Thursday, October 22, 2015

旺阿茲莎:納吉不信任動議已獲國會接收

(吉隆坡22日訊)國會反對黨領袖拿督斯里旺阿茲莎已向國會下議院提呈投首相不信任動議,並強調有關動議是針對首相拿督斯里納吉而不是政府;有關動議已獲得國會下議院接收。
早前消息人士聲稱,不信任動議表決時,不一定是要求議員現場投票,國陣議員可以選擇以“缺席”的方式支持反對黨的動議,即讓當天出席會議的反對黨議員成為多數的一方,有過半議員支持便能通過。”
昨日國會下議院議長丹斯里班迪卡表示,如果反對黨能夠提呈一份名單,證明他們已經掌握多數國會議員支持對首相不信任動議,他就可以施壓要國會辯論。
相關新聞:
【相關新聞請點大事件:國會專輯】
【議長:可施壓辯論不信任動議‧條件足夠議員支持】
(星洲網)

林吉祥被凍結議員資格半年(內附視頻)

(吉隆坡22日訊)國會下議院今日以107票對77票通過凍結行動黨國會領袖林吉祥議員資格的動議。林吉祥將從今天起被凍結議員資格長達6個月。
 
(圖:星洲日報)林吉祥在自辯時表示,就讓他被凍結議員資格事件,作為人民的一項教訓,即要尋求改變和推翻國陣政府。林吉祥表示,他當國會議員超過40年,最令他傷心難過的不是因為他被凍結議員資格6個月,而是這項動議實際上是在羞辱議長和國會,以及超級藐視議會,也顯示國陣議員們的膚淺和無知。

林吉祥說,他是1MDB這頭怪獸的最新受害者。凍結議員資格動議通過後,林吉祥被副議長請出國會議會廳,林吉祥揮手說"bye bye"後離開,國陣議員也揮手"歡送"
更新:森州行動黨主席兼芙蓉國會議員陸兆福陸兆福說,今天有78 反對黨議員 出席,77人投反對票,林吉祥不能投 。



新聞背景
行動黨國會領袖林吉祥被指侮辱下議院議長丹斯里班迪卡引發凍結其議員資格風波,首相署部長阿莎麗娜昨午(21日)在林吉祥拒絕解釋後,即提呈建議凍結林吉祥議員資格6個月的動議。
阿莎麗娜的動議已納入今天(22日)的議程表。她今日在一份國會下議院會議議程及動議建議中指出,振林山區國會議員指責議長,是十分嚴重的。
【相關新聞請點大事件大事件:國會專輯】
(星洲網)
 

Euro steadies versus dollar as investors wait for ECB meeting

Market has probably priced in dovish comments from Draghi: analyst

Traders see no move at the ECB meeting on Thursday, but expect central bank chief Mario Draghi to hint about additional easing steps.

The euro remained flat against the dollar in Asia trade Thursday, as many investors avoided making large bets ahead of the European Central Bank’s policy-setting meeting later in the day.
The euro  traded at $1.1338 from $1.1339 late Wednesday in New York. The common currency  was at ¥135.67 from ¥135.99.
Many currency market dealers and analysts in Tokyo expect the ECB will stand pat by keeping intact the central bank’s €60 billion-a-month bond-buying program. But they also expect the central bank chief Mario Draghi to hint about additional easing steps.
Speculation has been growing that the ECB and the Bank of Japan will increase monetary stimulus to support growth, while the Federal Reserve is widely expected to wait longer before raising short-term rates. U.S. and Japan monetary authorities will hold policy meetings next week.
“Investors continue to find it difficult to make moves,” said Yasuaki Amatatsu, senior analyst of global markets research at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, adding that the euro “can’t go either upside or downside.”
“Expectation is high for the ECB officials to go into depth about (future monetary) easing,” said Mr. Amatatsu.
“I think the currency market has priced in (dovish) comments by Mr. Draghi after the ECB meeting,” said Daiwa Securities senior FX strategist Yukio Ishizuki, especially after remarks by a member of the ECB Governing Council last week that sent the common currency into a tailspin from its high near $1.15.
“Even if the euro falls below the $1.13 mark, that may be only temporarily,” said Mr. Ishizuki.
ECB member Ewald Nowotny said last week officials should use more policy instruments to raise the region’s competitiveness. But he later expressed resistance toward an imminent expansion of quantitative easing in the single-currency bloc.
In other currency trade, the U.S. dollar  was at ¥119.63, compared with ¥119.93 late Wednesday.
The WSJ Dollar Index , a measure of the dollar against a basket of major currencies, was down 0.07% at 87.42.

Oil recoups some losses, but gains seen as short lived Market unimpressed by the producers meeting

Uptrend is likely short-lived as the latest data suggests a respite from low prices could still be a long way off.
Crude-oil prices recouped earlier losses in Asia trade Thursday, mainly thanks to bargain hunting, but the uptrend is likely short-lived as the latest data suggests a respite from low prices could still be a long way off.
On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude futures for delivery in December   traded at $45.42 a barrel, up $0.22 in the Globex electronic session. December Brent crude  on London’s ICE Futures exchange rose $0.25 to $48.10 a barrel.
Oil prices plunged overnight after the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported domestic crude-oil stockpiles expanded by 8 million barrels last week, much larger than the 3.5 million-barrel addition expected by the market and the 7.1 million-barrel build-up estimated by industry group American Petroleum Institute. Both the West Texas Intermediate and Brent saw the steepest fall this month by dropping 2.4% and 1.8% respectively.
The latest increase brings the U.S. total commercial crude inventories to 476.6 million barrels, nearing their highest levels in 80 years and around 26% higher than the same period last week.
“The slight improvement [in prices] isn’t going to last because not much has changed,” said a Singapore-based trader, adding that although China’s demand for crude has not trailed off too badly, the increasing global supply means lower prices for longer.
The market was also unimpressed by the Wednesday meeting between members and non-members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. As mostly expected, the meeting offered no measures on reviving prices which have been down more than 40% from levels a year ago.
“Russian officials said at an OPEC arranged meeting that the production restrictions on crude output were not discussed in Vienna meeting,” ANZ Research said in a report.
In a bid to protect market shares, cash-rich oil producers such as Saudi Arabia and Russia have refused to trim output even though oil revenues have been low, leaving players with smaller coffers–such as Venezuela–eagerly lobbying for help. The anticipated resumption of Iranian oil, most likely later this year, is also exacerbating concerns of a longer global glut.
“Apart from the occasional pep talk by oil ministers, the idea has always been kept the same–maintaining market share. We would think the main reason why the stance has not changed is because this strategy is seen to be working,” said Daniel Ang, energy analyst at Phillip Futures, referring to the decreasing U.S. crude oil production.
According to the EIA, the U.S. daily production of crude last week was 9.1 million barrels, steady from a week earlier, but about 2% lower than the same period last year which had 8.9 million barrels per day.
Nymex reformulated gasoline blendstock for November  — the benchmark gasoline contract — rose 86 points to $1.2894 a gallon, while November diesel traded at $1.4581, 81 points higher.
ICE gasoil for November changed hands at $443.75 a metric ton, unchanged from Wednesday’s settlement.

