Baltic Dry Index. 1390 +03 Brent Crude 75.63
What separates the winners
from the losers is how a person reacts to each new twist of fate.
Donald Trump
The Singapore summit
over, everyone left a winner, apparently. Everyone except, South Korea, Japan
and the US Army, who were all left stunned after President Trump cancelled all
South Korea war games due to their cost and “provocative” nature. Ruthless dictator Kim and President Trump
both accepted invitations to visit each other’s countries.
With Kim in Trump’s
best buddy book, how long before North Korea replaces Canada in the G-7?
Below, that summit in
Singapore. I wonder what they make of it in Beijing, Moscow, and NATO? For
today and tomorrow, it’s now all about waiting on the Fed and the ECB.
Without losers, where would
the winners be?
Casey Stengel
June 13, 2018 / 1:02 AM
North Korea frames summit as a win as Trump halts war games
SEOUL
(Reuters) - North Korean state media lauded on Wednesday the summit between Kim
Jong Un and Donald Trump as a resounding success, highlighting concessions by
the U.S. president and the prospect of a new era of peace and prosperity on the
Korean peninsula.
According to a report by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), Trump
expressed his intention to halt U.S.-South Korea joint military exercises,
offer security guarantees to the North and lift sanctions against it as
relations improve.
The U.S. president had said in a news conference on Tuesday he would
like to lift sanctions against North Korea but it would not happen immediately.
Kim and Trump invited each other to their respective countries and both
leaders “gladly accepted”, KCNA reported.
The summit, the first between a sitting U.S. president and a North
Korean leader, was in stark contrast to a flurry of North Korean nuclear and
missile tests and angry exchanges of insults between Trump and Kim last year
that fuelled worries about war.
“Kim Jong Un and Trump had the shared recognition to the effect that it
is important to abide by the principle of step-by-step and simultaneous action
in achieving peace, stability and denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula,”
KCNA said.
Trump confirmed the United States will not hold war games with South
Korea while North Korea negotiates in good faith on denuclearisation.
“We’re not going to be doing the war games as long as we’re negotiating
in good faith,” Trump told Fox News Channel in an interview in Singapore after
the summit.
More
June 12, 2018 / 12:11 PM
Trump surprises with pledge to end military exercises in South Korea
SEOUL (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald
Trump’s declaration on Tuesday that he intended to end joint military exercises
in Korea seemed to be news to both South Korean and U.S. military officials.
Trump made the remarks at a news conference after his summit with North
Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore, calling war games expensive and
“provocative.”
South Korea’s Presidential Blue House said it needed to “to find out the
precise meaning or intentions” of Trump’s statement, while adding that it was
willing to “explore various measures to help the talks move forward more
smoothly.”
A spokeswoman for U.S. military forces in Korea, meanwhile, said it had
not received any direction to cease joint military drills.
“USFK has received no updated guidance on execution or cessation of
training exercises - to include this fall’s schedule Ulchi Freedom Guardian,”
U.S. Forces in Korea spokeswoman Lieutenant Colonel Jennifer Lovett said in a
statement. “In coordination with our (South Korean) partners, we will continue
with our current military posture until we receive updated guidance from the
Department of Defense (DoD) and/or Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM).”
The Pentagon was not immediately able to flesh out Trump’s remarks about
suspending drills, a move the U.S. military has long resisted.
----One South Korean official said he initially thought Trump had mis-spoke.
“I was shocked when he called the exercises ‘provocative,’ a very
unlikely word to be used by a U.S. president,” the official said, speaking on
condition of anonymity because it was a politically sensitive issue.
More
June 12, 2018 / 11:41 AM
Iran tells North Korea Trump could cancel deal before getting home
LONDON
(Reuters) - Iran warned North Korean leader Kim Jong Un not to trust U.S.
President Donald Trump who, it said, could cancel their denuclearisation
agreement within hours.
“We don’t know what type of person the North Korean leader is
negotiating with. It is not clear that he would not cancel the agreement before
returning back home,” Iran’s government spokesman, Mohammad Bagher Nobakht, was
quoted as saying by IRNA new agency.
Trump pulled the U.S. out of a 2015 nuclear deal with Iran last month,
calling it deeply flawed and re-imposing unilateral sanctions.
