Baltic Dry Index. 1364 -01 Brent
Crude 62.52 Spot Gold 1465
Never ending Brexit now January 31, or maybe sooner.
Trump’s Nuclear China Tariffs Now in effect.
The USA v EU trade war started October 18. Now in effect.
Politics is the art of the possible, the
attainable — the art of the next best
Chancellor Otto von Bismarck.
With another weekend approaching and still no sign of an easy trade war win against China, it was time yesterday, for trade war team Trump to talk up their book. “White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said on Thursday that Washington was getting close to a trade agreement with China, providing a fillip to investor confidence.”
Well he would say that wouldn’t he. The trouble is he’s been saying it, or something like it for the last 18 months. With the Presidential election now less than a year away, time is on China’s side, not trade war team Trump’s, and it shows.
Despite this attempt to fire up US stocks, aided and abetted by the Trump Fed busy monetising like a drunken sailor, US stocks could barely get out of their own way.
To this old dinosaur market follower since 1968, this is a negative sign of deep trouble ahead. An exit signal for stocks, not an entry signal.
When “trade war deal lite, part one,” finally arrives, it is all too likely to underwhelm, given the desperation in Washington for a trade deal part one at any price.
Asian shares rise as Kudlow comments lift trade hopes
November 15, 2019
/ 1:03 AM
SHANGHAI
(Reuters) - Asian stocks jumped on Friday, propelled by a record S&P 500
finish and White House comments suggesting Washington and Beijing were close to
striking a trade deal, reviving hopes the tariff war may near an end.
However, analysts said investor sentiment remained fragile after weak data from China reinforced concerns about the global economy and amid increasing caution about false signs of progress in Sino-U.S. trade talks.
White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said on Thursday that Washington was getting close to a trade agreement with China, providing a fillip to investor confidence.
That helped to lift MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS up 0.67%. Japan's Nikkei .N225 added 0.76% and Australian shares gained 0.8%.
Chinese blue-chip shares .CSI300 gained 0.06% shortly after the start of trade.
Shane Oliver, chief economist at AMP Capital in Sydney, likened the market’s reaction to positive trade news to being in a relationship with an alcoholic, driven by entrenched hopes for recovery.
“Markets want to believe that there will be some sort of resolution to this issue, some sort of lasting truce at least, even though the experience of the last 18 months doesn’t give a lot of cause for comfort,” he said.
However,
Oliver said weaker Chinese and U.S. economies, and the U.S. presidential
election next year put pressure on both sides to come to an agreement.
---- A Reuters poll of more than 100 economists showed that while concerns have eased over a U.S. recession, few see an economic rebound, and most believe a trade truce is unlikely in the coming year.
Global sentiment has been buffeted in recent weeks by conflicting
assessments of progress in talks between the United States and China aimed at
ending their 16-month-long trade war.
On Thursday, China’s commerce ministry said that the two countries are
holding “in-depth” discussions on a first phase trade agreement, and that
cancelling tariffs is an important condition to reaching a deal.
China has also ended a nearly five-year ban on imports of U.S. poultry
meat, which the U.S. Trade Representative said would lead to more than $1
billion in annual shipments to China.
Those developments followed comments from officials from both countries
last week that they had a deal to roll back tariffs, only to have U.S.
President Donald Trump deny that any such deal had been agreed to.
More
New York Fed Pumps In $104.293 Billion in Temporary Liquidity
Interventions are aimed at ensuring the financial system has enough liquidity
By Michael S. Derby Nov. 14, 2019
10:18 am ET
The New York Fed added $104.293 billion to financial markets Thursday.
The addition of liquidity came in two parts. One was via overnight
repurchase agreements totaling $73.593 billion. The other was from a $30.7
billion 13-day repo operation. In both operations, dealers took less money than
the Fed was willing to provide.
Fed repo interventions take in Treasury and mortgage securities from
eligible banks in what is effectively a short-term loan of central-bank cash,
collateralized by the government securities.
The Fed’s market interventions are aimed at ensuring that the financial system has enough liquidity and that short-term borrowing rates remain well-behaved, with the central bank’s federal-fund rate staying within the 1.5% to 1.75% target range. The effective fed-funds rate stood at 1.55% on Wednesday. The broad general collateral rate for repo trading stood at 1.54%, also for Wednesday.
The Fed’s interventions, which began in large size in mid-September, aren’t designed to serve as stimulus. The temporary operations have kept short-term rates largely in line with central bank goals, after spiking unexpectedly in September.
