Baltic Dry Index. 589 +01 Brent Crude 65.23
LIR Gold Target in 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
"When it becomes serious, you have to lie"
Jean-Claude Juncker. Failed Luxembourg Prime Minister and ex-president of the Euro Group of Finance Ministers. Confessed liar. EC President.
Jean-Claude Juncker. Failed Luxembourg Prime Minister and ex-president of the Euro Group of Finance Ministers. Confessed liar. EC President.
We open today with Greece about to get the bum’s rush from the bar to the street. No one likes a bad drunk in a bar, and the German bouncers are hovering all over drunk Greece. But ejecting poor Greece from the bar, might just trigger an all-out bar brawl. Iberia, Italy and France are also heavily drinking in the last chance saloon.
Greece’s Endgame Nears as Tsipras Warns Bell May Toll for Europe
Nikos Chrysoloras 10:01 PM
BST May 31, 2015
Greece faces a week of tough decisions as negotiations over a financial
lifeline edged closer toward endgame with creditors showing no signs of budging
over what it will take for them to release more money.As another of the government’s self-imposed deadlines for securing a deal on its finances slipped away, disagreements between the two sides on budget targets persisted, a person familiar with the matter said. Greece must make four payments totaling almost 1.6 billion euros ($1.78 billion) to the International Monetary Fund this month and its bailout package backed by the euro region expires at the end of June.
While Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras wrote in French newspaper Le Monde that any intransigence wasn’t the fault of his four-month-old administration, a senior German lawmaker said it was down to Greece to adhere to reforms agreed to before Tsipras took power. An international official who asked not to be identified said creditors were discussing a deal to be presented to Greece as a way of ending the impasse.
“The lack of an agreement so far is not due to the supposed intransigent, uncompromising and incomprehensible Greek stance,” Tsipras wrote in the article published on Sunday. “It is due to the insistence of certain institutional actors on submitting absurd proposals and displaying a total indifference to the recent democratic choice of the Greek people.”
With technical talks yielding no breakthrough, Tsipras is seeking the intervention of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande. The three leaders held a call on Sunday to discuss what happens next, with a German government official calling them “constructive.” Merkel and Hollande are scheduled to meet in Berlin on Monday.
With negotiations now in their fifth month, creditor institutions are seeking concrete action in areas including the pension system, labor market and sales tax.
Tsipras said in his article that Greek plans for collective bargaining by unions adhere to norms in the euro region while reforms for retirees mandated by the country’s bailout agreement aren’t fit for a civilized country.
The biggest hurdle is their insistence on additional fiscal measures of as much as 3 billion euros, a Greek official with knowledge of the matter said. The official asked not to be named, as negotiations are private and ongoing.
While Greece’s partners are aiming to do their utmost to keep the country in the euro, “the ball is in Greece’s court” to fulfill the pledges made in the current aid package, Volker Kauder, the parliamentary chief of Merkel’s Christian Democrat-led bloc told ARD TV on Sunday.
---- Merkel will likely be more involved as time runs out between this week and a meeting of euro-region finance ministers on June 18 in Luxembourg, the person said. According to the official, the agreement may be delivered by leaders, but it will have been put together by the IMF, the European Central Bank and the European Commission.
Greece’s anti-austerity
government has repeatedly expressed confidence that an agreement to unlock
bailout funds and avert default is within reach, only to be rebuffed by
officials representing the creditors. The standoff over the terms attached to
emergency loans has triggered a liquidity squeeze and record deposit
withdrawals, tipping the economy back into recession.
More
Defiant Tsipras threatens to detonate European crisis rather than yield to creditor "monstrosity"
The Greek prime minister has accused Europe's leaders of 'issuing absurd demands'
Greek premier Alexis Tsipras has accused Europe's creditor
powers of issuing "absurd demands" and come close to warning that his
far-Left government will detonate a pan-European political and strategic crisis
if pushed any further.
Writing for Le Monde in a tone of furious defiance after the latest set of talks reached an impasse, Mr Tsipras said the eurozone's dominant players were by degrees bringing about the "complete abolition of democracy in Europe" and were ushering in a technocratic monstrosity with powers to subjugate states that refuse to accept the "doctrines of extreme neoliberalism".
"For those countries that refuse to bow to the new authority, the solution will be simple: Harsh punishment. Judging from the present circumstances, it appears that this new European power is being constructed, with Greece being the first victim," he said.
The Greek leader, head of the radical-Left Syriza government, issued a stark warning that his country will not submit to these demands and will instead take action "to entirely transform the economic and political balances throughout the West."
