Friday, 10 October 2014

Boom and Bust.



Baltic Dry Index. 974 -17

LIR Gold Target in 2019: $30,000.  Revised due to QE programs.

“The boom can last only as long as the credit expansion progresses at an ever-accelerated pace. The boom comes to an end as soon as additional quantities of fiduciary media are no longer thrown upon the loan market...”

“But it (the boom) could not last forever even if inflation and credit expansion were to go on endlessly. It would then encounter the barriers which prevent the boundless expansion of circulation credit. It would lead to the crack-up boom and the breakdown of the whole monetary system.”

Ludwig Von Mises

Comeback Greenspan all is forgiven! That’s probably what the Great Vampire Squids in America are thinking this morning, now that the New York Fedster’s have America’s major stock market indexes soaring and crashing with little rhyme or reason. What’s the good of the Yellen put, if high frequency algo nutcases, trying desperately to steal each other’s dollar and stay out of jail, can negate the put at a mere push on a button. Absent QE Forever, Zirp is never going to work on its own, at least not after six years of driving stock market mal-investment. Now with winter ahead, and one month out from the US mid-term elections, the Squids smell a rat coming shortly after the elections are over. Joe Sixpack and his wife long ago were tossed out of the stock market casino. All that’s left now are the “rent seekers,” the Squids v the HFT algo geeks.

Below, with the global economy in deep trouble as evidenced by the BDI, Dr. Copper, iron ore, and collapsing crude oil, the Great Reconnect is getting underway in stocks unless the Fed’s talking chair reopens her QE Forever purse, and does so fast.

Money, again, has often been a cause of the delusion of the multitudes. Sober nations have all at once become desperate gamblers, and risked almost their existence upon the turn of a piece of paper.

Charles Mackay. Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

Asian Stocks Extend Selloff on Europe as Oil, Metals Drop

By Glenys Sim and Emma O’Brien Oct 10, 2014 4:53 AM GMT
Asian stocks declined, with the benchmark index headed for a six-month low, on concern a slowdown in Europe may hurt global growth and as Hong Kong’s government scrapped talks with protesters. Bond risk rose as metals retreated and Brent crude fell to the lowest since 2010.

The MSCI Asia Pacific Index lost 1.5 percent by 12:46 p.m. in Tokyo, set for its lowest close since March. Standard & Poor’s 500 Index futures declined 0.2 percent after the gauge fell the most since April, while contracts on the FTSE 100 Index sank 1.1 percent. Copper in London slid 0.7 percent while Brent fell as much as 2.2 percent. Malaysia’s ringgit retreated from a two-week high before the budget. The cost of insuring corporate and sovereign bonds rose in Asia, Japan and Australia. (AS51)

European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said there are signs the region’s recovery is losing momentum, sending a gauge of volatility to an eight-month high. Federal Reserve officials said the U.S. economy may be at risk from a global slowdown as the International Monetary Fund this week cut its outlook for global growth. Hong Kong canceled talks with protesters after leaders of the movement called more rallies.

----The S&P 500’s 2.1 percent drop yesterday erased the 1.8 percent jump recorded Oct. 8, which was the index’s steepest one-day advance in almost a year. The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index surged as much as 28 percent to 19.38, the highest level since February.

The MSCI All-Country World Index dropped 0.4 percent, extending yesterday’s 1 percent loss.

----The MSCI’s Asia Pacific gauge is headed for a 1 percent drop this week, its fifth straight weekly decline and the longest run of losses since February, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Equity indexes in Australia and South Korea fell more than 1 percent. Taiwan’s markets are shut today.

Japan’s Topix (TPX) slumped 1.4 percent, set for a second weekly loss, as the yen headed for its first weekly gain since August. The currency was at 107.86 per dollar after yesterday reaching 107.53, the strongest since Sept. 17. It’s set for a third week of gains against the euro as Draghi pledged yesterday to expand stimulus measures if needed.
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Across the waters, in the land of the free and easy Fedsters, some of the Great Vampire Squids are getting grumpy. The New York Fed isn’t working as well for the one percenter’s as it used to. Who knew stocks can go down as well as up, just the moment the Chief Fedster closes her purse.

A market correction is 'definitely coming': Carl Icahn

Published: Oct 9, 2014 2:08 p.m. ET
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Billionaire investor Carl Icahn said a market correction is "definitely coming," and he is hedging some of his investments by shorting the S&P 500 SPX, -2.07% "I've been quite concerned for the last year or so. But we have a hell of a lot of stock in our portfolio so you sort of root for the upside," Icahn told CNBC. The S&P 500 tumbled Thursday, and was last down 1.5% at 1,940, having touched a low of 1,930. Icahn's comments just hours after he published a letter to Apple Inc., in which he pushed for more share buybacks and said the tech giant's stock should be trading at $203, or more than double its closing level from Wednesday.

