Thursday 31 October 2013

In the EUSSR “Flanby”.



Baltic Dry Index. 1487 -67 

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

"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

Below, from “old BS’s” mouth to God’s ears.  No tapering today, no tapering tomorrow, no tapering ever, probably. The Great Nixonian Error of fiat money has gone irretrievably wrong. Stay long physical precious metals. It’s to be fiat money printing forever and ZIRP forever, or at least as long as the Fed can sell that illusion to the rest of the world. Uncle Scam is to issue trillions more of worthless unrepayable IOUs to the world, in exchange for real goods and services of intrinsic value. Let the currency wars continue. We long ago left money for mere currency tokenism. It’s a truism that this currency house of cards won’t last. We just don’t know when or how it collapses. But collapse it does, and in our lifetime.

At the bottom end of western society, people working in McDonalds in America can’t afford to eat there even on pink slime, and get food stamps just to exist. Yet the Fed is spewing out 85 billion a month of new currency, over a trillion new currency dollars a year, just to keep this failed Nixonian error from collapse. The end is approaching fast. America, the Eurozone, the UK, China and Japan are all on a treadmill to fiat currency destruction.  Though we all know it, like little children we try to pretend this scary monster isn’t real. Tomorrow will not be like today which was like yesterday. On an unreformed fiat currency Nixonian error, tomorrow will be like Mao’s China or Stalin’s USSR. Draconian measures are needed to enforce the mere currency which isn’t money.

“The problem with fiat money is that it rewards the minority that can handle money, but fools the generation that has worked and saved money.”

“Adam Smith” aka George Goodman.

Oct. 30, 2013, 4:03 p.m. EDT

Fed says economy too weak to begin taper

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The Federal Reserve decided Wednesday to hold monetary policy steady, saying that conditions remained too weak to pull back from its bond-buying program.

By a vote of 9 to 1, the Fed decided to maintain the pace of its $85 billion-per-month asset purchase plan.

----Scott Anderson, chief economist at Bank of the West, said the market seemed disappointed by the lack of clarity from the central bank.

Indeed, the central bankers made very few changes to their outlook. Fed officials repeated what they had said in September — that the economy was improving at a “moderate” pace.

The Fed kept its optimistic tone that the economy remains on the mend, just at a slower than expected pace.
“Taking into account the extent of federal fiscal retrenchment over the past year, the [Fed] sees the improvement in economic activity and labor market conditions since it began its asset purchase program as consistent with growing underlying strength in the broader economy,” the central bank said in a statement. 
“However, the committee decided to await more evidence that progress will be sustained before adjusting the pace of its purchases,” the Fed said. Read text of FOMC statement.
More

NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers worldwide, Snowden documents say

In this slide from a National Security Agency presentation on “Google Cloud Exploitation,” a sketch shows where the “Public Internet” meets the internal “Google Cloud” where user data resides. Two engineers with close ties to Google exploded in profanity when they saw the drawing.

By Barton Gellman and Ashkan Soltani, Published: October 30

The National Security Agency has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world, according to documents obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and interviews with knowledgeable officials.
By tapping those links, the agency has positioned itself to collect at will from hundreds of millions of user accounts, many of them belonging to Americans. The NSA does not keep everything it collects, but it keeps a lot.

According to a top-secret accounting dated Jan. 9, 2013, the NSA’s acquisitions directorate sends millions of records every day from internal Yahoo and Google networks to data warehouses at the agency’s headquarters at Fort Meade, Md. In the preceding 30 days, the report said, field collectors had processed and sent back 181,280,466 new records — including “metadata,” which would indicate who sent or received e-mails and when, as well as content such as text, audio and video.

The NSA’s principal tool to exploit the data links is a project called MUSCULAR, operated jointly with the agency’s British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters . From undisclosed interception points, the NSA and the GCHQ are copying entire data flows across fiber-optic cables that carry information among the data centers of the Silicon Valley giants.

