Baltic Dry Index. 2840 -100
LIR Gold Target by 2019: $3,000.
"Gold was not selected arbitrarily by governments to be the monetary standard. Gold had developed for many centuries on the free market as the best money; as the commodity providing the most stable and desirable monetary medium."
Murray N. Rothbard
Round one to the Yanks. Yesterday China blinked in the game of currency manipulation with the Yuan v Dollar. In the clearest sign yet that Beijing manipulates its currency, China allowed the yuan to rise against the dollar in a bid to defuse US Congressional hearings in Washington into China’s “dirty float” tactics. My guess is it’s too little too late. An angry US voting public seems to be getting ready to send a new cast of characters to Washington, specifically to end what’s perceived as pushover Uncle Sam, and Wall Street’s takeover of the US Treasury. Incumbents desperately seeking survival in November, are unlikely to be fobbed off at the last minute by China tinkering at the edges of their dirty float. If anything, China just proved up the case of those claiming Chinese manipulation of its currency.
"As fewer and fewer people have confidence in paper as a store of value, the price of gold will continue to rise."
Jerome F. Smith
Yuan rises to fresh record against dollar
Sept. 15, 2010, 11:09 p.m. EDT
HONG KONG (MarketWatch) -- China's currency struck a new high against the U.S. dollar on Thursday, even as the greenback saw gains against other major currencies, and ahead of a second day of U.S. Congressional hearings that will include testimony from U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on China's currency policy. The central bank set the mid-point for the yuan's daily trading range at 6.7181 Thursday, compared to 6.7250 on Wednesday. The level marks the fifth day in a row that the daily reference rate has been set at a fresh record low against the dollar. The dollar was at 6.7255 yuan in midday morning trade in Hong Kong.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/yuan-rises-to-fresh-record-against-dollar-2010-09-15
China defends forex policy but hikes yuan
Sept. 15, 2010, 1:39 a.m. EDT
HONG KONG (MarketWatch) — China on Wednesday again denied claims that it manipulates its currency to boost exports. But as U.S. lawmakers prepared to debate whether China should face sanctions for its forex policy, Beijing also sent the yuan rising.
China’s central bank set the mid-point for the yuan’s daily trading range against the dollar at a record high on Wednesday, the fourth straight session of successive record gains for the Chinese currency.
The “central parity rate” was set at 6.7250 yuan per U.S. dollar on Wednesday, a drop from the greenback’s parity rate of 6.7378 yuan on Tuesday.
At the same time, China Commerce Ministry spokesman Yao Jian repeated official comments that U.S. charges of any connection between China’s trade surplus and the yuan policy were “groundless.”
---- As of Tuesday, the yuan had risen 1.2% since China dropped its de-facto peg to the U.S. dollar on June 19 and pledged to allow greater flexibility for trading in the currency.
Though it gained very slowly in the weeks following the move, China has allowed faster appreciation since a delegation of senior U.S. officials met with Chinese counterparts earlier this month.
The recent rise in the yen suggests China will allow the currency to appreciate about 5% against the dollar by the end of the year, according to calculations by CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets.
Stay long precious metals. China’s next move could well be dumping dollars for gold, if the US Congress goes ahead with retaliation against China’s currency manipulation. China is unlikely to dump its holdings of US Treasuries, since that hurts China as much as the USA, but sending a very clear signal that the dollar’s reserve standing is ending, and the US is not going to get to pick its replacement, is very much a Chinese policy option that won’t rile the markets. The giant Comex short position in gold and silver now risks getting caught between a couple of bull elephants fighting.
