Baltic Dry Index. 1924 -5 Brent
Crude 60.22 Spot Gold 1487
Never ending Brexit now October 31, maybe. 17 days away.
Trump’s Nuclear China Tariffs Now In Effect.
The USA v EU trade war starts October 18. Just 4 days
away.
“We don't have a trillion-dollar debt
because we haven't taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we
spend too much.”
With Japan closed for a holiday, and busy clearing up
from Saturday’s typhoon, and the US bond market closed to celebrate Columbus
Day, Asian stocks got off to a relief rally following last week’s US v China
trade deal “lite,” and the dropping of tomorrow’s scheduled US increase in
China tariffs.
Well, it’s a start, I suppose, and that’s better than
another hike in trade war tariffs, but it’s not enough to offset yet more sign
of a growing slowdown in the global economy.
The latest import and export figures out of China continue
to suggest a global economy on the cusp of, or entering a global recession. In
my book that makes this relief rally an exit rally, a time to be getting out of
stocks and into cash to wait out the last quarter of 2019.
The De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) contemplates life after the
financial system collapses. The solution, have gold. What does the DNB know
about the financial system that we don’t? Why is the Fed suddenly monetising
via repos out to the end of the first quarter of 2020?
Stocks in Asia Advance After Trade Talks Progress: Markets Wrap
By Adam Haigh
Updated on October 14, 2019, 5:25 AM GMT+1
Asian stocks began the week with gains after signs of progress in U.S.-China trade negotiations, though sentiment was
capped as investors voiced skepticism on the accord.Shares from Sydney to Hong Kong climbed after President Donald Trump said the two sides agreed to the outlines of a deal that could be signed as early as next month. S&P 500 futures gained after the U.S. equities gauge climbed to within 1.8% of a record on Friday. The yuan continued Friday’s advance and Treasury futures ticked up following the pickup in yields last week. Japan is shut for a holiday.
China’s exports and imports shrank more than expected in September, as existing U.S. tariffs and the ongoing slowdown in global trade combined to undercut demand.
Elsewhere, the pound retreated as European Union negotiators warned that Brexit plans from U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson are not yet good enough to be the basis for an agreement. The Singapore dollar rose as traders wound back more aggressive bets for further aggressive easing from the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
More
China September exports, imports in deeper contraction as tariffs bite
October 14, 2019 /
4:07 AM
BEIJING
(Reuters) - China’s exports fell at a faster pace in September while imports
contracted for a fifth straight month, pointing to further weakness in the
economy and underlining the need for more stimulus as the Sino-U.S. trade war
drags on.
The downbeat data is likely to reinforce expectations that Beijing needs
to introduce more stimulus measures to avert a sharper economic downturn,
despite tentative signs of a thaw in tense trade relations between the world’s
top economies.
Following talks last week, U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday
outlined the first phase of a deal to end the trade war and suspended a
threatened tariff hike set for Oct. 15. But existing tariffs remain in place
and officials on both sides said much more work is needed before an accord
could be agreed.
September had marked another major escalation in the dispute, with
Washington imposing 15% tariffs on more than $125 billion in Chinese imports
from Sept. 1, and Beijing hitting back with retaliatory levies.
September exports fell 3.2% from a year earlier, the biggest fall since
February, customs data showed on Monday. Analysts had expected a 3% decline in
a Reuters poll after August’s 1% drop.
“The headline figures suggest that global demand softened last month,
adding to the pressure from the U.S. tariffs that went into effect in
September,” said analysts at Capital Economics.
Some economists attributed the deterioration in exports to a fading in
the so-called “front-loading” effect. Some Chinese firms had rushed to ship
goods to the United States ahead of the September deadline, supporting overall
July and August export readings.
Total September imports fell 8.5% after August’s 5.6% decline, the lowest since May. Analysts had expected them to fall by 5.2%.
Despite more than a year of growth boosting measures, China’s domestic demand has remained stubbornly weak as economic uncertainty weighs on business and consumer confidence and discourages fresh investment.
China reported a trade surplus of $39.65 billion last month, compared with a $34.84 billion surplus in August. Analysts had forecast $33.3 billion.
