Baltic Dry Index. 971 -15
LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
A fool and his money are soon elected.
Will Rogers.
Finally the rest of us will soon get relief from
the media’s obsession with over coverage of the US election. Like sausage
making, it’s not for the sensitive nor intellectual. As rough and tumble, wild
west, rest of the world expensive entertainment, it quickly pales into endless
moronic repetition. At 4 years long, enough is enough. Americans finally get to
decide on 4 more dreary years or to put their trust in a Massachusetts asset
stripper, of selective memory. Happily whoever wins, the rest of the world will
go on, no matter what calamity gets to rule in D.C. Unfortunately there is the
prospect of disputed counts, with the story dragging on in the courts for a few
more weeks.
We can only hope that American’s come to their
senses and put one or t’other out of their misery. Whoever wins is likely to
have to face up to America’s currency and deficit problems immediately. As in
Europe there are no easy solutions anymore. Kicking the can down the road is no
longer an option. That “solution” only gets America closer to the problems of
Club Med, albeit with their own devaluable currency. Whoever wins, roughly half the country,
according to the polls, wasn’t onside. That in itself might lead to problems
ahead.
As America heads out to vote, the leftist,
anti-American Der Spiegel takes up the Decline and hopefully not Fall of
America.
Politics has become so expensive that it takes a lot of money even
to be defeated.
Will Rogers.
Divided States of America Notes on the Decline of a Great Nation
By SPIEGEL ONLINE Staff 11/05/2012
----After a brilliant century and a terrible decade, the United States, in this important election year, has reached a point in its history when the obvious can no longer be denied: The reality of life in America so greatly contradicts the claim -- albeit one that has always been exaggerated -- to be the "greatest nation on earth," that even the most ardent patriots must be overcome with doubt.
This
realization became only too apparent during and after Hurricane Sandy, the
monster storm that ravaged America's East Coast last week, its effects made all
the more devastating by the fact that its winds were whipping across an already
weakened country. The infrastructure in New York, New Jersey and New England
was already in trouble long before the storm made landfall near Atlantic City.
The power lines in Brooklyn and Queens, on Long Island and in New Jersey, in
one of the world's largest metropolitan areas, are not underground, but are
still installed along a fragile and confusing above-ground network supported by
utility poles, the way they are in developing countries.
Although
parts of New York City, especially the island of Manhattan, are only a few
meters above sea level, the city still has no extensive system to protect
itself against storm surges, despite the fact that the sea level has been
rising for years and the number of storms is increasing. In the case of Sandy,
the weather forecasts were relatively reliable three or four days prior to its
arrival, so that the time could have been used to at least make improvised
preparations, which did not happen. The only effective walls of sandbags that
were built in the city on a larger scale did not appear around power plants, hospitals
or tunnel entrances, but around the skyscraper of the prescient investment bank
Goldman Sachs.
IMF warns over-taxed France risks slipping behind Italy and Spain
The International Monetary Fund has told France to take urgent measures to head off national economic decline, warning that the country risks being left behind as southern Europe embraces reform.
Throwing
the guantlet at the feet of the Socialist president Francois Hollande, the
IMF said rising tax rates are undermining France as a place "to work and
invest" and leading to a "significant loss of competitiveness".
"There
is a risk it will get worse if France does not adapt at the same pace as its
trading partners in Europe, notably Italy and Spain," it said.
The IMF
challenge had an added piquancy coming from a body headed by France's Christine
Lagarde, widely touted as the next Gaulliste leader and a future rival for the
French presidency.
The
warning came as French industrialist Louis Gallois delivered a long-awaited
report to Mr Hollande calling for "shock therapy" to stop the
national rot, with drastic cuts in business payroll taxes to claw back loss
ground against Germany and other EMU states.
Mr
Gallois, ex-head of the EADS aerospace group and a revered figure in France,
said all parties need to unite in a patriotic push to save the nation.
His
report listed 22 measures. These include a €30bn cut in payroll levies, worth
1.5pc of GDP, to be offset by a higher VAT and other consumption taxes. The aim
is to reduce the "tax wedge", or tax share of labour costs. This has
risen to 50pc, among the world’s highest.
Mr
Gallois called for a state bank to channel cheap credit to exporters, a subsidy
likely to raise the eyebrows of the EU’s competition police.
Much of
the report is a slap in the face for Mr Hollande who cut VAT in June to protect
buying power and has just raised company taxes yet further in the 2013 budget.
He is facing a nationwide revolt by business leaders.
----Gaulliste deputy Jacques Myard said it is too late for France to claw back the lost ground within EMU. "Only a devaluation of 30pc against Germany can restore the competitiveness of French firms and provide the necessary shock. We have to confront the real issue, which is that the euro is strangling the French economy. We have to leave. All else is just waffle," he said.
Free
market critics say France’s root problem is a Leviathan state - now 56pc of
GDP, higher than Denmark - combined with cossetted welfare and early
retirement. Just 40pc of those aged 55 to 64 are in work, compared with 57.7pc
in Germany.
More
In the Decline and Fall of Spain, the EU said no to
compensation for Spain’s cheated bank investors. Any compensation must come
from Spain’s bankrupt central government. Is it any wonder that Catalonia is
holding a proxy referendum later this month, on exiting Spain and going
independent. Perhaps Spain could sell Catalonia to the highest bidder in order
to compensate Spain’s swindled bank investors. A warm water idyll on the Med,
has got to be worth something to Russia, Canada, Norway and Sweden.
