GOLD:$1815.00 DOWN $38.55 The quote is London spot price
Silver:$23.96 up $1.46 London spot price ( cash market)
i)Gold : $1815.00 LONDON SPOT 4:30 pm
ii)SILVER: $24.00//LONDON SPOT 4:30 pm
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2 ) Gold/silver trading overnight Europe, Goldcore
(Mark O’Byrne/zerohedge
and in NY: Bloomberg
3. ASIAN AFFAIRS
i)TUESDAY MORNING/ MONDAY NIGHT:
SHANGHAI CLOSED UP 60.18 PTS OR 1.77% //Hang Sang CLOSED UP 226.19 PTS OR .86% /The Nikkei closed UP 353.92 POINTS OR 1.34%//Australia’s all ordinaires CLOSED UP 1.04%
/Chinese yuan (ONSHORE) closed UP AT 6.5707 /Oil UP TO 45.13 dollars per barrel for WTI and 47.83 for Brent. Stocks in Europe OPENED ALL RED// ONSHORE YUAN CLOSED AGAINST THE DOLLAR UP AT 6.5707. OFFSHORE YUAN CLOSED UP ON THE DOLLAR AT 6.5630 TRADE TALKS STALL//YUAN LEVELS //TRUMP INITIATES A NEW 25% TARIFFS FRIDAY/MAY 10/MAJOR PROBLEMS AT HUAWEI /CFO ARRESTED//CORONAVIRUS/PANDEMIC/TRUMP TESTS POSITIVE FOR COVID 19 : /ONSHORE YUAN TRADING BELOW LEVEL OF OFFSHORE YUAN/ONSHORE YUAN TRADING STRONGER AGAINST USA DOLLAR/OFFSHORE YUAN TRADING STRONGER AGAINST THE DOLLAR /TRADE DEAL NOW DEAD..TRUMP RAISED RATES TO 25%
COMEX DATA//AMOUNTS STANDING//VOLUME OF TRADING/INVENTORY MOVEMENTS
GOLD
LET US BEGIN:
We had 3 kilobar transactions
ADJUSTMENTS: 2 //
i) Out of Loomis: customer to dealer//6590.750 oz (205 kilobars)
ii) Out of Malca: 48,226.5000 oz (1500 kilboars)
The front month of DEC registered a total of 25,471 contracts for a loss of 6210. We had 5371 notices filed upon yesterday so we lost 839 contacts or 83,900 additional oz will not stand in this very active delivery month of December as these guys morphed into London based forwards and accepted a fiat bonus for their efforts.
January LOST 23 contracts to stand at 2556 contracts. FEBRUARY gained a STRONG 2762 contracts UP TO 396,046.
THE BIG STORY AGAIN TODAY IS THE HIGH INITIAL OI STANDING FOR DECEMBER (95.93 tonnes).
We had 4560 notice(s) filed today for 456,000 oz OR 14.18 TONNES.
To calculate the INITIAL total number of gold ounces standing for the DEC /2020. contract month, we take the total number of notices filed so far for the month (9,931) x 100 oz , to which we add the difference between the open interest for the front month of DEC (25,411 CONTRACTS ) minus the number of notices served upon today (4560 x 100 oz per contract) equals 3,084,200 OZ OR 95.93 TONNES) the number of ounces standing in this active month of DEC
thus the INITIAL standings for gold for the DEC/2020 contract month:
No of notices filed so far (9931, x 100 oz +xx OI) for the front month minus the number of notices served upon today (4560) x 100 oz which equals 3,084,200 oz standing OR 95.93 TONNES in this active delivery month of December. This is a HUGE amount for gold standing for DEC delivery month (generally the strongest delivery month of the year). THE COMEX IS UNDER A HUGE FRONTAL ATTACK FROM EUROPEAN BANKS SEEKING PHYSICAL METAL! JUDGING FROM THE INITIAL NOTICES FILED VS THE NUMBER OF NOTICES STANDING, IT WILL BE EXTREMELY DIFFICULT FOR OUR BANKERS TO FIND THE NECESSARY GOLD TO SATISFY OUR EUROPEANS. ALSO REMEMBER THAT OPTIONS EXERCISED ON THE COMEX FOR DEC. ARE NOT GIVEN TO OUR PLAYERS UNTIL LATE MONDAY. ALSO EFP CONTRACTS EXERCISED FOR GOLD // DECEMBER FROM LONDON ARE NOT IN THESE TOTALS AND NO DOUBT THESE NUMBERS WILL BE FORMIDABLE.
NEW PLEDGED GOLD: BRINKS
492,256.108, oz NOW PLEDGED SEPT 15.2020/HSBC 15.31 TONNES ( A HUGE INCREASE FROM 10.6)
60,784.803 PLEDGED APRIL 3/2020: SCOTIA: 1.3234 tonnes
deleted Int. Delaware pledge July 7 (600 tonnes)
280,010.045 oz JPM 8.70 TONNES
602,840.325 oz pledged June 12/2020 Brinks/ july 2/july 21 18.75 tonnes
88,796.123 oz Pledged August 21/regular account 1.588 tonnes jpm
98,804.139 oz Pledged Nov 27.2021 MANFRA 3.07 tonnes
total pledged gold: 1,623,491;613 oz 50.49 tonnes
total registered, pledged and eligible (customer) gold 37,349,765.209 oz 1,161.73 tonnes (INCLUDES 4 GC GOLD)
total 4 GC gold: 126.34 tonnes
total gold net of 4 GC: 1035.39 tonnes
end
I have compiled data with respect to registered (or dealer) gold taken on first day notice for each of the past 24 months
The data begins on first day notice for the May month taken on the last day of July 2018. and it continues to present day.
I then took, how many deliveries were recorded by the CME for each and every month. I also included for reference the price of gold on first day notice.
The first graph is a logarithmic graph and the second graph, linear.
You can see the huge explosion of registered gold at the comex along with deliveries.
THE GOLD COMEX SEEMS TO BE UNDER SEVERE ASSAULT FOR PHYSICAL
And now for the wild silver comex results
And now for the wild silver comex results
INITIAL STANDINGS
DEC. SILVER COMEX CONTRACT MONTH//INITIAL STANDING
| Silver | Ounces |
| Withdrawals from Dealers Inventory | NIL oz |
| Withdrawals from Customer Inventory |
32,898.400 oz
Delaware
|
| Deposits to the Dealer Inventory |
1,191,002.470 oz
Scotia
|
| Deposits to the Customer Inventory |
32,898.400 oz
CNT
Scotia
|
| No of oz served today (contracts) |
3599
CONTRACT(S)
(17,995,000 OZ)
|
| No of oz to be served (notices) |
573 contracts
2,865,000 oz)
|
| Total monthly oz silver served (contracts) | 4768 contracts23,840,000 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 |
Gold Jumps Back Above $1800 As Bitcoin Drops $2000 From Record High
After testing new record highs overnight, just shy of $20,000, Bitcoin has tumbled$2000 this morning..
The entire crypto space is also getting whacked…
Source: Bloomberg
And at the same time, gold has surged back above $1800, erasing last week’s sudden plunge…
Is the gold-to-bitcoin rotation unwinding?
Source: Bloomberg
Interestingly, Ethereum also took a big hit…
Source: Bloomberg
As Ethereum 2.0 Beacon Chain goes live. As CoinDesk notes, today’s launch concludes the opening act, or “Phase 0,” of Ethereum’s consensus mechanism transition, which will see the network – whose native cryptocurrency, ether, is worth $70 billion by market cap – fundamentally change how it settles payments while in motion.
“The launch of the beacon chain is a huge accomplishment and lays the foundation for Ethereum’s more scalable, secure, and sustainable home,” Ethereum Foundation researcher Danny Ryan told CoinDesk in an email. “There is still much work to do, but today we celebrate.”
The Beacon Chain will be the backbone of a new Ethereum blockchain, a network intended to keep pace with PayPal and Visa in terms of processing speed, while rivaling them in terms of transparency and payment finality.
As CoinTelegraph points out, the transition to PoS paves the way for future planned upgrades to be implemented, such as sharding to improve scalability.
Currently staked ETH are likely to be locked up until Phase 1.5 of the Ethereum 2.0 rollout, currently planned for late 2021 or early 2022. This will see the current Ethereum mainnet merge with the new beacon chain and sharding system.
Anticipation for the Eth2 launch has been building throughout 2020, and has been reflected in the price of Ether, which started the year at just $130 but is currently riding high at over $600.
The launch will be especially welcomed by those in the decentralized finance community. The explosion of DeFi during 2020 saw a huge increase in traffic and gas fees on the Ethereum network.
And it appears retail is starting to show interest again as Google searches for Bitcoin Price are at two year highs…
And as institutional interest also picks up, CoinTelegraph notes that “PlanB,” the pseudonymous creator of the stock-to-flow-based family of Bitcoin price models, said on Dec. 1 that all was still going to plan after the most recent halving event in May.
“My fellow Bitcoiners, the bull market is upon us,” he declared, producing the latest version of his Stock-to-Flow Cross-Asset (S2FX) chart showing BTC/USD posting its highest-ever monthly close.
Stock-to-flow cross-asset (S2FX) historical chart. Source: PlanB/ Twitter
PlanB believes that recent gains mark just the start of Bitcoin’s next phase, a theory which would see Bitcoin simply follow its historical behavior.
“Like clockwork November red dot closed above all other red dots .. at $19,700 .. a new Bitcoin ATH. This is just the beginning. We will see volatility (e.g. -35%), but also new ATHs. Enjoy the ride!” he added.
end
We brought this to your attention yesterday but I am repeating it due to the fact that it is a huge story. Trump knows about the $50 billion slush fund//he is not aware of the $386 billion more in the fund
Trump Issued an Executive Memorandum Giving Mnuchin a $50 Billion Slush Fund; Mnuchin Gave Himself $386 Billion More
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 1, 2020 ~
Five days before Congress passed the CARES Act on March 25 of this year, President Donald Trump issued an Executive Memorandum giving U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin complete discretion to use $50 billion in the Treasury’s Exchange Stabilization Fund (ESF) as Mnuchin solely saw fit. The Memorandum was dated Friday, March 20. On the prior Tuesday and Wednesday of that same week, Mnuchin had already used $20 billion of the Exchange Stabilization Fund to bail out Wall Street. As Mnuchin’s letter of November 19 to Fed Chair Jerome Powell confirms, he gave (or committed) $10 billion from the ESF to the Fed’s Commercial Paper Funding Facility on March 17 and another $10 billion to another Fed emergency lending program, the Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility, on March 18.
Most Americans have never heard of the Treasury’s Exchange Stabilization Fund (ESF), a slush fund available to the sitting U.S. Treasury Secretary since 1934. The ESF has grown from $94.3 billion in assets prior to Trump taking office to $682 billion as of September 30, 2020. As recently as March 31, 2007, the ESF had assets of just $45.9 billion, meaning it has grown by a factor of more than 14 times in 13 years.
The size of the ESF slush fund matters because under current law (31 U.S.C. §5302) the decisions on how to spend the billions in this slush fund belong to the Treasury Secretary and “are final and may not be reviewed by another officer or employee of the Government.” The law also provides that the Treasury Secretary “with the approval of the President, may deal in gold, foreign exchange, and other instruments of credit and securities the Secretary considers necessary.” Since publicly traded stocks are “securities,” that certainly sounds like the Treasury Secretary would have the right to intervene in buying up stocks to shore up the stock market, effectively making the Treasury Secretary a Plunge Protection Team of one.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average had closed on the first trading day of March at 26,703, then preceded to lose 7,529 points by the close of trading on March 20 as the COVID-19 crisis escalated. By March 23, CNBC was reporting that the S&P 500 had plunged 30 percent in 22 trading sessions, the fastest decline in history, noting further that the “second, third and fourth quickest 30% pullbacks all occurred during the Great Depression era in 1934, 1931 and 1929, respectively.”
If Mnuchin did want to use his ESF slush fund to intervene in markets, how would he go about placing his trades? The insidious New York Fed tells us this about its relationship with the ESF: “ESF operations are conducted through the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in its capacity as fiscal agent for the Treasury.” The New York Fed also shares this: “ESF accounts and activities are subject to Congressional oversight. The Treasury provides monthly reports on U.S. intervention activities and a monthly financial statement of the ESF to Congress on a confidential basis.”
Who better than the tight-lipped New York Fed to be trading on a “confidential” basis for the Treasury Secretary. Wall Street On Parade couldn’t even get a photo from the iron-grip of the New York Fed of its Wall Street-esque trading floor back in 2013, but we located one anyway without its help.
We know that Mnuchin didn’t use his $50 billion of taxpayers’ money in his slush fund to trade foreign currencies, ostensibly what the ESF was created to do during the Great Depression to support the U.S. dollar, because the Fed has released reports for the first three quarters of this year indicating that it did not intervene on behalf of the ESF in foreign exchange markets.
We also know that Mnuchin’s ESF slush fund grew by $500 billion in the spring of this year because the CARES Act legislation mandated that amount of money to be first deposited into the Exchange Stabilization Fund. (According to Mnuchin’s November 19 letter, he “was personally involved in drafting the relevant part” of the CARES Act.) The Treasury Secretary was directed under the Act to use up to $46 billion of the $500 billion to make direct loans and loan guarantees to pandemic-impacted businesses as follows: up to $25 billion to passenger air carriers; up to $4 billion to cargo air carriers; and up to $17 billion to businesses critical to national security. The balance of $454 billion was to go exclusively to the Federal Reserve to be used as loss absorbing capital for the Fed’s emergency lending facilities.
Despite the very clear directive of the CARES Act, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin only provided $114 billion to the Fed for its emergency lending facilities and $20 billion of that came from the ESF prior to passage of the CARES Act. That means that out of $454 billion that Congress earmarked to the Fed’s emergency lending facilities under the CARES Act, Mnuchin only handed over $94 billion, leaving $360 billion sitting at his disposal in the ESF slush fund. According to Mnuchin’s letter of November 19, he has more than half ($26 billion) of the $46 billion he was to make in direct loans still unused. If you add the $26 billion to the $360 billion, Mnuchin has been sitting on a $386 billion slush fund that he is allowed to use without any Congressional approval for the past eight months. And, had President Trump been re- elected, as his administration had expected, the CARES Act provided that the ESF would not have to turn that pile of money over to the Treasury’s General Fund until January 1, 2026. The CARES Act reads as follows:
“Deficit reduction. On January 1, 2026, any funds described in paragraph (1) that are remaining shall be transferred to the general fund of the Treasury to be used for deficit reduction.”