Its trade surplus with the United States stood at $25.88 billion in September, narrowing from August’s $26.96 billion.
More
Dozens killed as Typhoon Hagibis makes landfall in Japan
Oct. 12, 2019 /
9:06 PM
At least 28 people have died and 18 people are missing in
the aftermath of Hagibis, the strongest typhoon to strike Japan's mainland in
decades.NHK also reported 166 people were injured.
Record-breaking rainfall, strong winds and severe flooding struck
central to northern Japan on Saturday, making landfall on Shizuoka Prefecture's
Izu Peninsula.
Nagano, Niigata, Miyagi, Fukushima, Ibaraki, Kanagawa and Saitama
prefectures were inundated by floodwaters after levees failed. Officials are
bracing for worsening conditions as the water levels may rise along flooded
rivers.
Japan Times reported Sunday that officials were assessing the damage from the 19th named storm of the season.
"I extend my condolences for all those who lost their lives and offer my sympathy to those who all those impacted by Typhoon [Hagibis]," Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said at a ministerial meeting on the typhoon at the Prime Minister's Office on Sunday.
More than 200,000 households in eastern and central Japan were left without power as of Sunday afternoon.
---- Hagibis rapidly strengthened in the West Pacific to become the third super typhoon of the season last week. The storm went from a tropical depression with sustained winds of 30 mph to a super typhoon producing winds of 150 mph only 48 hours later.
At a peak strength of 160 mph, the typhoon tied with Wutip from February as the most powerful tropical cyclone in the West Pacific Basin this year.
Although the Japan Meteorological Agency had downgraded the status of the storm to a "strong" typhoon before landfall in Japan, the agency had warned in a news conference during that Friday morning the storm could be as severe as the Kanogawa Typhoon, which had killed more than 1,200 people in 1958 and is one of the deadliest typhoons on record, the New York Times reported.
By 5 a.m. local time Saturday, the JMA had downgraded the scale of Hagibis from a "large and strong" typhoon to a "large" typhoon with maximum sustained winds of about 70 mph and gusts of about 98 mph.
More
DNB’s gold stock
De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) holds more than 600 tonnes of gold. A bar of gold always retains its value, crisis or no crisis. This creates a sense of security. A central bank's gold stock is therefore regarded as a symbol of solidity.
DNB holds more than 600 tonnes of gold. Part of it is
stored at DNB's head office in Amsterdam, but most of it is stored in other
countries: the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.
DNB's gold vault stores 15,000 bars of gold, worth over
EUR 6 billion and representing a third (31%) of DNB's total gold stock. Another
third (31%) is located in New York. This gold is stored in the vaults of the
Federal Reserve Bank, on Manhattan's granite rocks. A larger share of the gold
used to be stored here, but DNB retrieved part of it in 2014. The remaining 38%
is stored in the vaults of the Canadian and UK central banks in Ottawa and
London.
Gold: anchor of trust
Shares, bonds and other securities are not without risk, and prices can go down. But a bar of gold retains its value, even in times of crisis. That is why central banks, including DNB, have traditionally held considerable amounts of gold. Gold is the perfect piggy bank – it's the anchor of trust for the financial system. If the system collapses, the gold stock can serve as a basis to build it up again. Gold bolsters confidence in the stability of the central bank's balance sheet and creates a sense of security.
More
Up next, a WeWork rescue by SoftBank Group, sort of. Does the WeWork business model have any validity,
or is it a business plan doomed to failure at the arrival of the next
recession?
SoftBank seeks control of WeWork through financing package: source
October 13, 2019 /
11:21 PM / Updated 39 minutes ago
(Reuters)
- SoftBank Group Corp. (9984.T) has prepared a financing package for
WeWork Companies Inc that would give it control over the shared office space
company, a person familiar with the matter said.
The package would significantly increase the stake of SoftBank, which
already owns around one third of WeWork, and further dilute the influence of
co-founder Adam Neumann, said the person, who declined to be identified because
of the sensitivity of the matter.
Reuters had reported that SoftBank was in negotiations to make a $1
billion investment to enable WeWork to go through a major restructuring.
