Baltic Dry Index. 1476 -27 Brent Crude 58.63
Hans F. Sennholz
We are spoiled for
choice this morning, provided that choice is all about bad news. The Fed’s talking chair, says she wants
interest rates to rise gradually, but not too gradually, so that’s clear as
mud, typical of our modern central banksters, who only seem to worry about
stock prices. Nearly all in the markets took it as a sign she was signalling
another interest rate hike in December.
President Trump upped
his war of words with North Korea, and came out endorsing Spain’s rising crackdown
on Catalonian democracy. An immense blunder it seems to me in far away London.
In Europe, situation
normal. Everything is all at sea, upside down, with most continentals snapping
at each other’s throats. Meanwhile Germany is bracing for one of the most
bizarre coalition governments of all time, assuming that is Chancellor Merkel
doesn’t just go for a minority government, daring the rest to further alienate
the voters.
In the UK, Comrade
Corbyn’s New Communist Labour Party is winding up its annual conference today,
preparing for government, with massive nationalisation plan with no or below
market compensation, public sector wage increases all round, garden taxes, soak
the rich taxes, and an emergency plan to prevent the expected capital flight. With the Conservative Party in disarray, in
an all against all Cabinet fight against the Prime Minister, and the LibDems
complete non-entities waiting for the elderly to die off so they can hold
another EU referendum hoping to be able to re-apply to join, the bookies and
the polls suggest Comrade Corbyn’s “Money Tree” party is on course to win the
next election.
Below, a right mess.
Yellen says Fed should be ‘wary’ of raising rates ‘too gradually’
Published: Sept 26, 2017 3:54 p.m. ET
Doesn’t support staying on hold until inflation back to 2%
While recent soft inflation readings justify a gradual pace for
interest-rate hikes, there is also a danger of moving too slowly, Federal
Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen said Tuesday.
“We should also be wary of moving too gradually,” Yellen said in a speech
to the National Association for Business Economics meeting in Cleveland.
There is a risk that the labor market could become overheated, causing
an inflation problem down the road, she said. And persistently easy policy
could have adverse implications for financial stability.
“For these reasons, and given that monetary policy affects economic
activity and inflation with a substantial lag, it would be imprudent to keep
monetary policy on hold until inflation is back to 2%,“ she said.
Her remarks show that she is with the majority at the central bank that
wants to continue to raise rates one more time in 2017.
Only four of 16 top Fed officials want the central bank to hold policy
steady until 2018 and markets have priced in a 70% chance for a move in
December.
More
September 25, 2017 / 5:25 PM /
Updated 9 hours ago
Stocks waffle amid North Korea jitters, dollar gains
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A gauge of world stocks fell on Tuesday and the
euro dropped to its lowest level in about a month as investors pulled back from
trades that have worked for most of 2017 in the face of continued political
uncertainty around the globe.
The S&P 500 finished little changed as U.S. tech stocks rebounded
from their sharpest single-day selloff in five weeks. MSCI’s gauge of stocks
across the globe .MIWD00000PUS shed 0.30 percent as shares in Asia and emerging
markets declined.
North Korea has boosted defenses on its east coast, a South Korean
lawmaker said, after the North said U.S. President Donald Trump had declared
war.
The latest U.S.-North Korea development came as market participants were
still reckoning with the German election, in which Chancellor Angela Merkel won
a fourth term but her party was weakened by a surge in far-right support.
“The market has really been reacting to a combination of the North Korea
news and its global impact and the election in Germany,” said Rick Meckler,
president of LibertyView Capital Management in Jersey City, New Jersey. “This
has been a low-volatility market and this is really the only significant news
we have had lately.”
The dollar hit a month high after comments from Federal Reserve Chair
Janet Yellen before it pared its gains. Yellen said the U.S. central bank needs
to continue gradual rate hikes despite broad uncertainty about the path of inflation.
Chances of a hike at the Fed’s December meeting rose to 78 percent from
72 percent late last week, according to the CME Group.
More
In war news, President Trump upped the rhetoric yet
again.
September 24, 2017 / 9:33 AM /
Updated 2 hours ago
Trump - military option for North Korea not preferred, but would be 'devastating'
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump warned North Korea on
Tuesday that any U.S. military option would be “devastating” for Pyongyang, but
said the use of force was not Washington’s first option to deal with the
country’s ballistic and nuclear weapons programme.
“We are totally prepared for the second option, not a preferred option,”
Trump said at a White House news conference, referring to military force. “But
if we take that option, it will be devastating, I can tell you that,
devastating for North Korea. That’s called the military option. If we have to
take it, we will.”
Bellicose statements by Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in
recent weeks have created fears that a miscalculation could lead to action with
untold ramifications, particularly since Pyongyang conducted its sixth and most
powerful nuclear test on Sept. 3.
