Monday, 1 September 2025

A Trumpian Fed. The End Of Dollar Reserve Standard? The SCO Rises.

 Baltic Dry Index. 2025 +08            Brent Crude 67.18

Spot Gold 3476                      US 2 Year Yield 3.59 -03

US Federal Debt. 37.304 trillion

US GDP 30.237 trillion.

Work spares us from three great evils: boredom, vice, and need.

Voltaire

As the USA celebrates the Labor Day holiday the rest of the world trades on without the USA.

China and much of the rest of the world’s focus today will be on the outcome of the two day Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in China, where China is acting as global moderate to Trump’s USA tariffs chaos.

Will it work? Who knows, but the ROW is heavily incentivised to de-dollarise and reduce economic dependence on an increasingly over stretched USA.

Asia markets trade mixed as investors assess China’s RatingDog manufacturing data

Published Sun, Aug 31 2025 7:57 PM EDT

Asia-Pacific markets traded mixed Monday as investors assess China’s RatingDog manufacturing data for August. The metric — which was previously known as the Caixin Purchasing Managers’ Index — came in at 50.5, compared to a contraction of 49.5 the month before.

Data released Sunday showed that the country’s manufacturing PMI data came in at 49.4 in August, compared to 49.3 the month before.

Investors are also assessing the developments in India and China relations, after leaders from both countries agreed that they are development partners, not rivals during a two-day meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization regional security bloc. Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to deliver a speech at the summit.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index rose 2.16%, with gains led by by Alibaba Group which jumped 17.63%, BOC Hong Kong Holdings which surged 8.01% and WuXi AppTec which gained 6.86%.

Meanwhile, mainland China’s CSI 300 ticked up 0.33%.

In Japan, the Nikkei 225 declined by 2.03%. Losses were led by Advantest which plunged 9.04%, Disco Corp which declined 8.39% and Socionext which dropped 7.09%.

Meanwhile, Japan’s broader Topix index lost 0.78%.

Over in South Korea, the Kospi index fell 0.81%, while the small-cap Kosdaq lost 0.8%.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 benchmark retreated 0.62%.

Investors were also assessing a U.S. federal appeals court ruling that most of U.S. President Donald Trump’s “reciprocal tariffs are illegal.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held Friday ruled that Trump had overstepped his presidential authority by imposing levies on virtually every country in the world as part of his April 2 “liberation day” announcement.

Over in Wall Street, stocks fell Friday as new inflation data showed rising prices was still a risk heading into the new month.

The broad-based S&P 500 ended the day 0.64% lower at 6,460.26, but still scored its fourth winning month in a row. The Nasdaq Composite shed 1.15% to finish at 21,455.55, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 92.02 points, or 0.20%, to settle at 45,544.88.

U.S. markets are closed Monday for the Labor Day public holiday.

Asia markets trade mixed after China's RatingDog manufacturing data

Wall Street Week Ahead

Aug. 31, 2025 6:09 AM ET

Wall Street will see a holiday-shortened week on account of the Labor Day weekend. Still, investors will have plenty to digest, with the highlight being Friday's August nonfarm payrolls report.

The labor market will be squarely in focus, with updates on job openings and private sector employment scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday. The big event will be on Friday, especially after July's nonfarm payrolls came in significantly weaker than expected and May and June saw one of the biggest two-month revisions to job growth in decades. Any further signs of weakening in the U.S. labor situation will all but guarantee a Federal Reserve rate cut in September for traders.

Some quarterly earnings reports from major tech names will also grab the spotlight this week, namely Dow 30 component Salesforce (
CRM) and chipmaker Broadcom (AVGO).

Wall Street Week Ahead | Seeking Alpha

China’s Xi says SCO bears 'greater responsibility' for maintaining peace and stability

Xi Jinping is hosting 2-day summit of Shanghai Cooperation Organization in northern port city of Tianjin

01.09.2025 - Update : 01.09.2025

Chinese President Xi Jinping said the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) has a “greater responsibility” for maintaining peace and stability.

“At present, the century-defining transformation is accelerating across the world, with a marked increase in factors of instability, uncertainty, and unpredictability. The SCO thus bears an even greater responsibility for maintaining regional peace and stability and promoting development and prosperity of all countries,” Xi, alongside his wife Peng Liyuan, told a welcoming banquet at the Tianjin Meijiang Convention Center for foreign guests in northern China Sunday night.

Xi is hosting a two-day summit of SCO leaders as well as “SCO plus,” bringing together some 20 heads of state and government as well as leaders of international organizations.

This transformation “is accelerating across the world, with a marked increase in factors of instability, uncertainty, and unpredictability,” said the president of the world’s second largest economy, according to Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning.

He said the SCO has "stayed committed to the Shanghai Spirit, strengthening solidarity and mutual trust, deepening practical cooperation, and taking an active part in international and regional affairs."

