Baltic Dry Index. 2975 +57
LIR Gold Target by 2019: $3,000.
The World Trade Center opened in 1970 after 8 years of construction.
For more on the sickest great vampire squid joke yet, scroll down to “Crooks and Scoundrel’s Corner”. God’s workers are about to peddle municipal bonds to the great unsophisticated hoi polloi. When the man from Goldie calls hang up. If they want out, do you really want in?
Sixteen blocks were cleared to house the completed WTC.
We open this Friday before the 9th anniversary of the Moslem fanatic atrocity of 9/11 in America, with the OECD saying the slowdown in the west is worse than forecast. Wait for later revisions to show just how much worse.
The excavation work displaced enough soil to create Liberty Park, where four 60-floor towers and four apartment buildings were constructed.
World slowdown steeper than anticipated: OECD
Sept. 9, 2010, 5:29 a.m. EDT
LONDON (MarketWatch) -- The slowdown in the global economic recovery is "somewhat more pronounced than previously anticipated," said Pier Carlo Padoan, chief economist at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development on Thursday. In prepared remarks accompanying the release of the organization's updated economic outlook in Paris, Padoan said it isn't clear whether the loss of momentum is temporary or whether it signals greater underlying weaknesses in private spending at a time when support from fiscal and monetary policy is being removed.
If the slowdown is temporary, it would be appropriate to delay the withdrawal of monetary stimulus "for a few months" while pressing ahead with fiscal deficit-reduction measures, Padoan said. If the slowdown reflects "longer-lasting forces bearing down on activity," however, additional monetary stimulus might be warranted in the form of quantitative easing and a commitment to near-zero policy interest rates for a longer period, he said, while also delaying fiscal consolidation where public finances permit
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/world-slowdown-steeper-than-anticipated-oecd-2010-09-09
Below, some $2.5 trillion in to the great 21st century bankster bailout, the USA has managed to add more to national debt than collectively all previous Presidents from Reagan all the way back to George Washington. Stay long precious metals. The Great Nixonian Error gets more bizarre by the week.
The WTC had 12 million square feet of space. Each floor was 50,000 square feet.
Obama Added More to National Debt in First 19 Months Than All Presidents from Washington Through Reagan Combined, Says Gov’t Data
Wednesday, September 08, 2010 By Terence P. Jeffrey, Editor-in-Chief
(CNSNews.com) - In the first 19 months of the Obama administration, the federal debt held by the public increased by $2.5260 trillion, which is more than the cumulative total of the national debt held by the public that was amassed by all U.S. presidents from George Washington through Ronald Reagan.
The U.S. Treasury Department divides the federal debt into two categories. One is “debt held by the public,” which includes U.S. government securities owned by individuals, corporations, state or local governments, foreign governments and other entities outside the federal government itself. The other is “intragovernmental” debt, which includes I.O.U.s the federal government gives to itself when, for example, the Treasury borrows money out of the Social Security “trust fund” to pay for expenses other than Social Security.
At the end of fiscal year 1989, which ended eight months after President Reagan left office, the total federal debt held by the public was $2.1907 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That means all U.S. presidents from George Washington through Ronald Reagan had accumulated only that much publicly held debt on behalf of American taxpayers. That is $335.3 billion less than the $2.5260 trillion that was added to the federal debt held by the public just between Jan. 20, 2009, when President Obama was inaugurated, and Aug. 20, 2010, the 19-month anniversary of Obama's inauguration.
By contrast, President Reagan was sworn into office on Jan. 20, 1981 and left office eight years later on Jan. 20, 1989. At the end of fiscal 1980, four months before Reagan was inaugurated, the federal debt held by the public was $711.9 billion, according to CBO. At the end of fiscal 1989, eight months after Reagan left office, the federal debt held by the public was $2.1907 trillion. That means that in the nine-fiscal-year period of 1980-89--which included all of Reagan’s eight years in office--the federal debt held by the public increased $1.4788 trillion. That is in excess of a trillion dollars less than the $2.5260 increase in the debt held by the public during Obama’s first 19 months
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/72404
Back across the Atlantic in the home of the overpaid maladroit English World Cup football team, the stealth devaluation has gone off the rails. Despite the BOE dropping the Pound from $2.10 to $1.50, the devaluation has all gone horribly wrong in Europe’s second largest economy. Worryingly, Germany, Europe’s largest economy, now seems to be slowing as well. Pretty soon we’ll all be in Club Med but with Iceland’s weather.
