The Double Dip?

Baltic Dry Index. 1700 -09

LIR Gold Target by 2019: $3,000.

In central banking as in diplomacy, style, conservative tailoring, and an easy association with the affluent count greatly and results far much less.

J. K. Galbraith

Are we on the cusp of a new recession? From London, it has looked for some time that we probably are. Other than resurgent stock markets, where program trading and manipulation are the only games in town, there’s been almost nothing positive to write about for some time. The BDI has fallen 60% since May 26^th, never a sign of health in global trade. Now the Fed seems to be acknowledging the same thing. Below, The Telegraph covers the surprisingly downbeat Fed.

You will find that the State is the kind of organization which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly, too.

J. K. Galbraith

Fed's volte face sends the dollar tumbling

Rarely before have a few coded words in the minutes of the US Federal Reserve caused such an upheaval in the global currency system, or such a sudden flight from the dollar.

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, International Business Editor

Published: 8:52PM BST 15 Jul 2010

The euro rocketed to a two-month high of $1.29 and sterling jumped two cents to almost $1.54 after the Fed confessed that the US economy may not recover for five or six years. Far from winding down emergency stimulus, the bank may need a fresh blast of bond purchases or quantitative easing.

Usually the dollar serves as a safe haven whenever the world takes fright, and there was plenty of sobering news from China and other quarters on Thursday. Not this time. The US itself has become the problem.

"The worm is turning," said David Bloom, currency chief at HSBC. "We're in a world of rotating sovereign crises. The market seems to become obsessed with one idea at a time, then violently swings towards another. People thought the euro would break-up. Now we're moving into a new phase because we're hearing alarm bells of a US double dip."

Mr Bloom said a deep change is under way in investor psychology as funds and central banks respond to the blizzard of shocking US data and again focus on the fragility of an economy where public debt is surging towards 100pc of GDP, not helped by the malaise enveloping the Obama White House. "The Europeans have aired their dirty debt in public and taken some measures to address it, whilst the US has not," he said.

The Fed minutes warned of "significant downside risks" and a possible slide into deflation, an admission that zero interest rates, $1.75 trillion of QE, and a fiscal deficit above 10pc of GDP have so far failed to lift the economy out of a structural slump.

"The Committee would need to consider whether further policy stimulus might become appropriate if the outlook were to worsen appreciably," it said. The economy might not regain its "longer-run path" until 2016.

"The Fed is throwing in the towel," said Gabriel Stein, of Lombard Street Research. "They are preparing to start QE again. This was predictable because the M3 broad money supply has been contracting for months."

The Fed minutes amount to a policy thunderbolt, evidence of how quickly the recovery has lost steam. Just weeks ago the Fed was mapping out withdrawal of stimulus.

Goldman Sachs said it expects the euro to rise to $1.35 by the end of the year. The yen will appreciate to ¥83, through the pain barrier for most of Japan's big exporters. The new twist is that SAFE, China's $2.4 trillion fund, has begun buying record amounts of Japanese bonds, a shift in reserve allocation away from the dollar.

The signs of a deep and sudden slowdown in the US are becoming ever clearer as the "sugar rush" from the Obama fiscal stimulus wears off and the inventory boost fades. California, Illinois and other states are cutting spending, tightening US fiscal policy by 0.8pc of GDP.

Thursday's plunge in the Philadelphia Fed's July index of new manufacturing orders to –4.3 suggests that the economy may have buckled abruptly, as it did in mid-2008. The Economic Cycle Research Institute's ECRI leading indicator has tumbled, reaching –8.3pc last week. This points to a sharp slowdown or recession within three months.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/currency/7893238/Feds-volte-face-sends-the-dollar-tumbling.html

With the Fed apparently about to restart quantitative easing, aka monetization, the dollar as a long term store of value is compromised. In fact if a double dip recession does hit in the US, the Fed will go out to try to generate deliberate inflation in the economy to prevent deflation turning the double dip recession into the first US depression since the 1930s. This has forced money managers to start the logical process of trying to protect against dollar value destruction. Below the Houston Chronicle covers one attempt at protecting the long term value of funds. My guess is that this is only the start of a multi year process.

"When paper money systems begin to crack at the seams, the run to gold could be explosive."

Harry Browne

Higher education fund buys gold over economic worries

By R.G. RATCLIFFE and JEANNIE KEVER Copyright 2010 Houston Chronicle July 14, 2010, 9:40PM

AUSTIN — Fearing unstable international financial markets and the possibility of high inflation, Texas' higher education investment managers have bought more than $500 million in gold.

The gold purchases represent only 3 percent of the University of Texas Investment Management Co.'s $22.3 billion in investment funds, but it indicates how deeply the fund managers are concerned about the global financial future.

With the state's endowment funds designed to generate a 5.1 percent distribution each year to the University of Texas and Texas A&M University, it is rare for the investment managers to put large sums of money into a commodity whose value usually only grows through inflation.

"Recently, we've added 3 percent, 3 percent of our portfolio, into gold as a protection against inflation, but even more as a lack of confidence in financial markets due to extraordinary government fiscal and monetary stimulus," UTIMCO CEO Bruce Zimmerman told the University of Texas board of regents Wednesday. "I wish I could tell you the future looked rosy. Unfortunately, that's not our view. At best, we believe the future is uncertain."

Other executives suggested the endowments have begun to recover from the staggering losses of 2008 and 2009.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/7108909.html

The article didn’t cover the specifics of how UTIMCO made their gold purchase. I can only hope that they arranged to take allocated physical delivery in a secure international vault, at an institution that’s not hopelessly short paper gold. As the fiat currency system unravels in a world of casino capitalism and unrestrained derivatives gambling, I fully expect to see a Comex default of the gold and silver contracts, and to hear of serious problems at some of the precious metals ETFs and their custodians. I have serious doubts that all of the custodian’s metals really exist, or haven’t been pledged to more than one entity.

We end for the day watching weather events in S.E. Asia, where Vietnam’s rice crop is in danger of failing. As the second largest rice exporter in the world, any failure there will have a big impact on rice prices and through them much of Asia’s quality of life for those who haven’t yet made it up to the comfortable middle class. As is now usual in our dumbed down 21^st century world, a good article on a seriously disturbing problem gets the full global warming treatment by the “Staff Writers.” Below that, Accuweather covers the latest typhoon heading into already saturated China, that didn’t bring much in the way of relief to Vietnam.

Salty water, parched earth: Vietnam's Mekong paddies dry up

by Staff Writers
Que Dien, Vietnam (AFP) July 14, 2010
The rivers that should nourish his thirsty rice paddies are too salty, and the rains are late this year. Dang Roi does not know if he will be able to salvage anything from this spring's crop.

Vietnam is the world's second-biggest rice exporter and the Mekong Delta, where Roi farms, accounts for more than half of its production.

But Roi's paddy fields in Ben Tre province are burning up during a drought which meteorologists say is the worst in decades.

The dry season should have ended already, but in the yard of Roi's house in Que Dien commune, barrels that collect rainwater for his family's cooking and washing show the desperate situation. They are half-full, or empty.

Experts say Vietnam is one of the countries most threatened by climate change, whose effects are seen in worsening drought, floods, typhoons, exaggerated tides, and rising sea levels.

The country is planning for a one-metre (three feet) rise in sea levels by 2100, which would flood about 31,000 square kilometres (12,400 square miles) of land -- an area about the size of Belgium -- unless systems such as dykes are strengthened, said a UN discussion paper released last year.

It said the threat of floods is greatest in the Mekong Delta, where 17 million people live.

-------Over the past 50 years the sea level has already risen by 20 centimetres (eight inches) along Vietnam's coast, according to the increasingly worried communist government.

While delta farmers cope with drought, they are also challenged by sea water intrusion, which experts also link to climate change.

There is little water in the rivers near Roi's fields "and it's salty so we can't pump it" for irrigation, he says.

Recalling easier times on his 1.2 hectares (three acres), Roi says, "The rice fields weren't dying like this."

The Vietnamese government emphasises the role of climate change in disrupting its agricultural environment, but experts do not rule out an effect from dams upstream in China. That impact could be worsened by the opening of more dams further south in Laos and Cambodia, they say.

"The Chinese dams have made the system fragile, but the impact of the downstream dams will be cumulative," said Marc Goichot, of the WWF.

------China has eight planned or existing dams on the Mekong River, but rejects activists' criticism that the hydropower dams contribute to low water levels downstream.

There are proposals for another twelve dams in the lower Mekong countries.

Vo Tong Xuan, a leading Vietnamese rice expert, said the flow of the Mekong River -- whose long journey ends at the delta -- is "extremely reduced" this year.

He is concerned about the impact of Chinese dams, but also blames Vietnam's increasingly intensive methods of rice growing.

As the delta's population has expanded, farmers have gone from planting one to two and sometimes three rice crops

http://www.seeddaily.com/reports/Salty_water_parched_earth_Vietnams_Mekong_paddies_dry_up_999.html

Conson Aims for South China after Hammering Manila

Jul 15, 2010; 6:45 PM ET

Conson, having dealt Manila a drubbing, will now aim for a late-week landfall in south China.

