Baltic Dry Index. 1027 +06
LIR Gold Target in 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
By
trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man's, I mean.
President
Obama, with apologies to Mark Twain.
Anything you
can do we can do too, says Russia’s “Churchill,” referring to President Obama’s
attempt to “pivot” to the east. As China’s Great Wobble grows, only one, the
one offering a pipeline is likely to succeed. Uncle Sam’s attempt to ride two
horses in the East China Sea dispute was never very likely to succeed, and
during last month’s trip to Japan America switched to only one horse named
Japan. The timing couldn’t have been better for Moscow. Who’s running the show
in Washington, you might well ask? From China’s perspective, some of the great
excess steel capacity might soon find a multi-year use. A potential win-win
outcome for China and Russia. Better hope for a warm winter in continental Europe
2014-2015.
Below, more
on the Great China Wobble as Mr. Putin arrives offering China continental
Europe’s apparently unneeded cheap natural gas.
I asked Tom if countries always apologize when they had done
wrong, and he says, 'Yes, the little one does.'
Mark Twain. Tom Sawyer.
China Orders Interbank Lending Curbs to Quell Shadow Debt
May 16, 2014 5:00 PM GMT
The Chinese government ordered lenders to curb interbank borrowing in the
latest effort to check growth in the informal shadow-banking industry that
threatens to undermine the nation’s financial system. A commercial bank should limit its interbank borrowing to less than a third of its liabilities, while its lending to another financial firm shouldn’t exceed 50 percent of its Tier 1 capital, according to a statement on the People’s Bank of China’s website yesterday. Financial institutions need to better manage the maturity of interbank funding and control liquidity risks, the PBOC said.
Borrowing between financial institutions on the interbank market more than tripled in the past five years as part of a web of underground finance that evolved to sidestep government lending restrictions and capital requirements. Estimated by JPMorgan Chase & Co. to be worth $7.5 trillion as of September, shadow banking has made it harder for the government to curtail debt and shield state banks from rising defaults as the economy cools.
“Given that interbank financing has been important in funding the business of some lenders, the rules will limit overall lending in the economy, not just in the market,” Dariusz Kowalczyk, a Hong Kong-based strategist at Credit Agricole, wrote in an e-mail. “While much needed to control the risk in the banking system, they are a medium-term negative for the growth outlook.”
----The transactions between banks have allowed them to circumvent regulatory requirements on capital, risk provision and loan-to-deposit limits, the central bank said in its stability report. The complex structure through layers of intermediaries had inflated the assets of the industry and is extremely likely to spread risks, the PBOC said.
More
China Home-Price Growth Slowdown Spreads as Developers Discount
May 18, 2014 5:01 PM GMT
China’s new-home prices
rose in April in the fewest cities in a year and a half as developers offered
discounts and the economy slowed, prompting the easing of property curbs in
some places. Prices last month climbed in 44 of the 70 cities tracked by the government compared with 56 cities in March. That was the fewest cities with price gains since October 2012 when increases were recorded in only 35 on a monthly basis.
Home-price growth moderated both in first-tier and less affluent cities. Prices in Beijing rose 0.1 percent from March, the National Bureau of Statistics said in a statement yesterday, the slowest since September 2012, while Shanghai prices increased 0.3 percent, the smallest gain since November 2012. The eastern city of Hangzhou had the largest decline in April among cities tracked, with prices falling 0.7 percent from a month earlier.
“China’s property market is on a very dangerous brink,” Xu Gao, Beijing-based chief economist at Everbright Securities Co., who formerly worked at the World Bank, said in a phone interview yesterday. “Concerns about the slowing market led to weakening prices and sales, which turned into a vicious circle.”
The central bank on May 13 called on the biggest lenders to accelerate the granting of mortgages after sliding home sales and property construction helped drag the world’s second-largest economy to its slowest pace in six quarters in the first three months of this year. Developers including China Vanke Co. and Greentown China Holdings Ltd. have cut property prices since March to lure homebuyers, according to China Real Estate Information Corp.
More
China says Internet security necessary to counter 'hostile forces'
BEIJING
(Reuters) - A Chinese official in charge of regulating the Internet has said
Beijing must strengthen Internet security because "overseas hostile
forces" are using the Internet to "attack, slander and spread
rumors", state media said on Sunday.Wang Xiujun, the deputy director of the China National Internet Information Office, said political security is fundamental, reported The People's Daily, the official newspaper of the ruling Chinese Communist Party.
