Baltic Dry Index. 1398 +13 Brent Crude 55.37
“One of they key problems
today is that politics is such a disgrace. Good people don’t go into
government.”
Donald J. Trump.
While we await President Trump’s UN General
Assembly address later today in New York, we open with yet another category 5
hurricane hitting the Caribbean, and heading for much the same islands just hit
by hurricane Irma. On current projections it is not expected to hit Florida or
the US east coast.
Hurricane Maria upgraded to Category 5 as it smashes into Caribbean
Published: Sept 18, 2017 11:28 p.m. ET
AccuWeather is expecting up to four more named storms before the end of the Atlantic season
Hurricane Maria barreled toward areas of the Caribbean that were already devastated by Hurricane Irma on Monday, while Hurricane Jose continued to churn northward and was expected to bring heavy rains, strong winds and surf swells to the Northeast.Maria strengthened to a “potentially catastrophic” Category 5 storm Monday night as the eye moved directly over the small island of Dominica in the northeastern Caribbean Sea, according to the National Hurricane Center.
Dominica’s prime minister, Roosevelt Skerrit, posted a desperate Facebook update Monday night: “My roof is gone. I am at the complete mercy of the hurricane. House is flooding,” he wrote as the island was slammed by 160-mph winds, adding soon after: “I have been rescued.”
Maria is on track to hit Puerto Rico by Wednesday, and Gov. Ricardo Rossello urged residents there to brace for the storm: “It is time to seek refuge with a family member, friend or head to a state shelter.”
“Maria is expected to produce total rain accumulations of 6 to 12 inches with isolated maximum amounts of 20 inches across the central and southern Leeward Islands, and the U.S. and British Virgin Islands through Wednesday night,” the NHC said. “Rainfall on all of these islands could cause life-threatening flash floods and mudslides.” The agency also warned of storm surge up to 9 feet in some areas.
Maria currently has maximum sustained winds of 160 mph. A hurricane warning is in effect for Puerto Rico, Vieques and Culebra, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the British Virgin Islands, Dominica, St. Martin, and St. Barthelemy.
More
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/hurricane-maria-expected-to-hammer-caribbean-again-jose-to-bring-rain-to-northeast-2017-09-18
In market news, Asia nervously await President Trump and day one of the Federal Reserve meeting. Speculating, leveraged gambling, and investing get more bizarre with each passing month.
September 19, 2017 / 1:51 AM
Asian shares wobble as investors await Fed meeting for rate clues
TOKYO (Reuters) - Asian shares wavered on Tuesday, bolstered by record highs on Wall Street but hobbled by uncertainty as traders waited on a Federal Reserve meeting for clues on U.S. monetary policy.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan
.MIAPJ0000PUS turned slightly higher after dipping into negative territory.
On Wall Street on Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI
closed at a record high for the fifth straight session, and the S&P 500 .SPX
marked its second straight closing record high, as higher U.S. Treasury yields
helped lift financial shares. [.N]
At a two-day meeting beginning later on Tuesday, the Fed is
expected to take another step toward policy normalization and announce plans to
begin unwinding its $4.2 trillion portfolio of Treasuries and mortgage-backed
securities.
The Fed is expected to hold interest rates steady, but
investors will be looking for clues on the expected pace of further tightening
later this year and next. The market is pricing in an approximately even chance
of a hike in December.
Japan's Nikkei stock index .N225
surged 1.2 percent in early trade, catching up to global equities gains and
responding to a weaker yen as Tokyo markets reopened after a public holiday on
Monday.
The Bank of Japan will also hold a regular policy meeting on
Thursday, and is widely expected to maintain the status quo as inflation
remains stubbornly weak despite a modest economic recovery.
More
When the stock market finally implodes, don’t say these 3 charts didn’t warn you
Published: Sept 18, 2017 7:51 a.m. ET
The perennial headline: Stock market shrugs off everything. North Korea
(shrug). Terrorist attacks (shrug). Hurricanes (shrug). Investor complacency
(shrug). Lofty valuations (shrug). Trump (the best shrug, believe me). Whatever
it is — screw it, buy!
