Baltic Dry Index. 875 +30
LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
“Most of them are foreigners, so I doubt they will
pay the ticket before they go back to their countries," the officer said.
"It’s more likely they’ll keep it as a souvenir."
The Eternal City declares War on
Hungry Tourists. European Madness.
Pity the poor tax and work shy Greeks this morning.
Locked
into a suicidal austerity depression debt spiral, and about to run out of Euros
next month despite having over printed their quota of Euros with the connivance
of the ECB, ECB board member Asmussen pontificates that Greece can have neither
more time to dig itself out of its hole, nor more bailout money, nor a lower interest
rate charged on its unrepayable debt. Greece needs to default, devalue, reform,
and become the cheapest Mediterranean tourist destination and supplier of EU olive oil. Stay
long physical precious metals. Europe has just about reached the end of
Austerity Road.
"In
politics stupidity is not a handicap."
Napoleon
Bonaparte, Dictator.
Debt crisis: ECB board member shuts door on Greek pleas for leniency
Greece cannot have more time to repay its debt to the European Central Bank because it would be illegal and "illogical", board member Joerg Asmussen has said, as he shut the door on pleas for leniency from the bank.
Mr Asmussen said that the ECB could not lengthen the time period for loans to Greece nor lower interest rates as "both concessions would be a form of debt forgiveness and therefore a direct financial support for the Greek state."That would not be allowed under the law governing the ECB," he said.
Mr Asmussen also said that it would be wrong for Greece to say it needed more time but not more money.
"A temporary extension of fiscal targets automatically means that Greece needs more financial assistance from abroad." he told German newspaper Bild am Sonntag.
"It is logically quite wrong to say: we need more time, but not more money."
Mr Asmussen also said that statements by ECB members, including president Mario Draghi to do "everything to defend the euro" had helped to ease market tensions, but warned that the current calm was "deceptive", and called for all eurozone countries - including Germany and France - to reform.
Last week, Greek prime minister Antonis Samaras repeated his call for "accomodating policy" from the ECB regarding the payment of the country's debt and interest payments
Debt crisis: Spain's jobless flee to Argentina
Desperate Spaniards are fleeing in their thousands to set up new lives in Argentina, preferring rampant inflation to the prospect of searching for a job in a country with the highest unemployment rate in the industrialised world.
Official figures show that more than 65,000 Spaniards have fled to Argentina since the onset of the 2008 financial crisis, with another 25,000 settling in Mexico.Faced with a jobless rate of close to 25pc, many would rather live in Argentina, with an estimated inflation rate of 24pc and tightening trade barriers, than remain in crisis-hit Spain.
"I prefer inflation to joblessness," Erika, 31, who prefers life in a Buenos Aires surburb without proper sewerage, told the Sunday Times.
Kim Vidal, who saw his wage as a former commercial director in Barcelona slashed from £2,400 a month to £970, also prefers life in Argentina to Spain.
"People welcomed me with love," he told the paper, "the news from the old country is so sad".
----The number of unemployed Spaniards rose to 4.7 million last month, according to the country's labour ministry, taking Spain's unemployment rate to 24.63pc - the highest in the industrialised world.
The services sector was the hardest hit, with more than 85,000 job losses seen.
Argentina's president Cristina Kirchner has tightened protectionist trade barriers and virtually halted domestic dollar buying in a bid to stem capital flight from the country.
Last month, rating agency Standard & Poor's said that further tightening "could exacerbate the existing weaknesses in Argentina's economy, including high inflation and increasingly rigid government expenditures, and result in a deteriorating medium-term fiscal outlook and investment climate."
Disputed inflation figures also prompted International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Christine Lagarde to warn Argentina last month that it could face sanctions such as the loss of voting rights and even expulsion from the IMF unless it produced reliable data.
More
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9592270/Debt-crisis-Spains-jobless-flee-to-Argentina.html
Snacking tourists fined after Rome declares 'War on the Sandwich'
By Claudio Lavanga, NBC News
ROME -- It’s one of the highlights of any trip to Rome: Sitting on the
Spanish Steps eating a real Italian gelato. But on Oct. 1, it became a
potentially costly vacation memory.The mayor of the "eternal city" has made it illegal to eat snacks and junk food on or around its monuments.
Tourists will still be allowed to eat while they walk, but stop with a bag of chips in your hands or sit down while chewing on your panino, and you are eligible for a fine of 25 to 500 euros ($32 to $650). An Italian daily newspaper dubbed it the “War on the Sandwich.”
Dressed in their white and blue uniforms, local police officers Alessio Valentini and Magdi Adib were on patrol Thursday looking for anyone daring to flout the new law.
---- The officers told NBC News they had fined seven tourists -- all foreigners -- since the morning. The standard penalty was 50 euros ($65).
