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

No update today

Quick Overview

• [William Sawyer], the [veteran] Florida toxicologist, said the government tests do not look for total petroleum hydrocarbons in the seafood. He said his tests of Gulf shrimp have shown unsafe levels of the compounds, which can cause liver or kidney damage in a matter of weeks.

• U.S. consumer confidence rose to 54.1 in November.

• The Chicago purchasing managers index rose to 62.5 in November from 60.6 in October.

• U.S. Single-family home prices fell 0.7% in September: S&P/Case-Shiller

• Gold / Silver futures rose to a two-week high on Europe’s escalating debt woes

• India said it may allow sugar exports next month.

• China's Purchasing Managers Index at 55.2  forecast  54.7

Quick Overview

• YoY Sweden's GDP rose 6.9% in Q3.

• The Chicago Fed's Midwest Mfg Index rose 0.7% to 80.9, the highest reading since July

• U.K. house prices fell 0.8% MoM in November and were 1.1% lower YoY.

• Japanese retail sales fell 0.2% in October, the government said Monday, marking the first fall after nine consecutive monthly rises.

• Iran Nuclear Scientist Assassinated; Another Injured.

• Calm in the markets brought by the EU’s €85bn bail-out for Ireland quickly faded as fears returned about the spread of the debt crisis to Portugal and Spain.

• (Guardian) A hellish vision of a world warmed by 4C within a lifetime has been set out by an international team of scientists, who say the agonisingly slow progress of the global climate change talks that restart in Mexico today makes the so-called safe limit of 2C impossible to keep. A 4C rise in the planet's temperature would see severe droughts across the world and millions of migrants seeking refuge as their food supplies collapse

• (Guardian) Scientists claim to be a step closer to reversing the ageing process after rejuvenating worn out organs in elderly mice. The experimental treatment developed by researchers at Harvard Medical School turned weak and feeble old mice into healthy animals by regenerating their aged bodies.

• Japan's October jobless rate 5.1%.
• Czarnikow cut its global cane-sugar production forecast to 134.5 million tons from 137.9 million tons in August.
• India’s economy grew at 8.9% in Q2

EU rescue costs start to threaten Germany itself
"Germany cannot keep paying for bail-outs without going bankrupt itself," said Professor Wilhelm Hankel, of Frankfurt University. "This is frightening people. You cannot find a bank safe deposit box in Germany because every single one has already been taken and stuffed with gold and silver. It is like an underground Switzerland within our borders. People have terrible memories of 1948 and 1923 when they lost their savings."

Quick Overview

• Brazilian navy plans a fleet of 20 subs, six nuclear powered.

• The U.S. Justice Department filed a brief that declared, for the first time, that the U.S. government does not support the patenting of naturally occurring human genes. (About time)

• (FT)Bullion prices denominated in Euros hit a five-month high as concerns about the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis swept across financial markets.

• Weekly U.S. jobless claims drop to 407,000, the lowest level since July 2008.

• The Reuters/University of Michigan consumer sentiment index rose to 71.6 in November from 67.7 in October, its highest reading since June.

• The DOE reported:
• Crude-oil inventories rose 1 million barrels
• Supplies of distillates fell 500,000 barrels
• Gasoline stocks rose 1.9 million barrels

• U.S. sales of new single-family homes fell 8.1% in October. There was an 8.6-month supply of homes at the current sales rate. The median sales price fell 14% to $194,900. Sales fell 23.9% in the West, 20.4% in the Midwest and 12.1% in the Northeast. In the South sales gained 3.1%.

• The IGC left world wheat production estimates unchanged at 644 MMT, but raised consumption by 2 MMT to 660 MMT. Global ending stocks are expected down 16 MMT from last season.

• The IGC cut world corn output by 4 MMT from last month to 810 MMT, with ending stocks pegged at 121 MMT, 31 MMT down from last season. World inventories will end 2010-11 at the equivalent of 14.4% of consumption, compared with 18.7% at the close of last season, and tighter than the 16.1% at the end of 2006-07.
• The IGC’s estimate for the world rice harvest was kept at a record 449m tonnes.

• Portugal has, in the face of a squeeze on raw sugar supplies, urged the European Union to relax its import regime, warning that the region has overestimated available supplies of the sweetener.

• (Reuters) - Argentina's 2010/11 soy output is estimated at 49.5 million tons down from 54.5 MMT last year.

• Across multiple studies, a consistent link was identified between glucose levels and aggression, with sugar consumption making people less prone to unprovoked hostility toward strangers. Additionally, researchers found that U.S. states with higher rates of diabetes — a disorder characterized by low glucose and poor glucose tolerance — were plagued by higher rates of violent crime, even after factoring for poverty.

• (Bloomberg) -- Global sugar supplies may fall short of demand next year as Brazil, the world’s largest exporter of the sweetener, razes and replants enough farmland to cover the state of Connecticut.

• China on Friday reported a further slowdown in industrial profit growth due in part to the nation's ongoing campaign to save energy and cut emissions. Profits of major industrial enterprises in 24 provinces grew 51.6 percent in the first 10 months year on year to 2.8 trillion Yuan (427.1 billion U.S. dollars), 1.9 percentage points lower than that for Jan-Sept, the National Bureau of Statistics said on its website.
• In the first nine months, industrial profits decelerated by 2.8 percentage points from the Jan-Aug period. Core business revenue of those enterprises rose by 32.1 percent year on year to 45.3 trillion Yuan in the first 10 months.

• According to the Bank of Korea (BOK), the current account stood at 5.37 billion U.S. dollars in October, rising from 3.95 billion U.S. dollars in September.

