Intelligent and adorable with sensitive noses, these rodents scurry and sniff their way across fields to eliminate a scourge that has killed thousands of Cambodians: land mines. Sent from Africa, where they have successfully cleared minefields in Mozambique and Angola, they began the same task in northwestern Cambodia recently and have scored tangible results....MORE (video)
...MOREA retreat in almond prices from record highs is starting to do their work in reviving demand for the nut, producer Select Harvests said – although the outlook failed to stop a fresh tumble in its shares.Last year's surge in almond prices, driven by prolonged drought in the key US producing state of California, had "had an impact" in encouraging supplies, while stemming demand, which had also taken a knock from tighter credit conditions in many buying countries, Select Harvests said."End users are reluctant to commit to inventory in such an uncertain market and are conducting their buying activities on a hand-to-mouth basis," the Australian-based group added.Meanwhile, shipments from California began the year with a 12% gain - backed by 2015-16 production which, at 1.9bn pounds according to market estimates, had turned out better than initially expected.The US Department of Agriculture in December quoted a figure for the harvest of 1.8bn pounds.'Demand is re-emerging'However, almond demand "is re-emerging in some markets as credit/stock begins to move through the system," Select Harvests said."The current market prices will stimulate demand in the most price sensitive markets - India, China and the Middle East."The group flagged a mixed outlook for the Californian harvest this year, with – on the plus side for output – snowpack, an important water source, at near-normal levels and the blossoming period enjoying "some of the best conditions in recent years"....
Ride-hailing service Didi Kuaidi, Uber Technologies’s chief rival in China, plans to raise at least $1 billion in its latest fundraising round, bulking up its war chest to fend off competition and invest into new businesses, people familiar with the plans said on Thursday.
Terms of the deal are being finalized, as the company is still in discussions with investors, added the people, who couldn’t be named because details aren’t yet public.
The Wall Street Journal previously reported Didi Kuaidi’s fundraising plans, which it said valued the company at more than $20 billion.
The new fundraising round comes just months after Didi Kuaidi, which is backed by Alibaba Group Holding and Tencent Holdings, said it had completed another $3 billion round in September.
It raises the stakes for its battle with Uber‘s local arm, a smaller but well-funded rival, as both companies spend heavily to subsidize rides and jostle for market share. Didi Kuaidi has the largest market share of car-hailing apps in China....MORE
In a world plagued by low productivity, inequality, negative interest rates and deflation, the idea that something as simple as a physical cash ban might magically turn things around is, understandably, a tempting proposition.*Four days.
Furthermore, there are many convincing arguments for why this would be the case.
Most simply, cash is the means by which the criminal and tax-dodging grey economy get to have their cake and eat it: i.e. retain a right to claim the fruits of a collaborative and productive society supported by a social welfare system funded by taxes, without having to contribute their share of the bill (or in the case of the criminal element, despite actively disrupting the collaborative structure). Without cash, then, crime doesn’t pay, because there’s no way to protect the proceeds of a criminal lifestyle. As a consequence, the argument goes, criminals would simply pack it in.
On a nerdier finance level, banning cash seems a neat way to break through the zero lower bound. If there isn’t a bearer cash-out option, after all, everyone’s current liquid wealth becomes subject to an equal amount of tax whether they like it or not. More pertinent still, unless a person is prepared to transfer their cash to productive ventures (with some personal risk), everyone’s risk-free liquid capital turns into a depreciating asset. And that, in turn, sends a larger message to society that if you’re not prepared to take risk or pay your taxes, you don’t get the right to long-term par value protection for your wealth. In other words, keep what you need for consumption’s sake in liquid form, but be forced to share some fraction of it with the wider welfare state or — if you have more than you need — get a move on with investing it in our collective future prosperity.
Put that way, it’s fair to assume the productive and tax-paying members of society would see logic in a cash ban.
But perhaps things aren’t as simple as that.
To wit, see the latest thoughts from Nicholas Colas, chief market strategist at Convergex, on why it isn’t necessarily all about the Benjamins. On the matter of eliminating high-value notes from society to reduce crime and tax evasion, Colas notes:
Consequently, he says:...MUCH MORE
- Criminals always find a way. Cigarettes were the primary currency in the U.S. prison system until most states passed bans on smoking over the last decade. Now, inmates use everything from prepaid debit cards to postage stamps to foil envelopes of mackerel as currency.
