Baltic Dry Index. 804 -05 Brent Crude 49.28
LIR Gold Target in 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
"Gold bears the confidence of the world's millions, who value it far above the promises of politicians, far above the unbacked paper issued by governments as money substitutes. It has been that way through all recorded history. There is no reason to believe it will lose the confidence of people in the future."
Oakley R. Bramble
We open today with a financial report on the Great Nixonian Error of fiat money from the Swizz. According to mega bank Credit Swiss, the richest one percent now own half of the world’s wealth. Another unintended consequence of fiat money after the USA went bust in 1971, and imposed fiat money, communist money, on the planet. Not for nothing is Asia accumulating most or the world’s physical precious metals. The present fiat system is as unequal as it is unstable. In the end, said Voltaire, paper money returns to intrinsic value. We are one next Lehman away from finding out and how.
"The history of paper money is an account of abuse, mismanagement, and financial disaster."
Richard M. Ebeling
Credit Suisse report finds 1% now own half of world's wealth
Oct 14, 2015 12:52 PM ETThe richest one per cent now own half of all the wealth in the world, a new report from Credit Suisse says.
The bank's Global Wealth Report 2015 marks the first time that the world's super rich have amassed enough wealth to cross that symbolic line.
By the bank's reckoning, just over $250 trillion US worth of wealth has been amassed by households. At the top sit the ultra-rich, which the bank defines as having a net worth of at least $50 million in assets. Worldwide, there are 120,000 people in the group.
Just below the ultra-rich are 34 million people, with a collective net worth of at least $1 million. Collectively, people in that part of the pyramid make up 0.7 per cent of the world's population, but own 45.2 per cent of the world's wealth. If you extend the cut-off to one per cent of the world's population, they own more than half of all wealth in the world.
"Wealth inequality has continued to increase since 2008, with the top percentile of wealth holders now owning 50.4 per cent of all household wealth," the report said.
In Canada, 1.1 million people last year fit the bill of being worth at least $1 million US. But due largely to the huge drop in the loonie, their ranks actually declined in 2015 to 984,000 people.
Millionaires from just about every country saw their collective wealth decline last year, but the main factor was the rise of the U.S. dollar, which made wealth denominated in other currencies look comparatively smaller.
On a global scale, Canada has a disproportionate number of millionaires as Canadians make up three per cent of the world's "1%", despite Canada having only 0.6 per cent of the world's population.
Beyond tabulating the wealth of the super rich, the report examined the wealth of the so-called middle class, the definition of which changes depending on the country.
In the U.S., Credit Suisse says anyone worth between $50,000 and $500,000 would be considered middle class for the purposes of the survey. In some countries, the cut-off is higher, for example, in Switzerland, where the middle class starts at $72,000.
In China, it drops to $28,000. In India, it's at $13,700.
Interestingly, this year marks the first time that China's middle class — numbered at 109 million according to the bank — is larger than America's, which counts for 92 million people.
All in all, the middle class is worth a collective $80.7 trillion, or just under a third of the world's wealth.
On the bottom rung of the global wealth pyramid are 3.4 billion adults – 71 per cent of the world's population — who are worth less than $10,000 US.
http://www.cbc.ca/m/news/topstories/credit-suisse-world-wealth-report-1.3270056
Elsewhere, bad news mounts at Volkswagen. No one in Wolfsburg, it seems wants to visit America. Seth Blatteritis it looks to me. Or in “I am not a crook,” Nixonian terms, “what did you know and when did you know it?” Volkswagen’s falling sword gathers speed. Officially, according to Wolfsburg, it’s nothing to do with the dirty diesel scandal. Then again, officially according to Wolfsburg, the dirty diesels were clean diesels.
Volkswagen Loses Another Top Manager in Wake of Diesel Scandal
October 14, 2015 — 1:58 PM BST Updated on October 14, 2015 — 3:57 PM BST
Volkswagen AG lost another senior manager in the wake of the
diesel-emissions scandal as Winfried Vahland, who was tapped to restructure the
carmaker’s struggling North America operations, quit unexpectedly.
The 25-year VW veteran, who had helped push the German carmaker’s
business in China and successfully led the Skoda brand since 2010, turned down
the job as chief executive for North America less than three weeks before he
had agreed to start. Vahland decided not to take over the post on Nov. 1 as
planned amid disagreements about the organization of the new region, Skoda said
in an e-mailed statement.
“Vahland has had a number of key successes, in China and then at the
Skoda brand,” said Stefan Bratzel, head of auto research at the University of
Applied Sciences in Bergisch Gladbach, Germany. “His departure will hit
Volkswagen hard.”
