Baltic Dry Index. 1131 +31 Brent Crude 51.86
LIR Gold Target in 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
"It was disturbing to understand that the unspoken details behind the written words of my resume and of that article defined a world of smoke and mirrors intended to keep us all shacked to a system that is morally repugnant and ultimately self destructive."
John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean someone’s not out to get you. Are America’s “economic hit men” out after China, or is the rapidly growing commodity rout now leading the world back to the 1930s? Some combination of both? My money’s on the latter, some combination of both. China itself seems to think the former, with US fund Citadel in the crosshairs. But would the Fedster’s really dare unleash Citadel to take out China’s stock market bubble and end the Yuan's prospects? Wouldn’t that be the financial equivalent of the American War Party’s botched coup in Kiev?
Up front and center today, China, where contagion from the burst stock bubble seems to have spread deeply into the wider economy and is still spreading. Below that, commodity collapse contagion is now widening out globally, with Canada, among others in the crosshairs.
China freezes U.S. fund Citadel's account in war on stock speculation
China's markets regulator has suspended a trading account of U.S.-based
hedge fund Citadel LLC, the fund said on Monday, in the watchdog's first known
move against a big foreign investor as it battles to prop up China's ailing
stock markets.
The regulator, which has declared war on "malicious" short
selling, has been at the forefront of a government-orchestrated campaign to
prevent a meltdown in the two main stock markets, which have tumbled some 30
percent since mid-June.
The Shanghai and Shenzhen markets fell again on Monday, undermined by
fresh concerns over the health of the world's second-largest economy.
China's factory activity shrank more than initially estimated in July,
contracting by the most in two years as new orders fell and dashing hopes that
the world's second-largest economy may be steadying, a private survey showed on
Monday.
Morehttp://www.reuters.com/article/2015/08/03/us-china-stocks-regulator-citadel-idUSKCN0Q803G20150803
Asian stocks near 2015 lows on China economy worry, dollar strong
An index of Asian shares outside Japan fell close to this year's lows
thanks to a deepening selloff in commodities and concerns over slowing growth
in China, while the dollar held its ground against a basket of currencies.
China's factory activity shrank more than initially estimated in July,
contracting by the most in two years as new orders fell, according to a private
survey that dashed hopes that the economy may be steadying.
"We believe the stock market panic in early July chilled economic
activity, which is what the manufacturing PMIs picked up," ING economist
Tim Condon said in a research note ahead of the Caixin PMI release.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS
fell more than 1 percent before paring losses to be down 0.9 percent. The
biggest losers were financials and cyclicals. The index's low for this year was
on July 8.
Morehttp://www.reuters.com/article/2015/08/03/us-markets-global-idUSKCN0Q800V20150803
China central bank official sees downward pressure on economy persisting: paper
Downward pressure on China's economy will persist in the second half of
the year as growth in infrastructure spending and exports is unlikely to pick
up, a senior central bank official was quoted as saying.
Chinese companies are not optimistic about business prospects according
to the central bank's second-quarter survey,
Sheng Songcheng, the director of the statistics division of the People's
Bank of China (PBOC), was quoted as saying by the National Business Daily on
Saturday.
Pressured by uneven domestic and export demand, cooling investment and
factory overcapacity, China's economic growth is expected to slow to around 7
percent this year, the lowest in a quarter of a century, from 7.4 percent in
2014.
A plunge in the country's share markets since mid-June has added to
worries about the economy, and reinforced expectations that policymakers will
roll out more support measures in coming months to avert a sharper slowdown.
The PBOC has already cut interest rates four times since November and
repeatedly loosened restrictions on bank lending in its most aggressive
stimulus campaign since the global financial crisis.
Sheng warned about the risks of local government debt, saying that 2
trillion yuan ($322.08 billion) in bond swaps may not be able to fully cover
maturing debt, according to the report.
Sheng said the PBOC needs to step up the monitoring of local government
financing vehicles given the current downturn in property market and limited
local government revenues.
