Baltic Dry Index. 739
LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
“The
illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.”
Mario Draghi, with apologies to Henry
Kissinger.
Another Thursday,
another ECB central banksters meeting. Which part of the rules, regulations,
and constitution will get trashed today?
ECB's Draghi faces heat over euro, Monte Paschi
FRANKFURT |(Reuters) - Mario Draghi faces a grilling over the European Central Bank's sensitivity to the euro's sharp rise and his connection to an Italian banking scandal at an ECB meeting on Thursday where interest rates are almost certain to be unchanged.
Ireland is on tenterhooks whether the ECB will sign off on a new proposal to reduce the country's debt burden, for which its government rushed through emergency legislation early on Thursday to liquidate failed Anglo Irish Bank.
A source close to the negotiations told Reuters the ECB came close to agreeing a deal on Wednesday night, but in the end more work needed to be done and the Governing Council would continue discussions at its Thursday meeting.
----French President Francois Hollande said on Tuesday the euro zone must develop an exchange rate policy to protect the currency from "irrational movements".
Erkki Liikanen, an ECB Governing Council member, later dismissed any prospect of the bank pursuing such a policy, saying "we have no foreign exchange target" - a line ECB chief Draghi is likely to take at his 1330 GMT news conference.
----At Thursday's news conference, Draghi can also expect to be asked how much he knew about the derivatives scandal at Siena's Monte Paschi bank, and what he did about it when he headed Italy's central bank from 2006 to 2011.
Italy's third largest bank has been at the centre of a financial and political storm as a result of facing losses of about 1 billion euros from a series of derivatives and structured finance trades.
Draghi's news conference offers reporters their first chance to quiz him directly on the scandal since his role came into focus late last month.
He faced criticism then after former Italian economy minister Giulio Tremonti said it was "stupefying" that in his role as supervisor of Italy's banking system Draghi failed to discover or prevent loss-making derivatives trades at Monte Paschi.
More
Up next, the Paris
based OECD says it’s time for more of the BOE’s funny money. Don’t wait for
Canadian Carney and July. “Unconventional measures” are needed in the stalled UK
economy now. Print more and devalue is OECD advise. It’s a funny old world on
fiat money. Busted banksters get bailed out by the taxpayers to draw a
telephone number bonus another day. People on disability in genuine need, get
tossed off their meagre benefits, every day. It is truly strange that in modern
Britain, homosexual marriage gets forced though in defiance of the bible, while
another section gets enforced to the hilt. Her Majesty’s weak, accident and
U-turn prone Government seems to have an accelerating death wish. Come back
Gordon all is forgiven.
For
whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but
whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath.
Matthew
13:12.
Britain may need more QE in 'uneven' recovery - OECD
The Bank of England may need to carry out more money-printing to stimulate the economy despite rising opposition, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Having
been “flat” for two and a half years, the economy should grow by 0.9pc this
year and 1.6pc in the next, under the Paris-based think-tank’s latest review -
unchanged from last November.
However,
if the economy stays weak, another push from the Bank of England’s £375bn
quantitative easing (QE) programme, under which it buys up government debt in
an effort to stimulate the economy, may be warranted, it said.
“It is
important that monetary policy continues to be supportive of the economy,” said
Angel Gurria, the OECD’s secretary-general. “Unconventional measures, such as
further quantitative easing may be needed - now, this is of course if growth
fails to catch.”
The
recommendation came even as enthusiasm for QE appears to be waning among Bank
policy-makers, viewing it as a tool which offers diminishing returns.
However,
other options, such as cutting interest rates - long held at 0.5pc - close to
zero, or buying private securities rather than government bonds, did “not
appear to have clear advantages over expanding QE”, in the think-tank’s eyes.
More
Carney takes center stage ahead of Bank of England job
LONDON |(Reuters) - Britain's next central bank chief, Mark Carney, gets his first chance to show how he plans to fix the country's stagnant economy on Thursday, with expectations running high that the Canadian is set on change at the Bank of England.
Carney, the first foreigner to run the bank in its 318-year history, faces a three hour question-and-answer session with lawmakers that could also signal how he will bring his banking expertise to bear on Britain's crisis-hit banks.
After taking over at the Bank of Canada in 2008, Carney earned a reputation for successfully protecting his home country from the global financial crisis and he now faces the bigger challenge of getting Britain out of a rut of almost zero growth.
----Since then, Carney's various comments on policy have been seized upon as signals of what he plans to do when he takes over at the Bank of England on July 1, although he will be only one of nine interest rate setters.
"I think there will be quite a few changes," said Michael Saunders, an economist at Citi, such as a more flexible inflation target, setting clear signals on how long interest rates may remain low, more bond-buying and, possibly, a rate cut.
Carney promised to keep Canadian rates near zero for about a year in April 2009 as the global crisis intensified, before the idea was taken up by the U.S. Federal Reserve.
----Carney also stirred controversy in December by saying that, in times of crisis, central banks might consider targeting a mix of inflation and growth rates instead of just inflation.
More
In Ireland, confusion reigns. "You are winding up the bank but you are not
winding up the debt and that's where you critically failed," Pearse
Doherty, finance spokesman for the Sinn Fein party, told parliament. Stay long
physical precious metals. Yet another European “fix” that fixes little.
“Every
victory is only the price of admission to a more difficult problem”
Henry Kissinger.
