Thursday, 3 October 2019

The USA v EU Trade War Starts.


Baltic Dry Index. 1803 -06 Brent Crude 57.71 Spot Gold 1499

Never ending Brexit now October 31, maybe. 28 days away.
Trump’s Nuclear China Tariffs Now In Effect.
USA v EU trade war starts.
If the financial system goes down, our business is going down and, trust me, yours and everyone else's is going down, too.
Lloyd Blankfein’s CEO Goldman Sachs, threat 2008. “Mr. Goldman Sacks.”

With global stock markets already plunging from fears of a new recession underway, the WTO chose yesterday to authorise America to open a new trade war on Europe over subsidies to Airbus. Yet more drag on the already faltering global economy.

The EU is on record as saying they will retaliate, although probably only after first trying to negotiate some kind of settlement.
To this old dinosaur market watcher, it will take a miracle for the global economy to avoid a new recession, probably led by Europe dropping into recession next quarter.

If a new recession hits, Ray Dalio, the founder of the world’s largest hedge fund thinks our leading central banksters will head deep into uncharted, dangerous, experimental territory, aka helicopter money. Stay long fully paid up precious metals for when that all goes horribly wrong.

Asian markets sink amid Wall Street losses, new U.S. tariffs against EU

Published: Oct 2, 2019 11:57 p.m. ET
Asian markets fell in early trading Thursday, following losses on Wall Street triggered by fresh worries about an economic slowdown.

U.S. stocks are off to their worst start to a quarter since 2008, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -1.86%   has lost more than 800 points in the past two days. Data showing slower job creation and weaker manufacturing output are indicating that the Trump administration’s trade war is taking a toll on the U.S. economy.

Global markets were further uneased after the U.S. announced late Wednesday that it planned to slap tariffs as high as 25% on $7.5 billion of European imports, after the WTO ruled the EU improperly favored Airbus AIR, -2.04%   over Boeing BA, -2.02%   in a long-running trans-Atlantic dispute.

“The dreary economic data does perhaps suggest that traders could be better sellers in this risk-toxic environment,” Stephen Innes, Asia-Pacific market strategist at AxiTrader, said in a note.

---- Markets already were on edge about whether President Donald Trump’s tariff battle with Beijing, which is weighing on trade worldwide, might tip the global economy into recession.

U.S. and Chinese negotiators are due to meet this month for a 13th round of talks aimed at ending the fight over Beijing’s trade surplus and technology policies. The two sides have made conciliatory gestures including postponing or lifting some punitive tariffs, but there has been no sign of progress toward settling the core issues in the dispute.

Also Wednesday, investors increased their bets the Federal Reserve will slash interest rates at its next meeting to shield the economy from slowing growth abroad and the effects of the trade war.
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U.S. widens trade war with tariffs on European planes, cheese, whisky to punish subsidies

October 2, 2019 / 11:37 AM
LONDON/BRUSSELS/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States on Wednesday said it would slap 10% tariffs on European-made Airbus (AIR.PA) planes and 25% duties on French wine, Scotch and Irish whiskies, and cheese from across the continent as punishment for illegal EU aircraft subsidies.

The announcement came after the World Trade Organization gave Washington a green light to impose tariffs on $7.5 billion (6.1 billion pounds) worth of EU goods annually in the long-running case, a move that threatens to ignite a tit-for-tat transatlantic trade war. 

The measures would follow tariffs levied by the United States and China on hundreds of billions of dollars of each other’s goods in their more than year-old trade war.

The U.S. trade representative’s target list for EU tariffs, set to take effect on Oct. 18, includes large Airbus planes made in France, Britain, Germany and Spain - the four Airbus consortium countries. But no tariffs will be imposed on EU-made aircraft parts used in Airbus’ Alabama assembly operations or those used by rival U.S. planemaker Boeing Co (BA.N), safeguarding U.S. manufacturing jobs.

