Sunday, July 12, 2015

Killing the European Project
Can Greece pull off a successful exit? Will Germany try to block a recovery? (Sorry, but that’s the kind of thing we must now ask.) The European project — a project I have always praised and supported — has just been dealt a terrible, perhaps fatal blow. And whatever you think of Syriza, or Greece, it wasn’t the Greeks who did it.
EU Demands Complete Capitulation From Tsipras In addition to requirements to cut pensions and raise sales tax, which Tsipras accepted last week, the memo demanded that officials from Greece’s creditors return to Athens with full access to government ministers and a veto over relevant legislation, according to the document. Euro-area leaders also want Tsipras to transfer as much as 50 billion euros ($56 billion) of state assets to an independent Luxembourg-based company for sale and make him fire the workers he hired in defiance of Greece’s previous bailout commitments.

Tuesday, July 07, 2015

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: ..
Instead they were confronted with a text from the creditors that upped the ante, demanding a rise in VAT on tourist hotels from 7pc (de facto) to 23pc at a single stroke. Creditors insisted on further pension cuts of 1pc of GDP by next year and a phase out of welfare assistance (EKAS) for poorer pensioners, even though pensions have already been cut by 44pc. They insisted on fiscal tightening equal to 2pc of GDP in an economy reeling from six years of depression and devastating hysteresis. They offered no debt relief. The Europeans intervened behind the scenes to suppress a report by the International Monetary Fund validating Greece's claim that its debt is "unsustainable",..

(This from a country that has never repaid its debts. See Piketty )

Charts are up-to-date

Monday, July 06, 2015

QUICK OVERVIEW


  • The German government signaled a tough line towards Greece on Monday, saying it saw no basis for new bailout negotiations and insisting it was up to Athens to move swiftly if it wanted to preserve its place in the euro zone. With opinion towards Greece hardening in Germany’s ruling coalition. (This from a country that has never repaid its debts. See Piketty )

  •  (Krugman)..even if the creditors were making sense.What’s more, they weren’t. The truth is that Europe’s self-styled technocrats are like medieval doctors who insisted on bleeding their patients — and when their treatment made the patients sicker, demanded even more bleeding.

  •  (Hellenic Shipping News)A new record year in dry bulk demolition under way? The monthly average for the first six months in 2015 is 3.3m DWT. In 2014 the first half year averaged at 1.33m DWT per month. April 2015 saw 5.36 million DWT being retired from active service, which was the highest on record ever for a single month. 
  •  Overall confidence levels in the shipping industry fell during the three months to May 2015 to a level equal to the lowest rating recorded in the past seven years. Respondents complained predominantly about low freight rates and overtonnaging 
  •  The shipping industry is experiencing the biggest dry bulk market recession since the 1980s. The uncertain global economic outlook and the increased imbalance between supply and demand have lead to historical low freight rates .The downturn seems to continue until 2017 if a viable equilibrium is not achieved.. 

  •  China is capable and confident it can maintain the capital market stable and sound, said a commentary of People's Daily, the flagship newspaper of the Communist Party of China
  •  China's central bank cut both the requirement reserve ratio (RRR), the amount of reserves banks required to hold, and benchmark interest rates on Saturday. The central bank cut the RRR for commercial banks serving rural areas, agriculture and small businesses by 50 basis points (bps). The RRR for finance companies, or non-bank financial institutions, will be lowered by 300 bps, the PBOC announced. Benchmark interest rates have also been cut. Interest rates for one-year lending and deposits are cut by 25 bps to 4.85% and 2% respectively. 
  •  China's economy will grow by 6.93% YoY in the second quarter, said a report by the National Academy of Economic Strategy. 
  •  Surging investment by Chinese companies in U.S. research labs is yielding a fast-growing trove of patents, part of a push to mine America for ideas to help China shift from being the world’s factory floor to a driver of innovation.. 

