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- Video: There's No Tomorrow
- Fort Knox’s Vanishing Act
- Gold Bulls Expand as Billionaire Paulson Says Buy
- Investor Alert - The Enduring Popularity of Gold
- Debt derivatives and gold will explode shortly, von Greyerz tells King World News
- The Collapse of Jon Corzine
- Greece updates/Iran/High amounts of physical silver standing in February/
- David Morgan 2-18
- First Majestic Silver 2-17
- KILL SWITCH: FBI COULD SHUT OFF INTERNET FOR THOUSANDS ON MARCH 8 TO ERADICATE VIRUS
- Gold Demand Trends Show Chinese Growth, Indian Weakness & …
- By the Numbers for the Week Ending February 17
- LISTEN: Bill Murphy on Gold Price Manipulation
- Key Players Buying More Gold Now
- WATCH: Gold 1980 Vs. Today
- James Turk: A short history of the gold cartel
- “Quiet Session” Sees Gold and Silver Flat, ECB Could Create “Dangerous” Two Tier Debt Market
- LISTEN: Ty Andros on The Precious
- LISTEN: Jim Rickards on Central Banking
- LISTEN: Chris Duane on Baby Boomers
- Collections: gregory747′s Gold Coin Collection
- Best of the Web Archives
- Friday ETF Roundup: UNG Surges On Production Cuts, GDX Slips On Gold's Weakness
- tx teacher retirement fund gold manager
- Gold and Silver Disaggregated COT Report (DCOT) for February 17
- Bob Chapman - The Financial Survival - 17 February 2012
- The Recessions We Had To Have … But Didn't
- Two Years Of Euro Fears Have Disappeared
- PIIGS To The Slaughter: After Greece, Portugal
- Another misplaced sneer about gold from The Wall Street Journal
| Posted: 18 Feb 2012 05:10 AM PST The 35-minute video below provides an excellent look at the challenges facing mankind today and in the very near future. The film hits on all of the critical points and offers some practical solutions that anyone can start implementing today. This animated documentary shows how our economic system, by demanding infinite growth on a [...] |
| Posted: 18 Feb 2012 03:29 AM PST The real magic is how we have been duped for so long. http://www.321gold.com/editorials/ko...cha021812.html Hiding the Elephant: Fort Knox's Vanishing Act Kal Kotecha Posted Feb 18, 2012 In one of Harry Houdini's finest moments as a magician, he made a 6,000-pound, Asian elephant disappear – into thin air. Billed as the "world's most incredible conjuring illusion", Houdini swept onto the stage at the New York Hippodrome in 1918 and proclaimed "allow me to introduce Jennie, the world's only vanishing elephant." The elephant was then escorted into a large colored cabinet. The doors were closed. The stage was set and the drum roll began. Moments later, with a flourish, Houdini flung open the doors of the box. Six thousand pounds of elephantine flesh had vanished into thin air. The crowd went wild. In the years that followed, Houdini presented that trick to wide-eyed audiences of a million and more. Magic historian, Jim Steinmeyer, exactingly chronicled this – and other - conjuring tricks in "Hiding the Elephant", an exposé of stage illusions. In 1933, with America five-years deep into The Depression, the stage was set for a magic act of unprecedented proportions. History shows a wicked warlock at work. On March 6, 1933, Executive Order (EO) 6073 was passed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), the 32nd President of the United States in an attempt to solve the dire banking crisis. Executive orders have been around since 1789, allowing Presidents to issue legally binding orders unilaterally, without the consent of Congress. During his Presidential tenure, from 1933 to 1945, Roosevelt would issue 3,728 Executive Orders. This was his third and it was a doozy. Just two days after Roosevelt was inaugurated as President, he proclaimed a "banking holiday". From and including Monday, March 6, 1933 to Thursday, March 9, 1933 no bank "would pay out, export, earmark, or permit the withdrawal or transfer in any manner or by any device whatsoever of any gold or silver coin or bullion or take any other action which might facilitate the hoarding thereof…" Sold to the American people as an attempt to control speculation and regulate interest rates, he closed America's banks, thwarting customers from withdrawing their paper money holdings or converting their holdings to gold. With a swish of his magic wand, Roosevelt mastered "complete control over America's banking system", expanding his Presidential powers exponentially in the process. In his first "Fireside Speech" (which burned the backside of many Americans) on March 12, 1933 Roosevelt declared "Let me make it clear to you that the banks will take care of all needs, except, of course, the hysterical demands of hoarders, and it is my belief that hoarding during the past week has become an exceedingly unfashionable pastime in every part of our nation. It needs no prophet to tell you that when the people find that they can get their money -- that they can get it when they want it for all legitimate purposes -- the phantom of fear will soon be laid. People will again be glad to have their money where it will be safely taken care of and where they can use it conveniently at any time. I can assure you, my friends, that it is safer to keep your money in a reopened bank than it is to keep it under the mattress." On June 16, 1933, EO 6073 passed into legislation as the "Emergency Banking Act (EBA)". After only 40 minutes' debate in the House of Representatives, with an unknown author and no printed copies available for members of the House, the Bill was passed swiftly and without due process. The wand was waved again. At the time, Congressman Lundeen, appalled at the reckless lack of due process involved in the passing of this Bill said "I want to put myself on record against procedure of this kind and against the use of such methods in passing legislation affecting millions of lives and billions of dollars. It seems to me that under this bill thousands of small banks will be crushed and wiped out of existence, and that money and credit control will be still further concentrated in the hands of those who now hold the power…. I am suspicious of this railroading of bills through our House of Representatives, and I refuse to vote for a measure unseen and unknown." Meanwhile, Executive Order 6073 paved the way for Executive Order 6102 on April 5, 1933. This Executive Order (EO) made it a criminal act to possess gold coins, gold bullion and gold certificates within the continental United States and ordered that the hoarded gold be delivered to the Government on or before May 1, 1933. The official price of gold was raised from $20.67 to $35/ounce. Although it is unknown just how much gold was confiscated by means of Executive Order 6102, numbers suggest that by January 1934, there were 195.1 million ounces and 227.9 million ounces by August 1934. The Government had to have some place to hoard the confiscated gold. So, Executive Order 6102 paved the way to Fort Knox. The U.S. Treasury Department began construction of the United States Bullion Depository (USBD) in 1936. Completed in December of that year, at a cost of US$560,000, the Gold Vault sits in a 109,000-acre Army enclave in Fort Knox, Kentucky. The U.S. Mint states that 147.3 million ounces of gold are now tucked into Fort Knox. Guarded by Apache helicopter gunships and tucked into a bunker with a bomb-proof roof and thick granite walls, you'd think that 147.3 million ounces of gold would be safe in the vault. While Treasury officials insist that the "gold is all there", why the resistance to a public audit? Congress begs off, saying it will cost US$60 million to test the gold. Other figures bandied about suggest US$15 million. Other so-called experts contest both figures, stating that an independent audit and assay could be conducted for as little as US$15,000. More nefarious are that the numbers don't add up…and never have. In his article The Great American Disaster: How Much Gold Remains In Fort Knox?, dated August 27, 2010, Chris Weber states that, at their peak in 1949, the Fort Knox reserves reputedly numbered 701 million ounces – 69.9% of all the gold on the planet. The latest figures reported by the U.S. Mint state that 147.3 million ounces of gold are now tucked into Fort Knox. Treasury subsequently downgraded this figure from 264 million ounces of gold, a decline of 79%! Lucy, you got some 'splainin' to do. Clearly, the road to – and from - Fort Knox is paved in gold and not-so-gold intentions. Tales of pillaging, profiteering and skullduggery abound at the crossroads of Bullion Boulevard and Gold Vault Road. Masked interlopers didn't rob the USDB. Reputed to