Baltic Dry Index. 725
+11 Brent
Crude 70.70
Car Crash Brexit now 2
days away, maybe. Day 131 of the
never-ending China trade talks. Everyone’s “optimistic.”
The Global Financial Crisis and
Great Recession posed daunting new challenges for central banks around the
world and spurred innovations in the design, implementation, and communication
of monetary policy.
Janet Yellen
Ioday, more on our
world heading into the next recession and a probable stock market crash. In the
next recession, corporate profits collapse and with them most US corporation’s
ability and willingness to engage in aggressive stock buybacks.
But corporate stock buybacks
are the last thing driving stock prices higher. A massive mal-investment if
ever there was one, and one driven entirely by the central banksters, led by
the Fed, grossly under-pricing credit for over a decade.
Up until now this didn’t
matter as the global economy was still largely a cooperative economy, stumbling
along rather than booming, but still growing above stall speed. That simply isn’t
true anymore.
Brexit or not, Europe
is heading into recession, with the Trump trade war hooligans about to give
their economy a massive drag through another dose of trade war.
Asia’s growth rates
have all slowed with China’s slowing economy, with a further hit to come from
Trump’s trade war hooligans, if ever a trade deal is reached with China.
Trump’s trade wars
have dropped the global economy down to stall speed, and Trump’s trade war hooligans,
like an out of control Boeing 737 Max MCAS, now keep pushing the global
economies nose down.
Thanks to Trade War
Team Trump, (and an all too likely botched Brexit by an over reaching negotiating
team in Brussels,) at best a hard landing lies ahead, at worst a crash
landing. Sadly, we are all along for the
ride, including Trump’s America.
Asian stocks slip from eight-month high as new trade war front opens
April 10, 2019 /
2:18 AM
TOKYO (Reuters) -
Asian shares slipped from eight-month highs on Wednesday as the International
Monetary Fund lowered its global growth outlook and as tensions over tariffs
between the United States and Europe escalated.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan dropped 0.3
percent, a day after it hit its highest since Aug. 1.
The Shanghai Composite Index fell 0.55 percent and Japan’s Nikkei lost
0.7 percent.
On Wall Street, the S&P 500 gave up 0.61 percent and the Nasdaq
Composite declined 0.56 percent on Tuesday.
MSCI’s broadest gauge of the world’s stock markets was down slightly
from Tuesday’s six-month peak but it was still up roughly 19 percent from a
near two-year trough marked in December.
---- “The gap
between the strength in global shares and sluggishness in the real economy has
been widening,” said Norihiro Fujito, chief investment strategist at Mitsubishi
UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities.
That view was reinforced on Tuesday when the IMF cut its forecast for
world economic growth this year, saying the global economy is slowing more than
expected and that a sharp downturn could require world leaders to coordinate
stimulus measures.
U.S. data overnight added to the cautious mood, with job openings
dropping to an 11-month low in February and raising doubts about the strength
of U.S. labor market, which has so far been one of the few bright spots in the
economy.
Global trade anxiety was another sore point for risk asset markets.
U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to impose tariffs on $11 billion
worth of European Union products, heightening tensions over a long-running
transatlantic aircraft subsidy dispute.
The move came as markets remain on edge as negotiators try to hammer out
trade deals with China and neighbors Mexico and Canada.
“This time it’s the United States and the European Union trading words
and announcing retaliatory tariffs over subsidies to aircraft makers,” wrote
economists at ANZ.
“Watch this space. It’s small-fry versus the U.S.-China spat, but
unhelpful for sentiment.”
More
Potential U.S. auto tariffs would hurt Germany, Japan, Korea: Moody's
April 9, 2019 /
9:06 AM
(Reuters) - Ratings firm Moody’s said on Tuesday that potential auto
tariffs by the United States would be a risk to global growth, hindering
economic momentum in Germany, Japan and Korea.
However, such a move would be less severe for China as Chinese vehicle
exports were already subject to trade restrictions, Moody’s said in a report,
adding that it would also be broadly credit negative for the global auto
industry.
“Auto trade restrictions would cause a broader hit to business and
consumer confidence globally in an already slowing global economy,” Moody’s
Associate Managing Director Elena Duggar wrote.
