Baltic Dry Index. 568 +04 Brent Crude 53.44
LIR Gold Target in 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
I seen a peanut stand /And heard a rubber band /I've seen a needle that winked its eye / But I been done seen about everything / When I see an elephant fly.
The talking chair, with apologies to Dumbo.
Note, due to other commitments tomorrow, the next LIR update will be on Friday.
It’s Fedster day. Later today the talking chair gets to sing like a
canary. But will the song be dovish or hawkish? Do the Great Vampire Squids get
the green light for a summer of manic madness buying, or do they get hit with a
surprise bout of shock and awe panic selling? Everyone is betting on manic
madness, but yet…. Asia and Europe are increasingly hedging their bets that
something might yet go wrong. That America and they can’t survive another
Lehman like shock to the Great Nixonian Error of fiat money, and the gargantuan
unrepayable credit/debt boom it generated. When the next Lehman hits or a new
recession arrives, we all turn into Greece.
Below, rising signs of fear. Though ANZ bank sticks to gold pricing in
US dollars, in the currency wars to the bottom, in many local currencies gold
is already trading at all-time highs. China is now rumoured to hold more gold
bullion than Uncle Scam.
Gold Demand in Asia Seen Doubling as ANZ Predicts Record Prices
3:59 AM GMT March 18,
2015
(Bloomberg) -- Gold demand in Asia is set to double by 2030 and boost prices
to a record as investment and jewelry purchases climb, according to Australia
& New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. Demand from retail and institutional investors will jump to almost 5,000 metric tons a year by 2030 from 2,500 tons, analysts including Warren Hogan and Victor Thianpiriya said in a report. Prices may rise to more than $2,000 an ounce by 2025 and to $2,400 by 2030, they said. The bank says it supplied more than 20 percent of China’s gold imports last year.
Bullion is trading near the lowest level since 2010 and last year posted the first back-to-back annual drop in 14 years as assets in exchange-traded products contracted, the dollar strengthened and U.S. equities surged. Demand in India and China, the world’s biggest buyers, will total 900 tons to 1,000 tons each this year and central banks will buy at least 400 tons, according to the World Gold Council.
“The bedrock, the anchor of our views of increasing demand for physical gold will come from rising incomes in Asia,” Hogan, chief economist at ANZ, said by phone from Sydney on Wednesday. “Gold is going to have that investment role and it’s going to become more prominent.”
While the bank has a short-term target of $1,100, prices will increase through 2030 on growing wealth in Asia, rising investment by money managers and expanding holdings at emerging-market central banks, the bank said. If China’s shift to a more open economy is bumpy and global financial instability continues, the price may surge to $3,230, it said.
Gold for immediate delivery was at $1,151.04 at 11:42 a.m. in Singapore on Wednesday. Prices climbed to a record $1,921.17 in 2011 and fell to a four-year low of $1,132.16 in November.
Bullion demand may also expand as aging investors boost holdings in defensive assets and the development of Asia’s financial systems increases funds under management, Hogan said. Central banks may add to holdings to diversify reserves and shore up confidence in newly floated currencies, he said.
Governments globally added 477.2 tons to reserves in 2014, the second-biggest increase in 50 years, according to the London-based World Gold Council. Central banks have increased reserves for the past five years, a reversal from two decades of selling since the late 1980s.
ANZ’s forecasts include China, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. The bank says it handled the equivalent of 12 percent of global primary production last year, making it one of the world’s biggest physical gold distributors.
In more Great
Nixonian Error of fiat currency news, the Great Slow Motion train wreck called aging
Japan just goes from bad to worse. Japan’s official policy is forcing its old
age pensioner society out of relatively safe if unprofitable Japanese bonds,
into highly risky foreign stocks at the height of the latest unsustainable
central bankster stock bubble. That this will end badly isn’t in doubt, only
when and how badly for Japan’s pensioner society.
Japan Pensions Sell Record $46 Billion Bonds to Buy Stocks
1:35 AM GMT March 18,
2015
The $1.1 trillion Government
Pension Investment Fund and its smaller peers almost doubled net sales of
Japanese government bonds to 5.56 trillion yen ($46 billion) in the fourth
quarter, the most in Bank of Japan figures dating back to 1998. They bought an
unprecedented 2.39 trillion yen of foreign stocks and bonds. Selling of JGBs
and buying of overseas securities has continued for six straight quarters.
GPIF posted its largest
investment gain in almost two years last quarter after shifting more money into
stocks from Japanese bonds, as it came under government pressure to boost
returns to cover payouts for the world’s fastest-aging population. The
Federation of National Public Service Personnel Mutual Aid Associations, last
month said it will boost its investments in foreign stocks and bonds and cut
exposure to domestic debt, matching the plan by GPIF.
“It seems like three other civil
service funds have yet to move,” Takafumi Yamawaki, the chief rates strategist
in Tokyo at JPMorgan Chase & Co., said referring to data from the BOJ and
and GPIF.
“That means there is still some room left for the shift to take
place.”
