Baltic Dry Index. 1361 +24 Brent Crude 55.26
“Socialism
only works in two places: Heaven where they don’t need it and hell where they
already have it.”
Ronald
Reagan.
For more on “Conkers” scroll down to the end.
And no I am not being rude to anyone, including old Brussels Blusterer,
Juncker, not that he doesn’t rightly deserve rudeness after his monstrous
anti-democratic, “state of the European Union” speech on Wednesday. Thank God
for Brexit. Poor rump-EUSSR.
The early news today is all about North Korea
firing another ballistic missile over Japan, this time clearly demonstrating
that Guam is in range. Asian markets nervously treated it largely as a non-event.
Partly because it was expected last weekend. Partly because no one expects more
than bluster from President Trump. And partly because no one knows if North
Korea’s ballistic missiles are capable of carrying a warhead, or if that
warhead is capable of withstanding re-entry pressures.
Still with each new action and reaction
between North Korea and the United States, the likelihood for a misstep rises. This is
not a time for market complacency, business as usual, risk on. North Korea is
repeatedly calling President Trump’s bluff, suggesting that the world will soon
have to come to terms with a nuclear armed North Korea, and a much more limited
USA.
North Korea Puts Guam in Range With Missile Launch Over Japan
By Kanga Kong and David Tweed
North Korea’s second missile launch over Japan in as many months flew
far enough to put the U.S. territory of Guam in range, a provocation that comes
days after the United Nations approved harsher sanctions against Kim Jong Un’s
regime.
The intermediate-range missile fired from Pyongyang at 6:57 a.m. on
Friday flew over the northern island of Hokkaido, reaching an altitude of
770 kilometers (478 miles) before landing in the Pacific Ocean. It traveled
3,700 kilometers -- further than the 3,400 kilometers from Pyongyang to Guam,
which North Korea has repeatedly threatened.
“The range of this test was significant since North Korea demonstrated that it could reach Guam with this missile, although the payload the missile was carrying is not known,” David Wright, a co-director of the Union of Concerned Scientists, wrote in a blog post.
North Korea, which has fired more than a dozen missiles this year, had pledged to retaliate after the UN Security Council punished the country for its sixth and most powerful nuclear test on Sept. 3. Investors largely shrugged it off on Friday, showing that financial markets are growing accustomed to North Korea’s provocations and the responses of the U.S. and its allies.
----On Monday, the UN Security Council approved new sanctions after the U.S. dropped key demands such as an oil embargo to win support from Russia and China, both of which can veto any proposals. The resolution seeks to limit oil imports, ban textile exports and increase inspections of ships suspected of carrying cargo in breach of sanctions.
The council plans to convene on Friday in New York at 3 p.m. local time. China’s foreign ministry didn’t respond to faxed questions about the latest North Korea missile launch.
On Thursday, North Korea had threatened to sink Japan “into the sea” with a nuclear strike and turn the U.S. into “ashes and darkness” for agreeing to the latest UN sanctions.
More
September 15, 2017 / 12:03 AM
U.S., Asian shares dip after North Korean missile launch
TOKYO (Reuters) - U.S. stock futures and Asian shares dipped after North Korea fired another missile over Japan into the Pacific Ocean on Friday, demonstrating Pyongyang’s defiance in the face of intensifying sanctions.
U.S. stock futures ESc1 fell 0.2 percent while MSCI’s
Asia-Pacific share index excluding Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS shed 0.4 percent, though
it was still up 0.4 percent on the week.
Japan's Nikkei .N225
ticked up 0.1 percent.
Japan said the North Korean missile fell into sea about
2,000 km (1,240 miles) east of Hokkaido.
The launch came just days after the U.N. Security Council
approved new sanctions against Pyongyang for its Sept. 3 nuclear test, but
markets are growing accustomed to North Korea’s sabre-rattling.