MoreIran Says It Can Boost Oil Output Just Days After Sanctions End
August 2, 2015 — 8:55 AM BST
Iran can boost oil production in one week after international sanctions
are lifted, and OPEC’s refusal to accommodate Iran in export markets would
result in lower crude prices, Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said.
Production can increase by 500,000 barrels a day in a week after
sanctions end and by 1 million barrels a day in one month, state-run Islamic
Republic News Agency reported, citing Zanganeh in an interview with state TV.
Sanctions against Iran’s oil industry should be lifted by late November, he
said, according to Iran oil ministry’s Shana news agency.
Oil producers such as BP Plc and Royal Dutch Shell Plc have expressed
interest in developing Iran’s reserves, the world’s fourth-biggest, once
sanctions are removed. Iran is organizing a conference in London in December to
discuss new oil contract models with international companies. Iran had the
second-biggest output in OPEC before U.S.-led sanctions banned the purchase,
transport, finance and insuring of its crude began July 2012.
----Under the nuclear agreement Iran and
six world powers reached in Vienna last month, the U.S. agreed to end efforts
to limit Iran’s oil sales. The European Union said it would end the bloc’s
embargo on imports once Iran complies with obligations to scale back its
nuclear program.Iran, the third-largest producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, produced an average of 2.85 million barrels a day in July compared with 3.6 million at the end of 2011, according to estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
More
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-02/iran-s-oil-minister-says-output-to-rise-one-week-after-sanctions
Three Years Ago This Coal Mine Was Worth $624 Million. Now It Sold for $1
July 31,
2015 — 12:31 PM BST Updated on July 31, 2015 — 6:02 PM BST
The destructive force of a collapse in world coal prices has been
underscored by the sale of a mine valued at A$860 million ($631 million) three
years ago for just a dollar.Brazilian miner Vale SA and Japan’s Sumitomo Corp. sold the Isaac Plains coking-coal mine in Australia to Stanmore Coal Ltd., the Brisbane-based company said Thursday in a statement. Sumitomo bought a half stake for A$430 million in 2012.
A slump in the price of coking coal, used to make steel, to a decade low is forcing mines to close across the world and bankrupting some producers. Alpha Natural Resources Inc., the biggest U.S. producer, plans to file for bankruptcy protection in Virginia as soon as Monday, said three people with direct knowledge of the matter. It was valued at $7.3 billion in 2008.
Isaac Plains in Queensland “was one of the most exciting coal projects in Australia,” Investec Plc analysts said in a note to investors on Friday. The site has a resource of 30 million metric tons, according to Stanmore.
“The outlook for coal is still very difficult,” Roger Downey, Vale’s executive director for fertilizers and coal, said on Thursday after Stanmore announced the sale. “We see even in Australia mines that are still in the red and at some point that has to change. We have quite adverse and challenging markets.”
Coal’s demise is just part of a broader slump in commodity prices, which fell to the lowest in 13 years this month. The benchmark price for coking coal exported from Australia has slumped 24 percent this year to $85.40 a ton on Friday, according to prices from Steel Business Briefing. The quarterly benchmark price peaked at $330 a ton in 2011, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.
More
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-31/the-600-million-mine-sold-for-a-dollar-underscores-ruin-of-coal
Harper Calls Oct. 19 Election as Canada’s Economy Struggles
August 2, 2015 — 4:14 AM BST Updated on August 2, 2015 — 3:44 PM BST
Prime Minister Stephen Harper fired the starting gun early on Canada’s
election campaign amid polls showing his Conservative government’s nine-year
reign is threatened by a leftist party that’s never held power nationally.Harper, 56, met with Governor General David Johnston, Queen Elizabeth II’s representative in Canada, on Sunday morning. He requested the dissolution of parliament and formally began campaigning for an Oct. 19 vote, making it the longest electoral contest since 1872.
“Now is most certainly not the time for higher taxes, reckless spending and permanent deficits,” Harper told reporters at Ottawa’s Rideau Hall. “Now is the time to stay on track, now is the time to stick to our plan.”
The incumbent prime minister faces the toughest fight of his political life after almost a decade in power, as an oil shock ransacks the economy and voters grow increasingly weary of his government. Polls show Harper’s Conservatives in a tight three-way race with the left-leaning New Democratic Party and the centrist Liberals.
