Baltic Dry Index. 1098 -88
LIR Gold Target in 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
The great questions of the day will not
be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood.
Otto von Bismarck.
We open
today with more on the push for war in the Ukraine. Following the botched Coup
in Kiev, civil war in the Ukraine seems the next stage in this rapidly
escalating crisis, followed shortly thereafter with a clash between Russia and
the west. Poland and Germany better start preparing for Syrian style mass
migration by the end of the year.
Sadly our markets
and populations are blissfully unaware of the dangers of our reckless policies
in “the new Balkans.” Just as in early 1914, few thought a new European war desirable,
possible, or likely. Among those few who thought a European war remotely
possible, the consensus was that it would be local, contained and quickly over.
Casualties would be numbered in the thousands at worst.
In our
current manufactured crisis, the prevailing western view seems to be that we
will easily beat Russia in a western romp. My view is slightly different. A
NATO Ukraine is an existential threat to modern Russia. Like Israel, Russia
will do whatever it takes, including going nuclear, to prevent that from
happening. If that takes a nuclear exchange, that takes a nuclear exchange. Are
American’s really willing to swap Manhattan for the Kremlin?
Stay long fully
paid up physical gold and silver held outside of banks, brokerages, and the
larcenous reach of John Bull and Uncle Sam, who have previous form at taking
what’s not rightly theirs. Does Russia’s next move come over Easter?
All treaties between great states cease
to be binding when they come in conflict with the struggle for existence.
Otto von Bismarck.
Nato warns Russia against 'historic mistake' in Ukraine
Russia warned not to make 'historic mistake' as Ukraine mounts counter-offensive by vowing to treat the separatists as 'terrorists'
By AFP 12:23PM BST 08 Apr 2014
Nato warned Russia on Tuesday
against making an "historic mistake" by provoking a flaring secession
crisis in eastern Ukraine
that Moscow itself conceded could degenerate into a civil war.
Ukraine's embattled interim
leaders have been waging an uphill battle to keep their culturally splintered
nation of 46 million together after last month's ousting of a pro-Kremlin
regime and subsequent loss of Crimea to Russia.
An eerie echo of the Black Sea
peninsula's crisis sounded on Sunday when militants stormed a series of
strategic government buildings across a swathe of heavily pro-Russian eastern
regions and demanded that Moscow send its troops for support
Ukraine mounted a
counter-offensive on Tuesday by vowing to treat the separatists as
"terrorists" and making 70 arrests in a night-time security sweep
aimed at proving the Kremlin's involvement in the secessionist movement.
An urgent deployment of security
forces saw Kiev also regain control of an administration building in Kharkiv
and the security service headquarters of Donetsk.
But the separatists still held on
to the security service building in the city of Lugansk after breaking into its
massive weapons cache and releasing several activists who had been accused of
plotting to stage a coup.
Hundreds of militants remained
holed inside the Donetsk administration building a day after proclaiming the
creation of an independent "people's republic" and demanding that an
independence referendum be held before May 11.
The heart of Donetsk itself was a
mesh of razor wire and hastily-assembled barricades of old tyres that could be
set on fire in case the riot police decided to mount an assault on the regional
government seat.
More
Russia accuses NATO of cold war mentality over diplomatic restrictions
MOSCOW, April 8 (Xinhua) --
Moscow on Tuesday accused the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) of
bearing "cold war" mentality over the latter's decision to limit the
access of Russian diplomats to its headquarters.
"We noted that information
about the move was posted on the main page of NATO's official website. It looks
like access by Russian diplomats to the NATO office is the North Atlantic
alliance's number one problem," the Russian foreign ministry said in a
statement.
The NATO said Monday all
representatives of the Russian mission, except its head, the deputy head and
two support staff, would be denied access to the military bloc's headquarters
in Brussels, Belgium
Moreover, other Russian diplomats
would have to notify the NATO about their planned visits in advance, register
upon arrival and be escorted by security staff throughout the visit.
Moscow said such restrictive
measures "confirm once again that the alliance is not capable of
overcoming the 'cold war' mentality and prefers the language of sanctions over
dialogue."
