Baltic Dry Index. 1130 +24
LIR Gold Target in 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
“The boom can last only as long as the
credit expansion progresses at an ever-accelerated pace. The boom comes to an
end as soon as additional quantities of fiduciary media are no longer thrown
upon the loan market...”
“But it (the boom) could not last forever
even if inflation and credit expansion were to go on endlessly. It would then
encounter the barriers which prevent the boundless expansion of circulation
credit. It would lead to the crack-up boom and the breakdown of the whole monetary
system.”
Ludwig Von Mises
We are back to all news is good news. We are living
in the Great Delusion. Main Street may be dead on its feet, the EUSSR barely
ticking over and heading towards a Celtic Shock if Scotland votes itself out of
the UK and EU in September, but in the Great Vampire Squid casino land, the
Yellen boost to the Bernanke Bubble rolls on. What could possibly go wrong? We
are all headed to Caracas and Buenos Aires, once the Great Nixonian Error of rigged
fiat currency unravels.
Asian Stocks Climb to Three-Week High After BOJ Statement
Feb 18, 2014 4:46 AM GMT
Asian
stocks rose, with the regional benchmark index poised for a
three-week high, after the Bank of Japan maintained unprecedented asset
purchases and boosted lending programs. Chinese shares fell as the central bank
drained liquidity from the financial system.
----The MSCI Asia Pacific Index added 0.6 percent to 137.12 as of 1:32 p.m. in Tokyo, heading for its highest close since Jan. 24. Global equities erased this year’s losses after Janet Yellen’s first testimony to Congress as head of the Federal Reserve and China’s record lending buoyed optimism in the world’s largest economies.
“The broad market uptrend remains intact,” said Nader Naeimi, Sydney-based head of dynamic asset allocation at AMP Capital, which manages $131 billion. “Japan is in a unique situation as the BOJ continues to add stimulus, while the Fed is beginning to taper. Liquidity tightening in China shouldn’t be a concern as policy makers need to mop up excess liquidity. There’s enough credit available in China to support growth.”
More
Global Stocks Erase 2014 Losses as $3 Trillion of Value Restored
Feb 18,
2014 5:06 AM GMT
Global stocks erased their losses for the year as growing confidence in the U.S. economy
and a rally in emerging markets restored $3 trillion of value. The MSCI All-Country World Index advanced for a ninth straight day yesterday, lifting the value of world equities to $62.1 trillion from this year’s low of about $59 trillion on Feb. 4, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The gauge of developed and emerging shares rose 0.1 percent at 12:50 p.m. in Hong Kong.
Stocks have rebounded from the worst start to a year since 2010 after American unemployment fell to the lowest level since 2008, Chinese trade increased and developing nations from Turkey to South Africa took steps to stem capital outflows. Equity funds tracked by EPFR Global and Citigroup Inc. lured more than $11 billion in the week to Feb. 12, led by the U.S. after Fed Chair Janet Yellen said economic growth has picked up and pledged to pare back stimulus in “measured steps.”
More
While everyone gets on with the one way bet in
stocks, in the real world the game is switching from free money forever, to
something less benign. At some point, the Great Delusion ends and reality kicks
back in. Though probably not today.
PBOC Drains Funds Using Repos for First Time in Eight Months
Feb 18, 2014 6:37 AM GMT
China’s central bank sold
repurchase contracts for the first time since June, draining funds from the
banking system as money-market rates sink to the lowest levels in at least
three months. The People’s Bank of China conducted 48 billion yuan ($7.9 billion) of 14-day repurchase contracts at 3.8 percent today, according to a statement posted on its website. The monetary authority last issued such contracts on June 6, when it sold 10 billion yuan of 28-day repos. Today’s rate is higher than both the 2.75 percent in the June auction and the 2.05 percent when the PBOC last issued 14-day repos in January 2011.
More
China Tackles $1 Trillion Data Gap as Xi Changes Metrics
Feb 18, 2014 2:36 AM GMT
The gap in reported economic output between China’s provinces
and national statistics narrowed for the first time in six years as Communist
Party leaders vowed to reduce the focus on growth in evaluating local officials. The combined nominal economic output of the 31 provinces expanded about 9.2 percent in 2013 to 62.9 trillion yuan ($10.4 trillion), according to data reported by local governments since December and compiled by Bloomberg News. That exceeded the national figure by 6.06 trillion yuan, or 10.7 percent, after an 11 percent margin in 2012.