As of Thursday evening, EDT time, the center of Conson was located over the South China Sea about 200 miles southeast of Hainan Dao, China.

Conson is currently a typhoon with 80 mph winds and stronger gusts. It's possible the storm will strengthen slightly over the next 12 hours.

Conson is predicted to make landfall on Hainan Dao by Friday night, local time. A landfall here would bring flooding rain and damaging winds.

The cyclone had weakened into a tropical storm while moving over southern Luzon, the main island of the Philippines. As of Thursday afternoon, the maximum sustained winds were close to 65 mph with gusts to 80 mph.

---- AccuWeather.com meteorologists say that Conson may contribute, at least indirectly, to further rains and ongoing flooding in the Yangtze River basin of central and eastern China. Here, in the provinces of Anhui, Jiangxi and Hunan, rainfall has already been 100 to more than 300 percent of the normal July amount leading to severe flooding.

The flooded area will continue to have locally excessive rain for at least the next week with rainfall next week potentially getting a boost from dissipating Tropical Storm Conson.

http://www.accuweather.com/blogs/news/story/33963/conson_may_unleash_disastrous.asp

"Gold would have value if for no other reason than that it enables a citizen to fashion his financial escape from the state."

William F. Rickenbacker

At the Comex silver depositories Thursday, final figures were: Registered 52.47 Moz, Eligible 59.34 Moz, Total 111.81 Moz.

+++++

Crooks and Scoundrels Corner.

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

The cost of God’s work, $550 million. Barely the price of a top squids annual bonus. Today, it’s the Great Vampire Squid again, paying a mere $550 million to make America’s out of their league SEC go away. The cost of “God’s work?” A puny 14 days worth of profits, and less that the stock price surged on news of the settlement. It didn’t take Ebenezer Squid long with his Abacus to see that at 550 million it was easily the bargain of the new century. Besides, what’s 550 million when it ends all the paranoia among friends? Maybe now the top squids can stop wearing wires and trying to record each other. Below, the Journal covers the Squids giving back what for them amounts to just another cost of business. One tiny unseemly detail that was buried in the minutiae, the great vampire squid seems to have to help the SEC serve up Frenchman Fabrice Tourre’s head on a plate. One other minor detail, the SEC apparently gives up pursuing Goldman Sachs on “other mortgage related CDOs” according to MarketWatch. Bernie Madoff must be wondering where he went wrong. Below the Journal coverage, did someone at Goldie or the SEC game the settlement’s announcement near the close? The Fed’s NY fix-it desk perhaps? They wouldn’t do that, would they?

"I'm doing God's Work."

Lloyd Blankfein. CEO Goldman Sachs. November 8 2009.

JULY 16, 2010

Goldman Settles Its Battle With SEC

$550 Million Deal Ends Showdown That Shook Street

In one of the largest penalties in Wall Street history, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. agreed to pay $550 million to settle civil charges that it duped clients by selling mortgage securities that were secretly designed by a hedge-fund firm to cash in on the housing market's collapse.

But the agreement with the Securities and Exchange Commission ends a showdown that had deeply shaken America's most powerful financial firm at a cost that outside observers deemed a bargain.

Goldman conceded it made "a mistake" by not disclosing the role of Paulson & Co. to investors for a deal dubbed Abacus 2007-AC1. The firm vowed to toughen oversight of mortgage securities, certain marketing materials and employees who create or pitch such securities.

Criminal prosecutors still are looking into whether Goldman or its employees committed securities fraud in connection with its mortgage trading, according to people familiar with the matter. Goldman hasn't commented on the criminal probe.

Yet Goldman walked away with several victories that raise questions about the strength of the SEC's case. The company wasn't forced to sacrifice any top executives, including Chief Executive Lloyd C. Blankfein, as some executives had feared. The changes it agreed to won't weaken its profits or standing as Wall Street's mightiest firm. The record-setting penalty is equivalent to just 14 days of profits at Goldman in the first quarter.

"That is a steal," said Michael Driscoll, a visiting professor at Adelphi University and a senior managing director at firm Bear Stearns Cos. before that firm collapsed in 2007. Analysts had expected Goldman to pay at least $1 billion as part of the deal.

Goldman shares surged late in the day on expectation of a pact, and continued to rally in after-hours trading. The stock was up $6.16, or 4.4% to $145.22 in New York Stock Exchange trading in regular hours, and then another $7.13, or 4.9%, to $152.35 after hours.

The firm's traders, investment bankers and other employees expressed relief that the three-month legal ordeal, which erased nearly $20 billion of the company's stock-market value, was over. Executives believe the $550 million payment is tiny compared with the business Goldman could have lost if the case dragged on. Goldman brass told managers to make sure the reaction inside the firm was subdued, fearing that cheering or other celebration would further taint the firm's reputation.

The settlement must be approved by U.S. District Judge Barbara S. Jones in New York.

The SEC said the Goldman settlement represents the largest penalty it has ever extracted from a Wall Street firm. In 1988, Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc. agreed to pay $650 million in fines and restitution, but about half the total went to satisfy civil claims of investors and clients defrauded by Drexel.

----The SEC said Goldman agreed to cooperate in the investigation of Fabrice Tourre, the Goldman trader accused by the SEC of being "principally responsible" for piecing together the bonds and touting them to investors.

Mr. Tourre faces a Monday deadline to respond to the allegations by the SEC in its April lawsuit or seek an extension. Mr. Tourre, who still works at Goldman but is on paid leave, plans to file a response Monday and continue trying to clear his name, according to a person familiar with the matter.

----The settlement includes a $535 million civil penalty and the handover of $15 million in profits Goldman made on the Abacus deal. Goldman will pay $250 million to investors in the Abacus deal, including $150 million to IKB Deutsche Industriebank AG, a German bank that invested the same amount in a slice of the mortgage securities. The U.S. government gets the remaining $300 million.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704682604575369382547871788.html?mod=WSJEUROPE_hps_LEFTTopWhatNews

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Is the SEC Going to Investigate Insider Trading on Goldman Settlement News?

Goldman’s stock was trading at $140.15 at 3:26 PM today.

It moved more than 4 points in the next ten minutes.

I got wind that the settlement announcement was set for 4:45 PM at around 4:00 PM. I pinged a journalist at a major financial media outlet to find out whether there had been an announcement to the media earlier. His impression was also that the news had hit the wires at 4:00 PM (thus presumably intended for the close of trading).

So….it’s insider trading only if you are an insider…but who let the cat out of the bag at 3:30 PM, and were they an insider? This sort of thing happens all the time, but it’s particularly brazen when it involves and SEC announcement. But how likely is it that the SEC will turn over this rock to see what crawls out from under it?

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/07/is-the-sec-going-to-investigate-insider-trading-on-goldman-settlement-news.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

“I am not a crook.”

Ebenezer Squid. With apologies to Richard Nixon.

Another weekend and the British Open battles the winds, rain and sun of the links of St Andrews. In the Gulf of Mexico, BP finally seems to be close to a permanent solution to its Macondo blowout. The next 36 hours should tell whether the well’s integrity below the blowout preventer is still sound. More at the weekend and hopefully all good news. Have a great weekend everyone.

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

J. K. Galbraith.

Technorati Tags: Federal Reserve,QE,BDI collapse,fiat currency default,gold and silver.,Vietnam drought,rice,Goldman Sachs,great vampire squids,missing sunspots,global cooling

America The Beautiful.

Baltic Dry Index. 2351 -55

LIR Gold Target by 2019: $3,000.

"But the whole history of America is quite different from Europe. People went there to get away from the intolerance and constraints of life in Europe. They sought liberty and opportunity; and their strong sense of purpose has over two centuries, helped create a new unity and pride in being American."

Margaret Thatcher.

The monthly Coppock Indicators finished June:

DJIA: +269 Down. NASDAQ: +460 Down. SP500: +290 Down.

The bull market (or bear market rally) that commenced on Nasdaq on 30/4/09 at 1717 has ended. (30/5/09 SP 500 at 919, 30/5/09 DJIA 8500.) While the indicators can flip flop at market turns, this action is rare on the slow monthly indicators. Given the weakening BDI, and the ECRI leading indicators signaling recession ahead, it is probably safer to assume that the great stock market bounce has ended and that we are entering a new bear market, or alternately, resuming the old one after a bear market rally.

We open this morning saluting America. America the Great, for all its flaws, still the standard all other countries strive to attain, much of the world tries to emigrate to, legally and illegally. In fact Russia’s latest “spy ring,” on the prosecution’s presented case so far, seems to have given up spying to enjoy a decade of the American high life. As Maggie Thatcher pointed out in the quote above, when America stumbles it doesn’t stay down for long. I suspect that banksterism, casino capitalism, and creeping Swedish-French style 1970s socialism, won’t be around for long. I look forward to the next great American rebound later this decade.

America the Beautiful.

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_the_Beautiful

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_Lee_Bates

We open though with yet more sign of the double dip recession arriving. The central banks still can’t admit that the great experiment in fiat currency heresy has ended in failure. For the next few years we will likely live through ever more bizarre attempts at propping up the failed fiat friends of the central banksters. My guess is that the “next Lehman” takes out the existing fiat currency system. Unfortunately it will also probably wipe out all the phony, scammy, bogus systems of owning “paper” gold. Stay long physical precious metals, preferably well away from John Bull and Uncle Sam’s larcenous hands.

