Gold World News Flash

---

• Gold Cover Clause Guidance
• GoldSeek.com Radio Gold Nugget: Charles Goyette & Chris Waltzek
• Why Civilized People Buy Gold
• Can you spot the Bubble(s)?
• "Once A Liar, Always A Liar": The Incredible (Un)Truth About Italy, Greece, And The Birth Of The Euro
• Dont Bite The Gold Dust
• May Day in Paris
• Global Meltdown of Historic Proportions & A Fork in the Road
• What Happens to Gold if We Enter a Recession or Depression?
• Overnight Markets Plunging
• Greek leader of anti bailout party states bailout in Greece null and void/Spanish banks increase lending from ECB
• Jim Willie: “Gold Cover Clause Guidance”
• Answering The Cries For Help
• There Is a War Going on Because Fiat Money Is Dying: John Embry
• Silver and Gold Daily Bulletin/COT Review for Period 4-25 to 5/1/2012
• Safe Haven Indeed!
• Silver Update 5/08/12 GDP Games
• Gold Bull Market Over?
• The Gold Price Took a Big Hit Today Losing $34.60 Closing $1,604 How Far Will it Fall?
• Gold Breaks MAJOR Trendline Support
• Two Out of Three Ain't Bad
• Fleckenstein - Warren Buffett's Positions On Gold And Taxes Are 'Just Idiotic'
• Guest Post: The Emperor Is Naked
• Gold has changed overnight, and likely will again
• How Bailouts Encourage Bad Behavior
• Encouragement from Embry and Sinclair
• Capitulation Watch for HUI
• Gold Down but Holds Support at $1600
• Two Out of Three Ain't Bad
• Hecla Declares Silver-Linked and Regular Dividends and Announces Stock Repurchase Program

Gold Cover Clause Guidance Posted: 09 May 2012 08:00 AM PDT If today's landscape was a war setting, it would feature collapsed buildings, rubble on the streets, empty warehouses, smoke spewing upward from numerous city heaps, and fire hoses sending water in every conceivable direction throughout the entire city. And sadly, also dead bodies littered everywhere. They serve as the economic damage. The city ruins are marred by additional water damage, rubber boots a necessity. The buildings can be seen as the crumbled sovereign bonds. The street rubble is the home equity destroyed, some still underwater. The shattered warehouses are businesses either wrecked or in fast retreat. The smoke is the painful emotions based in despair, loss, and absent opportunity. In stark display, the fire houses are the central banks printing and dispensing money from tainted sources, not from factory income but rather the vacuous Weimar press.

GoldSeek.com Radio Gold Nugget: Charles Goyette & Chris Waltzek Posted: 09 May 2012 02:00 AM PDT GoldSeek.com Radio Gold Nugget: Charles Goyette & Chris Waltzek

Why Civilized People Buy Gold Posted: 09 May 2012 01:30 AM PDT Charlie Munger thinks that gentlemen should buy profitable companies, not gold. But he fails to realize that the economy is being managed at the top by people who are not reliable. It is being run by Congress, the executive bureaucracy, and the Federal Reserve System. It is being run by men who share the views of Keynes, namely, that the gold standard is a barbarous relic and that politicians and bureaucrats and central bankers are the people who should set policies under which companies become profitable.

Can you spot the Bubble(s)? Posted: 08 May 2012 07:50 PM PDT - With gold and silver gradually heading south since leap day, many PMs investors are beginning to get cold feet.  Then we have, over the weekend Charlie Munger, Berkshire Hathaway's No.2 commenting that "civilized people don't buy gold". Not surprising – why would anyone bother since "gold is a barbaric relic" anyway.  And with Bill Gates saying he's in [...] This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

"Once A Liar, Always A Liar": The Incredible (Un)Truth About Italy, Greece, And The Birth Of The Euro Posted: 08 May 2012 06:44 PM PDT The must read article from Spiegel.de: Operation Self-Deceit: New Documents Shine Light on Euro Birth Defects By Sven Böll, Christian Reiermann, Michael Sauga and Klaus Wiegrefe   Newly revealed German government documents reveal that many in Helmut Kohl's Chancellery had deep doubts about a European common currency when it was introduced in 1998. First and foremost, experts pointed to Italy as being the euro's weak link. The early shortcomings have yet to be corrected. ... Many of the euro's problems can be traced to its birth defects. For political reasons, countries were included that weren't ready at the time. Furthermore, a common currency cannot survive on the long term if it is not backed by a political union. Even as the euro was being born, many experts warned that currency union members didn't belong together. Pushing Ahead Regardless But it wasn't just the experts. Documents from the Kohl administration, kept confidential until now, indicate that the euro's founding fathers were well aware of its deficits. And that they pushed ahead with the project regardless.   In response to a request by SPIEGEL, the German government has, for the first time, released hundreds of pages of documents from 1994 to 1998 on the introduction of the euro and the inclusion of Italy in the euro zone. They include reports from the German embassy in Rome, internal government memos and letters, and hand-written minutes of the chancellor's meetings.   The documents prove what was only assumed until now: Italy should never have been accepted into the common currency zone. The decision to invite Rome to join was based almost exclusively on political considerations at the expense of economic criteria. It also created a precedent for a much bigger mistake two years later, namely Greece's acceptance into the euro zone.   ...   Of course, financial data doesn't play much of a role when it comes to war and peace. Italy became a perfect example of the steadfast belief of politicians that economic development would eventually conform to the visions of national leaders.   However, the Kohl administration cannot plead ignorance. In fact, the documents show that it was extremely well informed about the state of Italy's finances. Many austerity measures were merely window dressing -- either they were accounting tricks or were immediately dialed back when the political pressure subsided. It was a paradoxical situation. While Kohl pushed through the common currency against all resistance, his experts essentially confirmed the assessment of Gerhard Schröder, the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) candidate for the Chancellery at the time. Schröder called the euro a "sickly premature baby." A Miraculous Cure Operation "self-deception" began in December 1991, in an office building in the Dutch city of Maastricht, the capital of the southeastern province of Limburg. The European heads of state and government had come together to reach the decision of the century, namely to introduce the euro by 1999.   ...   As luck would have it, Italy fulfilled all requirements as the date approached -- surprisingly so, given that it had acquired a reputation for notoriously imbalanced budgets. But the country had undergone a miraculous cure -- on paper at least.   ...   A few months later Jürgen Stark, a state secretary in the German Finance Ministry, reported that the governments of Italy and Belgium had "exerted pressure on their central bank heads, contrary to the promised independence of the central banks." The top bankers were apparently supposed to ensure that the EMI's inspectors would "not take such a critical approach" to the debt levels of the two countries. In early 1998, the Italian treasury published such positive figures on the country's financial development that even a spokesman for the treasury described them as "astonishing." Snail's Pace In Maastricht, Kohl and other European leaders had agreed that the total debt of a euro candidate could be no more than 60 percent of its annual economic output, "unless the ratio is declining sufficiently and is rapidly approaching the reference value."   But Italy's debt level was twice that amount, and the country was only approaching the reference value at a snail's pace. Between 1994 and 1997, its debt ratio declined by all of three percentage points.   "A debt level of 120 percent meant that this convergence criterion could not be satisfied," says Stark today. "But the politically relevant question was: Can founding members of the European Economic Community be left out?"   Government experts had known the answer for a long time. "Until well into 1997, we at the Finance Ministry did not believe that Italy would be able to satisfy the convergence criteria," says Klaus Regling, at the time, the Director-General for European and International Financial Relations at the Finance Ministry. Currently, Regling is the chief executive of the temporary euro bailout fund, the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF).   The skepticism is reflected in the documents. On Feb. 3, 1997, the German Finance Ministry noted that in Rome "important structural cost-saving measures were almost completely omitted, out of consideration for the social consensus." On April 22, speaker's notes for the chancellor stated that there was "almost no chance" that "Italy will fulfill the criteria." On June 5, the economics department of the Chancellery reported that Italy's growth outlook was "moderate" and that progress on consolidation was "overrated."   ... 'Not Without the Italians' Horst Köhler wrote to the chancellor in mid-March. Formerly the German chief negotiator in the Maastricht Treaty negotiations, Köhler had moved on to become the president of the German Savings Bank Association. Enclosed with his letter was a study by the Hamburg Institute of International Economics, which concluded that Italy had not fulfilled the conditions "for permanent and sustainable deficit and debt reduction," and that it posed "a special risk" to the euro.   ...   At a European Union special summit in Brussels in early May 1998, Kohl felt the "weight of history" and, without further ado, provided his unreserved support. "Not without the Italians, please. That was the political motto," says Joachim Bitterlich, Kohl's foreign policy advisor.   ...   The head of the economics division at the Chancellery, Sighart Nehring, noted in mid-March 1998 that "enormous risks" were associated with Italy's "high debt levels." The debt structure, Nehring added, was "unfavorable" and outlays would increase considerably if interest rates rose by only a small amount. A Love for Italy But the memo had no repercussions. The chancellor, it would seem, wasn't terribly interested in the details. There was a "built-in flexibility" among politicians when it came to the Maastricht criteria," says Dieter Kastrup, German ambassador to Italy at the time.   Italy, after all, was a founding member of the EU.   ... Tricks and Luck  ...   In the end, the Italians formally fulfilled the Maastricht criteria with a combination of tricks and fortunate circumstances. The country benefited from historically low interest rates, and Ciampi proved to be a creative financial juggler. He introduced, for example, a "Europe tax" and carried out a clever accounting trick, which involved selling national gold reserves to the central bank and imposing a tax on the profits. The budget deficit shrank accordingly. Even though EU statisticians ultimately did not acknowledge this trickery, it symbolized the fundamental Italian problem: The budget was not structurally balanced, but in fact had benefited from special effects.   ...   The general secretary of the Dutch prime minister and a state secretary from the finance ministry wanted to put pressure on Rome. "Without additional measures on the part of Italy to provide credible proof of the longevity of the consolidation, Italy's acceptance into the euro zone is currently unacceptable," the Dutch officials argued. Germany's Growing Debt Kohl, fearing for his most important project since German reunification, refused. He told the Dutch officials that the government in Paris had warned him that France would withdraw from the agreement if Italy were excluded.   The Germans were in a weak negotiating position.   ...   The Chancellery was aware of the problem. "In contrast to Belgium and Italy, the German debt level has risen since 1994," they wrote in a March 24, 1998 memo to Kohl and Chief of Staff Friedrich Bohl. The consequences were unpleasant. "In our view, there is a legal problem in Germany's case, because the Maastricht Treaty only provides for an exception if the debt level is declining," the memo continues.   ...   Still, the situation made it difficult for Germany to play judge, particularly given the lack of formal proof that Italy was in violation. In the spring of 1998, the statistical office of the European Union certified that the Italians had satisfied the deficit criteria of the Maastricht Treaty. This meant that there was "no longer any reason to bar the Italians accession to the euro," as Waigel recalls. After this hurdle had been removed for the Italians, "they had a sort of legal claim to be allowed to be part of the euro from the very beginning," Waigel's former top official Regling says today.   Italy Turns Away from Austerity Many knew that the figures were sugarcoated, and that they hardly represented real debt reduction. But no one dared draw the consequences. Kohl trusted Ciampi's reassuring claims that the Italians would continue to pursue the "cammino virtuoso" ("virtuous path") they had embarked upon and would "be unrelenting in efforts to clean up the budget." The government in Rome predicted that its debt level would sink to 60 percent of GDP by no later than 2010.   Things didn't turn out that way. As early as April 1998 -- that is, prior to the official decision on which countries would be part of the euro -- there were growing indications that Prodi's coalition partners, the neo-communists, were just waiting to return to their old habits. On April 3, the German embassy in Rome warned that this risk should "not be ignored."   ... 'A Qualitative Shift' ...   This didn't change after the election, either, no matter how many alarming messages Financial Attaché Stenglin sent to Bonn. On Oct. 1, he submitted a blunt analysis of the Italian fiscal policy, which he hid behind the harmless subject line "Italian Government Approves Draft for the 1999 Budget." Stenglin, who had been sent to Rome from his position at the Bundesbank, saw that the development in Italy was moving completely in the wrong direction. The Italian government's draft budget, he reported to Bonn, signified a "qualitative shift in budget policy."   According to Stenglin, the budget showed the lowest cost-cutting figures since the beginning of the consolidation course in the early 1990s. Additional tax revenues, he noted, would no longer be used solely to reduce the deficit, but also to pay for new spending, particularly on social programs.   ...   When Prodi was replaced a short time later by former Communist Massimo d'Alema, the situation deteriorated even further. D'Alema proposed financing a European economic stimulus program through euro bonds and not factoring the associated expenditures into the national deficits.   ... The Maelstrom of Crisis  A few weeks before the launch of the common European currency, Stenglin's assessment of the situation took on a dramatic undertone, when he wrote: "The question arises as to whether a country with an extremely high debt ratio doesn't risk gambling away the success of its consolidation efforts to date, thereby harming not only itself, but also the monetary union." It was a prophetic remark. In the fall of 2011, when the country was pulled into the maelstrom of the crisis, the debt ratio had risen above 120 percent of GDP once again.   ...   Meanwhile, European leaders are trying to correct the defects of the founding phase of the euro. Austerity and reform measures are being implemented in large parts of Europe, and all countries support the idea of joint responsibility for the currency. Nevertheless, the new euro architecture doesn't differ all that much from the old one.   ... No Solution Yet The government files from the founding phase of the monetary union reveal that this construct cannot function. The message the documents convey is that political opportunism will ultimately prevail. A monetary union amounts to more than shifting several billion euros back and forth. It is also a community of fate. Shared money requires shared policy and, in the end, shared institutions.   The euro is now in its 14th year, and after two years of ongoing crisis, there is a growing realization in Berlin and other capitals that the status quo cannot continue. All reform efforts still resemble small steps to nowhere, and yet politicians are beginning to think in terms of broader categories as they cope with the crisis.   ...   All of these measures boil down to individual countries relinquishing more authority and the central government in Brussels acquiring more power in return.   ... Incredible! And yet investors and the media hang on every word from these self-deceiving political grab-baggers. Perhaps, just perhaps, the recent elections is the beginning of a slow realization by the public that they truly have been duped from the very beginning.

