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Dear CIGAs,
Relax!
Gold is going to $1224.
Gold is going to $1650.
Gold is going to Alf’s numbers.
Forget the naysayers that have nayed all the way from $248.
Jim Sinclair’s
And you think the crisis is over?
Cash machines were monitored every hour during banking crisis
Special report: Extent of FSA fears and reason for taxpayers’ bank bailout revealed
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 11 October 2009 20.07 BST
City watchdogs were monitoring cash withdrawals from Royal Bank of Scotland every hour during the height of the banking crisis, the Guardian can reveal.
The Financial Services Authority demanded 60-minute updates on cash flooding out of the bank’s branches and hole-in-the-wall machines in the days before Britain’s historic bank bailout, which took place a year ago.
The regulators stepped up their surveillance after realising that confidence was draining from the banking system following the collapse of Lehman Brothers a month earlier, and that customers were concerned about the safety of their deposits.
The chancellor, Alistair Darling, sanctioned the government’s taking a 70% stake in RBS, and 43% in the combined Lloyds and HBOS, after a series of frantic round-the-clock meetings that weekend. A year on, those shareholdings are creating a £4bn paper loss for the government.
The taxpayer breaks even when Lloyds shares rise through 122.6p and those in RBS trade above 50.5p. On Friday, the banks’ shares closed at 94p and 48.34p respectively.
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
Think about this:
You have a family. Your mistake was taking the Fed’s televised public testimony seriously in 2006 by borrowing on your home to buy consumer goods as a patriotic act.
You might not be the brightest crayon in the box. Now your job is lost. It was shipped out to some place you can’t pronounce in a country you never heard of.
Your 1% teaser interest-only mortgage just went to 14%. The value of your house has dropped 40%, but it doesn’t matter much because there are no buyers.
Your house is being foreclosed on. Bill collectors are calling so you are glad your cell phone was cut off.
Your kids don’t understand why they can’t have their allowances, and are going Goth, not speaking to you.
Your significant other is scared to death.
All of this is happening while paper shuffling industries are booming with bonuses that strain the ability of most people to count.
Don’t make light of the deep pain, suffering and anxiety attacks the backbone of any country.
More Americans fall behind on debts: Equifax
Wed Oct 14, 2009 3:31pm EDT
By Nick Zieminski
NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. consumers are increasingly late paying off loans on their primary home, as the highest unemployment in a quarter of a century pushes up delinquency rates on home loans and most other types of loans, according to a monthly report by the Equifax credit bureau.
"Every major consumer product line, in terms of delinquency, is up again, except for (credit) cards," said Dann Adams, president of U.S. Information Systems.
Among U.S. homeowners with mortgages, a record 7.65 percent were at least 30 days late on payments in September, up from 7.58 percent the previous month. The rate of delinquencies is more than double the 3.55 percent rate in September 2007, according to Equifax (EFX.N).
The rate of subprime mortgage delinquencies rose slightly to 41.36 percent. Early-stage delinquencies are an initial warning sign of potential future defaults, which in turn drive home foreclosures. The large supply of bank-owned homes reaching the market has helped prevent a strong recovery in prices.
Home equity and auto loan delinquencies also rose, both sequentially and from a year ago, but delinquencies on student loans have held steady during the recession.
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
A service you need to help see through the masterful MOPE.
- September Annual Inflation -1.3% (CPI-U), 6.1% (SGS)
- CPI-U Inflation Spike Due by Year-End
- No Recovery: September Real Retail Sales Continued
Bottom-Bouncing at Low-Level Plateau
- 10 Years of Retail Sales Growth Gone
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
This place is bordering on going critical when you add the military is angry with the political leadership, and the intelligence service is dicey.
Militants attack Pakistani cities
Last Updated: Thursday, October 15, 2009 | 12:13 PM ET
Five co-ordinated attacks killed at least 40 people in three Pakistani cities Thursday as violence escalated ahead of a planned offensive into the militant heartland on the Afghan border.
Officials said the violence began just after 9 a.m. with groups of gunmen attacking three sites in the eastern city of Lahore. Later in the day car bombs detonated in the cities of Kohat and Peshawar.
Gunmen initially launched a 1½ hour attack at the Federal Investigation Agency. Two attackers died in the standoff that also killed four government employees and a bystander, said government officials.
Soon after that assault began, a second band of gunmen raided a police training school in Manawan, on the outskirts of the city. During a brief attack, nine police officers and four militants died, officials said.
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
Pretty significant, says Eric. Interesting that the Russian Press is running this multiples times just in case anyone missed it.
Russia ready to abandon dollar in oil, gas trade with China
20:50 14/10/2009
BEIJING, October 14 (RIA Novosti) – Russia is ready to consider using the Russian and Chinese national currencies instead of the dollar in bilateral oil and gas dealings, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday.
The premier, currently on a visit to Beijing, said a final decision on the issue can only be made after a thorough expert analysis.
"Yesterday, energy companies, in particular Gazprom, raised the question of using the national currency. We are ready to examine the possibility of selling energy resources for rubles, but our Chinese partners need rubles for that. We are also ready to sell for yuans," Putin said.
He stressed that "there should be a balance here."
