Baltic Dry Index. 982 -54 Brent Crude 60.73
Trump 25 percent
tariffs 37 days away. Brexit 66 days
away.
If economists could
manage to get themselves thought of as humble, competent people on a level with
dentists, that would be splendid.
John Maynard Keynes
Well I think plenty could go badly wrong in the global economy, all the more so if the EUSSR follows through on its retaliatory tariff threat to US exports. From London this morning, our world seems to have gone mad, flirting with disaster, impoverishment and unemployment, replacing prosperity and employment. Lunatics are running economic policy on three continents. If people don’t come to their senses soon, a repeat of 2007 – 2009 becomes our future. Isn’t anyone watching the Baltic Dry Index?
EU Renews Warning to Trump of Potential $23 Billion Tariffs on U.S. Goods
By Jonathan Stearns 23 January 2019, 09:56 GMT
·
Bloc threatens tit-for-tat duties on $22.7
billion of goods
·
Risk of trade-war escalation amid parallel push
for accord
The European Union is prepared to hit 20 billion euros
($22.7 billion) of U.S. goods with tariffs should President Donald Trump follow
through on a threat to impose duties on EU cars and auto parts, said a senior
trade official for the bloc.
More
Asian shares subdued as U.S. political standoff, ECB decision eyed
January 24, 2019 / 1:04 AM
TOKYO (Reuters) - Asian shares were subdued on
Thursday as political uncertainty in the United States and worries about
weakening global economic growth left investors wary of riskier assets.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS
slipped 0.1 percent. It has gained 3.7 percent so far this year.Australian shares were flat while Japan's Nikkei .N225 was last down almost half a percent after moving between positive and negative territory.
China's blue-chip CSI300 .CSI300 shed 0.3 percent while Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index gave up two-tenths of a percent.
On Wall Street, all three major U.S. equity indexes closed in positive territory, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI booking the largest gains on upbeat quarterly results from International Business Machines (IBM.N) and other major firms. The S&P 500 .SPX gained 0.22 percent.[.N]
But gains were capped by uncertainty over the partial U.S. government shutdown, slowing global economic growth and the yet-unresolved trade standoff between the United States and China.
---- Japan’s manufacturing growth stalled in January as export orders fell at the fastest pace in 2-1/2 years, a preliminary business survey showed Thursday, offering the latest sign of slower growth hitting a major developed economy.
White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said in a CNN interview the
U.S. economy could see zero growth in the first three months if the partial
government shutdown lasts for the whole quarter.
More
Opinion: Contrarian who called the 2008 housing crash expects a global recession this year
By Howard
Gold Published: Jan 23, 2019
5:25 a.m. ET
Gary Shilling sees the U.S. economy deteriorating faster than most economists think
All at once, storm clouds are gathering over the world economy.The International Monetary Fund has cut its estimates for global growth in 2019, citing concerns about weakness in Europe. China just had its slowest GDP growth since 1990, and President Xi Jinping reportedly has held secret meetings warning Communist Party leaders to prepare for “black swan” events that could derail China’s economy.
In the U.S., the still-unresolved tariff war with China and the stalemated government shutdown may be having a bigger impact on the economy than many anticipated. Ian Shepherdson, chief economist of Pantheon Macroeconomics, told Politico’s Ben White that when the ripple effects of these big events are factored in, first-quarter U.S. GDP growth could drop to zero.
Still, economists overwhelmingly expect slower growth this year but no recession.
----One well-known independent economist thinks it will happen even sooner—he’s looking for a global recession to start in 2019. A. Gary Shilling, president of his eponymous consulting firm, made two of the best contrarian calls of recent decades: he saw the mega-bull market in bonds at its very outset in 1981, and in the years before the 2008 financial crisis and Great Recession, warned repeatedly that the housing bubble would turn into a bust and would take the whole economy down with it.
Now he says it’s once again time to batten down the hatches. Although he concedes that financial excesses aren’t what they were a decade ago and that the Federal Reserve is not raising rates willy-nilly—the two principal causes of recessions since World War II—he thinks the global economy will die a “death by a thousand cuts” in 2019.
