Baltic Dry Index. 576 -47 Brent Crude 62.22 Spot Gold 1561
Never ending Brexit now January 31. 8 days away.
Trump’s Nuclear China Tariffs Now in effect.
The USA v EU trade war started October 18. Now in effect.
The worst pandemic in modern history was the Spanish flu of
1918, which killed tens of millions of people. Today, with how interconnected
the world is, it would spread faster.
Bill Gates
Now comes the nervous wait in global stock and commodity
markets, to see what happens next in China with the new coronavirus.
If its spread is largely contained, with little impact
outside of China, by the end of next week it will just have been yet more
background noise.
If it starts spreading widely across China due to all the
travel in China for next week’s Lunar New Year celebrations, by the end of next
week we could start to see international travel restrictions on China, and a
rising impact on the Chinese economy and with it the global economy.
At this point in time it’s anyone’s guess as to what
happens next.
Below, the latest news from Asia.
Asia stocks recover Friday from beating 1 day earlier on Lunar New Year eve
By MarketWatch
Published: Jan 23,
2020 11:57 p.m. ET
Stocks in Asia were able to hold their own in early Friday
trading following a big down day Thursday that was triggered by jitters over
the spread of a coronavirus strain that has killed at least 17 people.With markets in China closed ahead of the Lunar New Year starting Saturday, the focus in the region was on Japan, where stocks opened slightly to the upside Friday. Led by electronics shares, the Nikkei NIK, +0.09% was up about ½ of a percent with shares getting a boost as the yen’s recent strength eases somewhat, and as investors focus on corporate earnings results before making aggressive bets.
The USD/JPY is at 109.55, up from the overnight low of 109.26 and compared with 109.58 as of Thursday’s Tokyo stock market close. Electric motor maker Nidec NIDECN, +2.95% reported a 5.7% drop in net profit for the third quarter ended December from a year earlier on Thursday after the market close. The Nikkei Stock Average ended 1.0% lower at 23795.44 on Thursday.
The spread of the coronavirus in China caused the government to broaden
its unprecedented, open-ended lockdowns to encompass around 25 million people
Friday to try to contain the deadly pathogen that has sickened hundreds, though
the measures’ potential for success is uncertain.
At least eight cities have been shut down —- Wuhan, Ezhou, Huanggang,
Chibi, Qianjiang, Zhijiang, Jingmen and Xiantao — all in central China’s Hubei
province, where the illness has been concentrated.
More
Shares hold ground as China virus fears persist; euro hits seven-week low after ECB
January 24, 2020 /
1:23 AM
TOKYO
(Reuters) - Asian shares held their ground on Friday as trade slowed for the
Lunar New Year, despite investors fears that a new coronavirus in China could
spread faster as millions of people would be travelling over the week-long
holiday.
Markets had steadied overnight, as investors took some solace from the
World Health Organisation labelling the outbreak an emergency for China, where
25 people have died and at least 800 have been infected, but not, as yet, for
the rest of the world.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose 0.1%,
while Japan’s Nikkei eased a marginal 0.05% and Australian stocks added 0.3%.
Trade in Asia is already slowing down for the Lunar New Year holiday,
with financial markets in China, Taiwan and South Korea closed on Friday.
“Investors are worried that the outbreak of coronavirus will dampen
consumption in China when the Chinese economy has been already cooling down,”
said Yasuo Sakuma, chief investment officer at Libra Investments.
Indeed, National Australia Bank’s research team tentatively estimated
China’s GDP growth for the first quarter could be hit by around 1% point by
this deadly coronavirus outbreak.
“The impact on Chinese growth could be significant given the outbreak
coincides with the Chinese New Year,” said Tapas Strickland, NAB’s director of
economics.
More
Oil rebounds, but markets 'twitchy' over China virus impact on demand
January 24, 2020 /
2:35 AM
SINGAPORE
(Reuters) - Oil prices edged up on Friday, helped by a decline in U.S. crude
stockpiles, but were on track for to fall up to 5% for the week on worries that
the China coronavirus that has killed 25 so far may spread, curbing travel,
fuel demand and economic prospects.
Brent crude futures LCOc1 were up 24 cents, or 0.4%, at $62.28 a barrel
by 0456 GMT after falling 1.9% the previous session. For the week, Brent is
down 4%.
U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures CLc1 were 24 cents, or 0.4%, higher
at $55.83 a barrel. The contract fell 2% on Thursday and is 5% lower for the
week.
“(The) virulent sell-off on the ... flu scare was mollified by a timely
decline in U.S. crude inventories,” said Stephen Innes, market strategist at
AxiTrader.
