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Hedge funds showing signs of caution towards US equities. Brexit turns predicting the pound into a nightmare. Banks seek lower taxes amid Brexit and Corbyn risks. Tuesday, 18 December, Uber cleared to resume Pennsylvania self-driving testing. FedEx delivers outlook cut, sending shares lower. China subway binge back on track. What is a pension superfund? It took less than seven years for the world to reach more than gigawatts, nearly the entire generating capacity of Japan.
Still, some predictions have proved overblown. Only about , materialised. Some green energy veterans bruised by past setbacks think there is a reason to be more optimistic today: Storing clean power has long been a holy green grail but prohibitive costs have put it out of reach.
This has begun to change as battery production has ramped up to meet an expected boom in electric cars. Lithium ion battery prices have halved since , and many analysts think prices will fall further as a slew of large battery factories are built. Tesla claims that once it reaches full capacity next year, it will produce more lithium ion batteries annually than were made worldwide in It is only one of at least 14 megafactories being built or planned, says Benchmark Minerals, a research group. Nine are in China, where the government is backing electric cars with the zeal it has directed at the solar industry.
Could this led to a China-led glut like the one that helped drive solar industry write-offs and crashing prices after the global financial crisis? Tesla finished a similar system in Hawaii in October and its chief executive, Elon Musk, made a characteristically flamboyant offer this year — via Twitter — to build a much larger one within days to help fix power outages in southern Australia. For all the excitement about batteries, the technology is still not ready to let householders in any part of the world stick a solar panel on the roof, a battery in the garage and abandon grid power completely.
It would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in snowy places like Nebraska and probably require an extra garage to house all the batteries, the CLSA brokerage calculated last year. However, other analysts say investors need to pay attention to the disruption that even partial grid defection could cause in places where batteries make more financial sense.
By , about 1m homes could have batteries, according to Morgan Stanley analysts. In quake-prone Japan, a hotbed of battery technology, industry leaders say it is inevitable that home solar-storage systems will become commonplace. When a powerful earthquake rocked the southern Japanese city of Kumamoto last year, black-outs plunged most homes into darkness for nearly a week. But the lights stayed on in at least 20 houses with solar-storage units, says Eliiy, which is planning to open a third battery production plant in as sales rise. Meanwhile, some fossil fuel companies are starting to put serious money into green energy.
The company has six offshore wind projects operating or in development, including an innovative floating wind turbine park off the coast of Scotland it plans to hook up to a battery system next year. But oil and gas companies may need to act faster if the ambitious plans of other large energy companies succeed. Engie has no interest in technology requiring subsidies, he says.
None of this means the future of clean energy will be entirely smooth. Indeed, its very success poses a raft of questions for governments that some have barely contemplated. How to pay for upgrading grids to cope with the influx of all this renewable power? What to do about incumbent companies calling for the brakes to be slammed on to protect them from green power incursions? Then there is Mr Trump, who is seeking to unwind the clean power policies of his predecessor. In the rest of the world, however, the future of green power appears assured.
So much so that an industry that has spent years on the defensive is beginning to show a rising sense of confidence. Are you looking forward to having a Marxist in No 11? But while John McDonnell had a jokey glint in his eye, the phrase highlights the chasm that remains between the opposition Labour party under Jeremy Corbyn and those who own and run businesses in the UK. Yet despite shared interest in a softer Brexit deal and higher infrastructure spending, business remains wary primarily over taxation and demands for greater state intervention.
Before the election Labour trailed the ruling Conservatives by 20 points in some polls: Its offer of extra money for health, education and the police is hitting home with voters tired of austerity. Policies once derided as a return to the s are proving hugely popular, including the nationalisation of the railways and utilities. Instead, Mr Corbyn unashamedly backs much higher taxes to fund better public services, along with greater state control of industry.
Iain Anderson, founder of the public affairs company Cicero, whose clients include big banks, says that when he gives boardroom presentations he uses a slide projection featuring Mr Corbyn in Downing Street. There sometimes appear to be two people who go by the name John McDonnell. This version spooks some executives.