The data suggest regional officials are heeding directives from President Xi Jinping and his team to shift their attention toward more sustainable expansion, including reducing debt and pollution. Still, the excess of the provincial total over the national figure remains more than the size of Indonesia’s economy, pointing to the room for further improvements.
“Regional authorities are showing more realistic data,” said Dariusz Kowalczyk, senior economist and strategist at Credit Agricole CIB in Hong Kong. The numbers “may reflect the change in emphasis in assessment of regional authorities away from growth towards other factors, which reduced the incentive for them to inflate the numbers.”
It’s the first time since 2007 that the combined provincial figures have shown a slower nominal growth rate than the central government’s data. Last year’s 9.2 percent expansion compares with 9.5 percent in country-wide figures from the National Bureau of Statistics, while the 10.6 percent increase in provincial output in 2012 exceeded the 9.8 percent seen in NBS numbers.
More
Gold price signals China credit bubble bursting as investors seek safety
Uncertainty is growing over China’s ability to sustain the rapid rates of economic growth it has seen over the past decade
China’s “unfolding credit crunch”
is having an unforeseen and dramatic impact on gold prices as investors
urgently stock up on the precious metal as a form of financial protection
against a sharp correction in the world’s second largest economy.
This is the main reason why gold
prices have unexpectedly shot up more than 10pc to breach $1,300 (£776) an
ounce for the first time since November against the prevailing forecasts for
weaker demand made by many industry experts at the beginning of the year,
according to Adrian Ash, head of research at gold trading platform
BullionVault.com.
Gold traded on the Shanghai Gold
Exchange has also reached a three-month high.
Rebounding is part of the reason
for the rise, said Ash, adding: “Gold lost 30pc and silver nearly 40pc last
year. The world economy will struggle to deliver all the good news priced in by
that crash. But China’s unfolding credit-crunch looks central right now.”
Uncertainty is growing over
China’s ability to sustain the rapid rates of economic growth it has seen over
the past decade amid concern over high-levels of debt among its provincial
governments. These concerns have helped to drive sharp falls across emerging
markets since the beginning of the year.
Ash
argues that capital flight is happening at a rapid rate in China because of the
$1.8 trillion of funds that have flooded into unregulated, non-bank “wealth
management products” which offered very high yields, up to 17 times as much as
cash deposits. It is feared that many of these funds are now trading at a loss,
setting up a crunch moment for China’s economy.
More
Below, more on the death throes of the Great
Nixonian Error of fiat money. Trading in casino chips is about to become
computer only. Soon to all be run from an NSA or GCHQ computer center on behalf
of who knows whom.
Banks are an almost irresistible attraction for that element of our society which seeks unearned money.
J. Edgar Hoover
FX Traders Facing Extinction as Computers Replace Humans
Feb 18, 2014 12:01 AM GMT
A widening probe of the foreign-exchange market is roiling an industry
already under pressure to reduce costs as computer platforms displace human
traders. Electronic dealing, which accounted for 66 percent of all currency transactions in 2013 and 20 percent in 2001, will increase to 76 percent within five years, according to Aite Group LLC, a Boston-based consulting firm that reviewed Bank for International Settlements data. About 81 percent of spot trading -- the buying and selling of currency for immediate delivery -- will be electronic by 2018, Aite said.
“Foreign-exchange traders are much like stock floor traders: a rapidly dying breed,” said Charles Geisst, author of “Wall Street: A History” and a finance professor at Manhattan College in Riverdale, New York. “Once the banks realize they are costing them money, the positions will dwindle quickly.”
At least a dozen regulators are investigating allegations first reported by Bloomberg News in June that traders colluded to rig benchmarks in the $5.3 trillion-a-day currency market. That scrutiny may give banks an opportunity to cull more staff, say analysts including Christopher Wheeler of Mediobanca SpA in London. It’s also boosting demand from clients for greater transparency in pricing and transaction charges, accelerating a longer-term shift in trading onto electronic platforms.
More
We end for the day with more on the madness of continental Europe. A plan for the suicide of Paris and Frankfurt as global or even EU financial centers. With Euroland ex-Germany, already dying and facing a glass of Scottish poison in September, the EUSSR now proposes to speed up its own demise. London, already the 6th largest French city by population, looks set to be well on its way to become 5th.
