Baltic Dry Index. 586 Friday Brent Crude 65.50
LIR Gold Target in 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
"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
In the EUSSR, all change. Spain
swings left, Poland goes right. Greece muddles on towards default. The EUSSR is
starting to disintegrate under the pressure of a wealth destroying one size
fits all dying euro, high youth unemployment, corrupt politics, and a stagnant
un-reformed economy across most of Club Med. Toss in American imposed, EUSSR
Russian sanctions to support America’s puppet regime in Kiev, and the
prevailing mood in continental voters now seems to be “toss all incumbents
out.” Euros anyone? Even those with the Germanic “X.” In the fragmenting,
dying, EUSSR it all gets worse from here. Stay long fully paid up gold and
silver, the Great Nixonian Error of fiat money is deep in the ending and long
been out of central bankster control.
To recap on the results of the long weekend.
Spain's ruling PP gets worst local election result in 20 years
Spain's ruling People's Party
(PP) took a battering in regional and local elections on Sunday after voters
punished Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy for four years of severe spending cuts
and a string of corruption scandals.
In a test of the national mood
ahead of general elections expected in November, the PP suffered its worst
result in more than 20 years to herald an uncertain era of coalition as new
parties rose to fragment the vote.
Spaniards rejected the stability
offered by the PP and rival Socialists which have alternated in power
since
the end of dictatorship 40 years ago and opted for change in the shape of new
parties - market-friendly Ciudadanos ('Citizens') and anti-austerity Podemos
('We Can').
Rajoy's future looked bleak as
his strategy to bet on an accelerating economic rebound to win a second term later
this year was seriously undermined by his party's poor showing.
"It's a drubbing for the PP.
The fear factor did not come into play and people voted for Podemos and
Ciudadanos," said Jose Pablo Ferrandiz of leading pollster Metroscopia.
Although the PP got more votes
than any other party, it and the rival Socialists fell short of overall
majorities in most areas. The two parties will have to negotiate coalitions
with minority parties in the 13 of Spain's 17 regions that voted on Sunday
alongside more than 8,000 towns and cities.
Spain has virtually no tradition
of compromise politics and the fragmented vote is likely to result in weeks of
pact-building in the regions which hold substantial devolved power and
determine spending in key areas like education and health.
----The PP got its
worst result in countrywide municipal elections since 1991 and lost its
absolute majority in regional bastions Madrid and Valencia, where potential
left-wing coalitions could send the party into opposition for the first time in
20 years.
More
Poland's new president Andrzej Duda heralds shift to the right
Sunday 24 May 2015
Andrzej Duda's shock win in
Poland's presidential election has capped a rapid rise from backroom obscurity
to head of state, and may herald a new political chapter in eastern Europe's
biggest economy.
Duda was a legal aide to
conservative President Lech Kaczynski before his death in 2010 in a plane crash
in Russia.
Now
43, Duda sees himself as spiritual and political heir to Kaczynski, recalling
how, two days before the flight, the president told him that a generational
change was afoot, and that it would be Duda and his peers who would take
responsibility for the future of the country.
----Duda's unlikely victory, the conservatives' first major electoral success in nearly a decade, has Law and Justice smelling blood ahead of a parliamentary election in the autumn, with potential ramifications for Poland's standing in Europe.
"From our point of view,
this election allows us to break the glass ceiling," said Law and Justice
deputy leader Adam Lipinski. "It paves the way to a clear win in the
parliamentary elections."
----On Aug. 6, Duda will become Poland's sixth president since its transition from communism in 1989, having defeated Komorowski in spite of opinion polls before the first round that suggested the incumbent would comfortably win a second five-year term.
Komorowski, Duda's senior by
almost 20 years, came off as lethargic, and failed to turn things around after
the first-round defeat.
As head of state, Duda will be in
charge of the armed forces, coordinating foreign policy with the foreign
minister, signing or vetoing bills and drafting his own legislation. He will
also appoint the head of the central bank.
That gives him and the Law and
Justice party scope to change Poland's relationship with the European Union,
until now built on close cooperation with Germany and other major players in
the bloc. The party is less enthusiastic about Brussels, arguing that Warsaw
should focus more on its own interests.
Duda has also suggested Poland
should curb foreign ownership in the banking sector. About two-thirds of
Poland's profitable and well-capitalised banking sector is foreign-owned.
He has also backed a conversion
of mortgages denominated in Swiss francs into Polish zlotys at historical
exchange rates, a move that would mean billions of zlotys in losses for the
banks, and called for a new tax on bank assets like that adopted in Hungary
under Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
More
Greece Points to June IMF Payment as Next Cliffhanger
12:25 PM BST May 25, 2015
The Greek government is priming investors for another cliffhanger on June 5.While Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s spokesman Gabriel Sakellaridis insisted on Monday that the government will pay salaries and pensions due at the end of this month, he refused to be drawn in on whether the administration will be able to find the roughly 300 million euros ($329 million) it’s due to pay the International Monetary Fund at the end of next week.
