Malaysian Palm Oil Demand Drop Risk

[errolanderson]

Interesting developments this morning.

There appeared to be near panic in
Europe overnight on ideas that Spain
will need a larger banking sector
bailout. Also, there was another rise in
Italian bond yields. This appeared to
prompt ECB President Draghi to state
that the ECB would do "whatever it
takes" to preserve the Euro.

This statement transpired to rally the
Euro this morning and along with it the
loonie, while pressuring the U.S.
dollar. This appears to be a 'risk on'
day, but there is rain in the states
pressuring soybeans.

But to me, this ECB action is showing
the desperation in these central bankers
right now to try to figure out a way to
stimulate growth.

Errol

[oneoff]

Ya the panic is on; and some will be spreading it; most will carry on as if all is well.

And we might as well be oblivious or optimistic n our own way.
I'm going to weigh in on the side of cottonpicken. Its just the direction we are headed is completely out of the control of anyone who might have some answers for the faulty borrowing and debt that we have allowed to spiral out of control.

There is just too much demand for all forms of limited resources and a population growth and expectations that just can't be sustainable, longterm.

There will be days of reckoning in the future; and the hints we see today are not being taken seriously enough.

Errol's comments don't deserve an ounce more weight than anyone else's take on our pilotless boat.

[TOM4CWB]

WD9,

I agree on the saturated fat and palm oil prices.

Here is an update on where the excess funds are going.... from quantitative easing:

ANALYSIS-Tax haven clampdown yields cash but secrecy still thrives

Credit Suisse Group AG
CSGN.VX
CHF16.24
0.15 0.93%
19:15:45 IDT
UBS AG
UBSN.VX
CHF10.30
0.24 2.39%
19:15:42 IDT
Thu Jul 26, 2012 2:23pm IST


* Official queries $21-$32 trillion haven estimate

* OECD has no "magic number" for offshore tax evasion

* System too complex to be workable -accountant

* Tax authorities crack down

By Chris Vellacott and Sinead Cruise

LONDON, July 26 (Reuters) - A global campaign to tax trillions of dollars hidden in offshore tax havens has made revolutionary progress, an official leading the drive said, rejecting suggestions that the super rich are running rings around Western authorities.

Pascal Saint-Amans, director of a unit at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, also cast doubt on estimates that the havens are illicitly sheltering wealth equivalent to several hundred times the fortune of Bill Gates.

Leaders of the G20 group of leading Western and developing nations launched the campaign three years ago, aiming to claw back billions in lost tax revenue at a time when many governments are trying to cut huge budget deficits.

Saint-Amans said his gut feeling was that before the G20's initiative at its 2009 London summit, people could hide their wealth in offshore havens without any risk of legal reprisals.

"Now you are at risk and that’s a major change. That’s a revolution," Paris-based Saint-Amans told Reuters in a telephone interview. Even if money is transferred abroad, rules improving transparency have made it easier for the taxman to find it, said Saint-Amans, whose unit is tasked with leading the Western efforts to fight tax evasion.

The Tax Justice Network, a campaign group, estimated last weekend that as much as $21 to $32 trillion of financial assets are sheltered in offshore tax havens, representing up to $280 billion in lost income tax.

That total wealth would dwarf the fortune of Microsoft Corp cofounder and philanthropist Bill Gates. In March Forbes magazine ranked Gates second on its global rich list with total wealth of a mere $61 billion. [ID:nL2E8E78DB]

Saint-Amans suggested the TJN estimates might be overstated. "I was wondering where the equivalent of 450 Bill Gates are hiding from everyone. It looks like the equivalent 20,000 unknown billionaires in the world or 200,000 people with net worth of 100 million," he said.

The Scorpio Partnership, a consultancy that analyses the global private wealth management industry, estimates the amount of money held offshore by people worth at least $1 million at a more modest $8-$9 trillion.

NO MAGIC NUMBER

Saint-Amans, who heads the OECD's Centre for Tax Policy and Administration, acknowledged his organisation makes no equivalent estimate. "I would rather spend the resource improving the legal framework and putting an end to loopholes than trying to find the magic number," he said.

In a statement accompanying its research, TJN criticised the OECD and other international bodies for not doing enough to track offshore wealth, saying it was scandalous that institutions devoted so little research to the issue.

