Baltic Dry Index. 883 +69 Brent Crude 49.13
LIR Gold Target in 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
When
Ebenezer Squid says jump, we only ask “how high?”
The
talking chair.
To no one’s great surprise, The Fedster’s bottled out
yesterday and left America’s key interest rate unchanged. The clue came earlier
in the day when America’s top Goldmanite ordered “don’t do it.” It wasn’t part
of God’s work, apparently. Perhaps as a Christmas treat.
Fed Leaves Interest Rates Unchanged
September
17, 2015 — 7:07 PM BST Updated on September 17, 2015 — 7:17 PM BST
Federal Reserve officials left interest rates unchanged, opting to
delay an increase amid stubbornly low inflation, an uncertain outlook for
global growth and recent financial-market turmoil.“Recent global economic and financial developments may restrain economic activity somewhat and are likely to put further downward pressure on inflation in the near term,” the Federal Open Market Committee said in a statement Thursday in Washington.
- Read the full statement here.
“On balance, labor market indicators show that underutilization of labor resources has diminished since early this year,” officials said.
The yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note fell to 2.23 percent at 2:10 p.m. in New York following the release of the statement from 2.30 percent late on Wednesday. The S&P 500 pared earlier gains.
Richmond Fed President Jeffrey Lacker dissented, saying he preferred to raise the target rate by 0.25 percentage point.
More
Goldman chief Lloyd Blankfein on Fed rate rise: 'I wouldn't do it'
Lloyd Blankfein said the Federal Reserve should take its cues from economic data rather than sentiment about an interest rate hike
The chief executive of Goldman Sachs has cautioned the US Federal Reserve against raising interest rates, saying policymakers should resist the temptation to hike prematurely and “get it over with”.As the world awaits a decision from the Fed at 7pm on whether rates will rise from their seven-year spell at rock bottom, Mr Blankfein told an event in New York that if a decision was made to hike “it’s not because there’s a tsunami of evidence of a hardening and quickening recovery”.
“It’s almost a question of wanting to get over that hurdle, and on that basis that’s probably not a reason to do it,” he said.
“I wouldn’t do it… because once you get pulled by, ‘gosh, they’ve been
low too long’ and these kind of soft things, that really enters into the
pressure and the politics and I think it should be data driven if you’re the
Fed.”
Goldman Sachs’ economists have predicted a rate rise in December, having
pushed back their prediction by several months over the summer in the face of
worsening economic signals from China as well as lacklustre measures of the US
economy.
More
In other news, Europe’s
migrant crisis is fuelling a swing to the right. Below, the latest news from
Mrs Merkel’s German folly.
Germany's right-wing AfD rises in eastern Saxony amid refugee crisis
Support for Germany's right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has
strengthened in the eastern state of Saxony, reaching the level of Social
Democrats (SPD) after an escalation in Europe's refugee crisis, a poll showed
on Wednesday.
German towns are struggling to cope with a record influx of refugees and
AfD has attacked the government's policy, calling it "asylum chaos".
Saxony is a stronghold for the far-right National Democratic Party and
neo-Nazis, as well as the domicile of AfD's new leader Frauke Petry. The state's
capital Dresden is home to the anti-Islam PEGIDA movement which drew about
5,000 people in a march earlier this week.
The infratest dimap survey put the AfD, which entered the Saxony
assembly in 2014 with 9.7 percent of the vote, on 13 percent, equal to the SPD
which currently shares power in the state with Chancellor Angela Merkel's
conservatives.
The conservatives slipped 1.4 points to 38 percent from their result in
the last year's state vote.
The poll also showed that 60 percent of people in Saxony are worried
about the influx of refugees, compared to 38 percent in the whole country.
More
Refugee crisis: Croatia seals border crossings with Serbia
Croatia closes seven out of eight border crossings with Serbia while Slovenia turns back train carrying migrants
By Matthew Holehouse, Brussels, Dan Nolan on the
Serb-Croatia border and Colin Freeman
Croatia became the latest country to try to stem the flow of refugees,
by closing seven of its eight border crossings with Serbia “until further
notice,”
The move was announced by the country's interior ministry after 11,000
migrants crossed the border within 48 hours.
Meanwhile Slovenian police stopped a train carrying 150 refugees at its
border with Croatia.
The migrants, who Slovenia said did not have the correct papers, will be
sent back to the Zagreb, the Croatian capital, a border police spokesman said.
Earlier in the day Hungary declared success for its controversial
efforts to seal its borders to migrants, as thousands of new arrivals begin
heading into neighbouring Croatia instead.
In a defence of its decision to fence off its frontier and repel
migrants with tear gas and water cannon, the government said the fact that
migrants were now seeking other routes into Europe vindicated its strategy.
Janos Lazar, the chief of staff to Viktor Orban, the country's
Right-wing prime minister, said the "assertive, uncompromising defence of
the border has visibly held back human trafficking and forces them to change
direction. That was the aim of the entire action".
Croatia became the latest country try to stem the flow of refugees by
closing seven of its eight border crossings with Serbia "until further
notice".
The move was announced by the country's interior ministry after 11,000
migrants crossed the border within 48 hours.
Meanwhile Slovenian police stopped a train carrying 150 refugees at its
border with Croatia.
More
We end for the week with commodities. Dr. Copper wasn’t much affected by
yesterday’s offshore Chilean earthquake.
Copper prices retreat as Chilean mines escape earthquake damage
Copper prices jumped to a near two month high before retreating after Chilean miners said workers were safe and operations were not damaged by the earthquake.
Copper prices retreated this morning amid reports Chile’s largest mines escaped damage from an earthquake which struck the South American country.Prices spiked to $5,405 - the highest level in almost two months - as concerns about supply disruptions offset worries over weakening demand from China.
