Monday, December 19, 2016

The USDA's projected 2016/17 world sugar stocks-to-use ratio of 17.7% would be the lowest in more than 20 years ...


Monday, December 12, 2016

Baltic Exchange Dry Index etc.

is up-to-date
Donald Trump seems to have brought the techniques of Twitter to the construction of his government. “Trolling” on Twitter is defined as “making a deliberately offensive online posting with the aim of upsetting someone”. In this spirit, Mr Trump has placed a climate-change denier in charge of environmental protection, an opponent of the minimum wage as labour secretary, a conspiracy theorist in charge of the National Security Council and a protectionist at the commerce department. The pièce de résistance could be the appointment of Rex Tillerson, a recipient of the Kremlin’s Order of Friendship, as secretary of state.

 (FT) Gideon Rachman

Sunday, December 11, 2016

QUICK OVERVIEW



  •  China flies nuclear bomber over South China Sea to 'send a message' to Donald Trump
  •  US officials say flight is in response to President-elect’s phone call with Taiwan's leader

  • Hmm. Is America about to enter a new golden age under (I'm, like a smart person) Trump  ? Another fresh all-time high of the skyrocketing Dow seems to says so.
  •  
  • Libor Fed Fund spread is looking interesting 
  • Russia and others join OPEC in a rare, coordinated push to cut oil output...
  • The CIA concluded that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help elect (I'm, like a smart person) Trump...
  • Trump (I'm, like a smart person) is expected to name the CEO of Exxon Mobil Tillerson as the country's top diplomat.HE RUNS WORLDS LARGEST OIL COMPANY, has extensive business dealings with Putin & Russia, and favors doing away with sanctions. In 2013, Putin awarded Tillerson the Order of Friendship, Russia’s highest honors for foreigners.
  • (NYT) Trump (I'm, like a smart person), in Louisiana, says he will end energy regulations…
  • China's consumer price index (CPI), a main gauge of inflation, rose 2.3% YoY in November, up from October's 2.1% the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) announced.
  • (WP) Trump's (I'm, like a smart person) transition team has issued a list of 74 questions for the Energy Department, asking agency officials to identify which employees and contractors have worked on forging an international climate pact as well as domestic efforts to cut the nation’s carbon output.
  • Gold futures fell on Thursday as the European Central Bank' s decision on quantitative easing supported the U.S. dollar
  • (Paul Krugman) Another metric: Trump would have to do one Carrier-sized deal a week for 30 years to save as many jobs as Obama's auto bailout
  • (Reuters) - Britain's Royal Mint and leading U.S.-based derivatives exchange CME Group have teamed up to create a blockchain-based digital platform for dealing in gold in a drive to cut the costs involved in trading the precious metal.
  • Economists at Zillow arepredicting a trend reversal in 2017, due partly to expected policy changes under President-elect Trump and partly to the ongoing housing recovery. Experts there say 2017 will see more millennial home ownership, more driving and rising construction costs.
  • The median home value in the U.S. is now $191,200, up 6.2 percent since last October, according to Zillow's October Real Estate Market Report
  • - Home values rose 6.2 percent over the past year to a Zillow Home Value Index (ZHVI) of $191,200 in October.
  • - Rents rose 1.4 percent over the past year to a Zillow Rent Index (ZRI) of $1,402.
  • - There are 6 percent fewer homes for sale than a year ago, with Boston and Indianapolis reporting the greatest drop in inventory.
  • - Most experts surveyed predict the housing market will shift from the current seller's market to a buyer's market by 2019.




Saturday, November 26, 2016

Baltic Exchange Dry Index etc.




is up-to-date

QUICK OVERVIEW

  • (NYT) A quarter of India’s 1.25 billion people are younger than 15. Every month, until 2030, nearly a million Indians will turn 18 European Central Bank 


  • (ECB) President Mario Draghi said 2016 marked the first year when gross domestic product (GDP) in the Eurozone recovered to above its pre-crisis level since 2008.


  • (Economist) Global wealth distribution: Where you fit in - If you had only $2,220 to your name, you might not think yourself terribly fortunate. But you would be wealthier than half the world’s population. With $71,560 or more, you’d be in the top tenth. If you were lucky enough to own over $744,400, as 18m Americans do, you are a member of the global 1% that voters everywhere are rebelling against. Some of those railing against the global elite probably do not know they belong to it.


  • (538) 82% of U.S. middle school students who weren’t able to determine the difference between sponsored content and a real news article, according to a new Stanford University study.


  • (Bloomberg/538) $146 million, estimated size of the market for aloe vera products in the U.S. Well, for products that claim to contain aloe vera, anyway. It turns out that store-brand aloe products sold in Target, Walmart and CVS didn’t contain any aloe at all, according to a lab analysis sponsored by Bloomberg News, despite listing it as one of the top two ingredients.


  • The Federal Trade Commission struck a blow for reality when it declared that homeopathic products may no longer make claims to treat any condition unless those claims are backed up by hard scientific evidence.


  • (Economist) Arctic sea ice: On the rocks Scientists are interested in sea ice as a marker—and amplifier—of climate change. In recent years the melting season in the Arctic has been ending later in the year. As a result, the total sea-ice extent in September 2016 was over 3m sq km smaller than in September 1980—though not quite as small as in 2012, the worst year so far. In the Arctic, it is around 2m sq km below average, the lowest figure on record for November (Economist)


  • Donald Trump said this week that on his first day in office, America would quit the TPP, a trade pact nearly a decade in the making. It would have covered almost 40% of the global economy. The deal was meant to be strategic as well as economic; its other signatories consider it pointless without American participation. Observers expect China to fill the void and assume economic leadership in Asia.


  • CME Group, announced it set a total open interest record of 116,999,368 on Nov. 23, 2016. The new record surpassed the previous open interest record of 116,427,935 contracts set on June 9, 2016. Interest Rate open interest also hit a record of 69,493,548 contracts, surpassing the previous open interest record of 68,147,202 set on Nov. 22, 2016.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11755717&ref=rss9/11, global elites and goblins: How America's top conspiracy theorist helped Donald Trump win (NZ Herald)
Mr Jones offered his followers $US1000 if they appeared on national TV for more than five seconds wearing the shirt, and $US5000 if they shouted the phrase "Bill Clinton is a rapist".

Friday, November 25, 2016

The Drums of War George Monbiot

The combination of automation, complexity and climate change is dangerous in ways we haven’t even begun to grasp.

Thursday, November 10, 2016

Trump voters will not like what happens next


..millions of people will take up leaf-raking and garage cleaning with intense pleasure. I'll be one  of them - back whenever..