Actualité Economie Mondiale

Rappel du premier message :

USA/GB: accord sur les faillites bancaires

Citation :

L'un des régulateurs bancaires aux Etats-Unis, la FDIC, et la Banque d'Angleterre ont annoncé vendredi la signature d'un accord de coopération sur les risques de faillite d'une institution financière multinationale.

Cet accord de principe vient en compléter un autre, datant de 1996 et amendé en 1998, entre les trois principaux régulateurs bancaires américains (Réserve fédérale, FDIC et OCC) et l'autorité de régulation britannique du secteur financier, la FSA.

Il prévoit un échange d'informations pour prévenir un risque de ce genre, de préparer "les outils de gestion d'une crise traversant les frontières", et de prévoir entre autres les moyens de coordination et la répartition des tâches.

La présidente de la FDIC Sheila Bair, citée dans un communiqué, a salué "un pas vers la mise en oeuvre des recommandations du groupe de résolution des crises internationales du Comité de Bâle", un forum de régulateurs bancaires de 27 pays.

Si la Banque d'Angleterre n'est plus régulateur bancaire aujourd'hui, elle reste chargée de gérer les crises bancaires, a rappelé son gouverneur Mervyn King. La FDIC est quant à elle l'autorité de régulation de plus de 5.000 banques, en plus d'être l'agence fédérale de garanties des dépôts bancaires.

AFP

Citation :

Les pays émergents continuent d'acheter massivement de l'or
http://www.capital.fr/bourse/actualites/les-pays-emergents-continuent-d-acheter-massivement-de-l-or-736567/

Ils se mettent à douter de plus en plus des monnaies des pays occidentaux en raison de leur dettes qui deviendra du papier toilette si krack s'annoncent à l'horizon

La catastrophe dans cette histoire ca demarre par des banquiers frauduleux US et ca se termine sur dos d'Etats-Nations

Qui veut la peau du modele Europeen...

@Akhnaton: les US vont redemarre l'exploitation de terres rares si je me souvoiens bien (desole j'arrive pas a retrouver l'article) la situation redeveindra confortable vers 2015...c'est vra ique ca prend du temps surtout dans une economie de marche...

Citation :

Rare Earth Supplies In U.S. To Meet Defense Needs, Pentagon Says

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-04/rare-earth-supplies-in-u-s-to-meet-defense-needs-pentagon-says.html

Rare Earths Shortage Would Spur Pentagon To Action

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-09/rare-earths-shortage-would-spur-pentagon-to-action.html

@farewell:

Quelque soit le degre de la crise, les pays developpe s'en sortiront, meme avec une re-repartition des centres de pouvoir economiques de par le monde avec certains BRICS (Chine etRussie surtout) qui peuvent allier a opportunite economique puissance militaire. Mais ces pays la ne different plus tellement de l'occident.

C'est encore une fois de notre cote que les plus grosses inconnues et les pertes reelles (humaines) vont se passer. Il est possible que certains pays disparaissent meme...

Si le point critique est atteint ceux sont les pays émergents qui subiront une vrai catastrophe car ils avaient placer les fruits de leurs formidables croissances en bons du trésor et en achetant massivement des dollars et euros en majorité...

Les occidentaux pourraient relativement s'en sortir malgré de manière global malgré le déclin démographique en s'appuyant comme tu le dis sur la redistribution de la nouvelle donne et serait débarrasser de leur dette dantesque après coup en supportant qu'une partie de l'impact.

farewell a écrit:

Si le point critique est atteint ceux sont les pays émergents qui subiront une vrai catastrophe car ils avaient placer les fruits de leurs formidables croissances en bons du trésor et en achetant massivement des dollars et euros en majorité...

Les occidentaux pourraient relativement s'en sortir malgré de manière global malgré le déclin démographique en s'appuyant comme tu le dis sur la redistribution de la nouvelle donne et serait débarrasser de leur dette dantesque après coup en supportant qu'une partie de l'impact.

Oui, mais les pays emergents ne sont pas tous sur le meme bateau. Il y'en a qui sont prets a saisir l'opportunite economique pour monter en grade politico-militaire, l'autre face de l'economie d'ailleurs

D'ailleurs, la plupart des pays emergents disposent egalement d'atout de taille en terme de ressources naturelles et de stabilite ideologique "sociale".

C'est nos pays d'Afrique (nord et sub sahariens except AfSud) et Moyen Orient qui ne savent sur quel pied dancer:

dependre des hydrocarbures (economie de rente), dependre de la croissance et facteurs internationaux "aleatoires" (Maroc, Egypte, Tunisie...), ajoutez y une delegitimisation continue de toutes les mouvances donc instabilite sociale quasi permanenete (dont les couts peuvent etre immenses), bref...l'impact d'une eventuelle nouvelle crise mondiale pourrait etre quantitatif sur le reste du monde, mais chez nous, et possiblement l'UE aussi, ca risque d'etre qualitatif...encore.

Je crois que c'est les elections US en Novembre qui donneront le ton: Romney va venir avec une guerre ouverte et sera la goutte qui pourrait deborder certains vases, Obama sera probablement plus "guerre en douce", probablement plus de stabilite pour les pays fragiles.

Decidement 2012 est interminable

Fahed64 a écrit:

Continuez comme ça à Berlin, dans 10 ans l'Europe n'existera plus

l´allemagne n´a pas a garantir les credits des autres,chacun pour soi,et elle a le support de l´opposition comme de la majorité des allemands.

Citation :

World GDP

The Economist




The world economy's growth accelerated in the first three months of the year, according to The Economist’s measure of global GDP, based on 52 countries. First-quarter output expanded by 2.9% compared to the same period last year, one-tenth of a percentage point higher than in the previous quarter. Austerity measures in Europe, coupled with uncertainty about the future of the euro, saw the economy of the common-currency area shrink marginally. And a more worrying sign is the fall in the contribution to world GDP of the BRIC countries, which have been widely considered the driving force behind global growth. Economic growth in Brazil, India and China slowed in the past quarter. In America, though, despite signs that the recovery could decelerate, first-quarter growth nearly reached 2%, driven primarily by consumption and exports.

Citation :

Japon: un important gisement de terres rares découvert dans le Pacifique
http://m.20minutes.fr/economie/963101-japon-important-gisement-terres-rares-decouvert-pacifique/

farewell a écrit:

Citation :

Japon: un important gisement de terres rares découvert dans le Pacifique
http://m.20minutes.fr/economie/963101-japon-important-gisement-terres-rares-decouvert-pacifique/

Maintenant que les pays post-indusrialises ont compris les risques liees aux terres rares ils vont tous s'y mettre. I lsuffit de changer de legislation pour donner des avantages fiscaux a des compagnies locales.

......

Citation :

Bombardier says wins $507 million plane order

TORONTO, June 30 | Sun Jul 1, 2012 5:44am IST
(Reuters) - Bombardier Inc said on Saturday its aerospace arm had received firm orders worth about $507 million for eight global business aircraft.

The Montreal-based manufacturer said the orders from an undisclosed customer consist of three Global 6000 and five Global 8000 jets. The value of the deal is based on the 2012 list price for typically equipped aircraft, it added.

"Sales momentum for the Global product line is strong and we are experiencing tremendous success with the new Global 7000 and Global 8000 jets," Steve Ridolfi, president of Bombardier's business aircraft division, said in a statement.

Citation :

Wall Street Journal

July 2, 2012, 6:53 AM HKT
China Seeks Oil-Pricing Power

China is increasingly central to world trade in crude oil. But the No. 2 consumer of crude - 11.4% of the global total last year according to BP PLC figures - is frustrated it doesn’t have a bigger role in a key aspect of the trade: the commodity futures trading that dictates market prices.