EU compensation route closed to Spain bank shareholders
MADRID |(Reuters) - Spaniards who swapped their savings for risky bank shares cannot draw on European funds to recoup money they lost, an EU official said, obliging them to pin their hopes for compensation on the government.
After Spain's housing bubble burst around five years ago, its heavily exposed lenders secured fresh capital in part by persuading thousands of mainly small-scale investors to exchange their savings for high-risk preference shares.
Under the terms of a 100 billion euro credit line that the European Union granted Spain in June for its banking sector, those investors will incur losses.
The EU's competition commissioner Joaquin Almunia said on Monday they could not be compensated via EU rescue funds.
"If it is necessary to compensate (shareholders) it can only be done with money from Spain," Almunia - himself a Spaniard - told reporters at a breakfast in Madrid.
Thousands have joined protest groups saying they were pushed by the banks into exchanging what in some cases were their life savings.
Lawyers representing them say they were swindled, and forecast a flood of compensation claims worth hundreds of millions of euros.
More
And so we await the outcome of the red states
versus the blue. Here the left wing, anti-American, Barack Broadcasting
Corporation has all but declared the incumbent the winner. There will be a
great wailing and gnashing of teeth in BBC land should Mr. Romney upset the
loony leftist, child molesting, scandal struck, broadcaster. Given America’s dismal economic record of the
last four years, very few voters can answer yes to Ronald Reagan’s famous
question, “are you better off now that you were four years ago?” It is a sign
of inherent weakness in the challenger that he’s not ahead leading a landslide.
Happily for all, life goes on no matter what outcome. The rest of the world
gets on with dealing with whoever wins, just as it will with China’s changing
leadership. Unhappily for those still struggling in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, a new
winter storm is headed their way, and we can only hope America’s Northeast is
better prepared for this smaller storm.
I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the
facts.
Will Rogers.
At the Comex silver depositories Monday final figures were: Registered 36.20
Moz, Eligible 105.96 Moz, Total 142.16 Moz.
Crooks and
Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
Today, we are happy
to report a bent US ratings agency finally getting held to account. We ain’t
seen nuthin yet, I suspect. As with the notorious Texas courts, it pays to be a
local multi-million “hill billy,” when those pesky foreigner’s city slicker
lawyers and accountants, come around to defend.
Australia’s ruling will have weight throughout most of the English
jurisprudence world. All the more so, if it holds up on appeal.
An economist's guess is liable to be as good as anybody else's.
Will Rogers
S&P Misled Towns With AAA Rembrandt Rating, Court Rules
By David
Fickling and Joe Schneider - Nov 5, 2012 7:19 AM GMT
Standard & Poor’s misled investors by giving its highest credit grade to
securities whose value plunged during the global financial crisis, an
Australian judge ruled. The ratings company said it will appeal. S&P was “misleading and deceptive” in its rating of two structured debt issues in 2006, Federal Court Justice Jayne Jagot said in her ruling released today in Sydney. The Australian municipalities that brought the case are entitled to damages from S&P and two other defendants, ABN Amro Bank NV and Local Government Financial Services Pty., she ruled.
Twelve Australian councils claimed they lost more than 90 percent of the A$16 million ($16.6 million) they invested in so- called Rembrandt notes rated AAA by S&P and linked to credit- default swaps on investment grade companies. The repackaging of debt into securities with top rankings from S&P and other rating companies contributed to more than $2 trillion in losses and writedowns as Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. collapsed in 2008 and the world fell into recession.
“This is the first time that a ratings agency has been held liable for their opinion in this way,” said Harald Scheule, as associate professor of finance at the University of Technology Sydney. It may spur efforts to move the industry toward a model in which consumers instead of issuers pay for credit opinions, he said.
The 1,459-page ruling is a “major blow to the ratings agencies, which for years have had the benefit of profiting from the assignment of these ratings,” Amanda Banton, a partner at law firm Piper Alderman, which represents the councils, said in an e-mailed statement. It will promote transparency in the ratings process, she said.
“We
reject any suggestion our opinions were inappropriate and we will appeal the
Australian ruling, which relates to a specific rating,” S&P said in a
statement. The New York-based unit of McGraw-Hill Cos. had argued that a report
provided to the Australian towns said investors can’t rely on the ratings
themselves as investment advice.
S&P
reported $502 million in revenue in the third quarter, the highest in 19
quarters as companies around the world tapped debt markets at the fastest pace
ever. McGraw-Hill is splitting its ratings business from its education unit.
---- The ruling may have implications in other jurisdictions, said John Walker, executive director of IMF (Australia) Ltd. (IMF), a company that invests in litigation and funded the action. IMF is funding a claim in the Netherlands over 2 billion euro ($2.6 billion) in similar securities sold in Europe by ABN Amro and rated by S&P, he said in an e-mailed statement.
The notes, known as a constant proportion debt obligation, or CPDO, were arranged by ABN Amro, an affiliate of Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, rated by S&P, and sold to the Australian councils by municipal adviser Local Government Financial Services.
The securities were unwound less than two years after the towns bought them because credit spreads kept increasing and their cash value was exhausted, according to a court filing.
Town officials said during the trial they hadn’t read all of the accompanying documents and relied on the AAA rating to make the decision to invest in the notes. Among the councils that bought the notes was Corowa Shire, a three-hour drive from Melbourne and home to the country’s biggest hog farm.
More
About all I can say for the United States Senate is that it
opens with a prayer and closes with an investigation.
Will
Rogers.
The monthly
Coppock Indicators finished October:
DJIA: +92 Up. NASDAQ: +99 Up. SP500: +102 Up.
No comments:
Post a Comment