Baltic Dry Index. 1484 +28
LIR Gold Target in 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
Remember, remember, the 5th of November
The Gunpowder Treason and plot;
I see of no reason why Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.
The Gunpowder Treason and plot;
I see of no reason why Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.
While the UK tonight celebrates the thwarting of a Catholic plot to blow
up King James VI of Scotland and 1st of England and Wales, and both Houses
of his Parliament in 1605, many will be forgiven for wishing it could happen in
2014, at least as far as this Parliament is concerned. Just this week we have
learned that the Speaker of the Commons had ordered destroyed all the bogus
expense claims of M.P.s in previous years, ensuring that they now can’t be
investigated for theft. Welcome to Great Britain in our new lawless age.
In other news, American voters have decidedly swung to the right
yesterday. For whatever reason, they have repudiated the ultra left views of
Hollywood, the Supremes and Greenwich Village, and seem to want a return to good
old fashioned American values. It remains to be seen if this puts America’s War
Party closer to starting World War Three. The Ukraine’s puppet government
certainly seems to think so, moving later today to revoke the Russian speaking
easts autonomy laws.
We open with Uncle Scam. Is President Obama already the lamest of lame
duck Presidents?
Singer's Elliott Says U.S. Growth Optimism Unwarranted as Data ‘Cooked’
Nov 4, 2014 7:18 PM GMT
Paul Singer’s Elliott Management Corp. said optimism on U.S. growth is
misguided as economic data understate inflation and overstate growth, and central
bank policies of the past six years aren’t sustainable. The market turmoil in the first half of October may be a “coming attractions” for the next real crash that could turn into a “deep financial crisis” if investors lose confidence in the effectiveness of monetary stimulus, Elliott wrote in a third-quarter letter to investors, a copy of which was obtained by Bloomberg News.
“Nobody can predict how long governments can get away with fake growth, fake money, fake jobs, fake financial stability, fake inflation numbers and fake income growth,” New York-based Elliott wrote. “When confidence is lost, that loss can be severe, sudden and simultaneous across a number of markets and sectors.”
More
Back in the EUSSR, only a mild autumn has prevented an energy crisis.
But can the EUSSR rely on a mild winter? The Ukraine heats up fast, will
continental Europe freeze?
Russia-Ukraine Crisis Shields EU Gas From Oil Price Rout
Nov 5, 2014 4:40 AM GMT
The risk of disruptions to Russian natural gas flows through Ukraine this
winter is protecting European prices from the rout that sent oil to a four-year
low. U.K. gas for next quarter fell 13 percent since mid-June, less than half the 28 percent plunge in Brent crude over that time. While Brent is typically the benchmark used to set the price on almost half the gas supply in Europe, the Russia-Ukraine conflict, along with supply-and-demand fundamentals in the market, is having a bigger impact on gas prices than the decline in oil.
First-quarter supply interruptions are still possible as Ukraine may struggle to pay Russia $3.1 billion by year-end under an agreement brokered by the European Union last week for gas already consumed, according to Societe Generale SA. The 28-nation EU, which gets 15 percent of its fuel from Russia through Ukraine, sought to avoid repeats of 2006 and 2009, when disputes between the former Soviet republics over gas debts and prices led to shortages across the region amid freezing weather.
“Right now, gas prices in Europe are really linked to the Russian-Ukrainian crisis, so I don’t think the impact from oil is as big as it could be,” Edouard Neviaski, chief executive officer of GDF Suez Trading, a unit of France’s biggest utility, said in an interview in London. “Gas prices have gone down a little bit, but nothing of the same magnitude.”
First-quarter gas in the U.K., Europe’s biggest market, dropped 1.1 percent yesterday to 55.33 pence a therm ($8.85 a million British thermal units) on the ICE Futures Europe Exchange in London. Brent traded near the lowest level in four years and was at $82.50 a barrel at 12:24 p.m. Singapore time.
More
Ukraine Tension Rises as Poroshenko to End Autonomy Law
Nov
4, 2014 10:00 PM GMT
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko will ask parliament to revoke a law
giving more autonomy to regions occupied by pro-Russian separatists after the
rebels held elections condemned by the U.S. and the European Union. Ukraine is sticking to a Sept. 5 cease-fire, Poroshenko said, even as the government in Kiev accused insurgents of continuing to shell government forces and Russia of massing troops and military vehicles in rebel-occupied Luhansk and Donetsk. The results of Nov. 2 ballots in the two regions will be annulled and the votes redone in government-condoned votes slated for Dec. 7, Poroshenko said.
The law granting more autonomy to the eastern regions was at the center of the truce agreed in Minsk, Belarus, last month by Ukraine, Russia and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Ukraine and the OSCE are the only parties adhering to the agreement, and the autonomy law’s revocation won’t affect the deal, Poroshenko said.
