Baltic Dry Index. 1084 -05 Brent Crude 65.35
“Socialism
only works in two places: Heaven where they don’t need it and hell where they
already have it.”
Ronald
Reagan.
In another holiday
shortened week in China and the USA, hopium rolls on in global stocks. But the
party mat be coming to an end if President Trump initiates his trade war with
China. Over the weekend, China said it reserved the right to retaliate in kind,
if he did. Generally there are no winners in trade wars.
Japan Stocks Gain as Yen Rise Stalls; Oil Climbs: Markets Wrap
By Andreea Papuc
Updated on 19 February 2018, 05:19 GMT
Japanese
shares rose as a rally in the yen paused and after U.S. equities capped their
best week in five years. The dollar fell against major peers and oil climbed
above $62 a barrel.
Asian
equities are building on their best week since September 2016, with stocks in
Seoul, Sydney and Singapore also gaining, even as markets in Hong Kong and
China are closed for the Lunar New Year holiday and in the U.S. for Presidents’
Day. S&P 500 Index futures were higher after the benchmark closed
little changed Friday, erasing most gains as investors assessed the
implications of new indictments in the Russia/U.S.
election investigation. The index ended 4.3 percent higher for the week and the
10-year Treasury yield fell back below 2.9 percent.
Meanwhile, the yen drifted around a 15-month high as data showed Japan’s exports and imports grew strongly in January from a year earlier in a sign the economy continues to expand. The increase in imports resulted in the first monthly trade deficit since May 2017.
Global equities staged a recovery last week after their worst selloff in two years as investors fretted about the outlook for high interest rates and inflation and U.S. 10-year Treasury yields approached 3 percent.
Traders return to their desks in Hong Kong on Tuesday, while Chinese markets reopen on Thursday.
More
China Warns It May Retaliate If U.S. Imposes Metal Tariffs
Bloomberg News
17 February 2018, 05:26 GMT Updated
on 17 February 2018, 06:39 GMT
China said proposed
U.S. tariffs on imported steel and aluminum products are groundless and
that it reserves the right to retaliate if they are imposed.The U.S. recommendations, unveiled by the Commerce Department on Friday, aren’t consistent with the facts, Wang Hejun, chief of the trade remedy and investigation bureau at China’s Ministry of Commerce, said in a statement posted on its website.
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the U.S. may impose quotas on imports of aluminum and steel, including a tariff of at least 24 percent on steel imports from all countries. While it’s the strongest indication yet that President Donald Trump’s administration is ready to take action on its protectionist agenda, Ross said “it wouldn’t surprise us” if the measures were challenged. The U.S. already has excessive protections on domestic iron and steel products, according to Wang.
“If the final decision impacts China’s interests, China will certainly
take necessary measures to protect its own rights,” Wang said.
American steel companies and steelworker unions have been pushing Trump
to follow through on his promise to protect the industry. China’s trade
partners have complained for years that its industry unfairly benefits from
state subsidies, and dumps its products at below-market prices. While China
only accounts for about 1 percent of U.S. steel imports, it could challenge
U.S. action at the World Trade Organization, a process that could take years.
----Rather
than tariffs on all imports, Trump may opt for a more “surgical” approach, Ross
suggested at a meeting with lawmakers this week. On steel, for example, the
president could go with the recommended option that would levy a tariff of 53
percent on imports from 12 countries — a list that includes China, Russia,
India and South Korea — but allow exemptions for allies such as Japan, Germany
and Canada.
More
In EUSSR news, elections go from ugly to uglier in
Italy and Hungary. In Germany, Mrs
Merkel’s non-stop car crash continues.
“Europe exemplifies
a situation unfavourable to a common currency. It is composed of separate
nations, speaking different languages, with different customs, and having
citizens feeling far greater loyalty and attachment to their own country than
to a common market or to the idea of Europe".
Professor Milton Friedman, The Times 19 November
1997.
Now Bots Are Trying to Help Populists Win Italy's Election
By Chiara Albanese
Findings of the digital forensic research lab at Atlantic Council
in Washington suggess the campaign could be vulnerable to manipulation using
these robot accounts. Such concerns were validated just last week
when U.S. special prosecutor Robert Mueller detailed a sweeping conspiracy
orchestrated by Russia to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election,
with social media a key to the effort. Bots -- which follow, tweet,
re-tweet and like content -- can exaggerate the support for smaller factions
and spread false or inadequate information.