Japan’s public pension funds
raised domestic stock holdings for a fifth quarter, adding a net 1.73 trillion
yen, the most since 2009. They held 5.6 percent of a record 1.023 quadrillion
yen of outstanding JGBs at the end of December. The biggest holder, the BOJ,
owned 25 percent of the total as of then, it said Wednesday in Tokyo.
More
Risks Lurk Beneath a QE-led Bonanza in World Stocks
by Wall Street Journal •
For now, fund managers are duly
piling in, following the logic of a world in which hyper-easy monetary
conditions have pushed bond yields sharply lower, making stocks comparatively
attractive.
So far this year, $36 billion has
flowed into European equity funds and $7.6 billion into Japanese stock funds,
with $15 billion going to “international” developed-market equity funds, said
fund tracker EPFR. The three categories together more than offset net outflows
from U.S. and emerging-market equities, which had previously enjoyed strong
gains.
“In Europe and Japan, equities
are the only game in town,” says Scott Minerd, global chief investment officer
at Guggenheim Investments, which has $220 billion under management. German
stocks provide a dividend yield, reflecting the annual payout as a share of the
current stock price, of “something in the neighborhood of 3%. Versus German
bunds with negative yields, that’s compelling place to be.”
Behind these numbers are the
asset-buying programs – also known as quantitative easing, or QE – instituted
by the Bank of Japan and European Central Bank.
The BOJ’s purchases of both bonds
and stock index-based exchange-traded funds are topping up Japan’s financial
system each month with an average 6.7 trillion yen, or $56 billion. And with
the Government Pension Investment Fund having amended its mandate to allow
equities in its $1.1 trillion portfolio, private money managers looking to
deploy that money have been given an unsubtle hint on where to put it.
The result: Tokyo’s Nikkei index
is up 10% since Dec. 31 to a 15-year high.
In the eurozone, the ECB’s newly
launched €60 billion-per-month program has pushed yields on various government
bonds below zero.
This buying spree is helping
markets deal with the fact that the Fed is now gingerly preparing to increase
interest rates, having last year ended a QE program that was itself
instrumental in driving U.S. stocks to record highs.
----The catch: The blind, buy-at-all-costs investing approach fostered by QE could be doing lasting damage to the structure of Western, free-market economies.
Big inflows are creating price
distortions in markets that could do long-term damage to their role as
allocators of capital and fuel destructive economic tensions.
Negative yield numbers for “risk-free”
benchmarks in Europe, which are traditionally used as the discount rates for
making net-present value calculations, mean “it’s a new era where nobody knows
how to value equities,” says Megan Greene, chief economist for John Hancock
Asset Management, which has $277 billion under management. “You can only
imagine what distortions will crop up.”
Indiscriminate increases in all
stocks undermine markets’ capacity to distinguish between winners and losers.
More
Next up Greece. Does Grexit come
this weekend?
Greece Optimist Throws in Towel Seeing Tsipras Go ‘Plain Nuts’
9:51 AM GMT March 16,
2015
(Bloomberg) -- Erik Nielsen likes
to spend Sunday mornings ruminating over the world economy at a cafe near his
west London home.
Finding his favored Caffe Nero
too crowded on Mother’s Day, the chief global economist of UniCredit Bank AG
beat a retreat to his own study. From there, he also changed direction on
Greece.
“I am throwing in the towel,”
Nielsen wrote in his “Sunday Wrap” report. “If they don’t want to play by the
rules (and the past weeks give me little hope,) they should get ready to
leave!”
“And please appreciate what a
difficult conclusion that is to draw for a deeply committed European like
myself,” said Nielsen, who previously worked at the International Monetary Fund
and Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
The reason? Greek Prime Minister
Alexis Tsipras’s call last week that Germany pay World War II reparations shows
things have gone “plain nuts” in Athens. That, combined with what he called
“blatant hypocrisy” and ignorance of the constraints facing the European
Central Bank, shows all the parties need to brace for Greece’s exit from the
euro.
More
We end for Fed day, with the UN reopening an old wound. Did the CIA or
others, assassinate the UN Secretary General in 1961? They wouldn’t do a thing
like that would they? Surely it’s only Putin’s dastardly Russians that assassinate
and go around staging coups? The UN’s new team of investigators might do well
to stay away from planes though.
Did Western agents assassinate the UN Secretary General in 1961?: Four theories
As the UN reopens its investigation into the plane crash that killed Dag Hammarskjold, its second secretary general, some are pointing fingers at the United States and Europe
The United Nations has ordered a
new investigation into the mysterious 1961 African plane crash that claimed the life of its
secretary general at a time of high international intrigue and intervention by
outside powers as the post-colonial continent took shape.
The flight was carrying Dag Hammarskjold,
the UN’s Swedish chief, on a high-stakes mission to negotiate
with rebels in Katanga, a breakaway mineral-rich province of Congo that was
backed by Belgian mercenaries and Western governments and business.
Pilot error was officially blamed
after the DC6 plane carrying the UN’s second secretary general crashed into the
bush, killing all 16 onboard, in the then British protectorate of Northern
Rhodesia (now Zambia).
But there were immediately
competing theories that the plane had been shot down, possibly by American agents or European
mercenaries, as Hammarskjold was believed to be about to broker a deal opposed
by Western interests.