Nikkei rises, while other Asian markets edge lower
Published: June 12, 2018 11:33 p.m. ET
Automakers boost Nikkei; ZTE’s plunge weighs in Hong Kong
After muted initial moves in Pacific Rim stock markets, things turned lower Wednesday as the trading day began in the rest of the region. Only in Japan were major indexes higher, with the Nikkei up 0.25%. Markets in China, Hong Kong, Australia, Malaysia FBMKLCI, -0.25% and Singapore STI, -0.96% were down roughly 0.5%The Nikkei’s NIK, +0.45% gains were helped by automakers, such as Toyota 7203, +1.51% and Honda 7267, +1.07% , up about 1% each. Nintendo 7974, -5.51% slid after announcing the popular videogame “Fortnite” would be available on its Switch console.
South Korea’s Kospi SEU, -0.05% was about flat, a day after President Donald Trump’s summit in Singapore with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, which appeared to significantly ease nuclear tensions on the peninsula.
China’s stock benchmark in Shanghai SHCOMP, -0.78% opened down 0.5%, giving back some of Monday’s outperformance. That came as the People’s Bank of China said it was removing a rule that limits the amount of funds that so-called qualified foreign institutional investors can take out of China every month. That led to some apprehension of overseas players boosting any selling, said UOB Kay Hian’s Ivan Ip.
Hong Kong stocks HSI, -0.61% opened lower, as ZTE 0763, -39.69% plunged in the resumption of trading following a two-month trading halt. Nearly 100 million shares of ZTE traded within the first 15 minutes, making it the second-busiest day since the day it went public in December 2004. The stock sunk 38% to $15.98, and earlier hit 13-month lows
More
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/nikkei-rises-while-other-asian-markets-edge-lower-2018-06-12
Trump insults Mark Sanford, Robert De Niro on his long flight home from Singapore
Published: June 12, 2018 11:08 p.m. ET
ust hours after being on his most diplomatic behavior with North Korean
leader Kim Jon Un, President Donald Trump on Tuesday returned to hurling
insults at his opponents.In a series of tweets, apparently from aboard Air Force One as he returned from the summit in Singapore, Trump denounced a Republican congressman who has opposed his policies and lashed out at actor Robert De Niro, who profanely blasted Trump at Sunday’s Tony Awards.
“Mark Sanford has been very unhelpful to me in my campaign to MAGA,” Trump tweeted about the South Carolina congressman, who lost a primary challenge Tuesday. “He is MIA and nothing but trouble. He is better off in Argentina.”
That was a reference to Sanford’s 2009 scandal, when, as governor of South Carolina, he went missing for a number of days. After reappearing, he first said he had been hiking the Appalachian Trail, then admitted he was in Argentina having an extramarital affair.
Sanford later resurrected his political career and won a House seat. But he has been one of the most anti-Trump Republicans in Congress, and on Tuesday night he paid the price, conceding to Katie Arrington — who Trump endorsed — in the South Carolina primary.
About an hour later, Trump took on De Niro, calling the seven-time Oscar-winner “a very Low IQ individual” and bestowing him with a new nickname: “Punchy.”
More
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trump-insults-mark-sanford-robert-de-niro-on-his-long-flight-home-from-singapore-2018-06-12
In other news, Germany fears a double hit from Trump tariffs and a Juncker-Barnier hard Brexit. By my unofficial, unscientific vehicle count as I drive around my part of the Thames and River Pang valleys, six out of every ten vehicles is foreign, with the vast majority of foreign cars coming from German firms, and the vast majority of foreign vans and light trucks coming from France. A Juncker-Barnier recession is coming to Germany and France.German car industry fears double shock of Trump tariffs and a Brexit breakdown
Ambrose
Evans-Pritchard11 June 2018 • 6:44pm
President Donald Trump owns a Mercedes SLR McLaren and a Mercedes
Maybach. His daughter Ivanka drives a Mercedes Cabrio.This has not stopped him seizing on German cars as the ultimate symbol of mercantilist villainy and unfair trade practices. Mr Trump reportedly told French leader Emmanuel Macron that he aims to clear every German car from Fifth Avenue in New York in an unyielding quest for national purification.
The German car industry is now seriously alarmed after the bad-tempered collapse of the G7 summit in Canada, followed by a storm of anti-German tweets from Air Force One.
More.
Subscription needed.
Finally, with the
World Cup start just one day away, the US spooks issue a warning. Leave those
mobiles at home. My advice, stay away
from door handles too.
