Money & Markets Report: July 7, 2022

134 Comments

  1. Hi Catherine! Great work! Quick question. What will happen to gold prices with the recent discovery of 31 millon tons of gold in Uganda? Worries me!
    Many Thanks!!

    1. No way to tell. My expectation is that the impact will be negligible.

  2. Has anyone heard of the money sharing app ZELLE? I am being asked to pay for a service via ZELLE but am nervous about downloading the app on my phone. I have never used anything like this before.

    1. Yes, I’ve used Zelle before to forward my mom money. It was thru my Dad’s Bank of America account (which I was finally able to close out). My husband also received a job payment from Zelle, which his customer wanted to use. Although it’s not something I’d want to keep on my phone.

    2. In Calif, it was reported last week that there was some fraudulent activity with Zelle. It’s honored by many banks including Bank of America here. A local news station took BofA to task to demand repayment based on the fraud. They balked at first but I guess due to the bad PR the bank changed course and ended up repaying their customers who were subject to the fraud.

      1. Thank you Catherine, Cathleen and Rich for the info on Zelle. I guess I will pass on that idea and try another way. Blessings

  3. Catherine and John I find that I look forward to traveling on Thursday’s so I’ll have time to catch your podcast while it’s current. One of the things that drew me to your website was that you challenge your audience to be critical thinkers. I was surprised with your reaction to the flooding along the Yellowstone River and taking the responsibility from the homeowners and putting it on developers and municipalities. If someone is intelligent enough to make millions in one industry why aren’t they expected to be intelligent enough to do some research and use their God given intuition to choose a safe spot for their home? My brother and I are second generation owners of a highway/heavy construction company. We’ve worked on many flood mitigation projects in our careers. We continually scratch our heads wondering why someone would choose to build a beautiful house inside a levee, why someone else would insure it and why are taxpayers (many who chose to live on safe ground) paying for us to fix the levee? I will agree that taking monies out of local hands and moving them to the federal level has perpetuated our misuse of funds as a society. The answer isn’t more regulation by some unelected zoning commission. It’s having personal responsibility for our individual spending. The wise man builds his house on solid rock!

    1. I agree that it should be an individual’s responsibility. However, this kind of building can create lots of mess, bad PR and expense for the neighbors and mumicipality – so where they can exercise the denial of approval or a warning, seems to me they have an obligation to do so.

  6. i thought that the insurance companies are not held liable because it was the patients choice to take it which voided the policy?

  7. C19 detection in Driver monitoring systems;

    GM GLOBAL TECH OPERATIONS LLC [US] – 2022-07-07

    AIRBORNE CORONAVIRUS DETECTOR AND ALERTING SYSTEM
    Detecting systems configured to detect airborne viruses, and methods of forming the same, are provide. A method for preparing a system for detecting an airborne virus includes preparing a thin-film coating on a surface of a substrate; ablating the coating to form an optical grating structure; and associating a plurality of receptors having an affinity and specificity for the virus with the optical grating structure so that the structure is capable of indicating the presence of the virus. A detecting system includes the optical grating structure and an optical component. The optical component includes a cavity defined by two opposing reflecting surfaces and configured to receive the optical grating structure, and a light source disposed adjacent to an exterior surface of a first reflecting surface. The light source may be configured to direct light towards the first reflecting surface so that light in resonance enters the cavity.
    https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?

    https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?II=37&ND=3&adjacent=true&locale=en_EP&FT=D&date=20220707&CC=US&NR=2022214480A1&KC=A1

    https://www.freepatentsonline.com/20220214480.pdf

    ……………………………

    VOLKSWAGEN AG [DE] – 2022-06-30

    IN-VEHICLE DECONTAMINATION
    A system and method for safe decontamination of a vehicle cabin while passengers can be present are disclosed that uses and/or has at least one data storage, at least one processor, at least one infrared (“IR”) sensor, and at least one ultraviolet (“UV”) emitter having a beam steering module. At least one contaminated area in the vehicle cabin is tracked using IR sensor data from the IR sensor. It is determined if there’s a direct line of sight between the UV emitter and the at least one contaminated area. If so, UV emitter is activated to target the at least one contaminated area and blocking UV illumination on non-contaminated areas of the vehicle cabin and areas temporarily covered by a passenger.

    [0003] In order to prevent contagions, e.g., COVID-19, from spreading, hygiene and sterilization are important aspects for mitigation strategies. Commonly shared spaces such as warehouses, workplaces, ride-sharing vehicles, taxis, and public transportation are potential hot spots for spreading contagions, even when people follow social distancing measures.

    [0004] In particular for commercial vehicles (e.g., ride-sharing vehicles, public transportation buses and trains, and airplanes), there are many challenges to maintain a sanitized interior vehicle cabin, which need to be considered in a cost-benefit analysis. The factors that are weighed in such balancing include an amount of vehicle downtime for sanitization, cost of the sanitization, and reducing potential infection when transporting passengers in the vehicle.

    https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?CC=US&NR=2022202969A1&KC=A1&FT=D&ND=3&date=20220630&DB=&locale=en_EP

    https://www.freepatentsonline.com/20220202969.pdf

    …………………………..

    TOYOTA ENG & MFG NORTH AMERICA [US] – 2022-06-16

    SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR ISOLATING COMPARTMENTS OF A VEHICLE
    [0003] A manufacturer may build vehicles with sensors to gather sensor data about an occupant. A system may use the sensor data to adapt automated driving modes, climate control, safety systems, and so on. For example, the system may provide comfort by controlling air temperature or quality (e.g. smoke) for an occupant. Concerning safety, a safety system may be unable to measure the health risk of a stranger and determine exposure risk to other occupants. For example, an operator may be at increased risk when interacting with strangers, particularly for ride-sharing services. If preemptive action is needed, certain safety systems may also lack adaptive controls or cabin systems to mitigate the risk to the operator or occupants.

    [0004] Furthermore, health risks in a vehicle are impacted by climate control systems. A climate control system may circulate air carrying a biological hazard between occupants in a cabin. For example, a virus may originate from an occupant who may be asymptomatic or showing light symptoms. The virus may be a risk for other occupants in the vehicle depending on immune system and health profiles. Accordingly, a climate control system may need particular controls and purposeful hardware in a cabin to mitigate health risks to occupants.

    [0032] An assessed risk or risk level may factor location data of an occupant(s). The sensor controller 320 may acquire remote data from the edge server 340 or the cloud server 350. The remote data may include past travel history or contact tracing indicating travel of an occupant(s) through a pandemic, severe communicable disease, or an elevated risk area. The contact tracing information may include information from health authorities, crowd-sourcing, social media, and so on. Communicable diseases may include cholera, hepatitis, influenza, malaria, measles, coronaviruses, COVID-19, tuberculosis, and so on that are transmissible by contact with infected individuals or their bodily discharges or fluids (such as respiratory droplets, blood, or semen), by contact with contaminated surfaces or objects, and so on. In one approach, the isolation system 300 may execute contact tracing using a graphical neural network (GNN) that identifies relations between map data and location-based services (LBS) information of an occupant(s). The computer 315 may request the remote data using wireless module 335 that communicates with the wireless module 345 of the edge server 340. The edge server 340 may request the remote data from the cloud server 350 if none is located for occupants of the vehicle 100.

    https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/description?CC=US&NR=2022185214A1&KC=A1&FT=D&ND=3&date=20220616&DB=&locale=en_EP

    https://www.freepatentsonline.com/20220185214.pdf

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