The infiltration is especially striking because the NSA, under a separate program known as PRISM, has front-door access to Google and Yahoo user accounts through a court-approved process.

The MUSCULAR project appears to be an unusually aggressive use of NSA tradecraft against flagship American companies. The agency is built for high-tech spying, with a wide range of digital tools, but it has not been known to use them routinely against U.S. companies.

In a statement, Google’s chief legal officer, David Drummond, said the company has “long been concerned about the possibility of this kind of snooping” and has not provided the government with access to its systems.

“We are outraged at the lengths to which the government seems to have gone to intercept data from our private fiber networks, and it underscores the need for urgent reform,” he said.

----Intercepting communications overseas has clear advantages for the NSA, with looser restrictions and less oversight. NSA documents about the effort refer directly to “full take,” “bulk access” and “high volume” operations on Yahoo and Google networks. Such large-scale collection of Internet content would be illegal in the United States, but the operations take place overseas, where the NSA is allowed to presume that anyone using a foreign data link is a foreigner.

----Tapping the Google and Yahoo clouds allows the NSA to intercept communications in real time and to take “a retrospective look at target activity,” according to one internal NSA document.

-----In an NSA presentation slide on “Google Cloud Exploitation,” however, a sketch shows where the “Public Internet” meets the internal “Google Cloud” where their data reside. In hand-printed letters, the drawing notes that encryption is “added and removed here!” The artist adds a smiley face, a cheeky celebration of victory over Google security.

Two engineers with close ties to Google exploded in profanity when they saw the drawing. “I hope you publish this,” one of them said.

----Because digital communications and cloud storage do not usually adhere to national boundaries, MUSCULAR and a previously disclosed NSA operation to collect Internet address books have amassed content and metadata on a previously unknown scale from U.S. citizens and residents. Those operations have gone undebated in public or in Congress because their existence was classified.
More

If You Want Privacy, Turn Off Your IPhone

By Leonid Bershidsky Oct 30, 2013 3:48 PM GMT
"Now it's everybody against everybody else," the Italian daily Corriere della Sera commented wryly before reporting the latest electronic surveillance scandal. Corriere and another Italian newspaper, La Stampa, broke the story simultaneously. According to them, European Council President Herman Van Rompuy grew suspicious about a USB stick and a phone charger he had received as gifts from the organizers of the Group of 20 summit in St. Petersburg last month. He handed the gadgets over to intelligence experts in Brussels, and they called in help from Germany. According to the Italian reports, German technicians found the devices to be "Trojan horses" designed to obtain information from phones and computers.

Russia, of course, denied that it had been so inhospitable. "This is clearly an attempt to divert attention from real problems that dominate the agenda between European capitals and Washington," President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. The denial, however, was somewhat incomplete without corroboration from Van Rompuy, who said nothing on the record, allowing the Italian stories to stand.

Incomplete denials are nothing new in the global electronic surveillance scandal known as Datagate. The White House, famously, denied that the U.S. National Security Agency was tapping German Chancellor Angela Merkel's phone or was planning to do so in the future. Merkel, understandably, assumed that since the past wasn't covered by the denial, she would be justified in complaining to U.S. President Barack Obama and the whole world.

Just as the Russian USB-drive story made the rounds, U.S. National Security Agency Director Keith Alexander was denying that his agency had collected call data in European countries, suggesting instead that these nations' intelligence services had made them available to the U.S. in the spirit of anti-terrorist cooperation. This denial had more holes in it than an unsuspecting user's digital privacy. People in France or Spain shouldn't care which intelligence service originally tapped their phones, especially if the covertly obtained data ended up at the NSA.

