Baltic Dry Index. 1200 +43 Brent Crude 70.96
O wad
some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion:
What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us,
An' ev'n devotion!
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion:
What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us,
An' ev'n devotion!
To A
Louse, Robert Burns, 1786.
Day three at Davos
and the arrival of the Special One from Washington. On this the day of Burns
Night, did the great Scots poet have an early vision of the WEF gathering in
Davos?
So far at Davos 2018, no sign of bitcoin mania, modesty, all the other
cryptocurrencies, humility, or of America First. Despite the Great Slide in the
US dollar, (due to Brexit – BBC,) no sign of any hotels settling their
outstanding bills in the cryptocurrency mania fads. Perhaps all that will
change at tonight’s parties and more especially when the Special One dictates
their exact role in Making America Great Again.
We open with the main
act arriving in Davos. The biggest louse of all, to most attendees, busy shying
away from the many mirrors. Below, some grovelling back pedalling by many of
the US Great Grandees.
Trump to Tell Davos That ‘America First’ Is Good for Globalism
By Shannon Pettypiece
President Donald Trump has a familiar message for the global elites
populating the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland: You were wrong.
A year ago, some Davos participants predicted Trump’s protectionist
rhetoric would lead to sluggish economic growth and lackluster stock market
gains. It didn’t. And the president isn’t about to let that go unnoticed.
Trump will arrive at the conference Thursday, joining a large delegation
of U.S. officials already there, where he’s expected to boast about U.S.
economic performance during his first year in office -- unemployment down, the
stock market up, robust growth. He’ll also seek to persuade the Davos
audience in a major speech on Friday that his populist, “America First”
policies can co-exist with globalism.
“He wants to shatter the myth that he is only an ‘America First’
president,” said Anthony Scaramucci, the financier who was briefly Trump’s
communications director and still informally advises the president. “That’s not
the case. He is a globalist. He has a duality to his personality. He’s here to
disrupt things, which he does a reasonably good to great job of.”
The Swiss mountainside gathering of bankers, corporate chiefs and academics isn’t exactly Trump’s scene, and his administration deliberately spurned the conference prior to his inauguration last year. But now, chief executives are warming up to the president after a year in which his administration began a major deregulation effort and won passage of a law that slashes the U.S. corporate tax rate.
“What I’m bulled up about is that policy makers are making good policy decisions in the U.S. about taxes, about proper regulatory reform,” JP Morgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon said in a Bloomberg Television interview at Davos.
“I like a lot more stuff than I don’t like,” Goldman Sachs Group Inc. CEO Lloyd Blankfein said in an interview with CNBC.
More
Trump Team at Davos Backs Weaker Dollar, Sharpens Trade War Talk
By Enda Curran and Jan Dahinten
Updated on 24 January 2018, 11:35 GMT
President Donald Trump’s top economic advisers set the stage for the
rollout of his "America First" manifesto on the world stage.
A day before Trump’s scheduled arrival in the Swiss ski resort of Davos
for the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin
endorsed the dollar’s decline as a benefit to the American economy and Commerce
Secretary Wilbur Ross said the U.S. would fight harder to protect its
exporters.
"Obviously a weaker dollar is good for us as it relates to trade
and opportunities,” Mnuchin told reporters in Davos. The currency’s short term
value is "not a concern of ours at all,” he said.
"Longer term, the strength of the dollar is a reflection of the
strength of the U.S. economy and the
fact that it is and will continue to be
the primary currency in terms of the reserve currency," he said.
The greenback, extending its 2018 slide after Mnuchin spoke, is now at
its lowest in three years as measured by the Bloomberg Dollar Index. Investors
have sold the currency in part because of concern over Trump’s protectionist
push highlighted by this week’s slapping of tariffs on solar panels and washing
machines.
While
Mnuchin’s blast echoed Trump administration doubts over a strong currency, it
marked a confrontation with the global elite in Davos over their "America
First" agenda. Ross, speaking alongside Mnuchin, says more measures at
defending U.S. commerce are in the offing.
More
Investors shouldn’t be surprised when Trump administration talks down the dollar
Published: Jan 24, 2018 1:26 p.m. ET
Administration thinks weaker dollar is quickest way to boost manufacturing base: Borthwick
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s embrace of a weak dollar on Wednesday caught traders by surprise. It shouldn’t have.The ICE U.S. dollar index DXY, -0.45% slumped to a three-year low after Mnuchin told reporters in Davos, Switzerland, that short-term weakness “isn’t a concern at all.”
“A weaker dollar is good for trade. In the longer term, a stronger dollar is a reflection of the strength of the U.S. economy,” he said.
A U.S. Treasury secretary actively embracing a weaker dollar, even for the short term, appeared to come as a shock to traders. Investors have to go back more than 20 years to the early days of the Clinton administration to find a Treasury secretary seeming to endorse dollar weakness.