----Russian
permanent envoy to NATO Alexander Grushko also said Monday beefing-up of the
Western military presence in eastern European countries would "completely
destroy the system of mutual obligations between Russia and NATO."
Ukraine says separatists hold hostages; activists deny charge
By Thomas
Grove LUHANSK, Ukraine
(Reuters) - More than 50 people left a state security service building
overnight that had been seized by pro-Russia activists in eastern Ukraine,
following negotiations between protesters and officials, Ukraine's state
security service (SBU) said early on Wednesday.The SBU said on Tuesday that the protesters who seized the local headquarters of state security in Luhansk on Sunday had wired it with explosives and were holding 60 people hostage, though this was denied by the protesters themselves.
After negotiations overnight, 51 people left the building without weapons, the SBU in the Ukrainian capital Kiev said. It was unclear if they were protesters or hostages.
Interfax Ukraine news agency later put this number at 56 and said negotiations were continuing between the protesters and local officials to end the occupation.
The activists denied on Tuesday they had any explosives or were holding hostages. But they conceded they had seized an armory full of automatic rifles.
More
US accuses Russia of sending spies into eastern Ukraine to 'create chaos'
Russia sending spies to eastern Ukraine to provide a pretext for a possible Crimea-style military intervention, John Kerry claims
By Roland Oliphant in Kharkiv 7:08PM
BST 08 Apr 2014
The United States has accused
Russia of sending spies into eastern Ukraine
to "create chaos" and provide a pretext for a possible Crimea style
military intervention.
In Washington's strongest
comments to date, John Kerry, the US secretary of state, described a series of
pro-Russian building seizures in eastern cities as an "illegal and
illegitimate effort to destabilise a sovereign state", funded by the
Russian special services.
"Everything that we've seen
in the last 48 hours from Russian provocateurs and agents operating in eastern
Ukraine tells us that they've been sent there determined to create chaos,"
Mr Kerry said in Washington
"No one should be fooled –
and believe me, no one is fooled by what could potentially be a contrived
pretext for military intervention just as we saw in Crimea. It is clear that
Russian special forces and agents have been the catalysts behind the chaos of
the last 24 hours," he added.
William Hague, the Foreign
Secretary, backed America's message by stating the flare-up bore "all the
hallmarks of a Russian strategy to destabilise Ukraine", while Nato warned
Russia that any further intervention would be a "historic mistake".
More
In other
news, the Great China Wobble grows. China and the US spar. Will Uncle Sam try
to use the Great Wobble to its advantage? Will Japan try to use America’s “blank
cheque” to force an early clash before China becomes an unstoppable force? I
suspect that the Ukraine will soon have company in the next war stakes. The old
Empire and the new Empire are treading on each other’s turf.
Be polite; write diplomatically; even in
a declaration of war one observes the rules of politeness.
Otto von Bismarck
Snoozing Staff at Yiwu Show China Exports Sputtering
Apr 9, 2014 5:10 AM GMT
Back in 2008, Sun Qiuliang’s company generated about $1.6 million selling
flashlights in the Chinese trade hub of Yiwu. This year, business has almost
dried up. “The mobile phone for my shop sometimes doesn’t ring for a month,” said Sun, 33, sales manager of his family’s Liyuan Flashlight Works. “In the good old days there would be one or two orders every day.”
Sun’s plight is shared by small businesspeople across the eastern city, a center for the export of cheap products from hair bands to bracelets. Chinese trade figures for March due tomorrow are projected to show growth below the government’s target for the full year even after a slide in the yuan, underscoring the urgency for Premier Li Keqiang to find alternative economic drivers.
“I don’t see a future for these places if they continue to make low-end products,” said Ding Shuang, senior China economist at Citigroup Inc. in Hong Kong. “They have to restructure their products and move up the value chain, and that applies to China more broadly.”
On a recent business day at the Yiwu International Trade Mart, a five-story marketplace with an area the size of 650 soccer fields, shopkeepers played computer games, read newspapers and even slept at their desks.
The dearth of buyers reflects rising costs and lost competitiveness even after the yuan fell about 2.3 percent against the dollar this year.
China last week outlined spending on railways and low-income housing and tax relief to support the economy after a slowdown endangered Premier Li’s target of 7.5 percent growth this year.
