Month: September 2014

Damn you debt-reducing austerity-that-is-blamed-for-everything-that-is-wrong-with-Europe’s-triple-dip-recessionary-economy-when-it-is-the-corrupt-socialist-incompetent-politicians’-fault. Damn you to hell! Oh wait a minute:

• Italy’s government debt rose to a record €2.169 trillion in July from €2.168 trillion in June, the Bank of Italy says in its public-finances supplement.
• Spain total govt debt amounted to a record € 1.01 trillion in 2Q, up from € 995.9b in 1Q, Bank of Spain says; 2Q Total Govt Debt Rises to 98.9% of GDP From 97.4% in 1Q

With austerity like this, who needs to spend like a drunken sailor?

Source: Bloomberg

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1oCIiMM Tyler Durden

There is now less than one week of campaigning remaining before the Scottish Independence Referendum, which takes place next Thursday, September 18. 

The pro-union ‘no’ vote campaign is back in the lead this week after the latest opinion poll from pollsters YouGov put them at 52%, marginally ahead of the pro-independence ‘yes’ campaign.

The referendum question being asked is simply “Should Scotland be an independent country?”

After being ahead significantly since the outset of the independence campaign, the pro-union side was abruptly shocked last weekend when the pro-independence side took the lead based on an opinion poll result, also from YouGov, released on Saturday, September 6. 

This forced the pro-union campaign into panic mode this week with the UK witnessing an unprecedented coordinated campaign between all the main political parties. who are pro-union, and a number of major UK companies to try to convince the Scottish electorate to stay in the United Kingdom.

Scotland’s financial sector became one of the main battlegrounds this week, with many Scottish headquartered banks and financial services companies first threatening to relocate their headquarters to London and then actually announcing that they will move south if the referendum outcome results in a ‘yes’ majority. 

The HQ move threats and announcements appeared to be part of an orchestrated corporate campaign run by the UK’s Treasury department and the Treasury did not deny this.

According to the banks, they are seeking to move because an independent Scotland would create too much economic, regulatory and financial risk and uncertainty for their headquarters to remain there.

Amongst the banks, two of the UK’s biggest banking institutions, the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), and Lloyd’s led the charge. Crucially, since the RBS and Lloyds were both bailed out by the UK government during the financial crisis, the UK government is now a significant shareholder in both institutions, owning a whopping 80% of the RBS and 25% of Lloyds. 

RBS has been headquartered in Scotland since 1727 and employs 35,000 north of the border. Lloyds owns various institutions including Bank of Scotland (not to be confused with the Royal Bank of Scotland), Halifax and Scottish Widows, the pensions and life insurance group.

Scotland’s third biggest bank, Clydesdale, owned by the National Australia Bank (NAB) said it also planned to relocate its HQ to London, again citing the uncertainty that a yes result would generate. Other banks such as the TSB and Tesco Bank also followed suit and said they too would move.

Many of the banks’ and asset managers’ share prices had been hit on the London Stock Exchange this week due to the pro-independence movement’s lead including the share prices of RBS, Lloyds, Aberdeen Asset  Management and Standard Life.

Financial services giant Standard Life joined in, saying that it would relocate large parts of its operations such as pensions and investments out of Scotland if the country voted for independence. Dutch asset manager and insurer Aegon said it too would move operations to London.

Other industry leaders also sided with the pro-union alignment with the CEO of the UK’s largest oil company British Petroleum (BP) saying that the company and the economy was “best served by maintaining the existing capacity and integrity of the United Kingdom”.

Scottish first minister and pro-independence leader Alex Salmond said that the corporate announcements had been orchestrated by the prime minister’s office in Downing Street in London, and that Treasury had been ‘caught red-handed in a campaign of scaremongering”.

According to the FT, a Treasury official admitted that “Danny Alexander and George Osborne have been making calls.” George Osborne is the Chancellor of the Exchequer and Danny Alexander is his assistant at the Treasury. The calls to RBS would have been quite easy to make given the government’s 80% shareholding. Likewise with Lloyds.

As RBS and Lloyds are already essentially run from London, the HQ move announcements do appear to have been more politically motivated than anything. HM Treasury does appear to have been bullying and pulling strings behind the scenes. On one hand it says plans by companies to move were ‘understandable’, while on the other hand it has been making phone calls encouraging companies to move.

Elsewhere, Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England, became involved in the debate which is slightly surprising given that the Bank of England is supposedly neutral of political interference. Carney said this week that a currency union between Scotland and the rest of the UK  is incompatible with an independent Scotland. 

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch chimed in, hinting that he was on the side of pro-independence, most likely because of his current coolness towards the Westminster leaders,  while financier George Soros weighed in on the pro-union side.

