Tuesday 29 May 2012

Bilderberger’s To Gather to Pick US President.


Baltic Dry Index. 1012  -22

LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000.  Revised due to QE programs.

For more on the coming Bilderberger gathering at the Westfield Marriott Hotel in Virginia from May 30 to June 3, scroll down to Crooks and Scoundrels  Corner. Are the elite “Masters of the Universe” giving up on President Obama or the Mormon Mr. Romney?

Now back to the disintegration of the Great Bilderberger Blunder of the European Monetary Union. Today “The German’s Burden.” If you wake up German this morning, you have to ask yourself why did German politicians so foolishly give up the sanity of the Deutsche Mark, for a politically unstable monetary union unit called the “euro,” allowing in the union, as they did, the tax and work shy members of Club Med? As a German, your next question should be, how much will it cost me to keep the euro together vs how much will it cost me for Germany to leave and form a sensible German centric, monetary union, of the tax paying and hard working north of Europe.

Today, while American’s recover from hangovers, mild sunstroke and too many burgers, Europe continues disintegrating.

Take up the German's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go, bind your sons to exile
To serve  southern lifestyle need;
To wait, in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Germany’s new-caught sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.

With apologies to Rudyard Kipling.

Bank of England prepares plans for euro collapse

The Bank of England is poised to cut interest rates or launch another round of quantitative easing if the euro collapses, it emerged on Monday.

A senior official for the Bank said the measures would "again play [their] part in mitigating the impact" of Greece or other countries leaving the single currency.

The comments come after the head of the IMF suggested last week that British interest rates may have to be cut to zero if the economic situation deteriorates.

The Bank has already completed a quantitative easing programme, effectively printing more money worth £325billion and this may be extended again.

Yesterday, David Cameron hosted a meeting with Sir Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank; Lord Turner, the chairman of the Financial Services Authority; and the Chancellor, to discuss contingency plans to deal with the collapse of the euro.

----Yesterday, Dr Ben Broadbent, a member of the Bank's monetary policy committee and former Treasury adviser, said that the Bank was ready to intervene.

He said: "Were the still unlikely worst case risks in the euro area actually to be realised, then our own monetary policy would again play its part in mitigating the impact."

But he added: "While they are both necessary and effective, these domestic interventions have their limits. It remains the case that, for the time being at least, the most important policy decisions affecting the UK are being taken in other parts of the continent.

May 28, 2012, 11:10 a.m. ET

Spain Borrowing Costs Hit New High

MADRID—Concerns about Spain's ability to overhaul an ailing banking system while it tries to shore up its financially shaky regions and plug a gaping budget deficit sent Spanish borrowing costs to a record high Monday, prompting a new call from Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy for the European Union to take action to calm market turmoil.

"We need clear statements in defense of the euro and of the sustainability of euro-zone debt," Mr. Rajoy said in a news conference. Spain's 10-year government bond yield rose 0.18 percentage point to 6.47% Monday, a new 2012 high, after Spain announced a €19 billion ($23.78 billion) bailout for ailing lender Bankia SA.

---- The €19 billion price tag for Spain's third-largest bank by assets more than doubles the amount the country has spent so far in its four-year financial crisis and signaled that the government is preparing to mount a muscular cleanup effort for the rest of the sector, analysts said. Under EU pressure, Spain has commissioned an external audit of the country's lenders by Roland Berger and Oliver Wyman. The results will be disclosed by mid-June.

In a note to investors, Nomura analyst Daragh Quinn estimated the entire sector could need €50 billion to €60 billion. "Given the current economic and political uncertainties facing the euro zone, this could see additional pressure on Spain to consider using external funds for the bank recapitalization," he said.
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Spain's Rajoy fights losing battle to stave off EU rescue

Spanish premier Mariano Rajoy has given a fateful hostage to fortune. He told the nation that there will no EU rescue of Spain's banking system, even as `Black Monday' brought a further crash in bank shares and the IBEX index dropped to nine-year lows.

So where will he find the money to finance his €23.5bn bail-out of Bankia, a bank deemed healthy just weeks ago? The Fund for Orderly Bank Restructuring (FROB) has €5.3bn, and other banks to worry about. It would be ruinous to tap the bond markets. Spanish 10-year yields are already at danger levels of 6.4pc. The spread over German Bunds has reached a post-EMU high of 514 basis points.

Capital flight has cut foreign holdings of Spanish debt from 50pc to 37pc since January. Spain's banks -- including Bankia -- have been propping up the state with €316bn borrowed from the European Central Bank. Now the state is propping up banks. The incestuous nexus is surreal.

