USPS Starts Testing Self-Driving Trucks For Long Hauls
by Zero Hedge - May 23rd, 2019 8:33 am
Courtesy of ZeroHedge. View original post here.
The US Postal Service (USPS) has awarded TuSimple, a global self-driving truck company, a contract to haul mail across the country with self-driving trucks, a move that could save the money-losing government agency millions of dollars per year if implemented, reported a TuSimple press release.
The two-week pilot started Tuesday will haul USPS trailers about 1,000 miles between USPS's Phoenix, Arizona, and Dallas, Texas distribution facilities. The 22-hour trip is often outsourced to third-party trucking companies that use multiple drivers.
During the test, a safety engineer and driver will monitor TuSimple's autonomous truck as it traverses I-10, I-20 and I-30 corridors through Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas.
"It is exciting to think that before many people will ride in a robo-taxi, their mail and packages may be carried in a self-driving truck," said Dr. Xiaodi Hou, Founder, President and Chief Technology Officer, TuSimple. "Performing for the USPS on this pilot in this particular commercial corridor gives us specific use cases to help us validate our system, and expedite the technological development and commercialization progress."
The USPS, which has been a money pit for taxpayers, lost nearly $4 billion in 2018, could finish 2019 with a $7 billion loss. With letter volume in terminal decline, the agency is trying to automate its transportation fleet as one way to cut expenses.
"We are conducting research and testing as part of our efforts to operate a future class of vehicles which will incorporate new technology to accommodate a diverse mail mix, enhance safety, improve service, reduce emissions, and produce operational savings," a postal service spokeswoman told The Wall Street Journal in an email.
Several years ago, autonomous mobile robots caught the attention of the USPS Office of Inspector General, who said autonomous vehicles have the potential to cut costs, increase efficiency, and enable new services. While delivery robots are still technologically immature to be fully scalable across major cities, autonomous long-haul trucking could be more realistic in the next several years.
Automation has the potential to reshape the US economy in the 2020s. The rapid adoption of new automation technologies across the entire economy could eliminate 20% to 25% of current jobs, hitting the middle class the hardest. The automation wave has started, middle America should be absolutely terrified that robots could soon replace them in the next 10 years.
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Faltering Thursday (Again) – Trump Tantrum Spooks Markets
by phil - May 23rd, 2019 8:31 am
The President is losing it.
Yesterday, he invited the House and Senate Democrats to meet with him to discuss Infrastructure and they had been discussing $2Tn worth of it but, when they showed up, Trump demanded they drop their investigations or he would not spend any money on Infrastructure – even though it's something America desperately needs action on.
Trump is not above holding America hostage to get what he wants – he shut the Goverment down for 35 days last year just to get funding for his wall and, so far, $1.57Bn has bought America 1.7 Miles of fence. President Donald Trump also commented on the progress of the wall construction on Twitter Wednesday, saying “tremendous work is being done.”
The Democrats did not agree to stop investingating Russian Interference into the US Elections which happens to also include potential charges of collusion and obstruction of justice on behalf of the President and his inner circle. One could say Trump's actions yesterday were obviously yet another attempt to obstruct justice by threatening people involved in an ongoing investigation but, regarless of that – this man is clearly not acting rationally and, unfortunately, he's our President.
It's interesting that Trump is complaining about the Mueller Investigation costing $35M (his estimate, not a fact) when Trump has spent $102M of the taxpayers' money playing golf in the past two years – and that is a FACT. In fact, Mueller has already collected $47M in fines so there's a $12M+ PROFIT from the investigation, not to mention that there have already been 37 people indicted for criminal activity including 26 Russians who interferred with our Demcracy and, so far, 7 people have already pled guilty, including several who were serving directly under the President.
I know people don't like to talk about politics on investing sites but this is serious stuff, folks! When this happened yesterday I told our Members to "GET OUT!!!" of the markets as this was clearly going to lead to some serious selling as, if nothing else, we have a completely dysfunctional government which will be doing nothing to address many, many critical things AND we're on a…
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America’s Busiest Port Prepares For Full Automation To Stay Competitive
by Zero Hedge - May 23rd, 2019 8:30 am
Courtesy of ZeroHedge. View original post here.
A new wave of investments in automation could stimulate the economy after the next recession. By 2030, automation may eliminate 20% to 25% of current jobs (equivalent to 40 million displaced workers), crushing the bottom 90% of Americans the hardest. Some of these investments include the automation of shipping terminals, reported Bloomberg.
At Pier 400 in Los Angeles, North America’s largest shipping terminal, about 1,700 diesel vehicles pass through the facility daily. The terminal is managed by APM Terminals, a segment of A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S, is expected to replace diesel and gasoline engines with electric, and use autonomous software to replace the workforce.
