Baltic Dry Index. 1151 +26.
LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
“The creatures outside looked from America to Russia, and from Russia
to America, and from America to Russia again; but already it was impossible to
say which was which.”
With apologies to Animal Farm.
More on the Fed’s panic later, first this bad news
from Asia. Japan’s new beggar thy neighbour trade war has beggared southeast
Asia’s Vietnam. In response, Vietnam has devalued the Dong to regain competitiveness
against Japan and all comers. The currency wars continue, though nothing good
will come from them. This morning Asia is
leading the world towards a full scale currency crisis, the central banksters
have now totally lost control over coming events.
"Gold would have value if for no other reason than that it enables a citizen to fashion his financial escape from the state."
William F. Rickenbacker
Vietnam Devalues Dong for First Time Since ’11 to Boost Reserves
By Bloomberg News - Jun 28, 2013 3:35 AM GMT
Vietnam’s central bank
devalued its currency for the first time since 2011 and cut the interest-rate
cap on dollar deposits to help “improve” the balance of payments and boost
foreign-exchange reserves. The State Bank of Vietnam weakened its reference rate by 1 percent to 21,036 dong per dollar, effective today, according to a statement released late yesterday. The currency, which is allowed to trade up to 1 percent on either side of the fixing, fell 0.8 percent to 21,180 as of 9:06 a.m. in Hanoi, prices compiled by Bloomberg show. The reference rate had been kept at 20,828 since 2011 and the spot rate sank to a record 21,036 most days this month, the lower limit of the trading band.
“The
trade balance
has swung back into deficit,” Tim Condon, head of Asian research at ING Groep NV in Singapore, wrote
in a note today. “Devaluation is the standard policy response when this
happens.”
More
Indian media: Concerns over rupee's fall
27 June 2013 Last updated at 08:32
Media in India are expressing concerns over the sharp decline in the value
of the rupee against the US dollar.On Wednesday, the rupee touched a "historic low" of 60.72 against the dollar, sparking worries of rise in the prices of essential commodities.
The Hindustan Times says the depreciation "is threatening to blow a bigger hole in household budgets and dashing hopes that the Reserve Bank of India will make loans cheaper".
"Over 11% fall in two months is extremely alarming which, in turn, pushes up the prices of commodities, especially oil and coal," The Hindu quotes financial analyst KN Dey as saying.
The Pioneer feels the sharp fall "clearly indicates tough days ahead for the economy and the common man alike".
More
China Bad-Loan Alarm Sounded by Record Bank Spread Jump
By Bloomberg News - Jun 28, 2013 5:18 AM GMT
Borrowing costs for Chinese banks have surged the most in at least six years
this month as rating companies say a cash crunch threatens to swell bad loans. The yield spread for one-year AAA bank bonds over similar-maturity sovereign notes jumped 56 basis points so far this month to 163 basis points, the most in ChinaBond records going back to 2007. The similar AA gap widened 59 basis points to 188. Even as China Construction Bank Corp. (939) President Zhang Jianguo said yesterday cash conditions have normalized, the benchmark seven-day repurchase rate was fixed at 6.85 percent, almost twice the 3.84 percent average for this year.
Money-market
rates touched the highest level last week since at least 2003, prompting three
of the largest rating agencies to warn banks may run out of cash to pay
investors in their wealth management products and to extend new loans,
increasing the risk their customers will default. The People’s Bank of China is seeking to
wring speculative lending out of the system after total credit approached 200
percent of gross domestic product, according to Fitch Ratings.
----Bad loans at banks including Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. have increased for six straight quarters through March 31, the longest streak in at least nine years.
Chinese commercial banks’ outstanding non-performing loans rose 20 percent to 526.5 billion yuan ($86 billion) at the end of the first quarter from a year earlier, accounting for 0.96 percent of total lending, according to data from the China Banking Regulatory Commission.
Those figures don’t reflect the real amount of debt because of the ways banks move loans off their books, Charlene Chu, Fitch’s Beijing-based head of China financial institutions, said in April. Some loans are bundled and sold to savers as wealth-management products, which pay more than regulated deposits, she said. Other assets are sold to non-bank institutions, including trusts, to lower bad-debt levels.
