Baltic Dry Index. 1171 +20.
LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
In economics, hope and faith coexist with great scientific
pretension and also a deep desire for respectability.
J. K. Galbraith.
We open this morning with bailed out Ireland
showing how not to impress the paymaster’s of modern Europe, and lose friends
and influence on a massive scale. Thanks to the arrogance of a trio of Irish
banksters, the reputation of 5 million innocent Irish citizens is tarnished
from France to Finland, and the tourist trade from Germany put at risk. Germans
make up the largest component of Ireland’s continental tourists and are large
consumers of Irish meat exports. Banksterism 21st century style
strikes again. Thanks to the Great Nixonian Error of fiat money, casino
capitalism trumps all, and the little people struggling in the real economy become
expendable collateral damage. Ireland is rightly outraged alongside Germany but
the water has already flowed past the bridge. But at least one bankster on the planet has
finally said sorry.
But first this worrying news on China’s wobble.
Chinese Manufacturing Gauges Fall as Slowdown Persists
By Bloomberg News - Jul 1, 2013 3:44 AM GMT
Two gauges of China’s
manufacturing fell in June, underscoring a sustained slowdown in the nation’s
economy as policy makers seek to rein in financial speculation and real-estate
prices. An official Purchasing Managers’ Index dropped to 50.1, the lowest level in four months, from 50.8, the National Bureau of Statistics and China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing said today in Beijing. A private PMI from HSBC Holdings Plc and Markit Economics was 48.2, the weakest since September. Readings above 50 signal expansion. (CNGDPYOY)
Weaker
gains in manufacturing and a cash squeeze in the banking system add to odds
that Li Keqiang will become the first premier to miss an annual growth target
since the Asian financial crisis in 1998. In the latest signal that policy
makers will tolerate slower expansion, President Xi Jinping
said local officials shouldn’t be judged solely on their record in boosting
gross domestic product.
More
China’s SouFun June New Home Prices Jump on Increasing Sales
By Bloomberg News - Jul 1, 2013 5:48 AM GMT
China’s new
home prices jumped in June by the most since they reversed declines in
December, defying the government’s tightened property curbs as increased sales
supported developers’ efforts to avoid price cuts. Prices surged 7.4 percent last month from a year earlier to 10,258 yuan ($1,671) per square meter (10.76 square feet), SouFun Holdings Ltd. (SFUN), the nation’s biggest real estate website owner, said in a statement after a survey of 100 cities. Last month’s increase was the biggest since December, when prices climbed 0.03 percent, reversing a 0.46 percent fall in November.
-----“Both new and existing-home transactions
gradually stabilized recently in many cities, indicating that home buying
demand remains strong,” SouFun said in the statement today. “Driven by the
multiple factors including demand and a heated land market, the pressure for
home-price increases is still relatively large” for the second-half of this
year.
More
Now back to the European Disunion. Did Irish
bankers really play Germany for a sucker? How will that play with German voters
in September’s general election?
It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin
it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently.
Warren Buffet.
German finance minister criticises 'aloof superhuman' Irish bankers
The bankers who sang "Deutschland uber alles" during the Irish bailout are worthy of contempt, German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble has said.
Wolfgang Schaeuble, Germany’s finance minister, has criticised the Irish bankers caught on tape joking about the Irish banking system bailout, calling them “aloof super humans” who were worthy of contempt.The comments followed the relased of transcrips of telephone conversation from 2008 between bankers at Anglo Irish Bank that have caused outrage worldwide.
John Bowe, Anglo’s head of capital markets, and Peter Fitzgerald, director of retail banking, were heared laughing and mocking as authorities were preparing a rescue deal for the country’s teetering banking system.
This has led to accusation that the lender suckered the Irish government into a €7bn (£6bn) bail-out knowing that much more was needed. The bankers are also heard singing a pre-war verse of the German national anthem, with the words "Deutschland uber alles".
Mr Schaeuble's remarks are quoted in German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine and echoed comments by Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday.
“These
bankers seem to like themselves in the role of aloof super humans who only have
contempt for their fellow humans,” Mr Schaeuble said. “Instead it is they who
should get our contempt and to whose game we should put a stop.”
The Irish
government was eventually forced to pump €30bn (£25.7bn) into Anglo and roughly
the same amount into Ireland’s two other cash-strapped banks, Bank of Ireland
and Allied Irish Bank – rescues that brought the entire Irish economy to its
knees.
Casey
was applying for a job as a prison Guard. The warden said to him, "Now
there are some real tough guys here. Do you think you can handle it?"
Casey said, "No problem at all. If they don't behave...out they go!"
