Baltic Dry Index. 355 -03 Brent Crude 30.30
LIR Gold Target in 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs.
Son, if you really want something in this life, you have to work for it. Now quiet! They're about to announce the lottery numbers.
Chancellor Osborne, with apologies to Homer Simpson.
No not a rollover in the UK lottery, although there is one coming up
this Saturday at £14 million. Nor a rollover in the Euro millions lottery, although
there is one tonight with a jackpot of £79 million. If there’s an LIR update at
the weekend, it means that yet again sadly my ticket didn’t win.
The rollover of the headline has far more at stake. Will Portugal
rollover and sink as the new socialist/communist anti-austerity government
introduce their 2016 budget? For more on Portugal and the fate of the EU,
scroll down to Crooks Corner.
Up next Davos and China. As global stock markets crumble, everyone at
Davos was looking to China. But with only a minor stock market bounce now and
again in 2015 – 2016, can China deliver another 2009 global financial system
saving spending miracle? Don’t bet on it, says George Soros, the man who took
the Bank of England to the cleaners in 1992. China’s in for a hard landing, he
thinks. If he’s anywhere near correct, 2016 will be an epic year of deepening
trouble.
“Never
believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied.”
Otto von Bismarck
China Has No Plans to Devalue Yuan, Vice President Li Says
January 21, 2016 — 2:32 PM GMT Updated on January 22, 2016 — 1:53 AM GMT
China’s vice president underlined the Communist leadership’s pledge
to avoid pursuing a policy of devaluation of the yuan, after criticism that his
nation’s policy makers haven’t been clear on their intentions with the exchange
rate.
"The fluctuations in the currency market are a result of market
forces, and the Chinese government has no intention and no policy to devalue
its currency," Li Yuanchao, who is also a member of the party’s Politburo,
said in an interview with Bloomberg News Thursday after arriving at the World
Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland.
Moves last year to make the yuan more responsive to market forces, and to end its peg to the dollar, have spurred confusion among market participants, and days ago the U.S. Treasury chief to urge clear communication on the matter. Secretary Jacob J. Lew’s message, delivered in a call with an aide to President Xi Jinping, was echoed in Davos by attendees including International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde.
Li redirected concerns about exchange-rate volatility to actions by the Federal Reserve, saying "fluctuations in the currency market started with the raising of interest rates by the Fed." Li came to the Davos gathering with a message of reassurance that the world’s second-largest economy remains on track, despite international investor concerns. He and fellow delegation members pledged to stay with a reform program that has seen China move away from reliance on investment, in the process slowing its growth.
China hemorrhaged $676 billion last year
@sophia_yanJanuary 21, 2016: 2:41 AM ET
Money is flying out
of China. An estimated $676 billion left the world's second-largest economy
last year, according to a report from the Institute of International Finance.That's a lot more than the $111 billion that fled all emerging markets -- including China -- in 2014.
Capital outflows from China accelerated in the final quarter of 2015, the report said, as overseas investors grew increasingly wary of the country's slowing economic growth and stock market turmoil. Chinese companies also rushed to pay off foreign loans as the yuan weakened.
The bleeding doesn't look like it'll stop anytime soon. China is expected to "see further large overall capital outflows as it continues to struggle against macro headwinds and to intervene heavily to stabilize its currency," the report said.
Investors have been trying to get at least some of their money out of China as the value of the yuan plummets, and the country's stock markets swing wildly. Many see better opportunities abroad, whether it's in real estate or foreign markets.
A whopping $200 billion left China last August alone, when the People's Bank of China forced a surprise devaluation of the yuan, according to the U.S. Treasury.
China limits the amount of money an individual can move out of the country to $50,000 per year. But in response to increased capital flight, Beijing last September went so far as to clamp down on the amount of cash its citizens can withdraw from ATMs overseas -- another attempt to stop money from leaving the country.
Outflows can put the yuan under pressure, pushing it down even more and increasing pressure on the central bank to act to support the currency. China has already been intervening in currency markets -- in the third quarter last year, the government spent as much as $230 billion to prevent the currency from depreciating further, according to the U.S. Treasury.