China stocks steady after selloff, but investors remain cautious

PBOC liquidity move restores some confidence in market

Some analysts are skeptical Thursday’s gains mark a turnaround form the panicked selling a day earlier.


China shares recovered Thursday from a sudden selloff in the previous session, though investors remain wary of weakness in the world’s No. 2 economy.
The Shanghai Composite Index  climbed in the morning to trade up 0.2% at 3328.49 after wavering between gains and losses earlier in the day. The benchmark lost 3% on Wednesday.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index  slipped 0.8%, with the market reopening after a holiday Wednesday.
Japan’s Nikkei Stock Average  recovered to trade up 0.1% and Australia’s S&P/ASX 200  was flat. South Korea’s Kospi Composite Index  slipped 0.6%.
Smaller stocks helped China’s market rebound Thursday, with a gauge of startup shares in Shenzhen, the ChiNext Price Index , rising more than 4%, after dropping 3% the previous day. The index is one of the most volatile share benchmarks in China.
The central bank’s moves to add liquidity to the market, announced after the market closed Wednesday, has helped restore some confidence, analysts said. The  People’s Bank of China said it injected 105.5 billion yuan ($16.6 billion) to 11 financial institutions via medium-term lending facilities–part of its goal to boost liquidity in the banking system and encourage lending to small businesses and the agricultural sector.
‘The bounce back is only because of the selling yesterday and we think the benchmark will have a difficult time climbing above 3500.’
Jacky Zhang, BOC International
Still, some analysts are skeptical Thursday’s gains mark a turnaround form the panicked selling a day earlier.
“The bounce back is only because of the selling yesterday and we think the benchmark will have a difficult time climbing above 3500,” said Jacky Zhang, an analyst at BOC International.
A gauge of Shanghai’s largest 50 stocks fell 0.9%, with state-owned industrial firms like China Communications Construction Co.  , down 3.1%, among the biggest losers.
Earlier this week, state-owned Chinese steel trader Sinosteel Co. postponed interest payments due earlier in the week on 2 billion yuan ($315 million) of onshore bonds, the latest sign that Chinese companies are struggling from heavy debt loads.
“If we start seeing the equity market acting violently negative again, you may well see some risky assets…come back under pressure,” said Chris Weston, a market strategist at brokerage IG. Volatility in China’s markets over the summer pressured many commodities and emerging-market currencies.
As of Wednesday’s close, the MSCI Asia Pacific Index was down 1.2% for the week, after three straight weeks of gains. The decline marks a reversal from the past few weeks, when hopes for a delay in higher U.S. interest rates and expectations of central-bank stimulus from Tokyo to Beijing fueled stock gains.
China’s economic backdrop remains a concern for investors. While the country grew at its slowest pace during the third quarter since 2009, authorities still haven’t given clear signs on whether they will introduce further stimulus. Policy makers meet in Beijing later this month for an annual economic planning meeting.
Investors also are looking ahead to an European Central Bank meeting later Thursday to see whether the bank will expand its €60 billion ($68 billion) a month bond-buying program, known as quantitative easing.
The U.S. dollar  was flat in early Asia trade at ¥119.87 Japanese yen.
In the U.S., health-care shares capped a volatile session with losses after a negative report about Canadian drug maker Valent Pharmaceuticals International  .
Prices for brent crude oil  were up 0.5% at $48.11 a barrel. U.S. crude-oil prices  fell 2.4% in overnight, as U.S. stockpiles surged.
Gold prices  were down 0.1% at $1,165.70 an ounce.

These two stars could kiss for a million years — and then die

 
ESO/L. Calçada
An artist’s impression of VFTS 352, the kissing stars.


Stars dubbed VFTS 352 could merge into one or lead scientists down a new evolutionary path


Ah, young love.
Just like teens on Earth, these two “young” stars, found by astronomers in a real galaxy somewhat far, far away, can’t bear to be parted. Their fate, however, is likely to be like that of Romeo and Juliet: a brutal death.
Scientists say the stars could merge into one and eventually explode — or separate and explode. But it could take 600,000 years — or even a few million years — for that to happen.
The pair of stars, known as VFTS 352, orbit each other in little more than a day about 160,000 light years away from Earth. That’s far even for Han Solo and the Millennium Falcon, and the surface temperature — above 40,000 degrees Celsius — makes it inhospitable for a “Star Wars” colony.
The two stars and their overlapping surfaces are “brightest, hottest, most massive” type of a rare phenomena formally called “overcontact binaries,” said Richard Hook, a spokesman with the European Southern Observatory, which operates three major astronomy sites in Chile. Unusually, the stars are of similar size, and they are estimated to be sharing about 30% of their material
The Tarantula Nebula, where they were found, is an area with clouds of dust, lots of gas and many hot young stars — young being millions of years, rather than the billions of years of our sun. These two stars are estimated to be about 2.5 million to 3.5 million years old.
Tarantula Nebula’s galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud, is a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. It is 50,000 parsecs away from us and is visible from the southern hemisphere with the naked eye and no light pollution. (Han Solo boasted of making the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs.)
Amateur astronomers could faintly see the pair with their own telescope, Hook said, “but it would be hard to find and unremarkable to look at.”
The stars were discovered in March 2014 with data compiled by Hugues Sana, a scientist at the University of Leuven, in Belgium, who was then working for the Hubble Space Telescope at the Space Telescope Scientist Institute in Baltimore, and analyzed by Leonardo Almeida, then at Johns Hopkins University and now at the Insitituto de Astronomia in São Paulo, Brazil.
“Understanding the life cycle of massive stars (how they form, live and die) is important for our comprehension of the evolution of galaxies,” Sana said. Studying a binary system like VFTS 352 is a key part of understanding how such massive stars live and die.
So what will happen to VTFS 352? Scientists are still debating the likely answer. Under one scenario, they will merge into a single gigantic star in about 600,000 years. That could then continue spinning rapidly and end its life in another three million or four million years with “one of the most energetic explosions in the universe,” Sana said.
A second possibility is that the stars continue mixing material but avoid merging, leading scientists down a new evolutionary path. Their lives could end in 2 million or 3 million years with supernova explosions that form binary black holes that could eventually merge.
Scientists are now analyzing fresh data from the Hubble telescope and could agree on an answer in about a year, Sana said.

