Baltic Dry Index. 1344 -04
LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE.
"We need only take our heads out of the sand to see clearly that interventionism not only has failed to provide the promised something-for-nothing, but has led to all sorts of undesirable consequences. Indeed, many are just beginning to realize that we are moving towards disaster even though we have been on a wrong heading for decades."
Leonard Read
Today we take a break from wondering when Greece will wise up and default on its bonds, if it doesn’t want to default, simply turn them into perpetuals, with no redemption possible, a break from wondering how many Irish must emigrate before the government there comes to its senses and puts the impossible burden back on the foreign banks where it rightly belongs, a break from wondering when Spain will capitulate and join Portugal in seeking a German bailout, a break for guessing on how much money Italy is losing as the Gaddafi regime takes on NATO Lite, absent the USA.
Today, London’s Mayor, perhaps unwisely for the mayor of the city hosting the Olympics next year, opines on the subject of the recent long overdue demise of the mass murderer of the World Trade Center, a complex I knew all too well.
Let's be clear: Osama bin Laden was executed – and for good reason
Imagine the media circus if the Americans had put the al-Qaeda chief on trial in New York City.
By Boris Johnson 10:27PM BST 08 May 2011
Well, that's handy. We have all just learnt some useful etiquette about how to greet US Navy Seals arriving unexpectedly in your house when you have just gone to bed. If you find yourself lying there with your wife, just after turning off the lights, and there is a terrific racket from downstairs, you need to follow these essential dos and don'ts.
If the ninja-clad gunmen start charging up the stairs and shooting up your relatives, you are perfectly entitled to stick your head out of your bedroom door and have a gander. You may gawp in horror as a bullet whangs into the plaster near your ear. But if you try to dodge the next bullet, I am afraid you may be deemed to have committed a "hostile act". If you are so rash as to duck back into your bedroom, you will apparently entitle the Seals to follow you into the matrimonial chamber, shoot your wife in the leg and then blow you away with a shot in the chest and the head.
Yup, it was Osama bin Laden's "hostile act" of bullet-dodging that cost him his life, says the White House. If he had only stayed out there on the landing and taken the next bullet square on the mazzard, he would have been beyond suspicion, it seems. As an explanation for killing an unarmed man, this is starting to get embarrassing.
----So why don't we all just cut the cackle and admit the groaningly obvious. It is perfectly clear why the US will not release the video footage they were all watching in the White House, and that caused Hillary to press her knuckles to her mouth. There was no firefight. Osama bin Laden did not cower behind his wife, spraying the US troops from his AK-47 like some scene from Call of Duty: Black Ops. That was a lie that went round the world faster than it took the truth to get its boots on, and the truth was that bin Laden hadn't even got his dressing gown on, let alone his boots, before he was despatched into the arms of Shaitan.
This was an assassination, a liquidation, an extra-judicial killing and a termination with extreme prejudice. Whichever way you look at it, President Obama has carried out one of the most effective whack jobs ever seen, and if he doesn't get re-elected I will be amazed. Osama is a has-bin, who sleeps with the fishes of the North Arabian sea, and it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.
More.
By contrast, Bin Laden’s family think he should have been taken alive, and have written to the New York Times to say so. Few in the west would agree. He gave no such deference to the unfortunate victims of 9/11.
Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
Galatians 6:7.
Osama bin Laden sons attack legitimacy of US assault
In letter to New York Times, sons of al-Qaida leader call for UN inquiry into why their father was killed and not arrested
Wednesday 11 May 2011 07.58 BST
Osama bin Laden's adult sons have attacked the legitimacy of the US assault that killed their father, calling for a UN inquiry to determine why he was not arrested and prosecuted.
In a joint letter the family said it wanted to know "why an unarmed man was not arrested and tried in a court of law so that truth is revealed to the people of the world".
"Arbitrary killing is not a solution to political problems," they said.
