Argentina’s latest annual inflation figure released yesterday just soared over 100 percent.
Asia-Pacific
markets rise after Wall Street sees bank stocks rebound
UPDATED WED, MAR 15 2023 1:16 AM
EDT
Asia-Pacific markets rose on Wednesday after
bank stocks on Wall Street rebounded on optimism of contagion risk from Silicon
Valley Bank being contained. The U.S. inflation print for February was in line
with expectations at annualized 6% rise.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index rose
1.3%, leading gains in the wider region. The Hang Seng Tech index jumped 1.9%.
In mainland China, the Shanghai Composite inched
up 0.67% and the Shenzhen
Component rose 0.35% as investors further digested economic
data out of China. The People’s
Bank of China kept its medium-term lending facility loan rates
unchanged at 2.75%.
South Korea’s Kospi rose 1.3% and
the Kosdaq saw gains of 3% as the country’s unemployment rate slightly fell
month-on-month in February.
In Japan, the Nikkei 225 was
flat after paring earlier gains led by banks and financials. The Topix rose
0.7%. In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 rose
0.86%.
Overnight in the US, the Dow Jones Industrial Average snapped a five-day losing streak to end
1.06% higher, while the S&P 500 added 1.65% and the Nasdaq Composite climbed 2.14%.
Asia-Pacific
markets rise after Wall Street sees bank stocks rebound (cnbc.com)
In other bank bailout news, the new reality is starting to sink
in.
A
Bailout Most Crooked, Part 1
David Stockman March
14, 2023
Oh, c’mon!
They have done it
again, and in a way that makes a flaming mockery of both honest market
economics and the so-called rule of law. In effect, the triumvirate of fools at
the Fed, Treasury and FDIC have essentially guaranteed $9 trillion of uninsured
bank deposits with no legislative mandate and no capital to make these sweeping
promises good.
That’s right. In
the case of the direct bailout of all depositors at SVB and Signature Bank,
these closed institutions have now been ridiculously christened on a postmortem
basis as “SIFIs” (systematically important financial institutions). That makes
them eligible for a hidden backdoor bailout mechanism in the 2009 Dodd-Frank
Act, which gave authorities the power to guarantee any and all bank deposits
above the standard $250,000 limit.
You might say “who
knew” our brilliant legislators deemed public guarantees of the deposits of
giant hedge funds and Fortune 500 companies, among like and similar “deserving”
others, to be an essential “reform” warranted by the lessons of 2008?
Then again, we will
just note the hideous abuse of language implicit in this weekend’s maneuver.
Total assets of the US banking system amounted to $30.4 trillion at the end of
2021. Accordingly, the $110 billion of assets at Signature bank amount to 0.36% of
the total and SVB’s assets of $210 billion were just 0.70% of
the banking system’s assets.
If these sub-1%
entities are indeed “systematically important”, then riddle us this: Why were
these cesspools of reckless banking not declared to be SIFIs back in 2011 along
with JP Morgan ($3.7 trillion of assets), Bank of America ($4.1 trillion of
assets) and the rest of the two dozen SIFI big boys, who at least had to adhere
to enhanced capital and liquidity standards in return for getting the SIFI
trophy?
More
A
Bailout Most Crooked, Part 1 (substack.com)
Signature’s
Seizure Tied to a Loss of Faith
14 March 2023 at 21:53 GMT
Silicon Valley Bank’s lack
of a chief risk officer for much of last year is being examined
by the Federal Reserve as part of its probe of the bank’s failure. SVB revealed
in a 2023 proxy statement that Chief Risk Officer Laura Izurieta left the
company in October but stopped performing the role in April. The company said
Kim Olson took over the job in December. Olson is based in New York, across the
country from most of the rest of SVB’s top brass. The San Francisco Fed was the
chief regulator for SVB before it fell into Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
receivership on Friday in the biggest bank failure in more than a decade. The Fed
has said that
it will also conduct an internal investigation of its own oversight, and
release the results on May 1.
Here are today’s top stories
By now most people know why
SVB tanked. But why Signature Bank? It turns out the answer is simple: The
favorite of law firms and crypto was seized by the government Sunday after
regulators lost
faith in management. “The bank failed to provide reliable and
consistent data, creating a significant crisis
of confidence in the bank’s leadership,” New York’s Department
of Financial Services said. The collapse—the third-largest bank
failure in US history—followed a surge in customer withdrawals on Friday that
is said to total about 20% of the company’s deposits.
Moody’s Investors Service placed First Republic Bank and five other US
lenders on review
for downgrade, the latest sign of concern over the health of
regional financial firms following the failure of SVB. Western Alliance
Bancorp., Intrust Financial Corp., UMB Financial Corp., Zions
Bancorp. and Comerica Inc. were the other lenders put on review.