Dont Bite The Gold Dust Posted: 08 May 2012 05:59 PM PDT Graceland Update

May Day in Paris Posted: 08 May 2012 05:57 PM PDT The Gold Speculator

Global Meltdown of Historic Proportions & A Fork in the Road Posted: 08 May 2012 04:40 PM PDT With continued volatility in many of the key global markets, 40 year veteran, Robert Fitzwilson wrote this exclusive piece for King World News.  Fitzwilson is founder of The Portola Group, one of the premier boutique firms in the United States. Here are Fitzwilson's observations: "The Central Banks have been pursuing a very flawed strategy.  Unfortunately, full speed ahead might be the only remaining alternative. Printing money to stimulate growth, in the face of declining/aging workforces and falling productivity, will result instead in lowering aggregate real returns for investors and exponential depreciation of fiat currencies." This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

What Happens to Gold if We Enter a Recession or Depression? Posted: 08 May 2012 04:00 PM PDT Casey Research

Overnight Markets Plunging Posted: 08 May 2012 03:39 PM PDT from Zero Hedge: Just as we warned at the end of today's nonsense, the afternoon ramp is fading fast now as the sad but true reality of a sun that rises in Europe awakening the maddening crowd. EURUSD is at 1.2970 (70 pips off the late-day swing highs already), ES (S&P 500 e-mini futures) are down 10 pts from the closing swing highs (which just happens to coincide with Sunday night's gap-down opening level around 1354.25), Silver has slumped back to the day's lows around $29, Gold back under $1600, and WTI is down around 2% from the day-session close at around $96.50. Treasuries are leaking lower in yield but FX markets seem very active as AUD drops to near parity with USD and carry pairs are generally weak. There are still a few more hours until Europe opens so anything can happen but for an overnight session, markets are not happy. Read More @ Zero Hedge.com

Greek leader of anti bailout party states bailout in Greece null and void/Spanish banks increase lending from ECB Posted: 08 May 2012 03:15 PM PDT by Harvey Organ, HarveyOrgan.Blogspot.ca: Gold closed down badly to the tune of $34.60 to close at $1604. Silver fared slightly worse falling by 66 cents to $29.41. The day started bad from Europe with reports that the leader of the anti-bailout party Tsipras declared that the bailout agreement with Europe is null and void. That sent all European bourses in the red and it immediately caused a spike downward in the S and P. The Dow at one point was down 198 points but not to worry as our plunge protection team showed up and viola the Dow fell by only 76 points. Today Europe announced that Italian banks borrowed another 1 billion dollars form the ECB a new record. In a few days we will hear from Spain but you can bet the farm that they have also come begging for euros in a can. In physical news, we witnessed a massive increase in imports of gold into Iran from Turkey. Turkey is the gateway into the Arab financial markets. China through its hub Hon Kong imported a huge 135 metric tonnes this quarter. Read More @ HarveyOrgan.Blogspot.ca

Jim Willie: “Gold Cover Clause Guidance” Posted: 08 May 2012 03:05 PM PDT by Jim Willie, via Silver Doctors: The propaganda against gold has intensified with Munger and Gates, unqualified to be sure that jewelry demand is down actually confirms the gold bull investment demand is much greater than jewelry demand to claim that gold supply is insufficient to accommodate a gold standard is rubbish the argument actually highlights the gargantuan expansion of the monetary base which urges a gold price an order of magnitude higher, like near $12,000/oz a 5% gold cover clause would be perfect to set a new global trade currency in motion actually, several new gold-backed currencies could simultaneously be launched that way, the new currencies form the core and the US & UK would be outside looking in the gold market is in a pitched battle still, with enormous orders being filled the Eastern Coalition continues to drain Western cartel member banks of their gold the cartel banks are insolvent and lately, they are suffering from illiquidity they have wrecked sovereign bond positions and off-side FOREX positions in the margin call, they are being forced to sell out their gold reserves for the precious cash the gold price will rise when the East is satisfied with their gold raids in the current round. Read More @ SilverDoctors.com

Answering The Cries For Help Posted: 08 May 2012 02:52 PM PDT by Jim Sinclair, JS Mineset: My Dear Extended Family, Today has been interesting in a perverse way. I have heard from every gold short who knows my name. I have heard from every weak gold holder that knows my name yelling for help. This time I cannot answer all the incoming communications. Nobody could. A month ago I got over 3500 incoming emails in less than three hours. The shorts exulting by email really cannot expect an answer. Even the weak gold and frustrated gold share holders cannot expect me to assuage their pain one at a time. The reason is it is always the same people pushing the panic button. I fully expect Alf Fields to be proven correct. As of today nothing he has said is wrong. He feels the gold price has bottomed in this reaction. That is yet to be proven incorrect. Read More @ JSMineset.com

There Is a War Going on Because Fiat Money Is Dying: John Embry Posted: 08 May 2012 02:37 PM PDT from KingWorldNews: With global stock markets plunging, along with gold and silver, today King World News interviewed John Embry, Chief Investment Strategist of the $10 billion strong Sprott Asset Management. Embry told KWN "There is a war going on right now" because "the pure fiat currency system is on its last legs." Embry also said "Europe is in desperate shape" and the implications are "horrific" if the US dollar loses its reserve status. Bur first, here is what Embry had to say about gold: "Gold is falling because the powers that be, with their paper shenanigans, are knocking the hell out of it. We see tremendous physical demand. Massive amounts of gold are going through Turkey, into the Middle-East. Chinese imports are strong. To me that's the ultimate antidote." John Embry Continues @ KingWorldNews.com

Silver and Gold Daily Bulletin/COT Review for Period 4-25 to 5/1/2012 Posted: 08 May 2012 02:35 PM PDT The commercials did almost the exact opposite on this trading day as their goal was to shake out all the shorts the speculators has purchased the prior period. The small speculators had picked up 2,798 shorts the previous period. They lost a ... Read More...

