GOLD: $1313,65 DOWN $ 0.55 (COMEX TO COMEX CLOSINGS)

Silver: $16.48 UP 0 CENTS (COMEX TO COMEX CLOSINGS)

Closing access prices:

Gold $1314.40

silver: $16.49

For comex gold:

MAY/

NUMBER OF NOTICES FILED TODAY FOR MAY CONTRACT:0 NOTICE(S) FOR nil OZ.

TOTAL NOTICES SO FAR 14 FOR 1400 OZ (0.0435 tonnes)

For silver:

MAY

127 NOTICE(S) FILED TODAY FOR

635,000 OZ/

Total number of notices filed so far this month: 5161 for 25,805,000 oz

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Bitcoin: BID $9319/OFFER $9419: DOWN $328(morning)

Bitcoin: BID/ $9389/offer $9489: DOWN $239 (CLOSING/5 PM)

end

First Shanghai gold fix comes at 10 pm est

The second Shanghai gold fix: 2:15 pm

First Shanghai gold fix gold: 10 pm est: 1325.17

NY price at the same time: 1317.65

PREMIUM TO NY SPOT: $6.31

Second gold fix early this morning: 1319.11

USA gold at the exact same time: 1312.80

PREMIUM TO NY SPOT: $8.00

AGAIN, SHANGHAI REJECTS NEW YORK PRICING.

WE WILL NOT PROVIDE LONDON FIXES AS THEY ARE NOT ACCURATE AS TO WHAT IS GOING ON AT THE SAME TIME FRAME.

FEDERAL RESERVE OF NEW YORK/EARMARKED GOLD REPORT

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York releases a report on the 29th of every month as to what foreign gold that is stored there is repatriated back to its mother country. They generally report that a country wishes to repatriate like they did with Germany, Holland and Venezuela. Turkey announced that it has told the FRBNY to repatriate its gold back to Turkey. The FRBNY did not make an announcement on that issue:

Here is the report for March 29.2018:

The total number of oz of gold that left the FRBNY during the month March was $17 million and the gold leaving was priced at $42.22 per oz

Thus $42.22 dollars equals one oz

17 million dollars equals 402,652.77 oz

Thus a measly 12.524 tonnes leaves the shores of NY for Instanbul

Turkey has in excess of 300 tonnes of gold stored in NY

end

Let us have a look at the data for today

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In silver, the total OPEN INTEREST ROSE BY A FAIR 1077 CONTRACTS FROM 193,878 RISING TO 194,762 WITH FRIDAY’S 5 CENT GAIN IN SILVER PRICING. WE ARE NOW WITNESSING OUR USUAL AND CUSTOMARY COMEX LONG LIQUIDATION AS WE ENTERED INTO THE ACTIVE DELIVERY MONTH OF MAY AS LONGS PACK THEIR BAGS AND MIGRATE OVER TO LONDON. WE WERE NOTIFIED THAT WE HAD A TINY SIZED NUMBER OF COMEX LONGS TRANSFERRING THEIR CONTRACTS TO LONDON THROUGH THE EFP : 335 EFP’S FOR JULY AND ZERO FOR ALL OTHER MONTHS AND THEREFORE TOTAL ISSUANCE OF 335 CONTRACTS. WITH THE TRANSFER OF 335 CONTRACTS, WHAT THE CME IS STATING IS THAT THERE IS NO SILVER (OR GOLD) TO BE DELIVERED UPON AT THE COMEX AS THEY MUST EXPORT THEIR OBLIGATION TO LONDON. ALSO KEEP IN MIND THAT THERE CAN BE A DELAY OF 24-48 HRS IN THE ISSUING OF EFP’S. THE 335 EFP CONTRACTS TRANSLATES INTO 1.675 MILLION OZ ACCOMPANYING:

1.THE RISE IN SILVER PRICE (5 CENTS) AT THE COMEX AND

2. THE STRONG AMOUNT OF SILVER OUNCES STANDING FOR MAY COMEX DELIVERY. (28.725 MILLION OZ)

ACCUMULATION FOR EFP’S/SILVER/J.P.MORGAN’S HOUSE OF BRIBES, / STARTING FROM FIRST DAY NOTICE/FOR MONTH OF APRIL: (FINAL)

10,212 CONTRACTS (FOR 5 TRADING DAYS TOTAL 10212 CONTRACTS) OR 51.06 MILLION OZ: AVERAGE PER DAY: 2042 CONTRACTS OR 10.212 MILLION OZ/DAY

TO GIVE YOU AN IDEA AS TO THE HUGE SUPPLY THIS MONTH IN SILVER: SO FAR THIS MONTH: 51.06 MILLION PAPER OZ HAVE MORPHED OVER TO LONDON. THIS REPRESENTS AROUND 7.29% OF ANNUAL GLOBAL PRODUCTION (EX CHINA EX RUSSIA)

ACCUMULATION IN YEAR 2018 TO DATE SILVER EFP’S: 1,196.5 MILLION OZ.

ACCUMULATION FOR JAN 2018: 236.879 MILLION OZ

ACCUMULATION FOR FEB 2018: 244.95 MILLION OZ

ACCUMULATION FOR MARCH 2018: 236.67 MILLION OZ

ACCUMULATION FOR APRIL 2018: 385.75 MILLION OZ

RESULT: WE HAD A FAIR SIZED RISE IN COMEX OI SILVER COMEX OF 1077 WITH THE 5 CENT GAIN IN SILVER PRICE. WE HAVE NOW ENTERED THE NEW ACTIVE MONTH OF MAY. THE CME NOTIFIED US THAT IN FACT WE HAD AN SMALL SIZED EFP ISSUANCE OF 335 CONTRACTS WHICH EXITED OUT OF THE SILVER COMEX AND TRANSFERRED THEIR OI TO LONDON AS FORWARDS. SPECULATORS CONTINUED THEIR INTEREST IN ATTACKING THE SILVER COMEX FOR PHYSICAL SILVER (SEE COMEX DATA) . FROM THE CME DATA: 335 EFP CONTRACTS FOR JULY, AND ZERO FOR ALL OVER MONTHS FOR A DELIVERABLE FORWARD CONTRACT OVER IN LONDON WITH A FIAT BONUS (TOTAL: 335). TODAY WE GAINED 1412 TOTAL OI CONTRACTS ON THE TWO EXCHANGES: i.e. 335 OPEN INTEREST CONTRACTS HEADED FOR LONDON (EFP’s) TOGETHER WITH AN INCREASE OF 1077 OI COMEX CONTRACTS. AND ALL OF THIS HAPPENED WITH THE RISE IN PRICE OF SILVER OF 5 CENTS AND A CLOSING PRICE OF $16.47 WITH RESPECT TO YESTERDAY’S TRADING. YET WE STILL HAVE A STRONG AMOUNT OF SILVER STANDING AT THE COMEX FOR DELIVERY IN THIS ACTIVE MAY DELIVERY MONTH. IT SURE SEEMS THAT WE MUST HAVE HAD SOME BANKER SHORT COVERING ON BOTH EXCHANGES.

In ounces AT THE COMEX, the OI is still represented by UNDER 1 BILLION oz i.e. .974 MILLION OZ TO BE EXACT or 139% of annual global silver production (ex Russia & ex China).

FOR THE NEW FRONT MAY MONTH/ THEY FILED AT THE COMEX: 127 NOTICE(S) FOR 635,000 OZ OF SILVER

IN SILVER, WE HAVE NOW SET THE NEW RECORD OF OPEN INTEREST AT 243,411 AND AGAIN THIS HAS BEEN SET WITH A LOW PRICE OF $16.51 ON APRIL 9.2018.

ON THE DEMAND SIDE WE HAVE THE FOLLOWING:

HUGE AMOUNTS OF SILVER STANDING FOR DELIVERY (MARCH: 27 MILLION OZ , APRIL: 2.485 MILLION OZ AND MAY: 28.765 MILLION OZ )
HUGE RECORD OPEN INTEREST IN SILVER 243,411 CONTRACTS (OR 1.217 BILLION OZ/ SET APRIL 9/2018
HUGE ANNUAL EFP’S ISSUANCE EQUAL TO 2.9 BILLION OZ OR 400% OF SILVER ANNUAL PRODUCTION/2017
RECORD SETTING EFP ISSUANCE FOR ANY MONTH IN SILVER; APRIL/2018/ 385.75 MILLION OZ/ (FINAL)

AND YET, WITH THE EXTREMELY HIGH EFP ISSUANCE, WE HAVE A CONTINUAL LOW PRICE OF SILVER DESPITE THE ABOVE HUGE DEMAND. TO ME THE ONLY ANSWER IS THAT WE HAVE SOVEREIGN (CHINA) WHO IS ENDEAVOURING TO GOBBLE UP ALL AVAILABLE PHYSICAL SILVER NO MATTER WHERE, EXACTLY WHAT J.P.MORGAN IS DOING. AND IT IS MY BELIEF THAT J.P.MORGAN IS HOLDING ITS SILVER FOR ITS BENEFICIAL OWNER..THE USA GOVERNMENT WHO IN TURN IS HOLDING THAT SILVER FOR CHINA.(FOR A SILVER LOAN REPAYMENT). IT ALSO LOOKS LIKE BANKER CAPITULATION IN SILVER AS THEY STRUGGLE TO REMOVE SOME OF THEIR HUGE OBLIGATIONS.

In gold, the open interest ROSE BY A FAIR 2064 CONTRACTS UP TO 499,189 WITH THE RISE IN THE GOLD PRICE/FRIDAY’S TRADING (GAIN OF $2.05). WE ARE NOW IN THE NON ACTIVE DELIVERY MONTH OF MAY. THE CME RELEASED THE DATA FOR EFP ISSUANCE AND IT TOTALED A GOOD SIZED 7445 CONTRACTS : JUNE SAW THE ISSUANCE OF 7445 CONTRACTS , MAY SAW THE ISSUANCE OF 0 CONTRACTS AND AUGUST SAW THE ISSUANCE OF: 0 CONTRACTS WITH ALL OTHER MONTHS ZERO. The new OI for the gold complex rests at 499,189. ALSO REMEMBER THAT THERE WILL BE A DELAY IN THE ISSUANCE OF EFP’S. THE BANKERS REMOVE LONG POSITIONS OF COMEX GOLD IMMEDIATELY. THEN THEY ORCHESTRATE THEIR PRIVATE EFP DEAL WITH THE LONGS AND THAT COULD TAKE AN ADDITIONAL 48 HRS SO WE GENERALLY DO NOT GET A MATCH WITH RESPECT TO DEPARTING COMEX LONGS AND NEW EFP LONG TRANSFERS. . EVEN THOUGH THE BANKERS ISSUED THESE MONSTROUS EFPS, THE OBLIGATION STILL RESTS WITH THE BANKERS TO SUPPLY METAL BUT IT TRANSFERS THE RISK TO A LONDON BANKER OBLIGATION AND NOT A NEW YORK COMEX OBLIGATION. LONGS RECEIVE A FIAT BONUS TOGETHER WITH A LONG LONDON FORWARD. THUS, BY THESE ACTIONS, THE BANKERS AT THE COMEX HAVE JUST STATED THAT THEY HAVE NO APPRECIABLE METAL!! THIS IS A MASSIVE FRAUD: THEY CANNOT SUPPLY ANY METAL TO OUR COMEX LONGS BUT THEY ARE QUITE WILLING TO SUPPLY MASSIVE NON BACKED GOLD (AND SILVER) PAPER KNOWING THAT THEY HAVE NO METAL TO SATISFY OUR LONGS. LONDON IS NOW SEVERELY BACKWARD IN BOTH GOLD AND SILVER AND WE ARE WITNESSING DELAYS IN ACTUAL DELIVERIES.

IN ESSENCE WE HAVE A FAIR SIZED OI GAIN IN CONTRACTS ON THE TWO EXCHANGES: 2064 OI CONTRACTS INCREASED AT THE COMEX AND AN GOOD SIZED 7445 EFP OI CONTRACTS WHICH NAVIGATED OVER TO LONDON.THUS TOTAL OI GAIN: 9509 CONTRACTS OR 950,900 OZ = 29.57 TONNES. AND ALL OF THIS OCCURRED WITH A GAIN OF $2.05

FRIDAY, WE HAD 6729 EFP’S ISSUED.

ACCUMULATION OF EFP’S GOLD AT J.P. MORGAN’S HOUSE OF BRIBES: (EXCHANGE FOR PHYSICAL) FOR THE MONTH OF MAY : 50,607 CONTRACTS OR 5,060,700 OZ OR 157.40 TONNES (5 TRADING DAYS AND THUS AVERAGING: 10,121EFP CONTRACTS PER TRADING DAY OR 1,012,100 OZ/ TRADING DAY),

TO GIVE YOU AN IDEA AS TO THE HUGE SIZE OF THESE EFP TRANSFERS : THIS MONTH IN 5 TRADING DAYS IN TONNES: 157.40 TONNES

TOTAL ANNUAL GOLD PRODUCTION, 2017, THROUGHOUT THE WORLD EX CHINA EX RUSSIA: 2555 TONNES

THUS EFP TRANSFERS REPRESENTS 157.40/2550 x 100% TONNES = 6.17% OF GLOBAL ANNUAL PRODUCTION SO FAR IN APRIL ALONE.*** THE ACCUMULATION OF EFP CONTRACTS IS RISING PER MONTH.

ACCUMULATION OF GOLD EFP’S YEAR 2018 TO DATE: 2,915.36* TONNES *SURPASSED ANNUAL PROD’N

ACCUMULATION OF GOLD EFP’S FOR JANUARY 2018: 653.22 TONNES

ACCUMULATION OF GOLD EFP’S FOR FEBRUARY 2018: 649.45 TONNES

ACCUMULATION OF GOLD EFP’S FOR MARCH 2018: 741.89 TONNES (22 TRADING DAYS)

ACCUMULATION OF GOLD EFP’S FOR APRIL 2018: 713.84 TONNES (21 TRADING DAYS)

WHAT IS ALARMING TO ME, ACCORDING TO OUR LONDON EXPERT ANDREW MAGUIRE IS THAT THESE EFP’S ARE BEING TRANSFERRED TO WHAT ARE CALLED SERIAL FORWARD CONTRACT OBLIGATIONS AND THESE CONTRACTS ARE LESS THAN 14 DAYS. ANYTHING GREATER THAN 14 DAYS, THESE MUST BE RECORDED AND SENT TO THE COMPTROLLER, GREAT BRITAIN TO MONITOR RISK TO THE BANKING SYSTEM. IF THIS IS INDEED TRUE, THEN THIS IS A MASSIVE CONSPIRACY TO DEFRAUD AS WE NOW WITNESS A MONSTROUS TOTAL EFP’S ISSUANCE AS IT HEADS INTO THE STRATOSPHERE.

Result: A FAIR SIZED INCREASE IN OI AT THE COMEX OF 2064 WITH THE GAIN IN PRICE // GOLD TRADING FRIDAY ($2.05 GAIN). HOWEVER WE ALSO HAD A GOOD SIZED NUMBER OF COMEX LONG TRANSFERRING TO LONDON THROUGH THE EFP ROUTE: 7445 CONTRACTS AS THESE HAVE ALREADY BEEN NEGOTIATED AND CONFIRMED. THERE OBVIOUSLY DOES NOT SEEM TO BE MUCH PHYSICAL GOLD AT THE COMEX. I GUESS IT EXPLAINS THE HUGE ISSUANCE OF EFP’S…THERE IS HARDLY ANY GOLD PRESENT AT THE GOLD COMEX FOR DELIVERY PURPOSES. IF YOU TAKE INTO ACCOUNT THE 7445 EFP CONTRACTS ISSUED, WE HAD A GOOD SIZED NET GAIN OF 9509 CONTRACTS IN TOTAL OPEN INTEREST ON THE TWO EXCHANGES:

7445 CONTRACTS MOVE TO LONDON AND 2064 CONTRACTS INCREASED AT THE COMEX. (in tonnes, the GAIN in total oi equates to 29.57 TONNES).

we had: 0 notice(s) filed upon for NIL oz of gold at the comex.

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With respect to our two criminal funds, the GLD and the SLV:

GLD…

WITH GOLD DOWN $0.55 /ANOTHER CHANGE IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD/A WITHDRAWAL OF 1.47 TONNES FROM THE GLD

Inventory rests tonight: 864.13 tonnes.

SLV/

WITH SILVER UP 0 CENTS TODAY: A BIG CHANGE IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV/A WITHDRAWAL OF 942,000 OZ OF SILVER FROM THE SLV

/INVENTORY RESTS AT 323.263 MILLION OZ/

end

First, here is an outline of what will be discussed tonight:

1. Today, we had the open interest in SILVER ROSE BY A FAIR SIZED 1077 CONTRACTS from 193,685 UP TO 194,762 (AND, CLOSER TO THE NEW COMEX RECORD SET /APRIL 9/2017 AT 243,411/SILVER PRICE AT THAT DAY: $16.53). THE PREVIOUS RECORD OTHER THAN WAS ESTABLISHED AT: 234,787, SET ON APRIL 21.2017 OVER ONE YEAR AGO. THE PRICE OF SILVER ON THAT DAY: $17.89. OUR CUSTOMARY MIGRATION OF COMEX LONGS MORPH INTO LONDON FORWARDS CONTINUES AS OUR BANKERS USED THEIR EMERGENCY PROCEDURE TO ISSUE: 0 EFP CONTRACTS FOR APRIL, 0 EFP CONTRACTS FOR MAY (WE DO NOT GET A LOOK AT THESE CONTRACTS AS IT IS PRIVATE BUT THE CFTC DOES AUDIT THEM), AND 335 EFP’S FOR JULY AND ALL OTHER MONTHS ZERO. TOTAL EFP ISSUANCE: 335 CONTRACTS. EFP’S GIVE OUR COMEX LONGS A FIAT BONUS PLUS A DELIVERABLE PRODUCT OVER IN LONDON. IF WE TAKE THE OI GAIN AT THE COMEX OF 1138 CONTRACTS TO THE 335 OI TRANSFERRED TO LONDON THROUGH EFP’S, WE OBTAIN A GAIN OF 1473 OPEN INTEREST CONTRACTS. THUS IN OUNCES, THE GAIN ON THE TWO EXCHANGES: 7.060 MILLION OZ!!! AND THIS OCCURRED WITH THE RISE IN PRICE OF 5 CENTS. THE BANKERS ORCHESTRATED THEIR RAID THROUGHOUT LAST WEEK DESPERATELY TRYING TO PARE THEIR GIGANTIC OPEN INTEREST SHORT ON BOTH EXCHANGES BUT TO NO AVAIL. JUDGING BY THE RECORD NUMBER OF EFP ISSUANCE DURING LAST MONTH OF APRIL AT 385.75 MILLION OZ AND THE TOTAL OI GAIN ON THE TWO EXCHANGES, I DO NOT THINK THAT OUR BANKERS HAVE BEEN TOO SUCCESSFUL. THE CONSTANT RAIDS ARE NOW BEING CALLED UPON BY OUR BANKER FRIENDS ARE DONE IN AN ATTEMPT TO SHAKE AS MANY SILVER LEAVES FROM THE SILVER TREE AS POSSIBLE.

RESULT: A FAIR SIZED INCREASE IN SILVER OI AT THE COMEX WITH THE RISE IN SILVER PRICING / friDAY (5 CENTS/) . BUT WE ALSO HAD ANOTHER TINY SIZED 335 EFP’S ISSUED TRANSFERRING COMEX LONGS OVER TO LONDON. TOGETHER WITH THE STRONG SIZED AMOUNT OF SILVER OUNCES STANDING FOR APRIL, DEMAND FOR PHYSICAL SILVER CONTINUES TO INTENSIFY AS WE WITNESS SEVERE BACKWARDATION IN SILVER IN LONDON.

(report Harvey)

2.a) The Shanghai and London gold fix report

(Harvey)

2 b) Gold/silver trading overnight Europe, Goldcore

(Mark O’Byrne/zerohedge

and in NY: Bloomberg

3. ASIAN AFFAIRS

i)MONDAY MORNING/FRIDAY NIGHT: Shanghai closed UP 45.61 points or 1 .48% /Hang Sang CLOSED UP 67.76 points or 0.23% / The Nikkei closed DOWN 5.62 POINTS OR .03% /Australia’s all ordinaires CLOSED UP .33% /Chinese yuan (ONSHORE) closed DOWN at 6.3654/Oil UP to 70.35 dollars per barrel for WTI and 75.58for Brent. Stocks in Europe OPENED DEEPLY IN THE GREEN. ONSHORE YUAN CLOSED DOWN AT 6.3654 AGAINST THE DOLLAR. OFFSHORE YUAN CLOSED DOWN ON THE DOLLAR AT 6.3688/ONSHORE YUAN TRADING STRONGER AGAINST OFFSHORE YUAN/ONSHORE YUAN TRADING WEAKER AGAINST USA DOLLAR/OFFSHORE YUAN TRADING WEAKER AGAINST THE DOLLAR /CHINA RETALIATES WITH TARIFFS/ TRUMP RESPONDS TO NEW TARIFFS AND IT NOW LOOKS LIKE A FULL TRADE WAR IS BEGINNING/

/NORTH KOREA/SOUTH KOREA

i)North Korea/South Korea/USA

b) REPORT ON JAPAN

3 c CHINA

4. EUROPEAN AFFAIRS

i)GREECE

Trouble as Turkey is letting a huge number of migrants to flow into Greece

( zerohedge)

ii)ITALY

Italy is still in a mess as to who will govern. Looks like new elections:

(Tom Luongo)

iii)AIR FRANCE/FRANCE

Air France is in a mess after its CEO resigns with no signs that the strike against the company is coming to an end.

( zerohedge)

5. RUSSIAN AND MIDDLE EASTERN AFFAIRS

i)Saudi Arabia/Iran

The real story behind the Iran nuclear deal. It is not nuclear but really about oil. If the nuclear deal is off the table for the USA (and Saudi Arabia) then Iran will have a new buyer in China and thus the Petro Yuan scheme will become stronger

( Tom Luongo)

ii)TURKEY/USA

You can now visualize Turkey leaving NATO as they are very angry at the USA blocking the sale of F 35’s to them:

( zerohedge)

iii)Israel/Iran/Syria/Hezbollah

Israel threatens Assad that if they continue to allow Iran to operate out of Syria, war will ensue

( zerohedge)

6 .GLOBAL ISSUES

Canada

Canadians have a real problem: 8% of households owe more than 20% of the huge 2.1 trillion C$ in total debt.Consumers owe greater than C$600 billion in debt as well as have over 1.5 Trillion C$ in mortgage debt.

Better Dwelling.Daniel Wong)

7. OIL ISSUES

Indigenous citizens in Alaska who opposed Alaska drilling for oil for decades have now changed and they want in on the action

( Bradner/OilBarrel blog)

8. EMERGING MARKET

i)Venezuela

This looks like it is heading for a collision course between China and the USA with respect to Venezuelan oil. The state owned PDVSA in or around 2007-2008 confiscated assets of Conoco Phillips. They sued and in April 2018 they were awarded $2 billion plus seek further billions in damages. Conoco Phillips legally confiscated PDVSA’s Caribbean assets. The problem is that most of Venezuelan oil lands in China due to debt deals a few years ago. This will set up a huge confrontational between China and the USA. And we still have to deal with CITGO assets which are pledged to Russia

( zerohedge)

9. PHYSICAL MARKETS

i)GOOD REASON FOR THE BOYS TO HAVE WHACKED SILVER ALL WEEK;

( zerohedge)

ii)Steve St Angelo outlines how certain central banks have been purchasing gold and how this is impacting the gold market

( Steve St Angelo/SRSRocco Report)

iii)Another oil producer Nigeria has just signed a 2.4 billion dollars worth of currency swap, as this will lessen the dependency on the use of dollars. It will also strengthen the PetroYan scheme

( Bloomberg/GATA))

iv)Shanghai gold withdrawals which equal demand for the first quarter was huge: 747.26 tonnes. If they continue on this course the demand will equate to 2242 tonnes. April was huge coming in at 212.65 tonnes and that volume will surely put pressure on the west especially London and the Comex. Our two resident experts on Chinese demand, Koos Jansen and Ronan Manly both state categorically that Shanghai withdrawals equals demand for gold inside China. The figures also include what China produces (approx 420 tonnes per yr or 35 tonnes per month)

( LawrieWilliams/Sharp Pixley)

10. USA stories which will influence the price of gold/silver

i)A good look at the housing crisis in Colorado as evictions are overwhelming the court. The cost of living is skyrocketing and with higher interest rates, citizens just cannot afford their rents/homes.