More
U.S. government shutdown to crimp growth, recession risk steady: Reuters poll
January 24, 2019 / 12:26 AM
BENGALURU (Reuters) - U.S. economic growth will take a hit
this quarter from the longest-ever government shutdown, keeping the Federal
Reserve on the sidelines until at least its April 30-May 1 meeting, a Reuters
poll of economists showed.
But the probability of a U.S. recession in the next 12 months held
steady from last month at 20 percent, according to the median forecast, while
the chance of a recession in the next two years was also steady at a median 40
percent.
The latest Reuters poll of over 100 economists taken Jan 16-23 also
showed a cut to the 2019 quarterly growth outlook, in line with a recent run of
weaker U.S. economic data pointing to rougher sledding for the economy this
year than last year.
“With the economy possibly easing and inflation not stirring in a
meaningful way, the case for additional tightening in monetary policy seems
weak,” noted Michael Moran, chief economist at Daiwa Capital Markets.
The partial government shutdown affecting 800,000 federal workers has
lasted more than a month and is expected to hurt the already-slowing economy.
----
Nearly 60 percent of about 50 economists who answered an additional question
said the shutdown will have a significant impact on first quarter gross
domestic product growth.
When
asked how much of an impact the shutdown would have on U.S. GDP for this
quarter, the median was for a 0.3 percentage point trim. But forecasts ranged
between 0.1 and 1.3 percentage points.
More
John Kenneth Galbraith
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over
banksters and politicians.
Today, hosing the consumer via technology. We have new ways of
separating you from tour hard earned money. And how. Davos, do as I say, not as
I do. Know your place!
How smart technology gets you to continue paying long after point of sale
Matthew Braga · CBC News · Posted: Jan 22, 2019 12:00 AM ET | Last Updated:
January 22
A common criticism of virtual assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google
Assistant is that they are always on, always listening, and always connected to
the internet. It's the only way they work.
For consumers who are rightfully skeptical of how tech companies big and
small are collecting, analyzing, and making money off their data — even in
anonymized form — the sudden proliferation of these always-connected smart
devices is concerning. But there's a reason that everything from televisions to
cars are suddenly getting smarter.
For consumers wondering why it might feel increasingly harder to buy
something dumb or disconnected, the reason is partly technical. Some of the
products users enjoy today wouldn't be possible — or, as good —
without a connection to the internet.
But it's also about money. With product margins thinner than ever, more
companies are either re-building their old hardware businesses around online
subscriptions, or monetizing data from people who are using their products for
free.
In other words: giving every dishwasher, thermostat, and SUV an internet
connection is one way for companies to keep making money after someone buys
their product — whether through regular subscriptions, data collection, or some
combination of the two.
As long as people believe they're getting value — say, the convenience
that smart speakers promise — they're more willing to accept this new
reality, according to Adam Wright, a senior analyst at the market research firm
IDC who focuses on connected devices for consumers.
----Smart speakers and virtual assistants are a good example of this dichotomy in action.
Anytime you ask Google Assistant to set a timer, or Amazon Alexa to
play one of your favourite songs, a recording of your voice is transmitted to a
server in the cloud. The recording is analyzed to determine what you said,
and the assistant figures out how to respond.
It's technically possible to build a voice assistant that is able to
recognize your voice and respond to basic queries offline — or, at the very
least, without sending your recordings to a server in the cloud. But Allan
Black, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Language Technologies
Institute, said it's harder to offer a cutting-edge experience this way.
----Of course, doing all that work in the cloud doesn't just make the experience better for users. It also gives the likes of Amazon and Google valuable insight into their users' preferences and behaviours — data that can be monetized one way or another. Other companies have realized this, too.
Recurring revenue
U.S. manufacturer Vizio sells inexpensive televisions. How does it afford to do this? By sharing information about how people use their TVs — and what they watch — with other companies, essentially subsidizing the product's cost."It's not just about data collection," said the company's chief technology officer, Bill Baxter, in an interview with The Verge earlier this month. "It's about post-purchase monetization of the TV."
Most
people don't upgrade their TVs very often — Baxter said the average lifetime of
a Vizio TV is 6.9 years — and Vizio only makes a slim margin on each sale. But
those TVs keep getting new features and updates for free. So (opt-in) data
collection is one way for Vizio to keep generating revenue in lieu of new
sales.
