BlackMask Breaking News

July 9 (Reuters) – As the number of new coronavirus cases in the United States rose to a single-day record, fresh government data on Thursday showed another 1.3 million Americans filed for jobless benefits, highlighting the pandemic’s devastating impact on the economy. More than 60,000 new COVID-19 infections were reported on Wednesday and U.S. deaths rose by more than 900 for the second straight day, the highest since early June. Florida on Thursday announced nearly 9,000 new cases and 120 new coronavirus deaths, a record daily increase in lives lost. Positive test rates reached a new daily high of 18%, up from 12%-13% two weeks ago. California and Texas, the most populous states, announced record increases in COVID deaths on Wednesday. The grim U.S. numbers come on top of extraordinarily high jobless figures, although they came in lower than economists had forecast. Initial unemployment claims hit a historic peak of nearly 6.9 million in late March. Although they have gradually fallen, claims remain roughly double their highest point during the 2007-09 Great Recession. With coronavirus cases rising in 41 of the 50 U.S. states over the past two weeks, according to a Reuters analysis, many states have had to halt and roll back plans to reopen businesses and lift restrictions. From California to Florida, beaches and bars have been ordered to close. Restaurants in Texas have been told they can have fewer diners. Earlier this week, President Donald Trump criticized his health agency’s recommendations for reopening schools in the fall as too expensive and impractical, insisting that all schools must open for classroom instruction. Vice President Mike Pence said on Wednesday the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would issue a “new set of tools” next week. Many Americans cannot return to work if schools do not open for in-person learning, as they are a major source of childcare in the country. The CDC’s director, Robert Redfield, on Thursday defended the guidelines but gave no details on what the CDC was changing. “It’s not a revision of the guidelines. It’s just to provide additional information to help the schools be able to use the guidance that we put forward,” he told ABC’s “Good Morning America” program. “Our guidelines are our guidelines.” Officials in New Jersey and New York, the hardest-hit states at the outset of the U.S. outbreak, are trying to preserve the progress they made in curtailing the spread of the virus in the face of the resurgence elsewhere, especially the South and West. New Jersey adopted a stringent coronavirus face-mask order on Wednesday, and New York City unveiled a plan to allow public school students back into classrooms for just two or three days a week. Nick Note: The major way the yearly flu is spread is by school children bring home the infections to their parents. Why wold anyone believe the coronavirus would be any different/.

In a history-making decision on Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled President Donald Trump cannot block a subpoena for his financial records sought by a New York prosecutor, ruling he is not immune from criminal investigation. The decision is a major legal defeat for President Trump, although it is highly unlikely the public will see the president’s tax returns or financial records before Election Day. In the most recent time Chief Justice John Roberts has sided with the court’s liberal side in a high-profile case, he wrote for the 7-2 majority, “Article II and the Supremacy Clause do not categorically preclude, or require a heightened standard for, the issuance of a state criminal subpoena to a sitting President.” The majority rejected the president’s claims of absolute immunity from criminal investigative process and affirms the ability of the Manhattan DA to subpoena he president’s financial records — but the court returns the matter back to a lower court for further proceedings to allow the president to “raise further arguments as appropriate.” “Two hundred years ago, a great jurist of our Court established that no citizen, not even the President, is categorically above the common duty to produce evidence when called upon in a criminal proceeding. We reaffirm that principle today and hold that the President is neither absolutely immune from state criminal subpoenas seeking his private papers nor entitled to a heightened standard of need,” Roberts wrote. Trump tweeted shortly after the decision was revealed that the matter is a “political prosecution.”

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance is seeking multiple years of documents as part of their respective investigations into potential wrongdoing by Trump prior to his presidency. He called the ruling a “tremendous victory” and said that the Manhattan District Attorney’s investigation will resume. “This is a tremendous victory for our nation’s system of justice and its founding principle that no one – not even a president – is above the law,” Vance said in a statement. “Our investigation, which was delayed for almost a year by this lawsuit, will resume, guided as always by the grand jury’s solemn obligation to follow the law and the facts, wherever they may lead.” The president’s attorneys said they were “pleased.” “We are pleased that in the decisions issued today, the Supreme Court has temporarily blocked both Congress and New York prosecutors from obtaining the President’s tax records. We will now proceed to raise additional Constitutional and legal issues in the lower courts,” Jay Sekulow, Counsel to the President, said in a statement on the New York case and a second case in which the court blocked congressional subpoenas, also sending the matter back to a lower court. In the case of Trump v. Mazars USA LLP and Trump v. Deutsche Bank AG & Capital One, House committees subpoenaed a sweeping array of Trump personal and business records predating his time in the White House, including bank statements, engagement letters, personal checks, loan applications and tax returns. They say the information is critical to drafting of federal ethics laws, anti-corruption legislation and campaign finance rules involving presidents. Trump is the only modern American president to have not publicly released tax returns or divest from major business interests while in office. Nick Note: I smell cooked goose here……..

