Baltic Dry Index. 805 +11 Brent Crude 59.62
LIR Gold Target in 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
"If the EU cannot resolve a small problem the size of Greece, what is the point of Europe?"
Romano Prodi, former chief of the European Commission, former Italy Prime Minister.
Tired of five years of German bullying and a 2010 bailout that bailed out continental Europe’s banks but put the cost on the hapless Greeks, Greek voters hit back yesterday in Europe’s Boston Tea Party moment. Greek voters violently shook Euroland’s Great Tree of Illusion and Comfort, Merkel, Juncker, Draghi & Co., all came crashing down to earth. What happens next, no one knows. The ECB’s Draghi must now make good on his “whatever it takes pledge.” “Whatever” just arrived yesterday, and how! Instead he seems to be happily in the campaign to get Greece kicked out of the monetary union. A no vote was almost a certainty after the IMF on Thursday said that whatever happens, Greece needs another 50 billion euro just to get through 2017.
The dying wealth and jobs destroying monetary union, which was already in the I. C. unit, just fell out of bed and got a kicking from Greece. If it wasn’t so serious it would all be very funny. Why would anyone want to be in a monetary Club like this. And just wait until MJD & Co., have to tackle the problems of Belgium, France, Italy and Spain! Some 400 million continental Europeans, now have an urgent need to own some physical gold and silver.
Below, the Bilderberger dream of the euro replacing the dollar lies in ruins. My guess is that it still only gets worse from here! Give that morose, dour, Scots ex-Chancellor Brown a medal for keeping GB out of the monetary union from hell.
"On
the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the
time.”
George
Orwell.
Greeks Reject Austerity, Setting Up Euro Showdown
July 5, 2015 — 9:35 PM BST Updated on July 6, 2015 — 3:28 AM BST
Greece voted against yielding to further austerity demanded by creditors,
leaving Europe’s leaders to determine if the renegade nation can remain in the
euro.Sixty-one percent of voters backed Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s rejection of further spending cuts and tax increases in an unprecedented referendum that’s also taken the country to the brink of financial collapse.
Tsipras described the result as a “great victory”, and said Athens would return to the negotiating table on Monday with a strengthened hand.
As the euro fell to a four-week low in Asian trading and
Tsipras’s supporters filled Athens’s central Syntagma Square waving Greek
flags, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande
called for an emergency leaders’ summit on Tuesday.
The result turns the tables on Merkel and Greece’s other creditors, who
must now decide if a financial rescue of the region’s most-indebted country is
still possible. It significantly raises the chances of a Greek exit from the
single currency, as the country’s banks run out of cash and its economy
staggers toward all-out collapse.
“The bill for keeping Greece in the euro area -- without commitment to
reform -- has just risen disproportionately,” said Mujtaba Rahman, the head of
the Europe practice at political consultancy Eurasia Group. “The hawks in the
euro group will win the debate that aid should be given to the country to leave
the currency bloc.”
Morehttp://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-05/tsipras-turns-tables-on-europe-in-austerity-referendum-triumph
German calls for Grexit mount as EU stunned by 'No' vote
BRUSSELS/BERLIN
|
France and Germany called for an emergency summit of euro zone leaders
to discuss Greece's stunning referendum vote on Sunday to reject bailout terms,
as calls mounted in Berlin to cut Athens loose from Europe's common currency.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel's deputy said Athens had wrecked any
hope of compromise with its euro zone partners by overwhelmingly rejecting further
austerity.
Merkel and French President Francois Hollande conferred by telephone and
will meet in Paris on Monday afternoon to seek a joint response. Responding to
their call, European Council President Donald Tusk announced that euro zone
leaders would meet in Brussels on Tuesday evening (1600 GMT).
German Vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel, leader of Merkel's centre-left
Social Democratic junior coalition partner, said it was hard to conceive of
fresh negotiations on lending more billions to Athens after Greeks voted
against more austerity.
Leftist Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras had "torn down the last
bridges on which Greece and Europe could have moved towards a compromise,"
Gabriel told the Tagesspiegel daily.
His comments reflected a mounting public demand in the most powerful EU
country, which is also Greece's biggest creditor, to eject Athens from the
19-nation currency area, of which membership was intended to be irreversible.
It was not clear whether Merkel, who has repeatedly said she wants to
keep Greece in the euro zone, would shift to a similarly hard line.
But senior lawmakers in her conservative bloc also spoke firmly:
"Now one has to ask the question whether Greece would not be better off
outside the euro zone," Hans Michelbach, a member of the Bavarian
Christian Social Union, told Reuters. "Unfortunately, Greece has chosen a
path of isolation."
The vote sharpened differences between Greece's few remaining
sympathizers in the euro zone - mostly in Italy and France - and hardline
countries led by Germany that are fed up with pouring loans into Greece.
