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Week Ahead – An extraordinary start to the year

Attention slowly shifting from US politics What an extraordinary start to the year. While next week should be much quieter, it won’t be without action. US politics is unlikely to go quiet with talk continuing of possible impeachment proceedings against…

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Attention slowly shifting from US politics

What an extraordinary start to the year. While next week should be much quieter, it won’t be without action. US politics is unlikely to go quiet with talk continuing of possible impeachment proceedings against President Trump, Covid is wreaking havoc once again and earnings season gets underway on Friday.

US heading for lockdowns?

London Mayor warns of Covid crisis

China inflation and trade in focus next week


Country

US

The US is supposed to be entering the peak of the holiday COVID surge, but it could get much worse now that more states have found the highly contagious UK virus variant.  ICU space is tightening across many states and it seems only a matter of time before lockdown efforts are implemented.  

For many traders, this week is all about Fed Speak as policymakers will have 11 different events to voice any changes to their outlook now that it seems the economy will finally get more fiscal support.  The Fed will also release their Beige Book on Wednesday. 

The main economic data event of the week will be if the December retail sale report showed a third consecutive month of declines.  Many investors will also pay attention to Friday’s bank earnings to get the latest assessment on strength of the US consumer.  

US Politics

After the Capitol riot and Trump’s concession that a new administration will be inaugurated on January 20th, Wall Street will keep the focus on President-elect Biden’s appointments and clarity on his 100-day agenda.  Impeachment proceedings may dominate the headlines, but will have little impact on financial markets.  

EU

ECB minutes the only notable release next week. The vaccine rollout is continuing after eventually receiving approval, while restrictions continue to be severe during a brutal winter wave.

Brexit

The UK and EU agreed a Brexit deal late in December but coming so late in the day means it’s only gone into force on a provisional basis. The European Parliament will scrutinize the deal, but ratification is expected to be a formality, given MEP’s have been kept in the loop on the progress of negotiations throughout.

Talks aren’t over yet, with negotiations now starting on the UK’s access to the EU on financial services, which the former is hoping will be wrapped up by March. This was not included in the initial agreement which focused primarily on goods. The UK is hoping to be granted equivalence but this is far from guaranteed, with the EU reportedly concerned about the countries desire to diverge away from its rules.

UK

It’s looking a little bleak for the UK at the moment, with the country back in lockdown until at least the middle of February and London Mayor Sadiq Khan claiming the city is at crisis point due to pressure on the hospitals, with the number already 35% above April’s peak. On the upside, the UK this week approved its third Covid-19 vaccine, with Moderna following Pfizer and AstraZeneca in gaining authorization.

While this won’t address any immediate problems in the country, it will contribute to the optimism from the second quarter, although its approval was already built into expectations.

The country may have averted one crisis in agreeing a Brexit deal late in December but it’s very much in the middle of another and there will once again be significant economic consequences of the latest measures, which were arguably inevitable regardless of the new strains.

Turkey

Turkish markets and the currency are back in favour over the last couple of months, following the personnel changes and rate hikes that went a long way to restoring confidence. In recent years, the country has never been too far away from a crisis but those risks have seemingly subsided in the near-term.

China

China inflation expected to move back above 0.0%, mostly due to increasing commodity prices. Thursday Balance of Trade. A fall below $70 billion could trigger fears that international demand is falling and be negative for China equities.

Equity markets are struggling to digest the US delisting of China telcos and their removal from important tracking indices from MSCI/S&P, while a number of payment apps were also banned in the US.

More importantly, antitrust investigations on Alibaba/Ant Financial are weighing on tech sector giants such as Tencent. The Chinese government has ordered the censoring of news around its antitrust investigations. China equities to underperform until more clarity is gained.

THe PBOC is showing signs that it is becoming less tolerant of Yuan appreciation, based on this week’s CNY fixes. A US Dollar rally due to higher US yields could see a major squeeze of long CNY, long Asian currency positions next week.