The other John McDonnell cuts a more considered figure. He resembles an old-fashioned bank manager, or maths teacher, and claims to be a moderate pragmatist. Yet the courtship is characterised by mutual suspicion. Adam Marshall, director-general of the British Chambers of Commerce, says engagement is constructive and is proceeding at a higher tempo than before. Executives are worried about many of the promises in the Labour election manifesto from June, with its multiple nationalisations, a higher minimum wage and hint of a land tax.
They are going to start asking fresh questions, such as, why stop at three big nationalisations? Morgan Stanley predicted in November that a Corbyn government could play havoc with stock markets and the pound, which has fallen more than 10 per cent since the eve of the EU referendum vote. CIV denies this was a comment on any future Labour government. Yet there is still a scattering of moderates in the new-look, Corbynista Labour party: Instead they should see it as a political manifestation of serious societal concerns, such as wage stagnation and out-of-control executive pay. He argues that some Labour policies, allowing the state to run the railways or offering free university tuition, are standard for the European centre-left.
Before June, Mr Corbyn was told by everyone — polls, the press, his MPs, even his own advisers — that he would fail at the ballot box and possibly lose control of his party. It seemed impossible for a leftwinger to win on a platform of nationalisation and higher taxes. Mr Corbyn did not win; in fact, Labour fell 64 seats short of an overall parliamentary majority. But having won 40 per cent of the vote and gained 30 seats, the Labour leader is in no mood to listen to sceptics.
Soon after becoming shadow chancellor, Mr McDonnell created an advisory panel of seven economists, including Ann Pettifor and Mr Blanchflower.
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The leadership will ultimately turn out to be pragmatic, she suggests. The party is prepared to work with business and the City of London. The Labour team has made a positive pitch to business, especially small business which has been singled out with the offer of a lower rate of corporation tax, no quarterly reporting and action on late payments. Small business representatives point out that many of these policies have already been enacted by current or former governments.
Some business leaders would prefer Labour to go further and endorse staying in the single market and customs union permanently, but the Corbyn team fear this would alienate millions of Leave voters in its traditional regional heartlands. At a gathering which normally sees a Conservative prime minister received with enthusiasm, Mrs May was met with only polite applause. The welcome for Mr Corbyn, who confidently strode across the stage while aiming jokes both at himself and the audience, was distinctly warmer.
But now, getting meetings one to one is very difficult. The Corbyn team believes New Labour got far too close to business, allowing companies to foist damaging private finance initiative contracts on the public sector — which Mr McDonnell now wants to unravel — dodge their fair share of tax and nibble away at the welfare state. The attitude of many business people is less love for Labour and more a frustration with the fractured May government. Is this the beginning of the end for Donald Trump?
Only Robert Mueller, the special counsel, is in any position to answer that, and perhaps not even then.
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But his target is clear. Never before has a presidential campaign manager been charged with laundering millions while working for a foreign agent — nowhere close. That Mr Mueller swiftly followed up with the disclosure that George Papadopoulos, a former Trump campaign adviser, had confessed to having lied to the FBI over his contacts with Russia cemented the message. Mr Mueller could have published the Papadopolous charge sheet weeks ago. He did so within two hours of releasing the Manafort indictment. Three things are clear. We cannot know whether he will succeed.
But it is clear that he is shaking every tree and pursuing every lead available. Mr Manafort, and his business associate, Richard Gates, are now under pressure to follow suit. The multiple charges against them could result in many years behind bars. They will be highly incentivised to strike a plea deal with Mr Mueller to slim down their charge sheets. The more Mr Mueller squeezes, the more indictments are likely to follow.
As the most seasoned investigator in the US, it is safe to say Mr Mueller knows what he is doing. When and how he moves will be carefully thought out. Second, Mr Trump is an expert at diversion. Expect dramatic fireworks in the coming hours and days.
