Yes, Virginia, the Real Action in the Libor Scandal Was in the Derivatives

As the Libor scandal has given an outlet for long-simmering anger
against wanker bankers in the UK, there have been some efforts in the
media to puzzle out who might have won or lost from the manipulations,
as well as arguments that they were as “victimless” or helped people (as
in reporting an artificially low Libor during the crisis led to lower
interest rate resets on adjustable rate loans pegged to Libor; what’s
not to like about that?)

What we have so far is a lot of drunk under the streetlight behavior:
people trying to relate the scandal to the part that is most visible
and easy to understand, meaning the loan market that keys off Libor. As
much as that’s a really big number ($10 trillion), it is trivial
compared to the relevant derivatives. From the FSA letter to Barclays:

The Eurodollar futures contract traded on the CME in
Chicago (which is the largest interest rate futures contract by volume
in the world) has US dollar LIBOR as its reference rate. The value of
volume of that contract traded in 2011 was over 564 trillion US dollars.

This is only one blooming exchange contract, albeit a monster of a
contract. There are loads of OTC contracts in addition to that:

Interest rate derivative contracts typically contain
payment terms that refer to benchmark rates. LIBOR and EURIBOR are by
far the most prevalent benchmark rates used in euro, US dollar and
sterling OTC interest rate derivatives contracts and exchange traded
interest rate contracts.

Devil’s advocates have also argued that while Barclays submitted
improper Libor rates, there’s no evidence they influenced the rates. I
read the FSA document quite differently.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/07/yes-virginia-the-real-action-in-the-libor-scandal-was-in-the-derivatives.html

UK Serious Fraud Office To Begin Criminal Probe Into Lieborgate

----

- my question for smart people out there, is there a way to tell how much distortion is current Libor number from actual 'interbank lending' rate?

I mean, if i were some poor sod with trillion of dollars in interest derivatives, the first thing I want to know is...what's the real value of all my junk, right?

- furthermore, what would be the impact of bringing all those overpriced interest swap/derivatives,....and possibly now affected currencies exchanges back to reality again...  How much adjustments all those TBTF now have to make inside their books? This is suppose to be AAA+++  type of asset instead of pure lies...

.........WHICH TBTF banks now has to admit  they are beyond bankrupt and can't be bailed out at any cost...because their lost is bigger than the entire worlds economic activities???

---

Also, the prospect of full scale Europe - US total currency debasement competition is very real. A lot of banks will die. The european just call ben bernank's bluff of not doing more QE. They are ...we'll see what happen as euro moves closer to 1.20

Widespread fraud has become apparent in the Mainland US and among
US-listed financial firms.  Extraordinary numbers of political figures
and public appointees have massive wealth.  Examples include (1) Dick Fuld, who was a director of the Federal Reserve Bank of NY until his firm, Lehman Brothers,
went into bankruptcy.  He has not been charged with any crime.  He
denied knowledge of any accounting irregularities.  (2) Former US
Senator Jon Corzine’s firm was a Federal Reserve primary dealer before
it failed.  Huge balances of client funds are unaccounted for at MF Global.  Corzine says he does not know what happened. (3) No one
knows the counterparties of the transactions that cost JPM billions. 
(4) Members of Congress and their staffs trade on insider information
and are not violating US law because of the congressional exemption that
Congress legislated for itself.”

http://www.businessinsider.com/david-kotok-what-a-crazy-week-2012-7

However, as the substance of the telephone conversation was relayed
down the chain of command at Barclays, a misunderstanding or
miscommunication occurred.

This meant that Barclays’ submitters believed mistakenly that they
were operating under an instruction from the Bank of England (as
conveyed by senior management) to reduce Barclays’ Libor submissions.

That is explosive stuff. Members of Parliament will be grilling
Tucker tomorrow about those events in what is sure to be a far more
combative and entertaining legislative inquiry than the Jamie Dimon dog-and-pony show we just went through here in the states in recent weeks.

The implications of that part of the story should be particularly
chilling to Americans, who in recent years have been party to a number
of revelations about strange and seemingly inappropriate contacts
between senior regulatory officials and big bankers during the heat of
the crisis.

