Baltic Dry Index. 1097 +03
LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
"The history of paper money is an account of abuse, mismanagement, and financial disaster."
Richard M. Ebeling
More on China later, first, politics as usual in Washington D.C. as America joins Europe in attempting national suicide. Not to worry, it’s only fiat money and there’s plenty more where that comes from. Shame about all the wealth destruction though. Shame about cheating our children and grandchildren out of a decent standard of living and their shot at wealth creation. Wiser oldies will buy some physical precious metals to pass on to the next generation, something more than Uncle Sam’s debt and dodgy fiat currency. For more on US national suicide married to champagne corporate socialism, scroll down to Crooks Corner.
"Were we to be directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want bread."
Thomas Jefferson
Nov. 27, 2012, 5:02 p.m. EST
U.S. stocks fall on fears debt talks have stalled
Another round of upbeat economic reports does little for investors
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — U.S. stocks dropped on Tuesday after
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said little progress has been made in talks
aimed at averting the so-called fiscal cliff.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA -0.69% declined
89.24 points, or 0.7%, to end at 12,878.13, with 23 of its 30 components in
negative territory. Hewlett-Packard Co. HPQ -2.98% was
the top decliner in the Dow, with its shares slumping 3%.
“The
dominant item on the market’s mind continues to be the fiscal cliff,” Brad
Sorensen, director of market and sector analysis at the Charles Schwab Center
for Financial Research, said of negotiations on Capitol Hill.
The
market’s intensified decline came after Sen. Reid, the Nevada Democrat,
expressed disappointment to reporters about the negotiations to avert billions
in automatic spending cuts and tax hikes set to start in the new year.
The
market’s intensified decline came after Sen. Reid, the Nevada Democrat,
expressed disappointment to reporters about the negotiations to avert billions
in automatic spending cuts and tax hikes set to start in the new year.
More
"If you don't trust gold, do you trust the logic of taking a beautiful pine tree, worth about $4,000 - $5,000, cutting it up, turning it into pulp and then paper, putting some ink on it and then calling it one billion dollars?"
Kenneth J. Gerbino
Next up China. Japan’s Daiwa Capital Markets is
ready to write off China. The increasingly nasty island dispute in the East
China Sea, of course, had no bearing on Daiwa’s somewhat rash conclusion. With
another 700 million still to join the party in top-down communist run China, my
guess is it’s a little too early to start writing off China. Not that there won’t
be some hard landing’s along the way.
China seen losing ‘world factory’ status within a decade
November
27, 2012, 11:27 PM
Early signs that Southeast Asian nations are trumping China as a home to
low-cost manufacturing are likely to gather momentum in the next few years,
costing the Middle Kingdom its status as the world’s factory within the next
five to 10 years, according to Daiwa Capital Markets.In a note released Wednesday, Daiwa economists Mingchun Sun and Christie Chien drew attention to an economic theory called the ‘flying-geese paradigm,” which contends that low-end manufacturing moves continuously from more advanced nations to the lesser-developed ones.
They pointed to the industrial migration from the developed West to East Asia over the past century, from Japan to the Asian Tigers (Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore) in the 1970s, and from the Asian Tigers to China in the 1990s. Read MarketWatch’s special report on New Asian Tigers.
After a
rapid increase in Chinese wages in recent years, labor costs are now much lower
in the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean). As a result, the baton
is now passing from China to what the economists described as the Asean-7 –
Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar.
They
offered Nike as a case in point, noting that in 2000, 40% of its shoes sold
globally were made in China, versus 13% in Vietnam. But today, 41% of its shoes
are manufactured in Vietnam, compared to 32% in China.
Vietnam’s
export growth in the labor-intensive industries of textiles and clothing has
been higher than that of China for most of the past decade, while Cambodia’s
exports growth rate has also exceeded China’s in the last two years, they said.
More
We end with another side of communist China. Is
this the real face of modern China? If it is, the west needs to isolate China
from the west’s economy. Break China now, using mass unemployment to mend communist
China’s ways.
China Mafia-Style Hack Attack Drives California Firm to Brink
By Michael Riley - Nov 27, 2012 11:01 PM GMT
During
his civil lawsuit against the People’s Republic of China, Brian Milburn says he
never once saw one of the country’s lawyers. He read no court documents from
China’s attorneys because they filed none. The voluminous case record at the
U.S. District courthouse in Santa Ana contains a single communication from China:
a curt letter to the U.S. State Department, urging that the suit be dismissed.
That doesn’t mean Milburn’s adversary had no contact with him.
For three years, a group of hackers from China waged a relentless campaign of cyber harassment against Solid Oak Software Inc., Milburn’s family-owned, eight-person firm in Santa Barbara, California. The attack began less than two weeks after Milburn publicly accused China of appropriating his company’s parental filtering software, CYBERsitter, for a national Internet censoring project. And it ended shortly after he settled a $2.2 billion lawsuit against the Chinese government and a string of computer companies last April.
