Phew! The End of Q1 16.

Baltic Dry Index. 414 +05        Brent Crude 38.85

LIR Gold Target in 2019: $30,000.  Revised due to QE programs.

Brexit odds checker. http://www.oddschecker.com/politics/british-politics/eu-referendum/referendum-on-eu-membership-result

Brexit Quote of the Day.

The quickest way of ending an EU war Dave, is to lose it.

With apologies to George Orwell.

While the Great Vampire Squids and their captive central banksters dress up the global casinos for the benefit of the one percent, and an increasingly futile attempt at building Potemkin Villages, in China’s real casinos the roof has fallen in. In yet another warning sign of rising distress in China, capital flight from China’s looming devaluation, has replaced hedonistic gambling trips to Macau.

Beyond that, the increasingly distressed real world far from the central bankster’s parallel planet world of ZIRP and NIRP voodoo economics.

There can be few fields of human endeavour in which history counts for so little as in the world of finance. Past experience, to the extent that it is part of memory at all, is dismissed as the primitive refuge of those who do not have the insight to appreciate the incredible wonders of the present.

J. K. Galbraith.

Wynn Macau 2015 profit tumbles 63%

Published: Mar 31, 2016 12:57 a.m. ET

Wynn Macau Ltd.'s (1128.HK) 2015 net profit plunged 63% from a year earlier, as high-spending gamblers shied away from the semiautonomous Chinese territory's tables.

The casino operator said after trading hours Wednesday that full-year net profit fell to 2.41 billion Hong Kong dollars ($310.9 million), from a net profit of HK$6.45 billion a year earlier. Full-year operating revenue was HK$19.10 billion, down 35% from HK$29.44 billion the previous year.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/wynn-macau-2015-profit-tumbles-63-2016-03-31

Welcome to New `Ice Age' as Top China Mill Sees Steel Crisis

March 31, 2016 — 3:01 AM BST Updated on March 31, 2016 — 4:12 AM BST

The crisis engulfing the global steel industry has become so severe that one of China’s top producers has warned of a new Ice Age as mills confront overcapacity and increased competition that threatens their survival.

“In 2015, China experienced a slowdown in economic growth and excess steel capacity, which caused the domestic and overseas steel industry to enter into an ‘Ice Age’,” Angang Steel Co. said after posting a net loss of 4.59 billion yuan ($710 million) for last year. There are severe challenges, fierce competition and difficult survival conditions, it said.

Steel demand in China is shrinking for the first time in a generation as growth slows and policy makers seek to steer the economy toward consumption. Faced with declining sales at home, mills in the top producer -- which accounts for half of global supply -- have shipped record volumes overseas, heightening competition from Europe to the U.S. Tata Steel Ltd. in India said this week it’s planning to sell off its loss-making U.K. plants, prompting Prime Minister David Cameron to call crisis talks on Thursday.

The steel industry is set for a “severe winter,” Angang said, describing the market that it and others faced as complex. Output of steel by the country’s fourth-biggest producer contracted 4.4 percent last year, and the company is seeking to reduce costs and boost efficiency, it said.

Benchmark steel prices sank 31 percent in China last year, pummeling mills’ margins and spurring the government to step up efforts to force the industry to shut overcapacity and shift workers to other jobs. While reinforcement bar has rebounded since November, Daniel Hynes, senior commodities strategist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd., forecasts the rally may not last.

“The short-term rally we’ve seen in steel prices will give way to the longer-term dynamic of weaker steel consumption in China,” Hynes said by phone on Thursday. “I suppose the positive thing is that maybe the restructuring we’re seeing in the steel industry will speed up the rationalization of the market.”

Other results from China this week showed the extent of the downturn. Baoshan Iron & Steel Co., China’s second-biggest producer, posted an 83 percent slide in net income last year, and Chongqing Iron & Steel Co. swung to a net loss of 5.99 billion yuan from a profit a year earlier.

More

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-31/welcome-to-new-ice-age-as-top-china-mill-warns-of-steel-crisis

We end with the ever more bizarre world of the Germanic Eurozone. Who other that the 5 European Presidents, and the horde of Eurorats would want to be in a monetary prison like this? Below, reading the chicken entrails, 21^st century style.

"In economics, hope and faith coexist with great scientific pretension."

