Baltic Dry Index. 1200 -01 Brent Crude 48.29
LIR Gold Target in 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
Delay is preferable to error.
Thomas Jefferson.
QE Forever and ZIRP have failed!
At best they merely delayed the consequences of the Greenspan serial
bubbles, that led to the financial system meltdown of 2007-2009. At worst they
inflated the Great Mis and Mal-investment bubbles 2010-2014, that now seems to
be bursting before our eyes with each passing week. Our Great Disconnect
between the financialised stock market casinos and the real world economy is
about to end.
Below, the world’s number one and number two economies hit trouble.
Trouble itself is about to hit the Fedster’s final stock bubble.
Go-go economy becomes so-so economy: U.S. faces dimmer future absent big fixes
Published: Aug 7, 2015 10:31 a.m. ET
US annual economic growth.
1950-1990 3.74% 1991-2000 3.45% 2001-2007 2.45% 2010-2014 2.21%
US productivity.
Average annual
increase. 1948-2007 2.5% 2010-2014 1.2%
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Millions of Americans who want a full-time job
still can’t find still one. Worker paychecks are barely keeping ahead of
inflation. And governments at all levels are struggling to prevent future costs
from spiraling out of control.All of these ailments can be traced to one malady: slow economic growth.
The U.S. is in a straitjacket. Sure, the economy has been growing steadily at a 2% clip since a recovery began in mid-2009. But the U.S. is expanding well below its historic growth rate of 3.3%. And it hasn’t topped the 3% mark in a decade — the longest barren stretch in modern times.
Politicians have taken notice. They’ve seized on the dull performance of the U.S. economy as they jockey to capture the White House in 2016. Republican contender Jeb Bush has publicly made the goal of a 4% economy the early rallying cry of his campaign.
Forget 4%. Virtually every economist of any political stripe says it’s an impossible dream. Most are doubtful the U.S. can regularly achieve 3% growth again. And even those who do disagree on what needs to done.
What’s at stake is the very future of America. Without faster growth the U.S. can’t create enough jobs for those who want to them, and Americans will have to get used to much smaller increases in their paychecks. The middle class could shrink and poor would be even worse off.
Governments from Washington on down won’t be able to do much to cushion
the blow, either.
They’ll find it harder to balance budgets, pay bills,
maintain entitlement spending and make badly needed investments in roads,
bridges, scientific research and other endeavors critical to the economy.
Even maintaining the world’s most powerful military could be
jeopardized.
More
China under mounting pressure to ease policy as economy stumbles
China is under growing pressure to further stimulate its economy after
disappointing data over the weekend showed another heavy fall in factory-gate
prices and a surprise slump in exports.
Producer prices in July hit their lowest point since late 2009, during
the aftermath of the global financial crisis, and have been sliding
continuously for more than three years.
Exports tumbled 8.3 percent in the same month, their biggest fall in
four months, as weaker global demand for Chinese goods and a strong yuan policy
hurt manufacturers.
"Policy focus is definitely the (producer) deflation at this
stage," said Zhou Hao, economist at Commerzbank AG in Singapore.
He said China's central bank would likely need to further cut interest
rates again, having already cut four times since November in the most
aggressive easing in nearly seven years.
The gloom may only deepen in the coming week with a raft of economic
data forecast to show renewed weakness in factories, investment and domestic
spending.
The world's second-largest economy is officially targeted to grow at 7
percent this year, still strong by global standards, but some economists
believe it is growing at a much slower pace.
More
Asian stocks near one and a half year lows on China data; dollar steady
Asian shares fell within sight of a fresh 1-1/2 year low while commodity
currencies such as the Malaysian ringgit fell further on Monday after Chinese
data highlighted a deepening slowdown in demand in the world's industrial
powerhouse.
News of another monthly decline in Chinese exports - its biggest fall in
four months - and a collapse in producer prices shows how China's faltering
industrial demand has hit global trade and sent emerging market assets reeling.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS
edged lower and held near a 1-1/2 year low hit last month. It has fallen 16
percent since May.
"The markets are beginning to price in structurally lower growth in
China and an end to the so-called commodity super-cycle," said Yoshinori
Shigemi, global market strategist at JPMorgan Asset Management.
While economists have long predicted a slowdown in the pace of China's
economic expansion after years of turbocharged growth, investors have been
taken aback by the scale of the slowdown and the impact it has had on emerging
markets.
In the six months to May, world trade volumes have shrunk by around 4
percent annualized, a pace of decline that hasn't been seen since the global
recessions of 2001 and 2009, according to BNP Paribas economists. Much of that
decline this year has been caused by a sustained slowdown in China.