“Oil
prices could remain on a slippery slope as traders remain incredibly twitchy
about the effects the coronavirus outbreak could have on Chinese GDP and air
travel more broadly,” said Innes.
----
Offering some support for prices was news that U.S. crude oil and distillate
inventories fell last week, the Energy Information Administration said on
Thursday.
Though they failed to match analysts’ expectations in a Reuters poll of
a 1 million barrel drop, crude inventories did decline by 405,000 barrels in
the week to Jan. 17, government data showed.
Elsewhere, refined fuel exports from India jumped in December as its
slowing economy crimped domestic demand.
India’s refined fuel exports rose 24.2% in December year-on-year to 6.46
million tonnes, the fastest growth since October 2016, official data released
on Thursday showed.
Finally, the USA gives Canada an out on a political extradition,
if Canada is smart enough to take it.
Britain’s extradition request was largely political
theatre ahead of last month’s general election, with little chance of success and
a very bad precedent set if America complied.
The US extradition attempt of Mrs Meng in Canada is
widely perceived in the world as political, an attempt to enforce as crimes, US
sanctions against Iran, that are not law outside of America, even if most
countries comply out of fear of being sanctioned themselves.
U.S. denies Britain's extradition request for diplomat's wife
January 24, 2020
/ 2:56 AM
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has declined Britain’s request
for the extradition of a U.S. diplomat’s wife who was involved in a car crash
last year that killed a British teenager, the State Department said on
Thursday.
British prosecutors have requested the extradition of Anne Sacoolas over
the crash last August in which 19-year-old Briton Harry Dunn was killed while
riding his motorbike.
“At the time the accident occurred, and for the duration of her stay in
the UK, the U.S. citizen driver in this case had immunity from criminal
jurisdiction,” a State Department representative said in a statement.
“If the United States were to grant the UK’s extradition request, it
would render the invocation of diplomatic immunity a practical nullity and
would set an extraordinarily troubling precedent,” the statement said.
Dunn’s family has said Sacoolas was driving on the wrong side of the
road at the time of the crash near an air force base in central England used by
the U.S. military.
Sacoolas was given diplomatic immunity and left Britain shortly after
the accident. Her lawyer has said that she would not return voluntarily to
Britain to possibly face jail for “a terrible but unintentional accident.”
More
Even the pandemic flu of 1918 only killed one to two percent of
the people who were infected.
Anthony Fauci
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner.
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled
over.
Yesterday, at Davos, the US Treasury Secretary had
some free, long overdue, advice for Greta Thunberg. How dare he? But are her
handlers listening?
Later St Greta fired back, getting support from the
German Chancellor seeking to shore up her declining popularity. No doubt a good time was had by all.
Get an economics degree Greta, then let's talk - U.S. Treasury chief
January 23, 2020
/ 8:39 AM
DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - Just when the Swiss mountain spat between
U.S. President Donald Trump and Greta Thunberg seemed to have blown over, U.S.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin took a new dig at the young climate activist
on Thursday.
Asked during a news conference about Thunberg’s call to divest from
fossil fuels, Mnuchin said: “Is she the chief economist? ... After she goes and
studies economics in college, she can come back and explain that to us.”
Mnuchin’s quip came two days after Trump and Thunberg sparred indirectly
at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos. After Trump said
the U.S. had committed to joining the one trillion tree initiative, Thunberg
retorted that fixing the climate crisis was not only about trees.
Before he left Davos, however, Trump seemed to extend an olive branch,
saying he wished he had seen Thunberg speak.
Addressing the Trump administration’s stance on climate, Mnuchin said
the U.S. position had been “misunderstood.”
“There is a real misinterpretation of the U.S. policy. Let me be very
clear: President Trump absolutely believes in clean air and clean water and
having a clean environment.”
Greta rejects U.S. Treasury chief's degree dig in latest climate clash
January 23, 2020
/ 8:39 AM
DAVOS, Switzerland
(Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told Greta Thunberg on
Thursday she should study economics, a jibe which prompted the climate activist
to say she did not need a degree to know the world was not meeting its climate
targets.
---- Earlier in
the week U.S. President Donald Trump and Thunberg sparred indirectly at the
World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort. After Trump said the United
States had committed to joining the one trillion tree initiative, Thunberg
retorted that fixing the climate crisis was not only about trees.
Thunberg, who has taken a year off school to advocate action on climate
change, hit back on Twitter, saying it did not take a degree to know the world
was not meeting its climate targets.