But while Mnuchin’s comments might have seemed jarring, the reality is that the Trump administration has consistently indicated little interest in providing the type of verbal support for the dollar that had been seen as standard since the mid-1990s when Robert Rubin took over as Treasury chief from Lloyd Bentsen and embarked on a jawboning campaign in favor of a stronger greenback.
“The Treasury secretary’s comments today match with what we have been discussing since the U.S. election. This administration sees the fastest way for the U.S. to become more competitive on the manufacturing stage is through a weaker U.S. dollar,” said Douglas Borthwick, head of foreign exchange for Chapdelaine FX, in an email.
Indeed, Trump made the U.S. trade deficit a centerpiece of his presidential campaign. It appears the administration thinks that it can use a weaker dollar as a cudgel to convince other countries to agree to new trade terms that are seen as more favorable to the U.S. It’s seen as hardly a coincidence the remarks come the same week Trump signed an executive order imposing tariffs on washing machines and solar panels, prompting concerns of a potential trade war with South Korea and China.
Read: Trump’s solar panel tariff will hike prices, but ultimately result in lower electricity bills
----“There
are few more efficient ways to accelerate trade wars than to publicly denigrate
your own currency, making foreign exporters suffer…,” wrote Mark Grant, chief
global strategist at B. Riley FBR Inc. & Wunderlich Securities, in a note.
“The only question is how will the foreign exporters, and everyone else,
respond.”
January 24, 2018 / 3:41 PM
On eve of Trump trip, EU leaders warn against nationalism
The speeches by Merkel, Macron and Italy’s Paolo Gentiloni -- leaders of
the continent’s three biggest economies -- came one day before U.S. President
Donald Trump arrives at the annual summit in the Swiss Alps to promote his
America First policies.
Since taking power one year ago, Trump has pulled the United States out
of international agreements on trade and climate, and threatened to torpedo a
deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program, unsettling partners who have looked to
Washington to help shape global rules since World War Two.
Macron spoke for a full hour, receiving a standing ovation from the
crowd of CEOs, bankers and top academics, after he called for a “global
compact” to address the economic forces that have led to rising inequality and
a surge in populism.
“We have a situation where people are being told, on social and
financial issues, that the answer is to do less, to cut our taxes, there is no
limit, it’s a race to the bottom,” Macron said, weeks after Trump pushed
through a large cut in corporate taxes that is expected to lure investment to
the United States.
“If we aren’t able to agree a standard of international cooperation, we
will never convince the middle class, the working class that globalization is
good for them.”
Merkel, in her return to the world stage after months of political limbo
in Germany, evoked the two world wars and questioned whether the West had
learned the lessons from those conflicts.
“We are seeing nationalism, populism and in a lot of countries a
polarized atmosphere,” Merkel told the packed auditorium where Trump will speak
on Friday.
More
In other news, are US
bonds heading for a crash dive? Are the bond vigilantes starting a comeback?
Dalio says investors may see ‘the largest bear market in bonds’ since 1980-81
Published: Jan 24, 2018 1:50 p.m. ET
Founder of largest hedge fund says we’re in the midst of a bond bear market
Investors
dismissing the recent climb in Treasury yields might want to heed Ray Dalio,
founder of the largest hedge fund in the world.
Adding
to recent calls from fixed-income investing luminaries like Bill
Gross, Dalio said bonds were in the midst of a bear market, in an interview
with Bloomberg TV at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The
hedge-fund maestro’s comments follow a previous interview in which the founder
of Bridgewater Associates said investors would rue holding cash as the stock
market surged to new heights amid tepid inflation and solid economic growth.
Asked what could upset benign economic conditions and the resulting
party in risk assets, Dalio pointed the finger at tighter monetary policy. “I
think the Fed is going to tighten faster than they are really signaling,” he
said.
Responsible for more than $150 billion in investor money, the hedge-fund
manager showed concerns bond investors could be blindsided by an aggressive
Federal Reserve willing to ratchet up interest rates as the economy kicks into
higher gear.
“Assets themselves are more sensitive, a 1% rise in bond yields will produce the largest bear market in bonds since the 1980-1981 period,” said Dalio. At the turn of the 1980s, a rare combination of high unemployment and inflation stalked the devastated U.S. economy, driving the 10-year yield to a record high of 15.68% in October 1981.
Since the financial crisis a decade ago, bond yields across the world have slipped lower and lower as central banks launched asset-purchasing programs.
In response, investors have plowed into bonds with longer durations in search of richer returns. In early 2017, the duration of the Barclays U.S. Aggregate Bond Index, the benchmark index for creditworthy debt, pushed past an all-time high.
The longer the duration, the more bond prices will fall in response to interest-rate increases. At the same time, issuers tend to offer higher yields to compensate investors for incurring so-called duration risk.