---- The tariffs heavily target the four Airbus consortium countries, including Spanish olives, British sweaters and woollens, and German tools and coffee, as well as British whisky and French wine. Cheese from nearly every EU country will be hit with the 25% tariffs, but Italian wine and olive oil were spared, along with European chocolate.

The size and scope of the tariffs were reduced considerably from a $25 billion list floated by Washington earlier this year that included helicopters, major aircraft components, seafood, luxury goods and other big-ticket categories that were excluded from Wednesday’s announcement.
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Cutting off capital flows to China may just be the start, Ray Dalio says

By Steve Goldstein  Published: Oct 2, 2019 4:03 a.m. ET
Ray Dalio, the founder of the world’s largest hedge fund, say reports of the U.S. limiting capital flows to China may just be the start.

The co-chief investment officer and co-chairman of Bridgewater Associates, known for his provocative takes, says wealth and political inequality is causing populism on both the left and the right, and that the limited ability of central banks to stimulate the economy will lead to more far-reaching actions — very large fiscal spending and large budget deficits that will have to be funded by substantially hiking taxes on the rich, printing money and the buying of debts coming from the deficits.

“Typically, this has led to capital flight as investors seek to escape these things, which has quite often led to capital controls that are intended to keep capital in the country and the currency so that it can more easily be taxed and/or devalued. So, naturally, I can’t help but wonder whether this extraordinary (i.e., nothing like this has happened in my lifetime) deviation from convention to restrict capital flows to China could be followed by these other steps when/if the circumstances that I’m describing unfold.” Ray Dalio

With respect to China in particular, Dalio notes in a post to LinkedIn that the U.S. president can unilaterally cut off capital flows to China, freeze payments on the debts owed to China and use sanctions to inhibit non-American financial transactions with China.

The Treasury Department didn’t exactly put to rest a published report that the U.S. was considering a move to de-list Chinese companies from U.S. exchanges, only saying it wasn’t considering such a move at this time.

Despite blasting an initial Bloomberg News report on it as “fake news,” White House adviser Peter Navarro did say in an interview with CNBC there were significant issues on Chinese companies listed on U.S. exchanges.

Goldman Sachs CEO: Negative rates are a ‘failed experiment’

David Solomon says they have led to 'inflated' asset prices and 'that should be of concern'

By Samuel Agini

Updated: October 1, 2019 2:55 pm GMT
Goldman Sachs chief executive David Solomon has criticised negative interest rates, warning they are a “failed experiment” and that they have led to “inflated” asset prices.

Solomon said on the latest edition of the bank’s podcast that he was “very concerned” about the evolution of central bank monetary policy in the decade since the financial crisis.

“I think negative interest rates is a failed experiment, and there are going to be real consequences and repercussions of that for everyone in the world, but in particular, you know, for those places where negative interest rates have existed.

“I think it’s inflated asset prices around the world, and I think that’s something that should be of concern at some point in time.”

Since the crisis, central banks have conducted large-scale asset purchases and set extraordinarily low interest rates in order to support lending in their economies. In the face of weak growth, however, some central banks such as the European Central Bank have resorted to setting targets for their key benchmark rates below zero. Rather than commercial lenders being paid interest for deposits held at central banks, the lenders are charged for the deposits.

A number of bankers, the group who bears the brunt of negative rates, have criticised the strategy, arguing that it punishes the owners of some assets, but not others, such as houses and stocks.

Christian Sewing, the chief executive of Deutsche Bank, warned last month of the “serious side-effects” of negative rates. Jean Pierre Mustier, the president of the European Banking Federation and chief executive of UniCredit, the Italian lender, said banks should stop complaining about negative rates, the Financial Times reported on October 1.

Solomon, who is celebrating his one-year anniversary at the head of Goldman Sachs, warned there had been “a real slowdown in Europe”.

He said the US economy “is doing fine” but raised concerns about the trade dispute between the US and China.

“I’m not smart enough to know if there’s going to be a deal, but I think there’s a fundamental change in the US-China relationship, and I think the evolution of that change and getting to, you know, the end of the road, is not something that’s going to happen with a simple trade deal.