be the second most secure place in the world (as reported in The Blogington's post of September 21, 2010), the video cams, armed guards, attack helicopters, armored personnel carriers, and 30,000 soldiers guarding Fort Knox guaranteed that. For over 50 years, while domestically it was a crime to hold gold, there is little doubt that well-heeled Americans - and America's enemies, operating offshore, were able to procure gold at the bargain basement price of $35/ounce. Not surprising that Fort Knox's 22-ton door is locked to an audit. For almost 40 years, no visitors have been allowed in the grounds of the Gold Depository. Considered one of the eight most secure places in the world, we're not getting in for a sneak peek anytime soon. In the last recorded "audit", in the early 50's, a group of Congressmen and Senators were taken on a quick tour of Fort Knox and allowed to peek into a few vaults. They reported seeing "orange-hued gold bars". Lucy, you got more 'splainin' to do. In his article "The Great American Disaster: How Much Gold Remains In Fort Knox?", Chris Weber outlines details about the one "audit" of Fort Knox, as follows: "The only audit that has ever been done of the gold inside Ft Knox was done days after Dwight Eisenhower became President in January of 1953. After 20 years of Democratic presidents, the American public wanted to be sure that the gold confiscated from them was still there. Thus, the new President ordered an audit within hours after taking office. The central problem was that it wasn't much of an audit. To sum it up: Representatives of the audited group were allowed to make the rules governing the audit. No outside private experts were allowed. Those government bureaucrats involved were inexperienced in their tasks, by their own admission. The entire audit of the largest gold hoard ever concentrated in history lasted only seven days. Only a fraction of the gold was actually tested. Later, the officials put this fraction at just 5%. Based on that fraction, the official committee reported that, in their opinion, all the holdings would have matched their records if they'd all been tested. If the audit was accurate, the fact remains that almost 80% of it went overseas in the coming years. If the audit was not accurate, the amount of gold lost could have been even more. " On September 23, 1974, Mary Brooks, the Director of the United States Mint, led a tour of members of Congress and the news media through the USBD. There was no audit or inventory of the gold and no other public "inspection" has been allowed since then. Why won't the Mint comment about how much gold is there? Perhaps the acid test is not so much as what has happened to the gold in Fort Knox; but rather is there gold in Fort Knox? And if so, how much…..or how little? In a feat worthy of The Great Houdini himself, the Fort Knox gold may be the World's Greatest Vanishing Act ever. |
| Gold Bulls Expand as Billionaire Paulson Says Buy Posted: 18 Feb 2012 01:30 AM PST ¤ Yesterday in Gold and SilverThe gold price did approximately nothing during the Friday trading day...at least not until shortly before the equity markets opened in New York at 9:30 a.m. At that point, not-for-profit sellers took it upon themselves to knock $15 off the price going into the London p.m. gold fix at 10:00 a.m. Eastern time. From there, the gold price recovered a bit, only to get sold down again, with the low of the day [$1,716.40 spot] coming shortly after 11:00 a.m. in New York. Then the gold price rallied a few dollars until the Comex trading session closed at 1:30 p.m...and from that point on, gold flat-lined during the electronic trading session that followed. From it's New York high to its New York low, gold got sold off about twenty-one dollars. Gold closed at $1,723.80 spot...down five bucks on the day. Net volume was very light...around 104,000 contracts.
Silver's price path was virtually identical. Like gold, silver had a brief spike to its high of the day...$33.80 spot...at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time, but got hit immediately...and then, at the same time as gold, the silver price got sold off, with the low of the day [$32.97 spot] coming sometime between 11:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. in New York. The subsequent...and very tiny rally...ended at the Comex close...and silver, too, traded sideways for the rest of the session. From its New York high to its New York low, silver got sold off about 83 cents, or 2.46%. Silver closed at $33.28 spot...down 24 cents on the day. Net volume was also pretty light...around 29,000 contracts.
Here's the New York Spot Silver [Bid] chart on its own. Note the 8:30 a.m. price spike to $33.80 spot...which got smacked in a heartbeat. Gold had a similar spike at the very same moment, but not as big. It's hard to pick out the exact bottom tick...but it looks like a few minutes past high noon in New York to me. If you examine Kitco's 24-hour chart above against this New York chart below, you can see just how much fine detail gets lost when looking at the big picture chart on its own.
The dollar index didn't do much...although it did decline 25 basis points right up until 9:30 a.m. Eastern time...and then in the space of forty minutes gained it all back...and closed unchanged from Thursday. The sell-off in both gold and silver started about ten minutes before the dollars index's little 25 basis points rally began at 9:30 a.m...and the sell-off in both metals continued long after the 30-minute dollar index rally ended, which was just minutes after 10:00 a.m. Eastern. It all looked a little too contrived for my liking...but as I've said on several occasions, maybe I'm looking for black bears in dark rooms that aren't there. I'll leave it up to you to draw your own conclusions...and I have more to say about this in 'The Wrap' further down.
The gold stocks opened in positive territory, but that didn't last long, as the sell off in gold that had begun just ten minutes before the equity markets opened, soon turned the metal price and their associated shares into negative territory...and that was it for the day. The stocks pretty much followed the lead of the gold price itself...and the HUI closed down 1.24%...giving up half of its Thursday gains.
The silver stocks finished mixed...and Nick Laird's Silver Sentiment index closed down 1.05%.
(Click on image to enlarge) The CME Daily Delivery Report showed that only 1 gold and 57 silver contracts were posted for delivery on Wednesday. It was the same threesome in silver as usual...Jefferies as the short/issuer...and the Bank of Nova Scotia and JPMorgan as the long/stoppers. The link to this action is here. There were no reported changes in either GLD or SLV on Friday...and no sales report from the U.S. Mint, either. Over at the Comex-approved depositories on Thursday, they reported receiving only 7,491 ounces of silver...and shipped 329,691 troy ounces out the door. The Commitment of Traders Report, for positions held at the close of trading on Valentine's Day, was a bit of a surprise...and both Ted Butler and myself were trying to sort out what it really meant during our daily phone conversation yesterday. Despite the fact that there was virtually no price movement in silver during the reporting week, the Commercial net short position rose by another 2,660 contracts, which translates into 13.3 million ounces of silver. The total Commercial net short position now sits at 186.6 million ounces of silver...up over 105 million ounces from its late December low. I was not happy to see this...and neither was Ted. He said that the small commercial traders sold another 1,600 of their long positions...and JPMorgan went short another 1,400 contracts. JPMorgan, all by itself, now appears to hold a short position of more than 25% of the entire Comex futures market in silver. If silver's COT numbers were a surprise...the gold numbers were a surprise in the other direction. The Commercial net short position in gold declined by a very chunky 11,664 contracts, or 1.16 million ounces. Like silver, the gold price did very little during the reporting week. Why the dichotomy between the metals? Beats me. Off the top of his head, Ted couldn't make any sense out of it either...but maybe he'll have an answer in his weekend report, which he'll be sending out to his paying subscribers later today. If he does, I'll steal it...and post it in my next column. Here's a chart that some kind reader sent me about a week ago. It's been posted on my desktop for so long, I've forgotten who sent it to me. The graph is self-explanatory.
