"China’s stock market sinks into bear territory as CSI 300 extends 10-week rout"

Raising the question where are the sellers putting the proceeds?

Price action says not into precious metals, not into mainland real estate, not into grains or industrial metals. So where are the sellers stashing their newfound liquidity?

Into cash in the form of currency? 

From CNBC, October 21: 

• The index, which tracks 300 of the largest stocks listed in Shanghai and Shenzhen, has declined for 10 consecutive weeks.
• Chinese firms have been suffering from declining profit growth amid intense competition that has eroded margins. 

China’s benchmark CSI 300 index on Thursday entered bear-market territory, falling 20% from its June peak, as a prolonged sell-off in its equities deepens.

The index, which tracks 300 of the largest stocks listed in Shanghai and Shenzhen, has declined for 10 consecutive weeks and is down 2.6% so far this week, underscoring sustained pressure on Chinese equities, data from LSEG showed. The index was more than 1% lower Thursday.

Jordan Cvetanovski, chairman and CIO at Pella Funds, said China’s equity market continues to face structural challenges, particularly as the world’s second-largest economy grapples with the fallout from years of excess capacity and overinvestment.

“I think China is really struggling with reining in the problems that they’ve had in the past from the overbuild of capacity and other things,” Cvetanovski told CNBC, pointing to challenges facing companies even in globally competitive industries such as batteries — a sector where he still sees select opportunities in China.

Chinese firms have been suffering from declining profit growth amid intense competition that has eroded margins and even invited the government to step in. In September, the country posted it’s weakest growth in industrial profits this year.

The world’s second-largest economy also posted its slowest growth in over three years in the second quarter, pressured by a multiyear slowdown in the property sector and extended weakness in consumer demand.

Shaun Rein, managing director at China Market Research Group, expects further selling pressure as geopolitical uncertainty, concerns over an artificial intelligence bubble and deteriorating consumer confidence weigh on investor sentiment.

China’s large base of retail investors could also exacerbate market volatility, Rein said, as individual investors are prone to exiting the market faster during periods of uncertainty.

Unlike major markets such as the New York Stock Exchange, where retail investors account for about 20%-25% of trade volumes, China’s retail investors drive 90% of daily trading, according to data provided by HSBC.

“For Chinese, it’s about wealth preservation,” Rein said, noting that investors are increasingly favoring safer assets such as time deposits amid a weakening property market and sluggish labor conditions....

....MORE 

Hong Kong's Hang Seng index was down 3%, Tokyo's Nikkei 225 down 2.65% and Seoul's KOSPI down 3 1/2%.

Also at CNBC:

Critical web security flaws spark global alarm as Google, OpenAI and Amazon respond 

U.S. pulls diplomats from Saudi Arabia as it reportedly readies Iran strikes after midterms 

My Spidey Sense is tingling but I'm not sure why. 

For what it's worth here is the one year chart of CNY/USD at the ICE via TradingView:

 

The yuan is definitely strong versus the dollar. 

As the best equity analyst I've ever met once said while looking at a stock chart with a similar pattern:

"A trend is emerging"

"Nvidia reveals plans for an AI factory in a shipping container to build data centers in weeks, not months" (NVDA)

They may be safer than other things people contemplate putting in shipping containers: small nuclear weapons, chemical or biological weapons, really any weapons at all. See Israel's Mossad and Ukraine's Operation Spiderweb.

I say may be because really, who knows?

From Yahoo Finance via MSN, October 21:

Nvidia (NVDA) wants to reduce the time it takes for its customers to start generating revenue from its AI systems.

At its GTC event in Berlin on Wednesday, the company unveiled its DSX POD, a reference design for an AI data center packed into a box about the size of a standard shipping container.

Data center construction can take months, if not years, to get up and running. And because they don't start generating revenue until they begin processing AI tokens, the longer a data center takes to come online, the more expenses pile up.

The DSX POD is meant to serve as a faster, modular solution for companies that need access to data center capabilities sooner rather than later.

"The moment then you have to install these AI factories, and they're gigantic. And putting these AI factories into service takes months. If we could reduce that months, you know, from the moment that the systems are shipped to the moment that it's deployed and being operational, if we could reduce it from months to weeks or even a month, that will be completely game-changing for all of these AI factories," CEO Jensen Huang told Deirdre Bosa.

According to Nvidia, the Vera Rubin-powered DSX PODs will arrive on site, ready to be plugged into the power, cooling, and networking infrastructure, reducing deployment time from six months to 14 days....

....MUCH MORE 

And at the company, October 21:

NVIDIA Introduces DSX POD AI Factories to Accelerate Europe’s Infrastructure Deployment 

Factory-Built With a Global Ecosystem Including Bull, Dell Technologies, HPE, Lenovo, Schneider Electric and Vertiv, the New Reference Design Speeds Infrastructure Deployment From Months to Weeks, Accelerating Time to First Production Tokens....

....MUCH MORE 

"Researcher: This is the only way to get rid of rats"

This article is about rodentia. We'll see if we have anything on politicians next week. 

From Science Norway, October 18:

Traditional methods are proving inadequate in the fight against rats.  

"Traditional pest control methods are not particularly good for the environment, human health, or animal welfare," says researcher Heidi Sjursen Konestabo.

Together with her colleagues at the Department of Pest Control at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH), she has now published a report on measures to combat rats and mice.

"We have summarised the research and identified what actually works," she says.

For a long time, both researchers and pest control companies believed that rat poison was the best method. It is now clear that it does not solve the problem in the long run....

....MUCH MORE 

Currently the most read article at Science Norway.
(possibly residual displeasure from the fact that the brown rat is also known as the Norway Rat: Rattus Norvegicus)

And at the top of the front page at Science Norway:

The Five Foolish Virgins tower over the narrowest point of this strait. What is this monument from the Roman era

May be of interest: 

The Norwegian Forest Cat (here at Catster):

 

"Democrats have a message for Elon Musk: Watch out" (SPCX; TSLA)

From Politico, October 20:

From DOGE to Ukraine, the uberwealthy GOP donor could be an irresistible target if House gavels change hands. 

Democrats are eyeing many targets as they make plans to probe corruption in and around President Donald Trump’s administration should they win control of the House next month.

Few loom larger than Elon Musk.

The world’s richest man and nine-figure Republican donor has emerged as a man of intense interest to several potential committee chairs — not to mention scores of rank-and-file Democratic lawmakers — who see multiple fronts for investigations.

Those include Musk’s whirlwind stint as head of the Department of Government Efficiency, his companies’ multibillion-dollar contracts with the federal government and — most recently — his possible role in throttling crucial internet access to the Ukrainian military as the White House seeks to pressure President Volodymyr Zelenskyy into cutting a peace deal with Russia.