( zerohedge)

ii)Unbelievable: Trump lashes out at John Kerry who is trying illegal shadow diplomacy with Iran

( zerohedge)

iii) Trump’s decision tomorrow at 2 pm on the Iranian deal

(zerohedge)

iv)Trump likely will scrap the Iranian deal but may offer some trinkets for Europe to buy Iranian oil

(courtesy zerohedge/NYTimes)

iii)SWAMP STORIES

a)Friday night/Reuters:

a biggy!! Judge Ellis questions whether Mueller has overstepped his authority with respect to the Manafort case. In his remarks, the judge states

that the prosecution is only interested in Manafort for his possible “singing” i.e. turn states evidence against Trump. However he further commented that

the problem with this kind of action, is the subject “composes” instead of “singing”. They have two weeks to supply the unredacted paper that

started this whole ball of wax. The judge may remove all charges against Manafort for their outreaching and that would put in jeopardy just about everybody

else charged by Mueller

( Reuters/LaFraniere)

b)Grassley furious as the FBI refuses to pursue the personal Strzok-Page text messages( zerohedge)

c)Constitutional scholar Joseph DiGenova states that it will be impossible for Trump to testify before the crooked Mueller team

( zerohedge)

We now have 4 judges who sense that Mueller’s case has nothing to do with Russian collusion but in essence is a scheme to remove Trump

We start with Emmit Sullivan who demanded exculpatory evidence withheld by Mueller in the witchhunt against Flynn. What is very unusual is the fact that the demand did not come from the defense but by the judge himself who knew that something was wrong after evidence surfaced that the investigators thought Flynn was telling the truth.
Judge Amy Berman Jackson: in a civil case with respect to Paul Manafort asking for dismal on grounds that Mueller far outreached his mandate, Berman Jackson demanded a copy of the unredacted memo from Rosenstein which postdated the raid on his house.
Judge Ellis: senior court judge in Virginia in the criminal against Manafort also saw outreaching and he voiced his concern that this is a shakedown to get to Trump. His big concern was that not only will Manafort “sing” but he might also “compose” He also like Amy Berman demanded an unredacted copy of the memo that post dated the raid of Manafort’s house. If they refuse to hand it over, he will dismiss the case.
Judge Friedrich: this is a good one..You will recall that Mueller charged 13 Russians 3 companies with collusion with respect to the USA election of 2016. This was nothing but a PR stunt as everybody thought that nobody would come and defend the charges as they were all Russian. One company, called Concord, of Russian origin has decided to fight the case. Mueller has been caught off guard and he has asked for trial delay to which the Judge Friedrich said no. Now Concord will ask for documents to which Mueller will refuse and thus this PR stunt will end and cause a lot of egg on his face.

( zerohedge)

e)Trump this morning rips into the 13 angry democrats that started the witchhunt. Becoming emboldened with the last Trump victories in court he is now harping on the huge conflict of interests with respect to many at the Dept of Justice

( zerohedge)

Let us head over to the comex:

The total gold comex open interest ROSE BY A FAIR SIZED 2064 CONTRACTS UP to an OI level 499,189 WITH THE GAIN IN THE PRICE OF GOLD ($205 GAIN/ FRIDAY’S TRADING). FOR TWO YEARS STRAIGHT WE HAVE NOTICED THAT ONE WEEK PRIOR TO FIRST DAY NOTICE OF AN ACTIVE DELIVERY MONTH THE COMEX OPEN INTEREST CONTRACTS AND EFP’S NOTICES EXPONENTIALLY INCREASE. THE CME REPORTS THAT THE BANKERS ISSUED A FAIR SIZED COMEX TRANSFER THROUGH THE EFP ROUTE AS THESE LONGS RECEIVED A DELIVERABLE LONDON FORWARD TOGETHER WITH A FIAT BONUS. WE HAD A GOOD SIZED 7445 CONTRACTS ISSUED: FOR JUNE, 7445 CONTRACTS ISSUED, FOR AUGUST ZERO AND ZERO FOR ALL OTHER MONTHS: TOTAL 7445 CONTRACTS. THE OBLIGATION STILL RESTS WITH THE BANKERS ON THESE TRANSFERS. ALSO REMEMBER THAT THERE IS NO DOUBT A HUGE DELAY IN THE ISSUANCE OF EFP’S AND IT PROBABLY TAKES AT LEAST 48 HRS AFTER LONGS GIVE UP THEIR COMEX CONTRACTS FOR THEM TO RECEIVE THEIR EFP’S AS THEY ARE NEGOTIATING THIS CONTRACT WITH THE BANKS FOR A FIAT BONUS PLUS THEIR TRANSFER TO A LONDON BASED FORWARD.

ON A NET BASIS IN OPEN INTEREST WE GAINED THE FOLLOWING TODAY ON OUR TWO EXCHANGES: 9509 OI CONTRACTS IN THAT 7445 LONGS WERE TRANSFERRED AS FORWARDS TO LONDON AND WE GAINED 2064 COMEX CONTRACTS.

NET GAIN ON THE TWO EXCHANGES: 9509 contracts OR 950,900 OZ OR 29.570 TONNES.

Result: A INCREASE IN COMEX OPEN INTEREST DESPITE THE RISE IN PRICE YESTERDAY (ENDING UP WITH A GAIN OF $2.05)THE TOTAL OPEN INTEREST GAIN ON THE TWO EXCHANGES: 9509 OI CONTRACTS..

We have now entered the non active contract month of MAY where we LOST 0 contracts REMAINING AT 364 contracts. We had 0 notices filed upon yesterday, so we LOST 0 contracts or 0 additional 300 oz will stand in this non active delivery month of May

The really big June contract month saw a LOSS of 4,133 contracts DOWN to 314,224 contracts. JULY saw a GAIN of 1 contract to stand at 78. The next big delivery month after June is August and here the OI ROSE BY 6312 contracts UP to 99392.

We had 0 notice(s) filed upon today for NIL oz at the comex

THERE IS NO QUESTION THAT THE COMEX DOES NOT HAVE ANY GOLD TO SATISFY UPON OUR LONGS.

Trading Volumes on the COMEX

PRELIMINARY COMEX VOLUME FOR TODAY: 240.523 contracts

CONFIRMED COMEX VOL. FOR YESTERDAY: 326,139 contracts

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And now for the wild silver comex results.

Total silver OI ROSE BY A FAIR SIZED 1077 CONTRACTS FROM 193,685 UP TO 194,762 (AND CLOSER TO THE NEW RECORD OI FOR SILVER SET APRIL 9.2018/ 243,411 CONTRACTS) WITH THE 5 CENT GAIN IN SILVER PRICING. SINCE WE ARE NOW INTO THE ACTIVE DELIVERY MONTH OF MAY. WE WERE INFORMED THAT WE HAD A SMALL SIZED 335 EFP CONTRACT ISSUANCE FOR JULY AND ZERO FOR ALL OTHER MONTHS. THESE EFPS WERE ISSUED TO COMEX LONGS WHO RECEIVED A FIAT BONUS PLUS A DELIVERABLE PRODUCT OVER IN LONDON. THE TOTAL EFP’S ISSUED: 335. ON A NET BASIS WE GAINED 1412 SILVER OPEN INTEREST CONTRACTS AS WE OBTAINED A 1077 CONTRACT GAIN AT THE COMEX COMBINING WITH THE ADDITION OF 335 OI CONTRACTS NAVIGATING OVER TO LONDON. DUE TO THE FACT THAT THE BOYS WERE VERY BUSY NEGOTIATING LONG COMEX CONTRACTS EMIGRATING TO LONDON,(AND WAITING FOR THEIR PASSPORTS)

NET GAIN ON THE TWO EXCHANGES: 1412 CONTRACTS

AMOUNT STANDING FOR SILVER AT THE COMEX

We are now in the active delivery month of MAY and here the front month LOST 161 contracts FALLING TO 718 contracts. We had 287 notices filed upon yesterday so we SURPRISINGLY AGAIN GAINED 126 contracts or 630,000 additional ounces will stand for delivery in this active delivery month of May AS SOMEBODY AGAIN WAS DESPERATE FOR PHYSICAL SILVER..

June saw a LOSS of 28 contracts to stand at 711 The next big delivery month for silver is July and here the OI ROSE by 1001 contracts UP to 142,773. The next active delivery month after July for silver is September and here the OI ROSE by 160 contracts UP to 20,478

We had 127 notice(s) filed for 635,000 OZ for the MAY 2018 contract for silver

INITIAL standings for MAY/GOLD

MAY 7/2018.

Gold	Ounces
Withdrawals from Dealers* Inventory in oz*	nil oz
Withdrawals from Customer* Inventory in oz*	NIL OZ
Deposits to the Dealer* Inventory in oz*	NIL oz
Deposits to the Customer* Inventory, in oz*	nil OZ
No of oz served (contracts) today	0 notice(s) NIL OZ
No of oz to be served (notices)	364 contracts (36400 oz)
Total monthly oz gold served (contracts) so far this month	14 notices 1400 OZ 0.0435 TONNES
Total accumulative withdrawals of gold from the Dealers* inventory this month*	NIL oz
Total accumulative withdrawal of gold from the Customer* inventory this month*	xxx oz

we had 0 kilobar transaction/

We had 0 inventory movement at the dealer accounts

total inventory deposit into the dealer accounts: NIL oz

total inventory withdrawals out of dealer accounts; nil oz

we had 0 withdrawals out of the customer account:

total customer withdrawals: NIL oz

we had 0 customer deposit

total customer deposits: nil oz

we had 0 adjustment(s)

For MAY:
Today, 0 notice(s) were issued from JPMorgan dealer account and 0 notices were issued from their client or customer account. The total of all issuance by all participants equates to 0 contract(s) of which 0 notices were stopped (received) by j.P. Morgan dealer and 0 notice(s) was (were) stopped/ Received) by j.P.Morgan customer account.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To calculate the INITIAL total number of gold ounces standing for the MAY. contract month, we take the total number of notices filed so far for the month (14) x 100 oz or 1400 oz, to which we add the difference between the open interest for the front month of MAY. (364 contracts) minus the number of notices served upon today (0 x 100 oz per contract) equals 37,800 oz, the number of ounces standing in this active month of APRIL (1.1850 tonnes)

Thus the INITIAL standings for gold for the MAY contract month:

No of notices served (14 x 100 oz or ounces + {(364)OI for the front month minus the number of notices served upon today (0 x 100 oz )which equals 37,800 oz standing in this active delivery month of MAY . THERE IS 10.382 TONNES OF REGISTERED GOLD AVAILABLE FOR DELIVERY SO FAR.

WE LOST 0 OZ OF GOLD T

total registered or dealer gold: 306,237.466 oz or 9.525 tonnes

total registered and eligible (customer) gold; 9,049,523.232 oz 281.47 tones

THE COMEX IS AGAIN IN STRESS AS ONLY 9.525 TONNES OF GOLD ARE LEFT TO SERVICE DELIVERIES. THERE IS HARDLY ANY GOLD AT THE COMEX TO SERVE UPON LONGS AND THUS THE REASON FOR THE EFP TRANSFER OVER TO LONDON.

IN THE LAST 18 MONTHS 73 NET TONNES HAS LEFT THE COMEX.

end

And now for silver

AND NOW THE APRIL DELIVERY MONTH

MAY INITIAL standings/SILVER

MAY 7/ 2018

Silver	Ounces
Withdrawals from Dealers* Inventory*	nil oz
Withdrawals from Customer Inventory	218,135.250 oz CNT Scotia
Deposits to the Dealer* Inventory*	nil oz
Deposits to the Customer Inventory	358,603.130 oz CNT Malca
No of oz served today (contracts)	127 CONTRACT(S) (635000 OZ)
No of oz to be served (notices)	591 contracts (2,955,000 oz)
Total monthly oz silver served (contracts)	5161 contracts (25,805,000 oz)
Total accumulative withdrawal of silver from the Dealers* inventory this month*	NIL oz
Total accumulative withdrawal of silver from the Customer* inventory this month*

we had 0 inventory movement at the dealer side of things

total dealer deposits: nil oz

we had 2 deposits into the customer account

i) Into JPMorgan: nil oz

*** JPMorgan for most of 2017 and in 2018 has adding to its inventory almost every single day.

JPMorgan now has 140 million oz of total silver inventory or 53.4% of all official comex silver. (140 million/263 million)

JPMorgan did not deposit into its warehouses (official) today.

ii) Into CNT: 58,158.000 OZ ???

iii) Into Malca: 300,418.130 oz

total deposits today: 358,603.130 oz

we had 2 withdrawals from the customer account;

i) out of CNT: 17,620.420 oz

ii() Out of Scotia: 200,,514.830 oz

total withdrawals; 218,135.250 oz

we had 0 adjustment

total dealer silver: 67.568 million

total dealer + customer silver: 266.738 million oz

The total number of notices filed today for the MAY. contract month is represented by 127 contract(s) FOR 635,000 oz. To calculate the number of silver ounces that will stand for delivery in MAY., we take the total number of notices filed for the month so far at 5161 x 5,000 oz = 25,805,000 oz to which we add the difference between the open interest for the front month of MAY. (718) and the number of notices served upon today (127 x 5000 oz) equals the number of ounces standing.

Thus the INITIAL standings for silver for the MAY contract month: 5161(notices served so far)x 5000 oz + OI for front month of MAY(718) -number of notices served upon today (127)x 5000 oz equals 28,760,000 oz of silver standing for the MAY contract month

WE GAINED 126 CONTRACTS OR AN ADDITIONAL 630,000 OZ WILL STAND AT THE COMEX AS SOMEBODY WAS IN URGENT NEED OF PHYSICAL SILVER.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

ESTIMATED VOLUME FOR TODAY: 45,065 CONTRACTS

CONFIRMED VOLUME FOR YESTERDAY: 49,571 CONTRACTS

YESTERDAY’S CONFIRMED VOLUME OF 49,571 CONTRACTS EQUATES TO 247 MILLION OZ OR 35/4% OF ANNUAL GLOBAL PRODUCTION OF SILVER

COMMODITY LAW SUGGESTS THAT OPEN INTEREST SHOULD NOT BE MORE THAN 3% OF ANNUAL GLOBAL PRODUCTION. THE CROOKS ARE SUPPLYING MASSIVE PAPER TRYING TO KEEP SILVER IN CHECK.

The record level of silver open interest is 234,787 contracts set on April 21./2017 with the price at that day at $18.42
The previous record was 224,540 contracts with the price at that time of $20.44

end

NPV for Sprott

1. Sprott silver fund (PSLV): NAV RISES TO -1.50% (MAY4/2018)
2. Sprott gold fund (PHYS): premium to NAV RISES TO -0.20% to NAV (MAY 4/2018 )
Note: Sprott silver trust back into NEGATIVE territory at -1.75%-/Sprott physical gold trust is back into NEGATIVE/ territory at -0.20%/Central fund of Canada’s is still in jail but being rescued by Sprott.
Sprott WINS hostile 3.1 billion bid to take over Central Fund of Canada

(courtesy Sprott/GATA)

3.SPROTT CEF.A FUND (FORMERLY CENTRAL FUND OF CANADA): NAV FALLS TO -2.35`%: NAV 13.59/TRADING 13.29//DISCOUNT 2.24

END

And now the Gold inventory at the GLD/

MAY 7/WITH GOLD DOWN $0.55/ANOTHER WITHDRAWAL OF 1.47 TONNES OF GOLD FROM THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 864.13 TONNES

MAY 4/WITH GOLD UP $2.05/A WITHDRAWAL OF 1.13 TONNES OF GOLD FROM THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 865.60 TONNES

MAY 3/WITH GOLD UP $7.05/NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 866.77 TONNES

MAY 2/WITH GOLD DOWN $1.15/ A HUGE WITHDRAWAL OF 4.43 TONNES FROM THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 866.77 TONNES

MAY 1/WITH GOLD DOWN $12.15/NO CHANGE IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 871.20 TONNES

APRIL 30/WITH GOLD DOWN $4.05/NO CHANGE IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 871.20 TONNES.

APRIL 27./WITH GOLD UP $5.90/NO CHANGE IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 871.20 TONNES/

APRIL 26/WITH GOLD DOWN $4.90/NO CHANGE IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 871.20 TONNES

APRIL 25/AFTER 9 CONSECUTIVE DAYS OF NO MOVEMENT OF GOLD INTO OUT OF THE GLD, WE HAD A HUGE DEPOSIT OF 5.31 TONNES OF GOLD INTO THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 871.20 TONNES.

APRIL 24./WITH GOLD UP $9.90, WE HAD NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 865.89 TONNES/

APRIL 23.2018/WITH GOLD DOWN $14.00/NO CHANGE IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 865.89 TONNES.

APRIL 20/WITH GOLD DOWN $10.20: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 865.89 TONNES

APRIL 19/WITH GOLD DOWN $4.25: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 865.89 TONNES/

APRIL 18/WITH GOLD UP $3.65: NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 865.89 TONNES

APRIL 17/WITH GOLD DOWN $1.00 NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 865.89 TONNES/

April 16/WITH GOLD UP$2.80/NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 865.89 TONNES/

April 13/WITH GOLD UP $6.15, A HUGE DEPOSIT OF 5.90 TONNES INTO THE GLD INVENTORY/INVENTORY RESTS AT 865.89 TONNES

April 12/WITH GOLD DOWN $17.40/NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 859.99 TONNES

April 11/WITH GOLD UP $13.85/NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 859,99 TONNES

APRIL 10/WITH GOLD UP $5.25/NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 859.99 TONNES

APRIL 9/WITH GOLD UP$4.50/NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 859.99 TONNES

APRIL 6/WITH GOLD UP $7.50 ,A HUGE CHANGE IN INVENTORY AT THE GLD/ A DEPOSIT OF 5.90 TONNES/INVENTORY RESTS AT 859.99 TONNES

APRIL 5/WITH GOLD DOWN $8.20 WE HAD TWO ENTRIES: 1) TINY WITHDRAWAL OF .28 TONNES TO PAY FOR FEES AND 2) A DEPOSIT OF 2.06 TONNES//INVENTORY RESTS AT 854.09 TONNES

April 4/WITH GOLD UP $2.90 WE HAD NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 852.31 TONNES

APRIL 3./WITH GOLD DOWN $9.30 WE HAD NO CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS AT 852.31 TONNES

APRIL 2/WITH GOLD UP $19.50, WE HAD A BIG CHANGES IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD A DEPOSIT OF 6.19 TONNES/INVENTORY RESTS AT 852.31 TONNES

MARCH 29/WITH GOLD DOWN $3.20 AND OPTIONS EXPIRY FINISHED, WE HAD NO CHANGE IN GOLD INVENTORY AT THE GLD/INVENTORY RESTS A 846.12 TONNES

March 28/WITH GOLD DOWN $16.70, ANOTHER RAID ORCHESTRATED, AGAIN NO SURPRISES AS WE WITNESS ANOTHER 1.18 TONNES OF GOLD REMOVED/INVENTORY RESTS AT 846.12 TONNES

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

MAY 7/2018/ Inventory rests tonight at 864.13 tonnes

*IN LAST 377 TRADING DAYS: 76.87 NET TONNES HAVE BEEN REMOVED FROM THE GLD
*LAST 327 TRADING DAYS: A NET 79.43 TONNES HAVE NOW BEEN ADDED INTO GLD INVENTORY.

end

Now the SLV Inventory/

MAY 7/WITH SILVER FLAT: A BIG CHANGE IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV// A WITHDRAWAL OF 942,000 OZ OF SILVER FROM THE SLV INVENTORY/INVENTORY RESTS AT 323.263 MILLION OZ/

MAY4/WITH SILVER UP 5 CENTS/A BIG CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV/ A DEPOSIT OF 1.224 MILLION OZ/INVENTORY RESTS AT 324.205 MILLION OZ/

MAY 2/WITH SILVER UP 24 CENTS/A HUGE CHANGE IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV// A DEPOSIT OF 6.082 MILLION OZ INTO THE SLV/INVENTORY RESTS AT 322.981 MILLION OZ/

MAY 1/WITH SILVER DOWN 24 CENTS/NO CHANGE IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV/INVENTORY RESTS AT 316.899 MILLION OZ/

APRIL 30/WITH SILVER DOWN 11 CENTS/NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV/INVENTORY RESTS AT 316.899 MILLION OZ/

APRIL 27/WITH SILVER DOWN 5 CENTS/NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV/INVENTORY RESTS AT 316.899 MILLION OZ/

APRIL 26/WITH SILVER DOWN 2 CENT/NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV/INVENTORY RESTS AT 316,899 MILLION OZ/

APRIL 25./WITH SILVER DOWN 18 CENTS/NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV/INVENTORY RESTS AT 316.899 MILLION OZ/

APRIL 24./WITH SILVER UP 8 CENTS/SOMETHING SPOOKED OUR CROOKS TO ADD SOME PAPER SILVER: A DEPOSIT OF 1.601 MILLION OZ/INVENTORY RESTS AT 316.899 MILLION OZ/

APRIL 23.2018/WITH SILVER DOWN 50 CENTS, ANOTHER HUGE WITHDRAWAL FROM THE SLV INVENTORY: A WITHDRAWAL OF 1.413 MILLION OZ/INVENTORY RESTS AT 315.298 MILLION OZ.

APRIL 20/WITH SILVER DOWN 11 CENTS: ANOTHER HUGE CHANGE IN SILVER INVENTORY: A WITHDRAWAL OF 1.13 MILLION OZ//SLV RESTS TONIGHT AT 316.711 MILLION OZ/

APRIL 19/WITH SILVER UP 3 CENTS TODAY: WE HAD A BIG CHANGE IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV: A WITHDRAWAL OF 2.355 MILLION OZ/ MAKES ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE!!/INVENTORY RESTS AT 317.841 MILLION OZ

APRIL 18/WITH SILVER UP 44 CENTS TODAY: NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV/INVENTORY RESTS AT 320.196 MILLION OZ

APRIL 17/WITH SILVER UP 10 CENTS TODAY/NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV/INVENTORY RESTS AT 320.196 MILLION OZ

April 16/WITH SILVER UP 7 CENTS TODAY: NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV/INVENTORY RESTS AT 320.196 MILLION OZ/

April 13/WITH SILVER UP 17 CENTS TODAY: NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV/INVENTORY RESTS AT 320.196 MILLION OZ.

