Author: admin

Authored by EconomicPrism’s MN Gordon, annotated by Acting-Man’s Pater Tenebrarum,

Mud Volcanoes

There are numerous explanations for just what in the heck is going on with the economy.  Some are good.  Many are bad.  Today we’ll do our part to bring clarity to disorder…

Two data series it is worth paying attention to at the moment: the unemployment rate (U3) and initial claims. As the chart at the top shows, when the former makes a low it is time to worry about the economy. Low points in the U3 UE rate slightly lead the beginning of recessions. Claims on the other hand are near coincident indicators of the stock market, this is to say, lows in initial claims tend to happen within a time period of four to six weeks surrounding major stock market peaks (in most cases they lead slightly, but small lags have occasionally occurred as well). Note: neither indicator confirms an imminent turning point as of yet – initial claims would e.g. have to rise to around 300k in order to do so. The same is true of other major recession indicators, their most recent readings do not yet confirm that the business cycle is about to turn down. However, there is a lot of circumstantial evidence that indicates such a downturn may soon be confirmed, including recent market moves (i.e., deteriorating stock prices and rising credit spreads). [PT]

Several backward looking economic fundamentals show all is well. Third quarter gross domestic product increased at an annual rate of 3.5 percent. And the unemployment rate, if you exclude something called discouraged workers, is just 3.7 percent – a near 50 year low.  By these metrics, the economy’s never been better.

Still, it doesn’t take much snooping around to uncover what’s really going on. Cracks in the economy’s foundation are transforming from minor hairline fissures to full blown surface fractures at about double the rate that Imperial Valley mud volcanoes are consuming Union Pacific Railroad tracks.  These full blown surface fractures will further multiply as the planet approaches the next financial crisis.

Gaia’s pustules… the mud volcanoes of Gobustan, a mysterious moving mud volcano near the Salton Sea and  a cold mud pot in Glenblair, California. [PT]

At the moment, for example, the auto manufacturing and housing sectors are breaking down.  Last week, General Motors announced they plan to cut 14,000 jobs and close five factories.  What in the world is going on?

We suspect that General Motors’ present failings have something to do with the fact that they aren’t very good at making cars.  Do you own a General Motors car?  Do you know anyone who owns a General Motors car?  We don’t either.

An early GM reputation destroyer – the 1971-1977 Chevi Vega. According to Popular Mechanics: “Legend has it that when Chevrolet Division Manager John DeLorean went to the GM Proving Grounds to get his first look at a prototype of the new 1971 Chevrolet Vega, the front of the car literally fell off onto the ground. But that bad omen didn’t keep DeLorean from putting the Vega on the market”. [PT]

The housing market also appears to be cracking up.  Existing and new home sales are on the decline.  Similarly, the pace of home price appreciation has declined for six straight months.  Soon enough, actual home prices will be in decline too.

Auto manufacturing and housing are both canaries in a poorly ventilated coal mine.  In particular, these two sectors are very sensitive to credit costs. A moderate rise in interest rates and they keel over.  No doubt, there are many debt encumbered corporations that are one or two quarterly earnings reports from also slumping over.

How Not to MAGA

After being subjected to nearly a decade of the Fed’s low interest rate fabrications, something remarkable has happened.  The economy has reconfigured itself in an abnormal way.  Hence, the Fed’s efforts to normalize interest rates without triggering a massive cascade of debt defaults is proving impossible.

Of course, further rate hikes, which would purge the rottenness from the system, would ultimately put the economy on a sounder footing.  Yet this is politically impossible.  President Trump’s made it loud and clear to Fed Char Jay Powell that he wants low interest rates and high asset prices.  Not the reverse.

Decades of extreme Fed intervention into credit markets are what created today’s instabilities and vast wealth disparities.  Does Trump understand that low interest rates and high asset prices are at odds with his promise to MAGA?

What’s more, the Fed’s massive credit creation scheme bears the primary responsibility for accelerating globalization and China’s rise over the last several decades.  Where did American consumers get the endless supply of credit to consume all the made in China goods?

Recognition of the extent and magnitude to which the Fed’s cheap credit distorted the global economy would require honest thought and contemplation.  Renouncing, as opposed to demanding, further credit expansions would require sacrifice.  These are not Trump’s strong suits.