Safe Haven Indeed! Posted: 08 May 2012 02:26 PM PDT by Andy Hoffman, Miles Franklin: The purpose of today's RANT – ONE OF MY MOST IMPORTANT – is to refute "Cartel Rule #1," thou shalt not let gold rise when stock markets plummet. Over the past decade, the Cartel has been unrelenting in its efforts to drive PM prices down during crises, particularly when the "DOW JONES PROPAGANDA AVERAGE" falls by more than the taboo daily amount of 100 points. To date, their greatest success was the commencement of Global Meltdown I in late 2008 – when they succeeded in convincing the masses that PMs fell due to "liquidity issues" – when in fact it was THEM naked shorting with all their might, creating a PERCEPTION of such. Those that own PHYSICAL metal know full well that PHYSICAL gold and silver prices never fell to $700/oz and $9/oz, respectively – as the PAPER prices did – and in fact, PHYSICAL silver bottomed closer to $16-$17/oz due to the nearly 100% premiums that developed while the Cartel attacked PAPER silver with naked shorts. Read More @ Miles Franklin.com

Silver Update 5/08/12 GDP Games Posted: 08 May 2012 02:21 PM PDT from BrotherJohnF:

Gold Bull Market Over? Posted: 08 May 2012 12:00 PM PDT While today's $45 plunge in spot gold has violated the monthly low at $1612.47 and pressed the price structure to a new 9-week reaction low at $1595.32, let's notice that the pattern emerging from the very big picture continues to carve out a massive high-level congestion area in the form of a large triangle that is perched atop a 12-year bull run.

The Gold Price Took a Big Hit Today Losing $34.60 Closing $1,604 How Far Will it Fall? Posted: 08 May 2012 11:45 AM PDT Gold Price Close Today : 1604.00 Change : (34.60) or -2.11% Silver Price Close Today : 2941.50 Change : 65.8 cents or -2.19% Gold Silver Ratio Today : 54.530 Change : 0.043 or 0.08% Silver Gold Ratio Today : 0.01834 Change : -0.000014 or -0.08% Platinum Price Close Today : 1507.60 Change : -18.00 or -1.18% Palladium Price Close Today : 623.40 Change : -22.20 or -3.44% S&P 500 : 1,363.72 Change : -5.86 or -0.43% Dow In GOLD$ : $166.66 Change : $ 2.57 or 1.57% Dow in GOLD oz : 8.062 Change : 0.124 or 1.57% Dow in SILVER oz : 439.64 Change : 7.07 or 1.64% Dow Industrial : 12,932.01 Change : -76.52 or -0.59% US Dollar Index : 79.87 Change : 0.305 or 0.38% The Big Hit landed on the GOLD PRICE today. It lost $34.60 to close Comex at $1,604.00, down 2.11%. Silver gave up 65.8 cents to shutter the shop at 2941.5c. Before I say one word about the silver and GOLD PRICE and bottoms and targets, I'll tell y'all that we'd all be better off and shuck a lot of anxiety if we just decided to ride the primary trend, buy when the price drops, and trust God for the outcome. But my phone is nearly melting with all the folks calling asking what we think the metals will do, and saying they're going to wait for another little drop. They'll never get it bought, because at every price, they'll still be waiting for "just a little more." Bulls get rich, and bears get rich, but pigs get slaughtered. So having warned against trying to catch a falling knife, I will now attempt to do it, natural born fool that I am. Today the GOLD PRICE dove through the upper boundary of that falling wedge pattern. Likely it will touch that lower boundary, now about $1,575, before it stops. (Ask yourself if this putative 1.5% is worth waiting for.) However, full disclosure wants to add that if that bottom boundary holdeth not, gold might plunge to next support, now about $1,500. Times like these you have to figure out what you believe and hang on to it. If we are near gold's bottom -- and I believe we are -- this offers a spectacular buying opportunity, but only if you can cinch up your fears and do it. Otherwise it only offers those bragging rights that begin, "One time I ALMOST bought gold right near the bottom, but . . . " The SILVER PRICE cascaded down 65.8 cents to 2941.5c. It sliced clean to the bottom boundary of the falling wedge. Now it stands at the crossroads. Road # 1, silver stops right here. (Low today was 2911c). Road #2, silver steps through that boundary, invalidating the bullish falling wedge, and seeking 2812c, or even the mid-2700c. It would reach those levels if its relation to certain moving averages matched those at the December 2011 lows. However, those are all so oversold already that silver may not match those December lows Whatever y'all do, buy only the US 90% SILVER coin, which is an eye-popping $2.66 an ounce cheaper than silver American Eagles and $1.01/oz cheaper than silver rounds. Never forget: OVER TIME, PREMIUM ALWAYS DISAPPEARS. In this Best of All Possible Worlds, Spain's fourth largest bank will be bailed out to the tune of $13 bn. I'm telling y'all, saving them banks is becoming a mite pricey, but I reckon the whole world's enslaved to them. Y'all can moan and complain about gold and silver tumbling, but as long as the banks are in charge, both metals have a secure and brilliant future. US DOLLAR INDEX took off the velvet gloves today and rose an unambiguous 30.5 basis points (0.31%) to 79.869. Close wasn't quite unambiguous, though, as it perched plumb on the upper boundary of the even-sided triangle. Intraday yesterday and today the dollar punched to 80. That and the European turmoil argue the dollar will clamber higher. You didn't want to own euros today. Euro dropped 0.31% to $1.3013, but that $1.3000 support has the life expectancy of a Tootsie Roll in a kindergarten thirty minutes before lunch. Lower it will go. Yen remained fairly flat again today, up 0.08% to 125.26c (Y79.83/US$1). Should go higher, although there's not a fundamental reason in the world for it, as it's the rottenest of all the rotten fiat currencies. STOCKS had water lapping over the gunwales today from the moment they launched. Dow's low appeared at 12,810, but "Somebody" came to the rescue late in the day and it closed down only 76.52 (0.6%) at 12,932.01. S&P500 lost 5.86 or 0.43% to end at 1,363.72. S&P500 fell clean through the neckline of its head and shoulders top pattern while the Dow worked on completing the right shoulder of its HandS. Candide couldn't find ground for optimism here. Yet strange to recount, the Dow in Gold Dollars today closed exactly at its March high, G$166.66 (8.062 oz). Four days ago it made a slightly higher high, but that top of this range has contained it for months as it forms a diamond top. One day soon it will break down, taking stocks much lower and gold higher, or stocks lower faster than gold. Argentum et aurum comparenda sunt -- -- Gold and silver must be bought. - Franklin Sanders, The Moneychanger The-MoneyChanger.com 888-218-9226 10:00am-5:00pm CST, Monday-Friday © 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. No, I don't.

Gold Breaks MAJOR Trendline Support Posted: 08 May 2012 11:23 AM PDT courtesy of DailyFX.com May 08, 2012 01:26 PM Daily Bars Prepared by Jamie Saettele, CMT Gold has broken below a major trendline that extends off of lows in 2008, 2010, and 2011. Focus is now on support from May 2011 and resistance from December 2010 at 1450/80. The bearish channel will come into play on a break below the December 2011 low. 1615 is resistance. The break is valid against 1650. Ideas: short into 1615, stop 1650...

Two Out of Three Ain't Bad Posted: 08 May 2012 11:01 AM PDT Synopsis: How the Pareto principle gives investors a serious edge in the natural resource markets. By Marin Katusa, Chief Energy Investment Strategist I want you I need you But there ain't no way I'm ever gonna love you Now don't be sad Cause 2 out of 3 ain't bad Now don't be sad Cause 2 out of 3 ain't bad Meat Loaf, from his 1977 album Bat Out Of Hell (song written by Jim Steinman) Before I get into why I'm using what is arguably Meatloaf's best song as an introduction, there are two things I want to get off the plate. First, you can now track me daily on twitter @marinkatusa. Second, on a flight from Florida to Georgia, Doug Casey and I flew with Porter Stansberry, and the bet is on. One hundred ounces of silver will go to the winner, and in addition we are having a radio debate next week – more information to come. Now on to this week's article. I spent the last few days of April at the Casey Research Recovery Reality C...