  •  Previously owned U.S. homes sold in May at the fastest pace since November 2009, driven by first-time buyers and indicating budding momentum in the residential real estate market. 
  • Closings on existing properties, which usually occur a month or two after a contract is signed, rose 5.1% to a 5.35 million annualized rate. 
  •  Home rental prices are climbing across much of the United States " with the biggest gains coming from not from New York or San Francisco but Jackson, Mississippi, and Portland, Maine (Zillow) 

  •  The volume of world merchandise trade increased modestly in the first quarter of 2015, with growth in both exports and imports registering slower growth than over the previous six months 


  • Global carbon dioxide levels break the 400ppm milestone 
  •  India's Poor cannot pay for 150 years of pollution by the West says India's coal minister as India ramps up coal production to reach its target of 1 Billion tons of coal by 2020. 

  •  Some top international doctors and public health experts have issued an urgent prescription for a feverish planet Earth: Get off coal as soon as possible. 

  • EU plans to regulate hormone-damaging chemicals found in pesticides have been dropped because of threats from the US that this would adversely affect negotiations for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), according to a report in The Guardian. Draft EU regulations would have banned 31 pesticides containing endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) that have been linked to testicular cancer and male infertility. 

  •  Canada’s political landscape has undergone a seismic shift with the election of a left-wing government in oil-rich Alberta. 

  • (Moody's) Company Total Cash $U.S. Billions: 
  • Apple $178.0 Dec. 27, 2014 
  • Microsoft $90.2 Dec. 31, 2014 
  • Google $64.4 Dec. 31, 2014 
  • Pfizer $53.6 Dec. 31, 2014 
  • Cisco Systems $53.0 Jan. 24, 2015 
  • Oracle $44.7 Nov. 30, 2014 
  • Johnson & Johnson $33.1 Dec. 28, 2014 
  • QUALCOMM $31.6 Dec. 28, 2014 
  • Medtronic $31.1 Jan. 23, 2015 
  • Merck  Co. $29.2 Dec. 31, 2014 


  •  A Gallup survey from 2013 found that libraries are not just popular, they’re extremely popular. Over 90 percent of Americans feel that libraries are a vital part of their communities. Compare this to 53 percent for the police, 27 percent for public schools, and just 7 percent for Congress, and you’re looking at perhaps the greatest success of the public sector.
Piketty: When I hear the Germans say that they maintain a very moral stance about debt and strongly believe that debts must be repaid, then I think: what a huge joke! Germany is the country that has never repaid its debts. It has no standing to lecture other nations.

Friday, May 01, 2015

Bernanke and the Inflationistas There’s something about inflation derp that goes straight to the ids of certain people — largely, one suspects, angry old men, though it would be nice to have hard evidence on the demographic. And they will keep regarding the Journal as the place to get the truth no matter how much money it costs them.

Saturday, April 25, 2015

The TPP: Toward Absolutist Capitalism

There are many excellent arguments against the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), two of which — local zoning over-rides, and loss of national sovereignty — I’ll briefly review as stepping stones to the main topic of the post: Absolutist Capitalism, for which I make two claims:
1) The TPP implies a form of absolute rule, a tyranny as James Madison would have understood the term, and
2) The TPP enshrines capitalization as a principle of jurisprudence.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Death of the Republic

On April 22, 2015, the Senate Finance Committee approved a bill to fast-track the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a massive trade agreement that would override our republican form of government and hand judicial and legislative authority to a foreign three-person panel of corporate lawyers.

QUICK OVERVIEW


  • U.S. stocks ended higher on Friday, with both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite Index refreshing their record closing highs, as major earnings reports came out generally positive. 

  •  (MarketWatch)Sales of new single-family homes fell 11.4% to an annual rate of 481,000 in March, pulling back from a seven-year high reached in the prior month and hitting the slowest pace since November. 

  • In Japan, manufacturing fell to 49.7 (est. 50.8), dropping below 50 for the first time since July 2014. 