April 12/WITH SILVER DOWN 27 CENTS/NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV/INVENTORY RESTS AT 320.196 MILLION OZ/

April 11/2018/WITH SILVER UP 16 CENTS: NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV/INVENTORY RESTS AT 320.196 MILLION OZ/

APRIL 10/WITH GOLD UP 8 CENTS/NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV/INVENTORY RESTS AT 320.196 MILLION OZ/

APRIL 9/WITH SILVER UP 12 CENTS/WE HAD NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY/INVENTORY RESTS AT 320.196 MILLION OZ/

APRIL 6/WITH SILVER UP 4 CENTS, WE HAD A HUGE DEPOSIT OF 1.319 MILLION OZ INTO THE SLV INVENTORY/INVENTORY RESTS AT 320.196 MILLION OZ

APRIL 5/WITH SILVER UP 6 CENTS/NO CHANGES IN INVENTORY AT THE SLV/INVENTORY RESTS AT 318.877 MILLION OZ/

April 4/WITH SILVER DOWN 11 CENTS/A SMALL CHANGE IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV/ A WITHRAWAL OF 135,000 OZ AND THIS IS PROBABLY TO PAY FOR FEES/INVENTORY RESTS AT 318.877 MILLION OZ/

APRIL 3./WITH SILVER DOWN 16 CENTS/NO CHANGE IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV/INVENTORY RESTS AT 319.012 MILLION OZ/

APRIL 2/WITH SILVER UP 34 CENTS/NO CHANGES IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV/INVENTORY RESTS AT 319.012 MILLION OZ/

MARCH 29/WITH SILVER UP 6 CENTS, THE CROOKS DECIDED THAT THEY HAD BETTER ADD SOME 943,000 PAPER OZ TO THEIR INVENTORY/INVENTORY RESTS AT 319.012 MILLION OZ

March 28/WITH SILVER DOWN 27 CENTS/AGAIN NO CHANGE IN SILVER INVENTORY AT THE SLV/INVENTORY RESTS AT 318.069 MILLION OZ

MAY 7/2018: A BIG CHANGE IN SILVER INVENTORY: A WITHDRAWAL OF 942,000 OZ FROM THE SLV INVENTORY

Inventory 323.263 million oz

end

6 Month MM GOFO 2.05/ and libor 6 month duration 2.52

Indicative gold forward offer rate for a 6 month duration/calculation:

G0FO+ 2.05%

libor 2.52 FOR 6 MONTHS/

GOLD LENDING RATE: .47%

XXXXXXXX

12 Month MM GOFO
+ 2.78%

LIBOR FOR 12 MONTH DURATION: 2.52

GOFO = LIBOR – GOLD LENDING RATE

GOLD LENDING RATE = +.26

end

Major gold/silver trading /commentaries for WEDNESDAY

GOLDCORE/BLOG/MARK O’BYRNE.

GOLD/SILVER

Weekly Gold Update – Gold In Dollars Lower Despite Poor US Jobs and Other Data

5, May

Weekly Gold Update by Daniel March for GoldCore (May 6, 2018)

• US dollar strength amid weakening fundamentals and poor US jobs data Friday

• Gold buyers in other currencies see gains – gold in EUR and GBP rises 0.7% & 0.9%

• YTD performance table suggests stagflation coming as Fed eyes inflation, lower growth

• Seasonal effect – gold to bottom this summer? (see charts)

• Silver is nearly 70% below it’s 1980 high and technically looks very good (see charts)

• Speculators cut long positions, GLD holds strong

• Boost for rural India – demand to benefit in Q2

• Turkey physical demand surges as Turks are “protecting their savings” with gold

• Egyptian billionaire putting half net worth in gold

• “Case for owning commodities has rarely been stronger” – Goldman

Editor: Mark O’Byrne

Gold in US dollar terms ended the week down 0.75%. Gold’s decline was likely primarily due to a stronger US Dollar Index (USDX) which was up 1.1%.

Gold rose after the worse than expected non farm payrolls on Friday before reversing the gains and then bouncign to close the day marginally higher. US job growth increased less than expected last month with the US economy adding just 164,000 jobs in April. This was less than the 193,000 jobs expected.

The USDX started the week strong, and once it pushed past its 200 dma in early trading Tuesday, both gold and silver were unable to hold up with selling pressure in the futures market.

A stronger US dollar came despite a backdrop of weakening economic data, US Pending Home Sales, ISM PMI, and the Non Farm Payrolls on Friday all came in below expectations.

The US economic outlook is clearly deteriorating but it appears to be still outperforming it’s global peers including the struggling UK and fragile EU. This served as a reflection point, as traders recognised the relative US strength and bid up the dollar, squeezing the long standing shorts out of the market. However, while a strong dollar is traditionally not a friendly environment for the precious metals, on-going uncertainty in the stock and bond markets have served to limit the downside in gold this week.

For holders of gold in EUR and GBP and other fiat currencies, many say gains with EUR and GBP gold buyers seeing their holdings gain in purchasing power by 0.7% and 0.9%, respectively.

On monetary policy, the Federal Reserve left rates on hold Wednesday, and acknowledged building inflation pressures, signalling their willingness to allow inflation to move around their 2% target ‘symmetrically’. In addition, they removed the wording “The economic outlook has strengthened in recent months”, perhaps in response to the weaker than expected economic data.

So with inflationary pressures building, and economic growth slowing, one has to ask how long the Fed can stick with their ‘dot-plot’ for future rates hike particularly when the Central Banks of Europe, UK, China and Japan are looking to reverse the tightening course and in some cases outright ease.

Perhaps this admission by the FED on a higher inflation, lower growth environment outlook is acknowledging the fact they will need to realign to global policy sooner rather than later.

Geopolitical risks have eased since last week’s symbolic meeting between the North and South Korean leaders. The stage is now set for the US to meet with the North Koreans later this month in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). However, tensions still persist in the Middle East with almost daily events occurring in Syria and Iran with little or no reaction from the markets so far.

It’s almost as if the world has become slight desensitized by the uncertainty and risks in the region. However, the Middle East remains a power keg and should there be a significant escalation in the region, gold will quickly erase any short term weakness and catch a safe haven bid in a heartbeat.

There were bullish developments in the latest Commitment of Traders (COT) report, released for the week ending Tuesday May 1st. Large speculators (historically the dumb money) reduced their net long position in gold by 29,867 contracts, while the commercials (historically smart money) reduced their net short position by an almost identical amount of 29,928 contracts.

In silver, the large speculators sold into the recent price weakness, and are once again net short 7,196 contracts. While the commercials did the opposite, buying back their shorts, leaving them now net short just 11,978 contracts.

While large speculators on the Comex have been quick to sell their positions the same is not true in the GLD ETF. As of this Friday the trust held 865.595 tonnes, just 6 tonnes shy of the highest holding reported this year, suggesting ‘stronger hand’ investors moving into gold via the GLD ETF, where they are unlikely to be shaken out by short term price moves.

Physical gold buying in the worlds 2nd largest gold consumer India looks set to increase in Q2 this year from a combination of positive monsoon rains and government efforts to boost rural incomes. Two-thirds of Indian demand comes from rural areas, and in an interview this week with Reuters, the WGC India commented:

“The government’s measures to boost rural incomes by increasing the subsidized prices for food grains and the forecast for a normal monsoon rains in 2018 will bolster demand … The aggregate demand in April to December would be higher than last year’s three quarters.”

All of which provides strength to the Indian gold market for Q2, given the headwinds to demand the last couple of years, from a combination of higher levies on gold imports, and the fallout from removing high denomination banks notes from circulation.

In Turkey physical purchases are up significantly in Q1 this year. As we pointed out Friday, the Financial Times reported this week:

“Turkey’s demand for gold surged by more than a third in the first quarter as consumers flocked to the precious metal as a protection against a tumbling currency and rising inflation”.

In the article from the FT, Charles Robertson, global chief economist at Renaissance Capital, said

“After centuries of default and economic instability, Turks are very savvy when it comes to protecting their savings….Gold has always been a store of value for them…”

It’s not just general public that are taking action, Turkey’s central bank have also been aggressively buying gold as they too see the benefits in hedging against an uncertain outlook for their fiat currency and their US dollar foreign exchange reserves. Not to mention the very real geo-political risks on their border in Syria and the wider Middle East.

Looking at the seasonals the summer months are traditionally a weak period for the metals. Data tracked from the last 30 years shows that gold and silver tend to drift lower during the early summer before regularly finding a bottom in late June early July – an anomaly clearly highlighted in the chart from Dimitri Speck’s website – www.seasonax.com. However, while the summer months are usually a headwind to the metals it historically provides a good buying opportunity going into the second half of the year.

On the long term view for gold (charts courtesy of StockCharts.com) we can see a narrowing range that gold broke out of in August 2017.

The once resistance, now support line, for gold has been tested at least 3 times, and should we see the usual ‘summer doldrums’, this area will offer significant support

Looking at silver (Charts courtesy of StockCharts.com) go back 15 years to identify its key support, which is currently sitting nicely at the 200 month moving average.

What is interesting about the silver chart is the powerful setup being presented, where the price is being squeezed into a narrower and narrower range. Unlike gold however, silver is yet to breakout, but given the historically high gold to silver ratio (currently sitting near 80) and the already bullish positioning in the COT, it makes the chances for an upside breakout more likely.

Couple that with the low silver premiums right now, and the fact silver is 68% below it’s 1980 high, and 90% below this high in inflation adjusted terms, means at $16 silver could be the best opportunity of all.

Following on from a recent trend of high net worth individuals (HNW’s) and family officeslooking to preserve their wealth it has been reported this week that Naguib Sawaris, Egypt’s second richest man (second only to his older brother) has invested half of his $5.7 billion fortune into gold.

Safaris has previous interests in gold mining operations, and at the moment it’s unclear how he’s put his money to work. However, If geopolitical risk is his main concern, and wealth preservation is his goal, he would be best served investing in a physical form that provides full title and access to the precious metal, and not by buying shares in a company.

This is perhaps one of the largest high net worth individuals to make such an investment, but should other wealthy individuals come to the same conclusion and follow suit, it has the potential to shift the current supply/demand dynamics for gold.

Goldman Sachs have put out a bullish commentary on the commodities sector this week. They see the “strategic case for owning commodities has rarely been stronger.”

While big bank history for making such calls is far from 100% it was interesting to hear the rationale for such a view, where they cite “building inflationary pressures associated with late cycle growth depleting global supply chains”. Considering this view from Goldman, not only echoes the sentiment from the Fed, but is also supported by the recent weak data, investors should maybe think about how a higher inflation, lower growth outlook will impact their investments, and act accordingly.

Economic data aside, it’s worth reviewing the performance of various other asset classes to see if stagflationary outlook is justified.

The below YTD relative performance (table from FINVIZ.com) seem to backup this projection, where of note the VIX is up 39.43% (fear/uncertainty), crude up 15.43% (inflationary), DJI down 2.27% (lower growth prospects), 30 year bond down 6.23% (inflationary, inverse to yields), and copper down 6.64% (possibly concerns about late cycle construction boom).

While gold and silver have been largely subdued YTD, up 0.4%, and down 3.76% respectively, we believe that once the growth and inflation prospects become a reality, risk averse retail investors will begin diversifying into precious metals providing the catalyst needed to make the next move higher in gold and silver.

Listen on SoundCloud , Blubrry & iTunes. Watch on YouTube

News and Commentary

Gold prices steady ahead of U.S. payrolls data (Reuters.com)

Asia Stocks Drop as Trade Talks Held; Dollar Slips (Bloomberg.com)

U.S. Trade Gap Narrows, Claims Remain Low, Productivity Tepid (Bloomberg.com)

U.S. factory orders rise, but business equipment spending slowing (Reuters.com)

ISM non-manufacturing index slows to four-month low in April (MarketWatch.com)

Don’t Be Afraid Of Fed, Gold Price To Touch $1,600 (Forbes.com)

PREPARING FOR A RECESSION (RealVision.com)

Has the Fed really turned hawkish? Or is it just an act? (MoneyWeek.com)

Global RESET Challenge: Ultimate Twist (GoldSeek.com)

Jeffrey Gundlach: Gold to explode (MoneyWeek.com)

Listen on SoundCloud , Blubrry & iTunes. Watch on YouTube below

Gold Prices (LBMA AM)

03 May: USD 1,313.30, GBP 966.19 & EUR 1,094.64 per ounce
02 May: USD 1,310.75, GBP 960.52 & EUR 1,091.99 per ounce
01 May: USD 1,309.20, GBP 956.37 & EUR 1,087.68 per ounce
30 Apr: USD 1,316.25, GBP 958.62 & EUR 1,087.62 per ounce
27 Apr: USD 1,317.70, GBP 954.41 & EUR 1,090.79 per ounce
26 Apr: USD 1,321.90, GBP 949.52 & EUR 1,085.94 per ounce
25 Apr: USD 1,325.70, GBP 949.47 & EUR 1,085.48 per ounce

Silver Prices (LBMA)

03 May: USD 16.47, GBP 12.12 & EUR 13.74 per ounce
02 May: USD 16.35, GBP 11.98 & EUR 13.62 per ounce
01 May: USD 16.25, GBP 11.87 & EUR 13.51 per ounce
30 Apr: USD 16.38, GBP 11.93 & EUR 13.54 per ounce
27 Apr: USD 16.53, GBP 12.01 & EUR 13.68 per ounce
26 Apr: USD 16.58, GBP 11.87 & EUR 13.61 per ounce
25 Apr: USD 16.57, GBP 11.87 & EUR 13.57 per ounce

Recent Market Updates

– Gold Demand Falls In Q1 Despite Robust Central Bank and Investment Demand and Surging Demand In Turkey and Iran
– Smart Money Diversifying Into Gold – One Billionaire Invests Half His Net Worth
– “Blood In The Streets” Of U.S. Gold Bullion Market As Sale Of Gold Coins Collapse
– Most Important Chart Of The Century For Investors?
– Gold Mining Shares Are Speculative Making Gold Bullion A Better Investment
– Gold Price Increasingly Influenced By Declining Dollar Rather Than Interest Rates
– Cash “Vanishes” From Bank Accounts In Ireland
– Russia Buys 300,000 Ounces Of Gold In March – Nears 2,000 Tons In Gold Reserves
– Family Offices and HNWs Invest In Gold Again
– New All Time Record Highs For Gold In 2019
– Palladium Bullion Surges 17% In 9 Days On Russian Supply Concerns
– Silver Bullion Remains Good Value On Positive Supply And Demand Factors
– London House Prices See Fastest Quarterly Fall Since 2009 Crisis

Mark O’Byrne

Executive Director

Mark O’Byrne

Executive Director

Andrew Maguire’s Kinesis money which is a “bitcoin” but backed 100% by allocated gold and silver is set to go.

it think it would be a great idea to look at this!

please read at: https://kinesis.money/#/

(Andrew Maguire)

Andrew Maguire

2:57 PM (1 hour ago)

to me

Harvey

Here It is my friend! https://kinesis.money/#/ Please let everyone know.

Let catch up on Monday if you have time. We have billions in the hopper ready to be allocated on the 1^st day of trading. The paper market days are over.

Warm regards

Andy

END

GOOD REASON FOR THE BOYS TO HAVE WHACKED SILVER ALL WEEK;

(courtesy zerohedge)

Schizophrenic Silver: Biggest ETF Inflow In 2 Years (After Major Outflow)

Silver investors have been schizophrenic the last two weeks. Following a huge inflow mid-April, last week saw the biggest outflow from Silver ETFs since Jan 2015, and now this week (yesterday) saw investors pile more money into Silver ETFs than at any time since March 2016…

After which silver soared 45%…

Dramatically outperforming Gold…

And don’t forget, Specs are notably divergent in their Gold vs Silver positioning…

end

* * *

Steve St Angelo outlines how certain central banks have been purchasing gold and how this is impacting the gold market

(courtesy Steve St Angelo/SRSRocco Report)

CENTRAL BANK GOLD PURCHASES: Stunning Impact On The Gold Market

POSTED BY SRSROCCOIN NEWS, PRECIOUS METALS ON MAY 4, 2018 — 2 COMMENTS

The switch from Central bank gold sales to purchases had a big impact on the gold market. Precious metals investors fail to realize that Central banks sold a staggering amount of gold into the market up until 2009. It’s also quite interesting that Central banks became net purchasers after the 2008 Market meltdown.

There’s been a lot of speculation as to why the Central banks decided to liquidate a portion of their gold holdings, but what we do know is that the amount equaled less than half of the United States supposed gold reserves were sold into the market from 2002-2009. Furthermore, Official Gold sales took place right at the very same time the Gold ETF market took off. From 2002 to 2009, nearly 1,800 metric tons (mt) of gold went into Gold ETFs, which accounted for 52% of Central Bank gold sales during that period.

According to the data from the World Gold Council, in just eight years, Central banks sold 3,425 mt of gold, or a massive 110 million oz (Moz) of gold into the market. To get an idea just how much gold this was, from 2002-2008 (the majority of sales), Central Banks supplied roughly 20% of global mine supply. That is one heck of a lot of gold.

To put it another way, 110 Moz is more than the total current 93 Moz of global, transparent gold holdings, including depositories, mutual funds, and ETFs. Moreover, Central banks sold nearly four times the gold that is “supposedly” in the SPDR’s GLD ETF (28 Moz). So, it seems that a lot of the public’s gold went into private hands… LOL.

Regardless, the chart below shows the Central bank net gold purchases from 2002 to 2017:

As we can see, Central bank sales of 110 Moz (2002-2009) switched to purchases of 118 Moz (2010-2017). Thus, the net change on the gold market over this 16-year period was a stunning 228 Moz. We must remember, the market enjoyed an extra supply of 110 Moz from 2002 to 2009, but this became the demand of 118 Moz during the next 8-year period.

Also, estimated Central bank gold sales were $53 billion versus purchases of $163 billion:

Thus, if the Central banks waited and sold their gold during the second period (2010-2017), they would have made $143 billion rather than the $53 billion (2002-2009). That $143 billion figure is based on selling 110 Moz at an average gold price of $1,300.

Now, of the stated 374 mt of gold purchased by Central Banks in 2017, Smaulgld wrote that Russia accounted for 224 mt, or 60% of the total last year. Also, if you check out Smaulgld’s article linked above, Russia added 804 mt of gold to its reserve from 2014-2017. Which means, Russia purchased 40% of all Central bank gold during that 4-year period.

While the West continues to demonize Russia, they are in much better shape economically if we focus on Energy, Debt and gold holdings. According to Sputnik News, Russia’s debt to GDP declined to 33%. However, compare Russia’s 33% debt to GDP to Japan (253%), U.S. (110%), France (97%), U.K. (85%), Europen Union (81%) and Germany (64%). Source: TradingEconomics.com

Furthermore, even though the United States is producing a lot more oil, we still have net petroleum imports of 3-4 million barrels per day. Whereas, Russia is exporting over 5 million barrels per day.

Lastly, if we consider that the United States holds 8,133 mt of gold in reserve backed by $21 trillion of debt versus 1,838 mt of official Russian gold reserves supporting $449 billion in debt, Russia comes out as the clear winner. For each ounce of gold that is supposedly held in the U.S. official reserves, there is over $80,000 of debt. Now compare that to $7.6 worth of debt for each ounce of Russian official gold reserves.

It will be quite interesting how the situation unfolds in the global economic and financial systems when the next major market correction takes place.

HOW TO SUPPORT THE SRSROCCO REPORT SITE:

My goal is to reach 500 PATRON SUPPORTERS.Currently, the SRSrocco Report has 190 Patrons!! I would also like to thank those foundation supporters, who have chosen to become a member by making donations through PayPal to further the research and publishing work at the SRSrocco Report.

END

Another oil producer Nigeria has just signed a 2.4 billion dollars worth of currency swap, as this will lessen the dependency on the use of dollars. It will also strengthen the PetroYan scheme.

(courtesy Bloomberg/GATA))

Nigeria, China sign $2.4 billion currency swap to lift trade

Submitted by cpowell on Sun, 2018-05-06 14:09. Section: Daily Dispatches

By Paul Wallace and David Malingha Doya
Bloomberg News
Thursday, May 3, 2018

Nigeria and China agreed on a currency swap worth $2.4 billion to boost commercial ties and reduce the need to use the dollar in bilateral trade.

Yi Gang, governor of the People’s Bank of China, and Godwin Emefiele, his Nigerian counterpart, signed a three-year swap of 15 billion yuan or 720 billion naira in Beijing on April 27, the Chinese central bank said in a statement today. The transaction can be renewed if both parties want, it said.

he deal, more than two years in the making, will “provide naira liquidity to Chinese businesses and provide renminbi liquidity to Nigerian businesses respectively, thereby improving the speed, convenience, and volume of transactions between the two countries,” the Central Bank of Nigeria said in a separate statement. It will allow Nigerian companies to import spare parts and raw materials from China by sourcing renminbi from local banks and help them avoid “the difficulties of seeking other scarce foreign currencies,” it said. …

… For the remainder of the report:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-03/nigeria-china-sign-2-…

end

Shanghai gold withdrawals which equal demand for the first quarter was huge: 747.26 tonnes. If they continue on this course the demand will equate to 2242 tonnes. April was huge coming in at 212.65 tonnes and that volume will surely put pressure on the west especially London and the Comex. Our two resident experts on Chinese demand, Koos Jansen and Ronan Manly both state categorically that Shanghai withdrawals equals demand for gold inside China. The figures also include what China produces (approx 420 tonnes per yr or 35 tonnes per month)

(courtesy LawrieWilliams/Sharp Pixley)

LAWRIE WILLIAMS: Chinese gold demand way up in April

Despite the latest analysis from the World Gold Council (WGC) which suggested a poorish start to the year for gold demand (See: Q1 gold demand lowest for 10 years), Chinese demand as represented by gold withdrawals out of the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE) appear to have picked up well in April coming out at 28% higher than in 2017 and 24% higher than in 2016 (see table below). They are still around 9% down on the record 2015 figure for the first four months of the year, but at least the trend appears positive when some other demand statistics appear to be slipping.

Indeed April 2018 gold withdrawals were comfortably higher than those in April 2015 too, but in the latter year gold withdrawals out of the SGE were particularly strong in the second half of the year and totalled almost 2,600 tonnes for the full year – around 80% of total global new mined production. We don’t expect this figure to be matched in the current year, but the Chinese figures look to be off to a good start.

Table: SGE Monthly Gold Withdrawals (Tonnes)

Month	2018	2017	2016	% change 2017-2018	% change 2016- 2018
January	223.58	184.41	225.08	+21.2%	-0.7%
February*	118.42	148.24	107.60	-20.1%	+10.7%
March	192.61	192.25	183.24	+0.2%	+5.1%
April	212.65	165.78	171.40	+28.3%	+24.07%
May		138.08	147.28
June		155.51	138.51
July		144.71	117.58
August		161.41	144.44
September		214.24	170.90
October		151.54	153.25
November		189.10	214.72
December		185.21	196.37
Year to date	749.07	690.68	687.32	+ 8.45%	+8.98%
Full Year		2,030.48	1,970.37

Source: Shanghai Gold Exchange. Lawrieongold.com

Of course, as we have pointed out here previously it is a contentious issue as to whether SGE withdrawal figures are an accurate indicator of total Chinese gold demand. The mjor precious metals consultancies come up with all kinds of differing reasons why this is not the case. But in support of our views on this we should point out that SGE withdrawal figures seem to relate far better to the sum of China’s own gold production plus known gold imports, plus a reasonable figure for scrap supply than these same consultancies’ estimates of Chinese annual gold demand.

