Baltic Dry Index. 1150 -19 Brent Crude 65.20
For more on the
disastrous Grenfell Tower fire last year and how the London Fire Brigade got it
all so wrong, scroll down to Crooks Corner.
We open with Asia’s
wobbly stock markets, fretting over trade wars, currency wars, rising interest
rates and chaos and confusion in Trump’s Washington. Is a Nixonian “Saturday night
massacre” for special prosecutor Mueller on the cards for this weekend? Will we
get the “St Patrick’s day massacre” tomorrow?
Mueller Just Stepped Over Trump's Red Line
The president once warned the prosecutor to stay out of his family business. The reply: subpoenas.
by Timothy L. O'Brien
15 March 2018, 20:56 GMT
Last July, President Donald Trump warned
the special counsel Robert Mueller that it would be a "violation" for
him and his group of Justice Department investigators to examine the Trump
family's finances. The president agreed with a New York Times reporter's
question about whether doing so would amount to crossing a "red
line."Mueller apparently has decided to cross that line anyway. The Times reported on Thursday that Mueller's team has subpoenaed Trump's company, the Trump Organization, for records pertaining to a number of business deals -- including some related to Russia.
Trump and his lawyers have thrown down all sorts of gauntlets around Mueller's probe. They have argued for a tight deadline leading to its conclusion; negotiated for where, when and how the president might agree to an interview with investigators; and pointed to areas that they think are off-limits.
It would appear that Mueller, with the full force of the law and subpoena power behind him, intends to proceed as he sees fit.
Mueller has already made it clear that he wouldn’t hesitate to look at Trump's business transactions. My Bloomberg News colleagues reported last July -- just a day after Trump conversed with the Times about that red line -- that Mueller was expanding the scope of his investigation to Trump's commercial dealings.
Mueller's probe seems to be pursuing three primary questions. The first is whether Trump or his campaign worked with the Kremlin to tilt the 2016 election in Trump's favor. The second is whether Trump or his advisers obstructed justice to derail the federal investigation. The third involves the possibility of financial quid pro quos that Trump and his family members (especially his son-in-law, Jared Kushner) may have sought in exchange for public policy favors (like, for example, possibly lifting economic sanctions on Russia or shifting U.S. Ukraine policy).
More
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-15/robert-mueller-s-subpoenas-cross-trump-s-red-line
March 16, 2018 / 12:52 AM
Asian shares slip as new U.S. political worries sour mood
TOKYO (Reuters) - Asian stocks slid on Friday as reports
of more chaos in the Trump administration tested investors’ nerves, already
frayed by fears that U.S. tariffs could hurt the global economy and trigger a
trade war.
----On
Wall Street, the S&P 500 .SPX edged
0.08 percent lower on Thursday, marking its first four-day losing streak of
2018.
It hit a session
low soon after the New York Times reported that U.S. Special Counsel Robert
Mueller had issued a subpoena for documents related to U.S. President Donald
Trump’s businesses.
The Washington
Post, meanwhile, reported that President Donald Trump has decided to remove
H.R. McMaster as his national security advisor.
The news came just
days after following the recent departure of two key officials, former
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and top economic advisor Gary Cohn, from the
Trump administration.
Together with the
report earlier this week that Trump is seeking to impose tariffs on up to $60
billion of Chinese imports, they cemented investor concerns that the
administration is increasingly leaning towards protectionism.
----Fears that
the tariffs could disrupt synchronised global growth dwarfed recent strong
economic data, including a fall in U.S. jobless claims.
“It seems as if for Trump, only ‘America First’ policies are left to
boost his popularity and to get re-elected,” said Hiroko Iwaki, senior
strategist at Mizuho Securities.
“It is hard to expect political uncertainties to disappear soon. That
will underpin bonds,” she added.
U.S. Treasuries yield stood little changed at 2.822 percent US10YT=RR in
Asia after having hit a near two-week low of 2.797 percent on Thursday.
In contrast, short-term bond yields rose as investors braced for a
widely expected rate hike by the Federal Reserve next week, with the two-year
yield hitting a 9 1/2-year high of 2.295 percent US2YT=RR.
More
Asian markets in the red after giving up early gains
Published: Mar 15, 2018 10:31 p.m. ET
Asia-Pacific stocks were mostly lower Friday, with Japan and South Korea
surrendering early gains as a choppy trading week comes to an end.The declines came against a backdrop of further political rumblings in the U.S. and Europe. Market participants digested U.S. sanctions against Russia, reshuffles in the White House and Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s decision to subpoena the Trump Organization.
