Buried in his massive Trump-Russia report, special counsel Robert Mueller admits that he was able to pinpoint Blackwater founder Erik Prince’s precise location in January, 2017 by matching his cell phone signal to a cell site near Trump Tower in New York City, according to Rowan Scarborough of the Washington Times.
The special counsel’s report discloses the use of this investigative technique, by which police determine a suspect’s location via a cellphone’s GPS signal.
The Prince narrative is one instance in unredacted sections of the report in which Mr. Mueller’s team explicitly discloses cellphone tracking. It raises the question of whether the FBI applied the process to other investigative subjects — a phone’s GPS signal can disclose its exact location within a few feet. One of the first requests the FBI makes when confronting subjects is to ask for their electronic devices.
The fact Mr. Mueller could pinpoint Mr. Prince’s exact whereabouts suggest he used GPS readouts, which prosecutors can subpoena from cellular service providers. –Washington Times
“I got the distinct impression that they had all my electronic communications and they operated with a confidence borne of a complete complement of the communications of everyone else,” former Trump campaign adviser Michael Caputo – a harsh critic of the Mueller investigation – told the Times.
Mr. Prince is a wealthy former Navy SEAL known for founding the private security firm Blackwater USA, which he later sold. His global business empire revolves around private force protection and commando-type training for governments and corporations.
He dabbled in giving Trump campaign advice. After the election, Mr. Princebecame a frequent visitor to Trump Tower, where he met principally with adviser Steve Bannon, the Mueller report said.
Mr. Prince emerged as a possible backdoor link to the Kremlin via Kirill Dmitriev, director of Moscow’s sovereign wealth fund and a close associate of Mr. Putin.
As the Times notes, the Mueller report dispelled a major MSM fake-news talking point from the infamous ‘Steele Dossier’ – namely that former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen was in prague in August 2016 to meet with Russian operatives, based on an alleged cellphone tower ‘ping’ picked up from Cohen’s phone.
Cohen has denied this, and the Mueller report specifically notes that Cohen didn’t go to Prague – which Mueller admits would have likely led to the conclusion that there was a conspiracy between Trump and Russia.
Down the road, we will all look back at the first week of June 2019 as watershed moment.
First, the Fed gave us all the groundwork for rate cuts the market had started to price in. From a tactical perspective, you had Evans and other using trade wars to open the door to what he labeled “insurance reasons” to talk about policy adjustments. From a more fundamental perspective, you had the AIT clan of Brainard (“we haven’t hit 2% inflation goal on a sustainable basis) and Williams (“too low inflation is a more pressing problem today’) using persistently disappointing inflation as their cover to cut. Interestingly, you are now even getting social justifications (too many people left behind during the recovery) as reasons for the Fed to cut. All that was enough to sustain Fed rate cut pricing, and sooth risk asset fears.
We also saw another downtick and disappointment in the Manufacturing PMI. We have spoken about this a few times that as a China/US trade war persists along with lower oil prices and flooded farm lands; a Manufacturing PMI contraction is a matter of months away. Last week was another step in that direction. It should be noted the ISM Service PMI, which in all fairness is most of the US economy, came in fine so this isn’t an economic disaster yet. However also note the Markit PMI (why do we ignore Markit in the US but nowhere else in the world?) remains precipitously close to contraction at 50.9.
Most importantly last week, we saw very initial signs the labor market is cooling/rolling over/turning whatever you want to call it. This is significant because anybody who has fought the Fed cut mentality has used the labor market as their cover. Your cover is getting pulled. ADP and NFP both were pretty disastrous. About the only positive thing you can say is at least they didn’t print negative.
The 6-month moving average of NFP has been declining all year…
Furthermore, the initial turning of the labor market was not only seen in the lagging indicators of ADP and NFP but also in some more forward looking indicators.
Help Wanted OnLine Index is turning over…
Truckers and transport jobs are not only an important part of the economy (especially for the center of the country), but more importantly it’s a read through to the overall health of the economy. Meaning if truckers and other transport jobs are hot, then the economy is cooking. Last year you couldn’t find enough truckers. This year is another story.
