Next update Jan. 16

Quick Overview

• Japan pledged to buy bonds backed by European governments.

• (MW) Speculation intensifies that Portugal will be forced to seek a bailout.
• Portugal does not need to apply for EU aid, Spain's Economy Minister said.

• One week after taking office, California Governor Jerry Brown announced a balanced state budget on Monday which slashes state spending by 12.5 billion U.S. dollars.

• A Fed. official said he would set the bar "very high" for the central bank to stop short in its planned $600 billion in bond purchases, but that the Fed may need to begin considering a reversal of policy by year end.

Quick Overview

• China's soybean imports will likely expand 5%-10% a year over the next five years, with imports in 2011 around 54 million-55 million tons, the Chinese Grain Network said
• Chinas exports grew 31.3% YoY to 1.58 trillion U.S. dollars while imports rose 38.7 % to 1.39 trillion U.S. dollars, said the GAC.
• Chinas December sales of passenger cars rose 26.7% YoY to just under 1.5 million units.

• Inflationary threats have become a 'general feature' among the world's emerging economies, Jean-Claude Trichet, European Central Bank president warns.

• Germany signaled it may agree to expand euro zone’s €750bn rescue facility.

• Australia's retail sales rose 0.3% in November

• (Sea Shepherd Conservation Society) Anti-whaling activists are promising more attacks after throwing smoke grenades and "flash bangs" at Japanese whalers in the Southern Ocean today.
• Perth Mint: Physical gold demand exceeds current availability
• Pima County Sheriff Clarence W. Dupnik: "To inflame the public on a daily basis, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, has impact on people, especially who are unbalanced personalities to begin with" 

Quick Overview

• U.S. Payrolls increased 103,000, less than the median projection of 150,000

• (Reuters) - Algeria is to suspend customs duties and value added tax on imports of white sugar until Aug. 31, the government announced on Saturday in response to a wave of riots over rising food prices

• High Plains Journal: The average value of an acre of farmland in Iowa increased 15.9% in 2010, according to an annual survey conducted by Iowa State University Extension. Mike Duffy, ISU Extension economist who conducts the survey, said the statewide average land value as of Nov. 1 this year was $5,064 an acre, up $693 per acre from 2009.

• The highest court in Massachusetts affirmed a lower court’s ruling invalidating two foreclosure sales because the banks did not prove that they actually owned the mortgages at the time of  foreclosure.

Europe unveils sweeping plans to govern reckless banks
The plans allow oversight bodies to place a "permanent presence" of inspectors in the offices of suspect banks, adopting a scheme already pioneered by Spain’s central bank. There will be annual stress tests, geared to shocks of "low probability but high impact".
Regulators will be able to order bank boards to fire directors, desist from any activity, reduce leverage, sell off assets, or restructure debt.
In extreme cases, they will have pre-emptive powers to take over the entire bank and decapitate top management, perhaps when Tier I capital ratios fall below an fixed level. Stronger banks will be required to help cover the costs of failure by weaker peers, creating a further buffer between the financial industry and the taxpayer.

Quick Overview

• Australian Bureau of Meteorology: The Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) value for December of +27 is the highest December SOI value on record, as well as being the highest value for any month since November 1973.

• U.S. jobless benefits climb 18,000 to 409,000 last week

• The Fed balance sheet rose to $2.418 trillion in the week ended Jan. 5 from $2.403 trillion the prior week.

• Britain raised the national sales tax to 20% from its previous 17.5 %, as part of its efforts to trim the near-record public spending deficit.
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• John Boehner put Michelle Bachmann on the “Intelligence” Committee.

Quick Overview

• U.S. payrolls expanded by 297,000 in December as companies boosted payrolls by the most since records began in 2001.

• Record high food prices and the likelihood of further increases in the year ahead are raising the specter of a repeat of the food riots that broke out in 2007-08, a senior economist at the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization said Wednesday.

• U.S. crude oil inventories fell 4.16 million barrels to 335.3 million last week.

• China's 2010 corn output is estimated at 172 million metric tons, down 940,000 tons from the previous estimate.