Shamed Irish banker David Drumm says sorry
An Irish banker who was recorded saying that he would demand cash from authorities to keep operating, and mocking the country's multi-billion- euro bailout has apologised for his comments.
By
Telegraph Staff 5:48PM BST 30 Jun 2013
Public
outrage has grown after the Irish Independent published taped telephone
conversations between executives of the now-defunct Anglo Irish Bank, wrecked
in 2008 when a property bubble burst after years of reckless lending.
But David
Drumm, Anglo's then chief executive, said in an interview published on Sunday
that there was "no excuse for the terrible language or frivolous
tone".
"I
sincerely regret the offence this has caused," he told The Sunday
Business Post. "I cannot change this now, but I can apologise to those who
had to listen to it and who were understandably so offended by it."
The bank
eventually cost taxpayers some €30 bn during the financial crisis, almost
one-fifth of the country's annual output, and three former executives – not
including Drumm – will go on trial next year on fraud charges.
The tapes
have caused offence in the EU, which helped to pay for Ireland's bailout. Enda
Kenny, the Irish premier, said they showed contempt, arrogance and insolence.
One
executive, John Bowe, was taped singing a jocular version of the German
national anthem during a conversation with Drumm, as they discussed money
flowing in from Germany after the governments guaranteed the banks. Chancellor
Angela Merkel said the recordings were "impossible to stomach".
In other continental European news, France is in
serious danger of collapsing the whole European Monetary Union, and with it
bringing down the Bilderberger EUSSR project. With the Chinese economy
seriously slowing, who knows what the real growth figure has fallen to, it’s
probably already too late to turn around France. And then there’s always the
problem of Italy and the rest of sunken Club Med. The euro as we know it is
going down, and Irish bankers have just made Europe’s paymaster gun shy.
“The
state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of
everyone else.”
Frédéric
Bastiat
France could miss deficit target - Hollande
Francois Hollande has warned that France could miss its deficit target due to poor growth and dwindling tax revenues, while stressing his commitment to containing public spending.
Speaking
on the sidelines of an EU Summit in Brussels, France's President told reporters
that if growth remained as weak as it currently was, the 3.7pc deficit target
would be difficult to meet.
"There
is a risk that we will have less revenue than expected," Hollande said,
adding that this would result in "a little more deficit" at the end
of the year.
"What
do we have to do given this perspective? First, everything possible for there
to be more growth in the second half of the year," Hollande said.
"But
what France must do for 2013 is contain public spending. Spending in 2013 must
be strictly equal to 2012 spending," he added.
Figures
released today by the country's data office INSEE also showed that public debt
rose by €36.5 billion in the first quarter to reach €1.87 trillion, or 91.7pc
of GDP.
Mr
Hollande's warning came just a day after the Cour des Comptes - a
quasi-judicial body that oversees public accounts - warned that the eurozone's
second largest economy would see its deficit climb closer to 4pc, missing the
target of 3.7pc.
It also 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.
It 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.
Merkel Blocks Milking of EU Bank in Defense of German Taxpayers
By James G. Neuger - Jun 30, 2013 11:01 PM GMT
German Chancellor Angela Merkel opened a new front in an election-year
effort to limit her voters’ exposure to the costs of spurring the slumping
European economy: the role of the European Investment Bank. Merkel refused to loosen the leash on the European Union’s project-finance vehicle at a summit last week, frustrating the aim of southern European leaders to use it more aggressively to spur their slumping economies and attack record unemployment.
“The discussion clearly emphasized the elements of prudence,” Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta told reporters as leaders headed home on June 28. “I’m telling you this because I don’t want to tell lies. I want to tell you how things really are. On this point, I think, as I see Europe, Europe needs a more proactive EIB.”
Merkel’s blunting of the raid on the EIB mirrors the political battles waged among European leaders since Greece kicked off the euro debt crisis in 2009. The biggest contributor to bailouts, Merkel has from day one sought to limit her voters’ liability for rescuing the most debt-laden states.
Now, it fits in with her electoral strategy of warding off potentially expensive surprises from Brussels. Delaying euro-zone bank supervision, sparing German taxpayers the bill for fixing lenders elsewhere, and blocking an EU decision on tighter car-emissions standards may also reflect that blueprint.
Croatia
Constitution:
adopted 22 December 1990; revised
1997, 1998, 2000, 2001, and 2010
Croatia Joins EU With History Lesson, Appeal for Peace
By Jasmina Kuzmanovic & James M. Gomez - Jun 30, 2013 11:00 PM GMT
Croatia became the 28th member of
the European Union, capping a decade of judicial and economic reforms to sever
ties from its communist and wartime past.
