Baltic Dry Index. 1387 -04 Brent Crude 76.49
"The leaders of the
French Revolution excited the poor against the rich; this made the rich poor,
but it never made the poor rich."
Fisher Ames.
The big news today will be what happens in
the summit between President Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. As I
write they are having lunch, having had at least a positive first couple of
sessions. With the summit well covered by mainstream media we might return to
the subject tomorrow.
Below, the Donald’s first impressions. Leaving
tweets later. Kim in, Trudeau out, for now?
‘We will have a terrific relationship,’ Trump says after meeting Kim
Published: June 11, 2018 10:30 p.m. ET
President Donald Trump predicted early Tuesday that he and Kim Jong Un
would have “a tremendous relationship” as the commander in chief and North
Korean dictator shook hands and began their historic summit in Singapore.
“I feel really great. We’ll have a great discussion. Tremendous success.
This will be tremendously successful. It’s my honor. We will have a terrific
relationship,” the president told reporters as he and Kim sat across from one
another moments after the historic handshake on a stage bedecked with U.S. and
North Korean flags.
“We’re here, overcoming everything,” the reclusive Kim told Trump,
adding that the two countries overcame many obstacles on their way forward.
“That’s true,” the president agreed.
Trump and Kim then met behind closed doors together for a meeting that
only months ago seemed impossible.
The historic session came just days before Trump’s 72nd birthday on
Thursday.
“Meetings between staffs and representatives are going well and
quickly….but in the end, that doesn’t matter,” Trump tweeted before his
encounter with Kim. “We will all know soon whether or not a real deal, unlike
those of the past, can happen!”
More
Next, NY Times deep analysis of the Trump –
Kim summit, or a clever disinformation, agitprop fed article intended to
unsettle China – North Korea relations? Both? Well worth the read anyway.
Before Kim Meets Trump, China Gets Jittery About North Korea’s Intentions
June 10, 2018
BEIJING — In the sudden rush of diplomacy involving North
Korea, China has appeared to have the upper hand, hosting the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, twice before his long-anticipated Singapore summit
meeting with President Trump even begins.
Yet as Mr. Kim prepares to finally meet Mr. Trump in Singapore on Tuesday, some
analysts say Beijing appears to be getting a sudden case of the jitters.
They say the Chinese leaders, who are unused to being on
the outside looking in, are growing anxious about whether they can keep their
Cold War-era ally firmly in its current orbit around China. Leaders in Beijing
are worried, experts say, that Mr. Kim might try to counterbalance China’s
influence by embracing the United States, North Korea’s longtime enemy.
According to analysts, Mr. Kim may seek to do this by
offering Mr. Trump some sort of deal, which would probably include some pledge
to scrap his nuclear arsenal in exchange for American
help to reduce or even eliminate North Korea’s near total dependence on China.
More
In other news, Canadians become Canadian;
Asian stocks drift; the G-6 and IMF fret, German motor makers caught cheating
again. Mercedes US tariffs next? Rising concern over global grains.
June 11, 2018 / 10:25 PM
Canada parliament condemns U.S. attack on Trudeau, country simmers
OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada’s House of
Commons on Monday unanimously condemned the personal attacks on Prime Minister
Justin Trudeau by U.S. President Donald Trump and his surrogates as the
famously polite nation simmered over the weekend broadsides by its U.S. ally.
Lawmakers gave unanimous consent for a motion backing Canadian steel and
aluminium, hit by U.S. tariffs, as well as the supply management system that
supports key agriculture sectors, and gave a standing ovation for the government’s
response to the Trump administration’s verbal attacks on Trudeau.
The motion in parliament, introduced by the opposition New Democrats,
rejected “disparaging ad hominem statements by U.S. officials which do a
disservice to bilateral relations.”
---- While the agreement of legislators who are normally opposed on most fronts was remarkable, the anger also spread to pundits, officials, celebrities and ordinary citizens as Canadians vowed consumer boycotts of American goods and brainstormed insults of Trump on social media.
