Baltic Dry Index. 1528 +61 Brent
Crude 61.33 Spot Gold 1459
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.
“When you put tariffs on goods that people in the
United States consume every day, it's a consumption tax. So all the tariffs did
is they made products that Americans were going to buy more expensive. And in
fact we got the final trade data numbers ... And lo and behold [in 2018], we
hit an all-time record-high trade deficit globally, and with China."
Gary Cohn. President Trump's former
director of the National Economic Council.
With better factory and export figures released by China,
has China just bested America in the USA v China trade war? If the factory and
export figures hold up ahead, the answer will probably be yes.
Since President Xi isn’t facing re-election next year,
with each passing week, the time advantage favours China and weakens President
Trump. That “easy to win” trade war gets harder to win the longer China baulks
at signing a trade deal “lite” part one.
But is even a “trade deal lite, part one,” a “victory” for
President Trump, no matter how hard trade war team Trump, try to hype it?
Huawei seems to have trumped Trump, cutting out the need
for US suppliers.
Below, more of the same on Trump’s never-ending trade
war.
Global stocks tick up on upbeat China factory reports, trade talk hopes
December 2, 2019 /
1:18 AM
TOKYO (Reuters) -
Global shares rose on Monday and oil rebounded after upbeat China manufacturing
surveys and as investors clung to hopes Beijing and Washington could reach a
compromise in trade talks.
MSCI's index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan gained 0.46%, reclaiming some of its loss on Friday while Japan's Nikkei .N225 jumped 1.11%.
U.S. stock futures ESc1 gained 0.31% to near record highs after a dip in a truncated U.S. session on Friday due to Thanksgiving holiday.
Mainland Chinese shares also went higher, with the bluechip CSI300 index .CSI300 rising 0.59% from a three-month low hit on Friday.
The market enjoyed a boost after the Caixin/Markit Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) index rose to 51.8 in November from 51.7 in the previous month, marking the fastest expansion since December 2016.
“Output and new orders are both strong. The survey seems to suggest domestic demand is pretty strong even if one cannot have unrestrained optimism on the economic outlook,” said Naoki Tashiro, president of T.S. China Research.
MSCI’s broadest gauge of world shares ticked up 0.1% and stood within reach of its all-time peak hit in January 2018.
While U.S. legislation supporting Hong Kong protesters last week raised concerns about U.S.-China trade negotiations, investors are nonetheless holding the broad view that a further escalation in the trade war can be avoided.
“It looks a bit difficult for two countries’ leaders to shake hands and sign a deal this month. What is more likely is to essentially kick the can, with China buying more U.S. farm products while the U.S. postpones its next tariffs,” said Hiroyuki Ueno, senior strategist at Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Asset Management.
Markets will consider such an arrangement as a de facto deal whether
they officially sign it or not,” he said.
Investors have long thought that the United States will avoid imposing
an additional 15% tariff on about $156 billion of Chinese products on Dec. 15
after signing a deal with China.
The two countries have been so far unable to bridge the gap over
existing tariffs on Chinese goods, with Beijing demanding scrapping them as a
part of any trade deal.
More
China wants U.S. tariffs rolled back in phase one trade deal - Global Times
December 1, 2019
/ 2:19 AM
BEIJING (Reuters) - Beijing is insisting U.S. tariffs must be rolled
back as part of any phase one trade deal with Washington, China’s Global Times
newspaper said on Sunday citing unnamed sources, amid continued uncertainty on
whether the two sides can strike a deal.
“A US pledge to scrap tariffs scheduled for December 15 cannot replace
the rollbacks of tariffs,” the newspaper said in a tweet, referring to an
additional round of tariffs on Chinese imports to be implemented in the absence
of a trade deal.
The Global Times is published by the People’s Daily, the official
newspaper of China’s ruling Communist Party.
On Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump said Washington was in the
“final throes” of a deal aimed at defusing a 16-month trade war with China, a
few days after Chinese President Xi Jinping had expressed his desire for a
trade agreement. Top trade negotiators for both countries also spoke again and
agreed to continue working on the remaining issues.
Trade experts and people close to the White House told Reuters last
month, however, that signing of a phase one agreement may not take place until
the new year as China pressed for more extensive rollbacks of tariffs. An
agreement was initially expected to be completed by the end of November.