We know that American officials in 2008-2009 were extremely concerned
about the appearance of weakness in the financial markets, so much so
that they may have resisted pursuing criminal prosecutions
against big banks, and we also know that they spent a lot of time
commiserating with Wall Street figures before and during the crisis.

If Bob Diamond and Paul Tucker were having these talks about LIBOR,
is it fair to wonder what else Hank Paulson and Lloyd Blankfein were
talking about in the 24 discussions they had in the six days following the AIG disaster? When Paulson had a secret meeting with the entire board of Goldman Sachs
in, of all places, his hotel suite in Moscow, in June of 2008? Or what
other material nonpublic information was exchanged when Paulson met with a gang of hedge fund chiefs
at the offices of Eton Park management in July 2008, and laid out for
them a possible scenario for putting Fannie and Freddie into
receivership?

Anyway, the LIBOR story is leading the front pages of most of Britain’s dailies, it’s on TV,
and it’s producing blistering editorials and howls of outrage amongst
politicians and activists. But as compadre Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism put it, where’s the outrage here in America?

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/why-is-nobody-freaking-out-about-the-libor-banking-scandal-20120703

A Hitchcockian nightmare: Europe falling off a cliff

Because without the ability to do business Europe cannot even continue
to generate the value it currently does and which it already overpays
itself for in its aggregate life style. In fact, Europe needs to do much
more business, and export it, to pay for the life-style it gives itself
and reduce the national debts.

It may seem an apocalyptic view
but there is the evidence in the latest numbers from the World
Semiconductor Trade Statistics, published by the Semiconductor Industry
Association.

Globally the situation is not good with
semiconductor sales in March, April and May (which are represented by
the three-month average ascribed by the SIA to May) generally down. The
Asia-Pacific region is down 1.9 percent on the same period in 2011. The
Americas region is down 3.2 percent. Japan is up 0.4 percent.

But look at this, the European region is down 13.6 percent
compared with a year before. In global statistics terms that is a major
percentage change. The equivalent figures in March and April were 15.4
percent and 14.4 percent. Basically it appears that in 2012 Europe's
drawn-out financial woes are driving a significant chunk of business out
of the continent.

http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4376694/A-Hitchcockian-nightmare--Europe-falling-off-a-cliff

The rotten heart of finance

A scandal over key interest rates is about to go global

A second problem is that those involved in setting the rates have
often had every incentive to lie, since their banks stood to profit or
lose money depending on the level at which LIBOR was set each day. Worse
still, transparency in the mechanism of setting rates may well have
exacerbated the tendency to lie, rather than suppressed it. Banks that
were weak would not have wanted to signal that fact widely in markets by
submitting honest estimates of the high price they would have to pay to
borrow, if they could borrow at all.

In the case of Barclays, two very different sorts of rate fiddling
have emerged. The first sort, and the one that has raised the most ire,
involved groups of derivatives traders at Barclays and several other
unnamed banks trying to influence the final LIBOR fixing to increase
profits (or reduce losses) on their derivative exposures. The sums
involved might have been huge. Barclays was a leading trader of these
sorts of derivatives, and even relatively small moves in the final value
of LIBOR could have resulted in daily profits or losses worth millions
of dollars. In 2007, for instance, the loss (or gain) that Barclays
stood to make from normal moves in interest rates over any given day was
£20m ($40m at the time). In settlements with the Financial Services
Authority (FSA) in Britain and America’s Department of Justice, Barclays
accepted that its traders had manipulated rates on hundreds of
occasions. Risibly, Bob Diamond, its chief executive, who resigned on
July 3rd as a result of the scandal (see article),
retorted in a memo to staff that “on the majority of days, no requests
were made at all” to manipulate the rate. This was rather like an
adulterer saying that he was faithful on most days.

http://www.economist.com/node/21558281?fsrc=scn/tw/te/ar/therottenheartoffinance

Swiss is dumping euro/dollar and buying Gold... they are partying like it's 1850.




http://www.financialsense.com/contributors/steve-angelo/u-s-gold-net-exports-increased-substantially-during-first-quarter-2012

South American Silver Plummets As Bolivia Announces It Will Nationalize One Of World's Largest Silver Deposits

one of the world's largest undeveloped silver, indium and gallium deposits" and which El Pais adds "is considered one of the largest undeveloped silver deposits, with reserves estimated at 230 million ounces, and at least 2,000 tons of indium, gallium and gold as well."

