Gold World News Flash |
- Will Gold, the Dollar or the Euro Collapse?
- Reference Point: Gold - Update #1
- Gold Price Correction Likely, Watch For Buying Opportunities
- 7 Reasons Food Shortages Will Become a Global Crisis
- Three December Details You Hopefully Haven't Forgotten
- Chambliss/Priebus in 2012?
- Euro: New Year, New Challenges
- Jon Hykawy: Vanadium Boost Would Give Batteries More Juice
- Real Silver Highs 3
- Peak Gold?
- Market Commentary From Monty Guild
- Macro-Trends – Keys to Macro Profits in 2011
- FRIDAY Market Excerpts
- Hourly Action In Gold From Trader Dan
- A National Debt That Will Never Be Repaid
- The SP 500 and Gold Under Pressure on Friday
- A Forecast Fulfilled
- Official US Debt Tough to Calculate
- Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts
- Why gold can hit $4,000
- Sarkozy aims to blunt dollar's dominance
- Gold Bounces as US Job Data Disappoints, Hong Kong Gold Premiums Rise Further
- The Fleecing Of Our Young Innocents: Loving Little Peter To Pay Paul
- The Truth About Gold
- COT Gold, Silver and US Dollar Index Report - January 7, 2011
- BLS Unemployment Report Doesn’t Add Up
- Mistakes With Minimum Wage
- Is Another Giant Precious Metals Bear Raid Coming This Morning?
- The Silver Rush Is On
- $1.3 Billion Burj Khalifa 2.0 is Briliant!
- LGMR: Gold Bounces as US Job Data Disappoints, Hong Kong Gold Premiums Rise Further
- The World Goes Crazy
- “If you've ever considered buying silver, I recommend you do it soon.”
- Banks lose crucial Massachusetts foreclosure case
- Ben Bernanke and the Price of Oil
- New Year’s Resolutions and Predictions
- CDS Markets: The Ultimate Ponzi-Scheme
- China gold output seen at new record 340 tonnes
- A Day in the Life of the National Debt
- Buyers facing down the silver shorts, Turk tells King World News
- Endeavour Silver Set for Long Bull Run With New Production Record
- Eton Park Starts New Vallar Position
- Agnico-Eagle Mines Still Lagging Well Behind Gold
- Gold Seeker Closing Report: Gold and Silver Fall Slightly
- India eyes South Africa’s coal, gold resources
- Never any blackout on Fed's private chats with investment houses
- Never any blackout on Fed's private chats with investment houses
- US State Revenue Down a Third While Spending Increased
- Nick Barisheff: Irreversible upward pressure for gold
- (For Pro Hedge Funds Only) Naked short the banks, use the proceeds to buy physical Silver. NOTE: if you are naked shorting you can sell enough paper short to guarantee a downtick! Manufacture profits just like Goldman does by massively swamping the exchan
| Will Gold, the Dollar or the Euro Collapse? Posted: 07 Jan 2011 04:00 PM PST Right now, the markets have pulled gold back in the face of what seemed to be an upward turn in the U.S. economy. Many may feel this is the time to sell gold. The growing Eurozone debt crises could spell the end of the euro as we know it. The debt problems of the U.S. are worse than Europe so it is a time to ask, "Will these three forms of money collapse?"
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| Reference Point: Gold - Update #1 Posted: 07 Jan 2011 02:57 PM PST The system we have today is actually broken, only we haven't quite recognized it yet. And so we need a new one, and this is the time to do it, while the markets haven't quite figured it out yet.The preceding were the words of a billionaire more than a year ago. The following are the words of a Federal Reserve Bank president from just a couple of days ago (emphasis mine)… Should the debate that is
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| Gold Price Correction Likely, Watch For Buying Opportunities Posted: 07 Jan 2011 12:57 PM PST Gold Price Close Today : 1,368.50 
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| 7 Reasons Food Shortages Will Become a Global Crisis Posted: 07 Jan 2011 11:51 AM PST Food inflation is here and it's here to stay. We can see it getting worse every time we buy groceries. Basic food commodities like wheat, corn, soybeans, and rice have been skyrocketing since July, 2010 to record highs. These sustained price increases are only expected to continue as food production shortfalls really begin to take their toll this year and beyond.  This summer Russia banned exports of wheat to ensure their nation's supply, which sparked complaints of protectionism. The U.S. agriculture community is already talking about rationing corn over ethanol mandates versus supply concerns. We've seen nothing yet in terms of food protectionism. Global food shortages have forced emergency meetings at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization where they claim "urgent action" is needed. They point to extreme weather as the main contributing factor to the growing food shortages. However, commodity speculation has also been targeted as one of the culprits. It seems that the crisis would also present the perfect opportunity and the justification for the large GMO food companies to force their products into skeptical markets like in Europe and Japan, as recently leaked cables suggest. One thing is for sure; food shortages will likely continue to get worse and eventually become a full-scale global food crisis. Here are seven reasons why food shortages are here to stay on a worldwide scale: 
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| Three December Details You Hopefully Haven't Forgotten Posted: 07 Jan 2011 11:38 AM PST As January and the new year kick off to a fast start, we shouldn't be so quick to forget about 2010, especially the events of December 2010. A number of very important news releases will set the stage for the silver markets in 2011, and interestingly enough, one company, JP Morgan, is featured in each. #1 Morgan and Copper In early December, it was discovered that JP Morgan may be behind the buying frenzy copper markets, just as it is believed the bank is massively short in the silver markets. For many, copper presents an opportunity to buy into a groundswell of real copper demand amid low interest rates, emerging market growth, and an expected decline in copper output. Some analysts, however, see it differently, and instead believe the combination of long copper and short silver is essentially a long-term, double short on silver. Silver, of course, is a by-product of copper mining, often brought out of the ground in search of new copper reserves. When mining ...
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| Posted: 07 Jan 2011 11:35 AM PST Stephen Colbert of Comedy Central and Colbert Nation had some fun with the name of one of the men trying to unseat Michael Steele as Republican National Committee chairman. I haven't laughed this hard in a long time and how Colbert kept it together through this entire piece is beyond me – he looked like he was about to lose it a couple times. On a more serious note (if you can ever say that about Stephen Colbert), see this interview with Ron Paul from earlier in the week.
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| Euro: New Year, New Challenges Posted: 07 Jan 2011 11:34 AM PST One interesting aspect of todays blow out +297K rise in Dec ADP is the cautious interpretations circulated for Fridays release of Dec Nonfarm payrolls. Recall the disappointing 39K increase in Nov payrolls from +172 in Oct despite the unexpectedly strong +92K ADP in Nov. Nonetheless, both the US dollar and 10 year yields are rallying across the board of further growth recovery in the US. Noting that Fed Chairman Bernanke will testify to Congress 1 hour after Friday's jobs report, we would expect the Chairman to reiterate the case for buying the entire $600 bln in QE2 even in the event that Dec payrolls show a blowout number with similar proportions to today's ADP (above 220K-250K). Yet despite those reiterations of QE2, bond yields will likely hold on to their upward trajectory eyeing 3.80% before ultimately regaining 4.10-15% in late Q1, which should help support USD vs. EUR, GBP and JPY. Before we get to the fundamental arguments hampering the euro, see below the key t...
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| Jon Hykawy: Vanadium Boost Would Give Batteries More Juice Posted: 07 Jan 2011 11:32 AM PST Source: Brian Sylvester of The Gold Report 01/07/2011 Don't look now, but vanadium demand is ramping up, according to Jon Hykawy, head of global research with Toronto-based Byron Capital Markets. Vanadium is mostly used to strengthen steel, but the metal could see its demand dramatically increase if battery manufacturers start using it to boost power output in lithium-vanadium cells. In this exclusive interview with The Gold Report, Jon talks about some potential demand drivers for vanadium and some companies looking to capitalize on the impending boost in vanadium use. The Gold Report: Jon, lithium batteries are about to be deployed in electric cars, replacing nickel-metal-hydride batteries. Lithium is also being used regularly in laptop batteries. Is there a substitute for lithium? Jon Hykawy: There really isn't as far as batteries go. You can produce batteries that contain nickel-metal-hydrides. You can produce batteries that contain lead and acid. You can produc...
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| Posted: 07 Jan 2011 11:15 AM PST Thanks to its awesome autumn rally, silver has become something of a rock star in the commodities world. Investors and speculators alike are enthralled with this white metal. But with it just hitting new 30-year highs, many on Wall Street suspect silver is stretching to bull-ending extremes. However once silver's modern history is recast into real inflation-adjusted terms, this metal's secular bull is still looking young.
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| Posted: 07 Jan 2011 10:51 AM PST AngloGold and De Beers to spend $40 million on undersea gold hunt Share this:
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| Market Commentary From Monty Guild Posted: 07 Jan 2011 10:41 AM PST The Key Asset Classes For 2011 Will Be: Oil, Gold, And Stocks Economic growth will be fine. The debt overhang will be handled by continuing and accelerated Quantitative Easing. Looking ahead, we are quite optimistic about demand for stocks, gold, and commodities in 2011 Investors are moving from bonds to stocks, and the huge cash balances at money market funds will likely find their way into stock and commodity markets in 2011. This means that inflation and commodities prices are likely to rise faster than wages, and those living on fixed incomes or bond interest will be affected the most, due to the fact that their money buys less of everything; both luxuries and necessities. However, the ramifications of this inflationary trend are also serious for wage-earners. In every inflationary period in recorded history, wages have risen more slowly than inflation. Although government officials do not want to admit it, the current environment in the U.S. is one of rising inflation. If you are skeptical, look around at the costs of goods and services that you buy. You will see that they are rising, and in months and years to come there will be acceleration of this rate of increase. So why does the government downplay this fact? The U.S. Government has many obligations tied to inflation, such as social security and other entitlement programs, and because of this, it behooves them to downplay inflation in their speeches and in their inflation reporting. Over the last few years world stock markets have been very volatile, and unforeseen events have been more common than in previous decades. This year, we expect sovereign debt problems in Europe, debt problems in U.S. states and municipalities, periodic market shakeouts due to high-frequency trading, and stronger economic growth within the developed world, to create more market volatility. This volatility may create opportunities to buy gold, oil, and quality U.S. and foreign stocks at attractive prices. We expect the market to recover from all of these events by the close of the year and end higher than today's values. The debt crisis engulfing the developed world's banks and governments will be solved by devaluing the U.S. Dollar, Euro, other currencies and by creating liquidity via Quantitative Easing, (QE), or the printing of new money. This liquidity will flow into stocks, precious metals, commodities, and commercial real estate. When these flows arrive, all of the above-mentioned asset classes will enjoy price rises, possibly even dramatic ones. What this means to investors is that gold, oil and stocks (both U.S. and foreign) will be beneficiaries of the liquidity that is and will continue to be pumped by many central banks into world markets. Your U.S. dollars, Euros, etc. will not buy as much, but you can protect yourself from the declining currency by owning the above asset classes. One of our resolutions for 2011 is to do a better job buying the dips. As always we will sell quickly to take profits or cut losses if the markets appear to be entering a long-term bear phase. As we enter 2011, the U.S. dollar appears ready to rally. European governments have significant debt issuance needs in the coming weeks, which could cause some unsteadiness in the Euro. This period of dollar strength could cause a pullback in some of the commodities that have been so strong for the past few months. Fundamentally, we see no cause for a big commodity or stock market selloff in 2011. Short-term sell offs of 10% will occur. On the economic front we see signs of growth. The banking system liquidity crisis, which has plagued the developed world for years will continue to be dealt with by the infusion of large amounts of liquidity into financial institutions and the financial markets. In summary, we believe that this QE will keep the stocks of growing companies in many countries, as well as oil, precious metals, foods and industrial metals moving up. Harry Schultz Last month saw the retirement of a great investment mind. The bold and brilliant Harry Schultz retired after a 45-year career and offerings of wise advice to the world's wealthy and powerful through his Harry Schultz Letter (HSL). Harry has been a great and experienced observer of world events for decades. After watching inflation in China as a young man he became a voice for rational economic behavior that has never wavered. Harry has enjoyed a superlative investment record in gold and in world markets. At 87 years young he deserves some rest, but I expect he will remain active in many areas. Harry remains a courageous, energetic, and youthful individual. All the best to you, Harry. The Fed Did More Than Many Realized In The Bail Out Of 2008 Many informed observers believe that without the Federal Reserve's emergency liquidity programs in 2008, the U.S. and Europe would currently be in a major depression at this juncture. While it is difficult to know for sure, we do know that the problems in the world's financial system were much worse than publically advertised. The system was, for all intents and purposes, bankrupt. The Fed was able to provide enough liquidity to keep it afloat, and is still having to provide liquidity today. Will it last forever? I doubt it. Watch out for liquidity problems in 2011 and coming years. For an interesting article on this subject, click the following link: "How Fed Crisis Aid Got Tested" from The Wall Street Journal, 12/09/2010. Wall Street Journal Article Link It might also be helpful to remember that one of the major factors that caused this crisis was unregulated, non-exchange-traded derivatives. These are still a problem, called "weapons of financial mass destruction" by Warren Buffet, and not enough is being done to rein them in.
