Greece- C-R-A-

Baltic Dry Index. 656 +14      Brent Crude 64.23

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

Operator, get me the number for 911.

Merkel, Tsipras, Draghi, with apologies to Homer Simpson, genius.

Two days left for either Berlin or Brussels to blink. Neither seem interested in the least in preventing the greatest European experiment since Hitler ordered Von Paulus to over winter in Stalingrad. That actually worked out well for Europe, if not the Germans. Hopefully it will be the case this time. Although, this unpredictable experiment round, finds Europe and the rest of the world deep into an unrepayable universal debt quicksand, with most facing a demographic and pensions crisis, and well into the end game of the Great Nixonian Error of fiat money. The biggest difference this time round, at least six pretty unstable countries have nuclear weapons if war breaks out, with the Anglo-American War Party thinking in terms of a Serbia-Kosovo type war over the botched Ukraine coup, and the SCO thinking more in terms of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Below, the latest developments in the never ending Greek saga.  Later in the summer, we get to find out who the Bilderbergers picked at the weekend to become the next American President.

Europe Raises Heat on Greece to Make Further Concessions

June 15, 2015 — 2:17 PM BST Updated on June 16, 2015 — 6:04 AM BST

Greece has no plans to present new proposals at a meeting of European finance ministers this week, signaling the country won’t make further concessions to unlock bailout funds needed to avoid default.
Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis told Bild newspaper any new proposals would need to be thrashed out at a lower level before they could presented to the finance ministers set to meet June 18 meeting in Luxembourg. He said that Greece remains willing to find a solution but creditors need to take Greece’s proposals seriously to end the impasse.

Stocks declined as the extent of the remaining policy divide was laid bare after weekend talks billed by European officials as a last attempt to end the standoff broke up early.

Europe needs a “strong and comprehensive agreement, and we need this very soon,” European Central Bank President Mario Draghi told lawmakers at the European Parliament in Brussels on Monday. “While all actors will now need to go the extra mile, the ball lies squarely in the camp of the Greek government to take the necessary steps.”

With signs that negotiating fatigue was stoking intransigence on all sides, some euro-area officials publicly raised the prospect of Greece’s exit from the currency region as the Greek government suggested it had reached the limits of its ability to make concessions. Greece is resisting demands for further cuts in pension spending as well as tax increases.

Asian stocks declined on Tuesday, following the drop in European shares on Monday, with the MSCI Asia Pacific Index shedding 0.5 percent. The Athens Stock Exchange Index fell 4.7 percent on Monday, while the Athex Banks Index dropped 8 percent, after a 12 percent tumble on Friday.
More

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-15/europe-raises-heat-on-greece-to-make-further-concessions-for-aid

Now the media is conditioning the public for a Greek Armageddon. But will it make Tsipras buckle and play the dutiful German Quisling and make the Greeks German serfs?

Greece crisis: Athens poised on the verge of catastrophic debt default as bailout talks collapse

Tuesday 16 June 2015

The world’s financial markets are facing up to the possibility that Greece could soon become the first country to crash out of Europe’s single currency. Talks between Athens and its eurozone creditors have collapsed in acrimony just days before a final deadline for Greece to unlock the €7.2bn (£5.2bn) in bailout funds it needs to avoid a catastrophic debt default.

The Greek Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras, accused the creditor powers of hidden “political motives” in their demands that Greece make further cuts to public pension payments in return for the financial aid. “We are shouldering the dignity of our people, as well as the hopes of the people of Europe,” Mr Tsipras said in a defiant statement. “We cannot ignore this responsibility. This is not a matter of ideological stubbornness. This is about democracy.”

Günther Oettinger, a European Commissioner and member of the German Chancellor’s ruling Christian Demorcrat party, hit back –suggesting Greece could soon be designated an “emergency area” if it fails to pay its debts later this month.

More
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/greece-poised-on-the-verge-of-catastrophic-debt-default-as-bailout-talks-collapse-10322163.html

Greece talks must yield imminent agreement, says European Central Bank

Monday 15 June 2015 19.09 BST
Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, has warned that time is rapidly running out to resolve the Greek debt crisis, as financial markets took fright at the prospect of a looming default. Shares fell across Europe after the latest breakdown in talks between Athens and its creditors diminished hopes of a deal being agreed at a meeting of eurozone finance ministers in Luxembourg on Thursday.