“There have been reports suggesting North Korea is preparing
a missile launch, so this was by no means a surprise,” said Hirokazu Kabeya,
chief global strategist at Daiwa Securities.
“Also, in the past, markets have stabilised within a few
days after a North Korean missile launch. So in a way this seems like something
markets have already experienced before, thus producing a limited reaction,” he
added.
Before North Korea’s missile launch, U.S. bond yields had
risen while Wall Street shares were mixed after U.S. consumer inflation data
rekindled expectations that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates in
December.
The consumer price index rose 0.4 percent in August from
July, faster than the 0.3 percent increase forecast by analysts in a Reuters
poll.
The so-called core CPI, which excludes volatile energy and
food prices, rose 0.2 percent. On a 12-month basis, it was 1.7 percent, above
the 1.6 percent forecast by economists.
More
In other news, Equifax news keeps going from
bad to worse.
How Equifax hackers could file taxes in your name and get a refund from the IRS
Published: Sept 13, 2017 4:35 p.m. ET
Here’s a good reason to file your taxes early this year.The data breach at credit bureau Equifax that may have affected 143 million U.S. adults could have lasting effects — including at tax time. If hackers gained access to the information on consumers’ credit reports, including their Social Security numbers, credit card numbers and driver’s license numbers, they could open credit accounts in consumers’ names, security experts have said.
To guard against that, the Federal Trade Commission warned consumers Friday to file their taxes early — “as soon as you have the tax information you need, before a scammer can.” Tax scams are already a problem. They have caused “thousands of people” to lose “millions of dollars and their personal information,” according to the Internal Revenue Service.
More
Were you impacted by the Equifax breach? You risk financial chaos by doing nothing
Published: Sept 14, 2017 11:14 p.m. ET
If you’re hoping to just ride out the Equifax breach scandal and do nothing
about it, you might not have a problem next week or next month. Or even next
year.Since the credit reporting company Equifax EFX, -2.35% announced last Thursday it had been affected by a data breach earlier in the summer that potentially affected 143 million U.S. adults, consumers have had many questions about how to protect themselves. Some have not even been able to freeze their credit reports, as security experts have suggested, because Equifax and the other two credit bureaus TransUnion TRU, -1.35% and Experian EXPN, -4.83% have been overloaded with calls and credit-freezing requests they were unable to handle.
As a result of frustration, or maybe naiveté about the risks, some have decided to stop trying. “You can do nothing, and then you’ll be a sitting duck,” said Adam Levin, a consumer advocate and chairman of security firm CyberScout. “If you could do something preventative, as opposed to ending up in the hospital and having to do something reactive, wouldn’t you rather do something preventative?”
If you don’t take any steps? This is what could happen:
Because the Equifax credit reports contained so much personal information, including Social Security numbers and financial account information, fraudsters could use the report for reasons including new account fraud, medical identity theft — using insurance information to have a medical procedure, which can create confusion on the true insured person’s medical file for years — or tax fraud, Levin said.
The fraudster could open credit cards and start utility bills in your name, which would go unpaid, and into collections, which could ruin your credit score, said Adrian Nazari, the founder and chief executive of Credit Sesame, a credit monitoring service. As a result, it could become difficult to be approved for home loans, car loans, jobs and desirable interest rates in the future, he said.
Bloomberg reporter Drew Armstrong wrote this week about his experience when his identity was stolen, which took three years to resolve. In the meantime, the man posing as Armstrong opened accounts in his name at Wells Fargo and went to the Delano Hotel in Miami Beach.
More
In other Equifax hack news, it’s an ill wind,
and all that. Still a silver lining for a handful, a potential for disaster for
143 million.
Equifax debacle has been a boon for LifeLock
The Equifax data breach was bad for a lot of people but good for a few companies that sell identity theft protection.
The hack, which Equifax announced last Thursday, exposed
Social Security numbers, drivers licenses and other personal information of 143
million people. And that was just in the United States.