But since Trump was not re-elected, Mnuchin is now demanding that all unused funds from the $500 billion allocated under the CARES Act be turned over to the Treasury’s General Fund five years ahead of what the legislation requires, thus depriving incoming Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen of her own ESF slush fund.
Both Mnuchin and Fed Chair Jerome Powell will appear today before the Senate Banking Committee and both will appear again tomorrow before the House Financial Services Committee. We’re not holding out much hope for clear answers as to what Mnuchin has been doing with that surplus $386 billion in the ESF.
The ESF has an ignoble history. President George W. Bush used the ESF to shore up Wall Street by guaranteeing money market funds during the last financial crisis. After Lehman Brothers collapsed into bankruptcy on September 15, 2008, a number of money market funds were found to have invested in Lehman paper. That set off a run. Bush issued a Memorandum authorizing the ESF to guarantee “certain” money market funds.
Notably, without any attention on the part of mainstream media, the CARES Act also authorized the ESF to guarantee money market mutual funds this year. Congress had restricted the ESF from using this maneuver again in the future when it passed the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. Some smart Wall Street lawyer had the foresight to remove that restriction in Section 5001 of the CARES Act, which reads: “Temporary Permit Use to Guarantee Money Market Mutual Funds: Section 131 of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (12 U.S.C. 5236) shall not apply during the national emergency concerning the novel coronavirus disease (COVID–19) outbreak declared by the President under the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.).”
In July 1999, a bipartisan group of House members attempted to add an amendment to the 2000 Appropriations bill that would mandate Congressional approval before the President or Treasury Secretary could spend more than $1 billion from the ESF.
Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, then a member of the House, was a Co-Sponsor of the amendment. Senator Sanders said this in his remarks on the amendment:
“Once again, this amendment will not in any way restrict the Treasury Department’s use of the ESF to stabilize currencies, because currencies stabilization is the purpose for which Congress established the ESF.
“The point here is that, as every Member of this body knows, that we on occasion spend hours debating how we are going to spend $1 million here or $1 million there. Given that reality, some of us think that maybe we should participate in debates when billions of dollars are appropriated.
“Mr. Chairman, in recent years, whether it has been Mexico, whether it has been Asia, whether it has been Latin America, in Brazil, the President has acted unilaterally. I would argue that those of us who believe in the democratic process, those of us who get up here and argue about how we spend $1 million here or there, have a right to participate in where billions of taxpayer dollars are going.”
Former Congressman Ron Paul of Texas also supported the amendment. He said this:
“I would like to clarify one thing about the original intent of the Exchange Stabilization Fund. It was never meant to be used to support foreign currencies. It should not be so casually accepted that that is the proper function of the Exchange Stabilization Fund. The Exchange Stabilization Fund was set up, I think in error; but it was set up for the purpose of stabilizing the dollar in the Depression…
“How did it come about over these many years that this fund has been allowed to exist without supervision of this Congress, and now has reached to the size of $34 billion and we give it no oversight? It is supposed to send reports to us, very superficial reports to the Congress. We don’t know how they got $34 billion. They earned interest on some of the loans, and all the loans are paid back because the countries who get the loans borrow more money.
“Mr. Chairman, the Mexico bailout did not solve the Mexico problem. It is ongoing. The peso is in trouble again. They are in more debt than before. We only encourage the financial bubble around the world. This is a dangerous notion that we can take something that was set up to stabilize the dollar, and now we are pretending we can stabilize all the currencies in the world and use it as foreign aid to boot without the congressional approval. There is something seriously flawed with this.
“It has also been suggested by many who know a lot more about the details of the Exchange Stabilization Fund than I do, and it has been suggested that possibly, quite possibly, what happens is Treasury deals in currencies all the time and there are profits to be made. And when there is a profit, it goes into the Exchange Stabilization Fund. When there is a loss, it is sent over to the Treasury and then recorded as a loss…in a free society, in a democracy, in a republic where we are supposed to have the rule of law, we are not supposed to have a slush fund that is run by our Treasury without supervision to be doing things that was never intended. This is a serious problem. And I think economically it is serious because it is contributing to the bubble. It is contributing to a financial bubble.”
In his remarks from the House floor, former Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Ohio called the ESF the “Foreign Investment Failure Fund.” His remarks included the following:
“Mr. Chairman, the Exchange Stabilization Fund is being misused by Treasury to bail out foreign investment failures. When some aspects of corporate foreign investment policy fails, the Treasury taps the ESF to cover over the failure.
“Here is a recent example, Mr. Chairman. In Indonesia, the International Monetary Fund caused a run on Indonesian banks when it directed the closure of 16 banks there. A confidential internal IMF memo even acknowledged the failure. The IMF caused a panic by making a bad situation much worse. So what does this ‘Foreign Investment Failure Fund’ do? Without congressional approval, Treasury dispatched a credit line of $3 billion to cover the mistake.
“NAFTA caused a flood of U.S. investors to abandon their investments in the U.S. for higher rates of return in Mexico. Then the already over-valued Mexican currency collapsed. Guess what? The ‘Foreign Investment Failure Fund’ was used without congressional approval to cover the multi-billion dollar failure.
“Indeed, the ESF was used in this way because Congress refused to pass a $20 billion package to benefit the Mexican elite at the expense of the Mexican people. The use of the ESF by Treasury thwarted the will of the Congress.
“The ‘Foreign Investment Failure Fund’ is used to accomplish policy changes that often make international financial problems worse. In Korea, important consumer and labor standards and regulations were overturned as conditions for $5 billion in ‘Foreign Investment Failure’ funds from the U.S.
“Koreans now talk about ‘IMF suicides’ to characterize the wave of suicides among jobless and hopeless Koreans. Korean labor unions are conducting massive protests and strikes. Without Congress’ approval or involvement, global economic policy is being forged for the benefit of the few with the funds of the American people as leverage.
“This amendment will correct the abuses, but it will not tie Treasury’s hands. If Treasury needs to stabilize another country’s currency, it will be able to use the ESF to do so unilaterally and without Congress’ approval. The amendment allows Treasury to do currency swaps and other currency stabilization aids without Congressional approval.
“But if Treasury is making a large loan to another country, they will have to come to Congress, which is the only appropriate process, given the American system of checks and balances.
“This amendment is nearly identical to one that Congress passed in 1995. Many of my fellow Democrats voted for that amendment then. Unfortunately, the authority of that provision lapsed in October of 1997. Today, we need to repeat our correct action. So long as the Exchange Stabilization Fund is used to extend credit or give loans to foreign nations without Congress’ approval, these foreign investment failures will get larger and will become more frequent. More of the U.S. Treasury will be exposed to paper over them, benefit foreign elites, bail out big banks, and underwrite austerity, joblessness and hopelessness for the majority of people around the globe.
“Let us stabilize the power of Congress by voting yes on this amendment.”
The amendment did not pass and today we are looking at a Treasury Secretary who has provided no details on what he has been doing for the past eight months with a slush fund of $386 billion while food lines grow by miles across America, 98,000 businesses permanently closed, and 20.4 million Americans are receiving unemployment benefits.
-END-
-END-
US seeks halt in civil lawsuit accusing JP Morgan of manipulating metals market, citing criminal case
- The U.S. wants a federal judge to halt a civil lawsuit accusing J. P. Morgan of manipulating precious metals markets. The Justice Department cited an ongoing criminal case as its reason for the request.
- A former J. P. Morgan trader pleaded guilty in Connecticut last month to manipulation charges.
- In the guilty plea, the trader said he had learned to make bogus trade orders from senior traders at the bank and that he used the strategy hundreds of times with the knowledge and consent of his immediate supervisors.
CNBC.com
The Justice Department is asking a judge to put the brakes on a civil lawsuit against J. P. Morgan Chase, citing an ongoing probe into a “related criminal case” that involves alleged manipulation of precious metals markets.
The department wants a six-month postponement in the proceedings of the civil lawsuit, which was filed in 2015 by hedge fund manager Daniel Shak and two commodity traders. The government also says it could ask for a longer delay in the case, according to a court filing on Monday.
The move comes days after Shak’s lawyer, David Kovel, sought permission to reopen questioning of two former J. P. Morgan traders and the bank’s current global head of base and precious metals trading.
Kovel, in making the request with the Manhattan federal judge in the civil case, cited last month’s guilty plea by one of those former traders, John Edmonds, in federal court in Connecticut.
Edmonds admitted making bogus bids on precious metals contracts while working at the bank from 2009 to 2015.
Neither J. P. Morgan Chase nor Kovel’s clients have opposed the Justice Department’s request.
In arguing for a delay, the Justice Department said Shak’s lawsuit is “related” to Edmonds’ criminal case and that Edmonds has “pleaded guilty and acknowledged his own participation in such conduct, as well as that of other traders.”
“Edmonds awaits sentencing, but the broader investigation is ongoing,” the Justice Department said. The U.S. wants to delay the civil case “to protect the integrity of its ongoing criminal investigation,” it said.
J. P. Morgan did not respond to a request for comment by CNBC. Kovel declined to comment.
Tuesday night, after this story first was published, Judge Paul Engelmayer ordered the federal prosecutors to explain in detail by Monday why postponing proceedings in the civil lawsuit would not harm those involved, and why reopening questioning “would be detrimental to the Government’s ongoing criminal investigation.”
Englemayer also wrote that he regards Edmonds’ guilty plea “as potentially highly consequential” to the civil case.
In his guilty plea, the 36-year-old Edmonds said he had learned to make bogus trade orders from senior traders at the bank and that he used the strategy hundreds of times with the knowledge and consent of his immediate supervisors. He admitted to working with “unnamed co-conspirators” at J. P. Morgan, according to the Justice Department.
Kovel wants to question Edmonds again as well as Michael Nowak, the bank’s global head of base and precious metal trading, and former J. P. Morgan Chase Managing Director Robert Gottlieb. The three had previously answered questions under oath in the civil case.
Kovel said in court filings that Nowak was the immediate supervisor of Edmonds, while Gottlieb was Edmonds’ mentor.
In his prior deposition, Edmonds said that Gottlieb sat only a “couple feet” away from him for about five years, and that he was “somebody [he] looked up to in the business,” who helped guide and train him.
Nowak is described by Edmonds as his direct supervisor, with whom he would sometimes discuss trading strategies. Nowak was also the person responsible for overseeing the performance and risk of Edmonds’ portfolio, according to the deposition.
Edmonds also stated in his prior deposition that he would enter precious metals trades for both Nowak and Gottlieb, among others.
The civil lawsuit claims Shak and his fellow plaintiffs lost tens of millions of dollars as a result of actions by J. P. Morgan’s traders.
Federal judge tells traders they can combine cases accusing JP Morgan of rigging metals market
- Litigation in a separate civil case has been put on hold until at least May at the behest of the Justice Department, which is investigating a “related criminal case” that involves alleged market manipulation by precious metals traders at J. P. Morgan.
- Judge John Koeltl of the Southern District of New York appointed the White Plains, N.Y., law firm Lowey Dannenberg as interim lead counsel for the proposed class action.
A group of traders from across the U.S. who allege that J. P. Morgan Chase manipulated precious metals markets for years are one step closer to bringing a class action suit against the nation’s largest bank.
Earlier this month, a federal judge said five separate lawsuits making similar allegations against the bank could be combined, potentially including thousands of people who traded in the precious metals market from Jan. 2009 through Dec. 2015.
Litigation in a separate civil case has been put on hold until at least May at the behest of the Justice Department, which is investigating a “related criminal case” that involves alleged market manipulation by precious metals traders at J. P. Morgan.
J. P. Morgan declined to comment on this story.
Judge John Koeltl of the Southern District of New York appointed the White Plains, N.Y., law firm Lowey Dannenberg as interim lead counsel for the proposed class action.
Vincent Briganti, a partner at the firm, filed the first suit seeking class action status in November on behalf of Dominick Cognata, a trader who alleges he suffered losses due to J.P. Morgan’s illegal trading conduct in the silver and gold futures and options markets.
That was after the federal court in Connecticut unsealed a criminal plea agreement by John Edmonds, a former J.P. Morgan metals trader. In his guilty plea, Edmonds, who is 36-years old, admitted that he and other “unnamed co-conspirators” fraudulently manipulated the precious metals markets while they were employed at J. P. Morgan from 2009 to 2015.
Edmonds said he had learned the illegal trading tactics from senior traders, and then used them hundreds of times with the knowledge of and consent of his immediate supervisors.
Briganti’s lawsuit also names John Edmonds and a group of yet-to-be-identified precious metals traders and the bank as defendants.
On Wednesday, the lawyers sent a letter to Judge Koeltl saying they were having difficulty locating Edmonds to serve him legal papers and requested a 30-day extension to do so, which the judge granted on Thursday. Briganti noted that they have been in contact with Edmonds’ attorney in the criminal case. Edmonds’ attorney and Briganti could not be reached for comment.
“We are hopeful that this extension will result in completing service on Mr. Edmonds without formal motion practice and a request for alternative means of service,” Briganti said in the letter.
The next step in the civil case is for the plaintiffs to file an amended class action complaint and set a schedule for defendants to respond.
In addition to the proposed class action, J. P. Morgan also faces a separate civil suit which also accuses the bank of rigging precious metals markets.
end
March 4.2019
Parker City News
JP Morgan faces potential class action lawsuit after guilty pleas by a former metals trader
Traders from across the U.S. are banding together to accuse J. P. Morgan Chase of manipulating precious metals markets for years.
At least six lawsuits, all making similar allegations against the nation‘s largest bank, have been filed in New York federal court in the past month, since federal prosecutors in Connecticut with a former J. P. Morgan Chase metals trader.
The cases could potentially include thousands of people who traded in the precious metals market. The White Plains, N.Y., law firm Lowey Dannenberg is asking the court to combine the cases and name it as the lead.
