Friday 10 June 2016

Starbucks The Bank.



Baltic Dry Index. 611 +01       Brent Crude 51.82

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

Brexit odds checker.
http://www.oddschecker.com/politics/british-politics/eu-referendum/referendum-on-eu-membership-result

Brexit Quote of the Day.
“When it becomes serious, you have to lie.”

Dodgy Dave Cameron, with apologies to Jean-Claude Juncker. Failed former Luxembourg P.M., serial liar, president of the European Commission.

For more on Starbucks the bank, scroll down to the end of this section.
With the European Cup competition starting today in Paris we open with a look at the Bilderberger paradise of the wealth and jobs destroying EUSSR. The Bilderbergers, according to Italy’s economy minister, have decided to appoint Hillary Clinton POTUS.
“In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.”
Mark Twain.

Euro 2016 Soccer Fans Greeted in France With Garbage, Strikes

June 9, 2016 — 3:32 PM BST Updated on June 10, 2016 — 2:01 AM BST
Soccer fans arriving in Paris on Friday for the opening game of the 2016 European championships may stumble on trash left uncollected by striking garbage collectors. That’s if their trains haven’t been canceled because of a rail workers’ strike.

As 10 cities across France prepare for 2.5 million spectators for the monthlong, 51-match tournament, airline pilots and energy workers are among others threatening walkouts that could disrupt the biggest football championship after the World Cup.
That’s prompted French President Francois Hollande to say the government will take all measures necessary to guarantee the event, including ensuring transport. He shied away from threatening to requisition train drivers, saying that for now, “we’re not there.”
“I’m calling on everyone to take their responsibility, because if the state has to do what it must, it will,” Hollande said Thursday in comments broadcast on French television. “Public services will be assured.”

In Paris, the garbage collectors’ strike is affecting half the city’s 20 districts. Another host city, Saint-Etienne, has also been hit by the garbage strike.

“The image of our country, the image of our capital city is at stake and our citizens are also just fed up,” Bruno Julliard, the deputy mayor of Paris, told Public Senat television Thursday. “We are very worried and preoccupied by the cleanliness in some arrondissements.”

After five days of strikes, mountains of garage bags have piled up in the heart of the French capital, including such well-frequented sites as Place de l’Opera, the Champs de Mars park at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, where a giant screen will show the games, and in Saint-Germain-des-Pres, a district popular with pub crawlers.

The uncollected garbage comes just as the city recovers from the rainiest May since record-keeping began in 1886 and as the Seine recedes from its highest levels in 34 years, leaving the river that flows across Paris laced with floating debris.

----The tournament is taking place during a tense political period in France with strikers protesting a law that allows companies to negotiate work contracts outside of national labor accords.

Opposition to the so-called El Khomri law has been become a catch-all for long-running disputes. Rail workers have been holding off-and-on strikes for several months to protest a planned reorganization. While most long-distance trains are running, only half of commuter and regional trains have run most days. A four-day walkout by Air France pilots is due to start June 11. Thursday morning some union members blocked access to Paris’s wholesale food market Rungis for several hours.
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Spain Fires Up Another Campaign With Rajoy Recovery on Trial

June 9, 2016 — 10:14 AM BST Updated on June 9, 2016 — 12:59 PM BST
Spain’s political leaders return to the campaign trail for the second time in six months on Thursday as the country wrestles with how best to consolidate its economic recovery.

Caretaker Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is promising to create 2 million jobs if voters give him enough support to stay in power after the June 26 ballot. His traditional Socialist rivals and the anti-austerity group say Spain must do more to ensure the poor and the middle class benefit. The pro-market group Ciudadanos, which came fourth in December, is calling for more ambitious reforms to fix the education and justice systems and to tackle corruption among political parties.

Rajoy’s People’s Party is aiming to consolidate its position as the biggest group in parliament to force other groups to let it lead the next government while Podemos’s leader, Pablo Iglesias, wants to forge a progressive alliance with the Socialists. Opinion polls suggest Podemos may overtake the Socialists to claim second place, posing a dilemma for Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez.

“The next government will either include the PP or it will include Podemos,” Iglesias said in a separate radio interview. “It’s the Socialists who will decide.” All four parties will kick off their campaigns with rallies in the capital on Thursday night.