There is much to lose for the City of London’s financial sector due to the economic uncertainty and sterling currency risk of an independent Scotland and the loss of financial power, international standing and resources that a smaller UK would represent.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) also became involved this week warning that “the main immediate effect is likely to be uncertainty over the transition to a potentially new and different monetary, financial and fiscal framework in Scotland.”

The pound sterling has fallen and risen this week based on the prevailing sentiment expressed in the various independence polls. Sterling strengthened today following the latest poll but had touched an 11 month low earlier this week against the dollar.

In terms of sterling, the gold price has not really moved significantly over the last month, remaining in a £20 trading range between £780 and £760, although the price did fall from the £780 range on Monday down to £760 today, slightly more than the US dollar denominated price move in gold, but in  in general sentiment to the weakness in the US dollar gold price.

Scotland’s bid for independence has also crystallised nationalist aspirations in other countries, most notably in Catalonia which is on the brink of its own unofficial referendum to try to break away from Spain. Yesterday was National Catalan Day and millions protested across the region most notably in  Barcelona.

There has been much speculation this week about how the UK’s gold reserves would be affected if an independence result emerges. The UK Treasury said that all Treasury reserve assets would be up for negotiation. Since this is a very general statement it does not provide much clarity as to whether an independent Scotland would be able to take any of the UK ‘s gold reserves, but this did stop various media outlets from appearing to think that Scotland would get its share of the UK gold. 

At this stage it is best to adopt a wait and see attitude since there are too many unknowns for any factual conclusions to be reached on the future of the UK, let alone future UK fiscal plans.

Whatever the outcome of next week’s independence referendum in Scotland, it has illustrated that the UK is a economic entity which is in some parts held together by groupings that do not have the same outlook. The closeness of the results for the two campaigns suggests that if the pro-union campaign wins, they will still have to address the concerns of the large Scottish independence movement, and calls for a future referendum on the subject may not go away. 

Economic uncertainty in the UK will remain in the near term and it is hard to see the UK economic landscape ever being quite the same again after the heated campaigning on both sides of the independence issue.

MARKET UPDATE
Today’s AM fix was USD 1,237.25, EUR 957.11 and GBP 760.87 per ounce.
Yesterday’s AM fix was USD 1,247.00, EUR 964.20  and GBP 767.53 per ounce.

Gold fell $7.90 or 0.63% to $1,242.10 per ounce and silver slipped $0.27 or 1.42% to $18.71 per ounce yesterday. For the week, gold is down 2.27% while silver is 2.56% lower. 

Gold in US Dollars – 2 Years (Thomson Reuters)

The gold price closed New York trading yesterday at $1,240.10 and fell to a January low of $1,232 in Hong Kong overnight. Gold in Singapore recovered to test the $1,240 level but was turned back at $1,240 prior to going in to London trading where gold is flat.

Palladium fell 2.24% today to $829, and is down 6.53% for the week on profit taking after reaching a multi-year high the previous week. Platinum is trading at $1,364 and is down 0.94% since yesterday and down 2.98% on the week.

FOMC ‘Jawboning’ Next Wednesday
A dilemma awaits the US Fed governors at the two day FOMC meeting next week (16-17 Sept) and at the end of meeting press conference, the FOMC members will have to decide whether to amend their interest rate forward guidance language which currently states that Fed funds rates will be kept near zero for a ‘considerable period’.

Gold in Sterling – 2 Years (Thomson Reuters)

Although there are now a number of Fed governors on the hawkish side, such as the Philadelphia and Cleveland governors, will this be enough to sway a consensus towards amending the language, and would the phrase just be dropped or would there be conditionality added such as interest rates will remain as is until unemployment or inflation data justifies adjusting the current outlook?

There is a market expectation that some sort of fine tuning of the language will occur next week. The Fed will probably subtly amend the language while trying to keep their options open. If this happens it would cause a short term dollar rally since the market would then expect interest rates to rise at an earlier stage in 2015 than previously expected. And rising interest rates mean higher nominal returns for dollar denominated assets. In this scenario, the gold price would come under pressure due to a stronger dollar.

With the recent non-farm payrolls growth data coming out as weak, can the indebted US consumer and economy absorb an interest rate increase? When interest rates begin to rise its usually part of a rising trend, not just a one off rate rise. Are the Fed prepared to follow through with a change of course at this early stage? These are just some of the questions that may be answered by the FOMC press conference next Wednesday.

In our view, the Fed will probably adjust the ‘considerable period’ language at the FOMC meeting next week by adding conditionality to the language linked to an improvement of economic performance such as unemployment data.