“Ukraine sees the solving of this issue exclusively by peaceful means,” Poroshenko said. “Today I will propose the National Security (GDEF) and Defense Council submit to parliament a request to cancel the law on special self-government in Donetsk and Luhansk regions.”
More
Russian Sanctions Put Swedbank’s Baltic Recovery Hopes on Hold
Nov 3, 2014 11:00 PM GMT
The biggest bank in the Baltic region says sanctions against Russia are destroying its hopes
of a recovery in credit demand in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Swedbank AB (SWEDA), a Swedish bank that lived through the 2009 Baltic housing collapse, was counting on a rebound in credit growth this year before the crisis in Ukraine upended its business plan.
“We had hoped that this would be the year when growth would come back,” Peter Stenborn, a debt investor-relations officer at Swedbank in Stockholm, said in a telephone interview.
Lending
in the region, which was once inside the Soviet Union and today
comprises part of the European Union’s border with Russia, is contracting in
krona terms, according to Swedbank’s books. Baltic loan volumes shrank 0.8
percent in the third quarter from the second, while deposits grew 2.5 percent.
In euros, lending volumes were unchanged on the quarter.
More
Russians Skip Switzerland Trips as Ukraine Crisis Hits Ruble
Nov 4, 2014 3:22 PM GMT
For Russians, Switzerland may have lost its appeal. With the ruble plummeting and President Vladimir Putin’s government encouraging vacations at home, the number of Russia visitors to Switzerland has declined every month since May. They fell 13 percent in September from a year earlier, statistics office data published today in Neuchatel show.
Russians, who ranked 10th among foreign visitors last year, are choosing not to travel after the annexation of Crimea and support for the eastern Ukraine rebellion led the European Union to impose a raft of sanctions.
It’s “strongly due to the Ukraine-Russia crisis, which seems to be having an impact on the travel habits of Russian guests in Switzerland,” said Alain Suter, a spokesman for the Swiss tourism board in Zurich.
EU sanctions include asset freezes and travel bans on Russian politicians, military officers and businesspeople. Moscow responded in August with a ban on food imports, and across the country, roadway billboards urged vacationers to head for the newly added territory.
It’s not just Switzerland that is affected: Russians also stayed away from the French Riviera this summer, with the number of private jets arriving from Moscow at the Nice Cote d’Azur airport suffering their first decline in five years.
More
We close for the day with the Saudis setting out to take out US oil
frackers. With Brent Crude at 82.40 and WTI at 77.05, Saudi Arabia is playing a
take no prisoners war. There is rising collateral damage everywhere. How long
before Texas and Scotland hit bust?
Saudis Go Back to the Future to Take on U.S. Shale Rivals
Nov 5, 2014 3:59 AM GMT
The Saudi oil minister’s visit to Venezuela this
week is also a trip through time. Flash back to December 1998 when Saudi Arabia looked to its fellow OPEC member for help lifting oil prices from about $10 a barrel.
Back then, the Saudis were defending their dominance in the global oil market from new suppliers in Latin America. Now the desert kingdom is cutting prices to the U.S. to contend with upstart shale producers. To win the showdown, the Saudis are trying to bring OPEC’s weaker members in line before the Nov. 27 meeting of the organization, said Seth Kleinman, head of European energy research at Citigroup Inc. in London.
“Shale is in the Saudis’ sights,” Kleinman said by e-mail. “It’s going to be shale or it’s going to be OPEC.”
More
Saudis Cut Crude Prices to U.S. in December Amid Shale Boom
Nov 4, 2014 9:48 PM GMT
Saudi Arabian Oil Co. lowered the cost of its crude to the U.S., where
production is the highest in three decades, deepening a selloff that sent
prices to the lowest in three years. The state-owned producer, known as Saudi Aramco, lowered the premium for Arab Light relative to U.S. Gulf Coast benchmarks by 45 cents a barrel to the smallest since December. medium and heavy grades were also down 45 cents and extra light oil 50 cents. Aramco increased the cost to Asia and Europe.
Swelling supplies from producers outside OPEC drove oil prices into a bear market last month as global demand growth slowed. Middle Eastern producers are increasingly competing with cargoes from Latin America, North Africa and Russia for buyers, as well as with U.S. production that has jumped 54 percent in the past three years.
More
Oil Erases $8.4 Billion for Junk Traders After Debt Binge
Nov 4, 2014 5:32 PM GMT
As oil prices
plunge, so goes the value of high-yield bonds. Traders are dumping dollar-denominated notes of speculative-grade energy companies today as oil reaches a three-year low: Petroleos de Venezuela SA bonds fell more than 4 percent and some Halcon Resources Corp. (HK) notes have lost about 6.5 percent.
The moves extend $8.4 billion of losses for junk-rated energy-company bonds that have accumulated since the end of August, Bank of America Merrill Lynch index data show.
