saveyourassetsfirst3 |
- 2012-03-27 TD Securities 2012 Gold Price Forecast $1,766
- TDG Interviewed by Alt-Investors 3/26
- Bad day for Obamacare individual mandate?
- Stealth Bottom Coming in Gold Stocks
- Gerhard Max Schubert: Precious Metals
- Precious Metals: You're Not Too Late
- The Fed Is Now Buying European Govt Bonds
- Does GLD Really Hold Gold, Or Is It A Scam?
- Bernanke gold bashing at George Washington University
- Bernankes Problem with the Gold Standard
- Emerging Gold Juniors and Explorers Should Recover in 2012: Jeff Berwick
- FSN Interview: When Ben Bernank Speaks, Gold Listens
- Gold Nears $1,700/oz After Bernanke QE Hints…
- Turkey says ” Gold IS Money”
- JPM's ties to MFGlobal Bankruptcy
- Does Gold Come Before the Dollar’s Fall?
- Bob Chapman talks Gold with Financial Survival
- Sideways Precious Metals Prices Mean It’s Not Too Late
- Bernanke ‘Dovish Again’ while ‘Growth Still a Problem’ in Europe
- Gold Rises as OECD Seeks $1.3T Europe ‘Firewall’
- Attention Silver Bugs: Get Back In Now!
- Is the US Dollar Headed for a Major Fall?
- Asia’s Golden Future
- We Have Entered the Most Favourable Era for Gold Prices in Our Lifetime: Don Coxe
- "We Have Entered The Most Favourable Era For Gold Prices In Our Lifetime” - Don Coxe
- If Greece ditches the Euro, gold will likely soar: John Embry
- U.S. commandeering of payments system likely to re-monetize gold, Sinclair says
- Asia's Golden Future: Alasdair Macleod
- I'm Back Into Gold: Dennis Gartman
- Bron Suchecki: Fake bars -- the facts
| 2012-03-27 TD Securities 2012 Gold Price Forecast $1,766 Posted: 27 Mar 2012 01:12 PM PDT TD Securities just lowered its forecast for the average gold price in 2012 from $1,925 to $1,766. TD Securities ist the global wholesale banking subsidiary of the Toronto-Dominion Bank, the second largest bank in Canada. |
| TDG Interviewed by Alt-Investors 3/26 Posted: 27 Mar 2012 05:45 AM PDT We were interviewed by Alt-Investors. We discussed the stock market, Gold, Silver, mining stocks, Oil and Bonds.
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| Bad day for Obamacare individual mandate? Posted: 27 Mar 2012 04:29 AM PDT http://www.businessweek.com/news/201...stitutionality Quote: U.S. Supreme Court justices voiced skepticism about President Barack Obama's health-care law, hinting they might strike down his biggest domestic achievement just months before the election. On the second of three days in the historic case, justices' questions over the law's requirement that Americans buy insurance or pay a penalty indicated they might split 5-to-4, with five Republican appointees banding together to topple the law. Justice Anthony Kennedy said the requirement to obtain coverage is telling individuals they "must act." Kennedy, who most often occupies the court's ideological middle ground, said, "That changes the relationship of the government to the individual in a fundamental way." Justice Samuel Alito called the penalties a "huge subsidy" from young, healthy people who don't want insurance to those who need a lot of health care. Quote: NBC's Pete Williams, who has been listening in as the Supreme Court hears arguments about President Obama's health care reform law, says he thinks it's "very doubtful" the high court is going to find the law constitutional. Quote: According to CNN's legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, the arguments were "a train wreck for the Obama administration." "This law looks like it's going to be struck down. I'm telling you, all of the predictions including mine that the justices would not have a problem with this law were wrong," Toobin just said on CNN. Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/peopl...#ixzz1qL6PNZCK |
| Stealth Bottom Coming in Gold Stocks Posted: 27 Mar 2012 04:21 AM PDT Certainly it has been a tough few months and a tough last 12 months for gold stock investors. However, the good news is two-fold. First, there are plenty of companies that have performed well and continue to perform well in this difficult environment. |
| Gerhard Max Schubert: Precious Metals Posted: 27 Mar 2012 04:00 AM PDT With fears of Iran threatening to cut oil supply, what would be the impact of this on precious metals? This week Peter Cooper Editor of ArabianMoney.net has a chat with precious metals expert Gerhard Max Schubert, Head of Precious Metals Emirates NBD to find out the trend for the coming months. ~TVR |
| Precious Metals: You're Not Too Late Posted: 27 Mar 2012 03:57 AM PDT