Giving evidence to the European parliament in Brussels, Draghi said: “We need a strong and comprehensive agreement with Greece. And we need it very soon.” His remarks came amid evidence of the fragile state of Greece’s banks, where the pace of deposit withdrawals increased to €400m (£289m) on Monday.

Capital flight is making Greece more dependent on emergency funding from the ECB but Draghi hinted that there would be no immediate loss of support from Frankfurt, despite the souring of the relationship between Athens and its creditors.

“While all actors will now need to go the extra mile, the ball lies squarely in the camp of the Greek government to take the necessary steps,” Draghi said.
More
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jun/15/greek-talks-european-central-bank-mario-draghi-athens-creditors

We end with American news that might make any relief action on Greece moot. Time is moving on against Greece and its foolish creditors. At AIG, it’s come  back John Cassano, “let’s do it over again.”

Yellen’s message this week? Rate hikes are coming

Published: June 15, 2015 2:35 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Higher interest rates are coming.

That will be the message Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen will try to send to markets this week, economists said.

“We expect Yellen to make it clear that the first rate hike is not far off,” said Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, in a note to clients.

Analysts think there is only a small chance the Fed moves at its next meeting, in July. Instead expectations have coalesced on the Fed’s September move “unless something unusual happens,” said Carl Tannenbaum, chief economist at Northern Trust.

----Yellen’s message will be nuanced, asserting that rate hikes are coming as long as the economic data over the next three months performs as expected, said Michael Hanson, U.S. economist at Bank of America, Merrill Lynch. The Fed continues to believe the slowdown in the first quarter was transitory.

Economic data in recent weeks has shown a split between the strong labor market and weaker data like gross domestic product and the factory sector. Data on Monday put the manufacturing sector in a technical recession.

The Fed comes down on the side of the strong labor-market data, said James Glassman, economist at J.P. Morgan Chase.

“They think the economy is doing fine,” and the majority on the Fed now favors starting rate hikes soon and going slowly, he said.
More
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/yellens-message-this-week-rate-hikes-are-coming-2015-06-15?dist=tcountdown

In A.I.G. Case, Surprise Ruling That Could End All Bailouts

JUNE 15, 2015

For years, critics of the bailouts during the financial crisis argued that the rescue efforts weren’t harsh enough. The chief executives of failing institutions should have lost their jobs. Shareholders should have suffered more pain. Taxpayers should have received substantial compensation for the risk they took.

All that did come to pass in one case: the bailout of the American International Group, the large insurer and symbol of the crisis. Yet on Monday, a judge in Washington decided that the government’s actions were too severe, and the rescue was illegal.

When the Federal Reserve propped up A.I.G. in September 2008, unlike its approach with most of the big banks, it threw out the company’s chief executive and took control of 79.9 percent of the company, nearly wiping out many of its shareholders. Taxpayers got all of their money back, and then some, receiving a profit of more than $20 billion.

But in a stunning ruling, Judge Thomas C. Wheeler of the United States Court of Federal Claims said on Monday that those terms were too “draconian.” In other words, he suggested taxpayers should have offered A.I.G. a more generous deal.

The judge’s decision could have far-reaching consequences should another financial crisis occur — and if history is any guide, one will. Legal experts say that the ruling, coupled with certain provisions of the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law enacted after the crisis, makes it unlikely the government would ever rescue a failing institution, even if an intervention was warranted.

More
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/16/business/dealbook/surprise-ruling-finds-bailout-shorted-aig.html?_r=0

"Gold would have value if for no other reason than that it enables a citizen to fashion his financial escape from the state."

William F. Rickenbacker

At the Comex silver depositories Monday final figures were: Registered 57.84 Moz, Eligible 122.39 Moz, Total 180.23 Moz. 