Italy's foreign minister, Paolo Gentiloni, said the euro zone should
resume efforts to reach a deal with Athens.
More
Greece has captured its conqueror. Now the EU should forgive and restructure the debt
The Greek people may have spent too much in the good times but austerity is now killing their country. The EU should demonstrate compassion
The Roman poet Horace said: "captive Greece captured its rude conqueror." He meant that the defeated ancient Greeks won in the long run by bringing poetry to his savage Empire. I hope the victory of the No vote in Sunday's referendum means that this time they'll bring a little compassion to the EU. It sorely needs it.Compassion. It's not a concept that a lot of people are applying to the Greek crisis. The EU elite has handled it with charmless inelegance, threatening Greece even with the prospect of "suicide" (note: it would be the EU pulling the plug). When the result came in, some Eurofanatics said Greece should suffer the consequences and leave the Euro. There were quite a few economic conservatives who agreed, because they regard the whole thing as a morality play about socialism and debt. The far Left and far Right, meanwhile, cheered a "triumph of democracy", surely knowing that the triumph will actually involve more pain in the medium term. Too often, the Brits see everything from their own
perspective. We see Grexit and think of Brexit and our own struggle for national self-determination.
But Greece, by contrast, is struggling to survive - not, say, end the tyranny of EU banana regulation.
No one in this story is an angel. Greece has effectively admitted that it lied to get into the Euro, spent too much and propped up a crazy welfare system in which hairdressers could retire at 50. But when the Crash came, the EU compelled them to swallow an overwhelming debt burden and pay for it via tax rises and cuts. Boy, did they pay. Public sector wages fell by 1/3. Pensions by 44 per cent. Per capita income by $5,000. And suicide jumped by 35 per cent.
More
In other news, China moved over the weekend to rig its collapsing stock market bubble.
We are rapidly reaching the end of the Great Nixonian Error of fiat money. China is rigging markets. Japan is rigging markets. America is rigging markets. Europe is rigging markets. Yet the global economy can’t seem to break out from the global shock of 2007-2009. Canute ordering back the sea comes to mind.
Chinese stocks rise after Beijing unleashes emergency support
In an extraordinary weekend of policy moves, brokerages and fund managers vowed to buy massive amounts of stocks, helped by China's state-backed margin finance company, which in turn would be aided by a direct line of liquidity from the central bank.
The CSI300 index .CSI300 of the largest listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen was up 2.5 percent, while the Shanghai Composite Index .SSEC had gained 2.2 percent, pulling back after an initial burst of euphoria sent them up around 8 percent when trading began.
Oliver Barron, China policy research analyst at NSBO, said it wasn't just faith in the markets at stake after investors had ignored official measures to prop up the market as equity indexes slid around 12 percent last week.
"After the market continued to fall despite myriad support measures, the government reached peak panic mode and must have worried that investors would not only lose confidence in the markets, but in the government itself," he said.
The rapid decline of China's previously booming stock market, which by the end of last week had fallen around 30 percent from a mid-June peak, had become a major headache for President Xi Jinping and China's top leaders, who were already struggling to avert a sharper economic slowdown.
In response, China has orchestrated a halt to new share issues, with dozens of firms scrapping their IPO plans in separate but similarly worded statements over the weekend, in a tactic authorities have used before to support markets.
China Vanke Co Ltd (000002.SZ), the country's largest developer, said in a statement to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Monday it planned to repurchase up to 10 billion yuan ($1.6 billion) worth of its domestic shares to protect investor interests.
China's state media rolled in behind the official moves with supportive reports and commentaries.
"Rainbows always appear after rains," said an editorial by the People's Daily, the mouthpiece of the ruling Communist Party on Monday. "(China has) the conditions, ability and confidence in maintaining capital market stability," the newspaper said.
Monday's gains were focused on blue chips, the explicit target of the stabilization fund, with the ChiNext growth board .CHINEXTC, home to some of China's giddiest small-cap valuations, falling 3.8 percent.
---- China stocks had more than doubled over the past year, despite a cooling economy and weakening corporate earnings, resulting in a market that even China's bullish securities regulators eventually admitted had become too frothy.
But the slide that began in mid-June, and which the China Securities
Regulatory Commission initially tried to downplay as a "healthy"
correction, quickly showed signs of getting out of hand.
A surprise interest-rate cut by the central bank at the end of June,
relaxations in margin trading and other "stability measures" did
little to calm investors, many of whom have borrowed heavily to play the stock
market.
STILL EXPENSIVE
In a series of initial announcements on Saturday, China's top brokerages
pledged to collectively buy at least 120 billion yuan ($19.3 billion) of shares
to help steady the market, and said they would not sell while the Shanghai
Composite Index remained below 4,500, a level last seen on June 25.
