This is why India needs a gold policy — WGC

India, the world’s second largest gold consumer after China, should start a bullion board to regulate trade and a spot exchange to offer uniform prices across the country, according to the World Gold Council.

In a study published Tuesday, the market development organization for the gold industry outlines seven key policy recommendations to monetize the 22,000 tons of gold stocks kept by Indian households:

1.     Establish an India Gold Exchange to ensure pricing standardization, increase transparency and improve supply and demand analysis.

2.     Establish a Gold Board to manage imports, encourage exports and facilitate development of the infrastructure needed to ensure the Indian gold market functions to maximum effect.

3.     Develop accredited refineries in line with international standards including upscaling the current domestic refineries.

4.     Allow Indian banks to use gold as part of their liquidity reserves. This would incentivize them to introduce gold-based savings products.

5.     Drive monetization of gold by incentivizing banks, revitalize Gold Deposit Schemes, introduce gold-backed investment and savings products.

6.     Create a more active marketing strategy for Indian handcrafted jewellery. This could boost exports and highlight India’s expertise in this highly-valued sector e.g. by promoting handcrafted ‘India-made jewellery’ like the Swiss-made watches.

7.     Drive the standardization of gold so that buyers and sellers can have faith in both the quality and price of their products. Introduce guidelines for compulsory quality certification of all forms of gold to encourage accountability and foster an environment of trust.

The report also assesses the policies adopted in countries like Turkey and China, which have faced challenges similar to India, but chose to devise public policies to monetize the local stock of gold. Here, some of the key findings:

Popping The Chinese Stock Market Mania

If you are wondering what triggered the PBOC to pull the punchbowl of leveraged collateral away from the 'wealth-creating' stock market exuberance in China... wonder no more. The last 2 weeks saw the biggest surge in new Chinese brokerage accounts ever, with this week alone the highest since October 2010 and January 2008 with a stunning 228,000 new accounts opened. On both prior occasions of such a maniacal surge in speculative accounts, the Shanghai Composite made a significant top and fell dramatically in the ensuing months.

How oddly dis-similar the PBOC is to the Fed!! Instead of encouraging open leveraged speculation, the central bank of China appears more risk averse, recognizing the potential medium-term disastrous consequences from such boom-bust moves (and likely has no cheer-leading CNBC channel to take care of).

U.S. aluminum imports highest for October since 2008

U.S. aluminum imports in October were at their highest for the month since 2008 as bigger inflows from Canada offset a slowdown in material from Russia, according to International Trade Commission data released on Monday.

Imports totaled 268,000 tonnes in October, up 18 percent from a year earlier and an 11 percent rise from the prior month, for third-highest monthly total so far this year.

The bulk of the inflows came from Canada, typically the top foreign supplier into the United States, with about 1.91 million tonnes coming across the border, up 17 percent from October 2013 and a rise of almost a quarter from September.

The Canadian imports were the second-highest for the year so far and came even as Rio Tinto has closed older Soederberg-technology potlines at its major Kitimat smelter as part of a major modernization of the technology.

The smelter's output fell in the third quarter, but that will ramp up next year as the facility fires up expanded capacity of 420,000 tonnes per year.

The upswing from Canada in October bucks an overall downtrend for the year to date. Canadian imports are down 4 percent at 1.65 million tonnes from a year earlier.

The overall rise in imports reflects a general trend so far this year as soaring premiums that fabricators and merchants pay on top of benchmark London Metal Exchange prices for delivery to the Midwest lure units to the United States.

Cuts in domestic smelting capacity due to low LME prices and high energy costs have also forced companies that use aluminum in cars and construction to buy more metal from abroad, from countries such as Saudi Arabia.

Goldman Sachs says India to outpace China in coming years

Goldman Sachs is saying that India could surpass China in the next two years in terms of real gross domestic product expansion

• Projects India’s real GDP growth rate will remain behind China’s this year and next
• But surpass it in 2016 with 6.8% GDP expansion as China’s growth slows to 6.7%
• Goldman predicts that India will extend that lead over the following two years
• Goldman says India will have one of the highest growth rates in the world in 2016  – more than triple the growth rates of Brazil, Russia, Japan or Europe

China Fixes Yuan At Strongest Since March As Trade Surplus Hits Record Highs

Chinese imports and exports dramatically missed expectations this evening but it is imports that was thereal driver that pushed the trade surplus to $54.47 billion (higher than the $43.95 billion expected) record highs. Exports rose just 4.7% YoY (against expectations of an 8.0% rise and previous 11.6% rise) for the slowest growth since April. Imports utterly collapsed; plunging 6.7% YoY (against expectations of a 3.8% rise and prior 4.6% YoY rise). This is the biggest drop since March and 4th largest plunge since Aug 2009. Of course, in any real world this means 'the rest of the world' should be suffering from huge drops in exports... but we are sure, by the magic of fradulent invoicing that will not be the case. The PBOC may have got a glimpse and fixed CNY at its strongest since March and highest premium to the market since August.

