Baltic Dry Index. 509 -07 Brent Crude 59.51
LIR Gold Target in 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
Merkel: "Here's a good job at the fireworks factory."
Draghi: "Those perfectionists? Forget it."
With apologies to Homer Simpson.
We open with an after-hours shocker from America.
Even with a west coast port strike distorting US trade patterns, this massive
jump in US crude oil supply was completely unexpected. Are American frackers going
all out ahead of a WTI price drop down to the 20s? Later today we should know.
Meanwhile, Chinese New Year or not, the Baltic Dry Index is about to breach 500
for the first time ever.
Crude-oil shocker: API data show supply surging
Published: Feb 18, 2015 6:59 p.m. ET
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — The oil market got a bit of a shock late
Wednesday, when the American Petroleum Institute’s supply data were released.U.S. crude-oil supplies as of the week ended Feb. 13 saw a whopping 14.3 million-barrel jump from a week earlier, the trade group reported, according to news reports and various sources.
Analysts polled by Platts forecast an increase of just 3.1 million barrels for the week. Prices for March crude CLH5, -2.95% on the New York Mercantile Exchange dropped to $50.48 a barrel in electronic trading after the API data, down from a regular-session settlement of $52.14.
The market will have to wait for confirmation from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, which will release its weekly petroleum supply figures at 11 a.m. Eastern time on Thursday. Supply data are delayed by a day this week due to the Presidents’ Day holiday.
More
Next, in the forever rigged fiat currency markets,
did the Fed just re-enter the fiat currency race to the bottom? On the Great
Nixonian Error of fiat money, we have entered the anarchic end phase. Nothing
is predictable anymore. With everyone rigging against each other for export
advantage, and the EU’s ECB just about to commence “QE constrained” in March,
it looks like the Fed has moved to weaken the dollar again. But who outside of
Goldman and Chase and the WSJ’s Hilsenrath gets the inside line?
“It takes two to lie: one to
lie and one to listen”
The talking chair, with
apologies to Homer Simpson.
Did the Fed Just Enter the Currency Wars?
12:26 AM WET February 19, 2015
(Bloomberg) -- The minutes from the Federal Reserve’s meeting last month
have foreign-exchange traders wondering whether Janet Yellen has joined the
currency wars. Policy makers pointed to the dollar’s rising value as “a persistent source of restraint” on exports in a surprisingly dovish set of meeting minutes published Wednesday. The greenback fell against a broad group of its peers.
Central bankers from Europe to Australia have engaged this year in bouts of rate-cutting oneupmanship, leaving the U.S. as the only developed nation forecast to raise borrowing costs in 2015. The dollar climbed to its strongest in more than a decade as a result, prompting billionaire Warren Buffett and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. President Gary Cohn to question whether the Fed can now increase rates without damaging the U.S. economy.
“The Fed is finding a very subtle way to temper the enthusiasm around the risks of a sustained dollar bull market that gets out of control,” said Alessio de Longis, a macro strategist in New York at OppenheimerFunds Inc., whose division oversees $11.6 billion. “What the Fed is trying to decelerate a bit is this dollar appreciation in order to make sure that the transition to a Fed hiking policy is more gradual.”
The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index, a gauge of performance against the euro, yen, pound and seven other major currencies, erased gains after the Fed released the account of its Jan. 27-28 meeting.
The greenback’s gains this year added to a 13 percent jump in the second half of 2014 that was its strongest advance since 2008, even as the U.S. economic recovery started to disappoint. The Citi Economic Surprise Index shows U.S. economic data are falling short of expectations by the most in more than two years.
Officials are inclined to keep rates near zero for longer, with many participants saying a premature rate increase might damp the economic recovery, the minutes show. Participants flagged the ascendant dollar’s negative effect on net exports, with a few pointing to the risk the currency could appreciate further.
----“The stronger dollar is de facto tightening,” said Greg Peters, a senior investment officer at Prudential Financial Inc.’s fixed-income unit in Newark, New Jersey, which oversees $534 billion in bonds. “It is doing much of the work for them already,” he said, adding that a June increase is not on the cards.
Central bankers from Australia to
Canada to Sweden are among those implementing monetary policies to boost
growth. That stimulus has weakened their exchange rates, which helps make their
economies more competitive, a knock-on effect that analysts have called a
currency war.
