Gold World News Flash |
- Gold Whale vs Bond Harpoon
- Fed Liquidity: Good as Gold
- HUI Tests Critical Support, Possible Breakdown or Bear Trap
- Soviet Leader: Chernobyl Nuclear Accident Caused the Collapse of the USSR
- Gold Seeker Closing Report: Gold and Silver Fall Almost 1% and 3%
- Bernanke's Speech Decrypted
- Silver Update 3/20/12: Silver Doctors
- John Embry: $50 Downside on Gold but $1,000’s to the Upside
- Are You Ready For the Big Bank Run?
- Gold price suppression is so blatant now that things must be far worse than admitted, Embry says
- NEWS BRIEF – Obama's Executive Decree: Strong Cities & Communities, Preparing For Economic Collapse
- A Massive Spike In The Price of Silver Is Imminent…?
- Gold Trendline Resistance Holds
- Great Grandpa And The Silver Dollars -or- How The Government Steals You Blind
- No Record Profits For Old Assets: Jim Montier On Unsustainable Parabolic Margin Expansion For Dummies
- Have Gold, Silver Entered a Bear Market?
- Harvey Organ's Daily Gold & Silver Report
- Monuments instead of Education
- Vin Maru: Paper trading and manipulation in precious metals
- John Hathaway - Gold is Making a Very Important Bottom
- Ralph Nader: America Must Protect Itself From the Seismic Ravages of a Global Casino Economy ? Here?s How
- Leeb - Easing Policy in China to Create Boom in Commodities
- A Massive Spike In The Price of Silver Is Imminent
- Iran Says "Gold is Money"
- Jim Sinclair's Mailbox: I do not agree with the rampant bearishness that has infected the community
- The Gold Price Remains in Primary Uptrend Comex Close at $1,646.70
- Three Energy-Sector Investment Traps
- Guest Post: Global Market Needs Canada's Crude
- Iran Says “Gold Is Money”
- When Central Banks Are Buying, So Should You
| Posted: 20 Mar 2012 06:58 PM PDT Graceland Update
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| Posted: 20 Mar 2012 06:55 PM PDT The Gold Speculator
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| HUI Tests Critical Support, Possible Breakdown or Bear Trap Posted: 20 Mar 2012 06:19 PM PDT HOUSTON -- From the Chart Book. Looking at the 30-minute chart for the AMEX Gold Bugs Index for Tuesday, March 20, 2012, we note the large gap down was reversed with the HUI actually closing slightly "green."
Continued... If the HUI continues to advance the rest of this week, traders will begin to call the gap lower an "exhaustion gap," meaning that the downtrend has exhausted itself, and possibly an "exhaustion gap reversal" – if the HUI ends up taking out the most recent turning high. Of course the HUI would have to break out of the Falling Wedge formation to the upside for that to occur.
Wealth has been leaving the miners, presumably to chase the Big Markets, but it is interesting to note very little in the way of metal reductions in the world's big gold and silver ETFs. Even more interesting to us is that Cash Gold closed at $1,650.40 on Tuesday, above the April '12 contract, which closed at $1,647.00. Cash Silver closed at $32.12 Tuesday, quite a bit higher than the May '12 futures contract, which showed a last trade of $31.834.
When the market for immediate delivery metal closes higher than the near active futures contract that is short term backwardation and it suggests that the demand for immediately available metal exceeds immediately available stocks – at least a little and at least enough that a premium is being offered for "now delivery." Hunker down and hold onto your hat. ***
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| Soviet Leader: Chernobyl Nuclear Accident Caused the Collapse of the USSR Posted: 20 Mar 2012 05:58 PM PDT Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of open politics – called perestroika – is largely blamed for the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, according to Gorbachev’s 1996 memoirs, it was the Chernobyl nuclear accident, rather than perestroika (or Ronald Reagan’s increased arms spending), which destroyed the Soviet Union. As Gorbachev wrote in 2006:
As we’ve previously noted, “the risk of a nuclear catastrophe … could total trillions of dollars and even bankrupt a country”. Indeed, Fukushima may yet bankrupt Japan. And any country foolish enough to build unsafe nuclear reactors – based upon their ability to produce plutonium for nuclear warheads and to power nuclear submarines – may go the way of the Soviet Union. Especially if it is foolish enough to let the same companies which built and run Fukushima build and run their new plants as well.
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| Gold Seeker Closing Report: Gold and Silver Fall Almost 1% and 3% Posted: 20 Mar 2012 04:20 PM PDT Gold fell $21.10 to $1641.60 by a little before 8:30AM EST before it rebounded to $1657.72 by late morning in New York, but it then fell back off again midday and ended with a loss of 0.89%. Silver slipped 90 cents to as low as $32.01 before it also bounced back higher in morning New York trade, but it then fell to a new session low of $31.787 and ended with a loss of 2.61%.
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| Bernanke's Speech Decrypted Posted: 20 Mar 2012 04:16 PM PDT Bernanke's splendiferous defense of all things holy and Central-Bank-like this afternoon has a little for everyone - if you spent the time to listen/read his entire lecture. For those who did not, perhaps the following word-cloud sums up his perspective - and its odd subliminal messaging. The words Gold and Standard appear more times than Central and Bank; the words Policy and Economy are almost equal in number and very close together in this 'randomized' word-cloud; Collateral and Essential appear infrequently but oddly proximate when the random hand of Worldle is applied; the Dollar got its rightful tiny mention; and the Inflation-Deflation debate will rage on - as Inflation slightly outnumbered Deflation but the randomizer did its job and strangely placed Inflation next to Bad and Deflation next to Great. There was no mention of Oz, The PPT, Unicorns, Beard-Trimmer, Ron Paul, or Those-Bloody-Bears-On-YouTube, though the words Panic and Panics were somewhat surprisingly frequently uttered.