Japan’s Nikkei Stock Average NIK, -0.49% and Korea’s Kospi SEU, +0.03% , which have risen in five of the previous six trading days, were each recently down about 0.5% after starting higher.
Japanese stocks were hit by a fresh uptick in the yen USDJPY, -0.43% , which rose 0.3% to 0.5% against other major currencies as U.S. Treasury yields continued to fall. The yield on 10-year Treasurys was recently at 2.82%, down from 2.832% in early trade.
Australia’s benchmark XJO, +0.48% held on to slight gains, after initially rebounding as much as 0.5% following three-straight sessions of declines.
The lack of clear direction overnight added to volatility in Asia. While European equities and the Dow Jones Industrial Average rebounded, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite fell slightly.
Most of the moves in Asia are being led by lackluster moves in the U.S., said Jingyi Pan, a Singapore-based market strategist at IG Group. “Other than trade and monetary-policy drivers, there’s really very little of interest to the market.”
Singapore’s February non-oil exports fell 5.9% from a year earlier, the latest data showed. Commerzbank attributed the decline to the Lunar New Year holiday, which occurred in February this year and late January in 2017.
Re-exports, a closer reflection of regional trade, were flat in February after posting a 5% gain from a year earlier in January. Singapore’s Straits Times Index STI, -0.04% was recently down 0.1%.
Meanwhile, a two-day Federal Open Market Committee meeting is scheduled to kick off in the U.S. on Tuesday. While the Fed is widely expected to raise interest rates, all eyes are on signs for four increases this year, which would be an increase from expectations for three increases following the central bank’s economic projections in December.
More
McMaster Ouster Denied by White House Amid Reports He's Next
By Margaret Talev
Updated on 16 March 2018, 05:15 GMT
President Donald Trump is not about to oust his national security
adviser, H.R. McMaster, according to White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee
Sanders, even as speculation intensified that McMaster’s departure had already
been decided.
Sanders tweeted on McMaster’s status late Thursday night following a
Washington Post report that Trump had decided to replace the Army lieutenant
general, who has led the National Security Council for more than a year. The
Wall Street Journal later reported that Trump wants to remove McMaster and has
conveyed his wishes to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly.
"Just spoke to @POTUS and Gen. H.R. McMaster - contrary to reports
they have a good working relationship and there are no changes at the NSC,” she
said in a Twitter post.
The Sanders tweet provided some reprieve for McMaster from speculation
that he would be the next top official to leave the administration amid
turbulence that has depleted Trump’s inner circle. That reprieve may only be
temporary, some people familiar with the situation said, as it appears that
Trump’s displeasure with McMaster has reached a critical level. The people were
granted anonymity to discuss internal White House deliberations.
More
Finally, in
commodities news, where will all the right metals come from to support a global
Electric Vehicle world? Gold plated runways.
Battery Markets and Metals Markets Have Officially Collided
The rise of electric vehicles and energy storage is contributing to turbulence in lithium, cobalt and nickel pricing, new research suggests.
Julian SpectorMarch 14, 2018
Lithium, cobalt and nickel are experiencing price fluctuations as global tech and auto giants race to lock down these crucial battery materials.
All three metals were rising in price through the early part of 2018, according to the latest research from Wood Mackenzie's newly launched Battery Raw Materials Service. The data charts out ups and downs in those metal prices over the next five years, which will play an increasingly significant role in the cost structure for advanced batteries.
The analysts expect lithium demand to grow by approximately 42 percent between 2017 and 2020, prompting an expansion of materials supply. But, they note, there’s a lag time between expanding raw metals production and churning out battery-grade materials.
“As such, we expect relatively high [lithium] price levels to be maintained over 2018," the report states. "However, for 2019 and beyond, supply will start to outpace demand more aggressively and price levels will decline in turn.”
The report predicts a steady decline in lithium prices, along with increased supply, amounting to a compound annual growth rate of -18 percent for lithium carbonate between 2017 and 2022.
Cobalt is another story. Its price more than doubled from
2016 to 2017, and prices in February were up 133 percent year-over-year.
---- Battery production drove 49 percent of cobalt demand in 2017, and will drive 61 percent in 2022, Wood Mac predicts. Battery demand for cobalt in that year will be just six kilotons short of the total cobalt demand in 2017.
A significant surplus will build up from 2019 onward, driving the
reduction in price. However, a short-term price increase is likely, driven by
regulatory uncertainty in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which supplied
64 percent of global cobalt production last year.
