Baltic Dry Index. 871 -01
LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
“Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.”
Edmund Burke
We open today with what looks like a new German
attempt to force most of Club Med to exit the one size fits all German euro. In
a document filed with Germany’s highest court, BUBA contends that any ECB
purchases of sovereign bonds under the ECB Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT)
scheme “entails the purchase of “bad bonds”, violates ECB independence and
entails a high risk of heavy losses in the “not unlikely” event that debtor
states are forced out of EMU.” Clearly many in the Bundesbank now think that
the Club Med debtor states are likely to exit the EMU, and that working
to prevent it is futile. Stay long physical gold and silver. BUBA is quite
likely right.
"The great merit of gold is precisely that it is scarce; that its quantity is limited by nature; that it is costly to discover, to mine, and to process; and that it cannot be created by political fiat or caprice."
Henry Hazlitt
Bundesbank declares 'war' on Mario Draghi bond bail-out at Germany's top court
Germany’s Bundesbank has issued a devastating attack on the bond rescue policies of the European Central Bank, rendering the eurozone’s key crisis measure almost unworkable.
The
hardline central bank - known as the temple of monetary orthodoxy - told
Germany’s top court that the ECB’s pledge to shore up Italian and Spanish debt
entails huge risks and violates fundamental principles. “It is not the duty of
the ECB to rescue states in crisis,” it wrote in a 29-page document leaked to Handelsblatt.
The
Bundesbank unleashed a point by point assault on every claim made by ECB chief
Mario Draghi to justify emergency rescue policies - or Outright Monetary
Transactions (OMT) - unveiled last summer to stop Spain’s debt crisis
spiralling out of control.
The
Draghi plan mobilized the ECB as lender of last resort and led to a spectacular
fall in borrowing costs across the EMU periphery, buying nine months of
financial calm. The credibility of the pledge rests entirely on German consent.
Analysts say the crisis could erupt again at any moment if that is called into
question.
“The
report borders on economic warfare,” said Harvinder Sian from RBS. “We think
there is going to be fear and dread in the market that the court will reject
OMT.”
The
document said OMT entails the purchase of “bad bonds”, violates ECB
independence and entails a high risk of heavy losses in the “not unlikely”
event that debtor states are forced out of EMU.
More
Over the weekend, Greece voted to commit a new form of slow motion national suicide, while Cyprus thieved up to 60 percent of its serf’s cash. Into its collapsing death spiral economy, the Bank of Cyprus just “Cyprussed” 60% of the serfs bank deposits over 100,000 euro. A massive negative blow to the quantity and velocity of money within the economy. Greece announced the firing of some 15,000 civil servants by the end of 2014, with some 4,000 getting fired this year. It doesn’t take a genius to see that most of the 15,000 will now be indifferent to their work at best, downright hostile at worst, with few to none incentivised to help the government implement the German dictated suicide regime.
"Sooner or later both the Greek population and international creditors will tire of fighting a losing battle, leading to a break-up of the currency union as Greece pulls out, probably followed by other countries"Douglas McWilliams, chief executive of the Centre of Economics and Business Research.
Business news and markets: April 29, 2013
The Greek parliament has voted to adopt a law providing for the dismissal of 15,000 civil servants by the end of 2014, as part of austerity measures imposed by the country's international lenders.
07.30 Also overnight, savers
in the Bank of Cyprus have taken a hit of 37.5pc of their uninsured deposits,
that were converted to equity as part of the island's €10bn (£8.4bn) rescue
deal.
Denise
Roland reports:
The
so-called 'bail-in' forces savers to foot the bill for the recapitalisation of
Cyprus' biggest bank, after it was hit by massive losses from its exposure to
debt-crippled Greece.
Bank of
Cyprus said it had converted 37.5pc of deposits exceeding €100,000 into
"class A" shares, with an additional 22.5pc held as a buffer for
possible conversion in the future.
Another
30pc would be temporarily frozen and held as deposits, the bank said.
The
bail-in is part of attempts by Cyprus to find €13bn - a figure nearly double
the island's original bill - to shore up its economy. Other measures include a
possible sell-off of the nation's gold reserves.
