another site
In the
past three weeks, the president has made it clear how he plans to
run the executive branch of the federal government in the next
three years: with a pen and a phone. Andrew Napolitano asks
pressing questions: How dangerous is a president who wants to rule
by pen and phone? Where will he strike next? How will this end?
Will this deliver us to tyranny?
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A 16-year-old boy,
who wasn’t named by local media, has been charged with felony and
misdemeanor indecent
exposure after mooning a bus full of students in Prescott,
Arizona.
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Gold rose $3.20 or 0.25% yesterday to $1,257.90/oz. Silver rose $0.36 or 1.8% to $19.85/oz.
Gold is marginally higher in all currencies today. Gold appears to consolidating above the $1,250 level and strong support is at $1,200/oz.
Gold in US Dollars, 1 Year – (Bloomberg)
Demand for physical gold and silver remains robust. The U.S. Mint has raised its silver coin supply to 850,000 ounces this week. That compares with 761,000 1 ounce American Silver Eagle coins allocated last week, Michael White, a spokesman at the U.S. Mint, told Bloomberg. Sales by the mint last month rose to 4.775 million ounces from 1.2 million ounces in December.
The World Gold Council has confirmed that the all-in production costs to produce one ounce of gold is around $1,200 an ounce. A drop below that level for a sustained period of time would have a significant effect on miners’ production, World Gold Council Director of Investment Research Juan Carlos Artigas said yesterday.
If gold dips below $1,200 per ounce for a “sustained” period, serious production cutbacks are likely.
About 30% of the gold mining industry becomes unprofitable if prices fall below that threshold, the council estimates.
Massive capital writedowns from 2013, from the world’s largest gold miner Barrick Gold Corp. (TSE:ABX) among others, could also “impair future production for some miners,” said the council’s 2014 outlook.
Global mine production is likely to hit 2,980 tons in 2013, up 4% from the year before. Gold mines can take years to come online, up to 20 years after deposits are first discovered. The industry is also beset by a shortage of qualified mining engineers.
“There’s a real cost of getting it out of the ground. And that cost has to be accounted for” said the Council. The council’s view adds to existing research highlighting $1,200 per ounce as a key price threshold.
Declining scrap or recycled gold supply, which fell to a five-year low in 2013, exacerbates a “tight supply picture”, said Artigas.
Find out why Singapore is now one of the safest places in the world to store gold in our latest gold guide – Essential Guide To Storing Gold In Singapore
via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1iv9DP3 GoldCore
Submitted by Zahchary Zeck of The Diplomat,
As many Diplomat contributors have noted, in recent months many have sought to draw comparisons between Asia today and Europe in the run-up to WWI.
Most notably, in a widely covered speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos last month, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe compared his country’s current bilateral relationship with China to that of England and Germany before WWI. Specifically, Abe used the example of London and Berlin before WWI to warn that China and Japan’s extensive economic ties do not necessarily preclude them from going to war.
Now it appears that some in Asia believe the current regional environment is more similar to Europe just before WWII. However, there appears to be some disagreement over which country in Asia most resembles Nazi Germany.
For the Philippines, it is China that most resembles Nazi Germany. In an interview with The New York Times on Tuesday, President Benigno S. Aquino III called on the international community to provide his country with more assistance in its ongoing dispute with China over parts of the South China Sea. To bolster his case, Aquino compared the threat the Philippines faces from China today to the one Czechoslovakia faced from Nazi Germany immediately before WWII.
“If we say yes to something we believe is wrong now, what guarantee is there that the wrong will not be further exacerbated down the line?” The New York Times quoted Aquino as saying. “At what point do you say, ‘Enough is enough’? Well, the world has to say it — remember that the Sudetenland was given in an attempt to appease Hitler to prevent World War II.”
North Korea disagrees, however, instead asserting that it is Japan who is most like Nazi Germany and Prime Minister Abe that most resembles an Asian Hitler. In an editorial on Tuesday, North Korea’s state media responded to Japan’s recent call for dialogue by writing:
“Their rash acts evoking much criticism in Asia have something in common with the war hysteria whipped up by Hitler in Germany after its defeat in the First World War.
“As well known, the First World War ended with the collapse of militarism in Germany, but fascist maniac Hitler’s assumption to power plunged many nations of the world into the bloodbath of another world war.
“Prompted by the wild ambition for reoccupying former colonies and, furthermore, building up a new vast empire in the world, Hitler had incited ultra-chauvinism and revanchism and restored the economy serving only for war in Germany. Over-heated in reinvasion, Hitler annexed neighboring countries one after another and, after all, unleashed the Second World War.
“Abe’s reckless moves are little different to those of Hitler.”