Source: Wordle
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| Silver Update 3/20/12: Silver Doctors Posted: 20 Mar 2012 04:16 PM PDT |
| John Embry: $50 Downside on Gold but $1,000’s to the Upside Posted: 20 Mar 2012 04:15 PM PDT  With continued volatility in gold and silver, and oil holding well above the $100 level, today King World News interviewed John Embry, Chief Investment Strategist of the $10 billion strong Sprott Asset Management. Embry told KWN gold has virtually no downside at these levels, but massive upside. Here is what Embry had to say: "I wouldn't worry about it, I think you're talking $50 to the downside on gold and thousands of dollars to the upside. These guys (manipulators) are really working on it relentlessly, which suggests to me there are more problems behind the scene than even I imagine."
This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Are You Ready For the Big Bank Run? Posted: 20 Mar 2012 04:09 PM PDT by Gary North, Lew Rockwell: China Syndrome 2: A Run on the US Treasury The China Syndrome (1979) was a movie on the threat of a nuclear power plant's core meltdown. The phrase was said to refer to the core of the plant's falling all the way to China. The producers were blessed by the March 28 Three Mile Island nuclear power plant emergency, which for a time looked extremely serious. The movie was released on March 16. There is another China syndrome, also associated with a meltdown. This would be triggered by the central bank of China's doing nothing. To understand how this could happen, it is useful to see how a similar scenario took place in 2008.
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| Gold price suppression is so blatant now that things must be far worse than admitted, Embry says Posted: 20 Mar 2012 04:07 PM PDT 12:01a ET Wednesday, March 21, 2012 Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: Gold price suppression is so aggressive and blatant now that the world financial system's problems must be far worse than generally understood, Sprott Asset Management's John Embry tells King World News. The market manipulation, Embry adds, "is so transparent now that anybody with the slightest open mind can see what's going on." An excerpt from the interview is posted at the King World News blog here: http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2012/3/21_Jo... CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer ADVERTISEMENT Be Part of a Chance to Discover Northaven Resources Corp. (TSX-V:NTV) is advancing five gold and silver projects in highly prospective and politically stable British Columbia, Canada. Check out the exploration program on our Allco gold/silver project : -- A large (13,000 hectare) property, covering more than 15 square kilometers of a regional mineralized trend just 3km from a recently announced 1.2-million-ounce gold and 15-million-ounce silver deposit. -- The property hosts historic high-grade silver workings and many mineral showings as well as former mines at the property's northern and southern boundaries. -- A deep-penetrating airborne geophysics survey has just been completed on the entire property and neighboring deposits and its results are eagerly awaited. To learn more about the Allco property or Northaven's other gold and silver projects, please visit: http://www.northavenresources.com Or call Northaven CEO Allen Leschert at 604-696-3600. Support GATA by purchasing DVDs of our London conference in August 2011 or our Dawson City conference in August 2006: http://www.goldrush21.com/order.html Or by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: To contribute to GATA, please visit: ADVERTISEMENT Golden Phoenix Discusses Royalty Mining Growth Strategy Golden Phoenix Minerals Inc. has discussed its royalty mining growth strategy on the Fox Business Network program "21st Century Business" with host Jackie Bales. Golden Phoenix's director of corporate communications, Robert Ian, told how the company narrows its focus to project generation and future royalty streams. He explained why Golden Phoenix believes it's better to own joint-venture interests in several producing mines instead of full exposure to just one project. "21st Century Business" has been airing for 15 years. Previous hosts have included Gen. Alexander Haig, Gen.l Norman Schwarzkopf, and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. Golden Phoenix appeared as paid programming on this broadcast. To view the program with Golden Phoenix, please visit Golden Phoenix's Internet site here: http://www.goldenphoenix.us/company-videos.html
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| Posted: 20 Mar 2012 03:55 PM PDT from NotForSale2NWO: Joe Joseph, Popeye, and Tim Watts talk about the Executive Order issued the day BEFORE the National Defense Resources Preparedness E.O. This E.O. paves the way for the Federal Govt. to take over municipalities drowning in debt. Municipal debt in the United States is over $22 trillion and continues to grow. They also discuss Sheriff Joe Arpaio's frustration with being stonewalled by the Main Stream Media.
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| A Massive Spike In The Price of Silver Is Imminent…? Posted: 20 Mar 2012 03:04 PM PDT from FractalSigns : Gold and silver are very close to entering the mania phase of this bull market. In order for gold and silver to go into the mania phase, value has to be diverted from somewhere, and that "somewhere" is most likely stocks. Since 2000, there has been a correction in stock values, in real terms; however, nominally, stocks are still significantly high (close to its all-time highs). I expect that significant value will soon be diverted from the general stock market, to silver and gold, causing prices to rally significantly, until these metals also become overvalued.
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| Gold Trendline Resistance Holds Posted: 20 Mar 2012 02:51 PM PDT courtesy of DailyFX.com March 20, 2012 12:28 PM Daily Bars Prepared by Jamie Saettele, CMT Trendline resistance (drawn off of the late February and 3/12 highs) turned back bulls last night but there is no change to the strategy. “Use Wednesday’s large range bar extremes (high and low) as points of reference to determine a bias. In other words, turn bullish on a break of Wednesday’s high and bearish on a break of Wednesday’s low.” Bottom Line (next 5 days) – ?...
