Friday 29 May 2015

Britain, Give Me Back My Gold!



Baltic Dry Index. 588 +01       Brent Crude 63.18

LIR Gold Target in 2019: $30,000.  Revised due to QE programs.

Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied.

Otto von Bismarck.

Suddenly everyone in Germany and Austria wants to spend more time at home admiring their gold. This requires moving it back from America, in the case of Germany, who may or may not still have it, as they don’t seem able to return it PDQ, and moving it back from the Bank of England in the case of Austria, unless by mistake, it became part of “Brown’s bottom,” the sale of “Britain’s” gold in the mid to high $200s in the late 1990s. If it did, 
The Old Lady might have a little trouble supplying Austria by 2020. Perhaps the Chinese or Indians might lend us some gold?

Stay long fully paid up physical precious metals held outside of banks and the MF Global financial mafia.

'Curiouser and curiouser!” Cried Chancellor Osborne (he was so much surprised, that for the moment he quite forgot how to speak good English).

Austria plan to repatriate gold not linked to Brexit talk: Nowotny

Thu May 28, 2015 6:17am EDT
A decision by the Austrian central bank to repatriate some gold from London by 2020 is "absolutely not" related to the possibility that Britain will leave the European Union, Governor Ewald Nowotny told a news conference on Thursday.

He said it instead reflected a trend among central banks, including Germany's Bundesbank, to hold more reserves at home.

Revealed: why Gordon Brown sold Britain's gold at a knock-down price

Last updated: July 5th, 2012
A great deal of Gordon Brown’s economic strategy would strike a sane man as troubling. Not a great deal was mysterious. The orgy of consumption spending, frequent extensions of the cycle over which he would “borrow to invest”, proclamations of the “end of boom and bust”: these are part of the armoury of modern politicians, of all political hues.

One decision stands out as downright bizarre, however: the sale of the majority of Britain’s gold reserves for prices between $256 and $296 an ounce, only to watch it soar so far as $1,615 per ounce today.

When Brown decided to dispose of almost 400 tonnes of gold between 1999 and 2002, he did two distinctly odd things.

First, he broke with convention and announced the sale well in advance, giving the market notice that it was shortly to be flooded and forcing down the spot price. This was apparently done in the interests of “open government”, but had the effect of sending the spot price of gold to a 20-year low, as implied by basic supply and demand theory.

Second, the Treasury elected to sell its gold via auction. Again, this broke with the standard model. 
The price of gold was usually determined at a morning and afternoon "fix" between representatives of big banks whose network of smaller bank clients and private orders allowed them to determine the exact price at which demand met with supply.

---- It seemed almost as if the Treasury was trying to achieve the lowest price possible for the public’s gold. It was.

One of the most popular trading plays of the late 1990s was the carry trade, particularly the gold carry trade.

In this a bank would borrow gold from another financial institution for a set period, and pay a token sum relative to the overall value of that gold for the privilege.

Once control of the gold had been passed over, the bank would then immediately sell it for its full market value. The proceeds would be invested in an alternative product which was predicted to generate a better return over the period than gold which was enduring a spell of relative price stability, even decline.

At the end of the allotted period, the bank would sell its investment and use the proceeds to buy back the amount of gold it had originally borrowed. This gold would be returned to the lender. The borrowing bank would trouser the difference between the two prices.

This plan worked brilliantly when gold fell and the other asset – for the bank at the heart of this case, yen-backed securities – rose. When the prices moved the other way, the banks were in trouble.

This is what had happened on an enormous scale by early 1999. One globally significant US bank in particular is understood to have been heavily short on two tonnes of gold, enough to call into question its solvency if redemption occurred at the prevailing price.
More

From Wednesday’s LIR.
What does China know that we don’t? A London Bullion Market default? Fort Knox empty? All the West’s gold, MF Globalled? Stay long fully paid up physical precious metals. Gold and silver look set to explode higher.

China sets up giant gold fund to expand its market power

Published: May 27, 2015 12:53 a.m. ET
HONG KONG (MarketWatch) — China has set up its largest gold-investment fund ever, expected to total 100 billion yuan ($16 billion), aiming to invest in mining projects in the region and enhance Chinese influence in global gold markets, local media reports said Wednesday.

