saveyourassetsfirst3 |
- Krugman Finally Wins the Argument
- Gold Miners Hemorrhage Despite Resilient Gold
- Civilized people don't buy gold
- Gary North: Gold in Your IRA. Not!
- Youku Earnings Preview: Expect Robust Topline Result; New Kind Of Rivalry Emerges
- The Silver Lining Of Bank Downgrades
- Precious Metals and Mining Stocks Approaching a Major Bottom
- Japan shuts down last working nuclear reactor
- The American gold Buffalo
- Central Banks Like Gold, Despite What They Say
- Economists, Liquidity Mongers and the Banker Assault on Financial Reform
- gim round to da moon?
- Silver Update: “Bull Over?”
- Gold in Your IRA. Not!
- ‘Civilized People Don't Buy Gold'
- What’s the point of gold?
- Silver: Don Vs. SF
- Silver: Bull Market, Bear Market?
- EndlessMountain: Silver Chart Update 5.5.2012
- BrotherJohnF: Silver To Go Parabolic
- George Washington: Lack of Trust – Caused by Institutional Corruption – Is Killing the Economy
| Krugman Finally Wins the Argument Posted: 06 May 2012 04:27 AM PDT Today's world can be summarized in two sentences: Unless continuously fed with new credit, the global financial system will implode. And when confronted with this possibility, governments will always respond with new credit. This has been true at least since the Long Term Capital Management collapse in 1998, and in the ensuing 24 years the global financial markets and the world's governments have been partners in a dance in which crisis elicits monetary ease, which ignites an asset bubble, which bursts and elicits a new flood of credit. After each sequence the total amount of debt — and the system's fragility — is even higher than before. Through it all a few brave souls like Ron Paul have tried to stop the music and liquidate the debt, while other — far more numerous — authorities like New York Times columnist Paul Krugman have called for even more debt to produce higher inflation in order to liquidate the old debt. These worldviews — sound money to which the world must adapt versus flexible money that adapts to the needs of the economy — are mutually exclusive. Only one can win. With all due respect to sound money advocates, there was never any doubt about the outcome. When voters suffer, governments armed with a printing press will always respond with easy money. Today the debate ended. France has elected a socialist leader who will demand an end to austerity. The head of the European Central Bank has accepted that growth should henceforth take precedence over balanced budgets, and Fed chairman Ben Bernanke has made it clear that he's ready to step in with more easing if necessary. Elections in Greece, Ireland and elsewhere will solidify this consensus. So now begins the next, purely-inflationary stage of the process, in which governments and central banks abandon whatever restraints they once recognized and vow to do whatever it takes to put people back to work in the here-and-now. That means tax cuts, even bigger deficits, continued low interest rates and aggressive asset purchase programs. Whether this "works", i.e. whether the coming round of global devaluation produces higher employment with a minimum of instability, is an open question because we've never been here before. No society in history has owed this much money, and the forces of global debt liquidation have never lost. Kondratieff Winter has never been bypassed and converted to Spring. But the world has never been armed with an unlimited printing press either. See The Long Wave Versus The Printing Press. One thing that's certain is that today's tentative policies with one eye on deficits will soon be replaced by single-minded money printing, with a Krugman-esque goal of sustained 4% inflation. So now we know exactly what the world's governments want. The question is, can they get it? | ||||
| Gold Miners Hemorrhage Despite Resilient Gold Posted: 06 May 2012 03:25 AM PDT By GDX) relative to the SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average (DIA). As a reminder, a rising price Complete Story » | ||||
| Civilized people don't buy gold Posted: 06 May 2012 02:20 AM PDT According to Warren Buffett's right-hand Charles Munger at Berkshire Hathway. . . http://www.cnbc.com/id/47298734 Of course not. . Once you buy it, they can't make any more money off of you! | ||||
| Gary North: Gold in Your IRA. Not! Posted: 06 May 2012 12:35 AM PDT Gold in Your IRA. Not! by Gary North Long article at Lew Rock: http://lewrockwell.com/north/north1135.html | ||||
| Youku Earnings Preview: Expect Robust Topline Result; New Kind Of Rivalry Emerges Posted: 06 May 2012 12:33 AM PDT By Jiang Zhang: Youku (YOKU) reports earnings this month. The Street expects:
Heading into the earnings, investors can expect continued topline momentum and possible signs of margin improvement. In addition, investors should focus on Youku's strategy of defending its market share from the growing threat of online video alliance between Sohu (SOHU), Baidu (BIDU), and Tencent. Robust Topline Growth Youku should continue to exhibit robust topline growth as the leading online video platform in China. click to enlarge image Youku's recent acquisition of its main rival, Tudou (TUDO), further strengthens its industry standing. The combined company will account for 36% of China's online video advertising market and will likely attract additional advertising dollar for advertisers generally have a preference of allocating budget to the platform that attracts large user traffic and contains wide selection of content. For a deeper analysis Complete Story » | ||||
