Gold World News Flash

GoldSeek.com Radio Gold Nuggets: Steve Forbes, Robert Kiyosaki, Michael Ruppert, Louis Navellier, CEO Harry Barr, & Chris Waltzek
Muni Bond Market Throwdown: How Bad Could Defaults Get?
THE BEAR WILL RETURN IN 2011
Yukon Conference to Highlight Area Play
Gene Arensberg's review of the Yukon resource play
Gene Arensberg's review of the Yukon resource play
Weekly precious metals market review at King World News
Yukon Conference to Highlight Area Play
Outlook 2011 & the Next Decade: Is The Smart Money Right About China?

GoldSeek.com Radio Gold Nuggets: Steve Forbes, Robert Kiyosaki, Michael Ruppert, Louis Navellier, CEO Harry Barr, & Chris Waltzek

Posted: 26 Dec 2010 04:00 PM PST

GoldSeek.com Radio Gold Nuggets: Steve Forbes, Robert Kiyosaki, Michael Ruppert, Louis Navellier, CEO Harry Barr, & Chris Waltzek

Muni Bond Market Throwdown: How Bad Could Defaults Get?

Posted: 25 Dec 2010 03:45 PM PST

By Louis Lanzano Star banking analyst Meredith Whitney has been saying for months that the next phase of the housing meltdown would be a local-government financial crisis. Last weekend she put a number on it, asserting that "hundreds of billions of dollars" of municipal bond debt would end up in default. Whitney, appearing on CBS' "60 Minutes," was interviewed on correspondent Steve [...]

THE BEAR WILL RETURN IN 2011

Posted: 25 Dec 2010 12:44 PM PST

It's almost impossible to find anyone who is long term bearish on the stock market or economy at this time. In the recent Barron's poll every single analyst expected a rise in stock prices next year and continued economic expansion.

I think they are all going to be wrong, horribly wrong. I believe next year the stock market will begin the third leg down in the secular bear market. And the global economy will tip over into the next recession that will be much worse than the last one.

I've gone over the 3 year cycle in the dollar index many times. The dip down into the next 3 year cycle low this spring should drive the final leg up in gold's massive C-wave. What I haven't talked much about is what happens after the dollar bottoms.

I actually expect this three year cycle in the dollar to play out almost exactly like it did during the last three year cycle. When the dollar collapses this spring it will not only drive the price of gold to a final C-wave top, it will drive virtually all commodity prices through the roof, the most important being energy and to some extent food.

It was the sudden massive spike in energy that drove the global economy over the edge into recession in late `07 and early `08. The implosion of the credit markets just exacerbated the problem. You can see on the following chart just as soon as Bernanke drove the dollar below long term historical support (80) oil took off on its parabolic move to $147.

More Here..

This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Yukon Conference to Highlight Area Play

Posted: 25 Dec 2010 06:08 AM PST

As our Christmas present to our web log readership, just below is an offering that normally would have been reserved for Vultures (Got Gold Report subscribers) only. Enjoy and Merry Christmas. Our generation may remember as kids, on Saturdays we were glued to our black and white TVs watching the Saturday serials such as The Rex Allen Show, Roy Rogers, Lassie, The Lone Ranger, The Whirly Birds, Rescue 8 and Sea Hunt to name but a few. One show, probably already a re-run then, helped to form a lasting impression of the Yukon country in the minds of young Texans. That show was Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, the story of an intrepid Canadian lawman and his trusty dog Yukon King bringing law and justice against heavy odds to an otherwise lawless crowd of gold-crazed Klondike boomers in the late nineteenth century. The show appealed to young Texans because Preston was the equivalent of our own Texas Rangers. Tough, fair, fearsome and capable, no one wanted to be on the wr...

Gene Arensberg's review of the Yukon resource play

Posted: 25 Dec 2010 03:26 AM PST

11:25a ET Saturday, December 25, 2010

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold and Silver:

Gene Arensberg of the Got Gold Report today published a wonderful overview of the Yukon resource exploration campaign that may be the hottest thing in precious metals at the moment. Arensberg's commentary includes information about the Yukon resource Internet conference planned for January 19 and 20 in which GATA Chairman Bill Murphy will be participating. Arensberg's commentary is headlined "Yukon Conference to Highlight Area Play" and you can read it at the Got Gold Report's Internet site here:

http://www.gotgoldreport.com/2010/12/yukon-conference-to-highlight-area-...

