Gold World News Flash |
- Gold Higher as France Refutes EU Fiscal Pact
- Lindsey Williams on Radio Liberty – Total Collapse Coming in 2012, All By Design
- Gold/Silver & Mining Stocks Going From Today?s Cycle Bottoms to Parabolic Peaks by 2015
- Jesse's Cafe Americain dismisses Doug Casey's 'canard'
- Those who cannot remember the past: Celebrating 100 years of fraud.
- Ben Davies – The Gold & Silver Liquidation is Over
- 2008 Redux?
- Greece is Huge Deal & it’s Coming to the Forefront Right Now-Andy Hoffman
- An Exit Tax... Or an Act of Extortion?
- Jim's Mailbox
- The Gold Price Turned Around Rising $17.10 on top of Yesterday's $38.30 to Close $1,591.60
- John Hathaway: "This Is The Bottom For Gold"
- Is This Surge In Gold a ?Dead Cat Bounce? or a ?Flight to Safety??
- This is the Gold Price Bottom
- The Bionic Man
- Andy Borowitz on the phoniness of the financial markets
- An Exit Tax… Or an Act of Extortion?
- Whales in the Gold Market
- Only market manipulation props up Facebook IPO at first day's close
- The Shift Taking Place
- This Is the Bottom for Gold
- Davies says gold smash is over; Sprott sees bank runs
- Gold Reached Support Level at $1,520
- Gold Seeker Weekly Wrap-Up: Gold and Silver End Mixed and Near Unchanged on the Week
- 'This Is the Bottom for Gold'- John Hathaway
- Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Something Wicked This Way Comes
- FadeBook
- JPM On Grexit, TARGET2, And The ECB
- Ben Davies - The Gold & Silver Liquidation is Over
| Gold Higher as France Refutes EU Fiscal Pact Posted: 18 May 2012 06:01 PM PDT Bullion Vault
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| Lindsey Williams on Radio Liberty – Total Collapse Coming in 2012, All By Design Posted: 18 May 2012 04:13 PM PDT from EconomyMeltdown: Lindsey suggests: Get out of paper assets, close your bank account, buy tangible assets; gold & silver, farmland, food. Banks runs now happening all over Europe, the sign to look for is the crack that will happen in the derivatives market which started with JP Morgan's $2 (now $5) billion dollars loss, the Dollar will be dead by the end of this year no matter how good things look like right now. Derivatives Market Collapse Coming Soon!
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| Gold/Silver & Mining Stocks Going From Today?s Cycle Bottoms to Parabolic Peaks by 2015 Posted: 18 May 2012 03:45 PM PDT Once every year gold and stocks form a major yearly cycle low while other commodities form a major cycle bottom every 2 1/2 to 3 years. Occasionally all three of these major cycles hit at the same time….That’s what’s happening right now and it should lead to a powerful rally over the next 2 years, culminating in 2014 when the dollar forms its next 3 year cycle low. Words: 622 So says Toby Connor ([url]www.goldscents.blogspot.ca[/url]) in edited excerpts from his original article*. * [INDENT]Lorimer Wilson, editor of [B][COLOR=#0000ff]www.munKNEE.com (Your Key to Making Money!), has edited the article below for length and clarity – see Editor's Note at the bottom of the page. This paragraph must be included in any article re-posting to avoid copyright infringement.[/COLOR][/B] [/INDENT]Connor*goes on to say, in part: *The CRB Index and US Dollar Index* The implications are that once the CRB has completed this major cycle bottom we should see generally higher price...
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| Jesse's Cafe Americain dismisses Doug Casey's 'canard' Posted: 18 May 2012 01:54 PM PDT 9:50p ET Friday, May 18, 2012 Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: Jesse at Jesse's Cafe Americain today dismisses Doug Casey's skepticism about gold market manipulation. Jesse writes, "Anyone who can trot out the canard that a 'market is too big to be manipulated' does not engage my interest for very long." Jesse's commentary is posted here: http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2012/05/chris-powell-answers-do... CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer ADVERTISEMENT Prophecy Platinum (TSXV: NKL) and Ursa Major Minerals Company Press Release 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: Vancouver World Resource Investment Conference Standard Chartered's Earth Resources Conference Hong Kong Gold Investment Forum Toronto Resource Investment Conference New Orleans Investment Conference * * * Support GATA by purchasing DVDs of our London conference in August 2011 or our Dawson City conference in August 2006: http://www.goldrush21.com/order.html Or by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: To contribute to GATA, please visit: ADVERTISEMENT Sona Discovers Potential High-Grade Gold Mineralization From a Company Press Release 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
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| Those who cannot remember the past: Celebrating 100 years of fraud. Posted: 18 May 2012 01:35 PM PDT from RedditSilverBugs: It was George Santayana who famously said "Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it." There are millions and millions of people who are blissfully unaware of the financial fraud that they partake in daily. These people will be left holding worthless fiat paper when the official monopolized money machine collapses, taking everyone's digital, paper & monetized debt instruments with it. Avoid financial catastrophe & buy physical silver & gold now while you still can. Visit us at www.reddit.com/r/silverbugs.
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| Ben Davies – The Gold & Silver Liquidation is Over Posted: 18 May 2012 01:25 PM PDT from KingWorldNews:
Ben Davies continues @ KingWorldNews.com
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| Posted: 18 May 2012 12:30 PM PDT by Andrew Hoffman, MilesFranklin.com:
This morning, I read an excellent article by Chris Martenson, about a very timely topic… Chris Martenson: "We Are About To Have Another 2008-Style Crisis" As far as I'm concerned, Global Meltdown III – i.e. "the Big One" – has ALREADY STARTED, with the only exception being the U.S. PPT's maniacal obsession with masking public PERCEPTION by supporting the "DOW JONES PROPAGANDA AVERAGE," at any cost (particularly during an election year). European and Asian stock markets are plunging and sovereign bonds crashing, while even PPT-supported American financials have not been immune. Actually, the fact that TBTF banks like Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley are approaching their Global Meltdown II lows despite the Dow's "relative strength" should tell you all you need to know – let alone, the carnage going on at JP Morgan resulting from 1) fallout from the MF Global fiasco, and 2) its recent, multi-billion dollar "hedging" losses.