I have the usual number of stories...and quite a number of them I've been saving for Saturday's column because of content or length. They're definitely worth the read, so I hope you have time to spend on them over the weekend. Despite the happy surprise in the COT for gold yesterday, I am getting concerned about the Commercial short position in silver. John Williams: $8,890 Gold, $517 Silver & Hyperinflation Update. Colorado looking at gold, silver currency. Debt derivatives and gold will explode shortly: Egon von Greyerz ¤ Critical ReadsSubscribeVolcker Said to Lobby SEC Chief PersonallyFormer Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker met in person with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Schapiro this week to discuss the proposed ban on proprietary trading named for him, according to a person familiar with the meeting. Volcker, 84, has been a prominent advocate for the ban, which he asserts would curb the kind of risky trading that contributed to the 2008 financial crisis. "Proprietary trading of financial instruments -- essentially speculative in nature -- engaged in primarily for the benefit of limited groups of highly paid employees and of stockholders does not justify the taxpayer subsidy implicit in routine access to Federal Reserve credit, deposit insurance or emergency support," Volcker wrote in a commentary submitted to regulators Feb. 13th. This Bloomberg story was posted on their website yesterday afternoon...and I thank West Virginia reader Elliot Simon for sending it along. It's certainly worth the read...and the link is here.  Jim Rogers: Don't Pay Governments Much AttentionInvestors shouldn't pay "much attention" to what governments are doing, well-known investor Jim Rogers, CEO and Chairman of Rogers Holdings, told CNBC Friday. "If you listen to governments, then you are not going to make a lot of money. Governments lie, distort and make mistakes," he said. Investors should focus on "real assets" like commodities to deal with continuing worries of another downturn, he added. "My way of playing this is to own real assets like commodities," he said "You now have the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, the Federal Reserve printing money. The way to protect yourself at a time like this is to own assets." Rogers added that he thinks silver looks more attractive than gold at the moment because of the sustained rise in the gold price. This story was posted on the cnbc.com website yesterday...and is another contribution from Elliot Simon. The link is here.  A New Bull Market? - Doug NolandBut don't count me bullish. I see no holes in the analysis that this is an ongoing slow train wreck – the unfolding worst-case-scenario. The European financial and economic crisis will not be resolved anytime soon (think post-Bubble Japan). Greece is an unmitigated disaster and, throughout Europe, economic structure now (in a post Credit boom backdrop) matters. I don't see how such dissimilar economic structures (and social and political systems), say between Italy and Germany, are consistent with a common currency. LTRO only buys time. China is, as well, an accident in the making. I look at the global backdrop and see all the makings for a major, major market top. It's just impossible to know how far away – both in time and price – we are from such an outcome. I don't envisage a new bull market – but instead see the same type of manic marketplace that brought us the 2010 "flash crash" and the 2011 10-day market shellacking. Doug Noland's Credit Bubble Bulletin every Friday is a must read for me...and it should be for you as well. I thank reader U.D. for sending me yesterday's edition that's posted over at the prudentbear.com website...and the link is here.  The Collapse of Jon CorzineOn December 15, Jon Corzine (D-NJ), former CEO of the suddenly bankrupt commodities and futures brokerage firm MF Global, finished three days of testimony before the House Financial Services Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee. This followed the December 2nd decision of the House Agriculture Committee to subpoena Corzine after a request for a voluntary appearance went unanswered. Two other congressional committees subpoenaed Corzine in the next several days. To say that it is unusual for Congress to issue a subpoena to a former United States senator (and, in this case, governor) is an understatement. As an Associated Press article noted, "Congressional historians and Capitol Hill insiders can't recall another time when a former member of Congress was summoned by his former peers to testify about a matter under federal investigation." In fact, the move was so rare that even the New York Times, Washington Post, and Politico—each of which had reported remarkably little on the eighth largest bankruptcy in our nation's history and America's biggest financial failure since Lehman Brothers—had to take notice. The bankruptcy was caused by Corzine's decision (if I may borrow a phrase from Corzine's good friend, President Barack Obama) to fundamentally transform MF Global from a sizeable but relatively staid commodities brokerage firm into a gambling enterprise. MF, which was spun off from the British firm Man Financial in 2007, not only risked the firm's own money but then used customers' funds to plug the holes when Corzine's massive speculative purchases of European government debt went south. Fundamentally transforming something that was already working pretty well is perhaps not the best strategy for success. Having read Roger Lowenstein's classic 2001 tome...When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management shortly after it was published, I was already well aware of this creature called Jon Corzine, as Roger did not paint a flattering picture of him, or Goldman Sachs, even back in those days. This 3-page exposé on Corzine showed up as the feature article in the February edition of The American Spectator...and I thank Washington state reader S.A. for digging up this absolute must read on our behalf. The link is here.  Creeping Fascism, Part One: Return of the Company TownThe US government's obliteration of the Bill of Rights via the Patriot Act, the recent defense bill that allows the military to detain citizens indefinitely without trial, the health care law that forces citizens to buy insurance, and the attempted takeover of the Internet through SOPA and PIPA has gotten a lot of attention lately, and in a few rare cases has generated some effective push-back. But according to an article in this month's Harper's Magazine (Killing the competition: How the new monopolies are destroying open markets, by Barry C. Lynn), US corporations are evolving into forms that are more threatening to their victims than anything emanating from Washington. As the author characterizes it, a new generation of monopolists ar |
| Investor Alert - The Enduring Popularity of Gold Posted: 18 Feb 2012 01:30 AM PST  The World Gold Council (WGC) reaffirmed the power of the Love Trade in its 2011 Gold Demand Trends report released this week. Gold demand grew 0.4 percent in 2011 despite a 28 percent year-over-year increase in bullion's average price. After flirting with the top spot for some time, China emerged as the world's largest gold market for jewelry and investment during the fourth quarter of 2011 as demand in India weakened. This is the first time China's demand outpaced India's in 11 quarters. However, India did retain the gold demand crown for the entire year, purchasing 933 tons compared to China's demand of 770 tons. |
| Debt derivatives and gold will explode shortly, von Greyerz tells King World News Posted: 18 Feb 2012 01:30 AM PST  Fund manager Egon von Greyerz, was interviewed by King World News yesterday...and he expects debt derivatives to start exploding across Europe and the United States soon, and gold to end its consolidation phase and to start moving up again as soon as next week. Let's hope he's right. An excerpt from the interview is posted at the KWN website...and the link is here. |
| Posted: 18 Feb 2012 01:30 AM PST  On December 15, Jon Corzine (D-NJ), former CEO of the suddenly bankrupt commodities and futures brokerage firm MF Global, finished three days of testimony before the House Financial Services Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee. This followed the December 2nd decision of the House Agriculture Committee to subpoena Corzine after a request for a voluntary appearance went unanswered. Two other congressional committees subpoenaed Corzine in the next several days. To say that it is unusual for Congress to issue a subpoena to a former United States senator (and, in this case, governor) is an understatement. |
| Greece updates/Iran/High amounts of physical silver standing in February/ Posted: 18 Feb 2012 12:41 AM PST This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Posted: 17 Feb 2012 07:49 PM PST Below is our interview with David Morgan, Editor of the Morgan Report at Silver-Investor.com. Dave is one of the top precious metals analysts in the world. David's Bio: Seduced by silver at the tender age of 11, David Morgan started investing in the stock market while still a teenager. A precious metals aficionado armed with degrees in finance and economics as well as engineering, he created the Silver-Investor.com website and originated The Morgan Report, a monthly that covers economic news, overall financial health of the global economy, currency problems ahead and reasons for investing in precious metals. David considers himself a big-picture macroeconomist whose main job as education (educating people about honest money and the benefits of a sound financial system) and his second job as teaching people to be patient and have conviction in their investment holdings. A dynamic, much-in-demand speaker all over the globe, David's educational mission also makes him a prolific author having penned "Get the Skinny on Silver Investing" available as an e-book or through Amazon.com. As publisher of The Morgan Report, he has appeared on CNBC, Fox Business, and BNN in Canada. He has been interviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Futures Magazine, The Gold Report and numerous other publications. Additionally, he provides the public a tremendous amount of information by radio and television.