India India's economy has good fundamentals. Rational economic behavior is on the rise and we believe in India as a long-term investment. Over the short term, we are concerned that Indian stocks are just not cheap enough. They must continue to produce a flow of good results to maintain their valuations. We are taking profits in India and exiting with a small profit. We continue to be attracted to India but we believe that the market is too highly priced. We will wait for a correction and then return to this long-term gem.
South Korea South Korea has been in the news as a result of the antics of the North Korean leader Kim Jung Il, who despotically presides over a poverty-stricken nation. We are impressed by the recovery in profits and the outlook for profits in South Korea despite this. South Korea is well positioned to sell to China, the rest of emerging Asia, and to the developed world. They are strong in technology and heavy industry, and Korea has many transferrable technologies that the Chinese would love to develop. We look for growth and opportunity in Korean stocks.
Summary of Recommendations Investors should continue to hold gold for long-term investment. We have been bullish on gold since June 25, 2002, when it was selling at about $325 per ounce. In our opinion, it will move to $1,500 and then higher. Traders should sell spikes and buy dips. Food and food-related shares remain a favorite of ours and we believe that oil-related investments hold promise. We have been bullish on grains and farm-related shares since late 2008 and bullish on oil since February 11, 2009, when oil was trading at $35.94 per barrel. For long-term investment, we do not like the U.S. dollar, Japanese yen, British pound, or the Euro. Since September 14th, we've been mentioning that we like the Singaporean, Thai, Canadian, Swiss, Brazilian, Chinese, and Australian currencies, and we still do. We suggest using pullbacks in these currencies as an opportunity to establish long-term positions. In each country we favor different companies, as different sectors and industries are at differing stages of their growth. In developed countries, technology, precious metals and commodity producers (food, oil, and base metals) will all benefit from the back-to-work trend developing as jobs begin to appear in the U.S. and Europe. Those familiar with China and India know that it is not the cost of capital (interest rates) that determines whether economic growth continues, but rather the continued availability of capital. Bank lending will not dry up in India and China. We are bullish on both countries, but if you do not own them wait to see if they institute capital controls, which would decrease their attractiveness. We also remain bullish on Colombia. In Colombia's case, it is due to the very low valuation of Colombian stocks. In summary, investors should continue to hold shares of growing companies in India, China, and Colombia. We believe U.S. stocks can rally further. Our reason for becoming more bullish on U.S. stocks on September 9, 2010 was that over the longer term, liquidity formation through QE will create demand for many assets, including U.S. stocks. A correction of 5% to 7% could occur at any time; we would use the correction as a buying opportunity. As mentioned two weeks ago, we also recommend Canada as a country for investment. A summary of our current recommendations can be found in the table below:
We are in the process of adding a page to our website where readers can view our current and past recommendations and see how our past recommendations have performed. In the meantime, please feel free to view our recommendations over the last decade by visiting our website archive at: www.guildinvestment.com. Best wishes. Monty Guild and Tony Danaher
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| Macro-Trends – Keys to Macro Profits in 2011 Posted: 07 Jan 2011 10:26 AM PST Gold and Silver will be the Ultimate Wealth Protection and Profit Providers in the Coming Years.
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| Posted: 07 Jan 2011 10:24 AM PST Gold futures slip under $1370, end week down 3.7% The COMEX February gold futures contract closed down $2.80 Friday at $1368.90, trading between $1352.70 and $1379.00 January 7, p.m. excerpts: see full news, 24-hr newswire…
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| Hourly Action In Gold From Trader Dan Posted: 07 Jan 2011 09:40 AM PST View the original post at jsmineset.com... January 07, 2011 10:47 AM Dear CIGAs, Extreme volatility was the standout today as a conflicted payrolls report had participants scrambling to assess the direction in which to place their bets. Overnight, gold fell through strong support near $1365 plunging down towards $1350 in anticipation of a very strong jobs number. When the number failed to live up to the anticipated hype (remember that bizarre ADP number earlier this week), shorts scrambled for cover as buyers came back in. That buying took gold well off its worst levels (nearly $20) and back above $1365. It will need to hold this level to prevent another run lower towards $1345 – $1340. One can easily observe the battle around this critical level on the 15 minute bar chart. JBGJ reports strong physical offtake in Asia on the move lower which is what will be needed to offset the fund liquidation and fresh short selling entering the market. The key will be whether the funds ...
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| A National Debt That Will Never Be Repaid Posted: 07 Jan 2011 09:40 AM PST As you read this, the U.S. government owes just a sliver under $14 trillion dollars to various suckers who've lent it money. And it wants to borrow more. Timothy Geithner warned that a failure to raise the debt limit would mean the government would not be able to make the payments on the current debt in the very near future. Consult the official record and you'll read that the U.S. has never defaulted on its obligations. That's technically true…but then what about when France's prime minister Charles de Gaulle politely asked the U.S. to hand over the gold it promised was backing the U.S. dollars held by France and other nations? "No gold for you!" Nixon was heard to say. That's because the U.S. had printed a lot of dollars in order to pay for Lyndon Johnson's social programs and war (among other things). There was no way that the ratio of dollars to gold held by the U.S. was still anywhere near an amount that would support the official $35/oz. What was the real price of gold wi...
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| The SP 500 and Gold Under Pressure on Friday Posted: 07 Jan 2011 09:05 AM PST With the holiday season in the rear view mirror and volume slowly creeping back into the marketplace, I can't help but wonder what lies ahead. The optimist in me is hopeful that the economy will continue to repair itself ... Read More...
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| Posted: 07 Jan 2011 08:45 AM PST by Addison Wiggin - January 7, 2011
 2011 is shaping up to be the year science makes the ultimate breakthrough treating one of man’s most vexing diseases. This week has already brought two developments bearing out one of Patrick Cox’s most critical predictions for the year. The editors and staff of Alzheimer’s Weekly just named their “most promising trial drug” of the previous 12 months. They did not take this step lightly. They thoroughly evaluated more than 100 trials of Alzheimer’s and dementia treatments. They reviewed more than 10,000 journal articles.A lot is riding on this designation… because 2010 was a tough year for Alzheimer’s research. In August, Eli Lilly suspended trials of a much-hyped drug called semagacestat. Turns out it actually made some patients’ symptoms worse. “It was a true crash-and-burn,” the Alzheimer’s Weekly editors write, “over a decade in the making and ending in a spectacular anti-climax.” “The drug was carrying a risk, a risk of skin cancer, and wasn’t improving memory,” adds Dr. Paul Aisen of the University of California, who was involved in the early trials.  Alzheimer’s Weekly has a rigorous list of criteria in evaluating which treatments are the most promising. They include…
 That leaves just one. Let’s zero in on the third criteria of the Alzheimer’s Weekly editors -- treating the disease, and not just the symptoms. Or in medspeak, “disease modification.” Pfizer’s Aricept is the big dog of existing Alzheimer’s treatments -- and it comes up way short in this department.Not so with the treatment we’re talking about. In a recent interview with Breakthrough Technology Alert editor Patrick Cox, the CEO of the company behind this treatment explains, “In validated standard approach animal models, which everybody does, we’ve seen an efficacy that far exceeds Aricept, and at very low doses. “We also have seen actual disease modification. Aricept is the market leader and is a symptomatic treatment only -- there is no disease modification.”  Now the second major development bearing out Patrick’s forecast: This same company applied this week to begin human trials of the drug we’ve just been describing.This speaks to the last of the Alzheimer’s Weekly editors’ criteria… human trials in the near term. “A drug not in human trials is at least five years away from availability,” they write. “Our readers are interested in what can be done for people living with dementia now.” That’s ultimately why they named this drug the most promising among more than 100: “It is out of the lab and in the clinic, undergoing trials on real people to help their Alzheimer’s.” It’s about to shake up the $5 billion Alzheimer’s treatment industry in a big way. Coupled with the news yesterday about another of Patrick’s “wealth quake” opportunities -- a significant breakthrough in the treatment of heart disease and autoimmune disorders -- Patrick’s 2011 forecasts are already bearing fruit… and the year is just one week old. To learn about the immense wealth potential underlying all five of Patrick’s forecasts, give this presentation a look right now.  On the surface, the Bureau of Labor Statistics delivered a head-scratcher of an unemployment report this morning: An anemic 103,000 new jobs in December, but a dramatic fall in the U-3 unemployment rate from 9.8% to 9.4%.Let’s dive into the particulars:
Here’s your answer -- a chart that shows the percentage of working-age population in the labor force. It fell to 64.3% last month -- a level last seen when Christopher Lloyd was taking moviegoers Back to the Future:  Herein lies one of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ favorite tricks. If you gave up looking for work more than a year ago, you’re no longer counted as part of the labor force. Thus, employers added only 103,000 jobs in December… but incredibly, we have 556,000 fewer unemployed people! And there you have it -- headline unemployment fell to its lowest in 20 months because more people gave up looking for work. Big problem for Uncle Sam, because that means more people with no income to tax. Our call last month -- a federal deficit easily exceeding White House estimates of $1.4 billion -- is looking more and more likely.  Thus, a raising of the national debt ceiling looks more and more like a slam-dunk today. With the national debt at $14.01 trillion, and the ceiling at $14.29 trillion… this is going to become an issue within weeks.Yesterday, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner wrote a letter to Congress saying a refusal to raise the debt ceiling would have “catastrophic economic consequences that would last for decades.” As if running up the debt indefinitely wouldn’t be catastrophic… but we digress.  Opposition to raising the debt ceiling is crumbling all around. “Will the debt ceiling ... have to be raised? Yes,” says House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan -- a darling of deficit hawks.Even Tea Party favorite Sen. Rand Paul appears to be backing down. “I’ll vote to raise the debt ceiling if we attach a balanced budget rule to it,” he says. “If they say no more debt will be added and from here on out we’ll balance the budget, I’ll vote one time to raise the debt ceiling.” Later today, we’re issuing our own letter to Congress, responding to Secretary Geithner, in hopes we might stiffen someone’s spine. A quixotic endeavor, perhaps, but we’ll pass along a copy to you… so you can see why we’re doing it. Keep an eye on your inbox.  For once, stock traders have seen through the Labor Department’s smoke and mirrors. A drop to 9.4% unemployment hasn’t prevented a 60-point fall in the Dow. Likewise, the weak employment numbers have propelled more expectations of “full speed ahead” for QE2… and put a floor under gold for the moment. After early-morning trading as low as $1,354, the spot price has recovered to $1,371 -- about where it was this time yesterday. Romania’s leaders are on notice: If bad things happen this year, it’s because their revisions to the tax code crossed the vital constituency of… witches.Yesterday, a coven of witches hurled poisonous mandrake into the Danube River to cast a spell on the president and other leaders. Seems for years, witches, astrologers and fortunetellers were among a handful of professions exempt from the Romanian tax code. No longer. They’re subject to the 16% flat-rate income tax like everyone else. Queen witch Bratara Buzea plans to cast her own spell using what she says is an especially potent combination of cat excrement and a dead dog.  “My curses always work!” she declares. “We do harm to those who harm us.” Hmmm… in a country that takes it superstitions seriously (it’s the place that gave birth to the Dracula legend, after all), does that amount to a terrorist threat? And since the EU shares its information with the United States, is she on the no-fly list now?  “Maybe I missed the context,” writes a reader, “but how did the fourth reader’s statement Wednesday about the Deepwater Horizon earn a ’jackass’ rating? If it was attached to some kind of complaint about Byron King, as your reply seems to imply, then I’d escalate to something less flattering than jackass.“I’m speaking as someone who, as an Outstanding Investments subscriber, bought Transocean and Cameron Intl. about a month before the big spill. I joked at the time that if I’d bought BP, I could’ve had a trifecta. “I didn’t have the guts to double down on them as they crashed, but Byron’s insights and analysis kept me from losing sleep or panic selling. Less than a year after the biggest man-made environmental disaster in history, RIG is back to within 18% of where I bought and climbing, and CAM is up 40%. Byron is, well, outstanding, and I’m looking forward to the day my portfolio can justify writing a check to join the Reserve. “And please don’t stop being uncouth. It’s one of your most endearing qualities.” The 5: Addison will be pleased to hear that. Your editor du jour is a bit more circumspect by nature, and thus, for example, avoided the word “crap” in relation to either the Romanian hex story… or the unemployment numbers.  “How about telling us, now that the drilling ban is ‘lifted,’ how many of those rigs are already gone?” from the Gulf of Mexico.The 5: Comprehensive numbers are hard to come by. But we’re previously reported Diamond Offshore has moved at least two rigs overseas, and Transocean two more. The more that Washington keeps the oil service firms twisting in the wind, the more they’re going to move the rigs to places where they’re wanted. “As much as no nation wants an offshore blowout,” Byron King wrote recently, “most nations in this world DO want to pursue energy production. They need the oil. They’re willing to make deals and allow drilling, under appropriate supervision.” One of the most promising concessions lies about as far from Washington, D.C., as you can get… and a Canadian penny stock stands to reap some big gains -- maybe as early as this month when it allows potential partner firms to begin inspecting its data. Byron can hardly contain his excitement about this firm… for reasons he makes clear here.  “Last week in The 5, you mentioned an article from the U.K. Daily Mail claiming that China would back the euro. That seems to me to be HUGE news for the markets, yet I have seen this mentioned in only one other daily. Could you do a follow-up on what is going on? The markets seem to be ignoring this development.”The 5: And they still are. “The euro and European financial markets are important parts of the global financial system,” said Yi Gang, the head of China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange just today. “They are one of the most important investment territories for China’s foreign exchange reserves in the past, present and future,” he added. Meanwhile, China’s vice premier just committed to buying $7.9 billion in Spanish government debt, according to Spain’s respected daily El Pais. And yet the euro sits at $1.298… barely a penny less than it was when that first report came out, just before Christmas.  “I learned many years ago to avoid doing business with or investing in anything that Goldman Sachs is associated with,” writes a reader reacting to our Goldman/Facebook coverage this week. “I lost that time, but I did learn. What bothers me the most today is the human traffic between the executive offices of Goldman Sachs and the executive offices of our federal government.“There is a fraternity here that will do whatever they can to protect each other’s interests, even if those same interests are not what is best for the general population of the USA.” The 5: The human traffic flow continues: Today the president is naming Larry Summers’ replacement as head of the National Economic Council. He’s Gene Sperling -- who had the gig during Clinton’s second term but more recently collected $887,727 as a Goldman consultant in 2008. And that comes on the heels of Bill Daley becoming White House chief of staff, after seven years as a senior executive with J.P. Morgan Chase.  “Despite the clear, manipulative price takedown in silver and gold by the major bullion banks (those with massive short positions which need to get covered), you still try to relate precious metal prices to things like the strength of the dollar.“You’re smarter than that, 5. This is the first time that I have seen you running with the sheeple, eyes wide asleep!” The 5: More like eyes open, but refusing to be distracted. Three brief points…
Have a good weekend, Dave Gonigam The 5 Min. Forecast P.S.: “Noticed yesterday an invitation to Patrick Cox’s 2011 outlook,” writes an existing reader of Breakthrough Technology Alert. “Will I be given this info as part of my subscription? “Would hope so, and just to be picky, why wouldn’t I have this info before you start selling it to those not yet subscribed?” Relax, you’re not missing a thing. Just log into the Breakthrough Technology Alert home page, click on “Reports” and enjoy. You’ll get all the names and ticker symbols. If you’re not already a member of Breakthrough Technology Alert, be advised we’re removing Patrick’s 2011 forecasts from the Internet next Thursday. If you haven’t checked out this comprehensive review of five potential “wealth quakes,” take the opportunity now. P.P.S.: Addison is scrambling to meet another deadline with the documentary today. He didn’t even have time to share the details with this editor… but he’ll be back on Monday to share them with all of us.
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| Official US Debt Tough to Calculate Posted: 07 Jan 2011 08:30 AM PST We just saw an estimate telling us that by the end of Obama's term the US will be spending a third of its tax revenues just to service its debt. Not at Japanese levels yet! But getting there. And after Japan bondholders go "over the cliff" maybe lenders won't be so ready to follow the US over the edge too. The US ratio of debt to GDP is very much in the range of all the mature economies – between 60% and 80% of GDP; not at Japanese levels either, yet. But wait. In the US, unlike say, France, state and local governments have their own debts, independent of the national government. How deep in the hole are the state and local governments? Truth is, nobody knows. The states report their liabilities in strange ways, often ignoring accounting conventions. Just reading the paper gives you an idea of the problem. California faces a $19 billion shortfall this year. Jerry Brown is going to take the bus to work. That will save some money. Only $18,999,999,900 left to cut. New Jersey's public pension system is $100 billion in the hole. New York's system may lack almost twice that much. Illinois spends twice as much as it gets in taxes. What's the total damage? We've seen various estimates. The number that sticks with us – probably because it is easy to remember – is $1 trillion. The other calculation that sticks in our mind is this: add state and local debt to national debt and you get a total as large as that of Greece – at about 130% of GDP. Of course, we're only talking about OFFICIAL debt. Even that is a very squirrelly number. The Obama administration, for example, says its Obamacare program will result in trillions of dollars worth of SAVINGS to the US government. Do you believe that? You do? How about this – we'll give you 50 cents for every dollar Obamacare saves the nation if you'll give us 25 cents for every dollar it ends up costing the nation. Deal? There are also the unfunded liabilities and off-balance sheet debt. Those estimates too are all over the place. Professor Laurence Kotlikoff estimates the total US off-budget and on-budget debt at more than $200 trillion. Another calculation, cited by our friend Dylan Grice of Société Générale, puts total US on-and-off budget debt at just over 500% of GDP. Curiously, comparing the US official and unofficial debt totals to other mature economies shows that the US is most like… …France! Both totals – official and unofficial – are at about the same level. Which surprises us… We thought France was in better shape. Oh well… If we go to the poorhouse together, let's get the French to do the cooking! Bill Bonner Official US Debt Tough to Calculate originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning. The Daily Reckoning, offers a uniquely refreshing, perspective on the global economy, investing, gold, stocks and today's markets. Its been called "the most entertaining read of the day."
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| Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts Posted: 07 Jan 2011 08:30 AM PST | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 07 Jan 2011 08:24 AM PST by Barry Elias Prescient advice, indeed. This organization promotes real solutions for real people. Now, how does this relate $4,000 gold by the end of this decade? Focus on one word: real. In this case, real assets. Financial (not real) engineering wreaked havoc with our financial system during the past three decades. Rather than acting as a catalyst to enable productive endeavors, finance metastasized into a machine that simply transferred enormous wealth while adding little value to society. It was enabled by a fiat currency that could be produced at virtually no cost. The click of a mouse can now add $2 trillion to the balance sheet assets of the Federal Reserve Bank. No need to cut down trees, produce pulp, manufacture paper, and print currency. (I suppose one might argue this is a cost-saving operation for the taxpayers: no thank you.) The creation of money needs to create value for society. This is where gold comes in. Gold is rare, not easily mined (produced), and historically functions as a proxy for currency exchange. Some say we don't have enough gold to back all the money in society. This may not be the case…. Imagine that we merely focus on backing the actual money stock (base) with gold. … China has nearly $2.5 trillion in reserves, with only $50 billion in gold. Recently, they purchased a significant quantity of gold, apparently to begin diversify their portfolio: smart move. They have an additional $2.45 trillion to spend (some on gold, perhaps). Credit Suisse estimates global private net worth to be $194.5 trillion, yet only 0.2 percent (that is, 1/5 of 1 percent) is invested in gold (less than $500 billion total). There is a significant amount of net financial assets available ($194 trillion) to rebalance global portfolios toward gold. As time passes, it is becoming very clear that global government debt (federal, state, and local) is risky business, which is easily manipulated. The world central banks have engaged in a series of financial gymnastics to promote liquidity, avert defaults and prevent economic implosion. Unfortunately, these remedies treat the financial symptoms, not the root cause. The problems will come back, except more severe. … All of this spells a large increase in future demand for gold. The cause of our ills: easy money. Too easy to create, camouflage, and manipulate. … Finance should function as a catalyst for economic growth and development. This requires discipline and responsibility, where money is a reflection of real assets, which can not be readily reproduced. [source] RS View: This is an excellent piece that should be read in context with the prior Sarkozy article, particularly insofar as it tips the solution to the stated problem that our debt-ridden monetary system is so easily manipulated that 'We need reserves that are surer and more stable.'
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| Sarkozy aims to blunt dollar's dominance Posted: 07 Jan 2011 08:06 AM PST January 8, 2011 (Bloomberg/Business Times) — French President Nicolas Sarkozy brings his campaign to blunt the dollar's dominance as a reserve currency to the White House next week. The French leader may find US President Barack Obama unwilling to budge at their Jan 10 meeting on giving up the dollar's role and might offer little in the way of alternatives. Mr Sarkozy, who this year holds the presidency of both the Group of Eight industrial economies and the wider G-20, has made re-jiggering the monetary system one of his priorities, along with controlling volatility in commodity prices. The European debt crisis that has rocked the euro isn't on his G-20 agenda. 'In the absence of a new crisis, there is no incentive for the US to move away from a US dollar-centric system,' Chile's Finance Minister Felipe Larrain said at a conference in Paris on Jan 6. 'We are in a state of flux in the international monetary system. The problem is that we don't really have a perfect substitute.' A Sarkozy aide who briefed reporters said the meeting isn't designed to yield decisions. Mr Sarkozy has also met in recent months with the heads of China, India and Germany. The French plan to organise a series of 'seminars' on monetary issues and say specifics won't be presented until a G-20 summit in the Mediterranean resort of Cannes on Nov 3-4. French officials say their goal isn't to dethrone the dollar. They want to open a debate to reflect changes since the 1944 Bretton Woods conference established the US currency's role. Mr Sarkozy and Finance Minister Christine Lagarde have said that the dollar's prominence contributed to the financial crisis by encouraging global imbalances.