The “Silk Road Gold Fund” — led by the Shanghai Gold Exchange and others — is reportedly focused on investing in gold projects as part of China’s “New Silk Road” push to deepen economic ties with other countries in the region, particularly those along the ancient Silk Road trade route linking Eastern and Western Asia. In fact, the fund’s founding late last week took place in Xi’an, the historic starting point of the Silk Road.
More

Next, who facilitated all the alleged wrongdoing at FIFA? Will America’s “Justice Department” really go after American banks? Or will they get a walk like America’s water boarders? My money is on a walk. As for the non-American banks, well lately that’s another thing. Like Heinz, Uncle Scam has 57 varieties of “Super Max” prisons.  Of course, perps are supposedly  innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, but that’s so last century.

Wall Street banks are being drawn into the FIFA bribery probe

Published: May 28, 2015 8:53 a.m. ET
Major global banks — including Wall Street giants Citigroup and J.P. Morgan — could be drawn into the sweeping probe into alleged racketeering, wire fraud and corruption in the soccer world, as investigators trawl through evidence tied to the FIFA bribery scandal.

A raft of banks have been named in the 164-page indictment that the U.S. Department of Justice released Wednesday, alleging that nine soccer officials from the sport’s top governing body, FIFA, and five sports executives were part of a 24-year corruption scheme involving more than $150 million in bribes.

Among major financial institutions allegedly used to facilitate payments and wire transfers are J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. JPM, -0.41% Citigroup Inc. C, -0.58% Bank of America Corp. BAC, -0.42% HSBC Holdings PLC HSBA, -0.27% HSBC, -0.25% 0005, +0.82% UBS AG UBSN, +0.48% UBS, +0.60%  and Julius Baer Gruppe AG BAER, +0.00% according to indictment.

“Part of our investigation will look at the conduct of the financial institutions to see whether they were cognizant of the fact they were helping launder these bribe payments,” Kelly T. Currie, acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said at a news conference on Wednesday, according to media reports. “It’s too early to say whether there’s any problematic behavior, but it will be part of our investigation.”

None of the banks has been accused of wrongdoing. Citi, Bank of America, Citi and HSBC weren’t immediately available for comment. Representatives of UBS and J.P. Morgan declined to comment, while a representative from Julius Baer said he wasn’t able to comment on the case but added that the bank always cooperates with authorities when requested.

According to the FIFA indictment, the U.S. banking sector played a central role in the alleged bribery scheme.

As early as the 1990s, but increasingly in the 2000s and 2010s, “the defendants and their co-conspirators relied heavily on the United States financial system,” the charges state. “This reliance was significant and sustained and was one of the central methods and means through which they promoted and concealed their schemes.”

Many of the transactions involved millions of dollars that would pass through U.S. bank accounts before allegedly being redirected to personal accounts. In one example, transactions totaling $10 million were alleged to have been wired from a FIFA account in Switzerland to a Bank of America account in New York to be credited to accounts held by the Caribbean Football Union (CFU) and CONCACAF, the continental confederation under FIFA headquartered in the United States.
More

Fifa bribes scandal: Police probe the British connection

City of London police are in contact with the FBI over football corruption inquiry

Edward Malnick, Luke Heighton 10:23PM BST 28 May 2015
British police are investigating Fifa corruption after links to UK banks and meetings in London were discovered, the Telegraph has learnt.

Officers from the City of London are in contact with the FBI regarding the inquiry into World Cup corruption and have been “assisting” since the “early stages” of the investigation, sources confirmed.

The US indictment gives details of a meeting in London where bribes were agreed.

It also alleges that bank accounts held by HSBC and Barclays were used to transfer funds and gives details of a payment to “an account of a luxury yacht manufacturer” in the UK.

On Thursday the Government urged the Serious Fraud Office to investigate British links to the scandal.

---- One of the men arrested by Swiss authorities in Zurich earlier this week – Costas Takkas – is a British citizen and it is likely that police will have examined bank accounts held in his name.

Mr Takkas is a former general secretary of the Cayman Islands Football Association and, according to prosecutors, used his global network of bank accounts to funnel bribes for another football official, who has also been arrested.
More

In El Nino news, are Mexico and America’s Great Rains linked?