While the sizes of recent operations are large, the practice of adding and subtracting liquidity from short-term markets to manage short-term interest rates goes back decades. The Fed hopes the large temporary operations won’t be needed after January.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-fed-pumps-in-104-293-billion-in-temporary-liquidity-11573744698
70% of Americans say they are struggling financially
Updated on: November 14, 2019 / 2:25 PM / MoneyWatch- 7 in 10 Americans struggle with at least one aspect of financial stability, a new survey finds.
- About 1 in 5 middle-class workers are spending more than they earn.
- About 20% of women say they are stressed by money, compared with 13% of men.
Many Americans remain in precarious financial shape even as the economy
continues to grow, with 7 of 10 saying they struggling with at least one aspect
of financial stability, such as paying bills or saving money.
The findings come from a survey of more than 5,400 Americans from the
Financial Health Network, a nonprofit financial services consultancy. The
project, which started a year ago, is aimed at assessing people's financial
health by asking about debt, savings, bills and wages, among other
issues.
Despite solid U.S. economic growth this year, the share of Americans who
are struggling financially remains statistically unchanged from a year ago,
said Rob Levy, vice president of research and measurement with Financial Health
Network.
Morehttps://www.cbsnews.com/news/70-americans-are-struggling-financially/
In EUSSR news,
Germany dodged dropping into recession, just. But the previous quarter was
revised down. Did the bean counters downward revision lift the current quarter avoiding
a technical recession of two consecutive downward quarters? They wouldn’t do
that, would they?
Meanwhile, “the likelihood of the European economy falling into
recession is “very low” the European Central Bank’s Vice President Luis De
Guindos said on Thursday.” Well if he says so, but he would say that wouldn’t
he? Just imagine the reaction if he’d said EU recession dead ahead.
German growth rises 0.1%, skirting recession
By Maria
Martinez Published: Nov 14, 2019 3:03 a.m. ET
Germany’s economy grew in the third quarter, avoiding a recession,
according to a first estimate published Thursday by the Federal Statistical
Office, Destatis.
Germany’s gross domestic product increased by an adjusted 0.1% from the
previous quarter, according to Destatis. This is better than economists’
expectations of a 0.1% contraction in The Wall Street Journal’s survey.
The agency, however, also revised the second-quarter data. Following the
revision, Germany’s GDP decreased 0.2% in the second quarter of 2019, compared
with a first estimate of a 0.1% decline.
GDP grew 0.5% on year in the third quarter on a calendar and
price-adjusted basis, Destatis said, in line with a Wall Street Journal poll of
economists.
Recent indicators have sent mixed signals on the German economy, with
improvements in manufacturing orders but weak data on industrial production,
which had its fifth consecutive quarterly contraction.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/german-growth-rises-01-skirting-recession-2019-11-14?mod=home-page
Risk of European recession 'very low' - ECB's De Guindos
November 14,
2019 / 10:56 AM
LONDON (Reuters) - The likelihood of the European economy falling into
recession is “very low” the European Central Bank’s Vice President Luis De
Guindos said on Thursday, but cautioned about an ongoing period of sub-par
growth in the bloc.
De Guindos made the comments after data showed the euro zone’s largest
economy, Germany, narrowly avoided falling into a technical recession of two
consecutive quarters of economic shrinkage.
Europe was in a place where growth remained “below potential” De Guindos
said at a BNP Paribas banking conference, adding that the ECB needed “to pay
close attention” to the situation.
In September, the ECB pushed euro zone interest rates further into
negative territory and said it was restarting its mass bond-buying programme
having only wound it down at the end of last year.
De Guindos also echoed recent calls for governments to step up their
economic support measures and that low bank profitability was the main threat
to euro zone financial stability.
Never believe anything in politics until it
has been officially denied.
Chancellor Otto von Bismarck.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner.
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled
over.
Today, Tesla again. Presented without need for comment, though sooner or
later, a jury and judge will. Why does WeWork come to mind?
Why Tesla picked Germany.
Elon Musk’s Solar Deal Has Become the Top Threat to Tesla’s Future
Thousands of pages of internal documents and testimony show that the CEO’s promises about SolarCity were misleading or false.