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| Greece is Huge Deal & it’s Coming to the Forefront Right Now-Andy Hoffman Posted: 18 May 2012 12:30 PM PDT from FinancialSurvivalNetwork.com:
This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| An Exit Tax... Or an Act of Extortion? Posted: 18 May 2012 12:10 PM PDT May 18, 2012 [LIST] [*]The math on Facebook: You want 15% a year for the next five years? Here's what has to happen... [*]Living with Uncle Sam's "exit tax," setting up a floating country: Two stories about early Facebook investors more interesting than the IPO [*]Show me the evidence, says Doug Casey... finally weighing in on gold manipulation [*]Huge gains in a down market... Nickel-and-diming bank customers... quips about the Goldman Sachs "swirlogram"... and more! [/LIST] The gods sure have a good sense of comic timing: The biggest Internet IPO ever coincides with our own Internet access getting throttled. For more than 24 hours, we've been contending with a bandwidth bottleneck here at Agora Financial headquarters. If you're receiving email from us late... or not at all... or if the charts in those emails don't load right away... rest assured, we have a small army of people on the case, working to restore normal operations as quickly as possible. In the meanti...
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| Posted: 18 May 2012 11:25 AM PDT The Pursuit of Balance Finds Few Masters CIGA Eric How many investors motivated largely by fear and highly motivated misinformation campaign dumped their gold and silver positions last week? Jim is absolutely right - Please make an effort to stay balanced. Greed is a condition of lack of balance similar to fear. Human Continue reading Jim's Mailbox
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| The Gold Price Turned Around Rising $17.10 on top of Yesterday's $38.30 to Close $1,591.60 Posted: 18 May 2012 11:12 AM PDT Gold Price Close Today : 1,591.60 Gold Price Close 11-May : 1,583.60 Change : 8.00 or 0.5% Silver Price Close Today : 28.69 Silver Price Close 11-May : 28.85 Change : -0.16 or -0.6% Platinum Price Close Today : 1,457.10 Platinum Price Close 11-May : 1,469.10 Change : -12.00 or -0.8% Palladium Price Close Today : 603.25 Palladium Price Close 11-May : 602.95 Change : 0.30 or 0.0% Gold Silver Ratio Today : 55.48 Gold Silver Ratio 11-May : 54.89 Change : 0.58 or 1.01% Dow Industrial : 12,442.49 Dow Industrial 11-May: 12,855.04 Change : -412.55 or -3.3% US Dollar Index : 81.50 US Dollar Index 11-May : 80.18 Change : 1.32 or 1.6% THIS WAS THE WEEK THAT THE SILVER & GOLD PRICE TURNED AROUND. Ahh yes, the day dawned, the sky cleared, and that support at $1,526.70 HELD. Do I flatter myself, or did the entire mood in the metals' markets change? Our phones have been ringing off the wall, well, off the desk. Today the GOLD PRICE gold rose another $17.10 on top of yesterday's $38.30 to close Comex at $1,591.60. Gold rapped on the door of $1,600 with a $1,597.50 high. To maintain this V-bottom pattern, gold must climb quickly through $1,600, $1,630, & then the killer $1,682. Look for at least two of those barriers to fall next week. Stop waiting to buy gold & silver. Do it NOW. SILVER PRICE held that support from Oct 11 & Dec 11 (2615c). Low came at 2673c on Wednesday. Silver must now advance through 2900 & jump right smart toward 3000c. Tougher battles will be fought at 3150c. That's it. That confirms the December low was indeed the low. That turns silver & gold's direction upward again. Only closes below 2673c & $1,526.70 could gainsay that conclusion. With the lows in silver & gold the GOLD/SILVER RATIO TOPPED at 56.540. Today it floats still at 55.468. If you have not yet swapped gold for silver, you must act quickly. The ratio can fall fall with blinding rapidity. Do not miss this opportunity to set yourself up for another gigantic profit-in-ounces when the ratio again falls to where 28 silver ounces will buy one gold ounce, instead of 55.468. This week marked the turning point for this correction. Now silver & gold have turned their faces up, toward those old highs at $1,927 & 4982c. Climb aboard, or miss the ride! Facebook's IPO fell flat on its face today, down several times as low as the $38 offering price, & up on the day only 1%. Not a blistering success when IPO's usually gain 10 - 15%. That's a sour comment on investor interest and the mood of the stock market.Yesterday I warned y'all -- natural born fool from Tennessee that I am -- that the euro was "monstrously oversold" ought to watch for a sudden rally. It happened today, when the euro rose 0.66% to $1.2778. Eyeing a record short position, traders bailed out -- or were squeezed out -- before the G8 summit this weekend. Y'all already know how those Nice Government Men like weekend surprises. First half of this year mine was probably the only voice in the known universe -- well, one of the few anyhow -- warning y'all that the stock market rally was a trap. The trap has been sprung, & I don't look near about so foolish now. Not that I'm the brightest bulb in the box, I just read labels before I drink contents. Label on this stock market is "BEAR: Primary Downtrend. Caution, can be hazardous to your solvency & your retirement." S&P500 touched 1,291 today. Now why would I mention that price? I'm right glad y'all asked. The S&P500 formed a head & shoulders topping pattern beginning in February, and two weeks ago fell through the neckline, signalling a breakdown. From that breakdown at 1,360, it has dropped 8 of the last 9 days, & today opened the trap door at 1,300 & jumped through, closing down 9.64 (0.74%) at 1,295.22. But why 1,291? Because that was the top of the last wave up in November. Should it pierce that support, this battle will get bloody indeed. The Dow, which closed today at 12,369.38 (down 73.11 or 0.47), took longer to complete its head & shoulders but falling 12 out of the last 13 days helped a bunch. Dow broke that neckline (about 12,650) two days ago and fell like a drunk at a bar knocking back one too many Tequila shooters. Both the S&P500 & the Dow are nearing their 200 day moving average (Dow's is now 12,199 & S&P's is 1,278.22) which ought to provide some support for a bounce. After that, doom will resume. US DOLLAR INDEX fell 36.8 basis points (0.47%) today to 81.125. High came at 81.758, which pert near matches the January peak at 81.78. Not clear to me yet whether the dollar will keep on rallying through 81.78 after a correction. Yen jumped broad and high yesterday and today, up 0.36% today to 126.57c/Y100 (Y79.00/US$1). I keep picturing a stranger from outer space. He lands on my farm and wants me to tell him about our world. I try to put the best face on things that I can, but he keeps going back to the monetary system: "You use WHAT for money?" I'm so embarrassed I want to dig a hole and crawl in. I will be away on a cruise from tomorrow through June 1. I won't be publishing commentaries during that time, but the turnaround in silver & gold make your course plain anyway. Y'all enjoy your weekend! Argentum et aurum comparenda sunt -- -- Gold and silver must be bought. - Franklin Sanders, The Moneychanger The-MoneyChanger.com 1-888-218-9226 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. 
