Baltic Dry Index. 598 +07 Brent Crude 63.67
LIR Gold Target in 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
“For children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy.”
G. K. Chesterton.
The endless round of talks between the Troika and Greece that’s gone on since February with no sign of success, failed again yesterday. The logical thing for Greece to do is to formally default, declaring the 2010 Troika loans “odious debt,” exit the dying euro and devalue, and start getting back on the road to prosperity. They should default tomorrow and exit and devalue early Saturday morning.
This being the wealth and jobs destroying EUSSR, which must be propped up forever and a day in the vainglorious continental European hope that one day the euro will displace the dollar, nothing of the kind is likely to happen this week. Instead, Greece’s last 300 million euro will be tipped down a rat hole called the IMF tomorrow and Greece will stagger on in to next week and towards an ignominious crash towards the end of the month. By getting it over tomorrow and Saturday, Greece would still have time to set off an enormous tourist boom for much of this summer. Crashing out at the end of the month leaves only August rather than July-August.
Below, euros anyone? Even those marked with a satanic “X”.
Greek Groundhog Day Continues With Talks Failing to Break Impasse
June 4, 2015 — 1:07 AM BST Updated
on June 4, 2015 — 4:15 AM BST
Another round of top-level talks
failed to resolve the standoff between Greece and its international creditors
as Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras rejected proposals that would unlock bailout
funds necessary to avert a default.
After a meeting with European
Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem,
who also heads the group of his euro-area counterparts, Tsipras said the basis
for any accord must be a Greek proposal meant to avoid spending cuts and tax
increases, rather than a plan drafted in recent days by creditors.
“The realistic proposals on the
table are the proposals of the Greek government,” Tsipras told reporters early
Thursday in the Belgian capital. We can’t “make the same mistakes, the mistakes
of the past,” he said.
The commission said in a
statement that “intense work” will continue and “progress was made in
understanding each other’s positions on the basis of various proposals.”
Months of antagonism and missed
deadlines have given way to a greater urgency to decide the fate of Greece.
Without access to capital markets, the country has to meet four payments
totaling more than 1.5 billion euros ($1.7 billion) to the International
Monetary Fund in June, while its euro-area-backed bailout also expires this
month.
Tsipras signaled that Greece will
meet its first June IMF payment, which is due Friday. “Don’t worry,” he said in
response to a reporter’s question about the matter.
Morehttp://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-04/eu-tsipras-say-greek-talks-must-continue-as-differences-persist
Europe has no choice - it has to save Greece
Even if Greece leaves the euro, Europe has to ensure the country's economy thrives. Otherwise it puts the entire EMU project at risk
Greece has been through the trauma of default and currency collapse before. It went horribly wrong.The sequence of events in the inter-war years have a haunting relevance today. In 1932, Greece turned to the League of Nations and British bankers in a last-ditch effort to defend the drachma under the Gold Standard as reserves drained away.
The creditors dithered for three months but ultimately said “no”. Greece devalued and imposed a 70pc haircut on loans. Debt service costs fell by two-thirds at a stroke.
It seemed like a liberation at first. The economy was growing briskly again - at more than 5pc - within a year. Then the sugar-rush faded. The credit system remained broken. Greek industry was too backward to exploit a cheaper exchange rate, unlike Japanese industry under Takahashi Korekiyo at the same time.
The government never regained its credibility. There were four attempted coups d’etat, ending in the military dictatorship of Ioannis Metaxas. Political parties were abolished. Trade union leaders were killed or imprisoned. Greece fell to Balkan fascism.
The cautionary episode is dissected in a seminal paper by the University of Athens. “The 1930s should perhaps be given more attention by those currently advocating the ‘Grexit scenario’,” it said.
----The chorus of warnings from EMU leaders that Grexit would be ruinous for the Greeks is a negotiating ploy, or mere cant. Each of the sweeping claims made by EMU propagandists over the last twenty years has turned out to be untrue.
The euro did not enhance growth,
or bring about convergence, or displace the dollar as the world's reserve
currency, or bind EMU states together in spirit, and refuseniks such Britain,
Sweden, and Denmark did not pay a price for staying out.
To the extent that they believe
their mantra on Greece, they risk misjudging the political mood in Athens. It
leads them to suppose that Syriza must be bluffing.
