Baltic Dry Index. 4041 -33
LIR Gold Target by 2019: $3,000.
This ailing continent needs newer and better politicians. But where could we find them? There is no sign of a European Obama or anything remotely like him.
Der Spiegel.
More on Der Spiegel misdiagnosing Europe’s solution later. The one and only thing going for Euroland is that it doesn’t have “a European Obama or anything remotely like him.”
We open this morning with truly disastrous admissions from BP’s CEO Tony Hayward. Mr. Hayward now sounds like some immature teenager who has just wrecked dad’s car. “Who knew,” says the man paid millions to know how to run an oil company, and to know how to properly assess the risks of cutting edge oil exploration. Of course, the CEO isn’t supposed to handle all this himself. He delegates to the best industry experts in their field, but puts in place premeditated disaster planning. BP Plc seems now to be saying that they didn’t do this and that they authorised BP America just to roll the dice in deep water oil drilling. Abandon hope all ye who remain shareholders of this cowboy outfit, the Goldman Sachs of the deep sea oil producing sector. Below, the FT covers BP’s CEO’s suicide mission. Mission accomplished, it seems to me in sunny summery London.
Before a man speaks it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks, it is seldom necessary to assume it.
H.L. Mencken.
BP ‘not prepared’ for deep-water spill
By Ed Crooks in Houston Published: June 2 2010 16:20 | Last updated: June 3 2010 00:51
BP did not have all the equipment needed to stop the leak from its Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico in the aftermath of the explosion on an oil rig six weeks ago, the UK company’s chief executive admitted.
Speaking to the Financial Times in Houston as engineers worked on their latest bid to trap the escaping oil, Tony Hayward said BP was looking for new ways to manage “low-probability, high-impact” risks such as the Deepwater Horizon oil rig accident.
That bid suffered a temporary setback on Wednesday when a saw was stuck during a risky operation to sever the leaking pipe.
“What is undoubtedly true is that we did not have the tools you would want in your tool-kit,” Mr Hayward said. He accepted it was “an entirely fair criticism” to say the company had not been fully prepared for a deep-water oil leak.
The containment effort on the surface, he said, had been “very successful” in keeping oil away from the coast. “Considering how big this has been, very little has got away from us,” Mr Hayward said. But in trying to plug the leak, BP had been reaching for many of the same techniques used to control the Ixtoc 1 blow-out in the Gulf of Mexico 31 years ago.
“After the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989, the industry created the Marine Spill Response Corporation to contain oil on the surface...The issue will be to create the same sub-sea response capability,” he explained.
With BP and the rest of the industry threatened with being shut out of the deep waters of the Gulf, the most promising US region for oil development, Mr Hayward argued that reform could justify continued drilling in those challenging areas.
The gas blow-out that caused an explosion on the rig on April 20 that killed 11 men had been a “one in a million” chance, Mr Hayward said, but that risk had to be cut to a “one in a billion or one in a trillion” chance.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e1e0e21c-6e53-11df-ab79-00144feabdc0.html
It doesn’t take a genius to be wise after the event, and no one has ever mistaken me for a genius, but cutting edge deep water drilling is just one step away from space exploration, getting something wrong was always a foreseeable event. An event that surely required joined up, adult, premeditated planning for precisely the kind of disaster now sadly underway. The “disaster team” should have been playing “devil’s advocate”. What has happened in the Gulf of Mexico wasn’t some act of God or war. It wasn’t some unthinkable event. Before issuing a license to undertake cutting edge drilling, surely one of the first things asked should be “what if something goes wrong?” All high risk endeavours take many weeks or months of in-depth planning, the D-Day rescue of Europe wasn’t just a lucky throw of the dice. Plans and ships and covering aircraft existed for getting the troops off again, had it all gone disastrously wrong. A second landing was planned and took place at St Tropez in the south of France. The public on both sides of the Atlantic deserve better. Below, AP covers more of the consequences of “no tools.”
Scientists warn of unseen deepwater oil disaster
By MATTHEW BROWN, Associated Press Writer Matthew Brown, Associated Press Writer – Mon May 31, 5:11 pm ET
NEW ORLEANS – Independent scientists and government officials say there's a disaster we can't see in the Gulf of Mexico's mysterious depths, the ruin of a world inhabited by enormous sperm whales and tiny, invisible plankton.
Researchers have said they have found at least two massive underwater plumes of what appears to be oil, each hundreds of feet deep and stretching for miles. Yet the chief executive of BP PLC — which has for weeks downplayed everything from the amount of oil spewing into the Gulf to the environmental impact — said there is "no evidence" that huge amounts of oil are suspended undersea.
BP CEO Tony Hayward said the oil naturally gravitates to the surface — and any oil below was just making its way up. However, researchers say the disaster in waters where light doesn't shine through could ripple across the food chain.
"Every fish and invertebrate contacting the oil is probably dying. I have no doubt about that," said Prosanta Chakrabarty, a Louisiana State University fish biologist.
On the surface, a 24-hour camera fixed on the spewing, blown-out well and the images of dead, oil-soaked birds have been evidence of the calamity. At least 20 million gallons of oil and possibly 43 million gallons have spilled since the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded and sank in April.
