Baltic Dry Index. 732 -06
LIR Gold Target in 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
First, many, many thanks to all of you who sent me and my
family condolences, thoughts and prayers of comfort following the sudden death
of my sister last week. They were greatly appreciated and very comforting.
“War
is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.”
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.”
George
Orwell. 1984.
Our new lawless times have turned truly bizarre.
Following a botched American coup in Kiev, we the west, find ourselves allied
to an American puppet regime in the Ukraine composed of anti-semites,
neo-Nazis, and a pro-west minority, now in civil war with the eastern minority
population that wants to re-join Russia. Into this wholly American created
Christian v Christian civil war that risks expanding into a wider regional war,
flew 298 luckless innocents only to be shot down in error, mistaken by the
Russian Minutemen/patriots/rebels/insurgents who though they were shooting at a
Ukrainian military transport plane. Now the propaganda spin machines of both
sides have gone into overdrive. Without a change in policy soon, we are headed
into a new European war that will quickly go global.
With this escalating propaganda war, well covered in
mainstream media, I will leave the subject to others, except to repeat stay
long fully paid up physical gold and silver, held outside of the UK and
America, where it will likely be confiscated if the Ukraine gambit really goes
wrong and we end up in a new European war.
“Supreme
excellence consists of breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.”
Sun
Tzu. The Art of War.
Also in the world of the bizarre, as France crumbles
around him, and capital flight and people flight surge into London, love-rat teenage
President Hollande has time for other things. King Louis 16th comes
to mind. No matter that France is too big to fail, but too big to bail. All the
more so if Germany starts committing national suicide for the American War
Party, by imposing real economic sanctions on almost next door Russia. The sooner
the UK is out of the EUSSR the better. With European leadership like this and
marching to a scatty American war plan, total disaster lies ahead unless EU
leaders come to their senses.
François Hollande 'to marry Julie Gayet'
French president reportedly close to proposing to Julie Gayet as party officials ask him to "formalise" his relationship with the actress
By David Chazan, Paris 5:33PM BST
20 Jul 2014
François Hollande may be close to
proposing to the actress, Julie Gayet, according to senior Socialist party
officials who have reportedly asked the French president to clarify his status.
"We've been hearing for the
past three months that he's going to formalise his relationship with Julie
Gayet," an official told the newspaper, Le Parisien.
Party leaders are reportedly
concerned that if Mr Hollande continues trying to keep his complicated private
life out of the public eye, rumours about his relationship with the actress
could overshadow the Socialists' 2017 election campaign.
"He has to clarify things
and show that it isn't just a casual fling," one leading Socialist told Le
Parisien.
Yves Azéroual, the author of a
book titled Passions of State, said: "Julie's tired of being the mistress
who has to hide. What's more, in the eyes of the public, she looks like the one
in the wrong. She's been putting him under pressure for several weeks and he's
finally said yes."
----For weeks, public attention focused on Mr Hollande's love life rather than his policies. The affair had little impact on the president's already dismal approval ratings, but it grew increasingly embarrassing for him to face constant questions about it.
If Mr Hollande does marry, it
will be for the first time. He did not wed Trierweiler or Ségolene Royale, the
mother of his four children. Ms Royale, 60, is now his environment minister.
He is widely reported to have
begun an affair with Ms Trierweiler, a journalist, before leaving Ms Royale.
More
In other news, America’s folly in setting off a new
European war is all too likely to come with a heavy price. If the Kiev coup had all gone to plan, an
American puppet regime would now be in NATO, the Russian Black Sea fleet
bottled up and useless. Russia and Belarus undermined, and likely in turmoil
facing their own US sponsored and paid for colour revolutions, Presidents Lukashenko
and Putin likely gone. The great EurAsian slicing and dicing underway. China
isolated and contained.
There are known
knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That
is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also
unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.
Donald
Rumsfeld.
The dollar's 70-year dominance is coming to an end
Within a decade, greenback's could be replaced as the world's reserve currency
In early July 1944, delegates
from 44 countries gathered at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New
Hampshire. A three-week summit took place, at which a new system was agreed to
regulate the international monetary and financial order after the Second World
War.
The US was already the world’s
commercial powerhouse, having eclipsed the British Empire several decades
earlier. America was also on course to be among the victors of “Europe’s
conflict”, even though its economy was largely unscathed by war. As such,
Bretton Woods was US-dominated and produced a settlement largely on US terms.
Seventy years ago this week, that
fateful summit ended. Its close marked the moment the dollar’s unquestionable
supremacy was secured. Since then, global commerce has been conducted largely
in dollars and leading economies have held the greenback as their primary reserve
currency.
The same system remains intact
today, with the lion’s share of commercial settlements worldwide still clearing
the US banking system – even if the parties involved have nothing to do with
the States.
The dollar’s hegemony continues
to be cemented, meanwhile, by the operations of the International Monetary Fund
and World Bank. Founded at Bretton Woods, they’re both Washington based, of
course, and controlled by America, despite some Francophone window-dressing.
