Baltic Dry Index. 2676 -61
LIR Gold Target by 2019: $3,000.
“If the Japanese side clings obstinately to its course, making mistake upon mistake, then China will take strong countermeasures and Japan will bear all the consequences.”
Foreign Ministry spokesman, Ma Zhaoxu.
With Japan closed or holiday’s today and Thursday, China escalated a minor shipping incident into a diplomatic incident. In an ominous development for the world’s largest debtor Uncle Scam, China seems to be signaling no more Mr. Nice Guy. Give us the respect that our size, economy and global cooperation deserve. Below Bloomberg covers the story where either China or Japan must now lose face. How the US reacts in backing up ally Japan will be watched very intently in Beijing and Taipei. Probably Moscow and Tbilisi too, I would expect.
China Suspends Exchanges With Japan Over Boat Clash
Sept. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Diplomatic ties between the world’s second and third-biggest economies soured as China escalated a dispute over Japan’s extended detention of a fishing boat captain for a collision in disputed waters.
China yesterday severed senior-level government contacts with Japan, halting aviation talks and suspending a meeting on coal because of the incident. Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu pledged “strong countermeasures” if Japan failed to release the captain. Japan’s government hasn’t been informed of the measures, a spokesman said today.
“Any so-called judicial proceedings the Japanese side takes against the Chinese captain are illegal and invalid,” Ma said in yesterday’s statement. “Japan will have to bear all of the consequences.”
The dispute has sent relations to their worst point since 2005, when thousands of Chinese protested Japanese textbooks that downplayed wartime atrocities, at a time when economic ties are strengthening. Nissan Motor Co. Chief Executive Officer Carlos Ghosn, today said in the city of Zhengzhou that China accounts for 23 percent of sales for the Japanese automaker.
-----Japan has repeatedly refused to release the captain, saying he is being investigated for a Sept. 7 collision with two of its Coast Guard vessels near a group of disputed islands in the East China Sea. The government yesterday extended his detention until Sept. 29.
New Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara yesterday said on NHK television that the case was being handled according to Japanese law. He called on China to handle the issue calmly and expressed appreciation for the way the demonstrations were handled.
“China is making efforts for us,” Maehara said. He reiterated that the islands, known as Diaoyu in Chinese and Senkaku in Japanese, are “an integral part of Japanese territory.”
http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aEBtfeK5EZPs&pos=8
In better Japan – China relations, Nissan subtly shifts stance to opt to grow with China. According to Goldman Sachs chief economist, Jim O’ Neill, China is on target to replace the USA as the world’s largest economy by 2027. That’s just 16 and a bit years away, and the USA is still proposing to run trillion dollar deficits through at least 2020. Stay long precious metals.
Nissan Plans to Almost Double China Capacity by 2012
Sept. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Nissan Motor Co. will almost double its production capacity in China to 1.2 million cars by 2012, accelerating earlier plans as economic growth spurs demand, Chief Executive Officer Carlos Ghosn said.
“China is now the second-largest economy in the world, and our ambitions and actions are aligned with the current reality,” Ghosn said today in Zhengzhou, central China, where Nissan held a ceremony to open its second plant in the city, according to a copy of his speech.
Ghosn said in April that Nissan, Japan’s third-largest automaker, aimed to increase its China capacity to 900,000 cars a year by 2012. China’s gross domestic product expanded 10.3 percent in the quarter ended June from a year earlier.
Nissan, General Motors Co. and Volkswagen AG are among automakers expanding in China as economic growth boosts car purchases in the world’s biggest automobile market. Passenger- car deliveries in China accelerated in August, and the nation’s auto sales are on course to outstrip the U.S. for a second year.
Nissan said it has capacity to produce 670,000 cars in China at present. The new plant will cost 1 billion yuan ($149 million) to build and has a production capacity of 180,000 cars a year, the Yokohama, Japan-based company said in a statement. Nissan also said it plans to open another factory in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou’s Huadu district in 2012.
The company said it plans to move production of its X-trail sport-utility vehicle and Qashqai crossover from another factory in Guangzhou to the new Zhengzhou plant to help ease capacity constraints.