Throughout the history of our industrialized economies, gold and silver have typically represented between 5% and 10% of the average investor portfolio – or roughly 5% to 10% of their wealth. Note that historically this ratio has typically risen in times of financial turmoil, crisis, or simply any time of high inflation. Today, despite the price of gold having surged in price by well over 500% from its absolute low, despite the price of silver having surged more than 800% off of its absolute low; gold and silver still represent little more than 1% of the wealth of the average individual. The gross under-ownership of this historic "safe haven" is taking place at a time when Western markets, financial systems, and their entire economies have never been in a greater state of crisis. Already, these debt-saturated dominoes have begun effectively declaring national bankruptcy. This is the only way to describe the 75% default on Greek government debt and the wholesale liquidation of government-owned assets. This only increases the leverage (and the strain) on the bankers' $1+ quadrillion derivatives market. The derivatives market is a totally unregulated casino, operated by Western banking Oligarchs. It is nothing but a collection of bets on the world's markets and economies. Indeed, one of the largest category of derivatives are credit default swaps – which had been banned for decadesbased upon U.S. anti-gambling statutes. With this insanely leveraged casino having swollen to a size equal to more than 20 times total, global GDP; it is only a question of "when" not if this paper Ponzi-scheme will implode. The amounts are so huge that a "bail-out" isn't even theoretically possible. When this implosion occurs, the Western financial system is 100% certain to be vaporized (and most likely all Western paper currencies). Meanwhile, the same cabal of bankers is printing-up their paper money at the most reckless rates in history, which is the only reason they have been able to delay the implosion of their paper house-of-cards this long. It is a matter of elementary economics and arithmetic that if you print currency at a rate in excess of economic growth that the value of that paper must decline. |
| The Fed Is Now Buying European Govt Bonds Posted: 27 Mar 2012 03:53 AM PDT It's Official – The Fed Is Now Buying European Government Bonds from Zero Hedge:
Dudley, testifying to a House panel, noted that he doesn't see more efforts by the Fed to buffer the US from Europe's tempests and believes European banks are deleveraging in an orderly manner. So not only is the US taxpayer bailing out Europe via the IMF (as we noted here a week ago using Greece as an intermediary) and the Fed is providing limitless USD swap lines but now we join the ECB in monetizing European government bonds – something we warned might happen back in December 2010. As for being a small amount – wasn't MF Global's holding relatively small too? And aren't we getting a little full from all this buying? Read More @ ZeroHedge.com |
| Does GLD Really Hold Gold, Or Is It A Scam? Posted: 27 Mar 2012 03:38 AM PDT By CommodityHQ: By Jared Cummans The SPDR Gold Trust (GLD) is one of the most popular exchange traded products in the world, as it is home over $68 billion in assets and an average trading volume topping 16 million shares. This fund features a physically backed exposure to gold while charging fees of just 0.40%. The yellow commodity has been surging in popularity in recent years as the precious metal soared past $1,900/oz. while analysts and investors speculated about where the asset was headed. For many investors, GLD is their go-to investment vehicle for gold exposure and trading, as futures contracts can often be complex and dangerous [see also Why No Investor Should Own GLD]. Most investors feel comfortable with GLD's physical strategy, as holding physical bullion is the arguably the safest way to invest in the commodity, but does GLD truly hold physical gold bullion? In recent years there has been Complete Story » |
| Bernanke gold bashing at George Washington University Posted: 27 Mar 2012 02:54 AM PDT http://www.forbes.com/sites/briandom...-rather-passe/ Ben Bernanke's Views on Gold Are Rather Passé By Brian Domitrovic Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke's big speech last week before the students at George Washington University didn't necessarily start out to be a screed against the gold standard, but it sure turned out that way. For its first two-thirds, the speech was a folksy historical justification of central banking. But in the peroration, the end, and then the Q&A, almost against its better instincts, it devolved into gold-bashing. It was a pretty undisciplined speech, and the shots Bernanke fired against gold ran the gambit. He repeated the utterly minor point that gold standards encourage gold exploration and development, thus diverting resources from the real economy. He said that bank failures happened in number in the gold-standard era, but provided no point of reference as to the relative size of these failures. And at last he dwelt on the gold standard's complicity in the onset of the Great Depression. Thus the speech serves a particular useful purpose. It essentially concedes this important point: across all the arguments against gold that are made from historical examples, there is only one that packs a punch. This is that gold caused the Great Depression. Whatever criticism there is to be leveled at the gold standard during its halcyon days in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, we now know, it is small potatoes. However many panics and bank failures you can point to from 1870 to 1913, the underlying economic reality is that the period saw phenomenal growth year after year, far above the twentieth-century average, and in the context of price oscillations around par that have no like in their modesty in the subsequent century of history. Moreover, the silence of the critics about the renewed if modified gold-standard era of 1944-1971, the "Bretton