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Week Ahead – Pressure mounting on central banks

Investors concerned about new Covid variant For months now the main topic of conversation in the markets has been inflation. Is there too much of it, is it here to stay, and are monetary policymakers actually going to do something about it? Of all the…

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Investors concerned about new Covid variant

For months now the main topic of conversation in the markets has been inflation. Is there too much of it, is it here to stay, and are monetary policymakers actually going to do something about it? Of all the risks facing the global economy and the markets this winter, that had risen to the top of the list. Until now.

Covid has returned with a bang, with Europe at the epicentre but the focus now switching to South Africa as the new “Omicron” variant has everyone fretting about whether another terrible wave is going to hit this winter. We’ll know a lot more about how dangerous the new variant is in the coming weeks but for now, investors are fearing the worst and risk assets are being hit hard.

As far as central banks are concerned, the timing couldn’t be worse. They’re already trying to navigate their pandemic exit strategies earlier than they’d clearly prefer as inflationary pressures continue to rise and become more widespread. If the world goes back into lockdown, what becomes the bigger priority, inflation or the economy? Thankfully there’s plenty of policymakers appearing next week who will be asked that very question. Talk about a rock and a hard place.

Fed comments eyed as new variant casts doubt over taper pace

Erdogan defiant as lira plunges

Yen buoyed by safe-haven flows

US

Next week is packed full of event risk from the US and news about a new Covid variant has added a whole new dimension to it. The jobs report is typically the highlight of the week and it will be one highlight, but next week is all about the Fed appearances in light of Thursday’s news. Investors had started to price in a faster pace of tightening, with an announcement maybe coming at the meeting in a couple of weeks. Should the variant prove to be a greater threat than others, it’s highly unlikely the Fed will change course. The absence of evidence on it will surely also encourage caution. The worst case isn’t worth thinking about but would make life very difficult for central banks next year.

We also get a bunch of economic data from the US next week aside from the jobs report on Friday, including PMIs, jobless claims and pending home sales, among others. Powell’s appearances in the Senate and House alongside Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will surely be the standout event though.

EU 

A lot of data to come from the EU next week including PMIs on Wednesday and Friday, inflation data on Tuesday, unemployment on Thursday, and retail sales on Friday. 

But as will be the case for all countries next week, central banks will be front and centre following the new variant news. We were just starting to get an idea of how they’ll proceed in the months ahead but this throws a massive spanner in the works. ECB President Christine Lagarde bookends the week, with others making appearances in between and investors will be hanging on their every word.

UK

At the risk of sounding repetitive, next week is all about the new Covid variant and central bank speak. BoE Governor Andrew Bailey’s appearance on Wednesday is the standout with PMIs also being noteworthy, albeit irrelevant if Omicron poses a real threat to life without restrictions.

Russia

PMI and unemployment data are the notable releases next week for Russia, which will also be watching the variant situation closely.

Perhaps more significant with respect to Russia is the growing tensions with Ukraine as forces build on the border. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has claimed Ukraine has uncovered a plot to overthrow the government next week including Russian individuals, which the Kremlin has denied involvement in. With tensions on the rise, it may not take much for this to boil over which could hit the ruble hard.

South Africa

The spotlight is very much on South Africa for the foreseeable future after discovering the new Omicron variant which could account for around 90% of new cases. With a small number appearing in Botswana, Hong Kong and Belgium, countries are rapidly applying travel restrictions on South Africa in a desperate attempt to avoid being next. 

Turkey

It’s difficult to know what to add anymore. Rather than being deterred by the extraordinary declines in the lira over the last week, President Erdogan is doubling down. On Friday he declared there is no turning back from the new economy program, that interest rates will decline and the economy is in the most determined policy shift.

And in Şahap Kavcıoğlu, Erdogan appears to have finally found an ally willing to do his bidding. Challenging times lie ahead. One interesting point on Friday was the lira tumbling more than 2% on Erdogan’s comments before recouping those losses quickly. Perhaps a sign of traders becoming less influenced by the President’s rants, although sensitivity remains. I’m sure there’s plenty more volatility to come in the weeks ahead.

China

China releases official and Caixin Manufacturing and Services PMIs in the week ahead. Nerves have been increasing and China’s growth is slowing thanks to its energy crunch and property sector woes. The latter is grabbing headlines once again as Kaisa attempts a debt restructuring. Against this background will be the global sell-off in emerging markets over South African virus concerns. How this plays out next week will determine the overall direction of China equities, although a weak reading once again from the Manufacturing PMIs will deepen the negative sentiment.

The Yuan has resisted the sell-off sweeping other EM currencies and the PBOC seems to be determined to maintain its stability. Similarly, China’s “national team” may be active in equity markets if the sell-off deepens or becomes disorderly.

