Baltic Dry Index. 1217 +17 Brent Crude 70.30
Day four of the Lords
of the Universe coven in Davos Switzerland, and the meeting’s main event, the
speech of America’s “Special One.” Taking
time off from building the Great Wall of America, swamp draining, and colluding
with Russia, he arrived in Switzerland yesterday in the biggest private jet of all, before
helicoptering in to an awed Davos to deliver his message of “America First,”
and “making America Great Again.”
And Merkel looked to
Macron, who looked to May, who looked to Modi, who looked to Trudeau, who
shrugged in a puzzled kind of way and said "eh?" All then looked for Juncker, who was last seen in the bar ordering breakfast.
Then the Great Dim One spoke up:
Then the Great Dim One spoke up:
"My daughter asked me when she came home
from school, “What’s the financial crisis?” and I said, it’s something that
happens every five to seven years."
And everyone noticed it was
already ten years on since the banksters at Davos had last wrecked the
financial system.
Then God’s workers,
the Goldmanites, stopped doing God’s work to threaten:
If the financial system goes down, our business is going down and, trust me, yours and everyone else's is going down, too.
Everyone then turned to the new Gnomes
of Europe, the German banksters, relaxing in Davos, taking a break from
oppressing the Greeks and Italians.
"We
shouldn't pour cold water on everything.
We, the eight or nine players in global investment banking, have a very
good future," said Deutsche Bank.
Hardly reassured, the four
Ms and the Great Northern T, repeated rapidly:
“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 transactions.”
And so we await today’s
“Shock and Awe” pronouncements from the Trump Tower.
In other news, in an
eerie repeat of US sanctions in 1940 against Japan, the USA is pushing North
Korea closer to war.
US slaps China with sanctions amid North Korea nuclear crackdown
PUBLISHED
: Thursday, 25 January, 2018, 2:46am UPDATED : Thursday, 25 January, 2018,
11:48am
The
United States has slapped new sanctions on Chinese and North Korean firms and
individuals that it said support the Pyongyang regime of Kim Jong-un
and his nuclear weapons programme.
The move comes as the US seeks to choke the flow of goods
and materials crucial to North Korea’s economy such as oil, electronics and metals,
and pressure Kim to halt the development of nuclear weapons that threaten the
region and potentially the US mainland.
Following UN sanctions, US Treasury Secretary Steve
Mnuchin said: “The US government is targeting illicit actors in China, Russia,
and elsewhere who are working on behalf of North Korean financial networks, and
calling for their expulsion from the territories where they reside.
“We
are sanctioning additional oil, shipping, and trading companies that continue
to provide a lifeline to North Korea to fuel this regime’s nuclear ambitions and
destabilising activities.”
Two Chinese trading firms are among the sanctioned organisations, as are
representatives of North Korean companies and banks mostly based in China and
Russia; and North Korean shipping companies and six specific vessels.
“Treasury continues to systematically target individuals and entities
financing the Kim regime and its weapons programmes, including officials
complicit in North Korean sanctions evasion schemes,” Mnuchin said.
The sanctions seek to lock those named out of the global economy by
banning US individuals and companies – including foreign banks and trading
firms with US entities – from doing business with them.
Ten of the individuals listed for sanctions were
representatives of Korea Ryonbong General Corporation, a UN-designated company
that makes acquisitions and supports sales for the North Korea defence
industry.
Most were based in Chinese cities on the border with
North Korea, and nearby Russian cities, where they helped arrange shipping of
materials and goods to North Korea.
One Ryonbong representative was based in Abkhazia,
Georgia, where – according to the US Treasury -he arranged to deploy North
Korean workers, which Pyongyang uses to obtain foreign currency.
Five others worked for North Korean banks in the northern
Chinese cities of Dalian and Shenyang, and in Vladivostok, Russia.
Two Chinese businesses, Beijing Chengxing Trading Co. and
Dandong Jinxiang Trade Co., were placed on the sanctions blacklist sales of
everything from high purity metals to used computers to North Korean businesses
already named for sanctions.