The law firm‘s commodities group is led by Vincent Briganti, the attorney who filed the first lawsuit on behalf of Dominick Cognata, a New York resident who alleges he suffered losses due to J. P. Morgan‘s trading conduct in the silver and gold futures and options markets.
A combined case, seeking class action status, would include anyone who purchased or sold futures contracts or an option on NYMEX platinum or palladium or COMEX silver or gold between at least Jan. 1, 2009, and Dec. 31, 2015. The lawyers believe that “at least hundreds, if not thousands” of traders would be eligible to join the case.
Named as defendants in all of the lawsuits are John Edmonds, a 36-year old former metals trader at J. P. Morgan, a group of yet-to-be-identified precious metals traders and the bank.
Edmonds, a New York resident, pleaded guilty in October to one count of conspiracy to defraud the market and manipulate prices of precious metals futures contracts and one count of commodities fraud. In the criminal plea, Edmonds admitted that he and other “unnamed co- conspirators” at J. P. Morgan, fraudulently manipulated precious metals markets from 2009 to 2015, the same time frame covered in the class action suits.
Briganti filed the initial class action on Nov. 7, just one day after the Justice Department unsealed Edmonds‘ plea in the U.S. District Court of Connecticut.
Edmonds admitted in his guilty plea that he deployed the illegal trading scheme hundreds of times with the direct knowledge and consent of his immediate supervisors. Plaintiffs say they have suffered economic injury, including monetary losses, as a direct result of actions by Edmonds and the other unnamed J. P. Morgan metals traders in the futures and options contracts.
One of the suits alleges that “the number of unlawful trades that JP Morgan traders executed in precious metals futures markets is at least in the thousands.”
J. P. Morgan declined to comment. Lowey Dannenberg did not respond to a request for comment by CNBC.
The Justice Department‘s criminal investigation is still ongoing and recently caused a separate related civil case to be put on hold for at least six months while the government continues its investigation. That civil lawsuit, which also accuses J. P. Morgan of rigging the precious metals market, was filed in 2015 by hedge fund manager Daniel Shak and two commodity traders.
After reviewing the details of the plea agreement, David Kovel, the attorney for Shak‘s suit, sought to re- interview Edmonds, along with two other current and former senior traders at the bank. However, the government argued that reopening questioning would be detrimental to the ongoing criminal investigation. The federal judge overseeing the proceedings ordered a six-month stay in the civil case.
Kovel declined to comment.
Edmonds was originally scheduled to be sentenced in Hartford, Conn., on Wednesday, Dec. 19, but a court filing on Nov. 27 shows the sentencing has been postponed until June. A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney for Connecticut could not elaborate on why the sentencing was postponed since the court filing is under seal.
-END-
Futures Soar Just Shy Of Record Highs As Meltup Returns Ahead Of Powell Hearing
S&P futures and global stocks started the last month of the year on a euphoric note, rallying to just below all time highs following a freak one-day selloff (perhaps on pension-rebalance selling) to close November after robust China data boosted expectations of a recovery from the COVID-19 downturn and as drugmakers seek fast approval for their vaccines and authorities look set to keep stimulus support.
E-mini futures jumped 1%, more than reversing all of Monday’s losses while the MSCI world equity index was up 0.4%. News that Tesla would be added to the S&P500 all in one move on Dec 21 propelled the stock to new record highs above $600 and boosted the broader Nasdaq. Meanwhile work from Home darling Zoom dropped despite reporting stellar results and guiding higher than forecast.
The risk-on mood carried across other markets. Bitcoin was on the verge of $20,000 before it was hit with a sharp selloff, while futures on the Russell 2000 Index outperformed the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 Index. Breakthroughs in vaccine developments from Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca last month along with news that Janet Yellen would head the Treasury helped the world equity index surge the most on record, up 12% to new all-time peaks.
On Monday, Moderna applied for U.S. emergency authorization for its COVID-19 vaccine after full results from a late-stage study showed it was 94.1% effective with no serious safety concerns, while in the latest vaccine news, this morning Pfizer and partner BioNTech sought regulatory clearance for their Covid-19 vaccine in the European Union, putting the shot on track for potential approval there before the end of the year.
“We believe the rally can continue, with the current pipeline of expected vaccine rollouts in line with our central scenario of widespread availability in the second quarter of 2021,” said Mark Haefele, Chief Investment Officer at UBS Global Wealth Management in Zurich. “We also believe that a divided U.S. government – which looks the most likely outcome – is no impediment to a rising market.”
Europe’s Stoxx 600 Index was 0.7% higher lifted by banks, miners and energy firms. U.K. stocks were up almost 2% after Goldman Sachs Group strategists called them a buy ahead of a Brexit trade deal. Stocks ignored the latest disappointing PMI data which found that Euro zone factory growth cooled last month as renewed coronavirus lockdown measures hurt demand, leaving the bloc lagging many Asian peers who recovered further from the COVID-19 crisis, surveys showed on Tuesday.
The euro zone is on track for its first double-dip recession in nearly a decade, according to a recent Reuters poll of economists, and IHS Markit’s final manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index fell to 53.8 in November from October’s 54.8. The Euro area manufacturing PMI for November was revised up by 0.2pt from its flash estimate of 53.6, reflecting upward revisions in both France (+0.5pt) and the periphery (+0.4pt), with a modest downward revision in Germany (-0.1pt). In the UK, the manufacturing PMI rose by more than was initially reported. However, both the Italian and Spanish manufacturing PMIs declined, surprising expectations to the downside, showing a sequential weakening across most subcomponents.
“Manufacturing is not that bad considering the pressure on the economy, but it’s all about services which have lost a lot of momentum,” said Peter Dixon at Commerzbank. While the region’s manufacturing sector continued to expand, an earlier flash reading of the overall survey showed growth in the dominant service industry contracted last month as COVID-19 restrictions were imposed to quell a second wave of infections.
Earlier the MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan added 1.3%, while China’s Shanghai Composite Index rose 1.8%, driven by China Merchants Bank and ICBC after the latest Markit (or is that S&P) survey showed on Tuesday activity in China’s factory sector accelerated at the fastest pace in a decade in November.
Trading volume for MSCI Asia Pacific Index members was 22% above the monthly average for this time of the day. The Topix added 0.8%, with Daikin and Shin-Etsu Chemical contributing the most to the move. Japan’s Nikkei rose 1.3% while Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 gained 1.1% after Australia’s central bank said the country’s economy would need fiscal and monetary support “for some time”.
“What we are seeing today is that upward trend reasserting itself, given the positive news on the vaccine front, China’s growth picking up, and the tremendous faith in the ability of central banks to keep the markets afloat,” said Stephen Miller, market strategist for GSFM Funds Management.
It’s not all good news though. Fed Chair Jerome Powell is expected to caution lawmakers that the U.S. economy remains in a damaged and uncertain state. In testimony released ahead of a Tuesday hearing before the Senate Banking Committee, Powell gave no indication how the central bank may respond to those worries when it conducts its next policy meeting even as he warned that a slowing recovery and a surging pandemic meant the U.S. was entering a “challenging” few months, with the potential deployment of a vaccine still facing hurdles.
In foreign exchange markets, the dollar was under pressure after closing out its worst month since July with a little bounce and as investors reckon on even more U.S. monetary easing. The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index dropped 0.3%, near a fresh two-year low, as the pound rose to the highest level since early September as officials sounded an optimistic tone on negotiations over a U.K. trade deal with the European Union. Sweden’s krona led gains after posting its biggest drop in a month versus the dollar on Monday. Australia’s dollar gained as the central bank pledged to continue supporting the recovery. The yen was little changed as gains in stocks dented demand for haven assets. The ZAR lead gains in EM FX, while TRY faded losses after a short-lived move above 7.90/USD.
As the dollar slide continued, China’s yuan surged the most in two weeks in offshore trading, bolstered by surging risk appetite globally, equity inflows from overseas, and signs that exporters were selling dollars to start the month. The offshore yuan rose as much as 0.49% to 6.5519 versus the dollar, the biggest gain since Nov. 16. The rebound came after the currency weakened a total of 0.32% in the last three trading days of November, its longest losing streak in a month.
The U.S. bond market was steady, as the U.S. Congress began a two-week sprint to secure government funding and avoid a possible shutdown amid the coronavirus pandemic. U.S. 10-year Treasury yields were up slightly at 0.8438%. Germany’s benchmark 10-year bond yield hovered near three-week lows, a touch lower in early trade at -0.574%, close to Monday’s three-week low of -0.60% while peripheral European bonds were briefly rattled by words of caution from ECB’s Schnabel, who warned against hopes for blockbuster stimulus although traders later dismissed his warning saying the it does not signal a game-changer.
In other markets, and reflecting the upbeat mood, copper prices rose with Shanghai prices hitting a more than eight-year high, helped by the robust Chinese data. Oil prices however were slightly lower after leading producers delayed talks on 2021 output policy, while the coronavirus pandemic continued to sap fuel demand. OPEC+ delayed talks on output policy for next year until Thursday as key players still disagreed on how much oil they should pump amid weak demand; gold advanced back over $1800.
Looking at the day ahead there are a number of highlights including the release of the November manufacturing PMIs from around the world, Fed Chair Powell testifying with Treasury Secretary Mnuchin before the Senate banking Committee, and ECB President Lagarde speaking at an Atlantic Council event. Otherwise, data releases include the ISM manufacturing reading in the US, the flash estimate of the Euro Area’s CPI for November and Canada’s GDP for September. Other central bank speakers include the Fed’s Brainard, Daly and Evans.
Market Snapshot
- S&P 500 futures up 1% to 3,657.75
- STOXX Europe 600 up 0.8% to 392.40
- German 10Y yield rose 0.8 bps to -0.563%
- Euro up 0.4% to $1.1975
- Italian 10Y yield rose 3.2 bps to 0.515%
- Spanish 10Y yield rose 2.0 bps to 0.101%
- MXAP up 1.1% to 191.28
- MXAPJ up 1.3% to 629.67
- Nikkei up 1.3% to 26,787.54
- Topix up 0.8% to 1,768.38
- Hang Seng Index up 0.9% to 26,567.68
- Shanghai Composite up 1.8% to 3,451.94
- Sensex up 1.3% to 44,710.59
- Australia S&P/ASX 200 up 1.1% to 6,588.54
- Kospi up 1.7% to 2,634.25
- Brent futures up 0.6% to $48.18/bbl
- Gold spot up 0.9% to $1,792.98
- U.S. Dollar Index down 0.2% to 91.69
Top Overnight News from Bloomberg
- President-elect Joe Biden is setting up his first confirmation fight with Senate Republicans by choosing Neera Tanden — a sometimes-acerbic Democratic policy wonk with an often-partisan Twitter feed — to serve as his White House budget chief
- Bitcoin has shot to a record just as billions of institutional dollars have fled gold. The the debate is now heating up on whether the world’s largest digital currency can one day rival bullion as an inflation hedge and portfolio diversifier
- German manufacturing recorded solid growth in November. Factories are benefiting from a rebound in global trade after a slump earlier in the year. Respondents to IHS Markit’s monthly survey pointed to export demand across Europe and from China
- U.K. house prices rose 6.5% last month from a year earlier, the fastest pace in almost six years, as the property market defied a wider economic slump
- U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson battled to win support for his coronavirus strategy from lawmakers in his Conservative Party after they threatened to undermine his authority in a vote in the House of Commons scheduled for Tuesday
Asian equity markets traded positively as strong data releases helped the region shrug-off the weak handover from US where stocks were pressured by month-end flows in which cyclicals underperformed and most major indices finished in negative territory, although the DJIA still notched its best monthly performance in more than 3 decades with a monthly gain of almost 12%. ASX 200 (+1.1%) advanced from the open with broad optimism across its sectors aside from energy following similar underperformance stateside and with the OPEC+ meeting postponed to Thursday to provide additional time for talks amid disagreements regarding extension of current production levels. Nikkei 225 (+1.3%) benefitted from more favourable currency flows which provided reprieve for Japanese exporters, while the KOSPI (+1.7%) was boosted after the upward revision to South Korean GDP for Q3 which was increased to 2.1% Q/Q from the preliminary 1.9% growth. Hang Seng (+0.9%) and Shanghai Comp. (+1.8%) conformed to the upbeat mood following the blockbuster Caixin Manufacturing PMI data which printed at a decade high of 54.9 vs. Exp. 53.5 and spurred Chinese markets to pick up from the slow start after the PBoC drained liquidity and with China’s new export control laws taking effect today, while Hong Kong had also announced further COVID-19 restrictions to curb the latest wave of the virus. Finally, 10yr JGBs saw mild gains despite the positive risk tone and mixed results at the 10yr JGB auction, as prices extended on the rebound from support through the key 152.00 level.
Top Asian News
- RBA Keeps Key Rate, Yield Unchanged, as Seen by All Economists
- Armenia Withdraws From Key Azerbaijani Region Under Truce Deal
- China’s Top Watchdog Vows ‘Special’ Oversight of Fintech Giants
- Hong Kong Virus Surge Scuttles Travel Bubble, Sends Bankers Home
Major European bourses see gains across the board (Euro Stoxx 50 +1.1%) as the region added to the modest upside seen at the cash open after taking its cue from positive APAC session. State-side, US equity futures hold onto gains seen overnight in a retracement of yesterday’s month-end induced losses – with ES +0.8%, NQ +0.7% and YM +1.1%, RTY +1.5%. On the COVID-19 front, distribution of a vaccine is seemingly unlikely this year as the European Medicine Agency (EMA) is to express an opinion on the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine on December 29th, according to sources cited by FT whilst Moderna’s shot discussion will take place on January 12th and AstraZeneca’s vaccine will not be scrutinised before January. Back to Europe, the region experiences broad-based upside with sectors also higher across the board and with a pro-cyclical bias vs. the mixed performance seen at the open. As such, Basic Resources, Banks, Oil & Gas and Autos top the charts whilst Healthcare, Staples and Utilities reside on the other end of the spectrum. As such, the SMI’s (+0.1%) gains are hampered given its heavy exposure to the pharma sector. The energy sector meanwhile rose from the ashes amid the price action in the energy complex. In terms of individual movers, UniCredit (-6.2%) share remain pressured after following CEO Mustier is to step down following clashes with the board over strategy. Mustier will remain in his post until either the end of his term of until a successor has been appointed. Elsewhere, Munich Re (+1.7%) shares saw a leg higher after setting FY20 targets whilst noting the pandemic impact on next year’s financials will be considerably lower.