The narrow contest suggests Canada is poised return to a minority government, in which no party can unilaterally push through its agenda and elections are more frequent. It would be the country’s fourth minority government in the past five elections.
More
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-02/harper-to-call-election-early-with-canada-s-economy-on-the-ropes
We end for today on unloved and much central bank rigged against gold. The whole article is well worth the time to read, but the tiny snippet below, says all about the failure of the Great Nixonian Error of fiat money, communist money in reality, and why every man, woman, and child on earth, needs some protection from the lying, cheating, stealing, incompetent central banksters.
Gold and the Grave Dancers
by Pater Tenebrarum • August 1,
2015
Back
in the 1960s, Alan Greenspan wrote a well-known essay that to this day is an
essential read for anyone who wants to understand the present-day monetary and
economic system (which is a kind of “fascism lite” type of statism,
masquerading as capitalism) and especially the almost visceral hate etatistes
harbor toward gold. Greenspan’s essay is entitled “Gold
and Economic Freedom”,
and as the title already suggests, the two are intimately connected.
Alan
Greenspan in the mid 1970s – although he later turned out to be a sell-out, his
understanding of economics undoubtedly dwarfed that of his successors at the
Fed (and we are not just saying this based on the essay discussed here).
What
makes Greenspan’s essay especially noteworthy is that it manages to present
both theory and history in a concise, easy to understand manner. There isn’t a
word in it we would change. At one point, Greenspan provides a brief history
lesson. Yes, the (relatively) free banking era in the United States in the 19th
century involved fractional reserve banking and as a result, there were
frequent boom and bust cycles. However, since there was no “lender of last
resort” with an unlimited money printing capacity, these business cycles were
sharp and brief, and the market economy quickly righted itself every time:
----Lastly, we are actually gratified by the fact that assorted etatistes still seem so preoccupied with gold. This is a sign that gold remains an important monetary asset, one that continues to stand tall as an indictment of central economic planning, socialism and corporatism in all its forms. Even after having declined by roughly 45% from its 2011 high, gold is still up by more than 3,000% against the US dollar since the latter was cut loose from its tie to gold by Nixon’s default in 1971. This means that even with gold under pressure for four years running, the dollar has still crashed by 97% against it since 1971.
More
http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/gold-and-the-grave-dancers/?utm_source=wysija&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Mailing+List+Sunday+10+AM
“This
book was written so that we may take heed and remold our story. I am certain
that when enough of us become aware of how we are being exploited by the
economic engine that creates an insatiable appetite for the world's resources,
and results in systems that foster slavery, we will no longer tolerate it. We
will reassess our role in a world where a few swim in riches and the majority
drown in poverty, pollution, and violence . We will commit ourselves to
navigating a course toward compassion, democracy, and social justice for all.”
John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
At the Comex silver depositories Friday
final figures were: Registered 56.59 Moz, Eligible 119.08 Moz, Total 175.67
Moz.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
No crooks today.
Today we take a different look at China from its shipping indexes, the China
Containerised Freight Index (CCFI) and the Shanghai Containerised Freight Index
(SCFI.) And from an interesting if inconclusive assessment of China in Forbes.
Both indexes are
released on Fridays and were 818.85, and 822.39 on Friday July 31. Recent highs
were CCFI about 1170 May 2014, SCFI 1120 December 2014. The indexes are roughly
complimentary, although they diverged last week with the CCFI falling and the
SCFI rising. However, both indexes continue to suggest a Chinese economy that
has slowed significantly from last year, and shows little sign of improving.
Click on the link
for more details on both. http://en.sse.net.cn/indices/introduction_ccfi.jsp
Do China’s Stock Markets Portend The Chickens Are Finally Coming Home To Roost?
by Forbes • August 1, 2015
No economy can have its cake and eat it too. The overarching objective
of modern China’s economic reform program, which was launched in 1978 soon
after the death of Mao Zedung and perhaps best encapsulated in Deng Xiaoping’s
1992 pronouncement of the concept of a “socialist market economy”, has been
always fraught with inherent contradictions.