India

A continued rise in US yields may offset recent INR strength. The currency has shown signs of waning upside momentum this week, and could face further depreciation next week.

India releases Industrial Production on Monday which is expected to recover modestly. WPI on Wednesday will show that India continues to struggle with stagflation, notably because of food price increases. The recent oil rally will add to those woes.

Overall India continues to grapple with a stagflationary environment complicated by a Covid-19 fall in domestic consumption and a weak financial sector.

New Zealand 

No significant data, Currency may correct lower if US yields continue rising next week.

Australia 

Covid-19 fears are rising as a community case of the UK variant in Brisbane will lead to a city lockdown for three days from this evening. Cases are decreasing in Victoria and NSW. An escalation, particularly in Queensland over the weekend, will mute Australian equities which have suffered today.

Retail Sales should bounce back by 7.0% next week, and Westpac Consumer Confidence will outperform reinforcing Australia’s domestic recovery, as commodity prices reach multi-year highs. Covid-19 will probably subsume that data however.

Japan

Shortened week with a public holiday on Monday. Japan Machinery Orders and PPI are expected to be quite negative, as reduced international demand and weak November bonuses sap international and domestic consumption. A Covid-19 state of emergency in Tokyo modest in scope and hardly a lockdown worth mentioning. Only an explosion of virus cases will undermine the equity rally.

Japan equities have rallied to multi-decade highs, coat tailing the US markets and as a prime beneficiary of the expected global recovery in 2021. We do not expect that sentiment to change markedly next week. 

Monitor USD/JPY which has rallied over 1.0% in 24 hours after the Democrat clean sweep and Biden Presidency confirmed.That has pushed US yields higher with the Yen being very sensitive to yield differentials. A further move higher in the US 10-year next week could see a test of long-term resistance at 104.70, opening up a potentially large USD?JPY short squeeze.


Key Economic Events

Monday, January 11th

– Atlanta Fed President Bostic talks about his economic outlook for 2021.  Dallas Fed President Kaplan speaks

– Bank of England policy maker Tenreyro discusses negative interest rates.

– The annual JPMorgan Healthcare Conference begins 4-day event.

Economic Data

Mexico industrial production

Bank of Canada Business Outlook Survey, Canadian Survey of Consumer Expectations

Australia Melbourne Institute inflation, retail sales

China CPI, PPI

Turkey current account balance, unemployment

New Zealand REINZ House Sales to be released this week

China Money Supply, New Yuan Loans, and Aggregate Financing to be released this week

Tuesday, January 12th

– Fed’s Rosengren, Kaplan, and Kashkari speak on “Racism and the Economy

– Boston Fed President Rosengren presents an economic overview at a Boston Chamber of Commerce event.

– BOE Deputy Governor Broadbent speaks on the coronavirus and spending.

Economic Data

Bank of France industrial sentiment

Japan BoP

Norway GDP

South Africa manufacturing production

India industrial production, CPI

Wednesday, January 13th

– ECB President Lagarde speaks at an online conference on the EU economy post-Covid and post-Brexit.

– UK PM Johnson is due to appear before Parliament’s influential Liaison Committee.

– Riksbank First Deputy Governor Skingsley participates in a panel discussion on the coronavirus pandemic.

– Philadelphia Fed President Harker discusses the economic outlook during a virtual event hosted by the Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia.

– The 11th Gulf Intelligence “Global” UAE Energy Forum 2021: Energy Outlook 2021

Economic Data

US Dec CPI M/M: 0.4% estimate v 0.2% prior, Monthly budget statement, Fed Beige Book

EIA crude oil inventory report

New Zealand ANZ commodity price

Japan money stock, machine tool orders

Czech CPI

Eurozone Industrial production

South Africa retail sales

Turkey industrial production

Thursday, January 14th

– Boston Fed President Rosengren to speak at “Recover Boston: The Road Ahead – Economic Issues in 2021,” hosted by the Boston Business Journal. Atlanta Fed President Bostic moderates a panel on small business recovery.

– Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell speaks at Princeton University virtual event.

– Samsung holds the Unpacked 2021 event reveals Galaxy S21 series

Economic Data

US initial jobless claims

ECB Monetary Policy Meeting Accounts

OPEC monthly oil report

New Zealand building permits

Germany 2020 GDP Y/Y: -5.1% estimate v 0.6% prior

U.K. RICS house price balance

Japan core machine orders, PPI

India wholesale prices

China Dec trade balance, Exports: 15.0% estimate v 21.1% prior, Imports: 5.0% estimate v 4.5% prior

Friday, January 15th

– US retail sales are expected to remain soft for a third consecutive month despite the holiday season as restrictive measures weigh on businesses and activity.

– Earnings season kickoffs with JPMorgan, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo report before the bell.

– Germany’s Christian Democratic Union, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party holds a virtual convention. To pick a new head on January 16th.

Economic Data

US Dec Retail Sales m/m: -0.1% estimate v -1.1% prior, Jan Empire manufacturing: 3.8 estimate v 4.9 prior, PPI, industrial production, Jan Prelim University of Michigan sentiment: 79.5 estimate v 80.7 prior

Oil: Baker Hughes rig count

Canada existing home sales

New Zealand food prices

Japan tertiary industry index

UK GDP, industrial production, trade balance

Swedish CPI

Polish CPI

India trade

Sovereign Rating Updates:

– UK (Fitch)

– Russia (S&P)

– Finland (Moody’s)

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Looking Back At COVID’s Authoritarian Regimes

After having moved from Canada to the United States, partly to be wealthier and partly to be freer (those two are connected, by the way), I was shocked,…

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After having moved from Canada to the United States, partly to be wealthier and partly to be freer (those two are connected, by the way), I was shocked, in March 2020, when President Trump and most US governors imposed heavy restrictions on people’s freedom. The purpose, said Trump and his COVID-19 advisers, was to “flatten the curve”: shut down people’s mobility for two weeks so that hospitals could catch up with the expected demand from COVID patients. In her book Silent Invasion, Dr. Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, admitted that she was scrambling during those two weeks to come up with a reason to extend the lockdowns for much longer. As she put it, “I didn’t have the numbers in front of me yet to make the case for extending it longer, but I had two weeks to get them.” In short, she chose the goal and then tried to find the data to justify the goal. This, by the way, was from someone who, along with her task force colleague Dr. Anthony Fauci, kept talking about the importance of the scientific method. By the end of April 2020, the term “flatten the curve” had all but disappeared from public discussion.

Now that we are four years past that awful time, it makes sense to look back and see whether those heavy restrictions on the lives of people of all ages made sense. I’ll save you the suspense. They didn’t. The damage to the economy was huge. Remember that “the economy” is not a term used to describe a big machine; it’s a shorthand for the trillions of interactions among hundreds of millions of people. The lockdowns and the subsequent federal spending ballooned the budget deficit and consequent federal debt. The effect on children’s learning, not just in school but outside of school, was huge. These effects will be with us for a long time. It’s not as if there wasn’t another way to go. The people who came up with the idea of lockdowns did so on the basis of abstract models that had not been tested. They ignored a model of human behavior, which I’ll call Hayekian, that is tested every day.

These are the opening two paragraphs of my latest Defining Ideas article, “Looking Back at COVID’s Authoritarian Regimes,” Defining Ideas, March 14, 2024.

Another excerpt:

That wasn’t the only uncertainty. My daughter Karen lived in San Francisco and made her living teaching Pilates. San Francisco mayor London Breed shut down all the gyms, and so there went my daughter’s business. (The good news was that she quickly got online and shifted many of her clients to virtual Pilates. But that’s another story.) We tried to see her every six weeks or so, whether that meant our driving up to San Fran or her driving down to Monterey. But were we allowed to drive to see her? In that first month and a half, we simply didn’t know.