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| John Hathaway: "This Is The Bottom For Gold" Posted: 18 May 2012 10:00 AM PDT Submitted by Casey Research In an interview with Louis James, John Hathaway discusses the US's economic outlook and why he's delighted by the current bearish sentiment toward gold.
Louis James: Ladies and gentleman, thanks for tuning in. We're at the Casey Research Recovery Reality Check Summit. We're talking with John Hathaway, one of the more successful fund investors – institutional investors – in our precious metals field near and dear to my heart. John, can you give us a quick version of what you talked about here, for those who didn't make it to the conference? John Hathaway: Sure, yes. I think we're at the end of a correction that resulted from the peak last summer. It was overcooked, kind of hyperventilated hysteria over the debt-ceiling talks, the rating downgrade of the US sovereign debt, and I think basically the stocks and the metal had been working off that boiled down to what we now have is a simmer. I think we are at a position where there's not a lot of downside, and I would not be surprised by revisiting the previous highs of $1,900 and maybe even new highs over $2,000 this year. What will do that is basically – so much of the narrative has been quantitative easing. When Bernanke announced on the 29th of February that they were done with quantitative easing (and if you believe that I've got a bridge to sell you, but for the time being let's assume that there won't be any), I was very impressed that gold did not go to a new low. It printed somewhere below $1,600 at the end of the year, made a couple-of-day swoon, but it didn't go to a new low. And then when the Fed minutes came out it also did not go to a new low, it kind of reiterated what Bernanke said. So the narrative may be changing. I'm not ruling out quantitative easing as a possibility, but there are things out there that gold might be looking at that the CNBC mentality hasn't figured out. Remember that gold rose for many years before we even heard of quantitative easing; it was in a steady uptrend. So what could those things be? What would take gold – what would be the new headlines that might take gold to higher highs? To me, the biggest thing is that the Federal Reserve has purchased something like 61% of all new Treasury debt in the last year; and if they aren't going to continue that, then what's going to happen to rates? Louis: Right. John: The Chinese – who had been big supporters because they were rigging their currency – have not been generating foreign exchange to anything like the extent they were, so their participation rate in Treasury auctions has gone way down. If you look up the TIC numbers, foreign buying of Treasuries has dropped precipitously, so you have the two biggest pillars of support for keeping rates low in question here, and let's see what happens on June 30th. If you don't have a political buyer, either the Chinese and foreign buyers who are manipulating currency, and the Fed because they said they aren't going to do it, what are rates going to do? If you are going to get a risk-free return inflation-adjusted today that's not politically motivated, it's got to be somewhere around 4-5% on the short end of the curve. Every hundred basis points adds a huge amount to the budget deficit, so to me we're in a real trap here, where it's going to be a game of chicken as to whether the Fed can really live up to what Bernanke said on the 29th. Louis: Isn't that really the bottom line? They can't allow that interest rate to rise with the debt outstanding – John: It seems very difficult. The recovery, the alleged recovery that we had, is very… I'll grant that things are better than they were a year ago or two years ago, but you'd have to call it feeble at best and maybe not sustainable. That's one thing that I think could affect the gold market. The second thing, and I think it's very important too, is that inflation is rising. Even though the economy is soft, the number I look at – and I know we're going to have John Williams speak at lunch, and we know he has a very good take on it – is the MIT Inflation Index, because that's real-time pricing of billions of products. You can get to that website just by googling "MIT Inflation Project"; and that does not include services. Most of the services I take are inflating at more than 5%; they are closer to 10%. But goods that could be measured in real time are rising at 5%, so that's also going to be a factor. That means if rates stay where they are, the Feds are just going to be that much more behind the curve. So those are two things; and the third thing is that there's $1.5 trillion of liquidity in the system that should the recovery – and I'm not a macro forecaster, but let's say the recovery does sustain itself – you've got $1.5 trillion of free reserves that could just turn into money supply. Then you really would have a potentially hyperinflationary scenario, and the Fed would be completely powerless to do anything about it. So I think that's bullish for gold – gold is not backward looking, it basically looks forward. I can go on and on. You've got the European unresolved sovereign debt crisis in Europe. Louis: Let me jump in with a question about this, then. You've stood out really from the crowd in that most people agree on the general prognosis for gold. Most people are sort of near-term bearish, you know, the ones – John: It makes me so happy. Louis: [Laughs] But, you know, once a bear sentiment sets in, it seems to almost have its own momentum. John: Yes. Louis: You're the only who's saying "I think we're near the bottom." Most people are saying, "Sell in May and go away" – John: Yes, I heard a couple of things from this session that just made me want to jump up and buy – Louis: I understand the contrarian reason for that, but can you tell our audience a couple of reasons why you think we might be near the bottom or why you're ready to buy now and not waiting to see how this summer turns out? John: Sure. Well, first of all, I'm not a trader. I mean, I'm long, and last summer I thought, "Gee, this is really a little spooky, we're not at a sustainable level," but there wasn't a whole lot I could do about it. And here we are and we have some cash, we have some inflows, so we are able to put money to work. And what is it that makes me think we're there? Sentiment numbers are extremely negative, historically, when they've gotten to these levels. By the way, I put out a quarterly newsletter now that has a lot of this data, which can be found on our website. Louis: Go ahead and give us the website. John: It's the Tocqueville Asset Management website, and it should be fairly easy to find. So sentiment is at levels that have been associated with big rallies. Traders' commitments, net longs, net spec longs are way, way down there. I look at that a lot just as a way to see where the market is positioned. The guys who can create some volatility are not there, and so if gold starts moving, they won't want to miss it, and so they'll come in. And then, we've looked at some technical stuff. I'm not a technician but most of what I see from a technical perspective is extremely constructive. So I put those things together. Sentiment is rock bottom. COMEX traders' commitments are very, very constructive, and technical things that we look at are very constructive. So I would say all of those things, plus hearing these guys say that they are not going to step in – that's more anecdotal, but that to me is just very, very positive. So I – frankly I don't stake my reputation the way that Dennis Gartman does on making trading calls, but just as an experienced observer of this market for some number of years now, I think we're ready to make a move higher. Louis: Okay, well, thank you very much. Word to the wise. John: Thank you.