That has far eclipsed the 11 million gallons released during the Exxon Valdez spill off Alaska's coast in 1989. But there is no camera to capture what happens in the rest of the vast Gulf, which sprawls across 600,000 square miles and reaches more than 14,000 feet at its deepest point.
Every night, the denizens of the deep make forays to shallower depths to eat — and be eaten by — other fish, according to marine scientists who describe it as the largest migration on earth.
In turn, several species closest to the surface — including red snapper, shrimp and menhaden — help drive the Gulf Coast fishing industry. Others such as marlin, cobia and yellowfin tuna sit atop the food chain and are chased by the Gulf's charter fishing fleet.
Many of those species are now in their annual spawning seasons. Eggs exposed to oil would quickly perish. Those that survived to hatch could starve if the plankton at the base of the food chain suffer. Larger fish are more resilient, but not immune to the toxic effects of oil.
-------But last week, a team from the University of South Florida reported a plume was headed toward the continental shelf off the Alabama coastline, waters thick with fish and other marine life.
The researchers said oil in the plumes had dissolved into the water, possibly a result of chemical dispersants used to break up the spill. That makes it more dangerous to fish larvae and creatures that are filter feeders.
Responding to Hayward's assertion, one researcher noted that scientists from several different universities have come to similar conclusions about the plumes after doing separate testing.
No major fish kills have been reported, but federal officials said the impacts could take years to unfold.
"This is just a giant experiment going on and we're trying to understand scientifically what this means," said Roger Helm, a senior official with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100531/ap_on_bi_ge/oil_spill_mysteries_of_the_deep
Next, more on Der Spiegel’s search for the “European Obama.” We end for today with the latest from the bureaucratic farce of the United States of Europe. Below Der Spiegel covers the polyglot “failure club” of Euroland. Stay long precious metals. Euros anyone? We can only live in hope Europe never finds its “European Obama.” Has Der Spiegel already forgotten Napoleon, Hitler and Stalin. Just look at the mess Great Britain is in following Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
H.L.Mencken.
The Failure Club
Our Leaders Are Responsible for Europe's Crisis
A Commentary by Hans-Jürgen Schlamp in Brussels 06/02/2010
It was neither tax evaders in Greece nor hedge funds that caused Europe's existential crisis -- political leaders in the euro zone share a great deal of the responsibility. They have been either unwilling or incapable of doing their jobs.
-----When the first states found themselves on the brink of bankruptcy -- Latvia, Estonia, Hungary and then Greece -- the leaders donated more and more billions of taxpayers' money and prescribed drastic remedies in the form of stringent austerity measures -- including for themselves. "We did what was necessary," a confident German Chancellor Angela Merkel said at each stage of the crisis. Her colleagues nodded in satisfaction.
At the same time, most of them don't even have a clue as to whether their activities have been helpful or counterproductive, or if they are even having any effect at all. "It worries me that many politicians believe that things will be the same after the crisis as they were before the crisis, when the world was still in order," Carsten Pillath, the director general in the European Council responsible for finance policy, told a small group of co-workers.
----The fact is, however, that politicians aren't even thinking about this. The men and women elected to higher office are mainly interested in one thing: getting re-elected and retaining their power. Anything else is secondary.
Provincial Bafoonery and Political Denial
If you look at the European political landscape these days, the image you get is largely a desolate one.
§ The political parties in Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, core countries of the original European project, are locked in endless battles, government crises and provincial buffoonery.
§ In Eastern Europe -- Hungary and Slovakia, for example -- nationalist parties are stoking the fires of anger in their own countries.
§ In Greece, the current government is struggling to deal with a legacy it has inherited from its predecessors. For decades, three families have taken turns to govern the country, with only a few short breaks here and there. The Papandreou clan of the current prime minister is one of them. The corrupt dealings of his grandfather, who once led the country, are the stuff of legend. And the people of Greece, whether passively or actively, adapted to the system.
§ The situation is no different in Italy: The country, one of the founding members of the European Union, has been in a state of political denial for years. The people of Italy doze in front of the television programs of media czar and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who himself has made a fulltime job of protecting his supporters in parliament with more and more new laws that will save them from prosecution. Meanwhile, opposition politicians are devouring each other over trivialities.
For a long time, the German-French double act ensured at least a minimal amount of leadership and orientation in Europe. But those days are over, too. Take, for example, the following questions: Do we need European economic governance? Should we ban hedge funds? How massive should the austerity measures being put in place be? Does Europe's economy need stimulating? The governments of Germany and France are currently providing contradictory answers to most of these questions -- or worse, no answers at all.
Almost worse is the fact that the countries' leaders aren't only far apart when it comes to goals. They also differ radically in their style of doing things: Nicolas Sarkozy is a hyperactive egomaniac, while Angela Merkel is a grouchy ditherer.
It makes no sense to try to "hide the fact that there is tension between France and Germany," Jean Bizet, the chairman of the European Affairs Committee in the French Senate, wrote in a recent essay for Le Monde -- and it is unlikely he put pen to paper in such a controversial way without discussing it first with Sarkozy, a close political ally.