-------------

Count down till regime change... (spreading democracy, women's right, terrorism...bla bla...

Goldman’s Hawker May Get More Bids After China Offer

Hawker Beechcraft Inc., the bankrupt
business-jet maker owned by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) (GS) and Onex
Corp. (OCX), may draw higher bids after agreeing to sell itself to
Superior Aviation Beijing Co. for $1.79 billion.

Superior will make payments over the next six weeks to help
keep Hawker afloat until the deal closes, the companies said
yesterday. The accord makes Superior the so-called stalking
horse bidder in a U.S. Bankruptcy Court-supervised auction that
may win more offers. Textron Inc. (TXT) (TXT) and Embraer SA (EMBR3) expressed
interest previously in Hawker’s assets.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-07-09/goldman-s-hawker-beechcraft-accepts-1-dot-79-billion-offer

sooner or later Cessna will be sold to the chinese. The entire industry is in deep dodo. And they still want to talk about Japan's style lost decade. By next mid decade there won't large company left except military supplier.

Japan expects to import 20% of LNG from N.America

Japan expects to import 15
million tonnes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from North America
per year from as early as 2016 once the United States lifts
restrictions on exports to the world's biggest LNG buyer.

A group of Japanese cabinet ministers on Wednesday cited the
volume estimate, which amounts to about 20 percent of Japan's
annual LNG imports, in a discussion on how to drive growth of
the world's third-biggest economy after last year's Fukushima
nuclear crisis, a government official said at a news conference.

http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/06/27/japan-energy-lng-idINL3E8HR47S20120627

But Iranian supply will come online september..they will be the biggest player in the world instantly. (eg. who on earth will sign long term price contract shipping it across pacific when one can simply use mallacca terminals? ...but than again Japan need to recycle those dollar pronto.

China’s imports rose less than
anticipated in June, pushing the trade surplus to a three-year
high and adding pressure on the government to support demand as
the global economy slows.

Inbound shipments increased 6.3 percent from a year earlier,
the customs bureau said in a statement today in Beijing,
compared with the 11 percent median estimate in a Bloomberg News
survey of 32 economists. Export growth slowed to 11.3 percent
and the trade surplus rose to $31.7 billion.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-10/china-s-import-growth-misses-estimates-for-june.html

yeah well, gotta recycle all those dollar faster eh? Buy africa I guess.

LIBOR Scandal: The Smoking Gun Showing The Authorities Knew

The scandal over the attempts to manipulate Libor looks like
one of those stories that just runs and runs. For now we’re getting into
the fun and joy of discussing who knew what and when. It’s all looking
quite Nixonian.

during the Crash the authorities knew that everyone was lying through
their teeth about what the real Libor rate was. The reason being that
the rates being reported were not including the perceived credit
worthiness of some, if not all of the participants. It absolutely was a
false market and Barclays were by no means the only ones falsifying it.

Quite what this means for the future is harder to determine. Libor
itself as a reference rate would seem to be on its way out. It might
take a long time to die but a global benchmark built on manipulable
opinions rather than actual reported trades looks unlikely to survive.
Other than that, if the authorities, as they obviously did, knew that
reported Libor in that depth of the crash was a false market then it
does seem very odd that they’re being so hard on everyone now.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/07/08/libor-scandal-the-smoking-gun-showing-the-authorities-knew/#comment_reply

How Britain’s rate-fixing scandal might spread—and what to do about it

The evidence that has emerged from the Barclays investigation reveals
two types of bad behaviour. The first was designed to manipulate LIBOR
to bolster traders’ profits. Barclays traders pushed their own
money-market desks to doctor submissions for LIBOR (and for EURIBOR, a
euro-based interest rate put together in Brussels). They were also
colluding with counterparts at other banks, making and receiving
requests to pass on to their respective submitters. A similar picture of
widespread collusion emerges from documents related to the Canadian
investigation. This bit of the LIBOR scandal looks less like rogue
trading, more like a cartel.

That could end up costing the banks a lot of money. LIBOR is used to
set an estimated $800 trillion-worth of financial instruments, affecting
the price of everything from simple mortgages to interest-rate
derivatives. If attempts to manipulate LIBOR were successful—and the
regulators think that Barclays did manage it, on occasion—then this
would be the biggest securities fraud in history, affecting investors
and borrowers around the world. That opens the door to litigation not
just by the direct customers of implicated banks, but by anyone with a
financial interest in LIBOR. The lawsuits have already begun.