More
If Everything Is So ‘Awesome’, Why The Alarms Over A Rate Hike Of 25 bps?
by Wall Street Journal •
Imagine
you have a serious illness and have been taking medication that was supposed to
cure you long ago. After being on the maximum dosage for years you start to
feel better, so you ask your doctor if you could roll back the dosage, ever so
slightly, to alleviate some of the side effects. He says that would be fine—but
then a pharmaceutical rep tells you that doing so would be dangerous. Whose
advice would you follow?
This resembles the situation today as the Federal Reserve signals its intent to start raising interest rates, ever so slightly, after six years of near-zero rates. This extraordinarily loose monetary policy was introduced in late 2008 when the global economy was in free fall. U.S. gross domestic product was plunging, the unemployment rate was rising and would soon climb above 10%, and in March 2009 the Dow Jones Industrial Average would fall below 7000.
Although at the time few could argue with the need for such extraordinary Fed action, the U.S. economy today has been growing for several quarters. Unemployment is below 6%, and the Dow recently reached an all-time high above 18000. An outside observer might think that taking some modest steps back toward a normal monetary policy is a no-brainer. Not so. Within and outside the Fed there is a great debate as to when, and sometimes whether, the Fed should start raising rates, even by a trivial amount.
Charles Evans, president of the Chicago Fed and a voting member of the board that determines rate policy, said last month that raising rates too soon would be a “catastrophe.” Former CEO of General Electric Jack Welch , during a Feb. 4 interview on CNBC, called a possible spring rate hike “ludicrous.” Billionaire investor Warren Buffett told Fox Business Network on the same day that he didn’t think a rate increase this year would be “feasible.” Catastrophe. Ludicrous. Not feasible. Really?
----The Fed’s proposed increase would take the fed-funds rate from near zero to about 0.25%, and no that isn’t a misplaced decimal point. We aren’t talking 2.5%, which would still be less than half the 1954-2007 average. We are talking 0.25%, which would mean the Fed’s monetary policy would be rolled back from full pedal-to-the-metal to a fraction above pedal-to-the-metal. On a historical chart of the fed-funds rate, the proposed hike would barely be visible to the naked eye. Does that sound like inviting catastrophe?
More
In Grexit Minus Three news, Greece is supposed to
hit the ball back to the “troika” or whatever they’re calling themselves now,
later today. In the game of bluff between Greece’s David to Germany’s Goliath,
it’s time for Frau Merkel to blink suggest the Telegraph’s AEP.
"Weaselling out of
things is important to learn. It’s what separates us from the animals … except
the weasel"
Tsipras, with apologies to H. S.
ECB risks crippling political damage if Greece forced to default
If Greece defaulted, the German people would discover instantly that a large sum of money committed without their knowledge and without a vote in the Bundestag had vanished
The political detonating pin for
Greek contagion in Europe is an obscure mechanism used by the eurozone's nexus
of central banks to settle accounts.
If Greece is forced out of the
euro in acrimonious circumstances - a 50/50 risk given the continued refusal of
the creditor core to acknowledge their own guilt and strategic errors - the
country will not only default on its EMU rescue packages, but also on its
"Target2" liabilities to the European Central Bank.
In normal times, Target2
adjustments are routine and self-correcting. They occur automatically as money
is shifted around the currency bloc. The US Federal Reserve has a similar
internal system to square books across regions. They turn nuclear if monetary
union breaks up.
The Target2 "debts"
owed by Greece's central bank to the ECB jumped to €49bn in December as capital
flight accelerated on fears of a Syriza victory. They may have reached €65bn or
€70bn by now.
A Greek default - unavoidable in
a Grexit scenario - would crystallize these losses. The German people would
discover instantly that a large sum of money committed without their knowledge
and without a vote in the Bundestag had vanished.
Events would confirm what
citizens already suspect, that they have been lied to by their political class
about the true implications of ECB support for southern Europe, and they would
strongly suspect that Greece is not the end of it. This would happen at a time
when the anti-euro party, Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD), is bursting on to
the political scene, breaking into four regional assemblies, a sort of German
UKIP nipping at the heels of Angela Merkel.
Hans-Werner Sinn, from Munich's
IFO Institute, has become a cult figure in the German press with Gothic
warnings that Target2 is a "secret bailout" for the debtor countries,
leaving the Bundesbank and German taxpayers on the hook for staggering sums.
Great efforts have made to discredit him. His vindication would be doubly
powerful.
An identical debate is raging in
Holland and Finland. Yet the figures for Germany dwarf the rest. The Target2
claims of the Bundesbank on the ECB system have jumped from €443bn in July to
€515bn as of January 31. Most of this is due to capital outflows from Greek
banks into German banks, either through direct transfers or indirectly through
Switzerland, Cyprus and Britain.