More
In the real world,
signs of moving on from deflation to depression.
South Africa’s Zuma Asks Mining Companies to Limit Job Cuts
August 9, 2015 — 3:52 PM BST
South Africa President Jacob Zuma asked mining and steel companies to limit
job cuts as falling commodity prices put profits at risk.“We urge business to contain the difficulties as much as possible and not to resort to retrenchments at the first possible opportunity,” Zuma said Sunday in Sasolburg in the Free State province, according to an e-mailed transcript.
Plans by companies including Lonmin Plc to cut jobs following a plunge in coal, iron ore and platinum have drawn criticism from the ruling African National Congress in a nation where one in four is unemployed. South Africa has a target to create six million new jobs by 2019.
The government will help companies to avoid cuts and assist people affected by job losses wherever possible, Zuma was cited as saying.
Anglo American Plc, Scaw Metals Group and Lonmin are among companies planning to cut about 10,000 jobs in Africa’s most-industrialized economy. The Bloomberg Commodity Index fell this month to a 13-year low.
Rumors of commodities' demise are not being exaggerated
Commodities are the gift that keep on not giving.The sector is in the throes of an 'annus horribilis', having gotten wrecked over the past few years despite massive liquidity that should have boosted their value. Bullish investor after bullish investor has tried to call a bottom, in a set of calls that now appear ill-conceived and money losing.
In the past week, the S&P GSCI Commodity Index has dropped 3.4 in the past week, as crude oil plunged 7 percent to hit multi-month lows, and a host of metals fell alongside it.
That, of course, hardly marks the first big drop for the alternative investment group. That widely watched commodity index has fallen 17 percent the last three months, and a whopping 42 percent in the past two years.
It's not just an energy issue, either. Copper, platinum, lumber, coffee, sugar, wheat, oats and lean hogs are all down double-digit percentages this year. While each specific commodity obviously responds to its own distinct supply-and-demand dynamics, a few fundamental factors appear to be weighing on commodities as a whole.
First of all, the U.S. dollar has risen nearly 8 percent this year against a basket of major currencies, and has rediscovered some of its strength in the past three months.
A strong dollar tends to be bad for commodities, as it should mean that it takes fewer dollars to buy the same amount of a given fixed asset.
And in fact, many investors bought commodities to get protection from a Federal Reserve stimulus-stoked rise in inflation that never came. As the Fed ended its quantitative easing program—and now appears months away from raising rates—what now appears to have been a massive bubble in commodities like gold has slowly popped.
More
Maybe the Commodities Supercycle Is Actually Real
16
Economic supercycle theories, based on the long-ago musings of Nikolai
Kondratiev and Joseph Schumpeter, have always been a little akin to voodoo:
It's hard to believe that there is an underlying pattern to how economic
indicators change over the course of decades. The current rout in commodity
prices, however, fits in eerily well with the idea.
Almost all commodity markets have taken a severe beating lately. The
aggregate Bloomberg Commodities Index is down 61 percent from its 2008 peak and
46 percent from the 2011 post-crisis high:
The rout can partly be attributed to expectations of a U.S. interest rate hike and the recent Chinese stock market crash, which made investors question the health of the world's second-biggest economy. It could, however, be the beginning of the downward part of the current supercycle.
Two economists -- Bilge Erten of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs and Jose Antonio Ocampo of Columbia University -- set out to describe the commodity supercycle in a 2012 paper, using the band-pass filter, a statistical technique that wasn't available to the 20th-century economists who pioneered the concept. They found four cycles between 1894 and 2010. The first one peaked in 1917 and ended in 1932, at the bottom of the Great Depression. The second one ran until the 1971 oil shock, peaking in 1951. The third one peaked soon after it started, in 1973, and ran until 1999. The current cycle, according to Erten and Ocampo, peaked in 2010 -- though if they had data from the next several years, they might have placed the peak in 2011 or 2012.
More
All great ideas are dangerous.
Oscar Wilde.
At the Comex silver depositories Friday
final figures were: Registered 55.83 Moz, Eligible 116.27 Moz, Total 172.10
Moz.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.
Bernie
Madoff, with apologies to Plato.
In forgotten EUSSR
news, Greece, yes remember Greece, slides closer to the door marked Grexit.
Whether Greece gets bailout three or not seems, now to be largely irrelevant. Events
in a slowing global economy, will leave Greece little choice ahead but to exit
the EMU, default, devalue, and reform.
