Tuesday, October 19, 2021
Biggest U.S. Coal Miner Surges 17% as Global Energy Crisis Boosts Demand
SO WHY IS MANCHIN WHINING
Will Wade
Mon, October 18, 2021,
(Bloomberg) -- The global energy crisis that’s fueling demand for coal boosted third-quarter results for Peabody Energy Corp., pushing up shares 17%.
Sales exceeded $900 million, the highest in seven quarters, and adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of $280 million to $290 million will be triple the year-ago figure, according to preliminary earnings released Monday by the biggest U.S. coal miner.
The results bode well for U.S. miners, which are heading into earnings season buoyed by increasing consumption at domestic utilities, higher demand for international shipments and prices climbing around the world. The global economic recovery has increased electricity consumption, leading to a shortage of natural gas and strong demand for coal. While world leaders will converge in Glasgow in two weeks for a critical climate conference, the dirtiest fossil fuel will remain the world’s biggest source of power for years to come.
“We remain optimistic about the future, given strong coal pricing and global demand fundamentals,” Peabody Chief Executive Officer Jim Grech said in the statement.
Peabody surged as much as 17% in New York, the most intraday since July. The shares have surged more than sevenfold this year as demand for coal has climbed. The company will issue its full third-quarter results on Oct. 28.
Peabody is the first U.S. coal producer to provide results for the quarter. Rivals may also report solid gains as power producers around the world are calling for more coal to head off potential shortfalls. U.S. miners are shipping as much as they can dig up, though their ability to increase production is constrained by labor shortages and mining capacity that’s been in decline for years.
Elliott Investment Management, the company’s top shareholder, reduced its stake after exercising short call options, according to a filing Monday.
Will Wade
Mon, October 18, 2021,
(Bloomberg) -- The global energy crisis that’s fueling demand for coal boosted third-quarter results for Peabody Energy Corp., pushing up shares 17%.
Sales exceeded $900 million, the highest in seven quarters, and adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of $280 million to $290 million will be triple the year-ago figure, according to preliminary earnings released Monday by the biggest U.S. coal miner.
The results bode well for U.S. miners, which are heading into earnings season buoyed by increasing consumption at domestic utilities, higher demand for international shipments and prices climbing around the world. The global economic recovery has increased electricity consumption, leading to a shortage of natural gas and strong demand for coal. While world leaders will converge in Glasgow in two weeks for a critical climate conference, the dirtiest fossil fuel will remain the world’s biggest source of power for years to come.
“We remain optimistic about the future, given strong coal pricing and global demand fundamentals,” Peabody Chief Executive Officer Jim Grech said in the statement.
Peabody surged as much as 17% in New York, the most intraday since July. The shares have surged more than sevenfold this year as demand for coal has climbed. The company will issue its full third-quarter results on Oct. 28.
Peabody is the first U.S. coal producer to provide results for the quarter. Rivals may also report solid gains as power producers around the world are calling for more coal to head off potential shortfalls. U.S. miners are shipping as much as they can dig up, though their ability to increase production is constrained by labor shortages and mining capacity that’s been in decline for years.
Elliott Investment Management, the company’s top shareholder, reduced its stake after exercising short call options, according to a filing Monday.
Toyota will build a US battery plant as part of a $3.4 billion investment
Igor Bonifacic
·Contributing Writer
Mon, October 18, 2021
Toyota plans to spend approximately $3.4 billion to scale its battery production capabilities in the US, the automaker announced on Monday. As part of the investment, Toyota says it will establish a new company that will, with help from its Toyota Tsusho subsidiary, build a battery manufacturing plant somewhere in the US. The company expects to invest $1.29 billion into the facility by the end of 2031.
Toyota said it would share details on the project, including where it plans to build the plant, in the future. However, the facility will initially focus on making batteries for hybrid electric vehicles, with production expected to start sometime in 2025. Toyota expects to create about 1,750 jobs through the project.
If nothing else, the investment is an acknowledgment by Toyota that it needs to diversify its electrification strategy. More so than almost any other automaker, it has invested significantly into fuel cell technology, with not a lot to show for its efforts, at least not in the US. Outside of California, you can’t buy its Mirai fuel-cell sedan. But as part of its Beyond Zero push, Toyota hopes to change that, with it currently planning to offer 70 different electric models, including 15 battery electric vehicles, by 2025.
ONE CEO Mujeeb Ijaz. Image Credits: Our Next Energy
LFP batteries also tend to have a lower fire risk than nickel and cobalt chemistries, because they are more stable and require a much higher temperature to reach thermal runaway -- a chain reaction that occurs when a battery cell is unable to discharge heat at the rate it's being generated.
ONE was founded by Mujeeb Ijaz, a battery tech veteran who previously led the team at Ford developing its first hybrid fuel cell powertrain, before being poached from battery manufacturer A123 Systems to work on Apple’s mysterious car project. He founded ONE just one month after leaving the consumer tech giant.
The Aries will go into production at the end of 2022. ONE plans to manufacture the batteries in Michigan with a contract manufacturing partner, and the funding will be used to accelerate product development, Ijaz said in a statement.
Igor Bonifacic
·Contributing Writer
Mon, October 18, 2021
Toyota plans to spend approximately $3.4 billion to scale its battery production capabilities in the US, the automaker announced on Monday. As part of the investment, Toyota says it will establish a new company that will, with help from its Toyota Tsusho subsidiary, build a battery manufacturing plant somewhere in the US. The company expects to invest $1.29 billion into the facility by the end of 2031.
Toyota said it would share details on the project, including where it plans to build the plant, in the future. However, the facility will initially focus on making batteries for hybrid electric vehicles, with production expected to start sometime in 2025. Toyota expects to create about 1,750 jobs through the project.
