Monday 26 August 2013

France & The Euro.



Baltic Dry Index. 1165 +07

LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000.  Revised due to QE programs.

"The history of paper money is an account of abuse, mismanagement, and financial disaster."

Richard M. Ebeling

It is the final summer bank holiday here in England today, the unofficial end to the UK’s press silly season. After today, the UK’s dismal politicians start returning from whatever rock they crawled under to hide during the summer, to commence new ways of making a bad situation worse. There never was a problem a politician or a bureaucrat couldn’t make ten times worse.  But as bad as the economic situation is, in the slowly recovering UK, it’s infinitely worse in Euroland’s number two economy, France.

Today, we link to John Mauldin, one of the best financial writers around, who has covered France in his latest update. To continue reading at his website you must sign up for a free subscription.  I would strongly recommend that each reader does.  My take on old socialist France is that they are going to end the unloved euro in its present form. Stay long physical precious metals.  French bank depositors are now at very high risk. When Benny and the Boys at the Fed start to taper, all interest rates rise.  Along with setting off turmoil in India, and across southeast Asia, rising interest rates will sink France, Italy and Spain. Euroland’s number two, number three and number four economies. The wealth destroying euro as we know it, is coming to its long overdue end. Sadly much more European wealth is about to get destroyed as Europe’s banks go bust with Cyprus as the template for massive bail-ins. But enough of my amateur observations, below a master class on France from one of America’s maestro’s.

"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

France: On the Edge of the Periphery

By John Mauldin August 25, 2013
France: On the Edge of the Periphery
“No: France Is Not Bankrupt” – Really?
So What Is the Catalyst for a French Crisis?
France Cannot Be France Without Greatness
San Antonio, Chicago, Bismarck, Denver, and Toronto

----In the Eurozone there was no mechanism by which exchange rates could be used to balance the labor-cost differentials between the peripheral countries and those of the northern tier. And then there's France. I've been writing in this space for some time that France has the potential to become the next Greece. I've spent a good deal of time this past month reviewing the European situation, and I'm more convinced than ever that France is on its way to becoming the most significant economic train wreck in Europe within the next few years.

We shifted focus at the beginning of the year to Japan because of the real crisis that is brewing there. Over the next few months I will begin to refocus on Europe as that train threatens to go off the track again. And true to form, this wreck will be entirely due to human error, coupled with a large dollop of hubris. This week we will take a brief look at the problems developing in Europe and then do a series of in-depth dives between now and the beginning of winter. The coming European crisis will not show up next week but will start playing in a movie theater near you sometime next year. Today's letter will close with a little speculation on how the developing conflict between France and Germany and the rest of its euro neighbors will play out.

----Let’s look at few facts, Prof. Moschetto:
  1. Your country is in recession and has been for almost two years. Even the government is beginning to acknowledge that growth is and will be flat. Standard & Poor's thinks your growth rate may be as low as -1.5%. Jean-Michel Six of Standard & Poor's recently noted, "The current account deficit is growing month after month, and this means it is depending more and more on the rest of the world to finance its growth. In my view, France has got just one more year to sort itself out."
One of the ways to deal with a debt crisis is to grow your way out of it. You are not doing that. The number of new industrial plants created by foreigners fell 25% last year, and new job creation fell 53%. Ernst & Young said France's anti-market body language had become almost "repulsive" to outside investors, and a series of bitter labor disputes has not helped (source: The Telegraph). French industrial output is still falling, and both your manufacturing and service PMIs are among the worst in Europe—far worse even than those of Italy and Spain, both of which are clearly in financial disarray. The following PMI chart is from March, but August was still in negative territory (chart courtesy of Josh Ayers of Paradarch Advisors).

Much More
http://www.mauldineconomics.com/frontlinethoughts/france-on-the-edge-of-the-periphery



Fed Officials Rebuff Coordination Calls as QE Taper Looms

By Simon Kennedy, Joshua Zumbrun & Jeff Kearns - Aug 26, 2013 5:55 AM GMT
Federal Reserve officials rebuffed international calls to take the threat of fallout in emerging markets into account when tapering U.S. monetary stimulus.

