Baltic Dry Index. 964 Friday
LIR Gold Target in 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
“War
is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.”
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.”
George
Orwell. 1984.
Pressed on
by America’s War Party and hundreds of American mercenaries in western Ukraine,
the Ukraine’s “president-elect,” the Cocoa King, Poroshenko, who gathered “nul
votes” in eastern Ukraine where his writ doesn’t run, promised his American
backers to turn the cold war hot. Russia warned of a “colossal mistake.” Everywhere else, everyone yawned, and got on
with the business of making money from buying stocks. “World War Three
starting? Who cares?”
Stay long
physical gold and silver at the maximum. When World War One started one hundred years ago this summer, four great
monarchial Empires plus the French Republic Empire took to the field. When it
ended, three monarchs had fallen. Two Empires had ended. Millions were dead.
Northern France and Belgium devastated. All involved bankrupt. Murderous
irreligious Bolshevism has seized the Russian Empire. France was in unrepayable
debt to Great Britain, which was in unrepayable debt to the USA. Losing Germany
was expected to pay for the cost of the war. It was all a “colossal mistake” as
it turned out.
Below, roll
out the tanks.
“That there are men in all countries who get their living by
war, and by keeping up the quarrels of Nations is as shocking as it is true.”
Thomas Paine.
Poroshenko Defies Russia With Vow on Anti-Rebel Operation
May 27, 2014 12:46 AM GMT
President-elect Petro Poroshenko set Ukraine on a collision course with Russia even before the last vote
had been counted, vowing to step up operations to rein in separatists in the
east of the country. “There will be a sharp increase in the efficiency of anti-terrorist operations,” Poroshenko said in Kiev yesterday. “They won’t last two or three months; they’ll last a few hours.” In Moscow, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that any escalation would be a “colossal mistake.”
----Yet in Donetsk, the election brought no lull in the violence. As evening fell, fighter aircraft were again seen in the skies and explosions were heard in the city, with renewed fighting near the railway station, the Ostrov news website reported. The Novosti Donbassa news agency reported that a column of about 40 trucks carrying armed men was seen in Russia approaching the border with the Donetsk region. Fighting was also reported in Slovyansk and Mariupol.
More
Ukraine's Naftogaz says no real progress made with Russia over gas
KIEV(Reuters) - Ukraine's state gas company Naftogaz said on Tuesday no real progress was made with Russia's Gazprom over its gas debt or on price in talks in Berlin aimed at settling a dispute that threatens to disrupt gas flows to western Europe.
The statement seemed at odds with the EU's energy commissioner, who said Ukraine and Russia had made progress on price on Monday and his proposal for Ukraine to pay $2 billion of its debts by Thursday could pave the way for talks on Friday.
Speaking after three-way talks with Russia's and Ukraine's energy ministers in Berlin, Guenther Oettinger said the two governments would study his proposal that Ukraine pay Russia $2 billion by Thursday and a further $500 million by June 7.
But Naftogaz said Russia had stuck to an "unconstructive" position, demanding that Kiev should pay all its bills, including ones that the gas company considers to be debatable.
"Naftogaz ... regrets the lack of real progress in negotiations with Gazprom," it said in a statement.
More
Elsewhere in
SE Asia the blood lust is also rising. A foreign escapade might be just what
China needs and wants.
“Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.”
Thomas Hobbes.
China Sinking Fishing Vessel Raises Tensions With Vietnam
May 27, 2014 5:49 AM GMT
Vietnam said a Chinese
vessel sank one of its fishing boats, the most serious bilateral standoff since
2007 and a move that underscores China’s
assertiveness in pushing its claims in the disputed South China Sea. “It was rammed by a Chinese boat,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Hai Binh said by phone. The 10 fishermen on board DNa 90152 were rescued by other Vietnamese ships after yesterday’s scrap, according to a government statement posted on its website. The incident occurred after some 40 Chinese fishing vessels encircled a group of Vietnamese boats in Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone, the government said.
