Thursday 12 November 2015

EUSSR Earthquake.



Baltic Dry Index. 599 -23        Brent Crude 46.03

LIR Gold Target in 2019: $30,000.  Revised due to QE programs.

I'm normally not a praying man, but if you're up there, please save me Superman.

Juncker, with apologies to Homer Simpson.

While Germany attempts to turn central Europe into a German version of the middle east, 
the UK looks increasingly to be headed for Brexit. But if Brexit happens, it will be because the EUSSR chose not to reform. Others will surely follow the UK in leaving the unreformed EUSSR. The new rising German Khanistan in Europe, is likely to become a very big fish in a very small pond. An earthquake is happening in continental Europe.  Merkel unilaterally altered the rules. The other members of continental Europe are fighting back. We are witnessing the death of the great Bilderberger project of imposing on Europe a one size fits all United States of Europe. 2015 is changing the old order.

Meet the City’s Money Men Who Want the U.K. to Leave the EU

November 11, 2015 — 12:00 AM GMT Updated on November 11, 2015 — 6:34 AM GMT
London’s top financiers and executives warn that a British vote to leave the European Union will have dire consequences: economic chaos, diminished trade opportunities and a decline in the City of London’s role as a premier hub for global business and finance.

Investor Richard Tice says they don’t speak for him.
"The biggest risk is staying in something that, frankly, is flat-lining and not helping its citizens," Tice, chief executive officer of property-investment firm Quidnet Capital Partners, said over an early-morning cappuccino across from his office in London’s gilded Mayfair district. 
A slim 51-year-old from England’s industrial Midlands whose firm manages about 500 million pounds ($756 million) worth of real estate, Tice is backing a campaign in favor of exit. A two-year stint in Paris in the 1990s convinced him Britain and continental Europe have fundamentally different cultures -- and that his country has nothing to lose from going its own way.
Tice is among a small group of prominent financial-sector figures publicly backing a U.K. departure from the EU. Others say they’ll endorse leaving if Prime Minister David Cameron doesn’t negotiate fundamental changes to the U.K’s relationship with the rest of Europe -- more fundamental than those Cameron favors.
----Wealthy or not, exit backers are swimming against a tide of business leaders urging the country to stay in, including top executives such as Stuart Rose, the former chairman of Marks & Spencer Plc, and BAE Systems Plc chairman Roger Carr. Many global financial institutions, including Citigroup Inc. and Germany’s Deutsche Bank AG, also have indicated support for continued British membership.

Those willing to contemplate an exit, by contrast, tend to work at smaller, less internationally-oriented firms. They argue their views are more representative of public opinion, and of the bulk of the British economy.

Howard Shore, executive chairman of broker and asset manager Shore Capital, says departure could allow the U.K. to rebuild what he sees as the freewheeling, entrepreneurial atmosphere of the 1980s, when then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was deregulating financial services. With about 150 employees and 800 million pounds under management, his company is by no means tiny, but it’s still small enough to feel the pinch of time-consuming regulations, said Shore, 55.
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Slovenia Follows Hungary in Building Fence to Shut Out Migrants

November 10, 2015 — 2:05 PM GMT
Slovenia will start building “technical barriers" on its border with fellow European Union member Croatia, taking a cue from Hungary which diverted people seeking refuge to neighboring countries by building fortifications.

Slovenia, on the southeastern edge of the European Union’s Schengen travel zone, was expecting as many as 30,000 migrants in the coming days, Prime Minister Miro Cerar said on Tuesday. More than 171,000 people fleeing conflicts in the Middle East and beyond have entered Slovenia already, according to police.

"As a man I don’t wish to build technical barriers, but as a prime minister I have a duty to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe,” Cerar told reporters in the capital Ljubljana. “The flow of migrants for a country of 2 million residents is just too big.”

With hundreds of thousands of refugees arriving by sea and land this year and tens of thousands more on their way, EU governments are grappling with a crisis on a scale not seen since the 1940s. Some, like Germany, have offered shelter, while others responded by closing borders and building fences or shuttling migrants across frontiers for other countries to deal with.

Hungary Against Taking Even a ‘Single Syrian’ from Germany

November 11, 2015 — 8:18 AM GMT
Germany shouldn’t send back refugees to the their first point-of-entry in the European Union based on the bloc’s Dublin accord, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said, according to an interview with MTI news service.

“The Dublin system is dead since apart from a few exceptions, countries aren’t abiding by its terms,” Szijjarto said on Wednesday, according to MTI. “Not a single Syrian” should be returned from western Europe to Hungary, he said.