Woods" run of substantial growth and considerable price stability, indicates that it too is innocent of sponsoring an irreducibly faulty monetary system. So that leaves one historical argument and one historical argument only about the purported fallaciousness of the gold standard: that which concerns the Great Depression. As I say, Bernanke's speech, if unwittingly, did a good job of narrowing the actual claims that opponents of the gold standard can marshal against it. And it begs a question: did the gold standard truly play a major role in causing the Great Depression? Perhaps the most influential single volume in academic economic history of the past generation is Barry Eichengreen's 1992 book, Golden Fetters, which makes precisely this point. Eichengreen lays out a case that it was the effort on the part of central banks to defend their currencies' gold parities from 1929 on that led to the severity of the crisis. The more countries tried to defend their currencies' values against gold, the more their economies were starved of cash and thus spun into depression; the more nonchalant countries became about gold, the quicker and bigger their recoveries. Ben Bernanke's views of Eichengreen's work have been uniformly laudatory over the years, as the GW speech made clear and as you can trace back to a glowing review Bernanke wrote of Golden Fetters called, "The world on a cross of gold." The problem with Bernanke's consistency in upholding the Eichengreen argument is that that argument has been rendered void by subsequent scholarship. Specifically, Milton Friedman's greatest student in the area of monetary history, Richard H. Timberlake, has written voluminously, and definitively, since 1993, that no evidence exists that the Fed was following gold-standard rules or rubrics when it contracted the money supply from 1928 to 1933. Rather, as Timberlake has shown, we know what guided Fed thinking in this period, and this was the doctrine that the Fed would refrain from issuing money unless it clearly would go to financing end-point economic transactions, as opposed to things like stock-market speculation and even investment. Whatever you want to say about this doctrine, it has zip to do with the gold standard. And it was at the root of the Fed's weird decision-making 1928-33 where it presided over a radical narrowing of the money supply. Gold is nowhere in this story. There's no evidence that Fed tightening was done in view of any gold-standard requirement, no evidence that gold-market moves pressured the Fed into tightening, no evidence that dwindling gold stocks or the prospect thereof scared the Fed into keeping money extra tight and triggering the Great Contraction. In fact, the whole while gold was cascading into the Treasury, making it fully possible, indeed mandated, under gold-standard rules (had they been obliged) for the Fed to print money with abandon. Indeed, as Timberlake notes, and this argument is killer, the gold-standard convention had it that all gold was to be monetized by central banks and treasuries in the event of crisis. Here was a crisis, and these institutions stockpiled gold at the expense of money! In sum: the gold standard was inoperative from 1928 to 1933. Now you know something must be up if the Fed chairman is still carrying water for a long-in-the-tooth argument against gold that hasn't held up over the years. There is. The website EconJournalWatch, in a section called "Sounds of Silence," surveys the major academic economic literature for times when the big cheeses in the profession find their arguments disproven but fail to respond to these disproofs in any meaningful way. Right there on the site's list is Timberlake's takedown of Eichengreen. In other words, Bernanke is part of a feet-in-cement consensus that says academic economics figured out the Great Depression back in the 1980s and 1990s. It's conservatism with a small-C. Bernanke was wowed by Eichengreen's book, and he's going to stay that way. Professors who hold on to outdated views and keep teaching from the same lecture notes are a common sight in higher ed. It's one thing to tend in this direction in the confines of a small classroom of smart students who can figure out what's up. But it's quite another when one is Fed chairman and standing in the way of the kind of monetary reform that this country needs to get going in the 21st century. At any rate, we can rest assured that the last historical argument against the wisdom and efficacy of the gold standard—that it ground us into the Great Depression—carries no weight at all. |
| Bernankes Problem with the Gold Standard Posted: 27 Mar 2012 02:39 AM PDT Merk Fund |
| Emerging Gold Juniors and Explorers Should Recover in 2012: Jeff Berwick Posted: 27 Mar 2012 01:39 AM PDT |
| FSN Interview: When Ben Bernank Speaks, Gold Listens Posted: 27 Mar 2012 01:38 AM PDT Andy Hoffman |
| Gold Nears $1,700/oz After Bernanke QE Hints… Posted: 27 Mar 2012 01:32 AM PDT gold.ie |
| Turkey says ” Gold IS Money” Posted: 27 Mar 2012 01:30 AM PDT Turkey Once Again Proves That Gold Is First And Foremost Money from Zero Hedge:
It would seem the rise in the value of Gold (in Turkish Lira) has been a 'good' store of value for the Turkish people over the past two decades… Read More @ ZeroHedge.com |