J. K. Galbraith.

How the Price of East German Butter Moves the Euro

From the cost of fresh butter in Dresden to a shirt in Leipzig or perfume in Chemnitz, each month the 60 data collectors in the German state of Saxony start gathering prices -- and end up moving the euro.

Figures that originate in what was part of communist East Germany and its price controls until 1990 have become a major focus for traders and market analysts trying to divine the overall inflation rate for the country and then the euro region. Saxony is the first in Germany to publish monthly consumer price data at a time when inflation dominates European Central Bank policy making.

“The sooner you get any kind of inkling of data, the better,” said Neil Jones, head of hedge-fund sales at Mizuho Bank Ltd. in London. “Saxony comes out first, it’s in Germany, which is obviously the largest economy in the euro zone, and that will look to be a guide to the potential for further stimulus down the line.”

The reaction to Saxony’s data published on Wednesday confirmed the sensitivity of financial markets to the findings of the state’s statisticians. The euro jumped 0.2 percent against the dollar and Germany’s benchmark 10-year bonds pared their gain immediately after the report showed the inflation rate rebounded in March.

Indeed, in the past year, the euro moved about 0.08 percent on average against the dollar in the five minutes after Saxony released its inflation report each month.

While hardly a seismic shift in sentiment, and coming at the same time the stock market opens in Frankfurt, the reaction was typically more than for consumer-price data for the euro region. The was also more movement than for the latest update on Germany’s business climate by the Ifo Institute, data that used to be more closely watched.

“At the moment the most dominant driver of exchange rates is central-bank policy and there it’s only important to look at numbers that have a potential impact on the sense of central banks,” said Ulrich Leuchtmann, Frankfurt-based head of currency strategy at Commerzbank AG, Germany’s second-largest bank. He said while Ifo used to move the exchange rate significantly with every surprise, “it’s not the case anymore.”

Saxony’s importance is down to timing rather than anything else. It’s the first glimpse of inflation data rather than an economic bellwether for Germany.

More

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-30/how-the-price-of-butter-in-an-eastern-german-city-moves-the-euro

"The paper standard is self-destructive."

Hans F. Sennholz

At the Comex silver depositories Wednesday final figures were: Registered 32.32 Moz, Eligible 123.27 Moz, Total 155.59 Moz. 

Crooks and Scoundrels Corner

The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.

Today, steel. Yet another central bankster fuelled malinvestment bubble gone horribly wrong. China’s malinvestment bubble in steel has resulted in an annual capacity of 779 million tonnes to 822 million tonnes, depending on source of the figures, no one has an exact figure, not even the Chinese themselves. Some 200 million plus tonnes over the rest of the world combined! China’s domestic demand for steel is an estimated 300 million tonnes, but declining as they try to switch their economy towards a more developed consumption economy, so China will be dumping cut price steel for decades, even as it desperately tries to shut down parts of its steel industry in a massive industry consolidation. The collapse of the Great Nixonian Error of fiat money, and the near on 50 year malinvestment bubble it spawned, only began correcting in 2007. We have barely started the process of correction.

"The history of paper money is an account of abuse, mismanagement, and financial disaster."

Richard M. Ebeling

Tata's U.K. Steel Challenge Is Selling a Business That Few Want

March 31, 2016 — 12:00 AM BST

Buyers for Britain’s biggest steel operations may be tough to come by.

Faced with a market flooded with cheap Chinese exports, Tata Steel Ltd. is planning to sell its U.K. business after several quarters of losses and 2 billion pounds ($2.8 billion) of writedowns left the division with an asset value of almost zero. Steel prices have plunged to the lowest in a decade and in the U.K. higher wages and rising energy costs make the business harder to sustain.

“It will be very difficult to find a buyer for steel assets in the current market environment,” Seth Rosenfeld, a London-based European steel analyst at Jefferies International Ltd., said in a phone interview. “Trying to ensure the long-term competitiveness of this plant will remain a real challenge for any upcoming owner.”

More

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-30/tata-s-u-k-steel-challenge-is-selling-a-business-that-few-want

Steelmakers' Megalomania Leads to Misery

By Chris Bryant

Of the many lessons from Tata Steel's decision to sell its loss-making British operations, surely the biggest is this: If a steelmaker tells you he's embarking on a multi-billion dollar, cross-border, debt-funded expansion, run for the hills.

