Tag: news

America’s Debt Will be Twice the Size of the Economy by 2050

iiphotos017457

If you’re getting tired of unrelentingly bad news about the national debt—well, I have some terrible news.

Today the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a 30-year budget projection. By 2050, the number-crunching agency now says, the national debt will grow to 195 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). That’s 45 percentage points higher than the CBO was projecting last year. What it couldn’t foresee, of course, was the COVID-19 pandemic and the expensive federal response to it, which has pushed the national debt to nearly 100 percent of current GDP.

The national debt is expected to hit 107 percent of GDP—matching the record high set during World War II—by 2023:

Rising debt levels will “increase the risk of a fiscal crisis—that is, a situation in which investors lose confidence in the U.S. government’s ability to service and repay its debt, causing interest rates to increase abruptly, inflation to spiral upward, or other disruptions,” the CBO warns. “It would increase the likelihood of less abrupt, but still significant, negative effects, such as expectations of higher rates of inflation.”

A national debt nearly twice the size of the economy will put a significant damper on long-term economic growth. The CBO now projects average growth of just 1.6 percent annually over the next 30 years. That’s almost a full percentage point less than the 2.5 percent average growth rate during the past 30 years.

In short, Americans face the prospect of decades in which living standards increase at a slower rate. Businesses will likely have a harder time expanding, and the federal government will have an even harder time balancing its wildly off-kilter finances.

Although the coronavirus response has driven this year’s budget deficit and the short-term national debt projections to higher-than-expected levels, the biggest problem between now and 2050 are the entitlement programs that will consume ever-larger shares of the federal budget.

While Social Security and Medicare spending are both projected to grow faster than federal revenue over the long term, another problem set to emerge in the 2030s and 2040s is the cost of paying for the national debt itself. As the country’s debt load becomes heavier, the interest payments on the debt will become one of the federal government’s biggest expenses, the CBO says.

“This current path will lead to insolvent trust funds and unsustainable levels of debt, prompting slower income growth, growing interest payments, and increasing the risk of fiscal crisis,” Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said in a statement.

Reducing the size of annual budget deficits and getting the national debt under control will be no easy task. In order to merely bring the national debt down to 100 percent of GDP by 2050, the CBO estimates that Congress would have to implement policy changes—spending cuts, tax increases, or both—equal to about $730 billion (or 2.9 percent of GDP) by 2025.

That would be the same as cutting roughly half of all discretionary spending in last year’s federal budget. And the longer Congress waits to take action, the larger that number will become.

As is always the case when discussing the long-term debt and deficit problems facing America, younger generations stand to lose if nothing is done in the near future. “Delaying policy changes would reduce the well-being of younger generations (compared with their well-being if policy changes occurred earlier),” the CBO warns. “Moreover, the farther in the future that a policy change occurred, the more the well being of older generations would be improved and that of younger generations would be worsened.”

And, of course, none of this accounts for the possibility that spending could continue to increase above current baselines in the near future. Both President Donald Trump and Joe Biden have indicated that they will hike spending and add to the debt.

The bad news, it seems, will keep coming for a long while.

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Remembering the Notorious RBG

Talk in Washington, D.C. has already turned to the politics of an election year Supreme Court vacancy and confirmation vote. For some, however, not enough time has been spent remembering and celebrating the legacy of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Jurisprudential differences aside, she was loved and admired by her colleagues and touched the lives of countless Americans. She led a noble and inspirational life that should be remembered.

My co-blogger David Post reflected on RBG’s legacy over the weekend. Below are some additional remembrances and tributes I thought might interest our readers.

In addition to the above, SCOTUSBlog is hosting a series of tributes here.

 

 

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America’s Debt Will be Twice the Size of the Economy by 2050

iiphotos017457

If you’re getting tired of unrelentingly bad news about the national debt—well, I have some terrible news.

Today the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a 30-year budget projection. By 2050, the number-crunching agency now says, the national debt will grow to 195 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). That’s 45 percentage points higher than the CBO was projecting last year. What it couldn’t foresee, of course, was the COVID-19 pandemic and the expensive federal response to it, which has pushed the national debt to nearly 100 percent of current GDP.

The national debt is expected to hit 107 percent of GDP—matching the record high set during World War II—by 2023:

Rising debt levels will “increase the risk of a fiscal crisis—that is, a situation in which investors lose confidence in the U.S. government’s ability to service and repay its debt, causing interest rates to increase abruptly, inflation to spiral upward, or other disruptions,” the CBO warns. “It would increase the likelihood of less abrupt, but still significant, negative effects, such as expectations of higher rates of inflation.”

