Your thoughts on this one............. unsubstantiated covid-19 internet waffle or....??
an interesting read..
World War 3 began on 10 December 2019.
On that date Zaosong Zheng, 30, a Chinese national, was arrested at Boston’s Logan International Airport and charged with attempting to smuggle 21 vials of biological research from a Harvard teaching hospital to China. Federal officers at Logan Airport discovered the vials hidden in a sock inside one of Zheng’s bags.
The federal authorities allege that Zheng lied to officers about the contents of his luggage, but later admitted he had stolen the vials from a lab at Beth Israel in Harvard Medical School. Zheng told officials that he intended to bring the vials to China to use them to conduct research in his own laboratory and publish the results under his own name.
In January, US federal authorities arrested Dr. Charles Lieber, chair of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University. Dr. Lieber had specialised in nanoscience, having received over $15 million in grants from the the National Institutes of Health and the US Department of Defence.
To qualify for the grants, Dr. Lieber had been obligated to disclose any significant foreign financial conflicts of interest, and any material payments from foreign governments or agencies. No such statements were issued by Dr. Lieber.
Harvard was unaware that, beginning in 2011, Dr. Lieber had become a “Strategic Scientist” at China’s Wuhan University of Technology. He had also participated in a state programme known as the Thousand Talents Plan from about 2012 to 2017. This programme is designed to attract and nurture high level scientific talent to promote China’s scientific development.
Such programmes also reward individuals for “liberating” proprietary information from Western companies and universities. Under the terms of his Chinese contract, Dr. Lieber was paid $50,000 per month, along with living expenses worth roughly $158,000, and he was also granted more than $1.5 million to establish a research laboratory at Wuhan.
In addition to arresting Zheng and Lieber, the US authorities also indicted Yanqing Ye, a member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and a lieutenant in the People’s Liberation Army. Ye had falsely identified herself as a “student” and concealed her ongoing military service at a top Chinese military academy run by the CCP. The US alleges that while studying at Boston University’s Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biomedical Engineering between 2017 and 2019, Ye had essentially spied on the US and sent sensitive material back to China.
Within a few weeks of these developments, a new strain of coronavirus had sparked an epidemic in Wuhan, China, killing over 560 people. A study in Nature found significant similarities between the new virus and a bat coronavirus linked to the intermediate horseshoe bat.
An article published in The Lancet linked the outbreak to Huanan Seafood Market 3. The novel coronavirus was found in 33 out of 585 samples taken from the market after the outbreak. In accordance with established quarantine protocol, the market was shut down.
There was no obvious link between bats (normally found in caves and trees) and the seafood market. No witnesses could be found to substantiate that bats were a food source in the city. No bat was traded in the market.
So how could the virus have spread from bat to human? One “smoking gun” is the proximity of one specific laboratory to the market itself. Within 280 metres of the market is the Wuhan Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, which hosts animals in laboratories for research purposes. One of those purposes is pathogen collection and identification.
Long story short, it would seem that somebody was responsible for the evolution of the 2019-nCoV coronavirus. The killer coronavirus almost certainly originated from a laboratory in Wuhan. Was the release deliberate, or accidental? Most likely accidental, since China’s rate of occupational accidents is about 10 times higher than the US’s, and 20 times higher than Europe’s, and the US and Europe are the only other regions of the world with high-level virology labs.
Either way, World War 3 has begun.
As we entered 2020, we knew that something was rotten in the state of Denmark, and as a result The Price Report portfolio was prepared for a reckoning of sorts. It turns out, though, that we were looking in the wrong place. We recognised that the bubble was wildly overinflated, we just didn’t identify precisely the pin that would cause it to burst. But then, nobody did.
So although the source of the crisis came from left field, the appropriate response – from a portfolio perspective, at least – remains largely unchanged. Diversify sensibly among different asset classes; whatever your commitment to equities, ensure that it’s focused on defensive value; moderate your exposure to bonds (or eliminate them altogether); ensure you own assets uncorrelated to the stock and bond markets (my favourite here remains systematic trend-following funds); and ensure you have exposure to gold and silver and related assets as portfolio, inflation and crisis insurance.
The rapid global spread of the 2019-nCoV coronavirus is an economic and social life-changer the like of which we have never seen before. Among its impacts is the fast-growing role of the State.
The Big State is back, whether we like it or not. So your portfolio should be braced for the extraordinary, including the possibility that certain markets actually close for a period (I like to think this is unlikely), and that we enter a world of rising financial repression and possibly even capital controls (the latter is plausible but the former is now inevitable).
Happily, some of our political class are wrestling with their consciences before allowing the Big State back into our lives with a cursory nod. If you want to see a profoundly moving piece of politics, try this brief clip of the Conservative MP Steve Baker supporting the extraordinary measures now being fast-tracked through Parliament, but with a very heavy heart. A prime minister in the making, perhaps?
Stimulus and governmental support for the economic victims of Covid-19 – ie, all of us – are now being rushed through the chancelleries of the world with such speed that it is impossible to keep up. Suffice to say I think the outcome effectively fast-tracks the return of inflation. The world has admittedly been put into a deflationary, medically induced coma, but the inflationary genie is surely stirring within his bottle. As SocGen strategist Albert Edwards observes,
Within a few years I have not one scintilla of doubt that helicopter money will be so successful that CPI inflation will return like a long-lost relative. But, like a distant uncle we only see every now and again, we will have forgotten just how out-of-control he can become after a few drinks, and woe betide anyone who tries to stop him in his tracks.
But the priority now, at both a personal and portfolio level, has to be survival. Capital preservation first; we can let capital growth take care of itself over the medium term. I suspect we have not seen the worst of the Wuhan virus when it comes to its malign impact on the stockmarket(s). I fear a lot of false dawns before the low is finally in.
I also both sense and crave a looming sea change in attitudes toward China as a result of the pandemic. I have no beef with the long-suffering people of China. But I have a violent, passionate contempt for their political class in the form of the CCP.
I like to think that, as investors, we can, over time, at least try to effect peaceful “regime change” in China – in economic terms, as opposed to military ones. The new battleground could easily be that of ESG – environmental, social and governance policy. I would suggest, for example, that fund management groups can have a credible ESG policy or they can have investments in China, but they cannot possibly have both.
… and opportunity
Nobody really knows how long this crisis will last.
To repeat, my thesis: World War 3 began on 10 December 2019.
Perhaps the Chinese deliberately released the 2019-nCoV coronavirus in retaliation for the arrest of Zheng and Lieber and the indictment of a member of the People’s Liberation Army. Perhaps the virus was released accidentally, given the sloppy standards practised in Chinese laboratories. We will probably never know, as the original article that warned of the virus’ likely origin has been removed and both the Chinese researchers responsible have subsequently deleted their profiles from the ResearchGate site that published it.
On 2 January 2020, the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s director sent out a memo forbidding discussion of an “unknown pneumonia in Wuhan” after ordering the destruction of all related lab materials a day earlier, making it abundantly clear that the Chinese government knew about this outbreak long before it took any steps to contain it, or made any public announcement.
Whether the virus release was deliberate or accidental barely matters any more, in that the damage has been done, is being done, and will continue to wreak human and economic damage around the world for an indeterminate period of time.
The world has changed. World War 3 has begun, whether the authorities choose to formally acknowledge it, or not.
Until next time,
Tim Price