Baltic Dry Index. 942 -10 Brent Crude
54.32
“Happy
New Year to all, including to my many enemies and those who have fought me and
lost so badly they just don’t know what to do. Love!”
Donald
J. Trump.
Today America is lucky or unlucky, depending on your point of view, to get two Presidents. President Obama in the morning and President Trump after his swearing in. America still has a way to go to catch up with the dying EUSSR, which has at least 5 ineffective, unelected Presidents, beavering away all 365 days a year, 366 days every leap year.
But today it’s out with “Yes We Can,” and in with “Make America Great Again,” a process that apparently involves building long walls, draining swamps, and transferring manufacturing jobs from Canada, China and Mexico to America. It’s out with Hawaii too, and in with Palm Beach Florida. The new President Trump doesn’t just play golf, serial style, like Presidents Eisenhower and Obama, Trump goes all-in, building and renovating serial golf courses. The next four years are going to be fun filled. Sort of like Teddy Roosevelt - the sequel. Somehow I get the feeling that America 2021 is going to look nothing like America 2017.
Below, the world and the Trump Presidency. Germany’s Der Spiegel and America’s FBI seem to have opted for all-out war.
“Ariana
Huffington is unattractive, both inside and out. I fully understand why her
former husband left her for a man – he made a good decision.”
Donald
J. Trump.
China says can resolve trade disputes with new U.S. government
China and the United States can resolve any trade disputes through
talks, the government said on Thursday, as a Chinese newspaper warned U.S. business could be targets for retaliation in any
trade war ushered in by President-elect Donald Trump.
Trump, who is sworn into office on
Friday, has criticized China's trade practices and threatened to impose
punitive tariffs on Chinese imports.
Billionaire investor Wilbur Ross, Trump's choice for commerce secretary,
voiced sharp criticism of China's trade practices on Wednesday, telling
senators he would seek new ways of combating them.
Chinese Commerce Ministry spokesman Sun Jiwen said the government was
willing to work with the new U.S. administration to promote the healthy
development of commercial ties.
"I believe China and the United States can resolve any disputes through
dialogue and negotiation and that the China-U.S. commercial relationship will
not significantly stray from the path of mutual benefit," Sun told
reporters.
"Both sides benefit with cooperation, and both are hurt with
conflict," he added.
But an influential state-run newspaper took a harsher line.
In an editorial, the Global Times said that as the United States has the
stronger economy, China may suffer more once a trade war starts, but China
"will take the U.S. on to the end".
"There are few cases in modern history where only one party
surrendered in a trade war; rather, the two parties ended up compromising with
each other. How could Trump's team believe China would surrender without any
countermeasures?" it said.
"The arrogant Trump team has underestimated China's ability to
retaliate. China is a major buyer of American cotton, wheat, beans and Boeing
aircraft," the paper added in the editorial carried in its Chinese and
English-language editions, without elaborating.
Boeing Co's China office declined to comment.
Boeing anticipates China will need 6,800 new jetliners worth $1 trillion
over the next 20 years.
Morehttp://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-china-idUSKBN153082
Xi portrays China as global leader as Trump era looms
China will build a "new model" of relations with the United
States, President Xi Jinping said on Wednesday in a speech that portrayed China
as the leader of a globalized world where only international cooperation could
solve the big problems.
Two days before the inauguration of Donald Trump who has promised to be
a U.S. president putting "America first", Xi urged countries to
resist isolationism.
"Trade protectionism and self-isolation will benefit no one,"
Xi told an invited audience at the United Nations in Geneva.
"Big countries should treat smaller countries as equals instead of
acting as a hegemon imposing their will on others."
Xi called for the world to unite on everything from environmental
protection to terrorism and nuclear disarmament, in contrast to Trump who has
said he has an "open mind" on climate change and that the United
States would win any nuclear arms race.
"We will build a circle of friends across the whole world," Xi
said.
"We will strive to build new model of major country relations with
the United States, a comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination with
Russia, a partnership for peace, growth, reform and among different
civilizations and a partnership of unity and cooperation with BRICS
countries."
While U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told Xi it was "very
reassuring to see China assuming such a clear leadership in multilateralism in
today's world", rights campaigners expressed concerns about China's
record.
