Baltic Dry Index. 1709 Monday Brent Crude 72.30
"I
think if this country gets any kinder or gentler, it's literally going to cease
to exist."
Donald J. Trump.
Has Trump’s America already “won?” Having imploded
the Turkish Lira and much of the Turkish economy, putting Europe’s banks under
stress, is China about to become the next Turkey? Don’t scoff, it might be the
next shoe to fall, if China’s debt bubble bursts.
If it is, “winning” is an unlikely description of
what follows next. If Trump’s version of winning crashes the Giant Chinese
Ponzi Scheme, from San Francisco to Santiago, to Shanghai, a handful of “winners”
will likely be offset by millions of losers, mass unemployment and mass unrest.
I suspect that Christmas 2018, will not be like Christmas 2017 or earlier Christmases.
Christmas 1930 might be the closer
guide. More Venezuela than Virginia.
Below, Asia starts to wobble once again and next
week Trump kicks off a new round of anti-China tariffs.
August 15, 2018 / 1:54 AM
Asian stocks retreat as Turkey worries weigh, dollar buoyant
TOKYO
(Reuters) - Asian stocks retreated on Wednesday, failing to follow Wall Street’s
gains, while the dollar was near a 13-month high as concerns about Turkey’s
financial crisis weighed on investor appetite despite the lira’s move away from
an all-time low.
The lira TRYTOM=D3 --which plummeted to a record low of 7.24 to the dollar at the week's start, rattling global markets-- was slightly weaker at 6.415 after rebounding more than 8 percent overnight.
Wall Street’s three main indexes rose on Tuesday as the lira’s climb eased fears of broader financial contagion for now. A string of robust earnings also boosted U.S. shares. [.N]
But the rise in U.S. shares did not carry through to Asia, with MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS sliding 0.8 percent after bouncing 0.4 percent the previous day when the lira showed signs of stabilising.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng .HSI dropped more than 1 percent and the Shanghai Composite Index .SSEC fell 0.1 percent. Signs of the world's second-largest economy losing momentum and the ongoing Sino-U.S. trade conflict have weighed on Chinese equities.
Australian stocks rose 0.1 percent and Japan's Nikkei .N225 slipped 0.4 percent after rallying more than 2 percent on Tuesday. South Korean markets .KS11 were closed for a public holiday.
“The equity markets are waiting for the next steps after gaining strongly yesterday. The drop by the Turkish lira may have stopped, but the country is yet to tackle the fundamental problems facing it, and this has kept market sentiment subdued,” said Masahiro Ichikawa, senior strategist at Sumitomo Mitsui Asset Management in Tokyo.
Keeping the markets wary, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday that Ankara would boycott electronic products from the United States, retaliating in a row with Washington that has helped drive the lira to record lows.
----The dollar index, which measures the greenback’s strength against a group of six major currencies stretched overnight gains and reached 96.82, .DXY, its highest since late June 2017.
The strength of the U.S. currency was compounded by the euro’s fall,
which has been dogged by potential risks to European banks from the financial
turmoil in Turkey.
“The lira rallied yesterday, but there is not remedial plan for Turkey’s
internal and external imbalances. Europe’s banks will have to reserve more
against these potential losses, and already low capital adequacy ratios will be
tested,” wrote Carl Weinberg, chief international economist at High Frequency
Economics.
Morehttps://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-global-markets/asian-stocks-retreat-as-turkey-worries-weigh-dollar-buoyant-idUKKBN1L002P
Are shoppers helping China spend its way out of US trade war trouble? Retail sales data says no
Beijing had been counting on robust spending to cushion the blow of its dispute with Washington
PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 14 August, 2018, 7:01pm UPDATED :
Wednesday, 15 August, 2018, 9:35am
Growth in Chinese retail sales was slower than expected in July, lowering hopes that consumer spending could help cushion the country from the blows of the trade war with the United States.
Sales still rose 8.8 per cent in July from the same period a year earlier, according to data released on Tuesday by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) – but that is down from the 9 per cent expansion in June and below the 9.1 per cent gain expected by financial analysts.
The latest growth rate was only marginally above the 15-year low of 8.5
per cent set in May.
With incomes rising over the past decade, consumer spending has become a
main driving force in the Chinese economy and Beijing is counting on further
robust spending to offset the economic impact of the trade war.
But rising consumer debt and concerns over the outlook for incomes have forced some consumers to rein in their spending this year.
The NBS data mirrors the findings of a recent study by the China National Commercial Information Centre, a state-backed consultancy, which suggested that the drop in consumer spending was gathering steam.
More
https://www.scmp.com/business/companies/article/2159675/chinas-retail-sales-data-shows-consumers-not-offsetting-us-trade?aid=197778625&sc_src=email_2321827&sc_llid=9188&sc_lid=154120022&sc_uid=164ZJlR5S5&utm_source=emarsys&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=GME-O-TradeWar&utm_content=row-180814
Low-hanging fruit and a mountain of debt – how China’s credit binge is playing out
Like many other Chinese cities, Changde has been on an infrastructure spending spree that went well beyond what the government could afford
PUBLISHED : Wednesday, 15 August, 2018, 6:13am UPDATED : Wednesday, 15 August, 2018, 11:31am
When Ma Heshui set up a vineyard in central Hunan province with a friend four years ago, they were surrounded by farmland.