Top European News
- Swiss Economy Grew Most in Four Decades After Curbs Lifted
- Bayer Raises $1.6 Billion by Selling Most of Stake in Elanco
- VW Puts Audi at Center of Taking on Tesla With EVs, Software
- Macron U- Turn Leaves French Police Chief to Take Heat Over Abuse
In FX, and looking at the USD, that didn’t last long in terms of a recovery for the Greenback and price action suggests a classic short squeeze once the bulk of or residual month end rebalancing was out of the way. Indeed, the DXY only managed a fleeting appearance back above 92.000 late Monday before receding again and is back below the round number within a 91.964-603 range having rebounded from 91.504 to 92.051 amidst another upturn in risk sentiment at the start of December awaiting the final US Markit manufacturing PMI, ISM, construction spending and the first testimony from Fed chair Powell that has been somewhat pre-empted by the release of his text.
- GBP/EUR – The Pound has picked up the baton from the Euro in terms of testing psychological resistance vs the Buck, at 1.3400, but like the single currency it has failed to sustain momentum as Brexit trade talks remain stymied on the 3 key issues and UK Cabinet Minister Gove concedes that there may be no negotiated outcome. However, Eur/Gbp is holding around 0.8960 after touching 0.9000 yesterday following an upward revision to the final manufacturing PMI that marginally eclipsed the Eurozone upgrade after mixed individual member state readings. Hence, Eur/Usd remains capped below 1.2000 and 1 bn option expiry interest from the big figure up to 1.2010, albeit recouping losses after its reversal to sub-1.1930.
- NZD/CHF/CAD/AUD – All firmer against their US counterpart, but to varying degrees as the Kiwi consolidates off 0.7050 peaks in the run up to NZ trade data and Franc pivots 0.9070 in wake of stronger than forecast Swiss GDP and manufacturing PMI. Elsewhere, the Loonie is holding 1.3000+ status and eyeing crude prices in advance of OPEC for further direction and the Aussie is straddling 0.7350 post-RBA (unchanged policy settings in line with consensus so soon after aggressive easing last time) and conflicting leads via building approvals, current account and net export releases overnight. Next up, Q3 GDP before a speech from RBA Governor Lowe later on Wednesday.
- JPY – The Yen is still caught between stalls as it tracks Dollar moves in response to the overall market tone and its own standing as a safe haven, but has retreated through 104.00 to test support into 104.50 after several failed attempts to breach recent highs. Nevertheless, Usd/Jpy appears unlikely to threaten decent option expiries between 104.85-105.00 (1 bn) at this stage.
- SCANDI/EM – Contrasting fortunes for the Sek and Nok in keeping with the respective Swedish and Norwegian manufacturing PMIs, while the latter also looks apprehensive given the delay in scheduling for OPEC+ due to the lack of agreement within the cartel on extending output curbs. Meanwhile, the Cnh continues bounce with assistance from another strong Chinese PMI (Caixin manufacturing) and irrespective of the PBoC setting a softer Cny midpoint fix, in contrast to the Try after a slowdown in Turkey’s manufacturing PMI.
In commodities, WTI and Brent futures see a choppy session whereby the benchmarks nursed earlier losses seen in wake of the OPEC+ meeting postponement to Dec 3rd which was due to ministers being unable to reach concensus on potential tweaks to the Declaration of Cooperation (Doc), although ministers are set to meet today at 13:00GMT/08:00EST for further negotiations, and thus source reports throughout the day are expected (Note: the Newsquawk OPEC Twitter Dashboard is available via the website). Meanwhile, markets are yet to see the implications of Saudi Arabia resining from its role as chairman of the OPEC-plus alliance and co-chairman of the JMMC, with some speculation doing the rounds of increased risks of a price war. Eyes are also on UAE who seemingly has not commmitted itself to a particularly course of action, and with recent reports resurfacing that the Kingdom is may drop out of the OPEC alliance. In terms of recent commentary from members, the Algerian Energy Ministry struck an optimistic tone with regards to reaching an accord whilst Kremlin stated that President Putin will not consult with Russian oil companies ahead of the OPEC+ meeting. WTI Jan has reclaimed a USD 45/bbl handle (vs. low 44.81/bbl) whilst Brent Feb 21 sees itself on either side of USD 48/bbl (vs. low 47.40/bbl). Elsewhere, spot gold and silver prices are underpinned by the softer Buck as the former breached 1800/oz to the upside alongside its 200DMA ~1801/oz, whilst the latter re-gained a footing above USD 23/bbl. Finally, LME copper prices are bolstered by the softer Dollar and stock market gains as the contracts mimic price action seen in Shanghai futures.
US Event Calendar
- 9:45am: Markit US Manufacturing PMI, est. 56.7, prior 56.7
- 10am: ISM Manufacturing, est. 58, prior 59.3; New Orders, prior 67.9; Prices Paid, est. 65, prior 65.5; Employment, prior 53.2
- 10am: Construction Spending MoM, est. 0.8%, prior 0.3%
- Wards Total Vehicle Sales, est. 16.1m, prior 16.2m
Central Banks
- 10am: Powell Appears Before Senate Banking Committee
- 12pm: Fed’s Brainard Discusses Community Reinvestment Act
- 1:15pm: Fed’s Daly Speaks at Economic Forecast Event
- 3pm: Fed’s Evans makes Opening Remarks at Regional Conference
DB’s Jim Reid concludes the overnight wrap
I’ve hated Christmas for many more years of my life than I’ve enjoyed it but I’m going through a good relationship with the event at the moment. I’ve now heard Last Xmas, two Xmas trees are up at home, the advent calendars are awaiting the children this morning, and the twins are now old enough to get excited about Xmas and Santa. Oh and I’ve just bought myself an early Xmas present heavily discounted and second hand on eBay. Yes it’s is a golf trolley that follows you round the course via Bluetooth without you having to touch anything on it. This is my example of “revenge shopping” as after not playing for a month due to lockdown 2 I will be playing again on Saturday and wanted to treat myself. I’ll let you know on Monday whether the Bluetooth fails (it is second hand) and it runs off and rips up the green and gets me chucked out of my club.
Even though it was a record month, the last day was a little bit of a dampener on what went on before as investors paused for breath following the unprecedented rally. However futures are back up this morning wiping out yesterday losses at the moment. Before that yesterday saw a move back into some of the defensive large cap tech names, with Apple (+2.11%) for example, having a good day and helping US equities recover from the lows yesterday. By the close, the S&P 500 had fallen -0.46% from its Friday record, with a broad-based decline that saw 71% of the index moving lower, as the Dow Jones (-0.91%) moved even lower. The NASDAQ (-0.06%) nearly ended in positive territory though due to strong performance from Semiconductors (+1.66%), Tech hardware (+1.61%) and Biotech (+0.53%) to a lesser degree. In Europe most of the continent’s major indices including the STOXX 600 (-0.98%) moved lower. 18 of the 20 STOXX 600 sectors dipped as only Retail (+0.56%) and Health care (+0.07%) pulled out gains. Energy was the worst performer on both sides of the Atlantic, -3.43% in Europe and -5.37% in the US as the reflation trades lost ground in addition to the OPEC meeting not going as expected.
The OPEC+ meeting that was planned for today has been rescheduled until Thursday as the member nations needed “further consultations”. Yesterday’s meeting of the countries’ ministers appeared to reach a consensus on rolling the existing production cuts for a further three months though. However, some countries want that extension made contingent on all nations meeting their targets. OPEC+ is expected to continue discussions in the next two days to hammer out details ahead of the new meeting on Thursday. Oil prices whipsawed around the news of the extension, with WTI and Brent crude seeing multiple 2% moves in either direction all session long before WTI ended the day down -0.42% and Brent crude fell -1.22%, but the latter future had closed before the meeting extension news.
As discussed above markets are back to their recent winning ways overnight with the Nikkei (+1.41%), Hang Seng (+0.98%), Shanghai Comp (+1.31%), Kospi (+1.60%) and Asx (+1.09%) all up. Futures on the S&P are up +0.81%. In terms of overnight data releases, China’s November Caixin manufacturing PMI affirmed yesterday message from the official release as it printed at 54.9 (vs. 53.5 expected), the highest reading in 10 years. Japan’s final manufacturing PMI also came in 0.7pts above the flash at 49.0. Manufacturing PMIs for other countries in the region were also mostly strong with South Korea (at 52.9 vs. 51.2 last month), Taiwan (56.9 vs. 55.1) Indonesia (50.6 vs. 47.8) and India (56.3 vs. 58.9) all reporting robust prints. Vietnam was an exception with the PMI declining to 49.9 from 51.8 last month. We’ll see the European and US data later so all eyes on that.
In other news, Fed chair Powell said in testimony released ahead of today’s hearing before the Senate Banking Committee that the US economy remains in a damaged and uncertain state, though recent news on the vaccine front “is very positive for the medium term.” More this afternoon but there were no real surprises.
On the virus, the main news yesterday came from Moderna, which announced that it would be requesting an Emergency Use Authorization from the FDA in the US, as well as a conditional marketing authorisation with the European Medicines Agency. Their vaccine is 94.1% effective and all of the severe Covid cases occurred in the placebo group. In response, the company’s share price rose by a further +20.24% yesterday. In other vaccine news, Novavax’s announced that the company’s study in the U.K. reached full enrollment and would have results soon. The news caused the shares to rise +10.99% on the day after being down -9.60% premarket after worries about delays in reporting elsewhere. Sticking with vaccines, Axios has reported overnight that the White House has summoned the US FDA chief Stephen Hahn to justify why he hasn’t moved faster to approve the Pfizer vaccine.
In terms of the other developments yesterday, the UK saw its 7-day average of confirmed cases fall below 15k for the first time since mid-October. It comes ahead of the regional tier system coming back in England tomorrow, with today being the last day of the England-wide lockdown. Elsewhere France saw positive news as well with the lowest daily rise in cases since August, as ICU and general hospitalisations stats continued to trend lower as well. Meanwhile, Turkey has announced a nationwide weekday curfew starting at 9 pm and ending at 5 am as the country copes with about 30,000 new cases per day. Similarly, the US news was not so positive even as daily counts are currently clouded by lower testing capacity around the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. New York City, at one point the epicenter of the virus in the US, saw their weekly average positivity rate rise over 4%. Meanwhile New York state overall is seeing elective surgery halted in northern counties as the Governor anticipates possible stress to the hospital system during the winter. In fact the number of Americans hospitalised with Covid-19 is at the highest at any point of the pandemic. California is considering a return to stay-at-home orders as hospitalisations soar, with projections showing that intensive-care demand will exceed capacity.
Back to yesterday and there was a reasonable selloff in sovereign bond markets especially in Europe. Yields on 10yr bunds (+1.7bp) and BTPs (+1.4bps) rose. The one exception was Greek debt, where the country’s spread over 10yr bunds fell -3.0bps to 1.21%, its tightest since 2009 before the sovereign debt crisis kicked off.
On Brexit, we’ve now reached the final month of the transition period, which is set to conclude at 11pm London time on December 31. Yesterday didn’t see anything concrete from the negotiations, though an EU source told Reuters that talks in London over the weekend had been “quite difficult” and there were “massive divergences” on the long-standing sticking points. In separate remarks, German Chancellor Merkel said that it would be a bad example for the rest of the world if the UK and the EU didn’t manage to reach an agreement.
In terms of yesterday’s data, UK mortgage approvals soared to 97.5k in October, which was their highest level since September 2007. It comes amidst a temporary cut in the tax on home purchases, which is set to last until the end of March and is seeing a number of buyers bring forward transactions so as to avoid it. Otherwise, preliminary inflation data for Germany in November showed an accelerating decline in consumer prices, having fallen by -0.7% year-on-year on the EU-harmonised measure, matching the post-GFC low set in July 2009. Italy saw more moderate deflation of -0.3% over the same period, up from the previous month’s -0.6% reading. Finally in the US, the data slightly underwhelmed expectations, with pending home sales falling -1.1% in October (vs. +1.0% expected), while the Dallas Fed’s manufacturing index fell to 12.0 (vs. 14.3 expected).
To the day ahead now, and there are a number of highlights including the release of the November manufacturing PMIs from around the world, Fed Chair Powell testifying with Treasury Secretary Mnuchin before the Senate banking Committee, and ECB President Lagarde speaking at an Atlantic Council event. Otherwise, data releases include the ISM manufacturing reading in the US, the flash estimate of the Euro Area’s CPI for November and Canada’s GDP for September. Other central bank speakers include the Fed’s Brainard, Daly and Evans.
3A/ASIAN AFFAIRS
i)TUESDAY MORNING/ MONDAY NIGHT:
SHANGHAI CLOSED UP 60.18 PTS OR 1.77% //Hang Sang CLOSED UP 226.19 PTS OR .86% /The Nikkei closed UP 353.92 POINTS OR 1.34%//Australia’s all ordinaires CLOSED UP 1.04%
/Chinese yuan (ONSHORE) closed UP AT 6.5707 /Oil UP TO 45.13 dollars per barrel for WTI and 47.83 for Brent. Stocks in Europe OPENED ALL RED// ONSHORE YUAN CLOSED AGAINST THE DOLLAR UP AT 6.5707. OFFSHORE YUAN CLOSED UP ON THE DOLLAR AT 6.5630 TRADE TALKS STALL//YUAN LEVELS //TRUMP INITIATES A NEW 25% TARIFFS FRIDAY/MAY 10/MAJOR PROBLEMS AT HUAWEI /CFO ARRESTED//CORONAVIRUS/PANDEMIC/TRUMP TESTS POSITIVE FOR COVID 19 : /ONSHORE YUAN TRADING BELOW LEVEL OF OFFSHORE YUAN/ONSHORE YUAN TRADING STRONGER AGAINST USA DOLLAR/OFFSHORE YUAN TRADING STRONGER AGAINST THE DOLLAR /TRADE DEAL NOW DEAD..TRUMP RAISED RATES TO 25%
3 a./NORTH KOREA/ SOUTH KOREA
South Korea
b) REPORT ON JAPAN
3 C CHINA
CHINA/
China is not performing like it should: It unexpectedly injects $30 billion into the financial system.