Both imports and exports miss dramatically

Pushing the trade surplus to record highs...

PBOC fixed the Yuan at its strongest against the USDollar since
March as the market's view of USDCNY started to rapidly weaken...

It's Official (Finally): The US Is No Longer The World's #1 Economy

It seems rather appropriate that just seven days after the US government hit a whopping $18 trillion in debt, mainstream financial media has picked up the IMF’s recent World Economic Outlook report, which puts the US economy as #2 in the world.

There’s no shortage of ostriches out there who come up with every reason in the world why this doesn’t matter.

They say, ‘oh the IMF is just reporting purchasing power parity.’ Or, ‘oh it’s the per capita GDP that it counts.’

But the obvious truth is that the US is in decline. And it’s being overtaken.

1,000 years ago when Europe was just a tribal backwater with local warlords duking it out over salt mines, Asia was the center of wealth, power and civilization.

That changed. The West overtook the East in terms of power and influence and it remained that way for centuries.

Now things are changing once again. The West, and the US in particular, is plagued by:

Insane debt levels, which the government has been accumulating at faster and faster rates, hitting an unprecedented $18 trillion in debt this past week.

Short-sighted monetary policy, from quantitative easing that has debased the currency to negative interest rates that have wiped out any reason to be smart with money.

A crippled economy, as Western nations’ oppressive taxation frightens away the productive, and handouts have created a society of dependency.

Global bullying, as the US spies on its own citizens and allies, compelling businesses and governments to terminate their relationships with the Land of the Free.

Waging endless wars, whether against nouns (‘terrorism’), plants (‘drugs’), and brown people on the other side of the planet who supposedly hate us for our freedom. If they only knew…

A population that lives in fear, as you are more likely to get shot by your own police in the United States today than to ever even see a terrorist.

It’s pretty hard to maintain the top spot when that’s what you stand for.

China obviously has its own substantial problems, but over the last several decades one thing is for certain - China (and Asia in general) is a place where production and savings are valued.

The universal law of wealth is to produce more than you consume. The West has completely broken that.

They’re trying to replace it with debt, war and intimidation. And we’re now only just starting to scratch the surface of the consequences that this brings.

History shows that every time this happens, governments in power will do anything they can to maintain the status quo and keep the party going just a little bit longer.

Do you have an obligation, simply by an accident of birth, to go down with the sinking ship?

Do you owe desperate politicians a greater share of your livelihood so they can blow it on even more war, police and spying?

Or is your primary obligation to your family and your loved ones?

The truth is that all the tools and all the resources exist to disconnect from this economic Hindenburg.

You can choose to either be an unwilling participant in its continued unraveling. Or, to be a curious spectator, having take steps to protect what you’ve worked your entire life to build. The choice is yours.

Sourced From : Simon Black via Sovereign Man blog,

Philippines expands nickel production with increasing demand from China

Incomparable level of demand from China, for nickel ore, has opened up a sizeable market for the Philippines nickel miners, to expand their export of nickel, and also poking the government to look into the underdeveloped mineral industry, and to take required steps in order to maximize the output, during this period of increasing demand.

The unpredictable, ban on the export of unprocessed nickel from the world’s largest producer of nickel, Indonesia, had left Philippines to become the provider of nickel in the world, including China, the country which uses a high amount of nickel pig iron for the production of stainless steel. The ban was issued when the government was trying to dig out ways to increase the economic contribution towards the mining sector, which was nearly 1 percent in the GDP, even with the presence of untapped mineral resources.

In the year 2013, Philippines was ranked as the biggest producer of nickel along with Indonesia, by the US Geological Survey, and the country is now increasing its output of nickel with great speed and enthusiasm. Marcventures Holdings, a Philippines based nickel miner, announced that the company had received approval from the government to expand the operations in the company’s mines. The Mines and Geoscience Beauro granted the mine with a permit to extract nickel ore from 4,799 hectares site, which Mindanao’s Surigao del Sur province.