“This government has the responsibility to pay its obligations, both within Greece and externally,” Sakellaridis told reporters in Athens. “The liquidity problems are well known. We want to honor our obligations, and that’s exactly why we’re seeking this agreement soon.”
Greece looks set to miss the May 31 deadline German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande set last week for reaching an agreement on aid, with no more meetings of euro-area finance ministers scheduled before then and its creditors still to sign off on Tsipras’s economic plans. Greek Economy Minister George Stathakis said in an interview with Le Monde newspaper that it may still be several weeks until the two sides can reach an agreement, though a deal remains the most likely outcome.
----Some
members of Tsipras’s Syriza party advocate defaulting on loans rather than
backing down from the anti-austerity policies that swept it to power in January
even if that leads the country out of the euro.
More
What Would Happen If Greece Doesn’t Pay the IMF: Q&A
4:29 PM BST May 25,
2015
Q: When are the next IMF payments due?A: Greece owes the IMF about 20 billion euros in principal over the next nine years for the bailout loans it has received. Four payments, totaling almost 1.6 billion euros are due next month, starting with a 308 million-euro payment on June 5. Another 347 million euros are due June 12, followed by a payment of 578 million June 16, and 347 million euros June 19. Payments to the Fund are denominated in Special Drawing Rights, a virtual reserve currency, so sums cited in euros are approximate and depend on the exchange rate between euros and SDRs.
More
"Until government administrators can so identify the interests of government with those of the people and refrain from defrauding the masses through the device of currency depreciation for the sake of remaining in office, the wiser ones will prefer to keep as much of their wealth in the most stable and marketable forms possible - forms which only the precious metals provide."
Elgin Groseclose.
In El Nino news, is this related and just the start? Normal El Nino’s usually start later in the year nearer the Autumn, and peak in North America in the first quarter of the following year.
Deadly tornado hits Mexican city
Twister strikes city on US-Mexico border, killing at least 13 people
AP 2:59AM BST 26 May 2015
A tornado raged through a city on the US-Mexico
border on Monday, destroying homes, throwing cars into the sky and ripping an
infant away from its mother. At least 13 people were killed, authorities said. In Texas, 12 people were reported missing after the vacation home they were staying in was swept away by rushing floodwaters in a small town popular with tourists.
----In the US, a line of storms that stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes dumped record rainfall on parts of the Plains and Midwest, spawning tornadoes and causing major flooding that forced at least 2,000 Texans from their homes.
More
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/mexico/11629360/Deadly-tornado-hits-Mexican-city.html
El Nino Effects 1982-83.
Australia. Droughts and fires.
Indonesia/Philippines. Drought, crop failure.
India/Sri Lanka. Drought, poor monsoon.
South America. Very heavy rains, flooding.
USA. Gulf states, Colorado Basin. Heavy rains, flooding. Fewer Atlantic hurricanes.
South Africa. Drought.
At the Comex silver
depositories Friday final figures were: Registered 60.85 Moz, Eligible 117.91
Moz, Total 178.76 Moz.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
Below, yet another warning of bad things to come.
The Great Disconnect between the real economy, and the central bankster fuelled
stock and bond bubbles, continues apace. How it ends isn’t in doubt, just when
and why. Time to apply to join Liberland?
“The U.S. is
eventually dragged into a recession through forces beyond its control.”
HSBC Chief Economist Stephen King.
The world economy is starting to look a lot like the Titanic, HSBC chief economist warns
May 13, 2015 | Last Updated: May 21 2:40 PM ET
Like the ill-fated White Star
liner, the global economy is sailing across the ocean with too few lifeboats
and an iceberg looming on the horizon, warns HSBC chief economist Stephen King.
And that’s going to be a titanic
problem for global policy makers.
It’s been six years since the
last U.S. recession and though they don’t come like clockwork, King says we are
closer to the next one than the last one.
But unlike past downturns, the
weak recovery from the last recession has not allowed monetary policymakers to
replenish their arsenals.
The chart below shows the average
annual U.S. growth rates during the six years after a recession over the past
40 years. The latest recovery is particularly weak, King notes.
Budget deficits are still huge,
debt levels too high and while the U.S. economy has improved it’s far from top
form.
In every recession since the
1970s, the U.S. Federal Reserve’s key rate has fallen by a minimum of 5
percentage points. With rates now at 0 to 0.25 per cent, there’s no way that
can happen.
“We
may not know what will cause the next downswing but, at this stage, we can categorically
state that, in the event we hit an iceberg, there aren’t enough lifeboats to go
round,” said King.
HSBC Global Research also lists
in its report Wednesday four suspects that could cause the next recession:
1) Higher U.S. wage costs along
with weak productivity leads to falling profit share in GDP which triggers a
collapse in stock prices. This leads to a loss of consumer confidence and then
economic contraction. “Put another way, another equity bubble bursts.”