The latest SGE figures do suggest that investment demand for gold bars and coins may be picking up – particularly as the gold price will have appeared weak at times. The prospects of a trade tariff war developing with the USA may also be driving people to safe haven investment and the huge falls in the value of cryptocurrencies will also have diminished interest in these as a safe investment asset which again may have turned the gold-loving Chinese back to the yellow metal. The WGC Q1 report noted above does suggest that gold jewellery demand in China as picking up too and points to a continuing sharp growth in technological demand – and China is at the forefront of the latter.

https://www.sharpspixley.com/articles/lawrie-williams- chinese-gold-demand-way-up-in-april_279369.html

___________________________________________________________________

Your early MONDAY morning currency, Asian stock market results, important USA/Asian currency crosses, gold/silver pricing overnight along with the price of oil Major stories overnight/9 AM EST

i) Chinese yuan vs USA dollar/CLOSED DOWN 6.3654 /shanghai bourse CLOSED UP 45.61 POINTS OR 1 .48% / HANG SANG CLOSED UP 67.76 POINTS OR 0.23%
2. Nikkei closed DOWN 35.25 POINTS OR .16% / /USA: YEN FALLS TO 108.98/

3. Europe stocks OPENED GREEN /USA dollar index RISES TO 92.85/Euro FALLS TO 1.1914

3b Japan 10 year bond yield: FALLS TO . +.04/ !!!!(Japan buying 100% of bond issuance)/Japanese yen vs usa cross now at 109.31/ THIS IS TROUBLESOME AS BANK OF JAPAN IS RUNNING OUT OF BONDS TO BUY./JAPAN 10 YR YIELD FINALLY IN THE POSITIVE/BANK OF JAPAN LOSING CONTROL OF THEIR YIELD CURVE AS THEY PURCHASE ALL BONDS TO GET TO ZERO RATE!!

3c Nikkei now JUST BELOW 17,000

3d USA/Yen rate now well below the important 120 barrier this morning

3e WTI:: 70.35 and Brent: 75.58

3f Gold DOWN/Yen DOWN

3g Japan is to buy the equivalent of 108 billion uSA dollars worth of bond per month or $1.3 trillion. Japan’s GDP equals 5 trillion usa./“HELICOPTER MONEY” OFF THE TABLE FOR NOW /REVERSE OPERATION TWIST ON THE BONDS: PURCHASE OF LONG BONDS AND SELLING THE SHORT END

Japan to buy 100% of all new Japanese debt and by 2018 they will have 25% of all Japanese debt. Fifty percent of Japanese budget financed with debt.

3h Oil UP for WTI and UP FOR Brent this morning

3i European bond buying continues to push yields lower on all fronts in the EMU. German 10yr bund RISES TO +.54%/Italian 10 yr bond yield UP to 1.79% /SPAIN 10 YR BOND YIELD UP TO 1.29%

3j Greek 10 year bond yield RISES TO : 4.14?????????????????

3k Gold at $1312.25 silver at:16.43 7 am est) SILVER NEXT RESISTANCE LEVEL AT $18.50

3l USA vs Russian rouble; (Russian rouble UP 28/100 in roubles/dollar) 62.91

3m oil into the 70 dollar handle for WTI and 75 handle for Brent/

3n Higher foreign deposits out of China sees huge risk of outflows and a currency depreciation. This can spell financial disaster for the rest of the world/

JAPAN ON JAN 29.2016 INITIATES NIRP. THIS MORNING THEY SIGNAL THEY MAY END NIRP. TODAY THE USA/YEN TRADES TO 109.31 DESTROYING JAPANESE CITIZENS WITH HIGHER FOOD INFLATION

30 SNB (Swiss National Bank) still intervening again in the markets driving down the SF. It is not working: USA/SF this morning 1.0053 as the Swiss Franc is still rising against most currencies. Euro vs SF is 1.1969 well above the floor set by the Swiss Finance Minister. Thomas Jordan, chief of the Swiss National Bank continues to purchase euros trying to lower value of the Swiss Franc.

3p BRITAIN VOTES AFFIRMATIVE BREXIT/LOWER PARLIAMENT APPROVES BREXIT COMMENCEMENT/ARTICLE 50 COMMENCES MARCH 29/2017

3r the 10 Year German bund now POSITIVE territory with the 10 year FALLING to +0.53%

The bank withdrawals were causing massive hardship to the Greek bank. the Greek referendum voted overwhelming “NO”. Next step for Greece will be the recapitalization of the banks and that will be difficult.

4. USA 10 year treasury bond at 2.96% early this morning (THIS IS DEADLY TO ALL MARKETS). Thirty year rate at 3.13%

5. Details Ransquawk, Bloomberg, Deutsche bank/Jim Reid.

(courtesy Jim Reid/Bloomberg/Deutsche bank/zero hedge)

Emerging Markets On Edge As Dollar Surge Resumes; Oil Hits 3 Year High

Global stocks and US equity futures are in the green, despite the dollar rebounding to session highs overnight, putting already nervous emerging markets on edge, while oil rising to a 3 year high above $70 is set to pressure corporate margins even more.

In the otherwise quiet overnight session which saw yet another disappointing European datapoint as German industrial orders dropped -0.9% from 0.3%, and below the expected 0.5%, all eyes remained on the dollar which once again defied bears, and reversed an early drop rising sharply to session highs following the Tokyo fix, even though volumes remained low with London closed for a U.K. bank holiday.

This follows what Bloomberg notes was the best week for the dollar since Trump took office.

Of course, the reason why every dollar move is being scrutinized is because as we noted last week, some of the key emerging markets have been getting crushed as a result of dollar strength, with EM assets – especially bonds – tumbling last week, with markets in Turkey and Argentina especially volatile. So far today, developing-nation stocks rebounded modestly even as currencies were slightly weaker. Overnight it was Indonesia’s turn to join the fallout, as the Rupiah tumbled after Indonesia’s economy expanded slower than expected last quarter, a setback for the government after eight interest rate cuts in the past two years. Meanwhile, in the country many say is ground zero for the next EM crisis, both Turkey’s lira and its equities retreated.

Another day, another EM FX bloodbath:

Elsewhere, in developed markets, the euro reversed gains from the Asian session as a pickup in dollar demand following the Tokyo fix and the abovementioned miss in German factory orders kept the euro under pressure. Australia’s dollar fell on speculation foreign funds were selling after asset managers placed the most short positions on the currency since 2015 amid waning bets the central bank will raise interest rates this year. USD/JPY halted three days of declines and rebounded from a loss to rise as much as 0.2% to 109.33; According to Bloomberg, Japanese banks had sold dollar-yen over benchmark fixing for corporate clients and Japan-domiciled funds as they returned from two-day public holiday, according to a trader. Going back to Europe, the Franc led losses in G-10 after Swiss inflation missed estimates and printed lower on a month-on-month basis.

Back to stocks, where the quiet session saw Europe’s Stoxx Europe 600 Index extend Friday’s gains as most regional indices advanced. Trading volumes were lighter than usual thanks to a holiday in the U.K. Focus today has been more on stock specific stories. SMI heavyweight Nestle (+0.6%) has formed a partnership with Starbucks of which Nestle will pay USD 7.15bln in closing consideration. German insurer Allianz (+0.1%) sold an 8.4% shareholding in Banco BPI (+21.2%) to Caixabank (+0.1%). Elsewhere, Air France (-13.4%) shares fell following the CEO offering his resignation after a pay deal rejection. Furthermore, a French finance minister expressed his concerns regarding the company’s survival.

In Asia, shares climbed in Australia and jumped in Shanghai. The ASX 200 (+0.4%) was lifted by commodity names following recent upside in the complex and with big 4 bank Westpac underpinned after reporting a 6% increase in H1 cash earnings, while Nikkei 225 (-0.1%) underperformed on return from last week’s holiday closures amid a firmer JPY. The Shanghai Comp. (+1.2%) and Hang Seng (+0.5%) shrugged off PBoC liquidity inaction to trade in the green and although a lack of progress was made during the US delegation visit, the consensus to keep on talking provided hope that an escalation to a full-blown trade war will likely be avoided.

Core euro-area bonds edged higher, while US Treasurys were generally unchanged due to the UK holiday. The 10Y TSY yield rose by less than one basis point to 2.95%. 10yr JGBs were quiet and failed to benefit from a subdued tone in Japan, as well as the BoJ Rinban announcement for JPY 840bln of JGBs across the curve with the amounts left unchanged. BoJ meeting minutes for March 8th-9th meeting stated that the BoJ should maintain easy policy as inflation target still a distance.

In the commodity sector, oil breached a key resistance level, rising above $70 for the first time since November 2014, and continued its climb amid reports that Saudi Arabia is looking to push prices up to at least USD 80/bbl (contrary to Iran who see USD 60-65/bbl as ‘suitable’).

Furthermore, geopolitical tensions remain a key focus for markets ahead of the Trump’s judgement on the Iranian nuclear deal on My 12th with non-conciliatory comments from the Iranian foreign minister and president stating that Tehran’s reaction if the US leave the nuclear deal will not be pleasant, and they will pay a heavy price.

Movements in Gold were largely being dictated by increases in the USD, with the yellow metal currently down USD 2.00. Copper is seeing strength as a result of Chinese outperformance.

In the latest Brexit news, PM Theresa May is prepared for a backlash from Brexiteers after pushing ahead with her hybrid customs plan according to the FT. Greg Clark, the Business Secretary, claimed that 3,500 jobs at Toyota could be at risk if the Prime Minister bowed to pressure from other members of her Cabinet and dropped the plans. Separately, Britain faces restrictions on post-Brexit trade and draconian measures to enforce free-market policies because the European Union fears a future Jeremy Corbyn government, according to EU officials, the Times reported.

Over in Italy, party leaders are meeting today for a potentially final round of negotiations aimed at forming a government. League’s Salvini and Forza Italia’s Berlusconi are reportedly divided over the 5 star government offer. Italy’s 5 Star leader Di Maio says the party is not willing to vote for any technocratic government; adding that an early vote is the only alternative if a government cannot be formed.

Looking ahead, economic highlights include consumer credit while there is a full docket of Fed speakers including Bostic, Barkin, Harker, Kaplan and ECB’s Praet

* * *

Bulletin Headline Summary from RanSquawk

WTI continues its climb above the USD 70.00/bbl mark, surpassing 4-year highs
Equity markets mixed as Nestle announce marketing partnership with Starbucks
Looking ahead, highlights include Fed’s Bostic, Barkin, Harker, Kaplan and ECB’s Praet

Market Snapshot

S&P 500 futures up 0.2% to 2,669.25
STOXX Europe 600 up 0.2% to 387.61
MXAP up 0.09% to 172.61
MXAPJ up 0.2% to 561.22
Nikkei down 0.03% to 22,467.16
Topix up 0.09% to 1,773.18
Hang Seng Index up 0.2% to 29,994.26
Shanghai Composite up 1.5% to 3,136.65
Sensex up 0.6% to 35,136.80
Australia S&P/ASX 200 up 0.4% to 6,084.47
Kospi down 1% to 2,461.38
German 10Y yield fell 1.3 bps to 0.531%
Euro down 0.2% to $1.1931
Brent Futures up 0.8% to $75.49/bbl
Italian 10Y yield rose 5.6 bps to 1.542%
Spanish 10Y yield fell 1.9 bps to 1.28%
Brent Futures up 0.8% to $75.49/bbl
Gold spot down 0.1% to $1,312.71
U.S. Dollar Index up 0.2% to 92.76

Top Overnight News from Bloomberg

Oil in New York rose above $70 a barrel for the first time since November 2014 as traders braced for a re-imposition of U.S. sanctions on Middle East crude producer Iran
Iran, faced with a possible restoration of U.S. sanctions, came out against higher oil prices, signaling a split with fellow OPEC member Saudi Arabia, which is showing a willingness to keep tightening crude markets
Indonesia’s economy expanded at a slower pace last quarter than economists had forecast, a setback for the government after eight interest rate cuts in the past two years.
Conservative tensions over Brexit erupted again on Sunday as a senior U.K. minister fueled speculation that PM Theresa May may be planning to revive a customs plan rejected by euroskeptic members last week
North Korea said U.S. sanctions aren’t the reason behind its willingness to remove nuclear weapons from peninsula, accusing its adversary of trying to ramp up tensions ahead of a summit between leaders of the countries
Some of the Bank of Japan nine board members said it’s important to communicate thoroughly that it’s still a long way from achieving the inflation target and the bank hasn’t reached the phase to consider exit, according to the record of the March 8-9 policy meeting
The European Union is mulling the option of tolerating quotas on metal imports to the U.S. in an effort to avert a trans-Atlantic trade war should President Donald Trump impose restrictions on steel and aluminum shipments, according to EU officials.
German factory orders unexpectedly dropped in March and February was revised lower, confirming a weak start to the year in Europe’s largest economy and raising concern over the strength of the euro-area growth.
All the countries in the euro area are set to meet the currency bloc’s annual deficit target of less than 3 percent of GDP this year — a feat that has never been achieved since the start of Economic and Monetary Union in 1999. Eight members of the currency bloc are even projected to show budget surpluses for 2018, EU Economic Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici said.
This year’s selloff in Asian dollar bonds has made their valuations more attractive but they are not yet cheap enough for investors to consider buying the dip, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Asian stocks began the week mostly positive as the region took its first opportunity to digest Friday’s US stock market surge despite the miss on NFP data, as well as the US delegate visit to China last week which ended with minimal progress although both sides agreed to keep talking. ASX 200 (+0.4%) was lifted by commodity names following recent upside in the complex and with big 4 bank Westpac underpinned after reporting a 6% increase in H1 cash earnings, while Nikkei 225 (-0.1%) underperformed on return from last week’s holiday closures amid a firmer JPY. Elsewhere, Shanghai Comp. (+1.2%) and Hang Seng (+0.5%) shrugged off PBoC liquidity inaction to trade in the green and although a lack of progress was made during the US delegation visit, the consensus to keep on talking provided hope that an escalation to a full-blown trade war will likely be avoided. Finally, 10yr JGBs were quiet and failed to benefit from a subdued tone in Japan, as well as the BoJ Rinban announcement for JPY 840bln of JGBs across the curve with the amounts left unchanged. BoJ meeting minutes for March 8th-9th meeting stated that the BoJ should maintain easy policy as inflation target still a distance. Furthermore, most members agreed that momentum towards hitting price goal is being maintained and most members also viewed that exports have been on an increasing trend due to firm growth overseas.

Top Asian News

China Steps Up Crackdown, Imposes More Fines on Financial Firms
China Hasn’t Intervened in FX for Nearly a Year, Yi Tells Caixin
Vinhomes Is Said Poised to Price $1.35 Billion Share Sale at Top

European equities opened mixed although they have since risen to session highs (Stoxx 600 +0.18%) this morning whilst the UK away on bank holiday. Looking at the sectors, IT names are leading with sector-wide gains of almost a percent. Focus today has been more on stock specific stories. SMI heavyweight Nestle (+0.6%) has formed a partnership with Starbucks of which Nestle will pay USD 7.15bln in closing consideration. German insurer Allianz (+0.1%) sold an 8.4% shareholding in Banco BPI (+21.2%) to Caixabank (+0.1%). Elsewhere, Air France (-13.4%) shares fell following the CEO offering his resignation after a pay deal rejection. Furthermore, a French finance minister expressed his concerns regarding the company’s survival.

Top European News

Berlusconi Clashes With League Over Five Star’s Offer of Pact
German Factory Orders Slump to Cap Feeble Economic First Quarter
Turkish Central Bank Moves to Provide Dollar Liquidity to Banks
ECB Says Protectionism Would Hurt Economy With U.S. Hit Severely
Iran Opposes Higher Oil Prices, Signaling Divide With Saudis

In FX, the DXY index has drifted back from fresh 2018 highs made in the aftermath of last Friday’s US jobs data, once the dust settled and markets got over the initial double disappointment of sub-consensus headline payrolls and average earnings. The bottom line is that the latest report is highly unlikely to prevent the Fed from hiking rates a 2nd time this year in June, and the Greenback is holding gains vs all G10 counterparts bar the Pound as a result. DXY currently just above 92.800 vs 92.900 at best ahead of the weekend. GBP: As noted, Sterling is showing a degree of resilience in UK holiday-thinned trade, with Cable bouncing firmly above the 1.3500 level and Eur/Gbp testing bids around 0.8000 amidst what appears to be a mixture of short-covering and perhaps some bargain hunting ahead of BoE super Thursday. Rate expectations have turned full circle to around 90% for unchanged from tightening only a few weeks ago, but the vote split may still reveal some hike advocates and the minutes could highlight a close call. EUR/CHF/AUD: The biggest losers vs the Dollar, as Eur/Usd only just retains 1.1900+ status, Usd/Chf extends gains beyond parity in wake of softer than expected Swiss CPI data and Aud/Usd is struggling to stay above 0.7500 amidst bearish cross-winds – note, a major bank has instigated a short Aud/Jpy position around 82.24 and is targeting 80.50.

In commodities, oil continues its climb as WTI maintains its move above USD 70.00/bbl amid reports that Saudi Arabia is looking to push prices up to at least USD 80/bbl (contrary to Iran who see USD 60-65/bbl as ‘suitable’). Furthermore, geopolitical tensions remain a key focus for markets ahead of the Trump’s judgement on the Iranian nuclear deal on My 12th with non-conciliatory comments from the Iranian foreign minister and president stating that Tehran’s reaction if the US leave the nuclear deal will not be pleasant, and they will pay a heavy price. Movements in Gold are largely being dictated by increases in the USD, with the yellow metal currently down USD 2.00. Copper is seeing strength as a result of Chinese outperformance.

US Event Calendar

8:25am: Fed’s Bostic Makes Welcome at Financial Markets Conference
2pm: Fed’s Barkin Speaks in Moderated Q&A at GMU
3pm: Consumer Credit, est. $16.0b, prior $10.6b
3:30pm: Fed’s Kaplan Speaks on Panel at Financial Conference
3:30pm: Fed’s Evans Speaks At Atlanta Fed Financial Markets Conference

There is no commentary from Jim Reid this morning due to the UK bank holiday.

3. ASIAN AFFAIRS

3 a NORTH KOREA/USA

North Korea/South Korea/usa

3 b JAPAN AFFAIRS

end

c) REPORT ON CHINA/HONG KONG

4. EUROPEAN AFFAIRS

GREECE

Trouble as Turkey is letting a huge number of migrants to flow into Greece

(courtesy zerohedge)

Meanwhile In Greece…

Less than a week after the Greek government sent additional police forces to reinforce its land border with Turkey as fears mount over a sharp rise in the number of refugees and migrants crossing the frontier, The Guardian reports that Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras faced down protests from citizens Thursday upset over how he’s handled April’s 17% increase in the influx of migrants.

The Daily Caller’s Audrey Conklin reports that the protests in Lesbos, Greece, represent a stark shift in attitude among a people once significantly more welcoming to migrants fleeing as part of a years-long refugee crisis.

Locals argue with riot police during a protest against the visit of Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras in Mytilene, on the Greek island of Lesbos.

Huge numbers of people seeking asylum are flooding into the country by bus and boat every week, and while an agreement between the EU and Turkey signed in 2016 states that illegal refugees are supposed to be sent to Turkey after crossing European borders, Greek camps are overcrowding and in bad shape. Experts estimate that as many as 500 refugees new people cross the island’s borders each week.

As DW News reports:

“Earlier on Thursday, the aid agency Doctors without Borders warned that Lesbos was ‘reaching breaking point’…overstretching healthcare and other services laid on for the migrants while leading some to resort to violence.”

Approximately 9,000 migrants and refugees are currently stranded in Greece because they are stuck between borders with no real place to live, even temporarily, as a result of the EU deal with Turkey.

Since March 2016, Turkey has threatened to terminate the agreement because the EU is having trouble collecting and delivering funds for the millions of refugees Turkey agreed to take in from Europe.

Syrian refugee Bashar Wakaa (3rd L) and his family stand in front of their tents at a makeshift camp for refugees and migrants next to the Moria camp on the island of Lesbos, Greece.

Arrivals on Greece’s Aegean islands have increased by 17 percent since last month “due to refugees fleeing Iran, Iraq and Syria.” Nearly a million refugees have crossed the borders of Lesbos over the past three years. Locals have had enough.

“The people of Lesbos are exhausted,” said mayor Spyros Galinos. “Kindness has turned to anger … and where there is anger there is room for all sorts of extremism.”

Locals and refugees alike witnessed that extremism Galinos is referring to when, just two weeks ago, radical protesters set fire to bins and flares surrounding a refugee base where Afghan migrants were protesting their confinement. Over a dozen people were injured, the Tampa Bay Times reports.

“Women are afraid to leave their homes at night,” Galinos continued. “Children are kept locked up indoors because parents are afraid to let them go out and play. No community would put up with this.”

A garbage bin burns as riot police officers stand guard separating protesting groups of locals and refugees demonstrating against conditions in Moria camp and delays in asylum applications, in the city of Mytilene on the island of Lesbos, Greece.

Residents feel their government is neglecting the people who actually live and work legally in Greece as a result of the ever-increasing population of refugees, which now make up a third of Lesbos’ total population

“Commerce and investment [have] come to a standstill,” local chamber of commerce leader Evangelos Myrsinias told reporters. “On these islands, we feel very neglected, very abandoned with frustration compounded by the decision to raise VAT which after everything we’ve been through will drastically raise the cost of living.”

Migration Minister Dimitris Vitsa said the government plans to decrease the number of migrants and refugees by the end of September from the current number of 15,500 to 6,500, which is the total population capacity for refugee shelters.

END

ITALY

Italy is still in a mess as to who will govern. Looks like new elections:

(Tom Luongo)

Did Italy’s Five Star Movement Just Blink Or Are We Headed To New Elections?

Authored by Tom Luongo,

Italian coalition talks have reached the end of the road. The latest news out of Italy has Five Star Movement (M5S) leader Luigi Di Maio willing to consider someone else as Prime Minister.

From Bloomberg (so salt to taste):

“I want to do a political government with the League based on some points,” Di Maio said Sunday in an interview on broadcaster RAI. “If Di Maio as premier is the obstacle,” then let’s choose together another prime minister, he said.

Di Maio, 31, is making a last bid to form a “political government” before President Sergio Mattarella begins a final round of meetings with the parties after an inconclusive general election in March.

There will be a meeting today (Monday, May 7th), to make one last push for a government.

The Bloomberg article is giving you the EU’s preferred outcome, a League-led government with Forza Italia over-represented giving their stalking horse Silvio Berlusconi a larger say than he warrants.

Shifting Poll Numbers

As always with U.S. media, the meat of the article it buried at the end, the latest poll numbers.

Polling group Youtrend compiled an average of voting intention surveys on May 3 which showed Five Star at 33.6 percent, compared with 32.7 percent in March elections. The League has gained 4 percentage points since the elections while Berlusconi’s Forza Italia has lost about 2 points.

I find it interesting that Di Maio would blink like this just a couple of days after saying that he and Five Star Movement would prefer a second round of elections in July. Moreover, I find it disconcerting that Salvini would want to continue hitching his rising star to a falling one like Berlusconi’s.

It’s not likely that Di Maio is going to completely cave here unless there is other arm-twisting going on behind the scenes. M5S is too strong a movement to be shut out of its own government.

So, the likely scenario for tomorrow is that talks go nowhere as Salvini tries to leverage the coalition’s strength versus M5S’s and Di Maio sticks to his guns.

Both should be willing to got back to the polls in July to see where their support truly lies. A result similar to the quoted poll above would give an M5S/League alliance a solid majority in Italian parliament. Seats they didn’t pick up in March should be in play, even given that 1/3 are chosen directly now.

The new election structure which allowed for coalitions to campaign together resulted in nearly the perfect situation for continued weak government in Italy which Brussels can abuse.

But, the problem has been Salvini and his firebrand, nee Trumpian, persona which has seen the League’s support double in the past six months.

Pride Goeth and All That…

I warned you we would get to this point last month, musing as to whether coalition talks have stalled because of League leader Matteo Salvini’s immense ego.

