Baltic Dry Index. 2991 -07
LIR Gold Target by 2019: $3,000.
“Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.”
Aristotle. 384-322 BC.
We open for the new week with two of the most troubling articles of the fraud driven, derivatives gambling, global financial calamity so far. The G-1, the City of Light on the hill to the world, has left the constitutional republic behind, and turned itself into a halfway house to criminal dictatorship and tyranny. The tragedy of ancient Greek democracy seems to be repeating in the early decades of the 21st century. Though it is by no means certain that the forces of law and order and constitutional republicanism won’t at some stage reassert control, for now all the signs in America suggest just the opposite. But first this, the tax challenged US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has either just demonstrated great diplomatic tact and aplomb by delaying a report branding China a currency manipulator, infuriating America’s largest creditor in the process, or has just kow-towed to China’s recent warning’s from China’s leadership, not to do it or else. In the tottering bankrupt, monetizing west it will be seen as the former. In the rising countries that make up the “BRIC,” Brazil, Russia, India and China, it will be seen as another sign that Pax-Americana is over. The truth is somewhere in between, but the days of a sole fiat dollar reserve standard are numbered.
“This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.”
Plato. 428-348 BC.
Geithner Delays Currency Report, Urges Flexible Yuan for China
April 4 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner delayed a scheduled April 15 report to Congress on exchange-rate policies, sidestepping a decision on whether to accuse China of manipulating the value of the yuan.
Geithner in a statement yesterday urged China to move toward a more flexible currency and said a series of meetings over the next three months will be “critical” to bringing policy changes that lead to a stronger, “more balanced” global economy. The delay comes as Chinese President Hu Jintao is scheduled to visit Washington for a nuclear summit April 12-13.
The Treasury chief faces demands from Congress to label China a currency manipulator for keeping the value of the yuan little changed from about 6.83 to the dollar for almost two years. Geithner is instead betting that China will take steps on its own in the next several months to strengthen its currency, analysts said.
----Geithner’s statement said countries such as China “with inflexible exchange rates” can promote global growth by “combining policy efforts to strengthen domestic demand with greater exchange-rate flexibility.”
“A move by China to a more market-oriented exchange rate will make an essential contribution to global rebalancing,” he said.
Lawmakers Critical
Lawmakers from both parties said Geithner is wrong to expect that negotiations will prompt such a move from China’s leaders. With the U.S. unemployment rate hovering near a 26-year high, some lawmakers say China’s policies give its exporters an unfair advantage over their U.S. competitors.
“We are disappointed, but not surprised, by the administration’s decision,” Senator Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat, said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. “After five years of stonewalling, punctuated by occasional, but halting action by the Chinese, we have lost faith in bilateral negotiations on this issue.”
Legislation
Schumer, along with four other senators including South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham, last month introduced legislation to require the Treasury to determine if a nation had a currency misaligned with the dollar and make it easier to respond by imposing import duties.
-----The latest delay “is probably the politically smart thing to do,” with Hu planning to be in Washington for talks with President Barack Obama, said Charles Freeman, a China expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
“I’m not sure Treasury really knows what it wants to do yet,” said Freeman. “It’s testing the political waters on Capitol Hill.”
Geithner said April 2 that Hu’s visit, along with a meeting of Group of 20 finance ministers and central bank governors this month and a U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue scheduled for May, will offer “the best avenue for addressing U.S. interests at this time.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=azQRzn_a9eP8
Now back to the death of the constitutional US Republic. An ends justifies the means rapid transition into a state/bankster controlled, semi constitutional, faux democracy has occurred. One where the masses are not to be trusted, and the operatives of state are unaccountable to serious rule of law at their option. This has big implications for America’s moral authority to lead in the world and in the west, and big implications for most of the west’s grand alliances. It is one thing when a small irrelevant state like Greece descends into state criminality. When the world’s only, if bankrupt, superpower does it, the whole global world order goes into unpredictable transition. It has big implications for investment decisions also. Such a state is to be feared, and is parasitic to wealth creation and global resources. It is no place for the rest of the world’s savings to be invested. Wealth destruction and ruin lie in all systems not based of capitalism and reliable rule of law, and equality under that law. Without that, there simply is no contract between those ruled and those in the position of exercising power. One’s wealth become subject to appropriation by caprice, vagary, avarice, and dictat of the rulers and their cronies. Up first, Karl Denninger covers last week’s developments fed out on “a good day to bury bad news,” to use the Tony Blair 2001 method of Nu Labour government.
