Wednesday 21 November 2012

Failure.



Baltic Dry Index. 1066  +12

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

Madness: doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.

Albert Einstein.

They came to Brussels from all over Europe, they met with each other and with the head of the IMF, the ECB, numberless Eurocrats, and even old Herman van Rompuy and all. After half a day of talking and a dinner, they all left again, spreading out like Ash Die-Back fungus across Europe. With nothing accomplished, Greece was left yet again to slowly twist in the wind as it dies. Welcome to the European Union, 21st century style, where in a disastrous monetary experiment gone wrong, Europe’s “leaders” are in deep denial about the cause of the problem. Not to worry though, this same set of elitist parasites are to meet again on Monday, to repeat the whole process expecting a different result. Before then, “the Great Leaders meeting,” two days of posturing, preening and pouting in Brussels. While Americans get to take two days off to celebrate Thanksgiving by feasting on turkey and cranberries, followed by manic shopping for knick knacks they don’t need and can’t afford, Europe’s great leaders, bureaucrats, and Bilderbergers, all get to politely bore and snub each other in Brussels, all paid for by Europe’s powerless taxpayer serfs.

"The most puzzling development in politics during the last decade is the apparent determination of Western European leaders to re-create the Soviet Union in Western Europe."

Mikhail Gorbachev

Nov. 20, 2012, 11:13 p.m. EST

Eurozone finance ministers fail to agree Greek debt deal

Greece's international lenders failed for the second week running to agree how to get the country's debt down to a sustainable level and will have a third go at resolving their most intractable problem in six days' time.

Reuters 6:18AM GMT 21 Nov 2012
After nearly 12 hours of talks through the night during which myriad options were discussed, eurozone finance ministers, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank failed to reach a consensus, without which emergency aid cannot be disbursed to Athens.

"We are close to an agreement but technical verifications have to be undertaken, financial calculations have to be made and it's really for technical reasons that at this hour of the day it was not possible to do it in a proper way and so we are interrupting the meeting and reconvening next Monday," Eurogroup chairman Jean-Claude Juncker told reporters.

"There are no major political disagreements," he said.

Nonetheless, the euro extended its fall against the dollar in response.

A document prepared for the meeting and seen by Reuters declared that Greece's debt cannot be cut to 120 per cent of GDP by 2020, the level deemed sustainable by the IMF, unless euro zone member states write off a portion of their loans to Greece.

The 15-page document, circulated among ministers, set out in black-and-white how far off-track Greece is in reducing its debt to the IMF-imposed target, from a level of around 170 per cent of GDP now.

The document set out various ways Greece's debt could be reduced between now and 2020, but concluded they would not be enough without euro zone creditors taking a hit on their own holdings – something Germany and others have said would be illegal.
More

Below, how Spain may yet unleash the apocalypse on an unsuspecting Euroland. After Cataluña, the Balearic Islands, Basque-land, Bavaria, Greater Lombardy, Sicily and Scotland. Stay long physical gold and silver, a long and dangerous, wealth destroying 2013 lies ahead.

Spread out, they’re sure to get one of us!

Anon.

Regional elections in Spain could mean independence for Catalonia

Sunday’s regional elections could trigger a battle for independence from Spain

Monday 19 November 2012
Two years ago in Girona, a well-to-do town in Spain’s autonomous region of Catalonia, Mercé Escara hung a pro-independence flag from her balcony window. The administrator for her apartment building promptly asked her to remove it.

Visit Girona today, and a similar request would be met with total derision. Throughout the town centre, about one property in three displays at least one, if not several, estelada flags that symbolise the Catalan separatist movement.

Although there are widespread disagreements about the cause, no one in Catalonia can deny that the pro-independence movement in Spain’s richest region is on the rise – signified by the pro-nationalist march on 11 September that brought well over a million people on to the streets of the Catalan capital, Barcelona.
Seizing on the political traction for the separatist movement, the conservative Convergence and Union (CiU) party that governs Catalonia has brought regional elections forward by two years to Sunday. They are likely to strengthen the position of the nationalists, reinforcing the mandate of Catalonia’s regional leader, Artur Más, to press ahead with a referendum on independence despite the ban on secession that is written in the Spanish constitution. However, if Sunday’s vote triggers this move, Spain’s economic woes will be compacted by a fresh constitutional crisis.

The mere suggestion of the referendum has set Catalonia’s ruling coalition on a collision-course with Spain’s main central political parties, and created a political headache in the most turbulent of economic times for the Spanish Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, and his ruling centre-right Partido Popular (PP) government.

---- Catalonia’s history, language and culture have long been a key part of separatist sentiment, but money is at the heart of this new fervour.