"The SCO has grown into a significant force in promoting a new type of international relations and building a community with a shared future for humanity," said Xi.

Xi stressed that the SCO Summit being held in Tianjin “is tasked with an important mission: to build consensus among all parties, ignite momentum for cooperation, and draw up a blueprint for development.”

Amid the turbulence, he said “the SCO thus bears an even greater responsibility for maintaining regional peace and stability and promoting development and prosperity of all countries.”

“It is believed that with the collective efforts of all parties, this Summit will be a complete success and the SCO will play an even greater role and achieve greater development,” he added.

The main part of the summit is set to be held Monday, when the participating leaders are expected to sign the Tianjin Declaration and approve a 10-year strategy alongside outcome documents on security, trade, energy and cultural cooperation.

The summit will also issue statements on the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II and the founding of the UN.

The SCO evolved from the "Shanghai Five" mechanism comprising China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan before Uzbekistan joined as the sixth member. Today, it includes 10 member states, two observers and 14 dialogue partners across Asia, Europe and Africa.

The organization covers approximately 24% of global land area and 42% of the world’s population, with member states accounting for roughly one-quarter of global GDP and trade increasing nearly 100-fold in two decades.

China’s trade with SCO members, observers and dialogue partners reached a record $890 billion in 2024, or 14.4% of its total foreign trade.

The previous SCO leaders’ summit was held in Kazakhstan in July 2024, where 25 strategic documents were adopted covering energy, security, finance and information security.

China’s Xi says SCO bears 'greater responsibility' for maintaining peace and stability

In other news, more UK taxes, rather than cutting spending and joining Trump in ending NATO’s proxy war on Russia.

Treasury should tax big banks on quantitative easing windfalls, argues thinktank

Fri 29 August 2025 at 12:00 am BST

Rachel Reeves should levy a new bank tax and urge the Bank of England to halt bond sales to reduce the government’s £22bn-a-year losses from quantitative easing, the IPPR thinktank has argued.

In a report called Fixing the Leak, the IPPR’s associate director for economic policy, Carsten Jung, says the Treasury should rein in the costs of QE as public finances are tight.

“What started as a programme to boost the economy is now a massive drain on taxpayer money,” he said. “Public money is flowing straight into commercial banks’ coffers because of a flawed policy design. While families struggle with rising costs, the government is … [in effect] writing multibillion-pound cheques to bank shareholders.”

The emergency policy, first enacted in 2009 during the global financial crisis, involved buying up £895bn of bonds from the UK’s banks and, in exchange, crediting them with reserves at the Bank of England.

The Bank is now winding down QE – a process known as “quantitative tightening” (QT) – by selling the bonds at a rate of £100bn a year, but these sales are taking place at a loss.

In accordance with a promise from Alistair Darling, then chancellor, the Treasury bears the financial risks of QE, so these losses hit the government’s finances.

In addition, the higher Bank of England base rate, now set at 4% to combat above-target inflation, means the Bank is paying out higher interest rates on banks’ reserves than it is receiving on the bonds it holds. In total, these losses amount to a £22bn-a-year hit to the public finances, according to the IPPR.

Jung calls for the Treasury to tax the big banks on their QE-related reserves, saying the profits of the big four have more than doubled since before the Covid pandemic.

He says such a policy could bring in £8bn a year and sidestep the Bank’s objections to a widely mooted alternative known as “tiered reserves”, which the Bank’s governor, Andrew Bailey, has argued could interfere with its job of combating inflation.

The IPPR compares the new bank levy it recommends with a tax on deposits implemented by the Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher in 1981, as rising interest rates led to higher bank profits.

Jung said: “A targeted levy, inspired by Margaret Thatcher’s own approach in the 1980s, would recoup some of these windfalls and put the money to far better use, helping people and the economy, not just bank balance sheets.”

With gilt markets consistently jittery in recent months, the report also suggests the chancellor recommends to the Bank that it halt the process of selling off its stockpile of bonds.

The Bank’s nine-member monetary policy committee will decide the pace of QT for the year ahead at a meeting on 18 September.

Bailey appeared to hint at the Bank’s quarterly monetary policy press conference this month that it would consider slowing the sell-off in the face of volatile long-term bond yields that move in the opposite direction to prices.

“There has been a change in the liquidity of the curve at the long end and that has affected yields,” he said, adding that all options were on the table for the meeting. Yields on 30-year government bonds, known as gilts, were close to a 27-year high this week.

More

Treasury should tax big banks on quantitative easing windfalls, argues thinktank

I do not like work even when someone else does it.

Mark Twain

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.

Rural America is suffering an economic crisis as crop prices plunge — ‘U.S. soybean farmers cannot survive a prolonged trade dispute’

August 31, 2025

  • Agricultural trade groups have sounded the alarm recently on the state of farmers, who are grappling with a continued slump in prices for their crops and worsening credit conditions. They have asked lawmakers to help increase access to export markets, including China, which is still locked in a trade war with the U.S.

