Baltic Dry Index. 1090 +28.
LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
"I'm telling you there's an enemy that would like to attack
America, Americans, again. There just is. That's the reality of the world. And
I wish him all the very best."
George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Jan. 12, 2009
For more on “If you see something, say
something,” and Snowy’s continued absence in Russia, scroll down to Crooks
Corner.
We open this morning with Bloomberg reporting
on a US rout of the hedge funds, mostly due to the bond market rout. That in
itself was caused by the wisdom of Bernanke in leaking to the Wall Street
Journal hack Hilsenrath that the Fed was about to “taper” its monthly QE
programs and end them altogether by mid-2014. Since the Fed is the market for
Uncle Sam’s debt now that the Chinese has wised up to the certainty of an Uncle
Sam default sometime this or next decade, US bond yields immediately rose and
bond prices fell even before Bernocchio took any action at all. Just wait for
the real disaster if/when he actually moves. Ominously, bond yields are also
rising in Euroland too, with Italy and Spain up about 1% in the last few weeks,
and even Germany’s yield rising about 0.8%. No word yet on the scale of hedgie
losses in Europe. Once on QE forever, it probably isn’t possible to get off
without triggering the crisis it was initiated to prevent. Is riding this tiger
fun or what?
“Deepak nodded. A sombre nod. The nod Napoleon might have given
if somebody had met him in 1812 and said, "So, you're back from Moscow,
eh?”
With apologies to P. G. Wogehouse.
More big-name hedge funds nurse wounds from bond sell-off
NEW YORK |(Reuters) - One of last year's top-performing hedge fund managers, Deepak Narula, is suffering a reversal of fortune as the mortgage bonds that steered him to the top of the industry in 2012 are now delivering losses.
His Metacapital Management's roughly $1.5 billion flagship fund was down 5.66 percent for the year through June 14, according to an investor with knowledge of the numbers.
The loss is particularly given the fund's 41 percent gain last year.
Narula's fund is just one of many credit-oriented hedge funds that have seen gains posted earlier this year turn into losses in the wake of a ferocious sell-off in bonds sparked by fears the Federal Reserve could pull back from its easy money policies later this year.
Other large hedge funds with significant credit exposure that are posting negative numbers since Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke signaled a potential end to the monthly purchases of $85 billion in Treasuries and mortgage securities include Brevan Howard, Bridgewater Associates and BlueCrest Capital Management
Metacapital, for instance, tumbled into the red after
the fund lost 7.26 percent in May alone, according to the investor familiar
with the numbers.
More
June 25, 2013, 3:54 p.m. EDT
Bill Gross: Fed tapering plan may be hasty
By
William H. Gross
“June
Gloom,” as the fog and clouds that often linger over the Southern California
coast this time of year are known, appears to have spread to the Federal
Reserve. At his press conference last week, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said the
central bank may begin to let up on the gas pedal of monetary stimulus by
tapering its asset purchases later this year and ending them in 2014.
We agree
that QE must end. It has distorted incentives and inflated asset prices to
artificial levels. But we think the Fed’s plan may be too hasty.
Fog may
be obscuring the Fed’s view of the economy—in particular, the structural
impediments that will inhibit its ability to achieve higher growth and
inflation. Bernanke said the Fed expects the unemployment rate to fall to about
7% by the middle of next year. However, we think this is a long shot.
More
In
other US news, President Obama’s brain has morphed into former Vice President
Al Gore’s. No word yet if he also claims to have invented the internet. Unable
to save America, Iraq, or Afghanistan President Obama is now determined to save
the planet by bankrupting US industry by making war on old King Coal. It’s a
funny old world on fiat currency. At the risk of coming to the attention of
GCHQ and the blackmailers at the NSA, perhaps someone should tell him to read
the Sunspots page at the LIR.
Daniel Schrag, a Harvard academic who advises on climate change,
had told the New York Times that while the White House was hesitant to use such
language, a “war on coal is exactly what’s needed”.
