A limitless power source for the indefinite future

Some background: By 2030–40, the projected annual electrical energy consumption will be a staggering 220 trillion kiloWatt hours, double the consumption in 2010 — and four times more by 2090–2100

Quick Overview

• Pritchard: The ECB is under intense pressure to step up purchases of Italian bonds after premier Silvio Berlusconi finally relinquished power, clearing the way for Mario Monti to form an emergency government of technocrats.
• Pritchard: Italy's gentle saviour is tougher than he looks. Mario Monti is a free-marketeer who disguises Thatcherite views and a steel will behind a cloak of unflappable good manners.
• Pritchard: Europe's scorched-earth policies have begun in earnest. The inherent flaws of monetary union have created a crisis of such gravity that EU leaders now feel authorized to topple two elected governments.

• (WSJ) Telefonica's (TEF) third-quarter revenue rose 3.7% to EUR15.79 billion, even though sales in the Spanish unit fell 8.8% in the period. This was mainly offset by a 18% rise in Latin American sales, where Telefonica now gets almost half of its revenue.
• The Spanish economy experienced zero growth in Q3

• California’s unfunded pension liabilities have been estimated at between $240 billion and $500 billion.

• With bond market vigilantes beating the drum for ever-more belt tightening, much of the developed world is charging ahead with austerity plans that will drag on the world economy.

• Asia-Europe rates fell last week by 6.5 % to US$573 per TEU, the single biggest week-to-week decline this year, according to the latest Shanghai Containerised Freight Index.

• Hong Kong's 10% quarterly export decline blamed on Euro debt crisis

• YoY India's industrial production slowed down to 1.9% in September on monetary tightening

• MoM Japan's Industrial Production fell -3.3%.

• Japan’s September Capacity Utilization down -3.6%

• Arlan Suderman: global Corn stocks as a percent of annual usage continue to trend lower; currently sitting at 38-year lows.

Dispelling An Enduring Myth With One Image

If the Earth’s temperature was the same year after year, then the effects of increasing greenhouse gases would be very easy to spot. Unfortunately, Mother Nature rarely makes things that easy to figure out. Besides the daily and seasonal cycles, we also have decadal temperature swings caused by the sunspot cycle and ocean/atmospheric oscillations. This tends to confuse non scientists, and fools many into believing claims that global warming has stopped. The Heartland Int. in Chicago (political think tank) has long been a major purveyor of this silliness.

Quick Overview

• YoY U.S. intermodal traffic rose 3.5% for the week ended Saturday

• The Greek Unemployment rate in August 2011 was 18.4% compared to 12.2% in August 2010

• The EU is now projected to stagnate until 2012. Growth for 2012 is forecast at ½%. By 2013, a return to slow growth of about 1½% is projected.

• YoY German CPI rose 2.5% in October

• Korea held its policy interest rate at 3.25%

• MoM U.S. Foreclosure activity rose 7% in October

• MoM Italian Industrial Production fell 4.8% in September
• 10-Year Italian government bond yields at 7.3% on Thursday

• China's trade surplus less than expected at $17.0 billion

• MoM Japan's core machinery orders fell 8.2% in September

• (BBC) Mr. Murdoch, I think you must be the first mafia boss in history who didn't know he was running a criminal enterprise' - Tom Watson MP

• Nvidia (NVDA) YoY Q3 profit at 29 cents a share, compared to 15 cents a share

• Walt Disney (DIS) Q4 profit rose 30%

• The latest bond sale went well in Italy

• U.S.unemployment benefits dropped by 10,000 to 390,000 in the week ending November 5

Quick Overview

• Bonuses were paid to MF Global ‘s UK staff just hours before the company filed for bankruptcy protection in New York.

• (Bloomberg) A kilogram of polysilicon, the basic material in solar panels, dropped from $475 in February 2008 to less than $35 Oct. 31... Great for the environment.

• Qualcomm (QCOM) announced that it has acquired substantially all of the technology and other assets of HaloIPT, a provider of wireless charging technology for electric vehicles.

• U.S. consumer credit increased at an annual rate of 3.5 percent in September, offering some positive sign to the weak recovery.

• MoM Germany's industrial output slumped 2.7% in September

• Japan's benchmark coincident composite index fell 1.4 points in September.

• L.M. Ericsson (ERIC) is forecasting a tenfold increase in mobile data traffic over the next five years, mainly driven by video.

• Vodafone declared an interim dividend of 3.05 pence, up 7% YoY, and said it would pay a special dividend of 4 pence following its recent deal with Verizon. VOD reported a 11% fall in first-half net profit due to higher cost of sales and a bigger tax bill than a year earlier, but raised its annual operating profit guidance.

• China imported a record 56.9 tonnes of Gold in September, a six fold increase from 2010

• Credit Suisse will hand over details of wealthy Americans with hidden Swiss accounts to the Swiss government, bringing U.S. authorities one step closer to obtaining names of alleged tax cheats.

• German reinsurer Munich Re says its net profits more than halved in the third quarter because of exchange rate volatility and the fallen value of Greek government bonds.

• Herman Cain “I’ve never acted inappropriately with anyone --- ever --- period” Really? No kidding? WOW!!

Quick Overview

• (Washington Post) Wall Street firms — either independent companies or the high-flying trading arms of banks — are doing even better. They’ve made more profit in the first 21 / 2 years of the Obama administration than they did during the entire Bush administration, industry data show.

• You now can download one Kindle book a month, with no due dates, free, if you’re an Amazon Prime ($79) member and a Kindle owner. This in addition to free 2 day shipping and thousands of free movies -- WHOA

• CME Group said it was changing its margin requirements for customers of collapsed brokerage MF Global, cutting the size of any margin calls when positions are transferred to another brokerage.