David Owen from Jefferies said Spain is near the point of no return. "It is not sustainable. They hope things will calm down after the Greek elections. We think there will have to be external intervention," he said.
Mr Rajoy is sticking doggedly to his line that Spain is a collateral casualty of mess elsewhere in Europe. 

"There are major doubts over the euro zone and that makes the risk premium for some countries very high," he said.

He wants mobilisation of the EU bail-out fund to recapitalise weak banks across Euroland, lessening the stigma for states in crisis. This amounts to EU debt-pooling -- a variant of eurobonds -- and has been vetoed by Germany.

Greek promises of tax crackdowns fail to bite

When Christine Lagarde hit out at Greeks for not paying their taxes, Athens scholar Evi Malliarou agreed with the IMF chief's sentiment.

Over the weekend Ms Lagarde told a newspaper she agreed that it was "payback time" for the many Greeks who see taxes as optional.

Ms Malliarou said: "Rich people have many tools to renegotiate their taxes while poor people have to pay in full. I paid the state all my taxes in full, not instalments, even though I have to deny myself other things."

Tax evasion is such an issue in Greece that successive finance ministers have declared crackdowns as a route out of the current crisis.

George Zanias, the caretaker finance minister installed two weeks ago, promised to open a "safari season" on evaders. Other measures have seen the naming and shaming of 4,152 top tax debtors, who together owe €14.88bn (£11.88bn), and the revelation that 555 luxury yachts had been seized.

The numbers underpinning Athens' €130bn bail-out are predicated on projections that rigorous collection could yield tens of billions in levies. Instead, slumping tax revenues have threatened the government's ability to meet its salary and pension bills.

Measures to increase the revenue take have backfired. A scheme tacking on tax arrears to electricity bills saw customers stop paying their bills. Utility company PPC is seeking a state loan to prevent a cashflow crisis as a result.

Greece could even be forced to tap the €3bn left over from its first bail-out to make ends meet if efforts to revive falling tax revenues fail, reports suggested Monday.

----Even where tax evaders have been caught and prosecuted, punishments for the well-connected have been minimal. Well-known singer Tolis Voskopoulos, who is married to a former MP, was convicted of owing €500,000. He got a suspended sentence and was told to repay the outstanding amount at €5 a day.
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Take up the German's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine,
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
(The end for others sought)
Watch sloth and Club Med folly
Bring all your hope to nought.

With apologies to Rudyard Kipling.

At the Comex silver depositories Friday final figures were: Registered 35.71 Moz, Eligible 106.21 Moz, Total 141.92 Moz.   USA closed Monday.

Crooks and Scoundrels Corner.

The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.

Bilderberg power masters meet in the US
Published: 23 May, 2012, 00:59 Edited: 28 May, 2012, 11:41
Every time a Bilderberg Meeting takes place, important things happen. The last time they met in the US was an election year, 2008 – and the world got Obama. This year they’re back in the US: will they decide who the next president will be?
­

When in 2008 they gathered from June 5 to 8 in Chantilly, Virginia – just a stone’s throw from the Washington DC – Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were neck-in-neck in the battle for the Democratic Party’s presidential candidacy.

On June 5 of that year, Barack and Hillary mysteriously “disappeared” for some hours “somewhere in the DC area.”  Their agendas blocked out, they clearly sneaked off to “Meet the Bilderbergers.”

The media kept mum about that, save for an Associated Press report on the campaign trail saying that, "reporters traveling with Obama sensed something might be happening between the pair (i.e. Obama and Hillary) when they arrived at Dulles International Airport after an event in Northern Virginia and Obama was not aboard the airplane. Asked at the time about the Illinois Senator's whereabouts, Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs smiled and declined to comment." (The AP dispatch “Obama and Clinton meet, discuss uniting Democrats” is, strangely, “no longer available” on their website).

Be that as it may, two days later, Hillary withdrew from the race and Obama became the presidential candidate. Did Bilderberg make Hillary “an offer she couldn’t refuse” to clear the way for Obama to the White House? Did they promise her that she would become his Secretary of State?

Although most Bilderberg annual meetings are held in Europe – France, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Denmark, England, Scotland, Norway – this US election year they’re again gathering at the Westfield Marriott Hotel in Virginia from May 30 to June 3.  Either they’re very fond of that place… or of US elections… or both…! 