No doubt there will be much anguish in the coming days about the pernicious impact of China's cheap steel exports, which increased to more than 112 million tonnes last year (equivalent to about two-thirds of total EU production).

But in truth, Tata's U.K. business has been struggling ever since a bidding war tempted the Mumbai-based company to pay an eye-watering 6.2 billion pounds ($8.9 billion) for Corus Group in 2007 -- a one-third premium on its initial bid funded largely with debt.

At the time chairman Ratan Tata called the takeover a "defining moment" for the company. Indeed it was, only in all the wrong ways.

Granted, the financial crisis and Europe's protracted recession weren't foreseeable and that hit the company hard. Europe accounts for more than half of Tata's revenue but demand there hasn't recovered to pre-crisis levels. Yet, in spite of cost cuts and thousands of job losses, Tata hasn't been able to turn things around.

In today's money, Gadfly estimates the company's European operations have lost almost $5 billion since 2010. Asset impairments in the UK totaled more than two billion pounds ($2.9 billion) in that period, according to Tata. As a result, Tata Steel's net debt stood at some $11.3 billion at the end of December, or more than 10 times estimated 2016 Ebtida, according to Bloomberg data.

Pride Before a Fall

Given that burden, Tata's decision to sell-up shouldn't come as a surprise. Arguably it should have recognized its mistake in buying Corus sooner. Doubtless, a big reason why Tata first did the deal was that Indian rival Lakshmi Mittal had completed a $38 billion takeover of Arcelor the previous year.

That hasn't turned out terribly well either. ArcelorMittal has also been forced to shutter European plants and it wrote down the value of its European steel business by $4.3 billion in 2012. Its huge debt forced it to announce a $3-billion rights issue in February.

Steel industry megalomania isn't a peculiarly Indian phenomenon, however, nor is organic growth necessarily better. ThyssenKrupp plowed billions of euros into a new Brazilian steel plant but lost more than 8 billion euros between 2011 and 2013 as construction problems and currency swings destroyed the original business case. The German steelmaker's balance sheet still bears the scars.

More

http://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2016-03-30/tata-steel-cannot-blame-china-for-british-failure

UK steel crisis: 'Government in disarray' says Corbyn amid threat of 40,000 job losses

30 March 2016 • 2:50pm

----Simon Boyd, director at REIDsteel and Business for Britain South West chairman, said: "While we remain in the EU our elected Government is helpless to assist the British steel industry. EU restrictions on our trade policy have cost the British steel industry thousands of jobs, leaving entire communities devastated.

"If we vote leave we can take back control of our trade policy and provide the help our steel industry needs."

More.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/03/30/uk-industry-rocked-as-tata-confirms-plan-to-offload-steel-busine/

Brexit Quote of the week.

Damn your principles! Stick to your party.

D. Cameron, with apologies to Benjamin Disraeli.

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 21^st century onwards? DC? A quantum computer next?

Today, the havoc subsidies wreak in energy policy. If an idea or innovation makes sense, there’s an entrepreneur out there that will take it up. Subsidies bring on the wrong technology, or bring in the right technology, but too fast for optimal efficiency. Not to worry though, on the Great Nixonian Error of fiat money, its only pretend money and there’s plenty more where that comes from.

Taxpayers Are Footing Bill for Solar Project That Doesn’t Work

David Kreutzer / @dwkreutzer / March 29, 2016

As every 10-year-old who ever got a sweater for a birthday present has been told, “it’s the thought that counts.” That seems to be the guiding principle at the Department of Energy and the California Public Utilities Commission when it comes to solar power.

The latest example is the $2.2 billion Ivanpah solar thermal plant in California. (Note: Solar thermal plants do not use solar panels to directly convert sunshine to electricity; they use sunshine to boil water that then drives conventional turbines.)

Here’s the story so far. Ivanpah…

• is owned by Google, NRG Energy, and Brightsource, who have a market cap in excess of $500 billion.
• received $1.6 billion in loan guarantees from the Department of Energy.
• is paid four to five times as much per megawatt-hour as natural gas-powered plants.
• is paid two to three times as much per megawatt-hour as other solar power producers.
• has burned thousands of birds to death.
• has delayed loan repayments.
• is seeking over $500 million in grants to help pay off the guaranteed loans.
• burns natural gas for 4.5 hours each morning to get its mojo going.

Brightsource, which is privately held, is owned by a virtual who’s who of those who don’t need subsidies from taxpayers and ratepayers.