Los Angeles City Coronavirus Update: Mayor Eric Garcetti  “All Options” On Table

• Los Angeles County Coronavirus Update: New Cases, Hospitalizations Now Regularly Averaging Close To All-Time Record As Test Positivity Rate Soars Again
• UK’s Largest Cinema Chain Odeon Slows Reopening Amid Moving Film Slate
• Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti Warns Of “National Testing Emergency” Across The U.S.

Noting that Los Angeles is currently seeing the highest level of hospitalizations since the pandemic began, Garcetti warned, “These [next two] weeks are absolutely critical. Critical to whether our schools open, whether our economy thrives.” He reminded residents that “All options remain on the table. We will do whatever we need to.” If things get worse, said Garcetti, “We’d likely return to a mandated stay-at-home order,” in one or two weeks. “There are still too many social gatherings. Way too many pool parties,” he said. “Parents, I need your help,” enjoined the mayor. “I need you to keep your children away from their friends.” As a general guideline, Garcetti advised, “You should assume that everyone around you is infected.” “Testing remains a critical tool,” he said. “We hear very single day that there are not enough tests,” said the mayor, before announcing that the city and county had performed a record 20,000 tests on Wednesday. But in a city of 4 million people, however, that’s still not enough. “We need more help with testing,” he said.

“Without a major boost in testing,” continued the mayor, “there’s no way we can safely reopen our economy or to safely reopen schools.”

He then called for federal help: “Congress and the  president need to step up and pass another aid bill.”For those concerned that the city and county are only doing 20,000 tests a day, “Don’t be that scared by those numbers,” said Garcetti, “and I’ll tell you why: We saw two weeks ago that we had capacity, but no demand.” Now, Garcetti says, with increased demand, “I’m confident that within the next week we’ll get back to whatever path we need to [be on].” But there is an even larger crisis looming, according to the mayor. “We’re going to see across this nation a testing emergency,” said Garcetti in response to a question from Deadline. He predicted a national squeeze on lab personnel, testing materials and contact tracing. He called on Congress to approve another round of economic support for Americans. “We need national leadership, so this isn’t a dog-eat-dog [process],” said Garcetti. If states are pitted against each other again, as they were in the scramble for PPE then, said Garcetti, it becomes a zero-sum equation: “If Florida does well, California suffers,” and so on. Earlier in the day, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health on Tuesday confirmed 4,015 new cases of COVID-19, the region’s highest number of new cases reported since the pandemic began. The high number of cases is due, in part, to a backlog of about 2,000 test results received from one lab that just submitted lab results from July 2-5 today. Testing results are available for more than 1.2 million individuals with 9% of those people testing positive. The daily positivity rate of all tests — a composite of a seven-day rolling average — has risen to 11.6%. On Monday, that seven-day average was pegged at 10%. A back of the envelope calculation shows L.A.’s one-day test positivity rate is 16 percent. Also on Wednesday, California Hospital Association President and CEO Carmela Coyle offered a grim update from the medical community. “We’re preparing to surge,” she said. And with good reason. California Gov. Gavin Newsom then announced a mind-boggling number of new coronavirus cases in the state. Over the previous 24 hours, California saw 11,694 new cases, which includes a backlog of cases from Los Angeles County. Testing backlogs have spiked the state’s daily new-case numbers before, but Wednesday’s number so far exceeds the state’s previous all-time high of 7,149 reported on June 24 that it cannot be ignored Nick Note. The positivity rate is astonishing. THE WAVE II is upon us. This is no joke!