Canada looks at fresh tariffs on U.S. goods, silent on details revealed by envoy
April 9, 2019 /
8:42 PM
OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada is looking at ways to boost the effectiveness
of its retaliatory tariffs against the United States, Foreign Minister Chrystia
Freeland said on Tuesday, but did not address remarks by a senior official who
revealed what Ottawa might do.
Canada imposed tariffs on C$16.6 billion ($12.5 billion)worth of U.S.
exports in May 2018 after Washington slapped punitive measures on exports of
Canadian steel and aluminum. The initial Canadian list included orange juice,
maple syrup, whiskey, toilet paper and a wide variety of other products.
“We are certainly constantly looking at ways to refresh the retaliation
list ... to have an even greater impact,” Freeland told reporters.
David MacNaughton, Canada’s ambassador to Washington, told U.S.
agricultural reporters on Monday that Canada could announce a new list of
targets as soon as next week, the Progressive Reporter and Politico websites
reported.
The retaliation would include a significant number of agricultural
products, possibly including apples, pork, ethanol and wine, they quoted the
envoy as saying.
Freeland referred in general terms to MacNaughton’s remarks but did not
mention the details he gave. A spokesman for the minister declined to comment
further.
The Canadian embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for a
copy of MacNaughton’s remarks.
If this ‘relentless bid’ dries up, investors could face ‘gruesome nightmare’
Published: Apr 9, 2019 3:28 p.m. ET
The corporate buyback binge has reached historic
proportions, with repurchases by S&P 500 SPX, -0.61%
companies in the last three months of 2018 marking the
fourth straight quarterly record high. That’s never happened before.
“Companies continued to spend more of their tax savings on these share repurchases as they boosted earnings through significantly reduced share counts,” S&P Dow Jones Indices analyst Howard Silverblatt explained last month.
Top “buyback queens” in 2018 included Apple AAPL, -0.30% Oracle ORCL, +0.20% Wells Fargo WFC, -1.51% and Microsoft MSFT, -0.54%
But what happens to these shares and the rest of the investment landscape when it stops? Wolf Richter of the Wolf Street blog chewed on the notion of a stock market without its biggest source of demand, and the picture he paints, with the help of Goldman Sachs GS, -0.95% isn’t pretty.
“Too painful to even imagine,” he wrote. “Share buybacks are the relentless bid, buying at any price, buying not to acquire assets at a low price but buying with the specific purpose of pushing up prices.”
Read: ‘How is this possible?’ Analysts puzzle over stock market’s rally amid equity-fund exodus
To get a sense of what the biggest investors have been up to over the past few years of this broad market push, Richter cited this data:
“So it all worked out. As investors were selling, companies were buying back their own shares. And markets boomed. But what would happen to stocks in a ‘world without buybacks?’” Richter asked, referencing the Goldman note.
He explained that some members of Congress are now targeting share buybacks and proposing legislation, which apparently has Goldman Sachs concerned that the bull market may be hobbled.
---- But in all seriousness, he laid out what would happen in such a scenario. Essentially, demand would evaporate, volatility would rise, earnings-per-share would take a hit and the bull market “would lose the force that powered it.”
In other words, we’d have a market left to fend for itself and embark on
its own price discovery. “No one would be ready for it,” Richter said. “This
type of world is just too painful to even imagine these days.”
Finally, the USA
readies for weather “bomb” two. This could be a very big story by next weekend.
A Second Bomb Cyclone: Colorado Predicted To Go From 80 Degrees To A Blizzard
3:10 PM ET
A weather whiplash is predicted to hit people in the
Rockies and Plains this week, as conditions go from balmy to blizzard
overnight. The high is predicted to be around 80 degrees in Denver and other
cities Tuesday — but within 24 hours, blizzard conditions are forecast, the
National Weather Service says."Warm today. Snow tomorrow," says the NWS office in Denver and Boulder, Colo., predicting temperatures that could hit record highs Tuesday — followed by rain turning to snow, in a blast of cold air that will ride winds of 40-60 mph on Wednesday.
For many central U.S. residents, the week began with warnings of a possible winter storm. But predictions now call for an April blizzard that could bring whiteout conditions. And because of the intense drop in pressure, the system could develop into the region's second bomb cyclone in less than a month.
