Baltic Dry Index. 768 unch. Brent Crude 64.59 Spot Gold 1557
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.
A good politician is quite as unthinkable
as an honest burglar.
H. L. Mencken.
The first act in the US impeachment melodrama got
underway in Washington yesterday, not that anyone, least of all the latest
stock market bubble, expects President Trump to get kicked out of office.
The Democrats simply never came to terms with losing in
2016, and have been trying to reverse that result ever since. Rather like UK’s Brexit
Remainiacs, were never able to accept that the UK voted to leave the wealth and
jobs destroying EUSSR.
In GB the issue got settled on December 12 in the general
election, when the Remainiacs mostly got tossed out of office.
In America, the final act takes a little longer with an “impartial
trial” in the Senate. But what would
happen to the Fed’s latest stocks bubble, were the Senate to toss President
Trump out of office?
Below, Asia likes the latest GDP figures out of China.
Unexpectedly, China’s GDP hit the Communist Party number.
For every complex problem there is an
answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
H. L. Mencken.
Asian shares firm as China's GDP raises hopes of recovery
January 17, 2020 /
1:06 AM
SHANGHAI
(Reuters) - Asian shares rose on Friday after global stock indexes and Wall Street
posted more records, and as China’s economic growth matched expectations in
spite of U.S. trade pressures.
---- Recent data has pointed to an improvement in Chinese manufacturing and business confidence as trade tensions eased, but analysts are not sure if the gains can be sustained and Beijing is widely expected to roll out more stimulus measures.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS was up 0.1%.
China's blue-chip CSI300 index .CSI300 was 0.27% higher, extending a rally fuelled by hopes for improving relations with the United States that has seen it gain 9% since the beginning of December.
Australian shares added 0.47% after setting four consecutive record closing highs in previous days and Seoul's KOSPI .KS11 rose 0.12%. Japan's Nikkei .N225 was up 0.49% after touching 15-month highs earlier in the session.
---- But analysts say global equities may find it difficult to maintain momentum from their recent rally as optimism over the U.S.-China trade truce gives way to uncertainty over the next steps in trade talks.
While a Phase 1 deal signed by China and the United States on Wednesday
is seen as defusing the 18-month row that has hit global growth, experts say it
is unlikely to provide much balm for broader frictions between the two countries.
Most of the tariffs imposed during the dispute remain in place and a number of
thorny issues that sparked the conflict are still unresolved.
“The challenge from here is how long we can maintain these
improvements,” said Steven Daghlian, market analyst at CommSec in Sydney.
---- In the United States on Thursday, a combination of upbeat earnings from Morgan Stanley, rising U.S. retail sales, a strong labour market and robust manufacturing data helped to lift Wall Street to record highs.
The Phase 1 deal and the U.S. Senate’s approval of a revamp to the 26-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement also boosted investor spirits.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI rose 0.92% to 29,297.64, the S&P 500 .SPX gained 0.84% to 3,316.81 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added 1.06% to 9,357.13.
More
To my way of thinking, this is still a Fed repo fuelled
exit bubble. To no one’s surprise, China’s GDP hit the official figure. Well
you would in China wouldn’t you. I mean, if you’re a Chinese bean counter,
would you tell your boss “we messed up with a big miss.”
Below, reasons to be cautious, if not taking profits and
getting safely in cash.
China fourth-quarter GDP grows 6%, in line with expectations and hovering near 30-year low
January 17, 2020 /
2:13 AM
BEIJING (Reuters)
- China’s economy grew 6.0% in the fourth quarter of 2019 from a year earlier,
official data showed on Friday, in line with expectations and unchanged from
the previous quarter’s pace.
Analysts polled by
Reuters had expected gross domestic product (GDP) to expand 6.0% in the
October-December quarter, hovering at the weakest pace in nearly three decades.
Facing sluggish demand at home and abroad and U.S. trade pressure,
Chinese policymakers have been rolling out a stream of growth boosting measures
over the past two years, while trying to contain financial and debt risks.
