Baltic Dry Index. 2225 -67
LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
“The
fundamental basis of this nation’s laws was given to Moses on the Mount
Sinai. If we don’t have a proper
fundamental moral background, we will finally end up with a totalitarian
government which does not believe in rights for anybody except the State.”
Harry
Truman.
It is
decision day. To taper or not to taper, by America’s gangsters running the Fed.
My money’s on no taper, and only double speak on any possibility of a future
taper of QE Forever. But the Murdoch media, best known for tapping more
telephones in the UK than the NSA and Britain’s GCHQ, is hot for a taper. What
do they know that we don’t?
"The Federal Reserve—all of them—could be sitting on a
barrel of dynamite, and then pouring gasoline on top of it, and then light a
cigar with matches, throw the match into the gasoline, and then not notice that
there is any danger. That is the state of mind of the professors at the Fed,
who never worked a single [day] in business."
Mark Faber.
Dec. 17, 2013, 12:17 p.m. EST
Three reasons the Fed should taper QE3
Opinion: Federal Reserve needs to prove that it can rip the Band-Aid off
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — With
the unemployment rate too high and inflation too low, the U.S. economy still
has its problems, but it’s time for the Federal Reserve to end its large-scale
asset purchase program, also known as quantitative easing 3.0, or QE3.
The Fed meets on Tuesday and
Wednesday to consider tapering the number of bonds that it buys every month
from the current $85 billion to perhaps $75 billion as a prelude to winding up
the program completely sometime in 2014.
Most
analysts expect
the Fed to hold off announcing the first taper until March, but it would be
better to do it now.
Here are three
reasons to taper now:
QE3 was taken out as an insurance policy against
fiscal drag, and is no longer needed
In September
2012 when QE3 was announced, the outlook for the economy was obscured by the
political fighting over the budget. The nation faced a “fiscal cliff” at the
end of 2012, to be followed quickly by another debt-ceiling showdown.
Remember, the Congressional
Budget Office
forecast that the economy would fall into a recession if Congress and the White
House didn’t act to moderate the fiscal drag from huge tax increases and
spending cuts that were legally required.
QE3 was a
pre-emptive strike by the Fed to protect the economy from the politicians.
As it turned
out, the worst effects of the fiscal cliff were averted by an 11th hour
agreement that raised taxes a little and
cut spending a little. The fiscal drag was significant at about 1.5 percentage
points of gross domestic product, but the economy had just enough momentum to
offset that drag.
More
Taper or no taper, the Fed will never end QE: Marc Faber
Published: Tuesday, 17 Dec 2013 |
2:09 PM ET
When the Federal Reserve announces its next move on Wednesday, some expect
it to reduce its $85 billion monthly bond-buying program, targeting an eventual
end to quantitative
easing in late 2014. Others expect the Fed to begin to reduce the program
in early 2014, or to finish it off by 2015. But Marc Faber has a
different take altogether ."The Fed will never end QE for good," the editor and publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom report said Tuesday on CNBC's "Futures Now." "They will continue because these programs, once they're introduced, usually keep on going."
More
But tapering
will blow up Italy and with it the wealth destroying Bilderberger European
Monetary Union. Let’s get started on the taper.
“The 'C' students
run the world.”
Harry
S. Truman. (Harry was an optimist.)
Italy’s president fears violent insurrection in 2014 but offers no remedy
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Economics Last updated: December 17th, 2013
Events in Italy are turning
serious. President Giorgio Napolitano has warned of “widespread social tension
and unrest” in 2014 as the Long Slump drags on.
Those living on the margins are
being drawn into “indiscriminate and violent protest, a sterile lurch towards
total opposition”.
His latest speech is a veritable
Jeremiad. Thousands of companies are on the “brink of collapse”. Great masses
of the working people are on the dole or at risk of losing their jobs. Very
high rates of youth unemployment (41pc) are leading to dangerous alienation.
“The recession is still biting
hard, and there is a pervasive sense that it will be difficult to escape, to
find a way back to full growth,” he said.
Now why might that be? Might it
not have something to do with the central overriding fact that Italy has a
currency overvalued by 20pc or more within EMU: that it is trapped in a 1930s
fixed-exchange system run a 1930s central bank that is standing idly by (for
political reasons) as M3 growth stalls, credit contracts, and deflation looms?