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| Posted: 17 Feb 2012 07:10 PM PST Below is our interview with Keith Neumeyer, founder and CEO of First Majestic Silver. The company is a sponsor of TheDailyGold. First Majestic Silver Corp. is committed to building a senior Silver producing mining company based on an aggressive development and acquisition plan with a focus on Mexico. The Company presently owns and operates three producing silver mines in Mexico; the La Parrilla Silver Mine, the San Martin Silver Mine and the La Encantada Silver Mine. Production from these three mines is anticipated to be between 8.9 to 9.4 million ounces of silver equivalents or 8.3 to 8.7 million ounces of pure silver in 2012.
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| KILL SWITCH: FBI COULD SHUT OFF INTERNET FOR THOUSANDS ON MARCH 8 TO ERADICATE VIRUS Posted: 17 Feb 2012 05:34 PM PST Sigh.... KILL SWITCH: FBI COULD SHUT OFF INTERNET FOR THOUSANDS ON MARCH 8 TO ERADICATE VIRUS It's a scary thought, having the Internet forcibly shut off for you. But it's just what some Fortune 500 companies and government agencies could face as the Federal Bureau of Investigation tries to get rid of an extremely malicious computer virus. Krebs on Security reports that the malware — DNSChanger Trojan — infected more than 4 million computes in more than 100 countries thanks to the work of six men who were arrested in Estonia for the crime in Nov. 2011. Gizmodo reports that the virus causes the user to be sent to fraudulent websites by changing DNS settings and even prevents them from visiting security sites that could help rid them of the virus. (Related: Seven charged for infecting 4 million computers with 'false advertising' malware) In the United States, a half a million computers were reportedly infected with a security firm finding at least one infection in half of the Fortune 500 companies and 27 government agencies. What's to be done? Krebs on Security reports that any computer still infected by March 8, 2012, will have Internet service disconnected from it: "Yes, there are challenges with removing this malware, but you would think people would want to get this cleaned up," said Rod Rasmussen, president and chief technology officer at Internet Identity. "This malware was sometimes bundled with other stuff, but it also turns off antivirus software on the infected machines and blocks them from getting security updates from Microsoft." Computers still infected with DNSChanger are up against a countdown clock. As part of the DNSChanger botnet takedown, the feds secured a court order to replace the Trojan's DNS infrastructure with surrogate, legitimate DNS servers. But those servers are only allowed to operate until March 8, 2012. Unless the court extends that order, any computers still infected with DNSChanger may no longer be able to browse the Web. Rasmussen said there are still millions of PCs infected with DNSChanger. "At this rate, a lot of users are going to see their Internet break on March 8." Krebs reports the FBI saying that it is currently working on ideas to minimize impact on users in that event. Rasmussen says that cleanup, even if the deadline is extended, will still take a long time given the number of computers and says in addition to being "an interesting social experiment", it would be a faster fix. Gizmodo reports that once you know you're computer has a problem, that the fix isn't too painful or time consuming. You can check to see if you've been "victimized" here. U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in November that this case was first of its kind because the suspects set up their own "rogue" servers to secretly reroute Internet traffic to sites where they had a cut of the advertising revenue. "Without the computer users' knowledge or permission, the malware digitally hijacked the infected computers to facilitate the fraud," the indictment says. Once their computers were infected, people seeking to visit Netflix, the IRS, ESPN, Amazon and other legitimate sites were redirected to sites where the defendants collected income for each click on an ad, authorities said. The malware and corrupted servers also allowed the defendants to substitute legitimate ads on other websites with replacement ads that earned them more illicit income, they added. http://www.theblaze.com/stories/kill...adicate-virus/ |
| Gold Demand Trends Show Chinese Growth, Indian Weakness & … Posted: 17 Feb 2012 05:27 PM PST |
| By the Numbers for the Week Ending February 17 Posted: 17 Feb 2012 02:53 PM PST HOUSTON -- Just below is this week's closing table.
That is all for now, but there is more to come. |
| LISTEN: Bill Murphy on Gold Price Manipulation Posted: 17 Feb 2012 12:03 PM PST Bill Murphy of GATA talks with Daniel of futuremoneytrends. from VisionVictory: ~TVR |
| Key Players Buying More Gold Now Posted: 17 Feb 2012 12:02 PM PST
Investor appetite for gold is heating up, in part because of signals from hedge fund guru John Paulson, the guy who saw the real estate meltdown coming in 2007 and became a billionaire as a result. The Paulson & Co. founder "told investors it's time to buy the metal as protection against inflation caused by government spending," Bloomberg reported today. "By the time inflation becomes evident, gold will probably have moved, which implies that now is the time to build a position in gold," New-York based Paulson said in a letter to investors obtained by Bloomberg. Armel Leslie, a spokesman for Paulson, declined to comment. Bloomberg reported that 12 of 22 companies surveyed had a buy on gold, with five surveyed neutral. Paulson & Co., the largest owner of the SPDR Gold Trust Exchange Traded Fund, which trades in gold futures, cut its position in 2011, Bloomberg reported earlier, probably to cover losses in securities. |
| Posted: 17 Feb 2012 12:02 PM PST |
| James Turk: A short history of the gold cartel Posted: 17 Feb 2012 11:54 AM PST James Turk: A short history of the gold cartel By James Turk, Editor Freemarket Gold & Money Report http://www.fgmr.com/ http://www.gata.org/node/7402 This week Bill Murphy and Chris Powell, co-founders of the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc. (www.gata.org), will be in London, England. Their trip is part of GATA's ongoing effort to raise awareness of the gold cartel and its surreptitious intervention in the gold market. Bill and Chris will meet with the British news media to explain GATA's findings. They will also attend an important fund-raising event being held in support of GATA's work. Their trip is another important step by GATA aimed at creating a free market in gold, one which is unfettered by government intervention. Governments want a low gold price to make national currencies look good. Gold is recognizable the world over as the "canary in the coal mine" when it comes to money. A rising gold price blurts the unpleasant truth that a national currency is being poorly managed and that its purchasing power is being inflated. This reality is made clear by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. Commenting in his memoirs about the soaring gold price in the years immediately following the end of the gold standard in 1971, he notes: "Joint intervention in gold sales to prevent a steep rise in the price of gold, however, was not undertaken. That was a mistake." It was a "mistake" because a rising gold price undermines the thin reed upon which all fiat currency rests -- confidence. But it was a mistake only from the perspective of a central banker, which is of course at odds with anyone who believes in free markets. The U.S. government has learned from experience and has taken Volcker's advice. Given the U.S. dollar's role as the world's reserve currency, the U.S. government has the most to lose if the market chooses gold over fiat currency and erodes the government's stranglehold on the monopolistic privilege it has awarded to itself of creating "money." So the U.S. government intervenes in the gold market to make the dollar look worthy of being the world's reserve currency when of course it is not equal to the demands of that esteemed role. The U.S. government does this by trying to keep the gold price low, but this is an impossible task. In the end, gold always wins -- that is, its price inevitably climbs higher as fiat currency is debased, which is a reality understood and recognized by government policymakers. So recognizing the futility of capping the gold price, they instead compromise by letting the gold price rise somewhat, say, 15 percent per year. In fact, against the dollar, gold is actually up 16.3 percent per year on average for the last eight years. In battlefield terms, the U.S. government is conducting a managed retreat for fiat currency in an attempt to control gold's advance. Though it has let the gold price rise, gold has risen by