Instead, he wants simple answers to complex problems.  And he has hacks like Peter Navarro yapping in his ear about the marvels of trade tariffs.  That, somehow, the act of cutting off one’s head to cure a headache, would solve America’s embarrassing trade deficit with China.

The trade deficit with China keeps growing, which is a big “so what”? The balance of trade does not say anything about a nation’s prosperity. After all, it is balanced by an offsetting capital account surplus.  [PT]

Trade tariffs are precisely how not to MAGA.  Maybe Trump knows this.  And maybe Trump knows what he’s doing.  Without question, table pounding and chest beating have served him well throughout his career.  So has making outlandish and grandiose claims.

But where all this current bluster will lead is to a place that’s utterly foreign to Trump…

Paper Lanterns

President Trump and his cohorts recently met with the Group of 20 nations in Buenos Aires, Argentina.  This included a Saturday night dinner with the President of China, Xi Jinping.  The supposed discourse at hand was the escalating trade war between the two countries.

Unfortunately, a joint statement wasn’t issued following dessert. This subsequently led to an enormous hubbub.  First, there was word of a 90-day truce on the imposition of new trade tariffs.  Then Trump tweeted something about China agreeing to buy lots of American made stuff.  Thus, stocks went on a fabulous binge on Monday; the Dow Jones Industrial Average gobbled up over 287 points.

Xi and Trump gaze at each other across the salad in Buenos Aires. [PT]

Then China, if we remember correctly, contradicted the supposed 90-day truce.  Hence, on Tuesday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average purged 799 points.  After that we lost track of the latest rumors of what was actually discussed, as none of it made much sense.

For all we know, the dinner’s discussion was a friendly exchange of tips and tricks for using big data to assign social credit scores to citizens… and how to reprimand and restrict people for behavior deemed uncouth.  Perhaps, following the main course, the conversation devolved to a braggadocio give-and-take of locker room talk.

What we do know is that no real progress was made towards a trade agreement.  What we also know is that no real trade agreement, other than window dressing, will ever be reached between China and the United States.  Here’s why…

Negotiating with China is completely different than negotiating with New York contractors or the mayor’s office.  No middle ground can be reached because no middle ground exists.  What Trump is up against is outside the realm of the art of the deal.

For example, paper lanterns have been used in China since the early days of the Han Dynasty… roughly a century and a half before Jesus of Nazareth turned water into wine.  Yet no one really knows the history or origin of paper lanterns.

Shanghai Lantern Festival – in China they like to be properly lanterned up, but it is not quite clear why. The lantern makers are all for it, that much is certain. [PT]

What is their purpose?  What do they represent?  Are they aesthetically pleasing?

No one knows.  And no one cares.  But day after day, millennia after millennia, the people hang their paper lanterns all the same.  Paper lanterns, in essence, are draped across outdoor markets and alleyways for no apparent reason.

Such vagaries have been interwoven into the fabric of Chinese culture for several millennia or more.  These vagaries are implicit to negotiating with Xi Jinping.

Hence, the only thing Trump’s trade negotiations will achieve is paper lanterns.  A little window dressing that the stock market can feel good about for a day or two… before a technology cold war – or worse – stands the global market place on its collective head.

Long paper lanterns.  Short everything else.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2QkDxRq Tyler Durden

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is warning the West that targeting his country with sanctions and destroying the economy will have disastrous consequences for Europe, unleashing a “deluge” of drugs, refugees, and the proliferation of terrorist elements. 

“I warn those who impose sanctions that if Iran’s ability to fight drugs and terrorism are affected … you will not be safe from a deluge of drugs, asylum seekers, bombs and terrorism,” Rouhani said in a televised speech, according to Reuters.

It’s rhetoric similar to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s consistent refrain throughout the war, who predicted that the West-Gulf alliance push for regime change in Damascus would unleash refugee chaos on EU shores, and result in terrorists wreaking havoc in European cities, much of which actually came to fruition. Pundits in the US and UK had subsequently accused Syria and Russia of “weaponizing” the refugee crisis, which they will now no doubt accuse Tehran of doing as well. 

Rouhani touted Iran’s role in counter-terrorism, something which will fall on deaf ears in the West:

“We have been just as determined in the fight against terrorism … sacrificing hundreds of valuable troops and spending millions of dollars annually,” he said.

