Baltic Dry Index. 1017 Friday
LIR Gold Target in 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
"Those entrapped by the herd instinct are drowned in the deluges of history. But there are always the few who observe, reason, and take precautions, and thus escape the flood. For these few gold has been the asset of last resort."
Antony C. Sutton
We open
today with a new western media offensive to condition the public for a war with
Russia, following America’s botched coup in Kiev that left America’s preferred puppet
government in Kiev having to share power with far right neo Nazi and anti-semitic
parties, and split the Ukraine in two, between the Russia speaking Russian Orthodox
Church regions, and the Ukrainian/Polish speaking western Church regions. To
recover from this CIA/State Department blunder, the USA now has legions of FBI
and CIA operatives in Kiev, calling the shots on how to conquer the Orthodox.
Expect nothing good to come from setting off a new religious war in Europe,
with the poor Ukrainians now mere pawns in a Washington attempt to slice and
dice up Russia.
Below, the
US led surge to World War Three. The war for the resources of the Steppes and
Siberia, and to encircle China. In world war, inflation is the only winner.
"In the long run, the gold price has to go up in relation to paper money. There is no other way. To what price, that depends on the scale of the inflation - and we know that inflation will continue."
Nicholas L. Deak
Ukraine Unrest Intensifies as Toll Rises From Offensive
May 6, 2014 2:53 AM GMT
Surging casualties are threatening to undermine Ukraine’s
campaign to regain ground from pro-Russian militants in its easternmost cities,
where insurgents killed four government troops and downed a military
helicopter. Government forces yesterday killed 20 rebels and dozens of civilians were wounded in fighting in the city of Slovyansk, Interfax reported, citing an unidentified representative of the separatists. Ukraine also sent specialized security units to the southern city of Odessa while neighboring Moldova put its borders on alert.
----Efforts by the
government in Kiev to expel insurgents from far eastern regions are at risk of
stalling less than three weeks before the country’s presidential elections.
Merkel and U.S. President Barack Obama have set the May 25 vote as the trigger for
possible economic sanctions against Russia if it fails to pull back its support
for separatists.
----Wheat surged to the highest price in more than a year as violence in Ukraine intensified concerns of supply disruption. Russia and Ukraine are expected to rank fifth and sixth among the world’s biggest wheat exporters in the 2013-14 season, according to the International Grains Council.
The U.S. and its allies say Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying to destabilize Ukraine before the election. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization says Russia has about 40,000 troops along the Ukrainian border. Four European Union and NATO members share a border with Ukraine: Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper
yesterday accused Russia of gradually taking over Ukraine. Canada, a NATO
member, has contributed air, navy and army assets to the alliance’s effort to
reassure eastern European allies, he said.
More
In eastern Ukraine, the mob rules
By Matt Robinson DONETSK, Ukraine
(Reuters) - His mistake was to run from the advancing mob, and that was
enough for the men and women carrying clubs, knives and swords through
Donetsk's Lenin district.They set upon him. Beaten and bloodied, the unidentified man was saved, in a manner, by militiamen who dragged him through the crowd under metal shields, bundled him into the back of a car and drove him off at speed to an unknown fate.
No one could say what he'd done; he was a "provocateur", a term used by both sides of Ukraine's increasingly bitter divide to describe the other, but in the rebel-held east it means only one thing - a supporter of the "Fascist" government in Kiev.
It was a brutal picture of the mob-rule that has descended upon this city in eastern Ukraine, the biggest to fall to an armed uprising against a government in Kiev that wants to take the country west. Kiev blames Russia for fomenting the violence, a charged denied by Moscow.
Pro-Russian separatist leaders want a referendum on May 11 to declare Donetsk and the surrounding region an independent republic.
Whatever the outcome, it won't be recognized by Kiev. The anger unleashed in the process will prove hard to rebottle, and points to a state descending into dangerous disorder, potentially civil war.
"We will not forgive
Odessa!" the crowd chanted, a phrase that has quickly become the new
rallying cry in towns across Ukraine's industrial east.
The deaths of more than 40
pro-Russian activists in a burning building during clashes in the Black Sea
port on Friday have injected new venom into the fight for Ukraine.
Sixty-seven pro-Russian
activists, detained by police during the unrest, were busted from prison on
Sunday by a crowd that broke down the main gate.