Below, news that backs up the 40% retreat in the BDI.

"Communist regimes were not some unfortunate aberration, some historical deviation from a socialist ideal. They were the ultimate expression, unconstrained by democratic and electoral pressures, of what socialism is all about.”

Margaret Thatcher.

Fears mount over slowing global demand

By Alan Beattie and James Politi in Washington, Kevin Brown in Singapore and Geoff Dyer in Beijing

Published: July 1 2010 19:14

Fears grew that the global recovery is faltering on Thursday after a slew of data pointed to weaker global demand led by slower growth in China.

Figures showed manufacturing output slowing across large parts of the world, posing further challenges to leading economies as they attempt to shore up shaky fiscal positions without falling back into recession.

In Asia – the world’s production powerhouse whose economies are still largely dependent on export demand – manufacturing activity indices for China, South Korea, Taiwan, India and Australia all showed weaker activity for June.

The overall level of factory activity still suggested production was expanding but at a more moderate rate than in recent months.

-----Figures for the US also suggested the economy was losing impetus in spite of being well short of its productive capacity and receiving unprecedented support from monetary and fiscal policy. The Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing index fell from 59.7 in May to 56.2 in June, a much larger drop than most economists had predicted.

-----Unemployment in the US appears stuck at just below 10 per cent, and hopes that it might start falling received a setback yesterday as new claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly rose. David Semmens, US economist at Standard Chartered Bank, said the jobless claims figures were “a timely reminder that firings in the US remain elevated and appetite from employers for hirings remains anemic”.

In the eurozone, an update to the manufacturers’ purchasing managers’ index showed its ninth month of expansion, but at a moderate rate that is not using up the spare productive capacity.

-----Nick Beecroft, FX Consultant at Saxo Bank, said: “This looks like the day that fears of a double-dip recession in the US, with all its attendant unpleasant consequences for the US budget deficit, finally trumped eurozone bank and debt concerns.”

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/fa81dd7c-8536-11df-9c2f-00144feabdc0.html

Spectre of an economic relapse stalks markets as China wobbles

Fears of an economic relapse across the world have begun to stalk markets again after pending homes sales in the US crashed by a third and a slew of weak data from China and Japan sent bourses tumbling across Asia.

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Published: 9:23PM BST 01 Jul 2010

The credit system is once again flashing warnings of extreme fragility, with the yield on 10-year US Treasuries plummeting back to crisis-levels of 2.89pc. Japan's 10-year bond dropped to 1.06pc, the lowest since the country's deflation battle seven years ago. Tokyo's Nikkei stock index tumbled to the lowest level since 2005 as safe-haven flight into the yen surged to levels that leave many Japanese exporters underwater.

"Double-dip is back in the lexicon," said David Bloom, currency chief at HSBC. "Everybody hoped that China's huge fiscal package would keep global growth going long enough for the West to recover, but it does not look like that is happening.

"China is now slowing but the US housing market is falling off a cliff. It's cataclysmic. In Japan the data is turning nasty, and fiscal tightening is just starting in Europe and the UK, so everybody is asking where the growth is going to come from," he said.

Goldman Sachs said its gauge of Global Leading Indicators had peaked. "Signs `under the hood' have pointed to some slowing momentum. Industrial growth is set to decelerate," said the bank.

The US National Association of Realtors said the numbers of home buyers signing contracts dropped 30pc in May from a month ealier, confirming fears that the expiry of subidies would lead to a cliff-edge fall in sales. "Tax credits merely cannibalised sales for the coming months, and did not succeed in jump-starting a lasting recovery of the housing market," said Teunis Brosens from ING.

The US property market is haunted by worries that a cluster of "option ARM" mortgages will reset upwards over the coming months, leading to a fresh wave of defaults.

-----The new twist for investors is the sudden slowdown in China. The HSBC/Markit index of Chinese manufacturing has fallen from a high of 57.4 in January to 50.4 in June, the result of monetary tightening and curbs to cool the red-hot property market.

Wensheng Peng from Barclays Capital said the risk of double-dip is small. "We are seeing a policy-led soft landing, a slowdown that is desired and targeted by the government," he said.

However, analysts are deeply divided on China. A report by the European Chamber in China said there was pervasive over-capacity in steel, cement, chemicals, refining, and energy equipment.

"The Chinese government's massive stimulus package is being pumped into building new plants and adding uneccesary capacity. The problem is getting worse in many industries," it said, claiming that usage rates were as low as 35pc in some sectors.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/7866896/Spectre-of-an-economic-relapse-stalks-markets-as-China-wobbles.html

We end for the day with good news, well good news if you’re an Australian miner or a shareholder in one. Good news too for future mining investment in Australia, which is good news for the rest of us whose 21^st century lifestyle relies on access to, and replacement of many of the minerals and metals Australia supplies. Good news too for the London Stock Exchange and the FTSE Index, where many Australian miners are jointly listed. Generally speaking, taxation is bad, merely encouraging feckless populist politicians to fritter the taxes away in bribing the voters to secure their re-election. Any time tax levying politicians anywhere lose big, having their head handed back to them on a platter, even if the fight was lead by some of the biggest mining companies on the planet, it’s a small victory for nearly everyone else on the planet.

“The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.”

Vladimir Ilyic Lenin.

Australian PM Gillard strikes a tax deal with the mining giants

Julia Gillard, the Australian prime minister, reached an agreement early on Friday with mining companies on a new tax, striking a compromise to end a simmering dispute that cost her predecessor his job.

By James Hall Published: 12:00AM BST 02 Jul 2010

In order to secure the deal and reach agreement with mining companies, the government has agreed to slash the mining tax rate and cut the types of resources affected. The new resource tax offers concessions to mining companies by taxing iron
ore and coal at a rate of 30pc. The government has also agreed to extend the existing so-called petroleum resource rent tax to coal-seam gas projects which would be taxed at 40pc.

BHP Billiton, one of the biggest companies in the FTSE, said it was encouraged by the deal and described the tax rate as competitive. Shares of all London-listed miners could rise this on the news.

The agreement on the new minerals resources rent tax is due to apply from July 1 2012. It would reduce the government's forward estimate for revenue by A$1.5bn (£836m).

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/industry/mining/7867111/Australian-PM-Gillard-strikes-a-tax-deal-with-the-mining-giants.html

"Socialism's results have ranged between the merely shabby and the truly catastrophic - poverty, strife, oppression and, on the killing fields of communism, the deaths this century of perhaps 100 million people. Against that doctrine was set a contrary, conservative belief in a law-governed liberty. It was this view which triumphed with the crumbling of the Berlin Wall. Since then, the Left has sought rehabilitation by distancing itself from its past."

Margaret Thatcher.

At the Comex silver depositories Thursday, final figures were: Registered 49.86 Moz, Eligible 64.15 Moz, Total 114.01 Moz.

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Crooks and Scoundrels Corner.

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

We end for America’s national Independence Day holiday long weekend with the great vampire squids fighting among themselves to the last US taxpayer. Was Ebenezer Squid doing “God’s work” in trying to take out AIG Financial Products division London, home of some of the dumbest risk takers on the planet, or were they taking advantage of AIG’s FP “mastermind” one Joe Cassano, and playing his team of derivatives lunatics for the clueless suckers they proved to be, as they wrote unlimited CDS without making any provision for loss. God must have liked what he saw at the Great Vampire Squid, because it survived thanks to the US taxpayer paying off all the duff AIG CDS at par. How lucky can a great vampire squid get, or what? Who needs a dog in Washington, when you have friends at the Fed and US Treasury?

“If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog”

President Harry S. Truman.

JULY 1, 2010

We Were 'Prudent': AIG Man at Center Of Crisis

Joseph Cassano, who led the division of American International Group Inc. responsible for the mortgage trades that proved the insurer's downfall, on Wednesday staunchly defended his actions, maintaining he made "prudent" decisions and that American taxpayers would have been better off had he stayed on.

In one of the most defiant statements by any Wall Street executive in the thick of the financial crisis, Mr. Cassano told a Congressional panel that he didn't misjudge the risks of subprime mortgage deals his unit entered into when he was its CEO, from 2002 until early 2008.

AIG's problems, he said, were brought on by a liquidity crisis when credit markets seized up— and weren't a result of lax underwriting practices or defaults among mortgage assets his unit had insured. When market values of those assets plunged, the firm was deluged by demands for cash collateral from banks that had bought the insurance from his unit, AIG Financial Products.

"I think I would have negotiated a much better deal for the taxpayer than what the taxpayer got" when the government and AIG in late 2008 paid tens of billions of dollars to banks to cancel the insurance-like contracts AIG wrote on mortgage securities, said Mr. Cassano, speaking publicly for the first time since the giant insurer's near-collapse in the fall of 2008.

Government officials have previously said that billions in payouts to banks were necessary to prevent AIG from filing for bankruptcy. On Wednesday, the Treasury dismissed Mr. Cassano's suggestion that he would have handled the situation better.