The DRC parliament passed a mining sector reform last month that would
increase royalties on cobalt, copper and gold, and levy a 50 percent tax on
“super profits,” defined as prices that exceed 25 percent of the project’s
feasibility-study projections. That means more of the proceeds from mining stay
in the Congo, but that could result in uncertainty or higher prices downstream.
“While the new code still has to be signed into law by President Joseph
Kabila, the new reforms highlight the inherent risk in the cobalt industry's
reliance on DRC supply,” the report notes.
More
Metal Tycoon to Leapfrog Elon Musk With World's Biggest Battery
By Perry Williams
Sanjeev
Gupta plans to snatch the world’s biggest battery crown from Tesla Inc. founder
Elon Musk.
Simec Zen Energy, controlled by the U.K. executive’s GFG Alliance, agreed to
build a 120-megawatt lithium-ion battery at Port Augusta in South Australia,
State Premier Jay Weatherill said in an emailed statement Friday. While no
timeline was given for completion, the battery size would exceed Musk’s
100-megawatt unit in the same state’s outback, which holds the current record. Other rivals may
also overtake Musk including a South Korean project.GFG, which last year added steel operations to iron ore mines in Australia, said the battery will help power a 200 megawatt solar farm at its Whyalla steelworks. Simec Zen hopes its Big Battery Project will provide grid stability and act as a buffer to power outages, which have included a state-wide blackout in September 2016.
More
This Commodity Investor Is Hoarding the World’s Cobalt Supply
Backed by a Russian billionaire, Anthony Milewski started stockpiling the metal in 2015.
By Mark Burton
Anthony
Milewski was among the first investors to realize that if electric-vehicle
sales take off the way automakers expect, the world is going to need a lot more
cobalt—an essential ingredient in lithium-ion batteries.
But the market for cobalt isn’t very big, and there aren’t many easy ways for investors to bet on prices. The metal is a minor byproduct of copper and nickel mining, and only a few places produce meaningful quantities. More than half the world’s supply comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo, an impoverished country in central Africa mired in corruption scandals and political unrest.
So, in 2015, backed by a Russian billionaire, Milewski started buying metal from mining companies and putting it in warehouses. At the time, it was cheap because most industrial commodities were stuck in long slumps. Today, the company Milewski runs, Cobalt 27 Capital Corp., holds almost 3,000 metric tons, the largest private stockpile on the planet. (Only China has more.) Prices have since surged almost four-fold, making the inventory worth about $250 million.
Milewski raised C$200 million ($126 million) from investors this month, and he is keen to get more cobalt. However, the metal has gotten harder to find, especially with manufacturers like Tesla Inc. and Apple Inc. trying to secure their own supplies by signing long-term deals with miners. Cobalt traded on the London Metal Exchange has gone from $21,750 a ton in February 2016 to a record $84,250 on March 8.
“If you tried to go out and buy 3,000 tons of cobalt today in the spot market, you’d need a telescope to see the price,” Milewski, 37, says from his office in Zug, Switzerland, where he also is a managing director for Pala Investments Ltd. The company is controlled by Vladimir Iorich, who made his fortune in Russian coal and steel. “The market’s gotten so tight.”
Still, Milewski remains bullish, and he’s looking for different ways to double-down on cobalt.
Governments from China to California are pushing for more electric vehicles to help reduce climate-altering emissions. By 2040, more than half of global auto sales will be electric vehicles, compared with 1 percent last year, when sales surged above 1 million, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. That means more demand for batteries and materials used to make them, including cobalt cathodes that help move electrons more efficiently without overheating. Half of cobalt demand is from battery makers.
More
Russian plane drops 3 tons of gold bars on runway after door glitch
An investigation is underway after the incident Thursday at
the airport in the far east city of Yakutsk.
By The Associated Press Thu., March 15, 2018
MOSCOW—Russian news reports say the hatch of a cargo plane carrying precious metals accidentally flew open upon takeoff — scattering at least 3 tons of gold on the runway.
An investigation is underway after the incident Thursday at the airport in the far east city of Yakutsk, according to the Tass news agency.
An An-12 plane operated by the airline Nimbus took off for Krasnoyarsk carrying 9.3 tons of gold and other precious metals, according to a statement from the state Investigative Committee quoted by Tass. Damage to a door handle caused it to fly open and spill some of the metal.
Authorities recovered 172 gold bars weighing 3.4 tons, Tass quoted Interior Ministry officials as saying.
No one was hurt in the incident. Images circulating on social media showed gold bars scattered across a runway.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.
