Baltic Dry Index. 815 +10 Brent Crude 57.22
LIR Gold Target in 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
I'm normally not a praying person, but if you're up
there, please save me Superman.
Draghi, Juncker, Merkel, Dijsselbloem, with apologies to
Homer Simpson.
Merkel,
don't discourage Tsipras! Weaselling out of things is important to learn. It's
what separates us from the animals! Except the weasel.
Ebenezer
Squid, with apologies to Homer Simpson.
Greece Given Hours to Save Place in Euro
July 6, 2015 — 7:38 PM BST Updated on July 6, 2015 — 8:18 PM BST
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was given hours to come up with a plan
to keep his country in the euro and stave off economic disaster as citizens
suffer under a second week of capital controls.Adding to the pressure, the European Central Bank made it tougher for Greek banks to access emergency loans. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said “time is running out,” as she and French President Francois Hollande responded to Sunday’s referendum result in Greece. Euro-region finance ministers gather for an emergency meeting on Tuesday.
Tsipras has all but run out of chances to reach a deal with creditors, who have insisted on tax hikes and spending cuts as the price for a new bailout of Europe’s most indebted nation. Greece’s economy is grinding to a halt, with bank closures extended through Wednesday to stem deposit withdrawals.
“It will be important tomorrow that the Greek prime minister tells us how this should move forward,” Merkel said at the Elysee Palace in Paris. “The last offer that we made was a very generous one. On the other hand, Europe can only stand together, if each nation takes on its own responsibility.”
Just after Merkel and Hollande met, the ECB maintained its lifeline to Greek lenders at the prior level, the equivalent of a drip feed. Yet it also increased the haircuts on collateral pledged against emergency liquidity, raising the discount applied to reflect the dire economic situation.
More
Greece crisis: Not since the war have Europeans hated each other this much
The view from Berlin: Greece must exit the euro to prevent dangerous splits on the Continent again
By Klaus-Peter Willsch 5:00PM BST 06 Jul 2015
The European Union is a community of freedom and justice. This is precisely
what created the trust in the European Union which exists both in Europe and
beyond. This is what makes membership attractive, after the numerous collective
experiences of restrictions on freedom and arbitrary rule during the last
century. The EU is not a centralised state, nor a federal state, but a confederation of sovereign states which have decided of their own volition and on the basis of self-determination to transfer certain powers to Brussels.
----A deliberate decision was taken not to establish the European Union as either a political or a fiscal union. It is the Maastricht and Lisbon Treaties which create the EU’s legal framework. All of the EU Member States have signed both treaties and assigned them constitutional-law status via their different ratification mechanisms.
The euro bailout is a continued and institutionalised violation of law. And disregarding the no bail-out clause has led to deterioration, rather than improvement, of the situation in Europe. At no time since Second World War the European peoples have been so negative in their assessments of each other as in the last five years, since the beginning of the “rescue measures”.
In the northern Member States, the image of lazy southern Europeans is increasingly pervasive. People in the countries being bailed out, meanwhile, feel as if they are being bossed around. This is completely absurd, since Greece has benefited from unprecedented solidarity from its European partner states.
Dogmatic insistence on retaining the euro is depriving bad performing countries of the most effective way out of the crisis: regaining competitiveness through flexible exchange rates. The only thing which can help Greece is a (perhaps temporary) exit from the eurozone.
Greece’s exit should come first, before assistance is provided by its European partners. This is the only way to create a positive perspective for Greece’s long-term future. Greece would endure a few years of hardship, but then people would be able to see light at the end of the tunnel
More
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/greece/11721110/Greece-crisis-Not-since-the-war-have-Europeans-hated-each-other-this-much.html
In other news in our increasingly dysfunctional world, it looks like there’s no place left to hide. “Buy when there’s blood in the streets,” said Baron Rothschild, after the Battle of Waterloo. Now may be that time for the brave. But the great Baron already knew the outcome of the battle and was making something of a one way bet, (now denied by Rothschild’s official chroniclers, re-writing history? Who knows or cares?) But it looks like a last chance saloon time to get long a little physical gold and silver.
5 big reasons for oil’s plunge Monday
By Myra P.
Saefong Published: July 6, 2015 4:47 p.m. ET
WTI, Brent crude prices trade at lowest levels since April
Oil futures got pummeled Monday. Prices for West Texas Intermediate and Brent crude logged their lowest settlements in roughly three months. In fact, WTI crude prices have cratered nearly 13% since June 24.Monday’s action marks the sharpest one-day drop for U.S. oil prices since April, as August crude CLQ5, +0.95% on the New York Mercantile Exchange settled at $52.53 a barrel, down $4.40, or 7.7%. On the ICE Futures exchange, August Brent crude LCOQ5, +1.15% lost $3.78, or 6.3%, to $56.54 a barrel.
