European Crisis: Your 1 Minute Update – “Financial Anarchy in Europe”

from Zerohedge:
This is where we stand right about now.
Future of the euro area — German Finance Minister Schäuble and former ECB president Trichet float proposals on the future of the euro area – an elected EU president, political union, “federation by exception”. While more integration is likely as a response to the current crisis, progress is not likely to be quick.
France and the fiscal compact — German FM Schäuble and Eurogroup chairman Juncker are confident that French President Hollande and German Chancellor Merkel will find a common position on the fiscal and growth pact. New French FM Moscovici says France will not ratify the pact unless it includes ambitious commitments to promote economic growth. However, with results of the French public finance audit due on 1 June, fiscal consolidation may get more airtime in the legislative election campaign than during the presidential one.
EU bank resolution scheme: The head of the banking unit at the EU Commission indicated that a crisis management proposal to wind up failing banks would be adopted by the EU on June 6.
Spain — Economy secretary Fernando Jimenez was quoted by Reuters on Thursday saying that, with Spain having done everything necessary in terms of fiscal policy adjustments and structural reforms, “we think that there should be some type of reaction from the ECB”. He denied the story run in El Pais that Bankia has lost over €1bn in deposits, around 1% of retail and corporate accounts, in the past week. LCH.Clearnet hiked Spanish bond margins (>1.5 years) on Friday.
Moody’s downgrades 16 Spanish banks. Spanish government approves 2012 budgets for 16 out 17 of the autonomous regions. In the process, Spain discovered that its 2011 budget deficit was not 8.5% of GDP, but 8.9%. Oops.
Read More @ Zerohedge.com

By The Time Operation Twist 1 Is Over, The Fed Will Have Quietly Completed 40% Of Operation Twist 2 As Well

By the time Operation Twist (1) ends in just over 40 days time, on June 30, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, according to his previously announced "loose" target, will hope to have extended the average maturity of all bonds in the System Open Market Account (SOMA) to a record of roughly 100 months from 75 month at the onset of the program in October 2011. After all the sole purpose of Twist was to load up the Fed's portfolio with duration, forcing the rest of the market to shift its investing curve even further into risky assets, as the Fed will have effectively onboarded the bulk of securities in the 3-4% return interval. Now as we showed back in early April, hopes that the Fed will simply continue with Operation Twist 2 after the end of "season" 1, as suggested by some clueless "access journalists" who merely relay what they are told by higher powers, are completely misguided as the Fed simply does not have enough short-term securities (1-3 years) to sell, and would have at most 2 months of inventory for a continued sterilized operation. Which however, does not mean that the Fed can not be quietly ramping up its operations in the ongoing Twisting episode. Because as Stone McCarthy demonstrates, as of the past week, the Fed has already surpassed its 100 month maturity target of 100 months, and is at 102.82 months as of May 16. And this is with 6 more weeks of Twist to go: at the current rate of SOMA purchases, the Fed will have a total portfolio average maturity of just shy of 110 months by June 30! Which means that contrary to market expectations of what the Fed's own stated goal may have been, Bernanke will have gobbled up nearly 40% more long-dated Flow relative to estimates! In other words, Ben does not need to do a full blown Operation Twist 2 episode: by the time Twist 1 is over, he will have attained nearly 40% of the goals of the next potential sterilized operation.
 

BRICS can not help a Eurozone intent on committing hara-kiri

from Re-Define:
Note: This is my Op-Ed response to Jeff Sach’s suggestion that emerging markets should help the eurozone. It appeared in the FT’s A-List.
The eurozone’s problems are entirely self-inflicted, and the solutions too must come from within.
However, the European Union may be ‘institutionally incapable’ of getting a handle on the crisis now. Its fragmented structure makes decision-making slow and difficult at the best of times. Petty parochial politics and procrastination has transformed a treatable birth-defect into a near-fatal malady.
The speed, scale and cross-border nature that characterise the crisis now, probably rule out solutions that come from the divided European Council, which is incapable of moving fast enough to restore confidence. The crisis that has already engulfed six of the seventeen euro member states limits their financial ability to act even if they could make quicker decisions. The European Commission, which can act faster, has no money to help.
Read More @ Re-Define.org