The second type of LIBOR-rigging, which started in 2007 with the
onset of the credit crunch, could also lead to litigation, but is
ethically more complicated, because there was a “public good” of sorts
involved. During the crisis, a high LIBOR submission was widely seen as a
sign of financial weakness. Barclays lowered its submissions so that it
could drop back into the pack of panel banks; it has released evidence
that can be interpreted as an implicit nod from the Bank of England (and
Whitehall mandarins) to do so. The central bank denies this, but at the
time governments were rightly desperate to bolster confidence in banks
and keep credit flowing. The suspicion is that at least some banks were
submitting low LIBOR estimates with tacit permission from their
regulators.

http://www.economist.com/node/21558260

Libor: The Largest Insider Trading Scandal Ever

What’s the most basic service banks provide? Borrow money and lend it out.
You put your savings in a bank to hold in trust, and the bank agrees to
pay you interest on it. Or you borrow money from the bank and you agree
to pay the bank interest.

 

How is this interest rate determined? We trust that the
banking system is setting today’s rate based on its best guess about the
future worth of the money. And we assume that guess is based, in turn,
on the cumulative market predictions of countless lenders and borrowers
all over the world about the future supply and demand for the dough.

 

But suppose our assumption is wrong. Suppose the bankers are
manipulating the interest rate so they can place bets with the money you
lend or repay them – bets that will pay off big for them because they have inside information on what the market is really predicting, which they’re not sharing with you.

 

That would be a mammoth violation of public trust. And it would
amount to a rip-off of almost cosmic proportion – trillions of dollars
that you and I and other average people would otherwise have received or
saved on our lending and borrowing that have been going instead to the
bankers. It would make the other abuses of trust we’ve witnessed look
like child’s play by comparison

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2012-07-08/libor-largest-insider-trading-scandal-ever

----------------
This is so big and so deep, I doubt they will dare to investigate it. Ultimately it will open up the shadow banking (interest swap and interbank loans)... forget ripping off the public, the politicians are bought and too stupid, but opening up the shadow banking is like stealing among the thieves being exposed.. they will claw each other eyes out.

Now to some degree the Asians knew the bargain they were getting into
in buying US treasuries. They were never buying a claim on the US
economy, or on the US gold reserves. They were buying a claim on
reproducible Federal Reserve notes, and since 1971 the bargain has been
that this is a purely fiat currency. Ultimately, if they do not feel
like the US will be solvent in the long run, they should not have
started lending to it. But now they are the largest real creditor, they
have no choice but to keep on buying and keep on stabilising, simply
because a functional US economy and a solvent US treasury is about the
only way they will see any return at all.

Yet if they don’t exert leverage on the US, then the US is unlikely
to do much at all. Without a little turmoil, legislators have very
little incentive to act. If the exporter nations feel as if they are
getting screwed, they are only more likely to escalate via the only real means they have — trade war. And having a monopoly on various resources included rare earth minerals (as well as various components and types of finished goods) gives them considerable leverage.

More and more Asian nations — led by China and Russia — have ditched the dollar for bilateral trade (out of fear of dollar instability).
Tension rises between the United States and Asia over Syria and Iran.
The Asian nations throw more and more abrasive rhetoric around — including war rhetoric.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-real-fiscal-cliff

even without trade war, exposure to dollar will be deadly since US based TBTF banks will collapse and bring down dollar system. Combined with US political deadlock/instability, countries like china, japan and rest of asia have to move away from dollar as a matter of survival, unless they are prepared to face "dollar crunch" during crisis, followed by dollar collapse when major player liquidate. (this is before taking into account the depth of banking manipulation an the subsequent collapse of euro-dollar shadow banking)

In combination all those will destroy trade and economic stability. So reducing dollar exposure/moving away from dollar is a must. It's a matter of survival.

Next question is "how"? obviously everybody getting out in panic will truly cause dollar collapse, while individual country getting out alone will cause currency depreciation against dollar denominated export. Can asia and latin america handle the complexity of trading in local currencies? Is yuan big enough? ...etc.. coming soon to theater near you ...