El Nino Shows Global Reach With Australia-to-Mexico Fallout

3:05 AM BST  May 28, 2015
A strengthening El Nino will bring a drier winter to Australia’s east, while the west is set for a wetter period, the country’s forecasters said, adding to warnings the pattern may have a global impact from the rice lands of the Philippines to the food markets of Mexico.

The period from June to August is likely to be drier-than-normal in southern and inland Queensland, northern and eastern New South Wales and eastern Victoria, the Melbourne-based Bureau of Meteorology said in a monthly update on Thursday. Southern Western Australia, the country’s top wheat producer, is set for more rain than normal, it said.

An El Nino was declared this month by Australia, and forecasters worldwide are seeking to map the probable impact of the pattern that can bake Asia, bring wetter weather to South America and crimp the frequency of Atlantic hurricanes. While the strength of the event doesn’t always correspond with its impact on Australian rainfall, it increases the risk of drought, according to the bureau. This year’s El Nino, which is intensifying, is the first since 2010.

----El Ninos are caused by periodic warmings of the equatorial Pacific and can roil agricultural markets as farmers contend with drought or too much rain. Commodity prices including foodstuffs typically rise in the wake of an event, according to a working paper published by the International Monetary Fund in April, which examined the impact on 33 countries.

In the Philippines, timely imports will be important to ease El Nino’s effect on rice and agriculture, National Economic & Development Authority Deputy Director General Manny Esguerra said at a briefing in Manila on Thursday. The effect on growth depends on how prolonged the event is, Esguerra said.

The Southeast Asian country, which has already reported damage to rice and corn crops from this year’s El Nino, imports rice as local output falls short of demand. The event may spur a rapid rise in Philippine food prices, the IMF said on Tuesday.

----Of the 26 El Ninos since 1900, 17 have resulted in widespread drought in Australia, according to the bureau. The Australian Bureau of Agricultural & Resource Economics & Sciences is set to update its wheat forecast in June.

The Atlantic hurricane season will be less active than usual this year as the El Nino helps limit storm development, U.S. government forecasters said on Wednesday. The season may produce six to 11 named storms through Nov. 30 and three to six of those storms may become hurricanes, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The El Nino will probably reverse a slide in agricultural prices in Mexico and boost the local inflation rate in as little as six months, according to BNP Paribas SA. Vietnam’s coffee is at most risk from the pattern due to the inconsistent nature of rainfall, according to Commodity Weather Group LLC.

The Bloomberg Agriculture Subindex, which tracks farm commodities from sugar and coffee to corn and wheat, slumped 29 percent in the past year. The gauge is about 62 percent below the record reached in May 1997. The 1997-1998 El Nino was the strongest on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
More

"As fewer and fewer people have confidence in paper as a store of value, the price of gold will continue to rise. The history of fiat money is little more than a register of monetary follies and inflations. Our present age merely affords another entry in this dismal register."

Hans F. Sennholz

At the Comex silver depositories Thursday final figures were: Registered 60.86 Moz, Eligible 117.85 Moz, Total 178.71 Moz.  

Crooks and Scoundrels Corner

The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.

Today, just why was the ECB leaking sensitive confidential information to the select few, crony insiders in London?  Cui bono?

ECB Asked by EU Ombudsman to Explain Closed-Doors Speech

3:28 PM BST  May 28, 2015
The European Central Bank should explain why market-sensitive information was disclosed to a limited audience in a speech on May 18, the European Union’s ombudsman said.

“I should be grateful if the ECB could provide a more detailed account of the incident in question and in particular of the measures it has taken to avoid a similar incident,” the ombudsman, Emily O’Reilly, said in a letter to ECB President Mario Draghi published on her office’s website. “For obvious reasons, your reply should in principle be public.”

A spokesman for the ECB said it will respond to the request and that the answer will be public.

The ombudsman’s letter relates to a dinner speech by ECB Executive Board member Benoit Coeure after a restricted-access event in London, which was co-hosted by a research group funded by hedge fund Brevan Howard Asset Management. He said the central bank planned to accelerate bond purchases in May and June to avoid falling short of its quantitative-easing target during the summer lull. The euro fell and bonds and stocks rallied when the ECB published the speech online the next day.