More
China's November factory activity unexpectedly expands at quickest pace in almost three years - Caixin PMI
December 2, 2019 /
1:53 AM
BEIJING (Reuters)
- China’s factory activity unexpectedly expanded at the quickest pace in almost
three years in November, with solid increases in output and new orders, a
private business survey showed on Monday.
But business confidence slipped and companies were reluctant to
replenish their inventories, worried about the uncertain outlook for demand and
the prolonged China-U.S. trade war.
The Caixin/Markit Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) index
rose to 51.8 in November from 51.7 in the previous month. That marked the
fastest expansion since December 2016, when it was 51.9.
The 50-mark separates expansion from contraction on a monthly basis.
Economists polled by Reuters had expected a dip to 51.4.
Zhengsheng Zhong, director of macroeconomic analysis at CEBM Group,
noted both domestic and overseas demand rose in November.
“Manufacturing investment may be lingering near a recent bottom,” Zhang
wrote in a release accompanying the data.
“If trade negotiations between China and the U.S. can progress in the
next phase and business confidence can be repaired effectively, manufacturing production
and investment is likely to see a solid improvement,” he said.
China’s official factory activity gauge on Saturday also surprised, returning to growth for the first time in seven months as domestic demand picked up in response to stimulus measures. But gains were slight and export orders sluggish.
The official survey focuses more on heavy industry than Caixin’s, which
is believed to include firms that are more export oriented. The two surveys
also cover different geographical areas.
The Caixin survey showed total new orders and factory production
remained at buoyant levels in November, although they both eased slightly from
record highs in the previous month, when they grew the fastest in over six
years and nearly three years, respectively.
The sub-index for new export orders came in at 51, marginally below that
in October, when it was the highest since February 2018.
More
Huawei Manages to Make Smartphones Without American Chips
For China’s top smartphone maker, U.S. suppliers are increasingly a nice-to-have, not a must-have
By Asa Fitch and Dan Strumpf
Dec. 1, 2019 5:30 am ET
American tech companies are getting the go-ahead to resume business with
Chinese smartphone giant Huawei Technologies Co., but it may be too late: It is
now building smartphones without U.S. chips.
More
"Tariffs don't work. If anything, they hurt
the economy because if you're a typical American worker, you have a finite
amount of income to spend. If you have to spend more on the necessity products
that you need to live, you have less to spend on the services that you want to
buy. And you definitely don't have anything left over to save.”
Gary Cohn. President Trump's former
director of the National Economic Council.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner.
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled
over.
Today, Marketwatch asks an intriguing question. The answer is no, but
only provided we can keep the Great Nixonian Error of fiat money functioning
without piling on a giant financialised bubble of gargantuan unrepayable debt.
Are we in for a repeat of the ‘Long Depression’?
Published: Nov 30, 2019 9:00 a.m. ET
A financial crisis that left in its wake deflationary price
pressures, low productivity, stagnant incomes, a spike in populism, a backlash
against globalization: if that all sounds familiar, you may not like the
following insight.It comes from Dario Perkins, global macro economist for TS Lombard, who, in a Wednesday note, described the historical period he thinks most resembles the current moment. That era is called, a bit bleakly, the Long Depression, and stretched from 1873 to about 1896, depending on the country.
----The U.S., for example, was in recession from October 1873 to March 1879, a stretch that remains the longest downturn on record, and which was followed by four more recessionary periods, for a total of 161 months, or over 13 years, in contraction during that time frame.
“The panic of 1873 was arguably the first truly international crisis,” Perkins explained. “It began in central Europe with the collapse of the Vienna stock market, then spread to the United States after the failure of the banking house of Cooke and Co. over its investment in the Northern Pacific Railroad.”
A financial crisis kick-starting a long period of economic malaise may also sound familiar, but Perkins is more interested in other features of the depression. He notes the slump in productivity that hit Great Britain especially hard: “this is the only period in the last three hundred years with a downturn comparable to what we see today.”
Perkins also calls attention to deflation. While most analysts agree that the effects of globalization, technological innovation, and a shift to a services-oriented economy away from manufacturing have all combined to keep inflation tepid, “these deflationary pressures were even stronger in the late 1800s, producing a sustained period of failing prices,” he writes. “U.K. inflation averaged -1.4% between 1873 and 1888.”
See: The world is de-globalizing. Here’s what it may mean for investors.
