Bloomberg Sues The Bucket Shop Known As The ECB, Seeks Disclosure Of Secret Greek Swap Documents

 

John Taylor Says To Play The Coming End Of The Global Reliquification By Shorting Australia

 

Is Paulson Offloading BofA In Dark Pools?

 

Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
John Williams of ShadowStats.com as compared to the glee of many talking heads for 2011.

- Automobile Orders Sink for Fourth Month
- Annualized GDP Growth at 2.6%, GDI Growth at 1.1%
- Housing Crisis Appears to Be Intensifying
- Year-to-Year Decline in Home Sales Is Meaningful Even after Netting out Year-Ago Tax Credit Spikes www.shadowstats.com



Little Holiday Cheer in This Week’s Numbers The average consumer remains liquidity-impaired, and that means there is no hope for any significant economic rebound in the months ahead.  New orders for automobiles (in durable goods) have fallen for four straight months.  Housing starts have begun to turn down anew, and home sales are showing meaningful annual declines, even with last year’s tax-credit-driven sales boosts backed out.  The GDP should turn down again, shortly, as the double-dip recession takes clear hold.  Payrolls and industrial production — allowing for revisions coming early in 2011 — appear already to have peaked or turned down anew as of the August to October 2010 period.  Retail sales — also subject to significant revisions — should begin to show outright monthly declines, net of inflation, in the months ahead.  This will be detailed in next week’s Commentary, which will address the outlook for 2011, a year that should be one of the most treacherous and unstable ever seen for the U.S. economy, systemic solvency and financial markets.  The general outlook as discussed in Special Commentary No. 333, however, has not changed.




Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
No amount of cost cutting can keep up with revenue decline. The you know what is about to hit the municipal bonds fan harder.

16 US Cities Facing Bankruptcy If They Don’t Make Deep Cuts In 2011 Gus Lubin and Leah Goldman | Dec. 21, 2010, 1:32 PM
2011 will be the year of the municipal default. At least that’s what analysts like Meredith Whitney predict, as do bond investors that have been fleeing the muni market.
There are many reasons to be worried. First, the expiration of Build America Bonds will make it harder for cities to raise funds.
Second, city revenues are crashing and keep getting worse. Property taxes haven’t reflected the total damage from the housing crash. High joblessness is cutting into city revenues, while increasing costs for services.
The next default could be a major city like Detroit, or it could be one of hundreds of small cities that are on the brink. Did we leave off your ailing city? Let us know in the comments.
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Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
Those cups with handles can be very powerful.

Chile’s Collahuasi copper mine halts shipments
Force majeure declared at world’s third largest copper mine By Jim Jelter, MarketWatch
Dec. 21, 2010, 7:13 p.m. EST
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Chile’s giant Collahuasi copper mine, the world’s third largest, has halted shipments indefinitely following an accident at the mine’s ore shipping terminal.
News that the mine had declared force majeure Monday raced through the global metals market Tuesday, sending March copper futures to a record close of $4.28 a pound on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange, a 1.7% advance from Monday’s settlement. Read Metals Stocks.
Force majeure is invoked when a company cannot meet its contractual obligations due to circumstances beyond its control, in this case its ability to ship copper-ore concentrate.
Mine officials said the mishap had not affected Collahuasi’s actual mining operations, but that they are scrambling to find some other way to ship stockpiled copper concentrate from the facility after a shiploader at the Punta Patache port collapsed, reportedly killing three workers. They said they did not know how long shipments would be suspended. Separately, a port official told Reuters it could take at least a month to repair the damaged loading station.
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Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
Does anyone still pay attention to these tools of currency manipulation? Did China not downgrade Fitch?

Fitch downgrades Hungary as parlt votes on 2011 budget Thu Dec 23, 2010 7:37am EST
By Gergely Szakacs and Krisztina Than
BUDAPEST, Dec 23 (Reuters) – Fitch cut Hungary’s long term foreign currency credit rating by one notch to BBB- with a negative outlook on Thursday, warning that the lack of a coherent medium-term fiscal strategy undermined confidence in fiscal sustainability.
The downgrade came just as Hungarian lawmakers prepared to approve the 2011 budget that cuts the deficit with one-off revenues, leaving markets hoping more reforms due in February will finally put the country on a sustainable fiscal path.
The 2011 budget targets a deficit below 3 percent of gross domestic product for the first time since Hungary joined the European Union in 2004, making it a top performer in the 27-member bloc.
But to do so it will rake in temporary taxes, including heavy new levies on profitable foreign businesses, and tap up to $14 billion of private pension savings, putting it on a potential collision course with markets and voters.
"The new Fidesz government… has set out fiscal plans that go in the wrong direction for further fiscal consolidation. Conversely, these plans could worsen the underlying medium-term budget outlook by around 4pp of GDP over 2011-2012," Fitch said.
Fitch warned that a failure to implement credible medium-term fiscal consolidation measures that restore public finances to a sustainable course could lead to a downgrade.
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Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
Who would want to bomb the Swiss other than a US account holder?

