Wednesday, 8 June 2016

Europe On The Brink.



Baltic Dry Index. 606 -01       Brent Crude 51.53

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.
We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness outside of the EUSSR.”

With grateful thanks to the writers of the US Declaration of Independence.

We open again with the EUSSR, now following Japan deeper into economic suicide. But what would the Bilderbergers do? About that we are shortly to find out. Below, the EUSSR on the cusp of unintended change.
It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder.
Frederic Bastiat.

Draghi Fires Starting Gun on Corporate Bond Purchases in Europe

June 8, 2016 — 12:01 AM BST
Investors will be watching Mario Draghi’s first corporate bond purchases on Wednesday for an indication of whether they were right to snap up the notes before the European Central Bank.

The ECB is adding investment-grade corporate notes to its 80 billion-euro ($91 billion) monthly purchase program, which already includes covered bonds, asset-backed securities and government debt, as part of efforts to encourage growth. The challenge will be buying enough bonds in increasingly illiquid markets, investors and analysts say.

“There is a fair amount riding on this in terms of the ECB’s credibility,” said Victoria Whitehead, a Paris-based senior portfolio manager at BNP Paribas Investment Partners, which oversees about 521 billion euros. “The perception is that if they can’t buy at least 5 billion euros of bonds a month, the program will be seen as unsuccessful.”

Investors have piled into investment-grade corporate bonds on the promise of central bank purchases, driving up prices and cutting borrowing costs. The average yield for euro notes tumbled to 1.002 percent on Monday, the lowest in more than a year, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch index data. Companies responded to the surge in demand by selling more than 50 billion euros of bonds in the single currency in May, the second-busiest month on record, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

----“We’re worried that they won’t be able to buy quite as much as they want to,” said Tim Winstone, a London-based portfolio manager at Henderson Global Investors Ltd. which oversees about 93 billion pounds ($135 billion) of assets. “If the buying underwhelms and reported volumes are less than most people expect, there is a risk of a selloff.”

The ECB can choose from as many as 1,049 securities totaling 620 billion euros when it starts buying, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. CreditSights puts the size of the universe at about 628 billion euros, while Morgan Stanley estimates it is about 675 billion euros.

For a QuickTake explainer on Europe’s quantitative-easing program, click here.

Euro-area national central banks will buy notes on behalf of the ECB in primary and secondary markets, according to the ECB’s website. Bonds issued by non-bank companies with an investment grade from at least one ratings provider will be eligible. The French central bank has the widest choice of bonds to buy, with a third of the eligible notes falling under its remit, followed by Germany, Belgium and Spain, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
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Former Bank of England head Mervyn King joins Alan Greenspan in advocating gold ownership

Posted on by USAGOLD  by Michael J. Kosares
In The End of Alchemy, Mervyn King, the former head of the Bank of England, writes of central banks’ frustration in dealing with the stagnant global economy. “Central banks,” he says, “have thrown everything at their economies, and yet the results have been disappointing, Whatever can be said about the world recovery since the crisis, it has been neither strong, nor sustainable, nor balanced.”

Similarly, former IMF chief economist, Olivier Blanchard was recently quoted in the Financial Times as saying: “And so the question is why is it, that with no fiscal consolidation and banks in decent shape, at least in terms of lending, and zero interest rates, we don’t have an enormous demand boom? That is now the puzzle.”
Alan Greenspan, in a recent interview with Fox Business News, offers the beginnings of an answer to Blanchard’s question – a question which happens to be on the minds of not just policy-makers but ordinary investors as well. “Our problem,” he said, “is not recession which is a short-term economic problem. I think you have a very profound long-term problem of economic growth at the time when the Western world, there is a very large migration from being a worker into being a recipient of social benefits as it is called. And this is legally mandated in all of our countries.” The western world, he concludes, is headed to “a state of disaster.”
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Next more on a subject we covered yesterday. Brexit fever is spreading across the wealth and jobs destroying EUSSR.

Brexit Contagion Is Spreading Across the EU, Pew Study Finds

June 7, 2016 — 11:00 PM BST
Opposition to the European Union is growing across the bloc, suggesting that anti-EU sentiment extends much further than traditionally skeptical Britain.

As the U.K. gears up for a referendum on whether to remain in the club of nations it joined in 1973, a survey of more than 10,000 people across Europe showed that voters from Italy and Poland to Greece and Sweden have lost faith in the EU. People in France -- one of the six founding countries -- now see the bloc less favorably even than those in the U.K., as the euro-area debt crisis and refugee influx take their toll.

