Baltic Dry Index. 580 Brent Crude 58.43
LIR Gold Target in 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
The
secret of politics? Make a good treaty with Russia.
Count Otto von Bismarck.
We open with the proxy war resuming in east Ukraine. As the west rearms
its Quisling puppet President in Kiev, the Russian Patriot Minutemen in the
east seem to be taking the initiative again. What was good enough for the
American revolution supported by French money and arms, seems to be the
template for east Ukraine. A bankrupt, corrupt, Kiev Ukraine, will soon be a
bottomless pit for EU and American money. Thankfully, for now it’s only fiat
money on both sides, and there’s plenty more where that comes from.
Violence escalates in east Ukraine ahead of talks
KIEV
Reuters) - Ukraine's military accused pro-Russian rebels on Monday of using
heavy weapons that were meant to have been withdrawn under a ceasefire deal,
after one Ukrainian serviceman was killed and six wounded in rebel-held
territories.With fighting intensifying once more, the foreign ministers of Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany were due to meet in Berlin later on Monday to discuss the next steps in implementing a ceasefire agreement signed in the Belarusian capital Minsk in February.
"The rebels have not stopped firing at Ukrainian positions ... Over the past day, the enemy has used weapons banned under the Minsk agreements," Ukrainian military spokesman Oleksandr Motuzyanyk said in a televised briefing.
Under the deal, weapons bigger than 100 mm caliber, including heavy artillery and powerful rocket systems, are meant to have been withdrawn from the front line.
Motuzyanyk said rebels had fired at government troops multiple times with 120-122 mm weapons.
Meanwhile separatist officials accused government troops of firing tank and artillery rounds repeatedly at rebel positions, the separatist news agency DAN reported.
It also quoted senior rebel commander Eduard Basurin as saying two local journalists had been wounded by Ukrainian firing around Pisky, near the rebel-held city of Donetsk.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which is monitoring the implementation of the ceasefire deal, also reported a sharp spike in hostilities over the weekend.
More
Russia's Gazprom warns EU over gas, Ukraine
(Reuters) - Russia's top gas producer Gazprom warned the European Union on Monday against moves to block Moscow's plans to bypass Ukraine as a transit country for its gas to Europe and said it needed guarantees on gas purchases.Russia is pushing ahead with plans to build a pipeline to Turkey and further on to Greece via the Black Sea, in line with its plans to stop exporting gas via Ukraine by 2019.
Moscow had to drop its $40 billion South Stream pipeline via Bulgaria to Europe last year, saying it was blocked by EU regulations, choosing the Turkish Stream project instead.
"If someone thinks about blocking Turkish Stream ... it is a very serious mistake," Gazprom head Alexei Miller told a conference in Berlin, adding volumes could go to other markets and construction of the pipeline could be paused if necessary.
Speaking to reporters in Berlin, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said Russia did not plan to extend its gas transit deal with Ukraine after the current contract expires in 2019.
Russia supplies around a third of the European Union's gas demands, though the EU is trying to diversify away from energy supplies from Russia. Relations have cooled over Moscow's role in the Ukrainian conflict.
Miller said the EU had to show an assurance of future gas purchases from Russia. He said Gazprom could produce 617 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas per year, while in 2014 output was 444 bcm, leading to excessive idle capacity.
"We don't hear the main statement that Europe will rely on Russian gas ... We fully bear the risks of creating new production capacities," he said, warning that the gas which Europe refuses to buy may be diverted to Asia.
Gazprom has clinched a deal to supply China with 38 bcm of east Siberian gas per year starting from 2018. It also wants to supply an additional 30 bcm annually to China from west Siberia.
Miller also said gas prices for Europe will increase in the final quarter of the year, tracking higher oil prices, while Russian gas exports will increase this year from 147 bcm in 2014 to exceed the previous record of 162 bcm set in 2013.
More
Russia opens way to missile deliveries to Iran, starts oil-for-goods swap
MOSCOW |
(Reuters) - Russia paved
the way on Monday for missile system deliveries to Iran and started an
oil-for-goods swap, signaling that Moscow may have a head-start in the race to
benefit from an eventual lifting of sanctions on Tehran.The moves come after world powers, including Russia, reached an interim deal with Iran this month on curbing its nuclear program.
The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin signed a decree ending a self-imposed ban on delivering the S-300 anti-missile rocket system to Iran, removing a major irritant between the two after Moscow canceled a corresponding contract in 2010 under pressure from the West.
A senior government official said separately that Russia has started supplying grain, equipment and construction materials to Iran in exchange for crude oil under a barter deal.
Sources told Reuters more than a year ago that a deal worth up to $20 billion was being discussed and would involve Russia buying up to 500,000 barrels of Iranian oil a day.
Officials from the two countries have issued contradictory statements since then on whether a deal has been signed, but Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Monday one was already being implemented.
"I wanted to draw your attention to the rolling out of the oil-for-goods deal, which is on a very significant scale," Ryabkov told a briefing with members of the upper house of parliament on the talks with Iran.
"In exchange for Iranian crude oil supplies, we are delivering certain products. This is not banned or limited under the current sanctions regime."
More
And in the EUSSR, the Land of Brotherly Love, the wealth destruction
continues apace. Neither side in the Berlin v Athens clash wants a peaceful
outcome. Neither side will get one. Stay long fully paid up physical precious
metals. A house divided cannot stand. The EUSSR has never been more divided
than in 2015. And just wait until the UK gets divided after the General Election
on May 7th. Europe: Abandon hope all ye who enter here.