If nothing else, the investment is an acknowledgment by Toyota that it needs to diversify its electrification strategy. More so than almost any other automaker, it has invested significantly into fuel cell technology, with not a lot to show for its efforts, at least not in the US. Outside of California, you can’t buy its Mirai fuel-cell sedan. But as part of its Beyond Zero push, Toyota hopes to change that, with it currently planning to offer 70 different electric models, including 15 battery electric vehicles, by 2025.
Our Next Energy closes $25M Series A for battery tech with backing from Bill Gates, BMW
Aria Alamalhodaei
Mon, October 18, 2021
Michigan-based startup Our Next Energy (ONE) has closed a $25 million Series A for tech that it says can double the range of EVs, as more and more startups take aim at surpassing the pitfalls of conventional lithium-ion batteries.
The 15-month-old company managed to attract major investors, including Bill Gates-founded Breakthrough Energy Ventures, which led the round. Assembly Ventures, BMW i Ventures (German automaker BMW’s venture fund), Singapore-based Flex and Volta Energy Technologies also participated.
ONE is developing a hybrid cell-to-pack system composed of two batteries: the Aries, a cobalt-free battery that the company says avoids fire risk from thermal runaway; and a battery range extender called the Gemini, which ONE estimates will be capable of a staggering 700-mile range on a single charge. The idea is that the Aries would be used for daily trips, while the Gemini could be used for the occasional longer trip. (ONE cites research on its website noting that 85% of vehicles are used at least once per year for a trip longer than 300 miles.)
It’s this hybrid approach that may allow ONE to succeed where others have failed. Key to the hybrid concept is in the chemistries: the Aries is a lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) chemistry. This is significant because LFPs are an older, cheaper formula that’s conventionally viewed as less energy-dense than more powerful nickel-based battery chemistries. But ONE says its Aries battery pack has managed to increase range and reduce cost, all while avoiding the pitfalls of nickel-based batteries -- namely, the reliance on scarce raw materials like nickel and cobalt.
What Tesla’s bet on iron-based batteries means for manufacturers
ONE’s first customer, the identity of which the startup is not disclosing, will use the Aries as a replacement for a nickel-based pack, a company spokesperson said. If LFP batteries could be used as a drop-in replacement for nickel batteries, without the associated trade-offs in range and cost, it could be a game changer for the industry.
Aria Alamalhodaei
Mon, October 18, 2021
Michigan-based startup Our Next Energy (ONE) has closed a $25 million Series A for tech that it says can double the range of EVs, as more and more startups take aim at surpassing the pitfalls of conventional lithium-ion batteries.
The 15-month-old company managed to attract major investors, including Bill Gates-founded Breakthrough Energy Ventures, which led the round. Assembly Ventures, BMW i Ventures (German automaker BMW’s venture fund), Singapore-based Flex and Volta Energy Technologies also participated.
ONE is developing a hybrid cell-to-pack system composed of two batteries: the Aries, a cobalt-free battery that the company says avoids fire risk from thermal runaway; and a battery range extender called the Gemini, which ONE estimates will be capable of a staggering 700-mile range on a single charge. The idea is that the Aries would be used for daily trips, while the Gemini could be used for the occasional longer trip. (ONE cites research on its website noting that 85% of vehicles are used at least once per year for a trip longer than 300 miles.)
It’s this hybrid approach that may allow ONE to succeed where others have failed. Key to the hybrid concept is in the chemistries: the Aries is a lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) chemistry. This is significant because LFPs are an older, cheaper formula that’s conventionally viewed as less energy-dense than more powerful nickel-based battery chemistries. But ONE says its Aries battery pack has managed to increase range and reduce cost, all while avoiding the pitfalls of nickel-based batteries -- namely, the reliance on scarce raw materials like nickel and cobalt.
What Tesla’s bet on iron-based batteries means for manufacturers
ONE’s first customer, the identity of which the startup is not disclosing, will use the Aries as a replacement for a nickel-based pack, a company spokesperson said. If LFP batteries could be used as a drop-in replacement for nickel batteries, without the associated trade-offs in range and cost, it could be a game changer for the industry.
ONE CEO Mujeeb Ijaz. Image Credits: Our Next Energy
LFP batteries also tend to have a lower fire risk than nickel and cobalt chemistries, because they are more stable and require a much higher temperature to reach thermal runaway -- a chain reaction that occurs when a battery cell is unable to discharge heat at the rate it's being generated.
ONE was founded by Mujeeb Ijaz, a battery tech veteran who previously led the team at Ford developing its first hybrid fuel cell powertrain, before being poached from battery manufacturer A123 Systems to work on Apple’s mysterious car project. He founded ONE just one month after leaving the consumer tech giant.
The Aries will go into production at the end of 2022. ONE plans to manufacture the batteries in Michigan with a contract manufacturing partner, and the funding will be used to accelerate product development, Ijaz said in a statement.
CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M PAYES
Lehman Brothers May Still Cash In on Its Own Big Short From 2009
Lucca de Paoli and Jeremy Hill
Mon, October 18, 2021
(Bloomberg) -- Derivatives Lehman Brothers purchased to guard against defaults on the subprime-mortgage bonds that fueled the 2008 crisis could deliver a big pay-out more than 10 years after the bank’s collapse.
Lehman Brothers International Europe, or LBIE, a London-based subsidiary of the defunct bank, is taking bond-insurance firm Assured Guaranty Ltd. to court over decade-old claims that a swath of credit-default swaps it had bought were incorrectly settled in 2009. A trial to resolve the matter started in New York state court on Monday, with Justice Melissa Crane presiding over a virtual hearing.
LBIE claims it’s owed more than $500 million because Assured failed to use market prices when it closed out a series of swaps, tallying them up instead through a method its lawyer said defied “the laws of financial physics” in court on Monday. Assured relied on stale data, flouted market norms and acted in bad faith when it settled the trades, Andrew J. Rossman of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan in New York said on behalf of LBIE.
