Baltic Dry Index. 765 +03
LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
Once, during prohibition, I was forced to live for days on
nothing but food and water.
W. C. Fields.
For more on the old, new re-launched
hamburger joke “now contains meat,” scroll down to Crooks Corner. “Every little
helps” was one supermarket slogan, that the others seem to have taken
literally.
From Dreamliner to Widow Maker, Boeing’s
nightmare in January 2013. Thankfully today’s 787 emergency landing in Japan
came with no casualties, but worryingly was caused when smoke alarms were
triggered in the hold. After a fire last week in America in the plane’s lithium
batteries, pilots and passengers are rightly jumpy. When Lithium burns it’s not
easy to put out. Perhaps it was not a good idea to use lithium batteries in
planes. At least when the odd GM Volt electric vehicle brews up, the passengers
and driver have an easy option of bailing out. Not so the tense 787 passengers
at 30,000 feet. If something isn’t done soon, Boeing will give flying a bad
name.
Japanese airlines ground Boeing 787s after emergency landing
TOKYO |(Reuters) - Japan's two leading airlines grounded their fleets of Boeing 787s on Wednesday after one of the Dreamliner passenger jets made an emergency landing, heightening safety concerns over a plane many see as the future of commercial aviation.
All Nippon Airways Co said it was grounding all 17 of its 787s and Japan Airlines Co said it suspended all 787 flights scheduled for Wednesday. ANA said its planes could be back in the air as soon as Thursday once checks were completed. The two carriers operate around half of the 50 Dreamliners delivered by Boeing to date.
Wednesday's incident follows a series of mishaps for the new Dreamliner. The sophisticated plane, the world's first mainly carbon-composite airliner, has suffered fuel leaks, a battery fire, wiring problem, brake computer glitch and cracked cockpit window in recent days.
"I think you're nearing the tipping point where they need to regard this as a serious crisis," said Richard Aboulafia, a senior analyst with the Teal Group in Fairfax, Virginia. "This is going to change people's perception of the aircraft if they don't act quickly."
The 787 represented a leap in the way planes are designed and built, but the project was plagued by cost overruns and years of delays. Some have suggested Boeing's rush to get planes built after those delays resulted in the recent problems, a charge the company strenuously denies.
Both the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said they were monitoring the latest Dreamliner incident as part of a comprehensive review of the aircraft announced late last week.
ALARM TRIGGERED
ANA flight 692 left Yamaguchi Airport in western Japan shortly after 8 a.m. local time (2300 GMT Tuesday) bound for Haneda Airport near Tokyo, a 65-minute flight. About 18 minutes into the flight, at 30,000 feet, the plane began a descent. It descended to 20,000 feet in about four minutes and made an emergency landing 16 minutes later, according to flight-tracking website Flightaware.com.
A spokesman for Osaka airport authority said the plane landed in Takamatsu at 8:45 a.m. All 129 passengers and eight crew evacuated safely via the plane's inflatable chutes. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said 5 people were slightly injured.
At a news conference - where ANA's vice-president Osamu Shinobe bowed deeply in apology - the carrier said instruments on the flight indicated a battery error, triggering emergency warnings to the pilots. It said the battery in the forward cargo hold was the same type as one involved in a fire on another Dreamliner at a U.S. airport last week.
"There was a battery alert in the cockpit and there was an odd smell detected in the cockpit and cabin, and (the pilot) decided to make an emergency landing," Shinobe said.
Marc Birtel, a Boeing spokesman, told Reuters: "We've seen the reports, we're aware of the events and are working with our customer."
The Teal Group's Aboulafi said regulators could ground all 50 of the 787 planes now in service, while airlines may make the decision themselves. "They may want to protect their own brand images," he said.
More
Ever wonder about China’s economic figures?
You’re not alone. In a top down Communist run economy, everyone meets their
targets or else. Suspect today, China’s latest export figures. It’s all down to
whether you believe China’s export figures or Hong Kong’s import figures. It’s
a little like believing in Uncle Sam’s inflation numbers, or in any number of
EU President’s declarations that the euro has been saved.
