LIR – Watch Oil. Watch America.

Baltic Dry Index. 706 +02LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programsEuropean creditor countries are demanding 38 specific changes in Greek tax, spending and wage policies by the end of this month and have laid out extra reforms that amount to micromanaging the country’s government for two years, according to documents obtained by the Financial Times.Another Friday and another opportunity for Greece to come to its senses and repudiate the shameful deal Germany forced on Greece at the start of the week. As further details come out, according to the Financial Times, Greece has till the

LIR – Delusion.

Baltic Dry Index. 706 -09LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programsOn Tuesday morning, private and official lenders to Greece made extra concessions that should bring down Greeces debts from the levels cited in the report. But that didnt soften criticism that even a glum IMF assessment lacked credibility. Sony Kapoor, managing director of Re-Define, a financial think tank, said the IMF had engaged in arithmetical gymnastics to produce the assumptions to get Greeces debttarget down to the targeted 120.5% of gross domestic product by 2020—a level many analysts still consider too high. Greek government debt

LIR – Greece Wiped Out.

Baltic Dry Index. 715 -02LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programsFirst they came for the communists,and I didnt speak out because I wasnt a communist.Then they came for the trade unionists,and I didnt speak out because I wasnt a trade unionist.Then they came for the Jews,and I didnt speak out because I wasnt a Jew.Then they came for meand there was no one left to speak out for me.Pastor Martin NiemöllerAfter 182 years, Greece is an independent state no more. The giant German financial war machine that is now effectively in control of Euroland, crushed

LIR –Confusion on G-Day.

Baltic Dry Index. 717 -06LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programsThere is no chance that free enterprise can pick up the slack in the foreseeable future as the state is dismantled, even if premier Lucas Papademos reaches a debt deal with Germany’s Wolfgang Schäuble and staves off default in March. Germany loves Greece, Germany loves Greece not. Germany loves Greece….? And so goes the never ending, never quite happening, “final” bailout of Greece. We have arrived at yet another “G-Day” EU Finance Ministers summit on Greece and it’s anyone’s guess whether Greece will be bailout

LIR – Germany Blinks!

Baltic Dry Index. 723 -08LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programsOne of the queries Quakers are asked to consider, is: Do you maintain strict integrity in your business transactions and in your relations with individuals and organizations? Are you personally scrupulous and responsible in the use of money entrusted to you, and are you careful not to defraud the public revenue?Probably why there a no Quakers on Wall Street. With rising disgust across Europe at Germany’s diktats on Greece, and visible daily increasing signs of distress among the Greek public, German politicians blinked first yesterday

LIR – Get Out!

Baltic Dry Index. 731 -03LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programsOf all the contrivances for cheating the laboring classes of mankind, none has been more effective than that which deludes them with paper money. Daniel WebsterGermany seems to be orchestrating the forced exit of Greece from the monetary union. Probably Portugal and Spain too. Cyprus might have to exit with Greece. The German government seems to have decided on what’s fixable and what’s not. Belgium, France and Italy are fixable. Greece, Portugal and Spain are not, at least in the sense of staying in the

LIR – “You’re fired!”

Baltic Dry Index. 734 +05LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programsIf the Greek people or the Greek political elite do not apply all of these conditions, I think they exclude themselves from the eurozone. The impact on other countries now will be less important than a year ago.Luc Frieden, Luxembourgs foreign minister, 14/02/2012.Given that there is no exit mechanism in the rules of the European monetary union, Germany and its lesser allies, seems to have adopted a plan to force Greece out of the Eurozone. There is no other way to interpret yesterday’s actions. Even

Grexit...........Inevitability?

There is a sense of inevitability about the Greek situation thats thoroughly disappointing. I say so because after muddling through for the last 2 years with band-aids applied to the deep structural wounds of the Greek economy, its quite evident that even if the next payment, now agreed upon by the Troika is made, Greece has no way to go but out. The one size fits all Euro is throttling it. Unemployment is in seriously high double digits, the public sector (the backbone of the economy) has taken huge hits in terms of employment et al and continues to

LIR – Fiat Chaos.

