"Citroën Sabotaged Wartime Nazi Truck Production in a Simple and Brilliant Way"

From Jalopnik:

In case you forgot to change the batteries in your calendar, you may not be aware that this year is the 100th anniversary of Citroën. We’ve been shooting a Jason Drives special mini-series for this centenary, and while doing some research I happened to stumble upon a fascinating bit of wartime Citroën lore. It involves screwing with Nazis in a genuinely clever and subtle way that nevertheless had big repercussions. I’ll explain.

So, when France was occupied by the Germans in 1940, major French factories like Citroën were forced to produce equipment for the Nazis. Citroën president Pierre-Jules Boulanger knew he couldn’t just refuse to produce anything, but he also knew there’s no way in hell he’s going to just roll over and build trucks for a bunch of filthy Nazis. Pierre had a plan....MORE

The 'Pierre had a plan' link goes to the design mavens at Core77:

A Brief History of Citröen, Part 1: Ignoring War and Sabotaging Nazis on Their Way to Producing Funky, Iconic Cars

Lots of pics.

"Mango leaves: Indian scientists’ solution to a $2.5 trillion global shipping problem"

For some reason this got me thinking of the great guar squeeze of 2011 - 2012.
Totally unrelated but somehow associated in an addled mind.
First though, Quartz (India), July 24:

A team of Indian scientists has developed a compound from the leaf of the mango tree that can protect ships from rusting, which is far more efficient than synthetic paints while also being non-toxic and environment-friendly.

Globally, the corrosion of ships and its prevention costs an estimated $2.5 trillion, according to a study by the National Association of Corrosion Engineers that is based in Houston, Texas.

According to Nishanth K Gopalan, leader of the team from the National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology, Thiruvananthapuram, mango leaves were selected for their anti-oxidant properties and their abundant content of polyphenols, which are known to resist corrosion.

“Corrosion prevention was achieved through the formation of an insoluble organometallic complex at the metal-electrolyte interface,” says Gopalan, an author of the report published last month in ACS Omega.

Gopalan tells SciDev.Netthat the compound, made by using epoxy as a base and incorporating mango leaf extracts in a substrate of amorphous silica, achieved 99% inhibition of corrosion in commercial steel when immersed in a saline medium to mimic seawater.

He explains that ethanol was used to extract phytochemicals from dried mango leaves and various concentrations tested for maximum corrosion resistance. “The anti-corrosion property was owing to the creation of iron-polyphenol, an organometallic compound.”...

....MORE

And back to quar.  

I know what the connections are: an un-heralded commodity, big money, and India.

So while you glance at this I will be making inquiries into the mango market. First stop FreshPlaza, who understand how exhilarating this stuff can be (see 2018's "Will the 2018/2019 season be the most exciting onion campaign in years?") 

From our outro from Rabobank: "World Vegetable Map 2018":

....In 18 months guar gum ran 17-fold.
Back then men were men and beans were for frackin', not eatin' and.....where was I?

Some of our posts from that memorable year:
April 20, 2012 
Commodities: Guar Trades at Record Prices, Frackers Halliburton, Baker Hughes, Schlumberger Suffer (HAL; BHI; SLB)
June 2012
Guar Shortage Still Gumming Up Works for Big Frackers But Relief May Be on the Way (HAL; BHI; SLB)
July 19, 2012  
Earnings Heads-up: "Guar sowing down in India, still time to catch up" (SLB; HAL; BHI)

With guar prices having risen from $1.50 to $25.00 per Kilo and with both Schumberger and Halliburton blaming guar for their Q1 earnings shortfalls and issuing warnings for Q2, all eyes turn to Rajasthan. (well mine, anyway)
Indian market intelligence purveyor Three Headed Lion will sell you their 2012 Guar Gum Report: INDIA for $2975.
There's big money in guar.
Both BHI and SLB report tomorrow, Halliburton on Monday.
Since the Indian authorities suspended futures trading guar only trades physical. This morning's market report: GUAR: Guar and guar gum maintained their last close in thin trading....

July 20, 2012
Fracking: US Drillers Find Respite in Guar War (BHI; SLB; HAL)

Well, you're probably ahead of me on how this plays out:

September 2012
Fracking: India May See Record Guar Crop (HAL; SLB; BHI)

By October the autopsies were being performed:
Lessons From the Attempted Corner and Price Spike in The Guar Futures Trading Fiasco (HAL; SLB; BHI)

The result of the attempted corner and price rise was classic substitution on the part of the oil well service companies. After Halliburton blamed the guar price spike for the drop in their Q1 margins they, Schlumberger and Baker Hughes all began developing substitutes for the humble bean. From HAL's Sept. 4 Q3 profit warning:

The other two-thirds of the margin depression was due to the jump in prices for a key hydraulic fracturing ingredient, guar. McCollum reiterated that high guar prices would weigh on North American margins throughout the rest of this year.

"I suspect that there won't be significant relief from guar pricing in the fourth quarter," he said, while noting the recent good news of rain in India, the world's dominant supplier of guar beans.

"All indications suggest that we should see a significant moderation in guar pricing as we go into 2013," he added.

McCollum said a positive aspect was that Halliburton's substitute for guar, PermStim, met 5 percent of its guar demand in the second quarter, and the uptake had been even more dramatic in the current quarter. Rival Baker Hughes Inc has reported similar success with its own guar substitute.

The other effect was a rush in India to plant guar rather than foodstuffs with the result that guar has given back 2/3 of the 900% price rise and farmers are in the position of  not being able to cover the costs of inputs. There's no doubt that the situation will add to the epidemic of suicides among farmers which passed the quarter-million mark last year.

From Madhyam:

The recent guar trading scandal gives a peek into the murky world of Indian commodity futures markets and reveals how commodity exchanges are acting like casinos for speculators, moving away from their avowed objectives of price discovery and price risk management in an efficient and orderly manner....

The 900% figure was for the 2012 move, the $1.50 to $25/kg action was over 18 months.

Last I saw guar gum isn't even quoted in American anymore, it was trading at 9,345 Rupees per quintal ($146.37 per 100 kilos) with an open interest of 115 contracts for the expiring month.

I'm hearing good things about Chinese garlic though. 
Something about a new use in silicon solar fabrication. No futures yet, you have to stockpile physical but for chart watchers there is a quasi-periodicity to the action. 
As long as the neighbors don't complain about the aroma.

If It's Not One Tham Ding It's Another: "The Greatest Long-Term Threats Facing Humanity"

Grandmother didn't swear so she said 'tham ding'.
The grandchildren knew what she meant.

From the BBC, July 19:

How long can civilisation survive? To thrive for billions of years, there will be a few troublesome problems to solve – from the death of the Sun to the decay of matter.

