Baltic Dry Index. 960 +16
LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted ammonium hydroxide status as a GRAS, or Generally Recognized as Safe, substance in 1974.
For more on generally recognised as safe to eat American foodstuffs, scroll down to Crooks Corner. Warning, not for the squeamish or those with a delicate appetite.
It is Friday the 13th. What could possibly go wrong? Well the North Koreans would cite the spectacular failure of their ICBM/space rocket. As an attempt to scare the locals it probably succeeded. The debris could have fallen anywhere. As an attempt to scare the Americans that LA and San Francisco are vulnerable to NK nuclear attack, and Uncle Sam needs to back off, it was a hopeless failure. If it wasn’t for that fact that they were in bed, Americans would be rolling in the aisles.
So what else could go wrong today? Another “flash crash” in US markets, where nothing has been fixed in the world of high frequency front running of the client orders? Is it any wonder that stock trading volumes continue to fall. A fat finger error that blows up Club Med’s debt? A misstep at the end of Friday prayers in Damascus? We await the day’s action with interest.
Up first today, another worrying development in China. No not another foreigner allegedly croaked by an elite member of the Chinese Communist Party, although food tasters are now probably in high demand in a certain part of Beijing, today’s development is that China’s economic growth is still slowing, and that despite China’s bank lending soaring in March. Given that China’s figures get the Washington massage treatment, 8.1 per cent might be closer to 7.1 per cent.
12-15 a.m. CQD (6 times) DE (this is) MGY (6 times) position 41.44 N. 50.24 W. La Provence and Frankfurt receive Titanic's first distress signals. Titanic sends position to Frankfurt. Frankfurt says "OK: stand by"
China's economic growth slows to three-year low of 8.1pc
China's economy grew at its slowest in nearly three years in the first three months of 2012, with a weaker than expected reading raising investor concerns that a five-quarter long slide has not bottomed and that more policy action would be needed to halt it.
Reuters 7:07AM BST 13 Apr 2012
The annual rate of GDP growth in the first quarter slowed to 8.1pc from 8.9pc in the previous three months, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Friday, below the 8.3pc consensus forecast of economists polled by Reuters.
The GDP data headlined a flurry of indicators published on Friday showing March industrial output expanded 11.9pc, March retail sales rose 15.2pc and quarterly fixed asset investment, one of the principal drivers of China's economy, grew 20.9pc.
They were broadly in line with the conservative expectations of investors who have grown concerned in recent weeks that the bottom of China's economic cycle would extend into the second quarter of the year as it struggles to escape its worst sequential slowdown since the 2008/09 global financial crisis.
"What's clear is that the economy is still decelerating and the property sector clearly is deflating," said Yao Wei, China economist at Societe Generale in Hong Kong.
"Looking at the property data, it seems that property investment has finally started to correct. I think this trend will continue and will drag growth even lower in coming months so we don't think this is the bottom yet. It means more monetary easing will be needed to prevent a sharper deceleration."
More
“It means more monetary easing will be needed to prevent a sharper deceleration." Well maybe, there again maybe not. Below BOA Merrill Lynch’s Ting Lu begs to differ. Chinese banks are already lending like there’s no tomorrow. Stay long physical precious metals. In 2012 our financial world has never looked more unstable.
April 12, 2012, 5:02 a.m. EDT
China bank lending soars to top 1 trillion yuan
HONG KONG (MarketWatch) -- Chinese banks made more than a trillion yuan in new loans in March to trounce market expectations, according to central bank data issued on Thursday. Mainland lenders lent 1.01 trillion yuan ($160.1 billion) during the month, 332 billion yuan more than they did in the same month a year earlier, and also substantially above the 800 billion yuan of credit expected in a Reuters survey. Analysts closely monitor China's monthly bank lending, as regulators are believed to watch and control loan disbursals to steer the economy. The PBoC also said China's foreign exchange reserves climbed to $3.31 trillion at the end of March. "Today's data mean that the chance of rate cut is very small in the near future," said Bank of America Merrill Lynch economist Ting Lu in comments emailed to clients. He said the lending data suggested "loan demand came back after banks cut lending rates, new investment projects got started and the coldest winter in 27 years [is] behind us."
Link
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/china-bank-lending-soars-to-top-1-trillion-yuan-2012-04-12
Next, The Telegraph reaches the right conclusion on the euro, but way too early for Brussels and Berlin. There’s billions, if not trillions more European wealth yet to be destroyed before Europe’s top down, one size fits all, great experiment of a single semi-Germanic currency is abandoned. As part of the great European wealth destruction, under new Italian management the ECB is currently morphing the euro from semi-Germanic into semi-Italian. Capital flight continues out of the Eurozone and into London, Switzerland, the USA and into Germany. When the Eurozone dies the expectation is that Germany will get a hard currency again. Who would want to be in a currency union with the PIIGS?