“Something strange and wonderful has been sparked by @realDonaldTrump’s
dishonourable comments about this country. I think it might be a Canadian
identity,” newspaper columnist John Ivison tweeted.
More
June 12, 2018 / 1:28 AM / Updated
an hour ago
Stocks on edge, dollar rises as Trump, Kim raise hopes at landmark summit
SYDNEY (Reuters) - The dollar
jumped to a 3-week top on Tuesday while stock markets in Asia ticked higher as
a landmark U.S.-North Korea summit in Singapore raised hopes the bitter foes
might be able to strike a deal to end a nuclear stand-off on the Korean
peninsula.
U.S. President Donald Trump said he had forged a “good relationship” with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the start of their historic meeting, just months after they traded insults and tensions spiralled in the region over the reclusive regime’s nuclear programmes.
Kim said the meeting was “a good prelude to peace”, but there was some unease among investors about the outcome of the talks given the tense relations between the two nations.
The combatants of the 1950-53 Korean War are technically still at war, as the conflict, in which millions of people died, was concluded only with a truce.
The dollar rose against the safe-haven yen, while the Korean won KRW= gained 0.2 percent to edge above a recent two-week trough. U.S. stock futures were barely changed with E-Minis for the S&P 500 ESc1 up 0.02 percent and Dow futures inching 0.06 percent higher.
In Asian equity markets, trading was volatile with Japan's Nikkei .N225 paring early gains to add 0.3 percent after earlier rising as much as 0.9 percent.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS seesawed between positive and negative territory, and was last up 0.1. South Korean shares .KS11 fell 0.2 percent in choppy deals, while Chinese shares were buoyant after starting in the red with the blue-chip .CSI300 jumping 0.8 percent.
---- “It seems that investors are hesitant to carry large directional exposure into this week’s events,” Citi analysts said in a note.
Even so, leveraged investors were long Korean won, Citi said citing the
average of past four weeks of money flows.
“Any disappointment from the summit could cause an unwind of such
bullish positions. On the other hand, a successful summit could trigger a
faster conversion into the Korean Won of foreign currency deposits.”
Many analysts said the bar was pretty low for what will be deemed a
‘successful’ summit, given the past failures in talks with North Korea.
More
June 11, 2018 / 6:13 AM
'Fair trade, fool trade', Trump's tweets spew ire on NATO allies, Trudeau
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump fired off a
volley of tweets on Monday venting anger on NATO allies, the European Union and
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the wake of a divisive G7 meeting
over the weekend.
The escalating clash over trade between Washington and some of its
closest global partners cast a cloud over Trump’s efforts to make history in
nuclear talks in Singapore on Tuesday with Kim Jong Un of North Korea, one of
America’s bitterest foes.
Having left the Group of Seven summit in Canada early, Trump’s
announcement that he was backing out of the joint communique torpedoed what
appeared to be a fragile consensus on the trade dispute between Washington and
its top allies.
“Fair trade is now to be called fool trade if it is not reciprocal,”
said Trump, who flew from Canada to Singapore on Sunday to prepare for the
first-ever summit between a U.S. and North Korean leader.
“Sorry, we cannot let our friends, or enemies, take advantage of us on
trade anymore. We must put the American worker first!”
----Trump’s extraordinary outburst on Monday against NATO allies, the European Union and Canada appeared aimed at striking a chord with voters who support his “America First” agenda.
At the same time, however, it put Trump in the position of going into a
crucial summit at odds with countries he needs on his side to pressure North
Korea to move toward dismantling a nuclear arsenal that threatens the United
States.
----“Not fair to the people of America! $800 billion trade deficit,” he said. “Why should I, as president of the United State, allow countries to continue to make massive trade surpluses, as they have for decades, while our farmers, workers & taxpayers have such a big and unfair price to pay?”
It was left to Trump’s aides to figure out how to explain Trump’s airing
of grievances against trading partners instead of focusing on his coming talks
with Kim, which the president’s supporters hope will provide him with a major
foreign policy win.
