Sunken Platinum Treasure Pegged at $3 billion

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — A shipwreck hunter says he has found the wreck of a World War II merchant ship that was torpedoed by a German U-boat off Cape Cod with a load of platinum now valued at $3 billion — perhaps the richest hoard ever discovered at the bottom of the sea.

Greg Brooks of Sub Sea Research, in Gorham, Maine, said a wreck in 700 feet of water 50 miles offshore is that of the Port Nicholson, a British vessel sunk in 1942. He said he and his crew positively identified the hull number using an underwater camera.

Salvage operations should begin this month or in early March aboard a 220-foot vessel called Sea Hunter with the assistance of a remotely operated underwater vessel, he said.

Brooks said the Port Nicholson was going from Nova Scotia to New York and carrying 71 tons of platinum when it was torpedoed. The platinum was intended as payment from the Soviet Union to the United States, he said.

A federal court judge has granted him the salvage rights, he said.

Read the rest here.

By P Gosselin

“THE CO2 LIES … pure fear-mongering … should we blindly trust the experts?”

That’s what Germany’s leading daily Bild (see photo) wrote in its print and online editions today, on the very day that renowned publisher Hoffmann & Campe officially released a skeptic book – one written by a prominent socialist and environmental figure.

This is huge. More than I ever could have possibly imagined. And more is coming in the days ahead! The Bild piece was just the first of a series.

Mark this as the date that Germany’s global warming movement took a massive body blow.

Today, not one, but two of Germany’s most widely read news media published comprehensive skeptical climate science articles in their print and online editions, coinciding with the release of a major climate skeptical book, Die kalte Sonne (The Cold Sun).

Germany has now plunged into raucus discord on the heated topic of climate change

What has set it all off? One of the fathers of Germany’s modern green movement, Professor Dr. Fritz Vahrenholt, a social democrat and green activist, decided to author a climate science skeptical book together with geologist/paleontologist Dr. Sebastian Lüning. Vahrenholt’s skepticism started when he was asked to review an IPCC report on renewable energy. He found hundreds of errors. When he pointed them out, IPCC officials simply brushed them aside. Stunned, he asked himself, “Is this the way they approached the climate assessment reports?”

Vahrenholt decided to do some digging. His colleague Dr. Lüning also gave him a copy of Andrew Montford’s The Hockey Stick Illusion. He was horrified by the sloppiness and deception he found. Well-connected to Hoffmann & Campe, he and Lüning decided to write the book. Die kalte Sonne cites 800 sources and has over 80 charts and figures. It examines and summarizes the latest science.

Conclusion: climate catastrophe is called off

The science was hyped. The book started hitting the bookshops today and has already hit no. 1 on the Amazon.de list for environment books. Indications show that it will climb very high in the overall bestseller charts. It’s published by a renowned publishing house and is now sending shock waves through the German climate science establishment. The first printing will produce 20,000 copies. I expect they will sell out rather quickly.

Today Germany’s national tabloid Bild (which has a whopping circulation of 16 million) devoted half of page 2 on an article called:

THE CO2 LIE

Renowned team of scientists claim the climate catastrophe is fear-mongering by politics“

The widely read Bild will follow with the rest of the series in the days ahead. In part I today Bild presents “What the IPCC of the UN doesn’t tell you.” Bild asks “what if the IPCC is wrong? Can we really blindly trust these experts? Are they really independent?”

Bild then writes:

The phenomenal prognoses of heat from the IPCC are pure fear-mongering.”

The Bild series is sure to cause radical environmentalists to seethe and lash out. Expect an all-out assault in the days and weeks ahead. Already the reaction from activists has been swift and virulent – though they have yet to read the book.

They never wanted the debate – and now the dam has broken

And the floods of skepticism are sweeping over the country. Worse, Germany’s flagship weekly news magazine Der Spiegel today also featured a 4-page exclusive interview with Vahrenholt, where he repeated that the IPCC has ignored a large part of climate science and that IPCC scientists exaggerated the impact of CO2 on climate. Vahrenholt said that by extending the known natural cycles of the past into the future, and taking CO2′s real impact into effect, we should expect a few tenths of a degree of cooling.

At a press conference today in Berlin, Vahrenholt, Lüning and publisher Hoffmann & Campe introduced the book and answered reporters’ questions. When asked why Hoffmann & Campe decided to publish “such a book”, the spokesman simply answered that the time is right – and there’s a real audience for the book. Even the weather timing was right! Germany is now experiencing it’s worst cold snap in 26 years. That makes it hard to deny lack of warming.