1-10 a.m. Titanic to MKC (Olympic), "We are in collision with berg. Sinking head down. 41.46 N. 50.14 W. Come soon as possible."
Time to put the doomed euro out of its misery
Europe can’t accept that the economics of the single currency condemn it to failure.
There is no mess quite so bad that official intervention won’t make it even worse. Nowhere is this old saw more applicable than in the eurozone, where only a month or so back, leaders were warmly congratulating themselves on having seen off the worst of the debt crisis. As is apparent from the events of the past week, these hopes were not just premature, but naive. The crisis is once again intensifying, with the focus of attention switching from Greece to Spain.
The European Central Bank’s flooding of the banking system with cheap money didn’t solve the problem, or provide more than short-term relief for its symptoms. After a brief period of remission, they are returning. At best, the ECB bought a little time. This has not been used well. Instead, the eurozone has just ploughed on with the same old set of failed policies.
The Spanish government, for example, recently announced 29 billion euros of spending cuts and tax increases. It failed to do the trick, so this week a further 10 billion was added to the tally. This only succeeded in unnerving the markets even more, forcing the ECB to concede that it might have to engage in further purchases of Spanish government bonds.
By promising virtually unlimited liquidity, the ECB may have prevented a Lehman-style meltdown of the banking system. Yet it also accentuated the underlying problem. Virtually free central bank finance has enabled Spanish and Italian banks to engage in a highly profitable arbitrage, borrowing money from the ECB and then reinvesting it in government bonds. This, in turn, helped ease the fiscal travails of the European periphery. But it also increased the banks’ underlying solvency problem, since they have been buying bonds that may eventually have to take a haircut.
Already, many are facing losses on their purchases. Yields have been rising again, as investors worry about the sustainability of Spain’s debts. What’s more, the preferential treatment given to the ECB and other “official” purchasers has concentrated the risk of default among the remaining investors, acting as a further deterrent to holding sovereign debt.
We end for the week with Goldie acting like, well Goldmanites. It’s not their fault really it isn’t. They just can’t help themselves. If it’s not nailed down it’ll automatically turn into Goldmanite property. Imagine, Goldman’s Muppets actually thought that Goldie’s traders and analysts wouldn’t “huddle.” What planet are Goldman’s Muppets living on? I look forward to the movie “I was a Goldman Muppet,” though I might have to wait awhile.
I can resist anything except temptation.
Ebenezer Squid. With apologies to Oscar Wilde.
Goldman Sachs to pay $22m fine over 'huddles'
Goldman Sachs said it would pay a $22m (£14m) fine to settle allegations that it failed to enforce so-called Chinese walls between its analysts and traders in a fresh blow to the embattled bank's reputation.
The investigation by regulators focused on weekly "huddles" between the bank's analysts and traders from 2006 to 2011, in which the former would share their top short-term trading tips and the latter would discuss their views on the markets.
In 2007, according to US regulator the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Goldman established the Asymmetric Service Initiative (ASI) in which analysts shared trading ideas from the huddles with a group of select clients.
The SEC alleges that the bank failed to put in place adequate controls to ensure that the ASI did not result in clients, as well as its own traders, learning of and trading on upcoming changes to the stock picks made by Goldman's analysts.
"Goldman failed to implement policies and procedures that adequately controlled the risk that research analysts could preview upcoming rating changes with select traders and clients," said Robert Khuzami, the director of enforcement at the SEC. As part of the settlement with the SEC and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Goldman also agreed to be censured and review its policies. The fine comes less than a year after Goldman settled similar allegations made by regulators in Massachusetts.
Goldman said it was pleased to have resolved the matter.
1-30 a.m.Titanic tells Olympic, "We are putting passengers off in small boats." "Women and Children in boats, can not last much longer"
At the Comex silver depositories Thursday final figures were: Registered 29.30 Moz, Eligible 111.30 Moz, Total 140.60 Moz.
Crook and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.
Today, ammonia is good for you, really it is. Especially if you put it in American food, starting with children’s school meals. While the UK may have had its own children’s school food scandal a few years ago involving “turkey twislers,” only America seems to have added “pink slime” to Mickey D’s burgers. At least, according to Mickey D Europe. Adding a new level of filth to the things people will do in pursuit of the filthy lucre.
Using small amounts of ammonia to make food is not unusual to those expert in high-tech food production.
Ammonia used in many foods, not just "pink slime"
By Martinne GellerPosted 2012/04/04 at 5:34 pm EDT
New York, Apr. 4, 2012 (Reuters) — Surprise rippled across America last month as a new wave of consumers discovered that hamburgers often contained ammonia-treated beef, or what critics dub "pink slime".