2) A growing series of failures
in non-banking financial services as pension funds and insurers find themselves
unable to meet future obligations. These trigger a demand for liquid assets
which leads to panic selling and then collapse in demand.
3) “A recession made abroad, not
at home:” China’s economy weakens to the point where Beijing must let the
renminbi slide.
The ensuing collapse in commodity
prices weakens other countries. The dollar surges but the Fed cannot respond by
lowering rates. “The U.S. is eventually dragged into a recession through forces
beyond its control.”
4) The Federal Reserve raises
rates too soon. The tightening exposes how fragile the recovery really is and
the economy goes in reverse. The same mistake was made by the European Central
Bank in 2011 and Bank of Japan in 2000.
Liberland
Liberland, officially the Free Republic of Liberland (Czech: Svobodná republika Liberland), is a self-proclaimed micronation claiming a parcel of land on the western bank of the Danube river between Croatia and Serbia, sharing a land border with the former. It was proclaimed on 13 April 2015 by Czech libertarian politician and activist Vít Jedlička.[3][4]The official website of Liberland states that the nation was created due to the ongoing Croatia–Serbia border dispute.[1][5][6]
Croatia have blocked access to Liberland in the beginning of May 2015.[7] Vít Jedlička was twice detained for less than a day by Croatian authorities in the same month.
Since the Yugoslav Wars, some borderland territories between Serbia and Croatia have been disputed, such as the Island of Vukovar and the Island of Šarengrad. However, a few other territories went unclaimed by either side.[4] Liberland was proclaimed on the largest of those land parcels, which is known as Gornja Siga (meaning upper tufa).[3][5]
The area is about 7 km² (3 sq mi), and most of it is covered with forests. There are no residents. A journalist from Parlamentní Listycz who visited the area in April 2015 found a house that had been abandoned for about thirty years, according to people living in the vicinity. The access road was reported to be in a bad condition.[8]
The Danube river, which is the only coastline of the territory, is an international waterway with free access to the Black Sea for several landlocked nations. Vít Jedlička has recommended using boats to reach Liberland.[9]
There are two internationally recognized sovereign states that are smaller than the area which Liberland claims; the Vatican City and Monaco.[10]
More
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, some more doubt about Tesla’s home battery packs.
Your Home Doesn't Matter for Tesla's Dream of a Battery-Powered Planet
12:00 PM BST May 21, 2015
Elon Musk has done something remarkable. He built a 220-pound battery to
hang on the garage wall and convinced a huge
number of people that owning one is a lifestyle choice—like having a
compost bin in the garden and reusable diapers on the baby. His battery is
personal, and it's going to change the world with your help.If only it were so. While the pairing of home batteries with solar power makes deeply intuitive sense, the problem is that it doesn’t make financial sense. Not now, not anytime soon, and definitely not in the U.S. I first wrote about the issue just after the high-profile launch, arguing that interest in Tesla's consumer-oriented Powerwall batteries wouldn't be based on sound financial reasoning. When Musk was asked about my findings in his earnings call with analysts, the Tesla chief executive offered this reply: "That doesn't mean people won't buy it."
That's true. Initial interest, by all accounts, has been off the hook. All that attention is giving a boost to Tesla's more important, if less discussed, Powerpack batteries designed for businesses and utilities—a product with truly disruptive potential.
But if you care about Tesla because you care about the future of clean energy, then the question of whether a solution makes financial sense is the only one that matters. Wind and solar power are at a major turning point precisely because they're now as cheap or cheaper than fossil fuels in many areas of the world. Initial demand for Tesla’s home batteries—38,000 queries in the first week—may seem like a great start, but even in the best-case scenario those orders would take more than a year to fill and would amount to a fraction of power generated from a single fossil-fuel power plant. To “fundamentally change the way the world uses energy,” as Musk puts it, the scale must be much, much bigger.
The impediments are huge. In the
U.S.—a power-hungry market with the most potential for impact—any homeowner
hoping to use Musk’s batteries to gain independence from the grid is in for a
surprise. For the average U.S. home to rely solely on solar panels and Tesla's
new batteries, the complete system would cost roughly $98,000, according to
analysis by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Even that glum assessment assumes a
house in a sunny region such as Southern California.
So defection from the electrical
grid will remain well out of reach for most Americans, and even those who
manage the feat will waste a lot of capacity thanks to solar panels and
batteries that are rarely used to their full potential.
More
Quantifying Returns: Does Energy Storage Coupled with PV Offer Big Savings?
Some commercial and
industrial facilities are betting that PV plus "smart" energy storage
solutions will help them save money. But how much savings is up for debate.
May 24, 2015
More but with charts.
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished April
DJIA: +112 Down. NASDAQ: +198 Down. SP500: +150 Down.
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