Fleckenstein - Warren Buffett's Positions On Gold And Taxes Are 'Just Idiotic' Posted: 08 May 2012 10:28 AM PDT Simone Foxman, for BusinessInsider.com writes:  "Legendary hedge fund manager Bill Fleckenstein trashed Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger for their stance on gold in an interview with King World News. Fleckenstein railed against Buffett's assertions that gold bugs "want people to be as afraid as they are" and Munger's arguments that "civilized people don't buy gold": "They've got a lot of these levered financial entities, and that's helped them. So, I guess they figure they know how to beat the money printing, that they obviously must see. Buffett knows the dollar is doomed by our policies. Why they (Buffett and Munger) act like you have to be a moron to own gold, I don't know. He could just say, 'It's not my cup of tea, I prefer businesses that spit out cash,' instead of talking about it as though as it was something only a fool would have.... "Is Munger trying to imply that only Jewish people in Vienna, before World War II, it was only suitable for them? Does that mean if he was Jewish, he wouldn't have seen the problems coming and he wouldn't have owned any? It's just idiotic. But then so is Buffett's stance on tax policy. Maybe guys get to the point where they have so much money, their ego gets the best of them and they just like to hear themselves talk. I don't know." Source: BusinessInsider.com http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-fleckenstein-warren-buffett-charlie-munger-gold-taxes-2012-5  Read more about Mr. Fleckenstein's commentary at King World News, at this link: http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2012/5/8_Fleckenstein_-_Stock_Market_to_Tank,_Buffetts_Ego_%26_Gold.html  (Ed.  How about a chart to go with the article.  See below.)  Uncivilized indeed.  That is all, carry on.

Guest Post: The Emperor Is Naked Posted: 08 May 2012 10:15 AM PDT Submitted by Karen Roche and JT Long of The Gold Report  (5/4/12), A "paralyzed" Federal Reserve Bank, in its "final days," held hostage by Wall Street "robots" trading in markets that are "artificially medicated" are just a few of the bleak observations shared by David Stockman, former Republican U.S. Congressman and director of the Office of Management and Budget. He is also a founding partner of Heartland Industrial Partners and the author of The Triumph of Politics: Why Reagan's Revolution Failed and the soon-to-be released The Great Deformation: How Crony Capitalism Corrupts Free Markets and Democracy. The Gold Report caught up with Stockman for this exclusive interview at the recent Recovery Reality Check conference. The Gold Report: David, you have talked and written about the effect of government-funded, debt-fueled spending on the stock market. What will be the real impact of quantitative easing? David Stockman: We are in the last innings of a very bad ball game. We are coping with the crash of a 30-year–long debt super-cycle and the aftermath of an unsustainable bubble. Quantitative easing is making it worse by facilitating more public-sector borrowing and preventing debt liquidation in the private sector—both erroneous steps in my view. The federal government is not getting its financial house in order. We are on the edge of a crisis in the bond markets. It has already happened in Europe and will be coming to our neighborhood soon. TGR: What should the role of the Federal Reserve be? DS: To get out of the way and not act like it is the central monetary planner of a $15 trillion economy. It cannot and should not be done. The Fed is destroying the capital market by pegging and manipulating the price of money and debt capital. Interest rates signal nothing anymore because they are zero. The yield curve signals nothing anymore because it is totally manipulated by the Fed. The very idea of "Operation Twist" is an abomination. Capital markets are at the heart of capitalism and they are not working. Savers are being crushed when we desperately need savings. The federal government is borrowing when it is broke. Wall Street is arbitraging the Fed's monetary policy by borrowing overnight money at 10 basis points and investing it in 10-year treasuries at a yield of 200 basis points, capturing the profit and laughing all the way to the bank. The Fed has become a captive of the traders and robots on Wall Street. TGR: If we are in the final innings of a debt super-cycle, what is the catalyst that will end the game? DS: I think the likely catalyst is a breakdown of the U.S. government bond market. It is the heart of the fixed income market and, therefore, the world's financial market. Because of Fed management and interest-rate pegging, the market is artificially medicated. All of the rates and spreads are unreal. The yield curve is not market driven. Supply and demand for savings and investment, future inflation risk discounts by investors—none of these free market forces matter. The price of money is dictated by the Fed, and Wall Street merely attempts to front-run its next move. As long as the hedge fund traders and fast-money boys believe the Fed can keep everything pegged, we may limp along. The minute they lose confidence, they will unwind their trades. On the margin, nobody owns the Treasury bond; you rent it. Trillions of treasury paper is funded on repo: You buy $100 million (M) in Treasuries and immediately put them up as collateral for overnight borrowings of $98M. Traders can capture the spread as long as the price of the bond is stable or rising, as it has been for the last year or two. If the bond drops 2%, the spread has been wiped out. If that happens, the massive repo structures—that is, debt owned by still more debt—will start to unwind and create a panic in the Treasury market. People will realize the emperor is naked. TGR: Is that what happened in 2008? DS: In 2008 it was the repo market for mortgage-back securities, credit default obligations and such. In 2008 we had a dry run of what happens when a class of assets owned on overnight money goes into a tailspin. There is a thunderous collapse. Since then, the repo trade has remained in the Treasury and other high-grade markets because subprime and low-quality mortgage-backed securities are dead. TGR: Walk us through a hypothetical. What happens when the fast-money traders lose confidence in the Fed's ability to keep the spread? DS: They are forced to start selling in order to liquidate their carry trades because repo lenders get nervous and want their cash back. However, when the crisis comes, there will be insufficient private bids—the market will gap down hard unless the central banks buy on an emergency basis: the Fed, the European Central Bank (ECB), the people's printing press of China and all the rest of them. The question is: Will the central banks be able to do that now, given that they have already expanded their balance sheets? The Fed balance sheet was $900 billion (B) when Lehman crashed in September 2008. It took 93 years to build it to that level from when the Fed opened for business in November 1914. Bernanke then added another $900B in seven weeks and then he took it to $2.4 trillion in an orgy of money printing during the initial 13 weeks after Lehman. Today it is nearly $3 trillion. Can it triple again? I do not think so. Worldwide it's the same story: the top eight central banks had $5 trillion of footings shortly before the crisis; they have $15 trillion today. Overwhelmingly, this fantastic expansion of central bank footings has been used to buy or discount sovereign debt. This was the mother of all monetizations. TGR: Following that path, what happens if there are no buyers? Do the governments go into default? DS: The U.S. Treasury needs to be in the market for $20B in new issuances every week. When the day comes when there are all offers and no bids, the music will stop. Instead of being able to easily pawn off more borrowing on the markets—say 90 basis points for a 5-year note as at present—they may have to pay hundreds of basis points more. All of a sudden the politicians will run around with their hair on fire, asking, what happened to all the free money? TGR: What do the politicians have to do next? DS: They are going to have to eat 30 years worth of lies and by the time they are done eating, there will be a lot of mayhem. TGR: Will the mayhem stretch into the private sector? DS: It will be everywhere. Once the bond market starts unraveling, all the other risk assets will start selling off like mad, too. TGR: Does every sector collapse? DS: If the bond market goes into a dislocation, it will spread like a contagion to all of the other asset markets. There will be a massive selloff. I think everything in the world is overvalued—stocks, bonds, commodities, currencies. Too much money printing and debt expansion drove the prices of all asset classes to artificial, non-economic levels. The danger to the world is not classic inflation or deflation of goods and services; it's a drastic downward re-pricing of inflated financial assets. TGR: Is there any way to unravel this without this massive dislocation? DS: I do not think so. When you are so far out on the end of a limb, how do you walk it back? The Fed is now at the end of a $3 trillion limb. It has been taken hostage by the markets the Federal Open Market Committee was trying to placate. People in the trading desks and hedge funds have been trained to front run the Fed. If they think the Fed's next buy will be in the belly of the curve, they buy the belly of the curve. But how does the Fed ever unwind its current lunatic balance sheet? If the smart traders conclude the Fed's next move will be to sell mortgage-backed securities, they will sell like mad in advance; soon there would be mayhem as all the boys and girls on Wall Street piled on. So the Fed is frozen; it is petrified by fear that if it begins contracting its balance sheet it will unleash the demons. TGR: Was there some type of tipping that allowed certain banks to front run the Fed? DS: There are two kinds of front-running. First is market-based front-running. You try to figure out what the Fed is doing by reading its smoke signals and looking at how it slices and dices its meeting statements. People invest or speculate against the Fed's next incremental move. Second, there is illicit front-running, where you have a friend who works for the Federal Reserve Board who tells you what happened in its meetings. This is obviously illegal. But frankly, there is also just plain crony capitalism that is not that different in character and it's what Wall Street does every day. Bill Dudley, who runs the New York Fed, was formerly chief economist for Goldman Sachs and he pretends to solicit an opinion about financial conditions from the current Goldman economist, who then pretends to opine as to what the economy and Fed might do next for the benefit of Goldman's traders, and possibly its clients. So then it links in the ECB, Bank of Canada, etc. Is there any monetary post in the world not run by Goldman Sachs? The point is, this is not the free market at work. This is central bank money printers and their Wall Street cronies perverting what used to be a capitalist market. TGR: Does this unwinding of the Fed and the bond markets put the banking system back in peril, like in 2008? DS: Not necessarily. That is one of the great myths that I address in my book. The banking system, especially the mainstream banking system, was not in peril at all. The toxic securitized mortgage assets were not in the Main Street banks and savings and loans; these institutions owned mostly prime quality whole loans and could have bled down the modest bad debt they did have over time from enhanced loan loss reserves. So the run on money was not at the retail teller window; it was in the canyons of Wall Street. The run was on wholesale money—that is, on repo and on unsecured commercial paper that had been issued in the hundreds of billions by financial institutions loaded down with securitized toxic garbage, including a lot of in-process inventory, on the asset side of their balance sheets. The run was on investment banks that were really hedge funds in financial drag. The Goldmans and Morgan Stanleys did not really need trillion-dollar balance sheets to do mergers and acquisitions. Mergers and acquisitions do not require capital; they require a good Rolodex. They also did not need all that capital for the other part of investment banking—the underwriting business. Regulated stocks and bonds get underwritten through rigged cartels—they almost never under-price and really don't need much capital. Their trillion dollar balance sheets, therefore, were just massive trading operations—whether they called it customer accommodation or proprietary is a distinction without a difference—which were funded on 30 to 1 leverage. Much of the debt was unstable hot money from the wholesale and repo market and that was the rub—the source of the panic. Bernanke thought this was a retail run à la the 1930s. It was not; it was a wholesale money run in the canyons of Wall Street and it should have been allowed to burn out. TGR: Let's get back to our ballgame. What is to keep the U.S. population from saying, please Fed save us again? DS: This time, I think the people will blame the Fed for lying. When the next crisis comes, I can see torches and pitch forks moving in the direction of the Eccles building where the Fed has its offices. TGR: Let's talk about timing. On Dec. 31, the tax cuts expire, defense cuts go into place and we hit the debt ceiling. DS: That will be a clarifying moment; never before have three such powerful vectors come together at the same time— fiscal triple witching. First, the debt ceiling will expire around election time, so the government will face another shutdown and it will be politically brutal to assemble a majority in a lame duck session to raise it by the trillions that will be needed. Second, the whole set of tax cuts and credits that have been enacted over the last 10 years total up to $400–500B annually will expire on Dec. 31, so they will hit the economy like a ton of bricks if not extended. Third, you have the sequester on defense spending that was put in last summer as a fallback, which cannot be changed without a majority vote in Congress. It is a push-pull situation: If you defer the sequester, you need more debt ceiling. If you extend the tax expirations, you need a debt ceiling increase of $100B a month. TGR: What will Congress do? DS: Congress will extend the whole thing for 60 or 90 days to give the new president, if he hasn't demanded a recount yet, an opportunity to come up with a plan. To get the votes to extend the debt ceiling, the Democrats will insist on keeping the income and payroll tax cuts for the 99% and the Republicans will want to keep the capital gains rate at 15% so the Wall Street speculators will not be inconvenienced. It is utter madness. TGR: It is like chasing your tail. How does it stop? DS: I do not know how a functioning democracy in the ordinary course can deal with this. Maybe someone from Goldman Sachs can come and put in a fix, just like in Greece and Italy. The situation is really that pathetic. TGR: Greece has come up with some creative ways to bring down its sovereign debt without actually defaulting. DS: The Greek debt restructuring was a farce. More than $100B was held by the European bailout fund, the ECB or the International Monetary Fund. They got 100 cents on the dollar simply by issuing more debt to Greece. For private debt, I believe the net write-down was $30B after all the gimmicks, including the front-end payment. The rest was simply refinanced. The Greeks are still debt slaves, and will be until they tell Brussels to take a hike. TGR: Going back to the triple-witching hour at year-end, if the debt ceiling is raised again, when do we start to see government layoffs and limitations on services? DS: Defense purchases and non-defense purchases will be hit with brutal force by the sequester. As we go into 2013, there will be a shocking hit to the reported GDP numbers as discretionary government spending shrinks. People keep forgetting that most government spending is transfer payments, but it is only purchases of labor and goods that go directly into the GDP calculations, and it is these accounts that will get smacked by the sequester of discretionary defense and non-defense budgets. TGR: I would think to unemployment numbers as well. DS: They will go up. Just take one example. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics monthly report, there are 650,000 or so jobs in the U.S. Postal Service alone. That is 650,000 people who pretend to work at jobs that have more or less been made obsolete and redundant by the Internet and who are paid through borrowings from Uncle Sam because the post office is broke. Yet, the courageous ladies and gentlemen on Capitol Hill cannot even bring themselves to vote to discontinue Saturday mail delivery; they voted to study it! That is a measure of the loss of capacity to rationally cognate about our fiscal circumstance. TGR: In the midst of this volatility, how can normal people preserve, much less expand their wealth? DS: The only thing you can do is to stay out of harm's way and try to preserve what you can in cash. All of the markets are rigged or impaired. A 4% yield on blue chip stocks is not worth it, because when the thing falls apart, your 4% will be gone in an hour. TGR: But if the government keeps printing money, cash will not be worth as much, either, right? DS: No, I do not think we will have hyperinflation. I think the financial system will break down before it can even get started. Then the economy will go into paralysis until we find the courage, focus and resolution to do something about it. Instead of hyperinflation or deflation there will be a major financial dislocation, which means painful re-pricing of financial assets. How painful will the re-pricing be? I think the public already knows that it will be really terrible. A poll I saw the other day indicated that 25% of people on the verge of retirement think they are in such bad financial shape that they will have to work until age 80. Now, the average life expectancy is 78. People's financial circumstances are so bad that they think they will be working two years after they are dead! TGR: Finally, what is your investment model? DS: My investing model is ABCD: Anything Bernanke Cannot Destroy: flashlight batteries, canned beans, bottled water, gold, a cabin in the mountains. TGR: Thank you very much. [Stockman was the keynote speaker at last weekend's Casey Research Recovery Reality Check Summit. This event featured legendary contrarian investor Doug Casey, high-end natural resource broker Rick Rule, New York Times bestselling author John Mauldin and 28 other financial luminaries. Over the three-day summit, they provided investors with asset-protection action plans and actionable investment advice. And even if you were unable to attend, you can still hear every recorded presentation in the Summit Audio Collection. Learn more here.] David Stockman is a former U.S. politician and businessman, serving as a Republican U.S. Representative from the state of Michigan 1977–1981 and as the director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan 1981–1985. He is the author of The Triumph of Politics: Why Reagan's Revolution Failed and the soon-to-be released The Great Deformation: How Crony Capitalism Corrupts Free Markets and Democracy. [Stockman was the keynote speaker at last weekend's Casey Research Recovery Reality Check Summit. This event featured legendary contrarian investor Doug Casey, high-end natural resource broker Rick Rule, New York Times bestselling author John Mauldin and 28 other financial luminaries. Over the three-day summit, they provided investors with asset-protection action plans and actionable investment advice. And even if you were unable to attend, you can still hear every recorded presentation in the Summit Audio Collection. Learn more here.] Want to read more exclusive Gold Report interviews like this? Sign up for our free e-newsletter, and you'll learn when new articles have been published. To see a list of recent interviews with industry analysts and commentators, visit our Exclusive Interviews page. Disclosure: From time to time, Streetwise Reports LLC and its directors, officers, employees or members of their families, as well as persons interviewed for articles on the site, may have a long or short position in securities mentioned and may make purchases and/or sales of those securities in the open market or otherwise.