Can we actually say anything about the far future? If we can’t predict when it will rain next month, forecasting billions of years hence might seem impossible.

However, not everything is as chaotic as the weather: even predictions very far ahead are sometimes possible, especially in astrophysics and cosmology. We can be confident that there will be a total solar eclipse in the UK on 23 September 2090 because the Moon, Sun and Earth move in stable, predictable orbits with very minor disturbances, and the laws of gravity are now well-tested. Similarly, we can use known astrophysics to predict what will likely happen across the Universe as it expands.

You might also like:
• The perils of short-termism
• Are we on the road to civilisation collapse?
• How to build to last 10,000 years

This approach can be described as “physical eschatology” – a term coined by the astronomer Martin Rees for using astrophysics to model where the Universe is going. Rees took a cue from theology, in which “eschatology” is the study of ultimate things such as the end of the world. And the classic paper on the topic is Freeman Dyson’s 1979 paper on life in open universes, which outlined likely or possible existential catastrophes that could threaten life far into the future, from the death of the Sun to the detachment of stars from galaxies.

So, what are the biggest challenges humanity will face if we survive into the far future? We cannot say how (or if) they will be overcome (I will make some guesses) but we can be confident these threats to our existence are coming.

Problem 1: Survive better than other mammals
The typical lifespan of a mammalian species is about a million years or so. From nuclear war to bioengineered pandemics, humanity clearly has other risks it needs to reduce urgently: right now the natural extinction rate is far smaller than risk we pose to ourselves.

Were we to fix our current existential risk and sustainability problems we would still have to deal with some other challenges to stay around.

For starters, in a few tens of thousands of years we will have to cope with the end of the current interglacial period: we are living during a brief interruption of a long ice age. Our ancestors have survived ice ages, so it is likely not a big deal – except that they were nomadic hunter-gatherers rather than a global civilisation.

We may also face dramatic climate variations between different geological eras. In the past the Earth has been not just colder, but also warmer. During the Eocene, temperatures were 10C warmer, with palms and alligators in the Arctic and equatorial regions too hot for unprotected humans to survive in. Even further in the past there has been “snowball Earth” episodes where almost all of the Earth was covered with ice.
Then there is the risk of supervolcanism, meteor impacts, gamma ray bursts, or emergent ecological disruptions, which we know have led to natural mass extinctions about once every 100 million years....MORE 

"How Making One Chemical Created the Modern World"

The TL:DR is making a pun, both Alfred Nobel and Kristian Birkeland got deep into the boom-boom quality of nitrogen.
Now it may end up being the energy carrier that displaces natural gas.

From Discover:

TL;DR: Nitrogen is one of life’s most precious resources. Discovering how to industrially produce it (as ammonia) let our population break free of natural limits, and explode.

An amazing fifty percent of the nitrogen atoms now found in human tissues originated inside an industrial machine invented relatively recently. These molecules form our DNA, our amino acids, and countless other things essential to life. But how did this bizarre situation come about?

The Haber process
In the 21st Century, our technology has helped to create us. But this same industrial machine could be said to have created the modern world too, as its development let our population skyrocket from 1.6 to 7.6 billion people in under 100 years, by producing enough fertiliser to grow the food needed to sustain all that extra life.

The machine is called the ‘Haber process’ and at first glance it seems like a bit of a contradiction.

Nitrogen is everywhere, but we can’t use most of it
Nitrogen is a colourless, tasteless, odourless gas. Human beings cannot  see it or smell it, and our species might have evolved that way because it makes up an overwhelming 78% of the air around us.
We inhale it in every breath alongside oxygen (which makes up 21% of our air). But unlike oxygen, we exhale nitrogen straight back out again.

The contradiction is that every cell in our bodies (and every cell of every living creature) desperately needs nitrogen. Plants in particular have an insatiable need and struggle to get it, even though we are all surrounded by it. Just like someone dying of thirst while stranded in the middle of the ocean, life on Earth is surrounded by nitrogen it can’t use.

Life on Earth is a bit like Tom Hanks in Castaway (2000)

Nitrogen’s triple bond Nitrogen is the seventh most abundant element in the Milky Way, and like many elements it is formed as a residue from an exploding star.
The problem is that most nitrogen atoms are tightly bonded with other nitrogen atoms using three of its seven electrons, creating what is known in chemistry as a powerful triple bond (N≡N).

As I was writing this page, I had to do a bit of a refresher on High School chemistry. I had a cranky old teacher who preferred talking about his sailing adventures from 40 years ago rather than making chemistry interesting. It was not my best subject!

Concepts like a triple bond in a colourless, odourless gas are pretty abstract. It’s part of what makes some sciences like chemistry difficult for us. When we can’t directly touch, hear, see, or smell something, it’s difficult to build the mental frameworks needed to understand it.

A well-kept secret
I found out that it took until 1772 for human beings to discover the existence of nitrogen in the first place.

Let’s unpack that.

Our species has existed for 350,000 years, and it took us almost our entire existence thus far to discover a gas that we inhale with every breath. At the end of the day we’re a species that evolved to hunt, gossip, invent things, tell stories, and have sex. But when we finally did work out the concept of nitrogen (and it’s triple bond) we conquered the Earth.

Severing the triple bond....

....MUCH MORE

Bad Metaphors: "Community"

From Real Life Magazine, July 22, 2019:

A false shorthand for unity provides a cover for corporate interests
BAD METAPHORS is an ongoing series that takes a critical look at the figures of speech that shuttle between technology and everyday life. Read the others here.

---

Community is a hot commodity. In marketing copy as in political rhetoric, the term is ubiquitous: Both the Green New Deal and Zuckerberg’s 2017 “Building Global Community” diatribe repeatedly invoke the word “community” (26 and 108 times, respectively), usually when more accurate words like “userbase,” “neighborhood,” or just “group” would suffice. Community, in this context, is presented as an unassailable good: something to be recognized, maximized, and protected.

Communities are assumed to be happy things, with constituents that agree with each other because they are more or less the same kind of people with the same values. They represent the goldilocks zone of social relations: not too impersonal, not too individualistic — just right. The assumption is that community, rather than an unaccountable individual or faceless bureaucracy, is the appropriate scale for important work; and that communities always act in the best interest of their constituents. As such, the metaphor deceives, providing a convenient cover for the interests of macro social structures like nations and corporations. It also depends on a misinterpretation of how communities actually function.

