Baltic Dry Index. 872 -07
LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
“Egol and Fabrice were way ahead of their time,” said one of the former Goldman workers.
“They saw the writing on the wall in this market as early as 2005.”
We open today with more on the Great Asian
wobble. With “Dr. Copper” making an 18 month low this week in Shanghai, “the
commodity with the degree in economics” seems to be signalling trouble dead
ahead in the real economy. The timid like me should be out of all leveraged
risk, safely in physical precious metals and cash. Risk takers with genuine
risk capital should be short. The next Lehman seems likely to surface this
summer. Never has the Great Disconnect ever been more dangerous. More MF Global’s
by the dozen. Be ready to instantly get cash out of banks on the first hint of
trouble.
"There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit (debt) expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit (debt) expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved."
Ludwig von Mises
China Politburo Warns on Financial Risks as Recovery Falters
By Bloomberg News - Apr 26, 2013 5:50 AM GMT
China’s top leaders said
the country must guard against financial risks and boost consumption amid signs
that the recovery in the world’s second-biggest economy is faltering. “China needs to cement its domestic economic growth momentum and guard against potential risks in financial sectors,” the Politburo Standing Committee said in a statement late yesterday published by the official Xinhua News Agency. Macro-economic policies should be stabilized and micro controls in some sectors should be loosened, it said after what Xinhua said was a “special session” on the economy.
Data
this week showed China’s manufacturing is expanding at a slower pace, adding to
evidence a recovery is losing steam after an unexpected slowdown to 7.7 percent
growth in the first quarter. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and
JPMorgan Chase & Co. last week cut forecasts for 2013 expansion while
Nomura Holdings Inc. estimates a one-in-three likelihood of a so-called hard
landing before the end of 2014.
More
BOJ Keeps Monetary-Expansion Plan as Deflation Deepens: Economy
By Toru Fujioka & Andy Sharp - Apr 26, 2013 6:37 AM GMT
The Bank
of Japan maintained its unprecedented plan to boost money supply at a
policy meeting today, matching economists’ forecasts, hours after a report
highlighted deflation’s grip on the economy. Consumer prices fell the most in two years, a government release showed, underscoring the challenge facing Governor Haruhiko Kuroda as he aims to meet a 2 percent inflation target. The BOJ reiterated its commitment to enlarge the monetary base, a gauge of money that includes physical currency in circulation plus assets that financial institutions hold at the BOJ, by 60 trillion yen ($607 billion) to 70 trillion yen a year
----The data will be no surprise for the
BOJ, which this month said that it expects prices to keep declining for “the
time being” even after unveiling a plan for unprecedented easing. Board members
probably will raise forecasts for consumer prices in the latest projections,
people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg News this month
More
Next more on our new lawless age. Uncharged bankster
criminals openly strut around Wall Street, bailed out by more taxpayer relief
than ever went to the poor and the ill. So who does Obama’s “yes we can” US
government choose to prosecute, a 79 year old Florida widow. Even the hard
bitten judge was for once outraged. The death of common sense and humanity. Yes
we can because we can!
Pesioners and annuities robbed by “triple-A” US
securities peddled globally to the unsuspecting masses only to implode, bet
against by the very Wall Street peddlers themselves. A world class city unnecessarily closed down
by panicking, over reacting, bumbling officials without even declaring martial
law. Bank deposits thieved at will by unelected European bureaucrats. The UK poor
forced off welfare so banksters can be bailed out with telephone number
bonuses. One in every two of Club Med’s youth forced into emigration or out
into permanent unemployment. More unintended consequences of the dumbed down
world that sprang from the Great Nixonian Error of fiat money.
"God, no, we don't club baby seals. We club babies."
Goldmanite, quoted in The Times of London. November 8 2009
Widow Gets Less Than Minute of Probation in U.S. Tax Case
By Susannah Nesmith & David Voreacos - Apr 26, 2013 5:01 AM GMT
A 79-year-old widow who pleaded guilty in the largest individual case since
a U.S. crackdown on offshore tax evasion began received less than a minute of probation
from a judge who scolded prosecutors.U.S. District Judge Kenneth Ryskamp yesterday sentenced Mary Estelle Curran, who had an account at UBS AG (UBSN), to one year of probation before immediately revoking it in federal court in West Palm Beach, Florida. Curran’s attorney Roy Black told the judge that she was “unsophisticated” about financial matters.