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The story has been relentlessly pursued by Fox News, Breitbart and other pro-Trump outlets. That story is likely to intensify. He leaves on Friday. Should we expect a new round of rhetorical salvos on North Korea? Third — and most critically — the judgment that matters most is that of the Republican party. Mr Trump has made it clear he would like to fire Mr Mueller. Most people would see that as obstruction of justice, which is an impeachable offence.
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No court can prevent Mr Trump from firing Mr Mueller. Mr Trump can only be impeached by Congress, which is Republican controlled. Nor can any court stop Mr Trump from pardoning people whom Mr Mueller indicts. Only Republicans can hold Mr Trump to account. So far very few elected Republicans have said anything about the Manafort indictment. Nor have they drawn a red line against the firing of Mr Mueller. Opinion polls suggest Republican voters remain strongly behind Mr Trump, which is the number that matters most to Republican legislators.
Unless that changes, Mr Trump may feel that he can get away with sacking Mr Mueller. At that point America would be plunged into a constitutional crisis. I would now put the chances of that happening at more than A traditional Chinese gong clangs. Adoring sighs break out as a red curtain is pulled aside. Standing in front of the glass just metres from the pandas, German Chancellor Angela Merkel beams and pumps her hands up and down like an excited schoolchild.
This is panda diplomacy at its most sophisticated and successful. It was a moment of high diplomatic theatre with an extremely political animal as the main protagonist. The oldest extant species of bear, the panda is found only in a small strip of mountainous terrain on the eastern edge of the Tibetan plateau. To many in the west, the animal represents wildlife conservation a panda has been the logo of the World Wide Fund for Nature, or WWF, since its inception in , poor sexual performance and perhaps comedic kung-fu cartoons. Far more money, time and effort has been spent on saving the giant panda from extinction than on any other animal.
In dozens of interviews with Chinese and western experts, as well as trips to reserves and zoos in China and abroad, the FT has uncovered a more complicated picture than that presented by most western zoos, conservation groups or the Chinese government.
It is seen as a superpower in waiting, if not yet in fact. This is something it wants to change. The US has been the most successful nation in history in projecting soft power but others, including the UK, have also fostered it over the centuries. That leaves its rich and ancient culture and its cultural symbols, such as the panda. Politicians all over the world often assist them in this propaganda effort.
Our universal love of pandas has even prompted neurologists to investigate why humans find these animals so damn cute. But the Chinese government did not see it that way. According to five people familiar with the matter, Chinese officials were livid about the decision and have been furiously lobbying for a reversal ever since. The authorities worry the downgrade makes pandas less valuable, from both a financial and political perspective, and could threaten tourism revenues and the business of panda loans to foreign countries.
But much of that data and the methodology by which they are collected are shrouded in secrecy. These scientists, who asked not to be named for fear of angering the authorities and jeopardising their careers, worry that the IUCN downgrade is based on a deceptively rosy picture painted by Chinese officials that does not accurately reflect the deteriorating situation for pandas in the wild. They have no say over where their money goes and hardly any idea how it is actually spent. The captive panda population has doubled in less than a decade to more than bears today, but attempts to reintroduce pandas to the wild have so far failed.
This is partly because the animals born in captivity have limited survival skills but also because human activity continues to degrade their natural habitat in south-western China. So, the ruling Communist party has put the surplus bears to work as soft-power ambassadors — the symbol of Chinese beneficence towards countries it considers friendly and important.
Perched on the edge of a steep valley in the remote mountains of western Sichuan province stands an extraordinary wooden building — part European gothic cathedral and part traditional Chinese courtyard complex. In fact, the first recorded example of panda diplomacy dates back much further to AD, when Empress Wu Zetian of the Tang dynasty presented a pair of live bears to neighbouring Japan. In the late s, the sons of the first President Roosevelt, Kermit and Teddy Jr, led an expedition to Sichuan to shoot a panda, which they skinned and sent to the Chicago Field Museum.