For its part, Assured says it followed the contracts to the letter when settling them, and the results show that it was actually Lehman on the hook -- owing the bond insurer a $20.7 million termination fee after the bank folded. Rather than a head-spinning skirmish over obscure financial instruments, “at its core, it’s a simple contract dispute, and a simple case,” Lev Dassin of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton said on behalf of Assured.
That such arguments still rage some 13 years after the fall of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. underscores the complexity of unraveling the value of credit-protection bets placed in the run-up to the global financial crisis. The 28 credit-default-swap contracts in question, tied to bundles of U.S. and U.K. residential mortgages as well as some corporate loans, had a face value $5.6 billion, but certain quirks of these particular swaps make establishing a settlement price harder.
“Any time the underlying instruments are unusual and illiquid, this kind of dispute can arise,” said John Williams, a partner at Milbank LLP who leads the firm’s derivatives practice. “There can be very big differences between what one person thinks the contract is worth versus another.”
Murky Waters
In their simplest form, CDS allow parties to wager on whether large companies will meet their financial obligations, and the settlement process is standardized. The swaps at issue here occupy a murkier and often more bespoke corner of the market, potentially leaving their value more open to interpretation.
As the buyer of the insurance, Lehman says the swaps should have been settled on the basis of market data. But Assured, the seller, says that was hard to do because there was no market to base valuations on. In fact, it says it held an auction for Lehman’s positions and no bidders emerged. Instead, the insurance company estimated the future performance of securities underpinning the trades.
Unsurprisingly, the two methods provided drastically different valuations -- almost $600 million apart.
“Everybody knows that the market-quotations framework is great, except when it doesn’t work,” said Julia Lu, a partner at law firm Ashurst, which counts Assured as a client but not in this case. “When there is a major market dislocation, you may not be able to get a quote anywhere because nobody’s willing to look at your trades.”
Credit-default swaps are designed to insure the holders against a borrower’s failure to meet its debt payments. Much like an insurance contract, the buyer of the credit protection makes fixed payments in exchange for a payout from the seller should something go wrong.
In the context of the financial crisis, CDS are perhaps better known as a tool for speculation rather than insurance, as traders used the swaps to make bearish bets on shaky mortgage bonds. Purchasing insurance on securities before they were set to collapse and then selling them in the midst of the crisis reaped huge rewards for the prescient few that did so early.
Timely Bets
Lehman is the best-known casualty of the crisis that risky mortgage bonds helped to cause. The swaps at issue in this case covered defaults on U.K. mortgage-backed securities, corporate loans and, crucially, two indexes that tracked subprime U.S. residential-mortgage securities. They were insurance on a part of the market that was in serious trouble.
“Nearly half of the subprime-mortgage loans underlying these indices were already more than 60 days delinquent, in bankruptcy, in foreclosure, or owned by a lender after a failed foreclosure auction,” Rossman, representing Lehman, said in a pre-trial memo. “Any reasonable party following industry practice to use market prices, or at least market data, would have valued the CDS trades at hundreds of millions of dollars in LBIE’s favor.”
Assured’s argument, however, is that the swaps at the heart of the case were particularly difficult to price because of their unorthodox structure. They had a so-called “pay-as-you-go” set-up and the insurance firm wasn’t required to post collateral if market prices moved against them.
That’s why Assured hired Henderson Global Investors to conduct an auction. It found 10 parties willing to take a look at replacing Lehman on the swaps, but none submitted bids. So, instead of pricing the swaps in reference to the market, it calculated them based on its own models of what the losses of the underlying securities would be.
“None of the bidders, which included many of the most sophisticated financial institutions in the world, were willing to pay any amount to enter into LBIE’s shoes in the transactions,” said Rishi Zutshi, a partner at Cleary Gottlieb in New York who is arguing on behalf of the insurance firm. “Assured acted reasonably in determining its loss.”
A spokesperson for Assured declined to comment.
Atlantic Connection
When the CDS were written Assured was one of a number of insurers known as monolines, meaning that it only wrote insurance on bonds. A number of the biggest monolines, like MBIA Inc. and Ambac Financial Group Inc., were rocked by the subprime crisis and saw their own credit ratings cut. Worries about the health of these insurance companies might have weighed on the valuation of these CDS contracts and made other parties less likely to buy them.
The difficulty of pricing correlation risk and high cost of hedging “made it unlikely that a counterparty would be willing to pay Assured to enter into replacement transactions,” Zutshi said in the pretrial memo.
The result of the trial will be keenly watched by hedge funds like King Street Capital Management and Farallon Capital Management as well as lenders such as Deutsche Bank AG and Barclays Plc. They’re awaiting a judgment from London’s Court of Appeal, where a ruling to decide on disputes between LBIE’s ultimate subordinated creditors could reap huge windfalls.
Administrators at PriceWaterhouseCoopers LLP have been winding down Lehman’s European arm since 2008, attempting to recover cash for the bank’s creditors. Money won by LBIE would eventually flow through the capital structure to holders of Lehman’s subordinated debt, now mostly owned by distressed debt investors. That could drastically improve the payout on the holdings for the funds that own those notes.
“This represents one of the final milestones of the LBIE administration, Europe’s biggest-ever bankruptcy,” said Russell Downs, a partner at PwC and one of the joint administrators. “This litigation will settle a key issue around compensation we believe is owed to LBIE.”
Lehman Brothers May Still Cash In on Its Own Big Short From 2009
Lucca de Paoli and Jeremy Hill
Mon, October 18, 2021
(Bloomberg) -- Derivatives Lehman Brothers purchased to guard against defaults on the subprime-mortgage bonds that fueled the 2008 crisis could deliver a big pay-out more than 10 years after the bank’s collapse.