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.

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Opportunity in the gold coin market

Swiss America Trading Corp. alerts GATA supporters to an opportunistic area of the gold coin market. While the gold bullion market has been quite volatile lately and as of November 29 gold has risen only $7 per ounce over the last month, the MS64 $20 gold St. Gaudens coin has risen about 10 percent in the same time. The ratio between the price of these coins and the price of gold is rising. If you'd like to learn more about the ratio and $20 gold coins, Swiss America can e-mail you a three-year study of it as well as other information.

Swiss America also can provide a limited number of free copies of "Crashing the Dollar," a book written by Swiss America's president, Craig Smith.

For information about the ratio between the $20 gold pieces and the gold price and for a free copy of "Crashing The Dollar," please call Swiss America's Tim Murphy at 1-800-289-2646 X1041 or Fred Goldstein at X1033. Or e-mail them at trmurphy@swissamerica.com and figoldstein@swissamerica.com.

Join GATA here:

Yukon Mining Investment e-Conference
Wednesday-Thursday, January 19-20, 2011

http://theyukonroom.com/yukon-eblast-static.html

Vancouver Resource Investment Conference
Vancouver Convention Centre West
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Sunday-Monday, January 23-24, 2011

http://cambridgehouse3.com/conference-details/vancouver-resource-investment-conference-2011/15

Cheviot Asset Management Sound Money Conference
Guildhall, London
Thursday, January 27, 2011

http://www.cheviot.co.uk/news/video/2010/12/the-cheviot-sound-money-conf...

Phoenix Investment Conference and Silver Summit
Renaissance Glendale Hotel and Spa
Glendale, Arizona
Friday-Saturday, February 18-19, 2011

http://cambridgehouse3.com/conference-details/phoenix-investment-confere...

Support GATA by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt:

http://gata.org/tshirts

Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009:

http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal

Or a video disc of GATA's 2005 Gold Rush 21 conference in the Yukon:

http://www.goldrush21.com/

Help keep GATA going

GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at:

http://www.gata.org

To contribute to GATA, please visit:

http://www.gata.org/node/16

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Prophecy Drills 71.17 Metres of 0.52 percent NiEq
(0.310 percent Nickel 0.466 g/t PGMs +Au and 0.223 percent copper)
from surface at Wellgreen Project in the Yukon

Prophecy Resource Corp. (TSX-V: PCY) reports that it has received additional assays results from its 100-percent-owned Wellgreen PGM Ni-Cu property in the Yukon, Canada. Diamond drill holes WS10-179 to WS10-182 were drilled during the summer of 2010 by Northern Platinum (which merged with Prophecy on September 23, 2010). WS10-183 was drilled by Prophecy in October 2010. Highlights from the newly received assays include 71.17 metres from surface of 0.52 percent NiEq (0.310 percent nickel, 0.466 g/t PGMs + Au, and 0.233 percent copper) and ended in mineralization. For more drill highlights, please visit:

http://prophecyresource.com/news_2010_nov29.php

Gene Arensberg's review of the Yukon resource play

Posted: 25 Dec 2010 03:26 AM PST

11:25a ET Saturday, December 25, 2010

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold and Silver:

http://www.gotgoldreport.com/2010/12/yukon-conference-to-highlight-area-...

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.

http://theyukonroom.com/yukon-eblast-static.html

Vancouver Resource Investment Conference
Vancouver Convention Centre West
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Sunday-Monday, January 23-24, 2011

http://cambridgehouse3.com/conference-details/vancouver-resource-investment-conference-2011/15

Cheviot Asset Management Sound Money Conference
Guildhall, London
Thursday, January 27, 2011

http://www.cheviot.co.uk/news/video/2010/12/the-cheviot-sound-money-conf...