But even if the Fedster’s reverse themselves and rush in QE Forever 4.0, it’s not going to save the EUSSR from the coming earthquake from voters thoroughly sick and tired of politics as usual in Brussels, and a one size fits all German austerity euro policy, that increasingly is putting continental Europe into a depression. With Germany now leading a suicidal sanctions war on Russia for the benefit of US companies seeking to profit from the War Party’s botched coup in Kiev, even Germany looks like sliding into a recession.

Below, more on the earthquake that’s about to bring down the EUSSR. Europe’s voters increasingly want out of the Bilderberger imposed EUSSR. The race is now on as to which country exits the EU or the euro first. At least the UK is not in the one size fits all German Euro. With a UK general election coming in May, the UK’s two major parties are on the ropes and relying on the UK’s “first past the post” voting system making it nearly impossible for new parties to break in. Nevertheless, yesterday’s results will give immense boost to similar minded parties across Europe.

“Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.”

Edmund Burke

Clacton by-election: Douglas Carswell becomes Ukip's first elected MP after a sensational victory

Friday 10 October 2014
The UK Independence Party scored a sensational victory early this morning when Douglas Carswell became the first MP ever elected under the party’s colours.

He romped home in a by-election in Clacton, in Essex, with 21,113 votes, trouncing his Tory opponent, Giles Watling, who scored 8,709. Labour came third with 3,959, while the Liberal Democrats trailed with a humiliating 483.

----In Rochester, the Tories face another potentially disastrous by-election after its MP Mark Reckless became the second Tory to defect to Ukip.

The Clacton result was a personal triumph for the former Tory MP who put his future on the line in August when he announced that he was switching parties and resigned his seat to give voters in his Clacton constituency the chance to back him or sack him.

Turn-out was 51.2 per cent - unusually high for a parliamentary by-election – a tribute partly to the huge effort that volunteers put into plastering Clacton and its surrounding villages with purple coloured Ukip posters.

----In Clacton, Ukip benefited from a general disillusionment with the main political parties, made worse by high unemployment. A report last year by the Centre for Social Justice said that 54 per cent of 16- to 64-year-olds in one of Clacton’s electoral wards were without jobs and reliant on benefits.
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Heywood and Middleton by-election: Labour holds off Ukip surge by just 617 votes

Labour has held Heywood and Middleton after Liz McInnes was elected as the constituency's new MP

The UK Independence Party has come within a few hundred votes of a stunning by-election upset in a result that lays bare Labour's vulnerability to the party in the North.

Nigel Farage's party received more than 11,000 votes in a Labour stronghold where they had almost no electoral holding in what amounted to Ukip's best ever result in a northern England by-election.

Labour hung on to the Heywood and Middleton seat by a little over 600 votes - a fraction of the 6,000 majority they enjoyed in 2010, won after more than a decade in power.

Despite plummeting support for the two governing parties after four years in Coalition, Labour almost lost a seat it has held for decades thanks to a massive surge in support for Ukip.

The party went from winning just 3 per cent of the vote in 2010 to 39 per cent on Thursday, confirming their ability to win thousands of supporters in Labour heartland.

Labour managed to increase it's share of the vote by just one percentage point, despite the Tory vote halving and support for the Liberal Democrats plummeting.

Labour won the seat with 41 per cent - just two points ahead of Ukip, on 39 per cent. The result was so close Ukip ordered a recount to ensure they had not actually won the seat.

Liz McInnes, Labour's victorious candidate, was jeered by Ukip activists as she claimed the result had been a ringing endorsement for Ed Miliband.
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"The most puzzling development in politics during the last decade is the apparent determination of Western European leaders to re-create the Soviet Union in Western Europe."

Mikhail Gorbachev

At the Comex silver depositories Thursday final figures were: Registered 66.53 Moz, Eligible 116.77 Moz, Total 183.30 Moz.    

Crooks and Scoundrels Corner

The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.

Today Ebola. How much longer before Ebola impacts our willingness to travel, impacting airlines, tourism and hotels? Can Ebola be spread by mosquitos, fleas, bedbugs and the like? How long can the virus live on door handles, lavatory seats and other surfaces? With up to a 21 day incubation period, how many travellers are unwittingly flying in a sealed tube with a biological time bomb about to go off. What about terminals? Will this be the black swan that undoes the Great Nixonian Error of fiat money?

Ebola: 'British man dies of deadly virus in Macedonia and one other is taken ill'

Officials are urgently investigating reports that a British man has died of Ebola in Macedonia and another has contracted the disease.

The Britons, who are believed to be friends, had travelled to the country from the London on 2 October, according to a spokesman for the Macedonian Foreign Ministry who confirmed the death.

The Macedonian authorities said the dead man was 57 and his friend is 72.