On Tuesday, Russia and China agreed terms for Russian gas deliveries at a level of up to 70 billion cubic meters a year. China also imports oil from Russia.
The Russian prime minister said the issue would be addressed among others at a meeting of Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) finance ministers, who are to convene before the end of the year in Kazakhstan.
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
This is the bomb of the age.
Chevy Volt: A lot of unanswered questions
Performance, price, and value – there’s still a lot of gray area around GM’s electric car.
By Alex Taylor III, senior editor
Last Updated: October 15, 2009: 10:17 AM ET
NEW YORK (Fortune) — While General Motors continues to define itself post-bankruptcy, it is pushing ahead with one of its key pre-bankruptcy projects: developing the Chevy Volt.
This week, a team of GM vehicle engineers is testing eight battery-powered Volts on a three-day, 1,200-mile drive from southeast Michigan to Pittsburgh.
The engineers will evaluate everything from the sound system to the seats, but most of their attention will be focused on how the Volt performs under electric and gasoline power.
Lots of questions remain, as I discovered when few a words about the Volt at the end of my last column drew a number of heated responses.
My comments focused on speculation about the performance of the Volt after the batteries discharge and the range-extending gasoline engine kicks in.
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
These numbers are shocking to any thinking person, if you can find any.
U.S. Foreclosure Filings Jump 23% to Record in Third Quarter
By Dan Levy
Oct. 15 (Bloomberg) — U.S. foreclosure filings climbed to a record in the third quarter as lenders seized more properties from delinquent borrowers, according to RealtyTrac Inc.
A total of 937,840 homes received a default or auction notice or were repossessed by banks, a 23 percent increase from a year earlier, the Irvine, California-based seller of default data said today in a report. One out of every 136 U.S. households received a filing, the highest quarterly rate in records dating to January 2005.
“The problem is prime loans going into foreclosure and people being underwater and losing their jobs,” Richard Green, director of the Lusk Center for Real Estate at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, said in an interview. “It’s a really bad number.”
Mounting foreclosures mean U.S. home prices probably will resume falling, analysts from Amherst Securities Group LP in New York said Sept. 23. A “shadow inventory” of 7 million properties are in the foreclosure process or likely to be seized, up from 1.27 million in 2005, they said.
The pace of prime and so-called alt-A loan defaults is accelerating as subprime defaults slow, Standard & Poor’s analysts led by Diane Westerback said yesterday in a report. Prime loans are those made to borrowers with the best credit records while alt-A loans are considered riskier because they were often granted without documenting the borrower’s income.
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
For your information.
Regulatory grip on derivatives eases
The House Financial Services Committee approved a provision that, according to Chairman Barney Frank, would exempt "the great majority" of businesses that use derivative instruments to hedge their business risks from trading such instruments through exchanges or clearinghouses. Critics have said the exemptions would create too large a loophole for financial instruments that were unregulated and played a central role in the economic crisis.
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
It is not simply CIT’s ability to remain outside of bankruptcy. It is the cost to do business with them and their ability to do business that Middle America depends on.
CIT Group to Move on After Peek
October 14, 2009
Christopher Menkin
The resignation of the CIT Group’s (CIT) chief executive Jeffrey M. Peek is very bad news for the finance and leasing industry. It will make credit tougher to obtain, and definitely more expensive, lengthening the recovery for small business in the United States, culling out the market place in a faster pace than Leasing News writers have been predicting. This is terrible news.
On July 13, Leasing News printed an editorial regarding support for the CIT Group: "It is imperative that the finance and leasing industry show support for a company that has supported so many small businesses; enabled them to grow, to support their families, to provide jobs, to keep the economy growing."
There have been many stories regarding this company, once a giant of the commercial finance industry with 7,500 employees worldwide. Many of its key commercial credit employees retired in the 1980s and 1990s, including some into 2000, and there was a major shake-up including the loss of some major department heads such as Walter Owens, president of corporate finance; Rick Wolfert; and Thomas Hallman.
Despite any criticism about Peek’s performance in the past, his efforts the last 12 months will be studied in university business classes for many years to come. He and his staff have earned their salary and more. CIT is an excellent team and should be congratulated, even today, for trying to keep the company together. No other group could have survived as long as they have with so many adversaries.
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
Here is a comment on the dollar’s future.
Zhu elevation step toward top role at IMF
Bank of China Vice-President Zhu Min may soon take up a senior position at the nation’s central bank, in a move that will eventually prepare him for a crucial post at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), people with knowledge of the matter said.
Though Zhu personally denied knowledge of his appointment as the vice-president of the nation’s top monetary authority – the People’s Bank of China – the source confirmed that the central bank had been officially informed about Zhu’s new position.
The 56-year-old Zhu, a senior banker with ample international experience, might just become the second person after Justin Lin, the current World Bank chief economist, to play a key role at an international financial institution.
If it happens, his elevation as the deputy managing director at the IMF is expected to help China have a bigger say in the process of reshaping the post-crisis global financial order.
Conventionally, officials recommended by the Chinese government to the IMF should first take up a transitional position at the central bank, while the ones suggested for a role at the World Bank usually assume a post at the Ministry of Finance at first, the source, who declined to be named, told China Daily.
