Baltic Dry Index. 1555 -18 Brent Crude 59.28
If it
Sounds Too Good to Be True, it Probably Is
Wall Street Adage.
Today, our 21st
century mega-bubble of all time. On the Great Nixonian Error (GNE) of fiat
money that is now devouring western society, splitting off “wealth” from the
masses and endowing prosperity increasingly only on the one percent, we have
entered a hucksters galore world, of endless financialised scams, scripted
markets, doctored financial figures, bail-outs for the banksters, bail-ins for
the depositors and junior bondholders, Clinton Foundations, central banksters
who long ago became entrapped in endless “emergency measures” of ZIRP, NIRP,
and the electronic issuance of “money” from thin air.
From passive
investing ETFs that track the High Frequency Trading, illegal-but-tolerated,
front running, theft algos, to Bitcoin and its imitators, that attempt to provide a private
non-government issued “money” insurance hedge against the coming GNE crash. But
are they real, or as JP Morgan’s CEO claims, a fraud?
In 2017, nine years
on from the near collapse via fraud of the global financial system, we are
still not out of the problem. All we currently have is rigged markets, massive increasing unrepayable debt, asset inflation
in the form of gargantuan bubbles, massive and increasing polarisation, rising
social instability, rising and increasing corporate scandals, unchecked by the
regulatory regimes supposedly policing them.
How it all ends, everyone
knows, hence all of the rush to build scam upon scam now, lest the hucksters
miss out. When it all ends and what triggers it, nobody knows, but to this old
dinosaur market and central bankster watcher, the end seems nigh. Collectively,
at breakneck speed, and in our globalised world, we all seem to have run out of
road and talent, at the same time, which is why, I suspect, China has opted to
go for strongman Chairman Xi Mao Zedong II. They soon may need the speed and
decision advantages, a strong single leader provides, to say nothing of the
Robespierre enforcement tendencies.
Below, more on the
one way street to universal prosperity. Why metal bash, or flip hamburgers to
prosperity the hard way, When it’s so easy to just ride the coattail’s of all
the central bankster’s easy money speculative wealth and prosperity?
Poverty is an
anomaly to rich people; it is very difficult to make out why people who want
dinner do not ring the bell.
Walter Bagehot.
Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Intel find billions more in profit
Published: Oct 26, 2017 10:25 p.m. ET
Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Intel increased profits by more than $2 billion and revenue by $19 billion in just one year
Technology companies have been dominating the news and investors’ attention, and a series of earnings reports Thursday afternoon showed why.Four of the most valuable tech companies in the world—Amazon.com Inc. AMZN, -0.05% , Google parent company Alphabet Inc. GOOGL, +0.00% GOOG, -0.08% , Microsoft Corp. MSFT, +0.17% and Intel Corp. INTC, +1.40% — destroyed expectations for profit and revenue in third-quarter reports Thursday afternoon, collectively bringing in about $2.2 billion more profit and $19 billion more revenue than in the same quarter a year ago. Stock in those four companies jumped across the board in late trading, which would make them worth even more than the combined market cap of nearly $2 trillion they enjoyed at the end of Thursday’s trading session.
Alphabet
had perhaps the most astounding beat of the afternoon, as profit rose $1.12
billion and revenue $9.5 billion from a year before. The
Google parent company reported third-quarter net income of $6.73 billion,
or $9.57 a share, on revenue of $27.8 billion. That performance destroyed
forecasts, as analysts on average expected Alphabet to report earnings of $8.31
a share on revenue of $26.9 billion. In a conference call, Alphabet Chief
Financial Officer Ruth Porat credited mobile search, the Google Cloud Platform
and Google’s expanded hardware efforts with boosting the company, as well as
YouTube. The company’s stock rise in late trading put it close to a $700
billion market cap, which would
make it only the second company in U.S. history to achieve that mark, after
Apple Inc. AAPL, +0.64%
More
October 26, 2017 / 10:12 AM
On front page of China's flagship paper, Xi gets Mao-like prominence
BEIJING
(Reuters) - The ruling Communist Party’s flagship newspaper on Thursday
provided more evidence that President Xi Jinping should be regarded as China’s
most powerful leader since Mao Zedong after this week’s party congress.
