Baltic Dry Index. 798 +20
LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
A burek is a
traditional Slovene lunch snack - it is a pastry filled with cheese (sirov),
meat (meso), apple (jabolčni) or pizza i.e. cheese and tomato (pizze). You'll
find these in cafes and street kiosks - they are filling, but sometimes greasy.
The first US presidential debate is now history,
and the winner by universal acclaim is the challenger Mr. Romney, though as I
listened in via the BBC’s World Service, both men seem to live in a different
reality to that of the world I live in. The global economy is now seriously
slowing, QE forever has driven food and fuel inflation to the point that countries
are now falling apart, for more on that scroll down to Crooks Corner where
South African mining is now coming apart at the seams. Club Med Europe has entered a death spiral,
certain to lead to the breakup of the Eurozone, with big implications for
America next year, whether America falls off a fiscal cliff or not. But with
the victor the challenger by universal acclaim, will the incumbent be tempted
into an October surprise? Iran’s fiat currency is crashing and a foreign
escapade might just get Iran’s Azeri, Kurdish and Baluchi minorities rising,
with or without US/Israel airstrikes. Yet another reason to stay long physical
precious metals.
Later today the ECB’s members meet in Ljubljana, Slovenia to
set policy rather than Frankfurt, in an effort to show twice a year that they
are good model modern Europeans. At least the tourists will dine better if
nothing else, provided no one orders chevaline. Meeting in nearby Athens, or Rome, or Madrid,
or Lisbon, or Dublin are out of the question, even good model modern Europeans
know where to draw the line. Also meeting later today, are the unelected grey
suits of the Bank of England. They only get to meet in London, since who wants
to meet in Birmingham, or Liverpool, Manchester, or Newcastle, let alone cross
a border into one of the old Lady of Threadneedle Street’s vassal states.
Below, the never ending crisis never ends. But is
Spain or Italy getting ready to call Germany’s bluff? Either way it doesn’t
really matter. With France now off pursuing the old socialist policies of economic
suicide, it’s only a matter of time until France itself needs a bailout. The
EMU as we know it is passing.
Locally
made viljemovka (pear brandy), slivovka (plum brandy) and Champagne
are the most common aperitifs on offer in restaurants. All are equally good and
a perfect start to a meal.
Draghi Stares at Spain as Brinkmanship Keeps ECB Waiting
By Gabi Thesing and Jeff
Black - Oct 4, 2012 12:00 AM GMT
Mario Draghi is waiting for Spain to get back to him on
whether his plan to save the euro is needed. One month after the European Central Bank president unveiled an unprecedented bond purchase program to rescue Europe’s embattled southern fringe, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is showing reluctance to ask for the aid he pushed for with Italy on concern about the terms attached to it. As ECB policy makers meet in Slovenia today, Spanish 2-year note yields are more than 50 basis points higher than the five-month low touched on Sept. 7, the day following their last decision.
“We’re back at this game of brinkmanship between the ECB and governments again, and it’s a case of who makes some concessions first,” said Nick Matthews, senior European economist at Nomura International Plc in London. “The markets will continue to play a significant role here and Draghi needs them to turn up the pressure.”
Spain will face a test of that pressure today as it sells as much as 4 billion euros ($5.2 billion) of bonds after Finance Minister Luis De Guindos said that officials are still considering whether they actually need ECB help. Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti cautioned last week that aid shouldn’t hinge on more conditions than leaders already signed up to and the International Monetary Fund shouldn’t need to police it.
More
Spain fears harsh rescue terms from AAA Nordic parliaments
Senior officials from Germany and other parts of the eurozone's AAA core have warned Spain privately that angry parliaments are likely to impose stringent conditions on any further rescue loans.
Fear of
escalating demands by Germany, Finland and Holland is a key reason why Spanish premier Mariano Rajoy continues to
drag his feet on a full sovereign bail-out.
Spain's
refusal to act has frozen the eurozone rescue machinery and begun to rattle
markets. The European Central Bank will not buy Spanish bonds until the country
requests aid from the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) and signs a
"Memorandum" giving up fiscal sovereignty.