Gold has changed overnight, and likely will again Posted: 08 May 2012 09:55 AM PDT 5:58p ET Tuesday, May 8, 2012 Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: GATA isn't an investment adviser but rather, as a matter of law, a non-profit educational and civil rights organization incorporated in Delaware and recognized as federally tax-exempt by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. As a more practical matter we aspire to be a sort of liberation movement, since, as was written in ancient times, the truth makes you free. We don't know exactly when this will happen. Insofar as the price of gold is an international political decision as much as a market decision, we particularly do not know when crucial political decisions affecting the gold price will be made. But they have been made before, they will be made again, and we are seeing now so many developments that correspond to the developments immediately preceding the last great revaluations of gold, in 1968 and 1971. ... Dispatch continues below ... ADVERTISEMENT Be Part of a Chance to Discover Multi-Million-Ounce Gold and Silver Deposits in Canada 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. Back then, when gold price suppression was openly a big part of U.S. economic and foreign policy, gold moved from West to East -- particularly from the United States to Europe. Then came the collapse of the London Gold Pool and the Bretton Woods Agreement, when the U.S. government decided that the drain on its gold reserves caused by its policy of price suppression had become too great: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Gold_Pool While gold price suppression is now a largely (but not entirely) surreptitious policy, once again we see gold flowing from West to East -- only now the East includes the rapidly developing countries of Asia. This flow has been tempered by the supply of imaginary gold conjured by derivatives, but it is a strong flow nevertheless. At what point will the government or governments still supplying metal to the market for price suppression change policy to relieve the threat to what remains of their gold reserves? Will the U.S. government, as geopolitical analyst Jim Rickards has suggested, end the price suppression scheme by confiscating the gold reserves it holds in custody for other nations? Maybe there are answers to those questions in the documents the Federal Reserve was able to withhold from GATA as a result of the decision last year in our somewhat successful freedom-of-information lawsuit against the Fed: http://www.gata.org/node/9917 We don't know. But we do know from history that the biggest circumstances with gold, and thus gold's valuation, tend to change overnight, when all is revealed suddenly. The central bankers won't be calling us or you about this a day or two ahead of time. They'll be calling their agents at JPMorganChase and HSBC. All we can do is strive to hasten the day of change. And such days do happen, and have happened in times much like the ones we are experiencing now. CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc. * * * Join GATA here: Las Vegas Money Show Caesar's Palace, Las Vegas Monday-Thursday, May 14-17, 2012 http://www.moneyshow.com/tradeshow/las_vegas/moneyshow/ Committee for Monetary Research and Education Spring Dinner Meeting "Money and the Corporate State" Union League Club, New York, N.Y. Thursday, May 17, 2012 http://www.cmre.org/ Vancouver World Resource Investment Conference Sunday-Monday, June 3-4, 2012 Vancouver Convention Centre East Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada http://www.cambridgehouse.com/event/world-resource-investment-conference Standard Chartered's Earth Resources Conference Wednesday-Thursday, June 20-21, 2012 J.W. Marriott, Hong Kong http://www.standardcharteredsignatureevents.com/earths-resources/welcome... Hong Kong Gold Investment Forum Monday-Wednesday, June 25-27, 2012 Renaissance Harbour View Hotel, Hong Kong http://www.hkgoldinvestmentforum.com/ Toronto Resource Investment Conference Thursday-Friday, September 27-28, 2012 Toronto Sheraton Centre Hotel Toronto, Ontario, Canada http://www.cambridgehouse.com/event/toronto-resource-investment-conferen... New Orleans Investment Conference Wednesday-Saturday, October 24-27, 2012 Hilton New Orleans Riverside Hotel New Orleans, Louisiana http://www.neworleansconference.com/ * * * 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: http://gata.org/tshirts Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: http://www.gata.org To contribute to GATA, please visit: http://www.gata.org/node/16