(zerohedge)
Beijing “Unexpectedly” Injects $30 Billion Into Financial System, Sparking Doubts About True State Of China’s Economy
Back in late 2019, we were frequently greeted by headlines such as this, indicating that PBOC was periodically making “unexpected” liquidity injections, which made sense in light of China’s ongoing economic slowdown:
… and:
Fast forward one year, when China’s economy is supposedly growing at a blistering pace thanks the massive credit injections following the covid pandemic – or so Beijing and various PMI surveys would would indicate, with the November NBS manufacturing PMI overnight rising to 52.1 from 51.4 in October (all sub-indexes in the NBS manufacturing PMI survey implied stronger growth momentum in November) while the NBS non-manufacturing PMI rising further to 56.4 from 56.2 in October on the back of stronger services and construction PMIs….
… and yet the same telltale signs that not all is well with China’s economy are back, with Bloomberg posting a deja vu report this morning that China “unexpectedly” – there’s that word again – added yet another injection in the form of medium-term funding to the financial system on Monday “as the central bank sought to ease liquidity tightness in the final weeks of the year.” Perhaps China’s economy is not nearly as strong as the “pristine” indicators would make us believe?
Specifically, the People’s Bank of China offered 200 billion yuan ($30 billion) of the medium-term lending facility at an unchanged rate of 2.95%, according to a statement Monday at the same time that Beijing reported the latest blistering PMI numbers.
The latest injection came just two weeks after the central bank offered 800 billion yuan of the funds, which were already more than enough to offset the 600 billion yuan that were due this month.
“The MLF injection is a surprise,” said Zhaopeng Xing, a markets economist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group. “It shows the central bank aims to ensure liquidity without using broader easing measures like a reserve-ratio cut, when the demand for medium-term cash surged.”
Curiously, even as Chinese post-pandemic economic recovery is blowing away expectations, widespread concerns over tighter cash supply have sent China’s benchmark sovereign yield to its highest level since May 2019 earlier in November…
… resulting in record wide spreads between US and Chinese 10Y yields.
The latest MLF injection came as the PBOC also added 150 billion yuan of 7-day reverse repurchase agreements on Monday.
Even more curious is the consensus explanation for the sharp rise in Chinese yields: according to Bloomberg, “the central bank’s drip-feed approach to offering funding has compounded” the lack of liquidity “indicating Beijing wouldn’t want to loosen monetary policy much more amid a growth rebound.”
But if the economy is so strong, which does China even need more liquidity: after all, the 10Y yield is – in theory – rising because of higher inflation expectations over the horizon, and yet the PBOC feels compelled to enter the market “unexpectedly” every other week to prevent sentiment from turning sour.
Maybe what’s going on is that the liquidity squeeze is the real story, and the so-called economic recovery is the latest goalseeked lie out of Beijing.
Recall that China is already facing a major funding squeeze, with the nation’s banks grappling with a $900 billion funding gap this month and next because of a need to repay at least 3.7 trillion yuan of short-term interbank debt and purchase 1 trillion yuan of newly issued government bonds. Also, 600 billion yuan of previously offered MLF loans will mature in December. The recent “unexpected” default of several SOE companies has added to the stress, with non-bank financial institutions finding it hard to fund themselves in the interbank market.
China’s economy continues to power ahead, with bumper net exports and capital inflows and industrial profits all being recorded: and yet the PBOC just had to inject CNY200bn (USD30bn) in MLF a month ahead of the end of the year to ease liquidity tightness, and that on the back of CNY800bn two weeks ago. Yes, this is gross not net: but why the need for so much PBOC help when everything is going so well? Perhaps because Chinese banks are still trying to repay CNY3.7 trillion of short-term interbank debt and purchase CNY1 trillion of government bonds and repay maturing MLF injections,…and are worrying about SOE bond defaults.
As Every rhetorically summarizes “everything is going so well though: there just isn’t any cash as a result“ and concludes with a bad quantum physics pun: “Isn’
It the most dangerous part of the Heisenberg below the water?“
How much longer can Beijing pretend that the economy is remarkably strong… if only there was a few hundred billion more in liquidity sloshing around. Probably at least until the January inauguration event. After that, non-quantum reality may finally have to reassert itself.
China Slams Australia’s ‘Overreaction’: “How Arrogant & Shameless The Morrison Government Is!”
China’s trolling Australia over the murders of civilians in Afghanistan by its special forces isn’t finished. Far from apologizing as Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has demanded, instead on Tuesday the state-run English language newspaper Global Times described that “China’s goodwill” is “futile with evil Australia” as the headline reads.
And yes the offending and now viral tweet is still live on Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian’s Twitter account. The GT op-ed had this to say: “Australia’s evil acts toward China have made Chinese society not only surprised, but also disgusted. Many Chinese people feel as if they have swallowed a fly when hearing about Australia… How arrogant and shameless the Morrison government is!…Australia treats China’s goodwill with evil. It is not worthy to argue with it.“
“If it does not want to do business with China, so be it. Its politics, military and culture should stay far away from China – let’s assume the two countries are not on the same planet. As a warhound of the US, Australia should restrain its arrogance. Particularly, its warships must not come to China’s coastal areas to flex muscles, or else it will swallow the bitter pills.)” the op-ed said.
Quickly spotlighting details of the escalating trade spat and Beijing’s version of events which is underlying the latest China trolling (and fueling that is Australia’s criticisms of Beijing’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak), GT continued:
China has never associated bilateral trade with politics between the two countries. China imposed tariffs on Australian barley for dumping and government subsidies, and imposed tariffs on Australian wine for the same reason. Moreover, pests have been found in Australian timber that threaten China’s ecology, and Australian lobsters have been found to have high levels of cadmium. China didn’t fabricate them. In terms of trade, China won’t fear it if Australia brings the cases to the WTO.
China firmly maintains and advocates free trade. China and Australia are signatories to the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. Australia has carried out more than 100 anti-dumping and anti-subsidies investigations on Chinese products, while China only carried out a few against Australian products. Beijing does not fear going to the WTO with Canberra. China will acknowledge it if it loses, but the result will certainly be that all Australia’s accusations will fall flat.
Beijing knows it holds all the cards, and that Canberra will soon be desperate to normalize trade ties and relations once again, after major Aussie commodities exports to its number one foreign market earlier this month were blocked and/or were hit with huge tariffs by China.
Meanwhile, speaking of Monday’s unified ‘outrage’ among Australia’s political class and media and PM Morrison’s demand of an apology over the offending doctored image tweet showing an Australian soldier poised over an Afghan child with a bloody knife, the Chinese Embassy in Canberra issued an official statement on its website, saying “The rage and uproar of some Australian politicians and media is nothing but misreading of and overreaction” to the tweet.
“Yesterday, Secretary of [Australia’s] DFAT made a complaint to the Chinese Ambassador over a phone call about the twitter post of Mr Zhao Lijian. The Ambassador refuted the unwarranted accusations as absolutely unacceptable,” the statement said.
The statement continued:
The accusations made are simply to serve two purposes. One is to deflect public attention from the horrible atrocities by certain Australian soldiers. The other is to blame China for the worsening of bilateral ties. There may be another attempt to stoke domestic nationalism.
All of this is obviously not helpful to the resetting of bilateral relationship. It’s our advice that the Australian side face up to the crimes committed by the Australian soldiers in Afghanistan, hold those perpetrators accountable and bring justice to the victims.
But it appears each side is locked in a point of no return and there’s only bottom from here, especially given leadership in both countries is now tapping into and stoking popular domestic anger.
END
4/EUROPEAN AFFAIRS
5. RUSSIAN AND MIDDLE EASTERN AFFAIRS
IRAN
Despite the assassination of their nuclear leader, the Iranian nuclear program is full steam ahead..
(South Front)
Iranian Nuclear Program Gains Steam Following Assassination Of “Nuclear Soleimani” Near Tehran
Submitted by SouthFront,
US President Donald Trump is apparently set to slam the door and go to great lengths to show love to his friends in Tel Aviv before withdrawing from the White House.
On November 27, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a prominent Iranian professor of physics and quantum field theorist, was assassinated near the Iranian capital of Tehran. Formally, Fakhrizadeh was the head of its Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research, while Israel and the U.S. insist that he headed the Iranian nuclear weapons program.
Israeli media even called Fakhrizadeh “the Nuclear Soleimani” referring to the commander of the Iranian Qods Force, who was assassinated by a US drone strike in Iraq on January 3, 2020. That assassination almost led to a US-Iranian war and the White House even swallowed a ballistic missile strike on its bases in Iraq, while Iranian air defense forces accidentally shot down an airliner near Tehran. Fortunately, a larger war was avoided, but the region entered into a new spiral of tensions between the Israeli-US bloc and Iranian-led forces. The November assassination did not trigger an immediate military response from Tehran, but there are little doubts that it will also have negative consequences for regional stability.
According to US and Israeli media, the development of the Iranian nuclear program requires the following factors: time, money and specialists.
- Iran has already had a lot of time.
- Trump’s “maximum pressure campaign” was intended to target the ‘money’ factor, but Iran’s so-called resistance economy survived despite the pressure.
- Now, the US and Israel once again turned to the ‘specialists’ factor of this formula and they have capabilities to conduct politically-motivated assassinations as a part of what they call the ‘deterrence campaign’ against Iran.
Initial reports say that the car of Fakhrizadeh was targeted by a car bomb explosion and then was subjected to gunmen fire at Absard city. According to the Iranian Defense Ministry, Fakhrizadeh “was severely wounded in the course of the clashes between his security team and terrorists and was transferred to a hospital,” where he later succumbed to his wounds. Later it appeared in the unofficial version of events, claims that the attackers used a remotely-controlled machine gun that was installed in the trunk of a Nisan pickup. Then, the pickup and the gun were detonated. The Iranian Fars News report insists that the entire attack lasted for only 3 minutes and that no gunmen were involved.
The assassination demonstrates the particular gaps in the security of such prominent and high-ranking persons. It is no secret that the life of Fakhrizadeh was under threat for years, but he still moved around the country with a small security team with only two cars, and his car was not even armored. This posture may be partly explained by the cult of martyrdom on the all levels of Iranian society and the fact that Iranian officials are pretty close to ordinary people, especially in comparison with other Middle Eastern states. These factors allow the current political regime in Iran to resist unprecedented sanctions, political and even military pressure from its opponents, but at the same time creates additional security difficulties.
Immediately after the assassination, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Army were put on high alert and top Iranian officials vowed to take revenge for the attack. Also, on November 29, the Iranian Parliament decided to speed up the consideration of the bill that supposes to increase the level of uranium enrichment. As a “double urgency”, it was ratified with 232 votes from a total of 246 MPs attending the session. The final vote on the adoption of the law may take place on December 2. The bill states that Iran would now produce at least 120kg of uranium enriched to 20% per year. In comparison, the Iranian nuclear deal, from which the Trump administration unilaterally withdrew, allowed Iran to enrich uranium to a maximum of 3.67%. In addition, under the bill in consideration, the government will have to put in operation one thousand additional centrifuges at the Natanz and Fordo nuclear facilities within a year. The bill also supposes an immediate return to the project for the reconstruction of the Arak nuclear reactor, which existed before the signing of the nuclear deal. Therefore, instead of slowing down the Iranian nuclear program, the assassination of Fakhrizadeh led to a public increase of the Iranian activity in the field. The United States and Israel will likely call these actions a great threat to global security and state that they are obliged to respond to the growing Iranian threat.
6.Global Issues
CORONAVIRUS UPDATE/GLOBE
US COVID Hospitalizations Hit New Record, Vietnam Halts International Flights After 1st COVID Case In 3 Months: Live Updates
As warnings about a “long dark winter” ahead intensify, with the NYT once again quoting scientists projecting death tolls and case tallies several times larger than what we have seen already, hospitalizations in the US have hit a new record high with more than 96k patients admitted to hospitals around the country.
However, even as daily tests now top 2 million, the number of new cases in the US is still falling, continuing an incipient trend that started just before the Thanksgiving holiday.
Source: COVID Tracking Project
Still, the alarming surge in hospitalizations over the past month would suggest that higher death tolls might be in store, as rural hospitals are overwhelmed by the crush of severely ill patients.
Meanwhile, the biggest news on the vaccine front has to do with Pfizer’s latest vaccine development: the company has officially filed for emergency use approval in the EU on Tuesday – after making the same request of authorities in the US last week.
Outside the US, Vietnam Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has ordered the country’s aviation authority to halt international commercial flights after health authorities reported the country’s first local cases in almost three months, according to a posting on the government’s website. The premier – who added that “rescue” flights bringing Vietnamese home from abroad should continue – instructed the Ho Chi Minh City government to quickly trace and isolate everyone who came in contact with those who tested positive this week.
Here’s a roundup of COVID news from around the world and in the US:
Ireland, one of the first countries in western Europe to return to lockdown in late October, began reopening its economy on Tuesday. Non-essential stores welcomed shoppers back. Restaurants will reopen later this week, as well as bars serving food. Bars that only serve drinks will remain closed (Source: Bloomberg).
Jean Stephenne, chairman of German biotech company CureVac NV, said he is confident the company’s Covid vaccine will be ready in the first quarter of 2021, and there is no reason to suggest its efficiency won’t match that of rivals. “We’re running a few months behind Pfizer, but confident on prospect for February-March,” he said (Source: Bloomberg).
7. OIL ISSUES
8 EMERGING MARKET ISSUES
Your early morning currency/gold and silver pricing/Asian and European bourse movements/ and interest rate settings TUESDAY morning 7:00 AM….
