Baltic Dry Index. 1993 -73 Brent Crude 82.88
Spot Gold 2356 US 2 Year Yield 4.81 -0.04
By means of
glasses, hotbeds, and hotwalls, very good grapes can be raised in Scotland, and
very good wine too can be made of them at about thirty times the expense for
which at least equally good can be brought from foreign countries. Would it be
a reasonable law to prohibit the importation of all foreign wines, merely to
encourage the making of claret and burgundy in Scotland?
The Wealth of
Nations, Book IV, Chapter II, 1776.
Little need for my two cents input today. Today’s articles speak loudly and clearly.
In the next section, though, finally a
warning on US unsustainable rising debt from Wall Street, not that anyone in
the District of Crooks is listening. Eventually a dollar crisis lies ahead.
Asia markets
track Wall Street gains ahead of key U.S. inflation data
UPDATED WED, MAY 15 2024 12:15 AM EDT
Asia-Pacific markets were mostly higher
Wednesday, tracking Wall Street gains overnight that saw the Nasdaq Composite index
hit a fresh record closing high despite strong inflation data.
The producer
price index reading for April came in at 0.5%, above the 0.3%
that economists polled by Dow Jones had expected. The initial market reaction
was negative but stocks subsequently rose as March wholesale prices were
revised down to show a 0.1% decline.
Markets in South Korea and Hong
Kong were shut on Wednesday for a public holiday.
Investors also assessed
Australia’s annual budget released late on Tuesday.
The People’s Bank of China kept
its one-year medium term lending facility rate unchanged at 2.5%. Mainland
China’s CSI 300 index fell 0.45%.
In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 index
opened 0.44% higher.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 gained
0.75%, while the broader Topix added 0.53%.
Overnight on Wall Street, stocks ended Tuesday
higher as investors awaited a key inflation report.
The Nasdaq
Composite gained 0.75% to close at a record high of 16,511.18.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average added
126.60 points, or 0.32%, while the S&P 500 added
0.48%.
Asia
markets live updates: Australia budget, South Korea, Hong Kong closed
(cnbc.com)
Stock futures are little changed as Wall Street
readies for key inflation report: Live updates
UPDATED WED, MAY 15 2024 12:51 AM EDT
Stock
futures were little changed on Wednesday as Wall Street braced for April’s
consumer price index.
Futures tied to the Dow Jones
Industrial Average added
19 points, while S&P 500
futures and Nasdaq 100 futures hovered
near the flatline.
Boot
Barn dropped
more than 6% on disappointing guidance for the full year, while Nextracker gained
11% on better-than-expected revenues.
The overnight moves followed a
winning session that pushed up the Nasdaq Composite 0.75%
to a fresh closing record. The S&P 500 added
0.48%, bringing the broad market index about 0.1% off of its record closing
high. The Dow Jones
Industrial Average gained
0.32%.
Investors await Wednesday’s
key inflation report for more insight into the state of sticky
inflation. Economists polled by Dow Jones expect the consumer price index to
show a 0.4% monthly gain, or a 0.3% increase excluding food and energy.
Economists expect a 3.4% year-over-year gain for headline CPI, following a 3.5%
rise in March.
Stubborn prices have remained a
key concern for markets in recent weeks, spurring fears that the Federal
Reserve may delay its rate-cutting cycle. Tuesday’s producer
price index for April contributed to that narrative, showing a
0.5% gain in wholesale prices, above the 0.3% estimate from Dow Jones.
More
Stock market today: Live updates (cnbc.com)
In other US news, Fed Chairman Powell says inflation remains higher than expected, so no interest rate cut next month then?
Gen Z in debt difficulty. Office loans difficulties too. Not that anyone cares, (yet.)
President Biden Joe Biden turns
Trumpian.
Fed Chair Powell
says inflation has been higher than thought, expects rates to hold steady
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell reiterated
Tuesday that inflation is
falling more slowly than expected and will keep the central bank on hold for an
extended period.