'Without defending or questioning the role of any specific currency, we can see that new economies have come to the fore during this recent crisis, and yet we have a world which for the time being is a single-currency world,' Ms Lagarde said on Jan 6. 'We need reserves that are surer and more stable.' [source] RS View: This article is your MUST READ assignment for the day. Got gold?
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| Gold Bounces as US Job Data Disappoints, Hong Kong Gold Premiums Rise Further Posted: 07 Jan 2011 07:58 AM PST Bullion Vault
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| The Fleecing Of Our Young Innocents: Loving Little Peter To Pay Paul Posted: 07 Jan 2011 07:54 AM PST Bill Gross, the PIMCO Money Manager, to whom it is often worth listening, cautioned this week that our nations leaders really do not know where they are going. They are mired in the fiscal quicksands of perpetual trillion dollar deficits. Read More...
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| Posted: 07 Jan 2011 07:52 AM PST  Gary Tanashian submits: The latest public sentiment data from 1/4/11 shows that enthusiasm was muted for that stodgy old monetary metal, gold, as compared to copper, silver and other commodities. This makes sense as we are on the go-go growth trade right now. Gold is more a counter-cyclical asset. Of more concern to the various substance addicts playing in the broad casino should be the gold-silver ratio and its implications if it should confirm the global anti-party, the USD. Complete Story »
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| COT Gold, Silver and US Dollar Index Report - January 7, 2011 Posted: 07 Jan 2011 07:43 AM PST COT Gold, Silver and US Dollar Index Report - January 7, 2011.
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| BLS Unemployment Report Doesn’t Add Up Posted: 07 Jan 2011 07:43 AM PST On the surface, the Bureau of Labor Statistics delivered a head-scratcher of an unemployment report this morning: An anemic 103,000 new jobs in December, but a dramatic fall in the U-3 unemployment rate from 9.8% to 9.4%. Let's dive into the particulars:
So… How does the unemployment rate fall so dramatically when job growth is still subpar? Here's your answer – a chart that shows the percentage of working-age population in the labor force. It fell to 64.3% last month – a level last seen when Christopher Lloyd was taking moviegoers Back to the Future:
Herein lies one of the Bureau of Labor Statistics' favorite tricks. If you gave up looking for work more than a year ago, you're no longer counted as part of the labor force. Thus, employers added only 103,000 jobs in December…but incredibly, we have 556,000 fewer unemployed people! And there you have it – headline unemployment fell to its lowest in 20 months because more people gave up looking for work. Big problem for Uncle Sam, because that means more people with no income to tax. Our call last month – a federal deficit easily exceeding White House estimates of $1.4 billion – is looking more and more likely. Dave Gonigam BLS Unemployment Report Doesn't Add Up originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning. The Daily Reckoning, offers a uniquely refreshing, perspective on the global economy, investing, gold, stocks and today's markets. Its been called "the most entertaining read of the day."
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| Posted: 07 Jan 2011 07:30 AM PST As if China does not have enough problems with inflation as it is, being 5.1% overall and with 11.7% inflation in food prices, now, astonishingly, Bloomberg reports that "Beijing will raise the minimum wage by 20.8% in 2011, becoming the latest local government to lift pay in a country where inflation is running at the fastest clip in more than two years." Not only is that hefty 20.8% boost in wages going to be an instant increase in demand for all kinds of things that can't be instantly increased in supply, but it is the second raise in the minimum wage this year! Wages are rising, so demand for goods and services is rising, which means inflation in prices. Yikes! What in the hell are these Chinese morons thinking about? In perspective, the increase brings the minimum monthly income to, according to Bloomberg, 1,160 yuan, which they calculate as being the equivalent of $175 a month, which means that there are 6.62 yuan per dollar, which seems to be less than it used to be. Astonishingly, A Whole Lot Of Yuan (AWLOY) are going to be necessary because, again astonishingly, "The city will also raise pension and unemployment benefits." Wow! If you have achieved True Mogambo Enlightenment (TME), or if you have some tiny smattering of education about the history of the last 4,000 years, or even if you don't, you must instinctively know that creating more and more money, to give to more and more people, is a Gigantic Freaking Mistake (GFM). If it is NOT a GFM, then why hasn't every government in all of history done it, you moron? It is, alas, in some respects, not unlike that other GFM where you somehow agreed to marry, and then there was that GFM of having kids, and then that GFM of not immediately selling them on the open market when they were still young and cute and wouldn't imprint "dad" on me, but instead made another GFM by agreeing to "learn to love them," which turned out to be easier said than done, especially when they reach that age where they start getting "clingy" and want to "be with me", even though I am telling them, "Not now, sweetie! Daddy is busy writing hate mail to the evil Federal Reserve, telling them how much I hope they rot in hell because of the economic misery and suffering they have created when they spent decade after freaking decade creating more and more money, which will end, as such suicidal idiocy always does, in a painful, terrifying inflation, and the only people who will prosper will be people who own silver and gold, and enough firepower to keep the morons at bay! People like you and me, honey! Daddy's little darling! Sugar lumps! Now scram!" And then when kids get a little older, they start telling you how stupid you are, and how much they hate you, and how all they want is for me to love them, love them, love them and blah blah blah, and even though you retreat to the safety of the Mogambo Bunker Of Bunkers (MBOB) and slam the door, you can hear them through the walls, whining and bleating. Even so, creating more and more money to give to more and people is worse than that! In fact, continually creating excess money is the proverbial Primrose Path To Hell (PPTH), a fitting description because it looks so pretty and flowery all the way to the very gates of hell, whereupon nothing looks pretty or flowery ever, ever again, or until after you are dead, whichever comes first. And to prove once and for all that the Chinese central bankers and government officials are laughable idiots just like all the rest of the central banks and government officials Around The Freaking World (ATFW), the reason that Chinese local governments are "augmenting wages" and raising pensions, as unbelievable as it is, is to "head off worker unrest and help households cope with accelerating inflation." Hahaha! You can tell by my rude laugh that I am literally snorting in scorn and dismissive condescension at these Chinese idiots, who are now proved to be just like the rest of the corrupt idiots everywhere who think that the inflation in prices caused by previous inflations in the money will "head off" worker unrest because of inflation by giving them – Hahaha! – more inflation! Hahaha! Idiots! And being an Idiot-Proof Guaranteed Investment Winner (IPGIW) is just one more reason to buy gold and silver, as if you needed another reason to buy gold and silver! Whee! This investing stuff is easy! The Mogambo Guru Mistakes With Minimum Wage originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning. The Daily Reckoning, offers a uniquely refreshing, perspective on the global economy, investing, gold, stocks and today's markets. Its been called "the most entertaining read of the day."
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| Is Another Giant Precious Metals Bear Raid Coming This Morning? Posted: 07 Jan 2011 07:01 AM PST "Gold pole-axed, but bugs (and others) calm. ADP says their own December employment data "looks suspicious". Gallup Finds Unemployment at 9.6% in December. US CFTC to vote on delayed position limit proposal on January 13th...and much more. " Yesterday in Gold and Silver Not much happened in the gold market on Thursday. The price topped out around $1,380 shortly before London opened...and then declined gently to its low of the day [$1,363.90 spot] around 11:15 a.m. in New York. The gold price subsequently recovered and closed down about eight bucks on the day. Silver's high came shortly after trading commenced in the Far East yesterday...and then declined very slowly and hit bottom [$28.79 spot] at the same moment as gold...around 11:15 a.m. Eastern. Silver closed down twenty cents on the day. The dollar continued to head north. Yesterday it closed up another 60 basis points. It's amazing how the dollar, which was about to break down through its 50-d...
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| Posted: 07 Jan 2011 06:56 AM PST By Dr. David Eifrig, editor, Retirement Millionaire Friday, January 7, 2011 A couple years ago, I shared two shocking silver charts with DailyWealth readers. These charts showed how governments around the globe have abandoned silver as money. They've decided it's easier to expand a nation's credit with fiat paper money than to mine more silver. They've sold off their silver stockpiles to industry and investors. This trend is decades in the making. At first, much of this silver was used up in industrial manufacturing and processes like photography. That silver is gone forever. But starting around 1997, silver began flowing into private hands. Folks concerned with wars, investment bubbles, and mismanaged economies were buying it up. They turned to silver as a safe form of savings that can't be debased by a gang of spend-happy politicians. It was a modern day "silver rush." And buying silver back then was a smart move. The metal is up sixfold over the last 14 years...
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| $1.3 Billion Burj Khalifa 2.0 is Briliant! Posted: 07 Jan 2011 06:55 AM PST
Earlier this week we saw reports that “Beijing authorities plan to build a "seven-star hotel" modelled after Dubai's Burj Khalifa -- the world's tallest building -- in a $1.3 billion joint project with Saudi Arabia.” Yes, the same building that symbolized Dubai’s $20-plus billion in malinvestments and required a bailout by Abu Dhabi. In Russian there is an expression: The wise man learns from someone else’s mistakes, the smart man learns from his own, and the stupid one never learns. You’d think I’d be putting the Chinese government in the latter category – obviously the Chinese have not learned from Dubai’s mistakes, and they don’t seem to want to learn from their own – empty shopping malls and cities which, based on these Google Earth images, are scattered all over China. So erecting a $1.3 billion “seven-star hotel,” when Beijing’s office vacancy rate was over 20% just a year ago (I doubt it has changed much, considering how much they’ve built in a year) would appear to be less than smart. Wrong! It is brilliant! The report also states, “The Saudi side was expected to foot the entire bill.” The “Saudi side” will bear the eventual losses. The construction of Burj Khalifa 2.0 is brilliant on so many levels: the Chinese government gets the “Saudi side” to finance its objective of growth and full employment at any cost, the Guinness Book of Records gets another entry with a Chinese name, the Chinese communist propaganda machine has another news story for us all to digest, and a few years from now Burj Khalifa 2.0 will be bleeding money and the Chinese government will bail out the “Saudi side” at 20 cents on the dollar. Brilliant! brilliant! brilliant! I wrote about a year ago in Dubai’s Shot to The Moon, an article that is as relevant today as it was then: Virtually unlimited access to cheap money blurs lines between what makes economic sense and what doesn’t. If it can be financed it will be built. Dubai’s plan to diversify away from petrochemicals made sense. Maybe it is even destined to become the Las Vegas of the Middle East, the Mecca of business travel and luxury. Dubai, however, is like NASA: both have proven that anything is possible when you ignore economic costs. Many technological discoveries were made in the process of putting a man on the moon; but the project did have, and was expected to have, a negative return on capital. Dubai has followed a similar path. The absolutely impossible category may not include building an underwater hotel, or the tallest building in the world, at a cost of $4.1 billion, or a covered ski resort in the middle of a desert, but these projects surely deserve a place in the category of economically impossible. Like putting men on the moon, Dubai’s projects were destined to have a negative return on capital. (At least NASA was up front about it.) Dubai’s construction wonders were made possible by high oil prices and, more importantly, unlimited (at the time) global liquidity – subprime global lending on steroids. Today Dubai, a city/state that could do no wrong just a few years ago, is defaulting on the debt it issued to finance its building boom. However, what is happening in Dubai is just the most recent, most vivid example of what took place all over the world until the economic crisis. Economically impossible endeavors with negative returns on capital were everywhere, and Dubai is just the latest to go bust. Though everyone is talking about Dubai’s potential default, the scope of the problem is greater. Think about how much energy (oil, coal, natural gas), materials (steel, concrete), and industrial products (cranes, tractors) – in other words, stuff – it took to build these economically impossible wonders. China, the most populous country in the world, also masked its share of economically impossible projects through the guise of “stimulus” and at times outright censorship. China is the birthplace of the largest shopping mall in the world, which is empty, and a city built on spec for a million people that remains mostly vacant. These two just scratch the surface. The rest of the world, including the US (after all, we built a lot of now-empty houses and condos) is swarming with economically impossible projects. How many houses (or in the case of Dubai, mansions), factories, hotels, skyscrapers, shopping malls, and railroads will not be built because there are too many already built? And if this is not convincing enough, funding economically impossible projects will be difficult for a while, as lack of liquidity and insurmountable losses suddenly turn bankers into … bankers. They find religion (at least for a little while) and start giving loans to folks who are expected to actually pay them back. Dubai is the exemplar of economically impossible activities that have taken place everywhere, and why one can’t be optimistic that demand for stuff will return to levels even remotely close to what they were in the days when everything was economically possible and financeable. Epilogue My father lives a block away from my office. I stop by his house a few times a week on the way to work. We have breakfast (my stepmother makes a killer fake-egg omelet) and stimulating conversation. My father is a true renaissance man; he is a gifted teacher, a scientist, an inventor, he holds a PhD in electrical engineering, and to top all that he is a very accomplished artist. The bottom line; he is a very wise man. This morning we discussed this Dubai article. He asked me, “But why would people in Dubai spend billions of dollars on buildings if they have little chance of earning a return on it?” He added, “I would think they’d have rational voices at the table pointing out obvious holes in these multi-billion projects.” At first I tried to explain that if things can get financed they’ll be built. I sensed skepticism. Then I explained how groupthink works, that under crowd pressure, especially after their predictions of the bubble bursting were proven “wrong,” as real estate prices kept climbing, skeptics were either turned into believers, got quiet, or got fired for being doomsayers and not being team players. My father started to see what I saw, and then I told him a joke that I heard from Warren Buffet years back. A very successful oilman dies. He faces Saint Peter, who says, “You’ve been a good man and normally I’d send you to heaven, but heaven is full. We only have a place in hell.” The oilman says, “Any chance I could talk to other oilmen who are in heaven? Maybe I can convince someone to switch places with me?” Saint Peter says, “It’s never happened before, but sure, I don’t see any harm in it.” The oilman goes to heaven, finds an oilmen convention and yells, “They found a huge oil discovery in hell!” Oilmen are stampeding out of heaven to hell, and our oilman is running with them. Saint Peter asks him “Why are you going to hell with them? I have a spot in heaven, you can stay.” The oilman answers – “Are you kidding, what if it’s true?” Vitaliy N. Katsenelson, CFA, is Chief Investment Officer at Investment Management Associates in Denver, Colo. He is the author of upcoming The Little Book of Sideways Markets (Wiley, December 2010). To receive Vitaliy’s future articles by email, click here.