It is fairly obvious that Salvini is a little drunk on the power of his newfound status of coalition leader. He’s trying to milk it for whatever he can get from it. And that’s the real danger.

Salvini believes a re-vote is in The League’s favor. But, I wouldn’t be so sure of that.

In response to talks breaking down, M5S Leader Luigi Di Maio made coalition overtures to the Democrats who promptly rejected him. And that’s expected. The establishment parties are beholden to Brussels in the end. It is their job to deliver a result that aligns with further EU integration.

And his unwillingness to break up the coalition with Forza Italia or even completely sideline Berlusconi is all the proof you should need to conclude he’s not really willing to stand up to Brussels.

All that talk of “I’m a populist” and “The EU can go f$@k itself” may have simply been more smoke than fire. We’ll see.

As I said in my previous article on the matter, Italians voted against the established parties for something new. They didn’t vote for The League or Five Star Movement.

They voted for change. It was a protest. And the energy behind protests can be dissipated by the establishment by seducing the ‘new guys’ with power and back-room deals.

Salvini and Di Maio are both outsiders to Rome. They represent a sea change in Italian politics. And, as such, should see each other as natural partners not rivals for a job neither is actually qualified for at this point in time.

So, check the egos, have a constructive meeting and get a deal done that puts both parties on strong footing. Salvini has to give up his alliance with Berlusconi who hates what Five Star represents and Di Maio should give up being Prime Minister if that’s the only way Salvini’s ego can be salved.

If they don’t, they will be headed back to the polls. And it’s there that things make even more sense for the two to put their differences aside and form a working coalition that stands up to Brussels and, more importantly, Berlin.

Market Outcomes

The most likely outcome from tomorrow’s meeting will be more of the same. If Di Maio caves completely then Brussels will be able to mute any reforms Salvini introduces and allow Berlin to play serious hard-ball on debt relief/restructuring which Italy desperately needs.

The euro will bounce on that news and bond yields across the euro-zone will fall, if only for a little while. The dollar is beginning its next leg higher which will put upward pressure on rates across the board as dollar-denominated debt service puts trillions at risk.

But, if Di Maio and Salvini don’t come to an arrangement then the market will be hostile to that and the opposite will occur, confirming nascent trend changes.

The euro is already flirting with a change in trend, below $1.20. Italian 10-year debt has pulled back from the bear market brink but it trapped in a tight trading range near 1.80%.

The markets are holding their collective breaths waiting to see what transpires between a group of egotistical, hot-headed Italians. It should, because anything is likely.**

** = It’s not racist to slam your own people’s shortcomings, folks.

* * *

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END

AIR FRANCE/FRANCE

Air France is in a mess after its CEO resigns with no signs that the strike against the company is coming to an end.

(courtesy zerohedge)

In “Worst Possible Outcome”, Air France Plummets Most In 16 Years After CEO Unexpectedly Resigns

Shares of Air France-KLM crashed as much as 14% on Monday – the company’s biggest drop since 2002 – after CEO Jean-Marc Janaillac, announced his resignation as company workers rejected a pay proposal that would’ve ended a crippling strike.

The company’s shares have slipped 40% since the beginning of the year, making it the worst performer in the 26-stock Bloomberg Airlines Index. Analysts at Bernstein warned that Janaillac’s departure is the “worst possible outcome” for the company’s stock, leaving Air France-KLM with no CEO, no labor contract, an ongoing dispute and “emboldened” unions.

Air France

As Bloomberg reported, while the airline had maintained almost all long-haul flights during the latest walkout, it was forced to cancel 20% of its medium-haul services on Monday. Last week, the company warned that the strengthening euro and rising wages would only compound the pressures from the company’s walkouts.

Janaillac, who held a press conference to announce his departure on Friday, launched a massive gamble by holding an online consultation on the pay offer with the company’s workers. He lost the gamble when 55% of staff unexpectedly rejected the proposal, which was for a 7% increase over four years. Janaillac held a short press conference late Friday to announce his planned resignation. While it has slid under the US news radar, Air France workers have hosted 13 days of labor action, joined by pilots, cabin crew, and ground staff since February, on several occasions paralyzing transit across Europe.

Meanwhile, the rejection of Janaillac’s proposal, and his resignation, has only strengthened the strikers’ position. A majority of labor representatives need to approve a compensation package for a deal to take effect.

Meanwhile, the European travel chaos is set to get worse as travelers with Air France tickets whose flights are delayed or cancelled can rebook at no additional cost. Travelers should expect last-minute delays and cancellations.

* * *

Janaillac’s struggle with the airline’s unions is in many ways emblematic of Emmanuel Macron’s broader push to liberalize France’s restrictive labor laws and cut taxes on investment, which he believes will help boost growth in one of Europe’s most anti-business economic climates.

Not surprisingly, most of the French government has backed Janaillac in his struggle to keep wages contained. To that end, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire on Sunday expressed his concerns about the company’s future and said that its workers need to show “responsibility” and accept that they can’t demand unrealistic wages, because the French government – which owns 14% of the company – won’t bail out the airline if it sinks into bankruptcy.

“If it doesn’t make the necessary efforts to be at the same competitive level of Lufthansa and other major airlines, it will disappear,” Le Maire said on BFM TV. “I am not taking the money of the French and putting it in a company that isn’t at the required competitive level.”

Transport Minister Elisabeth Borne also applauded Janaillac for trying to solve the company’s myriad problems.

The former CEO had put his job on the line, taking a tremendous gamble by holding a vote on the company’s pay offer. He lost his gamble when 55 percent of staff unexpectedly rejected the proposal, which would’ve offered a 2% wage hike in 2018 and a further 5% hike over the following three years, Reuters reported. Janaillac held a short press conference late Friday to announce his planned resignation.

Other large European airlines like Deutsche Lufthansa AG and British Airways, and even low-cost specialist Ryanair Holdings Plc, have all had their share of corporate dysfunction brought on by strikes – though none have suffered like Air France.

A simmering conflict exploded in late 2015 when two of the airline’s executives were physically assaulted by enraged workers, forcing them to flee and scale an industrial fence as their business suits were ripped to shreds – a poignant image of the burgeoning struggle between labor and management.

French unions have accused the company of not being serious about negotiations.

“The absence of any dialogue is clear. No one has called me this weekend. There are still no meetings planned for further negotiations,” Philippe Evain, leader of the SNPL pilots union told RTL radio.

The company’s board will decide on a management transition plan on May 15.

* * *

Finally, courtesy of Bloomberg, here are some analyst reactions to the CEO’s departure and the price action:

KEPLER CHEUVREUX (rating, PT under review)

CEO to leave co. this month is “sad news,” given strong track record; sees risk of months of uncertainty ahead; can’t rule out more short-term disappointments
Medium-term cost-saving targets could be at risk if co. agrees to higher compensation than offered so far
Current strikes likely to further increase reputational damage, affect yield and profitability performance in coming months

BERNSTEIN (underperform)

This result is “worst possible outcome,” leaves co. with no CEO, no labor contract, an ongoing dispute and likely “emboldened” unions

ING (hold)

Co. has entered period of uncertainty, is “probably without clear direction”
Notes Janaillac was strong manager, experienced in negotiating with unions without losing his focus
For investors the “no” vote should be a step in the wrong direction for AF KLM’s future

RAYMOND JAMES (market perform)

Uncertainty looms with change in leadership and potential for further strikes, following “shortsighted ‘no’ vote”
Shares already reflect a negative scenario; co. likely “to remain more of a trading stock,” reflecting relatively high earnings leverage/volatility

The bottom line: Air France is the poster child of what happens – and will happen – as companies in the new normal, accustomed to artificially high wages, are confronted by their workers with demands for higher pay. Expect many more “Air Frances” in the coming months.

end

5. RUSSIAN AND MIDDLE EASTERN AFFAIRS

Saudi Arabia/Iran

(courtesy Tom Luongo)

Saudi Arabia’s Needs Have Become Iran’s Problems

Authored by Tom Luongo,

While Israel has been the barking dog pushing hostilities against Iran, it is the Saudis that are truly most threatened by Iran’s return to the global economy. They are as much, if not a bigger, agitator for tearing up the Iran Nuclear Deal as Israel has been.

A report earlier this week from the International Monetary Fund argued that Saudi Arabia still needs oil trading at $88 per barrel to balance its budget and pull off the structural reforms the country needs.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030 plan, which has the usual suspects in Washington salivating at the prospect of leaching off of, will require a complete make-over of Saudi society. It will likely cost trillions. And the Saudis still have a big budget deficit.

It is set to shrink to a more manageable 7% of GDP this year while expanding government spending by more than 5%.

2018 Cuts the Deficit to 7.3% of GDP, thanks to $70/bbl Oil

And the only thing keeping this budget deficit moving lower is, of course, higher oil prices. Last year’s breakeven point was just $70 per barrel. But that rises this year to $88 according to the IMF because Bin Salman has begun the spending associated with Vision 2030.

Now, since the implementation of the Iran Nuclear Deal (JCPOA) Iran’s oil output has risen back to its pre-sanctions level of around 3.8 million barrels per day.

Iran’s Oil Production Now Exceeds, on Average, it’s Pre-Sanctions Level in 2012

With new exploration and production deals signed by European, Chinese and Russian oil majors Iran’s output over the next few years could easily push over 4 million barrels if not closer to 5 million.

While at the same time Saudi Arabia wants to both cut back on production and its exports to raise the price per barrel to the level it needs. So, it shouldn’t take a genius to see the incentive here to try and bribe President Trump with hundreds of billions in arms sales and promises of fighting Iran in Syria to get him to de-certify the JCPOA and have the deal fall apart.

U.S. Mob Rule

The Saudis, to some extent, are being shook down by Trump, Mafioso-style, for our nuclear shield. In exchange for help bottling up Iran and raising oil prices the Saudis will have to spend a lot of their savings pump-priming the U.S. economy with new refineries in Texas and more planes to drop bombs on weddings.

You know, win/win.

If the Saudis need $88 per barrel oil then Iran has to have its output cut to offset the rising price per barrel.

With the reports that U.S. Green Berets are present on the battlefield in Yemen should tell you that the Trump Administration is uninterested in any outcome in the Middle East that doesn’t end with Iran’s capitulation to Israeli and Saudi (and therefore U.S.) needs and Russia and China’s humiliation for backing Iran.

The White House is fully staffed with people willing to commit or condone the worst human rights violations in Yemen and Syria in order to stop Iran.

The question is, “Stop Iran from what?” The conventional answer from Trump and K-Street foreign policy ‘experts’ is, “Gaining a nuclear weapon.” The real answer, however, is much simpler than that.

Iran will not be allowed to re-join the global economy as an independent actor. That position will be maintained even if the theocracy is overthrown. Because this supposed existential fight to the death between Saudi Arabia and Iran has little to do with religion and old enmities.

It has to do with oil. Saudi Arabia wants Iran back to less than 3 million barrels a day to support higher prices. Israel and the U.S. want to starve the Iranian government of money, so pulling out of the deal will allow the U.S. to re-impose sanctions on Iran, cutting it out of the global banking system again.

But Iran being back to pre-2012 production levels and removing the U.S. dollar from its oil trade officially means that China has a different partner to buy its oil from. And that supports the fledgling petroyuan system developing in Shanghai financial markets.

The China Syndrome

Sinopec is set to curb imports of Saudi Oil another 40% this month citing inexplicable high prices from the Saudis during a time when a significant portion of Sinopec’s refineries are down for annual maintenance and other producers are happy to offer more for less to grab market share.

Last month, a Unipec official told Reuters, “Our refineries think these are unreasonable prices as they do not follow the pricing methodology.” Besides Sinopec, a source from another two refineries in northern Asia said they will be cutting their imports from Saudi Arabia by ten percent as oil buyers have a hard time grasping how the Kingdom is calculating the price for its most popular grade.

The price increase came as a surprise to the biggest market for crude in the world.

Aramco is pushing China at a time when it’s clear it has other options in the oil market and no longer wants to pay for oil in dollars. Brazil’s imports to China have risen sharply. Iran’s imports to India, tangentially related, are set to double this year to nearly 400,000 bbl/day.

Trump may want the Saudis, again mafioso-style, to raise its prices to get China to import U.S. oil as the Brent/WTI spread continues to widen, now over $6, to combat the U.S. trade deficit with China. Not that that makes a lick of sense, but then again, Trump is a mercantilist, which also doesn’t make any sense.

So, at least its consistent.

U.S. production keeps surging and will continue for likely the rest of 2018 and beyond as new fracking techniques lengthen the production time of new wells, albeit at lower daily output.

So, even if rig counts fall, which they show no signs of doing, U.S. shale oil output will keep rising. Brent output is falling, U.S. production is rising. So, the Brent/WTI spread will continue to widen if new ‘markets’ aren’t opened up for U.S. shale producers.

This again, brings me back to the Iran Nuclear Deal being all about oil and not about bombs. Ending the deal will allow Iran to restart its program which the conventional wisdom says they can spin up to a viable weapon within 18 months, quicker if its partner North Korea was successful in producing a viable warhead.

But, having removed Iran from the SWIFT financial payments network and seen Iran survive it, the threat of sanctions and SWIFT expulsion seem hollow. Both China and Russia have viable SWIFT alternatives and Iran has so few ties to both U.S. and European banking institutions after nearly a decade of hostilities.

Moreover, Turkey, who helped Iran survive without SWIFT in the past, is more than happy to stick it to the U.S. after its backing the Syrian Kurds. In short, Iran has a lot more friends today than it did in 2012.

China and Russia are immensely stronger. Israel and Saudi Arabia far weaker. And that means that regardless of what Trump does on May 12th, the world is already prepared for the next steps.

END

TURKEY/USA

You can now visualize Turkey leaving NATO as they are very angry at the USA blocking the sale of F 35’s to them:

(courtesy zerohedge)

“You Can’t Control Us” – Turkey Threatens To Retaliate If US Blocks Sale Of 116 F-35s

In the latest sign that Turkey is seriously considering leaving NATO as its relationship with the security bloc (and the US in particular) continues to deteriorate, Turkish Prime Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu warned on Thursday that the country would retaliate if a bill being pushed by House Republicans to block arms sales to Turkey becomes law.

As Reuters reports, lawmakers released details on Friday of a $717 billion annual defense policy bill that included a provision to temporarily halt weapons sales to Turkey. During an interview with broadcaster CNN Turk, Cavusoglu criticized the measure, saying it was wrong to impose such a restriction on a military ally, alluding to the fact that Turkey has graciously allowed the US to use its Encirlik air base to launch its air strikes against ISIS (as well as against Turkey’s enemy the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad).

“If the United States imposes sanctions on us or takes such a step, Turkey will absolutely retaliate,” Cavusoglu said. “What needs to be done is the U.S. needs to let go of this.”

While still a ways away from becoming law (and its unclear if President Trump, who has publicly praised Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan) the proposed US National Defense Authorization Act would block sales of “major” arms to Turkey until a report on the relationship between the US and Turkey (which is also a component of the law) is completed by the Pentagon.

The implied target of the bill would be the 116 F-35 Lightning II fighters that Washington has promised to sell Ankara, of which 100 are almost ready to be delivered.

The bill is in many ways a response to Turkey’s recent purchase of S-400 air defense systems from Russia. Though Turkey’s relationship with Russia is still far from amicable (indeed, the two countries almost became embroiled in a military confrontation after Turkey shot down a Russian jet that was allegedly flying through its airspace back in 2015), the purchase has unnerved NATO and the US. The Russian weapons, Reuters notes, aren’t compatible with NATO’s defense systems.

Turkish Prime Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Cavusoglu last month that the US was “seriously concerned” about Turkey’s buying of the S-400s (of course, we imagine American defense contractors weren’t thrilled either).

Cavusoglu criticized NATO’s consternation over the sale of Russian arms and accused it of trying to control Turkey and infringing on its sovereignty.

“Turkey is not a country under your orders, it is an independent country… Speaking to such a country from above, dictating what it can and cannot buy, is not a correct approach and does not fit our alliance,” he said.

Despite Trump’s warm feelings toward Erdogan, the Turkish president’s recent visits to the US have only served to inflame the conflict as his body guards repeatedly attacked Kurdish protesters that showed up to confront Erdogan during a trip to the home of the Turkish ambassador outside Washington DC and during a speech he gave in New York City while he was attending a session of the UN General Assembly. The beatings elicited charges against one of Erdogan’s body guards and a Turkish national living in New Jersey.

Last year, both countries temporarily curtailed embassy processing of visas after Turkey arrested an employee of the Turkish consulate in Istanbul as tensions flared.

Turkey leaving NATO would only be the latest sign that the Cold War alliance has entered a state of collapse as President Trump has repeatedly criticized it and castigated most of its members for not paying their fair share for their defense.

Of course, we doubt the bill will be successful – as it stands, it appears to be merely a threat by hawkish Republicans in the House. But if Turkey does eventually leave NATO, would that too be Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fault?

end

Israel/Iran/Syria/Hezbollah

Israel threatens Assad that if they continue to allow Iran to operate out of Syria, war will ensue

(courtesy zerohedge)

Israel Threatens Assad: “If You Continue Allowing Iran To Operate Out Of Syria, It Will Be Your End”

One month after Trump launched another 105 Tomahawk missiles at Syria, the latest US assault on a sovereign nation has been mostly forgotten, but not to Israel which keeps reminding the world that another provocation to be followed shortly by another regional war, is just a matter of time.

Amid alleged Israeli tensions that an expected retaliatory attack by Iran – whose Syria-based forces Israel has repeatedly attacked in the past month – is imminent, Energy Minister, and cabinet member Yuval Steinitz issued a direct threat against the Syrian ruler, when during a Ynet studio interview on Monday he said that, “if Syrian President Bashar Assad continues allowing the Iranians to operate out of Syria, it would be the end of him, the end of his regime.”

*Syrian President Assad will be eliminated and his regime toppled if he does not stop Iran, Israel Energy Minister Steinitz warned.*

Responding to a question on the readiness of Israel’s home front for a possible war in the north such an approach might lead to, Steinitz said there was “no absolute readiness.”

On Sunday, Haaretz reported that Iran may soon execute the retaliatory attack that previously vowed to carry out in the wake of the airstrike on the T-4 Airbase near Homs, which the Pentagon subsequently admitted was conducted by Israel.

However, since Hezbollah is expected to be involved in firing a missile barrage at a military base on Israeli territory, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)’s elite Quds Force Qasem Soleimani was reported to have decided to postpone the attack to immediately after the Lebanese elections which took place this weekend, in order to catch Israel unawares.

According to Ynet news, Soleimani and other IRGC officials have seemingly reached a conclusion — most likely with the assent of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — that US President Donald Trump had already made up his mind to suspend the 2015 nuclear deal, and that was therefore no point in waiting for May 12, when Trump is set to make his decision public.

Of course, with Israel setting the stage for an immediate retaliatory attack, it would be all too possible that a “false flag” attack is instead “launched” into Israel simply to give the IDF the green light to commence an attack on Syria or Iran.

In the Ynet interview, Steinitz also spoke about the years’ long civil war still raging in Syria, saying that Israel had thus far refrained from intervening in the internal conflict. “If Assad allows Iran to turn Syria into a forward operating base against us,” he clarified, “to attack us from Syrian soil, he should know that will spell his end.“

* * *

In a potential twist, the energy minister was then reminded of Benjamin Netanyahu’s upcoming visit to Moscow on Wednesday, where he will meet President Vladimir Putin, who will most likely be less than enthused with such statements. As reported previously, on Aprul 25 Russia is set to send advanced anti-aircraft missiles to Syria, having warned Israel of “catastrophic consequences” should the Jewish state launch another attack on Syria.

“It’s excellent that the premier is going,” Steinitz countered. “He has engendered unprecedented dialogue with Putin. Russia is an important superpower with which we have a lot of mutual interests.”

“Sometimes there are also conflicts of interest,” he continued, “but usually our interests converge. Everyone should understand, however, that certain things are red lines for us. If anyone is interested in maintaining Assad’s survival, they should tell him to prevent missile and drone attacks on Israel.”

When asked if that meant Israel might assassinate Assad, Steinitz had a witty retort, saying any assassination of Assad would be his own doing: “He will have his blood on his head.”

Steinitz also suggested that his remarks did not reflect Israeli government policy, saying, “I’m not talking about any concrete proposal.” Nevertheless asked how Israel could go about bringing an end to Assad, the Cabinet member explained that a similar dilemma existed regarding Lebanon in the past. “We deliberated whether the fact that Hezbollah was attacking us from Lebanon meant that we would only retaliate against Hezbollah or also strike at Lebanon.”

“Assad can permit them to attack Israel from Syria soil, or not. He can permit them to bring in missiles, antiaircraft systems and drones into Syria, or not, and if he does—he should know there is a price tag,” the minister concluded ominously.

Meanwhile, one week after his “huge” revelation that Iran was, at one point, developing nuclear weapons ended up being a giant dud on the international arena, Netanyahu commented on the Iranian threat at the beginning of a Sunday coalition meeting, saying, “we are determined to block Iran’s aggression against us, even if this means a (military) conflict. Better now than later. We do not want escalation but we are ready for any scenario.”

The premier also asserted that Israel maintained “full freedom of action to defend itself” and “explained” that in recent months, the IRGC have “transferred advanced weaponry to Syria in order to attack us both on the battlefield and on the home front, including weaponized UAVs, ground-to-ground missiles and Iranian anti-aircraft batteries that would threaten air force jets,” the prime minister said.

For now, neither Syria nor Iran have attacked Israel despite the avalanche of pre-retaliatory rhetoric

end

6 .GLOBAL ISSUES

Canada

Canadians have a real problem: 8% of households owe more than 20% of the huge 2.1 trillion C$ in total debt.

Consumers owe greater than C$600 billion in debt as well as have over 1.5 Trillion C$ in mortgage debt.

(courtesy Better Dwelling.Daniel Wong) and special thanks to Robert H for sending this tous:

Bank of Canada: 8% of Canadian Households Owe More Than 20% of the $2.1 Trillion in Deb

These Canadians are in a “highly vulnerable” position.

By Daniel Wong, Better Dwelling: May 5, 2018

Canadian real estate debt hit a new high, and the news gets worse as they explain it further. The Bank of Canada (BoC) updated household debt numbers for March. In a speech this week, BoC’s Governor Stephen Poloz also gave further insights on the numbers. The record debt levels are concentrated in a smaller segment of Canadians. These Canadians are now in a “highly vulnerable” position, and they’re f**ked if they don’t start preparing for higher rates now.

8% of Canadians Have Mortgage Debt Over 3.5x What They Make

In a speech this week, the BoC gave us further insights on the Canadian debt problem, and it’s worse than we thought. It turns out 8% of households have mortgage debt that’s more than 350% of their gross income.

This segment of borrower represents “a bit more than 20 percent of total household debt.” BoC Governor Poloz stressed that these households need to understand how “personally vulnerable” they are, as rates rise.

Rising rates are already putting the pinch on households, and it should get worse. The BoC reiterated the “neutral rate,” which is the rate where policy is no longer expansionary, is between 2.5% and 3.5%. Assuming no “shock” to the economy, rates will get there. Currently we’re at 1.25%, so that would mean rates will double over the next few years. You know, if we don’t face a major recession. Then you’re in the clear on rates, but a whole other bag of issues will crop up. On that note, onto those climbing debt numbers.

Canadian Households Owe More Than $2.1 Trillion Dollars. Total household debt hit a new record, but the annual pace of growth continued to decline. The total balance at the end of March stood at a whopping $2.129 trillion, up $3.4 billion from the month before. The annual rate of growth is now 5.25%. While it’s a new all-time high, it’s also the slowest pace of growth since November 2015. Let’s break this down into the two major components – mortgages, and consumer credit.

