Cash not Ash!

Baltic Dry Index. 3001 +35
LIR Gold Target by 2019: $3,000.

“Of all the trees that grow so fair,
Old England to adorn,
Greater are none beneath the Sun,
Than Oak and Ash and Thorn.”

Rudyard Kipling on the wrong sort of ash.

Another day and yet more ash from bankrupt Iceland. Not that the UK needs any more ash, about half the population goes about all day long generating masses of home made ash, accompanied by lots of smoke, coughing and spluttering. Tobacco taxes are the major way we fund the National Health Service. Besides H.M.’s G. demanded Iceland’s cash with a “c” not ash. In the business of ash generation Great Britain is right up there with the greats, although as usual, team Germany easily beats team GB, at least as far as I could see from my little over a year in Berlin. Apparently as children there enter kindergarten, they’re handed their starter pack of West cigarettes. There may be Germans who don’t actually smoke, but I suspect that they get exported to Holland. Of course, if you go outside and stare at the sky, you can’t actually see this Icelandic ash that’s grounded planes all across northern Europe, we just have to take our betters word that it’s up there, just hanging around ready to make all our planes drop out of the sky.

But there’s a silver lining for some. With most planes to everywhere grounded, there’s been a rush to get on the trains that get stuck in the Channel tunnel at the drop of a hat, and the ferries that still connect Great Britain with the prospect of warmer climes. Stay tuned for more on this story of Iceland’s revenge. Last time Iceland did it much of Europe starved and poor Marie Antoinette lost her head.

Below, one of our planes isn’t missing. The RAF fly a German plane right up to, but not into, Iceland’s revenge on Europe. Liners and airships anyone?

Volcanic ash cloud tested by scientists
Scientists have completed a daring mission to analyse samples taken from the volcanic ash cloud sitting over Britain.
Published: 2:45AM BST 16 Apr 2010

A plane carrying the researchers flew right up to the cloud to test its contents.
The data could reveal important information about the environmental impact of the eruption.
The operation will enable experts to update existing knowledge of air circulation patterns.
The findings will then be passed on to the Met Office and could have a bearing on its immediate forecasts.

This could in turn affect the decisions made by the Civil Aviation Authority relating to the reopening of British airports, one expert said.

The plane arrived back safely at RAF Brize Norton, Oxfordshire, last night.

Speaking prior to the mission, Peter Purcell, of the Natural Environment Research Council, based at Gloucester Airport, said: ''I don't believe that anybody has really used an aircraft to sample the edge of these plumes before - it is actually very dangerous.

''If you fly into the ash and your engines stop, you crash.''

Their plane, a Dornier 228 - was equipped with instruments warning pilots how close they were to the volcanic cloud.

''We can then fly at a level which is not a level of danger,'' he said.

The mission's objective is to determine the plume's speed and direction.

The group, which set off from Oxford Airport yesterday afternoon, included two emissions scientists and two instrument operators, flown by a pilot and co-pilot.

The Dornier 228 is able to fly where commercial airlines cannot because of its ability to 'see' the volcanic plume using the research instruments on board.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/7596317/Volcanic-ash-cloud-tested-by-scientists.html

We open business news this Friday, with more bad news from the real economy in America, far away from the telephone number bonuses at the great vampire squids busy doing God’s work on Wall Street, and far away from the Fed’s contrived economic recovery for banksters, Main Street is entering foreclosure again. Another great tranche of the vampire squids “Triple-A” securitizations is about to pass from Fed life support in their vault into CDO heaven or perhaps hell. Not to worry though, “God’s Work” allowed the Squids to bet against the triple-A securities they peddled. No great vampire squids were injured in the making of this outrageous financial calamity.

“In economics, the majority is always wrong.”

J.K. Galbraith.

FORECLOSURE ACTIVITY INCREASES 7 PERCENT IN FIRST QUARTER By RealtyTrac Staff
New Quarterly Records for Scheduled Auctions and Bank RepossessionsAll Foreclosure Types Spike in March, Which Posts Highest Monthly Total for Report

IRVINE, Calif. – April 15, 2010 — RealtyTrac® (realtytrac.com), the leading online marketplace for foreclosure properties, today released its U.S. Foreclosure Market Report™ for Q1 2010, which shows that foreclosure filings — default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions — were reported on 932,234 properties in the first quarter, a 7 percent increase from the previous quarter and a 16 percent increase from the first quarter of 2009. One in every 138 U.S. housing units received a foreclosure filing during the quarter.

