Baltic Dry Index. 1411 +06 Brent Crude 55.75
We hold these
truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal; that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness outside of Spain.”
With grateful thanks to the writers
of the US Declaration of Independence.
It is the Catalans
big day. Later today the Catalan Prime Minister gets to address the Cats
Parliament, and gets to tell the world Up or Down on Catalan independence from
Spain. Having backed himself and
Catalonia into a corner, any climbdown on independence will be of epic
proportions, but the Catalan government doesn’t seem to have made any
preparations for Catalonian independence. What currency will they use? What
central bank? What army, and other related security forces. What will the
timetable be for the split. Will they want to join the EU, UN, NATO, Shengen?
What if Spain refuses to negotiate?
With Catalonia
accounting for 20 percent of Spain’s GDP and taxes, Spain’s already wobbly
economy faces a massive hit. Whatever the decision later today, both Spain and
Catalonia will become far less attractive places to invest. Outside of the ECB,
who will want to buy Spain’s already iffy bonds?
Below, was it all
just a gigantic mistake?
“I have
not yet begun to fight.”
John Paul Jones
October 9, 2017 / 10:11 AM /
Updated 6 hours ago
Catalan leader under pressure to drop independence
BARCELONA/MADRID (Reuters) - Catalonia’s secessionist leader faced increased pressure on Monday to abandon plans to declare independence from Spain, with France and Germany expressing support for the country’s unity.
The Madrid government, grappling with Spain’s biggest
political crisis since an attempted military coup in 1981, said it would
respond immediately to any such unilateral declaration.
A week after a vote on independence which the government did
its utmost to thwart, the tension also took its toll on the business climate of
Spain’s wealthiest region.
Three more Catalonia-based companies joined a business
exodus from the region that has gathered steam since the Oct. 1 referendum.
Property group Inmobiliaria Colonial (COL.MC)
and infrastructure firm Abertis (ABE.MC)
both decided to relocate their head offices to Madrid and telecoms firm Cellnex
(CLNX.MC)
said it would do the same for as long as political uncertainty in Catalonia
continued.
Publishing house Grupo Planeta said it would move its
registered office from Barcelona to Madrid if the Catalan parliament
unilaterally declared independence.
Spain’s finance minister said it was the Catalan
government’s fault the companies were leaving.
Regional leader Carles Puigdemont is due to address the
regional parliament on Tuesday afternoon and Madrid is worried it will vote for
a unilateral declaration of independence.
Catalan officials say people voted overwhelmingly for
secession in the Oct. 1 referendum, which had been declared illegal by the
government. Some 900 people were injured on polling day when police fired
rubber bullets and stormed crowds with truncheons to disrupt the voting.
The issue has deeply divided the northeastern region as well
as the Spanish nation. Hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated against
breaking away in Barcelona at the weekend. They say the referendum did not show
the true will of the region because those who want to stay in Spain mainly
boycotted it.
Buoyed
by the show of support, Spanish Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saenz de
Santamaría said on Monday: “I‘m calling on the sensible people in the Catalan
government ... don’t jump off the edge because you’ll take the people with
you.”
Catalans Face Day of Reckoning Over Independence
By Angeline Benoit, Esteban Duarte, and Maria Tadeo
The Catalan government’s determination to break from Spain faces its
moment of truth, as the regional parliament meets to consider a declaration of
independence that risks an ironclad backlash from Madrid, the threat of
economic meltdown and international isolation.
Catalan President Carles Puigdemont is due to address lawmakers in
Barcelona at 6 p.m. on Tuesday on the outcome of the Oct. 1 referendum ruled
illegal by the Spanish courts. The Catalan administration says voters defied
police violence to deliver a resounding “Yes” to independence that cannot be
ignored; Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has dismissed the ballot as meaningless
and vowed to defend the unity of Spain using all means at his disposal.
With uncertainty over the outcome of the worst political crisis since
the death of the dictator Francisco Franco, attention will focus on the form of
words used by Puigdemont. Unless he backs away from a
unilateral independence declaration, Rajoy has made clear that Catalonia
risks intervention by security forces and the reassertion of central government
control.
“This is going to be a historical day regardless of the consequences,”
Alejandro Quiroga, professor of Spanish history at the University of Newcastle,
England, said in a telephone interview. “The tension has reached such a point
that something has to happen and if the Catalan government wants to declare
independence, now is the best time, while it’s still got international
attention.”
----Catalan secessionists have opened a second-front in their campaign against the government in Madrid, reaching out to the opposition Socialists with an offer to forge a coalition to oust Rajoy, according to two people with knowledge of the backroom efforts.
While the Catalan groups pushing the plan have already persuaded the populist Podemos party to back it, the Socialists have so far refused to sign up, the people said, asking not to be named discussing private conversations.