Barack Obama to cut emissions in vow to save planet
Barack Obama today unveiled the most ambitious plan to counter climate change ever put forward by a US president, saying he would not condemn future generations “to a planet that is beyond fixing”.
In sweeping proposals released after four years of frustrated efforts, Mr Obama ordered new curbs on carbon emissions from power plants and called for America to ready its defences against an already-changing climate.The president also surprised environmentalists by signalling he would reject a controversial oil pipeline if it was found to “significantly exacerbate” the problem of carbon pollution.
“I refuse to condemn your generation and future generations to a planet that is beyond fixing,” Mr Obama told students at Georgetown University. “As a president, as a father and as an American I’m here to say we need to act.”
Mr Obama first promised a new push on climate change during his inagural address on a freezing morning in January, warning that failing to cut emissions “would betray our children”.
Today, as Washington sweltered in the summer heat, Mr Obama finally laid out the details of his plan, which can be carried out by executive order and therefore do not need Congressional approval.
He
announced he was imposing the first-ever limits on carbon emissions from power
plants, the single largest source of pollution in the US.
Coupled
with new efficiency standards for vehicles, appliances and buildings the limits
are intended to help reduce carbon emissions by three billion metric tonnes
over 17 years.
The plan
commits to cutting hydrofluorocarbons, the “super greenhouse gases” emitted by
refrigerators and air conditioning units, part of a commitment reached last
month with China.
The
government will also issue permits for wind and solar energy projects on
government land intended to eventually power more than six million homes.
----The
overall plan is intended to help meet Mr Obama’s pledges to the UN climate
change summit in Copenhagen, where he promised that by 2020 the US would cut
emissions by 17 per cent from their 2005 levels.
In European insane asylum news, the ECB is
busy putting clear blue water between itself and the Fed. Since even hinting at
tightening ECB policy would blow up Club Mad and its leader France, the ECB
doesn’t have the Fed’s luxury of rattling the banksters cage.
Banks are an almost irresistible attraction for that element of our society which seeks unearned money.
J. Edgar
Hoover
ECB has no plans to exit loose policies, says Benoit Coeure
The European Central Bank has no plans to reverse its loose monetary policies and will support the ailing eurozone economy for "as long as necessary", according to ratesetter Benoît Coeuré.
Mr Coeuré, who sits on the ECB's executive board, appeared to distance the central bank from recent comments made by Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, who sparked a market sell-off when he signalled that the Fed could begin winding down stimulus measures this year.Mr Coeuré said that weak growth across Europe and low inflation expectations meant a reversal by the ECB "would not be warranted by current economic conditions.
"Let me state quite clearly that I do not intend to drop any hints about a change in the monetary policy stance in the euro area in the near future," he said in a speech in London on Tuesday.
"At the current juncture, there should be no doubts that our “exit” is distant and our monetary policy is and will remain accommodative.
Mr Coeuré's comments follow weeks of market turmoil on fears that the Fed would taper its $85bn (£55bn) a-month quantitative easing programme more quickly than expected.
----Mr Coeuré said he was confident that the Fed would manage its QE exit effectively. He added that the ECB's supportive policies were not "permanent" and that rates would eventually increase.
"We
have full trust in the ability of the US Federal Reserve to be on top of the
exit path, of the exit measures and make sure that any non-standard measures
will be unwound in an orderly way," he said.
More
Elsewhere in the EUSSR, France began gaming
the system ahead of yet another “Great Leaders” summit, Irish banksters were
caught on tape milking the Germans and everyone else in the Crazy Golf European
Monetary Union, while the Germans have strong armed Brussels into delaying the
date of the lunatic Financial Transactions Tax, that threatens to drive
financial transactions to New York, Singapore, and anywhere and everywhere
outside of Europe. Continental Europe seemingly has a death wish. Stay long
physical gold and silver outside of the banking system. The Great Nixonian
Error of fiat money is going the way of the old USSR Rouble.
"The paper standard is self-destructive."
Hans F. Sennholz
Brussels quietly delays FTT by six months
Brussels appears to have quietly delayed its Financial Transactions Tax (FTT) amid mounting opposition to the controversial levy across the European Union.
