Baltic Dry Index. 445 -22 Brent Crude 32.73
LIR Gold Target in 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
“The boom can last only as long as the
credit expansion progresses at an ever-accelerated pace. The boom comes to an
end as soon as additional quantities of fiduciary media are no longer thrown
upon the loan market.”
Ludwig
von Mises.
After last week’s stock market rout, more of the same apparently. Global trade appears to be drying up. Now comes the tsunami of bankruptcies and reorganisations. Who’s attending Davos this year for the last time? Who won’t even make it? Did the world’s central banksters set off the “crack up boom” 2009 – 2015?
Asian shares extend losses as China sows confusion
The absence of Tokyo for a holiday only made liquidity even harder to come by, heightening volatility.
Currency markets saw some wild swings with the South African rand ZAR=D3 collapsing to record lows at one point before bouncing.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS slid 1.8 percent to its lowest since late 2011.
China's main indexes .CSI300.SSEC slumped more than 3 percent at one point, Australia 1.25 percent and the Philippines .PSI dropped 3.8 percent.
Financial spreadbetters IG predicted opening losses of 0.5 percent for the FTSE 100 .FTSE, 1.5 percent for the DAX .GDAXI and 1.2 percent for France's CAC .FCHI.
E-mini futures for the U.S. S&P 500 ESc1 fared better, turning flat after an early loss of 0.8 percent.
Commodities were again on the ropes as Brent crude oil LCOc1 shed 79 cents to $32.76 a barrel, while U.S. crude CLc1 was 69 cents lighter at $32.47.
China was again the epicenter of unease as the People's Bank confounded analysts by guiding the yuan's midpoint rate sharply stronger, a move that might calm concerns about a competitive devaluation but only added to market confusion as to Beijing's ultimate intent on its currency policy.
The move was an apparent reversal of the midpoint's recent weakening trend which included the biggest one-day drop in the guidance rate in five months on Jan. 7.
"Authorities are reluctant to let market forces rule, which along with their indecisiveness and lack of transparency is exacerbating uncertainty," said Tapas Strickland, an economist at National Australia Bank.
"Understandably, amidst this global markets are selling Chinese policymaker's ability to control their economy."
That only heightened tensions ahead of China trade data on Wednesday where declines are expected in exports and imports, underlining just how anemic world trade flows are right now.
More
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-markets-idUSKCN0UP00C20160111
Historic First: North Atlantic EMPTY of Cargo Ships in-transit - ALL anchored along coasts; none moving
Newsroom- Jan 08, 2016
Commerce between Europe and North America has literally come to a
halt. For the first time in known history, not one
cargo ship is in-transit in the North Atlantic between Europe and North
America. All of them (hundreds) are either anchored offshore or
in-port. NOTHING is moving.This has never happened before. It is a horrific economic sign; proof that commerce is literally stopped.
The reason commerce has stopped is simple: People are not buying things. When people do not buy things, retailers do not sell things, so they do not order more goods for stock.
When retailers do not order goods, manufacturers don't make anything because there are no orders to fill. When manufacturers do not make goods, they don't order raw materials for manufacturing.
When there are no orders for raw materials, commodities sellers do not sell raw materials. When no raw materials are sold, there is no shipping by large cargo ships, (or railroads or tractor trailers) to move anything.
Put simply, the global economy is LITERALLY stopping. Right now. Today.
How things go from this point forward is simple: Without sales, retailers are not even "turning dollars" so they will have to layoff employees and close stores. Without orders, manufacturers will have to layoff employees and shut down. When manufacturing shuts down, suppliers of commodities will have to layoff employees and cease operations. As all of this economic activity comes to a halt, then the disaster REALLY takes off:
When businesses are not even "turning dollars" they cannot pay back their loans. Retailers, manufacturers and commodities suppliers will begin defaulting on bank loans within 30 days. When enough of them default, it begins taking-out banks. As banks begin to fail, others will run to their banks to withdraw money for fear THEIR bank will fail too; and therein starts "bank runs."
In the meantime, stock values plummet and people's life savings in retirement accounts, 401-k's, IRA's and the like, get wiped out of existence.
We are literally standing at the edge of an abyss. It appears we are about to go over that cliff . . .
To view the actual (real-time) movement of ships worldwide, and view the EMPTY North Atlantic, Click Here
https://www.superstation95.com/index.php/world/750
World's Richest Lose $194 Billion In First Trading Week of 2016
January 8, 2016 — 10:59 PM GMT
The world’s 400 richest people lost almost $194 billion this week as
world stock markets began the year with a shudder on poor economic data in
China and falling oil prices.
Forty-seven billionaires lost $1 billion or more during the worst week
for U.S. stocks since 2011, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The
combined drop was almost seven times the $29 billion lost in the first five
trading days of 2015. The 400 people on the index had a combined $3.7 trillion
at the end of the week, compared with more than $4 trillion a year ago.
Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, the best-performing billionaire in 2015,
lost the most, his fortune dropping $5.9 billion this week as shares of the
world’s largest online retailer fell more than 10 percent. Bezos is the
world’s fourth-richest person with $53.7 billion and more than doubled his net
worth in 2015 as investors cheered profits at Amazon.
The world’s richest person, Bill Gates, fell $4.5 billion to $79.2 billion, while Spain’s Amancio Ortega, the second-richest, dropped $3.4 billion to $69.5 billion.
The combined loss among the billionaires represents a 4.9 percent dip in their total wealth, according to the index, a slightly better performance than world equity markets so far this year. Global stocks tumbled 6.2 percent for the week, according to the MSCI ACWI Index.
More
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-08/world-s-richest-lose-194-billion-in-first-trading-week-of-2016
Taking stock of an awful trading week on Wall Street
Published: Jan 8, 2016 6:02 p.m. ET
The global stock markets lost $2.3 trillion in market cap this week. How does that signal for the rest of year?
The market meltdown in China reverberated across the globe in a week that punished U.S. stocks with major benchmarks recording their worst weekly performances in years.Even after China’s Shanghai stock market recovered Friday to gain 2%, the U.S. market remained volatile with the S&P 500 posting its worst opening week ever.
And there could be more turbulence ahead as history indicates that the trading in the first week of a new year could influence the direction of the market for the remaining 51 weeks.
“For the S&P 500—the first 5 trading day of the new year has predicted the direction of the full year 68% of the time,” according to the WSJ Market Data Group.
The correlation is 66% for the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -1.02%
However, investors will be heartened to know that the predictive power of the first week of trading tends to be more relevant when the market is going up rather than down. In fact, during years when the market is down, the first week’s performance as an indicator is no better than 50/50, according to Wall Street Journal data.
Here is how miserable 2016 has been so far.
•The S&P 500 SPX, -1.08% posted a weekly loss of 6% to close at 1,922.03 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 6.2% to 16,346.45. It was the worst week for stocks on a percentage basis since Sept. 23 2011.
•China’s Shanghai Composite Index SHCOMP, +1.97% sank 10% to 3186.41 while the Hang Seng Index HSI, +0.59% fell 6.7% to 20,453.71, both recording their biggest one-week decline since Aug. 21.
•Japan’s Nikkei 225 Index NIK, -0.39% shed 7% to 17,697.96, its worst weekly percentage drop since Sept. 4. The index fell five out of the past six weeks.
•The Stoxx Europe 600 SXXP, -1.49% skidded 6.7%, its steepest weekly fall since early August 2011.
Altogether, the global stock markets lost $2.3 trillion in market cap in the first four days of 2016, according Michael Hartnett, chief investment strategist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Some $12 billion in funds fled U.S. equities, the largest in 17 weeks, he said. Tech-focused funds were the most severely hit, with $600 million exiting, the biggest in 19 weeks.
More
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/taking-stock-of-an-awful-trading-week-on-wall-street-2016-01-08
“But it [the boom] could not last forever
even if inflation and credit expansion were to go on endlessly. It would then
encounter the barriers which prevent the boundless expansion of circulation
credit. It would lead to the crack-up boom and the breakdown of the whole
monetary system.”
Ludwig
von Mises.
At the Comex silver depositories Friday
final figures were: Registered 36.51 Moz, Eligible 124.88 Moz, Total 161.39
Moz.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
In El Nino news, southern Africa is reeling.World's Biggest Dam Has ‘Extremely Dangerous’ Low Water Levels
January 8, 2016 — 10:20 AM GMT
Water levels at Kariba dam, the world’s largest, are at “extremely
dangerous” lows that could force a shutdown of its hydro power plants, said
Zambian Energy Minister Dora Siliya.
Poor rainfall and overuse of water by Zambia and Zimbabwe, the southern
African countries that share the reservoir, have caused its levels to drop,
with electricity generation already reduced by more than half. As of Dec. 28,
Kariba was 14 percent full, compared with 51 percent a year earlier, according
to the dam’s regulator.
“The situation is dire,” Siliya told reporters Thursday in Lusaka,
Zambia’s capital. “I’m praying. We sit here and gaze at the sky and say,
‘please, the levels of Kariba are at extremely dangerous levels.’” A continued
absence of rains could force the power plants to shut down altogether, she
said.
Mining companies in Africa’s second-biggest copper producer have had to
reduce their electricity use and buy expensive imports at a time when plunging
metal prices have triggered the mothballing of some mines and more than 10,000
job cuts. Households and businesses endure power cuts as long as 14 hours a
day. The cost of importing power and emergency generation could threaten the
government’s 3.8 percent budget deficit target for 2016.Zambia is the most vulnerable country in sub-Saharan Africa to the El Nino weather system, partly because of its dependence on hydro power for more than 95 percent of generation, Bank of America Merrill Lynch analysts including Oyinkansola Anubi said in a November note. Six of Zambia’s 10 provinces have received below-normal rainfall this wet season, Meteorological Department director Jacob Nkomoki said in comments broadcast on Lusaka-based Radio Phoenix Dec. 4.