Lehman Brothers International Europe, or LBIE, a London-based subsidiary of the defunct bank, is taking bond-insurance firm Assured Guaranty Ltd. to court over decade-old claims that a swath of credit-default swaps it had bought were incorrectly settled in 2009. A trial to resolve the matter started in New York state court on Monday, with Justice Melissa Crane presiding over a virtual hearing.
LBIE claims it’s owed more than $500 million because Assured failed to use market prices when it closed out a series of swaps, tallying them up instead through a method its lawyer said defied “the laws of financial physics” in court on Monday. Assured relied on stale data, flouted market norms and acted in bad faith when it settled the trades, Andrew J. Rossman of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan in New York said on behalf of LBIE.
For its part, Assured says it followed the contracts to the letter when settling them, and the results show that it was actually Lehman on the hook -- owing the bond insurer a $20.7 million termination fee after the bank folded. Rather than a head-spinning skirmish over obscure financial instruments, “at its core, it’s a simple contract dispute, and a simple case,” Lev Dassin of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton said on behalf of Assured.
That such arguments still rage some 13 years after the fall of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. underscores the complexity of unraveling the value of credit-protection bets placed in the run-up to the global financial crisis. The 28 credit-default-swap contracts in question, tied to bundles of U.S. and U.K. residential mortgages as well as some corporate loans, had a face value $5.6 billion, but certain quirks of these particular swaps make establishing a settlement price harder.
“Any time the underlying instruments are unusual and illiquid, this kind of dispute can arise,” said John Williams, a partner at Milbank LLP who leads the firm’s derivatives practice. “There can be very big differences between what one person thinks the contract is worth versus another.”
Murky Waters
In their simplest form, CDS allow parties to wager on whether large companies will meet their financial obligations, and the settlement process is standardized. The swaps at issue here occupy a murkier and often more bespoke corner of the market, potentially leaving their value more open to interpretation.
As the buyer of the insurance, Lehman says the swaps should have been settled on the basis of market data. But Assured, the seller, says that was hard to do because there was no market to base valuations on. In fact, it says it held an auction for Lehman’s positions and no bidders emerged. Instead, the insurance company estimated the future performance of securities underpinning the trades.
Unsurprisingly, the two methods provided drastically different valuations -- almost $600 million apart.
“Everybody knows that the market-quotations framework is great, except when it doesn’t work,” said Julia Lu, a partner at law firm Ashurst, which counts Assured as a client but not in this case. “When there is a major market dislocation, you may not be able to get a quote anywhere because nobody’s willing to look at your trades.”
Credit-default swaps are designed to insure the holders against a borrower’s failure to meet its debt payments. Much like an insurance contract, the buyer of the credit protection makes fixed payments in exchange for a payout from the seller should something go wrong.
In the context of the financial crisis, CDS are perhaps better known as a tool for speculation rather than insurance, as traders used the swaps to make bearish bets on shaky mortgage bonds. Purchasing insurance on securities before they were set to collapse and then selling them in the midst of the crisis reaped huge rewards for the prescient few that did so early.
Timely Bets
Lehman is the best-known casualty of the crisis that risky mortgage bonds helped to cause. The swaps at issue in this case covered defaults on U.K. mortgage-backed securities, corporate loans and, crucially, two indexes that tracked subprime U.S. residential-mortgage securities. They were insurance on a part of the market that was in serious trouble.
“Nearly half of the subprime-mortgage loans underlying these indices were already more than 60 days delinquent, in bankruptcy, in foreclosure, or owned by a lender after a failed foreclosure auction,” Rossman, representing Lehman, said in a pre-trial memo. “Any reasonable party following industry practice to use market prices, or at least market data, would have valued the CDS trades at hundreds of millions of dollars in LBIE’s favor.”
Assured’s argument, however, is that the swaps at the heart of the case were particularly difficult to price because of their unorthodox structure. They had a so-called “pay-as-you-go” set-up and the insurance firm wasn’t required to post collateral if market prices moved against them.
That’s why Assured hired Henderson Global Investors to conduct an auction. It found 10 parties willing to take a look at replacing Lehman on the swaps, but none submitted bids. So, instead of pricing the swaps in reference to the market, it calculated them based on its own models of what the losses of the underlying securities would be.
“None of the bidders, which included many of the most sophisticated financial institutions in the world, were willing to pay any amount to enter into LBIE’s shoes in the transactions,” said Rishi Zutshi, a partner at Cleary Gottlieb in New York who is arguing on behalf of the insurance firm. “Assured acted reasonably in determining its loss.”
A spokesperson for Assured declined to comment.
Atlantic Connection
When the CDS were written Assured was one of a number of insurers known as monolines, meaning that it only wrote insurance on bonds. A number of the biggest monolines, like MBIA Inc. and Ambac Financial Group Inc., were rocked by the subprime crisis and saw their own credit ratings cut. Worries about the health of these insurance companies might have weighed on the valuation of these CDS contracts and made other parties less likely to buy them.
The difficulty of pricing correlation risk and high cost of hedging “made it unlikely that a counterparty would be willing to pay Assured to enter into replacement transactions,” Zutshi said in the pretrial memo.
The result of the trial will be keenly watched by hedge funds like King Street Capital Management and Farallon Capital Management as well as lenders such as Deutsche Bank AG and Barclays Plc. They’re awaiting a judgment from London’s Court of Appeal, where a ruling to decide on disputes between LBIE’s ultimate subordinated creditors could reap huge windfalls.
Administrators at PriceWaterhouseCoopers LLP have been winding down Lehman’s European arm since 2008, attempting to recover cash for the bank’s creditors. Money won by LBIE would eventually flow through the capital structure to holders of Lehman’s subordinated debt, now mostly owned by distressed debt investors. That could drastically improve the payout on the holdings for the funds that own those notes.