Eleven members of the EU, including France and Germany, announced in February they had agreed to introduced the tax by January 2014.But the European Commission has in the past few days updated its website saying the FTT is expected to be introduced “towards the middle of 2014.”
Tax experts warned that the new tax, which plans to impose a 0.1pc levy on share and bond transactions and 0.01pc on derivatives, would be very complicated to implement.
But the tax has been hit with criticism by businesses and pensions groups. Last month, France's central bank warned that the FTT could "destroy" parts of the country's banking industry, cost jobs and harm public finances. Several national versions of the tax have had disappointing starts. France’s version of the tax, launched in August 2012 has raised about half of anticipated income. While Italy’s FTT, launched 1 March 2013, has led to a sharp drop off in Italian share trading.
More
France pushing for EU to drop calls on retirement age - sources
PARIS |(Reuters) - France is pushing for this week's European Union summit to bury a suggestion by the bloc's executive arm that it raise its statutory retirement age from 62, French sources said on Tuesday.
This is the latest in a series of tussles between France and the European Commission. Paris has already accused Brussels of trying to dictate reforms, and it has also blocked EU efforts to include film and other cultural goods in talks on an EU-U.S. trade pact.
French officials promise they will push
ahead with pension and other reforms as agreed with the EU in return for more
time to cut their public deficit. But they say they must be allowed to do it
their way to avert the risk of strikes and protests.
----The Commission on May 29 gave France specific suggestions for reforms of its debt-laden pension system this year, such as adapting indexation rules or raising the legal retirement age.
Pension reform is an explosive issue in France. Hollande's conservative predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy brought hundreds of thousands of French out onto the streets in 2010 with his move to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62.
More
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/06/25/uk-eu-france-idUKBRE95O10S20130625
Seamus went to confession and said to the priest, "For the last two months I've been working in the timber yard and stealing the wood every day." The priest said, "Can you make a Novena?" He said, "Father, if you have the plans, I have the wood."
Irish bankers joke over bailout at EU's expense
DUBLIN/PARIS |(Reuters) - In the sort of scene that must infuriate Chancellor Angela Merkel, Irish bankers were taped laughing about a bank bailout deal and then mocking the European Union's paymaster by singing the German national anthem.
Recordings of senior executives in Anglo Irish Bank, the lender at the heart of Ireland's EU-IMF bailout, making light in 2008 of the government's decision to guarantee their liabilities at the height of the crisis underlined on Tuesday why Germany is so wary of creating a European banking union
Berlin's concern that it will end up on the hook for other countries' debts if such a union is created has held up the project's progress, particularly ahead of federal elections in September, at which Merkel is seeking a third term in office.
But without a banking union, investors are likely to continue to mistrust banks in highly indebted euro zone countries, keeping them frozen out of the interbank lending market and holding up the bloc's economic recovery.
----Irish people reacted with anger on Tuesday to the swagger of the Anglo Irish bankers, in tapes published this week, but mistrust of banks is widespread across Europe.
More
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/06/25/uk-europe-banks-idUKBRE95O10Y20130625."The history of paper money is an account of abuse, mismanagement, and financial disaster."
Richard M. Ebeling
At the Comex silver depositories Tuesday final figures were: Registered 41.40 Moz,
Eligible 123.45 Moz, Total 164.85 Moz.
Crooks and
Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
Today, America’s Department of Homeland
Security admits that it was behind Edward Snowden’s outing of America’s NSA,
Facebook, Google, et al, and the UK’s GCHQ. With Snowy missing in Putin’s
Russia, the chances are high that Russia’s FSB has already downloaded Snowy’s
laptops and flash drives. And in the interest of staying alive and away from
the FSB’s waterboards, it’s a fair bet that they are all having a nice chat
over Polonium free Russian tea and canapés. Swapping stories about fun and
games in international spying. Remember all the fun we had when America kicked
out Anna Chapman and nine of Russia's
sleeper agents. Or when Russia tricked poor “US diplomat,” Ryan C. Fogle into
dressing up in wig and costume for the benefit of Russian TV.
