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‘Delta Variant Fears’ Send Dow Dropping 700 Points in Worst Crash of 2021


We’re now 16 months into the corona crisis, and while the ‘pandemic’ itself seemed to have petered-out sometime around May 2020, the almighty power of the virus has hardly waned in the media and in the halls of politics. 

This week we learned that COVID has still somehow managed to ruin the Tokyo Olympics, as the obsession with the supposed “Delta Variant” and mass-testing has all but closed the entire competition. Fans were barred from attending already, and many athletes have already been disqualified from competing because they tested PCR positive for COVID – even though they had no noticeable symptoms or any proven active infection. All this, despite the fact that there’s no actual pandemic in sight (according to all official reports of ICU hospitalizations and deaths worldwide).

We are also witnessing another phenomenon in the world of high finance: stock markets are now being driven, at least in part, by the spectre of COVID. Again, even though there’s no visible medical pandemic on the ground, all of the government diktats and panic policies, along with omnipresent threats of rolling lockdowns have torpedoed investor confidence, causing the markets to tank. This phenomenon had very little to do with any actual respiratory virus going around, and everything to do with pandemic policies being run by government and businesses.

Now, you don’t even need a real pandemic to crash the market – only the mere threat of some elusive, exotic-sounding ‘variant’ will do the trick. Judging by this contrived polemic in a recent Washington Post article, it has become its own pantomime now:

“The market jitters and growing case counts echo the earlier days of the pandemic when stocks whipsawed with record volatility as investors struggled to get their arms around the breadth of the pandemic’s impact on the global economy.”

Extraordinary. Forget the fact that there are a number of very structural and fundamental problems going on in the global markets right now – most of it due directly to disastrous state interventions said to be ‘battling the pandemic’ – a string of failed government policy decisions which now seem intentionally designed to damage and destroy the real economy, and also further devalue many of the major national currencies.

But none of that matters. Just blame it on the virus. 

Washington Post reports…

Global stock markets swooned Monday, with the Dow slumping more than 700 points, as investors grow increasingly anxious about a delta-led resurgence in coronavirus cases and its potential to derail the economic recovery. Oil prices also fell sharply.

The delta variant is now the dominant strain worldwide and surging rapidly, even in countries with high vaccination rates. New coronavirus infections in the United States rose nearly 70 percent in a single week, officials reported Friday, and nearly every state has reported an increase in cases. Japan declared a state of emergency in Tokyo during the Summer Games — which kick off later this week — and banned spectators, but there have been several positive coronavirus tests at the Olympic Village and an alternate for the U.S. women’s gymnastics team has tested positive. Many market watchers are fearful the uptick will lead to a resumption in travel and business restrictions.

Asian markets closed in the red across the board, with Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index leading the losses with a 1.8 percent slide and Japan’s Nikkei falling 1.3 percent. European markets posted even bigger declines, with Germany’s DAX and France’s CAC 40 tumbling more than 2.5 percent and the Pan-European Stoxx 600 sliding 2.3 percent.

The Dow Jones industrial average closed down 725.81 points, or nearly 2.1 percent, to 33,962.04 for its worst day of 2021. The S&P 500 index skidded 68.67 points, nearly 1.6 percent, to settle at 4,258.49. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index shed 152.25 points, or nearly 1.1 percent, to close at 14,274.98.

Companies whose fates are tethered to the recovery were hit hard in early trading, with Carnival Cruises and United Airlines sliding 5.7 and 5.5 percent, respectively. Energy stocks were also pummeled, with ExxonMobil losing 3.4 percent and Chevron sliding more than 2.7 percent…

Continue this story at the Washington Post

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