Baltic Dry Index. 1398 +24
LIR Gold Target in 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
Failure is simply the opportunity to
begin again, this time more intelligently.
Henry Ford.
We open
today with better news of the future. Our new Carbon Age that will eventually
lead us out of the lawless era of mal-investment in High Frequency derivatives
gambling scams, social media scams, mega-merger scams, triple-A scams, and much
more, is starting to arrive. The trick is to somehow get from here to the end
of the decade when the graphene age will really start kicking in, without QE
Forever or President Hollande’s love life imploding first.
Sacrebleu!
Francois
Hollande, with apologies to Hercule Poirot and Agatha Christie.
Scientists Develop a More Efficient and Economical Solar Cell Based On Graphene and Perovskite
Jan. 14, 2014 — The Group of
Photovoltaic and Optoelectronic Devices (DFO) at the Universitat Jaume I in
Castelló, led by the professor of Applied Physics Juan Bisquert, together with
researchers from the University of Oxford, have created and characterized a
photovoltaic device based on a combination of titanium oxide and graphene as
charge collector and perovskite as sunlight absorber. The device is
manufactured at low temperatures and has a high efficiency.
----
The paper presents a record of efficiency of a solar cell with graphene of
15.6%. This efficiency exceeds that obtained by combining graphene with
silicon, which is the photovoltaic material par excellence. This development is
a new milestone for the progress of perovskite solar cells.
Researchers
Eva Barea, Iván Mora and Juan Bisquert have explained that the new device
consists of several layers processed at temperatures below 150°C. They have
also highlighted the importance of this study for the field of photovoltaic
energy because they have obtained a high degree of efficiency. Besides, the
device is manufactured at low temperatures, thus facilitating its large-scale
manufacturing in industry. In turn, this fact means lower production costs and
the possibility of using it in devices based on flexible plastics.
Up next, a cautionary tale from Germany on the folly of
going “Green” half cocked. If German industry fails due to the highest energy
costs in Europe, who is going to bailout Casanova Hollande’s France?
It is not the employer who pays the
wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages.
Henry Ford.
Germany is a cautionary tale of how energy polices can harm the economy
Despite Germany’s shift to renewable solar and wind energies, and amid a recession, its carbon emissions rose by 1.8pc last year
Germanys shift to renewable
energy was once Angela Merkel’s flagship policy - now it has become her biggest
headache.
“For me, the most urgent problem
is the design of the energy revolution,” said the German Chancellor in her
first television interview after being re-elected last month. “We are under a
lot of pressure. The future of jobs and the future of Germany as a business
location depend on it.”
She is not wrong: Europe’s
largest country and economy faces a crisis. Such is the mess over energy that
the future of Germany’s much-vaunted economic competitiveness is now seriously
threatened.
Ms Merkel is currently Europe’s
most popular leader but there is a growing backlash against her ill-thought-out
energy policies.
And, to cap it all, policies
hailed as saving the world from climate change have, in fact, increased CO2
emissions.
The plan was called energiewende,
which can be translated as energy transition or even revolution. But despite
Germany’s shift to renewable solar and wind energies, and amid a recession, its
carbon emissions rose by 1.8pc last year.
In the European Union, as a
whole, emissions fell by 1.3pc, mainly due to recession, according to the
Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo.
Ms Merkel has no one to blame but
herself. Germany’s shift to renewables was very much along the norms of the
European model, with the aim of going beyond EU targets. Then along came
Fukushima and the wave of anti-nuclear hysteria that followed the 2011 Tohoku
earthquake and tsunami in Japan.
The once-in-a-millennium event at
the Fukushima reactor killed nobody, although the tsunami claimed 16,000 lives.
However, it was enough to panic Germany’s green middle class.
Ms Merkel caved in to shrill
demands for the country’s atomic reactors to be closed. This decision, from a
former chemist, who is personally pro-nuclear, is perhaps the most important
economic call she has made. It is a disaster.
In March 2011, at the height of
the eurozone recession, Germany switched off eight of its 17 nuclear reactors,
cutting 7pc of electricity generation, with another 18pc to go over the next
decade. The other nine reactors will be phased out from 2015 to 2022, bringing
forward a previous 2036 deadline by 14 years.