U.S. producers of corn and soybeans have sent dire warnings as prices for their crops have crashed in recent years while President Donald Trump’s trade war whipsaws farmers.

On Thursday, the National Corn Growers Association raised alarms about “the economic crisis hitting rural America, as commodity prices drop at a time when input costs remain at near-record highs.”

Corn prices have plunged more than 50% from their 2022 peak, while production costs are down just 3% in that span, translating to a loss of 85 cents per bushel, the NCGA said, adding that the outlook for next year is worse with even lower prices and higher costs.

The NCGA called on Congress and the Trump administration to boost demand, including via higher blends of ethanol and increased foreign market access.

A week before that, the American Soybean Association sent a letter to Trump, warning that “U.S. soybean farmers are standing at a trade and financial precipice.”

The group asked that Trump prioritize soybeans in trade talks with China, seeking major purchase commitments as well as the removal of Beijing’s duties on the U.S.

“Historically, the U.S. was the provider of choice for Chinese customers,” the letter said. “However, due to ongoing tariff retaliation, our longstanding customers in China have and will continue to turn to our competitors in South America to meet their demand, a demand Brazil can meet due to significantly increased production since the previous trade war with China.”

With harvest season fast approaching, the association added that China hasn’t purchased any U.S. soybeans for the months ahead.

The longer negotiations with China drag on without a trade deal—and the deeper farmers go into the fall— the more pain they will feel, it said.

Like the corn growers, the soybean growers also cited sharply lower prices and high costs. Since peaking in 2022, soybean prices have fallen about 40%.

“Soybean farmers are under extreme financial stress,” the group said. “Prices continue to drop and at the same time our farmers are paying significantly more for inputs and equipment. U.S. soybean farmers cannot survive a prolonged trade dispute with our largest customer.”

More

Rural America is suffering an economic crisis as crop prices plunge — ‘U.S. soybean farmers cannot survive a prolonged trade dispute’

Here’s what it really means for Trump to get control of the Federal Reserve board

Published Sat, Aug 30 2025 8:54 AM EDT

President Donald Trump’s effort to sack Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook is about more than firing someone: It’s a maneuver that, if successful, would mark a seismic shift for an institution that for ages had been considered above politics.

Since taking office in January, Trump has placed the Fed directly in the crosshairs of executive power. He has berated central bankers for not lowering rates, threatened to remove Chair Jerome Powell, and now has taken the unprecedented step of actually attempting to unseat Cook.

From the president’s perspective, he’s looking to reform what has been an unpopular institution, often blamed for the runaway inflation that hit the U.S. following the Covid pandemic. Trump sees lower interest rates as a pathway to manage the swelling federal debt while boosting a housing market that has been a counterweight to an otherwise growing economy.

However, legal scholars as well as financial market experts and present and former Fed officials say Trump’s moves not only threaten to make the Fed more political but also would undermine key pillars of the American financial system.

“We are on a road that is going to lead to the erosion of central bank independence,” said Kathryn Judge, a professor at Columbia Law School. “It would be incredibly costly for the long-term health of the economy for the Fed to lose the credibility that it has spent decades trying to build.”

Independence in the Fed’s case is a term used to describe its freedom from outside political influence to determine monetary policy that is best for the U.S. economy. This is particularly the case if those decisions are unpopular, such as when the Federal Open Market Committee raises interest rates to bring down inflation.

But there’s more at stake than simply the level of the three rates the Fed controls.

What the board controls, and what it doesn’t

Should Trump get a majority of members on the board of governors to vote the way he wants — and the evidence right now, to be sure, is scant that he can ever achieve such a goal — it would give him access to key levers that control the economy as well as the nation’s financial infrastructure.

The seven-member Board of Governors, for instance, has regulatory and enforcement power over banks.

Moreover, while the 12-member FOMC sets the key overnight funds interest rate, the governors alone establish the discount rate, used to find the present value of money, and the interest on reserve balances, which pays banks for storing their money at the Fed and also serves as a kind of guardrail for the funds rate.

Finally, the board has control over the reappointments of the 12 regional bank presidents, with a slew of names coming up in 2026.

Embedded within those responsibilities is the Fed’s role in ensuring the integrity of the Treasury system and preserving a stable dollar.

In other words, this is about more than just getting a rate cut in September.

“The most serious danger, I think, to people’s being able to have confidence in the Fed board is what Trump is himself doing,” said Robert Hockett, a professor at Cornell Law School. “Because if Trump succeeds with this, then it suggests the Fed board is nothing but a rubber stamp. It just basically tells us that any nutjob who happens to get into the White House will be setting monetary policy henceforth.”