  •  PRNewswire/ -- Even though buyers in most markets can break even on a home purchase in less than two years, nearly half of renters in a newly released survey said their credit or finances keep them from buying a home. 
  • Of renters surveyed by Zillow, 16 percent said they can't qualify for a home loan, 18 percent said they can't afford taxes, maintenance and other costs associated with home-ownership, and 13 percent said they don't have enough savings for a down payment. About a quarter said they struggle to pay their rent. 
  •  According to the survey, 82 percent of renters are long-term renters, and 57 percent are long-term renters who have lived for a long time in the same home. Just 14 percent of renters said they aren't staying long enough in the same place to buy. 

  • The Competitive Edge: renters searching for their next home on Zillow can easily see how long rentals have been on the market... 

  •  U.S. gains 126,000 jobs in March, unemployment at 5.5% 

  •  Russia's consumer price inflation hit 16.9 % in March as the country heads for recession. 

  •  ISM services index dips to 56.5% in March from 56.9% 

  •  China's services purchasing managers' index (PMI) was posted at 52.3 in March, up from 52 in February 

  •  Corn inventories of 7.745B bushels as of March 1 are up 10.5% YoY and stand against trade estimates for 7.609B. Acres planted drop 1.398M YoY. 
  •  Wheat stocks of 1.124B bushels are up from 1.057B YoY and stand against estimates for 1.141B. Acres planted drop 1.648M YoY. 
  •  Soybean inventories of 1.334B bushels are up from 994M YoY and stand against estimates for 1.348B. Acres planted gain 934K YoY. 

  •  The number of Americans filing new claims for jobless benefits fell more than expected, while activity in the services sector hit a six-month high in March, underscoring the economy's solid fundamentals despite a recent softening in growth. The good news is that claims and the services sector data suggest the economy has gained some momentum heading into the second quarter. 

  •  US durable goods orders fell 1.4 in February 

  • U.S. Wages climbed by 1.3% from Q2 of 2012 to Q2 of 2014, compared to a 17% increase in home prices during that time, according to RealtyTrac. 

  •  The German economy, the biggest in Europe, is expected to keep its growth momentum in the first half of 2015 and continue to expand as strongly as at the end of 2014, Germany's central bank said on Monday in its monthly bulletin. 

  •  To boost economy, Sweden lowered its repo rate, the rate at which the central bank lends to commercial banks, from minus 0.1 percent to minus 0.25 percent and announced that it would buy 30 billion krona (3.42 billion U.S) 

  •  Across the US about 5.4 million homes(more than 10% of home-owners) are still upside-down on their mortgages, according to an estimate from CoreLogic. 

  •  An ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup weed-killer - glyphosate - is “probably carcinogenic,” according to a new decision by the World Health Organization. 

  •  The Abbott (he thinks the science of human-caused climate change is “crap”) government has pledged an extra $100 million as part of a long-term plan for the Great Barrier Reef that it hopes will prevent the international embarrassment of having the precious site declared officially "in danger" by the World Heritage Committee. 

  •  As bacon sales sizzle and China -- where pork is the favored meat -- becomes wealthier, pig farmers around the world are meeting demand by using about four times as much antibiotics per pound of meat as cattle ranchers. Poultry is a close second.

  • (March 16, 2015) - Researchers at UC San Diego and Creighton University have challenged the intake of vitamin D recommended by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Institute of Medicine (IOM), stating that their Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for vitamin D underestimates the need by a factor of ten. 

  •  Scrunchies saving wildlife from being killed by cats. (cats are killing birds by the billions each year) 

Sunday, March 15, 2015

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  • European stock funds attract $5.2 billion in ninth straight week of inflows 

  •  (Reuters) - Investors in U.S.-based funds pulled $1.8 billion out of taxable bond funds in the week ended March 11 on increased expectations that the Federal Reserve will hike interest rates... 