Without a fresh infusion of cash, WeWork risks running out of money as
early as the end of the December, the person said.
WeWork is working with JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) to negotiate a $3 billion debt deal after a planned initial public offering was tabled last month because of investor concerns about how it was valued and its business model, Reuters reported last week.
“WeWork has retained a major Wall Street financial institution to arrange a financing,” a WeWork spokeswoman said. “Approximately 60 financing sources have signed confidentiality agreements and are meeting with the company’s management and its bankers over the course of this past week and this coming week.”
WeWork lost $1.9 billion in 2018 and burned through $2.36 billion in cash in the first half of this year, according to filings.
In recent weeks, global credit rating agencies Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Ratings have also downgraded WeWork’s credit ratings deeper into junk territory, while the company’s junk bond is trading at a record low.
More
Finally, who can you trust? Nobody and nothing,
apparently, in the 21st century. The end of the “allegedly” corrupt
Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, era arrives? Well maybe, but they still control the
deep state and most of the media. There’s rarely no smoke without fire. The
Dukes of Hazzard comes to mind without the comedy and generally nice characters
Hunter Biden Steps Down from Chinese Board as Trump Attacks
By Stephanie Baker
October 13, 2019, 12:08 PM GMT+1 Updated on October 13, 2019,
2:46 PM GMT+1
Hunter Biden is stepping down from the board of a
Chinese-backed private equity company and promising to forgo all foreign work
if his father, former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, is elected president in
2020.After months of keeping a relatively low-profile as President Donald Trump leveled a barrage of unsubstantiated accusations of corruption at him, the younger Biden is publicly vowing to avoid any conflict of interest.
According to a statement released on his behalf by his lawyer George Mesires, Biden said he’ll resign at the end of the month from the management company of a private equity fund that’s backed by Chinese state-owned entities. He also pledged that he wouldn’t work for any foreign-owned companies or serve on their boards during a potential Biden administration. He reiterated that he never discussed his business activities with his father.
“Hunter always understood that his father would be guided, entirely and unequivocally, by established U.S. policy, regardless of its effects on Hunter’s professional interests,” the statement said. “He never anticipated the barrage of false charges against both him and his father by the President of the United States.”
Trump and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani have repeatedly claimed, without providing evidence, that Hunter Biden made millions of dollars from China while his father was vice president. They’ve also made unsubstantiated claims that Joe Biden used his position as the U.S. administration’s point person on Ukraine to help quash an investigation in 2016 into the owner of one of the country’s largest private gas companies where Hunter sat on the board.
Earlier this month, Trump publicly called on China to investigate the Bidens. A spokesman for China’s foreign ministry rejected that notion, saying it wouldn’t interfere in the internal affairs of other countries.
“Under a Biden Administration, Hunter will readily comply with any and all guidelines or standards a President Biden may issue to address purported conflicts of interest, or the appearance of such conflicts, including any restrictions related to overseas business interests,” the statement said. “He will continue to keep his father personally uninvolved in his business affairs.”
Hunter Biden released the statement on his own and not at the direction of the former vice president, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Ukraine, China
The statement aims to set the record straight on Biden’s past work in Ukraine and China, which Trump and Giuliani have fixated on as the 2020 campaign heats up. He served a five-year term on the board of Burisma, one of Ukraine’s biggest private gas companies, whose owner had been under investigation for alleged money laundering and abuse of power. The allegations predated his joining the board in April 2014. He stepped down earlier this year.Trump has alleged that Vice President Biden in 2016 threatened to withhold billions of dollars in loan guarantees unless Ukraine fired the country’s top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, as a way to quash the probe and help his son. But U.S. and Ukrainian officials said the investigation at the time was dormant and that Shokin was fired for the opposite reason: failing to fight corruption.
“Despite extensive scrutiny, at no time has any law enforcement agency, either domestic or foreign, alleged that Hunter engaged in wrongdoing at any point during his five-year term,” the statement said.
At the time he joined the Burisma board, Hunter was “of counsel” at Boies Schiller Flexner LLP, a U.S. law firm, and had been advising the company on “its corporate reform initiatives,” it said. He urged Boies Schiller to hire Nardello & Co., a consulting firm specializing in investigations, to assess Burisma’s “corporate structure and governance practices.”