Euro/USA 1.1978 UP .0041` REACTING TO MERKEL’S FAILED COALITION/ REACTING TO +GERMAN ELECTION WHERE ALT RIGHT PARTY ENTERS THE BUNDESTAG/ huge Deutsche bank problems ///ITALIAN CHAOS//CORONAVIRUS/PANDEMIC/TRUMP POSITIVE WITH VIRUS /AND NOW ECB TAPERING BOND PURCHASES/JAPAN TAPERING BOND PURCHASES /USA RISING INTEREST RATES /FLOODING/EUROPE BOURSES /GREEN
USA/JAPAN YEN 104.36 UP 0.049 (Abe’s new negative interest rate (NIRP), a total DISASTER/NOW TARGETS INTEREST RATE AT .11% AS IT WILL BUY UNLIMITED BONDS TO GETS TO THAT LEVEL…
GBP/USA 1.3330 DOWN 0.0005 (Brexit March 29/ 2019/ARTICLE 50 SIGNED/BREXIT FEES WILL BE CAPPED/
USA/CAN 1.2973 DOWN .0018 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 TUESDAY morning in Europe, the Euro ROSE BY 41 basis points, trading now ABOVE the important 1.08 level RISING to 1.1978 Last night Shanghai COMPOSITE UP 60.18 PTS OR 1.77%
//Hang Sang CLOSED UP 226.19 PTS OR .86%
/AUSTRALIA CLOSED UP 1,04%// EUROPEAN BOURSES ALL GREEN
Trading from Europe and Asia
EUROPEAN BOURSES ALL GREEN
2/ CHINESE BOURSES / :Hang Sang CLOSED UP 2266.19 PTS OR .86%
/SHANGHAI CLOSED UP 60.18 PTS OR 1.77%
Australia BOURSE CLOSED UP 1.04%
Nikkei (Japan) CLOSED UP 353.92 POINTS OR 1.34%
INDIA’S SENSEX IN THE GREEN
Gold very early morning trading: 1808.90
silver:$23.43-
Early TUESDAY morning USA 10 year bond yield: 0.862% !!! UP 2 IN POINTS from THURSDAY’S night in basis points and it is trading WELL BELOW resistance at 2.27-2.32%.
The 30 yr bond yield 1.601 UP 2 IN BASIS POINTS from MONDAY night.
USA dollar index early TUESDAY morning: 91.73 DOWN 13 CENT(S) from THURSDAY’s close.
This ends early morning numbers TUESDAY MORNING
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And now your closing TUESDAY NUMBERS \1: 00 PM
Portuguese 10 year bond yield: 0.08% UP 5 in basis point(s) yield from YESTERDAY/
JAPANESE BOND YIELD: +.02.% DOWN 1 BASIS POINTS from YESTERDAY/JAPAN losing control of its yield curve/56
SPANISH 10 YR BOND YIELD: 0.12%//UP 4 in basis point yield from yesterday.
ITALIAN 10 YR BOND YIELD:0.68 UP 6 points in basis points yield from yesterday./
the Italian 10 yr bond yield is trading 56 points higher than Spain.
GERMAN 10 YR BOND YIELD: FALLS TO –.52% IN BASIS POINTS ON THE DAY//
THE IMPORTANT SPREAD BETWEEN ITALIAN 10 YR BOND AND GERMAN 10 YEAR BOND IS 1.87% AND NOW ABOVE THE THE 3.00% LEVEL WHICH WILL IMPLODE THE ENTIRE ITALIAN BANKING SYSTEM. AT 4% SPREAD THERE WILL BE A HUGE BANK RUN…
END
IMPORTANT CURRENCY CLOSES FOR TUESDAY
Closing currency crosses for TUESDAY night/USA DOLLAR INDEX/USA 10 YR BOND YIELD/1:00 PM
Euro/USA 1.2042 UP 104 or 104 basis points
USA/Japan: 104.39 UP 0.072 OR YEN DOWN 7 basis points/
Great Britain/USA 1.3407 UP .0072 POUND UP 72 BASIS POINTS)
Canadian dollar UP 42 basis points to 1.2949
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The USA/Yuan, CNY: closed UP TO 6.5723 ON SHORE (UP)..
THE USA/YUAN OFFSHORE: 6.5564 (YUAN up)..
TURKISH LIRA: 7.85 EXTREMELY DANGEROUS LEVEL/DEATH WISH.
the 10 yr Japanese bond yield at +0.02%
Your closing 10 yr US bond yield UP 7 IN basis points from MONDAY at 0.919 % //trading well ABOVE the resistance level of 2.27-2.32%) very problematic USA 30 yr bond yield: 1.657 UP 8 in basis points on the day
Your closing USA dollar index, 91.30 down 57 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 TUESDAY: 12:00 PM
London: CLOSED UP 118.54 1.89%
German Dax : CLOSED UP 91.14 POINTS OR .69%
Paris Cac CLOSED UP 63.09 POINTS 1.14%
Spain IBEX CLOSED UP 63.90 POINTS or 0.79%
Italian MIB: CLOSED UP 38.94 POINTS OR 0.18%
WTI Oil price; 44.61 12:00 PM EST
Brent Oil: 47.49 12:00 EST
USA /RUSSIAN / RUBLE RISES: 75.68 THE CROSS LOWER BY 0.77 RUBLES/DOLLAR (RUBLE HIGHER BY 77 BASIS PTS)
TODAY THE GERMAN YIELD RISES TO –.52 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 f0r Oil, 4:00 pm/and 10 year USA interest rate:
WTI CRUDE OILPRICE 4:30 PM : 44.36//
BRENT : 47,35
USA 10 YR BOND YIELD: … 0.919..up 7 basis points…
USA 30 YR BOND YIELD: 1.66 up 9 basis points..
EURO/USA 1.2073 ( UP 135 BASIS POINTS)
USA/JAPANESE YEN:104.30 DOWN .010 (YEN UP 1 BASIS POINTS/..
USA DOLLAR INDEX: DOWN 64 cent(s)/91,23
The British pound at 4 pm Britain Pound/USA:1.34266 UP 91 POINTS
the Turkish lira close: 7.83
the Russian rouble 75.83 UP 0.61 Roubles against the uSA dollar. (UP 61 BASIS POINTS)
Canadian dollar: 1.2937 UP 54 BASIS pts
German 10 yr bond yield at 5 pm: ,-0.53%
The Dow closed UP 184.49 POINTS OR 0.60%
NASDAQ closed UP 156.37 POINTS OR 1.28%
VOLATILITY INDEX: 20.81 CLOSED UP .24
LIBOR 3 MONTH DURATION: 0.227%//libor dropping like a stone
USA trading today in Graph Form
Gold, Stocks, & Bond Yields Surge As Dollar Purge Continues
Since the election, and the ongoing roll out of Biden’s nominees for economic and policy teams, the dollar has been on a one-way streak lower…
Source: Bloomberg
The dollar is unchanged versus its fiat peers since Jan 2015…
Source: Bloomberg
And it appears the plunge in the dollar is being recognized by gold enthusiasts who bid the barbarous relic back above $1800, erasing last week’s end of month losses…
Interestingly, after recent chatter of a rotation from gold into bitcoin, the two alternative currencies reversed some of that rotation today…
Source: Bloomberg
And as the dollar dumped, so did bonds, with bond yields spiking dramatically…
Source: Bloomberg
Those are some violent moves… but that’s what happens when you “meddle with the primary forces of nature”…
Stocks started December as they did in November – by melting up… but smaller than hoped for stimulus chatter sparked some weakness late on. Nasdaq was the day’s winner and The Dow (and Small Caps) the laggard but all the majors ended green…
Energy stocks smashed higher at the open, but faded back significantly as the day wore on. Industrials lagged on the day as stimulus headlines appeared to disappoint a hungry market…
Source: Bloomberg
And in case you wondered just WTF was going on – it’s simple – a massive engineered short-squeeze! That is a 170% surge off the March lows…
Source: Bloomberg
Treasury yields started to snap higher today around the European open then accelerated around 5amET. After Europe closed, yields largely stopped surging…
Source: Bloomberg
Did Cylicals/Defensives get too far ahead of bond yields?
Source: Bloomberg
Both EU and JP investors can now grab positive yields from buying USTs with a currency hedge…
Source: Bloomberg
Bitcoin traded up to $19,918 intraday before falling back…
Source: Bloomberg
Dollar’s dive today seemed to mirror the gains in Yuan…
Source: Bloomberg
Gold appears to have decoupled from the plunge in real yields…
Source: Bloomberg
While gold and silver rallied, crude lost ground amid OPEC uncertainties…
But copper managed more gains…
Gold’s gains today outweighed Yuan’s rise also, erasing last week’s losses…
Source: Bloomberg
Spot Platinum surged back above $1000 for the first time since August…
Source: Bloomberg
Finally, while the dollar is being dumped broadly speaking, we note that there is a modest dollar shortfall worldwide – nothing to worry about for now – but worth keeping an eye on…
Source: Bloomberg
‘Soft’ survey data is starting to tumble back towards ‘hard’ data reality as hope is fading fast…
Source: Bloomberg
And, as we noted earlier, Citi’s Panic-Euphoria model has reached extremes not seen since the peak of the dotcom bubble…
As Tobias Lefkovich notes, this is not a good sign: “Current euphoric readings signal a 100% probability of losing money in the coming 12 months if we study historical patterns – indeed, we saw such levels back in early September as well right before a selloff in stocks.”
a)Market trading/LAST NIGHT/USA
b)MARKET TRADING/USA//Non farm payrolls
ii)Market data/USA
Markit data is always phony
(zerohedge)
US Manufacturing Surveys Send Mixed Signals As Employment Plunges
China’s overnight exuberance in its PMI surveys buoyed global stock markets but all eyes will be on US data this morning. As US ‘hard’ data has slumped for 4 straight months, ‘soft’ survey data has continued to surprise to the upside on the heels of hope.
- Markit US Manufacturing PMI ROSE to 56.7 (vs 56.7 flash vs 56.7 exp vs 53.4 prior) – best since Sept 2014
- ISM Manufacturing DROPPED to 57.5 (vs 58.0 exp vs 59.3 prior)
Source: Bloomberg
ISM notes that despite strength in new orders (even though its growth dipped), manufacturers registered notable weakness in employment (contracting on the month)…
According to Markit, the rate of job creation was only marginal overall, with some firms stating that short-term uncertainty over demand and efforts to rein in spending weighed on workforce numbers.
Chris Williamson, Chief Business Economist at IHS Markit said:
“The manufacturing recovery kicked up a gear in November, with production growth accelerating to the highest for over six years.
“Most encouraging was the breakdown of the rise in new orders which underpinned the expansion. Although demand for consumer goods remained somewhat subdued, mainly reflecting rising virus infection rates, demand for investment goods such as business equipment and machinery rose especially sharply.
“The rise in investment spending sends a welcome signal that companies have become more optimistic about longer term prospects, something that was reinforced by a surge in firms’ expectations about production in the year ahead – even in consumer-facing sectors – to the highest since early-2015.
“Confidence was boosted by encouraging vaccine news during the month, auguring well for life returning to normal at some point in the coming year, as well as hopes of increased stimulus spending and infrastructure investment following the election.”
However, as we noted above, ‘hope’ is starting to fade as ‘soft’ data reverts to ‘hard’ data overall…
Remember, “hope” is not a strategy!
iii) Important USA Economic Stories
Election chaos stories
Arizona testimoney in front of Republican state senators and represenatives:
a high degree of confidence that there are more illegal votes in Arizona voted upon than Biden’s margin of victory
(Epoch Times)
“High Degree Of Confidence”: Deep-Dive Data Analyst Says More Illegal Votes In AZ Than Biden Margin Of Victory
Pro-Trump statistician Matt Braynard – whom the FBI just asked to share his findings concerning his data-driven investigation into illegal and fraudulent voting in the November election – says he’s confident that there were more illegally-cast ballots in Arizona than Joe Biden’s current margin of victory.
“I have a high degree of confidence that the number of ballots that were cast that should not have been cast, illegal ballots, surpasses the margin of victory as it stands right now,” said Braynard said at a public hearing on election issues in Arizona.
Braynard, a former Trump data strategist who runs the Voter Integrity Project, made headlines after raising money to purchase voting information for a ‘deep-dive’ analysis looking for fraudulent activity. Earlier in the hearing, he said that he and his team called Arizona residents who had never voted before, yet voted in this election. One of them is a felon who can’t legally vote.
Other voters say they were issued mail-in ballots but did not request them.
Braynard says ‘no one’ can be confident of the vote count until questions he’s raised over voting integrity have been answered.
Following Braynard’s comments, data expert Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai said that the only way for Biden to have caught up with Trump’s lead in Arizona following election day is if votes came in a 130% Biden and -30% for Trump.
Switching gears to voting machines – Col. Phil Waldron (Ret.), a cybersecurity expert, testified that his team warned the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that voting machines are vulnerable to hackers and manipulation.
“When I started working on this project in August, I called them up and said, you guys have got to come out and look at it. They did. They spent an initial three hours going through this data. At the end of that, one of them said, ‘I think I need to go outside and throw up,” said Waldron, speaking of Dominion Votings Systems machines.
More via Zachary Stieber at The Epoch Times
DHS employees followed up multiple times, traveling to Dallas to obtain over 600 gigabytes of data from another team working with Waldron. Waldron’s team gave them another over 200 gigabytes and they analyzed that.
“After they analyzed, there was a scan, a passive scan done. They conducted a limited scan and determined that there were vulnerabilities. They held numerous meetings,” Waldron said.
Asked why nothing seemed to be done before the election to fix the vulnerabilities, Waldron said he believed it was either incompetence or a lack of commitment to doing something, at the senior leader level.
Woldron also says he’s seen traffic going from Dominion voting machines to Frankfurt, Germany (where you may recall, a trove of documents released by WikiLeaks (Vault7) claimed that the US Consulate is a ‘covert CIA hacker base):
Georgia’s Raffensperger Suddenly Concerned About “Illegal” Out Of State Votes
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) – who President Trump last Thursday called an “enemy of the people” for allegedly making some type of “deal” with Democratic operative Stacey Abrams over ballot harvesting – said on Monday that he’s suddenly concerned with progressive groups trying to sign up new voters in advance of a Jan. 5 Senate runoff which could flip the GOP-controlled chamber blue.
“These third-party groups have a responsibility to not encourage illegal voting. If they do so, they will be held responsible,” said Raffensperger, who added that his office is allegedly investigating efforts by America Votes, Vote Forward and the New Georgia Project to encourage people living outside Georgia to register to vote in the state.
Raffensperger also said his office has launched several investigations into accusations of fraud committed during the November election.