• The US Department of Agriculture's Buenos Aires bureau lowered its estimate of Argentine corn production by 1.0m tonnes.

• the ISM index rose to 57.1% in December

• (Bloomberg) -- The Pentagon underestimated the speed at which China has developed and fielded a ballistic missile that may be capable of hitting a maneuvering U.S. aircraft carrier, the head of Navy intelligence said today.

Regulators Resist Volcker Wandering Warning of Too-Big-to-Fail
“I wouldn’t lend you a dime if I knew you loved to gamble at a casino,” said Kahn, the chairman of investment advisers Kahn Brothers Group Inc., in an interview..

..“I’m sorry,” Reed, 70, said in an interview. U.S. lawmakers were wrong in 1999 to repeal the Depression-era Glass- Steagall Act, he said. The act required the separation of institutions involved in capital markets from those engaged primarily in traditional customer services, such as taking deposits and making loans..

..“My greatest fear for the last year has been an economic collapse as bad as the Great Depression,” Miller said in an interview. “My second greatest fear was that the economy would stabilize and begin to recover and the financial industry would have the clout to defeat the fundamental reforms that our nation desperately needs. My greatest fear seems less likely, lately, but my second greatest fear seems more likely every day.”

Quick Overview

• 12/20/10 China's soybean imports in November rose 47% compared with October and 90% YoY, to 5.48 million metric tons, the General Administration of Customs said Tuesday. Total imports from January to November increased 31% to 49.4 million tons.
• China November natural Rubber imports rose 53% vs 55% in October.
• China’s November Uranium imports at 2,181 tons rose 100% YoY.

• (Bloomberg) -- Uranium stocks, already trading at higher valuations than their national benchmark indexes, will rise further amid predictions the price of the fuel may surge as much as 30 percent, investors and analysts said.

• Dec. 24 (Bloomberg) -- One unidentified company has the potential to own at least 90 percent of the copper in warehouses monitored by the London Metal Exchange, the largest such position in two years, bourse data showed.

• Th People’s Bank of China increased key one-year lending and deposit rates by 25 basis points on Christmas Day in its second move since mid-October.
• "Inflation expectations are direr than inflation itself," Wen said, urging people to remain confident and government agencies to act to stabilize prices

• Sales of new single-family houses in the United States increased 5.5 percent in November.

• U.S. existing-home sales rose 5.6% MoM in November.

• French household consumption in manufactured goods rose by 2.8% in November.

• The IMF announced on Tuesday the conclusion of the limited sales program covering 403.3 metric tons of gold that was approved by the IMF in September 2009.

• Severe drought in major wheat production provinces of Henan, Hebei and Anhui has sparked supply concerns for 2011.

• Indonesia will raise a tax on crude palm oil exports to 20% for January from 15% this month

• 12/28/10 The S&P/Case-Shiller 20-city composite home-price index fell 1.3% MoM and 0.8% YoY. Including homes that are in or close to foreclosure, there’s inventory of 7.2 million homes, or roughly 21 months of supply

• U.S. consumer confidence fell to 52.5 in December from an upwardly revised 54.3 in November.
• U.S. retailers 2010 holiday sales rose 5.5 % for the best performance in five years.
• The Chicago purchasing manager’s index rose from 62.5 to 68.6, the highest level since the late 1980s and above expectations.

• 1/2/11 QoQ Singapore’s GDP rose 6.9% in the three months through Dec. 31.

• The Centre for Economics and Business Research said the likelihood the euro area will exist in its current structure in a decade is 20 % as governments take unsatisfactory measures to tackle economic imbalances.

• 1/4/10 GM on Tuesday reported a 7.5% increase in December U.S. sales -- Ford reported a 6.7% increase.

• U.S. factory orders rose 0.7% in November, ahead of forecasts for a 0.1% increase.