Canadians Owe Over $1.52 trillion Worth of Mortgage Debt

Outstanding residential mortgage credit is also at a new high. The total outstanding balance of residential mortgages hit $1.52 trillion, up $1.88 billion from the month before. That brings the annual rate of growth to 5.27%, the lowest since March 2015. The slowing rate of growth is being attributed to B-20 stress tests, and isn’t the good news people think it is.

Canadian Owe More Than $603 Billion In Consumer Credit

It’s not just mortgage debt those crazy Canucks are diving into, consumer credit is also at an all-time high. The total balance of outstanding consumer credit stood at $603 billion, up $1.54 billion from the month before. The annual rate of growth is now 5.2%, the lowest its been since July 2017. Consumer debt growth is the closest to beating mortgage growth, since 2010. That’s… a special moment for all of us.

High levels of household debt are a concern, that gets even worse when you realize how concentrated it is. It’s also created a debt trap for the BoC. Continued economic growth will send rates higher, putting these households at further risk. Lowered growth will send debt levels higher, putting even more households at risk.

END

7. OIL ISSUES

Indigenous citizens in Alaska who opposed Alaska drilling for oil for decades have now changed and they want in on the action

(courtesy Bradner/OilBarrel blog)

Arctic About-Face: Oil-Opposing Alaska Natives Now Lead Charge To ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’

Authored by Tim Bradner via Platts’ Oil Barrel blog,

For years indigenous people living in small villages along Alaska’s Arctic coast fiercely fought offshore drilling. Now they want a piece of the action.

When Shell first showed up in 2007 with a fleet of drillships and support vessels, and parked them in the migration path of the bowhead whale in the eastern Alaska Beaufort Sea, the Inupiats went to court. An injunction from the US Ninth Circuit stopped the company and started a chain of problems that would ultimately defeat Shell’s multibillion dollar Arctic initiative.

Fast-forward to 2018. The Inupiats have now taken over Shell’s offshore Beaufort Sea leases, where there were also earlier oil discoveries, and intend to develop them, most likely by partnering with larger firms.

In a decade, indigenous people in northern Alaska have come full circle, from hostility to cautious embrace of offshore drilling.

Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, owned by all Inupiats of the North Slope, is playing its cards close on its plans for 20 former Shell OCS leases off Camden Bay, in the Eastern Beaufort.

The US Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement approved the transfer of Shell’s leases to ASRC April 13.

The area is highly prospective and includes Union Oil’s small “Hammerhead” oil discovery made in 1986 and two Shell prospects, Sivulliq and Torpedo, outlined in 2012. A well was partly drilled by Shell at Sivulliq but not completed.

A PIECE OF THE ACTION

It helps to have an economic stake.

Over several years Alaska Native-owned development corporations – ASRC isn’t alone – have gradually become dominant players in industry support and service work on the North Slope.

Doyon, Ltd., owned by Athabascans of Interior Alaska, owns Doyon Drilling, the largest Alaska drilling contractor on the North Slope.

Bristol Bay Native Corp. and Calista Corp., of southwest Alaska have stakes in oil field services and drilling. Even tiny Nuiqsut, an Inupiat village of 300 near the Alpine oil field west of Prudhoe Bay, owns a drilling company.

Nuiqut’s Kuukpik Drilling is working this year for ConocoPhillips and also works in Cook Inlet, in south Alaska.

ASRC began working in oil field construction on the slope and expanded over several years into a variety of technical service fields.

It’s all about owning the resource The big money is in owning the resource, however.

It is here that Arctic Slope has played its cards shrewdly. Alaska’s Native corporations were formed in 1971 when the US Congress resolved long-standing land claims that had become an impediment to securing rights-of-way for construction of the Trans Alaska Pipeline System.

Congress transferred 45 million acres of Alaska to Native ownership and paid a cash settlement of $962 million to twelve regional Native development corporations that were also formed.

It seemed logical for the new Native corporations to invest in businesses and services to the fast-growing Alaska oil industry, and it turned out to be a successful strategy.

The initial moves into catering, facilities management and services in the 1970s evolved into drilling and construction.

ASRC pursued a similar path in oil field services but also had different cards to play.

As a landowner on the North Slope, ASRC held part of the mineral rights in the Alpine field and began splitting royalties with the state of Alaska when that field began production in 2000.

ASRC is now a working interest owner in the small Badami field east of Prudhoe Bay, which is producing, and it has a working interest in Liberty, a small deposit in shallow offshore waters near Prudhoe.

The corporation also acquired its own onshore state leases in lease sales and has done exploration drilling on the acreage.

ANWR OWNERSHIP IS KEY

Its biggest coup, however, was in securing mineral rights in a 92,000-acre inholding in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s coastal plain, which is prime real estate after Congress approved exploration in ANWR in the 2017 tax act.

ASRC made its move in the 1980s, years before the national spotlight focused on ANWR.

The inholding was held by Kaktovik Inupiat Corp., the Native village corporation for Kaktovik.

ASRC was able to swap land it owned in areas where the US wanted to preserve parkland for mineral rights under some vilage-owned land in ANWR.

The Native corporation went on to do a deal with Chevron and BP to drill an exploration well, KIC No.1. Because no development of the Native-owned land could occur until Congress voted to open the entire coastal plain, the results of that well were held confidential, and have been for decades.

Chevron and BP still hold rights under the deal, but the terms are also confidential.

8. EMERGING MARKET

Venezuela

(courtesy zerohedge)

“This Is Terrible For PDVSA”: Conoco Begins Confiscating Venezuela Oil Assets, Infuriating China

While there is an increasingly more overt trade war being waged between China and the US, a more covert – and arguably important – contest between the two superpowers is currently being fought for spheres of influence, most notably in Africa, which is now largely a Chinese colony, in Latin America, where increasingly more countries are gravitating toward China and away from the “west“, and more recently, even Europe.

Of all such “zones of influence”, the one country where Beijing has arguably invested the most is Venezuela, and for obvious reasons: the country with the world’s largest petroleum reserves has found itself in a spiraling economic crisis in recent years and with the US refusing to step in and provide much needed funding, it allowed both China and Russia to provide the Maduro regime with loans, mostly in the form of vendor financing, as new Chinese and Russians funds were wired in exchange for Venezuela oil delivery contracts, typically struck well below prevailing market prices.

Which is why China is sure to be incensed following the latest indirect attempt by the US to further limit Venezuelan oil output, and impair the production capacity of what has become one of China’s key Latin Americans clients.

Here’s what happened.

On April 25, ConocoPhillips won a ruling that said the US major was entitled to more than $2 billion from Venezuela’s insolvent state oil company, PDVSA, over the country’s expropriation of several oil projects more than a decade ago. The drawn-out international legal struggle began in 2007 when ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobil refused to cede control of their major oil production ventures to the Venezuelan government, as demanded by Hugo Chávez, who was president. The U.S. firm left the country after it could not reach a deal to convert its projects into joint ventures controlled by PDVSA, even as several other oil companies, including Chevron, Repsol of Spain and Total of France, agreed to the demand and accepted partnerships with the national oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, better known as PDVSA.

The problem, however, now that Conoco has the greenlight to demand billions, is trying to collect on the court ruling: the Venezuelan government has resisted the demands of companies whose assets it has confiscated, and since it is effectively bankrupt, there is little it can be threatened with under conventional contract law.

So, following the April 25 ruling, in a statement the Houston-based ConocoPhillips said it would “pursue enforcement and seek financial recovery of its award to the full extent of the law.”

Over the weekend it did just that.

As Reuters updates, ConocoPhillips has moved to “take Caribbean assets” – i.e. confiscate – belonging to Venezuela’s state-owned, solvency-challenged PDVSA as part of its unilateral enforcement of the $2 billion arbitration award.

The U.S. firm is said to have targeted PDVSA facilities on the islands of Curacao, Bonaire and St. Eustatius that accounted for about a quarter of Venezuela’s oil exports last year. The three play key roles in processing, storing and blending PDVSA’s oil for export.

The move, incidentally, is entirely legal: Conoco received court attachments freezing assets at least two of the facilities, and could move to sell them, one of the sources said.

What the confiscation of key Venezuela assets means is that the US oil major’s legal maneuvers could further impair PDVSA’s already sharply declining oil revenue and the country’s convulsing economy. Venezuela is almost completely dependent on oil exports, which have fallen by a third since its peak and its refineries ran at just 31 percent of capacity in the first quarter.

Venezuela’s collapsing oil production juxtaposed with the soaring US shale output, is shown in the Reuters chart below:

Making matters worse, this could be just the beginning of Conoco’s aggressive confiscation: the company’s claims against Venezuela and state-run PDVSA in international courts have totaled $33 billion, the largest by any company.

“Any potential impacts on communities are the result of PDVSA’s illegal expropriation of our assets and its decision to ignore the judgment of the ICC tribunal,” Conoco said in an email to Reuters.

Meanwhile, making confiscation a relatively simple venture for Conoco, PDVSA has extensive assets in the Caribbean. Some examples:

On Bonaire, it owns the 10-million-barrel BOPEC terminal which handles logistics and fuel shipments to customers, particularly in Asia, i.e. China.
In Aruba, PDVSA and its unit Citgo lease a refinery and a storage terminal.
On the island of St. Eustatius, it rents storage tanks at the Statia terminal, owned by U.S. NuStar Energy, where over 4 million barrels of Venezuelan crude were retained by court order, according to one of the sources.

Additionally, Reuters reports that Conoco also sought to attach PDVSA inventories on Curacao, “home of the 335,000-barrel-per-day Isla refinery and Bullenbay oil terminal. But the order could not immediately be enforced, according to two of the sources.”

And this is where not only Caracas, but also China is about to get very angry.

While PDVSA’s shipments from Bonaire and St Eustatius terminals accounted for about 10% of Venezuela’s total exports, the more important question is who were the recipients. According to Reuters, the exports were mostly crude and fuel oil for Asian customers including ChinaOil, China’s Zhenhua Oil and India’s Reliance Industries.

Which means China is about to see a significant decline in its Venezuela imports thanks to, you got it, a confiscation green lit by United States, and it will be most displeased.

Some more details on the confiscated assets: “From its largest Caribbean operations in Curacao, PDVSA shipped 14 percent of its exports last year, including products exported by its Isla refinery to Caribbean islands and crude from its Bullenbay terminal to buyers of Venezuelan crude all over the world.”

Meanwhile, making matters worse, operations at the bankrupt state-owned oil company are grinding to a halt: PDVSA on Friday ordered its oil tankers sailing across the Caribbean to return to Venezuelan waters and await further instructions, according to a document viewed by Reuters. In the last year, several cargoes of Venezuelan crude have been retained or seized in recent years over unpaid freight fees and related debts.

“This is terrible (for PDVSA),” said a source familiar with the court order of attachment. The state-run company “cannot comply with all the committed volume for exports” and the Conoco action imperils its ability to ship fuel oil to China or access inventories to be exported from Bonaire.

And now the question is what will China do after a US company has effectively crippled Venezuela’s oil output, forcing Beijing to look for much more expensive oil elsewhere.

end

Your early morning currency/gold and silver pricing/Asian and European bourse movements/ and interest rate settings MONDAY morning 7:00 am

Euro/USA 1.1914 DOWN .0041/ REACTING TO MERKEL’S FAILED COALITION/ SPAIN VS CATALONIA/REACTING TO +GERMAN ELECTION WHERE ALT RIGHT PARTY ENTERS THE BUNDESTAG/ huge Deutsche bank problems + USA election:/TRUMP HEALTH CARE DEFEAT//ITALIAN REFERENDUM DEFEAT/AND NOW ECB TAPERING BOND PURCHASES/JAPAN TAPERING BOND PURCHASES /USA FALLING INTEREST RATES AGAIN/HOUSTON FLOODING/EUROPE BOURSES DEEPLY IN THE GREEN

USA/JAPAN YEN 109,31 UP 0.197(Abe’s new negative interest rate (NIRP), a total DISASTER/SIGNALS U TURN WITH INCREASED NEGATIVITY IN NIRP/JAPAN OUT OF WEAPONS TO FIGHT ECONOMIC DISASTER/

GBP/USA 1.3530 UP .0004 (Brexit March 29/ 2017/ARTICLE 50 SIGNED/BREXIT FEES WILL BE CAPPED

USA/CAN 1.2877 UP .0033 (CANADA WORRIED ABOUT TRADE WITH THE USA WITH TRUMP ELECTION/ITALIAN EXIT AND GREXIT FROM EU/(TRUMP INITIATES LUMBER TARIFFS ON CANADA/CANADA HAS A HUGE HOUSEHOLD DEBT/GDP PROBLEM)

Early THIS MONDAY morning in Europe, the Euro FELL by 41 basis points, trading now ABOVE the important 1.08 level FALLING to 1.1914; / Last night Shanghai composite CLOSED UP 45/61 POINTS OR 1.40% / Hang Sang CLOSED UP 67/76 POINTS OR 0.23% /AUSTRALIA CLOSED UP.33% / EUROPEAN BOURSES OPENED GREEN

The NIKKEI: this MONDAY morning CLOSED DOWN 5.62 OR .03%

Trading from Europe and Asia

1/EUROPE OPENED DEEPLY IN THE GREEN

2/ CHINESE BOURSES / : Hang Sang CLOSED UP 67.76 POINTS OR 0.23% / SHANGHAI CLOSED UP 45/61 POINTS OR 1.48% /

Australia BOURSE CLOSED UP .33%

Nikkei (Japan) CLOSED DOWN 5.62 POINTS OR .03%

INDIA’S SENSEX IN THE GREEN

Gold very early morning trading: 1313.10

silver:$16.45

Early MONDAY morning USA 10 year bond yield: 2.96% !!! UP1 IN POINTS from FRIDAY night in basis points and it is trading WELL ABOVE resistance at 2.27-2.32%. (POLICY FED ERROR)/

The 30 yr bond yield 3.13 UP 1 IN BASIS POINTS from FRIDAY night. (POLICY FED ERROR)/

USA dollar index early MONDAY morning: 92.85 UP 29 CENT(S) from FRIDAY’s close.

This ends early morning numbers MONDAY MORNING

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And now your closing MONDAY NUMBERS \1: 00 PM

Portuguese 10 year bond yield: 1.674% DOWN 3 in basis point(s) yield from FRIDAY/

JAPANESE BOND YIELD: +.0.045% UP 0 in basis points yield from FRIDAY/JAPAN losing control of its yield curve/

SPANISH 10 YR BOND YIELD: 1.276% DOWN 2 IN basis point yield from FRIDAY/

ITALIAN 10 YR BOND YIELD: 1.759 DOWN 4 POINTS in basis point yield from FRIDAY/

the Italian 10 yr bond yield is trading 48 points HIGHER than Spain.

GERMAN 10 YR BOND YIELD:FALLS TO +.538% IN BASIS POINTS ON THE DAY

END

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IMPORTANT CURRENCY CLOSES FOR MONDAY

Closing currency crosses for MONDAY night/USA DOLLAR INDEX/USA 10 YR BOND YIELD/1:00 PM

Euro/USA 1.1925 DOWN .0029(Euro DOWN 29 Basis points/ represents to DRAGHI A COMPLETE POLICY FAILURE/

USA/Japan: 109.15 UP 0.047 Yen DOWN 5 basis points/

Great Britain/USA 1.3566 UP .0040( POUND UP 40 BASIS POINTS)

USA/Canada 1.2848 UP .0007 Canadian dollar DOWN 7 Basis points AS OIL ROSE TO $70.47

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This afternoon, the Euro was DOWN 28 to trade at 1.1925

The Yen FELL to 109.15 for a LOSS of 4 Basis points as NIRP is STILL a big failure for the Japanese central bank/HELICOPTER MONEY IS NOW DELAYED/BANK OF JAPAN NOW WORRIED AS AS THEY ARE RUNNING OUT OF BONDS TO BUY AS BOND YIELDS RISE

The POUND ROSE BY 40 basis points, trading at 1.3566/

The Canadian dollar FELL by 7 basis points to 1.2848/ WITH WTI OIL RISING TO : $70.47

The USA/Yuan closed AT 6.3667
the 10 yr Japanese bond yield closed at +.045% UP 0 IN BASIS POINTS / yield/
Your closing 10 yr USA bond yield UP 1 IN basis points from FRIDAY at 2.9555% //trading well ABOVE the resistance level of 2.27-2.32%) very problematic USA 30 yr bond yield: 3.125 DOWN 1/ 2 in basis points on the day /

THE RISE IN BOTH THE 10 YR AND THE 30 YR ARE VERY PROBLEMATIC FOR VALUATIONS

Your closing USA dollar index, 92.77 UP 20 CENT(S) ON THE DAY/1.00 PM/

Your closing bourses for Europe and the Dow along with the USA dollar index closing and interest rates for MONDAY: 1:00 PM EST

London: CLOSED
German Dax :CLOSED UP 128.54 POINTS OR 1.00%
Paris Cac CLOSED UP 15.37 POINTS OR .28%
Spain IBEX CLOSED UP 36.80 POINTS OR 0.36%

Italian MIB: CLOSED UP 209.24 POINTS OR 0.86%

The Dow closed UP 94.91 POINTS OR 0.39%

NASDAQ closed UP 55.60 Points OR 0.77% 4.00 PM EST

WTI Oil price; 70.47 1:00 pm;

Brent Oil: 76.08 1:00 EST

USA /RUSSIAN ROUBLE CROSS: 62.66 UP 20/100 ROUBLES/DOLLAR (ROUBLE LOWER BY 20 BASIS PTS)

TODAY THE GERMAN YIELD FALLS TO +.538% FOR THE 10 YR BOND 1.00 PM EST EST

END

This ends the stock indices, oil price, currency crosses and interest rate closes for today 4:30 PM

Closing Price for Oil, 4:30 pm/and 10 year USA interest rate:

WTI CRUDE OIL PRICE 4:30 PM:$70.01

BRENT: $75.56

USA 10 YR BOND YIELD: 2.95% THIS RAPID RISE IN YIELD IS ALSO VERY DANGEROUS/RECESSION COMING/DERIVATIVES FRY!!

USA 30 YR BOND YIELD: 3.12%/DEADLY

EURO/USA DOLLAR CROSS: 1.1923 DOWN .0031 (DOWN 31 BASIS POINTS)

USA/JAPANESE YEN:109.07 DOWN 0.026/ YEN UP 3 BASIS POINTS/ .

USA DOLLAR INDEX: 92.77 UP 20 cent(s)/dangerous as the lower the dollar the higher the inflation.

The British pound at 5 pm: Great Britain Pound/USA: 1.3557: UP 0.0031 (FROM FRIDAY NIGHT UP 31 POINTS)

Canadian dollar: 1.2885 DOWN 45 BASIS pts

German 10 yr bond yield at 5 pm: +0.538%

VOLATILITY INDEX: 14.77 CLOSED DOWN 1.13

LIBOR 3 MONTH DURATION: 2.369% .

And now your more important USA stories which will influence the price of gold/silver

TRADING IN GRAPH FORM FOR THE DAY

Colorado Eviction Courts Overwhelmed As Housing Crisis Unfolds

It is official. Consumers in Colorado appear to be tapped out.

This comes at a time when the recovery is now tied for the second-longest economic expansion in American history. The stock market is near an all-time high, unemployment is the lowest in two decades, consumer confidence is beyond euphoric, and Trump tax cuts are stoking the best earnings quarter since 2011 — unleashing a record amount of corporate stock buybacks.

While a real economic recovery could be plausible this late in the business cycle, the unevenness of the recovery has left many residents in Colorado without a paddle. Accelerating real estate and rent prices across Colorado are squeezing residents out of their homes at an alarming pace.

According to ABC Denver 7, Denver metro area’s skyrocketing cost of living, stagnate wage growth, and lack of affordable real estate has fueled an enormous housing crisis — overwhelming the state’s eviction courts.

Colorado Center on Law and Policy (CCLP), which has spent decades advocating for tenant rights, warns that an eviction crisis is underway in the Denver region.

ABC Denver 7 said, “27 percent of all civil cases filed in Colorado in 2017 were evictions, which represents 45,000 cases.” In Denver alone, eviction cases accounted for nearly 18 percent (8,000 eviction cases) of all evictions across the state. Arapahoe County, the third-most populated county outside of Denver, experienced the most significant number of eviction cases at nearly 22 percent (10,000 eviction cases) in 2017.

Jack Regenbogen, attorney and policy advocate for the Colorado center on Law and Policy, told ABC Denver 7 that most tenants are underrepresented in eviction court cases. In return, this has led to more evictions forcing tenants out onto the streets. He says about 90 percent of landlords are represented by legal counsel during an eviction process, but less than one percent of tenants have legal assistance.

“Traditionally, Colorado has been a very friendly state towards landlords. We really need our policymakers to begin investing meaningful resources to address this issue,” said adds.

ABC Denver 7 indicates that more than 50 percent of Coloradans are renting, and as court dockets continue to expand with evictions in 2018, the crisis is far from over.

According to the Denver Metro Association of Realtors (DMAR) May housing trends report, the average cost of a single-family home in the Denver metro area edged up, as it hit $543,059 in April. More and more homes are listing in the range between $500,000 to $750,000 than all of the price ranges below $500,000 combined. A spokesman from DMAR said homes priced between $500,000 and $749,000, is now considered the “new norm.”

All-Transactions House Price Index for Colorado

“This demonstrates homebuyer demand remains robust,” said Steve Danyliw, Chairman of the DMAR Market Trends Committee. “As new listings poured into the market, buyers that were waiting for them quickly gobbled them up, driving the average days on market down to 20 days.”

Danyliw, further said housing activity remains stable, but increasing interest rates could have an eventual impact on the real estate market.

Evidence continues to build that housing affordability is getting worse, particularly for everyday Americans. Colorado is the latest example of consumers physically tapping out, as they can no longer afford soaring real estate/rent prices – which is now overwhelming state courts in Denver.

end

Unbelievable: Trump lashes out at John Kerry who is trying illegal shadow diplomacy with Iran

(courtesy zerohedge)

Trump Lashes Out At John Kerry’s “Possibly Illegal Shadow Diplomacy” With Iran

Following reports over the weekend that Obama’s Secretary of State, John Kerry and a group of his former State Department officials, had been busy being unofficial diplomats in recent weeks, sneaking around the world trying to salvage the Iran nuclear deal he presided over, ahead of its May 12 renewal deadline, it appears President Trump has a few things to say about these actions.

As we previously noted,

John Kerry’s bid to save one of his most significant accomplishments as secretary of state took him to New York on a Sunday afternoon two weeks ago, where, more than a year after he left office, he engaged in some unusual shadow diplomacy with a top-ranking Iranian official.

He sat down at the United Nations with Foreign Minister Javad Zarif to discuss ways of preserving the pact limiting Iran’s nuclear weapons program. It was the second time in about two months that the two had met to strategize over salvaging a deal they spent years negotiating during the Obama administration, according to a person briefed on the meetings. –Boston Globe

Kerry has also met with leaders from Europe, including German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, EU official Federica Mogherini and French President Emmanuel Macron in both Paris and New York, where they discussed sanctions and regional nuclear threats in both French and English.

This type of “rogue” diplomacy is very rare for a former Secretary of State.

As The Globe notes, the effort to salvage the Iran deal “highlight the stakes for Kerry personally, as well as for other Obama-era diplomats who are dismayed by what they see as Trump’s disruptive approach to diplomacy, and who view the Iran nuclear deal as a factor for stability in the Middle East and for global nuclear nonproliferation.”

“It is unusual for a former secretary of state to engage in foreign policy like this, as an actual diplomat and quasi-negotiator,” said foreign policy expert Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution.

