Baltic Dry Index. 772 -02 Possible
double bottom.
LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
“Merkel
nodded. A sombre nod. The nod Napoleon might have given if somebody had met him
in 1812 and said, "So, you're back from Moscow, eh?”
With
apologies to Mike and P.G.Wodehouse.
For more on the dodgy gold now turning up in New
York’s diamond district, scroll down to Crooks Corner. Since it first appeared
in a 400 ounce bar a few years back in Hong Kong, the dodgy tungsten imitating
gold story has largely fallen by the wayside in mainstream media. I wonder why?
Now it has resurfaced in NYC and in supposed 10 oz. gold bars from Switzerland.
I suspect that this scandal is just in its infancy. Who really knows how much real
gold is still in Fort Knox, the BOE, ECB and Europe’s vaults?
Now back to the never ending Eurozone crisis.
German patience seems to be running out. After taking on French socialist
President Hollande at the weekend, Germany now seems to be willing to pick a
fight with all comers. In short order,
Germany blasted the French run IMF,
Spanish run Spain, and German run Der Spiegel magazine. History suggests that
nothing good comes Europe’s way when the Germans get seriously annoyed.
Below, yesterday’s fun in Euroland. All set against
the background of the 5th straight month that German business
confidence fell, and under reported in mainstream media, Portugal fell off the
German austerity wagon while Greece fell under it. Stay long physical precious
metals for the coming EMU break up, though it might be best to stay clear of
Swiss made 10 oz. gold bars for now.
"It
is never difficult to distinguish between a German with a grievance and a ray
of
sunshine."
With apologies to Scotsmen everywhere
and P.G.Wodehouse.
Bundesbank castigates IMF for saving Europe
Germany's central bank has launched a blistering attack on the International Monetary Fund, accusing officials of spraying around money like confetti and overstepping their legal mandate.
“The IMF
is evolving from a liquidity mechanism into a bank. This is neither in keeping
with the legal and institutional role of the IMF or with its ability to handle
risks,” said the Bundesbank in its monthly report.
The bank
said the Fund was right to help rescue Greece, Ireland and Portugal but said
monitoring levels were slipping and there had been a “watering down” of
standards. The scale of loans risks “overwhelming the IMF’s institutional
structure”.
The unprecedented attack came as the IMF’s chief, Christine Lagarde, called for urgent measures across the world to head off a fresh global slump. While praising the latest emergency measures of central banks in the US, Europe and Japan, she said this was not enough to secure recovery.
The Europeans must activate their new machinery, while the US must prevent a “dramatic tightening” of fiscal policy later this year. Failure to act “would effectively plunge the country off a 'fiscal cliff'", cutting US growth by up to 2pc. She said this would pose a “serious threat for the global economy”.
Ms Lagarde also said emerging economies need to bolster their defences against “potential spill-overs”, if necessary by injecting “additional stimulus”.
The
Bundesbank’s broadside against the Fund caused consternation in Washington,
where Asian and Latin American members of the Board think the IMF has been
doing Germany’s work for it, shouldering too much of the risk trying to hold
the eurozone together. There is irritation in IMF circles over the way the Fund
has been dragged into badly-constructed rescue packages. The Fund has refused
to lend any more money to Greece, saying the country cannot regain economic
viability unless EU bodies take losses.
Ms
Lagarde’s Keynesian team is deeply at odds with Germany’s hard-money hawks. A
leaked memo from Germany’s finance ministry previously called the IMF the
“Inflation Maximizing Fund” after it suggested that a burst of inflation might
lift the world off the reefs
Germany Losing Patience With Spain as EU Warns on Crisis
By Tony Czuczka and Brian
Parkin - Sep 24, 2012 4:15 PM GMT
“He must spell out what the situation is,” Michael Meister, finance spokesman for Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, said in an interview in Berlin today. The fact he’s not doing so shows “Rajoy evidently has a communications problem. If he needs help he must say so.”
Meister’s comments underscore Europe’s crisis-fighting stalemate amid discord over a banking union, Greece’s ongoing debate on how to meet bailout commitments and foot-dragging by Spain on a possible aid bid. European Union President Herman Van Rompuy warned today against “a tendency of losing the sense of urgency” in fighting the debt crisis three years after it erupted in Greece.