Why millennials should buy a home today

Sachita Kumar did something that few people her age appear to be doing in 2015: She bought a house.
“We decided that we just didn’t want to pay someone rent, so we decided to own something,” says Kumar, 26, a telecommunications consultant. She and her husband bought a townhouse in Somerset, N.J. and, unlike many Americans in their age group, they were able to afford the substantial 20% down payment. “A reason a lot of millennials don’t own is because of that,” Kumar says.
There are many practical reasons why millennials hold off on buying. Young adult employment has risen to around 7.7%, according to the Pew Research Center, up from 6.2% in 2007. Kumar has advice to those who can afford it: “You should definitely buy.”
She has a point. There are only two metro areas where renting is cheaper than buying for people aged 25 to 34, new data from real-estate website Trulia found. Renting is 5% less expensive than buying in Honolulu and 2% less expensive in San Jose, Calif., but buying is a no-brainer in 98 of 100 metro areas. It’s also 11% cheaper to buy than rent in the New York and New Jersey metro areas, where Kumar bought, and 10% cheaper in Newark, N.J. and San Diego. And it’s more than 40% cheaper to buy than rent in Houston and San Antonio, Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Syracuse, N.Y., Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and Miami, Oklahoma City, and Detroit.
Millennials have received a lot of criticism for holding back the housing market by not buying as many homes as economists (and would-be sellers) would like. Five years into the economic recovery, many continue to live at home with their parents: There were 71% of adults aged 18 to 34 (excluding full-time college students aged 18 to 24) living independently in 2007 versus just 67% in 2015, according to a recent study by the Pew Research Center. Although 74% of millennials expect to buy a home, more than half plan to wait until 2018, a separate survey last month of 6,000 millennial renters by Apartmentlist.com found.
Sachita Kumar and her husband, who recently bought their first home.
Read: These Americans have yet to recover from the recession
For Americans of all ages, buying a home rather than renting is 36% cheaper nationwide, Trulia concluded. That’s the biggest difference since 2012 when it was 38% cheaper to buy than rent. For those aged between 25 and 34, it’s only 23% cheaper than renting. One caveat for all would-be buyers: Interest rates have returned to near historic lows of 3.85%, after climbing to 4% last year, but many economists expect rates to go up again within the next 12 months. An increase of 25 to 50 basis points could push mortgage rates to a range of 4.15% to 4.4%, he says, but rates would have to nearly double to about 6.5% to equalize the buy versus rent equation for potential young adult buyers.
Read: Millennials who live at home after college will retire earlier
Trulia calculated the initial total monthly costs of owning and renting, including mortgage payments, maintenance, insurance, and taxes, based on September 2015 home prices and a 30-year mortgage with a 3.9% interest rate, with a 20% down payment for households moving every seven years. It also crunched the future total monthly costs of owning and renting, plus federal tax deductions and a 25% tax bracket.
“We calculated net present value, which reveals the opportunity cost of using money to buy a house instead of investing it,” says Ralph McLaughlin, Trulia’s housing economist. What’s more, home-price growth has continued to outpace rent growth since 2012, he added, but many people — especially in big cities like New York and San Francisco — are unlikely to be able to afford to buy in the same neighborhoods where they rent.
And yet there may be a less obvious reason, aside from the financial commitment, why so many Americans are reluctant to buy: Bureaucracy. “There is a substantial amount of paperwork,” Kumar says. “The bank goes through everything like the FBI. It’s a very gruesome process and takes months.”
Even the most innocuous deposit can raise a red flag. Case in point: Kumar’s bank noted some cash deposit of a few thousand dollars. “This goes back to the whole banking crisis,” she says. “Banks used to give loans out like crazy and then they all got into trouble.” Not so, anymore. “They will catch anything that looks kind of funky if it wasn’t paycheck-related,” she adds. Case in point: It’s traditional in Indian culture to give cash at a wedding rather than a gift and Kumar’s bank asked about all cash deposits. “When they asked, I told them, ‘Dude, I just got married.”

NATO Begins Dress Rehearsal for Europe-wide War

nato_war
More than 35,000 troops are participating in NATO’s month-long Trident Juncture war games, along with some 140 warplanes and 60 warships. The militaries of 30 different capitalist governments aligned with the NATO alliance are involved.
Massive NATO drills are taking place in Italy, Spain and Portugal. The drills are designed to prepare the NATO powers for large-scale strategic warfare outside the boundaries of the NATO countries, according to NATO officials.
The main focus of the NATO drills is to prepare for comprehensive strategic warfare spanning broad stretches of the Eurasian landmass, comments from NATO officers have made clear.
“Trident Juncture 2015 will demonstrate NATO’s new increased level of ambition in joint modern warfare and will showcase a capable, forward-leading Alliance,” NATO’s command center said in a statement Tuesday.
According to NATO officials, the military drills involve an unprecedented mobilization of NATO forces, modeled on the “Federated Mission Network” system of military “interoperability” developed during the US-NATO occupation of Afghanistan.
The exercises are emphasizing large-scale maneuver warfare to a degree not seen since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, but will also include training in hybrid warfare.
The drills aim to mobilize NATO’s leading combat elements, including the NATO Response Force (NRF) and the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF), for a “changed security environment” and “challenges from the South and the East,” according to NATO statements. The Western powers are preparing their militaries for a further destabilization of Europe’s political order and for new wars and interventions along Russia’s eastern frontier and in Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
During remarks opening the drills, NATO Deputy Secretary-General Alexander Vershbow vowed that the drills would “demonstrate NATO’s ability to move quickly and decisively beyond our borders.”
At a news conference, Vershbow denied that the fictitious aggressor in the Trident Juncture scenario was Russia. But then, effectively confirming this proposition, he added, “That is not to say that some of the challenges we are addressing and testing our forces for are not analogous to the challenges we would face were we to have a conflict with Russia.”
He cited both the large Russian naval base at Kaliningrad, an enclave of Russian territory wedged in between Lithuania and Poland, and the recent deployment of Russian warplanes to Syria, on the southern flank of NATO member Turkey, as developments that NATO planners had to take into account.
During the news conference, an antiwar protester unfurled a banner demanding an explanation of the bombing of a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Afghanistan, a war crime committed by US military forces with the backing of their NATO partners in that country. There were other antiwar protests in Trapani, Sicily, where the Trident Juncture headquarters was established.
Trident Juncture “sends a very clear message to any potential aggressor,” NATO’s commander, American General Philip Breedlove, said. “Any attempt to violate the sovereignty of one NATO nation will result in the decisive military engagement of all NATO nations.”
Breedlove was echoing the pledge made by President Obama during his last trip to the region: the full power of the 30-nation alliance, including its nuclear armaments, would be mobilized for the defense of any member nation, including the Baltic states, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which have perpetual tensions with Russia because of the large Russian-speaking minority in each country, which is either persecuted or openly disenfranchised.
The Trident drills are part of the general military escalation against Russia carried out by the US and NATO powers since the toppling of the pro-Russian regime of President Viktor Yanukovych by the February 2014 US-backed and fascist-led coup d’etat. The intervening period has seen the steady expansion of the NATO Response Force and the pre-positioning of NATO forces on high alert to deploy to the Russian border within a matter of hours.
At a military conference in Brussels in early October, NATO defense officials seized on accusations of airspace violations by a pair of Russian jets to carry out a further military escalation against Moscow, agreeing to expand the NATO Response Force to 40,000 troops and to deploy new teams of NATO military specialists to Central and Eastern Europe. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg proclaimed during the conference that the alliance is “implementing the biggest reinforcement of our collective defense since the end of the Cold War.”
On Sunday, US General Dennis Via said that the Pentagon is preparing to ship another round of pre-positioned weapons packages known as “activity sets” to Europe.
The Trident drills are also serving to prepare NATO forces for operations along the southern flank of Europe. Faced with the surging tide of refugees crossing the Mediterranean in flight from the catastrophes produced by the US-NATO wars in Libya and Afghanistan, the US occupation of Iraq, and the US-backed Islamist campaign against the government of Syria, which have killed hundreds of thousands and left entire societies in ruins, the NATO powers are mobilizing their military might to beat back the tidal wave of human beings produced by their own criminal war policies.
The intensity of the NATO war games is an expression of the fact that a general war in Europe is now viewed as possible, even likely, by leading factions of the Western militaries. Comments from a French military officer featured in a NATO promotional video for Trident Juncture illustrated the militarist mentality that prevails within the imperialist officer corps.
Comparing the historic war preparations to sports practice, the NATO officer said: “Let me take the analogy of a football team. They’re all super, they have strikers, they have goal keepers, but they have to form a team.” He added, “Now when they come together, they need training to win next Sunday’s match.”
The war fever of the imperialists must be taken as a grave warning to the international working class. Unthinkable scenarios are being discussed in ruling circles, which involve the unleashing of full-scale war between the two major nuclear-armed forces on the planet, NATO and Russia.