APM has already started to transform Pier 400 into a smart port, which will be several year processes of establishing robots throughout the facility to move containers more efficiently. To do this, APM recently ordered an electric, automated carrier from Finnish manufacturer Kalmar Global, that can perform three tasks: a crane, top-loader, and truck. Not only would the human element be eliminated from the equation, but also 65,000 miles driven by diesel motors would be replaced with electric engines.
The benefits of automation at the port will flow to the highly skilled workers—as well as APM. As a result, automation could significantly increase income inequality in the surrounding community because of the newly displaced workers, stripped of their jobs by robots.
Anthony Armijo, has worked at the terminal for 15 years said, “I just don’t understand what we’re going to be doing in the future,” he said. “I’m an American citizen. You would think they would have a way for us to make a living.”
Automation and clean-energy initiatives are expected to disrupt hundreds, if not thousands, of jobs, at the terminal by 2021.
“Automation is the path of history,” said Dan Sperling, a member of California’s Air Resources Board and professor of civil engineering and environmental science at the University of California, Davis. “The questions are how much automation really makes sense, and how do you deal with the disruption to the workers?”
Wim Lagaay, president and chief executive officer of APM North America, views…
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Japan, UK Join US Blockade Of China: ARM Tells Staff To Stop Working With Huawei
by Zero Hedge - May 23rd, 2019 8:26 am
Courtesy of ZeroHedge. View original post here.
Japan and the UK have joined the US trade clampdown on China as technology companies scramble to comply with a May 15 Executive Order signed by President Trump, which governs foreign-made telecommunications equipment deemed a national security risk.
Japanese-owned chip designer ARM Holdings has notified its staff to halt "all active contracts, support entitlements, and any pending engagements" with Huawei and its subsidiaries in order to comply with the recent US clampdown, according to the BBC. Based in the UK and owned by Japan's Softbank, ARM designs and licenses processors used in all types of electronic devices, including smart phones, tablets, laptops, televisions, automotive systems and more.
"ARM is the foundation of Huawei’s smartphone chip designs, so this is an insurmountable obstacle for Huawei," said Geoff Blaber of CCS Insight, adding: "That said, with an abundance of companies in Huawei’s supply chain already having taken action to comply with the US order, Huawei’s ability to operate was already severely affected."
In a company-wide memo, ARM told employees that their designs contain "US origin technology," which would be affected by the Trump administration's May 15 Executive Order to "protect our country against critical national security threats."
The US has argued that the Chinese government could force companies such as Huawei to install backdoors on their devices to allow for spying on US networks – an accusation Huawei has repeatedly denied.
Softbank – which is also one of Japan's largest mobile carriers – has joined with Japan's largest carriers DoCoMo and KDDI in announcing that they will stop taking orders for Huawei handsets.
KDDI and SoftBank said they made the decision as it remains unclear whether U.S. technology giant Google LLC will continue providing services, including its Android operating system, to the Chinese smartphone-maker following the declaration of a national emergency over technology threats by U.S. President Donald Trump last week. -Japan Times
Meanwhile, Japan's Panasonic has halted business with Huawei, and will no longer sell them certain components. "The affected products are limited, and there will be hardly any impact on earnings," said a spokesperson.
Panasonic supplies parts for Huawei phones, and
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Mnuchin Says Plans For Harriet Tubman On The $20 Have Been “Delayed” To 2028
by Zero Hedge - May 23rd, 2019 8:23 am
Courtesy of ZeroHedge. View original post here.
In a move that is drawing ire from the left side of the aisle, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced Wednesday that a planned redesign of the $20 bill, set to include Harriet Tubman, will be delayed from its planned release date in 2020, according to CNBC.
The timing of the release had been set to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote, but, due to counterfeiting issues, Mnuchin now says that no new imagery is going to be released until 2028.
Mnuchin said during a House Financial Services Committee meeting: “The primary reason we have looked at redesigning the currency is for counterfeiting issues. Based upon this, the $20 bill will now not come out until 2028. The $10 bill and the $50 bill will come out with new features beforehand.”
.@RepPressley: "Do you support Harriet Tubman being on the $20 bill?"
Secretary @stevenmnuchin1: "I've made no decision as it relates to that." pic.twitter.com/LuDNEhiEFH
— CSPAN (@cspan) May 22, 2019
The redesign was announced by Treasury Secretary Jack Lew in 2016, following a 10 month process of seeking input from the public. In 2016, Lew said: “The decision to put Harriet Tubman on the new $20 was driven by thousands of responses we received from Americans young and old. I have been particularly struck by the many comments and reactions from children for whom Harriet Tubman is not just a historical figure, but a role model for leadership and participation in our democracy.”
During President's Trump campaign for President, he referred to the idea of Tubman on the $20 as "pure political correctness" and instead suggested that she should be on the $2 bill.