- China’s largest banknote is worth 100 RMB (about $15), which should make the country largely immune from the ills caused by high denomination bills. Interestingly, Larry Summer’s own missive about the perils of the $100 bill notes that “China… has made attacking corruption a central part of its economic and political strategy”. Yes, there are no doubt $100 bills circulating in China but even the Sands paper only cites one example of a corrupt official found (in 2014) with a large quantity of $100 bills. Clearly there is more to corrupt behavior than the existence of high denomination bank notes.
- A Boston Fed study published in 2014 found that 5% of American consumers have a $100 bill in their wallet or purse. They tend to be more affluent than the average consumer (no surprise). To put that 5% in context, it amounts to 12 million people carrying $100 bills every day. And since we doubt criminals answer Fed surveys we assume that those 12 million people are all law abiding citizens using their currency for legitimate reasons. Bottom line: real people use $100s too.
Automation, the moving from manual tools to machines that replicate the actions of a human using a tool, appears in various forms within everyday financial life. The ATM, for instance, is an automated version of the bank teller of old who, with ledger book and quill pen, would have to exert energy to check your account, hand you cash, and alter your accounts. While financial interactions used to rely on human energy and mental faculty, today's digital interactions are very different. I use an interface to interact with this ATM, which gives me some form of control, but only within the inflexible rules of whatever it will allow me to do. This actually requires energy on my part, so while the machine seems to 'do things for me', the process is also 'self-service'.
Automation of this slippery sort is taking on more and more of personal finance. The glossy adverts of the financial marketing industry put an appealing spin on the future world of contactless payment, branchless banking and cashless society. They focus the mind on problems that are apparently being solved through new technology, but they simultaneously divert attention from the dark side of the automated financial regimes that is emerging around us.
Corporate management is fond of automation because it is a force for scale, standardisation and efficiency – and in turn lowers costs, leading to enhanced profits. The process is perhaps most advanced in the realm of electronic payments, where money is shifted with very little human action at all. Despite recent talk of the rise of digital currencies, most money is digital already, and tapping your contactless payment card sets in motion an elaborate automated system of hard-drive editing that 'moves' your money from one bank data-centre to another. This technology underpins talk of a future 'cashless society'. Bouncy startups like Venmo and iZettle are getting into the payments game, adding friendly new layers to an underlying digital payments infrastructure that is nonetheless still dominated by the banking industry and credit card networks: new forms of banking still work much the same way as old....MORE
Much of the financial system still retains a hybrid structure in which manual human actions interact with automated machine actions. The investment bank trader negotiates a derivatives deal over the phone and then books it into a partly automated back-office system.
Over the years, though, corporate managers have tried to push the power balance in this hybrid model towards the machine side, even in apparently human settings like the bank branch. You can talk with employees behind the Barclays counters, but often they are just there to enter data into a centralised system that tells them how to deal with you. To some degree these employees have agency – the ability to make decisions – but the dominant trend is for them to become subservient to the machine system they work with, unable to operate outside the bounds set by their computer. Indeed, many bank employees cannot explain why the computers have made the decisions they have, and thus they appear as the human face put there to break the news of whatever the algorithm has decided. We might even say they are a human interface to an otherwise algo-robotic system that is accountable only to the senior corporate management, who you will never deal with.
Nevertheless, humans are costly. In their ideal world, bank executives would get rid of as many manual human elements as possible and replace them with software systems moving binary code around on hard drives, a process they refer to as 'digitisation'. This generally means slowly dismantling branches while getting people accustomed to 'self-service'. Indeed, many banks are cutting branches, and many new forms of financial services are found only online, like digital banks Fidor and Atom. Digital banking startup Kreditech claims that bank branches won't exist 10 years hence, "and neither will cost-intensive, manual banking processes":
"We believe algorithms and automated processes are the way to customer-friendly banking," the startup declares confidently.
