Baltic Dry Index. 1203 -28 Brent Crude 62.19
EUSSR: In
return for these few glass beads and this mirror, you will leave the island of
Manhattan forever, but pay us 39 billion for the privilege and allow us to hunt
and fish wherever we want. Dotard May: where do I sign?
Today the GB Commons
begins 5 days of debating HMG’s 585 page long EUSSR Brexit surrender contract.
But first they vote on whether HMG is in “contempt of Parliament.” Why wouldn’t
they be? They’re held in contempt by everyone else. More towards the end of the
week.
Below the Trump
U-turn relief rally fizzles and perhaps even fails today. Even President Trump’s
team of trade war hooligans are at a loss to explain exactly what Presidents
Trump and Xi agreed, when it will happen and who will move first. To outside
observers, other than delaying the US punitive tariffs and agreeing to hold
more talks, and China promising to buy more goods from the USA, it doesn’t look
like anything was agreed at all.
Deferring the US punitive
tariffs and China purchasing more US exports, if it happens, is a plus but only
a small temporary plus at best. Ending the trade war and negotiating a new international
trade system like adults, is vital before the calamity of a new global
recession hits.
Below, more reasons
to think that the next global recession is getting closer with each passing
week.
The market, like the Lord, helps those who
help themselves. But, unlike the Lord, the market does not forgive those who know not what they do.
Warren Buffett.
Asia shares fall as lift from US-China trade truce ends
December 4, 2018 / 1:08 AM
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Asian shares fell on Tuesday as a relief rally
petered out amid rising doubts over whether China and the United States will be
able to resolve trade differences.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS fell 0.3 percent as Chinese equity markets struggled to move out of negative territory.
Chinese blue-chip shares in Shenzhen and Shanghai .CSI300 were slightly weaker, and the benchmark Shanghai Composite index .SSEC edged barely higher. Shares in Hong Kong .HSI lost 0.3 percent.
Australia shares gave up 0.8 percent and Seoul's Kospi .KS11 fell 0.6 percent, while Japan's Nikkei stock index .N225 was 1.3 percent lower.
The temporary freeze on further hostilities in the trade war between the United States and China had sparked a global rally in equity markets on Monday, pushing MSCI’s all-country world index .MIWD00000PUS up 1.3 percent.
But even before the trading day ended, major U.S. indexes pulled back from intraday highs as investors pondered unresolved issues between the two countries.
Overnight, the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI closed 1.13 percent higher, the S&P 500 .SPX gained 1.09 percent and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added 1.51 percent.
“Overall trade news overnight (has) probably left the market with more questions than answers, can the US and China really resolve their differences in 90 days?” National Australia Bank analysts said in a note to clients.
More
Trump's Advisers Struggle to Explain Deal He Says He Cut With Xi
By Shawn Donnan
Updated on 4 December 2018, 01:15 GMT
President Donald Trump left his top advisers scrambling on Monday
to explain a trade deal he claimed he’d struck with China to reduce tariffs on
U.S. cars exported to the country -- an agreement that doesn’t exist on paper
and hasn’t been confirmed in Beijing.In the day after Trump announced the deal in a two-sentence Twitter post, the White House provided no additional information. At a briefing in Beijing, a spokesman for the foreign ministry declined to comment on any changes to car tariffs.
Questioned about the agreement on Monday,
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Trump’s top economic adviser, Larry
Kudlow, dialed back expectations and added qualifiers.
“I’ll call them ‘commitments’ at this
point, which are -- commitments are not necessarily a trade deal, but it’s
stuff that they’re going to look at and presumably implement,” Kudlow told
reporters at an official White House briefing that followed TV interviews and
informal briefings by him and Mnuchin earlier in the day.
---- Trump’s tweet, which moved stocks of
automobile companies across the globe, followed the dinner at the Group of 20
summit in Argentina. There, all sides agree, the American president agreed to
postpone an increase in tariffs on Chinese imports to 25 percent from 10
percent, which was scheduled to take effect Jan. 1, in exchange for
negotiations on broader economic disputes.