If the GCHQ and the NSA at RAF Menwith Hill are all that they are hyped up to be, they are probably listening in too, with increasing dismay. Whose idea was it to tell Americans “If you see something, say something.” Fire that person ASAP! If you see something, absolutely do not say something! Not unless you have fatal attraction to meet up with an Obama drone. In our new lawless age, truth is stranger than fiction.
"I'm going to put people
in my place, so when the history of this administration is written at least
there's an authoritarian voice saying exactly what happened."
George W. Bush
"If You See Something, Say Something" Campaign
About the Campaign
The nationwide "If You See Something, Say Something™" public awareness campaign - is a simple and effective program to raise public awareness of indicators of terrorism and terrorism-related crime, and to emphasize the importance of reporting suspicious activity to the proper local law enforcement authorities. The campaign was originally used by New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), which has licensed the use of the slogan to DHS for anti-terrorism and anti-terrorism crime related efforts.
More
ORIGINAL NSA WHISTLEBLOWER: I Saw The Order To Wiretap Barack Obama In 2004
Russ Tice worked as an offensive National Security
Agency (NSA) agent from 2002 to 2005, before becoming a source for this Pulitzer Prize-winning New
York Times article exposing NSA domestic spying.
This week he appeared on the Boiling
Frogs Show and detailed how he had his hands "in the
nitty-gritty, the nuts and bolts" during his 20 years as a
U.S. intelligence analyst.Tice claimed that he held NSA wiretap orders targeting numerous members of the U.S. government, including one for a young senator from Illinois named Barack Obama.
"In the summer of 2004, one of the papers that I held in my hand was to wiretap a bunch of numbers associated with a forty-some-year-old senator from Illinois. You wouldn't happen to know where that guy lives now would you? It's a big White House in Washington D.C. That's who the NSA went after. That's the President of the United States now."
Tice added that he also saw orders to spy on Hillary Clinton, Senators John McCain and Diane Feinstein, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, Gen. David Petraeus, and a current Supreme Court Justice.
That sounds like a lot of abuse of the rules that govern NSA domestic spying. And that's exactly what Tice is claiming.
More
Read
more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-nsa-spied-on-barack-obama-2004-russ-tice-2013-6#ixzz2XEjohZUW
Ecuador politics complicates Snowden asylum
June 26, 2013, 12:55 AM
While National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden reportedly
remains at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport, his possible destination has been
thrown into a heated political debate over whether to grant him asylum.According to WikiLeaks, which is providing support to the fugitive former employee of security contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, Snowden plans to seek safe haven in Ecuador, the same nation which has used its U.K. embassy to shield WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from extradition to Sweden for almost a year.
But Agence France-Presse reports that Ecuador’s opposition lawmakers and many of its business leaders fear taking in Snowden could jeopardize the renewal of its preferential trade agreement with the U.S., which is due to expire at the end of July.
Ecuador relies on the U.S. as a key foreign market, shipping some 40% of its exports there, according to AFP.
“We don’t have the luxury of taking the wrong steps,” the report quoted Ecuadoran Business Committee head Roberto Aspiazu as saying. “What would we gain from giving political asylum to Snowden — confirming Ecuador’s international image as an anti-imperialist country? I don’t think we need that.”
While Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa has yet to decide on whether to grant asylum to Snowden, his political opposition is drawing contrast between his willingness to accept a man who leaked U.S. secrets to the press, while curbing freedom of the press at home.
“While they want to send Ecuadorans to prison for expressing their opinion, foreigners are given asylum, which confirms the government’s double standards,” AFP quoted Roldosist Party lawmaker Dalo Bucaram as saying.
If President Correa does decide to turn Snowden away, Venezuela might prove a likely alternative for the 30-year-old American.
More
"It
is always the best policy to speak the truth, unless of course, you are an
exceptionally good liar."
Jerome
K. Jerome. Novelist.
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.
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