Besides, Alexander didn't deny a far more outrageous charge made against his agency: That the NSA listened to the telephone conversations of 35 world leaders. The White House has publicly denied ever tapping U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron's phone, but it isn't clear whether other countries that questioned the U.S. about the allegation, such as South Korea, have received satisfactory answers

----It is the undeniable truth that tens of millions of law-abiding citizens, as well as dozens of politicians, have had their communications monitored by intelligence services. These services may rearrange their protocols, as Germany and France demand now, but they are unlikely suddenly to get religion and drop the unsavory surveillance practices
More

Next there is nothing new under the sun. Italy being Italy as usual. But reality always trumps Potemkin villages. The race is on as to whether Italy, Spain or France bolt from the dying wealth destroying Euro first. In Europe, tomorrow will not be like today which was like yesterday. With over 40 percent youth unemployment across southern Europe, despite massive fiat currency creation, the Bilderberger house of cards is set to implode. Capital flight to London is rampant and rising. The ECB is panicking. This euro house of horror will soon come to its long overdue end.

"In the long run, the gold price has to go up in relation to paper money. There is no other way.”

Nicholas L. Deak

Mediobanca hints at Italian euro exit unless Germany shifts on EMU policy

The exchange rate is bringing Italy's worrying matters to a head.

Italy remains stuck in depression. We now know that the spectacular spike in consumer confidence in June was a ruse, a white lie to talk up prospects and hold back the debt-deflation tide.

Hedge funds, banks and investors from around the world poured into Italian assets without reading the fine print. They made quick money, of course. Yields on 10-year Italian bonds fell 40 basis points within a week. Milan's MIB index of stock touched bottom near 14,860 just before the release. It then surged, reaching 19,496 this week.

The euphoria was understandable. The economy component of the confidence index jumped miraculously from 71.7 to 91.6 in one month. If Italy really was turning the corner so dramatically after a peak-to-trough fall in GDP of 9pc and two years of double-dip recession, it would indeed mean that Europe's crisis was behind us. We could breathe a little easier about Italy's €2 trillion debt, the world's largest after the US and Japan.

In reality, Italy's data agency Istat changed the survey. It looked at a different "socio-demographic structure" and "sample structure". Istat quietly revealed some details a month later, but only a handful of Italian economists were paying attention. "They played with the data and I am shocked," said one.

He described the episode as an attempt to talk up momentum and lift growth to "escape velocity". Italy's authorities - in thrall to the Bocconi Boys, free-marketeers from Milan's Bocconi University - give great weight to theories that confidence alone can overpower fiscal austerity, an overvalued currency and tight money.

And money is certainly tight. Italian M3 has contracted over the past five months (falling from €1.329 trillion to €1.312 trillion). Simon Ward from Henderson Global Investors says his gauge - six-month real M1 - has rolled over. "Italy is flashing red," he said.

----The hard data catch up soon enough in any case. Industrial production fell 4.4pc in August, and new orders fell 6.8pc. The Bank of Italy said credit to non-financial firms fell 4.6pc in August (year-on-year), worse than in July. Business confidence fell back to 79.3 in September and is now at post-Lehman crisis levels. Istat said this week that the economy is weaker than previously thought. GDP will shrink yet again in the third quarter.

"The recession has flattened, that is all," says Antonio Guglielmi from Mediobanca. "The debt-to-GDP ratio has risen by 15 percentage points [to 133pc] over the past 15 months because there is no growth. It is all because of the effects of austerity and the fiscal multiiplier. We are making the same mistake they made in Greece."
More

Hollande Lives Up to Pudding Moniker as His Authority Questioned

By Mark Deen - Oct 30, 2013 11:01 PM GMT
French President Francois Hollande’s nickname after a popular pudding is beginning to look like more than the stuff of satire.

A year and a half into his presidency, Hollande’s authority has been undermined by flip-flops on issues from immigration to taxes. This week’s decision to suspend a truck levy in the face of protests prompted headlines of “Government Runs Out of Steam” in Le Parisien and “Can He Still Govern?” in Le Monde.