If this occurs, the US dollar could have a short term rally on the back of the FOMC announcement since this is not yet fully priced in to the US dollar. This then is a real risk for gold because the gold price would most likely come under pressure as the US dollar strengthens.

Any US dollar rally would in our view be short-lived, since the Fed is not fully committed to increasing rates and is to an extent just engaged in the management of perceptions.

Therefore, any dollar rally would probably fizzle out shortly after it had begun. The fundamental reasons to own allocated and segregated gold remain intact.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1qskO2s GoldCore

President Obama’s 4-pronged strategy to ‘degrade and destroy’ ISIS includes a ‘financial attack’ (according to the Treasury) as they recognize, as The Daily Signal notes, one major hurdle in the way of the ‘strategy’ is the brutal organization’s control of oil fields in Iraq and Syria; which ISIS uses that oil wealth to help finance its terror operations. Here’s how they do it…

 

 

As The Daily Signal’s Kelsey Harkness ( @kelseyjharkness ) notes,

According to the Iraq Energy Institute, an independent, nonprofit policy organization focused on Iraq’s energy sector, the army of radical Islamists controls production of 30,000 barrels of oil a day in Iraq and 50,000 barrels in Syria.

 

By selling the oil on the black market at a discounted price of $40 per barrel (compared to about $93 per barrel in the free market), ISIS takes in $3.2 million a day.

 

James Phillips, veteran expert in Middle Eastern affairs at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal that the revenue gives ISIS a “solid economic base that sustains its continued expansion.”

 

The oil revenue, which amounts to nearly $100 million each month, allows ISIS to fund its military and terrorist attacks — and to attract more recruits from around the world, including America.

 

To be successful in counterterrorism efforts, Phillips said,  the U.S. and its allies must “push the Islamic State out of the oil fields it has captured and disrupt its ability to smuggle the oil to foreign markets.”

Here’s how Phillips said the ISIS oil operation works:

ISIS sells oil to consumers in territory it controls, roughly the size of Maryland, inside Syria and Iraq. The terrorist group also sells oil to a network of smugglers that developed in the 1990s during Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s rule; that network smuggled oil out of Iraq into Turkey to avoid sanctions imposed by the United Nations.

ISIS also reportedly sells oil, through middlemen, to the Assad regime in Syria that is trying to quell rebellion there. When it comes to making a fast buck, the Middle East has no shortage of “strange bedfellows” willing to do business with each other.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1AGHyfd Tyler Durden

Wolf Richter   www.wolfstreet.com   http://ift.tt/Wz5XCn

It’s hard these days to worry about inflation amidst a maelstrom of voices claiming that there isn’t enough inflation to begin with, and that the world will end if prices stop rising even for a moment. Whatever inflation we may encounter in daily life, whether for healthcare, tuition, beef, gas, or cars, we’re told not to worry about it because the higher prices are either annulled by an elegant scheme called hedonic regression, or they’re only temporary, or the amounts are too small to impact the overall budget.

But when it comes to housing, which now accounts for 33.6% of what Americans spend [What’s Draining American Wallets? Interactive Chart], none of these excuses fly. Because inflation in housing has been red-hot.

Actually, it hasn’t been red-hot, the way the Bureau of Labor Statistics measures it. Its Consumer Price Index contains two housing components: “Owners’ equivalent rent of primary residence” (OER) and “Rent of primary residence” (Rent). They purport to measure the cost of “shelter,” which is the “consumption item” that a home provides and is thus included in the CPI. The cost of the home itself and any improvements to the home are considered an “investment,” not consumption, and therefore not part of the CPI.

Owners’ equivalent rent accounts for 23.83% of the CPI and rent for 5.93%, for a combined weight in the CPI of about 30%. It is by far the largest and most important component.

Inflation in these two categories was contained, as they say at the Fed. In July, owners’ equivalent rent rose 2.7% and rent rose a minuscule 1.0%.

And in reality?

Home prices rose 8.2% over the 12 months through June 2014 and 12% for the prior 12-month period, according to the Case Shiller 20-City Index. A far cry from the government-sanctioned owners’ equivalent increase of 2.7%.

And rents? They rose on average 6.3% in August from a year earlier, according to Trulia, with double-digit gains in five of the 25 largest rental markets: in Sacramento, rents soared 14.9%. In San Francisco, where the median rent for a 2-bedroom apartment is now $3,500, they jumped 14.5%. That $3,000 apartment a year ago would now cost an additional $435 a month, or an additional $5,220 a year! No inflation, no problem. In Oakland, rents jumped 14.4%; in Denver, 13.1%; in Miami 11.3%. In the 25 largest rental markets, rents soared on average 10%.

