Baltic Dry Index. 1366 -29 Brent Crude 69.07
“The boom can last only as long as the
credit expansion progresses at an ever-accelerated pace. The boom comes to an
end as soon as additional quantities of fiduciary media are no longer thrown
upon the loan market.”
Ludwig
von Mises.
Stocks paused,
cryptocurrencies steadied, commodities and shipping suggested that demand is
starting to overtake supply. But is any of it real, or just massive mis and
mal-allocation of money, driven by the error of the central bankster panic of
free money, ZIRP and in places NIRP, since 2009? Once the central banksters try normalising
global interest rates, will the great economist Ludwig von Mises be proved
right? Or did Greenspan-Bernanke-Yellen sow the seeds of an imminent Great
Inflation, if interest rates can’t be normalised?
“But it [the boom] could not last forever
even if inflation and credit expansion were to go on endlessly. It would then
encounter the barriers which prevent the boundless expansion of circulation
credit. It would lead to the crack-up boom and the breakdown of the whole
monetary system.”
Ludwig
von Mises.
Asia Stocks Are Mixed as Euro Gains, Bonds Steady: Markets Wrap
By Adam Haigh
Updated on 12 January 2018, 06:28 GMT
Asian stocks are set to end the week on diverging paths as Japanese shares
declined, while those in Hong Kong extended a record winning streak. Volatility
in the Treasuries market subsided and the euro extended its advance.Equities rose in most Asia-Pacific markets with above-average volumes in Hong Kong and South Korea, while a stronger yen weighed on Japanese stocks. The euro was boosted by signals from the European Central Bank the economy may be strong enough to warrant scaling back crisis-era guidance on stimulus. The ECB release was the latest in a series of communications from central banks that have started waking currency markets up from a low-volatility stupor. Treasuries steadied after a sell-off sparked by rising concerns on inflation and potential rollback of purchases by China.
Bitcoin steadied after four days of losses for the largest cryptocurrency amid increasing scrutiny from regulators around the world with concerns ranging from investor losses to strains on power systems.
Attention turns to the earnings season, with investors hoping results from JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co. can boost optimism in the expansion of American corporate profits. The broad-based gains in equities this year are building on 2017’s stellar run amid optimism in global growth, though leading some to question valuations.
An exchange-traded fund tracking Brazilian equities dropped in after-hours U.S. trading after S&P Global Ratings cut Brazil’s sovereign credit rating deeper into junk territory.
Here are some key events and data releases scheduled for the remainder of this week:
- U.S. inflation data are forecast to show price pressures remain muted for now, giving hawks little reason to argue for faster tightening.
- JPMorgan and BlackRock Inc. are among four financial firms reporting results Friday.
- China’s export growth probably slowed somewhat, to 10.8 percent in December from November’s 12.3 percent, forecasts ahead of data on Friday show. Imports are expected to climb 15.1 percent, with the trade surplus narrowing to $37 billion.
More
Bitcoin Steadies; Still Heads for Weekly Slump as Scrutiny Rises
By Eric Lam
Updated on 12 January 2018, 05:47 GMT
Bitcoin steadied Friday after four days of losses for the largest
cryptocurrency amid increasing scrutiny from regulators around the world with
concerns ranging from investor losses to strains on power systems.
Bitcoin was little changed on the day, at $13,467 as of 1:27 p.m.
Hong Kong time, reversing an earlier decline. It was down as much as 23 percent
for the week at one point, on track for the deepest decrease since January
2015, according to Bloomberg composite pricing, and is now down about 20 percent.
The token peaked in mid-December soon after the introduction of futures trading
on regulated exchanges in Chicago.
Among the blows to cryptocurrencies this week was the South Korean justice minister’s reiteration of a proposal to ban local cryptocurrency exchanges, though the comments were later downplayed by a spokesman for the president. Meanwhile, bitcoin mining -- the process needed to facilitate transactions -- is set to become more expensive as China’s government cracks down on the industry, in part out of concerns about power use.
In the U.S., scrutiny is set to increase amid concerns about the potential use of cryptocurrencies for fraudulent purposes such as money laundering. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton and Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman J. Christopher Giancarlo are set to testify to the Senate Banking Committee on risks tied to bitcoin and its counterparts, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter. The committee intends to hold a hearing in early February, the person said.