Mr Puigdemont argues that although Catalonia produces 20 per cent of Spain’s GDP, it does not receive the appropriate level of investment from Madrid. He complains that Catalonia “only receives nine per cent of investment in transport infrastructure”, laments “the failure to turn the N-2, the busiest A-road in Spain that runs through here, into a motorway”, and objects to the fact that, in a country with one of the most extensive high speed train networks, his region’s railways “still need a change of gauge at the nearby frontier with France”.
More

Back in the land of the not so free and the deeply indebted brave, Helicopter Ben is starting to panic about falling over Uncle Sam’s “fiscal cliff.” It’s not the drop that worries him, it’s the sudden halt at the end.


Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.

H. L. Mencken.

Ben Bernanke steps up warning over America's 'fiscal cliff'

Fears over America's looming "fiscal cliff" of tax hikes and spending cuts are already holding back growth in the world's largest economy, the head of the US Federal Reserve has warned.

6:45PM GMT 20 Nov 2012

Ben Bernanke urged Congress to strike a deal to avert the package of tax increases and spending cuts that could trigger a recession next year.

Without a deal, the measures known as the "fiscal cliff" will take effect in January.

"Congress and the administration will need to protect the economy from the full brunt of the severe fiscal tightening at the beginning of next year that is built into current law - the so-called fiscal cliff," Mr Bernanke said in a speech in New York

"The realisation of all of the automatic tax increases and spending cuts that make up the fiscal cliff, absent offsetting changes, would pose a substantial threat to the recovery," he said.

"Indeed, by the reckoning of the Congressional Budget Office and that of many outside observers, a fiscal shock of that size would send the economy toppling back into recession."

---- In a statement after its October policy meeting, the Fed said that while the economy is improving moderately, job growth remained slow and the unemployment rate, at 7.9pc, remained elevated.

Economists predict growth in the July-September quarter will be revised up to around 3pc, higher than the government's initial 2pc growth estimate. But they think the economy slipped back to a lower rate of less than 2pc in the current October-December quarter.

Growth below 2pc is too slow to make a significant improvement in unemployment.

More

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9691583/Ben-Bernanke-steps-up-warning-over-Americas-fiscal-cliff.html

But not everyone expects a fiscal cliff with an unpleasant ending. Some see merely a pleasant fiscal slope. Our markets are anticipating neither. The Fairy Godmother is confidently expected to show up after Thanksgiving, allowing everyone to go to the Ball after all. America’s two warring tribes, after all, just voted for the continuing free lunch. That is what they expect.

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.

H. L. Mencken.

How to End the Great Fiscal Wars

By Clive Crook Nov 20, 2012 11:30 PM GMT
In one way, the so-called fiscal cliff threatening the U.S. economy is less dangerous than widely supposed. In another, it’s more.

First, as many have said, the cliff is really a slope. At year’s end, the tax cuts passed in 2001 and 2003 automatically expire, and a deliberately brainless process of sequestration starts to cut public spending. But the full fiscal effects of both events don’t arrive all at once. The changes would have to be sustained -- or be expected to be sustained -- to drive the economy into a recession.

Neither is likely. Businesses and consumers would see any start down the slope as temporary. They would expect some resolution of the fiscal problem in short order. Meanwhile, various maneuvers could be used to postpone the harm. The Internal Revenue Service could delay the additional tax withholding, for instance.
Departments and agencies could think about how to phase in cuts over the course of the year.

When a government defaults, that’s it -- so the debt ceiling really is a cliff (as it were). The fiscal slope is a less brutal kind of government dysfunction. Now that gauging various degrees of government paralysis has become the main task of U.S. political analysts, the difference is probably worth noting.

What matters, though, is not the damage that a temporary change in fiscal policy will cause at the end of the year, but the harm that the prevailing uncertainty over policy has already caused -- and will keep causing, even if the fiscal slope is avoided. That’s why being told that the cliff isn’t a cliff is small consolation.

Big U.S. companies are scaling back their investment plans at the fastest pace in almost three years, according to a new Wall Street Journal review of securities filings and conference calls. Confidence in the domestic economy is low. Weaker economies abroad, especially in China and the euro zone, aren’t helping.

The U.S. needs clarity about the fiscal outlook, and that will be hard to achieve.
More
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-20/how-to-end-the-great-fiscal-wars.html

We end for the day with yet more bad news from China. On some days if it wasn’t for bad news, there’d be no news at all. Stay long physical precious metals.

Analysis: China banks turn blind eye as corporate debt piles up

BEIJING/SHANGHAI | Tue Nov 20, 2012 6:37pm EST
(Reuters) - The problems at China's Yingli Green Energy Holding Co Ltd (YGE.N), the world's No.3 solar-panel maker, are going from bad to worse as the company struggles with mounting losses, collapsing product prices and a stock in free-fall.