“This represents one of the final milestones of the LBIE administration, Europe’s biggest-ever bankruptcy,” said Russell Downs, a partner at PwC and one of the joint administrators. “This litigation will settle a key issue around compensation we believe is owed to LBIE.”
Eco-Apocalypse, a Class Act
This is an excerpt from chapter nine of Blackshirt and Reds (1997)
by Michael Parenti.
In 1876, Marx’s collaborator, Frederich Engels, offered a prophetic caveat: “Let us not … flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human conquest over nature. For each such conquest takes its revenge on us. … At every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside of nature—but that we, with flesh, blood, and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst. …”
With its never-ending emphasis on exploitation and expansion, and its indifference to environmental costs, capitalism appears determined to stand outside nature. The essence of capitalism, its raison d’être, is to convert nature into commodities and commodities into capital, transforming the living earth into inanimate wealth. This capital accumulation process wreaks havoc upon the global ecological system. It treats the planet’s life-sustaining resources (arable land, groundwater, wetlands, forests, fisheries, ocean beds, rivers, air quality) as dispensable ingredients of limitless supply, to be consumed or toxified at will. Consequently, the support systems of the entire ecosphere—the planet’s thin skin of fresh air, water, and top soil—are at risk, threatened by such things as global warming, massive erosion, and ozone depletion.
Global warming is caused by tropical deforestation, motor vehicle exhaust, and other fossil fuel emissions that create a “greenhouse effect,” trapping heat close to the earth’s surface. This massed heat is altering the atmospheric chemistry and climatic patterns across the planet, causing record droughts, floods, tidal waves, snow storms, hurricanes, heat waves, and great losses in soil moisture. We now know that the planet does not have a limitless ability to absorb heat caused by energy consumption.
Another potential catastrophe is the shrinkage of the ozone layer that shields us from the sun’s deadliest rays. Over 2.5 billion pounds of ozone-depleting chemicals are emitted into the earth’s atmosphere every year, resulting in excessive ultraviolet radiation that is causing an alarming rise in skin cancer and other diseases. Increased radiation is damaging trees, crops, and coral reefs, and destroying the ocean’s phytoplankton—source of about half of the planet’s oxygen. If the oceans die, so do we.
At the same time, the rise in pollution and population has given us acid rain, soil erosion, silting of waterways, shrinking grasslands, disappearing water supplies and wetlands, and the obliteration of thousands of species, with hundreds more on the endangered list.
In 1970, on what was called “Environment Day,” President Richard Nixon intoned: “What a strange creature is man that he fouls his own nest.” With that utterance, Nixon was helping to propagate the myth that the ecological crisis we face is a matter of irrational individual behavior rather than being of a social magnitude. In truth, the problem is not individual choice but the system that imposes itself on individuals and prefigures their choice. Behind the ecological crisis is the reality of class interest and power.
An ever-expanding capitalism and a fragile, finite ecology are on a calamitous collision course. It is not true that the ruling politico-economic interests are in a state of denial about this. Far worse than denial, they are in a state of utter antagonism toward those who think the planet is more important than corporate profits. So they defame environmentalists as “eco-terrorists,” “EPA gestapo,” “Earth Day alarmists,” “tree huggers,” and purveyors of “Green hysteria” and “liberal claptrap.”
Some environmental activists in this country have been the object of terrorist assaults conducted by unknown assailants, with the implicit tolerance of law enforcement authorities.11 Autocrats in countries like Nigeria, in bed with the polluting oil companies, have waged brutal war upon environmentalists, going so far as to hang popular leader Ken Saro Wiwa.
In recent years, conservatives within and without Congress, fueled by corporate lobbyists, have supported measures that would (1) prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from keeping toxic fill out of lakes and harbors, (2) eliminate most of the wetland acreage that was to be set aside for a reserve, (3) completely deregulate the production of chlorofluorocarbons that deplete the ozone layer, (4) virtually eliminate clean water and clean air standards, (5) open the unspoiled Arctic wildlife refuge in Alaska to oil and gas drilling, (6) defund efforts to keep raw sewage out of rivers and away from beaches, (7) privatize and open national parks to commercial development, (8) give the few remaining ancient forests over to unrestrained logging, and (9) repeal the Endangered Species Act. In sum, their openly professed intent has been to eviscerate all our environmental protections, however inadequate these are.
Conservatives maintain that there is no environmental crisis. Technological advances will continue to make life better for more and more people. One might wonder why rich and powerful interests take this seemingly suicidal anti-environmental route. They can destroy welfare, public housing, public education, public transportation, social security, Medicare, and Medicaid with impunity, for they and their children will not thereby be deprived, having more than sufficient means to procure private services for themselves. But the environment is a different story. Wealthy conservatives and their corporate lobbyists inhabit the same polluted planet as everyone else, eat the same chemicalized food, and breathe the same toxified air.
In fact, they do not live exactly as everyone else. They experience a different class reality, residing in places where the air is somewhat better than in low and middle income areas. They have access to food that is organically raised and specially prepared. The nation’s toxic dumps and freeways usually are not situated in or near their swanky neighborhoods. The pesticide sprays are not poured over their trees and gardens. Clearcutting does not desolate their ranches, estates, and vacation spots. Even when they or their children succumb to a dread disease like cancer, they do not link the tragedy to environmental factors—though scientists now believe that most cancers stem from human-made causes. They deny there is a larger problem because they themselves create that problem and owe much of their wealth to it.
But how can they deny the threat of an ecological apocalypse brought on by ozone depletion, global warming, disappearing top soil, and dying oceans? Do the dominant elites want to see life on earth, including their own, destroyed? In the long run they indeed will be victims of their own policies, along with everyone else. However, like us all, they live not in the long run but in the here and now. For the ruling interests, what is at stake is something of more immediate and greater concern than global ecology: It is global capital accumulation. The fate of the biosphere is an abstraction compared to the fate of one’s own investments.