Grexit would detonate the system.
----Markets remain relaxed. Yields on Portuguese, Italian and Spanish debt have been eerily calm. Investors are betting that the ECB could and would contain any fallout as its launches €60bn a month of quantitative easing, simply blanketing the bond markets of EMU crisis states.
This ignores the great unknown.
Would the Bundestag or Holland's Tweede Kamer, or any creditor parliament,
continue to let their national central banks supply unlimited Target2 credits
to Latin bloc states via the ECB nexus once the system had blown up in Greece.
----Syriza's leader, Alexis Tsipras, holds a stronger hand than supposed, and he is not shy in playing it. His speech to the Greek parliament on Tuesday night was flaming defiance. "We are not taking even one step back from our promises to the Greek people. We will not compromise, and we won't accept an ultimatum,” he said.
"There is a custom that
newly-elected governments abandon their election promises. We intend to
implement ours, for a change," he said, basking in approval from 82pc of
Greek voters.
More
In botched US
Kiev coup news, don’t ask. Even US mercenaries aren’t making much of a
difference.
Defeated Ukrainians take the 'road of life' on their retreat from Debaltseve
Dispatch: Military disaster for Ukraine as defeated soldiers flee Debaltseve, while pro-Russian rebels raise their flag over the town marking the end of month-long battle
They came on trucks, on foot, and
perched on the top of battered armoured personnel carriers.
The Ukrainian
retreat from Debaltseve
began early in the morning, and continued all day.
Late into the afternoon,
artillery, armour, and soft-skinned lorries trickled up the E40 federal highway
– the "road of life" that had been the only way in and out of the
besieged town – bringing with them survivors of what has become a military
disaster for Ukraine.
Some of the vehicles had smashed
windows. Some had to be towed. And some didn't make it at all.
But these men were the lucky
ones.
----The fall of Debaltseve is a major victory for a Russian-supplied and supported separatist army that Nato officials now say is bigger than that of some European countries.
Fighting continued later on
Wednesday, with artillery audible from the outskirts of the nearby town of Artemivsk.
Access to Debaltseve itself was restricted by combatants on both sides
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of
troops were seen arriving in Artemivsk on Wednesday. But it is not yet clear
how many men, and how much equipment, was left behind.
More
We close for today with yet another burst of global
warming, sorry “climate Change.” Those
lucky Yankees just can’t get enough east of the Rockies.
Latest Surge of Arctic Air to Freeze Northeast, Midwest and South
By Brian Lada, Meteorologist February 19, 2015; 1:18 AM ET
Old Man Winter will be unrelenting across the Midwest and Northeast this week as yet another blast of arctic air rolls in and spreads deep into the South.This next push of arctic air is expected to bring air that is just as cold, or even colder than the air that brought subzero lows to the Midwest and Northeast during the weekend.
Millions will shiver from Chicago to New York City as record lows are challenged during this bitter blast. Records may also fall across parts of the South where temperatures manage to fall into the teens and single digits.
Some southern cities forecast to dip into the teens or lower include Birmingham, Alabama; Charlotte, North Carolina; Columbia, South Carolina; Nashville and Atlanta.
Floridians will even experience a taste of the arctic chill with temperatures dipping down to the lower 30s in cities such as Orlando, Melbourne and Daytona Beach.
The worst of the cold is expected to focus over the East for Thursday into Friday.
In the mid-Atlantic, some daily record lows set during the late-1800s will be challenged.
More
At the Comex silver depositories Wednesday final figures were: Registered 68.10
Moz, Eligible 106.98 Moz, Total 175.08 Moz.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
"How
is education supposed to make me feel smarter? Besides, every time I learn
something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain. Remember when I took
that home winemaking course, and I forgot how to drive?"
Graeme, with
apologies to H. S.
Earth closest to sun for 2015 on January 4
Jan 03, 2015
On January 4, 2015 – before dawn tomorrow from our North American longitudes
– our planet Earth reaches its closest point to the sun for this year. This
annual event takes place on January 4 at 6:36 UTC
(01:36 a.m. EST). This is Earth’s perihelion. The word perihelion
is from Greek roots peri meaning near, and helios
meaning sun. Earth is closest to the sun every year in early January, when it’s winter for the Northern Hemisphere. We’re farthest away from the sun in early July, during our Northern Hemisphere summer.