He points to a list of misguided Republican
actions that have led the country to economic disaster: the runaway
growth of public debt resulting "not from big spending by the Democrats,
but instead the Republican Party's embrace ... of the insidious
doctrine that deficits don't matter if they result from tax cuts," the neocon's
sky-high inflation of the military budget, the "warfare state," the
removal of traditional restrictions on leverage and speculation by the
financial sector which led to a "vast, unproductive expansion of our
financial sector," and the steady sending of jobs and production
offshore.

http://www.prwatch.org/node/9366

Stage 2. Crushing debts from domestic excesses, war mongering

Stockman says "the second unhappy change in the American economy has been the extraordinary growth of our public debt. In 1970 it was just 40% of gross domestic product, or about $425 billion. When it reaches $18 trillion, it will be 40 times greater than in 1970." Who's to blame? Not big-spending Dems, says Stockman, but "from the Republican Party's embrace, about three decades ago, of the insidious doctrine that deficits don't matter if they result from tax cuts."

Back "in 1981, traditional Republicans supported tax cuts," but Stockman makes clear, they had to be "matched by spending cuts, to offset the way inflation was pushing many taxpayers into higher brackets and to spur investment. The Reagan administration's hastily prepared fiscal blueprint, however, was no match for the primordial forces -- the welfare state and the warfare state -- that drive the federal spending machine."

OK, stop a minute. As you absorb Stockman's indictment of how his Republican party has "destroyed the U.S. economy," you're probably asking yourself why anyone should believe a traitor to the Reagan legacy. I believe party affiliation is irrelevant here. This is a crucial subject that must be explored because it further exposes a dangerous historical trend where politics is so partisan it's having huge negative consequences.

Yes, the GOP does have a welfare-warfare state: Stockman says "the neocons were pushing the military budget skyward. And the Republicans on Capitol Hill who were supposed to cut spending, exempted from the knife most of the domestic budget -- entitlements, farm subsidies, education, water projects. But in the end it was a new cadre of ideological tax-cutters who killed the Republicans' fiscal religion."

When Fed chief Paul Volcker "crushed inflation" in the '80s we got a "solid economic rebound." But then "the new tax-cutters not only claimed victory for their supply-side strategy but hooked Republicans for good on the delusion that the economy will outgrow the deficit if plied with enough tax cuts." By 2009, they "reduced federal revenues to 15% of gross domestic product," lowest since the 1940s. Still today they're irrationally demanding an extension of those "unaffordable Bush tax cuts [that] would amount to a bankruptcy filing."

Recently Bush made matters far worse by "rarely vetoing a budget bill and engaging in two unfinanced foreign military adventures." Bush also gave in "on domestic spending cuts, signing into law $420 billion in nondefense appropriations, a 65% percent gain from the $260 billion he had inherited eight years earlier. Republicans thus joined the Democrats in a shameless embrace of a free-lunch fiscal policy." Takes two to tango.
Stage 3. Wall Street's deadly 'vast, unproductive expansion'

Stockman continues pounding away: "The third ominous change in the American economy has been the vast, unproductive expansion of our financial sector." He warns that "Republicans have been oblivious to the grave danger of flooding financial markets with freely printed money and, at the same time, removing traditional restrictions on leverage and speculation." Wrong, not oblivious. Self-interested Republican loyalists like Paulson, Bernanke and Geithner knew exactly what they were doing.

They wanted the economy, markets and the government to be under the absolute control of Wall Street's too-greedy-to-fail banks. They conned Congress and the Fed into bailing out an estimated $23.7 trillion debt. Worse, they have since destroyed meaningful financial reforms. So Wall Street is now back to business as usual blowing another bigger bubble/bust cycle that will culminate in the coming "American Apocalypse."

Stockman refers to Wall Street's surviving banks as "wards of the state." Wrong, the opposite is true. Wall Street now controls Washington, and its "unproductive" trading is "extracting billions from the economy with a lot of pointless speculation in stocks, bonds, commodities and derivatives." Wall Street banks like Goldman were virtually bankrupt, would have never survived without government-guaranteed deposits and "virtually free money from the Fed's discount window to cover their bad bets."