“I think there is a specific understanding that we are now going to turn
the agreement the two presidents had into a real agreement in the next 90
days,” Mnuchin told reporters at the White House on Monday. “I’m taking
President Xi at his word, at his commitment to President Trump. But they have
to deliver on this.”
He didn’t say precisely what China committed to do.
The uncertainty underscored the risk entailed by Trump’s eagerness to
strike deals without nailing down details in advance. The confusion was
exacerbated by the absence of a joint statement from the U.S. and China
following the dinner. Financial markets were left struggling to digest talks
that the White House portrayed as a major victory for the president.
More
Key yield curve hits flattest in 11 years; 3-year and 5-year note invert for first time since 2007
By Sunny
Oh Published: Dec 3, 2018 4:35 p.m. ET
3-year and 5-year note inverts for first time since 2007
Bond investors are anticipating an increasingly dark landscape for the U.S. economy amid global growth headwinds, higher interest rates and the potential for a full-blown trade war.Against that backdrop, the yield curve’s slope, measured by the spread between short-dated and long-dated yields, are closing in on a so-called inversion.
That is because a flat yield curve currently reflects investors’ fears that the broader economy is succumbing to tighter financial conditions as the Federal Reserve pushes up interest rates. The central bank is projected to raise rates by another quarter-percentage point in December, even as investors are uncertain if the central bank will slow down its hiking path.
An inversion implies investors are selling short-dated bonds at a brisker pace than their long-dated counterparts. Bond prices rise as yields fall.
On Monday, the spread between the 2-year note TMUBMUSD02Y, -0.43% and the 10-year TMUBMUSD10Y, -0.92% narrowed 4 basis points to 0.16 percentage point on Monday, its flattest levels since July 2007.
When triggered, this bond market indicator has been an accurate predictor of recessions, though the timing between an inversion and an economic downturn can vary from six months to as much as two years, strategists have said.
More
JPMorgan Asset Says Cash Better Than Stocks First Time in Decade
By Cecile GutscherThat was highlighted by the firm’s multi-asset strategy team, with $260 billion under management, which upgraded its recommendation on U.S. cash to overweight for 2019. For the first time in a decade, investors can get a lot more from safe, liquid securities than from the S&P 500 Index, adjusted for volatility, they argued.
“Our cash and duration overweights really distill down to overweights in
U.S. cash and Treasuries, where ex-ante Sharpe ratios are now well ahead of
those for U.S. stocks for the first time in a decade,” according to John
Bilton, head of global multi-asset strategy at JPMorgan Asset Management. A
Sharpe ratio is a measure of an asset’s performance relative to its volatility.
The team said it’s preparing “for an environment of slowing earnings
growth and rising macroeconomic risks” that will weigh on equities, and has led
the group to de-risk its portfolios.
If
they are right, being boring may turn out to be the
key to success next year, just like in 2018. U.S. Treasury bills were poised to
end the year with the highest risk-adjusted returns of the world’s biggest
assets, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Finally, fed up with
bad neighbours led by Saudi Arabia, and ahead of a coming OPEC meeting, Qatar thinks the unthinkable and acts.
Qatar to leave OPEC and focus on gas as it takes swipe at Riyadh
December 3, 2018
DOHA (Reuters) - Qatar said on Monday it
was quitting OPEC from January to focus on its gas ambitions, taking a swipe at
the group’s de facto leader Saudi Arabia and marring efforts to show unity
before this week’s meeting of exporters to tackle an oil price slide.
Doha, one of OPEC’s smallest oil producers but the world’s biggest
liquefied natural gas (LNG) exporter, is embroiled in a protracted diplomatic
row with Saudi Arabia and some other Arab states.
Qatar said its decision was not driven by politics but in an apparent
swipe at Riyadh, Minister of State for Energy Affairs Saad al-Kaabi said: “We
are not saying we are going to get out of the oil business but it is controlled
by an organisation managed by a country.” He did not name the nation.