----Credit Suisse
Group said it found “material
weaknesses” in its reporting and control procedures for the past two
years, after questions from US regulators last week. The Zurich-based
bank, which has seen turbulent
times of late, said Tuesday it will take steps to fix ineffective checks
on the process it follows to pull together its financial reports.
----Underlying US consumer prices rose in February by the most in five months, forcing a tough choice for Federal Reserve officials weighing still-rapid
inflation against the ongoing banking turmoil in their next interest-rate
decision. Just before the crisis came to fruition last week, Chair Jerome
Powell had opened the door to re-accelerating the pace of rate hikes, but many
economists now say the central bank will either stick with a smaller increase
or pause entirely when it meets next week. One shop even says a rate cut could be in store.
More
Bloomberg
Evening Briefing: Signature’s Seizure Was Tied to a Loss of Faith - Bloomberg
Today,
we give the final word on that Silly Con Valley banking collapse to the ever
dry humour, but deadly accurate, Professor Patrick Boyle. Econ 101 for would be
start up disruptors everywhere.
No
surprise that the former management team at the bank and the parent company,
are already being sued by what are now the former angry shareholders.
Silicon
Valley Bailout
Silicon
Valley Bailout - YouTube
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.
Flood
problems grow as new storm moves into California
March
13, 2023
WATSONVILLE, Calif. (AP) — Crews rushed to repair a levee break on
a storm-swollen river in California’s central coast as yet another atmospheric river arrived Monday with the potential to wallop the
state’s swamped farmland and agricultural communities.
The Pajaro River’s first levee rupture grew to at least
400 feet (120 meters) since it failed late Friday, officials said. More than
8,500 people were forced to evacuate, and about 50 people had to be rescued as
the water rose that night.
Still, some stayed behind in Pajaro, an unincorporated
community that’s known for its strawberry crops and is now mostly flooded. The
largely Latino farmworker community there is already struggling to find food
with so many roads and businesses closed in the storm’s aftermath.
----Forecasters warned of more flooding, wind damage and potential power
outages from the new atmospheric river that came ashore Monday evening in
northern and central parts of the state and was expected to move south over
several days. California has been pummeled this winter by 10 atmospheric rivers, which are long, narrow plumes of moisture that turn
into rain and snow when they make landfall.
Along the Southern California coast, evacuation orders
were scheduled to take effect at 8 a.m. Tuesday in Santa Barbara County for
several areas that were burned by wildfires in recent years. Burned soil can be
water-repellent, increasing the risk of flash floods and flows of debris such
as downed trees, according to the National Weather Service.
Water from the newest storm will likely go over the
Pajaro River’s levee — but crews were working to make sure the rupture doesn’t
get any larger, said Shaunna Murray of the Monterey County Water Resources
Agency. Over the weekend, crews had to build access roads to get to the site of
the breach, and bring in rocks and boulders to plug the gap.
The river separates Santa Cruz and Monterey counties,
about 70 miles (110 kilometers) south of San Francisco. Several roads were
closed including a stretch of coastal Highway 1, a main route between the two
counties.
Monterey County officials also warned that the Salinas
River could cause significant flooding of roadways and agricultural land,
cutting off the Monterey Peninsula from the rest of the county. The city of
Monterey and other communities are located on the peninsula.
Winery and agricultural experts from the region said they
are concerned about the storms’ impact on crops — both ones in the ground that
are currently submerged, and ones that should be planted for the upcoming
growing season.
Karla Loreto, who works at a Pajaro gas station, said she
is worried about the toll the flooding will take on the area’s farmworkers.
“The fields are flooded right now,” she said Monday.
“Probably no jobs there right now. For this year, probably no strawberries, no
blackberries, no blueberries.”
More
Flood problems grow as new storm moves into California
| AP News
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
ONS to stop Covid infection weekly data report at end of
month
14 March 2023
The Covid-19
Infection Survey, set up in April 2020 to provide weekly data on rates of
circulating virus and new variants as well as the prevalence of long Covid,
will be paused at the end of the month.
Public health
officials said they were actively reviewing the best approach to Covid-19
surveillance to ‘ensure it is proportionate, cost effective and considered
alongside how we monitor a range of other infectious diseases’.
The UK Health
Security Agency (UKHSA) said it would confirm details of new surveillance
surveys that would continue beyond the end March soon.
Since its launch at the start of the pandemic, the Covid-19
Infection Survey, done in partnership with the Office for National Statistics
(ONS), has regularly gathered and analysed more than 11 million swab tests and
3 million blood tests from households.
Weekly data on virus positivity levels across the UK have
been published alongside details of new circulating variants, the
characteristics of those have been infected, such as age and ethnicity, as well as
population antibody levels and the numbers reporting ongoing symptoms.