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| Great Grandpa And The Silver Dollars -or- How The Government Steals You Blind Posted: 20 Mar 2012 01:39 PM PDT by NetRanger
…a short fable about value and wealth. Many years ago there was a man named George Franklin (His friends called him "Frank") who worked hard for his money. He was a machinist. He was highly skilled and highly sought after and, as such, was fairly well off. He and his wife had adequate savings, a nice home, some land, and several children. One day, late in his career, he had an idea. Frank's idea was to take an entire months wages and give it to each of his first two great grandsons. He discussed this with his wife, Tina, and they agreed. Their children were all grown and married with either young children or expecting. It would take a bit of extra saving but nothing the couple couldn't handle. The house was paid for, the kids were raised, the car was old but seldom used. Frank was paid a fairly handsome wage of $2 per day ($10 per week, $40 per month). It was high for a machinist but his skill and accomplishments rewarded him. So, over the next year, he and his wife set aside $80 for the two great grandsons.
After they saved the first $40, Frank, while cashing his weekly cheque, withdrew $40 in SILVER DOLLARS and put in a small leather bag that Tina had made especially for the purpose. After they saved the second $40, Frank attempted a similar action. But, a strange thing happened: The bank was out of $1 coins. Since a dollar was a dollar, Frank just had the bank give him 4, $10 bills. The years went on. Frank and Tina aged. Frank never really retired but rather opened his own shop. I don't think it ever made much money but it kept him busy. Frank died at the ripe old age of 90 and Tina followed the next year at 93. (Yes! Tina was a couple years old than Frank. SCANDALOUS in those days when they were courting.) When the will was read there was no heir for the "Great Grandson Money". They had multiple great grandchildren, ALL GIRLS! But, one of the granddaughters-in-law was pregnant with Twin Boys! The entire family was excited over this since these would likely be the heir to the Great Grandson money. They all imagined it to be a great sum, as the amount was kept secret by the designated Executor of the Franklin's estate. The twins were born and a meeting with the Franklin's Estate Executor was scheduled. To the first great grandson was given the first bag of $40. To the second great grandson, born 4 minutes later, the second bag of $40 was given. As the parents opened the bags to see what was in them, shock and awe proceeded around the room! How could Grandpa Frank have been so unfair! So short sighted! …to give one grandson so much and the next one so little. Think of it: One grandson got 40oz of silver valued at current prices: $1600, the other grandson, who got 4, $10 bills. Total: $40. How could this be? Great Grandpa worked just as hard and just as long for each of the bags of money, right? The value should be the same. But it was not. Where did the value go? If he had given his grandsons most anything, Colt Revolvers, Barrels of Oil, Land, etc, etc, they would have been equal. But, with the dollars they are not. Why? Isn't $40 always $40? No it isn't. What happened was the value that Grandpa Frank put in each bag was the same, at the time. But, because the bag with the 4, $10 bills was of an item that had arbitrary value that was set by your government, they debased its value by printing more money. They, in effect, stole the value right out of the bag without ever having to touch it. Ingenious! Evil, dishonest and crooked, but, ingenious nevertheless. The values of gold, silver, copper and many other things are timeless. While their value may go up or down depending on conditions, their value has a MARKET VALUE that cannot be manipulated by a significant amount for long. If you have value that you need to keep, you need to put it in hard assets. Those assets, though they can be stolen and they can't be eaten, will retain most of their value over time. As preppers, we must think about this. But, also, about balance. Don't sink all of your available income into just silver or gold or Colt Revolvers. You need Food, Fuel, Cash, Ammo, etc to meet immediate needs. Don't lock it all up in silver or gold. You may lose value when you are force to trade it in a pinch at a lower price because of your desperation.
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| Posted: 20 Mar 2012 01:37 PM PDT It is widely known that US corporate profits recently hit an all time high. What is less known is that in Q4, profit margins for the first time rolled over by 27 bps, and double that if one excludes Apple. What is very much irrelevant, is that to Wall Street none of this matters, and the consensus (of which GMO's Jim Montier says "the Wall Street consensus has a pretty good record of being completely and utterly wrong") believes that Q4 will be largely ignored, and margins will continue soaring ever higher. Well, the same Montier, has a thing or two to say about this consensus surge in profits ("it is almost unthinkable that it will remain at current levels over the course of the next few years"). More importantly he looks at the Kalecki profits equation, and finds something rather peculiar. Namely Japan. Because while taking the profits equation at its face value would surely explain the 10.2% in corporate profits, of which a whopping 75% is thanks to America's burgeoning deficit, it would imply that Japanese corporate profitability, where there has been not only a long-running current account surplus, but zero household savings, and massive fiscal deficits, should be off the charts. Instead it is collapsing. Why? Montier has some ideas which may force Wall Street to renounce its bullish views, although probably won't. However, the implications of his conclusion are far more substantial, and if appreciated by corporate America (whose aging asset base is the problem), may ultimately result in a revitalization of the corporate asset base, however not before the dividend chasing frenzy pops in the latest and greatest bubble collapse. First of all, for those who are not familiar with Kaleci, the Profits Equation, or any form of generic mumbo jumbo, here is the equation in question: Profits = Investment – Household Savings – Government Savings – Foreign Savings + Dividends How has this equation resulted in record profits? The chart below breaks out the various components:
Breaking this down historically yields the following chart:
So looking at historical and projected profit earnings, this is the consensus. Bear in mind this is critical for year end S&P targets above last year's closing level to make any sense without multiple expansion.