Beijing hopes to change that as it seeks what authorities call pricing power. China’s government has said for some time it plans to launch trading in crude oil futures, the commodity derivative contracts used to set benchmark prices for oil. Authorities recently indicated the contracts could be launched as soon as this year. Beijing hopes they will compete with the West Texas Intermediate futures traded in New York and London’s Brent futures.

A top China Securities Regulatory Commission official on Saturday kept the talk alive. ”Even now, crude oil is fully geared up,” said Peng Junheng, the commission’s deputy director of futures. Mr. Peng, who was speaking on the final day of Shanghai’s Liujiazui Forum, offered no timetable.

He and other speakers on a panel about commodities made clear the reason China is eager to pursue crude oil futures trading: pricing power. ”A lot of work has to be done before we become a price setter for the world, which is our goal,” according to Mr. Peng’s translated comments.

The worry in China is that traders in other markets who may have little appreciation for economic dynamics in China dictate what China pays for commodities.

That has become a major issue amid a surge in commodity prices over the past decade. To provide a recognized Chinese price for commodities, authorities have worked hard to build credible commodity futures markets. There are now 28 products traded on the country’s markets. Trading volume has surged over the years, with a particularly important contract on the Shanghai Futures Exchange in copper – a metal sometimes described as an economic bellwether.

Still, the markets have limits. To protect Beijing’s ability to control its currency, China’s futures markets are virtually closed to outsiders and its domestic traders don’t have easy access to international markets. Speculation from individual traders is rife. That makes its contracts less than credible as the global price for the agricultural, energy and metals products trade in China.

None of this was lost of the panelists Saturday, and several agreed that the more China’s currency system is relaxed, the more credible its commodity markets will become.

“The price that is found in the domestic market does not reflect global demand, aside from copper,” said Zhao Lei, president of Citic Newedge Futures Co., speaking about commodity futures in general. “That’s why China has hardly determined the price.”

Mr. Zhao cited a “price determination ratio” for China in crude oil of 9%, meaning that 91% of the price of oil is set by market forces unrelated to China. He said the figure came from research he had read and was unable to provide more details. But his point was echoed by other panelists, who said China doesn’t have enough power with pricing.

Where once China worried about how it would actually find supplies of commodities around the world to satisfy its people and growing economy, said Ma Wensheng, chairman of Xinhu Futures Co., the risk today is price. ”When the oil futures launch China will gradually increase its influence in the oil price setting, and I’m also confident this will help boost the Chinese economy,” said Mr. Ma.

Citation :

Bloomberg

By Sandrine Rastello - Jul 1, 2012 5:41 PM MT

Kim Says World Bank’s First Priority Is To Aid Growth

Jim Yong Kim, who took over as World Bank president yesterday, said his first task will be to help emerging markets keep expanding at a time of stress for the world economy.

“We begin our work together at a crucial moment” as the global economy “remains vulnerable,” Kim wrote in an e-mail to the Washington-based bank’s staff obtained by Bloomberg News. “My immediate priority will be to intensify the Bank Group’s efforts to help developing countries protect growth and jobs.”

The 52-year-old Kim, the former president of Dartmouth College, succeeds Robert Zoellick at the helm of a poverty- fighting institution that made loans worth almost $53 billion last year. Kim, a physician by training, has little time to ease into a job that stretches beyond his expertise as global growth is threatened by the European debt crisis and a slowdown in China.

“This is about financial crisis management, macroeconomics, understanding the workings of the European monetary union and what the risks are and prioritizing countries” according to their needs, said Uri Dadush, director of international economics at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington and a former World Bank director of economic policy.

“It’s not rocket science but it will be a new area for him, one in which he has no experience,” he said, predicting a “steep learning curve” for Kim.

Immediate Challenge

Kim, a graduate of Harvard Medical School, breaks the mold of World Bank presidents, who have been drawn from government and finance.

“I will be listening to and learning from staff at all levels,” in coming months, he said in the memo. “Consistent and open engagement between staff and the president is a requirement to help us progress.”

The bank was created at the end of World War II to help rebuild ravaged Europe. Now focused on developing countries, it lends for everything from building roads to supporting education policies, and has expanded its scope to taking stakes in companies and guaranteeing investments.

Complicating Kim’s job, the bank’s financial power is now more constrained than four years ago after stepping up loans to emerging countries hit by the financial crisis.

Less Cushion

“We went into the 2008 crisis with a big cushion of capital so we could expand in a way that we cannot just repeat today,” said Joachim von Amsberg, the bank’s vice president of operations policy and country services, in a June 26 interview. The bank’s equity-to-loans ratio for the unit that lends to governments fell last year to 29 percent from nearly 38 percent in 2008.

Commitments climbed during the crisis to a record $73 billion in the fiscal year 2010 from $38 billion just two years before, prompting the bank to seek a capital injection from member countries, which it obtained in April 2010.

The additional cash and a gradual decline in lending helped keep the bank’s equity-to-loans ratio just above its target range. Maintaining that level is important to keep its top credit rating, needed to raise money at low cost.

As a result, the bank is exploring ways to make the most of its resources, von Amsberg said. While demand for loans hasn’t yet increased, many countries are inquiring about precautionary financing, similar to the $1.3 billion Romania received last month, he said.

Growth Slowing

Neighboring nations of the 17-country euro region aren’t alone feeling the pinch. China’s manufacturing expanded at the weakest pace in seven months as overseas orders dropped, and South Korea cut its estimate for export growth this year, underscoring the risks to Asian economies as well.

The bank in a June report predicted that developing countries should prepare for a long period of volatility in the global economy, cutting its outlook for 2013 global growth to 3 percent.

The world’s economy will expand 2.5 percent this year, the same as a January forecast, after gains earlier this year were sapped by renewed market volatility over Greece and Spain. Next year’s prediction is down 0.1 percentage point from January.

Citation :

Bloomberg

Softbank To Build Japan’s Biggest Solar Plant On Incentives

Softbank Corp. (9984), Japan’shird-largest mobile phone company, said it will build the nation’s biggest solar plant as the country begins an incentive program for clean energy.

The facility in Tomakomai, Hokkaido will start operations in fiscal 2014 and have the capacity of 111 megawatts, Softbank spokesman Naoki Nakayama said today in a telephone interview.


Solar panels sit at SB Energy Corp.'s Softbank Kyoto Solar Park in Kyoto, Japan. Photographer: Akio Kon/Bloomberg
The Tokyo-based company held a ceremony today to mark the start of operations at a 2.1-megawatt solar plant in Kyoto, Nakayama said. The carrier also announced plans to build solar plants in Tottori, Nagasaki and Kumamoto prefectures as well as a wind power power plant in Shimane prefecture, he said.

Under the incentive plan, Japan’s utilities are required to buy electricity from renewable sources such as solar, wind and geothermal at above-market rates to increase the country’s clean power use and diversify its energy mix. Softbank’s Chairman Masayoshi Son has set up SB Energy Corp. to develop and promote renewable energy projects since the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

A 2.4-megawatt solar plant also began operating today in Gunma prefecture, according to a release by SB Energy.
Toshiba Corp. (6502) announced June 20 it reached an agreement with the quake-hit city of Minamisoma in Fukushima prefecture to build solar power stations totaling 100 megawatts.

Citation :

Xi Jinping Millionaire Relations Reveal Fortunes Of Elite

Xi Jinping,the man in line to be China’s next president, warned officials on a 2004 anti-graft conference call: “Rein in your spouses, children, relatives, friends and staff, and vow not to use power for personal gain.”

As Xi climbed the Communist Party ranks, his extended family expanded their business interests to include minerals, real estate and mobile-phone equipment, according to public documents compiled by Bloomberg.

Those interests include investments in companies with total assets of $376 million; an 18 percent indirect stake in a rare- earths company with $1.73 billion in assets; and a $20.2 million holding in a publicly traded technology company. The figures don’t account for liabilities and thus don’t reflect the family’s net worth.