In spite of all this, Ivanpah has fallen woefully short of its production targets. The managers’ explanation for why production came up 32 percent below expected output is the weather. In addition to raising questions about planning for uncertainty, it is not all that clear how a nine-percent drop in sunshine causes a 32-percent drop in production.

More bizarrely, the natural gas used to get the plant all warmed up and ready each day would be enough to generate over one quarter of the power actually produced from the solar energy. Sorry, let’s not be haters.

The problem for Ivanpah’s customers (California power utilities) is that they planned on all those solar watt-hours to meet California’s renewable power mandates, which require that renewables produce a large and rising fraction of California’s electricity. That is why they pay so much more for Ivanpah’s output than for conventionally powered electricity.

Breaching their contracts with these California utilities threatened to shut down Ivanpah. More likely than permanently shutting Ivanpah down would have been a change of ownership at a price that came closer to reflecting reality.

But this would have been bothersome for Ivanpah’s investors and the Department of Energy’s ridiculous Section 1703 Loan Program, so the California Public Utilities Commission saved the day (for the fat-cat owners, of course, not for actual the electricity consumers) by granting the company an extension to meet the production targets.

More

http://dailysignal.com/2016/03/29/taxpayers-are-footing-bill-for-solar-project-that-doesnt-work/

The monthly Coppock Indicators finished February

DJIA: 16517 -23 Down. NASDAQ:  4558 +45 Down. SP500: 1932 -17 Down. 

Fed’s “Chair,” Asia Now Drives Policy.

Baltic Dry Index. 409 +03        Brent Crude 39.30

LIR Gold Target in 2019: $30,000.  Revised due to QE programs.

Brexit odds checker. http://www.oddschecker.com/politics/british-politics/eu-referendum/referendum-on-eu-membership-result

Brexit Quote of the Day.

...for, as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under EUSSR rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom – for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.

Declaration of Westminster July 24^th 2016, with apologies to the Declaration of Arbroath April 6^th 1320.

Unreality. The great disconnect. On ZIRP and NIRP, bad news is good news. The final bubble grows. The Fed’s talking chair yesterday confirmed that outside events now drives the world’s leading central bank’s policy. The Great Nixonian Error of fiat money has returned to start eating up the original people of the free lunch. Fiat money is now everybody’s problem. Stay long fully paid up physical gold and silver, held outside of the financial houses who might hypothecate it for their own larcenous use, Corzine style. The next Lehman just got one day closer. That this all goes down is a given. The only unknowns are when, why, and how bad.

It’s our currency but it’s your problem.

US Treasury Secretary, John Connally. 1975.

Janet Yellen is worried about global growth—and Wall Street loves it

Published: Mar 29, 2016 6:45 p.m. ET

Janet Yellen offered up her best impression of a dove Tuesday. In other words, the Federal Reserve chairwoman stressed her intent to gradually lift benchmark interest rates off ultralow levels.

Unsurprisingly, Wall Street cheered the prospect of an ever slower approach to raising interest rates as she spoke at a highly anticipated speech at the Economic Club of New York. The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +0.56% and the S&P 500 index SPX, +0.88%  both posted their highest settlements of 2016.

The dollar DXY, -0.06% turned south and yields for rate-sensitive Treasurys TMUBMUSD10Y, +0.14% TMUBMUSD02Y, -0.51%  touched one-month lows.

What is worth taking note of is Yellen’s increased focus on forces outside of the U.S. as she outlines a plan to gingerly normalize interest rates, reiterating an updated March policy statement and the Fed’s reduced expectations for rate increases in 2016 (two versus an earlier projection for four).

In a note, Deutsche Bank DB, -0.91% chief international economist Torsten Slok pointed out that Yellen & Co. have been more influenced by events in the rest of the world since late May.

Mentions of China, the dollar and the term “global” have been more readily used by the Yellen as the emergence of negative interest rates in Japan and Europe have underscored consternation about the state of the world economy and. in particular, a slowdown by the world’s second-largest economy: China. Slok’s bar graph below illustrates the point:

----Yellen’s remarks follow a string of conflicting comments from Fed officials who have been referred to as the “gang of five” by some. Those individuals include Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart, St. Louis Fed President James Bullard, San Francisco Fed President John Williams, Richmond Fed President Jeffrey Lacker and Philadelphia Fed President Patrick Harker, who hinted at rate increases as early as April in a series of speeches ahead of Yellen’s.