----The matter is coming to head fast. It is understood that the Greek finance ministry has enough cash to pay the International Monetary Fund €300m (£220.7m) on Friday but cannot cover a €750m deadline next week.
While default is theoretically possible inside EMU, Greece would almost certainly be forced to impose capital controls, nationalise banks and create its own lender-of-last-resort. It turns into Grexit in short order.
More
We close for the day with some light entertainment from New York. In the
Great FIFA Corruption case (designed to take the heat off US banksters and
squids?) New York’s Banksters and Squids wouldn’t cross the street to pick up
such chump change, a mere $150 million spread over 24 years. Reminder no
banksters or squids have been arrested or indicted in the Great Systemic Crash
of 2007-2008, cost 5 trillion dollars and counting. America’s Department of “Justice”
and its FBI, apparently, have a lot of balls.
“When it becomes serious, you have to lie.”
Jean-Claude Juncker. Failed former Luxembourg P.M.,
serial liar, president of the European Commission.
Soccer’s Decades of Corruption Laid Bare in Blazer Guilty Plea
June 4, 2015 — 1:53 AM BST Updated
on June 4, 2015 — 1:54 AM BST
In a locked Brooklyn courtroom in 2013, a New York bon vivant named Charles
“Chuck” Blazer pleaded guilty to accepting and arranging bribes and not paying
taxes.He was one of global soccer’s most powerful figures.
The deal marked an ignominious end to a two-decade-long career in the number two post at Concacaf, the soccer confederation that oversees North and Central America, which Blazer helped build into a political and financial force.
In testimony from the 2013 hearing, made public on Wednesday, Blazer admitted that he used his position to enrich himself, arranging and agreeing to accept bribes to influence voting for countries hoping to host the 1998 and 2010 World Cups. He also accepted bribes from a sports-marketing firm that paid Concacaf for marketing and media rights to regional tournaments.
Blazer, now 70 and battling cancer, pleaded guilty to 10 crimes at the hearing, with the most serious carrying a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. U.S. District Judge Raymond Dearie set a bond of $10 million.
“I knew that the funds involved were the proceeds of an unlawful bribe, and I and others used wires, e-mails and telephone to effectuate payment of and conceal the nature of the bribe,” Blazer told the court, referring to money he transferred between the U.S. and the Caribbean.
On Wednesday, Blazer could not be located for comment, and one of his attorneys, Mary Mulligan, declined to comment.
Blazer’s guilty plea wasn’t made public until last week. In November, the New York Daily News reported that he cooperated with government investigators, wearing a hidden wire in meetings with FIFA officials.
The government’s case unfolded last week with the indictment of 14 soccer officials and sports-marketing executives charged with paying or accepting more than $150 million in bribes and kickbacks over more than two decades. Blazer’s 2013 guilty plea was made public on the same day; his former boss at Concacaf, Jack Warner of Trinidad and Tobago, was among those indicted.
More arrests are probable as the probe widens to include Sepp Blatter, the longtime FIFA president who announced his resignation on Tuesday, and the controversial votes for the 2018 World Cup in Russia and the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, according to sources familiar with the probe.
Meanwhile, Blatter’s top lieutenant, secretary general Jerome Valcke, denied Wednesday that he had paid a $10 million bribe on behalf of South Africa’s 2010 World Cup bid. The indictment released last week described a “high-ranking FIFA official” as authorizing the money transfer, and a source familiar with the investigation identified that official as Valcke. Valcke has not been named in the indictments.
----Warner resigned in 2011 amid allegations that he had orchestrated a vote-buying scheme for the 2011 FIFA presidential election. Blazer resigned later that year, and an internal Concacaf report in 2013 documented how Blazer had lived lavishly on Concacaf’s dime, with apartments in New York’s Trump Tower and Miami. He even built a giant cage for his parrot Max that had its own air-conditioning unit and Central Park views.
More
Long arm of U.S. law may struggle to reach all FIFA defendants
U.S. prosecutors may find it
difficult to get a number of the people they have charged in the FIFA
bribery scandal to face the music. Several cannot be found, and the authorities
in some countries may not agree to extradition requests.