Another feature of the Long Depression was polarization of the job market, caused by rapid technological change that “hollows out” the middle-wage segment of the workforce. In the late 1800s, that innovation included the invention of the telephone, the lightbulb, the automobile, and more; today, we‘re trying to learn how to live with machines that learn, microwaves that connect to the internet, and cameras tracking our every move.
The second half of the 19th century brought about a surge of globalization, Perkins noted, that was just as disruptive to people then as the one we’ve just lived through. “Industrialization plus huge advancements in transportation and communication allowed mass production and the shipping of agricultural products and cheap manufactured goods.”
It is probably not surprising, then, that populism as we know it now originated in the late 1800s. “The word ‘populist’ first appeared in 1891, as the name for a dynamic movement launched by farmers and workers in the Midwestern and Southern United States. Most socialist parties were also founded in the late 1800s. Some feared a Marxist revolution.”
Sound familiar?
So what gave? The positive effects of the newly emerging technologies finally found their way to consumers, Perkins says. “This is a reminder that technology can provide a way out of today’s slump, if the gains spread beyond the ‘superstars’.” (In earlier research, Perkins explained the idea of “superstars” as “a powerful winner-takes-most dynamic where a small number of firms gain a very large share of the market.” Some examples include Amazon.com Inc. AMZN, -0.97% and Google. GOOG, -0.61% )
In the 1890s, growth also got a boost from an acceleration in wages, he noted. “Populism played a role, especially as it led to the development of the welfare state and the organization of workers into trade unions. There was no Marxist revolution but worries about ‘socialism’ did cause a powerful shift in the distribution of income. So, while many investors struggle to understand the appeal of movements such as Modern Monetary Theory, ‘the left’ might actually have history on its side.”
"So we should try and make the goods as
cheap as possible. And we don't produce the goods in the United States; we
import the goods from other countries. And if we could produce the goods as
cheaply as other countries do, we would produce them in the United
States."
Gary Cohn. President Trump's former
director of the National Economic Council.
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?
New electrodes could increase efficiency of electric vehicles and aircraft
Date:
November 22, 2019
Source:
Texas A&M University
Summary:
The rise in popularity of electric vehicles and aircraft presents the
possibility of moving away from fossil fuels toward a more sustainable future.
While significant technological advancements have dramatically increased the
efficiency of these vehicles, there are still several issues standing in the
way of widespread adoption.
The rise in popularity of electric vehicles and aircraft presents the
possibility of moving away from fossil fuels toward a more sustainable future.
While significant technological advancements have dramatically increased the
efficiency of these vehicles, there are still several issues standing in the
way of widespread adoption.
One of the most significant of these challenges has to do with mass, as
even the most current electric vehicle batteries and supercapacitors are
incredibly heavy. A research team from the Texas A&M University College of
Engineering is approaching the mass problem from a unique angle.
Most of the research aimed at lowering the mass of electric vehicles has
focused on increasing the energy density, thus reducing the weight of the
battery or supercapacitor itself. However, a team led by Dr. Jodie Lutkenhaus,
professor in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering, believes
that lighter electric vehicles and aircraft can be achieved by storing energy
within the structural body panels. This approach presents its own set of
technical challenges, as it requires the development of batteries and
supercapacitors with the same sort of mechanical properties as the structural
body panels. Specifically, batteries and supercapacitor electrodes are often
formed with brittle materials and are not mechanically strong.
In an article published in Matter, the research team described
the process of creating new supercapacitor electrodes that have drastically
improved mechanical properties. In this work, the research team was able to
create very strong and stiff electrodes based on dopamine functionalized
graphene and Kevlar nanofibers. Dopamine, which is also a neurotransmitter, is
a highly adhesive molecule that mimics the proteins that allow mussels to stick
to virtually any surface. The use of dopamine and calcium ions leads to a
significant improvement in mechanical performance.
In fact, in the article, researchers report supercapacitor electrodes
with the highest, to date, multifunctional efficiency (a metric that evaluates
a multifunctional material based on both mechanical and electrochemical
performance) for graphene-based electrodes.
This research leads to an entirely new family of structural electrodes,
which opens the door to the development of lighter electric vehicles and
aircraft.
While this work mostly focused on supercapacitors, Lutkenhaus hopes to
translate the research into creating sturdy, stiff batteries.
It is the maxim of every prudent master of
a family, never to attempt to make at home what it will cost him more to make
than to buy...What is prudence in the conduct of every private family, can
scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom.
Adam Smith. The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
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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