“What happens when one guy gets a giant contract from the government and then uses it to do something that shuts down communication in a war that has been extremely important to the United States to support Ukraine?” Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, said in an interview. “There’s a lot of different parts of the corruption around Musk.”

Multiple committees are now gaming out how they will take on Musk next term if Democrats win back gavels, with senior members and aides considering how he fits into the various panels’ jurisdiction. Any number of committees in both chambers could stake a claim to probing a piece of Musk’s dealings with the federal government.

“We definitely have a lot of questions about Elon Musk’s role in DOGE and it is something we plan to investigate,” said Sara Guerrero, a spokesperson for top Oversight Committee Democrat Rep. Robert Garcia of California.

Spokespeople for Musk did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Some members are not waiting for election results to get started. Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee demanded last month that Musk testify under oath about a Government Accountability Office report claiming that DOGE overstated its savings, while the House Ways and Means Committee has already called to investigate alleged DOGE-related data theft from Social Security.

Huge parts of Musk’s dealings with the federal government could come under congressional scrutiny, including the billions of dollars in spaceflight contracts SpaceX holds with NASA as well as the clean-energy subsidies Tesla has reaped.

But leading Democrats of multiple committees remain fixed on Musk’s five-month rampage through the federal bureaucracy as DOGE leader, in which an estimated 250,000 federal jobs were cut amid allegations of data breaches and illegally withheld congressional spending.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California, the top Democrat on the Space, Science and Technology Committee, which oversees NASA, said her panel has more “to learn about the damage that DOGE inflicted on our science agencies.”

“Elon Musk and his DOGE cronies stirred up chaos, ruined careers, and played a large role in illegal grant cancellations and firings of civil servants,” she said in a Monday statement.

“He helped orchestrate the systematic destruction of government programs and services over the last nearly two years,” Lofgren added. “The sheer number of conflicts of interest are astounding.”

Rep. Greg Meeks of New York, the top Foreign Affairs Committee Democrat, said much the same — calling in a Monday statement for “a full accounting of the damage Mr. Musk and DOGE caused.”

“The cruel dismantling of USAID, championed by Elon Musk and carried out by Secretary Rubio, saved no taxpayer money, balanced no budget, and made America no safer,” Meeks said, adding that the panel “will not let anyone obstruct our oversight.”....

....MUCH MORE 

It is the cuts to USAID and its transfer to State Department oversight that kicked the hornets nest. Some of the very powerful "six ways from Sunday" constituencies have decided they want that money and they want that control.

Here's a quick read on a few of the issues that left USAID open to the actions taken thus far:

OFFICE OF INSPECTOR GENERAL
U.S. Agency for International Development 

Audit of USAID’s Financial
Statements for Fiscal Year
2025  

Audit Report 0-000-26-004-C
January 16, 2026

(87 page PDF) 

"Opposition to data centers will drive up inflation, says BlackRock’s Larry Fink"

There's an argument I hadn't seen before.

From MarketWatch, October 21: 

BlackRock Chief Executive Larry Fink doubled down on the importance of building data centers to the health of the U.S. economy, saying not pushing ahead could be inflationary.

“About two-thirds of the U.S. economy is capital expenditures right now on technology, whether it’s cloud or whether it’s AI, whether it’s just a capex of making sure you’re competitive,” said Fink, speaking to Bloomberg on the sidelines of the Berlin Global Dialogue conference on Wednesday.

“If we slow down the build out of this technology, I think it really does jeopardize the economy. It means we’re not going to build these. It means we’re building elsewhere,” he said, noting that Canada, India or Abu Dhabi could become alternatives.

“If we don’t build out these data centers, it is actually more inflationary because the cost to compute is so high right now. And the faster we can build up more data centers, the more compute we have, the faster we can bring down the cost,” he added.

Hyperscalers in the U.S. alone are talking about $7 trillion to $9 trillion that’s needed to finance that building and keep the U.S. in a leading position on AI, he said.

That type of funding, on top of financing the federal deficit, is pushing up the term premium — the extra return investors demand to hold longer-term Treasurys — which is bound to keep rising, he said....

....MUCH MORE 

 

News You Can Use: "....How AI-enabled coups could allow a tiny group to seize power"

Sure, everyone and his brother are posting on "How to build a Billion-Dollar Business with One Person and AI Agents" but where are you going to find Luttwak updated to the 21st century? Here, that's where.
(well, originally at the 80,000 Hours pod and then here.) 

May 3, 2025

....Highlights

"No person rules alone" — except now they might

Rob Wiblin: What is it structurally about AI as a technology that allows it to facilitate seizures of power by small groups?

Tom Davidson: The key thing in my mind is that it’s surprisingly plausible that you could get a really tiny group of people — possibly just one person — that has an extreme degree of control over how the technology is built and how it’s used.

Let me say a few things about why that might be the case. Today there are already massive capital costs needed to develop frontier systems: it costs hundreds of millions of dollars for the computer chips that you’d need. So that means that already there’s only a handful of companies that can afford to get into that game and large barriers to entry.

And I think that is going to increase as a factor over time, as these initial training runs are getting more and more expensive. And even with the move away from pretraining towards more agentic training like with o1, still we expect that there’s going to be a lot of compute used to generate that synthetic data to train the most capable systems.

There’s also kind of a broad economic feature of AI that it has these massive economies of scale, which means huge upfront development costs and then very small marginal costs of serving an extra customer. And also, AIs produced by different companies are pretty similar to one another. There are small differences between Claude and GPT-4, but not massive.

And economically speaking, those features tend to favour a kind of natural monopoly where there’s just one company that kind of serves the whole market. I’m not saying that these economic features will necessarily push all the way to there being just one frontier AI developer, but I think that there are these broad structural arguments to think that there could be a consolidation of that market — like what we’ve seen, for example, in the semiconductor supply chain over previous decades: now only TSMC is able to produce the smallest node chips.

So those are economic factors. I think there are some political factors that could lead to centralisation of AI development as well. People have raised reasonable national security grounds for centralising AI development. It could allow us to secure AI weights more against potential foreign adversaries. So I think there’s a chance that’s convincing.

People have also thought it might be good for AI safety to have just one centralised project, so you don’t have racing between different projects.

There’s also some more AI-specific reasons that you could have a real centralisation in terms of AI development. This idea of recursive improvement, which I talked about last time I was on the podcast, is the idea that at some point — I think maybe very soon — AI will be able to fully replace the technical workers at top AI developers like OpenAI. And when that happens, even if we were previously in a situation where the top AI developer is only a little bit ahead of the laggard, it could be that once you automate AI research, that gap quickly becomes very big — because whoever automates AI research first gets a big speed boost. So even if it seems like there’s multiple projects that are all developing frontier systems, then there could be a year over which actually now there’s only really one game in town, in terms of the very best system.