The Vietnamese craft overturned as it harassed a Chinese fishing boat in the area, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
China’s 2012 success in assuming control of the Scarborough Shoal, an area previously overseen by the Philippines, highlighted to nations from Vietnam to Japan the potential consequences of Chinese push to assert claims in neighboring bodies of water. Yesterday’s incident came after Chinese aircraft flew close to Japanese planes on May 24 in disputed airspace in the East China Sea.
“The message China is sending Vietnam is, this area of water is Chinese territory,” Ha Hoang Hop, visiting senior fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore, said by phone of the boat sinking.
“Yesterday a spokesman for China said Vietnam’s claims are ‘ridiculous.’ They are escalating things at sea and with their language.”
More
China Oilfield Services to Continue Drilling in South China Sea
May
27, 2014 5:47 AM GMT
China
Oilfield Services Ltd. (2883), which is drilling exploration wells in the
disputed waters of the South China
Sea, said it completed the first phase of operations and will go on to the
next. Platform HYSY981 has moved to “another location” to begin the second phase, the company known as COSL, said in a newsletter posted on its website today, without giving specifics. COSL started drilling in the area on May 2 and is expected to finish by mid-August, according to the statement.
The company, under contract from its state-owned parent China National Offshore Oil Corp., this month placed an oil rig near the disputed Paracel Islands off the coast of Vietnam, leading to confrontations between Vietnamese and Chinese boats. The move set off violent anti-China protests in Vietnam and prompted China to evacuate thousands of its citizens from the South East Asian country.
----Drilling in the
South China Sea is a business decision, Wang told reporters in Hong Kong after
the annual shareholder meeting of its listed unit, Cnooc Ltd. (883),
of which he is also chairman. Cnooc’s parent will oppose Vietnamese disruptions
to drilling, he said, adding that he expects the operation there to be
protected by the Chinese government.
More
China Middle-Class Protests Turn Violent After Petitions Ignored
May 26, 2014 5:00 PM GMT
The first time Yan heard authorities planned a waste incinerator near her
home in eastern China was when
a petitioner gave her a leaflet warning of the pollutants it might spew into
the environment. Fearing that the burner might hurt her toddler’s health, the technology worker in Hangzhou petitioned the government to halt the project before joining hundreds of protesters near the proposed site on May 10. Violent clashes erupted as cars were overturned and police vehicles set on fire.
“At the start, all people wanted was a way to reflect our concerns and grievances to the government,” said Yan, who is in her 30’s and asked not to be fully identified amid a government investigation.
The Hangzhou demonstrations, which prompted officials to suspend construction of the incinerator, were the third such violent protest in six weeks -- a trend that challenges President Xi Jinping’s quest for social stability. The story of how poor government communication there sparked anger and then clashes with police is one being replayed across China as wealthier and better informed residents resist industrial projects more forcefully.
The number of middle class Chinese will almost double from as much as 180 million to about 300 million by 2022, according to a 2013 McKinsey & Co estimate. Rising incomes, growing impatience with pollution, and a worry about “nuisance facilities” affecting home values are empowering more Chinese to push back against projects. So too, Wedeman said, is their demand for transparency and accountability from the ruling Communist Party.
In Hangzhou, an hour by train from Shanghai, word of the incinerator spread after a school principal, who has since been detained, spotted a notice on the local government website weeks before construction was scheduled to start.
Mass campaigns have succeeded in stopping industrial projects elsewhere. A planned chemical plant in the southern city of Maoming was scrapped last month after protests led to street clashes. In Guangdong province, neighboring Hong Kong, hundreds took to the streets to voice opposition to a proposed crematorium.
More
Staying with
Asia for now, few want to follow America’s lead on Thailand. ASEAN is all at
sea with China.
“The military don't start wars. Politicians start wars.”
General William Westmoreland.
Thai Society’s ‘Chasm’ Must Be Bridged, Singapore Says
May 26, 2014 5:00 PM GMT
Thailand’s societal
“chasm” needs to be bridged to bring stability to Southeast Asia’s
second-biggest economy after the military took power, according to Singapore Foreign Affairs
Minister K. Shanmugam. “There is deep polarization and Thailand has to find a way of bridging that polarization and find a structure for society that is workable for itself, and only the Thais can do it,” Shanmugam, 55, said yesterday in an interview. “It has had stability for a period and then it’s been impacted and I don’t think it’s good for the Thai economy or the people of Thailand.”