The use of bots isn’t illegal, but they can have a real effect on voter
intentions, according to Maks Czuperski, a director of at Atlantic Council lab
who’s part of a team traveling to Italy next week to monitor internet activity
in the run-up to the vote. “We are detecting an attempt to popularize the
more extreme parties, both right and left," he said.
----By analyzing the underlying code of the suspicious tweets sent in January, he traced them to the website of Salvini’s Northern League and linked to the party’s official Twitter feed, @LegaSalvini. Puente quickly posted his findings on his blog and then to his more than 7,000 followers on Twitter. He tagged Salvini in the tweet, which lamented the use of automated accounts to spew propaganda. It was re-tweeted almost 350 times.
Salvini’s press office didn’t respond to a request for comment.
More
February 18, 2018 / 5:41 PM
Hungary's Orban calls for global anti-migrant alliance with eye on 2018 elections
BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Hungarian leader Viktor Orban called on Sunday for
a global alliance against migration as his right-wing populist Fidesz party
began campaigning for an April 8 election in which it is expected to win a
third consecutive landslide victory.
Popular at home but increasingly at odds politically and economically
with mainstream European Union peers, Orban has thrived on external
controversy, including repeated clashes with Brussels and lately the United
Nations.
Those conflicts, mostly centred on migration since people fleeing war
and poverty in the Middle East and Africa flooded into Europe in 2015, have
intensified as the elections approach and Orban poses as a saviour of Europe’s
Christian nations.
“Christianity is Europe’s last hope,” Orban told an audience of party
faithful at the foot of the Royal Castle in Budapest. With mass immigration,
especially from Africa, “our worst nightmares can come true. The West falls as
it fails to see Europe being overrun.”
Orban is widely credited for reversing an economic slump in Hungary and
controlling its public finances, culminating in a return to investment-grade
for its debt, which was cut to ‘junk’ during the 2008 global economic crisis.
To achieve that and hold onto power the prime minister, 54, has used
methods that critics have called authoritarian, and picked fights with EU
partners, especially in the West. Eastern leaders, most notably in Poland, have
followed his lead.
More
February 18, 2018 / 4:19 PM
Leading SPD mayors back coalition with Merkel, poll shows
BERLIN
(Reuters) - Leading Social Democrat (SPD) mayors favour joining a coalition
government with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives, a poll showed on
Sunday, boosting the prospects of the centre-left party backing the alliance in
a ballot starting this week.
The
SPD’s 464,000 members vote in a postal ballot from Tuesday on whether their
party should go ahead with the coalition agreement its leaders clinched this
month to renew their alliance with Merkel’s CDU/CSU bloc.
----Merkel
turned to the SPD after her efforts to secure an alliance with the Greens and
the pro-business Free Democrats failed in November. She had to make painful
concessions to the SPD to break months of political deadlock after an
inconclusive election on Sept. 24.
The SPD‘S
leader-in-waiting, Andrea Nahles, is trying to convince members to back the
coalition agreement ahead of the postal ballot, which will run through to March
2. The result, due to be announced on March 4, is wide open.
More
February 16, 2018 / 8:27 PM
Airbus concerned about German coalition's tougher stance on arm sales
MUNICH
(Reuters) - The head of Airbus’s defence unit criticised Germany on Friday for
not spending more on defence and said the new coalition agreement’s call for a
tougher approach to arms exports could prompt the weapons maker to re-examine
its business plans.
A coalition deal between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the
centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), which must still be ratified by the SPD,
has pledged an immediate ban on arms sales to countries involved in the war in
Yemen and a tougher approach to arms sales in general.
“If additional restrictions are imposed, we would have to consider that
in our strategic planning,” Dirk Hoke, chief executive of Airbus Defence and
Space, said in a telephone interview during the annual Munich Security
Conference.
“A unilateral restriction on European arms exports by
Germany not only hurts domestic industry, but also reduces the room for
manoeuvre of a strategic European security and defence policy,” said Hoke, who
is German.
More
21st
century adage: Is that true, or did you hear it on the BBC?
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.
Yes it’s the banksters again. Modern banking is to all intents and
purposes, indistinguishable from organised crime.
Banks are an almost irresistible attraction for that element of our society which seeks unearned money.
