Oil – Russia, Europe Outlook.

Baltic Dry Index. 782 -06   Brent Crude 59.45

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

Below the outlook as per the OECD on Friday.

Russia's crisis has no end in sight as $50 oil looms, says OECD

Russia is moving towards autarky in the face of falling oil prices and tensions with the West that have left no end in sight for the country's economic woes, says OECD chief economist

By Szu Ping Chan 7:28PM GMT 27 Dec 2014

There is no end in sight for Russia’s economic crisis, as crippling sanctions and tumbling oil prices leave the country staring into an abyss, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has warned.
Catherine Mann, the OECD’s chief economist, said Russia was moving closer to shutting itself off from the rest of the world, while the West’s sanctions against Moscow over its annexation of Crimea in Ukraine had left no end in sight for the country’s woes.

“It’s very difficult to tell what will get Russia back on track,” she told The Sunday Telegraph. “The end game is autarky, and for an economy to return to being disconnected from the global economy, to be farming its own land for food, for the energy to be only used within its own economy, to not import clothing and machinery – this requires painful restructuring.”

Vladimir Putin, Russia's president, has already admitted that sanctions against the country will lead to two years of economic hardship, and has forced cabinet ministers to work over the Orthodox Christmas holiday in January as policymakers grapple with the country’s crisis.

Ms Mann said it was difficult to see Russia emerging from crisis while tensions continued with Ukraine. “A better strategy would be the geo-political one, and there is a sense that president Putin would rather move in that direction. But from the perspective of the countries that have imposed sanctions there does not appear to be a loosening of their resolve, so from that standpoint I don’t see any changes.”

Ms Mann also believes oil prices will tumble to $50 a barrel next year if Opec continues to fuel a global supply glut and growth remains sluggish.

----Preliminary calculations by the Paris-based think-tank suggest the recent oil price fall to $60 a barrel from $115 this summer will boost growth across the club of 34 developed nations by 1pc through cheaper oil import bills alone.

The benefit to South Korea, which relies on imports to meet about 97pc of its energy needs, is expected to be as large as 2.7pc of gross domestic product (GDP) through import channels, while the UK is expected to receive a boost of 0.5pc of GDP, or around £9bn in today's money.

However, Ms Mann said countries that rely heavily on oil revenues to fuel growth such as Norway will see as much as 6.5pc shaved off GDP in 2015.

While the OECD has not calculated how the Russian economy will be affected by the fall in oil prices, the country's central bank has said GDP could contract by 5pc next year if oil stays at around $60 a barrel.

But Ms Mann said Russia's economic slump was unlikely to lead to civil unrest. "Russian citizens have gone through tremendous amounts of change and have been pretty resilient in the face of those changes," she said.
She also warned that urgent reforms were still needed in the eurozone's top economies in order to lift the single currency bloc out of its chronic malaise.

"There are a variety of reforms that need to be done in various countries," she said. "France is eroding its future by wasting its youth, Germany is eroding its future through lack of investment. Both have work to do.

"[France has] 25pc youth unemployment. Many people identify with the jobs that they do and it is part of the fabric of their lives. If a whole generation doesn’t get to experience that, a country is worse off. It’s very simple."

More

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/oilprices/11309207/Russias-crisis-has-no-end-in-sight-as-50-oil-looms-says-OECD.html

At the Comex silver depositories Friday final figures were: Registered 64.60 Moz, Eligible 111.88 Moz, Total 176.48 Moz.   

Crooks and Scoundrels Corner

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

And in China, yet more sign of a coming hard landing.  Just don't let on to stock markets.

China’s Industrial Profits Drop Most in Two Years Amid Slowdown

By Bloomberg News Dec 27, 2014 5:34 AM GMT

China’s industrial profits fell the most in two years last month, the latest data to show a deepening slowdown in the world’s second-biggest economy as pressure grows on the nation’s central bank to ease monetary conditions.

Total profits of China’s industrial enterprises in November dropped 4.2 percent from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said today in Beijing. That followed October’s 2.1 percent decline and a 0.4 percent increase in September. It’s the biggest slide since August 2012, when profits slumped 6.2 percent.

Mired in industrial overcapacity, factory-gate deflation and a housing slump, China is headed for its slowest full-year economic expansion since 1990. A Chinese factory index fell to a seven-month low in December, while growth in aggregate financing, the broadest gauge of credit, trailed estimates in November, and imports unexpectedly dropped amid weak demand.

More

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-12-27/china-s-industrial-profits-drop-most-in-two-years-amid-slowdown.html

    

The monthly Coppock Indicators finished November.

DJIA: +136 Down. NASDAQ: +262 Down. SP500: +204 Down.