Baltic Dry Index. 2499 -19 Brent Crude 61.03 Spot Gold 1520
Never ending Brexit now October 31, maybe. 55 days away.
Trump’s Nuclear China Tariffs Now In Effect.
USA v EU trade war postponed to November, maybe.
There can be few fields of human endeavour in which history counts for so little as in the world of finance. Past experience, to the extent that it is part of memory at all, is dismissed as the primitive refuge of those who do not have the insight to appreciate the incredible wonders of the present.
John
Kenneth Galbraith
With the news that US v China trade talks are to resume next
month, it was euphoric rally time for US stocks and whipsaw time for US bonds.
Such is the insanity of modern markets in our financialised economies, under
central bankster fiat currencies operating on zero interest rates and negative interest
rates.
Never mind that there is no deal on offer from China that
allows President Trump to claim a “win.” Never mind that the US farm economy,
already in a growing farm recession, has another crop coming in with few
buyers. Never mind that Trump’s latest new and increased China tariffs are just
kicking in on US consumers ahead of the usual Christmas shopping season.
Never mind that a global manufacturing recession usually
precedes a much wider recession arriving. Never mind that if a wider recession
hits, stocks will whipsaw down while bonds whipsaw up again. In any recession, many
stocks will have a vast mountain on “goodwill” to write off.
Below, more on what I see as a great error. The final
Greater Fool’s exit rally. Smart money is unlikely to be buying in.
Asia Stocks Rise as U.S. Data Calms Economy Worry: Markets Wrap
By Adam Haigh
Updated on September 6, 2019, 5:17 AM GMT+1
Stocks in Asia rose after a strong session on Wall Street
as a slew of data bolstered confidence in the American economy. Treasuries
built on Thursday’s declines.Equity gains were modest across the region, though the MSCI Asia Pacific Index remained on course for its biggest weekly rise since June. Earlier, the S&P 500 closed more than 1% higher as trade tensions appeared to ease between the U.S. and China, and strong private payrolls data and a better-than-expected reading on the services sector tamped down recession angst. Treasury yields ticker higher following Thursday’s jump that came amid a deluge of investment-grade corporate supply.
Australian and Japanese bonds tracked the sell-off. Another stronger-than-forecast yuan currency fixing also aided sentiment.
News
that top Chinese and American officials agreed to restart talks aimed at ending
the trade war is helping boost sentiment and adds to a renewed appetite for
risk assets that took hold earlier in the week. After the strong U.S. economic
data, focus is now likely to shift to remarks from Federal Reserve Chairman
Jerome Powell and the latest jobs report, both due Friday.
“While this has been some positive economic data, it makes it a little
more difficult for the Fed to cut rates,” Kristina Hooper, chief global market
strategist at Invesco Ltd., told Bloomberg TV. “I suspect what we will hear
from Powell is a very tepid commentary on the Fed’s ability to provide monetary
policy accommodation.”
Elsewhere, the Hong Kong dollar ticked lower after Fitch Ratings Inc.
downgraded the territory as an issuer of long-term, foreign currency debt, on
concerns recent political turmoil raises doubts about its governance framework.
Here are some key events coming up:
- Fed chair Jerome Powell speaks in Zurich on Friday.
- The U.S. jobs report on Friday is projected to show the widely watched nonfarm payrolls rose by 160,000 in August, versus 164,000 the month prior. Estimates are for unemployment to be steady at 3.7% and the average hourly earnings rate of increase to slow to 3%.
More
Biggest Bond Rout in Years Whiplashes Bulls Who Were Right
By Liz McCormick
Updated on September 6, 2019, 12:50 AM GMT+1
·
·
‘Treasuries are not a one-way trade,’ Brean’s
Buchta says
After August’s historic drop, it was starting to seem like Treasury yields could only fall. And then came Thursday, when an enormous surge reminded even well-entrenched bulls that the world’s biggest bond market isn’t a one-way street.
Yields
on two-year notes jumped as much as 14 basis points, which would be the largest
full-day increase in a decade, before pulling back to 11 points. A popular iShares ETF tracking long
bonds sank as much as 2.4%, the biggest intraday rout since the day after the
2016 U.S. presidential election. The sell-off was global, with German 30-year
rates briefly turning positive after a month under zero, and yields in
Australia and New Zealand climbing early in Asia on Friday.
More
In other less
optimistic news for stocks, the new global recession risk is still rising. Hong
Kong disorder is still far from over. If China intervenes is a US v China trade
deal crushed?