Aggregate Weekly Hours – All Employees Trade & Transport – also seeing the 6-month moving average turning lower…
Therefore, you are seeing plenty of signs the labor market is, to say it conservatively, weakening on a rate of change basis.
If we look at where Fed pricing stands now compared to May 6th when I first showed this table in my note “40bps of cuts is not enough for the end of cycle,” the market has rightfully caught up and priced in more cuts. Even the “Johnny come lately” banks and academic economist have finally shifted their views.
As we can see, a lot more has been priced in and positioning generally has gotten long. So what’s my beef today? There is 92bps of cuts priced for the whole cycle. The bulk of that comes this year with ~65bps priced. That is the market partying like its 1995 or perhaps using the Evans narrative of insurance cuts. That’s fully priced now and perhaps overpriced if anything.
The 2020 pricing is what I want to point to. If you believe the narrative that the economy is not in a tailspin but in what looks to me like the most classic end of cycle, and you are paying attention to Fed rhetoric; then the one cut only priced into 2020 seems too little (~27bps of cuts priced past 2019). In other words, the risk reward is now to play for more cuts in 2020.
So as the market starts to price out rate cuts in the past few sessions, you are getting your opportunity to play for more cuts past 2019. That means you can make specific 2020 plays like selling EDH0/EDH1 spread as it approaches key resistance levels.
EDH0/EDH1 is coming up on pivot and trend resistance at -10bps…
Or you can go back to my old friend the EDM1/EDM2 steepener which remains a classic end of cycle trade and coming back down to levels we want to reengage. I am watching for a pullback down to 10bps.
EDM1/EDM2 is falling to trend and pivot support at 10bps…
To be clear, flatteners in 2020 and steepeners there on out with the thought being that more cuts will come in 2020, and those cuts lead to a better economic backdrop in the future which steepens out time spreads further out the curve.
I would also point out that there is a mindset that exists where the Fed will not cut during the presidential election cycle in 2020. Let’s be logical for a minute. If the US economy, which consensus economist expectations are for slower growth already in 2020 not even taking into account a potential labor market turn, slows sharply in 2020, do you really think the Fed will not cut?? It would be political if they DID NOT respond to a slowdown. The Fed will be data dependent as they always are. So if inflation is sub 1.5% and UER is ticking higher you think the Fed is going to say oh we are holding off because of the election?
The market is therefore giving you an almost free option with 2H 2020 Fed pricing. The FFM0/FFF1 spread (June 2020/Jan 2021) is 8bps. If the Fed doesn’t cut at all from July to December, you lose 8bps. If the Fed cuts once you make 17bps. If the Fed cuts twice you make 42bps. That’s call asymmetry folks.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2MNteUG Tyler Durden
Less than a month after a helicopter crashed into the Hudson River, NYPD reports that a helicopter has crashed into a high-rise building on 5th Avenue at 50th Street in Manhattan.
ADVISORY: Please avoid the area of West 51st and 7th Ave due to an ongoing police investigation. Expect an emergency vehicles and traffic in the area. Update to follow. pic.twitter.com/13gYd1hHI9
BREAKING: Picture of midtown Manhattan where @FDNY are responding to report of helicopter crash at 50th Street and 7th Ave; view from @FoxNews building on 6th Ave. pic.twitter.com/9RlzTF5ZHv
Walmart’s new fleet of robots is rubbing employees the wrong way, according to the Washington Post.
A Bossa Nova Robotics scanning device moves through a Walmart Supercenter in Rogers, Ark., in May 2018. (Rick T. Wilking/Getty Images)
In particular, the company’s new Auto-C self-driving floor scrubber is proving more of a headache than a helper, according to workers of Walmart Supercenter No. 937 in Marietta, GA, who have named it “Freddy” after the janitor it replaced.
Freddy’s career at the store has gotten off to a rocky start. Workers there said it has suffered nervous breakdowns, needed regular retraining sessions and taken weird detours from its programmed rounds.