Speaking to the annual general
meeting of the Foreign
Bankers’ Association in Amsterdam, the central bank leader
noted that the rapid disinflation that happened in 2023 has slowed considerably
this year and caused a rethink of where policy is headed.
“We did not expect this to be a smooth road. But these [inflation
readings] were higher than I think anybody expected,” Powell said. “What that
has told us is that we’ll need to be patient and let restrictive policy do its
work.”
While he expects inflation to come
down through the year, he noted that hasn’t happened so far.
“I do think it’s really a question
of keeping policy at the current rate for longer than had been thought,” he
said.
However, Powell also repeated that
he does not expect the Fed to be raising rates.
The Fed
has been holding its key overnight borrowing rate in a targeted
range of 5.25%-5.5%. Though the rate has been there since July, it is the
highest level in some 23 years.
“I don’t think that it’s likely, based on the data that we have, that the
next move that we make would be a rate hike,” he said. “I think it’s more
likely that we’ll be at a place where we hold the policy rate where it is.
More
Fed
Chair Powell says inflation has been higher than thought (cnbc.com)”
Credit
card delinquencies rise as more Gen Z cardholders are maxed out, New York Fed
research shows
May 14, 2024
Americans owe a collective $1.12 trillion on their credit cards, according to a new report on household debt from
the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
In
line with typical spending patterns after the peak holiday season, credit card
balances fell by $14 billion in the first quarter of 2024. But credit card delinquency rates
rose — especially among young adults, or borrowers between
the ages of 18 and 29, who are burdened by high levels of student loan debt and high
costs across the board, the New York Fed found.
These Generation Z borrowers
also have shorter credit histories and lower credit limits, making them more
likely to be maxed out on their credit cards and miss a payment, the
researchers found.
"Overall balance sheets are very good but then
clearly, what delinquency rates are showing is that there is increased stress
among some segments of the population," the New York Fed researchers said
on a press call Tuesday.
Over the last year, roughly
8.9% of credit card balances transitioned into delinquency, the New York Fed
found.
Why more Americans are falling
behind
Many consumers feel strained by higher prices — most
notably for food, gas and housing — and more cardholders are carrying debt from month to month or
falling behind on payments, according to a separate report by Bankrate from January.
"High inflation and high interest rates are
significantly contributing to Americans' debt loads and making this debt harder
to pay off," said Ted Rossman, Bankrate's senior industry analyst.
However, those just starting out face additional financial challenges.
Not only are their wages lower than their
parents' earnings when they were in their 20s and 30s, after adjusting for
inflation, but they are also carrying larger student loan balances, recent reports show.
More
Office-loan
delinquencies jump to nearly 6-year high, says Moody’s
Delinquencies on
office loans rose to 6.4% in April — the highest level since June 2018 — as the
payoff rate among borrowers with maturing debt from Wall Street plunged,
according to a new Moody’s Ratings report.
A main driver of
the monthly uptick was that only 24% of borrowers with maturing office loans in
April repaid their mortgages, down from a roughly 45% to 50% rate last year,
Moody’s said.
More, subscription required.
Office-loan delinquencies jump to nearly 6-year high, says Moody’s - MarketWatch
Biden raises tariffs on $18 billion of Chinese
imports: EVs, solar panels, batteries and more
PUBLISHED TUE, MAY 14 2024 5:00 AM EDT
The Biden administration announced stiff new tariff rates
Tuesday on $18 billion worth of Chinese imports. The
White House said the tariff hikes were necessary to protect American industries
from unfair competition.
Starting this year, President
Joe Biden will quadruple tariffs on
imported Chinese electric vehicles, from 25% to 100%. The import tax on Chinese
solar cells will double, from 25% to 50%. And tariffs on some Chinese steel and
aluminum imports will increase more than three-fold, from 7.5% today up to 25%.
The president also directed U.S. Trade
Representative Katherine Tai to more than triple the tariff rates on
lithium-ion batteries for EVs and lithium batteries meant for other uses.
