Tulips Drop to $9,600.

Baltic Dry Index. 1578 +42   Brent Crude 62.87

With everyone and their dog scrambling to buy into tulips, no one seems interested in buying any of my stock of unicorn’s and New York City bridges. Bah humbug!  In the latest instalment of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds “Several large market exchanges including Nasdaq, CBOEHoldings and CME Group -- the world’s largest derivatives exchange -- have said they are planning to provide futures contracts based on bitcoin.”

Coming soon, options on the bitcoin futures, contracts for difference on bitcoins, and last but not least, Exchange Traded Funds on bitcoins and their copycat ilk. Never mind that bitcoins, don’t exist, have no intrinsic value, are not a store of value, are not a medium of exchange, add nothing in the way of wealth to the world, probably detracting wealth from the planet. 

But bitcoins and their speculative bubble are an entirely logical outcome of the world gone mad on the Great Nixonian Error of fiat money, communist money. Money that can be created out if thin air at the push of a central bankster’s computer button, and which only has value as long as anyone is willing to part with real tangible goods for notional “money.” Tulips anyone? The time is right for Graeme’s Universal e-Money, coming soon to an I-phone near you.

December 1, 2017 / 12:58 AM

Asian shares pare gains as vote on U.S. tax bill delayed

TOKYO (Reuters) - Asian shares and the dollar pared their modest gains on Friday, with risk appetites supported by advances on Wall Street but capped by concern as investors awaited the U.S. Senate’s vote on U.S. tax reform legislation.

MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS was nearly flat on the day, after brushing a two-week low. For the week, it was 2.6 percent lower.

Japan's Nikkei stock index .N225 was up 0.1 percent, on track to gain 0.9 percent for the week.

“The market’s main focus is now whether the tax bill will pass or not,” said Yutaka Miura, a senior technical analyst at Mizuho Securities in Tokyo.

Late on Thursday, the Senate delayed voting on the bill as legislators wrestled with problems on an amendment sought by fiscal hawks to address a large expansion of the federal budget deficit projected to result from the measure.

The Senate adjourned, putting off any votes until Friday morning. It was still unclear whether a decisive vote on the bill would occur then.

On Wall Street overnight, major indexes marked gains, with sentiment lifted by apparent progress towards passage of the tax legislation. The S&P 500 SPX hit a record closing high and the Dow Jones industrial average .DJI topped the 24,000 mark for the first time. [.N]

EMini futures for the S&P 500 ESc1 were down 0.3 percent, edging lower after the Senate vote was delayed.

On Thursday, chances of passage of a Senate tax bill had been seen as rising, when influential Senator John McCain gave the bill his endorsement. The House had approved its own tax bill on Nov. 16.

News of McCain’s nod had pushed up U.S. Treasury yields to five-week highs, which underpinned the recently beleaguered dollar.

Yields also got a lift boost from U.S. data showing a rise in inflation and a decline in jobless claims, reinforcing expectations that the U.S. Federal Reserve will hike interest rates later this month, and several times in 2018.

more

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-global-markets/asian-shares-pare-gains-as-vote-on-u-s-tax-bill-delayed-idUKKBN1DV3E5

China Stocks Set for Worst Week This Year as State Cools Gains

By Richard Frost

December 1, 2017, 2:59 AM GMT

The hottest part of China’s stock market is cooling down as investors switch out of large cap shares into smaller companies.

The CSI 300 Index of some of China’s biggest companies has fallen 2.3 percent this week, poised for its biggest loss this year. The gauge had been the best place for a Chinese investor to put money in this year until the government signaled its concern about the pace of gains in high-flying shares like Kweichow Moutai Co. Taking the hint, money has flowed into beaten down small caps -- with the ChiNext gauge rallying 1.3 percent in the five-day period.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-01/china-stocks-set-for-worst-week-this-year-as-state-cools-gains

December 1, 2017 / 3:03 AM.

Bitcoin pauses below record peak; gained 55 percent in November

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Bitcoin hovered around $9,600 in volatile trade on Friday, after tumbling about 15 percent from an all-time high hit this week as some money managers warned ominously of a bubble and further falls in the stratospheric cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin was last down around 3.4 percent at $9,612.60 on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange, from a record peak of $11,395 set on Wednesday. On Thursday, it went as low as $9,000. BTC=BTSP.

The latest slide has tempered an astronomical rise in recent months: Bitcoin had jumped almost 1,100 percent year-to-date on Wednesday. As of 0200 GMT, it was still up around 915 percent.

One wealth manager said technical chart analysis was predicting deeper falls.

“A correction could bring bitcoin back to its previous level of chart support of around $7,500. That’s over a 20 percent drop from its current price,” said Shane Chanel, equities and derivatives adviser at ASR Wealth.

“Without everyday utility, pure speculation is driving prices at the moment. Traders are forced to use technical indicators to make buy and sell decisions.”

Despite its massive fall this week, bitcoin still ended November 54.6 percent higher, its best monthly performance since a near 66 percent gain in August.

The cryptocurrency has posted monthly losses only three times in 2017.

Bitcoin’s rise has been fueled by signs that the digital currency is slowly gaining traction in the mainstream investment world, as well as by increasing public awareness.

Several large market exchanges including Nasdaq, CBOEHoldings and CME Group -- the world’s largest derivativesexchange -- have said they are planning to provide futurescontracts based on bitcoin.