"Two years after the financial conflagration began, every amateur firefighter has a theory about how it might have been done differently, but ideas from those who lit the kindling aren't particularly disinterested or useful," a spokesman said.

The near-failure of AIG in 2008 sent shock waves through the global financial system and led to a bailout of up to $182.3 billion by the U.S. government that's nowhere close to being repaid. Because some of the funds were used to settle AIG's contracts with trading partners such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the bailout led to accusations that public money was used to rescue investment banks betting on the U.S. housing market.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703426004575338640175139822.html?mod=WSJ_hps_LEFTTopStories

AIG and Goldman trade blame for crisis

By Justin Baer in Washington Published: July 1 2010 16:03

Goldman Sachs executives responded to allegations that the bank was overly aggressive in seeking collateral from AIG, which was hurtling toward its $180bn government bail-out, noting the insurer had refused to share its valutaions of the debt securities at the heart of the companies’ dispute.

Goldman’s relationship with AIG and its alleged role in the insurer’s spectacular collapse has emerged as a flashpoint for regulators and politicians searching for the causes and the villains of the financial crisis.

In testimony before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, Goldman executives disputed that the bank had consistently marked debt securities insured by AIG at artificially low levels and pressed its counterparty for billions of dollars in collateral.

“AIG continued to dispute our marks, but for almost six months, AIG refused to provide Goldman Sachs with its marks on these same positions,” David Lehman, co-head of Goldman’s structured-products group trading desk, said during testimony before the commission.

Mr Lehman reiterated that Goldman had based its marks on similar transactions in the market. And while AIG had consistently argued that the marks were too low, the insurer was never willing to buy back Goldman’s positions at those lower prices.

“We offered, at various times, to transact with AIG, or other interested market participants that AIG was aware of, at prices consistent with those that we were using to calculate the collateral amounts,” Mr Lehman said. “AIG never took us up on this offer.”

At Thursday’s hearing, AIG’s Andrew Forster dismissed Goldman’s offer as unrealistic given the frozen state of the debt markets at the time.

“Their offer was kind,” Mr Forster quipped, “but not one we were ever going to take up.”

Mr Forster also said AIG had lacked an internal pricing system for much of 2007, and could not provide its own accurate marks until December of that year.

The allegations against Goldman resurfaced during Wednesday’s FCIC hearing, when Joseph Cassano, the former AIG executive who ran the financial-products division that housed its credit default swap portfolio, said his team was stunned by the bank’s collateral calls.

In internal e-mails and in interviews with the commission, AIG executives said they suspected Goldman was intentionally mismarking assets to profit from counterparties’ losses.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/acef9966-8520-11df-9c2f-00144feabdc0.html

"The world urgently needs to create a diversified currency and financial system and fair and just financial order that is not dependent on the United States."

Shi Jianxun. China People’s Daily. September 16, 2008

Another summer weekend, and America takes Monday off to celebrate gaining freedom from the UK’s Hanoverian tyrant, “Mad King George III.” Thankfully it all worked out for the best. Napoleon would have been unlikely to have sold the Louisiana territory to a British North America, similarly Tsarist Russia unlikely to have sold Alaska to it’s great rival in central Asia’s “Great Game.” A class run British North America would have been an unlikely great refuge for Europe’s huddled masses yearning to breathe free. A class run British North American monarchy from Hudson’s Bay to the Gulf of Mexico to San Francisco Bay, would be an unlikely brotherhood from sea to shining sea. Have a great weekend everyone, whether celebrating US Independence day or not. More on the weekend blog.

The New Colossus.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Emma Lazarus, 1883

http://www.libertystatepark.com/emma.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Lazarus

Technorati Tags: America the Great,double dip recession,BDI retreat,Australian mining tax climbdown,AIG v Goldman,missing sunspots,global cooling,gold and silver,mining stocks,HREs,REEs,Europe's huddled masses.

The Death Spiral? Wall Street Ethics.

Baltic Dry Index. 3288 -135

LIR Gold Target by 2019: $3,000.

“Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value -zero.”

Voltaire.

Another weekend past and another EU country cutting back and raising taxes. This time it’s Club Med leader France, where austerity means raising the retirement age from 60. Those poor hard working Germans will just have to work until 90, to pay for the remaining Gallic way of life. By my rough count, all of the major EU powerful economies except Italy, have now announced or are implementing serious cutbacks and tax increases austerity programs. The tiddlers like Austria, Ireland, Portugal and Greece are all on the bandwagon too. Is Europe about to take a ride on the Keynesian death spiral?

“I have tried to lift France out of the mud. But she will return to her errors and vomitings. I cannot prevent the French from being French.”

Charles de Gaulle

JUNE 14, 2010

France Targets Deficit, Retirement Age

PARIS—France said it would cut public spending by €45 billion ($54.48 billion) over the next three years and raise its retirement age, following other European nations that have announced austerity measures.

Saturday's announcement came ahead of a week in which President Nicolas Sarkozy is scheduled to have talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin, and the French government is expected to announce details of a rise in France's current standard retirement age. Prime Minister François Fillon said the cuts were aimed at bringing France's public deficit back down to the European Union's limit of 3%.

"We've made a commitment to bring down our deficit [to 3% from 8%] by 2013 and we will concentrate all of our efforts on it," Mr, Fillon told a gathering of members of his and Mr. Sarkozy's center-right UMP party. "It would be cowardly of us to tell the French people that their pensions could be maintained without lengthening their working lives and without altering the symbolic retirement age of 60."

Paris has lagged behind its neighbors in imposing cuts, as other major European economies have rushed to reduce their budget deficits after Greece's debt crisis. In particular, Germany's willingness to make public-spending cuts has pressured France to take similar measures.

In all, Mr. Fillon said the French government would reduce its public deficit by €100 billion. In addition to the €45 billion in spending cuts, another €5 billion would come from closing tax loopholes; €35 billion from increased tax revenue as the economy recovers; and €15 billion from stopping temporary extra spending designed to boost the economy.

The government based its tax-revenue estimate on an expectation the economy will grow 1.4% this year. The Bank of France last week forecast growth of 0.5% in the second quarter, following an expansion of 0.1% in the first.

An announcement on raising the standard retirement age—likely to either 62 or 63 from 60—is expected Wednesday.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704067504575304800122192006.html?mod=WSJEUROPE_hps_SECONDTopStories

Elsewhere in Europe, Belgium takes a giant leap forward towards finally splitting itself into two countries. Brussels, the bureaucratic parasite of the great United States of Europe serfdom project, joins the Netherlands, Britain, Germany and Spain, with weak coalition or minority government. Euros anyone? Stay long precious metals. A country of “Europe” simply doesn’t exist except in the minds of elitist Lord of the Universe “one worlder” Bilderbergers. One has only to look at all the European national teams playing in the World Cup in South Africa, the equivalent would be the USA represented by half a dozen of its top State teams. Below, the Times covers Caesar Rompuy’s faux Ruritania. Ruritania with all of the vices but none of the virtues.

“Belgium is a country invented by the British to annoy the French.”

Charles de Gaulle

June 14, 2010

Poll brings Flemish separatists closer to their goal

A separatist party was on course to win the most votes in Flanders last night for the first time in a Belgian general election, increasing the prospect that the country will split into the Flemish north and French-speaking south.

The New Flemish Alliance, led by Bart de Wever, 39, was heading for about 29 per cent of the votes in Flanders on a promise to break away from Wallonia and become an independent member of the European Union.

Mr de Wever’s success comes four days after Geert Wilders’s anti-Islamic Freedom Party claimed third place in next-door Netherlands on 15 per cent of the national vote as the economic crisis fuels nationalist fervour.

Both countries will now be plunged into weeks of difficult negotiations to form a workable government coalition from a fragmented patchwork of parties, with potentially disastrous implications for their economies.

The process is even more complex in Belgium, where there are no national parties, with the combined Wallonian and Flemish Socialists likely to be the biggest group. Mr de Wever has said that he would be content to see the Socialist Elio di Rupo become the first French-speaking Prime Minister since 1974, provided that the new government devolved more power to the regions. The Socialists are strongly against the break-up of Belgium.

Claiming victory last night, Mr de Wever told cheering supporters: “The N-VA has won the election. We stand before you with a party that has some 30 per cent (of the Flemish vote).”

Pierre Verjans, a University of Liège political scientist, said that he felt “a sense of mourning going on”. He added: “French-speakers now fear a Belgium without Dutch-speakers.”

-----Many Flemish voters are also increasingly frustrated at having to subsidise social security bills in the poorer, French-speaking south, where the collapse of traditional industry has led to much higher unemployment than in the north. The unhappy marriage of the parsimonious Germanic north and spendthrift Latin south is often cited as a microcosm for the centrifugal forces undermining the EU’s own response to the financial crisis.

Another nail was driven into the coffin of the political system when the last Government fell after failing to redraw Flemish and French-speaking electoral boundaries — an arcane row compared to the urgent need to address the burgeoning national debt.