----The truck-tax reversal came two days after Hollande abandoned a budget measure to increase taxes on savings and a week after he tried to backpedal over the deportation of a 15-year-old Kosovar girl. The U-turns lend substance to Hollande’s image for being soft and wobbly as he tries to please all -- one that earned him the moniker ‘Flanby,’ after a Nestle dessert brand, long before he became president.
More

Europe’s other debt crisis

It’s not just sovereign borrowing; there are too many zombie firms and overindebted households

----The euro zone’s politicians, even in supposedly prudent Germany, have been reluctant to look too deeply into banks’ balance-sheets, let alone to force them to clean themselves up. There are certainly questions to be asked about all the government bonds that the banks have bought in recent years. But the main dodgy assets that have been swept under the European carpet are private: bad loans made to households and companies.

There are some nasty bugs under your carpet, Angela

Europe is always thought of as having a sovereign-debt crisis, and it has. But the origins of the euro disaster lay less with government profligacy than with excessive private borrowing. True, Greece got into trouble because its government spent too much and collected too little in taxes. But elsewhere the bust followed a private-sector binge: mortgage debt in Ireland and Spain; corporate borrowing in Portugal and again in Spain (see article). In all three countries household and corporate debt combined were way over 200% of GDP before the crisis, much higher than in America (175%) or even Britain (205%).
More

ECB Makes Crisis Cash Lines at Central Banks Permanent

By Jeff Black - Oct 31, 2013 6:47 AM GMT
The European Central Bank said it is making its liquidity swap arrangements with global central banks permanent, turning crisis-era facilities into standing backstops for times of financial turbulence.

In an e-mailed statement, the Frankfurt-based ECB said it is converting temporary, bilateral arrangements with the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, the U.S. Federal Reserve, the Bank of Japan and the Swiss National Bank into standing facilities, allowing banks to access global currencies as well as the euro when needed.
More

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

Richard M. Ebeling

At the Comex silver depositories Wednesday final figures were: Registered 44.07 Moz, Eligible 124.44 Moz, Total 168.51 Moz.  


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

No crooks for a change today. Today it’s the turn of some Chinese politicians belittling the public, they’re not voters after all, with the Vice Mayor losing one of his legs. Some things are too good not to share.

China photoshop fail #2: Legless official hovers over tiny pensioner

Local government forced to apologise after being ridiculed on Weibo

Wednesday 30 October 2013

Look a little closer and there are a few problems with this picture of Chinese officials visiting an elderly woman.

The local government  in Anhui province has been left red-faced by another embarrassing attempt at photoshop, featuring a legless vice-mayor hovering ominously over a shrunken pensioner.

It was meant to show Wang Hun’s concern for the elderly during Double Ninth Festival, an event that honours ancestors, but this picture released by the  Ningguo government, became the subject of ridicule on social media.

Officials said an employee had been forced to doctor the picture because although they had visited the centenarians, elderly Cheng Yanchun was sitting in a very small space against the light, making it very difficult to take the shot.

In a statement translated by the Guardian, the government said: “Cheng was sitting on a chair on the balcony, under the sun. The balcony space was very small and the camera lens could not cover the whole scene … When the employee of the municipal civil affairs department uploaded the photos … he simply merged two shots.”

They added that the employee was now going to be censured for his actions. However it hasn’t stopped Weibo, Chinese microblogging site, from hungrily gobbling up this government gaffe.

Hailed as an example of government dishonesty, one Weibo user said the way the employee had shrunk the woman instead of the officials revealed how officials thought of the "little people."
More

"All previous attempts to base money solely on intangibles such as credit or government edict or fiat have ended in inflationary panic and disaster."

Donald Hoppe

The monthly Coppock Indicators finished September:
DJIA: +167 Up. NASDAQ: +213 Up. SP500: +203 Up.

Wednesday 30 October 2013

“BS” Day Arrives.



Baltic Dry Index. 1551 -68 Off nearly 28% from the summer high.

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

“Don’t worry mate -- there’s bigger crooks in the market than us guys!” the Rabobank yen Libor submitter, identified as Submitter-4 in the filing, said in a Sept. 21, 2007, e-mail, after agreeing to increase the daily yen rate by a percentage point.

