Baltic Dry Index. 820 +14
LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
The opening up of new markets, foreign or domestic, and the
organizational development from the craft shop to such concerns as U.S. Steel
illustrate the same process of industrial mutation—if I may use that biological
term—that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within,
incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one. This
process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism.
Joseph Schumpeter. The Process
of Creative Destruction.
Today’s LIR update will be brief. The real
action comes later in the day when the ECB lets us in on their latest thoughts
for saving the euro, and when the UN announces new sanctions against Korea.
Will North Korea really reopen the war, or will they just huff and puff as
before. The stock markets are betting on the latter.
It is decision day for the ECB. Mario dei Paschi
must now decide how the bank intends to react to Italy’s general election, that
resoundingly voted against austerity and probably even the euro itself. Once “super”
Mario, is super no more. His “whatever it takes” statement of last year is now
about to be put to the test. If whatever it takes to save the euro includes
bailing out a nation that won’t go along with austerity, the euro itself might
just be saved, although it will be a very different euro from the one envisaged
by the Bundesbank back in the 1990s. If whatever it takes doesn’t include such
a bailout, the words turn out to be a hollow bluff that’s now getting called by
Italy. Stay long physical precious metals for the long run. The ECB may today
have met its Stalingrad and Waterloo all in one. Only take euros marked with
the German “X”.
“The problem with fiat money is that it rewards the minority that can handle money, but fools the generation that has worked and saved money.”
“Adam Smith” aka George Goodman.
Draghi Confronts Italy Impact as ECB Seen Holding Rates
By Jana Randow & Stefan Riecher - Mar 7, 2013 7:11 AM GMT
The European Central Bank has to decide how big a threat Italy poses to Europe’s recovery. A rejection of austerity in the euro area’s third-largest economy has produced a political stalemate that’s driven up bond yields and undermined confidence in ECB President Mario Draghi’s scenario of a gradual economic upturn. While that’s prompted some observers to bring forward expectations for lower interest rates, economists from Nomura International Plc to ABN Amro Bank NV say the ECB is more likely to hold fire and keep the pressure on governments to enact reforms.
“The Italian election has brought the centrifugal force of dysfunctional politics back into focus, but rate cuts are not the answer,” said Richard Barwell, senior economist at Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc in London. “The ECB cannot save governments and countries that do not want to save themselves.”
Italy is threatening to unravel the relative calm that Draghi’s pledge to safeguard the euro brought to markets last year. With the 17-nation currency bloc struggling to exit recession, the ECB could be forced to lower its economic forecasts today. At the same time, the euro’s recent decline might ease concern that inflation will drop too far below the central bank’s 2 percent target.
More
Below, in Asia at least capitalism’s “perennial gale of creative destruction,” is
still at work. In Europe and America it was long ago replaced by derivatives
gambling casino capital socialism. Head we banksters win, tails you taxpayers
lose. Socialise losses, privatise winnings. It’s a funny old unsustainable
world on the Great Nixonian Error of fiat money. Is it “the gale” that is
hitting Apple or Microsoft?
The fundamental impulse that sets and keeps the capitalist
engine in motion comes from the new consumers’ goods, the new methods of
production or transportation, the new markets, the new forms of industrial
organization that capitalist enterprise creates.
Joseph Schumpeter. The Process
of Creative Destruction.
Samsung Throws Lifeline to Sharp as Focus Shifts to OLED
By Jungah Lee & Mariko Yasu - Mar 7, 2013 1:57 AM GMT
Samsung
Electronics Co.’s investment in struggling Sharp Corp. signals that the world’s
top seller of TVs is accelerating a shift toward higher-end sets using OLED
technology as it tries to widen the gap with Sony Corp.
The South
Korean company will acquire 3 percent of unprofitable Sharp for 10.4 billion
yen ($111 million) to secure liquid-crystal displays for smartphones and
televisions. Samsung is emphasizing organic light-emitting diode technology
that offers sharper, brighter images while consuming less power.
Samsung, with 37.4 trillion won ($34.4 billion) of cash, is investing in OLEDs in an effort to boost sales of the ultra-thin sets that typically cost three times more than LCD models. Samsung and Korean rival LG Electronics Inc. (066570) are depending on the new technology to counter slowing global demand for TVs that helped push Sharp, Sony and Panasonic Corp. into losses.
“Samsung is reducing its LCD production and shifting its focus more to OLED technology,” said Kim Sung In, a Seoul-based analyst at Kiwoom Securities Co. “LCDs aren’t making big money anymore.”
Samsung is paying 290 yen a share for its stake in Sharp, or 15 percent less than yesterday’s closing price. The share sale will close March 28, according to the filing.
More
Next month, “let the currency wars really begin.”
Stay long physical precious metals.
BOJ holds fire as Shirakawa era ends, action eyed under new boss
TOKYO |(Reuters) - The Bank of Japan board kept its policy unchanged on Thursday and voted down a proposal to step up monetary stimulus, saving ammunition for new leaders who are expected to take bolder action to try to end nearly two decades of deflation.