How Bailouts Encourage Bad Behavior Posted: 08 May 2012 09:30 AM PDT Greece returned to Europe's center stage this morning…and almost no one was happy about it. Most investors were pretty content when this "Debbie Downer-opoulos" of the European financial markets disappeared behind the curtains for a while. But Debbie took the stage again Sunday when the left-wing Syriza party gained a surprisingly large number of seats in Parliament. The leftists hope to form a coalition government that would nationalize banks, repeal recent labor reforms and immediately cancel the bailout accords with the European Union and the IMF. In other words, these politicians are threatening to undo the very austerity measures that the EU and the IMF adore. Whether or not such "leftist reforms" would benefit Greece, the idea that the Greeks would unhinge their EU shackles is worrying investors. The major European stock markets dropped about 2% — pushing several stock indices on Europe's periphery deeper into the red for the year. The Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Greek stocks markets are all showing losses for 2012. Looking back over the last 12 months, all four of these markets have tumbled at least 33% in dollar terms. For a fleeting moment earlier this year, many investors placed the Eurozone crisis in the past tense. But now it appears that the crisis is very much in the present and future tense. "Euro Near Three-Month Low on Greek Leadership Concern," a Bloomberg News headline declares. "Alexis Tsipras, whose Syriza party placed second in Greek elections on May 6…said he wouldn't agree to join forces with New Democracy and Pasok, the two Greek parties that have supported austerity measures in return for international funds." "When you have the guy who's supposed to form the coalition saying that there's a moratorium on debt limits," a currency strategist tells Bloomberg, "that the bailout is not necessarily in place — stuff like that is getting people a little skittish," Indeed…and the skittishness is rippling across the Atlantic. Here in the US, the "risk-off" trade is back on. Stocks and commodities down; bonds and the dollar up. Although the major US stock indices are still clinging to gains for 2012, the S&P 500 is off about 4% since early April. These modest signs of investor distress will no doubt inspire renewed bailout/austerity/manipulation efforts by the European and US governments' financial meddlers. As we have observed time-after-time since the 2008 crisis, there is no economic downtick that is not simultaneously a call to action — a call to government action. Regrettably, most of these government actions address symptoms rather than the disease itself. They "cure" gangrenous limbs with Lidocaine rather than amputations. As a result, a smattering of politically connected banks and corporations feel better, but the overall economy remains deathly ill. The European interventions of the last two years tell the tale. Northern European taxpayers have sent hundreds of billions of euros to their southern neighbors, while the European Central Bank has printed more than €1 trillion and funneled most of that money to large European banks. As a result of all of these shenanigans, many large European banks feel much better. But millions of taxpayers are poorer… and the Greeks themselves are no better off. In 2010, before the first bailout, the Greek government owed about €310 billion, all of it to banks and other members of the private sector. Today, a whopping 73 percent of Greek debt sits on the books of the European Central Bank, euro-area governments and the IMF. And by the time the EU and the IMF finish sending their bailout euros to Greece in 2015, Greek debt will total about €316 billion, close to 100% of which will be held by the ECB and other government agencies. In other words, the Greek's monstrous government debt load would be just as large in 2015 as it was in 2010. But government agencies would be on the hook for those debts instead of European banks and other private investors. Is this really a remedy? If so, for whom? This sort of remedy rewards imprudent banks, punishes taxpayers and condemns the Greeks to years of indentured servitude. And it probably condemns the entire European economy to a sustained period of slow-to-negative growth. Unfortunately, while such governmental "do-gooding" almost always fails to restore health and viability to a sickly economy, it almost always succeeds in nourishing a lot of "do-badding." By rewarding imprudence — over and over — government-sponsored bailouts encourage bad behavior…over and over. Eric Fry for The Daily Reckoning How Bailouts Encourage Bad Behavior originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning. The Daily Reckoning, published by Agora Financial provides over 400,000 global readers economic news, market analysis, and contrarian investment ideas. Recently Agora Financial released a video titled "What Causes Gas Price to Increase?".

Encouragement from Embry and Sinclair Posted: 08 May 2012 09:24 AM PDT 5:15p ET Tuesday, May 8, 2012 Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: Sprott Asset Management's John Embry today tells King World News that the counterintuitive drubbing of the monetary metals is an indication of the desperate circumstances of fiat money and its managers. He suspects that it presages another 100-percent-up year for the mining shares. An excerpt from the interview is posted at the King World News blog here: http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2012/5/8_Emb... Meanwhile, mining entrepreneur and gold advocate Jim Sinclair tells gold investors that they should depart the kitchen if they can't stand the heat, but he's staying: http://www.jsmineset.com/2012/05/08/answering-the-cries-for-help/ CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc. ADVERTISEMENT Prophecy Platinum (TSXV: NKL) and Ursa Major Minerals Sign Combination Agreement Company Press Release Friday, March 2, 2012 VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Canada -- Prophecy Platinum Corp. (TSX-V: NKL, OTC-QX: PNIKF, Frankfurt: P94P) and Ursa Major Minerals Inc. have signed a binding letter of agreement for a business combination through a proposed all-share transaction. In doing so Prophecy and Ursa have acted at arm's length and the transaction has been negotiated at arm's length. Prophecy will issue one common share in exchange for every 25 outstanding common shares of Ursa. Ursa options and warrants will be exchanged for options and warrants of Prophecy on an agreed schedule. Prophecy's offer represents a value of about $0.15 per each common share of Ursa based on Prophecy's share price of $3.70 as at March 1, representing a premium of 130 percent to Ursa's March 1 closing price of $0.065. Prophecy is to subscribe for $1 million common shares of Ursa by way of private placement financing at $0.06 per share, subject to regulatory approval. Upon placement completion, John Lee and Greg Hall, current Prophecy directors, will be appointed to Ursa's board. Prophecy thus will become a mid-tier resource company with a robust and diversified pipeline of platinum nickel projects, including: -- The fully permitted open-pit Shakespeare PGM-Ni-Cu mine close to Sudbury, Ontario, infrastructure with near-term production capabilities. -- The flagship Wellgreen (Yukon) PGM-Ni-Cu project with more than 10 million ounces of Pt-Pd-Au inferred resource. Drilling is under way and a preliminary economic assessment study is pending. -- Manitoba's Lynn Lake Ni-Cu project with more than 262 million pounds Ni and 138 million pounds Cu measured and indicated. For the complete announcement, please visit Prophecy Platinum's Internet site here: http://www.prophecyplat.com/news_2012_mar02_prophecy_platinum_ursa_major... Join GATA here: Las Vegas Money Show Caesar's Palace, Las Vegas Monday-Thursday, May 14-17, 2012 http://www.moneyshow.com/tradeshow/las_vegas/moneyshow/ Committee for Monetary Research and Education Spring Dinner Meeting "Money and the Corporate State" Union League Club, New York, N.Y. Thursday, May 17, 2012 http://www.cmre.org/ Vancouver World Resource Investment Conference Sunday-Monday, June 3-4, 2012 Vancouver Convention Centre East Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada http://www.cambridgehouse.com/event/world-resource-investment-conference Standard Chartered's Earth Resources Conference Wednesday-Thursday, June 20-21, 2012 J.W. Marriott, Hong Kong http://www.standardcharteredsignatureevents.com/earths-resources/welcome... Hong Kong Gold Investment Forum Monday-Wednesday, June 25-27, 2012 Renaissance Harbour View Hotel, Hong Kong http://www.hkgoldinvestmentforum.com/ Toronto Resource Investment Conference Thursday-Friday, September 27-28, 2012 Toronto Sheraton Centre Hotel Toronto, Ontario, Canada http://www.cambridgehouse.com/event/toronto-resource-investment-conferen... New Orleans Investment Conference Wednesday-Saturday, October 24-27, 2012 Hilton New Orleans Riverside Hotel New Orleans, Louisiana http://www.neworleansconference.com/ * * * 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: http://gata.org/tshirts Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: http://www.gata.org To contribute to GATA, please visit: http://www.gata.org/node/16 ADVERTISEMENT Sona Discovers Potential High-Grade Gold Mineralization at Blackdome in British Columbia -- 13.6g over 1.5 Meters From a Company Press Release November 22, 2011 VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- With its latest surface diamond drilling program at its 100-percent-owned, formerly producing Blackdome gold mine in southern British Columbia, Sona Resources Corp. has discovered a potentially high-grade gold-mineralized area, with one hole intersecting 13.6 grams of gold in 1.5 meters of core drilling. "We intersected a promising new mineralized zone, and we feel optimistic about the assay results," says Sona's president and CEO, John P. Thompson. "We have undertaken an aggressive exploration program that has tested a number of target zones. Our discovery of this new gold-bearing structure is significant, and it represents a positive development for the company." Sona aims to bring its permitted Blackdome mill back into production over the next year and a half, at a rate of 200 tonnes per day, with feed from the formerly producing Blackdome mine and the nearby Elizabeth gold deposit property. A positive preliminary economic assessment by Micon International Ltd., based on a gold price of $950 per ounce over eight years, has estimated a cash cost of $208 per tonne milled, or $686 per gold ounce recovered. For the company's complete press release, please visit: http://www.sonaresources.com/_resources/news/SONA_NR18_2011-opt.pdf