The effect, Hockett added, is that “we can have the same kind of hyperinflations in the future that banana republics in Latin America have classically had when their dictators have set monetary policy, or that Turkey has experienced in recent years because its dictator has set monetary policy.”

More

Here's what it really means for Trump to get control of the Federal Reserve board

Covid-19 Corner

This section will continue only occasionally when something of interest occurs.

Off topic but interesting.

AstraZeneca to seek approval for blood pressure drug by year-end

30 August 2025

(Reuters) -AstraZeneca plans to file for regulatory approval of its experimental blood pressure treatment before the end of the year, a senior company executive said, about a product seen as key to the drugmaker's long-term sales strategy.

The company is aiming for potential approvals in 2026 for the drug, baxdrostat, starting with the U.S. and the EU, said Ruud Dobber, president of AstraZeneca's biopharmaceuticals unit, ahead of a presentation of advanced trial data at a medical conference on Saturday.

Baxdrostat targets blood pressure-regulating hormone aldosterone, a novel approach compared with older treatments like diuretics and ACE inhibitors, which do not address hormonal drivers.

AstraZeneca expects peak annual sales for the drug to exceed $5 billion.

Keenly watched data showed that 2mg of baxdrostat, added to standard treatment, reduced systolic blood pressure by 9.8 millimetres of mercury (mmHg) from the baseline at 12 weeks, when adjusted for placebo, in patients with hard-to-control hypertension.

At the 1mg dose, that pressure exerted on the arteries by the heart's pumping action was lowered by 8.7 mmHg.

Physicians polled by TD Cowen wished to see a 10-12 mmHg fall in placebo-adjusted blood pressure, the brokerage said on Friday.

Mineralys Therapeutics' rival drug, lorundrostat, in March showed a placebo-adjusted reduction in systolic blood pressure by 9.1 mmHg at six weeks with a 50mg dose. The U.S. company also expects to submit data to the FDA by year-end.

"There's a huge acknowledgement that hypertension needs to be treated in a much more aggressive way," Dobber said.

High blood pressure affects over 1 billion people, according to the World Health Organization, and aggravates risk of heart attacks or strokes.

A small percentage of patients - 1.1% - taking baxdrostat developed hyperkalaemia, marked by high potassium levels in the blood. Hyperkalaemia was also observed with Mineralys' lorundrostat.

(Reporting by Pushkala Aripaka in Bengaluru; Editing by Sahal Muhammed)

AstraZeneca to seek approval for blood pressure drug by year-end

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.

EV bus madness? How long before the first fire?

First Bus is launching largest battery storage facility

29 August 2025

First Bus is launching its largest battery storage facility to date.

The new site, located at Hoeford depot in Fareham, will begin operating in September and marks a major step forward in the company’s decarbonisation and energy management plans.

The facility will store surplus electricity and feed it back into the UK grid during peak demand times, while also supporting the charging of First Bus’ growing fleet of more than 1,200 electric buses.

Faizan Muhammad, investment director – energy at FirstGroup, said: "Our investment in Palmer Energy Technology, alongside Barclays Bank and Oxford University, brings together great private sector expertise to find creative solutions to challenges facing the UK.

"This investment continues our strategy of backing new and innovative companies aimed at supporting our long-term public commitment of achieving a zero-emission commercial bus fleet by 2035.

"We’re really excited about this new chapter in our decarbonisation journey and look forward to working closely with PETL to continue developing this technology."

The Hoeford depot will house nearly three bus batteries, with the capacity to store one megawatt of power—enough to supply around 125 homes for a full day.

First Bus plans to repurpose batteries that have reached the end of their service life on buses for use in stationary power storage.

Work will also begin later this year on an even larger battery storage facility in Aberdeen, with additional sites under consideration across the UK.

The project is supported by an investment in Palmer Energy Technology (PETL), which designs and manufactures battery energy storage systems.

Dr Andy Palmer, founder of PETL and former chief executive of Aston Martin, said: "With buses at the forefront of the transition to electric vehicles and net-zero transportation, I’m delighted to welcome investment from FirstGroup Energy Ltd, as well as Barclays and Oxford University, to advance development of next-generation control systems.

"This will allow us to accelerate our business and give the UK a leading position in battery energy storage system technology."

First Bus aims to achieve a fully zero-emission commercial bus fleet by 2035, having already electrified more than a dozen depots and replaced over 1,200 diesel buses with electric models.

First Bus is launching largest battery storage facility | Daily Echo

Approx. 6 minutes.

Electric Narrowboat Battery BLAST - NEW FOOTAGE!

Electric Narrowboat Battery BLAST - NEW FOOTAGE!

Next, the world global debt clock. Nations debts to GDP compared.

World Debt Clocks (usdebtclock.org)

Some people make things happen, some people watch while things happen, and some people wonder what happened?

Anon. Attributed to many.

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