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Complacent? Here’s What The “Hint” Of A Fed Taper Did To Global Growth Hope

Whether or not one believes the Fed will taper (then almost instantly un-taper based on the market’s reaction) or not in the coming months, Bernanke’s “tease” in the early summer this year should give most pause for thought as to just how dependent ‘everything’ is on the Fed’s money printing. As the following chart from Bloomberg’s Michael McDonough shows, things changed when big Ben dropped the hint that the punchbowl will not be here forever. There is one region, however, that for now has improved its outlook for 2014 GDP growth since the taper-tease…

 

 

The largest decline occurred in Latin America, where the 2014 GDP growth consensus diminished to 3.21 percent from 3.99 percent on Jan. 1. and EMEA (the most dependent on abundant, cheap foreign capital to fuel their economic growth). Western Europe, which experienced the largest improvement, is forecasted to grow 1.39 percent in 2014, compared to 1.33 percent at the start of the year. Global growth is anticipated to total 2.85 percent in 2014.

The U.S. 2014 growth forecast has fallen modestly to 2.6 percent from 2.8 percent at the start of the year.

Though  U.S. GDP growth is forecasted to accelerate to 3.0 percent quarter-on-quarter SAAR by the fourth quarter of next year.

 

Hope – it’s always just around the corner…

 

Charts: Bloomberg


    



via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/fqAAS8mCTpg/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Complacent? Here's What The "Hint" Of A Fed Taper Did To Global Growth Hope

Whether or not one believes the Fed will taper (then almost instantly un-taper based on the market’s reaction) or not in the coming months, Bernanke’s “tease” in the early summer this year should give most pause for thought as to just how dependent ‘everything’ is on the Fed’s money printing. As the following chart from Bloomberg’s Michael McDonough shows, things changed when big Ben dropped the hint that the punchbowl will not be here forever. There is one region, however, that for now has improved its outlook for 2014 GDP growth since the taper-tease…

 

 

The largest decline occurred in Latin America, where the 2014 GDP growth consensus diminished to 3.21 percent from 3.99 percent on Jan. 1. and EMEA (the most dependent on abundant, cheap foreign capital to fuel their economic growth). Western Europe, which experienced the largest improvement, is forecasted to grow 1.39 percent in 2014, compared to 1.33 percent at the start of the year. Global growth is anticipated to total 2.85 percent in 2014.

The U.S. 2014 growth forecast has fallen modestly to 2.6 percent from 2.8 percent at the start of the year.

Though  U.S. GDP growth is forecasted to accelerate to 3.0 percent quarter-on-quarter SAAR by the fourth quarter of next year.

 

Hope – it’s always just around the corner…

 

Charts: Bloomberg


    



via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/fqAAS8mCTpg/story01.htm Tyler Durden

How to Invest Gold In Your Pension Plan – Part 2

Today’s AM fix was USD 1,281.00, EUR 956.90 and GBP 807.03 per ounce.   
Yesterday’s AM fix was USD 1,283.75, EUR 957.81 and GBP 801.54 per ounce.

Gold fell $3.90 or 0.3% yesterday, closing at $1,283.50/oz. Silver slipped $0.09 or 0.42% closing at $21.36. Platinum inched down $9.51 or 0.7% to $1,428.99/oz, while palladium fell $4.47 or 0.6% to $751.50/oz.

Gold dipped again in London on fears that a stronger U.S. economy will entice the U.S. Fed to taper its stimulus program and on positive economic data from China. Silver bullion slid to its lowest in four weeks, while gold is hovering at three week lows. In South Africa, the National Union of Mineworkers at Northam Platinum Ltd. continue their strike  that started on November 4th.


Gold in British Pounds, 10 Year – (Bloomberg)

SIPPs or Self-Invested Personal Pensions were launched by the UK government in 2006 in order to enable UK citizens to gain more control over their pension investment portfolio. The UK government also launched the Small Self-Administered Scheme known as a SSAS, an occupational pension scheme which is designed for up to 12 members.