China Defends Export Data After Economists’ Skepticism
By Bloomberg
News - Jan 16, 2013 4:38 AM GMT
China’s customs administration said every dollar of trade is documented,
defending the quality of export data that analysts at UBS AG and Australia
& New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. (ANZ) said may fail to capture the true
picture. “Customs import and export statistics are based upon actual customs declarations,” the General Administration of Customs said in an e-mailed statement yesterday, responding to questions submitted by Bloomberg News on Jan. 11. “In our published export and import data, every dollar has a corresponding customs declaration document to back it.”
China’s unexpected 14.1 percent export gain in December from a year earlier spurred skepticism from economists at banks including UBS, which cited discrepancies with other nations’ trade data. The Ministry of Commerce said today that exporters hurried shipments before a waiver of inspection fees expired at the end of the month and it was wrong to speculate that the data was false.
“It’s good that China’s customs bureau is responding to concerns, showing an awareness within the government of the need to communicate with the financial and business community and the public,” said Louis Kuijs, chief China economist at Royal Bank of Scotland Plc in Hong Kong, who previously worked for the World Bank in Beijing. At the same time, “saying that all of the data is backed up by customs declarations does not remove people’s concerns about fabricated declarations.”
The gain in December compared with a 2.9 percent increase in November and the 5 percent median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey of 40 analysts.
----“There’s mixed evidence on on whether
exports were quite good in the second half of last year -- there’s some support
in the data but also some items that are a little bit odd,” Kuijs said. “China’s
exports to Hong Kong show very strong growth, but when you look at the data
from the Hong Kong side, the Hong Kong imports from China are much less
strong.”
More
In economic news the morning, the Washington based
World Bank has finally noticed that all is not well in the developed nations.
An uncivil war in America and a German imposed austerity death spiral in
Euroland have finally hit the radar screen at the World Bank. For less informed
readers, the World Bank is the other DC based financial institution, the one
not under the control of French deviants.
World Bank cuts growth outlook as advanced nations drag
WASHINGTON |(Reuters) - A frustratingly slow economic recovery in developed nations is holding back the global economy, the World Bank said on Tuesday, as it sharply cut its outlook for world growth in 2013.
The World Bank forecast that global gross domestic product will inch up 2.4 percent this year, from 2.3 percent in 2012. In its last forecast in June, the bank projected global growth would reach 3.0 percent in 2013.
----The Bank warned that a drawn-out political battle in the United States over raising the government's borrowing limit and spending cuts could hit growth, spark a loss of confidence in the U.S. dollar and unnerve financial markets.
The World Bank also cut its forecast for developing countries, which last year grew at their slowest pace in a decade, to 5.5 percent in 2013 from 5.9 percent in the June forecast. It said growth in these countries should slowly pick up, reaching 5.7 percent next year and 5.8 percent in 2015.
Before the global financial crisis hit in 2007, developing countries as a whole were chalking up growth rates of around 7.5 percent, with China growing at an annual rate of 10 percent.
More
In European news this morning, if it wasn’t for bad
news there’d be no news at all. Below European car sales crash in December. The
only thing probably falling faster this morning are British sales of beef
burgers.
European December Car Sales Fall 16% on U.S. Producers
By Mathieu Rosemain - Jan 16, 2013 7:00 AM GMT
European car sales in December fell the most in more than two years as
recessions in the southern part of the region cut demand at Ford Motor Co. (F),
General Motors Co. (GM) and Renault SA. (RNO) Registrations plunged 16 percent to 838,428 vehicles last month from 997,842 a year earlier, the Brussels-based European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association, or ACEA, said today in a statement.
Full-year sales in the European Union plus Iceland, Norway and Switzerland declined 7.8 percent to 12.5 million cars, with the slump in the EU alone the worst in 19 years.
Car manufacturers have announced 30,000 job cuts in Europe since July, with Renault and Paris-based PSA Peugeot Citroen (UG) planning workforce cutbacks of 17 percent in their home market of France, amid a contraction in the economy of the 17 countries using the euro. Manufacturers of mid-range cars, such as Peugeot and Turin, Italy-based Fiat SpA (F), have exacerbated losses with price cuts that failed to win buyers.