“It is unfortunate that Chinese President Xi was given an obsequious red
carpet treatment at the U.N. today while NGOs with concerns about his dismal
rights record were kept out," said Sophie Richardson, China director at
Human Rights Watch.
Morehttp://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-usa-idUSKBN1522OS
Mr. Me
No One Loves the 45th President Like Donald Trump
The hope that Donald Trump might become more presidential as his inauguration approached has proven misguided. The 45th president of the United States has shown that his own public image is his first priority.
January 18, 2017 03:27 PM
To understand how the future president of the United States thinks and
acts, a look back at how he treated one of his former employees can be helpful.
The woman in question didn't become known because of complaints regarding
Donald Trump's behavior. Rather, he himself boasted about his own treatment of
her in one of his many books.
Trump
hired the woman in the 1980s. "I decided to make her into somebody,"
he writes in "Think Big and Kick Ass," a book in which he seeks to
share the secret of his success with the world. He gave her a great job, Trump
writes, and "she bought a beautiful home."
In the
early 1990s, when his company ran into financial difficulties, Trump asked the
woman to request help from a friend of hers who held an important position at a
bank. The woman, though, didn't feel comfortable doing so and Trump fired her
immediately.
Later,
she founded her own company, but it went broke. "I was really happy when I
found that out," Trump writes in his book. Although he had done so much
for her, he writes, "she had turned on me."
In
Trump's world, even just the appearance of disloyalty is an unforgivable sin.
He encourages his readers to react in such cases with brutal vengeance.
Ultimately, the woman lost her home and her husband left her, Trump relates.
"I was glad." In subsequent years, he continued speaking poorly of
her, he writes. "Now I go out of my way to make her life miserable."
At the
end of the chapter called "Revenge," Trump advises his readers to
constantly seek to take revenge. "Always make a list of people who hurt
you. Then sit back and wait for the appropriate time to get revenge. When they
least expect it, go after them with a vengeance. Go for their jugular."
This
hardcore Darwinism helped Trump, who sees life as "a series of battles ending
in victory or defeat," become a rich man on the often fierce real-estate
market.
Trump,
who will be inaugurated on Friday as the 45th president of the United States,
appears to be relying on the same formula for success in his new job -- despite
all of the predictable effects that might have for his country and the world.
Just last week, it was obvious on several occasions that Trump has no intention
whatsoever of adjusting his behavior to correspond to the dignity of the office
he has been elected to fill. He seems to continue believing exclusively in his
own maxim: "Think Big and Kick Ass."
Morehttp://www.spiegel.de/international/world/donald-trump-brings-uncertainty-and-nacissism-to-white-house-a-1129925.html#ref=nl-international
Feds investigating Russian intercepts for Trump ties: report
By Mike Murphy Published:
Jan 19, 2017 11:53 p.m. ET
Federal
authorities are investigating intercepted communications and financial
transactions over possible links between Russia and members of President-elect
Donald Trump's campaign team, the New York Times reported Thursday night. The
counterintelligence investigation is focused on former campaign chairman Paul
Manafort, policy adviser Carter Page and Republican strategist Roger Stone, the
Times said. U.S. intelligence has concluded that Russia interfered in the presidential election,
and worked in Trump's favor. The newspaper's sources did not say if the
intercepts implicated anyone in illegal acts. Manfort told the Times the report
was a "dirty trick and completely false." The FBI is said to be
leading the probe, which was not based on the secret dossier leaked last week containing
a number of unsubstantiated claims.http://www.marketwatch.com/story/feds-investigating-russian-intercepts-for-trump-ties-report-2017-01-19
But we give the last word on President Trump to a bitter old man who backed the losing side against The Donald, and is rumoured to have lost a billion in the weeks after Donald Trump won.
Soros Says Markets to Slump With Trump, EU Faces Disintegration
by Simone Foxman and Saijel Kishan
19 January 2017, 20:00 GMT
It’s tough to be gloomier than billionaire George Soros right now.
America has elected a would-be dictator as president, the European Union
is disintegrating, U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May won’t last long as her
nation prepares to secede from the EU, and China is poised to become an even
more repressive society, the investor told Bloomberg Television’s Francine
Lacqua from the World Economic Forum in Davos.
“It is unlikely that Prime Minister May is actually going to remain in
power,” Soros said. She has a divided cabinet and base and Britons are in
denial about the economic impact of Brexit, he said.