They leased 1.6 hectares (four acres) in a quiet spot on Changde’s
northernmost edge, 3km (1.9 miles) from its main train station. But as their
grapevines developed, so did the city of 6 million – and they watched as a
brand new urban centre sprang up around them.
Now, the vineyard sits at the centre of a “new town” covering an area of
27 sq km (10.4 square miles). A 3.3 billion yuan (US$481.8 million) hospital
has just opened there, an imposing city hall will follow, and on a recent visit
by the South China Morning Post, workers were installing curtain walls
on two high-rise buildings that will be the headquarters of the city
government’s biggest fundraising vehicle, Changde Caixin Financial Holding
Group.
“This is totally beyond my imagination – the whole area developed very
quickly after several new main roads were built,” said Ma, a 44-year-old father
of two. “But construction of many government projects has really slowed down
recently. It seems they’re suddenly running out of money.”
Changde is not the only city where building work is slowing after an infrastructure spending spree driven by local authorities seeking fast development, paid for with easy credit from the state banking system.
Government-led spending on roads, bridges, airports, railways, residential towers, conference centres and sports facilities has helped to propel China’s growth in the last decade, but it has left Beijing with a mountain of debt to deal with. The Bank for International Settlements put total debt at 256 per cent of China’s gross domestic product in mid-2017 – much of it racked up by state-owned enterprises and local governments.
Changde – known as “China’s Stalingrad” for its
resistance against the Japanese in a 1943 battle – wants to become a regional
economic centre alongside provincial capital Changsha, which is two hours away
by train.
It is one of hundreds, if not thousands, of Chinese
cities trying to take a bigger place in the country’s economic landscape. But
like many others, its ambitious development blueprints and countless
infrastructure projects go well beyond what the government can afford.
Changde’s fiscal income of 16 billion yuan last year covered just a quarter of
its spending – the rest came from Beijing and Changsha.
So when Beijing tightened control of the public-private
partnerships that are used to channel private funds into infrastructure, and
the banks became less willing to lend money to projects that would not
immediately be profitable, Changde was one of the places that felt the impact.
How will China walk the tightrope between stimulating growth and the need to rein in debt?
At least seven of the city’s key projects due to get
under way this year had yet to break ground by June, according to a government
document. They include a huge convention centre and “conference town” covering
60 hectares, a plan for 27 roads, eight bridges and 26 bus stops in the north
of the city where Ma’s vineyard is located, another plan for 50 roads and five
bridges in the west, and a stadium.
Dozens of other projects – including three shanty town
redevelopments – are behind schedule, according to the document released by the
city’s planning agency, the Changde Development and Reform Commission, last
month. It said the delays had been caused by the “government debt clean-up and
policies restricting fiscal spending and forms of investment”.
More
August 15, 2018 / 5:24 AM
Turkey raises tariffs on some U.S. imports, including cars, alcohol - Official Gazette
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey has sharply raised tariffs on some U.S.
imports, including passenger cars, alcohol, tobacco, the country’s Official
Gazette said on Wednesday.
The decree, signed by President Tayyip Erdogan, raised the tariffs on
passenger cars by 120 percent, on alcoholic drinks by 140 percent and on leaf
tobacco by 60 percent. Tariffs were also increased on goods including
cosmetics, rice and coal.
"We're
rounding 'em up in a very humane way, in a very nice way. And they're going to
be happy because they want to be legalized. And, by the way, I know it doesn't
sound nice. But not everything is nice."
President Trump.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.
No crooks, bent politicians, or doubled over
banksters and central banksters today.
Today the downside of Venezuelan socialism, the role model of Comrade Agent
Corbyn’s New UK Communist Labour Party. People are fleeing his People’s
Paradise for the austere Granite City of Aberdeen. From the report, I guess
they haven’t taken yet to deep fried Mars bars.
Venezuelan refugees find safe haven in Scotland, along with gray weather, weird food
August 02, 2018 04:04 PM Updated August 04, 2018 06:05 PM
ABERDEEN, SCOTLAND
So it’s not exactly the first place you’d expect to find a thriving Venezuelan outpost.
Yet, here they are. Aberdeen and other places in Scotland have quietly become a tiny oasis for refugees fleeing the social strife and economic collapse back home in Venezuela.
The influx started over a decade ago, the first refugees drawn by one thing the two very different countries have in common — the oil industry. Much of Aberdeen’s economy has been tied to oil and gas production in the nearby North Sea. So when Venezuela’s state-run oil industry began struggling, a number of workers took jobs here.
That was the seed of small but growing community. New refugees Carlos
and Nathaly Hernandez, with their two young daughters and teenage son in tow,
had hoped to escape the rising chaos and crime at home by moving to Miami, a
city with a booming Venezuelan population. But fearing it would be hard to live
legally long-term in the United States, they soon set their sights on Scotland
instead.
The transition has not been easy — the food was bland, they didn’t speak
English, let alone the local variant, and the weather was a shock after balmy
Caracas.