More
CIA, FBI agents advising Kiev: report
Afp, Berlin Tuesday, May 06, 2014
Dozens of specialists from the US Central Intelligence Agency and Federal
Bureau of Investigation are advising the Ukrainian government, a German
newspaper reported yesterday.Citing unnamed German security sources, Bild am Sonntag said the CIA and FBI agents were helping Kiev end the rebellion in the east of Ukraine and set up a functioning security structure.
It said the agents were not directly involved in fighting with pro-Russian militants. "Their activity is limited to the capital Kiev," the paper said.
The FBI agents are also helping the Kiev government fight organised crime, it added.
A group specialised in financial matters is to help trace the wealth of former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, according to the report.
The interim Kiev government took charge in late February after months of street protests forced the ouster of Kremlin-friendly Yanukovych.
Fierce battles between Ukrainian soldiers and pro-Russian separatists in the country's east have left more than 50 people dead in recent days.
Last month the White House confirmed that CIA director John Brennan had visited Kiev as part of a routine trip to Europe, in a move condemned by Moscow.
U.S.: Russian planes flew near California, Guam, in upped activity
By David
Brunnstrom WASHINGTON
(Reuters) - The head of U.S. air forces in the Pacific said on Monday that
Russia's intervention in Ukraine
had been accompanied by a significant increase in Russian air activity in the
Asia-Pacific region in a show of strength and to gather intelligence.General Herbert "Hawk" Carlisle said the activity had included Russian flights to the coast of California, and around the U.S. Pacific island of Guam.
Carlisle said the number of long-range Russian patrols around the Japanese islands and Korea Speaking at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, Carlisle showed a slide of a U.S. F-15 fighter jet intercepting a Russian "Bear" aircraft over Guam. He used the Cold War NATO name for Russia's Tupolov Tu-95 strategic bomber.
"Certainly what's going on in Ukraine and Crimea is a challenge for us and it's a challenge for us in Asia Pacific as well as Europe," Carlisle said.
He said there had been "a significant" increase in Russian activity in the Asia Pacific "and we relate a lot of that to what's going on in the Ukraine."
"They've come with their long-range aviation out to the coast of California, they've circumnavigated Guam," he said.
"That's to demonstrate their capability to do it, it's to gather intel," Carlisle said, adding that the surveillance had included observation of military exercises involving U.S. forces in South Korea and Japan.
More
Nickel Gains With Wheat on Ukraine Violence; Aussie Pares
May 6,
2014 5:52 AM GMT
Nickel gained and wheat extended its advance as the conflict in Ukraine’s
east intensified. Australian stocks rose while the country’s currency pared
gains as the central bank held rates. Nickel for three-month delivery on the London Metal Exchange jumped 1.3 percent by 12:51 p.m. in Hong Kong, while gold traded near the highest since April 14. Wheat climbed as much as 0.7 percent after reaching a 13-month high last session.
-----“The risk is if
you start to get some substantial sanctions imposed that have a significant
effect on the orderly functioning of some of these markets,” Victor
Thianpiriya, a commodity strategist at Australia & New Zealand Banking
Group Ltd., said by phone from Singapore today. “That’s going to have an impact” on markets
from metals to grains to oil, he said.
More
We end on
the subject today with US/EU sanctions proving a double edged sword for
Continental Europe. Italy and Spain will likely lose out on Russian tourists
and Spanish property buyers. EU exports to Russia look set to take a serious fall.
And all this is before Russia sets out to retaliate. Just how high does the War
Party in America think the EU’s youth unemployment can go, before Continental
Europe undergoes another 1848? Not that they care of course.
Ruble Plunge Hitting Russians Speeds Slide to Recession
May 5,
2014 11:00 PM GMT
As Russia’s central bank struggles to shield the ruble from the standoff
over Ukraine, Vasily Isaev says it may already be too little, too late to save
his plans for a vacation in Italy. “If you get your salary in rubles, a trip to the beach in Europe is going to be difficult this year,” said the 37-year-old sales manager, looking up from his English homework in the park near Tverskoy Boulevard in central Moscow. “We’re going to Bulgaria instead of Italy this year and we’re renting an apartment a little further away from the sea.”
Consumers like Isaev, spending more than a few months ago to fill a shopping cart with everyday items, may be squeezed most by the currency’s decline as inflation quickens. Wobbling consumption threatens to knock out another pillar of the economy reeling from sanctions that stoked capital flight.
Unruffled by the central bank’s emergency measures, the ruble has declined as an expanding list of U.S. and European Union sanctions in response to President Vladimir Putin’s actions in Ukraine sparked a selloff of Russian assets. The ruble has weakened 8 percent this year, the second-worst performance after the Argentine peso among 24 emerging-market currencies tracked by Bloomberg.