“We don’t expect the West to pay their share, but they should know that sanctions hurt Iran’s capacity to fight drugs and terrorism,” Rouhani added.

Iran sits between Afghanistan, the world’s largest opium producer, and Pakistan, a major central Asian transit hub for the global drug trade. 

Rouhani continued, “We spend $800 million a year to fight drugs which ensures the health of nations stretching from of Eastern Europe to the American West and North Africa to West Asia. Imagine what a disaster there would be if there is a breach in the dam.”

The Iranian president’s words may not be mere hyperbole or empty threats, as Reuters acknowledged based on U.N. data that “In 2012, Iran accounted for two thirds of the world’s opium seizures and one fourth of the world’s heroin and morphine seizures, a U.N. report published in 2014 showed.”

Advancing the same message Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif stated separately that it’s the United States that’s destabilizing the Middle East, flooding with arms and making it a “tinderbox”. 

Concerning the potential for a refugee crisis, especially should military intervention result from US-led economic warfare after pulling out of the 2015 JCPOA, Rouhani’s prediction could easily become reality. Reuters concluded that an exodus is already beginning based on Iran’s collapsing economy after fresh rounds of sanctions:

More than 700,000 undocumented Afghans have returned from Iran this year as the Iranian economy tightens, according to data from the U.N.’s migration agency, and Iranian media said some Afghans were seeking to enter Turkey to reach Europe.

Meanwhile, US rhetoric on Iran has only grown more jingoistic of late. In recent comments over Iran’s developing ballistic missile program, the State Department’s special representative on Iran, Brian Hook, said the “military option” is on the table. 

“We have been very clear with the Iranian regime that we will not hesitate to use military force when our interests are threatened. I think they understand that. I think they understand that very clearly,” Hook said late last week.

“I think right now, while we have the military option on the table, our preference is to use all of the tools that are at our disposal diplomatically,” he added.

Given that Iran has a population of over 80 million people, any future war — which Iran hawks like National Security Advisor have been gunning for for years — would most certainly dwarf the migrant and refugee shocks that Europe’s shores have already experienced.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2ElzM7W Tyler Durden

Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via Oilprice.com,

Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro said on state television that Venezuela would put in place in 2019 a program to sell all its oil production in the Petro cryptocurrency, which the leader is touting as the first state-backed oil-backed digital currency.

Gradually, Venezuela will sell all its oil production in Petro, Maduro said during a visit to Russia. For 2019, Venezuela will have a timetable to sell all its oil production in the cryptocurrency, its president said.

In this way, Venezuela will free itself from the currency used by Washington “to create economic pain” to other countries, and to “persecute countries, as it does with Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, and Russia”, Maduro said.

El Petro, however, is seen by analysts and experts as nothing but a scam and another effort by Venezuela to skirt sanctions and mask the inability to overhaul the ailing domestic economy.

According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Venezuela’s economy will collapse by 18 percent this year, while inflation is expected to be at 1,370,000 percent.

Over the past months, Maduro has been touting a new plan for economic recovery, which includes a new policy on gasoline pricing that would raise Venezuela’s ultra-cheap gas prices for the first time in two decades. The plan to ease the severe economic crisis also featured a devaluation of the currency and pegging the new bolivars to the Petro.

Maduro claims that the Petro is strengthening his recently announced economic overhaul plan and will “revolutionize” the global crypto economy with a new form of trade, finance, and monetary exchange.

Experts and analysts are skeptical that the Venezuelan cryptocurrency is really backed by oil assets and minerals.

“Reaction from the cryptocurrency community has been a mixture of dumbfoundedness and anger,” Alex Tapscott from the Blockchain Research Institute told the BBC.

According to Tapscott, there isn’t any proof at all to back up Venezuela’s claim that each unit of the Petro is backed by oil.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2B0GX17 Tyler Durden

Canada’s extraordinary arrest one week ago of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou, the daughter of Huawei founder and billionaire executive Ren Zhengfei, and its decision to charge her with “multiple” counts of fraud – a preamble to her likely extradition to the US to face charges of knowingly violating US and EU sanctions on Iran – has elicited widespread anger in Beijing, which declared Meng’s detention a “violation of human rights” during a bail hearing for the jailed executive on Friday.

That anger has apparently only intensified after the hearing adjourned without a decision (it will resume on Monday, allowing Meng’s defense team to argue for why she should be released on bail, contrary to the wishes of government attorneys who are prosecuting the case).