Naturally, this set the left into a frenzy:
People other than white men built this county. And Sec Mnuchin agrees, yet he refuses to update our #currency. #HarrietTubman #MarianAnderson & #EleanorRoosevelt are iconic Americans & its past time that our ???? reflects that. #RepresentationMatters | https://t.co/nJmhiktHPm pic.twitter.com/hKQSR3Gl8P
— Rep Ayanna Pressley (@RepPressley)
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Henrich: This ‘Ghost Chart’ May Come To Haunt Us All
by Zero Hedge - May 23rd, 2019 8:20 am
Courtesy of ZeroHedge. View original post here.
Authored by Sven Henrich via NorthmanTrader.com,
Are markets engaged in a major topping process? Last week I’ve raised the question of potential topping patterns being in the process of being formed if $SPX can’t recapture 2900 and move on to make new highs (Sins of the Past).
Let’s dig into this question a bit more deeply. Let me be the first to tell you to evaluate what I’m about to show you with caution and a healthy dose of skepticism, but in context of record debt levels, record BBB and junk debt levels, trapped central bankers, slowing growth and an escalating trade war between the 2 largest economies on the planet with asset prices artificially inflated by record buybacks and political jawboning we’re staring at least at a similar backdrop as we did in 2007/2008, except now debt is even higher.
We are here.
Grey areas = recessions pic.twitter.com/S6HgUUylF4— Sven Henrich (@NorthmanTrader) May 22, 2019
Oh, and credit card interest rates are at all time highs.
But don’t worry says Jay Powell, engaged in the required game of projecting confidence like his predecessors:
May 17 2007:
Bernanke: Subprime Mortgage Woes Won't Seriously Hurt Economy
May 21, 2019:
Powell Says Leveraged Lending Isn't Posing a Crash Threath/t @VolumeDynamicshttps://t.co/Zk4vwM9mCH
— Sven Henrich (@NorthmanTrader) May 21, 2019
‘We got this’ appears to be the message. After all Bullard and Evans are already talking QE and/or rate cuts/zero rates. It’s all theoretical of course. Wink wink.
Come on. We’re at the end of a bloated debt cycle propagated by easy money and it’s simply not producing growth anymore. Trade wars, blade wars, whatever, fact is growth peaked last year and it was all artificial because of the also artificial tax cuts.
Let’s just keep things real here. The data shows ZERO uptick in organic growth anywhere.
And the bond market has been screaming warnings since last year when it tagged its multi-year trend line. Long time readers are familiar…
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Bernie Sanders Wants To Make College Free By Taxing All Stock, Bond And Derivative Trades
by Zero Hedge - May 23rd, 2019 8:18 am
Courtesy of ZeroHedge. View original post here.
While the debates over AOC's Green New Deal and every socialist candidate's "MMT-based" platform have mercifully faded in recent weeks, discussion how to make college affordable and debt free is only just starting, and on Wednesday, Vermont socialist and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said he'll introduce legislation that would impose a tax on trades of all stocks, bonds and derivatives in the U.S., a move he says would "help curb Wall Street speculation and help finance his campaign promise to provide tuition-free college and cut student debt."
It wasn't clear how making traders earn less on their trades, and thus incentivizing them to take even greater risks and promote even more Wall Street speculation would help reduce record high tuition costs, which are only possible due to easy access to student loans, allowing colleges to demand any price, which students – relying on someone else's loan – will be happy to pay it. But we digress.
The proposal is hardly unexpected: as Bloomberg notes, Sanders has been pushing for a financial transactions tax since his run for the Democratic nomination in 2016. According to his Wednesday proposal, the US would apply a 0.5% tax rate for stock trades, a 0.1% rate for bond trades, and 0.005% for derivatives transactions.
In theory, the tax would both provide a disincentive for high-frequency trading based on algorithms and let Wall Street help middle-income Americans who helped foot the bill for the bailout of financial institutions after the 2008 market crash, according to an outline from the Vermont senator's office. In practice, however, trade will simply decline to the point where there is even less liquidity; should Bernie's proposal prove to be "overly successful", even the smallest drop in stocks will be magnified by the total collapse in liquidity, and result in a crash that wipes out trillions in value. Then again, since that "value" is fake to begin with, and only the result of central bank intervention, perhaps Bernie's plan is not one to make college free, but to actually reset the system.
In which case, sign us up…. although we are skeptical that Bernie has thought this all the way through.
“It is time for Wall Street…
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Technology Is Not Just Disruptive, It’s Disastrously Deflationary
by Zero Hedge - May 23rd, 2019 8:14 am
Courtesy of ZeroHedge. View original post here.
Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
Deflation eats credit-dependent, mass-consumption economies alive from the inside.
