The Solar wind is the lowest I have ever seen at 292.8 km/sec, but the Sun has a record ten sunspots spaced across two latitudes, high and low.Earth is passing through a stream of debris from Halley's Comet, source of the annual Orionid meteor shower. Forecasters expect the shower to peak on Monday, Oct. 21st, with about 20 meteors per hour. The best time to look is during the hours before local sunrise when the constellation Orion is high in the sky. The full Moon will make it tough to see, but you’ll still be able to see some, so please go out.
As Oct. 18th came to a close, a dusky shadow fell across the southern half of the full Hunter's Moon. It was a faint "penumbral" lunar eclipse. A penumbral eclipse happens when the Moon passes through the pale outskirts of Earth's shadow. It is much less dramatic than a total lunar eclipse. In fact, when observers are not alerted beforehand, they often do not realize an eclipse is underway. Nevertheless, the subtle shadow of Earth is visible to the naked eye if you know it's there.
Comet ISON, which will fly through the atmosphere of the sun on Nov. 28th, is now flying past the planet Mars. The green comet and the Red Planet are just 1o apart in the eastern sky before dawn. Some are saying that the comet’s tail is turning red. This would be extremely rare, and would indicate Oxygen or Potassium residue.
Some, I suppose, might call the zero-hours contract natural progress, the evolutionary step from a sea of unionism to the beach head of capitalistic corporatism, but I would prefer to call it economic nostalgia by the ruling classes. You see, I've done my share of labour; I have worn both the worker's cap and the manager's suit and I have known both hunger and plenty. Being 90, I witnessed and experienced the great depression where there were no work contracts and employers could hire or fire workers at their leisure. The dock workers of our ports and the labourers who tilled our fields, mended our roads or built our skylines had little protection from employment abuse because jobs were scarce and hunger was abundant.
As a boy, I remember watching beaten men beg for work at the bolted gates of a local mill while behind bars of iron, a harried manager picked from an uneven line the lucky few who'd earn a bit of dosh while working like a horse in a shuck. The men who were chosen were those who knew that the price for survival was to keep schtum over the injustices done to them. As for the others, well they were like all of the other unfortunates in Britain – their lives, like rubbish bins, were left on the curb side.
This is why I am disturbed by zero-hours contracts because so much talent and ability in today's generation is being jeopardised by an authoritarian business dogma dictated by large corporations that demand sacrifice from their employees, handouts from the government and excessive profits for their stakeholders. Ultimately, this myopic greed by business, which is encouraged by our government, cannot be sustained or civilisation as we know it will rot like the fruit that falls on to the ground in late September.
However, the problem is more than the avarice that has metastasised like a malignant cancer in our business leaders – it is also our own indifference to the injustices done to our society. Sure, many people are outraged by zero-hours contracts. Yet once the online comment sections of our newspapers are closed for discussion and this news cycle ends, today's dailies will wrap tonight's fish. Morning will come and there will be a new, fresh scandal or outrage to sting us, irritate us or frighten us and then it will disappear like smoke rings from our consciousness.
As a species we are unique because we can either learn from or choose to forget unpleasant experiences. If we ignore the root cause of zero-hours contracts then like the inhabitants of ancient Pompeii this country shall be buried not under a mountain of molten lava but under a wave of corporate greed.
In Britain, we have to start asking the tough questions not only to our leaders but also to ourselves. Left, right or centre, everyone has to pause and think about what type of country they want. We have to take some responsibility for our destiny and use our influence, be it great or small, to change this nation for the better.
Zero-hours contracts should be abolished and each and every MP should be required to sign a declaration to their constituents as to where they stand on the matter. There should be open and honest debates about the NHS and its future. We should discuss poverty, education, social mobility and the benefits of wealth used for both individual enhancement and societal change. It's time the people of this country start to realise life isn't a reality TV show and what really matters is what's happening on your street, in your riding, in your county and around your country.