It isn’t just Dalio warning about the explosive cocktail of longer-dated debt and tighter monetary policy. By the Office of Financial Research’s own calculations, an increase of 1 percentage point in interest rates would lead the securities underlying the benchmark bond index to shed more than $1.2 trillion.
Read: Risk of a big stock or bond market drop ‘are high and rising, government watchdog says
Finally, in
cryptocurrency mania news, is Arsenal Football Club planning to pay its players
in bitcoin? My advice, stick to Her Majesty’s finest Pounds, shillings and pence,
lads, just make sure your odd dodgy football agent keeps that account in Switzerland
and Malta.
Arsenal signs crypto-currency deal with gaming firm CashBet
The club has reached an agreement with the gaming company CashBet, which is planning to launch its own currency CashBet Coin.It will see CashBet Coin advertised at Arsenal's Premier League home games.
But one crypto-currency expert has questioned whether the club is wise to promote what can be a very risky investment.
CashBet is a Californian online gaming business formed in 2012, which is now launching an Initial Coin Offering (ICO). It aims to raise $40m by getting investors to buy CashBet Coins which can then be used to bet on its various online games.
Arsenal's chief commercial officer Vinai Venkatesham said: "We are looking forward to working with CashBet Coin as they launch their new crypto-currency."
I've asked Arsenal whether it was wise to endorse a highly volatile business and whether it was encouraging fans to bet with CashBet Coins.
"Not at all. The partnership aims to promote CashBet Coin ahead of their Initial Coin Offer on 24 January," a spokesman for the club said.
"It does not exist to encourage fans to bet with CashBet Coin."
'High risk'
ICOs have become an extremely popular way for businesses to raise money following the surge in value of Bitcoin, the original crypto-currency.But they are unregulated and investors who buy the coins have no stake in the business and receive no dividends. They hope to profit from the rising value of the crypto-currency.
The Financial Conduct Authority has warned that ICOs are "high-risk, speculative investments".
David Gerard, whose book "Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain" warns about the risks of investing in crypto-currencies, says Arsenal fans who might be encouraged to see CashBet Coins as a new way of betting need to be cautious.
"Crypto-currencies are less regulated than regular betting shops and it's a lot harder to get actual pounds back out again," Mr Gerard said.
While CashBet says it is regulated by the UK Gambling Commission and the Alderney Gambling Control Commission, a spokesman admitted that did not apply to its new crypto-currency venture.
He said that punters who bet with CashBet's currency would eventually be able to convert their winnings into cash on third party exchanges.
"Any nation
which gives up its freedom in pursuit of economic advantage deserves to lose
both."
Thomas Jefferson, US President 1801-1809.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.
Today, the rapidly growing seditious scandal at the
FBI, that threatens to tear Washington apart as in 1973 – 1974. Remind me again
of what happened to stocks way back in the 1970s.
Evidence suggests a massive scandal is brewing at the FBI
During the financial crisis, the federal government bailed out banks it
declared “too big to fail.” Fearing their bankruptcy might trigger economic
Armageddon, the feds propped them up with taxpayer cash.
Something similar is happening now at the FBI, with the Washington
wagons circling the agency to protect it from charges of corruption. This time,
the appropriate tag line is “too big to believe.”
Yet each day brings credible reports suggesting there is a massive
scandal involving the top ranks of America’s premier law enforcement agency.
The reports, which feature talk among agents of a “secret society” and suddenly
missing text messages, point to the existence both of a cabal dedicated to
defeating Donald Trump in 2016 and of a plan to let Hillary Clinton skate free
in the classified email probe.
If either one is true — and I believe both probably are — it would mean FBI leaders betrayed the nation by abusing their powers in a bid to pick the president.
More support for this view involves the FBI’s use of the Russian dossier on Trump that was paid for by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. It is almost certain that the FBI used the dossier to get FISA court warrants to spy on Trump associates, meaning it used the opposition research of the party in power to convince a court to let it spy on the candidate of the other party — likely without telling the court of the dossier’s political link.
Even worse, there is growing reason to believe someone in President Barack Obama’s administration turned over classified information about Trump to the Clinton campaign.
As one former federal prosecutor put it, “It doesn’t get worse than that.” That prosecutor, Joseph diGenova, believes Trump was correct when he claimed Obama aides wiretapped his phones at Trump Tower.
These and other elements combine to make a toxic brew that smells to high heaven, but most Americans don’t know much about it. Mainstream media coverage has been sparse and dismissive and there’s a blackout from the same Democrats obsessed with Russia, Russia, Russia.
Partisan motives aside, it’s as if a scandal of this magnitude is more than America can bear — so let’s pretend there’s nothing to see and move along.
