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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: marcher who wrote (149548)	7/3/2019 10:10:40 AM
From: TobagoJack	Respond to of 218068

Am feeling fortunate that I did not trade away any paper gold yet. Still feel trouble straight ahead or just around the corner. Trading gold is an activity my daughter finds puzzling, and my son figures as matter of course intuitive. Jack trades soccer player cards. Has folders of the stuff, and knows which ones he has how many. I do not get it, but I approve. What is there to get? besides more is better than less, now beats later, in own pocket bests in their folder In the mean time, Scientific American, one of my favorite airport magazines, is obviously a suspect witch scientificamerican.com The U.S. Should Go Back to the Moon--But Not on Its Own Do not make the U.S.’s lunar return an international clash THE EDITORSScientific American July 2019 Issue Credit: Matt Harrison CloughJust in time for the half-century anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing [ see our special report], the White House has declared the U.S. is going back to the moon within the next five years. “The first woman and the next man on the moon will both be American astronauts, launched by American rockets, from American soil,” said Vice President Mike Pence during remarks in late March at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Ala. There are reasons to be skeptical. Chief among them is the potential for Congress to balk at funding what some might consider a political stunt. According to the Trump administration, however, the urgency borders on being existential: China is now poised to “seize the lunar strategic high ground and become the world’s preeminent spacefaring nation,” Pence said. But such a jingoistic stance carries risks of its own, possibly isolating the U.S. from international collaborations in otherworldly exploration. China has already achieved a first by landing a rover on the moon’s far side this past January. And later this year it is set to conduct its first robotic lunar sample-return mission. Zhang Kejian, head of China’s national space agency, confirmed in April that these missions are precursors to human landings perhaps a decade hence. Such missions could support China’s plans for a research station near the lunar south pole to study resources such as water ice, which can be used to manufacture rocket fuel, potable water and breathable air. The fear in the White House, it seems, is that China will lay claim to the lunar pole and prevent the U.S. and others from operating there. (This action is essentially prohibited under the United Nations Outer Space Treaty of 1967, to which both China and the U.S. are signatories.) AdvertisementThere are good reasons to treat China as an adversary in space, but these moon plans are not among them. China’s use of antisatellite missiles and spacecraft does pose significant threats to strategic U.S. assets (while mirroring decades of similar efforts by the U.S. and Russia). Such concerns do not require framing NASA’s planned lunar return as part of a warlike conflict with China. As the crown jewel of the U.S. civil space program, the agency is ostensibly devoted to science and exploration instead of national defense. Although it emerged from the cold war–fueled space race of the late 1950s, NASA has more recently been defined by collaboration, not competition—most notably, in its partnerships with Russia and other nations on the International Space Station, which has served for decades to defuse geopolitical tensions. The U.S. and China are not the only spacefaring nations with ambitious plans for lunar missions—plans that rely on varying degrees of international collaboration. Europe—a key partner in NASA’s exploration efforts—is leading the push for a multinational “Moon Village” and is working with Russia on a lander. India also intends to put a lander and rover (along with a NASA-built instrument) at the lunar south pole. Japan, a regular U.S. partner in space science, is pursuing a lunar lander as well. Israel has already made one landing attempt with help from NASA’s deep-space communications network and may soon make another. In the context of a return to the moon, a similar degree of cooperation with China would be valuable—except that Congress has placed severe restrictions on NASA’s ability to collaborate with the Chinese. Sending NASA to the moon to beat China would not be the first time the administration has sought to extend President Donald Trump’s signature “Make America Great Again” mantra into outer space. Trump has previously vowed to aggressively develop space-based missile defense systems and to create a “Space Force” as a sixth branch of the U.S. military. Both proposals have been framed as part of an unfolding clash of civilizations in which the U.S. and its allies must act decisively in space to overcome China and other adversaries, such as Russia and North Korea. In the long term, however, this stance will most likely be self-defeating because it reinforces the impression, eagerly promulgated by China and Russia, that the biggest threat to the peaceful use of outer space is really the U.S. To ensure that our nation’s values are enshrined in space governance, the White House and Congress must together reduce needless barriers to engagement with China and other competitors, ideally through reinvigorated U.S. diplomacy within the framework of existing U.N. treaties and committees. Collaboration, not conflict, is the sustainable path forward to the moon.