Spaniards are heading to polls with the economy growing at 3.4 percent a year, close to the fastest pace since 2007. But after almost three years of expansion since the crisis, unemployment is still 21 percent, double the European average.
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German parliament condemns Turkish threats against lawmakers

Thu Jun 9, 2016 5:18am EDT
The president of Germany's parliament condemned threats against German lawmakers of Turkish origin after the Bundestag last week passed a resolution declaring the 1915 massacre of Armenians by Ottoman forces a genocide.

Ankara rejects the idea that the killings of Christian Armenians during World War One amounted to a genocide. Following the resolution there have been death threats and verbal attacks against German politicians with Turkish roots.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has said German lawmakers of Turkish origin who voted for the resolution have tainted blood and that their blood must be tested in a lab.

"Every person that tries to put pressure on individual lawmakers with threats must know they are attacking the entire parliament," Norbert Lammert said to loud applause as he opened the parliamentary session on Thursday.

Lammert said he was shocked that threats against the parliamentarians had been backed by high-ranking politicians, and said parliament would respond with all legal options.
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Italy economy minister says Trump victory could unseat Wall Street

Thu Jun 9, 2016 7:35pm BST
Italy's economy minister warned on Thursday of shocks to financial markets if Republican candidate Donald Trump wins the U.S. presidential election this year, and said that a Trump presidency would hurt New York's appeal as a financial centre.

In some of the strongest criticisms of Trump by one of Washington's G7 partners, Pier Carlo Padoan told Reuters that the economic consequences of Trump beating Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in November would be: "Very bad. Period."

He said the billionaire real estate developer's rhetoric on issues such as trade and security was unnerving for markets.

"The message is more protectionism, more fragmentation, more aggressiveness and more separation in dealing with global security threats," Padoan said in an interview.

"All of this adds to instability and uncertainty and this translates into financial market shocks."

European governments have been largely measured in their comments on Trump, who wants a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States, has criticised trade deals as tilted against U.S. interests and advocated raising import tariffs in response to very low interest rates in trading partners such as the EU.

However, Germany's economy minister said in March that Trump posed a threat to peace and prosperity. British Prime Minister David Cameron has cast him as "divisive, stupid and wrong" for proposing the temporary ban on Muslims.
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In other news, Japan feuds with China over some islands in the East China Sea, that President Nixon administratively transferred in error to Japan in 1971. In the fiat currency wars, it was all devaluing against the dollar as usual. Starbucks becomes a “bank.”

Japan protests after Chinese warship sails near disputed East China Sea islands

Thu Jun 9, 2016 12:33am EDT
Japan summoned the Chinese ambassador early on Thursday to express concern after a Chinese navy ship sailed close to what Japan considers its territorial waters in the East China Sea for the first time, increasing tensions over the disputed area.

Japan said a Chinese frigate sailed within 24 miles (38 kms) of the contested territory, the islands known as the Senkaku in Japan and the Diaoyu in China, shortly after midnight.

Japan's Vice Foreign Minister Akitaka Saiki summoned the Chinese ambassador in Tokyo at around 2 a.m. (01:00 p.m. EDT on Wednesday) to "express a serious concern," the government said in a statement.

Japanese and Chinese coastguard vessels frequently face off around the islands as both sides press their claims. Until now neither has dispatched warships to nearby waters, because doing so would inflame tensions and remove a buffer against potential armed conflict.

"We are worried that this action raises tensions to a higher level," Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said at a regular press briefing in Tokyo.

"Related ministries are working together to deal with this and we will work closely with the U.S.," Suga said.
China's Defence Ministry said on Thursday it was looking into the reports that one of its navy ships sailed close to the disputed islands, adding its navy had every right to operate in Chinese waters.
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Dollar enjoys reprieve as euro, sterling feel the heat

Fri Jun 10, 2016 12:07am EDT
The dollar index was on track for a modest weekly gain on Friday, having bounced off this week's one-month lows as the euro took a heavy spill while sterling stayed under a cloud on jitters over the upcoming Brexit vote.

The dollar index added 0.3 percent to 94.185, pulling away from Wednesday's trough of 93.425, its lowest since May 11, and was up 0.2 percent for the week.

Driving the index's rise was a bearish turn in the euro, which slid 0.2 percent to $1.1298, further distancing itself from the pervious session's one-month high of $1.1416. The European currency was poised to slip 0.6 percent for the week.