less than it would in a free market because the purchasing power of the dollar continues to be inflated and because gold remains so undervalued notwithstanding its annual appreciation this decade. These gains started from gold's historic low valuation in 1999. Gold may not be as good a value as it was in 1999 but it nevertheless remains extremely undervalued. For example, until the end of the 19th century, approximately 40 percent of the world's money supply consisted of gold, and the remaining 60 percent was national currency. As governments began to usurp the money-issuing privilege and intentionally diminish gold's role, fiat currency's role expanded by the mid-20th century to approximately 90 percent. The inflationary policies of the 1960s, particularly in the United States, further eroded gold's role to 2 percent by the time the last remnants of the gold standard were abandoned in 1971. Gold's importance rebounded in the 1970s, which caused Volcker to lament the so-called mistakes of policymakers. Its percentage rose to nearly 10 percent by 1980. But gold's share of the world money supply thereafter declined, reaching about 1 percent in 1999. Today it still remains below 2 percent. From this analysis it is reasonable to conclude that gold should comprise at least 10 percent of the world's money supply. Because it is nowhere near that level, gold is undervalued. So given the ongoing dollar debasement being pursued by U.S. policymakers, keeping gold from exploding upward to a true free-market price is the first thing they gain from their interventions in the gold market. The other thing they gain is time. The time they gain enables them to keep their fiat scheme afloat so they can benefit from it, delaying until some future administration the scheme's inevitable collapse. So how does the U.S. government manage the gold price? They recruit Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, and Deutsche Bank to do it, by executing trades to pursue the U.S. government's aims. These banks are the gold cartel. I don't believe that there are any other members of the cartel, with the possible exception of Citibank as a junior member. The cartel acts with the implicit backing of the U.S. government, which absorbs all losses that may be taken by the cartel members as they manage the gold price and which further provides whatever physical metal is required to execute the cartel's trading strategy. How did the gold cartel come about? There was an abrupt change in government policy around 1990. It was introduced by then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan to bail out the banks back then, which, as now, were insolvent. Taxpayers were already on the hook for hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out the collapsed "savings and loan" industry, so adding to this tax burden was untenable. Greenspan therefore came up with an alternative. Greenspan saw the free market as a golden goose with essentially unlimited deep pockets, and more to the point, saw that these pockets could be picked by the U.S. government using its tremendous weight, namely, its financial resources for timed interventions in the free market, combined with its propaganda power by using the news media. In short, it was easier to bail out the insolvent banks back then by gouging ill-gained profits from the free markets instead of raising taxes. Banks generated these profits through the Federal Reserve's steepening of the yield curve, which kept long-term interest rates relatively high while lowering short-term rates. To earn this wide spread, banks leveraged themselves to borrow short-term and use the proceeds to buy long-term paper. This mismatch of assets and liabilities became known as the carry trade. The Japanese yen was a particular favorite to borrow. The Japanese stock market had crashed in 1990 and the Bank of Japan was pursuing a zero-interest-rate policy to try reviving the Japanese economy. A U.S. bank could borrow Japanese yen for 0.2 percent and buy U.S. T-notes yielding more than 8 percent, pocketing the spread, which did wonders for bank profits and rebuilding the bank capital base. Gold also became a favorite vehicle to borrow because of its low interest rate. This gold came from central bank coffers, but central banks refused to disclose how much gold they were lending, making the gold market opaque and ripe for intervention by central bankers making decisions behind closed doors. The amount lent by central banks has been reliably estimated in various analyses published by GATA as between 12,000 and 15,000 tonnes, nearly half of total central bank gold holdings and four to six times annual gold mine production of 2,500 tonnes. The banks clearly jumped feet first into the gold carry trade. The carry trade was a gift to the banks from the Federal Reserve, and all was well provided that the yen and gold did not rise against the dollar, because this mismatch of dollar assets and yen or gold liabilities was not hedged. Alas, both gold and the yen began to strengthen, which, if allowed to rise high enough, would force marked-to-market losses on those carry-trade positions in the banks. It was a major problem because the losses of the banks could be considerable, given the magnitude of the carry trade. So the gold cartel was created to manage the gold price, and all went well at first, given the help it received from the Bank of England in 1999 to sell half of its gold holdings. Gold was driven to historic lows, as noted above, but this low gold price created its own problem. Gold became so unbelievably cheap that value hunters around the world recognized the exceptional opportunity it offered and demand for physical gold began to climb. As demand rose, another more intractable and unforeseen problem arose for the gold cartel. The gold borrowed from the central banks had been melted down and turned into coins, small bars, and monetary jewelry that were acquired by countless individuals around the world. This gold was now in "strong hands," and these gold owners would part with it only at a much higher price. So where would the gold come from to repay the central banks? While the yen is a fiat currency and can be created out of thin air by the Bank of Japan, gold is a tangible asset. How could the banks repay all the gold they borrowed without causing the gold price to soar, worsening the marked-to-market losses on their remaining positions? In short, the banks were in a predicament. The Federal Reserve's policies were debasing the dollar, and the "canary in the coal mine" was warning of the loss of purchasing power. So Greenspan's policy of using interventions in the market to bail out banks morphed yet again. The gold borrowed from central banks would not be repaid after all, because obtaining the physical gold to repay the loans would cause the gold price to soar. So beginning this decade, the gold cartel would conduct the government's managed retreat, allowing the gold price to move generally higher in the hope that, basically, people wouldn't notice. Given gold's "canary in a coal mine" function, a rising gold price creates demand for gold, and a rapidly rising gold price would worsen the marked-to-market losses of the gold cartel. So the objective is to allow the gold price to rise around 15 percent per year while enabling the gold cartel members to intervene in the gold market with implicit government backing in order to earn profits to offset the growing losses on their gold liabilities. The gold cartel's trading strategy to accomplish this task is clear. The gold cartel reverse-engineers the black-box trend-following trading models. Just look at the losses taken by some of the major commodity trading managers on their gold trading over the last decade. It is hundreds of millions of dollars of client money lost, and the same amount gained for the gold cartel to help offset their losses from the gold carry trade -- all to make the dollar look good by keeping the gold price lower than it should be and would be if it were allowed to trade in a market unfettered by government intervention. As I see it there are only two outcomes. Either the gold cartel will fail or the U.S. government will have destroyed what remains of the free market in America. I hope it is the former, but the flow of events from Washington and the actions of policymakers suggest it could be the latter. |
| “Quiet Session” Sees Gold and Silver Flat, ECB Could Create “Dangerous” Two Tier Debt Market Posted: 17 Feb 2012 11:51 AM PST
