Baltic Dry Index. 634
-08 Brent Crude 48.53
Brexit odds checker.
http://www.oddschecker.com/politics/british-politics/eu-referendum/referendum-on-eu-membership-result
Brexit Quote of the Day.
All the best
stories in the world are but one story in reality - the story of escape. It is
the only thing which interests us all and at all times, how to escape from the
EUSSR.
With apologies to
Walter Bagehot.
We
open with the G-7 finance ministers issuing yet another warning on the poor
state of the global economy. At the end of the week the G-7 leaders meet for a
photo op in Japan, and to largely repeat the performance of the finance ministers.
Central banking isn’t working like it used to, as the increasingly
dysfunctional Great Nixonian Error of
fiat money, communist money, gets deeper and deeper into voodoo economics. Stay long fully paid up physical gold and
silver. The next Lehman is out there and gets closer by the day.
Our
banksters seem to think it lies somewhere in the 4 trillion a year trade
finance industry. They’re turning to bitcoin technology for the solution.
Thanks to the Great Nixonian Error of fiat money, our “money” has become a mere
gambling chip in the financialised casinos, and has lost its store of value
quality.
To
this old dinosaur commodity trader, switching to digital-ledger technology and
blockchain accounting, seems likely to be highly destabilising to the Chinese
shadow banking system, and would probably crash the false over invoicing system
that underpins Chinese capital flight. If this ever looks likely to succeed, I
suspect that we will see a tsunami of capital flight from China before it gets
implemented. Something not on the agenda for this week’s G-7 photo op.
In central banking as in diplomacy,
style, conservative tailoring, and an easy association with the affluent count
greatly and results far much less.
John Kenneth Galbraith
G-7 Warns on Weak Global Growth as Japan Bristles Over Yen
May 21, 2016
— 8:13 AM BST Updated on May 21, 2016 — 10:21 AM BST
Finance chiefs from the world’s biggest developed economies meeting in
Japan underscored concerns that global growth is flagging and reaffirmed a
pledge not to deliberately weaken their currencies, even as Japan again warned
on the yen’s surge.
At the end of two days of talks, Group of Seven central bank governors
and finance ministers highlighted risks from terrorism, refugee flows,
political conflicts and the potential for a U.K. exit from the European Union.
While officials agreed not to target currencies to stoke growth and
warned of the negative consequences from disorderly moves in exchanges rates,
host Japan repeated a stance that recent trading in the yen has been one sided
and speculative.
Comments on the yen’s moves by Finance Minister Taro Aso hint at a
growing frustration inside Japan’s government about the impact on exporters
after the currency surged 9 percent this year, spurring speculation that the
government may intervene. Aso raised the issued in a meeting with U.S. Treasury
Secretary Jacob J. Lew on Saturday.
"I told him that one-sided, abrupt, and speculative moves were seen
in the FX market recently, and abrupt moves in the currency market are
undesirable and the stability of currencies is important,” Aso said to
reporters.
Tensions over the yen were evident over the course of the meetings,
which were held at a hot springs resort in the country’s north. As Japan warned
about the impact of disorderly trading, Lew repeated his view that the
yen’s movement hasn’t been overly volatile.
"It’s a pretty high bar to have disorderly conditions," Lew
told reporters.
----Aso also made it clear that the
difference of opinion with the U.S. is manageable. "They have an election
and we have an election and we both have TPP talks," Aso said. "There
are various things on our plates and we of course have to say various things as
that’s our jobs."Still, by choosing to be so vocal on the yen, Aso is both attempting to jawbone the currency lower and put a marker down in the event the currency again starts to appreciate rapidly.
"There’s no sign that Japan and the U.S. will move closer together," said Hiroaki Muto, chief economist at Tokai Tokyo Research Center.
Beyond currencies, the G-7 didn’t agree on details of how best to revive the world’s economy. The group said central banks, governments and structural reforms should be involved but stopped short of any coordinated push or an agreed to-do list.
More
Japan April exports suffer
biggest drop in three months, bode ill for growth
Japan's exports fell in April at the fastest pace in three months as a
stronger yen and weakness in China and other emerging markets take their toll
on the country's shipments, boding ill for growth prospects for the current
quarter.
Exports declined 10.1 percent year-on-year in April, Ministry of Finance data showed on Monday, in line with a 10.0 percent annual drop expected by economists in a Reuters poll but worse than a 6.8 percent drop in March.
It was the seventh straight month of declines and the biggest since 12.9 percent in January, when Japanese shipments to Asia slowed sharply ahead of the Lunar New Year holidays.
The decline was likely exaggerated by a drop in U.S.-bound car exports due to supply-chain disruptions caused by last month's earthquakes in southern Japan, but a rising yen and weak global demand are clouding the outlook for the year.