• German chemicals and pharmaceuticals giant Bayer (BAYRY) said Sunday it has boosted its cash reserves five-fold to some 3.8 billion Euros as insurance against any unexpected downturn in the economy

• "Ten years ago we had Johnny Cash, Bob Hope and Steve Jobs," runs a sour joke that has been doing the rounds since Silicon Valley lost its most famous son. "Now there's no cash, no hope and no jobs."

• The death toll from Thailand's floods rose above 500 as the seemingly unstoppable waters crept deeper into Bangkok.

• Papandreou said he will step down once agreement is reached on new coalition

Quick Overview

• Mario Draghi made his debut as head of the ECB with a surprise interest rate cut from 1.5% to 1.25%.
• Mario Gabelli: Greece has about as much impact as Maryland

• Qualcomm’s (QCOM) Net income rose 22% YoY

• Kraft (KFT) net revenues for Q3 rose 11.5%

• Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) reported futures volume in October rose 21%
• The CBOE Futures Exchange (CFE) said that October 2011 total trading volume and average daily volume rose 88%.

• Molson Coors Brewing Co.'s Q3 profit fell 23%

• Wiki Leaks founder Julian Assange lost his appeal against extradition to Sweden to answer sex crime allegations, but said overnight he would consider whether to take his protracted fight to Britain's highest court

• MasterCard's Q3 profit rose 38 %

• A rare case of people being infected with both swine and seasonal flu has been documented in Cambodia.

• Lenovo reported a nearly 88 % YoY surge in Q3 net profit

• A string of earnings reports showed that global coal demand is stronger than analysts anticipated.

• New census data shows nearly one in 15 Americans—more than 20 million people—are now so poor they live at least 50 percent below the official poverty level. The figure is the highest ever recorded. Forty states and the District of Columbia have had increases in the poorest of the poor since 2007. The District of Columbia ranked highest, followed by Mississippi and New Mexico.
  

Revenge of the Sovereign Nation When the history books are written, I think scholarship will be very harsh on the handful of men running EMU monetary policy over the last three to four years. They are not as bad as the Chicago Fed of 1930 to 1932, but not much better.

Quick Overview

• Greece’s referendum is dead. But the governments future is in doubt.

• Tokyo Electric Power Co. detected signs of nuclear fission at its crippled Fukushima atomic power plant in northern Japan, raising the risk of more radiation leaks. The situation is under control, officials said. (Of course!)
  
   

• (Reuters) MF Global violated requirements that it keep clients’ collateral separate from its own accounts.
• MF Global filed for bankruptcy protection Monday -- more problems for the largely invisible network of ties among institutions around the world? 

• The planet's population has now passed 7 billion.

• The U.S. says its cutting off funding for UNESCO because of the Palestinian membership vote.(Reuters) Israel’s Netanyahu decides to speed up settlement construction in parts of West Bank.

• Taiwan Smartphone maker HTC says its Q3 earnings grew 68% YoY, with shipments reaching 13 million handsets.

• YoY AIA Group’s new business rose 53%

• Britain’s GDP grew 0.5% in Q3 of 2011

• CME's Q3 earnings rose 29 %.

• Bullish reversal on corn.Goldman Sachs To Be Tried By People's Court in Zuccotti Park
  
• Goldman Sachs will be tried this Thursday, November 3, for crimes against the American public. Cornel West, noted civil rights activist, and Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize winner, will be among those presiding, and testimony for the prosecution will include individuals who have been directly affected and harmed by the actions of Goldman Sachs. The trial is open to the public, and if you can't make it? Tune in to WBAI (99.5 FM in New York) or online at www.wbai.org this Thursday, from 10 AM to 12 noon, where it will be broadcast live. If the government won't do it? We'll take it into our own hands.
  
  
  

Quick Overview

• Angela Merkel's approach -- to decelerate rather than succumb to panic -- is starting to pay off. Euro-zone agreed to reduce Greece's debt burden by half. In addition, the euro backstop fund will be boosted to over a trillion Euros.
• Soros thinks the EZ rescue deal is going to last between 1 day and 3 months
  
  
  
  

• US economic growth accelerated to 2.5% in Q3
• U.S. pending home sales fell 4.6% to 84.5 in September
• U.S. Census chiefs warn bureau cuts will leave nation flying blind in bad economy.

• (FT) FTSE 100 directors saw their total earnings rise by 49 per cent in the past financial year, taking the average to just under £2.7m, according to research by Incomes Data Services, the pay monitoring group.

• World power swings back to America – Pritchard/Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/8844646/World-power-swings-back-to-America.html

• IBM adds 7 billion to its stock repurchase program bringing the total to $12.2 billion, as IBM had $5.2 billion remaining of its previous repurchase authorization

• U.S. consumer-confidence fell to 39.8 in October from a September level of 46.4

• The U.S. House voted Monday to exclude U.S. airlines from an emissions cap-and-trade program that the European Union plans to impose on all airlines flying to and from the continent beginning next year.

• (Reuters) - A U.S. federal appeals court has revived a lawsuit accusing Rio Tinto Plc of human rights violations related to Papua New Guinea.

• (MW) The S&P/Case-Shiller 20-city composite index rose 0.2% in August, as 10 of 20 cities saw gains. That's the fifth straight month of gains, S&P said Tuesday. On a year-on-year basis, prices are down 3.8%. The 20-city composite is down 30.8% from its peak.

• Vietnam has lost its fight to save its rare Javan rhinoceros population after poachers apparently killed the country's last animal for its horn.

• Rick Perry suggested in a recent interview that Trump still harbored doubts about Obama's birth...

• As the U.S. economy suffers, cattle thefts rise to new highs. An estimated 4,500 cattle have been reported missing or stolen this year in Texas and Oklahoma alone.

