Monday 17 April 2023

US Treasury Secretary Pushes Stocks. Buy More!!!

Baltic Dry Index. 1435  -28         Brent Crude 86.30

Spot Gold 2004                US 2 Year Yield 4.08 +0.12

Coronavirus Cases 01/04/20 World 1,000,000

Deaths 53,103

Coronavirus Cases 17/04/23 World 685,679,893

Deaths 6,842,570

There can be few fields of human endeavour in which history counts for so little as in the world of finance. Past experience, to the extent that it is part of memory at all, is dismissed as the primitive refuge of those who do not have the insight to appreciate the incredible wonders of the present.

John Kenneth Galbraith

Hmm. Are things so desperate in the US economy that the US Treasury Secretary has suddenly come out publicly suggesting that US rate hikes aren’t needed anymore, but a USA digital currency is needed so that the public and giant corporations can hold fully guaranteed deposits with Uncle Sam.

Presumably Uncle Scam’s Central Bank Digital Currency  will be generated out of thin air at the push of a computer button, will pay an interest rate also created out of nothing at the push of a computer button, flooding the US economy with yet more trillions of “free” money.

But don’t dare step out of line, lest your CBDC be restricted or worse confiscated and do remember to stick with official policy and keep voting the right way.

For good measure, Treasury Secretary Yellen also strayed into US proxy war on Russia territory, assuring one and all that Ukraine is winning and that Russia is [still] running out of weapons and munitions.

Who knew that the US Treasury has now replaced the Pentagon!

Better get with Washington’s new time to buy stocks program, I suppose, never mind that food price inflation is still soaring and likely to be with us all year, that more and more of the world sees to be falling into violence, social disorder and wage price inflation strikes, nor that Commercial Real Estate Mortgage Backed Securities in the USA and Europe are on the cusp of an epic implosion.

Asia markets mixed as Wall Street’s earnings season continues

UPDATED SUN, APR 16 2023 11:23 PM EDT

Asia-Pacific traded mixed on Monday, as Wall Street looks ahead to another major earnings week, including the likes of Charles SchwabBank of America and Morgan Stanley.

The quarterly earnings reports would shed light into the overall health of the financial sector in the U.S. following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and how that would shape the U.S. Federal Reserve’s tightening cycle.

China’s gross domestic product report is slated to be released on Tuesday, with economists polled by Reuters expecting to see a 4% rise year-on-year for the first quarter of 2023, higher than the final quarter of last year. That would mark the biggest rise in nearly a year.

In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 was up 0.21%, extending its performance from last week’s gain of 1.98%, with all 11 sectors finishing higher.

In Japan, the Nikkei 225 was marginally lower, while the Topix was up 0.19%. South Korea’s Kospi was down 0.23%, while the Kosdaq rose 0.15%.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index climbed 0.22%, while the Hang Seng Tech index fell fractionally. Mainland Chinese markets were up, with the Shanghai Composite up 0.78% and the Shenzhen Component advancing 0.1%.

U.S. stocks ended Friday’s trading session all lower as the market entered its earnings season. The Dow Jones Industrial Average about 0.42%, while the S&P 500 fell 0.21% and the Nasdaq Composite slid 0.35% to end the week

Asia markets mixed as Wall Street's earnings season continues (cnbc.com)

European markets set for positive start ahead of Wall Street earnings

UPDATED MON, APR 17 2023 12:27 AM EDT

European markets are heading for a higher open Monday as investors look ahead to a major earnings week on Wall Street that will shed more light on the state of the U.S. economy.

U.S. financials are in focus at the start of the week, with Charles Schwab reporting quarterly earnings on Monday, Bank of America on Tuesday and Morgan Stanley on Wednesday. Investors have been keeping a close eye on the banking sector after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank last month spurred a liquidity crisis.

Wall Street futures ticked higher on Sunday, while Asia-Pacific traded mixed overnight.

European markets live updates: news, data, stocks and earnings (cnbc.com)

Yellen says U.S. banks may tighten lending and negate need for more Fed rate hikes

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said banks are likely to become more cautious and may tighten lending further in the wake of recent bank failures, possibly negating the need for further Federal Reserve interest rate hikes.

Yellen said in a CNN “Fareed Zakaria GPS” interview that policy actions to stem the systemic threat caused by last month’s failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank had caused deposit outflows to stabilize, “and things have been calm,” according to a transcript released on Saturday.

---- She said that would lead to a restriction in credit in the economy that “could be a substitute for further interest rate hikes that the Fed needs to make.”

But Yellen said she was not yet seeing anything “dramatic enough or significant enough” in this area to alter her economic outlook.

“So, I think the outlook remains one for moderate growth and (a) continued strong labor market with inflation coming down,” she said.