“I’m concerned about the fact that it seems like, because of the way this process has unfolded, we’re developing kind of a two-sphere world. There’s the US-aligned economic world and the China-aligned economic world.”

German institutes slash GDP growth forecasts, warn of high downside risks

October 2, 2019 / 9:07 AM
BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany’s leading economic institutes on Wednesday slashed their growth forecasts for Europe’s biggest economy for this year and next, blaming weaker global demand for manufacturing goods and increased business uncertainty due to trade disputes.

The revisions, which feed into the government’s own forecasts, reflect growing concerns that a slowdown in Germany, driven by a recession in the export-dependent manufacturing sector, could hamper the broader euro zone economy. 

The institutes also called on Berlin to ditch its ‘black zero’ budget policy of incurring no new debt if the growth outlook should deteriorate further.

The institutes said they now expect the German economy to grow by 0.5% this year and 1.1% in 2020. This compared with their April estimates of 0.8% and 1.8% respectively.

“An economic crisis with a pronounced underutilization of the German economy is ... not in sight, although the cyclical downside risks are currently high,” the institutes said, also pointing to Britain’s planned exit from the European Union.

For 2021, the institutes predict a mild recovery with economic expansion of 1.4%.

The government is due to publish its own growth forecasts later this month. In April, it predicted growth of 0.5% for 2019 and 1.5% for 2020.

The institutes said there was currently no reason for additional fiscal action, but the government should use its fiscal leeway if the economic downturn turns out to be worse than expected.

---- Under the German debt brake rule, the federal government can take on new debt of up to 0.35% of economic output. That would be roughly 5 billion euros ($5.5 billion) in 2020 after special factors such as growth have been taken into account.

The permitted debt would rise to 8.4 billion euros in 2021 and 9.7 billion euros in 2022, according to budget experts in parliament.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s centre-right party on Monday vowed to stick to its policy of no new debt, despite growing pressure at home and abroad to ditch the fiscal rule.
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Finally. In other news, yet more red flags on a new recession underway.

NYC housing prices in near 'free fall,' conditions mirror recession era following tax hikes

By Brittany De Lea Published 14 hours ago
NEW YORK - The Manhattan real estate market stumbled in the third quarter of 2019, new reports show, as prices plunged and fewer buyers were willing to purchase higher-priced properties in the wake of two recent tax increases.

The median sales price for properties fell 17 percent from the same quarter last year, to $999,950, according to new data from CORE. The average sales price dropped 12 percent, to $1.64 million.
Condo sales fell 8 percent, logging 946 transactions. Co-op sales, on the other hand, were up a modest 2 percent year over year.

“The third quarter of 2019 was undoubtedly the most challenging quarter in recent memory, especially for condo sales,” Garrett Derderian, managing director of market analysis at CORE, said in a statement. “Market prices have gone from what was once described as the kindest, gentlest correction to a near free-fall. The last time conditions were described in such a way was in the height of the recession.”

---- “Third-quarter data reflects a more accurate snapshot of the current market – continued price correction,” Diane M. Ramirez, Chairman & CEO of Halstead, said in a statement.

Halstead’s own report released on Wednesday showed Manhattan apartment sales fell 16 percent in the third quarter – with sales above $5 million dropping nearly 50 percent.

Properties, meanwhile, spent an average of 192 days on the market – the highest quarterly total since the final quarter of 2012.
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Jean-Claude Juncker. Failed former Luxembourg P.M., serial liar, president of the European Commission. Scotch connoisseur.

Crooks and Scoundrels Corner.

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

Today, America through Google, targets Huawei again. Is Google part of the USA deep state? Is it now unsafe for all global technology companies to rely of USA technology companies? Time will soon tell.

Huawei phones lose access to install Google's apps - Bloomberg

October 2, 2019 / 8:07 AM
(Reuters) - Huawei Technologies Co Ltd’s newly launched Mate 30 devices have lost their access to manually install Google’s Android apps, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.

