Baltic Dry Index. 825 -13
LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
“The great masses will more easily fall victim to a big lie than
to a small one"
Adolph Hitler.
All’s well in Euroland, says the ex-Goldmanite, dodgy
Italian running the ECB. With just one more push of austerity “over the top,”
by the peons of Club Med in this war, victory for the eurois assured, says
Goldman’s main man in Frankfurt. "Only a currency whose future existence is not
in doubt can be a stable currency" says super-Mario, apparently unaware that no
fiat currency goes on forever. Pity the poor peons of Euroland, forever now to
be broken on the wheel of Europe’s top banksters big lie. The “darkest clouds
over the Eurozone” long ago passed to Europe’s bankrupt banksters, as too big
to fail, socialised all the losses onto the taxpayers. Mr Hitler would be
impressed at the scale of this deception. It will end badly just the same. Stay
long precious metals for the end game.
"There can be no doubt that the international gold standard, as it evolved in the 19th century, provided the growing industrial world with the most efficient system of adjustment for balance of payments which it was ever to have, either by accident or by conscious planning."
W. M. Scammell
Mario Draghi: 'Darkest clouds over eurozone have passed'
The euro zone can begin 2013 with more confidence than last year but it is up to governments to carry the bloc forward with reforms while the European Central Bank delivers stable prices, ECB President Mario Draghi said on Tuesday.
6:58PM GMT 22 Jan 2013
Draghi's
pledge in July last year to do "whatever it takes" to preserve the
euro and his follow-up plan for a new ECB bond-purchase programme helped bring
the eurozone back from the brink of break-up.
In a new
year's speech, the central bank chief highlighted the impact the bond plan -
dubbed Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT) - has had on easing tensions but
put the onus on governments to press ahead with reforms to retain confidence in
the bloc.
The
commitment shown by policymakers in the 17-country bloc last year to securing a
stable euro meant that "the darkest clouds over the euro area
subsided" in 2012, Draghi said.
"We
begin 2013 with more confidence than we had in January one year ago," the
Italian told the Frankfurt Chambers of Commerce in his speech, adding quickly
that the ECB was focusing on its core task of delivering stable prices.
"This
confidence is to a large extent built on the progress that all of us -
governments, parliaments, the EU and the ECB - have been able to make during
2012," he said. "But it is also crucially built on the expectation
that progress will persist."
"The
ECB for its part will be there to continue, as it has done successfully now for
14 years, to safeguard price stability," he said, adding that there were
no signs of the central bank deviating from delivering stable prices.
The ECB
had shown its commitment to doing what is necessary - within its mandate - to
safeguard the stability of the euro, Draghi said, adding: "Only a currency
whose future existence is not in doubt can be a stable currency."
More
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9819514/Mario-Draghi-Darkest-clouds-over-eurozone-have-passed.html
Super-Mario can talk up his book all he
wants, the Lords of the Universe living up the high life in Davos are less
impressed. They noticed super-Mario’s lips moved. Besides Japan if it doesn’t
start world war three with China, is about to alter all of the rules of the
great fiat game. Unlike suoer-Mario they are not looking back to January’s
past, they are looking forward at January’s still to come.
It's good to trust others but, not to do so is much better
Benito Mussolini
Analysis: Davos leaders uneasy over glut of easy money
DAVOS, Switzerland |(Reuters) - The world is awash in easy money, with consequences that are starting to worry some central bankers and business leaders at the Davos World Economic Forum (WEF), though so far inflation fears seem overdone.
With developed world government finances constrained by huge debts and deficits, central banks have pumped trillions of dollars into the system to try to revive sluggish economies, combat deflation and prop up weak banks.
The Fed, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan and to a lesser extent the European Central Bank have strayed far from traditional inflation fighting to take into account objectives such as reducing unemployment, raising nominal GDP, and ensuring the smooth functioning of the sovereign bond market.
In pursuit of these goals, they have taken unconventional steps such as keeping interest rates well below the inflation rate, buying government bonds and mortgage-backed securities and providing long-term liquidity to banks at near zero rates.
Indeed, the Japanese central bank is now actively trying to create more inflation because prices are obstinately stagnant.
On Tuesday, the BoJ announced its most radical effort yet to end years of economic stagnation, after weeks of relentless pressure from new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for a greater push to lift the economy out of recession.
In a joint statement with the government, the BoJ said it would switch to an open-ended commitment to buying assets next year and double its inflation target to 2 percent.
Central banking purists, especially in Germany, with its history scarred by hyper-inflation, worry that the guardians of sound money are losing their independence to governments and will find it hard to get the genie back into the bottle.
The leading hawk on the ECB's Governing Council, German Bundesbank chief Jens Weidmann, who cancelled his appearance at Davos, warned on Monday that central banks were being bullied by governments and it could lead to currency wars.
----Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank President Charles Plosser, a long-time critic of the Fed's easy money policies, warned this month that central banks in many countries are adopting policies, often under pressure from governments, to control their currencies, calling it an unhealthy phenomenon.
"We do not want to get ourselves in a world where you have currency wars. Beggar-thy-neighbor policies ... would not be healthy," Plosser told a conference in Somerset, New Jersey.
Switzerland, Brazil and China have all taken steps to hold down the value of their currencies.
In Japan, Abe is applying a potent mix of stimulus spending and easy monetary policy to try to pull the economy out of deflation and a fourth recession since 2000, causing a sharp depreciation of the yen.
More
Sir Mervyn King says abandoning inflation target would be 'irresponsible'
Abandoning inflation targeting in Britain would be “irresponsible” and risk a return to the high inflation of the 1970s warned Sir Mervyn King, in what appeared to be a veiled criticism of his successor Mark Carney and the Chancellor.
In one of
his last speeches as governor of the Bank of England before he steps down at
the end of June, Sir Mervyn said that retaining a 2pc target was an “essential”
part of monetary policy.
It
followed comments by Mr Carney, the current Bank of Canada governor who takes
over at the Bank of England on July 1, suggesting that central bankers could
abandon inflation targeting
He
proposed an alternative mandate for “nominal GDP”, a measure of total growth
before adjusting for inflation, if traditional measures fail to produce a
recovery.
Mr Carney
also floated the idea of fixing interest rates until unemployment hit “precise
numerical thresholds” in times of economic crisis, regardless of the official
inflation target. He insisted his comments were not meant for a specific
country.
The
Chancellor George Osborne has refused to rule out abandoning the inflation
target in favour of a focus on growth, welcoming a debate on the future of
Britain’s monetary policy framework.
Speaking
at a CBI dinner in Belfast, Sir Mervyn said: “To drop the objective of low
inflation would be to forget a lesson from our post-war history.”
“In the
1960s, Britain stood out from much of the rest of the industrialised world in
trying to target an unrealistic growth rate for the economy as a whole, while
pretending that its pursuit was consistent with stable inflation.
“The
painful experience of the 1970s showed that this illusion on the part of
policy-makers came at a terrible price for working men and women in this
country.”
Inflation
averaged at 13pc a year in the 1970s, peaking at 25pc in 1975.
More
With the serf states of Euroland headed 180 degrees
the other way, the UK’s Telegraph points out that the Emperor has no new
clothes.
Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.
Benito Mussolini.
Central bankers should be brought to heel by elected parliaments
Intellectual fashion is changing. Central bankers around the world no longer command the charisma of a high priesthood.
Nor
should they after stoking a global bubble and then tightening just as the money
supply was collapsing in mid-2008.
The onus
is falling on them to justify why monetary independence is self-evidently a
good thing, and why central bankers should operate beyond democratic control.
The
humbling of the Bank of Japan (BoJ) this week is just the start, as Bundesbank
chief Jens Weidmann warned. “It is already possible to observe alarming
infringements, for example in Hungary or in Japan, where the new government is
massively involving itself in the affairs of the central bank, is emphatically
demanding an even more aggressive monetary policy and is threatening an end to
central bank autonomy,” he said.
One could
say that “alarming infringements” are in the eye of the beholder. The European
Central Bank that he serves is itself a political operator of unbounded power.
Professor
Richard Werner, a monetary expert at Southampton University, says the men of
Maastricht misread German history very badly when they created a central bank
that answers to nobody. “They thought they were modelling the ECB on the
Bundesbank, but they weren’t. They have instead replicated the Reichsbank,
which was not accountable to any democratic institution, and led to disaster,”
he said.
----Prof Werner said the Bundesbank was deliberately brought under the control of the German parliament when created after the Second World War to avoid repeating the mistakes of the Weimar era. “Europe has unlearned all the lessons of the Bundesbank,” he added.
The ECB’s
actions have certainly been remarkable. It sent secret letters to the leaders
of Italy and Spain in mid-2011 with a list of sweeping demands, covering
pensions, labour reform, and sensitive political issues over which it has no
constitutional authority.
When
Italy failed to comply with the terms, it switched off bond purchases, let
yields spiral upwards, and forced Silvio Berlusconi out of office. That may be
a good or bad outcome – depending on your point of view – but it is not the
action of a central bank. It is the action of a political authority that has
entirely slipped the leash of democratic control.
More
We end for the day with more flight from old “hate
the rich” socialist France.
'venez a Londres, mes amis'
Boris Johnson, Mayor of London.
