Baltic Dry Index. 962 +06
LIR Gold Target in 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
“The Germans [your nation here] 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.
In more
fallout from America’s botched coup in Kiev, Russia is ignoring America’s
increasingly strident if ineffective, rhetoric over the Ukraine. As both Russia
and the Ukraine are large wheat producers and exporters to much of the world,
unsurprisingly the price of wheat now starting to surge in case sanctions or
war disrupt supplies. Food price inflation is now about to become another unintended
consequence of America’s War Party’s rash action in staging a botched coup in
Kiev. Stay long fully paid up precious metals, there’s no telling how this
needless crisis now plays out. There never was a crisis a politician couldn’t
make worse, especially grandstanding to the media over the weekend.
The secret of politics? Make a good
treaty with Russia.
Otto von Bismarck.
Asia Stocks Drop With Hong Kong as Wheat Rises on Ukraine
Apr 25,
2014 5:12 AM GMT
Asian stocks fell, with the regional benchmark index heading toward a weekly
loss. Wheat climbed and nickel traded near a 14-month high as the U.S. warned
Russia of an “expensive mistake” in Ukraine. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index dropped 1.4 percent by 1:07 p.m. in Tokyo, with the MSCI Asia Pacific Index heading to a 0.8 percent loss for the week. Standard & Poor’s 500 Index futures were little changed. China’s yuan touched a 16-month low. Wheat contracts rose for a fourth day, adding 0.3 percent as soybeans and corn rallied at least 0.2 percent. Nickel was little changed at $18,348 a metric ton in London and is headed for a 15 percent jump this month as tensions rise over Ukraine.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Russia will be making a “grave mistake” if it doesn’t halt provocations in Ukraine. Russia is the world’s fifth-biggest wheat exporter, followed by Ukraine.
More
Russia braces for crippling US sanctions as Ukraine turns deadly
US President Barack Obama has accused Russia of violating both the spirit and the letter of the Geneva deal to end the crisis in Ukraine
Deadly clashes in eastern Ukraine
and warnings of broader US sanctions against Russia have sent tremors through
Moscow’s financial markets and forced the country to cancel a sovereign debt
auction yet again.
Russia’s RTS equities index fell
to a one-month low, with Gazprom and Sberbank both down 3.5pc in volatile
trading. Russia’s treasury pulled a 20bn rouble (£330m) bond auction intended
to test the waters, saying there were no buyers at an acceptable cost. Yields
on 10-year Russian bonds have jumped to 9.17pc.
Russian president Vladimir Putin
admitted for the first time that US sanctions imposed after the annexation of
Crimea are “causing damage” to Russia’s economy - already in or near recession
- but insisted that the crisis had not yet become critical.
State-lender Sberbank said bond
markets were almost completely shut for Russian banks, with companies and state
bodies trying to roll over $712bn (£424bn) of foreign currency debt.
The authorities may have to raid
the country’s reserve or national wealth funds to shore up the private sector,
it said. Companies must refinance $54bn of foreign debt over the next six months.
----US President Barack Obama accused Russia of violating both the spirit and the letter of the Geneva deal to end the crisis, warning that further measures are being prepared. “Those are teed up. It requires some technical work, and it also requires coordination with other countries,” he said in Tokyo. It is understood that Washington is aiming to ringfence BP, Shell and France’s Total, among others, from collateral damage or retaliatory action.
An elite cell at the US Treasury
has developed an arsenal of financial weapons that can in theory bring even
large countries to their knees through use of “scarlet letters” that cause
global banks and insurers to pull back. Japanese banks are already retreating
from Moscow to pre-empt problems with US regulators.
Diplomats warned that the crisis
could escalate after Ukraine sent troops into the Donbass region to recapture
cities under Russian paramilitary control, killing five pro-Russian protesters.
----Gazprom tightened the noose further by demanding that Ukraine pay $11.4bn for alleged failure to fulfil a “take-or-pay” contract last year, a sharp escalation from the $2.2bn of arrears demanded before. This follows an 80pc rise in the cost of gas as of May 1. Ukraine’s premier Arseniy Yatsenyuk accused Gazprom of “economic aggression”.