So the question is: will “key presidential candidacy decisions” be made again this year?  Will a Republican wildcard appear?  A “God-inspired Burning Bush” of some sort, perhaps?

A favorite Bilderberg method consists of inviting wannabe future heads of state to their meetings to determine whether they will go along with their agenda.  We thus saw George H. W. Bush attend their 1985 meeting, Bill Clinton attend their 1991 meeting, Tony Blair in 1993, and Romano Prodi, former head of the EU Commission, in 1999.

So what exactly is Bilderberg?  It’s neither an organization nor a lobby. The “Bilderberg Meetings,” as they dub themselves in their (apparently) official website www.bilderbergmeetings.com, is a “by-invitation-only” club of around 140 very high-power people from business, finance, oil, politics, media, industry, academia and nobility who come together in a very private no-media / no cameras / extremely-tight-security surroundings to discuss…  Well… there’s the rub: what exactly do they discuss?
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Take up the German's burden,
And reap his old reward--
The blame of those ye better
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought ye us from bondage,
Our loved Club Med night?"

With apologies to Rudyard Kipling.

The monthly Coppock Indicators finished April:
DJIA: +89 Down. NASDAQ: +97 Down. SP500: +63 Down. All three indicators remain down but downward momentum is stalling. 

To continue reading subscribe to the LIR at Currency Countdown.
http://www.proedgenet.com/Subscribe/Subscription.php?id=LIR2

Thursday 24 May 2012

Germany And Europe’s Animal Farm.


Baltic Dry Index. 1100  -27

LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000.  Revised due to QE programs.

Now, Muppets, what is the nature of this life of ours? Let us face it: our lives are miserable, laborious, and short. We are born, we are given just so much food as will keep the breath in our bodies, and those of us who are capable of it are forced to work to the last atom of our strength; and the very instant that our usefulness has come to an end we are slaughtered with hideous cruelty. No Muppet in Greece knows the meaning of happiness or leisure after he is a year old. No Muppet in Greece is free. The life of a Muppet is misery and slavery: that is the plain truth.

With Apologies to George Orwell.

Another EU summit meeting over, and not much to show for it except what German financial daily Handelsblatt said the Bundesbank was "holding a gun to Greece's head". How that helps is anyone’s guess but it is unlikely to play well with Greek voters forcing more likely to vote for extremist parties on the left and right. Seen from London, German policy is now to force Greece from the Eurozone and just possibly the European Union itself. Evidently Germany sees a national advantage to be gained in the Eurozone once Greece bows to the inevitable and exits the EMU. Germany, already a first among equals in the EU, now seeks undisputed leadership of continental Europe and is quite prepared to crush any that seek to stand in its way. Stay long physical precious metals. A Germany first Europe will not last. Will Greece’s caretaker government try to bolt from the EMU before the election? Better the Bilderberger  devil we know than some ultra left nationalist? Stay long precious metals. We haven’t seen anything yet as the euro goes through its death throes.

But first this. Bad news from China later today, says HSBC. While China still might be heading for a soft landing, it couldn’t come at a worse time for a now wobbling global economy. It is all too easy for a soft landing to unexpectedly quickly move into a hard landing.

Why then do we continue in this miserable condition? Because nearly the whole of the produce of our labour is stolen from us by gambling banksters and great vampire squids. There, Muppets, is the answer to all our problems. It is summed up in a single word—Banksterism. Banksterism is the only real enemy we have. Remove gambling Banksters from the scene, and the root cause of hunger and overwork is abolished for ever.

With Apologies to George Orwell.

May 24, 2012, 12:52 a.m. EDT

China manufacturing activity worsens: HSBC

HONG KONG (MarketWatch) — China’s factory activity appeared set for a seventh straight month of contraction in May, according to HSBC data released Thursday, with export orders shrinking to erase one of the bright spots in the previous month’s numbers.

The preliminary or “flash” headline reading of the HSBC manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) dropped to 48.7 in May on a 100-point scale, down from a final reading of 49.3 in April. A reading below the threshold of 50 indicates contraction from the previous month.

Export orders were firmly in contraction, reversing from a reading that indicated expansion in April, the survey said.
More

Now back to yet another failed leader’s summit in Europe. Capital flight is rising, investors are trying to raise cash rather than investing, Germany is bullying Greece out of the EMU, while France ponders leading a Club Med crusade against Berlin. Meanwhile Spain embarks on just the first of many bank nationalisations, provided Germany can/will come up with the money. Euros anyone?

