The world-famous coffee giant Starbucks has come under fire for scrapping the Covid-19 vaccine mandate, with calls to ‘boycott Starbucks’ flooding social media.

Both customers and Starbucks baristas say they refuse to support a place, no matter how iconic, which does not require employee vaccinations.

“Who wants unvaccinated people handling your food and drinks?” wrote one Twitter user, while others bitterly joked with the idea of “Starbucks now serving Covid-19 with that delicious hot coffee.”

The public reaction was sparked by Starbucks’ decision to go back on its previously announced plan to require all its US workers to be vaccinated against Covid-19 by February 9 or submit to weekly testing. The company scrapped the plan after the Supreme Court earlier this month ruled against the vaccine mandate proposed by President Joe Biden’s administration for large businesses. Without the mandate, firms are left to decide how to counter the spread of the pandemic internally.

“We respect the Court’s ruling and will comply,” John Culver, head of Starbucks in North America, said in a note to employees on Tuesday. Culver noted, however, that Starbucks workers are still encouraged to get vaccinated. He added that the “vast majority” of Starbucks’ roughly 200,000 US employees have been fully vaccinated already, but did not give specific numbers.

READ MORE: Starbucks employees form first US union in company’s 50-year history

The firm’s employees have not been happy with management’s decision, staging a walk-off earlier this month over “Covid-19 safety concerns that the company rebuffed” at a Starbucks in Buffalo, New York, the company’s first unionized store. The union – Starbucks Workers United – formed just last month, representing two Buffalo-area Starbucks stores. It slammed the company’s reversal on the vaccine mandate, stating that the decision was made without employee feedback.

Starbucks declined to comment on the public backlash regarding the mandate decision when asked by Yahoo Finance. The company introduced a number of Covid-19 safety protocols this week, including the requirement for workers to wear three-layered medical grade masks and the expansion of self-isolation policy. Starbucks also continues to offer two hours of paid leave for employees getting vaccinated.

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The US is reportedly trying to convince its allies to impose new sanctions against Russia if a war with Ukraine breaks out. These would target arms and energy exports, costing Moscow around $50 billion, German tabloid Bild reported citing unnamed sources.

The drastic step was reportedly proposed by William Burns, the head of the CIA, during his visit to Berlin. US officials reportedly asked the German government to ban imports of Russian raw materials and block the launch of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

Berlin assured the US that in the event of an invasion of Ukraine, Russian gas would not go through the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, the sources told the media. However, the chancellor’s office voiced doubts over completely abandoning the vital pipeline. The remark caused irritation in Washington, Bild reported.

READ MORE: Will Ukraine crisis destroy Russian economy?

Over the past few months, a wide range of Western media outlets, along with multiple US officials, have been spreading speculation about an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine. Washington and some of its allies threatened the Kremlin with a new round of ‘crippling’ sanctions if this happens, citing the movement of Russian troops within the country’s vast Western territory as evidence of the plan. Moscow has consistently rejected the accusations, saying it has a right to carry out military maneuvers as it pleases within its borders.

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Tesla submitted a filing in Manhattan federal court on Monday, accusing JPMorgan of “bad faith and avarice” for demanding $162.2 million after the bank had unilaterally changed the terms of warrants it received when the electric carmaker sold convertible bonds back in 2014.

Warrants allow holders to purchase company stock at a set “strike” price and date. 

“JPMorgan pressed its exorbitant demand as an act of retaliation against Tesla both for it having passed over JPMorgan in major business deals and out of senior JPMorgan executives’ animus toward Mr. Musk,” Tesla said, adding that by changing the terms the banking multinational “dealt itself a pure windfall” after receiving a “multibillion-dollar payout” from Tesla’s soaring share price.

Tesla’s countersuit escalates the conflict between the US’ biggest investment bank and the world’s most valuable automaker, which have hardly done any business with each other since the disputed contract.