Here
are the five biggest reasons for the dramatic price plunge:
Greece chaos!
Greek voters on Sunday rejected demands by the country’s creditors. That raised the risk of Greece’s potential exit from the eurozone, which the oil market believes could impact energy demand from Europe. “Even though Greece is a particularly small consumer of oil, it is the risk of contagion and in a worse case, another recession in the eurozone, which has weighed on oil prices,” said Thomas Pugh, commodities economist at Capital Economics. Read the latest news on Greece.Iran
Tuesday marks the deadline for a final agreement between the West and Iran over Iran’s nuclear program. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif on Friday implied that the parties were closing in on a final pact. An Iranian nuclear deal “would lead to lifting of sanctions and enable the country to export oil once again,” said Colin Cieszynski, chief market strategist at CMC Markets. Analysts have said Iran has the ability to add millions of barrels of oil to the global market and usher a quick return to $50 Nymex oil prices or lower. A top oil adviser, however, has said that Iran may delay the launch of new oil contracts by three months until December to take advantage of a potential lifting of western sanctions.
More
Good Luck Finding a Place to Hide as Global Markets Crumble
July 6, 2015 — 5:42 PM BST
Investors tend to respond to impending doom by selling risky stuff and
hiding out in safer assets -- namely, bonds in places such as Germany and the
U.S.There’s a problem with that formula this time around: Traders aren’t so sure they can find anything that’s truly safe right now. So, instead of piling into sovereign debt of developed nations, traders are pulling their money out of those places as the Greek economy teeters on the brink of collapse, Puerto Rico talks about delaying some debt payments and China’s stock market suffers its biggest selloff since 1992.
Investors yanked $2.9 billion from European government bond funds last week, more than ever before, and pulled $699 million from short-term investment-grade U.S. bond funds, Bank of America Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co. data show. While these assets have traditionally been havens during rocky periods, they look less appealing now after more than six years of unprecedented monetary stimulus that pushed yields to record lows.
Why is that a problem? Well, the European Central Bank’s bond-purchasing program this year sent yields so low (negative, in fact) that investors revolted, selling German debt in the face of some signs of economic growth and causing unprecedented volatility. In the U.S., the economy has improved enough that the Federal Reserve is planning to raise interest rates this year from virtually zero, where they’ve been since 2008.
And nations and companies around the world have taken on unprecedented amounts of debt, all with the hope of igniting some growth, with the results being rather tepid.
“All of the mechanisms that function so smoothly when things went wrong, all of those got broken this spring,” said Jim Vogel, an interest-rate strategist at FTN Financial. “No one has confidence that assets are going to go back to their traditional relationships.”
More
It Is NOT Priced-In, Stupid!
by David Stockman •
Among all the mindless blather served up by the talking heads of
bubblevision is the recurrent claim that “its all priced-in”. That is,
there is no danger of a serious market correction because anything which
might imply trouble ahead—-such as weak domestic growth, stalling world
trade or Grexit——is already embodied in stock market prices.
Yep, those soaring averages are already fully risk-adjusted!
So the “oxi” that came screaming unexpectedly out of Greece Sunday
evening will undoubtedly be explained away before the NYSE closes on
Monday. Nothing to see here, it will be argued. Today’s plunge
is just another opportunity for those who get it
to “buy-the-dip”.
And they might well be right in the very short-run. But this
time the outbreak of volatility is different. This time the dip buyers will be
carried out on their shields.
Here’s why. The whole priced-in meme presumes that nothing has really
changed in the financial markets during the last three decades. The latter
is still just the timeless machinery of capitalist price
discovery at work. Traders and investors in their tens-of-thousands are
purportedly diligently engaged in sifting, sorting, dissecting
and discounting the massive, continuous flows of
incoming information that bears on future corporate profits and the
present value thereof.
That presumption is dead wrong. The age of Keynesian central banking has
destroyed all the essential elements upon which vibrant, honest price
discovery depends. These include short-sellers which insure
disciplined two-way markets; carry costs which are high enough
to discourage rampant leveraged speculation; money market uncertainty
that is palpable enough to inhibit massive yield curve arbitrage; option
costs which are burdensome enough to deny fast money gamblers access
to cheap downside portfolio insurance; and flexible, mobilized
interest rates which enable imbalances of supply and demand for investable
funds to be decisively cleared.
Not one of these conditions any longer exists.
More
Just
because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand.
Tsipras,
with apologies to Homer Simpson.
