Friday 13 December 2019

Communism Trashed. Trump’s BIG DEAL.


Baltic Dry Index. 1388 -72 Brent Crude 64.62 Spot Gold 1467

Never ending Brexit now January 31.
Trump’s Nuclear China Tariffs Now in effect.
The USA v EU trade war started October 18. Now in effect.

Getting VERY close to a BIG DEAL with China. They want it, and so do we!

Donald J. Trump.

With President Trump tweeting about VERY close to a BIG DEAL with China, and Reuters reporting on no new tariffs on China, and a roll back on some existing tariffs, stocks are expected to surge into the year end.

Add in UK voters trashing Comrade Corbyn’s New Communist hate filled Labour Party in the general election, and Britain’s do-nothing Parliament gets replaced by a do-everything Parliament, with the EU exit now on for January 31. 

Below, a happy Friday the thirteenth to all.

Asian shares, sterling on a high as global risks ebb

December 12, 2019 / 10:38 PM
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Asian shares scaled eight-month peaks on Friday as a last-gasp Sino-U.S. trade deal and a likely major election win by Britain’s Conservative Party cleared a couple of dark clouds from the global horizon.

The double dose of relief slugged safe-haven sovereign bonds and the Japanese yen, and led markets to scale back the chance of more interest rates cuts around the world. 

“Global investors have been given two of the biggest gifts on their Christmas list and should be appreciative for a while at least,” said Sean Callow, a senior forex analyst at Westpac.

“Global equity indices such as MSCI World should set more record highs and sterling could push above $1.36.”

The pound hit its highest since mid-2018 as the run of UK vote results ruled out a shock win by the left-wing Labour opposition, which had been a worry for investors.

Prime Minster Boris Johnson looked set to gain a commanding majority in Britain’s Parliament giving him the power to deliver Brexit, though trade talks with the European Union were set to drag on for months yet.

The pound was last up 2.3% at $1.3460 GBP=D3 and reached levels on the euro not visited since mid-2016.

A wave of trade euphoria had already lifted Wall Street to record highs. Reuters reported the United States has agreed to reduce some tariffs on Chinese goods and delay a tranche of tariffs as part of a phase one deal.

China also has agreed to make $50 billion in agricultural purchases in 2020 as part of the deal, that person and another U.S. source familiar with the talks said.

“If the U.S. cuts the current tariffs to some extent as reported, that is not something markets have priced in, so we could see a further leg up,” said Norihiro Fujito, chief investment strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities in Tokyo.
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Winning big, Johnson on course to deliver swift Brexit

December 12, 2019 / 10:04 PM
LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Boris Johnson won a resounding election victory on Friday that will allow him to take Britain out of the European Union in matter of weeks.

For Johnson, whose 20-week tenure in power has been marked by chaotic scenes in parliament and stark division on the streets over Britain’s tortuous departure from the European Union, victory in Thursday’s contest was vindication. 

Educated at the country’s most elite school and recognisable by his bombastic style, the 55-year-old must not only deliver Brexit but also convince Britons that the contentious divorce, which would lead to lengthy trade talks, is worth it.

A landslide Conservative win marks the ultimate failure of opponents of Britain’s departure from the European Union who plotted to thwart a 2016 referendum vote through legislative combat in parliament and prompted some of the biggest protests in recent British history.

Johnson won an outright majority in the 650-seat parliament after an exit poll showed the Conservatives on course to win a landslide 368 seats, the biggest Conservative national election win since Margaret Thatcher’s 1987 triumph.

U.S President Donald Trump said it was “looking like a big win for Boris”.

Labour were forecast to win 203 seats, the worst result for the party since 1935, after offering voters a second referendum and the most radical socialist government in generations. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said he would step down.

With results from across Britain indicating the exit poll was accurate, Johnson’s bet on a snap election has paid off, meaning he will swiftly ratify the Brexit deal he struck with the EU so that the United Kingdom can leave on Jan. 31 - 10 months later than initially planned.
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China to buy $50 billion in U.S. farm goods for tariff relief - U.S. sources

December 12, 2019 / 7:29 AM
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Washington has agreed to suspend some tariffs on Chinese goods and cut others in return for Beijing’s pledge to hike U.S. farm product purchase in 2020, sources said on Thursday, taking a step to de-escalating the bitter trade war.