G20 leaders agreed at their London summit to crack down on tax evasion and banking secrecy, and asked the OECD to publish lists of tax havens according to how cooperative authorities there are on releasing information about offshore wealth holdings.

There are now 89 countries on the OECD's "white list" of jurisdictions that have implemented internationally agreed tax standards. These jurisdictions have between them signed more than 800 agreements on exchanging information with authorities other countries, Saint-Amans said.

"Until 2009, countries said being secretive is justified and fair. The change in the world is nobody says that any more, so that is a big change," he said.

Western tax authorities have individually stepped up efforts to net more money hidden abroad by their own citizens through a series of amnesties targeting people with accounts in jurisdictions such as Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

At the same time they have turned up the heat on citizens suspected of tax evasion. This has included using details of Swiss accounts originally stolen from HSBC by a former IT employee that found their way into the hands of tax authorities around Europe. [ID:nL5E7LD1Y2}

Britain's HMRC tax office expects an amnesty offering leniency to people with accounts in Liechtenstein if they come clean to raise about 3 billion pounds, while a similar deal on Swiss accounts will bring in up to 7 billion pounds.

Campaigners argue that such initiatives will achieve only limited success because a financial industry designed to ensure confidentiality across multiple jurisdictions makes it impossible to shut down tax fraud or money laundering.

"Anybody who’s serious about holding money offshore ... will hold it through a trust," said Richard Murphy, a chartered accountant and director of Tax Research, a think-tank.

"You’d have the trust in one territory, the company in another territory, its directors in another territory and its bank account in a fourth territory. So making an application for information is not very simple."

TOO COMPLEX TO BE WORKABLE

Murphy dismissed the OECD's progress in cracking down on tax havens, arguing that implementation of information exchange between territories is limited in practice and the process too complex to be workable.

"They’ve set up a system where it’s virtually impossible to apply for information ... The OECD claiming they are making progress is like checking the stable door has been shut way after the horse bolted. Not just the horse, the entire stable has bolted," he said.

The TJN research on offshore wealth - authored by James Henry, a former chief economist at consultant McKinsey & Co - highlights the "often unsavoury role" played by banks in catering to rich individuals who want to hide money offshore.

Large private banks with offshore businesses reject the idea they aid tax evasion.

"Our Code of Conduct explicitly says not to assist clients in activities intended to breach their tax obligations," said a spokesman for Swiss bank Credit Suisse (CSGN.VX) who declined to comment specifically on the contents of the TJN report

But recent crackdowns by tax authorities in countries such as Britain, the United States and Germany have proved embarrassing for Swiss banks.

German tax authorities are investigating roughly 5,000 German clients of Credit Suisse while French officials have searched the homes of UBS (UBSN.VX) employees. [ID:nL6E8IB7FC]

At least 11 Swiss banks suspected of helping wealthy American clients dodge taxes are currently subject to a U.S. investigation. [ID:nL6E8HT98C]

Saint-Amans said the OECD's efforts have focused on engaging with governments rather than imposing more supervision on financial institutions. The complexity of the industry, he said, meant that greater information exchange was the best way to tackle people using banking secrecy to break the law.

"I’m not sure that nationalising the banking industry throughout the world is the solution. The fact you have private practitioners being involved in a sophisticated environment is why you need to favour transparency and exchange of information," he said.

Efforts to increase disclosure and combat both tax evasion and money laundering by international bodies such as the OECD and the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a Paris-based inter-governmental body, have focused on self regulation.

"We've tried to ensure that what we're talking about is not to create some draconian system where we put a policeman in every financial institution which would be impossible to do," said a senior source at the FATF, which was set up to combat money laundering and terrorist financing.

Nick Matthews, anti-money laundering and offshore financial industry specialist at Kinetic Partners, said purging the world's financial system is "incredibly difficult".

"Clearly tax evasion leads to money laundering and is a crime but you would have money laundering even if there was no tax, because you still have proceeds from crime or corruption polluting the financial system," he said.

"That is why I say that no bank would ever stand up and claim that they are not being used to launder money. They appreciate that they are only as strong as their weakest link."

(Additional reporting by Katharina Bart and Martin de Sa'Pinto in Zurich; editing by David Stamp)

((chris.vellacott@thomsonreuters.com)( 44)(0)(20 75423987)(Reuters Messaging: chris.vellacott.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net)) Keywords: TAX/OFFSHORE

(C) Reuters 2012. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing, or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world."

http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/07/26/idINL6E8IOASE20120726

There is obviously no shortage of money in this world... only the folks who play by the traditional rules are short of financial resources.