This follows the People’s Daily editorial team last month responding to PM Abe’s controversial visit to Yasukuni shrine by calling the shrine “a symbol of Asian Nazism/Fascism.” The editorial also spoke of Abe’s “veneration of eastern Nazis,” referring to the Class-A war criminals buried at the Yasukuni shrine.
Sadly, this isn’t the first time Asian nations have played the Nazi game. In 2010 The Diplomat highlighted comments made by then-former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that implied China’s strategic doctrine was similar to the one pursued by Hitler and Nazi Germany.
via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1avUQUQ Tyler Durden
The US minimum wage has been a common news topic lately – increasing its sound and fury since President Obama's State of the Union proclamation of a rise in federal employee minimum wages to $10.10 (from $7.25). While obviously a contentious political issue, one question keeps coming up – will this help? As BofAML notes in a recent report, a simple back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that the rise in wages from a minimum wage increase would amount to fractions of a percentage point on macroenomic data. There simply are not enough people working at (or below, since some jobs are exempted) the minimum wage to have a noticeable impact on the total wage bill and in the end, there are just too few people, earning far too little, at the minimum wage to meaningful affect aggregate macroeconomic statistics. So why is he doing it?
Via BofAML:
The Chart below shows the limited coverage of minimum wages upon the labor force.
According to BLS data, in 2012 there were just over 129mn wage and salary earners in the US, and a little less than 3.6mn were paid at or below the federal minimum on an hourly basis. In other words, only about 2.8% of US wage earners were paid at or below the minimum wage. This share has risen in recent years, likely due to increases in the statutory minimum from 2007 and 2009, as well as the recession pushing some workers into low-paying jobs. Even restricted to just hourly workers, of which there were about 75mn in 2012, according to the BLS, less than 5% are paid at or below the minimum.
To figure out the effect of a minimum wage increase on wages in the aggregate, we have to make a few approximations for unavailable data. First, the share of workers at or below the minimum appears to have been trending slightly lower — as one might expect as the economy recovers — but let’s be conservative and assume it still stands at 2.8% today. Next, we need to figure out the share of wages, not persons, being paid at the minimum. Since those at the minimum wage are earning less than those above, less than 2.8% of wages are at the minimum — in fact, well less.
Chart 1 shows the minimum wage as a share of the prevailing hourly wage for private production and nonsupervisory workers. We plot this measure as it has a long history, which shows that the current share of around a third is not particularly high. The average wage across all workers in 2013 was about US$24/hour — nearly US$4/hour higher than production and non-supervisory workers.
But, as Chart 2 shows, average wages vary significantly across sectors — as do the relative sizes of each sector, shown as the share of total private sector hours along the horizontal axis.
For the sake of argument, let’s assume that the minimum wage does increase from the current US$7.25/hour to the proposed US$10.10/hour. That is a US$2.85/hour increase, or 39%! Surely that has to be inflationary?
Not necessarily. As a rough approximation, US$2.85 on a US$24 average hourly wage is nearly a 12% gain. But with just 2.8% of wages subject to the minimum, the overall impact is a 0.33% increase in average hourly earnings. This is very unlikely to be noticeable at all in the wage, let alone the inflation, data. If we use the 5.5% from the prior paragraph, the impact would be doubled, but still less than a percentage point increase in average hourly wages. Of course, these are very simple computations, but this exercise gives useful ballpark figures.
The minimum wage increases that have been enacted at the state level this year are smaller in size — the largest, a US$1.00/hour increase, brings the minimum wage for New Jersey to US$8.25/hour. This is only a little more than a 4% increase in the average hourly wage, so even if 8% of the workforce was affected, the impact on wages would still be just 0.33%.
In the end, there are just too few people, earning far too little, at the minimum wage to meaningful affect aggregate macroeconomic statistics
So one has to ask – if the rise in the minimum wage has begligble effects on growth or inflation and has the potential to price some out of the employment market – why is President Obama so insistent on its occurrence?
via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1jhk8cq Tyler Durden
The US minimum wage has been a common news topic lately – increasing its sound and fury since President Obama's State of the Union proclamation of a rise in federal employee minimum wages to $10.10 (from $7.25). While obviously a contentious political issue, one question keeps coming up – will this help? As BofAML notes in a recent report, a simple back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that the rise in wages from a minimum wage increase would amount to fractions of a percentage point on macroenomic data. There simply are not enough people working at (or below, since some jobs are exempted) the minimum wage to have a noticeable impact on the total wage bill and in the end, there are just too few people, earning far too little, at the minimum wage to meaningful affect aggregate macroeconomic statistics. So why is he doing it?
