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Biden administration ramps up antitrust efforts amid worries about high prices

Thanks to a subscriber for this article from The Washington Post may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

But other troubling signs have emerged in ways that threaten the administration’s political agenda. The price of gasoline rose by 2.5% in June and 2.4% in July — a rate which, if consistent over the course of the year, would amount to a more than 20% annual increase. Gas prices have risen above $3 and are at their highest level since 2014 as part of a broader increase in prices that the administration is eager to reverse. Prices could increase further as Hurricane Ida slams into Louisiana, a key hub for refineries, although that uptick will likely prove temporary.

Food price hikes also strained family budgets, rising by roughly 3.4% from last year. The Agriculture Department saw faster than expected jumps between June and July in the price of 11 different food categories — including beef and veal; seafood; fish; and dairy products — with pork and chicken prices increasing by about 2% in just one month. USDA projected jumps in poultry prices of as high as 6% over 2021.



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How water shortages are brewing wars

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Unfortunately, there's no one-size-fits-all solution to water scarcity. In many countries simply reducing loss and leaks could make a huge difference – Iraq loses as much as two-thirds of treated water due to damaged infrastructure. The WPS partners also suggest tackling corruption and reducing agricultural over-abstraction as other key policies that could help. Iceland even suggests increasing the price of water to reflect the cost of its provision – in many parts of the world, humans have grown used to getting water being a cheap and plentiful resource rather than something to be treasured.

Much can also be done by freeing up more water for use through techniques such as desalination of seawater. Saudi Arabia currently meets 50% of its water needs through the process. "Grey", or waste water, recycling can also offer a low-cost, easy-to-implement alternative, which can help farming communities impacted by drought. One assessment of global desalination and wastewater treatment predicted that increased capacity of these could reduce the proportion of the global population under severe water scarcity from 40% to 14%.

At the international level, extensive damming by countries upstream are likely to increase the risk of disputes with those that rely on rivers for much of their water supply further downstream. But Susanne Schmeier, associate professor of water law and diplomacy at IHE Delft in the Netherlands, says that co-riparian conflict is easier to spot and less likely to come to a head. "Local conflicts are much more difficult to control and tend to escalate rapidly – a main difference from the transboundary level, where relations between states often limit the escalation of water-related conflicts," she says



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Fearing Inflation, Germans Load Up on Gold Bars

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Demand for physical bullion in Germany, traditionally the biggest coin and bar buyer in Europe, was the highest since at least 2009 in the first half, World Gold Council data show.

While purchases in other Western markets have also been strong, Germans in particular are pouring into the metal as a hedge against rising inflation -- and dealers say business remains good.

“We have a long history of inflation fear in our DNA. Now the inflation risk is picking up,” said Raphael Scherer, a managing director at metals dealer Philoro Edelmetalle GmbH, whose gold sales are up 25% on what was already a strong 2020.

“The outlook for precious metals is very positive.” Germany’s love of gold has its origins in the hyperinflation seen under the Weimar Republic a century ago, which saw consumers’ buying power collapse. Last month, the reopening of the economy helped German inflation jump to the highest in more than a decade. Negative interest rates in Europe are also making non-yielding assets like gold more attractive, Scherer said.

First-half demand for bar and coins in Germany increased by 35% from the previous six months, compared with 20% in the rest of the world, WGC data show.



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Supply Squeezes are Reappearing Everywhere in Key Metal Markets

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It’s hard to think of two metals with more disparate fundamentals than copper and lead, and long-term projections for prices reflect that. In one corner, there’s a metal that looks set to soar as it powers the world’s rapidly burgeoning renewable-energy and electric-vehicle industries, and in the other corner there’s lead. The highly toxic metal has been substituted out of virtually every product it’s been used in throughout history, and now the electric-vehicle revolution is posing a manifest threat to its last major application in conventional car batteries.

Still, for buyers scrambling to get hold of spot metal on the LME, the fact that lead prices are likely to crumble in the future will be of no comfort at all. And the general rule in commodities markets is that as long as buyers are bidding up spot prices, futures are likely to follow.



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Iron Ore Spikes With Commodities Markets Set for Demand Revival

This article by Annie Lee and Mark Burton for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

Iron ore’s revival came after it lost about a quarter of its value in the past month, as China’s push to curb steel production hammered demand. But steel and other industrial commodities have rebounded this week, after China’s count of daily Covid cases fell back to zero and central bankers vowed to step up support for the real economy. Coking coal in China hit a record on Tuesday, while copper has also recovered amid signs that Chinese consumers are on a buying spree. 

“Iron ore just cannot be the only one lagging while everything else in steel space is massively bid,” Xiaoyu Zhu, a metals trader at StoneX Financial Inc., said by email. “After the price spike in coal products in the last two days, it’s hard for iron ore to stay quiet.”
 



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Brazil farmers remove dead coffee trees, some switching to grains

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Adriano Rabelo de Rezende, technical head at the Minasul coffee co-op, who flew over damaged coffee fields https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/frosts-stain-brazil-coffee-belt-growers-see-nearly-third-fields-hit-2021-07-30 with Reuters after the frosts, said the recommendation is for farmers to wait for the rains before taking any action.

“With the rains some plants could recover, so it will be better to decide the best action: what type of pruning,” he said.

Rains are expected in Minas Gerais by the end of the month. They will be key not only for the trees’ ability to recover, but also for the flowering stage that will determine production potential for the next crop.

Mario Alvarenga, who has two coffee farms in Minas Gerais, said the drought remains challenging.