On Thursday, President Trump slammed Raffensperger – telling reporters: “You’re not allowed to harvest, but I understand the secretary of state, who is really an enemy of the people, the secretary of state, and whether he’s Republican or not, this man, what he’s done, supposedly he made a deal and you’ll have to check this, where she is allowed to harvest but in other areas they’re not allowed.”
Stacey Abrams – the failed GA gubernatorial candidate who failed to concede – has been credited with helping to register 800,000 people to vote in Georgia for the 2020 election, though she claims it wasn’t done through ballot harvesting, a process by which an individual will collect ballots from voters and turn them in.
Biden ‘won’ Georgia by 12,670 votes.
Meanwhile, the odds of Democrats gaining control of the Senate are currently at 29% according to PredictIt.
Pennsylvania Lawmakers Formally Introduce Resolution To Dispute 2020 Elections Results
Just as we previewed over the weekend, Republican state lawmakers in Pennsylvania on Monday introduced a resolution to dispute the results of the 2020 election.
As The Epoch Times’ Ivan Pentchoukov reports, the text of the resolution, first previewed in a memo on Nov. 27, states that the executive and judicial branches of the Keystone State’s government usurped the legislature’s constitutional power to set the rules of the election.
“Officials in the Executive and Judicial Branches of the Commonwealth infringed upon the General Assembly’s authority under the Constitution of the United States by unlawfully changing the rules governing the November 3, 2020, election in the Commonwealth,” the resolution (pdf) states.
The resolution calls on the secretary of the Commonwealth to withdraw the “premature certification” of the presidential election and delay certifying other races, declares the 2020 election to be in dispute, and urges the U.S. Congress “to declare the selection of presidential electors in this Commonwealth to be in dispute.”
Members of the Pennsylvania General Assembly said in a statement, “A number of compromises of Pennsylvania’s election laws took place during the 2020 General Election. The documented irregularities and improprieties associated with mail-in balloting, pre-canvassing, and canvassing have undermined our elector process and, as a result, we cannot accept certification of the results in statewide races.”
They added, “We believe this moment is pivotal and important enough that the General Assembly needs to take extraordinary measures to answer these extraordinary questions. We also believe our representative oversight duty as Pennsylvania’s legislative branch of government demands us to re-assume our constitutional authority and take immediate action.”
The proposed text lists three steps taken by the judicial and executive branches to change the rules of the election.
First, on Sept. 17, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court “unlawfully and unilaterally” extended the deadline by which mail ballots could be received, mandated that ballots without a postmark would be treated as timely, and allowed for ballots without a verified voter signature to be accepted, the resolution says.
Second, on Oct. 23, upon a petition from the secretary of the commonwealth, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that signatures on mail-in ballots need not be authenticated.
And third, on Nov. 2, the secretary of the commonwealth “encouraged certain counties to notify party and candidate representatives of mail-in voters whose ballots contained defects,” the resolution says.
All of the changes are contrary to the Pennsylvania Election Code, which requires mail-in ballots to be received at 8 p.m. on Election Day, mandates that signatures on the mail-in ballots be authenticated, and forbids the counting of defective mail-in ballots.
The resolution also lists a variety of election irregularities and potential fraud, including the issues brought up by witnesses during the hearing before the Pennsylvania Senate Majority Policy Committee on Nov. 25.
“On November 24, 2020, the Secretary of the Commonwealth unilaterally and prematurely certified results of the November 3, 2020 election regarding presidential electors despite ongoing litigation,” the resolution states.
“The Pennsylvania House of Representatives has the duty to ensure that no citizen of this Commonwealth is disenfranchised, to insist that all elections are conducted according to the law, and to satisfy the general public that every legal vote is counted accurately.”
“So, we’re gonna do a resolution between the House and Senate, hopefully today,” he told Steve Bannon’s War Room on Friday.
Powell: Dominion Server Removed From Fulton County While Lawyers Sought Restraining Order
Authored by Ivan Pantchoukov via The Epoch Times,
Attorney Sidney Powell said on Monday that someone had removed a Dominion Voting Systems server from a recount center in Fulton County, Georgia.
“Someone went down to the Fulton center where the votes and Dominion machines were, claimed there was a software glitch and they had to replace the software, and it seems that they removed the server,” Powell told “Lou Dobbs Tonight” in an interview aired on Nov. 30.
Powell added that her team does not know where the server is.
Dominion’s software and hardware features prominently in two lawsuits filed by Powell in Georgia and Michigan.
The lawsuits claim that the software is vulnerable to manipulation by hackers and was used to alter to vote totals in the presidential election.
Powell prefaced her comment by saying that the alleged removal of the server took place when her team was seeking a temporary restraining order against the resetting, wiping, or altering of any of the Dominion machines. A district court judge subsequently granted the temporary restraining order on Sunday night.
Powell said her team is making significant progress in both cases while preparing to files suits in other states. She said the lawsuits are meant to stop the runoff elections in Georgia in January “because all the machines are infected with the software code that allows Dominion to shave votes from one candidate and give them to another and other features that do the same thing.”
“Different states shaved different amounts of votes. The system was set up to shave and flip different votes in different states. Some people were targeted as individual candidates. It’s really the most massive and historical egregious fraud the world has ever seen,” Powell said.
Dominion has vehemently denied these and other allegations.
A Dominion Voting Systems server crashed on Nov. 29 during the second recount in Georgia, according to a spokesman for Fulton County.
“A newly purchased Dominion mobile server crashed,” the spokesman told The Epoch Times via email. “Technicians from Dominion have been dispatched to resolve the issue.”
The office of the Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, was told of the issue and is aware of attempts to fix the problem, the spokesman said.
Dominion and Raffensperger’s office didn’t immediately respond to emailed requests for comment.
The judge presiding over the Powell case in Georgia has scheduled a hearing concerning the temporary restraining order for Dec. 4.
According to an affidavit from a GOP poll worker that was filed alongside the request for a restraining order, an election official wrote in a message on Nov. 25 that some ballot-counting machines were to be reset on Nov. 30 so they could be used in the machine recount requested by the Trump campaign given the tight margin with former Vice President Joe Biden.
Upon seeing the message, the poll worker said they notified their supervisor because they were concerned about wiping of the machines.
“I am seeing lots of notices from lawyers about possibly impounding the machines,” the poll worker wrote, according to the affidavit. “Lawyers are now saying that the machines should be confiscated immediately before this happens to protect forensic data. They are saying those machines need to be impounded ASAP. Yikes. Maybe I’m being overly paranoid but let’s be sure this is what we’re supposed to be doing.”
The supervisor responded: “It’s what we are supposed to do. It will take a court order to stop this process—so I guess we need to keep watching the news. If we get a court order to stop, we will see it in our SOS information.”
When the poll worker asked if the reset will wipe the forensic info from the machines, the manager said that “Atlanta already did it.”
end
ARIZONA/TODAY
(Epoch News)
Trump Ballots Defaulted and Switched to Biden Votes on Dominion System: Maricopa GOP Chairwoman
Maricopa County GOP chairwoman Linda Brickman on Nov. 30 testified before members of the Arizona State Legislature that she personally observed votes for President Donald Trump being tallied as votes for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden when input into Dominion machines.
Brickman, the GOP head of one of the country’s largest counties and a veteran county elections worker, submitted her testimony in a sworn affidavit under penalty of perjury. She testified that she and her Democratic partner witnessed “more than once” Trump votes default and shift to Biden when they were entering votes into Dominion machines from ballots that couldn’t be read by machines.
She alleged that she was later threatened by election supervisors at the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center (MCTEC) for speaking out about what she had witnessed.
“I observed, with my Democratic partner, the preparation of a new ballot, since the original one was soiled, or wouldn’t go through the tabulators. I read her a Trump Republican ballot, and as soon as she entered it into the system, the ballot defaulted on the screen to a Biden Democratic ballot,” Brickman told GOP Arizona State legislators on Monday.
She remarked that when she reported the issue to election supervisors, others in the room also commented that they had “witnessed the same manipulation.”
“We were never told what, if any corrective action was taken,” Brickman continued. “All I know is the next day, I was called outside the room that I was working in for signature verification by a supervisor who said, ‘I understand you caused some problems this week and you thought our machines were not working correctly.’
“I was told at that point in time that I could not discuss anything or talk about what was going on.
“Many people were threatened,” Brickman told the hearing. “They were told that their voices would be suppressed, they would have to leave the room and not work there again. I’m here because I think this is our duty to speak the truth.”
She told the hearing that she was yelled at and “reprimanded” by her own supervisor, who accused her of causing trouble and “bringing things up that I shouldn’t have.”
She also said that during testing and certification of the Dominion voting machines on Nov. 18, she had refused to approve the certification of the Dominion system during a meeting with Secretary of State Katie Hobbs because the machines had malfunctioned during the test, and were shut down and reset by Dominion staff instead of corrected.
She said that no explanation was given about the errors. “We could see the machines but we could not see or observe the software behind the machine to confirm what had really gone on,” she added.
Trump’s legal team had previously pointed to witness testimony alleging that election results from Dominion Voting Systems are susceptible to manipulation—an allegation that the company has repeatedly denied.
Writing for The Wall Street Journal in a piece published this week, Dominion CEO John Poulos said recent claims against the company “fueled the harassment of election officials and Dominion employees across the country,” including death threats.
“The lies and smears have no basis in fact but they do real damage to our democracy by casting doubt on the legitimacy of the electoral process. The false allegations should be retracted immediately,” he said.
Dominion has not responded yet to a request from The Epoch Times for comment.
Brickman in the hearing also testified to a number of other voting irregularities that she directly observed, including the constant lowering of signature verification standards by her election supervisors in order to “move more quickly” and process the higher amount of early and mail-in ballots received for the November election.
“Standards were lowered from approximately 15 points of similarities … reduced to a minimum of three, and then lowered to one, and ultimately none,” Brickman said, recalling that she was told to “just pass each signature verification through.”
“We were told, ‘Too many rejections have already been turned in … we need to move more quickly.’ This is not the way an election should be run. Where’s the integrity?” Brickman challenged.
The GOP chairwoman also said she observed signatures on envelopes that were completely different from the name of the listed voter being let through by election supervisors.
“So the ones who signed the envelopes were not the actual voters, but these were allowed to go through with ‘Maricopa County verified’ stamped on the outside of each affidavit envelope,” she said.
Batches of envelopes bearing the same handwriting for different signatures were also observed, she said.
“There were at least 30 ballots that I saw at one time, that were signed by the same handwriting but on different voters’ names,” Brickman testified. “When I asked if the county attorney would be alerted for possible fraud, I was told ‘no,’ that supervisors would take care of it.”
One of the most “egregious” irregularities, Brickman said, was the turning away of Trump votes as duplicated votes or “overvotes” because the voter filled checked both the bubble for Trump on the ballot but also wrote in the president’s name under the write-in candidate.
“This would continue on as an overvote, which means no vote was counted at all despite the policy having been changed to allow these overvotes. Supervisors contradicted their own policies where the [voter’s] intent was clear,” she said.
“I am here today again not as an expert in the Dominion software but as a voter in Maricopa County who wants to hear and speak the truth even though myself and others have been suppressed to speak before you now,” Brickman told the hearing.
“There should be integrity,” she said.
end
EMAIL ROBERT TO ME: (ON THE ELECTION)
In answer to your question
The only solution is that the election should be ruled null and void by the Supreme Court and it should be thrown into the House of Representatives.
NEW YORK, NEW JERSEY
this is really devastating; one third of all small business in NY and New Jersey have closed
(zerohedge)
“It’s Really Bad” – Almost One-Third Of Small Businesses In NY, NJ Have Closed
Here comes the next recession as nearly one-third of small businesses in New York and New Jersey remain closed since the virus pandemic began earlier this year.
The NYPost outlines small business data from Opportunity Insights and New Jersey Business & Industry Association paint a troubling outlook for the rest of 2020 into 2021.
Opportunity Insights’ TrackingTheRecovery.Org, a Harvard database that monitors economic activity for the US, currently says 27.8% of small businesses in New York remain closed. The same goes for New Jersey, where 31.2% of small businesses had not reopened.
The New Jersey Business & Industry Association reports similar figures with 28% of New Jersey’s small businesses have closed up shop this year.
With top federal health officials on Sunday warning about a post-Thanksgiving spike in COVID-19, the reemergence of the virus in New York and New Jersey, along with stricter social distancing measures, means that more small businesses may be decimated in the months ahead.
“It’s really bad,” Eileen Kean, New Jersey state director of the National Federation of Independent Businesses, told the Star-Ledger.
“And without federal dollars coming into New Jersey, the Main Street stores and other establishments are not gonna make it through the winter,” Kean said.
“It’s devastating how many restaurants have shuttered and jobs have been lost,” said Andrew Rigie, executive director of NYC Hospitality Alliances.
“And with the infection rate rising and the looming threat of indoor dining closing again, many more will close unless the government provides adequate support to these small businesses,” Rigie said.
On top of the small business closures in both states, 300,000 New Yorkers have filed a formal change of address notices with the U.S. Postal Service from March 1 to October 31. The rapid population decline suggests consumption at small businesses will continue to suffer well into 2021.
This all means that New York City’s economic recovery will lag the rest of the country. As explained by Mark Zandi, the chief economist for Moody’s Analytics, the city’s recovery might not be seen until 2025:
“This is an event that struck right at the heart of New York’s comparative advantages,” Zandi said. “Being globally oriented, being stacked up in skyscrapers and packed together in stadiums: the very thing that made New York the pandemic undermined New York, was upended by it.”
UPDATE: Dominion Employee IDENTIFIED — Allegedly Caught on Video Downloading Data on USB, Plugging it Into a Laptop, Manipulating Data and then Palming the USB
Twitter user Code MonkeyZ posted video last night on Twitter and YouTube what is alleged to be Dominion workers using the internet and USBs to pass information between workers in Gwinnett County.
Via Ron – CodeMonkeyZ:
A Dominion representative at Gwinnett County Election Central, responsible for tabulating ballots and certifying results, download data to a USB from the Election Management Server, plug it into a laptop, manipulate the data, then palm the USB.
He downloads data from the Election Management Server onto a USB, inserts it into the external laptop, manipulates ballot scans in the file explorer, ejects the usb, palms it, distracts the people nearby, then suspiciously walks out of the room.