-----China outpaced Japan as the world’s second-largest economy in the three months ended June. China, whose gross domestic product totaled more than $4.9 trillion last year, will overtake the U.S. as the world’s biggest economy by 2027, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. chief economist Jim O’Neill.
http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101&sid=a9zOQVKwIaDo
Staying with cars, but “cars of the future”, below new technology is pushing the limits today, but how much will be usable tomorrow? My guess is a whole lot more than we think.
"I never think of the future. It comes soon enough."
Prof. Albert Einstein.
Congratulations to the Winners of the $10 Million Progressive Insurance Automotive X PRIZE
Posted: September 16, 2010 02:29 PM
For those who have followed the Progressive Insurance Automotive X PRIZE, today has been a long time coming. Our vision from the start was to reinvent the paradigm for cars the public can drive. We wanted to ensure that these cars were fast, affordable, safe and achieved more than 100 MPGe (miles per gallon equivalent) -- a new way to directly compare the efficiency of gasoline to electric and other alternative fueled vehicles. This adventure began in early 2006, when we first developed the concept for this Incentive Prize. It was officially announced in March 2008, with Progressive Insurance as the competition's title sponsor. More than 130 vehicles from around the world registered to participate. This past summer, we tested the finalist at Michigan International Speedway, all competing for a $10 million purse and one shared goal: to develop viable and super, fuel-efficient vehicles that meet or exceed 100 MPGe.
We spent this morning in the nation's capital at The Historical Society of Washington, D.C. to announce the three winning vehicles among others that will impact our future driving experience.
----- We awarded $5 million to the competition's Mainstream Class (seats four) category winner and $2.5 million each to the two Alternative Class (seats two) winners, one with tandem seating and one with traditional side-by-side seating.
- Edison2 LLC, based in Charlottesville, Va., won the $5 million mainstream class with its Very Light Car. This forward-looking, truly aerodynamic vehicle weighs less than 750 pounds and boasts a drag coefficient that is half of what is considered the best today. In the competition, the Very Light Car achieved just more than 100 MPGe and passed all safety and emissions criteria- made even more remarkable with the knowledge that the car runs on E85 ethanol.
- Li-ion Motors, based in Mooresville, N.C., won the $2.5 million alternative side-by-side class with its Wave II vehicle. This battery electric urban car was built on a lightweight aluminum chassis and includes a highly efficient battery package and aerodynamic features that enabled it to achieve 187 MPGe in on-track testing.
- X-Tracer, based in Uster, Switzerland, won the $2.5 million alternative tandem class with its E-Tracer 7009 vehicle. The E-Tracer features two stabilizer wheels that automatically drop at low speeds or during sharp turns. It includes room for two in-line passengers and weekend baggage, and held the record high for efficiency in the competition, coming in at 197 MPGe.
While some may consider the competition over, for the winning teams the journey has just begun. Indeed, they will immediately begin leveraging their winning status, prize money and connections made over the course of the competition to catapult their vehicle into the consumer market. It will not be easy, but I know these teams can, and will, make it happen. Just like Burt Rutan and Paul Allen were able to take their winning vehicle, SpaceShipOne, from the Ansari X PRIZE and move it forward into commercialization through a $250 million commitment from Sir Richard Branson to create Virgin Galactic, so too, do we wish these winning teams great success in their next steps towards commercialization.
----- Working together, the X PRIZE Foundation and Progressive Insurance have strived to change the paradigm of "mainstream" vehicles by providing a global platform focused on engine efficiency, increased vehicle power, acceleration, safety and increased fuel economy. The innovative technologies brought forth in this competition were astounding and further proved the purpose behind prize competitions -- to make the impossible possible.
We were not looking for incremental changes or long-term strategies. The competition's structure demanded breakthrough thinking that would literally disrupt the industry and produce an accelerated wave to push it ahead in leaps and bounds.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-diamandis/congratulations-to-the-wi_b_718840.html
There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order, this lukewarmness arising partly from fear of their adversaries … and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have had actual experience of it.