  •  More than 5 million renters say they're likely to buy a home in the next year, according to the Zillow (US)Housing Confidence Index (Zillow) 

  • US access to mortgage credit has improved significantly, and is roughly two thirds of the way back to 2002 pre-crisis levels. 

  • South Korea's central bank cut its benchmark interest rate by 25 basis points to an all-time low of 1.75% 

  •  The U.S. Fed rejected the capital plans of two large banks, the American units of the Deutsche Bank and Banco Santander, due to their "qualitative" deficiencies including ability to model losses and identify risks. 
  •  All U.S. major banks passed the Fed stress test 

  •  The British economy grew by 0.6 percent in the three months to the end of February 

  •  U.S. wholesale inventories unexpectedly rose 0.3 % in January as sales recorded their biggest decline since 2009, lifting the number of months it would take to clear warehouses to its highest level in more than 5-1/2 years. 

  •  The U.S. added 295,000 jobs in Feb. as the unemployment rate fell to 5.5 %, lowest since 08, but youth unemployment is rising.For those aged 20-24 years old it was 10% in February – up from 9.8% in January 
  •  Unfilled job openings at small businesses reach 9-year peak. Around 29% of small-business owners say they have at least one job opening that they could not fill, Bloomberg reports. That is the highest that number has been since March 2006, and one of the highest numbers seen in 40 years. 


  •  Germany's annual inflation got out of its negative territory and stood at 0.1 % in February 

  • According to the second estimate from the U.S. Commerce Department the economy expanded at a 2.2 % annual rate in Q4 of 2014, revised down from the previous estimate of 2.6% 

  •  Japan's CPI rose 2.2 % YoY in January, marking the 20th consecutive monthly growth. 

  •  Iron Ore at the lowest price since 2009 as China tackles overcapacity and pollution 

  •  China’s premier Li Keqiang cut the nation’s growth target to “around” 7% , reiterating the need to pursue reform as development slows and the likelihood of tougher times ahead for the world’s second largest economy. 


  •  The Warming World: Is Capitalism Destroying Our Planet? Since 1880, when global temperatures began to be systematically collected, no year has been warmer than 2014. The 15 warmest years, with one single exception, have come during the first 15 years of the new millennium. Indeed, it has become an open question as to whether global warming can be stopped anymore -- or at least limited as policymakers have called for. Is capitalism ultimately responsible for the problem, or could it actually help to solve it? 

Sunday, January 11, 2015

QUICK OVERVIEW


  • The U.S. economy will expand by 3.2% or more this year, its best performance since at least 2005, as an improving job market leads to stepped-up consumer spending, according JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank and BNP Paribas. 

  •  U.S. consumer sentiment rose to the highest level since January 2007 

  •  (Blommberg)The unexpected 0.2 percent drop in hourly earnings on average last month, the biggest since records began in 2006, was probably influenced by the mix of workers on payrolls, economists said. Big gains in hiring of seasonal holiday workers, more entry-level positions and retirements of more expensive employees all probably played a role. 

  •  Russia’s credit rating was cut to one step above junk by Fitch. 

  •  (Prtichard) Without such jobs, Italy's political system is going to blow up soon. Its unemployment rate has just reached a modern-era high of 13.4pc, with youth unemployment hitting a record 43.9pc. The Mezzogiorno is sliding from depression towards social collapse. The Bourbons made a better fist of it. By cruel contrast, Germany generated 27,000 fresh jobs in December. Unemployment has fallen to a 23-year low of 5pc. Things have never been so good since reunification. There could hardly be clearer evidence that monetary union is unworkable. 


  •  (Bloomberg)ECB weighs bond purchases up to 500 billion Euros to juice economy..A 500 billion-euro purchase program would take the ECB halfway toward its goal of boosting its balance sheet to avert a deflationary spiral in the euro area 

  •  (MarketWatch) -- European Central Bank Mario Draghi has signaled the ECB could be closer to launching full-scale quantitative easing, as he said the risk of deflation has increased. The Euro hit a 9-year low as bloc slips into deflation.. 

