Baltic Dry Index. 2203 -02 Brent Crude 66.68
Spot
Gold 3685 U S
2 Year Yield 3.57 unch.
US
Federal Debt. 37.503 trillion
US
GDP 30.277 trillion
"We
held interest rates at 4% today. Although we expect
inflation to return to our 2% target, we're not out of the woods yet so any
future cuts will need to be made gradually and carefully."
BoE Governor
Bailey, 18 September 2025.
The stock casinos
mostly bubble up to new highs.
President Trump’s
latest pick for the Fed sees no Trump tariff inflation effect. “Well he would
say that wouldn’t he”, to quote a certain lady quite famous in 1963.
Below, onward and
upward. To infinity and beyond.
Dow,
S&P 500 close at fresh records, log big gains for the week after Fed rate
cut: Live updates
Updated
Fri, Sep 19 2025 4:14 PM EDT
Stocks
rose on Friday, with major U.S. indexes notching weekly gains, as the Federal
Reserve’s decision to cut interest rates set in investors’ minds.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average added
172.85 points, or 0.37%, to close at 46,315.27, reaching a fresh record high.
The S&P 500 settled
up 0.49% at 6,664.36, while the Nasdaq Composite advanced
0.72% to finish at 22,631.48.
The
small-cap Russell 2000 dipped
0.7%, taking back some gains this week after the index touched a fresh record
high earlier in the session.
Apple led the way higher,
rising 3.2%, as the company’s latest iPhone went on sale around the
world. Tesla shares
were also up more than 2.2%.
Wall
Street is on pace to post strong weekly gains. The S&P 500 and Dow are up
1.2% and 1%, respectively, while the Nasdaq is up 2.2%. The Russell 2000 gained
2.2%, notched its seventh weekly advance.
Stocks
got a boost this week after the Fed lowered
its benchmark overnight lending rate by a quarter percentage point,
its first rate reduction since December. The move was widely expected by
markets, but stocks had a volatile session on the back of the decision after
Fed Chair Jerome Powell in
his press conference characterized the decision as a “risk management
cut.”
″While September
has historically delivered pullbacks, this year’s market has defied that
pattern — climbing 35% since March with strong technical and fundamental
tailwinds,” said Mark Hackett, chief market strategist at Nationwide. “Still,
with the S&P 500 trading at 22x forward earnings and volatility suppressed,
a period of consolidation or choppiness would be a normal and healthy
development.”
Stock
market today: Live updates
What Reliving the 1929
Crash Tells Us About Today’s Stock Market
In 1929, Andrew Ross
Sorkin re-creates the euphoria and mania that led to the most famous stock
market slump in history.
September 19, 2025 at 11:00 AM UTC
There are two ways to read Andrew Ross
Sorkin’s 1929, a new book on the stock market crash of that year.
You can pop the popcorn and watch rich men twisting in the lies they tell
themselves and others. Or you can read 1929 to match the
stories Wall Street told itself then to those of today, a perversely fun
project that Sorkin subtly leaves us to complete for ourselves. Both approaches
are worthwhile. Neither will task your brain.
That’s because Sorkin, one of America’s
highest-profile financial journalists — with twin seats at CNBC and the New
York Times — does not seek to explain why the stock market fever rose
and broke. It was FOMO plus
debt. It’s almost always FOMO plus debt. Nor does he offer a counternarrative
about how the mania could have been avoided. (“No matter how many warnings are
issued or how many laws are written,” he writes, “people will find new ways to
believe that the good times can last forever.”) He isn’t trying to explain the
Great Depression, or whether the crash caused it.
But in the current moment, when so much feels (and is!) unprecedented, Sorkin’s greatest accomplishment is
allowing us to relive precedent by re-creating how the market felt in 1929,
week by week, sometimes day by day, to those experiencing it as its own thing
before they knew how it would live on in history.
More
What Andrew Ross
Sorkin’s ‘1929’ Tells Us About Today’s Stock Market - Bloomberg
In other news, why
more and more of the world is turning anti-west.
The Lies America Tells
Itself About the Middle East
As Its Influence
Faded, Washington Dissembled and Denied Reality
September 16, 2025
On any given day during the long war in Gaza, a
Biden administration official could be expected to assert any of the following:
a cease-fire was around the corner, the United States was working tirelessly to
achieve one, it cared equally about the Israelis and the Palestinians, a
historic Saudi-Israeli normalization deal was at hand, and all this was bound
up with an irreversible path to Palestinian statehood.
Not one of those pronouncements bore even a loose
resemblance to the truth. Talks about a cease-fire dragged on, and when they
fitfully bore fruit, the resulting understandings quickly fell apart. The United States refrained from doing the one
thing—conditioning or halting the military aid to Israel that kept the fire
from ceasing—that might have made it happen. Taking that step was also the one
thing that might have demonstrated, beyond platitudes, a U.S. commitment to
protecting both Israeli and Palestinian lives. Saudi Arabia kept repeating that
normalization with Israel depended on progress toward a Palestinian state, and
the Israeli government consistently ruled such progress out. The more time went
on, the more U.S. statements were exposed as empty words, met with disbelief or
indifference. That did not stop them from being made. Did U.S. policymakers
believe what they said? If not, why did they keep saying it? And if they did,
how could they ignore so much contrary evidence staring them in the face?