----Mr Tsipras's article is a thinly-disguised warning that Greece may choose to default on roughly €330bn of debt in the biggest sovereign default ever, and pull out of the euro, rather than breech its key red lines.
More
Meanwhile, it may
not matter much what Greece and the Troika have in mind. Other realities are
coming into play.
China factories scrabble for growth in May, export demand shrinks
BEIJING |
Growth in China's giant factory
sector edged up to a six-month high in May but export demand shrank again,
prompting companies to shed jobs and keeping alive worries about a protracted
economic slowdown, a government survey showed on Monday.
In a sign that China's worst
downturn in at least six years is hurting its services companies, too, a
similar survey showed growth in that sector slipped to a low not seen in more
than five years.
Services have been one of the
lone bright spots in the Chinese economy in the last year.
The muted reports reinforced the
view that authorities would have to roll out more stimulus in coming months,
despite having cut interest rates three times in six months.
"China’s economy still faces
strong headwinds," economists at ANZ Bank said in a note to clients.
"If capital outflow
continues at the pace of the first quarter, we expect the People's Bank of
China to cut the reserve requirement ratio by another 100 basis points, in
addition to a further interest rate cut of at least 25 basis points."
The official manufacturing
Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) edged up to 50.2 from April's 50.1, the
National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on its website, in line with analysts'
forecast for a 50.2 reading.
A reading above 50 points
indicates growth on a monthly basis, while one below that points to
contraction.
The non-manufacturing PMI, on the
other hand, slipped to 53.2, a trough not seen since December 2008 and compared
with April's 53.4, the NBS said.
More
US economy shrank in first quarter amid collapse in exports
World's largest economy contracts by 0.7pc on an annualised basis, as the strong dollar acts as a headwind to the recovery
The US is on course for its worst first half performance in four years, after revised data showed the economy shrank in the first quarter.The world's biggest economy contracted at an annualised rate of 0.7pc in the first three months of the year, compared with an initial estimate of an expansion of 0.2pc.
The downward revision was mainly due to a larger trade deficit and smaller inventories. A brutal winter also dampened consumer spending more than previously thought. However, the overall decline was shallower than the prediction of a 0.9pc contraction by analysts.
Exports fell by 7.6pc in the first quarter, following growth of 4.5pc in the final quarter of last year. Exports of goods alone fell by 14pc, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), partly reflecting the impact of the strong dollar. Meanwhile, imports increased by 5.6pc.
The ballooning trade deficit subtracted 1.9 percentage points from total gross domestic product (GDP), the BEA said, almost 0.6 percentage points more than its initial estimate.
----Data on Friday suggested the rebound in the second quarter may not be as strong as some expect. The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) Chicago business barometer fell to 46.2 in May, from 52.3 in April. This is well below the 50 level that divides growth from contraction.
"[The contraction] reversed
all of April’s gain and casts doubt on the strength of the widely expected
bounceback in the US economy in the second quarter," the ISM said in a
report.
Morehttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11638758/US-economy-shrinks-by-0.7pc-in-first-quarter.html
Inside Q1’s Punk GDP Numbers—–Why Bubble Vision Doesn’t Get It
by David Stockman • May 31, 2015
Promptly upon release
of today’s GDP update, Steve Liesman and his Wall Street economist pals
spent 10 minutes bloviating about why the negative print should be
completely ignored. Herein is an essay on why it is they who should
be given the heave-ho.
According to Liesman &
Co the GDP shrinkage reported by the BEA for Q1 was all a
mistake due to winter, strikes and unseasonal seasonals. So don’t sweat
the small stuff, they brayed to what remains of the CNBC audience,
the US economy actually continues bounding along at a 2.5% growth rate,
as it has for the entire recovery.
Well, hold it right there. I am
all for ignoring the quarterly jerks and flops embedded in the GDP data, too.
But if you want to talk trend and context—-let’s do exactly that. And
first and foremost there is no such trend as 2.5% growth.
After all, Liesman and his Wall
Street cronies have been cheerleaders for the Fed’s insane 80 months of ZIRP
and massive QE on the grounds that extraordinary measures were needed to
combat the deep economic plunge known as the Great Recession. In
fact, measured from peak to trough, the latter was the worst
downturn since 1950. Real GDP shrank by 4.2% compared to an
average of 1.7% during the previous nine recessions,
and handily topped the 2.6% decline in 1981-1982 and the 3.0% decline in
1973-1975.
So you would think that after a
recessionary plunge that was in a league all by itself that some account of
that would be taken in assessing the recovery. Indeed, that’s
particularly pertinent in the present instance because the depth of the
Great Recession was exacerbated by a violent inventory liquidation in the fall
and winter quarters right after the Wall Street meltdown in September-October
2008.