Read the whole thing, which is longer than usual.

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Problems After COVID-19 Vaccination More Prevalent Among Naturally Immune: Study

Problems After COVID-19 Vaccination More Prevalent Among Naturally Immune: Study

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis…

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Problems After COVID-19 Vaccination More Prevalent Among Naturally Immune: Study

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

People who recovered from COVID-19 and received a COVID-19 shot were more likely to suffer adverse reactions, researchers in Europe are reporting.

A medical worker administers a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to a patient at a vaccination center in Ancenis-Saint-Gereon, France, on Nov. 17, 2021. (Stephane Mahe//Reuters)

Participants in the study were more likely to experience an adverse reaction after vaccination regardless of the type of shot, with one exception, the researchers found.

Across all vaccine brands, people with prior COVID-19 were 2.6 times as likely after dose one to suffer an adverse reaction, according to the new study. Such people are commonly known as having a type of protection known as natural immunity after recovery.

People with previous COVID-19 were also 1.25 times as likely after dose 2 to experience an adverse reaction.

The findings held true across all vaccine types following dose one.

Of the female participants who received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, for instance, 82 percent who had COVID-19 previously experienced an adverse reaction after their first dose, compared to 59 percent of females who did not have prior COVID-19.

The only exception to the trend was among males who received a second AstraZeneca dose. The percentage of males who suffered an adverse reaction was higher, 33 percent to 24 percent, among those without a COVID-19 history.

Participants who had a prior SARS-CoV-2 infection (confirmed with a positive test) experienced at least one adverse reaction more often after the 1st dose compared to participants who did not have prior COVID-19. This pattern was observed in both men and women and across vaccine brands,” Florence van Hunsel, an epidemiologist with the Netherlands Pharmacovigilance Centre Lareb, and her co-authors wrote.

There were only slightly higher odds of the naturally immune suffering an adverse reaction following receipt of a Pfizer or Moderna booster, the researchers also found.

The researchers performed what’s known as a cohort event monitoring study, following 29,387 participants as they received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. The participants live in a European country such as Belgium, France, or Slovakia.

Overall, three-quarters of the participants reported at least one adverse reaction, although some were minor such as injection site pain.

Adverse reactions described as serious were reported by 0.24 percent of people who received a first or second dose and 0.26 percent for people who received a booster. Different examples of serious reactions were not listed in the study.

Participants were only specifically asked to record a range of minor adverse reactions (ADRs). They could provide details of other reactions in free text form.

“The unsolicited events were manually assessed and coded, and the seriousness was classified based on international criteria,” researchers said.

The free text answers were not provided by researchers in the paper.

The authors note, ‘In this manuscript, the focus was not on serious ADRs and adverse events of special interest.’” Yet, in their highlights section they state, “The percentage of serious ADRs in the study is low for 1st and 2nd vaccination and booster.”

Dr. Joel Wallskog, co-chair of the group React19, which advocates for people who were injured by vaccines, told The Epoch Times: “It is intellectually dishonest to set out to study minor adverse events after COVID-19 vaccination then make conclusions about the frequency of serious adverse events. They also fail to provide the free text data.” He added that the paper showed “yet another study that is in my opinion, deficient by design.”

Ms. Hunsel did not respond to a request for comment.

She and other researchers listed limitations in the paper, including how they did not provide data broken down by country.

The paper was published by the journal Vaccine on March 6.

The study was funded by the European Medicines Agency and the Dutch government.

No authors declared conflicts of interest.

Some previous papers have also found that people with prior COVID-19 infection had more adverse events following COVID-19 vaccination, including a 2021 paper from French researchers. A U.S. study identified prior COVID-19 as a predictor of the severity of side effects.

