Germany

Slowdown Confirmed

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By Mike Savage – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

I have had a rough time for the last few weeks coming up with commentary that has anything new to say. It seems that we are bombarded day after day with talk of trade wars, tariffs and counter-tariffs.

Just today, April retail and industrial production numbers came out in China and in the USA. To say the least, the numbers were uninspiring at best.

In the USA retail sales for April contracted 0.2%. Much of the weakness was in auto sales because taking the auto numbers out there was a .1% gain in April. Electronics and building materials also fell. US industrial production, which has been stagnant all year, was not expected to grow in April either. It still surprised on the downside contracting 0.5%. That is the largest monthly drop since May of 2018.

Durable consumer goods dropped 0.8%. What caught my eye, however, was production decreased for business equipment, construction supplies and business supplies. This appears to confirm that 500,000 less people are actually working today than were at the beginning of 2019 even though we have “full employment”. What a joke that is! The only reason production wasn’t hurt worse was an increase in defense and space equipment materials.

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Germany Tests its First ‘Electric Highway’ for Trucks

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By Jon Fingas – Re-Blogged From From Engadget

Germany is joining the ranks of those countries betting on “electric highways” to foster eco-friendly trucking. The country has started real-world tests of an eHighway system on a 3.1-mile stretch of the Autobahn between Frankfurt and Darmstadt, with an electric-diesel hybrid truck merging into everyday traffic while it received power from overhead cables to keep it from using its combustion engine. Earlier tests in the country relied on either slow nighttime tests or the safety of an unused military airfield.

The very first eHighway launched in Sweden in 2016. The concept here is the same — the trucks use pantographs (the pickps on their roofs) to latch on to the overhead cables and draw electricity. Trucks can feed electricity into the grid when they brake, making the system particularly useful if there’s ever a jam.

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Italy Is Latest Country Seeking To Bring Their People’s Gold Home

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By Mark O’Byrne – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

Gold Is A “Reserve Of Safety” – Mario Draghi

By Virginia Filder for Gold Telegraph

European Central Bank’s President Mario Draghi recently announced that the ECB would be required to approve any management of gold reserves within the euro zone countries.

The statement was specifically directed at two Italian members. Why was Italy singled out?

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EU Dumps 2050 Climate Alarmist Commitments

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By Larry Hamlin – Re-Blogged From WUWT

In a spectacular climate alarmist policy failure the EU dumped its “carbon neutrality by 2050” commitment and targets driven by the sacred but highly arbitrary and unsubstantiated 1.5 degree C global temperature “limit” and ended its Brussels summit with no climate commitments or targets for year 2050.

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Wind Turbine Infrasound as a Weapon

usissuescom Energy Policy, Foreign Policy, Regulation , , , ,

Re-Blogged From WUWT

Description: Industrial wind turbine infrasound is not the best weapon, but it is a weapon. This German video documents the harmful effects of the infrasound produced by industrial-sized wind turbines. The dangers of infrasound have been known since the 1980s when the U.S. military heavily invested in infrasound (below 20 Hz) as a weapon.

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EU Monetary And Economic Failures

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By Alasdair Macleod – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

Introduction and summary

The monetary, financial and political weaknesses of the EU are about to be exposed by the forthcoming global credit crisis.

This article assumes the combination of end of credit cycle dynamics and the rise in trade protectionism in 1929 is a valid precedent for gauging the scale of a developing global credit crisis today, as described in my earlier article published here. Then, it was heavier tariffs coinciding with a less destabilising inflation cycle than we face today, a combination that saw stock markets collapse. Today, we have the additional factors of far greater monetary inflation, far higher levels of government debt, low savings coupled with record consumer borrowing, and unbacked fiat currencies likely to lose purchasing power instead of gold-backed currencies which increased their purchasing power.

Declining international trade has already become evident in only a few months, and prescient observers detect early signs of a rapidly developing global recession. In response, the ECB has announced it will target lending to non-financial businesses with its TLTRO-III programme from September onwards.

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Powell’s Testimony & The ECB Meeting?

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By Arkadiusz Sieroń – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

Powell’s testimony before the Congress is behind us. The ECB meeting is ahead of us. Will Draghi support the gold prices after recent declines?

Gold Falls Below $1,300

Gold bulls might be disappointed. The upward trend apparently ended. As one can see in the chart below, gold fell below $1,300 on Friday.

Chart 1: Gold prices from March 1 to March 4, 2019

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