| JPM's ties to MFGlobal Bankruptcy Posted: 27 Mar 2012 01:26 AM PDT JPM Received $200 Million Margin Call 3 Days Prior to MFG Bankruptcy from Silver Doctors:
These are the most serious allegations of fraudulent activity in the entire financial collapse to date. If proven true, while Jon Corzine still deserves serious hard time for using client funds to meet said margin call; sulfur, fire, and brimstone would be too light a judgement for one JPMorgan CEO. It can now be reported that the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking has new evidence showing that JP Morgan had a $200 million overdraft aka a second margin call on the London LIFFE Exchange three days before the MF Global bankruptcy fiasco was triggered.The second margin call (the first margin call was four days earlier for $175 million) dealt with cross-collateralized, compounded naked euro currency put options that were written by JP Morgan with the transactions being placed through the CME Group and the aforementioned London LIFFE Exchange. We can now divulge that, thanks to PROMIS software, MF Global took the opposite side of the trade. Read More @ SilverDoctors.com |
| Does Gold Come Before the Dollar’s Fall? Posted: 27 Mar 2012 01:23 AM PDT Julian Phillips looks at how the US dollar rose to its position as sole global reserve currency and why it is unlikely to retain the title in the longer term by Julian D. W. Phillips, Mine Web: One of the facts of life over the last 40 years has been that the U.S. dollar is the world's sole global reserve currency. This is despite the fundamental factors underlying the U.S. balance of payments, which has been awful over that entire time. Nevertheless, the dollar ruled the global monetary system through these four decades and appears to be doing so still. But is that coming to an end? Next week there is a meeting of the BRIC nation over the use by the U.S. of the SWIFT system to block Iran from selling its oil. The BRIC nations are buyers of that oil. Their views on Iran's nuclear policies do not go as far as refusing to buy their oil. The SWIFT system is the system used to make international payments and covers most acceptable currencies. This use of the international monetary system as a war machine has surprised and angered these nations who are meeting next week to discuss this and, no doubt, to work out ways to prevent the U.S. from exercising such power. If they succeed, they will have formulated a way to bypass the U.S. dollar as the dominant currency with which to pay for oil. Once this hold has been broken, we may see a steady move away from the U.S. dollar as the sole global reserve currency. It is critical for investors to understand the importance of this and how the situation came about in the first place to understand the full ramifications to the gold and silver price. These will be dramatic! Read More @ MineWeb.com |
| Bob Chapman talks Gold with Financial Survival Posted: 27 Mar 2012 01:16 AM PDT Bob Chapman talks with Discount Gold 7 Silver Trading, from 3.36.12. ~TVR |
| Sideways Precious Metals Prices Mean It’s Not Too Late Posted: 27 Mar 2012 12:50 AM PDT Throughout the history of our industrialized economies, gold and silver have typically represented between 5% and 10% of the average investor portfolio – or roughly 5% to 10% of their wealth. Note that historically this ratio has typically risen in times of financial turmoil, crisis, or simply any time of high inflation. Today, despite the price of gold having surged in price by well over 500% from its absolute low, despite the price of silver having surged more than 800% off of its absolute low; gold and silver still represent little more than 1% of the wealth of the average individual. The gross under-ownership of this historic "safe haven" is taking place at a time when Western markets, financial systems, and their entire economies have never been in a greater state of crisis. Already, these debt-saturated dominoes have begun effectively declaring national bankruptcy. This is the only way to describe the 75% default on Greek government debt and the wholesale liquidation of government-owned assets. This only increases the leverage (and the strain) on the bankers' $1+ quadrillion derivatives market. The derivatives market is a totally unregulated casino, operated by Western banking Oligarchs. It is nothing but a collection of bets on the world's markets and economies. Indeed, one of the largest category of derivatives are credit default swaps – which had been banned for decades based upon U.S. anti-gambling statutes. With this insanely leveraged casino having swollen to a size equal to more than 20 times total, global GDP; it is only a question of "when" not if this paper Ponzi-scheme will implode. The amounts are so huge that a "bail-out" isn't even theoretically possible. When this implosion occurs, the Western financial system is 100% certain to be vaporized (and most likely all Western paper currencies). Meanwhile, the same cabal of bankers is printing-up their paper money at the most reckless rates in history, which is the only reason they have been able to delay the implosion of their paper house-of-cards this long. It is a matter of elementary economics and arithmetic that if you print