On the surface, this could be explained using the profits equation:
This is all great. There is however one problem. Japan.
What is the explanation for this dramatic outlier?
And so once again we get back to what we have dubbed the primary cause of all of modern capitalism's problems: a dilapidated, aging, increasingly less cash flow generating asset base! Because absent massive Capital Expenditure reinvestment, the existing asset base has been amortized to the point of no return, and beyond. The problem is that as David Rosenberg pointed out earlier, companies are now forced to spend the bulk of their cash on dividend payouts, courtesy of ZIRP which has collapsed interest income. Which means far less cash left for SG&A, i.e., hiring workers, as temp workers is the best that the current "recovering" economy apparently can do. It also means far, far less cash for CapEx spending. Which ultimately means a plunging profit margin due to decrepit assets no longer performing at their peak levels, and in many cases far worse. Furthermore, recall that in February we penned: '"No Continent For Young Assets" - Charting The Root Of Europe's Problems: Record Old Asset Age' in which we observed that the average age of European assets has hit a record high.
This also explains why banks have to dig progressively deeper into the sewer to pull out virtually anything that floats and hand it off to the ECB for collateralization, either in the open system or via repo. The reason is simple - there are not enough normal assets! And while we do not have the primary data, we are willing to wager that the average US asset's age is well on its way to record decrepitation. The conclusion of all this is quite simple: the longer the "recovery" continues, without an actual recovery being coincident, and all is merely a game of optics and smoke and mirrors, corporate margins will start collapsing in a toxic spiral, whereby companies generate less cash, and have less cash to spend on CapEx, etc, until the next sector needing a Fed bailout is the corporate one, all the while the Fed's forced misallocation of resources forces companies to expend every available penny into dividend payouts. Of course, this may well change. But if it does, and instead of pumping dividends, corporations do what they should be doing, which is begin the long overdue overhaul and update of their asset base, thing will eventually get back to normal, however record profit corporate margins will take a long time to return. And in the meantime, we sure would not want to be on the offer side of the collapsing dividend bubble...
Full Montier paper can be found here.
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| Have Gold, Silver Entered a Bear Market? Posted: 20 Mar 2012 01:00 PM PDT For nearly the last five years, we have seen events that were the first of their kind in modern history, from the credit crunch to the East emerging at the expense of the developed world. The oil price has risen to $145, fallen to $35 and then steadily moved up to the current $108. We have seen sovereign debt levels rise to the point where, if they were individual's loans, the individual would have been bankrupted long ago.
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| Harvey Organ's Daily Gold & Silver Report Posted: 20 Mar 2012 12:49 PM PDT Jim Sinclair important interview with Ellis Martin/Real Debt to GDP for Portugal: 140%/Gasoline prices hit $4.00/Treasury bonds fall for 10th day (yields rise)
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| Monuments instead of Education Posted: 20 Mar 2012 12:02 PM PDT Wolf Richter www.testosteronepit.com Tuition for the fall semester at the California State University system will be double of what it was for the 2007-08 academic year—which should send leftover deflation mongers back to their burned-out calculators. But it's still not enough. Now CSU is threatening the beleaguered public, taxpayers, and prospective students with stunning enrollment cutbacks, unless—and this smells of extortion—it gets its favorite tax-increase measures on the ballot and passed. CSU’s wealthy cousin, the University of California is also jacking up tuition and limiting enrollment. Budgets for the two systems were cut by $1.4 billion this year, and more budget cuts are expected unless tax hikes save the day. And yet, stunningly, a lavish multi-billion-dollar building boom continues on campuses around the state. For anyone who has ever run a real-world business or has been in a real-word activity, such as sales, this makes absolutely no sense: for the spring semester next year, CSU will not admit new students (its paying customers) to cut enrollment from 417,000 students to 400,000 students. And to push this strategy further into the absurd, CSU may block another 20,000 - 25,000 students in order to bring enrollment down to 380,000 by the fall of 2013 if voters reject the tax increases that may, or may not, end up on the ballot—competing income and sales tax measures are vying for our love and attention. Ironically, preventing willing and able buyers (students) from buying the ever more expensive product (education) won't save that much money: it shrinks revenues by the amount of tuition and fees that these students would have paid—though granted, in-state tuition doesn’t cover the whole cost. San Diego State University ran into this. After trimming its enrollment to save money last year, it couldn’t fill its dorms (duh!) and ended up closing an eleven-story building. Now it got smart. For this academic year, it required incoming freshmen from further way to live on campus and pay from $8,000 to nearly $14,000 for room and board—though they might have been able to bunk down for a lot less elsewhere. And yet, despite the money crunch, enrollment cutbacks, layoffs, and vertigo-inducing tuition increases, the University of California is plowing a whopping $8.9 billion into 200 construction projects on 10 campuses. A jump of 75% from a decade ago, according to California Watch. And the ever short-changed CSU system is building as well, but on a more modest scale, $161 million, up 5.2% from a decade ago (graph). Perhaps on the theory that new buildings are more conducive to higher education than new students. But new buildings aren't free. Maintenance is expensive; at CSU, the estimated cost of maintenance that has been deferred due to lack of money exceeds $450 million. And the financing costs also eat into operating budgets, even if buildings are empty, as is a $36-million medical school building that UC Riverside can’t afford to operate. Much of the money comes from construction bonds, which isn’t free either, a surprise to some people. Interest payments—$1.1 billion per year—are part of operating budgets, along with maintenance, heating and cooling, and so on. Other funding comes from private donations and grants. And some comes from student fees. But wait.... It’s not only crazy Californians. The construction boom is nationwide. “What you’ve seen in California you’ll see in other places, too,” said Mary Vosevich. She should know, as President-Elect of APPA, the national association of campus facilities administrators. Some construction may be justified, particularly at crowded community colleges that are catching students who can’t get into the university system, or can’t afford the tuition. But, as California Watch says dryly, “Many new buildings are going up on campuses because financial donors want their names immortalized, university presidents like to leave legacies of brick and mortar, and admissions directors are battling for applicants they’re convinced are lured by shiny new amenities." In a real-world business, this type of logic wouldn’t fly. Investments have to make sense on the bottom line. Alas, “There’s no bottom line in higher education,” said Richard Vedder, Director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity. So, thousands of students from all over California snarled traffic during their march on the Capitol in Sacramento. Hundreds flooded the Rotunda of the Capitol, a raucous affair—until the Highway Patrol cleared them out and threw 60 of them into the hoosegow. Their problem: tuition increases. For the debacle of a system that has become dysfunctional, and the nightmare that student loans have become nationwide, read.... Next: Bankruptcy for a Whole Generation.