“The ECB has explained that the delay between the delivery and publication of the speech in question resulted from an ‘internal procedural error’ and that the ECB had taken steps to ensure that there would be no repeat of the problem,” O’Reilly said. “I would be grateful to receive a reply from the ECB within the next fortnight.”

The EU ombudsman investigates complaints about maladministration in EU institutions, bodies, offices, and agencies, according to a document published on its website explaining its functions. The letter doesn’t say who filed a complaint against the ECB.

The ECB said that it had originally planned to release Coeure’s remarks on the day of the event. It also said the speech was covered by Chatham House Rules, meaning it wouldn’t normally be published.
More

Chatham House Rule

When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed.


Solar  & Related Update.

With events happening fast in the development of solar power, I’ve added this new section. Updates as they get reported.  

Today, are subsidies the solution or part of the problem?

Big Subsidies Make Solar Power Attractive for Home Developers

Solar-battery systems help ‘to create sizzle’ for Sacramento development

By Rebecca Smith and Cassandra Sweet May 28, 2015 4:04 p.m. ET
Sacramento developer Mark Wiese added solar-battery systems to a 34-home project his Pacific Housing Inc. built “to create sizzle.” Now he aims to put the green solution into a 91-home development for lower-income buyers.

Most public money Mr. Wiese received to defray the cost of adding solar-battery combinations came from a California program that subsidizes self-generating power. But for the next development, where homes will sell for about $200,000, he plans to tap a 30% federal tax credit to help pay for solar-battery systems in addition to local rebates.

Ken Munson, chief executive of Sunverge Energy Inc. which builds the systems Pacific Housing uses, says battery costs have plunged nearly 60% since 2009.

“We expect it to go down by a third in the next couple of years,” he said.

Mr. Wiese anticipates paying as little as $10,000 for the new systems—less than half what they cost a year ago. He thinks he will be able to offset those costs with subsidies. But even if a builder tacked a $10,000 system of solar panels plus batteries onto a new home, it would add very little expense. It would cost $76.50 a month if financed at 4.5% interest for 15 years, for example.

In Sacramento, where Mr. Wiese is building, the local utility plans to roll out variable demand-driven electricity rates in the summer of 2018. The rates are expected to range from 8 cents to 30 cents a kilowatt-hour. At such prices, a home that generates excess power and sells it back to the grid when prices are high—but charges up its batteries free using solar panels or during low-cost, low-demand times—could largely cover the cost of an unsubsidized system.

My own view is that we've come too far to turn back the clock on solar power. But that said, we need to get rid of the subsidies, rebates, mandates, and the like. We need to stop politicians and bureaucrats misdirecting resources, and misallocating capital into pet projects. Solar PV will come in due time because the power source is free, almost universal, requires no moving parts, and compared to today's power production sources, is clean, especially of particulates. The increasingly large problem in mega cities.

Edison, Bell, Parsons, Westinghouse, Ford, Daimler and Siemens, to name just a few, didn't need or ask for subsidies. Get rid of the malinvestment due to well-intentioned but wrong subsidy, and the market will function just fine. EVs that make sense will appear in due time. Effective and efficient solar PV will be developed and implemented as it becomes cost effective. Right now we stand only at the start of our new Carbon Age.  But unlike every other "New Age" before it, Stone, Bronze, Iron, Coal, Canal, Steam, Railway, Electric, Auto, Silicon, this Carbon Age is being pre-empted by subsidies driven by politicians and special interests who think that they know the future and its costs better than the inventors, scientists and technicians working in the field. "Bronze" would never have followed "Stone" had that happened earlier. If there's a natural profit in solar PV, some entrepreneur will find it, develop it and make that profit.

Have a great weekend everyone.

"Gold bears the confidence of the world's millions, who value it far above the promises of politicians, far above the unbacked paper issued by governments as money substitutes. It has been that way through all recorded history. There is no reason to believe it will lose the confidence of people in the future."

Oakley R. Bramble

The monthly Coppock Indicators finished April

DJIA: +112 Down. NASDAQ: +198 Down. SP500: +150 Down.  

Thursday 28 May 2015

The Wrong Box.



Baltic Dry Index. 587 +03       Brent Crude 62.59

LIR Gold Target in 2019: $30,000.  Revised due to QE programs.