currency at a rate in excess of economic growth that the value of that paper must decline. Hence, an ounce of gold which used to be priced at under $300/oz is now over $1600 (and had been much higher). An ounce of silver which used to be sold for less than $4/oz is now close to $32/oz (and had been much higher). A barrel of oil which was priced at $30/barrel a few years ago is priced at over $100/barrel today – despite energy analysts continuing to talk about a glut of current supplies/inventories. A loaf of bread which cost $2 only a few years ago costs $4 today. A dozen eggs which used to be under $2 is now over $3. A pound of ground beef which used to cost about $2/lb is now about $4/lb. The quality of none of these goods has improved. Indeed, the disease-ridden livestock which produce much of our food are arguably getting more and more inferior. Rather, it is the paper which is plummeting in value – despite our dishonest governments foisting their "low inflation" lies upon us. The paper-printing continues to increase exponentially. Every time you hear the phrase "bail-out" understand that none of our governments has any money, and that all that "bail-out" means is printing-up much, much more paper. Thus the inflation which has already ravaged our purchasing power has only just begun. |
| Bernanke ‘Dovish Again’ while ‘Growth Still a Problem’ in Europe Posted: 27 Mar 2012 12:13 AM PDT The gold price hovered just below $1,700 per ounce Tuesday morning in London – over 4% up on its low last week – before easing ahead of US markets open as the US dollar regained some of the ground it lost on Monday. |
| Gold Rises as OECD Seeks $1.3T Europe ‘Firewall’ Posted: 26 Mar 2012 11:38 PM PDT Gold is consolidating on yesterday's gains today above the 200-day moving average (simple) at $1,687/oz. after yesterday's biggest daily gain since January. The gains came after Ben Bernanke warned of the risks to the fragile US economic recovery. |
| Attention Silver Bugs: Get Back In Now! Posted: 26 Mar 2012 10:32 PM PDT  Insiders to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's speech, delivered at a gathering of the National Association of Business Economics, popped silver futures higher by more than 60 cents within minutes of the NY open on Monday. In his speech, Bernanke has finally admitted that more QE is needed, and his needed excuse is: fight stubbornly high unemployment.The recent alleged decline (see ShadowStats.com) in the unemployment rate reflects a "a reversal of the unusually large layoffs that occurred during late 2008 and over 2009," he said to attendees in Arlington Virginia. "To the extent that this reversal has been completed, further significant improvements in the unemployment rate will likely require a more-rapid expansion of production and demand from consumers and businesses, a process that can be supported by continued accommodative policies." "Continued accommodative policies!" Translation: Attention silver bugs! Get back into the pool—NOW! While the FOMC is now stacked with nine doves to Bernanke's 10-person committee, with Richmond Governor Jeffrey Lacker playing the sole bad cop in his role of providing the occasional head fake for those traders who don't quite grasp the Fed's communique con game, yet, there's nothing stopping the Fed from its mission to monetize crushing levels of U.S. Treasury debt (save a long-shot Ron Paul win in November, of course). To that point, on Friday, Gabelli & Company's Caesar Bryan warned precious metals investors of the Fed's ability (and a complicit media) to sway sentiment among the uninformed momentum traders who routinely push the silver market to massive extremes on the way up and on the way down. |
| Is the US Dollar Headed for a Major Fall? Posted: 26 Mar 2012 10:27 PM PDT by Julian D. W. Phillips, Gold Seek:
Read More @ GoldSeek.com |
| Posted: 26 Mar 2012 09:50 PM PDT The sharp lesson for nations in Asia is that their own trade security is best served by having an alternative settlement medium to the dollar and other Western currencies. This function historically belongs to gold, but that is a last resort for central banks. |
| We Have Entered the Most Favourable Era for Gold Prices in Our Lifetime: Don Coxe Posted: 26 Mar 2012 09:11 PM PDT ¤ Yesterday in Gold and SilverThe gold price didn't do a whole heck of a lot in the first fourteen hours of trading on Monday...as it was as quiet as a church mouse during the entire period...varying only a few dollars either side of Friday's closing price in New York. Then, at precisely 1:00 p.m. British Summer Time in London...8:00 a.m. in New York...the gold price blasted higher...and by the 8:20 a.m. Eastern time Comex open, gold had gained twenty bucks. Then from the Comex open, the gold price continued to work its way slowly higher, until the high tick of the day [$1,694.80 spot] was in on a tiny price spike about thirty minutes before electronic trading closed at 5:15 p.m. in New York. From there, gold sold off five bucks into the close. The gold price finished the day at $1,689.90 spot...up $27.10 from Friday's close. Gross volume was immense, but once all the spreads and roll-overs out of the April delivery month were subtracted out, the net volume wasn't overly heavy at 110,000 contracts.
