Baltic Dry Index. 875 +10
LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
“When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product
of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done”
John Maynard Keynes.
Gold had a bad week last week, at least if you
follow the tipsters who advocate using leveraged futures to try to gamble your
way to prosperity. Very few customers made money trading futures, in my
experience on Wall Street, with even fewer holding onto winnings for long. No
one was ever willing to walk away with any winnings, as in a casino, “profits”
were usually poured right back into the next bet. In my day only a handful of
futures traders were genuine hedgers, with most users of futures trading just
rent-seeking speculators seeking the fast lane to easy street. In my day front
running the customers was still illegal and enforced by firing and trip to the
courts. Now it’s actively promoted as “high frequency trading,” putting the
client Muppets at an ever further disadvantage to Wall Street’s Great vampire
Squids.
Across my lifetime following markets, I have has a
frontline seat as they went from economic legitimacy to crony casino capitalism,
run by spivs and outright crooks. Even now the banksters still pay themselves
bonuses on mark to fantasy profits, insisting on privity of their contracts
ahead of all others, long after they have bankrupted the bank. I was there when
the dubious futures contracts on stock indexes came in, followed shortly
thereafter by options on stock index futures. Unlike cattle futures, wheat
futures, or copper futures the new derivatives gambling contracts have almost no
genuine hedging function and only promote Wall Street and City of London socialised
gambling. A stock index is a notional construct forever tinkered with to drop
out the losers and bring in the next winner. A stock index derivatives futures
contract merely allows leverage betting on the notional index. The stock index derivatives
options contract merely allows for leveraged betting on the derivatives futures
contract, no added wealth has been generated in this sick society.
Today we are in a central bank supported, new money
from nothing world, of far more complex and useless derivatives gambling
contracts, that’s now extended so far as to be blowing up banks and nations and
bank deposits. To get out of our totally corrupt bankster driven, but
collapsing fiat currency system, Germany is now proposing that in addition to
misguided austerity regimes, Club Med and preferably all of the EU, now start
imposing “wealth taxes” to bail out the Great Nixonian Error of fiat currency,
and the financialised derivatives gambling, too big to fail, socialised crony
capitalism it spawned.
It doesn’t take a genius to recognise where all
this ends, we just don’t know of the timing. The euro as we know it is coming
towards its end. The Yen and the dollar will be right behind. Tiny currencies
like the Pound will fare no better. I will be adding to physical gold purchases
during the present decline on a scale basis, but especially near the time of
the fire sale. Since silver carries a 20% value added tax here, unlike gold, I
will not be adding to my silver holdings. If the EU is foolish enough to start
forcing Cyprus and the rest of Club Med to start selling off the gold bullion
holdings in a fire sale, much of the reason behind last week’s precious metals
selling, the bullion will transfer from Europe across to Asia and Russia. A
repeat of the wretched Gordon Brown’s incompetence in selling off the UK’s gold
at the post 1980 lows. A much weakened
Europe will have far less ability to recover from the Great Nixonian Error of
fiat money. Asia all the more ability, and likelihood to supply the dollar
replacement currency settled one way or another with gold.
Below this morning’s update in the curse of the
wealth destroying, Bilderberger euro. This modern day farce would all be economically hilarious if it all
wasn’t so sad and unnecessary.
The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in
escaping from old ones.
John Maynard Keynes.
German 'Wise Men' push for wealth seizure to fund EMU bail-outs
Two top advisers to German Chancellor Angela Merkel have called for a tax on private wealth and property in eurozone debtor states to force the rich to fund rescue costs, marking a radical new departure for EMU crisis strategy.
Professors
Lars Feld and Peter Bofinger said states in trouble must pay more for their own
salvation, arguing that there is enough wealth in homes and private assets
across the Mediterranean to cover bail-out costs.
“The rich must give up part
of their wealth over the next ten years,” said Prof Bofinger.