So this is all to say that we could very easily end up in a world where there’s just one organisation that is developing this completely general purpose, highly powerful technology.

Now, you might say that’s OK, because within that organisation there’ll be loads of different people, loads of checks and balances. But there’s actually a plausible technological path to that not being the case, which again relates to how AI could potentially replace the technical researchers at that company.

So today, there’s hundreds of different people that are involved in, for example, developing GPT-5. And if someone wanted to mess with the way that technology is built, so it kind of served the interests of a particular group, it would be quite hard to do, because there’s so many different people that are part of the process. They might notice what’s happening, they might report it.

But once we get to a world where it is technologically possible to replace those researchers with AI systems — which could just be fully obedient, instruction-following AI systems — then you could feasibly have a situation where there’s just one person at the top of the organisation that gives a command: “This is how I want the next AI system to be developed. These are the values I want it to have.” And then this army of loyal, obedient AIs will then do all of the technical work in terms of building the AI system. There don’t have to be, technologically speaking, any humans in the loop doing that work. So that could remove a lot of the natural inbuilt checks and balances within one of these — potentially the only developer of frontier AI.

So pulling that all together is to say that there is a plausible scenario where there’s just one organisation that’s building superhuman AI systems, and there’s actually potentially just one person that’s actually making the significant decisions about how it’s built. That is what I would consider an extreme degree of control over the system.

And even if there’s kind of an appearance that other employees are overlooking parts of the process, there’s still this risk that someone with a lot of access rights and are able to make changes to the system without approvals could secretly have a side project which does a lot of technical work. And that even if employees are overseeing some parts of the process, it could just be that that side project is able to have a significant influence over the shape of the technology without anyone knowing anymore.

Rob Wiblin: So I guess the key thing that distinguishes AI or AGI in this case from previous technologies, is the cliche about even dictators, even people who have seemingly enormous amounts of power: no person rules alone.

Even if you are Vladimir Putin or you’re seemingly controlling an entire country, you can’t go collecting the taxes yourself; you can’t actually hold the guns in the military yourself. You require this enormous number of people to cooperate with you and enforce your power. You have to care about the views of a broader group of people, because they might remove you if they think someone else would serve their interests better.

Tom Davidson: Exactly.

The 3 threat scenarios

Tom Davidson: I distinguish between three broad threat models here, although you can of course get combinations of all three.

Military coup is where there’s this legitimate, established military, but you subvert it by illegitimately seizing control — maybe using a technical backdoor or convincing the military to go along with your power grab. So that’s the first one: military coups.

The second one is something I call “self-built hard power,” which is just what it says on the tin: you’re kind of creating your own armed forces and broad economic might that allows you to overthrow the incumbent regime.

The third one is something that we’ve seen much more recently in more mature democracies, which I’m calling autocratisation. That’s the kind of standard term. The broad story there is that someone is elected to political office and then proceeds to remove the checks and balances on their power, often with a broad mandate from the people who are very discontented with the system as it is.

Rob Wiblin: So on one level, saying AI is going to enable a military coup or something like that sounds a little bit peculiar, a little bit sci-fi-ish. How sceptical should we be coming into this conversation? Are these things very abnormal or very rare? Or should we think of them as more common than perhaps we do on a day-to-day basis?

Tom Davidson: Across the second half of the 20th century, across the globe, military coups were very common. There were more than 200 successful military coups. Now, they were predominantly not in the most mature democracies; they tend to be in states that have some elements of democracy, but not kind of full-blown democracy.

But I do think that with AI technology, there will be new vulnerabilities introduced into the military that could enable military coups — so the historical trend that military coups haven’t happened in democracies may not continue to apply.

In terms of autocratisation, again, the most extreme cases of autocratisation really leading to full-blown authoritarian regimes haven’t started off in mature democracies like the United States. But for example, in Venezuela, that was a pretty healthy democracy for 40 years before Hugo Chavez came into power with a strong socialist mandate for reform — and then over the next 10, 20 years really pretty much removed all of the checks and balances. And now it’s just widely considered to be an authoritarian regime with just the smallest pretence of democracy today....

....MUCH MORE

Capital Markets: "Euro Pressure Persists"

From Marc Chandler at Bannockburn Global Forex: 

Fears over the AI-meme, which took the semiconductor index down more than 10% last week, has stabilized with the help of favorable earnings by Super Micro Computer and SpaceX. South Korea’s Kospi dropped 14.5% last week amid the anxiety. It rallied 3.3% today and is now higher on the week. On the other hand, the pressure in the European bond market continues. The French 10-year yield is edging closer to 5.00% and the premium over Germany is approached 160 bp. The widening of the peripheral premiums over Germany is seeing the euro underperform. 

The US and Canadian economic calendars are light today, and the foreign exchange session may take its cues from the stock and bond markets. The firm oil prices are lending support the Norwegian krone. The Australian dollar extended is gains and is at a new high for the month. The faster UK inflation boosted the market’s confidence of a BOE rate hike early next month and sterling is traded at its best level against the euro since May 2025. Tensions in US-Mexican trade talks keep the peso on the defensive. 

Prices...

....MUCH MORE  

"France's riot damage doubles: How will businesses pay for the destruction?"

Well, if they had taken the hint from October 5's "Is Your Strikes, Riots & Civil Commotion (SRCC) Insurance Coverage Up-to-Date?"....

From EuroNews, October 20:

At least 3,000 French shops were hit over the weekend. Insurers say they are mobilised, but lost trade may not be covered. Here is who pays the riot bill.

The number of shops damaged during France's weekend riots has reached at least 3,000, twice the figure reported just a day earlier.

Yet insurers, who are expected to pick up much of the bill, still have no estimate of what the destruction will cost them.

France Assureurs, the country's insurance federation, told Euronews that its members were "fully mobilised to support affected policyholders".

It could not provide an initial estimate of losses or say how many claims had been already filed.

Its crisis team is now working with public authorities across France following what the federation described as "extremely violent events".

French markets underperform as damage bill rises 
On Sunday, Carrefour chief executive Alexandre Bompard, who also chairs the FCD retail federation, estimated that around 1,500 shops had been affected.

He put the industry's losses at several hundred million euros.

By Monday, the government's count had reached 3,000.

Carrefour alone reported damage at 50 stores, including 20 that had been looted.

Financial markets were also under pressure on Monday. France's CAC 40 closed 1.1% lower, underperforming the broader Euro STOXX 600, down 0.9%.

Carrefour shares lost 2.2%, while luxury group LVMH fell 1.8%. A Louis Vuitton boutique in Marseille was among the stores broken into over the weekend.

Insurance stocks declined too. AXA shed 1.3% and reinsurer SCOR lost 0.9% in Paris. In Milan, Generali fell 2.3% and Unipol dropped 3.2%.

French government bonds also came under selling pressure on Monday.