India

Emerging markets will suffer in the race to safety over concerns surrounding the new virus mutation and whether it is the next delta. Indian equities have been sold heavily and both they and the Rupee may be in the firing line if WHO guidance is negative over the weekend. The evolution of the virus situation will set the direction for Indian and most emerging markets next week.

Australia 

The rush to safety over the Omicron Covid-variant has punished the Australian Dollar which was already wilting in the face of China concerns and a strong US Dollar. AUD/USD could remain under pressure on Monday if the virus news continues to be negative over the weekend.

Australian Q3 GDP mid-week is expected to show weakness, although it will be largely ignored as the Victoria and NSW reopenings in Q4 should see a rapid bounce in GDP. 

New Zealand

Markets were disappointed that the RBNZ only hiked 0.25% this week, leaving the NZD under serious pressure as the week ended. The virus-led selloff in equities has crushed risk appetite and leaves the Kiwi vulnerable to a material move lower. If the WHO announces further concerns over the weekend, NZD/USD could move sharply lower as the week starts.

No data of note in the week ahead.

Japan

The Japanese Yen is seeing strong haven inflows as markets retreat to defensive positioning over South Africa Covid variant concerns. USD/JPY is testing key support and could see more pressure to the downside if variant concerns grow.

Japanese retail sales and the Jibun Bank PMIs feature in the week ahead, but markets will be more focused on further details of the stimulus package and whether the virus risk-off move seen on Friday continues.


Key Economic Events

Saturday, Nov. 27

China – Industrial Profits

Japan – Retail Sales

Monday, Nov. 29

Fed Speakers – Jerome Powell (Chairman, Pre Record), John Williams, Michelle Bowman

ECB Speakers – Christine Lagarde (President), Luis de Guindos (Vice Presdent), Andrea Enria (Board), Isabel Schnabel (Board), Pentti Hakkarainen (Board)

BoC Speakers – Tiff Macklem (Governor)

RBA Speakers – Guy Debelle (Deputy Governor)

Economic Data

Germany – HICP Inflation

South Korea – Retail Sales

Japan – Unemployment

Tuesday, Nov. 30

Jerome Powell (Fed Chairman) to appear in Senate Testimony alongside Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen

RBA Speakers – Guy Debelle (Deputy Governor)

Riksbank Speakers – Henry Ohlsson (Deputy Governor)

Fed Speakers – Jerome Powell (Chairman), Richard Clarida (Vice-Chair), John Williams,  

Economic Data

US – Consumer Confidence

China – Manufacturing PMI, Composite PMI

Eurozone – HICP Inflation

Turkey – GDP

Denmark – GDP, Unemployment

France – GDP

Italy – GDP, CPI Inflation

Germany – Unemployment

India – GDP

Canada – GDP

API Crude Oil Stocks

Wednesday, Dec. 1

Hungarian Central Bank Minutes

Fed Beige Book

BoJ Speakers – Seiji Adachi (Board)

BoE Speakers – Andrew Bailey (Governor)

Economic Data

US – Manufacturing PMI, ISM Manufacturing PMI

China – Caixin Manufacturing PMI

Eurozone – Manufacturing PMI

Japan – Manufacturing PMI

UK – Manufacturing PMI

Germany – Manufacturing PMI

France – Manufacturing PMI

Italy – Manufacturing PMI

Australia – GDP

South Korea – Manufacturing PMI

Indonesia – Manufacturing PMI

India – Manufacturing PMI

Russia – Manufacturing PMI

Turkey – Manufacturing PMI, Istanbul Retail Prices

Canada – Manufacturing PMI

Mexico – Manufacturing PMI

EIA Crude Inventories

Thursday, Dec. 2

OPEC+ Ministerial Meeting 

Fed Speakers – Raphael Bostic (Atlanta President), Randal Quarles (Governor), Mary Daly (San Francisco President)

ECB Speakers – Fabio Panetta

BoJ Speakers – Hitoshi Suzuki (Board)

Riksbank Speakers – Henry Ohlsson (Deputy Governor)

Economic Data

US – Initial Jobless Claims

Eurozone – Unemployment Rate 

Australia – Trade Balance, Services PMI, Composite PMI

Turkey – FX Reserves

Friday, Nov. 26

ECB Speakers – Christine Lagarde (President), Philip Lane (Board)

Economic Data

US – Non-Farm Payrolls, Unemployment, Average Earnings, ParticipationServices PMI, Composite PMI, Factory Orders, ISM Non-Manufacturing PMI

China – Caixin Services PMI

Eurozone – Services PMI, Composite PMI

Germany – Services PMI, Composite PMI

France – Services PMI, Composite PMI

Italy – Services PMI, Composite PMI

UK – Composite PMI

Japan – Services PMI

India – Services PMI

Russia – Services PMI, Unemployment

Turkey – CPI

South Africa – Whole Economy PMI

Canada – Unemployment, Employment Change

Sovereign Rating Updates

Italy (Fitch)

Russia (Fitch)

Sweden (Fitch)

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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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International

‘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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