Wang's remarks coincide with a broad crackdown on online freedom of expression that has intensified since President Xi Jinping came to power last year. The crackdown has drawn criticism from rights advocates at home and abroad.
"Now, overseas hostile forces are using the Internet as a main channel to penetrate and destroy (us)," Wang was quoted as saying. "Using the name of 'Internet freedom' to repeatedly attack, slander and spread rumors in an effort to undermine our country's stability and national security."
Winning "the struggle for ideological penetration" would "decide to a great extent the future of our party and country", Wang said.
In February, Xi took the reins of a government body for Internet security , saying he aimed to turn China into a "cyber power". He said then that working on public opinion online was a long-term responsibility and the Internet could be used to "spread discipline".
The party renewed a campaign on online discourse last year, threatening legal action against people whose perceived rumors on microblogs are reposted more than 500 times or seen by more than 5,000 people.
China maintains tight control over the media. Censorship is widespread and Internet users cannot access information about many topics without special software to circumvent restrictions.
Wang said China wants to strengthen its security of networks and information systems in part due to intrusions in cyberspace by foreign governments, according to the People's Daily.
The case of former U.S.
intelligence contractor Edward Snowden showed that "a few countries have
used their superiority in Internet resources and information technology to
conduct large-scale Internet surveillance and to steal a large volume of
political, economic, military and corporate secrets", Wang said.
He did not name any country but
questions over cyber-espionage have long cast a shadow over China-U.S. ties,
with each side accusing the other of spying.
More
In the continuing US botched Kiev coup saga, from
the west’s perspective it just goes from bad to worse. Washington’s attempt at installing its puppet
government in Kiev, has left Moscow holding much of the Black Seas potential
oil and gas reserves, much needed for the rest of the century. Has given Moscow
control of the Strait of Kerch and the Sea of Azov, together with most of Azov’s
energy potential, and incentivised Moscow and Beijing to move forwards on a long
stalled natural gas pipeline. And best of all from Moscow and Gazprom’s perspective,
shortened the route, cost and build time for Russia’s South Stream gas pipeline
to Bulgaria and Europe, cutting out the need to use the Ukraine at all to ship
gas to Europe. Who need to formally annex east Ukraine, when the most corrupt country
in Europe, a failing state with little prospects and near bankruptcy, can now
be left a permanent monetary drain on the USA and the EU.The history of our race, and each individual's experience, are sown thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill and that a lie told well is immortal.
Mark
Twain.
Putin’s Shanghai Expedition Stokes Gazprom Deal Talk
May 19,
2014 5:54 AM GMT
President Vladimir Putin’s planned China visit this
week is helping spark the longest rally in OAO Gazprom since 2006 as
speculation mounts that he will return with a long-sought gas supply agreement.
Gazprom, the world’s largest natural-gas producer, has climbed eight straight days, rallying 15 percent over the period to 144.29 rubles ($4.15) in Moscow. The stock has gained 12 percent this month, compared with a 1.1 percent advance in the Stoxx 600 Oil & Gas index and the MSCI Emerging Markets Energy index’s 5.7 percent increase.
The stock is surging as traders read the president’s visit as a sign Russia is on the verge of getting the long-term gas supply contract it has sought for a decade. Putin is turning to Asia as the West expands sanctions tied to the incursion in Ukraine. After failing to agree on financial terms in previous talks, rising demand for fuel in China has pushed prices to a level that will probably be acceptable to both sides, Bank of America Corp. said in a May 16 report.
“Russia and China are closer to a deal
than they’ve ever been before,” Karen Kostanian, an analyst at Bank of America,
said by phone from Moscow last week. “While Russia seeks to diversify its
natural gas exports away from Europe, China wants to diversify its fuel imports.”
More
Failing Ukraine state plays in to Russia's hands
By Elizabeth
Piper KIEV
Reuters) - In late February, just two days after pro-Russian president
Viktor Yanukovich fled Kiev, Ukraine's parliament repealed a law enshrining the
rights of Russian-speakers to use their first language.Ukraine's Russian speakers, concentrated in the east and the south where the law applied, viewed the action as vengeful. In Moscow, Russia's leaders saw an opportunity.
Ukraine's new rulers took just five days to reverse course to once again allow the use of Russian in some schools, courts and other state institutions. Shocked by the outcry it caused, Ukraine's acting president had refused to sign the legislation.
But those five days were enough for Russian President Vladimir Putin to set in motion a chain of events that have undermined Kiev's pro Western government and drawn large areas of the country back into Russia's orbit, abetted by a divided West.