A commission of retired
international judges in 2013 called for a new investigation after hearing
"persuasive evidence" that the plane was shot down.
The UN has now announced that it
is ordering a new review by an independent panel led Mohamed Othman, a
Tanzanian jurist, and assisted by Kerryn Macaulay, an Australian aviation
specialist, and Henrik Larsen, a Danish ballistics expert.
The team of experts is expected
to travel to the crash scene. But for their mission to succeed, they will also
need access to intelligence held by the US, Britain and other European states
who have been urged to hand over the material.
More than five decades later, the
new panel may be the last chance to determine what really happened to Mr
Hammarskjold’s plane that night.
----Counterpoint: Even back in
1961, that conclusion sounded a bit too convenient given Hammarskjold's
powerful foes. Former president Harry Truman's
take? “He was on the point of getting something done when they killed
him," said Truman. "Notice that I said ‘when they killed him’.”
More
Caught On Tape: State Department's Psaki Smirks About US Policy Supporting Coups
Submitted
by Tyler Durden on
03/16/2015 23:15 -0400
Submitted
by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,In case you weren’t aware, Venezuelan authorities recently accused the U.S. of attempts to overthrow its government. In a press conference, U.S. State Department spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, vehemently denied such claims and then went ahead and spouted talking points so ridiculous, only a complete ignoramus could believe them. She said:
As a matter of long-standing policy, the United States does not support political transitions by non-constitutional means.
Interesting, because it seems to me that the primary role of U.S. foreign policy throughout my lifetime has been specifically to initiate political transitions by non-constitutional means.
The line was simply too much to bear for some members of the press. One guy in particular, incredulously asked her to elaborate on her definition of “long-standing” in light of the historical reality that the U.S. government has been constantly involving itself in coups all over the world, particularly in Latin America.
What’s even more amazing than the fact that the “authorities” remain so willing to publicly spout such easily disprovable propaganda, is her reaction once see realizes she’s been caught. She backpedals and squirms, but the most disturbing thing is you can see a subtle smirk come across her face. She knows how ridiculous the statement is and can’t keep it together once she’s called out
---Watch the clip below, and pay particularly close attention to Jen Psaki’s face from around the 57 second mark.
More
You can get much further with a kind word and a
gun, than you can with a kind word alone.
John Kerry, with apologies to Al Capone.
At the Comex silver
depositories Tuesday final figures were: Registered 69.43 Moz, Eligible 107.00
Moz, Total 176.43 Moz.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
Today, welcome to the world that fiat currencies to
support dollar hegemony, central banksterism, economic warfare, BRIC suppression, and miners and agricultural
un-planning has wrought. Short termism, for re-election or fiat currency
advantage and manipulation, are everywhere, sponsored by the fiat currency
central banksters. All in the pay of the corrupt politicians, despite the
pretence of independence. Real business planning and competition has been
trashed. We have entered a new dark age.
Are the good times over for growth in U.S. shale gas?
Reuters) - U.S. natural gas
production could decline in 2016 for the first time in 10 years, driven by low
oil prices after a decade of gangbusters growth from shale plays.
While most analysts forecast gas
production will continue growing year-over-year, albeit at a slower pace, a
couple of outlier analysts believe low oil and gas prices will prompt drillers
to cut spending enough to reduce gas production next year.
Any talk of cutbacks is an early
sign that low oil prices have slowed the U.S. shale gas boom that has
revolutionized global markets and is expected to transform the nation into a
net exporter of gas by the end of the decade.
U.S. gas production has increased
every year from 51.9 billion cubic feet per day in 2005 to a record 74.4 bcfd
in 2014, a 43 percent increase. The U.S. Energy Information Administration
expects gas output to reach 78.4 bcfd in 2015 and 80.0 in 2016.
The lack of consensus among
analysts shows how much still depends on what oil prices do in the coming
months.
U.S. crude oil futures CLc1 fell
about 60 percent from a high over $107 a barrel in June to a six-year low under
$43 on Tuesday.
"It all depends on market
prices. If we get higher gas and oil prices in the next three or four months
than gas production won't decline next year," said Randall Collum,
Managing Director, Supply Analytics, at energy data provider Genscape, which
expects gas production to fall 1.1 bcfd next year.
Any pullback in gas production
was considered unthinkable just six months ago.
"If you look back at what we
said in October when oil was trading around $80 a barrel, we were forecasting
gas production would grow by 2 bcfd in 2016," Collum said.
Analysts at Bank of America
Merrill Lynch also forecast gas production would decline in 2016.
The bank's call is for a 1.3-bcfd
production decline next year from 2015 due to declining growth in output from
the Marcellus and Utica shales in the Northeast in response to a 50 percent
drop in natural gas liquids prices, which are linked to oil prices.
More
We work all day/We work all night/We never
learned/To read or write/We're happy-hearted roustabouts!/When other folks/have
gone to bed/We slave until/We're almost dead/We're happy-hearted roustabouts!
Joe Sixpack, former fracker, with apologies to
Dumbo.
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished February
DJIA: +120 Down. NASDAQ: +213 Down. SP500: +169 Down.
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