The two
economist are members of Germany’s Council of Economic Experts or “Five Wise
Men”, a body that advises the Chancellor on major issues. There is no formal
plan to launch a wealth tax but the council is often used to fly kites for new
policies.
Prof
Bofinger told Spiegel Magazine that it was a mistake to target deposit holders
in banks, the formula used in the EU-IMF Troika bail-out for Cyprus where those
with savings above €100,000 at Laiki and Bank of Cyprus face huge losses. “The
canny rich in southern Europe just shift their money to banks in Northern
Europe to escape seizure,” he said.
Prof Feld
said a new survey by the European Central Bank had revealed that people in the
crisis countries are richer than the Germans themselves. “This shows that
Germany has been right to take a tough line of euro rescue loans,” he said.
The ECB
study found that the “median” wealth of is €267,000 in Cyprus, compared to just
€51,000 in Germany where home ownership rate is just 44pc and large numbers of
people have almost no assets.
The
median or midpoint level -- which strips out the distorting effect of the
super-rich -- was €183,000 for Spain, €172,000 for Italy, and €102,000, and
even €75,000 for Portugal.
Average
wealth in Cyprus is €671,000, far higher than in the four AAA creditor states:
Austria (265,000), Germany (195,000), Holland (170,000), Finland (161,000).
The ECB
survey has hardened attitudes in Berlin, dooming efforts by Cyprus extract more
money from the Eurogroup as rescue costs surge from €17.5bn to €23bn.
More
Portugal’s elder statesman calls for 'Argentine-style' default
Portugal's leading elder statesman has called on the country to copy Argentina and default on its debt to avert economic collapse, a move that would lead to near certain ejection from the euro.
Mario
Soares, who steered the country to democracy after the Salazar dictatorship,
said all political forces should unite to “bring down the government” and
repudiate the austerity policies of the EU-IMF Troika.
“Portugal
will never be able to pay its debts, however much it impoverishes itself. If
you can’t pay, the only solution is not to pay. When Argentina was in crisis it
didn’t pay. Did anything happen? No, nothing happened," he told Antena 1.
The
former socialist premier and president said the Portuguese government has
become a servant of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, meekly doing whatever it
is told.
“In their
eagerness to do the bidding of Senhora Merkel, they have sold everything and
ruined this country. In two years this government has destroyed Portugal,” he
said.
Dario
Perkins from Lombard Street Research said a hard-nosed default would force
Portugal out of the euro. “It would create incredible animosity,” he said.
“Germany would be alarmed that other countries might do the same so it would
take a very tough line.”
Mr
Perkins said all the peripheral states are “deeply scared” of being forced out
of EMU. “They fear their economies would collapse, which is ridiculous. But in
the end voters are going to elect politicians who refuse to along with austerity
as we are seeing in Italy, and the EU will lose control,” he said.
Raoul
Ruparel from Open Europe said Portugal had reached the limits of austerity.
“The previous political consensus in parliament has evaporated. As so often in
this crisis, the eurozone is coming up against the full force of national
democracy.”
More
EU Set to Clash on Bank Deal as Germany Sees Treaty Limit
By Jim Brunsden, Stephanie
Bodoni & Rainer Buergin - Apr
13, 2013 11:01 PM GMT
European Union nations are set to clash over plans to centralize the
handling of failing banks, as Germany
warned that the bloc is running out of road to adopt crisis-fighting measures
under its current treaties. German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told his EU counterparts at a meeting in Dublin April 12-13 that there isn’t enough of a basis in the EU’s current rulebook for building a common authority and fund for bank failures. Other nations, including France, Luxembourg, and Denmark, are urging swift progress on putting in place a resolution system, amid concerns that treaty changes would cause unacceptable delays
----The European Central Bank and Michel Barnier, the EU’s financial services chief, have called for the creation of a European Resolution Authority, backed with a common fund, to intervene at crisis-hit banks in the euro area, saying the step is an essential part of efforts to build a so-called banking union that would untangle the fates of lenders and sovereigns. Barnier has said that he will present draft legislation in June.