To contribute to GATA, please visit:

http://www.gata.org/node/16

Weekly precious metals market review at King World News

Posted: 25 Dec 2010 02:34 AM PST

10:34a ET Saturday, December 25, 2010

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold (and Silver):

It's Christmas but it's also Saturday and so the weekly precious metals market review has been posted at King World News, featuring Bill Haynes of CMI Gold and Silver and Dan Norcini of JSMineSet.com. It's 24 minutes long and you can listen to it here:

http://www.kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/Broadcast/Entries/2010/12/24_...

Or try this abbreviated link:

http://tinyurl.com/2e9bb44

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.

ADVERTISEMENT

Sona Drills 85.4g Gold/Ton Over 4 Metres at Elizabeth Gold Deposit, Extending the Mineralization of the Southwest Vein on the Property

Company Press Release, October 27, 2010

VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Sona Resources Corp. reports on five drillling holes in the third round of assay results from the recently completed drill program at its 100 percent-owned Elizabeth Gold Deposit Property in the Lillooet Mining District of southern British Columbia. Highlights from the diamond drilling include:

-- Hole E10-66 intersected 17.4g gold/ton over 1.54 metres.

-- Hole E10-67 intersected 96.4g gold/ton over 2.5 metres, including one assay interval of 383g of gold/ton over 0.5 metres.

-- Hole E10-69 intersected 85.4g gold/ton over 4.03 metres, including one assay interval of 230g gold/ton over 1 metre.

Four drill holes, E10-66 to E10-69, targeted the southwestern end of the Southwest Vein, and three of the holes have expanded the mineralized zone in that direction. The Southwest Vein gold mineralization has now been intersected over a strike length of 325 metres, with the deepest hole drilled less than 200 metres from surface.

"The assay results from the Southwest Zone quartz vein continue to be extremely positive," says John P. Thompson, Sona's president and CEO. "We are expanding the Southwest Vein, and this high-grade gold mineralization remains wide open down dip and along strike to the southwest."

For the company's full press release, please visit:

http://sonaresources.com/_resources/news/SONA_NR19_2010.pdf

Join GATA here:

Yukon Mining Investment e-Conference
Wednesday-Thursday, January 19-20, 2011

http://theyukonroom.com/yukon-eblast-static.html

Vancouver Resource Investment Conference
Vancouver Convention Centre West
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Sunday-Monday, January 23-24, 2011

http://cambridgehouse3.com/conference-details/vancouver-resource-investment-conference-2011/15

Cheviot Asset Management Sound Money Conference
Guildhall, London
Thursday, January 27, 2011

http://www.cheviot.co.uk/news/video/2010/12/the-cheviot-sound-money-conf...

Phoenix Investment Conference and Silver Summit
Renaissance Glendale Hotel and Spa
Friday-Saturday, February 18-19, 2011
Glendale, Arizona

http://cambridgehouse3.com/conference-details/phoenix-investment-confere...

Support GATA by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt:

http://www.gata.org/node/16

ADVERTISEMENT

Prophecy Drills 71.17 Metres of 0.52% NiEq
(0.310 % Nickel 0.466 g/t PGMs +Au and 0.223% Copper)
from surface at Wellgreen Project in the Yukon

Prophecy Resource Corp. (TSX-V: PCY) reports that it has received additional assays results from its 100-percent-owned Wellgreen PGM Ni-Cu property in the Yukon, Canada. Diamond drill holes WS10-179 to WS10-182 were drilled during the summer of 2010 by Northern Platinum (which merged with Prophecy on September 23, 2010). WS10-183 was drilled by Prophecy in October 2010. Highlights from the newly received assays include 71.17 metres from surface of 0.52 percent NiEq (0.310 percent nickel, 0.466 g/t PGMs + Au, and 0.233 percent copper) and ended in mineralization. For more drill highlights, please visit:

http://prophecyresource.com/news_2010_nov29.php

Yukon Conference to Highlight Area Play

Posted: 25 Dec 2010 12:42 AM PST

Outlook 2011 & the Next Decade: Is The Smart Money Right About China?

Posted: 24 Dec 2010 08:40 PM PST

By Dian L. Chu, EconForecast

China has been ranked as the top growing country among the G20 since 2001 and is expected to retain that title for at least another five years (See Growth Chart). However, the news coming out of China for the past three months has not been good. It is looking more and more that it is not a question of if China is a bubble and going to burst, but when.