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| Vin Maru: Paper trading and manipulation in precious metals Posted: 20 Mar 2012 11:46 AM PDT 7:45p ET Tuesday, March 20, 2012 Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: Vin Maru, editor of the TDV Golden Trader letter, comments extensively this week on the mechanism and opportunity for manipulating the silver market. His commentary is headlined "Paper Trading and Manipulation in Precious Metals" and it's posted at the TDV Golden Trader Internet site here: http://www.tdvgoldentrader.com/blog/2012/3/19/paper-trading-and-manipula... CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer ADVERTISEMENT A Rare Opportunity with Collectible Gold Coins Sovereign debt problems in the United States as well as Europe will worsen this year. The mainstream financial media may never report about the likely inflationary consequences of bailouts and "quantitative easing," nor are they likely ever to recommend tangible assets for financial protection. But at Swiss America Trading Corp. we believe that it is no longer a luxury to own gold and silver coins but rather a necessity. At the moment the public is showing little interest in Double Eagle U.S. $20 gold coins, so the price premiums above the intrinsic melt values (.9675 ounce of gold in each coin) are historically low. The ratio of price to bullion content for these coins has been 2:1 but today it is only about 1.25:1. This is a real opportunity. So give us a call or e-mail and we will be glad to discuss the potential of these coins and how to use a ratio strategy to increase your gold ounces without money out of pocket. In the January edition of his Early Warning Report, Richard Maybury writes: "As they are inherently in very limited supply, I believe that high-quality numismatics will become tulips, eventually rising a thousand percent or more in real terms, when money velocity goes into mid-second stage. In late stage, who knows -- 2,000 percent? 3,000?" All inquiries will receive without charge (while supplies last) our latest book, "The Inflation Deception," as well as our newsletter "Real Money Perspectives." -- Tim Murphy, trmurphy@swissamerica.com -- Fred Goldstein, figoldstein@swissamerica.com Telephone: 1-800-289-2646 Swiss America Trading Corp., 15018 North Tatum Blvd., Phoenix, AZ 85032 Support GATA by purchasing DVDs of our London conference in August 2011 or our Dawson City conference in August 2006: http://www.goldrush21.com/order.html Or by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: To contribute to GATA, please visit: ADVERTISEMENT Free Month Subscription to Market Force Analysis for GATA Supporters Market Force Analysis is a unique, patent-pending approach to commodity market analysis. An algorithm has been developed to extract supply and demand weightings from futures market data. The difference between supply and demand is the market imbalance that is called "market force," so named because it is what drives price. It brings clarity to past market action and predicts market trends. Because it is derived from accurate futures market data it is not subject to the errors inherent in macro-level estimates of supply and demand. Learn more here: https://marketforceanalysis.com/About_MFA.html Market Force Analysis focuses on short-term (15 days) and medium-term price predictions to help both short-term traders and long-term investors understand market moves and benefit from the generated prediction of prices. To read subscriber comments that show how much the service is appreciated, visit: https://marketforceanalysis.com/Testimonials.html The MFA service has been pioneered by market analyst and Gold Anti-Trust Action board member and researcher Adrian Douglas. The Market Force Analysis premium service provides: -- A bi-weekly report. -- Access to the MFA hot list of junior mining stocks derived from analysis of more than 800 mining stocks. The MFA hot list consistently outperforms well-known mining share indices like the HUI, GDX, and GDXJ. -- E-mail alerts about actionable trades. -- E-mail updates with important information. To obtain your 1-month free trial subscription to the Market Force Analysis letter, e-mail info@marketforceanalysis.com and put "MFA Free Trial" in the subject field.
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| John Hathaway - Gold is Making a Very Important Bottom Posted: 20 Mar 2012 11:00 AM PDT This is rock bottom sentiment and a buying opportunity.
