Baltic Dry Index. 778 +01
LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
“The problem with fiat money is that it rewards the minority that can handle money, but
fools the generation that has worked and saved money.”
“Adam Smith” aka George Goodman.
We start today with the Asian Development Bank
lowering its regional growth estimate. The bad news just keeps on coming, not
that you would know it from our stock markets that are responding to all the
monetary printing now happening and expected by our western central banks.
Effectively, the system produced by the Great Nixonian Error of fiat money blew
up in 2008, as casino capitalism couldn’t pay off its losses. We have been on
an ad hoc system pf print and punt ever since, though even here the end is
getting dangerously close.
A great reset is coming in the game called money,
but not before our central banksters destroy a whole lot more of their citizens
wealth in a desperate but doomed attempt at preserving the status quo of
2005-2007. Stay long physical precious metals, though not 10oz gold bars from
Switzerland. Today’s update is a fine illustration of just how unstable the
aftermath of the bankster bust has become. Mal-investment has yet to be purged
from the system, but that day is getting perilously close.
China’s Slowdown Reverberates as ADB Cuts Forecasts
By Karl Lester M. Yap - Oct 3, 2012 3:19 PM GMT
China’s
services industry expanded the least in more than a year, underscoring a
slowdown that spurred the Asian Development Bank to lower its 2012 regional
growth estimate and caused a slide in Australian coal exports.
The purchasing managers’ index from the Chinese government and logistics federation fell to 53.7 in September from 56.3 the previous month, a report showed today, while Australia recorded its widest trade deficit since March 2008 in August. The ADB today forecast Asia excluding Japan will expand 6.1 percent this year, the slowest pace since 2009.
Asian stocks fell and commodities declined for a second day, while Australia’s dollar slipped to its lowest level in nearly a month on concern global demand is faltering, putting pressure on authorities to support growth.
----Asia’s exports
have faltered as slower global growth crimps demand for the region’s goods.
Malaysia’s shipments abroad unexpectedly slipped for the first time in three months
in July, while Thailand and South Korea have recorded three straight months of
declines in overseas sales.
More
"Sooner or later both the Greek population and international creditors will tire of fighting a losing battle, leading to a break-up of the currency union as Greece pulls out, probably followed by other countries"
Douglas McWilliams, chief executive of the Centre of Economics and Business Research.
Debt crisis: troika demand even tougher austerity on stricken Greece
Greece's international creditors are demanding the imposition of even tougher austerity measures despite the delivery this week of Antonio Samara’s hard-won €13.5bn package of cuts.
On the second day of negotiations in Athens, the troika - officials representing the European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund - reportedly pushed for Greece to make deeper cuts to the minimum wage and pensions, while imposing longer working hours.Greece, which this week warned its economy was heading for a sixth year of recession, has asked Brussels to relax the terms of its bail-out conditions to allow the economy time to recover. The troika is reviewing Greece’s progress on austerity measures and its 2013 draft Budget to determine whether to approve the release of the next tranche of bail-out money worth €31bn.
But with awkward timing, it emerged that Greece has “unblocked” €30bn in order to push ahead with its plans to building a motor-racing circuit capable of hosting Formula 1 Grand Prix. The total cost of constructing the track in Xalandritsa, near Patras, is expected to be €94.6m.
Spain’s prime minister Mariano Rajoy firmly denied reports that the country was ready to request a full bail-out. At a press conference following a highly anticipated meeting with Spain’s rebellious regional heads, Mr Rajoy was asked if “a bail-out request is imminent”; to which he said: “No.”
15,000 queue for 150 Madrid factory jobs
More than 15,000 people looking for work queued to apply for just 150 vacancies at the factory of agricultural machinery company John Deere on the outskirts of Madrid.
As data showed
unemployment across Spain has risen by 11pc over the past year, the applicants had no idea
what positions they were applying for or what wages to expect, just that there
was the possibility of a regular job.
"The
truth is I have no idea what the job is, beyond that it is at a factory,"
one 23-year-old applicant was reported as saying.
Employment
agency Adecco in the Getafe district of Madrid, which advertised the job, said
it had seen more than 15,000 jobseekers in the week before the application
closing date of Monday.
Overwhelmed
by the huge response, the agency said it will hold a draw of those who applied
to narrow the list to 1,500 before considering suitable applicants for the
positions.
The
Spanish government released figures on Tuesday that showed half a million
people lost their jobs in the year ending September. Spain's official
unemployment rate reached 24.6pc in June, the highest in the industrialised
world.
Wanted: one au pair. Result: 2,000 applications
When Rosie Murray-West advertised for a home help last month, nothing prepared her for the mountain of letters from desperate youngsters pleading for work – mainly from Spain. It didn’t take her long to discover why.
By Rosie
Murray-West 4:25PM BST 01 Oct 2012
Sleeping
in our spare room in return for looking after two small girls is a dubious
privilege, which is why I had always assumed that recruiting our first au pair
would be a struggle. Two thousand applications later and I’m praying that we’ve
hit upon the right person.
