Baltic Dry Index. 954 +43 Brent Crude
46.50
Eurasian Snow cover. (How bad will
winter be?)
“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able
to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions
and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he
lives under is dishonest, insane, and intolerable.”
H. L. Mencken.
According
to the failed HillBilly, Wall Street Great Vampire Squid, Hollywood
pornographers campaign, “It’s the Putin
Wot Won It,” to co-opt the oh so modest
Rupert Murdoch Sun newspaper
headline after Maggie Thatcher Trumped old labour socialism yet again in 1992.
It's The Sun Wot Won It
Of
course it wasn’t true then and isn’t true now, but who cares in the counter
revolution currently underway, as old values Trump the corrupt Hollywood and
mass media immoral dumbed down 21st century values, as co-opted by
the American War Party to divvy up EurAsia for vested, mostly US corporate
interests. The warlike “Project for the
New American Century” just got Trumped and put on hold until the American War
Party can dispose of the Donald Trump. A food taster ought to be a first hire
for the president elect. Dodging Arkansas cement trucks comes next.
Project for the New American Century
Below,
Vlad (the impaler?) pours in the HillBilly salt. She did call him Adolph Hitler
after all. For now, the American War Party World War Three on Russia, is on
hold.
Putin Congratulates Trump on Victory, Hopeful of Better Ties
November 9,
2016 — 9:34 AM GMT Updated on November 9, 2016 — 11:36 AM GMT
President Vladimir Putin congratulated Donald Trump on his victory in
the U.S. presidential election and said he would do everything he could to
repair ties between the two countries after their most serious standoff since
the Cold War.
“Russia is ready and wants to restore full-scale relations with the
U.S.,” Putin said at a Kremlin ceremony Wednesday to accept new ambassadors’
credentials. “We understand it will be a difficult path, but we are ready to
play our part.”
The Russian leader praised Trump as a “colorful” personality during the
election campaign and welcomed his pledge to improve the relationship with
Moscow. Trump has said he’s willing to work with Putin on fighting Islamic
State in Syria and Iraq. He also said he’d consider recognizing Russia’s 2014
annexation of Crimea as well as lifting sanctions that the U.S. imposed along
with the European Union over the land grab and Russia’s clandestine military
intervention in eastern Ukraine. European leaders, especially in the
former-Soviet Baltic states, have been alarmed since Trump said he’d only honor
the U.S. commitment to defend fellow NATO countries if the alliance’s members
have paid their dues.
Trump’s defeated Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, had accused the
Republican of being a Kremlin “puppet” after U.S. authorities accused Russia of
hacking into Democratic National Convention e-mails to influence the outcome of
the vote. Putin and Clinton have clashed in the past, with the Russian leader
blaming her for inciting the biggest protests of his rule when she criticized
2011 parliamentary elections as secretary of state.Putin sent Trump a telegram Wednesday in which he expressed “hope for joint efforts to bring Russian-American ties out of crisis, resolve key international questions and find an effective response to the challenges of global security,” the Kremlin said in an e-mailed statement.
Lawmakers in Russia lost no time in welcoming the news, with members of the lower house of parliament bursting into applause when Trump’s victory was announced. Alexei Pushkov, a senator and former head of the assembly’s foreign-affairs committee, said that Ukraine and its pro-western President Petro Poroshenko would be a major loser from the result. “Trump may turn away from Poroshenko,” he said on his Twitter account.
State TV, which had given lavish coverage to Trump’s campaign, aired interviews with a series of pro-Kremlin politicians who praised the election of the billionaire real-estate developer.
Still, some voices in Russia were cautious about the chance of a
breakthrough in ties, given the hostility in the U.S. foreign-policy
establishment and Congress to Russia. “Trump won’t be able make any sweeping
changes as the establishment will rein him in,” said Alexei Mukhin, head of the
Center for Political Information in Moscow, even as he expressed hope for an
easing of sanctions and a joint fight against Islamic State.
Trump has also raised concerns about his unpredictability in Moscow,
mixing his promise of better ties with threats to shoot down Russian warplanes
that buzz U.S. warships.
More
David Stockman: "The Jig Is Up: America’s Voters Just Fired Their Ruling Elites"
Nov 9, 2016 8:05 PM
Submitted by David Stockman
America’s voters fired their ruling elites last night. After 30 years of
arrogant misrule and wantonly planting the seeds of economic and financial ruin
throughout Flyover America, the Wall Street/Washington establishment and its
mainstream media tools have been repudiated like never before in modern
history.