The North America job was a critical part of Volkswagen’s effort to
recover from the crisis after U.S. regulators forced the company to admit to
installing software to cheat on emissions tests in its diesel cars. Chief
Executive Officer Matthias Mueller is seeking to give regional leaders more
power and decision-making ability and break up the company’s rigid structure,
which contributed to the plan to rig some 11 million diesel cars
worldwide.
Vahland, 58, was among the candidates to succeed former VW Chief
Executive Officer Martin Winterkorn, who resigned last month amid the fallout
from the scandal, but the supervisory board favored Mueller.
Volkswagen
spokesman Eric Felber declined to comment on whether the company still plans to
fill the post.
Vahland is leaving the Wolfsburg, Germany-based manufacturer at his own
request, and his departure isn’t linked to the diesel investigations, Skoda
said in the statement.More
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-14/volkswagen-s-designated-north-america-chief-leaves-carmaker
Concerns Volkswagen's latest cars have extra suspect software
Scandal over Volkswagen emissions grows with car maker admitting 2016 cars have software which could help them improve pollution emissions
Volkswagen has admitted that its 2016 vehicles contain more software which could help them beat emission controls tests.The German auto giant has confirmed that the diesel vehicles are fitted with an "auxiliary emissions control device" which is different to the “defeat devices” which caused VW's share price to plunge by 40pc and cost the chief executive his job.
The company admitted last month that as many as 11m of its VW, Audi, SEAT and Skoda cars were fitted with defeat devices which detected when they were being tested and switched on full emissions controls so they could beat checks.
In normal use they were switched off, meaning they pumped out up to 40 times more nitrous oxide (Nox) pollution when driven on the roads.
----A spokesman for the car maker said it first told the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and California regulators about the existence of the latest software last week.
Regulators have yet to rule if the latest software is specifically to
beat tests but all such devices have to be revealed to authorities if cars are
to receive the certification required for them to go on sale in the US.
"We have a long list of questions for VW about this," said
Janet McCabe, acting assistant EPA administrator for air quality. "We're
getting some answers from them, but we do not have all the answers yet."
Morehttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/industry/11931840/Concerns-Volkswagens-latest-cars-have-extra-suspect-software.html
We close with rising trouble in Latin America’s largest economy. Our great disconnect between the central bank financialised bubble, casino stock markets, and the real world is reaching the end of the road.
"The first requisite of a sound monetary system is that it put the least possible power over the quantity or quality of money in the hands of the politicians."
Henry Hazlitt
Brazil's Next Big Crisis Is Scaring Bankers and Wiping Out Jobs
October 14,
2015 — 2:00 AM BST Updated on October 14, 2015 — 12:02 PM BST
In the smog-filled, run-down industrial hubs that ring the southern end
of Sao Paulo, Brazil’s next big crisis is taking root.
The labor market, long the country’s lone economic bright spot as growth
stagnated, is suddenly deteriorating rapidly, driving unemployment all the way
up to 7.6 percent from a record-low 4.3 percent at the end of 2014. Nowhere are
the layoffs that are fueling that surge more acute than here, in this gritty
complex of steel, auto and auto-parts factories built decades ago by the likes
of Ford Motor Co. and Volkswagen AG. Sao Paulo is now losing almost 20,000
jobs each and every month, the state’s industrial federation estimates.
Talk privately with Brazil’s most senior bankers and nearly all of them
will point to unemployment as a crucial concern. For starters, it’s
underpinning the national dissatisfaction that is fanning calls for the
impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff and creating policy paralysis in the
capital city of Brasilia. More importantly, in a country that has based its
growth model in recent years on a credit-fueled boom in consumer spending, it
threatens to both deepen the recession -- already the worst since 1990 -- and
leave millions of Brazilians scrambling to repay their loans.
----One
year after a massive corruption scandal broke out at the state-run oil company
and four months after Brazil officially entered recession, the financial
indicators are grim across the board. The real has fallen more than any other
major currency in the world this year; annual inflation has soared to almost 10
percent; the budget deficit has swelled to the widest in at least two decades;
and the government’s credit rating was cut to junk by Standard & Poor’s.
Last week, analysts at Itau Unibanco Holding predicted the economy will shrink
3 percent this year and unemployment will top 10 percent by 2016.
Morehttp://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-14/brazil-s-next-big-crisis-is-scaring-bankers-and-wiping-out-jobs
“The problem with fiat money is that it rewards the minority that can handle money, but fools the generation that has worked and saved money.”
“Adam Smith” aka George Goodman.