While Putin has presented separatist violence in eastern Ukraine as spontaneous, interviews with Ukrainian politicians and security sources with knowledge of Russian thinking suggest months of detailed planning by Moscow.
A key plank of Russia's plan, they say, was to deepen splits in a country that has struggled to form an identity since it emerged from the Soviet Union in 1991. To that end, Russia sought to exploit its connections to Ukrainian business, youth groups, the church, politicians and criminal networks.
The sources point to a paper from June 2013, described as a Kremlin consultation document by the Ukrainian newspaper Dzerkalo Tyzhnia and first made public in August that year. It sets out Moscow's fear of losing influence in Ukraine and its desire to draw its neighbor into an economic union.
The Kremlin declined to comment on the document, entitled "On the complex of measures to involve Ukraine in the Eurasian integration process", and Russian officials have previously written it off as a "provocation" by pro-Western politicians in Ukraine.
Bearing no signature or stamp, it is hard to trace its provenance, but a former security source in Ukraine corroborated its contents. He said he was present during conversations about the document involving officials in Ukraine with close connections to Moscow. Like others interviewed for this article he declined to be identified because of political sensitivities.
The document indicates that as far back as early 2013 Russia was nervous about Ukraine. Yanukovich's rule was widely seen as corrupt and the Kremlin was worried the president's unpopularity could harm Putin's plan to create a Russian-led "Eurasian" economic union to reunite part of the former Soviet Union.
Many Ukrainians believed Yanukovich was a Kremlin puppet, according to the document. Moscow was worried it would lose all influence in a new Ukraine if Yanukovich and his Party of the Regions were toppled.
"This aggravates the threat of a seizure of power by forces hostile to the Russian Federation," the document said.
"As the Party of the Regions has suppressed any independent pro-Russian movement, the collapse of the Yanukovich regime would leave us in a "scorched earth" situation, without any influential political forces on which we could rely."
It said Russia should apply pressure to oligarchs who enjoyed preferential trade with Russia but at the same time publicly criticized Putin's plan to create a Russian-led economic union.
A month after the report was written, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev decided to scrap quotas for steel pipe supplies, hitting at least one prominent oligarch. Russian pipe makers had taken issue with cheap Ukrainian pipe imports.
More
In Taking Crimea, Putin Gains a Sea of Fuel Reserves
When Russia
seized Crimea in March, it acquired not just the Crimean landmass but also a
maritime zone more than three times its size with the rights to underwater
resources potentially worth trillions of dollars.
Russia portrayed the takeover as reclamation of its
rightful territory, drawing no attention to the oil and gas rush that had recently been
heating up in the Black Sea. But the move also extended Russia’s maritime
boundaries, quietly giving Russia dominion over vast oil and gas reserves while
dealing a crippling blow to Ukraine’s hopes for energy
independence.
Russia did so under an international accord that gives
nations sovereignty over areas up to 230 miles from their shorelines. It had
tried, unsuccessfully, to gain access to energy resources in the same territory
in a pact with Ukraine less than two years earlier.
“It’s a big deal,” said Carol R. Saivetz, a Eurasian
expert in the Security Studies Program of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. “It deprives Ukraine of the possibility of developing these
resources and gives them to Russia. It makes Ukraine more vulnerable to Russian
pressure.”
Gilles Lericolais, the director of European and
international affairs at France’s state oceanographic group, called Russia’s
annexation of Crimea “so obvious” as a play for offshore riches.
In Moscow, a spokesman for President Vladimir V. Putin said there
was “no connection” between the annexation and energy resources, adding that
Russia did not even care about the oil and gas. “Compared to all the potential
Russia has got, there was no interest there,” the spokesman, Dmitry Peskov,
said Saturday.
William B. F. Ryan, a marine geologist at the
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, said Russia’s Black
Sea acquisition gave it what are potentially “the best” of that body’s deep oil
reserves.
----Most immediately, analysts say, Russia’s seizing
may alter the route along which the South Stream pipeline would be
built, saving Russia money, time and engineering challenges. The planned
pipeline, meant to run through the deepest parts of the Black Sea, is to pump
Russian gas to Europe.
Originally, to avoid Ukraine’s maritime zone, Russia
drew the route for the costly pipeline in a circuitous jog southward through
Turkey’s waters. But now it can take a far more direct path through its newly
acquired Black Sea territory, if the project moves forward. The Ukraine crisis
has thrown its future into doubt
More
South Stream Pipeline To Reach Bulgaria in End 2015
he South Stream pipeline
will reach Bulgaria's coast in December 2015, said Gazprom CEO Alexey
Miller, quoted by ITAR-TASS.
