Baltic Dry Index. 747 -06
LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
'venez a Londres, mes amis'
Boris
Johnson, Mayor of London.
With the UK’s weak, U-turn prone, Prime Minister
off wintering for a few days in warm sunny India, he probably hasn’t noticed
yet that “the Pound in his pocket” has come under attack from the Bank of
England. When his credit card bills roll in next month, Her Majesty’s Pound in
his pocket will pay off less and less Rupees. Unhappily for us and happily for
him, it’s the UK taxpayer paying for his CEO junket across India. Whatever the
G-20 may have fudged together for the communique in Moscow, the Bank of England
has joined Japan in the currency race to the bottom. Stay long physical
precious metals. Those unfortunate European nations trapped Germanic Euro, can
only watch and wait for Mario dei Paschi to act, as the Yen and the Pound set
out after the global export market. The
weak Pound also helps with inward Asian investment too.
Below, Mayor Johnson leaves out the bit about crooked
banksters rigging Liebor against the rest of the world.
"Come
to London, come to the business capital of the world, the place where 73 Indian
firms are listed on the London Stock Exchange, where Indian companies already
raise 53% of their international equity, a city that has the largest banking
and financial sector anywhere in the world, but which is at the cutting edge of
all the great growth businesses of the 21st Century."
Boris
Johnson, Mayor of London.
Sterling strikes seven-month lows amid calls for further weakness
Sterling struck seven-month lows against the dollar, before later recovering some of its losses, as a Bank of England policymaker said the pound may need to weaken further.
By
Telegraph Staff, and agencies 1:29PM GMT 18 Feb 2013
During
morning trading on Monday, the pound fell 0.5pc to $1.5438 - its lowest level
since July last year - before recovering to trade around $1.5483.
Sterling's
slide came as Martin Weale, a senior Bank of England policymaker, said on
Saturday that the pound may need to weaken further, which would help to make
exports cheaper and spur growth.
“It may be that high levels of uncertainty and a reluctance to take on new risks have stood in the way of exporters seeking new markets and domestic producers doing what is needed to displace imports,” Mr Weale said in a speech.
“Provided the calmer atmosphere we have seen since the summer is sustained, we may see further benefits of the depreciation.”
With
the Bank of England appearing comfortable with sterling's drop, traders
suggested that more losses are likely.
More
Up next, on the wealth destroying, “one German size fits all,” euro,
Euroland racks up yet another new unwanted record. Euroland is broken, time for yet another
summit and yet another euro fix. The EUSSR isn’t following the Great 1990s master
plan.
If you don't know where you are going, every road will get you
nowhere.
Henry Kissinger
Ford Leads Drop as European Auto Sales Decline to Record
By Tommaso Ebhardt - Feb 19, 2013 7:00 AM GMT
European Union car sales fell to a record low, with Ford
Motor Co. and PSA Peugeot Citroen posting
the biggest drops, as economic contractions in the southern part of the region
widened to Germany and France. Registrations in January dropped 8.7 percent to 885,159 vehicles from 969,219 cars a year earlier, the Brussels-based European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association, or ACEA, said today in a statement. The figure was the lowest for the month since the group began tracking sales in 1990, it said. Europewide sales, also including Switzerland, Iceland and Norway, fell 8.5 percent from a year earlier to 918,280 cars.
Volume carmakers are struggling to end losses in Europe that Fiat SpA Chief Executive Officer Sergio Marchionne has estimated at a combined 5 billion euros ($6.68 billion) in 2012. Manufacturers in the region have announced 30,000 job cuts and five plant shutdowns since July, with Renault and Paris-based Peugeot outlining domestic workforce reductions of 17 percent. The economies of Germany and France, the two biggest among the 17 nations sharing the euro, shrank in the fourth quarter.
“The sales crisis has spread from southern countries to the rest of Europe, and no one is immune,” Gian Primo Quagliano, president of Promotor automotive research group in Bologna, Italy, said before the ACEA released figures. “Until confidence rises, we won’t have any inversion in the trend.”
---- German car sales in January fell 8.6
percent, the ACEA said today. Registrations dropped 15 percent in France and 18
percent in Italy. Car sales in the U.K., which overtook France last year to
become Europe’s second-biggest auto market, rose 11 percent.
More
Sticking
with the ever more dysfunctional bureaucratic EU, Europe’s “equine beef”
problem continues to grow like Topsy. Now the world’s biggest food company has
found traces of Shergar in past it sold in Italy and Spain. As all us hapless
non-Bilderberger class, euro-serfs now know to our cost, “food safety” is now a
“European Competence” removed last decade from “National Competences.”