Is it not crystal clear, then, Muppets, that all the evils of this life of ours spring from the tyranny of German banksters and squids? Only get rid of banksters and the produce of our labour would be our own. Almost overnight we could become rich and free. What then must we do? Why, work night and day, body and soul, for the overthrow of the bankster race! That is my message to you, Muppets: Rebellion!

With Apologies to George Orwell.

Debt crisis: Germany holds a gun to Greece's head

Pressure on Greece increased dramatically on Wednesday night after Germany's central bank called for a suspension of financial support to Athens and eurozone finance ministries agreed to draft contingency plans for a Greek exit from the euro.

In a blunt warning to Athens, the Bundesbank said a Greek withdrawal from the eurozone would be disruptive but "manageable", undermining claims by Greece's radical anti-austerity leader, Alexis Tsipras, that Europe would not dare pull the plug.

"When the Eurosystem provided Greece with large amounts of liquidity, it trusted that the programmes would be implemented and thereby ultimately assumed considerable risks," said the bank. "In the light of the current situation, it should not significantly increase these risks."

The German financial daily Handelsblatt said the Bundesbank was "holding a gun to Greece's head", hammering home the message that Germany will not submit to blackmail from populist politicians in Athens.
Berlin also leaked news that their member on the European Central Bank board, Jürg Asmussen, is to head an ECB taskforce to handle the Greek crisis.

There was confusion in Brussels over leaks that EMU finance ministry officials had agreed in a meeting on Monday – allegedly in the name of Eurogroup executives – that each state should draw up a national plan to cope with a Greek exit.

EU Chiefs Clash on Euro Bonds as Crisis Summit Bogs Down

By James G. Neuger and Josiane Kremer - May 24, 2012 7:05 AM GMT
European leaders clashed over joint debt sales as they called on Greece to stick with the budget cuts needed to stay in the euro and offered no immediate relief for recession-wracked Spain.

The 18th summit in more than two years of crisis fighting was marked by new French President Francois Hollande’s challenge to the German-dominated deficit-cutting orthodoxy that has failed to stabilize the euro area and led to speculation that Greece might be forced out.

“We had a not unheated discussion on euro bonds,” Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker told reporters in Brussels early today after six hours of talks. Joint borrowing “didn’t find much support, particularly in the German speaking area, but found a certain enthusiasm in the French speaking area.”
More

Spain injects €9bn into ailing lender Bankia

Spain's finance minister said the government would inject “at least €9bn” (£7.2bn) into ailing lender Bankia while insisting it was an isolated problem which would not spread to the rest of the country’s banking system.

Luis de Guindos told the Spanish parliament that the government would do whatever was needed to rescue Bankia, while stressing that the situation “shouldn’t be extrapolated to the nation’s entire banking system”.
In what amounted to an attempt to bolster confidence and prevent a run on Spanish banks, he said directors at the nationalised lender would present a plan indicating the level of capital needed to meet all regulatory requirements.

Announcing the taxpayer bailout after markets had closed, Mr de Guindos said: “The government will fully back the capital needs which result from this plan.”

He said €9bn would cover capital needs of €7.1bn to comply with two banking reforms presented by the government as well as €1.9bn of capital buffers to comply with European-wide rules.

Bankia is the country’s fourth-largest lender and was formed in 2010 by merging seven of Spain’s regional savings banks. It has the greatest exposure to toxic property assets.

Meanwhile Spain need another 28 billion euro of European i.e. German cash for its regions. To no one’s great surprise, this being accounting challenged continental Europe after all, Spain’s regions need another 36 billion euro, rather than the 8 billion they reported. Investing in continental Europe, seen from London, is much like investing in Facebook. The numbers mean exactly what you want them to mean until they don’t. As with Facebook, some equals appear to be more equal than others.

Remember, Muppets, your resolution must never falter. No argument must lead you astray. Never listen when they tell you that Banksters and Squids and the muppets have a common interest, that the prosperity of the one is the prosperity of the others. It is all lies. Ebenezer Squid serves the interests of no creature except himself. And among us Muppets let there be perfect unity, perfect bondship in the struggle. All Banksters are enemies. All Muppets are allies.

With Apologies to George Orwell.

Spain struggles to meet regions' 36 billion-euro debts

Wed May 23, 2012 5:38pm EDT
(Reuters) - Top Spanish officials are at odds over how to help the country's highly indebted regions refinance 36 billion euros of debt this year, government sources told Reuters on Wednesday.

