saveyourassetsfirst3

Book Review: The Economist's Oath by George F. DeMartino
Extorre Lists on the NYSE Amex Exchange Under the Symbol "XG"
What's Next for the Gold/Silver Ratio?
Which Way is Gold Going to Go?
Europe’s Turn Again
Jeff Clark – Why $5,000 Gold May Be Too Low
China May Corner Gold Market
Silver May Rise to $40/oz in March on Tight Supply: Bloomberg Chart of the Day
Gold and Silver Parabolics – Part II
Stock Market DIVE!
mines forecasting metals, not the other word around
How the Mid-East crisis could kill the dollar
Rare earth prices are soaring... Here's how to play it
This could be the most important stock chart in the world today
China adviser says Beijing should buy more gold
Gold Mania Will Rival Tech Bubble: Rob McEwen
No Getting Away From It, Swiss Francs and Gold Are Still the Surest Havens
Whats Going On In The Silver Market: Audio Interview with Harvey Organ
China Surprise
Silver : clinging to 36
Russia’s lost Gold
Whats Driving the Silver Price?
Gold: Still Far to Go
Gold and Equities on the Verge of Breaking Out!

Book Review: The Economist's Oath by George F. DeMartino

Posted: 10 Mar 2011 06:30 AM PST

by George F. DeMartino, Oxford University Press 2011

At last, the widespread public criticism has evidence from within economists' conflicts of interest and general lack of ethical principles. This scholarly volume is a well-documented critique from many perspectives. It serves as a foundation for buttressing the many critiques over the past 40 years, including my own arising from systems perspectives and many other disciplines.

The dam burst in 2011 with the award of an Oscar to the movie "Inside Job," documenting the failures of analyses and conflicts of interest of economists and how they contributed to the financial crises of 2008-10, still unresolved. The Political Economy Research Institute – PERI – at the University of Massachusetts Amherst contributed greatly with its study "Financial Economists, Financial Interests and Dark Corners of the Meltdown" (pdf) by Gerald Epstein and Jessica Carrick-Hagenbarth (2010). Author DeMartino in "The Economist's Oath" provides

Complete Story »

Extorre Lists on the NYSE Amex Exchange Under the Symbol "XG"

Posted: 10 Mar 2011 06:05 AM PST

Extorre Gold Mines Limited (TSX:XG, Frankfurt: E1R, OTC: EXGMF – "Extorre" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that its common shares have been approved for listing on the NYSE Amex, and will commence trading on Monday, March 14, 2011. The Company will trade under the symbol "XG" on both the NYSE Amex and TSX Exchanges.

What's Next for the Gold/Silver Ratio?

Posted: 10 Mar 2011 05:49 AM PST

Hard Assets Investor submits:

By Brad Zigler

History repeats itself. Somebody important¹ said so.

Many silver traders and investors regard the gold/silver ratio now and think that old maxim is being proved again.

The white metal's been, er, white hot recently. Silver's has become expensive - not just in dollars, but in terms of gold. And as silver's price has raced higher, the gold/silver ratio has plummeted.

The ratio, which describes silver's buying power by dividing the per-ounce price of gold by that of silver, has averaged 60:1 over the past 35 years, meaning it's taken 60 ounces of silver to purchase one ounce of gold. Though with silver's most recent push to the $36/oz level, it now takes much less.

The gold/silver ratio broke below 40x this week, sending silver bulls into a tizzy. A decline in the gold/silver ratio is seen as bullish for metals, a notion borne out by the last

Complete Story »

Which Way is Gold Going to Go?

Posted: 10 Mar 2011 05:24 AM PST

Hickey and Walters (Bespoke) submit:

After once again trading to a new all-time high last week, the price of gold has seen a notable pullback over the last few days and is now trading back below its highs from last year. When

Complete Story »

Europe’s Turn Again

Posted: 10 Mar 2011 05:11 AM PST

Europe has been pretty quiet lately. But apparently that was an illusion. The Eurozone's slide down the slippery slope continues, but because the current stage involves colorless bureaucrats debating the terms of debt swaps rather than street riots and air strikes, it has been overshadowed by the chaos in the Middle East.