The patients had been staying at a hotel in the capital, Skopje, when they fell ill. The now-deceased man was admitted to the city’s Clinic for Infectious Diseases at around 3pm local, according to a Macedonian government official. He died around two hours later.

His friend remains under observation at the hospital, as medical staff attempt to confirm whether the pair were infected with Ebola.

Dr Jovanka Kostovska of the Ministry's commission for infectious diseases said the man had been suffering from a fever, vomiting and internal bleeding, and that his condition deteriorated rapidly.

"These are all symptoms of Ebola, which raises suspicions with this patient," Kostovska told a news conference. Samples from the man had been sent to Germany for tests to confirm the cause of death, she added.

But Public Health England said it believed it was "unlikely" that the death was caused by the virus, which has claimed thousands of lives in West Africa, but investigations were continuing.
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Ebola crisis: screening to start at Gatwick, Heathrow and Eurostar terminals

Travellers returning to Britain from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea will face enhanced screening and potentially medical checks, Downing Street has announced

6:02PM BST 09 Oct 2014
Enhanced Ebola screening will be brought in at Gatwick and Heathrow Airports as well as Eurostar terminals, Downing Street announced today.

The Government, which has up until now insisted additional checks were not necessary, changed guidance following advice from the Chief Medical Officer Dame Sally Davies.

Under new guidelines, people travelling from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea will be questioned about travel arrangements and recent contacts. They may also face medical checks.

A Downing Street spokesman said: "These measures will help to improve our ability to detect and isolate Ebola cases. However, it is important to stress that given the nature of this disease, no system could offer 100 per cent protection from non-symptomatic cases.

“It is important to remember that the overall risk to the public in the UK continues to be very low, and the UK has some of the best public health protection systems in the world with well-developed and well-tested systems for managing infectious diseases when they arise. Contingency planning is also underway including a national exercise and wider resilience training to ensure the UK is fully prepared.”

Dame Sally said that 'further measures' were necessary to protect the public.

“Although the risk to the UK remains low, in view of the concern about the growing number of cases, it is right to consider what further measures could be taken, to ensure that any potential cases arriving in the UK are identified as quickly as possible.

"Rapid access to healthcare services by someone infected with Ebola is not only important for their health but also key to reducing the risk of transmission to others.
More
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/ebola/11152500/Ebola-crisis-screening-to-start-at-Gatwick-Heathrow-and-Eurostar-terminals.html

Ebola: Spanish doctor says protective suit 'too short' as nurse health worsens

Three more health workers quarantined in Spain as doctor says his protective suit left bare skin exposed and the health of infected Spanish nurse worsens

The health of a Spanish nurse with Ebola worsened on Thursday as one of the doctors who initially treated her at a local hospital said the protective suit he wore while attending her was ineffective.

Dr Juan Manuel Parra complained that the protective suit he was given to treat Maria Teresa Romero Ramos had sleeves which were too short for him, leaving his bare skin exposed.

The health of Mrs Romero, the first person known to have caught Ebola outside of Africa, has deteriorated, according to the Madrid hospital where she is being treated.

"Her clinical situation has deteriorated but I can't provide more information," because of the express wishes of the infected nurse, a spokeswoman for the La Paz-Carlos III hospital told reporters on Thursday.

Dr Parra gave a damning account of the failure in biosecurity surrounding the case, before voluntarily isolating himself over fears that he has been infected.

In an open letter to Madrid health authorities the doctor criticised the conditions in which he attended Mrs Romero after she was transferred to her local hospital by ambulance in the early hours of Monday.

He wrote that doctors and nurses who treated Mrs Romero initially wore just impermeable gowns and double surgical gloves, a hat and a face mask.

He cared for the 44-year-old nurse between 8am when he began his shift until after midnight when she was finally transferred to a specialist isolation unit at the Carlos III during which time he had to put on and remove the protective clothing as many as 13 times.

As Mrs Romero’s condition deteriorated and she developed vomiting, diarrhea and a chesty cough Dr Parra advised his superiors of the situation and called for “immediate action”, a request that was made at around 11 am.
More
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/ebola/11151171/Ebola-Spanish-doctor-says-protective-suit-too-short.html

Another weekend, and our post WW2 world order now seems to be falling apart. The benefits of fiat currency were all front loaded and long ago dissipated in an orgy of debt fuelled excess by politicians and voters looking for a free lunch. Now we are getting the bill for my generations “free lunch.” Stay long physical gold and silver for insurance against what comes next. Have a great weekend everyone.

There can be few fields of human endeavour in which history counts for so little as in the world of finance. Past experience, to the extent that it is part of memory at all, is dismissed as the primitive refuge of those who do not have the insight to appreciate the incredible wonders of the present.

J. K. Galbraith




The monthly Coppock Indicators finished September.


DJIA: +141 Down. NASDAQ: +289 Down. SP500: +216 Down.  
 


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