Water flows in the Zambezi river that feeds Kariba on Dec. 28 were 27 percent lower than a year earlier when measured at the Victoria Falls, about 125 kilometers (78 miles) upstream from the dam, according to data from the Zambezi River Authority. At Chavuma, about 600 kilometers north-west and near the river’s source, flows had started to improve and were 23 percent higher on Dec. 28 than a year earlier.
More
What is needed for a sound expansion of production is additional
capital goods, not money or fiduciary media. The credit expansion is built on
the sands of banknotes and deposits. It must collapse.
Ludwig
von Mises.
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, a solar
power solution that’s perfect for Australia, Canada and the redneck States of
America.
Eureka! Serbian maths prof creates his home solar power heating system for just £50 made entirely from... BEER CANS
- Serbian Darko Milicevic created his own home solar panel heating system
- The high school maths teacher replaced copper wiring with the beer cans
- It cost just £50 to build and will save him around £500 a year in power bills
- He doesn't count the cost of the beer cans because 'I would drink them anyway,' he told MailOnline
|
With winter temperatures plummeting across Europe a
Serbian maths professor has come up with a novel, not to mention economical,
way of heating his house for free - by using empty beer cans to create a solar
power heating system.
Darko Milicevic has turned the empties into solar
panels which look set to save him as much as £500 a year on heating bills,
which is almost twice the average salary in Serbia.
So far his invention for the beer can solar panels
on the roof and radiators has cost the 39-year-old just £50.
Somewhat unsurprisingly, Mr Milicevic, from Paracin, in central Serbia, came up with the idea after drinking a few of his favourite beers.
He told MailOnline: 'I was thinking about how to
make my own heating system free of charge, because everyone wants to make their
lives easier during this [economic] crisis.
'Then I realised I could use beer cans instead of
buying copper tubes.
'I drink beer anyway and it was fun inventing
something alternative.'
Using 44 cans, Mr Milicevic, who teaches maths at
the local high school, constructed his experimental 3.5ft-long beer can panel
as a prototype.
Boring 22 holes into two planks of wood, he them
balanced the cans on top of each other before drilling little ventilation holes
into them and painting them black.
'The system is similar as in all solar panels,' he
explained.
'I placed it on the southern wall of my house. The
sun rays heat the air in the cans and the hot air naturally goes up through the
cans and into the house, heating the space there.'
Mr Milicevic added that he also painted the cans black to get more energy from the sun rays.
'The most expensive item was plexiglass to protect
the panel. I also used styrofoam to isolate it, so not to lose any heat,' he
said.
Taking to Facebook to show off his invention, he
explained that on New Year's Eve, when the temperature outside dropped to a
freezing minus five Celsius in Parcin, his beer can panel heated his water
boiler to 51.8 degrees.
There is a catch, however.
'If there is no sun at all, it does not work. But
even if the outside temperatures are very low and there is sun, it works.'
Now with his water heating bills having been
reduced to zero, he says he will create more panels from empty beer cans to
heat the entire house.
more
'Legos' for fabrication of atomically precise electronic circuits
Date:
January 8, 2016
Source:
Department of Energy, Office of Science
Summary:
For the first time, researchers tailored the electronic properties of
nanoribbons using a new “bottom-up” method that precisely controls and
modulates the atomic-scale width within a single nanoribbon.
For the first time, researchers tailored the electronic properties of
nanoribbons using a new "bottom-up" method that precisely controls
and modulates the atomic-scale width within a single nanoribbon. Simulations
were used to further interpret how nanoribbons with non-uniform widths behave
and confirmed that the modulated width altered the electronic properties as
intended, specifically the bandgap that determines how electrons move through
the material.
Unprecedented control over the shape and electronic properties at
sub-nanometer scales allows atomic-level engineering of semiconductor
heterojunctions with the potential for high-performance electrical circuits for
faster, more energy efficient electronics and advanced solar cells.
Varying the width of tiny strips of graphene with atomic-scale precision
is predicted to allow profound control over nanostructure electronic
properties. This is analogous to a technique for modifying the electronic
properties of electronic devices called "bandgap engineering."
Bandgap engineering has been used in the past to create high-performance
micron-scale devices from traditional semiconductors, but it remains an open
question whether it can be scaled down to the molecular level. Conventional
"top-down" fabrication methods are inadequate for this task because
they lack the required spatial resolution. For the first time, researchers led
by the University of California at Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory developed a new "bottom-up" approach that allows molecular
bandgap engineering to be performed by controllably modulating the width of
graphene nanoribbons at the atomic scale. Molecular building blocks were
designed to fuse together to controllably modulate the width of a single
nanoribbon in a series of connected segments, each having a different width
specified at the atomic level.
More
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished December
DJIA: +18 Down. NASDAQ:
+110 Down. SP500: +36 Down.
No comments:
Post a Comment