It needs to be pointed out Vahrenholt and Lüning are not skeptics; they are lukewarmers who have not been able to find any evidence of a coming climate catastrophe. They believe that man should switch to renewables, but do so in a rational manner: “Work fast, but don’t hurry.”

Read the rest here.

President Obama spent more than $85 billion bailing out General Motors and Chrysler three years ago. Now he claims credit for saving the industry, noting GM’s recent return to the top sales spot among automakers worldwide, Ford’s record profits (albeit achieved without federal funds), and the recent revival of Chrysler, (though Italy’s Fiat owns it). Regardless whether you supported or opposed the government bailouts, the reality is the Big Three’s assembly lines are humming again. Too bad Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency is preparing yet another killer hike in the Corporate Average Fuel Economy, only this time instead of merely inflicting massive costs on the industry and consumers, the coming regulation could very well demolish the Big Three for good.

Here’s why: The CAFE rule is the fleet-wide average fuel economy rating manufacturers are required by Washington to achieve. The new rule — issued in response to a 2010 Obama directive, not to specific legislation passed by Congress — would require automakers to achieve a 40.9 mpg CAFE average by 2021 and 54.5 mpg by 2025. In case you’re wondering whatever happened to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, it has been supplanted in the CAFE process by the EPA. The proposed regulation was designed, according to the EPA, “to preserve consumer choice — that is, the proposed standards should not affect consumers’ opportunity to purchase the size of vehicle with the performance, utility and safety features that meets their needs.” But the reality is that consumer choice will be the first victim.

Getting from the current 35 mpg CAFE standard to 54.5 can be achieved by such expedients as making air conditioning systems work more efficiently. We have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell to anybody who thinks that’s even remotely realistic. There is one primary method of increasing fuel economy — weight reduction. That in turn means automakers will have to use much more exotic materials, including especially the petroleum-processing byproduct known as “plastic.” But using more plastic will make it much more difficult to satisfy current federal safety standards. The bottom-line will be much more expensive vehicles and dramatically fewer kinds of vehicles.

The average price of a new vehicle will go up at least $3,200, according to NHTSA, but experts outside government such as the National Automobile Dealers Association say the cost will be substantially higher. The U.S. Energy Information Administration projects that there will be no vehicles costing $15,000 or less, the segment of the market that college students and low-income consumers depend upon. Altogether, an estimated seven million buyers will be forced out of the market for new cars.

Total costs, as calculated by the EPA, will exceed $157 billion, making this by far the most expensive CAFE rule ever. For comparison, the previous rule in 2010 cost $51 billion, according to the EPA. But the EPA doesn’t include this fact in its calculation: Annual U.S. car sales are 14-16 million units, yet over time, this rule will remove the equivalent of half a year’s worth of buyers. Will that be when the EPA takes a cue from Obamacare and issues an individual mandate that we all must buy Chevy Volts?

Source

(Reuters) – Move over, Cannes. Maine will be playing host to its first-ever international mustache film festival, part of its annual pageant that celebrates the bristly facial hair.

The festival set for March 30 in Portland will feature short films with storylines that involve mustaches or a main character who wears a mustache, said Nick Callanan, head of No Umbrella Media, a video production company organizing the event.

The idea for the mustache film festival, believed to be the first of its kind, grew out of an annual mustache pageant held locally to benefit arts and cancer research organizations, he said.

This year’s 2012 Stache Pag will feature contestants wearing all manner of mustaches, from handlebars to horseshoes, Callanan said. There are also the walrus and Fu Manchu styles, he said.

“It’s just about men expressing themselves,” he said.

Read the rest here.

On Tuesday, Nov. 6, Americans will head to the polls to elect the next President of the United States. Millions of dollars have already been spent on the election. Super PACs representing both President Obama and the Republican presidential candidates are experiencing a flood of monetary contributions while Americans are witnessing firsthand the effects of unlimited donations on their televisions and radio airwaves.

As the election nears, the records of both President Obama and his Republican Party challenger will be analyzed and scrutinized over and over again. Voters will decide who they think will do a better job not only governing the nation but also of leading it out of economic disaster.

But does the President have as much influence over the nation – and specifically the economy – as the electorate thinks he does?

“The president generally matters so much less than we think,” says journalist and Freakonomics Author Stephen Dubner. “Especially when it comes to the economy.”

Read the rest here (or watch the video).

WASHINGTON, Feb 6 (Reuters) – The IMF’s chief economist, Olivier Blanchard, said on Monday it looks like the ‘haircut’ on Greek private debt will be “very large” as negotiations between bondholders and the government drag on to cut Greece’s debt burden.