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| Is This Surge In Gold a ?Dead Cat Bounce? or a ?Flight to Safety?? Posted: 18 May 2012 09:43 AM PDT What does*[this surge in the*price of gold]*mean?…Is it*just a proverbial "dead cat bounce" or is it that*the death of the Euro is beginning to be priced into the markets….Will it continue? While no one can answer these questions with certainty my thoughts (guesses) are discussed below….Words: 380 So says "Monty Pelerin" (a pseudonym derived from The Monty Pelerin Society) in edited excerpts from his original article* as posted at [url]www.economicnoise.com[/url]. [INDENT]Lorimer Wilson, editor of [B][COLOR=#0000ff]www.munKNEE.com (Your Key to Making Money!), has edited the article below for length and clarity – see Editor's Note at the bottom of the page. This paragraph must be included in any article re-posting to avoid copyright infringement.[/COLOR][/B] [/INDENT]Pelerin goes on to say, in part: What may be beginning is that gold is becoming the flight to safety. While the dollar may be strong against the Euro, both are deteriorating in purchasing power. At the...
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| Posted: 18 May 2012 09:24 AM PDT In an interview with Louis James, John Hathaway discusses the US's economic outlook and why he's delighted by the current bearish sentiment toward gold. Louis James: Ladies and gentleman, thanks for tuning in. We're at the Casey Research Recovery Reality Check Summit. We're talking with John Hathaway, one of the more successful fund investors – institutional investors – in our precious metals field near and dear to my heart. John, can you give us a quick version of what you talked about here, for those who didn't make it to the conference?
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| Posted: 18 May 2012 09:06 AM PDT Synopsis: A "bionic man" gives a stranger a new lease on life. Dear Reader, Having returned from my latest business trip at 1:30 AM this morning, I suspect today's musings will be somewhat less energetic than otherwise might be the case. Then again, I'm only halfway through my second cup of strong coffee: perhaps the caffeine combined with loudly playing AC/DC's Shoot to Thrill will have the desired restorative effect. Regardless, as I am late as well as dragging, I plan on leaning on friends in today's missive. Most prominently, Bud Conrad, the hardest-working chief economist on the planet, has sent over an important update on his less-than-optimistic views of China, which I'll share shortly. Before I get to that article, and whatever else catches my attention this morning, I wanted to quickly tell you a story about an encounter earlier this week that has had a fairly profound and entirely positive impact on me. It was an encounter with…
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| Andy Borowitz on the phoniness of the financial markets Posted: 18 May 2012 09:06 AM PDT 5:10p ET Friday, May 18, 2012 Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: People wouldn't be investing in the monetary metals if they hadn't already concluded that the financial markets are now best described by the old song: It's a Barnum & Bailey world, But at least the satirist Andy Borowitz of the Borowitz Report nails these circumstances uproariously with commentaries arising from Facebook's initial public offering and the bankruptcy of Greece. Borowitz's commentary on the Facebook IPO is headlined "A Letter from Mark Zuckerberg" and it's posted here: http://www.borowitzreport.com/2012/05/17/a-letter-from-mark-zuckerberg/ Borowitz's commentary on Greece is headlined "Greece No Longer a Nation; Announces Plan to Become a Social Network," and it's posted here: http://www.borowitzreport.com/2012/05/18/greece-no-longer-a-nation-annou... Also, a clarification: The commentary about gold and silver market manipulation by Brett Heath of KSIR Capital, "Paper Gold and Silver Ponzi Exposed," brought to your attention this morning after its posting at MineWeb -- http://www.gata.org/node/11383 -- originally appeared in a longer form at the firm's blog, the Kwan Box, here: http://thekwanbox.blogspot.com/2012/05/gold-silver-market-explained.html... CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer ADVERTISEMENT Sona Discovers Potential High-Grade Gold Mineralization From a Company Press Release 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 Join GATA here: Vancouver World Resource Investment Conference Standard Chartered's Earth Resources Conference Hong Kong Gold Investment Forum Toronto Resource Investment Conference New Orleans Investment Conference * * * Support GATA by purchasing DVDs of our London conference in August 2011 or our Dawson City conference in August 2006: http://www.goldrush21.com/order.html Or by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: To contribute to GATA, please visit: ADVERTISEMENT Prophecy Platinum (TSXV: NKL) and Ursa Major Minerals Company Press Release 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...
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| An Exit Tax… Or an Act of Extortion? Posted: 18 May 2012 08:55 AM PDT May 18, 2012
For more than 24 hours, we've been contending with a bandwidth bottleneck here at Agora Financial headquarters. If you're receiving email from us late… or not at all… or if the charts in those emails don't load right away… rest assured, we have a small army of people on the case, working to restore normal operations as quickly as possible. In the meantime, "I had an email from a reader asking if Facebook met CODE," writes Chris Mayer. CODE is the recipe he uses to unearth investment ideas for his Capital & Crisis advisory. "C" stands for "cheap."
"At a $100 billion market cap," he adds, "Facebook trades for 25 times sales." To say nothing of 100 times earnings. And if that's not convincing enough, Chris passes along this intriguing valuation metric from famed value investor and Vancouver veteran Vitaliy Katsenelson: "Let's say Facebook investors want to receive 15% a year over the next five years. In that case, Facebook's market capitalization has to double in five years, to $200 billion. Conveniently, $200 billion happens to be Google's valuation today." "Since both companies are in the advertising business and have very similar cost structures, all Facebook has to do over the next five years is achieve Google's current sales level, which is a meager $40 billion (for purposes of this discussion, we'll ignore Google's $40 billion pile of cash, or about $100 a share, compared with Facebook's few billion, though that would only further make my point here)." FB's revenue last year? $3.6 billion.