“The Germans outside looked from America to
Russia, and from Russia to America, and from America to Russia again; but
already it was impossible to say which was which.”
With apologies to George Orwell and
Animal Farm.
Germany, France seek to revive transaction tax plan
By Huw
Jones LONDON
(Reuters) - Germany
and France
will lead a face-saving bid this week to revive a flagging project to tax
financial transactions in 11 euro
zone countries and allay fears it could hamper economic recovery.The tax is expected to be scaled back from an original plan to introduce it from January to raise 35 billion euros ($48 billion) annually to make banks pay back some of the money received in the 2007-09 financial crisis.
The idea of a transaction tax failed to win backing globally due to U.S. opposition, and a pan-European Union tax or even one covering all 18 euro zone countries also found no support. Britain, Ireland, the Netherlands and Sweden are among countries that have opposed it on grounds that it would encourage banks and finance firms to relocate trading activities.
Although the levy is likely to end up being a shadow of the original proposal, its introduction in some form would allow Germany and France to claim a victory.
The latest plan for the tax is expected to be on the agenda when Germany and France meet in Paris on Wednesday.
More
"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
At the Comex silver depositories Friday final figures were: Registered 50.77 Moz,
Eligible 130.75 Moz, Total 181.52 Moz. (???)
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
No great vampire squids, bent banksters, or voodoo
Federalis today, just more on the arrival of our new Carbon Age, that promises
by the end of the decade, early next decade to set off a new “industrial revolution”
that will rescue the world from the Great Nixonian Error of fiat money, and the
thoroughly corrupt fiat dollar reserve standard, that cheats the third world in
favour of the first. The trouble is how to get from here to there, even before
nationalist nutcases in Scotland and Catalonia and the Basque country, attempt
to aggravate the problem by bringing on
the collapse to the EUSSR.
Groundbreaking graphene-based product
TBA
Electro Conductive has developed a sprayable conductive coating containing
graphene platelets
A Greater Manchester firm is to
become one of the first in the world to make a product containing wonder
material graphene.
TBA Electro Conductive Products
Ltd is ready to go to market with a sprayable transparent conductive coating
that could deliver huge cost savings for firms in sectors including food,
electronics, pharmaceuticals and petrochemicals.
The home-grown development is
being billed as a ‘game changer’ for the commercialisation of graphene, the super
thin, ultra strong material created in the labs of Manchester University.
The new ATEX-compliant product is
a clear, anti-static aerosol (also available as bulk paint) made of a hybrid of
carbon nano tubes (CNTs) and graphene platelets - made from the shattered
graphite contained in the CNTs which, applied alone, temper-tangled, creating a
mucky appearance on products. Its application will safeguard electronic
equipment used in explosive environments and bring it up to European standards.
The company, which employs seven
people - a subsidiary of the 150-years-old Turner Brothers group now based on
the Transpennine Trading Estate - already has interest both at home and
overseas and believes it will add six figures to their annual £1.5m turnover.
The first sales are expected within weeks.
The product cost around £2m to
develop over two-and-a-half years, with an international consortium, including
£830,00 of European Union funding and £50,000 of the company’s cash.
It is expected to sell at £20 to
£30 a litre, with capacity to cover at least four square metres, compared to
existing clear conductive plastic sheeting priced around £600 for 2x1metre
coverage. It has dramatically reduced the conductive element in the firm’s
products to just 0.05 per cent, compared to up to 75 per cent in existing
solutions.
TBA Electro Conductive’s business
manager, Mark Lineker, said: “There are temporary solutions that get through a
test but wear off and there are some very expensive solutions. We saw an
opportunity to introduce a product, a thin film, that could be sprayed on
existing products.
"What we’ve ended up with is
a significant development on what was previously available and relatively cheap
by comparison. I genuinely hope this will give us more inroads into high tech
applications of these types of materials.”
Graphene in its purest,
two-dimensional form is still some way from commercialisation and under
constant development at Manchester University’s dedicated National Graphene
Institute.
More"Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the 'hidden' confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights."
Alan Greenspan. 1966.
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished January.
DJIA: +202 Down. NASDAQ: +330 Up. SP500: +249 Up. The new Fed bubble continues, but seems to be running out
of momentum.
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