---- In addition to snow, residents could see dangerous flooding, including in towns in Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota and along the Missouri River, where people are still coping with the effects of last month's floods.
"Heavy snow will develop in the mountains Wednesday morning and then may spread across the plains Wednesday afternoon," the NWS office in Boulder says. The agency's blizzard warning for northeast Colorado applies from noon Wednesday to noon Thursday.
Blizzard warnings have now been issued in several states, from the Dakotas and Colorado to parts of Iowa, Nebraska and Minnesota.
The storm came ashore from the Pacific Ocean on Sunday and Monday, bringing heavy rainfall and floods to Oregon, where evacuation orders were issued in the Eugene area, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported on Monday. It is also expected to cause problems in Idaho and Montana as it gets closer to its expected meeting with cold air.
---- The sudden about-face is similar to the way the inland bomb cyclone formed in March, when the weather in the Rockies and Great Plains shifted from clear skies and temperatures in the 50s and 60s to rain, snow and howling winds.
It's not unusual for these parts of the U.S. to experience swings from warm temperatures to snow in the springtime. But the intensity of the coming switch has caught forecasters' attention — and they're warning people to keep a cautious eye on conditions that could quickly turn dangerous.
"We usually get a winter storm sometime in April," the National Weather Service's Kari Fleegel told South Dakota Public Broadcasting 's Gary Ellenbolt. "However, amounts that we have forecast right now are pretty rare. Some of this might be record territory."
More
https://www.npr.org/2019/04/09/711424891/a-second-bomb-cyclone-colorado-predicted-to-go-from-80-degrees-to-a-blizzard
The financial crisis and the
Great Recession posed the most significant macroeconomic challenges for the
United States in a half-century, leaving behind high unemployment and
below-target inflation and calling for highly accommodative monetary policies.
Jerome Powell
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled
over.
No crooks or bent politicians
today, they are around 24/365 days a year except leap years, when they work
overtime and put in an extra day. Today, while the USA readies for its latest
storm in the Rockies and plains, an update on that other flood last month, this
one in southeast Africa.
After cyclone ruin, back to square one for Mozambique's Beira
Date created :
09/04/2019 - 05:18
Daviz Simango, mayor of Beira on the Mozambican coast, had worked to
shore up the city's climate defences, drawing on World Bank help to build
deterrents against rising seas, flooding and storms.
But in just a few hours last month, Cyclone Idai devastated the city of
half-a-million people, wiping out his efforts.
Packing winds twice the speed Beira was built to withstand, the
superstorm swamped the city's drainage system, overwhelmed its floodgates and
mocked its brand-new basin, designed to hold storm water.
Nearly 90 percent of the regionally-vital port city was damaged or
destroyed.
"We have never seen this before. Our infrastructures were prepared
to handle winds up to 120 kilometres (75 miles) per hour, but this time we were
subjected to winds of 240 kph," the mayor said.
Idai made landfall on March 14, ripping roofs off buildings, pulling
down electricity pylons, uprooting trees, and bringing heavy rains and floods
that swamped an area larger than Luxembourg.
More than 600 people died, as well as nearly 200 in neighbouring Zimbabwe.
Mozambican former first lady Graca Machel, on a post-cyclone visit,
declared Beira "will go down in history as having been the first city to
be completely devastated by climate change."
Climate scientists hesitate to attribute a single extreme-weather event
to climate change, a long-term meteorological shift.
But many would agree that Cyclone Idai is entirely consistent with
scenarios about the impact on weather systems of global warming -- the
relentless buildup of heat-trapping greenhouse gases emitted by burning coal,
oil, and gas.
A study in the journal Nature last November said average global warming
of one degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) to date had boosted the amount
of rain that hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones produce, and warned such storms
will become wetter and windier in future.
Warmer oceans provide more of the raw fuel on which cyclones feed, and
higher sea levels boost storm surges that may overcome coastal defences.
The world's nations agreed in 2015 to cap the global rise in temperature
at 2C from pre-Industrial Revolution levels.
"We can say with certainty: tropical cyclones will become more
intense under global warming. And very strong tropical cyclones will become
more frequent," physics professor Anders Levermann from the University of
Potsdam in Germany told AFP.