Xi’s official portrait dominated the People’s Daily’s front page report
on the unveiling of the party’s new top leadership. Below that was a smaller
group photograph of the new top leadership - the seven members of the Politburo
Standing Committee including Xi.
It is a stark departure from recent precedent, with Mao Zedong the last
leader to be granted such status on the front page after the party conclave -
which is held once every five years.
The People’s Daily did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Since Deng Xiaoping introduced collective leadership three decades ago
to ward off the rise of another Mao-like cult of personality, the official
portraits of all newly-selected Politburo Standing Committee members have been
presented together on the front page in a grid.
The portrait of the party’s top leader, the general secretary, is
usually only slightly more prominent; reflecting his position as the first
among equals.
Xi is the party’s general secretary, chairman of the Central Military
Commission, and president of the country.
In Thursday’s People’s Daily, the portraits and biographical information
of the six other standing committee members - Li Keqiang, Li Zhanshu, Wang
Yang, Wang Huning, Zhao Leji and Han Zheng - were relegated to the inside
pages.
“That’s definitely the first time since Mao,” said Ryan Manuel, a China
expert at the University of Hong Kong, referring to Xi’s oversized portrait on
the front of the paper.
More
Stocks Extend Gain With Dollar on Profit, U.S. Tax: Markets Wrap
By Adam Haigh and Andreea Papuc
Stocks in most Asian markets followed gains in U.S. equities and the
dollar climbed to a three-month high as earnings and congressional action on
tax reform boosted confidence in the growth outlook. Australian assets took a
hit after the government lost its majority.
Japan’s equity benchmarks rose as the yen weakened and technology shares
rallied following stellar profit at Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc. that
buoyed futures on the Nasdaq 100 Stock Index. Shares also advanced in Hong Kong
and Seoul with U.S. equity-index futures. Results from Twitter Inc. and Ford
Motor Co. topped estimates, showing strength in the American economy ahead of
the first reading on gross domestic product for the third quarter.
The Aussie dollar plunged to the lowest since July and stocks
declined after the nation’s high court ruled Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby
Joyce is ineligible to remain in parliament as he was also a citizen of New
Zealand when elected, violating constitutional laws. That means Prime Minister
Malcolm Turnbull’s Liberal-National coalition government loses one-seat
majority in the lower house of parliament.
The dollar extended gains with the Bloomberg dollar spot index headed
for its sixth weekly advance in seven after the U.S. House passed a budget
resolution seen as advancing the prospects for tax reform. The British pound declined
after Andreas Dombret, Bundesbank board member for banking supervision, wrote
in Focus magazine that a “hard Brexit would be economically manageable.”
The euro fell further. European Central Bank President Mario Draghi
outlined plans to halve its monthly bond purchases to 30 billion euros ($35
billion) from 60 billion euros starting in January, but he also indicated that
zero percent interest rates could remain at current levels until “well past”
whenever it finally decides to end its quantitative
More
Long the World
By Jared Dillian October 26, 2017
I am going to melt your brain today. Vanguard has an ETF that allows you
to get long world stock markets. The ticker: VT.
This raises all sorts of interesting philosophical questions. You see,
if you are long every stock in the world, you are basically long global
economic growth. Which is weird! Who has an opinion on global economic
growth?
Well, if you got long the human race circa 1880 or so, you
have done pretty well. It is hard work being short human ingenuity. But there
have been some big drawdowns along the way! We had a huge depression in the 30s
and a die-off in the 40s. Global stock markets have certainly not gone up in a
straight line—although they are today.
I can’t see myself getting long the human race because there are pockets of humanity that I am very pessimistic about. I am pessimistic on Canada, Australia, and Sweden, with their giant credit bubbles. I am bullish on Chile, which is making positive political change. I am bullish on Bangladesh, which has incredible demographics.
What I am essentially saying is that I am smart enough to pick and choose countries that are going to outperform. Which shouldn’t be super controversial—most national economic wounds are self-inflicted. It’s not hard to distinguish between good policy and crappy policy.
So really the only reason you would buy VT and get long the world is if you think that efficient market hypothesis (EMH) applies to global stocks—the idea that you can’t beat the world market by picking and choosing countries.