Those generations – X, Y, Z and the millennials – who wait in the wings wondering if their elders can do any more damage to their futures, it's time for you to take the ear-pods out and demand your voice be heard. If your generation doesn't have the gumption to demand more than a pay-day loan life from yourselves, your leaders, your political parties, the banks, you will be forever an indentured servant to a system that has been bent out of shape.
It is time you demanded your birthright, which is the modern welfare state where everyone's life is afforded protection and dignity. Don't tell me it can't be done because I was there in 1945 when a revolution washed over Britain and for the first time in our nation's history, people were judged by their character and not by their class, their region or their accent.
Dollar Slips as Fed Worries Continue
Treasury Yields Fall as Investors Focus on Effects of Government Shutdown
Expectations that the Federal Reserve will have to keep its easy-money policies in place for longer following the partial U.S. government shutdown pushed the dollar close to its lowest point of the year against the euro and U.S. Treasury debt prices to their highest point since July.
Yields on the 10-year Treasury note, which move inversely to prices, touched 2.538%, the lowest level since July 24, according to CQG. The dollar continued its slide against major rivals, including the euro, the yen and the pound. The euro recently bought $1.3686 from $1.3676 late Thursday, while the pound fetched $1.6186 from $1.6165. The greenback traded at ¥97.71 from ¥97.93.
The drop in the dollar and the rise in Treasury debt prices were set in train earlier this week after lawmakers reached a temporary solution to raise the so-called debt ceiling, showing that investors doubt the Fed can start to reel in its stimulus measures—a process dubbed tapering—for as long as economic performance and data is compromised by the now-ended shutdown, and as long as the risk of repeat shutdowns lingers.
"As policy remains uber accommodative, the dollar has adjusted downwards," said Scott Jamieson, head of multi-asset investing at Kames Capital in London, with $24 billion under management.
"While we have been inclined to see tapering next year, the market is only now coming to appreciate this," said analysts at Brown Brothers Harriman. "After the September disappointment, surveys suggest that a majority shifted their expectations to December. Now in light of the fiscal drag and new uncertainty, the mid-January and mid-February limits on spending and debt issuance will loom large at the December Federal Open Market Committee meeting, and likely reduces the possibility of tapering then. The focus is likely to shift to the March 2014 FOMC meeting for the first tapering," they said.
U.S. stocks traded mostly higher. The S&P 500 added 0.4% to 1740, pushing further into record territory. The Nasdaq Composite Index rose 0.8% to 3893. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lagged behind, dropping 0.2% to 15370.
As U.S. averts default, Japan and China brace for next dollar drama
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By Wayne Arnold and LeikaKihara
HONG KONG/TOKYO (Reuters) - Deal or no deal, the U.S. Congress' dance with default impressed policymakers and investors in China and Japan with just how vulnerable their own economic revival plans are to the next political tantrum on Capitol Hill.
The 11th-hour agreement on Wednesday between Congressional Republicans and Democrats to raise the limit on U.S. government borrowing and end a 16-day government shutdown also averted a default on U.S. Treasury bonds that had threatened the global economy and financial system.
But Congress gets another chance to hold U.S. creditworthiness hostage early next year ahead of a new February 7 deadline to approve a debt ceiling increase.
"We're glad a deal has been struck," said a Japanese policymaker, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "But the uncertainty will remain and it will be the same thing all over again early next year."
He and other Japanese officials say they have already developed contingency plans that include flooding Japan's banking system with cash to keep markets functioning however panicked investors become. And analysts say China, whose Communist leaders are due to hold a key policy meeting next month, may step up a push for global acceptance of its currency, the yuan or renminbi, as an alternative to the U.S. dollar in international trade.
"They might actually consider accelerating the process," said Vincent Chan, head of equity research at Credit Suisse in Hong Kong. "You strengthen the case of making the renminbi a genuine international currency, because the Americans are unreliable."
NEAR-DEBT EXPERIENCE
Perhaps no two economies outside the United States have more at stake in Washington's recurring drama than Japan and China.