Three more points from Mr. Ritholtz:
That is, you can't slap as many ads on the display of a mobile device as you can on a computer screen. And a user looking at Facebook on a phone while sitting with friends at a restaurant is less likely to buy something than someone at home looking at a computer screen.
"A single candle can't possibly tell this stock's entire story. You need to allow the name to develop a trend. One day—or even one week—simply doesn't cut it." "We might see an opportunity once the chart has a chance to develop. But realistically, Facebook is a crowded trade that could very well be susceptible to sharp price swings. It's on our list of stocks to avoid for the time being."
"Which brings to mind my general maxim on IPOs: insiders selling what they no longer want at prices they'd never pay." Besides, we see far more interesting things going on today with some of Facebook's earliest investors.
"We complied with all the known laws. There was an exit tax." Indeed, there was, the simpering of Sens. Chuck Schumer and Bob Casey yesterday notwithstanding. The "exit tax" became law in 2008. "The instant you surrender your citizenship," Addison explained last year in Apogee Advisory, "you are subject to capital gains taxes on the appreciated value of everything you own — as if you sold it." Saverin's Facebook stake, as of today, is worth about $3 billion. Long term, forking over the exit tax now and taking a Singapore passport might work out to be a better deal than the 35% or more in estate taxes his heirs would fork over when he dies. But "this had nothing to do with taxes," says Saverin. "I was born in Brazil; I was an American citizen for about 10 years. I thought of myself as a global citizen." We don't much care whether his motive was taxes or otherwise. Not so for the aforementioned senators, who propose a 30% capital gains tax on expatriates' future U.S.-based investments. "One might think that, if the senators were so upset with Saverin, as they piously claim, they would take down their own Facebook pages," wrote The Daily Reckoning's Joel Bowman yesterday. "Since they have not, we encourage fellow Reckoners to swing by and leave them a warm and fuzzy message." Indeed, one bold reader linked to Joel's piece on Sen. Schumer's Facebook page. [Ed. note: Have you friended Addison on Facebook yet? His brand-new page is up and running. Give it a look and connect now. And grab your free copy of The Little Book of the Shrinking Dollar at this link.]
Peter Thiel's concept for a floating country now has a name: Blueseed. Billed as "Silicon Valley's visa-free offshore startup community," Thiel and collaborator Patri Friedman (Milton's grandson) plan to convert a cruise ship or remodel a barge and park it off the coast of San Francisco. That would allow international entrepreneurs to get close to the Silicon Valley startup scene without jumping through the hoops of getting a work visa:  Some 100 international tech companies are already on board. "Blueseed hopes to have room for around 1,000 inhabitants in the live/work cruise ship of their dreams," according to SFist, "with all-inclusive rent estimated at about $1,200-3,000 per month." Blueseed's website has an amusing FAQ: On the subject of seasickness, it says, "Given the shape and size of the Blueseed vessel, and the ocean conditions at our mooring spot, it is very unlikely that seasickness will be a concern." Ditto for pirates: "They don't exist near California to begin with, and they have much better targets (cargo ships, for instance, with little personnel and a lot of cargo already packaged for resale)."
As of this writing, the Dow and the S&P are negligibly in the red after yesterday's big losses. The S&P has a tenuous hold on 1,300. The stomach-churning volatility has delivered steady-Eddie returns to readers of Options Hotline. They've had the chance to bag the following gains as of midday today…
So far in 2012, editor Steve Sarnoff has delivered five potentially money-doubling plays. That works out to an average of one every month. What's more, he's delivered those 100%-or-better plays an average of once a month for over 12 years. For the next 72 hours, you can access Steve's trading guidance at half off the regular fee.
Silver, after touching $29 in overnight trading, is at $28.67.
"I'm completely willing to believe central bankers are capable of any kind of nefarious foolishness, but I'd like to see proof. I'm constantly reading assertions of how 'the boys' come along at 'precisely' 1 p.m. or 2 p.m. or perhaps 'precisely' 11:37 a.m. or 12:16 p.m. and, on a purely not-for-profit basis, decide to 'smack down' the market for gold or silver or both." "Meanwhile, the market has been hitting new highs for a dozen years." "I know most of the believers in the precious metals manipulation theories personally and am only a phone call or email away from those I don't know. And I'm curious. So I ask questions of these folks, who are generally intelligent, well informed and sophisticated. But I don't get answers that I find make sense." Among those questions: What's it matter to JPMorgan Chase and other banks what the metals prices are? "The only reason that makes any sense," says Mr. Casey, "is that they are acting as proxies for the U.S. Treasury; the Treasury doesn't go into the markets itself. But does it direct a commercial bank to act for it to buy or sell gold? It might. But there's zero proof of any sort it's doing that." "These banks have no dog in the fight; they couldn't care less what the metals prices are and have no reason to try manipulating the market." "I advise readers to buy gold — even at current levels — but I'd like to see them do it for the right reasons," Doug concludes. "And it seems to me the arguments about gold manipulation are more redolent of religious belief than economic reasoning." Ooh boy, we sense the ol' inbox filling up over the weekend. But we'd expect nothing less from Mr. Casey than to stir the pot. It's why we invite him back every year for the Agora Financial Investment Symposium. Same goes for the aforementioned Barry Ritholtz. Dr. Marc Faber will make a return engagement this year, and historian Niall Ferguson will join us for the first time. You'll be peppered with ticker symbols all week, along with unique investing ideas you can't buy on any exchange. Seats are filling up quickly. Last year, we were full up by the end of May, so if you're thinking of joining us, it's a good idea to move now.
