Baltic Dry Index. 970 -19
LIR Gold Target in 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
"In
economics, hope and faith coexist with great scientific pretension."
J. K.
Galbraith
We open with
the official figures from Beijing. If the new official target is 7.5 percent
growth in 2014, all down the chain of command in communist run China, the
functionaries will report whatever it
takes to get the annual end result to 7.5 percent. Next quarter’s figure, 7.6
percent? Whatever the official figures, the rapidly sinking BDI shipping index suggests
a coming summer of harsh reality.
China’s Growth Slows to Six-Quarter Low
Apr 16, 2014 6:03 AM GMT
China’s expansion moderated to the weakest pace in six quarters and
property construction plunged, testing leaders’ commitment to keep reining in
credit as risks mount of a deeper slowdown. Gross domestic product rose 7.4 percent in the January-to-March period from a year earlier, the statistics bureau said today in Beijing, compared with the 7.3 percent median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey of analysts. Industrial production and fixed-asset investment trailed projections.
The weakest first-quarter
property-investment growth since 2009 signals credit is tight and demand is
faltering, adding to economic and default dangers as Premier Li Keqiang
grapples with risks from shadow banking and local-government debt. A deeper
slowdown would put pressure on leaders to expand stimulus or limit the pace of
changes intended to give market forces a bigger role in the world’s
second-largest economy.
More
Up next, in
China is gold the new copper? China imports copper to use in manufacturing, and
as security in the shadow banking system, against harder to come by loans in
the official banking system. But lately China seems to have cracked down on
using copper imports as a way around beating the credit tightening. Step
forward the world’s universal monetary metal. There’s more than one way to skin
a cat, although first you have to catch and kill your cat.
Strong demand from gold-hungry China in next 4 years – World Gold Council
By: Martin
Creamer 15th April 2014
JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) –
Private sector demand for gold in China is poised to increase by 25% from the
current level of 1 100 t/y to at least 1 350 t/y by 2017, the World Gold
Council (WGC) said on Tuesday.
Last year saw China become the
world’s largest gold market and, although 2014 Chinese gold demand is set for
consolidation, the succeeding years are expected to see ongoing strong growth,
driven by rising real incomes, a deepening pool of private savings and rapid
urbanisation across China.
In mining, China has gone from
being a minor producer to the world’s largest source of mined gold, with
production doubling from 217 t to 437 t in the past ten year.
In its report entitled 'China's
gold market: progress and prospects', the WGC examines the factors that have
taken the country to the number-one gold position, both in production and
consumption, in the wake of the liberalisation of China’s gold market in the
late 1990s and the subsequent offering of gold bullion products by the
country’s commercial banks from 2004.
The report also analyses why the
market will continue to expand, irrespective of short-term blips in the
economy, and calculates that the next six years will see China’s middle class
grow by 200-million people to 500-million people, compared with the population
of the US of 319-million people.
“We have witnessed astonishing
increases in demand for gold from consumers across the country,” said WCG Far
East MD Albert Cheng, adding that there was significant room for
the market to grow even further in the light of China’s deep-seated cultural
affinity for gold, increasing affluence and supportive State.
China is now seen to be at the
centre of the global gold ecosystem and, while the country faces important
challenges as it seeks to sustain economic growth and liberalise its financial
system, buildup in personal incomes and the public’s pool of savings should
support a medium-term increase in the demand for gold, in both jewellery and
investment.
The report finds that China’s continuing urbanisation has resulted in China now having 170 cities with more than one-million inhabitants and that demand for gold among those with a greater disposable income and limited investment opportunities will continue to grow.
The report finds that China’s continuing urbanisation has resulted in China now having 170 cities with more than one-million inhabitants and that demand for gold among those with a greater disposable income and limited investment opportunities will continue to grow.
Chinese savings levels remain
high with an estimated $7.5-trillion in Chinese bank accounts, but household
allocations of $300-billion are still moderate given that gold is seen as a
stable, accessible investment by consumers, particularly in the light of rising
house prices and a lack of alternative savings options.