“You don’t find any moisture in the soil up to 1 meter (40 inches) deep. Crops that were not hit by frosts are withering,” he said.

Alvarenga estimates that 18% of his coffee crops were damaged by frosts. He has already started pruning where he thinks trees have a chance of recovering when the first rains arrive, leaving the ones that are dead to be taken out later.



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Powell's Jackson Hole Gamble Runs Risk of Backfiring

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In the end, it will come down to what Powell considers the bigger longer-term risk for the U.S.: Become trapped in a disinflationary spiral like that experienced by Japan as the forces of technological advances and globalization continue to press down on prices, or enter an inflationary zone of escalating cost pressures akin to what the U.S. suffered a half century ago.

Right now, he’s betting that the former is the bigger long-run danger, and holding off from tightening credit.

“The new framework is not so much about what kind of monetary policy you would expect right now, but what you might expect over the next year or perhaps longer as this recovery continues,” Wendy Edelberg, director of The Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution, says. “They have made a pretty convincing argument they are going to keep monetary policy accommodative for longer than they would have under a different policy rule.”

But the path ahead will be far from easy as the Fed seeks to softly land the economy in the neighborhood of on-target inflation and maximum employment.

“It’s going to very difficult,” says Blinder, who was at the Fed when it achieved what many economists consider its only perfect landing for the economy, in the mid 1990s. “If they can achieve that, they deserve more than a pat on the back.” 



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World's biggest wind turbine shows the disproportionate power of scale

This article from NewAtlas may be of interest to subscribers.

China's MingYang Smart Energy has announced an offshore wind turbine even bigger than GE's monstrous Haliade-X. The MySE 16.0-242 is a 16-megawatt, 242-meter-tall (794-ft) behemoth capable of powering 20,000 homes per unit over a 25-year service life.

The stats on these renewable-energy colossi are getting pretty crazy. When MingYang's new turbine first spins up in prototype form next year, its three 118-m (387-ft) blades will sweep a 46,000-sq-m (495,140-sq-ft) area bigger than six soccer fields.

Every year, each one expected to generate 80 GWh of electricity. That's 45 percent more than the company's MySE 11.0-203, from just a 19 percent increase in diameter. No wonder these things keep getting bigger; the bigger they get, the better they seem to work, and the fewer expensive installation projects need to be undertaken to develop the same capacity.

The overall result should be a drop in offshore wind energy production prices – a sorely needed drop, too. Current levelized costs of energy, as estimated by the US Energy Information Administration for new energy generation assets going live in 2026, place offshore wind as the most expensive way of generating a megawatt-hour right now, at US$120.52, where ultra-supercritical coal is more like $72.78 and standalone solar is around $32.78 before subsidies.

Obviously, wind fills in gaps that solar can't, and it'll be a crucial part of the energy mix going forward. Scaling the industry up with these mammoth turbines is the key reason why industry experts are predicting that the cost of offshore wind will drop by between 37 and 49 percent by 2050, as reported by Renew Economy.

MingYang says the MySE 16.0-242 is just the start of its "new 15MW+ offshore product platform," and that it's capable of operating installed to the sea floor or on a floating base. The full prototype will be built in 2022, installed and into operation by 2023. Commercial production is slated to begin in the first half of 2024.



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Evergrande Slumps as Investors See No Bailout After Huarong

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Huarong’s bailout was reassuring for investors who went through months of agony guessing just how determined the Chinese government was in combating moral hazard. But even with $300 billion in liabilities that could roil banks, suppliers and home buyers, junk-rated Evergrande is seen as a separate case as authorities crack down on excessive leverage in the property sector. 

Investor concerns grew Thursday evening after Chinese regulators demanded Evergrande resolve its debt risks and refrain from spreading untrue information. People’s Bank of China and banking watchdog officials summoned the company’s executives, telling them to maintain operations and protect the stability of financial and property markets, according to a joint statement.  

“The Chinese government’s stance to prioritize social harmony and equality over corporate profit is becoming increasingly clear,” said Anthony Leung, head of fixed income at Metropoly Capital HK. “Evergrande is completely different in the sense that it is the poster child of an industrywide reckless risk-taking culture.”



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It's Not Just Poppies

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Plus, it would be many years before any mines would be developed, even if (as now seems possible) the Chinese are allowed by the Taliban to bring their can-do attitude to the task.

China has been cosying up to the Taliban (some of their leaders were on a Beijing visit a few weeks ago) and the Chinese government made it clear this week they had "maintained contact and communication" in recent days with the bearded ones now in charge in Kabul.

China has also said it wishes to help the "reconstruction and development" of Afghanistan.

Clearly, Beijing wishes to draw Afghanistan into its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). It is a telling detail that the 76km-long border between the two countries includes a pass that was a route on the old Silk Road, the template for the new BRI. Expect to see a highway and rail line this time rather than horses and camels.

China may be able to achieve what others have failed to do: make Afghanistan a vassal state. In that case, they will have under their control Afghanistan's mineral wealth.

The British Raj failed to subdue the Afghans — it's famous retreat from Kabul in 1842 ended with the entire 16,000-man army dying or being killed. Then the Soviet invasion came a cropper in more recent years.

And now the Americans have been humiliated.

Rare earths would be uppermost on Beijing's mind when it comes to mineral resources.

The USGS estimated that rare earths in Helmand province could contain up to 1.4 million tonnes of rare earth elements, which would dwarf what Australia could potentially supply to the world. China's control of those resources, as well as their downstream processing capabilities, would enable Beijing to maintain its stranglehold on those vital critical metals.

And presumably the Chinese would like to get their hands on the iron ore.



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