According to the report, security researcher John Wu published a blog post bit.ly/2p5d2Cu Tuesday that explained how users of Huawei's Mate 30 Pro were able to manually download and install Google apps, despite a U.S. blacklisting that prohibits the Chinese company from using American components and software. 

But in the wake of the revelations, the Mate 30 devices, made to work on new 5G mobile networks, lost their clearance to manually install Android apps, as reported by a number of smartphone experts, Bloomberg said.

The Mate 30 is Huawei’s first major flagship smartphone launched last month, since U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration effectively blacklisted the company in mid-May, alleging it is involved in activities that compromise U.S. national security, a charge the company denies.

Wu wrote in the post a widespread method to install Google Services on newly released Huawei devices relies on undocumented Huawei specific mobile device management application programming interface, or MDM APIs.

“Although this “backdoor” requires user interaction to be enabled, the installer app, which is signed with a special certificate from Huawei, was granted privileges nowhere to be found on standard Android systems,” he wrote.

“The system framework in Huawei’s operating system has a “backdoor” that allows permitted apps to flag some user apps as system apps despite the fact that it does not actually exist on any read-only partitions,” Wu said.

This process let the Mate 30 phones to run popular apps like Google Maps and Gmail that otherwise would not be permitted, Bloomberg reported bloom.bg/2mSwsKg.

An easy-to-use app enabling the installation of Google apps and services on the Mate 30 Pro, called LZPlay, had emerged alongside the device’s release, however it has disappeared after Wu’s posting. 
Only Google is able to make that change through its SafetyNet anti-abuse check, the report said.
Google and Huawei did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.

Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.

John Kenneth Galbraith.

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?

Borophene on silver grows freely into an atomic 'skin'

Date: September 30, 2019

Source: Rice University

Summary: Borophene has a nearly perfect partner in a form of silver that could help the trendy two-dimensional material grow to unheard-of lengths.

A well-ordered lattice of silver atoms makes it possible to speed the growth of pristine borophene, the atom-thick allotrope of boron that so far can only form via synthesis by molecular-beam epitaxy (MBE).

By using a silver substrate and through careful manipulation of temperature and deposition rate, scientists have discovered they can grow elongated hexagon-shaped flakes of borophene. They suggested the use of a proper metal substrate could facilitate the growth of ultrathin, narrow borophene ribbons.

New work published in Science Advances by researchers at Rice and Northwestern universities, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Argonne National Laboratory will help streamline the manufacture of the conductive material, which shows potential for use in wearable and transparent electronics, plasmonic sensors and energy storage.

That potential has fueled efforts to make it easier to grow, led by Rice materials scientist Boris Yakobson, a theorist who predicted that borophene could be synthesized. He and collaborators Mark Hersam at Northwestern and lead author Zhuhua Zhang, a Rice alumnus and now a professor at Nanjing, have now demonstrated through theory and experimentation that large-scale, high-quality samples of borophene are not only possible but also allow qualitative understanding of their growth patterns.

---- "So the origin of the shapes must not lie in equilibrium," he said. "They are caused by the kinetics of growth, how fast or slow the side edges advance. Opportunely, we had developed a theoretical framework for graphene, a nanoreactor model that works for other 2D materials, including boron."

Controlling the flow of atoms as well as temperature gives the researchers a simpler way to control borophene synthesis.

"Silver (111) provides a landing for boron atoms, which then diffuse along the surface to find the edges of a growing borophene flake," Zhang said. "Upon arrival, the boron atoms are lifted onto the edges by silver, but how difficult such a lift is depends on the edge's orientation. As a result, a pair of opposite zigzag edges grow very slowly while all other edges grow very fast, manifested as an elongation of the boron flake."

The researchers said the ability to grow needlelike ribbons of borophene gives them the potential to serve as atom-width conductive wires for nanoelectronics devices.

"Graphene-based electronics that have been conceived so far mostly rely on ribbonlike building blocks," Yakobson said. "Metallic boron ribbons with high conductivity will be a natural match as interconnects in circuitry."

 If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.

John Kenneth Galbraith.

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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