Of the nine current and former
FIFA officials and five corporate executives indicted for running a criminal
enterprise that involved more than $150 million in bribes, the whereabouts of
three Argentines and one Brazilian remain unknown. Another two former FIFA
officials in the Americas - one in Paraguay and the other in Trinidad and
Tobago - are expected to resist extradition to the United States.
All of the seven defendants who
were arrested in Zurich on May 27 during a surprise raid at a five-star hotel
have said they will oppose extradition.
Only defendant Aaron Davidson,
the chief of sports marketing firm Traffic's U.S. unit, is known to be in the
United States. He pleaded not guilty last Friday in federal court in Brooklyn,
New York, and is under house arrest.
The U.S. Justice Department has a
good track record of persuading other countries to extradite criminal
defendants and has a unit in Washington dedicated to that task, but the size
and complexity of the FIFA-related bribery charges present a new test.
----More than 100 countries, including Argentina, Paraguay and Trinidad, have extradition treaties with the United States. The agreements with these three are essentially identical, calling for each country to extradite defendants who have been charged with acts that constitute a crime in both nations and carry a minimum penalty of one year in prison, said Douglas McNabb, a lawyer in Houston who specializes in international extraditions.
The nationality of a defendant
cannot be used to forgo extradition, according to the treaties, but all
defendants have the right to challenge an extradition on a number of grounds,
McNabb said.
In Paraguay, age and health may
impede U.S. efforts to extradite Nicolas Leoz, the 86-year-old former president
of the South American Football Confederation (CONMEBOL).
Leoz quit the CONMEBOL presidency
in 2013 citing health issues and was admitted to a private clinic that he owns
on the same morning Swiss police made arrests in Zurich. His lawyers later told
reporters Leoz received treatment for hypertension, was surprised by the U.S.
charges and had nothing to hide.
----Meanwhile, the whereabouts of Alejandro Burzaco, 50, Hugo Jinkis, 70, and his son Mariano Jinkis, 40, all Argentine citizens, are unknown. The indictment alleges they conspired to win and keep hold of lucrative media rights contracts from regional soccer federations through the payment of up to $110 million in bribes.
The Argentine judge who ordered
the three men's arrest on May 28 said at the time that he did not know if they
were in the country.
----If the trio do come forward, extradition could still be an uphill battle.
Relations between Argentina and
the United States have been chilly during leftist President Cristina
Fernandez's eight years in power. But they have soured further over the past
two years after a court battle waged by U.S. hedge funds over unpaid Argentine
sovereign debt pushed Buenos Aires back into default last July.
More
“Who
leads the world in consumption? America! Who has more lawyers per capita?
America! Who has the highest incarceration rate? America! What is the greatest
country on earth? America!”
Jarod
Kintz
At the Comex silver
depositories Wednesday final figures were: Registered 58.19 Moz, Eligible 122.22
Moz, Total 180.41 Moz.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
Any guesses as to how Red Capitalism’s bubble ends?
I think we all know how from the 17th century tulip model, just not
why or when. Stay long gold and silver
for the aftermath.
Red Capitalism On Steroids: Every Chinese Economic Indicator Falling, Beijing Herding The Masses Into Berserk Stock Market
by Bloomberg Business •
When Sean Taylor looks at China’s
soaring stock prices, he sees a market more disconnected from economic
fundamentals than at any other time in a two-decade career.
His advice to investors? Keep
buying.
The London-based head of emerging
markets at Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management, whose developing-nation
equity fund has outperformed 94 percent of peers tracked by Bloomberg this
year, says what matters most in China right now is that policy makers have the
motivation and firepower to keep the world-beating rally going.
Rising stock prices not only help
Chinese companies reduce debt levels by selling new shares, they also make it
easier for the government to boost budget revenue and push forward on
privatization plans through stake sales. One way policy makers can support
further gains is through further monetary stimulus: banks’ reserve requirement
ratios are almost 6 percentage points higher than the 15-year average, even
after two cuts this year.
“The government wants a strong
stock market, to privatize more companies and do more IPOs,” Taylor, whose firm
oversees about $1.3 trillion, said in an interview in Hong Kong. He has an
overweight position in Chinese shares.
The Shanghai Composite has gained
141 percent in the past 12 months, the most among major global benchmark
indexes. The gauge closed little changed today.
The following six charts
underscore the disconnect between Chinese stocks and the economy.