No assets were traced to Xi, who turns 59 this month; his wife Peng Liyuan, 49, a famous People’s Liberation Army singer; or their daughter, the documents show. There is no indication Xi intervened to advance his relatives’ business transactions, or of any wrongdoing by Xi or his extended family.
While the investments are obscured from public view by multiple holding companies, government restrictions on access to company documents and in some cases online censorship, they are identified in thousands of pages of regulatory filings.
The trail also leads to a hillside villa overlooking the South China Sea in Hong Kong, with an estimated value of $31.5 million. The doorbell ringer dangles from its wires, and neighbors say the house has been empty for years. The family owns at least six other Hong Kong properties with a combined estimated value of $24.1 million.

More here:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-29/xi-jinping-millionaire-relations-reveal-fortunes-of-elite.html

http://go.bloomberg.com/multimedia/xi-jinping-relations-reveal-fortunes-of-some-elite-in-china/

Dans la meme veine des memes sources americaines qui nous informent sur les tenant de la politique interne chinoise

Citation :

Bo Xilai: Inside The Scandal – A WSJ Documentary

The fall of Bo Xilai, once a rising star in Chinese politics, has plunged the country into its biggest crisis since Tiananmen Square. In this documentary, The Wall Street Journal examines how his downfall has altered the debate about China's future.

http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2012/06/29/bo-xilai-a-wsj-documentary/

Citation :

Angola to sell new oil exploration rights

By Tom Burgis in Luanda

Angola plans to capitalise on one of the world’s most promising recent oil discoveries by auctioning more exploration rights next year as it aims to double production by the end of the decade.

The planned bid round follows February’s deepwater find by Cobalt International Energy, which the Goldman Sachs-backed group estimates holds some 1.5bn barrels of crude.
...
The development of the “pre-salt” oil play would spur efforts to raise output from Africa’s second biggest oil industry to 3.5m barrels a day from 1.8m b/d by 2020, Mr Vicente added.
...
Decades of onshore oil production in the northern enclave of Cabinda and from deepwater fields to the north of the pre-salt region have already made Angola a rival as Africa’s top producer to Nigeria, which pumps 2.1m b/d.

Nigeria, a member of the Opec oil cartel, vies with Saudi Arabia to be China’s biggest oil supplier and is an important source of crude for the US.

Le reste de l'article sur The Financial Times

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b84fe612-ba2a-11e1-aa8d-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz1zTjAiB1V


CBC

Citation :

Progress Energy gets $5.5B takeover offer

Prince Rupert, B.C., chosen as location for proposed LNG terminal
CBC News Posted: Jun 28, 2012 8:49 AM ET Last Updated: Jun 28, 2012 4:11 PM ET

Calgary-based Progress Energy Resources Corp. has received a friendly $5.5 billion takeover offer from Malaysia's state-owned oil and gas company, Petronas.

The offer — $20.45 a share — is 77 per cent above the $11.55 closing price of Progress shares Wednesday on the TSX. The shares soared Thursday, jumping $8.50 to close at $20.05.

The two companies are already partners in an ambitious project to export liquefied natural gas (LNG) by ship from British Columbia. They set up a joint venture last year to develop Progress' Montney shale assets in the foothills of northeast B.C.

The companies have also announced that they've selected Prince Rupert, B.C., for the location of a proposed LNG terminal.

The board of Progress is unanimously recommending that shareholders accept the Petronas offer.

"Our relationship with Petronas has been very productive and they have clearly demonstrated a commitment to the local communities, both economically and environmentally," Progress Energy CEO Michael Culbert said, referring to a commitment by Petronas to retain the entire Progress workforce.

Culbert says Petronas has the financial resources needed to allow Progress to access the international LNG market.

"Petronas offers the size and scale that will enable our company to continue to grow and not be limited by the same cash flow challenges faced by many producers in the North American natural gas market today," he said in a statement.

The deal will require government approval under the Investment Canada Act and Competition Act.

Gas prices higher in Asia

Natural gas prices in many Asian markets are much higher than the sub-$3 per million BTU level seen in North America, which explains why several companies are actively exploring the LNG export option for their gas.

In May, Royal Dutch Shell gave a tentative go-ahead for a liquefied natural gas project in Kitimat, B.C., alongside three Asian Partners. The Anglo-Dutch energy giant says it will have a 40-per-cent stake in the project, called LNG Canada. PetroChina, Mitsubishi Corp. and Korea Gas Corp. will each hold a 20-per-cent interest.

Encana Corp. and two U.S. partners plan to start up their Kitimat LNG plant in 2015.

BC LNG, owned by the Haisla First Nation and Houston-based LNG Partners, expects to ship its first LNG in 2014 and Talisman Energy, Nexen and Imperial Oil are exploring their LNG options.

How Wall Street Scams Counties Into Bankruptcy

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/02/wall-street-counties-bankruptcy_n_1642762.html?page=1

Bloomberg View | By William D. Cohan
Posted: 07/02/2012 10:44 am Updated: 07/02/2012 10:44

Citation :

Lord knows we’ve had more than enough scandals ginned up by Wall Street over the years, and the message that banking executives proclaim after each is: “Don’t worry, we’ve learned that lesson, and it will never happen again.”

Which is how we got to the recent spectacle of Jamie Dimon, the chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), testifying twice before Congress that although the bank’s chief investment office was taking huge proprietary risks with some $350 billion of its depositors money -- and lost $3 billion (and counting) by making a bunch of risky bets on an obscure, thinly traded derivatives contract -- everything is now fine and dandy because the unjustifiable gambling has been stopped dead in its tracks.

We were, of course, told pretty much the same thing after the collapse of the junk-bond market in the 1980s, the collapse of the Internet initial-public-offering market in the 1990s, the collapse of the telecom debt market in the early 2000s, not to mention the scandals over IPO spinning and laddering and the ones involving the trading of favorable corporate research for investment-banking fees.

We are told repeatedly that when Wall Street’s deeply flawed incentive system leads to one bad outcome after another, year after year, it will never happen again. Yet it does. And you can add this vital business to the list: The way state and local government officials hire Wall Street firms to raise the billions of dollars their municipalities need to build schools, hospitals, airports and sewers, and provide other essential services.

...
Le reste ici

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/02/wall-street-counties-bankruptcy_n_1642762.html?page=1

Tout va bien dans la zone euro...

Citation :

La Finlande préfèrerait sortir de l’euro plutôt que de payer la dette européenne

La Finlande préfère se préparer à sortir de l’euro plutôt qu’à payer les dettes des autres pays de la zone euro, affirme la ministre des Finances Jutta Urpilainen, vendredi dans le quotidien financier Kauppalehti.

http://www.romandie.com/news/n/Zone_euro_la_Finlande_prefere_sortir_de_l_euro_que_payer_les_dettes_des_autres30060720121200.asp

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RATP et SNCF : fin de la gratuité des transports pour les seniors

Les cartes Emeraude et Améthyste, qui permettaient aux personnes âgées ou handicapées de se déplacer gratuitement sur le réseau ferré d’Ile-de-France, deviennent payantes à partir du 1er novembre 2012.

http://www.reponseatout.com/reponse-conso/voyage-vacances/retard-train/ratp-et-sncf-fin-gratuite-transports-seniors-a107582

Citation :

Nouveau tour de vis budgétaire en Italie de 26 milliards

Le gouvernement de Mario Monti a adopté dans la nuit de jeudi 5 à vendredi 6 juillet une série de mesures qui permettront de réduire la dépense publique de 4,5 milliards d’euros dès 2012 et de plus de 10 milliards d’euros aussi bien en 2013 qu’en 2014.