More
China calls Xinjiang unrest a 'terrorist attack', ups death toll to 35
BEIJING |(Reuters) - China's state media has raised to 35 the death toll from unrest this week in far western Xinjiang region, and denounced the clashes, the deadliest in four years, as a "terrorist attack".
Xinjiang is home to a large Muslim Uighur community and violence focusing on its discontent had been confined recently to southern districts. The altercations in Shanshan county on Wednesday marked a return of unrest to Xinjiang's north.
Many Uighurs, Muslims who speak a Turkic language, chafe at what they call Chinese government restrictions on their culture, language and religion. China says it grants Uighurs wide-ranging freedoms and accuses extremists of separatism.
On Wednesday, gangs with knives attacked a police station and a government building and set fire to police cars. Twenty-four people died in clashes with police, including 16 Uighurs, state news agency Xinhua said.
According to Xinhua's latest dispatch on Thursday night, eight more died in the police response. It called the incident a "violent terrorist attack" and said the overall situation was now "on the whole, stable".
An officer at Shanshan county's public security, or police, bureau told Reuters by telephone that the cause of the riots and the ethnic origin of the attackers remained unclear.
Xinjiang government officials could not be reached.
More
Now back to the full on panic at the Fed following
the Bernank’s Great Miscalculation. Forget any idea of a taper, let alone the
death of QE forever. Three top Fed officials are now so panicked at the
relatively minor move in interest rates, that it’s back to QE forever, forever.
Stay long physical precious metals. The end of the Great Nixonian Error of fiat
currency began in 2008, we will likely see its death this decade. Meanwhile it’s
“dress up the end of quarter and half year time, in the markets. No chance of any
Liebor style rigging I suppose?
June 27, 2013, 4:01 p.m. EDT
3 more Fed officials chastise ‘feral hogs’
WASHINGTON
(MarketWatch) — Three top Federal Reserve officials on Thursday took issue with
the jump in interest rates since the central bank’s meeting last week, saying
that they were not based on anything policy makers had intended.
Markets
are now pricing in more rate hikes than had been assumed before last week’s
policy meeting and news conference by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.
Fed fund futures imply at least three quarter-point rate hikes, and possibly
four, by the end of 2015.
Earlier
this week, Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher likened market participants to
“feral hogs” for pushing bond yields higher.
On
Thursday, William Dudley, the president of the New York Fed, Fed Gov.Jerome
Powell and Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart were less colorful but more
pointed.
Dudley
said expectations of an earlier rate hike were “quite out of sync” with both
FOMC statements and the expectations of most FOMC participants.”
Any rise
in short-term rates “is very likely to be a long way off,” he stressed.
Powell,
in a separate appearance, said the spike in bond yields over the past month
is“larger” than would be justified by any “reasonable reassessment” of the path
of Fed policy.
----In a
speech in Marietta, Ga., Lockhart said that some in the markets appeared to
mishear what Bernanke said.
Lockhart
compared the market to someone who has to give up smoking.
“I don’t
want to be too cute about a serious matter, but to make an analogy, it seems to
me [Bernanke] said we’ll use the patch, and use it flexibly, and some in the
markets reacted as if he said ‘cold turkey’,” Lockhart said.
More
While I think that its time to start buying
physical precious metals again, and that the great correction is over, others
think that gold has entered a new bear market. I think that gold has much
further to rise as the central bankster trash the fiat currencies. But there
are other reasons to be a buyer of gold below about $1,400 a troy ounce. It
doesn’t pay to produce gold in many South African mines below roughly 1400, and
costs are about to take a massive jump down there later this year. There is
every prospect of major labour unrest, and a major decline from next year in
South Africa’s gold output. It’s a funny old world on fiat money and
manipulated markets. One that threatens to put South Africa’s working poor out
of work and into destitution.
Gold Bear Market Hits Hardest in South Africa Mines: Commodities
By Kevin Crowley & Andre Janse van Vuuren
- Jun 26, 2013 8:36 AM GMT
No one has more to lose from gold’s bear market
than South African producers as workers digging in the world’s deepest,
costliest mines threaten to bring them to a standstill unless pay is more than
doubled. Today the metal slipped to as low as $1,245 an ounce, a record quarterly drop and below production and capital spending expenses at Sibanye Gold Ltd. (SGL), Harmony Gold Mining Co. and Gold Fields Ltd. (GFI), figures compiled by Bloomberg show. Harmony’s South African output costs are the highest of the world’s 12 biggest producers by volume, according to Bloomberg Industries.