Despite the increased tension, the United States has not detected any
change in North Korea’s military posture reflecting an increased threat, the
top U.S. military officer said on Tuesday.
The assessment by Marine Corps General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the
U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, about Pyongyang’s military stance was in contrast
to a South Korean lawmaker who said Pyongyang had boosted defences on its east
coast.
----A U.S. official speaking on the condition of anonymity said satellite imagery had detected a small number of North Korean military aircraft moving to the North’s east coast. However the official said the activity did not change their assessment of Pyongyang’s military posture.
North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho on Monday accused Trump of
declaring war on the North and threatened that Pyongyang would shoot down U.S.
warplanes flying near the Korean Peninsula after American bombers flew close to
it last Saturday. Ri was reacting to Trump’s Twitter comments that Kim and Ri
“won’t be around much longer” if they acted on their threats toward the United
States.
We close with the
wealth and jobs destroying, dying EUSSR. Never have its 5 presidents and
bureaucrats, been more out of touch from the unfortunate people whose lives they
blight. Now Spain is about to put the EU democracy values through a shredder. How
will the EU respond? What happens in Catalonia next, all too likely to be the acceleration
of the end of the unloved EUSSR. Time to short euros.
September 26, 2017 / 3:57 PM /
Updated 15 hours ago
France's Macron says euro zone needs its own budget, a finance minister
PARIS (Reuters) - French
President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday reaffirmed that he wanted the euro zone to
have its own budget and finance minister, adding that it was key to ensure the
stability of the single currency union and to weather economic shocks.
“The fundamental issue at stake is not a mechanism which will magically
solve all our problems,” Macron said in a speech on the future of Europe. “What
is at stake is to reduce unemployment which affects one in five European
youths.”
He added that his idea was not about “mutualising past debts” or about
trying to “resolve the public finance problems of one state or another”.
September 26, 2017 / 5:50 PM /
Updated 10 hours ago
German FDP reject Macron's call to create joint euro zone budget
BERLIN (Reuters) - A senior member of Germany’s pro-business Free
Democrats (FDP), a potential coalition partner for Chancellor Angela Merkel,
generally welcomed French President Emmanuel Macron’s European Union speech but
criticised his proposal to create a joint euro zone budget.
“This was a courageous speech by President Macron, even if not all of
his proposals meet approval of the FDP,” said Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, FDP
leader in the EU legislature.
While Lambsdorff welcomed Macron’s call to strengthen military
cooperation in the EU and seize the opportunities of digitisation, he rejected
the idea of a join euro zone budget.
“The problem in Europe is not a lack of public funds, but the lack of
reform. A euro zone budget would set exactly the wrong incentives,” he said.
Rajoy Wins Trump’s Backing on Catalonia as Budget Plans Unravel
By Esteban Duarte and Maria Tadeo
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy won Donald Trump’s support for his
efforts to stop Catalan separatists during a visit to the White House while his
political problems deepened back home.
As his boss was meeting the U.S. president in the Oval Office, Rajoy’s
Budget Minister Cristobal Montoro pulled his 2018 spending bill, saying it
didn’t have the votes to pass. Rajoy has canceled his plans to attend a
European Union summit this Friday as prosecutors order Catalan police to block
access to polling stations ahead of an illegal referendum on independence set
for Oct. 1.
“We are dealing with a great, great country, and it should remain
united," Trump said in a joint press conference with the Spanish
premier in Washington on Tuesday.
Rajoy has vowed to use all legal means to ensure Catalans don’t go to
the polls on Sunday after Spain’s top court ruled that their plans are
unconstitutional.
“We are still talking with several political groups,” Rajoy said,
adding that still he expects to reach enough support to pass the budget
blueprint. “In any case, I don’t have it in my plans to call early elections.”
In Catalonia, Spanish prosecutors ordered the regional police to seal
off access to locations designated as polling stations before Sept. 30,
according to an instruction seen by Bloomberg News. Polling stations should
remain under police control until 9 p.m. on Oct. 1 and any attempt to breach
that cordon must be reported.
Earlier, Enric Millo, the government’s representative in Catalonia, said
regional President Carles Puigdemont and other senior officials from the rebel
region could be suspended by the Spanish courts if they follow through with
their plans for the Oct. 1 vote.
“I will keep hoping until the last minute that the Catalan government
has a change of heart and calls off the referendum,” Millo said at a briefing
in Barcelona on Tuesday. “If that doesn’t happen, it’s very likely that our
interlocutors in Catalonia afterward will be different people.”
Puigdemont, for his part, has said he’s ready to go to jail if that’s
what’s required to win independence for Spain’s largest regional economy.