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/reagan-insider-gop-destroyed-us-economy-2010-08-10?pagenumber=2

Suicide bombers of the world,
unite

What really happened is still murky.
Reuters said it was a suicide bomber working as a
bodyguard for Assad's inner circle. Agence
France-Presse reported it was a suicide bomber
detonating his belt. Beirut's Al-Akhbar said it
was a planted bomb. Same for Lebanon's Al-Manar TV
- detailing it was a 40-kilogram bomb.

So
who was it? The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)?
The MI6? Saudi intel? Turkish intel? Or that oh so
pliable ghost - al-Qaeda?

US Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton, five months ago, came up with a non-denial denial
by in fact admitting that Washington was working
side by side with al-Qaeda in Syria supporting the
Not Exactly Free Syrian Army (FSA)

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NG20Ak02.html

don't
be silly, the intelligence is fed from US. The bombing is coordinated
and equipped by external force. Most likely US. I think Syria is over,
the communication has been penetrated, so now it's wild goose chase
trying to assassinate Assad.

Obviously, the pilot who defected divulges where the defense holes are located. And via this hole UAV/optic view is gained to track and listen Assad. The rest is just a question
of putting the bomb. Plenty of crazy want to blow stuff up. Heck fly UAV, and blame it on some crazy. who knows. Is not like there is any real press reporting.

....This is classic CIA assassination from the 80's with afghan UAV blend.

Now it's a question of loyalty for the Syrian arm force. I think Syria will fail the test. I am giving the score to Israel and crew for being able to control US asset to achieve their end in Syria. Well done.

The
biggest item that comes out of this: United States now blatantly
support and use terrorism to achieve its geopolitical goal. bombing, assassination, arming militant 9al qaeda related from all people). So everybody
now will be on high alert, one neocon wrong blurb on tv, the other guy
simply has to assume they will be a target for terrorism attack. ...
then it's a question who makes the move first. venezuela, china, Jordan,
Indonesia, Brazil, entire latin america, Mexico, Ukraine, eastern
europe, Russia (definitely. it will be hit by US backed terrorism soon.
via caucasus) Of course Iran. (Things will definitely start blowing upin a view weeks time, prelude to real war.) Central asia will pop like pop corn soon. Uzbek, tajik, Kazak, armenia (all are favorite israel false flag target)

As usual, the only way to play this game is an eye for an eye. And one hope the other guy has less eye and can hold less pain before giving up the game. Logical outcome: It's 70's style state backed terrorism galore. each more brazen than previous attack. retaliation is instant.

India is definitely afraid now, They are the
easiest target for US backed terrorism as has been historically true.
This is a question of when. Out of line...wham.. I am putting my shiny dime as a bet that a high profile terrorism attack will happen in India within 2 years. blame it on the usual suspect, then BJP enters, then all of a sudden extreme tension with Pakistan, before long they have to put more troop to war in afpak conflict. (before 2014. yo' time is short) This on top of china border. ...India is toast anyway I see it. They are the "pivot" in Clinton plan.

Singapore GDP Unexpectedly Shrinks as Europe Crimps Exports

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-13/singapore-s-economy-shrinks-as-europe-turmoil-constrains-exports.html

Singapore's Q2 GDP shrinks 1.1% on-quarter

SINGAPORE:
Singapore's economy contracted by 1.1 per cent on a quarter-on-quarter
basis in the second quarter of 2012, compared to the 9.4 per cent
expansion in the preceding quarter.

On a year-on-year basis, the
economy grew at a modest pace of 1.9 per cent, following the 1.4 per
cent growth in the previous quarter.

This is according to advance estimates released by the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) on Friday.

The
MTI said in its statement that the weakened growth momentum in the
second quarter was mainly due to a sequential contraction in the
manufacturing sector.

The manufacturing sector declined by 6.0 per cent, reversing the 20.9 per cent expansion in the preceding quarter.

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporebusinessnews/view/1213299/1/.html

biggest port in the world says their business is down...(it means massive global slowdown in highest growth region.)

