Wednesday 14 November 2012

Gloom Deepens.



Baltic Dry Index. 985  +20

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

Though one would hardly think it possible, economic gloom has relentlessly deepened since American voters voted back in the man running on higher taxes. Yesterday was no different, merely that the gloom wasn’t just led by incompetent Europeans, though they are doing their best today to add to their problems, by holding yet another series of futile wealth damaging strikes. Once on the false promise of socialism, the deluded voters still expect the con man to come through for them.  Welcome to dumbed down Europe 2012.
We open with gloom from the US Conference Board. They think that all the low hanging fruit of recovery has been picked. Stay long precious metals in case they’re right.

Some see private enterprise as a predatory target to be shot, others as a cow to be milked, but few are those who see it as a sturdy horse pulling the wagon.

Winston Churchill.

US Conference Board fears BRICS miracle over as world faces decade-long slump

The catch-up boom in China, India, Brazil is largely over and will be followed by a drastic slowdown over the next decade, according to a grim report by America’s top forecasting body.

Europe's prognosis is even worse, with France trapped in depression with near zero growth as far as 2025 and Britain struggling to raise its speed limit to 1pc over the next three Parliaments.

The US Conference Board’s global economic outlook calls into question the "BRICs" miracle (Brazil, Russia, India, China), arguing that the low-hanging fruit from cheap labour and imported technology has already been picked.

China’s double-digit expansion rates will soon be a romantic memory. Growth will fall to 6.9pc next year, then to 5.5pc from 2014-2018, and 3.7pc from 2019-2025 as the aging crisis hits and investment returns go into "rapid decline".

Growth in India - where the reform agenda has been "largely derailed" - will fall to 4.7pc to 2018, and then to 3.9pc. Brazil will slip to 3pc and then 2.7pc. Such growth rates will leave these countries stuck in the "middle income trap", dashing hopes for a quick jump into the affluent league.

"As China, India, Brazil, and others mature from rapid, investment-intensive ‘catch-up’ growth, the structural ‘speed limits’ of their economies are likely to decline," said the Board.

The fizzling emerging market story is a key reason why the West has relapsed this year. The world is now facing a synchronized downturn all fronts, with little scope for fiscal and monetary stimulus.

Winston Churchill.

Rivals dig in as "fiscal cliff" drama debuts

WASHINGTON | Wed Nov 14, 2012 2:58am GMT
(Reuters) - Both sides in the U.S. "fiscal cliff" debate stood their ground on Tuesday as they gathered in Washington for the first time since the elections, with a fundamental tax dispute preventing a broader compromise on deficit reduction.

The White House made clear it was ready to negotiate with Republicans on taxes and spending, but a spokesman for Democratic President Barack Obama said he will not budge on insisting that tax rates for the wealthy must rise in 2013.

Obama wants to extend the individual income tax rates for 98 percent of Americans, but he will not agree to extend them for the top 2 percent of earners, White House spokesman Jay Carney told a briefing. He said the president would demand that a deficit-cutting agreement include $1.6 trillion in new tax revenues.

Obama is scheduled to hold a news conference on Wednesday, during which he will be questioned about negotiations.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said his party was open to discussing new government revenues, but not raising tax rates. "We're ... not about to further weaken the economy by raising tax rates and hurting jobs," he said.

The defiant remarks came as Congress returned from a post-election break with seven weeks left to deal with the "fiscal cliff," a convergence of urgent tax and spending issues that, if mishandled, could plunge the economy into another recession according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.
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http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/11/14/us-usa-fiscal-idUKBRE8A80WV20121114

In China news yesterday, it was something of a mixed bag. The yuan made a new dollar high, implying that many, possibly including the PBOC, think that America will actually fall over the “fiscal cliff” in January 2013. A respected Asian based economist expects a China crash, while China itself found the EU dumping toluene diisocyanate (TDI,) a main raw material of polyurethane products. Three can play the game of trade war as well as two. Tomorrow, China gets to announce who gets to replace the out-going leaders, then the People’s Congress gets to rubber stamp them. There’s not much to be said for such a closed door system, except it’s a good deal cheaper than the American one.

Yuan spot price per USD hits record high

BEIJING, Nov. 13 (Xinhua) -- The spot price of the yuan against the U.S. dollar rose to 6.2262 on Tuesday, marking a record high since China's foreign exchange reforms seven years ago.

Tuesday was the second consecutive day that the spot price of the yuan against the U.S. dollar hit a record high since China launched its foreign exchange reforms in 2005.

Enterprises and banks have been selling off foreign currencies in anticipation of the yuan's appreciation, pushing up the price of the currency, said Ding Zhijie, an economics professor at the University of International Business and Economics.

In China's foreign exchange spot market, the yuan is allowed to rise or fall by 1 percent from the central parity rate each trading day.
More
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/business/2012-11/13/c_131971563.htm

China consensus is dead wrong, says Duncan

November 13, 2012, 1:58 AM
Bangkok-based economist and author Richard Duncan says a chorus of economists pointing to a rebound in China may well be proven wrong, as he believes the nation is headed into a serious crisis.

Since the darkest hours of the 2008 global economic meltdown, China has made little progress in shifting its reliance away from exports, said Duncan, who is well known in Asia for his economic forecasting.