Diamond Says Brexit ‘Net Positive’ as Ermotti Sees Europe Doomed
By Christian Baumgaertel and Cindy Roberts
26 September 2017, 11:10 GMT+1 26 September 2017, 14:28
GMT+1
Bob Diamond says Brexit is bringing the Continent together, or at least
benefiting its banks. That prompted Sergio Ermotti, days after Germans gave
Angela Merkel a weaker mandate, to say the European Union is broken.Ermotti, head of Switzerland’s UBS Group AG, warned Europe is doomed to fall behind the U.S. and Asia unless the EU breaches the “taboo” of closer federalism. He struck a gloomy note in response to Diamond, the ex-Barclays Plc boss turned optimistic investor in Greek and Italian banking, who called Brexit a “net positive” for European bank reform moments earlier.
“I don’t think Europe in its existing form has any chance to succeed,” Ermotti said at a banking conference in Milan Tuesday organized by Bloomberg. “If you want to succeed, to compete against China and the U.S., you need to have -- which is a taboo right now -- a more federal model: one defense, one foreign policy, one minister of finance.”
The chasm in perceptions reflects that of the financiers’ counterparts at the Brexit negotiating table, who have so far failed to find common ground on the implications of the departure of the U.K., home to the EU’s dominant financial center. Their diverging views also highlight the challenges facing the region and its banks, which have struggled for years to boost profitability in a still fragmented market.
Non-European Winners
French President Emmanuel Macron, in a speech on Tuesday, will make proposals for an overhaul of the EU in areas ranging from defense to the economy, but his push has been complicated by Germany’s election on Sunday, which saw parties more hostile to European integration than Merkel’s past governing coalition strengthened.The main winners of Brexit, Ermotti said, will be New York and Asia, while Europe in its current form is doomed to fall behind both regions. He also said Europe is hobbled by its lack of a deep market for securitizations. To boost profitability, Ermotti, whose bank is among the few remaining global investment banks in Europe, said smaller lenders will need to consolidate, while larger banks must reduce back-office expenses by using more technology.
More
September 26, 2017 / 1:57 PM /
Updated 13 hours ago
Bavaria's wounded CSU complicates Merkel's coalition quest
BERLIN (Reuters) - Conservatives in the state of Bavaria, agonising over
heavy losses in Sunday’s federal election, are shaping up as a big obstacle to
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s bid to forge a new three-way coalition in Germany.
German voters punished Merkel’s conservative bloc for her handling of
the 2015 refugee crisis on Sunday, turning in droves to the far-right
Alternative for Germany (AfD), which surged to third place with 12.6 percent of
the vote.
Weakened, Merkel finds that her only real option of building a coalition
in her fourth term is to enlist both the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and
the environmentalist Greens, who disagree on issues from energy to tax, Europe
and migration.
With months of uncertainty ahead, the euro slipped to a one-month low
after its worst day so far this year.
Another key question for investors is whether the hawkish Wolfgang
Schaeuble remains finance minister of Europe’s biggest economy. Some
conservative allies pressured him to take a new job as president, or speaker,
of parliament.
While the FDP and Greens have signalled some willingness to compromise,
the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), which forms a parliamentary bloc
with Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU), sounded stubborn on Tuesday.
More
"Those entrapped by the herd instinct are drowned in the deluges of history. But there are always the few who observe, reason, and take precautions, and thus escape the flood. For these few gold has been the asset of last resort."
Antony C. Sutton
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.
Today, so what happens in a bankster imposed cashless
society, when the system goes down. Today Puerto Rico, tomorrow us, if we allow
central banksters their way. And Puerto Rico still has cash money.
Cash Is in Short Supply in Storm-Ravaged Puerto Rico
By Jonathan Levin
25 September 2017, 16:49 GMT+1 25 September 2017, 22:31
GMT+1
In post-hurricane San Juan on Monday, commerce picked up ever so slightly.
With a little effort, you could get the basics and sometimes more: diapers,
medicine, or even a gourmet hamburger smothered in fried onions and Gorgonzola
cheese.But almost impossible to find was a place that accepted credit cards.
“Cash only,” said Abraham Lebron, the store manager standing guard at Supermax, a supermarket in San Juan’s Plaza de las Armas. He was in a well-policed area, but admitted feeling like a sitting duck with so many bills on hand. “The system is down, so we can’t process the cards. It’s tough, but one finds a way to make it work.”
The cash economy has reigned in Puerto Rico since Hurricane Maria decimated much of the U.S. commonwealth last week, leveling the power grid and wireless towers and transporting the island to a time before plastic existed. The state of affairs could carry on for weeks or longer in some remote parts of the commonwealth, and that means it could be impossible to trace revenue and enforce tax rules.
The situation further frustrates one of the many challenges already facing a government that has sought a form of bankruptcy protection after its debts swelled past $70 billion: boosting revenue by collecting money that slips through the cracks.