June 12, 2018 / 11:43 PM
Exclusive - U.S. counterspy warns World Cup travellers' devices could be hacked
WASHINGTON
(Reuters) - The top U.S. counterintelligence official is advising Americans
travelling to Russia for football’s World Cup beginning this week that they
should not take electronic devices because they are likely to be hacked by
criminals or the Russian government.
In a statement to Reuters on Tuesday, William Evanina, an FBI agent and
the director of the U.S. National Counterintelligence and Security Center,
warned World Cup travellers that even if they think they are insignificant,
hackers could still target them.
“If you’re planning on taking a mobile phone, laptop, PDA, or other
electronic device with you - make no mistake - any data on those devices
(especially your personally identifiable information) may be accessed by the
Russian government or cyber criminals,” he said.
“Corporate and government officials are most at risk, but don’t assume
you’re too insignificant to be targeted,” Evanina added. “If you can do
without the device, don’t take it. If you must take one, take a different
device from your usual one and remove the battery when not in use.”
Evanina’s warning comes as U.S. intelligence, law enforcement and
congressional officials are still investigating Russian hacking in the 2016
presidential election and whether anyone with President Donald Trump’s campaign
was aware of or aided it. Trump has repeatedly denied there was any collusion
and Russia has said it did not meddle in the U.S. election.
Another U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said British
security agencies have issued similar warnings to the British public and the
England football team, which is competing for the World Cup.
More
Merkel Calls Out Trump, Citing U.S. Services Surplus With Europe
By Arne Delfs and Stefan Nicola
12 June 2018, 20:28 GMT+1 Updated on 13 June 2018, 06:04 GMT+1
Chancellor Angela Merkel said the U.S. runs a trade surplus with Europe
when services are included, marshaling a rebuff to President Donald Trump’s
sustained criticism of German exports.
In a speech in Berlin, Merkel said the topic was discussed at last
week’s tumultuous Group of Seven summit, where a U.S.-Canadian trade dispute
caused Trump to renege on his support for the leaders’ concluding statement.
“Trade surpluses are still calculated in a pretty old-fashioned way,
based only on goods,” Merkel told a business conference of her Christian
Democratic Union party on Tuesday evening. “But if you include services in the
trade balance, the U.S. has big surplus with Europe.”
Merkel and fellow world leaders are still struggling to adapt to an
unpredictable U.S. president who seems to delight in challenging allies on
issues from security to exports while lauding traditional rivals and enemies in
Russia and North Korea. German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas is due to deliver a
keynote speech in Berlin on Wednesday laying out his proposals on how Europe
should react to an unreliable ally in the White House.
More
There are seven winners of the
Monaco Grand Prix on the starting line today, and four of them are Michael
Schumacher.
Murray Walker
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.
Today, more on that US trade war for “national
security” reasons. Is Canada really about to invade the USA and burn down the
White House “again,” in a great milk war?
Any time you have a
competitive situation like politics is, there are winners, and there are people
who don't win, and their supporters can sometimes be very emotional.
Justin Trudeau
Trump's Beef With Canadian Milk
Why pick a fight with Canada, of all places?
Krishnadev CalamurJun 11, 2018 President Trump’s Twitter jab at Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau—in which he publicly called the leader of an allied country “meek and mild,” plus “dishonest & weak”—spawned a mini–cottage industry of articles (including my own) on the fate of the U.S.-led Western world order. And at first glance it’s puzzling why Trump would pick a fight with Canada, of all places, just as he was departing a summit meeting there.But in the same tweet he was pretty explicit about the source of his beef: It’s dairy. Referring to steel and aluminum tariffs he has imposed on Canada, he wrote: “Our Tariffs are in response to his of 270% on dairy!” He has a point. But Trump’s complaint obscures the fact that Canada has in the past been open to allowing in dairy imports in exchange for appropriate concessions; that Canada complains that the U.S. subsidizes its own dairy industry; and, perhaps most important, that while Trudeau, like all Western leaders, might need a close relationship with the United States, he needs to appeal to domestic political realities even more.
At issue is the Canadian supply-management system, which covers dairy, eggs, and poultry products. The system sets domestic production quotas and keeps prices stable, thereby guaranteeing farmers a steady income. And, in order to keep the supply stable, Canada blocks imports from other countries, including the U.S., by imposing tariffs—up to 270 percent on dairy products. About 80 percent of Canada’s dairy farmers are concentrated in two provinces, Quebec and Ontario, both of which are crucial to Trudeau’s political fortunes. (The system is by no means universally popular in Canada.)
