Baltic Dry Index. 2976 -21
LIR Gold Target by 2019: $3,000.
Capitalism is using its money; we socialists throw it away.
Fidel Castro.
In the wonders will never cease category, failed murderous communist Cuba is to fire a half million government workers. Unfortunately this doesn’t include firing the reprehensible two at the top and their lackeys, who between them have wasted the efforts of two generations, impoverishing 11 million less a few communist fat cats at the top of the hierarchy. Still heaven rejoices when a sinner repents, and Cuba is taking one step nearer to repenting. Just imagine the boom and hiring prospects, if Cuba would give up on failed murderous communism and allow the country to grow, even if only on the Chinese model.
But first this news from China. A weaker Euro is great news for Germany.
“It’s a good idea to save your money. One day it might be worth something again.”
Mad Magazine.
BMW Jan-Aug China Sales Exceed 2009 Full Year Figure, News Says
Sept. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Bayerische Moteren Werke AG sold 106,447 units of vehicles in China mainland in the first eight months of this year, exceeding full-year sales for 2009, the China Business News reported, citing the German automaker.
http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601100&sid=a8OSY1AihPkA
Now back to the big news from Cuba. Bad news for the UK’s communist and fellow traveler UK unions, just gearing up to make war this winter on the new coalition government.
“I think we agree, the past is over.”
President George W. Bush.
SEPTEMBER 14, 2010
Cuba to Cut State Jobs in Tilt Toward Free Market
Cuba will lay off more than half a million state workers and try to create hundreds of thousands of private-sector jobs, a dramatic attempt by the hemisphere's only Communist country to shift its nearly bankrupt economy toward a more market-oriented system.
The mass layoffs will take place between now and the end of March, according to a statement issued Monday by the Cuban Workers Federation, the island nation's only official labor union. Workers will be encouraged to find jobs in Cuba's tiny private sector instead.
"Our state can't keep maintaining...bloated payrolls," the union's statement said. More than 85% of Cuba's 5.5 million workers are employed by the state.
Cuba's effort to reorient its labor force represents the country's biggest step toward a freer economy since the early 1990s, when Havana embarked on a brief attempt to make changes in a bid to survive without subsidies after the collapse of the Soviet Union, its main benefactor.
The revamp is also the most drastic effort to revive the country's flagging economy since President Raul Castro, the brother of retired dictator Fidel Castro, took the helm of the Communist country more than four years ago after his brother fell gravely ill.
Many hoped that the younger Mr. Castro would push through Chinese-style measures to open the economy when he took power in 2006. But, with the president's ailing, revolutionary brother lingering in the background, changes never came.
But pressures have mounted in the wake of the global financial crisis, as the island's economic conditions have deteriorated, analysts say. Earlier this year, the Catholic Church warned that the island was on the verge of economic and social disaster if the government didn't quickly make the changes required.
Raul Castro has moved cautiously on reforms, but has consistently said the Cuban economy needs an overhaul. He has leased state lands and loosened restrictions on farmers buying supplies and selling produce. Last month, he foreshadowed Monday's announcement, complaining that the state payroll was burdened with 1 million excess workers.
"This is survival economics," says Jaime Suchlicki, director of the Institute for Cuban Studies at the University of Miami. "They don't have liquidity, and have a lousy economy."
Laying off government workers, however, is unlikely to do much to solve the country's problems, Mr. Suchlicki and others warned, since let-go workers have no where else to turn to earn a living. "They won't be absorbed by the private sector because there is no private sector to absorb them," he said.
Below, news from the men who would be king, at least in the sense that the IMF wants their organization to be in charge of the replacement fiat reserve currency once the dollar fails! Given France’s past record at running the Franc, why would anyone want a fiat currency managed by a French run IMF? Even though it will never happen, stay long physical, allocated, precious metals, far from the reach of larcenous Uncle Sam and John Bull. While the dollar is going through the long goodbye in its suicide by trillion dollar deficits, adopting the fiat “bancor” or “unitas” run by a French Keynesian IMF is not a solution, neither is adopting a dodgy Chinese yuan. Sooner or later, we are headed back to a level playing field of sound money tied to a gold bullion settlement system.