----Trump also lambasted fellow members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) for paying disproportionately less than the United States to maintain the Western alliance.
“The U.S. pays close to the entire cost of NATO - protecting many of
these same countries that rip us off on trade (they pay only a fraction of the
cost - and laugh!),” he tweeted. “The European Union had a $151 billion surplus
- should pay much more for military!”
“Germany pays 1 percent (slowly) of GDP towards NATO, while we pay 4
percent of a much larger GDP. Does anybody believe that makes sense?”
More
Lagarde Says Clouds Over Global Economy Are ‘Darker by the Day’
By Patrick Donahue and Andrew Mayeda
Updated on 11 June 2018, 20:27 GMT+1
June 11, 2018 / 5:35 PM / Updated
12 hours ago
German ministry says 774,000 Mercedes cars contain unauthorized software
BERLIN
(Reuters) - Germany’s Transport Ministry said on Monday that 774,000
Mercedes-Benz vehicles in Europe had been found to contain unauthorized
software defeat devices and ordered Daimler to recall more than 200,000 cars in
Germany.
Mercedes-Benz C-Class and Vito models with diesel engines and a sports
utility variant of the sedan, known as the GLC, were the main cars found to be
at fault, the ministry said.
“The government will order 238,000 Daimler vehicles to be immediately
recalled Germany-wide because of unauthorized defeat devices,” the ministry
said in a statement.
Germany can only order the recall of vehicles within its own borders, or
of those vehicles issued with a pan-European road-worthiness certification via
German authorities.
Mercedes-Benz C-Class and Vito models with diesel engines and a sports
utility variant of the sedan, known as the GLC, were the main cars found to be
at fault, the ministry said.
“The government will order 238,000 Daimler vehicles to be immediately
recalled Germany-wide because of unauthorized defeat devices,” the ministry
said in a statement.
Germany can only order the recall of vehicles within its own borders, or
of those vehicles issued with a pan-European road-worthiness certification via
German authorities.
More
GRAINS-Wheat subdued after weather rally, focus turns to USDA data
PARIS/SINGAPORE, June 11 (Reuters) - Chicago wheat eased on Monday
as rainfall in western Australia took the edge off global weather worries,
while investors awaited a U.S. government crop
report to gauge the possible impact of dryness in a clutch of exporting countries.
report to gauge the possible impact of dryness in a clutch of exporting countries.
----Wheat prices have been buffet in recent weeks by concern over dry
weather in several major exporting countries, which could change the complexion
of a global market currently laden with record inventories.
"News flow is supportive for wheat prices, we have a severe drought
cutting Russian output," said one India-based agricultural commodities
analyst.
"But the upside might be limited as stocks are still pretty big in
the United States and fresh supplies from the northern hemisphere harvest have
started coming to the market."
Traders will get an update on U.S. winter wheat harvest progress and
crop conditions later on Monday in a weekly U.S. Department of Agriculture
(USDA) report, ahead of the agency's
widely followed world crop forecasts on Tuesday.
widely followed world crop forecasts on Tuesday.
Farmers in Australia's export-focused west received beneficial rain at
the end of the winter wheat planting window, although conditions remain parched
in the eastern states.
Conditions remain parched in parts of the Black Sea export region.
"Hot and dry weather looks to stay over the Black Sea region this
week, further drawing yield potential for Ukraine wheat and corn, and Russia
wheat," Thomson Reuters Agriculture Research analysts said in a note.
Severe drought in eastern and southern regions could shrink Ukraine's
2018 wheat harvest by 15-30 percent versus original forecasts, the state
hydrometeorological centre said on Friday.
Russian agriculture consultancy IKAR said on Friday it had downgraded
its forecast for Russia's 2018 wheat crop to 71.5 million tonnes from 73.5
million previously.
More
And so on to the
Trump – Kim final communique. Trump tweets from his plane next.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.