All the moves make some market participants puzzled as to why Fed lifted interest rates for the first time in nearly a decade back in December only to take what looks like a long pause now.

More

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/janet-yellen-is-worried-about-global-growthand-wall-street-loves-it-2016-03-29

Yellen Says What Markets Want to Hear

March 29, 2016 2:38 PM EST By Mohamed A. El-Erian

Markets had a predictable immediate reaction to comments by Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen on Tuesday that they interpreted as relatively dovish signals about the thinking of the world’s most important central bank.

Within minutes of her remarks, risk assets rose, government bond yields fell, the dollar weakened and the VIX declined. Sustaining this trend will require two policy signals, one short-term and one longer-term -- assuming that the global economic environment remains relatively stable.

She used her much-anticipated lunchtime speech to the Economic Club of New York to paint a cautious and measured picture of the U.S. economy, and of the delicate balance that Fed policy makers must maintain.

The Fed chair acknowledged that the overall mixed U.S. picture for 2016 so far contained encouraging signs, including the continued strengthening of the labor market. Yet she also emphasized “external” risks, including slowing global economic conditions, the level of the dollar and market reactions to China’s currency policy. She even recognized the influence of some structural headwinds to growth and the unusual uncertainty facing the inflationary outlook.

This cautious assessment of the economy was accompanied by a rather measured appraisal of what the Federal Reserve can do to further support growth as part of its dual-mandate of maximum employment and stable inflation.

She argued that the Fed had not run out of policy ammunition and stressed the need for careful policy gradualism within a cautious approach overall -- music to the ears of markets that have been conditioned to depend on the Fed to suppress financial volatility and push asset prices higher. But she also cautioned about the extent to which the central bank can continue to be effective. And she refrained from venturing into the debate about negative interest rates, which has been fueled by the decision of her counterparts in Europe and Japan to push theirs below zero.

Judging from the immediate reaction, the markets liked her overall message, which they interpreted as an indication of continued support from the Fed.

More

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-03-29/yellen-says-what-markets-want-to-hear

Reality. The global economy is ugly and getting uglier, teetering on the edge of an abyss.

ADB’s China growth forecast: Slow and getting slower

Published: Mar 29, 2016 10:51 p.m. ET

BEIJING — China’s growth will be at the bottom of Beijing’s target range this year and decline further in 2017 amid slower growth in the Asia-Pacific region, according to an annual economic outlook published by the Asian Development Bank.

The Manila-based multilateral bank forecast annual growth in China of 6.5% this year and 6.3% for 2017. The government at its annual parliament earlier this month set a target of 6.5% to 7% growth this year and an average of 6.5% over the next five years, a level that may economists believe can only be achieved by excessive monetary and fiscal stimulus.

Dragged down by the People’s Republic of China’s diminished prospects and a weak recovery in major industrial economies, the ADB said it expects the Asian region to post annual growth of 5.7% both this year and next, down from 5.9% in 2015.

“PRC’s growth moderation and uneven global recovery are weighing down overall growth in Asia,” said ADB economist Shang-Jin Wei in a report.

China, the world’s second-largest economy, continues to battle excess capacity and needs to move ahead with structural reform, the bank said.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/adbs-china-growth-forecast-slow-and-getting-slower-2016-03-29

China’s credit hose leaves many firms parched

By Rachel Morarjee March 29, 2016

China is pouring money into the economy. But the gush of credit – banks doled out $540 billion of new loans in January and February – is not reaching nimbler private companies. That is worrying, since they generate 80 percent of the jobs in China’s cities and 60 percent of GDP.

A Reuters analysis of Chinese listed companies that have reported 2015 earnings show their suppliers owe them – and they in turn owe customers – more money that at any time in the last decade. It takes listed firms almost 170 days to turn working capital into cash. It took just one month in 2006.

Listed companies are larger and better connected than their unlisted peers, and often have access to state-bank funding, so the mounting backlog hits smaller outfits hardest.

China’s official Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) survey reflects this stark disparity. It shows large companies are still expanding, but smaller and medium-sized peers are bearing the brunt of the economic slowdown. The PMI score for small firms fell to 44 in February 2016 from 48 a year earlier, even further from the 50 mark that separates expansion from contraction.