Thousands Still Homeless a Year After the Bay Area’s Biggest Encampment Was Shuttered

On a rainy morning last December, hundreds of people emerged from a muddy gully in San Jose, California, hauling their possessions in garbage bags and shopping carts after the city’s largest homeless encampment, known as “The Jungle,” was closed.

2015_1021homeless.jpg
Over the following weeks, workers in biohazard suits removed more than 600 tons of garbage – including nearly a ton of human waste, much of it deposited directly into a beleaguered local waterway called Coyote Creek.
Media reports on the eviction focused on the grim aesthetics of the 68-acre camp, which, at its height, was choked with makeshift wooden structures and home to roughly 250 residents. The symbolism was stark and, for city leaders, deeply troubling: One of the country’s largest homeless camps lay in the heart of Silicon Valley, the nation’s wealthiest region.
Back in March 2014, a California Department of Fish and Wildlife game warden filed a formal complaint to regional water authorities, citing heaps of garbage and human waste as a hazard to public health and the local environment. The environmental group Baykeeper announced a similar lawsuit against the city later that year, over the hazards that large “rafts” of trash and fecal bacteria posed to public health and the creek’s flagging runs of steelhead and chinook salmon. For the first time, homelessness in Santa Clara County was no longer framed as just an intractable social problem; it had become a clear environmental threat.
Read more

RUSSIAN GOLD RESERVES INCREASE BY 1.1 MILLION OUNCES IN SEPTEMBER

by Smaulgld

Russian Gold Reserves.

Russian Gold Reserves September 2015.

Russia added 1.1 million ounces (34.21 tons) of gold to its reserves in September.

Russia Boosts Gold Reserves and U.S. Treasury Holdings.

Buy Gold Online

Russian Gold Reserves

Today, the Central Bank of the Russian Federation issued its official September, 2015 reserves and other foreign currency assets report. The report indicated that Russian gold reserves increased by1,100,000 ounces from its August 2015 report to 43.5 million ounces.
russian gold reserves 2009- september 2015
Since 2009 Russia has added more than 745 tons of gold to its reserves more than China who added (654 tons) during the same time period.
The 1.1 million ounce increase in Russia’s September gold reserves followed last month’s addition of one million ounces.

Russian Monthly Gold Purchases June 2014 – September 2015

xxxx
Gold Bless the Russian Central Bank
In June, the Russian Central Bank announced that they would be boosting their foreign reserves by about 40% from $356 billion to about $500 billion.
“Recent experiences forced us to reconsider some of our ideas about sufficient and comfortable levels of gold reserves,” said Elvira Nabiullina, Chairwoman Russian Central Bank.
Russia has been rebalancing its foreign reserves to favor gold vs. U.S. Treasury Bonds. Russia’s gold buying binge had coincided with a steady sell off of her U.S. Treasuries. In the past four months through August 2015, however, Russia has also added to her U.S. Treasury holdings. Higher oil prices have helped the Russian Ruble stabilize in recent months, prompting some analysts to believe Russia’s central bank will cut its bench mark interest rate.
Currently, inflation is running close to 16% in Russia.
Russia’s Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina said at a conference earlier this month regarding the possibility of further rate cuts “when inflation falls and when in our assessment inflation risks ease,” “If the situation will proceed as forecast and inflation will be at 7 percent in a year, that allows us to speak about rate reductions.”
Ms. Nabiullina also remarked that she believed that a four percent inflation rate is possible by 2017. To which, Russian President Vladimir Putin remarked “God Bless the Central Bank!”
Earlier this month Russia President Vladimir Putin noted “All this gives grounds to believe that the situation in the Russian economy will be stable and, despite the well-known decline in domestic demand, we will work hard to make it rise and become an essential factor in ensuring high rates of economic development,” adding “Russia’s economy will maintain a good development potential.”
It might be expected that as Russia increases its foreign reserves it would do so at least in proportion with that of its current gold reserves.
In August 2015, Russia added 1,000,000 ounces of gold to its reserves and $7.8 billion of U.S. Treasuries.

Russian U.S. Treasury Holdings

Russia’s U.S. Treasury Bond Holdings January 2014-August 2015
xxxxx
Russian Gold Reserves in Tons 1994-2015
chart showing russian gold reserves 1994-2015 in tonnes through september 2015

Subscribe to Smaulgld.com for free (above right) to receive gold and silver updates and analysis.