“We could
have given tickets to many more, but you have to apply some reason,” Adib said.
“If they drink a bottle of water it’s OK, but if they camp out, we fine them.”
“Eating
on monuments can really get out of control,” he added. “Once I caught a group
of tourists who set a table on the Spanish Steps, with table cloth and cutlery!
This has to stop.”
---- A young German tourist, who was sitting nearby and eating a sandwich, couldn’t believe it at first when told about the decree.
“What?
It’s full of food carts around here … where am I supposed to eat?” he said.
Tourists
sitting on the Spanish Steps shared his bewilderment.
Both a
Chinese tourist eating ice cream from a cup and a Romanian digging from a bag
of chips while admiring the sunset over Via Condotti pointed out that there
were no signs explaining the new law and asked how were they supposed to know
about the rule.
When
asked about this complaint, three local policemen patrolling the area told NBC
News that there was no need for a sign.
“It’s
common sense,” one officer said.
---- They too had handed out many fines, but worried that in the end the penalty would not be paid.
“Most of
them are foreigners, so I doubt they will pay the ticket before they go back to
their countries," the officer said. "It’s more likely they’ll keep it
as a souvenir."
More
We
end on Europe for today with the case for Germany leaving the Euro and the UK
leaving the European Union. Both would be better off economically, although
Germany would be better off leaving the EU as well, guilt trips over starting
two World Wars aside. Were Germany to leave the Eurozone, Holland, Austria and
Finland would almost certainly follow. If Britain were to leave the EU, those
remaining would have to make good on Great Britain’s lopsided tax contribution.
At the very least the EU finances would have to be reformed, a plus all around
for those remaining in the bureaucratic, sclerotic, corrupt EU. Despite what
Europe’s Bilderberger elite say, the existing Euro and EU aren’t fit for
purpose, and are no longer adding to most European’s wealth. Instead they have
become a giant European wealth transfer mechanism, from ordinary citizens to
European casino capitalism banksters. A system such as that will not last, no
matter how many deck chairs are rearranged by frantic Bilderbergers on the EU
Titanic.
"In
the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous."
Robert G. Ingersoll, industrialist.
If Germany were to leave the euro, it would be better off
Another week, another conference about the euro. This time it was in Singapore. Nevertheless, it was Germany that was uppermost in my mind, not least because several Singaporeans asked me why Germany doesn't leave the euro.
Last week I gave the political explanation. This week I am going to discuss the economic aspect.From the formation of the euro in 1999 to now, German unit labour costs have hardly risen.
Since costs have continued rising briskly elsewhere, Germany has gained competitiveness enormously. The result is now a surplus of exports over imports of about 6pc of GDP. It is this surplus – and the associated income and jobs – that defenders of the status quo say would be threatened without the euro.
But there is a catch. Germany has supplied BMWs to southern Europe and they have given it IOUs in return. Will those IOUs ever be honoured? That is the problem with trying to grow through unbalanced trade. In the end, your trade partners need something to pay you with.
Not that the German economy has been a stonking success during the euro's existence. Its average growth rate has been only 1.4pc, below the UK's – and below Spain's and Ireland's. The explanation is clear. Whereas consumer spending has grown by about 30pc in America and the UK, in Germany it has grown by only 10pc. The reason is that over the last 13 years, German workers' average real incomes have fallen by 4pc. The very success in keeping costs down has also kept pay down.
WE NEED TO LEAVE THE EU TO STOP IT BLEEDING US DRY
Saturday October 6,2012 By
Stephen Pollard
IN JUST
over a fortnight the European Commission will formally write to each of the
EU’s 27 member states about the EU budget.
Given the state of Europe’s
economies – there is nowhere that has been able to escape the need for spending
cuts – you might think that a sensible message to pass to national governments
would be that the EU is ready to do its bit and rein in its spending.
Fat chance. What, in fact, the Commission will say is that it wants even more of our money.
Astonishingly (all too predictably) the Eurocrats are demanding almost £1billion extra to plug a hole in this year’s budget.
While everyone else in Europe has been trying to stick to ever tighter spending limits, EU officials have been on a spree, going way over the budget agreed last November.
----A spokesman for the EU’s budget commissioner Janusz Lewandowski revealed the mind set that is at the root of these latest demands. He said:
“It has been two or three years since the parliament and the Council cut our proposals. It has been two or three years we’ve been saying, ‘We’re going to have problems.’”
In other words budget cuts were made by national politicians three years ago but the Eurocrats have simply carried on as before and are now screaming that the money isn’t there to pay for their uncontrolled spending – as if they alone get to decide how much they spend.
To say that the Commission is out of touch with reality doesn’t come close: it is out of control.
Across Europe cuts of varying degrees of severity are being made – in large part as a consequence of the imposition of the euro, another crazed European scheme.