Ireland votes to liquidate Anglo Irish Bank
Ireland's government rushed through emergency legislation early on Thursday to liquidate the failed Anglo Irish Bank as it tries to secure a deal with the European Central Bank to ease the country's debt burden.
6:28AM
GMT 07 Feb 2013
Prime Minister Enda Kenny has staked his administration's reputation on
cutting the cost of bailing out Anglo Irish, now known as Irish Bank Resolution
Corp, or IBRC, and the ECB's governing council in Frankfurt is considering a
fresh proposal after a previous plan was rejected last month. "This closes a sad and tragic chapter in our economic history," Kenny told a special session of the lower house that stretched until 3 a.m.
Technical negotiations between the ECB and Irish officials have dragged on for 18 months, with Frankfurt conscious that any proposal offered to Dublin could possibly set a precedent for other countries, such as Spain, dealing with large bank debts.
But European leaders also need a success story to emerge from the region's crisis, and a rescheduling of the so-called promissory notes or IOUs given to IBRC could help Ireland exit its EU-IMF bailout on schedule this year.
Under Dublin's new plan, first reported by Reuters on Wednesday, IBRC's liquidation was necessary so that the Irish government no longer had to make €3.1bn euros of annual payments on the promissory notes stretching out until 2023. The next payment was due next month.
More
In Asia, the Japan v China island dispute just
keeps moving up a notch. Will the two nations clash over the Chinese New Year?
Japan says it wants dialogue, a hotline,
and a meeting between Abe and Xi Jinping. Seen from faraway London, why
would Beijing want to do any of those things? They seem to be doing just fine
in keeping the initiative in the Diaoyu dispute.
China says probing Japan complaint about radar lock-on
BEIJING |(Reuters) - China's Foreign Ministry said on Thursday the government was investigating a complaint from Japan that a Chinese navy vessel aimed a type of radar normally used to aim weapons at a target at a Japanese navy ship in the East China Sea.
"The relevant Chinese departments are currently conducting an earnest, solemn investigation into these reports to verify them," ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a daily news briefing.
Japanese Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera said this week that the incident, which he said occurred on January 30 but took time to confirm, could have become very dangerous very quickly.
Hua said that it was actually Japan that was provoking tension over a group of disputed, uninhabited islands, called Diaoyu by China and Senkaku by Japan and which are also claimed by Taiwan.
"The problem at present is not China showing strength, but Japan continuously sending its ships and aircraft into the waters and airspace around the Diaoyu Islands to carry out illegal activities, damaging and infringing upon China territorial sovereignty," she said.
"Recently, Japan has been intentionally stirring up a crisis and causing tensions, blackening China's image. This is diametrically the opposite of efforts to improve relations."
Onodera said on Thursday China's use of the radar could be seen a threat of military force under U.N. rules, but urged dialogue to prevent such incidents happening again.
More
My policies are based not on some economics theory, but on things I and millions like me were brought up with: an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay; live within your means; put by a nest egg for a rainy day; pay your bills on time; support the police.
Margaret Thatcher.
At the Comex silver depositories Wednesday final figures were: Registered 37.03
Moz, Eligible 121.47 Moz, Total 158.50 Moz.
Crooks and
Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
In typical European
fashion, getting the truth out of a European bankster, relies on death by a
thousand cuts. Below, the world’s oldest bank now admits to a loss of almost a
billion euros, from gambling derivatives positions intended to cover up earlier
losses. Not too worry, it’ll all get picked up by Italy’s taxpayers, all 300 of
them. After all, it’s only fiat euros, and there’s plenty more where they come
from.
"When it becomes serious, you have to lie"
Jean-Claude Juncker. Luxembourg Prime Minister and president of the Euro Group of Finance Ministers. Confessed liar.
Monte Paschi loss could be up to a billion euros
SIENA, Italy |(Reuters) - Board members at Monte dei Paschi are expected to say on Wednesday that Italy's third largest bank may have lost up to 1 billion euros on opaque derivatives trades, far higher than the initial estimate.
The trades are at the center of a probe into former management of the bank which has deepened questions about the role of banking supervisors and the influence of local politicians ahead of Feb 24-25 parliamentary elections.
A source close to the situation said the final loss, set to be announced after the market close on Wednesday, should be somewhere between the preliminary estimate of around 720 million euros ($974 million) and 1 billion euros.
The findings of a review of the trades and their impact on Monte dei Paschi's accounts by external consultants have been submitted to the bank's board, chaired by former UniCredit chief executive Alessandro Profumo.
He has said the bank was not at risk of collapsing from the deals, which the current management says were partially hidden, and promised total clarity after Wednesday's board meeting.
"Profumo appears to have ruled out any catastrophic impact from the trades," said a Milan-based fund manager.
"But this does not change the bank's fundamental weakness."
Il Sole 24 Ore daily reported the bank would reveal losses of 920 million euros from the three derivative trades, plus a further loss of 120 million in "personnel costs".
"The numbers in Il Sole are not correct," said the source close to the situation.
The three derivative transactions are the "Nota Italia" trade with J.P. Morgan in 2006, the 2008 "Santorini" trade with Deutsche Bank, and the 2009 "Alexandria" trade with Nomura.
The loss from these trades will likely lead to a restatement of past accounts and increase the overall 2012 losses for the Tuscan lender, which had already posted a net loss of 1.66 billion euros in the first nine months.
Sources close to the matter have told Reuters the bank, the world's oldest, has been negotiating with
Deutsche Bank and Nomura to restructure or close the deals.
More
"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
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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