Happy Holidays!
(Updates resume Jan. 4)

Quick Overview

• (Bloomberg) Informa Economics Inc. said farmers will plant corn on 90.755 million acres, less than a November forecast of 93.055 million. Soybeans will be sown on 77.565 million, down from a record 77.714 million this year, the Memphis-based researcher said today in a report. Informa said farmers may plant the most acres of cotton in five years, after prices jumped to a record.

• U.S. Sugar Corp. said five nights of freezing Florida weather in the past 10 days “severely damaged” a cane crop.

• A shortage of high-quality arabica coffee has led to “precariousness of the supply/demand balance,” the ICO said.

• Ifo institute said its business climate index, rose to 109.9 from 109.

• Bank of America has halted all transactions for WikiLeaks, joining other institutions that refuse to process payments for the website that has exposed a trove of US government cables.

• Elwynn Taylor: The La Niña to date is tracking the 1973-4 event, a Risk factor for 2011

Mad Soybean’ Disease May Cut Some Brazil Output
(Bloomberg) -- Soybean farmers in Brazil, the world’s second-largest producer of the oilseed, are facing a new crop disease that threatens to curb yields in some areas by as much as 60 percent, a government researcher said

Quick Overview

• The Philadelphia Fed's manufacturing survey rose to 24.3 from 22.5 in November.

• Yields on 10-year notes have risen so far this month by about 72 basis points, making it one of the worst months in 20 years.

• U.S. housing starts rose 3.9% in November. Permits for new construction fell 4%.

• U.S. Jobless claims fell by 3,000 to a total of 420,000 in the latest week, the third decline in the past four weeks.

• TheU.S. current-account deficit widened to $127.2 billion in Q3 from $123.2 billion in Q2.

• Annual inflation in the euro zone remained stable at 1.9 % in November

• Rabobank said the U.S.  may use as much as 5.1 billion bushels of corn to produce ethanol the grain-based gasoline additive in 2010-2011 -- eroding inventories. The extra ethanol consumption implied a corn stock to use ratio at less than 4%.
  
  
  
  

Quick Overview

• U.S. consumer prices rose 0.1% in November

• (Guardian) Time’s poll found that almost six out 10 Americans believe Assange should face criminal charges for releasing the cables.

• U.S. industrial output rose 0.4%, the biggest gain since July.

• The DOE said:
• Crude oil supplies fell 9.85 million barrels to 346 million last week. Stockpiles were forecast to decrease by 2.5 million barrels.
• Gasoline supplies rose 809,000 barrels to 214.8 million.
• Refineries operated at 88% of capacity.
• Distillate supplies rose 1.09 million barrels to 161.3 million.

• (Bloomberg) Silver, the leading performer in metals this year, is likely to repeat its success in 2011, reaching $40 an ounce on new applications and industry demand, said the head of commodity trading in Japan at Standard Bank Plc.

Why I'm Posting Bail Money for Julian Assange By Michael Moore
Openness, transparency -- these are among the few weapons the citizenry has to protect itself from the powerful and the corrupt. What if within days of August 4th, 1964 -- after the Pentagon had made up the lie that our ship was attacked by the North Vietnamese in the Gulf of Tonkin -- there had been a WikiLeaks to tell the American people that the whole thing was made up? I guess 58,000 of our soldiers (and 2 million Vietnamese) might be alive today.

Quick Overview

• U.S. retail sales rose 0.8% in November, marking fifth straight monthly increase

• U.S. PPI rose 0.8% in November -- the biggest gain since March.(prices for fresh fruits and melons rose 13.6%)

• U.K. CPI rose 3.3%

• The FT reports that Portugal has become the first EU country with a sugar shortage.

• The Fed left interest rates and the bond purchase program unchanged.

• Indian inflation in November declined to 7.48 % from 8.58 % in the previous month.

• YoY China's exports grew by 34.9% in November to US$153.33 billion, while the nation's imports surged by 37.7% to $130.43 billion
• China's trade surplus declined to $22.89 billion in November, down from $27.1 billion in October, reports Xinhua.