Finance
minister Luis de Guindos told Spain's parliament Wednesday that there will be
no bail-out until the terms are clear. "The government will take the best
decision for Spain and its European allies when it knows all the details,"
he said.
Finland
has become the greatest worry. "Rajoy is terrified that the Finns will say
`No' after he has requested a rescue," said a Spanish economist with close
ties to the Rajoy team.
----True Finn leader Timo Soini said the parliament would demand high-quality collateral from Spain, complicating any deal. "Don't underestimate the fury of Finnish taxpayers. Almost everybody here thinks the bail-out policies have failed and that we are paying to rescue French and German banks," he said.
The mood
in Germany's Bundestag has become tetchy and unpredictable. Chancellor Angela
Merkel faces a simmering mutiny from the Free Democrats (FDP) and Bavaria's
Social Christians (CSU) in her own coalition.
She can push through a rescue with votes from opposition
Social Democrats (SPD) but electoral politics is intruding. All key parties
agree in any case that EU-IMF Troika discipline in Ireland and Portugal would
collapse if Spain secures softer terms. "Everything will fall apart unless
the conditions imposed on Spain are extremely tough. Madrid should have no
illusions about this," said one German policy-maker.
Debt crisis: Portugal to raise taxes to meet austerity targets
Portugal has announced a raft of new cuts designed to reduce the country's debt load, as finance minister Vitor Gaspar unveiled sweeping changes that will see the average income tax rate rise by 2pc.
6:38PM BST 03 Oct 2012
"The
adjustment is harder than we anticipated," Gaspar said, as he also
revealed that the unemployment forecast for 2013 had been raised to 16.4pc from
a previous forecast of 16pc.
The tax
hikes will see average rates rise from 9.8pc in 2012 to 13.2pc in 2013, said Mr
Gaspar, without indicating how much extra revenue would be raised by the
measure.
New
measures also include new levies on capital gains and a financial transaction
tax, though details of these moves have yet to be finalised, the minister said.
Portugal's
main union called a general strike on the back of today's announcement. CGTP
branded the move "an authentic programme of aggression against the workers
and the people.
"The
consequences for the workers and their families are brutal - general
impoverishment, drastic worsening of living conditions and life
expectancy," it added.
----Spending cuts and economic reforms have caused a recession, with the economy shrinking by 1.2pc in the second quarter, much faster than the 0.1pc rate in the first quarter.
The
contraction is expected to reach 3pc for the whole year.
More
Italian tax collectors accused of pocketing millions for parties
The head of an Italian tax collection agency and four of his employees have been accused of stealing 100 million euros (£63 million) of taxpayers' money.
By Nick
Squires, Rome 2:23PM BST 03 Oct 201
The fresh scandal is likely to infuriate Italians, who are having to pay
higher taxes under austerity measures introduced by the technocrat government
of Mario Monti, the Italian prime minister. It will also erode trust in the agencies that have the task of collecting the revenue, in a country in which paying taxes is deeply unpopular at the best of times.
Giuseppe Saggese, 52, the head of Tributi Italia (Italy Taxes), and four of his subordinates are suspected of pocketing the money and spending it on luxury holidays, lavish parties, yachts, sports cars and private planes.
Finance police in Genoa, in northwestern Italy, accused Mr Saggese of personally spending at least 20 million euros of the embezzled funds.
His firm was contracted to collect local taxes on behalf of 400 town councils, from the wealthy Lombardy region in the north to Sicily in the south.
Instead
they spent the money on "private planes, yachts, expensive cars, luxury
holidays, extravagant parties and music concerts," the Guardia di Finanza
tax police said in a statement.
The
alleged fraud had been going on for years, investigators believe.
In the
last few weeks, regional authorities around the country have been mired in
accusations of fraud, embezzlement and the misuse of public money on a grand
scale.
The
governor of Lazio, the province that encompasses Rome, had to resign last month
after her administration was accused of widespread corruption.
On
Tuesday Franco Fiorito, a senior member of the regional government who was
nicknamed "Batman" because he once hurtled away on a Harley Davidson
motorbike, was arrested on suspicion of embezzlement.