Some other studies have determined COVID-19 vaccines confer little or no benefit to people with a history of infection, including those who had received a primary series.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still recommends people who recovered from COVID-19 receive a COVID-19 vaccine, although a number of other health authorities have stopped recommending the shot for people who have prior COVID-19.

Another New Study

In another new paper, South Korean researchers outlined how they found people were more likely to report certain adverse reactions after COVID-19 vaccination than after receipt of another vaccine.

The reporting of myocarditis, a form of heart inflammation, or pericarditis, a related condition, was nearly 20 times as high among children as the reporting odds following receipt of all other vaccines, the researchers found.

The reporting odds were also much higher for multisystem inflammatory syndrome or Kawasaki disease among adolescent COVID-19 recipients.

Researchers analyzed reports made to VigiBase, which is run by the World Health Organization.

Based on our results, close monitoring for these rare but serious inflammatory reactions after COVID-19 vaccination among adolescents until definitive causal relationship can be established,” the researchers wrote.

The study was published by the Journal of Korean Medical Science in its March edition.

Limitations include VigiBase receiving reports of problems, with some reports going unconfirmed.

Funding came from the South Korean government. One author reported receiving grants from pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer.

Tyler Durden Fri, 03/15/2024 - 05:00

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‘Excess Mortality Skyrocketed’: Tucker Carlson and Dr. Pierre Kory Unpack ‘Criminal’ COVID Response

‘Excess Mortality Skyrocketed’: Tucker Carlson and Dr. Pierre Kory Unpack ‘Criminal’ COVID Response

As the global pandemic unfolded, government-funded…

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'Excess Mortality Skyrocketed': Tucker Carlson and Dr. Pierre Kory Unpack 'Criminal' COVID Response

As the global pandemic unfolded, government-funded experimental vaccines were hastily developed for a virus which primarily killed the old and fat (and those with other obvious comorbidities), and an aggressive, global campaign to coerce billions into injecting them ensued.

Then there were the lockdowns - with some countries (New Zealand, for example) building internment camps for those who tested positive for Covid-19, and others such as China welding entire apartment buildings shut to trap people inside.

It was an egregious and unnecessary response to a virus that, while highly virulent, was survivable by the vast majority of the general population.

Oh, and the vaccines, which governments are still pushing, didn't work as advertised to the point where health officials changed the definition of "vaccine" multiple times.

Tucker Carlson recently sat down with Dr. Pierre Kory, a critical care specialist and vocal critic of vaccines. The two had a wide-ranging discussion, which included vaccine safety and efficacy, excess mortality, demographic impacts of the virus, big pharma, and the professional price Kory has paid for speaking out.

Keep reading below, or if you have roughly 50 minutes, watch it in its entirety for free on X:

"Do we have any real sense of what the cost, the physical cost to the country and world has been of those vaccines?" Carlson asked, kicking off the interview.

"I do think we have some understanding of the cost. I mean, I think, you know, you're aware of the work of of Ed Dowd, who's put together a team and looked, analytically at a lot of the epidemiologic data," Kory replied. "I mean, time with that vaccination rollout is when all of the numbers started going sideways, the excess mortality started to skyrocket."

When asked "what kind of death toll are we looking at?", Kory responded "...in 2023 alone, in the first nine months, we had what's called an excess mortality of 158,000 Americans," adding "But this is in 2023. I mean, we've  had Omicron now for two years, which is a mild variant. Not that many go to the hospital."

'Safe and Effective'

Tucker also asked Kory why the people who claimed the vaccine were "safe and effective" aren't being held criminally liable for abetting the "killing of all these Americans," to which Kory replied: "It’s my kind of belief, looking back, that [safe and effective] was a predetermined conclusion. There was no data to support that, but it was agreed upon that it would be presented as safe and effective."

Carlson and Kory then discussed the different segments of the population that experienced vaccine side effects, with Kory noting an "explosion in dying in the youngest and healthiest sectors of society," adding "And why did the employed fare far worse than those that weren't? And this particularly white collar, white collar, more than gray collar, more than blue collar."

