America facing wheat export crisis as Europe and Japan lead the way in rejecting genetically modified crops

• EU will test incoming shipments after GM crops discovered in Oregon
• Japan cancels tender offer to buy U.S western white wheat
• No GM wheat varieties are approved for general planting in U.S

By Anna Edwards

Unapproved genetically modified wheat has been discovered growing in the United States.
The revelation is threatening the outlook for U.S. exports of the world's biggest traded food commodity, with importers keenly aware of consumer sensitivity to gene-altered food.
The European Union is preparing to test incoming shipments, and will block any containing GM wheat. Chicago Board of Trade wheat futures fell 0.5 percent on Thursday.

USDA officials said that when a farmer sprayed the so-called 'volunteer' plants (not pictured) with a glyphosate herbicide, some of them unexpectedly survived

Major importer Japan has cancelled a tender offer to buy U.S. western white wheat, while other top Asian wheat importers South Korea, China and the Philippines said they were closely monitoring the situation.

 

'We will refrain from buying western white and feed wheat effective today,' Toru Hisadome, a Japanese farm ministry official in charge of wheat trading said.
GM wheat was discovered this spring on a farm in the west coast state of Oregon, in a field that grew winter wheat in 2012.
USDA officials said yesterday that when a farmer sprayed the so-called 'volunteer' plants with a glyphosate herbicide, some of them unexpectedly survived.

Major importer Japan has cancelled a tender offer to buy U.S. western white wheat, while other top Asian wheat importers South Korea, China and the Philippines said they were closely monitoring the situation

Scientists found the wheat was a strain field-tested from 1998 to 2005 and deemed safe before St. Louis-based biotech giant Monsanto withdrew it from the regulatory approval process on worldwide opposition to genetically engineered wheat.
No GM wheat varieties are approved for general planting in the U.S. or elsewhere, the USDA said.
The EU has asked Monsanto for a detection method to allow its controls to be carried out.
With high consumer wariness to genetically-modified food, few countries allow imports of such cereals for direct human consumption. However, the bulk of U.S. corn and soybean crops are genetically modified.

With high consumer wariness to genetically-modified food, few countries allow imports of such cereals for direct human consumption

The latest finding revives memories of farmers unwittingly planting genetically modified rapeseed in Europe in 2000, while in 2006 a large part of the U.S. long-grain rice crop was contaminated by an experimental strain from Bayer CropScience , prompting import bans in Europe and Japan.
The company agreed in court in 2011 to pay $750 million to growers as compensation.
Asia imports more than 40 million tonnes of wheat annually, almost a third of the global trade of 140-150 million tonnes. The bulk of the region's supplies come from the United States, the world's biggest exporter, and Australia, the No. 2 supplier.
The USDA said there was no sign that genetically engineered wheat had entered the commercial market, but grain traders warned the discovery could hurt export prospects for U.S. wheat.
'Asian consumers are jittery about genetically modified food,' said Abah Ofon, an analyst at Standard Chartered Bank in Singapore. 'This is adding to concerns that already exist on quality and availability of food wheat globally.'
European traders said Black Sea and EU wheat was well positioned to benefit in any displaced demand for U.S. grain. But some were more pragmatic on the overall impact.
'The market is going to need U.S. wheat, we won't be able to do without it, so that could mean more checks and more sanitary certificates,' one European dealer said.
'Japan is in a position to be selective and to react sharply. It has other suppliers and the financial means to be choosy and pay more if needed. This is not necessarily the case for (top global wheat importer) Egypt which is in a difficult financial situation.'
A major flour miller in China, which has been stocking U.S. wheat in recent months, said importers will tread carefully.
China has emerged as a key buyer of U.S. wheat this year, taking around 1.5 million tonnes in the past two months.
Chinese purchases in the year to June 2014 are estimated to rise 21 percent to 3.5 million tonnes, according to the USDA, with most shipments coming from the United States, Australia and Canada.
The Philippines, which buys about 4 million tonnes of wheat a year and relies mainly on U.S. supplies, is waiting for more details before acting, an industry official in Manila said.
'I won't be surprised if other countries start cancelling or reducing their purchases of U.S. wheat, particularly Asian countries, putting pressure on wheat demand,' said Joyce Liu, an investment analyst at Phillip Futures in Singapore.
Genetically modified crops cannot be grown legally in the United States unless the government approves them after a review to ensure they pose no threat to the environment or to people.
Monsanto in a statement posted on its website said: 'While USDA's results are unexpected, there is considerable reason to believe that the presence of the Roundup Ready trait in wheat, if determined to be valid, is very limited.'

