Baltic Dry Index. 1073 +07
LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
"Gold was not selected arbitrarily by governments to be the monetary standard. Gold had developed for many centuries on the free market as the best money; as the commodity providing the most stable and desirable monetary medium."
Murray N. Rothbard
Today some 300 million American’s in the USA, get
to dine on massive amounts of turkey, as they get to celebrate the great
pre-Christmas feast of Thanksgiving. And there is much to be thankful for this
Thanksgiving. First there is the truce between Israel and the wretched 1.5
million Palestinians trapped needlessly in the overcrowded Gaza strip. Saner
minds will now get the chance to focus on a longer term peaceful solution that
avoids leading to a wider regional war. Second on my list would be that
thankfully, despite all the fraud, greed, and dangerous casino capitalism of
the Great Greenspan era of serial bubbles, the global economy is still just
managing to muddle through, without triggering a global depression. Third on my
list would be that despite a decade or more of increasingly stormy weather
and/or massive droughts, our world hasn’t yet stumbled into a massive food
shortage. Global grain stocks may be worryingly low, but we continue to muddle
through in food production as well.
While most Americans get to relax and take a derived
break, pity Europe’s “Great Leaders” all forced to assemble in Brussels for two
days of forced congeniality, affability, and sweetness and
light. There is a God after all, and he’s English with a devilish sense of humour.
More on the Great Leaders antics tomorrow or Monday, though don’t expect any
relief to Europe’s frightening rising crisis of massive youth unemployment. Over
half an entire generation, in some
countries has been tossed off the boat of future prosperity.
We open with gold and a forecast from the unfortunate,
wretched Merrill Lynch. In its current iteration, ML is a rescued rump, part of
the virtually insolvent Bank of America group. ML dated back to 1915. By the
time I started out in commodities back in 1968, ML was then named the highly respected Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner and Smith. ML collapsed
under the disastrous policies of CEOs Stanley O’ Neal and his successor John
Thain. “ Mother Merrill’s Wealth Management team, based in London see the gold
price rising above $2,000 an oz., next year. I suspect much higher.
"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
Gold Seen by Merrill Lynch Rallying Above $2,000 Next Year
By Maria
Kolesnikova - Nov 21, 2012 5:06 PM GMT
Gold is poised to rise above $2,000 an ounce next year, while lack of
clarity on demand outlook and policies in China dim prospects for industrial
metals, according to Merrill Lynch Wealth Management, which oversees more than
$1.8 trillion for clients. “We are holding gold at the moment,” Bill O’Neill, chief investment officer for Europe, Middle East and Africa, told reporters in London today. “We just use it as a form of diversification, a form of catastrophe insurance, but we are actually looking for a move above $2,000.”
Gold advanced 10 percent to $1,727.78 in London this year, headed for a 12th consecutive annual gain, the longest streak in data compiled by Bloomberg going back to 1920. Prices reached a record $1,921.15 in September 2011.
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While we wait for news out of Brussels on how the
coven is going, Bloomberg reports that the world’s hedge funds have cut back on
the formerly QE funded bullish bets on commodities, led by the industrial
metals though not gold and silver. With unfortunate timing, as seemingly China
might just have resumed industrial growth again.
Hedge Funds Cut Bets in Longest Retreat Since 2008: Commodities
By Debarati Roy - Nov 19, 2012 11:20 PM GMT
Hedge funds cut bullish commodity bets for a sixth straight week, the
longest slump since the depths of the global recession four years ago, on
mounting concern that economies are slowing. Money managers lowered combined net-long positions across 18 U.S. futures and options by 17 percent to 772,512 contracts in the week ended Nov. 13, Commodity Futures Trading Commission data show.
Holdings have tumbled 38 percent since Oct. 2 in the longest retreat since August 2008. Investors turned bearish on copper for the first time since August.
----U.S. industrial
production unexpectedly declined in October, while applications for jobless
benefits rose to the highest since April 2011, separate reports showed last
week. The 17-nation euro-area’s economy tumbled back into recession last
quarter for the second time in four years, official figures showed Nov. 15.
----Copper inventories monitored by exchanges in New York, London and Shanghai have climbed for three weeks to the highest since May. Supplies will exceed demand in cotton, nickel and lead this year, Morgan Stanley said in a Nov. 12 report. Barclays Plc expects the glut in aluminum to expand 29 percent next year.
Money managers added a net $681 million to commodity funds in the week ended Nov. 14, with gold and precious metals accounting for $732 million, according to Cameron Brandt, the director of research at Cambridge, Massachusetts-based EPFR Global, which tracks money flows.
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China Manufacturing Data Signals Rebound Gathering Pace: Economy
By Bloomberg News - Nov 22, 2012 3:41 AM GMT
A Chinese manufacturing index signaled the first expansion in 13 months,
adding to signs that economic growth is rebounding after a seven-quarter
slowdown. The preliminary reading was 50.4 for a purchasing managers’ index released today by HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA) and Markit Economics. It compares with a final level of 49.5 for October. A reading above 50 indicates expansion.
Gains in manufacturing bolster prospects for a sustained pickup in economic growth that slowed last quarter to the weakest pace in more than three years. A rebound may smooth a once-a-decade leadership transition for the ruling Communist Party, set to install Li Keqiang as premier in March, and reduce the likelihood of additional monetary stimulus.