Curran, of Palm Beach, faced as long as 37 months in prison for failing to disclose to the Internal Revenue Service that she had more than $43 million in Swiss bank accounts. Curran pleaded guilty to two counts of tax evasion in January. She paid a $21.6 million penalty as well as back taxes.
“This is really a tragic situation,” Ryskamp said. “It seems to me the government should have used a little more discretion.”
Ryskamp urged Black to appeal to the president to pardon Curran.
“If the government doesn’t join in that, it’s just spiteful,” the judge said.
Mark Daly, a Justice Department trial attorney, declined to comment after the hearing.
Up next, more on the never ending rescue of
Euroland. We’ve got to destroy the nation to save it, goes the logic in Berlin
and Brussels. On present crazy policies, Spain will neither be saved nor
rescued. Stay long physical precious metals, held anywhere except in a bank.
Sooner or later, but my guess is sooner as in 2013, the euro as we know it will
split. Most of Club Med can then get on with the process of trying to undo the
damage wrought by Germany.
"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.
The great Spanish nation can end its crucifixion at will by leaving EMU
Economics Last updated: April 25th, 2013
The mind
goes numb. Spanish unemployment jumped by yet another 237,000 people in the
first quarter to 6.2 million, or 27.2pc.
This is
equivalent to roughly 8.3 million in Britain, or 39 million in the United
States. The country is losing 3,581 jobs a day. There are 1.9m households where
no member of the family has a job.
As you
can see from this graphic, the rate has reached 36.8pc in Andalusia, Spain's
most populous region.
The
national rate of unemployed youth is 57.2pc, rising to 70pc in the Canaries.
This is
in spite of mass emigration by Spanish youth. El Pais reports that 260,000
young people aged between 16 and 30 left the country last year.
----Some claim that unemployment was almost as high in the early 1990s. It was not. A study by the Bank of Spain found that today's rate would be 4pc to 5pc higher under the old way of counting, nearer 32pc.
----The
Rajoy government said today that the crisis is "dramatic" but
insisted that the country has regained the confidence of the financial markets
and is at last on the road to recovery. Sadly this is not the case. The bond
vigilantes have been quiet only because the ECB has promised to backstop the
Spanish debt market. The crisis in the real economy is getting worse. The City
knows that.
Public
debt jumped from 69pc to 84pc of GDP last year, and only part was due to the
bank bail-out. That is a big jump in one year and it understates the actual debt.
David Owen from Jefferies says the real figure is 113pc once trade credits and
unpaid bills are included, a figure available from the Bank of Spain.
----I
am surprised that a great historic nation should put up with 27pc unemployment,
or accept vassal status to an incompetent and dysfunctional EMU regime. Does
anybody in Madrid think that EU officials in Brussels actually know what they
are doing? Or that the monetary provincials in Frankfurt (Draghi excepted) are
much better? Or that the Eurogroup is a civilised organisation after the way it
treated Cyprus?
More
We end for the week awaiting the ECB’s data on
capital flight from Cyprus. Who got tipped off in advance and how much did they
manage to move. Note the use of the weasel words “tax” and Cyprus “incident.” The correct English words are stolen, theft,
purloined and robbery. At the first hint of trouble in a bank anywhere on God’s
planet Earth, we all now have to move instantly to reclaim our hard earned
money before they steal it. Only the
slowest, the dimmest, the infirm, the pensioners, and those requiring a bank
account managed via a guardian, will likely be left behind to get Cyprussed.
Another unintended consequence of the Great Nixonian Error of fiat money, and
the serial incompetence of Europe’s politicians, bureaucrats and banksters.