Foreclosure filings were reported on 367,056 properties in March, an increase of nearly 19 percent from the previous month, an increase of nearly 8 percent from March 2009 and the highest monthly total since RealtyTrac began issuing its report in January 2005.

“Foreclosure activity in the first quarter of 2010 followed a very similar pattern to what we saw in the first quarter of 2009: a shallow trough in January and February followed by a substantial spike in March,” said James J. Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac. “One difference, however, is that the increases were more tilted toward the final stage of foreclosure, with REOs increasing 9 percent on a quarterly basis in the first quarter of 2010 compared to a 13 percent quarterly decrease in REOs in the first quarter of 2009.

“This subtle shift in the numbers pushed REOs to the highest quarterly total we’ve ever seen in our report and may be further evidence that lenders are starting to make a dent in the backlog of distressed inventory that has built up over the last year as foreclosure prevention programs and processing delays slowed down the normal foreclosure timeline.”
http://www.realtytrac.com/contentmanagement/pressrelease.aspx?channelid=9&itemid=8927

Housing Crashes Again
By MIKE WHITNEY April 15, 2010

The brief period of stabilization in housing appears to be over and the next leg-down has begun. Mortgage rates are edging higher, foreclosures are on the rise, and the government programs that supported the sector, are being phased out. The uptick in bank-owned properties (REO) is adding to surplus inventory and pushing down prices. A recently released report from First American CoreLogic shows that "distressed sales accounted for 29 per cent of all sales nationwide." Nearly one-third of all home sales are distressed REOs. Also, according to a report from Clear Capital, "Home prices nationally have dropped 3.9 percent quarter to quarter, the first quarterly drop in nine months. (Thanks to Diana Olick, Realty Check, CNBC) Bottom line: More people are being forced from their homes, the banks are facing bigger losses, and the housing market is on the skids.
More.
http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney04152010.html

We end for the still chilly, weekend, with news that LIR readers have known for at least 5 years. Below, the man-made global warming from CO2, carbon tax promoting BBC, does its best to trivialize and spin away the news of a sunspot link to cold winters. Don’t confuse me with the facts, my mind’s made up, carbon tax the peons.

"History is only a confused heap of facts."

Earl of Chesterfield, 1694-1773.

Sun activity link to cold winters
By Mark Kinver Science and environment reporter, BBC News The UK and continental Europe could be gripped by more frequent cold winters in the future as a result of low solar activity, say researchers.

They identified a link between fewer sunspots and atmospheric conditions that "block" warm, westerly winds reaching Europe during winter months.

But they added that the phenomenon only affected a limited region and would not alter the overall global warming trend.

The findings appear in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

"By recent standards, we have just had what could be called a very cold winter and I wanted to see if this was just another coincidence or statistically robust," said lead author Mike Lockwood, professor of space environment physics at the University of Reading, UK.

To examine whether there was a link, Professor Lockwood and his co-authors compared past levels of solar activity with the Central England Temperature (CET) record, which is the world's longest continuous instrumental record of such data.

The researchers used the 351-year CET record because it provided data that went back to the beginning of the Maunder Minimum, a prolonged period of very low activity on the Sun that lasted about half a century.

“ Europe is particularly susceptible because it lies underneath the jet stream ” Professor Mike Lockwood

The Maunder Minimum occurred in the latter half of the 17th Century - a period when Europe experienced a series of harsh winters, which has been dubbed by some as the Little Ice Age. Following this, there was a gradual increase in solar activity that lasted 300 years.

Professor Lockwood explained that studies of activity on the Sun, which provides data stretching back over 9,000 years, showed that it tended to "ramp up quite slowly over about a 300-year period, then drop quite quickly over about a 100-year period".

He said the present decline started in 1985 and was currently about "half way back to a Maunder Minimum condition".

This allowed the team to compare recent years with what happened in the late 1600s.

"We found that you could accommodate both the Maunder Minimum and the last few years into the same framework," he told BBC News.

Big chill

Professor Lockwood said that there were a number of possibilities that could explain the link, but the team favoured the idea of a meteorological phenomenon known as "blocking".
This affects the dynamics of jet streams, which are very strong winds about 7-12km above the Earth's surface that can have a major influence on weather systems. There is one jet stream present in each hemisphere.

"Europe is particularly susceptible because, firstly, it lies underneath the (northern hemisphere's) jet stream," he explained.

A "blocking" occurs when the jet stream forms an "s" shape over the north-eastern Atlantic, causing the wind to fold back over itself.