Economists surveyed by CNNMoney estimate the yuan will fall another 3% from current levels by the end of 2016.
http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/21/news/economy/china-capital-outflows/index.html?iid=hp-toplead-dom
China Vice President Vows to ‘Look After’ Stock Market Investors
January 21, 2016 — 2:30 PM GMT Updated on January 22, 2016 — 2:45 AM GMT
China is willing to keep intervening in the stock market to make sure a
few speculators don’t benefit at the expense of regular investors, China’s vice
president said in an interview.Calling the country’s market “not yet mature,” Vice President Li Yuanchao said the government would boost regulation in an effort to limit volatility.
“An excessively fluctuating market is a market of speculation where only the few will gain the most benefit when most people suffer,” Li told Bloomberg News after arriving at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. “The Chinese government is going to look after the interests of most of the people, most of the investors.”
Li, 65, is the most senior Chinese official yet to underline the government’s readiness to intervene should the market turmoil of last summer and the start of 2016 continue. So far this year, the Shanghai Composite and the Hang Seng China indexes have both lost more than 15 percent, even as the central bank injects cash into the system to drive down borrowing costs and boost the economy.
Li, who sits on China’s 25-member Politburo, led a delegation to Davos looking to offer reassurances about the health of an economy that grew last year at its slowest pace since 1990. Speaking in an interview with Bloomberg Television from the World Economic Forum, billionaire investor George Soros said a hard landing for China’s economy is “practically unavoidable”.
More
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-21/china-vice-president-vows-to-look-after-stock-market-investors
Soros Says China Hard Landing Will Deepen the Rout in Stocks
January 21, 2016 — 8:07 PM GMT Updated on January 22, 2016 — 3:26 AM GMT
Billionaire investor George Soros said China’s economy is headed for a
hard landing, a slump that will worsen global deflationary pressures, drag down
stocks and boost U.S. government bonds.
"A hard landing is practically unavoidable," he said in an
interview with Bloomberg Television’s Francine Lacqua from the World Economic
Forum in Davos on Thursday. "I’m not expecting it, I’m observing it.”
Soros, who built a $24 billion fortune through savvy wagers on markets,
said he’s been betting against the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index,
commodity-producing countries and Asian currencies, while buying Treasuries.
China’s economic downturn will have spillover effects on the rest of the world,
even though the nation’s policy makers have resources to manage the domestic
fallout, he said.
The former hedge fund manager turned philanthropist joined a chorus of top investors -- including DoubleLine Capital’s Jeffrey Gundlach and Scott Minerd of Guggenheim Partners -- warning of further downside in riskier assets after a selloff that erased $16 trillion from global equities since June and sent commodities to the lowest levels in more than two decades. Concerns over China have roiled global markets this year amid waning investor confidence in the government’s ability to restructure the economy without a crisis.
More
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-21/george-soros-says-he-expects-hard-landing-for-chinese-economy
“Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable — the art of the next best”
Otto von Bismarck
At the Comex silver depositories
Thursday final figures were: Registered 36.15 Moz, Eligible 119.76 Moz, Total
155.91 Moz.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally
doubled over.
Today, Portugal. Is Portugal about to rollover and
sink? If it does, will it take down next door, possibly splitting Spain with
it. Will both take down the wealth destroying EUSSR vanity project?
I'm normally not a
praying man, but if you're up there, please save me Superman.
Mario Draghi, with
apologies to Homer Simpson.
Even the ECB's Cash Can't Stop Investors Worrying About Portugal
January 21,
2016 — 12:01 AM GMT
As bonds tumble across southern Europe, it’s beginning to look like the
European Central Bank’s market stimulus never existed for Portugal.
The country’s bonds have slid since an inconclusive election on Oct. 4
led to weeks of political wrangling and a minority Socialist government
promising to ease austerity. Yields on 10-year securities have climbed more
than 60 basis points since then to 2.93 percent. They’re higher than when
ECB President Mario Draghi unveiled his bond-buying program,
or quantitative easing, last January.
