Baltic Dry Index. 724 -20 Brent Crude 51.08
LIR Gold Target in 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
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
The Great Disconnect has returned with a vengeance to global stocks,
fuelled by expectations that the ECB is about to launch a Eurozone bond buying
blitz, and that Germany has softened its hard line position over Greece.
Elsewhere, a slowing China will be forced into more stimulus programs, while
Japan will keep monetising like a drunken sailor, although that’s an injustice
to drunken sailors everywhere. Drunken sailors are never as irrational with
money as Abenomics. In America, the expectation is that the central banksters
will keep goosing the stock market forever, and never allow a decline ever
again of more than 3 percent. Welcome to the Looney Tune world of 2015. Stay
long fully paid up physical gold and silver. The longer this goes on, the
greater the eventual bust when the next Lehman hits.
Below, what’s wrong with this? What could possibly go wrong?
"We finished the year, and we reported that we had $17 billion of cash sitting at the bank's parent company as a liquidity cushion. As the year has gone on, that liquidity cushion has been virtually unchanged."
Bear Stearns CEO Alan Schwartz. March 12, 2008. Bust March 17, 2008
Bank of America warns of 'lethal' damage to China's financial system as deflation deepens
'Deflation, Devaluation, and Default' loom in China this year. The denouement for Shanghai's bourse will not be pretty, says the US bank.
China is at mounting risk of a
financial crisis this year as growth sputters and deflationary pressures
trigger a wave of defaults, Bank of America has warned.
The US lender told clients that a
confluence of forces are coming together that threaten to chill the speculative
mania on the Shanghai stock exchange and to expose the underlying fragility of
China’s $26 trillion edifice of debt.
“A credit crunch is highly
probable,” said the bank in a report entitled “Deflation, Devaluation, and
Default”, written by David Cui and Tracy Tian.
They said the country’s
highly-leveraged companies cannot safely withstand President Xi Jinping’s drive
to stamp out moral hazard and wean the country off excess credit, warning that
the mix of slower growth and excess debt “could prove lethal for the financial
system”.
The report warned that it is rare
for countries to escape either a financial crisis, or major bank failures, a
currency upset, a sovereign crisis – or a mix of these – after letting credit
grow at such vertiginous rates.
“The most likely scenario is a
bad debt surge as growth slows, followed by a credit crunch in the shadow
banking system, followed by a major recapitalisation of the banks,” said Mr
Cui.
The report said China spent 15pc
of GDP to rescue lenders in the late 1990s but the scale of the problem is much
greater today, and this time the government cannot resort to fresh stimulus so
easily.
Loans have jumped by roughly
100pc of GDP in the past five years under most estimates. This is twice the
pace of growth in Japan over a comparable period before the Nikkei bubble burst
in 1990, or in the US before the Lehman crisis in 2008.
Standard
Chartered said total credit has surpassed 250pc of GDP once shadow banking and
offshore lending are included, an extremely high level for an emerging economy
without mature markets or layers of accumulated wealth.
More
The Monkeys Are Screeching And The Central Banks Are Pushing On A String
by David Stockman •
Have you been at the zoo
when the monkeys start rattling their cages and screeching in unison? That
about sums up the last 24 hours since the euro zone’s December CPI printed at
negative 0.2% versus prior year.
Within minutes of the release, brokerage
house “economists” were out in force caterwauling that $1 trillion of ECB
bond purchases were now in the bag, meaning that gamblers who had ridden the
Italian 10-year bond, among other peripheral junk, all the way down from
7.5% to 1.72% would have another bountiful payday.
Then, just to make sure, the
rather vague reference in the Fed’s 2pm meeting notes about
headwinds emanating from economic weakness in Europe was spun
shortly thereafter by the Fed’s PR firm, Hilsenramp & Blackstone, as
an explicit instruction to Draghi et. al. to crank up the printing
presses to full throttle.
But then about 8pm came the
screech that ignited the robo-traders to another 300 Dow point buy-the-dip-rip.
The screecher was Charles Evans, who has spent the last 24 years in the central
banking cage at the Chicago Fed—–that is, after having been trained
previously in the intricacies of global money and capital markets as
an assistant professor of economics at the University of South Carolina.
Never mind the upbeat picture of
macroeconomic success painted in the meeting notes, said he. To actually allow
money market rates to rise from the zero bound, where they have been pinned by
the Fed’s big fat thumb for 73 months now, would be a “catastrophe” he
averred. Or as one wag noted at that moment,
SPHs are up 17.30 as we write
because uber dove and Chicago Fed Prez Evans said the Fed ‘should not rush
to hike rates’ and hiking rates would be a ‘catastrophe.’ Algos went berserk and bought
SPHs. Ergo, Evans pulled a ‘Bullard’ last night.
A “Bullard” indeed. Since Evans
has a vote this year and Bullard doesn’t it is evident that the monkeys are
interchangeable. But how else could you describe the babble and gibberish that
emanates from the world’s central bankers and the casino economists, strategists
and touts who amplify it?
There is overwhelming evidence
that the rampant money printing of the past decade or two has done nothing
to generate sustainable growth in mainstream living standards and real
wealth. Yet the monkeys keep rattling the cage, promising and demanding more
ZIRP(and now N-ZIRP) and more fraudulent purchase of government debt with fiat
credit congered by their printing presses.
Consider
some striking proof of failure. Presumably, the welfare state mecca
comprising the EU-19, for example, needs at least some growth in industrial
production to sustain the massive state spending, redistribution and borrowing
of its member nations. But behold, there has been no net increase in industrial
production since 2001.