On the flip side, bears, of course, have spent the better part of the
past few years missing out in one of the greatest bull stretches in market
history. But that won’t stop them from revelling in their I-told-ya-so moment
when it finally comes.
Lance Roberts, economist and chief portfolio strategist for Clarity
Financial, is not one of those wild-eyed market alarmists, though he did earn
our chart(s) of the day honors with this trio, which he says illustrates
his “biggest concern” at the moment.
Chart 1) This just shows how this bull cycle is on pace to become the
longest ever. “Regardless, it will end, and like all previously over-valued,
over-extended, over-leveraged and overly-complacent bull cycles in history, it
ends badly,” Roberts writes.
Chart 2) See those little bends in each
red dotted line? There may be something to that. “One of the hallmarks of a
late-stage bull-market cycle is the acceleration in price as investors
capitulate by ‘jumping in’ as prices accelerate,” Roberts explains.
Chart 3) There might be a tell in what
we’re seeing in corporate earnings. “The second downturn in earnings,
particularly when sales are stagnating as they are now, tends to be the
demarcation point of a repricing phase,” Roberts says.
More
In North Korean War news, is war back on the agenda,
or is it just more Yankee paper tiger bluster? Our complacent markets are all
betting on bluster. Will President Trump at the U. N. prove them right?
September 19, 2017 / 5:07 AM
In first speech at U.N., Trump to single out North Korea, Iran
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump will urge United
Nations member states on Tuesday to turn up the pressure on North Korea to give
up its nuclear weapons, using his maiden speech to the world body to address
what he considers the top global challenge.
Senior White House officials said Trump would also target Iran’s nuclear
programme, single out Venezuela for criticism and refer to Islamist militants
as “losers,” in his first appearance in the green-marbled U.N. General Assembly
hall, where applause from world leaders is generally muted.
Trump’s 10:30 a.m. (1430 GMT) speech will mark his latest attempt to lay
out his “America First” vision for a U.S. foreign policy that is aimed at
downgrading global bureaucracies, basing alliances on shared interests, and
steering Washington away from nation-building exercises abroad.
Trump’s first major turn on the global platform offered by the United
Nations has been dominated by Iran and North Korea, which have been the focus
of his talks with other world leaders.
Even so, he has found time to criticise the world body, alleging gross
mismanagement and demanding that the United States, the largest donor to the
United Nations, get more for its investment.
In his speech, he will seek to rally the world to help the United States
and its Asian allies reduce North Korea to pariah status and pressure Iran to
rein in everything from ballistic missile launches to interference in Syria.
With North Korean nuclear tests and missile launches stirring global tensions,
Trump’s move on Pyongyang comes as the U.S. ambassador to the United States,
Nikki Haley, says that most non-military options have all but been exhausted.
More
September 18, 2017 / 9:19 PM
Mattis hints at military options on North Korea but offers no details
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis hinted on
Monday about the existence of military options on North Korea that might spare
Seoul from a brutal counterattack but declined to say what kind of options he
was talking about or whether they involved the use of lethal force.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said on Sunday the
U.N. Security Council had run out of options on containing North Korea’s
nuclear program and that the United States might have to turn the matter over
to the Pentagon.
Any conflict on the Korean peninsula could easily result in a degree of
bloodshed unseen since the 1950-53 Korean War, which claimed the lives of more
than 50,000 Americans and millions of Koreans and ended in an armed truce, not
a peace treaty.
Seoul is within artillery range of North Korea, which beyond nuclear and
conventional weapons is also believed to have a sizable chemical and biological
arsenal.
Asked whether there were any military options the United States could
take with North Korea that would not put Seoul at grave risk, Mattis said: “Yes
there are. But I will not go into details.”
Pressed on whether that might include so-called “kinetic” options that
use lethal force, Mattis said: “I don’t want to go into that.”
Finally, haven’t we been here before? But this time
it’s different, right?