The figure, revealed in the budget plans from 17 autonomous communities, compares with previous public data of around 8 billion euros of bonds maturing in 2012.

The difference is due to bilateral loans from Spanish banks to the regions worth 28 billion euros that were not made public previously. It could unnerve further investors concerned by the capacity of Spain to curb its public finances and reform its banking sector.

Spain's weak banks and overspending regions are at the heart of the euro zone debt crisis. There are fears that expensive bail-outs of ailing lenders, like fourth largest lender Bankia, could force the country to seek international aid.

Many of the autonomous regions are virtually blocked from financing themselves on public debt markets due to the high rates they would have to pay. Some have seen the credit rating on their debt cut to junk status.

Ebenezer  was sent to make the necessary explanations to the others.
 
"Muppets!" he cried. "You do not imagine, I hope, that we Squids are doing this in a spirit of selfishness and privilege? Many of us actually dislike money and vast wealth. I dislike them myself. Our sole object in taking these things is to preserve our health. Money and vast wealth (this has been proved by Science, Muppets) contain substances absolutely necessary to the well-being of a Vampire Squid. We Squids  are brainworkers. The whole management and organisation of this world depend on us. Day and night we are watching over your welfare. It is for YOUR sake that we take that money and suck up that vast wealth.

With Apologies to George Orwell.

At the Comex silver depositories Wednesday final figures were: Registered 35.71 Moz, Eligible 105.49 Moz, Total 141.20 Moz.  

Crooks and Scoundrels Corner.
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.

Do not imagine, Muppets, that leadership is a pleasure. On the contrary, it is a deep and heavy responsibility. No one believes more firmly than Ebenezer Squid that all Muppets are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, Muppets, and then where should we be?

With Apologies to George Orwell.

The monthly Coppock Indicators finished April:
DJIA: +89 Down. NASDAQ: +97 Down. SP500: +63 Down. All three indicators remain down but downward momentum is stalling.
To continue reading subscribe to the LIR at Currency Countdown.
http://www.proedgenet.com/Subscribe/Subscription.php?id=LIR2

Monday 21 May 2012

The G-8, What Is It For?


Baltic Dry Index. 1141 +04 

LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000.  Revised due to QE programs.

Back in the early 1900s, a crusty British general, Andrew Skeen, wrote a guide to military operations in Waziristan. His first piece of advice: "When planning a military expedition into Pashtun tribal areas, the first thing you must plan is your retreat. All expeditions into this area sooner or later end in retreat under fire". It took us a century to understand the limits of our own power. It looks as if those same lessons are being re-learned.

They came, they talked, they congratulated “the Dutchman” on winning the French Presidency, remarking how much calmer meetings were now that President Bling-Bling wasn’t attending. They even had time to watch Chelsea defeat Bayern Munich to win the Champions League. With Euroland wrecked on the rocks of Greece threatening to bring down the European and possibly global banking system, they issued a Pullme-Pushyou statement about the need for growth with austerity packages, with more emphasis on growth, except of course in Club Med. And with that the G-8 left Camp David, some to move on to Chicago for today’s NATO meeting to try to figure out how to cut and run from Afghanistan, poor “three card Monti,” Italy’s unelected Berlin picked Prime Minister to look at the medieval ruins of parts of northern Italy following the weekend earthquake. Was God sending Italy a signal to get back to elected politics and drop the thin edge of a wedge that ends in Mussolini-lite?
Below, today’s dismal state of Europe after the meeting of G-8 giants.

"The history of paper money is an account of abuse, mismanagement, and financial disaster."

Richard M. Ebeling

Cracks are appearing in Europe's state-backed lenders

European taxpayers face having to bankroll a new wave of bailouts amid growing funding problems at state-backed borrowers across the region, according to senior bankers.

By Harry Wilson and Philip Aldrick 9:06PM BST 20 May 2012
Financiers are becoming increasingly concerned that many taxpayer-backed borrowers are losing their ability to access private funding markets. The development raises the prospect of already heavily indebted eurozone national governments being forced to take on hundreds of billions of euros of additional debts.

“Cracks are appearing in the funding markets for these institutions. If you don’t like the sovereign risk, why would you take the risk of buying the debt of the institutions they support,” said one credit banker.

In France, the authorities are racing to avoid having to rescue Caisse Centrale du Credit Immobilier (3CIF) after Moody’s downgraded the mortgage lender last week, warning it could become totally reliant on taxpayer support within months.

The lender is one of France’s largest mortgage providers and is owned by a collection of local authorities and mutuals, giving it implicit government support.