Belgium was created in 1830 and is made up of 6.5 million Dutch speakers and 4 million French speakers

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article7149542.ece

As the IMF arrive in red hot summer Athens today, where rumour has it, government tax revenues are already down from earlier estimates, Europe’s banks are mired in ever deepening trouble. Below, Bloomberg covers the growing summer crisis. Still, in football mad Europe and most of the world, the crisis will probably be delayed until after the end of the World Cup down in wintry South Africa.

“One does not arrest Voltaire.”

Charles De Gaulle

Europe’s Banks Face Second Funding Squeeze on Sovereign Crisis

June 14 (Bloomberg) -- European banks at risk of writedowns from the sovereign debt crisis face a funding squeeze that may depress earnings, curb lending and imperil economic recovery in the region.

Investors are shunning bank securities on concern Greek, Portuguese and Spanish bonds held by the lenders will plunge in value. Bank bond sales slowed in May to the lowest since Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s failure in 2008 as the extra yield buyers demand to hold the securities over government debt soared to the highest this year. Firms are wary of lending to each other, depositing record funds with the European Central Bank.

“There is a lot of mistrust,” said Christoph Rieger, co- head of fixed-income strategy at Commerzbank AG in Frankfurt. “Banks are trading with the ECB rather than with each other.”

The central bank is preventing a crisis by providing banks with unprecedented funding. In substituting long-term money with shorter-maturity ECB cash, policymakers are making it harder to wean banks off life support as well as the short-term financing that regulators blame for the credit crisis.

The cost of insuring bank debt from default rose close to a record last week. The Markit iTraxx Financial Index of swaps on 25 European banks and insurers climbed to 208 basis points on June 8, approaching the all-time high of 210 basis points set in March 2009, JPMorgan Chase & Co. prices show.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601095&sid=aHl8DzEheXq8

We end on dodgy Europe today, with problems rapidly escalating for austerity ridden Ireland. In “ABF” Ireland, anyone but France to win the World Cup in South Africa, the private sector continues choking on last decades commercial real estate excess. Below, the Guardian covers yet another company liming towards NADA? Ireland’s bad bank for new reality struck fallen wheeler-dealers. When is a trophy not a trophy but a millstone?

“Vanity of vanities, all is vanity”

Ecclesiastes. 1.2.

Hotels group Maybourne seeks to raise £610m to refinance debt

• Luxury hotels company needs to secure loans by Christmas
• Claridge's, Connaught and The Berkeley owner in talks with Deutsche Bank

Elena Moya guardian.co.uk, Sunday 13 June 2010 17.29 BST

The company that owns the five-star Claridge's, Connaught and Berkeley hotels in London needs to refinance more than £600m of loans before the end of the year to avoid falling into the hands of its banking creditors.

The three hotels, which each trace their history back more than 100 years and whose guests have included royalty, Hollywood stars and celebrities – from Queen Victoria to Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn to Madonna – could be up for sale.

The Maybourne hotel group, partly owned by Irish property tycoon Derek Quinlan, needs to refinance £610m of loans by Christmas. In the latest accounts posted at Companies House by parent company Coroin, the business had debts of £672m due after one year. The debt level compares with total assets, minus liabilities due within one year, of £679m, which could put the company at the mercy of its two banking creditors, the Bank of Ireland and Anglo Irish Bank.

The company is in talks with Deutsche Bank about a refinancing, the Guardian has learned. The talks, which would suggest the exit of the two Irish banks after the deal, "are proceeding steadily", the company said. It added that lending institutions are showing "sufficient interest" to refinance its debt.

The company said the loans have not been transferred to the National Asset Management Agency, Ireland's "bad bank". The agency buys troubled loans from Irish banks at a discount to clean their balance sheets and help reignite lending.

The refinancing talks could also involve Barclays Bank, already a banker to Maybourne, and are now focused on how much equity shareholders might inject, as that could determine whether creditors force the company into a sale of assets.

Real estate investors said the properties are openly for sale, at the right price, although Maybourne said it has no plans to sell. The three properties could attract US, Middle Eastern or Asian multimillionaires seeking trophy assets and a place to impress potential clients or investors.

-----Maybourne's majority shareholders, including Quinlan and Paddy McKillen, another property developer, "are prepared to inject additional equity if required", the company said. Other investors include Moya Doherty and John McColgan, the entrepreneurs behind Riverdance.

-----Maybourne is one of many highly leveraged property companies built during the years of cheap and ample debt. The company bought its hotels, which also included the Savoy in London, for £750m in 2004, valuing each room at about £1m. The Savoy was later sold for £230m. Hundreds of companies which followed a similar strategy now have a combined £55bn of property debt up for refinancing this year in Britain. Another £50bn are in breach of their financial covenants, three times more than in 2008, according to the British Property Federation. The breaches come as commercial property values plunged by about 45% since the peak of the market in June 2007, the federation said.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jun/13/maybourne-hotels-refinance-debt

We end for today with BP, again, and one of the many knee jerk political solutions that may prove worse than the disease. Welcome to the modern world of corrupt media driven, bankrupt political “democracy.” Can a Salem witch trial for BP and other oil service companies be very far away. Intelligent debate, rule of law, and scientific thought is out, mob rule whipped up by desperate power grabbing politicians, and great vampire squids seeking shorts is in. Nothing good for prosperity and mankind lies this way. If this sort of society worked, Africa would be the prosperity and lifestyle poster child for the world. We are entering upon a new “Dark Ages” if this is to be the west’s future. Stay long precious metals. Below the NY Times preaches sanity to the deaf. Don’t confuse me with the facts, my mind’s made up. Don’t just sit there, do something, and get your piece of the great BP giveaway. Below that, Bloomberg on the reality of BP on the energy sector.

A Sand Trap in the Gulf

By ROBERT YOUNG Published: June 11, 2010

OF the many cleanup solutions being pursued in the Gulf of Mexico, few are as ambitious as Louisiana’s berm project. The Army Corps of Engineers recently authorized the state to construct some 45 miles of artificial berms in an effort to protect Mississippi River Delta wetlands and barrier islands from the oil gushing from the Deepwater Horizon leak, with BP promising to pay the state $360 million for the entire project. Many more miles may be authorized in the coming weeks.

The state understandably wants to move quickly and on a large scale, and no one wants to stop a project like this simply because it is spending too much of BP’s money. The problem, however, is that the berms won’t work as promised, and their construction will monopolize resources that could be used more effectively elsewhere.

The berms, essentially a series of long, low-lying islands made of dredged sand, seem like a good idea for blocking an oil slick. But as any engineer will tell you, the difficulties are often in the details. Although federal and state agencies were given only a short time to respond to the application, their comments, included in the permit documentation, raise serious concerns about the proposal and its potential effects.

The Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of the Interior, for instance, question whether an effort that will take at least six months to build will appreciably diminish the amount of oil entering the delta wetlands.

Moreover, both agencies note that the berms are not designed to block the tidal flow of water completely, which would be deadly to the wetlands they are meant to protect. But that makes it unclear how much oil the berms would actually prevent from passing into the marshes and estuaries, even when the project is completed.

Then there is the question of the berms’ longevity. The ebb and flow of coastal waters is extremely powerful; even without a storm, the berms will begin to erode immediately. Vast portions are likely to be already gone before the rest of the project is finished.

Of course, summer in the gulf is hurricane season, and at six feet above sea level at high tide, the berms will not have the elevation or sand volume to withstand storm waves or surges. If just one of this year’s storms passes near them, they will be wiped out.

Then there are the environmental risks. A completed berm could potentially increase the impact of storm surges on the coastal lowlands, and instead of blocking oil it could merely redirect the natural tidal flow — and with it thousands of gallons of oil — to even more environmentally important areas. Likewise, by impeding the outflow of water, it could prevent the natural flushing of some oil.

If we knew for certain that the berms would keep significant amounts of oil away from fragile wetlands, then such risks might be worth it. But the proposal was so hastily written that no one has estimated its chances of success, or worked out the possibility of adverse consequences. There’s not even a clear, scientific rationale for the efficacy of the design. Instead, it simply presents the project’s logic as self-evident.

Now that this berms have been given permits, the Louisiana governor’s office and the Corps of Engineers should, at the very least, engage scientists and engineers to monitor the first berm to see how it performs and examine any unintended impacts. If it does in fact take several months to build the other berms, there will be plenty of opportunities to change the design if needed or abandon the effort if it is failing.

We should also remember that while there is no magic bullet for the spill, that doesn’t mean we should just try everything and see what sticks. It would be more prudent to continue fighting with methods like modified booms (as is being suggested for Alabama’s Perdido Pass) and collection until effective long-term solutions can be fully vetted by engineers and scientists specializing in coastal environments.

The BP spill will be with us not for weeks or months, but for years. If we want to do our best to stop the oil from hurting critical habitats, then it’s worth taking a little time to get it right.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/opinion/14Young.html

BP Crisis Wipes $19 Billion From Energy Bonds: Credit Markets

June 14 (Bloomberg) -- The biggest oil spill in U.S. history has wiped about $19 billion off the value of energy company bonds as investors bet increasing regulation will curb revenue and profits.