Believing that a global brand or a nation is a community sells 

the idea that community is a service you can sign up for

The very notion of community exists in direct relation to society, two social units with distinctive characteristics that, rather than being entirely separate, represent a spectrum of types of human interaction. Societal relationships consist of the complex apparatuses required to maintain large-scale civilizations. The clerk at a department store, your congressional representative, and the coder who helps to build your social media platform of choice: these are people with whom you have a societal relationship. By contrast, community members share a bond that is voluntary and based on shared values and beliefs. It is this deep bond that makes mutual aid without sophisticated accounting systems (read: money) possible. A neighbor will lend you a cup of sugar; a grocer will not. Society is a materialist relationship necessitated by forces such as markets, corporations, institutionalized religions, and nation states. Community, on the other hand, is affective, a social bond that offers feelings of solidarity and belonging. It is this affective element that platforms like Facebook seek to harness.

Whereas the 20th century was largely about reckoning with modernization’s push from “community” to “society,” this young century has seen multiple attempts at reconciling the two: feeling a sense of community within a complex society. “Community” evokes authentic human relationships, or at least the possibility of their existence in a society that craves those valid connections. Because the underlying goal of most late-capitalist market entities is to satisfy appetites — often appetites they themselves create — corporations and government officials latch onto the metaphor to appeal to consumers and constituents. Since at least the early ’90s, as Naomi Klein first outlined in her book No Logo, corporations have found that more profit can be made from selling an intangible feeling of belonging than a quality product. This has the dual benefit of reducing costs (marketing is relatively cheap to produce) and increasing prices by charging a premium for brand appeal. Brands from Nike to Starbucks aimed to represent a preexisting social relationship that one could access through buying their products.

This community-by-association is a powerful force for brand loyalty, which is why tech companies want to deploy this feeling at all levels of customer experience. In nearly every Apple advertisement from 1984 to the invention of the iPod in 2001, computers and gadgets were presented as the necessary final ingredient to an individual’s creative genius; but as Apple shifted heavily into selling handheld devices meant for consuming media, they also began leaning on the idea that to own their products was to be a part of a community: iPhone ads barely mention technology at all, opting instead to show poignant, intimate moments with the device capturing or mediating the experience. As Starbucks showed in the ’90s, the feeling of inclusion can justify higher markups: Apple calls their flagship stores “town squares” that act as venues for events, not just shelves for products. Their App Store bundles everything from TikTok to the lesbian dating app Her into a list titled “Find your Community.” In a recent press release about new tools to prevent bullying on the platform, Instagram sounds like a caring middle-school principal: “We’ve heard from young people in our community that they’re reluctant to block, unfollow, or report their bully because it could escalate the situation, especially if they interact with their bully in real life.” Amazon Ring’s attendant Neighbors app, which allows users to receive and share police alerts as well as reports of suspected criminal activity — and whose high susceptibility to racist profiling has been discussed — urges that “together we can create stronger communities.”

To wield the community metaphor requires three steps: invoke discomfort or fear among the target population that they are not members of the community; show them the benefits and terms of belonging; and finally, offer them a seat while outlining the rules that let you stay. These three short steps draw the individual’s attention to the crushing freedom of modernity — you can be anything, which also means you can fail at creating a self — and then offer a reasonable set of instructions to zeroing in on an identity, a role to play. Facebook portrays itself as an antidote to FOMO: the cool hangout where all your friends are. The company makes itself necessary not just by highlighting what you gain access to in using it, but by what you miss out on if you do not: event invites, group chats, meme references, and so on. Its “community standards” sound like something a group of like-minded, invested people decided on together, not a document written by lawyers. Believing that something as big as a global brand or a nation is a community creates a mental bridge to believing — or selling the idea — that community is a service you can sign up for....

...MUCH MORE

Panthers on the Prowl in London: "The Husband Hunters: Social Climbing in London and New York"

There are four ways to acquire money.
Make it, marry it, inherit it or steal it.

From Quadrant Magazine (Australia):

The Husband Hunters: Social Climbing in London and New York
by Anne de Courcy
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2017, 320 pages, $22.99

There I was, in an airport bookshop, seeking some entertainment for another long-haul flight, clutching a paperback that had looked promising on the shelf, and so it proved to be. The cover picture was enticing, a coloured-up photograph of an 1890s belle, displaying in pastels the porcelain skin, long straight nose, fine clear eyes and the pile of preferably auburn hair that was all the go at the time, the whole a cultural ensemble for feminine pulchritude, topped off with a bunch of pink peony roses dramatising her blue straw hat. Her neck swathed in a high fichu of fine white lace, the hint of an elegantly generous leg-of-mutton sleeve on her gown and her discreet stud-pearl earrings all said “lady”, but her vaguely eager expression suggested she might be fun nevertheless.

The blurb on the back told me that Libby Purves, in the Times Literary Supplement, had nominated this book as “pure catnip” for “both serious social historians and Downtonish aristo-fanciers”. A double-whammy for me—especially as this book of potted biographies of rich American women living in the decades before the First World War also contains a fascinating series of black-and-white, and some coloured, photographs of the life and times surrounding a very particular social phenomenon which is the book’s raison d’être. In The Husband Hunters Anne de Courcy puts a well-researched focus on the seeming invasion between 1870 and 1914 of young American heiresses into the cash-strapped marriage markets of Europe and Britain, where over 450 of them married titled Europeans, 100 of them British aristocrats, including six dukes, the best catches of all. The number of these marriages peaked in 1895.

These young women were heiresses to what the American novelist Edith Wharton in the 1880s termed the “buccaneer” wealth of America’s industrial capitalist expansion, a concentrated great wealth that lodged with the families of energetic (or lucky) entrepreneurs. The wives of these rich men bellowed out their husbands’ successes by spectacular displays of conspicuous consumption in housing, jewellery, carriages and other embellishments in an attempt to make the restricted invitation lists put out by the similarly profligate and display-prone female guardians of Old Money status, who were dropping their old habits of frugality and prudence in the race to keep their pre-eminent social position against such new contenders. In New York (whence many of the girls came) “the list” meant Mrs Astor’s list, and later Mrs Vanderbilt’s. As nouveau riche girls, frequently short on social status at home, they suffered from their mothers’ intent on remedying that deficit for themselves as well as their daughters, by means of a title which would carry Mamma along with her daughter into Mrs Astor’s ballrooms (pictured below) on any return to New York. Thus by a combination of circumstances at home, American heiresses to this amazing financial bounty brought their money and often their vigour to the titled men of Old Europe, careworn by the requirement of maintaining the ancestral pile and their own familial status and lifestyle during a major economic downturn.

 

Paris was a favourite initial destination in which to find one’s feet for a later shot at British husband hunting, for the continent had laxer behavioural codes, blooding the New World ingenue for the coming steep learning curve in the more taxing social mores of Britain. However, while this book covers some interesting continental opportunities taken, its main exposition relates primarily to Britain and the Anglophone relationship being cemented by the new White Star Line Atlantic “crossing’, a voyage which, now carrying this book, I was myself just on my way to reprise from New York to Southampton, on the modern Queen Mary; a nostalgic look backwards for today’s boomer generation....