During the course of the past year, upwards of 70 million citizens—–59
million for Trump and 13 million for Bernie Sanders—-have voted for dramatic
change. That is, for an end to pointless and failed wars and interventions abroad
and a bubble-based economic policy at home. The latter showered Wall Street and
the bicoastal elites with vast financial windfalls—-even as it left 90% of
Flyover America behind, where households struggled with stagnant wages,
vanishing jobs, soaring health costs, shrinking living standards and
diminishing hope for the future.
The voters also said in no uncertain terms that they are fed-up with a
“rigged” system that has one set of rules for establishment insiders and
another for everyone else. In essence, that’s what servergate, the Clinton
Foundation pay-to-play scandals and the trove of Wikileaks DNC/Podesta hacks
was all about.
---- Stated differently, the people did connect the dots. There is a straight line from repeal of Glass-Steagall by the Rubin-Clinton democrats in the late 1990s through the resounding repudiations of the Clintons last night.
This string includes the M&A roll-up of the giant Wall Street banks
after 1998; the subprime mortgage scams, housing booms and subsequent crash
during the next decade; the panicked multi-trillion bailouts of the Wall Street
gambling houses in the fall of 2008 and the lunatic spree of central bank money
pumping that followed; the soaring stock market fueled by the Fed’s free money
that arose therefrom; and the egregious global fund-raising and shakedowns of
the Clinton Foundation and personal wealth accumulations by the Clinton’s
personally, capped by Hillary’s notorious $250,000 off-the-record speeches to
Goldman Sachs.
What happened was that during the eight Obama years, Washington
essentially borrowed $10 trillion, or nearly as much as the first 43 presidents
did over 220 years, while the Fed expanded its balance sheet by 5X more than
had happened during its first 94 years of existence.
This feckless resort to monumental public borrowing and money printing
did generate a faux prosperity in the Imperial City and a $25 trillion gain in
financial wealth among the gambling and financial asset owing classes at the
top of the economic ladder. But the bicoastal elites in Washington, Wall Street
and Silicon Valley and its environs, luxuriating in their good fortune,
essentially assumed that all was fixed and all was forgotten from the dark days
of the financial crisis.
Not at all. The rubes remembered. No one in America supported the Wall
Street bailouts except a few ten-thousands Wall Street operators, hedge funds
and other gamblers; and the politicians and Keynesian policy apparatchiks who
saw it as a new route to power and spoils.
What happened last night—especially in the rust belt precincts where
70,000 factories have already closed and 6 million breadwinner jobs have
disappeared—–was nothing less than the third vote on TARP. Whereas the cowardly
House GOP had capitulated to Wall Street and their spineless leaders on the
second vote in late September 2008, the rank and file voters of Flyover America
last night proclaimed loudly that it had not been done with their leave.
Not at all.
More
Elsewhere, amazed that the sky didn’t actually fall yesterday when Hillary Clinton wasn’t coronated, cooler heads took advantage of the oversold selloffs to profit take and bargain hunt. Nevertheless, nervousness, rumour and increased volatility looks to be the future on the 10 weeks before President Trump gets to take power.
Asian Shares Jump With Metals as Trump Reassessed; Kiwi Weakens
November 9, 2016 — 10:50 PM GMT Updated on November 10, 2016 — 5:11 AM
GMT
Stocks in Asia rebounded from their steepest slide since Brexit,
industrial metals surged and regional bonds tumbled after Donald Trump’s
election victory and spending pledges spurred gains in U.S. shares.
The MSCI Asia Pacific Index rose by the most since February, led by
gains in raw-materials producers. Futures on the S&P 500 Index stabilized
after swinging wildly in the last session, when they briefly sank by a 5
percent daily limit as the results of the U.S. presidential vote were announced.
Australia’s 10-year bond yield jumped amid speculation Trump’s spending plans
will fuel inflation, while New Zealand’s dollar fell after the central bank
expressed concern about the currency’s strength. Copper, aluminum and nickel
rose to their highest levels in a year.
There’s been a U-turn in investor sentiment since the largely unexpected win for Trump triggered a knee-jerk selloff in equities and rush into haven assets. While it’s common for stock-market volatility to surge after U.S. elections, initial moves don’t tend to prove long-lasting and that also proved the case in the wake of Britain’s June vote to leave the European Union. Trump has signaled spending of more than $500 billion to rebuild U.S. infrastructure and also pledged to lower taxes.
“There will be short-term volatility following the Trump victory but this is going to be short-lived, much like Brexit,” said Joshua Crabb, Hong Kong-based head of Asian equities at a unit of Old Mutual Plc. “This outcome isn’t as bad as people think. There’s going to be some tax cuts and fiscal stimulus. That would be good for corporate earnings and will be positive for equities.”