Oil prices are driving credit markets -- where energy companies account for a record proportion of speculative-grade bonds -- as investors consider the possibility of both deflation and less income for commodity-dependent nations such as Venezuela.
“An
oil slick hit bond yields yesterday afternoon,” Jim Vogel, a
fixed-income strategist at FTN Financial in Memphis, Tennessee, wrote
in a note today. While some investors rely on economic data for cues about
whether to buy or sell, “oil has the upper hand for now.”
Saudi Arabia is cutting
prices, the U.S. is pumping at the fastest pace in more than three decades and
global growth is slowing. That’s a bad mix for oil, causing West Texas
Intermediate crude to slide 2.8 percent to $76.58 a barrel at 11:14 a.m. in New York. It
earlier traded as low as $75.84.
More
Canadian Dollar Sinks to 5-Year Low on Crude-Oil Selloff
Nov 4,
2014 10:06 PM GMT
Canada’s dollar plummeted
to a five-year low as the selloff in crude oil, the country’s largest export,
deepened after Saudi Arabia reduced prices to the U.S. in the face of soaring
North American output. The currency dropped for a fifth day versus its U.S. peer, the longest skid since January, as Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz speaking in Ottawa said monetary stimulus is needed to drive the recovery amid considerable slack in the economy. The Canadian dollar pared losses earlier after the nation’s merchandise trade balance swung to an unexpected surplus in September.
Poloz’s comments are “tying into this perfect storm of bearish news for the loonie,” Bipan Rai, director of foreign-exchange strategy at CIBC World Markets Inc., said by phone from Toronto. “Poloz’s statements of late are there to underline that the Bank of Canada’s bias is to remain on hold until well after the Federal Reserve begins hiking.”
The loonie, as the Canadian dollar is known for the image of the aquatic bird on the C$1 coin, declined 0.5 percent to C$1.1408 at 5 p.m. in Toronto after touching C$1.1427, the lowest since July 2009. One loonie buys 87.66 U.S. cents. The currency completed its last five-day streak of losses on Jan. 10.
More
"Gold was not selected arbitrarily by governments to be the monetary standard. Gold had developed for many centuries on the free market as the best money; as the commodity providing the most stable and desirable monetary medium."
Murray N. Rothbard
At the Comex silver
depositories Tuesday final figures were: Registered 66.14 Moz, Eligible 113.73
Moz, Total 179.87 Moz.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
Suntory time: Japanese whisky named world's best in sour dram for Scotland
World Whisky Bible gives highest mark to Yamazaki single malt while spiritual homeland’s ranking is dramatically watered down
Tuesday 4 November 2014 06.32 GMT
Scottish drinkers could be forgiven for crying into their drams after a
single malt from Japan was named the best whisky in the world for the first
time.Whisky expert Jim Murray awarded a record-equalling 97.5 marks out of 100 to Suntory’s Yamazaki Single Malt Sherry Cask 2013, hailing it as “near indescribable genius” in his comments in the forthcoming 2015 World Whisky Bible.
Murray’s tasting notes described the whisky, from the company’s distillery near Kyoto in western Japan, as possessing “a nose of exquisite boldness” and as “thick, dry, [and] as rounded as a snooker ball”.
It is the first time since the guide was first published 12 years ago that the top award has gone to a whisky from Japan. The country’s whiskies were once the butt of jokes but have won a slew of awards and widespread critical acclaim in recent years.
To compound the pain felt in the spiritual home of the “water of life”, this is the first time that not a single Scottish whisky made it into the top five in Murray’s respected guide.
Suntory’s winning whisky is aged for 12 to 15 years in casks previously used for Oloroso sherry, giving it what Murray described as a “light, teasing spice”.
The drink is a far cry from the cheap, blended versions, mixed with water or drunk with soda and ice as a highball, favoured by Japanese office workers.
Yamazaki – Japan’s oldest whisky distillery – produced a limited 18,000 bottles of the prize-winning single malt and they are sold only online or at specialist shops for about US$160 each.
Masataka Taketsuru, who helped found the distillery in 1923, and his Scottish wife, Rita Cowan, inspired a popular TV drama currently being shown by Japan’s public broadcaster, NHK.
They met when Taketsuru was studying chemistry in Scotland – with a view to opening his own distillery back home – and married against their families’ wishes before moving to Japan in 1921.
In 1934 the couple opened the Dai Nihon Kaju (later to become Nikka) distillery in Yoichi on Japan’s northernmost main island of Hokkaido, where he and Rita are buried.
Second, third and fourth places in this year’s awards went to three bourbons from the US; the prize for best European whisky went to Chapter 14 Not Peated, from the English Whisky Company.
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"With the exception only of the period of the gold standard, practically all governments of history have used their exclusive power to issue money to defraud and plunder the people."
F. A. von Hayek.
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished October.
DJIA: +137 Down. NASDAQ: +275 Down. SP500: +210 Down.
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