"The most puzzling development in politics during the last decade is the apparent determination of Western European leaders to re-create the Soviet Union in Western Europe."
Mikhail Gorbachev
Nestle finds horsemeat in beef pasta meals
LONDON |(Reuters) - Nestle (NESN.VX), the world's biggest food company, has removed beef pasta meals from sale in Italy and Spain after finding traces of horse DNA.
The discovery of horsemeat in products labeled as beef has spread across Europe since last month, prompting product withdrawals, consumer anger and government investigations into the continent's complex food-processing chains.
Swiss-based Nestle, which just last week said its products had not been affected by the scandal, said its tests had found more than 1 percent horse DNA in two products.
---- Nestle withdrew two chilled pasta products, Buitoni Beef Ravioli and Beef Tortellini, in Italy and Spain,
Lasagnes à la Bolognaise Gourmandes, a frozen product for catering businesses produced in France, will also be withdrawn.
Nestle was suspending deliveries of all products made using beef from a German subcontractor to one of its suppliers, Nestle said.
More
Division of competences within the European Union
INTRODUCTIONThe Treaty of Lisbon clarifies the division of competences between the European Union (EU) and Member States. It introduces a precise classification for the first time in the founding Treaties, distinguishing between three main types of competence: exclusive competences, shared competences and supporting competences.
This attempt at clarification does not result in any notable transfer of competence. However, this reform is important and vital for the proper functioning of the EU. Several conflicts of competence have emerged in the past between the EU and Member States. Henceforth, the boundaries between the competences of each are clearly defined. In addition, this transparency facilitates the application of the fundamental principles relating to the control and exercise of these competences.
Food safety
---- The objective of the European Union's food safety policy is to protect consumer health and interests while guaranteeing the smooth operation of the single market. In order to achieve this objective, the EU ensures that control standards are established and adhered to as regards food and food product hygiene, animal health and welfare, plant health and preventing the risk of contamination from external substances. It also lays down rules on appropriate labelling for these foodstuffs and food products. This policy underwent reform in the early 2000s, in line with the approach 'From the Farm to the Fork', thereby guaranteeing a high level of safety for foodstuffs and food products marketed within the EU, at all stages of the production and distribution chains. This approach involves both food products produced within the European Union and those imported from third countries.----A certain number of bodies, in particular, the European Food Safety Authority, are responsible for helping to guarantee food safety.
Link
Frozen burger sales fall 40pc following horse meat crisis
Sales of frozen burgers have slumped by 40pc as the horse meat saga causes customers to shun own-label brands, industry data have shown.
The figures from Nielsen compares the week ending February 2 with the same period last year and the decline is almost entirely down to supermarket’s own-label products, with sales of branded burgers increasing.The fall in sales reflects the potential impact of the horse meat saga on consumer behaviour.
However, the figures have also been impacted by the fact many retailers pulled all frozen burgers from their shelves as a precaution after horse meat was first discovered in Tesco’s Everyday Value burgers.
More
We end for today with a potential way for helping
the elderly aging baby boomers live longer. Fill up their nursing homes with
hydrogen sulphide. Of course it might be somewhat hard to get the grandchildren
to visit, while those charged with making pensions work, might have an interest
in over doing it. Hopefully by then, smoking will have gone out of fashion.
Rotten Egg Gas Seen Offering Promise of Extending Life
By Natasha Khan - Feb 18, 2013 4:01 PM GMT
In the hunt for ways to extend life, scientists are turning to an unlikely
source: the gas that gives rotten eggs their distinctive foul smell. Hydrogen sulfide -- maligned for its toxic and explosive properties -- may slow aging and block damaging chemical reactions inside cells, according to scientists in China, who reviewed studies on the malodorous gas and its effects on the cardiovascular and nervous systems.
Hydrogen sulfide
activates a gene implicated in longevity in a similar way to resveratrol, an
antioxidant in red wine that GlaxoSmithKline Plc tried unsuccessfully to turn
into a drug, scientists found.
---- “There is a lot of interest in understanding how we age and, as human beings, it’s natural for us to question if we could prolong life potentially by delaying aging,” said John Rouse, professor of chromosome biology at Scotland’s University of Dundee. Hydrogen sulfide is a worthy target, said Rouse, who studies DNA repair and aging.
Colorless and flammable, hydrogen sulfide was used briefly in warfare during the First World War as a chemical weapon. Over a certain threshold, it’s toxic, Rouse said, “but below that, there are certain health benefits.”
More
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-18/rotten-egg-gas-seen-offering-promise-of-extending-life.html
At the Comex silver depositories Friday final figures were: Registered 37.52
Moz, Eligible 122.72 Moz, Total 160.24 Moz.