That's about to change, as the flaws in the design of the common currency system really start to bite. As the Telegraph's Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, who is doing a great job of dissecting the Continental Crisis, reports:

EU paralysis drives fresh bond rout

Portugal edged closer to the brink yesterday, having to pay almost 6pc to raise two-year debt. The yield on 10-year bonds briefly surged to 7.8pc after the Chinese rating agency Dagong downgraded the country's debt to BBB+.

"These levels of interest rates are not sustainable over time," said Carlos Costa Pina, secretary of the Portuguese Treasury, blaming the latest upset on the lack of a coherent EU debt strategy rather any failing by Portugal to deliver on austerity.

Mr Costa Pina rebuffed calls by leading economists in Portugal for an EU-IMF bail-out rather than drawing out the agony. "It is not justified. Portugal doesn't need external help, it needs urgent measures by the EU to restore market confidence."

David Owen from Jefferies Fixed Income said last week's shock move by the ECB to pre-announce rate rises had tightened credit and effectively doomed the country. "The ECB by its actions has made it inevitable that Portugal will need a bail-out. There are parallels with the actions of the Bundesbank during the ERM crisis in 1992," he said.

Mr Owen said the ECB is playing brinkmanship with EU leaders, pressuring them to come up with a grand solution to the debt crisis at summits this month. It is a dangerous game. "Spain is not yet safe. It has €2.5 trillion of combined household and company debt. That is an awful lot," he said

There is no sign yet that Germany, Holland, and Finland will agree to expand the remit of the bail-out fund (EFSF), letting it buy the bonds of debtor states pre-emptively, or lend to these countries so that they can buy back their own debt in a "soft-restructuring".

If anything, the mood is hardening in Germany. The regional Länder have begun to demand a say over any EFSF deal. Hesse's justice minister Jörg-Uwe Hahn said he "categorically rejects" all moves to an EU 'Transferunion', debt pool, or fiscal fusion.

The three blocs of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Bundestag coalition have written a paper instructing her to resist any concessions on a debt union. She has little leeway anyway since the long-awaited ruling of Germany's constitutional court on the legality of the EU rescue machinery hangs like a Sword of Damocles.

"The EU will do too little, too late: the markets will dictate the solution," said Louis Gargour from LNG Capital, speaking at a Euromoney bond forum. He said Greece is already in the grip of an unstoppable debt spiral, spending 14.3pc of tax revenue on interest costs. He expects 50pc 'haircuts' on the debt, perhaps along the lines of the Brady Plan following Latin America's debt crisis.

The Greek crisis is going to from bad to worse. Ten-year yields spiked to 12.78pc yesterday and unemployment jumped sharply to 14.8pc in December, a reminder that the social trauma of austerity has yet to hit.

Greece is undergoing the harshest fiscal squeeze ever tried by a modern Western economy, yet public debt will end above 150pc of GDP by 2013 even if it complies with EU-IMF terms. "We should default and return to the Drachma to punish foreign loan sharks who have bled us dry," said Avriani, a paper linked to the ruling PASOK party.

There was similar anger in Ireland yesterday where Socialist MP Joe Higgins denounced "the poisonous cocktail of austerity concocted by the witchdoctors in Brussels and in Frankfurt".

Premier Enda Kenny said Ireland was at "the darkest hour before the dawn." He has so far played down talk of a clash with Germany over the terms if Ireland's bail-out, but Irish politics may force him to default on senior bank debt if the EU refuses to yield.

George Magnus from UBS said EU leaders are living in a "parallel universe", unable see that the festering EU debt crisis cannot be resolved without going to the root cause and recapitalising the banks.

Peripheral EMU will remain trapped in deep slump without debt forgiveness but the EU cannot do this until lenders are strong enough to absorb the losses. "The sequencing of this has to start with the banks, otherwise there will be fears of another Lehman. The EU and IMF are in denial about everything we have learned over history."

"The US banks raised $200bn of common equity in six weeks and that proved to be a turning point. If the EU does that, the crisis goes away," he said.

Olli Rehn, the EU economics commissioner, has been pleading for a policy shift to lessen the burden on debt-stricken states, including a cut in the punitive interest cost imposed on Ireland.

