Tuesday, 3 July 2012

Looking For An Honest Man.


Baltic Dry Index. 1013 +09

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

It seems likely that Diogenes was also enrolled into the banking business aiding his father. At some point (the exact date is unknown) Hicesias and Diogenes became embroiled in a scandal involving the adulteration or defacement of the currency, and 

Diogenes was exiled from the city.

The ancient Greeks, if not the modern ones, knew exactly how to deal with dodgy bankers. After getting some bad advice from the Oracle at Delphi to “deface the currency,”  he got banished from Athens for doing just that. In later life, recognising the moral bankruptcy of his era, he went around in broad daylight with a lit lamp, “looking for an honest man.” He never found one it’s believed. He would have a far harder time in our present age, especially if he started his search in the City of London or on Wall Street, or in any of the world’s dishonest central banks.

We open with breaking news. “Honest Bob” quits as Barclays chief. Does this mean tomorrow’s grilling, roasting and burning at the stake before Parliament is off? The FT had reported that he was prepared to take the BOE down with him if necessary. What’s going on behind the scenes in bankster London?

Bob Diamond resigns as Barclays chief

Bob Diamond has resigned as chief executive of Barclays with immediate effect, bowing to calls to go over the interest rate rigging scandal at the bank.

7:41AM BST 03 Jul 2012

He said in a statement: "No decision over that period was as hard as the one that I make now to stand down as chief executive. The external pressure placed on Barclays has reached a level that risks damaging the franchise - I cannot let that happen."

Marcus Agius, who announced his resignation on Monday, will become full-time chairman and will lead the search for a new chief executive.

The search for a new chief executive will commence immediately and will consider both internal and external candidates. The businesses will continue to be managed by the existing leadership teams.

More

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/9371729/Bob-Diamond-resigns-as-Barclays-chief.html

Next we return to Euroland, with yet more sign of dishonesty in last week’s big fix of the euro crisis. So what exactly was fixed, except the month-end an half-year’s end stock prices?

'When I use a word,' Chancellor Merkel said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'

Chancellor Merkel, with apologies to Humpty Dumpty.

July 2, 2012, 8:01 p.m. ET

Bond Rift Divides Merkel Coalition

BERLIN—The increasingly radical measures needed to tame the euro-zone debt crisis are leading to a growing rift within German Chancellor Angela Merkel's governing coalition.

Ms. Merkel's junior partner, the pro-business Free Democratic Party, is angry about the mounting hints in Berlin that Germany might ultimately agree to collective debt issuance by euro-zone governments, known as euro bonds.

In recent days, FDP leaders have criticized Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble for suggesting repeatedly that Germany might be open to euro bonds once it has won other European countries' binding agreement to centralized controls over taxation and spending.

----The finance minister, who is one of Germany's most powerful supporters of deeper European integration, also told the German parliament in a speech on Friday that the government was "working on (building) a financial structure in Europe soon" that would allow a common fiscal policy—and thereafter, euro bonds.

Although Mr. Schäuble stressed that a common euro-zone fiscal policy would have to precede any collective financing of governments, his talk of euro bonds has raised the hackles of the FDP, which has long viewed his pro-European idealism with suspicion.

"We think it is damaging to fantasize about a distant future with euro bonds, because they have no future," FDP General Secretary Patrick Döring told German news website Spiegel Online on Monday.

"The finance minister sometimes provides clear reminders of how important the FDP's steadfast resistance is against all efforts to collectivize [euro-zone] debt," Mr. Döring told Spiegel. Mr. Döring's office confirmed his reported comments.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, a leading FDP politician, likewise sought to shoot down the idea of euro bonds on Monday, calling them "out of the question" on German state broadcaster ARD. "We cannot take such a path to a liability and debt union" in Europe, Mr. Westerwelle said.
More

We end for today looking at the land between the shining seas. As Americans head home early to celebrate their Independence Day,  a weak manufacturing reports suggests that the US economy needs another dose of the Federal Reserve’s pixie dust. With the Bank of England expected to announce its own new version of quantitative easing this Thursday, will the Fed be very far behind? Stay long physical precious metals. With crooks running the banks and Wall Street, does anyone seriously think that they won’t just steal all the new money?