ECB Data to Show Extent of Capital Flight in Cyprus
By Stefan Riecher - Apr 26, 2013 12:00 AM GMT
The European Central Bank will publish data today showing how
much money savers withdrew from the euro region’s banks after a botched attempt
to tax Cypriot savers as part of a European Union-led bailout. The ECB will publish data for euro-area bank deposits including Cyprus after 10 a.m. in Frankfurt. In February, the month before the rescue, Cypriot deposits decreased 2.2 percent to 46.4 billion euros, down from 47.4 billion the previous month. It was the ninth straight decline
Cypriot
officials, euro-area finance ministers and the ECB agreed mid-March on an
unprecedented measure to impose a levy on deposits of less than 100,000 euros
($130,000) under a 10 billion-euro bailout. The plan was ditched after the
country’s parliament rejected it, and a new accord was reached where only
savings above the insured level of 100,000 euros will be taxed.
----“I’m
sure Cypriot banks have seen a deposit flight last month and it would be even
more interesting to see how much money left the country in the second half of
the month,” said Christian Schulz, an economist at Berenberg Bank in London.
“The deposit data for other countries will tell us a lot about how much damage
the incident in Cyprus has done.”
More
"When it becomes serious, you have to lie"
Jean-Claude Juncker. Luxembourg Prime Minister and ex-president of the Euro Group of Finance Ministers. Confessed liar.
At the Comex silver depositories Thursday final figures were: Registered 38.12
Moz, Eligible 128.50 Moz, Total 166.62 Moz.
Crooks and
Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
Another weekend, and another great vampire squid, missing client’s money
scandal breaking. It’s not their fault really, as Oscar Wilde said, they can
resist anything except temptation. The financial services industry hasn’t been
honest since disgraced fallen guru Greenspan bailed out Wall Street in the
panic of 1987, and gave the banksters of Wall Street a blank cheque in the form
of the Greenspan put. We are reaping post 2008, the sins of 25 years of a
financialised crony casino economy.
Old Ebenezer Squid had one-way
pockets. He would walk ten miles in the snow to chisel an orphan out of
tuppence.
With apologies to P.G. Wodehouse and the Duke of
Dunstable
Japan Regulator Said to Probe U.S. Firm MRI on Missing Assets
By Takako Taniguchi & Shigeru Sato - Apr 26, 2013 5:06 AM GMT
Japan’s financial watchdog
is investigating U.S. asset-management company MRI International Inc. on
suspicion that it lost clients’ money, a person with knowledge of the matter
said. The Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission plans to unveil the result of the probe as early as today, said the person, who asked not to be named before the announcement. The Financial Services Agency may order Las Vegas-based MRI to suspend operations in Japan, the Nikkei newspaper reported earlier, without citing anyone. Hiroshi Okada, a Tokyo-based spokesman for the agency, declined to comment
The probe comes a year after Japan’s financial watchdog conducted the biggest investigation of the country’s assets managers amid allegations of fraud at AIJ Investment Advisors Co. AIJ, a Tokyo-based investment company, was found to have concealed losing more than 100 billion yen ($1 billion) of clients’ money.
Calls to MRI’s Tokyo office were transferred to an answering machine saying it will “deliver letters to clients in due course.” The office had a notice posted on its entrance saying business is closed today. Nobody answered the door this morning.
Regulators haven’t been able to confirm the amount of potential client losses, the person said. As much as 130 billion yen may be missing, the Nikkei reported.
MRI, founded in 1998, sells investment products that are related to the rights to collect medical service fees, according to its website. The products offer an annual return of as high as 8.5 percent, according to its Japanese website.
More
So, Goldman is a serial arsonist that has turned betting against its clients' interests into a science. The Times article makes it clear that shorting subprime and luring gullible investors into the trap, was standard operating procedure. Goldman's CEO Lloyd Blankfein dismisses the criticism with a wave of the hand saying, "They were sophisticated investors," which is the same as saying "buyer beware". It's worth noting that shorting subprimes exacerbated the pain in housing by creating incentives for originators to issue more mortgages to people with poor credit. This prolonged the housing boom and deepened the recession when the bubble finally burst. The eventual downturn was largely engineered by Wall Street.
http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney04192010.html
Have a great spring weekend everyone. Next week in Europe, the May Day
holiday. Mayday, Mayday, Mayday!!!
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished March:
DJIA: +119 Up. NASDAQ: +132 Up. SP500: +157 Up. Another Fed bubble, but now it’s challenged.
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