However, EU leaders have the final say on the terms of the rescue machinery, and they are answering to their own angry electorates. The eurozone remains a collection of sovereign states. That is the nub of the matter.

Some thoughts:

It looks like the Eurozone made a huge mistake in not kicking Greece out of the system the minute it failed to meet the zone's debt and deficit targets. This would have established that the rules matter. If a country wants the benefits of a strong common currency, it has to manage its finances responsibly. In the same way that expelling a disruptive student from a classroom changes the behavior of the remaining kids, the other PIIGS countries would have immediately begun making the hard cultural and financial choices necessary to live in a (relatively) sound money world.

But by bailing out Greece, Europe instead sent the message that soaring government spending and double-digit deficits will be rewarded with massive loans. This allowed the other weak economies (Ireland being the notable, admirable exception) to put off the hard adjustments — which soured German voters on further bailouts, making help on an effective scale a tough, if not impossible sale.

Now, with inflation rising, the European Central Bank has been forced to promise to raise interest rates in coming months. This traps the PIIGS countries between two destructive forces: rising interest rates (prospective from the ECB and immediate in the bond markets) and the inability of German leadership to deliver a trillion-euro bailout.

The result is a feedback loop of deteriorating finances leading to credit downgrades leading to higher bond yields leading to further deteriorating finances, until at some point everything falls apart.

We may not be far from that point, when the bond markets demand unmanageably high rates on new Portuguese or Spanish bonds, one or both threaten to default, and German voters call their bluff. What happens then is anybody's guess.

Jeff Clark – Why $5,000 Gold May Be Too Low

Posted: 10 Mar 2011 04:51 AM PST

The Driver for Gold You're Not Watching

You already know the basic reasons for owning gold – currency protection, inflation hedge, store of value, calamity insurance – many of which are becoming clichés even in mainstream articles. Throw in the supply and demand imbalance, and you've got the basic arguments for why one should hold gold for the foreseeable future.

All of these factors remain very bullish, in spite of gold's 450% rise over the past 10 years. No, it's not too late to buy, especially if you don't own a meaningful amount; and yes, I'm convinced the price is headed much higher, regardless of the corrections we'll inevitably see. Each of the aforementioned catalysts will force gold's price higher and higher in the years ahead, especially the currency issues.

But there's another driver of the price that escapes many gold watchers and certainly the mainstream media. And I'm convinced that once this sleeping giant wakes, it could ignite the gold market like nothing we've ever seen.

The fund management industry handles the bulk of the world's wealth. These institutions include insurance companies, hedge funds, mutual funds, sovereign wealth funds, etc. But the elephant in the room is pension funds. These are institutions that provide retirement income, both public and private.

Global pension assets are estimated to be – drum roll, please – $31.1 trillion. No, that is not a misprint. It is more than twice the size of last year's GDP in the U.S. ($14.7 trillion).

We know a few hedge fund managers have invested in gold, like John Paulson, David Einhorn, Jean-Marie Eveillard. There are close to twenty mutual funds devoted to gold and precious metals. Lots of gold and silver bugs have been buying.

So, what about pension funds?

According to estimates by Shayne McGuire in his new book, Hard Money; Taking Gold to a Higher Investment Level, the typical pension fund holds about 0.15% of its assets in gold. He estimates another 0.15% is devoted to gold mining stocks, giving us a total of 0.30% – that is, less than one third of one percent of assets committed to the gold sector.

Shayne is head of global research at the Teacher Retirement System of Texas. He bases his estimate on the fact that commodities represent about 3% of the total assets in the average pension fund. And of that 3%, about 5% is devoted to gold. It is, by any account, a negligible portion of a fund's asset allocation.

Now here's the fun part. Let's say fund managers as a group realize that bonds, equities, and real estate have become poor or risky investments and so decide to increase their allocation to the gold market. If they doubled their exposure to gold and gold stocks – which would still represent only 0.6% of their total assets – it would amount to $93.3 billion in new purchases.

How much is that? The assets of GLD total $55.2 billion, so this amount of money is 1.7 times bigger than the largest gold ETF. SLV, the largest silver ETF, has net assets of $9.3 billion, a mere one-tenth of that extra allocation.