“With respect to private creditors at this stage it looks like the haircut will be very large,” Blanchard told an event at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Read the rest here.

Read: Ritholtz schools El Rushbo.

by CalculatedRisk on 2/06/2012 12:13:00 PM

There have been some recent articles arguing the “housing bottom is nowhere in sight”. That isn’t my view.

First there are two bottoms for housing. The first is for new home sales, housing starts and residential investment. The second bottom is for prices. Sometimes these bottoms can happen years apart.

For the economy and jobs, the bottom for housing starts and new home sales is more important than the bottom for prices. However individual homeowners and potential home buyers are naturally more interested in prices. So when we discuss a “bottom” for housing, we need to be clear on what we mean.

For new home sales and housing starts, it appears the bottom is in, and I expect an increase in both starts and sales in 2012.

To see the graphs and read the rest, go here.

What can one say of such insanity?

Yum beat by a penny and overseas operations are up 21% in same store sales …

Full article

Individuals and pros have picked up ETFs as a preferred market exposure vehicle.

Cairo (CNN) — Violent clashes near Egypt’s Interior Ministry on Monday left at least one person dead and 72 injured, a health ministry official said.

The man died of a gunshot wound, said Dr. Hisham Shiha, deputy health minister. Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim denied that officers were using anything but tear gas in confrontations with demonstrators.

Among those injured Monday was Salma Said, a prominent pro-democracy blogger who was reportedly shot in the face with bird shot by a police officer. Images of Said, her face and leg appearing to be bloodied, were circulating on the Internet.

Mona Seif, an activist and founder of the No to Military Trials for Civilians group, said officers dressed in civilian clothes infiltrated protest lines and arrested dozens of protesters. There was no immediate word from authorities about arrests on Monday. At least 40 people were arrested on Sunday, officials said.

A parliamentary committee visited the site to gather information and file a report on Monday’s clashes, an Interior Ministry spokesman said.

More than 80 people died in a riot at a soccer stadium in Port Said on Wednesday. As rival fans battled with rocks and chairs, some people suffocated as crowds tried to escape but were blocked by a locked gate.

On Monday, 120 members of Egypt’s parliament called for Ibrahim to be tried on charges that he failed to properly handle the riot, making him responsible for the deaths, speaker Mohamed Saad el-Katatni said in a televised session. He said he had ordered a report on the incident to prepare for questioning of Ibrahim by parliament.

Read here:

Warning that it’s a “losing bet” to side with dictator Bashar al-Assad, the White House on Monday urged friends of the Syrian people to help out “before the violence puts a political solution out of reach.”

But refusing to offer a “lead from behind” strategy, the Obama administration insists that after nearly a year of violence and a disappointing weekend that saw a U.N. Security Council resolution fall apart upon Russian and Chinese objections, a military solution is not forthcoming.

On Monday, the U.S. shut down its embassy in Syria, withdrawing Ambassador Robert Ford and 17 American officials. The State Department issued a warning for U.S. citizens to leave the country and announced that Poland will serve as a “protecting power” for the United States, providing consular services to any Americans remaining in the country.

That decision followed a violent crackdown in the city of Homs over the weekend that left hundreds dead. According to the U.N., since the March 2011 anti-government protests began, more than 5,400 Syrians have been killed, mostly by Assad forces.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said the decision to leave the embassy is part of a long-term effort to draw down embassy staff in Damascus, a reflection of the weakened security situation in Syria and the need to ensure the safety of U.S. diplomats.

But while it’s too dangerous for U.S. diplomats to stay in Syria, the violence is not too much for the U.S. government to intervene.

“I think it is very important to try to resolve this without recourse to outside military intervention and I think that’s possible,” President Obama told NBC in an interview that aired Monday, explaining that the administration’s “lead from behind” strategy used to drive out Muammar al-Qaddafi from Libya, would be implemented on “a case-by-case basis based on how unified the international community was, what our capacities were.”

Global Credit Research – 06 Feb 2012 Hong Kong, February 06, 2012 — Moody’s Investors Service says that while it expects a benign credit environment for Asia Pacific banks in 2012, there are still potential hazards that could develop into material adverse shocks for particular systems.

“These are not our central scenario, but what we consider as “tail risks”, or low-probability, but potentially high-impact events that warrant close monitoring over the coming 12 months,” says Stephen Long, a Moody’s Managing Director for the Financial Institutions Group in Asia Pacific.