I have no idea if there has been any research to support that statement. I can tell you from personal experience that I have had no trouble beating VT by making targeted investments in individual countries (usually with ETFs). But if EMH doesn’t apply to countries, why would it apply to stocks?
Short the World
I told you I was going to melt your brain. I’m going to leave that question unanswered for now (partly because I am not smart enough to answer it)—and instead talk about the audacious idea that one might actually want to short human progress.Selling short VT is the ultimate act of pessimism—you are saying that things, in the general sense, are going to get worse. Looks like most of you think that is going to be the case.
I kinda feel like doing it just to make a point.
Let’s dig deep into this. As I mentioned earlier, if you bought world
stocks in 1880 and stayed long, even throughout the nasty bits, you are pretty
happy. But in the grand scheme of all human history, that is a pretty small
sample size. We had a stretch of several hundred years that was pretty dark. We
called them the Dark Ages.
What was the defining characteristic of the Dark Ages? Unreason. The
opposite of the enlightenment. The use of physical force over mutually
beneficial trade.
Could we go back there? Maybe not all the way back. But whenever
it looks like ignorance is making new highs and trade and capitalism are making
new lows, I get anxious.
None of this is quantifiable. But you might have noticed in the last
political cycle that flat-earthers made a comeback(!) It should not come as a
surprise that the flat-earthers were not too keen on global trade.
The stock market has gone straight up under Trump, but it won’t
forever—especially if he gets his way and starts a trade war with China (and
everyone else). If you were wondering what I thought a global sell signal might
be, that is it.
Three Steps Forward, Two Steps Back
All of human progress is three steps forward, two steps back. We have had our three steps forward, and then some. I am not rooting for the Dark Ages, but we’re long overdue.For the optimists out there, by all means go out there and start lifting offers on VT. Never mind the fact that it trades at a 22 P/E. Never mind that it has all the dirtbag countries with the good countries. You just want to get long people. There you go.
In
my mind, if you buy an ETF like VT (and correspondingly, SPY) you have just
given up. Given up picking stocks, yes, but also you have given up having an
opinion on anything. It is a common misperception that stocks are going up
forever, no matter where you are in the world. Maybe not—what about Iceland? If
you dollar-cost-averaged there, you are still underwater.
Sometimes
stocks go down, and sometimes stocks go down and stay down. People are pretty
optimistic these days. Be careful.
“Greed, for lack
of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies and
cuts through to the essence of the evolutionary spirit.”
Gordon Gekko,
Wall Street.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.
Below, the New York Post blows open the Fake News
US politics story, still peddled as true by the extreme left wing, pro-Obamite,
pro-Clinton, pro-EUSSR, anti-Trump, BBC.
Below that, the WSJ does the same with Clintongate.
21st
century adage: Is that true, or did you hear it on the BBC?
Why doesn’t Hillary’s ‘dossier’ trick count as treason?
October 25, 2017
What’s
the difference between the infamous Russian dossier on Donald Trump and that
random fake-news story you saw on Facebook last year? The latter was never used
by America’s intelligence community to bolster its case for spying on American
citizens nor was it the foundation for a year’s worth of media coverage.
Then again, you get what you pay for. We now know Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee paid as much as $9 million for the discredited dossier on Trump.
According to The Washington Post, a lawyer named Marc Elias, who represented both the 2016 Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, had hired Fusion GPS, a DC firm working on behalf of the Russian government to soften sanctions at the time, to provide opposition research for them. The firm then hired a former British spy named Christopher Steele who reportedly purchased salacious rumors about Trump from the Russians.
Now, you might expect that the scandalous revelation of a political campaign using opposition research that was partially obtained from a hostile foreign power during a national election would ignite shrieks of “collusion” from all patriotic citizens. After all, only last summer, when it was reported that Donald Trump Jr. met with a Kremlin-linked Russian lawyer who claimed to be in possession of damaging information about Clinton, there was widespread condemnation.
Finally, we were told, a smoking gun tied the Trump campaign to Vladimir
Putin. Former Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine went as far as
to suggest that the independent counsel begin investigating treason.
Treason! Trump Jr. didn’t even pay for or accept research.
The Clinton crew, on the other hand, did. They didn’t openly push the
contents of the dossier — probably because they knew it was mostly fiction.