[charliep]

oneoff

Just curious if you were farming in the late 1970's/early 80's? If you were, what was the attitude in the late 1970's? The change in the early 1980's? It wouldn't likely be interest rates (not ruling out) but there are enough warning signs of something else. My lessons from this time period is you can be optimistic long term but you have to survive the short run. My other lesson from the 1980's was how quickly you can burn up equity with declining asset values and a few years of losses.

1988 from a summer rally perspective and 2008 from recent experience in blow off market need to be looked at. I will feel a lot more comfortable with the occassion setback and renewed commercial buying that launches us higher. Markets that staight up always make me nervous. Bull markets always need to be fed new information.

[cottonpicken]

I'm sorry i was out of line.

I watch that kyle bass video once in a while and i get
to fired up at the policy makers and the pain that is
coming at regular people.

People could have protected themselves 10 years ago
with gold but now its to late.

[errolanderson]

cotton . . . always enjoy reading your
comments. as you can tell, i have my days
as well.

all the best . . .

errol

[BTO_farmall]

I Agree, Sit Down and STFU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[oneoff]

Charlie: I was farming in the 70's and the 80's and 90's and the new century and in this decade as well.
The lessons I learned are past history; and involved hard work; analysis of then current situations; good timing, bad timing; no credit; opportunities and missed opportunities.
In fact exactly what I would face if starting over.
What I now see; that wasn't on my radar in those early days; is the belief that growth and insatiable consumption can continue forever; to feed and meet the desires of billions more humans; who now know about affluent lifestyles. We are led to continue to trust industry spokepersons for information, researchers who (largely) no longer exist; economists and leadership who were and are in charge while this situation has developed.

What has changed is the focus of the individual on their self; and our coincidentally linked small universe. And that is probably why so many are disengaged and even cynical persons; to the point that the stress and personal problems are enough without even considering being involved in wider community or larger world issues.

My concern is that there had better be some serious thought given to feeding everyone of those humans at every meal; their air had better be good enough to breathe throughout their lives and into the future; and fresh water must be available for their wasteful use. The financial system had better not collapse; and the waste products produced and the resources needed surely have finite limits. Is it not foolhardy to attempt oxidizing as much as possible of the hydrocarbon and coal bound carbon in the span of a few generations?
We have opened up new continents; cleared jungles; broken near every additional grain growing prairie regions throughout the world; added direct seeding; chemical and genetic engineering and still are barely keeping up with demand. What will be done for encores; when we are running out of space; paving over and ruining productive land, preparing for large scale efficiency and carving it up into small pieces at the same time?

And waste is enormous.

Oh; and no setbacks or cut backs to any current or desired lifestyles please..

Do you think that can be pulled off?. Remember; no meaningful moves on population control; every compound in the world considered to be mixed into every good and food imaginable; and developing every resource, product and mineral and transporting it around the world. And fresh water limits and a changing environment (also probably warming for a few years just before the onset of the next many millenia of ice ages). The rise in ocean levels as ice caps and glaciers melt will not be a maneagable problem within a relatively short term period.

And then we constrict ourselves to everything done "just in time"; and even draw or run reserves right down to nothing.
Planning or not?

[oneoff]

Are you all sure that the policy makers; the spokespersons; apologists or anyone has it right.

These aren't minor economic hiccups. There are casualties with zero percent interest rates. Bailouts and "too big to fail" are not supposed to be in the vocabulary that should ever need to be spoken.
And the Facebook IPO sounds like a poor recommendation as to how the stock market is meant to treat common unsophisticated investors.
Who is running the economic system? Any evidence of smart planning you've noticed lately.
And cotten: I too watched a half hour of the video you pointed us to. There's lots of changes improvements that never/never will be given a chance; and there are advisors, brokers, banks, "lobbiests", insiders, and spokespersons who will try to twart what isn't in their self interests. Don't be too easy on them in an effort to stay out of their sights.

[charliep]

I think we all have agreement on the issues facing the world economy. Where we might disagree with each other is impact, risk assessment and strategy. I find everyones ideas in the discussions interesting and food for thought.