Looks as if Abe Cofnas' "mock trade" of the week won't work out; he was swinging for the fences with a play that counted on the yen moving past 80.25 by today's close. Still, he's 9 for 12 on these demonstration trades here in the The 5…
"Simple calculations showed me that in a few more months' time, my savings account balance would be zero. After that… negative. Bank of America, whom I trusted to keep my (admittedly small) savings safe and sound… was unabashedly and systematically taking my money from me, in the form of a recently introduced monthly service-maintenance fee. It seemed that in a few short months, I might actually start to owe Bank of America an every increasing sum… to store and protect my (by then reduced to zero) savings account balance!" "I telephoned Bank of America, and a helpful customer service representative offered to… and had the authority to… pay back into my pillaged savings account all the money (something like $25) that had previously been vacuumed out. This restoration process was so quick and easy that I suspect I was not the first and only person to complain about being robbed in plain daylight, by my friendly bank." "At this point, I can only wonder how many millions of small savings accounts are being brazenly plundered in this way… right now… as I write. Because there are so many small savings accounts extant, the total take on this new kind of reverse bank robbery might be surprisingly large." "Let's see… $60 per year… times 1 million accounts… hmmm… $60 million dollars. That's not too bad for a bank robbery. Needless to say, goodbye, Bank of America… and hello credit union!" "Keep the fun stuff coming, 5! I love ya." The 5: Once again, it's the law of unintended consequences in action. New regulations on overdraft fees in checking accounts? The bank will make up for it by nickel-and-diming small savings accounts.
"Hold your noses! Hold your breath! Hold on tight!" The 5: If it's one of the government-mandated low-flush toilets, maybe it won't be so bad… Have a good weekend, Dave Gonigam P.S. "Uncertainty rules in 2012," says Ray Blanco of our tech team. "The markets lack direction. The political atmosphere is a mess." But you already know that. Ray is focused on the things he's certain about: "What we know today is the Internet is about to take a quantum jump forward. The ripple effects promise to create vast fortunes. From consumer products, medical advances, even new planets." Ray's latest research has unearthed six discoveries that will change the way we live… and perhaps make you very wealthy. See his latest report here.
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| Posted: 18 May 2012 08:50 AM PDT Last April gold investment analysts where excited to see a new institutional player enter the gold market. The University of Texas Investment Management Co. took delivery of nearly $1bn of gold bullion into a New York vault. The reason gold analysts were so interested was because large institutional players had been largely absent from their market and their huge purchasing power had therefore not had its potentially significant positive effect on the gold price.
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| Only market manipulation props up Facebook IPO at first day's close Posted: 18 May 2012 08:48 AM PDT Facebook Off to Faltering Public Start By April Dembosky and Telis Demos http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/c7bfd916-a113-11e1-9fbd-00144feabdc0.html Facebook's life as a public company got off to a faltering start as technology glitches delayed the opening of trading and underwriters had to intervene to prevent its shares falling below the $38 issue price set on Thursday. The stumbles, however, did not stop the company from celebrating the successful conclusion of the third largest initial public offering in US history on Friday. The $16 billion it raised trails only Visa's IPO in 2009 and a GM share issue in 2010. Facebook's closely-watched Wall Street debut defied predictions of a spike in first-day trading and contrasted with the scene at its Menlo Park campus just two hours earlier, when founder Mark Zuckerberg pressed the Nasdaq opening bell and employees exchanged high-fives and hugs. ... Dispatch continues below ... ADVERTISEMENT Prophecy Platinum (TSXV: NKL) and Ursa Major Minerals Company Press Release 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... After a series of technical glitches at Nasdaq delayed the start of trading by half an hour, Facebook's share price opened at $42.05, or about 10.6 per cent above the issue price, hit a brief high of $42.99, and then quickly fell back to the $38 offer price. It gyrated throughout the rest of day before closing at $38.23. Facebook's underwriters, a group of 33 investment banks led by Morgan Stanley, also stepped in when the shares fell back to their original offer price and bought shares to keep the price from dipping further, according to a person familiar with the intervention. Analysts at Morningstar said the company's record $104 billion valuation, set against the backdrop a weak stock market and a series of setbacks for Facebook's advertising business over recent weeks, may account for the lacklustre debut. Several other highly anticipated technology IPOs rose much higher on their opening days, including 109 per cent and 31 per cent gains, respectively, for shareholders at LinkedIn and Groupon. Some will see the modest rise as a coup for Facebook, leaving the company more money at the expense of day-traders and justifying its aggressive pricing at the very top of its indicative range. "They found the perfect equilibrium point [for] the offering," said Manuel Henriquez, a Facebook investor. "Taking the money off the table gives them a lot of dry powder to go pursue acquisitions and allow the stock to trade a lot cleaner in the future." The company has demonstrated to Wall Street throughout the IPO process that it will maintain as much control over its affairs as possible. Mr Zuckerberg, in his trademark jeans and hoodie, even rang the opening Nasdaq bell remotely from Facebook headquarters. Allowing no reporters access to the event, Facebook controlled a video feed showing the chief executive flanked by Sheryl Sandberg, his chief operating officer, and surrounded by executives. Thousands of employees watched and clapped as he pushed the button, then erupted into cheers. The first day of trading marks the official turning point in Facebook's 8-year history from private start-up ruled by "hackers," to massively valued public company, ruled by one chief "hacker." Mr Zuckerberg maintains more than 50 per cent of the company's voting rights, ensuring his long-term control. After two hours of trading, his stake in the company was worth $21 billion. He personally sold $1.1 billion worth of his shares in the IPO, which he said will be mainly used to pay taxes. Separately, in a sign of the mounting privacy battles Facebook will face as a public company, lawyers filed an updated lawsuit against the company in US federal court, seeking $15 billion in damages over allegations that Facebook improperly tracked the Internet use of its members even after they logged out of their Facebook accounts. The lawyers are attempting to consolidate 21 similar cases into one class action. Join GATA here: Vancouver World Resource Investment Conference Standard Chartered's Earth Resources Conference Hong Kong Gold Investment Forum Toronto Resource Investment Conference New Orleans Investment Conference * * * Support GATA by purchasing DVDs of our London conference in August 2011 or our Dawson City conference in August 2006: http://www.goldrush21.com/order.html Or by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: To contribute to GATA, please visit: ADVERTISEMENT Sona Discovers Potential High-Grade Gold Mineralization From a Company Press Release 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
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| Posted: 18 May 2012 08:38 AM PDT Jim Sinclair's Mineset My Dear Extended Family, There is a shift taking place whereby certain techs are being shorted, and guess what, some golds are getting a better reception by the hedge fund sector. Has the pendulum regarding gold swung too far to the bearish side? Yes, it certainly has. Goldman upgraded African Barrick to Neutral from Sell yesterday. Tanzania: Top Gold Miner Ups Royalty 17 May 2012 EFFORTS to make miners raise royalty have started to yield positive results and African Barrick Gold (ABG) said on Wednesday that it will pay the government an additional one per cent, citing the current gold price environment. ABG was earlier paying three per cent royalty and has for long been discussing with the government for review of the payments. "ABG has concluded discussions with the Tanzanian government with respect to the level of royalty payments made by its operations and, in light of the current gold price environment, agreed to a v...