Instead, Fusion GPS leaked it to their friends in the media.
The dossier ended up in the possession of most major news outlets. Many journalists relied on Fusion GPS to propel coverage. BuzzFeed even posted the entire thing for Americans to read, even though it was more than likely its most scandalous parts were hatched by a foreign government.
The memo dominated newsrooms that were convinced Trump was a Manchurian candidate. No fake-news story came close to having this kind of impact.
Democrats in Washington are now pushing the “Honest Ads Act,” which creates a raft of new regulations and fines for Web sites that don’t do enough to combat fake news. Attempting to control the flow of information into our screens is the hobbyhorse of would-be censors. But since they’re at it, when do we get a bill that fines institutional media organizations that readily embrace bogus foreign dossiers?
Because the dossier didn’t just awaken the Russia-stole-our-democracy narratives in the media. It’s just as likely that the dossier was used by Clinton’s allies in the government.
The Obama administration reportedly relied on the dossier to
bolster its spying on US citizens. We know of at least one case where the
information was used to justify a FISA warrant on a Trump adviser. And let’s
not forget that Steele had reached an agreement to be compensated for his
efforts by the FBI.
None of this excuses the actions of Paul Manafort and others who may
have benefitted from their relationship with the Russians. Yet, using the very
standards Democrats have constructed over the past year, the Fusion GPS story
is now the most tangible evidence we possess of Russian interference in the
American election.
And at some point, Democrats will have to decide whether it’s wrong for
a political campaign to work with foreigners when obtaining opposition research
or whether it’s acceptable. We can’t have different standards for Democrats and
Republicans.
Otherwise people might start to get the idea that all the histrionics
over the past year weren’t really about Russian interference at all, but rather
about Hillary losing an election that they assumed she’d win.
The FBI’s Political Meddling
Mueller is the wrong sleuth when his ex-agency is so tangled up with Russia
By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. Oct. 24, 2017 6:17 p.m. ET
Let’s give plausible accounts of the known facts, then explain why demands that Robert Mueller recuse himself from the Russia investigation may not be the fanciful partisan grandstanding you imagine.
Here’s a story consistent with what has been reported in the press—how reliably reported is uncertain. Democratic political opponents of Donald Trump financed a British former spook who spread money among contacts in Russia, who in turn over drinks solicited stories from their supposedly “connected” sources in Moscow. If these people were really connected in any meaningful sense, then they made sure the stories they spun were consistent with the interests of the regime, if not actually scripted by the regime.
The resulting Trump dossier then became a factor in Obama administration decisions to launch an FBI counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign, and after the election to trumpet suspicions of Trump collusion with Russia.
We know of a second, possibly even more consequential way the FBI was effectively a vehicle for Russian meddling in U.S. politics. Authoritative news reports say FBI chief James Comey’s intervention in the Hillary Clinton email matter was prompted by a Russian intelligence document that his colleagues suspected was a Russian plant.
OK, Mr. Mueller was a former close colleague and leader but no longer part of the FBI when these events occurred. This may or may not make him a questionable person to lead a Russia-meddling investigation in which the FBI’s own actions are necessarily a concern.
But now we come to the Rosatom disclosures last week in The Hill, a newspaper that covers Congress.
Here’s another story as plausible as we can make it based on credible reporting. After the Cold War, in its own interest, the U.S. wanted to build bridges to the Russian nuclear establishment. The Putin government, for national or commercial purposes, agreed and sought to expand its nuclear business in the U.S.
The purchase and consolidation of certain assets were facilitated by Canadian entrepreneurs who gave large sums to the Clinton Foundation, and perhaps arranged a Bill Clinton speech in Moscow for $500,000. A key transaction had to be approved by Hillary Clinton’s State Department.
Now we learn that, before and during these transactions, the FBI had uncovered a bribery and kickback scheme involving Russia’s U.S. nuclear business, and also received reports of Russian officials seeking to curry favor through donations to the Clinton Foundation.
This criminal activity was apparently not disclosed to agencies vetting the 2010 transfer of U.S. commercial nuclear assets to Russia. The FBI made no move to break up the scheme until long after the transaction closed. Only five years later, the Justice Department, in 2015, disclosed a plea deal with the Russian perpetrator so quietly that its significance was missed until The Hill reported on the FBI investigation last week.
