A bit later this AM, the June ISM service sector numbers came out and that also helped to confirm that strong jobs number. The employment component of that series came in at 54.4 against a 52.4 reading in May.
Stocks loved the number as the Dow rose above 17000. The S&P 500 and the Russell 2000 both moved higher as well. Any time weakness appears and it looks as if the Bears are finally going to get their day in the sun, back up these equity markets go only to set another new all time high. It is nothing short of astonishing. Fighting the tape has been a fool's errand when it comes to these equity markets.
The VIX, or Volatility Index ( I prefer to call it the Complacency Index ) is flirting with levels last seen in February 2007! Amazing!
The yield on the Ten Year rose as high as 2.69%. According to one of the CME markets, the odds of a rate hike by the Fed at its June 2015 FOMC meeting rose to 57%. Yesterday the odds were 51%. Last month the odds were 43%. It is clear that the a majority are coming around to the view that higher rates are in store next year. If the market becomes convinced that the Fed is going to be able to stay on top of any nascent inflationary pressures, gold is going to lose some of its current friends.
I suspect that today's strong number is going to shift more of the focus on the wages numbers coming our way in the future. Traders/investors are going to want to see some evidence of wage inflation. So far they do not seem concerned. As long as that is the case, the Fed can remain accommodative and will not be in a hurry to kick rates higher. Still, one can clearly see a subtle shift coming in regards to sentiment towards higher rates.
As far as gold is concerned, the metal looks as if geopolitical events in Iraq are continuing to provide some support. The stronger Dollar coming on the heels of the payrolls number, provided pressure. The lack of wage inflation did likewise. However, while the market bent, it did not break. The geopolitical premium remains. Also, while I have noticed that the TIPS spread has weakened somewhat this week, it is still up near 6 month highs.
If grain prices continue to work lower, it will be up to the energy complex to bring support to the commodity sector as far as inflationary aspects are concerned. Right now crude is continuing to weaken and has fallen down near that support zone I noted on the crude chart I put up in yesterday's post.
Coffee, sugar, cotton, soybeans, wheat and corn are all lower today - along with crude, heating oil and unleaded gasoline. Cattle are strongly higher as news hit the market after the close of pit session trading yesterday of a record $1.58 paid for cattle in the Southern Plains. I had to double check that price print as I thought I was hallucinating. WOW! those who have cattle to sell are sitting very pretty right now. By the way, as a side note, I just picked up my brisket for my July 4th barbeque - GREAT GOOGLY MOOGLY! I wonder how it now compares to caviar as far as price per ounce? AS I have said before in many posts - there is not going to be much if any relief in sight for meat prices for the remainder of this summer. We are going to have to wait for the 4th quarter, but especially for Q1 2015 for any significant relief.
On the currency front - ECB President Draghi was out making some dovish comments once again. Those, while not the main mover in the Forex arena, certainly did nothing to soothe any Euro bulls. One gets the distinct impression, especially after today's payrolls number, that interest rates, if they are going to go up, will certainly be doing that here in the US, well before they will be over in the Eurozone. That should keep the Dollar supported at the expense of the Euro.
You can see on the chart of the long bond that prices have been falling recently and have broken the uptrend line shown. Bonds have bounced however from the support zone noted. They will need to at a bare minimum, take out that level before we can say with any degree of certainty that a serious downtrend has begun. It is too early for that right now. We will need more confirmation in the price action.
If however we begin to see a STEADY series of good payrolls numbers, along with rising wages, I fully expect this chart to break down for good. The jury is out so we wait.
Happy Independence Day ( July 4th) to my American readers ( and to anyone else who might be celebrating along with us). When I look at the incredible system of government given to us by our Founding Fathers, and then shift my attention to what we now have left of it, I fear my kids and grandkids are not going to be able to see anything remotely in common with it by the time they are grown. Liberty is precious precisely because it is so rare among the annals of human history. This generation seems to have forgotten that although one wonders if they ever knew it in the first place.
I will get some updated charts up later... busy morning...
Will be interesting to see how the kwn headlines work around this one
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure KWN doesn't take reality into account.