Furthermore, pollution pays, while ecology costs. Every dollar a company must spend on environmental protections is one less dollar in earnings. It is more profitable to treat the environment like a septic tank, pouring thousands of new harmful chemicals into the atmosphere each year, dumping raw industrial effluent into the river or bay, turning waterways into open sewers. The longterm benefit of preserving a river that runs alongside a community (where the corporate polluters do not live anyway) does not weigh as heavily as the immediate gain that comes from ecologically costly modes of production.
Solar, wind, and tidal energy systems could help avert ecological disaster, but they would bring disaster to the rich oil cartels. Six of the world’s ten top industrial corporations are involved primarily in the production of oil, gasoline, and motor vehicles. Fossil fuel pollution means billions in profits. Ecologically sustainable forms of production threaten those profits.
Immense and imminent gain for oneself is a far more compelling consideration than a diffuse loss shared by the general public. The cost of turning a forest into a wasteland weighs little against the profits that come from harvesting the timber.
This conflict between immediate private gain on the one hand and remote public benefit on the other operates even at the individual consumer level. Thus, it is in one’s longterm interest not to operate a motor vehicle, which contributes more to environmental devastation than any other single consumer item. But we have an immediate need for transportation in order to get to work, or do whatever else needs doing, so most of us have no choice except to own and use automobiles.
The “car culture” demonstrates how the ecological crisis is not primarily an individual matter of man soiling his own nest. In most instances, the “choice” of using a car is no choice at all. Ecologically efficient and less costly electric-car mass transportation has been deliberately destroyed since the 1930s in campaigns waged across the country by the automotive, oil, and tire industries. Corporations involved in transportation put “America on wheels,” in order to maximize consumption costs for the public and profits for themselves, and to hell with the environment or anything else.
The enormous interests of giant multinational corporations outweigh doomsayer predictions about an ecological crisis. Sober business heads refuse to get caught up in the “hysteria” about the environment, preferring to quietly augment their fortunes. Besides, there can always be found a few experts who will go against all the evidence and say that the jury is still out, that there is no conclusive proof to support the alarmists. Conclusive proof in this case would come only when we reach the point of no return.
Ecology is profoundly subversive of capitalism. It needs planned, environmentally sustainable production rather than the rapacious unregulated kind. It requires economical consumption rather than an artificially stimulated, ever-expanding consumerism. It calls for natural, low-cost energy systems rather than profitable, high-cost, polluting ones. Ecology’s implications for capitalism are too horrendous for the capitalist to contemplate.
Those in the higher circles, who once hired Blackshirts (Nazis) to destroy democracy out of fear that their class interests were threatened, have no trouble doing the same against “eco-terrorists.” Those who have waged merciless war against the Reds (Communists) have no trouble making war against the Greens. Those who have brought us poverty wages, exploitation, unemployment, homelessness, urban decay, and other oppressive economic conditions are not too troubled about bringing us ecological crisis. The plutocrats are more wedded to their wealth than to the Earth upon which they live, more concerned with the fate of their fortunes than with the fate of the planet.
The struggle over environmentalism is part of the class struggle itself, a fact that seems to have escaped many environmentalists. The impending eco-apocalypse is a class act. It has been created by and for the benefit of the few, at the expense of the many. The trouble is, this time the class act may take all of us down, once and forever.
In the relationship between wealth and power, what is at stake is not only economic justice, but democracy itself and the survival of the biosphere. Unfortunately, the struggle for democracy and ecological sanity is not likely to be advanced by trendy, jargonized, theorists who treat class as an outmoded concept and who seem ready to consider anything but the realities of capitalist power. In this they are little different from the dominant ideology they profess to oppose. They are the ones who need to get back on this planet.
The only countervailing force that might eventually turn things in a better direction is an informed and mobilized citizenry. Whatever their shortcomings, the people are our best hope. Indeed, we are they. Whether or not the ruling circles still wear blackshirts, and whether or not their opponents are Reds, la lutta continua, the struggle continues, today, tomorrow, and through all history.
Australian Magnate Beats BHP on ‘Superior’ Offer for Canadian Nickel Miner
Yvonne Yue Li
Mon, October 18, 2021
(Bloomberg) -- Canadian miner Noront Resources Ltd. agreed to be acquired by Andrew Forrest’s Wyloo Metals Pty Ltd. in a deal that tops a rival offer from BHP Group.
Noront agreed to Wyloo’s “superior” offer of C$0.70 a share, which represents a 27% premium to BHP’s friendly offer of C$0.55 from July, the Toronto-based company said Monday in a statement. BHP has been given five business days to match the offer from the firm controlled by Forrest, an Australian mining magnate.
Shares of Noront fell 6.2% to C$0.76 at 9:55 a.m. in trading in Toronto.
Wyloo and BHP have been in a bidding war to gain access to Noront’s high-grade Canadian nickel deposits in a largely untapped region of northern Ontario dubbed the Ring of Fire. Mining heavyweights are racing to control more supplies of raw materials that are key to transitioning to low-carbon energy sources. Nickel is one of the key metals used in lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles.
Wyloo already owned about 24% of Noront’s stock and took further steps last month to lift its stake to 37.3% by swapping convertible debt into common shares. Wyloo said in August that its unsolicited proposal was more likely to succeed because it owns a chunk of Noront shares and doesn’t intend to support BHP’s offer. The deal values Noront at about C$321 million ($259 million), based on approximately 458.5 million shares outstanding as of July 31.
Noront’s main asset is the Eagle’s Nest deposit in Ontario, whose mineral wealth includes nickel, copper, chromite and zinc.
Yvonne Yue Li
Mon, October 18, 2021
(Bloomberg) -- Canadian miner Noront Resources Ltd. agreed to be acquired by Andrew Forrest’s Wyloo Metals Pty Ltd. in a deal that tops a rival offer from BHP Group.