German patience is running out with Spain as it plays for time after European Central Bank President Mario Draghi offered help to lower borrowing costs in return for strict conditions.
More
September
24, 2012, 8:07 a.m. ET
Germany Dismisses Talk of Boosting Bailout Fund
BERLIN—Europe
is discussing ways to leverage the assets of its €500 billion ($649.05 billion)
bailout fund through the involvement of private-sector investors, but reports
that this could boost the firepower of the European Stability Mechanism to more
than €2 trillion are "completely illusory," a spokesman for the
German Finance Ministry said on Monday.
The
discussions under way among members of the euro zone, the 17 European Union
member states that use the euro currency, are largely about the routine
transfer of crisis-fighting tools contained in the temporary bailout fund, the
European Financial Stability Facility, which will eventually be replaced by the
ESM. The ESM is expected to begin operating next month, and will initially run
alongside the EFSF, which will likely expire next year.
Commenting
on a report in German weekly magazine Der Spiegel, a spokesman for the Finance
Ministry said the ESM would "receive and use the same tools as its
predecessor, the EFSF, nothing more and nothing less." He denied that the
discussion included any instruments that hadn't already been set out in the
ESM's rules, or practices that weren't already being carried out by the EFSF.
He added that boosting the ESM to €2 trillion was unrealistic.
"It
is not possible to discuss numbers at this point,'' said spokesman Martin Kotthaus
during a routine government news conference, when asked about the Spiegel
report. "It is purely abstract."
Discussion
of the ESM's potential firepower is heating up ahead of the planned Oct. 8
launch, as the euro zone begins transferring powers and instruments from the
EFSF to the ESM and as speculation runs rife about funding requirements for
Greece and Spain.
More
September 24, 2012, 8:28 a.m. ET
German Business Confidence Falls
German
business confidence fell for the fifth straight month in September, raising concerns
that the European Central Bank's recent pledge to support euro-zone bonds has
had little impact on the real economy across Europe despite initially dazzling
stock investors.
The
worse-than-expected figure also raised expectations that the euro zone's
largest economy could now slip into recession. The closely watched Ifo survey
of about 7,000 mainly industrial German companies showed their assessment of
current conditions and the business outlook had deteriorated in September.
The Ifo
index fell to 101.4 points in September from 102.3 points in August, deepening
a decline seen in the last four months and confounding expectations that it had
stabilized.
The
German figures came alongside worsening Dutch producer sentiment where business
confidence in manufacturing dropped to minus 6.7 in September from minus 4.6 in
August. The country unexpectedly crawled out of recession in the first two
quarters but many economists expect gross domestic product to have contracted
again in the third quarter.
More
Patience snaps in Portugal
Last updated: September 24th, 2012----Premier Pedro Passos Coelho has gone beyond the demands of the EU-IMF Troika under the terms of Portugal’s €78bn loan package, winning plaudits from Europe’s austerity police and a pat on the head from Wolfgang Schauble.
The
Portuguese people have put up with one draconian package after another – with
longer working hours, 7pc pay cuts, tax rises, an erosion of pensions, etc –
all amounting to a net fiscal squeeze of 10.4 of GDP so far in
cyclically-adjusted terms. (It will ultimately be 15pc).
They have
protested peacefully, in marked contrast to the Greeks, even though the latest
poll by the Catholic University shows that 87pc are losing faith in Portugal’s
democracy.
Yet Mr
Passos Coelho’s rash decision to raise the Social Security tax on workers’ pay
from 11pc to 18pc has at last brought the heavens down upon his head.
He was
hauled in front of the Council of State – a sort of Privy Council of elders and
wise men – for a showdown over the weekend. Eight hours later he emerged
battered and bruised to admit defeat. The measure will not go ahead.
Francisco
Louca from left-wing Bloco suggested that the prime minister cannot survive
such a defeat. "The government is dead", he said.
Morehttp://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/ambroseevans-pritchard/100020306/patience-snaps-in-portugal/
Sept. 24, 2012, 7:13 p.m. EDT
Greece needs more time to fix finances: report
Greece
will need more time to get its fiscal house in order, German daily Sueddeutsche
Zeitung reported Tuesday, citing senior European Union diplomats in Brussels.