The yield on the country's 10-year bonds rose by around eight basis points to 4.94%. Germany's equivalent yield increased by less than four basis points.

That widened the difference between French and German borrowing costs to approximately 148 basis points.

What the 2023 riots tell us about the cost 
France has a recent benchmark for what a weekend like this can cost.

The riots that swept the country in June and July 2023 resulted in €793 million in insured losses, France Assureurs told Euronews.

Insurers handled around 17,000 claims, averaging roughly €46,600 each.

Two-thirds of the total, about €523 million, went on shops and business premises. A quarter, close to €200 million, went to local authorities whose town halls, schools and buses had been attacked.

Cars made up the remaining 7%.

Even those figures did not capture the full extent of the destruction.

A subsequent French Senate inquiry estimated property damage at closer to €1 billion. Some losses had never been declared, while others were only partly covered by insurance.

The comparison is particularly relevant now because the number of shops affected appears to be higher.

CCI France counted around 2,500 vandalised businesses during the 2023 unrest. This weekend's government tally has already exceeded that figure.

France's new riot insurance scheme is not ready 
France sought to address the insurance problems exposed by the 2023 riots in its 2026 budget law....

....MUCH MORE 

As we saw during Covid, business interruption coverage is also important, and sometimes very contentious. If one is so inclined, many of our early links on Business Interruption can be found in October 2020's "BigLaw on Big Insurance: Covid-19 Business Interruption Claims In The UK". 

If one is not so inclined just think of the boost to French GDP the rebuilding will produce.

It doesn't do anything for national wealth creation, Bastiat and his window and all that, but as with the falling-down bridges in China, GDP gets goosed. If interested see "That Which is Seen and That Which is Not Seen: Bastiat on Hurricane Sandy" and November 2012's:

"Frequent Bridge Collapses Help Boost China’s GDP" 

...On Aug. 24, a 330-foot long approach ramp of Harbin’s Yangmingtan Bridge fell over, killing three and injuring five. The bridge had been in use less than a year and is the eighth bridge collapse in China this year. The Harbin administration has so far not openly addressed the case.

Zhao Wenjin, the lead commentator of Lanzhou Daily, commented on the incident, saying, “With each collapse, we need to reflect: why are we chasing GDP?”

According to a Jingyang Net report, Wang Yang, Party secretary of Guangdong Province, said at a provincial Party meeting in 2009: “Sometimes the GDP number looks good, but it didn’t really create wealth for society. It was, instead, a waste of society’s wealth.

“For example, building a bridge creates GDP. When the bridge collapses and is taken down, it creates another addition to the GDP. When the bridge is rebuilt, more GDP is created. As such, one bridge resulted in three additions to the GDP. But it was a tremendous waste of resources.”...MORE

"AI dealmaking startup Rogo eyes 200 hires in Europe push"

From Financial News, London, October 19:

The US-headquartered firm is in the midst of an ‘aggressive’ hiring spree in Europe, its leaders tell FN 

Rogo, the AI startup founded by former dealmakers, is set to expand to more than 200 people in Europe as investment banks and asset managers in the region up their use of the technology.

The firm, which has gained traction among both boutique and bulge bracket investment banks as they invest in AI, is “aggressively hiring” for its key European hub in London, as well as cities like Copenhagen, Madrid and Paris, according to co-founder and chief operating officer John Willett.

Willett, who is a former JPMorgan investment banker, said that the firm could have 200-250 employees in the region by the end of 2027.

Rogo kicked off its European operations with around 15 staff earlier this year, its chief executive Gabe Stengel told Financial News previously.

“We just started to feel even more of a suction from the market in general and from the European banks. There was a real feeling that the timeline for adoption is just quicker than we’ve seen in any other software cycle,” said Willett.

“There’s a classic trope that Europe is two years behind the US in terms of tech adoption, but that’s not what I’m seeing. I’m seeing a much smaller gap. I’m seeing firms who are very ambitious, aggressive and wanting to adopt this stuff,” he added.

• Deutsche Bank puts 200 top bankers through mandatory AI training

• ‘My avatar is way more interesting than me’: How AI will transform wealth management

Investment banking is seen as ripe for disruption by AI, particularly junior roles that have been focused on so-called grunt work like correcting PowerPoint presentations or turning comments for senior dealmakers.

Both Stengel, who worked at Lazard, and Willett have experience of the junior banker lifestyle and the brutal hours required. They conceived the idea for Rogo while they were studying at Princeton University. They left their jobs in 2022 to launch the firm alongside computer scientist Tumas Rackaitis.

Willett said that the focus on improving junior banker productivity does not give full credit to the scope of the technology, with Rogo building a “self-improving agent workforce” within a bank and each lender’s deal intelligence forming their own “digital firm brain”....

....MUCH MORE 

Britain: "Jackdaw North Sea gasfield to get go-ahead in blow to climate campaigners"

Not exactly the 1990's 'Dash for Gas'* but still a recognition of political and geopolitical reality. 

From The Guardian, October 20: 

Jackdaw gasfield announcement signals UK’s commitment to North Sea industry but undermines green credentials 

The Jackdaw gasfield will be given the go-ahead on Wednesday, signalling Andy Burnham’s commitment to the North Sea fossil fuel industry and threatening to trigger a row with climate campaigners and Labour MPs.

Miatta Fahnbulleh and John Healey, the energy secretary and chancellor respectively, will make the announcement from Aberdeen on Wednesday morning after more than a year of deliberations over whether doing so would violate the UK’s climate commitments.

The approval for drilling at one of the biggest undeveloped fields in the declining North Sea basin is a big boost for Britain’s oil and gas industry – and especially for Shell and the Norwegian company Equinor, which operate it.

It will be met with outrage from climate campaigners, who say it undermines Labour’s green credentials and will exacerbate the climate crisis.

Tessa Khan, the executive director of the anti-oil campaign group Uplift, said: “Jackdaw will provide around just 2% of our gas demand for roughly 10 years. It has been oversold and won’t stop the overall decline in North Sea jobs, as it will be largely unmanned and operated remotely.”

She added: “Labour’s climate credibility is on the line. No new oil and gasfields are compatible with safe climate limits.”

When fully operational, Jackdaw will account for 6% of North Sea gas production, making it one of the biggest gasfields not yet under production.

Along with the Rosebank oilfield, its status has become symbolic of the government’s commitment to the oil and gas industry, which is facing heavy job losses as reserves decline and platforms become increasingly automated.

The field was approved by the Conservative government in 2022, with ministers arguing it would help shield the UK from the volatility in the energy market caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Labour came to power in 2024 on a promise not to grant any new licences in the North Sea, not expecting to have to make a decision on Jackdaw or Rosebank.

However both fields were cast into doubt last year by a landmark ruling that said their environmental approval had been incorrectly granted.