“In poor countries, officials receive explicit bribes; in D.C. they get the sophisticated, implicit, unspoken promise to work for large corporations”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

We open today deep in central bankster, financialised Casino-land. Unable to get a real recovery going to save their lives, the talking chair and the rest of the furniture, can merely stimulate (bribe) an ever more disconnected, highly erratic, stock market and bond bubble.

Below, America’s top analyst takes breakfast, lunch, and dinner away, from not so ritzy, blue-box Tiffany’s.  Meanwhile, America’s War Party attack on Russia has now opened up an iffy front to take the 2018 World Cup prize away from Russia. America’s DOJ, is now inadvertently at odds with the NY Fedster’s Wall Street bubble. When elephants fight, it’s best to get out of the way.

When Chasing The Tape—–Please Mind The Lemmings

by David Stockman • 
Prior to today’s open MarketWatch provided a reminder that the lemmings are still rampaging in the casino. With respect to Tiffany’s (TIF) pre-market earnings announcement, it telegraphed the reason why TIF soared by 12% or about $1.5 billion during the course of the trading day:

Tiffany & Co.’s stock climbed 3.5% in premarket trade Wednesday, after the luxury jewelry retailer reported better-than-expected fiscal first-quarter profit and sales, and provided an upbeat earnings outlook for the year.

Well, not exactly. Worldwide sales fell by 5%  from $1.01 billion in the April quarter last year to $962 million during the current the quarter. Same store sales dropped even more—-by 7%.

Likewise, net income of $105 million represented a 17% plunge from last year’s $126 million. Not surprisingly, however, this was greeted as rip-roaring good news because the street “consensus” had marked down expected earnings to just $91 million or by 27% from last year’s QI level.

As for the “upbeat”  earnings guidance, it amounted to this:

For the full fiscal year, Tiffany said it expects “minimal growth” in earnings per share from the $4.20 earned in fiscal 2014….

Apparently, flat is the new “upbeat”, but even then TIF didn’t actually earn $4.20 in the year ending in January. That’s the ex-items fiction that they use in the casino. TIF actually earned $3.73 per share last year.

So at today’s close of $94.50 the company was actually trading at 25X a net income number that management itself attested will be dead in the water this year; and which is at serious risk of shortfall because TIF is starting 2015 deep in the hole based on these crummy Q1 results.

Actually, upon today’s announcement Tiffany’s LTM net income computes out to $463 million. That happens to be the exact same number as the $464 million it posted for the LTM period ending way back in September 2013.

In short, TIF’s earnings have been dead in the water for several years now, but that’s not the half of it. Tiffany is the very embodiment of a piggyback rider on the worldwide financial bubble fuelled by the central banks.

Its earnings have already stalled out due to the crackdown on luxuries in China, but that’s just the tip of the diamond. The real crackdown will come when the third great financial bubble of this century finally bursts and the top 5% ratchet back sharply on their luxury jewellery purchases as they did in 2000-2001 and 2008-2009.
More

Is Nike the Unidentified Company in the FIFA Bribery Case?

7:49 PM BST  May 27, 2015
Nike Inc. said it’s cooperating with authorities on the same day the U.S. unsealed charges saying an unidentified sportswear company took part in bribing a Brazilian soccer official for a sponsorship agreement.

The deal described in an indictment of FIFA officials mirrors one obtained by Nike. The charges refer to a U.S. company that signed a partnership with the Brazilian federation in 1996. Nike, based in Beaverton, Oregon, announced its decade-long pact with Brazil that year.

“Nike believes in ethical and fair play in both business and sport and strongly opposes any form of manipulation or bribery,” the company said Wednesday in an e-mailed statement. “We have been cooperating, and will continue to cooperate, with the authorities.” Nike, which isn’t named in the indictment, declined to comment on the allegations.

Nike shares fell 0.6 percent to $102.84 on Wednesday in New York. The stock has gained 7 percent this year.

Winning the Brazilian sponsorship put Nike on the global soccer map. In 1994, its sales from soccer totaled $40 million. More than two decades later, it is challenging Adidas AG for the title of biggest brand in the sport, with revenue from soccer reaching $2.27 billion in fiscal year 2014.

Swiss police raided the luxury Baur au Lac hotel in Zurich at dawn Wednesday and arrested seven FIFA officials. Two former soccer executives were also charged by the U.S. in the wide-ranging corruption indictment, which includes counts of racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering.