Then, in , US adventurer Ruth Harkness sparked a wave of panda-mania after she smuggled a live baby panda disguised as a puppy to the US. In the first modern example of the panda as an explicit political gift, the wife of Chinese leader Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek presented a pair of the animals — named Pan-Dee and Pan-Dah — to the Bronx Zoo in to thank the US for war-time aid in fighting the occupying Japanese.
And after the communists came to power in , Chairman Mao Zedong resurrected the practice of gifting pandas to favoured allies — in his case North Korea and the Soviet Union. This marked the first of roughly five phases of panda diplomacy that have closely mirrored the momentous changes China itself has undergone. These can be broadly categorised as the communist, rapprochement, capitalist, conservation and soft-power phases.
The capitalist phase began in the early s, echoing the get-rich-quick market reforms transforming China at the time. This era involved highly lucrative short-term loans in which western zoos, primarily in the US, rented pandas to attract crowds and make money. Eventually, the US Fish and Wildlife Service banned the short-term import of pandas and the purely commercial era of panda diplomacy gradually ended. This pioneering arrangement satisfied China, which no longer wanted to give away the animals in perpetuity, while mollifying conservationists, who complained the bears were being exploited for profit in violation of several US laws.
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The agreement launched the conservation phase of panda diplomacy and became the model for all future panda loans. It is hard to pinpoint when panda diplomacy became such an explicit vehicle for soft power, but in the past few years the emphasis has clearly shifted away from conservation and back towards the political symbolism of the panda.
As recently as the middle of , there were just 42 pandas in zoos in 12 countries outside mainland China, according to official statistics. In just the past few months, China has sent — or promised to send — pandas to Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, Denmark and Indonesia. Xi personally signs off on every panda loan to a foreign country, according to several people with knowledge of the process. But before he decides whether to grant a country pandas or not, China requires the foreign head of state — the queen of Denmark, Angela Merkel herself — to ask for the bears in person.
People involved say the convoluted negotiations and personal involvement of a foreign leader remind them of ancient rituals in which Chinese emperors would receive barbarian supplicants. There is also a more practical and mercenary aspect to all this. For example, Australia, France and Canada all received pandas after agreeing to sell nuclear technology and uranium to China. Scotland accepted a pair of pandas in as part of an agreement to share offshore drilling technology and supply salmon to China, while the Dutch loan this year came as the Netherlands agreed to supply advanced healthcare services.
Pandas can also be used to punish countries that stray from this unspoken agreement. This punishment was possible because a clause in all panda-loan agreements stipulates that any cub born while abroad remains the property of China, as does any biological material from the animals such as blood, fur and semen. A recent study by 11 Chinese and international scientists found that despite decades of conservation efforts, their total area of current habitat is 5 per cent smaller than it was in the mids, and there are three times as many roads as there were then.
The FT was able to obtain the exact co-ordinates of the Fengtongzhai reserve, which revealed a disjointed patchwork of supposedly protected zones drawn apparently intentionally to exclude most economic activity. On a recent visit, I drove for hours along a riverbed pockmarked with large shingle quarries and punctuated by hydro-electric dams, cement plants, new tourist villages and even an enormous marble quarry.
Although overall panda habitat did increase very slightly from to , fragmentation caused by roads, railways, dams, mining and other activity means the remaining pandas are isolated in more than 30 separate groups, most of which have fewer than 10 individual bears. In March, the Chinese government announced plans to merge the existing panda reserves to form an enormous national park three times the size of Yellowstone in the US.
Scientists and conservationists have cautiously welcomed the plan but some have raised serious concerns about its viability and even suggested it could make things worse. The proposal calls for the forced relocation of at least , people, and one of its main objectives is to promote tourism throughout the area. Government propaganda posters across the region suggest Wang is right to be concerned.
Yet, outside the tiny scientific community, conservation for its own sake is not a popular goal in China. More pandas in the wild are often viewed as a wasted resource, since tourists cannot see them and they do not bring additional revenues. This does not mean the Chinese government is indifferent to the fate of the panda.
In , the WWF conducted its own survey of 12 endangered animals in China and found the populations of four of these species — the panda, Asian elephant, crested ibis and Pere David deer named after the same Father David who discovered the panda — had started to recover in the wild, while the other eight continued to decline at a rapid rate.