A statuette from the John Huston–Humphrey Bogart classic The Maltese Falcon is one of the most recognizable, and sought-after, pieces of movie memorabilia in history. In fact, Steve Wynn paid $4.1 million for it. But was it the genuine article? Bryan Burrough tracks down a flock of Falcons, with links to both Leonardo DiCaprio and a famous Hollywood unsolved murder.
“What is it?”—A cop asking Sam Spade about the Maltese Falcon in the final scene of the 1941 film.
“The stuff that dreams are made of.”
“Huh.”
Along with the ruby slippers Judy Garland wore in The Wizard of Oz and Orson Welles’s “Rosebud” sled, which burns in the final frames of Citizen Kane, there is probably no more iconic item of Hollywood memorabilia than the Maltese Falcon, the black statuette that Humphrey Bogart, as detective Sam Spade, tracked down in John Huston’s classic film of the same name.
Lost to history for decades, it resurfaced in the 1980s in the hands of a Beverly Hills oral surgeon, and beginning in 1991 traveled the world as part of a Warner Bros. retrospective, with stops at the Centre Pompidou, in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art, in New York, and elsewhere. In 2013 it was offered for sale by Bonhams auction house. There was talk it might go for $1 million or more. But at the auction in Bonhams’s Madison Avenue showroom on November 25, 2013, the bidding quickly passed $1 million, then $2 million, then $3 million. Spectators gasped as a bidder in the audience dueled with one on the telephone, driving the price higher and higher.
Only when the bidding reached $3.5 million did the bidder in the crowd surrender, sending the Falcon to the man on the phone, who was later revealed to represent Steve Wynn, the Las Vegas hotel and casino billionaire. With the buyer’s premium, the total price came to a stunning $4.1 million. The crowd burst into applause. The auctioneers wheeled out a tub of champagne bottles to celebrate.
And with good reason. It was one of the highest prices ever paid for a piece of movie memorabilia, and two of the others were for cars: the original Batmobile, which had sold for $4.6 million earlier that year, and the Aston Martin Sean Connery drives in Goldfinger. News of the Falcon sale was carried on the network news and in newspapers around the world. Today it sits, along with a pair of Picassos, a Matisse, and a Giacometti sculpture, in a meeting room in Wynn’s Las Vegas villa.
That is the official version of what happened to the Maltese Falcon. But it is just one chapter in a complex tale. It turns out there is another, far stranger version, and another Falcon, several more in fact. And this version, which draws in characters as diverse as Leonardo DiCaprio and the woman butchered in one of Hollywood’s greatest unsolved murders, constitutes a real-life mystery every bit as bizarre as the one Sam Spade confronted on film.
Flight of Fancy
Hank Risan, the protagonist of this noir thriller, is as unlikely as the tale he has to tell. A sinewy, 60-year-old Internet entrepreneur, he works out of three modest office suites in downtown Santa Cruz, the Northern California surfing mecca. In Silicon Valley, Risan is best known for creating a massive library of computer-generated copies of popular songs, including the entire Beatles catalogue. When he took them online in 2009, selling individual downloads for a quarter, the EMI record label promptly sued to shut him down. (Risan settled without admission of liability for $950,000.)
His second business is a software start-up that Risan, using the shopworn promotional language of entrepreneurs everywhere, swears will “revolutionize” computer security. He says he is working with everyone from the Internal Revenue Service to the National Security Agency to put his software on government and corporate computers. In the start-up’s office, though, I see only a single employee working beneath whiteboards covered with calculations.
What one can say for certain is that, whatever the success of his business ventures, Risan is one of the country’s leading collectors of rare guitars. When he put nearly 300 of them up for auction two years ago, Guitar Aficionado termed it an “immaculate collection,” a “staggering” assemblage featuring instruments used by the likes of Eric Clapton, Mick Jagger, and Stephen Stills. Its centerpiece, still in Risan’s hands, is an 1835 Martin long owned by Mark Twain. In 1999 Risan played a Stephen Foster song on it on National Public Radio.
Dozens of guitars are on display at Risan’s home, a tidy urban compound packed to the rafters with modern art and collectibles, including a Warhol screenprint, and Risan’s latest obsession, antique British chess sets. We enter past a Jaguar in the carport, into a small room hung with graffiti-inspired paintings. “This is my Banksy room,” Risan says, taking a moment to explain the stories behind several of them.