Crooks and Scoundrels Corner

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

Today more of the same old story. There’s a fool and his money parted more and more every day. Today it’s a story of gullible Chinese investors falling for Swiss prestige and safety, and UBS aside, the impression that Swiss cheese wouldn’t melt in their mouths. Is there anyone honest left in the Greenspan-Bernocchio-talking chair casino? Officially the now disappeared scamsters said “they wus hacked.” The NSA, GCHQ, and their Chinese and Russian comrades have form in this area, still they wouldn’t do that would they? More likely though is that it’s just another old fashioned take the money and run scam.

Geneva Whodunit Has Chinese Up in Arms Over $1.2 Billion Lost in Alleged Scam

June 15, 2015 — 12:00 AM BST Updated on June 15, 2015 — 7:55 AM BST

Street protests in Beijing and Hong Kong. Chinese investors flying 5,000 miles to show up on doorsteps in Geneva and demand their money back. It’s the fallout so far from an alleged scam that its victims say robbed 29,000 Chinese investors of $1.2 billion.

They were promised returns of as much as 10 percent a month from currency trading by API Premiere Swiss Trust AG and associated companies, according to interviews with six victims and documents they shared over the past three months. The money disappeared from their accounts in January, the investors said.

“We wanted to know the truth,” said Chen Biya, 43, an advertising agency owner in Beijing who flew to Geneva in late March with two dozen fellow investors to try to recover their missing millions.
They sought redress at API’s locked former offices, the public prosecutor and in meetings with lawyers, then went to Bern and Zurich to appeal to the Chinese embassy and Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority, known as Finma, he said. “But nobody has been able to tell us the entire story.

Unprecedented billions of yuan flowing from China and into investments around the world are creating opportunities for fraudsters, as well as legitimate money managers trying to get their hands on the cash. The cross-border nature of the flows is posing challenges for regulators and crime fighters alike.

----- Geneva’s public prosecutor confirmed it’s investigating API and an associated company, Alpen Asset Management Trust Sarl -- both described as “heavily indebted” by Finma, which initiated bankruptcy proceedings against them last month. In January, Finma issued a public warning that API and Alpen were wrongly claiming to be licensed and supervised by the Swiss regulator. It came about 10 days after the investors said they discovered their accounts had been emptied.

Representatives of API and Alpen couldn’t be contacted, except for the former API director listed in the Swiss public register, Aleksander Kaja, who declined to comment. Offices formerly used by API in Geneva were vacated months ago, while a Hong Kong office was also abandoned, with a writ for unpaid rent left stuck to the doors.

 “Both companies used their Swiss image to attract new clients, although they were mainly managed from abroad,” said Vinzenz Mathys, a spokesman for Bern-based Finma. “This, along with the losses endured by depositors, has a negative impact on the Swiss financial market’s good reputation.”

Chinese investors said they thought the company’s claim it was regulated in Switzerland made it secure.

“Switzerland is famous for its financial-services industry,” said Han Mingyun, a 65-year-old widow in Wuhan who said she was lured by the promise of a Swiss investment and saw $45,000 in savings disappear. “They are supposed to be the best and safe.”

Asked last week about the alleged scam and API’s use of Switzerland to draw investors from China, Finma’s Chief Executive Officer Mark Branson said: “Where there is a financial center, people will always try to take advantage.”

In Beijing, scores of investors have held four protests, the latest last week outside the Embassy of Switzerland, urging the Swiss government to work with China on the investigation.

---- After the money in their online API accounts disappeared, investors said they received a message from the company saying it had been hacked, urging patience and time for API to restore balances and compensate customers. After that, they were unable to contact company representatives, they said.
More

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-14/geneva-whodunit-has-chinese-alleging-1-2-billion-currency-scam

"With the exception only of the period of the gold standard, practically all governments of history have used their exclusive power to issue money to defraud and plunder the people."

F. A. von Hayek

Solar  & Related Update.

With events happening fast in the development of solar power, I’ve added this new section. Updates as they get reported. Is converting sunlight to usable cheap energy mankind’s future form the 21^st century onwards?

Thinner, lighter, flexible, stronger (?) smart phones coming. Almost no-cost Led and Oled lighting for homes, offices, retailers and factories? Massive power savings for shipping where every volt used is a tradeoff?

 Graphene quantum dot LEDs

Date:June 14, 2015

Source:Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

Summary:The first graphene quantum dot light-emitting diodes (GQD-LEDs), fabricated by using high-quantum-yield graphene quantum dots through graphite intercalation compounds, exhibit luminance in excess of 1,000 cd/m2.