All of the recovering animals have some degree of political importance for China. For example, the crested ibis is a traditionally revered national treasure in Japan and its extinction would be a diplomatic headache for Beijing. But for less political species such as musk deer, pangolins and various amphibians, Beijing has shown little interest in protecting their habitats or reviving their crashing populations.
Even for the panda, the priorities of economic development often clash with the need to protect its habitat. Western zoos and governments that manage to secure panda loans usually claim they are making huge contributions to conserving pandas in the wild. There are lots of empty buildings that they label as research labs. A similar lack of transparency surrounds the true number of pandas that remain in the wild. China has conducted four censuses over the past 40 years but Chinese scientists involved in the process raise troubling questions.
In the mids, the Chinese government quietly reached out to artificial insemination and husbandry experts at the San Diego Zoo and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, and asked for help in hitting what was seen as a wildly ambitious target of captive bears. At the time, there were only about pandas in captivity, and Chinese scientists would frequently snatch pandas from the wild to boost the number.
The Chinese government no longer acknowledges this crucial US contribution, but by the collaboration began to yield piles of baby pandas. When China blew past its original target of bears about five years ago, the target was raised to Last month, Chinese state media declared the breeding season, with 42 surviving cubs, the most successful on record, bringing the total in captivity to at least The target has now been raised again — to bears.
Chinese and western experts all agree there is no scientific reason for producing so many animals in captivity if they cannot be released in the wild. But after struggling for so many years to produce even a few surviving cubs, the machinery of panda production is now almost unstoppable, thanks to financial incentives and rivalry between competing agencies.
Both run large breeding centres and they compete fiercely for the bonuses the government pays for each surviving cub. But the SFA and Mohurd rarely allow their panda populations to mate with each other, and in recent years the Chinese government has kept the studbook secret from all but a handful of approved scientists. For foreign zoos and governments that borrow pandas, the process is like applying to host the Olympics.
They must build special enclosures with elaborate facilities and pay for Chinese experts to oversee the bears. A key motivator is the mistaken belief that pandas will bring a huge windfall in ticket sales, as they did in the earlier days of panda diplomacy. Many zoos and governments remain keen to make a deal with China to receive these cuddly emissaries but the proliferation of politically charged panda loans has already lowered their value.
Faced with a tortuous diplomatic negotiation process, many Beijing-based diplomats now dread the prospect of engaging in panda diplomacy. This illustrates the central problem of panda diplomacy today. The process has become onerous and expensive, the conservation benefits are dubious and there are now so many pandas outside China that more and more countries are likely to decide they would rather not bother.
At the height of the cold war it was not just China that dabbled in panda diplomacy. Perhaps the most famous panda in history was a bear named Chi Chi that ended up in the London zoo almost by accident in and lived there until her death in For that entire time she was the only panda living in a western country. Rather than a state gift from China, Chi Chi was one of three bears procured from the Beijing zoo in by an Austrian animal dealer called Heini Demmer, who swapped them for three giraffes, two rhinos, two hippos and two zebras.
She was also a focal point in relations between Britain and the USSR, which agreed in to host Chi Chi at the Moscow zoo in an attempt to get her to mate with the resident male panda An An. The rendezvous was a disaster as Chi Chi showed no interest in her suitor, who promptly attacked her. This attempt at panda matchmaking coincided with two visits to Moscow by UK prime minister Harold Wilson and elicited great mirth and mockery in the British press.
Several more attempts to convince the pair to mate were unsuccessful and Chi Chi died childless in A firming global recovery as shown by robust surveys of the manufacturing sector for leading economies suggests that the era of easy money has done its job. For bond markets, slumbering in low yield territory as many central banks still suppress borrowing costs via quantitative easing, the question looms: The current level of real yields suggests an economy stuck in a recession, says Mr Ruskin. While bonds suggest low yields are here to stay for some time, bearish traders may finally have their moment.