But the troubles at 3CIF are seen as evidence of far wider problems that are likely to face a range of quasi-government borrowers across Europe, as investors become more nervous about exposing themselves to the risk of a break-up of the euro area. 

France has been among the biggest users of quasi-state institutions to everything from mortgage borrowing to building infrastructure such as roads and railways. Several other major European countries, including Italy, use similar organisations to fund public projects that would otherwise add to national debt.

The deteriorating situation for these institutions echoes the fate of US mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that enjoyed a similar taxpayer guarantee. The two lenders were nationalised by the US government in 2008 in the wake of Lehman Brothers collapse as they were hit by billions of dollars of losses on toxic assets.

In Spain, the government has hired independent valuers to go through the books of struggling lender Bankia, which could cost the Spanish taxpayer as much as €10bn (£8bn) and even lead to the bank’s full nationalisation within weeks.
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Multinationals sweep euros from accounts on daily basis

When it comes to contingency planning for a eurozone break-up, it is typically a German company that has been ahead of the game.

Industrial conglomerate Siemens acquired a banking licence in December 2010. That allowed it to access directly European Central Bank funds, so cutting its exposure to swings in jumpy currency markets. It also took to parking cash at the ECB, once depositing €500m after withdrawing them from riskier French lenders. 

Now, with just about everyone reckoning Greece is heading for the exit, the treasury operations of multinational companies have gone into overdrive. WPP, Reckitt Benckiser and Diageo, to name just three, have taken to a daily sweep of euros from their accounts to reduce the risk of any overnight devaluation.
Sir Martin Sorrell, the WPP chief executive, confirms that the advertising giant is also converting euros it doesn’t need to safer haven currencies, notably the dollar, to minimise risk. 

Prudent treasury operations are all part of running a multinational. But, at a time when a Greek exit could see the reintroduction of a rapidly depreciating drachma and all the knock-on effects, contingency planning goes much further than simply limiting exposure to the single currency held on account.

Rising US recession risk poses the real threat to Europe

The US economy has slowed to stall speed. A few lonely forecasters fear that America has already fallen back into recession, replicating the terrible double-dip of 1937.

The Philly Fed’s manufacturing index dropped suddenly to minus 5.8 in May. The US Conference Board’s index of leading indicators fell in April. Job creation has slipped from 250,000 a month to nearer 130,000 in March and April. 

The Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI) says post-War personal income growth in the US has never been this weak for three months in a row without triggering a recession. It has happened ten out of ten times
It is this fresh menace - combined with China’s failure to calibrate its heralded soft-landing - that poses the real danger to southern Europe’s arc of depression over the next year. Greece is just a poignant detail.
America’s official data has not picked up any inflection point yet. We may be repeating the summer of 2008 when Washington mistakenly reported brisk growth and Fed rhetoric turned hawkish, setting off the Fannie/Freddie, Lehman, AIG disasters. We now know that the figures were wildly wrong. The economy was already in slump.
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"All of the government's monetary, economic and political power, as well as its extensive propaganda machinery, will be enlisted in a constant battle to drive down the price of gold - but in the absence of any fundamental change in the nation's monetary, fiscal, and economic direction, simply regard any major retreat in the price of gold as an unexpected buying opportunity."

Irwin A. Schiff         

At the Comex silver depositories Friday final figures were: Registered 35.77 Moz, Eligible 105.94 Moz, Total 141.71 Moz.  

Crooks and Scoundrels Corner.

The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.

No crooks today, but don’t worry, they haven’t gone away.  Tthe next Madoff and Lehman are out there just awaiting their moment in the sun.  And then there’s always the greatest derivatives gambling bankster of all, yet to unwind their foolish gamble by the “London Whale.” Everyone and their dog is lining up to get a piece of the free cash about to flow from JP Morgan Chase. Is too big to fail great for banksters or what?

"Markets are only a tiny facet of society, but being made by mass psychology, they are a good litmus paper for what is going on.  Markets only work when they believe, and this confidence is based on the idea that men can manage their affairs rationally.  If that belief fades, then so do the markets.  They do not merely dive, they dive and then they disappear.”

“Adam Smith” aka George Goodman. The Money Game.
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished April:
DJIA: +89 Down. NASDAQ: +97 Down. SP500: +63 Down. All three indicators remain down but downward momentum is stalling.
To continue reading subscribe to the LIR at Currency Countdown.
http://www.proedgenet.com/Subscribe/Subscription.php?id=LIR2