  •  The Institute for Supply Management’s factory index dropped to a six-month low of 55.5 from 58.7 in November. 

  •  China's PPI fell a record 3.3% 

  • YoY, the 34th straight month of decline. China's Purchasing Managers Index slipped to 50.1 in December from 50.3 in November, marking the third straight month of decline.Anlysts expect the central bank to continue to inject liquidity into the economy in the new year. 

  •  Chinese industrial profits fell 4.2% in November - the biggest annual decline since August 2012  

  • The UK economy, boosted by the inclusion of sex and drugs in national accounts, overtakes France by a whisker to become the world's fifth largest economy 

  •  Saudi oil minister Ali al-Naimi says price is irrelevant to output decisions PRNewswire: 

  • The total value of all the homes in the United States is expected to end 2014 at $27.5 trillion, a 6.7 percent increase from last year and the third consecutive overall increase, according to Zillow. 
  • Homes lost $6.1 trillion in value between December 2006 and December 2011. 

  •  (MW Howard Gold) Two researchers from the University of Oxford have estimated that computerization will put nearly half the jobs in the United States in jeopardy, including some creative professions that were thought to be immune...

  • IBM researchers estimate that a human brain can make 36.8 quadrillion calculations per second. The total computational power of the world's supercomputers is now eight times that, and the largest supercomputer, in Guangzhou, China, has nearly the computational capacity of one human brain...Peter Bock, professor emeritus of engineering at the George Washington University, has followed AI's progress for four decades and he says it's tracking Moore's Law closely. "We are precisely on schedule" to have the capacity to create the human-like brain of Mada, a fictional intelligent machine he described in the 1993 book "The Emergence of Artificial Cognition." Bock's TARGET DATE: 2024. 

  •  Only 15.6%  of advisers outperformed the Wilshire 5000 last year, so says Mark Hulbert 

  •  Carl's Jr. announced the launch of a new grass-fed, free-range beef burger that is free of added hormones, antibiotics and steroids. and Chick-fil-A Inc. says it is phasing out all chicken raised with antibiotics over five years. 

  •  Nokia (NOK) expands HERE maps client base with Baidu partnership offering international location services to Chinese tourists travelling abroad. HERE maps are in more than 200 countries and voice-navigation facility in 118. 

  •  Bought and paid for Republicans succeeded in passing a budget that includes explicit Citigroup language (inserted at the last minute) condoning financial institutions to trade instruments that are insured by the FDIC, explicitly putting taxpayers back on the hook for losses caused by these trades. 

  •  SPIEGEL ONLINE Deaths from police shootings US 461 Germany 8 Britain 0 Japan 0

  •  Disney(DIS) declared an annual dividend of $1.15 per share, up 34%. This is Disney’s 59th consecutive dividend. 

  •  Abbott (ABT) increased the quarterly dividend to $0.24 per share from $0.22 per share. This is the 364th consecutive quarterly dividend to be paid by Abbott since 1924. 

  •  Northeastern University researchers have discovered an antibiotic called “teixobactin” that eliminates pathogens without encountering any detectable resistance — a finding that challenges long-held scientific beliefs and holds great promise for treating chronic infections

Sunday, December 14, 2014

Earth faces sixth ‘great extinction’ with 41% of amphibians set to go the way of the dodo As ecologist Paul Ehrlich has put it: “In pushing other species to extinction, humanity is busy sawing off the limb on which it perches.”

Sunday, November 30, 2014

QUICK OVERVIEW


  • Swiss Gold Referendum Fails .. 78% vote against. 
  •  China's official PMI slips to 50.3 in November.. below forecast. 
  • Investors are trimming inflation hedges by pull $17bn from commodity index products 
  •  The European Central Bank said that it has begun buying asset-backed securities, as it seeks to get banks to lend and revive the economy. The purchases are expected to last for two years. 