The
Catalans are trying to bring officials in Madrid to the negotiating
table. Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez has called for dialogue to calm a
situation that saw police officers beating would-be voters at makeshift polling
stations, but Rajoy and his minority administration have refused to engage in
talks with the Catalan leaders until they accept the authority of the Spanish
courts. They warn of economic disaster if Catalonia attempts to break away.
“It’s
so terrible a scenario the idea of independence, that everything won’t work
from the single moment from which independence is declared,” Spanish
Energy Minister Alvaro Nadal said in a Bloomberg Television interview on
Monday. “There will be a problem in the energy sector, there will be a problem
in the telecom sector, in the financial sector of course.”
More
Elsewhere life
bubbled on as normal in the markets. Complacency still rules, the central
banksters have everyone’s backs covered. President Trump is a blowhard but he’s
not going to attack North Korea. Who cares if Puerto Rico has no electric power
or goes bust? Now OPEC wants to make a deal with US frackers. Good luck with
that. US fracker’s have mountain’s of debt to service, plus their exports are
taking market share from OPEC and friends. What could possibly go wrong?
October 10, 2017 / 1:57 AM /
Updated 2 hours ago
Asian shares shrug off Wall Street weakness, dollar steadies
TOKYO (Reuters) - Asian shares rose on Tuesday, shrugging off modest losses on Wall Street, while expectations of another U.S. interest rate increase this year continued to underpin the dollar.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan
.MIAPJ0000PUS was up 0.5 percent.
Japan's Nikkei stock index .N225
reversed early losses and gained 0.4 percent, as markets reopened after a
public holiday on Monday.
Korean shares .KS11
rallied 2 percent on their first day of trading this month, on expectations
that tensions with Pyongyang could ease, and as tech shares led by Samsung
Electronics Co Ltd (005930.KS)
caught up with gains made by global stock markets after a long break.
Seoul markets were closed last week and on Monday for public
holidays.
“Global stock markets marked strong gains while Seoul
markets were off, and the price of semiconductors continued to rally,” said Lee
Seung-woo, a stock analyst at Eugene Investment & Securities.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in a phone call on Monday that an escalation of tensions on the Korean peninsula is unacceptable.
Russia and China both called for restraint on North Korea on
Monday after U.S. President Donald Trump warned over the weekend that “only one
thing will work” in dealing with Pyongyang, hinting that military action was on
his mind.
“We are expecting a December Fed rate hike, so we are
expecting the trend to be dollar strength and yen depreciation, though whenever
North Korean risks rise, that pushes down the dollar,” said Harumi Taguchi,
principal economist at IHS Markit in Tokyo.
Interest rate futures are now pricing in nearly a 90 percent
chance that the U.S. Federal Reserve will rise rates again in December.
More
October 10, 2017 / 5:51 AM /
Updated 6 minutes ago
OPEC Secretary General urges U.S. shale oil producers to help cap global supply
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - OPEC’s Secretary General Mohammed Barkindo on
Tuesday called on U.S. shale oil producers to help curtail global oil supply,
warning extraordinary measures might be needed next year to sustain the
rebalanced market in the medium to long term.
“We urge our friends, in the shale basins of North America to take this
shared responsibility with all seriousness it deserves, as one of the key
lessons learnt from the current unique supply-driven cycle,” said Barkindo.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries official’s
comments came during a speech delivered at a conference.
We close for the day with
America, where wild fires in California are raging out of control.
Wildfires deal devastating blow to wine, tourism industries in California’s famed Wine Country
Published: Oct 9, 2017 11:47 p.m. ET
At least 10 killed, more than 1,500 buildings burned, many wineries threatened by flames
At least 15 wildfires raged across Northern California on Tuesday,
burning at least 73,000 acres and destroying at least 1,500 buildings in the
region’s famed Wine Country.
Ten people have been confirmed killed, more than 100 reported injured
and tens of thousands were evacuated from their homes due to the wind-whipped
flames. As many as 50 people were reported missing. Officials expect the toll,
both in deaths and property damage, to rise dramatically. As of Monday night,
none of the fires was under even limited containment. California Gov. Jerry
Brown declared a state of emergency as fire crews rushed to the area.
The most damaging blaze appeared to be the Tubbs Fire, which burned more
than 25,000 acres, jumped busy Highway 101 and destroyed entire neighborhoods
in northern Santa Rosa, a city of about 175,000 about an hour north of San
Francisco.
While damage is still being assessed, the fires — which mostly affected Napa and Sonoma counties — are expected to have a devastating effect on the region’s two major industries: Wine and tourism.
A number of major hotels have burned, including the Fountaingrove Inn and Hilton Sonoma Wine Country in Santa Rosa. The Silverado Resort and Spa in Napa County, which hosted a PGA golf tournament over the weekend, was evacuated overnight as flames approached. The resort tweeted Monday that it was still intact and its guests were all safely evacuated.