Crooks and
Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
Today, more of the lawless age we live in. From US gulags, torture and
extra judicial killings, to the undeclared war between the USA, France, and the
west against fanatical murderous moslems. Today, a mysterious death in custody
of a Mossad double agent. Why are the western alphabet soups now briefing the
media against Mossad’s suspicious death in custody?
I don't see why we need to stand by and
watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The
issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for
themselves.
Henry Kissinger.
Ben Zygier: The great Prisoner X conspiracy theory
A suspected Mossad spy, once known only as Prisoner X, was found hanged in his cell. What secrets did Ben Zygier take to his grave?
We all
love conspiracy theories, particularly when there actually is a conspiracy. The
odd thing is that when offered competing conspiracy theories, we often plump
for the dullest – it’s the bankers, or the CIA, or Zionists. If you’re going to
speculate, why not come up with something original?
Here’s a
practical example. Israel and Australia and all countries in between have been
buzzing for days over the fantastic case of Prisoner X, a once nameless inmate
of a solitary confinement wing in Israel’s most secure jail. I say nameless: he
was so top secret, his jailors weren’t allowed to know his name(s).
So who
was this modern-day Man in the Iron Mask? Australian television discovered he
was a Mossad agent originally from Melbourne called Ben Zygier, scion of a
prominent Jewish family who emigrated to Israel; and who later acquired a
number of Australian passports in names other than his own.
Moreover,
in December 2010 he was found hanging in his cell’s bathroom, a death ascribed
to suicide despite his being under 24-hour surveillance. Cue the theories: it
is not hard to see the possibilities in a story involving Mossad, the Middle
East, mysteriously dead nameless prisoners and double identities.
But there
we have my point: what is the explanation that the media have come to accept?
According to most accounts, Zygier was involved with the Mossad intelligence
service in faking and cloning Australian passports, and had informed Australian
intelligence services of this. Such accounts add – correctly – that Mossad has
had a long reputation for cloning passports, which has drawn the wrath of many
otherwise friendly governments, including Britain. Case closed.
But is
that it? Are we supposed to believe that Prisoner X was seized and
interrogated, threatened, as his lawyer subsequently said, with life
imprisonment and with being ostracised from his family, and that maybe
(according to innuendo) he was killed, all because he was about to reveal a
passport scam that the world already knew about? It doesn’t make much sense,
and it’s dull to boot.
In the
absence of solid answers, which we are unlikely to receive, I propose something
more imaginative. But that does not mean we shouldn’t start with the known
facts.
The
existence of Prisoner X was originally revealed by the US-based blogger Richard
Silverstein, who suggested he might be a missing Iranian general; he was
obviously wrong on that point, which he now believes was a plant to divert him
from the truth. In fact, according to the Australian network ABC, which must
have been leaked information by the intelligence services, Prisoner X was
Zygier, and he was arrested in February 2010. Australian intelligence was
notified by its Israeli counterpart on February 24 (remember that date). He
was, according to his lawyer, indicted for “grave crimes”, which he denied, was
held incommunicado, and then was found hanged on December 15.
The
timing is important. First, his name as a Mossad agent had previously been
given to an Australian journalist, who “fronted him up”, saying he had been
questioned for repeatedly applying for passports in different names. He denied
it. Second, around the time of his arrest, Mossad killed the Hamas gun-runner,
Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, in Dubai; the agents responsible used 27 Western passports,
including four Australian, mostly clones with the original bearers’ names but
the agents’ photographs.
The world
learned all this when Dubai showed passport pictures to a press conference on
February 15, three weeks after the killing, and that is what leads us to the
theory for Zygier’s arrest. It’s easy to make that assumption, and say Zygier
was arrested “after the use of cloned Australian passports was revealed by
Dubai police”. The only question left to interpretation is whether he informed
Australian intelligence, Dubai police, or both.
But in
key aspects, the statement beginning “after” is wrong. The use of three of the
Australian passports was revealed not on February 15 but nine days later, in a
press conference on February 24, the very day the Australians were informed of
Zygier’s arrest. (The fourth was revealed later still.) The first batch shown
off by Dubai police included British and Irish passports but not Australian.
Moreover,
the use of cloned passports was not “revealed by Dubai police”: when they made
their amazing announcement, they were unaware that the passports weren’t
genuine. This was only discovered when the owners were tracked down. So the
timeline disappears – he was already arrested when the Australian involvement
became known; and he didn’t tell Dubai, because they seemed not to know.
More
It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.
Niccolo Machiavelli.
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished January:
DJIA: +106 Up. NASDAQ: +126 Up. SP500: +140 Up. All three indexes are giving the same signal,
up.
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