More
In EUSSR asylum news,
German metal bashers look likely to be among the big losers in any
Juncker-Barnier punitive hard Brexit. With neither being German, or a metal basher,
neither seems to care.
January 11, 2018 / 10:13 AM
German car suppliers could lose thousands of jobs over hard Brexit - study
BERLIN
(Reuters) - A so-called “hard Brexit” involving tariffs and a lasting
devaluation of the pound could cause thousands of job losses at German
automotive suppliers, a study by accounting firm Deloitte showed.
An
arrangement where Britain gives up full access to the single market and customs
union could threaten as many as 14,000 jobs at automotive suppliers in Germany
and shrink their sales by 3.8 billion euros (£3.36 billion), the study
published on Thursday found. Britain will leave the European Union in 2019.
Germany is the largest exporter of car parts to the UK, with companies such as Continental (CONG.DE) and Robert Bosch providing nearly a fifth of all components used in UK-based car production.
Some 42,500 jobs in Germany depend on suppliers’ ties with Britain and German parts makers generated 16.9 billion euros in sales in 2016 from UK car production, a study by global accounting firm Deloitte published on Thursday showed.
More
Next, with Artificial
Intelligence and robotics set to sweep the planet next decade, how will the
people losing their jobs and careers survive? How will society avoid massive unrest?
One trial balloon being floated to see how well it flies, is a basic guaranteed
income for all. Since the Great Nixonian Error of fiat money, August 15, 1971,
it’s not as illogical as is first appears. But how will it work in practise,
and will it succeed as intended. What unintended consequences might it spawn?
With that in mind, Finland is setting out to run a test experiment.
What If Everyone Got a Monthly Check From the Government?
In an audacious experiment, Finland is giving some residents
a “basic income” of $16,000 for two years, no strings attached. Here’s what two
of them did with the money.
11
January 2018, 05:01 GMT
----Earlier that year, Finland had announced an unprecedented socio-economic experiment. Two thousand residents would receive €560 a month (about $670) for two years, with no strings attached, and the government would study how the money affected their lives. Specifically, Finland wanted to know if the payments, called basic income, freed up people to take part-time or freelance work as they looked for something permanent—stopgap measures that the country’s existing benefits system tends to discourage. To that end, it selected participants who were unemployed and poor.
Steffie, 38, was both of those things, and for months she and her husband had joked that she might make the cut. Chances were slim; the names were being drawn from a pool of about 177,000 people.
Basic income is, as the name implies, simple and earnest in
its intentions. It assumes that a society thrives when its members are cared
for and so seeks to provide them with the means to care for themselves. A
robust economy—with jobs, yes, but also the freedom to advance and
innovate—allows most people to prosper on their own. But skills become
obsolete. People are laid off or get sick. Basic income furnishes a regular
stipend so their fundamental needs will be met no matter what.
In its truest form, universal basic income, or UBI, money would be given to
everyone. Warren Buffett would get it. LeBron James would get it. So would drug
addicts and convicts and people who create Instagram hashtags for their dogs.
Technically, Finland’s experiment wasn’t universal, but if the government liked
the results, the hope was for the system it eventually implemented to be so.Historically, the idea of basic income crops up when people want to right an economic wrong. It’s there in Thomas More’s 1516 book Utopia, which describes a society that has no crime because it can “provide everyone with some means of livelihood so that nobody is under the frightful necessity of becoming … a thief.” There it is again, in a 1796 pamphlet by American political theorist Thomas Paine, who argued for the creation of a “national fund” out of which “every person, rich or poor” would receive £15 once he or she turned 21 and £10 every year thereafter. Earth’s resources were supposed to be available to everyone, Paine argued, so people deserved “compensation in part for … the system of landed property.”
With the U.S. facing growing income inequality, a tenuous health-care system,
and the likelihood that technology will soon eliminate many jobs, basic income
has been catching on again stateside. If predictions from places such as the
consulting firm PwC and the McKinsey Global Institute are right, tens of
millions of Americans will see their jobs become automated within the next
decade. These losses would be in addition to the 7 million manufacturing jobs
the U.S. has shed since 1980.
Such pressures have prompted business leaders like Richard Branson, Elon
Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg to praise the idea. “There is a pretty good chance we
end up with a universal basic income … due to automation,” Musk said on CNBC
last year. “I’m not sure what else one would do.” In July, Hawaii became the
first state to legislate a formal study of basic income. “We have a heavy
reliance on tourism and other service-related sectors of the economy, which are
more susceptible to automation. This is an effort to look at possible solutions
to that,” says Chris Lee, a Democratic state representative, who introduced the
bill after reading about basic income on Reddit.