Shoppers are not quite sure how to interact with Freddy, either. Evan Tanner, who works there, recalled the night he says a man fell asleep on top of the machine as it whirred obediently down a toy aisle. –Washington Post
While Walmart executives are skeptical that someone passed out on an operating Auto-C, Tanner insists that it happened. “Someone had to pull [the sleeping man] off,” he said, adding that Freddy “was going to swing toward groceries, just cleaning away.”
The company has also been using demeaning analogies to foist the robot co-workers on human employees, such as comparing the machines to Star Wars droid R2-D2 and the Transformer Optimus Prime. “Every hero needs a sidekick, and some of the best have been automated,” said the company in a May announcement titled #SquadGoals.
When does the “sidekick” become one’s boss? Not anytime soon if the reports are accurate:
Many Walmart workers said they had long feared robots would one day take their jobs. But they had not expected this strange transition era in which they are working alongside machines that can be as brittle, clumsy and easily baffled by the messy realities of big-box retail as a human worker can be. –WaPo
Walmart is rolling out an army of robots into more than 1,500 of its jumbo stores, performing tasks such as automated shelf-scanning, unloading boxes, AI camera systems and other jobs once left to human employees. Executives have promised that the 24-7 automation will result in happier employees who endure less drudgery and “more satisfying jobs.” (with far fewer human co-workers to get in the way, we presume).
The scale of the effort is impressive. The Fast Unloader machines automatically scan and sort freight as it is tossed off shipping trucks. Auto-S camera robots roll past shelves to scan which products are mislabeled or out of stock. Giant orange obelisks, called automated pickup towers, spit out goods for online shoppers like 16-foot-tall vending machines. Scurrying little Alphabots bring items to workers for packing. Auto-C robot Zambonis come out at night to buff the floors. –Washington Post
The result? Many of the company’s more than 1 millionEmployees have never felt more robotic as they go about their daily work, according to the report. Employees are also complaining about the frustrating process of training their replacements.
Now they find themselves in the uneasy position of not only training their possible replacements but also tending to them every time something goes wrong.
The self-driving floor scrubbers, for instance, must be manually driven until they learn the store’s layout — and when the aisles are shifted around, as is common during seasonal displays and remodels, the machines must be retrained.
Technical glitches, surprise breakdowns and human resentment are commonplace. Some workers said they have cursed the robots out using their employee-given nicknames, such as “Emma,” “Bender” and “Fran.” –Washington Post
Customers have been perplexed at the robots as well – with some shoppers reporting getting freaked out by the company’s new 6-foot-tall Auto-S scanner which “quietly creeps down the aisles, searching for out-of-place items by sweeping shelves with a beam of light.” Other shoppers have taken to kicking the robots.
Other customers find their time with the robots to be unsatisfying, including older shoppers for whom a trip to the store is as much about human interaction as anything else. “A lot of them will say, ‘I didn’t come here to talk to a machine,’ ” said a worker at a Walmart in Dunedin, Fla., who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he didn’t want it to affect his job. “ ‘I came here to shop and have someone help me with my groceries.’ ” –Washington Post
The report does note, however, that the robots don’t complain, ask for bathroom breaks or require vacations. They also don’t require employment taxes or health insurance. According to president and CEO Doug McMillon in a conference call last August, the machines are an important part of how the company can reduce waste and “operate with discipline.”
“We’re testing or scaling new automation efforts in several areas,” he said, adding “Our mind-set and specific plans and actions around cost management are vital.”
Maybe once they work out all the bugs, but for now they aren’t winning over hearts and minds.
Employees at a half-dozen newly automated Walmarts said the machines at times are helpful, even charming. Some talked about the robots’ personalities and said they had adorned them with employee name tags. But others also felt this new age of robotics had accelerated the pace of work and forced them to constantly respond to the machines’ nagging alerts. Some said it made them doubt the company valued their work.
This awkward interplay of man vs. machine could become one of the defining tensions of the modern workplace as more stores, hotels, restaurants and other businesses roll in robots that could boost company reliability and trim labor costs. –Washington Post
Implementing the technology is no minor undertaking. One Walmart Neighborhood Market in Levittown, NY boasts 100 servers, 10 cooling towers, 500 graphics cards and 150,000 feet of cable in order to manage an AI-driven ecosystem of real-time robots.