More
https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/smart-tech-internet-subscriptions-revenue-data-monetize-1.4987474
1,500 private jets expected at Davos, where attendees are discussing ‘safeguarding our planet’ from climate change
As the number of extremely wealthy people worldwide has grown, so too has the market for private flights.Despite global warming being one of the major issues discussed at Davos every year, some 1,500 private jets are expected this week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, according to an estimate from Air Charter Service, up from 1,300 last year. “We have had bookings from as far as our operations in Hong Kong, India and the U.S.,” Andy Christie, private jets director at ACS, said in a statement. “No other event has the same global appeal.”
“There appears to be a trend towards larger aircraft, with expensive heavy jets the aircraft of choice,” Christie said. “This is at least in part due to some of the long distances travelled, but also possibly due to business rivals not wanting to be seen to be outdone by one another.” Over the past five years, most private jets have come from or are going to Germany, France, U.K., U.S., Russia and United Arab Emirates, he added.
PrivateFly.com, a private jet service, expects between 1,200 and 1,500 private jets in and out of local airports around Davos, double the average daily volume of flight traffic to the area. “The primary airport used by private jet customers flying to Davos is Zurich Airport. This is 148 kilometers away, or 1 hour 45 minutes by road. So some visitors will also charter a helicopter for a faster transfer time,” the company said.
More
"On
the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the
time.”
George
Orwell
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?
Promising steps towards large scale production of graphene nanoribbons for electronics
Date:
January 22, 2019
Source:
Lund University
Summary:
Two-dimensional sheets of graphene in the form of ribbons a few tens of
nanometers across have unique properties that are highly interesting for use in
future electronics. Researchers have now for the first time fully characterized
nanoribbons grown in both the two possible configurations on the same wafer
with a clear route towards upscaling the production.
Graphene in the form of nanoribbons show so called ballistic transport,
which means that the material does not heat up when a current flow through it.
This opens up an interesting path towards high speed, low power
nanoelectronics. The nanoribbon form may also let graphene behave more like a
semiconductor, which is the type of material found in transistors and diodes.
The properties of graphene nanoribbons are closely related to the precise
structure of the edges of the ribbon. Also, the symmetry of the graphene
structure lets the edges take two different configurations, so called zigzag
and armchair, depending on the direction of the long respective short edge of
the ribbon.
The nanoribbons were grown on a template made of silicon carbide under
well controlled conditions and thoroughly characterised by a research team from
MAX IV Laboratory, Techniche Universität Chemnitz, Leibniz Universität
Hannover, and Linköping University. The template has ridges running in two
different crystallographic directions to let both the armchair and zig-zag
varieties of graphene nanoribbons form. The result is a predictable growth of
high-quality graphene nanoribbons which have a homogeneity over a millimeter
scale and a well-controlled edge structure.
One of the new findings is that the researchers were able to show
ballistic transport in the bulk of the nanoribbon. This was possible due to
extremely challenging four probe experiments performed at a length scale below
100 nm by the group in Chemnitz, says Alexei Zakharov, one of the authors.
The electrical characterization also shows that the resistance is many
times higher in the so called armchair configuration of the ribbon, as opposed
to the lower resistance zig-zag form obtained. This hints to a possible band
gap opening in the armchair nanoribbons, making them semiconducting. The
process used for preparing the template for nanoribbon growth is readily
scalable. This means that it would work well for development into the
large-scale production of graphene nanoribbons needed to make them a good
candidate for a future material in the electronics industry.
More
Jean-Claude
Juncker. Failed Luxembourg Prime Minister and ex-president of the Euro Group of
Finance Ministers. Confessed liar. European Commission President. Scotch
connoisseur.
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished December.
DJIA: 23,327 +115 Down. NASDAQ:
6,635 +152 Down. SP500: 2,507 +90 Down.
Normally this would suggest more
correction still to come, but with President Trump wanting to be judged by the
performance of the stock market and his Treasury Secretary activating the
Plunge Protection Team after the Christmas Eve Crash, will a politicised PPT
cover the President’s back? [Yes] Probably the safest action here is fully paid
up synthetic double options on most of the major indexes.
Hopefully a USA – China trade deal
reinvigorates the markets, but failure and 25 percent tariffs, is a market killer.
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