Baltic Dry Index. 729 +14LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programsSAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Moodys Investors Service late Monday lowered ratings on Italy, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia and Malta by one notch and slashed Spains sovereign rating by two notches. The ratings agency also cut the outlook on France, the United Kingdom and Austria to negative but kept their ratings at triple-A for the time being. The moves reflect the susceptibility of the countries to the growing financial and macroeconomic risks emanating from the euro-area crisis and how these risks exacerbate the affected countries own specific

LIR – Greece Surrenders.

Baltic Dry Index. 715 +20LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programsGold was not selected arbitrarily by governments to be the monetary standard. Gold had developed for many centuries on the free market as the best money; as the commodity providing the most stable and desirable monetary medium. Murray N. RothbardWith the Greek surrender widely covered in the mainstream media, we’ll confine ourselves with the observations of the Telegraph’s Ambrose Evans-Pritchard. Since the new deal doesn’t actually address the problem Greece faces, it needs to devalue against northern Europe, my guess is that Greece is still

LIR – Greece Death Spiral.

Baltic Dry Index. 676 +16LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs“In short: no disbursement without implementation,” Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker said in Brussels late yesterday after chairing emergency talks of euro-area policy makers. He set another extraordinary meeting for Feb. 15. Greece has been saved (again). All that is needed to get another 130 billion euro bailout, is a mere 325 million of new austerity cuts. No one believes it of course. The Greeks will announce another 325 million of fictitious austerity cuts, Greek unions will stage yet another general strike that will only

LIR – Trouble Ahead?

Baltic Dry Index. 676 +16LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programsThe great merit of gold is precisely that it is scarce; that its quantity is limited by nature; that it is costly to discover, to mine, and to process; and that it cannot be created by political fiat or caprice. Henry HazlittPride comes before a fall, goes the old saying. Berlin rules, OK! Well maybe not. Having slammed the Eurozone into a Berlin imposed super austerity regime, the lesser Europeans seem to be buying less from Germany. The lesser Europeans maybe untermenschen to Berlin’s ubermensche,

LIR –Greece Written Off?

Baltic Dry Index. 660 +12 LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programsMr Buiter said some creditor powers clearly wish to see Greece thrown out to set an example and teach a sobering lesson in moral hazard.Has Greece been written off by the Eurozone? From London this morning it rather looks like they have been. Greece seems to have dithered too long. The Germans and their allies have lost patience. Go and be gone, they seem to be signalling, presumably reckoning that they can handle any problems in their banks. But in Paris this new German

LIR –BDI Rallies!

Baltic Dry Index. 648 +01 LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programsWith the exception only of the period of the gold standard, practically all governments of history have used their exclusive power to issue money to defraud and plunder the people. F.A. von HayekFor the first time in about 7 weeks the Baltic Dry Index managed a rally. Yes it was only one point, but we are starting out from a lower level than that that hit after the Lehman crash. Too many ships are now chasing business in a world economy that’s visibly slowing,

LIR – Pink Slime

Baltic Dry Index. 647 -04 LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs“But it [the boom] could not last forever even if inflation and credit expansion were to go on endlessly. It would then encounter the barriers which prevent the boundless expansion of circulation credit. It would lead to the crack-up boom and the breakdown of the whole monetary system.”Ludwig von MisesFor more on “pink slime” and McDonald’s burgers scroll down to Crooks Corner.Another 24 hours to save Greece from default. But Greece never defaults. Another round of bailout talks has come and gone, with neither

LIR – Grain Crisis Looms.

Baltic Dry Index. 651 -11 LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programsA single currency is about the politics of Europe. It is about a Federal Europe by the back door. John Major, British Conservative politician, Prime Minister 1991-1997 Another day and more of the same. Europe dithers, Greece gets nearer to exiting the Euro via a messy default, the global economy slows as the Baltic Dry Index plunges below its 2008 low. Stay long physical precious metals. All the worlds money creation in an attempt to revive the western economies hasn’t worked yet, but still

Comment - RUN>>>>>>>>>>>

Are we there yet on this Greek crisis? Its never ending. We were promised resolution by last weekend, then it was going to be sometime this week, now its nest week. It does sound as though resolution is around the corner; but I fear it will all be for naught. I have been looking for something definitive by way of an answer thats fully bracketed that reflects to the market that this approach represents a meaningful way forward. My somewhat cynical attitude however keeps insisting that it may not be the case. A quick summary would be as follows:

LIR – BDI At New Low.