"Quiet Session" Sees Gold and Silver Flat, ECB Could Create "Dangerous" Two Tier Debt Market SPOT MARKET prices for buying gold held just above $1730 an ounce during flat trading this morning in London, as speculation continued over whether a Greek bailout will be agreed next week. Prices for buying silver were also very flat – hovering above $33.50 an ounce – as were those for commodities and stocks ahead of President's Day in the US on Monday. "A quiet session," said one Hong Kong gold dealer this morning. Heading into the weekend, the price of buying gold was up less than half of one percent on the week by Friday lunchtime, with silver also showing very little movement from last Friday's close. German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble has reportedly called for Greece to be allowed to default. Chancellor Angela Merkel is firmly against such a development, according to press reports. "Schaeuble doesn't think the Greeks can deliver any more [austerity measures]," an official from Merkel's CDU party tells the Financial Times. Schaeuble has also this week suggested Greece should postpone general elections scheduled for April and install a technocrat government. Eurozone finance ministers are due to meet Monday to discuss Greece's second bailout, with Germany, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Finland – all rated AAA by ratings agencies – calling for increased permanent supervision of Greece's fiscal affairs. "The one thing we should take away from Lehman Brothers," former US Treasury secretary Henry Paulson said this week, "is you don't want a big systemic institution to fail in a messy way, and you clearly don't want that to happen with a [Euro] member state." "We expect [gold's sideways] trend to continue into the weekend, as participants remain wary of taking on new positions ahead of Monday's Eurozone meeting," says today's note from Standard Bank commodities strategist Marc Ground. The German parliament is expected to vote on any bailout deal on February 27. If enough members of Merkel's coalition government oppose the measure, she may need to rely on opposition Social Democrat and Green votes. Elsewhere in Germany, Merkel's personal choice for the ceremonial role of German president resigned today amid allegations he misled parliament over a €500,000 loan to buy a house. The European Central Bank meantime is expected to swap its existing Greek bonds for new ones that would not tie it to any collective action clauses to which private investors would be subject. This means the ECB would be protected from taking losses on its holdings – an event that ECB "In Europe, all bond holders are equal, but the ECB is more equal than others, apparently," says Thomas Costerg, London-based economist at Standard Chartered bank. "This could set a dangerous precedent, and, by creating a de-facto two-tier market, this could discourage investment in other peripheral debt markets." If private sector Greek bond losses are deemed to be involuntary, this could also trigger payments on credit default swaps, which act as a form of debt insurance. "The probability of triggering CDS has increased because the ECB has protected itself," says Padhraic Garvey, head of developed-market debt at Amsterdam-based ING Groep. The United States meantime has no plans to give additional money to the International Monetary Fund, US Treasury undersecretary for international affairs Lael Brainard told the Senate banking Committee Thursday. US consumer price inflation dropped to an annual rate of 2.9% last month, according to figures published Friday – down from 3.0% in December. China's central bank may have been buying gold in the fourth quarter of last year, according to a report in Friday's FT. Elsewhere in China, a huge stockpile of silver bullion has built up in the country, according to investment bank analysis this week. Ben Traynor Gold value calculator | Buy gold online at live prices Editor of Gold News, the analysis and investment research site from world-leading gold ownership service BullionVault, Ben Traynor was formerly editor of the Fleet Street Letter, the UK's longest-running investment letter. A Cambridge economics graduate, he is a professional writer and editor with a specialist interest in monetary economics. (c) BullionVault 2011 Please Note: This article is to inform your thinking, not lead it. Only you can decide the best place for your money, and any decision you make will put your money at risk. Information or data included here may have already been overtaken by events – and must be verified elsewhere – should you choose to act on it.
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| LISTEN: Ty Andros on The Precious Posted: 17 Feb 2012 11:45 AM PST
Things are going down at an escalating rate according to Traderview.com's Ty Andros. He believes the US and the World economies are contracting at rising rates. This is why the debt can't be paid. Real economic growth, which allows for servicing and repayment of debt is non-existent. Of course, if you just rely upon the official government statistics, you won't realize this. But when inflation is properly calculated, deliberate distortions, like implied rent being treated as income, are factored out and the picture looks quite bleak. Ty has said it before and so have many of our guests, buying gold and silver is the only way for the average working person to secure his/her future. We've repeated this admonition to you so many times in the past, but it really can never be repeated enough. Look at the average American or citizen from virtually an country; they own little or no precious metals. If they were fortunate enough to get the family sterling silver passed down through the generations, this could well be their economic salvation in the coming hard times. Thinking outside the box, and finding new ways to realize value from what you own and the services you can provide are the keys to prosperity in any economic depression. Don't sell your metals until you absolutely have to–this is sound advice that will make all the difference. Much more @ KerryLutz.com or @ 347.460.LUTZ |
| LISTEN: Jim Rickards on Central Banking Posted: 17 Feb 2012 11:40 AM PST
Jim Rickards joined the Financial Survival Network to discuss his new book Currency Warsand to discuss the eventual dropping of the fiat money standard. Virtually everyone who doesn't reside in Washington, DC or Wall Street understands that Nixon's closing of the Gold Window 40 years ago, has helped create the unstable economic and monetary conditions the world is now experiencing. At some point, either an economic collapse or a world monetary agreement is going to put the experiment out of our collective misery. Jim doesn't see an economically enlightened leader stepping forward to lead the world into a new Golden Age. So that means that a collapse and resulting chaos are probably going to cause the inevitable transition. Jim states for the record, and it is a well established fact, "a Central Bank is not mandatory." The US got along just fine during the 1800′s after President Andrew Jackson disbanded the Second Bank of the United States. In fact on his death bed, Jackson said he was most proud of his victory of central banking. The problem is that mankind doesn't learn from history until it's too late. And that will probably be the case here. Much more @ KerryLutz.com or @ 347.460.LUTZ |
| LISTEN: Chris Duane on Baby Boomers Posted: 17 Feb 2012 11:37 AM PST
Chris Duane and I sit down after an enormously successful roundtable with David Morgan to discuss the market for enlightened free trade. While things on many fronts appear to be getting worse, and freedom appears to be under every increasing attack, more and more people are coming to understand the failure of the current economic and political paradigm and are seeking answers. That's why Chris, Sean (SGTReport), BrotherJohnF and so many others are finding ever larger audiences for their ideas and answers. As Chris explains it, the BabyBoomers–of which yours truly is a member–are about to go down the economic river without a paddle. People who just a few years ago were looking forward to a comfortable and dignified retirement are now facing a lifetime of toil and hard labor. Retirement nest eggs have been devastated. According to Chris, the only hope is the immediate purchase of 1000 ounces of silver. Once the dollar experiences its ultimate demise, this amount of silver should be the ticket to many retirements, in style and with self-respect. While the future price of silver is always a matter of conjecture, its past increase has been meteoric, going from $4 per ounce a decade ago to $33 now. Much more @ KerryLutz.com or @ 347.460.LUTZ |
| Collections: gregory747′s Gold Coin Collection Posted: 17 Feb 2012 10:29 AM PST TVR salutes goldbug Gregory, the first in a new "collections" series. from gregory747: Invest in gold or silver. Get the facts before you buy, educate yourself online. Getting an education about your investments could protect you through a world economic crisis buying gold and silver. I can't tell you what to do because you have to decide for yourself if buying gold and or silver is right for you. How do you know if investing in precious metals is right for you? Well if you have lost money by keeping cash deposited in a bank when our country is printing dollars. This inflation is a form of taxation, known as inflation tax. The wealth transfer, Obama's Wealth Redistribution. The idea of the redistribution of wealth, especially for people who don't consider themselves wealthy. |