Starting in 2025, tariffs on imported Chinese semiconductors will jump from 25%
to 50%.
First-time tariffs will be imposed on Chinese
imports of medical needles and syringes, as well as massive ship-to-shore
cranes, the White House said in a fact sheet. Chinese rubber medical gloves and
some respirators and face masks will also be hit with higher tariff rates.
Some items, like batteries and natural graphite,
will have longer phase-in periods for tariffs.The White House said this is
partly to give the U.S. manufacturing sector time to scale up to a point where
enough batteries are being produced domestically to meet consumer demand.
“China is producing at a rate and with a
trajectory that’s far in excess of any plausible estimate of global demand,” a
senior administration official said on a Monday call with reporters.
“That is going to flood the global market with
supply that undercuts our ability to build productive capacity at home and ...
leaves all of us across the world more vulnerable to economic coercion,” said
the official.
Warning signs
White House officials across a variety of agencies
have raised concerns in recent weeks about China’s domestic subsidies for clean
energy manufacturing.
They believe Beijing’s subsidies are helping
companies overproduce cheap clean energy products like solar panels and
electric vehicles that outpace domestic demand.
If companies cannot sell that surplus
domestically, U.S. officials warned, they could end up dumping them on global
markets, making it hard for nascent clean energy industries in other countries
to complete.
“China’s overcapacity distorts global prices and
production patterns and hurts American firms and workers, as well as firms and
workers around the world,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in March ahead
of her visit to China where she confronted government officials on the issue.
Xinhua, the Chinese government news agency, called Yellen’s
claims “unfounded,” and “a reflection of the zero-sum mindset of some
policymakers in Washington.”
More
Biden raises China tariffs on EVs, solar panels,
batteries (cnbc.com)
"When a country (USA) is losing many billions of dollars on trade with virtually every country it does business with, trade wars are good, and easy to win."
President
Don Trump.
Global Inflation/Stagflation/Recession Watch.
Given
our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians,
inflation now needs an entire section of its own.
Goldman CEO Issues Warning as Interest Costs on America’s Ballooning
Debt Exceed Spending on Defense, Medicare
‘We
need to deal with the debt and the deficits,’ Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon
said.
5/13/2024 Updated: 5/14/2024
Goldman
Sachs CEO David M. Solomon is the latest business leader to sound the alarm on
the Biden administration’s deficit spending, which comes as the cost of making
interest payments on the United States’ ballooning government debt has exceeded
spending in both the critical sectors of defense and Medicare.
“I think the level of debt in the United States [and] the level of spending is something
that we need a sharper focus on and more dialogue around than what we’ve seen,”
the investment banking chief told Bloomberg Television on May 13, adding that
if something isn’t done to rein it the spending, it could create problems.
His remarks come as the cost of servicing
the United States’ ballooning government debt reached $514 billion for the
first seven months of the current fiscal year, becoming the second largest line item in the budget.
Interest
spending—now the fastest-growing part of the budget—is currently greater than
all the money spent on education ($128 billion), transportation ($70 billion),
and veterans ($183 billion) combined.
The nonpartisan
Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) predicted that, by 2051,
spending on interest will be the largest line item in the budget. Currently,
only Social Security spending ($837 billion) is greater than what’s being
forked over to service the nation’s growing debt.
“Rising debt
will continue to put upward pressure on interest rates. Without reforms to
reduce the debt and interest, interest costs will keep rising, crowd out
spending on other priorities, and burden future generations,” the CRFB said in
a statement.
A number of economists, business leaders,
and lawmakers have issued warnings about out-of-control deficit spending that
adds to the debt load.
More
Bank
of England interest rate cuts on a knife edge as wage growth comes in hot
TUESDAY 14 MAY 2024 7:06 AM
Wage growth did not budge in the first quarter of
the year as the Bank of England deliberates on whether to cut interest rates at
its next meeting in June.