"Les économies que permettra le décret seront de 4,5 milliards en 2012, 10,5 milliards en 2013 et 11 milliards en 2014", a déclaré à la presse Mario Monti. Le gouvernement avait déjà adopté fin avril un décret-loi décidant le principe d’une réduction des dépenses de 4,2 milliards d’euros en 2012 et le document adopté dans la nuit vient compléter par des mesures concrètes ce précédent texte et en élargit l’horizon temporel aux deux prochaines années.

Une grande partie de ces réductions de dépense concerne la santé et l’administration publique, a précisé Mario Monti.

Baisse de 10% des effectifs dans l’administration

http://www.challenges.fr/europe/20120706.CHA8695/l-italie-adopte-un-nouveau-plan-de-rigueur-de-26-milliards.html[b]

Citation :

Les États-Unis se libereront sous peu de leur dependance energetique par rapport au Moyen Orient.

vipsdesvips a écrit:

Citation :

Les États-Unis se libereront sous peu de leur dependance energetique par rapport au Moyen Orient.

L'Age d'Argent des Etats-Unis commencera bientôt

l´age d´or tu veux dire

Non, j'ai bien voulu dire "Age d'Argent" car l'Age d'Or des USA est ,à mon sens, entre la fin de la seconde guerre mondial et le début de la guerre d’Afghanistan. Cette vision est un peu simpliste

Même si aucun pays au cours de l'histoire n'a exercé une telle domination ecomico-militaire, les USA sont empêtre dans plusieurs guerre qui les handicape au plus haut point.

mon ami,je crois qu´ils font seulement une pause apres astan,en puissance mondiale a hydrocarbures,ils seront encore plus riches et moins flexibles avec leurs ex-fournisseurs,leurs aventures exterieurs auront alors d´autres buts(terres rares,routes maritimes au pacifiques etc..)
je crains que le monstre gagnera encore de nouvelles griffes

Espérons que ce monstre ne nous ruine pas..

Et pourtant l'hisotire se répète, dois je vous rappeler qu'en 1929 Wall Street à fait s'ecrouler le monde et 2008,2009,2010 on remets ça avec la crise des surprimes, l'effondrement des banques US qui entraina et entraine encore des catastrophes economiques , les humains n'apprendront jamais

vipsdesvips a écrit:

Tout va bien dans la zone euro...

RATP et SNCF : fin de la gratuité des transports pour les seniors

Les cartes Emeraude et Améthyste, qui permettaient aux personnes âgées ou handicapées de se déplacer gratuitement sur le réseau ferré d’Ile-de-France, deviennent payantes à partir du 1er novembre 2012.

http://www.reponseatout.com/reponse-conso/voyage-vacances/retard-train/ratp-et-sncf-fin-gratuite-transports-seniors-a107582


c'est donc çà le changement promis par mr Hollande?

vipsdesvips a écrit:

Olivier Delamarche : "On va se retrouver en short, bien avant d’être sur la plage !"

Il n'est pas convainquant, il a emmit trop de critique mais pas de solutions,je ne mettrais pas mon argent pour investir dans sa companies ou lui donner mon portfolio pour le gerer

juba2 a écrit:

Spoiler:

Il n'est pas convainquant, il a emmit trop de critique mais pas de solutions,je ne mettrais pas mon argent pour investir dans sa companies ou lui donner mon portfolio pour le gerer

exactement. Trop de negativite sans solution sans alternatives!

Le monsieur ou bien il est deprime ou bien il n'est pas du tout pro: le monde n'a pas commence a vec wall ST et continuera a tourner meme apres un eventuel hiver nucleaire! alors ecarter d'un geste le potentiel des pays emergents et rien que ceux la c'est du catastrophisme gratuit.

Ce qu'il aurait du dire est que l'economie va changer de forme, de centre de gravite et qu'il y aurait des changement drastiques.

changements = opportunites (et risques mais son bolot est de chercher et pointer les opoortunitees!)

discours creux 10 minutes de perdues pour entendre qq maugerer certains "pro" devront laisser de cote leur zone de confort mental avec le monde auquel ils se sont habitue et chercher ou creer des alternatives.

Autre vision (oui c'est le porte parole neoliberal mais il y'a au moins une tentative de realisme)

The Economist

Citation :

Comeback kid
America’s economy is once again reinventing itself
Jul 14th 2012 | from the print edition


ALMOST the only thing on which Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, his Republican challenger, agree is that the economy is in a bad way. Unemployment is stuck above 8% and growth probably slipped below an annualised 2% in the first half of this year. Ahead lie the threats of a euro break-up, a slowdown in China and the “fiscal cliff”, a withering year-end combination of tax increases and spending cuts. Mr Obama and Mr Romney disagree only on what would make things worse: re-electing a left-wing president who has regulated to death a private sector he neither likes nor understands; or swapping him for a rapacious private-equity man bent on enriching the very people who caused the mess.

America’s economy is certainly in a tender state. But the pessimism of the presidential slanging-match misses something vital. Led by its inventive private sector, the economy is remaking itself (see article). Old weaknesses are being remedied and new strengths discovered, with an agility that has much to teach stagnant Europe and dirigiste Asia.

Balance your imbalances

America’s sluggishness stems above all from pre-crisis excesses and the misshapen economy they created. Until 2008 growth relied too heavily on consumer spending and house-buying, both of them financed by foreign savings channelled through an undercapitalised financial system. Household debt, already nearly 100% of income in 2000, reached 133% in 2007. Recoveries from debt-driven busts always take years, as households and banks repair their balance-sheets.

Nonetheless, in the past three years that repair has proceeded fast. America’s houses are now among the world’s most undervalued: 19% below fair value, according to our house-price index. And because the Treasury and other regulators, unlike their euro-zone counterparts, chose to confront the rot in their financial system quickly, American banks have had to write off debts and raise equity faster than their peers. (Citigroup alone has flushed through some $143 billion of loan losses; no euro-zone bank has set aside more than $30 billion.) American capital ratios are among the world’s highest. And consumers have cut back, too: debts are now 114% of income.

New strengths have also been found. One is a more dynamic export sector. The weaker dollar helps explain why the trade deficit has shrunk from 6% of GDP in 2006 to about 4% today. But other, more permanent, shifts—especially the growth of a consuming class in emerging markets—augur well. On the campaign trail, both parties attack China as a currency-fiddling, rule-breaking supplier of cheap imports (see Lexington). But a richer China has become the third-largest market for America’s exports, up 53% since 2007.

And American exporters are changing. Some of the products—Boeing jets, Microsoft software and Hollywood films—are familiar. But there is a boom, too, in high-value services (architecture, engineering and finance) and a growing “app economy”, nurtured by Facebook, Apple and Google, which employs more than 300,000 people; its games, virtual merchandise and so on sell effortlessly across borders. Constrained by weakness at home and in Europe, even small companies are seeking a toehold in emerging markets. American manufacturers are recapturing some markets once lost to imports, and pioneering new processes such as 3D printing.

Meanwhile, what was once an Achilles heel is becoming a competitive advantage. America has paid dearly for its addiction to imported oil. Whenever West Texas Intermediate climbs above $100 per barrel (as it did in 2008, last year and again this year), growth suffers. But high prices have had an effect, restraining demand and stimulating supply. Net imports of oil this year are on track to be the lowest since 1995, and America should eventually become a net exporter of gas.

Many countries have shale gas, but, as it did with the internet revolution, America leads in exploiting it (see our special report this week). Federal money helped finance development of the “fracking” technology that makes shale gas accessible, just as it paid for the internet’s precursors. However its use was commercialised by a Texas wildcatter called George Mitchell, the sort of risk-taker America has in abundance. In Europe shale gas has been locked in by green rules and limited property rights. In America shale has already lowered consumers’ energy bills and, by displacing coal, carbon emissions. In future, it will give a spur to the domestic manufacture of anything needing large amounts of energy.