----The coup threatens to widen the split
that has emerged in Thailand over the past decade between the largely
rural-based supporters of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra,
Yingluck’s brother, and his mainly urban, middle-class opponents. Thaksin was
removed in a coup in 2006.
Shanmugam said Singapore was unlikely to
withdraw military cooperation with Thailand, after the Pentagon announced it
was canceling a readiness and training exercise along with visits by U.S. and
Thai commanders to each others’ facilities. The Association
of Southeast Asian Nations adopts a consensus approach to matters affecting
its 10 members, and has “not generally taken the path of sanctions,” he said.
----As tensions escalate in Thailand,
Asean nations also face a more assertive China over the South China Sea,
through which some of the world’s busiest shipping lanes run and which is
criss-crossed by competing claims to territory. China’s placement of an oil rig
in disputed waters near the Paracel Islands off the
coast of Vietnam set off
violent anti-China protests in Vietnam and clashes between the nations’ boats
earlier this month.
----The Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei also claim parts of the South China Sea. The Philippines in March challenged China’s territorial actions at a United Nations tribunal and Indonesia has sought an explanation of a map outlining China’s claims.
China was the largest trading partner last year of Asean, with Asean importing more from the region’s No. 1 economy than it exported to it.
Addressing the substantive issue of territorial claims will take a long time, Shanmugam said. “What’s achievable is to try and have a code of conduct that tries to work out how the countries, countries’ ships and so on interact with each other, what can be done, what cannot be done, what kind of conduct is acceptable, what kind of conduct is unacceptable.”
Leaders of Asean have called for progress on a code of conduct with China. Talks have made little headway since China agreed in July to start discussions, with China introducing fishing rules in January requiring foreign vessels to seek permission before entering waters off its southern coast.
More
China, Japan exchange barbs over action by warplanes in East China Sea
TOKYO(Reuters) - Japan and China on Sunday accused each other's air forces of dangerous behavior over the East China Sea, with Japan saying Chinese aircraft had come within a few dozen meters of its warplanes.
Japan's defense minister accused Beijing of going "over the top" in its approach to disputed territory. China's defense ministry said Japanese planes had carried out "dangerous" actions during its joint maritime exercises with Russia.
Tensions have been running high between China and its neighbors over Beijing's assertive stance on claiming land and sea territory.
Japan's defense ministry said Chinese SU-27 fighters came as close as 50 meters (170 feet) to a Japanese OP-3C surveillance plane near disputed islets on Saturday and within 30 meters of a YS-11EB electronic intelligence aircraft.
"Closing in while flying normally over the high seas is impossible," Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera told reporters in comments broadcast on TV Asahi.
"This is a close encounter that is outright over the top."
Onodera said Japan conveyed its concerns to the Chinese side through diplomatic channels. He also said the Chinese planes were carrying missiles.
A ministry official said it was the closest Chinese warplanes had come to aircraft of Japan's Self-Defense Force.
China's defense ministry said jets were scrambled in the East China Sea on Saturday after Japanese aircraft entered its air defense zone during maritime exercises with Russia.
The ministry said the Japanese aircraft had entered the zone despite "no fly" notices being issued ahead of the exercises. China declared its air defense zone last year despite protests by Japan and the United States.
"Japanese military planes intruded on the exercise's airspace without permission and carried out dangerous actions, in a serious violation of international laws and standards, which could have easily caused a misunderstanding and even led to a mid-air accident," the statement said.
More
Back in the
continent plagued by the wealth destroying Euro, after the European elections
earthquake, the ECB readies for the deluge. Voodoo economics is about to storm
Frankfurt’s “Bastille.” Euro’s anyone? And just wait for the fallout from
America’s botched coup in Kiev. Everyone from the Urals west, now needs some
physical precious metals, if only to bribe one’s way across borders if the US
pursues Ukraine madness to the bitter end.
