Baltic Dry Index. 568 +03 Brent Crude 58.57
LIR Gold Target in 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
"When it becomes serious, you have to lie"
Jean-Claude Juncker. Failed Luxembourg Prime Minister and ex-president of the Euro Group of Finance Ministers. Confessed liar. EC President.
After a day of acrimonious shouting and posturing, by evening yesterday,
Grexit loomed as the only possible outcome . Seemingly confirmed by Juncker, the EC’s Liar-in Chief. Neither side seems to
have left room for any other outcome.
“There will never
be a Grexit. The country is and will remain a member of monetary union. A Greek
withdrawal would lead to an irreparable loss of global prestige for the whole
EU.”
Jean-Claude Juncker. Failed Luxembourg Prime Minister and ex-president of the Euro Group of Finance Ministers. Confessed liar. EC President.
Defiant Greece at daggers drawn with EU creditors
If Greeks are forced to choose between a restoration of their dignity or continued Troika humiliation, they will chose dignity, says the Greek prime minister
Relations between Greece and
Europe's creditor powers are dangerously close to breaking point. Both sides
have issued ultimatums, each insisting angrily on fixed positions and lashing
out at each other with barely concealed animosity.
“If they decide to kick us out,
the damage will be greater for them,” said Manolis Glezos, the war-time
resister who ripped the Nazi flag from the Acropolis in 1941.
Mr Glezos, a Syriza MEP and the
party’s venerated elder statesman, told the Daily Telegraph that his movement
never wished to take Greece out of monetary union but will not shrink from
doing so if EMU authorities insist on suffocating austerity. “You cannot attend
the negotiating table without carrying this option along,” he said.
Far from subsiding, the defiant
language from Athens is growing louder. "If Europe leaves us in crisis, we
will flood it with migrants,” said Panos Kammenos, the defence minister and
leader of the Independent Greeks party.
“Too bad for Berlin if there are
some Jihadis from Islamic State in that wave of millions. If they strike us, we
will strike them,” he told La Repubblica, vowing to give illegal migrants valid
documents and open Europe’s Schengen frontiers to all comers.
“Relations have reached a new
low. It’s turning into an arms race,” said Mats Persson from Open Europe.
“These comments are a recipe for matters to get out of hand, and it is becoming
increasingly hard for Germany to back down.”
Greek premier Alexis Tsipras is
barely more diplomatic than his ministers. Over the weekend he threatened a
snap vote on the terms of austerity if Eurogroup finance ministers reject Greece’s
latest list of reform proposals.
"If we were to hold a
referendum tomorrow with the question, 'do you want your dignity back or a
continuation of these undignified policies,' then everyone would choose dignity
regardless of difficulties that would come with it," he told Spiegel
Magazine.
To
drive home his threat, Mr Tsipras compared the eurozone to a woollen jumper.
“Once it begins to unravel, you can’t stop it any more,” he said.
----Germany’s Wolfgang Schauble among others insisted on using the term “Troika” – hated in Greece, and now officially abolished – seemingly wishing to humiliate Syriza. The Slovak minister told Greece to “face the naked truth”.
Jean-Claude Juncker, the European
Commission’s chief, warns that the EMU authorities must tread with great care.
“What worries me is that not everybody in the European Union seems to have
understood the seriousness of the situation in Greece,” he told Die Welt.
Mr Juncker issued a categorical
guarantee that Greece will not be forced out of EMU. “There will never be a
Grexit. The country is and will remain a member of monetary union. A Greek
withdrawal would lead to an irreparable loss of global prestige for the whole
EU.”
More
Europe tightens noose as Syriza told to face the 'naked truth' over bail-out
Creditors tell Greece to stop wasting time over enacting reforms as the country scrambles to meet €350m in IMF loan repayments by the end of the week
The gulf between the Greek
government and its international creditors widened on Monday as the country was
warned to speed up the pace of its reforms in order to unlock the vital funds
it needs to remain solvent.
In an uncharacteristically short
meeting of the eurozone’s finance ministers in Brussels, president of the
eurogroup Jeroen Dijsselbloem said the Greek government should start enacting
the reforms it needs to complete its €7.2bn in bail-out extension and avert
bankruptcy.
"We seem to be losing time
now - since the last eurogroup little has been done in terms of future talks,
in terms of implementation", said Mr Dijsselbloem.
"We have spent the last two
weeks discussing who will meet who, where, and in what configuration. It’s been
a complete waste of time."
Athens drafted a six-point
programme of economic reforms on Friday, but was warned its measures were not
enough to satisfy the demands of its lenders.
Dampening the idea that Greece
could be granted an early release of some portion of its bail-out funds, Mr
Dijsselbloem said Europe would only countenance such a move if Athens proved
its committment to "the whole package" of creditor conditionality.
More
Elsewhere, the sky has started falling too. Bad times and outcomes lie
directly ahead.
Dollar at 12-year peak on euro, emerging markets spooked
By Wayne
Cole SYDNEY
(Reuters) - The U.S. dollar scored multi-year highs against the euro and yen
in Asia on Tuesday amid starkly diverging outlooks for interest rates globally,
while currencies from emerging markets came
under mounting pressure from risk aversion.The skittish mood spread to Asian stocks as MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS slipped 0.6 percent.