Through the next door is a courtyard with a glassed-in guesthouse, a workshop where Risan’s assistant is busy restoring an antique guitar, a conversation pit, and a hot tub sitting under a set of bison horns.
We turn away from all this, stepping into the bungalow, then through a kitchen into a dining area.
“And in here,” Risan says with a flourish, “I might as well show it to you first. This is my Falcon.”
Suddenly here it is, plopped down in the middle of an antique chessboard like a massive rook, a foot-high black statuette of a falcon. The hunched, brooding shoulders are instantly recognizable.
There is a long moment of silence.HT: The Paris Review's "Remember to Authenticate Your Falcon, and Other News"
“This is the thing dreams are made of,” Risan announces....MUCH MORE
Yesterday, USDA released its Agricultural Projections to 2025.
In part, the report explained that, “Prices for most crops have fallen from highs of recent years as U.S. and global supplies have rebounded from relatively low levels. In response to the associated lower producer returns, planted area for major field crops in the United States has fallen from the highs of 2012-14 and is projected to continue to decline. U.S. planted acreage for eight major field crops (corn, sorghum, barley, oats, wheat, rice, upland cotton, and soybeans) averaged almost 257 million acres in 2012-14 and is projected to fall below 250 million acres by 2017. Wheat, corn, and cotton account for most of the decline between these years.”
More specifically with respect to prices, yesterday’s report noted that, “Larger global production of grains and oilseeds in response to high prices in recent years has raised world supplies and lowered U.S. prices for corn, wheat, and soybeans. Following these near-term price declines, the continuing influence of global growth in population and per capita income along with biofuel demand underlies moderate gains in these prices and keeps them above pre-2007 levels.”
The USDA report added that, “Corn prices are projected to decline through 2016/17 and then increase marginally over the next decade as ending stocks-to-use ratios fall somewhat due to growth in feed use and exports and continuing demand for corn for ethanol production.
“Prices for soybeans also initially fall through 2016/17 as continued high soybean acreage keeps supplies and stocks high. Soybean prices rise moderately through the rest of the projection period, reflecting a reduction of soybean plantings, increasing demand for soybeans and soybean products, and declining stocks.”
In a look at livestock variables, USDA stated that, “The U.S. livestock sector is projected to increase production over the next decade, an expansion that reflects several factors. Feed costs have fallen from recent highs and are projected to rise only moderately over the next 10 years. Also, demand for meats and dairy products in both the domestic market and for export is projected to be strong. As a result, total U.S. red meat and poultry production rises over the projection period. Milk production also increases over the next decade.”
Analysts at Bernstein have warned against the dangers of “bad business” and “underpriced risk” in the reinsurance sector, while reminding market players that in order for the softening environment to turn, “first there must be blood.”
The global reinsurance market has continued its softening trend during the opening weeks of 2016, with rate reductions occurring across the majority of business classes, and reportedly down by roughly 5% to 10% in the property catastrophe arena.
Despite this, an ongoing benign catastrophe loss environment has seen some firms report profitability and growth during difficult market conditions, with some reinsurers confident of earning attractive returns “when the market turns,” says Bernstein.
“We think it is worth remembering that the reinsurance cycle has historically only turned after there has been significant capital impairment. The cycle doesn’t turn until there is blood in the streets,” says Bernstein.
Ample capacity from both traditional and alternative capital sources, coupled with a lack of losses created an extremely competitive reinsurance market landscape in 2015, which resulted in a wave of sector consolidation as companies searched for efficiency, scale, and relevance.
And now, with the pressures and challenges of last year persisting into 2016, the desire to remain relevant to clients and the overall market remains.
Despite reinsurers stressing the importance of disciplined underwriting in a soft market, “all that bad business and underpriced risk is going somewhere in the system. Someone will pay the price when the music stops,” says Bernstein.
It’s certainly an interesting and valid point. With everyone in the sector writing business so cheaply, enabled by the stiff competition and current supply/demand imbalance occupying the space, when cat losses and earnings are returned to more normalised levels, there will likely be some fall-out.