Yellen is far from the only finance official expecting some retrenchment in bank credit as a result of the financial sector upheaval in the last month. Some Fed officials have said the U.S. central bank should adopt a more cautious footing as they expect banks to restrict lending in the months ahead.

Weekly bank balance sheet data published by the Fed has yet to show a material deterioration in bank lending, while also showing that deposit outflows have stabilized in the last two weeks after an initial flood of withdrawals around the time of the SVB and Signature failures in mid-March.

Yellen was asked, in the wake of concerns about the safety of deposits, whether it would be wise to develop a central bank digital currency that would allow U.S. consumers to have accounts directly with the Fed.

“There are important pros ... and there are some cons with such a decision, so it’s one that needs to be seriously analyzed, but it could be something that is in Americans’ future,” Yellen said.

Dollar dominance

Yellen also told CNN that U.S.-led sanctions and export controls on Russia were depriving it of materials for its war in Ukraine and the $60-a-barrel price cap on Russian oil imposed by Western countries was turning Moscow’s expected budget surpluses into deficits.

The sanctions and export controls have forced Russia to resort to Iran and North Korea for military equipment and supplies and the U.S. was taking steps to curb sanctions evasion, Yellen said.

More

Yellen says U.S. banks may tighten lending and negate need for more Fed rate hikes (cnbc.com)

Finally, it might mean nothing or it might mean yet more food price inflation continuing across 2024 and into 2025.

 

Weather scientists say conditions 'favorable' for return of El Niño

APRIL 13, 2023 / 7:22 PM

April 13 (UPI) -- Scientists now expect the El Niño weather phenomenon to affect climate conditions and temperatures during the next six months, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Thursday.

The administration's Climate Prediction Center issued a warning for the climate pattern officially known as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation.

"The most recent [International Research Institute] plume favors a transition to El Niño, beginning June-August 2023 and persisting into the winter," the Climate Prediction Center said in its April warning.

An El Niño watch is issued when "conditions are favorable" for the system developing.

"While we are still in an ENSO-neutral phase -- when no El Niño or La Niña is present -- there is a 62% chance El Niño will develop sometime between May and July. This comes after nearly two continuous years of a La Niña," NOAA said in a statement Thursday.

El Niño is the warm phase of the southern oscillation and usually is associated with warmer ocean temperatures and greater precipitation between the central and eastern Pacific Ocean.

The event usually occurs every two to seven years, typically developing between April and June and hitting maximum strength between October and February.

In early March, NOAA scientists officially declared an end to the La Niña, the colder counterpart to El Niño.

El Niño generally equates to wetter-than-usual conditions across the southern United States, with warmer and drier conditions in the northern part of the country.

Weather scientists say conditions 'favorable' for return of El Niño - UPI.com

El Nino Watch Called as Odds Grow of Weather-Shifting Event

·         Warming Pacific could limit Atlantic hurricanes in September

·         El Nino could hurt tea, coffee and cocoa crops across Asia

By Brian K Sullivan

13 April 2023 at 14:00 BSTUpdated on13 April 2023 at 15:50 BST

Subscription required.

El Nino Watch Declared as Odds Grow of Weather-Shifting Event - Bloomberg

April 2023 ENSO update: El Niño Watch

 BY EMILY BECKER  PUBLISHED APRIL 13, 2023

Well, that was quick! Just two months ago I was writing about La Niña for what seemed like the 97th month in a row, and then by March La Niña had departed. Today we’re hoisting an El Niño Watch, meaning that conditions are favorable for the development of El Niño conditions within the next 6 months. In fact, there’s a 62% chance of El Niño conditions for the May–July period. Read on for the reasoning behind the outlook, thoughts about the potential strength of El Niño, and implications for global weather and climate.

---- That’s where we are… but where are we going?? There’s a 62% chance that El Niño will develop during the May–July period, and more than 80% chance of El Niño by the fall.

---- Since ENSO can be predicted months in advance, we can start playing the odds on what sort of climate patterns can be expected. There is a lot of variety, and no prediction is ever perfect! But it’s currently the best tool we have to anticipate upcoming seasonal conditions.

I’ll get back to the potential impacts of El Niño in a minute—first, let’s discuss this confident forecast. Forecasts made during the spring are often less accurate than those made other times of the year. ENSO tends to change phase during the spring, and the tropical Pacific ocean-atmosphere system can be more susceptible to smaller pushes like short-term weather variations, contributing to the “spring predictability barrier.” So it seems the forecasters are really feeling their oats this month, to be giving El Niño such relatively high odds. What’s behind this?

First, the latest runs from our computer climate models are providing very high probabilities that El Niño will develop this year. When there is a lot of agreement among the models, we tend to give more credence to their predictions. For some examples, here’re Niño-3.4 forecasts from the European multi-model ensembleAustralia’s ACCESS-S2, and the North American Multi-Model Ensemble.