 ....MUCH MORE

"Facebook Is Dying, Libra Won’t Save It, & Wall Street Is Clueless" (FB)

From CryptOracle via Medium

I was the first person to call Mark Zuckerberg in 2004 and offer to buy the company (I was running Bolt at the time). In March, 2010, I published the first Wall Street style research report on Facebook on a Tumblr blog, with a $100 billion five year price target (it was actively trading in the private markets at $16B). For a brief while, I went back to Wall Street as a “Social Media Analyst” where I upped my target valuation forFacebook to $200 billion (per this clip of me on Bloomberg TV in late 2010)

My 2014 revenue forecast was off by just 1%, because I focused on user engagement. As Facebook continued to increase user engagement, I continued to be a Facebook bull. I believe that social media platforms are either growing user engagement, or they’re dying. And for eight years, Facebook was growing user engagement.

But Facebook’s Q4 ’17 earnings, released on January 31st, 2018, revealed the first decline in user engagement in Facebook’s history. Facebook gave the excuse that they were purposefully trying to prevent Facebook users from doing the #1 thing they liked to do on Facebook. Facebook was finally trying to stop fake news. I didn’t care about the excuse. So I turned bearish, penning this blog post to note the occasion.

It’s been 18 months since that post, and Facebook shares has underperformed the NASDAQ (up 5% vs. 15% for the NASDAQ). More telling, Facebook has dramatically underperformed it’s peer group (which I define as FAMGA), which averaged a gain of 33% over the past 18 months.

I believe Facebook will continue to underperform the NASDAQ and their peers, because of one simple graph.

The Graph That Shows Facebook Is Dying...

....MORE 

Coming up next, "How many noodles make a spaghetti graph unreadable?"

Just kidding, the one above is clear enough to follow the lines, more like this El Niño Southern Oscillation forecast from IRI/Columbia:

Although even here if you use enough distinct colors you can get the message.
And fortunately enough, the message one wants to be aware of is one of the outlier projections, NOAA's CFSv2, the green line under the zero degree anomaly.
If that model run comes to pass we are looking at a full blown La Niña.
Which would explain why the commercials are getting long natural gas futures.

Not Messing Around: YouTubers Join With Europe's Largest Trade Union To Fight The GOOG

From Vice, July 26:

The YouTubers Union Is Not Messing Around
The YouTubers Union has joined forces with Europe's largest trade union to fight for a fairer platform.

The YouTubers Union, a community-based movement fighting for the rights of content creators and users, has joined forces with IG Metall, Germany's largest union and Europe's largest trade union. Together, they have launched a joint venture called FairTube and sent a letter of demands to YouTube accompanied by a video explaining their concerns, demands, and plan of action.

The move is one of the most significant organized labor actions taken by creators on the platform, and puts some actual union power behind what has thus far been a nascent and disorganized movement.

In recent years, YouTube creators have consistently spoken out about changes to the massive platform that they say they are rarely consulted on that affect their ability to make money. For example, YouTube has repeatedly changed how it handles copyright takedown requests (allowing copyright holders to assert copyright on and monetize videos that they didn’t upload, for example.) YouTube has also controversially “demonetized” or issued content warnings to some innocuous channels. One of the creators leading the unionization charge, Jörg Sprave, has had his popular slingshot videos removed by YouTube.

"We aren't demanding things that cut into profits or are unrealistic. We want fairness. We want transparency. We want to be treated like partners. And we want personal communication instead of anonymous communication," Sprave told Motherboard.

In a video announcing the move, IG Metall’s Vice President Christiane Benner, Sprave said that the partnership meant “a completely new time begins. It is no longer the case that we are helpless against Youtube. With the IG Metall, we have a strong, strong partner.” Benner added, “We know from experience that together we can achieve a lot."

Sprave traced the origins of the problems leading to this recent move back to changes in YouTube’s relationship to advertisers following 2017’s “Adpocalypse.” In 2017 major advertisers organized a boycott of YouTube after learning their ads were running alongside "extremist content” videos and demanded the Google-owned platform implement "brand safety controls.” While the changes kept advertisers on the site, they also changed YouTube channels make money from ad revenue.

According to Sprave, the door was now open to more threats of advertiser boycotts as a tactic to gain leverage over Youtube. "Advertisers want control over content that they are displaying against like in magazines,” Sprave told Motherboard. “YouTube previously did not allow this but caved in after the companies threatened to leave."

This year, another Adpocalypse looms as YouTube has failed to address predatory behavior on content featuring children. And yet, YouTube’s net ad revenue has consistently grown every year since 2017 and from around $7.8 billion to $10.5 billion this year, according to projections by Vidmob, a market research company.

Sprave said that Google has transformed YouTube from "a platform to a curated network." In response to the first Adpocalypse, YouTube introduced a series of brand safety controls that allow businesses to opt-out of running ads against certain videos based on the video’s categorization.

"Tick-tock, the clock is ticking"...

...MUCH MORE

HT: MetaFilter

"Unstable Gases: Market Shocks and Qatari LNG"

In the U.S. prices have collapsed, see after the jump.
From Winton's 'Longer View', June 2017:

The gas market has experienced many shocks stretching back into the 19th century.

One notable aspect of the current diplomatic tensions between Qatar and its Arab neighbours has been the relative poise of natural gas spot prices. The Gulf state accounts for a third of LNG exports, and LNG in turn makes up approximately a third of total international trade in natural gas. It is early days, however, particularly as commodities traders have been sufficiently concerned to route LNG cargoes around Africa rather than through the Suez Canal, and to charter smaller ships to mitigate the impact of potential holdups.

Previous market disruptions include faulty pipelines in 19th century Pittsburgh, the machinations of energy companies like Enron in the early 2000s, and natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In the aftermath of Katrina, natural gas prices doubled. There has been a combination of infrastructure investments, source diversification and new legislation during the market’s existence. But a cursory glance at the range of prices over the last 10 years suggests the current stasis may not last for long.

The Explosive Properties of Pennsylvanian Gas (1880s)
In the early days of natural gas, rudimentary pipeline technology caused frequent disruptions. By virtue of its proximity to the Alleghany gas fields and motivated by a desire to reduce its air pollution, Pittsburgh was the first major city to adopt natural gas on a large scale. But its pipelines were beset by constant leaks, fluctuating pressures and explosions. One explosion levelled an entire city block, sparking a riot. Such unreliable supply prompted a partial return to coal, but also brought about innovative safety features and the auxiliary production of coal-oven gas, which helped smooth supply and demand for natural gas.

