Baltic Dry Index. 900 +27
LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
The evidence is contained in documents – classified as top
secret – which were uncovered by the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and seen
by the Guardian. They reveal that during G20 meetings in April and September
2009 GCHQ used what one document calls "ground-breaking intelligence
capabilities" to intercept the communications of visiting delegations
Watch out for China, says ratings agency Fitch.
China, not the snake bit European Monetary Union is in the lead in the race to
Reykjavik. If China’s wobble turns into a Japanese style deflationary crash,
the sky will fall they think. Today as
the G-8 and friends assemble in splendid isolation in Northern Ireland to spy
on each other’s telephones, computers and iPads, and more, for more on that
scroll down to Crooks Corner, we open the week with the new threat that has arisen
to bring on the next Lehman. Stay long physical precious metals. We all know
how the Great Nixonian Error of Fiat Money ends, just not the timing or
trigger.
Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult
problem.
Henry
A. Kissinger
Fitch says China credit bubble unprecedented in modern world history
China's shadow banking system is out of control and under mounting stress as borrowers struggle to roll over short-term debts, Fitch Ratings has warned.
The
agency said the scale of credit was so extreme that the country would find it
very hard to grow its way out of the excesses as in past episodes, implying
tougher times ahead.
"The
credit-driven growth model is clearly falling apart. This could feed into a
massive over-capacity problem, and potentially into a Japanese-style
deflation," said Charlene Chu, the agency's senior director in Beijing.
"There
is no transparency in the shadow banking system, and systemic risk is rising.
We have no idea who the borrowers are, who the lenders are, and what the
quality of assets is, and this undermines signalling," she told The
Daily Telegraph.
While the
non-performing loan rate of the banks may look benign at just 1pc, this has
become irrelevant as trusts, wealth-management funds, offshore vehicles and
other forms of irregular lending make up over half of all new credit. "It
means nothing if you can off-load any bad asset you want. A lot of the banking
exposure to property is not booked as property," she said.
Concerns
are rising after a string of upsets in Quingdao, Ordos, Jilin and elsewhere, in
so-called trust products, a $1.4 trillion (£0.9 trillion) segment of the shadow
banking system.
Bank
Everbright defaulted on an interbank loan 10 days ago amid wild spikes in
short-term "Shibor" borrowing rates, a sign that liquidity has
suddenly dried up. "Typically stress starts in the periphery and moves to
the core, and that is what we are already seeing with defaults in trust
products," she said.
Fitch
warned that wealth products worth $2 trillion of lending are in reality a
"hidden second balance sheet" for banks, allowing them to circumvent
loan curbs and dodge efforts by regulators to halt the excesses.
This
niche is the epicentre of risk. Half the loans must be rolled over every three
months, and another 25pc in less than six months. This has echoes of Northern
Rock, Lehman Brothers and others that came to grief in the West on short-term
liabilities when the wholesale capital markets froze.
Mrs Chu
said the banks had been forced to park over $3 trillion in reserves at the
central bank, giving them a "massive savings account that can be drawn
down" in a crisis, but this may not be enough to avert trouble given the
sheer scale of the lending boom.
Overall
credit has jumped from $9 trillion to $23 trillion since the Lehman crisis.
"They have replicated the entire US commercial banking system in five
years," she said.
The ratio of credit to GDP has jumped by 75 percentage
points to 200pc of GDP, compared to roughly 40 points in the US over five years
leading up to the subprime bubble, or in Japan before the Nikkei bubble burst
in 1990. "This is beyond anything we have ever seen before in a large
economy. We don't know how this will play out. The next six months will be
crucial," she said.
More
China Money Rate Drops on Speculation Cash Returned to Banks
By Bloomberg News - Jun 17, 2013 3:49 AM GMT
China’s money-market rate
dropped for the first time in three days on speculation the central bank has
returned cash to lenders due to a decline in deposits. Chinese banks meet reserve-requirement ratios by parking more funds with the People’s Bank of China on the 5th, 15th and 25th of each month if their deposit holdings expand, while they get refunds if savings decline. The People’s Bank of China gauged demand for sales of 28-day repurchase agreements, seven-and 14-day reverse-repurchase contracts and 91-day bills this week, according to a trader required to bid at the auctions
More
Still it’s not just American and Great Britain busy
spying on friend and foe alike. In rain sodden central Europe, a spying scandal
has done in the Czech Prime Minister. It was all a misunderstanding, apparently,
at least at the IRS and America’s Tea Party. But they would say that wouldn’t they. Poor old King George III. If only he had used
spies and the IRS back in the late 18th century. Still not to worry, America’s “decider” has
decided that spying on Americans didn’t violate their privacy. So that's alright then.