The towers were different heights. The South tower was 1,362 feet tall, and big brother North tower was 1,368.
U.K. Trade Deficit Widens to Record as Imports Surge
By Jennifer Ryan
Sept. 9 (Bloomberg) -- The U.K.’s trade deficit widened to a record in July as purchases of chemicals and oil drove imports to the highest level in two years.
The goods-trade gap widened to 8.7 billion pounds ($13.4 billion) from 7.5 billion pounds and June, the Office for National Statistics said today in London. The median of 13 forecasts in a Bloomberg News survey was for a 7.5 billion-pound deficit. Exports fell 0.9 percent and imports rose 3.1 percent
----The Bank of England today left its benchmark interest rate at a record low of 0.5 percent and its bond stimulus plan at 200 billion pounds.
“The figures are a disappointment,” Philip Shaw, chief economist at Investec Securities in London, said in a telephone interview. “Overall the great rebalancing of the U.K. economy has yet to happen. The bank will be frustrated that the long- awaited upturn in export growth simply hasn’t happened.”
-----The trade deficit in oil swelled to 649 million pounds, the most in two years. Imports from non-European Union nations reached 15.6 billion pounds in July, a record high.
While the jump in imports may signal strength in domestic demand, weakening exports suggest the economy is failing to benefit from the weakness of the pound, which has fallen by a about a fifth on a trade-weighted basis since the start of 2007.
Abingdon, England-based PV Crystalox Solar Plc, a maker of silicon wafers, said Aug. 19 first-half net income fell 59 percent as average wafer prices fell about 40 percent from a year earlier. Chief Executive Officer Iain Dorrity said the company is working to build up business in Asia.
German economic data published yesterday also showed exports fell and industrial production rose less than economists forecast in July, suggesting the recovery in Europe’s largest economy is moderating. The German economy expanded at the fastest pace in two decades in the second quarter, boosted by exports.
http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aOTZh4ao5C5s
Yesterday we covered Norway’s big sovereign wealth fund bet on the tax and work shy Greeks. Whatever were they thinking, they might as well have bet on England or France winning the World Cup! We end for the day with the ever entertaining Michael Lewis visiting Greece. Many thanks to Morris in NYC for sending the article along. The whole 7 page article will make for great weekend reading.
The steel inside the WTC could have made three more Brooklyn Bridges.
Beware of Greeks Bearing Bonds
By Michael Lewis October 1, 2010
As Wall Street hangs on the question “Will Greece default?,” the author heads for riot-stricken Athens, and for the mysterious Vatopaidi monastery, which brought down the last government, laying bare the country’s economic insanity. But beyond a $1.2 trillion debt (roughly a quarter-million dollars for each working adult), there is a more frightening deficit. After systematically looting their own treasury, in a breathtaking binge of tax evasion, bribery, and creative accounting spurred on by Goldman Sachs, Greeks are sure of one thing: they can’t trust their fellow Greeks.
-----I was there for money. The tsunami of cheap credit that rolled across the planet between 2002 and 2007 has just now created a new opportunity for travel: financial-disaster tourism. The credit wasn’t just money, it was temptation. It offered entire societies the chance to reveal aspects of their characters they could not normally afford to indulge. Entire countries were told, “The lights are out, you can do whatever you want to do and no one will ever know.” What they wanted to do with money in the dark varied. Americans wanted to own homes far larger than they could afford, and to allow the strong to exploit the weak. Icelanders wanted to stop fishing and become investment bankers, and to allow their alpha males to reveal a theretofore suppressed megalomania. The Germans wanted to be even more German; the Irish wanted to stop being Irish. All these different societies were touched by the same event, but each responded to it in its own peculiar way. No response was as peculiar as the Greeks’, however: anyone who had spent even a few days talking to people in charge of the place could see that. But to see just how peculiar it was, you had to come to this monastery.