Not only are they the second- and third-largest economies, but they lend Washington more money than any other single nation. China held $1.28 trillion in U.S. Treasury securities at the end of July and Japan owned $1.14 trillion. A default would likely have devastated the value of their holdings.
More than that, though, both nations have adopted policies to revitalize their own economies that to some extent rely on the improving economic appetite, stable currency and increasing indebtedness of the world's largest economy.
China is trying to deflate a dangerous credit bubble and wealth imbalances with a series of reforms that include slowly easing controls on moving money into and out of the country and allowing its currency to gently appreciate.
Analysts predict investors faced with a U.S. default would try to sell dollars for yuan, forcing China's central bank to either buy up dollars at a time when the government issuing them isn't honoring its obligations or allow a rapid increase in the yuan's value that would hurt exports and worsen the country's credit bubble.
In a sign of such market pressure, the yuan hit a record high on Friday for a fifth consecutive day against the dollar, partly as investors worried about the economic impact of the U.S. shutdown.
"If China allows the yuan to rise sharply, it could be very risky given the possible asset bubbles in the country," said He Yifeng, an economist at Hongyuan Securities in Beijing.
Japan, meanwhile, is trying to end 20 years of deflation and anemic growth with a blend of policies named for their chief proponent, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. "Abenomics" relies on reviving domestic consumption and investment in part by weakening the yen, boosting the earnings and stock prices of giant exporters like Toyota Motors Corp and Hitachi Ltd.
A U.S. default would likely prompt investors to buy yen.
"That would undoubtedly pose a headwind against Abenomics, which has much depended on a weak yen and higher share prices buoyed by the feel-good mood it has generated," said Masamichi Adachi, senior economist at JPMorgan Securities in Tokyo.
QUID PRO QUO
A default also stands to hamper a U.S. recovery and with it a nascent rebound in global exports. A default in the first quarter of 2014 would hit just as Japan's economy girds for an April sales tax increase and as China's economy loses the effects of accelerated public works spending and re-stocking of inventories.
There are no bond markets large enough to give China and Japan an alternative to U.S. Treasuries for the dollars they accumulate selling exports. So the prospect of another U.S. default drama next year is likely to lend new urgency to China's preferred solution: conducting less trade in dollars and more in renminbi.
About 18 percent of China's total trade is settled in yuan and it has registered a sharp increase this year after stagnating for most of last year.
Much of the increase has come in China's trade with economies outside the United States or the European Union, its biggest demand centers, although it accelerated plans to internationalize the currency with agreements this month with Britain and the European Central Bank.
Achieving more trade in yuan, however, means giving China's trading partners a place to invest their renminbi as easily as they invest their dollars in U.S. Treasuries now.
That means opening China further to foreign investment, a realization that could strengthen the hand of officials advocating faster reform.
"China can only be strong when its currency is a real alternative," said Chan at Credit Suisse. "But to be an alternative you have to have an open market."
“My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.” – Barack Obama March 27, 2009
The president was speaking to the heads of America’s largest banks in the White House shortly after his election. At this extraordinary meeting, Obama and his administration made it very clear that the big banks would play ball or have problems.
The CEOs of the big banks genuflected, as was wise. Jamie Dimon, Ken Lewis, and others knew what was expected of them. The play for these men was to roll over, which they did. And to write checks to Democrats, which they did.
They had already written big checks to Obama in the 2008 campaign. Wall Street piled onto the Obama bandwagon when things began to look obvious. Goldman Sachs employees for instance were Obama’s largest contributor after the University of California system. JP Morgan and Citi were not far behind.
They all got protection from the “pitchforks,” courtesy of President Obama. In particular, they got protection from legal actions connected to the Crash.
Little more than midway through the first Obama term, Wall Street began to wonder if the play was no longer to roll over, but to back the Republican candidate. Here was a candidate who came from their ranks who likely would not exact a political toll for protection, but would do it as a matter of natural disposition. Wall Street had more faith in Mitt Romney than Main Street did and Wall Street went in whole hog.