CHART: Europe's Economy Goes Deeper Into The Morass

http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-eurozone-composite-pmi-2012-6

Fed Releases New Economic Forecast, Sees Deteriorating Economy, Up To 8.2% Unemployment At Year End

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/fed-releases-new-economic-forecast-sees-deteriorating-economy-82-unemployment-year-end

Persian Gulf primed to
explode
In this rapidly
evolving milieu, the Persian Gulf is hostage to
the geostrategic calculations of, on the one hand,
a Western superpower and its local client states
and, on the other, a traditional regional power
with growing military prowess. What makes the
scenario more dangerous is that the whole picture
is moving in the direction of a zero-sum game of
strategy, that is, a win-lose scenario,
increasingly bereft of prior shades of grey
indicating "shared" or "parallel" interests. This
sharpening of conflicting interests is ready-made
fuel for open conflict in the Persian Gulf.


In the assortment of available remedies,
one can easily point to the on-going multilateral
nuclear talks between Iran and the "5 +1" nations
(the United Nations Security Council permanent
five members plus Germany) that have now been
degraded to the level of experts. If the Western
nations headed by the United States decide to
continue with the uncompromising approach already
seen at Iran Six meetings in Baghdad and Moscow,
however, the nuclear standoff will linger and
possibly worsen.

To de-escalate tensions
with Iran, the West will need to take a vastly
different negotiation strategy, one that is
willing to trade sanctions for concessions.
However, in a US election year, this is unlikely
to happen.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NG19Ak03.html

Unlikely to happen. It's election year and Obama needs to show some scalp to get zionist campaign money. Dead iranians worth A LOT of campaign money. .. It's that simple.

Here we go again....I guess Ben bernank just have to keep buying those euro to keep it above 1.20...
I don't know why the european even bothers to keep pretending it can't print without limit. ...It is US product to lose when they print. They have bigger market, bigger population, bigger industrial base...they can hold more inflation pain...

http://www.businessinsider.com/euro-collapsing-2012-7

GRAINS-US corn and soy hit record highs as heat bakes crops

CHICAGO, July 20 (Reuters) - U.S. soybeans surged two percent on Friday to
hit record levels for the third day in a row as scorching temperatures amid a
relentless drought baked crops in America's heartland, spreading into top
producers Iowa and Illinois.
Corn prices equaled their record set on Thursday. They have soared more than
50 percent in just a few weeks as crops wilted under searing heat in the
Midwest, prompting the United Nations agriculture agency to talk of a "serious
situation" though not yet a food crisis.
Wheat turned firmer but lagged the gains in corn and soybeans, with the
winter wheat crop already harvested and escaping the wrath of the worst drought
in more than half a century.
Weather forecasts saw little hope of relief over the next two weeks.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/20/markets-grains-idUSL6E8IKBMZ20120720

Time to print more money... (oops, now we have stagflation.)

NY cotton up on soaring grains, Indian weather watch

Cotton futures rose almost 1
percent on Thursday on the soaring grains market and as
investors shifted their weather watch to India where brokers
fear weak monsoon rains could hurt output from one of the
world's largest producers.
Concerns are mounting about a drought in India after
rainfall was 22 percent below average across the country in the
week to July 18.
While the cotton-growing areas are mainly well irrigated, it
has not stopped the market fretting about a potential drop in
yields, brokers said.

http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/07/19/markets-cotton-idINL2E8IJKKI20120719

it's not a question of irrigation. It's a question of hot money flowing in.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/forget-corn-soy-poised-lift

food index is at all time high. Get ready for middle east riot and political instabilities around the world. Plus, big war is coming.

RIYADH — Saudi Arabia has called for an extraordinary summit of
Muslim leaders to be held next month to address risks of "sedition"
threatening Muslim countries, state news agency SPA reported on Sunday.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iWshaR8lFCqZr2HmpjsPDh9vBoCw?docId=CNG.f14b30618d72b360f008dc33199704fb.5d1

yeah well, since when is Saudi suddenly a leader of Islamic worlds? Now that they are in such a deep dodo after screwing everybody, it's a little hard to claim that beyond throwing a lot of money and buying short term influence.. It's their turn to be eaten alive by their own people and rot in hell.

They should hurry up before muslims around the world start reciting verses to get rid of illegitimate rulers. They have to shoot a lot of people for sure. After they turn their back so many times, it's their turn to get stabbed.

My prognosis, they are fucked. current leadership is the last generation of saud regime.

Saudi Arabia to shoot down Iran-bound Israeli planes

United States is about to lose control of its client state.