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| Friday ETF Roundup: UNG Surges On Production Cuts, GDX Slips On Gold's Weakness Posted: 17 Feb 2012 10:15 AM PST By Jarred Cummans: Today saw markets end slightly up as investors anxiously await next week's holiday shortened string of trading days. Markets were rather calm as the world holds its breath for the outcome of Monday's meeting of European officials who will either sign off on a Greek debt deal or reject the proposed package, which could shatter equities. Friday's trading session saw both the Dow and S&P finish in positive territory to cap off weeks in which both indexes grew by more than 1%. The Dow is dangerously close to breaking through the coveted 13,000 level with just 10 points to go, as it is currently sitting at highs not seen for over three years. On that note, the Nasdaq closed at a decade high yesterday, falling in line with the rally that many have enjoyed to start off the year. Despite the bullish momentum on Wall Street, many are calling for Complete Story » |
| tx teacher retirement fund gold manager Posted: 17 Feb 2012 10:05 AM PST a little color behind the reports of trs investing in gold http://www.bullioninternational.com/...street_journal The 44-year-old pension-fund manager from Texas, who spoke recently at a gold conference in Berlin, caused a stir among the roomful of gold aficionados. His provocation: A book that predicts the price of the precious metal could soar to $10,000 an ounce, more than seven times its current price. Mr. McGuire's view isn't idle prognostication. He runs a $330 million gold portfolio at the Teacher Retirement System of Texas. Mr. McGuire's forecast, which he made in the recently released book, "Hard Money," makes him a very far outlier. Most on Wall Street consider the prediction outlandish. "If you missed" gold's recent run-up "you have to come up with some pretty sophisticated reasons to buy" now, says Andy Smith, metals analyst with Bache Commodities, a unit of Prudential Financial Inc. Mr. McGuire was early to the gold trade. In 2007, he and a colleague persuaded the $100 billion Texas fund, the nation's eighth largest, to move into the metal. It was a novel strategy that made it one of the few large U..S. pension funds to have a fund solely devoted to gold. At the time, gold was trading at around $650, less than half its current price. In his 2007 pitch, Mr. McGuire argued that gold was "the most underowned major asset, widely seen as an eccentric, anachronistic leftover from the pre-information age that is best for 'end of world' types." Not everyone at the Texas fund felt the same way. In one meeting, a pension executive sarcastically asked if anyone else in the room thought "the world was going to end?" Indeed, most pension funds still steer clear of gold, investing just a fraction of 1% on average of their assets in the yellow metal, according to Alan Kosan, of Rogerscasey, an investment-consulting firm. Most pension funds consider gold too volatile and therefore too risky. So far, however, Mr. McGuire is in the money. With gold prices surging this year, his fund is up about 25% since its inception a year ago. For its fiscal year ended in June, the Texas pension fund was up 15.6% overall. The gold fund has half its assets invested in a gold exchange-traded fund, SPDR Gold Trust, and the rest invested in gold stocks. Gold's historic run-up was spurred by uncertainty about currencies, fears of inflation and continued monetary easing by the Federal Reserve. Like dot-com stocks in that bubble, which were difficult to value because many companies generated no earnings, gold is hard to value because it produces no earnings or revenue and costs money to store. "It doesn't do anything but cost you charges and stare at you," billionaire investor Warren Buffett said in a recent interview. There are other gold bulls, of course, including prominent hedge-fund manager John Paulson, who has predicted gold could go to $4,000 an ounce by as early as 2013. For his part, Mr. McGuire says gold is no longer only for those who think financial Armageddon is near. He expects gold to soar amid rising inflation, among other things. "The world does not need to end for gold to go hyperbolic," he says. In his book, Mr. McGuire reasons that $10,000 gold is possible if enough other pension funds and big investors jump-start buying and move as little as 1% of total global stocks and bonds holdings into the metal. Such a migration into gold would equal enough demand to push prices up tenfold from their current level, he calculates. Of course, the same argument would be true for nearly every other investment class. Mr. McGuire has confidence in his argument, however, because he believes inflation will return, which typically pushes gold prices higher. He said he expects a series of fiscal crises to hit around the world. And then there is China, where he says that gold is "widely regarded as a basic savings asset." Gold prices also are rising because of the ascendancy of exchange-traded funds, which are funds that track an index but are be traded like a stock. The largest ETF, under the trading symbol GLD, now invests $50 billion, an amount that Mr. McGuire believes could grow far higher if investors shift a small percentage of their investment funds into gold. At its current level, the stock-market capitalization of all gold ETFs is about $80 billion, roughly that of McDonald's Corp. "Now that the value of modern money is becoming highly questionable, more and more people are turning to gold. It's not the new thing; it's a return to normal," he says. The son of a foreign correspondent for Newsweek, Mr. McGuire grew up in Mexico and spends leisure time playing chess and reading history books. He is a fan of the financial history of the 1930s, and quotes from Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first inaugural speech in 1933 about the importance of not overspending. Before joining the Texas pension fund in 2001, he was an analyst at Deutsche Bank and ING Barings. His gold prediction is by far the most aggressive call he has made in his career, he says, but he says he ignores his doubters. "It seems like an aggressive call," Mr. McGuire says, "but it's really a comment on what governments have been doing to the monetary system." Of course, the risks of such a big prediction can affect one's entire career, much as it did former stock analyst Henry Blodget, whose bullish call on Amazon.com was lambasted after shares plunged in the dot-com bust. "There are enough nutty-sounding gold targets out there that this one probably won't shock anyone," Mr. Blodget wrote in an email. "But it's certainly a nice big headline-friendly number." |
| Gold and Silver Disaggregated COT Report (DCOT) for February 17 Posted: 17 Feb 2012 09:54 AM PST This week's Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) commitments of traders (COT) report suggests the stepped up "opposition" to the gold and silver rallies by the usual "hedgers" noted last week continued for the silver futures market. However, the usual Big Sellers of gold futures were actually net buyers as of the Tuesday data cut off. In the DCOT table below a net short position shows as a negative figure in red. A net long position shows in black. In the Change column, a negative number indicates either an increase to an existing net short position or a reduction of a net long position. A black figure in the Change column indicates an increase to an existing long position or a reduction of an existing net short position. The way to think of it is that black figures in the Change column are traders getting "longer" and red figures are traders getting less long or shorter. All of the trader's positions are calculated net of spreading contracts as of the Tuesday disaggregated COT report.
Vultures, (Got Gold Report Subscribers) please note that updates to our linked technical charts, including our comments about the COT reports and the week's technical changes, should be completed by some time Monday evening. As a reminder, the linked charts for gold, silver, mining shares indexes and important ratios are located in the subscriber pages. In addition Vultures have access anytime to all 30-something Vulture Bargain (VB) and Vulture Bargain Candidates of Interest (VBCI) tracking charts – the small resource-related companies that we attempt to game here at Got Gold Report. Continue to look for new commentary often.