Socialist crooks today, the Great Venezuelan Follies. How to bankrupt
and impoverish a nation with massive oil wealth.
“Socialism
only works in two places: Heaven where they don’t need it and hell where they
already have it.”
Ronald
Reagan.
Venezuela’s Long Road to Ruin
Few countries have provided such a perfect example of socialist policies in practice.
By Mary Anastasia O’Grady Updated
June 10, 2018 9:58 p.m. ET
Word from Caracas is that locals have taken to scouring city streets for
plastic garbage bags full of rubbish and, when they find them, emptying the
contents so that they can resell the bags. This sounds absurd, but it is believable in a country where extreme poverty has spread like the plague. Human capital is fleeing. Oil production is plummeting, and the state-owned oil company is in default. The garbage bag, imported with dollars, is a thing of value.
If anything was more predictable than the mess created by Hugo Chávez’s Marxist Bolivarian Revolution, it is the pathetic effort by socialists to deny responsibility. The Socialist Party of Great Britain tweeted recently that Venezuela’s problem is that socialism has yet to be tried. It blamed the crisis on “a profit-driven capitalist economy under leftist state-control.” Even more preposterous is the claim by some academics that economic liberalism in the 1980s spawned the socialism that has destroyed the country.
Learning from history is impossible if the narrative is wrong. So let’s clear the record: By the time Chávez was elected, Venezuela already had 40 years of socialism under its belt and precious little, if any, experience with free markets.
Military dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez was toppled in January 1958. Romulo Betancourt, an avowed socialist, was elected president later that year.
When Venezuela promulgated its 1961 constitution, Betancourt immediately suspended Article 96, which read: “All can freely engage in the profitable activity of their choice, without any limitations other than those provided for in this Constitution and those established by law for security, health or other reasons of social interest.”
This crucial protection remained on the shelf for 30 years, as a string of socialist governments employed price and exchange controls in counterproductive attempts to raise living standards.
Rent control in Venezuela dates to 1939 but was not enforced by Pérez Jiménez. In August 1960 Betancourt revived it, passing a new rent-control law and prohibitions on eviction. Since then, “not one apartment rental building has been built,” writes Vladimir Chelminski in his 2017 book, “Venezuelan Society Checkmated.” The legendary slums that climb Caracas’s hillsides are a testament to this socialist stupidity.
Carlos Andrés Pérez took the presidency for the first time in 1974. World oil prices had shot up as President Nixon’s domestic price controls crippled U.S. production. As a result, Venezuela felt rich. The national assembly granted CAP, as the president was popularly known, an “enabling law” so that he could rule by decree. He mandated salary increases for the entire nation and implemented, for the first time, a minimum wage. He froze prices and issued crazy edicts. All commercial buildings had to employ elevator operators, and all public restrooms had to have attendants.
CAP put limits on foreign investment in everything from telecom and banking to food and electricity distribution, forcing foreigners to sell what they owned in Venezuela. He nationalized oil in 1976. The state expanded its role in iron, steel and aluminum and took control of coffee, cocoa and the previously independent central bank.
More
Seumas Milne, now [Labour
leader] Corbyn’s press spokesman, wrote
in the Guardian of how: “Venezuela and its Latin American allies have
demonstrated it’s no longer necessary to accept a failed economic model, as
many social democrats in Europe still do.”
Union boss Len McCluskey saw
Venezuela as a country that the rest of us should copy. “Europe might want to
learn the obvious lessons from Venezuela,” he said.
Diane Abbott [Labour Party
Shadow Home Secretary] agreed that Venezuela showed “another way” of doing
politics.
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?
Ultra-capacitor hybrid radically boosts power and efficiency of lithium batteries
Loz Blain 11/6/18Combining the unique strengths of lithium batteries with crazy-fast charging, carbon ultra-capacitors could save a ton of weight and add significant range and power to electric vehicles, according to Nawa Technologies. Based outside Marseilles, this fascinating French startup is working on a new type of battery it believes could offer some huge advantages in the EV space, among many others.