Swiss Embassy in Rome Hit by Package Bomb, Hurting One By Jerrold Colten and Tommaso Ebhardt – Dec 23, 2010 5:41 AM MT
A package bomb exploded and injured an employee at the Swiss embassy in Rome today, Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said.
The bomb, which was hidden in a postal package, exploded at noon today, according to a statement from the embassy. The victim suffered hand injuries. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, according to the embassy.
“This is a deplorable act of violence that deserves our complete condemnation,” Frattini said in an e-mailed statement.
The embassy employee was “seriously injured” and taken to a hospital, news agency Ansa reported.
Today’s explosion is the second bomb scare this week in Rome. A suspicious device discovered on a Rome subway train Dec. 21 wasn’t capable of exploding, Mayor Gianni Alemanno said at the time.
Rome and other Italian cities have been the site of violent student protests in the last week as Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s government attempts to push through legislation that will overhaul the country’s university system.
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Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
Regardless of all the China self-elected experts saying China will not do this, keep in mind that China’s strategy has always been to looks for any kind of national emergency and enter where no other man will tread. The West has no plans for anything and only reacts, usually in a wrong manner, to every situation.

China extends help to tackle euro crisis By Jamil Anderlini in Beijing and Peter Spiegel in Brussels
China has promised to take further “concerted action” to support European financial stabilisation, including continuing to buy the bonds of countries at the centre of the sovereign debt crisis, according to senior European officials.
The officials, who declined to be named, said Wang Qishan, a Chinese vice-premier, had given assurances that China would step up support for European stabilisation efforts “if necessary”. Mr Wang made the pledge during the third annual China-EU High Level Economic and Trade Dialogue, held in Beijing on Tuesday.
In comments reported by state media, Mr Wang said China supported measures taken by the EU and the International Monetary Fund to stabilise the eurozone, but gave little detail of what form such backing would take.
Beijing has emerged as one of the more enthusiastic backers of distressed European sovereign debt in recent months.
During a trip to Portugal last month, Hu Jintao, China’s president, said Beijing would take “concrete measures” to help the country, which officials signalled would include bond purchases.
A month earlier, Wen Jiabao, China’s prime minister, said in Athens that Beijing would purchase Greek bonds and increase foreign investment in the country.
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Fresh humiliation for eurozone as China says it will bail out debt-ridden nations By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 8:12 PM on 23rd December 2010
China has said it is willing to bail out debt-ridden countries in the euro zone using its $2.7trillion overseas investment fund.
In a fresh humiliation for Europe, Foreign Ministry spokesman Jiang Yu said it was one of the most important areas for China’s foreign exchange investments.
The country has already approached struggling European countries with financial aid, including offering to buy Greece’s debt in October and promising to buy $4billion of Portuguese government debt.
Today Portugal had its credit rating downgraded by the Fitch Ratings agency amid mounting concerns over the country’s ability to raise money in the markets to finance its hefty borrowings.
Fitch said it was reducing its rating on the country’s debt by one notch to A+ from AA- and warned that further downgrades may be in the offing by maintaining its negative outlook.
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Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
What foolish bureaucrat thinks the West can bully China into anything?

U.S. files WTO complaint against China. The Obama administration filed a complaint with the WTO over subsidies China provides its wind-energy manufacturers, acting on a petition brought by the United Steelworkers union. The U.S. claims that the Chinese government fund which awards grants to wind power manufacturers appears to require recipients to use Chinese-made parts, which violates WTO rules.



Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
A small step for a city but the beginning of something that will impact all mankind in the West.

Alabama Town’s Failed Pension Is a Warning Published: December 22, 2010
PRICHARD, Ala. — This struggling small city on the outskirts of Mobile was warned for years that if it did nothing, its pension fund would run out of money by 2009. Right on schedule, its fund ran dry.
Then Prichard did something that pension experts say they have never seen before: it stopped sending monthly pension checks to its 150 retired workers, breaking a state law requiring it to pay its promised retirement benefits in full.
Since then, Nettie Banks, 68, a retired Prichard police and fire dispatcher, has filed for bankruptcy. Alfred Arnold, a 66-year-old retired fire captain, has gone back to work as a shopping mall security guard to try to keep his house. Eddie Ragland, 59, a retired police captain, accepted help from colleagues, bake sales and collection jars after he was shot by a robber, leaving him badly wounded and unable to get to his new job as a police officer at the regional airport.
Far worse was the retired fire marshal who died in June. Like many of the others, he was too young to collect Social Security. “When they found him, he had no electricity and no running water in his house,” said David Anders, 58, a retired district fire chief. “He was a proud enough man that he wouldn’t accept help.”
The situation in Prichard is extremely unusual — the city has sought bankruptcy protection twice — but it proves that the unthinkable can, in fact, sometimes happen. And it stands as a warning to cities like Philadelphia and states like Illinois, whose pension funds are under great strain: if nothing changes, the money eventually does run out, and when that happens, misery and turmoil follow.
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