Hungary has built a razor-wire fence along its southern border to keep refugees out and has been the staunchest critic of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door policy to welcome an estimated million migrants this year, mostly refugees from Syria.

Merkel Urged to Shift Her `Moral' Refugee Stance by EU's Tusk

Updated on November 9, 2015 — 8:14 PM GMT
European Union President Donald Tusk said Germany needs to make it clear that Europe’s ability to absorb refugees is limited, challenging Chancellor Angela Merkel to signal toughness alongside moral principles.

Tusk’s comments in Berlin coincide with efforts by Merkel to maintain an open door for the 800,000 or more refugees and migrants expected in Germany this year while containing the domestic fallout that’s eroding her poll ratings. A Merkel ally in his previous post as Polish prime minister, Tusk couched his critique in a plea for German leadership as Europe faces challenges from countries such as Russia, on energy security and in securing the EU’s outer borders.

“They are of a European rather than specifically German nature,” he said in a speech Monday. “But whether Europe is able to meet those challenges will depend largely on Germany’s attitude.”
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Up next more on the Great German “clean diesel” fraud. Since this fraud is making people ill and a few to an untimely death, why is Germany treating it   as of no importance? Why is every other nation giving Germany a walk?

Germany Cites Signs of More Elevated Diesel Pollution in Probe

November 11, 2015 — 11:30 AM GMT
Germany’s diesel pollution probe in the wake of the Volkswagen AG cheating scandal has found signs of elevated emissions in some cars, authorities said in initial results of tests planned for more than 50 car models.

Regulators and carmakers are in talks about "partly elevated levels of nitrogen oxides" found in raw data from some of the cars in the probe, the Federal Motor Transport Authority, or KBA, said in a statement Wednesday. Vehicles were chosen for testing based on new-car registration data as well as "verified indications" from third parties and were evaluated on test beds as well as on the streets.

German authorities are about two-thirds finished with the review they started in late September, when the Volkswagen scandal prompted a deeper look at real-world diesel emissions. Volkswagen admitted to rigging the engines of about 11 million cars with software that could cheat regulations by turning on full pollution controls only in testing labs, not on the road. The scandal has since spread to include carbon dioxide emissions labels in another 800,000 vehicles, including one type of gasoline engine.

Other major automakers, including BMW AG and Daimler AG, have said they didn’t manipulate emissions tests.

KBA didn’t provide a time frame for the expected final results from its review, which includes cars from Volkswagen’s Audi, VW and Porsche brands as well as BMW, Mercedes, Peugeot and others. A spokesman declined to comment on which models had shown signs of elevated NOx pollution.

In China news, China serves notice that the rules change from December next year. It’s not 1945 -2005 any more.

China warns WTO its cheap exports will soon be harder to resist

Wed Nov 11, 2015 5:11pm EST
China has served notice to World Trade Organization members including the European Union and United States that complaints about its cheap exports will need to meet a higher standard from December 2016, a Beijing envoy said at a WTO meeting.

Ever since it joined the WTO in 2001, China has frequently attracted complaints that its exports are being "dumped", or sold at unfairly cheap prices on foreign markets. Under world trade rules, importing countries can slap punitive tariffs on goods that are suspected of being dumped.

Normally such claims are based on a comparison with domestic prices in the exporting country.

But the terms of China's membership stated that -- because it was not a "market economy" -- other countries did not need to use China's domestic prices to justify their accusations of Chinese dumping, but could use other arguments.

China's representative at a WTO meeting on Tuesday said the practice was "outdated, unfair and discriminatory" and under its membership terms, it would automatically be treated as a "market economy" after 15 years, which meant Dec. 11, 2016.

All WTO members would have to stop using their own calculations from that date, said the Chinese envoy, whose name was not given by a WTO official who spoke to reporters about the meeting.

Dumping complaints are a frequent cause of trade disputes at the WTO, and dumping duties are even more frequently levied on Chinese products.

In September alone, the WTO said it had been notified of EU anti-dumping actions on 22 categories of Chinese exports, from solar power components to various types of steel products and metals, as well as food ingredients such as aspartame, citric acid and monosodium glutamate. The EU was also slapping duties on Chinese bicycles, ring binder mechanisms and rainbow trout.

From the end of next year, such lists would need to be based on China's domestic prices "to avoid any unnecessary WTO disputes", the Chinese representative said.
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We close for today with Brazil. More trouble arrives for the sinking commodities behemoths. I suspect this human and environmental disaster will bring in a new 21st century regime for tailing ponds and dams globally. Mining costs are about to go higher following Samarco Mineração.

