Baltic Dry Index. 121 +28 Brent Crude 53.13
“It is hard for us, without being flippant, to even see a scenario
within any kind of realm of reason that would see us losing one dollar in any
of those [Credit Default Swaps] transactions.”
Joseph J. Cassano, a former A.I.G. executive, August 2007, on Credit
Default Swaps that wiped out A.I.G in 2008.
Some days it doesn’t pay to get out of bed,
and today seems like one of them. Texas and Louisiana are still struggling to
get back to something closer to normal. North Korea seems to be preparing to
fire another ICBM. Russia and China say no more NK sanctions. Category 5
hurricane Irma is about to hit the Leeward Islands, on a track taking it
towards the Florida Keys. Behind it comes another tropical storm, although it’s
far too early to know where its headed. The US airline sector is on a flight
path to a crash landing.
The EUSSR can’t get its act together
negotiating a Brexit trade deal, hung up instead on its demand for Danegeld. Europe
will lose far more than GB in any car crash of a return to duties and tariffs.
The UK seems stuck between an incompetent dithering Conservative government, or
electing the New Communist Labour Party, whose role models are Cuba and
Venezuela. The US party political fight over raising the debt ceiling is just
about to get underway lunatic Washington. Just as well I suppose, that we have
reached the Harvest Full Moon.
Below, suddenly, all seem to agree it’s risk
off.
“The problem with fiat money is that it rewards the minority that can handle money, but fools the generation that has worked and saved money.”
“Adam Smith” aka George Goodman.
September 6, 2017 / 1:38 AM
Asia stocks down and dollar on defensive, hit by risk aversion
TOKYO (Reuters) - Asian stocks on Wednesday tracked Wall Street’s slide overnight while the dollar was on the defensive with tensions in the Korean Peninsula showing few signs of abating.MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS fell 0.7 percent.
Japan's Nikkei .N225 stooped to a four-month low and was last down 0.3 percent. Australian stocks lost 0.6 percent.
Shanghai .SSEC dropped 0.4 percent while Hong Kong's Hang Seng .HSI retreated 1 percent.
South Korea's KOSPI .KS11 was down 0.3 percent, with auto stocks dropping on concerns about their sales in China. The index has fallen the past four days.
Shares in South Korea are “still closely eying further risks from the North,” said Rhoo Yong-seok, a stock analyst at KB Securities in Seoul.
Geopolitical tensions continued to simmer following North Korea’s biggest-ever nuclear test on Sunday. Pyongyang is ready to send “more gift packages” to the United States, one of its top diplomats said on Tuesday.
Against such a backdrop, U.S. stocks sank overnight, with the S&P 500 .SPX stumbling to its biggest single-day loss in about three weeks. [.N]
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Stocks Fall, Bonds Rally Amid Korea, Irma Threats: Markets Wrap
By Andrew Dunn
4 September 2017, 23:37 GMT+1 5 September 2017, 21:19 GMT+1
U.S. stocks slipped while Treasuries rallied the most in 10 months
as tensions with North Korea mounted and another Atlantic hurricane
threatened to make landfall.The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 234 points at the start of a week packed with central-bank decisions, Federal Reserve speakers and economic data that will help illuminate the path of the global economy. The S&P 500 Index dropped the most since Aug. 17, ending a six-day rally. Ten-year Treasuries climbed amid lingering unease over North Korean plans for a ballistic missile launch, while Hurricane Irma threatened a region already dealing with the devastation from Harvey.
West Texas intermediate crude climbed for a third day and
copper extended its rally. Gold also rose. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index dropped
slightly as the euro and yen gained against the dollar. The greenback declined
amid dovish comments
from Fed Governor Lael Brainard. Buyers of four-week Treasury bills demanded
the highest yields since 2008 in Tuesday’s auction as the deadline to raise the
U.S. debt ceiling neared.
Big economic news still awaits. Mario Draghi may give more
clarity on paring the European Central Bank’s bond-buying program when he
speaks after a rates decision on Thursday. U.S. durable-goods figures, the
trade balance, unemployment claims, and the release of the Fed’s Beige Book
will add to the global data mix after a purchasing managers’ index Tuesday
indicated the euro area is poised for the fastest economic expansion in a
decade.
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The Five Biggest Airlines Plunged 7.5% in August, Wiping Out $10 Billion in Market Value
By Mary Schlangenstein and Michael Sasso
5 September 2017, 10:00 GMT+1 5 September 2017, 22:31 GMT+1
U.S. airline investors, already absorbing the worst monthly stock
performance in a year, are bracing for more disappointment.A Standard & Poor’s index of the five biggest U.S. airlines plunged about 7.5 percent in August, wiping out about $10 billion in market value. Shares fell as a price war that started between United Continental Holdings Inc. and heavy discounters spread to more carriers and markets.
