Baltic Dry Index. 1001 -11
LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance,
and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.
Sir Winston S. Churchill.
This morning Europe, the EUSSR. A new beginning, or
just another false dawn in the never ending crisis? To every cloud, they say,
is a silver lining. Enter the US tort bar to the Berlin-Brussels destruction of
Greece. Is Goldie about to get its comeuppance for its part in the Greek
tragedy of joining the ill-conceived, wealth destroying, unemployment
generating Euro? Will the long suffering US taxpayer have to bailout the
Goldmanite’s yet again?
Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so few
Greeks, to so many.
With apologies to Sir Winston S. Churchill.
Victims of Greek bail-out get chance of class action
Aggrieved investors who lost tens of billions of euros in Greece’s bail-out are being given the chance to bring class actions in America and Europe after a landmark deal between two US law firms.
Grant & Eisenhofer (G&E), one of the US’s top investor rights law firms, has struck an alliance with Boston-based Kyros Law to help investors pursue cases both within Greece and elsewhere.Kyros’s new Athens office is already co-ordinating the claims of thousands of angry bondholders, who took a 53.5pc upfront haircut on their investments in 2012’s restructuring of all Greek public debt held by private creditors.
The Private Sector Involvement (PSI) deal was aimed at cutting Greece’s public debt by €110bn (£95bn), but has given rise to claims against the Greek government, banks and institutions involved in selling Greek bonds.
G&E is renowned for its bold approach to investor litigation. Its previous scalps include leading European institutions to a settlement worth more than $500m (£322m) from Shell after the oil giant overstated its oil reserves and a $110m claim relating to the Parmalat scandal.
John Kyriakopoulos, who heads the Kyros practice in Athens, said: “G&E have secured numerous record-setting financial recoveries for clients. Our new collaboration is an historic step for advancing the rights of investors in Greece, who have been battered in recent years and have scant remedies or even avenues through which to pursue recovery.”
Mr
Kyriakopoulos, the former head of the Hellenic Pension Mutual Fund Management
Company, was appointed in May to lead a class action against the National Bank
of Greece by OSPA, the union representing nearly 3,000 Olympic Airlines staff.
OSPA has
brought a suit against the bank for the way it structured severance packages,
70pc of which were in Greek government bonds that more than halved in value
after the 2012 bail-out.
Mr Kyriakopoulos
said the case had been lodged in the Greek courts, but that “20 to 30 of the
claimants have dual citizenship”, opening up the possibility of litigation in
foreign courts.
He added
that thousands of investors were clubbing together via the Association of
Bondholders in Greece to examine potential actions under the EU’s Markets in
Financial Instruments Directive.
Apart
from potential claims relating to the sale of Greek government debt, the
association was also examining sales of other financial instruments, such as
credit default swaps.
----He said the involvement of G&E, and the potential use of the US courts to fight cases, increased the chances of investors recouping some of the money they lost.
“The US
courts can provide for much wider protection in regards to investor and
shareholder rights,” Mr Kyriakopoulos said.
More
European banks need to sell £2.8 trillion of assets
Banks in Europe will need to slash €3.2 trillion (£2.8tn) of assets from their balance sheets over the next five years to meet new regulations designed to minimise the risk of further banking collapses in future.
Europe’s
smallest banks will have to undergo the biggest transformation by 2018 to meet
the new Basel III regulations, according to research by the Royal Bank of
Scotland.
Up to
€2.6tn will need to be cut from the balance sheets of smaller banks in Europe,
which could potentially lead to another contraction in lending to small and
medium-sized businesses.
However,
Europe’s largest banks will also have to shrink their assets by €661bn and
raise a further €47bn of capital to meet the regulations.
According
to RBS’s analysis, Barclays, Crédit Agricole of France and Germany’s Deutsche
Bank have the greatest requirement for fresh capital.
---- According to the European Central Bank, banks in the Eurozone have already reduced their balance sheets by some €2.9tn over the past 15 months.