• Ford's ranking fell 10 spots in Consumer Reports' annual auto reliability survey -- it now ranks 20th out of 28 major brands.

• CME Floor traders said the proposed tax break makes them nervous, because trading is already migrating away from open outcry and to the computer screen. If electronic trades get a tax break, they said, exchanges will have even less of a reason to promote face-to-face trading.

• (FT) Banks sign up to 'ethical' code: The UK's five biggest lenders have agreed to improve the way they do business..

• (FT) Chinese steel mills have started to cut their production as tighter credit conditions and a cooling real estate market bite in the world’s biggest steel market, pushing the cost of iron ore to a 15-month low.

• The wealthiest 1% of Americans saw their net (AFTER TAX) incomes skyrocket by 275% in the three decades to 2007, substantially more than all other segments of the population, the Congressional Budget Office said.

• The Zetas—a Mexican drug cartel believed to be responsible for numerous beheadings, murders, and acts of mayhem—got on the wrong side of the hacker collective Anonymous after allegedly kidnapping one of their members in Veracruz. Now Anonymous has issued an ultimatum: Release our man by November 5, or we'll expose your identities, addresses, and allies.

Next Update Sunday

Quick Overview

• IT's view of Dow Theory is back to bullish
  http://is.gd/U7MWjQ
• Big banks found themselves under pressure in Europe's debt crisis Saturday, with finance chiefs pushing them to raise billions of Euros in capital and accept huge losses on Greek bonds they hold.

• For the global sugar marketing year that began this month output will exceed demand by 6 million tons so UBS estimates. Macquarie anticipates a 5.32 million-ton glut, and Kingsman a surplus of 8.4 million tons. Barclays Capital estimated 4.5 million tons surplus, and the London-based International Sugar Organization anticipates a surplus of 4.2 million tons.

• U.S. unemployment rates dropped in 25 states, rose in 14 and stayed the same in 11. That is an improvement from August, when unemployment rose in 26 states. Nevada (13.4 %) reported the highest unemployment rate for the 16th straight month. California, with unemployment rate falling from 12.1% to 11.9 %, ranked number two. Michigan had the third-highest rate, at 11.1%.

• Eurozone government deficit rose to 572.5 billion Euros in 2010 from 571.5 billion in 2009, but the deficit-to-GDP ratio dropped to 6.2% from 6.4%.

• More than 170 countries have agreed to speed up adoption of a global ban on the export of hazardous waste.

• IBM ranks first in U.S. and second in world as World's Greenest Company. We've focused on green for 20+ years.

Quick Overview

• Senate GOP kills Obama plan for  hiring 400,000  teachers and first responders.

• (FT)The European banking crisis is spilling over into commodities trading with French banks, the main financiers of trading houses, reining in their lending.

• Microsoft (MSFT) sales rose 7.3 %. Net income rose 6.1% to 68 cents a share from 62 cents a year earlier.
• Nokia (NOK) +5.55% reported a loss but better-than-expected unit volume.

• The end of the world is nigh. Again! The Oakland-based Family Radio International that stirred a global frenzy when it predicted the rapture would take 200 million Christians to heaven on May 21, now says the cataclysmic event will destroy the globe on Friday.

• Greek politicians have  passed a tough austerity package while the country has been paralyzed by a 48-hour general strike.

• Western Digital Corporation, the world's leading manufacturer of hard disk drives, said global supply may be constrained for several quarters because of flooding in Thailand. Thai floods have affected 14,254 factories and businesses in 20 provinces, according to the Labor Ministry.

• Brazil lowered interest rates by 50 basis points to 11.5 per cent, the second such cut in six weeks.

• 18,000 of U.S. busiest bridges are structurally deficient.

• (FT) Dexia, the stricken Franco-Belgian lender that has been at the centre of recent market turmoil, loaned €1.5bn of fresh capital to its two largest institutional shareholders which then used the cash to buy Dexia shares before 2008, the Financial Times has learnt.

Quick Overview

• U.S. wholesale prices rose 6.9% YoY.

• Human Genome (HGSI) rose on Tuesday following a report in the U.K.'s Daily Mail that GlaxoSmithKline PLC could be preparing a bid of $25 a share.

• The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo housing market index rose by four points to 18, the biggest one-month gain since April 2010

• China's Q3 GDP rose 9.1% against forecast of 9.2%

• Total foreign holdings of U.S. long-term debt in August reached 4.57 trillion U.S. dollars, up from 4.48 trillion in July.

• China's CPI rose 6.1% YoY in September from 6.2% in August and 6.5% in July, which was a 37-month high. Inflation remains above the target of 4% for 2011.

• Chinas business climate index for the real estate sector also fell for the four consecutive month to 100.41 in September.

• Boston, San Francisco Bay Area, Paris, New York, Vienna, Amsterdam, Munich, Lyon, Copenhagen, Toronto are the top 10 innovative cities listed in the annual index for 2011.

• Global deliveries of new containerships have surpassed one million TEU since the beginning of 2011 with 154 vessels delivered and 280,000 TEU more to come by the end of the year, says Alphaliner

• Apple reported a net income of 6.62 billion U.S. dollars or 7.05 dollars per share, compared with 4.31 billion dollars, or 4.64 dollars per share a year ago.

• Coca-Cola said it had sold more drinks in each region around the world in Q3

• The CFTC reestablishes position limits. The rule limits traders to 25% of deliverable supply in the spot month. The spot-month limits apply separately to physically settled and cash-settled contracts. The CFTC will determine deliverable supply in conjunction with the exchanges.

• Intel posts 17% higher profit and issues strong outlook. It also authorized a further $10bn to buy back shares.