It has
been a month since I put up an advertisement on the popular website Au Pair
World, stating that we wanted someone to look after a five- and a three-
year-old for two afternoons a week with some light cleaning thrown in. I was
clear – discouraging even – about where we live and what we can offer. Despite
this, the letters and emails poured in.
----I’m
under no illusion. It’s not the quality of our family home but the “pain in
Spain” that has meant that we are suddenly awash with applicants. More than 80
per cent of them are Iberian and of the rest, most are Italian, French or other
countries in the eurozone whose names are frequently suffixed with the words
“debt crisis”.
More
More bikes sold than cars in Italy for first time since WW2
For the first time since the end of the Second World War the number of bicycles sold in Italy has overtaken the number of cars.
By Nick
Squires, in Rome 11:57AM BST 02 Oct 2012
In a
radical departure for the car-mad country, home to legendary marques such as
Fiat, Ferrari and Lamborghini, 1,750,000 bikes were bought in 2011 compared to
1,748,000 motor vehicles.
As
austerity cuts deepen and petrol prices hit a new high, the purchase of new
cars has dropped to levels not seen since the 1970s.
Families
are buying bikes, ditching their second cars and signing up to car pool schemes
– a major shift for a nation which has one of the highest car ownership rates
in the world, with around 60 cars for every 100 people.
Car
ownership became a symbol of the Italian economic miracle in the 1960s and has
steadily grown since, but as unemployment rises and living costs soar, it has
become an unaffordable luxury for many Italian families.
Petrol
recently hit two euros a litre, the highest in Europe, and it is estimated that
the average car in Italy costs €7,000 a year to run.
----“More and more people are deciding to bring their old models out of the garage or the cellar,” said Pietro Nigrelli, of industry association Confindustria.
“Bikes
are easy to use and they cost little. And on distances of five kilometres or
less, they are often faster than other modes of transport.”
Out of a
population of 60 million, 6.5 million Italians use a bike to get to work or
school, while 10.5 million use them occasionally, mostly at weekends.
More
"We are in a world of irredeemable paper money - a state of affairs unprecedented in history."
John Exter
Do Western Central Banks Have Any Gold Left???
By: Eric Sprott & David Baker
Somewhere deep in the bowels of the world’s Western central banks lie vaults
holding gargantuan piles of physical gold bars… or at least that’s what they
all claim. The gold bars are part of their respective foreign currency
reserves, which include all the usual fiat currencies like the dollar, the
pound, the yen and the euro.Collectively, the governments/central banks of the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, Switzerland, Eurozone and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are believed to hold an impressive 23,349 tonnes of gold in their respective reserves, representing more than $1.3 trillion at today’s gold price. Beyond the suggested tonnage, however, very little is actually known about the gold that makes up this massive stockpile. Western central banks disclose next to nothing about where it’s stored, in what form, or how much of the gold reserves are utilized for other purposes. We are assured that it’s all there, of course, but little effort has ever been made by the central banks to provide any details beyond the arbitrary references in their various financial reserve reports.
----So once we acknowledge how big the discrepancy is between the actual true level of physical gold demand versus the annual “supply”, the obvious questions present themselves: who are the sellers delivering the gold to match the enormous increase in physical demand? What entities are releasing physical gold onto the market without reporting it? Where is all the gold coming from?
There is
only one possible candidate: the Western central banks. It may very well be
that a large portion of physical gold currently flowing to new buyers is
actually coming from the Western central banks themselves. They are the only
holders of physical gold who are capable of supplying gold in a quantity and
manner that cannot be readily tracked. They are also the very entities whose
actions have driven investors back into gold in the first place. Gold is, after
all, a hedge against their collective irresponsibility – and they have
showcased their capacity in that regard quite enthusiastically over the past
decade, especially since 2008.
If the
Western central banks are indeed leasing out their physical reserves, they
would not actually have to disclose the specific amounts of gold that leave
their respective vaults. According to a document on the European Central Bank’s
(ECB) website regarding the statistical treatment of the Eurosystem’s International
Reserves, current reporting guidelines do not require central banks to
differentiate between gold owned outright versus gold lent out or swapped with
another party.
----Unfortunately,
that’s as far as their description goes, as each institution does not break
down what percentage of their stated gold reserves are held in physical, versus
what percentage has been loaned out or swapped for something else. The fact
that they do not differentiate between the two is astounding, (Ed. As is the
“including gold deposits” verbiage that they use – what else is “gold” supposed
to refer to?) but at the same time not at all surprising. It would not lend
much credence to central bank credibility if they admitted they were leasing
their gold reserves to ‘bullion bank’ intermediaries who were then turning
around and selling their gold to China, for example. But the numbers strongly
suggest that that is exactly what has happened. The central banks’ gold is
likely gone, and the bullion banks that sold it have no realistic chance of
getting it back.
More
"Those entrapped by the herd instinct are drowned in the deluges of history. But there are always the few who observe, reason, and take precautions, and thus escape the flood. For these few gold has been the asset of last resort."