In fact, fully one-third of the
$636 billion (2009 dollars) real GDP decline from peak to trough was
accounted for by inventory liquidation; real final sales dropped by a far more
modest 2.8%.
Accordingly, the appropriate way to measure the trend is to remove
the violent inventory swings from the numbers, and then to look at
the path of real final sales after the peak—-averaging in the down
quarters and the subsequent rebound.
Well, the present cycle
is not even close to the purportedly favorable, steady eddy 2.5%
trend that the bubblevision commentariat was gumming about again this
AM. The compound annual growth rate over the 29 quarters since the
pre-crisis peak in Q4 2007 is just 1.0%.
That’s right. This recovery is
pinned deep in the sub-basement of history. During the comparably deep
recessionary cycles of the late 1950s, mid-1970s and early 1980s, as shown
below, real final sales grew at 3-4% annual rates over the 29
quarters subsequent to the pre-recession peak.
Morehttp://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/inside-q1s-punk-gdp-numbers-why-bubble-vision-doesnt-get-it/?utm_source=wysija&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Mailing+List+Sunday+10+AM
Next an American foreign policy expert on an
America retrenching from the role of global policeman and undisputed leader of
the free world. So who or what is going to fill the void?
Exclusive interview: Ian Bremmer says America is no longer 'indispensible', and that's bad news for Britain
The foreign policy guru and author of "Superpower" speaks with Peter Foster about American retrenchment, the rise of China and what it means for Britain's future
After six decades serving as the global policeman, the United States is now signalling its retreat from the world.With the Middle East engulfed by the flames of sectarian conflict, Europe’s borders menaced by the threat of war and China starting to flex its muscles in Asia-Pacific, it is clear the world has entered a new period of volatility.
That uncertainty begs tough questions for Britain: how should we respond to this new American pragmatism? And as our traditional ally turns inward, what should that mean for British foreign policy?
Ian Bremmer, the American foreign policy guru who coined the phrase “G-Zero” to describe this new and unstable world, is the author of ‘Superpower’, a best-selling new book that explores America’s options as a superpower in the 21st century.
PF:
In ‘Superpower’ you outline three possible courses for American foreign policy:
1) keeping faith with the old “Indispensable” America that underwrites global
stability 2) adopting a “moneyball” approach where the US pursues its narrow
economic and security interests, or 3) an “Independent” America where the US
gives up trying to solve the world’s problems, but seeks instead to lead by
example by investing in America’s security and prosperity at home. While you invite
readers to choose for themselves, you personally plumped for the “Independent”
strategy – why?
IB: “I went for ‘Independent’ because America needs a strategy that doesn't just last for three months or a year, but for a generation. And the world is moving in a direction where the promises of an ‘indispensable’ America are going to be increasingly hard to fulfil. We see that in terms of how much leadership there isn't in Europe, the challenge posed by a rising China, the implosion of the Middle East, the rise of terrorist organisations and even things like quantum computing which are going to undermine the power of nation states. So for all these reasons I think ‘indispensable’ is deeply problematic.
“But the problem with the hard-nosed ‘moneyball’ approach, is that ultimately America is not a corporation. ‘Moneyball’ may well get the most return on investment for Americans, but the difference between a corporation and the United States is if you're a corporation and you make a bunch of bets and one doesn't work, you go bankrupt. The United States can't afford to go bankrupt. I also think we cannot just jettison the idea of the exceptionalism of the United States. Maybe this is my American bias coming out, but I really do believe that America stands for a lot more than, ‘we're going to be like any other country’. I believe the values that the United States was created with actually do matter.
“Which is why I argue that if the ‘independent’ America approach is done right, then the United States will become the ultimate ‘too big to fail’. And the way that you get the Chinese to align with America is not by containing them. It’s by creating the most robust American economy and democracy you possibly can that the Chinese will really want to invest in - because ultimately that's what's going to make them want to change their system in a way that is more aligned with the United States.”
More
We close for the start of the new month with California. Already in an extreme drought, CA’s snowpack is already gone and summer is just arriving. The blackest if black swans has just landed in Uncle Scam’s land between the shining seas. No amount of fudging by Washington’s talking chair, will put CA’s missing food and drink on American plates. And let’s not get started on Uncle Scam’s ever growing bird flu catastrophe.
Apocalypse Soon: California’s Snowpack Is Gone
May 29 2015
This
movie San Andreas opened Friday, depicting the destruction of San
Francisco and Los Angeles as mega-earthquakes rip apart California. The same
day, a real-life catastrophe quietly unfolded high in the Sierra Nevada
mountain range that runs parallel to the San Andreas Fault: The drought-stricken
state’s
snowpack disappeared.