Al-Kaabi told a news conference that Doha’s decision “was communicated
to OPEC” but said Qatar would attend the group’s meeting on Thursday and
Friday, and would abide by its commitments.
He said Doha would focus on its gas potential because it was not
practical for Qatar “to put efforts and resources and time in an organisation
that we are a very small player in and I don’t have a say in what happens.”
Delegates at OPEC, which has 15 members including Qatar, sought to play
down the impact. But losing a long-standing member undermines a bid to show a
united front before a meeting that is expected to back a supply cut to shore up
crude prices that have lost almost 30 percent since an October peak.
“They are not a big producer, but have played a big part in it’s (OPEC)
history,” one OPEC source said.
It
highlights the growing dominance over policy making in the oil market of Saudi
Arabia, Russia and the United States, the top world’s three oil producers which
together account for almost a third of global output.
More
“I
think we agree, the past is over.”
President
George W. Bush.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.
Today, cyber-crime again. Unfortunately,
it will only get worse say the experts. Well all those NSA, GCHQ
nerdy “contractors” have to do something when they get home in the evening. Not
everyone’s home watching dancing shows,
cooking shows, and fixer-upper homes and cars. And they’ve probably “borrowed”
a few “tools” too.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Juvenal. Who watches the
watchers?
Power outages, bank runs, changed financial data: Here are the 'cyber 9/11' scenarios that really worry the experts
- It may be impossible to hedge against the next major cyberattack, but there are some lessons from recent history and some clues from the private sector on what may be the next devastating cyberattack.
- Many experts have warned for years about an impending "cyber 9/11," and despite a nearly endless list of scenarios, there are a few that are more likely than others.
- Attacks that spill into the physical world, those that cause a financial sector "contagion" or attacks on data integrity -- rather than theft or destruction -- are top-of-mind, frightening scenarios for experts.
Kate Fazzini Published 9:12 AM ET Sun, 18 Nov 2018 Updated
5:27 PM ET Sun, 18 Nov 2018
For years, government security specialists have predicted the inevitable "cyber 9/11," an event originating as a digital attack that spills over into other aspects of society, causing widespread harm to people and the global financial sector.
Former NSA head Admiral Michael Rogers told CNBC last month that "nothing is beyond the pale of possibility" for cyberattacks.
Fear sells. So it can be hard to know what experts really fear might happen, versus hype meant to market a new cybersecurity product or service, or drum up attention on social media.
But there are some nightmare scenarios that have precedent. These are the scenarios that truly concern independent cybersecurity experts.
They fall into three common themes: physical attacks that shut off or damage some aspect of critical services, financial attacks that spin out of control and lead to bank runs, and hackers changing data in a way that erodes trust in the economy and critical institutions.
Knocking out basic services
Cyberattacks that cause major disruption to public services have happened many times in the real world.Some of them are very old news, in fact. But it's easy to imagine how a similar attack could shut down basic services, like electricity or water, that affect millions of people.
In 2000, a disgruntled sewage treatment plant worker in Queensland, Australia hacked into his employer's industrial control system to unleash torrents of raw sewage onto public grounds, flooding the city's local Hyatt hotel. The perpetrator was sentenced to two years for the attack.
In 2007, the country of Estonia was subject to widespread outages in its entire telecommunications network, following a cyberattack stemming from a dispute with Russia over a military statue. The incident was so damaging, it led to a decision to place the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's Cyber Security organization in Tallinn, the country's capital.
In 2015, Ukraine's power grid had massive outages after a cyberattack — which some officials have attributed to Russia — two days before Christmas, during a cold snap. Around a quarter-million residents were left without power, but the outages only lasted a few hours before government agencies were able to restore service.
Major cyberattacks aimed at taking down official services don't need to be strictly nation-state sponsored or terrorist-backed. They can be strictly criminal in nature, or come from a malevolent backer under the guise of a criminal attack.