You could be forgiven for getting the silver and gold chart mixed up yesterday...as visually, they were identical. The blast-off at 8:00 a.m...with the explosive 55 cent rally ending almost as quickly as it started...twenty minutes later at the Comex open. The only real difference was the high tick of the day. As silver took out the $33 price level to the upside at precisely 3:30 p.m. Eastern time, someone stepped in to make sure it didn't get any higher than that. Silver's high price printed $33.05 spot at that time. Silver closed on Monday at $32.84 spot...up 60 cents on the day. Net volume was pretty light at 28,000 contracts.
The dollar index was on the upswing right from the open at 6:00 p.m. in New York on Sunday night...and between precisely 9:00 and 9:30 a.m. in London, the dollar index gained 30 basis points. Then, between 9:30 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. British Summer Time, the dollar index gave up virtually the entire 30 basis point gain from earlier in their trading day. Then, starting a few minutes before 1:00 p.m. in London...8:00 a.m. in New York...the dollar index dropped by a bit more than 30 basis points by the Comex open at 8:20 a.m. Eastern time. From there, it drifted slowly lower, closing around the 78.90 mark...almost on its low of the day. From its zenith at 9:30 a.m. in London...to its absolute New York low...about 3:45 p.m. Eastern...the dollar index was down a hair over 80 basis points...but from its Friday close, it was only down about 40 basis points. The dollar index had 30/40 basis point rises and falls during the morning London and Far East trading sessions that had zero impact on gold and silver prices. One has to wonder why the precious metals only reacted as they did when the dollar index fell 30 basis points starting at 1:00 p.m. in London...as New York had yet to open.
Despite the fact that gold was up over twenty bucks at the 9:30 a.m. open of the equity markets in New York...and the fact that the gold stocks gapped up over two percent at the open...the gold stocks got sold off during the next thirty-five minutes of trading. From there, the gold stocks spent the rest of the day trying to get back to their opening highs...and never made it. One has to wonder what not-for-profit seller would dispose of their gold shares in such a manner as to ensure that they didn't get the best possible price for them? I can guess. The HUI finished up 1.83% on the day...but obviously would have done better than that if that not-for-profit seller hadn't shown up at the open.
This silver stocks did pretty well for themselves yesterday...but Nick Laird's Silver Sentiment Index only closed up 1.21%. However, most of the juniors did much better than that.
(Click on image to enlarge) The CME's Daily Delivery Report didn't show much...as only 38 gold contracts were posted for delivery tomorrow...and that takes care of virtually every March contract that was left open, so the rest of the week should pretty quiet for gold deliveries. I'm only guessing here, but I'd say that there are less than 50 March silver contracts left open once today's deliveries from last Friday's report are made. First Day Notice for delivery into the April contract will be posted on the CME's website on Thursday night...and the numbers will be in my Friday column. The GLD ETF showed that an authorized participant added 194,274 troy ounces of gold yesterday...and there were no reported changes in SLV. Well, the new short interest report for both SLV and GLD were posted late last night over at the shortsqueeze.com website. SLV short interest declined by 13.89%...and is now down 9.07 million shares/troy ounces. This is 2.9% of the outstanding shares...a far more reasonable number. We can live with that, although it's still not right, as there are 9.07 million shares of SLV that have no physical silver backing them. The short interest in GLD increased a hair... but only by 0.07%...about 7,000 shares, or 700 ounces. There was a smallish sales report from the U.S. Mint. They reported selling 250,000 silver eagles. The Comex-approved depositories showed that only 8,528 troy ounces of silver were taken into their collective inventories on Friday...and 514,035 ounces were shipped out. The link to that action is here. Here's a free paragraph from silver analyst Ted Butler's weekend review... "The current gold structure is as bullish as it was back at the late December price lows, namely, very bullish. And please remember that there was a fairly high volume sell-off after the Tuesday COT cut-off in both gold and silver, meaning that the market structure is even more bullish than indicated in the new report. In silver, we are not back to the extreme COT readings of late December (as we are in gold), but those silver readings were so extreme that I doubt we can achieve them again. I suppose the commercials could rig lower prices ahead because you never want to say never. But any objective reading of the COTs now strongly favors the upside. As always, lower prices from here would only make the structure more bullish. That's where we are right now." Here are a couple of charts courtesy of Australian reader Wesley Legrand. The first comes from a zerohedge.com piece headlined "TBTF: Top 5 U.S. Banks Hold 95.7% of Oustanding U.S. Derivatives"
And here are the OCC numbers that this chart is derived from...and it's definitely worth a look.