07.16 Overnight in Greece, the
parliament has voted to adopt a law providing for the dismissal of 15,000 civil
servants by the end of 2014, as part of austerity measures imposed by the
country's international creditors. Reuters reports
After
heated debate during an emergency session, 168 deputies voted for the bill,
with 123 voting against and one abstaining as the opposition proved powerless
to stop cuts the government insisted were needed to keep the country afloat.
The new
law overturns what had been a guarantee of a job for life for workers in
Greece's notoriously bloated civil service.
Around
800 people turned up outside the parliament to protest against the measure in a
demonstration called by trade unions.
The bill
provides for the dismissal of 15,000 civil servants by the end of 2014,
including 4,000 this year, to meet terms set by Athens's creditors for billions
in bailout loans.
Slashing
an unwieldy public service is a condition set by Greece's so-called
"troika" of creditors -- the International Monetary Fund, European
Union and European Central Bank -- to unlock loans of €8.8 billion.
The new
law will speed dismissal procedures, which previously made it impossible to
sack civil servants and saw the public sector swell over the years as every new
administration brought in its own people.
Employees
who have been disciplined for corruption or incompetence and those working for
one of dozens of shuttered government agencies will be the main targets.
The law,
which was written in a single article to force lawmakers to adopt all its
provisions together, also extends weekly working hours for teachers, opens a
number of professions to competition and reduces a controversial property tax
by 15 percent.
Another
section creates new payment terms for unpaid taxes, intended to help the
government recover billions of euros owed by indebted companies and households.
More
We end for the day with Matt Taibbi and Rolling
Stone on the “big rig.” After the Liebor scandal threatened to bring down the
world’s global banks, prompting the US Justice Department to brand them “too
big to fail or jail,” the ever interesting Mr. Taibbi has now found and even
bigger bankster scam.
Smauel
Untermyer Attorney. Q. But manipulation is a bad thing, is it not?
J.
P. Morgan. A. I think manipulation is always bad.
Testimony
to Congress December 18-19, 1912.
Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever
The Illuminati were amateurs. The second huge financial scandal of the year reveals the real international conspiracy: There's no price the big banks can't fix
By Matt Taibbi
April 25, 2013 1:00 PM ET
Conspiracy theorists of the world, believers in the hidden hands of the
Rothschilds and the Masons and the Illuminati, we skeptics owe you an apology.
You were right. The players may be a little different, but your basic premise
is correct: The world is a rigged game. We found this out in recent months,
when a series of related corruption stories spilled out of the financial
sector, suggesting the world's largest banks may be fixing the prices of, well,
just about everything.You may have heard of the Libor scandal, in which at least three – and perhaps as many as 16 – of the name-brand too-big-to-fail banks have been manipulating global interest rates, in the process messing around with the prices of upward of $500 trillion (that's trillion, with a "t") worth of financial instruments. When that sprawling con burst into public view last year, it was easily the biggest financial scandal in history – MIT professor Andrew Lo even said it "dwarfs by orders of magnitude any financial scam in the history of markets."
That was bad enough, but now Libor may have a twin brother. Word has leaked out that the London-based firm ICAP, the world's largest broker of interest-rate swaps, is being investigated by American authorities for behavior that sounds eerily reminiscent of the Libor mess. Regulators are looking into whether or not a small group of brokers at ICAP may have worked with up to 15 of the world's largest banks to manipulate ISDAfix, a benchmark number used around the world to calculate the prices of interest-rate swaps.
Interest-rate swaps are a tool used by big cities, major corporations and sovereign governments to manage their debt, and the scale of their use is almost unimaginably massive. It's about a $379 trillion market, meaning that any manipulation would affect a pile of assets about 100 times the size of the United States federal budget.
"Of all the contrivances for cheating the laboring classes of mankind, none has been more effective than that which deludes them with paper money."
Daniel Webster
At the Comex silver depositories Friday final figures were: Registered 37.41
Moz, Eligible 128.73 Moz, Total 166.14 Moz.
Crooks and
Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
Today, it’s
those larcenous Swiss again. According to “Sociologist
and former politician Jean Ziegler, in Der Spiegel, “Switzerland is the world capital of
dealing in stolen goods.” When not busy
ripping off American tax authorities, according to Jean Ziegler, the Swiss
banks have made a specialty of plundering the German Treasury. Unable to invade and sort out the Swiss once
and for all time, Germany has made a specialty of crushing the Greeks and their
cousins in Cyprus. It’s a funny old world in the fiat currency brotherhood of Bilderberger
German run Europe.