The market cap of the entire sector of gold stocks (producers only) is about $234 billion. The gold industry would see a 40% increase in new money to the sector. Its market cap would double if pension institutions allocated just 1.2% of their assets to it.

But what if currency issues spiral out of control? What if bonds wither and die? What if real estate takes ten years to recover? What if inflation becomes a rabid dog like it has every other time in history when governments have diluted their currency to this degree? If these funds allocate just 5% of their assets to gold – which would amount to $1.5 trillion – it would overwhelm the system and rocket prices skyward.

And let's not forget that this is only one class of institution. Insurance companies have about $18.7 trillion in assets. Hedge funds manage approximately $1.7 trillion. Sovereign wealth funds control $3.8 trillion. Then there are mutual funds, ETFs, private equity funds, and private wealth funds. Throw in millions of retail investors like you and me and Joe Sixpack and Jiao Sixpack, and we're looking in the rear view mirror at $100 trillion.

I don't know if pension funds will devote that much money to this sector or not. What I do know is that sovereign debt risks are far from over, the U.S. dollar and other currencies will lose considerably more value against gold, interest rates will most certainly rise in the years ahead, and inflation is just getting started. These forces are in place and building, and if there's a paradigm shift in how these managers view gold, look out!

Once fund managers enter the gold market in mass, this tiny sector will light on fire with blazing speed.

My advice is to not just hope you can jump in once these drivers hit the gas, but to claim your seat during the relative calm of this month's level prices.

~Jeff Clark, Casey Research

China May Corner Gold Market

Posted: 10 Mar 2011 03:49 AM PST

Richard Lehmann: China May Corner Gold Market

Thursday, 10 Mar 2011 11:58 AM
Article Font Size

By Dan Weil

China has likely begun a campaign to convert its dollars to gold that could end up with the nation cornering the gold market, says Richard Lehmann, editor of the Forbes/Lehmann Income Security Investor newsletter.

China is alarmed about potential weakness for the dollar, he says in an interview with Steve Forbes.

So "I'm concerned that basically China is probably already on a program to diversify the dollar into gold. I don't think they want any other fiat currencies or want to minimize that amount."

Gold bars

If China buys enough gold, at some point it can simply dictate the price, Lehmann says. And it has the means to do so, given that Chinese currency reserves total almost $3 trillion, and the world's gold supply is now worth about $5 trillion, he says.

So China could "in one stroke, basically take control of the gold market and tie the dollar to gold so that effectively, if every six months the dollar deteriorates 5 percent, they can just upgrade the stated price at which they wanted to buy gold and thereby upgrade and up-value their gold reserves, but also keep the dollar in check."

With plenty of other investors buying gold too, many experts expect it to continue rising. Richard Russell, author of the Dow Theory newsletter, says in a commentary obtained by King World News that the precious metal may reach $6,000 an ounce.

Spot gold was at $1,407.40 an ounce near midday Thursday.

Read more: Richard Lehmann: China May Corner Gold Market

Silver May Rise to $40/oz in March on Tight Supply: Bloomberg Chart of the Day

Posted: 10 Mar 2011 01:30 AM PST

Gold and Silver Parabolics – Part II

Posted: 10 Mar 2011 01:26 AM PST

Stock Market DIVE!

Posted: 10 Mar 2011 01:09 AM PST

Looks like something big is up, or should I say, down. A lot of electronic stops are kicking in causing massive selling. All this cash (dry powder) going to the sidelines. Eventually, will be plowed back into something. I would think "SAFE HAVENS but who knows. The market is so contrived.

This feels like 2008 to me.

mines forecasting metals, not the other word around

Posted: 10 Mar 2011 12:46 AM PST

:confused::confused::confused: anyone else noticed this?

ugh wtf how did I mess up that title so bad? it should read "miners forecasting metals, not the other way around"?

How the Mid-East crisis could kill the dollar

Posted: 10 Mar 2011 12:16 AM PST

From Gonzalo Lira:

In 1848, protests and revolutions swept through Europe. The specific causes were different in each country, but the underlying cause was the same everywhere: The middle and upper middle classes – politically powerless in these absolutist monarchies – wanted more control over their lives.

We are having an 1848 moment in the Middle East: Autocratic governments in two of these countries have been overthrown outright (Tunisia and Egypt), one is sliding into civil war (Libya), and a host of others are teetering. A few other undemocratic governments beyond the Middle East are very worried that their restive populations might get ideas – China, I’m looking at you.

The immediate spark for these revolts has been the rising price of food—but the fuel for this bonfire has been decades of political marginalization for large swathes of the educated population of these Middle Eastern countries.

Autocratic regimes never fare well during economic downturns. The Global Depression that began with the financial crisis in 2008 is slowly but surely picking up a head of inflationary steam, which has been squeezing the middle classes in these countries. A middle class being squeezed economically eventually oozes out political unrest—as we have been seeing throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

Now, in early March 2011, with the fate of these various revolts still unclear, it would be wise to go over them, and see where they are in each country. And it would be wise, too, to examine how these various revolts in the Middle East will affect...

Read full article...

More on the dollar:

How hyperinflation could come to America

The next 10 days could determine the fate of the U.S. dollar

The absolute must-read editorial of the week... of the month

Rare earth prices are soaring... Here's how to play it

Posted: 10 Mar 2011 12:16 AM PST

From Gold Stock Trades:

The Middle East turmoil has created a sell-off in equities and a run to the safe haven assets of precious metals and oil. Even though rare earth prices are soaring, many investors have overlooked a key sector which has pulled back, providing a bargain opportunity before the rare earth crisis intensifies.

U.S. House Rep Mike Coffman from Colorado, joined by 28 Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives sent a letter to the U.S. Trade Representative, demanding he file a complaint with the World Trade Organization against China's export reduction policies of rare earths.

Coffman wrote, "…Rare earths are critical to U.S. national security. Currently, the world is nearly 100 percent reliant on Chinese exports …" Coffman continued in his letter, "While our nation must act to correct our domestic rare earth supply chain problem, we must also recognize that the lack of a level playing field…is harmful."

Coffman mentioned that the United States must act to correct the domestic rare earth supply. Even though there are a few heavy rare earth deposits in North America, there is no separation facility outside China. This facility is crucial in extracting the valuable metal. Avalon Rare Metals (AVL) may be the first to bring separation capabilities, but that is not until 2016, so alternative solutions must be addressed...

Read full article...

More on rare earths:

This tiny new company could supply 25% of the world's rare earth demand

The huge source of power China has over America that no one talks about

Major manufacturer: U.S. facing "impending shortages" in these rare commodities

This could be the most important stock chart in the world today

Posted: 10 Mar 2011 12:09 AM PST

From Jeff Clark in Growth Stock Wire:

Stocks are storing up energy for another big move.

For the past two weeks, the S&P 500 has been confined to a tight trading range between 1,332 on the upside and 1,305 on the downside. The lack of activity has frustrated both bulls and bears, and has coaxed some of the best traders I know off their trading desks and onto the golf course.

"Why should I waste time staring at my quote screen," my friend Jim asked me, "when I get more action out of my 3-wood?"

By the look of the following chart, however, Jim might want to put his clubs back in the bag. The S&P is nearing an inflection point. And when it breaks, it's going to break big.

Take a look…

Read full article (with chart)...

More on stocks:

Marc Faber: Sell stocks now... buy this instead

Doug Casey: Get ready for the junior gold mania

Trader alert: This high-flying stock could be crashing

China adviser says Beijing should buy more gold

Posted: 09 Mar 2011 08:42 PM PST

China adviser says Beijing should buy more gold

Here's another story that I stole from a GATA release yesterday. It's a Reuters piece filed from Beijing...and it's another 'senior economic advisor' being quoted about the fact that China should buy more gold. "China should increase its gold reserves appropriately, and China must take every chance to buy, especially when gold prices fall," senior economist Li Yining was quoted by the official Xinhua news agency as saying. The link is here.

Gold Mania Will Rival Tech Bubble: Rob McEwen

Posted: 09 Mar 2011 08:42 PM PST

¤ Yesterday in Gold and Silver

The smallish rally in gold that started at 9:00 a.m. London time...lasted until about 9:00 a.m in New York when gold reach it's high tick of the day at $1,423.90 spot. From that point on, the gold price met its usual fate...and got sold down to its N.Y. low [$1,423.90 spot] around 11:40 a.m. Eastern.

From that low, gold began to rally, but traded sideways from almost the moment that Comex trading ended...and electronic trading began.

The silver price was more 'volatile' during the Wednesday trading session. The major difference was that silver's high of $36.47 spot came at precisely 9:30 a.m. Eastern before JPMorgan pulled their bids twice...and the price crashed to its low of $35.62 at 11:35 a.m. in New York...an 85 cent price drop in two hours and five minutes.

Silver, like gold, then rallied...but traded sideways shortly after electronic trading began at 1:30 p.m.

The two things to notice about both these gold and silver graphs is the general price activity over all three days. For the most part, both gold and silver rallied during late Far East and London trading until New York trading began on the Comex...then the sell-offs began. Also note that for all three days there were big drops in price going into the London p.m. gold fix at 10:00 a.m.

Nick Laird [with a hat tip to Dimitri Speck] of sharelynx.com made up this graph entitled "Intraday Average Gold Price Movements". The average gold price has been obtained from 4 years of data - from March 2006 through to March 2010...which is approximately 1,000 trading days. Carefully note this price action, compared to the price of action of both metals during the last three trading days. This is the mark of the price management beast.

Click here to enlarge.

The dollar rose a hair until 8:30 a.m. in London trading, before falling to it's low of the day at 7:00 a.m. Eastern time...falling a bit more than 40 basis points during that period...before recovering a bit going into the close of New York trading. It's a big stretch to say that the dollar and gold were joined at the hip yesterday.

The gold stocks started off in positive territory, but couldn't hold up under the selling pressure in gold...and there's no prize for being able to pick the low in the gold price off this chart. The HUI finished down 0.86%...despite the fact that the gold price finished in the black.

Some of the silver stocks got smoked pretty good yesterday...but as I pointed out last week, there's a lot of day/momentum traders in some of these small junior producers...and at the first sign that things aren't going their way...they're gone. I would suspect that that was the case yesterday and Tuesday...but they'll be back on the next big price rally.

The CME's Daily Delivery Report showed that 2 gold, along with 88 silver contracts, were posted for delivery on Friday. The biggest issuer in silver was the Bank of Nova Scotia. There was quite a variety of stoppers...with the largest being Barclays. Here's the link to the action.

For the second day in a row, the GLD ETF reported no changes...and for the third day in a row the SLV ETF took in a big chunk of silver. This time it was 1,952,612 troy ounces. Right now the SLV is reported to be sitting on 352,824,122 ounces of silver...which is a new record high.

The U.S. Mint reported selling another 5,500 ounces of gold eagles yesterday...but did not add to their silver eagle sales. Month-to-date, they have sold 18,500 ounces of gold eagles...along with 668,500 silver eagles.

There was activity in all four Comex warehouses on Tuesday. They reported receiving 592,485 ounces of silver...and shipped out a smallish 92,492 ounces. The link to that action is here.

Washington state reader S.A. was kind enough to provide the 30-year chart of the Gold/Silver Ratio. We aren't at 30-year lows...but we're getting close.

Click here to enlarge.

Another one of my daily readers, who wishes to remain anonymous, made up the following 40-year graph of the Gold/Silver Ratio...but the vertical axis is reversed...showing an upward trend as the ratio gets smaller. This graph shows that we are in a 'bull market' for the Gold/Silver ratio.

Click here to enlarge.

The absolute 'high' was 14.00 in early 1980. I'm sure we'll get there again...it's just a question of how long it takes...and how much we'll exceed the old 'high'.

It was another busy day for my bullion dealer yesterday...and if this keeps up, it should be a record week for silver sales. I think he's only sold a handful of gold maple leafs...and the rest has been silver bullion. I'm sure that this is a scenario that's occurring in every coin and bullion store across North America at the moment. And, when all is said and done, it will be the rapidly increasing investment demand that will drive a stake through the heart of the silver price suppression scheme that JPMorgan et al are currently trying to extricate themselves from.

It will be the rapidly increasing investment demand that will drive a stake through the heart of the silver price suppression scheme.

SLV adds 1,952,612 troy ounces of silver...and is at a new record high. China adviser says Beijing should buy more gold. No Getting Away From It, Swiss Francs and Gold Are Still the Surest Havens: Wall Street Journal.