“Anything
below $1,400 an ounce is sort of a red line” for South African gold producers,
said David
Davis, a Johannesburg-based analyst at SBG Securities. “There’s a vast
difference between what labor unions are demanding and what South African mines
can afford. It points towards long drawn out negotiations that could end in
dispute.”
Surging militancy among workers threatens to erupt into violence in the run-up to wage talks in mid-July as labor unions dig in for increases that could overwhelm companies’ profit. Strikes and related violence at mines last year that left at least 44 dead knocked 0.5 percentage point off economic growth, according to the National Treasury, and led to pay gains for some of about double the pace of inflation.
Violence extended into this year with three workers killed in the past six weeks including members of the rival National Union of Mineworkers and Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union.
More
We end for yet another chaotic week with the
decline and impending fall of the EUSSR. With yet another “Great Leaders”
meeting ending, I have every confidence in their infallible ability to
make matters worse. There never was a problem a bent politician and a crooked
central bankster, and their bureaucrats couldn’t make worse.
Tempers fray in France as drastic cuts loom
France's budget watchdog has called for another round of drastic cuts and an immediate freeze in public sector pay and benefits, warning that public finances are badly off track as deep recession eats into tax revenues.
The
country's Cour des Comptes said the budget is likely to breach EU targets by a
wide margin yet again this year, perhaps reaching 4.1pc of GDP, risking a fresh
showdown with Europe a time when French support for the EU Project is already
in freefall.
The
watchdog called for €28bn in extra belt-tightening over the next two years to
prevent a debacle, demanding a "particularly vigourous effort" to
rein in unemployment benefits, housing aide, pensions and help for families.
President
Francois Hollande has already angered much of his own Socialist base with plans
to cut spending next year in absolute terms for the first time since 1958, but
this may be just start of the battle. The Cour des Comptes said France is not
even "halfway" through its fiscal squeeze.
The
warnings came as a blizzard of grim news dashed hopes for a rapid recovery from
two years of slump. The data office INSEE said consumer confidence fell to 82
in June, the lowest since the series began 40 years ago.
A new
report on French competitiveness country by Ernst & Young entitled
"Last Chance" confirmed the worst fears of business leaders,
concluding that the country is being left behind as foreign investment migrates
to Germany and Britain.
The
number of new industrial plants created by foreigners fell 25pc last year, and
new job creation fell 53pc, with the emerging BRICS powers avoiding the country
altogether. Ernst & Young said France's anti-market body language had
become almost "repulsive" for outside investors, not helped by a
series of bitter labour disputes.
"France
is drifting away. Like a receeding wave, it is retreating little by little from
the global economy, imperceptibly in the past, but visibly so today," said
Jean-Pierre Letartre, Ernst & Young's chief in France.
Mr
Letartre said France still has world class companies in technolgy, transport
and information services but is succumbing to a "generalised
depression" that is feeding itself in a destructive dynamic.
----Officials in Brussels are watching with alarm as French leaders whip up a concerted campaign against European Commission president Jose Barroso, who in a loose moment described French Socialists as "extreme reactionaries" for clinging to cultural protection for France's film industry and arts.
Parliament
president Claude Bartolone, who called for showdown over austerity policies
with Germany in April, said Mr Barroso is a relic of the last century. "He
is a man past his time. His behaviour is insufferable. He incarnates a Europe
of markets, capital and a forced march towards austerity," he said.
More
German Inflation Probably Accelerated for a Second Month
By Stefan Riecher - Jun 28, 2013 12:01 AM GMT
German inflation (ECCPEST) probably
accelerated for a second month in June after falling to the lowest level since
2010 in April. The consumer price index in Europe’s largest economy, calculated using a harmonized European Union method, rose 1.8 percent from a year ago, compared with 1.6 percent in May, according to the median of 24 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey. Prices probably climbed 0.1 percent on the month, the survey shows. German states are scheduled to report inflation data throughout today before the Federal Statistics Office in Wiesbaden publishes national figures at 2 p.m.