Recession risks rise for Germany as industrial orders plunge
September 5, 2019
/ 7:29 AM
BERLIN (Reuters) - Weaker demand from
abroad drove a bigger-than-expected drop in German industrial orders in July,
suggesting that struggling manufacturers could tip Europe’s biggest economy
into a recession in the third quarter.
Germany’s export-reliant economy is suffering from slower global growth
and business uncertainty caused by U.S. President Donald Trump’s ‘America
First’ trade policies and Britain’s planned, but delayed, exit from the
European Union.
Contracts for ‘Made in Germany’ goods fell 2.7% from the previous month
in July, data showed on Thursday, driven by a big drop in bookings from
non-euro zone countries, the economy ministry said. That undershot a Reuters
consensus forecast for a 1.5% drop.
“The misery in manufacturing continues. The decline in new orders
significantly increases the risk of a recession for the German economy,” VP
Bank analyst Thomas Gitzel said.
Germany’s gross domestic product contracted by 0.1% quarter-on-quarter
in the second quarter on weaker exports, with the decrease in foreign sales
mainly driven by Britain and below average demand from China.
“The danger is great that negative growth will also be recorded in the
third quarter,” Gitzel added.
The economy ministry said new orders in manufacturing had a weak start
to the third quarter and that the outlook for the sector was also looking grim.
“In light of still unresolved international trade conflicts and muted
business expectations in manufacturing, there are still no signs of a
fundamental improvement in the industrial sector in the coming months,” the
ministry added.
Orders from non-euro zone countries plunged nearly 7% on the month while
demand from other euro zone countries and domestic bookings rose slightly, the
data showed.
More
Swiss Growth Slows as Global Uncertainty Holds Back Investment
By Catherine Bosley
September 5, 2019, 6:53 AM GMT+1 Updated on September 5,
2019, 7:51 AM GMT+1
·
GDP increased 0.3% in second quarter, down from
0.4%
·
Manufacturers suffered drop in orders, see
slower growth ahead
Swiss economic growth slowed in the second quarter, with business spending suffering amid fallout from the trade war and a slump in neighboring Germany.
Equipment investment dropped 1%, which the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs blamed on the “uncertain environment.” Companies have already been warning about the outlook, with a strong currency adding to problems. Gross domestic product rose 0.3% in the period.
More
German watchdog against ban on banks charging customers for deposits
September 5,
2019 / 11:20 AM
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Germany’s financial markets watchdog would not
support banning banks from charging retail customers for storing their money,
its president said on Thursday.
Banks in Germany and elsewhere in Europe are under pressure from low
interest rates and this has prompted debate about whether they could pass on
the charges they incur for depositing cash with the central bank to their
customers.
BaFin president Felix Hufeld, asked about banning banks from charging
customers for so-called negative interest rates, said he would not advise
politicians to go in that direction.
His remarks follow similar comments from Germany’s central bank.
Bavaria’s premier Markus Soeder has suggested banks be prohibited from
charging retail customers negative interest rates for accounts of less than
100,000 euros (£89,678).
But Hufeld’s comments highlight worries about the impact of low
profitability on banks and the wider financial system.
Since 2014, the European Central Bank has charged lenders to store their
cash, with the so-called deposit rate currently at minus 0.4%.
Banks in Germany paid 2.4 billion euros to the central bank to hold cash
in 2018, the German government said in response to a parliamentary inquiry on
negative interest rates.
Some banks have passed along that cost to their corporate and wealthy
clients, but banks have so far shied away from charging regular savers.
Fitch downgrades Hong Kong after months of protests
September 6,
2019 / 5:28 AM
(Reuters) - Global credit rating agency Fitch Ratings downgraded Hong
Kong’s long-term foreign currency issuer default rating to “AA” from “AA+”
after months of unrest and protests in the region.
Hong Kong’s rating outlook is negative, Fitch Ratings said on Friday.
Increasingly violent protests have roiled the Asian financial hub as
thousands chafe at a perceived erosion of freedoms and autonomy under Chinese
rule.
Hong Kong braces for weekend protests as leader fails to appease activists
September 6,
2019 / 2:54 AM
HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong is bracing for more demonstrations this
weekend, with protesters threatening to disrupt transport links to the airport,
after embattled leader Carrie Lam’s withdrawal of a controversial extradition
bill failed to appease some activists.