“A banking union only makes sense if we have mechanisms for the restructuring and resolution of banks,” Schaeuble said. “But if we want these European institutions, we need treaty changes
----Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who chairs meetings of euro-area finance ministers, said the German position meant some limited treaty change was inevitable for the EU to make further progress toward a fully-fledged banking union.
“The
Germans made very clear” that they don’t consider that the current EU treaties
provide a basis for centralized bank resolution, Dijsselbloem told reporters.
“If we want to make further steps, we must look at a limited treaty change on
this issue.”
More
Cyprus offers passport to big foreign investors
Cyprus will relax requirements for citizenship, including for bank depositors who lost large amounts of money in the deal with the EU and IMF, in an effort to keep foreigners interested in investing in the island state, the country’s president said on Sunday.
By Denise
Roland, and agencies 8:12PM BST 14 Apr 2013
Cyprus
was forced to wind down one major bank and impose considerable losses on large
depositors in a second bank in return for €10bn in aid from the International Monetary
Fund and the European Union in a move that was devastating to both Cypriots and
foreign investors. Eurozone finance ministers approved the aid on Friday.
In
prepared remarks to Russian businessmen in the port city of Limassol, President
Nicos Anastasiades said his cabinet would this week approve the relaxation of
restrictions on foreigners seeking citizenship of Cyprus, an EU member since
2004.
Non-resident
investors who held deposits prior to March 15, when the plan to impose losses
on savers was first formulated, and who lost at least €3m would be eligible to
apply for Cypriot citizenship, he said.
Cyprus’s
existing “citizenship by investment” programme - similar to that of many
countries - would be revised to reduce the amount of investment required to be
eligible for the programme from the previous €10m euros.
“These
decisions will be deployed in a fast-track manner,” Anastasiades said. Other
measures were also under consideration, he said, including offering tax
incentives for existing or new companies doing business in Cyprus.
More
Cyprus gold sale profits must be used to pay back ECB, orders eurozone
The sale of Cypriot gold reserves worth €400m will be used to pay back the European Central Bank as the eurozone forces the tiny Mediterranean island to take on an extra €6bn in bail-out costs.
Cyprus
must sell off the gold, amounting to three quarters of the country's reserves,
to try to meet the soaring costs of its bail-out without any additional help
from the European Union and IMF.
The extra
financing burden, equivalent to a third of the island's annual GDP, is expected
to push Cyprus into an economic meltdown and takes the cost of the Cypriot
bail-out to over 135pc of the country's economic wealth.
Mario
Draghi, the president of the ECB, has told Cypriot government that money from
the gold sale cannot be used to reduce public debt but must be used to help pay
back €9.1bn in emergency liquidity assistance (ELA) given to the central bank
of Cyprus.
"The
decision is going to be taken by the central bank. What is important, however,
is that what is being transferred to the government budget out of the profits
made out of the sales of gold should cover first and foremost any potential loss
that the central bank might have from its ELA," he said.
Increasing
the humiliation for Cyprus, Mr Draghi has written to Nicos Anastasiades, the
Cypriot President, ordering him to stop angry MPs from criticising or
investigating the central bank and threatening him with sanctions in the EU
courts.
The importance of money flows from it being a link between the
present and the future.
John Maynard Keynes.
At the Comex silver depositories Friday final figures were: Registered 41.00
Moz, Eligible 123.66 Moz, Total 164.66 Moz.
Crooks and
Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
On this day in history lest we forget. April 15, 1945.
1945: British troops liberate Bergen-Belsen
British
troops have entered the German concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen.
Inside
the camp the horrified soldiers found piles of dead and rotting corpses and
thousands of sick and starving prisoners kept in severely overcrowded and dirty
compounds.
Belsen,
near Hanover in Germany, is the first concentration camp to be liberated by the
British. Details of the conditions inside are likely to horrify a public which
until now has only heard limited descriptions from the camps in Poland freed by
the Red Army.