“When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.”
Plato. 428-348 BC.
The Fed Admits To Breaking The Law
April 1 (Bloomberg) -- After months of litigation and political scrutiny, the Federal Reserve yesterday ended a policy of secrecy over its Bear Stearns Cos. bailout.
In a 4:30 p.m. announcement in a week of congressional recess and religious holidays, the central bank released details of securities bought to aid Bear Stearns’s takeover by JPMorgan Chase & Co. Bloomberg News sued the Fed for that information.
The problem is this: The Fed is not authorized to BUY anything other than those securities that have the full faith and credit of The United States.
In addition Ben Bernanke has repeatedly claimed that these deals would not cost anyone money. But the current value looks differently:
Assets in Maiden Lane II totaled $34.8 billion, according to the Fed, which set their current market value in its weekly balance sheet at $15.3 billion. That means Maiden Lane II assets are worth 44 cents on the dollar, or 44 percent of their face value, according to the Fed.
Maiden Lane III, which has $56 billion of assets at face value, is worth $22.1 billion, or 39 cents on the dollar, according to the Fed’s weekly balance sheet. A similar calculation for the Bear Stearns portfolio couldn’t be made because of outstanding derivatives trades.
In other words, they have lost more than half of their value.
This was and remains a blatantly unlawful activity.
The Fed has effectively usurped Article 1 Section 7 of The Constituion which reads in part:
All bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.
The Fed effectively appropriated taxpayer funds without authorization of Congress. At the time these facilities were put in place neither TARP or any other Congressional authorization existed for them to do so, and to date no bill has been put through Congress authorizing the expenditure of taxpayer funds, either through putting them at risk or via outright expense, for this purpose.
Nor does it stop with a "mere" Constitutional violation - The Federal Reserve Act's Sections 13 and 14 do not permit Fed asset purchases except, once again, for items carrying "full faith and credit" guarantees. Credit-default swaps and trash mortgages most certainly do not meet these qualifications.
I know I've harped on this for more than two years, but here we have a raw admission of exactly what was done - and there is simply no way to construe any of it in a light that conforms with either The Constitution or black-letter statutory law.
What's worse is that Tim Geithner, head of the NY Fed at the time, was very much involved in this - that is, he in effect personally, along with Ben Bernanke, usurped the power of the United States House.
The Fed has spent two years trying to hide this from the public and Congress. It has fought off both Congressional demands for disclosure and multiple FOIA lawsuits, the latter of which has resulted in a series of adverse rulings (and, it appears, was ultimately going to force disclosure anyway.)
These actions are unacceptable but promising "never to do that again" is insufficient. In a Representative Republic where the rule of law is supposed to be paramount - that is, where we do not crown Kings and relegate everyone else to the status of knaves, unlawful actions such as this demand that strong and unmistakable sanction also be applied to all wrongdoers in addition to protection against future abuse.
In this case this means that both Geithner and Bernanke must go - for starters.
Amending The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 (as Chris Dodd has proposed to prevent future lending bailouts) is not sufficient in that The Fed did not lend in this case, it purchased, and by buying what we now know were trash loans it violated the black letter of existing law.
There is only one effective remedy for an institution that has proved that it will not abide the law: it must be stripped of all authority that has been in the past and can be in the future abused.
This means that The Fed, if we are to keep it at all, must be relegated to a body that only practices and provides monetary policy - nothing more or less - and that all monetary operations must be performed openly, transparently, and within those constraints.
We cannot have a republic where an unelected body is left free to violate The Constitution with wild abandon and those acts are then allowed to stand.
One final thought: If the individuals responsible for this blatant black-letter violation of the law do not face meaningful sanction for these acts, and neither does The Fed as an institution, can you fine folks over at The Executive, Judiciary and Legislative branches of our government please explain to us ordinary Americans why we should obey any of the laws of this land when you will not enforce the laws that already exist?
http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/2147-The-Fed-Admits-To-Breaking-The-Law.html
Below, President Ronald Reagan’s Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, speaks out one last time against how the last two decades have altered America, hopefully though not forever. Stay long precious metals, preferably outside of US and UK jurisdiction. Our world is in transition in a way that somewhat resembles the tumultuous change in China 1949. Lest anyone forget, the rise of a communist dictatorship in China did nothing good for the masses of Chinese people.