From the perspective of the gold bullion industry this was welcome news, as the newly launched SIPP and SSAS permitted individuals or groups to invest in a range of approved types of gold bullion as part of their pension provision. To protect SIPPs and SSASs from inferior product, all gold must come in the form of ‘good delivery bars’ as per the London Bullion Market Association who maintains a list of approved bar manufactures such as the Perth Mint of Western Australia.

Gold bullion and pensions are a powerful combination. Pensions are extremely tax efficient investment structures that have been ignored by the general public for too long despite being very easy to set up. Gold is a form of financial insurance and essential diversification that empowers investors to hedge and therefore reduce the long term risks involved in all investment strategies.

Contributions into SIPPs and SSASs qualify for income tax relief up to the highest rate. Important to note that once invested in your SIPP or SSAS, all investments grow capital gains tax free and there is no further liability to income tax.

In times gone by it was common to stay in the one job with the same company for one’s entire working career. Today’s working environment is dramatically different and it is not uncommon for professionals to have more than one pension scheme which reflects their career to date; having worked in a variety of different positions with different companies, all who have different pension schemes.

The SIPP affords you the opportunity to consolidate your pension schemes into one scheme. As we have long advocated here at GoldCore, when taking advice on your financial affairs, particularly your pension, seek the advice of a fee based financial advisor.

Click here for our guide to Putting Gold In Your Pension Plan in the UK.

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via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/5Epi9ZV6pr0/story01.htm GoldCore

Meet The Man Responsible For Regulating $234 Trillion In Derivatives: The CFTC’s New Head Timothy Massad

It’s official – goodbye Gary Gensler, we hardly knew you… as a commodities regulator that is, although Bart Chilton (who is finally also stepping down due to being too burdened by lack of funding to actually do anything) was kind enough to provide much needed perspective on how the CFTC truly works. In place of the former Goldmanite, today Obama will announce that going forward America’s top derivative regulator and CFTC head will be Timothy Massad, the Treasury Department official responsible for overseeing the U.S. rescue of banks and automakers after the credit crisis.

Who is Timothy Massad? Bloomberg has the details:

A former partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP in New York, Massad was a legal adviser to a congressional panel that oversaw the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which loaned billions of dollars in banks and auto companies to help stabilize the economy during the 2008 crisis. The program, which he then was confirmed to manage at Treasury, spurred a political backlash that drove congressional supporters from office in the 2010 election and fed criticism of Wall Street.

 

“Nobody ever wants to see TARP repeated. But the fact is, TARP is a program that did its job,” Massad said Sept. 30 at the Brookings Institution. “It has worked faster, better, and cheaper than most people ever thought possible.”

 

Massad would take over an agency that has put into place more than 60 rules mandated by Dodd-Frank to help reduce risk and increase transparency in the swaps market after largely unregulated trades helped fuel the crisis. The rules have yet to all take effect as the agency battles budget challenges as a result of failed efforts to increase funding from Congress.

 

The commission, which is designed to have five members, may instead have only one Democrat and one Republican early next year if Obama and the Senate cannot overcome political hurdles to confirm new commissioners.

So the man who was responsible for bailing out the banks at any cost, will now make sure these same banks don’t do anything bad again. And he will also, somehow, “supervise” America’s $234 trillion in derivatives and make sure nothing bad ever happens there too?

Somehow, we are a little skeptical. Sure enough: “The party-line split on the commission would probably delay votes on contentious Dodd-Frank regulations.” In other words more of the same “nothing must change” hard line stance the CFTC has so sternly pursued since the crisis, and before.