Another electric car company goes belly up

EVs charging at the Better Place visitor centre at the Pi-Glilot former gas depot in Ramat Hasharon, Israel, north of Tel Aviv (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

JERUSALEM (AP) — It was an audacious idea that came to symbolize Israel’s self-described status as “Start-Up Nation,” a company that believed it could replace most gasoline-powered cars with electric vehicles and reduce the world’s reliance on oil — and all within a few years.
But it all came crashing down.
The company, Better Place, started out as a source of pride and a symbol of Israel’s status as a global high-tech power, but it suffered from a local brand of hubris and overreach. On Sunday, it announced plans to liquidate after burning through almost a billion dollars and failing to sell its silent fleet of French-made sedans to a skeptical public.

“This is a very sad day for all of us. We stand by the original vision as formulated by Shai Agassi of creating a green alternative that would lessen our dependence on highly polluting transportation technologies,” the company said. “Unfortunately, the path to realizing that vision was difficult, complex and littered with obstacles, not all of which we were able to overcome.”
…
Agassi, 45, believed that in an era of global warming and rising oil prices, environmentally friendly electric cars could be the wave of the future, if only a way could be found to overcome the limited range of their batteries.
Full story here: http://www.ecnmag.com/news/2013/05/trailblazing-israeli-electric-car-company-close

Basel III: How The Bank For International Settlements Is Going To Help Bring Down The Global Economy

A new set of regulations that most people have never even heard of that was developed by an immensely powerful central banking organization that most people do not even know exists is going to have a dramatic effect on the global financial system over the next several years.  The new set of regulations is known as “Basel III”, and it was developed by the Bank for International Settlements.  The Bank for International Settlements has been called “the central bank for central banks”, and it is headquartered in Basel, Switzerland.  58 major central banks (including the Federal Reserve) belong to the Bank for International Settlements, and the decisions made in Basel often have more of an impact on the direction of the global economy than anything the president of the United States or the U.S. Congress are doing.  All you have to do is to look back at the last financial crisis to see an example of this.  Basel II and Basel 2.5 played a major role in precipitating the subprime mortgage meltdown.  Now a new set of regulations known as “Basel III” are being rolled out.  The implementation of these new regulations is beginning this year, and they will be completely phased in by 2019.  These new regulations dramatically increase capital requirements and significantly restrict the use of leverage.  Those certainly sound like good goals, the problem is that the entire global financial system is based on credit at this point, and these new regulations are going to substantially reduce the flow of credit.
The only way that the giant debt bubble that we are all living in can continue to persist is if it continues to expand.  By restricting the flow of credit, these new regulations threaten to burst the debt bubble and bring down the entire global economy.
Not that the current global financial system is sustainable by any means.  Anyone with half a brain can see that the global financial system is a pyramid scheme that is destined to collapse… but Basel III may cause it to collapse faster than it might otherwise have.



From The Economic Collapse Blog:
So precisely what is Basel III?  The following is a definition from the official website of the Bank for International Settlements…

“Basel III” is a comprehensive set of reform measures, developed by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, to strengthen the regulation, supervision and risk management of the banking sector. These measures aim to:

• improve the banking sector’s ability to absorb shocks arising from financial and economic stress, whatever the source
• improve risk management and governance
• strengthen banks’ transparency and disclosures.

All of that looks good at first glance.  But when you start looking into the details you start realizing what it is going to mean for the global financial system.  Banks are going to be required to have higher reserve ratios and use less leverage.  Banks are going to have to be more careful with their money, which is a good thing, but it is also going to mean that credit will not flow as freely.  Unfortunately, the only way for a debt bubble to survive is if it keeps expanding.  Anything that restricts the flow of easy money threatens to bring a debt bubble to an end.
These new regulations are going to be phased in between 2013 and 2019.  You can see a chart which shows the implementation schedule for the Basel III regulations right here.
So why is bringing the debt bubble to an end a bad thing?
Well, because it will cause the false prosperity that we have been enjoying to disappear, and that will be an exceedingly painful adjustment.
Sadly, most people have no idea what is happening.  Most people have never even heard of “Basel III” or “the Bank for International Settlements”.  Most people just assume that the people they voted into office know what they are doing and have everything under control.
Unfortunately, that is not the case at all.  The truth is that an unelected, unaccountable body of central bankers is making decisions which deeply affect us all, and there is not much that we can do about it.
This unelected, unaccountable body of central bankers played a major role in bringing about the last financial crisis.  The following is a brief excerpt from a recent article posted on Before It’s News…

If you have any questions about the power of these Basel Banking Regulations you can also see the effects that Basel II and 2.5, mark to market accounting, had on the Housing Markets in the United States of America in 2008. There were many causes for that housing bubble, then housing crisis, but Basel II and 2.5 was most assuredly the pin that popped the housing bubble that led to the financial crisis of 2008-09.