----The
Adriatic country, which emerged as an independent state in 1991 during the
bloody breakup of Yugoslavia, is looking to EU membership to help solidify a
lasting peace throughout the Balkan region as tensions still smolder in
Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo to the south. Leaders are also counting on EU ties to
lure foreign investors to the $63 billion economy and end four years of
recession and stagnation.
----The
country of 4.2 million, best known for its 3,600 miles of beaches, islands and
harbors, is joining the EU just as Europe suffers from its longest economic
contraction. As much as 10 billion euros ($13 billion) in EU funds may flow in
through 2020 to modernize communist-era railways, sewers and bridges, diversify
domestic industry and bring living standards up to those of eastern EU members
such as the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland.
----“German
taxpayers, or any other taxpayers, do not need to fear that they will have to
spend money on Croatia,” Pusic said at a press conference in Zagreb yesterday.
“The only thing we need to worry about is that we don’t absorb EU funds fully,
but that depends on us alone. Croatia is a great place for investment.”
----The unemployment rate for Croatia stood at 19.6 percent in May. The economy has failed to grow since 2008 and rising labor costs make it harder to attract investment into export industries. Foreign direct investment plummeted to almost one-fifth of the $4.2 billion invested in 2008.
Since then, the economy has shrunk by a combined 10.9 percent, according to Eurostat data compiled by Bloomberg. Gross domestic product contracted by 1.5 percent from a year earlier between January and March, government data show.
More
Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under the EU it's just the
opposite.
With apologies to J. K. Galbraith and murderous, Godless, Communism.
At the Comex silver depositories Friday final figures were: Registered 41.94 Moz,
Eligible 122.55 Moz, Total 164.49 Moz.
Crooks and
Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
While the southwest USA bakes in record and near
record heat, in Europe it’s Snowing again. While Her Majesty’s accident prone,
weak U-turn, pro-homosexual, anti-Christian government reels from Snowy’s leaks
about the scale of GCHQ domestic and international spying, in the UK the
Guardian newspaper has just been censored. Still think that you’re not a
Bilderberger serf. According to our “betters” in Her Majesty’s one termer
government, we Brits can’t handle the truth.
Oh what a tangled web we weave, when
first we practise to deceive.
Sir Walter Scott.
Taken down: deals to hand over private data to America
guardian.co.uk,
Sunday 30 June 2013 00.04 BST
This article has been taken down pending an investigation.
Below, this is the gist of the censored article. Below
that, Mrs. Merkel speaks with forked tongue.
Saturday, Jun 29, 2013 10:33 PM
+0100
A former NSA contractor says that the US has been colluding with the UK, Germany and others
The NSA has been working with at least seven European other countries to collect personal communications data, according to Wayne Madsen, a former NSA contractor who has come forward because he does not think the public should not be “kept in the dark.” According to Madsen, Denmark, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Spain and Italy all have formed secret agreements with the US to submit sensitive data.The Guardian reports:
Under international intelligence agreements, confirmed by declassified documents, nations are categorised by the US according to their trust level. The US is first party while the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand enjoy second party relationships. Germany and France have third party relationships.
In an interview published last night on the PrivacySurgeon.org blog, Madsen, who has been attacked for holding controversial views on espionage issues, said he had decided to speak out after becoming concerned about the “half story” told by EU politicians regarding the extent of the NSA’s activities in Europe.
He said that under the agreements, which were drawn up after the second world war, the “NSA gets the lion’s share” of the sigint “take”. In return, the third parties to the NSA agreements received “highly sanitised intelligence”.
The news could be potentially damaging to countries, particularly Germany, whose chancellor Angela Merkel has vocally condemned the NSA program that recently came to light by whistleblower Edward Snowden.
Saturday, Jun 29, 2013 09:00 PM
+0100
NSA reportedly spied on European Union offices
German paper Der Spiegel cites a "top secret" document obtained by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden
As the fate of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden hangs in the balance, more revelations exposing the breadth and depth of America’s classified surveillance program continue to emerge. On Saturday, German news magazine Der Spiegel reported that a “top secret” document, obtained by Snowden, reveals that the secretive government agency spied on European Union offices.From Der Spiegel, translated to English by Google Translate:
In a “top secret” classified NSA paper in September 2010 describes how the intelligence attacked the EU’s diplomatic representation in Washington.
Thus, not only bugs were installed in the building in the U.S. capital, but also the internal computer network was infiltrated. In this way, the Americans not only get access to meetings at the premises of the EU , but also to e-mails and internal documents on the computers.