Mr Napolitano offers no answer. A
former Stalinist who applauded the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956 (a
youthful indiscretion), he has long since switched his ideological fervour to
the EU project. He is by nature incapable of questioning the premises of
monetary union, so don’t expect any useful insights from the Quirinale on how
to break out of this impasse.
He does concede that the eurozone
crisis “has put a severe strain on social cohesion” but leaves the matter
hanging, his argument unfinished, more descriptive than analytical.
More
Bank of England likely to hold on to asset purchases for several years, says Mark Carney
Bank of England Governor says market reaction to the mere talk of QE tapering by the US Federal Reserve warrants caution by UK policymakers over £375bn stockpile
By Szu Ping Chan 8:11PM GMT 17
Dec 2013
The Bank of England is likely to
keep hold of its UK gilt purchases for several years, Mark Carney has said,
amid uncertainty about market reaction to the unwinding of its £375bn
stockpile.
The Bank's governor said on
Tuesday that the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) would likely implement several
interest rate rises before considering the sale of its asset
purchases."[Our] first move would be to tighten conventional monetary
policy, and we would likely … tighten conventional monetary policy for some
time, or to some degree, before we would consider adjustments to the size of
our balance sheets," he told the House of Lords economic affairs
committee.
Mr Carney said market reaction to
the mere talk of QE tapering by the US Federal Reserve warranted caution by UK
policymakers. "[Quantitative easing] is most effective in times of most
distress, but potentially has the most amplification on the other side in times
of more normal market conditions," he said.
The Bank is not expected to raise
rates from their record low of 0.5pc until 2015, and has so far reinvested the
proceeds of maturing gilts. Mr Carney rejected assertions by Lord Lawson of
Blaby that delaying the sale of asset purchases until it had raised rates was
"the easy way out", and said tightening policy using rate rises was
"prudent" because it allowed the Bank to be more
"flexible".
More
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/mark-carney/10524205/Bank-of-England-likely-to-hold-on-to-asset-purchases-for-several-years-says-Mark-Carney.html
We end with more on the unintended consequences of fiat currency. Free money is misallocated to the banksters and great vampire squids on Wall Street, in the real world, everything else is short changed.
“How many times do you have to get hit over the head until you figure out who’s hitting you.”
Harry S. Truman.
Lead Engineer: GWB Traffic Nightmare Could Happen Again And Again
Govs. Cuomo, Christie, Despite Controlling Port Authority, Seem Disinterested
December 17, 2013 5:24 PM
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Once, twice, three times — in
a month.
There were epic traffic delays,
yet again, Monday night, because of emergency repair work at the George
Washington Bridge.
And then on Tuesday the head
engineer at the bridge told CBS 2’s Marcia Kramer that we haven’t seen the end
of this.
The engineer admitted there’s
nothing they can do to fix the ongoing problems.
The Port Authority of New York
and New Jersey is the agency responsible, but the governors of New York and New
Jersey do have a say. There were calls on Tuesday for Andrew Cuomo and Chris
Christie to do something before it happens again.
The traffic backs-ups have been
potentially life threatening. The emergency repairs to the GWB have caused
massive rush hour gridlock in New York City three times in the last month,
including Monday night.
----Kramer: “Can you guarantee that between now and March, when you will finish this project, that there won’t be an emergency closure?”
Zipf: “I can’t guarantee it, but
we’re doing everything in our power to prevent it.”
The problem for Zipf and chief
structural engineer Bernard Yostpille is the that the emergency closures were
unanticipated — events in the Port Authority’s $82 million repair of the upper
road way, which is now 10 years past its “useful life.”
“We did not anticipate we’d have
these cracks at all of these sections,” Zipf said.
The unanticipated cracks have
occurred three times since Nov. 22. Lanes had to be closed for emergency work
during the height of the evening rush hour, causing unimaginable delays. On
Monday night, for example, the backups in New York City to the south went to
Midtown and beyond on the West Side Highway and the northbound avenues. To the
south the bumper-to-bumper traffic went into the Bronx and Westchester County.
And there’s another problem: The
Port Authority has no alternate plan for diverting traffic for an emergency
repair, including moveable barricades that would allow lane changes.
