Baltic Dry Index. 1366 Brent Crude 67.08
What is needed
for a sound expansion of production is additional capital goods, not money or
fiduciary media. The credit expansion is built on the sands of banknotes and
deposits. It must collapse.
Ludwig
von Mises.
Does 2018 continue the global central
banksters rigged “everything rally” since 2008-2009, or did they just run out
of road at the end of 2017? Will the bitcoin mania bust in 2018? Will the Great
China Ponzi Scheme bust? In the EUSSR
has the ECB already sowed the seeds of the Great Split? In America, will it be President Trump or
Hillary Clinton getting indicted in 2018? Will Jack Frost freeze the Trumpian
boom?
In short, will tomorrow be like today, which
was like yesterday, at least since the Great Central Bankster Panic of 2008?
We open with Bitcoin perhaps giving a sign.
Bitcoin Starts New Year by Declining, First Time Since 2015
By Matthew Leising
Updated on 2 January 2018, 01:52 GMT
For the first time since 2015, the cryptocurrency began a new year by declining,
extending its slide from a record $19,511 reached on Dec. 18.
The virtual coin traded at $13,624.56 as of 5 p.m. in New York on
Monday, down 4.8 percent from Friday, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
That’s also a fall from the $14,156 it hit Sunday, according to
coinmarketcap.com, which tracks daily prices. The cryptocurrency fluctuated in
early Asian trading on Tuesday.
For the first time since 2015, the cryptocurrency began a new year by
declining, extending its slide from a record $19,511 reached on Dec. 18.
The virtual coin traded at $13,624.56 as of 5 p.m. in New York on
Monday, down 4.8 percent from Friday, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
That’s also a fall from the $14,156 it hit Sunday, according to
coinmarketcap.com, which tracks daily prices. The cryptocurrency fluctuated in
early Asian trading on Tuesday.
January 2, 2018 / 12:31 AM
Asia shares scale decade top on China optimism, dollar in doldrums
SYDNEY
(Reuters) - Asian shares scaled a decade peak on Tuesday after a survey of
Chinese manufacturing proved surprisingly upbeat, while the euro lurked within
striking distance of its 2017 top against an ailing U.S. dollar.
Sentiment was also helped by news that North Korea had offered an olive branch to South Korea, with Kim Jong Un saying he was “open to dialogue” with Seoul.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS jumped 0.9 percent to heights last visited in 2007, having risen by one-third in value last year alone.
Japan's Nikkei .N225 was closed for a holiday. E-Mini futures for the S&P 500 ESc1 edged up 0.1 percent and spread betters predicted a firmer opening on European bourses.
Shanghai blue chips .CSI300 climbed 1.2 percent after the Caixin index of Chinese industry rose to a four-month high of 51.5 in December, confounding forecasts for a decline.
The
reading pointed to resilience in the world’s second-largest economy even as
Beijing cracks down on industrial pollution and engineers a cooling property
market.
----In currency markets, the dollar remained out of favour having hit a three-month low against a basket of its peers .DXY on Friday. That brought its losses for 2017 to 9.8 percent, its worse performance since 2003.
Its pain was the euro's gain, with the single currency enjoying its strongest year against the dollar in 14 years. On Tuesday, the euro was firm at $1.2017 EUR= and just off a three-month top of $1.2028.
Bulls were now eyeing the September peak of $1.2092, a break of which would take the euro to ground last trod in late 2014.
More
The Biggest Threats to China’s Economy in 2018
Bloomberg News
Updated on 2 January 2018, 03:18 GMT
China’s economy begins 2018 facing what
its own leaders call three years of “critical battles.”
Those fights to tackle domestic debt, poverty and pollution pose a hat-trick
of risks to the world’s No. 2 economy even before higher interest rates
and trade war threats from the U.S. are taken into account.While the nation is starting from a position of strength, with full-year growth in 2017 poised for its first acceleration since 2010, the expansion is seen slowing in 2018.
As a result, the government of Xi Jinping is signaling that it’s sanguine about more modest economic performance, if progress on the top risk -- financial fragility -- can be made.