(Boomberg) — It’s not your imagination: Stock markets are lurching from meltdown to melt-up like never before. After one of the swiftest corrections in history, the S&P 500 is now back within a spitting distance of pre-crisis levels. Likewise the February 2018 crash was followed by a swift resurgence, while the late December swoon that year was a mere memory the following April. The danger now is that investors are stampeding into yet another cross-asset rally ripe for a violent reversal. This tendency for markets to sway suddenly between extremes highs and lows is increasingly a feature of modern trading. Bank of America Corp. strategists have a term for this: Fragility. They reckon high-fragility events are kicking off five times more frequently since the global financial crisis compared to the decades from 1928 onwards. “In a world where alpha is hard to come by, you have to go with the trend,” said Benjamin Bowler, Bank of America Corp.’s chief global equity derivatives strategist, in an interview. “Because of that low conviction, when the trade turns, everyone wants to get out at the same time because they were only there when the trade was working.” Societe Generale SA strategists calculate the frequency of freakish moves in the S&P 500, a measure known as kurtosis, is nearly double its three-year average after reaching a two-decade high this year. Blame investor herding, monetary stimulus, weak liquidity, or excessive leverage. Whatever the culprits, it’s no easy problem to hedge, with market shocks becoming ;rallies painful to miss. Bowler’s recommending to /clients a ‘W’ trade that buys out-of-the-money S&P options which pay off sharply when there are extreme moves both up and down, while collecting a steady premium from selling contracts that are nearer to in-the-money. SocGen has a strategy that follows intraday stock trends, built for fast-moving markets prone to outsized price moves. “If all the central banks continue to artificially suppress volatility and support markets and have a heavy hand, I think this environment is going to continue,” Bowler said. Herd mentality is on full show of late in the nearly $23 trillion global stock rebound. The Nasdaq 100 has been flirting with overbought levels while corporate bond prices are recovering to their pre-pandemic highs. Yet as coronavirus cases climb across the U.S. and economic data signal continued weakness, the threat of extreme price moves is clear. A metric that tracks just how volatile implied stock swings are, the volatility of volatility, is still one quarter higher than the decade average. The post-crisis era has already seen five market blow-ups as measured by kurtosis, which calculates how often extreme moves are occurring relative to normal, or so-called fat tails. That compares with typically just one in a decade between the 1920s and 2008, according to Bowler’s calculations. In credit and equities, the metric reached at least three times its previous peaks this year in the pandemic crash. A recent example: On June 11, the S&P 500 plunged 5.9% amid signs of a second wave of the coronavirus in America. In terms of how sharp the move was relative to what volatility trends were projecting, that was the 25th biggest shock out of roughly 23,000 trading days since the 1920s, according to Bowler’s analysis. One problem is that high-frequency traders have filled the void left by investment banks after regulations made it harder for the latter to facilitate trading. As a result, liquidity — or the ability to find buyers and sellers at a tight spread — tends to vanish quickly during sell-offs. “Liquidity conditions haven’t quite come back to normal, especially in equities,” said Sandrine Ungari, head of cross-asset quantitative research at SocGen. “Any spike in risk aversion is most probably going to trigger a lot of volatility. Hysterical markets are posing particular challenges for systematic strategies. Ones that target volatility have struggled to cut positioning fast enough during drawdowns and then catch up with the rally. Trend followers with a medium-term view may also find fewer winning trades in cross-asset trading that zigzags rapidly. Nick Note: In what ever you do from this point on its critical you realize the world has forever changed. A correct assessment of the plague is critical. get it wrong and at least you go broke. But get it rally wrong and you will die. Critical in our evaluation is our conclusion their will be not cure. Treatments yes with varying outcomes. AND THEIR WILL NEVER EVER BE A WORKING VACCINE. Herd immunity is a sick joke. Now as far as the markets. One way or another the WORLD will be going into lockdown again. With the politicians and the sold out bankers kicking and screaming all the way. We are in for one hell of a global depression and it will end badly for most everyone you know. I urge you to first prepare your self mentally, they physically and then financially.