Noront agreed to Wyloo’s “superior” offer of C$0.70 a share, which represents a 27% premium to BHP’s friendly offer of C$0.55 from July, the Toronto-based company said Monday in a statement. BHP has been given five business days to match the offer from the firm controlled by Forrest, an Australian mining magnate.
Shares of Noront fell 6.2% to C$0.76 at 9:55 a.m. in trading in Toronto.
Wyloo and BHP have been in a bidding war to gain access to Noront’s high-grade Canadian nickel deposits in a largely untapped region of northern Ontario dubbed the Ring of Fire. Mining heavyweights are racing to control more supplies of raw materials that are key to transitioning to low-carbon energy sources. Nickel is one of the key metals used in lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles.
Wyloo already owned about 24% of Noront’s stock and took further steps last month to lift its stake to 37.3% by swapping convertible debt into common shares. Wyloo said in August that its unsolicited proposal was more likely to succeed because it owns a chunk of Noront shares and doesn’t intend to support BHP’s offer. The deal values Noront at about C$321 million ($259 million), based on approximately 458.5 million shares outstanding as of July 31.
Noront’s main asset is the Eagle’s Nest deposit in Ontario, whose mineral wealth includes nickel, copper, chromite and zinc.
GameStop mania severely tested market system, regulator says
In this Thursday, Jan. 28, 2021, file photo, a GameStop sign is seen above a store, in Urbandale, Iowa. The U.S. stock market certainly shook when hundreds of thousands of regular people suddenly piled into GameStop earlier in 2021, driving its price to heights that shocked professional investors, but it didn't break.
In this Thursday, Jan. 28, 2021, file photo, a GameStop sign is seen above a store, in Urbandale, Iowa. The U.S. stock market certainly shook when hundreds of thousands of regular people suddenly piled into GameStop earlier in 2021, driving its price to heights that shocked professional investors, but it didn't break.
(AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. stock market certainly shook when hundreds of thousands of regular people suddenly piled into GameStop early this year, driving its price to heights that shocked professional investors. But it didn’t break.
That’s one of the takeaways from a report by the Securities and Exchange Commission’s staff released Monday about January’s “meme-stock” mania. As GameStop’s stock shot from $39 to $347 in just a week, some of the stock market’s plumbing began creaking, but the report indicated the market’s basic systems and operations remained sound.
The surge for GameStop and other downtrodden stocks also laid bare how much power is being wielded by a new generation of smaller-pocketed and novice investors, armed with apps on their phones that make trading fun.
“The extreme volatility in meme stocks in January 2021 tested the capacity and resiliency of our securities markets in a way that few could have anticipated,” the report said. “At the same time, the trading in meme stocks during this time highlighted an important feature of United States securities markets in the 21st century: broad participation.”
Many of the points in the report were already known, such as how the extremely heavy bets made by some hedge funds against GameStop’s stock actually helped accelerate its extreme ascent, though they weren’t the main driver.
The report also didn’t make any recommendations for changes to how the market is structured, but it pointed to several areas for further consideration. They include topics that SEC Chair Gary Gensler has already cited in recent speeches, such as whether the way some brokerages make their money encourages them to push customers to trade more often than they should.
The report also indicated the SEC could further scrutinize events that may cause a brokerage to restrict trading in a stock. During the height of the frenzy, several brokerages barred customers from buying GameStop after the clearinghouse that settles their trades demanded more cash to cover the increased risk created by its highly volatile price. That left many investors incensed.
The report also raised questions about whether investors are getting the best execution on their trades when so many are getting routed to big trading firms instead of to exchanges like the Nasdaq or the New York Stock Exchange.
And, perhaps in a disappointment to some of the investors who piled into GameStop to punish the financial elite: The SEC’s staff said it doesn’t believe hedge funds were broadly affected by investments in GameStop and other meme stocks.
During the run-up of GameStop’s price, many people were bellowing on Reddit and other social media platforms that this was their chance to stick it to the hedge funds. They took aim at funds that had bet GameStop, a struggling video-game retailer, would see its price continue to fall.
Those hedge funds did that by “shorting” the stock. In such a trade, a short seller borrows a share, sells it and then hopes to buy it back later at a lower price to pocket the difference.
Some of those short sellers were indeed burned. And when they bought GameStop shares to get out of their suddenly soured bets, the buying helped push the stock up even further. But other hedge funds that had earlier bet on gains for GameStop’s stock made profits, as did others who jumped into the upsurge.
Hedge funds as a group have been making money this year, including a 1.2% return in January during the throes of the meme mania, according to the HFRI Fund Weighted Composite index.
The SEC’s staff nevertheless said that improved reporting of short sales is another area worthy of further study, particularly if it will help regulators better track the market.
NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. stock market certainly shook when hundreds of thousands of regular people suddenly piled into GameStop early this year, driving its price to heights that shocked professional investors. But it didn’t break.
That’s one of the takeaways from a report by the Securities and Exchange Commission’s staff released Monday about January’s “meme-stock” mania. As GameStop’s stock shot from $39 to $347 in just a week, some of the stock market’s plumbing began creaking, but the report indicated the market’s basic systems and operations remained sound.
The surge for GameStop and other downtrodden stocks also laid bare how much power is being wielded by a new generation of smaller-pocketed and novice investors, armed with apps on their phones that make trading fun.
“The extreme volatility in meme stocks in January 2021 tested the capacity and resiliency of our securities markets in a way that few could have anticipated,” the report said. “At the same time, the trading in meme stocks during this time highlighted an important feature of United States securities markets in the 21st century: broad participation.”
Many of the points in the report were already known, such as how the extremely heavy bets made by some hedge funds against GameStop’s stock actually helped accelerate its extreme ascent, though they weren’t the main driver.