Kory also said that Big Pharma is 'terrified' of Vitamin D because it "threatens the disease model." As journalist The Vigilant Fox notes on X, "Vitamin D showed about a 60% effectiveness against the incidence of COVID-19 in randomized control trials," and "showed about 40-50% effectiveness in reducing the incidence of COVID-19 in observational studies."

Professional costs

Kory - while risking professional suicide by speaking out, has undoubtedly helped save countless lives by advocating for alternate treatments such as Ivermectin.

Kory shared his own experiences of job loss and censorship, highlighting the challenges of advocating for a more nuanced understanding of vaccine safety in an environment often resistant to dissenting voices.

"I wrote a book called The War on Ivermectin and the the genesis of that book," he said, adding "Not only is my expertise on Ivermectin and my vast clinical experience, but and I tell the story before, but I got an email, during this journey from a guy named William B Grant, who's a professor out in California, and he wrote to me this email just one day, my life was going totally sideways because our protocols focused on Ivermectin. I was using a lot in my practice, as were tens of thousands of doctors around the world, to really good benefits. And I was getting attacked, hit jobs in the media, and he wrote me this email on and he said, Dear Dr. Kory, what they're doing to Ivermectin, they've been doing to vitamin D for decades..."

"And it's got five tactics. And these are the five tactics that all industries employ when science emerges, that's inconvenient to their interests. And so I'm just going to give you an example. Ivermectin science was extremely inconvenient to the interests of the pharmaceutical industrial complex. I mean, it threatened the vaccine campaign. It threatened vaccine hesitancy, which was public enemy number one. We know that, that everything, all the propaganda censorship was literally going after something called vaccine hesitancy."

Money makes the world go 'round

Carlson then hit on perhaps the most devious aspect of the relationship between drug companies and the medical establishment, and how special interests completely taint science to the point where public distrust of institutions has spiked in recent years.

"I think all of it starts at the level the medical journals," said Kory. "Because once you have something established in the medical journals as a, let's say, a proven fact or a generally accepted consensus, consensus comes out of the journals."

"I have dozens of rejection letters from investigators around the world who did good trials on ivermectin, tried to publish it. No thank you, no thank you, no thank you. And then the ones that do get in all purportedly prove that ivermectin didn't work," Kory continued.

"So and then when you look at the ones that actually got in and this is where like probably my biggest estrangement and why I don't recognize science and don't trust it anymore, is the trials that flew to publication in the top journals in the world were so brazenly manipulated and corrupted in the design and conduct in, many of us wrote about it. But they flew to publication, and then every time they were published, you saw these huge PR campaigns in the media. New York Times, Boston Globe, L.A. times, ivermectin doesn't work. Latest high quality, rigorous study says. I'm sitting here in my office watching these lies just ripple throughout the media sphere based on fraudulent studies published in the top journals. And that's that's that has changed. Now that's why I say I'm estranged and I don't know what to trust anymore."

Vaccine Injuries

Carlson asked Kory about his clinical experience with vaccine injuries.

"So how this is how I divide, this is just kind of my perception of vaccine injury is that when I use the term vaccine injury, I'm usually referring to what I call a single organ problem, like pericarditis, myocarditis, stroke, something like that. An autoimmune disease," he replied.

"What I specialize in my practice, is I treat patients with what we call a long Covid long vaxx. It's the same disease, just different triggers, right? One is triggered by Covid, the other one is triggered by the spike protein from the vaccine. Much more common is long vax. The only real differences between the two conditions is that the vaccinated are, on average, sicker and more disabled than the long Covids, with some pretty prominent exceptions to that."

Watch the entire interview above, and you can support Tucker Carlson's endeavors by joining the Tucker Carlson Network here...

Tyler Durden Thu, 03/14/2024 - 16:20

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