Baltic Dry Index. 1495 -05
LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
One of the queries Quakers are asked to consider, is: "Do
you maintain strict integrity in your business transactions and in your
relations with individuals and organizations? Are you personally scrupulous and
responsible in the use of money entrusted to you, and are you careful not to
defraud the public revenue?"
Probably why there a no Quakers on Wall Street.
We open today with Bloomberg alert to the high
stakes betting taking place in the markets now, thanks largely to the Fed’s
recent tapering U-turn. Main Street may
be flat on its back, but on Wall Street the Great Vampire Squids sense that
something big is about to happen within weeks, or at most a few months. Stay
long physical precious metals. This being our new lawless age, one or more of
the Ebenezer Squids has probably been tipped off. Probably only the NSA and
Snowy in Russia knows for sure, but without a new disaster on their hands, at
the NSA they’re all probably too busy watching porn.
With
futures and options trading a zero sum game, one side loses and the other side
games. Are we still on too big to fail?
Old Ebenezer Squid had one-way
pockets. He would walk ten miles in the snow to chisel an orphan out of
tuppence.
With
apologies to P.G. Wodehouse and the Duke of Dunstable
VIX Trader Betting $13 Million on 88% Jump in Fear Gauge
By Nikolaj Gammeltoft - Nov 19, 2013 8:51 PM GMT
An investor bought $13 million in call options
on the Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index, betting the gauge will
rally at least 88 percent in the next four months. About 100,000 VIX March calls were purchased with a strike price of 23 for about $1.30 each, according to Trade Alert LLC. The contracts were among the five most-traded on U.S. options exchanges today, based on data compiled by Bloomberg
An investor bought $13 million in call options on the Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index, betting the gauge will rally at least 88 percent in the next four months.
About 100,000 VIX March calls were purchased with a strike price of 23 for about $1.30 each, according to Trade Alert LLC. The contracts were among the five most-traded on U.S. options exchanges today, based on data compiled by Bloomberg.
“The S&P 500 (SPX) trade looks like a melt-up trade and the VIX trade is the melt-down trade,” Justin Golden, a partner at Lake Hill Capital Management LLC, said in an e-mail. The New York-based hedge fund trades options on equity indexes and commodities. “Either way, in order for either of these to pay off you need significant movement in some direction.”
The two trades -- one that makes money with higher volatility, the other profiting with equity gains -- show seemingly opposing wagers on the direction of the stock market as investors gauge the prospect of continued monetary stimulus after a four-year bull market.
More
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-19/vix-trader-bets-13-million-on-88-jump-in-fear-gauge.html
Below, Reuters proffers one possible explanation. And why not? China’s already spooked by the Fedster’s response to the Great Recession, the came last month’s near default by Uncle Scam in Washington. When the next Lehman hits, it’s all over for the Great Nixonian Error of fiat currency. Is China really changing? We will very soon find out.
"Of all the contrivances for cheating the laboring classes of mankind, none has been more effective than that which deludes them with paper money."
Daniel Webster
China central bank suggests faster tempo for freeing yuan
By Aileen Wang and Kevin Yao BEIJING
(Reuters) - With a shift in tone and language, China's central bank governor
has dangled the prospect of speeding up currency reform and giving markets
more room to set the yuan's exchange rate as he underlines broader plans for
sweeping economic change.The central bank under Zhou Xiaochuan has consistently flagged its intention to liberalize financial markets and allow the yuan to trade more freely, even before the Communist Party's top brass unveiled late last week the boldest set of economic and social reforms in nearly three decades.
But since the 60-point reform plan was released, Zhou has suggested urgency in pushing for change, although he has not provided any specific timetable. He promised on Saturday to "pull out all stops to deepen financial sector reforms".
Dariusz Kowalczyk, an economist at Credit Agricole in Hong Kong, said the governor's comments could mean that the People's Bank of China (PBOC) will widen the trading band of the yuan in the near term.