(Click on image to enlarge) Wesley's second chart needs no embellishment from me...and his spot on comments in the accompanying e-mail were as follows "Great chart below, shows how China is just returning to where it was before Britain knocked them out in the 19th century Opium Wars."
(Click on image to enlarge) The opium wars had silver as its focal point...but you never hear about that. If you'd like to learn more, you can check it out here. And if you were ever curious as to why Britain turned over Hong Kong to mainland China without a whimper...this was the reason. I have a large number of stories today and, for a change, a lot of them are precious metals related. The final edit, as always, is up to you. A declining dollar will add fuel to the fire, but it still boils down to who the not-for-profit short sellers will be on the ensuing rally. I'm Back Into Gold: Dennis Gartman. Bron Suchecki: Fake bars -- the facts. Printing money does not lead to inflation, argues Argentine central bank president. ¤ Critical ReadsSubscribeHousing Hype: Recovery Turns to Relapse?Housing was charging back. Spring sprung early. Sentiment among home builders doubled in six months. Any talk that the fundamentals might not be supporting the sentiment was met with harsh criticism. And then suddenly it wasn't. A slew of new housing data last week disappointed the analysts and the stock market, and all of a sudden you started to hear concern that maybe housing wasn't exactly in a robust recovery. This is no surprise to me. This 'new dawn' in U.S. real estate will turn out to be a false dawn in a hurry. The U.S. is years away from a bottom in the housing market...either new or resale. I thank West Virginia reader Elliot Simon for sending me this cnbc.com story from yesterday...and the link is here.  The First Crack: $270 Billion In Student Loans Are At Least 30 Days DelinquentYet one bubble which the Federal Government managed to blow in the meantime to staggering proportions in virtually no time, for no other reason than to give the impression of consumer re-leveraging, was the student debt bubble, which at last check just surpassed $1 trillion, and is growing at $40-50 billion each month. However, just like subprime, the first cracks have now appeared. It was just last week that I posted a story about this $1 Trillion dollar student debt bubble...and now we find out that quite a significant amount of that is past due. No surprises here...and it's just a matter of how bad it will end up being. This zerohedge.com story is another offering from Elliot Simon...and the link is here.  Property Tax Revolution in North Dakota, Minnesota and MichiganThe granddaddy of property tax revolts is now underway in North Dakota. This interesting article was posted over at Mish Shedlock's website on Sunday...and is Roy Stephens first offering of the day. The link is here.  BRICs and South Africa move to unseat dollar as trade currencySouth Africa this week will take some initial steps to unseat the US dollar as the preferred worldwide currency for trade and investment in emerging economies. Thus the nation is expected to become party to endorsing the Chinese currency, the renminbi, as the currency of trade in emerging markets. This means getting a renminbi-denominated bank account, in addition to a dollar account, could be an advantage for African businesses that seek to do business in the emerging markets. The move is set to challenge the supremacy of the US dollar. This, experts say, is the latest salvo in the greatest worldwide currency war since the 1930s. This story was filed from Johannesburg on Sunday...and was posted on the citypress.co.za website. I borrowed it from a GATA release...and the link is here.  Germany Bows to Pressure: Merkel Comes Around to Euro-Zone Firewall BoostGerman Chancellor Angela Merkel and her Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble have long opposed a further expansion of the euro-zone bailout fund, which would expose German taxpayers to billions in new liabilities. But SPIEGEL has learned that Merkel has given up her opposition and will likely agree to strengthen the firewall later this week. Government sources said the two politicians, who are both members of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), no longer plan to oppose the wishes of most of the other member states in the common currency zone to combine the remaining funds of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) with that of its successor, the permanent European Stability Mechanism (ESM), to create a more effective firewall to prevent a contagion effect in the euro crisis. That pretty much makes it a global clean sweep of "Inflate...or die." This is Roy's second offering of the day...and it was posted over at the German website spiegel.de yesterday. The link is here.  Trichet warns of nations' 'behavioral contagion'Speaking to a conference of influential central bankers from around the world and leading academic experts on monetary policy, Trichet said it could still turn out that the bond-buying, asset purchases and liquidity injections by global central banks might go away after the financial system gets back on its feet. That is the optimistic scenario, he said. But Trichet said there was a "less flattering conjecture" that the extraordinary actions will be part of a new "permanent regime." This is another cute way of saying it's either "Inflate...or die." This marketwatch.com story was posted on their website on Saturday...and I borrowed it from yesterday's King Report. It's worth reading...and the link is here.  Spanish PM Mariano Rajoy's election defeat fuels bail-out fearsTraders were alarmed by signs that Mariano Rajoy was losing popular support for his programme to reduce Spain's burgeoning debts, without which the country may need a Greek-style bail-out. The prime minister's PP party won 50 seats in the crucial Andalusia elections but failed to win a majority as the opposition leftist PSOE party won 47 seats. Alastair Newton, political analyst at Nomura, said: "Failure to win in Andalusia, whose regional de |