Tax Contempt
In fact, the power blackout only exacerbates a situation that has always been, to a degree, a fact of life in Puerto Rico. Outside the island’s tourist hubs, many small businesses simply never took credit cards, with some openly expressing contempt for tax collectors and others claiming it was just a question of not wanting to deal with the technology.
But those were generally vendors of bootleg DVDs, fruit stands, barbers
-- not major supermarkets. Now, the better part of the economy is in the same
boat.
Cash was in short supply. Many Puerto Ricans were still living off what
money they thought to withdraw ahead of the storm. Most ATMs on the island
still weren’t working because of the power outage or because no one had
refilled them.
In Fajardo, a hard-hit coastal area, the paper printouts taped to sheet
metal storm shutters read: “Cash only, thank you.” Jenny Rivera Valentin, a
50-year-old hair dresser from Humacao, didn’t mind. She was just glad to find
an open store. Her town had been “totally destroyed,” she said. And just about
every place was closed.
At the nearby Fajardo CVS -- or CV, as it appeared with the S obliterated by Maria -- the signage was similar: “Cash” scrawled in red marker.
As Banco Popular, Puerto Rico’s biggest bank, opened Monday morning in San Juan, the line stretched about 200 people deep for banking and ATM services. People fanned themselves with whatever they could find and held umbrellas against the sun. At the back stood Giddel Galliza, 64, a music teacher.
“I didn’t want to come because of the lines,” he said. “I need money for basic needs, food, gas -- my tank is full but it won’t be forever. I normally pay with my card.”
Across the street at Banco Santander it was much the same story. Erasmo Santiago, a 63-year-old mailman, said he was actually a Popular client but opted to pay a fee and go for the slightly shorter line. “I have my mom living with me, she’s 83,” he said. “So I need money.”
"Until government administrators can so identify the interests of government with those of the people and refrain from defrauding the masses through the device of currency depreciation for the sake of remaining in office, the wiser ones will prefer to keep as much of their wealth in the most stable and marketable forms possible - forms which only the precious metals provide."
Elgin Groseclose
Technology 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?
Physicists demonstrate using a laser to control a current in graphene within just one femtosecond
Date: September 25, 2017
Source: University of Erlangen-Nuremberg
Summary: Controlling electronic current is essential to
modern electronics, as data and signals are transferred by streams of electrons
which are controlled at high speed. Demands on transmission speeds are also
increasing as technology develops. Scientists have now succeeded in switching
on a current with a desired direction in graphene using a single laser pulse
within a femtosecond. This is more than a thousand times faster compared to the
most efficient transistors today.
Controlling electronic current is essential to modern electronics, as
data and signals are transferred by streams of electrons which are controlled
at high speed. Demands on transmission speeds are also increasing as technology
develops. Scientists from the Chair of Laser Physics and the Chair of Applied
Physics at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) have
succeeded in switching on a current with a desired direction in graphene using
a single laser pulse within a femtosecond -- a femtosecond corresponds to the
millionth part of a billionth of a second. This is more than a thousand times
faster compared to the most efficient transistors today.
Graphene is up to the job
In gases, insulating materials and semiconductors, scientists have
already shown that it is possible to steer electrons with light waves and thus,
in principle, to control current. However, this concept has not yet been
applied to metals as light cannot usually penetrate the material to control the
electrons inside. To avoid this effect, physicists in the working groups of
Prof. Dr. Peter Hommelhoff and Prof. Dr. Heiko Weber used graphene -- a
semimetal consisting of only a single layer of carbon atoms. Even though
graphene is an excellent conductor, it is thin enough to let some light
penetrate the material and move the electrons.
---- The researchers discovered that the current generation process in the graphene follows complicated quantum mechanics. The electrons travel from their initial state to the excited state by two paths rather than one -- similar to a forked road leading to the same destination. Like a wave, the electrons can split at the fork and flow on both roads simultaneously. Depending on the relative phase between the split electron waves, when they meet again, the current can be very large, or not present at all. 'This is like a water wave.
Imagine a wave breaks against a building wall and flows to the left and the right of the building at the same time. At the end of the building, both parts meet again. If the partial waves meet at their peak, a very large wave results and current flows. If one wave is at its peak, the other at its lowest point, the two cancel one another out, and there is no current,' explains Prof. Dr. Peter Hommelhoff from the Chair of Laser Physics. 'We can use the light waves to regulate how the electrons move and how much electricity is generated.'
Will we see electronics controlled by light frequency in the future?
The results are another important step in bringing electronics and
optics together. In the future, the method could open a door for realizing
ultrafast electronics operating at optical frequencies.
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished August
DJIA: 21,948 +215 Up. NASDAQ: 6,429 +266 Up. SP500: 2,472 +174 Up.
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