At the Comex silver depositories Monday
final figures were: Registered 60.15 Moz, Eligible 122.66 Moz, Total 182.81
Moz.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
I’m no fan of Piketty, but Greece hasn’t a hope
without a debt write off and preferably a new currency and a devaluation.
What do we need a psychiatrist
for? We know Europe is nuts.
Obama, with apologies
to Homer Simpson.
German conservatives are destroying Europe with austerity, says economist Thomas Piketty
Monday 06 July 2015
German conservatives are on course to destroy Europe with their commitment
to continent-wide austerity, one of the world’s most influential economists
has said.Thomas Piketty, a French academic who published a bestselling book on capitalism, said the likes of Angela Merkel had failed to learn the lessons of the past.
“This is neither a reason for France, nor Germany, and especially not for Europe, to be happy,” he told German newspaper Zeit Online, when asked about the dominance of austerity in policymaking.
---German conservatives are on course to destroy Europe with their commitment to continent-wide austerity, one of the world’s most influential economists has said.
Thomas Piketty, a French academic who published a bestselling book on capitalism, said the likes of Angela Merkel had failed to learn the lessons of the past.
“This is neither a reason for France, nor Germany, and especially not for Europe, to be happy,” he told German newspaper Zeit Online, when asked about the dominance of austerity in policymaking.
----Mr Piketty said Germany’s past history of having its debt forgiven by other nations should inform its approach to the current Greek crisis.
In contrast to the widespread support for austerity amongst politicians, most macroeconomists say the policy is damaging.
A survey by the Centre for Macroeconomics released in April this year found that two thirds of macroeconomists believed austerity had not had a positive effect in the UK.
The French government has in recent days softened its stance on Greece’s debt, in contrast to Germany - whose stance has hardened after the announcement of a referendum on a deal offered by creditors.
France's economy minister Emmanuel Macron took a similar line to Mr Piketty’s last night, warning against re-enacting the ‘Treaty of Versailles’.
----In contrast, after the Second World War Germany’s war debts were forgiven as part of a plan to rebuild the country.
Germany’s government was less reconciliatory than France’s in the
aftermath of the this weekend's vote.
Deputy chancellor Sigmar Gabriel, a social democrat ally of Ms Merkel,
said Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras has “torn down the last bridges”
between Greece and the rest of Europe.
Thomas Piketty is most well known for having written the 2013 book
Capital in the Twenty-First Century.
The work has sold more than 1.5 million copies and argues that
capitalism has a tendency to create inequality when the rate of return on
capital is higher than the rate of economic growth.
More
Oh, people can come up with statistics to
prove anything, Piketty. 14% of people know that.
Homer Simpson.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?
Graphene Light Bulb Hitting The UK Market Soon
July 5th, 2015 by James Ayre
The first commercially available consumer product using graphene will
soon be available in the UK — in the form of a light bulb coated in the
much-hyped material.
The graphene light bulb — which reportedly will reduce electricity use
by around 10%, and will last longer than a conventional LED bulb — is currently
expected to go on sale later this year for around £15 a pop.
The improved performance of the dimmable bulb is reportedly due to the
increased conductivity (electricity + heat) accompanying the use of graphene.
The design was the work of a company dubbed Graphene Lighting — which has as
one of its directors the deputy vice-chancellor at the University of
Manchester, Professor Colin Bailey.Professor Bailey noted in an interview with the BBC: “The graphene light bulb will use less energy. We expect it to last longer. The manufacturing costs are lower and it uses more and more sustainable components.”
Considering that graphene was first “discovered” by researchers at the University of Manchester — researchers (and Nobel Prize winners) Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, back in 2004 — the launch by a company associated with those at the university makes sense.
As it stands, over 35 different companies (from all over the world) currently have development partnerships with the university concerning technologies/products utilizing graphene — from use in solar PV cells, to electric vehicles, to energy storage. While there’s a great deal of hype surrounding the use of graphene, economical use of the technology is still something of an open question — as it is somewhat expensive for the time being and challenging to manufacture. Though, improvements in that regard are reportedly fast approaching.
https://cleantechnica.com/2015/07/05/graphene-light-bulb-hitting-uk-market-soon/
New micro-supercapacitor structure inspired by the intricate design of leaves
Date:July 1, 2015
Source:Institute for Basic Science
Summary:A new method for making a graphene film for
supercapacitors has been developed by researchers. When designing something new
and complex, sometimes the best inspiration is one already found in nature. The
team modeled their film structure on natural vein-textured leaves in order to take
advantage of the natural transport pathways which enable efficient ion
diffusion parallel to the graphene planes found within them.
More
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished June
DJIA: +98 Down. NASDAQ:
+192 Down. SP500: +127 Down.
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