Baltic Dry Index. 721 -07 Brent Crude 49.55
LIR Gold Target in 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
“Curiouser and curiouser!”
Glencore, with apologies to Lewis Carroll.
Before we get to madhouse Europe, we open with yet more bad news from China. Since all news now is bad news, and in our central bankster run gambling dens, bad news is the new good news, buy more. Still it’s very bad news for Glencore and the rest of the sinking commodities flotilla.
China’s Official Factory Gauge Signals Contraction Continues
November 1,
2015 — 1:10 AM GMT Updated on November 1, 2015 — 4:48 AM GMT
China’s first key indicator this quarter, an official factory gauge,
missed analysts’ estimates, signaling that the manufacturing sector has yet to
bottom out as global demand falters and deflationary pressures deepen.
The official purchasing managers index was unchanged at 49.8 in October,
the National Bureau of Statistics said Sunday, compared with the median
estimate of 50 in a Bloomberg survey. It was the third straight reading below
50, the line between expansion and contraction. The official non-manufacturing
PMI, a barometer of services and construction, fell to 53.1 from 53.4 in
September, the weakest since December 2008.
----The newest data highlight
the challenges confronting China’s old growth drivers. The nation’s leaders
have reiterated
priorities of both reforming the economy and maintaining medium- to high-speed
growth in the next five years, according to a communique released by Xinhua
News Agency on Thursday.----"Big companies are stabilizing, while smaller ones continue to perform below the contraction-expansion line," Zhao Qinghe, a senior statistician at NBS, wrote in a statement interpreting the data on Sunday. "The percentage of small companies facing a financial strain is considerably higher than that of bigger companies."
The unchanged manufacturing PMI suggests "managed stabilization" as policy makers strive to balance growth, reform, and market stability, according to Zhou Hao, a senior economist at Commerzbank AG in Singapore.
The manufacturing sector stabilized "somewhat" due to monetary policy easing, Zhou said, while slowing power generation, steel production and housing sales are "suggesting that the overall economy is still under downward pressure."
More
Elsewhere in the world, things are starting to get complicated and tricky. It’s not the 1990s anymore. Even the Saudis are skint. Well almost.
Saudi Arabia Credit Rating Cut by S&P After Oil Prices Sink
October 30, 2015 — 7:51 PM GMT Updated on October 30, 2015 — 11:37 PM
GMT
Saudi Arabia’s credit rating was cut by Standard & Poor’s , which
said the decline in oil prices will increase the budget deficit in a country
that relies on energy exports for 80 percent of its revenue.
S&P cut the sovereign rating one level to A+, the fifth-highest
classification, as it said the biggest OPEC producer’s deficit will increase to
16 percent of gross domestic product this year. The nation’s credit outlook is
negative as the decline in oil prices makes it difficult to reverse the fiscal
deterioration, S&P said in a statement.
“Credit metrics for oil producers like Saudi Arabia are coming under
pressure,” said Steve Hooker, a money manager at Newfleet in Hartford,
Connecticut, who helps oversee $12.5 billion of debt. “It’s not likely to
reverse until the oil prices go up.”
More
Saudi September Foreign Reserves Drop to Near Three-Year Low
October 28, 2015 — 2:45 PM GMT Updated on October 29, 2015 — 7:28 AM GMT
Saudi Arabia’s net foreign assets dropped for the eighth month in
September as the plunge in oil prices prompt the government to draw down on the
financial reserves it accumulated over the past decade.
Net foreign assets declined $7.7 billion to $646.9 billion, the lowest
level since November 2012, the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency said in its
monthly report. The central bank’s investments in foreign securities plunged
$23 billion, the data show, taking the drop since February to more than $90
billion. Bank lending to private businesses grew 7.1 percent, the slowest pace
since April 2011, the data show.
The biggest Arab economy may run out of financial assets needed to
support spending within five years if the government maintains current
policies, the International Monetary Fund said this month. Authorities are
already considering spending cuts and the government is selling domestic bonds
for the first time since 2007 to shore up public finances.
“It’s an even larger drop than I’d anticipated, and the sharp fall in
foreign security holdings is particularly striking,” Simon Williams, chief
economist for central and eastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa at
HSBC Holdings Plc, said by e-mail. The size of reserves leaves the kingdom in a
“very comfortable position, but with oil prices so low and the deficit so
large, those savings will continue to decline at a rapid rate through this
year, next and beyond,” he said.
More
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-28/saudi-net-foreign-assets-drop-for-eighth-month-in-september
Meanwhile back in
the dying EUSSR, Portugal is becoming the new Greece.
“Would
you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to."
"I don't much care where –"
"Then it doesn't matter which way you go.”
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to."
"I don't much care where –"
"Then it doesn't matter which way you go.”