The latest bulletin showed in
England around 1.3 million people or one in 40 were infected with Covid-19
compared with one in 45 in Wales, one in 75 in Northern Ireland and one in 40
in Scotland.
Professor Steven Riley, director general of data, analytics
and surveillance at UKHSA, said: ‘The Covid-19 Infection Survey has been an
important tool in helping us understand Covid-19 and we’d like to thank every
single participant for the huge contribution they have made.
‘We will continue to ensure our surveillance activities
remain proportionate and cost effective with the move to Living with Covid-19.’
He added that participants of the survey would be uniquely
placed to support future surveillance activities.
----Professor Kevin McConway, emeritus professor of applied
statistics at The Open University, said: ‘There is no doubt that the ONS survey
has done a magnificent job over the last three years in organising and
collecting swab test results from the UK household population, and (with
academic partners) analysing the resulting data and publishing the results in
many informative ways. There hasn’t been an equivalent anywhere else.’
But there are other ways that data is collected in the UK,
such as for flu surveillance, that have generally been effective, he added.
‘However, the announcement about pausing the CIS doesn’t
make it clear what is actually going to happen about Covid surveillance after
data collection from the ONS CIS is paused
‘While it’s important to balance out the available resource
across many potential infectious disease threats, I’d be happier with the
decision to pause the CIS if I knew more about what might replace it in three
weeks.’
The Government stopped funding the ZOE Covid infection study,
funded by UKHSA through the pandemic and run by King’s College London, as of
last April.
ONS to stop Covid
infection weekly data report at end of month - Pulse Today
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.
Today, a must read article by leading
expert Jack Lifton on Canada’s ever excellent InvestorIntel.com website.
What are the Implications if
Tesla’s Next Generation Motors are Rare Earths-Free?
Jack
Lifton March 13, 2023
At
Tesla’s Investor Day on March 1, 2023, Franz Von Holzhausen, Lead Design
Executive at Tesla Motors (Nasdaq:TSLA), announced that its next generation
of electric motors would not use rare earth materials. With Tesla’s current
dominance in the electric vehicle (“EV”) market, this shift could have a
significant impact on the rare earth market and some rare earth stocks were
down on the news. Here is what he said:
“But
at Tesla efficiency means more than just reducing how much energy the cars use
it’s about how we develop how we manufacture how we refine and how we scale the
powertrain. Now the model 3 and Y powertrain is a great example of this broader
meaning of efficiency. So since we launched it back in 2017, we’ve continuously
improved that powertrain and the factory that builds it so the Drive Unit the
engine of the car is lighter for the same power. We use 25
percent less heavy Rare Earth than when we
started and the powertrain Factory which is behind me today is 75 percent
smaller and 65 percent cheaper than the one that we originally built. And what
I really want to emphasize is that we did all of this without compromising our
cars are just as powerful. They go just as far, and they cost the same or less
and the factories have the same output.“
“There’s
one more thing that I want to highlight. So, I talked about how we had reduced
the amount of rare earth in our powertrains and, as the world transitions to
clean energy, the demand for Rare Earth is really increasing dramatically and
not only is it going to be a little hard to meet that demand but mining that
rare earth it has environmental and health risks, so we want to do even better
than this. We have
designed our next Drive Unit which uses a permanent magnet motor to not use any
Rare Earth materials at all. So
how does all this fit into the master plan we can make lower-cost products that
are still efficient and compelling, and we can make them at scale. We’re going
to use less constrained Commodities.”
Perspective lost! Tesla is not the driver of the global demand
for rare earths
Tesla
is not the driver of the global demand for rare earths; the global OEM Internal
Combustion Engine (“ICE”) automotive industry is the principal driver of demand
for rare earth permanent magnets followed by or paralleled by the direct drive
wind turbine electricity generation industry (at the moment), the Global OEM EV
industry, and the global military industry.
Tesla
is an example, even perhaps a symbol of something. It is not the thing itself.
The thing is the expanded use, albeit in very small quantities, of scarcely
produced, due to costs, technology metals that enable miniaturization and thus
widespread consumer use of information and entertainment technologies.
Rare
earth permanent magnets, which have allowed the miniaturization of electric
motors, are used today primarily for convenience and style accessories in cars,
power windows, power seats, windshield wiper motors (ok, this is a safety
necessity), audio loudspeakers, and power steering. Their use in drive motors
for vehicle power trains is not necessary and never has been.
More.
What are the
Implications if Tesla's Next Generation Motors are Rare Earths-Free? -
InvestorIntel
"As fewer and fewer people have
confidence in paper as a store of value, the price of gold will continue to
rise. The history of fiat money is little more than a register of monetary
follies and inflations. Our present age merely affords another entry in this
dismal register."
Hans F. Sennholz.
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