Baltic
Dry Index. 1890 -37 Brent Crude 71.61
Spot
Gold 2577 U S 2 Year Yield 3.57 -0.07
The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the
currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a
permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.
Ernest Hemingway.
In
the stock casinos, frontrunning next week’s US central bank meeting. A 50 basis
point interest rate cut or a disappointing, mere 25 basis point cut.
Lost
in this latest bout of stock mania and bubble, growing sign of a new US
recession underway.
Equally
lost in the current AI tech bubble madness, is, is September 2024, September 1913
in our Washington-London War Party race to start WW3, or is September 2024
early July 1914 in the race to start Nuclear War One?
Don’t
worry, this time it’s different, right. Besides Putin’s bluffing, he wouldn’t
dare first strike NATO would he?
Does
history repeat and blunder us into the modern equivalent of WW1?
S&P
500 and Nasdaq rally Friday to cap best week in 2024: Live updates
Updated
Fri, Sep 13 2024 4:56 PM EDT
Stocks
rose on Friday, with the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite posting their
strongest week of 2024 ahead of the upcoming Federal Reserve meeting.
The S&P 500 climbed 0.54% and
closed at 5,626.02, less than 1% from its July all-time high. The
tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite added
0.65% to end at 17,683.98. Both indexes posted their fifth consecutive winning
day. The Dow Jones Industrial
Average jumped 297.01 points, or 0.72%, closing at 41,393.78.
Utilities,
communications services and industrials led the market higher on Friday, with
each sector adding roughly 1%.
Investors
also continued to rake up shares of megacap tech and semiconductor names, which
helped drive this week’s rebound rally after tech’s recent underperformance.
Powerhouse chipmakers Super
Micro Computer and Arm
Holdings added 3.4% and 5.9%, respectively. Alphabet advanced 1.8%
and Uber jumped more
than 6%.
“Investors
are on guard for further bouts of volatility, particularly given the
expectations surrounding the Fed meeting,” said Quincy Krosby, chief global
strategist for LPL Financial. She noted that based on historical
patterns, stocks typically have their roughest performance of the year during
the second half of September.
On
a weekly basis, the S&P 500 rose 4% and the Nasdaq Composite gained 5.9%,
the best week this year for both indexes. The Dow has advanced 2.6% during the
period.
Wall
Street is now looking ahead toward the Fed’s policy meeting on Sept. 17-18,
where the central bank is largely anticipated to lower interest rates by 25
basis points. Currently, the Fed’s target rate is sitting at 5.25% to 5.5%.
Economic
data reflecting a moderation in inflation also seemed to support the case
for a rate cut. The consumer
price index in August came in at 2.5% on annualized basis, the lowest
level since February 2021. Wholesale
prices, meanwhile, rose 0.2% in August, coming in line with expectations.
Stock
market news September 13, 2024 (cnbc.com)
In other news, so you really, really really want an EV.
It
took 50,000 gallons of water to put out Tesla Semi fire in California, US
agency says
Updated
11:34 PM GMT+1, September 12, 2024
WASHINGTON
(AP) — California firefighters had to douse a flaming battery in a Tesla Semi
with about 50,000 gallons (190,000 liters) of water to extinguish flames after
a crash, the National Transportation Safety Board said Thursday.
In
addition to the huge amount of water, firefighters used an aircraft to drop
fire retardant on the “immediate area” of the electric truck as a precautionary
measure, the agency said in a preliminary report.
Firefighters
said previously that the battery reached temperatures of 1,000 degrees
Fahrenheit (540 Celsius) while it was in flames.
The NTSB sent
investigators to
the Aug. 19 crash along Interstate 80 near Emigrant Gap, about 70 miles (113
kilometers) northeast of Sacramento. The agency said it would look into fire
risks posed by the truck’s large lithium-ion battery.
The
agency also found that the truck was not operating on one of Tesla’s partially
automated driving systems at the time of the crash, the report said. The
systems weren’t operational and “could not be engaged,” according to the
agency.
The
crash happened about 3:13 a.m. as the tractor-trailer was being driven by a
Tesla employee from Livermore, California, to a Tesla facility in Sparks,
Nevada. The Semi left the road while going around a curve to the right and hit
a tree, the report said. It went down a slope and came to rest against several
trees. The driver was not hurt.
After
the crash, the Semi’s lithium-ion battery ignited. Firefighters used water to
put out flames and keep the batteries cool. The freeway was closed for about 15
hours as firefighters made sure the batteries were cool enough to recover the
truck.