Equifax said people in the U.K. and Canada were also
affected by the data breach, but it hasn't said how many. Equifax says it has
records on more than 800 million people worldwide.
Demand for identity theft protection just went up. A lot.
One company, LifeLock says it has gotten over 100,000 customer signups since the Equifax news broke. It said it's enrolling 10 times as many customers every hour now as a result.
The Equifax breach was not the largest ever, but it was notable for the kind of information that was put at risk.
LifeLock says its increase in business is greater than it was after two other big breaches -- an attack on Yahoo last year and one in 2015 against insurance giant Anthem.
"We've had more people sign up for LifeLock in the past three days than during the entire Yahoo or Anthem breaches," Fran Rosch, executive VP and GM of Symantec's consumer business unit, told CNN Tech on Monday.
LifeLock sells identity protection like credit monitoring, black market surveillance, stolen fund reimbursements, crimes committed in your name, and fake identity monitoring. Its service costs between $9.99 to $29.99 a month.
Another company that says it has seen an uptick in business is
CreditKarma, which provides free credit reports and monitoring. It told CNN
Tech it saw a 50% increase in signups over the weekend and a 50% increase in
search traffic.
CreditKarma analyzes credit profiles, suggesting product recommendations
to help users save money. If you take its recommendations, it then makes a cut
from the bank or lender behind the product.
More
In winter weather news, the odds of a colder
northern hemisphere winter are rising, and rising surprisingly fast.
U.S. Raises Odds of a Market-Roiling La Nina Forming This Winter
By Brian K Sullivan
14 September 2017, 14:00 GMT+1
Higher U.S. natural gas prices, drought in Brazil and flooding rains in
Australia’s coal-mining regions are all more likely after forecasters raised
the odds of a weather-roiling La Nina forming this winter.There is now a 62 percent chance La Nina will arrive between November and January, up from 26 percent last month, the U.S. Climate Prediction Center said in statement Thursday. The shift prompted the center to issue a watch for La Nina, a cooling of Pacific Ocean surface temperatures that can trigger weather changes the world over.
“This is our first watch of the year,” said Michelle L’Heureux, a forecaster at the center in College Park, Maryland. “We are taking this one pretty seriously. There were changes in the ocean that were fairly rapid over the past month.”
La Nina is closely watched by U.S. gas traders because it can mean cold winters for northern states and higher prices for the power-plant and home heating fuel. A year ago, some gas traders were anticipating a La Nina that would boost winter demand, particularly in the Midwest, and help whittle away a supply glut that was keeping prices low.
A weak La Nina ended in February when the Pacific returned to its neutral state. Waters have chilled by about 0.1 to 0.6 degrees Celsius across the surface with even cooler readings in deeper water. Back to back La Ninas are not uncommon and occur about 50 percent of the time, L’Heureux said.
Average temperatures across the contiguous 48 states fell 0.7 degrees Fahrenheit (0.4 degrees Celsius) below the 20th century average in the winter of 2010-2011, which coincided with a La Nina, according to the U.S. National Centers for Environmental Information in Asheville, North Carolina. In the winter of 2014-2015 during an ocean-warming El Nino, temperatures across the U.S. were 2.1 degrees above average.
La Nina can also trigger drought in Brazil’s soybean-growing regions and floods in Australia’s coal mines. Coal prices rose last year as forecasts pointed to La Nina’s arrival.
More
"Gold would have value if for no other reason than that it enables a citizen to fashion his financial escape from the state."
William F. Rickenbacker
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.
Today, Germany declares war on Donald Trump’s America. Well Germany’s
Der Spiegel does anyway. I think Der Spiegel has an ax to grind, and uses poor
Stanley Fischer, and the former British Empire, as tools to camouflage that ax.
Below two views of America, Der Spiegel and Warren Buffett. I know which
one I’ll choose.