    



via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/6bv-ltnQ76U/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Meet The Man Responsible For Regulating $234 Trillion In Derivatives: The CFTC's New Head Timothy Massad

It’s official – goodbye Gary Gensler, we hardly knew you… as a commodities regulator that is, although Bart Chilton (who is finally also stepping down due to being too burdened by lack of funding to actually do anything) was kind enough to provide much needed perspective on how the CFTC truly works. In place of the former Goldmanite, today Obama will announce that going forward America’s top derivative regulator and CFTC head will be Timothy Massad, the Treasury Department official responsible for overseeing the U.S. rescue of banks and automakers after the credit crisis.

Who is Timothy Massad? Bloomberg has the details:

A former partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP in New York, Massad was a legal adviser to a congressional panel that oversaw the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which loaned billions of dollars in banks and auto companies to help stabilize the economy during the 2008 crisis. The program, which he then was confirmed to manage at Treasury, spurred a political backlash that drove congressional supporters from office in the 2010 election and fed criticism of Wall Street.

 

“Nobody ever wants to see TARP repeated. But the fact is, TARP is a program that did its job,” Massad said Sept. 30 at the Brookings Institution. “It has worked faster, better, and cheaper than most people ever thought possible.”

 

Massad would take over an agency that has put into place more than 60 rules mandated by Dodd-Frank to help reduce risk and increase transparency in the swaps market after largely unregulated trades helped fuel the crisis. The rules have yet to all take effect as the agency battles budget challenges as a result of failed efforts to increase funding from Congress.

 

The commission, which is designed to have five members, may instead have only one Democrat and one Republican early next year if Obama and the Senate cannot overcome political hurdles to confirm new commissioners.

So the man who was responsible for bailing out the banks at any cost, will now make sure these same banks don’t do anything bad again. And he will also, somehow, “supervise” America’s $234 trillion in derivatives and make sure nothing bad ever happens there too?

Somehow, we are a little skeptical. Sure enough: “The party-line split on the commission would probably delay votes on contentious Dodd-Frank regulations.” In other words more of the same “nothing must change” hard line stance the CFTC has so sternly pursued since the crisis, and before.


    



via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/6bv-ltnQ76U/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Homebuilders' Cancellation Rate Surges To Highest Since December 2008

Despite ongoing optimism that the housing recovery can withstand fire, brimstone, rising rates, and collapsing confidence (in spite of the fact that indications from most top-down data are to the contrary), investors in US homebuilders may need to adjust this morning. If DR Horton is any indication of a broad trend (and empirical comparisons with its peers show that it is) then the firm’s huge miss in its cancellation rate (31.0% vs an expectation of 25.5%) in Q3 should be food for thought. The surge in cancellation was the largest MoM since mid-2008 and jumped to its highest since December 2008.

 

 

Does make one wonder if the lagged response to the surge in rates and collapse in applications is now catching up…

 

Charts: Bloomberg


    



via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/7_EF1AAYYqo/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Homebuilders’ Cancellation Rate Surges To Highest Since December 2008

Despite ongoing optimism that the housing recovery can withstand fire, brimstone, rising rates, and collapsing confidence (in spite of the fact that indications from most top-down data are to the contrary), investors in US homebuilders may need to adjust this morning. If DR Horton is any indication of a broad trend (and empirical comparisons with its peers show that it is) then the firm’s huge miss in its cancellation rate (31.0% vs an expectation of 25.5%) in Q3 should be food for thought. The surge in cancellation was the largest MoM since mid-2008 and jumped to its highest since December 2008.

 

 

Does make one wonder if the lagged response to the surge in rates and collapse in applications is now catching up…

 

Charts: Bloomberg


    



via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/7_EF1AAYYqo/story01.htm Tyler Durden

California Lawmakers Want Porn Stars to Wear Safety Goggles

California’s workplace safety guardians have proposed an
amendment to a bill that would
require porn stars to wear protective goggles while
filming.