The report lists and discusses five downside risk scenarios that Moody’s views as increasingly disturbing.

These include: (1) contagion risk from Europe’s sovereign crisis; (2) the possibility of a hard landing for the Chinese economy; (3) the bursting of real estate bubbles in Asia; (4) a downturn in commodity prices; and (5) a downturn in the Australian property market.

Regarding contagion risk, Moody’s believes that the banking systems in Australia, New Zealand, Korea and Vietnam are the most vulnerable to financial and economic shocks from a euro area crisis.

While another downside scenario is the risk of a China hard-landing, a somewhat comforting conclusion from Moody’s stress test is that the profitability, loss reserves, and capital positions of Chinese banks still provide a strong cushion.

The report also says that a substantial downturn in real estate prices in Asia would only have a limited impact on the region’s banking systems in general.

In addition, Moody’s expects the credit impact of a commodity price downturn to vary across the region, with potential distress concentrated in net commodity exporters, but also a risk among midstream processors.

Finally, a downturn in the Australian property market is another single-economy tail risk identified in the analysis. However, Moody’s notes that Australian banks are protected against the direct impact of falling house prices by their low loan-to-value ratios, and the use of mortgage insurance.

The report is titled “Asia Pacific Banks: Five Risk Scenarios for 2012.” It can be accessed on www.moodys.com.

Read here:

As sovereign debt defaults go, there may be no better time than now for Greece.

Global investors are clearly in risk-on mode, with the US stock market off to its best start in 15 years and equities in many emerging markets faring even better.

Friday’s job report helped assuage at least one of the primary fears regarding the U.S. economy, even though the housing market remains a shambles-an improving shambles, but still a long ways from healthy.

Last week in general gave life to the recovery theme, with 15 of 23 indicators beating expectations and causing some economists to raise their growth outlook for the full year.

So, with sentiment running so garishly positive, why not go ahead and get that pesky Greek default and all of the accompanying futile denial out of the way already?

“In the last six months, there’s probably been no better time to let Greece strategically default than right now,” said Citigroup credit analyst Jason Shoup.

Shoup was quick to point out that a Greek debt default is not Citi’s “base case,” or most likely outcome, but one that needs to be taken seriously if the markets are ever to absorb the magnitude of Greece’s problems and come out intact on the other side.

One key reason is that the window could be small for the present enthusiasm to last.

Some economists consider the startling jobs growth-a 243,000 surge in payrolls and an unemployment rate drop to 8.3 percent-unsustainable and as much a product of statistical anomalies as a jump in hiring. Specifically, a revision that saw the workforce drop by 1.2 million and a consistent drop in the labor force participation served as troubling signs.

If the recent uptick in economic indicators is indeed transitory, policy makers may want to consider attacking the Greece situation now while the market can still bear it.

“Letting Greece default either after a (Private Sector Involvement) haircut or in lieu of may have been unthinkable just a few months ago, but it wouldn’t surprise us if resistance to such an idea may be weakening in the halls of Brussels and Frankfurt,” Shoup said. “Certainly, buoyant markets seem to be emboldening policymakers to take more of a hard line even while Portuguese bonds oscillate.”

Indeed, there’s the Portugal problem.

It’s hardly a secret that Greece will be only the first of several dominos likely to fall in the Eurozone sovereign structure. Several of its neighbors face burgeoning obligations that they cannot meet, and Greece’s importance as much as anything is that it will serve as a signpost for how future crises will be handled.

An orderly Greek default in which panic is limited and bondholder haircuts are contained means future defaults may not capsize the markets either. But let the crisis spread and the fallout could be catastrophic.

Bob McKeee, chief economist at Independent Stratedy, a London-based research firm, told CNBC that Portugal will be next on the agenda. The nation is far more stable than Greece, which is why the eurozone needs to address its problem children first and then work on more manageable problems.

Concerns over Portuguese debt have come since the nation’s 10-year bond rates hit their highest level since the creation of the European Monetary Union. That came after a debt downgrade from Standard & Poor’s. In a supposedly solid country with a new government, investor confidence remains a problem.

“We believe this is a sign that, despite the tentative progress made by eurozone leaders on a ‘fiscal compact’ and increased liquidity support from the (European Central Bank), the eurozone remains in crisis,” London-based Capital Economics said in a research note.

As a result, refinery related stocks took off.

Spreads were up 8% today.

A rumor a few weeks ago is now confirmed and while it is not time to worry yet it certainly is a scenario we the fiat kings would not like to see spread.

Some shippers are renting vessels for just the fuel costs….