Further Reading:
Russian Gold Reserves (monthly archive)
Russia’s U.S. Treasury Holdings vs. Gold Reserves
Top Foreign Holders of U.S. Treasuries
Gold Repatriation Requests (updated regularly)
Gold Supply and Demand
The Importance of Gold
Save our Swiss Gold
The Smaulgld Gold Buying Guide
The West Sells Paper Gold While the East Buys Physical Gold
Gold Continues to Move From West to East
Gold Reserves By Country – Top 20
Russia, Ukraine and the Dollar
Are Russia and China Moving Against the Dollar
Gold and Silver Price Manipulation – Suspected
Gold and Silver Price Manipulation – Actual
China Hoards its Gold Production and Ramps up its Imports
Please visit the Smaulgld Store for a large selection of recommended Kindles, books, music, movies and other items.
You can support Smaulgld.com by making all your Amazon purchases through the search widget below and by ordering your gold and silver by clicking on the JM Bullion, BGASC, Bullion Vault, Gold Broker, Golden Eagle Coin, GoldMoney, Perth and Royal Canadian Mint ads on the site.

DISCLOSURE: Smaulgld provides the content on this site free of charge. If you purchase items though the links on this site, Smaulgld LLC. will be paid a commission. The prices charged are the same as they would be if you were to visit the sites directly. Please do your own research regarding the suitability of making purchases from the merchants featured on this site.
Chart Disclaimer: Information presented here has been obtained from a third party and is presented for information purposes only. Smaulgld can not and does not guarantee the accuracy or timeliness of the data displayed on this site and therefor the data provided should not be used to make actual investment decisions. You should always consult a professional investment adviser before investing in precious metals or any type of investment. You acknowledge that Smaulgld assumes no responsibility for the integrity of data on this site.
The content provided here is for informational purposes only. Making investment decisions based on information published by Smaulgld (SG), or any Internet site, is not a good idea. Accordingly, users agree to hold SG, its owner and affiliates, harmless for all information presented on the site. SG presents no warranties. SG is not responsible for any loss of data, financial loss, interruption in services, claims of libel, damages or loss from the use or inability to access SG, any linked content, or the reliance on any information on the site.
The information contained herein does not constitute investment advice and may be subject to correction, completion and amendment without notice. SG assumes no duty to make any such corrections or updates. As with all investments, there are associated risks and you could lose money investing. Prior to making any investment, a prospective investor should consult with its own investment, accounting, legal and tax advisers to evaluate independently the risks, consequences and suitability of that investment. SG disclaims any and all liability relating to any investor reliance on the accuracy of the information contained herein or relating to any omissions or errors and as such disclaims any and all losses that may result.

U.S. Government Creates “Stealth Tax” to Patch Budget Holes!

 Sources:
“Sanders Would Raise Payroll Taxes on Everyone to Fund Paid Family Leave – Breitbart”
http://www.breitbart.com/video/2015/1…
“States go after unclaimed property, use it to patch budgets – Yahoo News”
http://news.yahoo.com/states-unclaime…
“Big Banks to America’s Firms: We Don’t Want Your Cash – WSJ”
http://www.wsj.com/articles/big-banks…
“Oil nations feel the strain of ?Opec’s continuing price – Telegraph”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/ne…
oil gasoline stock market
http://s.telegraph.co.uk/graphics/Mob…
“Puerto Rico Said Struggling to Reach Deal With Hedge Funds – Bloomberg Business”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/article…

Twenty-First-Century Fascism


shutterstock_304729865
Globalization of trade and central banking has propelled private corporations to positions of power and control never before seen in human history. Under advanced capitalism, the structural demands for a return on investment require an unending expansion of centralized capital in the hands of fewer and fewer people. The financial center of global capitalism is so highly concentrated that less than a few thousand people dominate and control $100 trillion of wealth.
The few thousand people controlling global capital amounts to less than 0.0001 percent of the world’s population. They are the transnational capitalist class (TCC), who, as the capitalist elite of the world, dominate nation-states through international trade agreements and transnational state organizations such as the World Bank, the Bank for International Settlements, and the International Monetary Fund.
The TCC communicates their policy requirements through global networks such as the G-7 and G-20, and various nongovernmental policy organizations such as the World Economic Forum, the Trilateral Commission, and the Bilderberger Group. The TCC represents the interests of hundreds of thousands of millionaires and billionaires who comprise the richest people in the top 1 percent of the world’s wealth hierarchy.
The TCC are keenly aware of both their elite status and their increasing vulnerabilities to democracy movements and to unrest from below. The military empire dominated by the US and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) serves to protect TCC investments around the world. Wars, regime changes, and occupations performed in service of empire support investors’ access to natural resources and their speculative advantages in the market place.
When the empire is slow to perform or faced with political resistance, private security firms and private military companies (PMC) increasingly fulfill the TCC’s demands for the protections of their assets. These protection services include personal security for TCC executives and their families, protection of safe residential and work zones, tactical military advisory and training of national police and armed forces, intelligence gathering on democracy movements and opposition groups, weapons acquisitions and weapon systems management, and strike forces for military actions and assassinations.
The expanding crisis of desperate masses/refugees, alienated work forces, and environmental exhaustion means an unlimited opportunity for PMCs to engage in protections services for the global elite.
Estimates are that over $200 billion a year is spent on private security employing some fifteen million people worldwide. G4S is the largest PMC in the world with 625,000 employees spanning five continents in more than 120 countries. Nine of the largest money management firms in the world have holdings in G4S. Some of its more important contractors are the governments of the UK, the US, Israel, and Australia. In the private sector G4S has worked with corporations such as Chrysler, Apple, and Bank of America. In Nigeria, Chevron contracts with G4S for counterinsurgency operations including fast-response mercenaries. G4S undertakes similar operations in South Sudan, and has provided surveillance equipment for checkpoints and prisons in Israel and security for Jewish settlements in Palestine.
Another private military contractor Constellis Holdings—formally Blackwater and Triple Canopy—is a leading provider of security, support, and military advisory services to the US government, foreign governments, multinational corporations, and international organizations. Constellis is managed by an all male board of directors including billionaire Red McCombs; John Ashcroft, the former attorney general; retired admiral Bobby Inman; and Jack Quinn, a leading Democratic advisor who served as chief of staff to vice president Al Gore and as counsel to President Clinton.
Hundreds of private military contractors now play an important role in TCC security in the evolving 21st century neo-fascist corporate world. Capital will be free to travel instantly and internationally to anywhere that profits are possible, while nation-states will become little more than population containment zones with increasingly repressive labor controls. For these reasons, PMCs must be understood as a component of neoliberal imperialism that now supplements nation-states’ police powers and could eventually substitute for them.
The trend toward privatization of war is a serious threat to human rights, due process, and democratic transparency and accountability. The US/NATO military empire sets the moral standards for denial of human rights by using pilotless drones to kill civilians without regard for international law in various regions of resistance to empire. Labeling dead civilians as insurgents and terrorists, the complete lack of due process and human rights belies any standard of governmental moral legitimacy. This lack of moral legitimacy in turn sets standards for private military companies to operate with much the same malice in the shadow of the empire.
The globalization of PMC operations alongside transnational capital investment, international trade agreements, and an increasing concentration of wealth in the TCC means that the repressive practices of private security and war will inevitably come home to roost in the US, the European Union, and other first-world nations.
The 99 percent of us without wealth and private police power face the looming threat of overt repression and complete loss of human rights and legal protections. We see signs of this daily with police killings (now close to a hundred per month in the US), warrantless electronic spying, mass incarceration, random traffic checkpoints, airport security/no-fly lists, and Homeland Security compilations of databases on suspected resisters.
Each time we look past the crimes of the empire we lose a portion of our integrity of self. Ignoring repression becomes part of continuing compromise in our daily lives leading to a moral malaise and increased feelings of helplessness. We must stand up and demand democratic transparency and the international enforcement of human rights. Unless we collectively challenge the empire, we face a world that is evolving into a new dark age of neo-feudal totalitarianism unlike any previously known.
For a longer footnoted version of this report see here.