Today is day two of the Fedsters’ coven in Washington. The day we get to learn from Dr. B. S. Bernanke, or “old BS” as he’s affectionately known on the Street,  just how many angels can dance on the head of the Fed’s newest pin. After the Fed’s embarrassing U-turn last month on ending QE forever and ZIRP, nothing of substance is expected from this month’s instalment of the thoughts of Chairman Ben.

Below some of the latest news from the land of the not so free.  Not attending this month’s meeting but definitely listening in, James Clapper and anyone else at the NSA above janitor with a pension plan to protect. No word from The Guardian newspaper yet, if old Snowy in Russia will also be listening in. With the latest US news turning glum, will Bernocchio dare to increase the pace of the monthly QE? US stock markets seem to think it’s a fair bet.

In central banking as in diplomacy, style, conservative tailoring, and an easy association with the affluent count greatly and results far much less.

J. K. Galbraith

US factory and housing data suggest economy losing steam -

by City A.M. Reporter  October 29, 2013, 2:10am
US MANUFACTURING output barely rose in September and contracts to buy previously owned homes recorded their largest drop in nearly three-and-a-half years, the latest signs the economy’s momentum ebbed as the third quarter ended.

The reports yesterday showed economic activity was on a weak footing even before a 16-day partial shutdown of the US federal government early in October that is expected to weigh on fourth quarter growth.
Manufacturing production edged up 0.1 per cent last month after advancing 0.5 per cent in August, the Federal Reserve said.

Factory output was held back by a 0.5 per cent drop in computer and electronic goods production. Output of electrical appliances also fell.

While automobile output increased two per cent, that was a sharp slowdown from the 5.2 per cent rise logged in August.

Separately, the National Association of Realtors said its Pending Homes Sales index, based on contracts signed last month, plunged 5.6 per cent to the lowest level since December.

The decline was the largest since May 2010. The index, which leads home resales by a month or two, has now dropped for four straight months. Realtors believe home resales, which dropped in September, peaked in July and August.

The reports come on the heels of data last week showing a gauge of business spending tumbled in September. That data, combined with a disappointing reading on hiring released earlier this month, has offered a dull picture of economic activity.

Consumer Confidence in U.S. Slumps by Most Since August 2011

By Ben Schenkel - 2013-10-29T14:51:24Z
Confidence among U.S. consumers declined in October by the most since August 2011 as the budget impasse and debt-ceiling negotiations in Washington took a toll on outlooks.

The Conference Board’s index slumped to 71.2 from a revised 80.2 last month, the New York-based private research group said today. The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for a decrease this month to 75. The October reading was the weakest in six months

The partial shutdown of federal agencies for half the month pushed consumer expectations to a seven-month low as the economy shows signs of cooling. Limited employment and wage gains, along with the prospect of another budget battle early next year, raise the risk of restrained holiday sales.
More
Oct. 29, 2013, 4:41 p.m. EDT

S&P 500, Dow industrials close at record highs

Nasdaq Composite Index closes higher even with near hour-long halt

---- Tuesday’s moves by the major indexes followed narrowly mixed action on Monday, when the Dow and Nasdaq ended close to the flat line, and the S&P 500 inched up to reach a record for a second straight session.

Most analysts expect the Federal Reserve to stand pat on its accommodative stance, given the Fed’s coming change in leadership, the recent weak economic data and the government shutdown and debt-ceiling battle earlier in the month.

In its accompanying policy statement, however, the Fed is likely to keep its options open about any tapering of its purchases before the end of the year. The decision is expected after the meeting ends on Wednesday.
More

US spy chief defends spying on foreign leaders

James Clapper says discovering the intentions of foreign heads of state has always been a "basic tenet" for US spy agencies

AFP 2:23AM GMT 30 Oct 2013
The head of US intelligence has said the country's spy agencies always try to learn the intentions of foreign leaders, but stopped short of confirming reports of eavesdropping on German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
James Clapper, director of national intelligence, said seeking to discern the aims of foreign heads of state has long been a "basic tenet" for US spy agencies.

"As long as I've been in the intelligence business, 50 years, leadership intentions in whatever form that's expressed is kind of a basic tenet of what we are to collect and analyse," Mr Clapper told the House Intelligence Committee.

"It's invaluable to us to know where countries are coming from, what their policies are, how that would impact us across a whole range of issues," Clapper said.

"So, and it isn't just leaders themselves, it's what goes on around them and the policies that they convey to their governments."

Media leaks from former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden alleged the National Security Agency has listened in on the communications of dozens of foreign leaders, including Mrs Merkel.

The revelation has created an uproar in Germany and across Europe amid conflicting reports as to when President Barack Obama allegedly learned or approved of the eavesdropping.

---- Rogers said the "best way" to determine a foreign leader's plans was "to somehow either get close to a foreign leader or actually get communications of the foreign leader," and asked Mr Clapper: "Would that be accurate?"

And the spy chief replied: "Yes, it would."

Asked if America's allies have carried out espionage against the United States, Mr Clapper said: "Absolutely."

But another congressman, Adam Schiff, said the spy services had a legal obligation to inform the intelligence committees in Congress of "significant" activities and he insisted that would apply to any spying on foreign leaders.

Mr Clapper appeared to disagree, saying the spy agencies were complying with the law by telling lawmakers about the guiding priorities of intelligence gathering, without specifying each source or "selector" to be tracked.

The chairman of the committee, Mr Rogers, later sharply rebuked Mr Schiff and said panel members had access to large amounts of information from the NSA.
More

In European asylum news, the snake bit European Union staggers from grim to grimmer. Thankfully for the UK, continental Europe’s woes, plus those of the Middle East, have set off a Greater London boom due to capital flight and a brain drain for once in the UK’s favour.  Long may Berlin and Brussels ill wind blow.

Italy’s Slump Persists in Setback for Letta Government

By Lorenzo Totaro - Oct 29, 2013 1:44 PM GMT
Italy’s economy shrank in the three months through September, the head of the statistics office said, prolonging a record recession and signaling that the euro area’s recovery is bypassing its third-biggest economy.

Antonio Golini, acting chairman of Istat, the country’s national statistics office, also told a hearing in Parliament in Rome that gross domestic product will fall 1.8 percent this year. That’s more than the 1.4 percent contraction Rome-based Istat projected in May.

The estimate contradicts the forecast of Prime Minister Enrico Letta’s government that the economy would stop contracting in the third quarter before returning to growth in the final three months of the year. As the wider euro region emerged from a recession in the second quarter, the Italian economy shrank 0.3 percent as export growth failed to offset the impact of rising unemployment on domestic demand.
More

In China news, the PBOC sent out a very mixed signal as interest rates jumped to a four month high. With big changes due to be announced at next month’s Communist Party plenum meeting, money rates are likely to be skittish for some time unless the PBOC clarifies.

China Money Rates Jump as Cash Squeeze Spurs Record Bond Yield

By Bloomberg News - Oct 30, 2013 6:48 AM GMT
China’s money-market rates jumped to four-month highs as corporate tax payments tied up funds amid uncertainty over the central bank’s policy stance. The one-year government bond yield climbed to a record as demand weakened at a sale of the securities.

The People’s Bank of China injected funds into the financial system using reverse-repurchase agreements yesterday, after suspending use of the contracts for two weeks. The 13 billion yuan ($2.1 billion) added compares with a net 102.5 billion yuan drained by the central bank in the last two weeks.

“The policy signal from yesterday’s reverse-repo operations I believe is to calm market sentiment, but the amount is very small, so this caused some confusion,” said Zhang Guoyu, an analyst at Orient Futures Co. in Shanghai. “That may be contributing to the increase in rates.”