A judge ruled that when deciding whether the two fields would violate the UK’s climate commitments, regulators should have taken into account the carbon emissions generated by burning the oil and gas they would produce.

Shell and Equinor resubmitted their application for environmental consent last September. Since then, Fahnbulleh and her predecessor, Ed Miliband, have spent months deciding whether to use their ministerial power to block it.

Both the prime minister and his predecessor, Keir Starmer, have come under heavy pressure to allow the fields to go ahead in recent months, not least from Donald Trump, who urged both men to “open up the North Sea”....

....MUCH MORE 

*December 2009 - Some Drive-by Climate Biz History (Enron and Cap-and-trade) 

Environmental Capital has a post that I couldn't resist commenting on: 

Baseline Play: Cut Emissions Compared With When, Exactly?

...Those emissions targets for the rich world take 1990 as the “baseline” year, just as the Kyoto Protocol does. That is, cuts will be measured against what the world was emitting in 1990. But that baseline isn’t set in stone: As the WSJ notes today, “The parties could however decide to use another base year.”

It’s a contentious point. U.S. emissions targets use 2005 as the base year. President Obama, for instance, speaks of curbing emissions 17% from 2005 levels by 2020. That upsets Europe, because it translates into a much smaller cut—between 3% and 5%–from 1990 levels.

What’s in a number? Quite a lot, actually. As Geoff Styles notes, 1990 was a very different world than 2005: A lot of things happened in the meantime, from globalization, the rise of China and India, the decline of Europe, shifts in fuels used for power generation, and so forth.

Europe likes 1990 as a starting point, because the continent’s economies were a lot dirtier then. Russia, especially, likes 1990 because back then the big, dirty Soviet economy was still around (ditto, to a lesser extent, for the rest of Eastern Europe).

It’s easier to make cuts against the bloated past than the cleaner present. Some of Europe’s progress toward meeting its Kyoto targets, for instance, can be chalked up to clean policies in the meantime; but much of the progress simply comes from an easy comparison with a dirtier time....MORE

Pretty wonky but I had to get my two cents in:

• Climateer wrote:

As is the case with so much of this stuff, from carbon trading to wind (GE got in the biz by buying ENE’s wind ops) to nat gas to enriching the lobbyist sector of the economy to fraud on the markets Enron was there first.
Mr. Styles mentions, en passant, Britain’s ‘Dash for Gas” in the early ’90’s to take advantage of the North Sea natural gas finds.
One hulking big example is the 1875 MW Teesside generating plant.
Enron owned it.
Because of it’s 1993 operational date vs.the 1997 Kyoto agreement to use 1990 as a baseline, that one plant cut Britain’s emissions 1% vs the baseline.
The U.S. Kyoto delegation agreed to the 1990 date only on condition that Europe would agree to back Enron’s carbon trading proposals.
Amazing stuff.
As John Palmisano said in his infamous email ”Implications of the Climate Change Agreement in Kyoto & What Transpired”:
“If implemented [the Kyoto Protocol] will do more to promote Enron’s business than will almost any other regulatory initiative outside of restructuring of the [electricity] and natural gas industries in Europe and the United States….”
And:
“…This agreement will be good for Enron stock!!”

Amazing stuff.
Here’s the email:
http://www.politicalcapitalism.org/enron/121297.pdf [link rotted here's a capture at the Internet Archive]

I've been thinking about Enron as the senate debates the Cap-and-trade bill. Here's one of my favorite Enron posts (I'll post more of them next week):....

And July 2014 - Remember the 'Dash for Gas' and North Sea Oil? "UK became a net importer of petroleum products in 2013"

It's been 20 years since Enron opened the Teesside power station.
Time flies...

"SpaceX’s AI business is beating expectations" Stock Jumps (SPCX)

From TechCrunch, October 20:

SpaceX’s data centers and Grok agents were more profitable than investors expected in the third quarter of the year, as the company leaves its roots as a space company behind to focus on artificial intelligence, which now makes up 52% of its income.

CEO Elon Musk’s deep tech conglomerate reported $14.6 billion in third-quarter revenue on Tuesday, according to its regulatory filing.

That number was driven by growth in all segments, but especially its renamed “Super Intelligence” business line, which generated $7.5 billion in revenue from the recently acquired Cursor coding tool, Grok bot, and most importantly, the company’s burgeoning neocloud business, which now boasts 1.7 GW of compute. The AI business generated $431 million in profit, which would have been higher without $1.2 billion in one-time stock-based compensation expenses related to the Cursor acquisition.

The top-line revenue number was also boosted by about $1 billion in income related to the recovery of Bitcoin prices and unspecified related-party income that might be attributed to a SpaceX investment in another company.

The growing revenue is balanced against total capital expenditures of $19.6 billion, as SpaceX continues to build out a second data center project, Colossus II, and increase investment in Starship, the heavy-lift rocket it sees as vital to deploying a new generation of Starlink satellites and developing orbital data centers. CFO Bret Johnsen said the company would spend $35 billion to $40 billion on new capital investments in the fourth quarter.

During a livestreamed discussion of the results with investors, Musk said he was spending four days a week in Memphis, Tennessee, the site of Colossus II, working to bring the data center online.

“People are starting to realize [that] the constraint on deployment of super intelligence is more in power and cooling and infrastructure than it is in chips,” Musk argued, saying that he had tasked a team of SpaceX engineers to solve that problem. “This is a bit like the New York Yankees playing in Little League. It’s not fair, but the net result is being able to deploy power cooling infrastructure at a rate that is vastly faster than any anyone else.”....

....MUCH MORE 

In early pre-market trade the stock is up $13.92 (+9.42%) at $161.71.  

"Battery giant CATL posts surprise profit slowdown, mainland China shares tumble over 10%"

From Hong Kong's South China Morning Post, October 20/21:

CATL’s profits slowed sharply in the third quarter, as analysts warn the firm is vulnerable to headwinds in China’s electric car industry 

Chinese battery giant Contemporary Amperex Technology Limited (CATL) extended its stock price rout after recording a surprise slowdown in third-quarter net profits, as analysts warned the company could be hit by slowing demand from China’s electric car industry next year.

The world’s largest electric vehicle (EV) battery maker saw its shares continue to tumble by over 10 per cent in Shenzhen and 8.6 per cent in Hong Kong in the morning session on Wednesday.

The Fujian province-based firm posted a net profit of 21.25 billion yuan (US$3.18 billion) for the July-September period, up 14.54 per cent from a year earlier, according to an exchange filing on Tuesday.

The increase marked a sharp slowdown from the 36 per cent jump recorded in the second quarter of the year and a peak of 57 per cent in the final quarter of 2025.

The company’s third-quarter revenue grew 58.58 per cent year on year, reaching 165.22 billion yuan.