| The Silver Lining Of Bank Downgrades Posted: 05 May 2012 11:24 PM PDT By Spencer Knight: As the Moody's credit downgrade report becomes imminent it is important to discuss one positive that will come from a slew of downgrades. This silver lining comes from the fact that any downgrade will cause banks to raise their reserve levels. And raising reserve levels will help tame inflation. It will take plenty more tightening to considerably slow down inflation, but if enough banks are forced to hoard cash as collateral then it will play a small part in slowing down the inflation rate. More specifically, Moody's is in the process of reviewing the long term and/or short term credit ratings of Bank of America (BAC), Citigroup (C), Goldman Sachs (GS), JP Morgan Chase (JPM), Morgan Stanley (MS), Royal Bank of Canada (RY), Barclays (BCS), BNP Paribas (BNP.PA), Credit Agricole (ACA.PA), Deutsche Bank (DB), HSBC (HSBA.L), Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), and Societe Generale (GLE.PA), while current reviews of Credit Complete Story » | ||||
| Precious Metals and Mining Stocks Approaching a Major Bottom Posted: 05 May 2012 11:14 PM PDT I have followed Robert for a lot of years now and put a lot of stock in what he says. I subscribe to his service but this is from his free area. https://www.technicalindicatorindex....%2C%202012.pdf | ||||
| Japan shuts down last working nuclear reactor Posted: 05 May 2012 09:56 PM PDT All 50 reactors now closed for maintenance after 2011 tsunami but government faces major public opposition to reactivation. Japan is shutting down its last working nuclear reactor as part of the safety drive imposed after the March 2011 tsunami triggered a meltdown at the Fukushima plant... Read | ||||
| Posted: 05 May 2012 06:00 PM PDT GoldCoin | ||||
| Central Banks Like Gold, Despite What They Say Posted: 05 May 2012 05:01 PM PDT Watch what they do, not what they say. That is wise advise always, but especially when trying to discern what government is up to. Central banks routinely argue that gold is a "barbarous relic," the term Keynes used to describe it. He knew, as do Central Banks, that a true gold standard would make all | ||||
| Economists, Liquidity Mongers and the Banker Assault on Financial Reform Posted: 05 May 2012 03:10 PM PDT Yves here. I'm posting a Real News interview with Gerry Epstein on the same theme, that of the dubious arguments and methods bankers are putting forward to stymie reforms, at the end of this post. If you have time, I'd suggest watching that as well as reading this post, since they don't overlap much. Otherwise, pick your preferred medium! By Gerry Epstein, Professor of Economics and a founding Co-Director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Cross posted from TripleCrisis This has been a bad stretch for advocates of financial reform – and therefore for the economy as a whole. One after the other, new financial regulations contained in the Dodd-Frank law are being gutted or delayed by regulators and Congress, while the bankers – escorted by a phalanx of paid economists, lawyers and lobbyists – are squealing "wee, wee, wee" all the way home. Bankers and their lobbyists and economists help grease the skids not just with money – but with terms of "econ-speak" such as "cost-benefit analysis", and most commonly, "liquidity". Used and manipulated by the wrong hands, such boring and innocuous sounding concepts can turn dangerous, even fatal in the banker battle against safer financial regulation. The list of delays, loopholes and obstacles is too long to fully recount, but here are a few of the most important. First, the Federal Reserve Board decided to delay by two years the implementation of the so-called Volcker Rule which was one of the stronger measures in the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation that was signed into Law in July, 2010.While the regulators had been given the option for such a delay in the original Dodd-Frank legislation, the deed was done by the relentless lobbying by bankers that first filled the original Volcker rule with massive amounts of wiggle room and devilish complications, and then, over the next year made the rule more and more complex by filling it with even more loopholes and obscure language. Then – like the Republicans who cut taxes to bloat the deficit and then say the budget needs to be cut because the deficit is too large – the bankers demanded to "delay" the Volcker rule on the grounds that it is too complex. A second set of potentially powerful Dodd –Frank rules – to bring unregulated derivatives, including credit default swaps (CDS) that were at the root of the financial meltdown as well as those that are used to speculate on commodities such as oil and food under oversight and regulation – are now being massively watered down. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) are raising the "limbo" bar of regulation to a whopping $8 billion average worth of derivates each year, a figure so high that massive energy and financial speculators can easily slither underneath without being subject to serious regulation. The original maximum exception level proposed by regulators in 2010 was $100 million. Only an estimated 30% of traders would have made it under that bar; with the $8 billion threshold, an estimated 85% of the traders will go un-regulated, at least for the next five years. Third, many of these exemptions and loopholes are dramatically extended in a bill before the House of representatives this week: HR 3336 entitled "The Small Business Credit Availability Act" which has nothing to do with credit to small business, but everything to do with exempting major energy companies like Koch Trading from oversight under the derivatives rules, virtually destroying any chance of derivatives regulation in the already weakened Dodd-Frank Law. When the banks have not been able to kill or delay bills by stuffing them full of loopholes, as with the Volcker Rule and the rules governing regulations of derivatives, they have gone to court to block the implementation of the legislation. Perhaps most egregiously, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) and the International swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) brought a lawsuit to block the implementation of "position limits" mandated by the Dodd-Frank Act to limit speculation in commodities such as food and oil. The bankers and traders claim that the CFTC must do an extremely costly and time-consuming "cost-benefit" analysis to prove that the regulations will not do more harm than good. Lawmakers such as Carl Levin and analysts argue that in writing the law, Congress already determined that the benefits to society of limiting this destructive speculation outweighs the costs in terms of forgone profits by traders and speculators. The idea of subjecting each regulation to a "cost-benefit" analysis is being used as a tool to stymie the implementation of regulations of the egregious practices of corporations. It presumes, of course, that the default option should be the unregulated market. Instead, with many presumably dangerous practices –such as the marketing of dangerous financial products – a more sensible default option may be strict controls unless the financial instruments can be shown to be safe and useful: a financial precautionary principle. But perhaps the most over-used economics term, and most pervasive economic scare tactic, used to fight financial reform is the term "liquidity". Bankers doing battle against Dodd-Frank routinely get economists – some of them quite prestigious such as Stanford's Darrell Duffie – to write papers claiming that regulations such as the Volcker Rule prohibitions on proprietary trading will reduce the ability of banks to act as "market makers", thereby reducing "liquidity" in financial markets. This, Duffie and other economists such as those at the ubiquitous consulting firm Oliver Wyman say, will harm pension funds, corporate borrowers, and governments who will find their costs of borrowing increasing. Duffie and Wyman economists admit that the Volcker Rule, in fact, has a massive exception to its ban on proprietary trading allowing for banks to hold plentiful inventories of securities that will allow them to "make markets" and provide plenty of liquidity. They simply claim that banks will be afraid that the regulators will penalize them if they cross the line into proprietary trading. Oh yes: bankers are known as shrinking violets who quiver at the thought of straying over a line where a regulator might slap their wrists. This banker timidity will surely cause liquidity to dry up. To prove their point about the dangers of dry liquidity, Duffie and Wyman almost laughably cite data from the great financial crisis of 208 – 2009 where liquidity did dry up and yes: this was very costly. But they fail to mention that a major reason the illiquidity crisis occurred was that the banks engaged in massively dangerous proprietary trading that crashed the system in the first place, and at the first sign of trouble, instead of providing liquidity to their customers, the banks massively withdrew liquidity from the system and dumped assets just as fast as they could. And we can be certain that if the banks' proprietary trading is not controlled by a robust Volcker Rule of some type, the next time around, these banks will again generate massive cycles by providing excessive liquidity to the system so they can speculate and trade on complex and opaque bets during the upswing. Then, when these crash the system, they will destroy the liquidity before their customers can get their hands on it by dumping securities into the market just as fast as they can. Do these economists really not understand this? Some economists do. Find them at http://www.sec.gov/comments/s7-41-11/s74111-237.pdf">Americans for Financial Reform, Better Markets, SAFER, and Finance Watch among other places.