“Tyrants have always some slight shade of virtue; they support the laws before destroying them”
Voltaire.
Truth Has Fallen and Taken Liberty With It
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS March 24, 2010
There was a time when the pen was mightier than the sword. That was a time when people believed in truth and regarded truth as an independent power and not as an auxiliary for government, class, race, ideological, personal, or financial interest.
Today Americans are ruled by propaganda. Americans have little regard for truth, little access to it, and little ability to recognize it.
Truth is an unwelcome entity. It is disturbing. It is off limits. Those who speak it run the risk of being branded “anti-American,” “anti-semite” or “conspiracy theorist.”
Truth is an inconvenience for government and for the interest groups whose campaign contributions control government.
Truth is an inconvenience for prosecutors who want convictions, not the discovery of innocence or guilt.
Truth is inconvenient for ideologues.
Today many whose goal once was the discovery of truth are now paid handsomely to hide it. “Free market economists” are paid to sell offshoring to the American people. High-productivity, high value-added American jobs are denigrated as dirty, old industrial jobs. Relicts from long ago, we are best shed of them. Their place has been taken by “the New Economy,” a mythical economy that allegedly consists of high-tech white collar jobs in which Americans innovate and finance activities that occur offshore. All Americans need in order to participate in this “new economy” are finance degrees from Ivy League universities, and then they will work on Wall Street at million dollar jobs.
Economists who were once respectable took money to contribute to this myth of “the New Economy.”
And not only economists sell their souls for filthy lucre. Recently we have had reports of medical doctors who, for money, have published in peer-reviewed journals concocted “studies” that hype this or that new medicine produced by pharmaceutical companies that paid for the “studies.”
The Council of Europe is investigating the drug companies’ role in hyping a false swine flu pandemic in order to gain billions of dollars in sales of the vaccine.
The media helped the US military hype its recent Marja offensive in Afghanistan, describing Marja as a city of 80,000 under Taliban control. It turns out that Marja is not urban but a collection of village farms.
And there is the global warming scandal, in which NGOs. the UN, and the nuclear industry colluded in concocting a doomsday scenario in order to create profit in pollution.
Wherever one looks, truth has fallen to money.
Wherever money is insufficient to bury the truth, ignorance, propaganda, and short memories finish the job.
I remember when, following CIA director William Colby’s testimony before the Church Committee in the mid-1970s, presidents Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan issued executive orders preventing the CIA and U.S. black-op groups from assassinating foreign leaders. In 2010 the US Congress was told by Dennis Blair, head of national intelligence, that the US now assassinates its own citizens in addition to foreign leaders.
When Blair told the House Intelligence Committee that US citizens no longer needed to be arrested, charged, tried, and convicted of a capital crime, just murdered on suspicion alone of being a “threat,” he wasn’t impeached. No investigation pursued. Nothing happened. There was no Church Committee. In the mid-1970s the CIA got into trouble for plots to kill Castro. Today it is American citizens who are on the hit list. Whatever objections there might be don’t carry any weight. No one in government is in any trouble over the assassination of U.S. citizens by the U.S. government.
As an economist, I am astonished that the American economics profession has no awareness whatsoever that the U.S. economy has been destroyed by the offshoring of U.S. GDP to overseas countries. U.S. corporations, in pursuit of absolute advantage or lowest labor costs and maximum CEO “performance bonuses,” have moved the production of goods and services marketed to Americans to China, India, and elsewhere abroad. When I read economists describe offshoring as free trade based on comparative advantage, I realize that there is no intelligence or integrity in the American economics profession.
Intelligence and integrity have been purchased by money. The transnational or global U.S. corporations pay multi-million dollar compensation packages to top managers, who achieve these “performance awards” by replacing U.S. labor with foreign labor. While Washington worries about “the Muslim threat,” Wall Street, U.S. corporations and “free market” shills destroy the U.S. economy and the prospects of tens of millions of Americans.