But do most people know about this?
Of course not.  Most people want to blame the Republicans or the Democrats or Bush or Obama, and they have no idea about the financial strings that are being pulled at the highest levels.

It is so important that we get people educated about how the global financial system actually works.  The following is a summary of how the Bank for International Settlements works from one of my previous articles entitled “Who Controls The Money? An Unelected, Unaccountable Central Bank Of The World Secretly Does“…

An immensely powerful international organization that most people have never even heard of secretly controls the money supply of the entire globe.  It is called the Bank for International Settlements, and it is the central bank of central banks.  It is located in Basel, Switzerland, but it also has branches in Hong Kong and Mexico City.  It is essentially an unelected, unaccountable central bank of the world that has complete immunity from taxation and from national laws.  Even Wikipedia admits that “it is not accountable to any single national government.“  The Bank for International Settlements was used to launder money for the Nazis during World War II, but these days the main purpose of the BIS is to guide and direct the centrally-planned global financial system.  Today, 58 global central banks belong to the BIS, and it has far more power over how the U.S. economy (or any other economy for that matter) will perform over the course of the next year than any politician does.  Every two months, the central bankers of the world gather in Basel for another “Global Economy Meeting”.  During those meetings, decisions are made which affect every man, woman and child on the planet, and yet none of us have any say in what goes on.  The Bank for International Settlements is an organization that was founded by the global elite and it operates for the benefit of the global elite, and it is intended to be one of the key cornerstones of the emerging one world economic system.

Even though most people have never even heard of the BIS, the truth is that the global elite have had big plans for it for a very long time.  In another article I included a quote from a book that Georgetown University history professor Carroll Quigley wrote many years ago entitled “Tragedy & Hope”…

[T]he powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basle, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world’s central banks which were themselves private corporations.

Today we have such a system, and most of the public does not even know that it exists.
And when the next great financial crisis strikes, there will probably be very little ever said about the Bank for International Settlements in the mainstream media.
But right now the BIS is helping set the stage for the great credit crunch that is coming.
Get prepared while you still can, because time is running out.

New York Stock Exchange Margin Debt Hits A New Record, Surpasses 2007 Figures

Michael Lombardi: Is it just me, or have investors completely abandoned the concept of risk and reward?
The reality of the situation is that the key stock indices are treading in shark-infested waters and the risks are piling up daily. I see bearish signals all over, but the theme among investors, even conservative investors, continues to be “keep buying.”
It’s official…


Margin debt—that’s the amount of money borrowed to purchase stocks—on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) reached its all-time high in April. Margin debt on the NYSE registered at $384.3 billion as the key stock indices hit new record-highs. (Source: New York Stock Exchange web site, last accessed May 29, 2013.) The highest margin debt ever reached prior to this was in July of 2007, when it stood just above $381.0 billion. At that time, just like today, the key stock indices were near their peaks and “buy now before it’s too late” was the prominent theme of the day
Looking ahead, corporate earnings, which ultimately drive the direction of the key stock indices, don’t look so good. So far, 106 companies in key stock indices like the S&P 500 have provided their corporate earnings outlooks for the second quarter, and more than 80% of them have issued earnings outlooks that are negative! Corporate earnings growth for the second quarter is now projected to be only 1.4%—and the estimate keeps going down! (Source: FactSet, May 28, 2013.)
And this chart doesn’t look good either:

 

Chart courtesy of www.StockCharts.com

The above chart shows the performance of the S&P 500 utilities stocks through an exchange-traded fund (ETF) called the Utilities Select Sector SPDR (NYSEARCA:XLU). Why is this chart important? Utilities stocks are considered safe because the companies in the sector usually have good long-term growth and consistent corporate earnings. But this chart shows how investors are fleeing the safety of utilities stocks—and I think they are running to high-risk stock sectors.