The world’s second-largest economy grew 6.1% in 2019, the slowest in 29
years but still within the government’s target of 6-6.5%. Analysts had expected
it to expand 6.1%, down from 6.6% in 2018.
GDP grew 1.5% in the fourth quarter from the previous three months as
expected, the same pace as in the July-September quarter, the National Bureau
of Statistics said.
German economic growth to slow further in 2020 - BDI
January 16, 2020
/ 10:16 AM
BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany’s BDI industry association said on Thursday
it expected German economic growth to slow further this year as there are no
signs of improvement in the struggling manufacturing sector.
“Industry remains stuck in recession, there are no signs for the sector
bottoming out,” BDI President Dieter Kempf told reporters in Berlin.
The association said it expected the
economy to grow by 0.5% in 2020, helped mainly by a higher number of working
days, adding that calendar-adjusted growth is seen at 0.1%.
Kempf called on the government to cut corporate taxes to push down
companies’ average burden to below 25% from 31% currently.
Berlin should also massively hike public investment in infrastructure
over next 10 years to boost growth, he added.
12-time champion forecaster sees U.S. economy easing in 2020
By Rex Nutting
Published: Jan 16, 2020 10:09 p.m. ET
With the conclusion of the U.S.-China trade talks, financial markets are
feeling good, but award-winning forecaster Jim O’Sullivan of TD Securities
warns that the best days of this 10-year economic expansion are behind us.
“The economy is slowing for sure,” O’Sullivan said after winning his
12th Forecaster of the Year contest, including the last nine in a row. Let that
sink in.
O’Sullivan edged out Ryan Sweet of Moody’s Analytics and Christophe
Barraud of Market Securities by the slimmest of margins in the contest that
pitted 45 forecasting teams against each other.
O’Sullivan joined TD Securities as chief U.S. macro strategist in
December after seven years as chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics.
O’Sullivan is forecasting a modest economic slowdown in 2020 and beyond,
largely determined by a big downshift in job growth, slightly weaker household
income and spending growth, still-cautious business investment, and a squeeze
in corporate profit margins.
He sees gross domestic product growth slowing to 1.5% by the end of the year from around 2% now. GDP growth peaked at just over 3% in the middle of 2018. He believes that the Federal Reserve is paying much more attention to employment than to GDP, as it should.
He’s skeptical that U.S. exports to China will ramp up as fast as assumed in the deal signed Wednesday. He wonders “how will President Trump respond” if the pick-up is disappointing? With more tariffs?
“We don’t expect anxiety about trade to suddenly disappear, while domestic political uncertainty looks poised to rise,” he wrote to clients this week. “More fundamentally, we believe the decade-long expansion is showing strains, with profits being squeezed by a tight labor market.”
Geopolitical anxiety won’t disappear. “If business confidence has been subdued when the equity market has been surging, what will happen if equities SPX, +0.84% start falling?” he wonders.
He expects job growth to slow noticeably, from 223,000 per month average in 2018 and 176,000 in 2019 to about 75,000 per month by the end of this year. That trend sounds dire, but that pace of job growth would be roughly in line with natural growth in the workforce, and wouldn’t signal a recession as long as layoffs don’t take off.
If his prediction comes true, however, recession worries would likely arise again.
More
Next, Japan’s kettle calls Carlos
Ghosn’s pot black.
Japan throws stones at Ghosn from glass house
Philip Nussel [///www.autonews.com/section/rss/news?author=Philip%20Nussel]
January 11, 2020 12:00 AM As the Carlos Ghosn scandal unfolds with Hollywood-level kinds of drama and intrigue, it's refreshing to see the Japanese government launch its resources to rein in this fugitive from justice with all the righteous indignation of a nation that truly values international business ethics.
It's quite an about-face for a business culture that allowed the Takata exploding-airbag scandal that has claimed at least 24 lives, injured some 300 people and generated the largest safety recall in the history of the global auto industry. Another 10 million airbags were recalled in the U.S. last week, in fact.
But even more enlightening is how the prosecution and post-escape pursuit of Ghosn runs contrary to the Japanese practice of protecting its own business fugitives from justice, particularly when they stand accused by other countries of crimes that might not be considered serious in Japan.