But, thankfully the disgraceful episode won’t be washed away, thanks to a handful of congressional Republicans, led by California Rep. Devin Nunes, chairman of the House’s Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. After he accused the FBI of stonewalling in turning over records, the bureau relented, at least partially.
The result was clear evidence of bias against Trump by officials charged with investigating him and Clinton. Those same agents appear to have acted on that bias to tilt the election to Clinton.
In one text message, an agent suggests that Attorney General Loretta Lynch knew while the investigation was still going on that the FBI would not recommend charges against Clinton.
How could she know unless the fix was in?
All roads in the explosive developments lead to James Comey, whose Boy Scout image belied a sinister belief that he, like his infamous predecessor J. Edgar Hoover, was above the law.
It is why I named him J. Edgar Comey last year and wrote that he was “adept at using innuendo and leaks” to let everybody in Washington know they could be the next to be investigated.
It was in the office of Comey’s top deputy, Andrew McCabe, where agents discussed an “insurance policy” in the event that Trump won. Reports indicated that the Russia-collusion probe was that insurance policy.
The text was from Peter Strzok, the top investigator on the Trump case, and was sent to Lisa Page, an FBI lawyer and also his mistress.
“I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office — that there’s no way he gets elected — but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40 . . . ” Strzok wrote.
It is frightening that Strzok, who called Trump “an idiot,” was the lead investigator on both the Clinton and Trump cases.
---- Talk about irony. While Dems and the left-wing media already found Trump guilty of collusion before Mueller was appointed, the real scandal might be the conduct of the probers themselves.
Suspicions are hardly allayed by the fact that the FBI says it can’t
find five months of messages between Strzok and Page, who exchanged an
estimated 50,000 messages overall. The missing period — Dec. 14, 2016 through
May 17, 2017 — was a crucial time in Washington.
There were numerous leaks of classified material just before and after
Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20.
And the president fired Comey last May 9, provoking an intense lobbying
effort for a special counsel, which led to Mueller’s appointment on May 19.
There can be few fields of human endeavour in which history counts for so little as in the world of finance. Past experience, to the extent that it is part of memory at all, is dismissed as the primitive refuge of those who do not have the insight to appreciate the incredible wonders of the present.
J. K. Galbraith.
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?
Global quantum internet dawns, thanks to China's Micius satellite
Michael Irving 24 January 2018Thanks to the internet, a wealth of information is at our fingertips – although the flipside is that sensitive data is often vulnerable to eavesdropping and theft. Quantum encryption can make that literally impossible, and in a new demonstration of that kind of security, scientists have now used the Chinese satellite Micius to send quantum-encrypted data between China and Austria. The experiment brings the world another step closer to a global quantum internet.
Micius was launched in August 2016, to experiment with quantum communications and encryption. Conventional communications satellites transmit information via radio or microwave signals, but Micius uses quantum-entangled photons to effectively "teleport" information. The two photons are inextricably linked, meaning if a user knows the state of one particle they can infer the state of the other, no matter how far apart they are. Last year, Micius smashed the quantum entanglement distance record, sending a message over a distance of 1,200 km (746 mi).
As well as being almost instantaneous, quantum communications are extremely secure. It works in the same way as Schrödinger's famous thought experiment, involving a cat in a quantum superposition of being simultaneously both alive and dead. It's not until an observer peeks into the box and checks on the cat that the superposition collapses into one state or the other.
In quantum key distribution (QKD), a message is sent as individual photons that are in quantum superposition states – in data terms, those photons represent both ones and zeroes at the same time. The message is coded and decoded through devices at each end, which effectively collapse each incoming photon into the required state, one or zero. If an unauthorized person tries to intercept the message along the way, the very act of observing it will cause the superposition of each photon to collapse into a random state, garbling the message for the hacker and alerting the intended recipient to the breach.
Scientists have now used Micius to transmit data encrypted with QKD between Austria and China, over a record distance of 7,600 km (4,722 mi). The satellite first establishes a secure key between itself and one ground station, then another key with another station, and relays the information between the two. In this test, the messages were pictures with file sizes of about 5 kB, using 80-kbit secure quantum keys for one-time-pad encoding.
An image of Micius, the 5th-century Chinese scientist after whom the satellite is named, was sent from Beijing to Vienna, and the reply was an image of Erwin Schrödinger. To up the ante, the scientists then conducted a video conference call between the Chinese and Austrian Academies of Sciences. About 2 GB of data was transmitted during the course of the 75-minute call, including a 560-kbit quantum key. The conference was also encrypted using the Advanced Encryption Standard AES-128, which refreshed the 128-bit seed keys once every second.
More
https://newatlas.com/micius-quantum-internet-encryption/53102/?utm_source=Gizmag+Subscribers&utm_campaign=b00efb99b5-UA-2235360-4&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_65b67362bd-b00efb99b5-90625829
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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