Neither Washington nor Beijing have released any official statements, however, raising questions about whether the terms had been agreed by both sides.

A source briefed on the status of bilateral negotiations said the United States would suspend tariffs on $160 billion (£124.7 billion) in Chinese goods expected to go into effect on Sunday and roll back existing tariffs. 

In return, Beijing would agree to buy $50 billion in U.S. agricultural goods in 2020, double what it bought in 2017, before the trade conflict started, two U.S.-based sources briefed on the talks said.

The news helped cheer financial markets with the Chinese yuan surging to its highest in more than four months while shares rose in early Asian trade on Friday.

Both countries need to make formal announcements to cancel or postpone the scheduled tit-for-tat tariffs on each other’s goods that are scheduled to take effect Sunday, however. Chinese tariffs on U.S. goods would take effect at 0401 GMT, while U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods are scheduled to take effect at 0501 GMT.
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Presumably Reuters reporting is accurate, but we shall soon see over the weekend.

Comrade Agent Corbyn, a glutton for punishment, stared at himself in the mirror.

With apologies to P G Wodehouse.

Crooks and Scoundrels Corner.

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

Today, the EUSSR sets out to shoot itself in both feet. Germany’s worst ever Defence Minister, now the new European Commission President, sets out a plan to reduce Europe to a global backwater, of over-taxed serfs. Poland opts out.

European Green Deal Calls for Taxes on Transport and Energy

Fossil-fuel and transport companies could end up paying tens of billions more in taxes

By Dieter Holger and Maitane Sardon  Updated Dec. 11, 2019 12:39 pm ET
The Green Deal is a cornerstone of newly elected European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s plan for the European Union. In her speech to the European Parliament, she heralded the plan as the bloc’s “new growth strategy.”

“If companies invest in clean technologies, if they respect our environment, it cannot be that they face unfair competition from heavy polluters,” she said.

The Green Deal pledges to “create the context for broad-based tax reforms, removing subsidies for fossil fuels, shifting the tax burden from labor to pollution and taking into account social considerations” at the national level, according to a document provided by the commission. It will also “look closely at the current tax exemptions including for aviation and maritime fuels.”

Higher taxes could help the bloc achieve its climate ambitions. For the EU’s 28 member states-—including the U.K., which is set to exit the union—reaching the bloc’s goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 could cost up to 575 billion euros ($637.0 billion) a year, or close to $13 trillion over two decades, according to an estimate by the commission.

“We do not have all the answers yet,” Ms. von der Leyen said. “Today is the start of a journey.”

Calls for more climate-related taxes grew this month after the European Council, which represents the heads of member states, said that the commission should consider revising energy taxes in “relevant sectors such as aviation” to tackle climate change. The council added that “particular consideration” should be given to “specific tax reductions and exemptions.”

The commission said it will present a proposal to revise the EU’s Energy Taxation Directive by June 2021.

One of the taxes could be on jet fuel, which doesn’t carry an EU-wide excise duty. It could cost airlines €14.4 billion a year, more than doubling their current yearly taxes in the bloc, according to a July 2019 report from the commission. Including the U.K., the tax could generate up to €17 billion.

“Too long we have been subsidizing polluting modes of transport like aviation,” said Bas Eickhout, member of the Dutch greens and vice-chair of the European Parliament Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety.

Maritime companies could also end up paying billions more. The EU currently provides around €24 billion a year in subsidies to the maritime industry, mostly in the form of fossil-fuel tax exemptions, according to Transport & Environment, a research and advocacy group.

Between 2014 and 2016, EU member states subsidized the production and consumption of oil, gas, coal and fossil fuel-based-electricity by up to €55 billion a year, according to the commission.
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EU leaves Poland out of 2050 climate deal after standoff

December 12, 2019 / 12:53 AM
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union left Poland out of a 2050 climate neutrality agreement on Friday after hours of summit haggling with three poorer eastern member states that demanded more funds for economic transition and support for nuclear power.

The Czech Republic and Hungary eventually dropped their resistance after winning a guarantee that nuclear energy would be recognised as a way for EU states to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But Poland remained against. 