---- The seven-day repurchase rate, a gauge of funding availability in the banking system, rose 55 basis points to 5.55 percent, according to a daily fixing by the National Interbank Funding Center. That was the 10th increase in a row, the longest run of gains since 2007. The overnight repo rate jumped 53 basis points to 5.21 percent.
More

We end with a warning from JP Morgan. The Fed’s final bubble really will be the final bubble that does us all in. Our new lawless age is all too likely to end in a big bang. But first we probably have to endure a few months of the Yellen Fed. Stay long fully paid up physical precious metals for the coming end of central bank insanity.

"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

JP Morgan sees 'most extreme excess' of global liquidity ever

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Economics Last updated: October 29th, 2013
If you think there is far too much money sloshing through the global financial system and causing unstable asset booms, you are not alone.

A new report by JP Morgan says the bank's measure of excess global money supply has reached an all-time high.

"The current episode of excess liquidity, which began in May 2012, appears to have been the most extreme ever in terms of its magnitude," said the report, written by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglu and Matthew Lehmann from the bank's global asset allocation team.

They said the latest surge is far beyond anything seen in the last three episodes of excess liquidity: 1993-1995, 2001-2006, and during the Lehman emergency response from October 2008 to September 2010, all of which set off a blistering rise in asset prices.

This is not a problem right now. The bank says there is enough juice to keep the boom going for several more months, but it stores up bigger problems for later. "It could be a warning if fundamentals are out of whack. Markets could be vulnerable next year if that liquidity starts to disappear," said Mr Panigirtzoglu.

My own view on all this is somewhat different, so I pass on the report's findings for readers to make their own judgment.

They  argue that the global M2 money supply has risen by $3 trillion this year, up 4.6pc in just nine months to $66 trillion. Roughly $1 trillion is showing up in the G4 bloc of the US, eurozone, Japan, and the UK.

The lion's share, some $2 trillion, is showing up in emerging markets where credit continued to surge at $170bn a month in July and August despite the Fed Taper scare earlier that hit the Fragile Five (Brazil, India, Indonesia, South Africa, and Turkey). Mr Panigirtzoglu said there is an internal credit boom in emerging markets that is running in parallel to QE in the West.

---- If JP Morgan is right, you can see why the BIS, the IMF, and Fed hawks are biting their fingernails worrying about the next train wreck. There is clearly a huge problem with the way QE has been conducted.

The wash of money has set off another asset boom, yet the world economy has failed to achieve "escape velocity", and is arguably still in a contained depression.
More

There can be few fields of human endeavour in which history counts for so little as in the world of finance. Past experience, to the extent that it is part of memory at all, is dismissed as the primitive refuge of those who do not have the insight to appreciate the incredible wonders of the present.

J. K. Galbraith

At the Comex silver depositories Tuesday final figures were: Registered 44.07 Moz, Eligible 123.54 Moz, Total 167.61 Moz.  


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

Today, Bloomberg reports on just another day in global banking, in our new lawless era. But is it banking at all, or a criminal industry that long ago left banking for banksterism? How many criminal wrongs does it take to get America’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act to apply? Just why was JPMC facilitating the fraudster Madoff brothers?

Banks are an almost irresistible attraction for that element of our society which seeks unearned money.

J. Edgar Hoover

Madoff Money to Japan Mob Ties Breed Banks’ Global Pains

By Max Abelson - Oct 30, 2013 4:00 AM GMT
Japanese regulators said they’re looking for loans to gangsters by the nation’s three biggest banks. The 115-year-old Dutch lender Rabobank Groep was fined more than $1 billion for rigging interest rates. Deutsche Bank AG (DBK) and UBS AG (UBSN), Germany and Switzerland’s biggest lenders, both said they’re facing investigations into currency manipulation.

It was another day in global banking.

Those headlines, all from yesterday, arrived after the six biggest U.S. banks had passed the $100 billion mark for legal costs since the financial crisis. The largest, JPMorgan Chase & Co., is in talks with prosecutors to resolve allegations it helped facilitate Bernard Madoff’s crimes, as it tries to complete a proposed $13 billion settlement of cases related to its mortgage business.

