Baltic Dry Index. 605
-13 Brent Crude 50.09
LIR Gold Target in 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
Brexit odds checker.
http://www.oddschecker.com/politics/british-politics/eu-referendum/referendum-on-eu-membership-result
Brexit Quote of the Day.
Dodgy Dave Cameron: He was distinguished
for ignorance; for he had only one idea, and that was wrong.
With
apologies to Benjamin Disraeli.
We
open today as we head into the first summer holiday weekend of the northern
hemisphere, with crude oil news. Brent crude, the international benchmark for
oil pricing, just crossed 50 dollars a barrel for the first time since last
November. Can an upward change in the wests inflation numbers be long delayed?
I suspect that unless oil prices plunge again and soon, food and energy price
inflation is about to become the next big story. Like Rip Van Winkle, Mr. Inflation seems to be
awakening from his long slumber.
Forget
Brexit. Whether or not Dodgy Dave’s Project Fear surrender story wins or loses,
a return of inflation will blow the Bilderberger EUSSR project clean out of the
water. A fragile EU that’s never really recovered from the Great Recession of
2007-2009, is in no way prepared, politically or financially, to weather a
hurricane of inflation. ZIRP and NIRP will fast be replaced by positive
interest rates. A multi-decade long bull market in global treasuries will end
and reverse. America, the EUSSR and Japan are all horribly positioned for such
a development. An Everest of debt will implode faster than an avalanche in the
Alps. Crude oil is ringing a bell at what looks likely to be the top.
True, governments can reduce the rate of interest in the short run,
issue additional paper currency, open the way to credit expansion by the banks.
They can thus create an artificial boom and the appearance of prosperity. But
such a boom is bound to collapse soon or late and to bring about a depression.
Ludwig
von Mises.
Oil prices top $50, Asian shares struggle on China worries
Brent crude oil rose above $50 a barrel for the first time in nearly
seven months on Thursday but Asian shares struggled to gain traction, with
worries about U.S. interest rates and China's slowing economy keeping many
investors on the sidelines.
While energy stocks outperformed, a slump in mainland China stocks to
2-1/2 month lows dampened any broader interest in riskier assets in Asia, offsetting
overnight gains on Wall Street.
"The market environment is not bad overall. Oil prices are rising,
which would benefit oil producing countries. But Asia may be hurt by concerns
about the Chinese economy," said Shuji Shirota, associate director at HSBC
in Tokyo.
"The market's focus is returning to the Fed, given rising
expectations that they could hike rates much earlier than expected. That is
weighing on many emerging markets as well," he said.
Japan's Nikkei rose 0.3 percent but MSCI's broadest index of
Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was almost flat, struggling to extend its
rebound from Tuesday's 12-week low. It had gained 1.2 percent on Wednesday.
Shanghai shares fell more than 1 percent, with sentiment frail after a
series of disappointing economic data earlier this month and fears that
policymakers may be taking a more cautious stance on further stimulus as debt
levels grow.
More
Brent crude tops $50 a barrel for first time since November
Published: May 25, 2016 10:51 p.m. ET
Supply disruptions pushing prices higher
HONG KONG — International oil prices rose to their highest levels in six months on Thursday, as the recent decline in U.S. crude stocks raised expectations for a tightening in the market amid lower global supply.Brent LCON6, +0.74% , the international benchmark for oil, rose 30 cents to $50.04 a barrel in morning Asian trade, its highest point since the beginning of November. U.S. oil prices traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange CLN6, +0.71% rose 29 cents to $49.85 a barrel.
Persistent oversupply has kept prices well below highs of $100 a barrel reached two years ago. The price collapse has prompted energy companies to withhold investment — especially in the upstream sector — resulting in a slowdown in global output growth. Ongoing supply disruptions in North America and Africa, as well as dwindling output from Latin America, have also pushed prices higher.
“The fundamentals of the U.S. are changing and the declining production rate in the U.S. is a welcoming sign that adds to the belief the glut is dwindling,” said Vyanne Lai, energy analyst at National Australia Bank.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration said U.S. crude stockpiles fell 4.2 million barrels last week. Analysts polled by The Wall Street Journal had expected a decrease of 2.5 million barrels.
U.S. output also fell for the 11th straight week to 8.8 million barrels a day from a peak of 9.7 million barrels a day in April 2015.