“So either you tell us how to achieve this mitigation or explain to
future generations and those already affected by the climate emergency why we
should abandon our climate commitments,” Thunberg, said days after addressing a
packed panel at the Davos summit, where she has been a star attraction.
Before leaving Davos, Trump seemed to extend an olive branch, saying he
wished he had seen Thunberg speak.
----- Mnuchin later told CNBC he did not believe there were just a few years left to prevent a climate catastrophe.
“There are a lot of other important issues” threatening civilization, he
said, citing health and nuclear proliferation.
“The youth needs to understand: climate is one issue that needs to be
put in contexts with lots of other things.”
German Chancellor Angela Merkel rushed to Thunberg’s defence, saying in
Davos that attaining the goals of the Paris climate accord, which the United
States has quit, was vital.
“Time is pressing, so we - the older ones, I am 65 years old - must make
sure that we take the impatience of young people positively and
constructively,” Merkel said in her speech.
The Elite Machine Behind Greta Thunberg
In the matter of a few months, Greta Thunberg went from a lone girl
protesting in front of the Swedish parliament to an international phenomenon.
Although mass media is making it seem as if this meteoric rise to prominence
happened organically, this is simply not true.
Behind Greta is a major machine, one that is controlled by major
international actors and backed by major funds. This PR machine has allowed
Greta to make the covers of magazines, become the subject of thousands of news
articles while being photographed with world leaders and giving speeches at
elite organizations such as the United Nations.
Although Greta might very well be genuinely concerned with the fate of
the planet, her message is carefully crafted by those who control her to
generate a specific response from the youth. In short, Greta is the face of a
major marketing scheme – a tightly coordinated international effort to sell
global warming through a specific lens: Fear, panic, and urgency.
More
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?
Less may be more in next-gen batteries
Lab tests cells with silicon anodes, aluminum coatings that protect cathodes
Date:
January 22, 2020
Source:
Rice University
Summary:
Engineers build full lithium-ion batteries with silicon anodes and an alumina
layer to protect cathodes from degrading. By limiting their energy density, the
batteries promise excellent stability for transportation and grid storage use.
The process of developing better rechargeable batteries may be cloudy,
but there's an alumina lining.
A slim layer of the metal oxide applied to common cathodes by engineers
at Rice University's Brown School of Engineering revealed new phenomena that
could lead to batteries that are better geared toward electric cars and more
robust off-grid energy storage.
The study in the American Chemical Society's ACS Applied Energy
Materials describes a previously unknown mechanism by which lithium gets
trapped in batteries, thus limiting the number of times it can be charged and
discharged at full power.
But that characteristic does not dampen hopes that in some situations,
such batteries could be just right.
The Rice lab of chemical and biomolecular engineer Sibani Lisa Biswal
found a sweet spot in the batteries that, by not maxing out their storage
capacity, could provide steady and stable cycling for applications that need
it.
Biswal said conventional lithium-ion batteries utilize graphite-based
anodes that have a capacity of less than 400 milliamp hours per gram (mAh/g),
but silicon anodes have potentially 10 times that capacity. That comes with a
downside: Silicon expands as it alloys with lithium, stressing the anode. By
making the silicon porous and limiting its capacity to 1,000 mAh/g, the team's
test batteries provided stable cycling with still-excellent capacity.
"Maximum capacity puts a lot of stress on the material, so this is
a strategy to get capacity without the same degree of stress," Biswal
said. "1,000 milliamp hours per gram is still a big jump."
The team led by postdoctoral fellow Anulekha Haridas tested the concept
of pairing the porous, high-capacity silicon anodes (in place of graphite) with
high-voltage nickel manganese cobalt oxide (NMC) cathodes. The full cell
lithium-ion batteries demonstrated stable cyclability at 1,000 mAh/g over
hundreds of cycles.
More
Another weekend and what a critical weekend we
have. Apart from watching developments in China and southeast Asia, we get the
mass punditry on week one of President Trump’s impeachment. What will President
Trump tweet? We also get the preachy “wisdom” of the Davos billionaires and
supporting lesser classes. We are also just about one week away from Brexit
Freedom Day in GB. Have a great
weekend everyone, try to steer clear of airports.
January 24, 1847. James Marshall finds gold in Sutter's Mill
in Coloma, California.
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished December
DJIA: 28,538 +91 Up. NASDAQ: 8,973 +125 Up.
SP500: 3,231 +114 Up.
All higher again, but it’s
not a buy signal I would take. The rally is all down to the Fed monetizing at a
rate of about 100 billion a month. I continue to look on the Fed’s latest stock
bubble as an exit rally.
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