And yet, despite a government directive to rein in loans, Chinese banks keep extending credit to the New York-listed firm, and at below-market rates. Outstanding short-term borrowing has almost tripled to 8.2 billion yuan ($1.3 billion) since 2009, according to Yingli's 2011 annual report.

"You sometimes have to wonder why a certain loan was made," said Stanley Li, head of China bank research at Mirae Asset Management. "One problem with many Chinese banks is that we do not have much insight into their lending practices."

Yingli is one of many companies in China receiving life support from the country's banks. That support - at a time when China's economy and financial system are also under pressure - is raising fears that a spike in bad loans will push Chinese lenders into default.

"Banks like lending to us," said Yingli's Chief Financial Officer Bryan Li in an interview. "They feel that we are a potential winner if there is any consolidation in the industry."

That feeling may come back to haunt the banks.

A Reuters News analysis on 40 of China's most indebted companies - most of them from sectors already reeling with overcapacity such as wind-turbine maker Xinjiang Goldwind Science & Technology Co Ltd  and COSCO Shipping Co Ltd  - showed debt levels rising as profits decline across industries that Beijing has said it wants to promote.

On average, operating profit at these companies dropped 15 percent in 2011 as their debt piles grew by the same percentage, according to company and Thomson Reuters data.

China's big banks deny they are extending fresh loans to struggling companies, with officials saying risks are under control. The country's banking regulator also dismissed such concerns, saying asset quality was sound.
More
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/20/us-china-banks-loans-idUSBRE8AJ1FD20121120

At the Comex silver depositories Tuesday final figures were: Registered 35.86 Moz, Eligible 106.74 Moz, Total 14.60 Moz.  


Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over. 

Today, an obscure, lowly London bankster, gets to pay the price of being lowly and obscure.Ebenezer Squid, he ain't.

"The London Banker Henry Fauntleroy forged to keep his bank solvent. He was executed for it in 1824."

Charles P. Kindleberger,  Manias, Panics and Crashes.

UBS rogue trader Kweku Adoboli jailed for seven years

Former UBS banker Kweku Adoboli has been jailed for seven years and dubbed a trader who was "out of control", having been found guilty of the biggest fraud in British history.

By Jonathan Russell 2:00PM GMT 20 Nov 2012
Jailing him on Tuesday, Mr Justice Keith told Adoboli: "There is a strong streak of the gambler in you. You were arrogant to think the bank's rules for traders did not apply to you."

Adoboli will serve half his sentence minus a year already spent in custody - a total of two and a half years.
City of London Police, which investigated his activities after he confessed his losses in an email to colleagues, said Adoboli was one of the most sophisticated fraudsters the force had come across.

Detective chief inspector Perry Stokes, from the City of London police, said: "To all those around him, Kweku Adoboli appeared to be a man on the make whose career prospects and future earnings were taking off.

"He worked hard, looked the part and seemingly had an answer for everything. But behind this facade lay a trader who was running completely out of control and exposing UBS to huge financial risks on a daily basis.
"Rules put in place to protect the bank's position and the integrity of the markets were being bypassed and broken by a young man who wanted it all and was not willing to wait.

"When Adoboli's pyramid of fictitious trades, exceeded trading limits and non-existent hedging came crashing down, the repercussions were felt in financial centres around the world.

"Now, just a year on, he is facing the reality that he was not above the law and will be made to pay for his crimes."

A jury at Southwark Crown Court in London had earlier returned a verdict of guilty on two counts of fraud by abuse of position but acquitted him of four charges of false accounting.

The 32-year-old, who was arrested in September last year, had pleaded not guilty to all six charges.
Adoboli was accused of losing his bank billions of pounds in a series of fraudulent trades designed to boost his standing at the bank and increase his bonuses.

Using an “umbrella account”, Adoboli hid the trades from his superiors over more than two years. He invented fictitious counterparties to the trades and repeatedly lied to his superiors to cover his tracks.

His activity came to light after he sent his bosses an email detailing his activities in mid September 2011.
It read: “I take full responsibility for my actions and the s*** storm that will now ensue. I am deeply sorry to have left this mess for everyone and to have put my bank, and my colleagues at risk.”

In court he denied the charges claiming his colleagues knew of his activities and his superiors condoned it.

 His defence team painted a picture of an ambitious but well meaning young man who was working for the good of his bank. However on at least one count the jury has rejected that picture in favour of the prosecution case that Adoboli was greedy and immoral.
More

Henry Fauntleroy


Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood.

H. L. Mencken.

The monthly Coppock Indicators finished October:
DJIA: +92 Up. NASDAQ: +99 Up. SP500: +102 Up.

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