More
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/20/us-china-reform-idUSBRE9AJ09Y20131120
Insight - As U.S. default threatened, banks took extraordinary steps
Reuters – 19
hours ago
By David
Henry and Lauren Tara LaCapra
NEW YORK
(Reuters) - As the United States threatened to default on its debt last month,
major U.S. banks set up war rooms, spent many millions of dollars on
contingency planning and, in some cases, even prepared to underwrite federal
government benefits.
In a
series of interviews with top bank executives, new details emerged about the
extent of the contingency planning that was undertaken before and during the
16-day government shutdown and as a potential default loomed.
The
planning for worst-case scenarios didn't come cheap. JPMorgan alone has spent
more than $100 million on contingency planning for U.S. budget crises in recent
years including this one, sources close to the bank say. It has reviewed and
analyzed thousands of trading contracts, updated computer systems to handle
fiscal emergencies, hired consultants, and built new models to figure out what
might happen to securities prices.
It may
not go to waste. The temporary budget agreement that President Barack Obama
signed shortly after midnight on October 17 to end the shutdown and lift the
default threat, authorizes government spending through January 15 and eases
enforcement of the debt limit until February 7, creating the potential for
another budget crisis early next year, even as some Republicans vow they will
avoid it.
Morehttp://ca.news.yahoo.com/insight-u-default-threatened-banks-113701683.html
Wife of jailed Chinese Nobel Laureate appeals for his retrial
By Sui-Lee
Wee BEIJING
(Reuters) - The wife of jailed Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Liu Xiaobo has
filed an extraordinary appeal for his retrial, his lawyer said on Tuesday, in a
move that could renew the focus on China's human rights record.The news comes two weeks ahead of a visit to China by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, during which human rights will likely be raised amid a broader crackdown on dissent and freedom of speech and assembly.
Liu, a veteran dissident involved in the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests crushed by the Chinese army, was jailed in 2009 for 11 years, on subversion charges for organizing a petition urging the overthrow of one-party rule.
He was the organizer of "Charter 08", a manifesto for political reform.
His wife Liu Xia, who has been under effective house arrest since he won the Nobel Prize in 2010, met Liu in October in prison in northeastern Liaoning province and got his approval for the appeal, prominent human rights lawyer Mo Shaoping told Reuters.
"Whether Liu Xiaobo's viewpoints in his articles are correct or wrong, whether he drafted "Charter 08" and whether those views are wrong or right, this is a citizen's right to freedom of speech and expression," Mo said.
"This is the constitutional right granted to every citizen and does not constitute a crime, so we are requesting that the courts hear this case again and find Liu Xiaobo not guilty."
Liu Xiaobo's imprisonment has drawn the condemnation of Western governments and fellow Nobel Laureates, who have been lobbying for his release.
More
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/19/us-china-dissident-idUSBRE9AI0JD20131119
We end for the day with more on our new lawless age. As the eight hundredth anniversary of the signing of the Magna Carta approaches in June 2015, with friendly oversight like this who needs a written constitution.
"What do I care about the law ? Hain't I got the power."
Cornelius Vanderbilt, 1794-1877.
Secret U.S. court approved wider NSA spying even after finding excesses
By Joseph Menn SAN FRANCISCO
(Reuters)
- A secret U.S. intelligence court let the National Security Agency collect an
expanded amount of data about Americans' email even after finding that the
agency systematically exceeded the limits of a smaller program, newly released
documents show.
The judge
on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court recounted a litany of problems
with the first, smaller program, including the NSA collecting more categories
of information than had been approved by the court and sharing data more widely
within the electronic eavesdropping agency than had been authorized.
At issue
are emails among U.S. citizens that the NSA scooped up in its pursuit of
foreign intelligence. Though historically focused overseas, the agency
intensified its domestic operations after the September 11, 2001, attacks in
hopes of finding people in the country working with terrorists or spies.
The
programs let the NSA search for Americans who had electronic contact with
people who were in turn linked to people hostile to the United States. At
times, however, analysts queried the database with names that had not been
found to be terrorists or foreign agents, the judge found.
The NSA
was allowed to share criminal evidence with law enforcement agencies, but in
other cases it was supposed to obscure email addresses to protect the
identities of U.S. citizens because of the Fourth Amendment's protections
against unreasonable searches.