Analysts see more pain ahead. Three carriers, led by Delta Air Lines Inc., on Tuesday cut third-quarter guidance for revenue from each seat flown a mile, a closely watched gauge of pricing power known as unit revenue. UBS Group AG predicts the latest skirmish will force others to do the same. The trend is worrisome because the major airlines have been boasting that industry consolidation would lead to steadier profits and smoother shareholder returns, not repeated fare battles with low-cost rivals.
“We’ve taken it on the chin the last 30, 45 days, because there’s no question United started cutting fares to ward off Spirit, Frontier, whoever, and I guess it’s spread among all the airlines cutting fares,” said Gary Bradshaw, a portfolio manager at Hodges Capital Management in Dallas, which owns stakes in the major airlines. “It happened overnight almost.”
For more on the latest airline price war, click here
Hurricane Harvey, which shuttered Houston’s airports for several days last week, will be another drag on earnings because of flight cancellations and a spike in jet-fuel prices.
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Irma Has Florida Bracing for Atlantic's Most Powerful Storm Yet
By Brian K Sullivan
5 September 2017, 10:30 GMT+1 6 September 2017, 02:06 GMT+1
Hurricane Irma, the most powerful storm to form in the open Atlantic Ocean, was barreling toward Puerto Rico late Tuesday on a path that may bring it ashore in Florida and destroy so much property that damages may surpass Hurricane Katrina.
Irma has sent cruise lines and insurance stocks plunging, with Barclays Plc estimating insured losses in a worst-case scenario at $130 billion. Natural gas slid on speculation that the storm will wipe out demand for the power-plant fuel, and orange and cotton futures surged on potential crop damage.
Irma comes less than two weeks after Hurricane Harvey smashed ashore in Texas, knocking offline almost a quarter of U.S. oil refining capacity and causing widespread damage, power outages and flooding. While the latest models show the latest storm veering away from gas and oil platforms off the coast of Texas and Louisiana, sparing Houston more devastation, it threatens to wreak havoc upon the Caribbean islands and Florida.
Irma “is the kind of storm where you get thousands of lives lost,” said Chuck Watson, a Savannah, Georgia-based disaster modeler with Enki Research. “This is not going to be the big slow-motion flood like Harvey -- this is a real, honest-to-God hurricane.”
Irma’s top winds were 185 miles (300 kilometers) an hour late Tuesday, making the system a Category 5, the highest measure on the five-step Saffir Simpson scale. It’s on track to strike or graze Caribbean islands from Antigua to Puerto Rico through Wednesday, and Cuba by Saturday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said in an advisory at about 8 p.m. New York time.
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"Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the 'hidden' confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights."
Alan Greenspan
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.
With a potential white hot shooting war about to break out on the Korean
peninsula, China and Russia seem to have lost patience with America. Both China
and Russia have land borders with North Korea, America doesn’t. One simple
misstep as in 1914, and we can all too easily get World War Three.
Putin Echoes China in Rejecting Tougher North Korea Sanctions
By Henry Meyer and Ilya Arkhipov
5 September 2017, 08:31 GMT+1 5 September 2017, 10:51 GMT+1
Russian President Vladimir Putin again rejected U.S. calls for new
sanctions against North Korea after its sixth and most powerful nuclear test,
echoing China’s resistance to more punitive measures to pressure Pyongyang into
abandoning its atomic and missile programs.
The Russian leader criticized sanctions as “useless and ineffective,”
instead urging the international community to offer security guarantees to
North Korea.
“They’ll eat grass, but they won’t abandon their program unless they
feel secure,” he told reporters Tuesday at an emerging markets summit in
Xiamen, China, which was hosted by his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, said Monday the Trump administration would seek the strongest possible sanctions against Kim Jong Un’s regime. Kim was “begging for war” after testing what he claimed was a hydrogen bomb, she said after a meeting of the UN Security Council.
Haley said the U.S. would circulate new draft sanctions and wants the Security Council to vote on them Sept. 11.
Japan is singing the same tune as the U.S., with Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso on Tuesday calling for additional measures. "There’s no chance of talks progressing without increasing pressure," he told reporters in Tokyo.
The standoff between North Korea and the U.S. has become the most dangerous foreign crisis facing President Donald Trump, as the isolated Communist state accelerates its program to develop weapons of mass destruction.