"On
the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all
the time.”
George
Orwell.
Forget Default: Deutsche Reckons Debt Market Risk Lies Elsewhere
By Tracy Alloway
18 September 2017, 09:20 GMT+1
What’s in a word? A lot when it comes to the term “liquidity.”For years, academics, investors and regulators have sparred over the meaning of liquidity, and the degree to which it’s said to have deteriorated in the marketplace. For many, it’s simply the ability to sell an asset without significantly affecting its price. To others it’s the hallmark of a healthy market, or the symptom of a disease brought on by “easy money” provided by central banks in the years since the financial crisis.
To Aleksander Kocic, derivatives strategist at Deutsche Bank AG, it’s something that has turned the world of fixed income on its head -- transmuting an age-old principle of debt and converting the world’s biggest market into something theoretically far more risky.
“Liquidity transforms the risk of default (the ability that the debtor may not be able to pay back his debt) into the risk that the securities representing the debt find no purchasers,” he wrote in research published late last week. “It replaces responsibility with salability.”
For Kocic, today’s era of booming bond sales has an eerie parallel to
the subprime crisis of the mid-2000s. Back then, low interest rates spurred an
intense search for yield that culminated in investors purchasing risky home
loans in the form of securitized and salable bonds. Such securitizations had
the benefit of convenience as investors could buy and sell specific exposures
comprising hundreds of thousands of individual home loans.
But the steady demand for mortgages helped spur a rise in home prices
and inflation, which ultimately forced the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates,
thereby bursting the bubble.
“The forced unwind of leverage was responsible for the transformation of
conditional insolvency to unconditional illiquidity,” Kocic wrote in the
report, dated Sept 15. “Subprime borrowers were considered financeable only
because their debts were salable. That went on even when they were no longer
solvent and it ended with a liquidity crisis -- at that point, no debt, except
for the highest grade, could be transacted.”
Today, Kocic argues, post-crisis regulation has created a far less liquid environment for debt securities, which have been forced off the balance sheets of big broker-banks and onto those of a wide variety of funds who snap them up in the belief that they can capitalize on immediate price gains. At the same time, a cottage industry has cropped up to offer “liquidity transformation” services, including exchange-traded funds and open-ended mutual funds that promise investors the ability to buy and sell illiquid debt instantaneously.
While the parallel may be frightening, Kocic says the prospect of a sell-off remains “infinitesimal” providing that regulators and central banks are aware of the problem, and the situation persists. As long as such rules prevent “the transformation of liquidity into leverage” and subsequent inflation, the risk of a crisis “appears lower.”
“The biggest risk in this context is posed by irresponsible deregulation and inflation or anything that would cause a rapid rise in price level,” he concludes. “This implies predictable monetary policy and a tightly controlled Fed exit.”
“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.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.
Today, the Walter Mitty fantasies of the Man who would be EUSSR Emperor.
“Of
course, there will be transfers of sovereignty. But would I be intelligent to
draw the attention of public opinion to this fact?”
Jean-Claude Juncker. Failed
Luxembourg Prime Minister and ex-president of the Euro Group of Finance
Ministers. Confessed liar. European Commission President. Scotch connoisseur.
Earth to EU: It’s time to face reality
Published: Sept 15, 2017 9:03 a.m. ET
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker must have had visions of
sugar plums dancing in his head this week when he laid out his notion of where
Europe is going in his annual address to the European Parliament, fancifully called
the “State of the Union.”His fantasy of a federalist European Union with all 27 members remaining after Britain leaves embracing the euro EURUSD, +0.0670% and opening borders per the Schengen agreement was so out of step with reality and with the mood in EU countries that he seemed to be on a different planet.
In fact, the German daily Die Welt thought the idea of a Bulgaria or a Romania joining the euro was so absurd that one had to ask “on what distant star the spaceship EU under its Captain Juncker has spent the last few years.”