Debt sold by energy companies has lost almost 4 percent from this year’s peak on April 27 amid mounting costs from the April 20 Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s Global Corporates Energy index. The market value of the index, which contains 805 securities of companies from London-based BP Plc to Anadarko Petroleum Corp. of The Woodlands, Texas, ended June 11 at $510.8 billion.

“There are fears in the market of much tighter regulation and concern they’ll have to re-price the risk of fines and cleanup costs,” said Christian Weber, a Munich, Germany-based strategist at UniCredit SpA. “The entire sector is under a lot of pressure.”

The drop in debt prices has pushed yields to the highest since July relative to government bonds, the Bank of America Merrill Lynch index shows. That means the 50 biggest energy company borrowers may have to pay an extra $763 million in annual interest to refinance $80.3 billion of bonds coming due through 2012, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Interest costs are “going to hurt the company directly, because that feeds right into the bottom line,” said James Barnes, a money manager at Wyomissing, Pennsylvania-based National Penn Investors Trust Co., where he helps oversee $1 billion in fixed-income assets. “We don’t look at today’s market as a buying opportunity.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=awnn0jsk6F.c&pos=4

“I have heard your views. They do not harmonize with mine. The decision is taken unanimously.”

Charles de Gaulle

At the Comex silver depositories Friday, final figures were: Registered 52.34 Moz, Eligible 65.59 Moz, Total 117.93 Moz.

+++++

Crooks and Scoundrels Corner.

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

This morning, it’s back to Wall Street’s finest vampire squids again, busy doing “God’s work” by upholding the very best ethics of the Madoff era. Up first, this time out, someone came up with a Belgian Royal family alleged connection, if you overlook that the royal family in question isn’t THE Belgian Royal family, which sports “THE King of the Belgians,” among its number, but the “royal” family of Chimay, a sort of Belgian county specializing in Trappist beer, nestled close to the French border, on the traditional German invasion route that ends in Paris. Below that, Goldman’s ethics apply until they don’t. Rather the reverse of “deficits don’t matter,” until they do.

Judge: Do you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

Goldman: To a point.

Judge: What point is that?

Goldman: To the point that I am no longer telling the truth

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/seeking-clarity-goldmans-ethics-waiver

New York Money Manager Chimay Charged With Larceny, Forgery

By Karen Freifeld and Joshua Gallu

June 12 (Bloomberg) -- New York money manager Guy Albert de Chimay was indicted in New York on grand larceny and forgery charges, according to the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.

Chimay, 47, chairman and chief investment officer of Chimay Capital Management Inc., was arrested yesterday in Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, on a New York state warrant, said Adam Kaufmann, chief of the investigation division of the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued Chimay yesterday, accusing him and his firm of fraud for touting investments he claimed were tied to the Chimay royal family of Belgium, and then stealing millions of dollars to pay his divorce lawyers and the mortgage on his house in the Hamptons on Long Island east of New York City.

“He lied to investors, took their money and used it to support his lifestyle,” Kaufmann said in a phone interview.

The SEC obtained an emergency court order to freeze the assets of Chimay and his firm.

Chimay Capital claimed to be the U.S. investment arm of the royal family based in the Chimay region of Belgium and dating to the 14th century, according to the SEC.

“Chimay used the trappings of royalty to perpetrate the most common of frauds,” said George Canellos, director of the SEC’s New York regional office. “Chimay blatantly lied to investors about non-existent investments and then used their money to bankroll his exorbitant personal and business debts.”

Bridge Loan

Chimay solicited money from October 2008 to September 2009 for a bridge facility that he said would make lucrative short- term loans to firms with ties to the Belgian royal family, the SEC said in its complaint. There is no evidence that any loans were made and some funds were used to pay off disgruntled investors in Chimay’s other business ventures, the agency said.

In December, Chimay sought a multimillion dollar loan, falsely claiming he had $14 million in liquid assets in a Bermuda bank account to serve as collateral, the SEC said. In reality, the account was empty, the agency said.

Phone numbers listed for Chimay and Chimay Capital weren’t in service yesterday. He and the firm, which are facing at least three investor lawsuits, have no known defense counsel, the SEC said.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aj4evMXRSb2E

Seeking Clarity On Goldman's Ethics Waiver

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/12/2010 23:44 -0500

Now that Goldman is a household name, courtesy of a variety of litigation overtures, both in the civil and criminal arena, demonstrated by Goldman's popularity among the broader population, the firm has been kind enough to publicize its "Code of Business Conduct and Ethics" in an attempt to placate the concerned populace, and demonstrate that Goldman has a whopping 4 pages dedicated to promoting legal behavior amongst its nearly 30,000 employees. What confuses us is the placement at the very end of this document of the following section, Waivers of This Code, in which one reads: "From time to time, the firm may waive certain provisions of this Code." In other words, Goldman's activities comply fully with legality until such time that Goldman decides it is in the name of the greater good to "waive" this compliance. We are confused that in light of this glaring loophole, not one question has been asked of Mr. Blankfein as to what specific circumstances have necessitated the invocation of the "ethics waiver", by either executive and non-executive employees: something which none other than former Goldman CEO Hank Paulson recently used in order to pursue the full taxpayer-funded rescue of precisely this firm. Which is why, in the absence of others doing so, we have decided to ask this question directly of Goldman head of PR Lucas van Praag.

To wit:

Dear Lucas, in going through the Goldman Sachs code of business conduct and ethics, we have noted Section III "Waivers of this Code" where it states:
From time to time, the firm may waive certain provisions of this Code. Any employee or director who believes that a waiver may be called for should discuss the matter with an Appropriate Ethics Contact. Waivers for executive officers (including Senior Financial Officers) or directors of the firm may be made only by the Board of Directors or a committee of the Board.
Could you please advise when the most recent invocation of an ethics waiver occurred for GS executive officers (and whether this was in fact approved by the BOD), and also whether there have been any ethics waivers for any non-executive employees of Goldman over the past five years either in connection with currently ongoing civil and criminal litigation involving Goldman's Structured Products Division, or any other Goldman group, including, but not limited to: Fixed Income Currency and Commodities, Sales and Trading, Quantitative Strategies, Quantitative Resource Group, Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Goldman Global Alpha, Correlation Trading, Investment Banking, and Primary Dealers, and the specific details thereto.
Your prompt response is much appreciated.
The Zero Hedge team.

We are confident that since Goldman has nothing to hide in this or any other matter, a prompt response is indeed forthcoming.

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/seeking-clarity-goldmans-ethics-waiver

“I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.”

Charles de Gaulle

The monthly Coppock Indicators finished May:

DJIA: +276 UP. NASDAQ: +499 UP. SP500: +304 UP. The great Bull market goes on with the all three continuing higher in positive numbers, but is now under serious pressure.

Help the LIR fight Banksterism, the EU, and for sound money.

If you can, help the LIR stay around and make a difference. Please make a donation at the PayPal link on the website or better still become a sponsor for what looks like an exciting 2010. Capitalism not banksterism. Many thanks to all who have helped.

+++++

Sunspots – A 22 year colder world? (From 2004?)

Spotless Days June 13
Current Stretch:0 days

2010 total: 33 days (20%)
2009 total: 260 days (71%)
Since 2004: 802 days
Typical Solar Min: 485 days

http://www.spaceweather.com

Technorati Tags: French austerity plan,Belgium split,EU banks,Greece meets the IMF,BP's useless berms,Goldman's optional ethic's,Charles de Gaulle,missing sunspots,global cooling,mining stocks,REEs,HREs

Squids Go Criminal

Baltic Dry Index. 3329 +126 (April 28.)

LIR Gold Target by 2019: $3,000.

A permanent Governor of the Bank of England would be one of the greatest men in England. He would be a little `monarch` in the City; he would be far greater than the `Lord Mayor.` He would be the personal embodiment of the Bank of England; he would be constantly clothed with an almost indefinite prestige. Everybody in business would bow down before him and try to stand well with him, for he might in a panic be able to save almost anyone he liked, and to ruin almost anyone he liked. A day might come when his favour might mean prosperity, and his distrust might mean ruin.

Walter Bagehot. Lombard Street. 1873.

We open this morning for our May Day holiday weekend, with news that the great vampire squid is now under criminal investigation in America. News sure to increase Goldie’s problems in Europe, once Caesar Rompuy and the myriad of bureaucrats return to work sometime around mid May. Paranoia moves up several notches at the home of the squids. Who’s wired, who’s cooperating, and which phones are safe to use? Did everyone declare all on their taxes? For the clients of course, it’s a double edged sword. While the prospect of Goldman wrongdoing creates the chance that Goldie’s clients might get some of their embarrassing billion dollar losses back, a criminal investigation might mean some or all of them are on tape.

The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards.

Walter Bagehot.

APRIL 29, 2010, 9:41 P.M. ET
Criminal Probe Looks Into Goldman Trading
Federal prosecutors are conducting a criminal investigation into whether Goldman Sachs Group Inc. or its employees committed securities fraud in connection with its mortgage trading, people familiar with the probe say.

