What We Read Today 28 June 2019: Special Public Edition

Written by Econintersect

Econintersect: Every day our editors collect the most interesting things they find from around the internet and present a summary “reading list” which will include very brief summaries (and sometimes longer ones) of why each item has gotten our attention. Suggestions from readers for “reading list” items are gratefully reviewed, although sometimes space limits the number included.

This feature is published Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in the late afternoon New York time. Today the ‘What We Read Today’ column missed the cutoff for our FREE daily newsletter, normally the only way it is accessed. So it’s been published in a Special Edition for the convenience of subscribers. As a result, it is today available for all to read.

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Topics today include 24 articles and 20 graphics:​

• Extreme Bearishness – It Is Usually Bullish
• The Most Energetic Light Ever Seen Just Showered Down from the Skies Above Tibet
• The Last Glaciation
• The Last Glacial Maximum
• Was South America Covered with Ice the Way the Northen Hemisphere Was During the Last Ice Age?
• The Last Ice Age in Europe
• Development Will Drive Global Population Growth Down
• Rapid population growth is a temporary phenomenon: Empirical evidence for the demographic transition
• Winners and losers from two nights of Democratic debates
• Biden loses support of prominent fundraiser amid race, abortion controversies
• Stocks rise to close out Dow’s biggest June gain since 1938, S&P 500s best first half in 2 decades
• 28Jun2019 Market Close: Wall Street Ended Like A Rollercoaster Beginning Its First Run Downward, DOW Finally Closed Up 73 Points, This Is One Weekend I Wouldn’t Want To Have Speculative Position
• Man who rammed his car into counterprotesters in Charlottesville gets life
• Population Growth in the U.S. – With and Without Immigration
• Chris Matthews Asks Kamala Harris: How Do You Not Hate White People?
• Big Capital Gains? Should Have Bought Austria’s 100-year Bond
• France roasts in record heatwave, two die in Spain
• US reaches semifinals. Megan Rapinoe scores both goals
• Megan Rapinoe, USA Beat France, Advance to 2019 Women’s World Cup Semi-Finals

• Iran says European efforts to salvage nuclear deal are not enough

• Here’s what every major Wall Street bank believes will happen at the Trump-Xi trade meeting

• President Xi, Still the Deglobalizer in Chief

• Mexican president announces plan to provide 40,000 jobs

• And More

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Articles about events, conflicts and disease around the world

Global

• Development Will Drive Global Population Growth Down (Twitter) See also next article.

• Rapid population growth is a temporary phenomenon: Empirical evidence for the demographic transition (Our World in Data) The world’s future population will be determinded by demographic transition.

U.S.

• Winners and losers from two nights of Democratic debates (The Hill) Here’s the list:

Winners:

• Sen. Kamala Harris (CA)
• South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg (IN)
• Former HUD Secretary Julian Castro (TX)

Losers:

• Former VP Joe Biden (DE)
• Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (TX)
• Climate Change Activists

The Jury is Out:

• Sen. Bernie Sanders (I, VT)
• Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (HI)
• Sen. Corey Booker (NJ)

• Biden loses support of prominent fundraiser amid race, abortion controversies (The Hill) Former Vice President Joe Biden lost the support of one of his top fundraisers amid controversies over Biden’s comments on working with segregationist senators and the Hyde Amendment. Tom McInerney, a longtime San Francisco based lawyer, told CNBC that he informed Biden’s team on June 20 that he would no longer raise money for the campaign.
• Stocks rise to close out Dow’s biggest June gain since 1938, S&P 500s best first half in 2 decades (CNBC) Stocks closed higher on Friday, boosted by bank shares, as investors looked ahead to a key meeting between President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. See also 28Jun2019 Market Close: Wall Street Ended Like A Rollercoaster Beginning Its First Run Downward, DOW Finally Closed Up 73 Points, This Is One Weekend I Wouldn’t Want To Have Speculative Position for complete market coverage.
• Man who rammed his car into counterprotesters in Charlottesville gets life(CNN) James A. Fields Jr., the man who drove into a crowd of counterprotesters in Charlottesville’s “Unite the Right” rally two years ago, leaving one woman dead, was sentenced Friday to life in prison in his federal hate crimes case. Fields pleaded guilty to 29 federal hate crimes in March as part of an agreement that eliminated the death penalty as a possible punishment. Under the punishment imposed by US Judge Michael F. Urbanski, Fields will serve his sentence without the possibility of parole. Before sentencing Fields addressed the judge and said:

“I’d like to apologize. I apologize to my mother for putting her through all of this. Every day I think about my actions and how this could have gone differently. I’m sorry.”

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• Population Growth in the U.S. – With and Without Immigration (Our World in Data)

• Chris Matthews Asks Kamala Harris: How Do You Not Hate White People?(Daily Beast) Sen. Harris, who is married to a white man, seemed taken aback by the question. The entire summary of the interview is presented in the video below. See also The Past Finally Caught Up With Joe Biden and Kamala Shows She’s Here to Capture the Crown.

Austria

• Big Capital Gains? Should Have Bought Austria’s 100-year Bond (Twitter)

France

• France roasts in record heatwave, two die in Spain (Reuters) France registered its highest temperature since records began on Friday as the death toll rose from a heatwave suffocating much of Europe.