The central bank has been trying to halt the decline by raising its benchmark interest rate twice in the last two months by a total of 2 percentage points. The ruble’s weakening is increasing the cost of living by making imported goods more expensive.
More
"As fewer and fewer people have confidence in paper as a store of value, the price of gold will continue to rise. The history of fiat money is little more than a register of monetary follies and inflations. Our present age merely affords another entry in this dismal register."
Hans F. Sennholz
At the Comex
silver depositories Monday
final figures were: Registered 54.65 Moz, Eligible 119.15 Moz, Total 173.80 Moz.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
If US sanctions on Russia don’t bring down the
failed Bilderberger euro project, not to worry, too big to fail or bail France
will, happily assisted by Spain, soon to lose all of its Russian oligarch
tourists and mansion buyers. Apparently no one in Washington has heard of May
1968 in Paris, or if they have they want a repeat. May 68 fizzled out without a
revolution. As US sanctions start hitting the French economy, just as Berlin
puts the cosh to Paris, I suspect any repeat will have a very different
outcome.
"Adieu, de Gaulle!"
France to break eurozone spending cuts promise, shows EU forecast
President Hollande's failure to cut spending puts France on collision course with the eurozone
France is heading for a major confrontation with the eurozone after the European Commission warned that it will fail to honour its promise to bring public spending and budget deficits down next year.According to Brussels forecasts released on Monday, the French government will not meet budgetary targets either this year or in 2015 putting France in breach of beefed up eurozone powers to punish countries that fail to bring down public spending.
Ominously for the French Socialist government, the commission sounded a pessimistic note that "risks are tilted to the downside" because of delays by the administration to implement unpopular cuts such as a freeze on pensions.
"Attaining a decisive reduction in the deficit depends on the government's ability to effectively reduce public spending," the commission warned.
Francois Hollande, the French President, has committed his government to meeting the eurozone's key budget requirement that deficits should not be higher than 3pc of GDP
He was given a two year extension last year on the target amid recession caused by the euro zone crisis and to allow his Socialist administration, elected in May 2012, to get to grips with reforms.
But commission forecasts show that France will overshoot the target with a 3.4 per cent deficit in 2015 after estimates also show Paris failing its own target for this year of 3.6pc, estimated to be 3.9pc by Brussels.
Patience is running out in Berlin and Brussels who are angry that other eurozone countries have managed to make good on their euro zone obligations in far more difficult economic circumstances than France.
----Sluggish growth in France, forecast at one per cent of GDP this year compared to 2.7pc for Britain, and the political weakness of President Hollande, who is trailing behind the far-Right Front National in the polls, does not bode well, posing a big test for the eurozone.
After years of austerity, the collapse of its economy and deeply unpopular reforms, Greece will have reduced its budget deficit to one per cent in 2015, it was 12.7pc in 2013.
France, as the eurozone's second largest economy is now seen by the commission, European Central Bank and Germany as the acid test of the single currency's Stability and Growth Pact and new EU enforcement powers to police national budgets.
Spain, is also facing pressure after the commission forecast that, unless Madrid changes policy, the Spanish budget deficit will grow to 6.1 per cent in 2015.
The EU forecasts hailed "steady growth" but cut a predicted increase in GDP from 1.8 per cent in 2015 to 1.7pc as euro zone economies remain sluggish.
Fueling concern over deflation in the eurozone, the EU cut a forecast increase in consumer prices from a previous estimate of 1.5 per cent to 0.8 per cent. Eurostat figures, also released on Monday, found that eurozone producer prices fell 0.2 per cent in March, down by 1.6pc year-on-year.
More
May 1968 events in France
The May 1968 events in France were a volatile period
of civil
unrest punctuated by massive general
strikes and the occupation of factories and universities across France. It was the
largest general strike ever attempted in France, and the first ever nation-wide
wildcat general strike.[1]
At the height of its fervor, the unrest virtually brought the entire advanced capitalist economy
of France to a dramatic halt.[1]
The events had a resounding impact on French society that would be felt for
decades to come.
More. Much, much more.
How can anyone govern a nation that has two hundred and
forty-six different kinds of cheese?
Charles de Gaulle.
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished April
DJIA: +189 Down. NASDAQ: +347 Down. SP500: +249 Down. Sell in May, go away.
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