If a problem is detected the AI sends an alert to human employees’ handheld devices, where they can attend to the issue. This has introduced a “layer of discomfort to a job some workers said already feels demeaning.”
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2wRA3cF Tyler Durden
After a prolonged oil price plunge, pushing price levels down to around $59 Brent per barrel, signs are showing that the market believes the downward trend has overshot its target.
Concerns about global demand and supply have been wreaking havoc, based on assessments that the ongoing China-US trade war will put a major dent in demand. At the same time, U.S.-based oil storage volume reports showed a significant increase, killing off the bullish case for oil.
Despite this, OPEC+ refused to react, simply stating that the oil cartel and its Russian supporter were not willing to take appropriate measures to quell the confidence crisis in the market. Up until now, OPEC+ has seemed to be willing to take the wrath of Washington and others for keeping to its existing production cut agreement. There are even signs that the oil producers are considering a rollover of the production cut agreement at their upcoming meeting, presumably in June but most probably in July. A strong pro-roll-over front has been building up, led by Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Energy Khalid Al Falih, UAE’s Minister Al Mazrouei, and, surprisingly, Iraq. The leading Arab oil producers are taking the long-term view that the market has not yet stabilized, crude storage volumes are still too high, and demand is yet to see a tangible drop. There are signs, however, that a conflict is brewing within the oil group – with Russian officials spreading uncertainty.
In stark contrast to the full-scale support of a production cut that was given by Russia at the St Petersburg meeting in 2018 to OPEC, Russian president Vladimir Putin is now increasing the pressure on the agreement. By stating that Russia is happy with current price levels of around $60-65 per barrel, he has broken from the Saudi-UAE angle. Putin’s remarks threaten to push OPEC into a position where it will have to address possible shortages in the market in the coming months. By referring to a lower price level in public, Putin has acknowledged that Moscow is not interested in targeting higher prices, unlike Arab producers that need higher prices to support their own government budgets and diversification packages. Putin’s comments could even be interpreted as a willingness to leave the current production cut agreement, further undermining OPEC’s strategy.
The main question for oil analysts at present is whether Putin really stands behind his assessments. By reiterating that Russia is happy with lower prices and suggesting that the Russian government budget is based on $40 per barrel Putin is taking a risk. When analyzing the current state of the Russian economy, its global power projections and the extremely high costs of its ongoing military operations in Syria and elsewhere, higher oil and gas revenues would be a godsend. Putin’s dream of a Pax Russia cannot be built on $40 per barrel, not even on $60-65 per barrel. The Russian chess grandmaster seems to be playing on two boards at the same time. Putin’s attitude towards OPEC has always been one of ambiguity, taking the position that the oil cartel’s influence should be used to enhance Moscow’s geopolitical and economic influence. By creating a new front, some say against the USA and the EU, Moscow and OPEC have set up a marriage of convenience, built on a traditional commercial-strategic basis. OPEC+ is still very functional, but if Russian oil and gas oligarchs, the main support base of Putin at home, start to complain, the Russian tsar will need to act. It seems that the signs of political infighting have now become clear, with Russia’s minister of Energy Novak, formerly a supporter of the production cut agreement, keeping silent. In staying out of the discussion, Novak is lending credence to the idea that Russian oil companies may be running out of patience.
Strategically, lower oil prices would not only increase Russia’s market share, at the expense of former allies Venezuela and Iran, but would also help to constrain US shale. Saudi Arabia’s position on production is entirely different. Faced by high expenditure patterns due to the Kingdom’s economic diversification plans and regional military engagements, Riyadh needs a higher oil price. Change is being brought to the country slowly and with minimum risk to the regime. Higher oil prices will be vital if Saudi is to stand a chance of successfully implementing its visions.