A Reuters report on Commerzbank looking to put billions of euros in vaults rather than pay a penalty charge for parking them with the European Central Bank appeared to have unsettled an already nervous market.

"It seems the news made waves early in the European session Thursday, our London team reporting that this was credited for the euro being sold across the board," analysts at National Australia Bank wrote in a note to clients.

---- The market continued to give sterling a wide berth, pushing the currency to $1.4450, down slightly and well off this week's peak of $1.4664.

The pound has whipsawed in recent session in response to polls and other developments ahead of the UK's June 23 referendum on EU membership.

BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, said financial markets may be under-pricing the "Brexit" risk of Britain leaving the EU.

With the euro zone and the UK in focus overnight, the dollar enjoyed a small reprieve. Dollar bulls had been hit hard since disappointing payrolls data a week ago convinced investors that the Fed will refrain from hiking interest rates as early as next week's policy review.

A fresh batch of U.S. data on Thursday was more encouraging, with a surge in wholesale inventories in April prompting economists to lift their second-quarter economic growth estimates.
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Starbucks has more customer money on cards than many banks have in deposits

Published: June 9, 2016 7:55 p.m. ET

Most transactions take place using the Starbucks card or the app

Some people keep their money in banks. Some keep cash beneath a mattress. Now there’s another place that people are depositing their money: their Starbucks accounts.

The Wall Street Journal recently reviewed data from S&P Global Market Intelligence to determine where people are stashing their money these days, including banks, entities like PayPal Holdings Inc. PYPL, -1.12%  and other nonbanks.

Starbucks Corp. SBUX, +0.65%  , for one, had $1.2 billion loaded onto Starbucks cards and the Starbucks mobile app as of the first quarter of 2016, according to the data. This money can be used to purchase items including drinks, food and other merchandise.

See also: This is what would happen if the America totally abandoned cash

As of the second quarter of fiscal 2016, 41% of Starbucks transactions in the U.S. and Canada were conducted using a Starbucks card (24% of transactions at company-operated retail stores U.S. used the Starbucks mobile app), according to figures Starbucks provided to MarketWatch. The company had 12 million active loyalty members in the U.S. in the second quarter.

Starbucks sells millions of gift cards on Christmas Eve alone, a Starbucks representative told MarketWatch during the 2015 holiday shopping season.

The Starbucks figure exceeds the deposits at many actual financial institutions, including California Republic Bancorp CRPB, +0.00% ($1.01 billion), Mercantile Bank Corp. MBWM, -2.11%  ($680 million) and Discover Financial Services DFS, -1.03%  ($470 million).
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"I am very struck by the fact that over many many years, central banks, governments and individuals have always, despite the protestations of economists, held some gold in their portfolio. Obviously, there is no high running return, but when unexpected things happen, particularly when governments rise and fall, then gold is a means of payment that everyone is always prepared to accept. And I think that’s why even central banks have always had a role in their portfolios for gold”
Mervyn King former Governor of the Bank of England.
At the Comex silver depositories Thursday final figures were: Registered 22.48 Moz, Eligible 128.88 Moz, Total 151.36 Moz. 

Crooks and Scoundrels Corner

The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.
In the migrant paradise of the Caliphate of Germany, not all economic migrants migrated for work and benefits. Some of Migrant Mad Merkel’s new friends, brought along some very bad habits. Thankfully none of them live close to the Merkel family nor move in her same social circle. Still it might explain why she want to export most of them around the rest of the EUSSR.

Migrants linked to 69,000 would-be or actual crimes in Germany in first three months of 2016: police

June 7, 2016
BERLIN (Reuters) - Migrants in Germany committed or tried to commit some 69,000 crimes in the first quarter of 2016, according to a police report that could raise unease, especially among anti-immigrant groups, about Chancellor Angela Merkel's liberal migrant policy.

There was a record influx of more than a million migrants into Germany last year and concerns are now widespread about how Europe's largest economy will manage to integrate them and ensure security.

The report from the BKA federal police showed that migrants from northern Africa, Georgia and Serbia were disproportionately represented among the suspects.

Absolute numbers of crimes committed by Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis - the three biggest groups of asylum seekers in Germany - were high but given the proportion of migrants that they account for, their involvement in crimes was "clearly disproportionately low", the report said.