The mercury hit 45.9 degrees Celsius (114.6 Fahrenheit) in Gallargues-le-Montueux, in the southern Provence region, weather forecaster Meteo France said, nearly two degrees above the previous high of 44.1 Celsius recorded in August 2003.

• US reaches semifinals. Megan Rapinoe scores both goals (CNN) Defending champions the United States have reached the semi-finals of the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup, beating hosts France 2-1 on Friday. Megan Rapinoe scored twice before Wendie Renard got one back for Les Bleues as the U.S. advanced to a last-four tie against England. France conceded an opening goal on home soil for the first time in 2019 when Rapinoe arrowed a free-kick past Sarah Bouhaddi in the fifth minute.See also Megan Rapinoe, USA Beat France, Advance to 2019 Women’s World Cup Semi-Finals.

Iran

• Iran says European efforts to salvage nuclear deal are not enough (CNBC)

• The remaining parties to the Iran nuclear deal met in Vienna Friday, in a last ditch effort to keep Iran from violating the agreement by enriching more uranium than allowed by the accord.
• Britain, France and Germany came up with a trade mechanism to help Iran skirt some U.S. sanctions, and the EU said it would “intensify” efforts to reduce the impact of sanctions and normalize trade with Iran.
• But an analyst said the efforts are too little to appease Iran and the trading vehicle will likely assist in humanitarian goods, but not in trading oil as Iran seeks.

China

• Here’s what every major Wall Street bank believes will happen at the Trump-Xi trade meeting (CNBC)

• Major Wall Street banks believe a cease-fire in which the U.S. still keeps some tariffs on China but postpones new ones is the most likely outcome this weekend.
• “Investors beware: while a pause is better than escalation, it won’t refresh the economy enough to forestall a challenging path for risk assets,” Morgan Stanley says.
• “The ‘best case’ for this G-20 is a similar outcome to the last: new talks coupled with a decision to postpone the new tariff round,” analysts at Cowen said.

• President Xi, Still the Deglobalizer in Chief (Brad Setser,Council on Foreign Relations) When it comes to manufactures, China is actually importing less from everyone right now-even with the (quite modest) tariff cuts. They are not likely to import more from the U.S. after a trade agreement. China under Xi has deglobalized more than the United States under Trump. But China’s manufacturing surplus is still inching up.

Mexico

• Mexican president announces plan to provide 40,000 jobs to migrants(Reuters) Mexico is finalizing a deal to provide 40,000 factory jobs to migrants in northern states, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Friday, addressing a key need for the thousands waiting in Mexico as their U.S. asylum cases are decided.

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Other Scientific, Health, Political, Economics, and Business Items of Note – plus Miscellanea

• Extreme Bearishness – It Is Usually Bullish (Twitter)

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• The Most Energetic Light Ever Seen Just Showered Down from the Skies Above Tibet (Live Science) Scientists have found photons which originated in the Crab Nebula, a pulsar, or a powerful spinning supernova remnant 6,523 light-years away. These photons were gamma rays with energies exceeding 100 trillion electronvolts – one even had nearly 500 trillion electronvolts of energy. Previously, only photons with tens of trillions of electronvolts had been seen.

The new results were discovered with a part of the Tibetan Air Shower Array, an experiment that uses 4 million square feet (36,900 square meters) of detectors to search for high-energy particles like cosmic rays and gamma rays. When such particles hit the upper atmosphere, they create showers of secondary subatomic particles that the array detects. The rarified air over the array, which stands 14,100 feet (4,300 meters) above sea level, allows more of the secondary particles to make it to the ground.

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• The Last Glaciation (Thought Co.) When did the last Ice Age occur? The world’s most recent glacial period began about 110,000 years ago and ended around 12,500 years ago. The maximum extent of this glacial period was the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) and it occurred around 20,000 years ago. Although the Pleistocene Epoch experienced many cycles of glacials and interglacials (the warmer periods between the colder glacial climates), the last glacial period is the most heavily studied and best-known portion of the world’s current ice age, especially with regard to North America and northern Europe. See next two articles for some details. Picture below shows the iconic Matterhorn, one of the highest mountains in Europe. All four faces of the mountain were carved by glaciers.

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• The Last Glacial Maximum (Scotese.com) The last ice age affected land masses more in the northern hemisphere, where more than 2/3 of global land mass is located. See Was South America Covered with Ice the Way the Northen Hemisphere Was During the Last Ice Age? (Quora). Note the greater exposed land areas due to sea levels being 400 feet lower at the peak of the last ice age, shown in the map below.

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• The Last Ice Age in Europe (Don’s Maps) The last great ice age began around 120 000 years ago. One massive ice sheet, more than 3 kilometres thick in places, grew in fits and starts until it covered almost all of Canada and stretched down as far as Manhattan. Then, 20 000 years ago, a great thaw began. Over the following 10 000 years, the average global temperature rose by 3.5 deg C and most of the ice melted. Rising seas swallowed up low-lying areas such as the English Channel and North Sea, forcing our ancestors to abandon many settlements. First map below shows the maximum extension of the Eurasian Ice Sheet. The second map shows the progression of sea incursion on the land mass known as Doggerland which once made the modern-day British Isles part of the European contintent..

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