-------Americans have bought into the government’s claim that security requires the suspension of civil liberties and accountable government. Astonishingly, Americans, or most of them, believe that civil liberties, such as habeas corpus and due process, protect “terrorists,” and not themselves. Many also believe that the Constitution is a tired old document that prevents government from exercising the kind of police state powers necessary to keep Americans safe and free.
Most Americans are unlikely to hear from anyone who would tell them any different.
I was associate editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal. I was Business Week’s first outside columnist, a position I held for 15 years. I was columnist for a decade for Scripps Howard News Service, carried in 300 newspapers. I was a columnist for the Washington Times and for newspapers in France and Italy and for a magazine in Germany. I was a contributor to the New York Times and a regular feature in the Los Angeles Times. Today I cannot publish in, or appear on, the American “mainstream media.”
For the last six years I have been banned from the “mainstream media.” My last column in the New York Times appeared in January, 2004, coauthored with Democratic U.S. Senator Charles Schumer representing New York. We addressed the offshoring of U.S. jobs. Our op-ed article produced a conference at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. and live coverage by C-Span. A debate was launched. No such thing could happen today.
For years I was a mainstay at the Washington Times, producing credibility for the Moony newspaper as a Business Week columnist, former Wall Street Journal editor, and former Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. But when I began criticizing Bush’s wars of aggression, the order came down to Mary Lou Forbes to cancel my column.
The American corporate media does not serve the truth. It serves the government and the interest groups that empower the government.
-----These trillion dollar wars have created financing problems for Washington’s deficits and threaten the U.S. dollar’s role as world reserve currency. The wars and the pressure that the budget deficits put on the dollar’s value have put Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block. Former Goldman Sachs chairman and U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is after these protections for the elderly. Fed chairman Bernanke is also after them. The Republicans are after them as well. These protections are called “entitlements” as if they are some sort of welfare that people have not paid for in payroll taxes all their working lives.
With over 21 per cent unemployment as measured by the methodology of 1980, with American jobs, GDP, and technology having been given to China and India, with war being Washington’s greatest commitment, with the dollar over-burdened with debt, with civil liberty sacrificed to the “war on terror,” the liberty and prosperity of the American people have been thrown into the trash bin of history.
The militarism of the U.S. and Israeli states, and Wall Street and corporate greed, will now run their course. As the pen is censored and its might extinguished, I am signing off.
Paul Craig Roberts was an editor of the Wall Street Journal and an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts03242010.html
While the USA, the UK and the old European powers were never faultless democracies with perfect rule of law for all, and in the UK at least, under Blair and Brown we have traduced long cherished and hard won personal freedoms from the Crown, what we have now approaches more 18th century style capitalism, rather than the late 19th century – 20th century capitalism in which we prospered. I doubt many will prosper under state assisted, crony banksterism. The very conditions that drove much the European population to flee poverty in Europe for a better life in the new world. While America is hardly likely to go off the rails murderous Bolshevik communist Russia style, nor Germany or Italy European fascist style, reversing an elitist power grab in a continent sized virtual empire, historically has never been fast.
In global warming news, don’t tell the scoundrels at the University of East Anglia’s dodgy “man-made global warming from CO2,” Climate Research Unit, but south Florida just had coldest start to a year on record. Wrong sort of CO2 in North America, I presume.
“The foundation of every state is the education of its youth.”
Diogenes. 412-323 BC.
Forecasters: S. Florida Winter Among Coldest Ever
Apr 2, 2010 11:00 am US/Eastern
Record Low Average Temperatures Set For Miami Beach, West Palm Beach, Naples
Cooler Than Normal Temps, Higher Rainfall Expected In April
MIAMI (CBS4) ― Unless you spent this winter somewhere else, you know it was chilly, at least by South Florida standards. Now, with the data in, the National Weather Service has made it official. The first 3 months of the year were the coldest ever reported in Miami Beach, Naples, and West Palm Beach, and was among the coldest winters ever for Ft. Lauderdale and Miami.That information was included in an analysis of winter weather patterns conducted by the National Weather Service weather forecast office in Miami.Forecasters sat March set record cold readings for Miami Beach, which was 5.8 degrees colder than normal, on average, and for Naples, where the average temperature was almost a degree colder than the previous record.