READ MORE: Musk says he’s working with Goldman Sachs, Saudis others to take Tesla private

The legal battle began last November, when JPMorgan took Tesla to court for “flagrantly” violating a stock warrants contract. The bank alleged that the car manufacturer sold warrants to JPMorgan in 2014, which were to be paid off if their strike price, or guaranteed fixed price, was below Tesla’s share price upon the warrants’ expiration in June and July 2021.

JPMorgan claimed that the tweet shared by Tesla’s eccentric CEO Elon Musk on August 7, 2018 made the automaker’s share price more volatile. Musk tweeted that he might take Tesla private and had “funding secured,” but backtracked his comments 17 days later. Tesla’s share price had risen nearly ten-fold by the warrants’ expiration date.

Musk’s tweets led to a civil lawsuit by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The litigation resulted in Musk giving up Tesla’s chairmanship, and he and the company each being fined $20 million.

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The world’s number one cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, has declined to nearly $33,000 on Monday, marking a daily drop of nearly 5%, according to data tracked by CoinDesk. The second most popular crypto, Ethereum, plunged 9.3% to $2,209 in a 24-hour span. 

Earlier in the day, both tokens fell to their lowest since July, each dropping more than 50% from their all-time highs.

The major sell-off wiped nearly $130 billion off the value of the entire cryptocurrency market, and spread across the stocks, which extended losses recorded earlier this year, posting the worst week since March 2020.

Riskier assets like technology stocks and digital currencies have seen a heavy sell-off due to increased geopolitical risks related to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, as well as the latest push by the US Federal Reserve for tightening monetary policy at a faster pace than expected. 

READ MORE: Bitcoin drops 50% from its peak value

Moreover, investors are assessing the impact of further regulatory steps towards the cryptocurrency market across the world. Last week, the Central Bank of Russia’s proposed ban on the use and mining of digital currencies. Last year, the Chinese authorities prohibited cryptocurrency mining in the Sichuan Valley, triggering an adverse impact on the market.

“Bitcoin and crypto have been reacting much more violently, given the nature of the asset class, and we’re likely to test $30,000-$32,000 given current sentiment and momentum,” Vijay Ayyar, vice president of corporate development and international expansion, told CNBC.

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As the OPEC+ group unwinds its production cuts, the oil market has realized that not only do many producers in the pact lack the capacity to boost output further, but those who can pump more are reducing the global spare production capacity, thus exposing market balances to unexpected supply disruptions, and oil prices to further spikes.  Most of the world’s global spare capacity is currently held by OPEC’s Middle Eastern members Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Those two producers have the potential to raise their output as OPEC+ continues to unwind the cuts, but they are doing so at the expense of declining spare capacity.  

Low spare production capacity could set the stage for a prolonged oil price rally because the world would have a lower buffer to offset sudden supply disruptions, which are always lurking in the global oil market. 

The unrest in Kazakhstan and the blockade in Libya in the past month highlighted the challenge that the oil market will be facing if spare capacity continues to shrink. And shrink it will—that is, if OPEC+ continues to add 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) to its production quota every month until it unwinds all the cuts. 

Higher OPEC+ Production Means Lower Spare Capacity 

The problem with OPEC+ is that only a handful of producers can keep some capacity in reserve while raising production. The few who can include OPEC’s top producer and the world’s largest oil exporter, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and to some extent, Kuwait and possibly Iraq. Iran, under US sanctions, has over 1 million bpd that could return to the market. But Iran will be able to tap that capacity only if the ongoing nuclear talks are successful—a development that many analysts doubt will occur anytime soon. 

With Iran currently out of the equation, it’s mostly up to the Arab Gulf states to produce more oil and at the same time have some spare capacity left. The other issue is that the nameplate spare capacity may not be equal to the producers’ ability to pump oil—the limit of spare capacity has never been tested, even in Saudi Arabia. 

Sure, the United States, Canada, and Brazil—all of which are outside OPEC+ pacts—are expected to raise their oil production this year as high prices and growing demand incentivize more activity and drilling. In the US shale patch, however, capital discipline continues to be a key theme, so annual production increases are not expected to be anywhere near the 2018-2019 surge in output. 