Today what really happened at the scandalous
Grenfell Tower fire last year, and why the London Fire Brigade got it all so
wrong and the death toll was so high. But will the LFB’s role be covered up and
swept under the carpet for political reasons. Mayor Khan is the LFB’s boss. Would the Metropolitan Police investigating the crime, dare bring a corporate manslaughter charge against fellow unionists, the London Fire Brigade?
Grenfell firefighter's guilt over not being able to save more people
A firefighter who spent the night battling the blaze at Grenfell Tower
last June speaks to Sky News Correspondent Charlotte Lomas on the condition of
anonymity about what happened.
Eerily quiet.
That was the scene I encountered when I was sent into the blazing inferno of the Grenfell Tower fire.
That was the scene I encountered when I was sent into the blazing inferno of the Grenfell Tower fire.
Outside it had been loud and chaotic like a war zone, but inside it was
quiet.
And the reason soon became apparent - our radios weren't working and we
had lost all communication.
It felt like we were very much alone.
We couldn't radio back to let our crews know where we were, what we were
doing, if we had done the job we had been sent up there to do.
So if any of us were in trouble, we had no way of communicating that
back.
We couldn't see much. Everywhere we went it was filled with smoke - you
couldn't even see your hand in front of your face.
Everything about our training is teamwork and communications.
We talk to each other, we talk to the outside, communications between
the control staff, the people calling 999.
If we haven't got radio communications then it's all guesswork and
that's what a lot of our work was that night.
I think there would have been a higher chance of getting more people out
alive if the radios had worked properly.
It was the biggest failure of the night as far as the London Fire
Brigade was concerned.
No one could talk to anyone outside.
Imagine a firefighter going up to a certain floor in Grenfell Tower and
telling someone to stay put because that's what they've been told to tell them
and not realising the outside of the building was now fully engulfed in flames.
And that's what firefighters have to live with now because no one could
tell them inside the building that there was a raging inferno outside.
I know that firefighters would have made a decision to get more people
out of that building if they knew what was happening on the outside of that
building.
More
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?
March 15, 2018 / 11:40 AM
What is 5G and who are the major players?
LONDON/SAN
FRANCISCO (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump has blocked microchip maker
Broadcom Ltd’s $117 billion takeover of rival Qualcomm amid concerns that it
would give China the upper hand in the next generation of mobile
communications, or 5G.
Below
are some facts about 5G and major players.
WHAT IS 5G?
5G networks, now
in the final testing stage, will rely on denser arrays of small antennas and
the cloud to offer data speeds up to 50 or 100 times faster than current 4G
networks and serve as critical infrastructure for a range of industries.
Deals to start
building mass-market 5G networks are still largely a year away, but by 2025,
1.2 billion people are set to have access to 5G networks - a third of them in
China, according to the global wireless trade group GSMA.
Moving to new
networks promises to enable new mobile services and even whole new business
models, but could pose challenges for countries and industries unprepared to
invest in the transition.
Unlike the
upgrades of cellular standards 2G in the early 1990s, 3G around the millennium
and 4G in 2010, 5G standards will deliver not just faster phone and computer
data but also help connect up cars, machines, cargo and crop equipment.
WHY IS THE U.S. WORRIED?
The Committee on
Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which vets acquisitions of
U.S. corporations by foreign companies, said the Broadcom takeover risked
weakening Qualcomm, which would boost China over the United States in the 5G
race.
Acquiring Qualcomm
would represent the jewel in the crown of Broadcom’s portfolio of
communications chips, which supply wi-fi, power management, video and other
features in smartphones alongside Qualcomm’s core baseband chips - radio modems
that wirelessly connect phones to networks.
The
concern is that a takeover by Singapore-based Broadcom could see the firm cut
research and development spending by Qualcomm or hive off strategically
important parts of the company to other buyers, including in China, U.S.
officials and analysts have said.
5G promises to
open up the clubby world of telecom equipment by creating openings for a far
wider range of players in hardware, software and semiconductors, many of them
from Asia, increasing the dependence of Silicon Valley on foreign players.
MAJOR PLAYERS
Before the new
technology becomes a reality for consumers, two transitions need to take place.
Mobile operators
have to upgrade their networks with 5G gear made by the likes of Huawei
[HWT.UL] and ZTE of China, Sweden’s Ericsson and Finland’s Nokia. And phone
makers need to make handsets with built-in 5G radios ready to hook up to
networks.
More
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished February
DJIA: 25,029 +283 Up 01. NASDAQ: 7,273 +313 Up 03. SP500: 2,714 +212 Flat.
No comments:
Post a Comment