Thursday 13 December 2018

The Great London “Con.” More Pawns.


Baltic Dry Index. 1353 -11   Brent Crude 60.46

I'm glad to see that the voting system works. I voted for no one, and no one won.

Anon.

In London last night, in Parliament, “the longest running farce in the world,” the UK Conservative Party passed a vote of confidence in Prime Minister May, uniquely becoming the only people on planet earth with any confidence in Prime Minister May. British eccentrics on full display.  Mrs May did her part to instil confidence, heroically shooting herself in both feet by promising to leave office before the next general election.

In office, but like German Chancellor Merkel, French President Macron, and Spanish Prime Minister Sanchez barely in power, Prime minster May heads off to Brussels today for the final EUSSR “great leaders” summit that was supposed to complete the success of the imposition on the UK of the 585 page UK surrender contract. But the UK Parliament doesn’t have the votes to pass the surrender contract and probably never will.

With the big four in Europe all led by lame ducks, Italy in a budget fight with Brussels, now about to be joined by a budget breaking France, Austria, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and the Czech Republic all in open defiance of Brussels, and now a new minority government in Belgium itself, it’s hard to see why they are bothering to meet at all. Christmas drinks all round?

While Europe does what it does best, nothing but at great expense, others in the world are getting on with adjusting to Brexit.
I don't approve of political jokes...I've seen too many of them get elected.

Anon.

U.S. Treasury, USTR reach post-Brexit insurance accord with Britain

December 11, 2018 / 11:41 PM
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Treasury and U.S. Trade Representative’s office said on Tuesday they intended to sign a new bilateral insurance agreement with Britain that will provide insurance market regulatory certainty and continuity after Britain leaves the European Union. 

The Treasury and USTR said the U.S.-UK Covered Agreement would be consistent with a similar agreement signed with the EU in 2017. Britain is scheduled to leave the EU on March 29, 2019.

The announcement starts a 90-day notification period required by the U.S. Congress before it can be signed and put into effect.

The U.S.-UK agreement affirms the U.S. state-based system of insurance regulation and is expected to aid the competitiveness of U.S. insurance and reinsurance firms, the Treasury and USTR said.

Britain’s trade commissioner for North America, Antony Phillipson, welcomed the Treasury and USTR announcement, saying that it was part of work that the British government has been doing to ensure U.S.-UK business continuity while exploring further bilateral trade ties.

“I am very pleased that we’ve been able to preserve the benefits of the EU-U.S. covered agreement for UK firms in the U.S., the largest insurance market in the world, once the UK has left the EU,” Phillipson said in a statement released by Britain’s embassy in Washington.

'Zombie' Theresa May staggers on towards her eventual downfall

Huge challenges lie ahead for Theresa May despite managing to emerge victorious following a vote of confidence in her leadership.
06:20, UK, Thursday 13 December 2018

Like a zombie, Theresa May staggers on. Whatever is thrown at her, nothing can bring her down.
But neither can she regain her strength. As she stumbles towards her eventual destruction, is she taking the country with her?

She has overcome and survived the latest challenge but the prime minister immediately now faces an even bigger one.

Had she lost the vote of confidence she would have arrived at the EU summit, politically speaking, as the equivalent of the walking dead.

She has been spared that ordeal but may still be buried by events.

Mrs May has seen off the confidence vote but must now achieve the seemingly impossible - she must secure concessions from EU leaders to change the withdrawal agreement.

Without them, the deal she has negotiated with the EU is dead on arrival whenever it is put before the Commons.

Worse than that, without those concessions the DUP says it will end their support for the prime minister.

The confidence and supply agreement has kept her in power since the election. If that happens she will have kept her grip on her party only to lose control of the Commons and government.

And the brutal truth is, barring a miracle, those concessions will not be forthcoming.

---- The Irish backstop - as it is known - is a vital insurance policy, says the EU.

Without it - Ireland, the Irish border and the Good Friday Agreement are in peril.
British critics say it consigns the UK to the customs union and a state of vassalage in perpetuity.

