Gold’s trading at a high premium. Get this, RBI. You can’t reduce the consumption of a product by restricting supply, when demand is high. Jewellers are now paying a premium for gold, because their customers want the darn thing. Soon, you will find banks and agencies reimporting gold, against “full margin” and the cost of gold in India will go up again, and so will the current account deficit.
Taibbi says the Rating agencies knew about the subprime damage and documentary evidence shows they purposely looked away. We need to make rating agencies irrelevant. (RBI are you listening? Please remove any “lower” provisioning requirements for “rated” bonds or loans)
India’s Services PMI for June 2013 comes in at 51.7 which takes the composite index to 50.9 from 52 last month.
And Hindustan Copper has another offer for sale by the government, this time at Rs. 70. That’s a steep discount over the steeply discounted Rs. 155 that there was an offer for in 2011, and which was largely bought by LIC. I suppose policyholders can live with that.
The Brent-WTI premium is vanishing. From a near $11 spread earlier this year (and more than $20 earlier) we’ve seen it collapse to less than $5. This, says Walter Kurtz (at Pragcap) is due to easing Iranian tension:
Greece has three days to meet bailout conditions or face the consequences, says Reuters. The consequences are, says Mish, that either Greece meets the conditions or cribs and the conditions are lightened enough so Greece can meet them. Such fun.
Car sales have a depressing June. You should buy battery makers in a year or so. If no one’s buying cars, they’re going to have to change their battery soon.