While AI (artificial intelligence) garners the headlines, the next wave of disruptive technologies extend far beyond AI: as the chart of technologies rapidly being adopted shows, this wave includes new materials and processes as well as the "usual suspects" of machine learning, natural language processing, data mining and so on.
While many voices seek to assure us these technologies won't displace human workers, the reality is cutting labor inputs is the core driver. What few pundits seem to understand (perhaps because they've never experienced a truly competitive market?) is that the rush to incorporate these technologies into existing enterprises is deflationary not just to prices but to profits.
Reducing labor inputs and improving productivity of capital and the remaining labor force is not going to generate profits if competitors can access the same tools and processes. The race isn't to maximize profits, it's to survive the inevitable deflationary spiral in prices as competitors are forced to pass along cost savings to customers to retain market share.
Pundits glorying in tech profits only consider monopolies or quasi-monopolies like Apple, Facebook and Google or monopolies / cartels enforced by government regulations and policies. Markets open to competition do not enable pricing power beyond a temporary advantage for one or two product cycles. (Please see Two Intertwined Dynamics Are Transforming the Economy: Technology and Financialization)
As the race to improve technologies speeds up, "good enough" open source software and cheap previous-generation hardware is good enough for most applications. (We can surmise that the Pareto Distribution is active: technology that is 20% of the cost of the newest product can do 80% of what the new product can do, and tech that costs a mere 4% of the latest tech can do 64% of what the latest product can do.)
Everyone counting on trillions in tech profits is overlooking the inconvenient reality of the S-Curve for cheap credit, cheap energy and cheap labor--the three drivers of global expansion. Once credit dries up or becomes more expensive, once cheap energy is only a memory (or future fantasy) and once employment sags under the pressure to reduce labor inputs,…
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Federal Judge Rules Banks Can Give Trump Financials To House Dems
by Zero Hedge - May 23rd, 2019 8:10 am
Courtesy of ZeroHedge. View original post here.
In yet another blow to the Trump administration, a federal judge in New York has rejected his request to keep his banks from producing financial records to lawmakers.
As Bloomberg reports, the Trumps sued Deutsche Bank and Capital One last month to block them from complying with congressional demands for broad financial information.
In a 25-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos – an Obama nominee – ruled that while the president, his family and his business would suffer irreparable harm from disclosure of the records, they were “unlikely to succeed on the merits” with their argument that the congressional subpoenas are improper.
The suit is part of a broader effort by the president to push back at House investigations as he runs for re-election next year.
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Stocks & Bond Yields Tumble As Trade Turmoil Sparks Breakdown In Boom-Bust Barometer
by Zero Hedge - May 23rd, 2019 8:06 am
Courtesy of ZeroHedge. View original post here.
Fed Minutes fail to fend off the selling pressure as the Trump administration cranks up the pressure on China…
Chinese stocks were lower overnight (but ChiNext remain green on the week?)..
European markets were mixed with Germany modestly higher against weakness in the periphery…
US markets tumbled on the day with Trannies tanking worst… Another weak close took The S&P red on the week and Dow very modestly higher…
Today was the 7th day in a row of the opening-ramp…
We noticed that the machines kept wanting to lift Nasdaq futures back to the scene of the crime last night when NYT headlines reported the HIKvision blacklist…but each one failed
"Most Shorted" stocks tumbled today (so get yourself ready for a squeeze tomorrow?)
Semis slumped back to Monday lows…
Tesla bonds and stocks tumbled further on the day (with default odds now near 50%)…
Treasury yields tumbled on the day, pushing 30Y (outperforming) back to unch on the week
10Y Yields dropped back below 2.40% again today…
The yield curve extended its flattening trend after FOMC Minutes…
The Dollar is pinging around like a penny stock this week, but bounced very modestly higher after the hawkish tone from the Minutes…
Cable just keeps falling as rumors of May's demise rise…
Cryptos were quiet again today with Bitcoin treading water just below $8k (after briefly breaking above it overnight)…
Copper and Crude were clubbed like baby seals (trade war and inventory build respectively) with PMs flat on the day…
WTI almost tested a $60 handle intraday…
Finally, as Bloomberg's Ye Xie notes, the so-called boom-bust barometer is flashing a warning sign to the stock market.
The indicator, which tracks the ratio between the CRB industrial material price index and weekly jobless claims, peaked in mid-April and has since sunk like a stone. A similar decline a year ago foreshadowed the market rout in late 2018.
The recent decline in the index, which was created by Ed Yardeni at Yardeni Research, is driven by lower commodity prices and higher jobless claims. While it's easy to dismiss the jump in jobless claims as noise, the drop in industrial material prices do reflect weaker global manufacturing as the trade war moves from simmer to boil.
And global money supply support is disappearing…
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the site