Investors say action is likely to come at the BOJ's next meeting on April 3-4, when Asian Development Bank President Haruhiko Kuroda, a vocal advocate of aggressive easing, is expected to have taken over as governor.
At
this week's meeting, BOJ board member Sayuri Shirai proposed bringing forward
open-ended government debt purchases planned for next year. While she was voted
down 8-1, her proposal was seen as a harbinger of the changes coming to
monetary policy
.
"Today's
decision came as no surprise, but the fact that Shirai proposed bringing
forward open-ended JGB purchases has laid the groundwork for further monetary
easing at the bank's next policy review under the new leadership," said
Junko Nishioka, chief Japan economist at RBS Securities.
More
Companies
that once revolutionized and dominated new industries – for example, Xerox in
copiers or Polaroid in instant photography have seen their profits fall and
their dominance vanish as rivals launched improved designs or cut manufacturing
costs. In technology the cassette tape replaced the 8-track, only to be
replaced in turn by the compact disc, which was undercut by MP3 players, which
will in turn eventually be replaced by newer technologies. Companies which made
money out of technology which becomes obsolete do not necessarily adapt well to
the business environment created by the new technologies.
Wikipedia.
At the Comex silver depositories Wednesday final figures were: Registered 42.09
Moz, Eligible 121.55 Moz, Total 163.64 Moz.
Crooks and
Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
With the Chinese New Year celebrations past, as we expected China has
begun stepping up its dispute with Japan over the control of the Diaoyu
Islands. The USA’s nightmare is of a misstep by either nation that sets off a
military skirmish. The USA is treaty bound to come to the defence of Japan. But
would the USA really go to war with China for Japan over some uninhabited East
China Sea islands that the USA itself in the second world war and in the treaty
ending it with Japan, acknowledged that the islands were to be returned to
China, at that time run by US ally Chang Kai-sheck? I don’t think so either, which
is why China is likely to press the issue to its ultimate conclusion.
Japan will either walk away from the Diaoyu’s or China will press on to
the point of a military skirmish against Japan. The USA must then put up or
shut up, with massive implications whichever way the USA reacts. It would
become the USA’s “Falklands moment,” but without the moral high ground that
Maggie Thatcher held following Argentina’s invasion of the populated islands.
In this sovereignty dispute over the islands, the time advantage lies with
China. Seen from faraway, slowly turning spring-like London, the Chinese would
probably relish the chance to settle some old scores by smashing up a large
part of unrepentant Japan.
“God created war so that Americans would learn geography.”
Mark Twain.
China navy seeks to "wear out" Japanese ships in disputed waters
HONG KONG |(Reuters) - China's naval and paramilitary ships are churning up the ocean around islands it disputes with Tokyo in what experts say is a strategy to overwhelm the numerically inferior Japanese forces that must sail out to detect and track the flotillas.
A daily stream of bulletins announce ship deployments into the East China Sea, naval combat exercises, the launch of new warships and commentaries calling for resolute defense of Chinese territory.
"The operational goal in the East China Sea is to wear out the Japanese Maritime Self Defence Force and the Japan Coast Guard," said James Holmes, a maritime strategy expert at the Newport, Rhode Island U.S. Naval War College.
It wasn't until China became embroiled in the high stakes territorial dispute with Japan late last year that its secretive military opened up.
Now, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) is routinely telegraphing its moves around the disputed islands, known as Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyu in Chinese.
News of these missions also has domestic propaganda value for Beijing because it demonstrates the ruling Communist Party has the power and determination to defend what it insists has always been Chinese territory, political analysts said.
However, experts warn that the danger of these constant deployments from both sides into the contested area increases the danger of an accident or miscalculation that could lead to conflict.
In the most threatening incident so far, Tokyo last month said the fire control, or targeting, radar of Chinese warships near the islands "locked on" to a Japanese helicopter and destroyer in two separate incidents in late January.
Beijing denies this but U.S. military officers have backed up Japan's account.
"We are in extremely dangerous territory here," said Ross Babbage, a military analyst in Canberra and a former senior Australian defense official.
"We could have had Japan and China in a serious war."
More
"The international monetary order is more precarious by far
today than it was in 1929. Then, gold was international money, incorruptible,
unmanageable, and unchangeable. Today, the U.S. dollar serves as the
international medium of exchange, managed by Washington politicians and Federal
Reserve officials, manipulated from day to day, and serving political goals and
ambitions. This difference alone sounds the alarm to all perceptive
observers."
Hans F. Sennholz
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished February:
DJIA: +111 Up. NASDAQ: +129 Up. SP500: +148 Up. All three indexes are giving the same signal since
January, up, but surprisingly February’s
move in all three was weak, suggesting that the indicators are topping
out. Will sequestration turn March into a
down month? So far so good.
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