DeleteThey are the antithesis of objective thought.
And how about Zero Hedge? Five years of spamming with constant articles mocking the bulls, "this time its different", with attention grabbing bold letters and hysterical headlines using the words:
ReplyDelete"Plummeting"
"Lowest Ever"
"Tumbling"
"Record Lows"
"Plunging and Dropping"
"Overvalued in a Bubble"
And of course, all the:
"Presented Without Comment"
and
"Visualizing The Plunge in ______"
Yet during the entire time Zero Hedge has been in existence, with over 24,000 gloom and doom articles posted,
The market has gone straight up in the steepest, fastest ascent in modern history.
Led by consumer stocks.
Way to Go Tyler Durden!!! You fleeced millions of hedge funds who followed your lead by shorting and ended up haplessly underperforming for 5 consecutive years.
We may never know who writes for Zero Hedge (done by design), but it would not surprise me if the site can be traced back to a gov't sponsored server.
DeleteThe remnant does not believe in the markets, thus they will be the poorest ones by the time they are correct.
ZeroHedge performs a wonderful function for the gov't and globalists - whether intentional or not it it is used to totally discredit and isolate the gloomers. Anyone listening to them has lost his shirt, wife, balance sheet, child custody, job, sanity....
as for news it serves no useful function. Everything ZH writes is so slanted that it is like trying to understand the Obama regime by watching Fox.
"This generation seems to have forgotten that although one wonders if they ever knew it in the first place"
ReplyDeleteAffirmative... any connection here to 'this' headline? :
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/40-of-unemployed-workers-are-millennials-2014-07-03
Happy 4th!
Everyone have a Fun and Safe 4th of July!!
ReplyDeleteSparks...on the 4th
DeleteThe sizable selling or swapping of gold from a
ReplyDeleteCB to another (and especially London) is sure to fuel the imagination out there of all those who fervently believe "the vaults are empty" meme.
What if in all probability they're dead wrong and it's nothing more then another sensational prediction (in a long line of other predictions) by all the gold and silver Nostradamas'out there?
I suppose they can spin this India CB/gold policy as some type of desperate and manipulative effort by evil bankers bent on keeping their gold/GLD scheme alive or how London is desperate to stave off a delivery default blah, blah, blah...
Maybe the story isn't that big of a deal but it generally seems to me that large amounts of gold being sold or swapped into the international bullion market was generally gold negative.
We shall see.
"Indian gold swaps to reduce imports, ease payment pressure"
By Suvashree Dey Choudhury
MUMBAI, JULY 3 | Thu Jul 3, 2014 10:36am EDT
By Suvashree Dey Choudhury
MUMBAI, July 3 (Reuters) - A plan by India's central bank to swap old gold in its vaults for purer metal abroad that it could pledge or sell would have the added benefits of reducing gold imports and easing pressure on the balance of payments.
The Reserve Bank of India would sell relatively impure gold from its own vaults - some dating back to before independence - and receive the equivalent worth of purer yellow metal delivered to the Bank of England, under a scheme outlined on Wednesday.
The swaps would not involve money changing hands, according to three officials aware of the development.
The RBI has parked gold abroad in the past, once in the throes of the 1991 financial crisis. It did a similar swap in 1998, according to a report at the time, before Russia's default and devaluation caused a meltdown across emerging markets.
Governor Raghuram Rajan had to contend with a balance-of-payments shock when appointed last autumn and has taken several steps to improve the management of India's $315 billion of gold and foreign exchange reserves.
The old gold is held in the RBI vault at Nagpur, considered to be the geographical centre of British colonial India - in other words, about as far away as possible from the international financial system.
Holding the gold offshore would make it possible for the RBI, if needed, to raise funds using the metal as collateral, or to sell it to defend the value of the rupee.
IMPORT SUBSTITUTION
The so-called location swaps would also reduce the need for imports in gold-mad India. On average, Indians bought 2.3 tonnes of gold a day - the weight of a small elephant - until about a year ago. Most was hoarded and handed down as heirlooms to hedge against inflation.