| "We Have Entered The Most Favourable Era For Gold Prices In Our Lifetime” - Don Coxe Posted: 26 Mar 2012 09:11 PM PDT  In Don Coxe's latest and typically excellent letter..."All Clear?"...he highlights the opportunity in precious metals mining companies... "In our view, we have entered the most favourable era for gold prices in our lifetime, and the share prices of the great mining companies will eventually outperform bullion prices." Gold remains one of the most widely misunderstood assets in the investible world. Indeed, it may be better to refer to it as a means of saving that does not expose the saver to counterparty or credit risk or to the depredations of the monetary authorities. |
| If Greece ditches the Euro, gold will likely soar: John Embry Posted: 26 Mar 2012 09:11 PM PDT  In his March contribution to Investor's Digest of Canada, Sprott Asset Management's chief investment strategist, John Embry has a few things to say about that black hole of debt that Greece [and other PIIGS] are being sucked into...and what that may mean for precious metal prices going forward. The article is posted over at the sprott.com website...and I thank Australian reader Wesley Legrand for sharing this article with us. It's a must read of course...and the link is here. |
| U.S. commandeering of payments system likely to re-monetize gold, Sinclair says Posted: 26 Mar 2012 09:11 PM PDT  Trader, mining entrepreneur, and gold advocate Jim Sinclair today told King World News that the U.S. government's use of the international payments system as a weapon of war is likely to prompt the re-monetization of gold throughout the world outside the American empire. This is another KWN blog that Chris wrote the introduction for...and the link is here. |
| Asia's Golden Future: Alasdair Macleod Posted: 26 Mar 2012 09:11 PM PDT  In his new essay posted over at the GoldMoney.com website, economist and former banker Alasdair Macleod lays out "Asia's Golden Future," the development of a trade-settlement currency system allowing the continent to escape the West's system. I thank Chris Powell for wordsmithing the introduction for us...and the link is here. |
| I'm Back Into Gold: Dennis Gartman Posted: 26 Mar 2012 09:11 PM PDT  Dennis Gartman got out of gold last week, but he's back thanks to an inadvertent push by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. "I was wrong in standing aside," said the publisher of The Gartman Letter. "Fortunately I didn't stand aside on much. I got scared. The pros get more frightened than amateurs in this business, and the first rule is to keep your powder dry." "Sometimes you get lucky" and "Dr. Bernanke got me a little lucky this morning," said Gartman. He said he "got lucky" with Bernanke's easing comments, indicating possibly another round, which would be QE3, is back on the table. |
| Bron Suchecki: Fake bars -- the facts Posted: 26 Mar 2012 09:11 PM PDT  Well, the story about the drilled out gold kilo-bar that was all over the Internet on the weekend resulted in this posting by Bron Suchecki over at The Perth Mint in Australia. Chris Powell introduction is a must read...as are Bron's comments in this GATA release...and the link is here. |
As if the 'risk-less' dollar-swaps the Fed has extended to any and every major central bank were not enough, William Dudley just unashamedly admitted that the Fed now holds 'a very small amount of European Sovereign Debt'. Explaining this position, as Bloomberg notes:
The Turkish central bank has doubled the amount of gold that lenders can hold in reserves (as opposed to paper money – Lira) as part of their reserve requirement changes. As the 
Breaking reports state that JP Morgan received a $200 million margin call on London's LIFFE exchange 3 days prior to the MFG Bankruptcy over naked euro put options. The margin call came when the Dallas Fed refused to offer JPM a line of credit due to JPM's use of TARP funds to write euro derivatives. The report alleges that a panicked Jamie Dimon called Tim Geithner, Ben Bernanke, and Gary Gensler demanding the problem be taken care of and 
One of the facts of life over the last 40 years has been that the U.S. dollar is the world's sole global reserve currency. This is despite the fundamental factors underlying the U.S. balance of payments, which has been awful over that entire time. Nevertheless, the dollar ruled the global monetary system through these four decades and appears to be doing so still. But is that coming to an end? Next week there is a meeting of the BRIC nation over the use by the U.S. of the SWIFT system to block Iran from selling its oil. The BRIC nations are buyers of that oil. Their views on Iran's nuclear policies do not go as far as refusing to buy their oil. The SWIFT system is the system used to make international payments and covers most acceptable currencies.
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