• GM sold 2 mln vehicles in China for second straight year

Quick Overview

• OWS Sign: "I'll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one"

• Bloomberg: European leaders have one week to settle differences and flesh out a strategy to terminate their sovereign debt crisis as global finance chiefs warn failure to do so would endanger the world economy.

• The U.S. federal government registered a 1.299 trillion U.S. dollars budget deficit for the 2011 fiscal year ending September.

• The Eurozone trade deficit stood at 3.4 billion Euros (4.7 billion U.S. dollars) in August.
• Annual inflation in the Eurozone stood at 3.0% in September.

Rabbit-Hole Economics
The Great Recession should have been a huge wake-up call. Nothing like this was supposed to be possible in the modern world. Everyone, and I mean everyone, should be engaged in serious soul-searching, asking how much of what he or she thought was true actually isn’t.

Quick Overview

• While some warn of an imminent recession transports seem to point the other way. http://is.gd/5w3qPd         http://is.gd/ikXlcm

• (FT) Chinese copper inventories stood at 1.9m tonnes at the end of 2010, more than the US consumes in a year. The estimate is significantly higher than the 1.0m-1.5m tonnes range foreign executives had assumed and may indicate lower demand than thought.

• Western Europe's cocoa grind rose 14.0% YoY

• The USDA raised its world wheat stock estimated to 202.4m tonnes -- the highest for 10 years.

• Google's earnings rose 29%.

• Thai authorities are battling to keep the country's worst floods in decades from inundating Bangkok, urging the city's 12 million residents not to panic after a dyke burst in the northern suburb.

• The U.S. Labor Department said that the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims for jobless benefits was 404,000 in the week ending Oct. 8, a decrease of 1,000 from the previous week.

• Australia's unemployment rate fell to 5.2% in September, down from a 10-month high of 5.3% in August

• U.K. unemployment rate in the June-August period stood at a depressing 8.1%, the highest in 15 years.

• MoM the Eurozone industrial production rose by 1.2%, and 5.3% YoY.

• North American railcar owners pulled 11,087 more units out of storage

My Advice to the Occupy Wall Street Protesters
by Matt Taibbi

1. Break up the monopolies. The so-called "Too Big to Fail" financial companies – now sometimes called by the more accurate term "Systemically Dangerous Institutions" – are a direct threat to national security. They are above the law and above market consequence, making them more dangerous and unaccountable than a thousand mafias combined. There are about 20 such firms in America, and they need to be dismantled; a good start would be to repeal the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and mandate the separation of insurance companies, investment banks and commercial banks.

2. Pay for your own bailouts. A tax of 0.1 percent on all trades of stocks and bonds and a 0.01 percent tax on all trades of derivatives would generate enough revenue to pay us back for the bailouts, and still have plenty left over to fight the deficits the banks claim to be so worried about. It would also deter the endless chase for instant profits through computerized insider-trading schemes like High Frequency Trading, and force Wall Street to go back to the job it's supposed to be doing, i.e., making sober investments in job-creating businesses and watching them grow.

3. No public money for private lobbying. A company that receives a public bailout should not be allowed to use the taxpayer's own money to lobby against him. You can either suck on the public teat or influence the next presidential race, but you can't do both. Butt out for once and let the people choose the next president and Congress.

4. Tax hedge-fund gamblers. For starters, we need an immediate repeal of the preposterous and indefensible carried-interest tax break, which allows hedge-fund titans like Stevie Cohen and John Paulson to pay taxes of only 15 percent on their billions in gambling income, while ordinary Americans pay twice that for teaching kids and putting out fires. I defy any politician to stand up and defend that loophole during an election year.

5. Change the way bankers get paid. We need new laws preventing Wall Street executives from getting bonuses upfront for deals that might blow up in all of our faces later. It should be: You make a deal today, you get company stock you can redeem two or three years from now. That forces everyone to be invested in his own company's long-term health – no more Joe Cassanos pocketing multimillion-dollar bonuses for destroying the AIGs of the world.

Quick Overview

• PIMCO's Bill Gross: Class warfare by the 99%? Of course, they’re fighting back after 30 years of being shot at.
• Senate Republican/Tea voted unanimously against tax cuts for middle-class families, infrastructure spending, & millions of jobs.

• Slovakia rejected an expansion of the euro zone's bailout fund.

• U.S. stocks off to best October start since 1982

• (WSJ) 9.6%! That’s the decline from 2000 to 2010 in inflation-adjusted median earnings of people 25 to 34 years old with a bachelor’s degree and no graduate degree.

• Corning (GLW) raised the dividend by 50%.

• Japanese consumer confidence rose from 37 in August to 38.6
  
  

Quick Overview

• Dexia, a Belgian-French Bank, was leveraged by more than 100 times. It has assets exceeding Euro 500 billion and equity of just 5 billion  -- and it passed the recent European bank stress test!!
• (FT) Global banking regulators will press ahead with the first worldwide effort to force banks to hold more liquid assets and cut back the industry’s reliance on short-term funding, despite complaints that the rule changes could damage the broader economy, the new chairman of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision has warned
• A computer virus has hit the US Predator and Reaper drone fleet that Washington deploys to hunt down militants, logging the keystrokes of pilots remotely flying missions, Wired magazine reported.

• Economist: An ill-conceived congressional bill to punish China for manipulation its currency is yet another sign that America has little to be proud of in terms of economic policy... The debt crisis has been running for 18 month now, and the only way that euro-zone leaders have dazzled is through sheer incompetence.

• U.S. nonfarm payroll employment edged up by 103,000 jobs in September, but the unemployment rate remained at 9.1% for the third straight month.

• A big shift of manufacturing from China to the U.S. and other parts of North America will create up to 3 million U.S. jobs in coming years, says a study from Boston Consulting Group.