"Significant economic imbalances continue to create downside risk to the outlook for 2018," said Rajiv Biswas, chief Asia-Pacific economist at IHS Markit in Singapore. "Risks to the Chinese economy will remain among the key risks to the global growth outlook in 2018, with the Asia Pacific region particularly vulnerable to the shock waves from a slowdown."
Those waves haven’t materialized, and in fact economic activity is holding up. The official manufacturing purchasing managers index was at 51.6 in December, signaling improving conditions. New export manufacturing orders also climbed to a six month high, according to a sub-index.
The Caixin manufacturing purchasing managers index, which is more representative of smaller firms, also showed strong momentum with a reading of 51.5 in December, beating all estimates.
However, figures "likely are overstating momentum, particularly in construction," according to a report by Freya Beamish, chief Asia economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics Ltd in Newcastle, U.K. "The profit story appears to be deteriorating, as input price rises continue to slow."
Forecasters see expansion slowing to 6.5
percent -- the slowest pace since 1990 -- this year, the following are among
areas they flag as having the potential to trip up economic growth or spur
market turbulence.
More
December 29, 2017
Dilemma for ECB as German inflation hits five-year high
BERLIN (Reuters) - German inflation hit
its highest level in five years in 2017, initial data showed on Friday, sowing
the seeds of more discord among rate setters at the European Central Bank,
where some policymakers want to stop pouring money into the euro zone.
Consumer prices harmonised to make them compatible with inflation data
in other European Union countries rose by 1.6 percent year-on-year in December,
compared to the 1.4 percent forecast by analysts polled by Reuters.
“This is the correction to the inflation course desired by the ECB,”
said Alexander Krueger of Bankhaus Lampe. “And it is sustainable.”
On the month, prices in Europe’s largest economy rose by 0.8 percent
compared to November, faster than the 0.6 percent increase expected by
analysts.
German inflation figures are closely watched because of their influence
on the ECB’s monetary policy.
The central bank earlier this month stuck to its pledge to keep
injecting funds into the euro zone despite opposition from rate setters who
point to increased growth and inflation forecasts for the single currency as reasons
to change course.
German prices rose an average 1.7 percent over the year in harmonised terms, the largest increase since 2012, when inflation hit 2.1 percent.
High food costs made the largest contribution to the headline price increases, data released by the Federal Statistics Office showed, followed by increased rents.
The ECB’s governing council holds a monetary policy meeting on Jan. 25.
The German data will give hawkish members like Dutch central bank governor
Klaas Knot more arguments in favour of unwinding the ECB’s 2.55 trillion euro
(£2.26 trillion) bond-buying programme.
The German economy is firing on all cylinders with both consumption and
exports providing impulses this year, unfazed by political uncertainty created
by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s failure to form a government after an election in
September.
Some economists say the ECB’s low interest rate environment risks
causing the German economy to overheat. The ECB says its policy is tailored for
all 19 member states that use the euro.
More
January 1, 2018 / 11:03 PM
Record-shattering U.S. cold reaches into Florida
(Reuters) - Record-shattering
arctic cold reached as far south as Florida on Monday with freeze warnings in
place from Texas to the Atlantic Coast and the Northeastern United States
facing another cold wave at the end of the week, forecasters said.
Temperatures ranged from 20 to 30 degrees Fahrenheit (11 to 17 degrees
Celsius) below normal across the United States east of the Rocky Mountains,
with only southern Florida untouched by the arctic blast.
“That degree of cold will be with us until tomorrow,” said Brian Hurley,
a National Weather Service meteorologist at College Park, Maryland. “Tuesday
morning, we’re looking at temperatures with very high probability of record
lows.”
Along Alabama’s Gulf Coast, the
temperature in the city of Mobile could hit a low of 16 F (minus 9 C)
overnight. Stiff breezes were expected to create dangerously cold wind chills
across southeastern Georgia and most of northeastern Florida, the weather
service said.
----The mass of frigid air pumped south by a dip in the jet stream sent temperatures plunging across the U.S. heartland. Omaha, Nebraska, posted a low of minus 20 F (minus 29 C), breaking a 130-year-old record, and Aberdeen, South Dakota, shattered a record set in 1919 with a temperature of minus 32 F (minus 36 C).