Berlin regularly riles back, mostly under the cover of aides to the chancellor who can not be quoted. After reaching a €750 billion deal to shore up the faltering euro in early May, Sarkozy boasted to reporters that he had succeeded in pushing through "95 percent" of his ideas, including a "European economic government." A confidant of Merkel sneered back: "I will not deny that that was hot air."
This ailing continent needs newer and better politicians. But where could we find them? There is no sign of a European Obama or anything remotely like him.
-----Former Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy so far hasn't done anything to change the state of malaise in Brussels. He was chosen as the first permanent president of the European Council and was supposed to lend more European solidarity to the summits of national EU leaders. That effort went pretty much awry. "Van Rompuy was travelling in Asia as the crisis summit was being held in Brussels," scoffed the CSU's Ferber, adding that European Commission President Barroso was "busy with the EU-Latin American summit."
Now the impotent want to regroup. Van Rompuy has announced the creation of "some crisis cabinet" that would quickly bring together "the main players and the main institutions." It would include Jean-Claude Trichet, the president of the European Central Bank, European Commission President Barroso and, naturally, Van Rompuy himself. "That's hilarious," one government adviser in Berlin said in response to the proposal. And inside the Elysee Palace, Sarkozy's official residence, people were "laughing out loud," according to insiders.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,698343-2,00.html
A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
H.L. Mencken.
At the Comex silver depositories Wednesday, final figures were: Registered 52.47 Moz, Eligible 67.04 Moz, Total 119.51 Moz.
Day 23 of Hitler’s attack in the west that almost brought down western civilization. Dunkirk evacuation day 8.
Dunkirk & the Battle of France – Day by day 70 years on.
http://londonirvinereport.blogspot.com/p/dunkirk-battle-of-france.html
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Crooks and Scoundrels Corner.
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.
As promised yesterday, Herman van Rompuy, the backwater Belgian nobody that no one elected, who now struts over the EU as a new wannabe Belgian Caesar. It would all be so funny, if the man wasn’t so delusionally dangerous, with an agenda to bring in “economic government,” designed to aggrandize Brussels bureaucracy at the expense of everyone else, paid for mostly by hapless Germans, though UK serfs can be expected to cough up tribute to the unelected Lords of the Universe too.
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
H.L.Mencken.
EU need strong economic government – van Rompuy.
LA BAULE, France, June 2 (Reuters) - Europe needs strong economic government in addition to budgetary discipline and improved competitiveness to stop public debt "spinning out of control," European Council President Herman van Rompuy said on Wednesday.
Van Rompuy is "working on" the topic of economic government with policymakers in addition to other crisis response measures, he told an investment conference in La Baule, western France.
"We need strong economic government within the union and within the euro zone in particular...I am working on this," he said.
Several EU diplomatic sources said earlier on Wednesday that Van Rompuy wanted to speed up negotiations on reforming euro zone budget rules and economic governance to clinch political agreement on a package deal at an EU summit on June 17.
Better budget discipline, a monitoring system for competitiveness and improved crisis management were the three focus areas of the "task force" of European finance ministers, added Van Rompuy.
"These are three main priorities in order to prevent public debt from spinning out of control," he said.
http://www.iii.co.uk/news/?type=afxnews&articleid=7924176&subject=general&action=article
Herman Van Rompuy coins new 'EUphemism'
"Asymmetrical translation" is an new European Union phrase coined by its President to spare Gordon Brown's political blushes
Published: 7:00AM GMT 27 Mar 2010
Herman Van Rompuy came up with the idea, early on Friday morning, after a Franco-German call for an "economic government" horrified the Prime Minister.
"We consider that the European Council should become the economic government of the EU," said the Franco-German text.
To get around the G-word, "ideologically unacceptable" to Britain, but insisted on by Nicolas Sarkozy, the French President, Mr Van Rompuy came up with a novel solution to keep everyone happy.
As a result, the French version of the binding summit text, agreed on Thursday, used the original words "le gouvernement économique".
To spare Mr Brown's feelings, the English text used the more innocuous and less controversial term "economic governance".
"There is no fundamental difference of view, but rather a sensitivity to certain words which has led to an asymmetrical translation," remarked the EU president.
A British official tied to explain it: "Governance is about the way you do things, government is about new institutions or structures."
Another senior EU official noted that linguistic tricks were a specialty of Mr Van Rompuy, the former leader of Belgium, a country divided by bitter political disputes between Flemish Dutch and Walloon French speakers.
"I find it effective in a Europe with different political cultures. The words government or governance can be used for the same thing. We all know what is meant politically," he said.
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
H.L.Mencken.
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished May:
DJIA: +276 UP. NASDAQ: +499 UP. SP500: +304 UP. The great Bull market goes on with the all three continuing higher in positive numbers, but is now under serious pressure.
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Sunspots – A 22 year colder world? (From 2004?)
Spotless Days June 02
Current Stretch:0 days
2010 total: 33 days (22%)
2009 total: 260 days (71%)
Since 2004: 802 days
Typical Solar Min: 485 days
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