Greek finance ministry hits back at German newspaper report
The mood between Greece's newly-elected leftist government and its euro zone partners has been tense during negotiations that will determine whether the cash-strapped country deserves further financial aid by its EU/IMF lenders.
Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung cited participants at last week's meeting as saying that they were disappointed by Athens' lack of movement in its plans, adding that the Greek representative just asked where the money was "like a taxi driver" and insisted his country would soon be bankrupt.
"When the readers of FAS read the minutes of the Euro Working Group meeting the newspaper will have difficulty justifying its headline and the content of its article," the finance ministry said. "Such reports undermine the negotiation and Europe."
A meeting of deputy finance ministers - called the Euro Working Group - on Thursday gave Athens a six working day deadline to present a revised economic reform plan before euro zone finance ministers meet on April 24 to decide whether to unlock emergency funding to keep Greece afloat.
Technical teams from Greece and its international lenders held a teleconference on Saturday to outline the agenda of talks in the coming days, a Greek finance ministry official said.
Greece's biggest creditor Germany has said the euro zone would give Athens no extra funds until it has a more detailed list of reforms.
People
never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.
Count
Otto von Bismarck.
At the Comex silver
depositories Monday final figures were: Registered 62.95 Moz, Eligible 111.99
Moz, Total 174.94 Moz.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
Next, the future of energy based on the sun.
The $5 Billion Race to Build a Better Battery
Young companies staked by big backers are challenging fossil fuels with new ways to hold sun and wind power in the $50 billion energy storage market.
5:01 AM BST April 14, 2015
Professor Donald Sadoway remembers chuckling at an e-mail in August
2009 from a woman claiming to represent Bill Gates. The world’s
richest man had taken Sadoway’s Introduction to Solid State Chemistry online,
the message explained. Gates wondered if he could meet the guy teaching the
popular MIT course the next time the billionaire was in the Boston area, Bloomberg Markets magazine
will report in its May issue. “I thought it was a student prank,” says
Sadoway, who’s spent more than a decade melting metals in search of a cheap,
long-life battery that might wean the world off dirty energy. He’d almost
forgotten the note when Gates’s assistant wrote again to plead for a response.A month later, Gates and Sadoway were swapping ideas on curbing climate change in the chemist’s second-story office on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus. They discussed progress on batteries to help solar and wind compete with fossil fuels. Gates said to call when Sadoway was ready to start a company. “He agreed to be an angel investor,” Sadoway says. “It would have been tough without that support.”
Sadoway is ready. He and a handful of scientists with young companies and big backers say they have a shot at solving a vexing problem: how to store and deliver power around the clock so sustainable energies can become viable alternatives to fossil fuels. How these storage projects are allowing utility power customers to defect from the grid is one of the topics for debate this week at the Bloomberg New Energy Finance conference in New York. Today’s nickel-cadmium and lithium-ion offerings aren’t up to the task. They can’t run a home for more than a few hours or most cars for more than 100 miles (160 kilometers). At about $400 per kilowatt-hour, they’re double the price analysts say will unleash widespread green power. “Developing a storage system beyond lithium-ion is critical to unlocking the value of electric vehicles and renewable energy,” says Andrew Chung, a partner at Menlo Park, California–based venture capital firm Khosla Ventures.
The timing for inventors—and investors—may finally be right. Wind turbines accounted for 45 percent of new U.S. power production last year, while solar made up 34 percent of fresh capacity worldwide. Storing this energy when the sun isn’t shining or a breeze isn’t blowing has remained an expensive hurdle. Battery believers say that’s changing. They’ve invested more than $5 billion in the past decade, racing to get technologies to market. They’re betting new batteries can hold enough clean energy to run a car, home, or campus; store power from wind or solar farms; and make dirty electricity grids greener by replacing generators and reducing the need for more fossil fuel plants.
This market for storage capacity will increase almost 10-fold in three years to 2,400 megawatts, equal to six natural gas turbines, Navigant Consulting says.
Gates made good on his pledge to Sadoway with an undisclosed investment in 2011. The money helped form Ambri, a nod to the company’s roots in Cambridge, Massachusetts. (Gates declined to comment for this story.) Billionaire Nick Pritzker and his son Joby are backing Pittsburgh-based Aquion Energy through their Prelude Ventures and Tao Invest funds. At Aquion, a Carnegie Mellon University professor is repurposing a factory that made Volkswagens and Sony TVs to fashion batteries for residences and hotels. Technology from California’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has support from VC Vinod Khosla. The top three U.S. automakers are testing the lab’s lithium polymer product, which powers cars and homes. Sales are expected next year.
More money will flow to the global, $50 billion-a-year battery industry as the U.S., China, and Germany scramble to cut greenhouse gases. The market includes everything from flashlights and home solar to power sources for islands and storage that can fortify grids. A dozen startups are chasing the pot in a field dominated by Panasonic and LG Electronics, which are advancing their own offerings. “It’s a fantastic time, with some really strong technologies,” says Venkat Srinivasan, who leads storage research at Berkeley Lab.
More
The
great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and
majority decisions but by iron and blood.
Count
Otto von Bismarck.
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished March
DJIA: +118 Down. NASDAQ: +209 Down. SP500: +161 Down.
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