"For
240 years it’s been a terrible mistake to bet against America, and now is no
time to start. America’s golden goose of commerce and innovation will continue
to lay more and larger eggs. America’s social security promises will be honored
and perhaps made more generous. And, yes, America’s kids will live far better
than their parents did."
Warren
Buffett
A Shrinking Giant EU Worries Grow over U.S. Economic Chaos
Under Donald Trump's leadership, the U.S. is in the process of forfeiting its position of economic supremacy. An internal EU document shows that the Europeans are worried.
September 11,
2017
Stanley
Fischer, the 73-year-old vice chair of the US Federal Reserve, is familiar with
the decline of the world's rich. He spent his childhood and youth in the
British protectorate of Rhodesia, in present-day Zambia and Zimbabwe, before
going to London in the early 1960s for his university studies. There, he
experienced first-hand the unravelling of the British Empire.
History repeats itself, sometimes even within a single person's
lifespan. Now an American citizen, Fischer is currently witnessing another
major power taking its leave of the world stage. Under the leadership of
President Donald Trump, the United States is losing its status as a global
hegemonic power, he said recently. America's role as guarantor of global
organizations like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) can no longer be taken
for granted, Fischer says. "I had a picture of the world economy in which
the United States was an anchor," he recently told the Financial
Times. "Not a source of volatility."
The U.S. political system could take the world in a very dangerous
direction, says the economist, who has held a number of powerful positions in
his career. He has been the chief economist of the World Bank, deputy managing
director of the International Monetary Fund and governor of the Bank of Israel.
His resume makes him part of the caste of "globalists" despised by
Trump supporters.
Fischer is seeing things today that he has never experienced in his
entire professional career. For instance, he believes the current US
government's efforts to loosen regulation of the banking sector, hardly more
than 10 years after the financial crisis, are simply "mind-boggling."
Last Wednesday, Fischer took the next logical step and announced his resignation, meaning that the world's most important central bank will lose an undisputed expert. It is quite possible that Trump will replace him with another of his acolytes. Either way, America's reputation in the world of economics and finance is taking another hit.
Fighting to Stay in the Top League
For decades, the United States was something of a guarantor of global economic stability. It helped Western Europe emerge from the rubble of World War II with a massive redevelopment program, the Marshall Plan. Whenever there was a financial crisis somewhere in the world, the U.S. Treasury Department and the IMF joined forces to orchestrate supporting measures. When the worst world economic crisis in 80 years erupted in 2008, the Americans led the globally coordinated rescue effort.
Little is left of that dominant position. The United States, a former superstar, is now fighting to stay in the top league. The economic policy coming out of Donald Trump's Washington is characterized by timidity and despondency, sometimes erupting into boastful nationalism. The former economic superpower has embarked on a self-prescribed retreat. Once the home of the Washington Consensus, a policy that emphasized international cooperation, competition and market forces, the U.S. capital is now beset by economic navel gazing.
Everything that formed the basis of the West's economic triumph in the
last few decades has been discredited. Trade agreements are being called into
question, while traditional partner countries are being sharply criticized for
supposedly causing unemployment. A nation once bursting with self-confidence is
now plagued by self-doubt and fear of decline, as it increasingly isolates
itself.
Trump takes every opportunity to complain that the United States has
been bamboozled in trade agreements, accusing his predecessors of negotiating
bad deals. In Trump's world, it is almost as if the United States were a victim
and not an enabler of globalization.
More
"America’s
population is growing about .8% per year (.5% from births minus deaths and .3%
from net migration). Thus 2% of overall growth produces about 1.2% of per
capita growth. That may not sound impressive. But in a single generation of,
say, 25 years, that rate of growth leads to a gain of 34.4% in real GDP per
capita. (Compounding’s effects produce the excess over the percentage that
would result by simply multiplying 25 x 1.2%.) In turn, that 34.4% gain will
produce a staggering $19,000 increase in real GDP per capita for the next
generation. Were that to be distributed equally, the gain would be $76,000
annually for a family of four. Today’s politicians need not shed tears for
tomorrow’s children."