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| Posted: 20 Mar 2012 10:54 AM PDT [B][/B][B]The two-party political tyranny – Republican and Democratic – is too busy kneeling before the check-writers of imperious corporatists to stand up for the people whose votes they strive to secure. [Imagine,] as U.S. citizens struggle, Wall Street and Washington worry about Greece! [/B]Words: 550 So says Ralph Nader in edited excerpts from an article* posted on www.counterpunch.org. (Lorimer Wilson, editor of www.munKNEE.com has further edited the article below for length and clarity – see Editor's Note at the bottom of the page. This paragraph must be included in any article re-posting to avoid copyright infringement.) Nader goes on to say, in part: Not that much has changed since the Wall Street collapse of 2008 other than the renewed "Wall Street" belief that you, the taxpayers, will be forced once again by your government to bail out even larger financial giants who are so interlocked as to be "too big to fail." [INDENT][COLOR=#ff0000]Home Delivery Available! If yo...
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| Leeb - Easing Policy in China to Create Boom in Commodities Posted: 20 Mar 2012 10:49 AM PDT These markets are going to explode, gold, silver, copper and many of the base metals are simply going to explode."
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| A Massive Spike In The Price of Silver Is Imminent Posted: 20 Mar 2012 10:17 AM PDT I expect that significant value will soon be diverted from the general stock market, to silver and gold, causing prices to rally significantly
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| Posted: 20 Mar 2012 10:05 AM PDT Economic crises signal that the current system isn't working as expected and needs improvement. When it comes to monetary systems, questioning their fundamentals can lead to doubts about whether the preferred medium of exchange will continue to be preferred for long. The large-scale whirlwind of economic trouble around the globe has pushed some to rethink the role of gold in the economy – and to actually move toward bringing it back.
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| Jim Sinclair's Mailbox: I do not agree with the rampant bearishness that has infected the community Posted: 20 Mar 2012 10:02 AM PDT This period will be looked back on as just more noise and drama. The US dollar is in harm's way. QE will go to infinity. Gold will reach $2111.
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| The Gold Price Remains in Primary Uptrend Comex Close at $1,646.70 Posted: 20 Mar 2012 10:01 AM PDT Gold Price Close Today : 1646.70 Change : -20.20 or -1.21% Silver Price Close Today : 3180.50 Change : -112.10 cents or -3.40% Gold Silver Ratio Today : 51.775 Change : 1.149 or 2.27% Silver Gold Ratio Today : 0.01931 Change : -0.000438 or -2.22% Platinum Price Close Today : 1653.00 Change : -24.90 or -1.48% Palladium Price Close Today : 693.05 Change : -13.00 or -1.84% S&P 500 : 1,405.52 Change : 4.23 or 0.30% Dow In GOLD$ : $165.33 Change : $ 2.88 or 1.77% Dow in GOLD oz : 7.998 Change : 0.139 or 1.77% Dow in SILVER oz : 414.09 Change : 16.19 or 4.07% Dow Industrial : 13,170.19 Change : 68.94 or 0.53% US Dollar Index : 79.61 Change : 0.151 or 0.19% The silver and GOLD PRICE both wore themselves out yesterday, and both wilted today. Gold closed Comex $20.20 lighter at $1,646.70 and silver lost 112.1c to 3180.5c. The GOLD PRICE nearly ruined that nascent uptrend, and fell as low as $1,641.90. So far the $1,640 support holds, but should gold punch through that, then we are dealing with $1,625 - $1,605. SILVER PRICE broke down through 3200c support when it fell to 3179c. Last week's low came at 3145c and today silver posted a low price at 3179c, then closed at 3180.5c, practically on the day's low. In the aftermarket silver has risen above 3200c, but this is like an alcoholic walking back and forth, up and down in front of a liquor store. If he doesn't intend to go inside, he shouldn't keep wearing out the sidewalk there. However, right now all hangs on that 3150c level. Should silver break that, then 3100c, even 3000c becomes the next target. Be patient, lift up your eyes to the horizon, and gaze there upon the PRIMARY UPTREND in SILVER and GOLD, and know that this, too, will resolve to the upside eventually -- and probably within the next two weeks, maybe this week. That rotten dollar index bounced back up 15.1 basis points (0.19%) to trade right now at 79.611. It traded today up to 79.843, the 79.80 area where it broke down on Monday, but fell back. Insofar as a man even can say anything at all about such a manipulated market, it appears to be headed lower, but needs to confirm that with a close lower than 79.35. If I said that the dollar and all the other scabby fiat currencies were a joke, I'd be slandering jokes. Yen dropped 0.45% today to 119.44c/Y100 (Y83.82/US$1), but didn't drop lower than Friday's close, so that bottom at 119.14 remains valid. As valid as anything might be when talking about unbacked currencies run by political whim for fundamental corruption. The Euro closed $1.3223, down 0.14% from Monday. 'Tain't able to break through the 20 DMA at 1.3232 so far. I can say this, I'd rather own euros than have cholera. The enemies of gold are the enemies of justice and mankind. Here's a little proof (thanks to VP for sending it) from that well know philanthropist Adolf Hitler: "Gold is not necessary. I have no interest in gold. We'll build a solid state, without an ounce of gold behind it. Anyone who sells above the set prices, let him be marched off to a concentration camp. That's the bastion of money." See, it's easy: the concentration camp is what all fiat money advocates answer to gold. They may be a little more subtle, like Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke and all the other heads of central banks, but the concentration camp remains their ultimate answer. I keep on trying to say things in new and different ways so my constant dinning doesn't deafen y'all. Here's a new way: if you want to end up living in a cardboard house under a bridge, keep on counting on stocks. Otherwise, sell them now and put the proceeds into silver and gold. Stocks today fell. Dow fell 68.94 (0.52%) to 13,170.19. S&P dropped 4.23 (0.30%) to 1,405.52. This is a harbinger only, and needs further confirmation to call it a break. Next would come a close below the 20 DMA, now 13,021. Argentum et aurum comparenda sunt -- -- Gold and silver must be bought. - Franklin Sanders, The Moneychanger The-MoneyChanger.com © 2012, The Moneychanger. May not be republished in any form, including electronically, without our express permission. To avoid confusion, please remember that the comments above have a very short time horizon. Always invest with the primary trend. Gold's primary trend is up, targeting at least $3,130.00; silver's primary is up targeting 16:1 gold/silver ratio or $195.66; stocks' primary trend is down, targeting Dow under 2,900 and worth only one ounce of gold; US$ or US$-denominated assets, primary trend down; real estate bubble has burst, primary trend down. WARNING AND DISCLAIMER. Be advised and warned: Do NOT use these commentaries to trade futures contracts. I don't intend them for that or write them with that short term trading outlook. I write them for long-term investors in physical metals. Take them as entertainment, but not as a timing service for futures. NOR do I recommend investing in gold or silver Exchange Trade Funds (ETFs). Those are NOT physical metal and I fear one day one or another may go up in smoke. Unless you can breathe smoke, stay away. Call me paranoid, but the surviving rabbit is wary of traps. NOR do I recommend trading futures options or other leveraged paper gold and silver products. These are not for the inexperienced. NOR do I recommend buying gold and silver on margin or with debt. What DO I recommend? Physical gold and silver coins and bars in your own hands. One final warning: NEVER insert a 747 Jumbo Jet up your nose. 