“Even if pricing levels off at these levels, we think it is likely that many are not earning their cost of capital based on any reasonable “normalized” measure of earnings,” said Bernstein....MORE
I read “What Is the Most used Feature in Any business Intelligence Solution? It’s the Export to Excel Button.” The write up asserts:
I was recently forwarded an article on the continued popularity of Excel in the BI community consisting of quotes from 27 experts saying how great and how relevant Excel remains. We do categorize BI as static and historical as opposed to forward looking predictive analytics but I bet it’s still true that Excel is a very widely used tool even by folks that categorize themselves as data scientists.Let’s assume this is accurate. What does this suggest for complex analytics like my old pals SAS or IBM SPSS? What about high flying outfits like Palantir, and Centrifuge Systems?
I have some answers, but I think the questions are suggestive of a hurdle which high horsepower analytic systems must power around. There is a reason so few folks are adept at statistics whether the industrial strength variety or the weird approach taken in social science and economics classes.
Excel seems to be tough to master but compared to more supercharged methods, Excel sure looks like a push peddle tricycle. You can’t go too far or too fast. If you crash into something, there is F1 and semi automated procedures to kiss the boo boo and make it better.
Stephen E Arnold, February 24, 2016
Companies like AirBbB would have you believe everyone benefits from the sharing economy, but the truth is, no one's entirely sure who the participants even are. That's something of a problem for municipalities trying to understand how to regulate the no-longer-fledgling industry. Now, researchers have sought out hard data on who uses AirBbB, and their results suggest we may need an entirely new kind of regulation to deal with it."[T]he sharing economy and its regulation have become highly popular policy topics," write Giovanni Quattrone and a team of computer scientists in a paper to be presented in April at the 2016 International World Wide Web Conference. In part, that's because the sharing economy is having a substantial negative impact on more traditional service providers, like taxi cabs."Many municipal governments are attempting to impose old regulations on these new marketplaces ... without a complete understanding of the benefits and drawbacks generated by these new services. Furthermore, such a debate has resulted into little academic work," Quattrone and his colleagues write.Because there's not much in the way of organized data to look to, between 2012 and 2015 the researchers crawled through AirBnB's listings in London, including where AirBnB hosts were renting and how often they rented their places out, using the number of reviews as a proxy for the number of actual visitors. The researchers combined that data with sociodemographic indicators—even things like social media check-ins—to build a picture of how AirBnB in London has changed over time."Cities should rely on data analysis to envision and revise their local ordinances."
Here's the paper at arXive, 9 page PDFEarly on in 2012, AirBnB hosts were largely young, ethnically diverse, and living in central London neighborhoods—quite possibly students, the team suggests, since, in addition to their other traits, hosts tended to live in neighborhoods where fewer people were employed. In 2013 and beyond, AirBnB listings expanded outward from the center to include places farther from transit and the major tourist draws.The frontier at this stage also included neighborhoods with relatively low average incomes, suggesting that hosts were using AirBnB as a way to make more money, with an important caveat: Though there were new hosts in these areas, for the most part the researchers' data indicated travelers continued to stay closer to central London.Based on their findings, the team recommends a system, "transferable sharing rights," whereby a city can issue and regulate the rights to participate in AirBnB-like rentals....MORE
The current account of a country measures a couple of items:
If exports of a country are larger than its imports, we say that the country runs a current account surplus. In other words, the country is a net lender to the rest of the world. If a country’s exports are smaller than its imports, we say that the country runs a current account deficit, or is a net borrower from the rest of the world.
- The difference between its exports to and its imports from the rest of the world
- The international asset position of a country with the rest of the world
By definition, the current account of all countries should sum to zero, since one country’s exports is another country’s imports. In practice, however, this is not the case. The figure below shows that there is a discrepancy between global exports and imports.
The figure shows that in most years from 1980 to 2004, the world ran a current account deficit between -0.2 and -0.9 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP). This trend then reversed, with the world running a current account surplus of close to 0.5 percent of world GDP....
What can explain these discrepancies? Was the Earth a net importer of goods and services from other planets before 2005 and a net exporter afterwards?