It gave no breakdown of the number of actual crimes and of would-be crimes, nor did it state what percentage the 69,000 figure represented with respect to the total number of crimes and would-be crimes committed in the first three months of 2016.

The report stated that the vast majority of migrants did not commit any crimes.

It is the first time the BKA has published a report on crimes committed by migrants containing data from all of Germany's 16 states, so there is no comparable data.

The report showed that 29.2 percent of the crimes migrants committed or tried to commit in the first quarter were thefts, 28.3 percent were property or forgery offences and 23 percent offences such as bodily harm, robbery and unlawful detention.

Drug-related offences accounted for 6.6 percent and sex crimes accounted for 1.1 percent.
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Brexit The Animated Movie.

Brexit Quote of the week.

'You just never know. That unpredictability is the great thing about life. You change. The world changes. You live in a country where we are still blessed with enormous opportunity. Leave yourself open to the world of possibility. You have the ambition, you have the smarts and you have the toughness. So, turn the page on your biography - you have just started a new chapter in your lives.'

Lloyd Blankfein CEO of Goldman unintentionally backs Brexit in a US speech to graduates.

Solar  & Related Update.

With events happening fast in the development of solar power and graphene, I’ve added this 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?

Novel energy inside a microcircuit chip

Efficient nanomaterial-based integrated energy

Date: June 8, 2016

Source: VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland

Summary: Scientists have developed an extremely efficient small-size energy storage, a micro-supercapacitor, which can be integrated directly inside a silicon microcircuit chip.
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland developed an extremely efficient small-size energy storage, a micro-supercapacitor, which can be integrated directly inside a silicon microcircuit chip. The high energy and power density of the miniaturized energy storage relies on the new hybrid nanomaterial developed recently at VTT. This technology opens new possibilities for integrated mobile devices and paves the way for zero-power autonomous devices required for the future Internet of Things (IoT).
Supercapacitors resemble electrochemical batteries. However, in contrast to for example mobile phone lithium ion batteries, which utilize chemical reactions to store energy, supercapacitors store mainly electrostatic energy that is bound at the interface between liquid and solid electrodes. Similarly to batteries supercapacitors are typically discrete devices with large variety of use cases from small electronic gadgets to the large energy storages of electrical vehicles.
The energy and power density of a supercapacitor depends on the surface area and conductivity of the solid electrodes. VTT's research group has developed a hybrid nanomaterial electrode, which consists of porous silicon coated with a few nanometre thick titanium nitride layer by atomic layer deposition (ALD). This approach leads to a record large conductive surface in a small volume. Inclusion of ionic liquid in a micro channel formed in between two hybrid electrodes results in extremely small and efficient energy storage.
The new supercapacitor has excellent performance. For the first time, silicon based micro-supercapacitor competes with the leading carbon and graphene based devices in power, energy and durability.
Micro-supercapacitors can be integrated directly with active microelectronic devices to store electrical energy generated by different thermal, light and vibration energy harvesters and to supply the electrical energy when needed. This is important for autonomous sensor networks, wearable electronics and mobile electronics of the IoT.
VTT's research group takes the integration to the extreme by integrating the new nanomaterial micro-supercapacitor energy storage directly inside a silicon chip. The demonstrated in-chip supercapacitor technology enables storing energy of as much as 0.2 joule and impressive power generation of 2 watts on a one square centimetre silicon chip. At the same time it leaves the surface of the chip available for active integrated microcircuits and sensors.

Another weekend and we are spoiled for entertainment and diversionment. It’s a central banksters’ utopia. No one will be much stressed this weekend with all of their “successes” of the past week. Up first for entertainment, the European Football Cup competition gets underway today. Tomorrow England play Russia. Also tomorrow, London hosts “trooping the colour” for Her Majesty’s official birthday. The Queen, the crowds and the tourists, if not the troops involved, are always delighted. The weather in June is usually, but not always, better in June than in April. Sunday bring more football, and the Canadian Grand Prix motor race from Montreal.

What’s a central bankster not to like as attention gets diverted from the mess they have made of pursuing their filthy lucre. Have a great weekend everyone.

Government is merely a servant – merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn’t. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them.

Mark Twain.

The monthly Coppock Indicators finished May

DJIA: 17787  -20 Up NASDAQ:  4946 +04 Down. SP500: 2097 -18 Up.

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