Aleksander Kwasniewski, the former president of Poland, sat on the board of Burisma at the time and recruited Hunter as a non-executive director because of his advisory work for the gas company, the statement said. “At no time was Hunter in charge of the company’s legal affairs,” it said.
Hunter Biden also sought to counter increasing Trump campaign attacks on his ties to China. He denied Trump’s repeated allegations that he procured $1.5 billion from China for a private equity fund after he flew on Air Force Two with his father in December 2013 to Beijing.
He serves on the board of BHR (Shanghai) Equity Investment Fund Management Company, which was set up in 2013 to invest Chinese capital outside China. He previously acknowledged meeting with Jonathan Li, a Chinese banker and partner in the fund, during the 2013 trip but has said it was a social visit and they didn’t talk business.
BHR has the backing of several Chinese state-owned companies. Trump’s claim that Hunter walked away with $1.5 billion from China appears to be based on a fundraising target that BHR announced in 2014. But BHR never raised a discreet pool of capital, Mesires said, and instead raised money deal by deal. BHR now says it manages about $2.1 billion in investments.
Biden denied he played a role in forming the company or having any equity in it while his father was vice president. The board position was unpaid, he said. After his father’s term ended in 2017, Biden bought 10% of the management company for about $420,000. He hasn’t made money from the venture to date, the statement said.
He announced he’ll resign from the BHR board on Oct. 31. He didn’t comment on whether he would retain his equity stake, but his pledge to not do any foreign work under a Biden Administration indicates he would sell the stake if his father wins.
Trump Children
Biden’s pledge to avoid foreign work if his father wins the White House sets him apart from Trump’s children, who have continued working with foreign business partners from Dubai to Indonesia and India while his father sits in the White House. After Trump won the presidency in 2016, he handed the running of the Trump Organization to his sons, Don Jr. and Eric, and said they wouldn’t do any new overseas deals.
More
0.12.2019 09:00
AM
Security News This Week: An iTunes Bug Let Hackers Spread Ransomware
FBI overreach, hacker payback, and more of the
week's top security news.
We also took a look at how planting a spy bug on IT hardware is a lot easier—and cheaper—than you might assume. Also cheap and easy: Russia's cross-platform disinformation assault during the 2016 election, as comprehensively laid out in a new report from the Senate Intelligence Committee this week. The conclusion is the same as it has been for over a year, but is no less important for it: Russia's still at it, and the US isn't doing enough to stop it.
Also not doing enough: Twitter, which this week acknowledged that it had fed user phone numbers provided for two-factor authentication into its ad-targeting engine. This is bad! But maybe not unexpected, given how little the big tech platforms care about your privacy and security, especially compared to their profits. A less cut-and-dried controversy is swirling around the nascent idea of encrypting Domain Name System lookups, which both Google Chrome and Mozilla's Firefox support. Some security professionals argue that it makes it harder to defend networks against certain attacks, while offering minimal benefit.
Soldiers are incorporating more technology on the battlefield, but that can also cause dangerous—even deadly—distractions. And we took a look at 7 security threats that can sneak up on you, from rogue USB drives to snooping Chrome extensions. Keep your head on a swivel.
And there's more! Every Saturday we round up the security and privacy stories that we didn’t break or report on in-depth but which we think you should know about nonetheless. Click on the headlines to read them, and stay safe out there.
Ransomware Hackers Take Advantage of iTunes Zero-Day
Researchers from Morphisec Labs spotted a ransomware hackers using a zero day bug in iTunes for Windows to attack an automotive industry target. The flaw specifically relates to the Apple Software Update utility, allowing the Bitpaymer/iEncrypt malware to sneak onto PCs undetected. Apple has since patched the bug, so if you're still using iTunes on Windows for some reason you should be in the clear. And if you use iTunes on Mac, well, you're also fine. And as soon as you update to macOS Catalina, you won't even have iTunes at all.
More
“Government's
view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax
it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner.
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled
over.