Authorities
took the truck to an open-air facility and monitored it for 24 hours. The
battery did not reignite.
The
NTSB said all aspects of the crash are under investigation as it determines the
cause. The agency said it intends to issue safety recommendations to prevent
similar incidents.
More
It took 50,000
gallons of water to put out Tesla Semi fire, US agency says | AP News
Finally,
Britain’s Office for Budget Responsibility’s has a warning on GB’s fiat money
future.
Still,
forecasts for the next 50 years, is of very little use. Tomorrow will not be
like today, which was like yesterday. Today, we have tomorrow’s Great AI future,
aka AI bubble.
National
debt: Government must reform or things will ‘blow up’
Thursday
12 September 2024 4:45 pm
Sooner
or later the British government is going to face a reckoning on the national debt.
The
Office for Budget Responsibility’s (OBR) latest report on
debt sustainability makes
clear that the government cannot keep increasing spending on public services in
line with demand while also leaving the tax base unchanged.
That’s
because demand on public services is going to rise steadily, largely due to the
UK’s ageing population. The OBR projects that public spending will rise to 60
per cent of GDP, up from 45 per cent at the moment, whereas revenue will remain
flat.
It
is worth pointing out that this scenario is, in many ways, fairly optimistic.
For
a start, it does not include the impact of possible unforeseen shocks – since
they are impossible to forecast – but it seems a certainty that there will be
some shocks between now and 2074 (just think about the past 15 years).
The OBR’s
productivity forecasts are also relatively optimistic compared to many
peers. If they prove to be overly optimistic, that will make a huge impact on
debt (more on that later).
So,
there’s good reason to think things could be significantly worse than the OBR’s
main forecasts. Indeed, the OBR includes a forecast with added shocks which
sees national debt rise to 300 per cent of GDP.
Don’t
get lost in the numbers though. The entire point is that the government cannot
keep on increasing spending without broadening the tax base. As David Miles, a
senior official at the OBR, said, “at some point it will blow up”.
The
central message of the report, then, is that the state has to reform.
The
scale of required reform is large. Returning debt to its pre-pandemic levels
would require tax increases or spending cuts worth around £40bn per decade over
the next 50 years, the OBR estimates.
More
National debt:
Government must reform or things will 'blow up' (cityam.com)
Montana
miner to lay off hundreds due to declining palladium prices
Updated
11:51 PM GMT+1, September 12, 2024
NYE,
Mont. (AP) — The owner of the only platinum and palladium mines in the U.S.
announced Thursday it plans to lay off hundreds of employees in Montana due to
declining prices for palladium, which is used in catalytic converters.
The
price of the precious metal was about $2,300 an ounce two years ago and has
dipped below $1,000 an ounce over the past three months, Sibanye-Stillwater
Executive Vice President Kevin Robertson said in a letter to employees
explaining the estimated 700 layoffs expected later this year.
“We
believe Russian dumping is a cause of this sharp price dislocation,” he wrote.
“Russia produces over 40% of the global palladium supply, and rising imports of
palladium have inundated the U.S. market over the last several years.”
Sibanye-Stillwater
gave employees a 60-day notice of the layoffs, which is required by federal
law.
----The
south-central Montana mine complex includes the Stillwater West and Stillwater
East operations near Nye, and the East Boulder operation south of Big Timber.
It has lost more than $350 million since the beginning of 2023, Robertson said,
despite reducing production costs.
The
company is putting the Stillwater West operations on pause. It is also reducing
operations at East Boulder and at a smelting facility and metal refinery in
Columbus. Leadership will work to improve efficiencies that could allow the
Stillwater West mine to reopen, Robertson said.
The
layoffs would come a year after the company stopped work on an
expansion project,
laid off 100 workers, left another 30 jobs unfilled and reduced the amount of
work available for contractors due to declining palladium prices.
Montana miner to
lay off hundreds due to declining palladium prices | AP News
Gold is money.
Everything else is credit.
J. P. Morgan.
Global Inflation/Stagflation/Recession
Watch.
Given our Magic Money
Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians, inflation/recession now needs an entire
section of its own.
The
first requisite of a sound monetary system is that it put the least possible
power over the quantity or quality of money in the hands of the politicians.
Henry Hazlitt.
This weekend,
something a little different. Why I think nearly everyone now needs an US
election hedge.
Though I didn't listen in to the great
presidential debate, merely listening to the following spin by the mostly
leftist media for VP Harris.