Killing Off Community Banks — Intended Consequence of Dodd-Frank?

Source: Ellen Brown

The Dodd-Frank regulations are so lethal to community banks that some say the intent was to force them to sell out to the megabanks. Community banks are rapidly disappearing — except in North Dakota, where they are thriving. 
At over 2,300 pages, the Dodd Frank Act is the longest and most complicated bill ever passed by the US legislature. It was supposed to end “too big to fail” and “bailouts,” and to “promote financial stability.” But Dodd-Frank’s “orderly liquidation authority” has replaced bailouts with bail-ins, meaning that in the event of insolvency, big banks are to recapitalize themselves with the savings of their creditors and depositors. The banks deemed too big are more than 30% bigger than before the Act was passed in 2010, and 80% bigger than before the banking crisis of 2008. The six largest US financial institutions now have assets of some $10 trillion, amounting to almost 60% of GDP; and they control nearly 50% of all bank deposits.
Meanwhile, their smaller competitors are struggling to survive. Community banks and credit unions are disappearing at the rate of one a day. Access to local banking services is disappearing along with them. Small and medium-size businesses – the ones that hire two-thirds of new employees – are having trouble getting loans; students are struggling with sky-high interest rates; homeowners have been replaced by hedge funds acting as absentee landlords; and bank fees are up, increasing the rolls of the unbanked and underbanked, and driving them into the predatory arms of payday lenders.
Even some well-heeled clients are being rejected. In an October 19, 2015 article titled  “Big Banks to America’s Firms: We Don’t Want Your Cash,” the Wall Street Journal reported that some Wall Street banks are now telling big depositors to take their money elsewhere or be charged a deposit fee.
Municipal governments are also being rejected as customers. Bank of America just announced that it no longer wants the business of some smaller cities, which have been given 90 days to find somewhere else to put their money. Hundreds of local BofA branches are also disappearing.
Hardest hit, however, are the community banks. Today there are 1,524 fewer banks with assets under $1 billion than there were in June 2010, before the Dodd-Frank regulations were signed into law.
Collateral Damage or Intended Result?
The rapid demise of community banking is blamed largely on Dodd-Frank’s massively complex rules and onerous capitalization requirements. Just doing the paperwork requires an army of compliance officers, and increased capital and loan requirements are eliminating the smaller banks’ profit margins. They have little recourse but to sell to the larger banks, which have large staffs capable of dealing with the regulations, and which skirt the capital requirements by parking assets in off-balance-sheet vehicles. (See “How Wall Street Captured Washington’s Effort to Rein in Banks” in Reuters in April 2015.)
According to Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, the disappearance of community banks was not an unintended consequence of Dodd-Frank. He said in a speech in July:
The Dodd-Frank architecture, first of all, has made us less financially stable. Since the passage of Dodd-Frank, the big banks are bigger and the small banks are fewer. But because Washington can control a handful of big established firms much easier than many small and zealous competitors, this is likely an intended consequence of the Act. Dodd-Frank concentrates greater assets in fewer institutions. It codifies into law ‘Too Big to Fail’ . . . . [Emphasis added.]
In an article titled “The FDIC’s New Capital Rules and Their Expected Impact on Community Banks,” Richard Morris and Monica Reyes Grajales concur. They note that “a full discussion of the rules would resemble an advanced course in calculus,” and that the regulators have ignored protests that the rules would have a devastating impact on community banks. Why? The authors suggest that the rules reflect “the new vision of bank regulation – that there should be bigger and fewer banks in the industry.”
The Failure of Regulation
Obviously, making the big banks bigger also serves the interests of the megabanks, whose lobbyists are well known to have their fingerprints all over the legislation. How they have been able to manipulate the rules was seen last December, when legislation drafted by Citigroup and slipped into the Omnibus Spending Bill loosened the Dodd-Frank regulations on derivatives. As noted in a Mother Jones article before the legislation was passed:
The Citi-drafted legislation will benefit five of the largest banks in the country—Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo. These financial institutions control more than 90 percent of the $700 trillion derivatives market. If this measure becomes law, these banks will be able to use FDIC-insured money to bet on nearly anything they want. And if there’s another economic downturn, they can count on a taxpayer bailout of their derivatives trading business.
Regulation is clearly inadequate to keep these banks honest and ensure that they serve the public interest. The world’s largest private banks have been caught in criminal acts that former bank fraud investigator Prof. William K. Black calls the greatest frauds in history. The litany of frauds involves more than a dozen felonies, including bid-rigging on municipal bond debt; colluding to rig interest rates on hundreds of trillions of dollars in mortgages, derivatives and other contracts; exposing investors to excessive risk; and engaging in multiple forms of mortgage fraud. According to US Attorney General Eric Holder, the guilty have gone unpunished because they are “too big to prosecute.” If they are too big to prosecute, they are too big to regulate.
But that doesn’t mean Congress won’t try. Dodd-Frank gives the Federal Reserve “heightened prudential supervision” over “systemically important” banks, essentially putting them under government control. According to Hensarling, writing in the Wall Street Journal in July, Dodd-Frank is turning America’s largest financial institutions into “functional utilities” and is delivering the power to allocate capital to political actors in Washington.
Thomas Hoenig, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, gave a speech in 2011 in which he also described banking as a “public utility.” (What he actually said was, “You’re a public utility, for crying out loud.”) Six months later, Hoenig was appointed vice chairman of the FDIC.
If the megabanks are going to be true public utilities, they probably need to be publicly-owned entities, which capture profits and direct credit in a way that actually serves the people. If Dodd-Frank’s several thousand pages of regulations cannot create a stable and sustainable banking system, the regulatory approach has failed. The whole system needs to be revamped.
Restoring Community Banking: The Model of North Dakota        
Even if the megabanks were to become true public utilities, we would still need a thriving community banking sector. Community banks service local markets in a way that the megabanks with their standardized lending models are neither interested in nor capable of.
How can the community banks be preserved and nurtured? For some ideas, we can look to a state where they are still thriving – North Dakota. In a September 2015 article titled “How One State Escaped Wall Street’s Rule and Created a Banking System That’s 83% Locally Owned,” Stacy Mitchell writes that North Dakota’s banking sector bears little resemblance to that of the rest of the country:
North Dakotans do not depend on Wall Street banks to decide the fate of their livelihoods and the future of their communities, and rely instead on locally owned banks and credit unions. With 89 small and mid-sized community banks and 38 credit unions, North Dakota has six times as many locally owned financial institutions per person as the rest of the nation. And these local banks and credit unions control a resounding 83 percent of deposits in the state — more than twice the 30 percent market share that small and mid-sized financial institutions have nationally.
Their secret is the century-old Bank of North Dakota, the nation’s only state-owned depository bank, which partners with and supports the state’s local banks. In an April 2015 article titled “Is Dodd-Frank Killing Community Banks? The More Important Question is How to Save Them”, Matt Stannard writes:

 

Public banks offer unique benefits to community banks, including collateralization of deposits, protection from poaching of customers by big banks, the creation of more successful deals, and . . . regulatory compliance. The Bank of North Dakota, the nation’s only public bank, directly supports community banks and enables them to meet regulatory requirements such as asset to loan ratios and deposit to loan ratios. . . . [I]t keeps community banks solvent in other ways, lessening the impact of regulatory compliance on banks’ bottom lines.
We know from FDIC data in 2009 that North Dakota had almost 16 banks per 100,000 people, the most in the country. A more important figure, however, is community banks’ loan averages per capita, which was $12,000 in North Dakota, compared to only $3,000 nationally. . . . During the last decade, banks in North Dakota with less than $1 billion in assets have averaged a stunning 434 percent more small business lending than the national average.
The BND has also been very profitable for the state and its citizens. Over the last 21 years, the BND has generated almost $1 billion in profit and returned nearly $400 million to the state’s general fund, where it is available to support education and other public services while reducing the tax burden on residents and businesses.
The partnership of a state-owned bank with local community banks is a proven alternative for maintaining the viability of local credit and banking services. Other states would do well to follow North Dakota’s lead, not only to protect their local communities and local banks, but to bolster their revenues, escape Washington’s noose, and provide a bail-in-proof depository for their public funds.
_________________

Ellen Brown is an attorney, founder of the Public Banking Institute, and author of twelve books including the best-selling Web of Debt. Her latest book, The Public Bank Solution, explores successful public banking models historically and globally. Her 300+ blog articles are at EllenBrown.com. Listen to “It’s Our Money with Ellen Brown” on PRN.FM.

WALMART COLLAPSE SPREADS!!!

 Suppliers of everything from groceries to sports equipment are already being squeezed for price cuts and cost sharing by Wal-Mart Stores . Now they are bracing for the pressure to ratchet up even more after a shock earnings warning from the retailer last week.
Read More Here: https://ca.news.yahoo.com/wal-mart-pu…

Here We Go: BRICS Bank Gets Its Ducks In A Row, China Calls For New Global Currency

The New Development Bank (NDB) has started prioritizing projects for 2016, according to Russian Industry and Trade Minister Denis Manturov.
NDB was established by the BRICS member states – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – in 2014 to complement the World Bank. The bank’s main goal is to promote sustainable development in BRICS states. In July the bank opened for operations in Shanghai with the startup capital of $50 billion.
“BRICS New Development Bank which has already started the selection of next year’s priority projects, will contribute in attracting investment in joint projects in a wide range of industries,” Manturov said Tuesday at the first meeting of BRICS industry ministers in Moscow.
View image on Twitter
View image on Twitter
bank opens for operations in Shanghai http://on.rt.com/6ng1 

Russia has developed a roadmap of trade and investment cooperation with all the BRICS countries through till 2020, the minister added. It includes projects in manufacturing, mining, engineering, energy and many other sectors of the economy.“We are ready to work them out and determine the range of initiatives that will be implemented jointly with the assistance of the new development bank and national mechanisms of support,” the minister said.
https://www.rt.com/business/319173-brics-bank-projects-cooperation/

CHINA CALLS FOR NEW GLOBAL CURRENCY

China is calling for a global currency to replace the dominant dollar, showing a growing assertiveness on revamping the world economy ahead of next week’s London summit on the financial crisis.
The surprise proposal by Beijing’s central bank governor reflects unease about its vast holdings of U.S. government bonds and adds to Chinese pressure to overhaul a global financial system dominated by the dollar and Western governments. Both the United States and the European Union brushed off the idea.
The world economic crisis shows the “inherent vulnerabilities and systemic risks in the existing international monetary system,” Gov. Zhou Xiaochuan said in an essay released Monday by the bank. He recommended creating a currency made up of a basket of global currencies and controlled by the International Monetary Fund and said it would help “to achieve the objective of safeguarding global economic and financial stability.”
Zhou did not mention the dollar by name. But in an unusual step, the essay was published in both Chinese and English, making clear it was meant for a foreign audience.
China has long been uneasy about relying on the dollar for the bulk of its trade and to store foreign reserves. Premier Wen Jiabao publicly appealed to Washington this month to avoid any response to the crisis that might weaken the dollar and the value of Beijing’s estimated $1 trillion in Treasuries and other U.S. government debt.
For decades, the dollar has been the world’s most widely used currency. Many governments hold a large portion of their reserves in dollars. Crude oil and many commodities are priced in dollars. Business deals around the world are done in dollars.
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=7168919&page=1
One day it sure as shit will….I dont think it will be the yuan and if it is it won’t last for more than a few years…
The 2 quadrillion derivatives bubble is meant to take down every paper currency on earth and most likely every corporation
Use of derivatives is growing in anticipation of a hike in global interest rates. The increased demand for hedging instruments is placing a strain on dealers, which face rising derivatives trading costs as a result of recent regulation.
A new report, Corporate Derivatives Use Continues to Grow — Dealers Say Not So Fast, released by Greenwich Associates examines the results of a study of nearly 400 corporate treasurers globally and finds that corporate use of derivatives has climbed since the financial crisis with the annual interest-rate derivatives trading volume of the typical big corporate user growing to $3 billion in 2014 from $2 billion in 2006. The vast majority of these users—87% of study respondents—say new regulations have had no impact on their use of derivatives.
The story is much different for the dealers which companies rely on to execute these trades. While Dodd-Frank exempted corporate “end users” from its trading and clearing mandates, dealers executing bilateral trades with these clients are subject to much higher capital costs than those imposed on cleared trades for other clients. “Banks will be, and in some cases already are, passing these new costs down to the client,” says Kevin McPartland, Head of Market Structure and Technology Research at Greenwich Associates.
Over half the corporations participating in the study are paying credit charges to their dealer as part of the initial transaction to offset the dealer’s cost of capital under Basel III.
http://www.commodities-now.com/reports/portfolio-management/18860-corporate-use-of-derivatives-up-50-post-crisis.html
In yet another sign of its growing prominence on the global financial stage, China called for a new world reserve currency to replace the dominant dollar.
An ABC news report said China is showing “growing assertiveness” on revamping the world economy:
The surprise proposal by Beijing’s central bank governor reflects unease about its vast holdings of U.S. government bonds and adds to Chinese pressure to overhaul a global financial system dominated by the dollar and Western governments.”
http://schiffgold.com/key-gold-news/china-calls-for-new-global-reserve-currency-to-replace-dollar/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=gold-news&utm_content=peterschiff
View image on Twitter
View image on Twitter
China calls for new global currency @abcnews http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=7168919&page=1 