In New York, Justice Department officials vowed more arrests, and to widen the investigation of FIFA officials and banks that may have been used in the alleged conspiracy.

----According to the indictment, unsealed Wednesday in federal court in Brooklyn, New York, the unidentified company made a deal to pay $160 million over 10 years for the right to exclusively sell Brazilian national team apparel and footwear.

In a separate agreement, the unidentified company allegedly paid $40 million through a Swiss bank account to an official at a firm that buys and sells marketing rights in Brazil. Some of those funds were used to pay off a “high-ranking” FIFA and Brazilian soccer executive, according to the indictment.
More

With much, if not all of FIFA, likely headed for one of America’s 57 “super-max” jails, if not Guantanamo, it looks like it’s “let’s make a deal” time in FIFA. But who rats out who, and for what? “Mad-dog” McCain wants the Russian World Cup as an American trophy.  It looks to me that Tiffany’s stock of trinkets and baubles, will be even less in demand going forwards.

We look forward to seeing the DOJ case against Major League Baseball, the NFL, the NBA, and American College Football. We won’t hold our breath though. Formula One next?

FIFA’s Paris Cash Drop: $10,000 Bundles Stacked in Suitcase

7:58 PM BST May 27, 2015
The suitcase was waiting in a hotel room in Paris, the cash inside neatly bundled into $10,000 stacks.
The money, U.S. authorities allege, was payment for one of the most sought-after prizes in world soccer: a nod from FIFA, the sport’s governing body, to host the World Cup.

That allegation, involving a bid by South Africa for the 2010 Cup, is contained in a stunning 47-count indictment unsealed Wednesday by the U.S. Justice Department, the result of a years-long investigation of corruption at FIFA.

While scandals are nothing new at FIFA, the portrait of corruption painted by federal prosecutors rivals the worst in sports history for length and breadth. Money laundering, racketeering, bribery, kickbacks and more were all embraced by FIFA officials as business as usual, the authorities say.

“The indictment alleges corruption that is rampant, systemic and deep-rooted, both abroad and here in the United States,” U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said in a statement. “It spans at least two generations of soccer officials.”

One of those officials, according to the indictment, was a former history teacher from Trinidad and Tobago named Jack Warner -- the man for whom that suitcase was allegedly waiting.

A soccer official in his native country, Warner had won an election in 1990 to become president of Concacaf, the soccer confederation that oversees Central and North America.

In 2004, FIFA’s leadership gathered to consider bids from countries that wanted to host the 2010 World Cup. Among the hopefuls were Morocco, Egypt and South Africa.

Warner had ties to the South Africans, who had failed in a bid for the 2006 World Cup. One of his relatives had organized friendly matches in South Africa for teams in Warner’s confederation, according to the indictment. So Warner authorized the relative to fly to Paris to meet with a high-ranking South African bid official in a hotel, where prosecutors said the suitcase full of cash was waiting.

Years later, in 2011, Warner directed Caribbean football officials to pick up a “gift” -- an envelope containing $40,000 in cash -- ahead of the election for FIFA’s president, according to the indictment. He became angry, it said, when he learned that a Caribbean official had told a Concacaf official in New York about the cash.

“There are some people here who think they are more pious than thou. If you’re pious, open a church, friends,” he said, according to the indictment. “Our business is our business.”
More

In other news, Greece stumbles on towards the Euroland door marked “exit.” The EUSSR now seems to be trying to push them through it.

Creditors dash Greek optimism as US warns country faces an 'abyss' of a euro exit

Hopes of a draft agreement with creditors is dismissed by European officials after warnings from the White House over a Greek "accident"
European creditors dashed hopes that Greece was finally nearing the end-stage of its bail-out negotiations, insisting both sides remained far apart on securing the embattled country’s future in the eurozone.

Greek stock markets jumped after comments from prime minister Alexis Tsipras that the country was "close" to a deal, following reports the two sides had begun the process of drafting an agreement.

"We have made many steps. We are on the final stretch towards a positive deal," said Mr Tsipras.

"This agreement will be positive for the Greek economy, this agreement will redistribute the [financial] burdens and I believe that, very soon, we will be in a position to present more information," said the Lefist premier.