***

The Disunited States of US Gas (1954)
Ill-conceived legislation has sometimes hampered supply. Following the 1954 Phillips Decision, federal controls imposed on the US interstate gas market kept interstate prices far below their market value, fuelling demand while discouraging drilling and exploration. This led to chronic shortages in non-producer regions. By the mid-1970s, thousands of schools and factories had to close for want of gas. Meanwhile, intrastate markets in producer regions were well supplied and highly lucrative, leading to far faster development of local distribution networks. The interstate shortages also expedited the development of LNG import facilities along the East Coast, ultimately allowing the United States to avoid a supply crunch during the booming 1990s.

The Smartest Guys in the Room (2000)
When El Paso and its affiliates withheld natural gas to California during the state’s power crisis in 2000, they drove Southern Californian gas prices to five times the levels seen elsewhere, increasing the differential in prices along the pipeline from $1 to $50. Californian officials estimated that El Paso’s actions drove California’s gas and power costs higher by $3.7bn. Together with energy company Enron’s malfeasance, El Paso’s actions highlighted the dangers of overzealous energy deregulation, resulting in greater levels of regulatory oversight....

....MUCH MORE

On Thursday the EIA reported that U.S. electrical utilities had a record natural gas power burn:

In the News:

United States sets new daily record-high for power burn
The United States set a new record for natural gas consumption by electric power plants (power burn) of 44.5 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) on Friday, July 19, according to S&P Global Platts. Since July 1, 2019, U.S. power burn has exceeded the previous record of 43.1 Bcf/d―set on July 16, 2018―on five days: July 10 and July 16–19. Much higher-than-normal temperatures, structural changes to the power sector (particularly in the Northeast), and low natural gas prices all contributed to increased natural gas consumption by electric generators.

Higher electricity demand for space cooling in the past week was the main driver of increased natural gas-fired power generation as a record-setting heat wave affected much of the Lower 48 states. Although the hottest temperatures occurred over the weekend, most states east of the Rocky Mountains experienced warmer-than-normal weather in the days leading up to the heat wave. From July 16–21, the average maximum temperature exceeded 85 degrees Fahrenheit (°F) in most parts of the country; furthermore, average minimum temperatures, particularly in the Midwest and Northeast, were 8°F–10°F higher than average, resulting in increased cooling demand during off-peak periods.
Another contributing factor to the record power burn was relatively low natural gas prices, which averaged $2.33 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) from July 16–21 at the Henry Hub in Louisiana, according to Natural Gas Intelligence. So far this summer, Henry Hub prices have averaged $2.34/MMBtu, 19% lower than during the same period last year....MUCH MORE

And yet, despite this, natural gas futures settled at 2.1510, getting closer to the seldom-breached $2.00 line and threatening the 2016 multi-decadal lows:

FinViz  

However!! Commercial users really began ramping up their to-that-point modestly long position in the futures in the third week of May and haven't stopped accumulating.
Speculators can be right on the direction of prices from time to time but in the long run the commercials must be right or they go bankrupt and the game ends for everyone.

"Water is the hidden imbalance in U.S./China trade..."

Water is interesting stuff.
We'll have a few posts on it over the next week or so, starting off with something easy: virtual water.
From the Wilson Quarterly, Summer 2019:

The Big Leak
...The stakes for the climate and the economy are high.  

As you read this, you’re likely wearing some piece of clothing that is made in China. After all, over half of the world’s clothing is made in China.

The pervasiveness of clothing made in China in U.S. markets is certainly one of the things that comes to mind when talking about the balance of trade between the two nations.

But there is a hidden price tag on all the clothing that is made in China. It’s a considerable sum—and growing—that is skewing the trade relationship and putting its future at risk.

That hidden price tag is water. 

This hidden water in products, often referred to as virtual water, plays a significant role in the global goods trade. Water is hidden in more than just textiles; it goes into everything we use, eat, and wear. Crops must be irrigated, fuel sources must be fracked, and materials must be processed with water.

As goods are shipped and traded around the world, the water used to make or grow them is therefore also traded. When significant changes in the trade status quo occur, so does a nation’s water imports or exports—and thus its overall water supply.

If China hopes to keep its place as the world’s clothier, it must do a better job of stewarding its own water.

A Shifting Balance

One unforeseen impact of the ongoing U.S.-China trade war is a shift in the way water is spent between the two nations.

In 2017, China was the United States’ largest trading partner. Before the imposition of tariffs, China exported many water-intensive products to the United States; China is the world’s largest exporter of hidden water, and the United States is the largest importer.

Yet as trade between the two nations has stymied, the “water balance” between both the United States and China has changed.

For example, China imported zero soybeans from the United States in November 2018. Compared to the same month last year, the 4.7 million tons China imported from the United States not only represent $1.8 billion of lost value for U.S. farmers, but also a net gain of 5.08 billion cubic meters of virtual water for China.

This new reality means that the U.S. and China must adjust their water budgets—or else risk shortages. 

China’s per-capita available freshwater supply is one-quarter that of the U.S., making it especially at risk of a water shortage. China’s per-capita availability is 2,061.91 cubic meters, compared to the United States’ 8,844.32 cubic meters.

Yet despite the U.S.’s significantly larger water resources, it is China that is leaking water in the current trade regime. China exported a net 2.4 billion tons of virtual water to the United States in 2012—enough water to support 6.3 million households for a year.

Much like a carbon footprint, water consumption has a footprint. It comprises not only the water we use for drinking, laundry, and other daily uses, but also the hidden water in our products.

Clothing the world requires a lot of water: first to wash the cotton, then to manufacture it into a garment, and finally to dye and treat it. And the water required goes up when you factor in pollution: the chemical waste from this process is often dumped into rivers. 

As China continues to make more clothing, its water supply faces a double whammy: first, by sacrificing thousands of liters of freshwater for the manufacturing, and then again by polluting its own rivers, many of which are now too contaminated for human contact....

...MUCH MORE 

We've looked at virtual water a few times:

January 2013  

"PNAS Study: Population Growth Will be Constrained by the Limits of Trading Virtual Water (Food)" 

One of the few Limits to Growth that actually is a limit rather than some sort of scarcity meme.

However even this should be beatable if some smart people can do the deep dive into the wonder and magic (okay, chemistry and physics) that is H2O.
We'll be hearing about virtual water with increasing frequency, right now there are only 298,000 hits in a Google search....[now up to 459,00]

February 2014 
California Drought: Why Farmers Are 'Exporting Water' to China

March 2016
Shipping U.S. Water To Saudi Arabia
As we've noted elsewhere this is an example of what the hydrology pros call 'virtual water'.