• The number of foreign trade containers moving through the Port of Tokyo rose 9.7% in the first half of 2011 from the same period last year to 1.98 million TEUs.

• North American railroads again set a new all-time high in intermodal loadings with 313,026 containers and trailers in the week ending Oct. 1.

• (Bloomberg) -- U.S. sugar stockpiles are shrinking to the lowest in 37 years after rain and freezing weather damaged the beet crop, potentially reversing a price slump and forcing the government to ease import limits.

• Fitch cut Italy to "A+" from "AA-," citing high public debts, low growth and politically technical and complex solution necessary to fix the country's financial situation. The agency also downgraded Spain's long-term credit rating to “AA-" from "AA+."

• Moody's downgraded Britain's part-nationalized banks Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland on Friday.

• Japan's benchmark coincident composite index gained 0.3 point to 107.4 in August.

• German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Europe's banks should look first to raise money in the private sector before turning to governments to bolster their financial cushions against potential losses from the continent's sovereign debt crisis.

• Bankers, not taxpayers, should have to shoulder the losses in case of massive financial firm failures, a top Federal Reserve official said on Friday as growing discontent with Wall Street drove protests around the country.

• The Dutch government said Friday it would move to classify high-potency marijuana alongside hard drugs such as cocaine and ecstasy, the latest step in the country's ongoing reversal of its famed tolerance policies.

Confronting the Malefactors
There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear, but we may, at long last, be seeing the rise of a popular movement that, unlike the Tea Party, is angry at the right people.

Quick Overview

• European Central Bank surprised and kept rates at 1.5%.

• U.S. first time claims for unemployment benefits rose 6,000 to 401,000

• U.S. Homeownership fell 1.1 % to 65.1% between 2000 and 2010.

• Fed Dallas President Richard Fisher said protests against Wall Street and the central bank stem from frustration with unemployment, and he sympathizes with the discontent.

• Bloomberg: SABMiller the world’s second- biggest brewer, advanced the most in almost three years in London trading after Brazilian news website IG reported that the beer maker is in talks to be bought by larger competitor Anheuser-Busch InBev.

Quick Overview

• Financial Times: European Union finance ministers are examining ways of coordinating recapitalizations of financial institutions.

• Dexia is back at bailout trough! Its shares hit an all-time low despite a statement of support from the French and Belgian finance ministers. The question now becomes whether this means taxpayers will be called on to take losses so that bondholders can be spared.

• The Fed is ready to take further steps to help an economy that is "close to faltering," Fed chairman Ben Bernanke said in his bleakest assessment yet of the fragile U.S. recovery.

• Italy's bonds were downgraded by Moody's to A2 from Aa2

• The ISM manufacturing index  rose to 51.6% from a 50.6% reading in August.

• U.S. construction projects rose 1.4% in August

• Bloomberg: Take-home pay, adjusted for prices, fell 0.3 percent in August, the third decrease in five months, and personal income dropped for the first time in two years, the Commerce Department reported last week. The declines followed news from the Census Bureau that median household income in 2010 fell to $49,445, the lowest in more than a decade, and the poverty rate jumped to 15.1 percent, a 17-year high.

• Chrysler reported a 27% jump in September U.S. sales to 127,334 vehicles.
• GM reported a 19.8% jump in September U.S. sales to 207,145 Vehicles.

• YoY Macau gambling revenue rose 39% last month.

• Yum reported its third-quarter profit rose to 80 cents a share from 74 cents.

• Investor reaction to Apple’s latest phone – drop the stock by 3.8%.

Quick Overview

• The Occupy Wall Street / 99% had at least 700 people arrested over the weekend.
• Wall Street bankers are withholding funds from Barack Obama's re-election campaign because they believe they are unloved, Warren Buffett has warned.

• The Greek government ok’s austerity budget with a deficit at 8.5% of 2011 GDP.

• The USDA guesses September 1 corn stocks at 1.128 billion. 166 million above the average pre-report trade estimate.
• The USDA guesses September 1 soybean stocks at 215 million bushels, down 10 million from pre-report trade expectations.
• The USDA guesses the 2011 wheat crop at 2.008 billion bushels, down 38 million from the average pre-report estimate.
• (Reuters) - China, the world's second biggest corn consumer, is likely to more than triple imports to four million tonnes in the crop year starting October as strong livestock feed demand swallows up a bumper harvest.

Protectionism beckons as leaders push world into Depression  "The need to act in the collective interest has yet to be recognised. Unless it is, it will be only a matter of time before one or more countries resort to protectionism. That could, as in the 1930s, lead to a disastrous collapse in activity around the world," he said.

Next Update Sunday

Quick Overview

• U.S. GDP grew by 1.3% in Q2, up from 0.4% in Q1
• U.S. unemployment benefits dropped 37,000 to 391,000 in the week ending September 24 and their lowest level since April.

• German Unemployment fell by 26K to 6.9% in September

• Spanish August Retail Sales fell -4.4% YoY

• Bloomberg: Planning Commission of India said that it had recommended that the poverty line be fixed at 965 rupees per capita per month (about $0.65 a day) for people living in urban areas and 781 rupees per capita per month (slightly more than $0.50 a day) for those living in rural areas. Based on this very conservative cut-off point -- itself a figure revised upward after the Supreme Court objected to an earlier projection -- the commission estimated the population in India living below the poverty line at a little more than 407 million people. That is almost one-third of the population.

• New Zealand’s  credit rating was cut one step to AA by Fitch.

Quick Overview

• U.S. consumer confidence rose to 45.4 in September from 45.2 in August

• U.S. home prices rose for the fourth month in a row in July, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller 20-city composite. Prices rose 0.9% MoM, narrowing the YoY loss to 4.1%.

• Oil World warned that the current La Nina weather pattern has put Brazil's soybean crop, the world's second biggest, in jeopardy.