As Wall Street cheers tax reform and continues setting a record pace, the story in Europe has become a little worrying. The Euro Stoxx index lost momentum last month after setting its high at the start of November. Now the market is back testing its day moving average and for now holding above the day measure. Banks have been the main drag on the market that has fallen 2 per cent since the start of last month.
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Hence the importance of US tax reform hopes boosting the dollar at the expense of the euro. For all that, investors are still looking at disappointing price action after strong gains earlier in the year generated plenty of buzz for European equities. It has became popular among Brexit supporters to cite the strong performance of UK stocks in sterling terms as a vote of confidence. Markets decided UK assets deserved a huge downgrade immediately after the referendum, and have not been persuaded to change that view since then.
That outcome looked most likely in June last year, and it has grown more likely since then. Either of these would make a difference. But as it stands, the markets are pricing the UK on the assumption that Brexit will be harmful, but not an extreme disaster. Still, for shareholders in the two exchanges at the forefront of opening cryptocurrencies to derivatives and possibly a broader audience, the developments are proving rather beneficial.
Many markets have generated robust gains this year — and we are not just talking about cryptocurrencies — and plenty argue that this reflects the very favourable liquidity backdrop. Here we look at broad financial market liquidity, which is generally defined by the relationship between growth in M2 a broad measure of the money supply and the growth in the economy. When the supply of money is growing faster than the economy, the excess money is not invested in people, plant or equipment, but tends to find its way into asset markets, pushing up their prices.
Thus expanding liquidity tends to translate into positive equity performance. But we may have reached an inflection point. Jim Paulsen of Leuthold, using a simpler measure of six-month growth rates in M2 and GDP, finds that the two lines have just met. With the Federal Reserve appearing set on tightening conditions somewhat, it looks a good bet that in the US liquidity will grow more slowly than the economy.
You may not have caught the act of the latter if you are older than five, but pratfalls abound. Yet the suave Swiss and the accident-prone American have unremarked similarities. Differences are more glaring. Investors doubt Mr Staley can reform Barclays, assuming he is not forced to step down for compliance howlers.
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He is doubling down on investment banking, where earnings are volatile and capital needs are high. An anaemic economy imperils the UK retail arm. The group return on tangible equity is a negative 4. Mr Ermotti, in contrast, basks in the afterglow of a well-managed turnround. UBS has placed its chips on capital-light wealth management, which yields steady earnings. That, combined with a tilt to Asia, supplies a growth story underpinned by demographics. The RoTE, adjusted for tax deferrals, is an Alpine Core tier one capital, a measure of financial strength, has risen to UBS is only narrowly ahead at And while Barclays boasts a capital-light cash machine of its own in Barclaycard, UBS retains a substantial investment bank.
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Central banks are wary of cryptocurrencies but keen on the underlying technology. Southeast Asian central banks have a cautious stance on the rise of cryptocurrencies but adoption of the underlying technology, blockchain, appears inevitable. The need for the interoperability of customised blockchain platforms is likely to drive the creation of a universal platform under the control of central banks.
No systemic threat Central bankers and other financial institutions worry that in private hands this technology may upend their authority and circumvent their intermediary role.
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Tighter scrutiny Although the financial threat is almost non-existent, tighter scrutiny is to be expected soon — not on the cryptocurrencies but on the exchanges. Fostering innovation Nevertheless, central banks and other regulatory bodies are trying to avoid overregulation, for fear of stifling innovation. A data-driven news and analysis service on emerging markets for readers with business or financial interests in emerging markets. Gaps open between prices of almost identical bonds in guessing game over payments.
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The Big Read Renewable Energy. The shift to cleaner power is disrupting entire industries. Will the 21st century be the last one for fossil fuels? But the emerging energy transition is already causing trouble for companies around the world, from writedowns and shrinking sales to sliding share prices and wholesale break-ups: In sunny Nevada, casino companies are unplugging from the state utility. But new schemes have come online as LNG prices have collapsed amid fears of a supply glut that some economists say could linger as renewables become more affordable.