But what struck me most was that one
of these two candidates will likely be President come next January. But
both have crackpot ideas regarding the US economy. An economy already drowning
in 35.3 trillion in debt. It was "only" 33.0 trillion at the end of
last October. Come November 1, it will be close to 36 trillion, if not slightly
more.
Of the two, candidate Harris poses the
greatest risk, proposing wage and price controls, taxes on unrealised
"profits" and a free $50,000 for new business start ups. I will
start up an internet Water Mellons R Us, new business to get my free $50,000
operating from a business accommodation address in Little Havana, Miami. Be
sure to put in for your free $50,000 too.
Candidate Trump is proposing a trade
war against the rest of the world starting with tariffs against friend and foe
alike, plus sanctions on most of the world's banks.
Although theoretically, it's possible
for a hung Electoral College, meaning the House elects the President and the
Senate elects the VP, it hasn't happened since 1837 and isn't likely to happen
this year.
So that brings me to the conclusion I
need to hedge against either becoming President and hastening the demise of the
Great Nixonian Error of Fiat Money and with it the dollar reserve standard.
While the rapidly expanding BRICS
nations are talking about a new trade currency backed by gold and a pool of
their currencies, it hasn't got off the talking floor yet, and in my opinion,
has little chance of success.
The BIS, ECB, Fed, BOE, BOJ, PBC and
other central banks all have investigations into digital currencies underway,
with a few trying out early phase testing, but CBDCs don't seem at this time to
be an effective hedge against the next 4 years of US economic risk. London Irvine Report:
CBDCs
In that respect, only an increased
holding of fully paid up, physical gold and silver, stored outside of the US
Canadian and UK banking systems, (they have form in stealing other people’s
gold,) seems to offer a reasonable and achievable hedge against the next 4
years.
I'm old enough to remember the old
Swiss banking recommendation to hold 10 percent of one's wealth in physical
gold. That ended when the western central banks began selling off some of their
gold in the 80s and 90s.
But central banks are gold buyers
again, led by China and the "stans," probably as a hedge against the
Biden weaponised dollar and America's alarming unrepayable, in any meaningful
sense, debt.
I think it's time to hold close to 10
percent of one's wealth in gold once again, although I would prefer a 50:50
split between gold and silver. I also think it wisest to act before the
election itself on November 5th.
China’s retail sales and industrial data
miss expectations in August
Published Fri, Sep 13 2024 10:00 PM EDTU
EIJING — China’s retail sales,
industrial production and urban investment in August all grew slower than
expected, according to National Bureau of Statistics data released
Saturday.
Retail sales rose by 2.1% in August from a
year ago, missing expectations of 2.5% growth among economists polled by
Reuters. That was also slower than the 2.7% increase in July.
Industrial production rose by 4.5% in
August from a year ago, lagging the 4.8% growth forecast by Reuters. That also
marked a slowdown from a 5.1% rise in July.
Fixed asset investment rose by 3.4% for
the January to August period, slower than the forecast of 3.5% growth.
The urban unemployment rate was 5.3% in
August, an uptick from 5.2% in July.
Among fixed asset investment,
infrastructure and manufacturing slowed in growth on a year-to-date basis in
August, compared to July. Investment in real estate fell by 10.2% for the year
through August, the same pace of decline as of July.
National Bureau of Statistics spokesperson
Liu Aihua attributed the uptick in unemployment to the impact of graduation
season. But she said that stabilizing employment requires more work.
This year, the statistics bureau has been
releasing the unemployment rate for people ages 16 to 24 who aren’t in
school a few days after the wider jobless release. The youth
unemployment rate in July
was 17.1%.
“We should be aware that the adverse
impacts arising from the changes in the external environment are increasing,”
the bureau said in an English-language statement. A “sustained economic
recovery is still confronted with multiple difficulties and challenges.”
More
China’s
retail sales and industrial data miss expectations in August (cnbc.com)
Gold still represents
the ultimate form of payment in the world. Fiat money in extremis is accepted
by nobody. Gold is always accepted.
Alan Greenspan.
Covid-19
Corner
This section will
continue until it becomes unneeded.
COVID-19 remained at 'very high' activity levels
across the US: See latest data
September 12, 2024
The most recent data from
the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC) shows that last
month nearly half of the United States have reported "very high"
levels of COVID-19 activity.
As concerns with COVID
have waned across the U.S., the CDC has come to rely on wastewater data to
track the virus, which often lags several weeks behind current case counts.
Data collected between
Aug. 25 and Aug. 31 by the CDC showed that 23 states have reported "very
high" levels of wastewater viral activity nationwide. The data was
published on Sept. 5.