Both the earnings and revenue figures missed analysts’ consensus forecasts of 26.03 billion yuan and 175.05 billion yuan, respectively.

CATL’s shares slumped 6.58 per cent to HK$411.80 in Hong Kong and 2.97 per cent to 259.08 yuan in Shenzhen on Tuesday, before the earnings results were announced.

The company’s stock price has plunged since Chinese EV makers Xiaomi and Li Auto announced they were partnering with tier-two battery manufacturers in September, with CATL’s shares down over 20 per cent in Hong Kong and 31 per cent in Shenzhen since the start of the year.

On Tuesday, JPMorgan lowered its rating of CATL’s Hong Kong-traded shares to neutral, as the bank is increasingly worried about a faster-than-expected deterioration of profitability in the Chinese EV industry, which could affect demand for CATL’s batteries....

....MUCH MORE 

 

Capital Markets: "AI Anxiety Returns, Peripheral Premiums Widen in Europe, and Oil Extends Gains"

From Marc to Market: 

The US dollar is mostly softer as AI worries resurface.  A dismal showing of an IPO for an AI infrastructure company in South Korea seemed to renew last week’s concerns. The Canadian dollar is leading the charge today after the secessionist referendum in Alberta lost handily. The UK reported better-than-expected employment figures, which helped lift sterling.  

In addition to the AI concerns, investors are monitoring two other developments today.  First, Iranian strikes are lifting oil prices. Brent is at a five-month high and the December WTI contract is above $100. The Norwegian krone often is sensitive to oil prices, and it is the second strongest G10 currency today behind the Canadian dollar.  Second, the social/political tensions in several European countries remain a concern.  French 10-years are at new highs, approaching 5% and Italian bonds are also under pressure.  The peripheral premiums over Germany are widening....

....MUCH MORE   

And any minute Haiti is going to issue a travel advisory for its citizens stating Europe is too dangerous to visit; stay home, stay safe. 

"SpaceX surprises Wall Street with Oct. 20 earnings date — here's why" (SPCX)

From Yahoo Finance, October 19:

While Wall Street was still in a state of disbelief late last week that Elon Musk made a flying Tesla (TSLA) Roadster, his SpaceX (SPCX) team came out with a not-so-small note on its investor relations page.

SpaceX earnings are coming out on Oct. 20 after the market close. The announcement was a surprise to many on the Street, as it's common practice for earnings release dates to be shared weeks in advance. 

But there may be a few reasons behind SpaceX's rushed earnings date.

"Possible explanations include a desire to put updated financials on record ahead of further financing arrangements or share time-sensitive operational/strategic updates — either before counterparties do or to give the market time to digest the implications ahead of the sizeable lock-up releases (1.30 billion shares two days after earnings, 329 million on 10/24, and the remaining 857 million tranche of the 180-day group thereafter). Or the explanation could be as mundane as scheduling — it's just hard to know," said Evercore ISI analyst Kutgun Maral....

....MORE 

Ahead of the opening bell the stock is trading down $1.23 (-0.83%) at $146.73.

I would assume the company didn't do this to release what could be perceived as bad news. 

"Alberta delivers decisive vote to stay in Canada"

From Politico, October 20, 1:56 AM PDT |Updated: 10/20/2026 3:03 AM PDT:

Separatist leaders vow to keep fighting after voters reject bid to hold binding referendum on independence

Alberta voters have overwhelmingly rejected separation, though pro-independence leaders are vowing to keep up their fight.

Early results show 76% voted to stay in Canada, while 24% backed holding a binding referendum on separation, according to Elections Canada, with about 70% of the vote counted.

Prime Minister Mark Carney said the results mean “Albertans and all Canadians will move forward together with renewed purpose and high ambition.”

“Now is our opportunity to take all that we have been given as Canadians — and we have been given the greatest country in the world — and make our country better for all of us,” he said in a statement.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has said she won’t call another separation vote. But a court appeal by separatists could force Alberta to hold one if it succeeds.

Smith said on X that she is “pleased” with the results and will address the province Tuesday evening.

Smith is eager for the province to move on after years of grievances over former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s energy policies, many of which have been repealed or reformed to boost oil and gas production.

Carney traveled to Alberta ahead of the vote to campaign for the “stay” side.

Carney warned that failing to defuse the “leave” vote could burden Alberta’s children “with years of deep division and great uncertainty”....

....MORE 

But what of the children of Quebec?

Canadian Broadcasting Corp. October 7

What to expect from a Parti Québécois government
A tighter budget, cuts to immigrations levels, fights with Ottawa — and maybe a referendum 

"Communism, Berlin Edition: Adler Bonds Crash To Record Low As Left Coalition Plans To Socialize 152,000 Apartments"

You can either have rent control or you can have abundant housing.
You can't have both.*

From ZeroHedge, October 19:

Five years after Berliners voted to expropriate their landlords, the German capital finally has a government willing to do it.

On Saturday, Die Linke, the Greens and the SPD presented the 30-page exploratory paper that will underpin their coalition agreement for the next Berlin Senate, and buried among the usual promises sits a plan to socialize, under Article 15 of the German constitution, every apartment a private landlord owns in Berlin above the first 10,000. The compensation for this act of municipal generosity: a hard cap of €16 billion which works out to about €105K per unit, or 58% of book value... and even that cap is conditional on "fiscal sustainability."

The bond market did the rest: Adler Group's 10% notes due 2029 plunged 20 points on Monday to a record low around 59 cents on the euro (they dropped as 53 earlier in the session), as creditors scrambled to price in the possibility that 43% of Adler's yielding Berlin portfolio is about to be bought by the state at a 42% to 48% discount to book.

 

Regular readers will recall we flagged the direction of travel back in January, when we noted that the German capital had become a testing ground where socialism was on the rise in Berlin's real estate market. And on election night, September 20, when the results first came in, we tweeted the punchline...

....Four weeks later, the anti-capitalist party is about to run the city and the plan is on paper. So let's look at who is on the list, what Berlin is offering, and why the people most likely to stop this sit in Karlsruhe and in the Chancellery.

From "Deutsche Wohnen Enteignen" To "Vonovia, Mostly"

Some background first. In September 2021, Berliners voted 59.1% in favor of a non-binding referendum to expropriate landlords owning more than 3,000 apartments, about 240,000 units in total. The CDU-SPD Senate that followed sat on it, an expert commission concluded in 2023 that it was possible under Article 15 (an article which, for what it's worth, has never been used in the 77-year history of the Federal Republic), and that was that.

Then on September 20, Die Linke, whose roots lie in the East German communist party, won 25.7% of the vote, its best result ever, displacing Merz's CDU from the mayor's office. Its lead candidate Elif Eralp, who told Reuters that Zohran Mamdani's win in New York was "a big example for us", campaigned on expropriating more than 200,000 units. And in case anyone thought it was just rhetoric, the party's Berlin deputy chair Martha Kleedörfer helpfully told investors on Instagram that the Left would have no problem if they "finally go home".