Mrs May has tried to bridge that chasm by asking for assurances its use will only be temporary. But as one diplomat put it to me, what use is an insurance policy if you can just wait till it expires.
More

In other saner, happier news, is the Santa Claus rally finally about to show up? Well it all depends on who you listen to and whether you’re a perma-bull or perma-bear, long and worried or short and worried. What will the Fed do next week?

A rare batch of selling suggests the stock market may have just hit ‘rock bottom’

By Shawn Langlois  Published: Dec 12, 2018 1:34 p.m. ET
If recent market action feels extraordinary, that’s because it has been.

In fact, we’re seeing something that hasn’t happened since 2008, and, according to Dana Lyons of J. Lyons Fund Management, has only occurred a scant 11 times since 1960 — four straight sessions delivering intraday declines of at least 1.89% on the S&P 500 SPX, +0.54%

A rare streak of selling pressure, no doubt.

But as wrenching as this year has been for many investors — like this guy who has lost 99% in his portfolio — there’s reason to believe, at least in the form of this chart, that such downward pressure suggests bullish times ahead:

The dots on the chart signal instances when the S&P dropped at least 1.7% for four sessions in a row, which has happened 17 times since 1960. As you can see, the bulk of theses drops, particularly recently, took place near clear market bottoms, including 1974, 1982, 1987, 2002 and 2009.

“That might give bulls some hope that perhaps things have gotten so bad, i.e., rock bottom, that there’s nowhere to go but up,” Lyons explained in a blog post. “Although, it is probably a stretch to conclude that we are at a cyclical low right now since we were at all-time highs just about 10 weeks ago.”

He then points to the handful of times it didn’t exactly play out that way, like when stocks went “subterranean” in 1974, 2001 and 2008.
More

S&P 500 lows? We ain’t seen nothing yet, says Gundlach

By Barbara Kollmeyer  Published: Dec 12, 2018 9:32 a.m. ET
It’s a risk-on for Hump Day, but blink and you’ll miss it. Take a stroll around Wall Street or go to the bathroom and you could miss it.

That’s because stocks are prone to shilly-shallying these days, though fresh trade optimism could put a stop to all that.

Even hedge fund pioneer Paul Tudor Jones thinks 2019 may be better for traders than long-term investors, as he told a conference earlier this week that could turn into “just an enormously volatile period with a lot of back and forth.” Covering pretty much all the bases, the ‘87 crash predictor also forecast a 15% move either way from here for stocks.

There may be a little more conviction in our call of the day, from DoubleLine founder Jeff Gundlach, who told clients Tuesday evening that the S&P 500 could take out February’s 2018 low due to a growth slowdown hitting company profits.

“Many equity markets are down over 20%, which some people call a bear market,” Gundlach said in his latest webcast, according to Reuters. “I don’t really define bear markets as a certain fixed arbitrary percentage. I think of it more as mood. And certainly, the setup for the equity markets looked like a bear market going into the middle of this year…the global equity market which is strongly in a bear market at the present time.”

Bottom line, his mood is still bearish, considering he warned us in November that stocks still hadn’t hit a “panic low.” Some in Twitterland credited Gundlach for stirring up some action on S&P 500 futures overnight:

---- But what next for 2019 remains a pretty good question, especially if only the day traders are going to get anything out of it, if Tudor Jones is right.

Last word goes to Michael O’Rourke, JonesTrading’s chief market strategist, who says the “hollow victories” markets have been carving out go beyond trade and tariffs, and are more about “global superiority.”

“Therefore, it is better to be patient and wait for a resolution, or for the market to re-rate to a lower level where attractive valuations merit the risk. Despite the numerous headwinds facing the equity market right now and for the foreseeable future, the S&P 500 is only down 1.4% year to date,” he says.

More

I thought it would be a good idea to go into Politics, maybe I am a little old... but you know... I'd love to be Chancellor of the Exchequer - That way I'll be reunited with my money!

Ken Dodd.

Crooks and Scoundrels Corner

The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.

Today, China says what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Two can play at games of pawns. As Canada squeezes China’s pawn on orders from Uncle Sam, China squeezes Canada’s pawn in retaliation. How long before an American pawn gets squeezed? Canada, meanwhile, puts in a plea to America that’s at least 13 days to late. For now, at least, China finds squeezing Canada an easier option than squeezing America directly while tentative trade talks are in their early stages.  Besides, China’s just offered a soybean bribe. However, I doubt that no American pawn will last beyond year-end.