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| Three Energy-Sector Investment Traps Posted: 20 Mar 2012 09:48 AM PDT Synopsis: Energy executives are notorious for misleading unwitting investors with three value traps that camouflage the true health of their companies. By Marin Katusa, Chief Energy Investment Strategist Every salesman wants to present his product in the best light possible and the salesmen of the stock market are no exception. Public companies always highlight the positives about their projects, their financial positions, and their outlooks, and downplay negative news as much as legally possible. In the resource sector there is a long list of tactics that companies use to put their best foot forward. Many of these tactics revolve around how certain numbers are calculated and presented. Financial metrics are designed to convey a complicated set of information in a number or two, but the devil is in the mathematical details. How many expenses were labeled "extraordinary" and therefore excluded from a net-profit analysis? How does a company calculate the size and value of its reserves? While it may seem that net return and basic valuation information should be reliable, there are a lot of accounting tricks that are regularly used to transform red into black. Successful investing is based on comparing good information about hundreds of companies and selecting those that stand out. The thing is: you can't compare apples with oranges. Comparisons only work when each candidate can be examined across a standard set of parameters. When companies calculate their own metrics using their own methods, odds are pretty good that the parameters aren't going to be comparable. When it comes to energy producers, there are a couple of parameters that companies regularly wrangle and wrestle until they are as positive as possible. While these accounting methods are legal, the average investor can't possibly know how to assess the reliability of each calculation. Beware of the misinformed value trap. Today, I am going to discuss three very common "investor traps" in the energy sector. Each one is a figure that describes a financial or production level – and each can be shined up to gleam even when the real situation is not all that rosy. The BOE Scam Most oil wells produce some natural gas and natural gas wells often produce some oil, so most energy companies produce both kinds of fuel. To simplify reporting, producers have long lumped quantities of the two into one calculation: the "barrel of oil equivalent" (BOE). The BOE is a unit of energy, defined as the energy released when one barrel of crude oil is burned. Since different grades of oil burn at different rates, the value is an approximation, set at 5.8 x 106 BTU or 6.12 x 109 joules. The BOE concept then lets us combine different fuels according to energy equivalence. Barrels of oil equivalent are most commonly used to combine oil and natural gas: one can say that one barrel of oil is equivalent to 5,800 cubic feet of natural gas because both produce approximately the same amount of energy on combustion. It is understandable that companies want to distill their production or reserve information down into a single number that summarizes the situation for investors. The problem is that details are lost during the distillation process – and they are important details. See, the BOE concept would be great if we valued companies based on the energy contained in their reserves, but we don't. We care about the money they can earn from those reserves; that valuation depends on the market prices for oil and gas, which are just a tad bit different. One barrel of oil is equivalent in energy to 5,800 cubic feet of natural gas, but the difference in value is very significant – and that is the trap. Using an oil price of US$100 per barrel and a natural gas price of US$2.50 per thousand cubic feet (the spot price is currently US$2.14 per thousand cubic feet) we can calculate the value of a BOE of natural gas priced as gas:
Unfortunately, a barrel of oil is not worth US$14.50, but rather is currently worth more than US$100 per barrel. Yet a BOE with 100% gas is worth is only worth US$14.50. Those two valuations are nowhere close to equivalent! The barrel of oil is actually worth almost seven times more than the supposedly equivalent "barrel" of natural gas. Certain companies purposely use this misleading concept because they want to value their gas reserves at more than seven times their actual value. As an investor, when you see a company's production in terms of BOEs you need to ask yourself: "What percentage of production is oil versus natural gas and NGLs?" That is definitely a value trap that every investor wants to avoid. Well Decline Rates The news release announces with great fanfare that Company X's new well produced at a stellar rate of 1,450 BOE per day. That's fantastic – a rate like that puts it in the top 10% of oil wells ever drilled! Sounds like a great investment, right? Well, read a little further through the news release. A few paragraphs in, the company reveals that the production rate was measured during the well's first 22 hours of production. That is where you run into the problem of decline rates. When a well first starts spouting oil, the flow can be fast and furious, but that rate can decline a heck of a lot in very little time. Depending on what type of shale formation this well is in, it's altogether possible that within a month production could decline to 200 BOEPD; after a year its output could easily drop to 100 BOEPD. The uninformed investors pile in, which at first drives the price of the stock up significantly, but then the well decline rate reality sets in and brings with it the investment blues. Not all wells decline like that, but such short initial-production rate tests are an inaccurate yardstick for a new well. Production rates and decline rates vary with the geology of the field, size of the field, the number of wells, and the amount of gas being re-injected to maintain field pressure, among other variables. Of course, every company is going to jump on the opportunity to announce a gushing new well even if the initial rates do not carry much meaning, creating another value trap that