Morning Brief – Gold

Gold

The gold bulls are having a high old time with the metal at almost its all time high of Monday. There are three main reasons for this: first is the amount of gold bought by the world’s Central Banks in past months, second is the huge demand from China as holders of Yuan fearful of a China government intervention to devalue its currency pile in, and lastly the already present geopolitical fears which were exacerbated this week by the death of Iran’s President and the succession vacuum to Iran’s leadership caused by that wholly unexpected event.

Gold USD 2,425.

EU Cultural Heritage

If Brussels based Eurocrats have been labouring under the misapprehension that EU culture trumps national customs, then the EU elections on June 6 will be a rude awakening. The European Cultural Foundation is one of several organisations with culture uppermost on their agendas that has written an open letter to the EU warning Brussels that Culture needs to be put if not in the forefront certainly at the centre of the elections. To date Culture has been more usually defined as Nationalism and that position of course has mostly been captured by the Far Right which as the ECF has written is plain wrong. It is mostly the regions and the departments and the local areas rather than the conurbations of the EU countries that have become more vociferous as to why their own customs and cultures need to be preserved and enshrined.

EUR/USD 1.0879

IMF

Yesterday the IMF invigilators had their report cards out again and this time it was for the UK. Despite admitting that growth looked better which was stated through what sounded very much like gritted teeth, there was a bad mark for Chancellor Hunt who was told off (again) for cutting NIC and also for the Treasury which was warned that cuts or tax rises of GBP 30 billion were necessary for the UK to get its burgeoning debt position in any measurable way under control. This morning’s UK inflation release was tipped to come in at a much improved and respectable level at near to the 2% target and in the event after the previous rate of 3.2% fell to 2.3%. 

GBP/USD1.2713.

Trojan Horses of Social Corruption

Coming from President Erdogan of Turkey this description evoked thoughts of classical history and the famous tale of how Troy was captured by the use of a wooden horse and subterfuge. However it was in fact the President defending his decision to take Turkey out of the Eurovision Song Contest after 2012 and citing this year’s Swiss winner, Nemo as a prime example of an erosion in family values. Nemo in case you missed it is the first non binary winner of the contest-me neither-although it was hard to reconcile this plaudit when compared for example with Conchita Wurst (Austria) and Netta (Israel) both of whom displayed confusing degrees of contradictory sexuality rather than a simple case of non binary.

GBP/EUR 1.1703

Strange Brew

Those of a certain vintage will remember the supergroup Cream’s album Disraeli Gears that had a plethora of hits on it and marked the time in 1968 that Ginger Baker, Felix Papalardi and Eric Clapton took their jazz roots and translated them into the melting pot of rock, folk and pop musical influences of that time that subsequently became an explosion of psychedelic rock that almost brought the house down in the Royal Albert Hall-literally.

Strange brew
Kill what’s inside of you.

She’s a witch of trouble in electric blue,
In her own mad mind she’s in love with you.
With you.
Now what you gonna do?

She’s some kind of demon messing in the glue.
If you don’t watch out it’ll stick to you.
To you.
What kind of fool are you?

On a boat in the middle of a raging sea,
She would make a scene for it all to be
Ignored.
And wouldn’t you be bored?

Strange brew, strange brew.

Discussion and Analysis by Humphrey Percy, Chairman and Founder

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