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
The Ministry of Truth. 1984.
Rogue Spies Join Bribery Allegations to Sink Czech Premier Necas
By Peter Laca & Lenka Ponikelska - Jun 16, 2013 11:28 PM GMT
Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas, who will resign today because of a scandal
over spying and bribery, leaves his allies scrambling to assemble a
parliamentary majority to avert a snap election. Necas, who will also quit as head of the Civic Democratic Party, wants a new premier from his party to lead a government of the current coalition, he told reporters in Prague yesterday. He urged President Milos Zeman to respect tradition and name his successor from parties that show majority support in parliament. Necas’s departure invalidates a no-confidence vote called by the opposition, which is seeking an early ballot.
----The government has been rocked by a scandal that erupted June 13 after nighttime police raids resulted in the detention of eight people including Jana Nagyova, the head of Necas’s office. She is charged with abuse of power in ordering the illegal surveillance of three people and is linked to a bribery case, in which prosecutors say former members of parliament were offered jobs at state-controlled companies.
Necas’s
departure means the automatic resignation of his Cabinet according to Czech
law. The three coalition parties, which control 98 seats in the 200-member
parliament, have to secure the backing of at least half the deputies to get a
new government in power. They have relied on the votes of former coalition
deputies who defected their parties to pass legislation.
More
Political optics overlooked in 'Tea Party' review: IRS official
Mon Jun
17, 2013 1:35am BST
(Reuters)
- Internal Revenue Service employees in Ohio, who singled out conservative
groups applying for tax-exempt status for extra scrutiny, likely did not consider
the political implications, an IRS official in Washington has told
congressional investigators.
Providing
additional details about the worst crisis to hit the IRS in years, tax agency
official Holly Paz told investigators she was concerned when she learned that
IRS employees were singling out groups with "Tea Party" and other key
words in their names.
Paz is
the most senior IRS official to be extensively interviewed by investigators.
Ousted acting IRS Commissioner Steve Miller was among the top-level Washington
officials grilled by Congress in recent weeks. Investigators conducted longer
transcribed interviews with IRS employees behind closed doors.
A
mid-level official in Washington before she was put on administrative leave,
Paz worked for the director of the tax-exempt unit.
Paz said
she was worried the practice of flagging certain groups for scrutiny, which she
said was not politically motivated, "might give the impression that there
was ... some bias," Paz said in the interview last month. Reuters has
reviewed the interview transcript.
More
Obama does not feel Americans' privacy violated: chief of staff
WASHINGTON |(Reuters) - President Barack Obama does not believe the recently disclosed top-secret National Security Agency surveillance of phone records and Internet data has violated Americans' privacy rights, his chief of staff said on Sunday.
Denis McDonough, appearing on CBS's "Face the Nation" program, also said he did not know the whereabouts of Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor who said he was the source of reports in Britain's Guardian newspaper and The Washington Post about the agency's monitoring of phone and Internet data at big companies such as Verizon Communications Inc, Google Inc and Facebook Inc.
Asked whether Obama feels he has violated the privacy of Americans, McDonough said, "He does not."
While he defended the surveillance, McDonough said "the existence of these programs obviously have unnerved many people." He said Obama "welcomes a public debate on this question because he does say and he will say in the days ahead that we have to find the right balance, and we will not keep ourselves on a perpetual war footing."
More
"Those entrapped by the herd instinct are drowned in the deluges of history. But there are always the few who observe, reason, and take precautions, and thus escape the flood. For these few gold has been the asset of last resort."
Antony C. Sutton
At the Comex silver depositories Friday final figures were: Registered 41.76 Moz,
Eligible 123.36 Moz, Total 165.12 Moz.