“We can’t move the median because
it is part of the structure, so it’s not like in some of the tunnels where they
can actually move the barriers for change to flow. We’re stuck here,” Zipf
said. “It would be unsafe structurally. We can’t do it, and we can’t create a
cattle chute where cars would be coming.”
More
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2013/12/17/lead-engineer-gwb-traffic-nightmare-could-happen-again-and-again/
“Dictatorship, by whatever name, is founded on the doctrine that the individual amounts to nothing; that the State is the only one that counts; and that men and women and children were put on earth solely for the purpose of serving the state.”
Harry S. Truman.
At the Comex
silver depositories Tuesday
final figures were: Registered 52.28 Moz, Eligible 119.46 Moz, Total 171.74 Moz. Someone seems to be expecting a massive
December delivery.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
Today, when crooks fall out. The nearly bankrupt
sclerotic EUSSR loses out to Putin’s Russia in a high stakes game of poker
originally kicked off by President George W. Bush, who also lost out earlier
and withdrew from the table. Somehow I doubt that this game is over.
“Never kick a fresh
turd on a hot day.”
President Harry S. Truman.
Russia Gives Ukraine Bailout Package of at Least $20 Billion
Deal Keeps Former Soviet Republic in Moscow's Orbit
By James Marson Updated Dec. 17, 2013 4:38 p.m. ET
KIEV, Ukraine—Russia lavished Ukraine with a
bailout package worth at least $20 billion Tuesday, trumping the West in a Cold
War-tinged struggle that keeps the former Soviet republic in Moscow's orbit.The pact, one of the richest ever offered by Russia to another country, came just weeks after Kiev turned its back on a trade deal with the EU that Moscow had strongly opposed.
Announced after talks in the Kremlin
between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his
Ukrainian counterpart Viktor Yanukovych on Tuesday, the deal gives Ukraine
loans and cheaper natural-gas supplies.
It appears to be substantially
larger and the terms less restrictive than the aid the West had been offering
to entice Ukraine to sign the EU's trade-and-political accord. Russian
officials said the first $3 billion in credits could be released within days.
"Ukraine's trade with Russia
makes it impossible for us to act in any other way," Mr. Yanukovych said,
referring to the deep economic links between the two countries. "There is
no alternative to this."
Mr. Putin, in turn, told Mr. Yanukovych, "Ukraine, without doubt, is our strategic partner and ally."
The contest for the allegiance of this France-sized nation of some 46 million grew increasingly antagonistic in recent weeks as Western politicians flocked to the Ukrainian capital to join thousands of protesters who had taken to its central square after Mr. Yanukovych's abrupt about-face on an offer from the EU on Nov. 21.
Those demonstrators—and Ukraine's opposition—were livid at the news of the deal with Moscow on Tuesday.
"He has given up Ukraine's national interests, given up independence and prospects for a better life for every Ukrainian," an opposition leader, Vitali Klitschko, told crowds on Kiev's Independence Square.
White House spokesman Jay Carney also denounced the deal, saying it "will not address the concerns of those who have gathered in public protest across Ukraine."
He added, "We urge the Ukrainian government to listen to its people and to find a way to restore a path to the peaceful, just, democratic and economically prosperous European future to which Ukrainian citizens aspire."
But there is no sign so far that their weekslong protest will force Mr. Yanukovych to change his mind.
The deal represents a large bet by Mr. Putin on Ukraine's creaking economy, hamstrung by corruption and red tape and weak steel exports. Russia is itself grappling with slowing growth and rising unemployment, and Mr. Putin has reduced planned spending for the next two years. Mr. Putin's desire to keep Ukraine close appears to have overridden economic considerations, observers said.
Germany's new foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, accused Russia of taking advantage of Ukraine's economic weakness—some of which was caused by Russia's introduction of trade restrictions in recent months as Kiev appeared to move toward a deal with the EU—to trump the pact with Brussels. He acknowledged the EU deal was inadequate to win Ukraine's support.
More
“I never would have agreed to the formulation of the Central
Intelligence Agency back in forty-seven, if I had known it would become the
American Gestapo.”
Harry S. Truman.
The monthly
Coppock Indicators finished November:
DJIA: +190 Up. NASDAQ: +281 Up. SP500: +232 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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