Today, less reported climate change news. Please
don’t forward to anyone at the extreme left wing BBC. Their minds made up,
please don’t confuse them with facts. Besides, they’re in a total melt down
already over Brexit. How dare British people vote to leave the EUSSR!
There Is No Climate Emergency
September 23, 2019 By Christopher
Monckton of Brenchley
Five hundred scientists signed a letter to the United Nations saying
there is no climate crisis!
The letter says:
There is no climate emergency
A global network of 500 scientists and professionals has prepared this
urgent message. Climate science should be less political, while climate
policies should be more scientific. Scientists should openly address the
uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while
politicians should dispassion ately count the real benefits as well as the
imagined costs of adaptation to global warming, and the real costs as well as
the imagined benefits of mitigation.
Natural as well as anthropogenic factors cause warming The geological
archive reveals that Earth’s climate has varied as long as the planet has
existed, with natural cold and warm phases. ... Only very few peer-reviewed
papers even go so far as to say that recent warming is chiefly anthropogenic.
Warming is far slower than predicted The world has warmed at less than
half the originally-predicted rate, and at less than half the rate to be
expected on the basis of net anthropogenic forcing and radiative imbalance. It
tells us that we are far from understanding climate change.
The
letter continued by saying,
Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should
be more scientific. Scientists should openly address the uncertainties and
exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should
dispassionately count the real benefits as well as the imagined costs of
adaptation to global warming, and the real costs as well as the imagined
benefits of mitigation.
Natural as well as anthropogenic factors cause warming. The geological archive reveals that Earth’s climate has varied as long as the planet has existed, with natural cold and warm phases. … Warming is far slower than predicted. …. It tells us that we are far from understanding climate change.
Climate policy relies on inadequate models. Climate models have many shortcomings and are not remotely plausible as policy tools. …
CO2 is not a pollutant. It is essential to all life on Earth. … More CO2 is beneficial for nature, greening the Earth: additional CO2 in the air has promoted growth in global plant biomass. It is also good for agriculture, increasing the yields of crops worldwide.
Global warming has not increased natural disasters. There is no statistical evidence that global warming is intensifying hurricanes, floods, droughts, and suchlike natural disasters, or making them more frequent. However, CO2-mitigation measures are as damaging as they are costly. …
There is no climate emergency. Therefore, there is no cause for panic and alarm. We strongly oppose the harmful and unrealistic net-zero CO2 policy proposed for 2050. … The aim of international policy should be to provide reliable and affordable energy at all times, and throughout the world.
Natural as well as anthropogenic factors cause warming. The geological archive reveals that Earth’s climate has varied as long as the planet has existed, with natural cold and warm phases. … Warming is far slower than predicted. …. It tells us that we are far from understanding climate change.
Climate policy relies on inadequate models. Climate models have many shortcomings and are not remotely plausible as policy tools. …
CO2 is not a pollutant. It is essential to all life on Earth. … More CO2 is beneficial for nature, greening the Earth: additional CO2 in the air has promoted growth in global plant biomass. It is also good for agriculture, increasing the yields of crops worldwide.
Global warming has not increased natural disasters. There is no statistical evidence that global warming is intensifying hurricanes, floods, droughts, and suchlike natural disasters, or making them more frequent. However, CO2-mitigation measures are as damaging as they are costly. …
There is no climate emergency. Therefore, there is no cause for panic and alarm. We strongly oppose the harmful and unrealistic net-zero CO2 policy proposed for 2050. … The aim of international policy should be to provide reliable and affordable energy at all times, and throughout the world.
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?
The Arizona Battery Explosion Is Changing Conventional Wisdom on Safety
Six months later, GTM gets an exclusive update from APS and Fluence on an event that’s forcing a new look at grid battery engineering.
Julian SpectorOctober 10, 2019
The McMicken conflagration injured first responders and marred the safety record of the U.S. energy storage industry. The ability to store wind and solar electricity is crucial to the continued growth of clean energy, but the fire showed the risks of battery storage, even when handled by highly experienced professionals.