Exports probably rose 4.8 percent in March from a year earlier while imports increased 3.9 percent, based on the median estimates of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News ahead of customs data tomorrow. The pace may be distorted by inflated numbers in early 2013, when some companies filed fake invoices to disguise capital inflows.
China is targeting foreign-trade expansion of 7.5 percent this year, matching the economic growth goal. Exports fell 18.1 percent in February from a year earlier, the biggest drop since the global financial crisis.
First-quarter figures for gross domestic product are due April 16, with analysts estimating a 7.3 percent gain from a year earlier, the slowest pace since 2009.
More
U.S. defense chief gets earful as China visit exposes tensions
By Phil
Stewart BEIJING
(Reuters) - Tensions between China
and the United States were on full display on Tuesday as Defense Secretary
Chuck Hagel faced questions in Beijing about America's position in bitter
territorial disputes with regional U.S. allies.Chinese Defense Minister Chang Wanquan, standing side-by-side with Hagel, called on the United States to restrain ally Japan and chided another U.S. ally, the Philippines.
Then, Hagel was sharply questioned by Chinese officers at the National Defense University. One of them told Hagel he was concerned that the United States was stirring up trouble in the East and South China Sea because it feared someday "China will be too big a challenge for the United States to cope with."
"Therefore you are using such issues ... to make trouble to hamper (China's) development," the officer said.
Hagel assured the audience that America had no interest in trying to "contain China" and that it took no position in such disputes. But he also cautioned repeatedly during the day that the United States would stand by its allies.
"We have mutual self defense treaties with each of those two countries," Hagel said, referring to Japan and the Philippines. "And we are fully committed to those treaty obligations."
The questioning came just a day after Hagel toured China's sole aircraft carrier, in a rare opening by Beijing to a potent symbol of its military ambitions. Chinese Defense Minister Chang called Hagel, the top civilian at the Pentagon, the first foreign military official to be allowed on board the Liaoning.
Chang and Hagel spoke positively about improving military ties and announced steps to deepen them. But the effort could do little to mask long-standing tension over a range of issues, from cyber spying and U.S. arms sales to Taiwan to China's military buildup itself.
At a seminar in New York, China's ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai said Washington needed to think hard about the purpose of its military presence in Asia and whether its political agenda and those of its Asian allies were the same.
He spoke of the need to move away from "outdated alliances" and warned against any attempt to create an Asian version of the NATO Western military alliance to contain China.
"If your mission there is to contain some other country, then you are back in the Cold War again, maybe," he said. If your intention is to establish an Asian NATO, then we are back in the Cold War-era again. This is something that will serve nobody's interest, it's quite clear."
Beyond developing an aircraft carrier program, China's People's Liberation Army is building submarines, surface ships and anti-ship ballistic missiles, and has tested emerging technology aimed at destroying missiles in mid-air.
More
Ending on
China for today, is this the reason
Uncle Sam gave a blank cheque to Japan to start a war?
Central banks' investment in yuan puts currency nearer reserve status
Investment by dozens of central banks comes despite currency not being fully convertible
UPDATED : Monday, 07 April, 2014,
6:24pm
At least 40 central banks have
invested in the yuan and several others are preparing to do so, putting the
mainland currency on the path to reserve status even before full
convertibility, Standard Chartered said.
Twenty-three countries have
publicly declared their holdings in yuan, in either the onshore or offshore
markets, yet the real number of participating central banks could be far more
than that, said Jukka Pihlman, Standard Chartered's Singapore-based global head
of central banks and sovereign wealth funds.
Pihlman, who formerly worked at
the International Monetary Fund advising central banks on asset-management
issues, said at least 12 central banks had invested in yuan assets without
declaring they had done so.
The US dollar is still the world's most
widely held reserve currency, accounting for nearly 33 per cent of global
foreign exchange holdings at the end of last year, according to IMF data. That
ratio has been declining since 2000, when 55 per cent of the world's reserves
were denominated in US dollars.
----Pihlman said "a great number of central banks are in the process of adding [yuan] to their portfolios".
"The [yuan] has effectively
already become a de facto reserve currency because so many central banks have
already invested in it," he said. "The [yuan] may become a de facto
reserve currency before it is fully convertible."