“The economic recovery continues to gain momentum,” Qu Hongbin, chief China economist at HSBC in Hong Kong, said in a statement. “However, it is still the early stage of recovery and global economic growth remains fragile.”
----A separate, government-backed index of purchasing managers’ views at manufacturers, which showed an expansion in October for the first time in three months, is due to be released Dec. 1. The final HSBC-Markit index for November is due Dec. 3.
Zhang
Zhiwei, chief China economist at Nomura Holdings Inc., said that growth will
pick up “strongly” this quarter to an 8.4 percent annual pace from 7.4 percent
in the previous three months.
More
It is a day to largely just await developments. In Britain,
we have much to be thankful for today. Over in Brussels, “because of a quarrel in a far-away country between
people of whom we know nothing,” but use a fictitious currency called the euro,
detached Great Britain largely gets a walk in the Great Leaders game now
getting underway. While the hated paymaster Germany has to run around like a
headless chicken trying to keep all the lesser chickens lined up, we Brits get
to watch with some amusement and much disdain at the unseemly spectacle. Quite
why the peoples of Munich should want to tell the peoples of Manchester how to
live, is a mystery. Nor why the peoples of Brussels should want to order about
the peoples of Berlin. Or Paris boss around the citizens of Rome. The euro isn’t
working for most Europeans anymore, though don’t tell that to anyone at the
Great Leaders Meeting.
Sir Humphrey: Minister, Britain
has had the same foreign policy objective for at least the last five hundred
years: to create a disunited Europe. In that cause we have fought with the
Dutch against the Spanish with the Germans against the French, with
the French and Italians against the German, and with the French against
the Germans and Italians. Divide and rule, you see. Why should we change
now, when it's worked so well?
Hacker: That's all
ancient history, surely?
Sir Humphrey: Yes, and current
policy. We 'had' to break the whole thing [the EEC] up, so we had to get
inside. We tried to break it up from the outside, but that wouldn't work. Now
that we're inside we can make a complete pig's breakfast of the whole thing:
set the Germans against the French, the French against the Italians, the
Italians against the Dutch. The Foreign Office is terribly pleased; it's just
like old times.
Hacker: But surely we're
all committed to the European ideal?
Sir Humphrey: [chuckles]
Really, Minister.
Hacker: If not, why are
we pushing for an increase in the membership?
Sir Humphrey: Well, for the
same reason. It's just like the United Nations, in fact; the more
members it has, the more arguments it can stir up, the more futile and impotent
it becomes.
Hacker: What appalling
cynicism.
Sir Humphrey: Yes... We call it
diplomacy, Minister.
At the Comex silver depositories Wednesday final figures were: Registered 35.00
Moz, Eligible 106.40 Moz, Total 141.40 Moz.
Crooks and
Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
Today China, where
allegedly the world’s tallest skyscraper is going to be built in just 90 days. Call me old fashioned and a sceptic, but I don’t
think it will happen, nor do I think it wise even if such a feat were possible.
Who will want to occupy possibly the world’s largest fire trap if they get
something wrong? By the end of March 2013, I expect that Sky City in Changsha
still won’t have the world’s largest skyscraper, though they may have the world’s
largest pile of steel.
China to build world's tallest building - in just 90 days
Beijing Wednesday
21 November 2012
When completed by the end of next March, Sky City in Changsha will be the
tallest skyscraper in the world, standing at 2,749ft (838m) high, over 220
floors. And remarkably, they’ve not started building it yet.It took Dubai more than five years to build the world’s tallest building, the 828mBurj Khalifa, but architects and engineers at Broad Sustainable Building (BSB), a unit of the air conditioning maker Broad Group, are confident they can beat that record.
Critics have pointed out that BSB’s construction company has never built anything taller than 30 storeys before, but the builders seem unworried.
BSB senior vice-president Juliet Jiang told Construction Week Online that the company’s plan to construct the skyscraper “will go on as planned with the completion of five storeys a day.”
Designed by engineers who worked on the Burj Khalifa, Sky City will achieve the target by assembling BSB’s 95 per cent prefabricated modular technology at a breakneck construction pace. Nine of the world’s newest tallest 20 buildings are being built in China.
Adrian Smith, the Chicago-based designer of the Burj Khalifa who is working on the Kingdom Tower in Saudi Arabia, said at a meeting of the Council for Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat in Shanghai last month that rapid urbanisation in China would fuel major expansion in tall buildings.
“There are 179,000 people moving into urban areas every week. Do they go into a horizontal or a vertical city? It’s a question of economics,” said Mr Smith. BSB, currently responsible for 20 modular structures in China, demonstrated the construction method to a wider audience in January, when it constructed a 30-storey hotel in 15 days.
Foundation work is due to start at the end of the month, once local authorities approve the project. The slowing economy in China has led to some skyscraper plans being shelved, but the economy is still expanding at rates unheard of in the West. In China there is still considerable interest in building skyscrapers that show the rest of the world that your city or your company has truly arrived.
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"Until government administrators can so identify the interests of government with those of the people and refrain from defrauding the masses through the device of currency depreciation for the sake of remaining in office, the wiser ones will prefer to keep as much of their wealth in the most stable and marketable forms possible - forms which only the precious metals provide."
Elgin Groseclose
The monthly
Coppock Indicators finished October:
DJIA: +92 Up. NASDAQ: +99 Up. SP500: +102 Up.
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