The SPD, whose lead candidate Steffen Krach had categorically ruled out expropriations during the campaign, folded in the exploratory talks; the price of power, it turns out, was about 152,000 apartments.

What the three parties agreed:

• Threshold of 10,000 units per company (vs. 3,000 in the referendum), with each landlord allowed to keep the first 10,000; apartments built after January 1, 2021, cooperatives and non-profits are exempt
• Compensation capped at €16 billion, conditional on fiscal sustainability, meaning it can fall if financing conditions worsen
• A financing concept in 2027 which leaves open whether owners get cash or 100-year bonds, a bill in the Berlin parliament by mid-2028, and transfers taking effect one year after promulgation, i.e. mid-2029 at the earliest

Based on documented holdings, that means roughly 152,000 apartments (the Left's own spokesperson puts it at about 160,000 from five companies, adding the DVI Group): Vonovia 128K, Heimstaden 10K, Adler 7.4K and Covivio 7K. In other words, this is overwhelmingly a Vonovia story, as the 10,000 allowance shields almost all of the smaller landlords and leaves Germany's biggest landlord holding the bag on 93% of its Berlin stock.

 

Buy High, Expropriate Low

Now the fun part: the price. At €16 billion for ~152,000 units, Berlin is offering about €105K per apartment, roughly 58% of book value on a pro rata basis. That alone is a remarkable number, but it becomes even more remarkable when you recall that Berlin has bought these very same apartments before.

Back in September 2021, nine days before the referendum, Vonovia and Deutsche Wohnen sold almost 15,000 apartments to the city's municipal housing companies for €2.46 billion, or about €165K per unit. At the time, the expropriation campaigners slammed the deal as a "backdoor" purchase at "speculative prices". Five years, one property crash and one election later, the city wants the next batch for 36% less... and this time it won't be asking nicely....

....MUCH MORE 

*If interested see also September 27's "The Incoming Berlin Government Was Voted In After Promising To Expropriate The City's Landlords. Will They Do It?":

That's not me asking, that's federally funded media, Deutsche-Welle.

First some background. Two posts from 2021, the second one five years-almost-to-the-day ago: 

March 2 - "Berlin’s Rent Controls Are Proving to Be a Disaster"
 

September 28 - German Politics and Policies:....

....So with all this running through my head, the first thing I saw regarding German politics on Monday was that the referendum to expropriate and socialize Berlin apartments from Germany's largest landlord had passed. Although the referendum is not binding on the Berlin government the result 57% ja/39% nein is one heck of an indication of the political zeitgeist.....

And from D-W, September 23:

Could Berlin expropriate large real estate companies?....

....MORE, including earlier links 

Neocloud: "South Korean data centre firm Elice shares plunge in IPO debut"

From Singapore's Straits Times, October 20:

Data centre infrastructure company Elice plunged in its trading debut on South Korea’s tech-heavy Kosdaq market after raising 201 billion won (S$192.92 million) in the stock exchange’s biggest initial public offering in 2026. 

Shares of the Seoul-based neocloud service provider fell as much as 32% to 61,400 won in early trading on Oct 20. The company priced its shares at 90,500 won apiece in the IPO, the top of a marketed price range, for a post-listing market capitalisation exceeding one trillion won. 

The debut is a test of investor appetite for the sector after a series of setbacks around the world.

Firmus Grid cancelled its high-profile Sydney listing in October as concerns over borrowing costs, fierce competition and long-term returns from massive AI-related spending weigh on valuations.

Coreweave’s shares have more than halved since their May peak, AirTrunk is delaying a planned IPO of a real estate investment trust, people familiar with the matter have said.

Meanwhile, Nscale is facing pushback over its target IPO valuation, Bloomberg News reported.

“Elice’s debut comes at a time when sentiment toward AI infrastructure companies has weakened, particularly in the US,” said Albert Yong, managing partner and chief investment officer at Petra Capital Management. “Sentiment toward AI infrastructure has been highly volatile and often disconnected from underlying fundamentals.”....

....MUCH MORE 

"How to Keep Global Agricultural Output Rising"

From Timothy Taylor at his The Conversable Economist blog, October 16:

Global population is expected to keep rising for the next 50-60 years, because it will take awhile for the demographic force of declining birthrates to overcome the life expectancies. In addition, the world still has lots of very poor people: for example, about 800 million people around the world live below the World Bank extreme poverty line of $3/day, and of course hundreds of millions more are not far above that line. With a rising world population, and one where we hope the standard of living for the poorest will be rising, more food production will be needed. So how is the world doing in this area?

The Global Agricultural Productivity initiative at Virgina Tech University,tackles the big questions of global agricultural productivity in the 2026 GAP Report, Restarting Growth: The Role of Regenerative Agriculture in Productivity Growth and Profitability, with a team effort led by Chellie Maples. Here’s a picture to set the stage:

Growth in total agricultural output can come from several sources: more land, more irrigation, more intensive use of inputs (labor, materials, and capital), and increased productivity given the same amounts of land, irrigation, and inputs (say, from improved farming practices, better weather information, improved seeds, and so on). To do these calculations, gains in agricultural output that cannot be attributed to measurable factors like land, irrigation, and inputs are then ascribed to productivity gains.

In the 1960s, most growth of agriculture came from more intensive use of inputs. By the 1990s and early 2000s, most of the growth of agricultural output was coming from producitvity gains, with very little coming from land expansion or additional inputs. But since about 2011, growth of agricultural output has slumped. Productivity gains are way down, although expansion of land and inputs have made up some of the difference. In a nutshell, this is global challenge of finding ecologically-sound ways of increasing agricultural output.

Of course, these factors vary by region. But even in the areas with relatively rapid growth in agricultural output, that growth is being driven by additional inputs (like South Asia) or by additional land (sub-Saharan Africa)....

....MUCH MORE 

Previous visits to The Conversable Economist (there are many) including such hits as:

2013's A Fine Addition to The Economist's Big Mac Index: The McWage Ratio (MCD)

2021's "Some Economics of Sawdust"

2022's  “Economics is the Social Science of Love”

2026's "The Austin Experience: More Housing, Lower Rents"

How The Weather In England Helped Cause The October 19, 1987 Market Crash In The U.S.

A quick look back at the Great Storm of October 15 - 16, 1987 and how the lack of a pressure release by the London market that Friday exacerbated what came on October 19. 

First up, Norwich's Eastern Daily Press

1987 storm: How the chaos contributed to Black Monday financial crisis
Published: 6:00 AM October 15, 2012 Updated: 9:26 AM October 10, 2020 

To add to the chaos created by the October 1987 great storm, the extreme wind and rain contributed to a shocking global financial crisis.