Crooks and
Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
Today, still more on our lawless age. Ever wonder why no great vampire squids or
banksters get prosecuted in the USA, there’s every reason to think that they’ve
been granted immunity by the alphabet soup spook agencies. As the G-6 assemble
in Northern Ireland, distrust has never been greater.
“Won’t you step into my parlour,”
said the spider to the fly….
GCHQ intercepted foreign politicians' communications at G20 summits
Exclusive: phones were
monitored and fake internet cafes set up to gather information from allies in
London in 2009
Sunday 16 June 2013 20.46 BST
Foreign politicians and officials who took part in two G20 summit meetings in London in
2009 had their computers monitored and their phone calls intercepted on the
instructions of their British government hosts, according to documents seen by
the Guardian. Some delegates were tricked into using internet cafes which had
been set up by British intelligence agencies to read their email traffic.The revelation comes as Britain prepares to host another summit on Monday – for the G8 nations, all of whom attended the 2009 meetings which were the object of the systematic spying. It is likely to lead to some tension among visiting delegates who will want the prime minister to explain whether they were targets in 2009 and whether the exercise is to be repeated this week.
The disclosure raises new questions about the boundaries of surveillance by GCHQ and its American sister organisation, the National Security Agency, whose access to phone records and internet data has been defended as necessary in the fight against terrorism and serious crime. The G20 spying appears to have been organised for the more mundane purpose of securing an advantage in meetings. Named targets include long-standing allies such as South Africa and Turkey.
There have often been rumours of this kind of espionage at international conferences, but it is highly unusual for hard evidence to confirm it and spell out the detail. The evidence is contained in documents – classified as top secret – which were uncovered by the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and seen by the Guardian.
They reveal that during G20 meetings in April and September 2009 GCHQ used what one document calls "ground-breaking intelligence capabilities" to intercept the communications of visiting delegations.
This included:
----A detailed report records the efforts of the NSA's intercept specialists at Menwith Hill in North Yorkshire to target and decode encrypted phone calls from London to Moscow which were made by the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, and other Russian delegates.
Other
documents record apparently successful efforts to penetrate the security of
BlackBerry smartphones: "New converged events capabilities against
BlackBerry provided advance copies of G20 briefings to ministers … Diplomatic
targets from all nations have an MO of using smartphones. Exploited this use at
the G20 meetings last year."
More
The laws that allow intelligence agencies to spy on foreign diplomats
The Intelligence Services Act and
Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act are broad enough to allow all manner of
operations
Sunday 16 June 2013 20.46 BST
The powers that allow Britain's intelligence agencies to spy on individuals,
including foreign diplomats, were set out in the 1994 Intelligence Services Act
(ISA). They were framed in a broad way to allow those involved in espionage to conduct all manner
of operations with ministerial authority, and the types of techniques used
during the G20 summit four years ago suggest a creativity and technological
capability that Ian Fleming could only have dreamed of.This is captured in section 1 of the ISA, which says the agencies operate "in the interests of national security, with particular reference to the defence and foreign policies of Her Majesty's government in the United Kingdom; or in the interests of the economic wellbeing of the UK; or in the support of the prevention or detection of serious crime".
When it was published, the ISA was treated with a great deal of suspicion by other countries in Europe, who were particularly concerned that the inclusion of the economic wellbeing (EWB) clause could be used to offer British companies intelligence that might give them a competitive advantage over rivals. The precise definition of "national security" is also open to interpretation – because there doesn't seem to be any official definition of what it means. All of which gives Britain's intelligence agencies a large umbrella under which to hide when they are seeking to conduct classic espionage operations.
More
U.S. Agencies Said to Swap Data With Thousands of Firms
By
Michael Riley - Jun 15, 2013 5:01 AM GMT
Thousands of technology, finance and manufacturing
companies are working closely with U.S. national security agencies, providing sensitive
information and in return receiving benefits that include access to classified
intelligence, four people familiar with the process said.
These programs, whose participants are known as trusted partners, extend far beyond what was revealed by Edward Snowden, a computer technician who did work for the National Security Agency. The role of private companies has come under intense scrutiny since his disclosure this month that the NSA is collecting millions of U.S. residents’ telephone records and the computer communications of foreigners from Google Inc (GOOG). and other Internet companies under court order.
