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Immunotherapy drug VIR-5500 shows good results in treating prostate cancer and lowering PSA in patients.

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Hillary Clinton's estate tax plan would increase the estate taxes on the largest estates from 40% today and her proposed 45% to the higher figure of 65% proposed by Senator Bernie Sanders. Compared to the current $5.45 million exemption only the first $3.5 million would be exempt from estate tax for individuals ($7 million for a married couple). The top rate of 65% would apply to individuals with over $500 million. Beyond $10 million a 50% rate, and beyond $50 million a 55% rate.

The latest proposal adds $260 billion over 10 years adequate to pay for simplified small business taxes, and for expanding child tax credit.  Over 10 years Clinton would increase taxes by $1.5 trillion to pay for expanded education assistance, paid family leave and other programs. She would increase federal revenue by 4% and have the burden fall on only a small portion of households.

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Analysts say the price Russia agreed to for natural gas under the May 2014 agreement with China is about $350 close to the $380 price per 1000 cubic metres at which Russia sold natural gas to Europe for 2013. The deal involves building the pipelines on the Russian and Chinese sides and developing natural gas fields in Russian Siberia. The cost of the pipelines alone could be $70 billion, according to think tank RusEnergy, and the total deal worth about $400 billion. China National Petroleum website says Russia will begin supplying natural gas in 2018 with 38 billion cubic metres. By keeping the price "a commercial secret" in the words of Gazprom CEO Miller, Russia and China benefit from not having to renegotiate their contracts with other suppliers and buyers. Putin pointed out that the price has also been pegged to the future price of petroleum products and oil, which are expected to remain high.

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This visual in The Guardian shows how the center of gravity for carbon emissions has moved from Britain, to the US, and now to China.

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The Robert Koch Institute reports rise in daily infections from around 500 to over 800 a day on one day last week.  This is seen as a second wave after the economy reopened. The reproduction rate is up to 1.08 from 0.93, so that on average one infected person passes the virus on to one other person. 

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The behavior of the US stock market is examined in this analysis in the WSJ. It shows that tech stocks that comprise a major part of the S&P 500 made a big surge in 2020 and 2021, dropping by 30% in 2022. Consumer discretionary stocks which also experienced an upsurge in 2020 and 2021 are facing headwinds from higher inflation and decline in demand. Retailers such as Target and Walmart are reducing inventories as demand shifts. 

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FR24 gives details of the Gaza Truce proposals under Paris negotiations. A 40 day ceasefire Truce is proposed with one hostage released for 10 Palestinian prisoners.

All Israeli hostages, including women and children to be released.

In exchange for 40 hostages 400 Palestinian prisoners to be released.

Humanitarian aid- 500 trucks per day, 60,000 caravans, 200,000 tents. Rehabilitation of hospitals and bakeries, supply of fuel and other services. Necessary equipment to clear rubble.

 

 

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In a 50-50 Senate to pass president Biden's $3.6 trillion Families and Workers plan requires the vote of Kyrsten Simema, Democrat of Arizona. Simema is the lone holdout in the plan to raise $540 billion by increasing corporate tax rates to pay for part of the plan. Tax rate increases on capital gains would raise nearly $300 billion. A law passed by president Trump lowered corporate tax rates to 21% which would go up to 26.5% under the Biden plan. The top individual rate lowered to 37% would go up to 39.6% and capital gains rate from 23.8% to 28.8% under the Biden plan. Democrats say these new rates are fair considering how much wealth distribution is skewed and how much workers and families have failed to benefit in the policies pursued by different administrations since Reagan, through Bush, Clinton, Obama and Trump.

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Blinder, a Professor of Economics at Princeton, and former Vice Chairman of the Fed, always supported Sheila Bair's efforts at FDIC to help reduce forclosures. He says, Secretary Paulson has released little of the TARP money for reducing foreclosures and helping homeowners and none of it went to buying up troubled mortgage assets. So he argues the nations mortgage crisis, which is at the root of its problems goes on. The government that gave us Katrina and the Iraq war will now give us the TARP program, which apart from supporting the banks has done little to address the other serious problems that it had been approved for. And no conditions were made with the banks that required them to continue lending, all it accomplished is unfreeze the credit markets, a serious objective but clearly not sufficient to address the underlying causes of this crisis. Martin Feldstein, Professor of Economics at Harvard, has also repeatedly this year, from the early months of 2008, called for help to homeowners to reduce foreclosures. Little in the way of his counsel is being heeded, even though he has represented Republican administrations including Reagan and Bush in the past. Clearly too many conflicting interests stalled any progress, and the repeated crises since summer left Secretary Paulson and Fed Chairman more of a role putting out fires or forestalling dangerous developments in financial markets, than setting serious policy measures in place. ...

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Response to question whether this $100 a barrel oil is possible is yes, if something big happens in the oil flows from middle east or if there is a Katrina style hurricane. Reason being that oil demand has not slackened up either from Asia or from the U.S. automobiles. How would this impact the USA, Europe, Asia? The impact on Japan and Europe would be less because of the high efficiency in use energy use. This could slowdown the U.S. economy considerably as gasoline approaches $5 a barrel. India would be hurt with a drop in GDP growth from 8% to 6% according to an estimate by Crisil, Mumbai. It would affect Chinese growth also but the main impact would be indirect through a decline in the U.S. market for Chinese made products. Russia would gain and economic growth there could accelerate further from 6% to 9% according to estimate by MDM Bank, Moscow.

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The odd situation in India where 50% of 43,000 coronavirus cases on July 28 are in just 1 state in the southwestern side of India on the Malabar coast. The next state is Maharashtra with 6000 cases and other states have about 2000 cases each including Andhra Pradesh.

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A Brooklyn, New York resident who created his own job during the pandemic. A neighbor gave him a used bike she was getting rid of. He sold it online for $400. This gave him an idea- he now pulls bikes from garages and barns all over the U.S. and restores them to new. Because of the virus related manufacturing slowdowns for bicycles, and people preferring bikes to trains demand has jumped. U.S. bicycle sales at $2.6 billion up 81% and use of city bicycles up 141% in New York city for Citibike- with single trip pass buyer at 516,000. Mr. Van Scyvoc a 33 year old Brooklyn resident collects bikes around Cleveland where his father a retired firefighter lives and takes them by pickup truck to a bike stand he has at Fort Green park in Brooklyn. There he sells bikes bought for $80 to $250 for $300 to 500. First he has to have them washed clean and then serviced in Brooklyn by an IT engineer who now repairs bikes.

 

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DJT comments on Denmark's comments on its contributions to NATO overseas operations like the one in Afghanistan. DJT stated the facts about participants such as Denmark that made small contributions in numbers- DJT said on Fox News -We’ve never needed them. We have never really asked anything of them. They’ll say, they sent some troops to Afghanistan or this or that, and they did. They stayed a little back, little off the front lines.” About 41 Danish soldiers were killed in Afghanistan and about 800 Danes went in. DJT is probably talking about the  brunt of the action being taken by the US including the effects of road side bombs. About 2500 US soldiers died and 20,000 were wounded and the US took the brunt of the fighting. These were Bush-Obama wars that during that time distracted the Nation from the serious challenges that emerged later in drug cartels in Mexico that led to more deaths in the US than in the Korean and Vietnam wars and World War combined, and the deindustrialization of the US that began with the Clinton era decision to allow China to enter the World Trade Organization without any safeguards continued into the second term of the Obama administration. In the European media there is rarely any mention of the huge losses from drug trafficking into the US that requires action along the lines of the Monroe doctrine which also protect Europe from drug trafficking into the EU. ...