Forecasters say, overall, there were only a handful of days where temperatures were above normal in South Florida.Miami temperatures averaged almost 5 degrees below normal, making the January-March period the 9th coldest ever, while Ft. Lauderdale had it's 4th coldest period ever.While the cold weather of winter appears to be over, that doesn't mean South Florida won't continue to see cooler-than-normal temperatures, according to the National Weather Service.Their outlook claims cooler than normal coastal water temperatures in Florida will combine with the continued "el Nino" weather pattern to likely keep April temperatures below the norm.
The May forecast sees temperatures closer to normal, but that comes with the likelihood rainfall will be greater than normal.All of South Florida also saw an increase in rainfall when compared to previous years, but West Palm Beach, with almost 11 inches of rainfall in March, saw it's 5th wettest march ever. Miami Beach, with just over 4 inches of rain in March, saw it's 9th wettest March ever.
http://cbs4.com/local/RECORD.LOW.TEMPERATURE.2.1607771.html#addComments
“Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear. Kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor-with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant funds demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened; seem never to have been quite real."
General Douglas MacArthur. 1957.
At the Comex silver depositories Thursday, final figures were: Registered 53.78 Moz, Eligible 62.06 Moz, Total 115.84 Moz.
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Crooks & Scoundrels Corner.
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.
Up first this week, time to pull the plug on tax and work shy Greece, says one of the world’s leading experts on sovereign default. “Mr. Papandreou, tear down this wall of financial deceit.”
“The present will not long endure.”
Pindar. 518 -446 BC.
The IMF should impose default on Greece to end the charade
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Last updated: April 2nd, 2010
I just had lunch with Carmen Reinhart, author of `This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly” and a world authority on sovereign defaults.
Suitably, she was wearing a medallion of a Spanish silver coin dating from 1580, celebrating Philip II’s third default in eighteen years.
----Professor Reinhart said Greece cannot hope to escape from its debt trap under the current EU austerity plan. The cure of devaluation is blocked by EMU membership. The restrictive monetary policy of the European Central Bank — a contraction of both M3 money and lending to firms, record low core inflation — must inevitably unleash deflationary forces in Club Med states already trapped in credit busts.
A country can in theory deflate its way back to competitiveness by an `internal devaluation’, ie relative wage cuts, in this case by 20pc to 25pc.
Benito Mussolini cut wages by 20pc or so in 1928 when Italy returned to Gold with his Lira Forte policy, but he had Fascist controls on the unions, and Camicie Nere to assist. Italy was not in any case facing the aftermath of a property boom.
It may not be possible for a country to execute such a policy when it already has a public debt above 100pc of GDP, or in Greece’s case nearing 130pc by next year. Debt dynamics take over. The policy leads to a self-feeding spiral in compound interest. This will become evident very soon if — as some economists predict — Greece’s economy contracts by 4pc to 5pc this year.
Ireland is experimenting with this cure. We are seeing the consequences. Nominal GDP has fallen 18.7pc since the top of the boom, according to Barclays Capital.
Real GDP has fallen by less, 12.6pc. The rest is the effect of deflation. But what matters most for debt is nominal GDP. The same debt load has to be financed from a nominal economy that has shrunk by almost a fifth. That is why deflation can be so deadly, as it was from 1930-1933.
-----Greece is another story. It did not invest its EU and EMU windfalls in a well-educated workforce and high-tech enterprise. It spent the money on public payrolls – and submarines — and cut the retirement age as low as 54 for some. We will find out whether it has now gone beyond the point of no return.
Professor Reinhart said Europe will have to bite the bullet and accept `debt-restructuring’ or grapple with unending disaster. Since Germany obviously will not agree to provide the massive long-term finance at cheap rates needed to nurse Greece through the crisis – let alone direct subsidies – there is no alternative: lenders must agree to stretch maturities on Greek debt, and accept an interest rate haircut. “I don’t think the markets have yet understood this,” she said with dry understatement.
She said the model is the Uruguay default in 2003, conducted under the auspices of the IMF when she was working at the Fund. “Everybody got together in a civilized way, and it was very successful,” she said.
The average haircut was 13pc. Maturities were shuffled. Uruguay was praised all round.