Here are the overall
numbers of the states and territories that have reported wastewater viral
activity levels as of Aug. 31.
Can't see the table?
Click here to view it.
Note: Typically, wastewater data are
updated weekly and the data that
is published shows the results for the prior week. However, the results can
take up to five days to a week to be published online. Thus, the data from Aug.
31 is considered the most recent data.
COVID-19 Current
Wastewater Viral Activity Levels Map
Can't see the map?
Click here to view it.
More
COVID-19 remained at 'very high' activity
levels across the US: See latest data (msn.com)
Health warning as new study links vitamin
deficiency affecting millions of Britons to deaths from ALL cancers
12 September 2024
Low levels of the
sunshine vitamin may increase your risk of death from all cancers, a horror new
study suggests.
The finding is concerning
as vitamin D deficiency is a widespread concern in the UK, with around one in
six adults affected. It is common during autumn and winter months when sunlight
exposure is limited.
Previous studies have
linked vitamin D deficiency and an increased risk of cancer mortality but
researchers sought to shore up these findings by conducting a comprehensive
review of the literature.
The review, published in
the journal Nutrients last month, led to the identification of
182 articles from PubMed, 57 from the reference lists of relevant reviews, and
three from the Cochrane Library. These articles covered various cancers, 90,
52, 69, 18, and 17 of which were focused on breast, prostate, colorectal,
pancreatic, and lung cancers, respectively.
After screening titles,
abstracts, and full texts, 41 reviews were included in the qualitative
analysis. Thirty-four of these studies provided data on vitamin D levels and
cancer, whereas seven studies examined the potential anti-cancer effects of
vitamin D intake.
More
Technology Update.
With events happening
fast in the development of solar power and graphene, I’ve added this section.
Battery breakthrough could see electric planes finally take off
11 September 2024
cientists have invented an ultra-strong and
lightweight battery made from carbon fibre that they claim is energy-dense enough to power electric planes.
Billed as the world’s strongest battery, a team from
Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden said the material is sturdy enough
to serve as a load-bearing structure, meaning it can be integrated into the
design of a vehicle in order to radically reduce weight and increase range.
“We have succeeded in creating a battery made of
carbon fibre composite that is as stiff as aluminium and energy-dense enough to
be used commercially,” said Richa Chaudhary, a Chalmers scientist who led the
research.
“Just like a human skeleton, the battery has several
functions at the same time.”
The new battery design could be used in a wide range
of applications, capable of halving the weight of a laptop or making a mobile
phone as thin as a credit card. The researchers also claim that it could
increase the range of an electric car by 70 per cent.
Using carbon fibres to build batteries was first attempted in 2018, however the
energy density was not enough to be used within commercial applications. The
latest battery design has an energy density of 30 Wh/kg, which is roughly a
quarter the capacity of a comparable lithium-ion battery, however the ability
to construct the vehicle with the battery means it takes up far less space and
weight.
“In terms of multifunctional properties, the new
battery is twice as good as its predecessor – and actually the best ever made
in the world,” said Professor Leif Asp from Chalmers University of Technology,
who noted that there has already been interest from the automotive and
aerospace industries.
“One can imagine that credit card-thin mobile phones
or laptops that weigh half as much as today, are the closest in time. It could
also be that components such as electronics in cars or planes are powered by
structural batteries.
“It will require large investments to meet the
transport industry’s challenging energy needs, but this is also where the
technology could make the most difference.”
The research into so-called massless energy storage
was detailed in a study, titled ‘Unveiling the multifunctional carbon fibre
structural battery’, which was published in the journal Advanced
Materials on Tuesday.
Battery breakthrough could see electric planes finally take off (msn.com)
Next, the
world global debt clock. Nations debts to GDP compared.
World Debt Clocks (usdebtclock.org)
This
weekend’s music diversion. Handel, the organ maestro. Approx. 4 minutes.
Handel:
Organ Concerto No. 2 in B-Flat Major, Op. 4 No. 2, HWV 290: 4. Allegro ma non
presto
This
weekend’s chess update. Approx.9 minutes.
Greatest
Performance Ever! || Magnus vs Alireza || SCC Final (2024)
Greatest
Performance Ever! || Magnus vs Alireza || SCC Final (2024) - YouTube
This
weekend’s final diversion. That Las
Vegas Sphere. Approx. 10 minutes. Next weekend, Inside the Titanic.
What's
inside of the Sphere? (Las Vegas)
What's inside of the
Sphere? (Las Vegas) (youtube.com)
We have gold because we cannot trust governments
Herbert Hoover.
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