More
True, governments can reduce the rate of interest in the short run, issue additional paper currency, open the way to credit expansion by the banks. They can thus create an artificial boom and the appearance of prosperity. But such a boom is bound to collapse soon or late and to bring about a depression.
Ludwig
von Mises. Omnipotent Government
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.
Today, more on Bitcoin. A scam and a fraud, I think, even if JP Morgan’s
CEO has changed his mind and become a believer.
A Prime Number Could Be the Answer to Bitcoin’s Power Problem
By Jonathan Tirone
Updated on 11 January 2018, 14:24 GMT
Methods used by computers programmed to run a 350-year-old equation may also
offer answers to bitcoin’s out-sized demand for electricity.The Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search found and confirmed the biggest known prime number, a 23-million-digit-long figure discovered with the math of 16th century French monk Marin Mersenne, according to a statement earlier this month. That effort, along with other collaborative computing methods, are advancing the science of cryptography, which is essential to creating and tracking bitcoins.
“These ideas could be seen as intellectually connected,” said Seth Schoen, a senior technologist at San Francisco’s Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is offering a $150,000 bounty to the first person or group to discover a 100-million digit prime number. “Cryptocurrency mining could be seen as an indirect descendant of distributed computing projects.”
The process of searching for prime numbers -- which are at the foundation of cryptography -- shows how solving tedious equations can lead to scientific breakthroughs that have practical applications.
The meteoric rise of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is stirring debate at the highest levels of monetary policy making. Adherents are betting that trust in its blockchain technology for tracking transactions will eventually revolutionize how value is stored and transmitted. Detractors point to the massive energy consumed by the computers that are used to solve the mundane mathematical equations that keep the system going.
Energy has always been part of bitcoin’s DNA. The person credited with creating the currency, identified only as Satoshi Nakamoto, devised the system that awards virtual coins for solving complex puzzles and uses an encrypted digital ledger to track all the work and every transaction.
Bounty hunters for prime numbers and cryptography hacker groups have helped to improve cryptocurrencies by showing people how to collectively compute problems in a distributed way, Schoen said. Bitcoin is an “odd fit” in this tradition because the math problems it solves aren’t particularly “useful or interesting for anything” outside its system.
“This energy is put to a productive use in one sense -- confirming the authenticity of bitcoin transactions,” Schoen wrote in an email. “Yet it seems disproportionate in many ways, particularly if another technical alternative could be found for confirming transactions while using much less energy.”
Quantum Computing
The EFF technologist, active in encryption for more than 20 years, emphasized that it’s the collaborative methods used in detecting very large prime numbers rather than the figures themselves that have the biggest impact on cryptography. Until the advent of quantum computing, most people are safe with three-digit encryption, he said.A search for compromise is accelerating. Some researchers are trying to lower the energy needed for computer processing. Others have been tying cryptocurrency mining to math that solves real-world problems.
One
example is gridcoin, a cryptocurrency mined by a global network of more than
23,000 computers that are connected with scientists at the University of
California at Berkeley. Gridcoins are awarded in return for joining the
Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing, or BOINC. That work “may
lead to advances in medicine, biology, mathematics, science, climatology,
particle and astrophysics,” according to the group’s website, which notes that the energy
needed to mine gridcoin is a fraction of what bitcoin requires.
More
But, the Gospel according to Graeme.
This is madness. We take finite
resources, and money to generate electricity, which is then dissipated to
generate a bitcoin with no intrinsic value, no recognisable utility, and which
subtracts wealth from society rather than adding wealth into society. Worse,
each new bitcoin requires ever more electric power for its discovery. As
the mania drives up the trade price of bitcoin, more and more people and
entities are encouraged to get into the game to find the remaining bitcoins,
eventually pricing out genuine users of electricity. Rent seeking on
steroids, until one day in the future suddenly no one wants a bitcoin.
Even the blockchain arguments fails.
Assuming the computer chips used aren't yet a vulnerability for identity theft,
or debauching the blockchain, for how long? Once quantum computers
appear, with their massive leap in computing power, how safe will yesterday's
blockchain technology remain?