The first gas deliveries for Bulgaria, according to him, are also expected then.
“There is no doubt that South Stream everywhere gained the status of a priority national project,” Miller told the Rossiya 1 Russian national channel.
According to Miller, the North Stream and South Stream pipelines were necessary for the stable deliveries of Russian gas to the European consumers and said he was certain that the south pipeline will “completely eliminate the transit risks in Ukraine”.
He also said that the pipeline in Bulgaria and Serbia was already under construction and he was sure that they will be completed on schedule. “We have no problems with the construction of the pipeline,” Miller told the TV channel.
The first gas deliveries for Bulgaria, according to him, are also expected then.
“There is no doubt that South Stream everywhere gained the status of a priority national project,” Miller told the Rossiya 1 Russian national channel.
According to Miller, the North Stream and South Stream pipelines were necessary for the stable deliveries of Russian gas to the European consumers and said he was certain that the south pipeline will “completely eliminate the transit risks in Ukraine”.
He also said that the pipeline in Bulgaria and Serbia was already under construction and he was sure that they will be completed on schedule. “We have no problems with the construction of the pipeline,” Miller told the TV channel.
In European
election news, the upcoming election looks like delivering the end of the one
size fits all, top down, disastrous for most, Euro Bilderberger project.
It is easier to stay out than get out.
Mark Twain.
Exit polls show Greece's far-left Syriza leading in local vote
By Renee Maltezou and Deepa
Babington ATHENS
(Reuters) - Exit polls showed
Greece's radical leftist Syriza party ahead in local elections in Athens and
the wider Attica region on Sunday, in a surprisingly strong performance that
represents a setback for the country's fragile ruling coalition.
The vote, along with European
Parliament elections a week later, are being closely watched as a gauge of
sentiment towards the coalition of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, who is
facing his first electoral test since coming to power two years ago.
Syriza's candidate for Athens
mayor, Gabriel Sakellaridis, led the incumbent, leftist-backed independent
George Kaminis, by less than 2 percentage points, two exit polls showed.
The candidate for the far-left
party, which has called this month's vote a referendum on Samaras's
pro-bailout, austerity policies, was also in the lead for the race for prefect
- similar to state governor - of the wider Attica region.
If confirmed, the vote would
raise pressure on Samaras's New Democracy party and his coalition partner
PASOK, who hold a wafer-thin two-seat majority in parliament.
"It is a punishment vote and
reflects the internal divisions within the ruling parties," Constantinos
Routzounis, head of Kapa Research, told Reuters.
"The following Sunday, we
will see whether this vote has a deeper political significance."
More
We end for
the day with a warning for motorists in the warmer climates. Try not to have the
windows open when cleaning the windscreen on the move.
Windshield Wash Breeds Germs Causing Deadly Legionnaires
May 18, 2014 5:00 PM GMT
Windshield washer fluid, sprayed by drivers to help see out of their car
windows, may be a breeding ground for bacteria that causes the deadly pneumonia
known as Legionnaires’ disease. Previous studies have tied riding in automobiles to the illness, though researchers didn’t know how or why it happened. An investigation into fluid dispersed by school buses in Arizona seems to have provided the answer, according to research released today by the American Society for Microbiology at its meeting in Boston.
Three quarters of the buses tested in one district in Arizona were positive for the bacteria, the study found.
When the contaminated fluid was sprayed, the researchers detected levels of the bacteria that spread within a range that could be contracted and cause outbreaks of Legionnaires’ disease.
“Washer fluid has the traits a potentially dangerous source of Legionella exposure needs,” Otto Schwake, a microbiology Ph.D. student at Arizona State University in Tempe and the study’s lead author, said in an e-mail. “It is aerosolized, heated and people are regularly exposed to it. The results from this study support previously demonstrated epidemiological evidence for a link between automobiles and Legionnaires’ disease by providing microbiological data on survival, presence and transmission of Legionella in washer fluid.”
Today’s study is the first to find the bacteria Legionella in an automobile’s washer fluid and aerosolized in the spray, Schwake said.
----The airborne bacteria are contracted by inhaling small drops of contaminated water. Cases often involve air conditioning and heating systems in buildings or public showers. The disease was named after an outbreak at a meeting of the American Legion in Philadelphia in 1976.
Most of the people exposed don’t
become sick, the authors said. Those most at risk include the elderly, smokers
and those with weakened immune systems, Schwake said.
The researchers in the study
first measured Legionella survival by growing samples of the bacteria in washer
fluid in the lab. They then examined Legionella in washer fluid collected from
school buses in central Arizona.