Reclaim the Cyber-Commons For his film (Astro)Turf Wars, Taki Oldham secretly recorded a training session organised by a rightwing libertarian group called American Majority. The trainer, Austin James, was instructing Tea Party members on how to “manipulate the medium”(11). This is what he told them:
“Here’s what I do. I get on Amazon; I type in “Liberal Books”. I go through and I say “one star, one star, one star”. The flipside is you go to a conservative/ libertarian whatever, go to their products and give them five stars. … This is where your kids get information: Rotten Tomatoes, Flixster. These are places where you can rate movies. So when you type in “Movies on Healthcare”, I don’t want Michael Moore’s to come up, so I always give it bad ratings. I spend about 30 minutes a day, just click, click, click, click. … If there’s a place to comment, a place to rate, a place to share information, you have to do it. That’s how you control the online dialogue and give our ideas a fighting chance.”

No update today

Quick Overview

• Precious metals will probably give investors the best returns among commodities in the next year, and livestock the worst, Goldman Sachs  said. Goldman also sees cotton prices hitting 125 cents a pound in a year's time, and soybeans at $14.00 a bushel.

• YoY China's retail sales of consumer goods grew 18.7% in November
• China’s CPI rose 5.1%, the PPI rose 6.1%.
• China kept its benchmark interest rate unchanged.

• CoreLogic said 10.8 million homes, or 22.5% of those with mortgages, were “underwater” as of Sept. 30^th. That's down from 11 million, or 23% in June.
• JPMorgan has quietly reduced a large "short" position in the US silver futures market.
• (Bloomberg) -- Sugar production in Australia, the third-largest exporter, may plunge to the lowest in almost two decades as wet weather forces producers to leave some cane unharvested this season.
  
  
  

Quick Overview

• GE raised its quarterly dividend to 14 cents a share from 12 cents a share, the second increase this year.

• China's inflation surged to a two year high last month despite government control efforts, prompting fears that U.S. consumers will soon face paying more for Chinese made products.

• (Spiegel) It is a triumph for Mexico and a step forward in the fight against global warming: the Cancun climate conference reached a compromise in a dramatic conclusion to negotiations on Saturday. The deal preserves the UN's leadership in climate talks. But the compromises reached were modest

• The United States recorded a larger-than-expected $150 billion budget gap last month.

• The USDA raised projected Corn ending stocks by 5 million to 832 million bushels.
• The USDA has Soybean ending stocks to just 165 million bushels. That represents a 18-day supply.
• The USDA estimates wheat ending stocks to 858 million bushels.

• OPEC ministers announced Saturday the oil output would remain unchanged, while Saudi Arabia said it favors a price between 70 to 80 dollars per barrel.

Global bond rout deepens on US fiscal worries
The US tax deal adds $1 trillion of stimulus over two years, according to BNP Paribas. America's budget deficit will remain stuck near 10pc of GDP, not just in 2011 but also in 2012. This will push gross public debt to 110pc of GDP under the IMF definition, near the brink of a debt compound spiral. The contrast with fiscal tightening in Europe has become starkly evident.

Quick Overview

• China November trade surplus narrows to $22.9 Bln.

• The U.S. Treasury sold $13 billion in 30-year bonds at a yield of 4.41% -- lower than traders expected.

• U.S household debt fell at an annual rate of 1.75% in Q3 to $13.4 trillion. U.S. household financial assets gained from 43.8 trillion dollars in Q2 to 45.7 trillion dollars in Q3, with household deposits increasing from 7.62 trillion dollars in the second quarter to 7.66 trillion dollars in the third quarter, a sign of U.S. consumers changing habit of saving more and spending less.

• U.S. wholesale inventories rose 1.9% in October

• U.S. weekly jobless claims fell 17,000 to 421,000

• An Italian court sentenced the founder of Parmalat to 18 years in prison for his role in the Italian dairy company's 2003 collapse.

• Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan agreed to launch the Common Economic Space (CES) of the Customs Union on Jan. 1, 2012

• Over the past decade trade between the United States and India has surged by 169 per cent to reach US$38.5 billion in 2010. US exports to India have risen by almost 350% since 2000, US imports from India have risen by 107 %.