China Says Detained Canadian Worked for Group Without Legal Registration

By Steven Lee Myers and Jane Perlez Dec. 12, 2018
BEIJING — China said on Wednesday that a Canadian former diplomat who was detained in Beijing had been employed by an organization that was “not registered in China legally,” citing a law passed in 2016 that has had a chilling effect on the work of foreign charities, universities and nonprofit groups in the country.

The assertion was China’s first official comment on the detention of Michael Kovrig, senior adviser for Northeast Asia for the International Crisis Group, an independent nongovernmental organization that tries to defuse international conflict.

Officials, however, made no official statement confirming the detention, and they did not detail any more specific accusations against Mr. Kovrig, whose fate has further roiled relations between China and the United States and the West.

Late Wednesday, The Beijing News, a state-owned newspaper, said the state security agency in Beijing was investigating Mr. Kovrig on “suspicion of activities that endanger China’s national security.” The report could not immediately be verified, but it signaled the possibility that Mr. Kovrig could be prosecuted on more serious charges.

The opacity surrounding Mr. Kovrig’s situation sharply contrasted the public proceedings that unfolded over three days in a Vancouver courtroom following the arrest of Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei, the Chinese technology company that the United States has accused of violating sanctions against trade with Iran.

After three days of hearings, Ms. Meng was released on bail Tuesday evening, pending further court deliberations on whether she should be extradited to the United States. “I am in Vancouver and back to my family,” she wrote on Wednesday afternoon Beijing time in a post on Weibo, China’s social media platform. “I am proud of Huawei and I am proud of my motherland.”

Mr. Kovrig’s detention was seen as clearly linked to the events in Vancouver — even by those defending China. State media explicitly threatened retaliation over the weekend, summoning the ambassador from the United States and warning Canada it would pay “a heavy price.”

“The highly sensitive situation stemmed from Canada arresting Meng Wanzhou,” Hu Xijin, the editor of the English-language edition of the Communist Party-run Global Times, wrote on Twitter after the International Crisis Group announced Mr. Kovrig’s arrest. Still, Mr. Hu insisted in the same posting that “no evidence suggests this is Chinese government’s retaliation.”

The Huawei case has already deeply strained the truce President Trump and China’s leader, Xi Jinping, negotiated at the meeting of the Group of 20 industrialized nations in Argentina on Dec. 1, though officials on both sides have signaled a willingness to restart talks to resolve the broader trade disputes between the two countries.
More

Canada warns U.S. not to politicize extradition cases

December 12, 2018 / 6:16 PM
OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland on Wednesday warned the United States not to politicize extradition cases, a day after President Donald Trump said he could intervene in the affair of a Chinese executive detained in Canada at Washington’s request.

Freeland also told reporters that a second Canadian citizen could be in trouble in China. Authorities in China are already holding former diplomat Michael Kovrig, who was detained on Monday.
Officials say China had so far not linked Kovrig’s detention to the arrest in Vancouver on Dec. 1 of Huawei Technologies Co Ltd Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou, which infuriated Beijing. But Canadian diplomatic experts have said they have no doubt the two cases are linked.

U.S. prosecutors accuse Meng of misleading multinational banks about Iran-linked transactions, putting the banks at risk of violating U.S. sanctions. She has said she is innocent.

Trump told Reuters on Tuesday he would intervene here in the U.S. Justice Department's case against Meng if it would serve national security interests or help close a trade deal with China.

Freeland said it was obvious the legal process should not be hijacked for political purposes and that Meng’s lawyers would have the option of raising Trump’s remarks if they decided to fight extradition.

“Our extradition partners should not seek to politicize the extradition process or use it for ends other than the pursuit of justice and following the rule of law,” she said when asked about Trump’s comments.

Her words mark another potentially difficult moment in ties between Canada and the United States, which were heavily strained during more than a year of talks to negotiate a new North American trade pact.

