Baltic Dry Index. 524 +08 Brent Crude 61.63
LIR Gold Target in 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
"Gold would have value if for no other reason than that it enables a citizen to fashion his financial escape from the state."
William F. Rickenbacker
Tired of writing about the fall of Greece, the
wealth destroying, dying EUSSR, the Great (and increasing) Disconnect between
the real world and central bankster fuelled global stock markets, today we
focus on China where if it wasn’t for red flags China would have no flags at
all.
Below, a slowing economy threatens to sink all
boats. Yiwu seeks out new customers in Madrid.
China Drums Up Pro-Growth Moves as Disinflation Seen Deepening
3:24 AM WET February 26, 2015
(Bloomberg) -- China’s Premier
called for more active fiscal policy and a central bank publication said
additional monetary easing is needed, signaling more support is on the way for
the world’s second-biggest economy.
Li Keqiang’s call to aid growth
accompanied an announcement of tax breaks for small business, according to a
government statement summarizing a cabinet meeting yesterday. Meanwhile, the
central bank should cut bank’s required reserve ratios further to deal with
deflation risks, said an article in the People’s Bank of China’s newspaper
published today.
“To fend off possible deflation,
the central bank should continue to adjust tools, from required reserve ratios
and benchmark interest rates, at the right time,” the Financial News article
said.
Highlighting the scope for
further monetary easing, consumer inflation will moderate to 1.3 percent in the
first quarter and 1.7 percent in full-year 2015, the latest Bloomberg News
survey of economists showed. Further stimulus would see China joining Europe
and Japan in accelerating pro-growth policies.
More
China's top court says no to West's model of judicial independence
BEIJING(Reuters) - China's top court has urged officials from the ruling Communist Party to shun Western-style judicial independence and reject "erroneous Western thought", state media said on
Thursday, as controls over the media, dissent and the Internet are tightened.
The comments by China's Supreme Court, Beijing's latest attack on Western ideology, are also another sign of President Xi Jinping's conservative political agenda.
The party has signaled that it will not embark on political reform, despite hopes that Xi, the son of a former liberal-minded vice premier, might relax tight central controls.
A meeting of the Supreme Court's party committee on Wednesday said China would draw boundaries with the West's notion of "judicial independence" and "separation of powers", the state-run China News Service said.
"Resolutely resist the influence of the West's erroneous thought and mistaken viewpoints," it said on its website, citing the meeting.
China's top judge, Zhou Qiang,
"stressed the need to unswervingly take the road of socialism with Chinese
characteristics", it said, reiterating Beijing's stance that it is the
best way to govern the world's most populous nation.
The party has long railed against
Western values, including concepts like multi-party democracy and universal
human rights.
More
In other China news, the world’s longest train ride
links Madrid Spain, with Yiwu China. “Yiwu is also famous for being the centre of the
world’s illegal counterfeiting industry.”
Great news for us cash strapped Brits. It’s a lot cheaper and quicker to
get to Madrid for counterfeits, than to get to Yiwu China. Still, with only 82
containers, that’s not a lot of counterfeits for all of continental Europe.
China to Spain cargo train: Successful first 16,156-mile round trip on world's longest railway brings promise of increased trade
Tuesday 24 February 2015
The first train to complete a
journey on the world’s longest railway line, connecting Spain and China, has
returned home. The 16,156-mile round trip on the new Yixin’ou cargo line
through China, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Poland, Germany, France and Spain took four
months. The train arrived laden with cheap goods and returned to China with
expensive olive oil.
The 82-container cargo train
began its journey in November in the eastern Chinese city of Yiwu. Packed full
of Christmas trinkets and decorations, stationery and craft products, it
arrived in Madrid on 14 December, in time for the thousands of small shops and
Christmas markets to stock up on the cheap Chinese goods.
Before the Yixin’ou line was
opened, goods traded between Europe and China depended on inefficient sea or
air transport, meaning higher prices in Europe.
“The cargo train will boost
economic exchange between Yiwu, the world’s largest small commodity market, and
Madrid, Europe’s largest small commodity market,” said Li Huihuan, manager of
Yiwu CF International Logistics, which operates the train.
The train returned to Yiwu last
weekend, carrying olive oil and other Spanish-made goods that are becoming
popular in an increasingly affluent China.
The line is 450 miles longer than
the previous record holder, the Trans-Siberian Railway, which connects
Vladivostok in the east of Russia, to Moscow. State media in Russia greeted the
opening of the Yixin’ou by pointing out that containers on the new line must be
changed three times during the journey from China to Spain, because tracks in
the seven countries are of different gauges.
Nonetheless, the line’s
supporters hope that it will boost trade between the EU and China, which
already stands at more than €1bn a day. Traders at both ends of the new track
point out that the train provides a vastly faster service than seaborne goods
and is substantially cheaper than air cargo.
Yiwu, a city of 1.2 million, is a
booming example of modern China. The city’s small commodities market is growing
at an exponential rate and in 2014 combined imports and exports were valued at
$23.7bn, a 28.6 per cent increase on the previous 12 months.