The falsehoods served as cover for a policy that
enabled Israel’s ferocious attacks on Gaza and hailed the most modest, fleeting
improvement in the situation in the Palestinian enclave as the product of
American humanitarianism and resolve. Israel’s brutality worsened under
the Trump administration, but those earlier
falsehoods had paved the way. They helped normalize Israel’s indiscriminate
killings; its targeting of hospitals, schools, and mosques; its use of access
to food as a weapon of war; and its continued reliance on American weapons.
They laid the ground and there was no turning back.
More
Global Inflation/Stagflation/Recession
Watch.
Given
our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians,
inflation now needs an entire section of its own.
Miran
says he doesn’t see tariffs causing inflation, putting him in minority on Fed
committee
Published
Fri, Sep 19 2025 12:11 PM EDT Updated Fri, Sep 19 2025 1:39 PM EDT
Federal
Reserve Governor Stephen Miran said Friday that he doesn’t anticipate President
Donald Trump’s tariffs will have an inflationary effect on the U.S. economy.
“I’m
clearly in the minority in not being concerned about inflation from tariffs,”
he said on CNBC’s “Money Movers.”
“But that was also true in 2018-2019, and I think I probably could take a
little victory lap about that.”
“There
will always be relative price changes, but whether or not it’s inflation that’s
macroeconomically significant of the type that monetary policy should respond
to is a different question,” he added.
His
comments come after the Fed governor was the lone
dissenter among 12 Federal Open Market Committee voters from the
central bank’s decision Wednesday to slash
its benchmark overnight lending rate by a quarter-percentage point,
instead calling for a half-point reduction.
When
explaining the reason for his decision, Miran said he doesn’t “see any material
inflation from tariffs.”
“I
see no evidence that it’s occurred,” the policymaker said, pointing to the lack
of difference in inflation rates between import-intensive core goods and
overall core goods. “If you thought tariffs are driving inflation higher, you’d
think imports would be differentially inflating at a higher pace.”
Miran
additionally cited “no discernible trend difference” between U.S. core goods
inflation and that in other countries. “If I thought that tariffs were driving
any material inflation in the United States, I’d look for evidence,” he
continued.
However,
most measures show inflation running above the Fed’s 2% target this year, and
the full committee’s forecast indicated it won’t come back to that level until
2028.
In
the second half of the year, Miran expects growth to come in stronger, as he
said economic headwinds such as uncertainty around Trump’s trade and tax
policies caused growth in the first half to be weaker than he had hoped. He
also believes Trump’s immigration policies will bring about disinflation in the
economy.
“If
you add millions of new immigrants into a country in a short period of time,
it’s going to drive shelter prices up,” he said. “If you close that border, and
then you have negative debt migration … that’s going to have a very
disinflationary effect.”
The
Senate confirmed
Miran to the Fed Board of Governors on Monday, a day before this
week’s policy meeting began. He had been picked
by President Donald Trump in August to fill former Governor Adriana
Kugler’s seat following her abrupt
resignation.
Miran
is set to serve on the board for the remainder of Kugler’s term, which expires
on Jan. 31, 2026. He said during a confirmation hearing earlier this month that
he will take an unpaid
leave of absence from his position as chair of the White House Council
of Economic Advisors while serving out the term rather than resign entirely.
Miran
says he doesn't see tariffs causing inflation, putting him in minority on Fed
committee
'Foothills
of stagflation': Economists detail key dangers of Trump policies
September 18, 2025
On September 5, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that in August, the United States had 4.3 percent unemployment. The
U.S. is not in a recession, yet there are warning signs for the American
economy.
Job creation, according to the BLS, is weak. And
major economists like Paul Krugman and Robert Reich fear that President Donald Trump's steep new
tariffs will lead to "stagflation" — a painful combination of
inflation, high unemployment and weak economic growth that the U.S. suffered in
the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Stagflation fears are addressed in a conversation between four economists — Larry H. Summers, Rebecca Patterson, Oren Cass and Jason Furman —
published in Q&A form in the New York Times' opinion section on September
18.
Summers, who served as U.S. Treasury secretary under
former President Bill Clinton and director of the National Economic Council
(NEC) under former President Barack Obama, told the others, "I think we
may be at the foothills of stagflation. I don't think tariff impacts have been
fully felt or will be for some time, and confidence has more room to decline
than to rise. I think inflation will surprise a bit on the high side. I suspect
we are seeing unemployment and inflation forecasts both being revised up."
Furman noted that he shared "Larry's inflation
concerns," adding, "Core inflation, excluding items like food and
energy, has been running at a 3 percent rate. Some of that is tariffs, and they
might be transitory. But even without tariffs, inflation is still running about
2.5 percent."