Five North Korean shipping companies and six vessels were also blacklisted, as
the US targets efforts by Pyongyang to obtain needed materials like oil and
coal via ship to ship transfers from foreign vessels on the high seas.
The sanctions also included the North Korean Ministry of
Crude Oil Industry, which could affect any foreign oil supplier doing business
with the ministry.
The new sanctions represent Washington’s frustrations
that both China and Russia continue to enable or turn a blind eye to their own
companies and shippers still doing business with North Korea.
That serves to erode the impact of sanctions designed to
slow Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons and missiles programme, and press Kim into
negotiations.
Earlier on Wednesday a senior US Treasury official warned
Hong Kong authorities they must stop the city being used as a “safe harbour”
for illicit trade with North Korea, in violation of United Nations sanctions.
January 25, 2018 / 10:30 PM
Exclusive - Despite sanctions, North Korea exported coal to South and Japan via Russia: intelligence sources
PARIS/LONDON/MOSCOW (Reuters) - North Korea shipped coal to
Russia last year which was then delivered to South Korea and Japan in a likely
violation of U.N. sanctions, three Western European intelligence sources said.
The U.N. Security Council banned North Korean exports of coal last Aug.
5 under sanctions intended to cut off an important source of the foreign
currency Pyongyang needs to fund its nuclear weapon and long-range missile
programmes.
But the secretive Communist state has at least three times since then
shipped coal to the Russian ports of Nakhodka and Kholmsk, where it was
unloaded at docks and reloaded onto ships that took it to South Korea or Japan,
the sources said.
A Western shipping source said separately that some of the cargoes
reached Japan and South Korea in October last year. A U.S. security source also
confirmed the coal trade via Russia and said it was continuing.
“Russia’s port of Nakhodka is becoming a transhipping hub for North
Korean coal,” said one of the European security sources, who requested
anonymity because of the sensitivity of international diplomacy around North
Korea.
Russia’s foreign ministry did not respond to a Reuters request for
comment sent on Jan 18. Russia’s mission to the United Nations informed the
Security Council sanctions committee on Nov. 3 that Moscow was complying with
the sanctions.
----Reuters could not independently verify whether the coal unloaded at the Russian docks was the same coal that was then shipped to South Korea and Japan. Reuters also was unable to ascertain whether the owners of the vessels that sailed from Russia to South Korea and Japan knew the origin of the coal.
The U.S. Treasury on Wednesday put the owner of one of the ships, the
UAL Ji Bong 6, under sanctions for delivering North Korean coal to Kholmsk on
Sept. 5.
It was unclear which companies profited from the coal shipments.
More
“Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.”
Edmund Burke.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.
Today, more on President Trump’s wimpy currency war. I wonder if his
trade war will be any more real? North Korea?
"The
dollar is our currency, but it's your problem."
US
Treasury Secretary John Connally at the G-10 Rome meeting held in late 1971.
Mnuchin's Dollar Salvo Pales Against 1980s Currency War
By Chris Anstey
25
January 2018, 07:04 GMT
U.S.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin might have made waves in Davos with his
comment on a weaker dollar being helpful for American trade, but the remarks
fall well short of those in the “currency wars” of the past.
For the real deal, go back to the 1980s. The guardians of the world’s most
advanced economies had an accord in 1985 to drive down the dollar, but they
fell out in 1987 after a follow-on agreement to halt its slide.West German policy makers “should not expect us to sit back here and accept” their raising interest rates, then-Treasury Secretary James Baker said in October 1987. The U.S. administration later told the New York Times it would let the dollar drop as a response. The rising tensions were later cited as a contributor to the Black Monday stock collapse.
Robert
Rubin re-set U.S. dollar
policy
in 1995, emphasizing that it wouldn’t be used as a tool for trade. While his
endorsement of a “strong” dollar has had varying degrees of support from
successors, none has yet restored currency policy to the economic toolkit.