The bill, which has so far
stalled in the state senate, establishes numerous mandates for
the porn industry to follow with the goal of curbing the spread of
sexually transmitted diseases. Among these mandates is the
requirement that “personal protective equipment” be used to
“prevent contact of an employee’s eye, skin, mucous membranes, or
genitals with the blood or OPIM-STI of another.” (OPIM-STI
includes pre-ejaculate, semen, vaginal secretions, and fecal
matter.)

According to the
bill, which was originally posted on a NSFW
adult entertainment blog:

The employer shall provide, at no cost to the employee,
appropriate personal protective equipment such as, but not limited
to, condoms, gloves for cleaning, and, if contact of the eyes with
OPIM-STI is reasonably anticipated, eye protection.

So basically, cum shots sans eyegear would be illegal.

The bill would also require employees to wear condoms during
vaginal and anal sex, gloves when touching “contaminated laundry,”
and create a specific exemption for condom wearing during oral sex
to be reviewed in January 2018.  

Porn actors are actually already required to follow these rules,

says Deborah Gold, the deputy chief for health of California’s
Division of Occupational Safety and Health. They just rarely do. In
an interview with Salon, Gold said that “these draft
guidelines are an attempt to tailor existing workplace-safety rules
relating to blood-borne pathogens specifically to the adult
industry.”

The bill follows in the footsteps of last year’s 
Safer Sex in the Adult Film Industry Act (or Measure B),
the much-discussed, voter-approved measure that requires porn
actors in Los Angeles County to wear condoms on set.

James Deen, an
award-winning porn star and a staunch opponent of condom
mandates,
spoke with the Huffington Post
after the measure passed:

“It will be interesting to see what happens next. People will
most likely move production out of Los Angeles and take out tax
money with us. Hopefully this measure passing will help us [adult
entertainers] get more organized in the future and that, along with
Los Angeles losing our business, will allow people in politics to
start seeing us as an asset.”

There’s evidence that Deen’s prediction came true: After the
measure passed, the number of requests for porn production permits
in Los Angeles
dropped from an annual norm of 500 to two. Now it appears that
California politicians are looking to implement even more expansive
protective barrier mandates. 

In a satirical video protesting Measure B, James Deen and
co-star Jessica Drake show what a scene with mandatory safety
goggles and latex barriers everywhere could look like. NSFW! You’ve
been warned. Watch it after the jump.

from Hit & Run http://reason.com/blog/2013/11/12/california-lawmakers-want-porn-stars-to
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Anal Probes And The Drug War: A Look At The Ethical And Legal Issues

Last week, news wires, blogs and pundits lit up with the
horrifying story of David Eckert, a New Mexico man who last January
was subjected to a series of invasive and degrading drug search
procedures after a traffic stop. The procedures, which included
x-rays, digital anal penetration, enemas and a colonoscopy, were
all performed without Eckert’s consent…

Days later, a second resident of New Mexico came forward with
similar allegations. Timothy Young says that after a traffic stop
in October 2012, he too was subjected to x-rays and a digital anal
exam without his consent. New Mexico news station KBO-TV was
first to report both incidents, which were performed by
physicians at the Gila Regional Medical Center in Silver City, New
Mexico. In both cases, doctors and police failed to find any
illegal drugs.

A third alleged victim has since come forward, although
this woman says her anal and vaginal searches, x-rays and CAT scans
came courtesy of federal border patrol agents, and without a
warrant.

These incidents raise troubling questions about how the criminal
justice system and medical establishment could allow for such
extreme and invasive measures based on such little suspicion for
nonviolent drug offenses. Oddly, according to constitutional
scholars and medical ethicists I’ve consulted, the indignities
imposed upon Eckert and Young were both illegal
and unethical. And yet it also may be that (a) none of the law
enforcement officials or medical personnel responsible for the
violations are likely to be held accountable in any way, and (b)
they could probably do it all again tomorrow, and still wouldn’t
likely be held accountable.


Read this full article at The Agitator

from Hit & Run http://reason.com/blog/2013/11/12/anal-probes-and-the-drug-war-a-look-at-t
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