"Part of the $10 million I spent on gambling, part on booze and part on women. The rest I spent foolishly."
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, with apologies to George Raft.
IMF fears 'social explosion' from world jobs crisis
America and Europe face the worst jobs crisis since the 1930s and risk "an explosion of social unrest" unless they tread carefully, the International Monetary Fund has warned.
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Published: 11:00PM BST 13 Sep 2010
"The labour market is in dire straits. The Great Recession has left behind a waste land of unemployment," said Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the IMF's chief, at an Oslo jobs summit with the International Labour Federation (ILO).
He said a double-dip recession remains unlikely but stressed that the world has not yet escaped a deeper social crisis. He called it a grave error to think the West was safe again after teetering so close to the abyss last year. "We are not safe," he said.
A joint IMF-ILO report said 30m jobs had been lost since the crisis, three quarters in richer economies. Global unemployment has reached 210m. "The Great Recession has left gaping wounds. High and long-lasting unemployment represents a risk to the stability of existing democracies," it said.
The study cited evidence that victims of recession in their early twenties suffer lifetime damage and lose faith in public institutions. A new twist is an apparent decline in the "employment intensity of growth" as rebounding output requires fewer extra workers. As such, it may be hard to re-absorb those laid off even if recovery gathers pace. The world must create 45m jobs a year for the next decade just to tread water.
Olivier Blanchard, the IMF's chief economist, said the percentage of workers laid off for long stints has been rising with each downturn for decades but the figures have surged this time.
"Long-term unemployment is alarmingly high: in the US, half the unemployed have been out of work for over six months, something we have not seen since the Great Depression," he said.
Spain has seen the biggest shock, with unemployment near 20pc. Britain's rate has risen from 5.3pc to 7.8pc over the last two years, a slightly better record than the OECD average. This contrasts with the 1970s and early 1980s when Britain was notoriously worse. UK jobless today totals 2.48m.
Mr Blanchard called for extra monetary stimulus as the first line of defence if "downside risks to growth materialise", but said authorities should not rule out another fiscal boost, despite debt worries. "If fiscal stimulus helps avoid structural unemployment, it may actually pay for itself," he said.
"Most advanced countries should not tighten fiscal policies before 2011: tightening sooner could undermine recovery," said the report, rebuking Britain's Coalition, Germany's austerity hawks, and US Republicans. Under French socialist Strauss-Kahn, the IMF has assumed a Keynesian flavour.
Next, don’t bring it on, wails the UK’s PC police force, we can’t cope and austerity will bring on widespread civil unrest. Under the “social contract” of modern weasel word Britain, we, the great uneducated lower order serfs, don’t arm ourselves and rely instead on the rule of law and the local bigfoot PC Plod to enforce the law. Now the President of the Police Superintendent’s Association is suggesting that the UK’s police force is no longer “fit for purpose”. If that’s true, then it’s time to alter UK law to allow for an armed citizenry again, with children taught in schools the proper handling, care and maintenance of guns, knives and swords. Something Britain’s left wing PC media will never suggest.
Since love and fear can hardly coexist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.
Niccolo Machiavelli.
Cuts will bring civil unrest, says police leader
Britain faces widespread civil unrest, strikes and more crime as a result of cuts in public spending, one of the country's leading police officers will warn.
By Tom Whitehead, Home Affairs Editor Published: 12:01AM BST 14 Sep 2010
Derek Barnett, the president of the Police Superintendents' Association, will say that the harshest austerity drive since the Second World War is likely to lead to a period of rising "disaffection, social and industrial tensions".
In a speech to his association's conference, he will suggest that history shows that widespread disorder is "inevitable" at some point. Chief Supt Barnett will also warn that crime will rise if front-line policing is cut too severely.
Fears of widespread civil disobedience are being voiced as unions threaten co-ordinated strikes and a "campaign of resistance not seen for decades" against spending cuts.