Ukraine is in talks with Slovakia
and EU officials over plans to import gas from western Europe through “reverse
flow” pipelines. Gunther Oettinger, the EU energy commissioner, said any such
diversion of gas flows would need Russian consent, a bizarre comment that
appeared to undercut the purpose of the undertaking.
More
In a sign of
Uncle Sam’s increasing frustration, America’s western Ukraine pot, yesterday, called
Russia’s eastern Ukraine kettle black. In reality Russia is merely trying to do
in the east what America tried to do in the west, before America’s coup got
usurped by far right anti-semitic parties, which tore up the EU brokered deal,
and tossed out the elected, if corrupt, legitimate President of the Ukraine. An American picked puppet regime
now occupies Kiev, with Russia trying to achieve their version of a puppet
regime in the east. And for this botched coup we risk a path to World War Three
and nuclear war. Madness.
Anyone who has ever looked into the
glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before
starting a war.
Otto von Bismarck.
Kerry Warns Putin on Ukraine as Russia Opens Troop Drills
Apr 25, 2014 3:04 AM GMT
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry warned that Russia is running
out of time to comply with an accord to ease tensions in Ukraine, as
Russian forces began new military exercises on the two countries’ border. Speaking in Washington, Kerry accused Russia of using the “barrel of a gun and the force of a mob” to impose its will on Ukraine. He said Russia has failed to live up to commitments it made a week ago in Geneva to de-escalate the situation and said continued lack of cooperation would bring consequences.
“If Russia continues in this direction, it will not just be a grave mistake, it will be an expensive mistake,” Kerry said at the State Department. Earlier yesterday, President Barack Obama said the U.S. and its allies are ready to impose further sanctions on Russia if it doesn’t back off.
Kerry spoke hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Ukraine against continuing an anti-separatist offensive that killed five rebels. The agreement on disarming rebels and other measures signed April 17 in Geneva by Ukraine, Russia, the European Union and the U.S. is on the brink of collapse.
While Kerry declared that Russia has “refused to take a single concrete step” toward implementing the agreement, his words reflected the limited U.S. ability to influence Putin’s actions in a region that’s long been under Russia’s economic and political sway.
“This is not much of a response,” said Angela Stent, director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies at Georgetown University in Washington, noting Kerry didn’t announce implementation of the threatened sanctions.
“The administration didn’t think Ukraine was going to define the latter part of their foreign policy,” Stent said in a telephone interview. “There seems to be no strategy here.”
More
Ukraine foreign minister: Ready to fight Russia
By ,
PRAGUE — Ukraine’s foreign minister
has blasted the Russian decision to start military maneuvers along their border
and said Thursday his country will fight any invading troops.
Andriy Deshchytisa told The Associated Press in Prague that Russia’s decision to launch the military exercises “very much escalates the situation in the region.”
Deshchytisa said his country had been taught a lesson by Russia’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula.
“We will now fight with Russian troops if ... they invade Ukraine,” he said. “The Ukrainian people and Ukrainian army are ready to do this. Ukraine will confront Russia. We will defend our land. We will defend our territory.”
Ukrainian authorities have renewed a push to force pro-Russia armed insurgents out of occupied buildings in eastern cities. Reacting to the killing of at least two pro-Russian insurgents Thursday, Moscow announced the military exercises.
“What are the Russian plans?” Deshchytisa asked. “Will they invade Ukraine or not? I think it would be a very big mistake for the Russian government to send troops to Ukrainian territory to protect Russians.”
Deshchytisa said the new Russian military exercises are taking place “even closer to the Ukrainian border than it was planned earlier” and demanded the withdrawal of Russian troops.
Deshchytisa was visiting Prague for a two-day summit of presidents of post-Soviet nations with their European Union counterpart, with the Ukraine crisis topping the agenda.
More
In other
news, a falling yen, in a beggar thy neighbour devaluation policy, plus a three
percent sales tax hike, produced Japan’s biggest consumer price increase since
1992. I doubt if Japan’s aging population will be impressed with the faster
poverty, nor Japan’s export competitors with the competitive devaluation.