How can our trusty government be so far off the mark?

The data are obtained by survey. For “owners’ equivalent rent,” owners are asked what they think they would have to pay if they were renting the home. Hence a measure of implicit rent. For the “rent” component, renters are asked what they’re currently paying in rent. Even if they’ve lived in a rent-controlled apartment for 20 years and pay a ludicrously low rent, it becomes part of the statistics, and not the rent that a new renter would have to pay.

Surveys are easy to manipulate, in numerous subtle ways, and that’s why they’re used to determine shelter costs. The BLS could instead use market rents, which is a common measure of actual rents negotiated between renters and landlords at the signing of the lease. Each time a new lease is signed, it impacts market rent. But that would, like Trulia’s measure, indicate just how fast rents are rising. So, no way.

How large is the deceit? Over time, it adds up. From 2011 to 2014, market rent rose by 12.1% while owners’ equivalent rent inched up only 4.7%. OER understated actual rent inflation that people felt in their bank accounts by 61% in a little over three years.

Housing accounts for 30% of CPI, and understating inflation in housing will cut overall CPI by a big chunk. Actual inflation in housing costs is still there, but you can’t see it in the official numbers, on the government principle that hidden inflation is the best inflation.

It eats up your bank deposits and your wages and the value of your Treasuries and everything else you own. It pushes you into higher tax brackets though tax brackets are indexed to CPI – the hidden bracket creep.

Any government or corporate programs, pensions, and benefits that are indexed to CPI will gradually become less costly to the government or the corporation, and less valuable to you. The savings to them over time are huge. And best of all, understating inflation overstates “real” economic growth as measured by inflation-adjusted GDP. It’s the perfect solution for economies that are mired down.

Consumers, workers, and taxpayers are getting shafted without knowing about it. And the Fed doesn’t use CPI as inflation gauge for its purposes. It uses PCE, which understates inflation even more (chart). And so it can carry on its scorched-earth monetary policy while loudly proclaiming that inflation is below “target.” Hidden inflation is simply perfect.

Nevertheless, the Fed has embarked on a rate-hike cacophony. But ebullient markets are in no mood to listen and are pricing in “a later liftoff date” for the federal funds rate and a slower pace of tightening than FOMC participants themselves, the Fed finds. And it frets that the disconnect could cause financial instability. Read…   To Avert Sudden Market Collapse, the Fed Tries to Spook Utterly Unspookable Markets

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1qKehiE testosteronepit

Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

In the wake of non-stop propaganda from politicians of both parties, as well as a mainstream media desperate for ratings, the American public is finally terrified enough to support another war in the Middle East. This is an unfortunate development I lamented in yesterday’s post: The American Public: A Tough Soldier or a Chicken Hawk Cowering in a Cubicle? Some Thoughts on ISIS Intervention.

With just 6% of likely U.S. voters thinking Congress is doing a good or excellent job according to a recent Rasmussen poll, it’s no surprise to see so many of these corrupt clowns falling over one another to appear tough on ISIS, using myriad hyperbolic and Orwellian statements.

Let’s start with Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) who decided to see if she could take crazy to a whole other level:

“There’s been no pushback against the Islamic State and they have made breathtaking advances. We haven’t seen anything like this since Hitler and the blitzkrieg in World War II

 

The Islamic State have declared war against the infidel, they have declared war against the U.S.”

Well Rep. Bachmann, perhaps ISIS wouldn’t be so successful if not for our allies funding it, in addition to its use of U.S. military hardware. But of course those arms must’ve just immaculately conceived themselves out of thin air in the desserts of Mesopotamia.

You think that’s bad, how about this one from Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Middle East and North Africa:

“I’m glad people have this 9/11 mentality again.”

This brings up a whole host of followup questions. Why is she glad that people have this 9/11 mentality again? I can’t think of a single positive trend that has happened within the U.S. since September 11, 2001. However, I can think of several awful trends. Let’s name a few:

1) The destruction of the middle class amid a horrible economy.

 

2) The shredding of the Constitution in the name of security, yet the intelligence services have stopped zero terrorist attacks with all their invasive spying since 9/11.

 

3) The militarization of the domestic police force.

 

4) Enormous expansion of our national debt to fund an imperial military presence overseas.

 

5) Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dead human beings overseas and several countries destroyed beyond recognition (Iraq and Libya) in order to win a “war on terror,” which 13 years later is obviously no closer to being won.

Shall I go on?

But sure, I can see how an environment of fear is in the best interest of corrupt politicians with a 6% approval rating.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/X7z0kA Tyler Durden