Brazil vows to make BHP, Vale pay for deadly mine disaster

Wed Nov 11, 2015 9:35pm EST
Brazil's government said on Wednesday it may fine mining giants BHP Billiton Ltd and Vale SA for the "environmental catastrophe" caused by ruptured dams at an iron ore mine jointly owned by the companies in a southeastern state.

The government is increasingly concerned over the rising death toll and contaminated mud flowing through two states as a result of the disaster. It is studying the mine's permits and will ensure the owners pay for cleanup costs, Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira said in Brasília, the capital.

"If federal fines are applicable, we will apply them," Teixeira told reporters. "There will be punishment, and under Brazilian law the environment has to be repaired."

Her remarks are the strongest yet from the government, which was caught off-guard by a disaster that killed at least eight people and left another 21 missing in the mineral-rich state of Minas Gerais nearly a week ago.

The warning came as the chief executives of Australia-based BHP, the world's largest mining company, and Brazil's Vale, the world's biggest iron ore miner, took responsibility for the disaster.

After surveying the devastated area together, BHP CEO Andrew Mackenzie and Vale CEO Murilo Ferreira told a news conference their companies would meet all their obligations as joint owners of the mine, which is formally run by Samarco Mineração SA[SAMNE.UL].

They said BHP and Vale would create a joint fund for the recovery costs, but added that it was too soon to calculate how much would be needed. They also reaffirmed their long-term commitment to the joint venture.

"We are 100 percent committed to do everything we can do to support Samarco and make this right," Mackenzie said. "We are deeply sorry for everyone who has or will suffer for this terrible tragedy."

The apologies, however, are not doing much to calm nerves. More than 500 people remain displaced because of destroyed homes, and recovery crews are slogging through nearly 100 km (62 miles) of mud-caked floodplain in a search for more victims.

Fernando Pimentel, the governor of Minas Gerais, said on Wednesday the companies were not doing enough to address the problems caused by the disaster, including the interruption of water service for hundreds of thousands of residents downstream.

"Samarco, to blame for all of this, will have to make a greater effort," Pimentel told reporters in Governador Valadares, a city of 300,000 residents that is now having its water trucked in.

President Dilma Rousseff, who will fly over the disaster area on Thursday with Teixeira, believes the mining companies must pay for the cleanup of devastated and flooded villages and the restoration of water supplies, a presidential aide said.

---- Neither the companies nor Brazilian officials have determined a cause for the ruptures, though Samarco acknowledged that workers, 13 of whom were washed away by the torrent, were engaged in an expansion of the first dam when it burst. The work was necessary because of increased output at the mine.

A state prosecutor on Wednesday said investigators are probing reports that Vale contributed to higher water volumes behind the dam by sending waste from one of its nearby mines to Samarco's tailings pond. 
When a reporter asked about the reports at the news conference, the executives did not answer.

The disaster has become a public relations, regulatory and financial nightmare for the companies. Politicians, environmentalists and residents are calling for tougher rules on the mining industry, which employs hundreds of thousands of people and is a major source of export revenue.

---- The mine employs about 1,800 workers, most of whom are now on paid leave as operations have been halted.
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"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."

Albert Einstein.

At the Comex silver depositories Tuesday final figures were: Registered 43.34 Moz, Eligible 119.02 Moz, Total 163.36 Moz. 

Crooks and Scoundrels Corner

The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.

The Man Accused of Masterminding the Hacks That Shook Wall Street

November 10, 2015 — 10:08 PM GMT
Through the dark world of cybercrime, its tentacles spread everywhere: stock manipulation, money laundering, gambling and more.
Nothing in the annals of corporate hacking compares to the portrait U.S. authorities painted Tuesday of a vast, global crime syndicate -- a mob for the digital age. As described by federal prosecutors, it was an operation of breathtaking scale, involving more than 100 people in a dozen countries, with illicit proceeds stretching into the hundreds of millions of dollars.
At its head is a mysterious Israeli, Gery Shalon -- a 31-year-old from the Republic of Georgia who prosecutors said used aliases, fake passports and banking havens to turn hacking into the backbone of his criminal enterprise.
Much as the mafia gained footholds in construction, shipping, trucking and gambling, Shalon’s organization was a conglomerate that allegedly ran illegal Internet casinos and elaborate pump-and-dump stock schemes, while dabbling in credit-card fraud and fake pharmaceuticals.
His group is the thread that runs through many of the biggest cyber-attacks of recent years, including the largest bank breach on record, involving the theft of information relating to 83 million customer accounts from JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Along with JPMorgan, Fidelity Investments Ltd., E*Trade Financial Corp., Scottrade Financial Services Inc. and Dow Jones & Co., a unit of News Corp., confirmed they had been among the victims of hackers who worked for the group. The indictment unsealed Tuesday against Shalon and two other men didn’t name those institutions, saying only that hackers linked with the group had breached banks and other financial firms, stealing information on 100 million of their customers.
“The conduct alleged in this case showcases the brave new world of hacking for profit,” U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara in Manhattan said Tuesday in announcing two of the indictments that laid out parts of the scheme.
“It is no longer hacking merely for a quick payout,” Bharara said. “It is hacking as a business model.”
----Shalon’s alleged ring processed payment information for fake pharmaceuticals and fake anti-virus software. Its members sent misleading stock pitches to clients of banks and brokerages, whose e-mail addresses they’d stolen. They profited by using trading accounts set up under fake names and used dozens of shell companies and bank and brokerage accounts around the world to launder money. They also tried to extract nonpublic information from financial corporations, prosecutors said.