The cold will be unrelenting across the Middle Atlantic and Northeastern
United States, with up to two dozen low-temperature records expected in those
regions over the next day or two, Hurley said.
Although the cold should ease across most of the United States after
Tuesday, the northeastern quarter of the country will see a repeat of the
frigid temperatures from Thursday to Friday as another arctic blast hits the
area.
The private AccuWeather forecaster said the cold snap could combine with
a storm brewing off the Bahamas to bring snow and high winds to much of the
Eastern Seaboard as it heads north on Wednesday and Thursday.
The only part of the United States spared the deep freeze is the
Southwest, with above-normal temperatures and dry weather expected to linger
there, the weather service said.
There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.
Ludwig
von Mises.
Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.
Today, gold. But is this real news or fake news? Is it the reason Uncle
Scam has never properly audited his gold holdings?
“Why,
sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
Janet Yellen, with apologies to Alice in
Wonderland.
US gold of low purity & that's why audit of reserves will never be allowed - expert tells RT
Published time: 30 Dec, 2017 05:30 Edited time: 30 Dec, 2017
06:57
The United States doesn’t let anyone see its gold reserves. Even if the
Treasury has the number of billions it claims, they are not tradable, warns
Singapore’s BullionStar precious metals expert Ronan Manly.
The US government claims to hold 8133.5 tonnes of physical gold in its
official reserves. Fifty-eight percent is reportedly held in Fort Knox,
Kentucky, 20 percent at West Point in New York State, 16 percent is said to be
at the US Mint in Denver, Colorado and five percent is held at the NY Fed.
“The entire story around the US gold reserves is opaque and secretive. There has never been a full independent audit of the US gold reserves, and the custodians of the gold, the US Mint and the Federal Reserve of New York will not let anybody into the vaults to view the gold or to count it,”Manly told RT.
However, despite the numerous accusations against the US Treasury that it has much less gold than it claims, there is another reason, according to the expert - US gold is of bad quality.
“Even the details that have been provided on the supposed US gold holdings show that a majority of the gold bars are low purity and in weights that don’t conform to the industry standard ‘Good Delivery” gold bar specifications,” says Manly.
“So even if the US has the amount of gold it claims to have, most of this gold would not be acceptable for trading on the international market, and could only be used in swap transactions with other central banks that wished to swap Good Delivery gold bars for low purity and unusual weight US held gold bars,” he added.
If the claims about lower-than-claimed US gold reserves are
true, it would re-shuffle the entire global economy, Manly
predicts. Though it wouldn’t hit the US dollar directly, or result in an
immediate shift away from using the US dollar for international trade, the
consequences will be sizable.
“Firstly, proof of lower US gold reserves than claimed would add
pressure for a full independent audit of all US gold reserves. It would also
put the spotlight on the gold reserves of other major trading blocs such as the
eurozone and China and Russia, and open up a debate as to what is the role of gold
in the international monetary system. Which is something the US government
constantly tries to avoid,” the expert says.
“It would also then refocus attention on international holders of US
dollars pre-August 1971 when Nixon closed the gold window because after all
those outstanding dollars held at the time by foreign central banks are still
technically convertible into gold at the official gold price of the time,” he added.
Moreover, if the US Treasury gold holdings are falsified, it would put
additional pressure on other central banks around the world, which have gold in
the United States.
A proper check of the US gold reserves should include weighing all gold
bars, checking assays, and publishing a full weight list in the public domain;
the audit would have to be conducted by an entirely independent auditor. It
will never be allowed by Washington, Manly says.
“Under
the gold standard, a free banking system stands as the protector of an
economy's stability and balanced growth... The abandonment of the gold standard
made it possible for the welfare statists to use the banking system as a means
to an unlimited expansion of credit... In the absence of the gold standard,
there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation”
Alan
Greenspan
Technology 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?
No update today. Back
tomorrow.
The monthly Coppock Indicators finished December
DJIA: 24,719 +265 Up. NASDAQ: 6,903 +297 Up. SP500: 2,674 +199 Up.
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