Driving the dollar was speculation the Federal Reserve would start lifting interest rates from mid-year, while central banks in the European Union and Japan were busy easing policy by buying billions in government bonds.
The European Central Bank began its trillion-euro bond buying campaign on Monday, nudging down yields in Germany and other core EU sovereigns.
Selling in the euro gathered pace through the Asian session as a break of $1.0822 EUR= triggered stop-loss offers and took it as deep as $1.0785, the lowest since September 2003. Bears are now eyeing a major layer of chart support at $1.0762.
The dollar also broke higher on the yen to reach 122.02 JPY=, territory not visited since July 2007.
The prospect of rising U.S. yields threatened to attract funds from emerging markets, causing strains from Brazil to Turkey. The Brazilian BRL= real led the rout, having fallen for the sixth straight session on Monday.
The pressure spread through Asia with the South Korean won KRW= hitting its lowest since late August 2013 and the Singapore dollar SGD= its lowest since 2010.
More
We end today, with the City on the Hill divided. The near treason below
reminds me of the time that the Reagan campaign actively back channelled President
Carter’s negotiations with Iran to release the hostages. America’s War Party
plumbs a new low. Did no one bother to think how this would play in Beijing or Moscow?
Did 47 U.S. Senators Just Commit Treason By Attempting to Sabotage Iran Deal?
The letter, organized by Senator Tom Cotton, a freshman from Arkansas, warned Iran that "...we will consider any agreement regarding your nuclear-weapons program that is not approved by the Congress as nothing more than an executive agreement between President Obama and Ayatollah Khamenei. The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time."
White House press secretary Josh Earnest said the letter's goal was to "undermine" negotiations with Iran, but also noted that if the Obama administration reached an agreement over Iran's nuclear program that it would not be a treaty subject to congressional ratification.
Senate Minority Leader Harry
Reid, meanwhile, said it was highly unusual for a political party to insert
itself into a foreign policy negotiation in opposition to the president.
“Republicans are undermining our
commander in chief while empowering the ayatollahs,” he said from the Senate
floor Monday. “We should always have robust debate about foreign policy, but
it's unprecedented for one political party to directly intervene in an
international negotiation with the sole goal of embarrassing the president of
the United States.”
On Twitter, many observers were
quick to call the move by Senate Republicans "treason."
More
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
H. L. Mencken.
At the Comex silver
depositories Monday final figures were: Registered 68.85 Moz, Eligible 109.18
Moz, Total 178.03 Moz.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
While Greece slides towards the Euroland door
marked “Exit,” the central bankster fuelled stock markets are heading for a crash.
Below, David Stockman tells of the reality of US stocks.
Six Years Of Bull Market Bull
by David Stockman •
Never has there been a more
artificial—-indeed, phony—–gain in the stock market than the 215% eruption
orchestrated by the Fed since the post-crisis bottom six years ago today. And
the operative word is “orchestrated” because there is nothing fundamental,
sustainable, logical or warranted about today’s S&P 500 index at 2080.
In fact, the fundamental
financial and economic rot which gave rise to the 672 index bottom on
March 9, 2009 has not been ameliorated at all. The US economy remains mired in
even more debt, less real productive investment, fewer breadwinner jobs and
vastly more destructive financialization and asset price speculation than had
been prevalent at the time of the Lehman event in September 2008.
Indeed, embedded in Friday’s
allegedly “strong” jobs report is striking proof that the main street economy
is the very opposite of bullish. In January 2015 there were still 2
million fewer full-time, full-pay “breadwinner” jobs in the US economy than
there were before the crisis in December 2007.
Not surprisingly, therefore, real
median household income is still 4% below where it stood prior to the
crisis. That
cardinal fact nullifies in its entirety all of the Wall Street propaganda about
“recovery” based on spurious paint-by-the-numbers data on waiter and bartender
jobs or the temporary surge in car sales fueled by
unrepayble subprime auto loans.
As should be more than evident by
now, the household sector has reached a condition of peak debt, meaning that
sustainable consumption spending is now solely dependent upon income
growth. And that’s not happening.
---- Accordingly, the only valid measure of
future economic growth prospects is real net investment—–or current
spending as recorded in the GDP accounts less depreciation. As I
documented last week, that number stood at about $400 billion in Q4 or about
25% lower than the pre-crisis level of $500 billion, and nearly 33% lower than
the level recorded at the turn of the century. So there is nothing
bullish at all in the single most important metric for future economic growth
and profitability.
In
short, the endless buy-the-dip trajectory shown below is not the
consequence of a sustainably improving outlook for main street prosperity
and corporate profits or honest price discovery in the financial markets. Its
just reflective of bull market bull; its the flashing daily scoreboard
recorded in a casino that has been juiced by the greatest central bank
monetary fraud in human history.
More
"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.
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished February
DJIA: +120 Down. NASDAQ: +213 Down. SP500: +169 Down.
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