---- Further bolstering the chance for El Niño is a short-term forecast for the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO). The MJO is an area of storminess that travels west-to-east along the equator. It’s flanked by wind anomalies, as surface level winds rush toward the area of storminess. The MJO is predicted to be in a phase that will weaken the trade winds (the consistent east-to-west winds near the equator) over the next couple of weeks. Weaker trade winds allow the surface to warm and can contribute to the growth or propagation of downwelling Kelvin waves.

One more observation supporting the potential development of El Niño is the currently very warm far-eastern Pacific. The Niño-1+2 index, which measures the sea surface temperature off the coast of Peru, was near-record warm in March. A coastal El Niño like this can precede a larger El Niño event, although not always.

To summarize, there are several signs pointing to the development of El Niño, including model predictions and the current state of the ocean and atmosphere. It’s still possible that a developing El Niño will sputter out, and the forecast includes around a 1-in-8 chance of neutral conditions in the late fall. However, from our current vantage point, there is enough evidence to support a confident forecast for El Niño.

---- What would an El Niño mean for global climate?

Right, I promised to get back to impacts! El Niño influences the Atlantic and Pacific hurricane seasons, usually leading to fewer tropical storms and hurricanes in the Atlantic and more than average in the Pacific. In the case of the Atlantic, El Niño increases vertical wind shear—the change in wind direction and strength from the surface to higher in the atmosphere—which can impede a hurricane’s growth. NOAA’s hurricane outlook comes out next month, so keep your eyes peeled for that.

You can check out some of the El Niño-related expected temperature and precipitation patterns during June–August and December–February here. We’ll get into more detail about these potential patterns in coming months.

---- If El Niño develops this year, it increases the odds of record-warm global temperature.

More

April 2023 ENSO update: El Niño Watch | NOAA Climate.gov

 

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.

Steep Year-over-Year Decline for Single-Family Permits in February 2023

Year-to-date ending in February, single-family permits declined in all four regions. The Northeast posted a decline of 23.6%, while the West region reported the steepest decline of 44.7%. The Midwest declined by 33.3% and the South declined by 31.5% in single-family permits during this time. The South posted an increase of 31.8% in multifamily permits and the West increased by a small margin. Multifamily permits in the Northeast were down 32.6% and down in the Midwest 14.8%.

Between February 2022 YTD and February 2023 YTD, all the states and the District of Columbia reported declines in single-family permits ranging from 3.8% in New Mexico to 72.8% in Montana. The ten states issuing the highest number of single-family permits combined accounted for 66.3% of the total single-family permits issued. Texas, the state with the highest number of single-family permits declined 40.2% in the last 12 months while the next two highest states, Florida and North Carolina declined by 31.2% and 22.3% respectively.

Year-to-date, ending in February, the total number of multifamily permits issued nationwide reached 100,633. This is 8.4% above the February 2022 level of 92,818.

Between February 2022 YTD and February 2023 YTD, 24 states and the District of Columbia recorded growth, while 26 states recorded a decline in multifamily permits. North Dakota led the way with a sharp rise in multifamily permits from two to 316 while Maine had the largest decline of 89.3% from 748 to 80. The ten states issuing the highest number of multifamily permits combined accounted for 67.4% of the multifamily permits issued.

More

Steep Year-over-Year Decline for Single-Family Permits in February 2023 | Eye On Housing

Poland, Hungary ban grain and food imports from Ukraine; Kyiv unhappy

April 15, 2023

WARSAW/BUDAPEST (Reuters) -Poland and Hungary have decided to ban imports of grain and other food from neighbouring Ukraine to protect the local agricultural sector, the two governments said on Saturday, after a flood of supply depressed prices across the region.

Ukraine expressed regret about the Polish decision, saying that "resolving various issues by unilateral drastic actions will not accelerate a positive resolution of the situation".

After Russia's invasion blocked some Black Sea ports, large quantities of Ukrainian grain, which is cheaper than that produced in the European Union, ended up staying in Central European states due to logistical bottlenecks, hitting prices and sales for local farmers.

In a letter to the European Commission last month, the prime ministers of five eastern European countries said the scale of the increase in products like grains, oilseeds, eggs, poultry and sugar had been "unprecedented", and said tariffs on Ukrainian agricultural imports should potentially be considered.

The impact of the oversupply has created a political problem for Poland's ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS) in an election year, with the economy mired in stagflation.

"Today, the government has decided on a regulation that prohibits the entry, importation of grain into Poland, but also dozens of other types of food (from Ukraine)," PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski said during a party convention.

The list of these goods, which will range "from grain to honey products, very, very many things", will be included in the government regulation, he added.