----Soros had particularly harsh words for U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who will be inaugurated on Friday. Calling Trump a “con man,” Soros said the billionaire will fail because his ideas are contradictory and his White House advisers and cabinet members will fight with each other, an apparent reference to the conflicting views expressed during Senate confirmation hearings. The stock market rally since the November election, spurred by Trump’s promises to slash regulations and boost spending, will come to a halt, Soros said.
More
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-19/george-soros-says-markets-will-falter-as-uncertainty-takes-over
“I will build a great wall – and nobody builds
walls better than me, believe me – and I’ll build them very inexpensively. I
will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico
pay for that wall. Mark my words.”
Donald
J. Trump.
At the Comex silver depositories
Thursday final figures were: Registered 29.19 Moz, Eligible 151.03 Moz,
Total 180.22 Moz.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
Why do these two “banks” still have banking
licences?
“I
think the only difference between me and the other candidates is that I’m more
honest and my women are more beautiful.”
Donald
J. Trump.
How Deutsche Bank Made −€367 Million Disappear
A dubious trade leads to a criminal trial for Europe’s most important bank.
by Vernon Silver and Elisa Martinuzzi 19 January 2017, 06:00 GMT
On Dec. 1, 2008, most of the world’s banks were still panicking through
the financial crisis. Lehman Brothers had collapsed. Merrill Lynch had been
sold. Citigroup and others had required multibillion-dollar bailouts to
survive. But not every institution appeared to be in free fall. That afternoon,
at the London outpost of Deutsche Bank, the stolid-seeming, €2 trillion German
powerhouse, a group of financiers met to consider a proposal from a team led by
a trim, 40-year-old banker named Michele Faissola.
The scion of an Italian banking family, Faissola was the head of
Deutsche’s global rates unit, a division that created and sold financial
instruments tied to interest rates. He’d been studying the problems of one of
Deutsche’s clients, Italy’s Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, which, as the
crisis raged, was down €367 million ($462 million at the time) on a single
investment. Losing that much money was bad; having to include it in the bank’s
yearend report to the public, as required by Italian law, was arguably much
worse. Monte dei Paschi was the world’s oldest bank. It had been operating
since 1472, not long after the invention of the printing press, when the Black
Death was still a living memory. If investors were to find out the extent of
its losses in the 2008 credit crisis, the consequences would be unpredictable
and grave: a run on the bank, a government takeover, or worse. At the Deutsche
meeting, Faissola’s team said it had come up with a miraculous solution: a new
trade that would make Paschi’s loss disappear.
The bankers in the room had seen some financial sleight of hand in their
day, but the maneuver that Faissola’s staffers proposed was audacious. They
described a simple trade in two parts. For one half of the deal, Paschi would
make a sure-thing, moneymaking bet with Deutsche Bank and use those winnings to
extinguish its 2008 trading losses. Of course, Deutsche doesn’t give away money
for free, so for the second half of the deal, the Italians would make a bet
that was sure to lose. But while the first transaction was immediate, the
second would play out slowly, over many years. No sign of the €367 million
sinkhole would need to show up when Paschi compiled its yearend financial
reports.
The audience for the proposal that day was Deutsche’s global market
risks assessment committee, a top-level panel that reviews transactions with
legal, regulatory, and reputational considerations. Respectively, that means
asking: Is a given trade within the law? Is it within the looser framework of
industry rules and standards? And even if so, can Deutsche pull it off without
maiming its brand—its basic ability to operate as a trustworthy member of the
global financial system?
To at least one member of the committee, the possibilities of Faissola’s
trade seemed wondrous. “This is fantastic,” said Jeremy Bailey, Deutsche’s
European chairman of global banking, according to testimony of an executive who
later recounted the exchange for an internal disciplinary panel. “You can book
a [profit] in front and spread losses over time?” Bailey added. “We should do
it for Deutsche Bank.”
Ivor Dunbar, the meeting’s chairman, curbed Bailey’s enthusiasm. “We are
not discussing [our] balance sheet here,” he said. (Bailey, through a
spokesman, denies he made the remarks.)