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| Bob Chapman - The Financial Survival - 17 February 2012 Posted: 17 Feb 2012 09:01 AM PST Bob Chapman - Discount Gold and Silver Trading - 17 February 2012 : Europe is... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my blog http://www.bobchapman.blogspot.com for the full Story ]] This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| The Recessions We Had To Have … But Didn't Posted: 17 Feb 2012 09:00 AM PST This weekend's Daily Reckoning is about politics, rather than just economics. The fact that this makes it no different to any other Weekend DR is precisely our point. Politics and economics have fused. All around the world. And in a really bad way. We have politically manipulated markets for goods and services. We have politically manipulated money. And politically manipulated information. But who do we blame for our troubles, like poverty, debt repayments and unemployment? The free market! Too much capitalism, too much freedom on the internet and, worst of all, too much profit. Have Australians lost their common sense? Do they really see freedom as the ill and government as the remedy? We're not sure. But here are some examples of what government is getting away with right here in Australia: In January 2012 according to research firm Roy Morgan:
How can a research firm find double the level of unemployment to our government statisticians? Are our government figures really that manipulated? On Tuesday, Money Morning editor Kris Sayce commented on how the government prevents us from buying and selling what we choose to:
Keeping Cheese In, And Rubbers Out Your editor's favourite cheese isn't available in Australia because of pasteurisation laws. We'll never forgive the Federal Government for that. And consider the RBA's backdoor bailouts of Australian banks in 2008. $55 billion and we don't know who got what when or how. That's more than Kevin Rudd's $42 billion stimulus package handed out secretly to companies now at the ire of public opinion. Speaking of stimulus, there was that insulation episode. It stimulated the funeral and building market without much backlash against government. Ever since PM Paul Keating told voters about 'the recession we had to have', recessions became political footballs too. Political decisions even. Whether or not to attempt Keynesian stimulus is a political question, not an economic one. There is plenty of evidence that Keynesian stimulus does and doesn't work. The same goes for austerity. But the do nothing approach is the ultimate no-no for politicians. God forbid GDP goes negative for two quarters - the technical definition of a recession. Then there are of course some more recent examples. Like the Mineral Resources Rent Tax. And the Carbon Tax. At least we don't have an emissions trading scheme like the Europeans yet. According to Alexander Jung at Der Spiegel, that scheme isn't working. 'The price for emissions certificates has plunged, a development that is actually making coal more attractive than renewable energy.' It's always good fun when misguided government policies fail miserably. Unless people die in the process. Manipulation Leads to Misallocation Because politicians care more about the impression their policies create, rather than their true effect, they tend to cause problems rather than solve them. That of course creates more problems for them to solve, which suits politicians just fine. But all this builds up over time. And, after more than 20 years without a recession, the imbalances have had a lot of time to build up here in Australia. Where might they be hiding? Imbalance 1 - Superannuation A demographic bulge of people invested in the share market and other investments to fund their retirement. What happens when these people start to selling to realise their gains? It will create overwhelming downward pressure on prices. Especially once people realise that being the first to sell will leave you better off. Will an entire generation become disillusioned with the idea of investing because asset prices come under downward pressure? Will they turn to income generating investments rather than capital gains? If so, it might make sense to switch your portfolio over now. Imbalance 2 - Aussie dollar highs It's all over the papers. Australia's exporters are under pressure over an extremely high Aussie dollar. That's not a problem in itself, as we explained yesterday. The issue is that this may not be reflective of economic reality. It may be a reaction to money printing overseas, rather than having anything to do with trade balances. This also means it can reverse rapidly. As it did in 2008, when the Aussie dollar nearly halved. That kind of volatility is really bad for an economy. Exporters and importers are at the mercy of currency market mania, rather than currency markets being a reaction to trade flows. Imbalance 3 - Property bubble Usually a strong currency comes with better purchasing power. But, as any visitors to Australia will tell you, life here is expensive. In foreign currency and domestic. Our best guess for the cause of this is the property bubble. It pushes up all costs in an economy. Pop up shops are a great example of the economy's reaction to this. Unable to sustain enough sales to meet high rent, shops are popping up and closing down in a matter of weeks. It's a clever strategy, but is it really efficient and what shoppers want? When property prices correct, the cost of living could fall dramatically in Australia. But so will wealth in the process. Unless you've managed to sidestep the falling asset classes. Imbalance 4 - The lack of brush fires More than twenty years without a recession has left Australia's corporate and personal budgets untested. Thinking in terms every Aussie can understand, this means a heck of a lot of tinder has built up on the forest floor. Without regular back burning, a bushfire can turn into a catastrophe. Australia's incredibly high level of private debt is the perfect indicator of complacency. It's probably not a stretch to say that Australia's whole national psyche will change if the country is routed with the culmination of twenty years' worth of repressed recessions. The recessions we had to have, but didn't, will come back with a vengeance. Imbalance investing One question you have to answer is how to position your wealth in anticipation of all these imbalances correcting. Some might like to take to the sidelines. Others will place bets on how the story plays out. Both strategies will require quite some patience. Imbalances have a pesky habit of lasting longer than you think. Which makes your editor favour the kind of strategies that reward patience in the first place. The kind that see you reap measured and compounding gains regularly. We are speaking at Port Phillip Publishing's first ever investment symposium. And part of our speech will be about the investment strategy that does just as we mentioned above - reward patience. It would be great to see you there. So if you haven't registered already, you can find out what all the hubbub is about here. Until next week, Nickolai Hubble. About the author: having recently escaped from academia, Nick decided to drop his tights (the required attire of a trapeze artist) and joined Port Phillip Publishing. Instead of telling everyone about the Daily Reckoning, he now spends his time writing for the weekend edition. ALSO THIS WEEK in The Daily Reckoning Australia... The Oil Price: Warning of War? The Western world has been so safe, comfortable, and prosperous for most people in the last 20 years that it's almost unimaginable we could be seriously inconvenienced. It's even more unimaginable that Great Powers like China, the US, and Europe would permit a war to break out smack dab in the middle of the world's largest oil reserves. But collective plunges into insanity and war happen pretty regularly in human history. To the Tune of a Greek Bailout Instead of letting this failed system in Greece crumble, the power to compel is now being abused across borders in economic warfare. The Troika is looting productive Europeans to subsidise unproductive Greeks. It's just a leech that's swapped hosts. You'd think the Germans would know better than to attempt to control a nation suffering under crippling and irrational debts. It didn't end well for the Germans when they were in that condition after World War I. That Fair Dinkum Bloke Barack Obama People sense the system they live in his corrupt and that if you play by the rules, you're a sucker. The only people that seem to get ahead are the people that cheat or have connections or are already rich. That doesn't seem fair either. And when people sense that playing by the rules doesn't pay anymore, they're more tempted to even things up by taking what's not theirs. Moneyball Investing: A Simple Way to Beat the Stock Market In markets, one of the best predictors of wealth creation is ownership by the people in charge. Hardly anyone focuses on ownership. Ask a CNBC talking head how much stock the CEO owns of his favourite play? He won't know. Heck, ask most fund managers how much skin their management team has in the game. They won't know either. They don't look for it. And that is your opportunity. Saving Money and Time "You know, I've been reading your Daily Reckoning for years. And the one lesson I take from it is that you have to have some savings...so you're not forced to run on the treadmill all the time. You need some money and some time. Otherwise, you're never going to figure out what is going on. And you're not going to have a clue of how to make any money. You just go from day to day...from job to job...from one shop to the next mall...from bill to bill... Similar Posts: |
| Two Years Of Euro Fears Have Disappeared Posted: 17 Feb 2012 08:50 AM PST By Sy Harding: Kudos to the central banks. The eurozone debt crisis produced two years of fears that it would result in financial collapse and a severe recession in Europe that would spread to the rest of the world. But in November the central banks of Canada, England, Japan, Europe, the U.S., and Switzerland took coordinated actions to provide liquidity support to the global financial system. In December, the European Central Bank finally succumbed to pressure and launched a program providing substantial additional liquidity to European banks by making unlimited, low interest-rate, three-year loans available to banks. As a result, while questions remain about the bailout of Greece, and a potential recession in Europe, fears of a total collapse of the 17-nation eurozone financial system have gone away. In the U.S., massive government bailouts and record deficit spending prevented the bursting of the housing bubble and resulting 2008 financial crisis from dropping the Complete Story » |
| PIIGS To The Slaughter: After Greece, Portugal Posted: 17 Feb 2012 08:30 AM PST By Chip Krakoff: Let's just suppose for a moment that the Greek debt crisis can somehow be resolved without a disorderly default or the collapse of the Euro. As I have written previously, I very much doubt that it can, and today's news gives little cause for hope. Although the leaders of both of Greece's major parties agreed this morning to the latest round of austerity measures, the EU powers have backed away from ratifying the deal, demanding a further 325 million Euros in budget cuts. The Greeks now know how the Turks must feel, constantly on the cusp of a final agreement with the EU, but never quite getting to the finish line. This latest wrinkle will no doubt be ironed out within days, if not hours. It requires a much greater leap of faith, however, to believe that this will resolve the crisis once and for all. But suppose it does. Complete Story » |
| Another misplaced sneer about gold from The Wall Street Journal Posted: 17 Feb 2012 07:06 AM PST |
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