dChan
Anonymous ID: a4a55b Aug. 31, 2020, 12:11 p.m. No.10485185   🗄️.is đź”—kun   >>5371 >>5608 >>5705

>>10485088

Thailand shelves Chinese submarine deal after public backlash

 

BANGKOK – Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha has delayed the purchase of China-made military submarines for a year after public opposition sparked a reversal of a controversial funding decision. The Royal Thai Navy asked the parliament's budget committee Monday to cut the submarine procurement funding to zero for this fiscal year, a person familiar with the matter said. Government spokesperson Anucha Burapachaisri earlier on Monday said Prayuth, who concurrently serves as defense minister, had told the navy to postpone the deal until fiscal year 2022. The decision marks a setback for Prayuth's government amid a wave of youth protests seeking political reforms and greater protections for civil liberties.

 

The two Yuan-class S26T submarines were supposed to cost a total of 22.5 billion baht ($720 million) over seven years. The government sought to allocate more than 3 billion baht as the initial payment in the 2021 budget, but the move met with a strong backlash from the public, with critics saying the money should be spent on support for the slumping economy. Thailand will start negotiations with China on the details of the delay, Anucha said. These are the second and third of three submarines Prayuth promised the Royal Thai Navy and China while he was leader of a junta that toppled Thailand's democratically elected government in 2014. The budget for the first submarine was approved in 2017. It is being built in China for delivery in 2024, according to the navy. The deal attracted public attention, passing a lower house budget subcommittee on Aug. 22 by the narrowest margin. The meeting could not come to unanimous conclusion and was initially tied at 4 to 4, but a ballot from the chairman, a member of the ruling Palang Pracharat Party, allowed the deal to advance to the full budget committee. Yutthapong Jarassathian, deputy chairman of the subcommittee from the opposition Pheu Thai Party, was among the four members who opposed the decision. A memorandum of understanding exchanged upon the first submarine order between Prayuth and then-Chinese Defense Minister Chang Wanquan did not state that Thailand was obliged to buy the two additional submarines, Yutthapong said. "The prime minister must choose between the submarines and the economic survival of the people," he said.

 

The subcommittee decision drew criticism online, with a hashtag #PeopleSayNoToSubs trending in Thailand on Twitter. The navy was forced to present its view on Monday. Royal Thai Navy chief-of-staff Sittiporn Maskasem said the navy needed more submarines as part of its defense strategy. He urged the public not to politicize the deal. Most of Thailand's coastal neighbors in Southeast Asia own submarines. Vietnam operates the largest fleet in the region with six subs. Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia hold five, four and two, respectively. Myanmar, a far smaller economy than Thailand, has one, according to the navy.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Turbulent-Thailand/Thailand-shelves-Chinese-submarine-deal-after-public-backlash

Anonymous ID: a4a55b Aug. 31, 2020, 12:53 p.m. No.10485544   🗄️.is đź”—kun   >>5608 >>5705

Investors Have Stampeded Out of Stock Funds for Two Weeks – So How Did the Stock Market Set a New High Every Day Last Week?

 

The S&P 500 stock index set a new record high on Friday, closing at 3508.01 – the first time it has ever closed above 3500. In fact, the S&P 500 set a record high close every single day last week. Here’s the actual closing numbers(cap#2):

 

Monday, August 24: 3,431.28

Tuesday, August 25: 3,443.62

Wednesday, August 26: 3,478.73

Thursday, August 27: 3,484.55

Friday, August 28: 3,508.01

 

Refinitiv Lipper has been reporting fund flows into and out of the stock market for the past 18 years. According to Refinitiv Lipper, for the week ending Wednesday, August 26, stock (a/k/a equity) mutual funds and stock ETFs had a combined negative outflow of -$7.8 billion. For the week ending Wednesday, August 19, stock mutual funds and stock ETFs had a negative outflow of -$6.6 billion. Put the two weeks together and you have investors yanking a net $14.4 billion out of stock funds. Where was the money going? For the most part, it was going into taxable bond funds.

 

The S&P 500 is made up of approximately 500 companies at any one time. The index is market capitalization weighted, a system that divides the market cap of a company by the index’s total market capitalization to determine its influence in the index. When you have six companies that have been dramatically outperforming other stocks this year, and just five of them (Alphabet (parent of Google), Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft) make up more than 20 percent of the S&P 500’s total market capitalization, you can get an aberration in the pricing of the broader index. To put it simply, were it not for these six stocks, the whole S&P 500 index would be negative for the year-cap#3

 

DoubleLine’s Jeffrey Gundlach, a veteran market watcher, calls this “classic bear market rally activity.” It is also known as “distribution” on Wall Street. That’s when the little guy is seduced into the stock market on the illusion that it is rocketing to one all time high after another. This gives the knowledgeable insiders that want out the necessary dumb money on which to dump their shares.

 

Could there be an invisible hand giving an artificial boost to these stocks? Our first thought was to check on what’s been going on in the Dark Pools. These are effectively unregulated stock exchanges that are bizarrely allowed to operate inside the large Wall Street banks. For the week of August 10, the latest week in which data is available at Wall Street’s self-regulator known as FINRA, Dark Pools owned by UBS, Credit Suisse, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley (and numerous others) were active in trading every one of the above six high-flying stocks. In addition, these same Wall Street banks are allowed to issue buy ratings on the stocks (which incentivizes their brokers to talk up the stocks to their customers). Despite the fact that the SEC found internal emails showing that the bank analysts were pushing stocks to the public that they were calling dogs and crap in internal emails during the leadup to the dot.com bust, the Wall Street banks have been allowed to continue issuing buy ratings on companies to whom they make loans, underwrite their stock and debt offerings, and opaquely trade their shares in Dark Pools.

 

For example, Amazon, the biggest highflier of the gang of six, currently has a “buy” rating from Goldman Sachs and UBS; an “overweight” rating from JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley; and an “outperform” rating from Credit Suisse, just to mention a few of those banks that are also trading its stock in their internal Dark Pools. How long can a frothy bubble last? Much longer than common sense would suggest, especially when the Fed keeps spiking the punch bowl with zero interest rates and trillions of dollars in bailouts.

https://wallstreetonparade.com/2020/08/investors-have-stampeded-out-of-stock-funds-for-two-weeks-so-how-did-the-stock-market-set-a-new-high-every-day-last-week/