Athens' benchmark closed nearly 4pc up on the day.

His comments came as officials met for talks in Brussels over the country's bail-out conditions.

But European officials moved to immediately dampen hopes that an agreement was imminent. Vice president of the European Commission Valdis Dombrovskis said both sides were "still not there yet".

“We are working very intensively to ensure a staff-level agreement," he said.
More

 

“Fine: A bribe paid by a rich man to escape the lawful penalty of his crime” 

H. L. Mencken.

At the Comex silver depositories Wednesday final figures were: Registered 60.85 Moz, Eligible 117.89 Moz, Total 178.74 Moz.  

Crooks and Scoundrels Corner

The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.

Today, once again, the case for why everyone not a pauper, should own some gold and silver. For brevity and to be conservative I’ll use gold v the USA M1 Currency Component. Source FRED and US Treasury. The ever growing subsidy is too good to pass up, and let’s not get started on using Shadow Stats $10 trillion M3 current money supply. 1970 pre-fiat money, a mere $618 billion.

Our supple tribes repress their patriot throats, and ask no questions but the price of votes.

Samuel Johnson.

M1 Currency Component: 1,286.10 billion  May, 2015.

Gold price: $1,190.00 troy ounce 27, May, 2015.
USA gold holding 258,641,074 troy ozs. May 2015. Not fully audited since 1930s.
US gold holdings approximate current value: $337-338 billion.

Currency Component per troy ounce: $4,972.53
Gold price: $1,190.00 per troy ounce.
U.S. Gold Subsidy: $3,782.53 per troy ounce.

For Comparison.

U.S. Gold Subsidy 2001: $1,723.81 per troy ounce.

M1 1970/01 (on gold) 210.84 billion.
M1 1980/01 (off gold) 390.41 billion. The Great Nixonian Error starts slowly.
M1 1990/01 (fiat money) 800.66 billion.
M1 2000/01 (fiat money) 1,126.38 billion.
M1 2015/04 (fiat money) 2,994.50 billion.
M1 2020/01 (Estimate 3,623 B. conservatively @ av. 2000 - 20015)

Only a fool wouldn’t own some gold and silver against paper, and our lying politicians and central banksters.

The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.

Alexis de Tocqueville

Solar  & Related Update.

With events happening fast in the development of solar power, I’ve added this new section. Updates as they get reported.  

Not quite on message today, but interesting nevertheless. 

Air2Nitrous device claimed to cut vehicle exhaust

By Antonio Pasolini May 26, 2015
Driving an electric car that gives off no emissions is one of the best ways to reduce your personal transport carbon footprint. But if an EV is out of reach, the next best thing could be a simple retrofittable, scalable device called Air2Nitrous (A2N). Its creators claim it can reduce engine emissions by 90 percent, while cutting fuel consumption by 20 percent.

The Air2Nitrous team describes its electronic emissions control system as a "first phase" device because it works before and during combustion. It cuts emissions by increasing the amount of oxygen molecules and decreasing the amount of nitrogen molecules in the combustion chamber.

As air from the atmosphere passes through the vehicle’s air filter, it then passes unobstructed through the converter ring located in the air intake duct. At this point, the reactor exposes the air to electrical discharges, separating nitrogen (N2) and oxygen (O2) from the atmospheric air and transforming it into nitrous oxide (N2O), which is an enriched fuel/air mixture.

According to the company, less nitrogen means less nitric oxide and nitrogen oxide (NOx), and a decrease by up to 90 percent a range of harmful gases, including CO2. More oxygen in the combustion chamber also results in a more complete burn of particulate matter (PM) of 2.5 micrometers or less, also known as fine particles.

Vehicle and machinery operators trying A2N out are reporting fuel savings of six to 20 percent, Air2Nitrous says. The system works with combustion engines powered with various fuels, including diesel, LPG, bunker oil, gasoline, natural gas and others.

They add it takes 30 minutes to install the A2N device, a job that can be done by any mechanic to any internal combustion engine, with the benefits of the installation being immediate. They also promise A2N does not negatively impact engine performance, which is an advantage over other emissions-reducing technologies.
More

Air2Nitrous

The monthly Coppock Indicators finished April

DJIA: +112 Down. NASDAQ: +198 Down. SP500: +150 Down.