Morehttp://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/06/us-china-markets-idUSKCN0PG06B20150706
In a
time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
George
Orwell.
At the Comex silver depositories
Thursday final figures were: Registered 60.11 Moz, Eligible 123.57 Moz, Total
183.68 Moz.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
No comment needed from me.
"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.
Stop lying to the Greeks — life without the euro is great
Published: July 2, 2015 8:55 a.m. ET
Countries that don’t use the common currency have fared well
Will the euro-fanatics please stop lying to the people of Greece?
And while they’re at it, will they please stop lying to the rest of us
as well?
Can they stop pretending that life outside the euro — for the Greeks or
any other European country — would be a fate worse than death?
Can they stop claiming that if the Greeks go back to the drachma, they
will be condemned to a miserable existence on the dark backwaters of European
life, a small, forgotten and isolated country with no factories, no inward
investment and no hope?
Those dishonest threats are being leveled this week at the people of
Greece, as they gear up for the weekend’s big referendum on more austerity. The
bully boys of Brussels, Frankfurt and elsewhere are warning the Greek people that
if they don’t do as they’re told, and submit to yet more economic leeches, they
may end up outside the euro … at which point, of course, life would stop.
Take a look at the chart at the top of this article. It compares the
economic performance of Greece inside the euro with European rivals that don’t
use the euro.
Those other countries cover a wide range of situations, of course — from
rich and stable Denmark, to former Soviet Union countries, to Greece’s neighbor
Turkey, which isn’t even in the European Union.
But they all have one thing in common. During the past 15 years, while
Greece has been enjoying the “benefits” of having Brussels run their monetary
policies, those poor suckers have all been stuck running their own affairs and
managing their own currencies (if you can imagine).
And you can see just how badly they’ve suffered as a result.
They’ve crushed it. Romania, Turkey, Poland, Sweden, Croatia — you name
it, they’ve all posted vastly better growth rates than Greece.
----The data come from the International
Monetary Fund itself. It measures growth in gross domestic product, per person,
in constant prices (in other words, with price inflation stripped out).
Greece adopted the euro in 2001. And after 14 years in the same club as
the big boys, they are back right where they started. Real per-person economic
growth over that time: Zero.
Meanwhile Romania, with the leu, has only … er … doubled.
Everyone else is up. The Icelanders, who suffered the worst financial
catastrophe on the planet in 2008, have nonetheless managed to grow.
Yes, all data points have caveats. Each country has its own story and
its own advantages and disadvantages. But the overall picture is clear: The
euro has either caused Greece’s disastrous economic performance, or at least failed
to prevent it.
----Britain without the euro would be an
“orphan country,” petted, humored but ignored, warned one leading figure.
Britain would lose all influence and status. It would become a marginal country
outside the mainstream of Europe. It would lose “a million jobs.” Factories
would close. The car industry would collapse. Foreign investors would walk away
because of Britain’s isolation. Exports would plummet because of exchange-rate
fluctuations. The City of London, Britain’s financial district, would lose out
to Frankfurt. The London Stock Exchange would be reduced to a local backwater.
Tumbleweeds would blow in the streets. (OK, I made that one up.)
And here we are today.
Since 1992, when the single currency project began taxiing for takeoff,
the countries on board have seen total economic growth of 40%, says the IMF.
Poor old Great Britain, stuck back at the departure lounge with its
miserable pound sterling? Just 67%.
More
Freedom
is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
George
Orwell.
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 AC energy
mankind’s future from the 21st century onwards? A quantum computer
next?
Formula-e, and
flywheel energy storage, plus a few other bits and pieces.
POWERING FORMULA E
Williams Advanced Engineering announced in June 2013 that it will
partner with Spark Racing Technology to design and assemble a battery system
for the 42 cars that compete in the FIA Formula E Championship.
Spark Racing Technology was created in 2012 and is focused on the
manufacture of the cars that will compete in the FIA Formula E Championship,
the world’s first fully-electric racing series that begins in 2014. Williams
Advanced Engineering has signed an exclusive agreement with Spark Racing
Technology and will be the sole supplier of battery technology to Formula E.
Williams battery expertise first originated from its Formula One
programme, following the introduction of Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems into
the sport in 2009. Williams Advanced Engineering is drawing upon the battery
systems used in Williams' Formula One cars to create new battery and battery
management systems that are capable of powering a fully electric racing car.
More
http://www.williamsf1.com/advanced-engineering/case-studies
http://www.williamsf1.com/advanced-engineering/news
Moon phase
calendar.
Because everyone should have one, and this July has a “blue” moon.
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished June
DJIA: +98 Down. NASDAQ:
+192 Down. SP500: +127 Down.
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