Portugal,
with apologies to Lewis Carroll.
Portugal risks becoming 'ungovernable' as conservative government set to collapse after just 11 days
Centre-right minority government on course to be shortest ever after president warns of "uncontrolled" instability
Portugal risks becoming "ungovernable" as Leftist forces
prepare to topple the returning government of prime minister Pedro Passos
Coelho after just 11 days, the country's president has warned.
Mr Passos Coelho - whose pro-bail-out coalition presided over four years
of austerity policies - was sworn into office on Friday after his ruling
coalition finished first in recent elections, but lost its parliamentary
majority.
The appointment was met with controversy after the country's president vowed
to block an alliance of Leftist, anti-EU parties from taking the reins of
office. The coalition of Socialists, Communists and the radical Left have vowed
to bring down the minority government when a parliamentary vote is held on
November 10.A collapse would make it the shortest government in Portugal's 40 years of post-war democracy.
Addressing the nation, president Anibal Cavaco Silva defended himself
against accusations of constitutional over-reach.
But the head of state struck a more conciliatory tone, calling for all
the main parties to broker a compromise to stop Portugal from descending into
political chaos.
"Without political stability, Portugal will become an
uncontrollable country. And, of course, no one trusts an ungovernable
country," said the president.
"The government taking over today does not have majority in
parliament so the effort of dialogue and compromise has to proceed with the
other political forces to seek the necessary understanding."
Mr Cavaco Silva warned the anti-austerity Left against derailing four years
of fiscal consolidation and poisoning relations with the European Union. ----Despite exiting its €78bn bail-out last year, Portugal has the highest combined debt levels in the eurozone and the second highest government deficit at -7.8pc.
More
Staying with madhouse Europe, more on Merkel’s Folly, and the making of
the German Khanistan. Still, if without consulting anyone, you announce that if
you make it to Germany, you can stay, what did “Mad” Mrs. Merkel expect? Brexit looks better with each passing week,
despite what the Yanks, and EU paid for research say. Euros anyone?
“How
puzzling all these changes are! I'm never sure what I'm going to be, from one
minute to another.
“Mad”
Mrs Merkel, with apologies to Lewis Carroll.
Merkel's Refugee Troubles Mount as Allies Clash on Border Plans
November 1, 2015 — 7:58 PM GMT
German Chancellor Angela Merkel faces further coalition discord
over the refugee crisis after weekend talks with fellow party leaders
failed to identify a common government stance on tackling the biggest influx of
migrants since World War II.
The continued coalition disagreement threatens another stormy week for
the beleaguered chancellor as lawmakers prepare to return to Berlin for a
parliamentary session that will again be dominated by the projected arrival of
as many as a million asylum seekers in Germany this year.
With public concern mounting and party support on the slide, Merkel
and Horst Seehofer, the Bavarian state premier and Christian Social
Union chief who has demanded she stem the flow of migrants, will address their
joint parliamentary caucus Tuesday on efforts to tackle the crisis.
“It worries people that well over 10,000 people come every day across
the German-Austrian border without us being able to control this in any way,”
Jens Spahn, deputy finance minister and a member of Merkel’s Christian
Democratic Union, said late Sunday on ARD television. “We must send a signal
that we can’t help everyone in this world who is somehow in need, as hard as it
is.”
Merkel met for a total of some 10 hours on Saturday evening and throughout
Sunday with Seehofer, who heads the CDU’s Bavarian sister party and is her
chief coalition critic. Bavaria is the main gateway to Germany for the refugees
pouring over the border from Austria, and Seehofer had said the Bavarian state
government would take unspecified action if Merkel didn’t meet his demands to
curb the number of migrants.
The “most urgent” measure was to pursue the setting up of so-called
transit zones along the border with the aim of filtering out economic
migrants from those such as Syrian refugees with a genuine claim to
asylum. Those arriving from “safe” countries, such as Kosovo or Albania, would
be subject to an accelerated asylum process to send them home.
A decision on transit zones should be made this week before a Nov. 5 meeting
of Germany’s 16 state prime ministers and the three coalition leaders,
according to the joint CDU/CSU paper.
That suggests coalition strife ahead. Social Democratic Party chief
Sigmar Gabriel, who attended the Chancellery talks on Sunday morning, dismissed
the concept of transit zones as “inappropriate” and legally doubtful.
More
German Village of 102 Braces for 750 Asylum Seekers
SUMTE, Germany — This bucolic, one-street settlement of handsome
redbrick farmhouses may for the moment have many more cows than people, but
next week it will become one of the fastest growing places in Europe. Not that anyone
in Sumte is very excited about it.