In between, the hackers assailed Solid Oak’s computer systems, shutting down web and e-mail servers, spying on an employee with her webcam, and gaining access to sensitive files in a battle that caused company revenues to tumble and brought it within a hair’s breadth of collapse.
As the
public dispute unfolded in decorous courtrooms, Milburn’s computer prowess was
tested to its limits in what amounted to a digital home invasion by what he
later learned was one of the most prolific hacking teams in China. He waged his
own desperate one-man fight without weapons or help from authorities, swapping
out servers, puzzling over middle-of-the- night malfunctions, and watching his
sales all but evaporate -- his every keystroke monitored by spies who had
turned his technology against him.
Milburn,
61, rarely took a day off during that time as he struggled around the clock to
keep his computer network running and his firm afloat. He doubts he’ll ever
know exactly what was going on, but he has theories.
---- The cyber attack against Solid Oak provides a rare look at the clandestine methods in play as high-tech spies and digital combatants seek to gain a brass-knuckle advantage in the global economy, from trade disputes to big-dollar deals to lawsuits. U.S. officials say that China in particular uses its national security apparatus for such intrusions, targeting thousands of U.S. and European corporations and blurring the traditional lines of espionage.
While his
civil case was pending, Milburn didn’t discuss the cyber intrusion publicly,
saying only that the company and its Los Angeles-based law firm had received
e-mails containing spyware. He had no idea who was behind it until last August,
when he provided malware samples to a security firm at the request of a
Bloomberg reporter.
A
forensic analysis of the malware by Joe Stewart, a threat expert at
Atlanta-based Dell SecureWorks, identified the intruders who rifled Solid Oak’s
networks as a team of Shanghai- based hackers involved in a string of sensitive
national security-related breaches going back years.
Commercial
hacker hunters -- who refer to the team as the Comment group, for the hidden
program code they use known as “comments” -- tie it to a multitude of victims
that include the the president of the European Union Council, major defense
contractors and even Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. The group has
been linked to the People’s Liberation Army, China’s military, according to
leaked classified cables.
More
At the Comex silver depositories Tuesday final figures were: Registered 33.90
Moz, Eligible 105.88 Moz, Total 139.78 Moz.
2 Moz disappeared, most of it from Brinks. What’s suspect at Brinks, I
wonder?
"Of all the contrivances for cheating the laboring classes of mankind, none has been more effective than that which deludes them with paper money."
Daniel Webster
Crooks and
Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
Today, corporate socialism
in America at its worst. “God’s work” in
US casino capitalism now requires stealing what little they have from the
widows, orphans, the sick and the poor.
"A merry Christmas, uncle!
God save you!" cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Ebenezer Squid's
nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation he had
of his approach.
"Bah!" said Ebenezer Squid,
"Humbug!"
November 28, 2012
9 Greedy CEOs Trying to Shred the Safety Net While Pigging Out on Corporate Welfare
By Lynn Parramore, a senior editor at Alternet.A gang of brazen CEOs has joined forces to promote economically disastrous and socially irresponsible austerity policies. Many of those same CEOs were bailed out by the American taxpayer after a Wall Street-driven financial crash. Instead of a thank-you, they are showing their appreciation in the form of a coordinated effort to rob Americans of hard-earned retirements, decent medical care and relief for the poorest.
Using the excuse of a phony, manufactured crisis known as the “fiscal cliff” – which isn’t a crisis at all, as economist James K. Galbraith has succinctly explained — they are gearing up to pull the wool over the public’s eyes by cutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The CEOs are part of the Fix the Debt campaign run by the
-backed Center for a Responsible Federal Budget, which plans to unleash tens of millions pushing for a deficit reduction deal that favors the rich.
You can be sure that many more CEOs in addition to the names on the list below sympathize with plans to shred the social safety net and enjoy windfall tax breaks. But these Scrooges are so bold as to publicly announce their desire to pick the pockets of fellow Americans while simultaneously pigging out at the corporate welfare trough. Multitasking!
---- Here’s a sample of the Fix the Debt CEO Council Hall of Shame. (Download the complete list at the organization’s Web site.)
1. Lloyd Blankfein, chairman and CEO, Goldman, Sachs & Co. Blankfein, infamous for describing his financial activities as “God’s work,” shared his attitude toward society with CBS news recently. He explained his keen desire to see Americans lowering their sights for the future. You really have to watch the interview to get the full flavor of Blankfein’s smug assurance that predation can be sold as concern for the nation’s well-being. In addition to trotting out several myths about Social Security’s design and functions, including the bogus notion that retirement age must be raised, he gives a pithy summary of what life is going to be like for the 99 percent:
You’re going to have to do something, undoubtedly, to lower people’s expectations of what they’re going to get, the entitlements, and what people think they’re going to get, because you’re not going to get it.
Not if Lloyd Blankfein has anything to do with it. He calls it managing expectations. Here’s another word: theft.