But at a time when Greeks have to hunt for food in the streets and Spain is on the verge of collapse, the chauffeur driven, Michelin-star-fed members of the EU elite are demanding that British taxpayers – along with those from the rest of the EU – hand over even more to pay for their out-of-control spending.
But it’s not just the un elected, pampered, contemptuous Eurocrats in the commission who think that the rest of us exist solely to pay for their federal ideology.
Yesterday the European Parliament’s budget committee voted to sink MEPs’ snouts even deeper into the trough, handing themselves a 6.8 per cent pay rise.
Fat chance. What, in fact, the Commission will say is that it wants even more of our money.
Astonishingly (all too predictably) the Eurocrats are demanding almost £1billion extra to plug a hole in this year’s budget.
While everyone else in Europe has been trying to stick to ever tighter spending limits, EU officials have been on a spree, going way over the budget agreed last November.
----A spokesman for the EU’s budget commissioner Janusz Lewandowski revealed the mind set that is at the root of these latest demands. He said:
“It has been two or three years since the parliament and the Council cut our proposals. It has been two or three years we’ve been saying, ‘We’re going to have problems.’”
In other words budget cuts were made by national politicians three years ago but the Eurocrats have simply carried on as before and are now screaming that the money isn’t there to pay for their uncontrolled spending – as if they alone get to decide how much they spend.
To say that the Commission is out of touch with reality doesn’t come close: it is out of control.
Across Europe cuts of varying degrees of severity are being made – in large part as a consequence of the imposition of the euro, another crazed European scheme.
But at a time when Greeks have to hunt for food in the streets and Spain is on the verge of collapse, the chauffeur driven, Michelin-star-fed members of the EU elite are demanding that British taxpayers – along with those from the rest of the EU – hand over even more to pay for their out-of-control spending.
But it’s not just the un elected, pampered, contemptuous Eurocrats in the commission who think that the rest of us exist solely to pay for their federal ideology.
Yesterday the European Parliament’s budget committee voted to sink MEPs’ snouts even deeper into the trough, handing themselves a 6.8 per cent pay rise.
----EU spending
is so riddled with fraud that the Court of Auditors, the body
set up to monitor where the money goes, has refused to sign off the EU’s
accounts for the past 17 years.
Last year it said that 90 per cent of the EU’s entire budget was “materially affected” in some way by fraud or by unaccounted spending.
Last year it said that 90 per cent of the EU’s entire budget was “materially affected” in some way by fraud or by unaccounted spending.
More
Elsewhere, Japan in a hole trying
to retain China’s Diaoyu Islands, is determined to keep digging. To the muddle
headed elite in Tokyo, a PR charm campaign is the answer, so they think. The
history of the islands is against them. Taken as spoils of war in 1895 along
with Taiwan, they were given away along with Taiwan under the final settlement after
Japan’s surrender after WW2. Any mistaken PR campaign is merely likely to
highlight Japan’s weak case, and bring other Asian sympathisers to China’s
cause. Worse, it will very likely rebound against Japan’s exports, as a PR
aware public come to realise just how little contrition Japan has shown for its
treatment of the millions it conquered. Time is not on the side of Japan, where
changing demographics will soon lead to Japan needing to sell much of its
sovereign debt outside of Japan.
Almost as bad, China has other
islands in dispute with other nations, China can horse trade if so inclined,
though it probably won’t need to. Japan has only a dispute with Russia over
some northern island seized by Russia at the end of the war. Japan’s arguments against
China justify Russia holding on to its spoils of war. Stay long precious
metals. Our world gets more interesting as our politicians get more bizarre. As
the latest data from the World Bank show, Japan couldn’t have picked a worse
time to risk its exports to the region.
October 7, 2012, 7:05 a.m. ET
Japan to Step Up PR Campaign in Isle Spat
Japan has
decided to change tack in promoting its claim to disputed islands in the East
China Sea amid an escalation of tensions with China over the territorial
dispute, highlighted by a recent verbal tit-for-tat with Beijing at the United
Nations.
Instead
of taking the view that there's no need to proactively promote its cause, Japan
plans to step up a PR campaign outlining its claim to the disputed Senkaku
Islands. The isles are administered by Japan but claimed by China, where they
are known as the Diaoyu.
"We
had refrained from actively asserting our position on the basis that a
territorial dispute doesn't exist," Japan Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba
told reporters in New York last week, according to Japanese media.
While
reiterating the position that there's no question over Japan's ownership of the
territories, Mr. Gemba called for a "policy reversal" on the
government's PR strategies, a move that some analysts say could backfire.
Following
Mr. Gemba's statement, two days before the 40th anniversary of the signing of
the joint communique that normalized relations between Tokyo and Beijing, U.N.
representatives from Japan and China engaged in a fierce battle of words,
escalating into accusations of theft and money laundering over the Japanese
government's September purchase of the islands.
