Well that didn’t take long. Yesterday, the good people of our once-great Republic had about half a trillion dollars shoved into their bank accounts. The great hope was that this mountain of “stimmy” would flow directly into equities, pushing the Dow to – – what? – – 90,000 in a few months? Added to which, the good, good people of the Fed pledged interest rates would stay at 0%….……well at least their interest rates, not the actual market’s……….through the end of 2023. Since they can see clearly what’s going to happen for the next three years. Absolutely.
Here’s the ES over the past couple of days. It decided Powell is full of it:
Not to be outdone, the NQ likewise vomited its gains all over the linoleum.
And, of course, gold completely fell to pieces, since That’s What Gold Does.
The reason? Bonds keep plunging. Day after day. Week after week. Month after month. And why wouldn’t they? Would you want to buy the debt instrument of a collapsing republic which will repay the debt in freshly-printed, worthless “money” 30 years down the road? Yeah, that’s what I thought.
Thus, the NQ topping pattern still has a chance.
When I did my post yesterday evening, the markets were poised for yet more lifetime highs. Maybe there was a little truth in what I was writing.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has reacted to President Joe Biden calling him a “killer” by challenging Biden to take part in a conversation with him broadcast live online.
“I’ve just thought of this now,” Putin told a Russian state television reporter. “I want to propose to President Biden to continue our discussion, but on the condition that we do it basically live, as it’s called. Without any delays and directly in an open, direct discussion. It seems to me that would be interesting for the people of Russia and for the people of the United States.”
Putin’s invitation seemed to amount to a challenge to Biden to a live televised debate, following a day of diplomatic uproar that began when Biden said he thought Putin was a “killer” in an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos. Russia recalled its ambassador to the United States in response to the remark.
After issuing his invitation, Putin said he didn’t want to delay, proposing he and Biden hold the discussion as early as Friday.
“I don’t want to put this off for long. I want to go the taiga this weekend to relax a little,” Putin said. “So we could do it tomorrow or Monday. We are ready at any time convenient for the American side.”
PHOTO: Russian President Vladimir Putin takes part in a meeting with community representatives and residents of Crimea and Sevastopol via a video link in Moscow, Russia March 18, 2021. (Sputnik via Reuters)
In response to reporters’ questions, White House press secretary Jen Psaki suggested the discussion was unlikely to happen and noted that Biden is scheduled to travel to Georgia on Friday.
“I’ll have to get back to you if that is something we’re entertaining. I would say that the president already had a conversation with President Putin,” Psaki said, noting Biden still had other word leaders to talk with. “The president, of course, will be in Georgia tomorrow and quite busy,” she said.
Biden’s remarks in the ABC interview that aired Wednesday has triggered a furious reaction from Russia’s government, which unleashed a barrage of criticism and took the extraordinary step of recalling its ambassador back to Moscow for “consultations” over the comments.
In the interview, Stephanopoulos asked Biden if he thinks Putin “is a killer.”
“Mmm hmm, I do,” Biden responded.
Before issuing the discussion challenge, Putin reacted to Biden’s comment earlier with a playground retort: “I know you are, but what am I.”
“You know, I remember, in childhood, when we were arguing with each other in the courtyard, we would say, ‘I know you are, but what am I,’” Putin said. “And that’s no accident. It’s not just a childish saying. There is a very deep meaning in that.”
Putin suggested Biden was accusing him of what the U.S. itself is guilty of. He referred to the killings of Native Americans people during colonization and the injustice faced by African Americans.
The Russian leader also said he wished Biden “good health.”
“I would say to him: ‘Be well.’ I wish him good health. I say that without any irony, without jokes,” Putin said.
But while Putin has presented himself as responding with good humor, the rest of the Russian government has reacted with a torrent of outrage against Biden, who in the ABC interview also warned Putin would “pay a price” for meddling in American elections.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Thursday that Biden’s words had confirmed for them that Biden has no interest in improving relations with Russia.
“I’ll say only that these remarks by the U.S. president are very bad. He definitely doesn’t want to normalize relations with our country. And we’ll be acting based precisely on this premise,” Peskov said.
PHOTO: Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a concert marking the seventh anniversary of Russia’s annexation of Crimea at Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow, March 18, 2021. (Sputnik via Reuters)
The move to recall its ambassador is almost unheard of in recent U.S.-Russian relations. The last time Russia recalled its ambassador for consultations was reportedly in 1998 in protest over the bombing of Iraq ordered by then-President Bill Clinton.
The Russian embassy in Washington D.C. said the ambassador, Anatoly Antonov, would leave Saturday. It said Antonov’s would have a meeting with the foreign ministry in Moscow to “discuss ways to rectify Russia-U.S. ties that are in crisis.”
Maria Zakharova, a spokesperson for Russia’s foreign ministry, said in a statement, “We are interested in not allowing the irreversible degradation” of relations with the U.S. “If the American realize the risks connected with that.”
Live debate? I guess that means the Sock Puppet can’t bring his teleprompter where his aides tell him what to say.
LIMA, OH—As part of an ever-progressing military, a new feature has been added to the next line of M1 Abrams tanks: a diaper changing table.