America’s work-out is not finished. Even when the results are more visible, it will leave many problems unsolved. Because the companies leading the process are so productive, they pay high wages but do not employ many people. They may thus do little to reduce unemployment, while aggravating inequality. Yet this is still a more balanced and sustainable basis for growth than what America had before—and a far better platform for prosperity than unreformed, elderly Europe.

Of cliffs, and other perils

What should the next president do to generate muscle in this new economy? First, do no harm. Not driving the economy over the fiscal cliff would be a start: instead, settle on a credible long-term deficit plan that includes both tax rises and cuts to entitlement programmes. There are other madnesses brewing. Some Democrats want to restrict exports of natural gas to hold down the price for domestic consumers—a brilliant strategy to discourage domestic investment and production. A braver Mr Obama would expedite approval of gas exports. For his part, Mr Romney should back off his promise to brand China a currency manipulator, an invitation to a trade war.

Second, the next president should fix America’s ramshackle public services. Even the most productive start-ups cannot help an economy held back by dilapidated roads, the world’s most expensive health system, underachieving union-dominated schools and a Byzantine immigration system that deprives companies of the world’s best talent. Focus on those things, Mr Obama and Mr Romney, and you will be surprised what America’s private sector can do for itself.

et ca aussi vaut le coup,

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Points of light
Amid the gloom there are unexpected signs of boom, especially in energy

http://www.economist.com/node/21558591

Sur un autre registre

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Where are the biggest companies in the world

WHEN RANKED by revenue America has almost twice as many companies in the biggest 500 then any other country, according to Fortune. This is not solely down to its size; America’s ratio of companies to people is also striking. It has one company on Fortune’s list for every 2.4m people, only a handful of European economies do better. China is moving in on America’s spot though. In 2005 the Middle Kingdom housed only 16 of the biggest firms. This year it has 73—more than Japan. In contrast to the American way, China's government has a hand in most of its biggest firms. The highest ranked is Sinopec, an oil producer, which came in fifth. A look at the ratio of big firms to GDP highlights the places where tax is low and business is easy to do. Luxembourg (not shown) does best with 34 companies per trillion dollars, followed by Switzerland and Taiwan. All 500 firms on the list racked up combined revenue of $29trn. From this $1.6trn was profit, about the same as Australia’s GDP.

snak-boss a écrit:

vipsdesvips a écrit:

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Les États-Unis se libereront sous peu de leur dependance energetique par rapport au Moyen Orient.

L'Age d'Argent des Etats-Unis commencera bientôt

A cote de cela (qui peut etre remis en cause si Romney/ Republicains remportent les elections et impliquer les US au M.O encore plus profondement qu'en Irak), il y'a aussi la fonte des glacier de l'Arctique, qui ouvre de novuelles voies maritimes et facilite la prospection petroliere et gaziere.

Phys.org

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Russia vows to open up Arctic to energy firms

Russia's President Vladimir Putin chairs an energy meeting at the Kremlin. Putin has vowed to conquer ever broader expanses of the Arctic for Russia's oil and natural gas giants while inviting foreign majors to take part in the development boom.

President Vladimir Putin vowed on Tuesday to conquer ever broader expanses of the Arctic for Russia's oil and natural gas giants while inviting foreign majors to take part in the development boom.

Russia's dominant leader invited both senior executives and ministers to the first major meeting devoted to energy since his return to the Kremlin for an historic third term in May.
Putin relied on soaring energy prices to ensure record growth during his 2000-2008 presidency and will be keen to maintain that performance even as world prices wobble and supplies slowly dwindle at old Siberian fields.
The Kremlin chief said the Arctic now represented Russia's main hope -- and that tie-ups with foreign majors were its best option for exploiting the forbidding environment fast.

Map of the Arctic showing existing territorial waters and possible future territorial claims. President Vladimir Putin has vowed to conquer ever broader expanses of the Arctic for Russia's oil and natural gas giants while inviting foreign majors to take part in the development boom.

"In the coming years, we have to develop the geography... and more actively reach new shelf deposits," Putin said in a live television transmission of the meeting.

"We must attract foreign capital," Putin added in reference to three major Arctic deals the state firm Rosneft signed in the past year in hope of gaining access to global markets and the technology needed to tap hard-to-reach sites.
"We have already seen such examples and many of them are of a grand scale. We have to establish stable rules of the game for the market, which in turn will help the foreigners build long-term plans.

Russia is currently the world's largest oil exporter and biggest natural gas producer.

In 2007, a mini-submarine placed a Russian flag on the Arctic seabed at a depth of 4,261 meters (13,980 feet) beneath the North Pole. President Vladimir Putin has vowed to conquer ever broader expanses of the Arctic for Russia's oil and natural gas giants while inviting foreign majors to take part in the development boom.

But that status has been a double-edge soared that has keep growth dependent on external factors and the government hesitant to invest in other industries during petrodollar-driven booms.

Russian leaders had made economic diversification their mantra throughout Putin's 12 years in power. Putin himself however said on Tuesday he viewed oil and gas as a high-tech industry that required further help from the state.
"When they say that we remain hooked on oil, this is without question partially true. And we must develop high-end technologies," said Putin.

"But one must not forget that the oil and gas industry is in fact one of those high-tech industries," Putin added.

(c) 2012 AFP

Les US d'un autre cote ne voudront pas se desengager totalement du M.O ne serait-ce que pour mettre des batons dans les roues a la competition Chinoise, Russe et Europeene.

En tout cas nous sommes dans un tournant.


Le changement climatique dont certains effet, apparement, se sont vus dans la meteo americaine recemment pourrait commencer a avoir des effets sur la securite alimentaire mondiale

Mother Jones

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Climate Change Is Already Shrinking Crop Yields

For years now, people have wondered how climate change will affect farming. How will humanity feed itself during a time of rising temperatures and recurring drought?

Here in the US, we're starting to get a taste of things to come—and it's bitter. Brutal heat is now roiling the main growing regions for corn, soy, and wheat, the biggest US crops. According to Bloomberg News, 71 percent of the Midwest is experiencing "drier-than-normal conditions," and temperatures are projected to be above 90 degrees in large swaths of key corn/soy-growing states Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana through July 7 if not longer.

As a result, Goldman Sachs projects that this year's corn yields will come in 7.5 percent below the USDA's projection of 166 bushels an acre. (Why is a Wall Street behemoth like Goldman Sachs fussing over corn yields? That's another story, altogether, and an interesting one). Accordingly, crop prices are rising steeply, Bloomberg reports.

Of course, we can't tie any individual heat wave to long-term climate trends—there's plenty of random weather variation even in times of climate stability. But we do know that hot, dry weather can stunt plant growth and reduce yields—and we also know that we can expect more hot, dry weather in key growing regions as the climate warms up.

I hope the current heat wave gets policymakers thinking about the effect of climate change on food, because for for a long time, the consensus was that global warming might be more or less neutral for agriculture. Sure, the thinking went, climate change will likely make droughts more common and make some already-hot areas too hot for farming; but it will also lengthen the growing season in cold-winter areas like the US Midwest, perhaps increasing crop yields. Also, all that carbon dioxide we're pumping into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels would be manna to plants, allowing them to grow faster. These factors, many thought, would largely cancel each other out, and mean that climate change would have no great effect on global food production.

But back in 2008, a pair of researchers from the USDA and Columbia University shattered that comforting idea. In a paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, they looked at three major US crops (corn, soy, and cotton) and found that rising temperatures would indeed cause a slight increase in crop yields—up to a certain point. But when temperatures climb above that critical threshold, yields would plunge dramatically. And here's the kicker: At current levels of greenhouse gas emissions, average temperatures are expected to rise well above the critical levels identified by the researchers. As a result, they project that yields will fall by the end of this century by as much as 43 percent "under the slowest warming scenario" and 79 percent "under the most rapid warming scenario."