The document, which Der Spiegel saw only “in parts,” also claims responsibility for eavesdropping on the Justus Lipsius building in Brussels, which houses the European Council:
Apparently, the U.S. Secret Service is responsible for eavesdropping, which took place in Brussels. A little more than five years of EU security experts were several failed calls that had apparently been considered a remote maintenance facility in the Justus Lipsius building. There sit the EU Council of Ministers and the European Council.
The news comes only two days after it was revealed that the NSA has been tracking American email meta-data for the past ten years
Meanwhile in the land of the not so free between the
BP iridescent seas.
Senators Ask if NSA Collected Gun Data
Potential to construct gun database, senators say
une 28, 2013 3:35 pmSenators are questioning whether the National Security Agency collected bulk data on more than just Americans’ phone records, such as firearm and book purchases.
A bipartisan group of 26 senators, led by Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) asked Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to detail the scope and limits of the National Security Agency’s surveillance activities in a letter released Friday.
“We are concerned that by depending on secret interpretations of the PATRIOT Act that differed from an intuitive reading of the statute, this program essentially relied for years on a secret body of law,” the senators wrote in the letter.
The NSA’s surveillance program has come under intense scrutiny following a leak revealing the agency harvested the phone metadata of millions of American citizens.
The senators noted that the federal government’s authority under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act is broad and rife with potential for abuse. Among the senators’ concerns was whether the NSA’s bulk data harvesting program could be used to construct a gun registry or violate other privacy laws.
“It
can be used to collect information on credit card purchases, pharmacy records,
library records, firearm sales records, financial information, and a range of
other sensitive subjects,” the senators wrote. “And the bulk collection
authority could potentially be used to supersede bans on maintaining gun owner
databases, or laws protecting the privacy of medical records, financial
records, and records of book and movie purchases.”
More
Snowden Disclosures Won’t Stop, WikiLeaks Founder Assange Says
By Susan Decker & John Walcott - Jul 1, 2013 5:00 AM GMT
Arresting
former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden wouldn’t stop the
release of information on classified programs to collect phone records and
e-mail communications, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said.
“There is
no stopping the publishing process at this stage,” Assange said yesterday on
ABC’s “This Week” program. “Great care has been taken to make sure that Mr.
Snowden can’t be pressured by any state to stop the publication process.”
European officials are demanding more information on the latest revelation stemming from the releases, a report in the German magazine Der Spiegel that the NSA has been wiretapping European Union diplomatic missions in Washington and the United Nations building in New York. The report cited classified documents in Snowden’s possession.
“I am deeply worried and shocked,” European Parliament President Martin Schulz said in an e-mailed statement. “If the allegations prove to be true, it would be an extremely serious matter which will have a severe impact on EU-U.S. relations.”
Two U.S. officials familiar with American electronic espionage programs declined to comment on the allegations in Spiegel. However, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, both said that all multinational institutions are routine targets for both technological and human intelligence by virtually all member nations.
Both said that any such U.S. efforts are far from unique, though they allowed that in many instances U.S. programs are more extensive and ambitious than those of most other countries except China, France, Israel, the U.K. and Iran.
More
Edward Snowden may be the last of the human spies
In future, the public may never be alerted to
NSA-type revelations because surveillance is fast becoming automated
Saturday 29 June 2013 12.00 BST
Human nature makes it predictable that organisations such as the NSA would be cataloguing phone calls and other electronic interactions between humans. But Edward Snowden's revelations also tell us how far electronic snooping has yet to go. While the din of outrage still resonates, we should be thankful that
Snowden – a human being – actually exists. In the future, the world may never be alerted to such breaches of privacy because there will be no humans involved in spying at all. Just as algorithms have conquered our stock markets and our musical tastes, so too will they conquer surveillance. Even the most human of tasks, snooping, will become the province of the bots.
While it's true that the surveillance Snowden spotlighted is of a new and digital variety, it still required human levers to give it any meaning. The NSA, for example, using its call log data, would take an interest in people who repeatedly dialled the phone numbers of known troublemakers. Human agents would query the call-logging database and find out who a prime target in Yemen might be speaking with inside the US. The data is collected passively and electronically, but much of the intelligence and the methods to derive it come straight from human minds. But what will happen when a machine makes the rules?
More
You get so used to lying that after a while it’s hard to remember what the truth is.
Philip Agee. CIA defector/whistleblower.
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished June:
DJIA: +145 Up. NASDAQ: +146 Up. SP500: +177 Unch The Fed’s
Final Bubble continues, but is struggling. The S&P500 moved sideways. The Dow and
Nasdaq both barely eked out a gain. In current highly volatile conditions and
controversial uncertain policy indecision at the Fed, Speculators would stay
long, investors would exit stocks for now or get fully hedged.
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