With demand expected to exceed pre-Covid levels this year, the low spare capacity and the low upstream investment in recent years are setting the stage for even higher oil prices. 

OPEC+ will see its spare capacity reduced to just 2.3 million bpd by July 2022, at the height of the driving season, according to Bloomberg estimates. This would be the lowest spare capacity since the end of 2018. Most of it will be held by the Arab Gulf producers—the only ones thought to be able to pump to their OPEC+ quotas throughout this year. 

Even Russia is struggling. Russia has seen setbacks recently in its attempt to pump to its quota, and will likely continue to lag in the coming months, analysts tell Bloomberg. Russia may be able to raise its output by 60,000 bpd each month in the first half of 2022—just over half of the monthly production growth of 100,000 bpd it is entitled to, according to analysts polled by Bloomberg. 

Oil prices could hit $100 this year and rise to $105 per barrel in 2023 on the back of a “surprisingly large deficit” due to the milder and potentially briefer impact of Omicron on oil demand, Goldman Sachs said last week. Due to gas-to-oil substitution, supply disappointments, and stronger-than-expected demand in Q4 2021, OECD inventories are set to dip by the summer to their lowest levels since 2000, Goldman’s analysts note. Moreover, OPEC+ spare capacity is also set to decline to historically low levels of around 1.2 million bpd. 

“At $85/bbl, the market would remain at such critical levels, insufficient buffers relative to demand and supply volatilities, through 2023,” Goldman Sachs said in a note. 

JP Morgan, for its part, expects the falling spare capacity at OPEC+ to increase the risk premium in prices, and sees oil hitting $125 a barrel this year and $150 a barrel next year. 

“We see growing market recognition of global underinvestment in supply,” the bank said in a note carried by Reuters.  

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Shares in Digital World Acquisition Corporation (DWAC), the company connected to a planned social media app backed by former US president Donald Trump, have rallied to outperform every other special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC). Digital World currently ranks as the best-performing SPAC stock ever, according to SPAC Research.

The outstanding performance comes despite the regulatory risks facing the merger. The shares ended trading at $73.12 on Friday, way above their $10 initial public offering price. That infers a valuation on the combined entity of close to $13 billion, including debt.

Moreover, DWAC’s share performance has boosted the average trading price of all 114 SPACs that have announced deals that are yet to close. According to SPAC Research, the average SPAC (excluding DWAC) is currently trading at $9.88 a share, below the average trust value of about $10.05.

In October, Trump announced plans to launch a new media company that will “stand up to the tyranny of Big Tech.” Trump Media Technology Group (TMTG) simultaneously inked an $875-million deal to merge with a SPAC company called Digital World Acquisition Corp.

SPAC deals, also known as reverse mergers, have become very popular in recent years, with celebrities, former politicians and athletes getting involved. SPACs raise money from the public and promise to use those funds to acquire private firms. It’s an increasingly popular way for private companies to go public.

However, SPACs regularly come under regulatory scrutiny. Digital World disclosed in December that federal regulators have opened investigations into the planned merger for potential violations of securities laws around disclosure.

App Store currently lists February 21 as the date that Trump’s new social media app, Truth Social, will be available to download.

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The Russian stock market has dropped more than 4% on Monday, following two weeks of steady decline, while the national currency fell to its weakest in more than a year 78 rubles against the US dollar.

The plunge comes amid mounting geopolitical tensions stemming from claims that Russia is planning to attack Ukraine, actively spread by EU and US officials and fueled by major Western media outlets.

“We expect Russian equities to extend losses today due to an escalation in geopolitical tensions over the weekend,” analysts at Alfa Bank said, as quoted by AFP.

Renaissance Capital reportedly said in a note to clients that the ruble could fall by up to 20% to the dollar in the event of a military escalation.

The Central Bank of Russia announced on Monday that it plans to suspend foreign exchange purchases under fiscal rules to reduce pressure on the ruble. The regulator also said it has all the necessary tools to reduce threats of financial instability.

Western officials were expected to meet on Monday to try and coordinate retaliation measures and discuss new anti-Russian sanctions that should be imminently introduced if Moscow launches a military assault on Ukraine.