"How the state runs business in China"

From The Guardian:

Much of modern China’s epic growth was driven by private enterprise – but under Xi Jinping, the Communist party has returned to being the ultimate authority in business as well as politics.

When Xi Jinping took power in 2012, he extolled the importance of the state economy at every turn, while all around him watched as China’s high-speed economy was driven by private entrepreneurs. Since then, Xi has engineered an unmistakable shift in policy. At the time he took office, private firms were responsible for about 50% of all investment in China and about 75% of economic output. But as Nicholas Lardy, a US economist who has long studied the Chinese economy, concluded in a recent study, “Since 2012, private, market-driven growth has given way to a resurgence of the role of the state.”

From the Mao era onwards, Chinese state firms have always had a predominant role in the economy, and the Communist party has always maintained direct control over state firms. For more than a decade, the party has also tried to ensure it played a role inside private businesses. But in his first term in office, Xi has overseen a sea change in how the party approaches the economy, dramatically strengthening the party’s role in both government and private businesses.

International governments have noted Xi’s interventionist instincts with alarm. When US officials were pressed in early 2019 to provide evidence that Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant, had facilitated spying on the US and its allies, they pointed out that Beijing had already made their case for them: first with the party’s systematic infiltration of private companies, and second with the introduction of a new national intelligence law in 2017. The law states that “any organisation and citizen” shall “support and cooperate in national intelligence work”. The director of the US National Counterintelligence and Security Center, when asked about China’s entrepreneurs, cited these two policies in asserting that “Chinese company relationships with the Chinese government aren’t like private sector company relationships with governments in the west”.

Such shifts, under Xi, have gifted the US and EU an excuse to limit Chinese access to their markets, technology and companies. Australia has cited the same intelligence law to keep Huawei’s 5G technology out of its future mobile networks. Gordon Sondland, Donald Trump’s envoy to the European Union, gave such sentiment a hyperbolic spin to argue that Europe should do the same. “We want to keep critical infrastructure in the western world out of Chinese malign influence,” Sondland said. “Someone from the politburo in Beijing picks up the phone and says, ‘I wanna listen in on the following conversation, I wanna run a certain car off the road that’s on the 5G network and kill the person that’s in it’ – there’s nothing that company legally can do today in China to prevent the Chinese government from making that request successfully.”

Until recently, such a statement would have been laughed out of court. No longer. Nor would Washington have contemplated the policy of “decoupling” the US and Chinese economies – shorthand for the administration’s commitment, through taxes, tariffs and other punitive measures, to disentangle its companies and their technologies from China’s supply chains.

The relationship between the party and private sector companies is, up to a point, flexible – certainly more so than with state companies. The party doesn’t habitually micromanage their day-to-day operations. The firms are largely still in charge of their basic business decisions. But pressure from party committees to have a seat at the table when executives are making big calls on investment and the like means the “lines have been dangerously blurred”, in the words of one analyst. “Chinese domestic laws and administrative guidelines, as well as unspoken regulations and internal party committees, make it quite difficult to distinguish between what is private and what is state-owned.”

The answer to the question “does the party control a company?” is that it is impossible to tell. In the current environment, fewer foreign governments want to give Beijing the benefit of the doubt. If there was any question as to who was in charge of the economy and business, Xi’s local and overseas critics alike only have to take the Chinese leader at his word, that in private enterprises, as with state-owned firms and every institution in China, the party is the ultimate authority....MORE

The author rather blithely skips over the National Security Law.
Here via China Law Translate:

There is not a lot of wiggle room in Article 7

Article 7: All organizations and citizens shall support, assist, and cooperate with national intelligence efforts in accordance with law, and shall protect national intelligence work secrets they are aware of.
The State protects individuals and organizations that support, assist, and cooperate with national intelligence efforts.

All means all, including foreign companies operating in China.
Ditto articles 14:

Article 14: National intelligence work institutions lawfully carrying out intelligence efforts may request that relevant organs, organizations, and citizens provide necessary support, assistance, and cooperation.

And 16:

Article 16: When national intelligence work institutions staff lawfully perform their tasks in accordance with relevant national provisions, with approvals and upon the presentation of relevant identification, they may enter relevant restricted areas and venues; may learn from and question relevant institutions, organizations, and individuals; and may read or collect relevant files, materials or items.

And then there's The Cybersecurity Law and the Foreign NGO Law (2016) and the Counter-espionage Law (2014) and all worded vaguely enough that the laws can mean whatever the Party and the authorities want them to mean.

Making a bit of a straw man argumentum ad absurdum, the top Canadian spinmeister for one of the companies subject to the National Security Law said:

‘At Huawei, we’re not attaching laser beams to the heads of sharks’

—Alykhan Velshi, Vice President, Corporate Affairs, Huawei Technologies Canada, Markham, Ont.

Letter to the Editor, Maclean's Magazine, published July 23, 2019

Personally I think laser-enhanced sharks would be kind of cool, it's the required handing over of data should the Chinese government request it that gives one pause.

The quibble on the importance of the National Security Law aside, my Mandarin speaking friends say the Guardian article is a fair representation of Xi and how he is shaping China.

"Technoscience Rent: Toward a Theory of Rentiership for Technoscientific Capitalism"

From the journal Science, Technology, & Human Values:

Technoscience Rent: Toward a Theory of Rentiership for Technoscientific Capitalism 
Kean Birch1
First Published February 6, 2019

Abstract
Contemporary, technoscientific capitalism is characterized by the (re)configuration of a range of “things” (e.g., infrastructure, data, knowledge, bodies) as assets or capitalized property. Accumulation strategies have changed as a result of this assetization process. Rather than entrepreneurial strategies based on commodity production, technoscientific capitalism is increasingly underpinned by rentiership or the appropriation of value through ownership and control rights (e.g., intellectual property [IP]), monopoly conditions, and regulatory or market devices and practices (e.g., investment dispute courts, exclusivity agreements). While rentiership is often presented as a negative phenomenon (e.g., distorting markets, unearned income) in both neoclassical and Marxist political economy literatures—and much in between—in this paper, I conceptualize rentiership as a technoeconomic practice and process framed by insights from science and technology studies (STS). So, rather than a problematic “side effect” of capitalism, the concept of rentiership enables us to understand how different forms of value extraction constitute, and are constituted by, different forms of technoscience. This allows STS to contribute a distinctive analytical approach to ongoing debates in political economy about economic rents and rent-seeking.