The investigation from the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's Office, which is at a preliminary stage, stemmed from a referral from the Securities and Exchange Commission, these people say. The SEC recently filed civil securities-fraud charges against the big Wall Street firm and a trader in its mortgage group. Goldman and the trader say they have done nothing wrong and are fighting the civil charges.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703572504575214652998348876.html?mod=WSJ_hps_MIDDLETopStories

While Greece leads Europe boldly into the brave new age of austerity, both Germany and Britain, among others, will be cutting back and raising taxes starting in the second half of 2010 and into 2011, in the USA a million are about to lose their unemployment benefits, with Goldman estimating that soon that will rise by 400,000 a month. Bad things lie directly ahead, I suspect. Why bailout the banksters and not me, will soon be a populist rallying cry that’s hard to rebut in the face of a Roman style mob. Below, Bloomberg covers the worrying story. The recovery that isn’t, is on the edge of a precipice on both sides of the Atlantic.

Poverty is an anomaly to rich people; it is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.

Walter Bagehot.

More Than a Million in U.S. May Lose Jobless Benefits
April 29 (Bloomberg) -- Since the U.S. recession began in December 2007, Congress has extended the length of unemployment benefits for the jobless three times. Now, the lawmakers may have reached their limit.

They are quietly drawing the line at 99 weeks of aid, a mark that hundreds of thousands of Americans have already reached. In coming months, the number of those who will receive their final government check is projected to top 1 million.

It’s a deadline that has rarely been mentioned in recent debates over jobless benefits, in which Republicans have delayed aid because of cost concerns. The deadline hasn’t been lost on Teauna Stephney, a 39-year-old single mother from Bothell, Washington, who said she could become homeless once her $407 weekly checks stop in June.

“What are people like me supposed to do?” said Stephney, who said almost two years of benefits haven’t proved long enough for her to find work after she lost her last job in August 2008. Referring to lawmakers, she said, “I would like them to come and talk to me and spend a day in my shoes.”

-----“We have study after study that shows people are more anxious to get a job after they run out of benefits,” said Representative John Linder of Georgia, the top Republican on the Ways and Means subcommittee with jurisdiction over the unemployment program. “Continuing to extend this isn’t helping them or us.”

Allowing the ranks of those who lose their aid to swell carries risks for Democrats in November’s elections.

“They’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t,” said Stuart Rothenberg, publisher of the Rothenberg Political Report. Voters are “sensitive these days to spending and deficit issues and yet there are going to be people who need help, and if the administration ignores them, they’ll look rather callous.”

Negative ‘Atmospherics’

Baucus said extension legislation would fail in the Senate because of both the deficit and the negative “atmospherics” of lengthening the weeks of aid into triple digits.

“The best thing to do is get this economy turned around” to create jobs, said Baucus.

-----Since the recession began, aid extensions added 53 weeks of assistance to the 46 weeks that had been in place. About 11 million Americans, roughly 70 percent of the nation’s jobless, in March received unemployment checks averaging $320 per week.

The challenge for lawmakers is that while benefits have reached record lengths, so has long-term unemployment. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 44 percent of the jobless have been out of work for at least six months, the biggest share since the government began keeping track in 1948.

3.4 Million

About 3.4 million Americans -- approximately the population of Connecticut -- have been out of work for more than a year, according to a study by the Pew Fiscal Analysis Initiative.
The states, not the federal government, track how many exhaust their unemployment benefits, said U.S. Labor Department spokesman Matthew Wald.

Interviews with state officials found that in New York, 57,000 people have received their last check. In Florida, 130,000 are no longer eligible as are about 30,000 Ohioans.

Those numbers will grow, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which projects that more than 400,000 may soon begin losing benefits every month.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a8qJXfNS3RaQ&pos=7

King: Election winner will be out of power for a generation
By Edmund Conway Economics Last updated: April 29th, 2010

Whichever party wins this election will have to inflict such painful austerity measures on the British population that they will soon find themselves out of power for a generation. Not my words, the words of Mervyn King, Bank of England Governor.

Or so says American economist David Hale, who says King confided this with him over lunch last week.

To be precise, he said: “I saw the Governor of the Bank of England last week when I was in London and he told me whoever wins this election will be out of power for a whole generation because of how tough the fiscal austerity will have to be.” Ouch.

Now, based on precedent, the chances are that King will deny these remarks (and be pretty furious that Hale has blurted them out in an interview in Australia). Moreover, I happen to know King was out of London most of last week (first on holiday, then at the G20 meetings in Washington) so quite when this lunch happened is unclear. Though I understand they certainly have met.

However, leaving this inconsistencies aside, the comments do seem plausible: King has said repeatedly that the Government will need to impose far more ambitious cuts on the deficit than it currently plans. The comments ought to stand as a reminder that although the focus of the election has switched away to bigotgate, and the economic focus worldwide to the eurozone malaise, Britain faces a decade of hurt in the wake of its decade of debt.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies spelt it out earlier this week in typically frank terms. Labour and the LibDem plans imply the biggest squeeze on public services since the 1970s, when the IMF was in town. The Tory plans imply the biggest set of cuts since records began in 1948.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/edmundconway/100005270/king-election-winner-will-be-out-of-power-for-a-generation/

Next, the ex Bank of England Dutchman, Willem Buiter, now dancing away at Citi, suggests that the Fed is the most likely central bank to try "inflationary monetisation of public debt and deficits." Stay long gold and silver, but far from the reach of Uncle Sam and John Bull. That’s a polite way of saying the fiat money, dollar reserve standard is about to end in the Great Inflation. Below Zero Hedge covers Mr. Buiter’s scary analysis. Below that, the link to where it can be found on the new LIR blogsite.

Willem Buiter Issues His Most Dire Prediction Yet: Sees "Unprecedented" Fiscal Crises, US Debt Inflation And Fed Monetization
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/29/2010 08:48 -0500

---- Which is why we were very surprised when we read Willem Buiter's latest Global Economic View (recall that he works for Citi now). In it the strategist for the firm that defines the core of the establishment could not be more bearish. In fact, at first we thought that David Rosenberg had ghost written this. Once the apocryphal truthsayers such as Buiter become mainstream within the mainstream, it is only a matter of time before the marginal opinion shifts to match that of those who have been prognosticating doom all along (for all the right reasons). In the below piece, Buiter presents a game theory type analysis, which concludes that the US and other sovereigns will soon be forced into fiscal austerity. Among his critical observations (we recommend a careful read of the entire 68 pages), are that the US is highly polarized, and that the Fed, which is "the least independent of leading central banks" would be willing to implement "inflationary monetisation of public debt and deficits than other central banks." The next step of course would be hyperinflation. And Buiter sees America as the one country the most likely to follow this route. Most troublingly, Buiter predicts that a massive crisis is the only thing that can break the political gridlock in the US in order to fix the broken US fiscal situation. Must read.
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/willem-buiter-issues-his-most-dire-prediction-yet-sees-unprecedented-fiscal-crises-rampant-u

Soveregn Debt Problems in Advanced Industrial Countries.
http://londonirvinereport.blogspot.com/p/intraday-news.html

We end for the week with those dodgy Swiss. No it’s not UBS again, playing fast and loose with America’s optional laws, this time it looks like an open and shut case of plagiarism. Heidi is really Adelaide and German, but at least she wasn’t Australian I suppose.

April 29, 2010
The greatest blow to Swiss national pride: Heidi may be German
Switzerland’s international image has been taking a battering. Banking secrecy is a thing of the past. The traditionally tolerant nation has voted to ban minarets. Even Swiss army knives, the Alpine republic’s contribution to global security, are confiscated and binned at airports.
But the Swiss have always been able to count on Heidi. The frisky fictional orphan has been hopping and skipping down mountain slopes ever since Johanna Spyri wrote her children’s book in 1880 — Heidi’s innocence and love of the Alps, her modesty and her love of her grandfather are regarded as quintessentially Swiss.

“Heidi is the most prominent Swiss brand in the world,” says the film producer Lukas Hobi, who is making a 3D film about the pig-tailed heroine, a kind of Avatar with goats.

The problem is that Heidi may in fact be German. According to the German (but Zurich-based) researcher Peter Buettner, Johanna Spyri may have lifted some of the ideas, phrasing and narrative structure from the work of Hermann Adam von Kamp, a 19th-century German from Mülheim, now a smokey un-Heidiesque place. His Adelaide, the Girl from the Alps, was written fifty years earlier and even angry Swiss critics admit that Spyri may have read the book.

“I immediately noticed the same narrative structure: a little girl brought up by her grandfather, who left her homeland and grew unhappy abroad until she could come home,” says Mr Buettner. The name Heidi derives from Adelaide or Adelheid. Some of the vocabulary is very similar. Adelaide picks violets. Heidi gathers up unspecified flowers. Adelaide’s cheeks “glow red”. So too do Heidi’s.

And at least one key scene from the German work re-surfaces in the Swiss classic. In the German version Adelaide is offered a bag of money by her grandfather.

“O, keep it for yourself, said Adelaide. I don’t go shopping. And you give me so much.”

The Swiss classic has an almost identical exchange.

“I really don’t need it grandfather, said Heidi ... take it, take it and put it in the cupboard, you will surely need it.”

Naturally Swiss parents linger on this passage when reading to their children: it may just have been the last time that a Swiss child turned down a cash present from a relative.