Greece is a tougher nut to crack. French banks with €80bn and German banks with €40bn (and British banks too) that bought so much Greek debt at a few basis points over German Bunds in 2006 and 2007 will have to accept a bigger discount to atone for their epic error, perhaps 25pc — though Prof Reinhart did not put a figure on it.
----A Greek default would be twice the size of the two largest defaults in history put together — Argentina and Russia — at least in nominal terms, nearing €300bn. The “demonstration effect” in a long string of countries both inside and beyond EMU might be chilling.
----But is anybody in a position of power in Europe yet willing to contemplate such a solution for Greece? Is France? or Germany? or the European Commission? Or is the ruling machinery of EMU so twisted in ideological knots, and prey to conflicting national agendas, that nothing can be done beyond staging empty summits in Brussels that gain less and less market traction each time? This last deal has been tested within days. Greek spreads are through the roof again. Tuesday’s €1bn snap issue of bonds was horrendous.
---On a parting note, Professor Reinhart says the only budget deficit that matters in a crisis is the “cash deficit”, and this reached 16pc of GDP in Greece last year — not the 12.7pc officially registered under “accrual” accounting.
As countries near default, they typically find all kinds of way to disguise their troubles, by shifting debts between government agencies and delaying payments.
“In the end, everything comes out of the woodwork. You realize that it is even worse than you thought,” she said.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/ambroseevans-pritchard/100004699/the-imf-should-impose-default-on-greece-to-end-the-charade/
“A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.”
Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826)
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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Help the LIR fight Banksterism, the EU, and for sound money.
If you can, help the LIR stay around and make a difference. Please make a donation at the PayPal link on the website or better still become a sponsor for what looks like an exciting 2010. Capitalism not banksterism.
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Sunspots – A 22 year colder world? (From 2004?)
Spotless Days April 04 Current Stretch: 0 days
2010 total: 6 days (7%)2009 total: 260 days (71%)Since 2004: 776 daysTypical Solar Min: 485 days
http://www.spaceweather.com/
The long minimum seems to have ended.
New Solar Cycle Prediction
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/29may_noaaprediction.htm
Is the Sun Missing Its Spots?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/21/science/space/21sunspot.html?8dpc
Are Sunspots Different During This Solar Minimum?
-----But something is unusual about the current sunspot cycle. The current solar minimum has been unusually long, and with more than 670 days without sunspots through June 2009, the number of spotless days has not been equaled since 1933.
----During the period from 1645 to 1715, the Sun entered a period of low activity now known as the Maunder Minimum, when through several 11- year periods the Sun displayed few if any sunspots. Models of the Sun's irradiance suggest that the solar energy input to the Earth decreased during that time and that this change in solar activity could explain the low temperatures recorded in Europe during the Little Ice Age.
----The same data were later published [Penn and Livingston, 2006], and the observations showed that the magnetic field strength in sunspots were decreasing with time, independent of the sunspot cycle. A simple linear extrapolation of those data suggested that sunspots might completely vanish by 2015.These observations caused researchers to wonder whether the characteristics of sunspots are different now than in other solar cycles.http://www.leif.org/EOS/2009EO300001.pdf
Big freeze could signal global warming 'pause'
The Arctic conditions which have brought Britain to a standstill over the past week could be the start of a "pause" in global warming, some scientists believe.
Published: 9:20AM GMT 11 Jan 2010
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/globalwarming/6965342/Big-freeze-could-signal-global-warming-pause.html
Sunspot cycle 24: Together with sunspot cycle 25, the next two global cooling cycles. The new “Dalton Minimum?” Twenty Nine months now with low sunspots numbers, and counting. March was the 29th month of yet another low number of 15.4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalton_Minimum
Smoothed sunspot numbers (SSN). 2007, Oct. 0.9. The end of cycle 23.
Sunspot cycle 24: Nov 1.7. Dec 10.1. Jan 3.4. Feb 2.2. Mar 9.3 April 2.9. May: 2.9. June 3.1. July 0.5. August 0.5. Sep 1.1 Oct. 2.9. Nov. 4.1 Dec 0.8. Jan 1.5. Feb 1.4. Mar 0.7. Apr 1.2. May 2.9. June 2.6. July 3.5. Aug. 0.0. Sep 4.2. Oct 4.6. Nov 4.2. Dec 10.6 Jan 13.1 Feb 18.6 Mar 15.4.