Via BofAML:
The Chart below shows the limited coverage of minimum wages upon the labor force.
According to BLS data, in 2012 there were just over 129mn wage and salary earners in the US, and a little less than 3.6mn were paid at or below the federal minimum on an hourly basis. In other words, only about 2.8% of US wage earners were paid at or below the minimum wage. This share has risen in recent years, likely due to increases in the statutory minimum from 2007 and 2009, as well as the recession pushing some workers into low-paying jobs. Even restricted to just hourly workers, of which there were about 75mn in 2012, according to the BLS, less than 5% are paid at or below the minimum.
To figure out the effect of a minimum wage increase on wages in the aggregate, we have to make a few approximations for unavailable data. First, the share of workers at or below the minimum appears to have been trending slightly lower — as one might expect as the economy recovers — but let’s be conservative and assume it still stands at 2.8% today. Next, we need to figure out the share of wages, not persons, being paid at the minimum. Since those at the minimum wage are earning less than those above, less than 2.8% of wages are at the minimum — in fact, well less.
Chart 1 shows the minimum wage as a share of the prevailing hourly wage for private production and nonsupervisory workers. We plot this measure as it has a long history, which shows that the current share of around a third is not particularly high. The average wage across all workers in 2013 was about US$24/hour — nearly US$4/hour higher than production and non-supervisory workers.
But, as Chart 2 shows, average wages vary significantly across sectors — as do the relative sizes of each sector, shown as the share of total private sector hours along the horizontal axis.
For the sake of argument, let’s assume that the minimum wage does increase from the current US$7.25/hour to the proposed US$10.10/hour. That is a US$2.85/hour increase, or 39%! Surely that has to be inflationary?
Not necessarily. As a rough approximation, US$2.85 on a US$24 average hourly wage is nearly a 12% gain. But with just 2.8% of wages subject to the minimum, the overall impact is a 0.33% increase in average hourly earnings. This is very unlikely to be noticeable at all in the wage, let alone the inflation, data. If we use the 5.5% from the prior paragraph, the impact would be doubled, but still less than a percentage point increase in average hourly wages. Of course, these are very simple computations, but this exercise gives useful ballpark figures.
The minimum wage increases that have been enacted at the state level this year are smaller in size — the largest, a US$1.00/hour increase, brings the minimum wage for New Jersey to US$8.25/hour. This is only a little more than a 4% increase in the average hourly wage, so even if 8% of the workforce was affected, the impact on wages would still be just 0.33%.
In the end, there are just too few people, earning far too little, at the minimum wage to meaningful affect aggregate macroeconomic statistics
So one has to ask – if the rise in the minimum wage has begligble effects on growth or inflation and has the potential to price some out of the employment market – why is President Obama so insistent on its occurrence?
via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1jhk8cq Tyler Durden
It would seem, in the case of momo-chasing levered fast-money flows, that Propertius was correct – “fickleness has always befriended the beautiful…” and Japanese stocks are no longer the once beautiful trend that Abe had promised them to be. A tapering of the US flow; a ripple across the bow of emerging markets; and suddenly Kyle Bass’ sarcastically-named “macro tourists” are running for exits as Shakespeare himself once wrote, “was ever feather so lightly blown to and fro as this multitude.” Historical quotations aside, the last time flow swung so violently negative, the Nikkei ended up losing 55% in the next 18 months. We love the smell of nay-sayers in the morning…
Foreigners sold the most Japanese stocks last week since 2010 and before that since the credit crisis started to implode…
This outflow was 3x the size of the entire selling following the tumble in May/June last year.
and just in case you are banking on that flowing back to the US… think again – as we are trying to explain – it’s not real money, it’s credit-created leverage…
The ironists among market punters will even attempt to construe all this as a reason to buy more developed world stocks on the premise that the money flooding out of such places as Thailand, the Ukraine, Turkey, and Argentina will be parked in the S&P and the DAX (perhaps overlooking the fact that the purchase price of these now-unwanted positions was most likely borrowed, meaning that their liquidation will also extinguish the associated credit, not re-allocate it).
A gentle reminder of days gone by when rational investors roamed the markets…
Charts: Bloomberg
via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1bwBw8a Tyler Durden
“The market is way overdue for a 20 to 30% drop,” Marc Faber warns, “but that is not what worries him.” Sarcastically reflecting on the typical talking-head that appears on financial media, Faber adds you won’t “hear this view from someone who is fully invested,” as he “hopes the market drops 40% so stocks will become – from a value point of view – attractive.” The outspoken Faber channels Jim Grant as he exclaims, “the experience with quantitative easing is a complete failure. It has lifted asset prices and created asset inflation, but it hasn’t lifted the standard of living of most people in the U.S. nor worldwide.”