"To the extent the banks will get the gold, they will not have to import. So this should take some pressure off gold imports," one of the officials said.
The RBI has approached several state-run, private and foreign banks and agencies to carry out the swap deal, including State Bank of India, Corporation Bank, Bank of Nova Scotia and MMTC, according to industry sources.
"The entire cost will have to be borne by the local bank," said a senior official from one private bank. In a letter, the RBI asks the banks to respond by July 15 but does not specify swap ratios or timing of the deals, the official added.
No official comment was available from the banks. The officials declined to be identified as they were not authorised to talk to the media. The RBI has officially confirmed the proposed gold swap but not elaborated on the reason for it.
The central bank in September announced steps to raise money from overseas investors and has intervened frequently since March to buy dollars, building its reserves to guard against any possible selloff of the rupee.
At the same time, India...(cont.)
Reuters.com
Any thoughts on the parsing of the numbers? I understand that 500K full times jobs were lost, and 800K part time jobs created in that month; thus the 288K jobs created number. Seems to me Obamacare's second phase effects starting on Jan 1 2015 have been seen and are being moved on. Most budgets for 2015 have been approved in the early part of June. In my county of 97K residence the projected 2015 shortfall in the public school systems budget just for their employees medical insurance was $1.2 million for next year. This because the largest employer in the county, the State University has cut spousal insurance for adjunct professors and their families, so their spouses now have to rely on their employer, the public K-12 school system for coverage. This is only the budgetary relationship between the two largest employers in the county. It I'm sure is rippling throughout the rest of the local economy on many other levels. Shedding 500K full time jobs to create 288K part time no benefit jobs seems to be a disaster to me, wall street thinks its great?
ReplyDeleteThought this might be interesting too:
Deletehttp://www.macrotrends.net/1377/u6-unemployment-rate
I am wondering is the information that 500,000 full time people dropped out of the work force and 800,000 part time jobs were created true. That will answer the question for me if we are recovering.
ReplyDeleteyes it unfortunately appears to be true. the jobs report was just more head line number propaganda. we lost 500k full time jobs to gain 800k part time jobs. the labor participation rate the lowest in 35 years...no jobs recovery especially when you back out the 125k jobs created by the birth death model and if 1 full time job equals 2 part time jobs we are barely treading water . The teenage unemployment went up.
Deletehttp://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2014/07/03/no_news_drive_by_media_spins_jobs_numbers_and_poll_showing_obama_is_the_worst_president_since_ww2
Good morning,
ReplyDeleteThough I don't believe in the accuracy of the cycle forecast of Armstrong, I like to read his blog for some informative points of views about the economy and his comparison with historical events.
His last comparison confirms that he sees the rallye in the US stock market continuying its course until end 2015. Why not? I agree about his money flow statement and that it is not driven domestically but internationally.
On the SP500, I keep watching the "tendance en ligne" on the very long 2week timescale chart, and we are perfectly inside it, with a ma20 straight and parallel to the trend, so...it may still last for months, who knows (damn, I'm going to have to read Mark's posts for that long? :))
EUR USD I still see the support at 1.35 as important between neutral and bearish.
No trade for me though, empty market and on vacation in Warsaw, so I would only make blunders. Better be out of the market when you are busy with something else. (I was stopped out from my long gold 1326 position yesterday at 1319, so basycally I'm flat everywhere for now).
Have a nice weekend and a great 4th of july, that is, for those who are not going to watch en enjoy the REAL historical event of today, which ism of course the football match of titans (lol) between France and Germany for the world cup... :)
H'mmm...
ReplyDelete"Israel ready to help Jordan fend off Iraq insurgents if asked"
By Dan Williams
JERUSALEM | Fri Jul 4, 2014 9:14am EDT
By Dan Williams
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel is ready to meet any Jordanian request to help fight off Islamist insurgents who have overrun part of neighboring Iraq, an Israeli official said on Friday, although he believed Jordan was capable of defending itself.
Jordan is one of two Arab countries - along with Egypt - to have full peace treaties with Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday praised Amman's stability while echoing Western powers in pledging support to safeguard it.