More
Denmark Commits to Toughest Bail-Ins as EU Deal Readings Vary
By Peter Levring - Jun 28, 2013 6:18 AM GMT
Denmark isn’t planning to
soften its stance on bail-ins after the European Union struck a deal on bank
resolution that leaves room for national interpretation. The first EU nation to enforce losses on senior creditors in bank failures won’t back down from a law passed in 2010 that ensures taxpayer funds aren’t tapped to aid failing banks, Economy Minister Margrethe Vestager said.
“The EU proposal will not change Denmark’s bank resolution legislation or the conditions for bail-ins in Denmark,” Vestager said yesterday in a phone interview after returning from all-night talks in Brussels. “It will not make the road to receiving a bailout any easier in Denmark.”
EU finance ministers reached a compromise deal yesterday setting guidelines for assigning losses to private bank creditors. The text of the agreement still gives governments the option to nationalize banks to preserve financial stability. Danish banks, led by Danske Bank A/S (DANSKE), have argued the country’s bail-in legislation puts them at a disadvantage to competitors in neighboring Sweden, where creditors can expect state backing.
More
“...out
from the door of the farmhouse came a long file of pigs, all walking on their
hind legs...out came Obama himself, majestically upright, casting haughty
glances from side to side, and with his dogs gambolling round him.
He carried a whip in his trotter.”
He carried a whip in his trotter.”
With
apologies to Animal Farm.
At the Comex silver depositories Thursday final figures were: Registered 41.40
Moz, Eligible 123.05 Moz, Total 164.45 Moz.
Crooks and
Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
The USA may have a very fine written constitution
full of lofty aspirations and checks and balances, but what difference does
that make in our 21st century lawless age. If you’re in power and
control the NSA and the IRS, no one is going to hold you to account out of fear
of the consequences. Whoever gets the spoils of the Presidency in the new
lawless era, gets both the carrot and a very big stick.
“All
animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
Animal Farm.
Treasury: IRS targeted 292 Tea Party groups, just 6 progressive groups
By PAUL
BEDARD | JUNE 27, 2013 AT 9:50 AM
Refuting
Democratic suggestions that progressive groups were also swept up in the IRS
probe of the tax status of Tea Party organizations, the Treasury Department's
inspector general has revealed that just six progressive groups were targeted
compared to 292 conservative groups.
In a
letter to congressional Democrats, the inspector general also said that 100
percent of Tea Party groups seeking special tax status were put under IRS
review, while only 30 percent of the progressive groups felt the same pressure.
The
Wednesday letter to the top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee
punched a huge hole in Democratic claims that progressive groups were targeted
as much as the Tea Party groups from May 2010-May 2012, the height of the Tea
Party movement.
The
letter from the Treasury Department Inspector General for Tax Administration
revealed that there just weren't many progressive groups who even sought
special tax exempt status. A total of 20 sought it, and six were probed. All
292 Tea Party groups, meanwhile, were part of the IRS witchhunt.
"At
this point, the evidence shows us that conservative groups were not only
flagged, but targeted and abused by the IRS," said Sarah Swinehart
spokeswoman for the Ways and Means Committee.
"As
we gather the facts, we will follow them wherever they lead us. Chairman [Rep.
David] Camp encourages all groups, regardless of political affiliation, that
feel they may have been targeted to come forward and share their story."
Democrats
had noticed that the word "progressives" was on the so-called Be On
The Lookout, or BOLO, list. But the Treasury IG suggested that the list wasn't
used.
More
Another
weekend and still no sign of Snowy, supposedly holed up in a no go area of
Moscow’s international airport. My guess is that the FSB has whisked him off to
some safe location, possibly within the airport, much like Mossad’s zone at Schiphol
in Amsterdam, or more likely somewhere outside Moscow. Snowy was allegedly
travelling with 4 encrypted laptops and an unknown number of flash drives, all
now very likely copied by both the FSB and Ministry of State Security in China.
If so, both the NSA and UK’s GCHQ, will
soon go blind, or merely be detecting a stream of Chinese and Russian disinformation.
Not to worry though, both will still have the dirt on the US and UK serfs, all
the better to keep them onside. Have a great weekend everyone, but be careful
what you say and write.
“No one believes more firmly than Comrade Obama that all animals
are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for
yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and
then where should we be?”
With apologies to Animal Farm.
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished May:
DJIA: +142 Up. NASDAQ: +144 Up. SP500: +177 Up. The Fed’s
Final Bubble continues. But hurricanes and tornadoes appear. Getting out first
beats getting out last.
