Thursday 28 June 2012

“Bah humbug.” Chancellor Merkel.


Baltic Dry Index. 988 +07

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

Communications released by authorities on Wednesday showed Barclays traders calling each other "superstar" and with little concern for covering their tracks as they urged colleagues responsible for submitting Barclays' Libor rates to try and influence final prices.

Requests came in such as: "We need a really low 3m fix, it could potentially cost a fortune. Would really appreciate any help."

We open with Barclays exposing the depravity of our financialised casino capitalism, socialism-for-banksters system. They did so only to save their own necks and past bonuses. They are only the tip of the iceberg. The authorities on both sides of the Atlantic need to pursue criminal charges against those involved in such egregious behaviour. Who hurt the public more, Bernie Madoff or corrupt banksters rigging Libor, the basis for billions of transactions each year? Madoff was a boy scout compared to banksters rigging Libor.

It's morally wrong to allow a sucker to keep his money.

British Bankers Association, with apologies to W.C. Fields.

Record fines for Barclays are just the beginning of the Libor scandal

If money makes the world go around, Libor makes the money go around first. It's at the heart of everything, and dishonestly manipulating Libor is nothing less than manipulating the price of money itself.

Once you get your head round that concept it's a bit easier to understand why regulators on both sides of the Atlantic on Wednesday imposed record fines on Barclays of £290m – and don't forget that enforcers were being lenient on the grounds Barclays has been helping with inquiries.

Libor – the London Inter Bank Offered Rate – is the primary market rate of interest. The Bank of England sets the official policy rate but Libor is the actual cost to a bank of borrowing unsecured funds from one another overnight. Without that flow of funds the financial system doesn't work. That's why interest rates on subsequent loans of any shape or size are set at a margin above Libor. It's where the market pricing of money, or credit, begins. And given these loans become tradeable assets in themselves, with a multitude of derivative contracts – or financial bets – attached to them, Libor is used to price these markets too. It's the rate of interest charged at the very base of the financial pyramid.

US regulators on Wednesday gave a useful sketch of what that global pyramid looks like and why Libor is so important. At the apex it reckons there are loans worth $10 trillion (£6.4 trillion) priced off Libor. There are then interest rate swaps (derivatives which are insurance against adverse interest rate movements) worth $350 trillion, also priced with reference to Libor, and then at the base of this tower eurodollar futures (short-term loans which are also bets on interest rate movements) worth $564 trillion. Given this, it's surprising that setting the rate for Libor is unregulated. But it's not even subject to the full forces of the free market either. It emerges from a 16-strong cartel of banks which, as we now know, was ripe for abuse.
By manipulating Libor, up or down, Barclays could variously make profits on its own interest rate punts or give a dishonest impression to the market of its own cost of funding. It was, according to its own staff, "being dishonest by definition".

Now back to the fall of Europe. Either Germany caves in and free Europe dies, replaced by an unelected bankster run serf state, or Germany holds firm and the European Monetary Union ends in its present form, with Greece and others leaving the monetary union. There are no good outcomes to this European leaders summit. Do you prefer death by hanging or by garrotting? Our banksters must be hoping Germany holds firm, so an even bigger crisis/scandal than rigging Libor commences next week. Stay long physical precious metals. The road to hell seems to have reached hell for Europe.

Long is the way, and hard, that out of hell leads up to light.

John Milton, Paradise Lost

June 27, 2012, 8:52 p.m. ET

As Summit Looms, Merkel Sees 'Controversial' Talks

BRUSSELS—European leaders embark on talks here Thursday over steps they hope will begin to lift doubts about the survival of the euro, amid heavy skepticism in financial markets that they can achieve a breakthrough to stem the debt and banking crises.

At the two-day summit, the leaders of Spain, Italy and France are expected to pitch ideas for easing the crisis that will be mostly deflected by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose country would finance most of them.

Some European Union leaders are urging decisive action: "I think it is very important that this [summit] rules out any doubt about the irreversibility of the euro," said José Manuel Barroso, head of the European Commission, the EU's executive arm.

The leaders will discuss how euro-zone economies can move toward tying their budgets and banking systems closer together based on a report put together by senior European Union officials. But markets aren't optimistic about major progress.

"The only element this week's summit could already decide is a European bank supervision, which could be regarded as a first step towards a banking union," said Carsten Brzeski, senior economist at ING in Brussels.
Ms. Merkel acknowledged in Berlin on Wednesday that the meeting could be a tough one for her. "I have no illusions. I expect controversial discussions in Brussels and once again all eyes, or at least many eyes, will be on Germany," Ms. Merkel told lawmakers in the Bundestag.

As she spoke, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy had just told his own Parliament that Spain couldn't sustain super-high interest rates on its debts for much longer. The day before, Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti said he was prepared to stay in Brussels until Sunday if that's what it took to forge a credible solution to the euro zone's worsening troubles.
More

Spain cannot finance itself for long, says PM Mariano Rajoy

Spain's prime minister warned that his country cannot continue to finance itself and he called for Europe to move urgently to reduce unsustainably high interest rates.

"The most urgent subject is the subject of financing," Mariano Rajoy told Spain's Congress yesterday.

"We can't finance ourselves at the prices we are paying for very long," he said as the yield on 10-year bonds traded at more than 6.8pc.

He issued the stark warning on the eve of a European Union summit and called on EU partners to take urgent action using all "available instruments" to reassure markets and bring down punitive interest rates.
If Spain, the fourth biggest economy in the eurozone, is shut out of the markets it could be forced to seek a full-blown bailout.

"There are institutions and also financial entities that cannot access the markets. It is happening in Spain, it is happening in Italy and it is happening in other countries," he said.

----The Bank of Spain reported that the nation is sinking deeper into recession with economic output in the second quarter of this year shrinking "at a more intense pace" than the three months previously when a contraction of 0.3pc was posted

“The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.”

Dante Alighieri, Inferno.

At the Comex silver depositories Wednesday final figures were: Registered 35.89 Moz, Eligible 110.05 Moz, Total 145.94 Moz.   
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