----Rabobank Chairman Piet Moerland resigned. Mizuho Financial Group Inc. (8411) President Yasuhiro Sato gave up six months of pay for failing to stop loans made to yakuza crime syndicates. Takashi Tsukamoto will also forgo a half year’s compensation and give up his role as chairman of Mizuho Bank Ltd., keeping his post at the parent company.

No leading bank executives have been jailed since the global financial crisis. The largest lenders are so big that criminal charges could threaten the global economy, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said in a Senate hearing this March, saying that made it “difficult for us to prosecute.”

Executive-suite alterations, docked pay and company fines need to be paired with criminal prosecutions, according to Jennifer Taub at Vermont Law School.

----Banks have been punished too much, according to Phil Gramm. The former Republican senator who co-authored the 1999 U.S. law that ended Depression-era restrictions on banking said it’s the amount the largest U.S. lender is being forced to pay and not the company itself that’s criminal.

“Had the fines levied on JPMorgan been levied in a developing country we would have called it extortion,” Gramm, a UBS vice chairman until last year, said in a phone interview from Japan. “I think everybody knows it’s true.”

----Gramm’s former firm was in the news for a separate reason yesterday, when UBS said it’s taking measures against employees as investigators examine currency markets.

At the same time, Standard Chartered Plc (STAN) put Matt Gardiner, a senior foreign-exchange dealer, on leave because of allegations that don’t relate to his work there, said a person with knowledge of the matter. Gardiner worked at Barclays Plc and UBS before joining London-based Standard Chartered, which last year agreed to pay more than $600 million after regulators alleged it violated U.S. sanctions with Iran.
More
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-30/madoff-money-to-japan-mob-ties-breed-banks-global-pains.html

Rabobank Rate Riggers See Bigger Crooks Than Themselves

By Tom Schoenberg & Keri Geiger - Oct 29, 2013 11:01 PM GMT
Internal Rabobank Groep e-mails cited in the U.S. Justice Department’s case against the bank show a culture where fixing benchmark interest rates had become an easygoing routine, one in which employees joked about rate rigging while telling each other they weren’t really that bad.

Exchanges among traders, rate submitters and a money manager in London were laced with jokes and requests to raise or lower rates depending upon the traders’ positions, according to a statement of facts filed yesterday in federal court in Hartford, Connecticut, as part of a deferred prosecution deal reached with Rabobank.

“Don’t worry mate -- there’s bigger crooks in the market than us guys!” the Rabobank yen Libor submitter, identified as Submitter-4 in the filing, said in a Sept. 21, 2007, e-mail, after agreeing to increase the daily yen rate by a percentage point. Another mid-level manager joked to a colleague seeking help rigging rates: “I am fast turning into your Libor bitch!!!”

Rabobank, the co-operative formed in 1898 to lend to Dutch farmers, was fined 774 million euros ($1.1 billion) for its involvement in rigging benchmark interest rates, the second-largest in the global investigation.
Rabobank admitted that for at least five years beginning in 2005, benchmark submitters in London and Utrecht, Netherlands, would routinely take requests from traders seeking to fix the rate of Euribor and Libor for the U.S. dollar, yen and pound sterling, according to the statement of facts.
More
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-29/rabobank-rate-riggers-see-bigger-crooks-than-themselves.html

A large Bank is exactly the place where a vain and shallow person in authority, if he be a man of gravity and method, as such men often are, may do infinite evil in no long time, and before he is detected. If he is lucky enough to begin at a time of expansion in trade, he is nearly sure not to be found out till the time of contraction has arrived, and then very large figures will be required to reckon the evil he has done.

Walter Bagehot. Lombard Street. 1873

The monthly Coppock Indicators finished September:
DJIA: +167 Up. NASDAQ: +213 Up. SP500: +203 Up. All three are back positive again, thanks to continued Fed QE.  High risk speculators will now use any stocks sell-off to go long. After the last Fed meeting and QE U-turn, the Bernocchio put is back on.