“The world is a place that’s gone from being flat to round to crooked.”

Mad Magazine.

Manufacturing in U.S. Unexpectedly Contracted in June

By Shobhana Chandra - Jul 2, 2012 9:21 PM GMT
Manufacturing in the U.S. unexpectedly shrank in June for the first time since the economy emerged from the recession three years ago, indicating a mainstay of the expansion may be faltering.

The Institute for Supply Management’s index fell to 49.7, worse than the most-pessimistic forecast in a Bloomberg News survey, from 53.5 in May, the Tempe, Arizona-based group’s report showed today. Figures less than 50 signal contraction. Measures of orders, production and export demand dropped to three-year lows.

----Euro-area unemployment reached the highest on record in May, other figures showed. The jobless rate in the 17-nation region rose to 11.1 percent, the highest since the data series began in 1995, from 11 percent a month earlier, the European Union’s statistics office in Luxembourg said.

A manufacturing purchasing managers’ index for China fell to 48.2 in June from 48.4 a month earlier, HSBC Holdings Plc and Markit said today.

The ISM’s U.S. production index decreased to 51, the lowest since May 2009. The new orders measure dropped to 47.8, the weakest since April 2009, from 60.1. The drop in demand from the previous month was biggest since October 2001, after the September 11 terrorist attacks.
More

Shares gain on easing hopes after weak factory data

By Chikako Mogi
TOKYO | Tue Jul 3, 2012 1:48am EDT
(Reuters) - Asian shares rose on Tuesday on expectations that major central banks will take further policy steps to support the fragile economy, after manufacturing data around the world highlighted the drag on growth from the protracted euro zone debt crisis.

Monday's data showing U.S. manufacturing contracted for the first time in nearly three years raised speculation the Federal Reserve will again step in to boost the economy and support Wall Street. The Fed last month extended the duration of a program aimed at forcing longer-term rates down.

Many market players believe continued economic weakness will push the Fed into a third bout of quantitative easing (QE) - the policy of creating money to fund asset purchases that has lifted riskier assets such as shares and commodities in the past.

Traders also expected the European Central Bank to move to bolster the region's economy by cutting its main refinancing rate by 25 basis points to 0.75 percent at its policy meeting on Thursday.
More
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/03/us-markets-global-idUSBRE8520GN20120703

July 2, 2012, 11:36 AM

Economists React: ISM Indicates ‘Economy Is Going Nowhere’

If you haven’t heard the news: stay on vacation, no reason to hurry back. This economy is going nowhere according to the purchasing managers at manufacturing firms. The latest reading from the Institute of Supply Management is saying the economy’s engines have gone into reverse at the start of the summer. –Christopher Rupkey, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi

The fall in June’s ISM manufacturing index to below 50 for the first time since the last recession is the surest sign yet that the US is catching the slowdown already underway in Europe and China. But the index does not suggest that another recession is looming. –Paul Dales, Capital Economics

We never expected anything like the magnitude of the decline in the new orders index in June. The drop of 12.3 points in the orders index is the largest since October 2001 (when, in the wake of 9/11, the index dropped 12.4 points) and the second largest decline since December 1980. Thus we are dealing with an event that occurs in roughly one in 100 reports. The question, which we cannot answer at this point, is does this represent volatility reflecting fears over Europe (the export order index fell six points) and will orders bounce back (as the orders index did in November 2001) or is it a slide into something more worrying? –RDQ Economics
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Diogenes believed human beings live artificially and hypocritically and would do well to study the bankster. Besides performing natural bodily functions in public with ease, a bankster will eat anything, and make no fuss about where to sleep. Banksters live in the present without anxiety, and have no use for the pretensions of abstract philosophy. In addition to these virtues, banksters are thought to know instinctively who is friend and who is foe.

Diogenes, with apologies to dogs.

At the Comex silver depositories Monday final figures were: Registered 37.10 Moz, Eligible 109.43 Moz, Total 146.53 Moz.   

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