What they may not have known is that ammonia - often associated with cleaning products - was cleared by U.S. health officials nearly 40 years ago and is used in making many foods, including cheese. Related compounds have a role in baked goods and chocolate products.
Using small amounts of ammonia to make food is not unusual to those expert in high-tech food production. Now that little known world is coming under increasing pressure from concerned consumers who want to know more about what they are eating.
"I think we're seeing a sea change today in consumers' concerns about the presence of ingredients in foods, and this is just one example," said Michael Doyle, director of the University of Georgia's Center for Food Safety.
Ammonia, known for its noxious odor, became a hot topic last month with the uproar over what the meat industry calls "finely textured beef" and what a former U.S. government scientist first called "pink slime".
Used as a filler for ground beef, it is made from fatty trimmings that are more susceptible to contamination than other cuts of beef, and are therefore sprayed with ammonium hydroxide - ammonia mixed with water - to remove pathogens such as salmonella and E.coli.
After critics highlighted the product on social media websites and showed unappetizing photos on television, calling it "pink slime," the nation's leading fast-food chains and supermarkets spurned the product, even though U.S. public health officials deem it safe to eat. Hundreds of U.S. school districts also demanded it be removed from school lunch programs.
One producer, Beef Products Inc, has since idled three factories. Another, AFA Foods, filed for bankruptcy protection.
The outrage, which many experts say has been fueled by the term "pink slime," seems more about the unsavoriness of the product rather than its safety.
"This is not a health issue," said Bill Marler, a prominent food safety lawyer. "This is an 'I'm grossed out by this' issue."
Still, critics of so-called "Big Food" point out that while "pink slime" and the ammonia in it may not be harmful, consumer shock over their presence points to a wider issue.
"The food supply is full of all sorts of chemical additives that people don't know about," said Michele Simon, a public health lawyer and president of industry watchdog consulting firm Eat Drink Politics.
NOT AS BAD AS IT SOUNDS?
The meat industry has been trying to raise awareness of other foods that contain ammonia, in response to what it has characterized as an unfair attack on a safe and healthy product.
For example, ammonia compounds are used as leavening agents in baked goods and as an acidity controller in cheese and sometimes chocolate.
"Ammonia's not an unusual product to find added to food," Gary Acuff, director of Texas A&M University's Center for Food Safety, told a recent press conference hosted by Beef Products Inc. "We use ammonia in all kinds of foods in the food industry."
Kraft Foods Inc is one company that uses very small amounts of ammonium compounds in some of its products, which include Cadbury chocolate, Chips Ahoy cookies and Velveeta cheese.
"Sometimes ingredient names sound more complicated than they are," said Kraft spokeswoman Angela Wiggins. She also pointed out that ammonia, made up of nitrogen and hydrogen, occurs naturally in plants, animals, water, air and in some foods, including milk.
-----Compounds such as ammonium hydroxide, ammonium phosphate and ammonium chloride are considered safe in small amounts.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted ammonium hydroxide status as a GRAS, or Generally Recognized as Safe, substance in 1974.
Ammonium hydroxide is also an acceptable ingredient under the conditions of "good manufacturing practices" in dozens of foods, from soft drinks to soups to canned vegetables, according to the General Standards for Food Additives set forth by the Codex Alimentarius Commission, a group funded by the World Health Organization and the United Nations' Food and Agricultural Organization.
A trip to the grocery store revealed ammonium chloride - a salt - present in Wonder Bread and Chef Boyardee Mini Ravioli, made by ConAgra Foods. Ammonium phosphate, another type of salt, is listed on Chips Ahoy cookies.
But ammonium hydroxide, the chemical often used to sanitize the "pink slime," was harder to find.
That is because it is often considered a "processing aid," which is not required by U.S. regulators to be included on food labels.
More
http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/bre8331b4-us-food-ammonia/
Another weekend, and another chance for Greece to bolt for the dying monetary union. It’s not a very high probability until after their coming general election. The 100th anniversary of the Titanic sinking too, well at least it didn’t sink on Friday the 13th. Another chance to get to walk Rosie the Border Collie in God’s spectacular Blossom and Bluebell filled woods and country fields. A chance to see fields filled with gambolling lambs. It’s a chance to watch one of Britain’s great sporting spectacles too. Tomorrow Aintree racecourse hosts the 2012 Grand National, now carried live on TV all around the world. This year’s course has been modified to lessen the danger to the horses and riders. Not before time many would say. Have a great weekend everyone. Good luck to those trying to pick tomorrow’s winner.
The Grand National.
http://www.grand-national.me.uk/
1-45 a.m. Last signals heard from Titanic by Carpathia, "Come as quickly as possible old man: the engine-room is filling up to the boilers"
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished March:
DJIA: +97 Down. NASDAQ: +103 Down. SP500: +70 Down. All three indicators remain down but downward momentum is stalling.
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