¤ Critical Reads

Massachusetts mayors, unions debate health care proposals

Today's first story is courtesy of reader Scott Pluschau. It's filed from Boston...and posted over at cnbc.com. Massachusetts mayors are warning state lawmakers that, without dramatic changes to the way municipalities provide health care to their public workers, cities and towns will face dire fiscal straits for the foreseeable future, threatening core local services from police to road repairs.

State governments, squeezed between a lower tax base and rapidly escalating costs for health care, are finding themselves up against the wall...and something's got give. The link is here.

View full GSD edition

Warning Of 'Food Price Riots In The UK'

In a similar light, is this story from Britain that's posted over at the news.sky.com website. A senior economist said the following..."Even in the developed world I think we have very, very low wage growth, so people aren't getting more in their pay packet to compensate them for food and energy, and I think we could see social unrest certainly in parts of the developed world and the UK as well." She would be right about that. The link is here...and I thank reader Scott Pluschau for this story as well.

View full GSD edition

Number Of Underwater Mortgages Rises As More Homeowners Fall Behind

This next story is courtesy of reader Roy Stephens...and is a posting over at the huffingtonpost.com website. About 11.1 million households, or 23.1 percent of all mortgaged homes, were underwater in the October-December quarter, according to report released Tuesday by housing data firm CoreLogic. That's up from 22.5 percent, or 10.8 million households, in the July-September quarter. The link to the story is here.

View full GSD edition

Welfare State: Handouts Make Up One-Third of U.S. Wages

Here's a rather unhappy story that's posted over at cnbc.com...and was sent to me by reader U.D. Government payouts—including Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance—make up more than a third of total wages and salaries of the U.S. population, a record figure that will only increase if action isn't taken before the majority of Baby Boomers enter retirement. The link is here.

View full GSD edition

Another PIMCO fund dumps U.S. government debt

This is a Reuters piece that I 'borrowed' from a GATA release yesterday. PIMCO's Total Return Fund, the world's biggest bond fund, hasgone ultra bearish on the United States, dumping all of its U.S. government-related debt holdings, a source familiar with the fund's holdings said on Wednesday. This is definitely worth the read...and the link is here.

View full GSD edition

Argentina bans inflation from official jargon; inflation of synonyms

Here's a story that falls in the 'You Can't Make This Stuff Up' category...and it was sent to me by Casey Research's own Louis James...and is a posting over at mercopress.com. Next October Argentines will be going to the polls to vote for president and renew Congress which anticipates a rough political eight months, but before that the administration of President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has to weather a round of labour contracts which will be demanding strong adjustments because of the "prices distortion and dispersion" since the word 'inflation' has been erased from the official jargon. The link is here.

View full GSD edition

EU paralysis drives fresh bond rout

Reader Roy Stephens brings us this story that was posted late last night in The Telegraph. Political paralysis in Brussels and monetary tightening by the European Central Bank has set off a fresh spasm of the eurozone bond crisis, pushing spreads on Portuguese, Irish and Greek bonds to post-EMU records. International business editor Ambrose Evans-Pritchard lays it out for us...and it's definitely a must read. The link is here.

View full GSD edition

No Getting Away From It, Swiss Francs and Gold Are Still the Surest Havens

Posted: 09 Mar 2011 08:42 PM PST

No Getting Away From It, Swiss Francs and Gold Are Still the Surest Havens

Washington state reader S.A. provides the next gold-relate story which appeared in yesterday's edition of The Wall Street Journal. In the end, the quest for safe havens most obviously ends up at the doors of gold and the Swiss franc. Gold is hitting record highs daily at the moment and looking extremely comfortable well above the $1,400 per ounce level. Meanwhile the dollar notched up its all-time low against the Swiss franc two weeks ago, and hasn't recovered much poise since.

But it's interesting to note that one of these two is a 150-year old redoubt in times of trouble. The other, well, it's been a store of last-ditch value for millennia.

Whats Going On In The Silver Market: Audio Interview with Harvey Organ

Posted: 09 Mar 2011 06:32 PM PST

Jesse's Cafe

China Surprise

Posted: 09 Mar 2011 05:42 PM PST