How long before
all the blockchain entries become unreliable? Once registry and bank
entry tracking are replaced by a blockchain, how long before a NSA or GCHQ type
of state entity, can wreak havoc by putting in false or multiple entries,
sowing confusion in the chain as to who's entry is correct? What happens
if a power outage, deliberate or not, takes down part of the blockchain as it
tries to verify hundreds of thousands of new entries per minute, also
generating an unreliable blockchain?
Below, a warning from 2010.
https://www.theonion.com/u-s-economy-grinds-to-halt-as-nation-realizes-money-ju-1819571322
https://www.theonion.com/u-s-economy-grinds-to-halt-as-nation-realizes-money-ju-1819571322
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?
Quantum Dot: Extremely bright and fast light emission
Date:
January 10, 2018
Source:
ETH Zurich
Summary:
A type of quantum dot that has been intensively studied in recent years can
reproduce light in every color and is very bright. An international research
team has now discovered why this is the case. The quantum dots could someday be
used in light-emitting diodes.
An international team of researchers from ETH Zurich, IBM Research
Zurich, Empa and four American research institutions have found the explanation
for why a class of nanocrystals that has been intensively studied in recent
years shines in such incredibly bright colours. The nanocrystals contain
caesium lead halide compounds that are arranged in a perovskite lattice
structure.
Three years ago, Maksym Kovalenko, a professor at ETH Zurich and Empa,
succeeded in creating nanocrystals -- or quantum dots, as they are also known
-- from this semiconductor material. "These tiny crystals have proved to
be extremely bright and fast emitting light sources, brighter and faster than
any other type of quantum dot studied so far," says Kovalenko. By varying
the composition of the chemical elements and the size of the nanoparticles, he
also succeeded in producing a variety of nanocrystals that light up in the
colours of the whole visible spectrum. These quantum dots are thus also being
treated as components for future light-emitting diodes and displays.
In a study published in the most recent edition of the scientific
journal Nature, the international research team examined these
nanocrystals individually and in great detail. The scientists were able to
confirm that the nanocrystals emit light extremely quickly. Previously-studied
quantum dots typically emit light around 20 nanoseconds after being excited
when at room temperature, which is already very quick. "However, caesium
lead halide quantum dots emit light at room temperature after just one
nanosecond," explains Michael Becker, first author of the study. He is a
doctoral student at ETH Zurich and is carrying out his doctoral project at IBM
Research.
Electron-hole pair in an excited energy state
Understanding why caesium lead halide quantum dots are not only fast but
also very bright entails diving into the world of individual atoms, light
particles (photons) and electrons. "You can use a photon to excite
semiconductor nanocrystals so that an electron leaves its original place in the
crystal lattice, leaving behind a hole," explains David Norris, Professor
of Materials Engineering at ETH Zurich. The result is an electron-hole pair in
an excited energy state. If the electron-hole pair reverts to its energy ground
state, light is emitted.
----Great news for data transmission
As the examined caesium lead halide quantum dots are not only bright but
also inexpensive to produce they could be applied in television displays, with
efforts being undertaken by several companies, in Switzerland and world-wide.
"Also, as these quantum dots can rapidly emit photons, they are of
particular interest for use in optical communication within data centres and
supercomputers, where fast, small and efficient components are central,"
says Mahrt. Another future application could be the optical simulation of
quantum systems which is of great importance to fundamental research and
materials science.
ETH professor Norris is also interested in using the new knowledge for
the development of new materials. "As we now understand why these quantum
dots are so bright, we can also think about engineering other materials with
similar or even better properties," he says.
Another weekend and The Donald still standing in
Washington D. C. So far its Snowflakes 0, Trump 12 months and counting. After
all of his huffing and puffing over North Korea, President Trump seems to have
scored a limited success of sorts. North Korea will send a thousand strong delegation
to South Korea’s Winter Olympics next month. Though it seems to me that there
has to be a cheaper way of filling the seats than sending in two aircraft
carrier armadas, and over flying dozens of stealth and unstealthy bombers. Have
a great weekend everyone.
“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…We conclude that under a paper-money system, a
determined government can always generate higher spending and hence positive
inflation.”
Dr. Ben
Bernanke. 2002
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished December
DJIA: 24,719 +265 Up. NASDAQ: 6,903 +297 Up. SP500: 2,674 +199 Up.
No comments:
Post a Comment