Capitulation Watch for HUI Posted: 08 May 2012 09:21 AM PDT HOUSTON -- Please note the chart just below was originally shared with GGR subscribers on Sunday, May 6.  HUI/Gold Ratio for the past 16 years.  Measures the relationship between the large cap miners and gold.  A larger version of this chart is on the next page.  Capitulation is the condition where an issue accelerates its decline just before a reversal, often resulting in a "V" shaped pattern. It is sometimes called a selling exhaustion or washout. One of the ways we can measure/observe it is in the relationship of mining shares to gold metal.     We can see three major examples in the HUI/Gold ratio chart, plus the current example, although we do not yet know this one's limits.  (1) 2000.  The great exodus of capital out of mining stocks at the end of the 20-year bear market for gold and silver, following the extremely destructive Bre-X scandal which fraudulently boosted a penny stock to over $200 per share and a $6 billion market cap before the fraud was exposed. Gold stocks became universally hated and very under-owned.  The mother of all capitulations for the Big Miners.  (2) 2005. The first of the unexplainable overly-harsh reactions for mining shares relative to gold, except that gold corrected at the same time the Big Markets were doing better. Capitulation Lite.  (3) 2008. Bear Stearns, Lehman, AIG, GM, TARP, bailouts, Fed QE, U.S. "Great Recession" led to legitimate fears of the global collapse of the banking system, massive deleveraging… The Armageddon Capitulation.  (4) 2011-2012. European banking/sovereign debt crises, fears that gold cannot sustain its "high" price, rotation/migration of capital out of miners and into the Big Markets. With the big mining shares discounting something like $750 gold as of May 6, it has us looking for a likely Capitulation soon.

Gold Down but Holds Support at $1600 Posted: 08 May 2012 08:40 AM PDT [url]http://www.traderdannorcini.blogspot.com/[/url] [url]http://www.fortwealth.com/[/url] In spite of the strong wave of selling that has swept across the entirety of the commodity complex in today's session, gold did rebound from its move below the psychological round number support level at $1600. If you note on the chart, the market continues to be essentially trapped within a very broad range that with a brief exception made in late December of last year, has held the metal for the last 7 months. That range is basically bounded on the top by $1800 and on the bottom by $1600. Within that $200 range, there has been a tighter range for the last two months bounded on the top by $1680 with the floor of support down near $1600. Gold is now testing the bottom of this range to see whether or not there is sufficient buying to keep it elevated and within its borders. Central Bank buying has been very active on any dips below the $1600 level in the recent past and I would expect this to...