The paper should have exploded like a bomb in US and even global policy circles. The US produces around 40 percent of the entire globe's corn and soy, the authors pointed out. The global food system is highly geared to those crops, and dwindling production in the US heartland would be devastating. You'd think policymakers would have been compelled to act. Instead, they looked the other way. President Obama's tepid push for a climate bill collapsed ignominiously in the Senate, and the much-ballyhooed Copenhagen global climate talks ended in a cloud of hot air.

And then in 2011, another major study, this one published in Science, found that climate change is already biting into yields of major crops. By 2008, global corn and wheat were 3.8 percent and 5.5 percent, respectively, lower than they would have been without climate change, they found. For soy and rice, the good and bad effects of climate change had, to that point, largely balanced out, they found. But these crops, too, could eventually see lower yields as temperatures keep rising.

What to do about this, especially when it seems apparent that there will be no global pact to cut greenhouse gas emissions any time soon?

The conventional answer is: Trust Monsanto, the dominant player in the genetically modified seed market. Back in 2008, the company announced a commitment to "increase global food production in the face of growing demand, limited natural resources, and a changing climate." It would do so by engineering novel seeds that "result in more production per unit of land, and reduced use of energy, fertilizer and water per unit produced." The company vowed to "double yield in its three core crops of corn, soybeans and cotton by 2030, compared to a base year of 2000."

US policymakers largely buy that line of thinking. In a statement announcing President Obama's "Feed the Future" initiative, USDA chief Tom Vilsack echoed industry talking points. He wrote:

Producers across the globe must also continue to embrace existing and emerging technologies to produce more per acre while using less water, fewer pesticides and herbicides and less energy. We must encourage the adoption of proved technologies such as biotechnology, conservation tillage, drip irrigation and multiple cropping practices for farmers where appropriate.

But the problem is, these new technologies have failed to materialize. So far, Monsanto has managed to produce just one of these wonder seeds, a "drought-tolerant" corn variety that the USDA approved for use last last year. The moment should have been a great success for Monsanto, but there was one problem: According to Monsanto's own data, the seeds don't work any better than already-existing conventional varieties, and the USDA acknowledged as much in its Final Environmental Assessment of the crop. The Union of Concerned Scientists' Doug Gurian-Sherman has looked closely at Monsanto's efforts to engineer crops that utilize both nitrogen and water more efficiently, and concluded that real breakthroughs on either front are highly unlikely. Here's Gurian-Sherman on why complex functions like the way a plant utilizes water are so hard to re-engineer:

Drought tolerance is a complex trait that can involve many different genes, corresponding to different ways the plant can respond to drought; genetic engineering can manipulate only a few genes at a time. And in the real world, droughts vary widely in severity and duration, affecting the crop at different stages of its growth, so any engineered gene will be more successful under some drought conditions than others. Genes that improve drought tolerance may have other effects on crop growth, some of which may be undesirable—a phenomenon known as pleiotropy. This has been commonly observed with many otherwise promising drought tolerance genes, and is likely a reflection of the interconnectedness of drought response with many other aspects of plant growth.

If Monsanto's high-tech promises for a bountiful future look vastly overblown, how should we respond to the challenge of maintaining abundance amid climate change? I'll examine that question in my next post.

Bloomberg

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U.S. Corn Growers Farming In Hell As Midwest Heat Spreads

[...]

Crops on July 1 were in the worst condition since 1988, and a Midwest heat wave last week set or tied 1,067 temperature records, government data show. Prices surged 37 percent in three weeks, and Rabobank International said June 28 that corn may rise 9.9 percent more by December to near a record $8 a bushel. The gain is threatening to boost food costs the United Nations says fell 15 percent from a record in February 2011 and feed prices for meat producers including Smithfield Foods Inc. (SFD)

“The drought is much worse than last year and approaching the 1988 disaster,” said John Cory, the chief executive officer of Rochester, Indiana-based grain processor Prairie Mills Products LLC. “There are crops that won’t make it. The dairy and livestock industries are going to get hit very hard. People are just beginning to realize the depth of the problem.”

[...]

The Economist

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An unconventional bonanza

New sources of gas could transform the world’s energy markets, says Simon Wright—but it won’t be quick or easy





COLOURLESS, ODOURLESS, LIGHTER than air. Natural gas may not have much impact on the senses, but as a source of heat and power it is transforming energy markets. Around 100AD Plutarch, a Graeco-Roman poet, noted the “eternal fires” in what is now Iraq. They were probably methane gas seeping out of the ground, ignited by lightning. Those eternal fires are now proliferating. An unexpected boom in shale gas that has taken off in America may well spread elsewhere and will add massively to global gas supplies.

Shale gas—an “unconventional” source of methane, like coal-bed gas (in coal seams) and tight gas (trapped in rock formations)—has rapidly transformed America’s energy outlook. At the same time discoveries of vast reserves of conventional gas from traditional wells have pushed up known reserves around the world. Gas is the only fossil fuel set to increase its share of energy demand in the years to come.



For a long time it was regarded as oil’s poor relation. In the late 18th century William Murdoch, a Scottish engineer, used it to light his house, but it did not catch on until some decades later when it became popular for illuminating homes and streets, replacing flickering candles. Commercial exploitation of gas and oil began around the same time, yet gas remained a niche product for lighting. And despite its rapid rise in recent years, it will still lag oil as a source of energy by 2035, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), a rich-world energy club—and overtake coal by then only if the new gas reserves are fully exploited.

The trouble with gas is that it is difficult and expensive to transport. That used to be true of oil too, but since the development of supertankers in the 1960s it can be shifted relatively cheaply to find a customer in the world market. Gas needs a ready buyer and a way of delivering it.

A priceless commodity

Because of those hefty transport costs, gas does not behave like a commodity. Only one-third of all gas is traded across borders, compared with two-thirds of oil. Other commodities fetch roughly the same price the world over, but gas has no global price. In America, as well as in Britain and Australia, it is traded freely and prices are set through competition. In continental Europe traded gas markets are gaining a foothold, but most gas is delivered through pipelines and sold on long-term contracts linked to the price of oil, for which it used to be seen as a substitute. Gas-poor Asia relies heavily on imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG). “Stranded gas”, too far from its markets to go down a pipe, can be turned into a liquid by cooling it to -162°C, shipped in specialist tankers and turned back into gas at its destination. But the huge plants needed to do the job at both ends are very costly.

Since gas prices in different parts of the world are set by quite different mechanisms, they vary wildly across the globe. In America, where shale gas is whooshing out of the ground, they recently fell to a ten-year low. In Asia they can be ten times the American level.




Gas all over

Global reserves have been steadily increasing for at least 30 years. According to a report from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), published last year, world production has grown significantly too, rising by two-fifths between 1990 and 2009, twice as fast as that of oil. Only half a decade ago it looked as though the world might have only 50 or 60 years-worth of gas. Now shale and other unconventional as well as new conventional gas finds have increased that period to 200 years or more, by some estimates.

The unconventional-gas bonanza has roughly doubled the gas resource base, a measure of the total gas in the ground rather than what might be economically recoverable. In 2009 the IEA estimated the “long-term global recoverable gas resource base” at 850 trillion cubic metres (tcm), against 400tcm only a year earlier. The main reason for the rethink was shale gas and other unconventionals. Not just America but parts of Europe, China, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Canada and several African countries, among others, sit atop as yet unknown quantities of gas that could transform their energy outlook.

Better technology has helped, and so has the high oil price. The spiralling price of crude has caused oil companies to search even harder for it. But before a test well has been drilled, it is near-impossible to be sure whether the geological idiosyncrasies that excite oilmen will yield either oil or gas (or sometimes both, and often nothing). Of late, big oil companies have found plenty of gas.