“The British are not the only ones with doubts about the European Union,” said Bruce Stokes, the chief author of the Washington-based Pew Research Center report published Tuesday. “The EU is again experiencing a sharp dip in public support in a number of its largest member states.”

After Greece’s debt crisis triggered shock waves through the euro area, driving up unemployment and forcing governments into years of austerity, last year saw 1 million migrants arrive in Europe from the Middle East and Africa, testing social-security systems and the bloc’s free movement ideals. While the June 23 referendum has exposed the depth of anti-EU feeling in Britain, it’s clear that the roots of discontent go much further.

In France, beset by economic sluggishness and the rise of the anti-immigration National Front, the proportion of people with a favorable view of the EU has plummeted to 38 percent this year from 69 percent in 2004.
In Spain, whose banking sector teetered on the verge of collapse and needed an EU rescue in 2012, there’s been a similar drop: to 47 percent from 80 percent.
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We close for the day with the annual Bilderberger meeting of fat cat market riggers and fix-its. Presumably all will denounce Brexit and coronate Mrs. Clinton. But what else will they rig ad fix for the year ahead?

Bilderberg 2016: We can expect desperate lobbying against Brexit from Big Business

By Charlie Skelton June 6, 2016 13:09 BST
As the EU referendum looms, a great counsel of war is gathering. Henri de Castries, the Chairman of the influential Bilderberg Group, has made his way to the highest hill above Dresden, placed a mighty conch shell to his aristocratic French lips and blown.
Responding to his call, 140 or so of the most powerful pro-European business leaders and politicians will be making their way to the five-star Hotel Taschenbergpalais to discuss the future of their beloved free trade zone.
The annual three-day Bilderberg conference kicks off on Thursday, and you can be sure the mood in Dresden will be a grim one. The heads of Google, Shell, BP and Deutsche Bank will be there, and Brexit will be top of the agenda. The Bilderberg Group has been nurturing the EU to life since the 1950s, and now they see their creation under dire threat.
"A disaster for everyone" is how Henri de Castries, the boss of AXA and a director of HSBC, describes Brexit. But in particular, it is a disaster for his banking and big business colleagues at Bilderberg. Thomas Enders, the CEO of Airbus, who sits on Bilderberg's steering committee – the group's governing body – said, in a recent interview with CNBC, that his industry would be "lobbying" against Brexit.
Enders said: "Long-term it would not be positive certainly for the industry. This why the aerospace industry – I think amongst others – will lobby... for a [Remain] vote of the British electorate on the EU."

For Bilderberg, as for Goldman Sachs, the idea that there might be any kind of push-back against globalisation is a horrific one.
Goldman Sachs has two senior representatives on Bilderberg's steering committee: James A. Johnson, a board member of the bank, and Robert Zoellick, the chairman of Goldman Sachs' board of international advisors. We know from Charity Commission accounts that Goldman Sachs, along with BP, is one of the key funders of the group, and we also know that they've been pumping "a substantial six-figure sum" into the Remain campaign. And Goldman Sachs doesn't spend money lightly. The Remain campaign is clearly close to whatever they have instead of a heart.
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Hotel Taschenbergpalais Dresden.
Built in the 18th century by the Saxon king, August the Strong, as a pledge of love to his mistress and faithfully restored in 1995, Hotel Taschenbergpalais Kempinski Dresden is a beautiful combination of historic glory and contemporary elegance. The hotel offers 182 rooms, 32 suites and culinary excellence from five different venues. There are six elegant conference rooms on the Bel Etage and a divisible meeting and ballroom for up to 500 people. In addition, the Taschenbergpalais has also its own spa lounge and offers catering services in and around Dresden.

“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
At the Comex silver depositories Tuesday final figures were: Registered 22.48 Moz, Eligible 130.68 Moz, Total 153.16 Moz. 

Crooks and Scoundrels Corner

The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.
Goldie again today. “God’s work” apparently includes their raising billions of dollars for moslem foreign entities with “no way of knowing how 1MDB would use the money it raised.” Has no one at Goldie ever heard of 9/11?  Now much of the money raised seems to have been “Corzined” and the Journal is reporting that the Feds are on the case.  Better bung another $250,000 into the Clinton campaign.