  • China's central bank has cut interest rates on its one-year deposit rate by 0.25%, and its one-year loan rate by 0.4 %. The Bank also said it will allow more flexibility in deposit rates. 

  •  Kraft Foods Group (KRFT) raised dividends 4.7% 

  •  Johnson Controls (JCI) raised its quarterly dividend by 18% 

  •  Intel (INTC) increased its dividend to 96 cents a share - up 6 cents 

  •  (FT) US companies will buy $450bn of their stock this year 

  •  Among the more than 100 experts surveyed in the Zillow Home Price Expectations Survey, a majority said they don't expect the housing market to normalize for at least three more years....
  •  (Zillow) Millions of Potential New Households Waiting Out the Recovery Many Americans moved in together as housing costs outpaced income over the last decade, resulting in fewer households; if these doubled-up households divide, housing demand will pick up, according to Zillow - 
  • More than a third of U.S. adults were living with roommates or adult family members in 2012, up from 25.4 percent in 2000. - 
  • Household size has risen from 1.75 adults in 2000 to 1.83 adults in 2012. - 
  • In all, the U.S. lost 5.4 million households to doubling up. - 
  • The most potential new households are in places where rent has skyrocketed during the housing recovery, such as some large markets in California and Florida. 
  •  The 2014 National Association of Realtor's: The long-term average in this survey, dating back to 1981, shows that four out of 10 purchases are from first-time home buyers. In this year’s survey, the share of first-time buyers* dropped 5 percentage points from a year ago to 33 percent, representing the lowest share since 1987 (30 percent).  
  •  Buyers searching for real estate will find more homes for sale overall, but supply of lower-priced homes is growing more slowly than high-priced homes in most of the country. 

  • Uranium..Largest weekly price increases since 1996 

  •  UK, US and Swiss authorities have fined RBS, HSBC, Citigroup, JP Morgan and UBS a total of more than £2bn over failings that led to the manipulation of the $5.3 trillion-a-day foreign exchange market. 

  •  The USDA forecasts a drop of 1.41m tonnes in global sugar inventories in 2014-15 – a decline which would be the first since 2009-10. 


  •  (The Independent) As host of the G20 summit of world leaders in Brisbane this weekend, Australia had been looking forward to its moment in the sun. However, Tony Abbott’s government risks becoming an international laughing stock, thanks to its attempts to block discussion of climate change...Mr Abbott – who once dismissed climate change science as “absolute crap” – horrified scientists and environmentalists last month when he described coal as “good for humanity” while opening a new mine in Queensland. 

  •  (Reuters) - The U.S. military's ability to stay ahead of technology advances by other countries and respond to multiple crises around the world is already in jeopardy and will get worse unless mandatory budget cuts are reversed, top U.S. officials warned 

  •  Effective January 17, all research funded in whole or in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation must be published in journals that are immediately free-to-access, under a Creative Commons Attribution-only license

Sunday, November 02, 2014

QUICK OVERVIEW

  •  If the DJIA closes above 17355 "and" the DJTA closes above 8720 InvestmentTools.com view of Dow Theory returns to bullish. 

  • Germany: retail sales in Europe's biggest economy slumped by 3.2% MoM in September. It was the sharpest drop since May 2007, and led by a fall in sales in textiles and clothes which declined by 7.35. 


  •  Italian national statistics institute said that 3.2 million citizens were unemployed in September, the highest level since 2004.The number of the jobless was 48,000 higher in September than in August and 58,000 up on the same month in 2013. Thus the unemployment rate in the country climbed back up to a record level of 12.6%. The jobless rate among people aged between 15 and 24 was 42.9%, 1.9% higher than in September 2013. 

  •  Britain's consumer confidence slipped from minus one (-1) in September to -2 in October.