“The horrors of war have often been unfriendly to the busy mom on the go,” said Department of Defense spokesman Clayton Brown. “Our mission is to change things so pregnant women and working moms all feel welcome in our quagmires in the Middle East and have opportunities to blow up the locals with depleted uranium shells.”
In addition to the changing table, each new tank will also be slightly larger in order to fit a private lounge for breastfeeding. So far, women in the military love the new components. “It’s really great as a mom to have these additional features,” said Private Lorraine Hodges, though she said the tank isn’t great for small children since it’s “very noisy” and “constantly under attack.”
The new tanks should be deployed worldwide very soon, as many hotspots aren’t doing very well since backup troops had to be rerouted to rebut Tucker Carlson on Twitter.
Scotland’s coldest winter in a decade will drag on in what the Weather Outlook calls a three-week “polar spring”. Central UK faces an 85% chance of snow with potential for southernto experience unseasonable lows of -5C (23F).
Central Europe expect a spring burial, with the Alps adding to the 3 meters (10 feet) of snow they’ve already suffered this week. Record-smashing totals will also hit Scandinavia and the Balkans. North Africa is also on fore rare, heavy late-March flurries.
All of this is on top of unusually high snowfall this year in the northern hemisphere – >2 sigma.
Overall there are 45 volcanoes with continuing eruptions as of the Stop Dates indicated, and as reported through the last data update (28 January 2021), sorted with the most recently started eruption at the top. Information about more recently started eruptions can be found in the Weekly Report.
45 volcanoes compared to the 20 normally erupting.
Soothsayer. Caesar! Caesar. Ha! who calls? Casca. Bid every noise be still: peace yet again! Caesar. Who is it in the press that calls on me?100 I hear a tongue, shriller than all the music, Cry ‘Caesar!’ Speak; Caesar is turn’d to hear. Soothsayer. Beware the ides of March. Caesar. What man is that? Brutus. A soothsayer bids you beware the ides of March.105 Caesar. Set him before me; let me see his face. Cassius. Fellow, come from the throng; look upon Caesar. Caesar. What say’st thou to me now? speak once again. Soothsayer. Beware the ides of March. Caesar. He is a dreamer; let us leave him: pass.
William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Julius Caesar,” Act I, Scene 2
All eyes are on the Fed this week and how it will respond to the bond vigilantes who have effectively thrown down the gauntlet and are now waiting for the FOMC to respond in kind. First up let me be clear that the ZB trading near 155 is not that unusual which should be quickly apparent when pulling up a long term chart.
What’s worrisome is velocity of the current sell off and in particular the context in which it’s happening. The swap rate index which you are now are familiar with continues to climb higher by the day.
Nobody really knows what exactly this means as the OTC swap rate market is not something us mere mortals will ever be given access to. But clearly something extraordinary is going on and it can’t be good.
Meanwhile the VIX has descended back toward its new old baseline, but I for one won’t be getting too comfortable down here as this situation appears to be temporary.
The US State Department’s former lead investigator who oversaw the COVID-19 task force into the origins of the virus believes SARS-CoV-2 escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and may have been the product of bioweapons research, according to Fox News.
“The Wuhan Institute of Virology is not the National Institute of Health,” David Asher – now a senior fellow at the Hudson institute – told Fox News in an interview, adding: “It was operating a secret, classified program. In my view, and I’m just one person, my view is it was a biological weapons program.”
Asher has long been a “follow the money” guy who has worked on some of the most classified intelligence investigations for the State Department and Treasury under both Democratic and Republican administrations. He led the team that uncovered the international nuclear procurement network run by the father of Pakistan’s nuclear program, AQ Khan, and uncovered key parts of North Korea’s secret uranium enrichment. He believes the Chinese Communist Party has been involved in a massive cover-up during the past 14 months. -Fox News
“And if you believe, as I do, that this might have been a weapons vector gone awry, not deliberately released, but in development and then somehow leaked, this has turned out to be the greatest weapon in history,” Asher told a Hudson Institute panel discussing the origins of the pandemic. “You’ve taken out 15 to 20 percent of global GDP. You’ve killed millions of people. The Chinese population has been barely affected. Their economies roared back to being number one in the entire G20.”
According to Asher – who interfaced with the Chinese government as the State Department’s lead representative during the 2003 SARS outbreak – the CCP’s behavior surrounding COVID-19 reminds him of criminal investigations he’s overseen.
“Motive, cover-up, conspiracy, all the hallmarks of guilt are associated with this. And the fact that the initial cluster of victims surrounded the very institute that was doing the highly dangerous, if not dubious research is significant,” he said.
At first, China said the COVID19 virus originated in the Wuhan Seafood Market – but the problem with China’s theory: the first case had no connection to the market. Last fall the US obtained intelligence that indicates there was an outbreak among several Wuhan lab scientists with flu-like symptoms that left them hospitalized in November of 2019 – before China reported its first case. Asher and the other Hudson Institute panel experts said that in 2007, China announced it would begin work on genetic bioweapons using controversial “gain of function” research to make the viruses more lethal. -Fox News
In 2016, China stopped talking about their research at the Wuhan Lab – which Asher believes is when the CCP went form biodefense research to offense – in the same year as a Chinese state television commentator claimed: “We have entered into an area of Chinese biowarfare, and including using things like viruses. I mean, they made a public statement to their people that this is a new priority under the Xi national security policy,” according to Asher.