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| Posted: 18 May 2012 08:32 AM PDT In an interview with Louis James, John Hathaway discusses the US's economic outlook and why he's delighted by the current bearish sentiment toward gold. [To be a successful speculator, one must be willing to go against the mainstream investment trends, as John is. There's no better way to get a primer on contrarian investing than [...]
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| Davies says gold smash is over; Sprott sees bank runs Posted: 18 May 2012 08:31 AM PDT 4:30p ET Friday, May 18, 2012 Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: At King World News, gold fund manager Ben Davies describes what he sees as the mechanisms of the recent gold and silver smashdown and explains why he thinks it's over: http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2012/5/18_Be... And Sprott Asset Management CEO Eric Sprott says Western central banks are struggling to prevent a "panic liquidation" event but it's happening anyway with bank runs: http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2012/5/18_Er... CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer ADVERTISEMENT Prophecy Platinum (TSXV: NKL) and Ursa Major Minerals Company Press Release 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: Vancouver World Resource Investment Conference Standard Chartered's Earth Resources Conference Hong Kong Gold Investment Forum Toronto Resource Investment Conference New Orleans Investment Conference * * * Support GATA by purchasing DVDs of our London conference in August 2011 or our Dawson City conference in August 2006: http://www.goldrush21.com/order.html Or by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: To contribute to GATA, please visit: ADVERTISEMENT Sona Discovers Potential High-Grade Gold Mineralization From a Company Press Release 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
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| Gold Reached Support Level at $1,520 Posted: 18 May 2012 08:29 AM PDT Jonathan Barratt, managing director at Commodity... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website http://goldbasics.blogspot.com for full Content ]] 
This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Gold Seeker Weekly Wrap-Up: Gold and Silver End Mixed and Near Unchanged on the Week Posted: 18 May 2012 08:27 AM PDT Gold rose $23.67 to $1597.37 in early New York trade before it drifted back lower midday, but it still ended with a gain of 1.12%. Silver surged to as high as $28.913 and ended with a gain of 2.25%.
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| 'This Is the Bottom for Gold'- John Hathaway Posted: 18 May 2012 08:20 AM PDT In an interview with Louis James, John Hathaway discusses the US's economic outlook and why he's delighted by the current bearish sentiment toward gold. Read More...
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| Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Something Wicked This Way Comes Posted: 18 May 2012 08:09 AM PDT |
| Posted: 18 May 2012 08:08 AM PDT Forget that S&P 500 e-mini futures plunged to four-month lows at 1290; or Treasury yields crashed back to their record lows; or Gold and Silver's surge today; or WTI's plummet to almost a $90 handle; or Citi joining Morgan Stanley in the red year-to-date; or credit markets continuing into the red for the year; or IG9 10Y soaring further to 160bps - widest in 6 months; or VIX closing above 25% for the first time in 5 months (and decompressing to Europe's pain). Today was all about one thing - the disaster that was/is/and will be Facebook - between late openings, overwhelmed systems, a dump to the syndicate bid and almost 600mm shares traded with the syndicate just soaking it all up at $38.00 early and into the close. Is it any wonder that every other social media stock plunged and how do they expect to ever get another internet IPO off again (at anything but a massive discount). No matter what correlation trick was tried to juice markets today - for the tenth day-in-a-row markets saw a BTFD turn into a STFR. Not a pretty end to the ugliest week in six month for the S&P 500 as it nears its 200DMA into the close. Facebook...
and (h/t Dennis Dick) for the following visual of the HFT tractor beam in FB... And the massive dominance of the syndicate bid (as who else could it have been) is clear in this chart of the volume profile for today...with Facebook's VWAP perfectly at $40 by the close...
Morgan Stanley = Zuckerpunched
And the S&P 500 e-mini futures SNAFU continues...
Utilities, Energy, and Materials are all now down YTD with Industrials close...
Gold had quite a week...
and longer-term stocks are catching up to risk-assets (proxied here by CONTEXT)...
And corporate bonds (dark red below) are now starting to get hit by the selling in the indices...
A quick run down of the day's events from Bloomberg TV: Finally, this is what happens, Larry, when due to lack of real demand, you sell the second largest IPO in history to 25% retail, which has absolutely no idea how to trade a $100+ billion company and preserve the illusion of the ponz. Charts: Bloomberg and Capital Context
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| JPM On Grexit, TARGET2, And The ECB Posted: 18 May 2012 07:49 AM PDT Unless Greece chooses to leave the Euro area, which JPMorgan doubts will happen, the rest of the region will have to push Greece out. The mechanism for this will be the ECB excluding the Greek central bank from Target2, the regional payments and settlement system. Although this might look like a technical decision about monetary plumbing, the ECB will elevate this to Euro area Heads of State. There is understandably a lot of interest in the mechanics of how a possible Greek exit from the Euro would play out in relation to the ECB. Reports of significant deposit withdrawal from Greek banks also direct attention toward the support for Greek banks coming from the Greek Central Bank and the Eurosystem. And yesterday's announcement by the ECB of restricted access to regular repo Eurosystem financing for a number of Greek banks adds some more complication. Though we would not place a lot of emphasis on what the ECB announced yesterday as a signal of broader attitudes toward Greece, understanding the mechanics matters more broadly.
The view from the asset side…
Let's start by considering the asset side of the Greek Central Bank's Balance sheet (This is the less interesting part of the story, in our view).
If the Greek central bank makes loans to Greek banks under standard ECB repo terms, the credit risk on such loans is (under current law) shared across the Eurosystem. Regular repo operations against "extended collateral" see the credit risk transferred to the Greek central bank. And if the Greek central bank makes loans under ELA, the credit risk stays with the Greek central bank.