November 13, 2019, 5:00 AM EST
During a heated deposition this past June, Elon Musk finally seemed to admit that his
harshest critics were right. Since forcing through the controversial 2016
purchase of SolarCity Corp., the struggling solar
sales-and-installation business he co-founded with his cousins, Tesla Inc.’s chief executive officer has faced
almost-constant criticism: The move was called a catastrophe for Tesla, a $2
billion-plus bailout of a debt-saddled company of which Musk himself was
chairman and the largest shareholder. Despite plummeting sales and substantial
layoffs in the solar division under Tesla after the merger, Musk has fervently defended the SolarCity acquisition, once
calling it “blindingly obvious” and a “no-brainer.”But in a stunningly rare moment of contrition, Musk expressed regret over the decision at his deposition, part of a class-action shareholder suit that’s gained momentum in recent months. “At the time I thought it made strategic sense for Tesla and SolarCity to combine. Hindsight is 20-20,” Musk said. “If I could wind back the clock, you know, I would say [I] probably would have let SolarCity execute by itself.”
The 85% of shareholders who approved the acquisition had only their devout faith in Musk to go on when they voted three years ago this month. The CEO said a combined Tesla-SolarCity was always part of his master plan and would create the world’s first vertically integrated clean energy company.
The hope was customers would drive a Tesla electric car, harvest energy from Tesla solar panels to charge it, and tie the ecosystem together with Tesla’s Powerwall home battery.
In a trove of court filings unsealed this fall, thousands of pages of internal emails, board minutes and presentations, and executive testimony reveal how truly dire the situation was behind the scenes leading up to the acquisition, with almost every significant promise Musk pitched publicly either misleading or false. The documents in the lawsuit offer an unprecedented look at what happens when Musk’s reality-distortion field comes up against the reality of testifying under oath. Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment on the suit.
From the outset, Musk’s quest to buy SolarCity was riddled with question marks. He’d already bet Tesla on the Model 3, heralded as a $35,000 electric sedan for the masses; was it really the right time to engage in a distracting M&A gambit? Musk has said SolarCity was on solid financial footing, but internally he wrote that the company needed to solve its “liquidity crisis.” SolarCity, it turned out, was hemorrhaging cash and in danger of defaulting on its debt.
Tesla’s board initially balked at the proposal. So did Evercore Inc., one of the banks it brought in to evaluate the deal. (Not that they felt their guidance would be heeded: “It’s Elon’s world. We just live in it,” an Evercore banker joked in an email.) Even Tesla’s then-Chief Financial Officer Jason Wheeler raised concerns. “We have Model 3 happening. We have a lot of things going on. We ourselves have a large debt load,” Wheeler said in his June 2019 deposition. “Why do we need to do this now, Elon?”
Then there were the jarring conflicts of interest. Besides his cousins Lyndon and Peter Rive running SolarCity, its board and Tesla’s had complicated overlaps. Six of Tesla’s seven directors were Musk associates (including his brother, Kimbal) with SolarCity ties. Antonio Gracias was on the board of both companies. What’s more, Musk had used his other entities to raise capital for SolarCity: SpaceX, for example, had purchased $255 million of SolarCity bonds. Musk bought $65 million worth. Tesla’s directors had to grapple with this apparent self-dealing as Musk pushed them to reconsider the acquisition in May 2016. Musk said he recused himself from these deliberations, but court filings indicate he remained actively involved, even advocating for the move directly with bankers and investors.
----The shareholder lawsuit is set for trial before Delaware Court of Chancery Vice Chancellor Joseph Slights III in March 2020, according to Tesla’s securities filings. So far, though, Musk has mostly adopted a defiant (if not irritated) tone at his two depositions. In a back-and-forth with the plaintiffs’ lawyer, whom Musk called “dude,” he said now that Tesla has a better grip on its vehicle business, “we’re turning our attention to solar, and we’re going to fix it.” When pressed for details on the challenges with the acquisition, Musk called the lawyer “shameful” and a “very, very bad person” for scrutinizing a company that’s trying to change the world for the better.
More
Tesla's German factory started with love letter from Berlin
November 14, 2019 06:03 AM
BERLIN --When Elon Musk tweeted last year that Germany was a
front-runner for Tesla's first European car factory, it sent politicians into a
frenzy to win over the billionaire.
Berlin's economy minister, Ramona Pop, responded with a two-page letter
that waxed lyrical about Musk as a pioneer and visionary and offered financial
sweeteners to attract him to a city bustling with a vibrant tech scene and a
network of auto research institutes. She even floated access to a nearby race
track where Tesla could take its cars for a spin.