And with Canada insisting that it will prosecute Meng to the full extent of the law over allegations that she mislead banks about the true relationship of a Huawei subsidiary called Skycom, angry Chinese officials have decided to issue an ultimatum directly to the Canadian ambassador, who was summoned to a meeting in Beijing on Saturday and told in no uncertain terms that Canada will face “severe consequences” if Meng isn’t released, according to the Wall Street Journal.

China’s foreign ministry publicized the warning in a statement (though Canadian officials have yet to comment):

Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng summoned Canada’s ambassador to Beijing, John McCallum, on Saturday to deliver the warning, according to a statement from the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

The statement doesn’t mention the name of Huawei’s chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, though it refers to a Huawei “principal” taken into custody at U.S. request while changing planes in Vancouver, as was Ms. Meng. The statement accuses Canada of “severely violating the legal, legitimate rights of a Chinese citizen” and demands the person’s release.

“Otherwise there will be severe consequences, and Canada must bear the full responsibility,” said the statement, which was posted online late Saturday.

Phone calls to the Canadian Embassy rang unanswered while the Canadian government’s global affairs media office didn’t immediately respond to an email request for comment.

The warning marks an escalation in Beijing’s rhetoric as investors worry that the arrest could cause the shaky trade detente between the US and China to devolve into acrimony. A federal judge issued a warrant for Meng’s arrest back in August. Though after she was made aware of the warrant, Meng avoided travel to the US. She was arrested in Vancouver last Saturday while traveling to Mexico.

Aside from breaking off trade talks, some are worried that Beijing could seek to retaliate in kind by arresting a notable US executive. While the threats of Chinese bureaucrats might not amount to much in the eyes of US prosecutors, threatening a US executive with long-term detention in a Chinese “reeducation camp” just might.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2G70OS8 Tyler Durden

Authored by Robert Shiller, op-ed via The New York Times,

We are, once again, experiencing one of the greatest housing booms in United States history.

How long this will last and where it is heading next are impossible to know now.

But it is time to take notice: My data shows that this is the United States’ third biggest housing boom in the modern era.

Since February 2012, when the price declines associated with the last financial crisis ended, prices for existing homes in the United States have been rising steadily and enormously. According to the S&P/CoreLogic/Case-Shiller National Home Price Index (which I helped to create) as of September, the prices were 53 percent higher than they were at the bottom of the market in 2012.

That means, on average, a house that sold for, say, $200,000 in 2012 would bring over $300,000 in September.

Even after factoring in Consumer Price Index inflation, real existing home prices were up almost 40 percent during that period. That is a substantial increase in less than seven years.

In fact, based on my data, it amounts to the third strongest national boom in real terms since the Consumer Price Index began in 1913, behind only the explosive run-up in prices that led to the great financial crisis of a decade ago, and one connected with World War II and the great postwar Baby Boom.

The No. 1 boom occurred from February 1997 to October 2006, when real prices of existing United States homes rose 74 percent. This was a period of intense speculative enthusiasm — for houses and for financial instruments based on mortgages as investments — and it was also a time of great regulatory complacency. The term “flipping houses” became popular then. People exploited the boom by buying homes and selling them only months later at a huge profit.

That boom ended disastrously. Soaring valuations collapsed with a 35 percent drop in real prices for existing homes, ushering in the financial crisis that enveloped the world in 2008 and 2009.

The second greatest boom, from 1942 to 1947, had more benign consequences. Over this five-year interval, real prices of existing homes rose 60 percent.

Booms and busts are rooted in popular narratives with complex social-psychological roots. This boom centered on a war-induced housing shortage, an enormous increase in the number of new babies and families who would need housing after the war, and the 1944 G.I. Bill, which subsidized home-buying by veterans. Home prices did not fall significantly after this boom ended.

Today, signs of weakness in the housing market are being taken by some as a signal that the prices of single-family homes may fall soon, as they did sharply after 2006. The leading indicators, which include building permits and sales of both existing and new homes, have all been declining in recent months.

But with few examples of extreme booms, we cannot be sure what such indicators mean for the current market.

Low interest rates — imposed by the Federal Reserve and other central banks in reaction to the financial crisis — are the most popular culprit in the current boom. There is some apparent merit to this view, since these three biggest nationwide housing booms all included very low interest rates.