Tokyo Inflation Quickens to Fastest Since 1992
Apr 25, 2014 5:02 AM GMT
Tokyo’s consumer prices rose 2.7 percent in April from a year earlier,
the biggest jump since 1992, pumped up by a sales-tax increase and a year of
unprecedented stimulus from the Bank of Japan. Inflation excluding fresh food accelerated from 1 percent in the previous month, while nationally the same price gauge rose 1.3 percent in March from a year earlier, statistics bureau data showed today. The Tokyo price gains compared to a 2.8 percent median forecast in a Bloomberg News.
The data provide a first look at the
effects of the April 1 tax rise that’s damping consumer demand and is projected
to tip the economy into a one-quarter contraction. Ahead of the BOJ’s release
of updated growth and inflation forecasts next week, investors are assessing
whether price gains, fueled by a weaker yen and higher energy costs, will
spread throughout the economy.
More
"The great merit of gold is precisely that it is scarce; that its quantity is limited by nature; that it is costly to discover, to mine, and to process; and that it cannot be created by political fiat or caprice."
Henry Hazlitt
At the Comex
silver depositories Thursday
final figures were: Registered 53.23 Moz, Eligible 123.84 Moz, Total 177.07 Moz.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
In more on our not so new lawless age, in America’s silicon valley, capitalism’s good but stiffing the employees is even better. Still by all leaked accounts, it’s only the slightest tap on the wrist. Are the UK and EU authorities following this? Did the same thing happen in Europe? Are the CEOs fit and proper persons to be running publicly listed companies? What did the NSA know, and what did it do about it, given their involvement will all the companies hammering the staff? Why were the terms of the deal not disclosed? What is Apple and Google trying to hide? Shouldn’t the EU investigate and force disclosure? In the 21st century, on QE forever and ZIRP, it’s not capitalism anymore, it’s more like a mafia based enterprise.
Why did I take up stealing? To live better, to own things I couldn't afford, to acquire this good taste that you now enjoy and which I should be very reluctant to give up.Google, with apologies to Cary Grant. To Catch A Thief.
Apple and Google settle lawsuit over poaching staff
Tech workers claimed technology giants conspired not to poach one another's employees in order to avert a salary war
By agencies 9:43PM BST 24 Apr
2014
Four major tech companies
including Apple and Google have agreed to settle a large antitrust lawsuit over
no-hire agreements in Silicon Valley.
Terms of the deal were not
disclosed.
Tech workers filed a class action
lawsuit against Apple, Google, Intel and Adobe Systems in 2011, alleging they
conspired not to poach one another's employees in order to avert a salary war.
A trial had been scheduled to begin at the end of May on behalf of roughly
60,000 workers.
The companies had acknowledged
entering into some no-hire agreements but disputed the allegation that they had
conspired to drive down wages.
The case, closely watched in
Silicon Valley, was largely built on emails among top executives, including
late Apple chief executive Steve Jobs and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who
agreed not to approach each others' employees with job offers.
For instance, after a Google recruiter solicited an Apple employee, Mr Schmidt told Mr Jobs that the recruiter would be fired, court documents show. Mr Jobs then forwarded Mr Schmidt's note to a top Apple human resources executive with a smiley face.
Representatives for the companies were not immediately available for comment. An attorney for the plaintiffs, Kelly Dermody of Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, in a statement called the deal "an excellent resolution".
Apple, Google, Adobe and Intel in 2010 settled a US Department of Justice probe by agreeing not to enter into such no-hire deals in the future. The four companies had since been fighting the civil antitrust class action.
Walt Disney's Pixar and Lucasfilm units and Intuit had already agreed to a settlement, with Disney paying about $9m and Intuit paying $11m.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/digital-media/10786637/Apple-and-Google-settle-lawsuit-over-poaching-staff.html
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Another weekend, and hopefully one where America, the Ukraine puppet
regime or Russia won’t start a war. Stay long gold and silver. If meaningful
sanctions or worse a war starts, kiss the EU as we know it and the euro goodbye.
Continental Europe has far more to lose if either calamity strikes, than the UK
or USA. Though losing either Russia or the Ukraine’s wheat will set off a
global food crisis. Have a great weekend everyone.
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished March
DJIA: +197 Down. NASDAQ: +357 Up. SP500: +254 Down.
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