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| LGMR: Gold Bounces as US Job Data Disappoints, Hong Kong Gold Premiums Rise Further Posted: 07 Jan 2011 06:53 AM PST London Gold Market Report from Adrian Ash BullionVault Fri 7 Jan., 08:35 EST Gold Bounces as US Job Data Disappoints, Hong Kong Gold Premiums Rise Further as Weaker Eurozone Debt Falls Again DOLLAR PRICES for gold bullion bounced from a near 6-week low as New York trading began on Friday, rallying above $1360 an ounce as US employment data came in below analyst forecasts for Dec. Non-farm payrolls added 103,000 jobs. The participation rate for the US labor force fell further below two-in-three. World stock markets held onto slight losses on the news, but the Euro rallied after falling through both $1.30 and its 200-day moving average, as many technical analysts noted. Weaker-economy Eurozone bonds led by Portugal and Spain fell once again, and the cost of insuring them against default jumped to new record highs. "Precious metals are unable to break away from their Euro correlation," said one London dealer Friday morning, as silver prices dropped another dolla...
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| Posted: 07 Jan 2011 06:45 AM PST "…with all the thought and good intentions that we provided…we achieved absolutely nothing. Nothing that I did and very little that old Ben [Strong, head of the US Federal Reserve] did…produced any good effect…or any effect at all. Except that we collected a lot of money from a lot of poor devils and gave it over to the four winds." In three sentences, Montagu Norman, ex-chief of the Bank of England, described the handiwork of a whole generation of his fellow financial plumbers. This was the generation that made central bankers what they are today. Before 1914 they were expected to do nothing, that is, neither to aid the economy nor harm it. Since 1945, hardly a day went by that they did not clog a pipe or inadvertently blow up a gas main. This was the generation of Hjalmar Schacht in Germany and Emile Moreau in France, while the aforementioned Ben Strong represented the US and Norman himself, wearing his velvet cape and traveling under a pseudonym, stood up for England. This was the generation that financed war well and the peace badly. Borrowing heavily from the Americans, the British and the French were able to keep WWI going long after they were effectively bankrupt. Then, rather than write off the bad debt, everyone waited for someone else to pay it. The Americans watched the mail for checks from the British, while the British sent polite reminders to the French, who tried to foreclose on the Germans by invading the Ruhr; this got them no money, but it had the unintended consequence of boosting Adolph Hitler's budding career in politics. The debts were bad; the busted-up Reich couldn't pay anything near the amounts demanded. And the more grease the Germans scraped up and sent west, the more their own economy creaked and weakened; the more they tried to pay the less they were able to pay. This was the generation that took its currencies off the gold standard in order to run up debts that they couldn't pay…and then went back on the gold standard, as if they meant to repay them…and then off again in order to renege. And this is the generation that is autopsied in Liaquat Ahamed's book, Lords of Finance. It is meant to be a book about finance. But the central figures seem scarcely able to add and subtract. The Germans faced a $12 billion reparations bill, equivalent to about $2.4 trillion today. There was no way they could pay. Pretending that the money was forthcoming then was as vain and pernicious as expecting the Irish to make good on their bank debt, or expecting Americans to honor their $200 trillion worth of financial commitments, today. At least the Frenchman, Moreau, had his priorities right. He ducked meetings and dodged international monetary conferences so that he would be in the country for the opening of hunting season or so he could run for mayor of his home village of St. Leomer, with about 200 residents. Later, he left his post completely, in order to earn more money at the Bank of Paris and the Low Countries. His German counterpart, Horace Greeley Hjalmar Schacht, should have taken up hunting too. Instead, he took up Hitler. But that was after he was famous for having solved Germany's hyperinflation problem. The mark had fallen to 4.2 trillion to the dollar in November, 1923. The trouble with the mark was obvious. There were too many of them; Schacht's predecessor, von Havenstain, had anticipated quantitative easing by 9 decades. Schacht took over at the Reichsbank and on the 20th of November introduced a new currency, the rentenmark. Von Havenstain dropped dead the same day. At least Mr. Schacht was a smart fellow. Like Norman, he occasionally was afflicted by an honest insight: "The whole modern world is crazy…everybody here is crazy," he said. "And so am I… I am compelled to be crazy." But the remarkable thing is Ahamed's conclusion. On 502 pages we listen to central bankers and economists quack like ducks. On page 503, the author reveals that he is deaf. He tells us that the world is a better place thanks to them. All the evidence of the previous pages argues against it. None of them increased world output by a single sou or pfennig. Take Mr. Strong. Would things have gone better if he had not died in 1928, as the author suggests? He imagines that Strong would have intervened more forcefully in 1931, forestalling further bank failures. He seems to have missed the lesson of his own book – that bad debts should be allowed to die quickly. Besides, in his own telling of the story, it was Ben Strong who was more responsible for the Great Depression than anyone else. He lowered rates in 1927, even though the stock market was already running hot. "One of the most costly errors committed by [the Fed] or any other banking system," Adolph Miller testified before Congress in 1931. The error led to a bubble…which was followed by a bust, which his successors – who again refused to let bad debt die – turned into a long depression. Good work, boys. Regards, Bill Bonner The World Goes Crazy originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning. The Daily Reckoning, offers a uniquely refreshing, perspective on the global economy, investing, gold, stocks and today's markets. Its been called "the most entertaining read of the day."
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| “If you've ever considered buying silver, I recommend you do it soon.” Posted: 07 Jan 2011 06:40 AM PST Two Shocking Silver Charts Share this:
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| Banks lose crucial Massachusetts foreclosure case Posted: 07 Jan 2011 06:26 AM PST By Tom Weidlich http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-07/us-bancorp-wells-fargo-lose-piv... US Bancorp and Wells Fargo & Co. lost a foreclosure case in Massachusetts' highest court that will guide lower courts in that state and may influence others in the clash between bank practices and state real estate law. The ruling drove down bank stocks. The state Supreme Judicial Court today upheld a judge's decision saying two foreclosures were invalid because the banks didn't prove they owned the mortgages, which he said were improperly transferred into two mortgage-backed trusts. "We agree with the judge that the plaintiffs, who were not the original mortgagees, failed to make the required showing that they were the holders of the mortgages at the time of foreclosure," Justice Ralph D. Gants wrote. ... Dispatch continues below ... ADVERTISEMENT Prophecy Receives Permit To Mine at Ulaan Ovoo in Mongolia VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Prophecy Resource Corp. (TSX-V:PCY, OTCQX: PRPCF, Frankfurt: 1P2) announces that on November 9, 2010, it received the final permit to commence mining operations at its Ulaan Ovoo coal project in Mongolia. Prophecy is one of few international mining companies to achieve such a milestone. The mine is production-ready, with a mine opening ceremony scheduled for November 20. Prophecy CEO John Lee said: "I thank the government of Mongolia for the expeditious way this permit was issued. The opening of Ulaan Ovoo is a testament to the industrious and skilled workforce in Mongolia. Prophecy directly and indirectly (through Leighton Asia) employs more than 65 competent Mongolian nationals and four expatriots. The company also reaffirms its commitment to deliver coal to the local Edernet and Darkhan power plants in Mongolia." The Ulaan Ovoo open pit mine is 10 kilometers from the Russian border and within 120km of the Nauski TransSiberian railway station, enabling transportation of coal to Russia and its eastern seaports. Thermal coal prices are trading at two-year highs at Russian seaports due to strong demand from Asian economies. For the complete press release, please visit: http://prophecyresource.com/news_2010_nov11.php Wells Fargo, the fourth-largest U.S. lender by assets, dropped $1.10, or 3.4 percent, to $31.05 at 11:41 a.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. US Bancorp declined 28 cents, or 1.1 percent, to $26.01. The 24-company KBW Bank Index fell as much as 2.2 percent after the decision was handed down. Claims of wrongdoing by banks and loan servicers triggered a 50-state investigation last year into whether hundreds of thousands of foreclosures were properly documented as the housing market collapsed. The probe came after JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Ally Financial Inc. said they would stop repossessions in 23 states where courts supervise home seizures and Bank of America Corp. froze U.S. foreclosures. Teri Charest, a spokeswoman for Minneapolis-based US Bancorp, didn't immediately return a call for comment. Jason Menke, a spokesman for San Francisco-based Wells Fargo, didn't have an immediate comment. Charest previously referred questions on the case to the loan servicer for both mortgage-backed trusts, American Home Mortgage Servicing Inc. Philippa Brown, a spokeswoman for Coppell, Texas-based American Home Mortgage, didn't have an immediate comment. In March 2009 Massachusetts Land Court Judge Keith C. Long voided the foreclosures, finding that the mortgage transfers were done months after the house sales. In October of that year, Long declined the banks' request to reverse that ruling after they argued that the documents that bundled together the mortgages had transferred those instruments to them. Today's court decision held out the possibility of securitization documents properly transferring mortgages. Such documents, along with "a schedule of the pooled mortgage loans that clearly and specifically identifies the mortgage at issue as among those assigned, may suffice to be proof that the assignment was made by a party that itself held the mortgage," Gants wrote. "However, there must be proof that the assignment was made by a party that itself held the mortgage." The case is U.S. Bank v. Ibanez, 10694, Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts (Boston). The lower-court cases are U.S. Bank National Association v. Ibanez, 08-Misc-384283, and Wells Fargo Bank NA v. LaRace, 08-Misc-386755, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Trial Court, Land Court Department (Boston). Join GATA here: Yukon Mining Investment e-Conference http://theyukonroom.com/yukon-eblast-static.html Vancouver Resource Investment Conference http://cambridgehouse3.com/conference-details/vancouver-resource-investment-conference-2011/15 Cheviot Asset Management Sound Money Conference Phoenix Investment Conference and Silver Summit 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: 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: To contribute to GATA, please visit: http://www.gata.org/node/16 ADVERTISEMENT Sona Drills 85.4g Gold/Ton Over 4 Metres at Elizabeth Gold Deposit, 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
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| Ben Bernanke and the Price of Oil Posted: 07 Jan 2011 06:08 AM PST Jon Hilsenrath at the Wall Street Journal listened to the Q&A session that followed Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's testimony before the Senate Banking Committee today and passes on this summary about the relationship between money printing and the price of oil.