More
East Asia Growth Seen at 11-Year Low on China Slowdown: Economy
By Karl Lester M. Yap - Oct 8, 2012 6:43 AM GMT
The World Bank said policy makers in
Asia’s emerging economies have room to provide more fiscal stimulus as China’s
slowdown drags the region’s growth to an estimated 11-year low in 2012.
Growth in developing East Asia, which excludes Japan
and India, will probably ease to 7.2 percent from 8.3 percent in 2011, the
Washington-based lender said in a report today. That is the slowest pace since
2001, according to World Bank data, and lower than a forecast in May of 7.6
percent.
----India’s central bank held interest rates last month while unexpectedly reducing the amount of deposits lenders must set aside as reserves, and South Korea announced 5.9 trillion won ($5.3 billion) of spending and tax relief as officials acted to shield their economies.
Manufacturing from Europe to China contracted in September, and the Asian Development Bank last week lowered its inflation and expansion forecasts for the region excluding Japan for this year and next. To shield growth, Philippine President Benigno Aquino is increasing spending to a record and seeking more than $16 billion of investments in roads and airports, and Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak is also boosting disbursements.
More
"In the long run, the gold price has to go up in relation
to paper money. There is no other way.”
Nicholas L. Deak
At the Comex silver depositories Friday final figures were: Registered 40.51 Moz,
Eligible 102.60 Moz, Total 143.11 Moz.
Crooks and
Scoundrels Corner
The bent,
the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.
Today, more on the madness sweeping Europe. While little tax shy peons
get hammered, sophisticated tax shy magnates get exemptions. I think we all
know from history how this chapter ends.
"We
hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.”
Aesop
October
5, 2012, 9:13 p.m. ET
Now on Greek Menus: Tax Battle
Popular Fish Restaurant Becomes Front Line in Broad Effort to Fight Evasion, Boost Revenue
HYDRA,
Greece—A family-owned fish restaurant on this serene island has become an
improbable focal point of Greeks' debate over their government's effort to
collect more taxes.
Riot
police were called to Hydra when a small insurrection erupted over the summer,
after financial-crimes police tried to arrest a proprietor of a century-old
seafood taverna for allegedly failing to give proper receipts.
The
police action was part of a stepped-up effort to stamp out off-the-books
transactions that Greek officials say are depriving Athens of vital revenue when
every taxable cent is needed to ward off fiscal doom.
Tax-evasion
is pervasive in Greece. Many Greeks, however, object to what they see as the
government's uneven approach to the issue. They see heavy-handed treatment of
small-business owners who are reeling from recession and an increased tax
burden. They are resentful, meanwhile, over reports of tax evasion and money
laundering among the politically connected and wealthy. Many also express anger
over constitutionally decreed tax-exemptions for wealthy ship owners.
----Greece's tax revenue as a percentage of gross domestic product has long lagged that of most other European Union nations, according to Eurostat, the EU's statistics agency. The nation collected tax equal to one-third of GDP in 2010, according to provisional data—below Denmark's 48.5% and Germany's 39.5%, and just above Spain's 32.9% and Ireland's 29.8%.
Evaded taxable income in Greece amounted to €28
billion ($36 billion) among the self-employed in 2009, according to a recent
academic study. The lost income-tax revenue—which doesn't include other evaded
taxes, such as on consumption—would have been the equivalent of nearly
one-third of that year's budget deficit, the authors estimated.
"The
highest tax evaders are people who are highly educated and have high-profile
professions," said Margarita Tsoutsoura of the University of Chicago Booth
School of Business, an author of the study. The greatest offenders, she said,
include doctors, engineers, lawyers and accountants.
----"The huge problem of tax evasion plagues the Greek economy, nullifying every attempt at recovery and hope for the future of all," said government spokesman Simos Kedikoglou. Everyone, he added, should take their "moral and practical share" in efforts to rehabilitate Greece's economy and restore its credibility.
This past
summer, investigators under the Greek Finance Ministry carried out 4,067
controls on businesses in tourist areas. Violations were found at nearly 56% of
the establishments, totaling 31,237 offenses, most commonly for failing to give
proper receipts. The ministry said it played no role in the Hydra
investigation, which was conducted by a unit of the Greek police founded in
2011 to crack down on economic crime.
Stories
of Greeks failing to pay taxes often make headlines in other nations like
Germany, where many question why Germans should send bailout money to a
dysfunctional Greece while many Greeks aren't paying. One German public
television documentary, "The Greece Lie," featured a Greek shipping
tycoon who questioned why he would help fund a corrupt, inept state.
"Would you give your money to Al Capone?" the shipowner said.
More
"The
more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."
Tacitus. 55-130 BC
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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