A national debt nearly twice the size of the economy will put a significant damper on long-term economic growth. The CBO now projects average growth of just 1.6 percent annually over the next 30 years. That’s almost a full percentage point less than the 2.5 percent average growth rate during the past 30 years.

In short, Americans face the prospect of decades in which living standards increase at a slower rate. Businesses will likely have a harder time expanding, and the federal government will have an even harder time balancing its wildly off-kilter finances.

Although the coronavirus response has driven this year’s budget deficit and the short-term national debt projections to higher-than-expected levels, the biggest problem between now and 2050 are the entitlement programs that will consume ever-larger shares of the federal budget.

While Social Security and Medicare spending are both projected to grow faster than federal revenue over the long term, another problem set to emerge in the 2030s and 2040s is the cost of paying for the national debt itself. As the country’s debt load becomes heavier, the interest payments on the debt will become one of the federal government’s biggest expenses, the CBO says.

“This current path will lead to insolvent trust funds and unsustainable levels of debt, prompting slower income growth, growing interest payments, and increasing the risk of fiscal crisis,” Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said in a statement.

Reducing the size of annual budget deficits and getting the national debt under control will be no easy task. In order to merely bring the national debt down to 100 percent of GDP by 2050, the CBO estimates that Congress would have to implement policy changes—spending cuts, tax increases, or both—equal to about $730 billion (or 2.9 percent of GDP) by 2025.

That would be the same as cutting roughly half of all discretionary spending in last year’s federal budget. And the longer Congress waits to take action, the larger that number will become.

As is always the case when discussing the long-term debt and deficit problems facing America, younger generations stand to lose if nothing is done in the near future. “Delaying policy changes would reduce the well-being of younger generations (compared with their well-being if policy changes occurred earlier),” the CBO warns. “Moreover, the farther in the future that a policy change occurred, the more the well being of older generations would be improved and that of younger generations would be worsened.”

And, of course, none of this accounts for the possibility that spending could continue to increase above current baselines in the near future. Both President Donald Trump and Joe Biden have indicated that they will hike spending and add to the debt.

The bad news, it seems, will keep coming for a long while.

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Remembering the Notorious RBG

Talk in Washington, D.C. has already turned to the politics of an election year Supreme Court vacancy and confirmation vote. For some, however, not enough time has been spent remembering and celebrating the legacy of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Jurisprudential differences aside, she was loved and admired by her colleagues and touched the lives of countless Americans. She led a noble and inspirational life that should be remembered.

My co-blogger David Post reflected on RBG’s legacy over the weekend. Below are some additional remembrances and tributes I thought might interest our readers.

In addition to the above, SCOTUSBlog is hosting a series of tributes here.

 

 

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1619 Project Author Nikole Hannah-Jones Now Says She Never Implied That Year Was America’s True Founding

NHJ

The 1619 Project is The New York Times‘ Pulitzer-winning effort to put racism and slavery at the center of the conversation about American history. The newspaper published a series of articles in August 2019—the 400th anniversary of slavery’s introduction to the English colonies in the Americas—that reframed the year 1619 rather than 1776 as the true founding of America.

It’s a provocative claim, and it came under serious criticism, along with other aspects of the project. But the project’s lead author, Nikole Hannah-Jones, is now asserting that she never made it and that anyone who believes otherwise was fooled by bad-faith right-wing critics.

“One thing in which the right has been tremendously successful is getting media to frame stories in their language and through their lens,” wrote Hannah-Jones in a subsequently deleted tweet. “The #1619Project does not argue that 1619 is our true founding. We know this nation marks its founding at 1776.” She made a similar statement on CNN as well.

But as The Atlantic‘s Conor Friedersdorf exhaustively demonstrated in a series of tweets, this is simply not true. The 1619 Project was absolutely promoted—by the Times, and by Hannah-Jones herself—as an effort to recast 1619 as the year of the country’s founding. On the newspaper’s website, a special interactive version of the project was introduced in the following manner (emphasis mine):

The 1619 project is a major initiative from The New York Times observing the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.

Both conservative critics and progressive fans of the 1619 Project described it this way, because that’s how the Times itself described it.