Protesters plan to block traffic to the city’s international airport on
Saturday, a week after thousands of demonstrators disrupted transport links,
sparking some of the worst violence since the unrest escalated three months
ago.
In an advertisement on Friday in the South China Morning Post newspaper,
the Airport Authority of the Asian financial hub urged protesters “not to
disrupt the journey of tens of thousands of travellers who use the airport
every day”.
Other rallies are planned on Friday evening across the city, at sites
such as subway stations and near government headquarters.
On Wednesday, Lam announced the withdrawal of the extradition bill,
conceding one of the protesters’ five key demands, although many said the move
was too little, too late.
---- Many protesters remain angry over Lam’s refusal to grant an independent inquiry into perceived police brutality against them. Police have fired tear gas and bean bag rounds at protesters, who, in turn, have thrown petrol bombs and bricks at them in running battles.
The protesters’ three other demands are: retraction of the word “riot”
to describe rallies, release of all demonstrators arrested and the right for
Hong Kong people to choose their own leaders.
Many residents fear Beijing is eroding the autonomy granted to Hong Kong
when it was handed back to China in 1997.
More
In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone.
John Kenneth Galbraith.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner.
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled
over.
Today, naughty President Trump tweeted more than he meant to. How they
all laughed in London, Paris, Amsterdam, Moscow and Beijing, among many other
global cities. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. When a tweet goes wrong it's a twit.
09.03.2019 04:45
PM
Trump Tweeted a Sensitive Photo. Internet Sleuths Decoded It
Within hours of the president's post, amateur
satellite trackers had hunted down the secret spy satellite that photographed a
charred Iranian launchpad.
On Friday afternoon, President Trump tweeted a photo of a charred launchpad at the Imam Khomeini Space Center in Iran, which had just experienced its third launch failure of the year. Iran’s launch accident became public on Thursday after the satellite imaging company Planet released a photo that showed thick black smoke wafting across the launchpad.
Planet’s photo is characteristic of most satellite images of Earth seen by the public—slightly grainy with just enough detail to make out what you are looking at. But the image tweeted by Trump is a highly detailed photograph from an intelligence briefing: you can easily see the Persian lettering around the launchpad, the struts of the towers, the steps on a staircase, and individual fence posts.
“When we saw this photo we were kind of blown away,” says David Schmerler, a researcher at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies and the first to share Planet’s photo of the Iranian launch accident with NPR. “A president tweeting out national intelligence assets is a whole new level.”
For many outside experts, the only thing more intriguing than the president sharing sensitive military intelligence was the mystery of the technology that created the image. The photo’s extremely high resolution suggested it was taken by a drone or high-altitude plane, which would mean that Trump had tweeted proof that the US was violating Iranian air space. Alternately, the photo could have been taken by a US spy satellite, in which case Trump would have revealed the imaging capacity of one of America’s most advanced photoreconnaissance satellites.
Within hours of Trump’s tweet, a handful of amateur satellite trackers had not only determined that the photo was taken by a spy satellite, they had figured out which satellite had taken the photo. The culprit was USA 224, a classified National Reconnaissance Office satellite launched in 2011.
USA 224 is believed to be a member of the “KH-11” family of electro-optical surveillance satellites, which began to replace film-based surveillance satellites in the 1970s. Almost everything about the KH-11 satellite program is classified, but there are some clues about the design of the satellites. For example, in 2011 NRO donated to NASA two space telescopes that were originally intended for reconnaissance and believed to be part of the KH-11 program. Each of the telescopes had a 2.4-meter (7.9-foot) mirror, which is the same size used in the Hubble space telescope. But unlike Hubble, these telescopes were meant to be pointed at the Earth, not away from it.
In theory, KH-11 satellites outfitted with a 2.4-meter mirror could snap photos with a resolution of about 10 centimeters. (By way of comparison, the highest-caliber commercial imaging satellites can reach roughly 25 centimeters.) But that’s pure speculation, because images from the satellites have always been classified. The only confirmed photos from a KH-11 satellite were leaked in 1984 by a Navy intelligence analyst who ended up serving two years in prison for espionage.
“The US DOD has released reconnaissance satellite imagery on a number of occasions, but in all cases those were deliberately degraded images,” says Marco Langbroek, an archaeologist who runs an amateur spy-satellite tracking station in the Netherlands and who helped determine that USA 224 took the photo. “This is the first time since the 1984 leak that an image with this level of detail was released.”