J. Edgar Hoover
ECB's Rimsevics Detained by Latvian Anti-Graft Bureau
By Aaron Eglitis and Ott Ummelas
Updated on 19 February 2018, 01:28 GMT
Latvian central bank Governor Ilmars Rimsevics, a member of the European
Central Bank’s governing council, was detained by the anti-graft bureau, in a
flurry of actions by officials that ended early Monday with the financial
regulator imposing payment restrictions on third-biggest lender ABLV Bank AS.The detention followed a search by authorities of the governor’s office and private property, state-owned LTV reported. Rimsevics’s lawyer, Saulvedis Varpins, said the governor considered the move against him as "clearly illegal." Finance Minister Dana Reizniece-Ozola said the detention would be explained on Monday and -- without saying whether it was linked to ABLV -- that Latvia’s credit rating may suffer. She urged him to remove himself from his duties.
"Each day that Mr. Rimsevics remains in the central bank’s leadership significantly worsens" the situation, Reizniece-Ozola said at a news conference in Riga on Sunday. "I think that at this moment, it would be wise if Mr. Rimsevics would at least during the course of the investigation step down."
These developments deal a new setback to Latvia, a euro-area member that just last year saw its economy struggle back to pre-crisis levels after losing more than a fifth of its output in the global financial crisis. Last week, the U.S. Treasury Department proposed banning ABLV from the U.S. financial system, saying it helped entities allegedly linked to North Korea’s missile program process transactions -- charges the lender denies.
Years Ago
Rimsevics, 52, has worked at the Baltic nation’s central bank since graduating with an MBA from Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York, in 1992. After first taking the role of deputy governor that year, he was promoted to governor in 2001. He’s been a member of the ECB governing council since 2014, when Latvia adopted the euro.
More
February 19, 2018 / 5:36 AM
ECB halts all payments by ABLV Bank amid probe
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The European Central Bank has stopped
all payments by ABLV Bank, Latvia’s third biggest lender, as it’s facing
accusations of money laundering, the ECB said in a statement on Monday.
“This means that temporarily, and until further notice, a prohibition of
all payments by ABLV Bank on its financial liabilities has been imposed, and is
now in effect,” the ECB said. “In recent days, there has been a sharp
deterioration of the bank’s financial position.”
The U.S. Treasury sought sanctions against the bank last week, accusing
it of allowing clients to conduct business with North Korea in violation of
United Nations sanctions that were imposed in relation to its nuclear weapons
programme.
India State Banks Reveal Exposure in Billion-Dollar Fraud Case
By Subhadip Sircar
18 February 2018, 05:45 GMT
India’s state-owned UCO Bank said it has exposure
of $411.8 million in the nearly $2 billion bank fraud perpetrated against
Punjab National Bank, a case linked to billionaire jeweler Nirav Modi.UCO Bank’s Hong Kong branch granted loans against letters of credit issued by PNB, UCO Bank said in a filing with the Bombay Stock Exchange late on Saturday. Other banks, including State Bank of India and Union Bank of India, are also said to be at risk of loss.
In all, Indian banks could take a hit of more than $3 billion from loans and corporate guarantees provided to diamond companies allegedly involved in the fraud at PNB, Reuters reported on Saturday, citing the tax department.
In its complaint to the Central Bureau of Investigation, PNB alleged that the fraud was led by Modi, who’s dressed Hollywood actors including Kate Winslet and Bollywood actors such as Priyanka Chopra. Modi, 47, is No. 85 on Forbes’s 2017 list of India’s richest people.
Modi hasn’t spoken publicly about the allegations. He is in New York City, and the ministry of external affairs on Friday suspended his passport, The Times of India reported.
Read more: One of India’s Richest Men Allegedly Executed a $2 Billion Fraud
The CBI has arrested Gokulnath Shetty, a former deputy general manager at PNB, and Manoj Kharat, a so-called “single window operator” at the lender, CBI spokesman R.K. Gaur said on Saturday.
Hemant Bhat, an authorized signatory of the Nirav Modi Group of firms, has also been held, Gaur said.
A special court in Mumbai late on Saturday remanded the three suspects to the CBI’s custody for 14 days, saying the case has "consequences for the economy of the nation," the Press Trust of India reported.