Graphene is a 2D carbon nanomaterial with many fascinating properties that can enable to creation of next-generation electronics. However, it is known that graphene is not applicable to optical devices due to its lack of an electronic band gap. On the other hand, graphene quantum dots (GQDs), which are merely a few nanometers large in the lateral dimension, are shown to emit light upon excitation in the visible spectral range. The GQDs have attracted a great deal of attention as a next-generation luminescent material for their outstanding properties: tunable luminescence, superior photostability, low toxicity, and chemical resistance.

Recently, Prof. Seokwoo Jeon (Material Science and Engineering), Prof. Yong-Hoon Cho (Physics), and Prof. Seunghyup Yoo (Electrical Engineering) have succeeded in developing LEDs based on graphene quantum dots. Highly pure GQDs were synthesized by an environmentally-friendly method designed by Prof. Jeon's group, their light-emitting mechanisms were carefully studied by Prof. Cho's group with their transient spectroscopic technique, and finally Prof. Yoo's group brought their OLED expertise to create GQD-based LEDs.

The GQDs with high luminance tunability and efficiency were synthesized by a route based on graphite intercalation compounds (GICs). The proposed method is cost-effective, eco-friendly, and scalable, as it allows direct fabrication of GQDs using water without surfactant or chemical solvent.

----The present work, for the first time, demonstrated that GQDs can be applied to optical devices by fabricating GQD-based LEDs with meaningful brightness. Although, the efficiency of GQD-based LEDs is currently less than those of conventional LEDs, they are expected to improve in the near future with an optimized material process and device structure.

This research was published as a cover article in Advanced Optical Materials (Vol.2, 1016-1023 (2014)).

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/06/150614225649.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fmatter_energy%2Fgraphene+%28Graphene+News+--+ScienceDaily%29

Below, beware of the efficiencies quoted. Few articles bother to define the efficiency quoted, and often it’s the DC efficiency before it gets inverted to more usable AC at a lower efficiency. Even so, you can see where the science is headed. Probably all the faster if we dropped so many of the well intended, but malinvestment subsidies.

How Solar Panels Can Be Printed Like News Papers

October 16th, 2014 | By Ryan Landes-Gilman

For many years, solar power has been considered one of the foremost beacons in the alternative energy movement. But, silicon cells, which are used to construct the majority of solar panels, are prone to be unwieldy and fragile, not to mention expensive to produce. And, as we know, a high production cost often correlates with a high toll on the health of the Earth. That’s where graphene and perovskite come in, two new components making major waves in solar power.

In 2012, the melding of a layer of graphene over a small piece of silicon set a graphene solar efficiency record, surpassing prior attempts to harness graphene by close to 400%. This was possible thanks to a process called doping. Since then, that benchmark has been near-doubled, climbing to over 15% efficiency (meaning that 15% of the sunlight collected can be used as energy!) What was the trick? “Getting rid of the silicon all together.”

Graphene is less than a nanometer thin. And it may soon prove possible to mass produce graphene in sheet form, making graphene as easy to produce and distribute as newspapers. Graphene solar panels can be created at lower temperatures than traditional solar panels, and these reduced temperatures make it possible to bind graphene to flexible plastics rather than stiff fragile silicon.

While the production of additional plastics is never ideal, it will not only lead to the creation of less fragile solar panels, but less expensive and easier to install solar power. And although there are solar panels that have upwards of 45% efficiency, they are simply far too expensive for the average person.
That’s why the emergence of graphene in solar technology is such a wonderful thing!

Perovskite can be used as a spray-on solar power source, currently capable of gathering sunlight at 11% efficiency. The best perovskite solar cells can operate at 19% efficiency (transforming 19% of collected sunlight for power), which is only 6% shy of the 25% efficiency level of mid-level silicon solar panels. Just imagine how widely used and affordable spray-on solar energy could potentially become with such new-found accessibility!

More

http://www.pachamama.org/blog/graphene-blog

The monthly Coppock Indicators finished May

DJIA: +107 Down. NASDAQ: +195 Down. SP500: +139 Down.