India

The IMF just took a bucket of bath-salts to world economies as it slashes growth expectations for every major global economy (and emerging nations suffer too). Noting that Q1's upward surprise was "partly due to temporary factors", they reduce 2012's overall global growth to 3.5% adding that developments during the second quarter have been worse. Job creation has been hampered - with unemployment high in many advanced economies, especially among the young in the euro area periphery; but incoming data from the US also suggests less robust growth than forecast previously. While distortions to seasonal adjustment and payback from the unusually mild winter explain some of the softening, there also seems to be an underlying loss of momentum. Growth momentum has also slowed in various emerging market economies, notably Brazil, China, and India. This partly reflects a weaker external environment, but domestic demand has also decelerated sharply in response to capacity constraints. The baseline projections in this WEO Update incorporate weaker growth through much of the second half of 2012 in both advanced and key emerging market economies, reflecting the setbacks to the global recovery. Downside risks to this weaker global outlook continue to loom large. The most immediate risk is still that delayed or insufficient policy action will further escalate the euro area crisis. How long before those Q4 hockey-stick earnings forecasts get reduced?

By now it really, really should be obvious. While the insolvent "developed world" is furiously fighting over who gets to pay the bill for 30 years of unsustainable debt accumulation and how to pretend that the modern 'crony capitalist for some and communist for others' system isn't one flap of a butterfly's wings away from full on collapse mode, China is slowly taking over the world's real assets. As a reminder: here is a smattering of our headlines on the topic from the last year: ""World's Second (China) And Third Largest (Japan) Economies To Bypass Dollar, Engage In Direct Currency Trade", "China, Russia Drop Dollar In Bilateral Trade", "China And Iran To Bypass Dollar, Plan Oil Barter System", "India and Japan sign new $15bn currency swap agreement", "Iran, Russia Replace Dollar With Rial, Ruble in Trade, Fars Says", "India Joins Asian Dollar Exclusion Zone, Will Transact With Iran In Rupees", 'The USD Trap Is Closing: Dollar Exclusion Zone Crosses The Pacific As Brazil Signs China Currency Swap", and finally, "Chile Is Latest Country To Launch Renminbi Swaps And Settlement", we now get the inevitable: "Central bank pledges financial push in Africa." To summarize: first Asia, next Latin America, and now Africa.

Malaysia's state-owned oil and gas company just made a multibillion-dollar bet that Canada will choose to export its shale gas riches. Even though the odds of securing permission to export liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the Canadian west coast are still pretty poor, the costs of such an endeavor immense, and the timeline in question very long, Petronas is putting $5.5 billion on the table – far more than it has ever spent on an acquisition before – to secure a large foothold in the British Columbia shale gas scene.

It's yet another sign that things are getting serious in the global race for resources.

Katrina is still the best argument for self-reliance. Oh, no! Here comes FEMA.

Today's AM fix was USD 1565.50, EUR 1281.10 and GBP 1011.96 per ounce.
Yesterday’s AM fix was USD 1576.50, EUR 1284 and GBP 1012.91 per ounce.

Gold rose by 0.5% in New York yesterday and closed up $8.20 to $1,576.60/oz. Silver rose 0.93% or 25 cents to close at $27.09/oz.

Gold gradually ticked lower in Asian trading and has seen further slight weakness in European trading. Still robust physical demand is supporting gold at these levels and strong support is at the $1,500/oz level. 

European equities are seen softer at the North American crossover as continued concerns regarding global demand remain stubborn ahead of tonight’s Chinese GDP release. Adding to the risk-aversion is continued caution surrounding the periphery, evident in the Spanish and Italian bourses underperforming today. A key catalyst for trade today has been the ECB’s daily liquidity update, wherein deposits, unsurprisingly, fell dramatically to EUR 324.9bln following the central bank’s cut to zero-deposit rates. The move by the ECB to boost credit flows and lending has slipped at the first hurdle, as the fall in deposits is matched almost exactly by an uptick in the ECB’s current account. As such, it is evident that the banks are still sitting on their cash reserves, reluctant to lend, as the real economy is yet to see a boost from the zero-deposit rate. As expected, the European banks’ share prices are showing the disappointment, with financials one of the worst performing sectors, and CDS’ on bank bonds seen markedly higher. A brief stint of risk appetite was observed following the release of positive money supply figures from China, particularly the new CNY loans number, however the effect was shortlived, as participants continue to eye the upcoming growth release as the next sign of health, or lack thereof, from the world’s second largest economy.

• If Hilsenrath leaks a Fed party line and nobody cares, does Hilsenrath exist? Fed Weighs More Stimulus (WSJ)
• Clock Is Ticking on Crisis Charges (WSJ)
• South Korea in first rate cut since 2009 (FT)
• Shake-Up at New York Fed Is Said to Cloud View of Risk at JPMorgan (NYT)
• Italy stats office threatens to stop issuing data (Reuters)... because Italy is "out of money"
• China New Yuan Loans Top Forecasts; Forex Reserves Decline (Bloomberg).. and here are Chinese gold imports
• Italy Faces 'War' in Economic Revamp, Monti Warns (WSJ)... says Mario Monti from Sun Valley, cause Italy is "out of money"
• NY Fed to release Libor documents Friday (Reuters)
• U.S. House Again Votes to Repeal Obama’s Health Care Law (Bloomberg)
• Germany May Turn to Labor Programs as Crisis Worsens, Union Says (Bloomberg)
• Ireland to unveil stimulus package (FT)

Erste Group's Ronald Stoeferle, author of the critical "In gold we trust" report (2011 edition here) has just released the 6th annual edition of this all encompassing report which covers every aspect of the gold space. What follows are 120 pages of fundamental information which are a must read for anyone interested in the yellow metal. From the report:  "The foundation for new all-time-highs is in place. As far as sentiment is concerned, we definitely see no euphoria with respect to gold. Skepticism, fear, and panic are never the final stop of a bull market. In the short run, seasonality seems to argue in favor of a continued sideways movement, but from August onwards gold should enter its seasonally best phase. USD 2,000 is our next 12M price target. We believe that the parabolic trend phase is still ahead of us, and that our long-term price target of USD 2,300/ounce could be on the conservative side."