Asked to elaborate on the statement, Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz said potential Israeli assistance could include sending troops or arms, though he saw that as unlikely.
"We have an interest in ensuring that Jordan does not fall to, or be penetrated by, groups like al Qaeda or Hamas or ISIS," he told Reuters.
"If, God forbid, there is a need, if such a request comes, if there is an emergency situation, then of course Israel will extend all help required. "Israel will not allow groups like ISIS to take over Jordan."
ISIS, or ISIL as it also known, are radical Sunni Islamist insurgents who have seized much of northern and western Iraq, which has borders with Syria and Jordan.
Steinitz drew a comparison with Israel's willingness to intervene during 1970 border skirmishes between Syria and Jordan as Amman cracked down on Palestinian guerrillas on its turf.
"Israel said it would take action against the Syrian tank brigades that invaded Jordan, but what happened is exactly what I assess would happen now, too - the Jordanian army managed on its own to to halt the Syrian advance and destroy dozens of Syrian tanks and the Syrian army withdrew."
Today's Jordanian military similarly did not require help, Steinitz said, "as they are sufficiently professional and determined".
Following in Egypt's footsteps, the Hashemite kingdom made peace with Israel in 1994. But the countries had maintained discreet security ties since the early 1970s, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said in a Feb. 19 speech in Jerusalem.
Jordan's embassy in Israel declined comment on possible security coordination with the Netanyahu government.
Reuters.com
It's only a matter of time before the Egyptian armed forces start massing troops and pick what side their allied with.
Expect the Sinai to flare up again.
Food for thought...
ReplyDeleteJuly 4, 2014, 11:16 a.m. EDT
"Gold might be up this year, but it’s worth only $800"
Analysis: Forecaster who correctly predicted a big drop says gold may fall even more.
By Mark Hulbert, MarketWatch
The gold bugs are stirring.
A 10% gain by the yellow metal this year is rekindling hope among long-suffering bulls that the major bear market that began nearly three years ago finally might be over.
They argue that gold will continue to rise because investors will be seeking a hedge against rising inflation, currency fluctuations and geopolitical uncertainty.
Yet according to Duke University finance professor Campbell Harvey, one of academia’s leading experts on gold prices, the odds are poor that the metal will return any time soon to its all-time high in August 2011. That month, the spot Comex gold contract reached an intraday high of $1,929.20, more than $600 above Thursday’s settle price of $1,320.40.
He puts gold’s fair value today at a little higher than $800.
A valuation model Harvey proposed in a National Bureau of Economic Research study 18 months ago, when gold was nearly $1,700 an ounce, correctly foresaw that the metal was overvalued.
That model is based on the tendency for gold to decline whenever the ratio of its price to the consumer-price index rises well above its average level of about 3.4, and to rise when it is significantly below that average. With the CPI now at 237.1, this ratio stands at 5.6.
To be sure, Harvey acknowledges, gold is perfectly capable of taking a long time to return to its fair value — and by no means will the path it takes be a straight line. So a near-term rally isn’t out of the question.
There is a shorter-term factor that nevertheless leads him to doubt gold can mount even a short-term rally that is very significant: rising Treasury yields, which go up as bond prices fall.
Over the past decade, Harvey points out, gold’s price has been quick to respond to changes in Treasury yields — rising as yields fall, and vice versa. If you believe that yields will on average be higher in coming months than where they are today, as he does, then “gold will most likely decline” over the shorter term.
Shouldn’t inflation be taken into account in predicting gold’s performance? After all, gold is widely considered to be one of the best inflation hedges.
But gold’s track record as an inflation hedge depends greatly on your time horizon, according to Claude Erb, Harvey’s co-author on the National Bureau of Economic Research study and a former commodities and fixed-income manager at mutual-fund firm TCW Group.
Over the short term, he says, gold is a very unreliable inflation hedge. It is only over the long term that it can be a decent hedge — and he emphasizes that this long term must be measured over many decades at a minimum.