Many of these same Internet and telecommunications companies voluntarily provide U.S. intelligence organizations with additional data, such as equipment specifications, that don’t involve private communications of their customers, the four people said.
Makers of hardware and software, banks, Internet security providers, satellite telecommunications companies and many other companies also participate in the government programs. In some cases, the information gathered may be used not just to defend the nation but to help infiltrate computers of its adversaries.
Along with the NSA, the Central Intelligence Agency (0112917D), the Federal Bureau of Investigation and branches of the U.S. military have agreements with such companies to gather data that might seem innocuous but could be highly useful in the hands of U.S. intelligence or cyber warfare units, according to the people, who have either worked for the government or are in companies that have these accords.
Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), the world’s largest software company, provides intelligence agencies with information about bugs in its popular software before it publicly releases a fix, according to two people familiar with the process. That information can be used to protect government computers and to access the computers of terrorists or military foes.
Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft (MSFT) and other software or Internet security companies have been aware that this type of early alert allowed the U.S. to exploit vulnerabilities in software sold to foreign governments, according to two U.S. officials. Microsoft doesn’t ask and can’t be told how the government uses such tip-offs, said the officials, who asked not to be identified because the matter is confidential.
----Some U.S. telecommunications companies willingly provide intelligence agencies with access to facilities and data offshore that would require a judge’s order if it were done in the U.S., one of the four people said.
In these
cases, no oversight is necessary under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act, and companies are providing the information voluntarily.
----Most
of the arrangements are so sensitive that only a handful of people in a company
know of them, and they are sometimes brokered directly between chief executive
officers and the heads of the U.S.’s major spy agencies, the people familiar
with those programs said.
----Intel Corp. (INTC)’s McAfee unit, which makes Internet
security software, regularly cooperates with the NSA, FBI and the CIA, for
example, and is a valuable partner because of its broad view of malicious Internet traffic,
including espionage operations by foreign powers, according to one of the four
people, who is familiar with the arrangement.
Such a
relationship would start with an approach to McAfee’s chief executive, who
would then clear specific individuals to work with investigators or provide the
requested data, the person said. The public would be surprised at how much help
the government seeks, the person said.
McAfee
firewalls collect information on hackers who use legitimate servers to do their
work, and the company data can be used to pinpoint where attacks begin. The
company also has knowledge of the architecture of information networks
worldwide, which may be useful to spy agencies who tap into them, the person
said.
More
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-14/u-s-agencies-said-to-swap-data-with-thousands-of-firms.html
Welcome to Utah, the NSA's desert home for eavesdropping on America
The NSA's new $1.7bn facility in the
heart of Mormon country has the potential to snoop on US citizens for decades
to come
Friday 14 June 2013 16.01 BST
Drive south down Camp Williams Road, a highway outside Salt Lake City, and
your eye is drawn to the left. A gun-mounted helicopter and other military
hardware marks the entrance of the Utah army national guard base. The
ice-capped Rockies soar in the distance.To the right there is little to see: featureless scrubland, a metal fence, some warehouses. A small exit – not marked on ordinary maps – takes you up a curving road. A yellow sign says this is military property closed to unauthorised personnel.
Further up the hill, invisible from the highway, you encounter concrete walls, a security boom and checkpoint with guards, sniffer dogs and cameras. Two plaques with official seals announce the presence of the office of the director of national intelligence and the National Security Agency.
A spokesperson at NSA headquarters in Maryland did not welcome a Guardian request to visit its western outpost. "That is a secure facility. If you trespass on federal property security guards will be obliged to do their jobs." An interview was out of the question.
Welcome to the Utah Data Center, a new home for the NSA's exponentially expanding information trove. The $1.7bn facility, two years in the making, will soon host supercomputers to store gargantuan quantities of data from emails, phone calls, Google searches and other sources. Sited on an unused swath of the national guard base, by September it will employ around 200 technicians, span 1m sq ft and use 65 megawatts of power.
More
Whether
he went on with the diary, or whether he did not go on with it, made no
difference. The Thought Police would get him just the same. He had committed—
would still have committed, even if he had never set pen to paper— the
essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called
it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might
dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were
bound to get you.
The
NSA, with apologies to George Orwell and 1984.
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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