Since the financial crash, Blankfein’s company, Goldman Sachs, has received tens of billions of dollars in what the Economic Policy Journal describes as “direct and indirect succor from the Fed.” In sharp contrast to average Americans, when Goldman needed help in the 2008 crisis, a friendly Federal Reserve let Goldman turn into a commercial bank almost overnight, so it could go to the Fed for help 24/7.
2. Jeffrey Immelt, chairman and CEO, General Electric Company. In 2011, President Obama welcomed outsourcing pioneer Jeffrey Immelt to his White House inner circle as chair of a newly created jobs council – a move that was a sharp slap in the face to American workers. Immelt returned the favor by dumping Obama in favor of Mitt Romney in the recent election.
Obviously, supporting disastrous financial deregulation, dodging taxes and helping to destroy American manufacturing has not satisfied Immelt. He’d like to add insult to injury by making sure that people who have been screwed by the reckless activities of short-sighted corporate titans like himself are left to starve in their golden years and go without medical care. And as for the poor, well, couldn’t they be just a little bit poorer? Immelt thinks that would be swell.
After the 2008 crash, the government gave a giant boost to hard-pressed GE Capital, the company’s financing arm, through the Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program. GE has also helped itself to enormous taxpayer-funded subsidies, especially in green energy. And guess how much GE paid in taxes in 2010? Nothing. In fact, using what the New York Times describes as its “innovative accounting practices,” it claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion!
3. Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO, JPMorgan Chase & Co. At a recent gathering of the Council on Foreign Relations, Jamie Dimon vented his feelings about a number of things that peeve him, from a federal lawsuit brought against JPMorgan Chase to Obama’s failure to adopt the harmful and misguided Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction plan, which, among other things, recommended reducing the tax rate for top earners. Dimon has claimed that his bank did not need the TARP funds bestowed on it by the federal government, but there is no question that today his bank borrows funds more cheaply than smaller banks because of the federal government’s implicit too-big-too-fail guarantee.
Dimon is deploying a familiar scare tactic on the topic of the so-called fiscal cliff. He’s claiming that his company will be forced to cut down on hiring and so on if a budget plan is not tailored to enrich the wealthy. During a recent visit to India, he issued warnings to CNBC-TV18:
I’ve spoken to CEOs who say, you know, absolutely, we are making decisions to protect ourselves from the ‘fiscal cliff’ and those are like investment decisions and hiring decisions.
Maybe Dimon’s company would be better served figuring out what happened to the $6 billion that recently went up in smoke in the “London Whale” derivatives fiasco.
4. W. James McNerney, Jr., chairman, president and CEO, the Boeing Company. McNerney launched at Procter & Gamble, reached high altitude at GE and shot to the stratosphere by becoming head honcho at Boeing in 2005.
Boeing has been a long-time beneficiary of the government’s Export-Import Bank, which has financed sales of many of its planes. McNerney chairs President Obama’s Export Council, where he works hard to arrange policies that benefit his company. He spent much of 2011 slugging it out with the National Labor Relations Board over moving assembly plants from Washington to South Carolina, a right-to-work state. That got settled, but now the profitable company is in a fight with engineers who don’t want their pensions chopped nearly in half. Boeing’s excuse? It wants to keep the engineers “competitive.” Union members have reported intimidation from the company’s management as the dispute has intensified.
The Boeing boss is now crying “deficit” and asks for your retirement money. Pretty brassy, considering that the company paid not a single penny in taxes between 2008 and 2011. In fact, Citizens for Tax Justice calculates that Boeing actually got money back from the U.S. government over the past decade, “paying a negative 6.5 percent tax rate, even though it was profitable every year from 2002 through 2011.”
More
"At this festive season of the
year, Mr. Squid," said the gentleman, taking up a pen, "it is more
than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor
and Destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are
in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common
comforts, sir."
"Are there no
prisons?" asked Squid.
"Plenty of prisons," said
the gentleman, laying down the pen again.
"And the Union
workhouses?" demanded Squid. "Are they still in
operation?"
"They are. Still,"
returned the gentleman, "I wish I could say they were not."
"The Treadmill and the Poor Law
are in full vigour, then?" said Squid.
"Both very busy, sir."
"Oh! I was afraid, from
what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their
useful course," said Squid. "I'm very glad to hear it."
"Under the impression that they
scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude,"
returned the gentleman, "a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to
buy the Poor some meat and drink and means of warmth. We choose this
time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and
Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?"
"Nothing!" Squid replied.
"You wish to be anonymous?"
"I wish to be left alone,"
said Squid. "Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my
answer. I don't make merry myself at Christmas and I can't afford to make
idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned
-- they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there."
"Many can't go there; and many
would rather die."
"If they would rather die,"
said Squid, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus
population. Besides -- excuse me -- I don't know that."
With apologies to Charles Dickens.
The monthly
Coppock Indicators finished October:
DJIA: +92 Up. NASDAQ: +99 Up. SP500: +102 Up. Still time for the
Santa Clause rally?
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