Others also questioned whether Trump might be misusing the extradition request.
More

Trump Gets Win as Xi Makes Good on Pledge to Buy U.S. Soybeans

Bloomberg News
Updated on 13 December 2018, 04:01 GMT

'I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts'. 

Will Rogers


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?

Electric cars? They're shockingly BAD! LOUISE ATKINSON’s sorry diary of nightmare journeys, dud chargers and maddening bureaucracy

·         BMW, Renault, Nissan, Citroen and Jaguar join Tesla in the electric car revolution 
·         Louise Atkinson trials the Renault Zoe which claims to have a range of 160 miles
·         She finds the charging situation 'a nightmare' and charging at home difficult 
For the eco-conscious driver, the latest must-have is an electric car. Sales have soared, with 180,000 bought so far this year, compared to just 3,500 five years ago.

On paper, it’s easy to see the appeal: a full ‘tank’ for less than £5, a Government grant of £3,500 off the sale price and the sense of satisfaction in helping to save the planet from the evils of fossil fuels.

The technology is evolving fast, too, with BMW, Renault, Nissan, Citroen and now Jaguar joining Tesla in the electric car revolution. Electric vehicles are now said to be just as high performing — if not better — than their gas-guzzling counterparts.

With public charging points cropping up around the country, how hard could owning a purely electric car possibly be? As LOUISE ATKINSON found, very hard indeed . . .

June 17, 2018: My car lease is up for renewal and the idea of an electric car excites me. The monthly lease payments are similar (£250) to my old Toyota Aygo, but fuel costs will be quartered — saving up to £2,000 each year.

I pick the Renault Zoe because it is small, sporty-looking and claims to have a range of 160 miles on one charge (double the Nissan Leaf).

My husband, Jon, begs me to reconsider, informing me that the world isn’t ready yet.

But I refuse to be deterred. Attitudes are changing fast and the Daily Mail’s plastic campaign has taught me that when it comes to saving the planet, every step makes a difference. I don’t want to feel miserable every time I fill my car with poisonous fossil fuel.

Besides, I’m full of optimism that I can handle being a pioneer. Battery-powered cars are pretty mainstream now, so what can possibly go wrong? I order the car.

A (VERY) SLOW START

JULY 16: My electric car is here! It is beautiful! Unfortunately, it’s like a Christmas present without batteries. It sits on our drive, but the battery (which is under the floor of the car and powers the motor under the bonnet) is nearly empty, so I can’t take it for a spin.

There’s a charging cable in the boot, which fits both public and special home charging units, but no three-pin plug adaptor for me to hook it up to the mains.

As I leap in, Jon is sceptical: ‘Do you know how to charge it?’ (No).

Fearing the battery will die any minute, I crawl to the supermarket (six miles away) to find our nearest public charging point. I plug in the cable, but nothing happens.

I wiggle the cable, unplug it and replug it. Still nothing. Instructions on the charger inform me to download an app and input MY credit card details. Still nothing.

I draw quite a crowd. Electric cars are clearly a novelty here and everyone wants to know how I’m getting on. Not well.

I phone the charge point helpline. ‘What’s the name?’ they ask. I give them my name. ‘No, the name of the charging point.’

It turns out many have cheerful names, rather than serial numbers, and I am currently in dispute with ‘Fred-Geoff’. They run the checks and tell me, sadly, Fred-Geoff is out of order, but not to worry as ‘Laura-Clare’ is fighting fit and only . . . 25 miles away.

By driving very slowly and free-wheeling down hills (which works like a dynamo to boost the battery), I make it to my gym car park and plug in. Stressful? Immensely.
More

'Edison's electric light bulb is good enough for our transatlantic friends, but unworthy of practical or scientific use for practical men'. 

British Parliamentary society set up to investigate electric lighting in 1878.

The monthly Coppock Indicators finished November.

DJIA: 25,538 +157 Down. NASDAQ: 7,331 +205 Down. SP500: 2,760 +129 Down. 
All three slow indicators are signalling more correction to come, although not necessarily ahead of the year-end. However, if a tidal wave of stock fund redemptions hits in December, 2018 could end in a great rising wave of panic selling into a generally thin markets trading year-end.

No comments:

Post a Comment