Shalon -- also known as Garri Shalelashvili, Phillipe Mousset and Christopher Engeham -- was the self-described “founder” of the enterprise, according to an indictment unsealed in Manhattan that also named Joshua Aaron and Ziv Orenstein. Shalon directed hacks to further his market-manipulation and Internet gambling schemes, the indictment said, concealing at least $100 million in Swiss and other bank accounts.
Shalon and Orenstein were arrested in Israel in July, and the U.S. is seeking their extradition to New York for trial. Aaron remains at large.
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The lack of money is the root of all evil.

Mark Twain.

Solar  & Related Update.

With events happening fast in the development of solar power and graphene, I’ve added this new section. Updates as they get reported. Is converting sunlight to usable cheap AC or DC energy mankind’s future from the 21st century onwards? DC? A quantum computer next?

Renewable energy made up half of world's new power plants in 2014: IEA

International Energy Agency says figures are a “clear sign” of a transition from coal to clean energy
Tuesday 10 November 2015
Renewable energy accounted for almost half of all new power plants in 2014, representing a “clear sign that an energy transition is underway”, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Green energy is now the second-largest generator of electricity in the world, after coal, and is set to overtake the dirtiest fossil fuel in the early 2030s, said the IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2015 report, published on Tuesday.

“The biggest story is in the case of renewables,” said IEA executive director, Fatih Birol. “It is no longer a niche. Renewable energy has become a mainstream fuel, as of now.” He said 60% of all new investment was going into renewables but warned that the $490bn of fossil fuel subsidies in 2014 meant there was not a “fair competition”

----The IEA projects “turbulent times” ahead for coal: “Coal has increased its share of the global energy mix from 23% in 2000 to 29% today, but the momentum behind coal’s surge is ebbing away and the fuel faces a reversal of fortune.” It projects a 15% share by 2040.

Huge changes in China are a major factor in coal’s decline, said Birol: “The era of the China boom in terms of energy demand growth is coming to an end. This is a major story and has implications for the entire world.” He said China had the biggest energy efficiency programme in the world and that “China is the champion of renewables”, as well having a major nuclear programme and likely growth in unconventional gas.

But the IEA expects coal demand is set to triple in India and in south-east Asia by 2040. “South-east Asia is amazingly important and not getting much attention,” said Birol. “It is the only region in the world where the coal demand is increasing its share.” He said, in the absence of climate policies, cheap coal and renewables would squeeze out gas in the region.

 “India is moving to the centre stage of energy,” said Birol, becoming the main global driver of coal consumption and oil demand in the world by 2040 as well as accounting for 20% of the globe’s solar power installations. “The choices India makes will be important for all of us, and therefore there is a need for supporting India’s push for clean and efficient technologies.”
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Trina Solar hits record 21.25% efficiency for multi-crystalline silicon cell
by Staff Writers Los Angeles CA (SPX) Nov 10, 2015

Trina Solar Limited reports that its State Key Laboratory of PV Science and Technology of China has set a new world record for a high-efficiency p-type multi-crystalline silicon (mc-Si) solar cell.
The record-breaking p-type multi-crystalline silicon solar cell was fabricated on a high-quality mc-Si substrate with a process that integrates advanced Honey Plus technologies including back surface passivation and local back surface field.
The 156+ 156 mm2 solar cell reached a total-area efficiency of 21.25%. This result has been independently confirmed by the Fraunhofer ISE CalLab in Germany.
This efficiency record breaks the previous 20.76% efficiency world record for mc-Si solar cells also established by Trina Solar one year ago.
To set this new record, only low-cost industrial processes which can be easily integrated into large-volume production were used.
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The monthly Coppock Indicators finished October

DJIA: +31 Down. NASDAQ: +125 Down. SP500: +53 Down. 

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