“It’s not about Trump and Trudeau,” Stephen Kelly, who served as the U.S. consul general in Quebec City and the deputy chief of mission in Ottawa, told me. “This has been an irritant for many years.”
Decades, in fact—and not just for the United States, whose dairy farmers would like access to the Canadian market, but also their counterparts in New Zealand and elsewhere. New Zealand had opposed Canada’s entry into the Trans-Pacific Partnership over the supply-management system, but Stephen Harper, the Canadian prime minister at the time, agreed to dismantle the system in exchange for TPP membership. When the U.S. withdrew from the TPP, one of Trump’s first decisions as president, Canada withdrew that concession—other countries withdrew their concessions, as well—in the hopes that it could be put back on the table in the future if the U.S. rejoins the pact and demands compromises from the others.
The Canadians aren’t entirely opposed to negotiating on the dairy industry if they are getting something in return: In its Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement with the European Union, Canada agreed to import European cheese without tariffs. From Canada’s point of view, it is worth it for nearly tariff-free access to the 28-member bloc that is the world’s largest economy.
“In a multilateral context, there was more to trade off. Now the problem is that Trump is dealing with this in a bilateral context where trade barriers are generally very low,” Christopher Sands, the director of the Center for Canadian Studies at Johns Hopkins University’s School for Advanced International Studies, told me. “Most tariffs are down to zero anyway. So, there’s not much for the U.S. to give in return for the change.”
It doesn’t help that the U.S. subsidizes its own dairy industry heavily—up to $22 billion in 2015, according to one study. “The Canadians say, ‘Hey, wait a minute. You subsidize milk, too,’” Kelly, who is now a research scholar at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University, said. “You’ve got all sorts of support programs for milk.”
In other words, Canada props up its dairy industry through quotas that cap the amount produced, and imposes heavy tariffs on imports. The U.S. subsidizes its dairy industry, resulting in lower costs for U.S. consumers, but a supply glut.
“From a geopolitical point of view, the trouble with supply management
is it's kind of in your face: ‘You cannot enter our market. You foreigners
cannot enter our markets unless you pay tariffs of like 200 percent,’” Kelly
said. “Whereas subsidies are more insidious. They … probably are anti-trade in
some sense, but they’re not as glaring. … We do it more subtly.”
Those subsidies exist in the U.S. for the same reason Canada has a
supply-management system: domestic politics.
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?
US Food Protects against Fuel Price Increases with Expanded CNG Fleet
US Foods has expanded its fleet of compressed natural gas (CNG) trucks, adding 50 to its Houston warehouse and fueling them at Freedom CNG’s North Houston station. The Houston fleet will help protect the company from rising fuel costs. Freedom says its fuel price has never changed since it opened its first station in 2012.“
Natural gas is a stable, clean, effective and economical transportation fuel choice,” says the company’s co-manager, Bill Winters.
US Foods had been running CNG trucks in San Antonio and Austin, successfully reducing fuel costs and improving emissions, before adding 50 new trucks for its Houston delivery routes.
Such a move allows the company to reduce its environmental footprint while serving customers in an energy efficiency way, says Dario Skokie, VP of transportation for US Foods.
US Foods is the only food company in Houston running a compressed natural gas fleet. The company says its entire Houston fleet of 50 CNG trucks operating in place of similar fuel tractors is estimated to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions by 70 tons.
Lower Fuel, Operational Costs with CNG
Companies now using compressed natural gas fleets say reduced fuel and lower operational costs are two of the main reasons for the switch. Waitrose, for example, introduced a fleet of biomethane CNG trucks with a range of up to 500 miles last year. Though each of Waitrose’s Scania trucks cost 50%more than one that runs on diesel, the company said they will repay the extra costs in two to three years with fuel savings. And its vehicles are likely to operate for five more years than diesel equivalents.https://www.environmentalleader.com/2018/06/us-food-protects-against-fuel-price-increases-with-expanded-cng-fleet/
So I think the winners in
recession are the people who produce new technology that does things better,
which people really want.
James Dyson
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished May.
DJIA: 24,416 +201 Down. NASDAQ:
7,442 +276 Down. SP500: 2,705 +180 Down.
All
three slow indicators moved down in March and have continued down in April and
May. For some a new bear signal, for others a take profits and get back to cash
signal.
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