The original description no longer appears at nytimes.com. At some point, it was edited to read:

The 1619 Project is an ongoing initiative from The New York Times Magazine that began in August 2019, the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.

This may be a more accurate description of the project, and it’s certainly a less controversial claim. But it’s plainly different from the original, which means this is an unacknowledged edit—a major transgression of basic norms of journalism (albeit one that happens in major newspapers with some frequency).

Theoretically, it could be the case that the Times characterized the project using language that clashed with Hannah-Jones’ own vision. But Hannah-Jones repeatedly used the same phrasing:

For further clarification, here is Hannah-Jones’ banner picture:

Writing for Quillette, Phillip Magness, a senior fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research and the author of The 1619 Project: A Critique, argues that this dispute has “come to symbolize the Times‘s blurring of historical analysis with editorial hyperbole.” Magness’s other criticisms of the 1619 Project have been much more consequential: He and other historians have pointed out significant flaws with the lead essay’s thesis that the preservation of slavery was a major reason for the American Revolution—an idea the project’s own fact-checkers disputed prior to publication—and he has also offered withering criticisms of an article’s economic arguments about slavery.

All these arguments matter outside the world of journalism. The 1619 Project is being taught in U.S. schools, and President Donald Trump has waded into the debate in a characteristically clumsy fashion: declaring a federal initiative to “promote patriotic education” as a corrective. (As always, the best course here is to give families more control over kids’ education options: Kids should neither be forced to read the 1619 Project nor forbidden from doing so.)

In any case, that the Times’ major effort to reframe American history was itself reframed to suit the Times’ purposes after mistakes were identified does not inspire tremendous confidence in the work—Pulitzer Prize notwithstanding.

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1619 Project Author Nikole Hannah-Jones Now Says She Never Implied That Year Was America’s True Founding

NHJ

The 1619 Project is The New York Times‘ Pulitzer-winning effort to put racism and slavery at the center of the conversation about American history. The newspaper published a series of articles in August 2019—the 400th anniversary of slavery’s introduction to the English colonies in the Americas—that reframed the year 1619 rather than 1776 as the true founding of America.

It’s a provocative claim, and it came under serious criticism, along with other aspects of the project. But the project’s lead author, Nikole Hannah-Jones, is now asserting that she never made it and that anyone who believes otherwise was fooled by bad-faith right-wing critics.

“One thing in which the right has been tremendously successful is getting media to frame stories in their language and through their lens,” wrote Hannah-Jones in a subsequently deleted tweet. “The #1619Project does not argue that 1619 is our true founding. We know this nation marks its founding at 1776.” She made a similar statement on CNN as well.

But as The Atlantic‘s Conor Friedersdorf exhaustively demonstrated in a series of tweets, this is simply not true. The 1619 Project was absolutely promoted—by the Times, and by Hannah-Jones herself—as an effort to recast 1619 as the year of the country’s founding. On the newspaper’s website, a special interactive version of the project was introduced in the following manner (emphasis mine):

The 1619 project is a major initiative from The New York Times observing the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.

Both conservative critics and progressive fans of the 1619 Project described it this way, because that’s how the Times itself described it.

The original description no longer appears at nytimes.com. At some point, it was edited to read:

The 1619 Project is an ongoing initiative from The New York Times Magazine that began in August 2019, the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.

This may be a more accurate description of the project, and it’s certainly a less controversial claim. But it’s plainly different from the original, which means this is an unacknowledged edit—a major transgression of basic norms of journalism (albeit one that happens in major newspapers with some frequency).

Theoretically, it could be the case that the Times characterized the project using language that clashed with Hannah-Jones’ own vision. But Hannah-Jones repeatedly used the same phrasing:

For further clarification, here is Hannah-Jones’ banner picture:

Writing for Quillette, Phillip Magness, a senior fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research and the author of The 1619 Project: A Critique, argues that this dispute has “come to symbolize the Times‘s blurring of historical analysis with editorial hyperbole.” Magness’s other criticisms of the 1619 Project have been much more consequential: He and other historians have pointed out significant flaws with the lead essay’s thesis that the preservation of slavery was a major reason for the American Revolution—an idea the project’s own fact-checkers disputed prior to publication—and he has also offered withering criticisms of an article’s economic arguments about slavery.

All these arguments matter outside the world of journalism. The 1619 Project is being taught in U.S. schools, and President Donald Trump has waded into the debate in a characteristically clumsy fashion: declaring a federal initiative to “promote patriotic education” as a corrective. (As always, the best course here is to give families more control over kids’ education options: Kids should neither be forced to read the 1619 Project nor forbidden from doing so.)