More
China First-Quarter Home Sales Post Decline on Tight Credit
Apr 16, 2014 4:49 AM GMT
China’s home sales fell and new
property construction declined 25 percent in the first quarter, as credit
remained tight, adding to signs of a slowdown in the world’s second-largest
economy.
The value of homes sold fell 7.7 percent to 1.1 trillion yuan ($177 billion) in the three months to March from the same period a year ago, the National Bureau of Statistics said today. The last time home value sales dropped in the first quarter was in 2012. New property construction declined to 291 million square meters (3.1 billion square feet) in the quarter.
China’s broadest measure of new credit in March fell 19 percent from a year earlier and money supply grew at the slowest pace on record, according to People’s Bank of China. China’s expansion slowed to the weakest pace in six quarters in the January-to-March period, a separate government report showed today, adding to risks of missing an annual growth target of about 7.5 percent.
“The big drop in new property construction was a surprise and it shows that developers, mostly non-listed, are concerned about the property market outlook and holding off home-building,” said Jinsong Du, a Hong Kong-based property analyst at Credit Suisse Group AG. “Tight credit, with less money flowing in the market, is the main reason for the weakening sales.”
More
Chinese Police Confront Trust Investors Demanding Repayment
Apr 16, 2014 6:47 AM GMT
Chinese investors demanding their money back from a troubled 973
million-yuan ($156 million) high-yield product in Shanxi province were
confronted by police in front of a China Construction Bank Corp. (939) branch. People wearing white masks with the words “despicable bank” and “pay back our money” were among at least 30 investors facing special-forces officers in dark uniforms in Taiyuan city, about 521 kilometers (324 miles) southwest of Beijing. The nation’s second-largest bank is the custodian of the Songhuajiang River No. 77 trust, which missed six payments as of last month, according to the Economic Observer.
“We have been cheated by CCB,” said Wang Fengying, 60, a Shanxi resident who said her husband had invested 1 million yuan in the product. “Our parents are very old. We need the money for their medical bills and to buy a home for my child. We are so miserable and they won’t even let us demand our money back.”
The unrest underscores the stress in China’s $1.75 trillion trust industry as loans sour in an economy that grew at the slowest pace in six quarters. A product distributed by Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. (1398) to raise funds for a troubled coal miner was bailed out in January to avert what would have been the first trust default in at least a decade.
More
On the botched Kiev
Coup, US CIA World War 3 front, the rush to Sarajevo speeds up. We are heading
to our 2014 Gavrilo Princip moment. It can’t come soon enough for America’s War
Party.
If
all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
J. K.
Galbraith
Ukraine Says Russian Forces Among Separatists as Battles Ensue
Apr 16, 2014 3:00 AM GMT
Ukraine began an offensive against separatists in its restive east,
recapturing an airport amid claims that Russian special forces were supporting
the anti-government groups. Units from Ukraine’s interior ministry yesterday ousted pro-Russian activists who had seized the airfield in Kramatorsk, though there were conflicting accounts on casualties. U.S. Representative Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Intelligence committee, accused Russia of waging a campaign of “sabotage.”
“There are Russian citizens who are, again, military and intelligence operatives in eastern Ukraine fomenting this trouble,” Rogers said yesterday in an interview on CNN. “They are recruiting, and there’s some level of training.”
The airport operation marked Ukraine’s first foray against armed activists holding government buildings in cities near the Russian border. Efforts to contain the insurgency risk escalating tensions with Russia, which warned of a potential civil war. NATO says Russia has 40,000 troops massed on Ukraine’s border after its annexation of Crimea last month.
“The aim of these actions is to protect people,” acting Ukrainian President Oleksandr Turchynov said in a statement on his website. “Apart from Russian special forces and terrorists, there’s hundreds of thousands of innocent Ukrainian people deceived by Russian propaganda, and that is why we will take any needed anti-terrorist actions prudently and responsibly.”