Sunspots. http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/SunspotCycle.shtml
The count. http://sidc.oma.be/products/ri_hemispheric/
Why a New Minimum. http://sesfoundation.org/dalton_minimum.pdf
The “Carrington Event,” September 1, 1859.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/06may_carringtonflare.htm
Current Space Weather.
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/
What happened to global warming?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8299079.st
This week’s featured links: Silver & Gold Miners + Rare Metals.
With US trillion dollar deficits stretching as far as the eye can see, and voodoo economics the order of the day at the central banks, I think it is now time to begin selectively scaling into precious metals companies that mostly meet the following criteria:
Adequate cash reserves. Good management. Strong in-ground reserves or prospects. NAFTA based, or else located in countries with strong rule of law.
Endeavour Silver Corp. TSX: EDR. http://www.edrsilver.com/s/Home.asp
Semafo TSX: SMF http://www.semafo.com/home_company_intro.php
ATW Gold Corp. TSX.V: ATW. http://www.atwgold.com/
US Silver Corp. TSX.V: USA. http://www.us-silver.com/s/Home.asp
Excellon Resources Inc. TSX: EXN. http://www.excellonresources.com/
First Majestic Silver Corp. TSX: FR http://www.firstmajestic.com/s/Home.asp
New Jersey Mining Company. OTCBB: NJMC
http://www.newjerseymining.com/index.html
Atna Resources Ltd. TSX: ATN. http://www.atna.com/s/Home.asp
Barkerville Gold Mines TSX.V: BGM. Formerly International Wayside Gold Mines Ltd.
http://www.barkervillegold.com/s/Home.asp
Shoreham Resources Ltd. TSX-V: SMH
http://www.shoreham.ca/
ATAC Resources Ltd, TSX.V: ATC. http://www.atacresources.com/s/home.asp
Evolving Gold Corp. TSX.V: EVG http://www.evolvinggold.com/
Lydian International Ltd. TSX: LYD. Note: LYD operates in Armenia, a region carrying higher risk than our usual safer picks in NAFTA lands. http://www.lydianinternational.co.uk/
The story of rare earths and metals is mostly one of China producing and exporting, Japan, America and everyone else importing. Vital to our new technologies, and lifestyle, and critical to hybrid and electric cars, Rare Earth Elements and Heavy Rare Earths, are a strategic choke point held in China’s hands. Lately China has been squeezing that choke point. I think that AVL at Thor Lake Canada, has a property of global importance. A property with the ability to offer NAFTA access to REEs and HREs for the decades ahead. As America and the west move to reduce over dependence on oil from unstable regions, we will see demand for rare metals take off.
Avalon Rare Metals Inc. TSX: AVL. http://www.avalonraremetals.com/
We will be adding more REEs as appropriate.
Warning.
Sadly we are all in unexplored territory. The world has never before suffered a severe recession/depression while operating on fiat currency. As is widely apparent, the central banks haven’t a clue and are making up the rules as the flounder along. They never saw it coming they claim, although it was obvious to many fine writers though not unfortunately in the mainstream media, that a giant financialised derivatives gambling economy would always end badly. There are no experts now, for the simple reason that we have never before faced such a sudden synchronised and deep collapse in the global economies.
The unfortunate fact that we are operating on fraudulent currencies is highly likely to mean it all ends many months from now, in a fiat currency revulsion, but only after the monetary authorities have first tried pouring in endless amounts of newly created money. A derivatives gambling world with an estimated quadrillion dollars of face value has to be unwound and the losses absorbed. In this sort of investing environment, cash, gold and silver and tangible assets are favoured over stocks and intangible assets.
As always if thinking about making an investment, it’s important to do one’s own due diligence. No one has more at risk in an investment than you do yourself. In these difficult economic times, there will likely be several false bottoms before the real one arrives and hindsight allows us to confirm that the bottom is in. Even then, a “V” shaped rebound is highly improbable. A double dip recession seems likely. Beware the false "statistical" government subsidised "recovery." It is a "recovery" bought from a future of fiat currency collapse.
Graeme Irvine
London Irvine Report: www.londonirvinereport.com/
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