In early October, the district government informed Sumte’s mayor,
Christian Fabel, by email that his village of 102 people just over the border
in what was once Communist East Germany would take in 1,000 asylum seekers.
His wife, the mayor said, assured him it must be a hoax. “It certainly
can’t be true” that such a small, isolated place would be asked to accommodate
nearly 10 times as many migrants as it had residents, she told him. “She
thought it was a joke,” he said.
But
it was not. Sumte has become a showcase of the extreme pressures bearing down
on Germany as it scrambles to
find shelter for what, by the end of the year, could be well over a million
people seeking refuge from poverty or wars in Africa, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan
and elsewhere.
In a small concession to the villagers, Alexander
Götz, a regional official from Lower Saxony, told them this week that the
initial number of refugees, who start arriving on Monday and will be housed in
empty office buildings, would be kept to 500, and limited to 750 in all.
Nevertheless, the influx is testing the limits of
tolerance and hospitality in Sumte, and across Germany. It is also
straining German politics broadly, creating deep divisions in the conservative
camp of Chancellor Angela Merkel and energizing a
constellation of extremist groups that feel their time has come.
More
We end with EUSSR Brexit agiprop. We can expect a whole lot more EU paid
for “research” before the UK gets its referendum. Below, the Daily Telegraph sets
about conditioning the UK public with an EUSSR cosh.
“My
dear, here we must run as fast as we can, just to stay in place. And if you
wish to go anywhere you must run twice as fast as that.”
The
EUSSR, with apologies to Alice.
Brexit is a life or death matter for Britain's farmers
A new report warns that UK agriculture would collapse outside the EU, but it assumes that any post-Brexit government would let it happen
Land prices will crash. British agriculture will face a traumatic shock, and 90pc of the country’s farmers will be ruined.There will be a wave of debt foreclosures by banks, akin to the America Dustbowl and the Grapes of Wrath. A fresh seed of discord will be sown between England, Scotland, and Wales, imperilling the United Kingdom.
This is what is likely to happen if Britain votes to leave the EU next year, according to a confidential 70-page report issued to clients by the specialist consultants Agra Europe.
It is not a propaganda document. It is a detailed text, carefully researched, written for industry insiders. It is not to be dismissed lightly.
British farmers currently receive 60pc of their income from EU subsidies and environmental subsidies. They would lose most of this at a stroke unless the British government guaranteed compensating support of one kind or another, and so far it has clarified nothing.
Yet like all Brexit and counter-Brexit assertions, the Devil is in the assumption. Agra Europe takes it as a given that David Cameron or any other British prime minister will do little to prevent such a bloodbath running its course if the British people vote to withdraw from Europe, and say goodbye to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
More
But….
Yesterday Guido brought you the news that Agra Europe, a Brexit-scaremongering think tank which claims to be “independent“, had directly received €36,000 from the European Union. Today he can reveal that the true figure is far higher.
Agra CEAS is a consultancy firm that is a sister company of Agra Europe – both are owned by Informa UK. A search of the European Commission Financial Transparency System reveals that, just last year, Agra CEAS was awarded a massive €209,825 contract by the EU’s agriculture programme. So that’s €36,000 of taxpayers’ money going directly to Agra Europe, and another €200,000 bunged to its sister firm. Within months, they had published a damning report claiming “A British exit from the European Union would have a devastating effect on the nation’s farmers”, so Brussels certainly got bang for our buck. Textbook sockpuppetry attempting to skew the referendum debate…
UPDATE: Agra get in touch to say the €36,000 contract is a subscription paid by the European Commission for their news services, and stress the €200,000 relates to an “independent consultancy”. One that is owned by the same company…
“imagine
yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you
were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have
appeared to them to be otherwise.”
EUSSR
Motto, with apologies to Alice and Great Britain.
At the Comex silver depositories Friday
final figures were: Registered 43.13 Moz, Eligible 118.96 Moz, Total 162.09
Moz.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
In the madhouse also known as the EUSSR, as always
it’s one step forwards two steps back. The EU sends the coming “climate change”
conference/junket in Paris next month a message. It’s not one the 40,000 party goers want to
hear. All they want to hear is the developed economies impairing themselves,
and paying Danegeld to all the rest.
Below, Volkswagen Uber Alles.
Europe Prolongs Its Diesel Problem
Oct 30, 2015 3:48 PM EDT
Responding to public outrage over the Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal,
the European Union rightly pledged to toughen emissions testing and
enforce limits on nitrogen oxides (NOx), a hazardous type of diesel
pollutant. But those moves amount to very little, now that the EU is giving the
auto industry until 2020 to comply, and then only partially. The delay will
just prolong the shift away from diesel.While it will be useful to have on-road testing, starting in 2017, EU regulators decided Wednesday to allow new car models to exceed legal levels of NOx by 110 percent until the beginning of 2020. Even after that, they can go over the limit by 50 percent. The adjustment period for existing car models is still longer.