energy investors have to be very careful to avoid. Understand the type of field you're investing in and be cautious of short-term initial test rates – they're sexy but meaningless. Netback Nonsense There are all kinds of financial metrics available to assess the value in an energy producer. One of the ones we like best is the "netback," which is the net profit a company derives from each unit of production, whether that unit is barrel of oil or a thousand cubic feet of gas or ton of coal. Proper netback calculations mean you can value a company's projects according to the net profits they will generate. However, as with all financial metrics, you're best off calculating netbacks for yourself, because companies engage in all kinds of netback nonsense. One of my biggest pet peeves is when an oil and gas company presents high netbacks but yet the company does not make any money for the shareholders. To put all producing oil and gas companies on the same playing field you have to calculate netbacks fairly, which means subtracting all of the expenses involved in production from the cash flow. Of course, lots of companies make their netbacks look a little rosier by not including some expenses. Oftentimes these accounting tricks perform double duty by also burying some of the company's less palatable expenses, like fat salaries and huge debt-interest financing costs. If a company claims big netbacks yet cannot seem to make any money for its shareholders, it is probably presenting misleading netbacks. To get around these shenanigans, we developed our own netback formula – which companies hate us for using – called the "Casey True Netback." Every quarter, we publish a chart of the top field netbacks and the top Casey True Netbacks. The lists are starting to get quite the following within the sector. The formula: we subtract depreciation costs, amortization costs, royalties, general and administrative costs, and interest and financing costs to determine the actual amount each producer earns from its production. The results are often alarming in how much they differ from a company's claimed netback. It is the only way we can know how each field actually performs – and it's the kind of information that every investor need to know. Tricks like publishing BOE valuations for gas reserves, initial production rates for rapid-decline fields, or polished netback numbers are the reality of the energy industry. The way to avoid the traps they create is with careful, calculated due diligence – you have to calculate your own netbacks, dig through financial statements to determine the breakdown in a company's BOE reserves, and research the geology and activity of an entire field to understand how much heft to give an initial well production rate. Or you could let us do it for you – we're pretty darn good at numbers. The Casey Research energy team spends its days (and most of its nights) developing analytical models that grind through data in our proprietary company databases to churn out real financial metrics. The result: we actually compare apples with apples. It's no secret that some of the biggest investors in the energy sector use our numbers for their own analysis. In the last two months, subscribers to the Casey Energy Report have reaped the rewards of this effort: we sold three companies, one for a 100+% gain and the other two for more than 50% profit. We also recently took a Casey Free Ride on a dividend-paying company that has great growth potential, resulting in zero risk to our capital. To be a successful resource investor requires great discipline, and no there is better discipline than taking a Casey Free Ride to mitigate risk. (We're convinced that energy is poised to do for investors what gold's done over the last 10 years, but this sector is notoriously tricky to navigate on your own. There's no need to take this chance – let the Casey Energy Report guide you to outsized gains. Try it risk-free for ninety days.) Our methods aren't infallible. Investing is tough no matter how long and hard you chew on financial data, and there is no perfect method. All we can do is our best, which means combining our deep understanding of the sector, our vast network of industry professionals and knowledge of deal flow, and the data we've gathered on numerous site visits with advanced financial analysis to find companies with as-yet unrealized potential. The three tricks we discussed here are among hundreds of variables that companies manipulate before presenting their figures to the unsuspecting investor. We are not so unsuspecting.
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| Guest Post: Global Market Needs Canada's Crude Posted: 20 Mar 2012 09:44 AM PDT Submitted by Daniel Graeber of Oilprice.com Global Market Needs Canada's Crude Canada's natural resources minister told delegates at the International Energy Forum in Kuwait that his country was on the cusp of becoming an "energy superpower." Canada ranks No. 6 in terms of global oil production, but much of its crude exists in the form of oil sands. European leaders are considering a measure that would classify oil sands as an environmental issue, prompting Canada to threaten to take the issue to the World Trade Organization. With the U.S. political system in a deadlock over Canadian crude, the Ottawa government is now working to convince the international community that the global market is in jeopardy if polices "discriminate against oil sands."
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| Posted: 20 Mar 2012 09:07 AM PDT By Louis James, Casey Research Economic crises signal that the current system isn't working as expected and needs improvement. When it comes to monetary systems, questioning their fundamentals can lead to doubts about whether the preferred medium of exchange will continue to be preferred for long. The large-scale whirlwind of economic trouble around the globe [...]
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| When Central Banks Are Buying, So Should You Posted: 20 Mar 2012 08:47 AM PDT Use these futile, short-term attempts to control gold prices as major opportunities to increase your holdings of real money and your wealth is sure to rise.
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