The advantages this system bestows
on the US are enormous. “Reserve currency status” generates huge demand for
dollars from governments and companies around the world, as they’re needed for
reserves and trade. This has allowed successive American administrations to
spend far more, year-in year-out, than is raised in tax and export revenue.
By the early Seventies, US
economic dominance was so assured that even after President Nixon reneged on
the dollar’s previously unshakeable convertibility into gold, amounting to a
massive default, dollar demand kept growing.
So America doesn’t worry about
balance of payments crises, as it can pay for imports in dollars the Federal
Reserve can just print. And Washington keeps spending willy-nilly, as the world
buys ever more Treasuries on the strength of regulatory imperative and the vast
liquidity and size of the market for US sovereign debt.
It is this “exorbitant privilege”
– as French statesman Valéry Giscard d’Estaing once sourly observed – that has
been the bedrock of America’s post-war hegemony. It is the status of the
dollar, above all, that’s allowed Washington to get its way, putting the
financial squeeze on recalcitrant countries via the IMF while funding foreign
wars. To understand politics and power it pays to follow the money. And for the
past 70 years, the dollar has ruled the roost.
More
We end for the day with another sign from China that the
recent China GDP figure might not be all that it seemed.
China's First Mortgage Debt Since Crisis Shows Li Concern
Jul 21, 2014 3:19 AM GMT
China will revive mortgage-backed debt sales this week after a six-year
hiatus, as the government extends help to homebuyers in a flagging property
market. Postal Savings Bank of China Co., which has 39,000 branches in the country, plans to sell 6.8 billion yuan ($1.1 billion) of the notes backed by residential mortgages tomorrow, according to a July 15 statement on the website of Chinabond. The last such security in the nation was sold by China Construction Bank Co. in 2007, Bloomberg-compiled data show.
Premier
Li Keqiang is seeking to avert a collapse of the real-estate market after data
last week showed new home prices dropped in a record number of cities in the
world’s second-largest economy. The central bank in May called on the nation’s
biggest lenders to accelerate the granting of mortgages to first-home buyers,
and cities including Nanning, Hohhot and Jinan eased property restrictions.
More
Simply stated,
there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.
Dick Cheney August
26, 2002
At the Comex silver depositories Friday final figures were: Registered 58.98 Moz,
Eligible 116.27 Moz, Total 174.36 Moz.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
Europe’s fixed, so they say. The ECB’s Mr Fixit,
Draghi, fixed it two year’s ago, with a promise to do whatever it takes to
preserve the euro, no matter that it is the cause of the wealth destroying
misery inflicted on over half of Europe;s serf, and with his TLTRO program.
(Targeted Longer Term Refinancing Operations.) Well it aint as fixed as Mr.
Fixit thinks. Europe’s banks, just like
America’s are all a charade of smoke and mirror accounting, extend and pretend,
mark to the fantasy model, and degenerate derivatives gambling. If Europe blows
up Russia for America’s War Party, continental Europe will come crashing down
with Russia, happily taking America with it. Such is the madness now loose in
the world as we approach the 100th anniversary of the start of World
War One.
Espirito Santo International files for creditor protection
Holding company of Portugal's second-largest bank says it can't meet its obligations
The Espirito Santo family’s
holding company, which owns a stake in Portugal’s second-largest bank, has
filed for creditor protection, saying it can’t meet its obligations.
Espirito Santo International,
which partially owns Banco Espirito Santo (BES), said in a statement on Friday
night that “due to a significant part of its debt maturing” it has applied to
be placed under “controlled management” under Luxembourg law, where it is
based.
“The controlled management regime
will allow the company to defend the interests of its creditors in a
transparent and orderly way under the control of the courts and nominated
officials, particularly allowing a process of managing the value of the assets
for creditors that is more adequate than a rapid and massive liquidation,” the
company said in a statement.
In a complex arrangement,
Espirito Santo International owns 100pc of RioForte, another holding company,
which in turns owns just under 50pc of Espirito Santo Financial Group, which
owns 20pc of BES.
Espirito Santo International’s
move on Friday night, after markets had closed, came just hours after
Portuguese prosecutors said they were investigating the family’s web of
businesses.
“There are inquiries under way
related to this matter that even pre-date the reports of the past few weeks,”
the prosecutors said.
Luxembourg’s justice authorities
have already started an investigation into three of the family’s holding
companies.
In May, Espirito Santo Financial
Group claimed it had found “serious irregularities” in the accounts of Espirito
Santo International, including “overvaluations of assets”.
Last month BES rattled European
stock and bond markets as the spectre of the eurozone debt crisis was raised
again. Fears over BES were triggered by the accounts claims and the fact that
Espirito Santo Financial Group missed a payment on short-term debt. Alarm was
compounded by the group’s structure, which has been controlled by the Espirito
Santo family for nearly 100 years
More
Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war.
Donald
Rumsfeld.
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished June
DJIA: +169 Down. NASDAQ: +332 Down. SP500: +241 Down. The Fed’s final bubble still grows,
but …..
No comments:
Post a Comment