----But Mozambique is vulnerable, with a sub-tropical climate, a nearly 2,500-kilometre (1,600-mile) shoreline and entrenched poverty that makes it hard to raise funds for climate resilience or emergency response.
Beira, a city with poorly-planned settlements, inadequate housing and a
fast-expanding population, is particularly exposed.
The city has grown rapidly in recent decades, fed by an influx of people
fleeing the civil war that ended more than 20 years ago after claiming at least
a million lives.
The World Bank ranks Mozambique, after Somalia and Madagascar, as the
third-most at-risk country in Africa to climate change, with cyclones and
floods among the top threats.
Prior to Idai, Simango had overseen projects funded under a $120-million
(106-million euro) credit from the World' Bank's International Development
Association.
The work including rehabilitating the water drainage system, upgrading
and building 11 kilometres (seven miles) of canals, creating floodgates, and
building a large water retention basin.
These projects were supposed to mean "the end of the suffering of a
whole population," Simango said last year.
But this was not to be.
- 'Alarm bell' -
Idai "may turn out to be one of the deadliest weather-related
disasters to hit the southern hemisphere," according to World
Meterological Organization (WMO) executive director Petteri Taalas.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres described it as "an
uncommonly fierce and prolonged storm."
More
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?
Squeezed nanocrystals: A new model predicts their shape when blanketed under graphene
Date:
April 5, 2019
Source:
DOE/Ames Laboratory
Summary:
Scientists have developed a model for predicting the shape of metal
nanocrystals or 'islands' sandwiched between or below two-dimensional (2D)
materials such as graphene. The advance moves 2D quantum materials a step
closer to applications in electronics.
In a collaboration between the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames
Laboratory and Northeastern University, scientists have developed a model for
predicting the shape of metal nanocrystals or "islands" sandwiched
between or below two-dimensional (2D) materials such as graphene. The advance
moves 2D quantum materials a step closer to applications in electronics.
Ames Laboratory scientist are experts in 2D materials, and recently discovered
a first-of-its-kind copper and graphite combination, produced by depositing
copper on ion-bombarded graphite at high temperature and in an ultra-high
vacuum environment. This produced a distribution of copper islands, embedded
under an ultra-thin "blanket" consisting of a few layers of graphene.
"Because these metal islands can potentially serve as electrical
contacts or heat sinks in electronic applications, their shape and how they
reach that shape are important pieces of information in controlling the design
and synthesis of these materials," said Pat Thiel, an Ames Laboratory
scientist and Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Materials Science and
Engineering at Iowa State University.
Ames Laboratory scientists used scanning tunneling microscopy to
painstakingly measure the shapes of more than a hundred nanometer-scale copper
islands. This provided the experimental basis for a theoretical model developed
jointly by researchers at Northeastern University's Department of Mechanical
and Industrial Engineering and at Ames Laboratory. The model served to explain
the data extremely well. The one exception, concerning copper islands less than
10 nm tall, will be the basis for further research.
"We love to see our physics applied, and this was a beautiful way
to apply it," said Scott E. Julien, Ph.D. candidate, at Northeastern.
"We were able to model the elastic response of the graphene as it drapes
over the copper islands, and use it to predict the shapes of the islands."
The work showed that the top layer of graphene resists the upward
pressure exerted by the growing metal island. In effect, the graphene layer
squeezes downward and flattens the copper islands. Accounting for these effects
as well as other key energetics leads to the unanticipated prediction of a
universal, or size-independent, shape of the islands, at least for
sufficiently-large islands of a given metal.
"This principle should work with other metals and other layered
materials as well," said Research Assistant, Ann Lii-Rosales. "Experimentally
we want to see if we can use the same recipe to synthesize metals under other
types of layered materials with predictable results."
A lot has happened over the
years. And while this nation has been tested by war, and it's been tested by
recession and all manner of challenges - I stand before you again tonight,
after almost two terms as your president, to tell you I am more optimistic about
the future of America than ever before.
Barack Obama
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished March
DJIA: 25,929 +54 Down. NASDAQ: 7,729 +94 Down.
SP500: 2,834
+53 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 the Fed’s Plunge
Protection Team now officially part of President Trump’s re-election team,
probably the safest action here is fully paid up synthetic double options on
most of the major indexes.
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