Based on the markets’ recent behavior, Erb is confident that if inflation and Treasury yields were both to rise over the next couple of years, the most likely outcome still would be a lower gold price.
What steps should you take in your portfolio if you think inflation is about to heat up? Erb acknowledges that there isn’t a great short-term inflation hedge. But he says that intermediate-term government bond funds should largely hold their own when inflation and interest rates rise, since they can reinvest in higher-yielding issues as their older bonds mature, thereby absorbing the losses of principal caused by those higher yields.
Erb points to the surprising resilience from 1966 through 1981 of intermediate-term U.S. government bonds — those with five-year maturities. This 16-year period is often considered the worst environment in recent history for bond investors, since intermediate Treasury yields nearly tripled. Nevertheless, according to Ibbotson Associates data, these bonds produced a 5.8% annualized return over the period.
marketwatch.com
Unless there is deflationary collapse gold will never see 800 dollars. The question is what is going on, are we nearer to inflation or deflation. Nobody seems to know for sure. One thing often discounted here is the massive amount of money that has been created in this new healthier economy they so desperately tout. I am sure that those who blindly promote gold and the ones some here who constantly find reason to declare its worthlessness based on the sheer stupidity of perma gold bulls are equally wrong.
DeleteI don't see $800 happening either.
Delete$1100-ish is another story.
All-in-all I'd rather see it go up greatly then plummet.
Time will tell.
It doesn't matter if the jobs report was phony or not.
ReplyDeleteThe ONLY thing that matters is how the institutional investors react.
If they buy stocks, then you must follow the big money crowd and stay long.
One day the institutions will sell on bad news, or maybe good news. When that happens, the market will have spoken and it will be time to sell or go short.
Right now, there is still way too much money in bonds and big institutions are still under invested in stocks.
Mark is right. When the rest figure this out they will be flocking away from gold once again and into equities. When big institutions say gold is bottoming end of this year - uhmm heed the warning and get out of the way.
DeleteHey Dan,
ReplyDeleteI hope you're enjoying the holiday.
From the latest COT, I am very surprised at how much managed money increased their net longs from Jun 25 - Jul 1 and yet price has only gone up about $9. I'm not sure whether this favors the bulls or bears... on one hand, managed money looks to be very bullish going heavy long AND covering shorts but on the other hand the price hasn't been able to move above the recent range which implies heavy selling of supply from the commercials and market makers. What do you make of this scenario? Would love to hear your thoughts and interpretation on this latest report showing the battle between massive positioning vs. limited price movement.
Beef Prices
ReplyDeleteChoice rib eye on sale in Los Angeles area at $4.99 a pound. Not bad for the barbecue.
Happy Fourth First or what every day you celebrate.
Mike, you meant $14.99 right?
DeleteSouthern California Agriculture.
ReplyDeleteAntelope Valley, South end of the Southern Central Valley, Salinis Valley.
Those who have their own water are doing well. Those who depend on the CA State Water Project are sunk.
After several years of 50% type allocations this year they gave 0% then made a political revision to 5%.
I'll spair you the rest of my feelings about CA Politicians.
Al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia...
ReplyDelete"Two militants blow themselves up in southern Saudi Arabia
By Sami Aboudi"
DUBAI | Sat Jul 5, 2014 2:53pm EDT
By Sami Aboudi
DUBAI (Reuters) -
Two suspected al Qaeda militants blew themselves up on Saturday after being trapped inside a government building in southern Saudi Arabia, the Interior Ministry said, following an attack on a border post with Yemen that also killed four security men.
An Interior Ministry spokesman said the pair were part of a group of six al Qaeda militants who attacked the Wadia border post on Friday from Yemen. Three of the militants were killed on Friday and a fourth was captured after being injured.
Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter, has long viewed its 1,800 km (1,100 mile) border with impoverished, conflict-ridden Yemen as a major security problem and has been building a fence to deter militants and criminals.
Interior Ministry spokesman Mansour al-Turki said security forces surrounded the two men in the second floor of the local intelligence service building in al-Sharurah area after they had forced their way into the building on Friday. They were invited to surrender.