"Drops in U.S.-bound car exports were noise," said Takeshi Minami, chief economist at Norinchukin Research Institute.
"Asia and the global economy remain weak. On top of that, yen gains squeeze profits at exporters, causing wages and capital spending to weaken, which would hamper 'Abenomics' aim of creating virtuous growth," Minami said.
Imports fell 23.3 percent in April, worse than a 19.0 percent annual decline expected by economists and pointing not only to weak commodity prices but sluggish domestic demand.
A private business survey on Monday suggested more pain ahead for
Japanese manufacturers. The Markit/Nikkei preliminary survey for May showed total
new orders declined at the sharpest pace in 41 months.
More
Saudi financial crisis 'could leave oil at $25’ as contractors face being paid in IOUs
22 May 2016 •
8:40pm
Saudi Arabia faces a vicious liquidity squeeze as capital continues to leak out the country,
with a sharp contraction of the money supply and mounting stress in the banking
system.Three-month interbank offered rates in Riyadh have suddenly begun to spiral upwards, reaching the highest since the Lehman crisis in 2008.
Reports that the Saudi government is to pay contractors with tradable IOUs show how acute the situation is becoming. The debt-crippled bin Laden group is laying off 50,000 construction workers as austerity bites in earnest.
Societe Generale’s currency team has advised clients to short the Saudi riyal, betting that the country will be forced to ditch its long-standing dollar peg, a move that could set off a cut-throat battle for global share in the oil markets.
Francisco Blanch, from Bank of America, said a rupture of the peg is this year’s number one “black swan event” and would cause oil prices to collapse to $25 a barrel. Saudi Arabia’s foreign reserves are still falling by $10bn (£6.9bn) a month, despite a switch to bond sales and syndicated loans to help plug the huge budget deficit.
The country’s remaining reserves of $582bn are in theory ample – if they are really liquid – but that is not the immediate issue. The problem for the Saudi central bank (SAMA) is that reserve depletion automatically tightens monetary policy.
Bank deposits are contracting. So is the M2 money supply. Domestic bond sales do not help because they crowd out Saudi Arabia’s wafer-thin capital markets and squeeze liquidity. Riyadh now plans a global bond issue.
While crude prices have rallied 80pc to almost $50 a barrel since mid-February, this has not yet been enough to ease Saudi Arabia’s financial crunch.
The rebound in crude is increasingly fragile in any case as tough talk from the US Federal Reserve sends the dollar soaring, and Canada prepares to restore 1.2m barrels a day (b/d) of lost output. “We feel that markets have moved too high, too far, too soon. We still face a large inventory overhang and supply outages are reversible,” said BNP Paribas.
Total chief Patrick Pouyanne told the French senate last week that prices could deflate as fast as they rose. “The market won’t come back into balance until the end of the year,” he said.
Mr Pouyanne said the collapse in annual oil and gas investment to $400bn – from $700bn in 2014 – would lead to a global shortage of 5m barrels by 2020 and another wild spike in prices, but first the glut has to be cleared.
The oil rally is now at a make-or-break juncture. A growing number of oil traders warn that speculative purchases of “paper barrels” by hedge funds have decoupled from fundamentals. There is usually a seasonal slide in demand over the late summer.
More
Fraud in $4 Trillion Trade Finance Turns Banks to Digital Ledger
May 22, 2016 — 5:00 PM BST
The risk posed by fraud in the $4 trillion trade-financing industry has
prompted banks to start exploring distributed-ledger technology like the one
that underpins bitcoin.
Standard Chartered Plc, which lost almost $200 million from a fraud at
China’s Qingdao port two years ago, has teamed up with DBS Group Holdings Ltd.
to develop an electronic ledger of invoices that uses a parallel platform to
the blockchain employed in bitcoin transactions. Lenders such as Bank of
America Corp. and HSBC Holdings Plc say they’re looking at blockchain for
trade finance and other banking applications.
Blockchain proponents argue that the technology will change the face of banking, helping lenders cut billions of dollars in costs. Trade financing, a centuries-old banking mainstay, may become ground zero for blockchain adoption because it promises to do away with paper invoices and the fraud that accompanies them -- if banks can come together around a joint platform.
For blockchain applications, “invoices should be considered a leading candidate here, given the high potential for fraud,” said Henry Balani, global head of strategic affairs at Accuity, which provides technology to monitor trade-based money laundering.
Lenders typically don’t publish their losses from trade fraud, though almost 20 percent of banks in a 2015 survey by the International Chamber of Commerce reported an increase in fraud allegations.
We end for the day with another Brexit update. The Brexit vote is now just a month away. Project Fear has gone into panic mode.