The country has major infrastructure issues, troubling population dynamics, poorly aligned employment outcomes, inflation problems, a real estate bubble, an opaque and potentially insolvent banking system (had mark-to-market accounting been applied), geo-political problems with North Korea and Taiwan, and an underperforming stock market in 2010 (see stock comparison chart).

Smart Money Rushing Out

While the hot money is flooding into China, the smart local money is doing everything they can to get their money outside of China, which partly explains why Shanghai SE Composite has underperformed other markets for the past year or so (see Comparison Chart).

The many issues of China could conspire to become the biggest train wreck waiting to happen, and potentially dwarf any little budget problems in Europe by a factor of ten.

Big Trouble In Big China

China has a population related societal structural problem. The nation has tried to utilize the vast manpower to its advantage over the last two decades building a powerhouse manufacturing economy through the availability of low cost workers, which supplied the world with lower cost goods.

Nevertheless, the harsh reality is that the nation's infrastructure, quality jobs, food, and overall resources are too scarce to support such mass population, while achieving the government`s goal of a smooth transition to a developed middle class to sustain an internal demand model going forward.

If you think having riots in Greece over the pension retirement age being raised is bad, just wait till riots breaking out in Beijing and other cities over a 90 cent bowl of noodle soup now costing four dollars due to food shortages, and a runaway inflation problem.

Loose Lending = Non-performing Projects

This is only reinforced by some of the news events taking place over the last three months. Let`s start with the raising of banks reserve requirements by the central bank, which is the sixth such increase in 2010.

These measures are meant to curb the excess lending which has fueled much of the overbuilding and real estate speculation occurred over the past two years as China`s central bank initially wanted to avert a recession by artificially creating demand for workers and construction projects to replace lagging demand from the developed economies.

The problem is that too much lending has occurred, and bad lending at that. Because of the cheap available credit, now you have cement companies and manufacturing firms getting bank loans to invest in endeavors such as real estate, which is outside of their core expertise and competency.

Real Estate Misery Loves Company – China & Spain

The result is a bunch of excess inventory and poorly thought-out construction projects which have no means of recouping the initial investment needed to repay the bank loans.

This practice is similar to Spain`s situation now where they have entire uninhabited building complexes that have yet to be marked to market, and will probably ultimately be demolished. But at least in Spain, even though it was a construction boom, it was engineered by developers in Spain, and not by some manufacturing outfits like those in China.

So, multiply the bad business project factor by ten and you get an understanding of the magnitude of bad loans on the books of Chinese banks. The problem is being further exacerbated by the practice similar to Spain`s of banks making additional loans to the businesses just so that they can then turnaround and pay back the interest owed on the original loans.

The only way this would work out is if these projects magically develop revenue streams. Unfortunately, in the case of Spain, a 20% unemployment rate, coupled with a still overvalued housing market in which prices still need to come down significantly, would suggest that by the time the Spanish economy recovers enough to support the excess inventory, the abandoned projects are run down and uninhabitable.

A similar scenario could play out in China as well.

True Smart Money Wary of the Write-off Domino

Furthermore, China`s practice of overbuilding at the height of real estate valuations makes even haircuts on loan write-offs an untenable practice for banks, and by further throwing good money after bad, the ultimate mark- to-market effect could be catastrophic for Chinese Banks.

This is the main reason all the major Chinese banks have gone to the market in 2010 to raise more capital before investors wise up to the underlying deficits these banks face, as these bad loans eventually would need to be written off the books.

Victor Shih, a Northwestern University professor estimates that Chinese local governments borrowed some 11.4 trillion renminbi at the end of 2009, and that local government financing loans to be roughly one-third of China's 2009 GDP.

Shih reckons the most likely scenario over the next few years is that there would be increases of non-performing loans ratio from local governments. This would require a large scale of recapitalization of the Chinese banking system, which would eat up a large share of China's foreign exchange reserves and possibly slow down growth.

I do believe Beijing is quite capable of a few bailouts and surviving a widespread banking crisis, but this most definitely will not bode well for the financial markets. That's most likely why you see insiders removing capital from direct exposure to the inevitable re-pricing that will happen throughout Chinese markets from real estate to the stock market.