Keywords assetization, rentiership, rent-seeking, technoscientific capitalism, technoscience rent, political economy of technoscience

Tractors are an unusual starting point for research in science and technology studies (STS), but one that reflects a broader set of emerging issues in technoscientific capitalism that STS scholars could pay more attention to. In an article on the Motherboard website, Koebler (2017) claims that farmers in the United States are purchasing black market software from Ukraine in order to hack their own tractors. The reason for this is that tractor manufacturers have made it increasingly difficult, legally speaking, for farmers to do “unauthorized repairs” on their tractors. I stress “their” because Wiens (2016), writing in Wired, claims that said tractor manufacturers are reconfiguring—or “destroying” in his terms—the very nature of ownership itself, and, by extension, capitalism as we know it. Wiens argues that tractor manufacturers are basically claiming that farmers “don’t own their tractors” anymore after farmers sign license agreements in which they are forbidden to “tamper” with their tractor’s software and electronics, copyrighted by the manufacturers.

This reconfiguration of ownership is an example of rentiership or the capture of economic rents. Generally, economic rents are the value that can be extracted from economic activity—broadly conceived—as the result of the ownership and control of a particular resource (or asset), primarily because of that resource’s inherent or constructed productivity, scarcity, or quality. As a concept, economic rent is usually associated with the ownership and control of land and has its origins in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century political economy (e.g., Ricardo [1817] 2001; Marx [1894] 2010). Some classical political economists sought to defend this ownership (e.g., Thomas Malthus), although most criticized its negative effects on capital accumulation (e.g., Ricardo). Since then, and especially during the twentieth century, economic rent theory has been applied more widely to natural resources (e.g., oil), financial resources, and intangible resources such as knowledge.

Recently, economic rents and rent-seeking have moved to the center of public debate. A growing chorus of academics, politicians, journalists, activists, and commentators analyzing contemporary capitalism have turned to these concepts as a way to understand the implications of contemporary capitalism’s increasingly technoscientific characteristics. From the pro-capitalist side, the journalist Robert Colville (2017) argues that “the structure of capitalism is increasingly tending towards monopoly…[and] because of the network effects involved, this tendency is particularly pronounced in tech.” From the anti-capitalist side, the academic Guy Standing (2016) argues “Plutocratic corporations are patent hoovers, buying thousands of patents. It is a winner-takes-all market created by the regulatory apparatus, not market forces.” Numerous people raise similar issues relevant to debates in STS, including the privatization and commercialization of basic research (Stiglitz 2014), network effects of information technology (Jacobs 2015), business models of new technology platform companies (Kaminska 2016), ownership and use of personal data (Morozov 2016), threats to competition represented by corporate concentration and monopoly in tech sectors (Mazzucato 2018), and financial technology innovation (Bregman 2017)....

....MUCH MORE

HT: The author's Twitter feed

"The Beanie Baby Bubble of ’99"

From The Hustle:

Two decades ago, we fought, trampled, and even killed each other over little sacks of beans. Today, we realize how stupid it all was — but our behavior hasn’t changed.

On November 5, 1999, Frances and Harold Mountain sat crouched on the floor of a Las Vegas divorce courtroom, divvying up their most valued asset.

It wasn’t the house. It wasn’t the car. It wasn’t the computer, the appliances, the jewelry, the books, or the CDs. The hotly contested asset at hand was their Beanie Baby collection.
“Spread them out on the floor,” ordered the judge, “and I’ll have [you] pick one each until they’re all gone.” Frances made a beeline for Maple the Bear.

At the time, the little bean-filled sacks were more than a toy: they were an investment vehicle. Fueled by a rabid collectors’ market, Ty Inc. had just exceeded $1B in annual sales. Certain “retired” characters were going for as much as $13k on the resale market — 3,000x their original price.

Frances and Harold Mountain, recently divorced, duke it out over 

their Beanie Baby collection in court (Associated Press; 1999)

Unbeknownst to the hapless rubes above, it was all about to come crashing down.
How did one man convince the world that these glorified stuffed animals were worth their weight in gold? The answer is tied to our very human nature — and it helps explain why we continually fall victim to speculative bubbles.

Phase 1: The creation of a mania
Ty Warner got his start as a sales rep at Dakin Toy Company, then the world’s largest manufacturer of plush toys, in the early 1970s.

He quickly became the Dakin’s top salesman, aided in part by his marketing antics: When meeting with clients, he’d build intrigue by emerging from a white Rolls-Royce, festooned with a full-length fur coat and a cane.

In 1986, Warner had a crazy idea that changed the course of his life.
At the time, most plush toys were filled with stiff, rigid cotton. Warner decided that plastic pellets (or, as he later called them, “beans”) would allow for more flexible, “realistic” toys.

He began to work on his idea on the side — but when Dankin found out, he was promptly fired. So, Warner decided to launch his own toy company in a suburb outside of Chicago. He dubbed it “Ty Inc.” 

Initially, buyers told Warner his toys were flimsy pieces of crap. “Everyone called them roadkill,” he later said. “They didn’t get it.”

But behind the scenes, Warner had a plan up his fur-lined sleeve — and Beanie Babies were about to spark a worldwide mania....

....MUCH MORE

Related:
 Sotheby's: "Not Every Artwork Is A Masterpiece" plus the FT's Izabella Kaminska. Oh, and Beanie Babies
CryptoKitty Trading Volume Collapses: Andreessen, Union Square and Climateer Hurt Worst

"Still humping the American Dream, that vision of the Big Winner somehow emerging from the last minute pre—dawn chaos of a stale Vegas casino. Big strike in Silver City. Beat the dealer and go home rich. Why not? I stopped at the Money Wheel and dropped a dollar on Thomas Jefferson—a $2 bill, the straight Freak ticket, thinking as always that some idle instinct bet might carry the whole thing off. But no. Just another two bucks down the tube. You bastards! No. Calm down. Learn to enjoy losing.... 

 -Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Excuse me, I have to take a moment

"Market Maker For the Impressionists"

This is a repost from a few years ago.
No HFT here.

From The Economist's Prospero blog:

Market Maker For the Impressionists

“The Thames below Westminster”, by Claude Monet, 1871

Paul Durand-Ruel
Making the Impressionists 

PAUL DURAND-RUEL was a French art dealer who effectively made the market for Impressionist paintings. He was the first person to promote the artists; he supported them financially through the bad times; and he eventually found an audience that embraced their works as keenly as he did himself. "Without him," said Claude Monet, "we wouldn’t have survived." His is a heartening story of conviction, imagination and determination and a new exhibition at the National Gallery in London does it justice. While its plot is carried by texts on the wall, aided by a broadly chronological display and period photographs, the 85 works, nearly all of which Durand-Ruel dealt, act as a choir, singing the praises of a bold, risk-taking visionary.