May 26, 2014, 4:43 a.m. EDT
ECB's Draghi: Low inflation could delay spending
SINTRA, Portugal--European
Central Bank President Mario Draghi said Monday he sees a risk that expectations
for ultralow inflation will gain a grip in the euro zone and spur consumers and
businesses to delay purchases, the latest sign that the ECB is prepared to take
fresh easing measures when it meets next week.
Mr. Draghi's comments, delivered
at an ECB conference in Sintra, Portugal, signaled that the ECB is weighing a
wide variety of steps from interest-rate cuts to new bank loans or broad-based
asset purchases to keep excessively weak inflation from undermining the euro
zone's nascent economic recovery.
"What we need to be
particularly watchful for at the moment is the potential for a negative spiral
to take hold between low inflation, falling inflation expectations and credit,
in particular in stressed countries," Mr. Draghi said in his prepared remarks.
"There is a risk that
disinflationary expectations take hold" and cause households and firms to
delay purchases and investments "in a classic deflationary cycle,"
Mr. Draghi said. "We are not resigned to allowing inflation to remain too
low for too long," he said.
Mr. Draghi said after the ECB's
May 8 meeting that officials were "comfortable" with taking easing
steps at their June 5 meeting, though officials first wanted to see updated
staff inflation and growth forecasts due then through 2016.
More
EU crisis talks after populist parties claim big victories
Prime minister to demand treaty change and the return of powers to national governments in crisis talks following EU election triumphs for far-Right and Left
Europe's leaders are to hold
crisis talks tonight on the future of the European Union after stunning
victories by populist parties on the far-Right and Left in pan-Europe
elections.
At a Brussels summit dinner David
Cameron will demand urgent change to the EU’s Lisbon Treaty to give powers back
to national governments, a task he set as a “real test” for the Government
ahead of next year’s general election.
“The results show a very clear
message, which is people are deeply disillusioned with the EU, with the way
that it’s working, with the way that it’s working for Britain, and they want
change,” the Prime Minister said.
----Urgent reform of the EU, a potentially risky turn away from cuts to unpopular austerity in the eurozone and new rules to reduce alleged benefit tourism by people from poor East European member states will top a five-year programme aimed at wooing voters.
“It is time for the EU to get
real,” said a senior European diplomat involved in the negotiations. “We need
to stop the incontinence and proliferation of pointless things coming out of
Brussels. It is time for reform and most of the leaders sitting around that
table will know it.”
----The European political establishment has been traumatised by elections that handed victory to the French Front National, a far-Right party that wants France out of the EU. The defeat for François Hollande, the Socialist French President, raises serious questions over his government’s ability to implement economic measures demanded by the eurozone to preserve the stability of the EU’s single currency.
In Greece, Golden Dawn, a
neo-Nazi party whose leaders are in jail on criminal charges, overtook the
Panhellenic Socialists, a pillar of the European establishment that oversaw
their country’s transition to democracy from a Right-wing military
dictatorship.
Syriza, a far-Left party opposed
to the eurozone’s programme to stop Greece defaulting on its debt, won the
European elections with a substantial lead and could trigger meltdown of the EU
single currency if it succeeds in its demand for national elections.
Despite the surge in populist,
far-Right and Left votes, the mainstream pro-EU establishment parties will have
a majority of around 70 per cent of the European Parliament.
Most people
expect a “grand coalition” of the centre-Right European People’s Party and the
Socialists to form, controlling over 400 seats out of 751 in the EU assembly to
ensure business as usual, but this could fuel further Euroscepticism.
Louis XV (15 February 1710 – 10 May 1774), known
as Louis the Beloved (Louis
le bien aimé) was a monarch of the House of Bourbon who ruled as King of France
and Navarre from
1 September 1715 until his death.
----Most scholars believe Louis XV's decisions damaged the power
of France, weakened the treasury, discredited the absolute monarchy, and made
it more vulnerable to distrust and destruction, as happened in the French Revolution, which broke out 15 years
after his death.[1] Davies says that after he took full
control in 1723 his reign "was one of debilitating stagnation,"
characterized by lost wars, endless clashes between the Court and Parliament,
and religious feuds.