Patterson stressed that while some Americans are
doing well economically, others are "struggling" to find work.
Patterson told Summers, Furman and Cass, "While
overall economic growth has been fine, it is masking very different experiences
for different parts of the population. High-income earners with homes and
equities have rising levels of wealth and continue to spend. But young people
just out of college, lower-income earners and retirees on fixed incomes are
increasingly struggling, given high and still-rising prices, a stagnant job
market and a lack of housing supply."
Cass, meanwhile, described himself as "the
biggest optimist in the group."
Cass recalled, "When Ronald Reagan came into
office in 1981, the Fed induced a sharp recession to tame stagflation. Even at
the time, certainly in hindsight, people recognized that the short-term numbers
were not the right measure."
Read
the full New York Times article at
this link (subscription required).
'Foothills of
stagflation': Economists detail key dangers of Trump policies
In the beginning of a stock market boom it is ever
the “dear public,” the fleecy lambs, the most guileless victims, who make the
most money. They really do not know when to stop winning, and so in the end
they lose profit and principal.
Edwin Lefevre
Reminiscences of a Stock Operator is a
1923 roman à clef by American author Edwin
Lefèvre. It is told in the first person by a character, in the book called
Larry Livingston, inspired by the life of stock
trader Jesse Livermore up to the time of writing.[
Reminiscences
of a Stock Operator - Wikipedia
Technology
Update.
With events happening
fast in the development of solar power and graphene, I’ve added this section.
Electricity through osmosis: Japan opens landmark osmotic power
plant
September 16, 2025
Imagine generating power not from sunlight or wind, but from the
simple mixing of fresh and salt water. This is the quiet promise of osmotic
energy, a renewable energy source generated where river meets ocean. The idea
has been around for decades, but only now is it flowing into real-world use.
The principle behind osmotic potential is deceptively simple. When
fresh and salt water are separated by a semi-permeable membrane, water
molecules naturally move across the barrier to balance the difference. That
flow builds up pressure strong enough to spin a turbine. No combustion, no
emissions. And unlike wind or solar, there is no dependence on weather or
daylight, making it capable of running continuously.
The first real push came in 2009, when the Norwegian company Statkraft built
one of the world’s first prototype osmotic power plants. The four-kilowatt
demonstration model proved the concept could generate electricity, but due to
costs the technology mostly lingered in labs and small pilots.
Now, for only the second time since development of those
prototypes, a full-scale facility has opened in Fukuoka, Japan. Built by a
consortium including the National Institute for Materials Science and local
partners, it’s the world’s second osmotic power facility designed for
continuous output following the launch of
another plant in Denmark in 2023. While considered modest in
scale, it will generate around 880,000 kilowatt-hours per year – enough to
power 220 households or offset the energy needs of a desalination plant.
What sets the Fukuoka facility apart from any prior iterations of
the technology is not the amount of energy it generates, but how it applies
physics to infrastructure. By pairing with a desalination plant, it taps into
concentrated brine waste that would otherwise be discarded, creating a sharper
salinity contrast than rivers naturally provide. Those stronger gradients boost
efficiency and grounds osmotic generation in existing systems rather than the
lab.
Still, hurdles remain. Pumping losses and membrane fouling can
erode efficiency, and advanced membranes are expensive.
“While energy is released when the salt water is mixed with fresh
water, a lot of energy is lost in pumping the two streams into the power plant
and from the frictional loss across the membranes," said Professor Sandra
Kentish of the University of Melbourne in a recent interview with The
Guardian. "This means that the net energy that can be gained is
small.”
Precisely the sort of challenges that pushed companies such as
Statkraft to shutter its prototype after a few years.
While the Fukuoka facility doesn’t claim to have solved all of the
issues, it shows that osmotic power can be folded into real-world
infrastructure. Advances in membrane and pump technology are reducing the
losses, Kentish noted, and Japan’s use of concentrated brine from desalination
increases the energy available. That integration marks an engineering milestone
– and underscores the core attraction of osmotic power: its reliability.
More
Osmotic energy:
harnessing power from salt and fresh water
Next, the
world global debt clock. Nations debts to GDP compared.
World Debt Clocks (usdebtclock.org)
Exponent
Calculator
Enter
values into any two of the input fields to solve for the third.
This
weekend’s music diversion. Reichenauer, the Czech Vivaldi. Approx. 4 minutes.
Concerto
for Oboe, Bassoon, Strings and Basso continuo in B flat major – Allegro
Concerto for Oboe,
Bassoon, Strings and Basso continuo in B flat major - Allegro
Next, where “the Donald” stayed in Windsor. Approx.
4 minutes.
Windsor
Castle | A British Royal Palace
Windsor Castle | A
British Royal Palace - YouTube
Finally,
more EV battery failure. Approx. 8
minutes.
Not
All BESS Are Safe: Two Fires, Two Outcomes
Not All BESS Are
Safe: Two Fires, Two Outcomes
The U.N. is a place where governments opposed to free speech
demand to be heard.
Mad Magazine.