But the market reaction to interest rates is hardly immediate or predictable. The housing market does not react as directly as you might expect to interest rate movements. Over the nearly seven years of the current boom, from February 2012 to the present, all major domestic interest rates have increased, not decreased. So, while interest rates have been low, they have moved the wrong way, yet the boom has continued.

Another explanation is simple economic growth. But, as a matter of history, prices of existing homes — as opposed to the supply of newly built homes — have generally not responded to economic growth. There was only a 20 percent increase in real prices of existing homes in the 50 years from 1950 to 2000 despite a sixfold increase in real G.D.P.

The simplest narrative being given for the current boom is just that the 2008-2009 financial crisis and the so-called Great Recession are over and home prices are returning to normal.

But that explanation does not cut it either. In September they were 11 percent higher than at the 2006 peak in nominal terms, and almost as high in real terms. This is not a return to normal, but a market that appears to be rising to a record.

It is difficult to assess the contribution of President Trump to the current boom.

It is certainly less obvious than the role of President George W. Bush in the 1997-2006 boom. Mr. Bush extolled the benefits of “the ownership society” and in 2003 he signed the American Dream Downpayment Act, which subsidized home purchases. In his 2004 re-election bid he boldly asserted: “We want more people owning their own home.” This seems to have contributed to an atmosphere of high expectations for home price increases.

The Trump administration’s attitude toward housing is less clear. President Trump’s slogan “Make America Great Again” has overtones of the “American dream.” But provisions of his Tax Reform and Jobs Act of 2017 were unfriendly to homeowners.

Even without major further interest rate increases, there would seem to be a limit on how much the prices of existing homes can increase. After all, people must struggle to cover a range of living expenses, and builders are supplying fresh new offerings to compete with the existing houses on the market.

Perhaps the home price increases are now a self-fulfilling prophesy. As John Maynard Keynes argued in his 1936 “General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money,” people seem to have a “simple faith in the conventional basis of valuation.”

If the conventional basis is now that home prices are going up 5 percent a year, then sellers, who would otherwise have no idea what to ask for their houses, will just put a price based on this convention. And likewise buyers will not feel they are paying too much if they accept the convention. In the United States, we may believe that the process is all part of the “American dream.”

It can’t go on forever, of course. But when it will end isn’t knowable. The data can’t tell us when prices will level off, or whether they will plunge catastrophically. All we do know is that prices have been roaring higher at a speed rarely seen in American history.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2rpSmD4 Tyler Durden

Chief of Staff John Kelly – who was widely credited for instilling ‘order’ and ‘discipline’ during the early days of the Trump Administration before a stream of gaffes and scandals (most notably the domestic abuse scandal that led to the firing of White House Secretary Rob Porter) strained his relationship with the president – will leave the West Wing at the end of the year.

President Trump confirmed as much during a brief chat with a group of reporters on the South Lawn of the White House Saturday afternoon, according to a flurry of tweets.

Trump said he will announce Kelly’s replacement “within a few days.”

President Trump tells reporters on the south lawn John Kelly will be leaving the White House, per pool.

— Sarah Westwood (@sarahcwestwood) December 8, 2018

The president praised John Kelly and thanked him. He said he would announce a successor within in a few days and that person may serve on an interim basis.

— Kelly O’Donnell (@KellyO) December 8, 2018

Though rumors about Kelly’s impending resignation/firing were never far from the headlines, the chief of staff had managed to endure through several scandals and reported ‘rough patches’ in his relationship with President Trump. But when multiple media outlets reported this week that Kelly would be the next major administration figure to leave, the anonymous sources quoted in those articles insisted that, this time, things were different.

The word on the street is that Trump has already selected Nick Ayers, chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, to take over for Kelly. Kelly, a former Marine general, served as head of the Department of Homeland Security before moving to the West Wing during the summer of June 2017 after Trump fired his first chief of staff, Reince Priebus.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2L73v4I Tyler Durden

Authored by Chris Hamilton via Econimica blog,

Typically in times of strong economic activity, tax revenues rise and federal government spending is flat or even declines.  Times of economic weakness (usually recognized as recessions) see the opposite.  The chart below shows the year over year change (quarterly basis) in Federal Government expenditures (blue line), federal tax revenue (black line), and household net worth (yellow columns), plus shaded areas are recessions.  The current period of surging federal government expenditures, collapsing tax revenues, amid surging household wealth is “unique”.