How To Make 500% Off This Tech Stock By August (Click Here)

But in spite of all these factors, it wouldn’t surprise me to see the key stock indices go even a little higher because of all the buying momentum. The bear market rally, which began in 2009, has done a masterful job at convincing investors that the stock market is safe again—but it will all end in a collapse. It’s only a matter of when it will happen.
Key stock indices rising on anemic economic growth, poor corporate earnings, and leveraged investors—this is not going to end pleasantly.
Michael’s Personal Notes:
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has officially lowered its growth expectation for the Chinese economy, the second-biggest engine in the global economy. The IMF expects China to grow 7.75% this year compared to the eight percent it previously projected.
The First Deputy Managing Director of the IMF, David Lipton, said, “while china still has significant policy space and financial capacity to maintain stability even in the face of adverse shocks, the margins of safety are narrowing.” (Source: “IMF Forecasts Lower China Growth, Warns on Debt,” Wall Street Journal, May 29, 2013.) This will be the first year since 2009 that China’s economic growth is in the single digits.
France, a key economy in the eurozone and the fifth-biggest in the global economy, is back in a recession for the third time in five years, as the economic slowdown in the country continues to take its toll. In May, consumer sentiment in the French economy reached lows not seen since July of 2008. (Source: France 24, May 28, 2013.)
As I have written before, there is no way the economic slowdown in the global economy will not end up affecting America. The price action in the stock market doesn’t show this, but in the first quarter of 2013, of the 11 companies on the Dow Jones Industrial Average that reported their revenues in Europe, nine of them posted a decline in sales from that region! (Source: FactSet, May 28, 2013.)
Dear reader, while the U.S. economy still hasn’t recovered from the last economic slowdown, more troubles from outside our domestic control lie ahead.
China and France are just a few of the many examples of what’s actually happening in the global economy. Other nations like Japan are facing severe scrutiny as well.
There are several countries in the eurozone that are in an outright depression. The youth unemployment rate in some eurozone countries is close to 50%. In Cyprus, the government has gone so far as to take money right out of its citizens’ bank accounts if their deposits totaled over 100,000 euros.
While you don’t read or hear as much about it as you did last year, the economic issues in the eurozone are dire—and the ramifications for the global economy are very real. Should Germany’s economy soften further, we could see all of Europe come under economic pressure, the winds of which will surely sail across the Atlantic to the West.
What He Said:
“Even the most novice investor can now read the chart of the Dow Jones U.S. Home Construction Index and see that it is trading at its lowest level in five years. If, like me, you believe that stocks are an indication of what lies ahead, this important index is telling us housing prices are headed to 2002 levels! What would that do to the economy? Such an event would devastate the U.S.” Michael Lombardi in Profit Confidential, December 4, 2007. That devastation started happening in the first quarter of 2008.
This article is brought to you courtesy of Michael Lombardi from Profit Confidential.

Inflation, Deflation or Hyperinflation In America & Effect on Gold and Silver Prices

Is the United States currently experiencing inflation, deflation or stagflation? Are we heading into hyperinflation? What effect will this have on gold and silver price?

Detroit Mayor: Let’s Force Employees to Live in City Limits for 7 Years

Breitbart – by BEN SHAPIRO
Detroit Mayor Dave Bing says that Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr, who has threatened to take the city into bankruptcy over its unsustainable finances, is bluffing. “I think he’s using it, at this point, judiciously to make sure that he can use it as leverage more than anything else,” Bing told the press. “He said to me, more than once, ‘[bankruptcy] is not where I want to go, but at least it’s on the table, and if I have to go there, nobody’s gonna like it.’”  
Bing added that he was glad he was leaving office thanks to Detroit’s status as an undeclared disaster area. “When you talk about a $15 billion debt and long-term liability issue, you don’t solve that in a short period of time. So that is somebody else’s issue at some point. And I’m glad that’s not me!”
Bing said that the city had seen the flight of its most important assets, “police and fire.” More than half no longer live within the city, so “not only don’t people feel safe anymore, but you also lose the tax benefits that you were getting.”
Bing wants to pass a law forcing the city to hire people who must stay within the city for seven years. “In seven years a lot of things can change,” Bing explained, neglecting to explain how the city could legally force employees to stay within the city limits.
———————
Ben Shapiro is Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the New York Times bestseller “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013).

FED To INCREASE MONEY PRINTING: COLLAPSE of The DOLLAR? – Erik Townsend