Russia will be of particular importance in the coming weeks. Putin is facing the end of his political reign in the coming years, and growing dissent within the oil and gas sector is now noticeable. The Russian leader, maybe still hoping for a new political career, needs the support of Rosneft, Gazprom and others in order to survive and keep his legacy in place. Taking all of this into account makes the odds of Russia taking a bearish stance on oil all the more probable. It is likely that a roll-over of the agreement will not be issued, with heated discussions already happening between the main parties. It seems that it is not Trump who will influence oil markets in the near term, but rather two Arab Crown Princes and a Tsar heading for retirement.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2K7DIMf Tyler Durden
The Democrat-controlled House Judiciary Committee has postponed its contempt vote for Attorney General William Barr after the Justice Department agreed to turn over unredacted portions of the Mueller report as well as the special counsel’s “most important files” sought by the committee.
“I am pleased to announce that the Department of Justice has agreed to begin complying with out committee’s subpoena by opening Robert Mueller’s most important files to us,” reads a statement by Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY).
The document production will provide “key evidence that the Special Counsel used to assess whether the President and others obstructed justice or were engaged in other misconduct,” the statement continues.
“Given our conversations with the Department, I will hold the criminal contempt process in abeyance for now,” added Nadler.
House Judiciary Dems announced they’ve reached a deal with DOJ to get info related to the Mueller report. This means, per Chair Nadler, that the contempt proceedings against AG Barr (see: https://t.co/J7AfEl6a8q) will be put on hold pic.twitter.com/oZ5OIirCD9
The House Judiciary Committee voted 24-16 in May to hold Barr in contempt for refusing to turn over an unredacted copy of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia report, which found that Trump and his administration did not conspire with Russia to influence the 2016 US election. Mueller, however, left the determination of whether Trump obstructed justice by potentially trying to end the investigation up to Barr and others to decide.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2I6zqSY Tyler Durden
Diplomats gathered in Rovaniemi to discuss the state of the North Pole were caught off-guard by the United States’ posturing. In a speech to the Arctic Council, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sharply warned against China’s increasing economic activity on the North Pole and the potential militarization of its projects. The Arctic Council is the main intergovernmental forum on Arctic affairs and its mandate does not cover security issues. Therefore, his remarks were unusual and raised important questions. To what degree could China’s polar aspirations pose a threat to the regional stability of the Arctic Circle?
Chinese investments in the Arctic
Some of China’s investments have been welcomed by regional actors, and include the China Iceland Joint Arctic Science Observatory. Its costs were covered fully by the Chinese government, according to Halldor Johannsson, vice-chair of the new research facility located in Northern Iceland. Originally meant to monitor the northern lights, both parties have already committed to expanding its activities. Despite earlier suspicions in 2011 regarding investments by a Chinese billionaire, Iceland’s attitude towards scientific cooperation with China remains neutral, and the Observatory was inaugurated in October 2018.
In Greenland, melting glaciers provide new opportunities for the exploration of natural resources. Chinese companies are involved in six different projects, including a partnership with the Australian company to extract uranium and rare earth minerals, which may serve a growing demand for the latter in China. While environmental concernshave been raised, international cooperation on natural resource extraction could reduce Greenland’s current reliance on Danish subsidies.
However, in other cases, Chinese investments have been met with wary eyes. A sparsely populated but vast island, Greenland relies on aviation for the transport of both goods and people. When in 2017 two Chinese construction companies applied for a government tender to build three airports, their bid to improve the infrastructure network of the island sparked fears of a Chinese takeover in the Danish Parliament. In order to prevent Greenland from falling into a potential ‘debt trap’, Denmark offered to finance the projects instead.
In Sweden, a newly opened research facility in Kiruna has also been put under scrutiny after the Swedish Defense Research Agency, an entity of Sweden’s Ministry of Defense, argued that its monitoring capabilities could be abused by the Chinese military. China’s first wholly-owned satellite ground station opened in January 2019 and is meant to improve global satellite data reception. Yet the highly blurred lines between the civilian and military sphere in China’s space efforts mean that potential military applications of its new satellite base cannot be ruled out. It is these concerns that fuel U.S. antagonism towards a growing Chinese presence on the North Pole.
Simply business?