Germany has also stepped up
energiewende, as it switches to meet a target of producing 80pc of the
country’s electricity from renewable, wind and solar power by 2050. The fields
carpeted with solar panels and the North Sea wind farms may have gratified the
green conceits of Germany’s middle class but they have come at a terrible
economic and social cost. According to Nature, the international science
magazine, this year German consumers will be forced to pay €20bn (£17bn) to
subsidise electricity from solar, wind and bio-gas plants, power with a real
market price of €3bn.
---- Germany has got
used to delivering economic homilies on competitiveness to the rest of Europe.
But a new picture is emerging: German industry is in trouble. Energy prices are
40pc more expensive than in France and the Netherlands, and the bills are 15pc
higher than the EU average. Even though Germany’s energy-intensive
manufacturing sector is given a break with reduced levies, industries such as
chemicals and steel are among the hardest hit, with energiewende costs of up to
€740m a year. The burden could get even worse after the European Commission
(EC) launched an investigation into the reduced levies.
Much,
Much More
We end for the week with yet another warning on Asia. Our
Great Disconnect simply doesn’t care. All news for now is still good news.
Still deficits didn’t matter until one day suddenly they did.
Don't find fault, find a remedy.
Henry Ford.
JPMorgan Sees Asian Currencies Extending Rout on Economy
Jan 17, 2014 4:03 AM GMT
Asian
currencies are poised to extend declines amid concern an increase in
borrowing costs in China
and a weakening yen threaten economic growth in the region, JPMorgan Chase
& Co. said. “A trend of bearish” Asian currencies will “kick off,” JPMorgan analysts including Hong Kong-based Bert Gochet wrote in a report yesterday. “Worries over China’s tight liquidity stance generate downside risks to growth.”
China’s money market rates jumped in December to a six-month high, raising concern that tighter lending conditions may slow the world’s second-largest economy. The yen’s 15 percent decline over the past year is fueling speculation that a cheaper currency may help Japanese companies grab export market share from its competitors in South Korea and Taiwan.
The Philippine peso touched the weakest level since 2010 yesterday on concern the Federal Reserve may accelerate the withdrawal of stimulus as the U.S. economy improves. The Malaysian ringgit posted its biggest two-day drop since November, while the South Korean won fell 1.3 percent from the five-year high set in December.
The Fed started reducing its monthly bond purchases in January by $10 billion to $75 billion, reducing capital flows to emerging markets. The MSCI Emerging Markets Index of stocks has slid as much as 16 percent since May 22, when the Fed signaled its stimulus program could be trimmed.
China’s seven-day repurchase rate surged to 4.98 percent today in Shanghai, the highest level since Jan. 2, according to National Interbank Funding Center. New yuan loans slumped to a one-year low in December and money-supply growth eased, central bank data showed on Jan. 15.
The cash squeeze will persist this month because authorities are determined to curb shadow-banking financing and reduce banks’ reliance on interbank funding amid concerns about delinquent loans, Haitong International Securities Co., part of China’s second-largest brokerage, said in a Jan. 15 report.
The yen, which traded at 104.33 per dollar today, may yet reach 115 this year as the Bank of Japan weighs more stimulus to offset a sales-tax increase, former board member Nobuyuki Nakahara said in an interview yesterday.
---- Based on
conversations with customers, JPMorgan said local bond funds haven’t received
any inflows so far this year. It would be the first time that has happened in
January since 2008, JPMorgan said, citing data from research company EPFR
Global.
More
There is one rule for the industrialist
and that is: Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost
possible, paying the highest wages possible.
Henry Ford
At the Comex
silver depositories Thursday
final figures were: Registered 48.34 Moz, Eligible 128.00 Moz, Total 176.34 Moz.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
Today, is it time to boycott Ford vehicles? Not yet
but it soon might be. While I’m all for free speech, in our increasingly
intolerant PC world, Ford’s odious Odell merely makes Brits more likely to vote
against EU membership, rather than supporting his membership case with reason
and logic. In the present unreformed EU, with its wealth and job destroying
euro, there’s hardly any case for Britain remaining in a bureaucratic monster
that increasingly becomes the EUSSR and costs the British taxpayer over 10
billion Pounds a year. If the odious Odell wants to live in Russia and build cars for EurAsia no one in Britain is stopping him. His UK auto plants will find other, probably Chinese buyers, though after this speech, only at a knockdown price. Hardly in the interests of Ford shareholders. With Ford UK threatening to decamp and destroy shareholder value, savvy investors will probably want to decamp from Ford shares.
