Shine on the future.

Some events in Australia caught my eye. I’ll start with the positive one. It’s a Tesla project where head guy, Elon Musk said his company would build a 100-megawatt battery within 100 days, he did it. Apparently South Australia has experienced severe power outages and the lithium ion battery is capable of powering 30,000 homes. Tesla built it for free too using the same technology that it uses for cars. Storage has long been an issue for renewable energy that isn’t used straightaway. It looks like this technology could provide an answer. Tesla is not the only one in the market. I read that another battery, 50 per cent bigger, is set to go live in South Korea soon and Chinese companies are active too.

There has been a public furore over the behaviour of some of Australia’s banks. Here we go again. The government has been under pressure over it and now it has announced that is going to hold a royal commission inquiry into the nation’s banking and financial sector. Treatment of customers, interest rate rigging, and I read that the Commonwealth Bank is looking at fines relating to alleged largescale money laundering. Proceedings have been launched by Australia’s financial intelligence agency concerning nearly 54,000 instances. One would have hope that lessons had been learned from the financial crash but seemingly not.

Brexit. Follow the money? No surprises there. The EU are panic stricken that their budgets will be slashed and desperate for the UK to keep the gravy flowing, figuratively speaking, for a few years. For its part the UK is looking to keep the gravy from going over the channel. The result, a rather tawdry, bitter affair that looks to me to be all about the money. The latest is around a $60 billion settlement offered by the UK. The UK has accepted there is some liability, while the EU is looking for the settlement to be as large as possible. The offer may get rejected but there will doubtless be talks and talks within talks and agendas will be pursued. Something will be worked out. Maybe an arch deal maker could be brought in?

North Korea has launched another missile and boasts the whole of the U.S. is within range. President Trump has tweeted, and the war of words goes on. Keep an eye out for the Winter Olympics in South Korea early next year. If there’s an opportunity to grandstand and kick something off with the eyes of the world on hand, it’s then.

The tweets keep coming and President Trump keeps on stirring the pot with friend and foe alike. More recently it was his retweeting of inflammatory videos from a UK farright group that drew the ire of UK Prime Minister Theresa May who was then rebuked as well. Way to go. Who needs friends anyway?

The price of oil has recovered a little. Maybe because of the sabre rattling of Saudi Arabia and Iran and maybe because OPEC and Russia have agreed a deal on less production going into next year. I don’t really buy it. Getting a meaningful guess of oil production for me is like counting grains of sand on the beach, tedious and of little value. If the price of the black stuff can be held to a level where production is viable, workers keep their jobs and consumers aren’t gouged then I guess that works.