More
Russian PM Dmitry Medvedev says Ukraine on ‘brink of civil war’
15/04 22:30 CET
Stark warnings and coded language. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev,
flanked by his Kazakh and Belorussian counterparts has weighed into the
diplomatic arguments on Ukraine.His was a gloomy assesment of the future and he appealed to Kyiv.
“Ukraine is on the brink of civil war. It is scary. I hope that everyone who is responsible for making decisions at the moment, the current Ukrainian authorities have enough brains to avoid driving the country into such a state and to prevent an escalation of the conflict,” he told reporters.
The diplomatic theme from NATO on Tuesday was similar, ending a conflict which could spiral. But it pointed to Russia with a direct appeal to Moscow.
“I call on Russia to de-escalate the crisis, to pull back its troops from Ukraine’s borders, to stop de-stabilising the situation in Ukraine and make clear it doesn’t support the violent action of pro-Russian separatists,” said Nato General Secretary Anders Fogh Rasmussen
---From Estonia
which shares a border with Russia US Senator John McCain said he believed
Ukraine should receive military assistance from the West adding that Kyiv’s
military was poorly equipped to deal with any threat from Russian troops on the
Ukrainian frontier.
"If you don't trust gold, do you trust the logic of taking a beautiful pine tree, worth about $4,000 - $5,000, cutting it up, turning it into pulp and then paper, putting some ink on it and then calling it one billion dollars?"
Kenneth J. Gerbino
At the Comex
silver depositories Tuesday
final figures were: Registered 53.40 Moz, Eligible 124.36 Moz, Total 177.76 Moz.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
And God said let there be rain in California. Who
will ever forget Queen Elisabeth’s ill-timed 1983 El Nino visit to Ronald
Reagan’s, Santa Barbara, “ranch in the
sky,” California. Next winter, the early signs suggest a repeat. Time to sign
up Wills and Kate and Georgie for a state visit to the land of fruits and nuts?
Better yet, how about Chuck and Godzilla?
El Nino Signs Detected, Presaging Global Weather Change
Apr 15, 2014 12:00 PM GMT
Signs have been detected that a periodic warming of the tropical Pacific
known as El Nino is imminent, presaging changes to global weather patterns in
the months ahead, the World Meteorological Organization said. Water temperatures below the surface of the Pacific’s equatorial waters have warmed to levels similar to the onset of El Nino, and about two-thirds of climate models indicate thresholds for the phenomenon may be reached from June to August, the United Nations’ WMO said today in an e-mailed statement.
El Ninos occur irregularly every two to seven years and are associated with warmer than average years.
They tend to lead to abnormally dry conditions over parts of Australia, the Philippines and Brazil, and to more intense storms in the Gulf of Mexico. Their counterpart, La Ninas, are associated with cooler years.
“El Nino and La Nina are major drivers of the natural variability of our climate,” WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud said in the statement. “If an El Nino event develops, and it is still too early to be certain, it will influence temperatures and precipitation and contribute to droughts or heavy rainfall in different regions of the world.”
The last El Nino was from 2009 to 2010. The strongest El Nino measured to date ran from 1997 to 1998 and contributed to 1998 being the third-warmest year on record.
“El Nino has an important warming effect on global average temperatures, as we saw during the strong El Nino in 1998,” Jarraud said. “The combination of natural warming from any El Nino event and human-induced warming from greenhouse gases has the potential to cause a dramatic rise in global mean temperature.”
El Nino events tend to lead to dry conditions in northern Australia, the Philippines and Indonesia, as well as drier periods in southeastern Africa and northern Brazil during the southern hemisphere’s summer, according to the WMO, a UN agency.
During
the northern summer, Indian monsoon rains tend to diminish, harming crops,
while the west coast of tropical South America gets wetter. Western Canada and Alaska usually get
warmer winters, and the Gulf of Mexico gets more vigorous storms, it said.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-15/el-nino-signs-detected-presaging-global-weather-change.html
QUEEN'S PARTY FORDS STREAMS IN RAIN
By FRANCIS X. CLINES, Special to the New York Times Published: March 2, 1983
SANTA BARBARA, Calif., March 1— Queen Elizabeth II took a jouncing, steep-angled ride through fog and swollen creeks to have a taco lunch today at President Reagan's mountaintop ranch.