Antony C. Sutton
At the Comex silver depositories Monday final figures were: Registered 41.43 Moz,
Eligible 101.42 Moz, Total 142.85 Moz.
Crooks and
Scoundrels Corner
The bent,
the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.
Today, the New York
Attorney General finally gets around to taking civil action against the Great
vampire Squids who peddled bogus triple-A mortgage backed securities to the
world, including brain dead European bankers who should have known better. Civil
action requires a lower standard of proof than a criminal suit. At stake for JP Morgan and the other 40
thieves, hundreds of billions in miss sold MBS. Still to come, suits involving
the multiple pledging of the same mortgages to MBS securities, suits involving missing
mortgage notes in MBS, suits involving the MERS fraud. America’s largest banks will
likely need another FED bailout, but should the FED be in the business of
making securities fraud good?
Why did I take up stealing? To live better, to own things I couldn't afford, to acquire this good taste that you now enjoy and which I should be very reluctant to give up.
Ebenezer Squid, with apologies
to Cary Grant. To Catch A Thief
JPMorgan Rivals Face Billions in Damages After MBS Case
By David McLaughlin - Oct 2, 2012 11:10 PM GMT
JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM)’s rivals may face government lawsuits
claiming tens of billions of dollars in damages tied to investor losses on
mortgage bonds after New York’s attorney general filed a fraud lawsuit against
the nation’s biggest bank by assets. A state-federal task force set up this year to investigate misconduct in the bundling of mortgage loans into securities will bring other cases, according to New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. Investor losses in the JPMorgan case alone will be “substantially more” than the $22.5 billion cited in his complaint, he said.
“We do expect this to be a matter of very significant liability, and there are others to come that will also reflect the same quantum of damages,” Schneiderman said in an interview yesterday with Bloomberg Television’s Erik Schatzker. “We’re looking at tens of billions of dollars, not just by one institution, but by quite a few.”
Schneiderman alleged that the Bear Stearns business that JPMorgan took over in 2008 deceived mortgage-bond investors about defective loans backing securities they bought. Bear Stearns “systematically failed” to evaluate loans, ignored defects uncovered and “kept investors in the dark” about review procedures and problems with the loans.
The Bear Stearns mortgage unit packaged $212 billion in mortgage bonds from 2003 through 2006, according to the state’s complaint. Losses on $87 billion of those bonds packaged during just two of those years total $22.5 billion so far, it estimated.
The case targets mortgage securitizations between 2005 and 2007 involving Alt A and subprime mortgages, Schneiderman said in a conference call with reporters. It will take further investigation to determine the full extent of the losses.
“There are further losses being incurred,” according to Schneiderman, who called the case a “template” for cases against other issuers of mortgage securities.
New York will use at least some of the money it collects from the suits to reimburse investors, Schneiderman said in the Bloomberg interview.
“The investors who were defrauded deserve to get money back,” he said. “I don’t think there’s any dispute about that. This is a matter of doing justice. If anything, most folks in the U.S. think there were too few strings on the banks that were the recipients of the bailout and the recipients of taxpayer- backed loans.”
Joe Evangelisti, a JPMorgan spokesman, said the New York- based bank would contest the state’s complaint, which is “entirely about” conduct by Bear Stearns.
----The top issuers of mortgage securities without government backing in 2005 included Bank of America Corp.’s Countrywide Financial unit, GMAC, Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual, according to trade publication Inside MBS & ABS. Total volume for the top 10 issuers was $672 billion. JPMorgan acquired Washington Mutual in 2008.
Countrywide ranked as the top issuer of the securities in 2005, 2006 and 2007, when the worst-performing debt was created, according to Inside MBS & ABS. The lender created $405 billion of the $3.04 trillion of bonds sold in those years.
More
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-02/jpmorgan-rivals-face-billions-in-damages-after-mbs-case.html
Sub-prime feeding frenzy haunts Wall Street five years on
A fresh lawsuit filed by New York's top government prosecutor is a reminder that the financial crisis is still haunting Wall Street.
The $26m
(£16m) or so that Bear Stearns paid for Encore Credit Operations in October
2006 was not frontpage news. If shareholders of the US investment bank noticed
the deal, approval would have been their most likely response.
The
purchase of Encore Credit, which arranged mortgages for Americans with poor
credit histories, strengthened Bear Stearns’ seat at the only table that really
mattered on Wall Street in late 2006.
Like
rivals at Merrill Lynch, Citigroup and Bank of America, bankers at Bear Stearns
were pocketing millions of dollars by taking US mortgages, packaging them into
bonds and selling them to investors around the world. The business drove
profits at Bear Stearns to a record $2.1bn in 2006, saw then chief executive
Jimmy Cayne rewarded with a $15m bonus and had helped the bank’s share price
triple over the previous five years.
This
aggressive expansion into the mortgage business also explains why lawyers at JP
Morgan Chase, which bought Bear in the spring of 2008, are this week reading a
31-page lawsuit from New York’s top prosecutor.
“Call
it the Goldman Sachs test. If this is something Goldman would do to its
clients, don't do it."
Felix
Salmon.
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment