Gold World News Flash

---

• GoldSeek.com Radio: James Turk, Richard Daughty, The International Forecaster, and your host Chris Waltzek
• International Forecaster February 2011 (#8) - Gold, Silver, Economy + More
• Ignore The Jewelry Hoax....
• Guest Post: Analysis of the Global Insurrection Against Neo-Liberal Economic Domination and the Coming American Rebellion
• First Peaceful European Revolt, As Irish Tsunami Ends 60 Years Of Fianna Fail Rule Following Banker Bailout Fury
• Coming Dollar Crisis = Lower Stock Prices + Much Higher Gold Prices
• Stocks Test Support, Gold Broadening Top, China Stalls as USD Tests Lows Again
• The Most Compelling Argument for Owning Silver I've Ever Heard
• Gold scrap scarcity hobbles Indian refineries
• Albert Edwards On The Resurgence Of The "Conspiracy Of Optimism" As Groupthink Is Back To Record Levels
• Dollar Ready to Collapse, Silver Squeeze to Continue
• Did The Market Top Out Last Week?
• Gaddafi's Ukrainian "Love Interest" Nurse Deserts Deranged Dictator
• Paper metals markets will blow up, Rickards tells King World News
• Haynes and Norcini review metals' week at King World News
• Was it Ben Bernanke or Timothy Geithner?
• CBO on Migrant Workers
• U.S. Treasury Bonds, Yen, Euro and Dollar Chart Analysis
• Gold Collateral: A New Global Role
• Stock Market Topping, Treasuries Recovering and Gold is on a Tear
• Betting on Bernanke
• Gold Moving Closer To All-time High
• 100/OZ of American Silver Eagle Bullion From Fighting For Silver!!
• The Flood Of Money Drowns Out The Value
• The SPX, Oil, Silver, and Geopolitical Risk
• Visionary Makes His Move

GoldSeek.com Radio: James Turk, Richard Daughty, The International Forecaster, and your host Chris Waltzek Posted: 27 Feb 2011 04:00 PM PST 1st Hour: Headline news & the Market Weatherman Report. Spotlight Stock Picks. Host Chris Waltzek & Bob Chapman, The International Forecaster discussion and answer listener's questions. 2nd hour: James Turk, GoldMoney.com Richard Daughty, The Mogambo Guru Report

International Forecaster February 2011 (#8) - Gold, Silver, Economy + More Posted: 27 Feb 2011 04:00 AM PST The world is awash in dollars and that is being reflected in the USDX, which are six major currencies versus the dollar. The loss of value is being loudly trumpeted as the IMF says a replacement must be found. This is the same IMF that has been foisting non-gold backed SDRs on us since 1969. Every time they have tried this it has been a failure. We can give the Illuminists an 'A' for effort, but what they do not get is that the professionals and investors see right through it.

Ignore The Jewelry Hoax.... Posted: 27 Feb 2011 03:52 AM PST Ever since I started buying gold in 2003, people have been concocting stories about why it's a bad investment and why every pullback is indicative of the top. None of these stories has had much merit, but they all need to at least be explored. The latest thesis goes something like this: gold is a bubble driven by investment demand. Jewelry demand is in free-fall and when investment demand eventually reverses, it will crush the price of gold.

Guest Post: Analysis of the Global Insurrection Against Neo-Liberal Economic Domination and the Coming American Rebellion Posted: 26 Feb 2011 12:53 PM PST Submitted by David DeGraw from Amped Status Guest Post: Analysis of the Global Insurrection Against Neo-Liberal Economic Domination and the Coming American Rebellion – We Are Egypt [Revolution Roundup #3] If you think what’s happening in Egypt won’t happen within the United States, you’ve been watching too much TV. The statistics speak for themselves. In previous Revolution Roundups, before we were knocked offline, we featured mass protests by the people of Ireland, Italy, Britain, Austria, Greece, France and Portugal, as the Global Insurrection contagion spread throughout Europe. And now, as we have seen over the past month, North African and Middle Eastern nations have joined the movement as the people of Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan, Morocco, Gabon, Mauritania, Yemen, Bahrain, Libya, Palestine, Iraq, Sudan and Algeria have taken to the streets en masse. The connection between this latest round of uprisings and the prior protests throughout Europe is one the mainstream media is not making. We are witnessing a decentralized global rebellion against Neo-Liberal economic imperialism. While each national uprising has its own internal characteristics, each one, at its core, is about the rising costs of living and lack of financial opportunity and security. Throughout the world the situation is the same: increasing levels of unemployment and poverty, as price inflation on food and basic necessities is soaring. Whether national populations realize it or not, these uprisings are against systemic global economic policies that are strategically designed to exploit the working class, reduce living standards, increase personal debt and create severe inequalities of wealth. These global uprising, which have only just begun, are the first wave of the inevitable reaction to the implementation of a centralized worldwide Neo-Feudal economic order. The global banking cartel, centered at the IMF, World Bank and Federal Reserve, have paid off politicians and dictators the world over — from Washington to Greece to Egypt. In country after country, they have looted national economies at the expense of local populations, consolidating wealth in unprecedented fashion – the top economic one-tenth of one percent is currently holding over $40 trillion in investible wealth, not counting an equally significant amount of wealth hidden in offshore accounts. IMF imperial operations designed to extract wealth and suppress populations have been ongoing for decades. As anyone researching economic imperialism will know, a centrally planned Neo-Liberal aristocracy controls the global economy. I: Centrally Planned Economic Repression The IMF has a well-worn strategy that they use to conquer national economies. As I warned four months ago, we have now progressed into Step 3.5: World Wide IMF Riots. Back in October, in a TV interview with Max Keiser, we discussed leaked World Bank documents that revealed the IMF’s strategy. I stated the following: “They have a four-step strategy for destroying national economies…. We are about to enter what they would call Step Three. Step Three is when you’ve looted the economy and now food and basic necessities all of a sudden become more expensive, harder to get to. And then, Step 3.5 is when you get the riots. We are fastly approaching that…. We are headed to, as the IMF said, and as they plan, Step 3.5: IMF Riots. That’s what’s coming…” Fast-forward four months to today, and now we see country after country rebelling against high food prices. Since our October interview, food prices have spiked 15%. According to new World Bank data, since June 2010, “Rising food have pushed about 44 million people into poverty in developing countries.” As Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke announced another round of Quantitative Easing (QE2), those of us paying attention knew that the trigger had been pulled and Step Three had been executed. It was a declaration of economic war, an economic death sentence for tens of millions of people – deliberately devaluing the dollar and sparking inflation in commodities/basic necessities. It was a vicious policy that would impact people from Boston to Cairo. When QE2 was announced, I warned: “Food and Gas Prices Will Skyrocket, The Federal Reserve Just Dropped An Economic Nuclear Bomb On Us.” I also wrote: “The Federal Reserve is deliberately devaluing the dollar to enrich a small group of a global bankers, which will cause significant harm to the people of the United States and severe ramifications throughout the world…. The Federal Reserve’s actions are already causing the price of food and gas to increase and will cause hyperinflation on most basic necessities.” To be clear, there are several significant factors contributing to rising food prices, such as extreme weather conditions, biofuel production and Wall Street speculation; but the Federal Reserve’s policies deliberately threw gasoline all over those brush fires. QE2 was another economic napalm bomb from the global banking cartel. In a recent McClathy news article entitled, “Egypt’s unrest may have roots in food prices, US Fed policy,” Kevin Hall reports: “‘The truth of the matter is that when the Federal Reserve moved on the quantitative easing, it did export inflation to a lot of these emerging markets…. There’s no doubt that one of the side effects of the weak dollar and quantitative easing has been rising commodity prices. It helped create this bullish environment for commodities. This is a very delicate balancing act.’ It’s a view shared by Ed Yardeni, a veteran financial market analyst, who reached a similar conclusion in a research note to investors…. He joked that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke should be added to a list of revolutionaries, since his quantitative easing policy, unveiled last year in Wyoming, has provoked unrest and change in the developing world. ‘Since he first indicated his support for such a revolutionary monetary change… the prices of corn, soybeans and wheat have risen 53 percent, 37 percent and 24.4 percent through Friday’s close,’ Yardeni noted. ‘The price of crude oil rose 19.8 percent over this period from $75.17 to $90.09 this (Monday) morning. Soaring food and fuel prices are compounding anger attributable to widespread unemployment in the countries currently experiencing riots.’” The people throughout the Middle East and Northern Africa, on the fringe of the Neo-Liberal economic empire and most vulnerable to the Fed’s inflationary policies, are the first to rebel. Before analyzing the situation within the US, let’s take a closer look at the global Neo-Liberal economic policies that led to the Egyptian and Tunisian revolts. II :: Economic Imperialism: IMF Plunder of Egypt and Tunisia In the Middle East and North Africa populations are rising against their local dictators. However, these “dictators” take orders from the IMF. A report from the Center for Research on Globalization revealed some background and historical context: “The Alliance between Global Capitalism and Arab Dictators It is paramount to understand that the Arab dictators and tyrants serve the interests of organized capital. This is their primary function. They are elements of the global system formed by organized capital. Looking back, protests and riots started in 1977 against the regime of Mohammed Anwar Al-Sadat, Mubarak’s predecessor. The causes of these protests were the neo-liberal policies that the I.M.F. had handed down to Sadat. The I.M.F. policies ended government subsidies on basic daily commodities of life. Food prices jumped and Egyptians became hard-hit…. The Arab people grasp the fact that their ruling class and governments are not only corrupt regimes, but also comprador elites, namely the local representatives of foreign corporations, governments, and interests…. In Egypt, Gamal Mubarak (who was being groomed by his father for the presidency) worked for Bank of America. In Tunisia, Zine Al-Abidine Ben Ali was a military officer trained in French and American military schools who, once in power, served U.S. and French economic interests. In Lebanon, Fouad Siniora was a former Citibank official before he became prime minister…. Within the corrupt Palestinian Authority, Salam Fayyad worked for one of the banks forming the U.S. Federal Reserve and the World Bank…. Moreover, almost all Arab finance ministers are affiliated to the major global banking institutions. All of them also strictly adhere to the Washington Consensus of the International Monetary Fund (I.M.F.) and the World Bank…” Samer Shehata, professor of Arab politics at Georgetown University, summed up the situation in Egypt and Tunisia: “Beginning in 2004… Egypt began implementing economic reforms called for by the IMF—or really forced on them by the IMF and the World Bank… a new government was appointed, new ministers were appointed, who believed wholeheartedly in the ideas of the IMF and the World Bank. And they quite vigorously pursued these policies. And there was at one level, at the level of macroeconomic indicators, statistics, GDP growth rates, foreign direct investment and so on—Egypt seemed to be a miracle. And this, of course, was the case with the Tunisian model earlier. You’ll remember that Jacques Chirac called it the ‘economic miracle,’ and it was the darling of the IMF and the World Bank, because it implemented these types of reforms earlier. Well, of course, we saw what happened in Tunisia. In Egypt, from 2004 until the present, the government and its reforms were applauded in Washington by World Bank, IMF and US officials…. Egypt received the top reformer award from the IMF and the World Bank…” Former Goldman Sachs executive Nomi Prins reveals more details: The Egyptian Uprising Is a Direct Response to Ruthless Global Capitalism “The revolution in Egypt is as much a rebellion against the painful deterioration of economic conditions as it is about opposing a dictator…. When people are facing a dim future, in a country hijacked by a corrupt regime that destabilized its economy through what the CIA termed, ‘aggressively pursuing economic reforms to attract foreign investment’ (in other words, the privatization and sale of its country’s financial system to international sharks), waiting doesn’t cut it…. Tunisia’s dismal economic environment was a direct result of its increasingly ‘liberal’ policy toward foreign speculators. Of the five countries covered by the World Bank’s, Investment Across Sectors Indicator, Tunisia had the fewest limits on foreign investment…. Egypt adopted a similar come-and-get-it policy, on steroids…. But, as we learned in the U.S., what goes up with artificial helium plummets under real gravity…. Not surprisingly, those foreign speculation strategies didn’t bring less poverty or more jobs either. Indeed, the insatiable hunt for great deals, whether by banks, hedge funds, or private equity funds, as it inevitably does, had the opposite effect…. Ironically, the [Egyptian Ministry of Investment] brochure touted the large college graduate population entering the job market each year — 325,000. The same graduates are the core of the current revolution. They failed to find adequate jobs and are faced with an official unemployment rate of just below 10 percent (though, similar to the U.S., that figure doesn’t account for underemployment, poor job quality or long-term prospects)…. Meanwhile, 20 percent of Egypt lives in poverty… For in the United States, economic statistics are no better. By certain measures, like income inequality, they are worse than in Egypt.” III :: US-Egypt Economic Parallels, Inequality & Poverty Comparable economic statistics between the US and Egypt are facts that US mainstream media propagandists are not reporting. Inequality of Wealth Income inequality has reached a record level within Egypt, as Pat Garofalo explained: “One of the driving factors behind the protests is the… growing sense of inequality. ‘They’re all protesting about growing inequalities…. The top of the pyramid was getting richer and richer,’ said Emile Hokayem of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in the Middle East. As Yasser El-Shimy, former diplomatic attaché at the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, wrote in Foreign Policy, ‘income inequality has reached levels not before seen in Egypt’s modern history.’” As the US mainstream media references the “oppressive” and “corrupt” inequality of wealth throughout Egypt, the hypocrisy is shameful. The inequality of wealth in the United States is currently the most severe it has ever been. Gini coefficient ratings are a measure of a nation’s inequality – the higher a nation scores, the more unequal the society is. The US has a Gini coefficient rating of 45, compared to Egypt’s 34.4, Yemen’s 37 and Tunisia’s 40, making the US the most unequal, “oppressive” and “corrupt” of the four. As John Dewey once said, “There is no such thing as the liberty or effective power of an individual, group, or class, except in relation to the liberties, the effective powers, of other individuals, groups or classes.” Poverty When well-paid “experts” in expensive suits sitting behind desks in state of the art studios discuss the hardships of the Egyptian people, something tells me that these pundits haven’t spent much time interacting with tens of millions of people living in inner city America – just because the mainstream media doesn’t cover them, doesn’t mean they don’t exist. They exist in larger numbers in the US than they do in most rebelling countries. The rising price of food has played a pivotal role in sparking the uprisings, food prices have a larger impact in countries like Egypt and Tunisia, as they represent a more significant percentage of total income. However, the overall costs of living in the US are significantly higher. When these costs are factored in — medical expenses, housing, transportation, education, etc. – the US poverty level of $22k per year, for a family of four, is comparable to the poverty rate measure in Egypt. According to the CIA, the poverty rate in Egypt is 20%. With a population size of 83 million people, this would put 16.6 million Egyptians living in poverty. In the US, the current poverty rate is 16.8%, with a population of 309 million, this puts 52 million Americans living below the poverty line. When you consider that the US has 52 million people currently living in poverty, you realize, as shocking as it may sound, that we have a larger number of desperate people in the US than rebelling populations in countries throughout the Middle East and Europe. Overall, in comparison to Egypt, the US population is obviously more geographically spread out, but if you breakdown the demographics, many large US cities have a poverty rate higher than the 20 percent rate in Egypt. Consider that, according to low-ball government statistics, nine major US cities have a poverty rate over 25%. IV :: Debt Slavery: Unemployed, Underemployed, Underpaid, In Debt The unemployment rate in Egypt mirrors the unemployment rate in the US, currently fluctuating between nine and ten percent, according to government sources. The unemployment rate among recent graduates attempting to enter the workforce also mirrors the crisis in the US. The young unemployed and underemployed demographic has played a pivotal role in leading the rebellion. Reporting for the Financial Times in an article entitled, “At hand, an Arab awakening,” Roula Khalaf sums it up this way: “In Egypt, as in Tunisia, the young people who initiated the street campaigns were educated, internet-savvy activists with no political affiliation. [Sound familiar?] After watching the fervour unleashed in the past month, young Syrians, Bahrainis, Algerians and even the quiescent Libyans are turning to Facebook and Twitter to call for their own ‘day of rage’. As Mr Khashoggi puts it: ‘The 25-year-old unemployed today has become the strong man.’” A report from Business Week entitled, “The Youth Unemployment Bomb,” provides more detail: “In Tunisia, the young people who helped bring down a dictator are called hittistes—French-Arabic slang for those who lean against the wall. Their counterparts in Egypt… are the shabab atileen, unemployed youths… In Britain, they are NEETs – ‘not in education, employment, or training.’ In Japan, they are freeters: an amalgam of the English word freelance and the German word Arbeiter, or worker. Spaniards call them mileuristas, meaning they earn no more than 1,000 euros a month. In the U.S., they’re ‘boomerang’ kids who move back home after college because they can’t find work. Even fast-growing China… has its ‘ant tribe’ – recent college graduates who crowd together in cheap flats on the fringes of big cities because they can’t find well-paying work. In each of these nations, an economy that can’t generate enough jobs to absorb its young people has created a lost generation of the disaffected, unemployed, or underemployed—including growing numbers of recent college graduates for whom the post-crash economy has little to offer…. More common is the quiet desperation of a generation in ‘waithood,’ suspended short of fully employed adulthood. At 26, Sandy Brown of Brooklyn, N.Y., is a college graduate and a mother of two who hasn’t worked in seven months. ‘I used to be a manager at a Duane Reade in Manhattan, but they laid me off. I’ve looked for work everywhere and I can’t find anything,’ she says. ‘It’s like I got my diploma for nothing.’” The collapsing job market, declining wages, loss of benefits and skyrocketing cost of education has created a “lost generation” of young college graduates with little options and massive debt. When millions of American students took out tens of thousands of dollars in student loans to pay for an education which they assumed would give them the skills needed to make a good living, they never imagined that they would be either unemployed, working part-time, or making significantly less than people in their chosen profession have traditio

First Peaceful European Revolt, As Irish Tsunami Ends 60 Years Of Fianna Fail Rule Following Banker Bailout Fury Posted: 26 Feb 2011 12:26 PM PST Angela Merkel is carefully observing what can only be classified as a peaceful revolution in Ireland, where a stunning amount, over 70% by some estimates, of voters turned out to punish the ruling Fianna Fail party for its betrayal of the Irish people and for the latest (and what some say last) broad banker bailout. The Telegraph reports that "Exit polls and early tallies from Ireland's general election heralded political annihilation for Fianna Fail (FF), the party which has ruled Ireland for more than 60 years of the Irish Republic's eight decades of independence." Bloomberg adds:  "Counting will continue today to fill the 166-seat parliament, with an exit poll giving Fine Gael and the Labour Party a combined 57 percent of the vote. Support for Fianna Fail, which has ruled for the last 14 years, dropped to 15 percent from 42 percent in the 2007 election, the poll showed." In other words, the Irish people have voted for a direct confrontation with the EU, and indirectly, for austerity: "Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny, likely to become prime minister, wants to re-negotiate the interest rate on the emergency loans and speed up planned spending cuts to narrow the budget gap. Labour is pushing for more tax increases." And the reason Merkel is not going to sleep much tonight is that Germany is next. The country, where the CDU saw a comparable annihilation in a recent Hamburg vote, faces several regional elections as early as a few weeks from now, and the political scene is expected to change drastically, as a warning to anyone who feels like putting the banking kleptocracy (again) over the interests of the taxpaying majority. But what is most troublesome for all those who think that the EURUSD at 1.38 is remotely credible, is that the European Nash Equilibrium is now completely destroyed, and the game theory defections are about to start in earnest: "Declan Ganley, the Irish businessman who led the 2008 No vote to the Lisbon Treaty, said Ireland must "have the balls" to threaten debt default and withdrawal from the single currency. "We have a hostage, it is called the euro," he said. "The euro is insolvent. The only question is whether Ireland should be sacrificed to keep the Ponzi scheme going. We have to have a Plan B to the misnamed bailout, which is to go back to the Irish Punt." Funny  nobody even pretends that modern economics is even a remotely viable concept. Also, the Fed's plan of keeping the USD artificially low against most currencies is about to crash and burn mercilessly. From the Telegraph: According to exit polling carried out by the Irish RTE broadcaster, Fine Gael (FG), Ireland's main centre-right opposition, had won 36.1 per cent of the vote. Labour, traditional FG's traditional coalition partner, took 20.5 per cent, its best result ever. Fianna Fail took just 15.1 per cent share of the vote, representing a loss of 58 seats. Sinn Fein, usually outsiders in southern Irish politics, recorded its own best result with 10.1 per cent, up almost five per cent on the last 2007 election. The vote share for Greens, FF's junior coalition partner, plummeted to 2.7 per cent, possibly robbing the party of MPs. "The political landscape of Ireland is completely and utterly redrawn," said Roger Jupp, the chairman of the Millward Brown Lansdowne pollsters which conducted the exit polls for RTE. Enda Kenny, Fine Gael's leader, will later on Sunday, start to form a new government, almost certainly with Labour, after full election results under Ireland's complicated PR system come through. Both Mr Kenny and Eamonn Gilmore, Labour's leader, have promised Irish voters that they will renegotiate the EU-IMF austerity programme to reduce the burden for taxpayers and to force financial investors to shoulder some of the bank debts currently paid out of the public purse. Quid pro quo, Clarice: At a summit of centre-right EU leaders in Helsinki next Friday, Mr Kenny will use his position as Ireland's new Prime Minister to beg the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, and French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, for concessions ahead of an emergency March 11 Brussels summit to restructure the euro zone. But neither the two European leaders nor the European Central Bank or EU will permit any substantial changes, despite the huge popular Irish revolt against the bailout. Chancellor Merkel will tell Mr Kenny that if he wants to reduce the high, punitive 5.8 per cent interest rate charged on EU loans then Ireland will have to give up its low corporate tax rates - a measure regarded as vital to Ireland's recovery and one of the few economic policies it has not yet handed over to Brussels or Frankfurt. And, of course, Mutually Assured Destruction: The new Irish premier will also be warned that there is no question of forcing privately-owned financial institutions to assume Ireland's &ound;85 billion bank debts because the resulting market panic would spread to Germany and France, tearing the euro single currency apart. As Irish voters headed for the polling booths on Friday, the European Commission bluntly declared that the terms of the EU-IMF bailout "must be applied" whatever the will of Ireland's people or regardless of any change of government. "It's an agreement between the EU and the Republic of Ireland, it's not an agreement between an institution and a particular government," said a Brussels spokesman. A European diplomat, from a large eurozone country, told The Sunday Telegraph that "the more the Irish make a big deal about renegotiation in public, the more attitudes will harden". "It is not even take it or leave it. It's done. Ireland's only role in this now is to implement the programme agreed with the EU, IMF and European Central Bank. Irish voters are not a party in this process, whatever they have been told," said the diplomat. So is everything about to disintegrate, or will the status quo continue after all is said and done? Dessie Shiels, an independent candidate in Donegal, said: "People have not been given the basic right of deciding whether or not they should have their taxes increased in order to repay bondholders who have lent to the banks." David McWilliams, an economist and former official at the Ireland's Central Bank, has led calls for a popular vote under Article 27 of the Irish constitution, which requires on a matter of "such national importance that the will of the people ought to be ascertained". "We have to re-negotiate everything," he said. "Obviously, the first way to do this is to make them aware that if they force us to pay everything, we will default and they will get nothing. So they had better get a little bit of something, than all of nothing. To make this financial pill easier to swallow, we must take the initiative politically. We can do this via a referendum. However, just like in MENA, the Irish people, who have already sacrificed a part of their pension to keep the kleptocratic oligarchy fully funded and with another year of record bonuses, is increasingly ready and willing to throw the dice: "If the Irish people hold a referendum on the bank debts now, we can go to the EU with a mandate from the people which says No. This will allow our politicians to play hard-ball, because to do otherwise would be an anti-democratic endgame." Declan Ganley, the Irish businessman who led the 2008 No vote to the Lisbon Treaty, said Ireland must "have the balls" to threaten debt default and withdrawal from the single currency. "We have a hostage, it is called the euro," he said. "The euro is insolvent. The only question is whether Ireland should be sacrificed to keep the Ponzi scheme going. We have to have a Plan B to the misnamed bailout, which is to go back to the Irish Punt." And should that happen, the beinning of the end of the global Ponzi will be a fact. After so much posturing, will Ireland finally have the guts to what is right, or will nothing more than empty Dublin rhetoric rule the day even as the African revolutions spread to all middle east countries, and then to France...

Coming Dollar Crisis = Lower Stock Prices + Much Higher Gold Prices Posted: 26 Feb 2011 11:00 AM PST A Massive Gold Rally Is Underway With the U.S. dollar in decline Treasuries will also*be panned. As such, cash is beginning to head toward real money in a flight-to-safety – and there is no way precious metals*can absorb a panic-level volume of capital without a massive price adjustment. Words: 530 So*says*Deric O. Cadora*([url]www.thedocument.com[/url])*in*an article* which*Lorimer Wilson, editor of www.munKNEE.com,* has reformatted and edited [...]* further for the sake of clarity and brevity to ensure a fast and easy read. Please note that this paragraph must be included in any article re-posting to avoid copyright infringement.*Cadora*goes*on to say:* The U.S. Dollar Is On The Verge Of*A Breakdown [An analysis of the chart of the*U.S. dollar below*suggests that it is on the verge of a breakdown which will] bring an end to the cyclical equity bull market*that began in 2009. Periods of uncertainty and turmoil tend to bring down stock prices, and I expect the result to b...

Stocks Test Support, Gold Broadening Top, China Stalls as USD Tests Lows Again Posted: 26 Feb 2011 09:20 AM PST The FDIC Average Weekly Closures May be Rising. The FDIC Failed Bank List announced only one new bank closure this week.  U.S. regulators said they seized a failed Illinois bank Friday, the second from that state this year. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said it received Valley Community Bank of St. Charles, Ill., and entered a purchase-and-assumption agreement with First State Bank of Mendota, Ill., to take over the failed bank.

The Most Compelling Argument for Owning Silver I've Ever Heard Posted: 26 Feb 2011 09:09 AM PST Sean Goldsmith writes: The talk of the investment industry is a video making its way around the internet right now… And no… it's not the popular "End of America" video I'm sure you've seen.

Gold scrap scarcity hobbles Indian refineries Posted: 26 Feb 2011 08:24 AM PST Gold Refineries' Operating Capacity Declines By Dilip Kumar Jha Business Standard, New Delhi Sunday, February 27, 2011 http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/gold-refineries/-operating-c... MUMBAI -- The operating capacity of domestic gold refineries reached alarmingly low levels due to scarcity of scrap. Currently domestic gold refineries are operating between 25-30 per cent of their installed capacity as against 35-40 per cent around the same time last year. "Used gold sales have declined steadily in the last one year as consumers are holding jewellery in anticipation of higher prices. Total recycled gold supply plunged to 89 tonnes in 2010 as compared to 122 tonnes in the previous year," said Ajay Mitra of the India and Middle East office of the World Gold Council. Despite availability of other raw materials like "gold powder" and "dore bar" (raw gold), refineries can rely only on used gold from domestic sources for melting into coins and bars for further processing. ... Dispatch continues below ... ADVERTISEMENT Prophecy Resource Spins Off Platinum/Palladium Venture: World-Class PGM Deposit in Yukon Company Press Release, January 18, 2011 VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Prophecy Resource Corp. (TSX-V:PCY)and Pacific Coast Nickel Corp. announce that they have agreed that PCNC will acquire Prophecy's Nickel PGM projects by issuing common shares to Prophecy. PCNC will acquire the Wellgreen PGM Ni-Cu and Lynn Lake nickel projects in the Yukon Territory and Manitoba respectively by issuing up to 550 million common shares of PCNC to Prophecy. PCNC has 55.7 million shares outstanding. Following the transaction: -- Prophecy will own approximately 90 percent of PCNC. -- PCNC will consolidate its share capital on a 10 old for one new basis. -- Prophecy will change its name to Prophecy Coal Corp. and PCNC will be renamed Prophecy Platinum Corp. -- Prophecy intends to distribute half of its PCNC shares to shareholders pro-rata in accordance with their holdings. Based on the closing price of the common shares of PCNC on January 17, $0.195 per share, the gross value of the transaction is $107,250,000. For the complete announcement, please visit: http://prophecyresource.com/news_2011_jan18.php Gold powder cannot be imported due to security and storage reasons. Import of "dore bar" also faces high customs duty, which is unviable. Hence, domestic refineries generally procure used gold from local jewellers for running their operations. The situation, however, is unlikely to change for domestic refineries at least for one more month. With the beginning of festival season in the south, especially in Kerala and Chennai, used gold sales increase. The April-May holiday season in the south coincides with Akshaya Tritiya, the most religious festival for buying gold. Also, during this period, most of non-resident Indians bring huge amounts of gold jewellery from abroad for sale in local markets, which increases availability tremendously. "Therefore, we hope that gold scrap availability will rebound in early April which would encourage higher capacity utilisation of refineries," said James Jose, managing director of Chemmanur Gold Refinery Ltd. "Lower capacity utilisation will surely hit refineries' topline and bottomline. But we are used to it. This has been the scenario for the last couple of years. Hence, we have re-adjusted ourselves to cope with this situation," he added. The next season for higher used gold availability in India is December-January, which ended this year on a disappointing note due to volatile prices. In the last budget, basic customs duty on gold ore and concentrates was reduced from 2 per cent ad valorem to a specific duty of 140 rupees per 10 grams. The excise duty on refined gold made from such ore or concentrate was reduced from 8 per cent to a specific duty of 280 rupees per 10 grams. The import duty on raw gold was cut from over 400 rupees per 10 grams to 280 rupees per 10 grams. But an excise duty of 140 rupees per 10 grams was also levied. In effect, the overall duty was raised to 420 rupees per 10 grams, as against 300 rupees per 10 grams on pure gold. * * * Support GATA by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: http://gata.org/tshirts Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Or a video disc of GATA's 2005 Gold Rush 21 conference in the Yukon: http://www.goldrush21.com/ Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: http://www.gata.org To contribute to GATA, please visit: http://www.gata.org/node/16 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

Albert Edwards On The Resurgence Of The "Conspiracy Of Optimism" As Groupthink Is Back To Record Levels Posted: 26 Feb 2011 06:01 AM PST As regular readers know too well, one topic Zero Hedge enjoys ridiculing with the disdain it deserves is groupthink of any form. The phenomenon, which is nothing but transference of laziness by those who manage other people's money with complete disregard for the consequences of their actions, was among the main reasons for the Great Financial Crash.  As nobody was willing to engage in any form of critical thought, and with the market "only" going up, any investment thesis was predicated solely on what the "other guy" was doing. Of course when it all blew up, it was time to blame the evil rating agencies. After all, heaven forbid someone actually think about the logic behind the credit ratings of hundreds of billions in synthetic CDOs, or worse still, take responsibility for their own stupidity and laziness. We are now precisely in the same place we were when the market peaked last time around, with groupthink rampant, with any attempt at opposing thought squashed for fears it will end the party early, with sellside analyst optimism at all time highs, and with the administration actively encouraging rampant lies and perpetuation of the myths that take hold in the market with no factual footing whatsoever. The "conspiracy of optimism", as dubbed once by James Montier, has once again fully taken hold. As SocGen's Albert Edwards points out "despite another post mortem on forecasting failure, nothing has or will change": this is true... until the next crash. Then the finger pointing will begin anew, theatrics about the change in the Status Quo will resume, and once again the Fed will attempt to reflate the latest bubble crash. Only this time there will be no reflation, as the central planning committee's reign of terror will be over, and the fiat monetary system will have ended. Below we present Edwards' most recent solemn and very troubling thoughts on the latest break out of the great groputhink malaise, which will only last as long as the great chairsatan has some control over events. Luckily, with the amplitude from a stable market equilibrium shifting ever greater in either direction, and as the Fed's very existence (remember: the whole point of the central bank is to contain price stability) is repudiated, the time until the reset is now shorter than ever before in history. Edwards laments: I was leafing through a critical report into the IMF’s performance in the run-up to the financial crisis by the Independent Evaluation Office of the IMF (see IMF Performance in the Run-Up to the Financial and Economic Crisis: IMF Surveillance in 2004-07 – link). "Groupthink” mentality effectively sums up the reports criticism in one word. In Chapter 4 entitled Why Did The IMF Fail To Give Clear Warning?, the series of sub-headings reads just like my erstwhile colleague, James Montier’s papers with pronounced cognitive bias being cited as the basis of the view that almost everything in the garden was rosy. But suppose you were a dissenter – well ... “Staff incentives were not well aligned to foster the candid exchange of ideas that is needed for good surveillance—many staff reported concerns about the consequences of expressing views contrary to those of supervisors, management, and country authorities.” Or let’s shoot the messenger! Dissenting voices were ridiculed throughout the mid-2000s as the US and UK housing bubbles defied the pessimists’ pronouncements of collapse. For the vast majority of the analytical community, the fact that the cassandras were proved wrong gave them more and more confidence that there was, in fact, no bubble to burst at all, whereas it was clear to many that the crash would end up being all the deeper when it eventually came. But what has changed? The new groupthink is that the Chinese economy will not crash in the same way as the US economy did in 2008. China’s own Great Moderation has continued for so long, the mainstream will only extrapolate this into the indefinite future. And in developed markets, despite two gut-wrenching equity bear markets in a decade, QE2 has taken analyst optimism back to all-time highs (see chart below). A topic Zero Hedge presented previously is that while companies are now getting more bearish, the sellside doesn't want the party to end, and its optimism is at an all time high. The same goes for economists, who following in the footsteps of Goldman's Jan Hatzius stunning reversal in opinion, are now deliriously bullish on everything. None of this is of course surprising: it is a matter of national interest for the banks and their employees to promptly reflate the bubble at all costs. Otherwise, the great reset will send them all packing and looking for a job that actually involves doing something socially useful. As before, Edwards believes the great wind-down on groupthink will begin with China (despite Stephen Roach's optimistic view that the entirely export-led country can promptly shift its entire economic system to one driven by the consumer class : sorry, ain't happening... not without a catastrophic global economic realignment). So we await some sort of correction in risk assets. But is this just a technical correction within a bull market for risk assets or something more? Personally, I would categorize the entire move up in the equity market since March 2009 as a bear market rally which at some point will fall flat on its face. Investors seem to have forgotten that in a post-bubble world, recessions become far more frequent events. Certainly in the UK I don’t have much doubt that fiscal tightening is taking us back into recession, let alone now the increasing likelihood the Bank of England will soon raise interest rates. But it is China and the commodity markets where I remain most concerned. Many seem to have forgotten just how vicious the collapse in prices in H2 08 was – i.e. they have forgotten just how all-persuasive yet wrong the prevailing groupthink was back then. And for those who need a natural antidote to Roach's perpetual optimism on China, here is Edwards' punchline: Far bigger brains than my own seem pretty sure that China is a bubble destined to disappoint. Most recently I was reading a piece by Edward Chancellor of GMO entitled Entranced by China’s Bubbling Economy (see Financial Times 7 Feb – link). He points out that bubbles can be identified before they burst by using simple valuation tools. China has all the characteristics of “a truly great bubble” with the housing stock set to exceed 350% of GDP this year, the same level of Japan at the height of its real estate bubble in 1990. Construction accounts for around a quarter of China’s economic activity which Edward notes is coincidently the same level that Ireland attained before it’s dramatic explosion. Oops! Meanwhile, the major external imbalances that reflect the easy money policies that ruined the US, UK and Eurozone peripheral economies persist. The Chinese trade deficit with the US reached new highs in 2010 (see chart below). In many ways the persistence of the huge surpluses in China, Germany and Japan suggests that nothing much has changed. Economic implosion in the indebted countries has been prevented by the public sector simply replacing the excess debt of the private sector. The solution to the private sector debt excesses has been more debt and monetization of that debt. The real issues have been simply avoided. But at least one consensus trend trade has just bitten the dust. Emerging markets had a fantastic decade run because they were cheap (see chart below). But as ever, this outperformance was extrapolated way into the future. Groupthink failed yet again. The one traditional refrain on Wall Street has been to "never fight the Fed".. or by implication the great worldwide central banker cartel, which are now interchangeable as all the money printers are all in on the Ponzi. Yet with the massive moves in gold and silver, the market is telling us that ever more are taking the other side of that trade. Perhaps the only place where "this time it is different" is that the Fed is now losing. As Bernanke is now openly monetizing every dollar in gross issuance, what else does he have in his bag of trick? We contend that there is nothing left. And with QE3, QE4, etc. just a variation on a theme of dollar destruction, the end game is now here. Only this time even the Fed knows the outcome is given. So let the groupthink have its last moment in the sun for a few more week, or months, or at even years. Those who wish a return to a normal and efficient market system are already putting in place the structural supports for a systemic "Volkswagen" on the lazy parade of groupthink Koolaid drinkers, who will "never see it coming." Only this time, the resulting squeeze, and subsequent reset, will make even the Volkswagen chart from late 2008 pale in comparison.

Dollar Ready to Collapse, Silver Squeeze to Continue Posted: 26 Feb 2011 05:09 AM PST "Afternoon Gold Fix -- February 25, 2011. Interviews with Marc Faber, Jim Rickards and James Turk. Speak up and be heard by the CFTC one more time...and much more. " Yesterday in Gold and Silver When I hit the 'send' button on my Friday morning column, gold had just printed its low price tick of the day at $1,400 spot...so my warning of possible impending doom during the New York session wasn't worth a hill of beans. But at 2:50 a.m. Mountain time yesterday morning, it wasn't looking too good. From that low, which occurred minutes before London opened, gold rallied in fits and starts right up until the close of electronic trading in New York. You'll notice that the spike in the gold price that began the moment that the London p.m. gold fix was in at 10:00 a.m. Eastern, wasn't allowed to go far...and that was the high price tick of the day at $1,412.80 spot. The gold price closed just a bit under that. Here's the New York Spot gold chart on its own...

Did The Market Top Out Last Week? Posted: 26 Feb 2011 04:38 AM PST Once again, another week rolls by, and the market is hanging by a thread.  Thousands of hedge fund traders are anxious to "make a killing" by being fully invested on the short side and catch the next big bear market selloff so they can call it quits in a couple of months and spend the summer luxuriating out in the Hamptons after "making their year".  Bernanke has his back up against the wall.  He either needs to let the market fall so he can get a rally in the Treasuries going, or he needs to turn on the Infinite Fiat Firehose and send the U.S. Economy into full blown Zimbabwe mode. Believe it or not, after all the turmoil, the NYA is still in an uptrend.   Time to go through the checklist: XLF:  Broken, under the 21-day XRT:  Not broken yet Transports:  Broken, under the 21-day EEM:  Still sucking wind However, amazingly, the advance/decline line is still going up:   And some of the 1999 Superhookers are still skying to new highs: Anybody remember Kate Moss from 1999?  Yep, these skinny, skanky ones are still in high demand, even 12 years later...Still being chased, even today. Not much change in the Investor's Business Daily Top 50, LULU is still at the top of the list.  Amazingly, only two oil stocks and one silver stock in the list.  Still mostly tech stocks with outlandish PE ratios. Most of these stocks are still acting OK.  The CANSLIM crowd tends to be overly cautious, most of the mo-mo traders are now out of the market after the IBD "Big Picture" authors uttered a series of "distribution" calls and commenting on "uptrend is under pressure". All 50 charts posted here: http://clearstation.etrade.com/cgi-bin/bbs?post_id=9656630 Who would have figured that just a scant 2 years after the greatest credit bust in 50 years, the No. 1 leading stock would be a company that is selling $175 yoga outfits in droves? And yet again the Top 50 list is still populated by the newest, freshest, hottest "new names" like Aruba Networks.  Anyone see the latest from Adriana Lima? And the biggest red flag for stock bears is the CRB Index and the poor, beleaguered U.S. Fiatsco which appears to be ready to collapse in a heap. Currencies here: http://clearstation.etrade.com/cgi-bin/bbs?post_id=9495742 And when is this thing going to reverse? Who knows??   "Hey, everything is still going up!  It must be all good"

Gaddafi's Ukrainian "Love Interest" Nurse Deserts Deranged Dictator Posted: 26 Feb 2011 04:34 AM PST Following the departure of Gadaffi's private jet pilot, Odd Birger Johansen, who quietly left the country two days ago, the latest to flee the sinking ship is none other than the dictator's favorite Ukrainian nurse Galyna Kolotnytska, who has taken her leave from Tripoli permanently. The approximately 38 year old nurse was first exposed in WikiLeaks cables which Zero Hedge referenced previously here. The fact that Galyna was so close to the dictator and was a potential "love interest" apparently in no way increased her resolve to pull an Eva Braun and join Gaddafi when he finally realizes the end is nigh. And while Gaddafi will be able to do without sponge baths for a day or two, it may prove to replace the pilot of a jet already supposedly loaded up with gold and ready to go, on such short notice. The WSJ on the latest desertion: Embattled Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi is set to be deserted by another close ally after his Ukrainian nurse said she was heading home. Galyna Kolotnytska, described in a diplomatic cable published by Wikileaks as a "voluptuous blond" who "travel[s] everywhere" with Col. Gadhafi, called her family in Kiev on Friday to say she intends to return to Ukraine, her daughter told daily Segodnya. "Mom got in touch yesterday. She said she was now in Tripoli," Tetyana Kolotnytska said. "She spoke in a calm voice, asked us not to worry and said she'd soon be home." According to the cable from September 2009, contacts in Tripoli told U.S. diplomats that Col. Gadhafi "relies heavily" on Ms. Kolotnytska, then 38, as "she alone 'knows his routine.'" The cable also reported claims from unnamed sources that the eccentric Libyan leader and the nurse, part of a retinue of four Ukrainians, "have a romantic relationship." Ms. Kolotnytska's daughter said her mother had been in Libya for nine years, originally employed in a hospital before starting work for Col. Gadhafi. "Other Ukrainian women also work for him as nurses. Mom is one of them," she said. "For some reason, he doesn't trust Libyan women with this matter." And on the prompt fleeing of Gaddafi's private pilot to Austria: 57-year-old Odd Birger Johansen for the last year has been the pilot of the private jet of Colonel Gaddafi. Until yesterday, he was in Tripoli, together with his wife and daughter that had chosen this unhappy moment to visit him for a holiday in Libya. Yesterday, he spoke to the private Norwegian broadcaster 'TV2', saying he wanted to evacuate Libya as soon as possible. "Right now, the way I feel it, is that things are burning around me ... and I don't want to ... I am not a hero, I will go home," Mr Johansen told the broadcaster. The interview was picked up by international media, including afrol News, causing even greater fears for the Norwegian family. The pilot's wife, Kristin Haftorn Johansen, today told the Norwegian daily 'VG' that she feared Libyan security police could want to pick up the family after the world press reported over her husband's desire to desert the Libyan dictator. Johansen had originally emphasised he was "under contract, so I have to follow up on that if there should be a need for my services." But his wife soon convinced him that the international media coverage forced them to flee the country as soon as possible. Today, the family managed to buy the last available tickets for a flight from Tripoli to Vienna, Austria. Arriving safely in Europe, the Johansen family again dared to contact Norwegian media. A photo of the nurse who we expect will grace the cover of Playboy within 3-6 months:

Paper metals markets will blow up, Rickards tells King World News Posted: 26 Feb 2011 03:55 AM PST 11:53a ET Saturday, February 26, 2011 Dear Friend of GATA and Gold (and Silver): Market analyst Jim Rickards today gives a wide-ranging interview to King World News, remarking, among other things, that the oil market is heavily manipulated by governments, that governments use the paper gold markets to quash the gold price, that the International Monetary Fund has developed a detailed plan for global "quantitative easing" using Special Drawing Rights, that the Federal Reserve is "a large propaganda machine," that it's "just a matter of time" before the arbitrage between paper and physical precious metals markets blows up, and that precious metals investors can protect themselves against expropriation only by taking delivery. It's a great interview, about 23 minutes long, and you can listen to it at the King World News Internet site here: http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/Broadcast/Entries/2011/2/26_Jim_R... CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc. ADVERTISEMENT Prophecy Resource Spins Off Platinum/Palladium Venture: World-Class PGM Deposit in Yukon Company Press Release, January 18, 2011 VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Prophecy Resource Corp. (TSX-V:PCY)and Pacific Coast Nickel Corp. announce that they have agreed that PCNC will acquire Prophecy's Nickel PGM projects by issuing common shares to Prophecy. PCNC will acquire the Wellgreen PGM Ni-Cu and Lynn Lake nickel projects in the Yukon Territory and Manitoba respectively by issuing up to 550 million common shares of PCNC to Prophecy. PCNC has 55.7 million shares outstanding. Following the transaction: -- Prophecy will own approximately 90 percent of PCNC. -- PCNC will consolidate its share capital on a 10 old for one new basis. -- Prophecy will change its name to Prophecy Coal Corp. and PCNC will be renamed Prophecy Platinum Corp. -- Prophecy intends to distribute half of its PCNC shares to shareholders pro-rata in accordance with their holdings. Based on the closing price of the common shares of PCNC on January 17, $0.195 per share, the gross value of the transaction is $107,250,000. For the complete announcement, please visit: http://prophecyresource.com/news_2011_jan18.php Support GATA by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: http://gata.org/tshirts Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Or a video disc of GATA's 2005 Gold Rush 21 conference in the Yukon: http://www.goldrush21.com/ Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: http://www.gata.org To contribute to GATA, please visit: http://www.gata.org/node/16 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

Haynes and Norcini review metals' week at King World News Posted: 26 Feb 2011 03:06 AM PST 11:05a ET Saturday, February 26, 2011 Dear Friend of GATA and Gold (and Silver): In the weekly precious metals review at King World News, Bill Haynes of CMI Gold and Silver says he's confident that the precious metals will keep working higher over the long term, and JSMineSet.com analyst Dan Norcini remarks on how quick the dips in silver are being bought and how weak the U.S. dollar is. The interviews together are not quite 22 minutes long and you can listen to them at King World News here: http://www.kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/Broadcast/Entries/2011/2/26_K... CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc. ADVERTISEMENT Prophecy Resource Spins Off Platinum/Palladium Venture: World-Class PGM Deposit in Yukon Company Press Release, January 18, 2011 VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Prophecy Resource Corp. (TSX-V:PCY)and Pacific Coast Nickel Corp. announce that they have agreed that PCNC will acquire Prophecy's Nickel PGM projects by issuing common shares to Prophecy. PCNC will acquire the Wellgreen PGM Ni-Cu and Lynn Lake nickel projects in the Yukon Territory and Manitoba respectively by issuing up to 550 million common shares of PCNC to Prophecy. PCNC has 55.7 million shares outstanding. Following the transaction: -- Prophecy will own approximately 90 percent of PCNC. -- PCNC will consolidate its share capital on a 10 old for one new basis. -- Prophecy will change its name to Prophecy Coal Corp. and PCNC will be renamed Prophecy Platinum Corp. -- Prophecy intends to distribute half of its PCNC shares to shareholders pro-rata in accordance with their holdings. Based on the closing price of the common shares of PCNC on January 17, $0.195 per share, the gross value of the transaction is $107,250,000. For the complete announcement, please visit: http://prophecyresource.com/news_2011_jan18.php Support GATA by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: http://gata.org/tshirts Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Or a video disc of GATA's 2005 Gold Rush 21 conference in the Yukon: http://www.goldrush21.com/ Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: http://www.gata.org To contribute to GATA, please visit: http://www.gata.org/node/16 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

Was it Ben Bernanke or Timothy Geithner? Posted: 26 Feb 2011 02:01 AM PST Man gave $200K to fake online girlfriend MK: A headline you will never see; ‘Man gives 140 Oz’s of Gold to fake online girlfriend.’ This is the problem with fiat money, it’s impossible to take it seriously. Share this:

CBO on Migrant Workers Posted: 26 Feb 2011 02:00 AM PST I came across this slide from the Census Bureau. When you do the calculations on births/deaths/migrant workers you get the following results: Annual births: 4.5mm Annual deaths:2.9mm Net change: 1.6mm Net new migrant workers 790,000 From this one gets the total increase in population at ~2.6mm. Fully one-third of that growth comes from foreign immigrant workers. I was surprised to see how big the migrant worker side of the equation was. That comes to 66,000 a month. If you follow the monthly Non-Farms Payroll report you know that there have been many months that we don’t create that many net new jobs. Our friends at the Congressional Budget Office just happened to have issued a report on this subject on Friday. Catchy title: A slide that I thought was interesting shows just how much money is leaving the country from those foreign migrant workers: The total came to $66 billion in 2009. That is a very big number. Of the $31b that left the shores to go south of the border $20b ended up in Mexico. Asia was the beneficiary of $17b of inward money flows. Of that, $3.2b went to China. China manages to suck the blood out of the USA every which way. We send them our money for interest on our debt. We send them money for everything we buy from them. And those who come to work here send back a few billion more. Allow me to “play” with these numbers a bit. I believe that the vast majority of the money going to Latin America (31b) is from undocumented workers. The same is true for the $5b going to Africa. I will assume a conservative estimate that only 50% of the $17b going to Asia is from illegal workers (9b). I will be generous and exclude all of the money (total 15b) going to Canada, Europe and the Middle East (there are many undocumented workers in this set). My conservative estimate is that ~$45b a year is leaving the country from undocumented workers. A question is, “How much of an illegal workers pay is being sent back home?” My answer to that is: “Somewhere between 0 and 50%". Call it 25%. This means that a worker sends home one week of wages for every month that they are here. I actually think the percent number is lower. It is hard to get by in America with just three weeks of wages a month. The savings rate for Americans is less than 5%. If you accept my (conservative) one week in four argument then you can conclude that the total wages being paid to these workers is ~$180b a year (4 x 45b). That is a very substantial amount of money. The average legal worker pays 7% in Social Security and other FICA taxes. The average Federal tax rate is about 20% and the average state income tax is another 5%. It comes to about 33 cents on the dollar. Put that together and you get lost tax revenue of ~$60b (180*.33). I think this is a pretty good estimate given that I excluded the $15b going to Europe/Canada and 50% of Asia. But I will ‘haircut’ this estimate down to $50b a year. That still is a hell of lot of money. -A ½ Trillion over the next decade would be very welcome. -$50b a year would solve all of the state’s problems if the money were committed to them over a long period of time. -$50b a year would be a hell of a down payment on the energy infrastructure build out that we so desperately need. -$50b a year would turn Social Security into a perpetual “pay as you go system”. We could forget about any funding shorts falls forever. -$50b a year would go a very long way to bring our educational system back up to par. What would you do with an extra $50b a year? Let’s face it, we need this money and it would be very helpful if we had it. The bottom line is that America needs immigrant workers. We also need the tax dollars that come from the wages that are paid. We don’t need to have all this money just leak out of they system while the social costs of illegal workers stay in country. This is America’s Black Economy. It stares us in the face every day. For the life of me I can’t figure why we don’t confront the problem. But notice that neither the Republican nor the Democrats have even raised it as an issue for 2011. They are too busy fighting over budget cuts, yet there is a big bucket of money right at their feet. We don’t need to solve the broad immigration problem today. That is a very complex/emotive task. We should start the process by making sure that illegal workers pay their taxes. Just like the natural American workers do.

U.S. Treasury Bonds, Yen, Euro and Dollar Chart Analysis Posted: 25 Feb 2011 11:17 PM PST Treasury: Close to entering a long term bear market on US treasury on 10 year duration. We believe the COT captures the true picture of the developing situation in the US as FED moves in with QE3 which will be close to $400-500 billion of asset purchase. COT for week ended Feb 26 indicates that shorts have increased their position with nearly 148k contracts shorted, an increase of 32k new shorts for the week.

Gold Collateral: A New Global Role Posted: 25 Feb 2011 09:55 PM PST Gold is increasingly accepted as collateral in commercial arrangements... read more

Stock Market Topping, Treasuries Recovering and Gold is on a Tear Posted: 25 Feb 2011 09:53 PM PST Initial Claims Drop 22K To 391K, On Expectations Of 405K, Durable Goods Collapse -  (ZeroHedge)  Initial Claims, which were obviously revised higher from 410K to 413K, dropped well below expectations, printing at 391K, on expectations of 405K.  With claims continuing to hug the 400K line, this means that unfortunately the economy is not creating nearly enough jobs: as a reminder per the CBO, the US needs to create over 100K jobs a month just to stay in line with population growth. Continuing claims dropped from an (upward) revised 3935K to 3790K, as more and more people hit the 6 month continuing benefits cliff. They also are hitting the end of their 99 week extension period: those on extended benefits dropped by -111,087.

Betting on Bernanke Posted: 25 Feb 2011 09:47 PM PST Two simple numbers point the way for Gold Prices... read more

Gold Moving Closer To All-time High Posted: 25 Feb 2011 09:33 PM PST Gold prices have slipped a bit to close out the week, but an ounce of gold is holding steady over $1,400 as a run toward late December’s all-time intraday trading high of $1,431.50 appears inevitable in the coming weeks. Continued political unrest in Libya and Bahrain, combined with the recent overthrow of 30-year Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, has driven speculators toward commodities.

100/OZ of American Silver Eagle Bullion From Fighting For Silver!! Posted: 25 Feb 2011 07:36 PM PST Share this:

The Flood Of Money Drowns Out The Value Posted: 25 Feb 2011 07:00 PM PST Awash in dollars the value drops, new movement in Gold and Silver, a plan for world government, trillions poured into the economy affects the Dow, forecast for an eventual market correction, break up what is too big to fail, inflation a factor in the middle east, Madoff profit scandals continue, dismal treatment of teachers.

The SPX, Oil, Silver, and Geopolitical Risk Posted: 25 Feb 2011 08:50 AM PST While this week was shortened due to the President's Day holiday, it has been quite a ride for traders and investors. The 24 hour news cycle certainly intensifies current market conditions as any news focusing on oil or the Middle East ... Read More...

Visionary Makes His Move Posted: 25 Feb 2011 07:35 AM PST by Addison Wiggin Oil pioneer on the verge of his second big breakthrough… 3,800 miles away from his first Alan Knuckman with a chart showing how commodity prices have much more room to run Buying at the top? Chris Mayer with an indicator that might signal the start of a major sell-off Since when did the "American Dream" become all about collective bargaining and government checks? "It's not about the writing"… Readers explain the appeal of Atlas Shrugged   We interrupt our recent litanies — rising raw materials prices, Middle East uprisings, state and local government meltdowns — to note a signal event on the frontier of energy production: The Oil Kitchen is getting hot.   The Brazilian oil firm HRT — the brainchild of Vancouver sensation Marcio Mello — is buying out the Canadian-traded firm UNX Energy for $782 million. This is big news… for a select lot. If you're not hip to the story, here's the short version: Mello is the guy known in the oil business as "Mr. Drill Deep." His prodding led executives at the Brazilian oil giant Petrobras to explore the ocean at depths no one else had the guts to imagine — beneath 7,000 feet of ocean water… and another 16,000 feet of rock, salt and sand. The Petrobras payoff came in 2007 with the discovery of the Tupi field — the largest oil discovery in the Western Hemisphere for 30 years. Having blazed the trail, Mello left Petrobras to pursue the "next big thing." He founded his own firm, HRT, and acquired drilling rights off the coast of Namibia, in southwestern Africa. Back in the day — that is, 250 million years ago — the world's continents were smashed up together as a single land mass called Pangaea. Pangaea was, at the time, surrounded by a single ocean:   As time passed, the continents separated into the world map you recognize from your elementary geography class. The result: Geological formations found in one location — like off the coast of Brazil — can be very similar in another location far away — like off the coast of Namibia. That is, Mello knew if huge quantities of oil lay under the "pre-salt" formations off South America, there was a good chance the same was true off the coast of southwestern Africa. That's why he picked up the drilling rights to 920 square miles in a backwater almost no one else cared about. Now, with the UNX acquisition, HRT's territory nearly triples. Byron King recommended UNX to readers of his premium advisory Energy & Scarcity Investor in September 2009. The price was then 75 cents a share.   "If things play out with this offshore story," he wrote, "one of these days, you won't remember what you paid for the shares." HRT is offering $6.17 per share. That's a 723% gain. "Byron King is an extraordinary researcher and analyst," writes a reader. "He has managed to ferret out and unlock the hidden values of many companies that he has discovered well before other analysts and the market have, so I have profited mightily from his 'boots on the ground' approach and acute analysis." "I invested $41,030 in nine stocks," another reader wrote us late last year, "and they are now at $65,095, for a $24,071 gain, or 58%, since Oct. 13." "Energy & Scarcity Investor is without question my best advisory service," writes a third. "I have made more money with Byron than anyone else." Dig it. Oil prices are stabilizing after yesterday's run-up and pullback. WTI trades just below $97 a barrel and Brent a shade above $111, although nothing in Libya has changed fundamentally in the last 24 hours.   The blogosphere is rife with speculation that both the Nymex and ICE exchanges engineered the pullback by choosing yesterday to raise margin requirements. Then again, Col. Gaddafi's latest rants may have awakened traders to a sequence of three absurd truths… Roughly 2% of world oil production lies in the hands of Gaddafi.  Gaddafi blames the revolt in his country on teenagers whose instant coffee is spiked with hallucinogens — and he says Osama bin Laden is behind it all.  Gee, maybe that 2% was never very reliable in the first place and the world can get along without it until things settle down. "Oil is still 34% below its 2008 highs," says Alan Knuckman, by way of making a larger — and undoubtedly controversial — point. "I personally do not believe in the evils of inflation being an issue for the current economy. "Prices have recovered from catastrophic near-deflation lows with the increase overblown by renewed commodity attention. The last six months do not signal out-of-control spiraling rising costs. It is still difficult to name any specific goods that have become extremely expensive over the last five years. "One fact is that the soft commodity complex highs were made in the mid-1970s, over 30 years ago. Take a look:   Bottom line: There's still huge upside potential in the commodities space, says Alan — "not because of destructive inflationary forces, but a return to previous highs from decades ago." You don't have to buy into Alan's thesis to make money from his trades. In just one three-month stretch during 2010, he bagged nine winners in a row… for an average gain of 157%… in an average holding time of 14 weeks. So far this year, he's closed positions for gains of 95% and 217%… and his readers are holding out for bigger gains on a heating oil play already up 223%. For the next three days… you have a chance to snag a membership to Alan's Resource Trader Alert… plus Byron King's Energy & Scarcity Investor… plus our flagship resource publication Outstanding Investments — just named the top-performing letter over the last 10 years by the independent Hulbert Financial Digest — all for one low price… so low it makes me want to gag while writing this. The suite of services we call the Resource Reserve — everything you need to profit from the rising prices of raw materials. For a one-time fee, you get all three services for life — plus free admission every year to our confab in Vancouver. We're holding a limited number of slots open for the Resource Reserve… after all, there's only so much space in Vancouver. And the fact that it's so cheap, we'd bankrupt ourselves if every reader took us up on the offer. The slots will likely fill up before we close this offer on Monday. Take the opportunity to review all the benefits of Resource Reserve membership in this invitation. The Commerce Department issued its second guess this morning on GDP during the fourth quarter, revising it downward from an annualized 3.2% to 2.8%. Whoops, the Street was counting on an upward revision to 3.4%. Turns out consumer spending wasn't as robust as first thought. And the decline in spending by state and local governments was steeper than first thought. Notwithstanding that disappointment, stocks are generally up today — the Dow back above 12,100.   Investors who call the U.S. home are piling back into domestic mutual funds. Data from Lipper show $7 billion flowed into domestic equities funds in the most recent week. That's as much as flowed in during all of last year. That sounds about right… Joe Six-pack jumping in after the S&P has already run up 100% for only the third time in 100 years. "Mutual fund investors are the worst kind of investors, statistically speaking," Chris Mayer muses. "They don't even earn the posted returns on their mutual funds, because they have a tendency to take their money out after a fall and put it back in after a rise. "Thinking in contrary fashion, I'd say the market is due for a good pullback." Of course, there are always special situations that buck the overall trend. Chris shares one of his favorites with you — a company with a $1 billion market cap sitting on $51 billion in assets — right here. We can't allow the week to close without taking note of the spectacle in Wisconsin — seeing as it will hit all 50 state capitals tomorrow. In case your eyes are about to glaze over, here's a three-sentence update: The lower chamber of Wisconsin's legislature passed Gov. Scott Walker's emergency budget shortly after 1 a.m. today. It includes the provision that strips the government-employee unions of the collective-bargaining authority. Democratic senators remain camped outside the state, stalling the vote in that chamber. In our overstuffed inbox this morning is a press release trumpeting "Save The American Dream' Rallies to Take Place in All 50 State Capitals This Saturday" organized by MoveOn and similar groups. Yes, because collective bargaining is the essence of the American Dream.   Oy. And you thought it couldn't happen here? "Participants will protest the attack on workers' rights," reads the press release, "and proposed dangerous budget cuts, and demand an investment in decent jobs." Yes, because government checks and government "investment" in "decent jobs" is also the essence of the American Dream. "Bring it on!" we say. If there ever were a worthy public discourse, this is it: Is the American Dream about self-determination and political freedom? Or… the "right" to a decent job, education, home, health care and retirement… and government debt…? We suspect in the end it will all be a waste of time. Only one of these directions is within the government's power to deliver, regardless of what your local representative says before you cast your ballot. But it will sure be fun to watch the carnage along the way, don't you think? More bread. More circuses. And down we go. "I find it rather strange that The 5, along with most other financial newsletters, are crediting Julian Assange and his WikiLeaks for revealing that Saudi oil reserves are far less than claimed. "Apparently, you have all forgotten that Matthew Simmons revealed that fact in 2005 in a well-documented book titled Twilight in the Desert." The 5: We find it rather strange that you didn't actually read what we wrote before commenting on it. We share an editor at Wiley with Simmons, may he rest in peace. And his research was central to a report we first issued in 2006 called The Great Oil Hoax. WikiLeaks only confirmed that the U.S. State Department was and is aware of the sham too. What's even more interesting: Like you, the rest of the world seems to have the attention span of a flea: As soon as an anonymous Saudi lackey promised to fill the Libyan void yesterday, the oil price fell. Investing is not always about being right. "Perhaps I can explain Atlas Shrugged a bit to the reader who panned the book," writes another reader. "First, it's not about the writing. Rand's writing is only passable and, obviously, a style 50 years old. You read it for the ideas. "She writes her characters in this two-dimensional way to highlight the characteristics that illustrate her point. Ever seen a Bond movie? He's a bit two-dimensional, right? Because it's different from real life, and a form of idealism… "If you don't understand the point of productive people gathering, then yes, you should have read to the last page, or reread the first 300. "Rand's ideas for society are not perfect, but a society of producers is exactly what makes a country great. The leftist utopias, while similarly romanticized and two-dimensional, never celebrated the productive owning their output to the point of individual wealth, as Rand does, and as we strive to continue to in the U.S. and other free places. "I find it interesting that you say the two are similar — Rand's utopia and the leftist ones — since dropping the leftism and adopting more capitalism is exactly what has saved China, communist leadership or not. "Rand isn't perfect, and Atlas Shrugged is somewhat difficult reading for today's audience. But the messages are valuable, the primary one being that producers provide everything and most of the rest are, in Rand's words, looters, or, in Bill Bonner's parlance, zombies. "Love The 5. Keep it coming." The 5: No, Rand isn't perfect. Some of the passages in Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead are insufferable. And the whole "Cult of Rand" thing is… well, weird… as are allegations that Alan Greenspan was, while chairman of the Federal Reserve, intentionally leading the U.S. to the precipice of bankruptcy in order to fulfill some Randian fantasy he cooked up while bedding her. But her books do have legs, don't they? A testament to the ideas, perhaps, as you suggest. "There are truths in the book whether you can see them or not," a Reserve member chimes in. "Atlas Shrugged is a romantic novel in the heroic sense. As stated, the heroes are too perfect and the statists and bureaucrats are… well, exactly as statists and bureaucrats are. The villains in Atlas Shrugged are all too real. "Therein lies the 'truth' in Atlas Shrugged. The motivation of the statists is inherently ugly and dishonest. Although couched in compassion, it serves to cripple, and they know it. "Obviously, whether you'd enjoy it or not, a 'Galt's Gulch' would never exist, unless we evolved in a few million years. But the reader's assertion that this is a banal text is, I suspect, bred of lack of experience in dealing with people like Philip Rearden and the crony 'capitalists' from the book. "Being a physician practicing in the U.S. and having experience with all walks of life, I can tell you that the world is filled with people just like him. Those who would take responsibility are an ever-dwindling breed." "It is comments like this that make The 5 a priority on my reading list every day," says another reader who appreciated the final sentence of our riposte to the idealistic young lady currently living in Nicaragua yesterday. "Thanks (chuckle)."   Cheers, Addison Wiggin The 5 Min. Forecast   P.S.: We'll state it unequivocally: The Resource Reserve is by far the best deal in the industry if you want advice on making money from the rise in commodities and natural resources — a trend we suspect will be in place for several more years. We're closing this limited-time offer on Monday night, so dig in while you can. (This short window for enrollment was the first in four years… so you may want to jump on the offer right now. Go.) P.P.S.: "I've been taking some time over the holidays to reflect and catch my breath, and have been rereading Atlas Shrugged, "a friend wrote to me just after the holidays, "I don't know how long it has been since you've read it, but I assume you are a fan. It has been over 25 years for me, but the message has never been more appropriate for our culture. "With the perspective I now have after having battled bureaucrats and 'looters' for over two decades, Ayn Rand's message means more than ever. In particular, I have heavily underlined Francisco d'Anconia's speech at the wedding…" Forthwith, for your consideration, we reproduce Francisco's speech: Rearden heard Bertram Scudder, outside the group, say to a girl who made some sound of indignation, "Don't let him disturb you. You know, money is the root of all evil — and he's the typical product of money."  Rearden did not think that Francisco could have heard it, but he saw Francisco turning to them with a gravely courteous smile. "So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Aconia. "Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil? "When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears nor all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor — your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money. Is this what you consider evil? "Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions — and you'll learn that man's mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth. "But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made — before it can be looted or mooched — made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced. "To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except by the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss — the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery — that you must offer them values, not wounds — that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods

You are subscribed to email updates from Save Your ASSets First To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610