Warren Buffet.
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?
Tesla Bears Some Blame for Self-Driving Crash Death, Feds Say
9- 13-2017
It's been nearly a year and a half since Joshua Brown became
the first person to die in a car driving itself. In May 2016, Brown was on
a Florida highway in his Tesla Model S using Autopilot,
the semi-autonomous driver assist feature that handles steering and speed during
highway driving.Tesla has always warned drivers that Autopilot isn't perfect. According to car's driving manual and the disclaimer drivers accept before they can engage it, the system should only have been used on highways with clear lane markings, strict medians, and exit and entrance ramps. So when a tractor trailer turning left crossed into the Model S's lane, the system did not recognize it—and the car crashed into its side, killing Brown instantly.
Since then, Tesla has updated the Autopilot system that was controlling the car at the time. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the government's vehicle safety watchdog, concluded in January that because Brown was supposed to be monitoring the car's driving, human error—not Tesla tech—caused the crash. And several automakers have introduced their own versions of Autopilot-like software, which purports to help drivers navigate highways safely while leaving some of the work to the machines.
But now there's a new wrinkle to the story. Tuesday morning, the National Transportation Safety Board, an independent federal body that investigates plane, train, and vehicle crashes, concluded its investigation into the incident. It declared that whether or not Brown paid heed to Tesla's warnings, the carmaker bears some of the blame for selling a system that allowed that kind of misuse.
“The combined effects of human error and the lack of sufficient system controls resulted in a fatal collision that should not have happened,” said Robert Sumwalt, the chairman of the NTSB.
The NTSB's report is the most substantive rebuke yet of not only Tesla, but an industry eager to offer drivers automated features that can be easily abused—with deadly consequences.
The automotive industry promises that fully driverless cars will nosedive the roughly 35,000 American road deaths per year, 94 percent of which result from human error. But while roboticists wrangle with the complex problems that stand in the way of full self-driving, carmakers are rolling out semi-autonomous features, which help drivers perform some driving tasks.
Systems like Tesla's Autopilot, General Motors’ Super Cruise, and Audi’s Traffic Jam Pilot already make driving safer, according to preliminary research. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has found that vehicles with front-crash prevention are less likely to rear-end and cause injuries in fellow vehicles. NHTSA's investigation of the Brown crash found that Tesla cars with self-driving capabilities crashed 40 percent less frequently than those without.
More
Another weekend and
not a hurricane in sight. Just a rapidly approaching autumn equinox, and with
it the approach of another northern hemisphere winter. And with that, endless
hours of tv advertising promoting this, that, and the other for Christmas.
Here in my part of
the world, it’s the last of the late summer’s blackberry season. The onset of
the elderberry season. The height of the crab apple season, and the
anticipation of the sweet edible chestnut season. For the younger sons of LIR readers, it’s
just about to hit peak season in inedible horse chestnuts, “conkers” to older
readers. Have a great pre-Christmas marketing season weekend everyone.
Conkers
Conkers is a traditional children's game in
Britain
and Ireland played using the seeds of horse
chestnut trees—the name 'conker' is also applied to the seed and to the
tree itself. The game is played by two players, each with a conker threaded
onto a piece of string: they take turns striking each other's conker until one
breaks.
- ----A hole is drilled in a large, hard conker using a nail, gimlet, small screwdriver, or electric drill. A piece of string (often a shoelace is used), about 20 cm (8 inches) long, is threaded through it. A large knot at one or both ends of the string secures the conker.
- The game is played between two people, each with a conker.
- They take turns hitting each other's conker using their own. One player lets the conker dangle on the full length of the string while the other player swings their conker and hits.
Scoring
- The conker eventually breaking the other's conker gains a point. This may be either the attacking conker or (more often) the defending one.
More
21st
century adage: Is that true, or did you hear it on the BBC?
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