Quick Overview

• Australia's unemployment rate fell 0.2 % to 5.2% in November.

• Brazil held rates at 10.75%.

• New Zealand left rates at 3.0%.

• Japan's GDP grew at an annualized 4.5% rate in the three months ended Sept. 30.

Keith Olbermann comment on Bush tax

Quick Overview

• US stocks lost gains late in the session after rallying for most of the day on the back of the extension of the Bush tax cuts.

• YoY Bank lending in Japan fell 2.1% in November, marking the 12th successive month of decline.

• YoY Japan's current account surplus rose 2.9 % in October to 1,436.2 billion yen (17.20 billion U.S.)

• MoM Japan's core machinery orders declined 1.4% in October

• The American shipping community - and its customers - praised the US and South Korean governments for reaching consensus on a new free trade deal, and said they look forward to enjoying its benefits once ratified.

• ETF Securities says it has approval from European regulators to launch three physically backed metals ETF’s. Expected to begin trading Friday in London, the ETF’s specialize in copper, nickel and tin.

AkzoNobel has become man's best friend in China thanks to Dulux and its dog
The winning allure, surprisingly, is Dulux's old English sheepdog peering out of paint pots through a mop of white hair. "Having a dog in China has become a status symbol," said Karen Yin, Dulux's marketing director in China. "A dog represents loyalty and the warmth of the family."

Quick Overview

• India's gold imports this year are likely to be 700 metric tons, about 46% more than last year

• Standard Bank said China’s demand for gold is likely to total 600 tons this year up from less than 500 tons last year, with around 250 tons having to be imported.

• Price increases are decelerating at the greatest pace in nearly 30 years, a paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco said.

• Bernanke said the central bank may boost purchases of U.S. debt.

• (FT)The euro falls after Germany casts doubt on the future of eurozone stability by rejecting calls to increase the size of EU bail-out fund and issue a single euro bond.

• Moody’s cut Hungary’s credit rating to just above junk.

• The prospect of additional US stimulus boosts demand for precious metals.

Next update Sunday Dec. 5

Quick Overview

• Goldman: American soybean inventories potentially on course to fall to 4.0%, as a proportion of use, the lowest since the 1960s.

• U.S. pending-home sales rose 10.4% in October

• Weekly U.S. jobless claims rise 26,000 to 436,000

• European Central Bank keeps rates at 1%

• China may have a refined sugar shortage of 2.5 million metric tons in the 2010-2011 marketing year that needs to be met by imports or selling reserves, the China Merchandise Reserve Management Centre said.

• BNP Paribas has raised its average 2011 gold-price forecast to $1,500 an ounce and looks for the metal to average $1,600 in 2012.

• The Federal Reserve might need to curtail its $600 billion bond purchase plan if the economy grows more strongly than anticipated, said Charles Plosser.

Quick Overview

• Fed Beige Book: US economic growth continues to improve

• U.S Private-sector employment rose 93,000 in November, the largest gain in three years

• Casino revenue rose 42% YoY in November, according to Macau’s Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau.

• (FT)ECB president’s comments that the bank could step up purchases of Eurozone bonds help stabilize European sovereign debt markets and propel global equity markets.

• ISM manufacturing index slips to 56.6% in November

• U.S. Q3 nonfarm productivity revised to 2.3% from prior estimate of 1.9%.

• China's Purchasing Managers Index at 55.2 beat forecast of 54.7.

• South Korea’s imports of iron ore in October were an all-time record at 5.32 Mt – up 34% YoY.

• India’s coal deficit will deepen sharply next year, its coal minister said, forcing Asia’s third largest economy to import more of the fuel on which it relies.

• EU Purchasing Managers index rose to 55.3 from 54.6 in October.

• The unemployment rate in the euro zone hit a record high of 10.1 percent in October.

• S.Korea’s CPI grew by 3.3 % YoY.

• YoY Canada’s GDP grew 1.0 %in Q3

• (Bloomberg) -- China’s gold imports jumped almost fivefold in the first 10 months