As ever in China, there are workarounds. For one, small businesses can turn to peer-to-peer lenders for cash, paying higher prices for bridging loans while they wait for customers to pay them. Reflecting this trend, the P2P business is booming. Overall P2P loans – a figure that includes other categories such as consumer lending – shot up in the first two months of the year to hit 243 billion yuan ($37 billion), versus 69 billion for the same period in 2015, according to data provider Wangdaizhijia.

Alternatively, if customers pay with bills of exchange, entrepreneurs can take these to the bank and trade them in at a discount for ready cash. This is increasingly popular too. Such discounting is now being done with 46 percent of all bills of exchange, up from 20 percent at the end of 2013, according to research firm CreditSights. That is the highest proportion since monthly data began in 2011.

However, both fixes are expensive and eat into profits. That just adds to the pain of the struggling small businesses which China needs to create jobs.

http://blogs.reuters.com/breakingviews/2016/03/29/chinas-credit-hose-leaves-many-firms-parched/

China bank profits flat-line as bad debts continue to soar

Tue Mar 29, 2016 4:27am EDT

China's Big Four state-run banks this week are set to report annual earnings growth that likely flat-lined after around a decade of terrific profitability, as a surge in soured loans continued unabated while economic expansion weakened.

Profit growth has slowed in recent years while the sector tackles its greatest challenge since the global financial crisis, with bad loans at a 10 year high while funds set aside to cover the losses fall close to regulatory limits.

While banks ramped up lending during a government stimulus drive during the meltdown, much of that lending went to industries where rapid expansion developed into over-supply as economic growth tapered, raising the risk of default and dragging on profits.

For 2015, analysts estimate net profit at the Big Four to range from 1 percent growth to 1 percent decline, showed Reuters calculations based on data from Starmine SmartEstimate.

Bank of Communications Co Ltd (601328.SS) (3328.HK), China's fifth-biggest lender, reports earnings on Tuesday, followed on Wednesday by Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd (ICBC) (601398.SS) (1398.HK) and Bank of China Ltd (BOC) (601988.SS) (3988.HK).

China Construction Bank Corp (601939.SS) (0939.HK) is also expected to report earnings on Wednesday, followed by Agricultural Bank of China Ltd (601288.SS) (1288.HK) on Thursday.

Fitch Ratings, in a research note on March 22, said banks are likely to announce "continued subdued earnings growth amid margin compression and asset deterioration."

More

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-banks-earnings-idUSKCN0WU0KS

Can anything rescue Japan from the abyss?

Mehreen Khan 28 March 2016 • 4:07pm

“Shunto” season has failed to grip Japan.

The country’s annual Spring assault on wages seems to have passed with little more than a whimper this year despite being billed as one of the most anticipated economic events in Japan’s recent history.

Translating as “spring wage offensive”, Shunto marks the annual Japanese ritual of wage bargaining between business groups and labour unions.

This year’s negotiations have been preceded by months of feverish lobbying from prime minister Shinzo Abe who has urged the country’s business groups to raise wages and help smash Japan’s deflationary mindset once and for all.

The issue has become the latest lightning rod in the country’s two decade struggle to ensure long-term economic prosperity. 

Higher salaries encourage consumption and are vital in raising inflation. This in turn would help erode some part of Japan’s record 250pc of GDP debt pile. 

Abe's calls have been echoed by some of the world’s most renowned economists.

Olivier Blanchard, the former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund and Adam Posen, a former Bank of England policymaker, have called for an unprecedented 10pc increase in nominal wages in 2016. In the last two years, average wages have risen by just 1pc.

“What is needed is a jump-start to a wage-price spiral of the sort feared from the 1970s”, say Posen and Blanchard, who call for a “virtuous cycle” of wage growth, inflation, and lower debt to release Japan from economic stagnancy.

But like so many of Tokyo’s radical attempts to extricate itself out of low growth and low inflation, the early signs show that Shunto has already fallen flat.

Car-making giant Toyota is reported to have agreed on a wage settlement which will boost its employees’ basic wages by just  ¥1500 ($13) a month, despite recording bumper profits of ¥2.17 trillion ($19bn) last year.

Overall, the fruits of 2016’s Shunto are set to be more meagre than those of last year. The March round of talks indicate wages hike demands from unions to be around 3.27pc this year, lower than the 3.74pc of 2015, according to analysts at UBS.