Nicolo Machiavelli
At the Comex silver depositories Friday, final figures were: Registered 53.72 Moz, Eligible 58.85 Moz, Total 112.57 Moz.
+++++
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner.
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.
Today, it’s the turn of the UK’s bankrupt banksters again, now the biggest drain on the economy and UK taxpayer since Great Britain stood alone confronting the evil of Hitler. Somehow bailing out overpaid gambling banksters bears no comparison to that noble cause. Typically in the world of crony central banksters taking care of their own in a crooked fiat money world, no British banksters suffered in this modern version of the reverse Robin Hood. In the year of AD 2010, we rob from the poor to prop up the Sheriff of Nottingham’s exorbitant lifestyle. A winter of union discontent likely lies ahead for the UK’s weak coalition government
Wealth is not without its advantages, and the case to the contrary, although it has often been made, has never proved widely persuasive.
J. K. Galbraith.
Cameron Vexed by Bailout’s $5 Billion Interest on $103 Billion
Sept. 20 (Bloomberg) -- The U.K. pledged more money rescuing banks during the credit crunch than on any project in British history outside of world wars. And the cost keeps rising as the government looks for ways to get its money back.
While U.S., French and Swiss banks repaid bailouts, the U.K. hasn’t received any return on its 66 billion pound ($103.2 billion) rescue of Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and Lloyds Banking Group Plc. The annual interest payment on the debt incurred acquiring controlling stakes in the banks is about 3.2 billion pounds, according to a JPMorgan Chase & Co. estimate.
That’s about what British taxpayers spent on military operations in Afghanistan last year and exceeds the forecast of 2 billion pounds from a proposed levy on banks. While the government would like to sell the bank stakes, it can’t because the shares are fluctuating below the level the state paid for them. In addition, a government commission isn’t scheduled to decide for another year whether to split the retail and investment-banking businesses of Britain’s largest lenders.
“They should have lent money to these banks, not bought shares in them,” said Conservative lawmaker John Redwood, 59, who advised former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on privatizations in the 1980s.
-----The government invested, loaned and pledged more than 850 billion pounds rescuing stricken banks during the financial crisis that started in 2007, the National Audit Office, the U.K. public-spending watchdog, said in a December report describing the outlay as unprecedented. It’s equivalent to each U.K. household having about 3,000 pounds of stock in RBS and Lloyds.
Next month marks the second anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2008, bailout amid concern by then-Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling that RBS, the nation’s second-largest bank, and Britain’s biggest mortgage lender HBOS Plc didn’t have enough money to open their doors the next day.
Defeating Hitler
The government took an 83 percent stake in RBS and bought 41 percent of Lloyds, which acquired HBOS. It also took over all of Northern Rock Plc and parts of Bradford & Bingley Plc after bailing out the banks, and agreed to insure 280 billion pounds of RBS’s riskiest assets for an annual fee. The U.K. provided a further 450 billion pounds in guarantees to increase liquidity.
The annual interest cost on the 66 billion pounds of bonds the government had to sell to finance the rescue of RBS and Lloyds isn’t included in official estimates of the outlay for the bailout, meaning the actual bill may be as much as 19.7 billion pounds more, or 30 percent higher, JPMorgan’s analysis shows. That assumes the government can’t sell its stakes until 2014, six years after it used taxpayer money to save the banks.
Aside from World War I and World War II, the bank rescue was the costliest undertaking in British history. The U.K. spent 300 billion pounds defeating Adolf Hitler’s Germany in World War II, according to the Penguin Atlas of World History, about 3.5 trillion pounds on an inflation-adjusted basis today.
http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601095&sid=aqfGsQoqGiqw
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished August:
DJIA: +243 Down. NASDAQ: +366 Down. SP500: +243 Down.
The bull market (or bear market rally) that commenced on Nasdaq on 30/4/09 at 1717 has ended. (30/5/09 SP 500 at 919, 30/5/09 DJIA 8500.) While the indicators can flip flop at market turns, this action is rare on the slow monthly indicators. August is the third down month in a row and “crash season” approaches.
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