Notes From All Over -- August 14, 2021

Maureen Dowd: behind a paywall over at The New York Times, but no paywall at Mediaite: "Behold Barack Antoinette." Also at The Wrap.  I assume in a day or two one will be able to find the Dowd article without a paywall. Stephen Colbert didn't go. Nancy Pelosi didn't go. The former president was gifted 1,000 custom face masks but guests not interested. 

Coffee, inflation: Yesterday, I talked about inflation and the cost of coffee. In that post, I noted that Amazon was selling K-pods for 20 cents apiece.

Now this, from The Wall Street Journal, right on cue: coffee jolt gets pricier as costs of beans, labor, transport rise. Cafes and retailers lift prices, while others try to hold the line; "consumers will be looking for more affordable options." 

This was a very, very long article, and not one mention of Amazon.com which would have taken less than five seconds to research. Amazing. How do these "modern" millennial reporters forget to check Amazon?

Anyone not buying coffee on-line ... well, what can I say?

Fertilizer from China: China has asked its top fertilizer companies to suspend  exports of phosphate and urea, a bullish development for both commodities. Link here. The country is the world’s top exporter of phosphate, shipping out 3.2 million tonnes of diammonium phosphate  in the first half of 2021. It also exported another 2.4 million tonnes of urea. Maybe more on this later. 

Germany: coal-fired power generation is skyrocketing, Link here. August 3, 2021.

At its peak, the corona crisis is causing energy consumption and CO2 emissions in Germany to collapse along with economic activity. It’s over. The consumption of lignite, which is particularly harmful to the climate, is increasing dramatically.

The recovery of the economy after the Corona slump and the cool spring caused energy consumption in Germany to rise in the first half of 2021. Consumption increased by 4.3 percent compared to the same period in the previous year. The temperature-adjusted consumption values ​​would be more than 7 percent below the value for the first six months of 2019. 

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AMD: why AMD stock shot up 4%, August 13, 2021.