In any case, that the Times’ major effort to reframe American history was itself reframed to suit the Times’ purposes after mistakes were identified does not inspire tremendous confidence in the work—Pulitzer Prize notwithstanding.

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“Needs To Be Quashed Immediately”: Michigan Clerk Files Criminal Complaint Against Resident Who Mocked Mail-In Voting

“Needs To Be Quashed Immediately”: Michigan Clerk Files Criminal Complaint Against Resident Who Mocked Mail-In Voting

Tyler Durden

Mon, 09/21/2020 – 15:10

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

A Michigan clerk appears to have taken a determined stand against lawn commode voting. The problem is not that Barb Byrum, the clerk of Ingham County is entirely humorless.

Rather, she appears legally clueless in a complaint filed against a Mason, Michigan resident who put a toilet on their lawn with a sign that reads, “Place mail in ballots here.” 

Byrum could have denounced it as scatological, but instead declared it unlawful on the basis of an absurd theory that people would mistake the toilet for a polling place or mailbox. However, the Democratic clerk vowed to “quash” anyone mocking the election in this way.

Byrum insisted that “It is a felony to take illegal possession of an absentee ballot. Elections in this country are to be taken seriously and there are many people who are voting by mail for the first time this election.”

In so saying, Byrum succeeded in looking even more crazed than the residents with a toilet on their lawn.

The relevant provision appears to be:

(f) A person other than an absent voter; a person whose job it is to handle mail before, during, or after being transported by a public postal service, express mail service, parcel post service, or common carrier, but only during the normal course of his or her employment; a clerk or assistant of the clerk; a member of the immediate family of the absent voter including father-in-law, mother-in-law, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, grandparent, or grandchild; or a person residing in the absent voter’s household shall not do any of the following:

  (i) Possess an absent voter ballot mailed or delivered to another person, regardless of whether the ballot has been voted.

  (ii) Return, solicit to return, or agree to return an absent voter ballot to the clerk of a city, township, village, or school district.

This of course is a toilet and a joke.  If a voter actually thought he or she was voting by lawn commode, would we really want that person participating in an election?

If the resident is joking, it is not solicitation to return.  Moreover, Byrum is using this ridiculous interpretation to effectively punish a voter for engaging in political speech.  The picture shows that next to the toilet is a sign reading “Recall Whitmer.” This is clearly political speech protesting the massive increase in mail-in voting that has many citizens (and President Donald Trump) complaining over possible fraud.   So Byrum responds with a criminal referral that seems retaliatory and harassing in character.

Byrum also comes across as a petty tyrant in proclaiming:

“This kind of behavior needs to be quashed immediately. They are making a mockery of our elections. I’m not going to stand idly by and watch it happen.”

That comment seems so over-the-top that I double checked sources to confirm that she said it.

Byrum appears to view her office as empowering her to “quash . . . mockery” like some humor police. The mockery in this story is using a felony crime to threaten political critics.

This is why Einstein said “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/33ObIoj Tyler Durden

Quant Vs Quant: Storm Erupts At JPMorgan Over Impact Of Month-End Rebalancing

Quant Vs Quant: Storm Erupts At JPMorgan Over Impact Of Month-End Rebalancing

Tyler Durden

Mon, 09/21/2020 – 14:56

Last Tuesday, JPMorgan’s in-house quant star (and perpetual skeptical foil to the bank’s other far more permabullish strategists such as Marko Kolanovic), Nick Panigirtzoglou – who has far less of a media foot print than Marko – spooked Wall Street when he estimated that quarter and month-end is poised for one of the highest bouts of forced selling in history, as between US pension plans, the Norwegian sov wealth fund and Japan’s pension giant, the GPIF, some $200 billion in quarter-end stock selling was on deck due to negative rebalancing flow.

Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou.

Panigirtzoglou was not shy about the implications of this massive outflow, stating clearly that “This is the most negative rebalancing flow since the virus crisis” and adding that “this negative rebalancing flow becomes even more problematic given this month’s sharp decline in equity market depth” referring to the latest collapse in market liquidity which would only exacerbate the adverse impact of forced selling.

Forced selling aside, Panigirtzoglou also made another critical observation, which however is beyond the scope of this article, even though it reflects a critical aspect of the broken capital markets, namely that “this month’s sharp decline in equity market depth is a reminder of how quickly liquidity conditions can deteriorate in equity markets and raises the risk of more abrupt equity market moves going forward.”