"In
economics, hope and faith coexist with great scientific pretension."
John
Kenneth Galbraith.
Finance Chiefs Unanimous in Denouncing Brexit as Wrong Choice
May 21, 2016
— 7:21 AM BST
Global finance chiefs agreed that Britons should not vote to leave the
European Union next month as they warned that Brexit may have negative economic
consequences.
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said in a briefing at the
conclusion of the Group of Seven finance ministers’ meeting in Sendai, northern
Japan, on Saturday that all G-7 members agreed on the consequences of Brexit,
and shared the hope that Britain would vote to remain in the bloc on June 23.
“We were all of the opinion that it would be the wrong decision for the
U.K.," Schaeuble said. "But it’s a decision to be taken by the
British voters. We’re concerned that it could have negative consequences for
the European and the world economy.”
The Japanese presidency of the group released a summary of the meeting,
which said the "shock of a potential U.K. exit from the European Union”
would complicate the global economic environment.
With only a month to go before the referendum, the G-7’s caution will provide
further ammunition for U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, who is
one of the main strategists behind Prime Minister David Cameron’s campaign to
keep Britain in the bloc.
More
David Cameron's disgraceful dishonesty over the EU is turning Britain into a banana republic
Simon Heffer21 May 2016 •
3:00pm
One
of the Tory party’s more distinguished parliamentarians told me last week, in
deadly seriousness rather than satire, that he thought we lived in a banana
republic. He believed there was some truth in a story, going around
Westminster, that the Prime Minister would create 25 peerages for those
“supportive” in the referendum campaign. Certainly some of the recent
ennoblements have seemed like barrel scrapings, pitching into the Upper House
for reasons of tokenism people who, a generation ago, would have been lucky to
get a job cleaning the place.
Doling out peerages to nonentities because
they agree with you is bad enough. But what about the perception that Mr
Cameron is doing favours to captains
of industry in return for vocally supporting his cry to remain in the EU –
even by urging shareholders to vote “remain” in company annual reports? And
what are we to make of the outrageous imposition of employers telling employees
how to vote on June 23? Gladstone had the secret ballot introduced in 1872
precisely to allow working men enfranchised after the 1867 Reform Act to vote
without being bullied into supporting a certain side by their employers: a fat
lot of good that did.People say they want “facts” before deciding how to vote next month, so here’s one to mull over. The EU is a profoundly anti-democratic institution. The European Commission, whom no-one elects, initiates policy in the EU. The European parliament, or indeed you or I, can ask it to do certain things: it can tell the parliament, or you and me, to get lost, and that’s that. Charles I tried something similar, and it started a civil war.
More
If
all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
John Kenneth
Galbraith.
At
the Comex silver depositories Friday final figures were: Registered 30.03 Moz, Eligible 124.53 Moz, Total 154.56 Moz.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
Today, Chancellor Merkel is in
panic mode with Turkey. When the EUSSR grants visa-free travel status to
Turkey, continental Europe, Schengen Europe, starts playing Russian roulette
with Islamic terrorism.Merkel on Mission to Rescue Turkey Deal as Erdogan Tightens Grip
May 22, 2016 — 11:00 PM BST
German Chancellor Angela Merkel made yet another trip to Turkey as she
strives to shore up a fragile refugee accord in the face of increasingly
rancorous relations with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.Merkel arrived in Istanbul Sunday evening for her fifth visit to Turkey in eight months amid German criticism of Erdogan’s moves to tighten his grip on power with the installation of a close ally as prime minister and head of the ruling party. For his part, Erdogan has hammered the European Union’s terms for granting visa-free travel for Turkish citizens and the slow delivery of 6 billion euros ($6.7 billion) in EU funds in return for halting the influx of refugees making their way to Europe.
----The chancellor
is in Istanbul for Monday’s United Nations-sponsored World Humanitarian Summit. As part of the delicate
balancing act she’s facing, she was due to meet with members of Turkey’s civil
society Sunday evening to hear their criticisms of the government. Turkey on
Friday moved closer to putting many of its leading Kurdish politicians on
trial, as parliament passed a constitutional amendment depriving almost all
elected lawmakers from the main pro-Kurdish party of their legal immunity.
----The visit comes
as Erdogan shores up his power. One of his closest lieutenants, Binali
Yildirim, was on Sunday anointed chairman of the ruling Justice and Development
Party, or AKP, and is premier-designate. Davutoglu, who was Merkel’s main
interlocutor on migration, abruptly announced his resignation
this month after losing a power struggle with Erdogan. The presence of a
loyalist as premier helps pave the way for Erdogan to transform Turkey from a
parliamentary to a presidential system, with much greater power resting with
him.