On
Monday afternoon, flames from the Atlas Fire, which had burned at least 25,000
acres, jumped Napa’s famed Silverado Trail, a thoroughfare lined by a number of
famous wineries.
While
it was unclear how many Silverado Trail wineries had been damaged, at least two
— Signorello Estates and William
Hill Estate Winery — appeared to be destroyed. Social media posts showed
flames dangerously close to Chimney
Rock and Stag’s Leap wineries in Napa. Yountville’s famed restaurant
The French Laundry was closed Monday, but apparently safe for the moment. About
30 vineyard workers on Atlas Peak had to be rescued Sunday night by helicopter
as flames cut off escape routes.
In neighboring Sonoma County, fires were closing in on a number of major wineries lining Highway 12 between Sonoma and Santa Rosa, including Chateau St. Jean, Kenwood, Kunde and B.R. Cohn.
“It looks like a bombing run,” winemaker Joe Nielsen told the San Francisco Chronicle after viewing the remains of Donelan Family Wines. “Just chimneys and burnt out cars and cooked trees.”
Consumers nationwide will likely feel the effects of these wildfires for years to come. The fires hit during the grape harvest season, and a number of major vineyards either burned or are threatened, potentially causing years-long shortages of wine grapes. The Santa Rosa Press Democrat reported that while 75% of the region’s grapes have already been picked, most of the cabernet sauvignon and merlot crop was still on the vines.
California produces about 85% of U.S. wine, and Napa and Sonoma counties produce much of the country’s premium wines. California’s wine sales were valued at $34.1 billion in 2016.
More
“They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable
to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it
be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed,
and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather
strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual
resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of
hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak
if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in
our power.”
Patrick Henry
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.
Today, so you really want to ban the internal combustion engine from
cars and trucks? Go ahead, make someone’s day.
Motor Mouth: More inconvenient truths on banning gas engines
High-speed EV recharging stations on highways sound great – until you hear how much they would cost
by
David Booth | October 6, 2017
Anyone
who tells you that the electric car in your future will be just as convenient
as the gasoline-fueled vehicle you’re currently driving is lying. If not
overtly, then at least by omission. Nor can they plead ignorance, the
calculations required to reach this conclusion hardly the stuff of graduate-level
physics. Indeed, judging from the experts I’ve spoken with, plenty have been
the warnings proffered to the politicians, policy makers and futurists
advocating an all-battery-powered future.
----Instead, the problem for our
all-electric future (now California is said to be following France and
England’s banning of the internal combustion engine) is power transmission.
More specifically, as one industry expert summed up the situation, “the
bottleneck [clouding the future of the electric vehicle] is local
distribution.” That bottleneck is going to be the highway service stations that
will be required to service our 300 million now-electric cars for longer trips
when we don’t have access to the convenience of our home chargers.
Consider the following scenario: last Labour Day weekend, like so many
holiday weekends, pretty much every fuel pump on the side of Ontario’s 401 was,
er, pumping non-stop. That, for anyone thinking of following along with my
calculus, is a station every 80 kilometres, each with up to 16 pumps. More
importantly, each of those is capable of pumping about 30 litres of gasoline in
a minute.
In other words, discounting credit card transaction and unscrewing of
gas cap, even the most ardent
gas-guzzler can take in enough fossil fuel for
500 kilometres of driving in about two minutes.
But consider this: an EV that can guarantee 500 klicks requires at least
100 kilowatt-hours of battery. Do the math and a similar two-minute recharge
would require three megawatts. That, for those who don’t have an electrical
engineering degree, is 3,000 kilowatts.
Now for some perspective: current fast chargers boast about 50kW. Yes,
essentially 1/60th of the charging capacity required to match the refueling
rate of an everyday gas-powered car. If you’re reaching for your calculator,
I’ll save you the trouble: Serving the same number of cars could theoretically
require as many as 960 charging stations (and they’d still have to sit there
for two hours to fully charge).
But isn’t Porsche promising a 20-minute charge for 400 kilometres of
range, you ask? Doesn’t that mean we’ll soon see EVs capable of matching those
two-minute recharges?
Well, yes, Porsche is making just such a promise. Unfortunately,
however, that would seem to be the practical limit of how fast we’re going to
be able to recharge these electrical behemoths. Indeed, The 350kW rechargers
required for those promised 20-minute refueling is, according to the experts I
spoke with, likely the upper limit of the equipment we humans will ever be allowed
to handle. In fact, these 350kW rechargers generate so much heat, their
amperage is so incredibly high, that the cables carrying all that current need
to be liquid cooled. And anything that can recharge our batteries faster than
20 minutes will have to be automated, i.e., phantasmagorically expensive.