Mr. Reagan's plan to take her on a horseback ride was
washed out by relentless gales. But the Queen's seven-mile ride by motor
caravan up the narrow, winding road of the Santa Ynez Mountains was an American
adventure in itself.
Their tour schedule already shredded by the week's
fierce weather, the Queen and Prince Philip remained patient as their four-wheeldrive
vehicle forded seven overflowing streams on the way up the mountain. Once
there, they found a storm-lashed site more reminiscent of their homeland moors
than the Reagan's Rancho del Cielo, or ranch in the sky. The royal couple and
the Presidential couple posed for photographs outside the ranch house, near a
small shingle that read: ''The Reagans, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.''
The
Queen and Prince Philip wore beige raincoats and high rubber boots. Mrs. Reagan
wore a red raincoat and cowboy boots. Mr. Reagan had on a denim ranch jacket
and western-style tie and boots. All posed unflinching, albeit briefly, for
photographs before the rainstorm intensified and they went into the house.
More
Lewis and Clark.
Winter on the Pacific
December
08-30, 1805
Lewis and Clark decided to make camp south of the Columbia. On a slight rise along the banks of a small river, they cleared a site of trees and brush and built Fort Clatsop, named after the local Clatsop Indians.
Their time at the fort was monotonous, spent making moccasins and buckskin clothing, storing food, and working on journals and maps. Even Christmas Day was gloomy, the men's dinner stringy elk meat and roots. Rain was constant.
The captains were anxious to meet one of the trading ships that came frequently to the mouth of the Columbia from U.S. ports or from Britain. One ship did stop to trade with the Indians during the corps's time on the West Coast. But the Indians did not tell Lewis and Clark about it, and the ship left without them ever knowing it had been there.
Lewis and Clark decided to make camp south of the Columbia. On a slight rise along the banks of a small river, they cleared a site of trees and brush and built Fort Clatsop, named after the local Clatsop Indians.
Their time at the fort was monotonous, spent making moccasins and buckskin clothing, storing food, and working on journals and maps. Even Christmas Day was gloomy, the men's dinner stringy elk meat and roots. Rain was constant.
The captains were anxious to meet one of the trading ships that came frequently to the mouth of the Columbia from U.S. ports or from Britain. One ship did stop to trade with the Indians during the corps's time on the West Coast. But the Indians did not tell Lewis and Clark about it, and the ship left without them ever knowing it had been there.
Reading 3: Wintering on the West Coast
---However productive they were, the three months at Fort Clatsop were difficult for the members of the expedition. Their hopes of meeting a trade ship never realized. Game was hard to locate, and with only a few days rations on hand, regular hunting parties were kept out constantly. The miserable, rainy weather played havoc with black powder and flintlock weapons. The jerking of meat never met with complete success in the moist coastal environment and spoiled quickly. The weather and poor diet complicated the men's health.Colds, fevers and rheumatism joined the multitude of fleas as their constant companions. These disagreeable conditions hastened the departure of the corps. Before setting out on March 23, 1806, Clark wrote:
[A]t this place we had wintered and remained from
the 7th of Decr. 1805 to this day and have lived as well as we had any right to
expect, and we can say that we were never one day without 3 meals of some kind
a day either pore Elk meat or roots, notwithstanding the repeated fall of rain
which has fallen almost constantly since we passed the long narrows.4
"Until government administrators can so identify the interests of government with those of the people and refrain from defrauding the masses through the device of currency depreciation for the sake of remaining in office, the wiser ones will prefer to keep as much of their wealth in the most stable and marketable forms possible - forms which only the precious metals provide."
Elgin Groseclose
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished March
DJIA: +197 Down. NASDAQ: +357 Up. SP500: +254 Down.
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