Tracing the photo to a classified satellite was a masterclass in internet sleuthing. Christiaan Triebert, a journalist for The New York Times' visual investigation team, used the shadows in the photo to determine a one-hour window in which the photo was taken. Michael Thompson, a graduate student in astrodynamics at Purdue University, pointed out that USA 224 was directly over the Iranian launch facility during the timeframe identified by Triebert. Langbroek then used these initial observations to conduct a refined analysis that provided an exact location of the satellite at the time of the photo.
Since the trajectories of classified satellites are not published by the
Department of Defense, Langbroek had to rely on orbit data collected by a
global network of amateur spy-satellite hunters.
This community obsessively
documents the movements of classified objects in space, often using little more
than binoculars, a stopwatch, and a basic knowledge of orbital mechanics. But
despite the low-tech observation techniques, their predictions of satellite
movements are often accurate to within a few seconds.
Armed with USA 224’s orbital trajectory, Langbroek calculated the angle
at which the satellite viewed the Iranian launchpad based on the ellipticity of
the platform as seen in the photo. (Since the launchpad is a near-perfect
circle when viewed from directly overhead, the viewing angle can be determined
based on how the circle is stretched along its axes in the photo.) Once
Langbroek knew the angle, he could pinpoint the satellite’s exact position in
the sky.
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?
Graphene layer enables advance in super-resolution microscopy
Göttingen researchers develop a new method allowing ten-fold improvement in optical resolution
Date:
September 3, 2019
Source:
University of Göttingen
Summary:
Researchers have developed a new method that uses the unusual properties of
graphene to interact with fluorescing molecules. This method allows scientists
to optically measure extremely small distances, in the order of 1 ångström (one
ten-billionth of a meter) with high accuracy for the first time. This enabled
researchers to measure the thickness of lipid bilayers, the stuff that makes
the membranes of all living cells.
-----This enabled researchers to optically measure the thickness of
lipid bilayers, the stuff that makes the membranes of all living cells. The
results were published in Nature Photonics.
Researchers from the University of Göttingen led by Professor Enderlein
used a single sheet of graphene, just one atom thick (0.34 nm), to modulate the
emission of light-emitting (fluorescent) molecules when they came close to the
graphene sheet. The excellent optical transparency of graphene and its
capability to modulate through space the molecules' emission made it an
extremely sensitive tool for measuring the distance of single molecules from
the graphene sheet. The accuracy of this method is so good that even the
slightest distance changes of around 1 ångström (this is about the diameter of
an atom or half a millionth of a human hair) can be resolved. The scientists
were able to show this by depositing single molecules above a graphene layer.
They could then determine their distance by monitoring and evaluating their
light emission. This graphene-induced modulation of molecular light emission provides
an extremely sensitive and precise "ruler" for determining single
molecule positions in space. They used this method to measure the thickness of
single lipid bilayers which are constituted of two layers of fatty acid chain
molecules and have a total thickness of only a few nanometers (1 billionth of a
meter).
"Our method has enormous potential for super-resolution microscopy
because it allows us to localise single molecules with nanometre resolution not
only laterally (as with earlier methods) but also with similar accuracy along
the third direction, which enables true three-dimensional optical imaging on
the length scale of macromolecules," says Arindam Ghosh, the first author
of the paper.
"This will be a powerful tool with numerous applications to resolve
distances with sub-nanometer accuracy in individual molecules, molecular
complexes, or small cellular organelles," adds Professor Jörg Enderlein,
the publication's corresponding author and head of the Third Institute of
Physics (Biophysics) where the work took place.
Another weekend and a
weekend of damage reports from Hurricane Dorian. The good news, it largely
missed Florida, and doesn’t seem to be causing much damage to the rest of east
coast America. The bad news, it seems to have been catastrophic for the northern
Bahamas. The Bahamas are going to need massive outside help for many months.
In other news, how
much more can the UK Commons, and Brussels, mess up Brexit next week? With
Germany leading Euroland into recession, and negative interest rates heading Europe’s
largest bank, Deutsche Bank into failure, you might think that somewhere in
Europe, someone might care. Have a great weekend everyone.
In central banking as in diplomacy, style, conservative
tailoring, and an easy association with the affluent count greatly, and results
far much less.
John Kenneth
Galbraith
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished August
DJIA: 26,403 +52 Down. NASDAQ: 7,963 +59 Down.
SP500: 2,926 +53 unchanged.
An inconclusive month, but
all three shows signs of weakening.
No comments:
Post a Comment