In the event that Greece were to leave the Euro area, any possible losses on ELA loans to banks and repos against extended collateral accrue to the Greek central bank. What would happen to any losses on regular repo operations in the context of euro exit is much more hazy. Greece may claim legal grounds that any losses should be shared. But since EMU exit would be a material breach of existing legal treaties, it is tough to argue that existing legal provisions would necessarily carry much weight. There would probably have to be some negotiation over any losses that accrue down the line.
The ECB's decision yesterday to limit the access of Greek banks to regular repo financing, forcing more use of ELA, reflects the fact that the banks and the Greek authorities are still haggling over the terms on which they are recapitalised. The ECB's position is that until the capital goes in, the banks are not fully solvent, hence lending to them goes via ELA, not regular repos. On the one hand, this puts pressure on the Greeks to stop haggling on the recap terms. On the other hand, some may argue that it demonstrates that the ECB is keen to limit the system's exposure to Greece as a whole, pushing the loans to ELA where necessary, where Greece has no legal comeback at all for losses. We think the first of these is more important.
The view from the liability side….
If we now think about the liability side of the Greek central bank balance sheet: the story gets more interesting. The Greek central bank creates euros when it grants loans to Greek banks via either repos or ELA. In the first instance, these show up as reserve holdings by the Greek banks at the central bank when the euros are credited to their account. But with euros leaving the Greek banking system, Greek banks lose reserves as transactions are settled through the payments system. As Greek bank's reserves fall, this is replaced by a liability to the Target2 payments system for the Greek central bank. The Greek central bank's liability to the rest of the Eurosystem via Target2 is currently near €130bn. As we move toward the Greek election next month, that is likely to climb given deposit flight. But we expect the ECB will do all within its power to keep the Greek banking system afloat until the election, even if some of the loans to Greek banks are redirected via ELA. The terms of ELA can be stretched so that Greek banks do not run out of collateral, while banks can issue bonds to themselves backed by a government guarantee to create more collateral.
How Greece could get cut off from Target2
But a much more challenging question is what happens after the election. Let's imagine Syriza is able to form a government, declares a debt moratorium, and antagonizes the rest of the region by rejecting the Troika programme in its entirety. Even with no further disbursements of official loans, the region's loans to Greece via the target 2 system will be continuing to grow. Loans from the Greek central bank to Greek banks would be almost completely forced into ELA. The ECB can "shut off" the Target2 loans if it exercises its veto over ELA loans (requiring a two-thirds majority on the Governing Council), and if the Greek central bank respects that veto. But the Greek central bank would likely be faced with the need to impose very restrictive controls on Euro deposits to limit outflows if ELA loans to Greek banks cannot be made. If the Greek central bank is faced with the prospect of imposing capital controls, a collapse of the Greek banking system, or defying the ECB's veto on ELA loans, what route would it take? If it chose the latter, the only way for the ECB to "shut off" the Target2 loans would be to prevent Greek access to the payments system itself, refusing to accept payments of euros to and from Greek banks. At that point, Greek created euros are no longer euros. That decision would not be made by the ECB alone, but would likely be deferred to European Heads of State.
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| Ben Davies - The Gold & Silver Liquidation is Over Posted: 18 May 2012 07:36 AM PDT  With continued uncertainty in markets around the world, today Ben Davies, CEO of Hinde Capital wrote the following piece exclusively for King World News. Davies believes the gold and silver liquidation is over: "I humbly believe the seller is done. For one week there has been several but mainly one entity selling Comex gold futures, as well as some physical to liquidate on the open and closes. This suggest to us it was a CTA commodity type fund. They use volume areas of the day to transact."
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With continued uncertainty in markets around the world, today Ben Davies, CEO of Hinde Capital wrote the following piece exclusively for King World News. Davies believes the gold and silver liquidation is over: "I humbly believe the seller is done. For one week there has been several but mainly one entity selling Comex gold futures, as well as some physical to liquidate on the open and closes. This suggest to us it was a CTA commodity type fund. They use volume areas of the day to transact."
If you're a person that doesn't really understand what's going on, but what you see of the current global financial world, like the first ever Japanese pension fund investing in gold, makes you fearful of your own financial survival, listen up! Andy and I touch base again this week and break down the implosion occurring in Greece. We suggest you keep your eyes on that Greece thing! Although the powers that be, aka the Elites, have done everything to make you believe what's going on with Greece is not a big deal, it is undoubtedly a foreshadowing to global calamity.
The gods sure have a good sense of comic timing: The biggest Internet IPO ever coincides with our own Internet access getting throttled.
"And that's where we can put our pencils down on Facebook," says Chris. "It ain't cheap."
"Anyone who clicks on a 'Like' button is counted as a monthly user," adds Vancouver stalwart Barry Ritholtz, poking a few holes of his own in the Facebook case, "making that 900 million monthly user number grossly exaggerated."
"When it comes to trading IPOs, you simply avoid them—at least during the formative early weeks and months," says Greg Guenthner, tackling the matter from a technician's view.
"Many FB insiders," adds Chris Mayer, "are also selling about half their holdings."
"I'm not a tax expert," says co-founder Eduardo Saverin, speaking up for the first time since news got out a week ago that he surrendered his U.S. citizenship.
Meanwhile, one of Facebook's earliest investors is a step or two closer to implementing his own version of expatriation.
The Facebook chatter has largely overshadowed the fact this will be the second week in a row in which major U.S. indexes will log "their worst week all year."
After a big jump yesterday, gold is taking a small leap upward today. At last check, the spot price is $1,589 — a $50 improvement in 48 hours.
"I like to see evidence for everything," declares the inimitable Doug Casey, weighing in on the question of whether the gold and silver markets are manipulated.
The greenback is about where it was 24 hours ago, the dollar index at 81.3. The euro has settled back to $1.271, while the yen is at 79.13.
"I recently noticed," a reader writes, "that a small (under $100) balance in a Bank of America savings account, which has earned me a dollar or so per year interest for many years, had started dwindling rapidly… at the rate of $5 per month."
"Does that swirlogram," a reader inquires after yesterday's episode, "look a lot like empires going down the drain, or is that my imagination?"
"The swirlogram," adds another, "is the visual interpretation of the beginning of the flushing the economy down the toilet."
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