In the Takata scandal, the company in January 2017 agreed to pay a $1 billion U.S. criminal fine for its fraudulent conduct stemming from the lethal airbag defect. Three of its executives were charged with crimes in the U.S., but they stayed in Japan and never faced justice here.
"Warrants were issued at the time of the indictment and are still active," a U.S. Justice Department spokeswoman said in an email to Automotive News, declining further comment when asked about extradition efforts.
---- The antitrust arm of the Justice Department spent much of the past decade, during the Obama and Trump administrations, prosecuting these crimes. As of 2018, U.S. antitrust regulators said their work yielded $2.9 billion in fines and convictions of 46 suppliers and 32 executives. The vast majority of them are Japanese.
And while the companies themselves pleaded guilty and ponied up massive U.S. fines, as many as 20 individuals charged with crimes stayed in Japan, where they were protected from extradition. Some even kept their jobs. It's unclear whether the U.S. even attempted extradition — and very unlikely that it did. Japanese officials would have to cooperate in such a process.
To this day, these Japanese executives carry the same international fugitive status as Carlos Ghosn.
More
https://www.autonews.com/commentary/japan-throws-stones-ghosn-glass-house
Finally, the great and the not so
good jet in to Davos. What would Greta say? Take the train?
Dalio, Dimon and 117 Other Billionaires Set to Descend on Davos
By Tom Metcalf
People of the same trade seldom meet
together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a
conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices…. But
though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling
together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies, much less to
render them necessary.
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner.
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled
over.
Crooks of a different sort today. Today the crooks who stole Hawaii on
January 17th 1893.
Jan. 17, 1893 | Hawaiian Monarchy Overthrown by America-Backed Businessmen
By The Learning Network
January 17, 2012 4:01 am
On Jan. 17, 1893, Hawaii’s monarchy was overthrown when a group of
businessmen and sugar planters forced Queen Liliuokalani to abdicate. The coup
led to the dissolving of the Kingdom of Hawaii two years later, its annexation
as a U.S. territory and eventual admission as the 50th state in the union.
The first European contact with Hawaii was made in 1778 by Capt. James
Cook. In the 19th century, traders and missionaries came to the islands from
Europe and the United States. They often opposed the Hawaiian monarchy,
favoring instead a British-style constitutional monarchy where the monarch held
little power.
In 1874, David Kalakaua became king
and sought to reduce the power of the white Missionary Party (later Reform
Party) in the government. In 1887, angered by King Kalakaua’s extravagant
spending and his attempts to dilute their power, a small group of Missionary
Party members, known as the Hawaiian League, struck back against the king.
Led by Lorrin A. Thurston and Sanford B. Dole, the Hawaiian League drafted a new constitution that reduced the power of the king and increased the power of the cabinet and Legislature. It also extended voting rights to wealthy noncitizens, while excluding Asians and restricting access for native Hawaiians through land-owning and literacy provisions. Backed by a militia, the group used the threat of violence to force King Kalakaua to sign the constitution, which became known as the Bayonet Constitution.
Led by Lorrin A. Thurston and Sanford B. Dole, the Hawaiian League drafted a new constitution that reduced the power of the king and increased the power of the cabinet and Legislature. It also extended voting rights to wealthy noncitizens, while excluding Asians and restricting access for native Hawaiians through land-owning and literacy provisions. Backed by a militia, the group used the threat of violence to force King Kalakaua to sign the constitution, which became known as the Bayonet Constitution.
King Kalakaua died in 1891 and was
succeeded by his sister, Liliuokalani, who proposed a new constitution that
would restore powers of the monarchy and extend voting rights for native
Hawaiians. The queen’s actions angered many of Hawaii’s white businessmen, who
formed a 13-member Committee of Safety with the goal of overthrowing the
monarchy and seeking annexation by the United States.