Baltic Dry Index. 662 -18 LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programsRecent central bank behavior, including that of the U.S. Fed, provides assurances that short and intermediate yields will not change, and therefore bond prices are not likely threatened on the downside. Still, zero-bound money may kill as opposed to create credit. Developed economies where these low yields reside may suffer accordingly. It may as well, induce inflationary distortions that give a rise to commodities and gold as store of value alternatives when there is little value left in paper. Bill Gross. Co Founder of

LIR – Madness.

Baltic Dry Index. 680 -22 LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programsThe European Commissioner has told us this would cost Europe half a million jobs. Now when were all fighting for jobs and for growth, to do something that would cost so many jobs does seem to me to be extraordinary.And in the spirit of this healthy competition with France, if France goes for a financial transactions tax then the door will be open and well be able to welcome many more French banks, businesses and others to the UK.Well expand our economy in that

LIR – Euro Rout Looms.

Baltic Dry Index. 702 -24 LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programsThe Compagnia dei Bardi was a Florentine banking and trading company which was started by the Bardi family. The Bardi company was one of three major Florentine banking companies (called super-companies by some modern scholars) that assembled large amounts of capital and established wide-ranging, diversified business networks, doing business throughout the Mediterranean and in England. The Bardi traded oil and wine, and had close economic ties to southern Italy and Sicily. Their chief product, however, was high-quality woolen cloth. The Bardi were the largest

LIR – Germany Puts The Boot In.

Baltic Dry Index. 726 -27 LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programsGermanys demands have sparked fury in Greece, with education minister Anna Diamantopoulou calling them the product of a sick imagination and finance minister Evangelos Venizelos claiming on Sunday that the country, with €350bn debts, was capable of sticking to its promises. Our partners know that European unification is founded on the institutional equality of member states and respect for national identity, he said before heading to a Brussels summit already threatened by strikes from three Belgian transport unions. The Telegraph January 30 2012 It’s

LIR – Recovery? What Recovery?

Baltic Dry Index. 784 -24 LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programsJohn Bull can stand many things, but he cannot stand two per cent.Walter Bagehot.For more on John Bull and two per cent scroll down to Crooks Corner. Are ultra-low interest rates helping or hurting the global economies? Is ultra-low, too low to stimulate growth? Are ultra-low interest rates self-defeating?Is America’s relative boom real? While Europe stays mired in what looks to be a double dip recession, America had shown weak signs of building on a recovery. Yesterday that recovery was shaken, stirred and rocked.

LIR – “Capitalism’s Broken.”

Baltic Dry Index. 784 -24 LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programs640K ought to be enough for anybody.Bill Gates, 1981 Another day, more posturing by Europe’s vainglorious inept politicians, but still no sign of relief for Club Med, nor of Club Med facing up to the reality that either they or Germany must leave the snake bit European Currency Union. We open with yesterday’s developments. For the first time Chancellor Merkel seems ready to toss the work and tax shy Greeks out of the currency union. Stay long physical precious metals. Greeks, Iberians and Italians

LIR – Doom, Gloom, Default.

Baltic Dry Index. 807 -34 LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE programsThis sucker could go down.George W. Bush. Is Greece being set up to forced default? It seems that way to me at least. The banksters can run thorugh the numbers as well as anyone, and it’s obvious that Greece has to default at some point. But a default is best done early and suddenly. Right after Greece has received whatever new currency it’s going to impose and right after a deal is struck with the ECB over Greek issued euros. More and more it

Comment : Brinkmanship, Stalemate & Revulsion!

We seem to be currently experiencing an even more intense form of the risk-on/risk-off mentality that represented the year that was 2011 . The Greek talks on debt restructuring are once again the central fulcrum for market reaction. The rates complex has increasingly dismissed any serious repercussions as yields slowly creep higher and yield curve plays are entered into. Nonetheless the restructuring talks are hardly complete and as an evident game of brinkmanship is played out almost publically between the various stakeholders in this negotiation, it increasingly begs the question whether it would not simply be best to allow