Greece
will be unable to finance its budget from 2015 as planned without more aid, the
newspaper said. And the goal of completely financing its debt in the financial
markets from 2020 seems unlikely, the newspaper
said.
The
country will need "at least two more years" of added time to get back
on its feet, the newspaper said, citing unanimous opinions from its sources in
Brussels and in European central banks. The country's latest financial gap
amounts to around EUR30 billion, the newspaper said, citing its sources.
Link
“I
could see that, if not actually disgruntled, Hans was far from being gruntled.”
With apologies to P.G.Wodehouse.
At the Comex silver depositories Monday final figures were: Registered 39.45 Moz,
Eligible 100.53 Moz, Total 139.88 Moz.
Crooks and
Scoundrels Corner
The bent,
the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.
Today, some dodgy “Swiss”
gold turns up in New York City. Now who would have the incentive and resources
to do a thing like that? Is there a Bernie Madoff lurking in one of the central
banks? An Arthur Andersen hiding in one of the many alphabet soup secret
agencies of the nation states?
Things
are seldom what they seem,
Skim milk masquerades as cream;
Highlows pass as patent leathers;
Jackdaws strut in peacock's feathers.
Skim milk masquerades as cream;
Highlows pass as patent leathers;
Jackdaws strut in peacock's feathers.
H.M.S.
Pinafore.
Fake gold hits NYC
Diamond District finds 10 tungsten-filled bars
- By MICHAEL GRAY Last Updated: 11:49 PM, September 23, 2012
The Post has learned as many as 10 fake gold bars — made up mostly of relatively worthless tungsten — were sold recently to unsuspecting dealers in Manhattan’s Midtown Diamond District.
The price of gold has risen more than 600 percent since January 2000, while the S&P 500 index is down 0.6 percent over the same period.
The 10-oz. gold bars are hugely popular with Main Street investors, and it is not known how many of the fake gold bars were sold to dealers — or if any fake bars were purchased by the public.
One gold dealer discovered that four of the 3-inch-by-1-inch gold bars he bought — worth about $72,000 retail — were counterfeit.
“It has the entire street on edge,” said Ibrahim Fadl, 62, who has been the owner of Express Metal Refining, a Midtown gold-refinery business, for the last 11 years. “I and the others on the street work off of trust; now that trust is strained.”
Fadl, a Columbia University graduate with a master’s degree in chemical engineering, and who has more than 40 years in the industry, purchased the four fake bars from a well-known Russian salesman with whom he has done business.
A second 47th Street refiner, who wished to remain anonymous, said he was burned recently when he bought six gold bars that turned out to be mostly tungsten, with just a gold veneer. He would not comment, though, on who sold him the bogus bars.
Fadl became suspicious when he offered the salesman a deep discount for the investment-grade gold bars and he quickly accepted it, a source tells The Post.
Fadl said he did his due diligence “by X-raying the bars to ascertain the purity of the gold and weighing the bars, and the Swiss markings were perfect.”
Tungsten is an industrial metal that weighs nearly the same as gold but costs a little over $1 an ounce. Gold closed Friday at $1,774.80 an ounce.
To quell his suspicion, Fadl then drilled into the bar and discovered the tungsten — whose silver color is distinctive from gold’s bright yellow hue.
Raymond Nassim, CEO of Manfra, Tordell & Brookes, the American arm of the Swiss firm that created the original gold bars — with their serial number and purity rating stamped clearly into them — said he reported the situation to the US Secret Service, whose jurisdiction covers the counterfeiting of gold bars.
He said his company “is supporting and cooperating with authorities any way we can.”
More
Black
sheep dwell in every fold;
All that glitters is not gold;
Storks turn out to be but logs;
Bulls are but inflated frogs.
All that glitters is not gold;
Storks turn out to be but logs;
Bulls are but inflated frogs.
H.M.S.
Pinafore.
The monthly
Coppock Indicators finished August:
DJIA: +76 Up. NASDAQ: +97 Up. SP500: +69 Up. All
three indicators have reversed from down to up.
No comments:
Post a Comment