Feds investigate Goldman Sachs over suspicious 1MDB transaction

Published: June 6, 2016 8:13 p.m. ET

$3 billion raised for Malaysian fund, but much of money disappeared

U.S. investigators are trying to determine whether Goldman Sachs Group Inc. broke the law when it didn’t sound an alarm about a suspicious transaction in Malaysia, people familiar with the investigation said.

At issue is $3 billion Goldman GS, +0.89%  raised via a bond issue for Malaysian state investment fund 1Malaysia Development Bhd., or 1MDB. Days after Goldman sent the proceeds into a Swiss bank account controlled by the fund, half of the money disappeared offshore, with some later ending up in the prime minister’s bank account, according to people familiar with the matter and bank-transfer information viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The cash was supposed to fund a major real-estate project in the nation’s capital that was intended to boost the country’s economy.

U.S. law-enforcement officials have sought to schedule interviews with Goldman executives, people familiar with the matter said. Goldman hasn’t been accused of wrongdoing. The bank says it had no way of knowing how 1MDB would use the money it raised.

Investigators are focusing on whether the bank failed to comply with the U.S. Bank Secrecy Act, which requires financial institutions to report suspicious transactions to regulators. The law has been used against banks for failing to report money laundering in Mexico and ignoring red flags about the operations of Ponzi scheme operator Bernard Madoff.

The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.

Federic Bastiat.

Brexit The Animated Movie.

Brexit Quote of the week.

'You just never know. That unpredictability is the great thing about life. You change. The world changes. You live in a country where we are still blessed with enormous opportunity. Leave yourself open to the world of possibility. You have the ambition, you have the smarts and you have the toughness. So, turn the page on your biography - you have just started a new chapter in your lives.'

Lloyd Blankfein CEO of Goldman unintentionally backs Brexit in a US speech to graduates.

Solar  & Related Update.

With events happening fast in the development of solar power and graphene, I’ve added this 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 low-defect method to nitrogen dope graphene resulting in tunable bandstructure

Date: June 6, 2016

Source: Naval Research Laboratory

Summary: Scientists have demonstrated hyperthermal ion implantation (HyTII) as an effective means of substitutionally doping graphene, resulting in a low-defect film with a tunable bandstructure amenable to a variety of device platforms and applications.
An interdisciplinary team of scientists at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), Electronics Science and Technology and Materials Science and Technology Divisions, has demonstrated hyperthermal ion implantation (HyTII) as an effective means of substitutionally doping graphene -- a hexagonally-arranged single-atomic thickness carbon sheet -- with nitrogen atoms. The result is a low-defect film with a tunable bandstructure amenable to a variety of device platforms and applications.
The research shows that the HyTII method delivers a high degree of control including doping concentration and, for the first time, demonstrates depth control of implantation by doping a single monolayer of graphene in a bilayer graphene stack. This further demonstrates that the resulting films have high-quality electronic transport properties that can be described solely by changes in bandstructure rather than the defect-dominated behavior of graphene films doped or functionalized using other methods.
"Since the discovery that a single atomic layer of sp2 bonded carbon atoms, termed graphene, could be isolated from bulk graphite, a plethora of remarkable electronic and spintronic properties have emerged," said Dr. Cory Cress, materials research engineer, NRL. "However, few applications are forthcoming because graphene lacks a bandgap and its doping is difficult to control, rendering graphene devices competitive only for highly-specialized device technologies."
Doping or chemical functionalization may add a usable transport gap. However, these methods tend to produce films that are plagued by unintentional defects, have low stability, or non-uniform coverage of dopants and functional groups, which all greatly limit their usefulness and degrade the intrinsic desirable properties of the graphene film.
As an alternative, NRL scientists leveraged their radiation-effects background to develop a hyperthermal ion implantation system with the necessary precision and control to implant nitrogen (N+) into graphene achieving doping via direct substitution.
"After many months of developing the system, the feasibility of the technique really depended on the first experiment," Cress said. "In our study, we determined the range of hyperthermal ion energies that yielded the highest fraction of nitrogen doping, while minimizing defects, and we were successful in confirming the inherent depth control of the HyTII process."
To achieve the latter, the scientists implemented a bilayer graphene material system comprising a layer of natural graphene, with mostly carbon-12 (12C) atoms, layered on graphene synthesized with greater than 99 percent carbon-13 (13C). This bilayer material provided a means to identify which layer they were modifying when analyzed with Raman spectroscopy.
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The monthly Coppock Indicators finished May

DJIA: 17787  -20 Up NASDAQ:  4946 +04 Down. SP500: 2097 -18 Up.

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