  •  (Pritchard) The Bank of Japan is mopping up the country's vast debt and driving down the yen in a radical experiment in modern global finance 

  •  Japan's consumer prices for September rose 3.0% 

  • YoY Japan's household spending in September dropped 5.6% YoY (Pritchard)

  • The world has changed abruptly for investors as the US Federal Reserve and the People's Bank of China both brush aside deflation warnings and press ahead with monetary tightening 
  •  (WSJ) China is taking a step toward easing its grip on credit cards, potentially resolving a long-running trade dispute with the U.S. and allowing foreign companies such as Visa, MasterCard and other electronic-payment processors to have a greater presence there. 



  •  The U.S. real gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of 3.5% in Q3

  •  (Reuters) - The Federal Reserve ended its monthly bond purchase program and signaled confidence the U.S. economic recovery would remain on track despite signs of a slowdown in many parts of the global economy. 

  •  U.S Home values are still rising in most markets, but the rate of appreciation has slowed considerably, making the housing market less competitive for buyers, according to Zillow 
  • The U.S. housing market rebounded in September as home sales rose to their highest level of the year. After dipping in August, sales of previously owned homes climbed 2.4% in September to a annual rate of 5.17 million. 

  •  The Central Bank of Brazil's raised the country's annual basic interest rate from 11% to 11.25%, the highest level since November 2011. 

  •  Spain’s unemployment rate fell to 23.7% from 24.5% in Q3, the lowest since the end of 2011 as its economy turned into one of the fastest-growing in the euro region. 

  •  Little fish have never had it so good, according to research showing how mankind’s taste for big fish such as tuna and shark is allowing the anchovy and sardine to flourish.

Thursday, October 16, 2014

World economy so damaged it may need permanent QE


Markets are realising that the five-and-a-half year recovery since the financial crisis may already be over, says Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

With the close on 10/13/2014 of Dow Transports at 7717.69, and Dow Industrials at 16321.07, IT’s opinion of Dow Theory is now bearish.

Sunday, October 05, 2014

QUICK OVERVIEW


  • The U.S. adds 248,000 new jobs in Sept. - the jobless rate falls to 5.9 % 


  • Chinas PMI of non-manufacturing sectors out at 54% last month, down 0.4% from August. 

  • The Aral Sea, once the fourth largest lake in the world, is now completely dry…………… 

  •  The ISM said its manufacturing index dropped to 56.6% last month from a three-month high of 59% in August 

  • The IEA says world to add 200 gigawatts of solar power every year from 2025 onwards under the right policies, more than the entire stock in the world today. 

  • Eurozone jobless rate stable at 11.5% in August 

  • Eurozone annual inflation down to 0.3% in September 

  • U.S. airline stocks fell as investors fretted that news of a first Ebola case in Texas would discourage people from flying. 

  • U.S. Consumer spending rose 0.5% in August 

  • The U.S. pending home sales index dropped 1 % after a 3.2% increase in July, the National Association of Realtors said. 





  • Chinas preliminary Purchasing Managers’ Index from HSBC was at 50.5, matching the highest estimates in a Bloomberg survey 

  •  U.S. existing-home sales fell 1.8% in August 

  • S. Korea's national debt rises to 34.3 pct of GDP 

  •  G20 vows to boost global economic growth by 1.8 pct 

  • Brazil lowers growth forecast to 0.9% 

  • (Reuters) - New international tax rules proposed could eliminate structures that have allowed companies such as Google Inc and Amazon.com Inc to shave billions of dollars off their tax bills....The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) announced a series of measures that, if implemented by members, could stop companies from employing many commonly-used practices to shift profits into tax havens. 

  • While America spends $76,000 per soldier each year, EU states are down to $18,000, largely earmarked for pay and pensions, according to the Institute for Statecraft. Almost nothing is being spent on new equipment. Europe has slashed defence budgets by $70bn over the past two years even as Russia blitzes $600bn on war-fighting capabilities by 2020 and turns itself into a militarised state, a Sparta with nuclear weapons.