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| Posted: 05 May 2012 01:37 PM PDT got me a sheet :banana: what's the mintages on the three gim rounds? http://www.ebay.com/itm/Silver-Round...item5ae695c7ef We will offer this Beautiful Advertising Silver Art Round Ingot, so don't miss it as advertising ingots are quite collectible and any of them could be very rare as many of them were very low, have you seen this round before, We have not: Shipped in a flip we found it, we will mark it as circulated but near mint with a tad of toning. Put this old Freedom ingot minted in 2008 as dated in your collection of advertising as it is one ultra-rare art round. Minutemen will bring you Gold, for this rare ingot. Remember the Western Auto art bar and buy now, as it has been discontinued years ago and the strike was low no doubt. (Gold Money) information will bring you one great collectible piece, as shown in the stock scans below, can it get any better; it is hallmarked as One Troy Ounce .999 fine on the shown obverse. | ||||
| Silver Update: “Bull Over?” Posted: 05 May 2012 01:34 PM PDT BJF on addresses the question " bull over" in the 5.5.12 Silver from brotherjohnf: Got Physical? ~TVR
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| Posted: 05 May 2012 01:11 PM PDT
from lewrockwell.com: have a Website where subscribers can ask questions on various forums. The site is actually called "Gary North's Specific Answers." My answers are very specific. So are other subscribers' answers. One of the categories is "retirement." There is a lot of interest in retirement issues. One of them is what assets should go into an IRA. I say "None." This is not a popular answer. I add, "especially gold." This is also unpopular. Over the years, I have published articles on my site explaining these answers. But some subscribers do not use the search engine to locate these articles. Others do not believe me. Still others talk it over with their accountants. Their accountants offer rival views. Then they post a question that reflects their accountants' views. I have no objection to someone going to his CPA for advice. In fact, I recommend it. That's what CPAs are supposed to do: offer advice. But there is a problem. CPAs are inside the tax system. They give advice as agents of the system. They are licensed by the profession, which has been granted an occupational monopoly by agencies of government. I used to have an accountant who had been a CPA, but he resigned. He turned in his CPA license. Here was his logic. "I take extreme positions on interpreting the tax code, to enable my clients to pay minimal taxes. At some point, I argue very strongly in tax court. I could have been threatened by the IRS to have my CPA license revoked. To remove this threat, I send back my license." This man no longer takes clients with less than $1,000,000 income per year. Note: he is also a semi-pro poker player in Las Vegas. His moniker at the table would tell all but a professional to stay out of the game. He likes risk. Most CPAs don't like risk. Keep on reading @ lewrockwell.com | ||||
| ‘Civilized People Don't Buy Gold' Posted: 05 May 2012 01:10 PM PDT
from thedailybell.com: Civilized people don't buy gold," Berkshire Hathaway's Charlie Munger told CNBC yesterday in an exclusive "sit down" interview. It wasn't some off-the-cuff remark, either, as he went on to remind us that "gold is only useful if you're a Jewish family in Vienna in 1939″ and "sewing it" into your clothes. The statement has received a lot of attention in the alternative press since then, with numerous articles and commentaries mentioning it. The sheer obstreperousness of the comment virtually flies in the face of much of what's taken place in the past decade. At the same time Munger was making these dubious observations, Berkshire Hathaway was announcing that it had more than doubled its profit in the first quarter. The conglomerate's insurance business, according to a Reuters report, "was spared from the devastating natural disaster losses that hit the company a year earlier." The company also made money on its derivatives portfolio and substantially wrote down part of a bond portfolio. But it's hard to avoid the idea that all of this organized PR is setting the table for the company's upcoming shareholder meeting that's been called the "Woodstock for Capitalism," to be held in Omaha, Nebraska. At this meeting Buffet and Munger shall be lionized as great investors once