A lack of transparency, a lack of enforcement of law and a compliant media which failed to ask the hard questions and do basic investigative journalism led to the price fixing continuing and the manipulation continuing unchecked on such a wide scale for so long - until it was exposed recently. Similarly, the gold market has the appearance of a market that is a victim of “financial repression”. Given the degree of risk in the world – it is arguable that gold prices should have surged in recent months and should be at much higher levels today. The gold market has all the hallmarks of Libor manipulation but as usual all evidence is ignored until official sources acknowlege the truth. However, like LIBOR the gold manipulation 'conspiracy theory' is likely to soon become conspiracy fact.  It will then – belatedly - become accepted wisdom among 'experts.'  Experts who had never acknowledged it, failed to research and comment on it or had simply dismissed it as a “goldbug accusation.”  Financial repression means that most markets are manipulated today - especially bond and foreign exchange markets.

The Island-Renaissance fusion was a vision of the future in which high-speed AI-guided robots would operate on lightning-fast electronic pools, controlling the daily ebb and flow of the market. The AI Bots poured their valuable liquidity into Island, which, in turn, made it possible for the Bots to operate at high frequencies. They fed off one another, creating a virtuous cycle that would become un- stoppable. Little-known outfits such as Timber Hill, Tradebot, RGM, and Getco would soon start trading on Island, forming the emergent ganglia of a new space-age trading organism driven by machines. Tricked-out artificial intelligence systems designed to scope out hid- den pockets in the market where they could ply their trades powered many of these systems. In the process, the very structure of how the U.S. stock market worked would shift to meet the endless needs of the Bots. The human middlemen, though they didn’t know it, were being phased out, doomed as dinosaurs. And the machines were breeding more machines in an endless cycle of innovation, as programmers pushed the boundaries of speed more ruthlessly than Olympic sprinters. Trading algorithms would mutate, grow, and evolve, feeding off one another like evolving species in a vast and growing digital pool.

Lakshman Achuthan, co-founder of the Economic Cycle Research Institute, spoke with Bloomberg Television’s Tom Keene today and said that, "What we said back in December was that the most likely start date for the recession would be in Q1 and if not then, by the middle of 2012. I’m here to reaffirm that. I think we’re in a recession already." And just like us, the anagrammatic ECRI economist believes that "It is not all about GDP. It is about jobs. It is about income and sales. A recession is a vicious interplay among output, input, employment, income and sales" noting that recessions don't generally start with a cliff (that everyone looks for) adding (rather ominously): "there is this belief that somehow government or a central bank will stave off a recession. For the last 220 years, you do some history with Hamilton, which ended in a duel by the way... you have had 47 recessions. Why are we going to avoid the 48th?"

There are those who say gold may go to $10,000 or to $0, or somewhere in between; in a different universe, they would be the people furiously staring at the trees. For a quick look at the forest, we suggest readers have a glance at the chart below. It shows that just in the first five months of 2012 alone, China has imported more gold, a total of 315 tons, than all the official gold holdings of the UK, at 310.3 according to the WGC/IMF (a country which infamously sold 400 tons of gold by Gordon Brown at ~$275/ounce).

A preview of the key events in the coming week (which will see more Central Banks jumping on the loose bandwagon and ease, because well, that is the only ammo the academic econ Ph.D's who run the world have left) courtesy of Goldman Sachs whose Jan Hatzius is once again calling for GDP targetting, as he did back in 2011, just so Bill Dudley can at least let him have his $750 million MBS LSAP. But more on that tomorrow.

If you are reading this, you are probably a member of what the sociologists would term middle class (albeit at the upper end). This is precisely the segment of society which is poised to come off worst from what is coming. Here is a very disturbing idea. As this crisis develops, if you are an equity portfolio manager and you want to outperform the market, you are going to have to position your portfolio so that it benefits most from your own wealth destruction and that  of your family, friends and colleagues. Almost everybody is going to lose and there aren’t many places to hide. This is deeply unpleasant but you can blame the central planners. I’ve written about my own investing, e.g. gold and silver, equities in terms of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, etc. In this Thunder Road Report (below) and going forward, I will discuss this middle class theme and highlight positions I have in individual stocks, etc. The only good thing that can  come out of this is a rise in awareness. It’s just awful.

• Finland (which with Holland account for 50% of the Eurozone's AAA rated countries), just says "Ei" to stripping ESM subordination (Bloomberg)
• Libor Rate Scandal Set to Spread (WSJ)
• #ByeBarclays flashmob descends on bank (FinExtra)
• What is financial reform in China? (Pettis)
• Cities Consider Seizing Mortgages (WSJ)
• China Beige Book Shows Pickup Unseen in Official Data (BBG)
• China’s New Rules May Curb Credit Growth, CBRC Official Says (BBG)
• India Said to Pay in Euros for Iranian Oil Due to Rupee Hurdles (BBG)
• Wealthy Hit Hardest as France Raises Taxes (FT)
• Euro Bank Supervisor Faces Hurdles (WSJ)