"At an early hour this morning... the two attackers resorted to blowing themselves up," Turki said in remarks carried by state news SPA.
Saudi-owned al-Arabia television earlier reported that the militants had put up "stiff resistance" to security forces surrounding them, firing automatic weapons and hurling grenades at security forces, but there were no reports of casualties.
Saudi Arabia had been wary of potential al Qaeda infiltration from Iraq, where militants have swept through the country's Sunni Muslim heartland close to the border with Saudi Arabia.
In the south, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (Sinai) has been waging a campaign of attacks on Yemeni government targets raising fears the violence could spill across the border to Saudi Arabia.
The kingdom overcame its own al Qaeda insurgency almost a decade ago, but said in May it had detained 62 suspected al Qaeda militants with links to radicals in Syria and Yemen who it said it believed were plotting attacks on government and foreign targets in the kingdom. [ID:nL6N0NS426]
SIX MILITANTS
Turki said Friday's attack began when six militants in a car with licence plates from an unspecified Gulf Arab country arrived at the Wadia checkpoint in the Empty Quarter desert area, which links Yemen's Hadramout province with Saudi Arabia.
The militants shot and killed the commander of a Saudi border patrol and seized his car. They made their way inside Saudi territory towards al-Sharurah.
Security forces engaged the militants in the second car, killing three and capturing the fourth. The militants also killed two other security men during the clash, Turki said.
Saudi media had earlier said the six were all Saudi nationals. Turki said authorities were conducting tests to determine the identities of the militants.
Yemen's state agency Saba earlier reported that a suicide bomber drove a car laden with explosives into the Yemeni side of the Wadia border crossing, killing himself and one soldier and wounding another.
After the attack, Yemeni security forces chased militants who fled from the scene in two cars into the desert, Saba said, citing a military source. But a Yemeni official, apparently referring to the same incident, earlier told Reuters the gunmen had escaped into Saudi Arabia after attacking the Yemeni border post. The official said the attackers were al Qaeda militants. The Wadia crossing links Saudi Arabia with Yemen's southeastern Hadramout province, which stretches through arid valleys and empty desert - a landscape that al Qaeda militants use to their advantage across the Middle East. Saudi Arabia's construction of the security fence along its border with Yemen has often been interrupted by protesting tribesmen who say it prevents them accessing pastures for their livestock.
Reuters.com
The West/US is in a tricky spot with this delusional and dangerous self-proclaimed prophet if he gets killed (and he will) on the battlefield and is seen as some type of martyr who managed to unite Muslims while waging a holy war/crusade of sorts against the colonial western powers.
ReplyDeleteI don't think he's reached some revered mythical status yet in the greater Muslim world at this point.
But the longer he lives, fights, commands and expands and solidifies an Islamic State while doing some damage to those countries that are seen as being tainted by western influence the more of a following he'll acquire.
If at some point (a really big IF) he becomes seen by many millions of Muslims as heir to Mohammed and the new recognized caliphate and the west/US kills him the resulting backlash from his "execution" could ignite something much larger and longer in duration then the current "fight against terrorism" we've witnessed so far.
I doubt very much that he'll obtain the messianic status that he's assigned himself, but hey you never know. Crazy times and a deep western hatred by people in MENA could transform this Al-Baghdadi into their next modern day prophet.
I don't think it'll get that far and he's gone (missing or killed) within a year and he doesn't acheive the god-like status he believes himself to be.
But then again, I'm not Muslim and I don't live over there and I haven't experienced what generations of Arabs's, Persians, Egyptians etc have endured (even before WWII) at the hands of the colonial powers.
The longer he lives and fights against the perceived enemies of Islam the more credibility he gains. If he manages to actually succeed in building and holding onto a new state while keeping unfriendly forces at bay the trickier it gets for the west in how they handle him.
Odds are that he's eliminated before he attains a true foothold over there.
"ISIS Head Makes First Video Appearance"
07/05/2014 - 13:43
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Islamist militant group Isis, has finally broken his video silence, and has called on Muslims to obey him, in his first video sermon recording. The video appears to have been filmed on Friday during a sermon at the al-Nouri Mosque in Mosul, northern Iraq. It surfaced on Saturday amid reports that he had been killed or wounded in an Iraqi air raid.