"If you haven't got blocking, then the jet stream brings the mild, wet westerly winds to give us the weather we are famous for."

But, he added, if the jet stream is "blocked", and pushed further northwards, then cold, dry winds from the east flow over Europe, resulting in a sharp fall in temperatures.

"This... 'blocking' does seem to be one of the things that can be modulated by solar activity," he said.

Recent studies suggest that when solar activity is low, "blocking" events move eastwards from above north-eastern North America towards Europe, and become more stable.

A prolonged "blocking" during the most recent winter was responsible for the long spell of freezing conditions that gripped Europe.

Written observations from the period of the Maunder Minimum referred to the wind coming from the east during particularly cold winters, which strengthened the team's "blocking" hypothesis.

The way in which solar activity affects the behaviour of blocking episodes is linked to the amount of ultraviolet (UV) emissions being produced by the Sun.

Solar UV heats the stratosphere (20-50km above the surface), particularly the equatorial stratosphere. This results in a temperature gradient, which leads to the formation of high level winds.

"The change in solar activity undoubtedly changes the stratospheric winds," said Professor Lockwood.

Studies have shown that the state of the stratosphere can make a considerable difference to what happens in the troposphere, which is where the jet stream occurs, Professor Lockwood explained.

"There has been some quite simple modelling that indicated that heating the equatorial stratosphere with more UV would actually move the jet streams a little bit, by just a few degrees.

"That, of course, has the potential to change the behaviour of the jet streams - and that is the sort of thing that we think we are seeing."

'Blocking central'

Professor Lockwood was keen to stress that "blocking" only affected a limited geographical region, and would not have a widespread impact on the global climate system.

To illustrate the point, he said that while the CET record showed that this winter was the UK's 14th coldest in 160 years, global figures listed it as the fifth warmest.
He said that one of his colleagues at the University of Reading referred to Europe as "blocking central".

"The reason is largely because the jet stream has to come to us over the Atlantic Ocean and it is slowed down when it hits the land in Europe.

"You don't quite have the same combination of circumstances anywhere else in the world that gives you such strong blocking."

While the current decline in solar activity is expected to continue in the coming decades, he cautioned that more frequent "blocking" episodes would not result in Europe being plunged into sub-zero temperatures every winter.

"If we look at the last period of very low solar activity at the end of the 17th Century, we find the coldest winter on record in 1684, but the very next year - when solar activity was still low - saw third warmest winter in the entire 350-year (CET) record."

A number of other meteorological factors also influenced the weather systems over Europe, so a number of parameters had to be met before a "blocking" occurred, he observed.

Responding to the team's findings, Dr Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring and attribution at the UK Met Office, said: "This paper provides some additional evidence that what happens in the stratosphere could be important for climate at the surface."

But he added: "The findings are suggestive of a possible effect but more research is needed to pin down the mechanisms and determine how significant such effects could be for determining the probability of cold winters in the UK.

"At the Met Office, we are already working on research into incorporating better representation of the stratosphere into our seasonal and decadal forecasting models."
Professor Lockwood said he now planned to examine the influence of low solar activity on European weather during the summer months.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8615789.stm

“Professor Lockwood said he now planned to examine the influence of low solar activity on European weather during the summer months.” Better late than never, I suppose, although tossing an Icelandic volcano spewing ash into this year’s equation, my guess is that a large part of Europe will turn out to be unseasonably colder than usual. In trading terms, It’s probably a reasonable punt to buy a few calls on grains and possibly cattle and hogs.

THE SUN'S CHILLY IMPACT ON EARTH
-----During the Little Ice Age, access to Greenland was largely cut off by ice from 1410 to the 1720s. At the same time, canals in Holland routinely froze solid, glaciers advanced in the Alps, and sea-ice increased so much that no open water was present in any direction around Iceland in 1695.
http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/20011207iceage.html

At the Comex silver depositories Thursday, final figures were: Registered 48.89 Moz, Eligible 66.69 Moz, Total 115.58 Moz.


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Crooks & Scoundrels Corner.

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

The envelope please. And the winner is Greece. This morning, the WSJ covers the reality of doing business in modern Greece. Yesterday the tax and work shy Greeks wrote to the EU and IMF to inquire about details of getting access to rescue cash. No word yet on whether they included a magic envelope along with their letters to speed along the process.

"Anybody has the right to evade taxes if he can get away with it. No citizen has a moral obligation to assist in maintaining the government."

J.P. Morgan.