Instead,
Judge John Bates wrote about the first bulk collection program, "NSA
analysts made it a general practice to disseminate to other agencies
intelligence reports containing U.S. person information," such as their
email addresses.
Bates'
117-page opinion was among nearly three dozen documents declassified and
released on Monday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in
the wake of suits filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the
Electronic Frontier Foundation.
SERIOUS
NON-COMPLIANCE
The order
is heavily redacted, with entire pages and even the date of the ruling
censored. Still, the remaining harsh criticism echoes that of a previously
disclosed opinion faulting the NSA's conduct in scooping up email addresses and
routing information.
Morehttp://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/19/us-usa-nsa-spying-idUSBRE9AI11Y20131119
"When a President does it, that means that it is not illegal."
Richard M. Nixon.
At the Comex silver depositories Monday final figures were: Registered 44.25 Moz,
Eligible 124.23 Moz, Total 168.48 Moz.
Crooks and
Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
In the land where “my word is no longer my bond,” yet another market
rigging scandal seems to be in the works. If we didn’t know better, we could be
forgiven in thinking London’s “gold fixers” were members of the Unite union,
fully signed up members of corrupt Scottish Labour’s Falkirk franchise. For the
record I was born in the pretty little town of Falkirk, Scotland, where
everyone is below average, according to the corrupt Scottish Labour Party, with
Venezuela as its aspirational role model.
It is never difficult to distinguish between a
Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine.
P. G. Wodehouse
Gold Benchmarks Said to Be Reviewed in U.K. Rates Probe
By Suzi
Ring - Nov 20, 2013 12:11 AM GMT
The U.K.
Financial Conduct Authority is reviewing gold benchmarks as part of its wider
probe of how global rates are set, a person with knowledge of the matter said.
The FCA
review is preliminary and hasn’t risen to the level of a formal investigation,
said the person, who asked not to be identified because the matter isn’t
public. The person declined to say which gold benchmarks were under scrutiny.
One of the key benchmarks is the London gold fixing, a measure of the spot price for physical gold that is set twice daily by five banks. At private Commodity Futures Trading Commission meetings this year, the U.S. derivatives regulator discussed reviewing how gold benchmarks are set, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
“We’ve seen a pattern of this sort of scrutiny across markets,” said Bill O’Neill, a partner at Logic Advisors in Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. “I don’t think this will have a big price impact in gold, but it could change the way markets are traded.”
Regulators around the world are examining alleged abuses of a number of financial benchmarks by companies that play a central role in setting them. Inquiries were triggered after it emerged the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, the benchmark interest rate for more than $360 trillion of securities worldwide, was being manipulated.
The scandal also sparked reviews of how to improve how rates are set, so as to prevent them from being rigged in the future, and which ones should have formal oversight.
Steve Adamske, a spokesman for the CFTC, and Lara Joseph, a spokeswoman for the FCA, declined to comment on the review.
In addition to Libor, regulators including the FCA are investigating rate-rigging in the $5.3 trillion-a-day foreign-exchange market, and ISDAfix, a benchmark for interest-rate swaps.
Separately, the FCA will publish an update on its approach to supervision of commodities markets, including gold, before the end of the year, Joseph said.
----The London gold fixing is conducted twice a day by Barclays Plc (BARC), Bank of Nova Scotia (BNS), Deutsche Bank AG (DBK), HSBC Holdings and Societe Generale SA. (GLE) The pricing, started in 1919, was conducted in a meeting held for 84 years at N.M. Rothschild & Sons Ltd.’s offices, and started taking place over the telephone in 2004.
More
Yes,
gold doesn’t bear interest. Many, including Warren Buffett, belittle its
investment value. But, paintings or antiques don’t bear interest either. When
money supply is rising, anything scarce tends to rise in value. Gold is the
best scarce commodity in the world.
Andy
Xie.
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished October:
DJIA: +178 Up. NASDAQ: +238 Up. SP500: +217 Up. The
Fed’s final bubble continues to grow, until QE Forever isn’t forever. Up will
remain up, until one fine day out of the blue the Fed finally loses control, or
the next Lehman hits.
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