The letter was sent to the New York Times under the name of Omar bin Laden, the 30-year-old fourth son of Bin Laden who lived with the al-Qaida leader in Sudan and Afghanistan but has publicly denounced his attacks on civilians.
Drawing comparisons with Saddam Hussein and the former Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic, the statement said "international law has been blatantly violated" and, in a reference to the shooting of other people in the compound, said President Obama had ordered "the execution of unarmed men and women".
The letter contained some contradictions. Bin Laden called on the US to provide proof of his father's death – "we are not convinced" he said – while also condemning Osama bin Laden's sea burial as a deprivation of the family's religious rights.
Bin Laden also said it was "unworthy" of US special forces to kill an unarmed female family member and one of Osama bin Laden's sons, identified in news reports as 22-year-old Khalid. But the exact identities of those killed remains unclear.
Some reports last night suggested that another son, 20-year-old Hamza, had escaped the raid. A senior Pakistani intelligence official said he had no information about any escapees.
Bin Laden's family said it was calling on Pakistan to repatriate his three wives and several children, who are being held in military custody after surviving the dramatic US special forces raid on their Abbottabad home eight days ago.
Washington has publicly demanded access to the wives, one Yemeni and two Saudis, saying they may offer new intelligence on al-Qaida. Officials in Islamabad responded with conflicting statements but last night the interior minister, Rehman Malik, told CNN that access would be granted although he not specify when.
More.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/11/osama-bin-laden-attack-legitimacy-us-assault
We end for the day with the still (just) United Kingdom. Will the property bust turn the UK into another bigger version of Ireland? Stay long precious metals the fiat currencies, and central banksters, have wrecked the world. The UK, and America and Spain, all have the same real estate bubble problem. We’re all in danger of becoming Ireland.
"The history of paper money is an account of abuse, mismanagement, and financial disaster."
Richard M. Ebeling
MAY 11, 2011
Osborne Must Move Fast on Housing
George Osborne may not care for the comparison, but there is one aspect in which the U.K. Chancellor's economic strategy resembles that of his Labour predecessor Gordon Brown: the extent to which it hinges on the vagaries of the U.K. housing market. Where Mr. Brown needed to keep inflating the housing bubble to ensure the booming economy generated enough tax revenues to fund his public spending splurge, Mr. Osborne needs to find ways to stop the housing market imploding to ensure that the U.K. doesn't sink into an economic slump that would see its sovereign debt position rapidly head in the direction of Ireland and Portugal.
For Mr. Osborne, the challenge is becoming urgent.
Of course, it's in no one's interests that house prices remain overvalued, and it makes no sense to try to pump more air into a bubble. On the other hand, a sudden slump in the housing market could have repercussions for both monetary and financial stability, as a result of both the impact on consumer confidence and the blow to bank balance sheets and lending.
The latest figures show no let up in a steady slide that resumed in the middle of last year. Average prices are now about 20% below their peak in real terms and the latest Halifax survey showed house prices fell 1.4% in April, weaker than the 0.1% increase expected, leaving house prices down 3.7% year-on-year. Bank of England data show transaction levels are running at half the level in the years before the financial crisis, while the stock of mortgage lending continues to fall.
The state of the housing market may not figure prominently in the Bank of England's latest Inflation Report, to be published Wednesday. But there's no doubt it is one of the biggest concerns facing the Monetary Policy Committee. Governor Mervyn King alluded to these anxieties last week when he warned "the economic consequences of high-level indebtedness would become more severe if rates were to rise," taken as a clear signal he is likely to continue voting to keep rates low for some time.
The question for policy makers is how bad the housing market is going to get. Is the current slowdown in activity simply a protracted period of adjustment to a more rational market in which the extreme leverage—the 125% loan-to-value mortgage deals and the reckless self-certified loans—of the boom years is gone?
If so, it is hard to argue the slump, while it may be challenging for policy makers, is a welcome and necessary correction. Or does the house price slide represent the start of something more sinister, reflecting something fundamentally broken in the mortgage market beyond the healing powers of loose monetary policy and time?