The Jan. 29, 1893
edition of The New York Times recounted the events of the coup. On Jan. 16,
Hawaiian Marshal Charles B. Wilson attempted to arrest the committee members
and declare martial law, but his attempts were turned down by other government
officials who feared violence. The next day, after a police officer was shot
and wounded trying to halt the distribution of weapons to the Committee of
Safety’s militia, the committee decided to put its coup into action. Near the
queen’s ʻIolani Palace in Honolulu, the committee’s militia gathered and were
joined by 162 U.S. Marines and Navy sailors who were ordered by John L.
Stevens, U.S. Minister to Hawaii, to protect the committee. The queen
surrendered peacefully to avoid violence.
The Committee of Safety established a provisional government headed by
Mr. Dole. U.S. President Grover Cleveland opposed the provisional government
and called for the queen to be restored to power, but the Committee of Safety
established the Republic of Hawaii and refused to cede power. In 1895, Hawaiian
royalists began a coup against the republic, but it did not succeed. Queen
Liliuokalani was arrested for her alleged role in the coup and convicted of
treason; while under house arrest, the queen agreed to formally abdicate and
dissolve the monarchy.
In 1898, the United States annexed Hawaii. Hawaii was administered as a
U.S. territory until 1959, when it became the 50th state.
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?
Colloidal quantum dot laser diodes are just around the corner
Date:
January 14, 2020
Source:
DOE/Los Alamos National Laboratory
Summary:
Scientists have incorporated meticulously engineered colloidal quantum dots
into a new type of light emitting diodes (LEDs) containing an integrated
optical resonator, which allows them to function as lasers. These novel,
dual-function devices clear the path towards versatile, manufacturing-friendly
laser diodes. The technology can potentially revolutionize numerous fields from
photonics and optoelectronics to chemical sensing and medical diagnostics.
"This latest breakthrough along with other recent advances in
quantum dot chemistry and device engineering that we have achieved suggest that
laser diodes assembled from solution may soon become a reality," said
Victor Klimov, head of the quantum dot group at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
"Quantum dot displays and television sets are already available as
commercial products. The colloidal quantum dot lasers seem to be next in
line."
Colloidal quantum dot lasers can be manufactured using cheaper, simpler
methods than modern semiconductor laser diodes that require sophisticated,
vacuum-based, layer-by-layer deposition techniques. Solution-processable lasers
can be produced in less-challenging lab and factory conditions, and could lead
to devices that would benefit a number of emerging fields including integrated
photonic circuits, optical circuitry, lab-on-a-chip platforms, and wearable
devices.
For the past two decades, the Los Alamos quantum dot team has been
working on fundamental and applied aspects of lasing devices based on
semiconductor nanocrystals prepared via colloidal chemistry. These particles,
also known as colloidal quantum dots, can be easily processed from their native
solution environment to create various optical, electronic, and optoelectronic
devices. Furthermore, they can be 'size-tuned' for lasing applications to
produce colors not accessible with existing semiconductor laser diodes.
In a paper published today in Nature Communications, the Los
Alamos researchers successfully resolved several challenges on the path to
commercially viable colloidal quantum dot technology. In particular they
demonstrated an operational LED, which also functioned as an optically-pumped,
low-threshold laser. To achieve these behaviors, they incorporated an optical
resonator directly into the LED architecture without obstructing charge-carrier
flows into the quantum dot emitting layer. Further, by carefully designing the
structure of their multilayered device, they could achieve good confinement of
the emitted light within the ultrathin quantum dot medium on the order of 50
nanometers across. This is key to obtaining the lasing effect and, at the same
time, allowing for efficient excitation of the quantum dots by the electrical
current. The final ingredient of this successful demonstration was unique,
home-made quantum dots perfected for lasing applications per recipes developed
by the Los Alamos team over the years of research into the chemistry and
physics of these nanostructures.
Presently, the Los Alamos scientists are tackling the remaining
challenge, which is boosting the current density to levels sufficient for
obtaining so-called 'population inversion' -- the regime when the quantum dot
active medium turns into a light amplifier.
As democracy is perfected, the office of
the president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people.
We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks
of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will
be adorned by a downright moron.
H. L. Mencken.
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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