READ MORE: EU pins soaring gas prices on geopolitics

Media reports claim Russia has amassed over 100,000 troops on the border with Ukraine, with some Western officials believing that a military incursion is around the corner.

Britain and the US have ordered some staff to return home from their embassies in Ukraine with their families.

Russian authorities have repeatedly rejected accusations that Moscow is planning an invasion of Ukraine, which have been voiced by Washington and its allies since November last year, describing the claims as groundless attempts to instill “hysteria.”

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In 2021, Beijing’s trade surplus reached an all-time high of $676 billion, boosted by buoyant demand for Chinese-made goods across the world, while a major decline in outbound travel amid the Covid pandemic also limited the deficit in services trade.

The surplus on China’s current account climbed to an eight-year high of $224.2 billion, while the capital account surplus hit $83.2 billion, the highest since records began in 2010, Bloomberg reports, citing calculations based on data released by the State Administration of Foreign Exchange.

The reported figures reflect the nation’s robust trade surplus during the coronavirus pandemic and inflows into yuan-denominated bonds, according to Stephen Chiu, chief Asia FX at Bloomberg.

The soaring surplus bolstered a rallying yuan that strengthened by 2.7% against the US dollar in 2021, extending the gains of 6.7% recorded for the previous year. China’s national currency is climbing toward 6.33 per dollar, a level last recorded in December, when the People’s Bank of China increased the foreign-currency reserve ratio to cool the gains.

READ MORE: Yuan rises in ranks of top global currencies

“In 2022, overall forex settlements are likely to be similar to last year, especially in terms of a robust current account surplus,” Chiu told Bloomberg.

“Even though global economic growth may slow cyclically, China’s exports are likely to continue to constitute a large share globally because the pandemic continues.”

Last year, foreign investors reportedly expanded their holdings of Chinese sovereign bonds by 575.6 billion yuan ($90.9 billion), marking the fastest pace on record.

Meanwhile, foreign exchange settlement under securities investment in the capital account jumped to $23 billion in December, the highest since records began in 2010.

The big returns of yuan-denominated assets along with the stability of the yuan exchange rate attracts foreign capital, according to Ken Cheung, chief Asian FX strategist at Mizuho Bank, as quoted by Bloomberg.

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A few years ago, battery energy storage began drawing attention as what one industry executive at the time called the Holy Grail of renewable energy. In the years since, EVs have stolen the spotlight but now battery storage is back, larger than life and, quite likely, twice as expensive.

The ongoing energy crunch in Europe is one good illustration of why, if we are going down the renewable energy path, we need to build battery storage – and a lot of it. One cause of the crunch, admitted unwillingly but still admitted, was lower than usual wind power output. With storage, at least some of that output might have been stored for later use.

The Financial Times reported this month that the battery storage industry is getting billions poured into gigafactories, where battery cells for electric vehicles (EVs) and storage installations are made. According to the report, energy storage companies raised $5.5 billion in venture capital funds over the first nine months of 2021 across 59 deals. This compared with just $1.2 billion across 91 deals during the same period of 2020.

“Batteries will play an increasingly important role in allowing high levels of penetration of variable renewable energy like wind and solar on the grid,” the FT quoted Oxford Institute for Energy Studies research fellow Barbara Finamore as saying.

“The [investment] numbers are changing so fast, people cannot keep up with how many gigafactories are in the pipeline.”

READ MORE: Tesla reducing dependence on China with graphite deal

The above smacks of a future bubble, but given the net-zero targets of the Paris Agreement, investors are excused for buying into this particular bubble. Among these targets, per the International Energy Agency, is selling only electric cars from 2035 onwards and having two-thirds of the global energy supply come from wind, solar, biomass, hydropower, and geothermal. This is one massive undertaking that cannot happen without equally massive storage.

In October last year, energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie forecast that battery storage would really take off after the worst of the pandemic passes.