The risk that the Fed’s trimming of bond buying will hurt economies from India to Turkey by sparking an exodus of cash and higher borrowing costs was a dominant theme at the annual meeting of central bankers and economists in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, that ended Aug. 24. An index of emerging-market stocks last week fell 2.7 percent, the steepest in two months, compared with a 0.5 percent gain in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index.

Such selloffs aren’t an issue for Fed officials who said their sole focus is the U.S. economy as they consider when to start reining in $85 billion of monthly asset purchases that have swelled the central bank’s balance sheet to $3.65 trillion. Even as the Fed officials advised emerging markets to protect themselves, they were pressed by the International Monetary Fund and Mexican central banker Agustin Carstens to spell out their intentions better in the interest of safeguarding global growth.

“You have to remember that we are a legal creature of Congress and that we only have a mandate to concern ourselves with the interest of the United States,” Dennis Lockhart, president of the Atlanta Fed, told Bloomberg Television’s Michael McKee. “Other countries simply have to take that as a reality and adjust to us if that’s something important for their economies.”
More
 
"As fewer and fewer people have confidence in paper as a store of value, the price of gold will continue to rise. The history of fiat money is little more than a register of monetary follies and inflations. Our present age merely affords another entry in this dismal register."

Hans F. Sennholz

At the Comex silver depositories Friday final figures were: Registered 39.27 Moz, Eligible 125.16 Moz, Total 164.43 Moz.  


Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.

Below, France’s old socialists lower the red flag. France has hit the end of the road say the men trapped in the 1950s mentality. The politics of class hatred, wealth envy, has finally run out of road. French voters fell for the something for nothing, free lunch, one time too many. In return for a German bailout once interest rates rise, France is about to get “Athened.”

The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.

Margaret Thatcher.

France cannot take any more taxes, government admits

France's Socialist government has admitted that the country cannot cope with any further tax rises and promised no more hikes just days ahead of the country's largest ever tax bill.

In an unfortunate piece of timing, however, the pledge came just as the environment minister announced the creation of a new "carbon tax" and amid reports that the overall tax pressure on French households will rise even further next year.

Returning from their summer break, the French are about to discover stinging rises in tax bills in their letter boxes – the result of a series of new levies enacted by President François Hollande as he seeks to plug the French deficit and bring down public debt – now riding at 92 per cent of GDP.

But the extent of the hikes has apparently even shocked the very Socialist ministers who implemented them.

The total tax pressure (taxes and social security contributions) will account for 46.3 per cent of GDP this year – a historic high – compared to 45 per cent in 2012.

Some 16 million households will see an automatic 2 per cent rise in income tax as calculations are no longer mitigated by inflation. Family tax breaks will be cut.

The rich will see the highest rises, following Mr Hollande's decision to raise the rate to 45 per cent for those earning more than 150,000 euros – effectively 49 per cent due to an additional levy.

Amid discontent at the forthcoming rises, Jean-François Copé, head of the opposition Right-wing UMP party today pledged to enact "massive tax cuts" and to slash state spending by ten per cent should his party win power in 2017.

In a clear damage limitation exercise, a chorus of top Socialists spoke out against any more rises.

Pierre Mosovici, the finance minister, told France Inter radio: “I’m very sensitive to the French getting fed up with taxes We are listening to them.” Laurent Fabius, the foreign minister followed suit, warning Mr Hollande to be “very, very careful” as “there’s a level above which we shouldn’t climb”.

One Socialist told Les Echos newspaper that the hand-wringing was totally hypocritical as “they are crying wolf, but the wolf is us.”
More

Of course, our vision and our aims go far beyond the complex arguments of economics, but unless we get the economy right we shall deny our people the opportunity to share that vision and to see beyond the narrow horizons of economic necessity. Without a healthy economy we cannot have a healthy society. Without a healthy society the economy will not stay healthy for long.

Margaret Thatcher.

The monthly Coppock Indicators finished July:
DJIA: +164 Up. NASDAQ: +167 Up. SP500: +195 Up. The Fed’s final bubble still inflates but for how much longer?  

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