But the
figures from RBS highlight that a vast amount of work still needs to be done
over the next five years to comply with the Basel III regulations which were
created to avoid further bail-outs.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/10236436/European-banks-need-to-sell-2.8-trillion-of-assets.html
In yet another sign that interest rates have
bottomed, the German led Eurozone might just have turned the corner. On Zirp
and free money forever, the great inflation comes next. “The external
environment is really getting better, led by signs that U.S. demand is picking
up,” said Nick Kounis, head of macro research at ABN Amro Bank NV in
Amsterdam.” I’d rather like to know what Nick is smoking in ABM Amro in
Amsterdam.
Once in a while you will stumble upon the truth,
but most of us manage to pick ourselves up and hurry along as if nothing had
happened.
Sir Winston S. Churchill.
Euro Area’s Recession Seen Over as Champagne Kept on Ice
By Jeff Black - Aug 12, 2013 12:01 AM GMT
The euro-area economy probably edged back to growth last quarter for
the first time since 2011, ending the longest recession since the single
currency union started 14 years ago. Gross domestic product in the 17-nation region expanded 0.2 percent in the three months through June after shrinking for the previous six quarters, according to the median of 21 economist forecasts in a Bloomberg News survey. The European Union’s statistics office in Luxembourg will release the data at 11 a.m. on Aug. 14. The German economy probably expanded about 0.75 percent, exceeding the 0.6 percent economists predict, according to a government estimate.
A
year of relative calm on financial markets, budget cuts and economic reforms
from Spain to Italy, and accelerating growth in the
U.S., the world’s biggest economy, has helped the euro area start to recover
from a downturn that pushed unemployment to a record 12.1 percent.
----“The external
environment is really getting better, led by signs that U.S. demand is picking
up,” said Nick Kounis, head of macro
research at ABN Amro Bank NV in Amsterdam. “The second quarter should mark the
end of the recession in the euro area, but the recovery will be excruciatingly
slow. We’re not getting the champagne out yet.”
More
For another 6 weeks at least, Club Med must be
tortured on the rack of getting the NSA’s leader in continental Europe re-elected.
This ailing continent needs newer and better politicians. But where could we find them? There is no sign of a European Obama or anything remotely like him.
Der Spiegel
Merkel Returns From Vacation to Defend Her Lead Ahead of Vote
By Patrick Donahue - Aug 11, 2013 11:00 PM GMT
Germany’s election
campaign ramps up this week as Chancellor Angela
Merkel defends her lead in the polls against sharpened political attacks
from opposition Social Democratic candidate Peer Steinbrueck. Merkel will return from vacation to deliver the first of 56 scheduled campaign speeches across Germany in the Hessian city of Seligenstadt on Aug. 14. For six weeks until election day on Sept. 22, the candidates will criss-cross the country as Steinbrueck launches broadsides at the popular leader’s economic policies.
“With its delaying tactics, this government has become the favored child of the banks and has prevented them from being brought to account for their lapses,” Steinbrueck wrote in an op-ed for the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper Aug. 10, accusing Merkel of holding back a financial-transaction tax.
The vote to determine whether Merkel wins a third term has ground action on the European debt crisis to a halt as the SPD strives to unseat her. Steinbrueck moved to exploit her absence this month by mobilizing a get-out-the-vote effort to win back undecided or one-time SPD voters.
While polls last week suggested the SPD candidate may be
narrowing the gap, an Emnid survey published in Bild am Sonntag yesterday showed the chancellor’s
Christian Democratic-led block with a 16-point lead.
Merkel’s
bloc gained a percentage point to 41 percent, while the SPD held steady with 25
percent support, the poll showed. Still, with the chancellor’s pro-business
Free Democratic allies polling at 5 percent -- the threshold to enter
parliament -- such a result may not be enough to reprise her current coalition
and continue her policies.
More
We end for the day with growing signs of a new commodities
scandal emerging in our new lawless age. What does the NSA know and when did
they know it? This might not be the best
time to start shedding documents or losing track of emails. Still the
investigating agency is America’s Commodity Futures Trading Commission, whose
only role in life is to make the USA’s SEC look like geniuses in comparison.