China’s money supply growth dwarfs the rest of the world
A file picture dated 10 May 2011 shows Chinese 100 yuan or Renminbi (RMB) notes and coins in Beijing, China. China is moving to boost the international strength of its currency by announcing on 03 November 2014 plans to turn Frankfurt, Germany into the eurozone centre for trading in the yuan. Transactions in yuan in a newly established clearing house operated by the Bank of China will begin on November 17.
hina’s broad money supply growth between 2007 and 2013 was greater than that of the rest of the world combined, spurring the country’s rapid economic expansion but creating the risk of asset price bubbles and widespread loan defaults.
Analysis by Ousmène Jacques Mandeng, a former deputy division chief at the International Monetary Fund, suggests China’s broad money rose by $12.9tn in the seven years to 2013, outstripping the $11tn rise of the rest of the world.
“The Chinese money wall may well dwarf anything in the international financial system including unconventional monetary policy [such as quantitative easing],” says Mr Mandeng, who describes China’s growth of M2 broad money — a measure that includes cash in circulation, savings and time deposits — as “scary”.
“This is a reflection of massive expansion of bank balance sheets in China. It’s a big, big thing and it is lost on most people,” he says.
Mr Mandeng is head of research and development at New Sparta Asset Management, an emerging markets-focused house set up by Jerome Booth, the co-founder of Ashmore.
He calculates that China’s M2 rose 18.4 per cent a year between 2008 and 2013.
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/3/c85cb7b0-62a1-11e5-9846-de406ccb37f2.html
The key for China is gaining the support of a major financial centre in the West, otherwise everything they spout is just hot air, but it seems the City of London is the go to place at the moment to turn those Chinese dreams into reality, especially now they have removed the RFQII cap with the UK and replaced it was a market demand cap, and are now planning to issue short term RMB denominated debt in London..
Be interesting to see the speech Xi will give in the City of London today, and what deals are signed, thus far all we know is 150 deals are to be signed, and some of them are financial ones.. but the BoE seems to be betting the bank on China, hence supporting the internationalisation phase…
Honestly, can’t see any of this going down well the US and the Special Relationship… and to be honest I have no idea where this will leave US/UK relations.. I guess it’s a wait and see moment, could all be more hot air or could be something much more..
China to issue short term debt in London.
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/3/c85cb7b0-62a1-11e5-9846-de406ccb37f2.html#axzz3pCE90EOA
I.O.A.

Credit Suisse CEO scraps 1600 Jobs. “Not my job to do great things but to have success”… plans to raise $6.3 billion in new capital

Google Translate:
At a press conference CS boss Tidjane Thiam has given the most important changes of the strategy known.
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/wirtschaft/konjunktur/die-credit-suisse-informiert-ueber-die-neuerungen/story/25373022
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http://www.blick.ch/news/wirtschaft/cs-spart-3-5-milliarden-thiam-streicht-1600-jobs-in-der-schweiz-id4279413.html
He’s actually a nice guy…
Thiam Quote: “We are not going to create a bloodbath»
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http://www.20min.ch/finance/news/story/-Wir-werden-kein-Blutbad-veranstalten–20268468
Credit Suisse plans $6.3 billion capital increase
ZURICH– Credit Suisse Group AG revealed details of a planned overhaul under its new chief executive on Wednesday including raising roughly 6 billion Swiss francs ($6.3 billion) in new capital, as the Swiss bank delivered a set of disappointing third-quarter results.
Incoming CEO Tidjane Thiam took over at Zurich-based Credit Suisse in July, and has been widely expected to implement changes at the lender including a downsizing of its relatively expensive, and relatively high-risk, investment bank unit. Credit Suisse said on Wednesday it plans to “significantly” reduce the use of capital at its investment bank.
Credit Suisse said it would raise fresh capital through both a rights offering and private placement.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/credit-suisse-plans-63-billion-capital-increase-2015-10-21?dist=beforebell

How Can Stocks Be So Good When the Economy’s So… Not?

by 
I really hate to be so negative, but I really don’t get the rally in stocks.
Just last week alone September retail sales disappointed, consumer inflation flat-lined and a couple major regional manufacturing surveys showed contraction. In other words, economic activity is actually shrinking. The Fed’s September index of industrial production showed another contraction, which was the fourth in five months.
I’m not cherry picking the bad economic reports here. I really can’t find many “green shoots” in the picture.
Our unemployment rate of only 5.1% seems to be positive, but wage growth has been absent. Home sales and auto sales have been strong, but a lot of this is a result of the Fed keeping borrowing costs so low. And those seem to be the only sectors holding up the entire U.S. economy!
Aside from the poor economic data, it’s also earnings season. Corporate earnings have been coming in a little better than expected, and that could be the reason stocks (S&P 500 and Dow Industrials) are only 5% away from all-time highs.
Of course, it’s not hard to beat expectations when they’ve already been revised down. Just this past Friday, General Electric posted better-than-expected earnings, but its revenues fell short. We’ve been seeing a lot of that lately.
Many companies have resorted to share buybacks and accounting mirages to boost or stabilize earnings per share. With the Fed’s zero interest rate policy this has been a cheap game to play.
So, stock prices continue to be buoyed by Fed policy and not by improving profitability or growing revenues. But when the music stops and companies run out of accounting gimmicks, look out below!
Why am I so focused on stocks? Because when the shoe drops and stocks finally correct, the money will naturally flow into the safety of U.S. Treasury bonds.
In fact, bond investors are already starting to position for a major slow down. See the chart from last week, which shows a strong technical pattern supporting future lower yields.
30 Year US Treasury Bond Oct 20

Lance Gaitan
Editor, Dent Digest Trader