More
The history of fiat money is little more than a register of monetary follies and inflations. Our present age merely affords another entry in this dismal register."
Hans F. Sennholz
At the Comex silver depositories Tuesday, final figures were: Registered 32.95 Moz, Eligible 68.44 Moz, Total 101.39 Moz.
+++++
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner.
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.
Today, the crooks in communist, repressive China. After last year’s rare earths embargo on Japan following a fishing dispute near the disputed Daiyou/Senkaku islands, this year it’s Norway’s salmon exports to China that are the weapon of choice by the regime in Beijing, over the awarding of a Nobel peace prize to pro-democracy campaigner, the jailed Liu Xiaobo. With a record like this, should China really be in the World Trade Organization, have most favoured nation status, and be a member of the G-20? Were it not for its hold over Uncle Sam by virtue of being his largest creditor, the Chinese Panda would probably be back in an isolation cage. Sadly I expect more of this bullying behavior as the decade progresses. Neither the EU nor America are willing to stand up to China.
"Of all the contrivances for cheating the laboring classes of mankind, none has been more effective than that which deludes them with paper money."
Daniel Webster
Scottish salmon farmers set to clean up after China's Nobel dispute with Norway
China's dispute with Norway over the awarding of the Nobel prize to dissident Liu Xiaobo has produced an unlikely winner - the Scottish salmon.
By Peter Foster, Beijing 12:02PM BST 10 May 2011
Norway’s fall from grace has provided a chance for Scottish salmon farmers to break into a market that had been dominated for years by the Scandinanvian country, which provides 90pc of the salmon eaten in China, according to the state-backed Global Times newspaper.
Exports of Norwegian fjord-farmed salmon to China have plummeted by 70pc in the first four months of this year, while Scottish producers signed a landmark agreement in January to begin direct exports to China.
Norway has been in the diplomatic equivalent of the deep freeze since last October when the Norway-based Nobel Committee announced it was awarding the peace prize to Mr Liu, a pro-democracy campaigner currently serving an 11-year jail sentence.
All political meetings between the two countries have been cancelled in a sign of Beijing’s displeasure, while shipments of Norwegian salmon that once sailed through customs now lie stranded on the dockside, awaiting ‘clearances’ by health inspectors, according to reports.
“We cannot get fish in there at all,” admitted Henning Beltestad, the CEO of Norway's Leroey Seafood Group, one of many Norwegian companies absorbing the impact of a breakdown of relations between Oslo and Beijing.
Salmon farming supports 6,000 jobs in Scotland, with exports worth nearly £300m, a figure that the industry hopes to grow through exports to China and the Middle East, expanding from traditional export markets of Europe and the US.
At the signing of January’s deal, China’s vice-premier Li Keqiang, observed that “even if 1pc of the people of China decide to eat Scottish salmon” then Scotland would have to double production to meet demand.
While Norwegian producers said they were now searching for alternatives markets for their fish, Jamie Smith, a spokesman for the Scottish Salmon Producers' Organization, said Scottish exporters had not experienced any problems with inspections.
"It is important to remember that government interference always means either violent action or the threat of such action.....taxes are paid because the taxpayers are afraid of offering resistance to the tax gatherers. They know that any disobedience or resistance is hopeless. As long as this is the state of affairs, the government is able to collect the money that it wants to spend. Government is in the last resort the employer of armed men, of policemen, gendarmes, soldiers, prison guards, and hangmen. The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisoning. Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom."
Ludwig von Mises
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished April:
DJIA: +182 Up. NASDAQ: +236 Up. SP500: +185 Up.
The Dow and SP 500 and NASDAQ have all reversed from down to up. The Fed’s rigging of the indicators seems to have worked. Note: like all indicators, they were devised for normal markets not markets where the central bank is flooding the economy with new cash. In current conditions where risk is suspended by too big to fail, I doubt any indicators are showing more that where the Fed’s new cash is flowing in our world of casino capitalism.
No comments:
Post a Comment