When China began funding research at the WIV in 2017, they stopped talking about their research into COVID “disease vectors which could be used for weapons.”
“I doubt that’s a coincidence,” said Asher.
According to State Department official Miles Yu, who co-wrote a recent WSJ op-ed with former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo about the virus’ origins, “China has been involved in this type of virus research since 2003, the SARS outbreak,” adding “China’s biosafety standard is really low and is very dangerous. So this is an accident waiting to happen.”
As discussed in Wikipedia (Wikipedia, 2021), the Maunder Minimum, also known as the “prolonged sunspot minimum”, is the name used for the period around 1645 to 1715 during which sunspots became exceedingly rare, as was then noted by solar observers.
The term was introduced after John A. Eddy[1] published a landmark 1976 paper in Science.[2] Astronomers before Eddy had also named the period after the solar astronomers Edward Walter Maunder (1851–1928), and his wife Annie Russell Maunder (1868–1947),who studied how sunspot latitudes changed with time.[citation needed] The period which the Maunders examined included the second half of the 17th century.
Two papers were published in Edward Maunder’s name in 1890[3] and 1894,[4] and he cited earlier papers written by Gustav Spörer.[5][6] Because Annie Maunder had not received a university degree, restrictions at the time caused her contribution not to be publicly recognized.[7] Spörer noted that, during a 28-year period (1672–1699) within the Maunder Minimum, observations revealed fewer than 50 sunspots. This contrasts with the typical 40,000–50,000 sunspots seen in modern times (over similar 25 year sampling).[8]
The Maunder Minimum occurred with a much longer period of lower-than-average European temperatures which is likely to have been primarily caused by volcanic activity.
The strengthening solar output has been noted over the past 40-50 years reaching a peak coinciding with the second half of the 20th century. Entering the 21st century, solar activity appears to be falling off with a corresponding cooling effect on Earth’s climate.
Note that more intense solar activity over the period 1850-2000 presumably related to increased anthropogenic greenhouse gas emission of the industrial age also corresponds with more intense solar activity leading to the Modern Maximum peaking around the start of the 21st century.
Historically, the Sun exhibits centennial-scale activity variations. A grand solar minimum occurs when solar activity becomes extremely weak and sunspots disappear for several decades. Such extreme solar weakening could cause severe climate, leading to massive reductions in crop yields in some regions.
The Maunder Minimum roughly coincided with the middle part of the Little Ice Age, during which Europe and North America experienced colder than average temperatures. Whether there is a causal relationship, however, is still under evaluation.[9] The current best hypothesis for the cause of the Little Ice Age is that it was the result of volcanic action.[10][11] The onset of the Little Ice Age also occurred well before the beginning of the Maunder Minimum,[12] and northern-hemisphere temperatures during the Maunder Minimum were not significantly different from the previous 80 years,[13] suggesting a decline in solar activity was not the main causal driver of the Little Ice Age.
The correlation between low sunspot activity and cold winters in England has recently been analyzed using the longest existing surface temperature record, the Central England Temperature record.[14] They emphasize that this is a regional and seasonal effect relating to European winters, and not a global effect. A potential explanation of this has been offered by observations by NASA’s Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment, which suggest that solar UV output is more variable over the course of the solar cycle than scientists had previously thought.[15] In 2011, an article was published in the Nature Geoscience journal that uses a climate model with stratospheric layers and the SORCE data to tie low solar activity to jet stream behavior and mild winters in some places (southern Europe and Canada/Greenland) and colder winters in others (northern Europe and the United States).[19] In Europe, examples of very cold winters are 1683–84, 1694–95, and the winter of 1708–09.[20]
Indeed, the past decade saw the Sun’s activity decline.
In a recently published paper, Miyahara (2021) shows that the 11-year solar cycles were signifcantly lengthened before the onset of the Maunder Minimum (1645–1715 CE) based on unprecedentedly high-precision data of carbon-14 content in tree rings. This finding implies that fow speed in the convection zone is an essential parameter to determine long-term solar activity variations.
In fact, Myahar finds a 16 year long cycle occurred three solar cycles before the onset of prolonged sunspot disappearance, suggesting a longer-than-expected preparatory period for the grand minimum. Like the 17th century Maunder Minimum, the Sun has shown a tendency of cycle lengthening since Solar Cycle 23 (1996–2008 CE). That means the behavior of Solar Cycle 25 can be critically important to the later solar activity.
Reference
Miyahara, H., Tokanai, F., Moriya, T., Takeyama, M., Sakurai, H., Horiuchi, K., & Hotta, H. (2021). Gradual onset of the Maunder Minimum revealed by high-precision carbon-14 analyses. Scientific Reports, 11(1), s41598-021.
Econophysics2020 