The report also didn’t make any recommendations for changes to how the market is structured, but it pointed to several areas for further consideration. They include topics that SEC Chair Gary Gensler has already cited in recent speeches, such as whether the way some brokerages make their money encourages them to push customers to trade more often than they should.
The report also indicated the SEC could further scrutinize events that may cause a brokerage to restrict trading in a stock. During the height of the frenzy, several brokerages barred customers from buying GameStop after the clearinghouse that settles their trades demanded more cash to cover the increased risk created by its highly volatile price. That left many investors incensed.
The report also raised questions about whether investors are getting the best execution on their trades when so many are getting routed to big trading firms instead of to exchanges like the Nasdaq or the New York Stock Exchange.
And, perhaps in a disappointment to some of the investors who piled into GameStop to punish the financial elite: The SEC’s staff said it doesn’t believe hedge funds were broadly affected by investments in GameStop and other meme stocks.
During the run-up of GameStop’s price, many people were bellowing on Reddit and other social media platforms that this was their chance to stick it to the hedge funds. They took aim at funds that had bet GameStop, a struggling video-game retailer, would see its price continue to fall.
Those hedge funds did that by “shorting” the stock. In such a trade, a short seller borrows a share, sells it and then hopes to buy it back later at a lower price to pocket the difference.
Some of those short sellers were indeed burned. And when they bought GameStop shares to get out of their suddenly soured bets, the buying helped push the stock up even further. But other hedge funds that had earlier bet on gains for GameStop’s stock made profits, as did others who jumped into the upsurge.
Hedge funds as a group have been making money this year, including a 1.2% return in January during the throes of the meme mania, according to the HFRI Fund Weighted Composite index.
The SEC’s staff nevertheless said that improved reporting of short sales is another area worthy of further study, particularly if it will help regulators better track the market.
Monday, October 18, 2021
British Museum to display the world’s oldest map of stars
Associated Press
This image courtesy of the State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt shows the Nebra Sky Disc. The British Museum will display what it says is the world’s oldest surviving map of the stars in a major upcoming exhibition on the Stonehenge stone circle. The 3,600-year-old “Nebra Sky Disc,” first discovered in Germany in 1999, is one of the oldest surviving representations of the cosmos in the world and has never before been displayed in the U.K., the London museum said Monday.
Associated Press
This image courtesy of the State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt shows the Nebra Sky Disc. The British Museum will display what it says is the world’s oldest surviving map of the stars in a major upcoming exhibition on the Stonehenge stone circle. The 3,600-year-old “Nebra Sky Disc,” first discovered in Germany in 1999, is one of the oldest surviving representations of the cosmos in the world and has never before been displayed in the U.K., the London museum said Monday.
(Juraj Liptak/State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology Saxony-Anhalt via AP)
NOTE THE SEVEN STARS BETWEEN THE SUN AND MOON THESE ARE THE SEVEN SISTERS AKA THE PLEIADIES
LONDON (AP) — The British Museum will display what it says is the world’s oldest surviving map of the stars in a major upcoming exhibition on the Stonehenge stone circle.
The 3,600-year-old “Nebra Sky Disc,” first discovered in Germany in 1999, is one of the oldest surviving representations of the cosmos in the world and has never before been displayed in the U.K., the London museum said Monday.
The 30 centimeter (12 inch) bronze disc features a blue-green patina and is decorated with inlaid gold symbols thought to represent the sun, the moon and constellations.
The “World of Stonehenge” exhibition planned for next year will be the first time the disc has been loaned out from Germany for 15 years. The U.K. is only the fourth country the disc has travelled to after it was discovered buried in the ground in eastern Germany.
It will feature alongside an extremely rare 3,000-year-old sun pendant described by the British Museum as the most significant piece of Bronze Age gold ever found in Britain.
“The Nebra Sky Disc and the sun pendant are two of the most remarkable surviving objects from Bronze Age Europe,” said Neil Wilkin, the exhibition’s curator.
“While both were found hundreds of miles from Stonehenge, we’ll be using them to shine a light on the vast interconnected world that existed around the ancient monument, spanning Britain, Ireland and mainland Europe,” he added. “It’s going to be eye-opening.”
The exhibition aims to share a wider history of the mythology and cosmology surrounding the 4,500-year-old Stonehenge in southern England. Hundreds of artefacts from across Britain and Europe telling the story of Stonehenge will also be displayed.
The exhibition runs from Feb.17 to July 17, 2022.
The 3,600-year-old “Nebra Sky Disc,” first discovered in Germany in 1999, is one of the oldest surviving representations of the cosmos in the world and has never before been displayed in the U.K., the London museum said Monday.
The 30 centimeter (12 inch) bronze disc features a blue-green patina and is decorated with inlaid gold symbols thought to represent the sun, the moon and constellations.
The “World of Stonehenge” exhibition planned for next year will be the first time the disc has been loaned out from Germany for 15 years. The U.K. is only the fourth country the disc has travelled to after it was discovered buried in the ground in eastern Germany.
It will feature alongside an extremely rare 3,000-year-old sun pendant described by the British Museum as the most significant piece of Bronze Age gold ever found in Britain.
“The Nebra Sky Disc and the sun pendant are two of the most remarkable surviving objects from Bronze Age Europe,” said Neil Wilkin, the exhibition’s curator.
“While both were found hundreds of miles from Stonehenge, we’ll be using them to shine a light on the vast interconnected world that existed around the ancient monument, spanning Britain, Ireland and mainland Europe,” he added. “It’s going to be eye-opening.”
The exhibition aims to share a wider history of the mythology and cosmology surrounding the 4,500-year-old Stonehenge in southern England. Hundreds of artefacts from across Britain and Europe telling the story of Stonehenge will also be displayed.
The exhibition runs from Feb.17 to July 17, 2022.
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