For anyone who cares to look, the real problem here is that the FBI itself is so thoroughly implicated in the Russia meddling story.
The agency, when Mr. Mueller headed it, soft-pedaled an investigation highly embarrassing to Mrs.
Clinton as well as the Obama Russia reset policy. More recently, if just one of two things is true—Russia sponsored the Trump Dossier, or Russian fake intelligence prompted Mr. Comey’s email intervention—then Russian operations, via their impact on the FBI, influenced and continue to influence our politics in a way far more consequential than any Facebook ad, the preoccupation of John McCain, who apparently cannot behold a mountain if there’s a molehill anywhere nearby.
More
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?
Taming 'wild' electrons in graphene
Discovery could lead to novel electronic devices
Date:
October 23, 2017
Source:
Rutgers University
Summary:
Graphene -- a one-atom-thick layer of carbon -- is a better conductor than
copper and is very promising for electronic devices, but with one catch:
Electrons that move through it can't be stopped. Until now, that is. Scientists
have learned how to tame the unruly electrons in graphene, paving the way for
the ultra-fast transport of electrons with low loss of energy in novel systems.
Graphene -- a one-atom-thick layer of carbon -- is a better conductor
than copper and is very promising for electronic devices, but with one catch:
Electrons that move through it can't be stopped.
Until now, that is. Scientists at Rutgers University-New Brunswick have
learned how to tame the unruly electrons in graphene, paving the way for the
ultra-fast transport of electrons with low loss of energy in novel systems.
Their study was published online in Nature Nanotechnology.
"This shows we can electrically control the electrons in
graphene," said Eva Y. Andrei, Board of Governors professor in Rutgers'
Department of Physics and Astronomy in the School of Arts and Sciences and the
study's senior author. "In the past, we couldn't do it. This is the reason
people thought that one could not make devices like transistors that require
switching with graphene, because their electrons run wild."
Now it may become possible to realize a graphene nano-scale transistor,
Andrei said. Thus far, graphene electronics components include ultra-fast
amplifiers, supercapacitors and ultra-low resistivity wires. The addition of a
graphene transistor would be an important step towards an all-graphene
electronics platform. Other graphene-based applications include ultra-sensitive
chemical and biological sensors, filters for desalination and water
purification. Graphene is also being developed in flat flexible screens, and
paintable and printable electronic circuits.
Graphene is far stronger than steel and a great conductor. But when
electrons move through it, they do so in straight lines and their high velocity
does not change. "If they hit a barrier, they can't turn back, so they
have to go through it," Andrei said. "People have been looking at how
to control or tame these electrons."
Her team managed to tame these wild electrons by sending voltage through
a high-tech microscope with an extremely sharp tip, also the size of one atom.
They created what resembles an optical system by sending voltage through a
scanning tunneling microscope, which offers 3-D views of surfaces at the atomic
scale. The microscope's sharp tip creates a force field that traps electrons in
graphene or modifies their trajectories, similar to the effect a lens has on
light rays. Electrons can easily be trapped and released, providing an
efficient on-off switching mechanism, according to Andrei.
"You can trap electrons without making holes in the graphene,"
she said. "If you change the voltage, you can release the electrons. So
you can catch them and let them go at will."
The next step would be to scale up by putting extremely thin wires,
called nanowires, on top of graphene and controlling the electrons with
voltages, she said.
Another weekend and this
old dinosaur suspects we have already entered a new era. Though the old era
still lingers on, like a dying sunspot cycle, greed is exiting and getting
replaced by fear, in the high risk, GNE one way street era of irresponsible, reckless
leveraged gambling. The low hanging fruit went in the 70s and 80s, mid-level fruit in the
90s and mid 20s. We are high in the tops scanning for anything remaining. A
fall from here has to end in disaster.
Have a great weekend everyone. Expect to hear more on the never ending
tragedy of Spain v Catalonia.
"The United
States have developed a new weapon that destroys people but it leaves buildings
standing. It's called the stock market."
Jay
Leno
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished September
DJIA: 22,405 +223 Up. NASDAQ: 6,496 +274 Up. SP500: 2,519 +179 Up.
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