The storm played its part in making what came to be known in the financial world as Black Monday.

With an estimated 15 million trees blown down by gales of over 90mph in the south-east of England, the timber market was all of a sudden flushed with stock that threatened to see the trade's worth plummet.

To combat this great stores of wood were safely stored in mass piles, including at Thetford Forest where 173,000 cubic metres of felled timber was stored.

In total there was an incredible 600,000 cubic metres of woodland lost in Norfolk and Suffolk.

The financial markets felt an unfortunate knock-on effect of the storm however, with the travel problems and loss of power for many homes meaning that few traders managed to struggle into work in London on Friday, October 16.

Unfortunately this coincided with the Hong Kong and Tokyo stock markets crashing and the financial crisis spreading west through Europe.

When London re-opened on Monday, October 19, there was mass panic selling of stocks....

....MUCH MORE

Trees.
It seems that trees loom large in the collective memory.
Almost every account mentions the trees. Gorleston Norfolk had a 122 mph wind gust.

And those were just the words.
The pics are...amazing:

London

Suffolk- A car drives past a forest devastated                                          Kent
by the Great Storm of 1987, with a single tree
left standing.

In an October 2013 piece, "Tale of Two Storms" which compared the effect of the '87 blow with a similar storm, were it to repeat now, the Financial Times noted:

...A green and pleasant land 
The Kent town of Sevenoaks is named after the seven oak trees that were planted there in 1906. In 1987 six of them were blown over, along with about 15m other trees across the UK. The storm’s impact on England’s trees – from forests to copses – is deeply ingrained in its cultural legacy. Today there are 6.2m hectares of woodland in the UK, says the Forestry Commission. Pests that affect trees – such as the horse chestnut leaf miner – have spread in recent years. In 2012, the Forestry Commission warned of an “unprecedented level of threat” from pests and diseases that may weaken trees. But one of the biggest factors determining the number of trees Britain could lose this time will be – as it was in 1987 – how wet the soil is in which they stand. Falling trees posed a major problem for power and telephone lines in 1987, while this time the sturdiness of mobile masts will also come into play....

They go on to note that the forests of London the last few years have been comprised of construction cranes.
So, we have the answer to the age-old question, if 15 million trees fall, everyone notices. And remembers.

With that we get to our headliner.
Writing for the Royal Meteorological Society, Bob Prichard has what is probably the most accessible piece of scholarship of the events:

Research Article
The Great Storm of 16 October 1987 
First published: 26 September 2012

Abstract

This article describes the development and impact of one of southeastern Britain's most violent weather events of the twentieth century: the Great Storm of 16 October 1987. It draws on material from Weather's Special issue of March 1988, but includes some new insights and photographs.

This Special issue commemorates the 25th anniversary of one of southeastern Britain's most violent weather events of the twentieth century. The first half of the issue looks at the development and impact of the storm, including how woodlands were affected – an aspect that was widely misunderstood at the time. In the second half we explore further the lessons that were learnt by meteorologists, with particular reference to what threatened to be a possible repeat last December. We also include an article on a localised historical tornado from the same time of year.

The days following the 1987 storm were uncomfortable ones for forecasters: put simply, the event was just not forecast (at least on the day – it had been signalled a few days earlier). It was, therefore, heartening to read in a Met Office Press Release dated 12 October 1988 and headed ‘The Storm of 1987 – one year on’: Extraordinary weather sequences such as those which caused last year's October storm are being overcome by the Met Office's development programme. Problem solved! (This extract appeared in the January 1989 issue of Weather, page 11).

Setting the scene

October 1987 was not short of remarkable weather, and nearly always the cause was a deep, sharpening upper trough to the southwest of Britain. Very cold air plunging southeast over warm seas triggered vigorous depressions, whilst blocking high pressure over eastern Europe meant that the slowing and sharpening of the troughs gave further impetus to the depressions and also drew up some very warm, moist air in the warm sectors.

This was a recipe for copious rainfall, and it was repeated several times during the month. On the night of 15/16 October it also had the effect of producing a violent storm as an already very deep depression moving northeast over Biscay deepened further over the warm sea and in response to the sharpening of its governing upper trough. The depression was a complex feature, with several small offshoots running northeast ahead of it along its warm front.

Figures 1-4 illustrate the run-up to the event. From 12 to14 October the baroclinic zone, depicted by the extensive cloud south of 50°N, is fairly smooth with little apparent development. In the 80-page Special issue that Weather published on the storm, Monk and Bader (1988) remarked that this cloud band extended from the vicinity of hurricane Floyd near Florida. Development of the storm is clearly well underway by late afternoon on the 15th (Figure 4); Monk and Bader discussed the development of the cloud head and dry wedge, both becoming apparent in this image and features known to precede intense cyclogenesis.

A quiet evening followed by a night of mayhem
A very marked temperature contrast developed across the warm front as it edged erratically into southeast England during the late afternoon of the 15th; at 1700 utc, the temperature was 16°C at Herstmonceux (East Sussex) and 9°C at Heathrow. For a while in the evening events ‘marked time’ as a ripple ran along the front, keeping the warm air just over the extreme southeast and the Channel Islands: it was windy in the warm sector, but not excessively so. By 2200 utc, the temperature was 8°C at Stansted and 17°C at Southend (both in Essex). Around this time there was a rapid fall in barometric pressure at the western end of the warm sector, over northwest France, and little change in pressure over northeast France. This was soon reflected in a marked strengthening of the wind along a track about 70km wide, which reached the Channel Islands around 0000 utc on the 16th. The central pressure of the depression at this stage was about 953mbar just north of Brest.

Amongst the less remarked-on effects of the night was the amount of dirt deposited on all surfaces as the temperature suddenly rose on the passage of the warm front, creating condensation on all surfaces – such as the outside of windows. There was at least a fair amount of dry weather in the warm sector following hours of warm-frontal rain.

By 0200 utc, the violent winds had reached all of the south coast from east Dorset to East Sussex...

.... MUCH, MUCH MORE

Here's some guy* writing at The Guardian about the April 2000 leg of the dotcom crash on the London exchange and looking for a comparison:

Meltdown at the stock exchange

...Such paralysis has never been witnessed before in the London market, the closest example being October 16 1987, when the hurricane resulted in so few City workers getting to their desks that the exchange shut early. The following week, the stock market suffered its biggest fall in living memory - Black Monday....

*Okay, not just "some" guy.
That's Paul Murphy in a prior life before he went on to fame and fortune, becoming a honcho at the Financial Times and the tough-but-fair boss at FT Alphaville and then FT Investigations.

 

First posted in 2017 as part of "As Hurricane Ophelia Continues On Track to Ireland and Scotland, A Quick Look Back At The Great Storm of October 15-16, 1987"