Sahra Wagenknecht, a leader of the Left party in Germany — who takes advantage of her party’s marginal status to speak more pointedly than mainstream politicians — said “Mr. Juncker seems to have taken leave of his senses.” The euro is already causing enough damage to the countries that have it, without extending it to the rest of the EU, she said.
Even the liberal Guardian, which has been steadfastly pro-Europe, said “Juncker’s federalist vision for the EU is far from reality.” Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte described Juncker as a “romantic,” the paper reported, and suggested that people with vision see an eye doctor.
---- The problem with any grand vision of how to integrate and restructure Europe is that’s not the way history happens. And Europe has a lot of history. Grafting on some notion of a United States of Europe is antithetical to that history, and virtually impossible to achieve politically.
In that sense, the notions of a multi-speed Europe propagated by the
likes of German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble outside of election campaign
time, are more realistic. Especially if one of the speeds is reverse.
The EU probably reached its peak as a free-trade zone and common market,
before the debut of a joint currency and a European Central Bank put member
states in a straitjacket that benefited Germany but created problems for other
countries. The mistake was to proceed with integration at a forced march even
as the bloc expanded to take in the newly liberated countries in Eastern Europe.
More
“When it becomes serious, you have to lie.”
Jean-Claude Juncker. Failed former Luxembourg P.M.,
serial liar, president of the European Commission. Scotch
connoisseur.
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?
'Rubber material' discovered that could lead to scratch-proof paint for car
Date:
September 7, 2017
Source:
Queen's University Belfast
Summary:
A stretchy miracle material has been discovered that could be used to create
highly resistant smart devices and scratch-proof paint for cars, report
investigators.
Led by Dr Elton Santos from the University's School of Mathematics and
Physics, an international team of researchers have found superlubricity in a
few layers of graphene -- a concept where friction vanishes or very nearly
vanishes. The experts also found that a few layers of hexagonal boron nitride
(h-BN) are as strong as diamond but are more flexible, cheaper and lighter.
The findings, which have been reported in Nature Communications,
reveal that the h-BN layers form the strongest thin insulator available
globally and the unique qualities of the material could be used to create
flexible and almost unbreakable smart devices, as well as scratch-proof paint
for cars.
Dr Santos explains: "We have all at some point in life stepped on a
slippery surface where we have to steady our balance so that we don't fall. In
most cases, liquid such as water or oil is the cause and this slippery state is
what we describe as superlubricity -- there is basically no friction on a
surface.
"In graphene, this superlubricity state comes from atomic orbitals
that compose carbon atoms. Normally, to generate friction some orbitals must
overlap and heat, or some energy, must be released. Surprisingly, our research
shows that graphene does not require this process, it just spontaneously slides
on top of other layers but does not release heat. This means that graphene,
which is 300 times stronger than steel, becomes mechanically weaker and can
easily break."
The research findings around the h-BN layers show that its mechanical
properties are similar to diamond but are much cheaper, more flexible and
lighter. It can easily be integrated in tiny electronic circuits or to
reinforce structures as it is more robust against shocks or mechanical stress.
----Our key finding is that bilayer graphene develops a super-lubricity state where no heating is generated as the layers slide on top of each other. Just a few materials have these features and it looks like graphene has joined this exclusive club. During this process, we also discovered that h-BN, a common lubricant used in several automotive and industrial applications, developed a mechanical strength in a few layers. These are as strong as diamond, measured in terms of a quantity called Young modulus. This is a truly ground-breaking finding as even an insulator with thin layers could not keep its Young modulus at such high magnitudes.
"There are several possibilities for application of our discoveries
which could have a positive impact in the real world. We are looking at a
timeline of around five to ten years to transform the discoveries into real
products but we could see benefits such as material reinforcement to mixture in
solutions such as ink for paint, which would give further strength against
corrosion and could potentially mean scratch-proof cars in future.
"This stretchy material could also be used in electronic devices
and motor engines to make friction very low, as no heat is released."
More
“40 Wall Street actually was
the second-tallest building in downtown Manhattan…And now it’s the
tallest.”
Donald J. Trump.
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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