These investments are exemplary of China’s wish to become a ‘polar great power’, a term first used by President Xi Jinping in 2014. Its aspirations in the polar regions have become clearer since January 2018, when the State Council Information Office released a white paper entitled ‘China’s Arctic Policy’. This document outlines some of China’s economic and scientific interests in the Arctic but refrains from mentioning any long term military and strategic goals.
More specifically, the paper calls for international cooperation in order to develop a new shipping route through the Arctic. The new route, called the Northern Sea Route, shaves off 15 days of the shipping time and allows ships to navigate Russian waters in order to enter the seas of Western Europe. Since 2013, Chinese shipping company COSCO has conducted 22 commercial voyages and its cargo volume is predicted to increase in the coming years.
Furthermore, the emphasis is placed on the potential extraction of both natural and living resources. In addition to its activities in Greenland, China is also involved in a Sino-Russian joint venture in Yamal, Russia, to extract liquified natural gas. A recent bureaucratic shuffle in March 2018 has put the Chinese Arctic and Antarctic Administration under the direct supervision of the new Ministry of Natural Resources. This illustrates the importance the Chinese government attaches to the potential economic utilization of the Arctic.
While business interests thus dominate Chinese foreign policy in the far north, other intentions likely play a role as well. The Arctic, for example, is perceived by Chinese researchers as a barometer for climate change, the latter which may have a direct impact on Chinese national security. Rising sea levels, for example, threaten to flood Chinese coastal regions, including its highly industrialized Pearl River Delta. And although the government has withheld from commenting on military affairs in an official capacity, academics from institutions of the People’s Liberation Army continue to engage in discussions on the geostrategic implications of melting ice caps.
The snowy road ahead
Governance in the Arctic is an extremely convoluted process, however: rather than one single regime, the region is governed by a patchwork of international treaties. While the Arctic Council exercises some influence, the current regulatory framework favours the five littoral states of Canada, Denmark, the United States, Russia, and Norway. In the 2008 Ilulissat Declaration, this group asserted its primacy in Arctic affairs, effectively preventing the creation of a comprehensive Arctic Treaty without its approval.
Although Chinese scholars have raised their concerns about the exclusionary nature of the current regime structure, officials are careful not to make any public statements. Despite the restrictions that the current Arctic regime poses for China, the current treaties in place provide some leeway for the country to engage in its interests. China is therefore likely to continue to push for international cooperation in these fields. It will be eager to avoid securitization of the region. Scientific investments, such as those in Iceland, form an opportunity to forge bonds with potential Arctic allies, including its own neighbours: since 2013, China, Japan, and Korea have held yearly summits on Arctic cooperation.
As climate change takes centre stage in the Arctic Council, China remains off the radar – for now. Its activities in the far north are limited as of now. Chinese militarization is unlikely in the foreseeable future as the country continues to build ties with what it regards as key stakeholders in the region. Military use of civilian technology, however, cannot be ruled out and these uncertainties may fuel further hostility of the United States towards China’s policies abroad. Much like its unease towards the use of Chinese 5G technology, it is probable that an increasing amount of Chinese ventures around the Arctic Ocean may become yet another factor contributing to the growing distrust between the two nations.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2X10tHU Tyler Durden
It isn’t just Wall Street that’s starting to sour on Tesla. Now, it’s the company’s own employees.
According to two high profile job websites, job dissatisfaction at Tesla is intensifying amid what Reuters calls “layoffs, strategy shifts and executive turnover”, but what we just call absolute, all-around chaos.
In 2018 and 2017, Tesla placed fifth and sixth on LinkedIn’s annual “Top Companies” list. For 2019, Tesla fell to 16th. The data to create the list is compiled from billions of actions taken from LinkedIn’s over 600 million users that indicate job interest and demand.
At the jobs website Glassdoor, Tesla’s company rating fell to 3.2 out of 5 from a high of 3.6 in 2017. This is below the average of 3.4 for all employers reviewed on the site.
In addition, Elon Musk’s CEO approval rating has dropped to 52% from 90% in 2017. Tesla’s “recommend a friend” rating fell to 49% in the first quarter from a high of 71% two years prior.