• New U.S. homes sales fell 2.3% in August to an annual rate of 295,000,-- the fourth decline in a row. The average selling price fell 8.7% to $246,000, the lowest level since early 2009. At current sales rates, unsold new homes on the market represented a 6.6 month supply.

• The Bank of Israel unexpectedly lowered its key interest rate by 25 basis points to 3%

• The staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission is considering recommending civil legal action against the Standard & Poor's debt ratings agency over its rating of a 2007 collateralized debt offering

It's the Inequality, Stupid A huge share of the nation's economic growth over the past 30 years has gone to the top one-hundredth of one percent, who now make an average of $27 million per household. The average income for the bottom 90 percent of us? $31,244.

Quick Overview

• The 111% MoM rise in the Swiss monetary base is by far the biggest since 1973.

• The IMF said that the global economy had entered a “new and dangerous phase”

• The Fed said there were "significant downside risks" to the economy.

• Robert Zoellick, the World Bank president, warned "the world is in a danger zone"

• The U.S. Fed announced that it intends to shift $400 billion in its shorter-term debt portfolio holdings to longer-term bonds hoping to stimulate more growth.

• The whole euro currency project is in danger due to member states' runaway spending and subsequent sovereign debt crises, a European Central Bank study said.

• Chinas PMI fell to a two-month low of 49.4 in September from 49.9 in August.

• The MBA said the Market Composite Index of U.S. mortgage applications rose 0.6% in the week ending Sept. 16th

• The IMF expects Indonesia's economy to grow by 6.4% this year.

• S&P lowered ratings on several Italian banks.

• Germany’s PMI fell to 50.3 in September from 51.1 in August.

• MoM French PMI fell to 47.3 from 49.1.

• Foster's rose after getting a sweetened A$5.10-a-share bid from SABMiller (SBMRY)

• HGSI rose on news that the company's new lupus drug Benlysta was selling better than expected.

• Moody cut BoA's (BAC) rating and argued the US government is now less likely to support the bank if needed.

• The latest tar balls that turned up on the US Gulf coast are again from BP’s oil spill, signaling that the area is far from cleaned up

• CERN said that measurements over three years showed  neutrinos moving 60 nanoseconds quicker than light over a distance of 730 km

Quick Overview

• S&P cuts Italy's sovereign-debt rating to A.

• German PPI YoY rose 5.5%

• Swiss exports fell 7% MoM in August

• Construction output in the Eurozone rose by 1.4 MoM

• The Greek economy may contract by 5.5%t this year said the IMF

• YoY Sweden's GDP rose by 4.9% in Q2

• YoY Chinas pork price in August rose 45.5%. Food prices account for about one third of the weighting in Chinas CPI.
• Talks continue about China buying corn… China has decided to release 3.7 Million tonnes from their state reserves… China's domestic Corn shortfall will reach 11 mil tons by 2015, up from 1 mil tons in 2010, a gov. official said…

• (AP) -- U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder says that the Obama administration will do its utmost to close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay ahead of next year's presidential elections despite political opposition.

• The Fed's two day meeting, from which the market is hoping for QE3, starts today.

Can China escape as world's debt crisis reaches Act III?
Whatever the mix: there is simply too much global investment, and too little consumption. The system is out of joint. It does not feel like the 1930s because we are richer in the West, with a better safety net, and emergency stimulus has so far cushioned the effects, but Bertil Ohlin, John Maynard Keynes, and Irving Fisher would find it unnervingly familiar.

Quick Overview

• (FT) European central banks have become net buyers of gold for the first time in more than two decades.

• The bungling execs at UBS, announced that loss from unauthorized trading amounted to $2.3 billion, more than initially reported.

• (Guardian) At the same time, Webster insists, the threat from H5N1 has not gone away. On the contrary, if the latest the scientific data are to be believed, a new "mutant" strain of the virus, codenamed 2.3.2., has already moved from China and Vietnam to central Asia and eastern Europe, spread by migratory waterfowl.

• Without fresh aid, Greece will run out of money by mid-October, the WSJ said.

• Magistrates investigating an alleged prostitution ring in Italy have published wiretaps in which Silvio Berlusconi boasts of spending the night with eight women.

• [AP] - Let the audits begin. As the U.K. tightens its belt during economic uncertainty, a senior government official said Sunday he was hiring more than 2,000 extra tax inspectors to make sure that Britain's wealthiest feel the squeeze.

• A new analysis from shipbrokers Gibson showed this week that just 223 single hull tankers of over 25,000 dwt remain in the fleet, representing about 5% of the total tanker population.

• Ships waiting to load sugar at Brazil’s main ports were less than half those lined up a year earlier as the nation harvests the smallest crop in four years, Cosan SA Industria & Comercio SA’s logistics arm said.

Quick Overview

• U.S. consumer sentiment rose to 57.8 in the preliminary reading for September after tumbling to a nearly three-year low 55.7 in August

• Luxembourg Juncker said “we don’t see any room for maneuver in the euro area which could allow us to launch new fiscal stimulus packages. That will not be possible.”
• The Finnish Finance Minister said it was unlikely that any agreement on collateral would be reached at this meeting…

• There are definitely some ongoing concerns of interbanking markets starting to freeze up at major European banks -- therefore central banks joined forces to provide liquidity. French banks hold €50 billion (£44 billion) of Greek debt. Trichet tells politician’s to get ahead of the curve.

• India’s central bank raised interest rates to 8.25 percent from 8 percent -- the 12th increase since the start of March 2010.

• (AP) -- Wildlife biologists on Friday will evacuate two species of minnows from the shrinking waters of a West Texas river in the first of what could be several rescue operations involving fish affected by the state's worst drought in decades.