More
Cheapest gas pump prices in over a decade this Memorial Day weekend
Published: May 23, 2016 9:56 a.m. ET
High demand for gas to soak up some crude’s supply glut: analyst
Drivers
are expected to pay the lowest Memorial Day weekend prices for gasoline since
2005 thanks to the plunge in crude-oil prices over the past two years.
“As an army of motorists descend onto the nation’s thoroughfares for the
coming holiday, gasoline prices are the lowest they’ve been this time of year
since 2005,” said Patrick DeHaan, senior petroleum analyst at GasBuddy.com, a
retail fuel-pricing information and data provider.
More than 38 million Americans—the most since 2005—are expected to
travel during this year’s Memorial Day holiday period, defined as Thursday, May
26 to Monday, May 30, according to report released Thursday from AAA, a leisure
travel and motorist group, and IHS, an information and analysis provider.
Of that figure, 33.9 million travelers, or 89%, will drive to their
destinations, up 2.1% from a year earlier.
----The national average price for a gallon of gasoline stood at $2.26 on Thursday, according to AAA’s Daily Fuel Gauge Report.
The last time prices were this low for a Memorial Day holiday was in 2005, when prices averaged $2.10, AAA said. Prices are also down from $2.705 a year ago. Gasoline futures, meanwhile, traded sharply lower Thursday, pressured by strength in the U.S. dollar DXY, -0.28% Reformulated gasoline for June delivery RBM6, +0.48% fell 2.3% to $1.449 a gallon.
Gasoline demand is likely to “break all-time record highs set in 2007 due to the combination of relatively low prices and a healthy economy, a situation we haven’t seen in just as long,” DeHaan said.
More
For Tanker Owners, Shrinking Oil Glut Is Least of Their Worries
May 26, 2016 — 12:00 AM BST
Tanker owners hauling the world’s crude were among the few big winners
from an oil-price crash that started in mid-2014. Now for the flip side.
The slump was caused by most enduring oil glut in a generation, flooding
shipping companies with more cargoes than they could handle and driving down
fuel costs that are the industry’s biggest expense. Rates got so high that
owners embarked on the biggest fleet expansion spree in half a decade. Now,
just as that wave of new orders swells the fleet, the glut of crude that lifted
rates in the first place is starting to dissipate.
There will still be lots more oil shipped. About 445 million more
barrels will be pumped out of the ground by the world’s producers in 2017
compared with last year, of which about two-fifths moves by sea. The trouble is
that, by then, the enlarged fleet will be able to deliver at least an extra 1.5
billion barrels annually.
"Shipowners rushed to order new tankers to benefit from the surging
rates in mid-2014 and 2015,” said Burak Cetinok, senior consultant at Hartland
Shipping Services Ltd. in London. “But the market dynamics have changed since
then and this huge amount of ships may not have enough crude to carry
around. This will of course soften their daily rates.”
Rates for the three main types of crude tanker will all be lower in 2017
than this year, according to the medians of 12 analyst estimates compiled by
Bloomberg for each vessel. The industry’s biggest ships, so-called very large
crude carriers or VLCCs, will earn $37,750 a day next year, which would be the
least since 2014.
The fleet of the world’s three biggest tanker types is projected to grow
by about 11 percent in the two years through 2017, according to data from
Clarkson Research Services Ltd., a unit of the world’s biggest shipbroker.
Production of oil will expand by about 1.3 percent over the same period,
according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Hartland
estimates 137 crude oil tankers, including 64 VLCCs and 38 Suezmaxes will be
delivered this year, Cetinok said. Next year’s deliveries are estimated to
be 148, including 47 VLCCs and 63 Suezmaxes, he said.
More
We
close with yet more reason to Brexit the EUSSR. Does anyone watch these
continental films, even on the continent ,often filmed in black and white,
especially black? Though I suppose they are must rent viewing at the
anti-American, anti-British, anti-Christian, anti-Israel, pro-Remainiac,
pro-homosexual, pro-moslem, pro-Corbny, pro-Clinton, BBC.
Netflix, Amazon Face Minimum EU Quota for European Films, Shows
May 25, 2016
— 11:11 AM BST
Video-on-demand providers such as Netflix Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and
Apple Inc.’s iTunes would be forced to dedicate at least a fifth of their
catalogs to European content, under proposals published Wednesday.