The decline in December was the biggest since a 17 percent drop in October 2010. Industrywide deliveries last month in western Europe, which excludes countries that have joined the EU since mid-2004, dropped 15 percent to 781,830 vehicles. That pushed full-year sales down 8.1 percent to 11.8 million cars. EU registrations were the lowest since 1995, the ACEA said
More
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-16/european-december-car-sales-fall-16-on-u-s-producers.html
We end for the day with gold. Just as demand soars,
one of the world’s biggest producers output is falling. Confirmation that the
Bundesbank has lost faith in the central banks of America and France. Stay long physical precious metals. The great
21st century scramble for gold hasn’t really started.
"When paper money systems begin to crack at the seams, the run to gold could be explosive."
Harry Browne
SA November gold output down 32.2% year-on-year
15th January 2013
JOHANNESBURG
(miningweekly.com) – South Africa’s mining output for November 2012 fell by
4.5% year-on-year, with gold output down 32.2%, official data showed on
Tuesday.
The data,
released by Statistics South Africa, further showed that copper output fell by
57.3% in November, compared with November 2011, followed by ‘other’ metallic
minerals, which was down 13% year-on-year.
Gold
contributed 5.5 percentage points to the 4.5% year-on-year decrease in overall
mining output, while copper contributed 0.9 of a percentage point.
Mineral
sales in October preceded the downward trend in output, decreasing by 13.5%
year-on-year, with chromium ore recording the largest negative growth rate, at
42.9%, followed by other metallic minerals, at 37.1%, copper at 35.2% and gold
sales dropping by 27.1%.
The major
contributors to the 13.5% decrease were gold, which contributed 5.6 percentage
points, coal, which contributed 2.5 percentage points, and iron-ore,
contributing some 1.7 percentage points.
More
Bundesbank to pull gold from New York and Paris in watershed moment
Germany’s Bundesbank is to repatriate gold reserves held abroad to tighten control and combat currency crises in the future, pulling a chunk of its holdings from New York and all its bullion from Paris.
The move marks an extraodinary breakdown in trust between leading central banks and has set off ferment among gold enthusiasts, with some comparing it with France’s withdrawal of gold from the US under President Charles de Gaulle as the Bretton Woods currency system crumbled in the late 1960s.Handelsblatt said the Bundesbank will announce on Wednesday that it intends to relocate the gold to vaults in Frankfurt, said by insiders to include parts of the old archive library. Germany has 3,396 tons of gold worth roughly £115bn, the world’s second-largest holding after the US. Most of the reserves were stored abroad for safety during the Cold War.
The bank holds an estimated 45pc of its gold at the US Federal Reserve in New York, and 11pc at the Banque de France, lower than originally thought.
A report by Germany’s budget watchdog in October revealed that the bank halved its holding in London a decade ago, a period when the Bank of England was selling part of Britain’s gold at the bottom of the market to buy euros.
The gold was purportedly withdrawn because London was charging €500,000 a year in storage costs. The Bundesbank said part of 930 tonnes brought back was melted down for checks, and "not one gram was missing". It currently holds just 13pc of its total holdings at the Bank of England.
"There can be no other
criterion, no other standard than gold. Yes, gold which never changes, which
can be shaped into ingots, bars, coins, which has no nationality and which is
eternally and universally accepted as the unalterable fiduciary value par excellence."
Charles De Gaulle
At the Comex silver depositories Tuesday final figures were: Registered 38.01
Moz, Eligible 112.49 Moz, Total 150.50 Moz.
Crooks and
Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
Poor old
Dobbin, turned into a cow in Ireland. Ever wonder how the discount supermarket
chains get such low prices? Well now we know. In their very own version of the
Liebor scandal, Ireland has been passing off ground horsemeat and pig as ground
Irish beef. By hammering their suppliers relentlessly, their suppliers cut
corners and seek out the cheapest option. The cheapest option, it turns out is
to blend in “European beef” to make “Irish beef” go further. So much for Irish
beef! A good brand trashed by blending in cheaper European ground “beef” that
turned out to contain horse and pig. Who knew and when?