-----Moody’s, the ratings agency, had just lowered Greece’s credit rating to the level that turned all Greek government bonds into junk—and so no longer eligible to be owned by many of the investors who currently owned them. The resulting dumping of Greek bonds onto the market was, in the short term, no big deal, because the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank had between them agreed to lend Greece—a nation of about 11 million people, or two million fewer than Greater Los Angeles—up to $145 billion. In the short term Greece had been removed from the free financial markets and become a ward of other states.
-----That was the good news. The long-term picture was far bleaker. In addition to its roughly $400 billion (and growing) of outstanding government debt, the Greek number crunchers had just figured out that their government owed another $800 billion or more in pensions. Add it all up and you got about $1.2 trillion, or more than a quarter-million dollars for every working Greek. Against $1.2 trillion in debts, a $145 billion bailout was clearly more of a gesture than a solution.
-----As it turned out, what the Greeks wanted to do, once the lights went out and they were alone in the dark with a pile of borrowed money, was turn their government into a piñata stuffed with fantastic sums and give as many citizens as possible a whack at it. In just the past decade the wage bill of the Greek public sector has doubled, in real terms—and that number doesn’t take into account the bribes collected by public officials. The average government job pays almost three times the average private-sector job. The national railroad has annual revenues of 100 million euros against an annual wage bill of 400 million, plus 300 million euros in other expenses. The average state railroad employee earns 65,000 euros a year.
-----The Greek public-school system is the site of breathtaking inefficiency: one of the lowest-ranked systems in Europe, it nonetheless employs four times as many teachers per pupil as the highest-ranked, Finland’s.
-----Where waste ends and theft begins almost doesn’t matter; the one masks and thus enables the other. It’s simply assumed, for instance, that anyone who is working for the government is meant to be bribed.
-----Oddly enough, the financiers in Greece remain more or less beyond reproach. They never ceased to be anything but sleepy old commercial bankers. Virtually alone among Europe’s bankers, they did not buy U.S. subprime-backed bonds, or leverage themselves to the hilt, or pay themselves huge sums of money. The biggest problem the banks had was that they had lent roughly 30 billion euros to the Greek government—where it was stolen or squandered. In Greece the banks didn’t sink the country. The country sank the banks.
-----At the dark and narrow entrance to the Ministry of Finance a small crowd of security guards screen you as you enter—then don’t bother to check and see why you set off the metal detector. In the minister’s antechamber six ladies, all on their feet, arrange his schedule. They seem frantic and harried and overworked … and yet he still runs late. The place generally seems as if even its better days weren’t so great. The furniture is worn, the floor linoleum. The most striking thing about it is how many people it employs.
Much more.
http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2010/10/greeks-bearing-bonds-201010?currentPage=1
We end for the day with China, China’s top “diplomat” at the UN to be exact. Next posting Mongolia probably.
The buildings housed 49,000 tons of air-conditioning equipment.
China's UN diplomat in drunken rant against Americans
China's top-ranking UN diplomat embarked on a drunken rant against the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, telling his boss he'd "never liked" him, and adding for good measure that he didn't like Americans either.
Peter Foster in Beijing Published: 11:42AM BST 09 Sep 2010
The outburst by Sha Zukang at a retreat for top UN officials in the Austrian ski resort of Alpbach left senior UN officials cringing in embarrassment as others tried to convince him to put down the microphone, according to Washington-based Foreign Policy magazine.
"I know you never liked me Mr. Secretary-General – well, I never liked you, either," said Mr Sha as Mr Ban looked on, smiling and nodding awkwardly during the 15-minute toast attended by the UN's top brass.
Mr Sha, who was appointed the UN undersecretary general for Economic and Social Affairs in 2007, also made no secret of his fractious relationship with Mr Ban, although did say he'd grown to respect the South Korean.