again, as before. We shall be subject to the interminable assertions that Buffet and Munger are simple men with a simply fantastic knack for picking "great companies." Can we really believe it? It should be obvious by now for those who care to look that Warren Buffet in particular has been flailing for years. Virtually every time you look around he's on television calling for higher taxes. When he's not calling for higher taxes, he's making deals with companies like Goldman Sachs at insider prices. Buffet rarely if ever takes a naked long position, from what I can tell, without some sort of additional assurance or inducement. He uses his size and leverage to create advantages while extolling the plain common sense of "value investing." But given his use of derivatives and the way he throws his substantial investment weight around, it's hard to believe that he is really "walking the walk" anymore. Keep on reading @ thedailybell.com | ||||
| Posted: 05 May 2012 01:09 PM PDT
from moneyweek.com: One of the problems with putting a price on gold – as gold perma-bears regularly point out – is that it doesn't pay an income. Generally, the starting point with valuing an investment is to work out how much income it will pay you in the future, then work out how much you are willing to pay for that. With gold paying neither dividends nor rent, you can't do that. So how do you value it? I've just read an interesting report from Julian Jessop at Capital Economics that has a crack at it… Three scenarios for gold: from $1,000 an ounce to $5,000 Jessop notes that gold has "moved fairly closely in line with the cost of insuring against sovereign defaults in Europe." In other words, as anxiety grows about the condition of Europe, the gold price tends to rise. Their central scenario is that Europe experiences a "relatively orderly" break-up, with one or more small countries leaving the eurozone. As a result, the Federal Reserve would keep monetary policy ultra-loose (even if it avoids more quantitative easing), and gold would rise to $2,200. Even at this price, it would still be lower than the inflation-adjusted all-time high of 1980 (which was $2,400 in real terms). It would also be reasonably priced compared to oil. Keep on reading @ moneyweek.com | ||||
| Posted: 05 May 2012 01:03 PM PDT | ||||
| Silver: Bull Market, Bear Market? Posted: 05 May 2012 01:03 PM PDT Silver is in the middle of something, and Silverfuturist wants to know what it is. from daytradeshow: ~TVR | ||||
| EndlessMountain: Silver Chart Update 5.5.2012 Posted: 05 May 2012 01:00 PM PDT | ||||
| BrotherJohnF: Silver To Go Parabolic Posted: 05 May 2012 12:38 PM PDT John from brotherjohnf.com Interviewed by Elijah Johnson of Unconventional Finance from unconventionalfin: ~TVR | ||||
| George Washington: Lack of Trust – Caused by Institutional Corruption – Is Killing the Economy Posted: 05 May 2012 10:54 AM PDT People Are Losing Trust In All InstitutionsThe signs are everywhere: Americans have lost trust in our institutions. The Chicago Booth/Kellogg School Financial Trust Index published yesterday shows that only 22% of Americans trust the nation's financial system. SmartMoney notes today that more and more Americans are keeping valuables at home because they have lost trust in banks. Robert Shiller said Monday:
The National Journal noted last week:
Gallup reported last month that – for the second year in a row – Americans said that gold is the safest long-term investment. This shows that Americans don't trust the government. Specifically, as Time Magazine points out:
Indeed:
It's not just the U.S. As the Economist reported in January, trust in institutions is plunging worldwide:
Lack of Trust Is Killing the EconomyTop economists have been saying for well over a decade that trust is necessary for a stable economy, and that prosecuting the criminals is necessary to restore trust. Indeed, as we have repeatedly noted, loss of trust is arguably the main reason we are stuck in an economic crisis … notwithstanding unprecedented action by central banks worldwide. Economist Daniel Hameresh writes:
In 1998, Paul Zak (Professor of Economics and Department Chair, as well as the founding Director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies at Claremont Graduate University, Professor of Neurology at Loma Linda University Medical Center, and a senior researcher at UCLA) and Stephen Knack (a Lead Economist in the World Bank's Research Department and Public Sector Governance Department) wrote a paper called Trust and Growth, arguing:
Heap, Tan and Zizzo and others have come to similar conclusions. In 2001, Zak and Knack showed that "strengthening the rule of law, reducing inequality, and by facilitating interpersonal understanding" all increase trust. They conclude:
A 2005 letter in premier scientific journal Nature reviewed the research on trust and economics:
Forbes wrote an article in 2006 entitled "The Economics of Trust". The article summarizes the importance of trust in creating a healthy economy:
In 2007, Yann Algan (Professor of Economics at Paris School of Economics and University Paris East) and Pierre Cahuc (Professor of Economics at the Ecole Polytechnique (Paris)) reported:
Similarly, market psychologists Richard L. Peterson M.D. and Frank Murtha, PhD noted in 2008
In 2009, Paola Sapienza (associate professor of finance and the Zell Center Faculty Fellow at Northwestern University) and Luigi Zingales (Robert C. McCormack Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business) pointed out:
They quote a Nobel laureate economist on the subject:
In 2010, a distinguished international group of economists (Giancarlo Corsetti, Michael P. Devereux, Luigi Guiso, John Hassler, Gilles Saint-Paul, Hans-Werner Sinn, Jan-Egbert Sturm and Xavier Vives) wrote:
They noted:
In his influential 1993 book Making Democracy Work, Robert Putnam showed how civic attitudes and trust could account for differences in the economic and government performance between northern and southern Italy. Political economist Francis Fukiyama wrote a book called Trust in 1995, arguing that the most pervasive cultural characteristic influencing a nation's prosperity and ability to compete is the level of trust or cooperative behavior based upon shared norms. He stated that the United States, like Japan and Germany, has been a high-trust society historically but that this status has eroded in recent years. Chris Farrell notes:
Dallas Fed president Richard Fisher said last year that a growing distrust of the nation's political institutions is keeping businesses on the sidelines. Forbes notes in March that a lack of trust was one of the main factors hurting the Greek economy:
Ken Eisold – an internationally respected authority on the psychodynamics of organizations – writes:
But the problem is not that people should be more blindly and naively trusting. The problem – as Eisold points out – is that the institutions have to act in a more trustworthy manner:
No Economy-Revving Optimism Without TrustEconomist Robert Higgs – who has studied the effect of World War II on the economy in great detail – argues that it was optimism, rather than stimulus spending, which got us out of the depression:
Unlike after WWII, Americans now are pessimistic (even though we've been various wars against third-rate countries far longer than we were in WWII) and our expectations are stuck in the gutter. Why? Perhaps because we don't trust our government, our big corporations or our other institutions to do anything very helpful for the country. Indeed, we don't trust our government, big corporations and other institutions to even allow a fair playing field where we have a chance of competing fairly to get ahead on our own initiative. Why should we work harder, invest more or spend more when we don't trust that we might have a bright future? Prosecuting the Criminals Is Necessary to Restore TrustNobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz says that we have to prosecute fraud or else the economy won't recover:
Robert Shiller said recently that failing to address the legal issues will cause Americans to lose faith in business and the government:
Economists such as William Black and James Galbraith agree. Galbraith says:
Galbraith also says that economists should move into the background, and "criminologists to the forefront". Government regulators know this – or at least pay lip service to it – as well. For example, as the Director of the Securities and Exchange Commission's enforcement division told Congress:
Nobel prize winning economist George Akerlof has demonstrated that failure to punish white collar criminals – and instead bailing them out- creates incentives for more economic crimes and further destruction of the economy in the future. Indeed, William Black notes that we've known of this dynamic for "hundreds of years". And see this, this, | ||||
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