In any event, it appears that the angry blowback from clients who read Panigirtzoglou’s note in which JPM warned of a potential market dump were not happy to learn that there is a reason why they need to hedge or – heaven forbid – sell, and escalated their concerns to the point where this morning the two heads of JPM’s global quant and derivative strategy, Bram Kaplan and Marko Kolanovic, were dragged into writing a note meant to minimize (and dare say discredit) the implications of the report published by their quant colleague just a few days earlier.

Without hyperlinking or even referring to Panigirtzoglou’s cautionary note on the topic of forced month-end selling – after all everyone read that – Kolanovic and Kaplan (henceforth K&K) “explain” that in their view there is a notable difference between quarter and month-end rebalancing, which is precisely the loophole JPM needed to avoid being pigeonholed for being both bearish (if one reads the Panigirtzoglou report) and Bullish (as per any report from KK), to wit: “Equities have significantly underperformed bonds on a month-to-date basis (by ~8%), and although they have outperformed quarter-to-date (by ~5%), our analysis suggests that a large majority of these portfolios rebalance on a monthly rather than quarterly frequency.“

Why does this matter? Because as K&K claim, the monthly rebalance effect “is over 5x stronger than the quarterly rebalance effect.” Thus, K&K claim that “the equity buying by monthly rebalancing portfolios (due to equity  underperformance MTD) much more than fully offsets the selling by quarterly rebalancing portfolios, meaning these portfolios are expected to be net buyers of equities into month/quarter-end.“

Marko Kolanovic

As a result, Kolanovic and pal concludes that “rebalances by these fixed weight asset allocation portfolios will provide a tailwind to equities next week.”

Come again? The reason for the confusion is that one week after JPMorgan quant Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou wrote, and we quote:

“we estimate around -$200bn of negative rebalancing flow by entities that tend to rebalance on a quarterly basis… This is the most negative rebalancing flow since the virus crisis. In our opinion, this negative rebalancing flow becomes even more problematic given this month’s sharp decline in equity market depth.”

… two other JPM quants were immediately tasked to spike the original report and to convince clients that, contrary to what they may have read elsewhere at JPMorgan, the quarter- and month-end rebalancing is really great news, and will actually serve as a “tailwind to equities next week.”

Not only that, but while completely ignoring the point Panigirtzogou made about collapsing liquidity exacerbating the impact of quarter-end flows, K&K claim that “based on our model, these rebalances could drive ~1% of equity outperformance into quarter-end all else equal” (what may make all else not equal are changes in market levels and relative performance, to wit: “i.e. equity outperformance/underperformance would decrease/increase the amount to be rebalanced, respectively).”

What this means explicitly is that now that stocks have slumped sharply since last Tuesday, rebalancing may indeed be far less due to the investing public’s frontrunning of said selling, which of course makes forced selling less needed as equity outperformance relative to bonds has moderated sharply. Of course, if K&K inspire enough of the market to now reverse, and frontrun the lack of selling, which they frontran last week when they sold, well then buy stocks is what Kolanovic and Kaplan would want you to believe.

Of course, by this point the confusion is so profound that nobody knows what’s going on anymore, pension funds may still sell $200BN (or they may not), but one thing that is certain is that this bizarre confusion within one strategy inside JPM shows just how political even market analysis has become as the largest US bank, and how much confusion a simple topic as forced month-end selling (or buying) can create at one of the most closely followed desks on Wall Street.

Oh, and for those keeping track, anyone who traded on Panigirtzoglou’s reco last week and sold ahead of next week’s forced selling – and today’s rout – is sitting pretty and deciding if and when to buy back into the market, while those who bought expecting “a tailwind” from the discounted buying of equities into month/quarter-end as K&K predicted this morning, may want to have a talk with their JPM sales coverage.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3hR6MEn Tyler Durden

Platts: 4 Commodity Charts To Watch This Week

Platts: 4 Commodity Charts To Watch This Week

Tyler Durden

Mon, 09/21/2020 – 14:39

Via S&P Global Platts Insight blog,

A hike in rhodium prices, South Korean nuclear availability and European power prices are all in the mix in this week’s selection of trends to watch in energy and raw materials markets.