Since I didn't watch this, the exact words are not known to me, but, based on the above, it seems that the most important economist in the world thinks the relative stability of the U.S. dollar against the basket case currency otherwise known as the euro is evidence that the Fed money printing campaign has not contributed to higher commodity prices. Yes, it's true that, over the short-term, oil and the trade-weighted dollar often move in different directions and this is an important cue for traders – see the dollar go lower, bid oil prices higher – but there is no fundamental relationship between the two.
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| New Year’s Resolutions and Predictions Posted: 07 Jan 2011 05:55 AM PST The New Year invites guesses about the year ahead. I thought I wouldn't bother this year, but then I found myself scribbling out some investment resolutions and predictions on a napkin over breakfast. Here are some of them: 1. Ignore the "gold is in a bubble crowd." The mainstream press doesn't understand gold. They look at the price and think it's expensive. Instead, they should turn it around and question the value of the dollar. Gold is best thought of as a play on the creditworthiness of paper money. When people worry about the printing presses, gold does well. As most governments have huge deficits to finance, gold shouldn't collapse. Besides, on an inflation-adjusted basis, gold is still below its all-time high in 1980. It would have to trade north of $2,000 an ounce to break it. Gold stocks are the best way to play gold because they are going to put up a stellar year of earnings in 2011. Many will mint money at $1,400 an ounce. Stay long gold stocks. 2. Stick with the fundamentals. People come up with all kinds of crazy indicators to try to predict what the market is going to do. The year 2010 had a couple of really silly ones that got a lot of press. Anyone remember the "Hindenburg Omen?" That people gave any credence to this idea at all makes me wonder about the survivability of our species. But it wasn't the only one. I clipped out and saved a column from Barron's dated July 5, 2010, giving serious ink to the idea of the "Death Cross" – another indicator that cropped up in 2010 and predicted the market would crash. Of course, the market is 25% higher since. Ignore these contrivances. The future is unpredictable. You're better off studying businesses and trying to buy only cheap stocks. Move to cash when you can't find anything to buy and wait. It's worked for me anyway. 3. Question the "US blue chips are cheap" argument. This one is controversial because you couldn't find a money manager today who doesn't think US blue chips – Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, Kraft and the like – are cheap. Nearly everyone does. That's the problem. Something is wrong here. Microsoft trades at only 12 times earnings, but perhaps deserves that multiple. Yes, it generates a lot of cash, but it has done little with it for shareholders' benefit. The problem is that a lot of these big firms hoard cash, earning nothing, or spend it on value-destroying acquisitions. All that great cash flow these firms generate never gets into shareholders' pockets. Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Cisco and Intel are examples of companies that throw off lots of cash and carry excess cash…yet pay hardly anything to shareholders. As Bill Miller, manager of the Legg Mason Value Trust, points out: "[These companies] all could EASILY pay out 70% of their free cash flows as dividends and still build cash on the balance sheet. If they did so, it is hard (nay, impossible) to believe their stocks would not move dramatically higher. My guess is that at worst they would trade at between a 4% and a 5% dividend yield, about where much-slower-growing utilities trade, providing an immediate gain of over 30% to their owners." I agree. If big blue chips were smart allocators, they'd be great investments. Look at what McDonald's has done. Or even IBM, which trades at a higher price-to-earnings ratio than Microsoft, a notoriously poor allocator of capital. Until these big blue chips start thinking about shareholders, I don't think they are especially cheap. They probably trade where they should trade. Meanwhile, I still find better bargains among smaller-cap stocks, in which the people running the show have skin in the game. I'd rather invest in these names than some giant corporation that hands its executives lush option packages. Over the long haul, I prefer "owners" versus "renters." 4. Stay with commodities where supply is tight and there is no immediate cure. I think 2011 will be more difficult for commodity investors. Mining companies are pouring record amounts of cash toward new projects. That's like turning on the shot clock in basketball. There is a window to score here, but it is closing. Some commodities, though, ought to do better than others. There is an old market saying that says, "Good things happen to cheap stocks." Even though we can't predict when things will happen, a cheap stock usually doesn't need much help to produce a sizeable gain. In the commodity world, a similar saying might be "Good things happen to commodities where supply is tight and finding more is not easy." Coking coal is a good example. Quality deposits are hard to find. Steelmakers are looking all over the world for new sources of supply. But then, in recent days, the sky opened up in Australia. The rain was so torrential, it's halted exports of about 40% of the world's coking coal. A whole bunch of companies declared force majeure, saying they would not be able to meet supply contracts. No one could've predicted that, but good things tend to happen to such commodities. Coking coal prices will surely spike upward in the second quarter. Already, coking coal contracts for January-March are $225 a tonne, the second highest on record. For 2011, I'd say uranium has the most upside potential, outside of the precious metals. Even though prices rose in 2010, they still don't compensate miners for the risk of building new mines. It's also a very concentrated industry, like coking coal. More than 60% of all uranium comes from just 10 mines. Stay long those uranium stocks. What about the biggest potential correction on the downside? I'd say agricultural commodities. We're going to see record planting all over the world. My guess is that these plantings will be enough to dent to the run of commodities such as wheat and corn. Good for stocks such as Pilgrim's Pride (NYSE:PPC), though, which should enjoy a fall in feed costs. 5. Keep traveling. I always learn something new when I travel and often uncover new investment ideas as well. All of which is to say it's a good thing to leave your desk and step out into the world. This year, I have a number of places and people I'd like see and meet. For instance, in March, I plan to check out Colombia. And in May, I hope to visit South Africa. 6. Keep a sense of humility. The most important resolution is one I make to myself every year: It is to keep a sense of humility about the markets. Unpredictable things happen all the time. There is some element of luck involved, for good or ill. And everyone – no exceptions – gets his head handed to him at some point or other in his investing life. If you play long enough, you will have your share of losses and disappointments. As Roy Neuberger wrote in his memoir, So Far, So Good: The First 94 Years: "Always-right investors don't exist, except among liars." So there is no room for overconfidence, stubbornness or arrogance. Take your gains and losses with cheerfulness and a light touch. Don't be afraid to say, "I don't know." Keep an open mind. Keep learning. And enjoy the ride. Here's to 2011! Regards, Chris Mayer New Year's Resolutions and Predictions originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning. The Daily Reckoning, offers a uniquely refreshing, perspective on the global economy, investing, gold, stocks and today's markets. Its been called "the most entertaining read of the day." More articles from The Daily Reckoning….
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| CDS Markets: The Ultimate Ponzi-Scheme Posted: 07 Jan 2011 05:47 AM PST By Jeff Nielson, Bullion Bulls Canada As the general public begins to become familiar with some of the "financial weapons of mass destruction" which the banker oligarchs call "derivatives", the media has continued to do an utterly dismal job of educating readers. Talking-heads regularly parrot "credit default swap" prices on various mounds of festering, Western debt. Sadly, they never take the time to explain precisely what a credit default swap is, nor how the market functions. The reason this is of such great importance is that the minute there was a broad understanding of what a "CDS" really is, there would be an instant uproar that these financial abominations be permanently excised from global debt markets. A "CDS" contract is nothing but make-believe "insurance". The party wanting to issue more debt ensures that there is some chump purchasing a CDS contract on their debt, and then merely on the basis that this debt is now "insured", the debtor magically gets to pay a much lower interest rate on the debt they issue. Indeed, the "magic" of these CDS contracts is precisely how the banksters duped idiot-politicians and institutional debtors to amass more than $60 trillion in CDS contracts – roughly equal to the entire, global GDP. That's right, one single banker Ponzi-scheme (primarily created by the odious Wall Street Oligarchs) has grown as large as the entire global economy and when this debt-bubble bursts it will cause a financial meltdown which will make the Crash of '08 look like a very pleasant picnic, in comparison. To illustrate precisely how terrifying this debt-bubble has become, we need only look at how little the world's worst deadbeats must pay to "insure" their debt. Understand that all insurance is nothing more than a "bet" that the premiums paid to the insurer will exceed the pay-outs to the insured. Thus, the size of these premiums equates to the "odds" which the market has placed on (in this case) the insured party defaulting on its debt. In the Land of Deadbeats (otherwise known as the United States), the current "champion" is the state of Illinois. Illinois simply didn't even pay $6 billion of its bills from the last fiscal year (equal to 25% of total spending), and is looking at an upcoming "deficit" equal to 50% more than its total borrowing-and-revenues can bring in. In short, it is already defaulting on its debts, and there is absolutely no possible way it can borrow enough, or cut spending by enough that it will be able to pay its bills this year – let alone catch-up on the $6 billion this deadbeat owes from last year. It is hopelessly insolvent, and bankrupt in all but name. And to insure $10 million of its debt costs only $350,000. Gamblers out there (and anyone with a half-decent grasp of numbers) will tell you that the credit default swap market is currently betting 30:1 against a default by Illinois. This is much like making a 30:1 bet that a hospital patient will survive a risky operation after the patient has already been pronounced dead. Keep in mind that these credit default prices for Illinois have only recently exploded to these new highs. The chumps who "insured" Illinois' debt for last year (including the $6 billion in unpaid bills) would have received a much lower premium for their bet – meaning the odds (and their potential pay-out) is much, much greater. Knowing the ridiculous leverage that the players in this market have taken upon themselves in insuring extremely risky debt is literally only half the "horror story" here. The other half is contemplating whom is (supposedly) insuring all of this bad debt. In fact, it is the same banking oligarchs who created this $60+ trillion Ponzi-scheme who are supposedly "backing" all of this debt – despite the fact that most of these financial institutions have only avoided their own bankruptcies via massive taxpayer hand-outs. That's right, we have deadbeats insuring deadbeats. The obvious question from the above example is: how could anyone possibly be foolish enough to place a 30:1 bet against a bankrupt entity defaulting on its debts? The answer is equally obvious: these bankers have bet (at huge odds) that the U.S. government will come running to Illinois' aid – chequebook in hand. More articles from Bullion Bulls Canada….