Focusing on the 1970 through 1994 period, the chart below shows the interplay of goosing federal spending while tax revenues (and economic activity slow).  This is typically also associated with periods of declining or low growth household net worth.

Focusing on 1995 through Q3 of 2018, chart below details the surge in federal spending, tanking tax revenues, coincident with declines in household net worth…until now?!?  2011 to present is the period with the greatest wealth creation growth in the nations history, yet during this period of economic strength, growth in federal tax receipts has been consistently decelerating…and even prior to the Trump tax cuts had already turned negative.  Since the tax cuts, tax receipts are collapsing while federal spending is surging…hallmarks of what typically takes place during a recession, not the greatest wealth creation in this nations history.  The federal government is already red-lining stimulus…before a slowdown or recession has even officially begun.

Now the economy is cooling, the Fed is likely to cease rate hikes, likely to slow or even cease “normalizing” its balance sheet (despite the balance sheet still being over 5x’s the size of the pre-GFC balance sheet).  Growth in federal spending is likely to continue accelerating and tax receipts continue declining.  Negative interest rates and more QE are certainly good likelihoods.

The already swollen issuance of public (marketable) debt since 2007 is about to move from a steep angle to an exploding vertical upward trajectory.

The much feared debt crisis is directly ahead exactly as the demographic driven crisis hits full force.  Charts below detail the working age population growth vs. 65+yr/old populations from 1966 through 2030.  Note the highlighted areas from 2018 through 2030 of minimal growth in the working age population versus the mushrooming of the 65+yr/old population.

65+ year olds, chart below.

Simply put, from 2018 through 2030:

• 15-64yr/old population +4 million persons, primarily derived from anticipated immigration (with 75% Labor Force Participation rate)

• 65-74yr/old population +8 million persons (27% LFP)

• 75+yr/old population +12 million persons (8% LFP)

For quick reference, the chart below details the average income, expenditures, and labor force participation (highlighted boxes) by age of the head of household.

Even more simply put, 73% of the 65-74yr/old population growth and 92% of the 75+yr/old population growth will move directly into the “not in labor force” categorization (detailed HERE) while the potential for further growth in employees tanks (detailed HERE).  And as immigration (legal/illegal) continues decelerating, some or all the estimated working age population growth will disappear.  But this is far larger than just the US, as the huge deceleration in growth of global energy consumption is telling us (detailed HERE).

Get ready, the sum of a whole lot of bad policies and broken systems are about to, very sadly, come to fruition.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2zRFcU9 Tyler Durden

What does Martian wind sound like? Now we know as for the first time in history sound has been recorded on another planet’s surface.

On Friday NASA released audio from its InSight Mars lander, which touched down on the planet’s surface last week and transmitted audio of wind and vibration sounds deflecting off the lander’s 7-foot solar panels. 

Scientists did not initially expect to capture such clear sound and were surprised upon listening to the transmission. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory stated in a press release, “Capturing this audio was an unplanned treat”… “But one of the things [the InSight mission] is dedicated to is measuring motion on Mars, and naturally that includes motion caused by sound waves.”

NASA scientists described the sound as from a northwest wind blowing 10-15 mph and atmospheric vibrations picked up by sensors on Dec. 1, according to the official media release:

InSight sensors captured a haunting low rumble caused by vibrations from the wind, estimated to be blowing between 10 to 15 mph (5 to 7 meters a second) on Dec. 1, from northwest to southeast. The winds were consistent with the direction of dust devil streaks in the landing area, which were observed from orbit.

NASA posted the audio to YouTube on Friday, which can be listened to here (begins :35 mark):  

Scientists described further of the advanced senors that picked up the Mars audio: “Two very sensitive sensors on the spacecraft detected these wind vibrations: an air pressure sensor inside the lander and a seismometer sitting on the lander’s deck, awaiting deployment by InSight’s robotic arm.”

And further the sensors act as the rover’s “pair of ears,” according to the NASA description: “The two instruments recorded the wind noise in different ways. The air pressure sensor, part of the Auxiliary Payload Sensor Subsystem (APSS), which will collect meteorological data, recorded these air vibrations directly. The seismometer recorded lander vibrations caused by the wind moving over the spacecraft’s solar panels, which are each 7 feet (2.2 meters) in diameter and stick out from the sides of the lander like a giant pair of ears.”