At the Comex
silver depositories Friday
final figures were: Registered 56.14 Moz, Eligible 120.08 Moz, Total 176.22 Moz.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
More on the
madness of Europe. Who would willingly want to be in an asylum like this? Note
the lack of rule of law as Germany’s Finance Minister pre-empts the
investigation before it even starts. In Europe, it’s a Europe of crony fat
cats, run by fat cats, and for fat cats. The serfs may have voted, but who
cares.
“We must now face the difficult task of moving towards a single
economy, a single political entity .. For the first time since the fall of the
Roman Empire we have the opportunity to unite Europe.”
EU Commission President Romano Prodi, European
Parliament, October 13, 1999
I voted twice' in EU poll, says German newspaper editor
BERLIN(Reuters) - Prosecutors are investigating the editor of one of Germany's most respected newspapers for suspected fraud after he blurted out on television that he had used his dual nationality to vote twice in Sunday's EU polls.
"I voted twice," said Giovanni di Lorenzo, editor in chief of weekly liberal newspaper Die Zeit, during a high-profile talk show on Sunday night following the European Parliament election.
"I'm allowed to vote twice because I have two passports," added di Lorenzo, who claims Italian and German nationality. He was sitting alongside Finance Minister and former Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble who shook his head in response.
After Hamburg prosecutors said they opened an investigation for possible election fraud on Monday, Di Lorenzo told mass daily Bild newspaper he had not known that he could only vote in one country in the EU election.
Yet his own newspaper ran a story last week about EU citizens with two passports, many of whom were likely to be registered in two countries and might have trouble deciding in which state to vote. It said they were only allowed to cast one ballot.
Voter turnout across the European Union was 48.1 percent.
Di Lorenzo's unprompted admission started a discussion on dual citizenship on the talk show, a hot topic in Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives have long argued it is impossible to be loyal to two countries at the same time.
Based on a criminal law that prohibits "unauthorized voting or causing an incorrect result or falsifying the result of an election", Di Lorenzo could face imprisonment of up to five years or a fine, but Schaeuble said on Sunday:
"Everyone can only vote once during an election. You'll know for next time. You won't have to go to jail for it."
French UMP party official admits funding irregularities
PARIS
(Reuters) - A senior official in
France's UMP party acknowledged on Monday that "anomalies" had
occurred to cover the costs of Nicolas Sarkozy's failed 2012 election campaign,
in a scandal that threatens to damage the party.
The affair could end up affecting
the party's choice of its next presidential candidate, and complicate Sarkozy's
efforts to run again in three years.
"There have been
anomalies," Jerome Lavrilleux, a deputy director of Sarkozy's presidential
campaign, told BFM TV with tears in his eyes. Neither Sarkozy nor UMP Chairman
Jean-Francois Cope were informed of the "drift" in campaign finances,
he said, and had nothing to do with the "anomalies".
"There was no wrongdoing,
there was a terrible spiral, a train going at high speed and people who should
have pulled the emergency alarm and didn't, and I was probably one of
them," Lavrilleux said.
His comments came after police
searched the UMP offices, and followed accusations by a lawyer for event
organizer Bygmalion that the UMP had ordered fake invoices to cover campaign
costs. Some expenses were listed as "other operations" because costs
had "exploded" well beyond a legal ceiling, Lavrilleux said.
---- Patrick Maisonneuve, the lawyer for Bygmalion, told BFM TV: "This has been called the Bygmalion affair, but in fact it's about the Sarkozy campaign accounts."
He said the faked invoices
totaled around 11 million euros ($15 million).
Maisonneuve alleged that UMP
officials had made clear to Bygmalion staff at the time that if they did not
comply they would not get paid, accusing the party of "financial
blackmail". He declined to identify anyone by name.
More
“One basic formula for understanding the Community is this: ‘Take five
broken empires, add the sixth one later, and make one big neo-colonial empire
out of it all.’”
Professor Johan Galtung, Norwegian sociologist, “The European Community, a Superpower in the
Making”, 1973.
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished April
DJIA: +189 Down. NASDAQ: +347 Down. SP500: +249 Down. Sell in May, go away.
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