The first
British soldiers who entered Bergen-Belsen have described seeing a huge pile of
dead, naked women's bodies within full view of several hundred children held at
the camp.
|
|
The
gutters, too, were filled with dead bodies.
One of
the reasons the Germans agreed to surrender Belsen was because so many of the
inmates were diseased. There was no running water in the camp and there were
epidemics of typhus, typhoid and tuberculosis.
There
were thousands of sick women, who should have been in hospital, lying on hard,
bare bug-ridden boards. Of the 1,704 acute typhus, typhoid and tuberculosis
cases, only 474 women had bunks to sleep on.
There
were fewer male prisoners, but they were also kept in severely overcrowded and
dirty conditions.
One of
the British senior medical officers, Brigadier Llewellyn Glyn- Hughes, told the
Reuters news agency he saw evidence of cannibalism in the camp. There were
bodies with no flesh on them and the liver, kidneys and heart removed.
He said
their first priority was to remove the dead bodies from the camp. He was told
some 30,000 people had died in the past few months.
He said
typhus had caused far fewer deaths than starvation. Men and women had tried to
keep themselves clean with dregs from coffee cups. Medical supplies were
severely limited - there were no vaccines, or drugs and no treatments for lice.
The only
food available for the prisoners was turnip soup and British guards had to fire
over the heads of prisoners to restore order among those desperate to get at
the food stores.
Those
prisoners who were too weak to get up and collect their food went without and
died.
The camp
commandant, who was described as "unashamed" at the camp conditions,
has been placed under arrest.
Massacre of Kalavryta
The Holocaust of Kalavryta (Greek: Ολοκαύτωμα των Καλαβρύτων), or the Massacre of Kalavryta (Σφαγή των Καλαβρύτων), refers to the extermination of the male population and the subsequent total destruction of the town of Kalavryta, in Greece, by German occupying forces during World War II on 13 December 1943. Aside from the deportation and murder of over 80% of Greece's Jewish population, it is the most serious case of war crimes committed during the Axis occupation of Greece during World War II.In early December 1943, the German Army's 117th Jäger Division began a mission named Unternehmen Kalavryta (Operation Kalavryta), intending to encircle Greek guerilla fighters in the mountainous area surrounding Kalavryta. During the operation, 78 German soldiers, who had been taken prisoner by the Greek guerillas in October, were executed by their captors. The Commander of the German division, General Karl von Le Suire reacted with harsh and massive reprisal operations across the region. He personally ordered the 'severest measures' - the killing of the male population of Kalavryta - on 10 December 1943.
Operation Kalavryta struck from Patras and Aigion on the Gulf of Corinth and from near Tripolis in central Peloponnese. All 'Battle-Groups' were aimed at Kalavryta. Wehrmacht troops burnt villages and monasteries and shot civilians on their way. When they reached the town they locked all women and children in the school and marched all males 12 and older to a hill just overlooking the town. There, the German troops machine-gunned down all of them. There were only 13 male survivors. Over 500 died at Kalavryta. The survivors told their story of survival, saying that after the Germans machine-gunned the crowd, some falling bodies were covered by the dead. This way, when the Germans went through again to finish off those still alive, the few lucky ones escaped the coup-de-grace. The women and children managed to free themselves from the school, some say after a German soldier took pity on them and let them escape, while the town was set ablaze. The following day the Nazi troops burnt down the Monastery of Agia Lavra, a landmark of the Greek War of Independence.
More
“How long will it be necessary to pay
City men so entirely out of proportion to what other servants of society commonly
receive for performing social services not less useful or difficult?”
John Maynard Keynes.
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished March:
DJIA: +119 Up. NASDAQ: +132 Up. SP500: +157 Up. Another Fed bubble grows. For the adventurous,
with true risk capital, ridding this new bubble is a calculated risk as long as
the central banksters pursue QE and ZIRP. But remember, getting out early and
near first is the name of the game in trading bubbles.
No comments:
Post a Comment