Gold World News Flash

GoldSeek.com Radio Gold Nugget: Harry S. Dent Jr. & Chris Waltzek
The Growth Stocks of the Gold/Silver Bull Market
Didn't Fed attend other G-10 gold committee meetings?
Printing Enough Money to Buy the World’s Silver
Ahh, What a Lovely Day It Was…
Disasters Rocking U.S. Dollar?
Gold Seeker Closing Report: Gold and Silver Jump To New Highs
Dimitri Speck: The three phases of secret gold policy
Italian banks want nation's gold reserves credited to them
Gold Market Breakout Alert!
Printing Enough Money to Buy the World's Silver
Should States Adopt Defined-Contribution Plans?
Sunny Days!
Is the U.S. dollar on the brink?
Jim?s Mailbox
The Return of Stagflation?
End Game - Would US Police/Troops Fire Upon US Citizens?
Blowout possible in gold, force majeure in silver, Rule tells King
Jim's Mailbox
Not enough metal to put dollar back on gold, Bernanke says
Didn't Fed attend other G-10 gold committee meetings?
Gold Price Made a New All Time Intraday High at $1,432.56, Silver Blasted Into New High Ground, I Have No Idea What It Might Reach?
FMX Connect "When A Gold Market Trades Like A Gold Market"
Chinese queue at malls to beat Bernanke's inflation with gold
Guest Post: Prove Mayans Right: Address Structural Economic Problems With Chicanery
Geithner’s $3 Trillion Target
Why Small Businesses are Worried About Double Taxation
Gold hits record high
Geithner’s $3 Trillion Target
Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Emperor Agonistes

GoldSeek.com Radio Gold Nugget: Harry S. Dent Jr. & Chris Waltzek

Posted: 01 Mar 2011 07:02 PM PST

GoldSeek.com Radio Gold Nugget: Harry S. Dent Jr. & Chris Waltzek

The Growth Stocks of the Gold/Silver Bull Market

Posted: 01 Mar 2011 06:08 PM PST

With the bull market in precious metals likely to accelerate in the coming years, folks should turn a great of their attention towards finding the growth stocks of the bull market. We are talking about your Ciscos and Microsofts. These are the stocks one can hold for at least several years.

Didn't Fed attend other G-10 gold committee meetings?

Posted: 01 Mar 2011 06:06 PM PST

After 12 years of collecting and publishing government documents confirming or implying the Western central bank gold price suppression scheme, and collecting and publishing the many evasions of central banks and their refusals to answer simple questions about their gold policy, GATA sometimes feels as if it is engaged in a never-ending struggle to prove that the sun rises in the east.

Printing Enough Money to Buy the World’s Silver

Posted: 01 Mar 2011 06:02 PM PST

I thought I had heard all the good arguments to buy silver, mostly from me asking myself two important questions. First, "Why am I not buying silver when it is so obviously going to go much, much higher in price because of the absurd Federal Reserve insanely creating so much money, which causes inflation, which always makes the prices of precious metals soar?"

Ahh, What a Lovely Day It Was…

Posted: 01 Mar 2011 06:01 PM PST

Yesterday's newsworthy satisfactions were marred only by the passage of a spending bill that unfortunately will allow the U.S. Government to avoid shutting down. This not-unexpected disappointment aside, all seemed right with the world: stocks got bitch-slapped for a change, bullion prices screamed, Charlie Sheen and Col. Qadaffy appeared headed for well-deserved oblivion (even if there will be no Kadhafy reruns), and winter temperatures here in Boulder, Colorado, hovered near the mid-60s.

Disasters Rocking U.S. Dollar?

Posted: 01 Mar 2011 05:41 PM PST

From earthquakes in New Zealand to revolutions in the Middle East, natural and man-made disasters are rocking the world. We are all too often made to believe that in times of crisis there’s a flight to the U.S. dollar. However, the U.S. dollar has instead had a rocky ride of its own thus allowing the crisis-ridden Eurozone to shine. What’s going on? Is there no crisis, or has the U.S. dollar lost its appeal as a safe haven? Over longer periods there is little correlation between the U.S. dollar and other assets. In the past two years, however, a mentality has arisen that whenever there is a crisis the U.S. dollar benefits; as the crisis abates money flows out of the U.S. dollar and once again into currencies and markets overseas that may be deemed riskier. That may well be a skewed pendulum, however, as the U.S. dollar may have a more difficult time attracting money at each subsequent crisis. Firstly, the U.S. is simply better at spending and prin...

Gold Seeker Closing Report: Gold and Silver Jump To New Highs

Posted: 01 Mar 2011 04:00 PM PST

Gold steadily rose throughout most of world trade and ended near its last minute new all-time high of $1430.95 with a gain of 1.44%. Silver climbed to a new 30-year high of $34.568 and closed with a gain of 2.53%. Both metals are rising to new highs in after hours access trade as well.

Dimitri Speck: The three phases of secret gold policy

Posted: 01 Mar 2011 02:49 PM PST

10:45p ET Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

At the International Precious Metals and Commodities Fair in Munich last November, market analyst Dimitri Speck, editor of the Seasonal-Charts.com Internet site, author of the book "Geheime Goldpolitik" ("Secret Gold Politics"), and consultant to GATA, reviewed what he calls the three phases of secret central bank gold intervention policy. Speck's presentation has been translated into English and today was posted at Financial Sense here:

http://www.financialsense.com/contributors/dimitri-speck/phases-of-secre...

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

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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

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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

Italian banks want nation's gold reserves credited to them

Posted: 01 Mar 2011 02:36 PM PST

Italian Banks Lobby to Tap Surging Gold Price

By Rachel Sanderson
Financial Times, London
Monday, February 28, 2011

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e4bb2008-4376-11e0-8f0d-00144feabdc0.html

MILAN, Italy -- Italian banks, which by a quirk of law are shareholders in the country's central bank, are lobbying to have their stakes in the Bank of Italy marked to market on the back of surging gold prices in an attempt to ease regulatory pressure on them to raise capital in advance of this summer's stress tests.

The move comes as Mario Draghi, Bank of Italy governor, over the weekend stepped up pressure on Italian banks, which are some of the lowest capitalised in Europe, to increase their core capital ratios or make clear to the market any plans to do so.

The Bank of Italy currently has a nominal value of just E156,000 ($215,000) divided into 300,000 shares, which are distributed among Italy's retail and savings banks according to their size.

Senior bankers say taking into account the surge in gold prices the Bank of Italy could have a mark-to-market value of about E30 billion. Analysts estimate the Italian banking sector has combined recapitalisation needs of much the same amount to comply with new Basel III capital rules.

... Dispatch continues below ...

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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

Any debate over the value of the Bank of Italy has met with opposition from the central bank, concerned that it could harm governance. For the same reason, executives at Italy's banks are not involved in the central bank's decision-making process.

But several sources familiar with the talks say Italy's banking lobby is gaining political traction amid opposition from its core shareholders, the local banking foundations, to capital increases as they fear a dilution of their stakes.

Italy's government has also indicated there is a political will to reduce the need for Italian banks to access the capital markets.

After heavy lobbying from banks and foundations, the government last week forced through a motion, using a confidence vote, that will ease capital pressures on the banks by allowing them to book some deferred taxes as assets.

Monte dei Paschi di Siena and Banca Popolare di Milano, a regional lender, are the banks seen as most likely to have to tap the market as they have core Tier 1 capital ratios of under 8 per cent and little room for asset sales. Both banks have denied any such plans. The capital structure of UniCredit, Italy's largest bank by assets, is also in the spotlight as the future of its main shareholders -- the Libyan Central Bank and Libyan Investment Authority -- is unclear. Intesa Sanpaolo, Italy's largest bank by retail network, has core capital of about 8 per cent, which could also be considered too low for a potentially systemically important bank.

Intesa Sanpaolo would be the biggest beneficiary of any capital revaluation, with a 30 per cent stake in the central bank.

* * *

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

Gold Market Breakout Alert!

Posted: 01 Mar 2011 02:00 PM PST

We noted that once the trading range between $1,320 and $1,380 broke through resistance at $1,380 it could move much higher in the coming weeks, months. We were going to alert you, but felt we should hang back and await confirmation that the high-risk area was passed and that we had confirmation that a strong move up was coming ($1,430+). We have now had that confirmation and can confirm to you our subscribers that a large move upward is soon to occur.

Printing Enough Money to Buy the World's Silver

Posted: 01 Mar 2011 01:15 PM PST

Should States Adopt Defined-Contribution Plans?

Posted: 01 Mar 2011 01:08 PM PST

Via Pension Pulse.

Blogging for Reuters, Felix Salmon comments, Why states shouldn’t adopt defined-contribution pensions:

Steven Greenhouse has a long article in today’s NYT about an attempt by the states to deal with their “strained” pension funds by moving to defined-contribution pension plans. Here’s the lede:

Lawmakers and governors in many states, faced with huge shortfalls in employee pension funds, are turning to a strategy that a lot of private companies adopted years ago: moving workers away from guaranteed pension plans and toward 401(k)-type retirement savings plans.

What’s a “huge shortfall”? Amazingly, nowhere in the 1,500-word article does Greenhouse actually say. Instead, we get incomprehensible tales like this:

Utah decided to adopt a 401(k)-type plan after the stock market plunge in 2008 caused the shortfall in the state’s pension plan to balloon to $6.5 billion…

Under the new plan, [state senator Dan] Liljenquist said, the state’s retirement contributions for new workers will be roughly half that for current employees, potentially saving $5 million a year for every 1,000 new workers hired.

So, the state of Utah has been putting insufficient money into its pension plan, and now there isn’t enough money there to meet upcoming liabilities. And the solution here is for the state, in future, to contribute “roughly half” of what it’s been spending up until now in pension contributions.

Needless to say, this makes no sense on either front. The liability to existing workers doesn’t go away if a different plan is adopted for new workers, so the problems at the pension plan aren’t being addressed. On top of that, it’s hard to see how contributing much less to new workers’ retirement is going to help them at all, either. From a pensions perspective, there’s no winner at all: the only entity better off is the state, from a cashflow perspective.

On top of that, Greenhouse makes no attempt to put numbers like $6.5 billion or $5 million in any kind of context. Are they big? Who knows.

The only way I could make any sense at all of Greenhouse’s article was to read it in parallel with Dean Baker’s paper on the origins and severity of the public pension crisis. The table he includes, which includes all state public pension funds, is invaluable; here, for instance, is Utah.

What this shows is that the Utah pension fund, at the end of 2009, was about $2.8 billion in the hole. If it rose by 15% in 2010, which is a pretty reasonable assumption given the performance of the stock market, the gap is likely to have been all but eliminated. But even the gap at the end of 2009 was less than one tenth of one percent of Utah’s state income.

All of these numbers are fuzzy, of course. Valuing assets is hard enough; coming up with a present value of future liabilities is much harder, and depends crucially on which discount rate you use. But Baker’s numbers are pretty reasonable, and show that there really isn’t anything to panic about here.

More generally, as Teresa Ghilarducci notes elsewhere on the NYT website (but not in the paper), the idea that moving from defined-benefit to defined-contribution plans is going to help anybody at all is highly problematic.

401(k) plans are bad deal for taxpayers. Dollar for dollar, a traditional pension plan yields more pension benefits than do 401(k) plans because 401(k) management and investment fees are three times higher. And professionals who manage money in pooled pension funds usually get higher returns than workers who manage their own 401(k) accounts. The only clear winners when pensions switch over to the 401(k) plans are brokers and bankers…

The unintended effect of widespread 401(k) plans is more volatility. In contrast to traditional pensions and Social Security, 401(k) plans fuel bubbles and make recessions worse. When the economy is booming, 401(k) plan asset values soar, making people spend more and work less. Not what you want in an expansion.

Worse, when the economy plummets and takes 401(k) assets with it, people do the opposite; they cling to the labor market and rein in spending – again, two things you don’t want in a recession.

On top of that, defined-benefit plans have a mutual-insurance component to them: shorter-lived workers subsidize longer-lived workers, helping to increase everybody’s standard of living.

The fact is that the states’ move to defined-contribution plans is a blatantly political one, born of Republican ideology conflating such plans with individual freedom and choice. For rich professionals who jump from job to job every few years, 401(k) plans do make a certain amount of sense. For public servants spending a lifetime in the police force or in elementary schools, by contrast, they emphatically don’t. As for the state pension plans, the only way that the state governments can help them make up their actuarial liabilities is if they pour more money into them. Not less.

In his comment in Forbes, E.D. Kain takes it a step further:

Worse, defined-contribution plans open up a Pandora’s box of potential problems down the road. Take the case of the West Virginia. In 1991 West Virginia lawmakers ended their defined-benefit plans for new teachers. All teachers hired after 1991 were placed on a 401(k)-style plan. Under a 401(k) employees pay into a personal retirement account and employers match their contributions up to a certain amount. This money is invested in stocks and bonds and is often left to the employee to manage. It’s also tax-free up to a certain percentage of income, and portable. But it turns out, 401(k) plans are not for everyone:

Fast forward to today. It turns out that for a very large segment of West Virginia teachers, the 401(k)-type plan hasn’t panned out too well. According to a study done by West Virginia’s Consolidated Public Retirement Board, the average account balance is just $33,944 and only a handful of teachers age 60 or older have amassed more than $100,000 in their accounts – a fraction of what the pension plan would’ve paid.

What happened? Despite receiving an annual matching contribution equal to 7.5% of their pay, many teachers are claiming that they were improperly steered into low-yielding annuities, even though the plan offered more appropriate investment choices. Others say they received no guidance or education on such important topics as asset allocation and rebalancing.

So the West Virginia teachers now want a do-over. Essentially, they want to treat the past 17 years under the 401(k)-style system as though it never happened. They are asking to be put back – retroactively – into the traditional defined-benefit pension plan. Like a bad dream, their paltry 401(k) balances will disappear, to be replaced by the more generous pensions they would have racked up had they been in the traditional plan all along.

Of course, millions of private-sector workers would also like a second chance. According to an analysis of 20 million 401(k) participants conducted by the Employee Benefit Research Institute and the Investment Company Institute, the median account balance of a worker in his or her 60’s, making between $40,000 and $60,000 a year (in the same ballpark as a retiring West Virginia teacher) was $97,588 at the end of 2006. To put that amount in perspective, it would generate only about $8,000 a year in retirement income if it were invested in an immediate annuity.

But back to West Virginia. Incredibly, the state legislature has already agreed to go along with this retroactive pension switchover – as long as 65 percent of teachers formally elect to make the voluntary changeover.

Did you catch that? The average balance on these plans was just $33,944 – not exactly a nest egg. Spread over just twenty years of retirement, that only gets you a little over $140/month. The median account balance at retirement of private-sector workers on a 401(k) plan is only $97,588, or just over $400/month. Compare this with a defined benefit of say $2,500/month for twenty years – the equivalent of a $30,000/year pension – and you get a total benefit of $600,000. This should give you a sense of how difficult 401(k) plans are to scale across the American workforce. As Salmon correctly notes:

The fact is that the states’ move to defined-contribution plans is a blatantly political one, born of Republican ideology conflating such plans with individual freedom and choice. For rich professionals who jump from job to job every few years, 401(k) plans do make a certain amount of sense. For public servants spending a lifetime in the police force or in elementary schools, by contrast, they emphatically don’t. As for the state pension plans, the only way that the state governments can help them make up their actuarial liabilities is if they pour more money into them. Not less.

Well that’s not the only way states can help their pension funds. They can also manage them more wisely and not put as much faith into Wall Street. The financial collapse and the housing bubble are the reasons these plans are in crisis to begin with after all.

Let me comment on these posts. Felix Salmon rightly notes that states like Utah have been putting insufficient money into their pension plans, exacerbating pension deficits. But he also questions the magnitude of pension deficits, alluding to Dean Baker’s paper on the origins and severity of the public pension crisis.

I'm not going to question Dean Baker's paper and I agree that the problem of pension deficits has been blown way out of proportion for ideological reasons. Having said this, deficits are real and they require tough political choices ahead which include increasing contribution rates, cutting cost-of-living adjustments, cutting benefits and if need be, raising taxes. Relying on rosy investment projections to deal with chronically underfunded pension plans is simply irresponsible and taxing the private sector which is still reeling after the 2008 crisis is political suicide.

But moving into defined-contribution (DC) plans is not the solution. I've said it before, defined-contribution plans have been a disaster for workers looking to retire comfortably. They underperform large, well-managed defined-benefit (DB) plans for the reasons cited above, namely, they're expensive (fees are outrageous), volatile, badly managed, and they don't have the best interest of workers at heart (just those of brokers and bankers).

Let me add this: large, well governed defined-benefit plans are able to manage assets internally as well as invest in the best public and private funds in the world. For example, look at the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board's (CPPIB) external partners in public markets, private equity and real estate. Do you really think any DC plan can compete over a long period with a large DB plan that's able to pool billions and invest in these top managers? Not in a million years.

Moreover, defined-benefit plans end up costing society a lot less over the long-term because they cut the rate of pension poverty, as well as cut the fees paid out to brokers, banks and insurance companies. But when ideology takes over, the arguments against DB plans become ridiculous: "It's socialism, communism, a reason to raise taxes!". Give me a break! There are problems with DB plans but the rush to scrap them and replace them with DC plans will only make matters worse, ensuring more pension poverty down the road.

Sunny Days!

Posted: 01 Mar 2011 01:04 PM PST

About a month ago Marc Faber called a top in gold and said he was looking for a correction back to 1,100.00. Three weeks ago the Aden Sisters said that this wave up in gold had topped. A week ago they said they were "watching" it. Read More...

Is the U.S. dollar on the brink?

Posted: 01 Mar 2011 01:00 PM PST

Just take a look at the chart of the U.S. dollar Index and you see a frightening sight. If it sinks any further its support will have evaporated. We have watched all this week the gold price rise and look good in the dollar. But in the euro it has barely moved. Against the Swiss Franc the dollar looks so weak. With the Technical picture looking so poor, one turns to the fundamentals to see if they conflict or support a downturn for the dollar.

Jim?s Mailbox

Posted: 01 Mar 2011 12:22 PM PST

View the original post at jsmineset.com... March 01, 2011 03:51 PM Vicious Downward Cycle Intensifying CIGA Eric The vicious downward cycle (see Jim’s formula) that started that started in 2001 and rematerialized in 2008 is beginning to intensify in 2011. This suggests an acceleration in the trend toward a lower standard of living for Americans as the shockwaves of public spending cuts negatively impact local, state, and eventually federal coffers. The public sector, contracting under the weight of a massive debt burden, has few options without the bankruptcy protection or ability to devalue. The message from national municipal bond market reflects this "damned if you do, damned if you don't policy quandary. Expectations calling for an end of quantitative easing will once again be proven premature. US Federal Budget (Surplus or Deficit As A % of GDP, 12 Month Moving Average) and Gold London P.M. Fixed: Headline: Wis. governor proposes deep cuts for schools Even t...

The Return of Stagflation?

Posted: 01 Mar 2011 12:11 PM PST

Bill Bonner View the original article. March 01, 2011 10:47 AM The Dow up 95 points yesterday. Gold flat. "Investors start to fret over renewed threat of stagflation," says a headline in today's Financial Times. You remember stagflation from the '70s. Prices rose. The economy didn't. It seems to be happening again – thanks to the feds. The economy is caught between an unstoppable force on one side and an immovable object on the other. Between a Great Correction…and awful money-printing. Deflation and inflation. "Don't fight the Fed," say the old-timers. The Fed's easy money is boosting up prices all over the world. Not all prices…at least not in the US and other advanced economies. But prices for key "auction-priced" goods – such as food and energy…and stocks…are going up fast. The typical US stock has gained 100% in the last two years. (We are coming up to the 2-year anniversary of this rally next week.) And yesterday, we paid more than $6 a gallon for di...

End Game - Would US Police/Troops Fire Upon US Citizens?

Posted: 01 Mar 2011 10:59 AM PST

End Game - Would US Police/Troops Fire Upon US Citizens?

Cognitive Dissonance

This is the first in an occasional series examining the end of the American Empire and the global shock waves it will produce. Contrary to popular belief I suspect the unraveling will take place over many years, decades even, with sudden plunges and slow partial recoveries aka dead cat bounces. I call this series of examinations “End Game”.

I would wager that the vast majority of people reading this essay have already come to their own conclusion regarding the answer to the title’s query. Certainly you may have several qualifiers and stipulations with which you framed your answer and maybe even a few facts and proofs ready for quick rebuttal if challenged. But my own experience with explosive questions such as this is that there are few who have not already formed an opinion on the matter. If you have not you would be the exception to the rule.

And at this point in the meltdown it would be fair to say there are no correct or incorrect answers to be found, only supposition, assumption and what I expect will be full throated argument to follow in the comment section. May I suggest that whatever answer you’ve come up with wasn’t necessarily arrived at through careful deliberation or contemplation, but rather as an integral part of your overall belief system? And while you may consider all that you believe to be valid and fact based, for all people other than possibly the sociopaths walking among us this is far from the case.

Personally I find that sitting down and writing about a subject forces me to push through all the fuzzy logic and tenuous connections that make up my system of beliefs. For most of us what we think we know or believe is similar to a loosely connected debris field of facts, thoughts, myths, hopes and desires floating on the mind’s surface. Only in this case there really isn’t much mixing or removal of the thought debris by intellectual wave action, just a lifelong rearrangement of the floating deck chairs. When strong emotions are brought into the mix, it’s like a hurricane came through and made an even bigger mess of things.

Debris

Much of our belief system is firmly stuck in heavy mud by our late twenties, having been absorbed and adopted during our early years by way of our state mandated education, the popular press, corporate branding initiatives, consensus opinion, deliberately false public myth making and the always present and rarely subtle corporate and governmental propaganda machines. And what we call our mid life crisis is simply that period of time when we begin to call into question many of the basic and fundamental tenets that have guided us to that point. We usually get through this moment of clarity when the bills start piling up and the libido finally begins to fail care of our chemically treated foodstuffs.

In practice what we believe is not a coherent jigsaw puzzle held together by reason and “facts”, but rather little islands of hope and belief that would contradict or outright cancel each other like matter and anti-matter if they ever came into contact with one other. I see this all the time not just here in The Hedge (both in the comment section and in various articles from multiple sources) but in newspapers, magazines, blogs, TV and radio; the list really is endless. Selective memory and a convoluted thought process isn’t just the domain of think tanks and the MSM. The alternative press and blogosphere are often just as guilty as well, it being one of the hazards of swimming in the same festering cesspool.

Read or listen to any person long enough and you eventually begin to detect errors in logical thought and fact as well as serious conflicts between a person’s articles, books, and lectures; even at times within a specific article or essay. I find this holds true for nearly everyone (including myself) regardless of our denial that it’s happening. Courage is required to challenge our own thinking and weed these discrepancies out. Sadly it’s so much easier to isolate and ignore these inconsistencies then to purge them and face the ugly truths left behind. We hide from ourselves long before we flee the boogie man. The masks we wear in public are crude imitations of the ones we carry within.

Masks

Judging from conversations I’ve had with many people from diverse backgrounds the majority of souls seem to come down into one of two camps. For the most part the responses I’ve gathered consist of either “No….but” and “Yes….but” with the clear winner the middle ground of qualified “buts”. When questioned more than superficially and asked to explain or justify their stance, many shamelessly switch back and forth between sides and arguments, proving to me that their opinion is based upon nothing more substantial than wishful thinking and hope. However, most do understand that there are huge variables involved anytime a gun is pointed and fired, regardless of whether the person fired upon is armed or not.

Obviously at this point in the great American unwind no police or military units are patrolling the streets gunning down all who are seen as threatening. And this wasn’t what I was suggesting would happen……at least not unless worse case scenarios are achieved. But the end of the American Empire is approaching, a process that will unravel over decades. And it would be hopelessly naïve or even terminally ignorant to believe that any high ranking “authority” in America has anyone’s interest first other than their own. We can love our slave masters all we want, but they love us only for any remaining productive worth we may offer and no more.

Any remaining belief in high ranking honorable “public servants” should have been thoroughly abandoned after witnessing the outrageous antics of the financial elite and politically connected over the last ten years and particularly the last five. We are all expendable cannon fodder and contrary to any official assurances from the professional propagandists that we are all loved and cared about, we have always been so. Denial of this basic fact is the only real roadblock to a fuller understanding of what’s being done in my name and yours.

False hope inevitably binds us to truly impossible situations and this has consistently been our Achilles Heel, a weakness ruthlessly exploited by the rich and powerful for millennium. The almost universally accepted Abrahamic religious redeemer complex is the ultimate (self) enslavement vehicle. In effect, it forgives those who dish out the punishment and glorifies the suffering of those who are being punished. Talk about your dysfunctional relationship, how are we to live in peace and harmony when the basic tenets of the majority of the world’s religions glorify those who grind our bones to make their bread?

Abrahamic Religions

First let’s take a look at who or what would be patrolling the streets under the guise of “keeping the peace”, “finding the terrorists” or whatever excuse the government manufactures in order to justify placing armed uniformed men and women in the population centers of America. And for the purpose of this essay there is the assumption that something has happened or was caused to happen that will be used by the powers that be to deploy police/troops in America under the cover of maintaining law and order.

BTW, we should clearly understand that the real reason the troops will be deployed is to maintain and possibly even consolidate the existing power structure of the powers that be. Or at a minimum to keep the lynch mobs and revenge seekers at bay long enough to make their escape. Is this truly that surprising? After all we have devolved into a banana republic and that’s the way all bananas are eventually peeled.

Initially there would be the local police, supposedly the first line of defense in maintaining the peace. And despite the obvious fact that over the last ten or so years they have been increasingly militarized, the police are for the most part trained to resolve conflict through non-violent means. Or at least that’s the official public myth. Only after you don’t agree with their non violent solution do they pull out their Tasar or Glock. If the first thing you experience is fear when you see flashing lights in the rearview mirror, I would ask you to reconsider the validity of their “non-violent” mission.

Just conduct a “police brutality” YouTube search if you’d like a video lesson on officially sanctioned violence in America. Between the images cruiser dashboard cams have documented and those candid camera videos various citizens have captured via camera phone it’s quite clear police violence isn’t just perpetrated by a few rogue cops on an occasional basis. Instead it appears to be a systemic problem that’s growing worse by the day. A Google word search using the same term will bring back tens of thousands of hits, more than enough to turn your stomach and send the meek and mind controlled scurrying back to the safety of their warm beds. The formerly carefully hidden police state is now coming into full view.

Rearview

The second line of defense would be the National Guard. If we were talking twenty years ago I might make a disparaging remark about weekend warriors more dangerous to themselves than to others. But eight years of rotations through Iraq and Afghanistan have turned the National Guard into something your father wouldn’t recognize. Without getting too deep into the merits of today’s Guard, better trained has its pluses and minuses as long as we understand what they have now been trained to do.

Then there is the military itself, most likely Army and possibly Special Forces units that will provide the actual boots on the ground. Ever since the creation of NORTHCON on October 1, 2002, supposedly as a direct result of 9/11, the political and financial elite have been overtly preparing for the inevitability of social unrest. Covert preparations extend back decades under cover of any available and plausible excuse in the book.

The military readily admits that it’s not properly trained to execute (no pun intended) domestic police actions and they agree they would be poorly suited to maintain order during any chaotic domestic uprising. And I agree. Home invasions by the military would be just as distasteful for Americans as they are for the Iraqis regardless of what it’s called and under whatever bullshit legal premise it has been authorized.

I can’t help but wonder if the UN Security Council will sanction an invasion of America by a “coalition of the willing” when our time comes around? Don’t laugh because I’m being deadly serious. Do not underestimate the measures the desperate will use to remain in power and don’t assume the rich and powerful are physically located only in the USA. It’s a global game and America has been the home field only for the last 70 or so years. It helps to remember that stock sectors aren’t the only thing that rotates. BTW notice that the eagle below covers all of North America, not just the USA.

Northcom

On a side note, I still find it amazing how many political/military actions were a direct result of 9/11 yet nobody wants to seriously discuss what really went down that day. Careful because you might not like the stench of whatever it is you dig up. We all complain about political and governmental secrecy, but the vast majority of Americans don’t want to know what’s going on and are happier when they are deceived. The big lie we gratefully participate in is that we are a free and self directed people. It’s so much better to let buried dogs lay undisturbed where they can quickly decompose out of sight and mind.

And let’s not forget the foreign troops that will be invited to conduct joint exercises on American soil. On February 14, 2008 Northcom and the Canada Command agreed to come to each other’s “aid” in the event of a civil crisis such as floods, forest fires, hurricanes, earthquakes and “the effects of a terrorist attack”. While this description comes from the PR propaganda on Northcom’s web site I would love to read the actual document. Naturally Congress wasn’t consulted and were actually sidestepped entirely. It didn’t matter anyway since they were too busy whoring for re-election contributions at the time, a time honored spring, summer, fall and winter Congressional/Corporate pornographic mating ritual.

Of course, the obvious inference here is that if American citizen soldiers are unable or unwilling to “police” their fellow US citizens, we can always call in the Canadians to help us out. Certainly our Canadian brothers and sisters will be subjected to plenty of official propaganda to prepare them for their friendly invasion. I’m sure the psyops division of both countries can come up with plenty of video of homeless Americans swimming across the Saint Lawrence River in search of Canadian food stamps and citizenship….or at least their version of the green card. There are many other “agreements” with NATO and other individual countries that have been less publicized than this one if that’s even remotely possible

Now for the sleeper “police” force very few seem willing to acknowledge or even aware enough of to intelligently discuss, but who will most certainly be invited to the nationwide block party. Naturally I’m talking about private military contractors of the Blackwater/Xe ilk, also known as privately paid (with taxpayer funds of course) and controlled mercenaries of the increasingly privatized and corporatized America. This isn’t new but rather just a recycling of an old tradition of the Federal Government using private entities to provide “security” and “crowd control”. Blackwater is just the latest.

Blackwater

While everyone was watching what Blackwater and others like them were (and still are) doing over in Iraq and Afghanistan (and in many other countries where they are used as embassy and corporate “security” forces) rarely do we hear about the untold billions they’re being paid for services rendered in the good old US of A. Their presence in New Orleans after Katrina was a primer on how things will be done in the future. The almighty buck is their master and it’s the only flag they salute. God bless Uncle Ben.

Last, but most assuredly not least, will be the alphabet soup of government intelligence agencies (domestic and foreign) as well as too numerous to count private “interests” pushing, prodding and provoking wherever they can to influence the outcome of the civil unrest. This will be done for any number of reasons that will most certainly be at cross purposes with the interests of the American people in general and the actual protestors in particular. This will include the FBI, CIA, DIA, Mossad, MI6, BND and dozens of other public, private and foreign “security” and intelligence organizations whose primary purpose will be the protection of the vested interests of powerful people, corporations and countries. Guess where that leaves you and me?

So who will take to the streets? Ultimately this is impossible to say because the situation will be fluid and the variables unknown and in a constant state of flux. To be frank the time to push back was late in 2008 when the globalist&rsquo

Blowout possible in gold, force majeure in silver, Rule tells King

Posted: 01 Mar 2011 10:54 AM PST

6:49p ET Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold (and Silver):

Resources broker Rick Rule sounds increasingly radical in an interview today with King World News. Rule finds an "upside blowout" in gold more likely and he muses about "force majeure" being declared in the silver futures market when that metal runs out. You can find excerpts of the interview at the King World News blog here:

http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2011/3/1_Ric...

Or try this abbreviated link:

http://tinyurl.com/4rhvb9h

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

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

Jim's Mailbox

Posted: 01 Mar 2011 10:51 AM PST

Vicious Downward Cycle Intensifying
CIGA Eric

The vicious downward cycle (see Jim's formula) that started that started in 2001 and rematerialized in 2008 is beginning to intensify in 2011. This suggests an acceleration in the trend toward a lower standard of living for Americans as the shockwaves of public spending cuts negatively impact local, state, and eventually federal coffers. The public sector, contracting under the weight of a massive debt burden, has few options without the bankruptcy protection or ability to devalue. The message from national municipal bond market reflects this "damned if you do, damned if you don't policy quandary. Expectations calling for an end of quantitative easing will once again be proven premature.

US Federal Budget (Surplus or Deficit As A % of GDP, 12 Month Moving Average) and Gold London P.M. Fixed:

Headline: Wis. governor proposes deep cuts for schools

Even though Walker isn't ordering immediate layoffs, his budget will put tremendous pressure on schools and local governments, which will be asked to shoulder huge cuts without raising property taxes to make up the difference.

Walker's budget includes a nearly 9 percent cut in aid to schools, which would amount to a reduction of nearly $900 million. The governor also proposed requiring school districts to reduce their property tax authority by an average of $550 per pupil.

Source: news.yahoo.com

More…

Greetings Jim,

Gold closed sharply higher today, breaking out to a new all-time high for the secular bull market. Technical indicators are bullish overall on the daily chart, strongly supporting a continuation of the rally.

The Gold Currency Index (GCI) closed sharply higher as well, moving up toward its recent all-time high. Although the GCI is lagging gold slightly in terms of price action, technical indicators are bullish overall on the daily chart, confirming the underlying strength of the advance.

With respect to cycle analysis, today's strong move higher indicates that the current short-term cycle has moved into the beta phase and reconfirms the extreme right translation exhibited by the last two cycles.

As expected, the latest Intermediate-Term Cycle Low (ITCL) in late January has been followed by a strong move higher during the past 5 weeks.

A weekly close at current levels or higher on Friday would constitute a long-term breakout, reconfirming the secular bull market and forecasting additional gains during the next 2 to 3 months.

Best,

Erik McCurdy
Prometheus Market Insight
http://www.prometheusmi.com

Not enough metal to put dollar back on gold, Bernanke says

Posted: 01 Mar 2011 10:47 AM PST

And plenty of derivatives to keep the dollar off gold.

* * *

Bernanke Unfazed By Gold Standard, Currency History Queries

By Michael R. Crittenden
Dow Jones Newswires
via The Wall Street Journal
Tuesday, March 1, 2011

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20110301-714533.html

WASHINGTON -- Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke defended the central bank's effect on the dollar Tuesday, pushing back at the idea that policy makers should consider alternative proposals like the gold standard.

Bernanke, appearing before the Senate Banking Committee, was pressed by Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., on the viability of a return to a gold-backed economy or the idea of the Treasury Department issuing bonds payable in gold.

Bernanke, who has studied the issue, said a return to the gold standard wouldn't work.

"It did deliver price stability over very long periods of time, but over shorter periods of time it caused wide swings in prices related to changes in demand or supply of gold. So I don't think it's a panacea," Bernanke told DeMint.

... Dispatch continues below ...

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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

Additionally, Bernanke said there were a number of practical issues that would prevent the return of gold as the world standard. Namely, there's not enough gold in the world to effectively support the U.S. money supply.

"I don't think that a full-fledged gold standard would be practical at this point," Bernanke said, declining to opine on the gold-backed bond issue because he was not familiar with the idea.

Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., also engaged Bernanke on the currency issue, questioning whether the Fed's $600 billion bond-purchase program is in effect monetizing the U.S. debt. Bernanke noted that the U.S couldn't have currency outstanding if there were no Treasury securities to back it up, and that even the most steady economic times the Fed engages in the buying and selling of U.S.-backed securities.

Kirk, however, noted that the United States did have currency not backed by federal debt at one time in its history: under the administration of President Andrew Jackson, the nation's seventh president.

Bernanke, appearing amused, was quick to respond.

"So this was before the Civil War. This was during the period where individual banks issued currency. We didn't have a national currency," Bernanke said.

Not to be outdone, Kirk asked whether it was possible for a country to have a currency without a trillion-dollar debt. Bernanke said that was the case.

* * *

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

Didn't Fed attend other G-10 gold committee meetings?

Posted: 01 Mar 2011 10:27 AM PST

6:24p ET Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

But here's still another potential proof for you, stemming from the Federal Reserve's release to GATA two weeks ago, at federal court order, of the minutes of the secret meeting held on April 7, 1997, by the G-10 Gold and Foreign Exchange Committee, at which the committee discussed at great length how member nations might coordinate their gold policies and how this coordination might affect gold's price:

http://www.gata.org/node/9623

In GATA's lawsuit, brought under the federal Freedom of Information Act in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the Fed insisted that it could not find any more documents dealing substantively with gold than the dozen or so it produced for the court's private review. The record of the G-10 committee meeting was the only document the court ordered the Fed to disclose, such minutes, the court ruled, falling outside the law's several exemptions.

To make sense of any of this, one has to believe some of the following things:

1) The Fed has no other records of the G-10's Gold and Foreign Exchange Committee because the committee has met only on April 7, 1997, and neither before nor since.

2) The committee has met more than that once but the Fed has no records of any other committee meetings because the Fed was represented only at the meeting on April 7, 1997.

3) The committee has met more than that once, the Fed was represented at those other meetings, but the Fed's representatives failed to report in writing about those other meetings, even as they reported at such length about the April 7, 1997 meeting.

4) The Fed's did have records of those other committee meetings but they were discarded, misfiled, or, when GATA started asking questions, hurriedly transferred to the office of the Exchange Stabilization Fund over at the Treasury Department, the ESF being exempted by law from any accountability to Congress, the public, and the courts.

If, after reflecting on the strange singularity of the minutes of the April 7, 1997, meeting of the G-10 Gold and Foreign Exchange Committee, you still don't think the Fed is hiding a lot about its involvement with the gold market, you may be qualified to write daily gold market commentary at Kitco.

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

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

Gold Price Made a New All Time Intraday High at $1,432.56, Silver Blasted Into New High Ground, I Have No Idea What It Might Reach?

Posted: 01 Mar 2011 10:27 AM PST

Gold Price Close Today : 1430.70
Change : 21.40 or 1.5%

Silver Price Close Today : 34.416
Change : 0.612 cents or 1.8%

Gold Silver Ratio Today : 41.57
Change : -0.120 or -0.3%

Silver Gold Ratio Today : 0.02406
Change : 0.000069 or 0.3%

Platinum Price Close Today : 1840.10
Change : 10.80 or 0.6%

Palladium Price Close Today : 816.25
Change : -23.90 or -2.8%

S&P 500 : 1,306.33
Change : -20.89 or -1.6%

Dow In GOLD$ : $174.22
Change : $ (5.10) or -2.8%

Dow in GOLD oz : 8.428
Change : -0.247 or -2.8%

Dow in SILVER oz : 350.36
Change : -4.95 or -1.4%

Dow Industrial : 12,058.02
Change : -168.32 or -1.4%

US Dollar Index : 77.02
Change : 0.131 or 0.2%

At long last the GOLD PRICE broke through resistance around its 3 January top at $1,422.60, and scooted. The SILVER PRICE, thankful for the confirmation, blasted into new high ground. This is a "Get Out Of The Way Day".

The GOLD PRICE has been fighting that resistance for the last five days, and today smashed through. Overnight gold crouched below $1,415, then about 6:00 a.m. (Eastern time) burst to $1,419, traded sideways to build strength, then bulled its way through to 1423. It backed off a little to get a running start, then beat down the $1,425 gate and made a new all time intraday high at $1,432.56. Comex close came at $1,430.70, up $21.40, a good sign since it backed off very little from its intraday high.

Thinking on targets, it's hard to imagine gold stopping short of $1,500, maybe $1,550, before this run ends. Tomorrow it might back off a little, but as long a it doesn't close lower than $1,422.60 it intends to hold on to its gains.

On the five day chart since Thursday the SILVER PRICE has made the same sort of stubborn, steady, uninterrupted advances that it has been pursuing since last July. It demolished resistance at 3400c, never to be repaired. My feeble old memory says that back in 1979-1980 -- we have to dig back that far to find silver trading at these heights -- that a jiggle of trading stands at $34.50 and another jiggle at $39.50. By "jiggle" I mean a short interruption of an otherwise vertical rise. That is ANCIENT support/resistance, but those things have a way of avenging themselves even over long years, like Scotch-Irish nursing a grudge. The jiggling was all on the coming-down side, not the going-up.

Not any point in talking about 3450c, since silver's high today was 3467c, and it closed on Comex up 61.2c at 3441.6c. Looks like silver can deal with that one. Up above that leaves 3950c.

The GOLD/SILVER RATIO might give us some guidance. A 40:1 ratio and a 3950c silver high takes gold to $1,580 -- plausible. Gold at $1,500 with a 40:1 ratio yields silver at 3750c, and yes, there is also an ancient jiggle peak there, too.

Over the course of this bull market silver has usually topped in February, March, or May. If this rally runs into May, well, I have no idea what it might reach. I warn y'all, however, to view this soberly. Everybody loves a Fun Run, but nobody likes the clean-up, and when this rally ends there will be one huge mess to clean up. Silver will take a big hit, and so will gold, and the market will be slow and disappointing for months afterward.

But why throw ice-water on the party-goers? Y'all go ahead, dance, have a good time. Just keep your shoes on and keep listening for that midnight bell.

Rally will continue as long as GOLD does not close below $1,422.60 or SILVER below 3400c.

Now I begin to wonder if markets aren't coming right-side up again after hanging so long upside down. Gold and silver are supposed to move together and opposite the US dollar OVER THE LONG TERM, while stocks ought to run contrary to silver and gold, although for the past many months they have been running with metals. Of course, over the very short term, a few days or weeks, anything can happen.

'Twas a bad day for stocks and for the Nice Government Men who run the Stock Levitation Department. The Dow gave up 168.32 points to wind up at 12,058.02, which I believe I remember was last week's low close. A break through 12,000 will look like an avalanche beginning in the Alps.

While the Dow lost 1.57% the S&P500 lost 1.97% today, off 20.89 points at 1,306.33. I know it's ill-mannered to say, "I told y'all so", but can I get away with Veritas filia temporis -- truth is the daughter of time? For your financial health's sake, stay away from stocks. In the World of Investment Nutrition, they are the Big Mac with fries fried in GMO canola oil and a Jacuzzi-sized diet drink.

US DOLLAR INDEX rose 13.1 basis points to 77.020. I've been reading today about an accounting change the Federal Reserve slipped through for its balance sheet lately. Seems that it shoves all its losses on assets it holding -- like bonds or mortgage securities -- off into a category other than Capital. This is pretty neat, since it means that its balance sheet can NEVER become insolvent.

Now what does that tell you? Think. Y'all remember about 5 or 6 years ago the Fed stopped reporting M3 Money Supply. Suspicious soul that I am, I figured they were "burying the corpse in advance." That is, they KNEW they were going to puff up the money supply, so they pulled M3 to make it impossible to compare NOW with THEN. Now why would they be gussying up their balance sheets with tricks to hide insolvency unless. . . You tell me. Couldn't be they foresee a need for significantly more inflating?

Disheartening is that they are arrogant enough to believe that wet cardboard tricks will do to fool the public, and generally they do. Mercy! The Fed itself is a wet cardboard trick. Poke your finger at it and it pushes clean through.

Argentum et aurum comparenda sunt -- -- Gold and silver must be bought.

- Franklin Sanders, The Moneychanger
The-MoneyChanger.com
Phone: (888) 218-9226 or (931) 766-6066

© 2011, The Moneychanger. May not be republished in any form, including electronically, without our express permission.

To avoid confusion, please remember that the comments above have a very short time horizon. Always invest with the primary trend. Gold's primary trend is up, targeting at least $3,130.00; silver's primary is up targeting 16:1 gold/silver ratio or $195.66; stocks' primary trend is down, targeting Dow under 2,900 and worth only one ounce of gold; US$ or US$-denominated assets, primary trend down; real estate in a bubble, primary trend way down. Whenever I write "Stay out of stocks" readers inevitably ask, "Do you mean precious metals mining stocks, too?" No, I don't.

FMX Connect "When A Gold Market Trades Like A Gold Market"

Posted: 01 Mar 2011 10:14 AM PST

From FMX Connect, whose call a week ago for a break out is materializing just as predicted

Analysis:

During London time and on the comex open risk reversals traded in April and June with dealers buying call and selling put. Subsequently, June 1600 Cs were purchased live. Funds bought while dealers and market makers sold. Volatility proceeded to rally from there in step with the market’s movement. Puts were almost not quoted at all, except to be sold in fence form. On the day skew was up, call tails were raised and volatility was higher.

Commentary:

It’s about time that this market started acting like a commodity and not a proxy for some ETF product traded by mutual fund managers. Call skew rallied to levels not seen in a long time as first dealers rolled their longs higher to let them hedge their gamma and then funds added to existing positions. It seems that the constant flow of GLD call selling that used to spill over onto comex has subsided. Perhaps we are entering a parabolic phase now that we are at all-time highs. We alerted readers to get long 2 days ago and remain behind our call of a top side of 1475-1550 in the next 8 weeks.

Summary

April Gold settled at $1431.20 per troy ounce, a gain of $21.30 for the day. Volatility rallied on the back of call buying and puts were offered.

Active Options

J 1350P /1505 C Fence

J 1450 C

M 1500 C

M 1600 C

ATM Volatility Curve:

Volatility Smile:

Chinese queue at malls to beat Bernanke's inflation with gold

Posted: 01 Mar 2011 09:40 AM PST

Malls Witnessing Gold Rush as Shoppers Fear Inflation

By Xu Fan
China Daily, Beijing
Monday, February 28, 2011

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2011-02/28/content_12085402.htm

Jewelers at shopping malls across the capital are witnessing a gold rush as residents spooked by inflation fears look to protect their money.

Statistics from Beijing Caibai, the city's largest jewelry store, show sales of gold and other jewelry have totaled about 4 billion yuan so far this year, a 70 percent increase year-on-year.

Wang Chunli, general manager, told METRO that hundreds of customers are lining up outside every day to buy gold accessories, such as necklaces and rings. To cope with demand, the store has even introduced a string-weave service, she said, adding: "We've also arranged experienced staff to be on duty and increased the number of security guards."

... Dispatch continues below ...

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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

After seeing the enthusiasm for gold investment, insiders predict prices will continue to rise this year.

Zhou Xiangrui, deputy general manager of Guo Hua, an established gold and jewelry store, even suggested that the surging demand could set a new record, saying: "The price is estimated to increase by 10 percent this year."

The price has already reached 338 yuan a gram at Caibai and 375 yuan a gram at Beijing branches of Chow Tai Fook and Chow Tai Seng, according to data from cngold.org, a popular gold investment website.

Concern over the volatile conditions in the Middle East and the debt crises in Europe could also impact gold prices, said Ji Zhiguo, an analyst the Beijing Gold Trade Center. "This year we might see some investors purchasing more than 10 kilograms of gold bars again," he said. "A booming gold market coupled with a stable price increase could prompt more individuals to rush in and invest."

Gold sales in large shopping malls citywide increased by at least 40 percent year-on-year during the first two months of 2011, Legal Mirror reported.

According to China Central Television, about 40 investors are rushing to purchase gold bars every day at the Wang Feng shopping mall in the Xinjiekou area, with most snapping up several kilograms at a time.

Wang Qiming, 34, who lives in Haidian district, said he has purchased both gold bars in malls and paper gold online. "The capital has limits on house and car purchases, and it might be hard to preserve the value of my assets if I save cash in a bank account. So I've started to focus on gold investment," he said, explaining that he plans to spend 300,000 yuan on 100 grams of gold bars.

"Stock markets change very fast and are not stable," said Wang. "Gold investment seems much safer."

A report released by the World Gold Council at the end of 2010 said China is the strongest market for gold investment and gold accessory purchase.

* * *

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

Guest Post: Prove Mayans Right: Address Structural Economic Problems With Chicanery

Posted: 01 Mar 2011 09:12 AM PST

Submitted by Davis Sherman Okst of Financial Sense

Prove Mayans Right: Address Structural Economic Problems With Chicanery (Part 2 of 2)

Monetizing Governmental Debt AKA Money Printing or in Bernanke’s Vernacular - Quantitative Easing

Here are some realities on Quantitive Easing:

If Bernanke stopped QE, the United States of America would default, the government would close down, there would be massive interruptions in all Federally assisted programs (Medicare, Social Security, etc.), debt service to China et al would be impacted or stop totally
We take in about 2 trillion in tax revenue, we borrow about 1 trillion and, like drunken sailors, we spend about 4.5 trillion. 80% of our deficit is entitlements and debt service. Make all the cuts we want, that stuff can't be cut. QE is a fancy term for counterfeiting the 1.5 trillion dollar difference we have NO possible way of paying
QE is debt monetization that IS increasing the size of the money supply. Since that money has been spent, there is no way in hell Bernanke or anyone else can “shrink” the money supply at the right time - the horses are out of the barn, every POMO auction is just money created out of thin air to cover the Treasury's checking account

There are those who would point out that without “velocity” we can’t have hyperinflation; and with 23% employment we aren’t going to get people spending, therefore there will be no velocity and thus no hyperinflation. I’d advocate that this argument be looked at again. First, the government is spending “funny money” that is, to some extent, creating some “velocity.” What is more important - money is a commodity as described in Part 1 - and therefore the more of a commodity that there is the less its value. Since the inception of the Fed in 1913 the dollar went to a value of .04 cents, 80% of that devaluation happened since Nixon took us off the gold standard. So if our dollar goes to a value of less than .04 cents, lets say .00000001 cent - we will have massive hyperinflation. Printing money is the road to .00000001 cents.

I’m in the camp that gold hasn’t gone up, silver hasn’t gone up and the stock market hasn’t gone up. Graham Summers of Capital Research did a fantastic short piece titled “While I Love Gold” at ZeroHedge.

Stocks Priced to Gold

stocks to gold ratio

Like I said, gold hasn’t “gone up” stocks haven’t “gone up” and food prices haven’t “gone up.” The value of all currencies have gone down. People who compare one currency to another won't see what is happening until it is too late.

It is all how you look at it. We are playing an entirely idiotic game because no president (other than Andrew Jackson) had the guts to fix the real problem - money.

About the only thing gold and silver will do is act as a true store of value and pay off any fixed debt when things get totally out of hand - which, in my never so humble opinion - is the obvious unstoppable trajectory we are on now.

Lastly, on the subject of Ben Bernanke’s path to making the USA Zimbabwe I’d like to address the “We can raise interest rates in 15 minutes” BS. Sure he can. But the rest of the “We can raise interest rates in 15 minutes” sentence goes like this: of course 80% of the deficit is unfunded liabilities and debt that is rolling over, so doing so will bankrupt the country with impossible to pay interest on debt. Estimates are that higher interest rates will add TRILLIONS to our debt. Higher rates will be another nail in real estates coffin, another nail in high unemployments coffin and another nail in state and local debt burdens.

In summary: The biggest lies about Quantitative Easing are: It isn’t [governmental] debt monetization, we can raise interest rates, it isn’t causing inflation, it won't cause hyperinflation, we aren’t increasing the size of the money supply, we can contract the size of the money supply when the time is perfect, we can stop it [QE] at anytime, it is creating jobs, and we can sell stuff no one else is now buying and the money is just sitting there, i.e. there is no velocity.

In short: It is QE or America defaults. A.) Hyperinflate the absurd debt away or B.) Default. If Bernanke thinks he can secretly devalue the dollar and reduce our debt to some payable amount by reducing the dollar’s value by like 10% per year (thus reducing our 128 trillion dollar debt to half over 5 years) then he is really an utter and absolute moron.

The Maestro of Disaster came right out and said that debasing a currency is American robbery. Covertly stealing - even if it is for some lame unworkable plan to save the economy - is not leadership, nor is it ethical.

Lies are the hallmark of a leadership deficit. Lies don’t fix problems, solutions do.

The Fix

The fix is simple: Admit that things got out of hand over the past 4 decades and overtly do what they are covertly doing. Stop prolonging the agony - it is abolishing the middle class. The only trick is to make the monetary system as sound as possible. I have no false dreams that we will ever wind up with a better system (read: something that isn’t debt-money IS debt) but I do know we can do better.

We supposedly have 10,000 tones of gold.

According to Greenspan’s own 1960 article this country has been and is a welfare state that is robbing its citizens through taxation and inflation:

“Stripped of its academic jargon, the welfare state is nothing more than a mechanism by which governments confiscate the wealth of the productive members of a society to support a wide variety of welfare schemes. A substantial part of the confiscation is effected by taxation.”

So we can put 2+2 together and be reasonably sure that we have 18,000 tones of gold - since it is a given that a country that would steal from its own people wouldn’t blink twice at “borrowing” 8,000 tones of gold from other countries to save its own rear.

Again, I do hate gold, but re-valuing a failed currency without anchoring it to something will consist of a few failed takeoffs and crashes. Doing it this way would ensure we remain the reserve currency.

Right now we are at a competitive advantage - we have more gold than any other country (even if it is unaudited).

Geithner’s $3 Trillion Target

Posted: 01 Mar 2011 09:00 AM PST

The 5 min. Forecast March 01, 2011 01:19 PM by Addison Wiggin - March 1, 2011 [LIST] [*] Geithner licks his chops at $3 trillion of new income to tax… Never mind it will kill small business [*] Silver reaches another post-1980 high… Two factors that could drive it to $40 this year [*] Chris Mayer unearths a sector beaten down for 20 years, about to rise again [*] An… um… interesting new product from the U.S. Mint [*] “Right track” or “dictatorial”? Debate raging in Wisconsin moves to The 5 [/LIST] We’ve hit a milestone: As this missive hits your inbox, the crew is in Tampa, wrapping up the final shoot of a documentary on risk and entrepreneurship in the wake of the financial crisis. For a case study, we’ve been following a group of small business owners who make their living exploring the ocean floor. At stake, $500,000 in gold and silver coins... a piece of fine art stol...

Why Small Businesses are Worried About Double Taxation

Posted: 01 Mar 2011 08:52 AM PST

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is urging Congress to "revisit" the tax code… and how the code treats small business owners. Amen. It's about time.

Hong Kong's tax form is a 3×5 postcard. Surely, if the president's mandate for this administration is to make the US "the best place on Earth to do business," Mr. Geithner is envisioning something similar.

Yeah, right.

Here's the rub: Currently, a small business owner has a choice of paying taxes as a corporation… or alternatively, through a structure like a partnership that makes it possible to report profits and losses on a garden-variety individual 1040.

"Congress," says Geithner, "has to revisit this basic question about whether it makes sense for us as a country to allow certain businesses to choose whether they're treated as corporations for tax purposes."

Here's what Geithner sees: $3 trillion of income that suddenly would be subject to tax, some of it racked up by big law firms, investment partnerships and so-called S corporations.

Here's what small business people see: double taxation. They'd have to pay tax first as a corporation, and then again as an individual, as if they were drawing a paycheck from that corporation.

"Most small to midsized businesses in the United States," explains Neal Weber, a small-business consultant, "are structured as pass-through entities in order to avoid double taxation."

Kauffman Foundation research finds startup firms to be the "sole engine of job creation" in the US economy. Mr. Geithner, who you'll recall has trouble with his own tax returns, proposes to throw sand in the gears of this engine. The Senate Finance Committee may take up the matter as early as today.

Addison Wiggin
for The Daily Reckoning

Why Small Businesses are Worried About Double Taxation originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning. The Daily Reckoning has published articles on the impact of quantitative easing, bakken oil, and hyperinflation.

Gold hits record high

Posted: 01 Mar 2011 08:47 AM PST

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Gold prices settled at a new record high on Tuesday, as unrest in North Africa and the Middle East pushed the safe-haven commodity north of $1,430.

April gold futures rose $21.30, or 1.5%, to settle at an all-time high of $1,431.20 an ounce.

Tuesday's record high is not adjusted for inflation. If adjusted for inflation, gold's record price is much higher.

Investors rushed to gold as unrest in the key oil producing state of Libya continued to rage, and reports from Iran indicated large numbers of protestors were in the streets.

[source]

Geithner’s $3 Trillion Target

Posted: 01 Mar 2011 08:19 AM PST

by Addison Wiggin - March 1, 2011

Geithner licks his chops at $3 trillion of new income to tax… Never mind it will kill small business
Silver reaches another post-1980 high… Two factors that could drive it to $40 this year
Chris Mayer unearths a sector beaten down for 20 years, about to rise again
An… um… interesting new product from the U.S. Mint
“Right track” or “dictatorial”? Debate raging in Wisconsin moves to The 5

We’ve hit a milestone: As this missive hits your inbox, the crew is in Tampa, wrapping up the final shoot of a documentary on risk and entrepreneurship in the wake of the financial crisis.

For a case study, we’ve been following a group of small business owners who make their living exploring the ocean floor. At stake, $500,000 in gold and silver coins... a piece of fine art stolen by the Nazis... and the future of capitalism as we know it.

If you’re new to the class, or if you’d like a refresher, you can catch up with our friends at Odyssey Marine here. Likewise, The 5 will be your source for updates on the release of the film. At the end of next week, we’ll learn if we’ve been accepted for competition at the Tribeca Film Festival.

The film’s focus on entrepreneurs, jobs and the government is timely enough… especially in light of the following news.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is urging Congress to “revisit” the tax code... and how the code treats small business owners. Amen. It’s about time.

Hong Kong’s tax form is a 3x5 postcard. Surely, if the president’s mandate for this administration is to make the U.S. “the best place on Earth to do business,” Mr. Geithner is envisioning something similar.

Yeah, right.

Here’s the rub: Currently, a small business owner has a choice of paying taxes as a corporation… or alternatively, through a structure like a partnership that makes it possible to report profits and losses on a garden-variety individual 1040.

“Congress,” says Geithner, “has to revisit this basic question about whether it makes sense for us as a country to allow certain businesses to choose whether they’re treated as corporations for tax purposes.”

Here’s what Geithner sees: $3 trillion of income that suddenly would be subject to tax, some of it racked up by big law firms, investment partnerships and so-called S corporations.

Here’s what small business people see: double taxation. They’d have to pay tax first as a corporation, and then again as an individual, as if they were drawing a paycheck from that corporation.

“Most small to midsized businesses in the United States,” explains Neal Weber, a small-business consultant, “are structured as pass-through entities in order to avoid double taxation.”

Kauffman Foundation research finds startup firms to be the “sole engine of job creation” in the U.S. economy. Mr. Geithner, who you’ll recall has trouble with his own tax returns, proposes to throw sand in the gears of this engine. The Senate Finance Committee may take up the matter as early as today.

Elsewhere on Capitol Hill, Congress might or might not get around this week to repealing the onerous 1099 provision of the health care law.

This is the provision that requires businesses to furnish a Form 1099 to everyone from whom they buy $600 or more in goods and services each year. You buy $600 in office supplies from Staples? You issue Staples a 1099.

We’ve published reams of anecdotal reader mail on how and why this bit of “reform” is tantamount to a punishment for conducting regular business transactions. It’s expensive and time-consuming. And, at the same time, turns every small business owner into a de facto agent for the IRS.

Alas, you can only squeeze a turnip for so long. Even the president has supported its repeal.

That said, there are two competing versions of repeal that just made it out of the House Ways and Means Committee, and a third that’s passed the Senate. If and when something substantive happens, we’ll let you know.

Stocks are meandering, the Dow and the S&P starting the day up and then moving down. The Dow is back below 12,200.

Saudi Arabia’s main stock index fell 7.4% today, traders concerned the Middle East turmoil will spread there.

An Egyptian newspaper reports the Saudi princes have sent tanks to nearby Bahrain, where the ruling Sunni elite is the target of protests by the Shiite majority.

The Saudi stock index is now down 18% since Tunisia’s president fled the country. It’s back to September 2009 levels.

Oil is popping in response to the rumors. WTI is pushing $99, while Brent has pushed back above $114.

The key measure of health in the U.S. manufacturing sector is up again this month. The ISM Manufacturing Index reached 61.4 in February, the strongest reading since May 2004.

Any reading above 50 indicates manufacturing is expanding, and the index has topped 50 for 19 straight months.

China’s version of the same manufacturing figure eased for the second straight month. It now sits at 52.2, the lowest in six months.

“The story of titanium oxide is interesting from an investment point of view,” writes Chris Mayer, who’s interested in a lot of things most of us would turn up our noses at.

“TiO2 is a white pigment used in paints, coatings, glazes, enamels and more. It gives these products their shine and also resists discoloration from sunlight. It’s also used in sunscreen for this reason, where it acts as a blocker of UV rays.” Its disinfecting properties make it useful in food processors, medical devices, and air conditioning screens.

“In the 1980s, the industry way overbuilt. The pigment then entered into a 20-year bear market in which prices were cut in half by 2007. As you can imagine, this pretty much destroyed the industry except for its strongest members.

“Prices for TiO2 started to improve a bit in 2009. But it really turned the corner only last year. Prices rose more than 15% last year, and more price increases are on the way.

“The titanium oxide makers have been in a 20-year bear market, which corrected itself. It’s now over.” Chris recently recommended his favorite in the sector in Capital & Crisis.

Meanwhile, time’s running out for half-price access to Chris’ premium advisory, Mayer’s Special Situations. Move on this before midnight Thursday, and you’ll get a package of eight recommendations -- including the $1 billion market cap company sitting on $51 billion in oil. Here’s where to begin.

With no explanation, the U.S. Treasury just upped its estimate of the amount of Treasury paper owned by China. Two weeks ago, it was $852 billion. This morning, it’s $1.12 trillion.

It’s conceivable the Treasury traced some of China’s holdings to custodians based in the United Kingdom… Britain’s holdings have been revised downward.

In any event, the difference isn’t small potatoes. Yesterday, China accounted for 9.8% of the total amount Uncle Sam is in hock. Today it’s 12.8%.

Gold is within a couple bucks of its nominal all-time high set in December. At last check, the spot price is $1,422. Silver has set a new post-1980 high of $34.44.

Silver is higher in all currencies today, especially the Japanese yen.

The London-based precious metals consultancy GFMS sees investment demand for silver rising 18% this year. That compares to just an 8% anticipated increase in mine supply.

As such, the firm reckons silver could reach $40 between now and year end.

The U.S. Mint sold 3,240,000 Silver Eagles during February. Hardly the record 6,422,000 set during January, but still a very high number by historical standards.

If the sales pace so far this year keeps up, 2011 sales will set an annual record as early as August.

[Ed. Note: Once again this year, our friends at First Federal have exclusive rights to distribute the new issue of government-certified First Strike Silver Pandas from China. And once again, Agora Financial readers have dibs.

Effective midnight tonight, First Federal will offer these coins to the general public… if our readers don’t clean out the inventory first. That’s what happened last year. So it pays to move on this now. As always, we may be compensated if you buy.]

We don’t usually spend much time perusing the U.S. Mint website, but as we looked up the Silver Eagle sales this morning, we stumbled upon this…

Under the “Medals” category is this little gem for sale honoring the man who fearlessly and decisively shepherded us through those dark days of autumn 2008.

Really, doesn’t it perfectly capture the look of panic that washed over his face with every Sunday night announcement aimed at preventing a Monday market meltdown? “We’re going to rescue the banks by buying up their toxic assets! No, change that! We’re going to buy equity stakes in the banks instead!” Ah, those were the days.

This 3” bronze medal is yours for the low, low price of $42. Let’s see, that’s maybe four ounces of copper. Spot copper is a shade under $4.50 this morning. Throw in whatever trace metals were used in the bronzing process and we’re looking at, what, a $1.25 melt value?

If you’re wondering about the imagery on the reverse: “The image of the peregrine falcon,” the sales page explains, “represents Secretary Paulson’s commitment to conservation and his long-time interest in birds of prey.”

Like Goldman Sachs, which he ran before he took over Treasury.

“I too live in Wisconsin,” a reader writes, continuing to stir the pot. “I think Gov. Walker is on the right track too!

“Teachers that are deadbeats are allowed to continue teaching making it twice the work for the good teachers, while the students suffer unless they are lucky enough to get into the classes of the good teachers, which are usually overloaded.

“As far as leeches -- the farm subsidies, as I have seen here in Wisconsin, have not helped the small farmer (they probably are too hard at work to know about or find out about the subsidies). The mid to large farmers get the maximum subsidies in all families’ names and buy out that little farmers who can no longer afford to keep their land.

“The modern farmer is getting to be like the big corporation CEOs, greedy pigs and ‘Don’t worry, the government has always been there for me, gov’t will bail me out just like they did GM.’”

The 5: Even so, don’t you get suspicious when you see statement like this one found on Walker’s campaign website: “strengthening public/private partnerships… to ensure that the next generation of farmers can produce even more than we do now.”

It’s also curious that the newest Tea Party hero is a guy who, in his previous gig as Milwaukee county executive, increased spending by 35% over an eight-year span. Hmmn...

“The gentleman who thinks we should give up ‘collective bargaining rights’ in Wisconsin needs to read the issue more carefully. The public employees agreed to take wage cuts, just not to give up their rights to speak about working conditions and other items forever. The governor will not even talk.

“This behavior is dictatorial, not democratic. That is a fact, not an opinion.

“The man in the private sector [who wrote in yesterday] has been earning more money percentagewise also. He would not have all he does if not for unions negotiating in earlier years.

“I do hope you will present the whole picture, and not one person’s opinion.”

The 5: Unfortunately, that is an opinion. If we read the accounts right, they’re still waiting for some senators to return home from Illinois to vote on the bill. You just don’t like what’s in it.

One question: If the private sector is such a better-paying gig than government, why didn’t all those people sleeping in the statehouse in Madison leave government years ago and save us all the headache of having to hear about it?

“The 5 is pretending that the Wisconsin affair is about unaffordable benefits,” writes another. ”It isn’t. It is about union busting, plain and simple.

“With help from those at The 5 who either fail or choose not to see what’s really going on, all unions (except for those who traditionally support Republicans) will be without power, all working folks will be at the mercy of CEOs and their wealthy friends and Republicans will no longer have any reason to fear political pressure from unions. What a country!”

The 5: Right. There’s a budget shortfall in Wisconsin. Those deficits existed prior to the kerfuffle in Madison, as in 45 other states that bet too big on the housing bubble and were happily papered over with stimulus money from the Feds.

The spigot in Washington is running to a trickle. So too will Madison’s assistance to local governments in Wisconsin. The fact that the state raises only $3 of tax revenue to cover every $4 of spending is coming to light.

The 45 other states share a similar fate.

You can argue all day about who’s responsible. You can even blame Republicans if you want. But you can’t pretend there’s no crisis. Rewriting the collective bargaining law in the process is merely a side benefit. Open your eyes... think for yourself.

Regards,
Addison Wiggin
The 5 Min. Forecast

P.S.: “As you drive through the desert landscape of New Mexico and West Texas,” writes colleague Matt Insley, “you may be surprised to find the smell of petroleum frequently fills the air.

“Heh, you should have seen our resident rockhound Byron King’s eyes light up the first time he got a sniff of that light crude through the car vents.”

Byron and Matt -- as unlikely a pair as you’ll ever meet -- traipsed through the West Texas oil patch last week in search of new investing opportunities. You can read about some of the fruits of their labors later today in the premiere issue of Daily Resource Hunter.

It’s our newest free e-letter, focused exclusively on energy, precious metals, base metals, agriculture -- you know, “real stuff.” You can sign up to get in it your inbox, three times a week, right here.