The European Commission is seeking to bolster the EU’s film and TV
industry with the 20 percent quota as part of a wider overhaul of the EU’s
broadcasting rules presented in Brussels on Wednesday. Netflix and Apple’s
iTunes currently teeter just above the proposed level, the commission said.
The regulator also came forward with proposals for geo-blocking rules to
eliminate obstacles to online shopping across the EU. The draft law wouldn’t
force traders to physically deliver products to specific regions. Additionally,
the commission said it’s weighing initiatives for so-called online platforms
such as Google and Amazon.
Facebook Inc.’s WhatsApp and other online telecommunications services
may face the same data-protection requirements for traditional operators in
rules to be announced later this year.
Alphabet Inc.’s Google and other Internet services may also see new
rules on their liability for content under an overhaul of copyright rules. The
EU said it will assess whether Internet companies need guidance for handling
illegal content and for takedown procedures. Regulators and the industry are
currently discussing a code of conduct for tackling hate speech online.
The broadcasting and geo-blocking rules still need the backing of EU
lawmakers and national governments.
Europe’s Troubles Pile Up at Home as Leaders Cross Globe for G-7
May 25, 2016 — 11:00 PM BST
When Germany hosted last year’s Group of Seven summit, European leaders
assured President Barack Obama they were up to dealing with the crises on their
doorstep.Twelve months on, Europe’s challenges have multiplied to an extent that questions the wisdom of making the 6,000-mile trip to Japan for the G-7. From Brexit to migration, home-grown terrorism to the destabilizing impact of surging populism, Europe has seldom looked in more need of political leadership at home.
Global summits usually provide an opportunity for heads of government to play the role of international dealmakers. But right now Prime Ministers David Cameron and Matteo Renzi, Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Francois Hollande are faced with coalescing crises -- and restive electorates -- that demand attention in their own countries.
“This is a group of leaders who collectively and individually are losing their authority and losing their chance to command their domestic political structures,” said Fredrik Erixon, director of Brussels-based European Centre for International Political Economy. “They’re not looking at the G-7 as a chance to achieve larger things.”
Take Cameron, whose Conservative Party is facing ever deeper splits as Britain enters the final month of campaigning before a vote on membership of the European Union that the premier has said is bigger than any election.
Renzi’s political fate is bound to a referendum of his own as he tries to stabilize Italy’s government in the midst of persistently weak economic growth. In Germany, Merkel is desperate to keep a lid on the refugee influx that has prompted a life-threatening plunge in her party’s support. Hollande meanwhile just can’t seem to escape the downward spiral of bad news that’s made him the most unpopular president in French history -- with an election to fight within the year.
----For Merkel, it’s the refugee crisis
and its impact on her government going into an election year. Her woes are
centered on Turkey, where President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to tear
up an accord with the EU that is curbing the flow of migrants from the Middle
East. She’s bracing for the likelihood that the German parliament will further
rile Erdogan next week with a vote to recognize Turkey’s Ottoman-era killings
of ethnic Armenians as genocide
More
There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought
about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should
come sooner as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit
expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system
involved.
Ludwig
von Mises.
At
the Comex silver depositories Wednesday final figures were: Registered 30.11 Moz, Eligible 123.54 Moz, Total 153.65 Moz.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
No crooks or bent politicians
today. And since we haven’t found an
honest politician or central bankster, none of them either. Today an update of
a coming change next month to global shipping.Panama Canal Fever Sweeps Globe Again as New Era in Trade Nears
May 25, 2016
— 2:00 AM BST Updated on May 25, 2016 — 8:15 AM BST
A
century after transforming global markets, the Panama Canal is about to redraw
world trade once again.
Nine years of construction work, at a cost of more than $5 billion, have
equipped the canal
with a third set of locks and deeper navigation channels, crucial improvements
that will double the isthmus’s capacity for carrying cargo between the Atlantic
and Pacific oceans.When the new locks slide open to receive traffic for the first time in late June, the reverberations will be felt from Asian gas terminals to Great Plains farms and ports from Miami to Long Beach to Santiago.
The debut coincides, fortuitously, with a surge in U.S. natural-gas
production that has shale outfits suddenly seeking out new export markets. The
deeper channels will be able to accommodate the kind of massive tankers that
transport liquefied natural gas, shaving eleven days and a third of the cost
off the typical round trip to the Far East. Markets from Chile to China will
also become more accessible for oil drillers across the Americas while millions
of tons of container shipments originating from Asia could start bypassing
western U.S. ports and opt to dock instead along the Gulf Coast or Eastern
seaboard.