Zerohedge.com
And how about Zero Hedge? Five years of spamming with constant articles mocking the bulls, "this time its different", with attention grabbing bold letters and hysterical headlines using the words:
ReplyDelete"Plummeting"
"Lowest Ever"
"Tumbling"
"Record Lows"
"Plunging and Dropping"
"Overvalued in a Bubble"
And of course, all the:
"Presented Without Comment"
and
"Visualizing The Plunge in ______"
Yet during the entire time Zero Hedge has been in existence, with over 24,000 gloom and doom articles posted,
The market has gone straight up in the steepest, fastest ascent in modern history.
Led by consumer stocks.
Way to Go Tyler Durden!!! You fleeced millions of hedge funds who followed your lead by shorting and ended up haplessly underperforming for 5 consecutive years.
Mark...you really believe that the Hedge Funds give a rat's ass what Zero Hedge's ficticious Durden has to say??????????????????...Really????
Dean,
DeleteLike a country which is so divided it cannot get anything done in Congress. We now have the battle of lies that is the perma positioned anything advocates for any position stockmarket or commodities, the always wrong gold bulls versus the anti-gold perma bears. I cherish reading Dan but some here are great contrary indicators for gold on the bear side. Always talking mega drops to 1000 or below they are as blind as gold bulls who never stop squawking about manipulation.
Every time sentiment gets sky high on either side you take the other side you will come out on the right side.
H'mm...this seems like a prelude to some type of anticipated action maybe.
ReplyDeleteIf true, evacuating Tartus on any level is noteworthy imho.
"...Moscow announced Wednesday June 26, the evacuation beginning Friday of all Russian military and diplomatic personnel from Syria was complete, including its naval base at Tartus."
debka.com (take it with a grain of salt)
The Egyptian perspective...
ReplyDelete"Egypt's Sisi says independence for Iraq's Kurds would be 'catastrophic'"
CAIRO | Sun Jul 6, 2014 2:33pm EDT
CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said on Sunday a referendum on the independence of Iraq's Kurdish region would lead to a "catastrophic" break up of the country, which is facing an onslaught by Sunni Islamist militants.
The comments from Sisi, leader of the most populous Arab nation, indicate a growing fear in the region that the division of Iraq could further empower the insurgents who have declared a "caliphate" on land seized in Iraq and neighboring Syria.
"The referendum that the Kurds are asking for now is in reality no more than the start of a catastrophic division of Iraq into smaller rival states," Egypt's MENA news agency quoted Sisi as saying during a meeting with local journalists.
The president of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish north, Massoud Barzani, asked the region's parliament on Thursday to prepare the way for a referendum on independence.
Iraq's five million Kurds, who have ruled themselves in relative peace since the 1990s, have expanded their territory by up to 40 percent in recent weeks as the Sunni Islamist militants seized vast stretches of western and northern Iraq.
Egypt, a traditionally regional diplomatic heavy weight, has been embroiled in domestic turmoil for three years since a 2011 uprising ousted autocratic President Hosni Mubarak.
Sisi said he warned the United States and Europe about the ambitions of the Islamic State militants, which have shortened their name from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
"ISIL had a plan to take over Egypt," Sisi said. "I had warned the United States and Europe from providing any aid to them and told them they will come out of Syria to target Iraq then Jordan then Saudi Arabia."
Sisi, Egypt's former army chief, last year orchestrated the ouster of the state's Islamist President Mohamed Mursi, who was elected in a free vote, in reaction to mass protests against his rule.
Sisi's interim government that ruled until his election had cracked down on Islamists. Thousands of Islamist activists and members in Mursi's Muslim Brotherhood group have been jailed since Mursi's ouster last July and hundreds of street protesters were killed.
The Muslim Brotherhood group, the state's oldest and most organized movement, is now banned and declared a terrorist organization.
Reuters.com
Indian maggots, leeches, and parasites just do not go away
ReplyDelete