Stocks
The MSCI Asia Pacific Index climbed 3.1 percent as of 1:53 p.m. Tokyo time, bouncing back from a 3.2 percent slide on Wednesday. Japan’s Topix index jumped more than 5 percent, after sinking 4.6 percent in the last session, and Australia’s benchmark rallied by the most in five years.
BHP Billiton Ltd., the top miner, and Rio Tinto Group had intraday gains of more than 9 percent in Sydney, their biggest increases since 2009. In Hong Kong, Jiangxi Copper Co., China’s second-largest producer by output, rose as much as 11 percent and Russian aluminum maker United Co. Rusal Plc jumped by the most on record. Trump’s spending plans will spur demand for copper and other commodities at a time of tightening global supply, according to Jefferies Group LLC.
More
We end for today, with world leaders presuming upon themselves to lecture the President Elect. Having blindsided themselves with the polls and one sided mass media reporting, Europe’s out of touch elite are still in deep shock. Hillary’s European triumphant victory tour is no more.
“You
can't do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about
its width and depth.”
H. L. Mencken
Anxious world leaders seek clarity on Trump policies
World leaders offered to work with Donald Trump when he takes over as
U.S. president, but expressed anxiety over how he will handle problems from the
Middle East to an assertive Russia and whether he will carry out a number of
campaign threats.
Several authoritarian and right-wing leaders hailed the billionaire
businessman and former TV show host, who won the leadership of the world's most
powerful country against the odds in Tuesday's election.
China, a target of Trump's ire during his campaign, appealed for
cooperation. Mexico also struck a conciliatory tone, despite Trump's insults to
Mexican migrants and pledges to build a wall to separate the two countries.
South Korea urged him not to change policy on North Korea's nuclear tests.
Trump, who has no previous political or military experience, said after
defeating Democrat Hillary Clinton that he would seek common ground, not
conflict, with the United States' allies.
In the election campaign, he voiced admiration for Russian President
Vladimir Putin, questioned central tenets of the NATO military alliance and
suggested Japan and South Korea should develop nuclear weapons to shoulder
their own defense burden.
Iran urged Trump to stay committed to the Iran deal. President Hassan
Rouhani said the nuclear accord with six world powers could not be dismissed by
one government.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel -- denounced by Trump as
"insane" for allowing more than 1 million
migrants into the country
last year -- added a stern note in her message of congratulations which hinted
at a certain unease.
"Germany and America are bound together by values - democracy,
freedom, respecting the rule of law, people's dignity regardless of their
origin, the color of their skin, religion, gender, sexual orientation or
political views," Merkel said.
---- In Britain, where Trump's victory had echoes of June's referendum in which voters showed dissatisfaction with the political establishment by voting to leave the European Union, Prime Minister Theresa May said the "enduring and special relationship" between the two countries would remain intact.
But Scotland's first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, who has often expressed
distaste for Trump, said many people in the United States and across the world
would feel "a real sense of anxiety."
---- Some European officials however took the unusual step of openly denouncing the outcome, calling it a worrying signal for liberal democracy and tolerance in the world.
"We're realizing now that we have no idea what this American
president will do," Norbert Roettgen, the head of the German parliament's
foreign affairs committee, said.
President Francois Hollande said France wanted to begin talks with Trump
immediately to clarify his stance on international affairs.
"This American election opens a period of uncertainty,"
Hollande said.
More
“A good politician is
quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.”
H. L. Mencken.
At the Comex silver depositories
Wednesday final figures were: Registered 30.35 Moz, Eligible 142.16 Moz,
Total 172.51 Moz.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
Today, sore loser NY Times, which brazenly and
shamelessly, propagandised for the failed HillBilly campaign, pontificates on
what a “Donald” Presidency might mean. As with GB after the Brexit vote, the
losers, will now try every trick to undermine the election result. How dare the
voters defy us! Just who do these voters think they are? As with John Bull’s
Brexit vote, what part of change, aka swamp draining, don’t the failed elitist plotters understand?
“A newspaper is a
device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.”
H. L. Mencken
Donald Trump’s Victory Promises to Upend the International Order
JERUSALEM — Donald J.
Trump’s stunning election victory on Tuesday night rippled way beyond the
nation’s boundaries, upending an international order that prevailed for decades
and raising profound questions about America’s place in the world.
For the first time since before World War II,
Americans chose a president who promised to reverse the internationalism
practiced by predecessors of both parties and to build walls both physical and
metaphorical. Mr. Trump’s win foreshadowed an America more focused on its own
affairs while leaving the world to take care of itself.