---- When the meeting ended after almost
90 minutes, Faissola got a go-ahead—setting in motion a scandal that has
resulted in a criminal trial now under way in Milan. A judge there has accused
Deutsche Bank and five former executives, including Faissola and Dunbar, of
colluding with Paschi to falsify its accounts in 2008. (None of Deutsche’s top
managers at the time has been accused of wrongdoing. Faissola declined to
comment for this article, as did both banks. Dunbar didn’t respond to requests
for comment.)
Eight years after the financial crisis, the stakes could hardly be
higher. Being the biggest bank in Germany makes Deutsche the most important
bank in Europe, and the Paschi trial is an uncomfortable reminder that its
operations, already with barely enough capital to meet industry standards, are
threatened by persistent scandal. Deutsche is also facing investigations into
whether it helped clients launder billions out of Russia. This month the bank
agreed to pay $7.2 billion to resolve a U.S. probe into its subprime mortgage
business, admitting it misled investors. Deutsche has paid more than $9 billion
in further fines and settlements related to claims of tax evasion; violating
sanctions against Iran, Libya, Syria, Myanmar, and Sudan; rigging the $300
trillion Libor market; and other alleged breaches of the law.
More
“My
IQ is one of the highest — and you all know it! Please don’t feel so stupid or
insecure; it’s not your fault.”
Donald
J. Trump.
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?
Milestone in graphene production
Date: January 18, 2017
Source: Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft
Summary: For the first time, it is now possible to produce
functional OLED electrodes from graphene. The OLEDs can, for example, be
integrated into touch displays, and the miracle material graphene promises many
other applications for the future.
The Fraunhofer Institute for Organic Electronics, Electron Beam and
Plasma Technology FEP from Dresden, together with partners, has succeeded for
the first time in producing OLED electrodes from graphene. The electrodes have
an area of 2 × 1 square centimeters. "This was a real breakthrough in
research and integration of extremely demanding materials," says FEP's
project leader Dr. Beatrice Beyer. The process was developed and optimized in
the EU-funded project "Gladiator" (Graphene Layers: Production,
Characterization and Integration) together with partners from industry and
research.
Graphene is considered a new miracle material. The advantages of the
carbon compound are impressive: graphene is light, transparent and extremely
hard and has more tensile strength than steel. Moreover, it is flexible and
extremely conductive for heat or electricity. Graphene consists of a single
layer of carbon atoms which are assembled in a kind of honeycomb pattern. It is
only 0.3 nanometers thick, which is about one hundred thousandth of a human
hair. Graphene has a variety of applications -- for example, as a touchscreen
in smartphones.
Chemical reaction of copper, methane and hydrogen
The production of the OLED electrodes takes place in a vacuum. In a
steel chamber, a wafer plate of high-purity copper is heated to about 800
degrees. The research team then supplies a mixture of methane and hydrogen and
initiates a chemical reaction. The methane dissolves in the copper and forms
carbon atoms, which spread on the surface. This process only takes a few
minutes. After a cooling phase, a carrier polymer is placed on the graphene and
the copper plate is etched away.
Gladiator project was launched in November 2013. The Fraunhofer team is
working on the next steps until the conclusion in April 2017. During the
remainder of the project, impurities and defects which occur during the
transfer of the wafer-thin graphene to another carrier material are to be
minimized. The project is supported by the EU Commission with a total of 12.4
million euros. The Fraunhofer Institute's important industrial partners are the
Spanish company Graphenea S.A., which is responsible for the production of the
graphene electrodes, as well as the British Aixtron Ltd., which is responsible
for the construction of the production CVD reactors.
Applications from photovoltaics to medicine
"The first products could already be launched in two to three
years," says Beyer with confidence. Due to their flexibility, the graphene
electrodes are ideal for touch screens. They do not break when the device drops
to the ground. Instead of glass, one would use a transparent polymer film. Many
other applications are also conceivable: in windows, the transparent graphene
could regulate the light transmission or serve as an electrode in polarization
filters. Graphene can also be used in photovoltaics, high-tech textiles and
even in medicine.
Another weekend and
the first weekend of the new President Trump. We can hardly wait for his
weekend tweets. Have a great weekend everyone. The next four years look like
fun.
What separates the winners from the losers is how a
person reacts to each new twist of fate.
Donald J. Trump.
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished December
DJIA: 19763
+74 Up NASDAQ: 5383 +70 Up. SP500: 2239 +75 Up
No comments:
Post a Comment