"The most puzzling development in politics during the last decade is the apparent determination of Western European leaders to re-create the Soviet Union in Western Europe."
Mikhail Gorbachev
Ford's pull-out threat on Brexit greatly inflates relevance of dying EU
Economics Last updated: January 16th, 2014
Ford has issued what amounts to a
threat to shut down operations in Britain if the country votes to leave the EU.
Steve Odell, CEO of Ford's
operations in Europe, told our Katherine Rushton in Detroit that the UK would
be “cutting its nose off to spite its face” by exiting the EU.
“I don’t want to threaten the
British government, 'If you do this there are consequences’ [but] I would
strongly advise against leaving the EU for business purposes, and for
employment purposes in the UK,” he said.
“You’d have to look at everything
… Clearly we wouldn’t be alone in doing that. Would it mean tariffs? Would it
mean duties? We’d take a look at what it meant.
“When the Russian industry
reduced last year, we took a shift out of St Petersburg. It wouldn’t just be UK
specific, it would be what else would happen if we left the EU. Hopefully we
never get to that.”
Fine, but Neil Mellon from the
BNY Mellon reminds us that this is what Ford boss Sir Nicholas Scheele said in
November 2002.
"Every minute of delay in
adopting the euro is detrimental to our employees, our business partners, our
customers … as well as to Ford … There is a significant risk to the country's
manufacturing and exporting sector if Britain doesn't join the euro."
I interviewed Honda chief Takeo
Fukui in Tokyo on May 2007 when he (politely) threatened to cut off future
investment in Britain unless the country joined the euro. He said Honda had
made an "error" building its car plant in Swindon.
At that point sterling was too
high, of course. Before long it was very nicely valued again and such chatter
stopped. Britain went on to become Europe's second biggest car producer outside
the euro. It is likely to smash all previous records by producing two million
vehicles in 2017 outside the euro.
The debate is stuck in a
time-warp as if the EU were still the same historical force marching forward to
inevitable hegemony that it appeared to be (to them) a decade ago.
Events are moving very fast on
the Continent. The European Parliament elections in May are likely to be a
political earthquake. The eurozone crisis is still getting worse since EMU
internal devaluation policies are leading to debt deflation in the South,
causing debt ratios to rise faster.
The old nomenklatura is losing
its grip. The Franco-German axis has broken down, whatever the rhetoric from Mr
Hollande this week. You could argue that Germany has already left the EU in all
but name, conducting its own unilateral trade and foreign policies with China
and Russia, conducting its own Middle East policy, and turning its back on
fiscal union (contrary to all the logic of EMU). Indeed, you could argue that
by its actions, Germany has already left the euro.
You could argue too that the EU
no longer exists as a motivating project. It is a relic of the Cold War era, an
empty shell, overtaken by nation state revivals across the EU, and by global
free trade under the WTO. As for Mr Odell's "duties", did you know
that even Tunisia has tariff-free access to the EU market?
A British exit would be extremely
damaging to the EU's already tattered credibility, and possible the coup de
grace – as Germany's Wolfgang Schauble admits, precisely because he is
Germany's last true believer in the Project. It would change the EU chemistry
in unpredictable ways. It would upset the internal EU power structure, leaving
the triple stool standing on two unstable legs.
The people who matter in EU
capitals would bend over backwards to find a formula to keep Britain inside the
Union, if only as a sort of associate member for appearances' sake.
They would seek to avoid any
damage to the trading relationship. This is not just because Britain is the
eurozone's biggest single market, larger than the US or China, but ultimately
because diplomacy goes on between rich democratic neighbours whether or not
they are in any particular treaty structure.
----If the IMF, OECD, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs are right, the GDP growth differential between Britain and the eurozone from 2012 to 2016 will by then be so emphatic that the tenor of the economic debate will be transformed in any case.
The difference in jobs growth is
already changing the political argument. The UK unemployment rate is 7.4pc and
falling fast. It is 12.1pc in the eurozone and stuck. A lot of people in Italy,
Spain, and France have noticed this.
More
I believe God is managing affairs and
that He doesn't need any advice from me. With God in charge, I believe
everything will work out for the best in the end. So what is there to worry
about.
Henry Ford.
Have a great weekend everyone.
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished December and 2013.
DJIA: +204 Up. NASDAQ: +311 Up. SP500: +247 Up.
The new Fed bubble continues, but for how much longer?
No comments:
Post a Comment