Not only have breakthroughs in technology opened up America’s shale beds, but advances in drilling in very deep water have dramatically changed exploration in the sea. Australia will emerge as a gas superpower as it begins to deliver large quantities of LNG from offshore fields. And better technology and global warming is unlocking the Arctic’s natural bounty.

But there are reservations. Last year the IEA published a report entitled, “Are We Entering a Golden Age of Gas?” The question mark reflects the constraints that public disquiet about shale gas might put on its development. That is one reason why Fatih Birol, the IEA’s chief economist, is far from certain that America’s shale boom can be replicated elsewhere.

In the most promising scenario, if shale development goes full steam ahead, the IEA reckons that the share of gas in the global energy mix will rise from 21% today to 25% in 2035. That may not sound much of an increase, but over that period total global consumption will grow spectacularly. If the obstacles can be overcome, more gas and lower prices will mean a rise of 50% in global demand for gas between 2010 and 2035, according to the IEA.

What has made gas so exciting is not just the steep rise in supply but also the wide range of uses for it. It is a flexible fuel, capable of heating homes, fuelling industrial boilers and providing feedstock for the petrochemicals industry, where it is turned into plastics, fertiliser and other useful stuff. It is also making small but significant progress as a fuel for lorries and buses.

But the biggest advances have been in power generation. A technological breakthrough, the combined-cycle gas turbine, a spin-off from the aviation industry, has transformed the economics of the industry. Not only has it made it cheaper to generate electricity from gas, but the process releases up to 50% less carbon dioxide than does coal. As governments strive to cut greenhouse-gas emissions, replacing coal with gas will bring fairly swift results. Already the share of gas in the overall energy mix, which had remained at 16% from the late 1960s to the 1990s, has risen to 21%.

Gas power stations are a “low-regret” option, according to Michael Stoppard of IHS CERA, a research firm. They are relatively cheap to build, beating nuclear power hands down in terms of capital costs, and in most cases they are also less expensive than renewables. The EU hopes that by 2050 some 97% of power generation will come from renewables, but gas power stations are likely to be needed for decades yet to provide flexibility and security. And if gas is cheap enough and techniques such as carbon capture and storage can be developed to make commercial sense, gas could thrive for much longer even in a world that had radically cut carbon emissions.

Except in America, though, gas is currently expensive, and shifting it is likely to remain costly. Gas markets are regional. The stuff is mainly delivered down pipelines that stretch across countries and even continents, but not between them. Pipelines cost million of dollars a kilometre to build. The business model of developing a gasfield has been to find buyers and lock them into long-term contracts to ensure that the costs of developing and delivering the gas will be paid back. The alternative is to ship the gas in liquid form, as LNG. But projects to liquefy gas also require huge investments, and often finding long-term buyers too.

Well oiled

Historical factors have led to another anomaly: much of the gas traded across borders is sold at prices linked to those of crude oil. When gas was first brought to market as a commercial fuel in the 1960s, as an alternative to home heating oil, it made sense to price it against a substitute. But there was also a more subtle reason. Oil was used as an independent price arbiter for Dutch gas in the 1960s and then for Algerian and Norwegian gas in the 1970s because neither side could influence the supply and demand for it. The system persisted as Russian gas came to Europe in the late 1970s. But the economics have changed, and valuing one commodity in terms of another now seems bizarre.

Britain has had competition based on supply and demand since the deregulation of the energy industry in the 1990s. The fuel is traded at the National Balancing Point, a virtual hub. Similar arrangements are now spreading across north-western Europe as the European Union is switching to hub-based gas trading at the virtual Title Transfer Facility (TTF), as well as at Zeebrugge in Belgium and NetConnect Germany (NCG) and Gaspool in Germany. The model is America’s Henry Hub in Louisiana, where nine interstate gas pipelines meet and from where the gas is distributed to buyers, setting a benchmark for prices across America.

A more competitive market the world over would doubtless make gas cheaper by breaking the link with oil, but that will be difficult to bring about. Gazprom, Russia’s huge state-run gas producer and supplier of 25% of Europe’s gas, is strongly opposed to dropping oil indexation. A tussle is under way between it and the continent’s big buyers. Some pundits say that gas must eventually become a global fungible product like oil, with regional price differences closing as more gas is shifted in the form of LNG, draining gluts and making up shortfalls in regional production in North America, Europe and Asia. But others reckon it will never happen.

Gas producers are naturally happy with the high prices resulting from oil indexation, arguing that without them the economics of big gas projects would never work. But Rick Smead of Navigant, a consultancy, thinks there are good reasons for all concerned to want competitive gas prices. He points out that they would reduce regional price volatility and provide gas producers with a broad and flexible market instead of having to rely on a single consumer at the end of a pipeline. That should offer an incentive to make the huge investments required.

If the “shale gale” blowing through America can be replicated worldwide, the huge surpluses it would bring could hasten the advent of a global market. Just as the 20th century was the age of oil, the 21st could prove to be the century of gas.

Gas works
Shale gas is giving a big boost to America’s economy

http://www.economist.com/node/21558459



Fracking
Landscape with well
Despite its poor image, fracking causes little mess or disruption

http://www.economist.com/node/21558462

La saga des terres rares, ou rare earth, a mettre ne parallele avec la volonte de la chine, en partie, a booster son industrie energie solaire et voiture electrique et ceci en bloquant sutout les US de faire de meme. nous sommes probablement dans un tournant sur quel pays (Chine ou US) aura acces au plus gros marche avec l'offre la plus competitive dans la nouvelle-nouvelle economie des energies renouvelables entres autres. Ce sont ces evenements "insignifiants" qui montrent la transformation qualitative de l'ambition industrielle chinoise a cote de , par exemple, s'offrir l'equipementier de construction allemand Putzmeister, l'un des principaux competiteur de Caterpillar, dans le giron d'une compagnie publique. La Chine travaille calmement et methodiquement pour meriter sa place de superpuissance. Respects.

Citation :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_earth_element

http://ictsd.org/i/news/biores/138193/
11th July 2012

Citation :

China Blocks EU, US, Japan Request for WTO Dispute Panel on Rare Earths

The EU, US, and Japan have taken the next step in their dispute with China over the latter’s export restrictions on rare earths, formally requesting the establishment of a dispute panel at Tuesday’s WTO Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) meeting. While the request was rejected by Beijing, trade experts expect a second panel request to be made later this month.

The request is the latest effort by Brussels, Washington, and Tokyo to prompt Beijing to lift its export restrictions on rare earths, as well as tungsten and molybdenum (see Bridges Trade BioRes, 15 March 2012). The 17 rare earth elements have unique magnetic, heat resistant, and phosphorescent properties, and are essential for the production of high-tech and green energy products, including wind turbines, engines for electric and hybrid vehicles, and medical equipment.

Beijing, which produces over 90 percent of the global supply of rare earths, maintains that these measures are intended to limit environmental damage and conserve natural resources, with officials recently defending the restrictions in a white paper issued on 20 June (see Bridges Trade BioRes, 22 June 2012).

“The government is strengthening the management of the industry to protect the environment and resources, which is beneficial for the sustainable development of the industry and totally conforms to WTO regulations,” Su Bo, China’s vice minister of industry and information technology, said last month. “The protection of the environment is never a pretext for gaining advantage or increasing economic returns.”

The complaining parties, for their part, argue that the export restrictions are disruptive to domestic industries and result in increased production costs, while also providing Chinese competitors with cheaper and easier access to the elements compared to foreign manufacturers.

“China’s restrictions on rare earths and other products are a violation of China’s WTO commitments and continue to significantly distort global markets, creating a disadvantage for our companies,” EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht said in a statement on 27 June.


The panel request comes after formal consultations between the parties - the first step in the WTO dispute settlement process - failed to reach a resolution. A second panel request from the complainants is widely expected at the upcoming DSB meeting on 23 July; should the second request be made, a panel will automatically be established, as required by WTO rules. Experts anticipate a panel ruling in late summer 2013, at the earliest.