While declines in higher-yielding government bonds in riskier parts of
the euro region have shown this week the limits of the ECB’s impact, Portugal
and Greece are the only countries in the 19-member currency bloc to have lost
investors money over the past three months, returns compiled by Bloomberg show.
“For investors to keep Portuguese paper they need to see that the new
government is following a path of fiscal responsibility,” said Ciaran
O’Hagan, a strategist at Societe Generale SA. “The ECB’s QE is having an
impact. It’s a tap that’s constantly flowing, but it can’t stop a tsunami.”
Central to the concern over Portugal is whether the government is
shifting tack as it prepares to temper the austerity measures that won favor
with investors, if not voters.
Prime Minister Antonio Costa’s government, sworn in at the end of
November, is due to deliver a draft of its 2016 budget to European authorities
this week. Plans include reversing state salary cuts and bolstering family
incomes, policies he needs to ensure the support from the Communists and Left
Bloc to have a majority in parliament.
The government already increased the minimum wage and plans to reinstate
four holidays and reduce the working week for state workers to 35 hours,
abandoning some measures introduced during Portugal’s three-year international
bailout program that ended in 2014.
More
Portugal's Tiny Stock Market Gets a Whole Lot Smaller: Chart
January 20,
2016 — 1:30 PM GMT
A
deluge of misfortunes has wiped out almost half of Portugal’s stock market in
less than two years.
Worth
about $100 billion in 2014, the value of Portuguese shares has tumbled to its
lowest level since the onslaught of Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis in 2012.
Stung by government crises, the downfall of Banco Espirito Santo SA, once the
nation’s largest lender by market cap, as well as the resulting sale of
Portugal Telecom SGPS SA’s assets, the country’s stock market is now worth less
than $56 billion -- it’s smaller than Vietnam’s. The benchmark PSI 20 Index has
slumped more than 27 percent since its high last year.
Maybe, just once,
someone will call me 'Sir' without adding, 'You're making a scene.'
Jean-Claude Juncker. Failed Luxembourg Prime Minister and
ex-president of the Euro Group of Finance Ministers. Confessed liar. EC
President. With apologies to Homer Simpson.
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?
This new graphene material is more sensitive than your skin
Prosthetics could one day 'feel' more than humans
Researchers at Monash University have developed a new material that is more sensitive than human skin.The elastomer, created from wonder material graphene, is flexible, ultra-light, and sponge-like in texture. It's capable of sensing pressure and vibration across an impressive range of frequencies.
"It far exceeds the response range of our skin," said Dr. Ling Qiu of the Monash Centre for Atomically Thin Materials, or MCATM. "It also has a very fast response time, much faster than conventional polymer elastomer."
Because of how well the graphene elastomer responds to touch, in addition to its known durability and ability to react to temperature, scientists speculate that the material could be used in developing highly-advanced prosthetic limbs, as well as other flexible electronics.
"Although we often take it for granted, the pressure sensors in our skin allow us to do things like hold a cup without dropping it, crushing it, or spilling the contents," explained Qiu. "The sensitivity and response time of the elastomer could allow a prosthetic hand or a robot to be even more dexterous than a human."
While Deus Ex-style robotic augmentations are still a ways away, Professor Dan Li, a director at MCATM, is still excited by the findings.
"Although we are still in the early stages of discovering graphene's potential," Li said, "this research is an excellent breakthrough."
Another weekend, and a “historic” blizzard expected to hit the northeast
of the United States, at least according to the current media hype. According
to the current media hype, the crude oil market bottomed yesterday. The
implication is that stocks and commodities can now rally. I’m a sceptic that
oil or commodities have bottomed, or that we will see any more than a short
covering, profit taking rally in stocks. The problems of an ongoing global deflation
require more than just a floor in the price of oil. Have a great weekend
everyone. Once the snowstorm passes in the US northeast, enjoy God’s passing
Great Winter Wonderland.
Oh,
people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Farage. 14% of British people
know that.
Prime Minister Cameron, with apologies to Homer
Simpson.
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished December
DJIA: +18 Down. NASDAQ:
+110 Down. SP500: +36 Down.
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