Summary of Weekly Petroleum Data for the week ending July 3, 2020

U.S. commercial crude oil inventories (excluding those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve) increased by 5.7 million barrels from the previous week. At 539.2 million barrels, U.S. crude oil inventories are about 18% above the five year average for this time of year.  U.S. crude oil refinery inputs averaged 14.3 million barrels per day during the week ending July 3, 2020 which was 315,000 barrels per day more than the previous week’s average. Refineries operated at 77.5% of their operable capacity last week. Gasoline production increased last week, averaging 9.0 million barrels per day. Distillate fuel production increased last week, averaging 4.8 million barrels per day. U.S. crude oil imports averaged 7.4 million barrels per day last week, increased by 1.4 million barrels per day from the previous week. Over the past four weeks, crude oil imports averaged about 6.6 million barrels per day, 8.5% less than the same four-week period last year. Total motor gasoline imports (including both finished gasoline and gasoline blending components) last week averaged 729,000 barrels per day, and distillate fuel imports averaged 72,000 barrels per day. Total motor gasoline inventories decreased by 4.8 million barrels last week and are about 8% above the five year average for this time of year. Finished gasoline and blending components inventories both decreased last week. Distillate fuel inventories increased by 3.1 million barrels last week and are about 27% above the five year average for this time of year. Propane/propylene inventories increased by 2.2 million barrels last week and are about 7% above the five year average for this time of year. Total commercial petroleum inventories increased last week by 9.8 million barrels last week. Total products supplied over the last four-week period averaged 17.8 million barrels a day, down by 15.1% from the same period last year. Over the past four weeks, motor gasoline product supplied averaged 8.5 million barrels a day, down by 12.5% from the same period last year. Distillate fuel product supplied averaged 3.5 million barrels a day more than the past four weeks, down by 10.3% from the same period last year. Jet fuel product supplied was down 57.2% compared with the same four-week period last year. Nick Note: Recovery my ass.

The United States, the country hardest hit by the coronavirus, on Tuesday posted 60,209 new cases, a record for a 24-hour period, according to a tally from Johns Hopkins University. The country was just shy of three million cases, at 2,991,351, the Baltimore-based university said in its latest data as of 8:30 pm (0030 GMT Wednesday).  While a Reuters tally had the U.S. passing 3 million, Johns Hopkins University put the U.S. case total at 2,996,098 on Tuesday evening with 60,209 new cases – a new record for a 24-hour period. The U.S. coronavirus outbreak crossed a grim milestone of over 3 million confirmed cases on Tuesday as more states reported record numbers of new infections, and Florida faced an impending shortage of intensive care unit hospital beds.  Authorities have reported alarming upswings of daily caseloads in roughly two dozen states over the past two weeks, a sign that efforts to control transmission of the novel coronavirus have failed in large swaths of the country. California, Hawaii, Idaho, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma and Texas on Tuesday shattered their previous daily record highs for new cases. The biggest jumps occurred in Texas and California, the two largest U.S. states, with more than 10,000 each. About 24 states have reported disturbingly high infection rates as a percentage of diagnostic tests conducted over the past week. In Texas alone, the number of hospitalized patients more than doubled in just two weeks. The trend has driven many more Americans to seek out COVID-19 screenings. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said on Tuesday it was adding short-term “surge” testing sites in three metropolitan areas in Florida, Louisiana and Texas. In Houston, a line of more than 200 cars snaked around the United Memorial Medical Center as people waited hours in sweltering heat to get tested. Some had arrived the night before to secure a place in line at the drive-through site. In Florida, more than four dozen hospitals across 25 of 67 counties reported their intensive care units had reached full capacity, according to the state’s Agency for Health Care Administration. Only 17% of the total 6,010 adult ICU beds statewide were available on Tuesday, down from 20% three days earlier. Additional hospitalizations could strain healthcare systems in many areas, leading to an uptick in lives lost from the respiratory illness that has killed more than 131,000 Americans to date. At least 923 of those deaths were reported Tuesday, the biggest single-day toll since June 10 but still far fewer than the record 2,806 tallied back in April. A widely cited mortality model from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) projected on Tuesday that U.S. deaths would reach 208,000 by Nov. 1, with the outbreak expected to gain new momentum heading into the fall. A hoped-for summertime decline in transmission of the virus never materialized, the IHME said. “The U.S. didn’t experience a true end of the first wave of the pandemic,” the IHME’s director, Dr. Christopher Murray, said in a statement. “This will not spare us from a second surge in the fall, which will hit particularly hard in states currently seeing high levels of infections.” President Donald Trump, who has pushed for restarting the U.S. economy and urged Americans to return to their normal routines, said on Tuesday he would lean on state governors to open schools in the fall.