APRIL 15, 2010
Tragic Flaw: Graft Feeds Greek Crisis
ATHENS—Behind the budget crisis roiling Greece lies a riddle: Why does the state spend so lavishly but collect taxes so poorly? Many Greeks say the answer needs only two words: fakelaki and rousfeti.

Fakelaki is the Greek for "little envelopes," the bribes that affect everyone from hospital patients to fishmongers. Rousfeti means expensive political favors, which pervade everything from hiring teachers to property deals with Greek Orthodox monks. Together, these traditions of corruption and cronyism have produced a state that is both bloated and malnourished, and a crisis of confidence that is shaking all of Europe.

A study to be published in coming weeks by the Washington-based Brookings Institution finds that bribery, patronage and other public corruption are major contributors to the country's ballooning debt, depriving the Greek state each year of the equivalent of at least 8% of its gross domestic product, or more than €20 billion (about $27 billion).

"Our basic problem is systemic corruption," Greece's Prime Minister George Papandreou said after he took office late last year, vowing to change a mentality that views the republic as a resource to plunder. He later berated the chief of public prosecutions, saying Greeks believe "there is impunity in this country." The chief prosecutor said that wasn't so.

Greece moved closer to a bailout Thursday, requesting aid talks with the International Monetary Fund and the European Union. Many investors and economists say aid would buy Greece time, but wouldn't solve its underlying problems.

The Brookings study, which examines the correlation between corruption indicators and fiscal deficits across 40 developed or nearly developed economies, highlights how corruption has hurt public finances in parts of Europe, especially in Greece and Italy, and to a lesser extent in Spain and Portugal.

Greece's budget deficit averaged around 6.5% of GDP over the past five years, including a 13% shortfall last year. If Greece's public sector were as clean and transparent as Sweden's or the Netherlands', the country might have posted budget surpluses over the past decade, the study implies.

"If Greece had better control of corruption—not to Swedish standards, but even at Spain's level—it would have had a smaller budget deficit by 4% of gross domestic product," on average over the past five years, says Daniel Kaufmann, senior fellow at Brookings and the study's author.

Greece places last in the 16-nation euro zone in a ranking by World Bank researchers of how well countries control corruption, and last in the 27-nation European Union, tied with Bulgaria and Romania, in corruption-watchdog group Transparency International's survey of countries' perceived graft.

Last year, 13.5% of Greek households paid a bribe, €1,355 on average, according to a Transparency survey published last month. Ordinary citizens hand out cash-filled envelopes to get driver's licenses, doctor's appointments and building permits, or to reduce their tax bills, according to the organization's Greek chapter.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303828304575179921909783864.html?mod=WSJEUROPE_hps_MIDDLETopStories

"You can get much farther with a kind word and a bribe than you can with a kind word alone."

With apologies to Al Capone and guns.

Another weekend, and spring here is displaying all its glory. Our hedgerows are a glorious display of white blackthorn blossom. Wild daffodils and primroses are still in delayed display. Here in the woods on the hills between the River Thames and River Pang valleys, the first of the bluebells are coming into flower. In another two weeks, I think, the great carpets of blue will begin. To walk the dog on a sunny Sunday morning the woods are a joy of birdsong, passing deer and the bells of St James the Less in distant Pangbourne village on the Thames. There is much more to God’s world than the great vampire squid will ever know. Have a great weekend everyone, be sure to check with the new blogsite over the weekend.

St James the Less, Pangbourne.
http://www.pangbournechurches.info/bells.html

"I see you don't understand, and I must explain it to you. Well, very long ago, on the spot where the Wild Wood waves now, before ever it had planted itself and grown up to what it now is, there was a city - a city of people, you know. Here, where we are standing, they lived, and walked, and talked, and slept, and carried on their business. Here they stabled their horses and feasted, from here they rode out to fight or drove out to trade. They were a powerful people, and rich, and great builders. They built to last, for they thought their city would last for ever."

"But what has become of them all?" asked the Mole.

"Who can tell?" said the Badger. "People come - they stay for a while, they flourish, they build - and they go. It is their way. But we remain. There were badgers here, I've been told, long before that same city ever came to be. And now there are badgers here again. We are an enduring lot, and we may move out for a time, but we wait, and are patient, and back we come. And so it will ever be."

The Wind in the Willows. Kenneth Grahame. Pangbourne.



The monthly Coppock Indicators finished March:

DJIA: +168 UP. NASDAQ: +370 UP. SP500: +196 UP. The great Bull market goes on with the all three continuing higher in positive numbers.

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