How expensive? As I mentioned, you’ll need about 60 50kW rechargers to
replace one fuel pump; about eight of the 350kW variety for every pump. That,
as I mentioned, would mean 960 of the low-powered 50kW units at each rest stop
and 128 of the high-tech 350kW versions. Have I mentioned that even those
low-powered 50kW fast chargers cost about $40,000 apiece? One of those
faster-charging 350kW items? About two hundred large. Faster-charging automated
versions would cost upward of a half-million each.
Even a more conservative estimate taxes one’s calculator. Factoring in
the aforementioned credit card transaction and washing of windshield that might
extend gasoline refueling to five minutes, it would still require 600 of those
50kW chargers for a roadside station to service the 2,000 cars those gas pumps
could service in a busy 12-hour period. Even that conservative estimate would
require a $24-million investment just for the cheapest rechargers.
They’d
also need about 30 megawatts of power. For those thinking that’s a sh%$-load of
electricity, you’re right. Thirty megawatts, for perspective, is enough to
power about 20,000 homes. In other words, powering these service stations of
the future will require about the same amount of electricity as a city of
75,000. Oh, and by the way, all that electricity, unlike off-hour home
recharging, happens during peak-usage daylight hours.
More. Much more.
“If there must be
trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.”
Tom Paine
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?
Rural Rwanda is home to a pioneering new solar power idea.
By Rachel Nuwer 9 October 2017
Fidel
Mberabagabo lives down a dirt path in a modest, hand-built mud and concrete
home surrounded on either side by hazy, gently cresting green hills. Like most
people in this part of Rwanda’s rural Rwamagana district, he is a farmer. Also
like them, finances are strained; he never knows just how much he will make in
a given month. But Mberabagabo’s life does now differ from that of many of his
neighbours in one important way: he has electricity.
In the developed world, people take for granted that light bulbs will turn on with the flick of a switch; that they can access unlimited power to charge copious devices; and that their well-stocked fridges and artificially cooled and heated homes will maintain just the right temperature.
But as anyone who has weathered the aftermath of a hurricane or found themselves in the midst of a major blackout will attest, if these precious amenities are taken away, life largely comes to a halt.
Yet for all our dependency on power, some 1.2 billion people around the world – 16% of the global population – do not have access to it at all.
Back in Rwanda, for example, less than 20% of the population live in homes that enjoy electricity – a fact that stymies development and reinforces poverty. It’s a huge problem that defines many of the problems we face in the 21st Century.
To some, however, such statistics ring not of hopelessness, but of opportunity.
“This is such an untapped market,” says Laurent Van Houcke, chief operations officer of BBOXX, a London-based company that brings off-grid energy to the developing world. “There are massive opportunities for entrepreneurship, as well as great possibilities for impacting lives.”
For Van Houcke and his colleagues, rural residents like Mberabagabo who lack electricity are not charity cases, but bona fide customers.
Their solution: a for-profit company that manufactures, installs and affordably loans out sturdy, hyper-efficient solar-powered chargers. In just four years, they have brought power to around 130,000 homes and businesses in 35 countries – by 2020, they're aiming for more than a million.
----In summer 2009, when they flew into Kigali, Rwanda’s friendly, laid-back capital, they could clearly see the challenge the country faced. The hilly city’s numerous lookout points afforded sweeping views of attractive buildings painted in shades of cream and yellow, interspersed with parks and a few high rises. But after sundown, a previously invisible divider revealed itself: the light abruptly stopped outside of the capital’s tight core.
How would Rwanda ever realise its goal of becoming “the Singapore of
Africa” if so many of its citizens still lacked access to electricity?
Rather than stay in Kigali, they spent the majority of their time living
and working in a rural Rwandan community of around 200 households. As they
explored various ways to get power to their new neighbours, they realised that
the grid will never supply those in Rwanda and beyond who currently lack
electricity: such communities are dispersed over immense areas, and are too
poor to afford such extensive infrastructure.
That’s when they arrived at a grand idea: they concluded that Africa
will largely bypass the grid and leapfrog over Europe and North America
straight into solar – just as it did in skipping landlines, a rarity in rural
Africa, in favour of cell phones.
Encouragingly, their field investigations also revealed that many
Africans in these communities were completely open to the idea of paying for
solar energy.
More
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished September
DJIA: 22,405 +223 Up. NASDAQ: 6,496 +274 Up. SP500: 2,519 +179 Up.
Hi,
ReplyDeleteThe Madrid government, grappling with Spain’s biggest political crisis since an attempted military coup in 1981, said it would respond immediately to any such unilateral declaration.The Catalans are trying to bring officials in Madrid to the negotiating table. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in a phone call on Monday that an escalation of tensions on the Korean peninsula is unacceptable. Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez has called for dialogue to calm a situation that saw police officers beating .Thanks for sharing your post.....
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