The concessions might make sense if the technology to meet the limit had yet to be developed. But selective catalytic reduction and other NOx-limiting mechanisms have been available for years. Carmakers argue that they impose an added hassle and expense on consumers. But it is precisely the kind of burden that consumers must consider in deciding whether to buy a diesel car rather than an electric or a hybrid.
Delaying the emissions limits compounds the market-distorting effects of the Europe's initial decision, in the mid-1990s, to promote diesel engines with lower excise taxes and relatively lax environmental standards. These benefits explain why 35 percent of cars in the EU are diesel.
American carmakers may be quietly cheering Europe's folly, as it could
prompt China to drop European car emissions standards in favor of stricter U.S.
ones.
What's worse for Europe is that the delay on diesel rules undermines its
credibility on limiting emissions. With key environmental talks coming up in
Paris in just over a month, Europe has promised ambitious greenhouse
gas reductions by 2030. But can it be trusted to follow through?
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 or DC energy mankind’s future from the 21st century onwards? DC? A quantum computer next?New design points a path to the ‘ultimate’ battery
29 Oct 2015
Researchers
have successfully demonstrated how several of the problems impeding the
practical development of the so-called ‘ultimate’ battery could be overcome.
Scientists have developed a working laboratory demonstrator of a lithium-oxygen battery which has very high energy density, is more than 90% efficient, and, to date, can be recharged more than 2000 times, showing how several of the problems holding back the development of these devices could be solved.
Lithium-oxygen, or lithium-air, batteries have been touted as the ‘ultimate’ battery due to their theoretical energy density, which is ten times that of a lithium-ion battery. Such a high energy density would be comparable to that of gasoline – and would enable an electric car with a battery that is a fifth the cost and a fifth the weight of those currently on the market to drive from London to Edinburgh on a single charge.
However, as is the case with other next-generation batteries, there are several practical challenges that need to be addressed before lithium-air batteries become a viable alternative to gasoline.
Now, researchers from the University of Cambridge have demonstrated how some of these obstacles may be overcome, and developed a lab-based demonstrator of a lithium-oxygen battery which has higher capacity, increased energy efficiency and improved stability over previous attempts.
Their demonstrator relies on a highly porous, ‘fluffy’ carbon electrode made from graphene (comprising one-atom-thick sheets of carbon atoms), and additives that alter the chemical reactions at work in the battery, making it more stable and more efficient. While the results, reported in the journal Science, are promising, the researchers caution that a practical lithium-air battery still remains at least a decade away.
“What we’ve achieved is a significant advance for this technology and suggests whole new areas for research – we haven’t solved all the problems inherent to this chemistry, but our results do show routes forward towards a practical device,” said Professor Clare Grey of Cambridge’s Department of Chemistry, the paper’s senior author.
Many of the technologies we use every day have been getting smaller, faster and cheaper each year – with the notable exception of batteries. Apart from the possibility of a smartphone which lasts for days without needing to be charged, the challenges associated with making a better battery are holding back the widespread adoption of two major clean technologies: electric cars and grid-scale storage for solar power.
----- By precisely engineering the structure of the electrode, changing it to a highly porous form of graphene, adding lithium iodide, and changing the chemical makeup of the electrolyte, the researchers were able to reduce the ‘voltage gap’ between charge and discharge to 0.2 volts. A small voltage gap equals a more efficient battery – previous versions of a lithium-air battery have only managed to get the gap down to 0.5 – 1.0 volts, whereas 0.2 volts is closer to that of a Li-ion battery, and equates to an energy efficiency of 93%.
The highly porous graphene electrode also greatly increases the capacity
of the demonstrator, although only at certain rates of charge and discharge.
Other issues that still have to be addressed include finding a way to protect
the metal electrode so that it doesn’t form spindly lithium metal fibres known
as dendrites, which can cause batteries to explode if they grow too much and
short-circuit the battery.
Additionally, the demonstrator can only be cycled in pure oxygen, while
the air around us also contains carbon dioxide, nitrogen and moisture, all of
which are generally harmful to the metal electrode.
“There’s still a lot of work to do,” said Liu. “But what we’ve seen here
suggests that there are ways to solve these problems – maybe we’ve just got to
look at things a little differently.”
“While there are still plenty of fundamental studies that remain to be
done, to iron out some of the mechanistic details, the current results are
extremely exciting – we are still very much at the development stage, but we’ve
shown that there are solutions to some of the tough problems associated with
this technology,” said Grey.
More
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished October
DJIA: +31 Down. NASDAQ:
+125 Down. SP500: +53 Down.
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