*Shanghai Composite performance:
The index rose last week to its highest level in seven years, while Bloomberg’s
monthly gross domestic product tracker for China is near the lowest since 2009.
----Financial stocks: The CSI
300 Index’s gauge of banks, property developers and brokers climbed to its
highest level since January 2008 last week. Data on May 13 showed the M2
measure of broad money supply grew 10.1 percent in April from a year earlier,
the smallest expansion on record.
----*Commodity
producers: The CSI 300 Materials Index capped a 13th month of gains in May, its
longest winning streak on record. Fixed asset investment rose in April by the
least in almost 15 years.
----*Retail
stocks: The consumer discretionary index has rallied 75 percent this year to a
record. Retail sales grew 10 percent in April, the slowest pace since 2006.
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.
In UK solar news, forget solar panels of housing, corporations have discovered the benefits of installing solar power in the new “never ending” age of ZIRP.
Southwark waste facility going solar with rooftop array
By Liam Stoker 03 June 2015, 12:28 Updated:
03 June 2015, 12:47
Veolia’s integrated waste
management facility in Southwark, south London, is having what’s claimed to be
one of the capital’s largest solar installations.
The utility management company is
in the process of installing 2,500 solar panels on the roof of the facility
which sorts recyclables and treats waste for it to be used in heat generation
for the borough.
The installation will almost
completely cover the facility’s roof and will generate around 674MWh of energy
each year, enough to power 220 homes.
Councillor Darren Merrill said
the installation marked Southwark Council’s “commitment to sustainable energy
resources” despite the budget challenges it continues to face.
“With deepening local government
budget cuts, we’re using our partnership with Veolia to develop innovative,
locally- driven renewable projects. Not only is this more cost effective but it
supports our goal to become a more energy efficient borough,” Merrill said.
More
Bombardier completes 3.8MW Belfast rooftop array
27 May 2015, 10:16 Updated: 28 May 2015, 12:11
Manufacturing giant Bombardier
has completed the 3.8MW rooftop solar array atop its east Belfast manufacturing
facility.
The Canada-headquartered firm has
completed the project following an investment of around £3.5m, funding of which
was supplied by investment management firm Oxford Capital who said it would
allow Bombardier to purchase electricity “at a predictable cost”.
The 14,000-panel array covers
600,000 sq ft of space and is expected to generate approximately 3,000MW hours
of electricity each year, providing around a quarter of the facility’s total
energy demand.
And Bombardier said it ultimately
hoped to derive up to 70% of the facility’s energy demand from renewable energy
sources as well as the rooftop array.
"Such a large expanse of
roof has provided a number of opportunities to boost our wing facility's
environmental performance, including natural lighting and rainwater
harvesting," Michael Ryan, VP of aerostructures and engineering services
at Bombardier Belfast, said.
Panels were supplied by Northern
Ireland-based renewable energy supplier SALIIS
Renewables, while rooftop mounts
were sourced from AmbiVolt.
More
Moss Electricals plotting 1.1MW rooftop solar system
27 May 2015, 11:16 Updated: 27 May 2015, 12:52
Electricals wholesaler Moss
Electrical is to invest in a 1.1MW rooftop solar system at the firm’s Dartford
headquarters.
The company is to invest more
than £1 million to fit the system on top of its 150,000 sq ft offices having
already installed a 50kW system on the office’s flat roof, and the company
intends to complete the fit by September.
Robert Moss, managing director at
Moss Electricals, said the company had come to the decision after experiencing
a surge in sales of its own domestic solar kit building services and
ground-mount installations.
“The commercial installation
sector is ripe for growth. More companies are realising the potential savings
to be made through self-consumption. PV is a long-term investment, and
high-quality product and technical support help customers make well-informed
decisions,” he said.
Sustain Commercial Solar has
designed the system and generated electricity will be used to power the
office’s operations, supply to local businesses or export to the national grid.
A new
client had just come in to see a famous NY lawyer.
"Can you tell me how much you charge?" said the client.
"Of course", the great lawyer replied, "I charge $2000 to answer
three questions!"
"Well that's a bit steep, isn't it?"
"Yes it is", said the lawyer, "And what's your third
question?"
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished May
DJIA: +107 Down. NASDAQ: +195 Down. SP500: +139 Down.
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