Putin condemned what he described as a policy of whipping up war hysteria, which he said could lead to a “global catastrophe and a huge number” of human casualties. “There’s no other path except for a peaceful, diplomatic resolution of the North Korean nuclear problem,” he said.
Oil Pressure
Even before North Korea detonated its most powerful nuclear bomb on Sunday, Japan was calling for moves to cut off its oil supply. Afterward, Trump threatened to halt all trade with any country that does business with Kim Jong Un’s regime. China, which supplies most of its food and fuel, called the warning “unacceptable.”Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang batted off a question at a briefing in Beijing on whether his nation would consider limiting oil shipments to North Korea.
“The actions and reactions of the Security Council will depend on the conclusions reached through debate by its members,” Geng said, according to an official transcript. “China will promote denuclearization and the maintenance of stability on the peninsula, and promote solving problems on the peninsula through dialogue and consultation.”
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September 5, 2017 / 11:19 AM
North Korea warns of 'more gift packages' for U.S.
GENEVA (Reuters) - Amid international uproar over North Korea’s latest
and biggest nuclear weapons test, one of its top diplomats said on Tuesday it
was ready to send “more gift packages” to the United States.
Han Tae Song, ambassador of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
(DPRK) to the U.N. in Geneva, was addressing the U.N.-sponsored Conference on
Disarmament two days after his country detonated its sixth nuclear test
explosion.
“I am proud of saying that just two days ago on the 3rd of September,
DPRK successfully carried out a hydrogen bomb test for intercontinental
ballistic rocket under its plan for building a strategic nuclear force,” Han
told the Geneva forum.
“The recent self-defence measures by my country, DPRK, are a ‘gift
package’ addressed to none other than the U.S.,” Han said.
“The U.S. will receive more ‘gift packages’ from my country as long as
its relies on reckless provocations and futile attempts to put pressure on the
DPRK,” he added without elaborating.
Military measures being taken by North Korea were “an exercise of
restraint and justified self-defence right” to counter “the ever-growing and
decade-long U.S. nuclear threat and hostile policy aimed at isolating my country”.
“Pressure or sanctions will never work on my country,” Han declared,
adding: “The DPRK will never under any circumstances put its nuclear deterrence
on the negotiating table.”
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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?
South Derbyshire Council approves 40MW ‘Energy Barn’ for Green Hedge
Published: 4 Sep 2017, 13:32
Green Hedge, a UK renewable energy developer that has diversified into
battery energy storage systems, has had an application for a 40MW project
approved by local authorities in Derbyshire.Green Hedge, which has developed 200MW of renewables in Britain to date, mainly large-scale solar PV, netted £30 million of funding towards battery storage projects from investor Zouk Capital in July. By that time, through a subsidiary company, Green Hedge Energy 2 Barn Ltd, the company had already in late May applied to South Derbyshire District Council, in the Midlands, for permission to construct the project.
According to the planning applications, the project would be a “40MW energy storage scheme (sui generis - ‘standalone’) to provide back up electricity services to the grid for a period of 25 years from the date of commission” of the battery storage project. The planned development is at Breach Farm, in Swadlincote, Derbyshire.
The area where the plant is to be built used to be coal-country. Indeed, the council warns that there may be “unrecorded coal mining hazards” in the vicinity of the plant. In contrast, a lack of hazardous waste, effluent or sewage expected from the energy storage facility, including a lack of noise, helped win the application, it seems. The dozens of blueprints and documents sent in to South Derbyshire Council make for interesting reading.
Green Hedge to retain ownership of future 'Energy Barn' projects
When announcing Zouk Capital’s £30 million investment back in July, Green Hedge said the money would be used to fuel expansion of the developer’s pipeline of ‘Energy Barns’, the brand name it has given to its large-scale lithium-ion battery energy storage projects, enclosed in steel-framed barns. At the moment, their chief purpose will be to provide frequency regulation services to UK transmission network operator (TNO) National Grid and bid into the capacity market, the mechanism for ensuring the network remains stable and ‘the lights stay on’ in Britain.
Having sold four 10MW systems to commercial energy solutions provider Anesco following a co-development deal in 2016, each backed with 15-year contracts in National Grid’s capacity market, Green Hedge said that going forward it expects to retain energy storage assets on its balance sheet, rather than sell them on.
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Comrade Corbyn’s New
Communist Labour Party: "You sell us your vote. We sell you your dreams.”
Delivery aspirational. Lying to the many to elect the few.
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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