According to the Chinese-state
run news agency, Xinhua, 60 per cent of the world’s Christmas trinkets are
originally bought and sold in Yiwu’s annual Christmas market. While traders in
Madrid’s Plaza Mayor and elsewhere will welcome the opening of the Yixin’ou
railway, which should see the prices they pay for nativity scenes and Christmas
lights fall, Yiwu is also famous for being the centre of the world’s illegal
counterfeiting industry.
More
Then again, maybe more on Greece. Is Syriza doing
another u-turn again? Will the new drachma arrive on March 1?
Greece to stop privatisations as Syriza faces backlash on deal
The Syriza leadership risks falling between two stools as it tries chip away at the austerity regime without triggering Greece's ejection from the euro
Greece's Left-wing Syriza government
has vowed to block plans to privatise strategic assets and called for sweeping
changes to past deals, risking a fresh clash with the eurozone's creditor
powers just days after a tense deal in Brussels.
"We will cancel the
privatisation of the Piraeus Port," said George Stathakis, the economy
minister. "It will remain permanently under state majority holding. There
is no good reason to turn it into a private monopoly, as we made clear from the
first day.
"The deal for the sale of
the Greek airports will have to be drastically revised. It all goes to one
company. There is no way it will get through the Greek parliament."
The new energy minister,
Panagiotis Lafazanis, warned that Syriza will not sell the Greek state's 51pc
holding of the electricity utility PPC, power grid ADMIE or state gas company
DEPA. "There will be no energy privatisations," he said.
It is already becoming clear that
Syriza's leadership does not accept a strict, minimalist reading of the
Eurogroup text, and is relying on quiet assurances from Brussels and Paris that
it has friends in the EU.
The defiant signals are making it
harder for the German government to dampen criticism over the deal in the
Bundestag before it votes on Friday. "Greece will not get a single penny
until it complies with its obligations," said Germany's finance minister,
Wolfgang Schauble.
Both the International Monetary
Fund and the European Central Bank say the deal is too loose to pin down
Syriza, allowing it to unpick elements of the EU-IMF Troika Memorandum. Mr
Stathakis gave strong hints that this is indeed Syriza's intention. "The
Eurogroup meetings went very well," he said, with a conspiratorial smile.
Yet the Syriza leadership risks
falling between two stools as it tries chip away at the austerity regime
without triggering Greece's ejection from the euro. A closed-door crisis
meeting of the party at the Greek parliament erupted in an emotional storm,
running for 12 hours as the group's Left Platform voiced their anger over the
retreat in Brussels.
---- Diplomats in Athens have some sympathy for the Syriza view, confirming that many of the past deals were corrupt or tailored to the interests of powerful oligarchs. "These people 'own' the energy industry. The property sales and airports are a stitch-up, all going to the same small circle," said one veteran.
"We know exactly who the
biggest smuggler of shipping fuel is, and why nothing has been done. He is very
close to the previous government. Syriza are not part of this system and don't
have 'cheques to pay back'."
More
"In
economics, hope and faith coexist with great scientific pretension."
J. K.
Galbraith.
At the Comex silver depositories Wednesday final figures were: Registered 67.51
Moz, Eligible 109.38 Moz, Total 176.89 Moz.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
With America’s NSA backdooring US technology
products from Apple to Cisco to Google, to spy on everyone and everything under
the sun, unsurprisingly it’s generated a reluctance to buy American technology
products. Below, China leads the way.
Exclusive: China drops leading tech brands for state purchases
By Paul Carsten BEIJING
(Reuters) - China has dropped some of
the world's leading technology brands from its approved state purchase lists,
while approving thousands more locally made products, in what some say is a
response to revelations of widespread Western cybersurveillance.Others put the shift down to a protectionist impulse to shield China's domestic technology industry from competition.
Chief casualty is U.S. network equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc (CSCO.O), which in 2012 counted 60 products on the Central Government Procurement Center's (CGPC) list, but by late 2014 had none, a Reuters analysis of official data shows.
Smartphone and PC maker Apple Inc (AAPL.O) has also been dropped over the period, along with Intel Corp's (INTC.O) security software firm McAfee and network and server software firm Citrix Systems (CTXS.O).
The number of products on the list, which covers regular spending by central ministries, jumped by more than 2,000 in two years to just under 5,000, but the increase is almost entirely due to local makers.
The number of approved foreign tech brands fell by a third, while less than half of those with security-related products survived the cull.
An official at the procurement agency said there were many reasons why local makers might be preferred, including sheer weight of numbers and the fact that domestic security technology firms offered more product guarantees than overseas rivals.
China's change of tack coincided
with leaks by former U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward
Snowden in mid-2013 that exposed several global surveillance programs, many of
them run by the NSA with the cooperation of telecom companies and European
governments.
"The Snowden incident, it's
become a real concern, especially for top leaders," said Tu Xinquan,
Associate Director of the China Institute of WTO Studies at the University of
International Business and Economics in Beijing. "In some sense the American
government has some responsibility for that; (China's) concerns have some
legitimacy."
Cybersecurity has been a
significant irritant in U.S.-China ties, with both sides accusing the other of
abuses.
More
"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 January
DJIA: +124 Down. NASDAQ: +220 Down. SP500: +178 Down.
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