However, copper soon fell back to $5,341 as Chilean-based miners said workers were safe and their operations were undamaged by the 8.3 magnitude earthquake.
The earthquake struck 55km outside Illapel, Chile, the world's top supplier of copper, according to the US Geological Survey, threatening over 600,000 tonnes of annual capacity.
Copper
prices have been rocked in recent times amid ongoing concerns that the world's
second largest economy, China, is contracting.
More
"The
international monetary order is more precarious by far today than it was in
1929. Then, gold was international money, incorruptible, unmanageable, and
unchangeable. Today, the U.S. dollar serves as the international medium of
exchange, managed by Washington politicians and Federal Reserve officials, manipulated
from day to day, and serving political goals and ambitions. This difference
alone sounds the alarm to all perceptive observers."
Hans F. Sennholz
At the Comex silver depositories
Thursday final figures were: Registered 46.86 Moz, Eligible 120.67 Moz, Total
167.53 Moz.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
Today, oil news.
Oil slips as Japan data outweighs stock draw, dollar
Oil prices fell on Thursday after weak Japanese data sounded alarm bells
over the prospects for global growth, outweighing the bullish impact of a
weaker dollar and a bigger-than-expected decline in U.S. crude oil stocks.
Japan's exports slowed for a second straight month in August in a sign
China's economic slowdown could be damaging the world's third-biggest economy.
The data follows worrying figures from other Asian economies, including
South Korea and Taiwan, increasing anxiety over the consequences of a sharp
slowdown in China.
---- Both global benchmarks had
rallied sharply over the last three days as the dollar weakened on expectations
that the U.S. central bank, the Federal Reserve, would maintain interest rates
at their current, very low,
levels.---- This week's rally has made a further sharp sell-off in oil less likely, said Robin Bieber, a technical analyst and director of London brokerage PVM Oil Associates.
"It's out of dump-danger at the moment," Bieber said.
U.S. oil data this week suggested the world's biggest oil market may be beginning to tighten.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) on Wednesday reported
the largest crude drawdown since February 2014 at the Cushing, Oklahoma,
delivery point.
"This is a result of higher refining activity and lower U.S. crude production, which is helping the U.S. inventory glut to ease off," Daniel Ang, analyst at Singapore brokerage Phillips Futures, said.
U.S. oil output has begun to ease after six years of sharp increases.
EIA data shows U.S. crude and condensate production peaked at 9.612 million
barrels per day (bpd) in April and had declined by 316,000 bpd by June.
But the world is still awash with oil, with global production still running at more than 2 million bpd above demand, filling oil stockpiles around the world.
More
Solar & Related Update.
With events happening fast in the development of solar power and graphene, 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?Steve Holliday, CEO National Grid: “The idea of large power stations for baseload is outdated”
Steve Holliday, CEO of National Grid, the company
that operates the gas and power transmission networks in the UK and in the
northeastern US, believes the idea of large
coal-fired or nuclear power stations to be used for baseload power is
“outdated”. “From a consumer’s point of view, the solar on the rooftop is going
to be the baseload. Centralised power stations will be increasingly used to
provide peak demand”, he says, in an exclusive interview for World Energy
Focus, a publication of the World Energy Council produced by Energy Post. The
chief of National Grid also notes that energy markets “are clearly moving
towards much more distributed production and towards microgrids”.
“This industry is going through a tremendous transformation. We used to
have a pretty good idea of what future needs would be. We would build assets
that would last decades and that would be sure to cover those needs. That world
has ended. Our strategy is now centred around agility and flexibility, based on
our inability to predict or prescribe what our customers are going to want.”
As CEO, since 2007, of a company active on two continents, and being responsible
for both gas and electricity transmission and distribution, Steve Holiday finds
himself smack at the centre of the whirlwind developments in the energy sector.
And since National Grid is a regulated (albeit publicly listed) company, he can
speak from a reasonably independent position. Which makes it fascinating to
talk to him.
“What is crucial”, says Holliday, “is what consumers will want. In the
past all consumers got the same. One size fits all. Now one size will not fit
all. People will want to interact with energy in many different ways.” This is
why he warns against people who think they can predict the future. “Some people
think they have the answer, whatever it may be. But I believe there will be
different answers for different places, rural and cities, and for different
customers. That’s why flexibility and agility are key.”
---- For the UK National Grid works with four Future Energy Scenarios, which are
available on the internet and updated every year. According to these scenarios,
it is likely that by 2020 small-scale, distributed generation will represent a
third of total capacity in the UK. Holliday: “This is a quadrupling in just a
few years. It represents a massive increase from the old days of centrally
dispatched generation.” Recent government measures in the UK to limit subsidies
for renewable energy may affect the timing of this development, says Holliday,
but not the trend.
He notes that the speed at which the energy
system is changing has taken many people by surprise, including himself. “The
amount of solar being added to the system is incredible. 1500 MW in the first
three months of this year. That’s the capacity of two power stations. I made a
comment to the Energy Minister four years ago that there was little probability
we would have 20,000 MW of solar in the UK. Now three of our scenarios have
more than 20,000 MW of solar by 2035.”
More
Another weekend, and a growing migrant crisis in Europe thanks to
Germany. It’s getting hard to see the EUSSR surviving in its present erratic
German diktat form. Time to place a bet on Brexit. Greece votes on Sunday but
whoever wins they must implement German policy. I suspect that many won’t
bother to vote. Have a great weekend everyone.
"Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the 'hidden' confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights."
Alan Greenspan
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished August
DJIA: +65 Down. NASDAQ:
+168 Down. SP500: +92 Down.
No comments:
Post a Comment