The
California Department of Water Resources reported Friday that
mountain snowpack across the state was 0 percent of normal for May 29. That
means that even before summer begins, there will essentially be no more of the
crucial mountain snowmelt that California relies on to replenish the streams,
rivers, and reservoirs that supply water to cities and farms.
Sure, there are still patches of snow here and there around the high Sierras. But the “snow water equivalent”—the volume of water that would be produced by melting a depth of snow—is 0 percent, according to measurements taken at 98 stations by the water resources department.
When the snowpack hit a record low of 6 percent of normal on April 1, California Gov. Jerry Brown issued the first statewide mandatory water restrictions, ordering cities to cut water consumption by 25 percent.
A week ago, some California farmers agreed to voluntarily reduce their water use by 25 percent, a sign of just how desperate the Golden State’s situation has become.
With the snowpack now gone and California entering its fourth year of drought, such cutbacks may be just the beginning.
In a
time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
George
Orwell.
At the Comex silver
depositories Friday final figures were: Registered 58.42 Moz, Eligible 120.86
Moz, Total 179.28 Moz.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
No crooks or scoundrels today, just a long overdue
reminder of how Canada stood by Britain, when Britain stood almost alone in
1940. Below, from Churchill to Cameron via Blair and Brown. Without Canada’s
help and others from the Dominions and Empire, continental Europe would be a
fascist hell hole from the Atlantic to the Urals. My thanks to Ian in Toronto
for sending me the link.
Brian Mulroney on Winston Churchill’s poignant lessons in leadership
Special to National Post Friday, May 29, 2015
Former Canadian Prime Minister
Brian Mulroney delivered a tribute to Sir Winston Churchill at England’s
Blenheim Palace Friday, on the 50th anniversary of his death. The following is
an exclusive excerpt of that speech.
It is daunting to say anything
new or fresh about a man about whom so much has been written, including so much
by Sir Winston Churchill himself. But it is a high honour and privilege to have
the opportunity and especially here at Blenheim where, as Churchill observed,
“I took two very important decisions; to be born and to be married. I am
content with the decisions on both occasions.”
There is ample reason why
Churchill continues to attract admiration around the world. He was the paragon
of leadership during the darkest period of Britain’s history.
With unrelenting vigour and
tenacity of purpose, he triumphed against all odds and we are all
beneficiaries.
His indomitable courage, his
unbridled optimism, his bristling speeches and his undiluted confidence made
him not only the right man at the right time but also the most consequential
leader of the last century. That is what we honour tonight.
---- In June, 1940 after Dunkirk, Churchill promised Parliament: “We shall not flag or fail. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender until in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forward to the rescue and liberation of the old.”
Spanning more than half a
century, the statesman we honour this evening had many connections with Canada
— what he described fondly as the “Great Dominion.” He visited nine times, more
often than to any other country other than the U.S. and France.
In 1901, at Winnipeg, he first
heard the news of Queen Victoria’s death.
After resigning along with the
Baldwin government in 1929, he had an extensive vacation in Canada. At Niagara
Falls, he regretted that he had not tried to buy a concession there in 1900.
When he returned with his daughter in 1943 en route to Franklin Roosevelt’s
home at Hyde Park, N.Y., he was asked whether he noticed any differences. “The
principle seems to be the same,” Churchill quipped, “the water still falls
over.”
---- Churchill spoke to Canada’s Parliament on a more solemn occasion in the bleak days of December 1941. Despite the prevailing mood, he exuded confidence. Because the French General Maxime Weygand had told the last civilian premier of the Third Republic that “in three weeks Britain will have her neck wrung like a chicken,” Churchill derisively retorted. “Some chicken … Some neck.” The gallery and the Parliament erupted in tumultuous applause.
----Churchill, as prime minister,
first met Roosevelt on the shores of Placentia Bay in Newfoundland in August
1941. (“Meeting Roosevelt,” he declared, was “like uncorking your first bottle
of champagne.” He would know.) At that time, they agreed on eight basic clauses
that shaped the Atlantic Charter, laying the foundation for an alliance that
would win the war and establishing principles for future world order, including
notably the “right of all people to choose the form of government under which
they live.”
At Quebec City in 1943, and again
in 1944, Churchill met Roosevelt and their respective chiefs of staff to plot
the path to victory.
Some of this will be familiar to
you. What you may know less about is the vital military and economic role
played by Canada.