As the beauty contest gained momentum, it turned into a battle. Two
federal states that border France also touted their virtues. Musk already had a
connection with that part of Germany from his purchase of an automation company
there a few years ago. There's also Berlin's patchy track record shouldering
large infrastructure projects -- its new airport remains a mothballed mess,
years behind schedule and massively over budget.
Yet when Musk's Gulfstream jet touched down in the German capital early
this week, his mind was made up: the European gigafactory would sit on the
outskirts of Berlin, with an additional engineering and design center within
the city limits. Musk casually dropped the news at a red-carpet award populated
by the top brass of Germany's car industry, including the CEOs of BMW and
Volkswagen, two companies pushing hard into an electric future.
Morehttps://europe.autonews.com/automakers/teslas-german-factory-started-love-letter-berlin
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?
Perovskite solar cells: Possible
aspects of high efficiency uncovered
Date:
November 13, 2019
Source:
Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie
Summary:
A team has demonstrated that hybrid halide perovskites crystallize without an
inversion center. Interactions between the organic molecules and adjacent
iodine atoms can lead to the formation of ferroelectric domains, which,
indirectly, can result in higher solar-cell efficiencies. The formation of
these ferroelectric domains cannot occur in purely inorganic perovskites.
Solar cells based on perovskites have reached enormously high
efficiencies within a few years, only. Those containing hybrid halide
perovskite, i.e. materials containing inorganic and organic components, achieve
particularly high efficiencies, but lack long-term stability, yet. Even though
inorganic perovskite semiconductors, such as CsPbI3, are less efficient, they
are considered interesting, as well, since they may overcome the stability
issues of hybrid perovskites.
Up to now, it was assumed that hybrid and purely inorganic perovskites
do not differ fundamentally in their crystalline structure. When producing
perovskite materials, it often occurs that no large single crystals are formed,
but countless tiny twin crystals instead. This makes a crystal structure
analysis particularly complicated and prone to errors and low precision.
An HZB team headed by Prof Susan Schorr and Dr Joachim Breternitz has
now achieved a breakthrough in understanding the crystalline structure of
hybrid halide perovskites. The team investigated crystalline samples of
methylammonium lead iodide (MAPbI3), the most prominent representative of this
class of materials, at the Diamond Light Source synchrotron (DLS) in the United
Kingdom using high-resolution single-crystal diffraction. This approach
provided data for a more in-depth analysis of the crystalline structure of this
material.
They were also able to clarify, whether ferroelectric effects are
possible at all in this hybrid halide perovskite. Ferroelectric domains can
have favourable effects in solar cells and increase their efficiency. However,
measuring this effect in samples is difficult -- a null result can mean that
there is either no ferroelectric effect or that the ferroelectric domains
cancel one another's effects out.
"From a crystallographic point of view, some conditions are
necessary for ferroelectricity: a ferroelectric effect can only occur if the
crystal structure does not contain an inversion centre, and additionally if it
exhibits a permanent polar moment," explains Breternitz.
Previously, it was assumed that the crystal structure of MAPbI3 did
contain an inversion centre. However, the results of the crystal structure
analysis show this is not the case: "The organic methylammonium cation MA+
plays a major role in this," explains Breternitz. This is because the MA
molecule is not spherically symmetrical and is also considerably larger than a
single atom, so that it generates a polar moment with the adjacent iodine
atoms. The occurrence of ferroelectric domains in MAPbI3 is therefore possible.
For inorganic perovskites incorporating an alkali atom instead of the MA
molecule, this mechanism is not applicable. That means the more stable
inorganic perovskites may be fundamentally somewhat more limited in their
efficiency than their hybrid halide relatives.
Another weekend and an
election campaigning one in the UK. So far both major parties have found a
magic money tree, and are promising free everything to just about everyone.
So as not to miss out
this time, I have emailed my bank details to the Chancellor and Shadow Chancellor,
in hopes of getting near the top of the list. When they bailed out the
banksters back in 2008-2009, letting them keep their bonuses even though they had
bankrupted their banks, no one wired me anything. Have a great weekend
everyone.
It is the destiny of the weak to be devoured by the strong.
Chancellor Otto von Bismarck.
The monthly Coppock Indicators
finished October
DJIA: 27,046 +59 Up. NASDAQ: 8,292 +67 Up. SP500: 3,038 +67 Up.
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