He downloads data from the Election Management Server onto a USB, inserts it into the external laptop, manipulates ballot scans in the file explorer, ejects the usb, palms it, distracts the people nearby, then suspiciously walks out of the room.
— Ron (@CodeMonkeyZ) December 1, 2020
Heres a closeup of the Dominion Rep’s badge with the Dominion logo on the bottom right, and his official title of “County Technician”. pic.twitter.com/ujJqMyphks
— Ron (@CodeMonkeyZ) December 1, 2020
Grab these videos ASAP and backup locally! They are high-risk for deletion.
Thanks @launa_usa for closely watching this Dominion Representative all night and filming him.
Thanks Neonrevolt over at Gab for helping with the vid upload.— Ron (@CodeMonkeyZ) December 1, 2020
UPDATE — The Dominion employee was identified on 4Chan.
His name is Xavier Khouri
Considering the amount of fraud, the continued lies and the number of ways we witnessed cheating in this year’s election does anyone really doubt what they witnessed here?
— Nick Madonna – President Elect (@lifeasametsfan) December 1, 2020
This raises serious questions.
Now that we know Dominion staff are manipulating the vote tabulation with an insecure USB chain of command, maybe we should look closely at the staff in all Dominion central counting centers including Maricopa county. https://t.co/YL421WEWYa
— Ron (@CodeMonkeyZ) December 1, 2020
White House Slams AG Barr’s Claims Of No Election Fraud: “There’s Been No Semblance Of A DoJ Investigation”
Update (1500ET): That did not take long. The President’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani has issued a statement:
Statement of Trump Legal Team on Bill Barr’s Comments on Voter Fraud
“With all due respect to the Attorney General, there hasn’t been any semblance of a Department of Justice investigation. We have gathered ample evidence of illegal voting in at least six states, which they have not examined. We have many witnesses swearing under oath they saw crimes being committed in connection with voter fraud. As far as we know, not a single one has been interviewed by the DOJ. The Justice Department also hasn’t audited any voting machines or used their subpoena powers to determine the truth.
“Nonetheless, we will continue our pursuit of the truth through the judicial system and state legislatures, and continue toward the Constitution’s mandate and ensuring that every legal vote is counted and every illegal vote is not. Again, with the greatest respect to the Attorney General, his opinion appears to be without any knowledge or investigation of the substantial irregularities and evidence of systemic fraud.”
* * *
* * *
Attorney General William Barr said Tuesday the Justice Department has not uncovered evidence of widespread voter fraud that would change the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
Last month, Barr issued a directive to U.S. attorneys across the country allowing them to pursue any “substantial allegations” of voting irregularities, if they existed, before the 2020 presidential election was certified.
And today, in an interview with The Associated Press, Barr said U.S. attorneys and FBI agents have been working to follow up specific complaints and information they’ve received…
“Most claims of fraud are very particularized to a particular set of circumstances or actors or conduct. They are not systemic allegations… And those have been run down; they are being run down,” Barr said.
“Some have been broad and potentially cover a few thousand votes. They have been followed up on.”
But, as AP reports, they’ve uncovered no evidence that would change the outcome of the election.
“To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election,”Barr told the AP.
Additionally, while Barr didn’t name Sidney Powell specifically, he added:
“There’s been one assertion that would be systemic fraud and that would be the claim that machines were programmed essentially to skew the election results….
And the DHS and DOJ have looked into that, and so far, we haven’t seen anything to substantiate that.“
Though we note from the above sentence that Barr did not deny the evidence, just that he and the DoJ had not found any, making one wonder just how hard they looked?
However, as AP admits (deep in its story), if people still believe there is evidence, they need to seek remedies through a civil case (comfortably distancing himself and the DoJ from any involvement)
“There’s a growing tendency to use the criminal justice system as sort of a default fix-all, and people don’t like something they want the Department of Justice to come in and ‘investigate,’” Barr said.
In the meantime, here are 20 ‘facts’ that don’t pass the smell test that perhaps AG Barr and his crack DoJ election team could probe a little harder…
We will not be holding our breath for President Trump’s response to AG Barr’s ‘findings’, as we suspect it’s coming given what he is watching…
end
Waste of time: Durham will do nothing
(zerohedge)
Durham Gets Special Counsel Upgrade ‘To Protect’ Russiagate Origins Investigation
Attorney General William Bar has upgraded US Attorney John Durham to special counsel, affording him extra protection against a Biden administration canceling his investigation into the origins of the FBI/DOJ Trump-Russia probe – which cost taxpayers over $40 million and dominated the news for over three years.
According to the Associated Press, Barr said Durham had been appointed special counsel in October under the same federal statue which governed Robert Mueller’s investigation in the Russia probe.
He said Durham’s investigation has been narrowing to focus more on the conduct of FBI agents who worked on the Russia investigation, known as Crossfire Hurricane.
The investigations grew out of allegations of cooperation between Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and Russians to help him defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton. –AP
“I decided the best thing to do would be to appoint them under the same regulation that covered Bob Muller, to provide Durham and his team some assurance that they’d be able to complete their work regardless of the outcome of the election,” Barr told AP, who added that the Durham investigation has “narrowed considerably” and is now “really is focused on the activities of the crossfire hurricane investigation within the FBI.”
Many had been expecting Durham to produce some type of report, indictment, or some type of findings prior to the 2020 election.
According to the Oct. 19 order obtained by AP, Barr authorized Durham “to investigate whether any federal official, employee or any person or entity violated the law in connection with the intelligence, counter-intelligence or law enforcement activities” used against the 2016 Trump campaign or members of the Trump administration.
A senior Justice Department official told the AP that although the order details that it is “including but not limited to Crossfire Hurricane and the investigation of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III,” the Durham probe has not expanded. The official said that line specifically relates to FBI personnel who worked on the Russia investigation before the May 2017 appointment of Mueller, a critical area of scrutiny for both Durham and for the Justice Department inspector general, which identified a series of errors and omissions in surveillance applications targeting a former Trump campaign associate.
AP notes that the focus is on the FBI, ‘rather than the CIA and the intelligence community,’ which essentially means former CIA Director John Brennan and current CIA Director Gina Haspel (who ran the London CIA bureau while the majority of operation crossfire hurricane took place on UK soil) are pretty much in the clear.
On Sunday, President Trump telegraphed the move in an interview with Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo.
Until and unless proven otherwise, we’re going to assume this is all political theater.
A little too late
Sec of State of Georgia finally opens up 250 new investigations upon seeing Sidney Powell law suit
You will recall that he has already certified the votes
Wolf of Washington
iv) Swamp commentaries)
Just in 5:20 pm
Martial law must be created now
THE CHINA CONNECTION: Parent company of Dominion Voting Systems Received $400 million from Swiss Investment Bank — 75% owned by the Chinese Government
An investigation into SEC filings has revealed that the firm which owns Dominion Voting Systems received $400 million dollars from a Swiss bank with close links to the Chinese government less than a month before the election.
This was first reported at Infowars.
The investigation centers on Staple Street Capital, which acquired Dominion Voting Systems in 2018.
From an InfoWars report:
Dominion Voting Systems operates voting machines in 28 states and has been accused by President Trump and his supporters of being involved in deleting millions of votes for Trump in addition to switching votes to Biden on election night.
“On Oct 8, 2020, Staple Street Capital filed SEC Form D offerings and sales amount of $400,000,000 with the Sales Compensation Recipient identified as UBS Securities,” states the investigation, which also notes that another payment of $200,000,000 was received in December 2014.
“UBS Securities is a swiss investment bank which owns 24.99% of UBS Securities Co LTD, a Chinese Investment Bank. The remaining 75% of UBS Securities CO LTD is owned by the Chinese government,” states the report.
The overall owners of UBS Securities Co LTD are;
– Beijing Guoxiang (33%)
– UBS (24.99%)
– Guangdong Comm. Group [zh] (14.01%)
– China Guodian (14%)
– COFCO Group (14%)
Aside from UBS, the other four owners of UBS Securities are all Communist Chinese front groups.
More…
“UBS Securities is a swiss investment bank which owns 24.99% of UBS Securities Co LTD, a Chinese Investment Bank. The remaining 75% of UBS Securities CO LTD is owned by the Chinese government,” states the report.
— Disclose.tv 🚨 (@disclosetv) December 1, 2020
More from The National Pulse:
Beijing Guoxiang is a state owned asset.
Guangdong Comm. Group 100% stakeholder is the Guangdong Provincial Government.
China Guodian is state owned enterprise administered for the SASAC for the state Council
COFCO Group is a state owned enterprise under the direct supervision of the SASAC.
SASAC The State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council (SASAC) is a special commission of the People’s Republic of China, directly under the State Council.
Our apologies to Inforwars.
v) King report/Courtesy of Chris Powell of GATA which includes the major swamp stories.
Trump to add China’s SMIC and CNOOC to defense blacklist
The Trump administration is poised to add China’s top chipmaker SMIC and national offshore oil and gas producer CNOOC to a blacklist of alleged Chinese military companies, according to a document and sources, curbing their access to U.S. investors and escalating tensions with Beijing weeks before President-elect Joe Biden takes office… https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-military-companies-exclusiv/exclusive-trump-to-add-chinas-smic-and-cnooc-to-defense-blacklist-sources-idUSKBN28A036
Powell stresses importance of lending programs, calls economic outlook ‘extraordinarily uncertain’
“Based on recent economic data, I continue to believe that a targeted fiscal package is the most appropriate federal response. I strongly encourage Congress to use the $455 billion in unused funds from the CARES Act to pass an additional bill with bipartisan support,” Mnuchin said. “The Administration is standing ready to support Congress in this effort to help American workers and small businesses that continue to struggle with the impact of COVID-19.”…
Powell called the recent news on vaccines “very positive” for the medium term, but said “significant challenges and uncertainties remain, “including timing, production and distribution, and efficacy across different groups.” “It remains difficult to assess the timing and scope of the economic implications of these developments with any degree of confidence,” he added…
The ‘Smartest Man in the Room’ Just Joined Sidney Powell’s Team
In her Georgia complaint, Sidney Powell included the declaration of Navid Keshavarz-Nia, an expert witness who stated under oath that there was massive computer fraud in the 2020 election, all of it intended to secure a victory for Joe Biden. Dr. Kershavarz-Nia’s name may not mean a lot to you, but it’s one of the weightiest names in the world when it comes to sniffing out cyber-security problems…The reason we know about his qualifications is that it takes seven paragraphs for him to list them in the declaration he signed to support the Georgia complaint…
So what does the brilliant Dr. Kershavarz-Nia have to say? This:
- Hammer and Scorecard is real, not a hoax (as Democrats allege), and both are used to manipulate election outcomes.
- Dominion, ES&S, Scytl, and Smartmatic are all vulnerable to fraud and vote manipulation — and the mainstream media reported on these vulnerabilities in the past.
- Dominion has been used in other countries to “forge election results.”
- Dominion’s corporate structure is deliberately confusing to hide relationships with Venezuela, China, and Cuba.
- Dominion machines are easily hackable.
- Dominion memory cards with cryptographic key access to the systems were stolen in 2019…
Dr. Keshavarz-Nia concluded with “high confidence that the election 2020 data were altered in all battleground states resulting in a [sic] hundreds of thousands of votes that were cast for President Trump to be transferred [sic] to Vice President Biden.”
This is going to be tough evidence for Democrats to counter. Back when the naïve Democrats thought Trump would be the one to commit fraud, they held congressional hearings and wrote articles about the voting machines’ vulnerability. And with the New York Times touting Dr. Keshavarz-Nia’s brilliance and his ability to sniff out fraud, they’ll struggle to that he’s not a reliable expert. Things are getting fun. https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/11/the_smartest_man_in_the_room_has_joined_sidney_powells_team.html
Arizona Voter Fraud Witness Army Col. Phil Waldron Confirms He Witnessed Dominion Communicating with Frankfurt on Election Day
@9NEWSNANCY: Dominion Executive: “Trump is not going to win. I made f***ing sure of that.”
Scientists at St. Jude may have figured out how COVID-19 kills, and more importantly, how to stop it – This virus triggers severe inflammation that cripples the lungs and damages other organs. St. Jude researchers say they’ve identified the mechanisms that drive COVID-19 inflammation and the medicines that can treat it.The team focused on cytokines, small proteins released in the body in response to inflammation. They concentrated on the most elevated cytokines in COVID-19 patients and found one duo that stood out.Turns out, the drugs to treat these cytokine reactions, or cytokine storms, already exist…So now these drugs will be used in clinical trials on COVID-19 patients. If that goes well, FDA approval is the next step… https://bit.ly/366IsLY
FROM MONDAY
Prominent Atty @LLinWood: Leaders of national & state @GOP are making NO effort to expose fraud in general election.
What??? Judge reversed order based on Defendants’ claim that GA Counties control voting machines.
Machines are owned by State & @GaSecofState administers state laws on elections. Why are GA officials determined to wipe these machines clean be resetting them?
Fulton County [Georgia] recount delayed by Dominion server crash, officials say
All counties are required to complete the recount by Dec. 2.
@MattBraynard: The @FBI has proactively and directly requested from me the VIP findings that indicates illegal ballots. By Tuesday, we will have delivered to the agency all of our data, including names, addresses, phone numbers, etc.
@correctthemedia: IMPOSSIBILITIES: On election night, 400k ballots were processed at 4 precincts in Michigan within just 2 hours and 38 minutes. The machines used in those 4 locations are only capable of processing a maximum of 100k votes within 2 hours and 38 minutes.
https://twitter.com/correctthemedia/status/1332126146088099844/photo/1
@RealAPolitics: The mail-in rejection rate in Fulton county Atlanta in 2016 was 4.5%. This year virtually 0
The dozen belated disclosures that turned the tide in Michael Flynn’s case
@CBSSunday: And now some breaking news on #SundayMorning… President-elect @JoeBiden and his wife @DrBiden won’t just be bringing their German shepherds, Major and Champ to the White House. The Bidens tell us exclusively that soon they’ll be joined by a cat. [NOT A PARODY!]
MSM journalism is dead; they are now cheerleaders and advocates!
Well that is all for today
I will see you WEDNESDAY night.