Back across the Atlantic in Euroland, war has broken out between France and Luxembourg over Romanian gypsies. While most people outside Luxembourg have a hard time finding it on a map, it’s marked on German maps as the front door to Paris, France is calling Luxembourg’s bluff and offering its unwanted gypsies to Luxembourg. Now brash Luxembourg is in full retreat. We don’t want them either, is Luxembourg’s silence deafening reply. Send them to Brussels where Luxembourger EU Justice Minister Viviane Reding hangs out, she wasn’t speaking for US, says Luxembourg foreign minister Jean Asselbom. Today’s EU summit meeting in Brussels ought to be more interesting than most. Perhaps Napoleon Sarky should take along a few bus loads of Roma to make his point. Europe at its best and another reason for the UK to withdraw like Norway. UK out – Iceland in! This is all getting too funny for words.
In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their language.
Mark Twain
Sarkozy suggests Roma 'should be sent to Luxembourg'
Nicolas Sarkozy has sparked a bitter EU row by suggesting that the European Commissioner who compared his Roma policy to Nazi deportations should offer to host expelled gipsies in her native country of Luxembourg.
By Bruno Waterfield in Brussels Published: 1:05AM BST 16 Sep 2010
Luxembourg reacted with fury as the heated row threatened to engulf the meeting of EU leaders.
"I know that Nicolas Sarkozy has problems with Luxembourgers, but he's gone too far here," said Jean Asselborn, Luxembourg's foreign minister
France has lashed out at Viviane Reding, a Luxembourger and the EU's justice commissioner, who on Tuesday threatened legal action and described Mr Sarkozy's treatment of Roma as a "disgrace" that reminded her of Second World War round ups of gipsies and Jews.
"For Nicolas Sarkozy to amalgamate the commissioner's nationality and Luxembourg is malevolent. She was not talking for Luxembourg and did not take instructions from Luxembourg," said Mr Asselborn.
Bruno Sido, a French senator, said his country's leader would personally raise the "scandalous" criticism at an EU summit in Brussels on Thursday.
"He said he was only applying European regulations, French laws, and France was irreproachable in the matter but that if the Luxembourgers want to take them he had no problem," said Mr Sido.
French authorities have recently dismantled more than 100 illegal gipsy and traveller camps and deported more than 1,000 Roma, mainly back to Bulgaria and Romania, EU member states.
Both Germany and Bulgaria also waded into the controversy.
Berlin officials on Wednesday expressed support for the European Commission.
"Ethnic minorities should not be discriminated against. If the Commission now wants to examine whether events in France are in accord with this, then it has the perfect right to do so, and the commissioner has the perfect right to make a statement," said a government spokesman.
Georgy Parvanov, the Bulgarian President, broke his country silence on a policy that "ascribed guilt according to ethnicity".
"What happened with the expulsions of Bulgarian and Romanian Roma from France cannot be called good European manners and runs contrary to European values. I do not consider mass repatriation like this as normal," he said.
The Duchy is already at loggerheads with Paris after repeated French attacks on its banking secrecy laws, said by Paris to encourage tax evasion,
I have heard your views. They do not harmonize with mine. The decision is taken unanimously.
Charles De Gaulle
We end for the day with the US, and bad news from Pennsylvania and natural gas production from the Marcellus shale formation. Gas is the main competitor to renewables when it comes to generating clean(er) electricity. Although cleaner than burning coal or oil, burning gas still leaves a large carbon footprint. Bad news for gas is good news for the other clean technology energy producers, mainly wind and solar. What’s good news for them, is generally good news for rare earths and metals producers too. But that’s a story for another day.
Gas Shales: Good News And Bad News
While the production data is better than expected, Dr. Engelder also noted that the Marcellus gas produced last year was worth about $720 million, which is a large number but less than the cost of drilling and developing the wells. It is these negative economics that are beginning to play havoc with the profitability of the E&P companies active in the gas shale formations.
We are now seeing numerous producers indicating they are actively reducing or planning to reduce their rig counts in the gas shale formations around the country in response to the poor well economics – low natural gas prices and high drilling and well completion costs. Without a large volume of natural gas liquids in shale gas production, current gas prices make these wells uneconomical.
End.