More
This Isn’t Investing … It’s Russian Roulette
by Bill Bonner •
A man puts a single bullet in a
revolver and spins the chamber. He puts the gun to his head. He pulls the
trigger. Nothing happens.
He spins the chamber again.
Gawkers watch. Speculators take bets on whether he will live or die. Again, the
man pulls the trigger. The gun clicks. But no discharge. He spins the chamber
again.
Again, the speculators make their
bets. They bet that he must be getting closer to the end of his game. Although
the actual odds stay at 6-to-1, the speculators are now happy with 5-to-1 odds.
Again, he pulls the trigger
without effect. The tension mounts. Another spin. More bets. Odds have fallen
to 4-to-1.
Once again, he is lucky.
Speculators are betting heavily now. Spotting an opportunity, he puts his
little game on YouTube. Now, it’s all over the Internet.
He gets paid $3 per ad view on
his site. Millions of people are watching and making their bets. And now, after
three tries on a six-shooter revolver, they’re betting his luck is running out.
Odds fall to 3-to-1.
But one more time he pulls the
trigger and nothing happens. Now, speculators are beginning to wonder. He’s
awful lucky. Too lucky. Maybe the bullet wasn’t live? Maybe there’s some trick
involved? Or maybe he is being protected by divine intervention?
The odds stick at 3-to-1 on the
fifth try.
“How lucky can this guy be?”
people ask. Another spin. Another round of bets. Another trigger-pull. And
still… nothing. This goes on for several more tries. Now, speculators begin to
feel a pattern that they can’t quite explain.
More
Yes, gold doesn’t bear interest. Many,
including Warren Buffett, belittle its investment value. But, paintings or
antiques don’t bear interest either. When money supply is rising, anything
scarce tends to rise in value. Gold is the best scarce commodity in the world.
Andy Xie.
At the Comex silver
depositories Thursday final figures were: Registered 65.04 Moz, Eligible 109.28
Moz, Total 174.32 Moz.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
Below, the Great Disconnect returns in man-made
global warming, now rebranded and re-launched as “climate change.”
Record-breaking cold closes U.S. schools, sends penguins inside
By Barbara Goldberg
(Reuters) - Record-breaking cold
that gripped the U.S. East and Midwest on Thursday snarled travel, shut
schools, filled homeless shelters and even led to zoo penguins being ordered
inside.
Snow expected to accumulate to 3
feet (1 meter) deep was falling in upstate New York near Watertown, and snow
already blanketing South Dakota was whipped by winds into a "ground
blizzard" that made driving treacherous, said meteorologist Dan Petersen
of the National Weather Service.
The coldest place in the country
on Thursday was Estcourt Station, the northernmost point in Maine, with
temperatures of minus 38 degrees F (minus 39 C), he said.
Records were broken from
Montpelier, Vermont, at minus 20 F (minus 29 C), to Jackson, Kentucky, with
minus 1 F (minus 18 C), he said. Snow flurries were reported as far south as
Jacksonville, Florida.
"It's the face, it's like
being hit with a sheet of ice," Bart Adlam, 40, president of U.S. yogurt
supplier siggi's, said as he rode a bike through Times Square on his way to
work at 8 a.m. in New York. The wind chill there made 9 degrees F (minus 12 C)
feel like 2 below (minus 18 C), according to Weather.com.
Cold bitter enough to freeze fuel
lines on school buses forced schools to close from Portland, Maine, to Chicago.
Train rails cracked by the cold caused delays for commuters in Washington, D.C.
Weather also hung up U.S. air travel with 1,937 delays and 515 cancellations by
mid-afternoon, according to FlightAware.com.
In Pittsburgh, two baby African
penguins were moved indoors at the National Aviary, where the endangered
animals that are native to South Africa will remain until temperatures rise.
Frostbite could set in with just
15 minutes' exposure to the frigid air, the weather service said, advising
people to keep pets indoors.
----"It's cold but I'm bundled up," said Willie Council, 65, a homeless man rocking back and forth to stay warm on K Street, Washington's corridor for lobbyists and lawyers. "I’ve got on three pairs of socks but I don’t have any boots.”
Chicago's biggest homeless
shelter filled its beds to capacity, putting some of the overflow crowd on
mattresses on the floor while others spent the night on the streets.
Even sledding hills around Chicago
and ice-skating rinks in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, were shut down because of
risk of wind chill, while Maine's Sugarloaf Mountain closed ski trails because
of "Arctic conditions."
Temperatures also plummeted to an
uncharacteristic 10 to 15 degrees F (minus 12 C to minus 9 C) overnight across
the Gulf Coast. In South Carolina, the odd snowflake on the beach drew excited
observers outside to watch in wonder.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/08/us-usa-weather-idUSKBN0KH10O20150108
Another weekend, and since its cold, windy, wet, snowy January in the
northern hemisphere, a weekend of buyer’s remorse at all of the excess taken on
last month. Tentatively, our December oil collapse seems to be trying to bottom
at 50 on Brent. If it does, and that’s still a big if, a whole lot of oil debt
is headed for debt heaven unless some central banksters want to park it in
their vaults next to AIG’s aging CDS. Have a great weekend everyone, and don’t
forget to worry about “climate change.”
"We are not discussing the exit of Greece from the euro area. This is a stupid idea and an avenue we would never take."
Jean-Claude Juncker. Failed Luxembourg Prime Minister, former president of the Euro Group of Finance Ministers, Liar and current EC President.
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished December.
DJIA: +138 Up. NASDAQ:
+247 Down. SP500: +198 Down.
No comments:
Post a Comment