Indeed, as someone who has professionally focused on China’s economy
since 1993, worked extensively in many regions of the country—some far, far off
the beaten track—and been on the factory floor in more Chinese state-owned
enterprises (SOEs) than have most Chinese (so I’ve been told by friends in
Beijing), Deng’s notion always seemed to be a blatant contradiction in terms.
----Yet the country’s leadership has been opening up access to the stock
markets at a furious pace in order to pacify the population so it feels it is
able to share in the economy’s growth in some fashion. The number of traders
has exploded, with many freely admitting that they engage in transactions based
simply on hearsay or from informal tips from friends and family members. This
is why observers increasingly liken China’s stock markets to casinos. At the
same time the number of enterprises listed on the exchanges has leapt. Between
2000 and 2013, the number of listings more than doubled, from just over 1000 to
about 2500.This is why Beijing in recent weeks has had little choice but to prop up share values (as it has done in the past). When a government does this, why even pretend to call these stock markets? No doubt, this is the most glaring of China’s economic contradictions. Worse still, this is a loser’s game. At some point, resources will either have been exhausted or they will be taken away. In the meantime, China’s leadership is treating the stock markets as ‘too big to fail’ and committing moral hazard, which only creates stronger incentives for the Chinese people to continue to buy in.
This is the real knife edge: while the leadership professes it wants the
population to believe in markets, having the state jumping in and out of the
marketplace to attempt this to happen is simply tautological.
Back to those chickens, seemingly intent to roost: should the Chinese
continue to put most of their eggs into a state-owned basket?
More
"The loans of foreign aid will ensure that today's children and their grandchildren will be held hostage."
John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
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?
Off topic but worth
sharing.
Non-invasive spinal cord stimulation gets paralyzed legs moving voluntarily again
Five men with complete motor paralysis have regained the ability to move their legs voluntarily and produce step-like movements after being treated with a non-invasive form of spinal cord stimulation.The new treatment builds on prior work to generate voluntary movements in paralyzed people through electrical stimulation – in particular, two studies (one completed in 2011, the other in 2014) that involved surgically implanting an electrode array on the spinal cord. This time, however, the researchers found success without performing any invasive surgery.
The new treatment uses a technique called transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation, which involves strategically placing electrodes on the skin of the lower back. While receiving stimulation, the men's legs were supported by braces that hung from the ceiling. At first their legs only moved involuntarily, if at all. But they soon found they could voluntarily extend the distance their legs moved during stimulation. They doubled their range of voluntary motion after four treatment sessions.
In an effort to further improve voluntary motion, the researchers gave the men a drug called buspirone during the final four weeks of the 18-week study. This drug mimics the neurotransmitter serotonin, and it is known to induce walking motions in mice with spinal cord injuries.
All five men had been paralyzed for more than two years prior to receiving the treatment, which lasted 45 minutes at a time and was conducted once a week for the duration of the study. But by the end of the study, after they had received the buspirone drug, they could all move their legs with no stimulation at all. This movement was comparable to what they achieved while receiving stimulation.
"It's as if we've reawakened some networks [in the nervous system]," said co-lead researcher V. Reggie Edgerton.
There appear to be connections between the brain and spinal cord even in some paralyzed people, only they have gone dormant. But electrical signals generated in the men's leg muscles during stimulation suggest this can be reversed.
Edgerton now hopes to test the non-invasive stimulation on people with partial paralysis. He also notes that, while the results here are very promising, both invasive and non-invasive forms of electrical stimulation will need to be developed further and one will likely not prove better than the other for everyone.
"All patients are going to need something slightly different," he said, "and maybe non-invasive stimulation is going to be best in some cases and epidural stimulation in others. What we need to do is maximize the clinical tool box that we have so that the physician and the patient can select a therapy that is best for them."
The study was conducted by researchers at UCLA, the University of California, San Francisco, and Russia's Pavlov Institute. A paper describing the research was published in the Journal of Neurotrauma.
More
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished July
DJIA: +88 Down. NASDAQ:
+189 Down. SP500: +116 Down.
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