According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), these discrepancies are driven by several factors. For one, transportation lags could generate a positive current account if the exports of a country are recorded in one year and imports are recorded in the following year. Another factor, especially in emerging economies, is the underreporting of income generated through these transactions for tax evasion purposes. A 2009 IMF study found that the switch from a deficit to a surplus was due to a mismeasurement of services, which are easier to identify from exporters than importers (for example, big insurance companies providing services to small clients).1 The IMF’s projection for the next five years is that these discrepancies will decrease (as they have been since 2012) and that the world current account will be negative.
Accounting for the magnitude of these errors is difficult and still important to understand the existence of global imbalances around the world.
Notes and References
“Exports to Mars.” The Economist, Nov. 12, 2011.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said that the public reaction to a photo of him wearing red pants and UGG boots has been embarrassing, the RIA Novosti news agency reported Saturday.
Peskov told journalists on Saturday that he does not want to discuss his red pants and UGG boots.
“You know, I do not think at all that's an issue to discuss during a conference call. I am a little bit amazed by that, because when you go to a car wash at night — in order not to stand in a queue — and this turns into such a story, I am, to tell the truth, embarrassed and do not want to discuss it,” Peskov was quoted as saying by RIA Novosti....MORE
After last week's roller-coaster ride (API "draw" vs DOE "build"), tonight's API data (following Al-Naimi's reality check this morning) was much heralded. After DOE reported builds across the entire complex last week, and expectations of a 3mm barrel build, API reported a massive 7.1mm build and a bigger than expected 307k build at Cushing. Gasoline inventories also rose more than expected (for the 15th week in a row).
While this may have been catch up from last week's data, this is still a major build from API...MORE
- Crude +7.1mm (3mm exp)
- Cushing +307k (300k exp)
- Gasoline +569k (-1mm exp)
- Distillates -267k (-700k exp)
That’s not great news for the Bank of Japan.
The Japanese are spending—but not in a way that is likely to strengthen the country’s economy.
Following the Bank of Japan’s decision to lower interest rates below zero in January, many consumers have reportedly rushed to hardwares store in search of one thing: safes.
Negative interest rates mean customers effectively pay a fee for parking cash in banks, so Japanese citizens are beginning to hoard yen, according to the Wall Street Journal, and they need somewhere to put it.Whatever you do, don't choose a safe you can pick with a magnet and a sock:
Sales of safes have doubled from the same period a year earlier at chain hardware store, Shimachu, according to the Journal. The chain has already sold out of one model worth $700. Others savers are considering more unconventional storage spaces.
“In response to negative interest rates, there are elderly people who’re thinking of keeping their money under a mattress,” Mariko Shimokawa, a Shimachu saleswoman told the Journal....MORE
We're looking for down then some serious weather related up.From Agrimoney:
Wheat futures plunged to a six-year low on Tuesday, in the face of heavy global supplies.
The front-month contract, which expires at the end of this week, hit its lowest level since 2010.
...MORE
"There's just a lot of wheat in the wold," Don Roose, of US Commodities"."The US just isn't competitive," he said, adding that markets were also waiting for US acreages and demand data, which will be released this week.Focus on acreages"Our markets are definitely focused on the USDA Outlook Conference later this," said Tregg Cronin, of Halo Commodities.And Mr Cronin noted that analysts "are already taking issue," with what they think will be an underestimate.The USDA has already pegged the US' eight crop planted area 1.9m acres down from last year, "despite the heavy prevent plant acres in Missouri, Nebraska and Illinois".Mr Cronin added that there were still additional acres to be allocated from the sharp drop in winter wheat plantings last autumn, "which could see additional acreage added to corn, beans and spring wheat".Farmer sellingMr Roose also noted that grain rallies were triggering farmer selling in the US.As to why the turnaround is happening today, Mr Roose said "I think it's Tuesday," referring to an idea that markets often shift direction on Tuesdays.And indeed, outside markets turned hostile, after Monday's supportive tone, with global equities and oil prices down.Short-covering failureAnd at Country Futures, Darrell Holaday noted the apparent failure of a recent short-covering rally in grains, as fund shrink their net-short position in grains."There is little doubt that has happened the last ten days,"...