More
"We
are in a world of irredeemable paper money - a state of affairs unprecedented
in history." John Exter
Brexit The Animated Movie.
Brexit
Quote of the week.
“We hold these
truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal; that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness outside of the EUSSR.”
With grateful
thanks to the writers of the US Declaration of Independence.
Solar & Related Update.
With events
happening fast in the development of solar power and graphene, I’ve added this
new section. Updates as they get reported. Is converting sunlight to usable
cheap AC or DC energy mankind’s future from the 21st century onwards?
DC? A quantum computer next?
Below, Bill and
Melinda fix their problem. Good for them. After that, what happens when solar
mirrors misalign.
Graphene makes rubber more rubbery
Date:
May 20, 2016
Source:
University of Manchester
Summary:
Adding graphene to thin rubber films can make them stronger and stretchier,
researchers have shown.
In an article published in Carbon, Dr Aravind Vijayaraghavan and
Dr Maria Iliut from Manchester have shown that adding a very small amount of
graphene, the world's thinnest and strongest material, to rubber films can
increase both their strength and the elasticity by up to 50%. Thin rubber films
are ubiquitous in daily life, used in everything from gloves to condoms.
In their experiments, the scientists tested two kinds of rubbery materials
-- natural rubber, composed of a material called polyisoprene, and a human-made
rubber called polyurethane. To these, they added graphene of different kinds,
amounts and size.
In most cases, it they observed that the resulting composite material could
be stretched to a greater degree and with greater force before it broke.
Indeed, adding just one tenth of one percent of graphene was all it took to
make the rubber 50% stronger.
Dr Vijayaraghavan, who leads the Nano-functional Materials Group, explains
"A composite is a material which contains two parts, a matrix which is
soft and light and a filler which is strong. Taken together, you get something
which is both light and strong. This is the principle behind carbon fibre
composites used in sports cars, or Kevlar composites used in body armour.
"In this case, we have made a composite of rubber, which is soft
and stretchy but fragile, with graphene and the resulting material is both
stronger and stretcher."
Dr Maria Iliut, a research associate in Dr Vijayaraghavan's group,
describes how this material is produced: "We use a form of graphene called
graphene oxide, which unlike graphene is stable as a dispersion in water.
The
rubber materials are also in a form that is stable in water, allowing us to combine
them before forming thin films with a process called dip moulding."
"The important thing here is that because these films are so thin,
we need a strengthening filler which is also very thin. Fortunately, graphene
is both the thinnest and strongest material we know of."
The
project emerged from a call by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to
develop a more desirable condom. According to Dr Vijayaraghavan, this composite
material has tremendous implications in daily life.
More
Mirrors blamed for fire at world’s largest solar plant
May 19, 2016 The Associated Press
PRIMM, Nev. – A small fire shut down a generating tower Thursday at the
world’s largest solar power plant, leaving the sprawling facility on the
California-Nevada border operating at only a third of its capacity, authorities
said.
Firefighters had to climb some 300 feet up a boiler tower at the Ivanpah
Solar Electric Generating System in California after fire was reported on an
upper level around 9:30 a.m., fire officials said.
The plant works by using mirrors to focus sunlight on boilers at the top
of three 459-foot towers, creating steam that drive turbines to produce
electricity.
But some misaligned mirrors instead focused sunbeams on a different
level of Unit 3, causing electrical cables to catch fire, San Bernardino
County, California fire Capt. Mike McClintock said.
David Knox, spokesman for plant operator NRG Energy, said it was too
early to comment on the cause, which was under investigation.
The fire was located about two-thirds of the way up the tower, said Jeff
Buchanan of Nevada’s Clark County Fire Department, which also responded to the
blaze.
Plant personnel had the fire out by the time firefighters reached the
spot, and it was officially declared out in about 20 minutes.
Photos showed melted and scorched steam ducts and water pipes.
Knox said the tower was offline while crews assess the damage. He could
not immediately say when it would restart.
The plant can produce enough power for 140,000 California homes, but a
second tower is shut down for maintenance, leaving only one running.
It was not immediately clear what impact that would have on California’s
electricity supply.
It was the first fire at the plant, which opened two years ago on
federal land in the Mojave Desert about 45 miles southwest of Las Vegas.
The $2.2 billion complex has nearly 350,000 computer controlled mirrors
— each roughly the size of a garage door — that sprawl over roughly five square
miles of desert.
http://www.canadianbusiness.com/business-news/mirrors-blamed-for-fire-at-worlds-largest-solar-plant/
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished April
DJIA: 17773.64-19 Down. NASDAQ: 4775.36 +11 Down. SP500: 2065.30 -21 Down.
No comments:
Post a Comment