Using carbon nanotubes (hollow tubes of carbon atoms), MIT chemical engineers have found a way to concentrate solar energy 100 times more than a regular photovoltaic cell. Such nanotubes could form antennas that capture and focus light energy, potentially allowing much smaller and more powerful solar arrays.
"Instead of having your whole roof be a photovoltaic cell, you could have little spots that were tiny photovoltaic cells, with antennas that would drive photons into them," says Michael Strano, associate professor of Chemical Engineering and leader of the research team.
I am a big believer in our newly arriving age of cleaner renewable energy, and it has nothing to do with the scam of man-made global warming from carbon dioxide. Recent advances in technology are improving the efficiencies of renewable energy. Recent advances in megawatt grid storage put intermittent energy sources like wind, solar, wave and tidal, on the cusp of becoming reliable base energy. Recent advances in e-mobility, put electric vehicles on a viable motorway to replace internal combustion mobility. The first electric locomotive was invented in Scotland in 1837, though it took until 1890 for the first electric underground line to open. Change happens far faster these days. In the depressed, austerity challenged west, all this may seem an unlikely prospect to alter our lives. Perhaps, but I think 2020 won’t look too much like 2010.
In contrast to wind turbines, there remains considerable room for advances in the efficiency of solar power and while this presents an opportunity to reduce costs further, it poses dilemmas for existing solar module manufacturers, particularly given the large investments which have already been made and the potential costs incurred in retooling existing factories to produce radically different products. A clear example is the recent breakthrough at the University of Stanford, where researchers have discovered that cesium-coated gallium nitride is capable of converting the energy from the light and heat of the Sun into electricity, paving the way for solar panels with efficiencies in the 55-60% range.
At the Comex silver depositories Wednesday, final figures were: Registered 53.97 Moz, Eligible 57.51 Moz, Total 111.48 Moz.
+++++
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner.
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.
No crooks or scoundrels today, just a bad news good news story from NY.
10,000 birds trapped in Twin Towers memorial light
More than 10,000 confused birds were trapped by the beams of memorial lights switched on to mark the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York.
By Nick Allen in Los Angeles Published: 6:21PM BST 15 Sep 2010
Two beams emanating from Manhattan, known as the Tribute of Light, had to be turned off five times to allow the migrating birds to continue on their journey last week.
The birds were on their way from Canada to the warmer climate of the Caribbean and South America.
They do not always fly over New York and the last time their migratory path coincided with September 11 was in 2004.
The Tribute of Light is turned on by the Municipal Art Society every year on the anniversary of the attacks.
Monitors from New York City Audubon, a conservation organisation, observed this year's tribute and alerted organisers to the confused birds.
An Audubon spokesman told the Animal Planet website that the birds could use up valuable energy needed for their migration while flying around in the lights.
He said: "We have a protocol in place in partnership with the Municipal Arts Society in case something happens like it did. There were huge numbers of birds flying through and large numbers did have difficulty navigating out of the beams.
"The Municipal Arts Society were very supportive of our goals of minimising risk to migratory birds."
The lights were shut off for about 20 minutes each time to allow the birds to clear the area.
An estimated 90,000 birds die each year after becoming disorientated by lights and crashing into skyscrapers in New York as they migrate south for the winter.
Owners of tower blocks are increasingly switching off or dimming their lights to reduce the risks to birds.
The Kahuku [Hawaii] wind power plant will use twelve 2.5-MW Liberty wind turbine generators manufactured by Clipper Windpower and a 10-MW battery energy storage system (BESS) manufactured by Xtreme Power Inc. The BESS will modulate and smooth fluctuations in power output caused by changes in wind levels.
When completed, Kahuku will produce the first combined installation of Clipper wind turbines and Xtreme's battery energy storage system.
“Xtreme Power is taking a different approach. It is working to commercialise a fibre-glass dry-cell battery which, thanks to being composed of solid materials, is able to deliver high efficiency power coupled with high levels of reliability, to the point where the company claims its device can still function after being riddled with bullets.”
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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