Europe

The Russian gas giant this week said it will allow up to 15% of its gas sales to Europe to be sold at spot gas prices on the continent.

This is a big shift for Gazprom. Previously, the major insisted on selling gas to European users under long-term contracts. With gas prices linked to prevailing oil prices.

European shale-derived natural gas could become a reality far sooner, and in far larger quantities, than markets expect.

In a Securities and Exchange disclosure from last Thursday Chevron confirmed that it won new rights to explore Poland for potential shale gas, although the size of the acreage was not divulged.

Two issues that have been looming in the world economy keep getting attention: Greece and Dubai. Let’s start with Greece. It turns out that Greece has been “hiding” debt problems for years.

The Middle East peace talks are at a deadlock. Negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians to move ahead with the plan established by the so-called Quartet – the US., U.N., EU and Russia -- have faltered and come to a complete standstill.

The U.S. Dollar is trading lower against most currencies with the exception of the Japanese Yen as stronger equity markets in Europe and Asia helped drove up demand for higher yielding assets. Trading was thin overnight and is expected to remain that way until the Fed FOMC announcement later in the day.

In the last few months as the financial crisis has worn on and the perceived fate of the US banking system has ebbed and flowed there have occasionally been articles and blog posts pointing to other countries that have “better” or more sound banking systems. The decline in these places has generally been less and there seems to be less uncertainty about their fates.

Plain and simple. Equity markets started the week of June 15-19 on the wrong foot as the European Central Bank confirmed Monday the view I posited in last week’s BHBGroupTrader Market Spread Report, namely that central bankers are not buying the green shoot theories of recovery.

Record credit-card defaults in the United States are set to expose severely under-capitalized U.S. banks. Along with soaring default rates in every category of U.S. debt, this will lead to the banker-beggars looking for more blank-cheques from their errand-boy, Tim-the-tax-cheat Geithner – later this year.

For nearly 5,000 years, the price ratio between gold and silver has averaged approximately 15:1. This number is very close to the 17:1 ratio which represents the natural occurrence of the two elements in the Earth's crust. It is interesting to note, however, that through most of history the price ratio has favored silver.

On February 1, 2008, the day that Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper appointed Mark Carney as the new Governor of the Bank of Canada, Canada's currency was soaring at a multi-decade high – well above par versus the U.S.

In Part I of this series, I provided a brief exposition on the birth of silver mining, and explained how and why silver came to be universally considered a “precious metal” (and “money”) by humanity.In Part II, I will provide an outline of the development of silver mining, and the huge growth of global, silver stockpiles which accompanied such production-growth – and which ended in the l

Given the rate in which our species is over-populating this planet, in some of my more pessimistic moments, I have envisioned a world where we are all waist-deep in our own “waste”. How ironic would it be if our species' own waste products turned out to be our energy-salvation in the future?A Reuters story demonstrates that such a future is at least plausible.

There was yet another news item out on June 8th concerning still more investing by China in the infrastructure of another commodity-producing nation. While there was nothing especially noteworthy about this one, particular investment, it does not only reinforce an obvious trend – but also counters yet another myth about China's investment policies.The media in the “old” economies of U.S.

U.S. mortgage applications fell to their lowest level since February, in numbers released today. With interest rates guaranteed to go higher (thanks to the collapse in U.S.

Not all the efforts of the U.S. propaganda-machine are directed at generating false-hope in the U.S. economy and warping economic statistics beyond recognition. A large component of this campaign is to undermine confidence in other economies – in order to try to make investing in U.S. assets appear to be the least-worst alternative.Of course, there is no need for the U.S.