As a result, the Chinese economy is dangerously exposed to a renewed downturn in global trade, which Duncan sees as very likely despite a consensus that China is headed for sunnier times.

“I think China is in very big trouble,” Duncan told MarketWatch in a telephone interview, saying those focused on improvement in select data points such as manufacturing and retail sales are missing bigger trends in the global economy.

Global trade has contracted in each of last three months on an annual basis, according to the CPB Netherlands Bureau of Economic Policy, signaling what Duncan says is the sputtering out of the “recovery phase” that got underway in 2010.

“The rebound in global trade is beginning to fizzle out to the point now where we are hitting the zero line on growth in terms of trade, if not negative,” Duncan said. “China’s imports and exports are grinding to a halt as well.”

It’s only a matter of time before the weaker export environment results in Chinese newspaper headlines “about big job losses and pay cuts,” he said.

In fact, some signs backing up Duncan’s view are beginning to surface. China’s Vice Minister of Human Resources and Social Security Yang Zhiming, for example, told the state-run Xinhua news agency Monday that weakness in the job market is “starting to emerge.”

Duncan said his own visits to Shanghai and Beijing in April this year brought further confirmation of brewing trouble. While strolling in the nation’s capital, he counted a single construction crane, an unusual sight for a skyline normally cluttered with building activity.

“They have reached the stage where they realize there is no point in building skyscrapers that no one can move into, at least in these large cities, so the construction boom is rapidly fading out,” Duncan said.

China probe finds EU dumping TDI

Anti-austerity strikes sweep southern Europe

MADRID/LISBON | Wed Nov 14, 2012 1:12am EST
(Reuters) - Spanish and Portuguese workers will stage the first coordinated general strike across the Iberian Peninsula on Wednesday, shutting transport, grounding flights and closing schools to protest against spending cuts and tax hikes.

Unions in Greece and Italy also planned work stoppages and demonstrations on a "European Day of Action and Solidarity" against austerity policies, which labor leaders blame for prolonging and worsening the continent's economic crisis.

The international coordination shows "we are looking at a historic moment in the European Union movement," said Fernando Toxo, head of Spain's biggest union, Comisiones Obreras.

Spain, where one in four workers is unemployed, is now teetering on the brink of calling for a European bailout, with Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy trying to put off a rescue that could require even more EU-mandated budget cuts.

Passion has been further inflamed since last week when a Spanish woman jumped from her apartment to her death as bailiffs tried to evict her when her bank foreclosed on a loan. Spaniards are furious at banks being rescued with public cash while ordinary people suffer.

----"The first ever Iberian strike" would be "a great signal of discontent and also a warning to European authorities," said Armenio Carlos, head of Portugal's CGTP union which is organizing the action there.

Some 5 million people, or 22 percent of the workforce, are union members in Spain. In Portugal about one fourth of the 5.5 million strong workforce is unionized. Unions have planned rallies and marches in cities throughout both countries, with a major demonstration beginning at 6:30 p.m. (1730 GMT) in Madrid.
Just 20 percent of Spain's long-distance trains and a third of its commuter trains are expected to run. Lisbon's Metro will be shut completely and only 10 percent of all trains will run under court-ordered minimum service.

----This will be the first time Spanish unions have held two general strikes in one year. Spain's last general strike, in March, brought factories and ports to a standstill and ignited flashes of street violence.

“Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.”

Winston Churchill.

At the Comex silver depositories Tuesday final figures were: Registered 36.52 Moz, Eligible 107.36 Moz, Total 143.88 Moz.  


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

Whoever knew that the US military was modelled along the lines of London Transport. You wait hours for a bus to show up then three come along at the same time. So it seems to be with US Army Generals and scandals, where one for all and all for one now seems to be the order of the day.

Free speech carries with it the evil of all foolish, unpleasant venomous things that are said but, on the whole, we would rather lump them than do away with them.

Winston Churchill.

Bad times for generals: Pentagon demotes 4-star General Ward

PERTH | Tue Nov 13, 2012 10:27pm EST
(Reuters) - In more bad news about U.S. generals, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who is in Australia for talks, announced on Wednesday he was demoting a retiring four-star Army general for wasting taxpayer money on extravagant trips and would seek to recoup tens of thousands of dollars from him.

Panetta's decision to strip a star from General William Ward, a former commander of Africa Command, comes as the military is reeling from a scandal involving two of the most powerful men in the United States' national security apparatus.

David Petraeus, a retired four-star general who ran the war effort in Afghanistan until last year, resigned as the director of the CIA over a sex scandal on Friday. The Pentagon announced on Monday that Petraeus' successor in Afghanistan, Marine General John Allen, was also being investigated, as the scandal widened.

The investigation into Ward by the Pentagon's Inspector General found numerous examples of wasted taypayer money, including taking his official plane to Bermuda for an overnight refueling stop with his wife.
The Pentagon said it was requesting that Ward reimburse $82,000 in expenses, citing misconduct in travel, misuse of military aircraft and misuse of staff.

Although Ward's demotion to a three-star lieutenant general will knock off over $30,0000 in retirement pay, he will still receive a pension of over $200,000 a year, a U.S. defense official said.
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"To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day."

Winston Churchill.

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

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