1. Will supply-constrained rhodium see more upside after all-time high?

What’s happening? After a period of lower prices in the first and second quarter of 2020 as lockdowns and low automotive production weighed on demand, the rhodium market once again picked up the bullish streak seen early this year. The base price climbed to an all-time high of $14,500/oz on September 16, before falling back in the following days.

What’s next? The latest rally was caused by anticipated supply shortages from South Africa, which accounts for around 80% of global rhodium mine supply, strong buying ahead of the seasonally strong Q4-Q1 period, and optimism stemming from a recovery in Chinese vehicle sales. Nearly 80% of demand for rhodium comes from the global automotive industry, for catalytic converters to control emissions of greenhouse gases and pollutants. China sales growth turned positive in May, supported by dealer and government incentives, but uncertainty over electricity supply from troubled South African utility Eskom is adding to the supply concerns. Given the volatility of rhodium prices, a new high should not be ruled out, though a quick decline is also possible.

2. S. Korea’s typhoon-shuttered nuclear to underpin thermal generation

What’s happening? Two typhoons hit South Korea in less than a week and shut down six nuclear reactors. The first typhoon, Maysak, hit South Korea on September 3 and four nuclear reactors were shut in the Kori nuclear complex. The second typhoon, Haishen, hit on September 7 and led to the outage of two additional reactors, this time at the Wolsong nuclear complex, losing a combined capacity of 1.4 GW.

What’s next? The outages have led to the temporary loss of a 5.3 GW of nuclear capacity. With plenty of spare capacity, generation from thermal fuels is set to pick up and replace the decline in nuclear generation. S&P Global Platts Analytics estimates that demand for both coal and gas will increase, with about 3 GW more coal-fired generation and the remainder from gas. For every week the units are offline, Platts Analytics assumes South Korea will need to buy another cargo of LNG.

3. European wind volatility drives hourly prices up to Eur800/MWh

What’s happening? European wind generation plunged September 15, sending spot power prices to 2020 highs. Reduced nuclear availability saw a scramble for back-up capacity, with intra-day prices spiking in Germany, France, and the UK. National Grid was forced to issue a UK capacity notice warning of tight margins, and was seen buying power on interconnectors inside and outside of the Balancing Mechanism, before and after gate closure, causing system prices to rise over GBP600/MWh in the evening peak.

What’s next? Europe’s wind fleet, at over 200 GW installed, has graduated from enfant terrible status to fully-fledged monster. Feast can become famine in hours, pulling prices from negative territory up to the hundreds of euros per MWh as weather systems change. Last week’s daily low saw the fleet average under 15 GW September 15 versus 40 GW for the preceding week, a relatively low-wind period. COVID-19 demand fluctuations have already inflated UK balancing costs this year. The growing need to constrain wind looks set to put added pressure on network management in Q4, presenting lucrative earnings for the small, flexible gas engines that have done so well out of the UK’s Capacity Mechanism.

4. Norway’s Equinor aims for bigger share of Asian pie

What’s happening? North Sea crude oil suppliers are confident Asia’s firm base requirements will keep their exports to the Far East at healthy levels, despite the region’s volatile product margins and fragile fuel demand during the coronavirus pandemic, industry executives told S&P Global Platts at the 36th Asia Pacific Petroleum Virtual Conference in Singapore over September 14-16. Norway’s state-controlled Equinor, for one, is boosting its presence in the Asian oil market, having doubled crude sales to the region.

What next? Despite the coronavirus pandemic, Equinor has seized the opportunity to grab as much market share as possible amid ongoing output cuts by OPEC+. Chinese exports of Norwegian crude rose to 7.96 million mt over January-July, compared with just 119,000 mt a year earlier. Equinor has also extended its crude oil storage contract with the Korea National Oil Corporation, to store approximately 5 million barrels of oil at KNOC’s Yeosu storage tanks for marketing purposes in Northeast Asia. It is crucial for Asian refiners to have the flexibility to respond quickly to the volatile markets by adjusting refinery operations and crude slate, said JY Lim, oil markets adviser at S&P Global Platts Analytics, especially as OPEC+ started to trim back on production cuts.

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Classes #10: Executive Power I and Easements I

Class 10: The Executive Power II

  • Hirabayashi v. United States (572-582)
  • Korematsu v. United States (582-592)
  • Ex Part Endo (592-597)

Class 10: Easements I

  • Creation of Easements: Willard v. First Church of Christ, 766-772
  • Licenses: Holbrook v. Taylor, 772-777

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