Quick Overview

• UBS said a trader of its investment bank unit has caused a loss estimated at USD 2bln  
  

• Moody's cutting the long-term credit rating of Crédit Agricole and Société Générale

• The U.S. EIA reported:
• Oil inventories fell by 6.7 million barrels
• Gasoline supplies rose by 1.9 million barrels,
• Distillates fuel inventories rose by 1.7 million barrels

• Italy cleared a 54-billion-euro emergency budget plan aimed at balancing public finances by 2013

• Eurozone industrial production rose by 1.0% in July.

• Indian inflation rose to 9.78% in August from 9.22 in July.

• The number of U.S. homes that received an initial default notice rose 33 % MoM

Quick Overview

• Greek 10 year yields at 24%. German Chancellor Angela Merkel rejected the idea of a hasty bankruptcy by Greece.

• The dry bulk market kept its upward momentum to reach 1901 a new high for the year.

• In the euro area, the unemployment rate was  unchanged for the second consecutive month at 10.0%. The high unemployment rates are in Ireland, Portugal, the Slovak Republic and Spain which are hovering at 14.5%, 12.3%, 13.4% and 21.2% respectively.

• Australia’s business confidence index dropped 10 points to minus eight in August.

• France's CPI rose by 0.5% in August.

• (AP) James Murdoch is being recalled for another grilling before Britain's Parliament after former News Corp. executives raised serious doubts about his role in the country's tabloid phone hacking scandal.

• [AP] - The largest U.S. banks will be required to show regulators how they would break up and sell off their assets if they are in danger of failing.
  
  
• The ranks of the poor in the U.S.  rose to nearly 1 in 6 people last year. The number of uninsured rose to 49.9 million, the biggest in over two decades.
• Median household income in the U.S. at  $49,445 is down 7.1% adjusted for inflation from 1999 peak.
• Obama Announced a 1 year extension of the trading ban with Cuba.

Quick Overview

• The U.S. National Association for Business Economics (NABE) cut projections for U.S. economic growth in 2011 and 2012 to 1.7%t this year, down from its May prediction of 2.8 percent.

• The IMF releases nearly 4 billion Euros of rescue funding to Portugal.

• The USDA estimates the U.S. Corn crop at 12.497 billion bushels and a yield of 148.1 bushels per acre.

• The USDA estimates soybean production at 3.085 billion bushels and a yield of 41.8 bushels per acre.

• Indian industrial production showed tepid growth of 3.3% in July down from 8.8% MoM.

'We Did Exactly What Al-Qaida Wanted Us to Do'
The Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu said a long time ago: "If you know your enemy and know yourself, you will win a hundred times in a hundred battles." Unfortunately with the war on terror we forgot who we are, but also we didn't know our enemy. Look at al-Qaida. On the eve of 9/11, they had about 400 operatives. They led us into a war longer than World War I and World War II. Not because they are such smart people, but because we did not understand our enemy. Instead, we applied waterboarding and enhanced interrogation techniques. We did exactly what al-Qaida wanted us to do. When you do this, what are you proving to the guy? You're proving that everything he thinks about you is right. But if you come with a cup of tea, he doesn't know how to act.

Quick Overview

• The parrot thinks the short term S&P cycle low should be right about now http://is.gd/VAPqgS

• The M’s are moving right along especially M1, ROC plus 20% -- most since 1975 http://is.gd/MwGAft

• Does the Baltic know something? http://is.gd/3sQ34N

• Is coal starting next leg up? http://is.gd/Z9wfVG

• (FT) New international bank capital rules are “anti-American” and the US should consider pulling out of the Basel group of global regulators, Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, has said.

An Impeccable Disaster
What Mr. Trichet and his colleagues should be doing right now is buying up Spanish and Italian debt — that is, doing what these countries would be doing for themselves if they still had their own currencies. In fact, the E.C.B. started doing just that a few weeks ago, and produced a temporary respite for those nations. But the E.C.B. immediately found itself under severe pressure from the moralizers, who hate the idea of letting countries off the hook for their alleged fiscal sins. And the perception that the moralizers will block any further rescue actions has set off a renewed market panic.

Quick Overview

• Germany Said to Ready Plan to Help Banks If Greece Defaults. The resignation of a key official from the European Central Bank was the latest sign of deepening disagreement over how to solve Europe' economic problems.

• Canada's economy shed jobs for the first time in five months as the country's unemployment rate rose to 7.3% from 7.2% in July.

• YoY France budget deficit narrowed to 86.6 billion Euros (119.51 billion U.S. dollars) from 93.1 billion Euros (128.49 billion U.S. dollars)

• China's industrial value-added output is expected to grow 13.5% YoY
• China's inflation eased to 6.2% in August

Quick Overview

• U.S. Fixed mortgage rates fell this week to the lowest levels in six decades.

• U.S. weekly applications for unemployment benefits rose 2,000 to 414,000

• U.S. Trade deficit fell to $44.8 billion in July, down 13.1 % from June

• P&G says sales will rise by 5 to 9% in the coming year, with double-digit emerging market growth mitigating continued slow growth in the U.S., Europe and Japan.

• Spanish RE sales fell 40.8% YoY.

• Merkel greeted the verdict from the German constitutional court as pivotal in upholding the legitimacy of her government's Eurozone bailouts package, saying it justifies her policies in dealing with the debt crisis.

• Trichet warned there are increasing risks for the euro zone’s waning economic recovery and less chance of inflation.