Earth is about 5 million kilometers – or 3 million miles – closer to the sun in early January than it will be in early July. That’s not a huge change in distance. It’s not enough of a change to cause the seasons on Earth.
Despite
what many may think, Earth’s distance from the sun isn’t what causes the
seasons. On Earth, because our orbit is so close to being circular, it’s mostly
the tilt of our world’s axis that creates winter and summer. In winter, your
part of Earth is tilted away from the sun. In summer, your part of Earth is
tilted toward the sun. The day of maximum tilt toward or away from the sun is
the December or June solstice.
[Tilt: The angle of the Earth's axis
relative to the plane of its orbit changes about three degrees every 41,000
years. Tilt
currently 23.5
degrees
Eccentricity:
The shape
of Earth's orbit around the Sun becomes slightly more and then less oval every
100,000 years.
Precession: Earth wobbles on it axis as it
spins, completing a full wobble every 23,000 years. http://www.windows2universe.org/php/tour_test_sqli.php?page=/earth/climate/cli_sun.html
]
Though not responsible for the
seasons, Earth’s closest and farthest points to the sun do affect seasonal lengths.
When the Earth comes closest to the sun for the year, as around now, our world
is moving fastest in orbit around the sun. Earth is rushing along now at 30.3
kilometers per second (almost 19 miles per second) – moving about a kilometer
per second faster than when Earth is farthest from the sun in early July. Thus
the Northern Hemisphere winter (Southern Hemisphere summer) is the shortest
season as Earth rushes from the solstice in December to the equinox in March.
In the Northern Hemisphere, the
summer season (June solstice to September equinox) lasts nearly 5 days longer
than our winter season. And, of course, the corresponding seasons in the
Southern Hemisphere are opposite. Southern Hemisphere winter is nearly 5 days
longer than Southern Hemisphere summer.
More
Are the December solstice and January perihelion related?
Jan 03, 2015
December solstice 2014 is December 21. Earth is closest to
the sun in 2015 on January 4. Coincidence?
Earth comes closest to the sun tomorrow – January 4, 2015 at 6:36 UTC (01:36 EST). This event is called Earth’s perihelion. Meanwhile, the December solstice took place on December 21. At perihelion in January, Earth is about 147 million kilometers from the sun, in contrast to about 152 million kilometers in July. At the solstice, Earth’s Southern Hemisphere is tilted most toward the sun; it’s the height of summer in that hemisphere. Are the December solstice and January perihelion related? No. It’s just a coincidence that they come so close together.
The date of Earth’s perihelion drifts as the centuries pass. These two astronomical events are separated by about two weeks for us. But they were closer a few centuries ago – and in fact happened at the same time in 1246 AD.
As the centuries continue to pass, these events will drift even farther apart. On the average, one revolution of the Earth relative to perihelion is about 25 minutes longer than one revolution relative to the December solstice. Perihelion advances one full calendar date every 60 or so years.
Earth’s perihelion – or closest point to the sun – will happen at the same time as the March equinox in about 6000 AD.
More
Why does the new year begin on January 1?
Jan 01, 2015
The
date of New Year’s Day seems so fundamental that it’s almost as though nature
ordained it. But New Year’s Day is a civil event. Its date isn’t precisely
fixed by any natural seasonal marker.
Our
modern celebration of New Year’s Day stems from an ancient Roman custom, the
feast of the Roman god Janus – god of doorways and beginnings. The name for the
month of January also comes from Janus, who was depicted as having two faces.
One face of Janus looked back into the past, and the other peered forward to
the future.
---- The early calendar-makers didn’t know it, but today we know there is another bit of astronomical logic behind beginning the year on January 1. Earth is always closest to the sun in its yearly orbit around this time. This event is called Earth’s perihelion.
People didn’t always celebrate the new year on January 1. The earliest recording of a new year celebration is believed to have been in Mesopotamia, circa 2000 B.C. That celebration – and many other ancient celebrations of the new year following it – were celebrated around the time of the vernal equinox, around March 20. Meanwhile, the ancient Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Persians began their new year with the autumnal equinox around September 20. And the ancient Greeks celebrated on the winter solstice, around December 20.
By the Middle Ages, though, in many places the new year began in March. Around the 16th century, a movement developed to restore January 1 as New Year’s Day. In the New Style or Gregorian calendar, the New Year begins on the first of January.
More
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished January
DJIA: +124 Down. NASDAQ: +220 Down. SP500: +178 Down.
No comments:
Post a Comment