“The world is a place that’s gone from being flat to round to crooked.”
Mad Magazine.
Money Mountain: Swiss Banks 'Plundering German Treasury'
Sociologist
and former politician Jean Ziegler has few nice things to say about the banking
sector in his native Switzerland. In an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE, he
argues the Alpine nation is the world capital of dealing in stolen goods, and
that Germany has the power to change it.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Bayern
Munich manager Uli Hoeness deposited money
in Switzerland. Does that surprise you?
Ziegler: No. Switzerland has one of the highest per capita incomes in
the world, the strongest currency and the largest financial center for foreign
assets. And we're a small country with no natural resources. Switzerland is the
world capital of dealing in stolen goods.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: That's a harsh accusation. How do you reach that conclusion?
Ziegler: Money comes to Switzerland through three illegal sources: tax evasion in other developed countries, the blood money of dictators and other rulers in the Third World and organized crime.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: You have criticized the Swiss business model for more than 20 years. Has absolutely nothing changed since then?
Ziegler: No, things have changed. Tax evasion formerly wasn't a crime in Switzerland. That's why in cases like that of former Deutsche Post CEO Klaus Zumwinkel there was no cooperation with German authorities. That has changed under pressure from industrialized countries. But Switzerland still rejects the automatic exchange of bank information.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: That was a big sticking point in the planned tax treaty with Germany. Hoeness evidently hoped the deal would pass so he could anonymously legalize his assets. But the plans were blocked by the upper house of parliament in Germany.
Ziegler: Thank God! I don't understand why Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble accepted the treaty. It was the last wise-guy move of the Zurich bankers.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Do Swiss politicians now see the country's role as a finance center in a more critical light?
Ziegler: Not in the least. The structure of the Swiss ruling class is rock-hard, and unchanged since the time of Napoleon. They sit on their mountains and lecture the world on democracy. It's an unbelievable show of self-satisfaction and arrogance.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Come on, some things have changed in Switzerland in recent years.
Ziegler: Yes, but only under pressure. That was the case in the battle over assets owned by Jews that Swiss banks silently held onto after the war. Reparations were first paid out after the United States threatened the banks with a boycott.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Ex-Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück went so far as to compare the situation to needing a military threat to keep a country under pressure. What did you think of his threat?
Ziegler: It was good. I've never understood why Germany lets itself be duped. The Swiss banks have been plundering the German treasury for decades.
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 March:
DJIA: +119 Up. NASDAQ: +132 Up. SP500: +157 Up. Another Fed bubble, but now it’s challenged.
Russia’s Pulkovo Observatory: ‘We could be in for a cooling period that lasts 200-250 years’
Sunday, 28 April 2013Russia’s Pulkovo Observatory: “we could be in for a cooling period that lasts 200-250 years”
Scientists at Russia’s famous Pulkovo Observatory are convinced that the world is in for a period of global cooling.
Global warming which has been the subject of so many discussions in recent years, may give way to global cooling. According to scientists from the Pulkovo Observatory in St.Petersburg, solar activity is waning, so the average yearly temperature will begin to decline as well. Scientists from Britain and the US chime in saying that forecasts for global cooling are far from groundless.
Some experts warn that a change in the climate may affect the ambitious projects for the exploration of the Arctic that have been launched by many countries.
Just recently, experts said that the Arctic ice cover was becoming thinner while journalists warned that the oncoming global warming would make it possible to grow oranges in the north of Siberia. Now, they say a cold spell will set in. Apparently, this will not occur overnight, Yuri Nagovitsyn of the Pulkovo Observatory, says.
”Journalists say the entire process is very simple: once solar activity declines, the temperature drops. But besides solar activity, the climate is influenced by other factors, including the lithosphere, the atmosphere, the ocean, the glaciers. The share of solar activity in climate change is only 20%. This means that sun’s activity could trigger certain changes whereas the actual climate changing process takes place on the Earth”.
Solar activity follows different cycles, including an 11-year cycle, a 90-year cycle and a 200-year cycle. Yuri Nagovitsyn comments.
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