According to
the BBC, a spokesman for Tesco dryly called the problem “very distasteful.”
Come back Diogenes, you’re needed more than ever in the 21st
century. European beef anyone? About the best that can be said for the tainted
burgers, at least they didn’t contain American McDonalds’ pink slime. The
tainted Irish burgers are now being dispatched to Greece, no pun intended.
A bum
told me "I haven't tasted food all week." I told him "Don't
worry, it still tastes the same!"
Henny
Youngman.
Tesco beef burgers found to contain 29% horse meat
Horse meat has been found in burgers on sale in British supermarkets. Tests on beef products sold in Tesco, Lidl, Aldi, Iceland and Dunnes Stores uncovered low levels of the animal’s DNA.
By Rosa
Silverman and Alice Philipson 9:44PM GMT 15 Jan 2013
In Tesco
Everyday Value Beef Burgers, horse meat accounted for approximately 29 per cent
of the meat. The supermarket announced last night that it was removing all
fresh and frozen burgers from sale immediately regardless if they had been
found to contain horse meat.
Tim
Smith, the group technical director of Tesco, said: “The presence of illegal
meat in our products is extremely serious. Our customers have the right to
expect that food they buy is produced to the highest standards.”
An
investigation was carried out by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland. The Food
Standards Agency, working with the Irish authorities, established that mainland
Britain was part of the area affected.
More than
a third (37 per cent) of the products tested in Ireland contained horse DNA,
while the vast majority (85 per cent) also contained pig DNA.
Horse
meat and pig DNA was found in 27 beef burger products. Another 31 foods,
including cottage pies, beef curry pies and lasagnes, were analysed, with 21
testing positive for pig DNA.
Traces of
horse DNA were also detected in batches of raw ingredients.
The
findings raise concerns about “the traceability of meat ingredients and
products entering the food chain”, investigators said. They are also likely to
prove worrying to practising Jews and Muslims, who may have unwittingly eaten
pig, which is forbidden in their culture.
The beef
burgers containing horse DNA were produced by two processing plants in Ireland,
Liffey Meats and Silvercrest Foods, and one plant in the UK, Dalepak Hambleton
in North Yorkshire. They were on sale in Tesco, Dunnes Stores, Lidl, Aldi and
Iceland.
In nine
of the 10 beef burger samples, the levels of horse DNA were very low, however.
Prof Alan
Reilly, the chief executive of the FSAI, said: “While there is a plausible
explanation for the presence of pig DNA in these products, due to the fact that
meat from different animals is processed in the same plants, there is no clear
explanation for the presence of horse DNA in products emanating from meat
plants that do not use horse meat.”
An FSA
spokesman said: “The FSA has been made aware of the survey results in which
equine DNA was identified in some beef burgers and is working with the Food
Safety Authority in the Republic of Ireland to investigate the issue. However,
at this stage it is not believed to be a food safety risk.
“We are
aware that investigations are ongoing to ascertain how or why horse meat was
used in the products.”
A spokesman
for Aldi Ireland said they were moving Oakhurst Beef Burgers from sale. Only
its Irish branches were affected.
Iceland,
whose own branded quarter-pounder burgers were found to contain traces of horse
meat said they would be 'working closely’ with suppliers to find out how it
happened.
Liffey
Meats said "minute traces of non-beef DNA" had been found in the
company's beef burgers. It blamed the contamination on "imported
ingredients".
A
spokesman said: “We sincerely regret that any product produced by the Company
would not conform to the highest specifications and sincerely apologise to our
customers”.
Silvercrest,
another company found to have supplied burgers containing horse meat said:
"Although the products pose no risk to public health, Silvercrest has
taken immediate action to isolate, withdraw and replace all suspect product.
"Silvercrest
has never purchased or traded in equine product and has launched a full-scale
investigation into two continental European third party suppliers who are the suspected
source of the product in question.”
“I
cook with wine, sometimes I even add it to the food.”
W. C.
Fields.
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished December:
DJIA: +100 Down. NASDAQ: +123 Unch. SP500: +129 Up.
All three indexes are giving different
signals. A time for caution.
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