Glassdoor ratings for culture and values, career opportunities, senior leadership and six-month positive business outlook also all dropped. While “work-life balance” and “compensation and benefits” remained the same, no Tesla metrics improved.
Tesla responded by saying that the company continues to remain a highly sought-after employer. It received over half a million job applications in 2017 and 2018, and expects to exceed that figure in 2019, it claimed.
Reuters interviewed two current and 16 former employees since January. Some of them continue to praise Elon Musk as a visionary, but noted that his management style and the “exodus of executives” has left a void in leadership. Despite filling CFO and top lawyer positions recently, Tesla has still not replaced its recently departed heads of communication and growth.
Meanwhile, the company has 1,100 job openings posted on his website, down from 2,510 in January.
Many show vacancies that have been open since last October.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2I5R35r Tyler Durden
The deputy energy minister of Iran has said that electricity bills for digital currency miners should be calculated in accordance to real prices, Iranian economic daily newspaper Financial Tribune reported on June 9.
Iran’s deputy energy minister, Homayoun Haeri, has stated that electricity bills for cryptocurrencymining activities should be priced according to the same rates established for power exports. The government reportedly pays nearly $1 billion in subsidies annually to bridge the gap in real electricity costs and what consumers are billed, Financial Tribune writes.
As reported last December, Iranians were profiting from digital currency mining despite the crash in the crypto markets and fluctuations in the national rial currency caused by reinforced United States sanctions.
Iran had demonstrated a positive stance towards crypto mining last September, when major government authorities — including the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology, the central bank, the Ministry of Energy, and others — accepted crypto mining as an industry.
At the time, the Secretary of Iran’s Supreme Cyberspace Council stated that the Iranian National Cyberspace Center was developing a platform for cryptocurrency mining regulation, while the relevant authorities considered the development of crypto mining-related regulatory framework.
In an attempt to gain economic stability in the country, the Iranian government has also been considering the launch of its own state-backed cryptocurrency. In August of last year, Iran’s National Cyberspace Center revealed that the draft of the government-backed crypto project was ready, following instructions from Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.
A recent Cointelegraph analysis looked at the changing attitudes of the government towards cryptocurrencies, as well as how it affects Iranian crypto users.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2Zh46Xu Tyler Durden
The last few days have seen the re-emergence of the Nike market – just buy it… buy the rumor, buy the news, buy the good news, buy the bad news. As long as Powell keeps his promises, everything will be awesome and stocks will go to the moon Alice.
With markets now pricing in at least three rate-cuts and expectations for a July cut surging to over 80%, belief in a pre-emptive “insurance” cut is now consensus – and The Fed had better not disappoint.
However, as Bloomberg’s Ye Xie warns, while, historically, preemptive Fed rate cuts have tended to boost the stock market, this time may be different.
Any student of stock market history would tell you that the Fed’s “insurance” cuts in 1995-1996 and 1998 did extend the bull market and economic expansion.
What’s different this time is that the front-end of the yield curve is much more deeply inverted than in the 1990s. In other words, markets have more aggressively discounted policy easing. With Fed fund futures pricing in about 70 basis points of cuts by year-end, the FOMC has a high bar to keep equity investors happy without fomenting recession fears
Xie continues:
While investors have priced in a fair amount of good news in terms of lower interest rates, they’re yet to factor in enough of the bad news on global trade. Historically, S&P’s EPS estimates track global trade volume fairly closely.
Analysts are expecting earnings to grow a little less than 5%. Based on regression, that would require trade to increase 2% to 3% this year after, contracting 1% in 2018. That seems optimistic as exports from open economies, such as South Korea and Taiwan, continue to shrink.
Sure, President Trump dropped plans for tariffs on Mexican exports Friday night, a moved welcomed by his own Republican party. But the trade war against China is a different story because it has bipartisan support. The standoff between the world’s two largest economies shows no signs of easing.
To sum up, for the equity market to keep rallying, the Fed has to cut rates quickly and decisively, the trade war needs to be resolved, the economy needs to keep humming, and global trade needs to pick up.
How do you like those odds?
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2wOCcWw Tyler Durden