So is Heidi about to go the way of other Swiss icons, devalued by the Germans, their more powerful northern neighbours? Tensions are already running high. It has been the Germans who have been most active in cracking open Swiss banking secrecy, buying up apparently stolen files of numbered accounts belonging to tax-dodging German clients. One German minister suggested that Berlin’s role was to act as the US cavalry riding out to bring order among the Apaches. The Swiss did not like the image.
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article7111662.ece


Oh what a tangled web we weave…..

Sir Walter Scott.

At the Comex silver depositories Wednesday, final figures were: Registered 51.17 Moz, Eligible 63.83 Moz, Total 115.00 Moz. The bean counters seem to be on a bender again.

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Crooks & Scoundrels Corner.

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

Yes it’s the great vampire squid again. One pre inquisition, held over article from the infamous Michael Lewis at Bloomberg. Well worth clicking on for the whole hilarious article. The other post inquisition peeling apart the smoke and mirrors aka deception.

“The current political-economic system is simply unsustainable; no economy can afford to pay for four giant zombie financial institutions, two substantial military adventures, a zombie-driven housing market, an exploding health-care bill and Goldman Sachs partners' lifestyle aspirations.”

Martin Hutchinson. November 23 2009.

Bond Market Will Never Be the Same After Goldman: Michael Lewis
April 22 (Bloomberg) -- If you happen to be sitting on the Goldman Sachs bond-trading floor life must feel horribly unfair.

You did nothing worse than live by the ethical assumptions of your market -- any money-making event short of obviously illegal is admirable -- and now your own grandfather thinks you’re some kind of monster. Your world feels upside down: What was right is now wrong; what was good is now bad; what once felt like winning now feels like losing.

You are probably wondering: What next? What will the angry rabble -- all those ordinary people who can never really understand your business -- now demand that you explain to them, so they can disapprove of you all over again?

A few possibilities:

No. 1 -- Full knowledge of the inner workings of your proprietary trading desk.
In particular: the moment-to-moment dealings of your correlations traders from late 2004 (when they first exploited American International Group’s idiotic willingness to sell cheap insurance on pools of subprime mortgage loans) until the end of 2007, when they would have taken most of their profits from the total collapse of the subprime bond markets.
Your bosses claim to have lost almost $100 million on the Abacus trade for which your firm is being sued. This seems, to put it mildly, disingenuous. In March 2007, the time of this particular Abacus trade, your prop traders were already short the subprime market. Would they really have taken a naked long position in a deal you helped to construct precisely so that it would fail without offsetting in some other way on their books?

Ritual Sacrifice

Sadly, it will not suffice to offer up Fabrice Tourre as a ritual sacrifice. No one is going to accept a then 27-year-old Frenchman, whose job was apparently to keep sweet the patsies on the other end of your trades, as the world’s authority on your trading positions.
His name isn’t even on the top of the list of Goldman traders listed on the $2 billion Abacus deal for which you are being sued. The name on top of that document is Jonathan Egol. Egol appears to have been the bond trader at the center of your Abacus program. The same Jonathan Egol who told fellow traders in 2006 -- a year before this transaction -- that the subprime market was doomed.

The public eventually will ask: Who is Jonathan Egol and what exactly was his game?

No. 2 -- A far better understanding of your relations with the inaptly named “CDO manager.”

Clearly Clueless

In this case the manager was ACA Management, but there were other CDO managers at least as pliable as ACA. The SEC suit charges you with using ACA as a shill: the end investors in your CDO assumed that it was ACA’s job to figure out whether the bonds inside the CDO were intelligent investments.

But ACA quite clearly had no idea what it was doing -- and you quite clearly understood that.
The telling details here are the e-mails between your French salesman and ACA, in which ACA feels it needs to understand exactly what John Paulson’s interest are in this new CDO. Paulson, who had done a great deal of analysis on the underlying bonds, was of course picking the ones he wanted to see inside the CDO. (Hard to understand why it didn’t disturb you that he was even in the room, by the way, but that’s another conversation.)

The SEC accuses you of lying to ACA, by suggesting Paulson was a long investor in the deal when he was in fact selling the deal short.

Good From Bad

But what’s interesting here is what you appear to take for granted: that ACA has no talent for evaluating the bonds picked by Paulson. After all, if ACA was doing its job it wouldn’t have cared one way or the other what Paulson (then a little-known hedge fund manager) was up to. ACA would have known which bonds were good and which were bad, and picked the good ones.

In their anxiety about Paulson’s motives we can all glimpse their incompetence. They want to know that Paulson has an interest in picking the good ones because they themselves have no clue which ones they are.

But if a CDO manager had no independent ability to select the bonds inside a CDO what, please explain to us, was his financial function? Why did you select ACA to manage your deal?

No. 3 -- A far better sense of why, and when, you ceased completely to concern yourself with the consequences of your actions.

The masses will be curious to know, for instance, how you became blinded to the very simple difference between right and wrong. The more moralistic among them will ask the question mainly to fuel their own outrage; the more tactical will ask the question because they sense that the financial system doesn’t function unless you have the incentive to think in these terms - - and you clearly do not.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=aWUolZvh4qmE

How Goldman offloaded its toxic assets
Apr 28, 2010 17:38 EDT
Chris Nicholson finds a particularly damning email in the mountains of evidence released by the Senate investigations committee. It’s written by someone on Goldman Sachs’ European sales desk:

Real bad feeling across European sales about some of the trades we did with clients. The damage this has done to our franchise is very significant. Aggregate loss of our clients on just these 5 trades along is 1bln+. In addition team feels that recognition (sales credits and otherwise) they received for getting this business done was not consistent at all with money it ended making/saving the firm.

Clearly Goldman’s clients aren’t buying what Lloyd Blankfein is selling: the idea that they’re just arm’s length counterparties who know what they want to buy and are just looking for the best price. Illiquid things like CDOs are sold as much as they’re bought, and Goldman’s highly-paid sales team was aggressively going out and selling instruments which were at one point on Goldman’s balance sheet and which wound up cratering in value.

The effects were twofold: firstly, the Goldman clients who got stuck with this nuclear waste when the music stopped were understandably none too impressed with Goldman. And secondly, Goldman managed to stick the losses on those instruments to its clients, rather than taking those losses itself, and as a result its profits were billions of dollars higher than they would otherwise have been.

Was the hit to Goldman’s franchise value a hit worth taking, given the billions of dollars it saved? Probably yes, until the SEC and Carl Levin came along. But clearly the European sales team which was responsible for successfully offloading this nuclear waste wanted to see some part of those billions of dollars in savings for itself. Because, like all Wall Streeters, they care more about their annual bonus than they do about their employer’s franchise value.

Here’s a question, though. Let’s say you work at an investment bank and you’re in charge of a book which includes a $1 billion barrel of toxic nuclear waste. You know that barrel is going to zero sooner or later, and you manage to sell it to some European dupes just in time, for full face value, saving your bank from $1 billion in losses. How much of a bonus, if any, should you get on that deal, and where should the money come from? And should you feel bad about avoiding the losses and sticking them to your clients instead?
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2010/04/28/how-goldman-offloaded-its-toxic-assets/

Again, it may be said that we need not be alarmed at the magnitude of our credit system or at its refinement, for that we have learned by experience the way of controlling it, and always manage it with discretion. But we do not always manage it with discretion. There is the astounding instance of Overend, Gurney, and Co. to the contrary. Ten years ago that house stood next to the Bank of England in the City of London; it was better known abroad than any similar firm known, perhaps, better than any purely English firm. The partners had great estates, which had mostly been made in the business. They still derived an immense income from it. Yet in six years they lost all their own wealth, sold the business to the company, and then lost a large part of the company`s capital. And these losses were made in a manner so reckless and so foolish, that one would think a child who had lent money in the City of London would have lent it better. After this example, we must not confide too surely in long-established credit, or in firmly-rooted traditions of business. We must examine the system on which these great masses of money are manipulated, and assure ourselves that it is safe and right.

Walter Bagehot. Lombard Street. 1873.

Another delightful weekend and in most of Europe a holiday weekend too. For those who can get out into the UK’s countryside, a rare chance to see all kinds of late flowers and blossoms all out at the same time. Our carpets of bluebells are passing their peak. Sadly, in the Gulf of Mexico the ecological disaster seems about to become a catastrophe. We can only hope that God intervenes to drive the oil away from the vulnerable coasts. More on that over the weekend. Starting next week we will begin the daily update of the Dunkirk and the Battle of France page. 70 years ago in 1940, civilization fell to Nazis socialism in a blitzkrieg campaign lasting 37 days. Have a great weekend everyone.


Why A UK Hung Parliament is Likely. Stay long precious Metals.
http://www.ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/


The monthly Coppock Indicators finished March:

DJIA: +168 UP. NASDAQ: +370 UP. SP500: +196 UP. The great Bull market goes on with the all three continuing higher in positive numbers.

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Help the LIR fight Banksterism, the EU, and for sound money.
If you can, help the LIR stay around and make a difference. Please make a donation at the PayPal link on the website or better still become a sponsor for what looks like an exciting 2010. Capitalism not banksterism. Many thanks to all who have helped.

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