Annual pay growth excluding bonuses averaged 6.0 per cent between January and March, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), unchanged from last month and slightly ahead of expectations.
Including bonuses, pay growth came in at 5.7 per cent, unchanged from last month’s upwardly revised figure of 5.7 per cent. Economists had expected it to fall to 5.5 per cent.
With inflation falling,
real pay growth remained at its highest level in over two years at around two
per cent.
“Earnings growth in cash terms remains high, with
the recent falls in the rate now levelling off,” ONS director of economic
statistics Liz McKeown said.
Michael Brown, senior research strategist at
Pepperstone, said: “Today’s wage data somewhat raises the risk of inflation
persistence within the UK economy, which is a factor that the MPC’s hawks are
likely to point to as a reason to delay the first Bank Rate cut to the end of
summer”.
This morning’s data does not include the impact of
the near 10 per cent increase to the National Living Wage, which came into
force in April. This could keep cost pressures elevated over the summer,
particularly in the services sector.
Early estimates for April indicate that median
monthly pay increased by 6.9 per cent compared with last year, a worrying sign
for the Bank if it persists.
More
Interest rate cuts on a knife edge as wage growth
comes in hot (cityam.com)
The
UK is out of recession – but it’s far too soon to celebrate
TUESDAY 14 MAY 2024 6:00 AM
While the UK’s
exit from recession is welcome news, structural problems will continue to
stymie economic growth for years to come if they are not addressed soon, Chris
Dorrell writes
The economy looks
set to play a central role in this year’s general election
campaign with both Labour and the Conservatives staking a claim to economic
competence.
Figures out at the end
of last week showed that the UK economy grew 0.6 per cent, its strongest
performance in nearly three years and comfortably ahead of
expectations.
The Conservatives were
quick to claim credit for the surprisingly strong GDP figures, meaning
the UK is officially out of recession.
“Today’s growth figures are proof
that the economy is returning to full health for the first time since the
pandemic,” Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said last week.
Their hope is that as the year
progresses – as inflation falls further and interest rates are cut – households
will slowly start to feel the benefit. Hunt has previously said that, by the
autumn, people will start to experience the “feelgood factor”.
There’s no doubt that the economy is
improving, but it seems unlikely that this will close the yawning chasm
separating the Tories and Labour in the polls.
David Gauke, head of public
policy at Macfarlanes and a former Treasury minister, agreed that last
week’s figures were “encouraging.”
More
The UK is out of recession - but it's far too soon to celebrate (cityam.com)
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
Today, better news for many UK small businesses but not for UK insurers or reinsurers.
Businesses
can still claim on their insurance for Covid-19 business interruption
May 14, 2024
When the UK went into lockdown in 2020, many
thousands of businesses up and down the country were forced to close their
doors to the public, with no idea when they’d be able to reopen them again.
Retail and hospitality were especially hard hit – restaurants had to pivot to
only selling takeaways, and many pubs and shops had to halt trading completely.
For many,
the early days of Covid-19 now feel like a lifetime ago, but the effects of
lockdown still weigh heavy on many small business owners. Having now also been
hit with an aftershock of soaring energy costs and inflation, many of these
businesses have struggled to keep afloat. Some have already gone under:
official statistics released by the Insolvency Service suggest that more UK
companies went bust in 2023 than in any year since the Great Recession.
Government support including
the furlough scheme was one safety net for companies during the Covid chaos,
but that’s long since been exhausted. Another potential lifeline is insurance
– particularly for business interruption.
“Hundredsof thousands of
businesses held insurance which covers for ‘prevention of access’, ‘infectious
disease’ and other factors which prevent trading,” says AaronLe Marquer, Head of
Policyholder Disputes at Stewarts. “Many of these policyholders therefore logically
expected that the Covid-19 lockdowns would trigger the terms of their
insurance, and that they’d be compensated for the ensuing losses.”