Ukraine's ministry of agrarian policy and food said the Polish ban contradicted existing bilateral agreements on exports, and called for talks to settle the issue.

"We understand that Polish farmers are in a difficult situation, but we emphasize that Ukrainian farmers are in the most difficult situation right now," it said in a statement.

Later on Saturday nationalist Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government joined the ban, saying the status quo would cause severe damage to local farmers.

Hungary did not give details on when its ban on grain and other food imports would go into effect, but said it will expire at the end of June.

More

Poland, Hungary ban grain and food imports from Ukraine; Kyiv unhappy (msn.com)

Covid-19 Corner

This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.

Contentious COVID-19 Drugs Are All Antimalarial: May Not Be a Coincidence


Apr 14 2023


The COVID-19 recommendations hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, and now artemisinin all have one thing in common: They are antimalarial drugs or have such properties.

 

Yet studies suggest that this may not be a mere coincidence; malaria and COVID-19 may be more similar than people may realize.

 

Malaria Versus COVID-19

From the outset, malaria and COVID-19 are very distinct diseases.

 

Malaria is a parasitic disease. An infection starts when an individual is bitten by a mosquito carrying a parasite from the Plasmodium genus. Upon infection, the parasite first goes to the liver and multiplies in liver cells. Then it migrates to the bloodstream, invades and proliferates in red blood cells, and causes these cells to expand and burst.

Common malaria symptoms such as fever, chills, and sweating occur during the blood-stage infection. Complications include anemia, and on rare occasions, cerebral malaria, liver failure, fluid buildup in the lungs, and acute respiratory distress syndrome.

 

COVID-19, on the other hand, is a viral disease. Infection occurs primarily through the inhalation of contaminated droplets. The virus invades the body through the nasal cavities, entering the upper and then lower respiratory tracts.

 

Inflammation of the lungs ensues as the body’s immune cells fight off the infection. The person’s oxygen levels start dropping as inflammation worsens in the advent of a cytokine storm, and the lungs become damaged. Some of the virus can also go into the bloodstream and invade other organs, causing systemic inflammation and damage.

 

Several Commonalities

While one mainly affects blood cells and the other primarily affects the lungs, both diseases are characterized by a strong inflammatory response early in the infection, according to a 2022 paper in Frontiers in Immunology.

More, much, much more.

Contentious COVID-19 Drugs Are All Antimalarial: May Not Be a Coincidence (theepochtimes.com)

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.

Wonder material graphene claims yet another superlative

12 April 2023

In a paper published in Nature this week (13 Apr 2023), researchers from The University of Manchester report record-high magnetoresistance that appears in graphene under ambient conditions.

Materials that strongly change their resistivity under magnetic fields are highly sought for various applications and, for example, every car and every computer contain many tiny magnetic sensors. Such materials are rare, and most metals and semiconductors change their electrical resistivity only by a tiny fraction of a percent at room temperature and in practically viable magnetic fields (typically, by less than a millionth of 1 %). To observe a strong magnetoresistance response, researchers usually cool materials to liquid-helium temperatures so that electrons inside scatter less and can follow cyclotron trajectories.  

Now a research team led by Professor Sir Andre Geim has found that good old graphene that seemed to be studied in every detail over the last two decade exhibits a remarkably strong response, reaching above 100% in magnetic fields of standard permanent magnets (of about 1,000 Gauss). This is a record magnetoresistivity among all the known materials.

Speaking about this latest graphene discovery, Sir Andre Geim said: “People working on graphene like myself always felt that this gold mine of physics should have been exhausted long ago. The material continuously proves us wrong finding yet another incarnation. Today I have to admit again that graphene is dead, long live graphene.”

To achieve this, the researchers used high-quality graphene and tuned it to its intrinsic, virgin state where there were only charge carriers excited by temperature. This created a plasma of fast-moving “Dirac fermions” that exhibited a surprisingly high mobility despite frequent scattering. Both high mobility and neutrality of this Dirac plasma are crucial components for the reported giant magnetoresistance.

----In addition to the record magnetoresistivity, the researchers have also found that, at elevated temperatures, neutral graphene becomes a so-called “strange metal”. This is the name given to materials where electron scattering becomes ultimately fast, being determined only by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. The behaviour of strange metals is poorly understood and remains a mystery currently under investigation worldwide.

The Manchester work adds some more mystery to the field by showing that graphene exhibits a giant linear magnetoresistance in fields above a few Tesla, which is weakly temperature dependent. This high-field magnetoresistance is again record-breaking.

More

Wonder material graphene claims yet another superlative (manchester.ac.uk)

“The voice of Finance seemed to call to me, but it was a wrong number.”

Sam Bankman-Fried, with apologies to P. G. Wodehouse.

No comments:

Post a Comment