Greece inches closer to third bail-out deal but Finns insist rescue package 'won't work'
Greece's creditors agree on draft deal after marathon talks as Finland's foreign minister criticises the rescue and inists 'Grexit' is still the most likely outcome
Greece is closer to unlocking a fresh €86bn (£61bn) rescue package after the country's creditors reportedly agreed on a draft deal this weekend.German and Greek media said 27-pages of "substantial" and "far-reaching" reforms had been agreed following marathon talks between Euclid Tsakalotos, Greece's finance minister, and the country's creditors on Saturday.
The six hour meeting, which ended in the early hours of Sunday morning, will see the country slash defence spending and subsidies for farmers as part of a fresh package of austerity measures, according to German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
Mr Tsakalotos and Giorgos Stathakis, Greece's economy minister, will meet creditor representives again on Sunday to iron out details on fiscal targets and a €50bn privatisation fund.
The country's third bail-out in five years has faced fierce opposition from countries such as Finland, which threatened on Saturday to withhold its support for a new deal.
Timo Soini, the country's eurosceptic foreign minister, said Finland was "running out of patience" with Greece, as he insisted that a Greek exit from the eurozone was still the most likely outcome..
"Of course we can stay out [of another rescue package], that is possible," he told Reuters.
In a separate interview with Bloomberg, Mr Soini said: “Truth is the strongest force ... We should admit that this isn’t going to work.”
Mr Soini admitted that Finnish opposition would not derail a a third bail-out, citing an emergency voting procedure whereby financial assistance can be granted if supported by a qualified majority of 85pc of the votes cast. Finland has a share of less than 2pc of the vote.
"If we vote against a deal, it goes to the emergency procedure, and a package is implemented regardless of us," said Mr Soini. "I don't believe that this [bail out] policy will provide solutions, and I think that, in the longer term, 'Grexit' is the most likely scenario," he said.
More
The
surest way to remain poor is to be an honest man.
Napoleon
Bonaparte.
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? DC? A quantum computer
next?
From cameras to computers, new material could change how we work and play
Date: August 3, 2015
Source: Northeastern University
Summary: During a four year project to imbue graphene with
thermal sensitivity, researchers discovered an entirely new material spun out
of boron, nitrogen, carbon, and oxygen that shows evidence of magnetic,
optical, electrical, and thermal properties.
That's what Northeastern physicists Swastik Kar and Srinivas Sridhar
found during their four-year project to modify graphene, a stronger-than-steel
infinitesimally thin lattice of tightly packed carbon atoms. Primarily
funded by the Army Research Laboratory and Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency, or DARPA, the researchers were charged with imbuing the decade-old
material with thermal sensitivity for use in infrared imaging devices such
as night-vision goggles for the military.
What they unearthed, published in the journal Science Advances,
was so much more: an entirely new material spun out of boron, nitrogen,
carbon, and oxygen that shows evidence of magnetic, optical, and electrical
properties as well as DARPA's sought-after thermal ones. Its potential applications
run the gamut: from 20-megapixel arrays for cellphone cameras to photo detectors
to atomically thin transistors that when multiplied by the billions
could fuel computers.
"We had to start from scratch and build everything," says
Kar, an assistant professor of physics in the College of Science. "We
were on a journey, creating a new path, a new direction of research."
The pair was familiar with "alloys," controlled combinations
of elements that resulted in materials with properties that surpassed
graphene's--for example, the addition of boron and nitrogen to graphene's
carbon to connote the conductivity necessary to produce an electrical
insulator. But no one had ever thought of choosing oxygen to add to the mix.
What led the Northeastern researchers to do so?
"Well, we didn't choose oxygen," says Kar, smiling broadly.
"Oxygen chose us."
Oxygen, of course, is everywhere. Indeed, Kar and Sridhar spent a lot
of time trying to get rid of the oxygen seeping into their brew, worried that
it would contaminate the "pure" material they were seeking to develop.
"That's where the Aha! moment happened for us," says Kar.
"We realized we could not ignore the role that oxygen plays in the way
these elements mix together."
"So instead of trying to remove oxygen, we thought: Let's control
its introduction," adds Sridhar, the Arts and Sciences Distinguished
Professor of Physics and director of Northeastern's Electronic Materials
Research Institute.
Oxygen, it turned out, was behaving in the reaction chamber in a way
the scientists had never anticipated: It was determining how the other
elements--the boron, carbon, and nitrogen--combined in a solid, crystal form,
while also inserting itself into the lattice.
MoreThe monthly Coppock Indicators finished July
DJIA: +88 Down. NASDAQ:
+189 Down. SP500: +116 Down.
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