Raids were being conducted across India by the Enforcement Directorate, and included the seizure of about 56.7 billion rupees ($883 million) in diamonds, gold, precious stones and jewelry, the Press Trust of India said in a separate report on Saturday.
PNB on Friday told the National Stock Exchange and Bombay Stock Exchange that it has also filed complaints against Mehul Choksi’s Gitanjali Group of companies. PNB alleges that Modi and Choksi worked with Shetty, who was posted at a PNB branch in Mumbai from where the fraud originated.
The bank claims they used fake PNB guarantees worth $1.8 billion to obtain loans from the overseas branches of Indian banks, claiming to need the cash to import pearls, according to documents made public or seen by Bloomberg.
"It's strange that men should take up crime when there are
so many legal ways to be dishonest. “
Al Capone
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?
Electric car range is affected by extreme cold, but at least the cars can start
- Jan. 2nd 2018 11:46 am ET
Sorry for the snarky headline and the swipe at internal combustion
engines, but I have seen so much misinformation spread about electric cars in
cold weather lately that I had to clarify something.
Yes, electric cars are negatively affected by the extreme cold, but it’s
perfectly manageable and arguably as manageable if not more easily
manageable than gas-powered cars.
In case you are not aware, North America has been hit by a massive wave
of extremely cold weather over the last 2 weeks.
In Quebec here, it results in temperature often going down to -25C
(-13F) before accounting for wind chill. It’s not unusual for a
Canadian winter, but it’s fairly extreme for December and now early January.
Following this cold weather, Le Journal De Montreal, one of the biggest
newspapers in Quebec, made a front page out of electric vehicles being affected
by the cold with a headline translating to ‘Electric vehicles are Freezing” all
based on the experience of one Nissan Leaf owner and one Chevy Bolt EV owner.
Of course, that headline ran on the same day that hundreds if not
thousands of gas-powered cars wouldn’t even start in our little province.
To be fair, they did briefly mention that EVs have a better chance
to start than internal combustion engines at the very end of the article, but
that brief mention on page 5 did nothing compared to this anti-EV propaganda on
the front page.
Now, there’s no doubt that EVs are negatively affected by the cold both
due to heavier use of the heating system that can’t take advantage of an
inefficient engine that loses most of its energetic potential through heat
and due to batteries being less efficient at low temperatures.
But EVs don’t just “freeze” in cold weather like they claim. That should
be obvious just from the fact that there’s no better EV adoption rate than in
Norway, but here’s a quick personal experience from a road trip I took last
weekend just as an example.
Electrek’s Take
For any type of vehicle, regardless of the type of powertrain,
there has to be some planning to assure a safe and efficient trip. The problem
with Le Journal de Montreal’s two examples is that they are talking about two
electric vehicles that are already not ideal for long-distance travel in the first
place.
Both the Bolt EV and Nissan Leaf are great commuter cars and even with a
decrease in range in cold weather, they will still be able to cover most
commutes easily. Even though the Bolt EV has a longer range, its limited fast
charging capacity/options doesn’t make it a great car for road trips
–especially in the cold. While Tesla will heat batteries to enable 100+kW
charging, the Bolt’s system is slow to heat the battery for rapid charging
which maxes out at a little above 50kW.
For now, Tesla’s vehicles are still the best options for long-distance
travel with EVs.
Last weekend, I had to travel 150 km (mostly highways) each way to
stay at a family member’s cottage north of Montreal. My Tesla Model S P85
gets about 400 km of range on a full charge, so normally I wouldn’t even
think about it even though I can only charge on a 110-volt outlet for a day at
the house.
More
Do Electric Cars Work in Cold Weather? Get the Facts…
David Reichmuth,
senior engineer, Clean Vehicles | February 16, 2016, 10:30 am EST
In
short, yes. All cars (both gasoline and electric) have lower fuel efficiencies
at colder temperatures, decreasing how far the vehicle can travel without
refueling. However, because some electric vehicles (EVs) have a lower range
than the typical gasoline car, these efficiency losses can be an important
consideration when choosing an EV in places that have cold winters. Still,
today’s EV’s work just fine in cold climates, and new models will be even
better.
More
Electric Vehicles Do Work In Cold Weather
February 13th, 2018 by Jake Richardson
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished January
DJIA: 26,149 +282 Up. NASDAQ: 7,411 +310 Up. SP500: 2,824 +212 Up.
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