The NotPetya cyberattacks of June 2017, known by the name of the criminal ransomware-inspired computer virus behind it, were notorious for the real-world harm they caused to companies. In Germany, consumer goods-maker Reckitt Benckiser halted shipments of numerous products. Ships belonging to logistics giant Maersk were at a standstill, and the company later said it took a $300 million hit from the attack. In the U.S., a facility owned by Merck that makes the HPV vaccine Gardasil was shut down to such a big extent, the company had to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars worth of back-up vaccines stockpiled by the Center for Disease Control.
More. So much
more.
"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?
Study unlocks full potential of 'supermaterial' graphene
Researchers remove silicon contamination from graphene to double its performance
Date:
November 29, 2018
Source:
RMIT University
Summary:
New research reveals why the 'supermaterial' graphene has not transformed electronics
as promised, and shows how to double its performance and finally harness its
extraordinary potential.
Graphene is the strongest material ever tested. It's also flexible,
transparent and conducts heat and electricity 10 times better than copper.
After graphene research won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2010 it was
hailed as a transformative material for flexible electronics, more powerful
computer chips and solar panels, water filters and bio-sensors. But performance
has been mixed and industry adoption slow.
Now a study published in Nature Communications identifies silicon
contamination as the root cause of disappointing results and details how to
produce higher performing, pure graphene.
The RMIT University team led by Dr Dorna Esrafilzadeh and Dr Rouhollah
Ali Jalili inspected commercially-available graphene samples, atom by atom,
with a state-of-art scanning transition electron microscope.
"We found high levels of silicon contamination in commercially
available graphene, with massive impacts on the material's performance,"
Esrafilzadeh said.
Testing showed that silicon present in natural graphite, the raw
material used to make graphene, was not being fully removed when processed.
"We believe this contamination is at the heart of many seemingly
inconsistent reports on the properties of graphene and perhaps many other
atomically thin two-dimensional (2D) materials ," Esrafilzadeh said.
"Graphene was billed as being transformative, but has so far failed
to make a significant commercial impact, as have some similar 2D nanomaterials.
Now we know why it has not been performing as promised, and what needs to be
done to harness its full potential."
The testing not only identified these impurities but also demonstrated
the major influence they have on performance, with contaminated material
performing up to 50% worse when tested as electrodes.
"This level of inconsistency may have stymied the emergence of
major industry applications for graphene-based systems. But it's also
preventing the development of regulatory frameworks governing the
implementation of such layered nanomaterials, which are destined to become the
backbone of next-generation devices," she said.
The two-dimensional property of graphene sheeting, which is only one
atom thick, makes it ideal for electricity storage and new sensor technologies
that rely on high surface area.
More
Finally, finally, an online treat from
the British Library and its French counterpart. Who needs the wealth and jobs
destroying EUSSR?
Medieval England and France, 700–1200
Explore illuminated manuscripts from the national libraries of the UK and France
This curated selection explores medieval manuscripts that were digitised as part of The Polonsky Foundation England and France Project: Manuscripts from the British Library and the Bibliothèque nationale de France, 700–1200. Discover stunning highlights of illuminated manuscripts set in their cultural and historical context and explored in a range of articles.All of the 800 manuscripts digitised in the project are included in full on the website France et Angleterre: manuscrits médiévaux entre 700 et 1200 where you can view manuscripts side by side, and find manuscripts by date, language, place of origin, author or subject.
More
“What
me worry?”
President
Trump, with apologies to Mad Magazine
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished November.
DJIA: 25,538 +157 Down. NASDAQ:
7,331 +205 Down. SP500: 2,760 +129 Down.
Though a strong attempt was made of Friday to dress
up the month-end figures to prevent November becoming a second down month in a
row, the Coppock Indicators still moved down suggesting that there’s still more
of the correction to come. But was the month-end dress up enough to prevent a
massive wave of year-end stock fund redemptions? Probably, after Presidents
Trump and Xi found a way to defer by 90 days the January 1st increase in US
tariffs. But beware the end of March 2019 redemptions if the US v China trade
talks fail.
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