The anticipated growth has triggered a multibillion-dollar dredging and
building binge at ports in the U.S., Caribbean and South America, all seeking
to win a share of the traffic boom. Panama is also bidding to become a
distribution hub for global manufacturers, with plans to add space for more
than 5 million additional cargo containers.
“There are going to be a lot of feeder services that develop around
it," Moses Kopmar, a Moody’s Investors Service analyst in New York, said
in a telephone interview. “What it will do is basically unlock a huge amount of
the global fleet in terms of being able to transit the canal."
The expansion won’t solve all the canal’s challenges. While tripling the
size of cargo vessels it can receive, Panama still won’t be able to take the
biggest container ships or crude tankers. What’s more, its traffic will depend
on the health of the global economy more than its dimensions, according to
Kopmar.
But expansion was critical, industry experts say, for a country that
risked seeing its shipping route lose relevance if it didn’t grow to handle the
increasingly large vessels favored nowadays. The canal, which carried some 340
million tons of cargo in the fiscal year that ended last September, accounts
for about 6 percent of total world trade.
Morehttp://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-25/panama-canal-fever-sweeps-globe-again-as-new-era-in-trade-nears
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?
New de-icer gains anti-icing properties
Dual-function, graphene-based material good for aircraft, extreme environments
Date:
May 23, 2016
Source:
Rice University
Summary:
Scientists have modified their graphene-based de-icer to resist the formation
of ice well below the freezing point and added superhydrophobic capabilities.
The robust film is intended for use in extreme environments as well as on
aircraft, power lines and ships.
Rice University scientists have advanced their graphene-based de-icer to
serve a dual purpose. The new material still melts ice from wings and wires
when conditions get too cold. But if the air is above 7 degrees Fahrenheit, ice
won't form at all.
The Rice lab of chemist James Tour gave its de-icer superhydrophobic
(water-repelling) capabilities that passively prevent water from freezing above
7 degrees. The tough film that forms when the de-icer is sprayed on a surface
is made of atom-thin graphene nanoribbons that are conductive, so the material
can also be heated with electricity to melt ice and snow in colder conditions.
The material can be spray-coated, making it suitable for large
applications like aircraft, power lines, radar domes and ships, according to
the researchers. The study was published this month in the American Chemical
Society journal ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces.
"We've learned to make an ice-resistant material for milder
conditions in which heating isn't even necessary, but having the option is
useful," Tour said. "What we now have is a very thin, robust coating
that can keep large areas free of ice and snow in a wide range of
conditions."
Tour, lead authors Tuo Wang, a Rice graduate student, and Yonghao Zheng,
a Rice postdoctoral researcher, and their colleagues tested the film on glass
and plastic.
Materials are superhydrophobic if they have a water-contact angle larger
than 150 degrees. The term refers to the angle at which the surface of the
water meets the surface of the material. The greater the beading, the higher
the angle. An angle of 0 degrees is basically a puddle, while a maximum angle
of 180 degrees defines a sphere just touching the surface.
The Rice films use graphene nanoribbons modified with a fluorine
compound to enhance their hydrophobicity. They found that nanoribbons modified
with longer perfluorinated chains resulted in films with a higher contact
angle, suggesting that the films are tunable for particular conditions, Tour
said.
Warming test surfaces to room temperature and cooling again had no
effect on the film's properties, he said.
The researchers discovered that below 7 degrees, water would condense
within the structure's pores, causing the surface to lose both its
superhydrophobic and ice-phobic properties. At that point, applying at least 12
volts of electricity warmed them enough to retain its repellant properties.
Applying 40 volts to the film brought it to room temperature, even if
the ambient temperature was 25 degrees below zero. Ice allowed to form at that
temperature melted after 90 seconds of resistive heating.
The researchers found that while effective, the de-icing mode did not
remove water completely, as some remained trapped in the pores between linked
nanoribbon bundles. Adding a lubricant with a low melting point (minus 61
degrees F) to the film made the surface slippery, sped de-icing and saved
energy.
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished April
DJIA: 17773.64-19 Down. NASDAQ: 4775.36 +11 Down. SP500: 2065.30 -21 Down.
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