This is historic. It’s the first time anyone has ever heard a sound on Mars.@NASAJPL just released audio of wind blowing across the Martian landscape, captured by the Mars Lander’s audio sensors.

This is what it sounds like.

(Turn your speakers up) pic.twitter.com/wJPUUAUPCW

— Muhammad Lila (@MuhammadLila) December 7, 2018

In two years the Mars 2020 rover expected to launch and will have two microphones on board for clearer sound recording.

The current rover traveling Mars’ surface, InSight, landed on November 26 after traveling for seven months and some 300 million miles through space. Its mission is explore the planet’s deep interior while analyzing seismic activity on the red planet. 

via RSS https://ift.tt/2SzYLai Tyler Durden

Via Dana Lyons’ Tumblr,

The numerous important trendline tests currently underway across the financial markets suggest this is a key juncture.

Volatility in global equity markets has kicked back into hyper-drive this week with an average daily true range in the S&P 500 approaching a staggering 3% for the week. The volatility (at least the downside part of it) has resulted in “tests” of a number of important trendlines throughout the financial markets — both in the U.S. and abroad. This proliferation of important tests suggests that we are near an important juncture in the markets. Specifically, as the tests pertain to stocks, it’ll be critical for the various markets to hold their respective uptrend lines. Should they fail here, it could be a long way down to the next significant support levels.

We could have spent all day posting about key trendline tests presently in play. However, as highlighted in our #TrendlineWednesday feature on StockTwits and Twitter, here are some of the most important ones across the financial markets, in the U.S. and abroad.

First off, we have the Russell 2000 testing its post-2009 Up trendline.

Similarly, the Nasdaq 100 is testing its post-2009 Up trendline that it held last month.

Across the pond, we see perhaps the most prolific trendline in the global stock market universe — the broken post-2000 Down trendline in France’s CAC-40 Index — getting tested at the moment.

Staying in Europe, we also have the UK’s FTSE 100 testing its post-2009 Up trendline.

And at perhaps the lowest end of the European equity spectrum, we see Deutsche Bank testing the trendline connecting its series of lower lows over the past decade.

Elsewhere in the world, we see, once again, the MSCI Emerging Markets Index testing its broken decade-long Down trendline.

And it’s not just stocks getting having all the trendline fun. We see, among other bond tickers, the 30-Year U.S. Treasury Yield testing its post-2016 Up Trendline.

Like I said, we can go on and on here. I think the message behind all of these important tests is that this is a critical juncture in the market. If, in the case of the stock indices, the tests are successful, a solid rally may finally take hold after the recent correction. If not, like we said, it could be a long way down.

*  *  *

If you are interested in an “all-access” pass to our charts, research and investment moves, we invite you to further check out The Lyons Share. There, we post all of the noteworthy chart developments for members — EVERY DAY. You can also follow our investment process and posture on a daily basis — including insights into what we’re looking to buy and sell and when. Given what we believe will be a treacherous market climate going forward, there has never been a more important time to reap the benefits of our risk-managed approach. Thanks for reading!

via RSS https://ift.tt/2BcpYJt Tyler Durden

Washington media exploded Friday night following the publication of sentencing memos filed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and prosecutors with the SDNY which called for Cohen to serve a “substantial” prison sentence (NY prosecutors recommended a “slight downward variance” of 42 months), arguing that the attorney’s decision to rat on his former boss with his back against the wall wasn’t a noble act and didn’t excuse his many criminal acts – from bank fraud to violations of campaign finance laws – that were committed with the assumption of impunity, and without the knowledge of the family Cohen has claimed to be trying to protect.

As a refresher, here are a few of the highlights from the memos:

• Mueller said Cohen had “gone to significant lengths to assist the Special Counsel’s investigation” and met with the special counsel’s office on 7 occasions. Still, Mueller didn’t ask for leniency and said any prison sentence imposed by the New York judge would be appropriate.

• Cohen provided information about his contacts with “Russian interests,” including his and others’ involvement in the Moscow Project and Russians’ outreach to the campaign.