And signs are the Trump administration won’t do that either. Mnuchin himself
said “longer term, the strength of the dollar is a reflection of the strength
of the U.S. economy.” The Commerce secretary played down Mnuchin’s remark on a
weaker dollar, saying it reflected that the currency wasn’t the
administration’s biggest concern. And White House’s chief spokeswoman
highlighted that it backs a free-floating
currency.“Beginning with Rubin’s ‘strong-dollar policy,’ best practices evolved toward letting markets determine exchange rates,” Marc Chandler, head of currency strategy at Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. in New York, wrote in a note. With the G-7 and G-20 officially having backed market-set rates, “in effect, the foreign exchange market was de-weaponized.”
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?
Adding graphene girders to silicon electrodes could double the life of lithium batteries
Date:
January 23, 2018
Source:
University of Warwick
Summary:
New research has found an effective approach to replacing graphite in the anodes
of lithium-ion batteries using silicon, by reinforcing the anode's structure
with graphene girders. This could more than double the life of rechargeable
lithium-ion based batteries and also increase the capacity delivered by those
batteries.
New research led by WMG, at the University of Warwick has found an
effective approach to replacing graphite in the anodes of lithium-ion batteries
using silicon, by reinforcing the anode's structure with graphene girders. This
could more than double the life of rechargeable lithium-ion based batteries and
also increase the capacity delivered by those batteries.
Graphite has been the default choice of active material for anodes in
lithium -- ion batteries since their original launch by Sony but researchers
and manufacturers have long sought a way to replace graphite with silicon, as
it is an abundantly available element with ten times the gravimetric energy
density of graphite. Unfortunately, silicon has several other performance
issues that continue to limit its commercial exploitation. Due to its volume
expansion upon lithiation silicon particles can electrochemically agglomerate
in ways that impede further charge-discharge efficiency over time. Silicon is
also not intrinsically elastic enough to cope with the strain of lithiation
when it is repeatedly charged, leading to cracking, pulverisation and rapid
physical degradation of the anode's composite microstructure. This contributes
significantly to capacity fade, along with degradation events that occur on the
counter electrode -- the cathode. To use the mobile phones as an example, this
is why we have to charge our phones for a longer and longer time, and it is
also why they don't hold their charge for as long as when they are new.
Numerous approaches have attempted to overcome these issues. The use of
nano-sized / structured silicon particles with micron-sized graphene for
example, but this has not proved satisfactory. Using nano-sized silicon
particles dramatically increases the amount of reactive surface available. This
leads to much more lithium being deposited on the silicon during the first
charge cycle forming a solid-electrolyte interphase barrier between the silicon
and the electrolyte and thus greatly reducing the lithium inventory and thus
the battery's useful lifetime. This layer also continues to grow on silicon and
so the lithium loss becomes continuous. Other methods of incorporating other
materials such as graphene at different sizes have been deemed impractical to
then progress to large-scale manufacture.
However new research, led by Dr Melanie Loveridge in WMG at the
University of Warwick, has discovered, and tested, a new anode mixture of
silicon and a form of chemically modified graphene which could resolve these
issues and create viable silicon anode lithium-ion batteries. Such an approach
could be practically manufactured on an industrial scale and without the need
to resort to nano sizing of silicon and its associated problems. The new
research has just been published on Tuesday 23rd January 2018) in Scientific
Reports in a paper entitled Phase-related Impedance Studies on Silicon-Few
Layer Graphene (FLG) Composite Electrode Systems.
More
WMG, at the University of Warwick
Another weekend and
what will President Trump tweet and against whom? Have a great weekend
everyone.
“There are some bored foreigners,
with full stomachs, who have nothing better to do than point fingers at us
[China]. First, China doesn’t export revolution; second, China doesn’t export
hunger and poverty; third, China doesn’t come and cause you headaches, what
more is there to be said?”
President Xi Jinping
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished December
DJIA: 24,719 +265 Up. NASDAQ: 6,903 +297 Up. SP500: 2,674 +199 Up.
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