Sarkozy's plans 'to dodge new 75% French tax rate by moving to London with wife Carla and setting up £1bn private equity fund'
Fraud police found details of move and business plan in raid on home
Sarkozy is under investigation for corruption in France
He will be latest Frenchman to escape potential top French tax rate of 75%
Couple would become London's most high profile Gallic celebrities
Sarkozy would hope for fund support from French entrepreneur Alain Minc
UPDATED:
Former president Nicolas Sarkozy could become the next wealthy Frenchman to flee to Britain over his country’s looming tax hikes on the rich.
Mr Sarkozy – who famously snubbed the Prime Minister’s attempt to shake his hand after Mr Cameron vetoed changes to the EU treaty in 2011 – is reportedly planning to move to London to set up a £800million investment fund.
The 57-year-old, who was ousted from office last June, has amassed a fortune from £150,000-an-hour public speaking engagements and is now said to be trying to raise capital from investors.
If the move goes ahead, the controversial Frenchman will become the latest to escape a potential top tax rate of 75 per cent in his home country.
He and his former supermodel third wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy would be likely to settle in an affluent district like South Kensington – so becoming the most high profile Gallic celebrity couple in the city.
But the former president is under investigation for corruption in France, and if he does cross the Channel there will be outrage.
Details of the planned move were uncovered during a raid by fraud police on Sarkozy’s Paris mansion last June.
More
"There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit (debt) expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit (debt) expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved."
Ludwig von Mises
At the Comex silver depositories Tuesday final figures were: Registered 37.97
Moz, Eligible 113.00 Moz, Total 150.97 Moz.
Crooks and
Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
Today, was the “Arab spring” really such a good idea?
How a pile of explosives I found in a Libyan field may have ended up in the hands of Algerian terrorists
Last
updated: January 22nd, 2013
When I read the story of Steven McFaul, the hostage from Belfast who did a
runner from the jihadis in southern Algeria with a Semtex suicide belt around
his neck, I was taken back to a slightly nerve-racking, sweltering afternoon
spent in a field on the southern edge of Tripoli, Libya, at the beginning of
September 2011.The city had just fallen to the Libyan rebels, and journalist colleagues and I were being regularly alerted to evidence of atrocities committed by Gaddafi's elite 32nd or Khamis Brigade around their base in Salaheddin suburb. We found the bodies of a hundred men cremated in a barn, after being machine-gunned and blasted to death; decomposing bodies of other victims, hands tied behind their backs, in ditches.
Perhaps
the most extraordinary find, though, was something Heathcliff O'Malley, the
Telegraph photographer, two New York Times colleagues and I stumbled across
almost by chance. We climbed into a field where we were told there might be a
mass grave only to discover something even more startling: pile upon pile of
landmines, neatly stored in their boxes. I made an initial, conservative
calculation that there were 60,000 of them. I now learn that it was two and a
half times that: 150,000.
We picked
our way nervously through the field, into an orchard. Here there were boxes
containing rubbery and plasticky blocks, their lids off and exposed to the
harsh summer sun. They were clearly marked: Semtex and TNT. In a guardhouse,
carelessly scattered around, were a couple of bags full of hand grenades.
There was
also a giant, brand new, German mine-detecting device.
One thing
there wasn't was any sign of was security. We were there on our own. A local
told us some rebels had visited but disappeared.
As well
as writing about and picturing our find, we thought we had better tell someone.
That evening, at a press conference, I found Abdulrahim el-Keib, a member of
the National Transitional Council who later became interim prime minister, who
promised something would be done. Heathcliff spoke to Peter Bouckaert,
emergencies director of Human Rights Watch and a weapons expert after years in
the field, who himself raised it with the Americans, the Brits, the EU.
Where did those weapons end up? Well, a picture on the Telegraph website today
tells one part of the story
– in a haul shown off by the Algerian military
after the end of the siege in In Amenas are three anti-tank mines of the sort
that were in the Tripoli field.
I
wondered whether the Semtex I saw had ended up round Mr McFaul's neck. That is
hard to say: there's plenty of the stuff around. Gaddafi had a lot of it – he
sent some to the IRA of course over the years – and so the jihadists' stock
could have come from anywhere.
What we
know is that there was a fairly dramatic upping of the weapons supplies
available to rebels and their jihadi associates in northern Mali, many of them
Tuaregs who had fought for Gaddafi, within months of Libya falling – hence the
ease with which they swept past outgunned Malian troops last year. We also know
that there was a surge of weapons into trouble spot like the Egyptian Sinai –
where police reported another find of explosives in a truck yesterday – and
Gaza, where AK103 rifles like those used by the Libyan forces have started
showing up in rallies. The jihadis who took the gas field are said to have
crossed into Algeria from Libya and Mali.
More
The keystone of the Fascist doctrine is its conception of the State, of its essence, its functions, and its aims. For Fascism the State is absolute, individuals and groups relative.
Benito Mussolini.
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.
Howdy dudes! Wonderful stuff protects it up. lie detector
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