Two Out of Three Ain't Bad Posted: 08 May 2012 08:36 AM PDT Synopsis:  How the Pareto principle gives investors a serious edge in the natural resource markets. By Marin Katusa, Chief Energy Investment Strategist I want you I need you But there ain't no way I'm ever gonna love you Now don't be sad Cause 2 out of 3 ain't bad Now don't be sad Cause 2 out of 3 ain't bad Meat Loaf, from his 1977 album Bat Out Of Hell (song written by Jim Steinman) Before I get into why I'm using what is arguably Meatloaf's best song as an introduction, there are two things I want to get off the plate. First, you can now track me daily on twitter @marinkatusa. Second, on a flight from Florida to Georgia, Doug Casey and I flew with Porter Stansberry, and the bet is on. One hundred ounces of silver will go to the winner, and in addition we are having a radio debate next week – more information to come. Now on to this week's article. I spent the last few days of April at the Casey Research Recovery Reality Check Summit in Florida. The event was packed with interesting, thought-provoking speakers and panel discussions debating the health of the world's economic recovery, the meaning behind the recent correction in commodity prices, and the best path forward from here. It was a fantastic event, and for those who were unable to attend an audio collection is being produced, in CD as well as instantly available MP3 format, that will have every presentation and every chart, graphic, and slide each speaker used. I recommend ordering your own copy, as it will be well worth it. I came away with lots of food for thought. I also came away with renewed enthusiasm for one of my guiding investment principles: follow the right people. The renewed enthusiasm came from a cool survey that ran alongside the show. Attendees were invited to vote for the three companies at the Summit that had the best upside potential. Now, companies gain upside potential from a number of factors; but without one fundamental component – the right people – even a company with all kinds of interesting projects and plans is a lost cause. Company management is the ingredient that turns upside potential into reality. That's why I would have cast my votes based on the people involved in each company. I know hundreds of good people in this industry, but you can't follow and invest in the movements of hundreds of people. You can only track the movements of a few, which is why I created the Casey NexTen. The NexTen is a list of the top ten up-and-coming titans of the resource industry. These are the movers and shakers who I think will make resource-industry history time and again over the coming years. Two of the guys on my NexTen list were at the Recovery Reality Check Summit, presenting their companies. We must have done a good job selecting the members of the NexTen, because of the three companies at the show voted to have the best upside potential, two were NexTen companies. Two out of three ain't bad. Since we can't go back, we have to look forward Imagine investing in Silver Wheaton seven years ago. The brainchild of resource legend Ian Telfer, Silver Wheaton is a metals streaming company, which means it provides upfront payments to mine developers to secure the right to buy all or part of the future mine's production at a low fixed cost. Telfer founded Silver Wheaton (T.SLW) in 2004. In its first 18 months the company's share price ranged between $2 and $5. Today, Silver Wheaton shares are worth $28 to $35, depending on current precious metals prices. That means a $1,000 investment in 2005 at $3.50 per share would today be worth no less than $8,500. When the price of silver peaked in late February, pushing SLW's share price to almost $40, the savvy investor who bought SLW in 2005 could have sold his shares for $11,285. That would be what we call a ten-bagger. Here's another multi-ten-bagger. In 1993 geologists from a company called Diamond Fields Resources were prospecting in northern Canada – northern Labrador to be specific. Instead of diamonds, they found nickel. A lot of nickel. The Voisey's Bay deposit remains one of the world's richest nickel-copper-cobalt discoveries in the world; and by 1996 it earned Diamond Fields a $4.6-billion takeover offer from Inco. The man who led Diamond Fields through this discovery and deal is the now world-renowned Robert Friedland, who is also a Casey Explorers' League honoree. As Diamond Fields' stock shot from a few dollars to almost $27, Friedland's personal net worth grew by $500 million. And he hasn't slowed down since: He most recently led Ivanhoe Mines through the discovery and development of a massive copper-gold-silver deposit in Mongolia called Oyu Tolgoi, adding another item to a long list of laudable accomplishments. Telfer and Friedland are part of a small group of resource titans who proved their successes were more than just luck by repeating their resource feats several times over. As mentioned, Friedland's list of successes is too long to list. Ross Beaty earned the nickname "the broken slot machine" for the repeated payouts he generated for shareholders who followed him from one landmark deal to the next. Lukas and his late father Adolf Lundin are legends in the resource sector, each with a long list of hugely profitable companies. How fantastic it would be to have an investment time machine, to travel back in time and invest in Diamond Fields in 1994, or in Silver Wheaton in 2004, or in any of Beaty's or Lundin's companies before they made it big. Ten-baggers all around! Unfortunately, time travel isn't an option, so since we can't go back, we have to look forward: We have to figure out who will comprise the next group of resource titans and follow their moves in anticipation of the next big win. The NexTen The NexTen is that next generation of titans. The NexTen are all young, driven, and successful beyond their years. By hitching your cart to their horses now, you can follow them through several more decades of discoveries and deals. The characters on the NexTen list are very impressive. Take Amir Adnani. Many people spend their entire careers trying to find a deposit and build a mine. Amir Adnani built an operating, revenue-generating uranium mine by the time he was 33. Amir is the president and CEO of Uranium Energy (NYSE.UEC). Founded in 2005 and taken public a year later, UEC is focused on the 300-mile long South Texas uranium belt. It's an area long known to host uranium, and in particular it hosts uranium that can be leached out of the ground using a technique called in-situ recovery (ISR). Compared to conventional mining, ISR is a much less damaging and more cost-effective way to extract uranium. Amir honed in on South Texas because it offered the perfect opportunity: to develop a set of low-impact uranium mines arranged around a central processing facility and start producing uranium just before the United States loses its biggest uranium supplier – the Megatons deal. Through this agreement, Russia has provided the US with half of its nuclear fuel for the last 17 years by decommissioning Soviet warheads – but the deal is set to end next year. To transform that dream into a reality, Amir has led UEC team through an impressive list of accomplishments since 2007. They acquired uranium-exploration databases covering the entire region. They bought the old Hobson ISR processing facility and completely refurbished it. They drilled off resources at three sites near Hobson. The company permitted one for development and started producing uranium in late 2010. They also permitted and are currently building a second mine. They have raised money and spent it wisely. Building a mine is never easy. Building a uranium mine in the middle of Texas is very challenging. Amir handled every hurdle with aplomb and has never taken his eye off the prize: to transform UEC into a significant American uranium producer just as global uranium supplies start to tighten and prices start to climb. And remember – Amir managed to do all this before his 34th birthday. The guy has decades of mine building, project buying, and deposit discovering ahead of him. That's a trajectory I want to track. Another NexTen honoree who continuously achieves feats beyond his years is Nolan Watson. Ian Telfer may have founded Silver Wheaton, but Nolan was the company's first employee and was instrumental in its success. As CFO, Nolan worked alongside Telfer for four years; together they grew SLW from a startup to a company with a market capitalization of $3 billion. To date, those four years developing SLW remain the best way anyone could have ever learned the streaming and royalties business – there is now no one who knows the business better than Nolan. At the age of 30 Nolan decided to apply that knowledge to a new venture: he founded Sandstorm Resources, a streaming company modeled on Silver Wheaton but not limited to silver. A year later he led the charge as Sandstorm raised $47 million from eager investors, and in its first four years Sandstorm's share price nearly quadrupled. Nolan is exceptionally smart and extraordinarily driven. His list of successes by the age of 33 is phenomenal. Just imagine what the guy will have accomplished 20 years from now… and how much we could all profit by following his moves. I've done my portfolio a favor and have invested in both Nolan and Amir. Trusting Pareto There's a mathematical principle behind the concept of basing investment decisions on the actions of just a few exceptional individuals, known as the Pareto principle. In 1906 Vilfredo Pareto observed that 80% of Italy's land was owned by 20% of the population; 35 years later Joseph Juran noted that 20% of the pea pods in his garden contained 80% of the peas. Thus was born the Pareto principle, which states that 80% of the effects in a situation come from 20% of the causes. It really does seem to hold up. For example, at present the richest 20% of the world's population earns just over 80% of its income. Many quality control regimes focus on fixing the top 20% of reported bugs to fix 80% of a system's errors. In the US, 20% of healthcare patients use 80% of the system's resources. And so on. In investing, we take Pareto one step further. Trying to watch the movements of the top 20% of market movers would be very difficult and leave much room for error – too many people to ferret out and follow. So we apply the principle a second time: if 80% of market moves are sparked by 20% of investors, then 80% of those effects come from 20% of those 20%. Eighty percent of 80% is 64%; 20% of 20% is 4%. So Pareto derived, as it were, suggests that 64% of market movements come from 4% of the players. Four percent we can work with. My Casey's NexTen list is an attempt to identify some of that 4%, specifically the most impressive industry actors under 40 years of age. I must be on to something. At the Summit there were only two representatives from my NexTen list presenting at the event, and both made it into the top three voters' choice list. Like Meat Loaf said, two out of three ain't bad. Additional Links and Reads Oil Slumps to Three-Month Low After European Elections (Bloomberg) Speculation that the new governments of France and Greece will derail austerity measures in the Eurozone pushed the price of oil down to a three-month low. Downward pressure on oil stemmed mostly from the falling value of the euro against the dollar, a shift that generally reduces oil's appeal as an investment. In France, new president François Hollande inherits an economy that is barely growing, with jobless claims at their highest level in 12 years. Hollande's platform calls for higher taxes, increased spending, and delayed deficit reduction – policies German Chancellor Angela Merkel opposes. In Greece voters also flocked to anti-austerity, anti-bailout parties. West Texas Intermediate crude for June delivery slid to US$97.94 a barrel, its lowest settlement since February 6, while Brent oil for June settled at US$113.16 a barrel. China's Steel Mills Too Big to Fail – Or Succeed (Reuters) Trying to serve the "twin masters of the state and the market" has pushed China's steel sector to the brink. Chairman Mao Zedong turned China's steel sector into a key symbol of the country's economic and political prowess, but now margins are plummeting and debts are piling up at lumbering state-owned mills that have never needed to compete for survival. Ferocious expansion since 1978 has produced a massive steel sector in China, one that sates 45% of global demand, but an obsession with size and technological advances means costs have risen out of control just as demand slows. Coal Fights Obama with NASCAR, YouTube Campaigns (Bloomberg) Coal supporters are embracing an all-of-the-above strategy to defend their industry against what they consider regulatory overreach in Washington. Coal backers are slighted that President Obama regularly fails to mention coal in his comments about the US's energy future; worse still for industry proponents are a series of regulations related to air pollution and mountaintop mining. More generally, coal is losing its position as the fuel of choice for US electricity generation – coal is now responsible for just 40% of electricity generation in the US, down from more than 50% only a decade ago. To fight back, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity is sponsoring Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s JR Motorsports team and have produced and promoted a YouTube video on the economic impact of the new coal regulations, while coal political action committees and industry executives have spent more than $5 million on political donations. Higher Bills Likely as LNG Heads to Asia (Financial Times) Gas prices and energy bills are set to climb in the United Kingdom as cargoes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) are diverted to Asia. UK imports of LNG have plummeted 30% this year as prices climbed, largely in response to increased demand from post-Fukushima Japan, where there are now no operational nuclear reactors. The drop in imports shows how the UK is losing out in the competition for energy supplies to fast-growing economies in Asia and South America, a problem that could get more acute as Britain's own indigenous gas production declines. Britain bears the brunt of any disruption in the LNG market because it has fewer long-term LNG supply deals than others in the EU. Japan Counts Down to End of Nuclear Power (Financial Times) For weeks only one of Japan's 54 commercial nuclear reactors had been operational, and now there are none: on May 5 the No. 3 reactor in the northern coastal village of Tomari went offline, leaving Japan without nuclear power for the first time since 1970. Japan's nuclear future is very unclear. The national government has yet to set a clear direction for the power sector but did green-light several reactors for restart. Those reactors remain offline, however, because local authorities still oppose any restarts. Many wonder whether Japan can get by without nuclear energy, which until last year accounted for about a third of the country's electricity supply.

Hecla Declares Silver-Linked and Regular Dividends and Announces Stock Repurchase Program Posted: 08 May 2012 08:31 AM PDT COEUR D'ALENE, Idaho, May 08, 2012 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Hecla Mining Company (NYSE:HL) is pleased to announce its Board of Directors has declared the third consecutive quarterly dividend of $0.0225 per share of common stock for a total amount of approximately $6.4 million. The Company's Board of Directors has also approved a stock repurchase program. Under the program, Hecla is authorized to repurchase up to 20 million shares of its outstanding common stock from time to time, with the purchases expected to occur over the next 24 months. "Our Board's action to declare the third consecutive silver-linked dividend, continue our regular quarterly dividend, as well as approve a stock repurchase program, reflects Hecla's excellent operating margin and strong financial position," said Hecla's President and Chief Executive Officer, Phillips S. Baker, Jr. "We believe our cash balances and ongoing cash flow generation allows Hecla to deliver shareholder value in three ways: by growing production 50% over the next five years, paying dividends and repurchasing shares." Any purchases made under Hecla's repurchase program may be made from time to time in open market or privately negotiated transactions, upon such terms as the Company deems appropriate, commencing at the conclusion of its current quarterly blackout period. All purchases are subject to stock price, market conditions, corporate and legal requirements and other factors. Hecla intends to comply with Rule 10b-18 under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. In the future, repurchases of common stock may be made under a Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. This will allow the Company to repurchase shares in the open market during periods in which the stock trading window is otherwise closed for the Company. The repurchase program may be modified, suspended or discontinued at any time. The Company currently has approximately 285 million common shares outstanding. Third Consecutive Silver-linked Dividend and Regular Dividend The dividend is part of Hecla's common stock dividend policy, which consists of a silver-linked dividend of $0.02 per share based on an average realized silver price of $36.59 for the first quarter of 2012, and a minimum annual dividend of $0.01 per share of common stock, payable quarterly. The cash dividend is payable June 8, 2012, to common shareholders of record on May 30, 2012. There are approximately 285 million shares of common stock outstanding. Under Hecla's silver price-linked dividend policy, it is expected that any quarterly common stock dividend declared by the Company will be based on Hecla's average realized silver price for the preceding quarter. Realized prices are calculated by dividing gross revenues by the payable quantities of each metal included in concentrate and dore sold during the period. As noted above, the average realized silver price per ounce was $36.59 in the first quarter of 2012 compared to the average market price of $32.66 (London PM Fix). Any quarterly common stock dividend declared by Hecla will increase or decrease by $0.01 per share ($0.04 annually) for each $5.00 per ounce incremental increase or decrease in the average realized silver price in the preceding quarter. The declaration and payment of dividends remains at the sole discretion of the Board of Directors and will depend on Hecla's financial results, cash requirements (including for preferred dividends, operations, capital projects, exploration and development, litigation and settlements, acquisitions, and other items), future prospects and other factors deemed relevant by the Board. Investors are cautioned that this new policy is not a guarantee that a dividend will be declared or paid in any particular period in the future. – Hecla press release continues at the link below. Source: Hecla http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=63202&=RssLanding&cat=news&id=1692975  (Ed note:  As of the April B report, there were 26,028,600 shares of HL sold short on the NYSE.)

You are subscribed to email updates from Save Your ASSets First To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610