To: marcher who wrote (149548)	7/14/2019 9:24:08 AM
From: TobagoJack	2 Recommendations Recommended By dvdw© marcher Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 218068

I believe this below is important to note ... zerohedge.com A Third Of All European IG Bonds Have Negative YieldsWith much fanfare, and an astronomical (literally) dose of clickbait, Bloomberg leads off today with an article about " The Black Hole Engulfing the World's Bond Markets"... ... which beyond the tantalizing headline says little that has not been already covered for years before, as well as recently, namely the $13+ trillion in negative yielding government bonds thanks to catastrophic central bank policies. Worse, what the article should have been focusing on instead, is the truly noteworthy fact that as a result this glut of negative yielding sovereign paper, there are now hundreds of billions in investment grade corporate bonds that have a subzero yield, and - far more shockingly -there are now at least 14 "high" yield issuers (i.e. junk bonds), that also have a yield below 0%, to wit: Ardagh Packaging Finance plc /Ardagh Holdings USA Inc.Altice Luxembourg SAAltice France SAAxalta Coating Systems LLCConstellium NVArena Luxembourg Finance SarlEC Finance PlcNexi Capital SpANokia Corp.LSF10 Wolverine Investments SCASmurfit Kappa Acquisitions ULCOI European Group BVBecton Dickinson Euro Finance SarlWMG Acquisition Corp.In other words, instead of focusing on the "black hole" of sovereign yields, which has been widely discussed for years ever since the ECB took rates below zero in what will one day been seen as the beginning of the end of central banking , what Bloomberg should have been looking at is the impact falling rates have had on investment grade corporate bond yields (mostly in Europe,for now), dragging these towards all-time lows, some well below zero. And, as Deutsche Bank notes, duration extension has been one way to reach for non-negative yield, leading to flattening of corporate yield (and spread) curves. Still, as the German bank notes, "one can run but one cannot hide", and as a result, a third of all European investment grade bonds and a third of 1-2y European BB-rated (i.e. junk) bonds now yield less than zero. What stands out in the chart above, is that 2/3rds of AA-rated EUR bonds, over 1/3 of single As, over 1/5 of BBBs and nearly a tenth of BBs yield less than zero at the moment. Here is the shocking punchline: the higher-rated front end is essentially all under water and 33% of the €2.2tn market, or some €700bn of EUR IG corporate bonds, have a negative yield. Shocking as that may be, it pales in comparison with the 75BN CHF IG market, of which 83% yields less than zero. You read that right: more than 8 out of 10 corporate bonds in Switzerland have a negative yield, such as the €500 million in bonds due 2024 issued by Nestlé which pay a 0.375% coupon, and which most recently traded at around 102.50, resulting in a negative yield of 0.15%. That means investors are paying a company - not a country, not a sovereign - for the "privilege" of issuing debt. The red color on the heatmap below only underscores the contrast between EUR and CHF denominated issuance, indicating that there is even more room for EUR IG yields to fall if need be. So going back to Bloomberg's "Black Hole" here is the bigger picture: there are now $13.4tn of negatively-yielding IG bonds globally, which is 24.5% of the universe that consists of $54.6tn of government, corporate and securitised IG bonds across currencies. The evolution of this trendline is shown in the chart below. A more granular take on the subset of EUR IG corporate bonds and Eurozone sovereign bonds, reveals that the value of negatively-yielding bonds is at an all-time high in the corporate and sovereign space alike: there are some €3.5tn of Eurozone sovereign bonds eligible for iBoxx indices that yield less than zero and, as mentioned above, some €700bn of negatively-yielding IG corporate bonds. Likewise, even though the markets have grown in size over time, the percentage shares with negative yields are at record levels too. Putting it all together, DB's Michal Jezek writes that while many investors are still reluctant to buy corporate bonds with negative yields, "the reality should eventually sink in that it is simply preferable to bleed less." Of course, none of this makes sense. As Bloomberg does correctly note, "negative rates are at odds with basic principles of the global finance system. "One important law of financial logic –- if you lend money for longer, you should see a higher return –- has been broken," wrote Bloomberg's Marcus Ashworth. "The time value of money has essentially disappeared.” And, as a result, investors are crammed into ever riskier bets in the hunt for returns, assuring that when the current asset bubble in financial markets and real estate - the biggest of all time - bursts, it won't be just investors who "bleed" but shortly thereafter central banks join them as well, only less metaphorically.