This Commission hasn’t been able to recognise US government gold and silver
manipulation since it was founded in 1975.
Exclusive: CFTC subpoenas metals warehousing firm as inquiry heats up
LONDON |(Reuters) - The U.S. commodities market regulator has subpoenaed a metals warehousing firm, seeking all of its documents and communications related to the London Metal Exchange since January 2010, as an inquiry into complaints about inflated metals prices gathers steam.
The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) sent the subpoena last week, a source with direct knowledge of the matter said, after a letter from the regulator last month ordered the warehouse firm to preserve emails, documents and instant messages from the past three years.
The subpoena is the latest sign the CFTC is stepping up its inquiry as it looks into allegations by users of metals, such as Coca-Cola Co, that warehousing firms have made it more expensive for them to buy metal by restricting the flow of metal out of warehouses.
It isn't clear if more than one firm has received a subpoena or whether there is going to be a formal investigation into the metals warehousing industry.
The industry used to be primarily run by traditional warehouse firms such as Netherlands-based C.Steinweg and Singapore-headquartered CWT Commodities but in recent years it has been dominated by banks such as Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase & Co, as well as large commodities traders like Glencore Xstrata Plc and Trafigura AG, all of which have bought metals warehouse businesses in the last three years.
Spokespeople for Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Glencore Xstrata, and Trafigura declined to comment.
More
A politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to
happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability
afterwards to explain why it didn't happen.
Sir Winston S. Churchill.
At the Comex silver depositories Friday final figures were: Registered 40.62 Moz,
Eligible 124.03 Moz, Total 164.65 Moz.
Crooks and
Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
Today, the real China. In our new lawless era, with
the NSA spying on everyone and the IRS a political tool of the US party in
power, how long before this becomes the scene from California to New York?
The
truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but
in the end; there it is.
Sir
Winston S. Churchill.
China arrests activist on subversion charge as crackdown deepens
BEIJING |(Reuters) - China has arrested an activist on a charge of subversion, his brother and a rights group said on Sunday, the second such arrest in less than two months and the latest sign that the authorities are hardening their stance toward dissent.
Yang Lin, 45, a critic of China's one-party system who lives in the southern province of Guangdong, was arrested on a charge of "inciting subversion of state power", his brother, Yang Mingzhu, said by telephone.
In China, an inciting subversion charge is commonly levelled against critics of one-party rule. It carries a maximum penalty of five years in jail, though lengthier sentences have been handed down.
Yang Mingzhu said he had received a notice of his brother's arrest, dated July 19, but it gave few details.
The U.S.-based group Chinese Human Rights Defenders said Yang Lin, had spent a year in a labor camp, and he was also a signatory of "Charter 08" - a manifesto organized by jailed Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Liu Xiaobo - which calls for political reform.
"He would not hesitate in throwing himself wholeheartedly in helping disadvantaged citizens fight for their rights and in activities promoting constitutional democracy," the advocacy group said on its website on Sunday.
Chinese liberals and intellectuals had hoped the new government that took over this year, under President Xi Jinping, would be more tolerant of calls for reform but authorities have seemed to indicate they will not tolerate any challenge to their rule.
In recent months, authorities have detained at least 16 anti-corruption activists involved in demonstrations calling for government officials to disclose their assets.
The Futian District Detention Centre, where the brother said Yang Lin was being held, declined to comment.
A formal arrest usually leads to a trial. Activists who are detained are sometimes released before they are formally arrested.
In June, authorities formally arrested a man for inciting subversion after he applied for permission to demonstrate on June 4, the 24th anniversary of the bloody crackdown on protesters in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.
“I
believe that at this point in history, the greatest danger to our freedom and
way of life comes from the reasonable fear of omniscient State powers kept in
check by nothing more than policy documents.”
Edward
Snowden.
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished July:
DJIA: +164 Up. NASDAQ: +167 Up. SP500: +195 Up. The
Fed’s final bubble still inflates.
No comments:
Post a Comment