Delegates at the Trades Union Congress yesterday voted almost unanimously in favour of a motion that called for a co-ordinated campaign against the cuts.
One union leader branded the Government the "demolition Coalition" and said it had declared war on working people.
Brendan Barber, the usually moderate general secretary of TUC, said the cuts would make Britain "a darker, brutish, more frightening place".
Mr Barnett will say that it is "disingenuous" to suggest that any warnings of rising crime under the cuts is scaremongering. Theresa May, the Home Secretary, will be at the superintendents' conference to hear him say that there was "surprise and disappointment" that the police service was not offered protection from cuts like some other public services, such as the NHS.
"In an environment of cuts across the wider public sector, we face a period where disaffection, social and industrial tensions may well rise," Mr Barnett, of Cheshire Police, will say. "We will require a strong, confident, properly trained and equipped police service, one in which morale is high and one that believes it is valued by the government and public."
He will say that from the Peterloo massacre in 1819, where 15 people died in a cavalry charge on a demonstration for parliamentary reform, to current alcohol-linked disorder "history teaches us that there will always be widespread threats to the public peace".
Remember that there is nothing stable in human affairs; therefore avoid undue elation in prosperity, or undue depression in adversity.
Socrates
At the Comex silver depositories Monday, final figures were: Registered 53.97 Moz, Eligible 56.90 Moz, Total 110.87 Moz.
+++++
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner.
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.
Today’s crooks, Japans’ dodgy relatives who manage to lose the dear 100 year old ancestors with remarkable indifference to a fate without access to their pensions. Call me old fashioned and a cynic, but I don’t believe Japan has 884 150 year olds either. I don’t believe that laughing stock Japan has one. Below, Japan needs help in finding it’s missing army of centenarians. Not too worry, the missing centenarians still somehow manage to cash in their pensions, helping to boost the economy.
Japan mislays 230,000 centenarians
Japan has mislaid more than 230,000 of its centenarian, officials have said.
Published: 2:29PM BST 10 Sep 2010
The country, which is famed for its longevity, launched a nationwide survey after the discovery that Japan's oldest man had been dead in his home for 30 years.
Since then the search for centenarians has led to the discovery of a Tokyo woman believed to be 104, whose remains were found stuffed into her son's backpack, where they had been for more than a decade.
Earlier this month a 58-year-old woman living near Osaka admitted to keeping her father's corpse hidden at home for the past five years.
The cases have also triggered soul-searching over elderly people living in isolation, and public outrage at relatives of those missing who have kept their deaths secret in order to keep receiving their pension payments.
The Justice Ministry said that a search of family registries, which are updated based on residents' notifications, found that 234,354 people recorded as at least 100 years old could not be located at their listed address.
Many of those whose whereabouts were unknown may have died as long ago as the Second World War or may have emigrated without their status being reported to local authorities, the ministry said.
The list included 77,118 people who would be 120 years or older today, and 884 who would be at least 150 years old, the ministry said.
The government has instructed regional legal offices to delete the names of people aged 120 or older if their whereabouts cannot be confirmed.
The ministry said the impact on Japan's life expectancy figures would likely be minimal since these are calculated from separate data gathered in home visits by field workers during national census campaigns.
Japan's health ministry reported in July that the average life expectancy was a world-record 86.44 years for women and 79.59 years for men.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/7994352/Japan-mislays-230000-centenarians.html
"The world urgently needs to create a diversified currency and financial system and fair and just financial order that is not dependent on the United States."
Shi Jianxun. China People’s Daily. September 16, 2008
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished August:
DJIA: +243 Down. NASDAQ: +366 Down. SP500: +243 Down.
The bull market (or bear market rally) that commenced on Nasdaq on 30/4/09 at 1717 has ended. (30/5/09 SP 500 at 919, 30/5/09 DJIA 8500.) While the indicators can flip flop at market turns, this action is rare on the slow monthly indicators. August is the third down month in a row and “crash season” approaches.
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