The tussle came a day after Germany’s Ursula von der Leyen, the new head of the bloc’s executive European Commission, proposed a 100-billion-euro (85.7 billion pounds) investment plan for net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century, declaring it Europe’s “man on the moon moment”.

With fires, floods and droughts ruining millions of lives around the world, the European Union’s new push comes as popular protest demanding more action to fight climate change spreads around the bloc.
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“When it becomes serious, you have to lie.”

Jean-Claude Juncker. Failed former Luxembourg P.M., serial liar, ex-president of the European Commission. Scotch connoisseur.

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?

How to induce magnetism in graphene

Elusive molecule predicted in the 1970s finally synthesized

Date: December 10, 2019

Source: Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (EMPA)

Summary: Graphene, a two-dimensional structure made of carbon, is a material with excellent mechanical, electronic and optical properties. However, it did not seem suitable for magnetic applications. Researchers have now succeeded in synthesizing a unique nanographene predicted in the 1970s, which conclusively demonstrates that carbon in very specific forms has magnetic properties that could permit future spintronic applications.

Depending on the shape and orientation of their edges, graphene nanostructures (also known as nanographenes) can have very different properties -- for example, they may exhibit conducting, semiconducting or insulating behavior. However, one property has so far been elusive: magnetism. 
Together with colleagues from the Technical University in Dresden, Aalto University in Finland, Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz and University of Bern, Empa researchers have now succeeded in building a nanographene with magnetic properties that could be a decisive component for spin-based electronics functioning at room temperature.

Graphene consists only of carbon atoms, but magnetism is a property hardly associated with carbon. So how is it possible for carbon nanomaterials to exhibit magnetism? To understand this, we need to take a trip into the world of chemistry and atomic physics.

----Back in the 1970s, the Czech chemist Erich Clar, a distinguished expert in the field of nanographene chemistry, predicted a bow tie-like structure known as "Clar's goblet." It consists of two symmetrical halves and is constructed in such a way that one electron in each of the halves must remain topologically frustrated. However, since the two electrons are connected via the structure, they are antiferromagnetically coupled -- that is, their spins necessarily orient in opposite directions.

In its antiferromagnetic state, Clar's goblet could act as a "NOT" logic gate: if the direction of the spin at the input is reversed, the output spin must also be forced to rotate.

However, it is also possible to bring the structure into a ferromagnetic state, where both spins orient along the same direction. To do this, the structure must be excited with a cer-tain energy, the so-called exchange coupling energy, so that one of the electrons reverses its spin.

In order for the gate to remain stable in its antiferromagnetic state, however, it must not spontaneously switch to the ferromagnetic state. For this to be possible, the exchange coupling energy must be higher than the energy dissipation when the gate is operated at room temperature. This is a central prerequisite for ensuring that a future spintronic circuit based on nanographenes can function faultlessly at room temperature.

From theory to reality

So far, however, room-temperature stable magnetic carbon nanostructures have only been theoretical constructs. For the first time, the researchers have now succeeded in producing such a structure in practice, and showed that the theory does correspond to reality. "Realizing the structure is demanding, since Clar's goblet is highly reactive, and the synthesis is complex," explains Mishra. Starting from a precursor molecule, the researchers were able to realize Clar's goblet in ultrahigh vacuum on a gold surface, and experimentally demonstrate that the molecule has exactly the predicted properties.

Importantly, they were able to show that the exchange coupling energy in Clar's goblet is relatively high at 23 meV, implying that spin-based logic operations could therefore be stable at room temperature. "This is a small but important step toward spintronics," says Roman Fasel.
Another weekend, and if Reuters is correct, a great trade war relief weekend, as we head into the final weeks before Christmas.  But what if Reuters got it wrong? What if that VERY close BIG DEAL turns out not to be so close or so big? What happens then next week? Have a great weekend everyone.
Fisher Ames.

The monthly Coppock Indicators finished November

DJIA: 28,051 +76 Up. NASDAQ: 8,665 +94 Up. SP500: 3,141 +90 Up. All higher again, but it’s not a buy signal I would follow. I would wait for the next sell signal.

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