More

https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-markets-bitcoin/bitcoin-pauses-below-record-peak-gained-55-percent-in-november-idUKKBN1DV3J5

Remarks by Governor Ben S. Bernanke
Before the National Economists Club, Washington, D.C.
November 21, 2002

Deflation: Making Sure "It" Doesn't Happen Here

----What has this got to do with monetary policy? Like gold, U.S. dollars have value only to the extent that they are strictly limited in supply. But the U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost. By increasing the number of U.S. dollars in circulation, or even by credibly threatening to do so, the U.S. government can also reduce the value of a dollar in terms of goods and services, which is equivalent to raising the prices in dollars of those goods and services. We conclude that, under a paper-money system, a determined government can always generate higher spending and hence positive inflation.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/speeches/2002/20021121/

Crooks and Scoundrels Corner

The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.

This Friday, more food for thought on the coming lifestyle changes. A major shift in the balance of power is coming, says one of the mining leaders who ought to know.

.‘Miner's Revenge’ Is Coming With Electric Cars, Friedland Says

By Thomas Wilson

November 30, 2017, 3:58 PM GMT

Surging demand for metals like copper, nickel and cobalt for use in electric vehicles promises to overturn the balance of power between mining companies and their customers, according to billionaire investor Robert Friedland.

Automakers will have to change the way they approach procurement if they want to power their vehicles, said Friedland, who as a student befriended Steve Jobs before a career backing major discoveries from Canada to Mongolia.

“Coming soon to a theater near you: this is the revenge of the miner,” said Friedland. “No miner is willing to sell a high-volatility metal to a car manufacturer at a fixed price.”

Friedland’s Ivanhoe Mines Ltd. is developing a large copper deposit in the Democratic Republic of Congo and a platinum project in South Africa. He’s also co-chairman of Clean Teq Holdings Ltd., which has a nickel and cobalt sulphate project in Australia. Both metals are used in rechargeable-battery technologies and have surged this year on expectations for rising demand.

"Nickel sulphate and cobalt sulphate: these are the sexy commodities that we cannot live with out," Friedland said. While demand for coal and iron ore will stagnate, copper usage will continue to rise to meet environmental standards and reduce pollution, he said.

Read more: Copper Consumption to Get Boost as World Wagers on Electric Cars

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-30/-miner-s-revenge-is-coming-with-electric-cars-friedland-says

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 21^st century onwards? DC? A quantum computer next?

A transistor of graphene nanoribbons

Breakthrough in Nanoelectronics

Date: November 29, 2017

 

Source: Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (EMPA)

 

Summary: Transistors based on carbon nanostructures: what sounds like a futuristic dream could be reality in just a few years' time. Scientists have now produced nanotransistors from graphene ribbons that are only a few atoms wide.

Transistors based on carbon nanostructures: what sounds like a futuristic dream could be reality in just a few years' time. Scientists have now produced nanotransistors from graphene ribbons that are only a few atoms wide.

Graphene ribbons that are only a few atoms wide, so-called graphene nanoribbons, have special electrical properties that make them promising candidates for the nanoelectronics of the future: While graphene -- a one atom thin, honeycomb-shaped carbon layer -- is a conductive material, it can become a semiconductor in the form of nanoribbons. This means that it has a sufficiently large energy or band gap in which no electron states can exist: it can be turned on and off -- and thus may become a key component of nanotransistors.

The smallest details in the atomic structure of these graphene bands, however, have massive effects on the size of the energy gap and thus on how well-suited nanoribbons are as components of transistors. On the one hand, the gap depends on the width of the graphene ribbons, while on the other hand it depends on the structure of the edges. Since graphene consists of equilateral carbon hexagons, the border may have a zigzag or a so-called armchair shape, depending on the orientation of the ribbons. While bands with a zigzag edge behave like metals, i.e. they are conductive, they become semiconductors with the armchair edge.

This poses a major challenge for the production of nanoribbons: If the ribbons are cut from a layer of graphene or made by cutting carbon nanotubes, the edges may be irregular and thus the graphene ribbons may not exhibit the desired electrical properties.

Creating a semiconductor with nine atoms

Empa researchers in collaboration with the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz and the University of California at Berkeley have now succeeded in growing ribbons exactly nine atoms wide with a regular armchair edge from precursor molecules. The specially prepared molecules are evaporated in an ultra-high vacuum for this purpose. After several process steps, they are combined like puzzle pieces on a gold base to form the desired nanoribbons of about one nanometer in width and up to 50 nanometers in length.

These structures, which can only be seen with a scanning tunneling microscope, now have a relatively large and, above all, precisely defined energy gap. This enabled the researchers to go one step further and integrate the graphene ribbons into nanotransistors. Initially, however, the first attempts were not very successful: Measurements showed that the difference in the current flow between the "ON" state (i.e. with applied voltage) and the "OFF" state (without applied voltage) was far too small. The problem was the dielectric layer of silicon oxide, which connects the semiconducting layers to the electrical switch contact. In order to have the desired properties, it needed to be 50 nanometers thick, which in turn influenced the behavior of the electrons.

However, the researchers subsequently succeeded in massively reducing this layer by using hafnium oxide(HfO2) instead of silicon oxide as the dielectric material. The layer is therefore now only 1.5 nanometers thin and the "on"-current is orders of magnitudes higher.

More

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/171129120254.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fmatter_energy%2Fgraphene+%28Graphene+News+--+ScienceDaily%29

Another weekend and will Microsoft support finally get my Office suite to work? All will be revealed in the weekend edition. I give MS 100 percent for effort, enthusiasm, courtesy, and optimism. I dread to think of what a little problem like mine does to their profits. Have a great weekend everyone. Don’t forget Christmas is just 24 days away. Go on, make some retailer happy.Are tulips the gift of 2017?

The monthly Coppock Indicators finished November

DJIA: 26,272 +243 Up. NASDAQ:  6,874 +289 Up. SP500: 2,648 +189 Up.