This can be seen at this early stage by the underperformance of the Chinese stock market compared to other global markets. Remember, foreigners cannot invest directly in these markets, so these capital outflows are truly the smart money.

Logistic Gridlock Crimping the Middle Class

Next let`s look at the recent news regarding a severe cutback in automobile registrations in Beijing to 240,000 in 2011 from 700,000 registered in 2010 by the municipal government. Other large cities in China are bound to follow. This is most likely related to the reported 9-day traffic jam on the Beijing-Tibet expressway in August, and other extended traffic jams throughout China in 2010.

China is trying to build infrastructure projects after the fact; whereas with proper central planning these should have been established far ahead of the massive transition from a rural, agricultural based populous to that of a modern, large city based business and manufacturing concentration.

Simply put, it is impossible for all the Chinese citizens who want and can afford automobiles to be able to own and utilize this form of transport without a total breakdown in the transportation system. We are seeing the early stages of complete and counterproductive gridlock in the transportation system of China, and it is only going to get worse over the next decade.

No Jobs for College Grads

For all the talk about how China graduates more engineers each year, and other college educated young people who have strong backgrounds in the hard sciences than most developed nations combined, this is actually another sign of problems to come over the next decade in China.

China`s wealth and emergence into the second largest business economy hasn`t been built around the need for these types of mind and skill set. So literally you have a large mismatch between the types of available jobs in China, that are supported by the heavy manufacturing and construction intensive focus of the past twenty years, to that of the recently educated pool of graduates who have grown in sizable numbers over the past five years.

The Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Waste

This results in a large human asset class that China is currently wasting, as most of the newly educated workforce is working in jobs which require little or no advanced education at the university level. So you have highly educated university graduates in areas like engineering and accounting working low level service and sales jobs that pay less than many manufacturing jobs.

In short, there are too many highly educated Chinese citizens graduating each year for the number of jobs available needing their skill set because China`s economic model isn`t built around these type of jobs. This type of misaligned employment outcomes never ends well; it usually manifests itself in increased civil and social unrest.

8% Inflation in 2011

The next major challenge for China is a skyrocketing inflation, which at its root is the fact that there are too many people chasing too few resources. This fundamental flaw in population dynamics underpins many of the problems that China faces going forward.

Recent CPI data for November illustrates the inflation problem in China with a reading of 5.1% from a year ago comparison, this is up from a 4.4% reading for the previous month. Couple this with the latest 4% hike in fuel prices in China because of rising oil prices, you could expect future CPI and PPI reports to reflect even higher rates of inflation.

For now, most of the year over year spike has revolved around higher food prices as energy has mainly been flat for 2010 thanks mostly to government subsidies. Now that energy prices have entered the picture, China will start to experience even more inflation pressures in 2011.

Furthermore, with the undervalued yuan pegged to the dollar, it is only getting worse for China in 2011 due to Fed's QE2 pressures on the dollar. The real inflation rate for Chinese citizens for 2011 will probably approach 8% next year.

An Asian Contagion by China?

This escalating inflation concern is further compounded by Beijing's lack of decisive action to combat the problem by delaying a much needed currency appreciation, and hiking interest rates in a timely fashion. There is no getting around the fact that these two things need to occur as soon as possible.

By the time the Chinese government is forced to implement these tightening tools, the damage to the economy is most likely already done. The longer China delays the inevitable serious tightening measures, the harder the economic crash that will occur in the aftermath of these policy changes. And it is unlikely to end well. The resultant impact will probably take the rest of the Asian economies down with it – an Asian Contagion scenario.

History Repeats Itself

Eventually central planners and finance ministers around the world might start to understand that policies which lead to bubbles being formed in the first place are counterproductive in the long run. But until that lesson is learned, it seems like we are doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over again.

Right now, there are more and more signs coming out of China that all is not well with its economy, and the likelihood of a more severe downturn in the future is a distinct possibility, unless its policy makers take decisive and prudent actions to minimize the damage of a hard landing.

Dian L. Chu, Dec. 25, 2010 | Mobile Reader, Website | Google Profile

Save Your ASSets First

Sunday, December 26, 2010

Gold World News Flash

Gold World News Flash

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