They found that the amount of
Legionella in the washer fluid was higher in the summer than winter months.
More
If you pick up a starving
dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal
difference between a dog and a man.
Mark Twain.
At the Comex
silver depositories Friday
final figures were: Registered 56.02 Moz, Eligible 119.67 Moz, Total 175.69 Moz.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
So you think we’re out of the Great Recession,
thanks to QE Forever and Zirp. Presented without need for a comment from me.
And just wait until continental Europe crashes from suicidal real sanctions on
Russia. When Europe crashes, there goes China’s largest export market. How long
before America crashes after that? But is the build in global unsold autos
actually what it seems? Is QE Forever
and ZIRP just a giant hidden make work employment program? Anyone have any
thoughts.
Where the World's Unsold Cars Go To Die
In the past several years, one of the topics covered in detail on these pages has been the surge in such gimmicks designed to disguise lack of demand and end customer sales, used extensively by US automotive manufacturers, better known as "channel stuffing", of which General Motors is particularly guilty and whose inventory at dealer lots just hit a new record high. But did you know that when it comes to flat or declining sales and stagnant end demand, channel stuffing is merely the beginning?Presenting...
Where the World's Unsold Cars Go To Die (courtesy of Vincent Lewis' Unsold Cars)
Above is just a few of the
thousands upon thousands of unsold cars at Sheerness, United Kingdom.
Please do see this on Google Maps....type in Sheerness, United Kingdom. Look
to the west coast, below River Thames next to River Medway. Left of A249,
Brielle Way.
Timestamp: Friday, May 16th,
2014.
There are hundreds of places like
this in the world today and they keep on piling up...
THE WORLDS UNSOLD CAR STOCKPILE
Houston...We have a
problem!...Nobody is buying brand new cars anymore! Well they are, but
not on the scale they once were. Millions of brand new unsold cars are
just sitting redundant on runways and car parks around the world. There,
they stay, slowly deteriorating without being maintained.
Below is an image of a massive
car park at Swindon, United Kingdom, with thousands upon thousands of unsold
cars just sitting there with not a buyer in sight. The car manufacturers have
to buy more and more land just to park their cars as they perpetually roll off
the production line.
There is proof that the worlds
recession is still biting and wont let go. All around the world there are
huge stockpiles of unsold cars and they are being added to every day.
They have run out of space to park all of these brand new unsold cars and are
having to buy acres and acres of land to store them.
NOTE:
The images on this webpage
showing all of these unsold cars are just a very small portion of those around
the world. There are literally thousands of these "car parks"
rammed full of unsold cars in practically every country on the planet.
Just in case you were wondering, these images have not been Photoshopped, they
are the real deal!
Its hard to believe that there
are so many unsold cars in the world but its true. The worse part is that
the amount of unsold cars keeps on getting bigger every day.
It would be fair to say that it
is becoming a mechanical epidemic of epic proportions. If anybody from
outer space is reading this webpage, we here on Earth have too many cars, why
not come and buy a few hundred thousand of them for your own planet! (sorry but
this is all I can think of)
Below is shown just a few of the
57,000 cars (and growing) that await delivery from their home in the Port of
Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A. With Google Maps look South of Broening Hwy in
Dundalk for the massive expanse of space where all these cars are parked up.
----The car industry cannot stop making new cars because they would have to close their factories and lay off tens of thousands of employees. This would further add to the recession. Also the domino effect would be catastrophic as steel manufactures would not sell their steel. All the tens of thousands of places where car components are made would also be effected, indeed the world could come to a grinding halt.
Below is shown just a small area
of a gigantic car park in Spain where tens of thousands of cars just sit
and sunbathe all day.
They are also
piling up at the port of Valencia in Spain as seen below. They are either
waiting to be exported to...nowhere or have been imported...to go nowhere.
Below is an
image of thousands upon thousands of unsold cars parked up on a runway near St
Petersburg in Russia. They are all imported from Europe, they are all
then parked up and they are all then left to rot. Consequently, the airport is
now unusable for its original purpose.
----Below is
shown a recent (April 2014) screen grab from Google Maps of the Italian port of
Civitavecchia. All those little specks are a few thousand brand new
unsold Peugeots. Just collecting dust and maybe a bit of salty sea spray!
More, much more.
“Sometimes
I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on
or by imbeciles who really mean it.”
Mark
Twain.
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished April
DJIA: +189 Down. NASDAQ: +347 Down. SP500: +249 Down. Sell in May, go away.
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