The outsider revolution that propelled him to power
over the Washington establishment of both political parties also reflected a
fundamental shift in international politics evidenced already this year by
events like Britain’s
referendum vote to leave
the European Union. Mr. Trump’s success could fuel the populist, nativist,
nationalist, closed-border movements already
so evident in Europe and spreading to other parts of the world.
Global markets fell after Tuesday’s election and many
around the world scrambled to figure out what it might mean in parochial terms.
For Mexico, it
seemed to presage a new era of confrontation with its northern neighbor. For Europe and
Asia, it could rewrite the rules of modern alliances, trade deals, and foreign
aid. For the Middle
East, it foreshadowed a possible alignment with Russia and fresh
conflict with Iran.
“All bets are off,” said Agustín Barrios Gómez, a
former congressman in Mexico and president of the
Mexico Image Foundation, an organization dedicated to promoting its reputation
abroad.
Crispin Blunt, chairman of the foreign affairs
committee in Britain’s House of Commons, said, “We are plunged into uncertainty
and the unknown.”
Many linked Mr. Trump’s victory to the British vote to
exit the European Union and saw a broader unraveling of the modern
international system. “After Brexit and this election, everything is now
possible,” Gérard Araud, the French ambassador to the United States, wrote on
Twitter. “A world is collapsing before our eyes.”
The election enthralled people around the world on
Tuesday night: night owls watching television in a youth hostel in Tel Aviv;
computer technicians monitoring results on their laptops in Hong Kong; and even
onetime oil pipeline terrorists in Nigeria’s remote
Delta creeks, who expressed concern about how Mr. Trump’s election would affect
their country.
It is hardly surprising that much of the world was
rooting for Hillary
Clinton over Mr. Trump, who characterized his foreign policy as “America
First.”
He promised to build
a wall along the Mexican border and temporarily
bar Muslim immigrants from entering the United States. He questioned
Washington’s longstanding commitment
to NATO allies, called for cutting foreign aid, praised
President Vladimir
V. Putin of Russia,
vowed to rip
up international trade deals, assailed
China and suggested Asian allies develop
nuclear weapons.
More
“The kind of man who
wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man
whose ideas are idiotic.”
H. L. Mencken
Solar & Related Update.
With events
happening fast in the development of solar power and graphene, I’ve added this
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?
Major advance in solar cells made from cheap, easy-to-use perovskite
Physicists boost efficiency of material that holds promise as base for next-generation solar cells
Date: November 8, 2016
Source: University of California - Berkeley
Summary: Physicists have boosted the efficiency of material that
holds promise as base for next-generation solar cells. Perovskite solar cells
are made of a mix of organic molecules and inorganic elements that together
capture light and convert it into electricity, just like today's more common
silicon-based solar cells. Perovskite photovoltaic devices, however, can be
made more easily and cheaply than silicon and on a flexible rather than rigid
substrate.
Solar cells made from an inexpensive and increasingly popular material
called perovskite can more efficiently turn sunlight into electricity using a
new technique to sandwich two types of perovskite into a single photovoltaic
cell.
Perovskite solar cells are made of a mix of organic molecules and
inorganic elements that together capture light and convert it into electricity,
just like today's more common silicon-based solar cells. Perovskite
photovoltaic devices, however, can be made more easily and cheaply than silicon
and on a flexible rather than rigid substrate. The first perovskite solar cells
could go on the market next year, and some have been reported to capture 20
percent of the sun's energy.
In a paper appearing online in advance of publication in the journal Nature
Materials, University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory scientists report a new design that already achieves an
average steady-state efficiency of 18.4 percent, with a high of 21.7 percent
and a peak efficiency of 26 percent.
"We have set the record now for different parameters of perovskite
solar cells, including the efficiency," said senior author Alex Zettl, a
UC Berkeley professor of physics, senior faculty member at Berkeley Lab and
member of the Kavli Energy Nanosciences Institute. "The efficiency is
higher than any other perovskite cell -- 21.7 percent -- which is a phenomenal
number, considering we are at the beginning of optimizing this."
"This has a great potential to be the cheapest photovoltaic on the
market, plugging into any home solar system," said Onur Ergen, the lead
author of the paper and a UC Berkeley physics graduate student.
The efficiency is also better than the 10-20 percent efficiency of
polycrystalline silicon solar cells used to power most electronic devices and
homes. Even the purest silicon solar cells, which are extremely expensive to
produce, topped out at about 25 percent efficiency more than a decade ago.
More
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished October
DJIA: 18142
+32 Up NASDAQ: 5189 +31 Up. SP500: 2126 +46 Up.
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