He is
accused of spending around 1.3 million euros of party funds on holidays,
expensive restaurants and luxury goods.
More
Meat
tends to feature heavily in Slovene menus with puran (turkey), govedina
(beef) and chevaline (horse)
being the most common offers.
At the Comex silver depositories Wednesday final figures were: Registered 41.42
Moz, Eligible 102.01 Moz, Total 143.43 Moz.
Crooks and
Scoundrels Corner
The bent,
the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.
Today, main
stream media finally picks up on the round of mining strikes underway in South
Africa. After Lonmin settled with its striking workforce with a pay rise of
22%, “me too” say all the other South African miners. But not all mines are
profitable with high energy prices driven by too much QE commodity speculation.
Something that can only get worse once the US election is over and USA/Israel
attack Iran. Stay long gold and silver, 2012 looks like becoming the 21st
century’s 1914.
October 3, 2012, 1:23 p.m. ET
South Africa's Labor Woes Worsen
RUSTENBURG, South Africa—Labor tensions in South Africa escalated as miners at Kumba Iron Ore Ltd. walked off the job on Wednesday, the latest work stoppage in a wave of strikes pummeling the continent's largest economy.Kumba said a small percentage of workers refused to work their night shift at the Sishen mine, making it the first iron-ore mine to be hit by strikes that started in the platinum sector in August and have spread to gold and diamond mines.
About 70,000 of South Africa's miners are now on strike, or about 23% of the country's total, according to the Chamber of Mines, a industry group. They include employees from some of the country's biggest gold and platinum mines. Protracted labor strife has prompted Anglo American Platinum Ltd. AMS.JO -3.19% and AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. ANG.JO -1.68% to warn that some of their mines could be shut, and more jobs lost, if the turmoil continues.
Harmony Gold Mining Ltd., HAR.JO -2.77% South Africa's third-largest gold producer after AngloGold and Gold Fields Ltd., GFI -4.97% said Wednesday that workers at its Kusasalethu mine had begun to strike. And Gold One International Ltd. GDO.AU -3.61% said it suspended about 1,400 workers who had gone on strike illegally.
The
unrest has worried investors because it suggests the government has been unable
to prevent a core industry from slipping into crisis, analysts say. Moody's
Investors Service cut South Africa's debt rating a notch last week to Baa1 from
A3, saying the nation's leaders demonstrated a "reduced capacity" to
manage "the current political and economic situation."
The South African Reserve Bank has already cut its
growth outlook for the year to 2.6%, and Gov. Gill Marcus said Tuesday it could
lower the forecast again because of output lost to mining-sector turmoil.
"The government needs to take control of the
situation…with regard to wage negotiations before the nation's mining sector
becomes uninvestable," said John Meyer, an analyst at investment bank
Fairfax IS PLC in London.
----More than 28,000 truck drivers are on strike across South Africa to demand higher wages and better working conditions, threatening to disrupt supplies of gasoline and other goods. And 5,000 municipal workers in Limpopo province are threatening to strike in the coming days over wage issues.
The spiraling demands for higher salaries stem in part from the topsy-turvy state of South Africa's labor movement. As rival unions jockey for new members, labor leaders have come under pressure to take aggressive stands in wage talks.
The strikes began in August, when 3,000 rock drillers at Lonmin LMI.LN -3.33% PLC stayed away to demand higher wages. The bloody Lonmin strike, which left 46 people dead, including 34 who were shot by police, ended last month with the company agreeing to raise wages by as much as 22%. Since then, other miners, hoping for similar wage increases, have followed suit, paralyzing a big portion of the country's mines.
More
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443768804578034271819419406.html?mod=WSJUK_hpp_MIDDLEFourthNews
"If ever there was an area in which to do the exact opposite of that which government and the media urge you to do, that area is the purchasing of gold."
Robert Ringer
The monthly
Coppock Indicators finished September:
DJIA: +66 Up. NASDAQ: +88 DOWN. SP500: +85 Up. All
three indicators had reversed from down to up, but now the NASDAQ has reversed
again to down. While not unprecedented, it is a warning sign a that the July
reversal from up to down is about to fail.
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