The insurance industry had other ideas. Many
large insurers sought to avoid their liabilities to businesses either by arguing
that pandemics were excluded from policy wordings, or using narrow definitions
of terms in contracts to try and minimise the value of payments. The stage was
set for a legal clash to answer the question…
Are businesses owed insurance money after lockdown?
If you’ve read the title of
this article, you’ll know that the short answer is‘yes’. As early as January
2021 the Supreme Court ruled that most insurance wording did cover losses
caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, entitling businesses up and down the country
to potentially life-saving payouts from their insurers.
Despite this early victory,
the battle between policyholders and insurers has raged on. “Subsequent cases
have considered whether specific policy wordings apply to Covid, and how much
money a business can claim on those wordings,” Stewarts Policyholder Disputes
partner Chloe Derrick explains. “The court has in many of those cases
ruled that policyholders are indeed owed money by their insurers.”
The end of the road is now in sight
for Covid-19 BI litigation. Later this year the final significant appeal will
be held – the biggest issue in question is whether insurers are entitled to
‘bank’ the furlough money paid by the government to businesses.
Businesses including those
represented in the litigation by the Stewarts team argue that the intention of
furlough was to support businesses and save jobs, not to subsidise insurers.
Whether or not the court agrees with this, or the insurers’ argument that
businesses would be overcompensated if furlough payments are not deducted, is
still to be decided.
More
Businesses can still claim on their insurance for
Covid-19 business interruption (msn.com)
Technology
Update.
With events happening fast in the
development of solar power and graphene, among other things, I’ve added this
section. Updates as they get reported.
World's highest-efficiency hydrogen system scales up
for mass production
Loz Blain May 13, 2024
Hysata promises the world's cheapest
hydrogen, thanks to a remarkable device that splits water into H2 and O2 at 95%
efficiency – some 20% higher than the best conventional electrolyzers. The
company has raised US$111 million to scale up production.
You have to throw some energy
away to make hydrogen – typically around 20-30%, even with the best systems,
which use around 52.5 kWh of energy to create a kilogram of hydrogen that can
store 39.4 kWh of energy. It's a waste of renewable energy, and it contributes
to the high cost of a green fuel option that's really struggling to compete
against fossils and batteries in many applications.
That's what
makes Australian company Hysata's capillary-fed electrolyzer such an
interesting device; at 95% efficiency, it uses just 41.5 kWh of energy to
create that kilogram of hydrogen, cutting down operational costs for hydrogen
producers – while also cutting down on CAPEX by being cheaper to install and
run, to boot. The result: the cheapest green hydrogen going around.
Hysata says the key goal of
its design – originally invented by scientists at the University of Wollongong
– is to eliminate bubbles of hydrogen and oxygen gases in the electrolyte fluid
between the anode and cathode. Bubbles are non-conductive, and they can stick
to the surface of electrodes, meaning that less of the electrode is exposed to
the electrolyte. This adds resistance to the system, and explains much of the
energy that's wasted.
Hysata's
design keeps the electrolyte at the
bottom of the device, and allows it to be drawn up through a porous,
hydrophilic separator between the electrodes. Each electrode has full, direct
contact with the electrolyte on the inner side, and a dry chamber on the outer
side.
So as the
water comes up that tube and gets split, the gases have nothing to bubble
through. The resistance is greatly reduced, and capillary action draws more
water up the central separator without requiring any kind of pump, and the
overall efficiency takes a huge leap.
Indeed,
Hysata says it's measured the efficiency of this cell at up to 98% in lab
conditions, in peer-reviewed research published in the journal Nature
Communications. So that 95%
efficiency might be a realistic real-world figure.
More
World's highest-efficiency hydrogen system scales up
for mass production (newatlas.com)
Finally,
our latest new section, the world global debt clock. Nations debts to GDP
compared.
World Debt
Clocks (usdebtclock.org)
It is the highest impertinence and presumption, therefore, in kings and ministers to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expense. They are themselves, always, and without any exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society.
Adam Smith.
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