• YoY Singapore's manufacturing output increased 31.0 % in October.

• Consumer prices in Japan fell 0.6 % in October, the Japanese government said on Friday.

• Russia says they will import wheat in 2011.

• (Economist)... the Fed has only succeeded in raising America’s broad money supply (as measured by seasonally-adjusted M2) to about $8.8 trillion. China’s central bankers, on the other hand, have increased China’s M2 to almost 70 trillion Yuan, or $10.5 trillion. As Mr. Kroeber points out, China has a greater quantity of money circulating in an economy a third of the size. Who is calling whom easy?

Next Update Sunday Nov. 28

Quick Overview

• China's demand for vegetable oils will "rise sizably" despite efforts to slow its economy, Oil World says.

• Nearly 70% of American mayors are cutting back on road maintenance and projects as a result of the prolonged economic downturn, according to a new survey of mayors coast-to-coast commissioned by Reader's Digest and conducted by Harris Interactive.

• Borrowing costs for Portugal and Spain have surged to danger levels on fears that Europe's leaders are losing political control of the Irish crisis and have yet to agree on a coherent plan to tackle the euro zone’s deeper debt woes.

• Sales of U.S. existing homes fall 2.2% in October.

• U.S. third-quarter GDP revised to 2.5% growth.

• Gold prices rose as fears of escalating tension on the Korean peninsula and spreading sovereign jitters in Europe drove investors to seek safety.

• The Russian government will start selling grain from the state intervention fund if domestic grain prices rise to 7,000-8,000 rubles ($224-256) per ton, First Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov said Tuesday. The current price for grain stood at 6,000 rubles ($192).

Portugal next as EMU's Máquina Infernal keeps ticking
The eurozone will face its moment of existential danger the day that Portugal is forced to tap the EU bail-out fund. A third rescue in months will push the combined bill towards €300bn (£257bn) and risk exhausting the political capital of EMU, leaving little left for Spain even if the European Financial Stability Facility can in theory handle one more domino

Quick Overview

• Investors question whether international efforts to halt a full-blown Eurozone debt crisis are enough.

• The new Basel III banking rules will leave the biggest U.S. banks short of between $100 billion and $150 billion in equity capital, with 90 per cent of the shortfall concentrated in the top six banks, the Financial Times said.

• Singaporeans are the most optimistic consumers in the region, according to the latest Asian Consumer Confidence Index. The index rose 11 points to 137 in Q3.

• Soybeans rose on dry weather in parts of Brazil.

• Precious metals will produce the best commodity returns next year, Goldman Sachs said.

• (Bloomberg) -- Billionaire Warren Buffett said that rich people should pay more in taxes and that Bush-era tax cuts for top earners should be allowed to expire at the end of December.

Quick Overview

• India may produce 8.7 % less Sugar than estimated as rain pests and disease reduce yields.

• (FT) Top mints have seen their silver coin sales jump to record or near-record levels.

• Union Pacific will increase its dividend by 15% to 38 cents.

• The Philly Fed diffusion index rose to 22.5 in November from 1.0 in October.

Why America will come to regret the craven deal Obama is offering Netanyahu.
By Christopher Hitchens

This craven impotence will be noticed elsewhere, and by some very undesirable persons

Quick Overview

• China may impose temporary price controls on “important daily necessities” to counter the fastest inflation in two years, the State Council said today on its website.
• (Price controls have never increased supply! Today the price of corn on the CBOT is $5.25 and $8.10 on the Dalian)
• (Arlan Suderman) There is trade speculation that China may be manipulating the markets to buy large quantities of corn and soybeans before the end of the year.

• The UN warns the world must be vigilant against further supply shocks and prepare for even higher food prices next year if cereal production fails to increase significantly.

• US consumer price inflation rose just 0.2 % in October.

• The DOE said:
• Crude-oil inventories fell 7.3 million barrels
• Gasoline inventories fell 2.7 million barrels
• Distillates inventories fell 1.1 million barrels

• Demand for gold hit 922 metric tons in Q3, a 12% increase YoY, a trade group said.

• Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke told lawmakers the Fed's $600 billion economic aid program could create 700,000 jobs over two years.

• Buffett has written a 'Thank You' note to 'Uncle Sam' for preventing a catastrophic economic meltdown in September of 2008

• [AP] - The nation's largest banks must undergo new stress tests to show they can weather another recession, and the Fed said those that pass them can boost dividends paid to investors.
  
  
• U.S. New home starts fell 11.7% in October to an annualized rate of 519,000 -- the lowest rate in 18 months.

The horrible truth starts to dawn on Europe's leaders
He is admitting that the gamble of launching a premature and dysfunctional currency without a central treasury, or debt union, or economic government, to back it up – and before the economies, legal systems, wage bargaining practices, productivity growth, and interest rate sensitivity, of North and South Europe had come anywhere near sustainable convergence – may now backfire horribly.

Quick Overview

• (Bloomberg) China may impose price limits on food and toughen punishment of those found speculating on agriculture futures including corn and cotton to combat rising inflation, the China Securities Journal reported

• Korea raised rates by 0.25 points.

• U.S. retail sales grew 1.2% in October.

• Conditions for manufacturers in the New York area deteriorated sharply in November, with a New York Fed survey turning negative for the first time since June 2009.

• (Bloomberg) The International Monetary Fund reduced the weighting of the U.S. dollar and the yen and increased that of the euro in its Special Drawing Rights valuation basket after its regular five-year review.

• Mexico's tourism income rose 10.8% YoY.

• Japan's economy grew an annualized  3.9% in Q3.