This indicates the average eventual wage hike will be around 0.3pc in 2016 for the country's 63.5m workers, down from 0.69pc agreed in 2015, calculate economists at JP Morgan.

More

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/03/27/can-anything-stop-japan-from-falling-into-the-abyss/?WT.mc_id=e_DM103417&WT.tsrc=email&etype=Edi_Cit_New_Tue_9Sections&utm_source=email&utm_medium=Edi_Cit_New_Tue_9Sections_2016_03_29&utm_campaign=DM103417

In other news, Uncle Scam orders US families to run from Turkey.

Families of U.S. personnel ordered to leave parts of Turkey amid security concerns

Tue Mar 29, 2016 4:20pm EDT

The Obama administration ordered the families of U.S. military and diplomatic personnel to leave parts of southern Turkey on Tuesday and warned U.S. citizens against travel to the region amid mounting security concerns.

The Pentagon said 670 dependents of U.S. military personnel would be affected by the order to depart areas of southern Turkey, including Incirlik air base, which is used heavily in the fight against Islamic State militants.

The U.S. State Department said a small number of diplomatic families would be affected but did not give numbers. The Pentagon said 100 military dependents in Ankara and Istanbul were not affected by the departure orders because of security measures in place there.

State Department spokesman John Kirby said the move had been under consideration for several weeks, and was not the result of any specific threat and had nothing to do with the visit to Washington this week by top Turkish officials.

Secretary of State John Kerry met Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on Monday, and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan is due to attend a Nuclear Security Summit with other world leaders later in the week. Kirby said Kerry had discussed the security announcement with Cavusoglu at their meeting on Monday.

"The decision to do this wasn’t taken lightly. It was done after careful thought and consideration, and inter-agency coordination," Kirby told a daily briefing at the State Department.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-military-turkey-security-idUSKCN0WV1WO

"Gold was not selected arbitrarily by governments to be the monetary standard. Gold had developed for many centuries on the free market as the best money; as the commodity providing the most stable and desirable monetary medium."

Murray N. Rothbard

At the Comex silver depositories Tuesday final figures were: Registered 32.32 Moz, Eligible 123.24 Moz, Total 155.56 Moz. 

Crooks and Scoundrels Corner

The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.

Today, did the EV manufacturers just make a gigantic production error? The ever excellent Investorintel website, always worth a visit and signing up to, posits that they did.  But bad news usually has a silver lining, and if John Petersen’s even halfway right, that silver lining lies with America’s class action Tort lawyers.

EV Batteries and the Cobalt Cliff: The biggest “oops” in the history of supply chain management

Posted on March 25, 2016 by John Petersen

In early March, I described cobalt supply and demand dynamics as a giga-risk for lithium-ion battery manufacturers. I subsequently took my analysis a step further and suggested that electric vehicle (EV) manufacturers including Tesla (TSLA), General Motors (GM), Nissan (NSANY) and Porsche (POAHY) might soon find themselves coping with the biggest “oops” in the history of supply chain management.

While the statistical data was unassailable, I had a hard time answering the most common question readers asked; “how could so many major companies make the same supply chain blunder and bet their futures on plentiful supplies of a by-product?” Since I wasn’t satisfied with my own responses, I’ve spent the last two weeks searching for hidden flaws in my hypothesis and contemplating the likely short- to medium-term impacts of the Cobalt Cliff.

The bad news is I haven’t found any flaws in my hypothesis. The worse news is I’ve concluded the short- to medium-term impacts on EV manufacturers may be catastrophic:

1. The world’s miners will not produce enough cobalt in 2016 to satisfy demand;
2. There is no reason to believe cobalt production will ramp at a pace that’s adequate to satisfy expected incremental demand from EV manufacturers; and
3. When it comes to free-market competition for limited cobalt supplies, battery and EV manufacturers will be the most cost-sensitive class of cobalt users.

Cobalt Resources and By-product Status

Cobalt is an unusual metal because the identified terrestrial resources are about 25 million tons and the identified sea-bottom resources are another 120 million tons. With rare exceptions, however, cobalt is produced as a minor by-product of nickel and copper mining. As a result, global cobalt production ramps up and down as nickel and copper miners respond to global demand for their primary products. Since less than 6% of global cobalt production comes from mines that produce cobalt as a primary product, cobalt supply cannot respond to normal market signals. After all, no rational nickel or copper miner will put additional pressure on prices for its primary products because it wants to sell a little more cobalt. Glencore and other international mining companies are suspending operations at marginal and unprofitable mines around the world. Therefore, cobalt production is expected to spike down in 2016 and remain at low levels until nickel and copper prices recover. While I don’t have enough data to accurately assess the magnitude of the downward spike, a 5% to 10% decline in global cobalt production seems all but certain and much larger production declines are a distinct possibility.