• “Synergy on a government level”: One Russian national who contacted Cohen in late 2015 claimed to be a “trusted person” in the Russian Federation reached out and claimed they could offer the campaign “synergy on a government level.”

• “By virtue of his regular contact with Company executives during the campaign,” Cohen provided the Special Counsel’s office “useful information concerning certain discrete Russia-related matters core to its investigation.”

• The White House link: Cohen provided “relevant and useful information” about his contacts with “persons connected to the White House” from 2017 to 2018.

• During his proffer sessions, Cohen admitted that he had previously lied about an invitation to arrange a meeting between Trump and Vladimir Putin in late 2015. Cohen claimed that, in fact, he had discussed the possibility with Trump.

• Federal Prosecutors for the first time also said that Cohen committed campaign finance crimes “in coordination with and at the direction of [Donald Trump, aka Individual-1]”

While the Washington press corp was quick to assume that these revelations suggest that Mueller will try to frame Trump as working to orchestrate wide-ranging collusion with a foreign government (in the documents, Trump was referred to only as “Individual 1”), many, including the president himself, pointed out that these allegations amount to little more than hearsay and are totally dependent on the word of an admitted liar.

In a Saturday morning tweetstorm, Trump let his feelings about the memos and their contents be known, arguing that the summary of Cohen’s testimony “totally clears” the president of wrongdoing…

Totally clears the President. Thank you!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 7, 2018

…Before pointing out that after two years and nearly $30 million spent on Mueller’s probe, the special counsel had failed to uncover any concrete evidence of collusion (even CNN admitted that the sentencing memos don’t suggest that there was “any crime committed” by the president).

AFTER TWO YEARS AND MILLIONS OF PAGES OF DOCUMENTS (and a cost of over $30,000,000), NO COLLUSION!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 8, 2018

As he’s fond of doing, Trump quoted a defensive take offered by Fox News host Geraldo Rivera.

“This is collusion illusion, there is no smoking gun here. At this late date, after all that we have gone through, after millions have been spent, we have no Russian Collusion. There is nothing impeachable here.” @GeraldoRivera Time for the Witch Hunt to END!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 8, 2018

Bill Mitchell pointed out in a tweet that Cohen had said Trump had no knowledge of his contacts with Russians UNTIL the lawyer learned that saying the opposite would be the only way to avoid a lengthy prison term.

I’m confused on the Cohen testimony. He said Trump had no knowledge of him reaching out to the Russians, but then when he found out it would get him a more lenient sentence, he said he DID recall discussing this with Trump?

Anyone else see the glaring problem with this?

— Bill Mitchell (@mitchellvii) December 8, 2018

Before the memos were released on Friday, Trump reminded the public that his legal team would publish a “major Counter Report” to Mueller’s allegations to shine a light on the political bias at the DOJ that helped kick start the investigation.

We will be doing a major Counter Report to the Mueller Report. This should never again be allowed to happen to a future President of the United States!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 7, 2018

In a statement, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders argued that Cohen’s claims contain “nothing of value that wasn’t already known.”

“The government’s filings in Mr. Cohen’s case tell us nothing of value that wasn’t already known,” press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement. “Mr. Cohen has repeatedly lied and as the prosecution has pointed out to the court, Mr. Cohen is no hero.”

To be sure, some conservatives continued to insist that the memos contained evidence of wrongdoing by Trump. One of the most prominent among these was Kellyanne Conway’s less-famous husband George Conway, who has emerged as a prominent Trump critici since being denied a position within the president’s DOJ.

Except for that little part where the US Attorney’s Office says that you directed and coordinated with Cohen to commit two felonies. Other than that, totally scot-free. https://t.co/YXmgY9KmXi

— George Conway (@gtconway3d) December 8, 2018

Trump has taken a lot of flack from the media lately for pointing out the DOJ’s conspicuous unwillingness to pursue charges against the Clintons. However, one Twitter user made one “casual observation” that could explain why Trump has been subjected to so much scrutiny, while the Clintons haven’t.

Don’t take this as a defense of Trump, just a casual observation…he has no political insurance policy as an outsider…it begs the questions as to why Clinton’s and perhaps O were not investigated this thoroughly…Answer, they had leverage on their opponents

— Robert L. Armstrong (@rlaattorney) December 8, 2018

 

via RSS https://ift.tt/2B2tJ3Q Tyler Durden