Utility Arizona Public Service has invested heavily in understanding and operating batteries, well ahead of most of its peers. Fluence, which took the McMicken system online in 2017, helped kick off the industry and has operated since 2008 with a clean safety record (previously as AES Energy Storage).
Inexperience, then, did not play a role in this fire. Neither did any obvious technical malfunction.
“Things worked, by and large, the way they were intended to work; we still had an event," Fluence COO John Zahurancik told GTM. "So we're now analyzing...the combination of things that led to this.”
New details are emerging, after the parties had to invent a painstaking technique to safely remove the burned up battery cells from the otherwise functional batteries surrounding them. The wreckage has finally arrived at a forensic lab in Michigan for detailed analysis.
But the investigation is already reshaping how APS thinks about lithium-ion technology. APS remains committed to a massive expansion of lithium-ion battery facilities to store Arizona's cheap and abundant solar power. The findings will guide new safety frameworks there, but will also inform the industry's growth around the country and the world.
The fire already delayed battery projects in Arizona, and has jammed
safety to the top of the agenda in sales conversations with other utilities.
U.S. utility-scale storage deployments are on track to underperform against
expectations this year, although other market factors make it hard to isolate
the effect of the fire.
It's safe to say that the expected doubling of U.S. storage
installations in each of the next two years will depend on whether or not the
industry moves decisively to solidify confidence in battery safety following
the Arizona failure.
----The parties have not released the cause of the fire, but they quickly identified where it occurred: one particular rack, containing 14 battery modules. The monitoring systems detected a voltage drop across those modules, followed by an increase in temperature.
The good news was that, due to the system design or some other factor,
the fire did not spread from one rack to the next, which would have drastically
expanded the fuel for the fire.
The problem, as far as the investigation was concerned, was that the
burned rack stood about halfway down the container, and the racks surrounding
it maintained a state of charge around 90 percent, Bordenkircher said. Put
another way, 1.5 megawatt-hours of stored electricity stood between
investigators and their key evidence. But because the facility had been exposed
to high heat and high-pressure explosive force, the utility determined a
conventional discharge would be too risky.
----The McMicken disaster unfolded in two distinct but related events. First, a single battery rack caught fire and burned — an occurrence that battery engineers refer to as thermal runaway. Second, an explosion rocked the enclosure when first responders opened the door.
While the forensics lab seeks answers on what sparked the fire, a separate line of inquiry hopes to establish what gaseous materials built up in the facility and fueled the explosion. Preliminary results from that modeling exercise could be ready in the next couple of weeks, Bordenkircher said.
"The battery module itself did not blow up or explode," Bordenkircher explained. "It was really the gases inside the container got to a point where they then exploded."
Public discussion of battery safety tends to focus on the fire risk, namely that lithium-ion cells pack a lot of energy into a tight space, and if an electrical short or some other failure disrupts the usual flow of power, their flammable components can combust and keep burning until the fuel runs out.
As GTM reported in the aftermath of the April fires, burning battery cells have a well-documented but less widely acknowledged property: They release explosive gases. DNV GL researchers testing battery safety for New York City stakeholders repeatedly encountered explosions after they set lithium-ion batteries on fire in an enclosed environment. These findings led New York City to require ventilation systems to remove such gases from battery enclosures.
More
October 14, 1322. The Scots win the Battle
of Byland, forcing Edward II to flee.
The remains of the
English army made their way to York seeking protection. Edward had left all his
finery, treasure and the Great Seal of England at the Abbey – all then captured
by the Scots. The victorious Scots raided the abbeys and made their way back north
after plundering and moving through into the Wolds as far as Beverley. York was
a fortified city and so was spared.
Robert’s army set about making castles
unusable and demanding payment from towns and villages – those that could not
pay were looted and burnt. The monasteries and priories tried to save their
wealth by moving their riches south before the Scottish army arrived, but had
to pay heavily and never really recovered their former riches. The treasure
gathered on the way back to Scotland helped Robert to make a start rebuilding
his realm.
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished September
DJIA: 26,917 +57 Up. NASDAQ: 7,999 +62 Up. SP500: 2,977 +61 Up.
Another inconclusive month,
but all three moved up weakly. I would not rely on nor take such a weak buy
signal.
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