“Inventing Impressionism: Paul Durand-Ruel and the Modern Art Market” will almost certainly draw crowds. Paintings by Monet, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-August Renoir, Edouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Berthe Morisot and their artist friends are hugely popular with the public and chased by collectors. But in the early 1870s, when Durand-Ruel, the successful, art-dealing son of an art dealer, first fell for them, such works were reviled, practically unsellable. He scooped them up, buying some 12,000 Impressionist works in total, including 1,000 Monets and 1,500 Renoirs. He used other stock as collateral to raise the capital needed to pay these struggling artists monthly stipends, produce illustrated catalogues, engage the press, and stage what were at the time very unusual one-man shows. Durand-Ruel also opened branches of his gallery abroad, and it was the Americans who were the first to embrace Impressionism, helped perhaps by the efforts of Mary Cassatt, one of Durand-Ruel’s artists and a well-connected Philadelphian. Yet decades were to pass before his commitment was reflected in strong sales.

The show opens with a photograph of the Grand Salon in Durand-Ruel’s Paris apartment. The furnishings—gilded armchairs, crystal chandelier, curlicue mouldings—hark back to the 18th century. But every vertical surface is covered in contemporary, Impressionist art. Even the doors (which are part of the National's exhibition) have panels that were created by Monet in 1882. The explanation was not purely aesthetic: the room was an astute marketing tool offering evidence to those who asked to visit that one could live intimately, even joyously, with these works....MORE

HT: Art Market Monitor 

The memory of that older post was triggered by this, from My Modern Met, July 19:

How This One Painting Sparked the Impressionist Movement

Claude Monet, “Impression Sunrise,” 1872 (Photo: Wikimedia Commons Public Domain)

Today, Impressionism remains one of the most popular and prevalent types of painting. Considered the catalyst of modern art, the Impressionist genre has played a pivotal role in art history, with its influence evident in a range of artistic practices.

Having left such an important legacy, you may be wondering what could have set such a monumental movement in motion. Unlike most genres, which develop over time, Impressionism is believed to have to started in the 1870s with a single work: Impression, Sunrise, a light and airy landscape painting by none other than Claude Monet....

....MUCH MORE, a first rate essay. 

Shipping: So What's New In the Hanseatic League?

First up, a bit of backstory, November 24, 2017:

A Tale of Two Cities: Hamburg and Lübeck—Lessons in Trade, Geography and Urbanism

Sorry Lübeck, the umlaut might not print correctly on this platform.

From ProMarket:

The German cities of Hamburg and Lübeck have an interwoven and eventful history. Whereas Lübeck offers an example of how dominant cities may become unattractive and decline when they end up serving the interests of a privileged few and refuse to change, Hamburg serves as a tale of how cities can reinvent themselves by changing with the times.

The cities of Hamburg and Lübeck in the north of Germany are just 65 kilometers (40 miles) apart. Yet, given the shape of the Jutland peninsula, Hamburg lies on the Atlantic coast, while Lübeck lies on the Baltic.

The two cities have an interwoven and eventful history. Both Hamburg and Lübeck were members of the medieval Hanseatic League. This league was a federation of merchant guilds—an association of wholesale traders that had a privileged regional monopoly over trade—that traded across northern Europe. These guilds were the dominant way of doing trade across medieval Europe.

Within the Hanseatic League, Hamburg and Lübeck were sprawling cities. While Lübeck served as the chief Baltic entrepôt of Europe, Hamburg provided the Hanseatic League with access to the Atlantic. Between the two cities lay the elaborate Elbe river and canal system to facilitate transport of goods. Lübeck prided itself on being the Queen of the Hanseatic until the fifteenth century, while Hamburg was its smaller, allied partner.

Times became rocky for the Hanseatic system in the fifteenth century. This was in part due to the rise of the Dutch, who were once beneficiaries of trade with the Hanseatic but were now the league’s seafaring competitors. Before the arrival of the Dutch, almost all trade to and from the Baltic passed through Lübeck. Likewise, Hamburg benefited from being the sole major Atlantic port of the Hanseatic. The link between Lübeck and Hamburg was a crucial route for trade in the north. However, the Dutch began to trade with the Baltic by navigating around the Jutland peninsula and through the Sound (Øresund). Thus, the Dutch soon began to reach the Baltic shores without the need to visit Hamburg and/or Lübeck. This competition from the Dutch disrupted the two cities’ centuries-old domination over trade between the Atlantic and the Baltic.

How did the two cities respond? Differently. Lübeck responded to this competition with the Dutch by giving more privileges to its own merchants and by leading a persistent attempt to disrupt the Dutch trade through the Sound (which included taking part in the Dano Hanseatic War of 1426-35 and the Dutch Hanseatic War of 1438-41). In contrast, while Hamburg initially was an ally to Lübeck in its resistance to the Dutch (including in the two wars), it eventually began to diverge from its partner in the sixteenth century. Hamburg opened trade to all locals and non-locals, and instead of resisting this rising Dutch trade, it “adapted itself perfectly to the changing situation” and moved toward an open system of trade that welcomed diverse merchants (Dollinger, 1970, p. 355). Thus, Hamburg internally reformed, and the centuries-old privileges that a few of its merchants enjoyed declined, especially in the sixteenth century. This made a difference.

Hamburg over time became integrated with the Atlantic trading system to its west, and expanded as a major Atlantic entrepôt of northern Europe. Traders from around Europe could trade in Hamburg, and this attracted more merchants and more trade. And what about Lübeck? While the traditional traders held onto their privileges in the city, Lübeck as a whole declined slowly but persistently, especially after the sixteenth century.

Dollinger (1970, p. 372), recounting the decline of Lübeck in his classic book The German Hansa, wrote:...MUCH MORE

And from gCaptain, July 24, 2019:

Elbe River Dredging Kicks Off

The project to widen and deepen the Elbe River has kicked off with the arrival of DEME Group’s hopper dredger ‘Scheldt River’.

The project consists of widening and deepening the 72-mile long Elbe fairway, leading to the port of Hamburg, to allow two-way traffic of ultra-large containerships without restrictions.

“This is very good news for our trading and shipping customers in the German and European hinterland and all our worldwide business partners,” said Axel Mattern, Joint CEO of Port of Hamburg Marketing.

Following completion of the project, ocean-going ships will be permitted to leave Hamburg with a draft of 13.5 meters, or 14.5 meters depending on tide, which is an entire meter more than currently allowed. The Port of Hamburg estimates the extra draft will allow containerships to transport around 1,800 more twenty-foot containers per call....MORE

If interested see also:
Shipping: "Hamburg: China’s European trade hub"

...Unlike Rotterdam in the Netherlands, which processes a higher volume of traffic but primarily handles crude oil, Hamburg focuses on container shipping. Though the top 20 container ports in the world are mostly in East Asian locales such as Shanghai, Singapore and Shenzhen, Hamburg is Europe’s third-largest container port...

And it all ties together in one neat, 600 year old package.