----Conclusion

Over the last two weeks I’ve spoken with a wide variety of professionals including battery experts, miners, the USGS and the CDI. The battery experts invariably assumed that since cobalt trades on the LME, the world’s miners can and will quickly respond to increased demand by boosting supplies and reducing prices due to economies of scale. The miners, the USGS and the CDI agree that it simply can’t happen that way because cobalt is a by-product of copper and nickel mining and by-product availability is always constrained by demand for the primary products.

When I was a boy my mother taught me the “First Law of Cooking” – check your pantry and don’t start if you don’t have all the required ingredients. It was my first lesson in supply chain management; a lesson that’s served me well for over a half-century.

This is more than a supply chain management oops, it’s a due diligence debacle!

• Governments should have understood the realities before adopting policies to promote or require the deployment of cobalt-intensive technologies;
• Entrepreneurs should have understood the realities before spending billions on new factories to make cobalt-intensive products;
• Financiers should have understood the realities before raising billions to finance cobalt-dependent projects; and
• Sell-side analysts should have understood the realities before encouraging investors to bid the market values of cobalt-dependent companies to unreasonable levels.

Instead of doing their homework, everybody assumed that somebody else had done a complete due diligence investigation and there was no sense in duplicating the effort.

- See more at: http://investorintel.com/technology-metals-intel/ev-batteries-and-cobalt-the-biggest-oops-in-the-history-of-supply-chain-management/#comment-537596

Related articles.

http://investorintel.com/technology-metals-intel/lithium-ion-batteries-three-critical-mineral-constraints/#sthash.n0nqAAo2.dpuf

“Understanding Advanced Batteries and Energy Storage – Part I” http://investorintel.com/technology-metals-intel/understanding-advanced-batteries-energy-storage-part

http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/the_high_power_lithium_ion#sthash.n0nqAAo2.dpuf

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Brexit Quote of the week.

Damn your principles! Stick to your party.

D. Cameron, with apologies to Benjamin Disraeli.

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 21^st century onwards? DC? A quantum computer next?

Graphene shows potential as biosensor

March 29, 2016

Graphene has been touted as a material highly suited for use as a biosensor, by Plymouth University researchers.

Results from a new study show electrical signals transmitted at high frequencies do not lose energy when travelling through graphene – as the material does not have a band gap, making it an excellent conductor. 

Due to this, graphene has been put forward for a range of uses in the engineering and health sectors. Researchers believe high-speed transistors and amplifiers for mobile and satellite communications and biological sensors may be possible uses for graphene.

Dr Shakil Awan, a lecturer from Plymouth University and principal investigator in the study, said: “Our results for the first time not only confirm the theoretical properties of graphene but also open up many new applications of the material in high-speed electronics and bio-sensing.

“An accurate understanding of the electromagnetic properties of graphene over a broad range of frequencies has been an important quest. Initial measurements gave conflicting results with theory because graphene’s intrinsic properties are often masked by much larger interfering signals from the supporting substrate, metallic contacts and measurement probes,” he added.

The results from this study will be used to develop high speed, low noise amplifiers, mixers, radiation detectors and novel-biosensors.

The biosensors are being researched as part of a one million pound project on developing early detection of dementia, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. Graphene is also an ideal material for this because of its small thermal noise at room temperature.

Dr Alan Colli, from Nokia Technologies, who was involved in the study, said: “Our study has unlocked the fundamental behaviour of graphene at high frequencies, which will be essential in the design and evaluation of future graphene-based wireless devices.”

The research published in 2D Materials, was carried out by Plymouth and Tohoku University in conjunction with the Nokia Research Centre in Cambridge.

http://www.labnews.co.uk/news/graphene-shows-potential-biosensor-29-03-2016/

The monthly Coppock Indicators finished February

DJIA: 16517 -23 Down. NASDAQ:  4558 +45 Down. SP500: 1932 -17 Down.