“With the market recovering following the pandemic and a growing acceptance of energy storage as a mainstream power technology, the total energy storage market will double in size in 2021 to reach 56 GWh, with that number expected to increase by 17x in 2030,” Le Xu, senior analyst, Power and Renewables, wrote.

An expected increase is one thing. The cost of this expected increase and its usefulness is quite another matter. For starters, the Wood Mac forecast sees a doubling of global lithium-ion battery manufacturing capacity. This means a surge in demand for battery metals and minerals such as lithium, nickel, and manganese. For seconds, the world consumes huge amounts of energy every minute. Storage will need to become a lot more compact and cheaper to handle this consumption. And this will be tricky.

READ MORE: Electric cars drive nickel prices to ten-year high

Lithium prices are on the climb as demand for the metal rises with battery demand projections and more gigafactories in the pipeline. But the lithium market is already in a deficit, which means even higher prices ahead.

Nickel demand is on its way to outpacing supply, according to Rystad Energy, with the market seen swinging into a deficit in two years. This means more upward cost pressure for batteries.

And the shortage of metals is not all. There is also the ESG aspect of their mining to consider – an aspect that has become essential for European governments, which are also the ones with the most ambitious renewable energy plans for the future. Europe, in other words, is picky about its, say, lithium and cobalt supply. It wants to make sure that it was mined ethically. And this automatically makes it expensive because it limits the places where these metals can be sourced, and puts constraints on the miners.

So, battery cells are only going to become more expensive at a time when they need to become cheaper, so energy and EVs become more affordable, and adoption increases. But this is not the biggest problem of energy storage. The biggest problem is that the amount of storage needed to be deployed in order to ensure energy supply security is truly insane.

Bjorn Lomborg, president of an environmental think-tank and a vocal critic of the renewable energy push in its current form, wrote on Twitter earlier this month that Asia consumes 25 GWh of electricity per minute. The continent has a battery storage capacity of 13 GWh, which is enough for 31 seconds of consumption. With plans in place to boost battery storage capacity 25 times, in 2030, Asia will have enough storage for about 10 minutes of consumption.

But perhaps some would say the whole continent of Asia is not a good example. After all, battery storage capacity there is not exactly equally distributed and aimed at securing the energy supply of the whole of Asia. So let’s take another example. Germany’s per-capita energy consumption for 2018 stood at 6.8 GWh. Germany’s population is over 83 million people. So, Germany alone will need more than the world’s total projected storage capacity for 2021 to secure its energy supply, assuming a 100-percent renewable grid, which is the purpose of the energy transition. It would need a lot more.

It is true that without energy storage, wind and solar are far from reaching their full potential and far from being reliable sources of electricity. Yet the factors determining the commercial viability of storage installations are such that the projections made by Wood Mac and virtually every other energy forecaster out there might end up feeding a bubble that will sooner or later burst.

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The price of energy across the world has skyrocketed to unprecedented levels in a trend that is being exacerbated by geopolitical pressures, says the European Commission.

The soaring cost of gas has clearly impacted energy prices on the continent, according to European Commissioner for Energy Kadri Simson.

However, strife between and within nations has inevitably had a knock-on effect too.

February futures prices at the Netherlands’ Title Transfer Facility, a virtual trading point for natural gas, reportedly surged to $915 per 1,000 cubic meters on Friday, or €78 ($88.5) per megawatt hour in household terms.

In December, they hit a record high in Europe of nearly $2,200 per 1,000 cubic meters, which constituted an almost 400% rise since the start of the year.

READ MORE: France may see 40% electricity price surge by February

“This is a particularly important time for the energy sector, both for its current state and for its future,” Simson said after a meeting with European energy ministers in France on Saturday.

“In the short term, we are faced with unusually high energy commodity prices – a trend intensified by geopolitical tensions.”

She affirmed that the current astronomically high prices for electricity and gas were placing an intolerable burden on homeowners and businesses alike across the European Union, but said national leaders were taking all possible steps to cushion them from future market shocks.

“These actions taken by member states to protect the consumers amount to more than €21 billion – a remarkable and swift effort by the EU governments,” Simson said.

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