“I saw it as too gray,” Nathaly Hernandez recalled of their arrival to
Aberdeen. “At that moment, the girls cried. It’s a gray city. They didn’t like
it.”
For Venezuelan
exiles, the family’s experience will sound painfully familiar.
He was a well-to-do veterinarian and farmer, she an accountant who helped run a telecommunications company. They lived in a gated mountainside community outside Caracas, put their two young daughters and teenage son in private school and took vacations to Miami and Orlando.
Now, Carlos pedals his rusty used bicycle to his night shift washing dishes at a restaurant. Nathaly spends her days cleaning hotel rooms. They live in a cramped apartment next to an ancient Scottish cemetery.
But the young girls, 9-year-old Ana and 6-year-old Sophia, can do something they could not in crime-wracked Venezuela: Play outside without fear.
“The parks. The beach ... There’s no danger here, not like Venezuela, where I couldn’t even go outside and jump around,” Ana said in a mixture of Spanish and broken English.
Since the late President Hugo Chávez took power in 1999, anywhere from two to four million Venezuelans have fled the country, according to estimates, most to neighboring South American countries. After nearly two decades of socialist rule, hyperinflation and economic mismanagement have led to crushing shortages of food, power and water, a dramatic rise in violent crime and continuing refugee crisis.
Most of the spotlight has been on the exodus to the United States and neighboring Colombia — the U.S. Agency for International Development recently announced it was giving $6 million to help feed and aid the tens of thousands crossing the border to Colombia.
But many Venezuelans also have fled to Europe, where those seeking international protection there has increased by over 3,500-percent. In February alone, nearly 1,400 Venezuelans sought asylum, nearly all of them in Spain.
The United Kingdom has also proven a growing option. There were an estimated 22,000 Venezuelan-born people living in legally in the United Kingdom last year, according to national statistics — nearly triple the number from just five years earlier. The population in Scotland remains small. About 2,000 people of Venezuelan birth were recorded living legally in Scotland last year — but that’s double the number from a decade ago, the stats show.
More
14 August 2018 - 19H44
Lack of food pushes 2.3mn to flee Venezuela: UN
UNITED NATIONS (UNITED STATES) (AFP) -
About 2.3 million Venezuelans have fled their crisis-hit country mainly
because of a lack of food as severe shortages of medicine has left thousands at
risk, the UN spokesman said Tuesday.
The Venezuelans have fled to Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Brazil.
"People cite the lack of food as their main reason for
leaving," said UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric. About 1.3 million
Venezuelans are suffering from malnourishment.
More
“Socialism
only works in two places: Heaven where they don’t need it and hell where they
already have it.”
Ronald
Reagan.
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?
Why some computer viruses refuse to die
14 August 2018
There are zombies on the internet - odd, undead lumps of code that roam endlessly
seeking and finding fresh victims to infect that help keep the whole ugly horde
staggering on, and on.
Most of these shambling data revenants are computer viruses and the most
long-lived of all are worms.
"Most of those worms are self-spreading - that's why we still see
them moving around," said Candid Wueest, principal threat researcher at
Symantec, who has hunted viruses for years.
Typically, he said, when these malicious programs infected a machine,
they kicked off a routine that scanned the entire net looking for other
computers vulnerable in the same way as their current host.
When they found one, they installed a copy that also started scanning.
"All it takes is a few machines to get them moving around
again," he added.
One of the most active zombie viruses is Conficker, which first struck in November 2008. At its height, the worm is believed to have infected up to 15 million Windows PCs.
The French navy, UK warships, Greater Manchester Police and many others were all caught out by Conficker, which targeted the Windows XP operating system.
The malware caused so much trouble that Microsoft put up a bounty of $250,000 (£193,000) for any information that would lead to the capture of Conficker's creators.
That bounty was still live and, Microsoft told the BBC, remained unclaimed to this day.
Dr Paul Vixie, from Farsight Security, was part of the Conficker Working Group, set up when the malware was at its feverish peak.
The group had managed to stem the tide of infection, said Dr Vixie, because of the way the virus worked.
One of the ways it spread was by it checking one of a handful of net domains for instructions or updates every day.
And the first two variants of Conficker picked one domain from a list of 250 randomly generated names.
But some clever software reverse engineering worked out how the daily domains were generated.
In 2008, Dr Vixie helped to run the net's Domain Name System so was able to co-ordinate a global effort to register every day's possible domains before the malware's creators did the same.
And data sent from infected machines was then "sinkholed" almost neutering Conficker's ability to spread.
"We got it from 11 million down to one million," said Dr Vixie. "That sounds like progress but one million is still a pretty big number."
That zombie virus was still wandering around, said Dr Vixie.
Statistics gathered by Symantec suggest there were 1.2 million Conficker infections in 2016 and 840,000 in 2017.
India suffered the highest number of infections last year.
More
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished July.
DJIA: 25,415 +213 Down. NASDAQ:
7,672 +259 Down. SP500: 2,816 +166 Down.
All
three slow indicators moved down in March and have continued down ever since.
For some a new bear signal, for others a take profits and get back to cash
signal.
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