“Of course, former secretaries of state often remain quite engaged with foreign leaders, as they should, but it’s rarely so issue-specific, especially when they have just left office.”

Which leads us to President Trump’s twitter exclamation that

“The United States does not need John Kerry’s possibly illegal Shadow Diplomacy on the very badly negotiated Iran Deal.”

And Trump explains why – very simply…

“He was the one that created this MESS in the first place!”

Trump Will Announce Iran Deal Decision At 2 PM Tuesday

President Donald Trump tweeted Monday afternoon that he will be announcing his long-awaited decision on whether the US will be pulling out of the Iran deal tomorrow at 2 pm ET. The decision will be announced from the White House.

As Bloomberg notes, Germany, France and the UK have lobbied Trump and his top aides to remain in the deal, which the president has frequently criticized. Trump has strongly hinted that he will withdraw from the agreement, and French President Emmanuel Macron said after meeting with Trump last month that he expects the US to exit the deal.

Additionally, Israel’s Channel 10 news reports that it is not clear that European pressure will persuade Trump to maintain The Iran Accord.

There’s been some speculation that Trump might continue pursuing negotiations even after ending the waiver on the US’s sanctions against Iran, using the period before the most draconian sanctions kick back in as leverage to try and achieve restrictions on Iran’s ballistic missile program.

The announcement triggered a “sell the news” reaction in oil, pushing WTI back below $70…

So much for John Kerry’s “shadow diplomacy.” If anything, Kerry’s actions pushed Trump towards what many suspect will be a termination of the deal, since any back-pedalling now would tilt towards Kerry as saving the deal last minute.

END

Trump likely will scrap the Iranian deal but may offer some trinkets for Europe to buy Iranian oil

(courtesy zerohedge)

Trump Likely To Scrap Iran Deal, Reimpose Sanctions: NYT

With Trump’s long anticipated announcement on the fate of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, i.e., the Iran Nuclear Deal, now set at 2pm on Tuesday, the world is scrambling to handicap the odds that Trump i) lets the deal live, and ii) permits Iran to continue exporting as much as 1mmbpd.

That said, barring some last minute miracle, if the late afternoon conjecture by the NYT is accurate, and following news over the weekend that Obama’s Secretary of State had secretly been engaging in shadow diplomacy to preserve the JCPOA, in less than 24 hours the US will no longer be a signatory to the Iran deal, just as Trump had promised during his presidential campaign.

According to NYT sources, “diplomats who were familiar with the negotiations said Mr. Trump appeared inclined to scrap the deal and reimpose sanctions on Iran that were suspended in an accord reached in Vienna in July 2015.”

Even Iran, despite warning the US will suffer from “historic regret” if it withdraws from the Nuclear Deal, has reportedly made back up plans for just that contingency.

And yet, following a full-court press by European heads of state, most notably Macron and Merkel, both of whom have been purchasing Iranian crude at below-market prices for the past 3 years and are eager to continue the Iran real, it is distinctly possible that in announcing the scrapping of the deal, Trump will provide for some continuity for the rest of the world so that i) Iran is not blacklisted by SWIFT again and ii) Iran oil exports can continue, to wit:

it is unclear whether he would moderate that move, perhaps by allowing the European nations to move ahead with their economic relations with Tehran without being penalized by the United States.

Mr. Trump issued two tweets about the coming decision. The first berated John Kerry, the former secretary of state, for his “possibly illegal Shadow Diplomacy on the very badly negotiated Iran deal.” It was an apparent reference to Mr. Kerry’s calls to leaders around the world looking for ways to save an accord that he dedicated much of his term during the Obama administration to negotiating.

Withdrawing the US from the deal will open the way for Tehran to resume making nuclear fuel: as a reminder, Iran’s agreement with world powers required the country to ship about 97 percent of its nuclear fuel out of the country, and to halt production of new fuel for 15 years.

This newfound liberty for Iran will also mean that the odds of a war with Israel soar, as Netanyahu will do everything in his power to prevent Tehran from developing nuclear weapons, as was the case in the several years before Obama sanctioned Iran in March 2012 with an executive order.

But the key question that has yet to be answered is whether Trump has been notified that the surging oil – and thus gasoline – price as the world “prices in” the elimination of up to 1 million barrels in Iranian oil, will offset any benefits to the middle class from Trump’s tax cuts as we explained last month in “Rising Gas Prices Threaten To Wipe Out Trump’s Tax Cut Benefits.” And, related to that, since there is nothing Americans hate more than high oil prices, how long until Democrats latch on to the issue of declining Iranian oil supply as the key driver of the highest gas prices in 4 years as a key political talking point for the upcoming midterm elections.

Since it is unlikely that Trump is willing to risk a political revulsion to a highly unpopular surge in commodity inflation just to teach Iran a lesson – especially one that may lead to his impeachment if the Democrats win the midterms – it is more likely than not that for all the bluster, Trump will offer some quasi-compromise that keeps Iranian oil exports in play, and may explain why oil has continued to sell off on the news…

END

SWAMP STORIES

Friday night/Reuters:

a biggy!! Judge Ellis questions whether Mueller has overstepped his authority with respect to the Manafort case. In his remarks, the judge states

that the prosecution is only interested in Manafort for his possible “singing” i.e. turn states evidence against Trump. However he further commented that

the problem with this kind of action, is the subject “composes” instead of “singing”. They have two weeks to supply the unredacted paper that

started this whole ball of wax. The judge may remove all charges against Manafort for their outreaching and that would put in jeopardy just about everybody

else charged by Mueller

(courtesy Reuters/LaFraniere)

Judge Questions Whether Mueller Has Overstepped His Authority on Manafort

A federal judge questioned on Friday the authority of the special counsel to prosecute Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman, on financial fraud and other charges.CreditShawn Thew/EPA, via Shutterstock

By Sharon LaFraniere

May 4, 2018

WASHINGTON — A federal judge in Virginia sharply challenged on Friday the special counsel’s case against Paul Manafort, suggesting that prosecutors had pursued fraud charges in hopes of gaining evidence that might incriminate President Trump or even topple him from office.

“You don’t really care about Mr. Manafort’s bank fraud,” Judge T. S. Ellis III said during a court hearing in Alexandria. “You really care about getting information that Mr. Manafort can give you that would reflect on Mr. Trump and lead to his prosecution or impeachment or whatever.”

Mr. Trump immediately seized upon the judge’s comments as proof that the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, is out of control. In a speech on Friday afternoon to the National Rifle Association in Dallas, he cited the judge’s critique. “I’ve been saying that for a long time,” he said. “It’s a witch hunt.”

He described the judge as “very special” and “highly respected,” and Mr. Manafort, who served as his campaign chairman for five months, as “a good person” who worked for him only briefly.

The judge’s unfriendly, even sometimes hostile, reception was a new turn of events for Mr. Mueller’s team, which has faced little confrontation thus far in court. Other Americans charged by the special counsel have pleaded guilty and most have agreed to cooperate with the prosecutors. But Mr. Manafort has mounted a vigorous defense against financial fraud and other charges, contending that Mr. Mueller has gone beyond his mandate.

Judge Ellis, 77, who was appointed to the federal bench in 1987 by President Ronald Reagan, seemed sympathetic to the defense lawyer’s argument. He said that the crimes described in the indictment “manifestly don’t have anything to do with the campaign or with Russian collusion.” Some of the allegations, he noted, date to 2005 or 2007.

“I don’t see what relation this indictment has with anything the special counsel is authorized to investigate,” he said, according to a transcript of the hourlong hearing on a defense motion to dismiss the charges. He added, “What we don’t want in this country is we don’t want anyone with unfettered power.”

Mr. Mueller was appointed a year ago by the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, to investigate Russia’s election interference, possible links to the Trump campaign and “federal crimes arising from the investigation of these matters.”

Michael Dreeben, a prosecutor in the special counsel’s office, argued that Mr. Manafort’s financial ties with people in both Russia and Ukraine fell in the scope of Mr. Mueller’s jurisdiction. “We followed the money into the transactions that led to the criminal charges here,” he said.

Judge Ellis, who did not issue a ruling, acknowledged that prosecutors often hope to turn defendants into witnesses who can give evidence against more important targets. “The vernacular is ‘to sing,’” he said, or “tighten the screws.” He added, “I’m not saying it’s illegitimate.”

But he questioned why the special counsel’s team had pursued the charges against Mr. Manafort when it had referred allegations about the president’s personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, to federal prosecutors in Manhattan.

“Why in New York did you feel it wasn’t necessary to keep that, but it is necessary to keep this?” he asked. “I don’t see the difference.”

He mused at one point about whether the United States attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia might handle the prosecution instead of Mr. Mueller’s team. He also asked whether the special counsel’s office had already run through its $10 million budget — a question that Mr. Dreeben said he could not answer.

The judge ordered prosecutors to give him a complete copy of an August memo in which Mr. Rosenstein outlined the authority of the special counsel. Mr. Rosenstein has specifically authorized Mr. Mueller to investigate allegations that Mr. Manafort, who lobbied for a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine, committed crimes involving payments from the Ukrainian government, according to the brief part of the memo that was made public when it was filed in court. Most of it was blacked out.

House Republicans allied with Mr. Trump have also sought a full version of the memo, the latest salvo in a tug of war with Mr. Rosenstein over records related to some of the Justice Department’s most politically charged investigations. The department has declined to hand over the document, citing a policy against sharing information on a continuing investigation.

The bank and tax fraud charges that Mr. Manafort faces in Virginia are rooted in the Ukrainian line of inquiry, as is a second indictment in the District of Columbia that accuses him of money laundering, failing to register as a foreign agent and making false statements to investigators. Mr. Manafort’s lawyers are seeking to dismiss those charges on the same basis.

Adam Goldman contributed reporting.

END

Friday after/Reuters_

Judge skewers Manafort’s civil case challenging Mueller’s powers

Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A federal judge tore into all of the legal arguments that a lawyer for President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort made on Wednesday in his long-shot civil case to convince her that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation has run amok and should be reined in.

“I don’t really understand what is left of your case,” U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson said to Kevin Downing, Manafort’s attorney, after peppering him with a lengthy series of questions.

Manafort filed a civil lawsuit on Jan. 3 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against Mueller and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, the Justice Department official who appointed the special counsel, in a key legal test of how far Mueller’s mandate extends.

Jackson did not say when she might rule on the civil case, which the Justice Department is seeking to dismiss.

Mueller is investigating possible collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia as well as whether the president has unlawfully tried to obstruct the probe.

Mueller has charged 22 individuals and entities to date, including Manafort and his associate Rick Gates. Manafort’s civil case marks the first time a defendant has sought to challenge his authority.

Manafort, who performed lobbying work for a pro-Russian former Ukrainian president before serving as Trump’s campaign chairman in 2016, is facing two indictments brought by Mueller in federal courts in Washington and Alexandria, Virginia. The charges against him include conspiring to launder money, failing to register as a foreign agent, bank fraud and filing false tax returns.

Manafort has pleaded not guilty and none of the charges directly relate to work he performed for Trump’s campaign.

Trump has denied colluding with Russia and called Mueller’s probe a witch hunt.

Manafort’s civil lawsuit relies on an arcane law called the Administrative Procedure Act, which spells out the process federal agencies must follow when writing regulations. The suit alleges that Rosenstein’s order laying out Mueller’s investigative mandate violates Justice Department rules because it is overly broad and therefore “arbitrary and capricious.”

Legal experts from the start have said Manafort’s civil lawsuit faced an uphill battle.

The Justice Department’s regulations explicitly say that private parties have no right to challenge them in court. Judges in prior cases also have generally not permitted defendants in criminal cases like Manafort to use civil litigation to try to challenge criminal charges.

But Manafort’s case appeared to be even weaker in Jackson’s eyes on Wednesday after Downing told her he was scaling back the scope of the civil complaint against the Justice Department.

Manafort’s lawsuit originally asked the judge to declare that Rosenstein’s entire order appointing Mueller was invalid and to set aside the criminal charges against him.

On Wednesday, Downing said he is only challenging a portion of Rosenstein’s order, and that he is not asking the judge to toss the charges in this case, but instead seeking to protect his client from potential future charges also unrelated to Russia.

That prompted Jackson to ask an array of questions, including how Manafort can have legal standing to challenge the order if he has not suffered any harm, how he can know for sure whether or not Mueller may bring future charges within the proper scope of Rosenstein’s order, and whether there was legal precedent allowing someone to challenge a prosecution under the Administrative Procedure Act.

“It seems to me you are trying to have it both ways,” she said, adding that Downing is not trying to dismiss the indictment but still has a problem with Manafort being prosecuted.

Downing told the judge Rosenstein’s order violates the rules governing special prosecutors because it lets Mueller broadly investigate “any matters that arose or may arise directly from” the probe into Russian interference.

He stressed that Manafort never even had an office in Russia and that the criminal case against him dates back to 2014, well before the campaign.

A court filing on Monday appeared to somewhat undermine that claim by showing that Rosenstein specifically authorized Mueller in August 2017 to investigate both whether Manafort colluded with Russia to interfere with the 2016 presidential election and his activities prior to 2016 involving Ukraine’s former pro-Russia government.

Jackson also is handling the criminal case against Manafort and is expected to hear oral arguments for that later this month, when Downing will ask her to dismiss the indictment.

Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Will Dunham and Bill Trott

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

end

And this from zerohedge on Friday:

Judge Mulls Dismissal Of Manafort Charges, Sharply Questioned Mueller Overreach

Like most motions to dismiss, Paul Manafort’s was initially viewed as a long-shot bid to win the political operative his freedom and get out from under the thumb of Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

But after today’s hearing on a motion to dismiss filed by Manafort’s lawyers, it’s looking increasingly likely that Manafort could escape his charges – and finally be free of his ankle bracelets – as judge Amy Berman Jackson said Mueller shouldn’t have “unfettered power” to prosecute over charges that have nothing to do with collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians.

Berman said she’s concerned Mueller is only pursuing charges against Manafort (and presumably other individuals) to pressure them into turning on Trump. Berman added that the charges brought against Manafort didn’t appear to stem from Mueller’s collusion probe. Instead, they appeared to be the work of an older investigation into Manafort that was eventually dropped.

“I don’t see how this indictment has anything to do with anything the special prosecutor is authorized to investigate,” Berman said.

Berman has given prosecutors two weeks to show what evidence they have that Manafort was complicit in colluding with the Russians. If they can’t come up with any, she will presumably dismiss the case. She said she would also like to see the letter signed by Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein outlining the scope of the Mueller probe.

Of course, such a dismissal would be nothing short of groundbreaking. It would potentially make it much harder for Mueller to turn witnesses against the president.

We imagine President Trump will gleefully weigh in on Twitter, touting Berman’s skepticism as validation of his view.

END

Late Friday night/Saturday morning:

Comey caught in a big lie over the Flynn Investigation
The redactions by the Dept of Justice/FBI was not because of national interest but to hide the huge miscarriage of justice
Lovebird Lisa Page and James Baker, both lawyers with the Dept of Justice both resign on Friday..only explanation is that something bad is coming down from the Inspector General.

(courtesy zerohedge)

FBI Chaos: Comey Caught In Lie Over Flynn Investigation; Anti-Trump “Lovebird” Lisa Page Quits

Quite a bit of FBI-related news broke late Friday;

A newly unredacted section of a House Intel Committee report reveals that former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe told Congressional investigators that the FBI had virtually no case against Mike Flynn
The same report reveals that James Comey contradicted himself during a recent interview with Bret Baier
Comey, McCabe and then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Mary McCord gave the committee “conflicting testimony”
Anti-Trump FBI “Lovebird” Lisa Page (with whom Peter Strzok was having an affaird) has flown the coop,tendering her resignation ion on Friday
One of Comey’s closest confidants, former FBI top lawyer James A. Baker also resigned Friday

A newly unredacted version of the House Intelligence Committee’s final report on Russia was released on Friday, containing bombshell revelations stemming from the Congressional testimony of former FBI and DOJ officials Andrew McCabe and James Comey.

For starters, the redacted section of the report covers up the fact that former deputy director Andrew McCabe told Congressional investigators the FBI had virtually no case against former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn.

McCabe also says that former FBI Director James Comey spearheaded the “ambush” of Flynn at the White House – in which two FBI agents, one of whom was Peter Strzok dropped in unannounced to interrogate him.

McCabe told the committee that “The two people who interviewed [Flynn] didn’t think he was lying[.]” as well as “[N]ot [a] great beginning of a false statement case.”

“Deputy Director McCabe confirmed the interviewing agent’s initial impression and stated that the ‘conundrum that we faced on their return from the interview is that although [the agents] didn’t detect deception in the statements that he made in the interview … the statements were inconsistent with our understanding of the conversation that he had actually had with the ambassador,’” the report states.

Next, we learn that Comey lied (or had a terrible lapse in memory) when he told Fox News host Bret Baier that he didn’t tell Congressional investigators what McCabe told them; that the two FBI agents who interviewed former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn didn’t think he was lying to them.

“Director Comey testified to the Committee that ‘the agents…discerned no physical indications of deception,” reads the new report.”They didn’t see any change in posture, in tone, in inflection, in eye contact. They saw nothing that indicated to them that he knew he was lying to them.”

Here’s what Comey told Fox’s Baier last week:

Baier: Did you tell lawmakers that FBI agents didn’t believe former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn was lying intentionally to investigators?

Comey: No. And I saw that in the media. I don’t know what – maybe someone misunderstood something I said. I didn’t believe that, and didn’t say that.

As Sean Davis of The Federalist notes, the DOJ and FBI “demanded significant redactions to the document not to protect national security or sources and methods, but to protect potentially corrupt officials from accountability”

House Intel Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) weighed in, pointing out to Fox News‘s Laura Ingraham that his committee had “been fighting with the Department of Justice and the FBI, for six weeks, to release this information to the American people.”

Flynn, who has been cooperating with Mueller’s investigation, was forced to resign as Trump’s National Security Advisor last February after pleading guilty to lying to the FBI about perfectly legal and to-be-expected conversations he had with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the transition.

So why would Flynn plead guilty?

Some have suggested that Flynn pleaded guilty due to the fact that federal investigations tend to bankrupt people who aren’t filthy rich – as was the case with former Trump campaign aide Michael Caputo, who told the Senate Intelligence Committee “God damn you to hell” after having to sell his home due to mounting legal fees over the inquiry.

“Your investigation and others into the allegations of Trump campaign collusion with Russia are costing my family a great deal of money — more than $125,000 — and making a visceral impact on my children.”

Thus, it’s entirely possible Flynn pleaded guilty in order to avoid financial ruin – though like Caputo, he didn’t escape having to sell his house in March.

Another thought is that the FBI simply called Flynn’s bluff and said they caught him in a lie. While perhaps a stretch at this point and certainly unconfirmed, some have suggested that Andrew McCabe instructed Peter Strzok and the other FBI agent who interviewed Flynn to alter their “302” forms – the document FBI investigators use to document an interview.

Investigative journalist Sara Carter has reported that FBI sources maintain the FBI’s deputy director under Comey, Andrew G. McCabe, may have asked FBI agents to alter or change their findings in their 302s; Carter alleges that OIG Inspector General Michael Horowitz is looking into this. –The Hill

So we know that innocent people plead guilty all the time, and that Flynn faced significant financial pressure were he to remain in the Trump administration and fight the claims against him. Also recall that during December 2016, when Flynn spoke with the Russian ambassador, the Russiagate narrative was in a full frenzy. It’s possible that although Flynn and Kislyak’s contact was perfectly legal and to-be expected, he may have been hesitant to tell the FBI about some or all of his communications out of an abundance of caution. It should also be noted that Flynn may have considered the obviously pro-Clinton top brass of the US intelligence community to be “the enemy” and been hesitant to tell them the full truth.

Until we know more, we can only speculate.

In other FBI news – Lisa Page and James Baker quit on Friday

Two top Comey advisors announced their departure from the FBI on Friday, leading to speculation that some bad information is about to come out regarding the pair.

Resignations were handed in by James Baker – former top lawyer for the NSA specializing in FISA matters before becoming the FBI’s top lawyer, and lawyer Lisa Page – one of the two “lovebirds” who sent anti-Trump text messages with her co-worker with whom she was having an extramarital affair – special agent Peter Strzok (who spearheaded the Clinton email investigation, the early Trump investigation and interviewed Mike Flynn).

Mollie Hemmingway of The Federalist notes that Page and Baker quit as a highly anticipated report by the DOJ’s Inspector General is “looming,” suggesting that the report will reveal violations of the law egregious enough to call for both of them to hand in their resignations on the same day.

One Twitter user takes it a step further…

NameRedacted8@nameredacted8

Baker was NSA Gen Counsel specializing in FISA matters. After you hired him, the @FBI engaged in a palace coup attempting to rig a presidential election, then overthrow a President via FISC abuse. Baker was instrumental. You’re both going to prison.

James Comey✔@Comey

A great public servant retired from the FBI today. Jim Baker’s integrity and commitment to the rule of law have benefitted our country through 5 presidents, of both parties. We are fortunate he and so many others choose to devote their lives to justice.

And, oddly, James Comey forgot to mention Page’s name when he was praising Baker on Friday night:

Perhaps Page and Baker can set up legal defense funds

end

Grassley furious as the FBI refuses to pursue the personal Strzok-Page text messages

(courtesy zerohedge)

FBI Refuses To Pursue Personal Strzok-Page Texts; Grassley Goes Nuclear

The FBI is refusing to pursue work-related text messages and emails sent on the personal devices of Peter Strzok and Lisa Page– the FBI “lovebirds” discovered to harbor extreme political bias for Hillary Clinton and against Donald Trump while actively involved in cases against each candidate during the 2016 US election. Clinton was of course exonerated by the FBI despite overwhelming evidence of criminal conduct, while Trump’s entire presidency has been tainted by the spectre of unproven Russian collusion.

Over 50,000 text messages between Strzok and Page were discovered by the Department of Justice’s internal watchdog, the Office of Inspector General (OIG), leading to their removal from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation – which has since devolved into trying to embarrass the President over allegedly paying a porn star not to discuss consensual sex. Of note, Page tendered her resignationon Friday.

In a Wednesday letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, FBI Director Christopher Wray said that the FBI was not “obligated” to collect all communications between employees, and would not be pursuing communications Strzok and Page sent to each other on their personal devices.

In response, Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) went nuclear – reminding Wray in a Friday letter cc’d to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) that “Although, as your letter notes, the FBI is not “obligated” to collect all communications between employees, it is obligated to collect and preserve federal records.”

Grassley goes on to note that previously released text messages between Strzok and Page “show substantial reason to believe government work was performed on non-government systems during the course of a high-profile investigation,” and that those communications could prove vital to the Committee’s investigation.

The work-related communications on nongovernment systems could shed more light on how the FBI handled the Clinton investigation and would constitute federal records that the FBI would be obligated to retrieve and preserve under the Federal Records Act. –Sen. Grassley to FBI Director Wray

The letter then provides several examples in which Strzok and Page explicitly referred to exchanging work-related information over their personal devices.

“For example, in two text messages Strzok said to Page:”

Gmailed you two drafts of what I’m thinking of sending Bill, would appreciate your thoughts. Second (more recent) is updated so you can skip the first.

…

Yep. Sent something to your gmail, work-related. Think I’m going to pull here and send to Kortan….

“In another text message, Strzok and Page appear to use the encrypted iMessage application on their personal Apple devices to discuss work-related material:”

Strzok: Want to imsg it to me, or want to do it in person?

Page: It’s not that sensitive.

Strzok: Ok. You can imsg just for convenience of typing, too, if you want

…

Strzok: And I have no good, awful, sh*tty terrible (work) news. I can’t say it here, and you can’t share with Andy (yet). I’m upset.

