Written by Econintersect
Early Bird Headlines 05 September 2019
Econintersect: Here are some of the headlines we found to help you start your day. For more headlines see our afternoon feature for GEI members, What We Read Today, published Monday, Wednesday and Friday, which has many more headlines and a number of article discussions to keep you abreast of what we have found interesting.
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Notice: We have changed the form of content coverage for Early Bird. We will provide discussion only for Asia Markets news and a small number (often 1 or 2) other articles. The remainder of the content will be headlines (with links) only.
Key Articles
Global
- Hang Seng index clings on to gains as investors watch Hong Kong developments (CNBC) Asia Pacific stocks were higher Thursday. The U.S. dollar index weakened to 98.352 from levels above 98.8 yesterday. Brent crude futures traded slightly higher at $60.70 per barrel and U.S. crude futures declined 0.13% to $56.26 per barrel. Spot gold fell 0.5% to $1,545.37 per ounce as of 0327 GMT, set to snap a three-day gaining streak. Prices touched $1,557 on Wednesday, their highest since April 2013. U.S. Treasury yields were higher.
U.S.
- Sleuths Find the Top-Secret (and Classified) Satellite Behind Trump’s Tweeted Photo (Live Science) Amateur satellite trackers have reverse-engineered the image included in a President Trump tweet on August 30 and figured out that it likely came from the highly classified USA 224 satellite. USA 224 is suspected to be a KH-11 surveillance satellite, a classified piece of equipment about which the public knows little. See next article.
- Image from Trump tweet identified as imagery by USA 224, a classified KH-11 ENHANCED CRYSTAL satellite ( SatTrackCam Leiden) Detailed analysis has established exactly when and where the photgraph was taken. The author is puzzled why the president would reveal the secret (until he declasified that photo) capabilities of this very advanced surveillance instrument:
The occassion at which this happened, is eyebrow raising. A failed space launch hardly is a matter of great geopolitical concern. It is something trivial compared to e.g. imagery showing preparations for an invasion, the production of WMD, or atrocities against humanity. The latter could perhaps be argued to be a valid reason to publish imagery that also divulges the capacities of your best space-based imaging platforms: this occasion was not.
Which makes this a rather momentous occasion.
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- Futures Soar, Yields Jump After China, US Agree To Resume Trade Talks In October (Zero Hedge) S&P futures surged and 10Y yields jumped after China’s CCTV reported that its top trade negotiators will travel to Washington in early October for talks with U.S. counterparts, to resume negotiations to resolve their trade war. The decision came following an early Thursday phone call Beijing time between Chinese Vice-Premier Liu He and the USTR Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, according to a statement from China’s commerce ministry.
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Italy
- No One’s Looking at Italy – Here’s Why That’s a Mistake (Critical Signals Report) There is one serious error in this analysis – the author equates Italian “sovereign” debt with that of the U.S., not rcognizing that Italy owes it’s debt in Euros (which it cannot create), while the U.S. national debt is denominated in dollars. That said, Matt Piepenburg does have a point about the anomaly of very low yields in Italy, indeed in all the Eurozone. He says:
Italy’s bond market has officially been committed to an insane asylum, to which the U.S. bond market will eventually be booking a room.
a year ago, unlike now, money was naturally fleeing out of Italian bonds and thus sending bond prices down and yields up.
In a matter of just 20 trading days, Italian 10-year bonds saw yields skyrocket from 1% to 3%.
Today, however, those same bonds are even riskier, but the return/yield for such risk has recently fallen to below 1%, a number that is simply insane. Take a look:
What we see in European bond yields is now embarrassingly obvious evidence of bond market rigged to fail.
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Other important articles
Global
U.S.
- 10 key lines from CNN’s climate crisis town hall (CNN)
- Pence lands in controversy with stay at Trump hotel (The Hill)
- Jeffrey Epstein Case: Over 1,000 People Connected to Him in Address Book (The New York Times)
- Alan Greenspan says it’s ‘only a matter of time’ before negative rates spread to the US (CNBC)
- Cities where the middle class can no longer afford housing (24/7 Wall St)
- Trump administration rolls back Obama-era lightbulb rules (The Hill)
UK
- How Boris Johnson lost his legislative majority, and what it means (The Washington Post)
- Boris Johnson’s bid for early UK election rejected (CNN)
- Brexit: Lords agree to push through bill preventing no deal by end of Friday (The Guardian)
Germany
- British bankers on trial in Germany charged with €447m fraud (The Guardian)
Russia
India
- Opioid addiction rising in India as US drugmakers push painkillers (The Guardian)
- In Kashmir, shopkeepers refuse to open despite India easing some curbs (Reuters)
China
- China and US agree to meet in October for trade negotiations: Chinese Ministry of Commerce (CNBC)
- Hong Kong leader says China ‘respects and supports’ withdrawal of extradition bill (Reuters)
Bahamas
Honduras
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