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| China gold output seen at new record 340 tonnes Posted: 07 Jan 2011 05:40 AM PST by Lawrence Williams … Given that China also imported a record tonnage of gold this gives yet another indication of the growing importance of Chinese demand on the global gold sector – but whether this is due to Central Bank accumulations (unreported) or investment demand, is unknown – most likely a combination of the two. … Overall China imported 209.7 tonnes of gold in the first 10 months of 2010 – up a massive 500% on the previous year's imports over the same period. With the end of the year traditionally seeing a surge in public gold buying – and anecdotal evidence suggests this has been the pattern this year too – it looks as if the country's overall gold consumption (a figure reached by adding mine output to imports) in 2010 could reach close to 600 tonnes or more – equivalent to around a quarter of global mine production. … It is already seen as taking its own mine production into government coffers, while its state banks and institutions have been advertising the benefits of precious metals ownership to its general public too. [source]
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| A Day in the Life of the National Debt Posted: 07 Jan 2011 05:37 AM PST As an example of the kind of sheer monetary insanity that is happening all around us and that is going to destroy the United States of America, and probably most of the world, too, the national debt of the United States of America hit a new, all-time record: An astonishing $14,025,215,218,708.52, which can be more conveniently referred to as $14.025 trillion, and which works out to a debt of $140,252.00 for every non-government worker in the Whole Freaking Country (WFC), the interest on which (at 5%) is $7,012.60 for each of those selfsame non-government workers. Per year! And this $14,025,215,218,708.52, which is, again, a massive $14.025 trillion, was reached on the Very Last Day Of The Year (VLDOTY) of 2010, a foul feat of fiscal folly, a fact made all the worse by noting that this unholy indebtedness was reached on that Very Last Day Of The Year (VLDOTY) because the debt soared by a huge $154 billion on that Very Last Day Of The Year (VLDOTY)! $154 billion in one day! In One Freaking Day (OFD)!! Note the use of the double exclamation point to indicate emphasis, which is altogether appropriate because many other outrageous things happen in One Freaking Day (OFD), like how you got married One Freaking Day (OFD), and you took your stupid job One Freaking Day (OFD), and you agreed to attend the kid's horrible music recital that seemed to last an eternity but was, instead, just One Freaking Day (OFD). But it is seldom on One Freaking Day (OFD) that the despicable federal government issues a massive $154 billion in new debt, which is so much money that it is more than $1,540 of new money for every non-government worker in the Whole Freaking Country (WFC)! In One Freaking Day (OFD)! I can see by looking at your stunned expression that you are as freaked out about this as I am, because this is a lot of money for workers in the non-government, profit-seeking part of the economy to shoulder. But the biggest killer of the economy is the massive deadweight loss of local, state and federal government, which now accounts for half of all spending, supports roughly half of the population. And employing, as it does, 1-out-of-6 workers. And let's not forget, as Martin Hutchinson, in his essay at PrudentBear.com, reminds us, "The nonprofit sector (including religious and cultural institutions) represents a sizeable portion of the US economy." And by "sizable portion of the US economy", he means "According to the CRS study, nearly 10% of the US workforce works in the non-profit sector, with 7% employed by charities." A tenth of the population does not work to make a profit at all! What kind of economic idiocy is that? Is this part of the reason that we have a trade deficit of over $600 billion a year? And not only did non-profit employment increase by 16% between 1998 and 2005, but "Employment in the charitable sector is highest in the District of Columbia, with 16.3% of its workforce employed in that sector, then Rhode Island with 13.6%, then New York with 13.3%." The interesting part is when he reports that this is actually, as we originally surmised, bad news, as it turns out that "charitable employment is strongly inversely correlated with economic growth," as "the jurisdictions that have shown the most robust economic growth in the last 30 years are those where charities are least active." Why is this? He figures that the reason that a lot of charitable giving is correlated with low economic growth is that, "In the case of charities, resource allocation is made by people with a political agenda, seeking to maximize their resource collection from rich people with little knowledge of the problems the charity addresses, whose decision making is obfuscated by incessant misleading charity propaganda. Thus, charitable activity is even more economically inefficient than government, and excessive charitable activity holds back the local economy by diverting resources from the local private sector." On the other hand, I say, with all due respect, that the reason that economic growth is low in those areas where there are many charities is because of an increase in the population of those coming to seek charity, bringing with them all their higher crime rate, lower business activity, and requiring increases in taxes to provide for them. Either way, everywhere you look, you see Bad, Bad News (BBN), even in the charity business, and with 43 million Americans receiving food stamps already, with more and more applicants every day, which will be provided by more government deficit-spending more excess money created by the Federal Reserve expressly for the purpose, it doesn't take long before you realize the urgent need to frantically buy gold and silver, and keep on buying them for as long as the money holds out. And the really nice thing about it is that it is so easy that people say, "Whee! This investing stuff is easy!" The Mogambo Guru A Day in the Life of the National Debt originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning. The Daily Reckoning, offers a uniquely refreshing, perspective on the global economy, investing, gold, stocks and today's markets. Its been called "the most entertaining read of the day."
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| Buyers facing down the silver shorts, Turk tells King World News Posted: 07 Jan 2011 05:29 AM PST 11:20a ET Friday, January 7, 2010 Dear Friend of GATA and Gold (and Silver): GoldMoney founder and GATA consultant James Turk tells Eric King of King World News that buyers continue to challenge the silver shorts on the Comex, a bullish sign. Turk expects January to mark the lows for the year in silver. Excerpts from the interview are headlined "New Buyers Taking on Silver Shorts Is Very Bullish" and you can find them at the King World News Internet site here: http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2011/1/7_Jam… Or try this abbreviated link: CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer 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: To contribute to GATA, please visit: http://www.gata.org/node/16
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| Endeavour Silver Set for Long Bull Run With New Production Record Posted: 07 Jan 2011 05:29 AM PST By Bob Kirtley, Gold Prices Endeavour Silver Corporation (EXK) has once again beaten its production forecast of 3.1 million oz silver with room to spare and silver production is up 15% to 895,931 oz, with Gold Output up 6% to 4,871 oz. This quote from Bradford Cooke, chairman and CEO, sums up just how well they are doing:
To put these results into perspective, this is the sixth consecutive year of silver production growth, up 26% year-on-year to 3.3 million ounces of silver in 2010. To add a little spice, gold chipped in with an impressive performance, output up 33% to 17,713 ounces in 2010 compared to 2009. Using the recent silver: gold ratio of 50:1, Endeavour produced 4.2 million oz. silver equivalents in 2010, up 24% compared to 2009. So there we have it and in our humble opinion these results bode very well for the future. Endeavour Silver closed at $6.47 yesterday.
A quick look at the chart and we can see that Endeavour Silver has more or less doubled in price since August 2010. Silver prices have come off recently with some of the fizz being taken out of stock prices. Endeavour Silver Corporation is set up well to benefit from the silver bull market which has in our very humble opinion a long way to run, so keep an eye on them as this company offers good exposure to silver prices. It's widely available in Canada, USA and Europe. Disclosure: I am long EXK.
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| Eton Park Starts New Vallar Position Posted: 07 Jan 2011 05:29 AM PST Market Folly submits: Eric Mindich's hedge fund firm Eton Park Capital Management has started a brand new position in Vallar (VLLRF.PK) The London Stock Exchange has revealed that due to trading activity on the 22nd of December, 2010, Eton Park now controls 5.03% of Vallar's voting rights. In terms of other recent Eton Park activity, we saw that the hedge fund supported Air Products' (APD) latest bid for Airgas (ARG) in one of their arbitrage trades. However, nothing has materialized there. Eton Park's most recent acquisition is a bit of a head-scratcher and you'll see why below in the company description:
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| Agnico-Eagle Mines Still Lagging Well Behind Gold Posted: 07 Jan 2011 05:29 AM PST As we can see from the chart below, these are not the best of times for Agnico-Eagle Mines Limited (AEM), which is trading at the same price as it was in April 2008 despite gold's advance. Having been one of our favorite gold-producing stocks for some time, we are disappointed to see it languishing at $69.76. Back in April 2008, Agnico was trading in the $70-80 range and gold was trading below $1,000.00/oz; now here we are with gold prices at roughly $1,367.50 and Agnico can't manage $70!
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| Gold Seeker Closing Report: Gold and Silver Fall Slightly Posted: 07 Jan 2011 05:29 AM PST Gold saw a $5.65 gain at $1379.75 in Asia before it fell to see a $9.55 loss at $1364.55 by late morning in New York, but it then bounced back higher in the last couple of hours of trade and ended with a loss of just 0.19%. Silver rose to $29.42 and fell to $28.78 before it also rallied back higher in late trade, but it still with a loss of 0.14%.
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| India eyes South Africa’s coal, gold resources Posted: 07 Jan 2011 05:28 AM PST India has set its sights on South Africa's mineral resources and is keen to form partnerships with local companies, executives from trading house MMTC said on Friday. The State-owned MMTC, which is opening an office in Johannesburg to increase its exposure to the mineral-rich African markets, is particularly interested in South Africa's coal and gold, MD Hardip Mann said in Johannesburg. India is battling with an ever-increasing demand for power, and may face a coal shortfall of 189-million tons a year by 2015, which would lead to a twofold increase in imports.