Jim Cramer Is Predicting Bank Runs In Spain And Italy And Financial Anarchy Throughout Europe

from The Economic Collapse Blog:
During an appearance on Meet The Press on Sunday, Jim Cramer of CNBC boldly predicted that “financial anarchy” is coming to Europe and that there will be “bank runs” in Spain and Italy in the next few weeks.  This is very strong language for the most famous personality on the most watched financial news channel in the United States to be using.  In fact, if Cramer is not careful, people will start accusing him of sounding just like The Economic Collapse Blog.  It may not happen in “the next few weeks”, but the truth is that the European banking system is in a massive amount of trouble and if Greece does leave the euro it is going to cause a tremendous loss of confidence in banks in countries such as Spain, Italy and Portugal.  There are already rumors that the “smart money” is pulling out of Spanish and Italian banks.  So could we see some of these banks collapse?  Would they get bailed out if they do collapse?  It is so hard to predict exactly how “financial anarchy” will play out, but it is becoming increasingly clear that the European financial system is heading for a massive amount of pain.
Posted below is a clip of Jim Cramer making his bold predictions during his appearance on Meet The Press.  He is obviously very, very disturbed about the direction that Europe is heading in….
Read More @ TheEconomicCollapseBlog.com

Indonesia imposes 20% export tax on Gold, Silver and Platinum

from Bullion Street:
JAKARTA(BullionStreet): Indonesia has decided to retain gold, silver and platinum in the list of minerals enforced with a 20 percent export tax but coal is exempted.
A total of 65 mineral categories has been included in the list which is expected to provide the government an additional revenue up to $2 billion.
The minerals include antimony, bauxite, chromium, copper, , iron ore, iron sand, lead, manganese, molybdenum, nickel, and tin apart from gold, silver and platinum.
Indonesia’s Finance ministry said the regulation would assist the government in properly listing and managing mining export performance in the country.
Read More @ BullionStreet.com

Gold COT Report (CFTC – Commitment of Traders) for Period 5/9-5/15/2012

from Silver Doctors:
Commercials bought a huge 9,579 longs but only covered -2,959 shorts to end the week with 56.88% of all open interest and now stand as a group at -13,891,500 ounces net short, another huge decrease of over 1,000,000 ounces net short from the previous week.
The CFTC knows exactly what these producer/merchants are doing to these speculators, right now, killing them, and these commissioners have placed their full blessing upon this rampant destruction of speculator long positions.
For your convenience, if you would like to contact the CFTC and express your views to them, I have provided you their phone numbers and I hope earnestly that you fill up their phone lines:  http://www.cftc.gov/Contact/index.htm  and email addresses as well:

ggensler@cftc.gov Chairman Gensler
bchilton@cftc.gov Commissioner Chilton
Read More @ SilverDoctors.com

Currency Wars – James Rickards

from CaseyResearchFAN:

‘The Right to Peaceably Assemble’ Chicago-Style

from LeakSource2012 and MediaLube

Answer to the Most Important Question Facing Investors Today

from KingWorldNews:
Investors around the world are asking the critical question, do we have inflation or deflation immediately in front of us? Today Michael Pento, of Pento Portfolio Strategies, writes exclusively for King World News to let readers know exactly where we are in the ongoing and epic battle of inflation vs deflation. This is the single most important question facing investors around the world at this moment. Here is what Pento had to say about the situation: “We now live in a world where deflation has become public enemy number one. In this current economic environment, governments seek a condition of perpetual inflation in order to maintain the illusion of prosperity in the developed world. But in reality, deflation is the free-market approach to rectify a secular period of superfluous money supply growth, debt accumulation and asset price appreciation.”
Michael Pento continues @ KingWorldNews.com

Germans Shaking About Their Foreign Gold Reserves

by Francis Tawiah, Modern Ghana:
The largest portion of Germany’s massive gold reserves are stored abroad, mainly in the Federal Reserve in the USA, New York. But their question is, are the bars really where they are supposed to be? A dispute has broken out over whether the German central bank needs to check on its gold, or can Germany trust its international partners.
Germany has gold reserves of 3,400 tons, which is the second largest reserves in the world after the United States. Much of that is in the safekeeping of central banks outside the country, mostly in the US Federal Reserve in New York. It’s clear that with such a valuable worth around €133 billion ($170 billion), the German government would want to keep a close eye on its whereabouts. A dispute has therefore broken out between different German institutions over how closely the reserves should be checked.
Read More @ modernghana.com

Please support our efforts to keep you informed...
Thank You

I'm PayPal Verified