At the Comex silver depositories Wednesday
final figures were: Registered 42.88 Moz, Eligible 120.11 Moz, Total 163.00
Moz.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
Today in the deflating oil patch, everything’s for
sale. It’s let’s make a deal time for players with cash and access to credit.
The trouble is, very few in 2015 have access to cash or credit. There are far
more forced sellers than willing buyers.
"We are in a world of
irredeemable paper money - a state of affairs unprecedented in history." John Exter
Oil Slide Means `Almost Everything' for Sale as Deals Accelerate
October 14, 2015 — 4:02 AM BST
More than $200 billion worth of oil and natural gas assets are for sale
globally as companies come under renewed financial pressure from the prolonged
commodity price rout, according to IHS Inc.There are about 400 buying opportunities as of September, IHS Chief Upstream Strategist Bob Fryklund said in an interview. Deals will accelerate later this year and into 2016 as companies sell assets to meet debt requirements, he said. West Texas Intermediate crude has averaged about $51 a barrel this year, more than 40 percent below the five-year mean.
Low prices have slashed profits and as of the second quarter about one-sixth of North American major independent crude and gas producers faced debt payments that are more than 20 percent of their revenue. Companies have announced $181.1 billion of oil and gas acquisitions this year, the most in more than a decade, compared with $167.1 billion the same period in 2014, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
“Basically almost everything is for sale,” Fryklund said Oct. 8 in Tokyo. “Low cycles are when a lot of these companies can rebalance their portfolios. In theory, this is when you upgrade your existing portfolio.”
Companies with strong balance sheets are seeking buying opportunities, said Fryklund, citing Perth, Australia-based Woodside Petroleum Ltd.’s $8 billion offer for explorer Oil Search Ltd. and Suncor Energy Ltd.’s $3.3 billion bid for Canadian Oil Sands Ltd. Both targets rejected initial offers.
As of August, one out of every eight junk-rated oil companies was in danger of defaulting, according to Moody’s Corp. WTI plunged below $40 a barrel in August, to the lowest price in six years. The grade added 0.3 percent to $46.81 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange at 11:36 a.m. in Tokyo.
More
"If you don't trust gold, do you trust the logic of taking a beautiful pine tree, worth about $4,000 - $5,000, cutting it up, turning it into pulp and then paper, putting some ink on it and then calling it one billion dollars?"
Kenneth J. Gerbino
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?New graphene-coated 'e-fabrics' detect noxious gases
Date:
October 12, 2015
Source:
ResearchSEA
Summary:
Scientists have developed wearable, graphene-coated fabrics that can detect
dangerous gases present in the air, alerting the wearer by turning on an LED
light.
Scientists in Korea have developed wearable, graphene-coated fabrics
that can detect dangerous gases present in the air, alerting the wearer by
turning on an LED light.
The researchers, from the Electronics and Telecommunications Research
Institute and Konkuk University in the Republic of Korea, coated cotton and
polyester yarn with a nanoglue called bovine serum albumin (BSA). The yarns
were then wrapped in graphene oxide sheets.
Graphene is an incredibly strong one-atom-thick layer of carbon, and is
known for its excellent conductive properties of heat and electricity. The
graphene sheets stuck very well to the nanoglue -- so much so that further
testing showed the fabrics retained their electrical conducting properties
after 1,000 consecutive cycles of bending and straightening and ten washing
tests with various chemical detergents. Finally, the graphene oxide yarns were
exposed to a chemical reduction process, which involves the gaining of electrons.
The reduced-graphene-oxide-coated materials were found to be
particularly sensitive to detecting nitrogen dioxide, a pollutant gas commonly
found in vehicle exhaust that also results from fossil fuel combustion.
Prolonged exposure to nitrogen dioxide can be dangerous to human health,
causing many respiratory-related illnesses. Exposure of these specially-treated
fabrics to nitrogen dioxide led to a change in the electrical resistance of the
reduced graphene oxide.
The fabrics were so sensitive that 30 minutes of exposure to 0.25 parts
per million of nitrogen dioxide (just under five times above the acceptable
standard set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) elicited a response.
The fabrics were three times as sensitive to nitrogen dioxide in air compared
to another reduced graphene oxide sensor previously prepared on a flat
material.
The new technology, according to the researchers, can be immediately
adopted in related industries because the coating process is a simple one,
making it suitable for mass production. It would allow outdoor wearers to
receive relevant information about air quality. The materials could also be
incorporated with air-purifying filters to act as "smart filters"
that can both detect and filter harmful gas from air.
More
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished September
DJIA: +41 Down. NASDAQ:
+138 Down. SP500: +65 Down.
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