“I think the market is way overdue for a 20 to 30 percent correction,”
“nothing worries me… In fact, I’m hoping for the market to drop 40 percent so stocks will again become—from a value point of view—attractive.”
“But that is not the view of someone who is fully invested—obviously not.”
“Stocks are by-and-large fully priced“
“I think the experience with quantitative easing is a complete failure. It has lifted asset prices and created asset inflation, but it hasn’t lifted the standard of living of most people in the U.S. nor worldwide.”
On the chance of a bounce (and what next?)
“If the rebound fails around 1,820 [on the S&P 500] and then the market starts to drift again on the downside, and we see important shares for the market such as General Motors, GE, MMM, Coke … failing to make new highs, then I think we can assume that something more serious is in the offing.”
via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1e4J0vS Tyler Durden
“The market is way overdue for a 20 to 30% drop,” Marc Faber warns, “but that is not what worries him.” Sarcastically reflecting on the typical talking-head that appears on financial media, Faber adds you won’t “hear this view from someone who is fully invested,” as he “hopes the market drops 40% so stocks will become – from a value point of view – attractive.” The outspoken Faber channels Jim Grant as he exclaims, “the experience with quantitative easing is a complete failure. It has lifted asset prices and created asset inflation, but it hasn’t lifted the standard of living of most people in the U.S. nor worldwide.”
“I think the market is way overdue for a 20 to 30 percent correction,”
“nothing worries me… In fact, I’m hoping for the market to drop 40 percent so stocks will again become—from a value point of view—attractive.”
“But that is not the view of someone who is fully invested—obviously not.”
“Stocks are by-and-large fully priced“
“I think the experience with quantitative easing is a complete failure. It has lifted asset prices and created asset inflation, but it hasn’t lifted the standard of living of most people in the U.S. nor worldwide.”
On the chance of a bounce (and what next?)
“If the rebound fails around 1,820 [on the S&P 500] and then the market starts to drift again on the downside, and we see important shares for the market such as General Motors, GE, MMM, Coke … failing to make new highs, then I think we can assume that something more serious is in the offing.”
via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1e4J0vS Tyler Durden
Wednesday night episodes of The
Independents, as a
perusal through the Reason
archives will
attest, tend to be chock full of
libertarian red meat. Tonight is no different.
Batting leadoff, playing natural-rights field (ducks),
is Fox News
Senior Judicial Analyst and Reason.com
columnist Andrew Napolitano, who will talk about 1) CVS’
decision to stop selling cigarettes, and whether that’s an example
of a
private business living life by its own lights, or an example
of a
lobbying heavyweight working the borderline between P.R. and
corporatism; 2) the move by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) to
make Attorney General Eric Holder disclose the administration’s
legal rationales for Barack Obama’s once and future executive
orders; and 3) an outrageous Circuit Court decision allowing the
city of Orlando to
eminent domain a church (!) and give it to a Major League
Soccer franchise (!!!!).
In the two-hole come TV’s
Andy Levy of Red Eye fame plus
“Conservative Black
Chick” Crystal
Wright, who will discuss the latest developments and
pharmacological hysteria over the heroin overdose of Philip
Seymour Hoffman, and also the news that New York Mayor Bill de
Blasio is creating
new school days off in honor of Muslim and Asian holidays. The
third hitter, fittingly, is Liberty Movement superstar
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky), who will talk about 1) the
latest Edward Snowden/Glenn Greenwald
nonsense emanating from House Intelligence Committee Chairman
Mike Rogers (R-Wisc.); 2) the latest
promising developments in the fight to roll back mandatory
minimums for drug sentencing; 3) whether he’s ready to go full
legalization; and 4) his weird & wonderful off-the-grid farm. (Speaking
of the latter, that’s the theme of Friday’s show, which will
discuss Bitcoin, preppers, sovereign cities, and all kinds of
wonderful don’t-track-me-bro arcana.)
Beloved Reason Foundation Senior Analyst
Shikha Dalmia comes on to talk about the latest in
immigration-reform politics, and whether Roger L. Simon’s
modest proposal to withhold voting privileges for amnestied
illegal immigrants is a clever way to depoliticize the issue. There
will also be discussion of the latest awful farm bill,
the
latest idiot e-cigarette ban, the proposed upcoming boxing
match between
George Zimmerman and the rapper DMX, and the school that
wants to ban the advertisement for banning guns at school
because it shows a gun, at school.
And to put a cherry on that sundae, there will be a second
installment of Two Minutes Hate, a reading of your worst viewer
mail. Send your tweeted appreciations out to @IndependentsFBN!
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