Nawa Technologies' core product is a new type of carbon ultra-capacitor with a set of remarkable advantages over typical lithium-ion battery cells.
To start with, as a capacitor, its charge and discharge rates are
absolutely spectacular compared with batteries – up to 1,000 times faster.
We're talking about charging an entire car battery in a matter of seconds,
maybe three times quicker than filling a tank with fossil fuel.
And since there's no chemical reaction taking place, merely a physical
separation of protons and electrons, super-fast charging doesn't cause any heat
build-up or swelling of the battery. That gives the carbon ultra-capacitor an
exceptionally long lifetime, up to a million charge cycles.
The ultra-capacitor's monster discharge rate also offers another
advantage over lithium batteries. In high-powered EVs, the slow discharge rate
of the batteries often means you need to up battery capacity in order to add
performance. The Tesla Model S, for example, wouldn't be able to activate its
Ludicrous speed mode with a smaller battery pack, because the slow discharge
rates of the batteries would cause a power bottleneck. That's absolutely not a
problem with an ultra-capacitor; these things discharge fast enough to output
enormous power with a very small battery.
It's also very cheap and simple to manufacture, using a process that
Nawa Founder and COO Pascal Boulanger describes to us over the phone as
"the same process used to create photovoltaic panels. It's industry
proven, highly efficient and cost effective."
----"Nawa's ultra-capacitors only use carbon and aluminum. Our
carbon comes from natural, sustainable sources. We don't need to mine. When I
created Nawa, that was what I wanted to promote: a real, sustainable way.
That's the dream. Building safer and cleaner batteries."
----But this ultra-capacitor technology does have drawbacks.
For starters, while power density (the amount of power output per unit
of weight) is off the charts, energy density doesn't compete with lithium. An
ultra-capacitor will only hold about 25 percent of the energy per unit of
weight that a lithium battery can manage, so a car battery with the same sized
ultra-capacitor would have only a quarter the range.
Secondly, capacitors suck at long-term energy storage. Leave your car
charged up in your garage, and you could expect to leak around 10-20 percent of
your energy out each day.
The Nawa team believes that the full potential of the ultra-capacitor,
at least in the EV space, becomes unlocked when it's combined with a lithium
battery.
A hybrid lithium/carbon battery system could offer the best of both
worlds – long-range continuous driving and long-term power storage thanks to
the lithium unit, plus ultra-fast partial charging and extreme power output
thanks to the ultra-capacitor.
This kind of hybrid system has another hidden advantage: regenerative
braking would become about 450 percent better at recouping energy. Current
re-gen systems are forced to throw away the vast majority of energy generated
back through the wheels under braking simply because lithium charges so slowly
that there's nowhere to put it all.
----In a regular driving situation, that could handily extend your battery range. In an electric race car, this kind of system would be even more effective, storing almost all of your braking energy coming into a corner, and then pumping it back out at a massive rate for huge acceleration out of the turn.
"For example, let's take Formula E racing," says Grape.
"If you look at the batteries they have on those cars, we've done a
simulation using data from a co-operation partner of ours, and we've analyzed
it. When you combine our technology with the lithium battery, we could reduce
the size and weight of the battery pack from 300 kg (661 lb) to about 200 kg
(441 lb) – and you'd have a longer driving distance as well, because we're much
more efficient."
Morehttps://newatlas.com/nawa-technologies-carbon-ultra-capacitor/54972/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2018-06-11%20084151%20Other%20Daily%20Basic%202018-06-11%20084439%20Ultra-capacitor%20hybrid%20radically%20boosts%20power%20and%20efficiency%20of%20lithium%20batteries&utm_content=2018-06-11%20084151%20Other%20Daily%20Basic%202018-06-11%20084439%20Ultra-capacitor%20hybrid%20radically%20boosts%20power%20and%20efficiency%20of%20lithium%20batteries+CID_31660331a4921393199e6791b4e4b58a&utm_source=Campaign%20Monitor&utm_term=Read%20more
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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