To paraphrase Chris Farley, 'for those who don't habla Español, La Niña is Spanish for..ah..the niña.'And Feb. 9's "There's So Much Stuff, Everywhere: 'Grain prices dip, after US hikes record world wheat stocks estimate'".
I mentioned on Tuesday "We are expecting to have a lousy weather-thank you La Niña long trade later this year..." Here's more.
Just two weeks ago, Francis Outred declared to Colin Gleadell about David Hockney’s Umbrella selling for £3.1m, “This price will look cheap before too long.” Now we know why Outred could be so confident of the continuing arc of Hockney’s prices upward.
The Tate Britain has announced a major retrospective of the artist’s work in time for his 80th birthday. Here’s the Guardian on the announcement:
Hockney said he had enjoyed revisiting works he made decades ago. “Many of them seem like old friends to me now. “We’re looking over a lifetime with this exhibition, and I hope, like me, people will enjoy seeing how the roots of my new and recent work can be seen in the developments over the years.”...MORE
What a shit show this is. Icahn and his stupid commodity bets, long egregious amounts of CHK, LNG and FCX, have wreaked havoc on his publicly traded net worth inflator, aka IEP. He owns 90% of it and now S&P is threatening to slash the credit rating to junk status, due to its nefarious holdings in which the value have been subjugated to ruinous losses.Previously:
These and other bad bets have led Standard & Poor’s to warn it may downgrade Icahn Enterprises (IEP) to junk territory within the next 90 days.All of this has led S&P to posit whether Icahn might inject personal capital into IEP to firm up its balance sheet....MORE
S&P says Icahn’s firm had just $182 million of cash as of the end of September, down from $1.1 billion the year before. At the same time, Icahn Enterprises lists $13.4 billion in total debt, of which $1.2 billion is due early next year.
“All I am saying is, we are not banking on cuts,” Mr Naimi said at the IHS CERAWeek conference.While MarketWatch leads with:
Saudi Arabia's al-Naimi says he welcomes new additional suppliesHere's the headline story from Bloomberg:
Saudi Arabia won’t cut oil production as other countries would be unlikely to assist in restraining output, leaving the burden of adjusting supply with high-cost producers, Oil Minister Ali Al-Naimi said.April futures now down $1.66 at $31.73.
“Not many countries are going to deliver” even if they promise supply curbs, al-Naimi said at the IHS CERAWeek conference in Houston Tuesday. An accord last week to freeze the oil production of Saudi Arabia, Russia, Qatar and Venezuela at January levels is “not like cutting production, that’s not going to happen.”
Instead, high-cost producers will have to “lower costs, borrow or liquidate” to cope with the slump in oil prices, al-Naimi said, adding that he doesn’t know when the current rout will end. This is a “more efficient” way for the market to rebalance than cuts by low-cost producers like Saudi Arabia, which would only delay the “inevitable reckoning” needed for supply and demand to realign, he said.
The Feb. 16 freeze agreement reached in Doha marked the first sign of cooperation between OPEC and non-members since oil prices began their long decline in 2014. Even as crude dropped about 70 percent to 12-year lows, Saudi Arabia insisted that other producers would have to join in before it considered curbing production.
Al-Naimi said the accord is “the beginning of the process” and that producing countries will gather again in March. Major exporters will cooperate, he said.
Further Steps
After the agreement was announced, al-Naimi suggested the freeze was a prelude to “other steps.” The comments, reiterated by other officials outside the kingdom, had fanned speculation that the government in Riyadh was dropping its resistance to production cuts....MORE
Despite OPEC's El-Badri proclaiming that Iran and iraq "didn't refuse to join the production freeze," oil prices are tumbling this morning on comments from Iran's oil minister that OPEC's call for a production freeze is "ridiculous."
And the result...Proposal by Saudi Arabia, Russia, Venezuela, Qatar for oil producers to freeze output puts “unrealistic demands” on Iran, Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh says, according to ministry’s news agency Shana.
*IRAN CALLS SAUDI-RUSSIAN OUTPUT FREEZE PLAN `RIDICULOUS': SHANA