New COVID-19 infections are rising in 42 states, based on a Reuters analysis of the past two weeks. By Tuesday afternoon, the number of confirmed U.S. cases had surpassed 3 million, affecting nearly one of every 100 Americans and a population roughly equal to Nevada’s. In Arizona, another hot spot, the rate of coronavirus tests coming back positive rose to 26% for the week ended July 5, leading two dozen states with positivity rates exceeding 5%. The World Heath Organization considers a rate over 5% to be troubling. The surge has forced authorities to backpedal on moves to reopen businesses, such as restaurants and bars, after mandatory lockdowns in March and April reduced economic activity to a virtual standstill and put millions of Americans out of work. The Texas state fair, which had been scheduled to open on Sept. 25, has been canceled for the first time since World War Two, organizers announced on Tuesday. In Ohio, Governor Mike DeWine said the state was ordering people in seven counties to wear face coverings in public starting Wednesday evening. Nick Note: The reality is they blew their WAD. Its now the crying time AGAIN. YOUR YOUR YOUR leaders ALL ALL are clueless at best and sold out liars and thieves in reality. TO busy feathering their own nests to give in 5 minutes of thought about the death and destruction their stupid decisions have wrought. The cold hard ugly truth (the sooner you accept the better)  is trump could not and would not rise to the opportunity and i have serious doubts it America will or even can rise up again.

HOUSTON (Reuters) – Total SA’s Port Arthur, Texas, refinery is operating at about 60% of its 225,500-barrel-per-day (bpd) capacity, said sources familiar with plant operations. The refinery is running at reduced capacity because of the loss of demand during the coronavirus pandemic, the sources said.Oil refineries have curbed output since

    Most refiners are operating, 
but many have reduced the number of 
barrels of oil they process as gasoline
and diesel use contracts.

Fuel demand has dropped by about 30% 
as the coronavirus chokes economic 
activity. 
Refinery:       
                                  
 Total SA      Production cut to         
               70% of capacity       
 Royal Dutch  Operating at 80%                  
              capacity              
 Royal Dutch  Running at 87% of      
 Shell Texas  Capicity       
 
 HollyFrontier Cuts production   
 refineries    by 30%     
 
 CVR Energy   Operating refineries
              at near minimum       
                                                                 rates                 
 BP Plc        Operating at about                
               70% capacity   
       
 Total SA      Production cut      
 Port Arthur   by 36%                   

 Marathon   Operating refineries 
 Corp       at minimum rates 
                                                               month from mid-May    
 LyondellBasell Operating between                 
                 85% and 90% Capacity
                                                                           
 Valero Energy Corp   Idled 
 Norco, Louisiana   
                                            
 Husky Energy     All refineries are                
                  running at minimum    
  
 Royal Dutch Shell  Shuts units              
 U.S.          
  
 Marathon Petroleum Shutting Production
 Corp California,    
 
 Phillips 66       Shut gasoline unit                
 Oklahoma, U.S.     
      
 Royal Dutch Shell  Shut Unit
 Louisiana, U.S.  
                                                                 refineries            
 Valero Energy Corp  operating at
  U.S.               minimum capacity      

 BP Plc            operating 80 and 85% 
 U.S.              of capacity
                                 
 Marathon Petrol    temporarily idle               
 Corp  U.S.           
                                                                 on April 15           
 Exxon Mobil Corp    Running two-thirds                   
 Baton Rouge,        of capacity
                                                                 capacity              
 PBF Energy          cut production
 Chaulmet LA         by 45%                
                                              reduced rates         
 Marathon Petroleum   cut production
 Galveston Bay        25%
                                                      August                
 Chevron            Large CDU shut                  
 California 
 
 PBF Energy Inc     several units
 Toledo, Ohio       Shut Down
                                               
 BP Plc         Cuts production at                
 U.S.           three U.S. Units
                                                             60% capacity          
 Royal Dutch    Operating at about    
 Washington    60% capacity          
                             
 Imperial Oil   Cloased for
 Sands Canada  maintenance work      
                                                
 Valero Energy Corp  Cuts production             
 Texas, U.S.         more than 30%         
  
 Exxon Mobil Corp    Shutting CDU  
 Baton Rouge, La                         
                                                    
 Valero Energy       plans to     
 Port Arthur         cut production
 
 Exxon Mobil         Shutting down
 Baytown, Texas      FCC               

 Valero Energy Corp  May cut production
 Mz Tennessee        by 50% of capacity
             
 Exxon Mobil Corp     Cut refinery 
 Baton Rouge          production
                                           
 Chevron             Cuts refinery
 El Segundo          production

 Saudi Aramco       To cut refinery
 Saudi Arabia       runs
                                                             
 Marathon Petroleum Cut production
 L A

 Phillips 66        Cut production
 California         at least 20%             
                                             
 Citgo Petroleum     Shut alkylation  
 Corpus Christi      unit