• HuffPost: Each civilian sent to Afghanistan costs U.S. taxpayers up to $570,000 a year
• The DOE said:
• Crude supplies fell by 4 million barrels, or 1.1 percent, to 353.1 million barrels, which is 1.9% below year-ago levels.
• Gasoline supplies rose by 200,000 barrels, or 0.1 percent, to 208.8 million barrels. That was 7.2% below year-ago levels.
• Demand for gasoline over the four weeks ended Sept. 2 was 2.9% lower than a year earlier.
• U.S. refineries ran at 89 % of capacity.
• Supplies of distillate fuel rose by 700,000 barrels to 156.8 million barrels.
• The Cass Freight Index for U.S. shipments grew 4.4 percent in August over the same month a year ago, the smallest gain in a year-and-a-half and a sign of fragile demand in the American economy.
• Bulk freight shipments on major North American railroads rose 1.4 percent last week to the highest level since April 2, with gains across a wide range of cargoes.

Quick Overview

• (Bloomberg) The Swiss central bank imposed a ceiling on the franc for the first time in more than three decades and pledged to defend the target with the “utmost determination,”

• (Bloomberg)The Conference Board’s Employment Trends Index decreased 0.3 percent to 100.8 from the prior month’s revised reading of 101.0, the New York-based private research group said today. The measure was up 4.1 percent from August 2010.

• The U.S. Institute for Supply Management’s index of non- manufacturing businesses increased to 53.3 last month from 52.7 in July.

• Informa forecasts U.S. corn yield at 151 bu. per acre, down from 158 in Aug. The Corn crop is estimated at 12.7 bbu. Soybeans at 3.06, avg yield of 41.5, one bu/a.
  (They are usually high!!)
• Allendale forecasts U.S. corn production at 12.466 billion bushels and the yield per acre at 147.7 bushels per acre. They estimate this year's U.S. soybean production at 3.007 billion bushels and soybean yield at 40.7 bushels per acre.
• The above figures are below the corn estimate from the USDA of a 12.914bn-bushel harvest, and a yield of 153.0 bushels per acre. Next USDA forecast Monday.
  
  
• YoY Australia’s GDP rose to 1.4% in 2Q
  

  
  
• 
  

  Bank of Japan says post-quake recovery intact, keeps policy rate unchanged at 0%-0.1%

Ready for the fall

Euro-zone governments have effectively spent the past year making a departure from the euro zone ever more attractive, and therefore vastly more likely.

• Baltic Dry Index is looking quite positive http://is.gd/3sQ34N

• and so is the Capesize http://is.gd/Ilicqu

• European markets are showed a growing concern that the sovereign debt crisis is worsening.
  
  
  
  

Quick Overview

• The U.S. jobless rate held at 9.1%. Private sector firms added 17,000 jobs while state and local governments continued to shed workers. The average workweek dropped by 0.1 hour, and average earnings also fell by 3 cents. The unemployment rate for black Americans is at 16.7% in August, up from 15.9% the previous month.

• MoM The PPI picked up by 0.5 % in the Eurozone.

• U.S. sues 17 big banks over mortgage-backed securities

• 186 million Americans are currently breathing in unhealthy levels of smog. Caving Obama, citing the nation's struggling economy, asked the Environmental Protection Agency to withdraw a key air-quality standard. 
• The EPA  noted that while compliance with the new rule would cost polluters between $19 billion and $90 billion a year by 2020, the benefits to human health will be worth between $13 billion and $100 billion every year.

• Lanworth estimates corn 143.3 (+/-3bpa) beans 40 (+/- 1.2bpa).

• In 2011, through Aug. 31, some 243 — nearly half of the companies in the S&P 500 — have either increased or initiated a dividend payment.

• British Police have so far arrested more than a dozen people this year as part of the probe into alleged voicemail interception and corrupt payments to police by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. James Murdoch says he's turning down $6 million bonus (may take one later, though.) Rupert is keeping his.

• After prison lobbyists and execs donated generously Texas Gov. Perry floated a proposal to privatize the state's prison health care network.

Quick Overview

• The U.S. advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims for jobless benefits was 409,000 in the week ending August 27, fell 12,000 from the previous week's figure.

• France's unemployment rate inched down by 0.1% to 9.1 % in Q2 of 2011 .

• Global iron ore production growth needs to be at a rate of at least 100 million tons a year over the next eight years to meet rising demand, the world's mining giant Rio Tinto said on Thursday.

• (FT) U.S. Defense Contractors have wasted or lost to fraud as much as $60 Billion over the past 10 years.

• (MSFT) said its Windows Phone operating system may capture more than 20 percent of the smartphone market over the next two to three years with the help of hardware manufacturers and increased marketing efforts.

Quick Overview

• Ukraine raised its forecast for exports of grains by 1 million metric tons to 25 million tons

• The amount of cargo handled at the port of Maputo between January and July of 2011 totaled 6.4 million tons, which was a YoY rise of 1.6 million tons or 33%.

• India's crude oil imports in July rose 2.6% YoY to 13.58 million metric tons, or 3.21 million barrels a day.

• YoY the S&P/Case-Shiller index of property values in 20 cities fell 4.5%, after a 4.6% YoY drop in May.

• U.S. Consumer confidence fell to 44.5 in August -- the lowest reading since April 2009.

• U.S. road freight growth has exceeded truck driver volume in the year so far and is likely to inflate salaries by as much as 30 per cent by 2014.The three-year deficit of drivers, which number 300,000 full-time posts, matches 2004 vacancies that remained unfilled for a year, said freight transport consultancy FTR Associates head Noel Perry.

Attention Governor Perry: Evolution is a fact
The population of the United States is more than 300 million and it includes some of the best and brightest that the human species has to offer, probably more so than any other country in the world. There is surely something wrong with a system for choosing a leader when, given a pool of such talent and a process that occupies more than a year and consumes billions of dollars, what rises to the top of the heap is George W Bush. Or when the likes of Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann or Sarah Palin can be mentioned as even remote possibilities.

Graphics Gallery: The Most Important Facts about the Global Debt Crisis