Britain did not stand alone
against Nazi Germany. On Sept. 10, 1939, one week following Britain and two
years before America, Canada’s Parliament declared war on Germany. Australia,
New Zealand and South Africa joined as well. That was my country’s first,
independent declaration of war and the beginning of the largest combined
national effort in our history.
From a population of 11 million,
over one million Canadians — mostly volunteers — served in uniform. Canada
fielded the fourth largest air force and fifth largest naval fleet in the
world. We suffered some 100,000 casualties, half of whom were killed in action.
----- Canada’s economic generosity throughout the war and well into the peace was unprecedented. With a population only one twelfth of the U.S., Canada’s financial gifts were one quarter of the total Lend Lease aid from the U.S — more than three times greater on a per-capita basis. The proportion of defence expenditures given away in terms of free supplies was higher from Canada than from any other country.
After the war, our prime
minister, Louis St. Laurent, had welcomed Churchill thus: “Your voice was the
voice of human freedom and became the symbol of the unconquerable spirit of
free men and women facing terrific odds. No man living has done more to bring about
an association of hearts and minds between your father’s and your mother’s
native lands.”
Responding to a toast in Canada
in June, 1952, Churchill offered this tribute to Canada: “There is no more
spacious and splendid domain open to the activity and genius of free men, with
one hand clasping in enduring friendship the U.S., the other spread across the
ocean to Britain and France.”
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, photovoltaics for the high latitudes take a big leap forward thanks to Finland. I suspect that we are still just scratching the surface of the technology advances to come this century.
Efficiency record for black silicon solar cells jumps to 22.1%
Date:May 18, 2015
Source:Aalto University
Summary:Researchers have obtained
the record-breaking efficiency of 22.1 percent efficiency on nanostructured
silicon solar cells. An almost 4 percent absolute increase to their previous
record was achieved by applying a thin passivating film on the nanostructures
and by integrating all metal contacts on the back side of the cell.
Finland's Aalto University's researchers improved their previous
record by over three absolute % in cooperation with Universitat Politècnica de
Catalunya.
The researchers have obtained the record-breaking efficiency of 22.1% on nanostructured silicon solar cells as certified by Fraunhofer ISE CalLab. An almost 4% absolute increase to their previous record is achieved by applying a thin passivating film on the nanostructures by Atomic Layer Deposition, and by integrating all metal contacts on the back side of the cell.
The surface recombination has long been the bottleneck of black silicon solar cells and has so far limited the cell efficiencies to only modest values. The new record cells consists of a thick back-contacted structure that is known to be highly sensitive to the front surface recombination. The certified external quantum efficiency of 96% at 300nm wavelength demonstrates that the increased surface recombination problem no longer exists and for the first time the black silicon is not limiting the final energy conversion efficiency.
The results were published online 18.5.2015 in Nature Nanotechnology.
"The energy conversion efficiency is not the only parameter that we should look at," explains Professor Hele Savin from Aalto University, who coordinated the study. Due to the ability of black cells to capture solar radiation from low angles, they generate more electricity already over the duration of one day as compared to the traditional cells.
"This is an advantage particularly in the north, where the sun shines from a low angle for a large part of the year. We have demonstrated that in winter Helsinki, black cells generate considerably more electricity than traditional cells even though both cells have identical efficiency values," she adds.
In the near future, the goal of the team is to apply the technology to other cell structures -- in particular, thin and multi-crystalline cells.
"Our record cells were fabricated using p-type silicon, which is known to suffer from impurity-related degradation. There is no reason why even higher efficiencies could not be reached using n-type silicon or more advanced cell structures," Professor Savin predicts.
The development of the cells fabricated last year will continue in the upcoming "BLACK" project, supported by the European Union, in which Professor Savin together with her team will develop the technology further in cooperation with industry.
"The surface area of the best cells in the study was already 9 cm2. This is a good starting point for upscaling the results to full wafers and all the way to the industrial scale."
Fine-tuned molecular orientation is key to more efficient polymer solar cells
Date:May 25, 2015
Source:RIKEN
Summary:Polymer solar cells are a
hot area of research due to both their strong future potential and the
significant challenges they pose. It is believed that thanks to lower
production costs, they could become a viable alternative to conventional solar cells
with silicon substrates when they achieve a power conversion efficiency--a
measure that indicates how much electricity they can generate from a given
amount of sunlight--of between 10 and 15 percent. Now, using carefully designed
materials and an "inverted" architecture, a team of scientists has
achieved efficiency of 10 percent, bringing these cells close to the threshold
of commercial viability.
More
"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 May
DJIA: +107 Down. NASDAQ: +195 Down. SP500: +139 Down.
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