The central banks more likely to
add yuan holdings in the future were the ones with "strong trade linkages
to China" and those which had relatively large levels of reserves which
could consider diversifying more for return-related reasons, he said.
"The [yuan's] convertibility
may be already there for central banks in a way that has got them comfortable
to start investing in the currency," Pihlman said.
More
We close for
today with a red flag from America. Is a great food price explosion what comes
next? If it is, where next for an explosion of social unrest.
Beef prices hit all-time high in U.S.
Extreme weather has thinned the nation's cattle herds, roiling the beef supply chain from rancher to restaurant.
April 8, 2014, 6:05 p.m.
Come grilling season, expect your sirloin steak to come with a hearty side of
sticker shock.Beef prices have reached all-time highs in the U.S. and aren't expected to come down any time soon.
Extreme weather has thinned the nation's beef cattle herds to levels last seen in 1951, when there were about half as many mouths to feed in America.
"We've seen strong prices before but nothing this extreme," said Dennis Smith, a commodities broker for Archer Financial Services in Chicago. "This is really new territory."
The retail value of "all-fresh" USDA choice-grade beef jumped to a record $5.28 a pound in February, up from $4.91 the same time a year ago. The same grade of beef cost $3.97 as recently as 2008.
The swelling prices are roiling the beef supply chain from rancher to restaurant.
----There's more pressure to throw the special cuts needed to make deli meat into the grinder for hamburgers. What's left for Haines costs more. Brisket has more than tripled in price since 2008. Navel has more than doubled.
"This whole thing now is being driven by hamburger," said the gravelly voiced Haines, who keeps years of beef prices recorded on stacks of small sheets of paper. "You take all the McDonald's and Burger Kings across the United States; the amount of meat needed to make those hamburgers is forcing the value of other cuts of meat to go up."
The biggest fast-food chains aren't immune to the price pressure either. Experts say $1 value menus could soon be a thing of the past.
In October, McDonald's said its Dollar Menu of more than a decade would morph into a so-called Dollar Menu & More, which mixes $1, $2 and $5 items. Wendy's made a similar move last year.
"Gold would have value if for no other reason than that it enables a citizen to fashion his financial escape from the state."
William F. Rickenbacker
At the Comex
silver depositories Tuesday
final figures were: Registered 53.43 Moz, Eligible 124.85 Moz, Total 188.28 Moz.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
No crooks or scoundrels today, just a look at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, London and the coming improvements for its
ex UK military inmates. The RHC grounds host the Royal Horticultural Society Chelsea
Flower Show each May. (RHC/RHS/CFS if you prefer.) The RHC/RHS/CFS celebrated its centenary there
in 2013, though there were some gaps due to the Germans starting two wars. Though
I’ve never visited RHC/RHS/CFS over the years, I’ve been privileged to be stuck
in heavy crawling traffic on the Chelsea Embankment many times over the years
trying to drive past, struggling to get from Reading in the Thames Valley, up
to the City and vice versa. In the days
before mobile phones, I was lucky not to go broke
in commodities. The good old days.
8 April 2014 Last updated at 01:18
The place where Chelsea Pensioners live
Pretty much unchanged since Sir Christopher Wren designed
them at the end of the 17th Century, the Long Wards - home to the Chelsea
Pensioners - are getting a makeover.
The small wooden rooms - measuring 9 x 9ft - are being modernised and getting bigger. The distinctive wood panelling will remain, but residents will enjoy the luxury of en suite facilities and direct daylight.
Take a tour of the old rooms - and see how they will look in future.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26886162
RHS Chelsea Flower Show, May 20 - 24 2014
http://www.rhs.org.uk/Shows-Events/RHS-Chelsea-Flower-Show/2014?utm_medium=cpc&gclid=CLil04CI0b0CFUTMtAodAwcAOg
Chelsea flower show 1914 Images.
Flower power: 100 years of the Chelsea Flower Show
Tears. Anger. Competition. Reputations – and fortunes – made
and lost. We look back at a century of the Chelsea Flower Show
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished March
DJIA: +197 Down. NASDAQ: +357 Up. SP500: +254 Down.
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