Page: Can you share it on imsg?

Strzok: Yes just sent[.]8

Grassley then excoriates the FBI – comparing Strzok and Page’s use of personal devices for work purposes to Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information on her personal server – which Strzok and Page were investigating.

“Under 18 U.S.C. § 2071, it is illegal to willfully and unlawfully conceal, remove, or destroy a federal record. Secretary Clinton alienated thousands of federal records when she used a nongovernment server and email for official work, many of which were deleted rather than returned to the State Department when the Department requested them. Ironically, as FBI employees tasked with investigating Clinton’s similar conduct, Strzok and Page appear to have used nongovernment systems for official work as well. This Committee has yet to receive a satisfactory explanation as to why the FBI apparently let Secretary Clinton off the hook for multiple § 2071 violations. It is disturbing that even at this late date, and with all the litigation surrounding Secretary Clinton’s use of a private email server for official business, the FBI seems similarly uninterested in even attempting to retrieve federal records of its own employees that appear to have been alienated as well.”

Grassley then asks three questions of Wray, noting that he expects the response to be unclassified:

Why has the FBI not requested from Ms. Page or Mr. Strzok any official work-related material from their personal devices and email accounts?
Why has the FBI not conducted searches of non-FBI-issued communications devices or non-FBI email accounts associated with Mr. Strzok or Ms. Page for official work-related material?
The FBI’s May 3, 2018, response letter also failed to answer questions 1-5, 8, and 11. Please provide answers and the requested documentation by the deadline.

Full letter below

(see zerohedge)

end

Constitutional scholar Joseph DiGenova states that it will be impossible for Trump to testify before the crooked Mueller team

(courtesy zerohedge)

Trump Won’t Testify After Mueller Probe Reaches “A Level Of Bad Faith”: DiGenova

President Trump will not be interviewed as part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, according to former Trump lawyer and U.S. attorney Joseph diGenova, who told Fox News Sunday that the investigation is now in “bad faith.”

“The president will not sit down for an interview because this investigation has reached a level of bad faith,” said diGenova “This is no longer a good faith investigation.”

DiGenova suggested that the judge in Paul Manafort’s case, T.S. Ellis, “did something very important on Friday. He started a civics lesson about what the constitution is about, and about what the powers of a Special Counsel are,” adding that Mueller “should be ashamed of himself” over the way the FBI conducted the raid on Paul Manafort’s home – pulling him from his bed and handcuffing his wife at 3 a.m.

Yesterday we noted the intense courtroom battle which played out on Friday between Judge Ellis and Mueller attorney Michael Dreeben in which Ellis put the Special Counsel in its place six ways from Sunday during a motion-for-dismissal hearing – giving prosecutors two weeks to produce evidence that Manafort was colluding with the Russians.

President Trump has repeatedly expressed a willingness to testify in front of the Special Counsel, mentioning as recently as last week “I would love to speak… I would love to go through with it, if I thought it was fair to override my lawyers.”

Red-faced Rudy

Both diGenova and Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz have dinged Rudy Giuliani over comments made last week that Trump reimbursed his personal attorney, Michael Cohen, for a $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels.

DiGenova says that Giuliani’s comments are a “nothing buger,” that serve “no useful purpose in terms of the facts.”

“If it is a purely personal matter, which this clearly has to be, it doesn’t matter what its relationship was to the timetable in a campaign,” –Joe diGenova

Giuliani has since been making the media rounds trying to smooth out and clarify his comments – with the grand takeway being that the payments to Daniels (real name Stephanie Clifford) were perfectly legal.

Alan Dershowitz, meanwhile, told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday that Giuliani’s comments (whether intentional or not) “plays into the hands of Mueller’s tactic to try at any cost … to find technical violations against lower-ranking people so that they can be squeezed.”

The Harvard Law professor emeritus also said that Trump’s team is “admitting to enough that warrants scrutiny,” and that it’s been a “bad week for both sides.”

end

Now we are witnessing headlines over the past 16 months morph into court hearings. For the first time, the judicial system is finally doing their duty for checks and balances.

We now have 4 judges who sense that Mueller’s case has nothing to do with Russian collusion but in essence is a scheme to remove Trump

We start with Emmit Sullivan who demanded exculpatory evidence withheld by Mueller in the witchhunt against Flynn. What is very unusual is the fact that the demand did not come from the defense but by the judge himself who knew that something was wrong after evidence surfaced that the investigators thought Flynn was telling the truth.
Judge Amy Berman Jackson: in a civil case with respect to Paul Manafort asking for dismal on grounds that Mueller far outreached his mandate, Berman Jackson demanded a copy of the unredacted memo from Rosenstein which postdated the raid on his house.
Judge Ellis: senior court judge in Virginia in the criminal against Manafort also saw outreaching and he voiced his concern that this is a shakedown to get to Trump. His big concern was that not only will Manafort “sing” but he might also “compose” He also like Amy Berman demanded an unredacted copy of the memo that post dated the raid of Manafort’s house. If they refuse to hand it over, he will dismiss the case.
Judge Friedrich: this is a good one..You will recall that Mueller charged 13 Russians 3 companies with collusion with respect to the USA election of 2016. This was nothing but a PR stunt as everybody thought that nobody would come and defend the charges as they were all Russian. One company, called Concord, of Russian origin has decided to fight the case. Mueller has been caught off guard and he has asked for trial delay to which the Judge Friedrich said no. Now Concord will ask for documents to which Mueller will refuse and thus this PR stunt will end and cause a lot of egg on his face.

(courtesy zerohedge)

Mueller Investigation In Jeopardy As “Witch Hunt” Accusations Play Out In Court

A funny thing happened on the way to impeaching Donald Trump. After two-years of investigations by a highly politicized FBI and a Special Counsel stacked with Clinton supporters, Robert Mueller’s probe has resulted in the resignation of National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, the arrests of Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, and the indictment of 13 Russian nationals on allegations of hacking the 2016 election – along with the raid of Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen.

The nation has been on the edge of insanity waiting for that much-promised and long awaited link tying President Trump to Vladimir Putin we were all promised, only to find out that there is no link, the deck appears to have been heavily stacked against Donald Trump by bad actors operating at the highest levels of the FBI, DOJ, Obama admin and Clinton camp, and the real Russian conspiracy in the 2016 election was the participation of high level Kremlin sources used in the anti-Trump dossier that Hillary Clinton paid for.

Now, as the out-of-control investigation moves from the headlines and into court, the all-encompassing “witch hunt,” as Trump calls it, may be in serious jeopardy.

As of Friday, three separate Judges have rendered harsh setbacks to the Mueller investigation – demanding, if you can believe it, facts and evidence to back up the Special Counsel’s claims – in unredacted format as one Judge demands, or risk having the cases tossed out altogether.

The first major setback happened in February, when the federal judge assigned to the criminal case against Trump’s former National Security Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ordered Mueller’s team to turn over any “exculpatory evidence” to Flynn’s defense.

Oddly, Flynn’s legal team never made this request. Instead, Judge Emmet G. Sullivan issued the order “sua sponte,” or at his discretion, invoking the “Brady Rule” – which requires prosecutors to turn over previously unfiled evidence that might have a material impact on a defendant’s case. Two days before Sullivan’s order, Mueller filed a motion for a protective order regarding the use of evidence in the case, including “sensitive materials,” which would be provided to Flynn’s lawyers by the office of the Special Counsel.

Judge Emmet G. Sullivan

This development generated a significant buzz in conservative circles, with the implication being that perhaps Flynn might not have pleaded guilty in light of certain evidence.

We also know that the FBI agents who interviewed Flynn – one of whom was anti-Trump counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok, did not think Flynn was lying to them – something James Comey was recently caught lying about himself.

Fox‘s Judge Andrew Napolitano thought Sullivan’s decision at the time was a complete bombshell.

“Why would he want that after General Flynn has already pleaded guilty? That is unheard of. He must suspect a defect in the guilty plea. Meaning, he must have reason to believe that General Flynn pleaded guilty for some reason other than guilt.” –Andrew Napolitano

And as we noted yesterday, some have suggested that Flynn pleaded guilty due to the fact that federal investigations tend to bankrupt people who aren’t filthy rich – as was the case with former Trump campaign aide Michael Caputo, who told the Senate Intelligence Committee “God damn you to hell” after having to sell his home due to mounting legal fees over the inquiry.

Let’s not forget about the time Mueller’s team at the FBI massively screwed up the 2001 anthrax case after 9/11 – ruining the life of SAIC employee Steven Hatfill when it mysteriously leaked that he was the FBI’s prime suspect. Mueller assured Congress in a closed-door January, 2003 session that Hatfill was their man based on shaky evidence which was later deemed unreliable. Effectively, he needed a scalp. Hatfill was professionally and financially ruined until he sued the US Government for $5.8 million.

“It’s like death by a thousand cuts,” Hatfill, who is now 56, says today. “There’s a sheer feeling of hopelessness. You can’t fight back. You have to just sit there and take it, day after day, the constant drip-drip-drip of innuendo, a punching bag for the government and the press. And the thing was, I couldn’t understand why it was happening to me. I mean, I was one of the good guys.” –The Atlantic

Then there’s the judge in the Manafort Case, who excoriated a Special Counsel attorney on Friday during a “motion to dismiss” hearing. A leaked transcript of the heated exchange between attorney Michael Dreeben and Eastern District of Virginia Judge T.S. Ellis reveals that the entire Manafort case is in jeopardy if the Special Counsel doesn’t produce an unredacted copy of the original order from Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein authorizing the original investigation.

Ellis also said that Mueller shouldn’t have “unfettered power” to prosecute Manafort for charges that have nothing to do with collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians, and called out the DOJ’s efforts in the case as an attempt by Mueller to gain leverage over Manafort.

“You really care about what information Mr. Manafort can give you that would reflect on Mr. Trump or lead to his prosecution or impeachment or whatever. That’s what you’re really interested in.” –Judge Ellis

The Judge also notes that the Special Counsel’s indictment against Manafort doesn’t mention:

(1) Russian individuals
(2) Russian banks
(3) Russian money
(4) Russian payments to Manafort

To which Dreeben provided an unsatisfactory lawyerly response about how everything is connected to everything (including, apparently, whether Trump paid a woman to keep quiet about consensual sex).

Last – but we’re quite sure not least, was last week’s ruling by federal Judge Dabney Friedrich, a Trump appointee, denying Mueller a trial delay over the high-profile February indictment of 13 Russians for interfering in the 2016 US election.

Mueller accused 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities – one of which was Concord Management and Consulting, of “knowingly and intentionally” conspiring to interfere with the election by using social media to disparage Hillary Clinton and support Donald Trump.

And Concord Management decided to fight it…

As PowerLine notes, Mueller probably didn’t see that coming – and the indictment itself was perhaps nothing more than a PR stunt to bolster the Russian interference narrative.

I don’t think anyone (including Mueller) anticipated that any of the defendants would appear in court to defend against the charges. Rather, the Mueller prosecutors seem to have obtained the indictment to serve a public relations purpose, laying out the case for interference as understood by the government and lending a veneer of respectability to the Mueller Switch Project.

One of the Russian corporate defendants nevertheless hired counsel to contest the charges. In April two Washington-area attorneys — Eric Dubelier and Kate Seikaly of the Reed Smith firm — filed appearances in court on behalf of Concord Management and Consulting. Josh Gerstein covered that turn of events for Politico here. –Powerline Blog

Politico’s Gerstein notes that by defending against the charges, “Concord could force prosecutors to turn over discovery about how the case was assembled as well as evidence that might undermine the prosecution’s theories.”

In a mad scramble to put the brakes on the case, Mueller’s team tried to say that Concord never formally accepted the court summons related to the case, wrapping themselves in a “cloud of confusion” as Powerline puts it. “Until the Court has an opportunity to determine if Concord was properly served, it would be inadvisable to conduct an initial appearance and arraignment at which important rights will be communicated and a plea entertained.”

The Russians hit back against Mueller’s attempt to delay – filing a response on Friday to let the court know that “[Concord] voluntarily appeared through counsel as provided for in [the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure], and further intends to enter a plea of not guilty. [Concord] has not sought a limited appearance nor has it moved to quash the summons. As such, the briefing sought by the Special Counsel’s motion is pettifoggery.”

And the Judge agreed…

A federal judge has rejected special counsel Robert Mueller’s request to delay the first court hearing in a criminal case charging three Russian companies and 13 Russian citizens with using social media and other means to foment strife among Americans in advance of the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

In a brief order Saturday evening, U.S. District Court Judge Dabney Friedrich offered no explanation for her decision to deny a request prosecutors made Friday to put off the scheduled Wednesday arraignment for Concord Management and Consulting, one of the three firms charged in the case. –Politico

In other words, Mueller was just denied the opportunity to kick the can down the road, and will likely be forced to produce the requested evidence or withdraw the indictment, potentially jeopardizing the PR aspect of the entire “Trump collusion” probe.

As Mueller’s “witch hunt” moves from the headlines to courtrooms with no-nonsense Judges, dismissals and withdrawn cases risk further delegitimizing the already-beleaguered Special Counsel investigation of President Trump and the 2016 US election.

One wonders how much this whole thing has cost taxpayers so far?

end

Trump this morning rips into the 13 angry democrats that started the witchhunt. Becoming emboldened with the last Trump victories in court he is now harping on the huge conflict of interests with respect to many at the Dept of Justice

(courtesy zerohedge)

Trump Rips Mueller’s “13 Angry Democrats”, Hints At Coming Revelation About DOJ “Conflicts Of Interest”

As we anticipated late last week, President Donald Trump has seized the opportunity to gloat about a pair of legal victories last week that raised questions about the Mueller probe’s credibility in an official setting.

During hearings about a potential dismissal of the charges against Paul Manafort and Mueller’s request for a delay in his Russian troll farm case, judges articulated doubts about the special counsel’s investigation that appeared to be almost ripped from the president’s previous tweets.

In a series of early morning tweets, Trump declared that the Russian “Witch Hunt is rapidly losing credibility” after the “House Intelligence Committee found No Collusion, Coordination or anything else with Russia.”

He also lashed out at the “13 Angry Democrats” – a group that includes people involved with the Mueller probe, including Special Agent Peter Strzok, who was removed after sending anti-Trump texts to his mistress.

But most importantly, Trump also hinted that there might soon be another embarrassing revelation about conflicts of interest involving Mueller and his investigators.

As of Friday, three separate Judges have now delivered serious setbacks to the Mueller investigation. They’ve demanded – if you can believe it – facts and evidence to back up the Special Counsel’s claims in unredacted format as one Judge demands, or risk having the cases tossed out altogether.

The first major setback occurred in February, when the federal judge assigned to the criminal case against Trump’s former National Security Judge Emmet G. Sullivan asked Mueller’s team to turn over any “exculpatory evidence” to Flynn’s defense. Strangely, Flynn’s legal team never made this request. Instead, Judge Emmet G Sullivan issued the order “sua sponte” – or at his legal discretion – by invoking the Brady rule.

Despite some potentially problematic comments last week from the newest member of Trump’s legal team, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, it appears Trump is finally making some headway in his battle against Mueller.

If anything, recent leaks about questions Mueller would like to ask Trump have only suggested that Trump is biding his time before he rejects Mueller’s interview request – effectively daring the special counsel to subpoena a sitting president.

end

Let;s close with this fantastic interview of Nomi Prins by Greg Hunter as she discusses how the upcoming crash in the stock market will occur

(courtesy Greg Hunter/Nomi Prins/USAWatchdog)

Market Plummets if Global Central Banks Pull Plug – Nomi Prins

By Greg Hunter On May 6, 2018 In Market Analysis

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com (Early Sunday Release)

Two time best-selling book author Nomi Prins says the rescue policies of the 2008 financial crisis are still with us today. Prins is out with a brand new book called “Collusion: How Central Bankers Rigged the World.” The enormity of our current global debt problem is caused by central bankers. Prins explains, “It is huge. The debt is between two and a half to three times global GDP, which is an historical high. Debt to GDP throughout the developed world is higher than it has ever been, and it continues to grow. Why? Because money continues to be conjured up and rendered cheap for the participants at the top of the financial system. The banks, the major corporations, the people who make money out of that, and it hasn’t washed down to the rest of the economy. This is why most people feel this anxiety about another potential financial crisis, but also about what happens every day in their own pocketbooks. So, it is worse. These central banks today, 10 years after the financial crisis occurred, that was supposed to be an emergency situation. They have $21 trillion worth of conjured money in return for debt assets, stocks and corporate bonds around the world. If they pulled that plug, if they were to take down any of the $21 trillion, even a little bit . . . it would begin to create a major rupture in the financial system. This is why I say the central banks are the market. Without them, the markets would be nowhere near these highs. If they pulled their help and subsidies, the market would plummet really quickly.”

Prins admits this has gone on for longer than most believed possible, but says it can’t go on forever. How does it all end? Prins, who was a former top Wall Street banker, says, “We will eventually get a crash because, at some point, the amount of quantitative easing, or conjured money to buy assets out of the market to pump up the . . . financial system, will come to this head where even though these major central banks are continuing to dump money in. There will be ruptures at the bottom of the economy . . . even though they are borrowing cheap money, they just can’t make enough money to service very cheap debt. Consumers, who are at all-time debt highs, don’t have enough to continue to service their debt. When these things happen at the same time in terms of lack of payments, delinquencies and defaults, then money will be taken out of the stock markets to plug the gap, and then the stock market comes down. It will start with debt disintegrating, defaulting or having delinquencies. . . . The behavior that happens after this is the seizure of credit and lack of confidence everywhere. When the cracks start, they will get bigger and bigger faster, and that’s when we have a crash.”

Will the next crash be worse than the last one? Prins says, “Yes, it will because we will be falling from a higher height. The idea here is you are sinking on the Titanic as opposed to sinking on a canoe somewhere. All of this artificial conjured money is puffing up the system, along with money that is borrowed cheaply is also puffing up the system and creating asset bubbles everywhere. So, when things pop, there is more leakage to happen. The air in all these bubbles has created larger bubbles than we have had before.”

How does the common man protect himself? Prins says, “They have to own things, and by that I mean real assets, hard assets like silver and gold. That’s not as liquid, so taking cash out of banks and sort of keeping it in real things and keeping it on site . . . keeping cash physically. You need to extract it from the system because the reality is when a financial crisis happens, banks close their doors to depositors. . . . Also, basically try to decrease your debt.”

Join Greg Hunter as he goes One-on-One with two-time, best-selling author Nomi Prins, who just released “Collusion: How Central Bankers Rigged The World.”

https://usawatchdog.com/market-plummets-if-global- central-banks-pull-plug-nomi-prins

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HARVEY

NUMBER OF NOTICES FILED TODAY FOR MAY CONTRACT:0 NOTICE(S) FOR nil OZ.

127 NOTICE(S) FILED TODAY FOR

635,000 OZ/

Bitcoin: BID $9319/OFFER $9419: DOWN $328(morning)

Bitcoin: BID/ $9389/offer $9489: DOWN $239 (CLOSING/5 PM)

First Shanghai gold fix gold: 10 pm est: 1325.17

Second gold fix early this morning: 1319.11

3. ASIAN AFFAIRS

/NORTH KOREA/SOUTH KOREA

b) REPORT ON JAPAN

3 c CHINA

4. EUROPEAN AFFAIRS

5. RUSSIAN AND MIDDLE EASTERN AFFAIRS

6 .GLOBAL ISSUES

7. OIL ISSUES

8. EMERGING MARKET

9. PHYSICAL MARKETS

10. USA stories which will influence the price of gold/silver

Let us head over to the comex:

Trading Volumes on the COMEX

PRELIMINARY COMEX VOLUME FOR TODAY: 240.523 contracts

CONFIRMED COMEX VOL. FOR YESTERDAY: 326,139 contracts

INITIAL standings for MAY/GOLD

And now for silver

AND NOW THE APRIL DELIVERY MONTH

MAY INITIAL standings/SILVER

Inventory 323.263 million oz

Major gold/silver trading /commentaries for WEDNESDAY

Andrew Maguire

Schizophrenic Silver: Biggest ETF Inflow In 2 Years (After Major Outflow)

Nigeria, China sign $2.4 billion currency swap to lift trade

LAWRIE WILLIAMS: Chinese gold demand way up in April

Your early MONDAY morning currency, Asian stock market results, important USA/Asian currency crosses, gold/silver pricing overnight along with the price of oil Major stories overnight/9 AM EST

Emerging Markets On Edge As Dollar Surge Resumes; Oil Hits 3 Year High

3. ASIAN AFFAIRS

3 a NORTH KOREA/USA

3 b JAPAN AFFAIRS

c) REPORT ON CHINA/HONG KONG

4. EUROPEAN AFFAIRS

Meanwhile In Greece…

Did Italy’s Five Star Movement Just Blink Or Are We Headed To New Elections?

Shifting Poll Numbers

Pride Goeth and All That…

Market Outcomes

In “Worst Possible Outcome”, Air France Plummets Most In 16 Years After CEO Unexpectedly Resigns

5. RUSSIAN AND MIDDLE EASTERN AFFAIRS

Saudi Arabia’s Needs Have Become Iran’s Problems

U.S. Mob Rule

The China Syndrome

“You Can’t Control Us” – Turkey Threatens To Retaliate If US Blocks Sale Of 116 F-35s

Israel Threatens Assad: “If You Continue Allowing Iran To Operate Out Of Syria, It Will Be Your End”

6 .GLOBAL ISSUES

Bank of Canada: 8% of Canadian Households Owe More Than 20% of the $2.1 Trillion in Deb

These Canadians are in a “highly vulnerable” position.

By Daniel Wong, Better Dwelling: May 5, 2018

8% of Canadians Have Mortgage Debt Over 3.5x What They Make

Canadians Owe Over $1.52 trillion Worth of Mortgage Debt

Canadian Owe More Than $603 Billion In Consumer Credit

7. OIL ISSUES

Arctic About-Face: Oil-Opposing Alaska Natives Now Lead Charge To ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’

A PIECE OF THE ACTION

ANWR OWNERSHIP IS KEY

8. EMERGING MARKET

“This Is Terrible For PDVSA”: Conoco Begins Confiscating Venezuela Oil Assets, Infuriating China

Your early morning currency/gold and silver pricing/Asian and European bourse movements/ and interest rate settings MONDAY morning 7:00 am

Your closing bourses for Europe and the Dow along with the USA dollar index closing and interest rates for MONDAY: 1:00 PM EST

Closing Price for Oil, 4:30 pm/and 10 year USA interest rate:

And now your more important USA stories which will influence the price of gold/silver

TRADING IN GRAPH FORM FOR THE DAY

“Sell The News” Stalls Biggest Short Squeeze In Two Years, Bonds Shrug

Short-Squeeze Lifts S&P To Critical Technical Level; Bonds, Dollar Shrug

Colorado Eviction Courts Overwhelmed As Housing Crisis Unfolds

Trump Lashes Out At John Kerry’s “Possibly Illegal Shadow Diplomacy” With Iran

Trump Will Announce Iran Deal Decision At 2 PM Tuesday

Trump Likely To Scrap Iran Deal, Reimpose Sanctions: NYT

Judge skewers Manafort’s civil case challenging Mueller’s powers

Judge Mulls Dismissal Of Manafort Charges, Sharply Questioned Mueller Overreach

FBI Chaos: Comey Caught In Lie Over Flynn Investigation; Anti-Trump “Lovebird” Lisa Page Quits

FBI Refuses To Pursue Personal Strzok-Page Texts; Grassley Goes Nuclear

Trump Won’t Testify After Mueller Probe Reaches “A Level Of Bad Faith”: DiGenova