Export restrictions draw attention in Indonesia

The outcome of this case is being highly watched by trade observers, given its potential ramifications for the use of export restrictions in other countries. Just last week, Indonesia announced it would be moving forward with its plan to tax unprocessed mineral exports, despite protests from both the foreign and domestic business communities.

The new tax is designed to prevent overexploitation of Indonesian mines before Jakarta’s 2014 ban on the export of unprocessed metals goes into effect, government officials have said.

Under the impending 2014 ban, miners will be expected to either establish smelters or cooperate with other companies to process minerals ahead of exporting; if they wish to continue exporting unprocessed ores once the ban is in place, miners will need to demonstrate concrete plans for eventually implementing one or both of these requirements.

ICTSD reporting; “U.S., Europe and Japan Escalate Rare-Earth Dispute With China,” THE NEW YORK TIMES, 27 June 2012; “Govt to go ahead with export restriction despite protests,” THE JAKARTA POST, 6 July 2012.

Proactive Investors Australia

Citation :

China building up rare earths strategic reserve

Monday, July 16, 2012 by Bevis Yeo

China is building a strategic reserve and launching its first rare earths spot trading platform in August.

This is believed to include the purchase of about 6 billion yuan (A$919.65 million) worth of rare earth.

The country, which produces more than 90% of global rare earth supplies, has struggled with excessive production and has imposed strict production caps and export quotas in order to check this.

Starting a strategic reserve is seen as a move to give it more say over the pricing of rare earths, which are used in the electronics, defence and renewable energy industries.

China’s State Council had first suggested establishing a national rare earth strategic reserve system, combining the commercial stockpiling with national rare earth reserve bases, in May last year.

Other countries such as Japan have also used strategic reserves to ensure the sustainable development of high-tech industries.

The next step in China’s strategy to stabilise prices appears to be the launch of a rare earth trading platform on August 8, a move spear headed by China's largest Baotou Steel Rare Earth Hi-Tech Co and other major Chinese producers.

The exchange will be located in Baotou city in China's northern region of Inner Mongolia, home to nearly half the world's light rare-earth output.

These moves come as China remains locked in a trade dispute with the European Union, United States and Japan, who have complained to the World Trade Organization that Beijing illegally choked exports while holding down prices for domestic manufacturers.

China has denied the charges, saying product quality variations account for the price gap between the metals it produces for export and domestic use.

It had previously claimed that its toughening of rare earth production regulations since 2007 was a bid to minimise the environmental impact caused by excessive exploitation though this defence was shot down by the WTO, which said that it only applied if China was giving the domestic and international markets equal treatment.

Rare earths cover a group of 17 strategically important metals, including scandium and yttrium, which are key components for modern-day technologies such as hybrid electric vehicles, liquid crystal display and other high-tech products.

The US Geological Survey says China has about half of global rare earth reserves, with 55 million tonnes, as compared to Russia with 19 million and the U.S. with 13 million though China says its reserves are closer to a quarter of global reserves.

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The China Post

Citation :

Vietnam and Japan to start rare-earth production in '13

HANOI -- Japan and Vietnam on Saturday agreed to jointly develop rare earths to combat China's near-monopoly on the supply of the elements needed to produce many modern technological devices.
“Japan and Vietnam have agreed to strengthen cooperation in order to start production in 2013,” Japanese Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba said after meeting with Vietnamese counterpart Pham Binh Minh in Hanoi.

Japan agreed to cooperate on exploration, mining and processing of rare earths starting with the Dong Pao project in northern Vietnam's Lai Chau province. The project would supply more than 20 percent of Japan's needs.

Plans call for the production of 3,000 metric tons a year by 2013 and 7,000 tons by as early as 2014.

Japanese makers of electric cars, wind turbines and oil-refining catalysts have sought to reduce use of the metals following China's move to limit exports of the minerals.

China supplies more than 90 percent of the global market. Beijing announced in July 2010 that it would control exports more tightly.

A report by the U.S. government's Congressional Research Service estimated that in 2010, China had 55 million tons of rare-earth element reserves, about half of the world's total.

La Carte des terres rares depuis l'US Geological survey

http://mrdata.usgs.gov/mineral-resources/ree.html

Depot de terre rare au Maroc

http://mrdata.usgs.gov/ree/show-ree.php?rec_id=89

Citation :

Tamazert (Oued Tamazert, Tamazeght, Bou Agrao)

Carbonatite rare earth element deposit in , Morocco

Sections of this page: [Geologic] - [Economic] - [Reference]

Geologic Information
Country Morocco
Geographic location: -4.65, 32.566667
Geographic context:
Political divisions (FIPS codes)
Morocco(country)
Africa(continent)
Land(continent)
Location references
Woolley, A.R., 2001, Alkaline rocks and carbonatites of the world-- Part 3: Africa: London, The Geological Society, 372 p.
Deposit type Carbonatite
Age of deposit Tertiary
REE minerals synchysite
parisite
monazite
Ore minerals apatite
pyrochlore
uranium
thorium
barite
strontianite
fluorite
zircon
columbite
pyrite
magnetite
celestite
galena
Gangue minerals calcite
ankerite
Host rock types carbonatite
nepheline syenite
breccia
Geologic map unit Mainly sedimentary terrane, middle Mesozoic
Economic Information
Status Occurrence
Reference information
Comments Carbonatite may be hydrothermally altered.
General references
Mourtada, S., Le Bas, M.J., and Pin, C., 1997, Pétrogenèse des magnésio-carbonatites du complexe de Tamazert (Haut Atlas marocain): Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences, Serie II, v. 325, p. 559-564.
Woolley, A.R., 2001, Alkaline rocks and carbonatites of the world-- Part 3: Africa: London, The Geological Society, 372 p.
Arab Organisation for Mineral Resources, 1987, Mineral deposit map of the Arab world-- Explantaory notes and maps: Rabat, Morocco, Arab Organisation for Mineral Resources, 430 p.

Article datant de Mars 2012 mais intererssant

Citation :

Analysis: China's budding Caterpillars break new ground overseas

Reuters) - When concrete-pump maker and symbol of German industrial strength Putzmeister rolled up at Japan's Fukushima last year to help tackle the nuclear disaster, few industry watchers might have guessed it would soon be bought by China's Sany Heavy Industry.

Sany (600031.SS), often referred to as China's Caterpillar (CAT.N), and other top domestic construction gear makers such as XCMG Group and Zoomlion Heavy Industry (1157.HK) 000157.SZ are stepping up their overseas hunt for assets that will give them more than just technological know-how.

They're not just dismantling production lines and shipping them home, but going after brand recognition and established distribution networks, driving China towards its three-year goal of becoming the world's top exporter in the $150 billion global market for equipment like bulldozers, excavators and forklifts.

"Engineering machinery could well be a sector where China can really start the production and go out and take a much larger share," said David Chin, UBS head of investment banking in Asia.

The machinery manufacturers, little known outside of China a few years ago, are already making a mark. Chinese manufacturers accounted for 15 percent of the top 50 construction gear companies' revenues globally in 2010 compared with just 1.6 percent in 2003, according to industry data provider KHL Group.

The pace of their overseas expansion is set to accelerate.

State-owned XCMG Group, whose sales at 87 billion yuan ($13.8 billion)were about a quarter of Caterpillar's last year, clinched two European acquisitions in 2011 and has said it is seeking bigger overseas assets to power its sales target of 300 billion yuan a year in 2015 and a goal of becoming the world's No.3.

Chinese media have reported it may buy a stake in German concrete-pump maker Schwing GmbH, although an XCMG spokesman declined to comment.

And German banking sources told Reuters a Chinese company is interested in Schwing, with one saying "it could be a deal like Putzmeister".