"You've been trying to get rid of me," said 62-year-old Mr Sha according to the senior UN official present, "You can fire me anytime, you can fire me today."
Later in his impromptu speech Mr Sha turned to an American colleague, singling out Bob Orr, from the executive office of the secretary-general.
"I really don't like him: he's an American and I really don't like Americans," he said.
A second senior UN official who was at the dinner said: "It went on for about ten or fifteen minutes but it felt like an hour."
Officials present at the dinner suggested that Mr Sha might have been the victim of a misguided attempt at humour.
The next morning Mr Sha requested a meeting with Mr Ban during which he was "deeply apologetic" according to Farhan Haq, the acting deputy UN spokesman.
On a clear day, it was possible to see for 45 miles in every direction from the observation deck.
At the Comex silver depositories Thursday, final figures were: Registered 54.12 Moz, Eligible 57.12 Moz, Total 111.24 Moz.
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Crooks and Scoundrels Corner.
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.
We end for the day with the sickest NY bankster joke of the year so far. My thanks to Ed in Chicago for sending it along. When Goldman calls hang up. Below, the Journal on Ebenezer Squid’s move into municipal bonds! If Ebenezer’s selling, do you really think it’s right to be buying? Sensing the coming US municipal collapse and debacle, Goldie is about to take opportunity to dump the increasingly bankrupt municipality "triple-A bonds" on the unsuspecting dhimmis of Main Street America. Has any Squid in Goldie called Narvik yet? This is so sad and funny at the same time, it’s a Wall Street classic. Any chance that they will short against the munis they peddle? Naw, they wouldn’t do that would they? Ebenezer is laughing all the way to the Federal Reserve bank Goldie already owns.
The most famous man to scale the outside of the building was George Willig - who was arrested at the top. Mr. Willig was fined one penny for each of the 110 floors he scaled.
I had the privilege of watching Mr. Willig from my corner office.
SEPTEMBER 8, 2010
Goldman in Bond Deal
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is about to start selling municipal bonds directly to mom and pop.
The New York company plans to enter a partnership this week with Chicago securities firm Incapital LLC to sell bonds issued by U.S. states, cities and towns to individual investors, according to a person familiar with the situation.
The arrangement will make billions of dollars of municipal bonds underwritten by Goldman available for sale by at least 85,000 brokers in Incapital's distribution network of broker-dealer firms.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703720004575478151808425876.html
How Narvik was fooled into investing in CDOs
How Narvik, Norway, a small town near the Arctic circle, was fooled into investing in Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs). From CNBC’s “CNBC,” original air date, February 12, 2009.
http://blog.norway.com/2009/07/13/narvik-fooled-into-investing-in-dcos/
"As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs."
Another weekend, and if Pastor Terry Jones in Florida doesn’t set off World War 3 on the 9th anniversary of the atrocity of the World Trade Center, we will all be fortunate indeed. The on again-off again threatened US war with Iran over nukes, seems to be off again for the moment. Replaced by a man who no one had ever heard of, determined to set off a US lead war against the whole Moslem world. Only in America as they say. As religious protests go, I suppose this is Florida’s sun baked travesty of the 95 Theses on the door of All Saints Church. Most countries have sensible laws against deliberately setting off religious or race wars. In Europe the result of too many wars over the centuries, and the still fresh memory of the Godless psychopaths Stalin and Hitler. Whatever happens tomorrow, we can only hope that God lets saner heads prevail. Tomorrow we remember the dead of 9/11. May God give comfort to their families and friends. Have a great weekend everyone.
"Why does the pope, whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build the basilica of St. Peter with the money of poor believers rather than with his own money?"
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.
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. Many thanks to all who have helped. Anyone heard from Hindenburg?
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Sunspots – A 22 year colder world? (From 2004?)
Spotless Days Sep 08
Current Stretch:1 days
2010 total: 39 days (16%)
2009 total: 260 days (71%)
Since 2004: 808 days
Typical Solar Min: 485 days
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