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| Never any blackout on Fed's private chats with investment houses Posted: 07 Jan 2011 05:23 AM PST NY Fed's 'Mr. Inside' Dudley Flapping His Gums By John Crudele http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/ny_fed_mr_inside_dudley_flapping_X... The president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York doesn't know when to keep his mouth shut. The entire Fed regularly observes what it calls a "blackout period" starting one week before Federal Open Market Committee meetings and lasts until the Friday after those meetings. In case you don't know, FOMC meetings are where the Fed decides whether to change interest-rate policy. But there is also a communique released just hours after the meeting concludes in which the Fed gives its view of what the economy is doing. It might also hint at unusual moves like quantitative easing in this communique. Once it is released, that communique goes through a word-for-word analysis by everyone who follows the markets. Even a whiff of something changing could send markets soaring or collapsing. That's why the Fed muzzles its members. The form on which outside organizations can request a Fed speaker says "please be advised that there are timing restrictions --- including FOMC blackout periods -- for certain types of speeches." William Dudley, the head of the New York Fed, seems to have his own rules about talking to people during the blackout period. Dudley's office recently released his daily work schedule for the past two years. That schedule shows Dudley isn't shy about talking during those blackout periods with people on Wall Street who might benefit from his knowledge. ... Dispatch continues below ... ADVERTISEMENT 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. Take March 11, 2009. The blackout period ran from March 10-18. I know this because those dates are written in capital letters -- "PRE-FOMC BLACKOUT PERIOD" -- right at the top of Dudley's calendar for that day, a reminder, I guess, from his assistant. Remember, the financial markets were in disarray back then and the FOMC was meeting on March 17 and 18 to figure out what to do. No speeches were allowed. Still, Dudley decided to have an "informal meeting" from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. on March 11 with Goldman Sachs chief economist Jan Hatzius at the Pound and Pence restaurant near the New York Fed's headquarters. I have to give you some factoids here. Before he joined the Fed, Dudley was an executive with Goldman. So he and Hatzius could very well be friends who were talking about their kids' summer plans or their wives' spending habits. But still, there was a blackout period in effect. And a slip of the tongue by Dudley could have given Hatzius and Goldman valuable information. Even a pained expression on Dudley's face could have told Hatzius too much. I called the New York Fed and asked for a clarification of the blackout rules. What I wanted to know: Was the rule only for speeches? Could it be possible that private meetings that could benefit small groups are allowed but not public speeches that might help all investors? And what is the penalty for violations? The Fed never called me back. There was another blackout period from April 21-28, 2009. On April 22, one day into the blackout period, Dudley held a conference call at 9 a.m. with Jamie Dimon, the head of JPMorgan Chase. At 11:30 a.m. there was a meeting with Jeffrey Carp, executive vice president and chief legal officer of State Street Capital. There were apparently others at that meeting because there was a notation "et al." accompanying that meeting. At 1:15 p.m. Stuart Bohart, the co-head of Morgan Stanley's asset management unit, had lunch with Dudley in the New York Fed's Washington Room. And at 3 p.m. John Mack, head of Morgan Stanley, met with Dudley for 45 minutes in Dudley's office. I looked through some 460 pages of Dudley's schedule and he didn't always have such interesting meetings during the blackout periods. During the blackout period from Sept 15-23, 2009, for instance, there were no meetings or phone calls with Wall Street types -- or, at least, none noted on Dudley's schedule. But there were enough at other times to make me wonder if Dudley was sensitive to the fact that his brain contained valuable information desired by the guys he was meeting. On Dec. 11, 2009, for instance, Dudley had a breakfast meeting with Goldman Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein and that company's chief financial officer, David Viniar. The Fed's blackout period had begun three days earlier and lasted until Dec. 16. Goldman is a primary dealer in government securities, so lower-level discussions with the Fed probably occur frequently. But a breakfast meeting? At the Fed? At a time when Dudley was preparing for an FOMC meeting and wasn't supposed to be tipping his hand in public? Meredith Whitney, the influential bank analyst, was on Dudley's schedule on April 20, 2010 -- the day another blackout period started. During this past September's blackout period, Dudley met with a principal of Woodbine Capital, a hedge fund. A source of mine who used to work at the Fed says private meetings like these during blackout periods have always been a matter of contention inside the Fed. And, quite frankly, I can't blame the folks who attended these meetings. If an influential member of the Fed like Dudley might have an indiscreet moment, why not listen? My view? If the Fed doesn't want its people tipping information to the public in speeches, why wouldn't it crack down on private conversations that can be used for huge profits by small Wall Street groups that just happen to have the right connections? How is this fair to the investing public? And how is this fair to every other investment firm that competes with the guys who lunched and breakfasted with Dudley during these periods when he is supposed to keep his mouth shut and his thoughts to himself? Join GATA here: Yukon Mining Investment e-Conference http://theyukonroom.com/yukon-eblast-static.html Vancouver Resource Investment Conference http://cambridgehouse3.com/conference-details/vancouver-resource-investment-conference-2011/15 Cheviot Asset Management Sound Money Conference Phoenix Investment Conference and Silver Summit 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: 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: To contribute to GATA, please visit: ADVERTISEMENT Prophecy Drills 71.17 Metres of 0.52 percent NiEq 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
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| Never any blackout on Fed's private chats with investment houses Posted: 07 Jan 2011 05:23 AM PST NY Fed's 'Mr. Inside' Dudley Flapping His Gums By John Crudele http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/ny_fed_mr_inside_dudley_flapping_X... The president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York doesn't know when to keep his mouth shut. The entire Fed regularly observes what it calls a "blackout period" starting one week before Federal Open Market Committee meetings and lasts until the Friday after those meetings. In case you don't know, FOMC meetings are where the Fed decides whether to change interest-rate policy. But there is also a communique released just hours after the meeting concludes in which the Fed gives its view of what the economy is doing. It might also hint at unusual moves like quantitative easing in this communique. Once it is released, that communique goes through a word-for-word analysis by everyone who follows the markets. Even a whiff of something changing could send markets soaring or collapsing. That's why the Fed muzzles its members. The form on which outside organizations can request a Fed speaker says "please be advised that there are timing restrictions --- including FOMC blackout periods -- for certain types of speeches." William Dudley, the head of the New York Fed, seems to have his own rules about talking to people during the blackout period. Dudley's office recently released his daily work schedule for the past two years. That schedule shows Dudley isn't shy about talking during those blackout periods with people on Wall Street who might benefit from his knowledge. ... Dispatch continues below ... ADVERTISEMENT 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. Take March 11, 2009. The blackout period ran from March 10-18. I know this because those dates are written in capital letters -- "PRE-FOMC BLACKOUT PERIOD" -- right at the top of Dudley's calendar for that day, a reminder, I guess, from his assistant. Remember, the financial markets were in disarray back then and the FOMC was meeting on March 17 and 18 to figure out what to do. No speeches were allowed. Still, Dudley decided to have an "informal meeting" from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. on March 11 with Goldman Sachs chief economist Jan Hatzius at the Pound and Pence restaurant near the New York Fed's headquarters. I have to give you some factoids here. Before he joined the Fed, Dudley was an executive with Goldman. So he and Hatzius could very well be friends who were talking about their kids' summer plans or their wives' spending habits. But still, there was a blackout period in effect. And a slip of the tongue by Dudley could have given Hatzius and Goldman valuable information. Even a pained expression on Dudley's face could have told Hatzius too much. I called the New York Fed and asked for a clarification of the blackout rules. What I wanted to know: Was the rule only for speeches? Could it be possible that private meetings that could benefit small groups are allowed but not public speeches that might help all investors? And what is the penalty for violations? The Fed never called me back. There was another blackout period from April 21-28, 2009. On April 22, one day into the blackout period, Dudley held a conference call at 9 a.m. with Jamie Dimon, the head of JPMorgan Chase. At 11:30 a.m. there was a meeting with Jeffrey Carp, executive vice president and chief legal officer of State Street Capital. There were apparently others at that meeting because there was a notation "et al." accompanying that meeting. At 1:15 p.m. Stuart Bohart, the co-head of Morgan Stanley's asset management unit, had lunch with Dudley in the New York Fed's Washington Room. And at 3 p.m. John Mack, head of Morgan Stanley, met with Dudley for 45 minutes in Dudley's office. I looked through some 460 pages of Dudley's schedule and he didn't always have such interesting meetings during the blackout periods. During the blackout period from Sept 15-23, 2009, for instance, there were no meetings or phone calls with Wall Street types -- or, at least, none noted on Dudley's schedule. But there were enough at other times to make me wonder if Dudley was sensitive to the fact that his brain contained valuable information desired by the guys he was meeting. On Dec. 11, 2009, for instance, Dudley had a breakfast meeting with Goldman Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein and that company's chief financial officer, David Viniar. The Fed's blackout period had begun three days earlier and lasted until Dec. 16. Goldman is a primary dealer in government securities, so lower-level discussions with the Fed probably occur frequently. But a breakfast meeting? At the Fed? At a time when Dudley was preparing for an FOMC meeting and wasn't supposed to be tipping his hand in public? Meredith Whitney, the influential bank analyst, was on Dudley's schedule on April 20, 2010 -- the day another blackout period started. During this past September's blackout period, Dudley met with a principal of Woodbine Capital, a hedge fund. A source of mine who used to work at the Fed says private meetings like these during blackout periods have always been a matter of contention inside the Fed. And, quite frankly, I can't blame the folks who attended these meetings. If an influential member of the Fed like Dudley might have an indiscreet moment, why not listen? My view? If the Fed doesn't want its people tipping information to the public in speeches, why wouldn't it crack down on private conversations that can be used for huge profits by small Wall Street groups that just happen to have the right connections? How is this fair to the investing public? And how is this fair to every other investment firm that competes with the guys who lunched and breakfasted with Dudley during these periods when he is supposed to keep his mouth shut and his thoughts to himself? Join GATA here: Yukon Mining Investment e-Conference http://theyukonroom.com/yukon-eblast-static.html Vancouver Resource Investment Conference http://cambridgehouse3.com/conference-details/vancouver-resource-investment-conference-2011/15 Cheviot Asset Management Sound Money Conference Phoenix Investment Conference and Silver Summit 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: 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: To contribute to GATA, please visit: ADVERTISEMENT Prophecy Drills 71.17 Metres of 0.52 percent NiEq 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
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| US State Revenue Down a Third While Spending Increased Posted: 07 Jan 2011 05:18 AM PST While US state governments continued spending at a voracious rate in 2009, recent US Census data that shows state tax revenue was plummeting, down almost a third. The states were only able to finance their largesse via American Recovery and Reinvestment Act stimulus funds provided by the federal government. However, many of its provisions will expire this year… and the feds would have a tough time affording its marked level of support much longer anyway. According to Reuters: "Total state government revenue dropped 30.8 percent from 2008 to $1.1 trillion in 2009, the latest year for which data is available and the last year before the decennial census was completed. "Much of the decline was caused by drops in social insurance trust revenue, which are funds providing money for programs such as unemployment compensation and public employees' retirement, the Census said. Total taxes collected in 2009 fell 8.5 percent from the previous year to $715.1 billion. The Census said it was the first year-on-year decline in tax revenue since 2002. "As revenues fell in 2009, states continued to spend. Billions of dollars from the federal stimulus plan passed early in the year buoyed budgets and prevented some cuts to education and public welfare programs. Within weeks of taking office in 2009, President Barack Obama worked with the U.S. Congress to pass an $814 billion economic stimulus plan of tax and spending measures that included the largest transfer of federal funds to states in U.S. history." Over the course of 2009, the states took in almost $480 billion in federal grant transfers, a massive subsidy that's unsustainable in the long run. Further, as the article indicates, the stimulus was primarily used for welfare payments, especially unemployment, which has been an increasing rather than decreasing cost center. So, despite ongoing budgetary shortfalls, state expenses will keep rising. Looking ahead, the unemployment picture is not likely to improve a bit, and states, already short on revenue, have only a much poorer Uncle Sam to count on during these lean times. With no other easy or politically palatable options on the table, Bernanke and the Fed are likely to continue burning the midnight oil and working the presses. You can read more details in coverage from Reuters on how US state revenue fell in 2009 while spending didn't. Best, Rocky Vega, US State Revenue Down a Third While Spending Increased originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning. The Daily Reckoning, offers a uniquely refreshing, perspective on the global economy, investing, gold, stocks and today's markets. Its been called "the most entertaining read of the day."
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| Nick Barisheff: Irreversible upward pressure for gold Posted: 07 Jan 2011 05:15 AM PST 1p ET Friday, January 7, 2011 Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: Bullion Management Group CEO Nick Barisheff's outlook for gold in the new year cites three key factors: central bank purchases, movement away from the U.S. dollar, and demand from China. His commentary is headlined "Gold Outlook 2011: Irreversible Upward Pressures and the China Effect" and you can find it at Business Insider here: http://www.businessinsider.com/gold-outlook-2011-irreversible-upward-pre... CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer 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 http://theyukonroom.com/yukon-eblast-static.html Vancouver Resource Investment Conference http://cambridgehouse3.com/conference-details/vancouver-resource-investment-conference-2011/15 Cheviot Asset Management Sound Money Conference Phoenix Investment Conference and Silver Summit 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: 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: To contribute to GATA, please visit: http://www.gata.org/node/16 ADVERTISEMENT Prophecy Drills 71.17 Metres of 0.52% NiEq 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
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| Posted: 07 Jan 2011 05:01 AM PST This is not a trading recommendation, this is a financial assassination recommendation. To sell stock naked you must be willing to break the law like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan. Share this:
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The euro headed for a weekly loss versus all but one of its 16 major counterparts amid concern that European governments will struggle to raise funds as the region's fiscal crisis lingers. Borrowing costs for Portugal surged at a six-month bill sale this week, the first of Europe's high-deficit nations to test investor demand in 2011. Thomas Mayer, chief economist of Deutsche Bank AG, commented that the euro's survival in its present form "can no longer be taken for granted," and that European Union policymakers have to move faster to reform the euro region to avoid another crisis…
Mr. Bernanke says his quantitative easing policy is not to blame for the sharp increase in the price of oil. Instead, oil's rise is the result of strong demand from emerging markets. The dollar, he notes, has been "quite stable" in the past few months. One worry in the run up to the Fed's $600 billion bond-buying announcement in November was that it was going to cause the dollar to fall sharply, which would in turn put upward pressure on commodities like oil priced in dollars. The stable dollar, which has risen since the program's announcement, implies the Fed isn't the problem in commodities markets, Mr. Bernanke notes.
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